Outside the Gates of Eden

by Lewis Shiner

  The man changed guitars and played a minute or so of legato single notes, timed to the natural reverb of the space. Cole found himself holding his breath. The melody was passionate and vastly sad, more like something from Jeff Beck’s Blow by Blow than one of Page’s tortured metal solos.

  “Right,” the monitor said. “Let’s keep it moving, yeah?”

  Another from the endless supply of big men came out and made a few adjustments to Bonham’s custom Ludwig set. He had only a single bass, single riding tom, and a couple of floor toms, though the drums themselves were huge and looked to be made of gold-plated steel. Plus two tympani and a monstrous gong. A ridiculous amount of equipment to cart all over the world for a few seconds of effect. While the sound man got levels on each of the dozen drum mikes, the red-haired man played the rest of Page’s guitars and then ran through Jones’s gear—electric bass, standup bass, and a triple-necked acoustic with mandolin, 12-string, and 6-string on the same body.

  By that time Linda had her drums assembled and they settled onto the hard metal chairs. Cole would rather have stood at the edge of the stage, but a glance at the head gangster convinced him not to bother asking. The Zeppelin crew finished their sound check and the red-haired man walked past Cole. “That piece you played on the Telecaster,” Cole said. “That was amazing.”

  The man stopped, and for a second Cole was afraid he’d broken some rule of silence. Then the man grinned. “Twats in the booth didn’t think as highly of it as you did, unfortunately.” He offered his hand. “My name’s Ginger. On account of the hair.”

  “Like Ginger Baker,” Linda said.

  “Yeah. Right bastard that he is.”

  “I’m Cole,” Cole said. “This is Linda.”

  Ginger crouched in front of them. “Our tour manager’s name is Cole, but everybody calls him Ricardo. You lot don’t look like Derringer, so I take it you’re Los Cuervos?”

  Cole introduced the others as Appice’s elaborate drum set was loaded on in front of Bonham’s platform.

  “I don’t envy you playing tomorrow,” Ginger said. “Zeppelin’s crowds eat opening bands for breakfast. My advice is, keep it loud, keep it coming, and don’t overstay.”

  “Thanks,” Cole said. Ginger patted his shoulder with an oversized hand and walked away.

  “Guess we better rethink the set list,” Valentina said.

  The Derringer roadies were quick. The guitar tech played less than a verse of “Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo” before being dismissed by the sound crew. The drum tech got only a handful of microphones and a minute and a half.

  Then Cole was rolling his Twin Reverb onto the stage and trying to find a place for it in front of the other gear. He plugged in the Strat and played a few notes of Zeppelin’s “Black Dog,” a song they would definitely not be playing. The echo hypnotized him. He almost regretted that a hundred thousand bodies were going to be there to kill it on Saturday and Sunday.

  The sound crew finished with them in moments—nobody cared how the opening band sounded—but Cole couldn’t resist playing another minute of solo guitar just to listen to it come back to him out of the twilight.

  “Yeah, thanks, Clapton,” the sound man said, “but we haven’t got all fucking night.”

  Cole put the Strat away and looked up to see Ginger loitering by one of the fake standing stones. “You’ve got a nice touch,” Ginger said. “Fancy a pint? Or whatever odd configuration of piss-water lager you poor bastards have on offer over here?”

  Ginger rode to the Hilton in their limo, doing his best to charm Valentina and Linda, with limited success. Cole wasn’t sure they understood what he was saying. Cole himself had read so many English spy novels that he was able to get at least the gist of the slang.

  The rest of the band left Ginger and Cole to stake out a table in the bar. Word had leaked that Zeppelin was staying there and teenagers thronged the lawn and sidewalks outside. Periodically one or two rushed the lobby and got ejected by hotel security. “They don’t even look like they’re having fun,” Cole said.

  “Nah. More like they’re offering themselves up as sacrificial victims to their gods. And in the case of the little girls that get taken upstairs, sacrifice is the word. You been at this long?”

  “Ten years or so. I played at Woodstock.”

  “Ah. About ten years for me too. That was a whole different scene then, you know? Took acid for cosmic insight, didn’t we, and now these kids take it just to get fucked up. The music meant something then.”

