Chapter 3

Heritage, California
October 4, 1981

It was Friday night and D Street West was packed with about as many people as it could physically hold. The air was hot and stale, choked with cigarette smoke, the odor of sweat and beer pervading every corner. The babble of hundreds of conversations and the shouts of drunken voices drowned out the recorded music playing from the overhead speakers. Behind the bar, six bartenders struggled to keep up with the hordes of customers pushing and shoving to get close enough to order another round. Occasionally, a fight would break out although they tended to be brief, mostly harmless struggles that were broken up by bystanders before they could escalate into something more dangerous. There simply wasn't the room to have a good fight. Not on a night that Intemperance was playing.

The opening band had been Airburst, a group that actually displayed something like talent. Jake had spent a few minutes talking to them before their set-something he made a point of doing with each band that opened for them-and had learned that their members were made up of the pick of the litter of three other bands that had been making the second-rate club circuit over the past year. They had a southern blues rock sound, sort of a cross between Lynard Skynard and Molly Hatchet, not exactly original, but not exactly a knock-off either since the lead singer was a woman. The crowd had cheered for them in a manner that seemed considerably more sincere than that displayed for most of the openers in this venue. But they did not ask for an encore. Intemperance remained the only opening act to have ever achieved that distinction.

At ten minutes to showtime Jake and Matt were in the backstage alcove looking out over the crowd. This was something both of them enjoyed doing, Matt so he could scope out likely groupie prospects for after the show, Jake because he never tired of marveling over the fact that so many people had come to see them play. He still felt some stagefright before each performance-some of those nagging, irrational fears refused to go away-but it was nothing like the intensity it had been before that first performance. They were now seasoned performers and they put on a damn good show. A thousand people had told them that a thousand times and they knew it to be true.

There had been a few mishaps of course. When you performed live, things got screwed up every now and then. It was just a fact of life. The most common thing to happen were dropped or broken guitar picks in the middle of a song. Matt and Jake had both done this several dozen times apiece now. There had also been the time that Jake's A string had snapped in the middle of Worship Me, a semi-ballad with lots of finger-picking of that particular string. Coop had broken drumsticks half a dozen times (though he had never, not even once, dropped one, not even while twirling them around or throwing them into the air and catching them). Darren had once stepped on his power cord, ripping it out of his bass and nearly falling to his face before recovering his balance. And Bill had once gone a little overboard while running his hands across his keyboard and had accidentally turned his volume switch all the way up, creating a feedback whine that had been nearly loud enough to shatter glass.

They had learned to recover from these mishaps quickly and professionally. In the case of the lost guitar picks, the band had gotten so good at covering for it that no one in the audience-save other experienced musicians-usually even noticed. Whoever lost it would switch to hitting their strings with their fingers for the remainder of the song. If there was no break planned between the song where the pick had been lost and the next, the band would insert a break, pausing long enough for Jake to throw out a "is everyone havin' a good time" and for a new pick to be produced. In the case of the drumstick, Coop would simply miss a beat with that hand long enough to reach down and grab another from a stash he kept in a pocket between the two bass drums. He had become so proficient at this maneuver that the audience usually never noticed this either.

The things the audience did notice-the volume on the piano, the broken guitar string, the forcible removal of the power cord-the band tried not to dwell on. They simply recovered as quickly and nonchalantly as possible and went on with the show. Jake, as the voice of the band, had discovered a natural talent for making humorous comments when such things occurred.

"That's a new step Darren's working on there," he'd said after the cord tripping incident, while Darren blushed and scrambled to plug himself back in. "As you can see, it needs just a little more work."

The audience had laughed and a moment later Coop banged the sticks together and launched them into the next song.

When Bill created the feedback whine, making everyone in the house wince and cover their ears as 130 decibels washed over them, everything went quiet afterward, the audience stunned and a little shocked at this obvious malfunction of performance. Jake waited until things were at their quietest and then yelled into his mic, "Do we fuckin' rock, or what?"

Once again, laughter had erupted, followed by cheers, followed by resumption of the set as if nothing had happened.

