Crime Plus Music (4 page)

As I sat by the riverbank smoking a cigarette after the police and everyone had gone that day they found his head, I had the strange thought that if we managed to find all the pieces of Tony and somehow put them together, The Blackbird would live again. I believe in transformations.

Then I recalled a day not so long before, when Connie was still alive, and she and Tony were in love. I asked him what happened to the blackbird in his story, the one with the damaged wing and the messy nest. Had he found a mate? Did they live happily ever after?

And Tony told me that the blackbird had simply disappeared. One day he just wasn't there any more. His nest was empty and his song was silent.

But whenever I hear a blackbird now, I always think of Tony. And if I can, I try to get a look at it, especially its wing. Just in case.

THE MISFITS

BY NAOMI RAND

W
HERE WOULD YOU HAVE BEEN
without me, go on, tell me that why don't you, you ungrateful bitch. I made you.

T
HAT
WAS
HIS
PARTING
SHOT
to me. Johnny O believed that until the minute he cast his eyes upon you, you didn't actually exist. My ex-manager thought I was some piece of clay he breathed that lousy cigarette breath into to coax into life.

I believed otherwise. My version is that when we met, I had already been alive and well and living in Calabasas for seventeen years. I, Julie Weston, was a senior at Calabasas High. I'd already been accepted to my first choice school, UCLA. And why not? I had a 4.0 average. Plus, I was captain of the girl's swimteam, lynchpin of the debate team, and to top it off, I was dating the boy most likely to be crowned prom king. So really I did exist before. Not only did I exist, I was well on my way to making my doting parents proud. But you be the judge.

L
ATE
M
AY
,
BUT
THERE
'
S
J
UNE
gloom in the air. I cut class and head east from the boring suburbs to the City of Angels. I drive straight to Tower Records and park. Walk inside and comb the rack to find the new album filed under S for Smith. On the cover, Patti wears a wife-beater tee and a locket. She looks like she's pretending to be demure, her eyes look down and a little to the side, while really she's saying, good luck, you'll never know me.

Patti Smith is the girl I wish I could be pretty much every minute of every day. In reality, I'm her polar opposite. Not just in attitude, as in I give my parents no trouble at all, but of course in looks. I have straight blond hair that falls almost to my waist, winning blue eyes, and a natural tan.

The title of the new album is
Easter
. I think how genius that is comparing herself to Jesus because of course, she's risen again after falling off the stage and breaking her neck.

She's so brave.

I'm such a coward.

This is what I think as I walk to the register and stand in line to pay. Then the guy behind me asks, “Is that really for you, luv?”

The first thing I notice is the English accent. When I swing 'round to see who he is, I see a guy who's way on the wrong side of thirty. They say clothing makes the man. If so, his outfit is questionable. He's wearing a leather fringed vest over a washed-out Stones concert T-shirt. Strapped round his hips, a thin leather belt with an oh-so-expensive Navajo hammered silver buckle, and to finish off the look, worn-out jeans and lizard-skin cowboy boots.

A sleazebag, I decide.

“Are you buying it for your boyfriend then?”

“No, I'm not.” Though how is it even his business?

Luckily it's my turn to pay. My boyfriend? Josh thinks the Bee Gees are what music is all about. At the prom he'll want to do one of those dance routines with me. I squirm at the thought. A few months ago, I lost my virginity to Josh in the backseat of his car. We've had sex pretty regularly since then and I wish I could say the groping and fumbling has turned into something desirable. But it hasn't. I have already decided to break up with him as soon as I leave for college.

Enough of Josh, he's annoying to think about at best.

I grab my yellow Tower bag and head out to my car. It's an ancient orange VW bug and by ancient I mean you can see the road passing if you look down, due to the rusted floorboard.

“So you're a fan then, are you? Do you play anything?” The guy has followed me. Jesus, he's persistent. In fact he's leaning on the car as he talks to me. “If you're in the mood, swing by Thursday, I'm having tryouts.”

He's giving me a business card.

“Come by at six.”

I read
Johnny O, Musical Impresario
. What does that even mean? But there's an address and phone number.

He walks away. Gets into a retro Thunderbird convertible and drives off in a blaze of glory and gas fumes.

