Climbing the Rock

Chapter 13a: Lines of Persuasion

Austin, Texas

June 7, 1984

They moved about the stage, their motions pulsing, frantic, as they closed out Almost Too Easy. As the last beats were hit in a carefully timed crescendo, Jake, Matt, and Darren moved backwards, entering the safety perimeter that would keep them untouched by the coming explosion. By now they were well practiced in this maneuver and there had been no mishaps. The last beat was hit, the last strings strummed, and the two canisters detonated, sending a boom and a flash of light out. The audience of 11,224 cheered wildly.

"Thank you, Austin!" Jake shouted after stepping back to the microphone. Before him, the pyrotechnic canisters were still smoking. "Thank you and goodnight!"

He put his guitar down and stepped backwards, letting the applause wash over him, relishing it, basking in it. Darren and Matt appeared on either side of him, their arms on his shoulders. Bill and Coop formed up on the outside. They bowed one time to the crowd and walked off the stage, exiting through the stage left door.

This wasn't really the end of the show and the crowd knew it. There was still the encore. They screamed for it, stomped their feet for it, sending noise and vibration through the arena.

The roadies had placed cold quart bottles of Gatorade on a table just inside the stage door. All five band members picked one up and drank deeply, throats working frantically, green liquid running down their chins onto their chests. They took deep breaths after the first long drink and then drank some more. Jake forced himself to stop after consuming half the bottle. He didn't want his stomach to cramp when he went back out there for the last two songs.

The thundering of the crowd was too loud for conversation to take place, especially since the band's ears were still ringing from seventy-eight minutes in front of the amps and from the concussion of the explosion. But Bobby Lorenzo, Darren's personal assistant, had no problem understanding sign language. Darren mimed the act of lighting a lighter and Bobby brought him one, along with a marble pipe stuffed with greenbud. Darren put the pipe in his mouth and fired up, inhaling deeply and expertly. He then passed the pipe and lighter across to Coop, who took them and did the same.

In had been a month since Greg, using the authority vested in him by the Intemperance contract with National Records, had repealed the long-standing prohibition against getting high before performing. In that month, things had led exactly where Matt and Jake had always feared they would if this rule were relaxed. At first it was just Darren taking a few hits before the start of the night's show and then he began slipping out during his breaks in the performance — Matt's extended guitar solo, Coop's drum solo, and Jake and Bill's duet — and reinforcing his high with a few more hits. Then came the further hits during the encore break. Then, starting about six shows ago, Coop, unable to take it anymore, began to join him in the indulgence.

"Look, guys," Coop said when Matt and Jake called Coop on this after the first time. "I can handle it just like Darren does. It's just weed. It ain't like we're getting drunk before we go on."

But of course, once the precedent was set, neither Darren or Coop saw the need to stop drinking alcohol four hours prior to a show, or to keep from snorting a few lines of coke when the effects of drinking alcohol all day long had them a little weary. As a result of all this, tensions among the band members were high and there had been some screw-ups onstage. In San Antonio the week before, Darren tried to do a fancy twist maneuver and knocked over his own microphone stand. In the last show, in El Paso, Coop actually started playing the wrong song at one point in the set, forcing the rest of the band to quickly change gears and play out of the sequence they'd rehearsed. When confronted after the show following these mistakes by an angry Matt and Jake, both had simply claimed that it was road fatigue and over-repetition that had caused the mishaps, not the drugs and alcohol.

"That's fucking bullshit and you know it!" Matt thundered both times. "There's a goddamned reason why we had that rule and this is fucking it!"

Unfortunately, whenever they tried to argue, or demand, or even plead for a return to the sobriety rule, Greg would step in and remind the two members of the rhythm section that they were free to do what they wanted before a show or even during it. "I'm your boss," he would tell them. "Matt and Jake are your peers. You don't have to give in to peer pressure. You can just say no to them."

"I don't think that is exactly what Nancy Reagan had in mind when she wrote that little catch phrase," Jake said sourly the fist time he heard this.

Darren and Coop were certainly saying no to no drugs on this night. Upon arriving in Austin at two that afternoon, they'd forgone the coffee in favor of three lines of coke. Throughout the day, as the band rode from place to place, signing autographs and greeting fans and talking to Austin disk jockeys at the local hard rock station, the two of them drank beers and took pipe hits and snorted line after line of cocaine. After the sound check, as the hour to hit the stage rolled closer and closer, they kept it up, draining bottles of beer and tossing them in the trash, hitting the pipe whenever their high started to dissipate, and begging another line from Greg whenever these first two indulgences started to make them feel tired. By the time they hit the stage both of them were keyed up and sweating, their eyes dilated and sluggish, their movements alternately clumsy and over-fast. They were, to put it mildly, fucked up beyond recognition, in the stratosphere, annihilated to the gills.

Coop screwed up his drumbeats three times during the set. Twice the rest of the band had been able to cover for it without the audience noticing, but the third time he played the drum roll build-up to the bridge of a song after the first verse instead of after the second, throwing the entire song out of whack and causing all of them to fumble around for the better part of ten seconds, their instruments jangling in opposition as Bill and Matt tried to blend and follow the mistake while Jake and Darren tried to transition them back on track. The audience emitted a shocked laugh and even a few boos before they were able to pull themselves back together and continue the song. The applause after that song was the most muted they had ever heard.

