Chapter 4: Making Things Click

Santa Clarita, California

July 17, 1991

Laura came pretty close to just telling them all what they could do with their fifty dollars an hour by the time they broke for lunch the next day. No amount of money was worth this abuse, this questioning of her musical abilities.

They spent the first two hours working on The Struggle. While the tune was actually starting to grow on her a bit—it really was poignant when you considered the lyrics—she could not seem to make Celia and Kingsley happy with her rendition of the simple melody that was required.

“It’s coming out flat,” Kingsley told her bluntly. “You’re just mouthing the notes mechanically. You’re not putting any emotion into them.”

“I’ve never had any complaints about my phrasing before,” she insisted. “Especially on something as straightforward as this.”

“Well, you’re getting complaints now,” Kingsley told her. “It’s listless and flat. We can’t do anything with what you’re putting out.”

Her appeals to Celia did no good. Though she was kinder in her words than Kingsley, her opinion was no different. “I’m not feeling the expression I’m trying to convey with the tune,” she told Laura. “I’m hoping to start hearing some improvement as we go along, but we seem to be stuck in a rut here.”

“I have the notes down,” she insisted. “I don’t even have to look at the score anymore. It’s a three-chord melody for heaven’s sake. How am I supposed to phrase it any differently than I have been?”

“Phrasing is the signature of the musician,” Celia said. “It’s up to you to come up with the way to shape it.”

“Yeah,” Kingsley grunted. “And right now, that signature is being shaped by a daisy wheel printer in block letters. It’s mechanical and flat.”

They tried a few more times. The results were the same. She played the notes out perfectly, but they weren’t happy with them. And, in truth, part of her knew what they were talking about. It really was a listless rendition. She just couldn’t feel their music the way they wanted it to be felt. There was very little enthusiasm for her to put into it. That was hardly her fault, was it?

They then moved onto another tune, this one called Done With You, and things got even worse. It was an up-tempo tune and Kingsley’s electric guitar was the primary melodic instrument. It was not quite heavy metal, but it was a long way from jazz. Celia wanted her to provide fills throughout the tune with her sax and then, perhaps put in a solo.

“A solo?” she asked, surprised. “Who is going to compose it?”

“You are,” Celia told her simply.

“It is traditional for a musician to compose her own solo in rock and roll music,” Mary said.

“But ... I’m not a composer,” she protested.

“Neither am I,” Mary said, “but I’ve put together a nice little solo for Jake’s tune, Insignificance.”

She looked at her in surprise. “He has a violin solo in one of his songs?”

“Strange but true,” Kingsley told her. “She nailed it too.”

“It’s still a work in progress,” Mary said modestly. “I’ll play it for you if you think it’ll help.”

“Well ... I don’t know,” she said.

“How about we don’t worry about the solo just yet?” Kingsley suggested, his voice more than a little impatient. “We haven’t even tried her on the fills yet. Let’s work on those first.”

“Uh ... sure,” Laura said, still trying to picture how a violin would fit into one of Kingsley’s songs. What kind of atrocity were they putting together?

They ran through Done With You and Laura did not have a good opinion of it. True, it had a catchy beat, and Mary’s violin provided a flowing accompaniment over the top of the piano, and Celia’s voice carried the lyrics well, but that electric guitar noise! She couldn’t get over it. It jangled at her nerves just to hear it! And there was a synthesizer mixed in as well. How was she supposed to provide fills atop of all that?

“Okay,” Celia told her after they played the first two verses without her. “This is where we start plugging you in. You can see on the score where your fills go over the top. We want loud and strong, almost overwhelming to everything but Jake’s guitar and the backbeat. Jake, can you play the basic gist we’re shooting for here so she can hear it?”

“I can,” Kingsley said. He picked out a distorted electric version of the primary fill they wanted, his fingers pressing on the G and B strings, moving up and down through the fret boards.

The sound of it actually caused her to wince. Something that did not go unnoticed by Kingsley. “A problem, Ms. Best?” he asked her.

“No ... not at all,” she replied. “I’m just not used to that much distortion. It’s kind of ... rough.”

