Hard Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All

by King, Stephen

  Brewster invited us to the Kennedy Space Center to see the shuttle launch and to play with Max Q. It was the beginning of a wonderful relationship. I often returned to play with various incarnations of Max Q. The band members changed as new astronauts became active and old ones retired; you couldn’t play in the band unless you were actively flying in space. They thought I was already in space! The experience woke me up to an enchanting reality—playing music with people who did it just for fun was a lot more of a blast than playing music with people who did it just for money!

  ROGER AND ROBERT “HOOT” GIBSON OF MAX Q

  In March of 2000, the mailman brought two packages to our doorstep. At first we didn’t understand why different people had given us copies of Carl Hiaasen’s book Sick Puppy. Camilla and I each began reading. We thought maybe they’d been sent to us because the plot involved an evil lobbyist who was planning to bulldoze a south Florida island and we live in Orlando. It wasn’t until the main character, an ecoterrorist named Twilly Spree, kidnapped the lobbyist’s dog and renamed it “McGuinn” that we realized why copies were showing up at our house.

  A week later, Carl was in town for a book signing. We thought it would be funny to stand in line and ask for his autograph. “Would you make it out to Roger McGuinn please?”

  After dinner we joined about three hundred well-behaved patrons who waited for Carl’s autograph. Our joke suddenly didn’t seem so funny. Ten minutes later, a local TV news reporter recognized me and asked if I would mind going to the front of the line because the cameraman had another assignment he had to get to. We didn’t mind one bit. Our plan didn’t go as dramatically as we’d hoped though because Carl had been told that I was there. Carl was too busy to chat during the signing, but he invited us to a dinner the next night where he was the guest lecturer.

  After his lecture, we found an out-of-the-way table and became fast friends. Carl mentioned that sometimes he played with a band of authors called the Rock Bottom Remainders—another group who played for fun. Carl noticed my excitement and offered to contact Dave Barry on my behalf.

  I had met Dave the previous year at an SCO software convention in Northern California, where he was presenting a talk, or maybe it was a stand-up comedy routine. You can’t always tell what Dave is doing. I was playing my guitar and singing. Dave told me he’d seen The Byrds in concert as a teenager and thought it was so cool when girls rushed the stage. Maybe that’s why Dave invited me to play with the Rock Bottom Remainders.

  ROGER MCGUINN: FROM HEADLINER TO BYLINER,

  Photo by Joseph Peduto

  Entering a rehearsal studio was nothing new to me, but this time Camilla and I were both a little intimidated. The Rock Bottom Remainders had instruments strapped on, but underneath those guitars they were carrying “the mighty pen.” We were scared of them and they all looked scared of me. We didn’t exhale until Kathi came over and declared that this was going to be fun.

  Kathi told me that she had met me in the seventies at my house in Malibu. She had come to one of my many parties with our mutual friend Kinky Friedman. After entering the kitchen, she noticed a guy sitting on a table next to the stove, eating bits of lamb shank with his fingers. He was trying his best to look and sound like Bob Dylan. Kathi couldn’t believe he was bold enough to try and pull that off in a house where people actually knew Bob Dylan! Kinky later introduced her to the lamb shank eater…Bob Dylan.

  Kathi loosened me up and we started playing. Dave always downplays the musicianship of the Remainders, but I found them to be very good—especially when they practiced. Most of them had played in bands before they realized there might be a more lucrative way to make a living. The front line of the RBR is a rocking band. Dave and Greg on guitar, Ridley on bass, Mitch on keyboards, Sam on his soulful harmonica, and James rocking his sax. With core musicians that good, you can always add the “dark and stormy night guy,” Stephen, for a bit of drama and Scott to “shoot the sheriff.” With sultry Amy strutting around with her whip, the band not only sounded good, there was eye candy, too!

  DARK & STORMY,

  Photo by Joseph Peduto

  As much fun as they are onstage, they’re even more interesting on the tour bus or in the dressing room. Most musicians talk about and listen to music all the time. The Rock Bottom Remainders talk about books and read and write books. They’re all so bright and witty, it’s like hanging out with Mensa without having to pass an IQ test.

