Chapter 14A: The Core

Los Angeles, California
November 19, 1984

Jake's Corvette moved slowly down Hollywood Boulevard, caught in the thick Monday afternoon traffic. Jake was behind the wheel, feeling the usual frustration that came with driving a high performance vehicle he could rarely get out of second gear. Bill sat next to him, his thick glasses perched firmly upon his face, his hand playing with his crewcut, trying to determine if it was time to get another haircut or not. They had just finished a jam session, or rather, they had been forcibly pulled out of a jam session early by a National Records gopher who had shown up at their warehouse to give them a message. They were now on their way to the National Records building in Hollywood. Several blocks behind them were the two limousines carrying the rest of the band. The summons had asked for all of them, citing a "status meeting" as the reason.

"That asshole Crow keeps pressuring us to work harder, work longer, work faster," Jake complained as they sat through another red light for the second time. "He yells at us for wanting to take Thursday and Friday off so we can go home for Thanksgiving. And now, what does he do? He orders us to wrap up early today so he can tell us in an official meeting that we're not working fast enough."

"He does have a marked tendency to be counter-productive to our efforts," agreed Bill.

"We could have dialed in that new tune if we'd hit it just a little longer. We were getting there, you know what I mean? Now we'll have to spend an hour plugging back into it tomorrow." He sighed. "Oh well. What the fuck can you do?"

"Yep," said Bill with a nod. "Sometimes we're helpless before the actions of osmotic migration."

Jake interpreted that in his mind for a few seconds and finally decided — mostly through long experience of translating Bill's statements for others — that this meant 'what the fuck can you do?' as well. "Damn right, Bill," he said. "Well put."

The light turned green and they surged forward again, just clearing the intersection before the light turned back to yellow. Almost immediately, however, they were trapped in another section of gridlock waiting for the next light to turn.

"Coop and Darren are getting worse," Bill said.

"Yeah," Jake agreed. "They are. I don't think either one of them said a damn thing during the whole session today. They just did what they were told and played like they were told. It's making it harder to dial these tunes in."

Over the past few weeks, as the band tried frantically to come up with more tunes and to perfect them before the mid-December deadline for submission, Coop and Darren had become gradually but persistently less involved in each session. They would show up late, moving slowly, their actions lethargic and mechanical, their words few and far between. They had all but stopped contributing suggestions towards how the music should be played and mixed and, when asked to come up with a beat or a rhythm to back a particular beat, they would inevitably choose the simplest, least complex beat or rhythm possible.

"I never realized how much we relied on those two fuckheads to help set the backbeat for us until they stopped doing it," complained Matt during one of the multiple discussions the core members of the band had had on the subject. "It's hard enough coming up with the riffs and the mixes. Now we have to move their fucking fingers and hands for them as well to set the rhythm."

Both had been confronted on what the problem was and both had denied that there was a problem.

"We're doing everything we've always done," Darren would respond.

"Yeah," Coop would agree. "I don't see no problem. We're getting these tunes done, ain't we?"

They were, but the quality was starting to suffer, as was the speed of progression. There was also an insidious decline in the feeling of teamwork and camaraderie that had always marked their jam sessions in the past. It was starting to feel like a battle was being set up — a battle between the core and the rhythm.

"I think they're using heavy narcotics," Bill said now as the light turned green and they crept forward another fifty yards before it turned red again.

"Narcotics?" Jake asked, looking over at him. "Why do you say that?"

"Mostly the way they're acting," Bill replied. "We've all seen each other stoned and coked-out and drunk a multitude of times so I think we'd all know if any one or two or three of those things was the problem. Instead, they're acting quite atypically for the normal intoxicants we use. But remember when Darren was getting shot up with the Demerol before the shows?"

"How could I forget?"

"That's the way both of them are acting now," Bill said. "They move slow and they don't talk much. They're almost falling asleep sometimes while the rest of us are arguing over something. When you do talk to them, its like they're not completely cognizant of the words you're speaking to them."

"Hmm," Jake said, thinking about what Bill was saying and — now that it was pointed out to him — finding that he was right. They were acting a lot like that.

