by Stephen King
"Gimme the ax," Norman said.
I handed it over, disappointed to let it go. "Thanks for letting me play it," I said, and headed for the door.
"Wait a minute, Morton." It wasn't much of a change, but at least I had been promoted from freshie. "Audition's not over."
Audition?
From the storage cabinet he took a smaller case, opened it, and produced a scratched-up Kay semi-hollowbody--a 900G, if you're keeping score.
"Plug into the big amp, but turn it down to four. That Kay feeds back like a motherfucker."
I did as instructed. The Kay fit my body better than the Yammie; I wouldn't have to hunch over to play it. There was a pick threaded into the strings and I took it out.
"Ready?"
I nodded.
"One . . . two . . . one-two-three-and . . ."
I was nervous while I was working out the simple rhythm progression of "Green River," but if I'd known how well Norman could play, I don't think I could have played at all; I would simply have fled the room. He hit the Fogerty lead just right, playing the same licks as on that old Fantasy single. As it was, I was swept along.
"Louder!" he shouted at me. "Jack it and fuck the feedback!"
I turned the big amp up to 8 and kicked it back in. With both guitars playing and the amp feeding back like a police whistle, Norm's voice was lost in the sound. It didn't matter. I stuck the groove and let his lead carry me. It was like surfing a glassy wave that rolled on without breaking for two and a half minutes.
It ended and silence crashed back in. My ears were ringing. Norm stared up at the ceiling, considering, then nodded. "Not great, but not terrible. With a little practice, you might be better than Snuffy."
"Who's Snuffy?" I asked. My ears were ringing.
"A guy who's moving to Assachusetts," he said. "Let's try 'Needles and Pins.' You know, the Searchers?"
"E?"
"No, this one's D, but not straight D. You gotta diddle it." He demonstrated how I was supposed to hammer high E with my pinky, and I picked it up right away. It didn't sound exactly like the record, but it was in the ballpark. When we finished I was dripping with sweat.
"Okay," he said, unslinging the guitar. "Let's go out to the SA. I need a butt."
*
The smoking area was behind the vocational tech building. It was where the burns and hippies hung out, along with girls who wore tight skirts, dangly earrings, and too much makeup. Two guys were squatting at the far end of the metal shop. I'd seen them around, as I had Norman, but didn't know them. One had sandy blond hair and a lot of acne. The other had a kinky pad of red hair that stuck out in nine different directions. They looked like losers, but I didn't care. Norman Irving also looked like a loser, but he was the best guitar player I'd ever heard who wasn't on a record.
"How is he?" the sandy blond asked. This turned out to be Kenny Laughlin.
"Better than Snuffy," Norman said.
The one with the crazy red hair grinned. "That ain't sayin shit."
"Yeah, but we need someone, or we can't play the Grange on Saturday night." He produced a pack of Kools and tipped it my way. "Smoke?"
"I don't," I said. And then, feeling absurd but not able to help myself, "Sorry."
Norman ignored that and lit up with a Zippo that had a snake and DON'T TREAD ON ME engraved on the side. "This is Kenny Laughlin. Plays bass. The redhead is Paul Bouchard. Drums. This shrimp is Connie Morton's brother."
"Jamie," I said. I desperately wanted these guys to like me--to let me in--but I didn't want to start whatever relationship we might have as nothing more than Mr. Football's kid brother. "I'm Jamie." I held out my hand.
Their shakes were as limp as Norman's had been. I've gigged with hundreds of players since the day Norman Irving auditioned me in the GFHS Band Room, and almost every guy I ever worked with had the same dead-fish shake. It's as if rockers feel they have to save all their strength for work.
"So what do you say?" Norman asked. "Wanna be in a band?"
Did I? If he'd told me I had to eat my own shoelaces as an initiation rite, I would have pulled them from the eyelets immediately and started chewing.
"Sure, but I can't play in any places where they serve booze. I'm only fourteen."
They looked at each other, surprised, then laughed.
"We'll worry about playing the Holly and the Deuce-Four once we get a rep," Norman said, jetting smoke from his nostrils. "For now we're just playing teen dances. Like the one at the Eureka Grange. That's where you're from, right? Harlow?"