  The writers often compared notes about writing and publishing. Listening to them give one another technical advice about the novels they were working on was fascinating. My reputation for carrying gadgets on the road opened the door for me to be a technical adviser, too. Carl Hiaasen called me in 2001, wanting information for his book Basket Case. It involved recording rock and roll on a computer hard drive, and he knew we had recorded “The John B. Sails” on a Dell laptop at Ridley’s house in St. Louis for my 4-CD boxed set, The Folk Den Project. Another tool I always carry is a radiation detector, because you can never be too careful. Ridley asked for advice on how the Gamma-Scout radiation detector operates for his novel Killer View.

  There was one thing they did that I didn’t adapt to very well. The Rock Bottom Remainders got up early! Rock musicians usually stay up till dawn and sleep till noon. With the RBR, we were up at four to make a seven a.m. flight, or if we were traveling by bus, it would depart the hotel at the break of day. After concerts, we would be back at the hotel singing and partying until security shut us down. Roy, Frank, and I were the old guys in the group, but even their energy put me to shame.

  I have great memories of the twelve years I got to play with the Rock Bottom Remainders. I’m sure others will talk about how Amy said playing with the Remainders was so much fun, she would do it to kill the whales! How her husband, Lou, broke his collarbone in a fall during the “Leader of the Pack,” or how Bruce Springsteen told them not to get any better because then they’d just be another lousy garage band. Playing with the Remainders was so much fun–it’s hard to believe it’s over. There is talk of renaming the band so they can tour sometime in the future. Mitch came up with a great one: “The Whom.” Dave had a line in one of his songs, “Proofreading Woman,” about not dating guys who split their infinitives. “The Split Infinitives” might work too. Whatever happens, I will miss them, and especially Kathi.

  Q&A: Roger’s Next Band

  Q&A with the Remainders

  Q: Which group of professionals should Roger play with next?

  A:

  “Professional musicians. The man has suffered enough.”

  “The Daughters of the American Revolution. They need God.”

  “Solar Panel Installers.”

  “After having gone from the outer limits of space to the depths of human imagination, how could I possibly perform with anyone else? Or maybe an undertaker band would be pretty cool. We could all get embalmed together before the show!”

  Q&A: Aspiring Writers Aspiring to be Rock Stars

  Q&A with the Remainders

  Q: What advice do you have for aspiring writers aspiring to be rock stars?

  A:

  “Be sure to always get up really, really early!”

  “Practice practice practice”

  “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Take music lessons first.”

  “Get Ted. Otherwise little hope. In fact, put Ted in charge of the federal government. He could run it from his laptop.”

  “If you poop on the bus, deny it.”

  Ted’s Management Lesson #6:

  Time Management

  A big part of touring involves meeting in the lobby to get on the bus. I quickly learned that “be in the lobby at nine sharp” means different things to different people. Roger? Always on time. Ridley, Kathi, and Dave, too. The rest of the group? Well, without naming names, nine a.m. ranged anywhere from nine ten a.m. (Steve, Scott, Roy) to nine thirty a.m. (Matt, Greg, Sam) to “Just give me the address. I’ll take a cab.” (Ahem, Amy
and Mitch).

  Bonus pro-tip #1: Do not try to tune guitars in the hotel lobby to save time. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea to me. Of course, I have absolutely no musical talent, background, or experience, so it wasn’t just unreasonable…It was pretty damn stupid. If you ever find yourself managing a band of famous authors, take note: Musicians tune their instruments just before going onstage. And putting Stephen or Roger in a hotel lobby doing anything is a bad idea, unless you enjoy crowd control.

  STEPHEN SIGNING FOR HIS FANS,

  Photo by Joseph Peduto

  Q&A: Titles and Plots

  Q&A with the Remainders

  Q: Create a plot summary and title for a book that uses three of these items (all referenced in Remainders’ essays): KKK Marching Band, Bus of dead Remainders, Closet of Prada shoes, Kicking someone to death, A Segway, Teddy bear named Steve with a brain like Einstein, Invisible bird dicks, Roy (as himself), An inflatable sheep.

