When Hell Freezes Over

by Rick Blechta

  Those had indeed been heady days, everything happening so fast. One month we were just another struggling Brummy bar band with a solid local following, and the next, we had management and a major record label paying for us to record at a posh London studio. In short, we were being groomed as Rock Stars. Don’t Push Me turned out to be the success everyone had predicted. The album quickly went gold, then platinum, and eventually double platinum, meaning that we sold a boatload of recordings. The single did equally as well.

  The tours had always been the best part of it for the rest of the band. The excessive lifestyle had suited them all—especially Rolly, who embraced it with Bacchanalian gusto. I lived for being in the studio. I enjoyed most the time after everyone had left for the day with the hangers-on, spending hours experimenting, re-arranging, tweaking, looking for that something special that would take every song to the next level.

  I made two albums with Neurotica and left them with enough material for a third. Although I didn’t have anything to do with recording it, to my sad satisfaction, it showed in its mediocre sales. Rolly and I always took writing credit for the songs, me for the music and Rolly for the lyrics—even though towards the end he was too busy becoming a legend to do more than a cursory job. (“Yeah, yeah, Michael. Sounds fine to me. You might want to fix up the chorus a bit. The lyric’s bloody depressing.”) The material on the second album was consequently almost completely mine. It was during the tour in support of its release that the whole thing had imploded for me.

  The kettle sang its steamy note, jerking me back to the present, and I sat brooding for almost an hour over two cups. It hadn’t been a good idea to visit Angus. I didn’t like it when the old trouble got stirred up. Regardless of what I’d said, I also felt guilty about leaving Angus with a twenty-four-year-old problem named Regina. Heaven only knew how she had taken it when she’d woken up to find me long gone. But her problems were not something I could or would get involved in. When it counted, I’d done my bit and helped out a fellow human being. What had happened between us afterwards had all been her idea. If she now felt any remorse or anger about it, then it was her problem. Right?

  So how come I didn’t really believe that?

  ***

  Next morning, I pried myself out of a pleasantly warm bed and looked out at a snow-covered city. The wind had died down during the night, and white stuff was falling in big lazy flakes.

  Dressing, I couldn’t help feeling silly about the night before, allowing myself to wallow in self-pity over how life had changed the cards I’d been dealt. A lot worse could have befallen me.

  I’d built a successful business, and I still had a generous income from the royalties of my youthful musical endeavors. I could indulge myself when I wanted, buying silly unneccesaries such as the BMW M3 which sat in the parking garage in the basement of the building, the Blüthner in my sitting room, and now the ultimate silly musical toy waiting in a shipper’s warehouse at the airport.

  A quick glance at the clock showed me I’d better get my arse in gear if I wanted to pick up my latest vintage keyboard before noon. Toronto traffic could be horrible with even a small amount of snow. It’s an odd thing that in a wintry country like Canada, few drivers in its largest city seem capable of driving in even moderately bad weather.

  On my way to the customs broker, I phoned up the shop, getting Johnny, my newest recruit and a total keener for the job. Sensing that about him right from the beginning, I’d given him his own key earlier than I normally would have with a new employee. My intuition had so far proven correct. He was always first to arrive and last to leave.

  “Welcome back, boss!” he said when he heard my voice. “Kevin told me that you’d scored on your big game hunt ‘over ’ome’. Are we picking it up today?”

  “Yes. I’m on my way to the shipper’s warehouse to sign the papers and pay the charges. Bring the small van and meet me in an hour.”

  “You bet! This is going to be so cool. I’ve never seen one of the big mellotrons up close.”

  “You’re probably going to be pretty sick of it before long, Johnnymy-lad, since it’s to be your responsibility to maintain it.”

  ***

  As usual with these things, it took two times longer to bail out the mellotron than I’d planned, with the result that it was past twelve when I rolled into the industrial mall in the northern Toronto suburb of Unionville, where I had my business. Kevin and my other employee, Hamed, were busy loading our fourteen-foot box van with a small mountain of equipment rented for a movie shoot at a downtown location. Seems someone had taken it into their head to make a film about the trials and tribulations of a rock band on the road in the late sixties. Spare me!

