The nurse smiled. “Good luck.”
Arriving at the window, the nurse showed him his daughter. “There’s little Melinda, sir. I have to go now. If you want to see your wife, just ask the nurse at the station. Good bye, and good luck.”
“Thank you, bye,” Joey said absently, absorbed in his new miracle.
“She looks just like you, Joey,” Jimmy said. “All red and craggy.”
“Yeah, she does, doesn’t she? Wow, man! A daughter. Hey, Melinda, welcome to earth. I’m your daddy and I’ll take care of you.” Joey pressed his fingers against the window as if he could somehow touch her through the glass. “Life is good, Jimmy-man. Ain’t it? I’ve got to call Johnson,” he muttered, almost lying on the window in a dramatic but silly trance.
“Huh?” Jimmy asked, gazing across the busy room filled with new arrivals to planet earth; some crying, some sleeping, some just checking out the new dimensional digs.
As if coming back to earth from a fog, Joey said, “Oh…I just have to call an old friend of mine in California.”
Melinda’s birth was wonderful for Joey, but for me, the best news came later. That night, in the hospital parking lot, Jimmy revealed that some of the Hit Factory staff might soon be transferred to the West Coast. That meant that Joey and I might be together again.
“You kidding me?” Joey’s mouth dropped open as he turned towards Jimmy.
“Sure, maybe you’ll be surfing again in Paradise.”
Joey smiled at Jimmy. “God, that would be totally groovy.”
He gazed back at the hospital, where Karen and Melinda both slept.
“A baby girl and moving back to California.”
III
Bridge
15
Susie Cream Cheese
I watched Joey navigate the Porsche around the bends of the Hollywood Hills. I couldn’t get over how Joey had changed. From a high school wanna-be to a muscular, almost leading man type, full of inner confidence. His charisma hadn’t changed—it still beamed from him as if inside search lights were turned on maximum.
The warm July breeze gently rustled the leaves of the magnificent, old oak trees on Mulholland Drive. The earthy highway was the sluice for driveways that flowed onto it directly from the castles of the rich, the creative, the lucky, and the wicked. The famous highway rolled out along the mountain range that separated the San Fernando Valley from the west side of Hollywood. Mulholland propelled skyward into the night, representing the pinnacle of achievement. Dream Street. Status Zone. Endsville.
In the late 1950’s and 1960’s, the other historical boulevard crossing Mulholland was Laurel Canyon and it became the mecca for the hippie generation. Where these two boulevards met would be the new home of Joey Zagarino.
Countless successful rock bands lived in Laurel Canyon in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s: Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, and The Buffalo Springfield. It was the closest to the Greenwich Village scene that Los Angeles would ever get.
“Brown Sugar” by the Stones was blaring though the superboosted sound system installed in Joe Zagarino’s white Porsche. Singing at the top of our lungs and dancing in our seats, Joey and I were caught in that outrageous ecstasy of being together for the first time in ten years. We were older, but still the child raged in us. We sang of rock and roll, changing the words to suit ourselves: “When Zagarino was a New Jersey cat…That’s when the Upsets really went flat. Yeah…Ohhh.”
I turned the volume down. “What’s the name of the street?”
“13014 Woodrow Wilson Drive,” Joey said, glancing at the opened page of his two hundred dollar leather organizer. “They said one block past Laurel Canyon off Mulholland. Supposed to be a yellow house. This is too cool. They get us this house and this car. Man, you look incredible, Rusty. Years have been good to you, Moondoggie.”
“You, too, Joey. Is that a curling job or has your hair just gotten curlier over the years?”
“Karen gives it a little help with something. I don’t know what the name of it is.” Joey brushed his curls while turning a wide curve. “I was thinking on the plane how we ran from the cops and how sad we all were when I had to leave. Have you heard from Adele at all?”
“Someone said she married a teacher and they live in Hawaii.”
“Wow, Hawaii. God, I want to see her.” He scratched his facial hair. “Hey, dude, remember that last day in my room, you said you were going to marry her someday. Why didn’t you?”
“We lost touch due to rock and roll,” I answered.
