Rock 'n Roll Heaven excerpt

     Whew! The past few days have passed like a whirlwind. On Wednesday, I released my newest book, Rock 'n Roll Heaven. I was a little nervous about releasing it, because it was different from anything else I've published. There is something of a love story, but it's not really central to the plot. This book is more about my love of the music I grew up on - Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison, Roy Orbison, Janis Joplin - than anything else. At least so far, whatever worries I had were unnecessary, as worries often are. The book is selling well, early reviews are good, and everything seems to be fine. Then, I ran a series of ads for my first book, Feels Like the First Time, and things got a little crazy.  The book has been out for more than a year and a half and it's sold a lot of copies already, but it started selling like pocket protectors at an Engineering Convention. When the dust settled last night, our little memoir was ranked at #67 in the entire Amazon store. Out of 8 million titles, or whatever there is for sale on Amazon. Dawn's daughter Connie was up visiting at the time, so Dawn, Connie and I did a little happy dance around the living room (okay, maybe it was just me) and then I went to bed. That's my typical reaction to excitement: I go to sleep.
     Today, I wanted to share a little excerpt from Rock 'n Roll Heaven, to give you an idea about whether you'll be interested in reading it or not. This is the very beginning of the book, and includes the entire first chapter. I hope you enjoy it!


            Jimi Hendrix leaned his chair back, eyes shut, the wide, floppy brim of his hat drooping low over his forehead. His fingers flew over the strings and frets of his famously flipped Fender Stratocaster. He bit his lip in concentration, looking for something; a new sound, a new… anything.


He slammed the chair down in frustration as he realized that the riff that had appeared in his head had rematerialized as nothing more than a slight variation of what he had done in Little Wing. He looked across the table at Gram Parsons, who was leaning his cheek against the neck of his guitar, shaking his head.

“Nothing?” Gram said?

“Nothing new,” Jimi said.

Across the room, Bob Marley stood and stretched, rubbing his eyes.

“Why?” Bob said in his Jamaican lilt. “Why bring us all together, then keep us from writing, from creating anything new? It’s what we do. It’s who we are.”

“I think,” Jimi said, “this isn't heaven at all.”





Chapter One

 

Jimmy ‘Guitar’ Velvet lifted his arm straight up, held it there for one beat, then two, obeying his own inner metronome, then whipped it around in his last windmill jam of the night. Sweat flew off him, splattering and soaking into the rough wooden planks of the dance floor. He kneeled at the front of the tiny stage like it was an altar and coaxed every last bit of fuzz out of his Fender Stratocaster.        

It was February 3rd, 1993, and Jimmy was celebrating his birthday. Like almost every birthday in his adult life, he was marking it onstage. Jimmy was still tall and lean at 44, wearing a black Ramones Gabba Gabba Hey T-shirt, faded Levi 501s and black biker boots. He looked every bit the aging rock star, even though he’d never actually been a star.

The bartender had made his “last call for alcohol” announcement (“You don't have to go home, but you can’t stay here”) fifteen minutes earlier. Only two dancers were left, propping each other up in a drunken embrace, unaware that the last slow dance had been Home Sweet Home three songs ago.

Jimmy turned to the rest of The Black Velvets and waited for them to join him in the final chord crash of Free Bird. They finished with a flourish, and the final note echoed off the back wall. Jimmy stepped to the microphone. There was tepid applause from the six or seven paying customers who had stuck around until closing time.

“Thank you very much! I’m Jimmy 'Guitar' Velvet and this is The Loudest Bar Band in the World, The Black Velvets. Good night!”

A few years earlier, Jimmy might have tried to remember the name of the town they were playing, so he could say “Goodnight, Walla Walla,” or “See ya next time, Longview,” but no longer. In those glory days, The Black Velvets would set down their instruments, put their arms around each other and take a bow, basking in the reflected glory of an appreciative crowd. Back then, Jimmy saved a killer song or two for the end, knowing they would give in and do an encore.

One drunken straggler weaved toward the stage, Pabst Blue Ribbon bottle held high, yelling “Rock ‘n Roll! Whoooo!”

There would be no encore tonight.

They were playing The Eagles Nest, a bar owned by a former mechanic named Sal. In all the years Jimmy had played the Nest, he never understood how people found it, or where they came from, but when the sun went down and the sound went up, people materialized. The Eagles Nest had actually been Sal's auto garage before he decided that selling watery drinks was an easier living than fixing carburetors. Neon signs for Rainier, Heidelberg and Olympia beers covered the walls. Backstage, one could still see half-peeled posters on the wall that advertised tools and other things marketed to car repair shops.

