Turn Around Bright Eyes (14 page)

There are lots of musicians here this week, and I meet them all, either because they’re down-to-earth people who like talking to fans (George Thorogood, what a mensch) or because they find out I’m from
Rolling Stone
and they want to complain about something somebody wrote when I was in kindergarten (nice to meet you too, Eric Burdon). They’re all absurdly nice (except Eric Burdon). Even when Carmine Appice chews me out it’s because he cares. Sheila E gives me a pep talk about my sense of rhythm; she tells me she hears the tambourine sound as “ka-ching,” because that’s how she made her dough. I tell Bret Michaels about the Poison show in 1988 where he spilled beer on my little sister in the front row, and though it makes him nervous for a minute about
maaaybe
where this story is going, he claims to remember the show, the touching insincerity of which is almost embarrassingly sweet of him.

But no matter who it is, I ask too many questions. I have trouble turning down the volume on that
Rain Man
rock-geek thing. It’s a sorry situation.

The rock stars are here to do music clinics, or to jam with the campers, or just to do grip-and-grin photo/autograph sessions. It’s always interesting to see how some rock stars can handle this part of the life and some can’t. Some actively
love
talking to fans; others put up with it like good sports; others roll their eyes. I have never seen a human being who isn’t a fourteen-year-old girl do as many eyerolls-per-minute as Vince Neil.

Eric Burdon refuses to sign autographs except for people who are buying his new book, which isn’t really how things are done around here. But it’s funny to see his face when people ask him how he wrote hits like “House of the Rising Sun” or “We Gotta Get out of This Place” or “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” none of which he wrote. He only asks to talk to me after he hears there’s a
Rolling Stone
writer on the premises, whereupon he shares his feelings about the two dullest topics any old rocker ever wants to discuss: 1) He’s working on a new album that ranks with his finest work, and 2)
Rolling Stone
never appreciated his genius in the seventies. Believe it or not, I
have
heard these before, and while I’m enough of a pro to listen sympathetically to the first one (which old rockers do often sincerely believe, and why not, good for them), the second sends my normally trusty eyeroll muscles into Vince Neil mode. The sad part is that Eric fails to exploit the rare (I assume) opportunity of being face-to-face with somebody under sixty who’s a fan of his music, one who would have been happy to massage his ego by quizzing him about the gnome symbolism in “Spill the Wine.”

George Thorogood is the opposite. He’s easily the most articulate, generous, and ego-free of our guest speakers. He declines to sit on a stool (“folksingers sit on a stool—blues singers sit on a chair!”) so he stands and shakes hands for upwards of an hour, letting us all pump him for stories about Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. Some dudes are just cool, I guess.

I’m so not one of them. I’m a combination of two horrific personality types, an encyclopedia-minded data-storage-facility rock geek and a cripplingly polite firstborn Irish son. It’s a deadly combo, and it means being unable to chitchat with these musicians without making it all complicated. I’m overzealous to please in the most irritating way. When I run into Micky Dolenz, and gush about the Monkees, I worry about his feelings. I want him to be marginally happier after meeting me than he was before. Why? I have no idea. It’s got something to do with gratitude—anyone who goes through the dirty and dangerous business of spreading music through the world deserves a well-informed compliment. But what if he doesn’t like to talk about how much I love the Monkees? (It turns out he does. Nice guy, Micky Dolenz.) I would hate to meet me if I were a rock star.

On Thursday, I meet one of my main men, John Waite, but I decide I shouldn’t mention “Missing You,” because I know he gets reminded of that song a zillion times a day and there are other songs I want to thank him for. So I tell him how much I love his version of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” from his 1995 album,
Temple Bar
. Fortunately, in this case, it’s not the Wrong Thing to Say. “I have to shake your hand for that,” he says, and indulges me with a long discussion of his underrated nineties work, at which point he’s the one who brings up “Missing You,” as if he’s suddenly worried I haven’t heard that song. “I’ve never sung it without loving it,” he says. “I’m lucky. A lot of artists have a famous song they hate.”

Damn, John Waite. That’s so horrible I can’t even think about it.

I want the musicians to feel appreciated. I want them to feel people were paying attention all those late nights, all those lost years, when they must have felt like they wasted their lives on a dream. I want rock stars to be content, even though the gig of being a rock star is inherently contentment-denying and soul-crushing and bitterness-magnifying and satisfaction-thwarting, and even though it’s well documented that nobody devotes their lives to music unless they are permanently insane. I’m just trying to make the most miserable people on earth feel a little less miserable. I’m asking too damn much.

Why am I like this? Is it because I want to show off? Is it because I want extra credit for all my extra listening? Is it an ego thing where I’m trying to impress them with obnoxiously knowledgeable insights? Or is it because I want to reassure them their lifetime of music was spent wisely? I really don’t know. But remembering which dude in which band sang which song, or knowing every dusty nook and cranny of their discography—it’s like an obnoxious party trick I can’t stop doing. This is the one thing I can do to make them happy, so it’s compulsive. (If I do it and it bums them out, as in Johnny Marr, that miserable memory haunts me forever.)

Everybody knows the story about John Lennon walking into the fancy French restaurant where the violinist serenaded him with “Yesterday,” which was a Paul song. John
loved
telling this anecdote in interviews. But I hear that story and I feel bad for the violinist. He wanted to make John happy. Nobody takes years of violin lessons so they can ruin John Lennon’s dinner. He just played the wrong song. I know his pain.

I’m not alone, of course. Everybody here wants to thank the rock stars, in their own way. So this is the special thing I can do here, instead of actually playing the notes, which is what everyone else here came to do. These people can take the rock stars’ music and echo it back to them. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do, but can’t. I seethe with envy when I meet Barry, the fifty-four-year-old dermatologist from Florida who played the organ parts on the Mark Farner jam. “That moment, ‘I’m Your Captain,’ with Mark—not only did I sing that with him, I sang it for him. I will carry that memory with me the rest of my life.”

