Fifty in Reverse

by Bill Flanagan

  Peter hit him with “Blitzkrieg Bop,” and Barry said, “Now that’s just stupid. Your songs are getting worse.”

  Frustrated, Peter asked, “Why are we doing this? Are we putting together a band or what?”

  Ricky said, “Barry knows that guy in the music business.”

  Peter said, “So?”

  “So,” Barry said, jumping from the couch and getting close enough that Peter could smell the beer on his breath, “this guy Lou Pitano is a big-time agent and record producer. He’s gotten bands signed to Buddah Records, okay? You know that song ‘The Last Surfer’? Louie Pitano cowrote that and produced it.”

  Peter said, “Wasn’t that in, like, 1962?”

  “So you do remember it!” Barry cackled as though he had just proven intelligent design. “Lou’s mother comes from around here, and after all his success in New York City he’s back in town looking for local talent to sign to publishing, production, and recording deals. I brought him to hear my brothers and he said he liked the sound…”

  This alone was enough to make the boy question the A&R credentials of Lou Pitano.

  “But he said we need original songs. Now, I worked on that thing you gave Ricky, ‘Velvet Rim.’ ”

  “It’s called ‘Born to Run,’ ” Peter said.

  “Not anymore. We fixed it up; we improved it to the point where I would consider submitting it to Lou. But we can’t walk in there with one song. We need at least four. So I’m looking at you and asking, Do you have any songs that are good enough to impress a professional music executive who until recently had his own office at Kama Sutra Records?”

  Peter played Barry “Little Red Corvette,” “No Woman No Cry,” and “Superstition.” Barry didn’t like any of them. He finally got his attention with “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper. Barry thought that had potential. Around this time Ricky and Rocky traded instruments, Ricky going to the drums and Rocky to guitar.

  Trying to think like a DeVille, Peter pulled out “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room,” which would be a hit in 1973 for Brownsville Station if the boy didn’t get to it first, and if Brownsville Station were other than a figment of his elaborate imagination.

  When he finished, Barry paced up and down for forty seconds before turning to the ragged combo and saying, “Now that is a fucking song!”

  Ricky and Rocky laughed and whooped. Peter was overwhelmed with gratitude that he had finally hit Barry DeVille’s level. Barry made them play “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room” four more times. The last time he produced a cheap office cassette recorder with a built-in microphone and held it in front of Peter’s face and said he would now record a demo for the great Pitano.

  “Wait,” Peter said. “Hold on. Barry, you’re not going to get anything but noise out of taping the song on that toy. I assume going into a professional studio isn’t an option? Okay, if you want to get this… talent scout to hear our music, he’s going to have to come down here and let us play for him live.”

  Ricky and Rocky murmured agreement, and Barry didn’t immediately veto the idea. Peter pressed on: “But not yet. Look, we’re not a band—we’ve never even played together before. The best thing we can do is pick three songs and really rehearse the shit out of them until we have them right, and then get this guy over to hear them. I mean, if he doesn’t like what he hears the first time, I’m guessing he won’t be back.”

  Barry nodded. Peter said, “We have to talk about arrangements, too. Do you guys own a bass?”

  Ricky said he knew where they could get one. The boy did not want to know what that meant.

  * * *

  When he recounted all this to Dr. Terry, the therapist asked why he was suddenly investing so much energy in starting a rock band.

  Peter took a moment to gather his answer.

  “I have considered the possibility that I’m not going to wake up out of this alternative reality tomorrow or the next day or this year. With every hour this world feels more real and the life I’ve lived for the last fifty years seems more abstract. I keep repeating to myself the names of my in-laws, my coworkers, my poker buddies. I keep going over family vacations, my children’s teachers, their birthdates—anything to stay tethered to who I really am and the life I’ve lived. What if the longer I stay in 1970, the more I lose of the future—my past?”

  “Is that what you feel is happening?” Dr. Terry asked.

  Peter plowed on. “If this huckster who Barry DeVille knows has any connection to the music business at all, I might be able to use him to get me to someone who would recognize the value in the catalogs of Billy Joel, the Eagles, and—let’s not piss around—Michael Jackson. Elton John hasn’t written ‘Candle in the Wind’ yet. I’ll start with that. ‘My Heart Will Go On’? That has to be worth a thousand dollars.”

