by Len Vlahos
The room absolutely exploded into a wall of noise and positive energy. Johnny nodded to Harry, and Harry started playing the riff Johnny showed him. He played it perfectly, which brought a smile to Johnny’s face, which was good to see. I mean, it’s not that Johnny didn’t smile; it’s that lately he hadn’t seemed to mean it. This time, he did.
Against the backdrop of Harry playing that lonely guitar riff, Johnny started to sing:
I am only what I seem
When I hear my mirror confess
That I live in American dreams
And that’s useless.
Cracked cement trains of thought
Going off the tracks.
What’s the difference if no one’s on board?
It’s useless.
That’s where Richie and I came in big, and Johnny, as if he knew what we were going to do, added a beautiful organ line.
But I was off, a hair late with everything. And my bass line was too simple. My fingers weren’t able to do any of the stuff they would normally do. It was hard enough to land on the root notes and just follow along. My performance was, what’s the word, uninspired. Johnny shot me a look that was half annoyed and half concerned, and sang the next verse.
Writers spend hours staring out windows,
Watching it rain minutes,
Yet still never a word written
That’s useless.
I’ll find the girl who cries in the street,
I’ll follow her trail of tears.
When I reach the puddles at her feet,
I’ll see her washed-out fears
In a puddle of tears,
Drained over the years.
It’s useless.
At this point, Johnny held up his hand to have us dial it back and then slashed the air to tell Richie and me to stop.
We did. And again, I was late.
The only sound was Harry’s guitar echoing through the room.
With my head in my hands, confused,
Nothing is what it seems.
And just when I thought nothing had use,
I find the only truth
Is in dreams.
Harry played the riff four more times, each one slower than the one before, until he ended on a bright but sad-sounding E chord.
The room was dead quiet for just long enough to make me wonder if I’d really messed up. Then the audience went nuts. And I mean, seriously nuts! I couldn’t hear myself think as we leaped off the stage.
Richie high-fived Harry, me, and Johnny, but when I went to hug Johnny, he looked like he was going to kill me.
“What the fuck was that?” He was yelling at me. Harry and Richie looked as surprised as I did.
“What?” I said in full defender mode. “I’ve never heard the fucking song before.”
“Bullshit.”
“What do you mean? I’ve never heard—”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.” Johnny was as pissed as I’d ever seen him. “You played the whole set high or drunk or something, didn’t you?”
I had no response, but I didn’t break eye contact with him.
“Maybe you don’t need this band, Cheyenne,” he said, using my full name, which he almost never did, “but Harry and I do.”
Harry looked up like he’d been slapped, like he wanted no part of whatever was happening between me and Johnny, like he didn’t want to be dragged into the middle.
“Yeah, I’m the first bass player in the fucking history of fucking rock and roll that had a couple of beers before playing a set. You’re out of your mind, John.” I always shortened his name to John when I was being serious with him.
“However many beers Dee Dee Ramone or Paul Simonon had before a set, they never messed up the music.”
“I’d never heard the fucking song before!” Now I was shouting.
“Fuck you, Cheyenne.” He may as well have punched me in the stomach. Fuck you, Cheyenne? For this?
“Whatever,” I mumbled, and I walked off to the bathroom.
But even with that big scene, it wasn’t the awful thing he’d said that was echoing in my ears as I stomped away. It was his new song.
“Useless.” I couldn’t get it out of my head.
HARBINGER JONES
The truth is, I’d heard “Useless” before. Johnny had played the song for me a few days earlier, and we’d even worked on it a little bit. I nailed the guitar part at the Bitter End because I’d already played it. That’s something I’ve never told Cheyenne and Richie.
I didn’t know why Johnny was making it seem like I’d never heard it, but I figured he had a reason, so I played along.
I asked him about it later.
“Did you know,” he answered, “that when Alfred Hitchcock filmed the shower scene in Psycho, he used warm water for all the rehearsals? But when it came time for the actual take, he used cold water, only he didn’t tell Janet Leigh.”
“Who?” I asked.
“She’s the woman who gets stabbed in the shower.”
“Oh.” I’d never seen Psycho before, but I knew better than to interrupt Johnny when he got going on something.
“So when they started filming and they needed her to scream, they doused her with the ice-cold water and she gave the performance of her life.”
“John,” I said, both exasperated and confused, “what does that have to do with ‘Useless’?”
He rolled his eyes like I was the biggest idiot in the world for not following his train of thought. “I figured that, if the other guys thought it was a totally new song, it would give the band extra focus.”
Johnny was like that. Always looking for a way to push us harder, make us better. He was like our own David Lee Roth. It drove the three of us crazy sometimes, but for the most part, it worked. Whether or not it was his Psycho stunt—pun intentional—or something else, “Useless” worked that night, it really did. It was a totally magic moment. At least I thought so.
Only, as soon as we walked offstage, Johnny bit Chey’s head off, accusing her of playing drunk. She had been a little off during the set, but I wasn’t really sure where his level of anger was coming from. It ruined the whole good vibe we had going.
