Chapter 6: Coming Together and Falling Apart

Washington DC, USA

October 29^th, 1991

Matt stood on the stage under the bright spotlights, his iconic black and white Fender Stratocaster—the only guitar he had ever played before an audience—in his hands, his fingers moving surely and steadily over the fretboard with a skill and talent nearly unequaled among current guitarists. He was alone on the stage, ten minutes into a long, drawn-out guitar solo he had composed just for his live performances. The members of his band—John Engle on bass and Steve Calhoun on the drums—were sitting backstage at the moment, waiting for the end of the solo and their cue to return for the final number before the encore break.

The cheers from the audience as he played his instrument were loud and enthusiastic, but not deafening by any means. They were certainly nowhere near the volume he’d received regularly when he’d done his requisite live solos while playing with Intemperance. A big part of that was the size of the audience. Though the arena he was playing in—the same one where the Washington Bullets played hoop for the hometown crowd—had a capacity of more than sixteen thousand for concerts, it was not even half full for tonight’s Matt Tisdale concert (with Breakdown, a new death metal band recently signed by National, opening for him). This was typical so far, at least after the first fifteen dates of the east coast leg of the tour. He had not sold out a single venue since then. The scalpers weren’t even bothering with him, as there were always tickets available at the door on show nights. According to Greg Gahn, his tour manager, the night-of-show tickets accounted for approximately twenty-five percent of all ticket sales on any given night. That was absolutely pathetic, Matt had to admit to himself. Especially when Intemperance tickets, during their prime, had been going for several hundred dollars apiece on the illicit resale market, which was arguably—since it was the free market system truly unrestrained—the best marker of how popular a band really was.

He did not let his mind think about any of this as he played. Above all else in life, he was a professional and he gave his all to the seven thousand some-odd fans out there watching him. Sweat poured down his face and onto his chest—he had removed his shirt shortly after the third song of the set. He was cold sober currently, as he refused to allow himself or his band members to engage in any intoxicating substance for at least four hours prior to any show. He played with a focus and intent that was almost supernatural, pouring out his heart and his soul into the licks coming out of the Strat. When he sang, his vocals came out powerfully and with all the emotion he could wring from them.

And he knew it wasn’t what the people wanted. That fact had been painfully driven home to him over the past three months in a variety of ways.

His album was selling dismally. Only three hundred thousand copies so far, well over two-thirds of that within the first month of release. Sales were only a trickle now, a few thousand each week at best. It was quite apparent to him that he was not even going to make Gold before the end of the year, let alone the Platinum required for him to win the wager with National Records and keep control of the post-production of his next album.

He wanted to blame the National executives for this pathetic album performance—wanted to do that with every fiber of his being, with every paranoid and suspicious bone in his body—but he just couldn’t. They had held up their end of the bargain. He knew that. They had pulled out all the stops to promote the album and push for airplay of his tracks with all of their connections across the nation. He had been monitoring their efforts during every step of the process. Uncharacteristically, they had done their best, probably, he figured now, so they could say they told him so and not be accused of trying to sabotage the deal.

Where the fuck did I go wrong? he asked himself over and over again. My shit rocks! It’s some of the best guitar work in the history of the fucking guitar! Why the fuck aren’t people buying it? Why the fuck aren’t the radio stations playing it?

Sadly, he thought he knew what the answers to these questions were, and they were all the same answer. It wasn’t Intemperance. He had inadvertently type-cast himself by playing with those fucking traitors and it was now coming back to haunt him.

The reason his initial concerts had sold out large halls was not because of Matt himself, but because National, in promoting the tour, had heavily implied—though not actually promised—that Intemperance songs would be performed as part of the set. They were not. Though Crow and the boys had begged, threatened, demanded, and begged some more for him to lay down some of the tracks he had written for Intemp, the contract Matt had signed with them gave him control over the set list and composition of any tour. And there was no way in hell that Matt was going to perform any Intemperance tunes on his fucking tour.