Perhaps the most shining example of covering for a mistake had been when Jake's guitar string had broken. "Looks like I played that one to death," he told the audience-that after nearly two minutes of converting the remaining acoustic portions of the song into a rhythm that did not require the A string to be struck. He patted his Les Paul affectionately. "Can ya'll hang on a sec while I fix this thing up?"

And while he'd gone backstage and hurriedly installed a new A string, the rest of the band kept the crowd entertained with an impromptu jam session in which Matt and Bill played dueling solos while Darren and Coop kept rhythm. Once his string was in place and tuned as well as he could get it by listening without amplification, Jake had gone back out, plugged in, and joined them, inserting his own acoustic solos seamlessly into theirs and adjusting his tuning knob in between them. When he was tuned to his satisfaction, he gave a nod to the rest of the band and they wrapped up the unplanned, unrehearsed performance with an equally unplanned and unrehearsed flourish of instruments. The crowd had cheered wildly and given a standing ovation. When they quieted down, Intemperance fell back into the rest of the set they'd rehearsed, playing it out to perfection.

Such occurrences, however, were very much the exception to the rule. Most of their sets went off flawlessly, the music pouring out of them just as they'd rehearsed it. They changed their sets around every two weeks, usually cycling in new tunes they'd come up with once a month. They now had a bank of thirty-three original songs, all but two of which had been performed at least once before their fans. Tonight was the second night of a new cycle, the first night that It's In The Book would be performed for the D Street West crowd.

"Look at that one right there," Matt told Jake, pointing with his lit cigarette out into the crowd. "That brunette there in the purple blouse."

"Which one?" Jake asked. "There's like five hundred people out there."

"Over there by the bar," Matt said, pointing a little firmer. "Standing next to that fat bitch and that faggy-looking dude with the crew-cut. You see her?"

Jake dutifully turned his attention in that direction and, after a moment of searching, found the girl he was referring to. "I see her," he said. "And I believe that blouse is what the ladies call lavender, not purple."

Matt shook his head in disgust. "Fuckin' lavender? Jesus Christ, Jake. You smokin' dicks now? No dude should know what lavender is."

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," Jake said. "Anyway, what about her?"

"She's my bitch for the night," Matt said. "I'm gonna fuck her."

"Does she know this yet?"

"No, but she will. Look how shy she looks. How innocent. She might even be a cherry."

"Awfully confident, aren't you?" Jake asked. "What if she doesn't stay for the after-gig festivities?"

Matt shrugged. "Then she'll miss out on her golden opportunity to have her furrow plowed by the great and powerful Matt Tisdale. Her loss. I have a Plan B already sighted in just in case." He pointed over at the other end of the barroom. "That blond librarian looking bitch. See her? Standing next to that slut in the red mini-skirt?"

Jake didn't see her but pretended like he did. "Uh huh," he said. "And what if the first chick does stay for the party but doesn't want to boff you? You ever think of that?"

Matt looked genuinely appalled by this suggestion. "No," he said simply. "I never thought of that. Why would I?"

Jake didn't press the point any further. He knew Matt was right. So far, he had never been turned down once he set his sights on a particular female. He had even gone through a period where he and Coop were betting $20 dollars on that very subject, with Coop picking a woman at the after-gig party and Matt having to fuck her before the night was out. Matt had a one hundred percent win rate so far and it had got to the point where he had to offer ten to one odds just to get Coop to take the bet.

"And what about you?" Matt asked. "You gonna get your weenie wet tonight?"

"I don't know," he sighed. "I'm still a little fucked over about the whole Michelle thing."

"That didn't stop you from nailing that Brooke Shields looking bitch on Wednesday. I was proud of you, man. Fucking proud. You finally took advantage of the pussy that's due people of our stature and talent. How was she, anyway? I've seen her at a couple of our shows and thought about giving her a ride myself."

"She was uh... well, very experienced at sexuality," he replied. "But I was drunk and stoned. I wouldn't have done it otherwise."

"You'll be drunk and stoned tonight too," Matt reminded him.