Kingsley nodded. “That’s why we want you to play the notes and not me,” he said. “Why don’t you give it a try. Work it up a few times and then we’ll try it with everyone in.”

She looked down at the score before her, back up at Celia, and then put the mouthpiece to her lips. She blew, working through the notes of the flourish at half speed. Even she could hear the flatness issuing forth.

“Not the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard,” Kingsley pointed out.

“It’s my first time playing it!” she barked back at him. “Give me a few run throughs before you start hating it.” She then blanched as she realized she had just yelled at a man who was not only her employer, but who had been known to beat women severely—it was said that he had even thrown one girl off a boat after raping her. “I’m ... uh ... I’m sorry,” she told him. “I’m just getting a little stressed, I think.”

“No problem,” Kingsley said, his voice calm. “And I accept your offer.”

“My offer?”

“I’ll give you a few run throughs before I start hating it. Sound good?”

She cast her eyes away from his, seething on the inside. That was when she first started thinking about just walking out.

She did not improve much on the piece as the morning went on. As with Struggle, she could play the notes without any problem but she just could not feel the music enough, could not appreciate it enough to phrase it in anything other than a mechanical fashion. She tried faking it, drawing out the notes a little here, varying the strength of them there, but it did not make Celia or Kingsley happy and, truth be told, it did not make her happy either. She knew they sounded flat. Could not deny it even to herself.

At one o’clock they broke for lunch. She was more than grateful for the interruption.

The catering company that KVA did business with brought in a tray full of sandwich makings and a variety of breads, a tub of potato salad, and an ice chest full of soda and fruit juices. Everyone went about fixing themselves plates and then they drifted over to various places to sit and eat. Talk was minimal during this, and what little there was had nothing to do with music or music production.

Laura made a small sandwich out of turkey meat and sourdough bread, spreading a little mayo, a little mustard, then throwing some lettuce and tomatoes on it. She then put a small dab of the potato salad on her plate next to it. She loved potato salad—loved anything made with potatoes really—but she knew that it would go straight to her hips and butt if she had more than a dab. Dave was always warning her not to plump up on him. He didn’t like fat women.

She went back to her seat in front of her microphone stand and began to pick at her food. She was really too stressed out to be hungry, but she knew she needed to put something in her stomach.

Celia came and sat next to her, in the chair normally reserved for Mary, but Mary was sitting next to her son over on the drum platform. They were laughing about something as if they had no care in the world. Was he telling her some tales about his drug fueled orgies, perhaps? Any mother who raised a son like Kingsley would probably be amused by such tales.

“How are you doing?” Celia asked her.

She shrugged. “I’m starting to feel like maybe this whole thing was a mistake,” she said.

Celia nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps it was,” she allowed. “That all depends on you.”

“On me?”

“On you,” Celia said. “We all heard you play when you auditioned. You’re capable of amazing expression and phrasing with your instrument. You impressed us all greatly.”

“I’m very good at what I do,” she proclaimed firmly. “I’ve been playing this instrument since I was ten years old. I’ve been studying music theory almost as long and I’ve always worked on playing expressively.”

“No one is questioning your talent,” Celia said gently. “You’re just not displaying it when you play my tunes. And, unfortunately, that is exactly what you were hired to do.”

“I’m trying,” she insisted.

“That’s just the thing,” Celia said. “I don’t think you are—not really, anyway.”

“You heard me work more than two hours with you on The Struggle. How can you say I wasn’t trying?”

“You don’t like the song, do you?” Celia asked.

“I have nothing against it,” she said softly.

“Let’s be truthful, Laura,” Celia said. “You don’t like it much, and you like Done With You even less. Am I right?”

She shrugged. “The Struggle is starting to grow on me a little,” she said, “but you’re right, I don’t care for Done With You at all. It’s rock and roll music, with electric distorted guitars, and I just don’t care for the entire genre.”

“And, because of that, it’s hard to come up with proper phrasing because you don’t enjoy the underlying song?”

She took a deep breath. “Maybe,” she admitted. “Like I said, maybe I’m not the right girl for your little project here. The money is good, of course, but ... well ... it might be best if I just let you find someone else.”