More embarrassing, however, was Darren. Though he hadn't made a mistake in his actual playing, he was still creating quite a spectacle of himself by trying out new dance moves to his routine. He was jumping up and down, kicking his feet out, making leering faces at the crowd, spinning back and forth, and generally doing everything he could to draw attention to himself. Jake supposed he thought he was being cool but in reality he was looking like an intoxicated dork — the performing arts version of putting a lampshade on your head at a party.

As the cries for encore reached their peak, Jake and Matt shared a look of anger and helplessness, both knowing they had put in a substandard performance because of the two fuck-ups and both hating the fact that there was little they could do about it. Neither could know that the worst was yet to come.

Darren took a final hit from the pipe, actually burning the resin in the pipe-stem since the pot had all been smoked away. He handed it and the lighter back to Bobby, blew his hit out, and then took a last drink of his Gatorade. He smiled as he felt the latest surge of THC working its way through his brain, restoring the coveted high. Yes, he was ready to go knock off the last two songs now. And he was determined to show these Texas fans what he was all about. Jake and Matt thought they had some moves? They didn't have shit. He was the really important one in the band, him and his bass. After all, without the bass, the rest of them wouldn't have a rhythm to play to, would they? Why did those two prima donna assholes — three if you included that nerdy dickwad Bill — get all the credit for Intemperance's success?

So intent was he on these thoughts that he didn't notice that the other four had already gone back through the stage left door and onto the stage. Not even the applause roaring back from the crowd clued him in. It took a slap on the back by Bobby and a shouted "Go!" into his ear to get him moving. He stepped through the door to find the rest of the band already in position, instruments in hand. There was another burst of laughter from the crowd at his late arrival and both Matt and Jake were glaring at him.

He didn't acknowledge them. He simply picked up his bass and put it in position. Just to show who was the real talent of the band he strummed out a quick, twelve note bass solo, something that was most definitely not part of the encore performance. He expected applause at this but what he got was a gasp of confusion from the crowd instead. Obviously his talent was a little too sophisticated for these Texas assholes.

Coop hit the four count and they launched into the first encore song: Rules of the Road, from the new album. It was one of Jake's songs and one of Darren's least favorite to perform. Jake was fond of changes in tempo in his songs and this one was absolutely full of them. It started out fast, slowed down during the first verse, sped up to almost heavy-metal intensity during the chorus, and then slowed back down for the second verse and the bridge. Jake himself kept having to switch from acoustical sound during the slow parts back to distortion on the faster parts, said switch being accomplished by hitting one of the effects pedals arrayed around his mic stand. The rapid and constant changing in tempo meant that Darren couldn't perform a lot of the new badass moves he was trying to incorporate into his stagecraft.

When Rules of the Road ended, Darren perked up considerably. The final song was his absolute favorite that they did: Who Needs Love? It was a true rock masterpiece with a fast, heavy, and fairly consistent beat that he could truly pound out on his bass like rock music was meant to be pounded out. They launched into it with a roar of approval from the crowd. Darren's hands did their work automatically, his left hand pushing on the frets and moving up and down the neck, his left picking at the thick strings with perfect precision. He jumped up and down as he played, moving back and forth, making harsh faces that he thought were just the coolest fucking thing ever. Twice as the song progressed he was so intent on his jumping and moving and face making that he forgot to go back to his microphone and sing the backing to the chorus. Oops, he thought when this happened. So fucking sue me then. It wasn't like his voice was actually needed anyway with Matt, Coop, and Bill chiming in their parts. In fact, maybe he would talk to Greg about taking him off singing duty completely. Having to hit the microphone all the time detracted from his stagecraft.

As Matt launched into the main solo of the song and Jake backed off to give him the spotlight, Darren stayed at the front of the stage, deciding that more moves were in order. He jumped up and down a few more times and then bounced his way to the right to get next to Matt. His intention was to bump shoulders with the guitarist, one of those camaraderie type of moves that looked so cool, but instead he slammed into Matt with considerable force. Matt flew sideways from the impact, stumbling twice and nearly falling down. At the last second he managed to keep his feet and, though he shot a murderous glare at Darren his fingers never missed a string and the solo went unbroken.

Oops, Darren thought again. That probably didn't look good. But then, if Matt wasn't so fucking clumsy on his feet he probably would've been braced a little better. Hopefully he'll learn from it. Maybe if he smoked out a little and let himself chill like Coop and I, he'd do better up here.

Darren worked his way back toward his microphone, bouncing all the way. Halfway there he crossed over Jake's guitar cord, caught it with his foot, and ripped it cleanly out of Jake's guitar, instantly silencing the backing riff just before the end of the solo and the beginning of dual riff portion of the song. He didn't even notice that he'd done it. When he heard Jake's guitar go quiet he turned and saw the singer frantically moving across the stage to pick up the end of the cord and plug it back in and concluded that Jake himself had been the one to cause the mishap.