Jake thought that over for a second. "I guess you're right," he said, smiling.

"That's my fuckin' brother," Jake said, slapping him on the back. "I knew you were a man. You oughtta call up that Catholic bitch while you're fucking some slut tonight and put the phone down by her pussy so she can hear the squishing while you laugh at her. That'll show her she's been replaced."

"That would show her all right," Jake said, knowing he would never do such a thing no matter how drunk or how mad he was, also knowing that Matt would do it even if he were sober and only mildly peeved.

That sat in silence for a bit, Matt smoking, Jake drinking from his ice water. Finally Jake brought up the subject that had been bothering both of them. "Darren is stoned out of his mind," he said.

"I know," Matt said. "I can smell it all over him for one thing, but that's not even it. I can tell just by looking at him. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, we've gotten stoned together a thousand times. We know what he acts like, what he fuckin' looks like when he's flyin'. Does he really think he's fooling us?"

"Yeah, I think he does," Jake said.

"Moron," Matt said, shaking his head.

Throughout their year of playing together onstage, the members of Intemperance had changed and evolved in many ways. Their wardrobe, their playing styles, their onstage antics, the between-song banter, even their music itself had all undergone a shift as they gained experience performing. One thing that had not changed, however, was the rule about using intoxicating substances before rehearsing or performing. Matt and Jake both liked to think of this as a sacred decree. But over the past six weeks or so, they had noticed that Darren seemed to be throwing this rule to the wayside. He would show up for rehearsals higher than a kite, claiming that he had smoked some hours before but was fine now. Worse, he was now starting to slip out somewhere before their live performances and come back reeking of pot, his eyes half-lidded, his speech thick and slow in the way it only got when he was stoned. Tonight had been the first night that Matt-as the leader of the group-had actually called him on it. Darren had simply denied it absolutely and unwaveringly.

"Dude, I'm not stoned," he said. "I wouldn't burn before a show. You know that."

"I can smell it all over you, asshole!" Matt yelled back, exasperated and pissed.

"That doesn't mean I've been smoking it," Darren protested. "Jesus, man. I walked by some people out back that were toking up and the smoke got on me."

They had gone round and round about this for almost ten minutes before Matt had finally walked away in frustration-an emotion that was almost foreign to him.

"What are we gonna do about it?" Jake asked now. "I mean, this can't go on. I'm pretty sure he was lit when he tripped over his power cord."

"Yeah," Matt said. "He was."

"And if this keeps up, he's gonna have Coop smoking out with him before long. You know how close those two are. You know how Darren's the fuckin epitome of peer pressure."

"I know," Matt agreed, dropping his cigarette into a soda can. "I've known Darren since we were freshmen in high school so I know what he's like and what he's capable of. This isn't going to continue. Mark my word."

"What are you going to do?"

"He's an old friend and I hate to do it, but I'm gonna have to lay down the law with him. I'll take him aside tonight and let him know that if he shows up stoned for either a rehearsal or a performance one more time... if we even think he might be stoned at a rehearsal or a performance, then he's out of the band."

Jake thought this was very harsh, but he didn't disagree. They couldn't afford to have anyone giving less than their all. "Do you think he'll believe you?"

"If he wants to push the issue, I'll let him know where he really stands. He's a fuckin' bass player. He's pretty good but he isn't outstanding or anything. He can easily be replaced. If we put an ad in the paper asking for a bass player to perform with Intemperance, we'll have two hundred applications the next day and I guarantee you that at least one out of every ten of them will be both better and more reliable than Darren."

"And what if he tries to get Coop to go with him if we kick him out?"

Another shrug. "If you were Coop, would you go with him?"

"No," Jake said immediately. "I wouldn't."

"And I don't think Coop will either. And even if he does, the same thing applies to him. Coop is better at drumming than Darren is at bass, but he's not Jon Bonham or anything. If we put an ad out for a drummer, we'd have five hundred applications and one out of every twenty would be as good or better than Coop. When you come right down to it, those two positions in the band are nothing but support. Its you, me, and Nerdly that make this band what it is. Agree?"

