How to Kill a Rock Star (6 page)

Lucy looked momentarily intrigued. “Where do they play?”

“A place cal ed Rings of Saturn, mostly.” As fast as I’d grabbed her, I lost her. “Eliza, Rings of Saturn is where bands go to die.”

Terry told me to come back and see him at the end of the day, and from there I fol owed Lucy on a tour of the office, which could have been the headquarters of any gener-ic business and wasn’t nearly as hip as I had imagined.

Further dampening my mood, Lucy repeated her earlier dig, presenting me to one of the senior editors as “Doug Blackman’s
friend
.”

No matter that I’d only known the woman for fifteen minutes, I hated Lucy Enfield.

“I hope you weren’t expecting a corner office with a view
of the park,” she said, coming to a stop at a partitioned cubicle to the left of a large room.

My cubicle was identical to the ten or so other associate editors’ cubicles surrounding it. It contained a desk and chair, a computer, and one encouraging sign—a coffee mug with a photo of U2 circa
The Joshua Tree
that the last occupant must’ve left behind—only there was a cautionary chip in the mug, right in the middle of the Edge’s hat, like someone had pul ed a Wil iam Tel on him.

Lucy pointed to a large stack of papers and two FOR

PROMOTIONAL USE ONLY CDs on the desk. “Letters to the editor,” she said. “Weed through them, see if there’s anything worth printing. And the CDs need to be reviewed for the next issue.”

I waited until Lucy walked away and then I sat down. It occurred to me that I might be in over my head, but I had to bury that, otherwise I would’ve started to cry. Or worse, run to Port Authority and hopped a bus back to deathland.

With nothing to put away, I opened and closed al the drawers in the desk, booted up the computer, and spent the rest of the day listening to one of the CDs I’d been given to review. The disc was cal ed
Chocolate Starfish and the Hot
Dog-Flavored Water
. In my humble opinion, it was crap, but I had to figure out how to say that using five hundred wel -thought-out words.

At six o’clock I went back to see Terry.

“How’s it going, Mags?” He tilted his neck from side to side and I heard his vertebrae release two loud cracks. “Mind if I cal you Mags?”

“No,” I said, even though it seemed creepy.

“Everything al right? You look a little gray.” I took a step forward and kept my voice down. “This might be out of line, but is Lucy always so curt, or did I do something to annoy her?”

4“Both.” Terry told me there was a hierarchy at
Sonica
.

Lucy had started as an intern, putting in sixty-hour weeks to get to her high-ranking position; thus she had an aver-sion to any person who didn’t start in the mailroom, especial y if the person’s employment could be construed as “carnal nepotism.”

“But I swear, I never so much as—”

“Not my business.” Terry waved me off. “Just expect the shitty assignments for a while. Hence the 66 gig.” Lucy came in shortly thereafter, handed me press creden-tials for the 66 show that night, then gave me a blue-lined copy of the September issue and explained that as an associate editor, I was required to read and copyedit the magazine before it went to print.

“You have until noon tomorrow,” Lucy said.

It was going to be a long night.

“Only in America. This could only happen in America.

Because America is in a tailspin from grace. What we invented—what our contribution to the world has been, the sonic representation of the freedom we as a country pride ourselves on—is rock ’n’ rol music. But rock ’n’ rol music is a dying man. No, not just a dying man. It’s a man being crucified, Eliza. It’s Jesus Christ. Our Savior. It’s The Way, The Truth, and The Light bleeding down on us from the cross, and you know what? We’re al just standing around watching the poor guy die.”

That’s the analogy that Doug Blackman had offered me over cheeseburgers and French fries in his hotel room in Cleveland.

Doug said radio was inundated with what he cal ed

“musical heathens and soul ess pop pagans.” For the most part, they don’t write their own songs—and the ones who do can’t seem to write good ones—but they dress in hip clothes, they dance and lip-sync like nothing else, they’re skil ed in the art of self-promotion, and, most notably, they play by the rules.

Doug picked up my tape recorder and spoke directly into the mike. “
Nobody,
and I mean
nobody,
ever started a revo-lution playing by the rules.”

