by Dan Kennedy
“I can’t believe I got to meet Simon LeBon. I got a picture with him. Did you see that,” he asks.
“Yeah. Hey, who was the guy with short black hair sitting to the left?”
“I don’t know, I think he’s their manager. Or maybe their road manager, I’m not sure.”
All I can think is: Well, whoever he is, he knows he’s got a big fan.
ROCK OPERA TRILOGY: I. THE DONNAS SING SONGS ABOUT SEX IN CARS II. BE COOL, STAY IN SCHOOL, AND LEAVE THE FULLY AUTOMATIC ASSAULT WEAPONS AT HOME III. JEWEL IS A HUMAN BEING, FOR YOUR INFORMATION
How can anyone not like this band, the Donnas? Or maybe more accurately: how can one thirty-five-year-old straight white man receding into the melancholy of middle age not like a band of cute girls, ten years younger than he is, playing a solid stadium-rock song about having sex in a car with a faceless male protagonist? Deadly combination, if you ask me. The only combo that might be slightly more powerful would be the same band of girls playing power ballads about sexual loopholes that don’t technically constitute cheating on one’s wife or high-energy anthems that detail ways to avoid getting gouged on taxes this year. Anyway, decent band; paid major dues in the first portion of their career on a small independent label; and they’ve now taken the jump to a major label, having signed with Atlantic.
They’ve got the requisite indy guitars-up-front sound with a mild hint of indie label post-punk vibe, which will be briskly and freshly scrubbed off of them quicker than you can say “Budweiser wants to pay you to be in a commercial.” They’re good looking, they play guitar songs in 4/4 time that are loud and have this kind of tongue-in-cheek take on lyrics and maybe a certain nod to seventies stadium rock with the requisite twenty-something hipster wink of irony. I wonder, though, is there anything sincere about hipster irony? Can you even imagine Joey Ramone ever standing on a stage and thinking, “Man, this is hilarious — I’m being totally ironic; my hair is hanging over my face, I’m super tall, and I’m singing about some place called Rock and Roll High School? Get it? Me? In High School?” Say what you will about what became of punk or seventies stadium rock, but my hat is off to the lack of irony. I applaud the fact that Kiss never came off stage saying, “How classic was that? I was all, ‘Alright, New York, do you people want to rock and roll all night?’ and then I was all, ‘I can’t hear you!’ and they yelled even louder! I think they thought I was serious!”
Anyway, here in the studio up on the twenty-eighth floor with the Donnas, we’re waiting for a couple of other people I work with to show up. The band’s product manager arrives with some big wig from radio promotions or New Media or something. We’re going to be recording thirty-second public service announcements about how kids shouldn’t bring guns to school — which kind of seems like a given, but whatever. These little announcements will feature the band saying something to the extent of, “Hi, we’re the Donnas, if you hear about something or see something out of the ordinary” — namely, your peers toting assault rifles — and we’re guessing that would strike you as out of the ordinary — “let a teacher or your principal know. Check out our new album, Spend the Night! at a record store near you!” or something along those lines, and the world will be a better place. They’re really cool about it; their attitude is pretty much, “If it stops one kid from doing something horrible, then it’s worth it” type of thing. And I guess the label’s stance is more like, “If one person, plus five and a half million other people, hear this public service announcement, possibly prevent a tragedy, but more important, head to retail to buy your album, then it’s worth it. . . .”
The in-house studio is basically two little rooms hidden behind a sort of James Bond blue vault door, and the door just looks like a part of the long, high-tech, space-age hallway here on floor twenty-eight until you realize there’s a little handle tucked away that turns part of the wall into a door. It’s crammed with racks of preamps, boards, monitors, and about seventy-five other high-tech flashing, blinking, slim, and impressive things that I have no idea how the engineer operates. How much did this place cost? is my first thought. The studio is used mostly for recording things that it seems you could just record on your laptop — like these public service announcements we’re doing today, or what they call “drops.” Drops are when you get an artist to say, “Hi, this is ARTIST NAME and when I’m in CITY, the only radio station I listen to is NAME OF STATION THAT LABEL HAS PERSUADED TO PLAY RECORD REGULARLY.”
