“Inspiration,” he said.
Hank picked up one of the books and blew off a layer of dust from the cover. “Sacred geometry?” He shot Johnny a thin smile. “Don’t you remember Mrs. Rice’s class? You nearly failed geometry, dude.”
“Not that kind of geometry, dipshit.” Johnny took the book from him and flipped ahead to a marked page. “This is different. Representative of nature in all forms, seen and unseen. It all follows the golden ratio.”
A diagram of something called the ‘Metatron’s Cube’ filled the page, its thin lines stretching to the edges, bisecting one another, forming a large elaborate figure of squares, circles, and triangles. Together they completed a singular shape in which all points met in the center.
“Okay,” Hank said, “so . . . what? Are we going to start writing songs about math? Tool already did that, man.”
“No, not exactly.” Johnny pointed to the Plexiglas window that looked out into the studio. Bobby was screwing his cymbals to their stands. “We’re going to play in a certain arrangement.”
Hank and I exchanged glances. Johnny took note of our silence, and for a moment he looked like his old insecure self from high school, still hiding behind his hair, afraid to utter a sound. That flash of insecurity made me nostalgic for better, simpler times; thinking of it now just makes me miss my friend.
He shrugged his shoulders and turned away from the window. “Trust me on this, guys. I don’t know how else to explain. Just a feeling, I guess. It’ll help our sound. It’ll have certain acoustic properties.”
I smirked. “Acoustic properties,” I said. “Right.”
“Are we ready to go?”
Our producer, Joe, walked into the room with a Starbucks in one hand and a notebook in the other. He’d come recommended by way of Reggie when we asked for Rick Rubin to produce the album. “Owes me a favor,” Reggie had said over the phone. “He’ll treat you boys right. Besides, Rubin’s booked solid for two years.” When we asked for Trent Reznor, he told us we couldn’t afford him.
Not that it mattered. Joseph Harper was more than adequate for our production needs. Although Camilla’s influence was felt throughout every step of the album’s recording, Joe’s presence gave it that extra punch. He took it to the next level, elevating it above just another prog rock concept record. His influence made it shine in all the right places, knowing when to smooth out Johnny’s vocals or to keep my guitar’s raw distortion for the master recording.
Joe was one of the few good guys involved with that record who escaped unscathed. He showed up every morning, worked with us until dinner, and called it a night. When we asked to stay behind, he showed us how to record through the studio setup. “Just enough to be dangerous,” he joked. He was professional through and through, and I’ve nothing bad to say about him.
But enough about him. Let’s get back to Johnny’s weird geometry obsession.
***
Camilla dropped by the studio that first day to watch us set up. At first, Joe wasn’t comfortable with having her in the control room, but Johnny told him to be cool, and so he was. The rest of us weren’t comfortable with her there, either, but there wasn’t much we could do about it. Johnny was running the show.
In our early days, there wasn’t a band leader, per se. Sure, Johnny wrote the lyrics and melody, but we all contributed something to the final product. That’s not to say we didn’t on that record, but there was so much more involved in the recording that we had no control over. Camilla’s presence, for one. Our placement in the studio, for another.
Johnny’s grand plan was to have us position ourselves in each of the points of the geometric design, going as far as using rolls of green duct tape on the floor to map out a rough shape for each of the intersecting points.
“The idea,” he said, “is that our creative energy and sound feed off one another. Aidan, you stand here.” I followed his direction, standing midway across the studio to his right. “Hank, I want you over here.”
Hank rolled his eyes and sighed like a petulant child before conforming to Johnny’s vision, taking his place to the left of our singer. Bobby was positioned in the back and center, as was tradition with most band setups, with his dual Kurzweil synths off to his left.
With us in place, Johnny took the duct tape and marked our spots with green X’s.
“Okay,” Bobby said. “Now what?”
“Now you just keep your places when we record.”
“Johnny,” Hank whined. “What’s the point of this? How are we supposed to see each other’s cues? Seriously, man. I just want to fucking play.”