  “These are songs you wrote?” Dr. Terry said.

  “These are songs I’m going to write,” Peter said. “I figure it’s a win-win. Either Neil Young and Elton John and Brownsville Station show up with the same songs and I prove I’m from the future, or they never write them and I get rich.”

  Dr. Terry said it was good that Peter was engaging with positive aspects of being in 1970.

  “If I’m going to be forced to live my life over, I’m going to do everything the second time that I wish I had done the first time,” Peter said. “And that starts with making a million dollars before I get to eleventh grade.”

  Dr. Terry scratched his neck and said, “You comfortable fixing that ambition to the DeVille brothers?”

  “Shit, Doc, I’ve been around the music business for forty-five years. I’ve lived through ‘Disco Duck,’ Black Oak Arkansas, and Sebastian Bach. The DeVille brothers are sophisticates by comparison.”

  THIRTEEN

  Daphne Burrows bought twelve dollars’ worth of windowpane acid from Rocky DeVille and proposed that Pasa meet her at the supermarket so they could try it out. It was the climax of an entire school year of speculating, theorizing, and debating when and where they should initiate their relationship with LSD. They had studied paperbacks about it, burned incense in Pasa’s rec room, listened to Ravi Shankar records in preparation, and bought black-light posters at Spencer Gifts. There was a great bridge between intention and commission, however, which was finally crossed when Daphne approached the middle DeVille after the Kent State assembly and asked if he would help her score. Rocky came through behind the A&P, which Daphne decided would be a good place to trip.

  “Why the supermarket?” Pasa wanted to know. “Shouldn’t we go to the ocean? Trip on the beach? Or the zoo. We could take the bus to the zoo and look at those little monkeys with the long tails.”

  Daphne thought Pasa was stalling. “I’m not going to go all the way to the zoo on acid,” Daphne insisted. “Let’s take it right now and go inside. It will be crazy. The soup cans will look like they were painted by Andy Warhol.”

  Pasa kept arguing for the ocean, but Daphne put her foot down. She opened the envelope Rocky had sold her and took out a small square of paper and popped it in her mouth.

  “Daphne!”

  “I’m going into the A&P. Are you coming?”

  “Daphne! Maybe we should go to your house.”

  “And have my mother see me with pinwheel eyes? I don’t think so. You want to take yours?”

  Pasa was having trouble making the leap from the theoretical to the actual. “I’m going to wait and see if you need any help or anything.”

  “Cluck, cluck—chicken!”

  The two girls entered the market cautiously. Piped-in music was playing. Daphne said, “That melody is so weird!”

  Pasa was concerned. “It’s ‘Tiny Bubbles,’ Daphne. It’s not weird.”

  “It sounds like it’s under water. Oh wow—look at that freaky bald guy. He has an earring!”

  “That’s Mr. Clean. It’s a cardboard cutout. Daphne, it’s only been, like, five minutes. I don’t think it should be working yet.”

  “My senses are super acute. I can
hear your heart beating.”

  “How about if we go to my house? My mom’s not home. We could go to the rec room and turn on the TV with the sound down and play records…”

  “I went to Peter Wyatt’s house,” Daphne told Pasa. “We fed his horse, and he took me up to a spooky hayloft. We kind of made out.”

  Pasa was horrified. “He could have killed you with a pitchfork, Daphne! He could have attacked you.”

  “Do you think he’s cute?” Daphne asked.

  “I think he’s a psycho.”

  Daphne smiled. “He told me he’s been to Mexico and Morocco.”

  “He’s a lunatic.”

  Daphne whispered, “He told me he’s married.”

  Pasa said, “That freak is going to hurt somebody, Daphne. My mother says a whole group of the parents are going to make sure he’s taken out of school.”

  Daphne twirled around in the aisle staring at the fluorescent lights in the ceiling. She said, “I’d like to go to Morocco.” She extended her hands into the air and walked delicately down the cereal aisle like Ophelia. Pasa followed.