I started coiling my guitar cords and packing up my effects pedals in silence while Richie took apart his drum gear. Johnny, who looked really tired, was leaning against the wall; his blond curls, which he was growing out like Roger Daltrey, were matted against a concert poster for when Peter Frampton had played the club. Chey had stormed off to the bathroom.
“You kids were amazing,” this guy said as he walked up to us. I’m not sure why older people like to call younger people kids. Do they think it endears them to us? It doesn’t. It’s condescending. You don’t need to remind us that you’re older, wiser, and in control. We know that every waking minute of every day. It was especially aggravating on that night, because, really, we were supposed to be in control.
“Thanks,” Richie said. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m your fucking future,” the guy said. I liked his answer. It made me forget about the kids thing for a minute.
“You mean,” Richie responded, “like, you’re Johnny, but from the future?” He cackled at his own moronic joke, and I went back to coiling my guitar cords while the guy talked.
“Not quite. I manage rock bands, and I’d like to get the Scar Boys into the studio to cut a demo. I think you guys have something here, and I’d like to get a closer look.”
We all stopped what we were doing. He had our full attention now. He was a scrawny man with a big nose and yellow teeth, but also with a certain kind of charisma. He was holding business cards, fanned like a hand of poker.
“Jeff Evans,” he said, by way of introduction. We each shook his hand and took a card.
Jeff, seeing how completely dumbfounded we were, just stood there, taking it all in, grinning like he knew something we didn’t. Like he knew a lot of things that we didn’t.
RICHIE MCGILL
He told us that he managed bands and gave us this whole song and dance about how he was gonna get us to the big time. I was still coming down off the high of the set, and I didn’t really know what to make of the dude. At first it sounded like a lot of bullshit.
“So listen up, Scar Boys and Scar Girl,” he said, nodding to Chey, who had just walked back up from taking a leak—wait, do girls say taking a leak? Anyways, Jeff said, “You’re doing great on your own. But you’re good enough for bigger venues. I saw you a couple of weeks ago at CBGB’s, when you opened for Chemicals Made of Mud. You shouldn’t be opening for wankers like that.” Jeff loved to say shit like wanker, tosser, and punter. He was one of those dudes who thought it was cooler to be British than American. I guess when he was younger the cooler bands and better music were coming out of the UK. That’s not true anymore. The crap coming out of London in the last few years flat-out sucks. I mean, Kajagoogoo? “If you’re going to be an opening act, then you should open for bands playing theaters and small arenas.”
“Arenas?” Johnny asked.
“Yes, arenas. Look, I have your single, ‘The Girl Next Door.’ It’s great. The raw emotion on it sucks you right in. But it needs a bit more of a professional touch.”
“You mean, make us slick.” It was Johnny again. I don’t know if he didn’t trust Jeff or if he was just still pissed at Chey and acting all cranky because of it.
“No, no. Not slick. But the EQ on the snare drum isn’t crisp enough. The whole mix has too much treble. And while I love the stereo tambourine”—I saw Johnny look at Harry and smile at that one—“your records can’t live on whimsy alone.”
“So how does this work?” Johnny asked.
“Simple. You sign a contract with me, and I work to promote you, to get you better gigs, and to get you a record deal. No money up front, but I keep fifteen percent of whatever you earn.”
He said it was simple, but that’s one thing I’ve learned about life: nothing, not one freaking thing, is ever simple.
CHEYENNE BELLE
The next day, we were sitting in a diner in Yonkers. It was a weird place because the building next door was . . . wait for it . . . a diner!
Two diners right next door to each other. I mean, really, what’s the point? They were owned by two brothers who supposedly hated each other. After the first guy opened the Olympic Diner, his brother, just to spite him, opened the Five Star Diner thirty yards away. No one knows why they hated each other so much, but I’ll bet one of them slept with the other one’s wife.
Want to know the weirdest thing of all? Both diners thrived. The parking lots were always jammed, and the booths were always packed. Go figure. I guess people in Yonkers like their diners.
Anyway, we were sitting at a booth in the Five Star, all of us staring at Jeff’s card, which Johnny had dropped in the middle of the table.
Johnny hadn’t apologized for bitching me out, and I hadn’t apologized for playing the gig drunk, but when Harry picked us both up, we seemed to settle into a kind of truce. Jeff’s card, and everything it stood for, seemed to be more important than all of that other stuff. Harry said it was like the “one ring to rule them all.” He was always geeking out that way.
“What do you guys think?” Johnny said, nodding at the business card. He was always the first to talk. Even after everything that’d happened on the road, even after his accident, even as he was retreating deeper and deeper into his shell and Harry started coming out of his own, Johnny was still the leader of the Scar Boys. At the end of the day, we were going to think whatever he wanted us to think. It’s just how we were wired. I’m not saying it was right or wrong; it was just the truth.
“Tell me again what he wants us to do?” I asked. After I had stomped off to the bathroom and then stomped back out, I saw Jeff talking to the band. I walked over in the middle of his spiel, just in time to hear him refer to me as Scar Girl. I liked that, a lot.
