Walk, Don't Run

by Steven Jae Johnson

  “Five minutes, girls,” Joey said. He strapped on his guitar as he repeatedly revised the song list. “Let’s start with ‘Walk, Don’t Run’ then do ‘Green Onions.’”

  Each of us settled at our instruments, catching looks, nods, and waves from people we knew from school and around the city.

  “Here we go!” Joey said. He turned back to me. “You wanna welcome everyone and introduce us?”

  This last minute idea set wonderfully in my mind. I leaned into the microphone.

  “Good evening, Car Club Association cats and chicks, and welcome!”

  Several whistles and hollers erupted from the crowd.

  “We’re Joey and the Upsets and we’re gonna start with a little ditty by The Ventures called ‘Walk, Don’t Run’!”

  Joey counted out loud “1, 2, 3, 4” and the band exploded.

  The audience quickly jumped to their feet and the hall was alive with the energy of its young.

  My hands drummed with a rhythmic force I realized was driving the entire hall.

  Joey’s biting guitar solo brought clapping from the crowd as he hot-dogged it with great zeal. Mike Hoops bent backwards while moving to the song and screamed. Ed Winn’s saxophone completed the band’s sound and helped to drive the crowd further into a musical frenzy. This outrageous display caused the band to laugh along with some of the surfers at the front of the crowd.

  “‘Wipe Out’!” Joey shouted and the band blasted into the popular drummer’s song. The song built to a huge finish and the audience cheered. From the front of the crowd, Eddie Olmos suddenly leaped onto the stage.

  “‘Walking the Dog’ in C!” he shouted.

  Joey roared with laughter, “’Bout time you got here!” as the other members of the band screamed “Go, Eddie!”

  Joey counted the song off as human electricity shot through the room. Eddie howled the beginning of the first verse—“BABY, BABY!”—as his body shook and he danced across the stage like a tiger in heat. Just before the first chorus kicked in and the tension built, Eddie flung himself into a twirling three hundred and sixty degree turn and shot down into a full set of splits, instantly causing the turned on audience to scream in excitement. He propelled himself up in perfect timing to land in front of the microphone and sing, “JUST A WALKIN’ THE DOG” as the Upsets all sang in harmony behind him. As Joey blasted his lead guitar solo in the song, Eddie danced over to me and we both bobbed and weaved with our heads together deliriously singing as we performed. Eddie ran to the front of the stage for the closing of the song, microphone in hand, and shouted, “Everyone sing with us!” The echo of four hundred young people singing shook the walls of the Taylor Ranch House and could be heard all the way down to the shopping mall halls of the Montebello Mart.

  When the song ended, the audience exploded into wild hysteria.

  I jumped from the drums and did a small drum solo on Eddie’s sweaty back. “Bitchin’, Olmos. You slayed ’em, cat!”

  Joey said over the microphone, “Mr. Eddie ‘James Brown’ Olmos! We’re gonna take a break.”

  We all walked down the stage steps. Joey and I beelined for the stage door so that we could catch a breath of fresh air and hopefully cool off after being on stage for over an hour. We relished the night air and the few moments we had together before we performed our next set. We were silent, but the silence was a self-congratulatory one. We both knew we had something so we didn’t even have to form the words to say it.

  The stage door opened and Eddie Olmos walked over to us. We caught our breath looking at the full moon and the assortment of stars laid out for our enjoyment. Joey smiled while he stared into space thoughtfully. He broke the comfortable silence.

  “The feeling up there on that stage is untouchable, you guys.”

  “Trying to put a name on that feeling, Joey, would be impossible,” Eddie said. “When we’re inside the music—all together, all pumping—it’s like some kind of spiritual something. It’s other world stuff.”

  “I’m hip,” Joey said. He lit a smoke and watched the rings float into the air while thinking this over. “Yeah,” he went on. “There’s an amazing moment when your eyes lock on someone staring at you from the audience. It’s like you’re breathing in this moment of connection, soul to soul.”

