The Blonde laughs. “You’re a hard guy to compliment, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“I would introduce you to Bono, but he’s having a hard time right now. He sees himself as a Vessel of God, and he has to write the lyrics before the band can write the music.”
“So?”
“They’re trying to finish that album, and he’s got writer’s block.”
“And that’s why he hasn’t come over here?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Okay. That’s cool. Where are you going?”
“I’ll be back.”
Kurt paces in the control room by himself for a while. He hits a few buttons on the Sony digital decks. The tape rolls, but there is no sound. He messes with the faders. Still nothing. He walks outside into the hallway. He looks to his right and spots all four members of U2 walking in a row toward him. The drummer nods at Kurt. The others ignore him. Kurt pushes his hand through his waxed-up hair and looks over the tops of their four heads. He hears “bro, bro, bro,” and turns to spot Spewing running from the communal lounge waving a paper and pen in the air.
The last member of U2 passes Kurt. The four famous dudes have conditioned themselves not to turn around when someone like Spewing starts yelling. U2 is almost at the reception area when Spewing, now in a full sprint, approaches Kurt. Kurt pulls his left hand back and unleashes a mighty slap. Spewing lands flat on his back.
Kurt walks over, leans down into Spewing’s face, and says, “Thunderstick is from California. We don’t beg for autographs.”
“Bro. My face stings like shit. But nice left. You totally caught me, man.”
That night ends at 4:00 A.M. Kostas has Ernie run a cable from the vocal iso room into the parking lot. It’s attached to a mic and placed on a tripod just behind the straight pipe on the Jovi’s chopper.
In the control room Kostas yells, “Okay! I’m rolling!” to Jesse in the hallway.
Jesse turns toward the parking lot. “He’s rolling!”
The Jovi nods and kicks at the chopper. It comes to life with a cataclysmic growl. The Jovi revs the engine.
The needles on the Neve bounce. Kostas cheers.
The next day the Blonde and the Redhead are massaging a prostrate Kurt and feeding him grapes in the control room.
Jimmy Iovine is a big producer but a little guy. He walks in wearing his ever-present baseball cap and sunglasses. He nods at the Blonde and says, “Hey, sugar, you’re wanted in Studio D. You boys don’t mind if I borrow her, do ya?”
She gets up, leans Kurt’s head back on the pillow, and walks for the door. The Redhead follows.
“Who the fuck was that?” Kurt asks.
“U2’s producer,” Felder says. “But it was good while it lasted, right? Right? That’s what I say to myself when she’s gone. After I’ve taken her out for another dinner.”
“That was nothing. My neck was sore. I love my wife.”
“I know. I know, Kurt.”
Kurt puts his hands above his head and announces to everyone in the control room, “Don’t look at me! You know those guys in U2 have wives back in Ireland!” He talks in a fake southern lilt. “Alright! How mellow! They call themselves Christians, but they can’t hear the Holy Spirit in my music? Alright, God saved me, got me off drugs—God is probably telling them to say hello to me and they won’t listen? Right?”
Felder chokes off a laugh, puts on a sympathetic face, and says, “All in good time.”
Kurt’s brother walks in the room.
Jesse yells, “James Franklin! To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Sophie’s got a job up here. Japanese commercial. I wanted to check this studio scene out. Sleep all day. Play all night. You guys are like Led Zeppelin in here, aren’t you?”
“Full on, bro,” Kurt says and hugs James.
“Hey, man, how is your supermodel girlfriend?”
Felder’s ears perk up. “We should all be so lucky. What is it with you guys? You’re just some guys from La Jolla. How do you pull this shit off ? Ron Headley saw a picture of her, Sophie Clark, right? in Elle magazine—he calls it catalogue shopping—does it all the time. He sees one he wants, he has me track ‘em down. He really wanted to meet Sophie, I mean really. I don’t mind doing it for him, it’s part of being a manager—you saw Iovine just now. So I called around, her bookers, her agents. I said to them, ‘Ron Headley, you know from the ‘70s supergroup Brougham LTD., Ron Headley winner of an MTV astronaut for his solo song “Indian Summer,” Ron Headley wants to meet Sophie Clark’ They all said no way, she’s not interested. She turned down Headley—she must really love you.”