“You will,” Johnny said. “And just do what you normally do. All I’m asking you is to stand in a certain spot.” He held out his hands in a placating gesture, but Hank was having none of it.
“Dude, all I’ve heard from you lately is this hippy-dippy bullshit. If you really think people are going to give a shit about religious geometry and how we’re standing on the fucking stage, brother, you’ve got another thing coming.”
I plugged in my guitar and played the opening riff to that famous Judas Priest song. Bobby and Johnny broke into a fit of laughter. Hank just shook his head and gave me the finger, but he was smiling while he did it.
A hiss of feedback broke up our reverie, and Camilla’s sultry voice filled the studio. We turned back to the control room window and saw her leaning over the microphone.
“Joe wanted me to tell you time is money, boys.”
Silence fell over us then. I can’t speak for Hank and Bobby, but personally, I’d forgotten she was there. For that brief few minutes, we were the band again, just four friends from high school who loved music enough to try and make their own sound. We were The Yellow Kings again, and not Johnny Leifthauser’s ‘Trio of Jesters’. I don’t know, it just felt fun again. How quickly we’d forgotten what that felt like.
Johnny blew Camilla a kiss, and I spotted Bobby rolling his eyes. He turned back to us.
“All right. ‘Season of the Leech’, from the top. Remember, Aidan, it starts with E. Bobby, count us down.”
Bobby lifted his drumsticks.
“One, two, three, four—”
***
Other interviewers have come to me over the years to ask what it was like recording the album, if there was ever any hint that something was ‘off’ during the process. All of them assumed what happened was part of Johnny’s ‘master plan’, that he actually orchestrated everything that occurred that night at our final show as fulfillment of some occult ritual. Which, in all fairness, is a legitimate assumption. How else could you rationalize such a tragedy? The media’s always looking for a devil to take the blame.
The truth is, Johnny really had nothing to do with it. I can’t even say it was entirely Camilla’s doing.
I can see by your expression that you’re surprised by my statement. Let me explain.
I’ve spent the last thirty years trying to wrap my brain around that period of weeks, coming to terms with what happened, how it happened, how I let things progress to that point, and so on. While I’ve yet to fully grasp the nature of the power of the music we made in that studio, I’ve come to realize Camilla wasn’t the catalyst.
Sure, she manipulated us, manipulated Johnny, manipulated events in such a way that we were there at that exact time, surrounded by the right influences, but she didn’t put the instruments in our hands. She didn’t tell us what to play. All of us knew something was off, but the promise of success and of making more music is what drew us forward toward our fate.
All four of us chose to walk hand in hand to the gates of Carcosa. We chose to put on our masks. Some of us even chose to take them off.
But my mind wanders. The point I’m trying to get at is that we were complicit in the act of recording those songs. Camilla just had to make sure we were there every day. She made sure Johnny had the books, she kept us stocked with candles and incense for the studio, and she kept us satisfied in other ways. Johnny didn’t seem to
mind sharing his girl with Hank and Bobby—in fact, I think they started keeping a schedule—but I kept my distance from her. Between what had happened that night in the van and the night in the hotel room, I wanted to be as far away from Camilla as I could get.
Which wasn’t very far, unfortunately. In some ways, she’d become our new manager. Reggie stayed away for most of the process. Whether he was busy or too afraid of Camilla, I’m not sure. He didn’t show up again until the last couple of days of recording to listen to our progress. By then the recordings had already started to take their toll on all of us, even though we wouldn’t admit it to ourselves.
I first noticed the difference a few days into the sessions. It was my turn in the studio, experimenting with a synth guitar for ‘Lost in Dim Carcosa’. I’d taken my designated place, standing over the green X Johnny had left for me. Joe buzzed in over the speaker: “Just noodle for a few. I’ll let you know when we have what I’m looking for.”
So I closed my eyes and let my fingers play, starting with my warm-ups and moving on to more sophisticated shreds. The distorted synth effects playing back in my ears filled me with a vibration I’d not experienced since we were back in Camilla’s bedroom.
