Hail, Hail!

Rock and roll is, often, deadly.

I’m supposed to say I don’t know why that is. But I do. And I’m not talking about plane crashes or car wrecks. I’m saying, from its genesis, and by its inherent, undeniable nature, rock and roll, itself, kills people. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it, I suppose, to the extent that one can ‘live’ someone else’s death.

And at this moment, I have to decide whether I’m going to help it kill somebody else. I’ll explain.

16 years ago I played a quad-tom rig in a traveling drumline outfit back east. I still can’t read music, but I’ve always sort of known exactly how it’s supposed to go, so that worked out OK. Then after law school I signed on with a firm in Kansas City; mostly, we represented casinos and bars. They all had live music, so I saw a whole lot of rock bands.

Skipping ahead, eight years ago I left the law firm and started a concert promotion company. It took off, partly because I can tell which performers are the ultra-rare real McCoys. As in, I know within a few seconds, and I’m right as rain.

That’s how I found The Crampons in a strip-mall dive in Lenexa Kansas. Lightning struck, in the form of the first few notes they played and sang. I got goosebumps, and the hairs on my arms strained up to take in all the music they could capture, and the whole nine yards. Acts like this are once-in-a-lifetime finds. White buffalos. Unicorns. And this one didn’t have a mama.

So that’s why I signed them up, stuck in a hundred grand, and developed them to where a ruthlessly competent indie record label took over and plowed in another quarter-mil. And all this is how the band’s frontman ended up dead at my feet in an even skeevier gin mill in Seattle.

I didn’t kill him. I found him. The band was preparing to headline a 1500-seater up the street, not that joint. And the King County Medical Examiner’s report said it was ‘heroin’ that stopped Xander Reynolds’ heart at 25, not ‘rock and roll.’ But like I say, I know what it really was. And I know why.

See, for all his talent, and all his originality, X was, among nearly-unique people, awfully typical. That caliber of artistic ability very, very often arrives in broken crates. Whether from early trauma, or oversensitivity, or plain-old faulty brain wiring, the genuine ‘rock stars’ who give the rest of us the chills tend to walk around, all day every day, with their own cases of the chills. Or insecurities. Or complexes. Pain, basically. It may ebb and flow like the tides for us, but for them, it abides like the sky.

And then along comes rock and roll. And from the first time these unicorns hear a distorted, mis-slapped C chord rage out from a stack of Marshalls, rock inveigles them with a singular, tailor-made chance to exorcise, or, really, exercise, their own demons. There’s nothing like it. It’s brass-knuckled joy and catharsis and deterioration, all at once. And there’s nothing, and nobody, like a born rock star.

It isn’t remotely fair, that matchup. No contest. Rock and roll, to those special few, feels, or helps them feel, finally, triumphantly ‘right’ -- even if only for moments here and there.

So for that mirage of a chance, these artists will reach far too deep within themselves, and they’ll wrestle or tame or cut sly deals with the horrors that plague them. And then they’ll sling those horrors out into spotlights for all to see, in 110-decibel clouds of sweat and brilliance and irreplaceable bits of their souls.

Afterwards, we’ll all clap and cheer and go home. But then, spent and sprained and maybe realizing it was all less a real chance than a mirage, they’ll depart on sapping, lonely trips in the dark. And they’ll do it again the following night. And then again. And again.

Until they can’t, that is. Whether for lack of a show, or for lack of strength, or for lack of whatever’s just petered out, there always come days when those horrors of theirs aren’t gonna be pushed around anymore. And, then, often, when rock stars find themselves short of insanely-fast cars or furtive assignations with the all-too-willing, or maybe when they find that their hangovers have given up trying to teach them, they’ll go looking for new ways to try to get through.

And they’ll find them, those ways. Always.

That’s why, three years ago last month, I dropped everything and flew from Kansas City to Spokane. Bataan Records had received reports that Xander was back on junk, and passing out on stages across the High Plains. Bataan’s CEO, Rena, called me in a panic. So I hustled up there and fired the tour manager, and I rode along to Seattle. But instead of cancelling the next show, or maybe saying the words I should’ve been able to figure out and say, I failed. I let rock and roll kill Xander.

The band and I buried him next to his sister’s grave in Joplin two weeks later. Whereupon I quit the rock and roll business. Well, sort of. I’m coming to that. The other guys quit too, pretty much.

But the terrible thing was, the business didn’t quit us. X died just as the first album had started gaining traction at radio. News of his passing propelled it to platinum-level sales. Then double platinum. Then parts of it got into some movie soundtracks, and then the damned Olympics called about using a song, and by the time I flew to Detroit to bail the guitarist out of jail it’d moved nine million units.

Bataan put out a live record. The guys’ publishing rights sold at a gunfight of an auction. There was a documentary. Commercials. Simply put, even I got stinking rich, and my contractual percentage from those early investments wasn’t that big.