  A: Dancing with Drunks. Dave joins the KKK Marching Band and is excised when one of them spots his Prada shoes. They pull off his sheet to discover he has an invisible penis and there’s just a hole there and you can see clear through to the back, where Roy (as himself) is spotted behind Dave. The KKK flees in terror and jump aboard a bus of Dead Remainders, whereupon an inflatable sheep kicks one of them to death. —James McBride

  “Woz Up?” The unauthorized biography of a big teddy bear named Steve, with the brain of Einstein, who plays Segway polo. Steve the bear gets stopped by the California Highway Patrol, going over a hundred miles an hour in his Prius. —Roger McGuinn

  Pop Quiz: Who was Described as…

  Who was described as endearing, sneaky, maddening, cuddly, downright odorous, and as “a Southerner who knows how to call a fart a fart, especially when they make ’em”?

  Select a choice:

  Greg Iles

  Scott Turow

  Dave Barry

  Roy Blount Jr.

  Results: Who was Described as…

  See what percentage of the Remainders and all other readers picked each answer

  Greg Iles Readers: 17%

  Remainders: 33%

  Scott Turow Readers: 0%

  Remainders: 0%

  Dave Barry Readers: 25%

  Remainders: 0%

  Roy Blount Jr. Readers: 58%

  Remainders: 67%

  “MORE COWBELL!”

  by Greg Iles

  Every writer I’ve ever met who has sung even once in the shower has asked me how to get into the Rock Bottom Remainders. There’s no formal procedure. It’s like being tapped for a secret society. I’m one of the mere mortals in the Remainders, and thus—hopefully—a window into it for the people reading this book. I’m also one of the newer (and younger) members, having been in it about twelve years. How I got into the Remainders we must pass over in silence, since in so many ways this band is an inside thing, a family, and even at the end some secrets must remain.

  I consider writing this “essay” akin to signing my band mates’ yearbooks (and selfishly taking up a couple of pages). Despite our relatively advanced ages, some might call the vibe in this band collegial, but I think it’s a lot more like high school—which was always the realm of rock and roll anyway. And like high school, the Remainders have given me moments of exhilaration, joy, and excruciating embarrassment.

  The first time I ever saw the band was in 1993 in Miami. I was starting the book tour for my very first novel and hadn’t even known the Remainders existed until the previous night, when I’d been floored to learn that some of my literary idols—Stephen King, for God’s sake!—performed in a band together. As a former rock musician, I was sure (like a thousand others before me) that I was destined to become part of this supergroup. The next night, I (and a girl who worked at a bookstore where I’d just signed about eight copies of my first book) stared slack-jawed at the visual and auditory calamity that was the Remainders. As we danced, she promised that she could get me backstage into the VIP room to meet the band. After the show, she disappeared for about twenty minutes, then returned with an apologetic smile and told me my fantasized meeting/audition was not to be. She was nice about it, but the subtext was clear: I wasn’t cool enough.

  About three novels later, back in Mississippi, I walked unsuspectingly out to my mailbox and among the bills discovered a hand-addressed letter from a certain “Steve King.” This turned out to be a not-so-run-of-the-mill letter offering heart-stopping praise for the novel I’d just published. I had no idea how Stephen King had learned my humble address, but I assumed he had people for things like that. Not too long after this, I received a phone call from fellow thriller writer Ridley Pearson, asking if I’d like to sit in with the band at a show in New York. Duh…An improbable but mostly delightful sequence of events followed this call (excepting several horrifying hazing incidents devised by Dave Barry), and before a year had passed, I was a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders.

  The first time you see your name on the New York Times Best Seller List means a lot to any writer, but for me, that wasn’t the moment that told me I had “arrived.” No, that moment came at a party in Amy’s SoHo loft, after the first gig I played with the Remainders. Somehow I found myself standing in a corner with Scott, discussing the genesis of Presumed Innocent over far too much alcohol. That was tall cotton for a boy from Mississippi, who’d started out wanting to tread the disputed borderland between commercial and literary fiction. Dave has always joked that there’s a band rule that we can’t talk about writing, but I’ve constantly broken this proscription, most notably with Scott and Steve. I’ve also talked writing and the business of writing with Roy, Amy, Mitch, and Ridley. For who could possibly stand listening to the problems of best-selling authors besides other best-selling authors? In that way, this band has been a therapeutic haven for me, a writer who lives so far from others who share his trade.