And so, National, being National, had employed a little innuendo and bending of the truth when announcing the tour dates in the localities they were scheduled in.

MATT TISDALE – The legendary guitarist for Intemperance performs his material LIVE IN CONCERT! read the posters, announcements, and promos done by DJs across the nation.

It only took about fourteen shows for word to spread across the nation that Matt was not, in fact, laying down any Intemp after all. There was no Who Needs Love?, no This Life I Live, no Grandeur, no The Thrill of Doing Business. Once that rumor became verified by word of mouth, ticket sales plunged into the proverbial toilet. Now, the hope that this tour—which was reasonably low budget due to the lack of any technological flourishes such as lasers, complex lighting, complex sets, or pyrotechnics—would actually turn a profit was all but dashed. They were losing upwards of thirty thousand dollars per show, sometimes more depending on the venue.

“Why?” Crow, Doolittle, and other bigwigs from National management had demanded of him when it became clear he would not be doing any of the Intemp material. “Why are you cutting your throat like this? Don’t you know that this is what they want to see?”

“They’ll get my new shit,” was Matt’s only reply. “The tour is to promote my new album, not to play a bunch of shit from a job I used to have.”

“It was that job that made you what you are!” Crow nearly screamed at him when he heard this.

But Matt did not budge an inch. He would not play so much as a single riff from any Intemperance tune. He gave the National executives no explanation. He gave the many rock media reporters who questioned him about this no explanation either. Unfortunately, however, he could not hide the explanation from himself. He knew all too well why he was not performing any Intemperance material: his voice work could not compete with Jake Kingsley’s. He had a decent singing voice and he could carry a tune with it well—that was evident enough on the tracks for Next Phase—but he could not carry those tunes the way Jake had. He knew that. He fucking knew it. And he was not going to be compared unfavorably to that traitorous asshole. Not while he was still drawing air on this Earth.

I will never sing a song that fucking Kingsley has sung before me, he vowed with the same level of zeal and determination with which he’d vowed he would never play anything onstage but his old Strat.

That old Strat was screaming now, as Matt played out the final, furious crescendo of his fourteen minute long guitar solo—the second of two such solos in the set. He let the final note fade slowly away while the crowd cheered enthusiastically in response. While they were cheering, John and Steve came back out on the stage, the former picking up his bass guitar, the latter taking a seat back behind the double bass drum set.

“You like that shit?” Matt asked the crowd.

They liked that shit—after all, anyone who had bothered to show up had to be a Matt Tisdale fanatic—and they let him know they liked it by increasing the decibel level of their cheers, standing up on their seats, and holding their lighters in the air to create an artificial starfield out in the arena.

“Fuck yeah,” Matt said. “Let’s do one more here, then I gotta get the fuck on down the road, you know what I mean?” He turned to the band. “Let’s do it, boys.”

They did it, Matt churning out the intro to Into the Pain, the only song on the album that had been played on any radio station in the Washington/Baltimore region. John and Steve chimed in to set the rhythm. The crowd went wild once again.

The tune was seven minutes and twenty-three seconds on the album. In concert, it ran nine-fifteen thanks to Matt extending two of the guitar solos and the entire band making a huge production out of the finish to the song since it was the final number of the main set. At last, however, they finished it up and left the stage. They were not done yet, of course. The crowd cheered and yelled, stamped their feet, and shouted for more.

Matt and the boys gave them more. They did a two-song encore that lasted another eighteen minutes. The first song was Coming Down Fast, an unrecorded piece that had been worked up but not included on Next Phase due to time constraints. Matt intended to put it on the next album, although he was already cringing when he thought of what those sound engineers in the studio were going to make him do to it. The final song was Stir it Up, the multi-tempoed, multi-guitar soloed final cut on Next Phase—the song that had been Matt’s favorite of them all.

At last, they put their instruments down and left the stage after taking their bows. The house lights came up, signaling to the audience that it really was over this time. As the crowd began making its way to the exits, Matt, Steve, and John headed back to the dressing room, where the requisite food trays, tubs of beer, and, of course, marijuana and cocaine, would be laid out.