Joey leaned over and opened the glove compartment and pulled out a three-inch smooth stone with one hole in the middle, like a miniature cup to hold something, and a hole at each side that ran all the way through it. Joey casually lit it and sucked in a large puff. He passed it to me.
“Ah, no thanks, my man; that shit, it do make me a bit paranoid.”
“Go ahead, man. It’s good hash from way down under,” Joey said, while making a shooooooo sound as he exhaled.
I knew the craziness of drinking and drugs. Through the years of band work and living in Hollywood, I had definitely seen the scene—and stayed away from it. I saw different vices destroy too many talented people.
This seemed different, though. Joey’s affluent lifestyle was very seductive and it was something I wanted to be part of: big record deals, big money, and big power. Everything we’d dreamed of as kids! This wasn’t inner-city street shit. This was the Beverly Hill’s new music set.
Besides, this was my best friend Joey.
I took the stone and inhaled.
We laughed as the smoke came out of my mouth.
“That’s it. Cool, bro.”
After I exhaled, Joey reached under his seat and produced a clear plastic bag of white powder.
Cocaine.
“Lookie here, big guy. See what the Joe-Joe man got!”
“Damn, Joey! That’s a little deep, boy. Eddie and I don’t even do the grass thing. Hell, he don’t even drink. I do.” A worried look came over me at my admission. Suddenly, this homecoming scene bothered me. I couldn’t take my eyes off the bag. “Ah, sometimes I even drink too much…and I feel like an outhouse the next day.”
“Me, too.” Joey opened the bag of white powder as he drove. “Look, all this stuff does is put your head where it should be when it ain’t where it is,” he cackled. “It’s no big thing. Hell, people nowadays pay bills with this shit. It’s everywhere and it’s just fine. It’ll be our little celebration for the ten years we missed together.”
Joey skillfully inhaled some of the white up each of his nostrils with a small spoon he lifted from the pocket of his shirt. All the while, he maneuvered the car perfectly. An old pro at this by now, I thought.
He offered the spoon to me. A silent line was broken.
“Truth be known, old man, I’ve never done this stuff,” I admitted almost shamefully, not wanting to seem out of it.
Joey saw the hesitation in my face. “Come on, man. It’s no big deal. Makes you feel like a million bucks and you can be anything you want.” Joey opened the top of the bag and glanced from it to my face. “Go on,” he reiterated, like a coach egging on a star athlete.
A small war raged in me, then I said, “All right, I’ll try it just once.” I took the spoon and copied my friend’s earlier movement.
“What the hell! Everyone should try everything once in their life,” Joey exhorted.
Both the hash and the cocaine kicked through my blood stream with the same explosive force as the Hindenburg blimp explosion . I looked down at my newly pressed Levi-Strauss jeans while trying to put a sentence together.
Instead, I began giggling wildly.
“I don’t have any feeling in my legs,” I laughed, like a drunk trying to explain to his scolding wife how he fell over the top porch step and broke the screen door. The world spun mightily off its axis and I found myself worried that the beetle size car we were in would be hard to spot if we fell to our early deaths down the thundering
mountain range of Mulholland.
“Hey, Joey baby, this is a far out feeling, mmmmaaaaaannnnnn! Ha Ha Ha. Oops, I farted. Sorry, gringo. Oh…Who…Who? You’re the gringo, dude. I’ll just roll down the window so the smell of the Ruster’s big old stinky fart don’t eat your brains out,” I slurred.
“Youuuuu un funny guy,” Joe said in his best Chinese imitation. “Hey, dig this—you know who we live right across the street from?”
“Mao Tse-tung? HA HA HO HO HE HE!” I bellowed, stoned.
“Frank Zappa.”
“All right. The Mothers of Invention.”
My blood was pumping through my system at an alarming rate. I was more stoned than I’d ever been in my life. Something wasn’t right.
“I can’t wait for you to meet Karen and Melinda. I dropped them at my aunt’s house to scout this out first with you. I’ll move them in tomorrow.”
My eyes crossed momentarily. “Eddie and I can come over tomorrow and help.”
“I’ll order up some food from Art’s Deli and we’ll make a day of it. But, be very careful of the monster, Tramp,” Joey joked.