“I don’t want someone else,” Celia told her. “I want you. I want you blowing that horn the way you did on Someone To Watch Over Me, the way you did on When the Saints Come Marching In. That talent will make my songs shine, will make people sing along with them when they hear them on the radio, make them buy the album in droves when it comes out. And, quite frankly, I don’t have anyone else. I want you to stay but I need you to find a way to get over your contempt for my music and start plugging in the way I’m sure you’re capable of.”

“But how?” Laura asked. “I can’t help the way I feel.”

“Perhaps not,” Celia said, “but you can open your mind a little, can’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You try to wrap your mind around the thought that maybe we don’t suck as much as you think we do, that maybe we really are capable of producing some palatable music you might actually enjoy.”

“Well...” she said doubtfully, not daring to articulate what was actually on her mind.

But Celia did not really need a full answer. “And we,” she continued, “will start working on a way to generate a little camaraderie, a little band cohesion with you. I think that is an important factor in mutual composition.”

“How are you going to do that?”

Celia smiled. “You’ll see after lunch,” she said.

She would answer no more questions about her plan. She simply went on eating her own sandwich and sipping from her diet Coke. Laura thought about asking her a few questions—primarily about how she had ended up being friends with such an unsavory character as Kingsley. She seemed to remember that a few years ago Kingsley had ended up getting in a fight with some of Celia’s band at the Grammy Awards. Obviously, they had gotten over whatever that issue had been about. Was it because Jake had come on to her, perhaps? That seemed a likely possibility. In the end, however, she kept her mouth shut. Did she really want to know any more about these people than she already did?

When the lunch break was over, both Ben and Ted went after the leftovers and began packing them up into Tupperware containers.

“You want in on the swag, Laura?” Ted asked her.

“The swag?” she asked.

“The rhythm section gets to keep the leftovers,” Ben told her. “That’s the rule they laid down when we signed on. Of course, you’re not the rhythm section, but I’m sure we can include you in the deal.”

“Hell to the yeah,” Ted said. “My goddamn refrigerator is already full. I haven’t had to buy groceries in a month.”

“Uh ... I’m okay,” she said. “You go ahead and keep the ... the swag.”

“Fair enough,” Ted said. They went back to packing up and soon, the food was neatly stowed away in ice chests that both had brought just for this purpose.

At promptly two o’clock, lunch was declared to be at an end and everyone returned to their seats.

“All right then,” Kingsley said, twirling a guitar pick in his fingers while his black Les Paul sat on his lap. “What next? Back to Done With You? Maybe try to make some headway?” He cast a sour glance at Laura as he said this—a look that implied he knew who was responsible for that lack of headway. Again, she almost wanted to call him out, say something nasty in reply, and, again, she remembered what kind of man she was dealing with. She kept quiet.

“I think,” Celia said, “that I want to try a little experiment.”

“What kind of experiment?” Kingsley asked.

“Well, it occurred to me that we need to have a little exercise in band cohesion here.”

“We have band cohesion,” Kingsley said. He then looked directly at Laura again. “For the most part anyway.”

Laura could hold her tongue no longer. “I’m sorry I don’t fit in with your little group here,” she told him. “I’ve tried, but this music you’re playing is just not ... not what I’m used to. Like I was just telling Celia, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.”

“Maybe it wasn’t,” Jake agreed.

Laura opened her mouth to say something else—quite possibly something along the lines of Fine, I’ll just be on my way then, and you can stick your fifty dollars an hour up your derriere! —but Celia opened her mouth first.

“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” she said. “We need group cohesion, and the member who is feeling like she doesn’t belong here is Laura.”

“I don’t think I do belong here,” Laura said. “I’m not sure I’m ever going to feel like that.”

“It’s only been two days, Laura,” Ben told her. “You haven’t really given us much of a chance.”

“Nor have I been given much of a chance either,” she returned.

“Touché,” Celia said. “That’s why I want to try this little exercise—a kind of a jam session, if you will.”

“A jam session?” Kingsley said. “How is that going to help anything?”