If you knew where to look, just to the right of the Wurlitzer jukebox, you could find a cluster of three bullet holes, the result of a legendary bar fight in 1978. The Nest had the potential to be quaint, or charming, but it wasn’t. It was a dump, typical of the places The Black Velvets played.

Jimmy set his Strat in his guitar stand and turned to find Rollie waiting at the edge of the stage with a towel and a Coke. Jimmy sat down on a old wooden chair in what passed for a backstage. Before he had toweled off and drained half the Coke, J.J.’s drum kit was down and Mark and Drew’s guitar and bass were tucked away.

                A case for everything and everything in its case.

As much as The Eagles Nest sucked, tonight's sets had been good. Tight. This most recent incarnation of The Black Velvets had been together for almost a year. Everyone in the band but Rollie was at least twenty years younger than Jimmy, but that didn't matter. They were starting to become a real band. Thirty years experience had taught Jimmy what he privately called 'The Evolution Of A Rock Band.’

It started with a bunch of guys hanging around, jamming together and playing the music they loved. You sounded like crap, but no one cared because everyone liked each other. If you stuck it out and landed a few gigs, you started to understand each other’s styles. Over time, you came together like one big happy family.

After a few months or a year or two, you got to the peak, where everyone knew everyone else, the instruments working together as if guided by one mind. If your band was ever going to get past playing the Eagles Nests of the world, and make it big, that's when it would happen.

If your crew didn't catch that big break, though, the wheels started coming off the Stardom Express. All the little things that never seemed to bother you before—drug problems, supersized egos, bad hygiene, and vocal girlfriends offering, unasked for, dippy ideas on “exactly what this band needs to do to make it” began to bug you. People began considering their options. For example, the rhythm section might hear of a band across town seeking a drummer and bass player. Pretty soon, the cycle began again. That was why there weren't many forty-four-year-old lead guitarists like Jimmy, sticking it out on the bar circuit.

Still dreaming the dream. Or so I tell myself. Do I really dream it anymore? Sure, sure.

Over the years, fourteen different lineups had played under The Black Velvets' banner. Jimmy would have forgotten how many, but Rollie kept track in a creased little notebook. Why he keeps it, I don't know. Maybe some sense of morbid fascination.

Two constants had been part of all those different lineups: Jimmy and Rollie. They had met during their sophomore year in high school, when they were regular old Jimmy Andrzejewski and Rollie Klein. The Beatles had invaded, and every girl in school was fantasizing about the Fab Four. Jimmy and Rollie did not overlook this trend.

His Uncle Bill had given Jimmy a real guitar for his tenth birthday. It was his first love. He couldn’t read music, but he took his allowance down to the record store every week and bought a new 45. He sat in his bedroom and played along with Oh, Boy or Wake Up, Little Susie until he imagined that could play them just like Buddy Holly or Phil and Don Everly.

Until he observed the unique impact of rock musicians on his female peers, Jimmy'd never taken the music out of his bedroom. Jimmy thought that girls sighing over him would be very interesting, so he got the bright idea to form a band. He recruited Rollie, who had never before played an instrument, as the bass player. "All you’ve got to do is follow along with the drummer. It’s easy,” Jimmy had told him.

                They recruited two buddies, both of whom were also interested in any reasonably legal activity with the potential to induce females to remove their undergarments, and thus the first edition of what would become The Black Velvets came into being. The name hadn't come easily. One or more members had—mercifully, in hindsight—rejected names like Jimmy and the Jim Tones, the Mossy Rockers, and The Bugs. They argued about it for weeks before resorting to heavy weaponry: they stole a bottle of whiskey from Rollie’s dad, then locked themselves in Jimmy’s garage until they figured it out. Although they passed out before they settled on a name, morning brought them massive headaches and an empty whiskey bottle staring at them with their new name: The Black Velvets.

They started out playing keggers in secluded locations where one could get by with copious underage drinking. They didn't get paid, aside from all the beer they could drink, but they learned three very important lessons. First: drinking lots of beer did not improve their music. Second: this deterioration in skill did not cause girls to love them less. Third: Rollie hadn't been bullshitting. He indeed lacked any performing musical talent.

Another kegger band in the area broke up during that time. Rollie knew the bass player, a lanky guy named Jon Averill. Jon was the bassist Rollie wasn't, but instead of quitting, Rollie became the roadie and stage manager. His genius for holding a sound system together with chewing gum and baling twine did far more for The Black Velvets than he ever could have with a bass guitar.

                Jimmy and Rollie had been together ever since. Their friendship was the closest thing to a long-term relationship either one of them had ever experienced.

                This latest incarnation of The Black Velvets was starting to gel. If I'd found these guys fifteen years ago, we might have caught a couple of breaks, signed a record deal and be rich and famous now. Of course, all the other guys in the band had been in elementary school fifteen years ago, but Jimmy tried not to dwell on that.