Johnny went through the whole thing again, laying out all the pros and cons. I asked a few questions but was barely listening. This was a no-brainer to me. Why wouldn’t we say yes? Wasn’t this everything we’d been working for? I could tell that Richie was thinking the same as me, but Johnny, and especially Harry, seemed, I don’t know, hesitant. I didn’t get it.
HARBINGER JONES
I looked out the window of the diner and watched the traffic snake along Central Avenue, the main drag that runs through Yonkers and the southern part of Westchester County. The road was like an artery clogged with fat, slowing the entire city down, waiting for it to have a heart attack and die.
I watched all those people in all those cars, wondering where they were going, wondering what they were thinking. It’s overwhelming, sometimes, to think about all the people in the world living their lives. What are they feeling? What skeletons are in their closets? Are they leading happy, normal, well-adjusted lives? Or are they drowning in swirling cesspools of drama, just like the rest of us?
I was torn apart looking at Jeff’s card. I had more or less made up my mind to leave the band and was just biding my time until the moment was right. But this, this was everything we’d been working toward.
My brain instinctively reached for one of its lists, but it just wasn’t there.
I looked at each of my bandmates while Johnny spoke.
Richie, like always, was relaxed, his long and lanky arm up on the back of the booth, like he had it draped across the shoulders of an invisible girlfriend, his free hand holding a Cherry Coke. He was listening to Johnny intently.
Johnny was lost in his own soliloquy. I was only catching every few words—“don’t really know this guy”—and “could be the opportunity of a lifetime”—and “I don’t know about you guys, but I kind of need this.” That last one caught my ear. Johnny never needed anything. Wait, strike that. Johnny never admitted to needing anything. His eyes were glassy, and there was a note of desperation in his voice. He was slowly becoming someone different. It’s almost like he was becoming me.
Chey had her full attention on the cup of coffee, now turning cold, on the table in front of her. I could tell she was listening to Johnny because she was asking questions and nodding at appropriate moments, but there was something underneath.
I was pretty surprised that Chey had gotten drunk at the Bitter End—not that she was a total prude—but like it is for me, music is Cheyenne’s everything, and I’d never seen her do anything to put that in jeopardy. Johnny was kind of a dick the way he treated her about playing drunk, but he wasn’t entirely wrong.
Either way, I was sick of the drama, sick of all the crap running under the surface. The Scar Boys had become like a giant septic tank.
(Giant Septic Tank, by the way, is a great name for a band.)
I looked from Johnny, Richie, and Chey back to the cars on Central Avenue. All those people living all those complicated, mysterious, uncertain lives out there, my best friends in here, and I wasn’t sure I knew one group any better than the other. It made me wonder if you can ever really get to know someone.
“So,” Johnny said, wrapping up, “I vote that we sign, but maybe only for six months. If this guy turns out to be a bust, then at least we can have a quick out. This is a big decision, so let’s vote. Richie?”
“I’m in.”
“Chey?”
“Me, too.”
“Harry?”
And there it was, my conundrum.
Was I supposed to tell them that I’d been planning to move on, to give them a chance to replace me in the band, or to maybe rethink their decision? Or was I supposed to abandon the notion of college and refocus my energy and my industry on the only dream I’d ever really had, especially now that it had a better chance of coming true, even if that meant having to deal with the Johnny and Cheyenne Show, in all likelihood, ratcheted up to another level?
My brain was still telli
ng me to leave the Scar Boys, my dad’s voice—“It’s a million-to-one shot that your band can ever make it big”—floating in the air around me. But I still couldn’t bring myself to quit.
See? Once a coward, always a coward. I would go along with it for now and figure it all out when the time was right.
I signed.
PART SIX,
LATE DECEMBER 1986
I used to jog, but the ice cubes kept falling out of my glass.
—David Lee Roth
Choose one word to define each of your bandmates.
CHEYENNE BELLE
For Richie, that’s easy; I’d say rhythm. For Harry, I don’t know. It’s a lot harder because he’s a more complicated guy. Oh, wait, there you go. I’d say complicated.
HARBINGER JONES
One word? I think we’ve already established that I don’t do well with word counts, and one word is like the mother of all word counts. That said, for Cheyenne it would have to be magical, and for Richie, true friend.
Yes, that’s two words. Deal with it.
RICHIE MCGILL
One word for Cheyenne? Feisty, I guess.
For Harry, that’s a snap. Harbinger. I didn’t even know that was a word other than his name until I’d known him for, like, two years, but, holy shit, it fits. Whether his parents just got it right or whether it forced him to be who he is, I have no idea. But, man, that name fits the dude to a T.
CHEYENNE BELLE
The next couple of weeks passed in a blur.
The mental scars from the miscarriage weren’t healing. I kept seeing that baby’s face, a little, miniature Johnny, its eyes always closed, like it was sleeping. I lived in terror that it would wake up and start talking to me.