“By helping us find common ground,” Celia said. She looked at Laura. “When you were doing When the Saints Come Marching In yesterday, everyone really liked it. Ted and Ben even chimed in with the rhythm. Everyone was tapping their feet. It was a piece that all of us liked and knew, right?”

“Well,” Kingsley said, “it’s not up there with Bohemian Rhapsody or Kashmir in my book, but it’s catchy and easy to play. It’s ... fun.”

“Right!” Celia said. “Making music is supposed to be fun. We need to learn how to have fun together.” She looked at Laura. “All of us.”

Laura wanted to keep stewing in her anger and perceived lack of respect, but she forced herself to put it aside for the moment. Maybe Celia was onto something here. True, Saints was no Rhapsody for the Alto or Romeo and Juliet, but it was fun and easy to play. Something to just tear up with for the sheer enjoyment of it. That was why she had chosen it to round out her audition. It was something she could play at a whim without having to think about it and something she enjoyed, that she could phrase with some soul.

She nodded her head slowly. “Okay,” she said softly. “How do we do this?”

“Alternating melodies,” Celia said. “Ben and Ted set the rhythm up, I’ll play accompaniment on my Fender and maybe sing if the mood strikes me, and then Mary, Cindy, Jake, and Laura all take turns throwing down the melody, one by one. Each of you do your best, make it sing! Make us feel it! You know what I’m saying?”

Kingsley was now smiling, his eyes looking at Celia with clear affection. Interesting. “I know what you’re saying,” he assured her.

“Let’s do it!” Mary said enthusiastically.

“I’m in!” said Cynthia.

They all looked to Laura. She offered them the first smile of her tenure with them. “Let’s do it,” she said. “Who’s going to start?”

“You are,” Celia told her. She turned to Ted. “Four count and let’s get it on.”

“Hell to the yeah,” Ted said, grinning. He tapped his sticks together four times and they began to play.

Since it was an unrehearsed piece, and no one had any sheet music to help them remember the notes or to set the tempo or the key, Laura let them go through a couple of reps first so she could plug into the groove they were setting. She picked it up by tapping her foot in time to it. When she felt she was locked in, she began to play in the key of C major, the way she had always played that particular piece.

The music came out of her horn and it had soul. There was no doubt about it. She even began to move her shoulders back and forth as she played. After the drivel they had been making her produce, it was a true pleasure to play something she enjoyed.

“That’s the shit!” Ted shouted at her at one point.

“Agreed,” said Celia, who was strumming away at her Fender. “Let’s try it with some vocals.”

“Sing it, C!” Kingsley called out.

“Oh, when the saints,” Celia belted out, “oh when the saints. Oh, when the saints go marching innnnnn. Oh yes, I want to be in that number, when the saints go marching in. Blow it, Laura!”

Laura blew it, belting out another round of the melody. This time around, she added some style and few fills of her own, putting some more soul into it.

“Hell to the yeah!” Ted cried again, adding a little drum fill of his own. This time around, however, it did not annoy her. It added to the piece and he had struck it out with improvised precision.

“Oh, when the saints, ” Celia continued. “Oh, when the saints. Oh, when the saints go marching in. Oh yes, I want to be in that number, when those saints go marching innnnnn. Hit it, Mary!”

Mary hit it, playing out the melody on her violin with an enthusiasm and style, moving her own shoulders to the rhythm. She too brought a sense of phrasing to the piece—a playful, happy outpouring of musical emotion. She went through it twice, on the second time adding a few of her own fills, drawing some of the notes out, chopping some of the others.

“Way to go, Mom,” Kingsley said with a smile, his own foot tapping on the ground before him.

Celia sang out the chorus again. This time she called out Cynthia. “Do it, Cindy!”

Cindy pounded on the piano keys of her stage instrument. Laura was impressed with her competency and her phrasing. The piano had a lot more room for adding fills to a piece and she took advantage of them well, almost erupting into a mini-solo as she closed out her turn.

“We’re smokin’ now,” Celia said, and then sang out the chorus yet again. This time, she called on Kingsley. “Jake! Let’s hear what you got!”