“Not a bad show, guys,” Matt told his band as they each grabbed a bottle of beer out of the ice and popped them open.

“Thanks, Matt,” said Steve. “I felt like we were really clicking up there tonight.”

“Yeah,” agreed John. “Me too. We were really in the groove.”

“I guess,” Matt said with a shrug. “Of course, you are both nothing but studio hackers, remember? There is only so much groove you can actually slide into.”

“Well ... just because we worked in the studio before hooking up with you...” started Steve.

“Don’t give me that fucking shit again,” Matt said. “Granted, you’re the best of the studio hackers, but you are still, by definition, studio hackers. Ass sucking little moles employed by the biggest ass in existence. Just because you’re not shitty, don’t let that shit go to your head.”

“Right,” Steve said sourly.

John simply grunted.

“Now then,” Matt said, picking up the cocaine kit that had been placed next to the beer cooler. “Anyone want to light up their life?”

All three of them did. Matt, though not the kindest boss in the world, was at least generous. They each snorted up two lines of pure, uncut Peruvian flake. That put everyone in a better mood—or at least it did until the dressing room door opened and Greg Gahn walked in.

“What the fuck are you doing in here?” Matt demanded of him. “I thought I was very clear in my tour instructions that I wanted to see as little of your hypocritical ass as humanly possible.”

“You made it quite clear,” Greg said. He was looking a bit haggard these days as well. Greg was quite fond of the white powder himself—this despite being an allegedly devout Mormon. Unlike when he went out on other tours, however, he was not allowed to imbibe in the drug, at least not from the supply that Matt maintained for himself and his inner circle. This was not out of any concern for his health or well-being, or even his performance, but for financial reasons. Cocaine was expensive and Matt’s contract stipulated that “entertainment expenses”, i.e. the cocaine, marijuana, and alcohol that flowed each night, did not cover National management members. Though Greg was a well-paid National Records employee, he was not well paid enough to finance his own considerable habit. And so, he was currently in a clean phase, having been dumped in a rehab center just prior to the tour heading out.

“Then explain yourself,” Matt said, holding up the cocaine mirror. “Did you come to offer to suck somebody’s dick for a little hit of this shit?”

“He ain’t sucking my dick,” said Steve.

“Mine either,” put in John.

“I do not and would not engage in homosexual sex!” Greg said firmly. “Not for anything in the world. And as for the devil’s powder, I am now almost eighty days clean. Heavenly Father has, once again, guided me out of the addiction.”

Matt simply shook his head. “You’re so full of bullshit,” he said. “What do you want, Greg? Speak and get the fuck out.”

“Well ... it has to do with the upcoming tour dates,” Greg said. “It’s good news, really.”

“The upcoming tour dates?” Matt asked, alarmed. “What about them? They’re not fucking canceling us, are they? I’ll fucking kill someone!”

“No, no,” Greg said hurriedly. “It’s nothing like that. As I said, this is actually good news. There are going to be some changes of venue, that’s all.”

“Changes of venue?” Matt said. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” Greg said, pulling a sheet of paper out of the jacket of his tailored suit, “starting with the show in New York, which will be November 5, you’ll be moving to smaller arenas whenever we can make the arrangements.”

“Smaller arenas?” Matt asked. “What the fuck?”

“Yes, smaller,” Greg confirmed. “You won’t be playing Madison Square Garden in New York. Instead, you’ll be playing Queens Memorial Auditorium.

“They’re pulling me out of MSG?” Matt asked angrily, his cocaine cheer evaporating in an instant. “Why?”

“I would think that would be obvious, Matt,” Greg told him. “The decision is financial in nature. We’ve only sold seven thousand tickets for the New York show. Why would we pay to rent MSG with eighteen thousand seats when Queens Memorial, with a capacity of eight thousand, rents for half the price, even with the cancellation fee for MSG thrown in.”

“They can’t do that!” Matt nearly screamed.