I’m standing in the first room of the studio, next to a leather designer couch that exceeds my station in life and a mixing console manned by today’s engineer. I hand each Donna the little scripts I wrote; there are a few different versions of each one. I’m a little nervous about the fact that they’re so attractive, although — and I’m sure unveiling the following ruse isn’t breaking news, but: no star looks quite as gorgeous or handsome in real life as the five or six-figure photographer’s version of what they look like. The first time I saw Jewel at the office it took me ten minutes to recognize her even with four huge posters of her new album cover on the wall of the hallway we were both walking down. I was shuffling down the hall that day thinking, “Who’s this attractive blonde woman walking toward me? Think. She . . . looks . . . very . . . familiar, but I can’t quite . . . Connie, maybe? From accounts payable? Yes! That’s her. That’s who does the expense checks! Wait . . . is it?” And I kind of nodded hello as we passed in the hall and as soon as I was ten yards past my brain made a positive ID and I was thinking, “Wait just a minute. That was Jewel. But with pores. And a normal, human-sized waist.” Enough time, money, lighting, film, and Photoshop airbrushing, and you can make America fall in love with the oddly tiny, slightly hooked little toe on my left foot. Yep, give me the standard budget of one to three hundred grand for a shoot with the right photographer, stylist, and art director, and I’ll show you an unsightly little toe that gets e-mailed marriage proposals and has legions of gushing fans bringing that photo to plastic surgeons and hair stylists, saying, “I want to look like this.” Still, the Donnas are very attractive. I’ve walked into the studio from the control room to hand them their scripts, and am hoping I’ve written them in a fashion that gets across the sober tone of discouraging teens from bringing fully automatic firearms to school, while at the same time still managing to capture the playful, rockin’ tone of the band and their song, “Take Me to the Back Seat.” That’s the song that will be playing in the background while members of the bands are telling the teens not to bring guns to school.
“So, do you like your job?” one of them asks me.
“Yeah . . . you know. Whatever. I guess it’s pretty cool as far as jobs go. Man. Pretty, you know, chill.”
When I hear it come out of my mouth, it sounds like a tape of an undercover cop trying to convince downtown perps that he’s not a square. Or one of those cheesy modern dads trying to get his daughters to think he’s cool so they’ll admit to drinking beer on the weekends and then he can lecture them and insist that if they’re going to drink, they do it at home.
“You know . . . I kinda just do whatever I need to do and nobody really asks me any questions. Yesterday I took a two-and-a-half hour lunch with a friend. Whatever. What are they gonna say? You know what I mean?”
Just then, the product manager and the vice president or whatever from radio come in from the control room. The product manager is one of the guys that spend a solid four-year stint working his ass off as an assistant before getting the break; one of those guys who started from the ground up to get his job and has wanted it, has tasted it, longer than I’ve even been in the building.
“Hey, you guys! You look great! Did you have a good flight?” This, from the product manager.
“Yeah, it was good. Kind of tired, we played in Boston last night and today after we do MTV stuff, we have radio stuff, a dinner, and then we’ll play at Irving Plaza tonight.”
“Oh, wow! Okay, well this shouldn’t take long, we should have you out of here pretty quick. I s
ee you’ve already met Dan.”
And that’s when it happened. To this day I can’t remember which one started it. I think it was the bassist.
“Yeah we met. He was telling us how he takes two-and-a-half-hour lunches with his friend and nobody says anything.”
Then the other girls in the band start laughing and chiming in.
“Yeah, he’s all, ‘What are they gonna say?’” This from the one who sings the songs about slutting it up in people’s sedans!
I give them a look while biting my lip, bulging my eyes a little bit, and barely shaking my head “no” in hopes of discreetly stopping this. But there’s no way to get them to turn back. Maybe it looks like I’m freaking out and that’s why they’re saying even more things. I feel like Schwarzenegger before California made him governor, when he’s in that movie where the kindergarten class is getting out of control and he can’t stop it. Kindergarten Cop, I think it’s called. He’s like a big lion being harassed by a pack of hyenas or something. Another one of them speaks up.
“Yeah, we asked him if he likes his job and he was like, ‘I guess . . . if you gotta have a job’ or something like that.”
What? Drop it! Jesus, you guys sing about tempting motorists with sexual favors or whatever the hell you’re singing about and you’re telling on me?
I stand there with a terrified polite little smile frozen on my face avoiding eye contact with the product manager and vice president, waiting for that moment when the three of us would start laughing. After five or six seconds of silence, it becomes apparent that this isn’t one of those moments.
“We should get started on these,” I say to no one in particular.
I walk back into the little control room on the other side of the glass so we can get started.
After a handful of takes, one serious, one sweet, one rocking, it’s time to leave. They take off their headphones and we all file out of the studio; I close the door and it fades back into the wall. We say good-bye; they keep asking me if it was good enough. Yes, God, it was good enough. Just go. You’ve done enough. They walk down the south hall back to fancy elevators that will gently set them back down on the street twenty-six stories below so they can be on their way to their hotel before playing for a venue packed with adoring fans. I take a different elevator. An elevator that takes a much shorter trip two floors down. Time to get back into my office, check my e-mail, surf the Internet, and, well, heal.
FREE LYRICS FOR ANY ALL-GIRL ROCK BAND TRYING TO WIN OVER THE MIDDLE-AGED WHITE SUBURBAN MALE DEMOGRAPHIC
I think that’s muscle, not fat.
I think you’re hair’s still rad.
You and your friends still seem like rockers.
It turns me on, the way you tuck your short-sleeve Polo
into your pleated khaki Dockers.
Hey, baby, did you hear?
Big changes in the tax laws this year.
You can write off almost all of your travel
Doesn’t matter if it’s business or personal.
What? [sexy moan] Oh, yeah!
[Chorus]
Hello, Sir, we wanna do it to you after the show.