“That is pimp shit, Felder,” James says. “It’s really disturbing. I don’t even know where to start with that.”
“Hey, Felder, bro, if I show you a picture of some whore in Hustler, can you track her down so I can bang her?” Spewing asks. “That’s what I want, man!”
“Shut up, Spewing! You’ll get laid when I say you can!”
Kostas claps his hands together and says, “C’mon, let’s do one! Get in there!” Everyone looks through the glass into the tuna tank with EJ’s drums set up in the middle.
“Yeah, let’s do it!” they yell.
Kostas hits RECORD and the band starts “Alone, Alone.”
Through the glass, Kurt can see Kostas and Felder driving the Neve. James, Jesse, and Lunky stand behind them facing the glass bobbing their heads to the music.
Outside, in the lobby, the receptionist tells Sophie Clark to wait for the red RECORDING sign to go dark. Sophie ignores her, walks up to the space-age door, hits the button, and enters the Studio A control room in long, slow strides. Felder turns around in his chair, beholds Beauty, and mumbles, “Holy shit.” Kostas maintains the helm, his chin lit by the lights of the Neve. The song builds toward an impossible crescendo. The Jovi’s back is hunched to the glass. He’s rocking to EJ’s beat. It’s the hundred-meter four-by-four and the guitar lead is the baton, The Jovi is the anchor with blazing speed. He takes the handoff in stride and accelerates into the corner. He pulls and chokes on the neck of the guitar. He spins around, bends a string to perfection, and loses himself in Sophie’s sleepy blue eyes. She is so close. Her hands are up against the glass. His are somewhere on his guitar. He has no idea what they’re doing. He just hopes they’ll keep it up. James puts his hands on Sophie’s shoulder. The Jovi falls out of the lead, but the song is on to the tag anyway. The Jovi feels lightheaded. The song ends and he sits down on his amp. Sophie runs into the big room, throws her hands in the air, and calls, “Jovi!”
He gets to his feet and hugs her.
She holds his hand and pleads with him. “Come dinner with us!”
“Yeah, sure.” The Jovi smiles at James.
“We have to go now. But meet us at Angeli, okay?”
“Yeah, totally. What time?”
“Nine? Ten?” she says.
“I’ll be there.”
James walks up to Kurt and puts out his hand. “You guys sound insane. This record is going to change everything. Rock and roll will never be the same.”
“Yup.” Kurt nods and lights a cigarette. “Later.”
Kostas presses a button on the Neve and his voice reverberates through the studio. “You guys want to hear this one?”
During playback, no one says it, but you can hear Sophie walk in. There’s no footsteps, there’s no sound of the door opening. But there’s a jump in the energy of the song. It suddenly becomes unpredictable and joyous and hopeful.
“Your brother’s girlfriend is really something,” Felder says. “Really something.”
“She’s a great girl,” the Jovi says. “Not just the way she looks either.”
“Yeah. She fucks like a banshee too,” Jesse the Giant yells.
Everyone laughs except Kurt. “Watch it Jesse! That’s my brother’s chick.”
“I’m just kidding. Kurt knows I’m kidding.” He grabs Kurt by the neck and shakes him.
A soft voice interjects. “Hey guys!” It’s the Blonde.
“Hey. Any message from Ireland?” Kurt asks.
“Jimmy Iovine says you guys are the future.”
“What do you think?”
“I think you’re right now.” She smiles. Eric is lying on the couch. She walks over and plops down beside him and touches his foot.
Kurt isn’t going to let this happen. He takes the Blonde by the hand and says, “I want to show you something.” He presses the button on the door and leads her upstairs into the Studio A Lounge. With each step, her leggings stretch around her and become nothing more than a gauzy sheen of black on her perfect white skin. She rises away from the band, serene and ethereal, like a virgin sacrifice sent off to meet the monster monkey in the jungle.
Sitting downstairs, Felder does a head count and knows it is just the two of them up in the lounge. He gets up and hits the button on the door. It opens and everyone can hear Kurt’s voice and Kurt’s thick fingers pressed on his acoustic, making music that drifts down the stairs. The door closes automatically. Kostas fiddles with some knobs and starts a playback. Felder paces for a second and presses the button again. All is silent. Felder says, “Eric, go see what’s going on up there.”