And they give me shit for stepping on my cord that one time, Darren thought. I'm never gonna let his ass hear the end of this one.

Matt covered for Jake the best he could by extending the solo for another ten seconds, long enough for Jake to plug back in. He then repeated the ending, leading them back to the cue for the next section of the song. They hit the dual riff and then separated back into lead and backing. Jake sang out the third verse and the final chorus grouping and they worked their way into the final crescendo. This was what Darren had been waiting for.

Darren longed to perfect a move for the final moments of the last song. He wanted to do a double jump and then twist three hundred and sixty degrees in a circle on the third jump. The first time he'd tried it he had been too close to his microphone stand and had knocked it over. The second time his three-sixty had ended up being a one-eighty and he had been facing the wrong direction. This time, he was determined, he would get it right. He had the rhythm, he was back far enough from his mic, and it just felt like something that was meant to be. He would pull this off just before the final climax of explosions and the crowd would go wild, would scream his name, and the next day, in the Austin papers, it would his name the concert reviewers would mention instead of Jake's or Matt's or Bill's.

The moment came. To his right, Matt and Jake pounded off the final notes. He jumped twice with the ending beat and then leapt high in the air for the third leap. As soon as his feet left the ground he spun violently to the left, imparting himself with enough force to make it all the way around before his feet came back down. The maneuver might have gone off as planned but he forgot one little thing. He forgot to make sure he cleared his own guitar cord. It wrapped neatly around his legs, effectively binding them together, and when he came back down he was unable to spread them to keep his balance. He pitched forward, feeling himself falling towards the stage. Instinctively he tried to counter this by giving one more hop forward and, in doing so, he jumped right into the midst of the danger zone surrounding the pyrotechnic charge situated in front of his microphone. The cord pulled tight as he reached the end of his slack and he pitched forward again, the neck of his bass knocking over his microphone stand, his body achieving a horizontal orientation. He found himself looking directly down into the pyrotechnic charge and, in sudden terror, he managed to turn his head to the left.

He heard the boom, louder than it had ever been before. A bright flash of light blinded him even through his closed eyelids and burning pain seared up the right side of his body. The air was blasted out of his lungs and he felt himself flying through the air, twisting around and around like a football thrown in an awkward spiral. And then he was crashing down on a sea of human bodies, hearing the faint sounds of screaming through his violently ringing ears.

Holy fucking shit! Jake's mind screamed as he watched Darren go flying eight feet into the air, spiraling around and around, and landing somewhere in the darkness of the mosh pit in front of the stage. The cheers of the audience cut off in an instant, as if a mute button had been pushed. From the mosh pit itself, he could hear screaming over the ringing in his ears.

He spun the volume knob on his guitar to the zero position and dropped it to the ground, rushing forward, grabbing the main microphone as he went by. He looked down but could see nothing but a squirming mass of bodies in the darkness.

"Everyone," he said into the mic, "please back away from him. Give us some room. Stay back!"

Matt came rushing by on his right. He leapt off the stage and into the mosh pit and began pushing his way through.

"House lights!" Jake said into the mic. "Turn on the house lights please. We need to see down there."

The lights clicked on, illuminating the chaos below. Jake dropped the microphone and jumped off the stage as well, finding himself surrounded by sweating bodies. He began pushing through. "Back away," he said. "Back away. Let me through."

He worked his way to Darren's position, elbowing and forcing his way through the gathered crowd, none of whom were heading his pleas to back away. Finally he stood looking down at the bass player. He was on his back, eyes closed, smoke rising from his body, particularly his head where a good portion of his hair had been burned off. The right side of his face, his right arm, portions of his exposed right flank and stomach, and a good portion of his right leg were bright red in color, like sunburn only much worse. His bass guitar was lying next to him, the neck broken in half, the strings snapped and hanging free, the body charred and smoking. Matt was kneeling next to him, shaking him.

"Is he dead?" Jake yelled.

"If he's not I'm gonna fuckin' kill him!" Matt yelled back. He gave an extra-hard shake. "Darren!"

Darren's eyes flew open, gazing around, unseeing. "My cock!" he yelled, panicked. "Did it blow off my fuckin' cock?"

It did not blow off his fuckin' cock. The leather shorts he wore had protected that portion of his body. Nor did he suffer any broken bones from either the concussion or the spectacular flight through the air (although three members of the audience were injured when his two hundred and thirty pound, smoking bulk landed atop them). What he did suffer were second-degree burns all over his right leg, right arm, right chest and abdominal wall, and the right side of his face and neck. He also suffered a massively ruptured right eardrum, which left it doubtful that he would ever regain full hearing on that side. His hair was flat out gone, most of it burned off in the explosion, the rest shaved off in the Austin burn center later that night. For the next forty-eight hours he lay in a hospital bed, a morphine drip keeping the worst of the pain under control while blisters rose and fell on his burned skin.

They discharged him with a prescription for heavy-duty pain pills and strict instructions to change his dressings once a day and to maintain bedrest until the skin healed. They wanted him in for check-ups every three days for the next two weeks. But this was simply not to be.