O
UR
HOUSE
IS
A
ONE
-
STORY
ranch on Susan Drive. Susan Drive ends at Eve Court. The developer who built every one of these ticky-tacky houses named the streets after his daughters and sisters and mother and, when those names ran out, about a zillion cousins. When I pull into the driveway, the sprinklers are whirling away. But the garage is empty.

Perfect!

In my room, I turn up the sound on my KLH to blast. Then lie prone on the shag carpet and shut my eyes. I forget where I am, my pretty-in-pink bedroom in the middle of what used to be a desert. My perfect home in a perfect town filled with perfect people and their perfectly tedious and predictable lives. I'm where she is. Where she lives. I picture New York City, which is hard since I've never actually been there. It's more of theoretical construct, an amalgamation of images that I've seen in movies and photographs.

I've listened to the record three times through by the time my mom yells, “Julie!” I leap up and turn down the sound and can hear her asking herself her favorite rhetorical question: “How can anyone call that din music?”

T
HURSDAY
FINDS
ME
HEADING
SOUTH
. My mom thinks I'm with Stacy. Stacy thinks I have a hot date and am two-timing Josh. I slide my tape of
Horses
into the eight-track and chant along, slamming the palm of my hand against the steering wheel in time to the beat.

When I get there, my heart sinks. The address is for a garage, smack in the middle of two working auto body shops. The joke is clearly on me. I look around surreptitiously, wondering if it's some humiliating version of
Candid Camera
. But I see no one filming, so I force myself to get out and walk up to the door. Sure enough, there's his name next to the buzzer. Johnny O.

What does the “O” stand for anyhow, I wonder? I hesitate, but I've come all this way, so I force myself to ring. The lock is released. When I pull the door open, I see a dark hallway. What comes to my mind is that quote, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Still, I walk inside and the door shuts behind me with a harsh click.

“We're down here, luv,” a voice calls out.

W
HEN
I
GET
TO
THE
end, I find a rehearsal space. In it, there's a piano and a drum kit and a bunch of mics. And on the far side, I see an actual office. It's not high class, but it looks legit.

“Put your name down,” Johnny O says to me, handing me a piece of paper. “We'll get started in about fifteen, ladies,” and he saunters away into the office and shuts the door.

There are a bunch of other girls there. Thank God!

I've lugged in my Guild in its sad cardboard case. Some of the other girls have theirs out, tuning up. I sit down on a folding metal chair and do the same. What I wonder is if he approached all of them on line at Tower, but then a girl says to me, “I was sure no one else would come,” and shows me the ad. He put a notice in the
LA Free Press
.
Do You Have What It Takes to become Rock and Roll Royalty?
It says whoever passes the audition is going to be a member of a brand new, all-girl band. He's even picked out our name for us.

We're going to be called The Misfits.

Just then he emerges and says, “Shall we get started then?”

J
OHNNY
AUDITIONS
THE
DRUMMERS
FIRST
. The rest of us sit and watch and wait. It's no contest, there's one girl who's far and away the best. He says, “Thank you for coming,” to the rest and then uses that girl to keep the beat. He chooses two of us to play together with her, one plays lead, the other bass, and he puts up sheet music in case we don't know the songs. I can read chords, but not the notes.

I start to really panic. I think about leaving. But that would be humiliating too. Lethargy sets in, and so, I stay.

Johnny O looks even more dubious than he did two days ago. He's thin and twitchy and a cigarette perches perilously in the corner of his mouth. Yet not one of us questions that he can deliver on the advertised promise of fame and fortune.

I
T
TAKES
ANOTHER
HOUR
AND
he selects the bassist, dismisses a bunch more. Now there are only four left. That I'm among them is a total shock to me. The other three go first, and they're all much better guitarists than I am. They can all carry a tune as well. When it's my turn I'm so nervous, I literally bang my lips against the mic. “Sweetheart, please, it's not your boyfriend up there, it's a mic.”

I blush. Extensively.

The song he picks for me to sing is the Stones, “Sympathy for the Devil.”

First stroke of luck, I know it by heart.

