Cherry Bomb

by Jenny Valentish

  Marcus Biel had a reputation within small ponds of taking some indie bands to the next level. Over the music he yelled a spiel about the labels we needed to hit up, spittling our faces with visions of radio-station showcases and high-school tours that wouldn’t be as bad as they sounded. Rose wiped a droplet away with one finger and I clocked she was wearing my Miss Plum nail polish; I’d been searching for it for weeks.

  We had to listen to Marcus because our first ever gig, at the Parlour, had gone badly. We’d spent an eternity setting up the stage with baby-doll heads, lace throws and fairy lights, so there was no time left to soundcheck. I’d drawn a diagram on my fist of how to plug in my pedals, but I’d still got the input and output the wrong way around. I had a bad feeling the moment we went on. I was self-conscious because the Parlour had a UV light above the stage that illuminated the bleach in my hair so that I looked like a fluorescent troll doll. Then when I crashed down into the first chord of ‘Bad Influence’, nothing happened.

  Yell at the soundman through the mic in a stadium and you’re considered rock’n’roll, but do it in a lounge bar and it’s bad form, according to John Villiers. I’d rung him later that night to check. Basically, solving sound problems was usually just a case of switching on your amp or turning up the volume. A manager would know that sort of thing.

  Rose and I shared a look across the table. Okay, Marcus Biel, we were listening.

  ‘Have you had any success getting bands on TV?’ Rose wanted to know, even though we’d agreed our reputation would be for our live shows.

  ‘Not as yet,’ Marcus admitted, ‘but I’ve got quite a few contacts at the ABC and I’ve just been waiting for the right band.’

  Having spent three months being picked up after our gigs like kids from a party, Rose had to admit that her mum managing us for free wasn’t ideal. Her growing irritation at Dee saying, ‘You look really pale,’ when we were waiting to load in our gear, or distractedly brushing at Rose’s fringe, meant I didn’t have to say much to convince her. If I mentioned Mrs Cyrus constantly fangirling around Miley and hovering in her spotlight, it was only in passing. Similarly, Rose’s dad couldn’t stay on as our driver. Instead, he would be persuaded to cut us a loan—with great formality at the kitchen table—to allow us to pay a manager, pay a backing band and pay for taxis. We would reimburse Dee and Tim with our first big royalty cheque. My own parents were otherwise occupied with alimony arrangements, but they would still get a thankyou in the acknowledgements on the sleeve, which Rose and I had compiled way back in The Bain Maries days.

  The old folks tended to miss the milestones of my life—such as going on tour with drug-addled drop-outs like The Dummies—even when I left them little clues that I was still here. Including:

  Getting dropped home from the pub by the cops

  Cutting ‘FU’ into my forearm (I tired before I could get to the ‘CK’)

  Borrowing fifty bucks from Dad’s wallet × 3

  Coming down to dinner with mascara rivers down my face Sleeping with father figures

  Going out dressed like that

  It didn’t take us more than four dirty martinis that night to get on board. Marcus bought the drinks, even for Hank, plus he had a driver’s licence. By the time the house lights came on after our set we’d agreed to pay him a hundred dollars a week plus thirty per cent of anything we made—and perhaps now you’ll understand why we garnered a reputation for being ruthless with legal matters later in our career.

  Now that he was officially ours we clinked our dirty martinis in celebration and Marcus became the new object of our obnoxiousness. We started by changing his name to Ian Essence, because he started every sentence with ‘In essence . . .’—the perfect bullshit expression.

  TOP 10 MEN IN THE RECORD INDUSTRY

  1. Manager: The good manager will be a master manipulator, persuading people that they’ve said things they haven’t, threatening to withdraw privileges, stroking egos, playing Mum. In fact, Mother’s favourite saying, ‘Do as I say, not as I do,’ applies here.

  2. Publicist: Gay. Aquarius.

  3. A&R: The stockbroker of the industry, gambling with artists’ careers, but never allowing risk-taking in the studio. Makes friends and influences people with cocaine.