“Oh, but they can and they have,” Greg countered. “Tour composition and set list are yours to do with as you please under the contract. But tour management, including venues, cities, and ticket prices are the exclusive responsibility of National Records. And they are exercising their management powers to downgrade the venues across the map. There’re nothing you can do about it, Matt.”

Matt clenched his fists nearly hard enough to draw blood in his palms. “Those motherfuckers,” he grunted.

“You’re looking at this the wrong way, Matt,” Greg told him. “As I said, this is good news.”

“How the fuck is this shit good news?”

“I would think that would be obvious,” Greg said. “With the reduced costs of venue rental, the tour may end up being profitable after all. In New York, for instance, instead of losing thirty-eight thousand dollars, we’ll be in the black by more than five thousand, and that’s without even accounting for merchandise receipts.”

“Fucking money,” Matt said in disgust. “That’s what it’s always about with you dickwads. I thought you were always spouting off about how the purpose of a tour is not to make money, but to promote the album.”

“That is true,” Greg said. “But the purpose of the tour is not to lose money hand over fist when the same promotion aspect can be accomplished at a lower cost. There is no downside to this, Matt. I don’t understand why you’re protesting so much.”

Matt was not about to explain it to the grinning freak, but he knew why he was protesting. Madison Square Garden was where top acts performed when in New York City. It was where Intemperance had performed every single time they’d visited the Big Apple. Queens Memorial—which Matt had never even fucking heard of—was a second-rate arena. It was where second-rate acts were booked. And now they had booked him there. Matt fucking Tisdale at Queens Memorial? That was humiliating! And New York was only the start. They were going to do this shit to him all across the country, moving him from top billing to second-rate status just to save a little money.

“Get the fuck out of here, Greg,” Matt told him.

“Don’t you want to go over the...”

“I don’t want to go over shit,” Matt said. “Get out of my dressing room before I decide to vent some steam by twisting your fuckin’ head around and then bending you backward so you kiss your own ass.”

“But...”

“Go, Greg!” Matt barked.

“I think I would go if I were you,” Steve suggested mildly.

Greg went, shutting the door behind him.

“Assholes,” Matt said, taking a long drink of his beer.

“You all right, Matt?” John asked carefully.

“Yeah,” Matt spat, setting the cocaine mirror back down and then crunching up another two lines. “What can you do?”

“Not much, I guess,” the bassist allowed.

They ate some of the food that had been laid out for them. Matt chomped down on some ribs and potato salad, washing it down with two beers. John and Steve each made a sandwich out of the fixings. More than half of the food was still there when they were done.

“All right,” Matt said with a sigh as he tossed his latest beer bottle in the general direction of the garbage can. “I guess I’m gonna hit the shower.”

“Sounds good, Matt,” said Steve, who was loading himself up a nice bonghit from the tray.

“I’ll be in right after you,” said John, who was putting together a gin and tonic.

Before heading to the shower, Matt opened up the dressing room door. Standing outside was Brian Browning, one of the security guys. “Hey, Bri,” Matt greeted.

“What’s up, Matt?” Brian returned.

“I’m hitting the shower now. Have Jack bring the bitches back in about ten minutes.”

“Will do,” Brian said, picking up his portable radio and putting it to his mouth.

Matt hit the shower, taking off his stage clothes of jeans and a sleeveless shirt and putting them in the laundry bin. He rinsed and cleaned the sweat from his body, washed out his long hair, and then stepped out to dry off. Once dry, he put on his after-show clothes, which consisted of a pair of jeans and a sleeveless shirt.

He was still quite upset about the change of venues. When he emerged back into the dressing room and saw what Jack had brought for him and the boys, his mood did not improve.

There were four girls out there. Two were well into their thirties. The other two, while in their twenties, were not the most impressive examples of young female adulthood. The one with the fake blonde hair was at least thirty pounds overweight, her body squeezed into a denim miniskirt that was perhaps two sizes too small. It rode quite high on her chunky legs, which were covered with a pair of fishnet stockings. A roll of fat bulged out from beneath her top. The other young one was painfully skinny, her face somewhat pockmarked with acne, and she had no tits at all. Her legs were knobby little sticks that looked like they had been drawn on. Of the older two, one, though marginally cute, was clearly inebriated to the point that she was about to pass out. The other was even fatter and more inappropriately dressed than the young fatty.