  “Where’s the ’tron?” Kevin asked as he stood in the back of the truck, sweating profusely, even though the cold in the warehouse was fairly intense because of the open door.

  “Johnny’s behind me somewhere with it. I told him to take it slow, since the roads are rather slick.” Looking over the equipment contract on the clipboard, I noticed that several more amplifiers had been requested and added, “What in heaven’s name do they need all this for? You could play an arena with this amount of gear.”

  Hamed took the clipboard from me and checked off another three amps. “That’s exactly what they’re doing. Apparently they have actors who can actually play a bit, and they’re going to stage a sort-of-real concert at Maple Leaf Gardens, or what’s left of it. They need the equipment for an extra week, too,” he grinned.

  I’d actually played The Gardens with Neurotica back in the day. Partially dismantled, it was now a sad relic of the past, with all of the concert action having moved south to the Air Canada Centre and the super-large nightclubs on the waterfront. I hardened my resolve not to visit the movie set.

  I found a week’s worth of phone and e-mail messages waiting when I sat down at my desk, and it took quite a while to wade throughit all. January was normally a pretty slow month, but the amount of business coming through the door was either a fluke or a very gratifying upturn.

  Writing up work orders took pretty well the rest of the day, and after filling out a deposit slip, I decided to cut out a bit early to stop off at the bank on the way home. As I headed for the back door, Johnny was the only one around. The other lads hadn’t got back from the movie shoot delivery and would probably be several hours yet, since they’d have to set up all the gear and test it. That would be duck soup for Hamed, who could play guitar pretty well (imagine a Palestinian heavy metal guitarist, if you will) and loved showing off with some hot licks on a high-volume rig. Kevin could play bass well enough, too, so if a drummer could be found kicking around the set (not such an impossible thing), they would have everything needed for an impromptu concert. If there were some babes hanging around (also not hard to imagine on a movie set), so much the better, as far as they were concerned. I wished them well.

  “Can we crack open the mellotron case tomorrow and take it for a test drive?” Johnny asked.

  “Sure. Get out one of the Hiwatt stacks and a drum stool. Don’t turn it on, though, until I go through the check list the Rugely lads gave me. We don’t need the mellotron to eat its tapes as soon as we hit the mains switch.” I took a look at the next day’s duties on the clipboard. “If you want to get a jump on things for tomorrow before you leave, there’s that Hammond B3 and Leslie going out early. Make sure it’s working properly. I’ve marked which one I want you to send.” Handing Johnny the board, I walked to the door. “And don’t forget they want bass pedals. For heaven’s sake, send the good set!”

  The cold hit like a hammer blow as soon as I opened the door, making me wish I’d decided to settle someplace like southern California.

  On the way, I stopped at a supermarket for a few things, including a frozen meat pie for dinner, then made a beeline for home and warmth. Tonight was an evening for a roaring fire and a good book.

  After dinner and a glass or two of wine, I wound up behind thepiano instead. I noticed
with some disgust that the tuning had slipped again, mostly because I’d turned down the heat when I’d left for the UK.UK

  I had a Mozart sonata I’d been casually fooling around with lately, and that kept my fingers and mind occupied for over an hour. Gradually, though, my thoughts started wandering into other channels, and my fingers followed suit. First it was a couple of jazz standards: “What’s New?”, “Lover Man”, moody things like that. Then the rock and roll started creeping out of the dark recesses: a mindless boogie progression in G. Finally something, from where I have no idea, insinuated itself into my brain, and my fingers began following its trail. A melody popped into my head, and I began humming over the chords. It started so innocently, and it felt like it always had in the past when the creative juices began flowing.

  I jumped violently to my feet, knocking the piano bench over. Slamming down the keyboard lid as if the piano were somehow responsible for what had happened, I stomped over to one of the windows overlooking Lake Ontario, pulled the curtain aside and stared out. A few stars gleamed brightly in the cold, hard night sky. The air was so clear, you could actually pick out several craters on the nearly-full moon.

  I stood looking out for a long time, thoughts both good and bad flipping through my brain at ninety miles per hour.