  4. House soundman: Despises all artists. Doesn’t appreciate being addressed from the stage when things go wrong. Reacts badly to having his arse slapped when he eventually does come up and bend over something. Always insists things may have been a bit patchy at first but that he found the sweet spot from the third song onwards. This is why big bands take their own soundman on tour.

  5. Journalist: There will be certain male lecherous hacks who stake ownership of female musicians and can be found at every show. They’ll hover around afterwards with their beers held high for protection, then violently bash out hatefuck reviews. See also: up-skirt photographer.

  6. Radio programmer: Whether it’s a local station or national broadcaster, the radio programmer gets to play god with the tunes they choose to play. Bribing them with gifts and glitter or questioning their judgement will destroy your career. Only seasoned Dungeons & Dragons players are likely to figure out the best way to pass.

  7. Roadie: To the unskilled observer it will seem that roadies only ever say, ‘Check, two, two, two’ into a mic, but in fact their repertoire consists of millions of complex in-jokes—just in a language nobody else understands.

  8. Venue booker: Being the bearer of bad news—door sales are low; PA is duff; food and drinks rider is not plentiful—the venue booker will usually skulk behind the scenes after a brief introduction and flurry of excuses. It is the job of the tour manager to weed him out and threaten to break his fingers.

  9. Tour manager: Harried, always simultaneously on laptop and phone. Doesn’t have time to respond to questions in more than one syllable. Employs a clique of drug buddies, the most fucked of whom will be assigned to drive you around.

  10. Record-company mogul: Insists he’s not out of touch, but spends a lot of time bloodthirstily sizing up his competitors from his bayside mansion. After he’s tired of his latest next big thing and cut off their cash flow, they will be forced to chew off their own legs to escape their contract.

  Ian Essence’s first job as manager of The Dolls was to meet Rose’s mother. That’s how we found ourselves gathered in the breakfast nook at Berkley Drive a week later. It was times like this I was grateful that Helen was Helen. She wouldn’t win any mum-of-the-year awards, but she didn’t try to cramp my style, either.

  ‘They’re barely seventeen,’ Rose’s mum said sharply when he brought up the subject of interstate travel. She violently levered a piece of lasagne on to his plate with a wet slap and dispatched a tongful of salad. ‘Not even old enough to drink. How can they play licensed venues when I’m not there to supervise?’

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ Ian Essence said in his best-voice-for-mums. Rose and I watched with interest. ‘It just means they can’t drink—and I’ll keep an eye on them. I’ll be there one hundred and ten per cent.’

  Dee was in a fix. She was racked with guilt and misgivings about Rose dropping out of school, but in her mind she was probably responsible for all this, from the Doc Martens she bought Rose to help her rebel, to encouraging her to spend more time with her cousin. For all my eye-rolling about Dee, I knew I ranked a very close second in her affections.

  Rising to her feet, Dee put her napkin on the table and went over to the fridge. She came back with a bottle of champagne and some orange juice.

  ‘Open that, will you?’ she said to Ian Essence, and retraced her path to get some clean glasses from the dishwasher. We were nearly there. I pressed my lips together and looked at Rose across the table. Her eyes were bright.

  ‘I’ll say yes on the provision that I meet everybody involved in the tour, right down to the roadies.’ Dee cast a look at Rose to make sure she had that word right. ‘And I’ll want everybody’s mobile numbers, for emergencies.’

  �
�Oh, Mum,’ Rose said.

  ‘Either that or I’m coming with you.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Ian Essence smoothly. ‘Phone numbers, no worries.’

  Dee filled our champagne flutes halfway with juice and gestured to Ian Essence to top them up with bubbles. My glass was still hot from the dishwasher, but I’d drunk worse.

  ‘Cheers,’ she said, chinking my glass first and giving me a smile. ‘And only because this is a special occasion.’

  •

  While he is not remembered kindly in the annals of The Dolls’ history, Ian Essence did do one good thing. In his first week on the job he set up auditions for backing musicians, telling them we had a number of deals on the table already and the vested interest of John Villiers. He might as well have printed up black-on-cream cards with John Villiers’ name on them, such was the frequency with which it was being dropped.