"Yeah," Jake said. "I think that's a fair assessment."

"So if the fuckin' rhythm section is having a problem with the buds, then we can kick their asses out of here if they don't stay in line. And right now, that's the situation we face. I'll tell Darren how it is tonight, you support me, and this thing will work itself out. Trust me."

Jake nodded. "I'll support you," he said.

O'Donnel appeared a moment later, his signature cocaine glint firmly affixed upon his face. Darren, Coop, and Bill trailed behind him, Darren still looking sullen and hurt from the argument with Matt.

"You ready to do it, boys?" O'Donnel asked, putting his chubby arms around Jake and Matt's shoulders.

"We're ready," Matt said, casting an evil glare at Darren. "Aren't we?"

Darren refused to meet his eyes. Yeah," he muttered. "Ready for Freddie."

O'Donnell's smile faded a bit as he picked up on some of the tension. He seemed to debate saying something and then decided not to. "All right then," he said instead. "Let's get the show on."

The crowd cheered as he walked out on the stage, quieted while he made a lengthy and almost syrupy introduction, and then erupted into out and out pandemonium when the name Intemperance was spoken. The band did their now customary hands on hands symbol of camaraderie and then hit the stage. The cheers, whistles, and shouts intensified as they picked up their instruments and took their places.

"You ready to rock and roll?" Jake asked the crowd, serving the dual purpose of riling them up and performing a level check on his microphone. Since they were the headliner band they had no opportunity for a sound check prior to the show. They had to rely on pre-setting all of the equipment beforehand.

The crowd was ready to rock and roll. Intemperance obliged them. Coop did a four count with the drumsticks and they began to bang out their opening number for this cycle, Waste Not, Want Not-one of Matt's hard-driving tunes that dealt with the subject of never turning down sex or drugs when they were offered.

Jake's fingers picked out the backing riff with ease, moving from fret to fret. When the cue came around, his voice burst out of his mouth, the words flowing freely, effortlessly, the volume and timbre shaped to perfection. The crowd settled down a bit and enjoyed the music, most of them swaying to the beat and tapping their feet, more than a few actually singing along. When Matt played the first guitar solo of the night-a fast and furious finger-tapping number-the crowd stood and cheered, raising their arms and pumping them.

They ended the song as they did all of them-with a tremendous concerto of drums, guitars, piano, and bass chords. After a brief pause to let the crowd cheer in appreciation, there was another four count and they launched into Descent Into Nothing, a tried and true favorite at D Street West.

Matt, Jake, and Darren all moved around much more than they used to. In their earlier gigs they had tended to stay near their respective microphone stands, shuffling back and forth a little, but only shifting position during the guitar solos, when Jake would step back near Darren and Matt would step forward. These days both Matt and Darren kept their animation levels high while Jake sang, moving back and forth behind him, occasionally playing back to back or shoulder to shoulder. Jake did the same when his mouth was not required on the microphone, stepping back and joining the other two, occasionally doing a little spin maneuver. When it was time for a guitar solo, Matt would bend backward, or forward, or would force the neck of his instrument up or down, making it look as if the act of producing the music was a painful, difficult endeavor. This showmanship added an element of spontaneity to each performance, especially since Matt forbid them from choreographing or rehearsing such maneuvers in advance. They never went overboard-there was no dropping to the floor and scooting along on their buttocks, no licking of the guitar strings, no leaps from the amplifier stacks-instead, they simply let the rhythm and their instincts guide them. In this way, each Intemperance concert was unique.