"We had to cancel the first two shows in Dallas," Greg said as they climbed on the bus in the hospital parking lot, "but they're setting up for the third right now. We should make it there by three o'clock this afternoon. We won't have time for the usual interviews and autograph sessions, but we should be able to make the sound check on time."

"Wait a minute," Jake said as he heard this. "Are you saying we're not going home?"

"The show must go on," Greg replied. "It's bad enough we had to cancel two dates in one of our biggest cities. Do you have any idea how much revenue we lost?"

"Darren can't play like that," Matt said. "He looks like a fuckin' cartoon character that got shot with a cannon."

"And his eardrum is ruptured," Jake added. "Didn't they tell him to avoid loud noises until it healed up?"

"He could lose his hearing in that ear for good if he doesn't," said Coop.

"I really don't think I can play," Darren agreed. "These burns hurt real bad. All the fuckin' time, man."

"Nonsense," said Greg dismissively. "I'll make sure everything goes well. I'll get him an earplug for that ear and keep his injuries covered with moist bandages when he goes on stage."

"But my hair!" Darren cried. "I ain't got no fuckin' hair!"

"We'll get a hat for you," Greg said. "Trust me on this. I know what I'm doing."

"No," Matt said. "This is too much, Greg. The man is burned and has blisters all over his body. We ain't doing any more shows until he's healed."

"Then you will be responsible for all the lost revenue for any dates that are missed," Greg said. "All of it. That includes merchandising sales and all fees of inconvenience associated with refunded ticket sales. You think you're in the red now? Taking two or three weeks off from the tour will push you another half a million or so into the hole. Is that what you want?"

"What fuckin' difference does it make?" Matt yelled. "We're already a quarter mil in the hole. What's another half mil on top of it? Take us home until Darren recuperates. If you don't want to do that, put us up in a hotel here in Austin. You can tack that onto our account as well."

"Why don't we let Darren decide this?" Greg asked. "After all, it is his name you're speaking in." He turned to Darren and put his best smile on his face. "Darren? What do you think? If I can make you comfortable enough, do you think you can carry on?"

"Tell him no, Darren," Jake said. "This is bullshit!"

Darren looked miserable. "I want to," he said, "but I don't think I can. I'm really hurtin', you know?"

"I'll give you pain medicine before you go on," Greg promised.

"Oh that's a fuckin' brilliant idea," Matt said. "Aren't the fucking drugs what got us into this situation in the first place?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Darren demanded.

"It means you were trashed up there on the stage and that's why you tripped over your own cord and landed on top of an explosive charge!" yelled Matt. "If Mr. I Want To Suck Joseph Smith's Dick here hadn't of told you to that you don't have to listen to me anymore none of this shit would've happened!"

"That's a fucking lie!" Darren yelled. "He just told me I could do what I want. Smoking weed had nothing to do with what happened!"

"I agree," said Greg. "I'm more inclined to think the accident was caused by a lack of choreography to your sets. If you would have let us train those dance moves into you before we went out on the road, Darren wouldn't have been trying to improvise moves on his own."

"Christ," Matt said. "Round and fucking round we go with this shit."

"If I do go on," Darren said, "I won't be able to do any of my moves at all. Will that be okay?"

"Do us a favor, Darren," Matt said. "Keep your moves to yourself in the future."

Darren looked hurt and then angry. "What's wrong with my moves? Are you just jealous because you can't do 'em? The audience loves them, man. They fuckin' love 'em!"

"Yeah," Matt said. "Especially those three people you landed on after one of your moves got you blown through the air like a fuckin' circus performer."

"It was a good demonstration of a ballistic arc," said Bill, in all seriousness.

"Look," said Greg, "I understand that you won't be able to do your moves for awhile. The audience will understand that too. It was in all the papers about how you were burned by a mishap with the pyrotechnic charges. All you have to do is stand by your microphone and play your bass. Try to back up when Matt is doing a solo. The important thing is that you go on. You'll be applauded just for doing that. They'll understand why you can't move about with your normal enthusiasm."

"Okay," Darren said. "I'll try it."

It looked doubtful at first. During the sound check Darren had to sit in a chair and hold his new Brogan bass away from his body. The back of his right hand was burned and each stroke of the strings sent pain slamming up and down his arm. And even with the earplugs in place the concert level sound blasting out of the amps was making it feel like someone was sticking an ice pick in his right ear.

"I don't know about this, Greg," he said when the sound check was complete. Even after the pills I took, this is fuckin' agony, man."

"Don't worry," Greg told him. "You'll be more comfortable for showtime."

And he was. His burned lag and arm were wrapped in moistened bandages imbedded with lidocaine jelly. He was dressed in a pair of loose fitting black sweatpants and a looser fitting white sweater. They put a lidocaine soaked bandana over his head, ear, and neck and then covered it with an Intemperance baseball cap from the merchandising stocks.

"How's it feel?" Greg asked him.

"Better," Darren said. "It still hurts when I move, but not as bad."

"Well, let's take care of that right now," Greg replied, opening up his little black bag. He pulled out a syringe and a vial of medicine.