She winced a little in advance as Kingsley took his turn on the electric guitar, hitting the notes with distorted loudness, his fingers bending and pulling at the strings to elicit the music. So prepared was she to dislike it that it took her a moment to realize that it actually was not all that bad. She wasn’t a big fan of the blues, but she certainly liked it better than rock music, and Kingsley was putting the notes down in blues style with a distinct emotion to his phrasing. He too was having a good time with the piece. She could hear that in his expression, could see in the tapping of his foot, in the sure way his fingers moved across the fretboard of his guitar.

“That’s the way!” Celia yelled when he was done. “Sing it with me, Jake!”

They sang the next chorus in harmony, their voices mixing together surprisingly well. Kingsley did not scream even once, and he had a decent sounding tenor voice that mixed well with Celia’s contralto. They went through twice and then Celia called out her next command. “Mary and Laura together! Do it!”

She hesitated a moment—double with a violin? Absurd!—but when Mary began to play the notes she dutifully stepped in and played them with her. It actually sounded much better than she would have thought. True, it was not a traditional doubling of instruments, but it worked!

“That’s badass!” Ted encouraged from behind his drum set. “Bring up the volume some!”

“Yeah,” shouted Kingsley. “Really grind it!”

Laura and Mary looked at each other for a moment and shared a nod. As they entered the next rendition, Laura blew harder, putting more strength into her notes. Mary did the same, moving the bow across her strings with a little more force, drawing louder and more authoritative sound out of the instrument.

“All right!” Celia said after finishing the next chorus. “Jake and Cindy this time. Show us what you got!”

They showed what they had. Laura was again prepared for it to be hideous, and was again pleasantly surprised to hear that it wasn’t. Kingsley laid down a solid blues track that mixed in with the piano rendition of the melody. It could not quite harmonize on the level that a sax and a violin, or a sax and a guitar could, but that was actually its strength. The notes came out in harmony but their rendition was quite different and complimentary.

“That is sweet shit,” Ted said, adding another impressive drum fill.

“Okay,” Celia said. “Final time around. All of you together! In harmony for the finish!”

“And then take us down tempo for the final sequence,” Kingsley added.

They went through it, with all four melody instruments playing in unison to the back beat. It sounded good ... deep, Laura could not help but feel. This was music they were making, turning a simple, repetitive piece into something quite more than its base melody.

“Bring it down,” Kingsley instructed after going through it twice.

Ben and Ted obediently brought the tempo down and those on melody followed them, making the final rendition march out slowly, down to almost a stop until they all let the very last note draw out and fade away.

“Hell to the yeah!” Ted said yet again. “That was bitchin’!”

“Agreed,” said Kingsley.

“That was the barest beginning of band cohesion,” Celia told Laura. “Do you get it now?”

“I get it,” Laura said. “I really do, but I still don’t know if that’s going to help me phrase on your original pieces.”

“Then we’ll keep doing this until you start to feel them,” Celia told her. “What else can we do? What else do all of us know?”

“Probably not much,” Kingsley said sourly. He turned to Laura. “Are there any rock or pop songs that you know? Some Beatles maybe? Some Elton John? Some Journey perhaps?”

Laura shook her head. “No, none of that. How about you all? Do you know any jazz? Any Charlie Parker? Any Louis Armstrong?”

Kingsley raised his eyebrows a bit. “Not much,” he said, “but there is this one...” He fiddled with the pedals on the floor before him and then flipped a switch on his guitar. He gave a quick strum and the music came out clean instead of distorted. He played a few open chords and then gripped his fretboard and began to strum out a melody in F major. She recognized it immediately.

“You know What a Wonderful World,” she said, surprised.

“Since I was a kid,” he confirmed. “It was always a good, mellow piece to play around the old campfire.” He chuckled. “Especially when there were ladies present.”

“I see,” she said doubtfully.

“I’ll play the chords,” he told her. “You play the vocal parts on the sax. Let’s see if we can make some music together.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ted said. “You’re talking elevator music here, Jake.”

“Anything for the cause,” Jake said, continuing to strum. “Jump in any time here, Laura.”