  These bit players were all in a bunch of bands around town, none of them regarded highly outside the street press. Donny, on bass, had spiky bleached hair that guaranteed he’d get called Billy Idol if he walked into a pub anywhere but Newtown, where they’d get the correct references. He would be relieving Rose of all bass duties. Anna Conda, on keys, was chosen to stand there and look pretty—although, not too pretty. Mark was our moody second guitarist—second, because his digital pedal board and lead breaks came secondary to my songwriting skills. He smoked Marlboro Lights like I did, so I’d often buddy up with him between songs and discuss a way we could jazz up the bridge. Lastly, on drums there was Weird Brian, who’d been in every local band since the mid-nineties, and suffered the wear and tear of it. Brian stared at us whenever we were taking selfies and he always counted us in when we were trying to talk.

  But, for every good thing Ian Essence did, heartache was sure to follow. We were rehearsing at Duckboard Studios one night when he unveiled the first step of his game plan. Our room was laden with overflowing ashtrays and smelled as such. In one corner stood a bass amp like a monolith. The carpet was threadbare with scraps of gaffer tape melted into the fibre, and there were a few old armchairs that held the stale smoke like a shroud. On the walls, people had scrawled in-jokes and messages from one band to another that made us feel inadequate. We only knew The Dummies, so we left messages for them.

  Ian Essence entered this scene at around ten-thirty, twenty minutes before we were due to pack up. He looked pleased with himself, I noted, plunking away at my guitar while Rose went over to kiss his cheek. He put his satchel down on one of the armchairs and leaned on the side of it so that he could break his big news.

  ‘Shh,’ said Rose, waving silent my rhythm part. Ian Essence had booked us an appearance in the biggest shopping centre in western Sydney, that weekend. While we were trying to get signed, he said, crooking his fingers into quotation marks, we needed to maintain a ‘high profile’.

  Rose and I stood rooted to the spot; me with my fingers still winched into a D-chord. Our manager insisted a shopping-centre gig was a ‘rite of passage’ for contemporary artists. ‘It targets a captive audience,’ he finished in satisfaction. ‘Kids and bored young mums.’

  We might have fooled him that first night at Dingo’s with our Ozmerican accents, but Ian Essence knew by now that we were Westies, so this was like a sick joke. We practically grew up in Westfield Shoppingtown. That was where we got our dollar make-up every Saturday, before wasting the afternoon hanging with the wannabe gangsters in the food court. You didn’t work with John Villiers just to play a set outside Macca’s.

  ‘Just think of it as our sayonara,’ said Rose, coming over and massaging my shoulders. She knew I’d get it worse than she would if we ran into any of the old faces.

  I shrugged her silent, not wanting to cause a scene in front of the new band. I didn’t want my baggage from Pazzamazza coming with me to Kings Cross. People in Sydney considered the Cross to be a sleazy strip, but to me it was pristine. I’d run out of options in Parramatta, just because I was a boys’ girl, and girls’ girls didn’t like that, and word got around.

  I couldn’t think, because Donny and Mark had taken advantage of the lull to break into Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’. Once Weird Brian decided to pile in and join them, which would happen at any second, we’d have lost five minutes of our recording time, which Rose and I were paying for. It was just Rose, strictly speaking, but I’d pay her back one day.

  Rose had suggested a fining system, penalising the band for things like lateness and unauthorised haircuts, so maybe we could add Led Zeppelin to the list.

  ‘We’re paying their wages,’ she said, as we got into Ian Essence’s car after packing up. ‘They’re ours to do what we want with, aren’t they?’

  Ian Essence drove a Ford Laser—no good for drum kits, and hard to get into the back of with heels. I made a mental note to tell Rose we had to take turns riding shotgun—that was item one on The Dolls’ agenda. Item two was to find a manager with a nice car and a clue.

  •

  If we were going to do Parramatta, we were going to do it properly. We were used to being watched, because of our unique fashion sense, and this would only intensify as our reputation grew. Our pictures were starting to be circulated like trading cards in the street press. There weren’t enough bands whose members included hot chicks, so editors started dropping us in whenever they had a space to fill.