As Jake performed, looking out over the crowd and making eye contact with person after person, the lyrics coming out of his mouth and transmitting through the amplifier, his hands moving up and down on his guitar, bending and pressing the steel strings with his left, his pick or his fingers hitting them in a series of complex rhythms with his right, all was copasetic in his world. Playing music for a crowd was what he loved doing most of all, making even sex pale in comparison. It was a difficult job-keeping his lyrics straight, keeping his riffs in time-but it was one he was good at and he thrilled with each song that went off without a hitch. The high it gave him was more powerful, more satisfying than even the best weed, the most potent cocaine, the smoothest booze. Thoughts of Michelle and their break-up, the sense of loss, pain, and incomprehension that had run through him constantly, they were gone while he played, as were thoughts of how he was going to make his next rent payment, how he was going to afford new tires for his car, whether or not his parents were right and he should start trying to put his talent to better use. There was no room in his mind for anything but the show, anything but the crowd he was playing for, for the music he was helping to make. Like a fighter pilot on a mission, an athlete in the middle of a game, he was in the bubble, and nothing else mattered.

By the halfway point of the set, after a solid thirty minutes of playing under the hot stage lights, Jake was dripping with sweat. His long hair was damp with it. His white, button-up shirt was sticking to his chest and back. He was not breathless, however. Not even close to it. After a year of dancing and jumping and singing and playing three nights a week for sixty to seventy minutes at a time, his body was actually in the best shape it had ever been in. Being a rock music performer was the equivalent of taking a high-impact aerobics class, complete with the endorphin rush that came when things really got smoking.

The endorphins were flowing freely as they did their last song of the set, Who Needs Love?-one of their most popular numbers. They ended the song with a longer and more potent flourish, drawing it out and then finally hitting the last chords. They let the last hums of the instruments slowly fade away as the crowd erupted into cheers and applause once again.

"Thank you," Jake said, tossing his guitar pick into the crowd. "Thank you very much and goodnight."

The band gathered together, linked arms, and took a bow. They walked back to the alcove and the cheering continued, growing louder even. This was followed by the stomping feet and the cries of more, more, more.

All five of them drank mightily from their water glasses, alleviating a little of their thirst. They allowed themselves two minutes to rest and to hear the glorious sound of the crowd calling for their return and then Matt said, "Let's do it." They hit the stage again.

Jake did a brief introduction of their new song-It's In The Book-and they launched into it, the fast-paced riff from Matt's guitar getting everyone's hands clapping and waving even before Jake began to sing. They then did their final number of the night, one of their raunchier and hard-driving tunes, Matt's The Thrill of Doing Business. Another drawn out, carefully rehearsed ending, another group bow, and they left the stage for good this time. There were shouts for another encore-there always were-but they died reluctantly away when O'Donnell turned up the houselights and took the stage himself.

"Intemperance everybody!" he shouted. "Let's hear it for them one more time!"

The crowd gave it up once more, as requested.

The band gathered backstage and sat down near their equipment cases. This was the cool down period, when they let their heartbeats return to normal, when they let some of the sweat dry up. They talked about how the show had gone-all thought it had gone exceptionally well tonight-while they guzzled water and smoked cigarettes (all except for Bill, who still hadn't picked up that particular habit).

"Well," Matt said after fifteen minutes, "let's go get it done."

"Yep," Coop said with a sigh. "This is the fun part."

They trudged back to the stage to clean up their mess. The crowd had thinned considerably with the end of the show but there was still upwards of three hundred people out there, smoking, drinking, and dancing to the jukebox music. As always, those remaining gave a cheer as the band reappeared. They all waved back casually, acknowledging it, and then went about the task of breaking down their show.

As part of his closing remarks each night, O'Donnell always asked the crowd to please refrain from disturbing the musicians during the stage clearing process. As a result, they were pretty much left alone as they disassembled the drum set and hefted amps and wound up electrical cable. Occasionally a fan near the stage would tell them "great show" or "you guys rocked tonight", but no one seemed to expect an extended conversation at this point in the evening.

Once all the equipment was packed into the two vans and secured, they went back inside through the backstage door. Adjacent to the bar supply storage room was a small locker room for the performing bands' use. Since it only contained two showerheads the five of them matched quarters for bathing order. Jake and Coop came out first and second tonight so they stripped off their sweaty stage clothes and fired up the nozzles.

Jake, who had never been a fan of the locker room environment, showered quickly, running a bar off soap over his skin, dumping some shampoo and conditioner on his hair, rinsing, and then vacating for Matt, who had drawn third place. He dried off and put on a fresh pair of jeans and a tattered black T-shirt. He combed out his long hair and then slipped back into the tennis shoes he had worn on stage.