“Oh my God, it’s you!” the young fatty yelled when she saw him emerge from the shower room.

“It is!” screamed the young skinny one. Is she that skinny because of fucking meth? Matt had to wonder. He strongly suspected that was the case, particularly when he saw she was missing a few teeth.

The four of them ran over to him and began telling him how much they loved him, how they were so into his music, how they would do anything he wanted them to do.

“It’s nice to meet you all,” Matt told them. “No need to tell me your names. Y’all know the rules.”

“No names!” the inebriated one squealed, delighted. “Everyone knows that Matt doesn’t wanna know your fuckin’ name!”

“Just call me nameless,” said the old fatty, as she reached down and ran the back of her hand across his crotch.

“All right then,” Matt said, twisting away from her probing hand. “Why don’t you bitches grab something to drink, or...” He looked at the fatties. “ ... or some grub if you want. Give me just a second.”

They practically ran to the bar and food spread and began helping themselves. Matt watched them for a second and then walked over to the door, where Jack Ferguson, head of tour security and procurer of the groupies, was standing.

“What the fuck is up with this bunch, Jack?” Matt asked him. “I don’t recall asking you to find the skankiest bitches in the arena.”

“Sorry, Matt,” he apologized, “but the pickings are a little slim. These are the best I can do.”

“Seriously?” Matt asked. While it was true that the quality of groupie on this tour was considerably less than what he had enjoyed during the Intemperance tours, Jack was usually able to come up with four to six acceptable bitches each show. What he was seeing now was bottom of the barrel shit.

“We’ve been over this before,” Jack told him. “Unlike in the Intemp days, your solo fans are mostly male. Greg tells me that eight out of every ten patrons coming through the door has a fuckin’ dick swinging between their legs. And of that twenty percent that have a twat, probably five out of every six are only here because a boyfriend or a husband dragged them here. I’m telling you, it’s hard to find any groupies out in the crowd who even want to come back and entertain you and the boys, let alone pay the price they have to pay to get back here.”

“I know,” Matt sighed. “I understand all that and I appreciate what you do, Jack. You know I think of you as a brother, right?”

“I know, Matt,” Jack said.

“But these four?” Matt whispered to him, jerking his head in the direction of the women. “Is that seriously the pick of the litter?”

“For Washington, District of Columbia, it is,” Jack confirmed. “The male to female ratio in this town is higher than the average because it’s a government capital region. That eighty-twenty mix of male to female we see in the other venues was about ninety-two to eight here. We had a hell of a time even finding these four.”

Matt looked them over again, shaking his head sadly. “That’s a damn shame,” he said.

“You want me to get rid of them?” Jack asked. “Maybe you can score something a little better when we get back to the hotel.”

Matt thought it over for a few seconds. “Naw,” he said. “Let ‘em stay. I guess I can bag the two heifers. Hell, maybe I’ll be inspired to write a song about it like Brian May.”

“Anything can happen,” Jack said. “And if it makes you feel better, the older one sucks a mean dick.”

“Yeah?” Matt said, his interest growing a bit now.

“Yeah,” Jack assured him.

“Well, maybe there’s something to be salvaged from this night after all.”

Meanwhile, about four hundred air miles to the northwest, in Detroit, Michigan, another show was just wrapping up as well. The contrast between Matt’s show and the concert by Veteran could not have been greater.

Veteran was playing in famed Cobo Arena, on the north bank of the Detroit River, just a hundred feet from the Canadian border. Twelve thousand screaming fans filled the bleacher seats. Another two thousand were on the floor before the stage. A large screen showed live views of the show while a complex scaffolding hung above, flashing hundreds of computer controlled lights of different colors onto the five-man group. Intermittently, lasers would fire through clouds of carbon dioxide gas generated by machines fueled with dry ice. Explosions would echo from time to time as well, to the delight of the crowd.

