Born to Rock (8 page)

And Neb Nezzer hurled himself straight up in the air in his signature scissor-kick, landing on the stage in a full split.

I watched him, bug-eyed, counting off the seconds.

He didn't get up.

[13]

ONE OF THE LESSER-KNOWN RESPONSIBILITIES
of a roadie—it was my job to ride in the ambulance with Neb, who was in a lot of pain, and not taking it well.

“Just relax, sir,” soothed the paramedic. “Tell me what happened.”

“I'll tell you what happened!” roared Neb, temporarily the angriest member of Purge. “I'm dying, and somebody's asking me stupid questions! That's what happened!”

I tried to be helpful. “He did a split and couldn't get up. I'm pretty sure he has a bad back.”

“It's not my back, it's my crotch!” he howled. His agonized eyes focused on me for the first time. “Who the hell are you? Do you work for me?”

The paramedic prodded Neb's abdomen and got a caterwaul of protest for his trouble. “You do that again,” the patient promised, “you're a dead man!”

“Sir, I have to find out what's wrong with you.”

“Are you deaf?” Neb bellowed. “It's my crotch! It's broken! Sprained! Whatever!”

In emergency, the doctors discovered that Neb had been right all along. The problem really
was
his crotch. More specifically, somewhere during the leap/kick/split, the guitarist had popped a hernia that had become strangulated.

“But I used to do this all the time!” Neb protested. “It was my trademark back in the eighties!”

The doctor smiled patiently. “How many of us can still do all the things we did back in the eighties?”

While Neb was rushed into the operating room, I called the only number I had—Bernie McMurphy's cell.

“This better be good!” was his salutation.

“It's Leo.” My voice was quavering. “Listen, Neb has a strangulated hernia. He just went into surgery.”

There was dead silence, during which I heard music and laughing voices.

“Are you listening? Neb is having an operation. They're doing it
this minute
!”

“I'm thinking!” Bernie snapped. “A hernia. That's nothing, right? He's okay to go to San Francisco tomorrow?”

“It's strangulated!” I exclaimed. “The doctor says it'll take him weeks to recover.”

A string of curses greeted this revelation. “First day of the tour, and we've got no guitarist. Why me?”

“It isn't you,” I said reproachfully. “It's Neb.”

He took a deep breath. “Okay, sit tight. I'm sending Cam over to pick you up. I'd come myself, but I've got to find a replacement guitarist, and they're all here at the party.”

“Party?” I repeated. “Neb was carted away by ambulance, and you're
partying
?”

“You've got to understand, Cuz, in this gig, parties are like meetings. It's where a lot of business gets done.” There was some feminine giggling at very close range, and Bernie mumbled, “Not now, babe. I gotta go.”

“Is King at the party too?” I asked.

“He's not here.” I couldn't tell if it was true or a manager's automatic reflex to protect his star. “Just keep an eye out for Cam. He'll be there soon. And listen, kid—good job. You stuck by Neb when he needed you most.”

I was the only one.

Actually, I got to stick by Neb a lot longer than that, because Cam didn't show up. I was there when they wheeled Neb out of recovery at three
A.M
. and established him in his own room. I was there when his eyelids fluttered open, and I heard his first words: “Do I know you?”

By five
A.M
., I was back in the waiting area at emergency. Cam had abandoned me, but I didn't care. I was finally asleep after twenty-seven frenetic, stress-packed hours, and it was plenty sweet.

A deluge of ice-cold beer soaked my face and chest, and shocked me awake. I jolted upward, arms and legs flailing. “Rise and shine, new guy. Been waiting long?”

Cam.

“Thanks to you,” I told him.

He led me out to the parking lot to an equipment van full of roadies and girls. My anger dissipated enough for me to realize that they'd all been drinking since the show had ended more than four hours ago.

“I'll drive,” I said firmly.

“You're the boss, Hoss,” Cam sang out, dumping more beer, this time onto my shoes. But I stood my ground until he gave me the keys.

We drove around for a long time because nobody could remember where the Hilton was. I got directions at a gas station, and that's where we lost the girls. They went for frittatas at the Mexican diner across the street.

Finally, we found the hotel, and I dragged up to my room. Who dragged along with me? Cam, my roommate. Lucky me. At least my luggage was there, miracle of miracles.

Cam invited the others to come along, and I had to let them because I was the idiot who stopped for directions and cost them the girls.

“Well, okay,” I said, “but I'm going to sleep.”

They were loud and obnoxious, and pelted me with cashews from the minibar. I tried to be good-natured about it. Who wants to start something with all his coworkers on the very first day? I was caught between a rock and a hard place. What happened right now could set the tone for the whole summer. They were bigger than me, adults to my seventeen, worldly to my naive, and there were four of them and only one of me.