So it happened, that by the time I got the call from Bataan this morning, I hadn’t really been working a lot for, oh, too long, I guess. I handled things for Xander’s estate, like auditing royalties and knocking down errant paternity suits and such. But 10:00 a.m. was a long-lost stranger to me when my phone rang.

“Morning, Brad. It’s Rena. Got a minute?”

I’d never liked it when Rena called, back when the band was touring. I grew to like it even less after Xander died; the memories and the bad dreams would take days to go away afterward. I probably sounded less than pleasant when I replied.

“What can I do for you, ma’am?”

She got right to business. “Xander’s niece. Dorothy. Have you seen her?”

I scowled and lit my first cigarette of the day. “Yeah. Duh. She’s his sole heir.”

Rena made a little “grr” noise and continued quickly. “No, no, I mean, have you seen her play?”

That confused me for sure. “Play? Play what?”

She made another noise; it was more of an impatient snort that time. “Jesus, Brad. What do you, live on an island? She’s got a live YouTube clip out there with, like, 400,000 views. You didn’t know? How could you not –”

I cut her off more politely than I felt like being. “Rena, partner, gimme some slack, hey? I’ve been out of circulation. What is she, like, 19? What’s she play?”

“Doro’s 21, sir. Plays guitar, plays keys, probably plays kazoo for all I know. She’s fronting a band. They’re headlining tonight. You should go.”

I stubbed out my cig, and then I walked toward the shower as I talked. “She didn’t tell me. I don’t really go see bands anymore. Besides, you’re the record mogul. Why don’t you go?”

Rena offered, probably, the only answer I’d have considered. “Because I’m in California, and she’s playing in Missouri. Independence, someplace like that. Also because she called me, and she didn’t know whether she ought to call you or not. She wants your opinion. Frankly, so do I.”

I didn’t really have another call coming in, but I wanted that call with Rena to end. So I ended it. “I’ve got somebody waiting, ma’am. No promises, but I’ll try, k?”

Hitting the ‘end’ button on my phone started me on a day of drinking, and brooding, and pretending to watch sports on TV at about six different bars around Kansas City. By the time an Uber let me off behind a former client’s tavern out in Independence, I wasn’t sloppy drunk. But I figured I was ready for the show. Maybe.

I went in through the kitchen door and chatted with the owner’s adult son for a while, until the God-awful opening band finally had enough mercy to finish up and leave. Then I skulked around to a far-corner barstool where I knew I’d be tough to see.

Half a Jameson’s later the house lights went down. Three guys tuned-up and started playing. Two were OK. The bassist was poo, but he got a few things right. Then the lights changed, and a spot snapped on, and Xander’s niece took the stage to some really solid applause. She channeled Joan Jett with a few power chords on her low-slung Les Paul. Then she squared-up behind the mic stand to sing the first verse, and I felt like I was seeing a ghost.

She moved like X. She eyed the crowd like he did, and she owned them all, instantly. And when she cut loose and sang, my heart ripped in thirds.

She had it. Doro Reynolds absolutely, undeniably had the goods. Rock star. And not ‘someday.’ Now.

I stayed through the show, plus both encores, and then I drank with the owner’s kid while the staff cleaned up. The band was almost finished loading their gear out when I went and said hello. Doro gave me a big hug, and we found a corner table.

“I didn’t see you, Brad! How long’ve you been here?”

I had to concentrate on not running my words together, but I managed. “Whole show.”

She must’ve been able to see what I thought. She asked anyway. “So? What’d you think?”

Just then, a guy I hadn’t seen during the show came in through the side door where the band was carrying drum cases. He had a backpack with him. He looked to catch Dorothy’s eye. She stood up immediately.

“I’ll be right back. Little band business.”

I acted like I was lost in thought, but I peripherally watched like a hawk as the two went across the room and sat down. She handed him something under the table. He reached into the backpack, and then he started to pass her something back.

Somebody muffed the exchange. A little package, more like a box, about the size of five packs of gum and wrapped in plain brown paper, hit the floor between them. Dorothy grabbed it up quickly. By the time she looked to see if I’d been watching, I wasn’t, anymore.

So. Now. Technically, I don’t know what’s in that little box. And I guess I could always say, truthfully, that I don’t know what is, or was, in that guy’s backpack. The pack he brought to a bar. An empty bar. After hours. And the pack he brought with him to go sit alone with, probably, the richest young lady in a fifty-mile radius.

Sure. I could claim ignorance, to Doro or to whomever, now, or later. Or, I could say nothing, ever.

But in just a moment she’s going to want to know what I thought of her show. That is, whether she’s a genuine rock star, like her uncle X was.

I don’t want to lie to her. I don’t want her dead, though, either.

But here I am, with a second chance that few people get. A couple different chances, maybe. And I gotta say... something.