“That a dog or a fish?” I put my hands to my head to try to slow the spinning.
“The most fearsome, cruel, man-eating, woman-eating, speckled, giant Great Dane that the East Coast has ever produced. Dig it. The Tramp-animal is no mere mortal pooch. He’s a building.”
“What’s a dog like that eat in a day?” I giggled like a school girl as I watched the trees spin.
“Two or three kids in the neighborhood.”
We crossed Laurel Canyon heading east and turned right onto a beautiful tree-lined street. Counting four houses on our right, we found the house and turned into the driveway.
“Yellow it is, old man,” I said. “It’s also very charming. Like, ah…Colonial isn’t it?”
“Man, that’s great. It’s great. Come on, let’s go in,” Joey said.
“Ah…bro, I think I’m gonna have to stay in the car for a while.” My eyes were as big as silver dollars and I stared out the windshield at a knot hole in the garage door like a crazed zombie.
I remembered why I didn’t do drugs. This felt like shit—and I was scared to death.
“Things are spinning pretty bad and I’m not liking this feeling. I told you I don’t do this stuff. I’ll join you in a while. Let me just ride this out.”
“Damn, man, I’m sorry,” Joey lamented.
“It’s cool, it’s cool. I just don’t have any tolerance for it. I must be a pussy, right? I’ll just sit here till it goes away.”
“Okay. I’ll go check out the digs. You sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah, man. Go. Go see the pad. I’m fine.”
Joey got out of the car. Everything was still spinning. I smiled at him through the windshield and put the bucket seat back to stop the revolving world. I thought about those awful films they used to show in high school about the dangers of drugs. I had lied when I told Joey I was all right. I had had some bad reaction and after the first few minutes of laughter, my skin crawled and my heart raced so fast I’d thought it would burst. I thought about opening the car door and crawling around on the lawn, screaming for Joey to call an ambulance to come get me. I pulled back on the handle of the door and heard the click and felt it open two inches. I could feel the cool, fresh breeze. Just as quickly, I closed it and got hold of myself, not wanting to make a scene.
This was cocaine. I hated it. Loathed it. It made me want to scream and start ripping at my clothes. My mind raced a million miles an hour. I squirmed so heavily in my seat, I thought that at any moment I’d bolt from the car and run down the street. My heart hurt.
“Everything they said about this shit was the truth,” I said out loud, wiping my brow and wondering in my wildest dreams how anybody’s system could adjust to this bullshit. I’d heard stories about people who got so behind this crap that they sold all their worldly property to buy it—until it drove them nuts.
But Joey’s no loser, I thought. All of us tadpoles wanted the break he got. Ah…he can’t be doing too much of this poison.
Or could he?
Ray Milland in Lost Weekend flashed through my mind. I remembered the scene where Milland saw things crawling on the wall and screamed for his mamma.
Joey came out of the house and got in the car.
“You all right, man?”
“I’m fine. We’ll go through the house tomorrow when we’re moving you in. I hope like hell, bubba, you’re not using much of this stuff or I have completely missed the boat. I hate it and I’ve been sitting here worrying that you’ve got some funky jones to it. The snow-quake, I mean. I hate to be nosy ’cause it’s your life, but are you?”
“Rusty, dig it. I have dabbled and it’s no big thing. Don’t worry, nobody knows around me, not Karen or Jimmy, no one.”
“Okay, then,” I said. “Let’s go eat. I’m starving. Down the Valley side there’s a Tiny Naylor’s.”
Joey started the Porsche and backed out of the driveway. He cranked up the Rolling Stones once again. The opening eight bars of “Not Fade Away” filled the upside down tea-cup of a car and we drove off into the smog, singing as usual.
I picked up Eddie and we drove to Joey’s to write some music. Our session was interrupted by a phone call from one of Joey’s new neighbors.
“Yeah, sure, I’ll be right over.”
Joey hung up the phone.
“Come on, you guys. We’re going across the street to Zappa’s.”
“Frankie and the Mothers!” Eddie said.
“The one and only. We’ve been hanging out a bit this week. He wants to show us his new board. Twenty-four track right in his front room.”
We walked out the front door and across Woodrow Wilson Drive to Frank Zappa’s house. Joey knocked on the door and a voice called loudly from the inside.