"Dude," Darren said as he watched Greg draw the clear liquid into the syringe. "I don't really dig needles, you know."

"It's just a little needle," Greg said. "It'll be over in a second."

"What exactly are you giving him?" Matt asked.

"It's a standard pharmaceutical painkiller," Greg replied, taking out an alcohol swab. He pulled down the shoulder of Darren's sweater, baring his unburned left arm.

"The name, Greg," Matt insisted. "What's the shit called?"

"Demerol," Greg replied. "As I said, a standard painkiller used in hospitals all over the country."

"Ahh, Demerol," said Matt with a knowing nod. "One of the more potent narcotics commercially available." He looked directly at Darren. "It's like heroin, but lasts longer."

Darren looked from the needle to Matt's face to Greg's. "Like heroin?" he said. "I don't know about this shit, man. I don't wanna do no heroin."

"It's not like heroin," Greg insisted. "Demerol is a painkiller produced in the finest American pharmaceutical plants and used by doctors nationwide for the relief of pain. Heroin is an illegal street drug that you melt in a spoon and inject into your veins. They are quite different. Now hold still."

"But..." Darren started.

"Just relax," Greg soothed. "I know what I'm doing." He stabbed the needle into Darren's upper arm and depressed the plunger. Darren kept his eyes closed the entire time. Finally, he let them creak open.

"I don't feel any different," he said.

"I gave it to you intramuscularly instead of intravenously," Greg said. "It will take fifteen or twenty minutes to start working but it will last longer — probably for the entire show."

Darren looked doubtful but, as the minutes ticked closer and closer to showtime and the drug seeped into his veinules and capillaries, gradually working its way through his bloodstream to receptors in his brain, the look of doubt was replaced with something like exaltion. "Wow," he said, smiling and nodding his head. "This is some cool-ass shit."

"Yeah?" asked Coop. "Better than weed?"

"Not better," Darren replied, "but different."

"Never mind how it feels," Matt said. "Will you be able to play like that?"

Darren stood up. He was a bit unsteady at first but as he got used to it he was able to walk back and forth with ease. He flexed his burned hand a few times. "It still hurts a little," he said, "but it doesn't bother me that bad, you dig?"

"That's exactly what its supposed to do," Greg said with a smile. "I think you're going to do just fine out there."

Just fine was probably not the best description for what Darren did, but he did manage to make it through the show. He walked steadily out to his microphone, picked up his bass, and when the lights came up, when the first explosion of the night ripped across the stage, he didn't even flinch. The audience cheered loudly, louder than normal even. And he played. His hands moved like they were supposed to, hitting the right strings in the right order at the right time. He sang the back-up lyrics he was supposed to sing. He made no mistakes. But through the entire show, he hardly moved at all. He didn't sway his body to the beat he was helping to set. He didn't shuffle his feet, shrug his shoulders, or twist back and forth. He most certainly didn't jump or spin or make faces. When the time came for Matt's solos, he would back up a few steps, clearing the spotlight area. When the time came for the explosions, he backed up a little faster. In effect, he appeared to be nothing more than an animatronic bass player, or perhaps a holographic one, while the rest of the band moved and turned and swayed and played their usual enthusiastic performance. It wasn't pretty, but the show went on and when it was finally over the audience cheered as they usually did.

"Good job, Darren," Greg congratulated him when they left the stage after the final encore. "You did just great up there."

Darren simply nodded, his face drenched in acrid sweat. "That shot you gave me wore off," he said. "Can I get another one?"

He got another one. Greg shot him up and sent him back to the hotel in a limousine hired especially for the occasion. While the rest of the band engaged in their normal post-show groupie action, Darren crashed out in his bed and slept until eight the next morning.

The next two weeks went by in a haze of consecutive dates. They worked their way out of Texas and into New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. Gradually, Darren's burns healed and he began to move around a little more on stage. The lidocaine soaked bandages went away but the earplug, the bandana, and the hat remained. So did the Demerol shots. Even though the blisters on his skin all popped and disappeared, he insisted upon getting his "pain shot", as he called it, before and after each performance.

"Why the fuck do you need that shit?" Matt demanded of him as Greg drew up the proper dosage prior to the first of three Denver shows. "You're not burned anymore. You fuckin' hair is even growing back!"

"It's my ear," Darren insisted. "It hurts like hell whenever I hear something loud. I won't be able to make it through a show if something doesn't dampen the pain down."

"Christ," Matt said in disgust. "Your fucking ear my ass. You're getting addicted to that shit, Darren. Don't you realize what this asshole is doing to you? He's turning you into a fucking heroin addict."

"It's not heroin!" Darren yelled. "And I'm not addicted to it. It's only for the pain. The fuckin' show must go on, man. You know that!"

The shows went on. Soon, Darren's hair had grown back enough for him to lose the hat and the bandana. But he continued to complain about his ear and demand shots before and after each performance. In addition to the pain shots, he began to drink beer again and to smoke marijuana and snort cocaine before hitting the stage. Coop joined him in all of these endeavors with the exception of the pain shots. There were occasional mistakes on the stage as a result of all this but they remained minor since both seemed to have learned to keep things at a certain level. Still, mistakes were mistakes and each one earned a furious screaming and yelling response by Matt and pleas from Jake to refrain from getting intoxicated before performing. The pleas and yells went unheard, however, since Greg was always there to let the drummer and the bassist know that he was their boss, not Matt or Jake.