And I’m jealous. I don’t even like “I’m Your Captain,” but I’m jealous.

TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT WE TAKE
it to the stage. Our final rehearsals are downright cocky. We’re the only band performing an original song, the one Scotty wrote. All the other bands have heard about our teen guitar whiz, and they’re pissed, which is awesome, so we officially dub our band the Unfair Advantage.

Fred sits at the Hammond B-3, working on his “Good Lovin’” solo. “I’ve been trying to get this down for twenty years,” he mutters. An old hippie studio dude who resembles a tattooed Santa Claus offers to help. He slips out his cell phone and calls the guy who played the solo, the Rascals’ Felix Cavaliere. Fred asks, “So how did you do that last trill?” He takes instructions over the phone and gets back to work.

As we practice “Good Lovin’,” I dance around, sucking in my cheeks, shaking my hips, using the choreography known among my bandmates as “Rob’s spazzy dance.” My legs are on their last hobble, and under my jeans the hideous purple bruises have gotten worse, not better, and it seems obvious I will require medical attention and most likely amputation, but nothing will keep me from struttering out tonight. Stealing moves from a friend who used to model, I spin into a T-stance, and then whip around to bang the tam on my ass Benatar style. Seductive, trust me.

We have a last-minute rehearsal with Simon Kirke, the drummer for Bad Company. The camp wants to get video footage of us onstage with him later tonight playing the Bad Company song “Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy” for their promo materials. Simon tells us funny stories about partying with John Bonham. He has a foxy daughter in New York, who is the mortal enemy of a friend of mine because they both made out with the same guitarist in the same band the same night after the same gig. For about a second and a half, I think he might be amused by this story. Fortunately, in a momentary lapse of reason, I shut the hell up.

During the breakdown, I hear Jim behind me drumming along, grunting out loud with the intensity of it all. I desperately want to prove to myself I’m part of this intensity, not just standing near it. It’s important to me, personally, to be as into it as my bandmates are, not to be a pretender. I want to be inside the music. But does anybody really get all the way in? Does loving music as intensely as I do mean that I am really and truly part of the music, even though I can’t play it? Or am I still on the outside? Is being into it the same thing as doing it, or is loving it being it, or what? Do real musicians agonize over these stupid ontological quibbles? Or is this yet another example of how I tax their patience? The possibility that I’m a dick, not for the first time this week, hovers before me.

Another band down the hall is rehearsing Journey’s “Any Way You Want It.” Somehow, that song, with its promise of infinite gratification, makes me feel a stab of melancholy. It’s like the feeling Steve Perry must get when he meets a woman who loves to laugh and loves to sing but doesn’t love the lovin’ things.

WHEN WE TAKE THE BUS
to the House of Blues, we’re shocked to see hundreds of people in the crowd, only some of whom are relatives. (They’re here for the all-star charity benefit jam that follows our Battle of the Bands.) The coaches are here to watch, too. “I’ve been in worse bands,” Liberty DeVito tells me at the bar. “Hell, I’ve been in worse bands that were getting paid.” We’re scheduled to go on last, and we already know it’s to spare the other groups the humiliation of following us. When the first band hits the stage, mass euphoria sets in; after waiting all week, we finally see our new friends kick out the jams. Hey, that’s Gina rocking the cowbell in “You Shook Me All Night Long!” That’s Christy belting “I Want You to Want Me”! That’s Dan shredding to “All Along the Watchtower”! I am so proud. Everybody buzzes around the room with a manic joy that’s new to me, at least, trading “you rock!”/“no,
you
rock!” high-fives.

When it’s our turn, like most American males faced with a live mike, I go into
Kiss Alive!
mode. “You wanted the best and you got it! The hottest band in the land: The Unfair Advantage!” We do our three songs: “Good Lovin’” (Jack sings the first verse, I do the second), “Flowers and Flame” (twice as fast as we played it in rehearsal), and “Johnny B. Goode,” where Ben sings and Ed makes every guitarist in the room feel a little queasy, milking his whole teeth/knees/upside down/behind the head routine. The sweat pours out our bodies like the music that we play. For our grand finale, Simon Kirke sits in with us for the unofficial camp theme song, “Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy.” My role is to yell “fantasy!” over and over, and somehow that feels right.

The next morning Gina will drive me to the airport. We will meet in the Riot House lobby and go get a nice long overcaffeinated, overpancaked brunch at Mel’s Diner, which used to be the Sunset Strip rock & roll hangout Ben Frank’s. She will spill her alleged Alec John Such gossip and I will feel a tremendous sense of well-being, like everything in my life is absolutely good. We will head off to LAX in her convertible, blasting one of her bootleg live tapes from the
Slippery When Wet
tour, and I will think, here I am cruising down Sunset Boulevard, a cool blond California girl at the wheel, top down, sun out, listening to a Bon Jovi concert. This is the most American moment of my life. We will email next week and I will ask, because I know I will never get another chance like this, how did you form a first impression of me? How did you know I wasn’t going to hit on you? She will reply, “I just knew.” But I will ask, How could you tell I knew how to do the thing where I hold your purse? And she will write back, “No, you taught me the purse thing. I didn’t give you my purse, you took my purse and held it so they’d leave me alone, so I knew,” and I will remember it differently but she will leave it at “I just knew” and I will spend the rest of my life wondering what she means.

11:47 p.m.:

Nice try, Oedipus, but there are in fact three ages of man:

No man ever plans to turn into Rod Stewart. It just happens. There are days when I dread this fate. And then there are other days when I think every minute of my life I don’t spend being Rod Stewart is a waste of time.