  ***

  Next morning, I got my sorry arse out of bed at a reasonable hour. After taking a long, steamy shower and actually stopping for breakfast on the way, I arrived at the shop even before Johnny. As I had feared, the fourteen-foot van was not in its usual spot blocking the loading door. Hamed and Kevin had probably made a late night of it.

  If someone were really determined to steal equipment, I didn’t harbour any illusions that it couldn’t be managed. I tried to make things difficult only to keep the casual thieves at bay. Good locks, an efficient alarm system and a big truck in front of the loading doors saw to that. Even if Kevin had gotten well into the booze or drugs, Hamed, who didn’t indulge in either, should have driven the truck back. I’d have to speak to them.

  Two years earlier, I’d moved Quinn Musical Equipment out of an inadequate and over-priced space in downtown Toronto into one of those anonymous industrial malls that any big city has springing up in its nether regions like pimples on the landscape. I sometimes suffered a guilty pang from the knowledge that my business stood on what had once been a productive farm, but the mall had already been built by the time I leased space, and if it hadn’t been me doing it, someone else would have set up shop regardless. The farm was gone forever.

  Almost the whole of our three thousand square-foot space was taken up by floor to (twenty-foot) ceiling shelving units containing amplifiers of all descriptions and wattage, speaker cabinets, drum kits, various keyboards old and new, monitor systems, a few small mixing desks, in short, anything that might be needed on a stage during a musical performance. Quinn didn’t supply sound reinforcement systems or stage lighting, since they were too specialized and needed trained crews to set up and operate them, but if a client requested it, I knew people in the business whom I could book for those duties. Recording studios were increasingly renting our vintage equipment, mostly keyboards, for various projects. Those contracts were lucrative and easy to deal with. The tough ones were one-day concert rentals. The first few of that type of gig I’d done when I was starting out made me aware of how much Neurotica had owed our road crew. Talk about a thankless job. Try moving a few tons of equipment twice in one day.

  The front of the building housed my small office and a rehearsal studio/demo room, where clients could try out equipment before renting. I attempted to keep everything orderly but had given up most of that fight long ago. As long as the condition of the place didn’t cross the line into squalor, I could live with it.

  In my office, after bringing my computer to life and checking emails, I listened to the answering machine. With nothing urgently needing my attention, I went back out into the warehouse area, where Johnny had taken my latest acquisition out of its baby-blue flight case. One of his mates must have picked him up the previous evening, since he couldn’t have opened it by himself. From my briefcase, I got out Rugely Electronic’s list of “Things to check before switching on your mellotron” and had the back off the cabinet with my head inside when Johnny arrived.

  “Absolutely amazing,” he said, peering over my shoulder. “Who would believe that something like this could actually work! Does everything check out, boss?”

  I flipped off my pocket torch and stood up. “Seems so. Connect a jack to the line out, and let’s fire her up.” Johnny had gotten out a classic Hiwatt stack to use for amplification. The mellotron had its own onboard speakers, but they’d sounded pretty wimpy when I’d briefly tried the instrument before buying it. “Turn it up to five,” I told him and switched on the mellotron.

  It made an odd, soft clanking noise as it sprang to life. I glanced at the sheet Rugely had provided listing the voices and their location on the mellotron’s tapes.

  “What do you want to hear first?” I asked Johnny.

  “It’s got to be those violins.”

  The classic mellotron sound. I looked at the sheet: right-hand keyboard, Station 2, Track A, and checking again to make sure I was doing it correctly, pushed the required buttons. The mellotron whirred and vibrated under my hand. Sliding back the cover, I could see the right rear cylinder turning. Everything seemed to be doing what it was supposed to do. Sitting down on the drum stool, I put my foot on the volume pedal and depressed it halfway. Fingers over the keys, I pressed down the notes for an open F Major triad.

  That sound filled the room. Johnny’s jaw literally dropped open, and I have to admit that my heart beat a bit faster. I played a couple of chord progressions, and had just started the opening to King Crimson’s “Court of the Crimson King” when Kevin and Hamed arrived.

