Chapter 13b: Lines of Persuasion

That night, after eating the dinner Manny had prepared for him — something with an unpronounceable French name that was made out of chicken breast and rich white wine gravy — Jake walked into the office of his new place. There, beside the computer desk and the filing cabinet was a black case that had been moved from his apartment in Heritage to his apartment in Hollywood to a storage house during his first tour to his first condo after it to another storage house during the second tour and now here, to his office in his second condo. The case hadn't been opened in more than two years.

He picked it up and sat on the couch across from the computer desk. He set the case down next to him and opened it. Inside was his old acoustic guitar — a Fender knock-off that he'd purchased in a Heritage music store way back in 1977. Of course the Brogan guitar company — his official sponsor — had given him several high-quality acoustic guitars as well as five electrics, but he had never even opened the boxes they'd come in. This guitar was the one he'd always used to compose with, the one he'd always strummed for the sheer pleasure of strumming, for the thrill of making music, for translating the rhythm and melody in his head into the air around him. He looked at it now. It was covered in a layer of dust despite the case. He strummed his thumb over the strings. The sound was muted and out of tune. He felt horrible as he looked at its condition, as he listened to its imperfection. It was almost like he'd abandoned a child.

Gently he lifted it from the case and set it on the couch. He spent the next thirty minutes polishing it, cleaning it inside and out and restringing it with a set of strings that had been stuffed into the box. He then took out his tuning fork and spent another fifteen minutes tuning it to perfection. He strummed it again, listening in satisfaction as the rich, perfect sound poured out.

"You sound good, old friend," he said with a smile, unaware that he was speaking aloud. "I promise to never leave you in the case that long again."

He sat back on the couch and put the guitar in his lap, his left hand going to the neck, his right twirling a guitar pick. The room was silent, the only sound the muted roar of a vacuum cleaner from somewhere else in the condo as Manny did his housework. He strummed a few times and then grabbed a G chord — his favorite for improvisation — and picked out a brief rhythm. He winced as he heard it.

"That really sucked," he muttered.

He sat back, staring at the blank computer monitor on the desk across the room. Had he lost the ability to compose music? Had he been out of practice at it so long that he no longer had the knack? How had he begun before, back in the days before National Records, before Shaver and his Bolivian flake cocaine, before national fame and groupies in every city?

"A concept," he said. "I began with a concept."

He let his mind flow over everything he'd been through in the past two years, over everything that had been going on in the world, just and unjust, good and bad. Images and emotions flashed by as if projected by a kaleidoscope, images of Angie and their brief relationship, emotions of leaving her to go on tour and never speaking to her again, never contacting her again. He thought of the giddy elation of leaving Heritage to go to Los Angeles and record their first album, of the thought that they'd actually been signed to a record label, that they were really going to be rock and roll stars. He thought of the gradual realization that was brutally slammed home when the lifestyle of the rock star turned out to be far from what he'd expected. He thought of long bus rides and the boredom that went with them. He thought of the road fatigue that settled in after a few weeks on tour, when you could no longer remember where you were or what day it was. He thought of the absolute thrill of performing on stage in front of thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of people, of hearing their cheers and adoration. He thought of the groupies he encountered out there, of the difficulty in resisting the primal urges the sight of their young bodies and willing sexuality invoked. He thought of horrid fatigue ridden hangovers after the post-show partying, hangovers that could only be driven back by the hair of the dog, by a few more drinks, by a few lines, a few hits. He thought of Mindy and the raw sexual infatuation she still invoked in him to this day, of the sweltering, drug-like allure of being with her, of touching her, of knowing that she wanted him to touch her, that she craved him as he craved her, of the glorious knowledge that he was fucking a woman that most of America would kill to fuck. And then his mind turned away from his own life and onto other things. He thought of marines in Beirut, blown to pieces by a suicide bomber. He thought of the marines who had survived this bombing being pulled out of Lebanon in response. He thought of other marines in another part of the world, landing in helicopters on the island of Grenada. He thought of a Korean Airlines 747 being blown out of the sky by Russian jet fighters, how the terrified passengers must have endured five or six minutes of still-living, horribly conscious terror before the spinning aircraft mercifully crashed into the sea. He thought of protestors lining up in front of nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons production facilities. He thought of the constant threat of sudden, extinction level nuclear war that hung over the world like a pall.

"Too much," he said, shaking his head, closing his eyes in frustration. "There's too much in there."

He lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, keeping the guitar on his lap but keeping his hands off of it. Yes, there were too many concepts to consider, too many ideas for him to focus on a single one. Maybe he should just give this up for the night and try again tomorrow. It was obvious that the conditions were not right for composition.

But he didn't get up. Instead, he let his mind go a little bit further, releasing the brakes and restrictions on it, letting it drop into a mode it hadn't been in for two years now. And soon, as it always had back in the day, it picked a concept out of the maelstrom of thoughts and began to focus on it.