The Thrill of Doing Business tour came to an end on September 3, 1984 with the last of four sold-out shows in Los Angeles. Intemperance had played 126 shows in 96 American cities before a combined total of 1,308,297 paying ticket holders. Meanwhile, The Thrill of Doing Business — the album — went platinum and continued on past, heading rapidly towards double-platinum status, which would be easily achieved — if current sale rates continued — by Christmas. Crossing the Line — the second single released — shot rapidly up the charts into the top ten and then spent nearly a month clawing its way upward from there. As the tour wrapped up CTL — as it was referred to by the music professionals associated with it — was locked in a furious battle for number one with three other songs — all of them the pop-music staples of the Top Forty chart. Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr., What's Love Got To Do With It by Tina Turner, and, the stiffest of the competitors, a song called I Love To Dance by a group called La Diferencia, which was a pop-band from Venezuela that had released an American album on the Los Angeles based Aristotle Records label. As Intemperance spent their first week back in Los Angeles, moving into their new condos and recuperating from the long, torturous road trip just completed, CTL finally peaked at number two on the charts, aced out of the number one spot by I Love To Dance. It held there for another two weeks, trying and trying to dislodge the Venezuelan group's hit — during the second week the difference in single sales was less than five hundred — but ultimately they were unable. CTL began to fall off and I Want To Dance held on, staying at the top spot for what would turn out to be another six weeks.

"What in the fuck is wrong with the music consumer these days?" ranted Matt on the day CTL began to fall. He, Bill, and Jake were sipping drinks on the balcony of Jake's new condo, out of earshot of Manny, who had been once again employed as Jake's manservant. "I mean really, I could understand if Tina Turner had aced us out of number one because Tina's at least a real musician with a rockin' voice and that song she's got going has got some fuckin' soul to it, you know what I mean?"

"I know what you mean," Jake said, and he in fact agreed with this assessment.

"But what's this I Want To Dance crap? So she wants to fuckin' dance? Who gives a flying fuck? I'm telling you, MTV did this shit to us. That and the public's fascination with goddamn third world countries."

"Actually," said Bill, "Venezuela has a standard of living quite close to that of the United States and Canada."

"What?" asked Matt.

"Oh yes," Bill said. "They have copious reserves of petroleum. They've been the largest supplier of foreign oil to the United States ever since the Arab oil embargo of 1973. They're also the only western hemisphere member of OPEC. All of this oil revenue amounts to a gross domestic product that is nearly as high as..."

"Nerdly," Matt said, taking a drag off his cigarette.

"What?"

"I don't give a fuck about their oil revenue."

Bill looked hurt. "I was just trying to tell you that Venezuela is not a third world country," he said.

Matt's face went through a few contortions as angry outbursts were formed and then headed off. Finally he nodded. "I apologize," he said. "Can we call them a second world country then?"

"That would be a more accurate portrayal," Bill agreed.

"Good," Matt said. "Anyway, that Venezuelan bitch with her hokey little accent and her fuckin' crucifix around her neck comes out of this second world country, sings about how she wants to dance, makes a video where her titties are bouncing all over the place under a tight shirt, and everyone eats it up. Nobody notices that the song itself bites ass."

"How do her titties look in the video?" asked Jake, who had not actually seen it — since he despised the whole concept of music videos — nor had he heard anything other than snatches of the actual song since it was not played on stations that he typically listened to.

"They are nice titties," Matt admitted. "Kind of grapefruit sized with lots of good bounce to 'em. And the bitch herself is kind of exotic looking. Dark hair, light skin. The kind of skin you'd like to nut on."

"Light skin, huh?" Jake said, considering. "Is she actually a native of Venezuela or are they making all that shit up?"

"I'm sure they're sincere about her geographic origin," Bill said. "Light skin tone is not all that unusual among Venezuelans. As a nation, they retain a much higher percentage of Spanish blood in their citizenry than the more familiar Latin American nations like Mexico and Cuba."

"So you'd nut on her too?" Jake asked him.

"Does all molecular motion stop at absolute zero?" Bill replied.

Jake looked at him for a second. "Does that mean yes?" he asked.

"Fuckin' A," Nerdly agreed.

"I thought so," Jake said.

"Okay," said Matt. "Now that we all agree we would nut on her, let's continue our shit-talking session about her and her crappy pop band and how the stupidity and complete lack of musical taste among the American public allowed them to keep us from our rightful place on top of the goddamn music chart."

"You already know the answer to that, Matt," Jake said. "It's a demographic thing. They sing pop music. Do you remember what 'pop' stands for? It means popular. The crap they produce is designed to reach out across the entire demographic spectrum. It's not harsh like rock and heavy metal, it doesn't twang like country."

"Country?" Matt said. "Don't even mention that word in my presence!"