“Right,” she said, surprised to find that she was actually impressed with Kingsley’s guitar playing. It was soft and sweet, exactly at the right tempo and phrasing for the piece. And that from a guitar that had been hammering out distorted notes just a few moments before. Who would’ve thought?

The melody came around to the beginning again and she jumped in, playing a soft, mournful expression of where the vocals would be if someone were singing. The weird drummer guy was right. It was elevator music, but good elevator music, the kind that made you happy when you heard it, that made you hum along.

“Nice,” Cynthia said, smiling.

“It is, isn’t it?” said Mary.

They worked their way through the entire song, through three verses, the bridge, and three repetitions of the one-line chorus. On the final rendition of the chorus section, Kingsley sang out the words in harmony with her sax—about how he speculated in his own mind how nice the planet he lived on actually was. His tenor voice expressed the line with perfect tone, perfect expression, and she found herself actually feeling a little shiver going down her spine.

He really can sing, she thought. Amazing! Why in God’s name is he wasting that talent singing the trash he puts out?

“Bring it home, Laura,” he told her after repeating the chorus twice. “Close us out.”

She did it, going through one more, slower tempo version of the final chorus and then improvising out a drawn-out outro to end it.

She was surprised when everyone applauded. She blushed nervously.

“What do you know?” Kingsley said, giving her a smile—the first one she’d seen him display. “We really can make music together.”

“I guess so,” she said, feeling the barest beginnings of a smile touching her mouth as well.

Real life is not a situation comedy or a weekly drama, where problems are encountered and solved to the happiness and prosperity of all in thirty minutes. Laura’s opinion of Jake Kingsley did not magically change at that moment in time, nor did Jake Kingsley’s opinion of Laura Best. She continued to think of him—and, by association and example, Celia Valdez—as a sellout who was in the business of making tripe compositions for the unsophisticated masses. She continued to dislike and, though she would not ever admit it to herself, fear Kingsley. And Jake did not magically warm to Laura in the moment either. He continued to think of her as an unjustifiably arrogant cold fish, and one who was probably not going to work out ultimately.

What that moment in time did accomplish, however, was to plant the initial seeds in everyone involved of how things could be, if only they worked at them a little. Laura saw that both Jake and Celia actually did possess some significant musical and vocal talents—a considerable amount actually, if those first flashes of insight she was witnessing were correct. And Jake and Celia both saw that Laura had the potential to not just fill in the missing pieces of Celia’s compositions, but to enhance and compliment them, perhaps brilliantly, if she could only learn to put her heart into them.

For her to learn to put her heart into them took a little longer.

They spent the rest of that first full day just trying to find a little more common ground. It wasn’t easy, but they dug up a little. There was When Johnny Comes Marching Home, which Ted pounded out brilliantly on the drums while Jake and Laura took turns playing the melody on their respective instruments. They played around a little with A Mad Russian’s Christmas, only because it was familiar to all of them, but abandoned that effort after only fifteen minutes or so because the complexities of it would have taken too long to learn properly (Jake would remember that effort in astonishment and envy five years in the future, when just such a rendition helped propel the band Trans-Siberian Orchestra to international fame). And then, to the embarrassment of Jake and Laura both, they found that they all knew Sweet Caroline, by Neil Diamond and, at the insistence of Mary and Cynthia, they laid it down, with Cynthia playing primary melody, and Jake strumming the chords out on his acoustic-electric and singing the lyrics while Laura and Celia added fill with the sax and the drop-D tuned strat, respectively.

“If anyone tells anyone what I sang here today,” Jake threatened after they put Sweet Caroline to bed, “I swear to God, I will kill you all in a painful manner.”

Ted, Ben, and even Laura all agreed to keep mum. None of them wanted it to be known they enjoyed themselves a little Sweet Caroline either.

The next time they got together to work on Celia’s tunes, it was a Saturday. Things started off pretty much the same as their first session together. They worked on The Struggle and then Done With You for the first part of the morning. Laura’s notes came out sounding listless and flat, just as they had before.

In frustration, Jake suggested that maybe they should give Laura a little break and work on something that did not include the sax in it until lunch. Everyone agreed except for Laura, who wanted to keep pushing on.