The man was cynical, to say the least. But he had come of age in the sixties—that mythical generation of turbulence How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 4:59 PM Page 46

4and change, where new things were new and people had hope. Rock ’n’ rol , civil rights, men walking on the moon.

He’d protested wars and preached about a woman’s right to choose. He’d earned his opinion.

Doug said the America he knew then was now the home of the lost, the confused, and the greedy. He said we live in a country that values commerce over art, a country that al ows mediocre talents to thrive and breed and poison the airwaves, movie screens, television, and printed word like toxic chemicals in the water supply.

“Once in a while something pure slips through the cracks, but these days it’s rare.”

“Why do you think it’s so rare?” I asked him.

By then he’d had half a bottle of wine. He was worked up. “I’l tel you one of the reasons why it’s rare in music— because record companies have become little divisions of bil ion-dol ar corporations, that’s why. In some cases, record company CEOs are nothing more than middle-management kiss-asses. They don’t know shit about music and don’t care.

Their job is to sel records. They don’t need a good ear, they need good marketing skil s. And that’s only half of it. There’s politics involved.
Politics
.”

“How does that explain your success?” Doug scratched his temple, which he had a habit of doing whenever he paused to think. “It was different when I started. We’re talking 1966. What we were doing then was relatively novel. You had Dylan doing the folk-rock thing, you had the Beatles taking over the world, and I came from the blues camp—I was a white guy trying to make gospel music with a raspy voice and a guitar. But if I were twenty-four today and released the same record I put out then, how many copies do you think it would sel ?”

“Blasphemy,” I said. I couldn’t imagine my world without the sound of Doug Blackman in it. “Your music changed my life.” How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 4:59 PM Page 47

I told Doug about my first concert experience: His 1990

The Life You Save Could Be Your Own
tour at the Cleveland Coliseum. I was sixteen, and it was just a few weeks after my episode in the bathroom with the kitchen knife, so needless to say I was a little down on myself. Michael, Vera, and I sat in the fourth row—seats nine, ten, and eleven. And when Doug ambled onto the stage, red Gibson in hand, and belt-ed out “The Day I Became a Ghost” with what looked like tears in his eyes, it was as if he were speaking directly to me.

“That song gave me courage,” I said. “It reminded me of something I’d learned so many years before. That I could feel things. Even if it was pain.”

“
That’s
the magic,” Doug said. “
That’s
why you have to save the dying man. Because you want him around to keep saving you.”

“Save the savior,” I said.

“You dig, Eliza Caelum?”

“I dig, Mr. Blackman.”

During the 66 show, Doug’s words were al I could think about. 66 was one of the worst bands I had ever seen or heard. It was as if, instead of amps, the guitars were plugged into helium tanks. And al the girls in the audience were dressed exactly like Amanda Strunk, a peroxide blond with a trampy, been-around-the-block attractiveness, whose only real talent was the ability to say
fuck
and lift up her skirt at the same time.

The crowd screamed and applauded like they were watching the Beatles.

Fol owing the show, I walked to Tompkins Square Park, where I sat on a bench, stared at the word HOPE carved into stone above the water-fountain gazebo, and jotted down notes about the concert as Doug’s words echoed in my ears:
Tell me what you listen to and I’ll tell you who you
are.

4Musical heathens? Soul ess pop pagans?

I recal ed Paul saying he’d gone out with Amanda Strunk.

I wrote
bitch
in parenthesis next to Amanda’s name, questioned why I’d done it, and quickly scribbled it out until it became nothing but a rectangular window to the next page.

Most of the bars and cafes in the East Vil age were stil bustling. There were cool people with cool hair and cool clothes everywhere. I saw a guy in a cobalt-colored shirt whose posture, from the back, reminded me of the way Adam used to stand, sort of off balance and tilted to the side.

Adam was a blue, human Leaning Tower of Pisa.

I wondered how different New York would have felt if Adam had been there. Not that I wanted him there. I didn’t miss him anymore. But I missed the idea of him. I missed having a hand to hold. I missed the il usion of safety.