"Forgive me," Jake said. "But anyway, pop bands specialize in catchy tunes that the musically unsophisticated — which, I'm sad to say, make up the majority of the American public — can bop and sing along to. They don't have to have strong lyrics or good guitarists or musical depth of any kind. They just have to have a backbeat you can dance to and a catchy chorus that will stick in your head. If they can get that formula down, two-thirds of the goddamn country will buy their shit, and that crosses pretty much all of the demographics. They're just as likely to have a twelve-year-old boy buying their shit as they are to have a sixty-year-old woman. It's amazing that we've held our own against them with as many songs as we have. You ask me, it's a testament to our musical ability that we're even on the single charts at all, let alone vying for the number one spot."

"Are you saying that we're falling into the pop music category?" Matt asked, appalled at the very thought.

"No, not at all," Jake said. "I'm saying that our core audience are the late teen to mid-twenties crowd — the high school and college age demographic. Those are the ones who like hard rock music and we've dominated that demographic ever since they started playing Descent on the radio. However, our stuff is so musical, so enjoyable to listen to, that we've crossed demographics into the traditional pop music crowd. Most of these people buying CTL singles would never buy a Van Halen single, have never even heard a Led Zepplin or an AC/DC tune, and are only buying our songs because, through no fault of our own, our lyrical and back-beat formula are meeting the requirements they want in pop music."

"So you're saying," said Matt, "that Crossing The Line and The Thrill of Doing Business are being played by people because they like the beat and the chorus?"

"Most of them are probably not even listening to the verses," Jake said. "And if they are, they're not comprehending the meaning of them. Our core demographic catches our meaning and appreciates us both musically and lyrically, but then our core demographic are the people buying the entire album, not the singles."

And so far, that demographic was keeping The Thrill of Doing Business — the album — number one on the album charts for its ninth straight week, with no sign of dropping anytime soon. They had neatly dislodged the albums put out by both Tina Turner and Lionel Richie, both of which had formerly held the number one spot.

"The singles don't mean shit in the great scheme of things," Jake said. "I mean, sure, they're making some money for National and they amount to prestige for the individual songs, but it's the album sales that are first and foremost here. By Christmas, we'll have sold two million copies of Thrill and almost three million copies of Descent. That's where hard rock pays for itself. Our fans — not the pop music faggots who are buying the singles — but the real fans, the guys and girls in jeans and leather, with long hair, the ones smoking pot and chewing shrooms, they buy albums, not singles. Our strength here is that our first album was full of good music. It didn't just have two or three songs that were good and the rest that were shit. People heard Descent the song, then they heard Who Needs Love. That's when the album sales started picking up in the cities we hadn't toured in. Now that we've established ourselves as a group that makes good music, our core fans snatched up copies of Thrill — the album — the moment it went on sale. Thrill is full of good music too. The core fans will develop favorites out of the tracks that aren't even played on the radio at all. That's what we need to focus on in the future. Keeping our core fans happy, not the pop fans."

"And the way to keep the core fans happy," Matt said, seeing where he was coming from, "is to keep making albums full of good music instead of albums with a couple of catchy tracks that will sell singles."

"Exactly," Jake said. "The worst mistake we could make is to start catering to the pop fans. If we start making music that's catchy instead of deep, if we start writing songs with the thought of what the video will look like when its produced, or with the thought of how it will sound on the radio, we're going to fade into obscurity within two more albums. I don't want that."

"Fuck that," said Matt, horrified by the very thought.

"I agree," said Bill. "We need to be our own quality control. But how do we do that?"

"We need to keep doing what we did before Shaver and National Records came along," Jake said. "We need to write our songs and produce our music without interference, to do it from our hearts, just like we used to."

"Crow isn't going to like that," Matt said. "It'll take too long."

They knew this to be true. They had had a meeting with Crow just the day before and he had already started pushing them to get into the recording studio for their next album as soon as possible.

"If we can get you in there by the first of December," he told them, "we could realistically expect to release the next album by the first of April."

"The first of December?" Jake asked incredulously. "Are you serious?"

"Is that a problem?" Crow responded. "I'm already working on reserving the studio time."

"There's the small matter of us not having any fucking material to record," Matt said. "Since you won't let us record It's In The Book and since the other four tunes we got in the hopper aren't album quality, I'd say that's a pretty big problem."

"We haven't worked on anything new since we signed with you," Jake said. "It takes some time to come up with ten tunes."

"More like fifteen since you assholes reject at least a third of what we come up with," Matt said.

"Well," Crow said thoughtfully, "there's always those numbers our songwriting teams came up with as filler for the last album. There are eight of them, including Embrace of Darkness, which is a really good tune. We haven't farmed those songs out to anyone yet so all of them are available to you. That means you would only have to come up with two songs of your own."

"Ahhh," said Matt, "I was wondering when we would get back to this."

"Look, guys," Crow said, "I know you don't like the tunes. We gave into you last time — very much against our better judgment I assure you — but this time we're going to have to stand firm on this. We need ten songs from you by December 1. If you can't come up with them on your own..."

"We're not doing your songs," Jake interrupted. "Period. End of story. That's the final word. I thought we established that the last time we butted heads with you people. We would rather have you sue us for breach of contract, ruin our entire careers, and garnishee every wage we ever earn for the rest of our lives than record a song that someone other than me or Matt has written and composed."

