Getting in Tune

by Roger L. Trott

  I took a breath. My hand clamped down on an A-minor bar chord, my pick cut across the strings. A huge ball of crunchy distorted sound went shooting out from everywhere.

  Christalmighty!

  Flicking past the G, hanging on the F, then back up and through again, I looked around in amazement, stunned by how loud my guitar sounded routed from my amp through the PA. A blue spotlight caught me. I windmilled a chord over the top of a thundering drum roll raining down all around me. Yogi’s beat steadied at the turnaround right as Rob’s bass slid into the groove. The stage literally shook. God, it was an incredible noise.

  Mick barked out the first line, but I could barely hear him. Like magic, his voice came up and the rest of us notched down. Now he could be heard, and he sounded like ten Micks rolled into one, louder than a bomb, more powerful than a speeding locomotive....

  So much adrenaline was pumping through me that I thought I might explode. Even so, my feet, planted ten feet in front of my amp, wouldn’t move. But my skin danced and tingled with high-decibel electricity. I chanced a glance across the stage and saw Rob spread out wide, head bent, hair hanging, hands crawling all over the bass. Sam was up beside the drum set, pounding the bejeebers out of his tambourine.

  Second verse already. Mick had the mike in hand, doing that skipping, hopping jig along the edge of the stage. The upturned faces of kids lined the edge, heads bobbing, hair thrashing, mostly guys, a brave girl here and there. I saw Beanie’s head above the rest. Next to him, Cecil, Evangeline.

  A drumstick went clattering by me. Yogi went into a one-handed beat for a second before grabbing another stick. We got to my solo. I knew I’d better keep it simple or I’d blow it. Surprising myself, I hit a burst of triplets, repeating them like echoes, moving up an octave, doing the same thing. Mick was now facing me, pumping his fist, his scarf flying in the air. I ran up higher, and then—Pete, forgive me—rolled back my head, closed my eyes, clinched my teeth, and, against everything I believed in, did the guitar god pose of all time. Mick grinned, screamed something in my face, and hopped back to the front of the stage.

  In a blur we reached the end of the song, slowing down through the last walk-up and vamping the final chord for what seemed like a minute. Yogi finally ended it with a clattering roll. And all was suddenly quiet.

  After a moment, tentative applause leaked out of the crowd. Someone who sounded like Beanie screeched out, “Rock ‘n’ roll!” And then sporadic cries of “Heart!” were heard. I stood in a pool of sweat. Drops of it were all around me, and my white coveralls were already drenched. Breaths came in heaves. But at least I was still breathing. And now Mick was back on the mike, squinting into the crowd.

  “Allllright, now! You all warmed up out there? Get ready to get your ya-ya’s out, baby, ’cause we got it live if you want it.”

  He reached back and gave me the c’mon motion with his hand, and I somehow found my way through the bluesy guitar-run intro of It’s Too Late. Rob and Yogi joined me, and Sam moved up to punctuate the beat with tenor sax riffs. Mick’s cock-of-the-walk strut took him up near the edge of the stage, and he leaned out over the crowd, wagging a finger and shaking his butt. The crowd egged him on, hands motioning for him to come closer, but he danced away, only to return and move right up to the edge. I held my breath until he danced back.

  Still riding on adrenaline, we skittered through the song, bouncing in and out of the pocket of Yogi’s scary, almost out-of-control beat. Sam pumped through his solo, wailing and shrieking over the ten thousand watts of PA. power, and then I moved up closer to the front of the stage and ripped off my best Johnny Thunders solo, all slop and volume. Another verse, Mick shouted out a dozen “It’s too lates,” and we jammed through the chord progression four more times before skidding to a stop-on-a-dime ending.

  Silence. And then the same tepid, scattered applause. My heart dropped. This was it. We couldn’t play any better than this. I caught my breath and gazed out into the crowd—a blurry, shadowed mass thirty feet beyond the stage—scanning the faces of the people I could actually see. I found Beanie, Cecil, and Evangeline. They were clapping like crazy, but nobody else was.

  I looked down at the set list taped to the floor. Suddenly a girl’s voice came shrieking out of the humming crowd. “Mick!”

  Who the hell was that? I looked up. Mick shielded his eyes from the stage lights and peered out.

  Again the high-pitched, almost hysterical scream: “Mick!”