It was a pleasant thought, one of the most pleasurable, perhaps the most pleasurable, he'd experienced over the past two years, something he'd experienced every night out on the road. It was the moment when they first stepped onto the stage at each performance, when the lights came on, when the crowd saw them for the first time and they began to play. To Jake, the applause, the screams, the appreciative yells and whistles that took place at this instant of the show were the best, the most gratifying. They were the yells and screams and applause of people that had been waiting for days, weeks even for this moment. And every night, when he heard this, it didn't matter how tired he was, how hungover or pissed off or burned-out, it always brought him to life. It was like... like... like he'd found himself again, his purpose, his reason for being.

"Found myself," he muttered, setting his half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. "Yeah."

He picked up the guitar and grabbed the G chord again. He began to pick at the strings, throwing out a simple melody as it formed in his head.

"Found myself," he said, half-singing those words this time.

But it wasn't just that he'd found himself at the moment, was it? No, not at all. It happened every night — every performance anyway. And no matter how many times it did happen, the sensation remained strong, the feeling of finding one's purpose.

"Again," he said. "Found myself again. I've found myself again."

He repeated this phrase, fully singing it now, emphasizing the last word, and strumming out the developing rhythm as he did so. "I've found myself again."

He liked that thought, could see the potential it held. His mind focused more intently on it and while it did so, his fingers continued to strum the melody over and over, twisting it a little, throwing in some chord changes, firming it up. And, as always, the music focused his mind even tighter, letting him recall everything about that moment, letting him put into words exactly what that moment felt like.

"The lights come on..." he sang, slowing the melody a bit. "The lights come on, I hear that roar... and I've found myself again." A furious bit of guitar strumming and then, "I've found myself again!"

He stopped, taking a few breaths, the words he'd just composed running over and over in his head along with the melody.

"Yeah," he whispered, smiling, grinning from ear to ear in fact. "Fuck yeah!"

He set the guitar down and walked over to the desk, pulling open one of the drawers. He took out a pen and a notepad and scratched out the lyrics he had come up with so far. True, it was only thirteen words, but more would soon join it, of that he had every confidence. He knew, of course, that his efforts might be in vain, that the song, the concept he was now working on might end up sucking ass when all was said and done, might end up a balled up piece of paper in the wastebasket, but that didn't matter. He was composing. He hadn't lost it after all.

He went back to the couch, setting the notepad and pen down next to him and picking up the guitar. The melody and the words were still dominating the forefront of his brain. He began to play again, singing out the words he had so far.

"The lights come on, I hear that roar, and I've found myself again. I've found myself again!"

It was twelve-thirty when he finally went to bed. For the past three hours he had sat there on the couch, strumming and singing, thinking and composing, changing and changing back. During that time he didn't smoke, he didn't get up to go to the bathroom, he didn't drink or eat. The notebook, which he locked in the safe next to his marijuana and cocaine, now had the first three pages covered with lyrics and musical notes. The first verse, the chorus, and the beginning of the bridge were already composed.

While Jake was finding himself again, sixteen blocks away, on the twenty-eighth floor of another upper-class high-rise condo building, Matt was doing the same. He did things a little differently than Jake. In the first place, he was incapable of composing new material while sober. To prepare for this first attempt in two years he had smoked six hits of potent greenbud from the old plastic bong he used to use when he was a teenager.

"All right," he said, grinning on his living room couch as he felt the massive surge of THC obliterating his higher brain functions. "Now let's write some fuckin' music!"

The instrument he used to compose with was different from Jake's as well. Jake's tunes were all acoustic guitar based and any one of them could be translated back to its base form if so desired. Even the hardest rocking of Jake's songs, like Descent Into Nothing or Living By The Law, could be sung around a campfire by a single guitarist or even played out on a piano. Matt's songs, on the other hand, were all based on power chords on a distorted electric guitar and virtually none of them could be translated into an unaccompanied acoustic format, at least not without changing the basic melody.

What this all meant was that while Jake was sitting in relative quiet with his old acoustic on his lap, Matt had taken down his beloved Stratocaster and plugged it into a thirty-five watt amplifier and connected a series of effects pedals. He spent almost thirty minutes playing with the distortion levels and the effects and then turned the volume on the amp itself up to eight. He began to play, warming up with a series of riffs and solos that were loud enough to cause the pictures on his wall to vibrate on their hooks.

His new manservant, Emil (his last manservant had refused to serve him again) came rushing out of his bedroom within seconds of Matt's initial solo. He had to scream "Mr. Tisdale!" six times before his voice finally made it to Matt's ears.

"What the fuck you want?" demanded Matt after silencing the guitar. "Can't you see I'm composing?"

"Begging your pardon, sir," Emil said, "but the noise! The neighbors will complain."