Eric comes back a second later. “They’re gone.”
“They’re gone?”
“They are gone.”
“What happened to our Christian leader?” The Jovi laughs.
“He must be performing a baptism,” Jesse says.
Felder says, “Oh fuck. I should’ve figured. I want Kurt to pay me back for all the raw fish I’ve fed that girl. I’ve fed her more tuna than Flipper. I’ll have Bill Wellington prepare a fucking invoice.”
“Oh dude. He took her to the pinball room. He’s probably got her laid out on the machine right now giving her the business. Can you even imagine having sex with Kurt? Talk about an eight-second tube ride!” The Jovi shakes his head violently and lets out a primal scream. Everyone laughs.
“Don’t worry, Felder,” Jesse says and looks at his bare wrist. “Kurt’ll give her back to you in another minute.”
The Jovi musses Felder’s hair.
“You guys just wait. I take the slow approach,” Felder says. “I’ll get her yet.”
“Sloppy seconds, huh?” Jesse yells.
“Well…no…”
“Tiptoe through the tulips!” Jesse the Giant sings.
“What you think I look like, Tiny Tim?”
Everyone joins in singing in a British falsetto.
“Is that it? You fuckers.”
“Where’s your ukulele, Felder?” EJ asks.
“You guys don’t even know the words to that song.”
“Fuck, nobody does,” Jesse yells.
“That’s enough,” Kostas says, “stop the singing.”
The door sucks into the ceiling. Kurt enters, scanning the floor. He has the look of a tomcat recovering from general anesthesia. Every guy suffers through a postglurp cascade of shame, but for Kurt it seems much worse. The Blonde comes down, cheery, kisses Kurt on the cheek in front of everyone, waves, and walks away.
After the space-age door closes and seals behind her, Felder says, “You sly devil.”
Kurt looks around, quite somber, and says, “Look, man, nothing happened. I love my wife. I don’t know what you guys are talking about.”
“Fair nuff, let’s do a song” Kostas says.
“Alone, Alone.”
Again.
During the middle of a lifeless guitar solo, Kurt fiddles with the little headphone mixing board in front of him. He reaches down and turns a knob in between strumming his guitar. He pulls off his headphones, grates the pick violently on a guitar string, and stomps on the headphones until they break into four pieces.
The song ends.
Felder speaks into the mic in the mixing board and says, “Alright boys, that’ll be all for tonight.”
The next day Kurt calls a band meeting, roadies included. “No more chicks in the studio,” he says. “I love my wife. I called her last night, and she’s going to come up here and stay with me as long as she can.”
“Great, Kurt, where am I supposed to stay?” Jesse says sarcastically.
“You can stay on the couch.”
“Fuck that. I’m too big for a couch. Maybe you guys don’t need me up here anyway. I’m the road manager. We’re not on the road.”
“Look, man, I need you up here. You’re helping out. We just need to deal with this chick thing.”
“I’ll sleep on the couch,” Lunky says. “You can have my bed.”
“Fuck, I don’t want to stay with the roadies,” Jesse the Giant says.
“What the fuck, bro?” Talksley says. “Like what’s wrong with us, man? Why would you talk such crazy talk? What’d I ever do to you, bro? Dude.”
“You know, Jesse, in some ways you are a roadie,” Lunky says.
Kurt stops him and declares in the voice of a barbarian king: “I am a sinner. I know that. But some of you are bringing sin into this band and you don’t even know it.”
Beneath Kurt’s stare, everyone is penitent.
“I hear ya, bro. Me and God, we got a special agreement on that stuff,” the Jovi says. “I’ll try and reel it in a little.”
Lunky bows his head and says, “Sorry, Kurt…”
“Yeah, and I tangled with that little actress chick,” Eric adds.
“Look, Kurt,” EJ says, and stares over Kurt’s shoulder. “We all respect you and you’re the leader of the band, but frankly, you’re also the only guy who’s banged a chick in the studio. Why don’t you just bring Priscilla up here, and don’t worry about the rest of us.”