  The dirt and stones of the parking lot crunched under our boots while we made our way back to the stage. An outside light for the parking lot cast a yellowish glow that gave us each a spiritual look. The Car Club Association danced to Joey and the Upsets while the local sheriff drove by every half hour just to check on things and remind the band that they had to stop at 1:00 a.m.

  Would this road lead us to stardom? I hoped so. But no matter where this led, I was definitely along for the ride.

  2

  He’s a Rebel

  During the next three months, Joey and I wrote and recorded six songs. Four were in the tradition of the surf groups like the Beach Boys, the Pyramids, and—Joey’s personal favorite—the Ventures. We also whipped up two rhythm and blues semi-masterpieces in the “Green Onions” style. One thing that Joey wanted to do differently was to establish a link between the instrumentals that were so prevalent in surf music and vocals. Obviously, the Beach Boys were the kings in this area. The Upsets had this all-instrumental sound that Joey loved, but hiring me was a business move, for he really saw the need to add a singer’s voice to his original songs. Since Joey was not a lead singer and I was, our relationship would now flourish as best friends and musicians.

  Two more original songs we had written were filled with vocals that I belted out passionately. The new lyrics were filled with the topics of the day—cars, chicks, and surf along with broken-hearted love affairs. As we dropped our demo packages in the mail each day praying for a record deal, I kept mentioning to Joey that we should have Eddie “James” Olmos in the band full time.

  “A lead singer would be a good addition because I have to play drums full-time, Joey.”

  “I know,” Joey would say, “but the reality is that his band is working more than ours. We should have more to offer him than just a once in a while gig. He’s Mr. Showbiz! I know we’re going to land a record deal with these songs. That would be the time to offer him the spot. Then, you cats could sing together.”

  Spread out on the living room of Joey’s home were sixteen labeled boxes of two track mix downs on small five-inch reels. Each held all six songs. To the right of the boxes were eight-by-ten pictures, a pile of resumés, and a three-page summary of newspaper clippings and reviews.

  “Man, I’m glad we saved these clippings from the different papers. It gives the band an air of professionalism. I just hope they don’t check too closely on these resumés.”

  I was busy stuffing envelopes and was only half listening to Joey. After a long moment, he mocked, “You mean except for the gigs, we’re lying through our teeth.”

  That afternoon we walked to the mailbox on the corner. “Let’s bless each one as we mail it,” I suggested.

  “Cool. What could it hurt?”

  Joey went first. “Please, God. Please, Big Fella. Look down on your poor deprived children and bless us with Beach Boy and Ventures success. You wouldn’t have us doing weddings and Bar Mitzvahs forever, would ya?”

  Joey deposited half of the envelopes. I dropped my load of packages into the mailbox and sang a line. “Just like the King in ‘Jailhouse Rock’, Ziggie and I were born to shake our butts, so let’s have some pull from heaven, God. Please!”

  We ate dinner at the Bowling Alley coffee shop that night, flirting with the waitress and enjoying our reputation as musicians.

  Later that night, I found myself standing at Adele’s window. For the past three months, I had been dutifully visiting Adele after the band’s rehearsal. Sometimes I’d sing as promised; other times we would chat—about life, school, the band. I could sense that we were developing crushes on one another. The crush from my point of view was a little hard to admit because she was a couple of year
s younger, making her thirteen or fourteen. I wanted to date her, but knew it was impossible. She knew it, too.

  “Hi, honey,” she mused excitedly.

  “Hi, Gidget,” I smiled. I curled my lip in an Elvis impersonation and lowered my voice. “Got a little song for you here tonight.”

  “No,” she said holding up her hand. “I have one for you.”

  Her excitement made her cheeks red and her breath short. She brought out a piece of paper from her purse and unfolded it intensely, looking over her shoulder.

  “I know,” she said turning back to me. “Go around the house to the driveway gate. I don’t want anyone to hear this except us.”

  “Sure,” I said, excited. I almost flew from the ground to the driveway, noticing a tingling in my stomach.

  She carefully came out the kitchen door like a cat burglar. A waist-high gate separated us. The moonlight shimmered softly on her blonde hair, making her appear even more angelic—almost surreal.

  “Here it goes,” she said. “This song was written for you and me.”

  She began softly:

  Born too late for you to notice me.