"Fuck the neighbors," Matt said. "And don't ever refer to my music as noise again, you dig?"

"Uh... yeah, I dig," he said. "But, sir, the... uh... music you're making is sure to..."

"I'll stop when the cops show up," Matt said. "That's a rule that's always worked for me in the past. Now tell me what you think of this riff. Too heavy? Or not heavy enough?"

And with that, he ground out a crunching, multifaceted riff that reverterbrated throughout the floor above and below his.

Emil didn't answer. He simply fled back to his bedroom, worried for his immigration status when the cops finally did arrive.

Matt chuckled under his breath and continued playing. He played with different riffs, trying to come up with something new, something original, something that sounded like nothing he or anyone else had ever done before. After about twenty minutes he hit upon such a thing. It was a complex five-chord riff that blasted out of the amp like lightning from a storm cloud. He tweaked it a little here and there, refining and modifying, increasing the power in some parts and decreasing in other, playing with the distortion levels until he had something that made him smile with accomplishment.

"Yeah," he said, his ears ringing from the amp, his head nodding in satisfaction. "Now that is what I'm fuckin' talkin' about!"

He began to play again, doing it over and over, getting it down, imprinting it in his brain for all time. Once the base riff was there, he began to modify it again, to make it even more complex. Through it all, in his mind, he envisioned what the riff would sound like backed by Jake's guitar, by Nerdly's piano, and with the drum and bass beat keeping time. Once that was done, he knew he had another hit on his hands, something that a crowd would scream for. Now it was time to come up with some lyrics to go with it.

What to write about? he wondered as he put the guitar down and took another three hits of greenbud. What to write about? His mind automatically turned towards the three things he loved to write about more than anything: sex, gross intoxication, and violence. Like Jake, he cast his mind backwards over the last two years, trying to focus on a concept that fit into one of these categories. And, also like Jake, he eventually locked onto an aspect that had to do with life on the road.

The groupies. For him, this was one of the most enjoyable aspects of being on the road. He loved playing before a crowd, loved the applause — initial and final — and loved the adoration that swept over him at such moments, but he also loved the gratuitous sex that he was provided at the end of each show by the young, slutty, and gloriously attractive groupies the security team picked and chose and admitted to the backstage area. He loved everything about them — their namelessness, their youth, their willingness to do anything and everything, up to and including dyking out with each other or even pissing on each other for his pleasure.

"They serve me," he said, ripping out his new riff again. "They fuckin' serve me!"

He played the riff a few more times, variations of this phrase running through his head, searching for a lyrical rhythm that went with the music. At last he came up with one.

"You're here to service me," he sang as the riff ground out. "You're here to service me. You're here to ser-vice me! You're here to ser-vice me!"

He could hardly hear his own voice over the sound of the guitar, but that didn't matter. He heard it in his mind and he liked it. He envisioned that phrase as a repetitive lyric, sung primarily by the back-up singers — himself, Bill, Coop, and Darren. Jake would sing other lyrics in between the repetitions. Other lyrics... other lyrics... like...

"I want you down on your knees," Matt sang, imagining Jake's voice and then imagining his own again, mixed with the others. "You're here to ser-vice me." He nodded in satisfaction and then stopped long enough to write that down on a piece of paper. He then began working on more Jake lyrics to go between the service me lines.

"Bring your girl-friend please," he sang. "Just don't bring no disease. Yeah, you're here to ser-vice me! You're here to ser-vice me! No talking, no names, please! You're here to ser-vice me! I like to come clean you see! You're here to ser-vice me!"

He played and sang, pausing every few minutes to write down the particular lyrics he thought were keepers (he rejected the ones about "no cottage cheese" and "watch those teeth if you please"). By the time the LAPD finally pushed their way into the condo — assisted by the building manager (who had pounded on the door, unheard for more than twenty minutes) and his passkey — he had all of the chorus sequences written and had started on the main lyrics.

The entire band got together two days later for their first official jam session in more than two years. They met in their rehearsal warehouse where all of their touring equipment had been set up and attached to the soundboard and their basic recording set. Jake plugged his old Les Paul into the amps while Matt plugged in one of the Brogan brand Stratocaster knock-offs he'd been provided. Bill's piano was the electric one instead of the grand, the idea being simplicity in sound reproduction instead of showmanship.

Darren was ten minutes late and looking a little haggard. Most of his hair had grown back, although it wasn't as long as it had been before, and he had only minimal scarring from his encounter with the explosives. He still wore the earplug in his right ear, however, because loud noise allegedly still bothered him, as did a rampant, chronic case of tinnitus (ringing in the ear) from his damaged eardrum. He was also quite obviously stoned and under the influence of narcotic painkillers. Neither Jake nor Matt commented on it and didn't really care anyway. This was a jam session, after all, not a rehearsal, and during jam sessions, marijuana intoxication was not only allowed, it was mandatory.