  Cole shrugged. He’d witnessed the mystification of Woodstock over the years, as kids who’d been nothing but wet and miserable now claimed to have had life-changing experiences. “I don’t know. Seems like most rock and roll has always been about, ‘let’s get high, let’s get laid.’”

  “At least there was an, ‘I love you, baby,’ before the ‘let’s fuck.’ Not just, ‘gonna give you every inch of my love.’ You know what I mean? There’s a big empty place in this music where the heart should be.”

  “Still, you have to give them credit. It’s beautiful stuff. ‘Achilles Last Stand,’ like you were playing tonight, ‘Kashmir,’ nobody else makes music like that.”

  Ginger shook his head. “People make music like that, just not as well. I mean, Black Sabbath, for Christ’s sake. I don’t know, maybe it’s knowing them personally puts me off the music.”

  “I’ve heard some of the stories. Mudsharks, whips and handcuffs…”

  “It’s not just the sexual stuff, though I’ll say it again, god help those poor little girls. You know Jimmy is into all this Aleister Crowley bollocks. ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.’ That’s just an excuse to indulge his slightest whim without regard to the consequences for anyone else. I mean, look at the lives they lead on tour. They can’t leave their bloody rooms except to go to some stadium and be worshipped, or to get on their private aeroplane to fly to the next city they’ll never see except through a limousine window. Totally divorced from reality. Bonham, who is more sensitive than you might think, goes barking mad after every show, Jonesy withdraws from everybody, G—that’s Peter, Peter Grant—snorts mountains of coke, Jimmy shoots up. Robert is the only one close to normal, and he’s not all that close.”

  “You’re a terrific guitar player. Why don’t you quit and play in your own band?”

  “Look at me. I’m not some waif-like pretty boy like Jimmy, I’m a great ugly bastard that gives girls nightmares.” He held out his massive hands. “These are all right for power chords and slow stuff, but… have you heard this kid Eddie Van Halen? That’s what they want now, speed. At least working for G, he values me being big and ugly, more muscle when it comes time to put the boot in.”

  “Do you really do that? You don’t seem like the type.”

  Ginger drank off the last of his current beer. “Yeah,” he said, “it gets rough sometimes. I don’t like to hurt anybody, but some of these kids, they’re so crazed, they could hurt the band or hurt themselves and you’ve got to restrain them. I mean, that’s the thing about G. He lives and breathes this band, it’s all he does. He takes care of his own, and fuck everybody else.”

  The beers kept coming and Ginger put them away twice as fast as Cole. He talked about working for Cream and pulling his namesake off of Jack Bruce on multiple occasions, not to mention cleaning Baker’s vomit off his drums and the surrounding stage. “It was the heroin made him puke. Fortunately Jimmy’s got a stronger stomach.”

  “Jimmy’s on smack?”

  “Fucking right he is, have you not seen him staggering about the stage?”

  “No, I’ve never seen him before.”

  “Henry is their little code name for it. Charlie for cocaine. He mixes them up in some exact combination that lets him function, barely. Though it’s got so bad a couple of times lately he’ll forget how the songs go and Robert has to sing them for him right there on stage. I don’t know how they can keep on going, with everything getting madder and madder, the band stir-cra
zy in their rooms, G hiring these gangsters like John Bindon who then assault journos and punters and staff, millions of dollars in cash flying about, where does it all end? Where’s the joy in it? Is this the music that was supposed to set us free?”

  At 11:00 Ginger announced, “Bollocks. I’m knackered, and pissed as a newt. And we’ve got an early call tomorrow.”

  “Yeah.” As Cole stood up, he felt a drunken rush of affection. “It’s been good talking to you. I really enjoyed it.”

  “Yeah, me too, mate. You’re all right.” Then a troubled look crossed his face. “You’re not… nah, of course you’re not.”

  “What?” Cole said.

  “You don’t… I mean, you’re not…”

  Looking into his eyes, Cole saw pain, doubt, fear, and something else. “You mean… am I gay?”

  “I knew it was a stupid question. Should have kept my gob shut.”