"How-Low," Kenny Laughlin said, snickering. "That's what we call it. As in How-Low can you shitkickers go?"
"Listen, you want to play, right?" Norm said. He lifted his leg so he could bogart his cigarette on one of his battered old Beatle boots. "Your brother says you're playing his Gibson, which doesn't have a pickup, but you can use the Kay."
"The Music Department won't care?"
"The Music Department won't know. Come to the Grange on Thursday afternoon. I'll bring the Kay. Just don't break the stupid feedbacky fucker. We'll set up and rehearse. Bring a notebook so you can write down the chords."
The bell rang. Kids butted their smokes and started drifting back toward the school. As one of the girls passed, she kissed Norman on the cheek and patted him on the butt of his sagging jeans. He seemed not to notice her, which struck me as incredibly sophisticated. My respect for him went up another notch.
None of my fellow bandmates showed any signs of heeding the bell, so I started off on my own. Then another thought crossed my mind, and I turned back.
"What's the name of the band?"
Norm said, "We used to call ourselves the Gunslingers, but people thought that was a little too, you know, militaristic. So now we're Chrome Roses. Kenny thought it up while we were stoned and watching a gardening show at my dad's place. Cool, huh?"
In the quarter century that followed, I played with the J-Tones, Robin and the Jays, and the Hey-Jays (all led by a snazzy guitarist named Jay Pederson). I played with the Heaters, the Stiffs, the Undertakers, Last Call, and the Andersonville Rockers. During the flowering of punk I played with Patsy Cline's Lipstick, the Test Tube Babies, Afterbirth, and The World Is Full of Bricks. I even played with a rockabilly group called Duzz Duzz Call the Fuzz. But there was never a better name for a band, in my opinion, than Chrome Roses.
*
"I don't know," Mom said. She didn't look mad, she looked like she was coming down with a headache. "You're only fourteen, Jamie. Conrad says those boys are much older." We were at the dinner table, which looked a lot bigger with Claire and Andy gone. "Do they smoke?"
"No," I said.
My mother turned to Con. "Do they?"
Con, who was passing the creamed corn to Terry, didn't miss a beat. "Nope."
I could have hugged him. We'd had our differences over the years, as all brothers do, but brothers also have a way of sticking together when the chips are down.
"It's not bars, or anything, Mom," I said . . . knowing in some intuitive way that it would be bars, and probably long before the most junior member of Chrome Roses turned twenty-one. "Just the Grange. We have rehearsal this Thursday."
"You'll need plenty," Terry said snidely. "Gimme another pork chop."
"Say please, Terence," my mother said distractedly.
"Please gimme another pork chop."
Dad passed the platter. He hadn't said anything. That could be good or bad.
"How will you get to rehearsal? For that matter, how will you get to these . . . these gigs?"
"Norm's got a VW microbus. Well, it's his dad's, but he let Norm paint the band's name on the side!"
"This Norm can't be more than eighteen," Mom said. She had stopped eating her food. "How do I know he's a safe driver?"
"Mom, they need me! Their rhythm guy moved to Massachusetts. With no rhythm guy, they'll lose the gig Saturday night!" A thought blazed across my mind like a meteor: Astrid Soderberg might be at that dance. "It's importan
t! It's a big deal!"
"I don't like it." Now she was rubbing her temples.
My father spoke up at last. "Let him do it, Laura. I know you're worried, but it's what he's good at."
She sighed. "All right. I guess."
"Thanks, Mom! Thanks, Dad!"
My mother picked up her fork, then put it down. "Promise me that you won't smoke cigarettes or marijuana, and that you won't drink."
"I promise," I said, and that was a promise I kept for two years.
Or thereabouts.
*
What I remember best about that first gig at Eureka Grange No. 7 was the stench of my own sweat as the four of us trooped onto the bandstand. When it comes to sweat, nobody can beat an adolescent of fourteen. I had showered for twenty minutes before my maiden show--until the hot water ran out--but when I bent to pick up my borrowed guitar, I reeked of fear. The Kay seemed to weigh at least two hundred pounds when I slung it over my shoulder. I had good reason to be scared. Even taking the inherent simplicity of rock and roll into account, the task Norm Irving set me--learning thirty songs between Thursday afternoon and Saturday night--was impossible, and I told him so.