“Nothing happened! Besides, it doesn’t work like that. This is a real band. It’s like a country. You can’t have slavery in half the country and half the country free. Either we walk with God, or we don’t, all of us.”
“Fuck,” the Jovi says. “That’s deep.”
Spewing’s dad shows up at A&M, carrying a video camera all the way from the parking lot to the control room. He walks up to Kurt and says in a droll German accent, “This is very professional. I am very impressed. Kurt, I know that you made this happen. I am giving you Patrick. Think of him as your son now.”
Kurt nods and shakes the father’s hand. It is like an Old World apprenticeship without the buggery.
Eric is not a great musician, but he’s a steadying force and unlike Spewing, he doesn’t blow takes. He’s been bulking up, ordering lasagna and everything else that can’t get away until someone calls him lardo and tells him to “sneak up on a few salads.” It’s okay. In rock, fat passes for formidable. Plus, Eric believes in the band. While Kurt is in the tuna tank, Felder whispers doubt. “It still needs something. Maybe it’s the song. Maybe the song is the problem.”
Eric lifts his arms in Kurt fashion and asks aloud, “The songs? The songs? The songs were plucked from the Ganges River, dyed blue with their own divinity. The problem is not the songs.”
“I see why they call you Spock,” Felder says. “Maybe it needs a bumblebee buzzing in a jar.”
“Dude,” EJ barks, “is that all you got? A bumblebee buzzing in a jar?”
Many a night in the tuna tank is spent searching for the perfect take. Kostas has his first and only good idea. “Hey, enough of repeating the same song over and over again. Why don’t you guys just play the set like it’s a live show, like we’re back at Gates? Everyone together in the same room.”
It works.
“That’s something I can sell,” Felder says. “We’re gonna do guitars now, we’ll call you when we need you.” He shoos Eric and Spewing towards the door. “Making an album is a weird combination of teamwork and fuck-the-teamwork,” Felder says. “But Eric, before you go, there’s something I need to talk to you about. You see the band’s entourage is sucking the band dry. We’ve gone over budget. DCA is pissed. We have to get rid of the dead weight. We need to fire Lunky and Talksley.”
Eric looks at Lunky through the glass. He is breaking down the keyboard rig. “What about Jesse?”
“Kurt says he stays. Besides, he helps keep Kurt under control. We can hire Lunky and Talksley when we get a tour. It shouldn’t be too long from now. The Jovi said he’d tell Talksley. Do you want to tell Lunky?”
“You remember the night you told us about the record deal?”
“Yeah?”
“We went out dancing to celebrate. We danced to the Brothers Johnson’s ‘I’ll Be Good to You.’ Everyone danced.”
“So?”
“Kurt danced like a lead singer, waving his arms without sense or rhythm. Jesse danced wooden like a football player. The Jovi danced smiling like a rock star. And Lunky danced with this crazy, unexpected snaky rhythm and these rolling hips like he was taking off his clothes for a crowd of sex-crazed secretaries.”
Felder laughs. “Am I missing the point here?”
“I just don’t feel good cutting him loose. Who knows where he’ll end up?”
“You’re hilarious. You think he’ll end up dancing on top of some bar on Santa Monica Boulevard for a bunch of screaming homos, don’t you?”
“Kinda.”
“I’ll get L.A.’s biggest drum tech, Raymo, to hire him. Would that make you feel better?”
“Fully.”
Eric solemnly walks out through the tuna tank into the glass iso booth. “Lunky, I got some bad news. The band is broke.”
Lunky is rolling cords, tying them, and putting them in Eric’s gig bag. He doesn’t look at the lavish recording studio. He doesn’t look at all the expensive equipment. He just looks at Eric. “I don’t care. I don’t need money. If you just feed me, I’ll be fine.”
“I can’t do that. You need somewhere to live. You need money.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Felder lined up a job for you with one of the top drum techs in L.A. This guy Raymo, he’s gonna train you. When we go on tour, you’ll be there. You’ll be EJ’s drum tech and my keyboard tech.”
Lunky’s heavy round head tilts toward the floor. “If that’s the way you want it.”
Before the Flock Page 15