Coop sat behind his drum set, his shirt off, his blonde hair flapping wildly about, sweat dripping from his body as he pounded his sticks down during the final number of the main set. He was playing his best, giving all his energy, all his heart, all his soul to the performance.

Unfortunately, his bandmates were not doing the same.

Coop was stone cold sober as he played. He was the only one of the five that could make that claim. He had learned the hard way back when he and Darren had started playing around with smoking weed, then drinking prior to performances when out on the road. Matt was a supreme asshole to the tenth degree, but his rule against imbibing for at least four hours prior to a show was a good rule that made a lot of sense. It was a rule that, when disregarded, had led to Darren getting his stupid ass blown through the air like a fucking soda can over a firecracker one night in Austin, Texas. It was the injuries from that incident that had led first Darren and then Coop himself to get started down the nasty road of heroin addiction. Coop had managed to walk away from that road. Darren had not, and, because he had not, he was now dead, buried in a cemetery in Heritage, California with only thirty years between the two dates on the tombstone.

There was no such rule in the band Veteran.

Every night, before every show, Mike Hamm, Jerry Hawk, Rob Wilkes, and Steve Carl drank no less than eight beers, snorted endless lines of cocaine, and smoked bonghit after bonghit while waiting backstage for their opening band to finish up. By the time they took the stage each night, all four of them were cruising far above the stratosphere and in considerably less than ideal shape for putting on a concert.

Hamm and Wilkes were the worst of the bunch, and the most prone to making the errors that went along with gross intoxication. Rare was the show where Hamm didn’t start playing the wrong part of the rhythm for at least one of the songs, or didn’t lead through a switchover the way he was supposed to, or sang out a backing vocal at the wrong time, when he wasn’t supposed to be singing. And Wilkes ... it was amazing that he made it through any of the shows at all. He could barely walk at times up on the stage. His lyrics were slurred and he often sang the wrong verses, or came in late, or missed his cue entirely. And his between-song banter! He couldn’t remember what the hell he was supposed to be saying half the time. When he did speak, his slurring was even worse and the audience could barely understand him. Twice now he had actually gone off into rants about anti-nuclear shit and banning the fur trade—topics that were most assuredly not scripted into the banter.

Coop had tried to reason with them, had tried to explain that they would put on a much better show if they could simply hold to a four hour window of sobriety once a day when they were scheduled to perform, but his pleas had fallen on deaf and hostile ears.

“That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard!” declared Hamm when the suggestion was first put to them. “We’re fucking rock stars! Getting wasted before a show is what we do.”

“Fuck yeah,” agreed Wilkes. “Our fans expect us to be fucked up.”

And the truth of the matter was, that actually seemed to be the case. Whenever there was a screw-up onstage, the fans cheered louder and held their lighters higher. The reviews of their shows—which Coop considered to be pathetic shadows of what they truly could be with a little discipline and effort—were almost universally positive. All of this pleased Aristocrat management in general and Larry Candid—their tour manager—in particular.

“You boys just keep doing what you’re doing,” Larry told them after each review came out. “You’re killing this tour. Absolutely fucking killing it!”

We’re killing it all right, Coop thought now, as they prepared to close out the Detroit show. Fucking Wilkes had just sung the wrong verse again, putting the third verse where the second one was supposed to be. Coop followed along the mistake, leading the rest of the band through it as well, but that meant that they’d skipped the entire bridge section and the guitar solo. And no one onstage even seemed to realize it!

The audience did, however. They were playing Off Track, the second release from the album, a song that was now in the midst of heavy airplay on the radio. A chorus of boos erupted when it was realized that they were closing out the song without the solo. But even the boos seemed playful and understanding, more amused than angry.

Coop sighed as he played out the outro to the tune. They had just started the second leg of the tour. There were two more to go after this one and he had even heard talk of an international tour of Europe and Asia. He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take.