  And then I saw her, pushing through the much-larger bodies near the stage. Little Rita, packed into a tight blue halter-top and black miniskirt. Her hands were up over her head, stretched out toward Mick. I shot a glance across the stage at Rob, whose jaw hung open, and at Sam, laughing and shaking his head. Mick skipped up to the edge of the stage and bent down to grab Rita’s hand.

  “Bring on Heart!” someone yelled. “Magic Man!”

  “Get off!” another voice hollered out, followed by scattered boos.

  I waited for Mick to return to his mike, but he ignored the crowd and stayed with Rita. The boos coalesced into a rhythmic cascade of hoots and jeers. Fearing a repeat of last night’s near-debacle, I caught Yogi’s eye and started banging out the opening riff to Rebel Rebel. With Rob joining us, we kept the riff going, hard and insistent, until Mick finally pulled away from Rita and got back on mike for the first verse.

  I edged forward to help with the background vocals. With the lights pulsing yellow, the sound of the band all around me, my heart thumping away, the scene took on the unreal vividness of one of my dreams. I half-expected Pete Townshend to step out of the blinding lights to show me the chords.

  Now up at my mike, I squinted into the brilliance. Christ! Flying pinpoints of color. No, wait! Something was coming at me. I instinctively flinched, but a shower of little somethings hit me and went bouncing all over the stage.

  I fell back but not before another shower came down through the lights. This time the cluster of objects landed at my feet and scattered. I kept the Rebel Rebel riff going and bent down to peer at the floor. What the hell? Little multicolored heart-shaped Valentine candies were all over the place. In the bright lights, I could actually see B MINE on one of the chalky hearts. Why were they throwing these things at us? I looked over at Rob, whose surprised face undoubtedly mirrored my own. And then, as another handful of the tiny candies came flying up, the realization, along with a few of the candies, hit me. The Heart fans were sending us a message: We want the girls. Get the hell off their stage.

  But what could we do but keep on playing? Mick held his ground and swatted at the candies as if they were gnats. The rest of us moved back as far as we could. My retreat brought with it a sinking feeling. This was it, the big time? Was this what all the trouble with Kitten had gotten me? Valentine candies thrown in my face?

  Now midway through the Bowie song, with my hands mechanically running through the riff, I almost laughed seeing all the little hearts scattered across the stage. Listen to, your heart? I had the bloody things all around me, and they weren’t saying anything other than you fool you fool you fool.... Nita was gone. For this? I stepped forward and crushed one of the candy hearts into dust.

  Suddenly a roar came from the crowd. My head shot up. I peered out through the lights. Nothing. Had they run out of ammunition? But now something started happening in front of the stage. I could see the crowd heaving, people jostling, heads turning. What looked like a human wave was pushing forward, flowing toward us, bodies reaching the stage, then spreading out sideways. I saw Rita carried away, off to Rob’s side of the stage. Beanie, Cecil, and Evangeline edged off in the other direction. And then I saw a large clot of bodies clad in black leather push up to the very front of the stage and stop. The floor cleared around them. I blinked and shook my head, but they were still there: Butch, Whiskey, and at least two dozen of their biker friends. Their gloved fists came up and starting punching the haze of smoke in time to the beat. Butch opened his mouth: “Fuckin’ A! Killjoys!” Whisk
ey blew us a wet, bosom-jiggling kiss. The Hells Angels had come to our rescue again.

  By now we had almost reached the song’s end. The bikers fists were pumping hard. One by one, other fists rose up and started shaking in rhythm. Encouraged, Mick spit out the last line, hopped up to the edge of the stage, and started slapping upraised hands. Bouncing back and forth, his scarf flapping behind him, he worked the edge of the stage, teetering on his heels before dancing away and then up to the edge again.

  I glanced over at the others to cue them for our last pass through the riff. They nodded back, and I turned to face the audience. Something was wrong. My head swiveled from one side of the stage to the other. Mick was not there. I looked again, squinted into the wings. Gone. Peering out, I saw the crowd heaving again just beneath the lip of the stage.

  The last note came. The others hit it and held on while Yogi banged out a crescendo, but I screwed up and kept going. Fortunately Yogi covered me, and I recovered to hit the final crash with the others. But where the hell was Mick? Straining forward until I reached the end of my cord, I looked over the lip of the stage. Shit! There he was, on his back, suspended in the air by the upraised hands of Butch and his buddies.