But when I saw Cam shaking up a fresh can of Budweiser, it was too much. I probably could have controlled myself. McMurphy, however, was another story.

My foot snapped up and booted the can out of his hand and across the room. “No more beer showers!” I snarled. “I've been taking your crap all night, and it ends here! I may be the new guy and the kid, but if you don't lay off, I swear to God I'll find a way to make you pay!”

I looked at their faces and knew I'd just made a big mistake. I wasn't sure exactly what they'd do to me, but this was about to get ugly.

And then there was a knock at the door.

“Later!” snapped Cam.

“Leo?”

Never did I think I'd be so glad to hear the voice of King Maggot. The mood changed in a heartbeat as all those Neanderthals broke their necks to let the boss inside.

King walked in, ignoring everybody else, and taking note of the sight I must have presented, having last seen to my grooming thirty hours earlier in Connecticut.

“You look terrible.” A fine greeting from my bio-dad, for whom I'd crossed the country.

“I just got here,” I explained.

He looked amazed. “What—now?”

“Bernie sent me to the hospital with Neb. You heard he's off the tour, right?”

He shrugged like I'd just told him we were out of Kleenex. “I came to see if you wanted to do breakfast. But I guess you'd better get some sleep.” He turned back to the door and began to stroll out the way he'd strolled in. To the room in general, he said, “You guys are getting along okay, right?”

It was a question, an order, and a threat all rolled into one.

After a silent moment, I replied, “Oh, yeah, they're showing me the ropes.”

“Good, because I promised I'd look out for you.” And he was gone.

A big hulk I came to know as Julius spoke first. “Welcome aboard, kid. Good working with you.”

I could have ratted them out, and they all knew it. I think I made some points there.

But not with Cam. When we were alone in the room, he looked at me and growled, “Who's King to you? Your daddy?”

I didn't say a word. I just flashed him my friendliest smile and crawled into bed, burrowing my McMurphy ear deep into the pillow.

[14]

MY NEWFOUND FRIENDS, THE ROADIES,
were driving to San Francisco with the equipment trucks. King invited me to fly up with the band on Neb's ticket, so we'd have a chance to spend some time together.

And we did. In first class, no less. But it wasn't exactly quality time. The life of a rock band on tour was like boot camp. There were no thirty-mile hikes or cleaning the toilet with your toothbrush. But every day was kind of an obstacle course.

Autographs to sign in the hotel lobby; sharing the limo ride with an interviewer. There was always something to suck up every spare minute. When we got to the airport, Max was waiting for us with an enormous poodle on a leash.

“What the hell is
that
doing here?” Bernie demanded.

“He's coming with us,” the drummer said, and you could tell by his tone that there was more to the story.

The manager was horrified. “You can't take a dog on tour!”

“I got stuck with him,” Max explained. “Penelope dumped him with the desk clerk at six
A.M
. The proctologist is taking her to Rio for three weeks.”

“Well, she's got to change her plans!” Bernie exploded.

“She's already gone!” cried Max. “Don't you get it? This
was
her plan—to stick me with Llama because she's pissed about the divorce.”

“Find a kennel,” Bernie ordered. “There are no poodles in punk. It doesn't fit the image.”

Max didn't even hear him. “A hundred grand to redo the kitchen in a house I'm not even going to be allowed to live in anymore. Tiffany's shopping for grad schools. I'm going to be on the street!”

But, stressed as he was, Max dug in his heels and threatened to boycott the tour. With Neb already on ice, Purge couldn't afford to lose another original member. Pretty soon, Llama was being crammed into an animal carrier and loaded with the luggage. He howled all the way up the conveyor belt. As a matter of fact, we could still hear him in the belly of the plane, complaining throughout the trip.

“It could have been worse,” was King's only comment. “He could have brought Penelope. She's louder.”

We finally got airborne, but the business didn't end as LAX fell away beneath us. The minute the seat belt sign went off, Bernie took the floor.

“Okay, listen up. Pete Vukovich of the Stem Cells has agreed to stand in for Neb. He says he knows our stuff. I've arranged for rehearsal time tonight to bring him up to speed.” He cleared his throat carefully. “What happened to Neb—it's too bad, but let it be a lesson to us. We're not twenty-five anymore. We've got to put on a good show, and do what we do. But let's know our limitations. We're none of us as young as we'd like to be.” He grinned at me. “Except for Leo.”

He turned to his bassist, who was double-fisting doughnuts from the hospitality cart. “And try to go easy on the eating, will you, Zach?”

Zach was offended. “You're our manager, not our mother.”

“I speak up for the interests of this band,” Bernie said righteously. “Purge is a lean and hungry look. You're pushing the outer limits of that.”