He shrugged and offered me the most useful advice I ever got as a musician: When in doubt, lay out. "Besides," he said, baring his decaying teeth in a fiendish grin, "I'm gonna be turned up so loud they won't hear what you're doing, anyway."
Paul rolled a short riff on his drums to get the crowd's attention, finishing with a cymbal-clang. There was a brief spatter of anticipatory applause. There were all those eyes (millions, it seemed to me) looking up at the little stage where we were crowded together under the lights. I remember feeling incredibly stupid in my rhinestone-studded vest (the vests were holdovers from the brief period when Chrome Roses had been the Gunslingers), and wondering if I was going to vomit. It hardly seemed possible, since I'd only picked at lunch and hadn't been able to eat any supper at all, but it sure felt that way. Then I thought, Not vomit. Faint. That's what I'm going to do, faint.
I really might have, but Norm didn't give me time. "We're Chrome Roses, okay? You guys get up and dance." Then, to us: "One . . . two . . . you-know-what-to-do."
Paul Bouchard laid down the tomtom drumbeat that opens "Hang On Sloopy," and we were off. Norm sang lead; except for a couple of songs when Kenny took over, he always did. Paul and I did backing vocals. I was terribly shy about that at first, but the feeling passed when I heard how different my amplified voice sounded--how adult. Later on I realized that no one pays much attention to the backup singers anyway . . . although they'd miss those voices if they were gone.
I watched the couples move onto the floor and start to dance. It was what they'd come for, but in my deepest heart I hadn't believed they would--not to music I was a part of. When it became clear to me that we weren't going to be booed off the stage, I felt a rising euphoria that was close to ecstasy. I've taken enough drugs to sink a battleship since then, but not even the best of them could equal that first rush. We were playing. They were dancing.
We played from seven until ten thirty, with a twenty-minute break around nine, when Norm and Kenny dropped their instruments, turned off their amps, and dashed outside to smoke. For me those hours passed in a dream, so I wasn't surprised when during one of the slower numbers--I think it was "Who'll Stop the Rain"--my mother and father waltzed by.
Mom's head was on Dad's shoulder. Her eyes were closed and there was a dreamy little smile on her face. My dad's eyes were open, and he gave me a wink as they passed the bandstand. There was no need to be embarrassed by their presence; although the high school dances and the PAL hops at the Lewiston Roller Rink were strictly for kids, there were always a lot of adults when we played at the Eureka Grange, or the Elks and Amvets in Gates. The only thing wrong with that first gig was that, although some of Astrid's friends were there, she wasn't.
My folks left early, and Norm drove me home in the old microbus. We were all high on our success, laughing and reliving the show, and when Norm held out a ten-dollar bill to me, I didn't understand what it was for.
"Your cut," he said. "We got fifty for the gig. Twenty for me--because it's my 'bus and I play lead--ten for each of you guys."
I took it, still feeling like a boy in a dream, and slid open the side door with my aching left hand.
"Rehearsal this Thursday," Norm said. "Band Room after school this time. I can't take you home, though. My dad needs me to help paint a house over in Castle Rock."
I said that was okay. If Con couldn't give me a ride home, I'd hitch. Most of the people who used Route 9 between Gates Falls and Harlow knew me and would pick me up.
"You need to work on 'Brown-Eyed Girl.' You were way behind."
I said I would.
"And Jamie?"
I looked at him.
"Otherwise you did okay."
"Better than Snuffy," Paul said.
"Way better than that hoser," Kenny added.
That almost made up for Astrid's not being at the dance.
Dad had gone to bed, but Mom was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. She had changed into a flannel nightgown, but she still had her makeup on, and I thought she looked very pretty. When she smiled, I saw her eyes were full of tears.
"Mom? Are you okay?"
"Yes," she said. "I'm just happy for you, Jamie. And a little scared."
"Don't be," I said, and hugged her.
"You won't start smoking with those boys, will you? Promise me."
"I already promised, Mom."
"Promise me again."