  A deep male voice seemed to come out of the air around them. It called their names. Pasa was certain it was the police. Daphne smiled and wandered toward the sound.

  Moe Mosspaw said, “Hello, girls! Hunting for bargains?”

  Pasa was confused that the guidance counselor was dressed in a white butcher’s apron, plastic gloves, and a little cardboard beanie. Daphne stared at him with open-mouthed wonder, hoping he was her first hallucination.

  “I work part-time in the meat department,” Mr. Mosspaw announced. “It’s really a summer job, but I do every other Saturday during the school year to stay on the books.”

  Pasa nodded. She wished Daphne would at least close her mouth.

  Mosspaw said, “You okay, Daphne?”

  Daphne stared into Mosspaw’s eyeglasses and said, “One of your irises is bigger than the other.”

  Mosspaw said, “That’s right. Childhood accident. My brother was chasing me and I tripped, and a coat hanger went into my eye. A little piece of it is still in there. See?”

  He leaned forward, lifting his glasses so Daphne could get a good look at his pupil. Daphne tipped toward him with beatific delight. She said, “A little speck of metal floating in an ocean of green.”

  Pasa told Daphne they had to go and said so long to Mr. Mosspaw in his cardboard hat.

  “He’s a teacher, Daphne,” she whispered as she led her psychedelicized friend out of the store by the arm.

  “Ivory Snow,” Daphne said as if it were a secret. “Ivory Snow. Ivory. Snow.”

  They crossed the parking lot and Pasa tried to steer Daphne in the direction of Pasa’s house, but Daphne wasn’t having it. She stepped into the road and stuck out her thumb.

  Pasa said, “What are you doing? You can’t hitch a ride—you’re too fucked up. Come to my house!”

  A beat-up Mustang convertible blasting Rare Earth slammed to a halt and slid onto the lip of the road in front of the two girls. A skinny guy with a bent nose and a drooping mustache looked back at them from the driver’s seat and said, “Wherever you’re going, jump in.”

  Pasa tried to pull Daphne toward the curb, but Daphne yanked away from her and climbed into the passenger’s seat. Pasa made a muted angry noise and hauled herself into the small jump seat, a crevice behind the driver.

  “My name is Slocum,” the driver said. He was wearing a pea-green army surplus coat and had mirrored sunglasses pushed up on top of his head. “Sam Slocum. What’s your names?”

  Daphne was smiling and studying her hand. Pasa said sadly, “This is Gidget, and I’m Larue.”

  “Where you ladies heading?”

  “Across town,” Daphne said without looking away from her fingers. “That farm on the hill on East Shore Road.”

  Pasa kicked the back of Daphne’s seat.

  Sam Slocum said, “Isn’t that where the judge lives? I don’t like that man. He sent a good friend of mine away.”

  “My boyfriend is his son,” Daphne said. “He has a horse.”

  Sam Slocum said, “What if we drove out to the reservoir? I got a buddy with some good grass.”

  Pasa said, “No thanks.”

  Daphne said, “Does your buddy have a horse?”

  The Mustang made it to the bottom of Peter Wyatt’s driveway in the time it took to hear two-thirds of the album version of “Get Ready.” Sam Slocum stopped at the foot of the road and put his car in park. He said, “I don’t want to go up there, but I’ll wait here for you if you think you might want to head to the reservoir after you look at the pony.”

  “Okay,” Daphne told him.

  Pasa climbed out of the jump seat and said, “You shouldn’t wait.”

  Sam Slocum said, “How old is she, anyway?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “See you later.”

  Daphne wandered up the road to the Wyatts’ house with Pasa suffering along behind.

  They went to the kitchen door and Daphne cupped her hands around her eyes and leaned against the screen, peering inside. She said, “Oh. Hi, Mrs. Wyatt. Is Peter home?”

  Pasa was hanging back, ready to make a run for it. The door opened and the boy’s mother was there, smiling.

  “Daphne, nice to see you again.” She looked at Pasa. “Hello.”

  “This is Pasa,” Daphne said. “I was telling her about your horse. Is Peter here?”