You know what vertigo feels like? How you can be completely still and suddenly feel as though you’re falling? Or being pulled away? It felt like that, but not quite as jarring. I didn’t lose my balance, but sort of floated into the darkness as my fingers climbed the fret board.
I can’t say I was really paying attention to what I was playing. My mind was elsewhere, following darkened tides crashing against a distant shore, and somewhere on the horizon, I glimpsed the golden city once again. Its towers pierced the sky like gilded needles, filling the heavens with a brilliant light. The structures swelled and contracted, the city breathing with a hint of trepidation, waiting to welcome me into its walls. There was a congregation of figures at its gates. Tall, slender things with sickly yellow skin, their proportions elongated and distorted, as if they were drawn by a child. They wore dark red robes and blank white masks, chanting together in a low hum that made the very fabric of reality flutter around them like heat.
I’d lost myself in my music before, but this was different. I was outside myself, cognizant that I was in two places at once. I was back in the studio, eyes closed, noodling a jumble of chords on the guitar, and I was there on the shore, watching this throng of masked figures pray at the gates of an impossible city. I felt stoned. I felt elated. I felt like Dorothy gazing upon the Emerald City for the first time. I remember being amused by an idle thought, wondering if this is what Pink Floyd felt like the first time they recorded Dark Side of the Moon.
And then I heard the voice. The same voice I’d heard before, back in Camilla’s room. It was calling to me again, carried on a warm gust of air that swept toward me in low, hushed breaths. That voice rose and fell with the tides, hissing with the spray of dark sea foam and brine, a din of ancient secrets and wisdom.
Take off your mask, it said. Take off your mask.
And I wanted to take off my mask. I wanted very badly to take off my mask, but I didn’t know how. Because I wasn’t wearing a mask. Because, in the back of my mind, I knew this was all a fantasy, a bizarre hallucination brought on by—what? Drugs? Booze? I was flying sober those days in the studio, so that wasn’t it. Was it the music? Johnny’s stupid geometry? Camilla’s incense she’d left burning atop one of our amps? The candles?
The voice again, right next to me, whispering so close to my ear I could feel the breath, the trace of full lips along my earlobe. Take off your mask, Aidan.
A woman’s voice. Not the voice of a king.
You want this. Let it happen.
Her voice. The usurper’s voice. Camilla’s voice.
I opened my eyes, and I was back in the studio, my fingers still working mindlessly along the neck of the guitar, climbing one octave after another. Joe’s voice crackled through the studio intercom.
“All right, we got it. Get your Fender. I want to re-record your solo for ‘Black Stars’ before lunch.”
***
We were a week into the recording when I noticed the circles under my eyes. I don’t know how long they were there. I wasn’t partying—none of us were—in those days. We got up for breakfast, went straight to the studio, worked until dinner, and then we went back to our hotel. Most evenings, I crashed into bed and fell into an empty, dreamless sleep.
But I felt exhausted. Like I wasn’t sleeping at all. Like we were running marathons every single day we were in the studio. I wasn’t the only one who looked haggard. Hank, Bobby, and even Johnny all looked worn down. Johnny looked the worst, I think. He had circles under his eyes so complete and dark we thought someone had beaten the shit out of him.
Our hands shook and our fingernails fell out. Bobby lost one of his teeth. Just fell out one night while he was eating dinner. I had bruises in odd places, along my ribs, at the tips of my elbows, and across my knuckles like I’d been punching a wall for nights on end.
One morning into the second week, Joe asked us if we were using, a question which almost got him fired.
Johnny wouldn’t talk about it, but Hank and Bobby weren’t as tacit about their concerns. I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Hargrove: we were fucking scared. We didn’t understand what was happening to us. Right up until the end, I don’t think Hank or Bobby ever really understood it. Maybe Johnny did, maybe he didn’t. I don’t think it would’ve mattered one way or another. Johnny was too far gone at that point even if none of us knew it.