“Hey, I'm starving myself on the Richmond Hill diet—”

“Looks more like the Krispy Kreme diet,” put in Max.

Zach waved one of his doughnuts in the air. “I budgeted for this. I was entitled to half a grapefruit for breakfast, and I skipped my carrot sticks from last night.”

“That's some budget you've got there,” King observed. “Like saving a nickel a week to buy a Ferrari.”

“Don't take it so personally,” Bernie told Zach. “Use common sense. That applies to all of us. Now, let's go over the media appearances for San Francisco….”

When all that was finally done, I sat waiting for the father-son chat to begin. It never did. I cast a sideways glance at my bio-dad. He had his headphones on, and was as distant from me as he'd ever been.

Protestors surrounded the entrance to our San Francisco hotel.

It shook me up—two hundred sign-waving citizens—but King thought it was funny. “San Francisco,” he commented. “This town never fails to turn up a few nut-jobs.”

“But why are they bothering a band that hasn't recorded an album in sixteen years?” I asked him. “What about rap or something recent?”

King shrugged. “These people don't listen to music. They only know what
The O'Reilly Factor
tells them to hate.”

The nut-jobs du jour were a group who called themselves the Society of Decency, or SOD for short. Their signs bore messages like
MAGGOT IS AN INSECT
and
PURGE SHOULD BE PURGED
.

As we walked past them from the limo to the hotel, they yelled and chanted at us. Some were singing hymns. We weren't in any danger. There were policemen keeping them behind barriers. But it was kind of spooky to have total strangers so mad at you. Yet it was the only time since I'd met King that I really had a sense that he was enjoying himself. He leaned into the crowd and uttered a Hannibal Lecter–like snake hiss that had people jumping backward for their lives.

A sign that read
NEZZER = SATAN
had a special attraction for Bernie. “Satan won't be coming today,” he assured the woman, who was regarding him with distaste. “He has a hernia.”

Llama the poodle, led by Max on a tight leash, chose that very moment to make a statement on the sidewalk. The reaction from the protestors was absolute bedlam. I honestly think SOD believed that Purge had deliberately trained the dog to do something disgusting.

By the time we were safely inside the lobby, we were on our hands and knees on the carpet. It was the first huge laugh I'd ever shared with King Maggot.

Max said it all. “And you guys wanted to put him in a kennel!”

No one could ever say that being a roadie is a cushy job. Amps and equipment weigh hundreds of pounds. The stuff is constantly being moved around, set up, struck down, and packed up again. Glamour? Try muscle aches, bruises, toe sprains, and electric shocks. The first time I plugged in Zach's bass, I got a jolt that had my hair standing straight up at attention. Julius claimed he actually saw a wisp of smoke coming out of the top of my head.

The festival had its own crew for the stage, the lighting, and the speaker towers. All the other equipment was the responsibility of the individual bands. And for Purge, that meant us.

Those were just our official duties. It was the gofer jobs that made this a twenty-four/seven affair: constant runs to the pharmacy for Advil and deodorant; walk the dog; pick the raisins out of the trail mix for Zach; put them back in for Max. Ever try to have a noose dry-cleaned? You get some pretty strange looks.

Max made me read the fine print on the faxes he received from his divorce lawyer because he was too proud to wear reading glasses. Zach had me sneaking him food, which was uncomfortable because Bernie had me spying on Zach to keep him on his diet.

The only band member I didn't have much to do with was King, the guy I was supposed to be getting to know. The other roadies were constantly shuttling him to interviews and TV appearances. I never got asked to go. Cam handed out most of the assignments, and he always saved the worst for me.

The travel was a lot less glamorous than it looked. Regardless of whether I was first-classing it with the band or trucking it with the roadies and equipment, the schedule was grueling. And with Cam as my roommate, even downtime was uptime. He was constantly on my case for being too slow or too inexperienced. Mostly, though, he complained that, “I'm never going to hook up with any babes with you latched on.”

“Hey,” I kept telling him, “you're not my personal chaperone. Feel free to go girl-hunting without me.”

In Las Vegas, he decided to take me up on it. That was my first chance to take out my laptop. Gates was the only friend I'd told about Concussed, and he'd e-mailed to ask how the tour was going. I was sort of hoping to hear from Melinda, but I knew I didn't really deserve it. Leaving town without telling her probably wasn't the best way to defuse the awkwardness that had developed between us.

I couldn't resist visiting Graffiti-Wall.usa and checking up on The World According to Kafka-Dreams. Actually, her message board was sparser than usual, but I did find this current posting:

Keep an eye on the people you're close to—they're the ones who'll surprise you, and I DON'T mean in a good way. It's the friends you've known forever—THAT'S where the stink's going to come from. P.S.—Speaking of stink—what's up with rest stop bathrooms? KafkaDreams seal of disapproval.