"And then there's the physical symptoms of narcotic intoxication," Bill said.

"The physical symptoms?"

He nodded. "Their pupils are always pinpoint sized now," he said. "It's not dark in the warehouse by any means, but its not bright either. Their pupils should be fairly normal sized, like yours and Matt's — about three millimeters, right?"

"You know what the normal pupil size is in millimeters?" Jake asked.

"Of course. Doesn't everyone?"

Jake let this go. "Go on," he said.

"Well... my point is, that your pupils and Matt's pupils, and, presumably, mine as well, tend to hover around three millimeters in the lighting conditions prevalent in the warehouse. Darren and Coop's pupils, however, tend to stay around a millimeter and a half no matter what the lighting is like. That's pretty small. It's also a side-effect of narcotic use."

Jake had never actually noticed this before, but now that it was mentioned to him, he did recall both Coop and Darren complaining at various times that the lights were too dim in the warehouse, that they were having a hard time seeing things because of this. Following his own train of logic he concluded that having your pupils be half the size that they were supposed to be would serve to make it seem dim when it really wasn't. It would be kind of like walking out of the bright sunshine into a normally lit room, only this wouldn't go away.

"There are a few other things too," Bill said.

"Such as?"

"I've noticed both of them have burns on their fingers and burn holes in their clothes. That's from cigarettes that they've forgotten about because they were too zonked-out to remember or that they've dropped the embers from. They don't notice it right away because of the pain-killing effects of the narcotic and the sedation of the drug effect and they end up with burns. I bet if you lifted their shirts up you'd see a dozen cigarette burns on their stomachs and chest."

"Hmm," Jake said. Again, not that it was mentioned, he had noticed several nasty looking burns on both of their hands, including nearly identical blistering burns between the index and middle fingers of their right hands — right where a cigarette would normally be held.

"And then there's their shirts," Bill said. "Have you noticed that they're both always wearing long-sleeved shirts now?"

"Yeah," Jake said. "I guess I have."

"They wear them even though it gets a bit warm in the warehouse. They don't want us to see their arms."

"So, when you're talking heavy narcotics here," Jake said, "you're not talking about just pills, are you?"

Bill shook his head. "Heroin," he said. "It's the only thing that makes sense."

"Jesus fucking Christ," Jake said. "And you can bet who is supplying them with it."

"And who is ultimately paying for it," Bill added.

The National Records building was now in sight, rising above the concrete of Hollywood Boulevard ahead. They made it through the next light and then settled in to wait for the next.

"A couple of heroin addicts in the band," Jake said. "That's just beautiful."

"I just thought you should know what I suspect is taking place," Bill said apologetically.

"Yeah, I know," Jake replied. "And there's not a goddamn thing we can do about it either."

By the time the five of them assembled in Crow's office for the meeting, Darren and Coop were a little livelier than they had been at the jam session. Though they were still quite a bit on the lethargic side, they were at least talking now, and in sentences of more than six syllables even. Their liveliness kicked up a few notches when Crow, as was his custom preliminary to any meeting, offered them a few lines of cocaine. Matt, Jake, and Bill all respectfully declined — as was their custom during official meetings of any kind with any record company representative — but Coop and Darren both snorted right up.

"Good fuckin' shit, Steve," Darren complimented as the drug began to take effect.

"Fuck yeah," agreed Coop. "You got anything to drink in this place?"

Coop and Darren were served twelve year old scotch over ice cubes with coke. Matt, Jake, and Bill all accepted alcohol-free drinks, not even bothering to cast discouraging looks at their companions. Things had gone way beyond that now.

"First of all," said Crow once the preliminaries were complete, "let me congratulate you all on the continuing success of Thrill, the album. As of ten o'clock this morning, total sales were just one hundred and fifty thousand shy of two million. My guess is that you'll go double-platinum late next week or early the week after."

"No shit?" said Matt.

"No shit," confirmed Crow.

"Wow," Matt said. "And you told us our songs sucked ass, didn't you? I bet we'd be at quadruple platinum by now if we would just listened to you and used those hacker songs."