  “Jesus...” Kevin said after I’d finished.

  I stood and bowed, using my hand in a sweeping gesture to indicate the instrument in front of me. “Gentlemen, the Mellotron MkII.”

  “It is very impressive,” Hamed added, coming around to look at the control panel. “How does it work?”

  I handed him the repair manual I’d also purchased. Turning back to the instrument, I consulted the track sheet, pressed another button and began the opening to “Watcher of the Skies” by Genesis. The sound was even more spectacular.

  “How come you know all this old stuff, boss?” Johnny asked.

  I answered, sounding more disgusted than I wanted to, “Because it wasn’t that old when I learned it.”

  On and off during the day, we all kept gravitating to the mellotron, putting it through its paces. Every sound was tried, and none found wanting. Some seemed like old friends because of the number of times we’d heard them on recordings: cello, mixed choir and flute (“Strawberry Fields” anyone?), but several were new to me, bass flute and French horn being the standouts there. Hamed liked the sustained guitar (another new one), and we all especially liked Gothic, a huge sound that was a blend of string section, mixed choir and pipe organ—very atmospheric and creepy to the point where it actually made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  Shortly after Johnny had left with the organ delivery to a studio downtown, the buzzer on the back door sounded. I’d built a small room with a counter to keep customers out of the warehouse proper, so we couldn’t see who had entered. Hamed trotted off to find out. I had my head down fiddling with the reverb control on the mellotron when two sets of footsteps approached.

  When I didn’t look up right away, Hamed cleared his throat. “Michael, this woman says she’d like to speak to you.”

  I looked up distractedly, and there stood Regina. She didn’t really want to speak to me. She just reared back and gave my face the kind of full-handed slap you only see in movies.

  Five

  We all stood frozen as the sound of Regina’s slap seemed to echo around the warehouse.

  My first thought was how much it hurt! My face
burned, but not simply from the force of hand meeting flesh. Kevin and Hamed stood shuffling awkwardly, eyes down. Regina stared at me, her expression daring me to say something, at which point, I had no doubt, she would have slapped me again.

  After a good fifteen seconds of uncomfortable silence, Regina turned, and with her head held high and her body stiff, started back across the room. The sound of the outside door slamming followed shortly after. At the same time, the three of us started breathing again.

  I knew I deserved what I’d got, but why had she come all this way to deliver her rebuke for my caddish behavior? Princess indeed! I guess I had delivered the ultimate insult, and at all costs, it had to be redressed.

  Partly without willing it, my feet began moving, following in her footsteps. I had no idea what to tell her, but I owed Regina more than stunned silence. As I crossed the room, I could hear Kevin say softly to Hamed, “What the hell was that all about?”

  “A woman scorned is my guess,” Hamed answered.

  Without a coat, the extreme cold hit like a hammer as I left the building. Hair streaming behind her, Regina stood hunched into the wind in the middle of the driveway.

  I walked forward and touched her shoulder. “Regina...”

  She turned slowly, and her face had an odd expression. If I hadn’t known better, I would have said it looked something akin to triumph.

  “It’s cold out here,” I began lamely. “Come inside, and I’ll call you a cab.”

  “You hurt me!” Regina said savagely. “I gave myself to you, and you just walked away.”

  “This isn’t the place to discuss my shortcomings, certainly not in this weather. Why don’t you come into my office, and we can talk?” I grabbed her arm, steering her back to the door. “Please, come inside.”

  Regina resisted for a moment, then sagged. “All right. It’s too damn cold out here.”

  Hamed and Kevin were where I’d left them as we re-entered the warehouse. Without a word, we passed through, entered the office and shut the door. I knew they’d be speculating themselves into a stupor, and without a doubt, the story would be all over town in short order. Even though it had been years since I had been in the limelight, people still seemed to take inordinate notice of my comings and goings, as if they were expecting me to break out at any moment and become a Rock Star again. In the past, it had been sort of amusing, but this time I dreaded the chatter. Well, the damage was done, and I would have to live with the fallout, even if a report surfaced on that damned Neurotica fan website that had appeared a few years previously.