“The friends you've known forever….” Was she talking about
me
? Who else could it have been? Not Owen, her personal shadow. They didn't start hanging out until high school.
I
was the one who went back to prehistory with her.

Perfect—Melinda was trashing me on the Internet, figuring that I'd never see it. It was almost as if she was accusing me of stabbing her in the back by having King as a father. How did that make sense? Nobody controls his own parentage. By definition, it's something that happens before you're born.

Anger flared in my gut. Did she think a genetic hitchhiker was like one of her tattoos or piercings—a style statement? Of all the potential bio-dads in the world, she had to know that I would have picked King Maggot dead last. My opinion of punk rock was no mystery to her.

And just as suddenly, the burn receded as my thoughts traveled back to that day on the commuter platform. I used to be one father up on Melinda. Now I was two—and the guy was her hero.

She had no right to blame me. But at that moment, I sympathized. I always sympathized with Melinda where dads were concerned. How could I not?

The P.S. made me frown. Rest stop bathrooms? What was that supposed to mean?

I shut down my laptop, and sat in the silence of the darkened hotel room. T-shirts and underwear were already strewn across the furniture, although we had only been in Vegas for a few hours. Maid service was as important to rock and roll as electric guitars and record companies.

All at once, the isolation came crushing down on me. I had never felt so disconnected from my regular life.

Bernie put Cam in charge of picking up Pete Vukovich after his opening set with the Stem Cells and driving him back to the hotel to rest up for his stint with Purge that same night. But in Vegas, he pushed the job off on me. I found out why when I got into the rental van. Whoever had driven it last had left the tank a thimbleful away from dead empty. And Cam was too lazy to fill it up.

I drove to the festival grounds, so low on fuel that the motor stalled out on every upgrade. But there was no time to stop at a gas station. Cam hadn't given me much warning, and I didn't want to keep Pete waiting. The buzz was he was doing a spectacular job filling in for Neb, and Purge loved him. Melinda was right. He was the rising star of punk.

Concussed provided a luxury trailer for the performers to use as a dressing room/crash pad while on site. That's where I found the rising star—flaked out on the overstuffed couch, naked from the waist up, with four girls from the audience rubbing baby oil into his chest and shoulders. Did this guy own a shirt?

I cleared my throat, and Pete acknowledged me. “Get lost.”

“I'm here to take you back to the hotel.”

“Wait outside, yo,” he mumbled.

“King asked me to make sure you're well rested for the set tonight,” I lied. “I'd hate to let him down.”

He sat up and peered through the girls at me. The musicians of the Concussed festival were a motley lot who belonged on Yu-Gi-Oh cards more than any concert stage. But they had one thing in common—total worship of King Maggot.

“Yeah, okay.” He swung his legs to the floor. “Rain check, ladies. Gotta fly.”

Still shirtless, he followed me out through the backstage gate to the van.

It took several tries to start the engine. “We have to stop for gas on the way,” I said apologetically.

We shuddered into a Mobil station on fumes alone. Pete went to the bathroom while I pumped thirty gallons into the van. I pocketed my receipts and climbed in behind the wheel to wait for him.

Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. How long did it take to go to the bathroom?

Feeling half-anxious, half-stupid, I walked around the back and tapped tentatively on the men's room door. “Pete?” I called. Louder, “Pete?”

No reply.

Well, what would you have done? Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur—how many recording artists had died under weird circumstances over the years? I threw open the door and burst inside.

Pete knelt on the slimy cement floor, bent over a none-too-clean toilet. The seat cover was down. A long stripe of white powder had been painstakingly formed on top of it.

I may have been a Republican Goody Two-shoes, but I knew what cocaine looked like. “Hey—”

And then a gust of wind swept in from outside, and the stuff was airborne. A translucent cloud filled the bathroom. Pete reached out with both arms as if he thought he could somehow corral the powder and wrestle it back onto the toilet seat.

I tried to stammer an apology. Before I could finish, his bony fist was hurtling toward my face. I dodged the punch, mind reeling. What would the roadie's handbook say about this? We served at the pleasure of the performers, but surely that didn't mean we had to let them beat the crap out of us.

Not knowing what else to do, I grabbed him in a bear hug, imprisoning his arms against his sides. I was surprised at how easy it was to subdue him. Onstage, he seemed lean and powerful, a tight weave of knotted muscles. But in reality, he was just skinny and weak.

“That was four hundred bucks' worth of blow!” he thundered, struggling against me.

“Sorry,” I panted, holding on for dear life.