Crow cast a mildly contemptuous look at Matt but didn't bother to answer him. "And as for Crossing The Line," he continued. "It's still hanging in at number thirty-two on the Top Forty and is still in the top ten most requested on rock radio stations nationwide. There's even some talk of it being nominated for record of the year."

"We'd never win it," Jake opined. "Tina Turner has it in the bag."

"Nevertheless," Crow said, "it would be a great honor just to be nominated, wouldn't it? The publicity angle alone would be almost priceless."

"Isn't Crossing The Line one of those songs you initially rejected?" Matt asked. "You know? One of the ones we fought and struggled and issued ultimatums to get included?"

"I seem to recall something like that," said Jake. "I'm not sure though. My memory gets fuzzy at times."

"Yes," confirmed Bill. "It was definitely among the forbidden artistic efforts we initially presented for consideration."

Crow sighed, shaking his head and feeling the ulcer in his stomach start to flair — as it always did when he had to deal with this troublesome but hugely profitable group of musicians. "All right, guys," he said. "You've made your point and hammered it home quite nicely. We were wrong about those tunes. Are you happy?"

"Rapturous," said Matt. "So what else is up?"

"Well, as you know," Crow said, "Rules Of The Road has been moving up the charts as well. This week it cracked the top ten at the number nine position."

"Rules Of The Road?" asked Matt. "No shit? Hey, Jake, isn't that another one of those songs that they initially rejected? I mean, there were so many of them I can't keep track. Refresh my memory for me."

"Yes," said Jake. "I believe they said it was too complex of a song, that there were too many changes in tempo for the average consumer to appreciate it."

"There is a lot of fucking tempo changes in it," Darren muttered.

Jake and Matt gave him a dirty look this time but otherwise ignored him. Crow did as well.

"Can we let the past drop?" Crow asked them.

"Who's bringing it up?" Jake asked innocently.

"In any case," Crow said, letting a little of his irritation slip through, "Rules is finding itself locked into the same stiff competition as Thrill. Namely, a tune by La Diferencia just happens to be moving up the chart at the same time."

This was a sour spot with Matt. "That fuckin' Venezuelan bitch again. Her and her crappy ass happy tunes."

"Uh... please don't say something like that in front of a member of the press, Matt," Crow warned. "But yes, La Diferencia seems to be acing you out of positioning yet again. Their new tune is called Young Love and the pop demographic are buying it up like mad. It's only been played on the radio for the past three weeks and already it's in the top ten — at number eight, I might add. That's one of the fastest selling singles of all time."

"And it's a stupid fucking song," Matt said. "Holy shit, have you heard this thing?" He sang, viciously mimicking the accent of the female lead singer. "Young love, burns like a fast flame. Hot and strong, but dies without tending."

Jake hadn't heard the song, but he had to agree that the lyrics — if Matt had sung them accurately — were pretty simplistic. But then, pop music was simplistic, wasn't it? He had, however, finally listened to La Diferencia's first hit, I Love To Dance, which had aced CTL out of the number one spot back in September. As much as he hated to admit it (and he hadn't admitted it, at least not to anyone other than himself) he had actually found himself liking the tune a little bit. Not just not hating it, but liking it, singing along with it after a few repetitions, and even appreciating some of the musical qualities of it. The most striking thing about the tune was the vocals put down by Celia Valdez, the lead singer. Her voice was beautiful. There was no other way to describe it. It was rich and pure, sweet sounding, with considerable range for a pop singer. She had a strong Hispanic accent that was noticeable in her vocals but not to the point of distraction. It came through just enough to remind you that she was not American or English. And though the rest of the song consisted of a bland, formulistic backbeat, passable piano, weak lead guitar, and the inevitable synthesizers, there was a strong acoustic guitar backing that spoke of someone with some talent strumming the strings.

"What do we know about this band?" Jake asked. "Where'd they come from? How'd they get here? Are they really Venezuelans or is Aristocrat making all that shit up?"