  A spotlight found his twitching body. A roar erupted from the bleachers. Rob and Sam came up beside me, and we watched the bikers pass Mick from hand to hand. Mick’s arms and legs were flapping around, seeking traction, like a turtle on its back.

  From behind us, Yogi yelled out, “What’s going on?”

  “He fell in!” Sam yelled back.

  Two roadies came out of the wings. When they saw the bikers, they faded back. We were on our own. Sam started toward the edge of the stage, but Rob and I grabbed him. “They’ll kill you!” I shouted in Sam’s ear. He looked from me to the bikers and nodded.

  Mick was twenty feet out, still being passed from biker to biker. I scanned the mob until I found Butch’s bushy Neanderthal profile. He had just passed Mick off to someone else and was standing sideways to the stage. In his bulky motorcycle jacket, he looked to be about three hundred pounds. I took a deep breath. “Hey, Butch!”

  The biker’s head jerked around, lips pulled back, eyes blazing. I pointed at Mick and motioned toward the stage with my hands. The crowd saw my gesture and almost as one roared out, “No!”

  Butch continued to stare up at me, his eyes narrowing. I could almost see his greasy mental gears spinning: Throw him back? What the hell for? In the meantime Mick floated from hand to hand, squirming, kicking. And the crowd continued to yell. Finally, Butch’s head rotated all the way around, his eyes taking in Mick, the crowd behind him, the bleachers, then back to me. Slowly, his expression softened, eyes relaxing, head nodding. And what remained of his teeth emerged through the chaos of his beard. He looked over his shoulder and yelled at his buddies, “Throw him back, boys! He’s too small to keep!”

  The bikers reacted to Butch’s command like a precision drill team. Within seconds, they rotated Mick around and passed him forward until his feet were about a body’s length from the front of the stage. Suddenly, en masse, they rushed forward and flung him up, a rag doll tossed by a catapult. We scattered. For a moment, Mick seemed to hang suspended in the air above the stage, his mouth open, eyes wide, scarf flapping lazily in the breeze. And then he came thudding down, feet first, between two monitors. His momentum drove him straight toward Sam and Rob. They reached out and steadied him to a stumbling stop as the crowd exploded in cheers.

  We hustled Mick away from the edge of the stage, back toward the drums. He seemed lost, squinting around, his eyes unfocused, muttering, “Bloody ... bloody ... bloody hell.”

  “You O.K., man?” Rob shouted at him.

  Mick opened his mouth, but his answer was blotted out by the rhythmic stomping sound coming from the bleachers. From the floor, clapping hands joined the stomping feet. The auditorium—stage, walls, ceiling—started to rock and roll. I felt it. Mick felt it, too. His face went pale, and during that moment I thought he was going to faint again, but, instead, he cocked his head as if listening to the cacophony. His face took on a peculiar twisted look. And then he smiled.

  I sensed trouble. “Mick,” I yelled, “you all right?”

  “Bloody hell!” He started bobbing, squinty eyes radiating heat. Suddenly he spun and thrust both fists into the air. A roar erupted, the stomping, screaming sound ratcheting up until it was deafening. The temperature climbed a hundred degrees, and my hair burst from its rubber band confinement. I couldn’t think.

  Mick continued to exhort the crowd, hopping up and down and pumping his fists. He had lost his mind. And now I watched a pony-tailed guy in a plaid shirt climb up onto the far side of the stage. Mimicking Mick, he thrust both hands into the air and danced around until the bouncers came out and shoved him back into the melee. I edged backward and heard a voice yell out from the wings. Turning, I saw Beeber, Kitten, the Wilson sisters, and three other guys who must’ve been the rest of Heart standing there. Their eyes were shooting back and forth between us and the crowd. Only Nancy Wilson seemed to be happy with what was going on. She raised a clinched fist and pumped it in cadence to the crowd.

  Beeber was in a hair-jiggling panic. He took a step toward me and yelled, “Play something, damnit!”

  I motioned Rob and Sam over and hollered, “What’s next?”

  “Thrill!” Sam yelled back. “You’re up!”

  I caught my breath and glanced out into the auditorium. Mick was still dancing around like a fool. I tried to think but couldn’t. My stomach flip-flopped. “You sure we should do it?”

  Both of them nodded, and Sam yelled, “It’s perfect!”

  “Yeah, man, it’s symmetrical!” Rob said, grinning hysterically.