  I’m just a kid, that you won’t date.

  Why was I born too late?

  I see you walk with another.

  I wish it could be me.

  I long to hold you and kiss you,

  But I know it never can be.

  Why was I born too late?

  I reached across the fence and touched her cheek. Her lips parted as she gazed back up at me, the stars acting as our backdrop. A tear ran down her cheek. I wondered if she could see my eyes had moistened.

  “I mean…you’re seeing someone…in your class…and—I should go.”

  “Adele,” I said anxiously. “Wait.”

  She stopped with the screen door half open, looking down on me from the steps. After a moment, she tentatively walked back to me. I slowly reached up to touch her hair. It fell between my fingers like lavish silk. She closed her eyes. The intimacy of this moment—eyes closed, head bowed—was a confession of emotion we’d been hiding.

  The wind moved easily between Joey’s home and Adele’s home, caressing effortlessly our two young hearts as we embraced.

  That breeze touched Adele’s cheek.

  And then it touched mine.

  As we slowly parted, we continued holding hands until only our fingertips were touching. I smiled at her and she cast her gaze downward. Without a word, she turned and went into her house.

  “Wanna drive?” I yelled at Joey as we walked out of the music store.

  “Boss!” Joey exclaimed.

  Joey and I had hit our sixteenth birthdays in May, 1963. I had a car; Joey didn’t. The car meant freedom.

  Joey’s elation heightened tremendously as he moved through the traffic. The white and red ’54 Chevy with the bare painted black rims ranked as a “hot rod,” with its cut springs that lowered the front end dramatically. It represented a major step in becoming a man to both of us. Experiencing this emancipation together was exhilarating. It was a symbol more than anything. Wheels. A function machine. Something indefinable, but tirelessly referred to as “cool.”

  After rehearsal, while we wrote more material for The Upset’s intended album, Joey walked with me to my car.

  “There’s a party in Monterey Park this weekend,” he said. “It’s being thrown by some chicks we met at that wedding gig in Whittier last month. They want all four of us to come. Can we take the car? It’s Saturday night. Apparently, the babe that’s throwing it is twenty-one and owns her own house.”

  We both knew what that meant. Slow, devilish smiles began to form on both of our faces.

  “Turn that up,” I ordered Joey as we drove to the party the following Saturday night, masterfully dressed in leather jackets and jeans.

  “That’s Link Ray’s ‘Rumble.’ Outta sight,” Mike Hoops said from the back seat.

  We rode low in their seats. Silently, we absorbed the deep smoldering cool of the song. It hypnotized us. We became its rhythmic pulse. The bass with its deep sound could pull us into the heart of the song as the drums kept a driving forward beat. The guitars swirled it all together as an anthem for the youth of the day. It seemed bigger than us, as if we would have to run after it and try aimlessly to control it’s thrusting time and mood arrangements. I absolutely loved the song’s power to transcend us all to another dimension as if my mind had a tiny place where music had been stored from another life. Another dimension. Another time.

  Music did that to me. It opened my mind beyond the normal situations of everyday life. I always thirsted for that indescribable freedom musicians had on stage. I had always felt that musicians had a handle on the coolness of their individual time period on earth. Their “hip-ness” had always appealed to me. Fortunately, my father, an aspiring singer himself, continued to encourage me on the musical path.

  Once we arrived at the party, we strutted as if we were long, cool warriors of the night. I combed my pompadour. I put my comb between my teeth and gave the front a twirling twist. Hair, like music, was serious business.

  Three hours later we stumbled to my car—drunk. “Misirlou” by Dick Dale and the Del-Tones pounded in our heads, still ringing down the streets from the party house. We did slurred imitations of Dick’s classic guitar solo, falling over one another.

  “You guys really bite the big one as guitar players.” Joey howled at the moon. He fell in the shotgun seat next to me while Hoops and Winn got in the back. We ate sandwiches stolen from the party, hoping they would absorb the booze we’d consumed.

  “Rusty, take the side streets back to the Bowling Alley,”

  Joey suggested after we ate. “You okay to drive now?”

  “Yeah, I’m all right…I think.”