"No," said Crow, "La Diferencia is really from Venezuela from what I understand. They come from some small town in the middle of nowhere and got noticed by the Venezuelan music industry. They put out an album of traditional Latin tunes early last year and it sold well enough in Venezuela that some record exec from Aristocrat decided to meet with them. They did up some tunes in English with more Americanized musical backing and the rest is pretty much history. They're a hit."

"They're a flash in the pan," Matt opined. "Just like most of the rest of the crap you record people put out."

Crow didn't even bother denying this. Flashes in the pan, after all, translated to lots of money for the music industry, so they were not really considered a bad thing.

"What about the band itself?" Jake asked. "How many people are in it? Who plays what?"

"Why are you so interested in these suck-ass pop assholes?" Matt asked.

Jake shrugged. "Know thy enemy," he said.

"Well," said Crow, "it should be quite obvious that the talent of the band is Celia Valdez. Without her, the rest of them would still be herding cattle or processing cocaine or whatever it is they do in that place. She sings and plays acoustic guitar. Her brother — I don't know his name — is the lead guitarist."

"Lead guitar my ass," Matt said. "He can't even play a simple three chord riff. It's a bunch of repetitive two-chord shit that just backs up the piano and the synthesizers. He doesn't do any solos, intros, or even mixes. The acoustic is the real lead in those tunes and the electric is the backing."

"He's her brother?" Jake asked.

"Oh yes," said Crow. "And the piano player is her sister. It's kind of a family band, you see."

"They keep that sister on the piano in the background in the videos," Matt said. "Her face ain't bad — though not as good as the lead singer bitch — but they never show her body at all. I bet she's a fuckin' whale."

"And she's certainly no great talent on the piano either," put in Bill. "She sounds like a first year student reading from a piano book."

"It's just like the lead guitar," Matt agreed. "Simple, repetitive melodies over and over."

"Are the rest of the band members relatives?" asked Jake.

"The guy playing the drums is a second cousin from what I understand," Crow said. "The bass player is a family friend and the gossip columns have been hinting that he and Celia are romantically involved."

"You gotta respect him if he's tappin' into that shit," said Matt.

"Hell yeah," said Coop. "I'd buy him a drink for that."

"The synthesizer player is the only one who was not an original member of the group. They got him from some band in Caracas when Aristocrat signed them. They originally had two acoustic guitar players and a bongo player to go with the drummer. They kicked them out and replaced them with the synthesizer guy in order to convert to American style tunes."

"So their material was fed to them by Aristocrat?" Jake asked.

Crow didn't like that particular terminology very much but he nodded. "Most of it," he agreed. "I think they have two of their own songs on the album and the rest are composed by American songwriters who work for Aristocrat."

"Including the two hits they've had so far?"

"Exactly," said Crow, smiling. "Do you see now why we encourage you to utilize our songwriters for some of your material? Look what they're doing for La Diferencia."

"Let's not even start down this fucking road again," Matt said. "If Jake is done gathering his intelligence on the beaner band, maybe we can talk about the reason you dragged us out of a fairly productive rehearsal session?"

"I'm done," said Jake.

"Okay then," said Crow. "Let's get to the meat of the matter. How are we coming along with new compositions? Do you have at least ten songs composed yet?"

"Hardly," Matt said. "As of this afternoon, we have three tunes we're pretty happy with, although we're still tweaking them a little here and there, and three more we're in the beginning stages of."

Crow's face turned to instant unhappiness. "Just three?" he asked. "And only three more you're working with?"

"I believe I spoke plain English there, didn't I?" Matt returned.

Crow shook his head. "Gentlemen," he said. "I'm afraid that's not acceptable. You need to work faster. Your deadline is only three weeks away."

"We're doing the best we can, Steve," Jake said. "We told you back when we started this thing that you were pushing us a little too fast."

"But you also agreed you'd meet the deadline," he said. "At this rate you'll have, what? Maybe six songs complete? That's simply not good enough."

"We can only work so fast," said Matt. "We're not machines."