  We knew we had to get our backing band in step with this, so Rose went to Bunnings especially to get white overalls so that they could have a cool, uniform look.

  I wore: ankle boots, a singlet and waistcoat, tiny denim shorts with the pockets flapping down my legs.

  Rose wore: rolled-up grey sweat pants, bra top, sun visor, Louboutin knock-offs from Chatswood.

  When we pulled into the car park of the shopping centre we saw Ian Essence near the ticket machine, talking to John Villiers: our benevolent sponsor, whose name we had been taking in vain. A finger of electricity goosed me. He had no reason to be here, other than for me to give him a chemical reaction.

  ‘Please go,’ I hissed to Dee as she rummaged through her handbag to give us some spending money. After an age she drove away and we picked our way carefully across the tarmac in our heels.

  ‘Ladies,’ Ian Essence beamed.

  Our band had just pulled up in a hire van with the gear and John Villiers was looking at their overalls with an unreadable expression.

  ‘How you going?’ I asked, to distract him.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m just passing, so I thought I’d stop by and take a look.’ He jangled his car keys in his pocket.

  I could feel Rose looking at me, wanting me to close some sort of deal, get him to swear he’d find us a record company with bags of money, but I wasn’t a performing seal. I needed more of a run-up for these things.

  ‘Cool,’ I muttered. I’d have another go later, because I couldn’t do the eye-sex thing with Ian Essence standing there.

  ‘Just passing?’ Rose whispered, as we followed them into the shopping centre. I could smell Juicy Fruit on her breath. ‘Bullshit.’

  We had rehearsed three songs from our demo CD, the idea being that we would belt through the first and third like a punk-rock band, with the middle track an acoustic number delivered from stools that Ian Essence would bring on stage. I couldn’t abide that ‘let’s bring things down a notch’ thing, but Alannah had told me we had to pick our battles.

  Our contact at the mall, Chris, was a man in his late thirties with an indie-boy hairstyle and a corporate shirt with the top button undone. He was a veteran of a few bands and we heard all about those in the lift down to the food court, but I was staring at John Villiers in the mirror, holding his gaze with a half-smile.

  Hank Black’s efforts to look Australian were getting laughable. As the doors opened onto the ground floor, I saw him leaning casually on the crash barrier in a blue Bonds singlet and dirty jeans, so tight I could make out his bon scotts. I sped up my pace to join him, but he ignored me as he kissed Rose’s che
ek and shook the hand of Ian Essence. Ordinarily I’d feel a whine crank up inside of me—Where’s my special greeting?—but not today. When John Villiers walked past us I felt that glow inside; the one I got when I knew I held all the cards.

  I cast my eyes up to the stage, which had a rig of lights up top and a backdrop from the drinks sponsor. The PA looked cheap; more accustomed to announcing Santa’s arrival in the grotto outside Coles. I didn’t like the idea of standing a metre above the ground and singing to nobody, but when our guitarist Mark wandered on and studiously peered at his pedal board, people started pouring out of the dollar stores. They were probably hoping it was Guy Sebastian.

  We weaved past the barrier and up the steps to the stage. I took my spot in front of the band and looked across at Rose, who smiled tightly and gave a minute nod. I always used her as a mirror and I saw we were brightly lit, judging by the thick matte look of her foundation. There wasn’t much that could be done about that now. I looked out at the faces gawking up at us.

  Launching into ‘Can’t Say No’ was like flicking a switch. A weird noise went up from the front row. These girls had only heard of us thirty seconds earlier, yet they were wailing and hanging over the barriers like they were awaiting a food drop. It was harder for Rose and me to get into it—every time I hit that righteous note in the bridge I’d open my eyes and find I was pointing at the Big W signage.

  With the advent of the chorus, I slammed the mic away and whipped my hair to one side. I had to stay fairly compact or I’d collide with our guitarist. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rose crouch down and tear a note from the sky, before rising unsteadily to her feet and tossing that damned note right to the ground. Song one was YouTube worthy.