As he was heading for the door Matt passed him, fresh out of the shower now, completely naked except for a towel slung over his shoulders. "We're gonna get us some fuckin' cherry pussy tonight," he said. "How's that sound?"

Jake didn't answer him. He knew Matt wasn't talking to him. He was talking to his own penis-an instrument he conversed with almost as much as his guitar. Jake shook his head, told his bandmates he would see them out there, and then slipped out the door and into the hallway.

When he walked through the service door that led from the backstage area into the main lounge, there was the usual crowd of people loitering around. Dozens of females and about half as many males made a point of staking out this location after the show in the hopes of being among the first to socialize with a band member. This used to overwhelm Jake in the early days-how everyone wanted to talk to him, to touch him, to be near him-but he was used to it now.

No less than twenty people called out his name in asynchronous harmony. Hands descended on his shoulders to pat him. He was told it had been a great show in a dozen different ways. They pressed all around him, mostly the girls, vying for his attention. Several of the closer girls made a point to "accidentally" rub their breasts on his arm or on his back. He acknowledged as many people as he could, shaking a few hands, throwing out a few words of thanks and a few other small commentaries. He kept a slight smile on his face-the signature shy smile people had come to love about him. As he walked towards his first priority-a stiff drink-the gathering moved with him. As he approached the bar, those in front of him and those who were not part of the gathering but were merely waiting at the bar for their own drinks, parted to either side, leaving him a clear path.

"Wassup, brother?" asked Mohammad Hazim, a full-time bartender for D Street West and a part-time struggling guitarist whom Jake had taken under his wing over the last few months. Mohammad's parents had come to Heritage from Iran in 1962, when he was just two years old. They were devout Muslims who still wore the dress of their native land and were quite horrified by their only son, who had gone to school in the Heritage Public School system and had become fully Americanized by the age of thirteen.

"Wassup, Mo?" Jake asked, holding out his right hand and exchanging a soul brother shake. "You comin' to the party tonight?" Mohammad was one of the select few who fell into the personal friend of the band category in regards to Matt's parties. As such, he had an open invite for every one and he did not need to bring an intoxicating substance along for admission (although he often did anyway).

"Bet your ass," he said, taking a water glass down from above the bar and filling it with ice. He poured a triple shot of 151 proof rum into it, filled the rest up with Coke, and then handed it over to Jake, not asking for payment on a drink that would've cost anyone else four bucks. "Here ya go. You good on smokes?"

"For the moment," Jake assured him.

"Yell me down if you need anything."

"I will," Jake said. "Thanks, Mo."

Mo moved off down the bar to serve some of the paying customers and Jake pulled out one of his cigarettes. Two of the guys moved forward to light it for him, both whipping out Zippos. The larger of the two-a blonde, surfer type in a Van Halen T-shirt-got his up and ignited first. Jake accepted the light from him and spent a few moments conversing with him. It turned out the guy was a guitarist as well-probably a hopeless hacker-and wanted to know details on several chords that Jake had played. Jake remained polite and cordial as he answered his questions.

"Thanks, dude," the surfer told him about halfway through the smoke. "Good fuckin' gig tonight. You guys rock."

"Thanks," Jake said. "We try."

The surfer had a laugh at that and disappeared into the crowd. He was instantly replaced by one of the girls, who wanted to know just how one went about securing an invitation to the after-gig party.

Over the next thirty minutes, Jake was promised sex ten times by ten different girls-one of whom had offered to take him out to her car right at that moment and fuck him in the backseat. During this time he consumed two and a half of Mo's potent drinks and as the alcohol began to surge into his brain he went from politely deflecting each offer to seriously considering which one of the girls he was going to take to Matt's. After all, he'd done it the other night and had enjoyed it immensely, hadn't he? Why shouldn't he enjoy it tonight as well? It wasn't like he had a girlfriend any longer.

Chapter 4 »