"It ain't gonna happen," Matt agreed. "Let's just cut the bullshit and not rehash this stupid argument again, you down with it?"

Crow sighed, managing to look like his feelings had been hurt. "Okay," he said. "Just thought I'd throw that out there. But the fact remains we need to get you into the studio early in December. That means you need to submit at least twelve songs for our approval by mid-November. That's a little over a month away."

"It's also a little bit impossible," Matt said. "There ain't no way in hell we're gonna be able to come up with twelve tunes by then. We'd be lucky to get three or four going."

"That's all the more reason to consider utilizing some of our pre-written material," Crow said.

Matt got mad. He stood up and slammed his hands down on Crow's desk, hard enough to echo through the room and make Crow back up in fear. "Listen up, fuckdick!" Matt yelled at him. "You don't seem to be absorbing the point here about this pre-written shit your hackers whipped up for us. It will never be recorded by Intemperance! Never! I swear before all that I hold holy and sacred, I swear on my fucking Strat! We will never do it. Never! Do you catch my fucking drift now?"

"Okay, okay," Crow said, his hands trembling a bit. "No need to yell. I think you've made your point quite nicely."

Matt sat back down. He pulled out a cigarette and sparked up. Crow did the same, his hand still shaking.

"Now that we've settled that," Jake said. "We're left with the problem of not enough time to come up with new material. As Matt said, you're asking the impossible here. You need to extend the deadline."

"Now you are asking the impossible," Crow replied. "We can't allow any lag time between the decline of Thrill and the launch of the next album."

"Why not?" Jake asked.

"Well... because you just can't!" Crow said. "Everyone knows that. If you don't keep your name constantly at the top of the charts you fade into obscurity in no time. We need to have that next album out by mid-April at the latest."

They went round and round on this issue for the next twenty minutes but eventually Crow — after having a private conversation with Doolittle like a car salesman consulting with his sales manager — grudgingly gave some ground.

"All right," he said. "We don't usually do this but Mr. Doolittle has agreed to give you a little more time to come up with new material."

"How much more time?" Jake asked.

"An extra month," Crow said. "We'll put off the start of the recording session until the first week in January. That means we'll expect twelve new tunes out of you by mid-December. Do you think you can meet that deadline?"

"That's still a little bit tight," Jake said.

"We're working with you all we can here, Jake," Crow said. "Really we are. But that's the absolute best we can do. Now all of the songs don't have to be masterpieces. Just give us two or three quality pieces for radio play and video production and the rest can be filler. Remember, your image is selling for you now."

Matt opened his mouth to say something — something that undoubtedly would have been profanity-laden and angry — but Jake put his hand on his shoulder, restraining him.

"We'll see what we can do," Jake said.

The meeting came to an end a few minutes later.

"Fuckin' filler," Matt said now, as they sipped from fresh drinks Manny had delivered to them. "I hate the very sound of that word. I do not produce filler. I will not play guitar for a song that is merely filler."

"I agree," Jake said. "I've done a lot of shit in the name of advancing my career. I've put on tight leather pants to play in front of an audience. I've lip-synched to my own music in front of cameras to make crappy music videos. I've given up my Les Paul for a Brogan. But none of that has actually affected the music itself. Pumping out filler tunes or playing crap that other people have written crosses a line that I'm not willing to cross."

"It would be an unacceptable compromise," Bill said. "Absolutely and completely deplorable."

"Let's make a pact," Jake suggested.

"A pact?" asked Matt.

"Yeah," Jake said. "We're the core members of this group, correct? You and I write the tunes and concoct the basic melodies. Nerdly, you're the one who knows the best way to polish those melodies into perfection. We are Intemperance. We are the ones who control the music we put out, agree?"

"Agree," said Bill.

"Damn right," said Matt. "Those two fuckin' druggies in the rhythm section are replaceable assets. I would've replaced Darren's ass a long time ago if they'd let me."

"I understand," Jake said. "And since we're the core of the group and since we control the music, we need to make this pact among the three of us. We need to vow that we will hold to our musical ideals in the production of new music. No filler tunes allowed. We will not allow our music to be compromised by the constraints of time or record company interference. Remember the standard we used before using new material at D Street West?"

They both nodded. The standard back then was that if the three core members were not drooling to play a tune before the audience for the first time, it would not be played. Any doubts about the quality of a new song by either Bill, Matt, or Jake, would be enough to get it banned. It was a rule that was unwritten and undiscussed, but a rule that carried the same weight as the Ten Commandments did for the bible thumpers.

"If we wouldn't play a song in front of D Street West," Jake said. "It doesn't go on an Intemperance album. That's the pact. Any one of us have unquestioned veto power over a tune. It has to be unanimous approval or we shitcan it. And no pressure by Crow or Doolittle or any of those other fuckheads will change our mind. Agreed?"

"Agreed," said Matt.

"Agreed," said Bill.

They sealed the pact the way the sealed any agreement between them. They drank on it and then smoked a joint in celebration.