When Patti first showed up, all they could do was compare her to Mick, which I find insulting. She was herself, wasn't that enough? I strum the first chord a few times and then the drummer hits the beat and we start in.

I don't know what happens, because I'm nervous as hell but somewhere along the way the music takes over and by the time I'm in St. Petersburg I've forgotten where I am.

Then, just like that, it's over.

“All right,” Johnny O says and he turns around and dismisses the other girls.

O
UTSIDE
,
THE
THREE
OF
US
stand in the parking lot. We are The Misfits.

Tara, the bassist, is spark-plug short with dark hair, cut just at her shoulders. She looks kind of boyish. Eileen, our drummer, is really tall. I'm five eight and she looms over me but like a lot of tall girls she hunches her shoulders to try and hide. She's got this mop of curly red hair and a lot of freckles spanning the bridge of her nose. It turns out Eileen's from Woodland Hills and Tara is from right nearby; she lives in an apartment complex two blocks from Griffith Park. They're both living with their moms, as in children of divorce. I come from a happily married family, so I'm the odd girl out. Also Tara's already been in two other bands and Eileen learned how to play because her older brother is a drummer.

“How about you?” Eileen asks.

I admit that I've basically only played alone in my room.

“Really?” I can't tell whether they're impressed or horrified. Changing the subject, Eileen says, “That guy Johnny O is pretty weird, right?”

“No kidding,” I say.

“Do you think he can really do something for us?” Tara asks.

“I hope so,” Eileen says.

I nod. We all have the same dream glittering in our eyes.

Eileen stubs out her cigarette and then she turns to me and says, “You really killed that song by the way.”

“Yeah, you totally did!” Tara agrees.

They both seem to mean it. I don't think I've ever felt this happy.

T
HUS
, I
BEGIN
TO
LIE
big time. I invent a new job, a new friend, tutoring after school, anything that sounds even halfway real. We have to rehearse every day.

I get away with being the queen of deception for seventeen days. On the eighteenth, Johnny O introduces us to Trish who he says is going to perfect our look. When she's done with me, my hair is cut short and dyed jet black. Not to mention the makeup. “You'll have to stop sitting out in the sun so much,” Trish tells me as she works to accentuate my eyes, dark slashes of eyeliner and coral pink eye shadow.

“What on earth?” My mother's jaw could not fall further south and the horror is etched on her face. “Oh my god, your beautiful hair.” She is almost crying as she grabs my hair in a last-ditch attempt to believe that somehow I'm playing dress up.

“I'm in a band,” I tell her.

“What?”

I explain, a little. My father comes home. They're both aghast. They announce I'm officially grounded.

“You can't do that,” I say.

“Yes, we can. We're your parents.”

Wrong. That night I sneak out with a backpack full of a few essentials and head for Tara's. When her couch gets old, I move into the back room at Johnny O's.

F
OR
A
GUY
WHO
LOOKS
tubercular, he is a real babe magnet. Most of the women are blowsy, with big teased hair and way-too-tight tube tops constricting their massive chests. At first, I'm polite but honestly. What's the point, it's like Union Station in there. I stuff my ears with Kleenex at night. And yeah, there are plenty of times when I wonder what I'm doing. I even call home, but my mom just breaks down sobbing and my dad gets all tough love with me, so I give up on that. Then one night I'm resting on the mattress on the floor and listening to the sirens and the whir of the helicopters and I realize I'm doing just fine. Not just fine, better than that. I feel a rush of elation. “I'm free,” I say aloud.

I
N
J
ULY
, J
OHNNY
ANNOUNCES
HE
'
S
booked us our first gig. He doesn't believe in starting small either; we're playing the Roxy. “If you don't think you can manage ladies, then you've been wasting my time.” We all know a warning when we hear one.

To celebrate what will either be a huge mistake or the first day of the rest of our lives we go to this funky tattoo parlor on Sunset and have the word “Misfit” tattooed on our left upper arms in Gothic script.

We're the opening act, as in the background noise for everyone getting buzzed. The three of us step out on stage to complete our sound check, and I look out at all the people in the room and I just panic. I stand there, frozen. But then Eileen does this snappy little drum roll and calls out, “Hey, Julie?” and that brings me back. You can do this, I tell myself.