  As the fictional lead singer in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous famously said: Rock and roll is about the buzz. And the buzz comes in many forms. One in which it presented itself to me was Roger McGuinn, founding member of The Byrds. The first time I found myself standing side by side with Roger onstage, playing rhythm guitar so that he could solo on “Eight Miles High,” near-nirvana levels of endorphins went shooting through my brain. When I sang backup for him on “Mr. Tambourine Man,” I was certain I’d stepped into a time machine set to 1967.

  But not all was to be flowers and moonbeams. One night in Los Angeles, after the band appeared with Steve Martin, McGuinn helped us close the show by playing an upbeat folksong—I forget which one. But at roughly the midpoint, Roger half turned to me and called, “Greg!”—indicating that I should take the guitar solo. Now, you might expect this to be another nirvana moment. Not so. The instant I realized what Roger meant, I forgot which fret was which, what the dots on the guitar neck meant, and what my flatpick was for. Like Mitch and Ridley, I’d actually earned my living as a musician for a number of years, so I should have been prepared for this moment. But when a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitarist turned to me and called out my name to take the solo…I nearly crapped my pants! After a momentary delay, I played a passable solo, but I don’t remember a note of it. In that dazed blur, I realized that I was meant to be writing books, not sharing the stage with a rock god.

  GREG ILES: MERE MORTAL BY DAY, ROCK GOD BY NIGHT,

  Photo by Joseph Peduto

  I could tell Remainders stories forever, but I’d rather jot down a few things I’ve learned about some of the people who make up this band of scribes: not-so-secret secrets that have enriched my life:

  Dave is the sharpest knife in the drawer. You know how, after some unpleasant confrontation, you think of the perfect withering comeback, only woefully too late? Dave is one of those rare humans who thinks of the perfect retort at the exact moment it’s required, then delivers it with devastating effect. I’ve witnessed what happens to journalists who have the temerity to try to slyly insult Dave; they slink a
way with near-fatal wounds to their egos. I’ve also learned that beneath the comic genius of guys like Dave and Steve Martin are depths of feeling the public never sees. Comedy is a lot like writing novels that move people: If it were easy, everybody would be doing it.

  I will swear on a stack of Bibles that Stephen King is the most gracious man I’ve ever seen in the flesh. No matter where I’ve traveled with him, obsessive fans have swarmed out of nowhere, sometimes in frightening numbers and occasionally with outrageous levels of aggression. Yet Steve has always gone beyond the call of duty to give them what they think they want: a piece of the magic he carries inside him like a glowing nugget of radium. Stephen is an example to everyone who ever reached their dream, or went beyond it. I only wish other “stars” could see how he handles his fame.

  Roy is a gentleman and a scholar, and my fellow Southerner in this band of mostly Yankees. A consummate wordsmith, Roy made me feel at home in the Remainders from the very first night. In droning buses, planes, and trains filled with some very funny (and loquacious) people, Roy would always choose a brief lacuna of silence in which to inject an insight so dry and pointed that you had to wait for the shock to wear off before you could burst out laughing.

  You need chicks in a classic-rock band (and at least one dude that dresses like a chick), and we had both. When they weren’t providing emotional support of various kinds, Amy and Kathi threw aside all notions of propriety and shocked crowd after crowd with how far they were willing to go for the cause of rock and roll. Kathi sashayed across countless stages and owned every one, while Amy channeled her inner dominatrix with such intensity that I sometimes wondered how much of it was an act. Scott, a lawyer of consummate skill and experience, threw aside a lot more than propriety (swapping gender and sporting outlandish wigs in front of his own partners, no less!) and proved again and again that he had the biggest clanking cojones in the band.