Hello, mister, we could do it and your wife would never know.
We wanna have two Amstel Lights
and party till eleven on a Tuesday night, yeah!
I think your four-door rocks.
I love those sandals with those socks.
I swear to God you turn me on.
It gets me hot when you brag about
Underreporting your gross annual income.
[solo, repeat chorus, to END]
FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK IN VALLERIE’S OFFICE, WE POLITELY SALUTE YOU
I’m staring at the calming, soothing colors of the calendar on my computer screen when suddenly Amy interrupts my post-Donnas healing process.
“We’re all heading down to Vallerie’s office to hear this guy that they just signed.”
Act like you don’t hear her.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see her still standing in my doorway.
Ignore her. She answers your phone. She can’t boss you around. She’s so nice, though. I want to be young again like her. Jesus, easy, Sport.
“Vallerie’s office in ten minutes if you want to hear this new guy.”
“Oh, yeah. Good. Just checking . . . things on my computer. The calendar there. Good. Looks good.”
There is something entirely surreal and uncomfortable about being crammed into an office with your coworkers and bosses while a newly signed star-to-be sits in an ergonomically correct office chair with an acoustic guitar and emotionally croons about heartbreak and sexual mishaps; almost always about the general rigors of young hard-living lovers plagued with emotional problems and bound for quasicrippling emotional disaster designed to bring a tear to your eye, it seems.
I mean, I’m not saying I even find them particularly moving. I’m just saying . . . we’re all being shoved into an office together listening to songs that are supposed to make you cry . . . and we’re at work. So I’m concerned that, you know, worst-case scenario, somebody gets choked up in there; that would be a little awkward. And the musicians who do this, they always look completely comfortable in their skin, oddly enough. Totally fine doing this. Most people would feel pretty damn awkward even talking too much about a health insurance claim while sitting in somebody’s office, but these guys seem to be able to sing about relationship difficulties, struggles with addiction, sexual problems, emotional inadequacies, you name it! They seem to be saying, “Want to hear an intimate performance of my song that talks about my inconsistent weight, surprisingly positive sperm analysis, divorce, and subsequent pill addiction? No problem, which office do you want me to play it in?” My hat is off to them. I can’t even talk to my boss about my weekend plans without stuttering and blinking my eyes seven thousand times.
I don’t want to go to this. If Amy’s supposed to be my assistant, why do I have to do everything she tells me to?
I’m going to start stabbing myself in the arms and chest with a Bic Paper Mate pen as soon as the new genius starts to sing, how’s that for a little number about emotional difficulty?
I shuffle into Vallerie’s office with some other stragglers and there he is. Really thin, kind of shaggy hair and a small chin beard. You’ve seen this guy in every university district of every city you’ve ever been to or lived in. He’s the guy who’s muscular and gangly, bright-eyed if it weren’t for being a little stoned, and he thinks he’s cute and charming when he says something wittier than the other street poets and beautiful losers when you walk by. Something like, “Hey, support your favorite starving musician, man. . . . Got a spare million bucks or a spare record deal, maybe?” I usually smile and maybe sometimes give the clever self-referential singer-songwriter types a spare dollar and walk on. Well, apparently someone gave this one a record deal. He’s got a friend, too. A bit more meat on his bones and he’s the one who plays the guitar while the other one sings. I can’t help picturing him sneaking money out of the guitar case on the street when the singer’s not looking; he’s seriously, like, fifteen pounds heavier and the other dude looks like a lean lost dog. They sit there quietly waiting for us all to file in. What if a fax comes in on the machine they’re going to be playing next to?
Everyone is here. The smattering of VPs, Rob/Dick, Vallerie, Amy, Chocolate Chip, the product managers, Aging Suburban Classic Rock Guy, Aged Robert Wagner Character From Sales. Dick says something in an introduction to the lot of us about how brilliant these two are. Which, really, is simply his way of saying that he has heard from someone above him that somebody here thinks these two are brilliant. Wouldn’t that be such a sweet introduction? I bet even these guys getting ready to play for us would start cracking up if Dick went, “Welcome to Vallerie’s office, everyone. I’ve never heard of this young man with the guitar, or the guy sitting next to him who apparently doesn’t play an instrument, but trust me when I say it’s probably a good sign that
I’ve never heard of them. Anyway, I have been told by my boss to tell you and your bosses that they’re brilliant, and I basically do whatever the bosses say. That’s my own problem to deal with. Anyway, let’s hope Vallerie doesn’t get a fax while they’re playing — hit it, guys.”
If he had the heart and guts and sense of humor to say something like that I would follow him to the end of the earth, seriously. If we collectively had that kind of heart and guts as a company, we would have the coolest bands on the planet wanting to sign with us.
The guitarist starts to play as the other guy sings while smacking his legs like a focused and caffeinated psychic teen runaway keeping time to a beat that only he can hear, and only when he closes his eyes.
Slim starts in with his singing: “Yeah, she’s gone again. Whiskey and cigarettes. The front door slams, heartbreak and nothing left, but she’s . . . ”