We could’ve taken a break. During our weekly conference call with Reggie, he suggested we take a weekend and drive down to Mexico, but Johnny silenced us before we could respond. “We’ve got a good thing going here, Reg. We don’t want to mess up the mojo. You understand.”
Reggie said he did, but the tone of his voice said otherwise.
“Maybe I’ll pay you boys a visit,” he said. “It’s been too long since I saw you, and honestly, I’d love to hear the new material. I know the guys at the label are eager, too.”
He meant well. He really did. We were like his kids, you know? We probably sounded ten times worse over the phone. He had every reason to worry.
***
After the call with Reggie, we went back to work, which is what we did every day, seven days a week. Even when Joe wasn’t around, we were in the studio experimenting with different riffs and time signatures, trying to build the perfect concept album one note at a time.
This continued for a stretch of days until Bobby passed out at his drum kit one night. We were tracking the beats for ‘Leech’ when he just fainted right there, one arm crashing into his hi-hat with a loud hissing clang as he slumped forward over the snare. One of his drumsticks clattered dully on the throw rug below.
We were sitting at the mixing board, unsure of what had just happened. Johnny buzzed the intercom.
“What the hell. You alive in there, Bobby?”
Bobby didn’t stir. The three of us got up from the board and went into the studio. Only Camilla stayed behind, reclining back on the plush couch at the opposite end of the control room. I caught a glimpse of her just before I walked out of the room. She was blowing smoke rings from her cigarette, and when she caught me looking, she flicked her tongue over her teeth and smiled.
“Better go check on Bobby boy,” she said. “Looks like he drummed his little heart out.”
I rolled my eyes and turned away. When I entered the studio, Johnny had successfully roused Bobby from unconsciousness. He snapped his fingers in front of Bobby’s face.
“You with us, Bobby?”
Hank walked around the kit and knelt beside him. “You all right, broth—oh fuck.”
Blood oozed from Bobby’s left nostril, splattering in dark floral patterns on the carpet. He put his finger to his face and then stared at the blood, incredulous that something so warm and dark could be pouring out of him.
Camilla approached from behind wit
h a box of tissues in her hand.
“At least he didn’t combust,” she said, plucking one of the tissues from the box and handing it to Bobby, who promptly tucked it up his nostril. We waited a few minutes while he collected himself, and the whole time I couldn’t stop staring at the bloodstains on his white Bowie shirt. He loved that shirt. Now it was ruined.
Johnny was the one who started the fight. Bobby called for a timeout to go clean himself up and to get some fresh air, but Johnny wasn’t too happy about that.
“We still need to get those beats down for the mix, dude.”
Bobby shook his head. “No way, man. My heart’s racing and my head feels like a fucking jackhammer is at work inside it. Let me sleep and start fresh tomorrow.”
When Bobby rose from his seat he took one step and staggered, shooting his arms outward to steady himself. Hank was at his side in a moment to catch him.
“See what I mean?” Bobby half-smiled, half-grunted.
Johnny shook his head. “Just five more minutes.”
“He said no, John.” Hank had that look in his eye, the kind every self-respecting southern boy has. The kind that says, “Don’t fuck with me right now, bud.” He’d also called Johnny by his given name, an act which Johnny despised, and everything pretty much escalated from there. When Camilla inserted herself into the conversation, Hank exploded.
“What’s another five minutes, Bobby?”
Hank spun around and got in her face. “I don’t recall asking for your opinion, bitch.”
She played it off with a shrug and a smile, but Hank had had enough. Even now I admit the guy had some balls to stand up to her, especially after experiencing all the weird shit that had happened. We all had a tacit understanding that she wasn’t to be fucked with, which isn’t something you’d expect from four dudes. Camilla stood at five-feet-nothing, but I’d seen her make the biggest of men shrink away from her like wounded animals. She carried with her a kind of imposing darkness that could make the strongest men wilt at her will.
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