  “Peter is at rehearsal in Buttongreen,” the mother said. “He and some other boys have a little band.”

  This was big news to Daphne. “Gee, we just came from Buttongreen,” she said. “Who was he rehearsing with?”

  “I think the boy’s name is Rick.”

  “Ricky DeVille?”

  “That sounds right.”

  “Okay. Thank you, Mrs. Wyatt.”

  Daphne led Pasa back down the long driveway to the main road, where she stuck out her thumb once more.

  “I can’t believe Peter is right now playing music on the other side of town with the brother of the boy we bought this acid from.”

  Pasa said, “Let’s call my mother and ask her to come pick us up.”

  Daphne said, “Look, Eleanor, if you’re not going to take that other hit, fork it over. I’m coming down too soon.”

  FOURTEEN

  What kind of music industry mogul would go into a tool shed in a suburb sixty miles from Boston to listen to a teenage band that had never played a paying gig? Lou Pitano was that sort of mogul. A skinny little man in his late forties wearing pressed jeans and a shiny leather jacket, his protruding eyes darted left and right behind tinted prescription glasses while a small ring of white glue peeked out from the prow of a toupee that almost matched the color of what remained of his hair.

  Lou spoke with a broad Brooklyn accent of the sort that would no longer be heard in 2020 and might have been an affectation in 1970. Lou explained to Peter and the three DeVilles that after enjoying great success in the New York City record business, he had relocated to New England in search of fresh talent.

  “I had an office at Atlantic Records,” Lou declared. “A skyscraper. Bert Berns, Jerry Ragovoy, I knew ’em all. If a light bulb blew out in my office, I was not allowed to fix it! I rang for building services and they sent a guy up to change the bulb for me.”

  The DeVilles’ mouths were open in admiration.

  “But New York is fished out. The Rascals, Tommy James, all the great acts are taken, and there’s nobody good coming up.”

  “You work with the Velvet Underground at Atlantic?” Peter asked.

  “That sort of crap is why I got out. If they’re signing shit like that, time to move to fresh water. See, everybody else has headed to California. What? Am I going to be one of a hundred schmucks trying to find the next Sonny and Cher? No, I come here—because where nobody else is looking, that’s where the new thing appears!”

  “Okay!” said Ricky DeVille.

  “So you boys, you got some
songs?”

  “We do, sir,” Barry said. Rocky flashed astonishment at the “sir.”

  “Let’s hear them.”

  They launched into “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room.” They weren’t as tight as Peter would have liked, but it was a hard song to mess up. His fifteen-year-old voice was an instrument of neither strength nor beauty, but Peter knew enough to not oversing. “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room” was a story told in the voice of a teenager caught with cigarettes in the school lavatory. An adolescent yowl was compatible with the subject matter.

  They collided to a stop and studied Lou Pitano’s expression. He gave away nothing. He said, “What else ya got?”

  They had “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper. This composition stretched the talents of the ensemble to the peak of their competence. Peter turned to the DeVilles to steer them through the tricky “No more pencils, no more books” passage, and by the time they got to the last triumphant chorus, Lou Pitano was moving his right foot as if he were doing the twist from the waist down.

  “That’s not too bad,” he announced to everyone. He said to Peter, “You wrote those songs?”

  Peter nodded. Lou Pitano reached into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew a transistor radio. He clicked it on and began spinning through the stations.

  “I want to play you cats something,” he said. Through the static they heard bits of “Venus,” “ABC,” and “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” before the mogul smiled and let the dial come to rest on “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes).” He held up the radio. The DeVilles were impassive. The mogul said, “You boys know this song?”

  “Yeah,” Ricky said like he was giving a deposition to a hostile attorney.

  “Okay, now hang on,” Lou insisted. He fiddled with the transistor some more. Snatches of “Give Me Just a Little More Time” and “Ma Belle Amie” went past. He was searching for something. The boys had no idea what to say, so they said nothing.

  It took stops at the news, weather, and “No Sugar Tonight” before Lou found what he was looking for and held the radio in the air in victory. It was “Gimme Dat Ding” by the Pipkins, as stupid a novelty song as ever got airplay.