  I wasn’t sure what he meant, but something clicked into place in my brain. Punk is coming! No, not coming.... It was here! My time had come and I had no choice but to play my furious, crazed song. My head seemed to nod on its own. We broke apart.

  I moved forward, that one thought in my head: Punk is here right now. And only one thing was wrong: Nita wasn’t here to see it.

  I waited until Yogi climbed back behind the drums, and then I let go with a blitzkrieg attack of chords. The sound of my guitar was swallowed up and spit back at me a millisecond later. Yogi and Rob came in, the volume pitched up, overwhelming the roar of the crowd. Mick ran over to his mike and was met by a sea of pumping fists rising above the bodies on the floor. What was he doing? Was he going to sing my song? I wasn’t sure, but I staggered toward my mike as if being dragged downhill by the gravitational pull of the bikers at the foot of the stage. Mick was still at his mike, pointing into the crowd. I kept ripping out the chords, waiting to see what he was going to do.

  Mick suddenly grabbed his mike stand and dragged it up to the edge of the stage. Feedback rang out for a moment before I heard him scream, “That was bloody awesome! You want me to come back out?”

  The crowd roared a response. I kept playing.

  Mick threw a fist into the air. “Bloody hell, I’m comin’ back out, mates!”

  I heard him, but he made no sense. Was I stoned from all the pot smoke in the air? I watched Mick bounce to the very edge of the stage, stop, and, like a diver, bring his arms together over his head. In response, pumping fists below the stage stopped and flattened out, creating a platform of upraised palms. In an electrical flash, I had that déjà vu sensation again. I saw Mick’s father, arms raised, at the edge of the Sacramento River, ready to baptize his followers. Mick was doing the same thing. He leaned out over the edge of the stage, his arms extended upward, rocking back and forth on his heels. And then he pirouetted until he faced us. He grinned and, as if in slow motion, drifted backward down into the crowd, leaving behind only a momentary glimpse of his flapping scarf.

  I couldn’t get the first words of Thrill out of my mouth. I had stopped breathing. The chord progression wrapped around again, and I watched a spotlight catch Mick and follow him as he floated out across the hands of
the bikers and beyond into the roiling mass of the crowd. As if caught in a riptide, the bikers and the others near the stage followed Mick’s body back into the main part of the floor.

  For a moment, the area in front of the stage cleared, and Beanie, Cecil, and Evangeline came flowing back into the void. They were grinning up at me. Beanie’s entire body was jerking around in a celebration of something none of us had ever seen before. I felt a red-hot uplifting surge shoot through me. Air filled my lungs. I was breathing again. The words of the first verse burst into my head, and, as I took another look down at the foot of the stage, a vision of a girl with choppy blonde hair and tucked chin filled my eyes. Could it be? I blinked and looked again. No, she wasn’t really there. Pulling in another breath, I took one last look out into the auditorium, and in that moment, in the blinding illumination of the stage lights, I again saw a vision, a vision of the future that didn’t exist without Nita, and I realized that my eyes hadn’t deceived me. She was there, just like Pete Townshend was there, and I could see her. Just as Townshend was part of me, just as he had guided me to this moment, Nita had become part of me and was ready to take me the rest of the way home. As real as anyone could ever be, she was standing at the foot of the stage, her bright blonde hair shining like a beacon, her smile asking me to sing the song that we both knew, ready to go with me into the space where the music would change, where the music would save us.

  In Nita’s upturned, childlike eyes, I saw the Real Me.

  28

  WE STOOD TOGETHER on the stage, front and center, all five of us, side by side, arms draped over each other’s shoulders, facing out toward the roaring crowd. Just like the Who at the Cow Palace. I had one arm hooked around Rob’s shoulder, the other around Mick’s. Yogi and Sam anchored the opposite ends of our little chain. All connected. And we were all drenched in sweat and grinning.

  The houselights came up. I swept the auditorium with my eyes. Everyone on the floor appeared to be standing, as they had since Mick had launched himself out onto the sea of hands. I leaned my head back and glanced into the wings. No Wilson sisters, but Beeber and Kitten were there. Beeber screamed something at us, motioning for us to come off the stage. I ignored him and focused on Kitten. She saw me and stared back, expressionless. One ring-adorned hand came up and swept away black strands of hair from her face. I could tell she knew I would never sign the contract. And I knew that she’d trash us with every promoter she knew. But I had Nancy Wilson’s guitar pick in my pocket....