  “Hoops and Winn, watch for cops. We get pulled over, we’re dog shit,” Joey barked.

  “Listen, if we see any cops in the residential neighborhood,” I added, “I’ll pull in front of any house and we’ll get out and start walking towards it like it’s one of ours.”

  Zagarino looked at me, surprised. “Where’d you learn that?”

  “Saw it in some movie.”

  We slithered slowly down the residential streets and over the hill on Wilcox Boulevard towards Montebello. We talked about music to add to our set list.

  “There’s the Bowling Alley,” Joey suddenly said, easing all of our pent up tension. “We made it. No trouble. Rusty, just pull into the parking lot and we’ll go in and hang out for a few hours. It’s only eleven thirty.”

  “No problem,” I said, relieved.

  As I signaled to turn left into the Bowl’s parking lot, a siren blared and swirling red and blue lights filled the car.

  “Where in the hell did they come from?!?!” I yelled. I flashed a distressed look of panic into the rear view mirror, straightening up rigidly.

  “Shit!” Ed Winn screamed from the back seat.

  “Shit, Johnson. Run!” Hoops shouted.

  “Where?” I screamed. “We’re turning into the Bowling Alley!”

  “My house! Your house! Anywhere!” yelled Joey.

  Knowing that the safety of Joey’s house was literally one hundred yards from us and hidden behind a six-foot block wall, I gunned the car and headed for the alley behind Joey’s house.

  We were now running from the cops. Sweat formed on my hands beneath the steering wheel. Since I was at the wheel and it was my car, the ultimate decision was mine. If we got caught, which looked like a sure bet, it would be my ass. Joey, Mike, and Winn would be let off with a slap on the weenie, but I would get the book thrown at me.

  Fear had a smell, and The Upsets stank of it. Suddenly, I yelled like some cheesy actor in a B movie. “I’m skidding to the back of the Bowling Alley by the wall. We’ll all go over it! They’ll never find us. We’ll go over the fence and into Joey’s house. Got it?”

  “Yeah,” Joey answered.

  Mike and Winn were too busy losing their bladders in
the back seat. Their faces looked like crazy clowns in some freak show, bobbing around to the insanely colored lights caused by the police car.

  My eyes were spinning as the negative excitement built inside the car. I put the pedal to the metal for the last one hundred yards. I raced to the back part of the parking lot and skidded around to a stop, raising a cloud of brown dust. The old Bel-Air squeaked and moaned in a metallic protest.

  Frantically glancing up again and looking into the rearview mirror, I could see the end of my life as I knew it. The Bobby Fuller Four’s “I Fought the Law and the Law Won” flickered momentarily in the back of my mind.

  “Okay, Mouseketeers! Annette says let’s get the hell outta here! Spin and Marty coming up after the commercial.”

  The two doors flew open and Joey and I spilled out onto the dirt and gravel. The old squeaky seats resounded with pain as Hoops and Winn propelled themselves into the night air.

  The chase was on!

  Everyone broke for the wall like it was a rest stop bathroom. The wall represented our record deal, freedom, and safety.

  The police car skidded in behind us and the driver screamed through his open window, “Police! Freeze!”

  The Upsets climbed over the wall, mixing fear with hilarious laughter as we snorted and pulled our skinny butts over the cement barrier.

  Joey and I leaped from the top of the wall in one monumental aerial dive. We hit the ground on the other side as the cops were just getting out of their car. It was only as I looked back before descending into darkness that I remembered one tiny little bit of incriminating evidence.

  My car was running, blocked by the police car, with the keys in it and the radio blasting.

  “I’m a ’58 Ford Edsel. Doomed and ugly!” I muttered.

  “Come on, you guys!” Joey screamed. Thinking alike, Joey and I raced to the Zagarino driveway and sprinted down it, knowing we’d be out of sight before the cops had time to get up on the wall.

  “Thank God my parents aren’t home,” Joey said softly.

  We scampered down the driveway and jumped on the back steps of his house. Joey jammed his key into the lock and we leaped in. I glanced behind to see if Hoops and Winn were tailing us, but they’d vanished.