“Come on in, you guys!”
We stepped into a large front room where Frank, standing by his board with cigarette and coffee in hand, turned to welcome us. His guitar hung around his neck; his long black hair, usually in a pony-tail, today fell over his shoulders. His small goatee needed some trimming. He wore brown bedroom slippers, a white tee shirt, and faded Levis. He’d apparently been over-dubbing some guitar tracks to a new composition.
“Hey, guys! What’s shaking?”
“Hey, Frank. These are my best buddies: Rusty Johnson and Eddie Olmos. Rusty was in my first band years ago and Eddie joined him later. We’re working on new songs together.”
“Hi, Frank, good meeting you,” Eddie said.
“Outta’ sight, Frank,” I said excitedly.
“The pleasure’s all mine, guys. Can I get you some coffee or something to drink?”
“Na, we’re fine,” Eddie said while making eyes at the new board.
“Man, this board is incredible,” Joey said. “Trident is top of the line, you guys. It’s from England and has a certain sound that’s too hip. Sixteen assignable buses. Full threeband parametrics. The dude just gets an idea and plays it when his friends come over.”
“Yeah,” Frank said, “I got pissed having to drive all the way across town every time I wanted to record, so I brought the recording studio to me. Check out the Ampex, two incher. Brand new. Had it moved in yesterday.”
“This shit’s as hip as the Record Plant’s. Jimmy and I will just bring acts here and pay you. Mind blowing, Frank.”
“Nothing but the best for the Zappa gang,” Frank laughed. “Had a guy help me out a bit putting it all in. Cool E.M.T. reverb, A.K.G. microphones, Shures thrown in for good flavor.”
“Man, you’ve got auxiliaries up the ass. You can give each guy a different mix right here in your living room. Too much,” Joey marveled.
“Let me play you guys something we’re working on,” Frank said proudly. He cranked his new system up and through the hanging JBL speakers and we were treated to music heard only the way Frank did it. Wonderful—full—outrageous—and mind boggling.
; We stared at each other in disbelief. It sounded like Frank was working with the London Philharmonic Orchestra—with some bad-ass guitar playing to boot!
For about another hour with we talked about music and what Joey had coming up.
“‘Susie Cream Cheese,’ on the Invention album, man, got my juices going in this direction,” Eddie told Frank. “I know ‘The Mothers Of Invention’ by heart.”
“Frank,” I cut in through the laughter, “I guess it was about three of four years ago, you were at the Whiskey and we were up the street at Gazzarri’s. We came down to catch your last set one night. There was this guy who opened for you named Mad Man Fisher. He did all this bizarre shit—”
“Yeah, yeah!” Frank cut in. “I remember that cat.”
“Oh wait, wait!” Eddie shot in excitedly. “Wasn’t he that guy, Rusty, who came on stage with a small old forty-five record player and did voices?”
“That’s the guy!” I said. “Then, Frank, you did this thing that blew me away. At the end of the night, you walked up to the end of the stage and said, ‘Well, we’re all done, so all the chicks that want to sleep with the band come up to the stage now. We’ll make a list!’”
Everyone screamed with laughter.
“Yeah. I did that, I’m guilty,” Frank said, looking over his shoulder for our entertainment. “Not too loud, please, thank you very much.”
Over the following weeks, Eddie and I would help Joey at sessions for Jim Keltner, the drummer for John Lennon in the Plastic Ono Band. We’d bumped into Sly of Sly and the Family Stone at several late night sessions at Village Recording Studio. Joey was now using Bobby Keys and Jim Price, the saxophone player and the trumpet player for the Stones, on different sessions when they were in town.
I loved being with Joey and watching him work. And I wound up shaking my head at each new session. It was all so unbelievable.
16
Satisfaction
The phone rang in my apartment and I ran to pick it up. “Rusty, it’s Zag!” The rewinding of powerful tape machines could be heard in the background. “Dig it! Call Eddie and the two of you get your asses down to Sunset Sound Recorders and come into studio C. PRONTO! You ain’t gonna believe this one, daddy-o. Whatever you’re doing, drop it and get here—FAST!”
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