  “No, it’s all right. I’m just… I’m sorry, man.”

  Ginger waved a large, drunken hand. “Forget I said anything, yeah? I mean, if G or the other fellas found out, it’d be my job. Probably beat me half to death first.”

  Cole, torn between sympathy and his own discomfort, held on to the back of his chair with both hands. “Yeah, not a very open-minded bunch, I imagine. It must be hard.”

  “It’s fucking lonely, I’ll tell you that. And being around Robert all the time, he’s always running around with his shirt off and his tackle bulging out of his jeans and me trying not to look…” In a split second, his defenses snapped back into place and he sat up straight and shook his head like a dog coming out of the water. He fixed Cole with an intense stare. “Seriously, though. You’ll keep schtum, won’t you?”

  “I promise,” Cole said. “Get some sleep, Ginger. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Cole had to show his purple backstage pass three times to get to the sixth floor—once to a hotel bouncer and twice to Zeppelin’s own security. Bill Graham had booked them into a suite, two bedrooms with two beds each. When he let himself in, Linda was on the couch watching tv. Moaning noises came from one of the bedrooms.

  “Val scored, I take it,” Cole said.

  Linda looked up, held his eyes a second too long, and then looked away and nodded. “Luke’s already sacked out.”

  Cole showered and brushed his teeth, careful to wear a robe when he passed through the living room. He felt Linda watching him. He got into bed in the dark and tried to tune out Luke’s soft snoring. His thoughts turned, inevitably, to sex.

  He and Charlene had been an on-and-off thing for a year or more, both of them fooling around on the side, both up for a bit of fun when they ran into each other at the ’Dillo or the Broken Spoke. Then a drunk had run a red light and T-boned Charlene’s Mustang. She’d broken 17 bones and been in physical therapy for seven months. They’d done their best to put her face back to what it had looked like before the accident. Cole was okay with that, thought it gave her character. She’d also gained a lot of weight in the hospital, which was not in itself a deal breaker. The problem was that she was in constant pain, and the doctors insisted it wasn’t real. They had stopped prescribing Percodan and so she’d moved out of her mother’s house and started using heroin. The last time he’d spent the night with her, mostly out of pity, he’d caught her emptying his wallet in the middle of the night and he’d told her to call him if she ever got straight.

  Once Los Cuervos were making good money he’d left the Castle for a new two-bedroom apartment across the river in South Austin. He’d brought home his share of women from the shows, none of whom had stuck, and he had to admit it was not the ideal way to start a serious relationship.

  He’d never intended for the business with Linda to happen. The band had played an ill-advised and worse-attended show in Waco, and somehow he and Linda had ended up in his motel room with a couple of six packs and nature had taken its course. Cole had felt guilty and disgusted with himself afterward, but Linda, it turned out, had been nursing some feelings for Cole for quite a while. In fact, she had quite a lot of feelings, which she tended to hide under several layers of sullenness and aggression. And Cole, having been there once, found himself on a couple of other occasions of drunkenness and desperation unable to resist the easy opportunity, until Valentina had taken him aside.

  “This bullshit with my drummer is going to stop, right now.”

  “Your drummer?”

  “She’s a human being, Cole, and you are going to treat her that way. You will show her kindness and respect and nothing else. You will not have anything even vaguely resembling sex with her again as long as you are in this band, or you will no longer be in this band. I’m going to give her this same talk, so as of now you two are no longer an item, not even the half-assed, at your pleasure item that you were.”

  Valentina had never used that preemptory tone with him before, and Cole saw that he had just ceded control of the band. He was smart enough to walk away in silence, turning his fury inward as he always did, driving back to his empty apartment to drink himself into a long, self-pitying sulk. The one time he’d tried to apologize to Linda, she’d said, “Yeah? What exactly is it you’re sorry for?”

  In the end, the band didn’t suffer for it. Linda hit the drums as hard, if not harder, than before, and Cole stood back and let Valentina call the shots.

  *

  In the limo at ten am, Valentina handed out a revised set list.

  “You pulled all the songs I sing lead on,” Cole said.