                Jimmy liked to say that the only way he had changed over the years was that he had more gray hairs and far less hangovers. At times he wondered why he still played the rocker game, and usually concluded that it was about all he knew in life.

                Tonight, at least, Jimmy did it in order to fill up the Magic Bus with fuel. This meant finding Sal and being paid, which was likelier at The Eagles Nest than at some gigs. Jimmy stood up off the little stool, winced at a crick in his back, and glimpsed himself through the spiderweb cracks in the nearby full-length mirror. With sweaty hair and two days' graying whiskers, the image in the mirror could have been that of his father, now twenty years dead. By his early forties, Dad had married, had two kids, lived his life and died. By my early forties, I have played thousands of dives like this, made my hearing worse, and broken a long string of promises. Mostly to myself.

                What in the hell have I done with my life?

“Sold my soul for rock ‘n roll,” he muttered under his breath as he went to search for Sal to collect the money.

                He tracked Sal down in the slimy little closet that was the backstage men’s room at the ‘Nest.

                “How was the crowd tonight, Sal?”

                Sal was somewhere in his sixties, with greasy grey hair combed straight back. He still wore his old garage shirt and pants, including a faded red-on-yellow oval name patch. He was intimidating despite lack of size, with a presence that tended to keep trouble at bay. And if it didn't, the bat and the illegal scattergun under the bar had the rest covered. Sal shrugged. “It was all right. Nothin’ special. After I pay you guys, I might maybe break even on the night. Next time around, we might need to renegotiate your fee.”

Jimmy began to call bullshit, then caught himself. You goombah, I know how much you charge for those weak-ass drinks. You've made a mint paying people like me barely enough to get to the next joint. You never just 'broke even' in your entire life. But yeah, you were busting my balls back when I still had a good future ahead of me, instead of too much past behind me. You're an equal opportunity prick to everybody.

                “Whatever, Sal. I’ll give you a call when we’re passing through again. It wouldn’t be life on the road without a stop at the Nest.”

                Sal pulled out a leather wallet the size of a paperback book. He held it away from Jimmy and fished out two fifties and ten twenties. Jimmy nodded, climbed back onstage and started to pack his guitar and amp.

                “Another fabulous night in the life of a glamorous rock ‘n roll star, huh Jim?”

                Jimmy didn’t even look up from the cable he was looping. “Sho ‘nuff, Rollie. Hey, I got an idea…why don’t you go unlock the stage door and let a few of those groupies in I’m always reading about in Rolling Stone.”

                “Shit, man. I didn’t know you were going to be in the mood, so I sent ‘em all home disappointed.”

With few variations, they’d had this conversation a thousand times.

                Less than an hour later, the amps, instruments and sound board were loaded on the Magic Bus, idling in the back parking lot like a noisy locomotive. Rollie had named it that fifteen years ago, but the only magical thing about it was how it managed to log so many miles between engine rebuilds. The Magic Bus was a ’59 school bus converted to the specific needs of a traveling rock band. Its exterior was a crazy quilt of its original yellow, primer gray and spray-painted graffiti. Storage space in the back held their equipment, with enough room left over so everyone had a little personal space inside. Personal space was a help, especially when one of The Black Velvets insisted on bringing a girlfriend on the road—or, more frequently, when a Black Velvet's lady friend insisted on traveling with the band.

For The Black Velvets, it was home.

Mark, Drew and J.J. climbed on board and settled into their spots while Jimmy and Rollie did one last stage walkthrough. It was all too easy to misplace cables, light boxes or duct tape. When you ran as close to the bone as The Black Velvets, you left no stray piece of equipment behind. By the time they got on the bus, Jimmy heard snoring from the back.

Jimmy smiled, shook his head and said, “They don’t breed ‘em like they used to, do they? We used to play all night and party all mornin’. Now they crash before we even roll out of the parking lot.”

“True,” Rollie said, “but that’s why we look the way we do. When they’re as old as we are, they’ll still be beautiful. Nobody’s accused us of that in a damn long time.”

“I hope I die before I get old,” Jimmy muttered.

For many of their years together, Jimmy and Rollie had partied with the best of them. And with the worst of them. They drank, smoked, injected, huffed or otherwise indulged in every excess they could get hold of. If something felt good, they did it. Even when it didn’t feel so good any more, they kept on doing it. Jimmy’s standard had always been simple: if he could get up on stage the next night and play, he was doing all right. Since he always answered the bell, he fooled himself into believing he didn't have a problem.

Jimmy’s roundabout road to sobriety had begun ten years earlier in Pocatello, Idaho.




That's the first chapter! If you'd like to read more, it's available for your Kindle here or in paperback here.