Heading down Avenue A, I wondered how it was possible to be surrounded by so many people and stil feel utterly alone. At Houston Street I came upon Rings of Saturn. The marquee said:

BANANAFISH UPSTRS EVRY THUR

I cal ed Vera to see if she wanted to meet me at Rings of Saturn but she was already in bed. Then I tried Michael. He was stil at practice, and I asked him if I could head down to the rehearsal space and hear the band.

“Not a good night for that,” he said. “Some other time, though.”

Inside Rings of Saturn, the main room was smal , the ceiling was low enough that I could almost touch it, and everything—the wal s, chairs, floor, tables, even the bar—was black. There was a staircase in the right-hand corner—also black—leading up to what I presumed was the stage.

The place was empty except for a young couple at a table in the back, and a burly bartender; I sat down and told the bartender that my brother was a member of Bananafish.

“Which one?” he said.

“Michael.”

“Which one?”

“Oh, right.” I laughed. “Caelum. The guitarist.” The bartender nodded as if he approved. He only had one working eyebal . The other was clearly made of glass and seemed il -fitted, bulging so far out of its socket I was afraid it might pop into my lap if he got too excited.

He asked me what I wanted and I ordered the only thing I ever drank. “Water, please. But may I have it in a martini glass with an olive?”

As the bartender fixed my drink, he educated me on the proper way to hot-wire a car. He mentioned a red wire, and warned that if I didn’t do it right there was a smal chance I’d be electrocuted. He told me his name was John the Baptist, and when I expressed skepticism he admitted his real name was John Barnaby. The moniker had evolved from his chosen profession.

“Dispensing the blessed liquid,” he said. “Why haven’t I seen you at the shows?”

“I just moved here.”

I asked him for a refil and he said, “Want me to throw in a little vodka?”

“No, just the water, please. And another olive, unless I have to pay for it.”

“You a friend of Bil ’s?”

I didn’t know what that meant. John explained it was a slang term for a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He and Bil had been friends for twenty years.

“No,” I said. “I just don’t drink.”

“Why not?”

I didn’t feel like getting into the meat of it. That is, how the majority of my high school and col ege classmates got drunk every weekend, and how watching them throw up
5and pass out depressed me so I refrained from participating, even though this turned me into more of an outcast than I already was.

“It just seems like a bad idea,” I said, “swal owing a liquid that can be set on fire.”

Smiling, John refil ed my glass. “Since you’re new here, I’m going to give you some advice.” John picked up a red plastic toothpick that had been designed to look like a teeny-tiny sword. He stabbed three green, pimento-stuffed olives with it, and slid the whole thing into my drink. “On the house,” he said. “Now pay attention. If you’re ever walking down the street and some psycho with a gun decides to open fire, here’s what to do— don’t make eye contact with him and keep walking. Do you hear me? Just pick up the pace and go in the opposite direction of the guy. Unless he’s a trained assassin, in which case you’re screwed. But if he’s not, if he’s just some postal worker or something, it’s doubtful he’l be able to hit a moving target.”

I wasn’t sure if John the Baptist was an eccentric or a sociopath, but I liked him either way, and I left him the last two dol ars in my wal et.

July 25, 2000

The question is one of faith. Faith in my talent. Faith in my decisions. And faith in the idea that the truth, even if it can’t pay my bil s, can stil set me free.

I know. Funny. Ha. Ha.

Am I talking loud enough? I’m trying to be quiet because my new roommate is asleep across the hal , but I’l get to her in a few minutes.

First, faith—one of the many pancreas-burning issues I wres-tle with every day. Trying to hold on to faith in this business is like trying to hold on to a rope while dangling off a cliff. And believe me, I’m not afraid I’m reaching the end of the rope as much as I’m afraid of letting go and having a long way to fal .

Rehearsal was supposed to run late tonight, but we were al down in the dumps over the Winkle fiasco and couldn’t accomplish a thing. Then Feldman showed up, pissed as hel . He came in demanding to know what was wrong with me, and if I realized I’d alienated one of the biggest names in the industry, not to mention potential y throwing my career down the drain.

I dragged Feldman into the hal way, shut the door, and asked him if he’d sent me to the meeting knowing what Winkle was going to say. He told me I was supposed to go alone—his way of answering my question. I reminded him that I’m not a solo artist, and he goes, “Wel , maybe you should be.