I did. Making promises when you're fourteen is even easier than working up a sweat.
Upstairs, Con was lying on his bed, reading a science book. It was hard for me to believe anyone would read such books for pleasure (especially a big-shot football player), but Connie did. He put it down and said, "You were pretty good."
"How would you know?"
He smiled. "I peeked in. Just for a minute. You were playing that asshole song."
"Wild Thing." I didn't even have to ask.
*
We played at the Amvets the following Friday night, and the high school dance on Saturday. At that one, Norm changed the words to 'I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore' to 'I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Girl Anymore.' The chaperones didn't notice, they never noticed any of the lyrics, but the kids did, and loved it. The Gates gym was big enough to act as its own amplifier, and the sound we made, especially on really loud tunes like "Good Lovin'," was tremendous. If I may misquote Slade, us boyz made big noize. During the break, Kenny went along with Norm and Paul to the smoking area, so I did, too.
There were several girls there, including Hattie Greer, the one who'd patted Norm's butt on the day I auditioned. She put her arms around his neck and pressed her body against his. He put his hands in her back pockets to pull her closer. I tried not to stare.
A timid little voice came from behind me. "Jamie?"
I turned. It was Astrid. She was wearing a straight white skirt and a blue sleeveless blouse. Her hair had been released from its prim school ponytail and framed her face.
"Hi," I said. And because that didn't seem like enough: "Hi, Astrid. I didn't see you inside."
"I came late, because I had to ride with Bonnie and Bonnie's dad. You guys are really good."
"Thanks."
Norm and Hattie were kissing strenuously. Norm was a noisy kisser, and the sound was a bit like my Mom's Electrolux. There was other, quieter, making out going on as well, but Astrid didn't seem to notice. Those luminous eyes never left my face. She was wearing frog earrings. Blue frogs that matched her blouse. You notice everything at times like that.
Meanwhile, she seemed to be waiting for me to say something else, so I amplified my previous remark: "Thanks a lot."
"Are you going to have a cigarette?"
"Me?" It crossed my mind that she was spying for my mom. "I don't smoke."
"Walk me back, then?"
I walked her back. I
t was four hundred yards between the smoking area and the back door of the gym. I wished it had been four miles.
"Are you here with anybody?" I asked.
"Just Bonnie and Carla," she said. "Not a guy, or anything. Mom and Dad won't let me go out with guys until I'm fifteen."
Then, as if to show me what she thought of such a silly idea, she took my hand. When we got to the back door, she looked up at me. I almost kissed her then, but lost my courage.
Boys can be dopes.
*
When we were loading Paul's drumkit into the back of the microbus after the dance, Norm spoke to me in a stern, almost paternal voice. "After the break, you were off on everything. What was that about?"
"Dunno," I said. "Sorry. I'll do better next time."
"I hope so. If we're good, we get gigs. If we're not, we don't." He patted the rusty side of the microbus. "Betsy here don't run on air bubbles, and neither do I."
"It was that girl," Kenny said. "Pretty little blondie in a white skirt."
Norm looked enlightened. He put his hands on my shoulders and gave me a fatherly little shake to go with the fatherly voice. "Get with her, little buddy. Soon as you can. You'll play better."
Then he gave me fifteen dollars.
*
We played the Grange on New Year's Eve. It was snowing. Astrid was there. She was wearing a parka with a fur-lined hood. I led her under the fire escape and kissed her. She was wearing lipstick that tasted like strawberries. When I pulled back, she looked at me with those big eyes of hers.
"I thought you never would," she said, then giggled.
"Was it all right?"
"Do it again and I'll tell you."
We stood kissing under the fire escape until Norm tapped me on the shoulder. "Break it up, kids. Time to play some music."
Astrid pecked me on the cheek. "Do 'Wild Thing,' I love that one," she said, and ran toward the back door, slipping around in her dancing shoes.
Norm and I followed. "Blue balls much?" he asked.
"Huh?"
"Never mind. We're gonna play her song first. You know how it works, right?"
I did, because the band played plenty of requests. And I was happy to do it, because now I felt more confident when I had the Kay in front of me, an electric shield plugged in and ready to drive.