  “We share the vocals on nearly everything, and you’ve got the lead on ‘Time and Tide.’ I can’t help it if you sing a lot of candy-ass Mexican songs. Today is not the day for that shit.”

  “We should at least end with ‘Cielito lindo.’ Everybody knows it, we’ll get them singing along. Up the tempo, do it electric.”

  “With no rehearsal?”

  “We change stuff around all the time.”

  Valentina looked at Linda, who said, “I don’t care.” Luke shrugged.

  “Oh, all right,” Valentina said. “If it sucks, we’re not doing it tomorrow.”

  At 11:05, a massive thug with a walkie-talkie gave Bill Graham the go-ahead to introduce the band. The boos started when it became clear he wasn’t introducing Zeppelin. As soon as the words “Los Cuervos” left his mouth, they hit the stage running. Valentina shouted “Good morning!” into her mike as Linda counted off “Good Morning Blues,” the old Leadbelly song that they’d given a Zeppelin-style makeover with churning guitar riffs and Linda hammering the toms. The sound man gave them plenty of pa volume and it should have knocked the audience back in their seats. Instead they waved their middle fingers and shouted for Zeppelin.

  Valentina acted like the widely scattered applause at the end of the song was a massive ovation and shouted a “Thank you!” that sounded like she was having the time of her life. As the rest of the band started into “Just a Little Bit,” she announced it as “a song by one of the greatest Bay Area bands ever, Blue Cheer,” a name that meant nothing to these demented children. Still, when Linda slammed into the drum break at the end, gradually picking up speed until her hands and hair were flying and her drums completely filled the stadium, the Bonham freaks recognized one of their own and the whistles and cheers began.

  They kept their tenuous hold on the audience until the last couple of songs, at which point Cole saw that Valentina was right and he was wrong, and he walked up to her in the middle of “Give It Up,” one of her raucous originals, and said into her ear, “Fuck ‘Cielito lindo,’ do ‘Take Me with You’ instead.” She nodded and he passed the word to the others. They pulled it off, and got decent applause, which died too quickly to justify an encore. Deep Purple’s Machine Head blasted out over the pa and Zeppelin’s road crew shoved the band’s equipment offstage.

  Ginger was pushing Cole’s Twin Reverb and he raised his thumb. “Well done. You actually got those bloodthirsty bastards on your side.”

  “Thanks to your advice,” C
ole said.

  “All in a day’s work. You staying for the main event?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Come round the caravans after, I’ll see if I can get Jimmy to say hi. No promises, but I’ll give it a go.”

  Bleachers had been set up behind the stage for guests. Cole located a couple of cans of beer and sat with his bandmates to watch Derringer. Their stage show was self-conscious and theatrical, bare chests and perms and lots of running around the stage. The crowd went for it, especially the hit, “Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo.” Derringer was a great singer and a fine guitarist, but Cole had liked him better when he led the McCoys. Linda was guilelessly into the show, Luke was bored, and Valentina was shaking her head. “Even with the dumbed-down set we did, we were better than this.”

  “I know,” Cole said. “But there’s ninety thousand people out there who disagree.”

  “That kind of hurts my feelings.”

  “Yeah,” Cole said. “Mine too.”

  Derringer kept it under an hour, with encore, and then the long wait began. Side Two of Machine Head played, then Disraeli Gears. The backstage area was dead and eventually Bill Graham got up and began telling lies about equipment problems. Cole wandered out into the crowd, unable to keep from making comparisons to Woodstock. This crowd was one-sixth the size, and pent up in a concrete facility in the middle of an urban sprawl. They were younger but less innocent—barely pubescent girls danced with calculated eroticism and shirtless boys shoved each other, long hair flying. The heat and the drugs had caught up with the kids who’d been lined up all night. Cole watched uniformed workers being booed as they carried two of them off on stretchers.

  Where do we go from here? he wondered. What is this scene going to look like in another ten years?

  An hour or so later he was hanging out with Ginger by the backstage gates when a limo pulled up. A disoriented Jimmy Page, in sunglasses and black silk pajamas with dragons on them, got out and started in the wrong direction. One of the bouncers gently caught him and turned him around as the other three climbed out. They were maybe twenty feet away and Cole was starstruck.