"I've already reserved studio time for you," Crow said. "You're scheduled to enter the studio for full-time recording duties on January 3. And even with that late date and working six ten-hour days a week it will be a chore to be able to finish the album by mid-April."

"We could be jamming right now," said Matt, "but instead, we're in here listening to you tell us we're not doing it fast enough."

"I hardly think three hours off from your schedule is the cause of this delay," Crow said. "You have to work longer and faster. You simply have to. I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist you work through the Thanksgiving holiday period. I know you all have plans, but the show must go on. We need those tunes by mid-December so we can start working on an order of recording and an album theme."

"Fuck that," said Matt. "We've been going eight hours a day without a break for the last three weeks. And that doesn't include the time Jake and I spend at night coming up with the new tunes in the first place. I haven't even scored any puss in a week and Jake here hasn't been laid in God knows how long."

"Three and a half weeks," Jake said sourly. "I've had to resort to porno mags."

"Me too," said Bill. "Did you see this month's Hustler? That punk-rock model on the cover is a premium self-stimulation visual."

"Oh fuck yeah," said Coop. "I got that one. She's hot."

"Did you see that other bitch in there?" asked Darren. "The one who can tie her pussy lips in a knot?"

"That's some seriously over-used pussy if she can do that," said Matt.

"Gentlemen!" Crow yelled, exasperated. "Could we keep on topic here?"

"Forgive us," said Matt. "But I'm sure you can see by our conversation that we're all seriously in need of a break. We need one and we're going to take one."

"I forbid it," Crow said.

"Yeah?" said Jake. "And I forbid the proliferation of nuclear warheads, but guess what? They still keep proliferating anyway. Sorry, Steve. Bill and I have our plane tickets already paid for — out of our allowance I might add — and we're going. Our families are getting together for the holiday at my parent's house, and we're going to be there."

"And I've got myself booked on a private two-day deep sea fishing charter out of Marina Del Ray," Matt said. "I've also got a premium piece of puss scheduled to go with me. So you can suck my hairy ass if you think I'm gonna hang out in a warehouse."

"Yeah," said Darren, emboldened by his peers' defiance. "Coop and I got shit to do too."

Crow looked up at the ceiling for a moment and took a few breaths. Finally he looked down at his musicians. "All right," he said. "I guess I can't stop you from taking your little vacation. But we still need those tunes. The three you have ready. Are they decent tunes?"

"They're more than decent," Jake said. "They're bad ass."

"That's the only fuckin' thing we put out," Matt said.

"Good enough," Crow said. "How about you focus on perfecting those tunes prior to leaving on your holiday. When you get back, work out the other three as quick as you can. They don't have to be perfect, they just have to be palatable."

"Palatable?" Matt asked, hating that very word.

"The three main tunes can be the releases — if they're as good as you claim. The other three can be the filler. For the other four..."

"Don't even think about suggesting your hacker tunes again," Matt warned.

Crow held up his hand in a gesture of peace. "I understand your position on that and I respect it. What I was about to suggest was that you do some cover tunes to fill in the rest of the album."

"Cover tunes?" Jake asked.

"That's right," Crow said. "You can even pick them out yourselves. We don't care what they are. Pick three or four tunes from the old days and re-work them into something new. Do some country and turn it into rock and roll. Do some polka and turn that into rock. We don't care. Just let us know what they are as soon as you decide on them and we'll start working on the legalities of letting you perform them. There are a few songs you are not allowed to do — Stairway to Heaven, Hotel California, and stuff like that — but pretty much anything else can be arranged. Is that acceptable?"

"No," Jake and Matt said in unison.

Crow let his head fall onto his desk. Slowly he lifted it back up. "Why not?" he asked wearily.

"We don't do cover tunes," Matt said simply. "That's not what we're about."

"Everyone does cover tunes when they're short on material!" Crow screamed. "Fucking everyone! Look at Van Halen! They had cover tunes on their very first album! Diver Down was full of them! Look at Motley Crue! They did a cover of Helter Skelter on Shout At The Devil! Even AC/DC and Led Zepplin did covers! There's not a goddamn thing in the world wrong with it!"