Climbing the Rock

Chapter 17C: Balance of Power

Two days later, Jake was sitting in his living room, sipping a rum and coke and flipping through a collection of apartment brochures that had been sent to him. Manny was already gone, his fate unknown to Jake and uncared about. Jake himself had thirty days to find new lodging.

He now had $79,780 in his bank account, his share of the $500,000 advance minus Pauline's twenty percent and the amount he'd spent on groceries for himself and the monthly insurance payment for his Corvette. On Pauline's advice he was already considering another thirty thousand of it to be gone as well, earmarked for federal and state income taxes, which he alone would be responsible for calculating and paying. That left him with about fifty grand to pay for housing, gas, insurance, groceries, clothing, and everything else he would need to buy until their first royalty payments started to come in. The best they could hope for there was next July, assuming they got an album out by December and assuming that album went platinum very quickly. If not, it would be after the third quarter of next year, October, before they saw more revenue since their advance money and all the other expenses would be recouped first. That fifty grand was going to have to stretch thirteen months.

Granted, this left him with about $3800 a month to spend free and clear. That was considerably more than the average middle-class citizen of the United States enjoyed at this particular point in history, but the average middle-class citizen did not live in Los Angeles and was not used to living in a luxury condo. Jake simply did not have enough money to continue living in the lifestyle to which he'd become accustomed. Comparable apartments went for around $2500 a month. He figured his budget would allow only about $1500, $1700 at the most, for housing. In that price range he could find nothing in the downtown area that was livable to his standards. If he wanted to keep up something of an air of luxury, he would have to travel outward, to the suburbs.

"Oh well," he said to himself as he lit a cigarette and took a sip from his drink. "I suppose there are people who would kill to have my problems."

He took a moment to worry about Darren and Coop. Both had checked into the Betty Ford Center, as scheduled, and were currently enjoying their first twenty-four hours without heroin. He hoped they would come out clean and stay clean but even if they did, they were already setting themselves up for big problems down the line. Jake and Bill had both offered to find new housing for them while they were in rehab but both had refused. National had stuck their noses in and offered to continue leasing their current condos to them, something that would eat up their advance money long before the first royalty check, even if it did come in July. Those condos went for three grand a month, plus dues.

The phone rang, interrupting his thoughts. He actually sat for three rings before remembering that Manny was no longer there to act as phone secretary. He got up and answered it.

"Mr. Kingsley?" a vaguely familiar voice said.

"Who is enquiring?" Jake asked.

"Ted Perkins," the voice said. "I'm in charge of the endorsements department at Brogan Guitars. We met a few years ago while you were recording your first album, remember?"

"Yes, I do," Jake said, and he did. Perkins was the rep who had pushed the Brogan guitars on them during the recording and touring stages of Descent Into Nothing. He was also one of the people who had called and threatened Matt with contract violation when he refused to play one on stage. "How did you get my number?"

"Mr. Crow over at National gave it to me," he said. "It is my understanding that the endorsement contract we held with National regarding the guitar you play onstage during your tour is no longer valid."

"That's your understanding, huh?" Jake said suspiciously, not volunteering anything further. The contract they had just signed contained a strict non-disclosure clause about its very existence.

"This is information Mr. Crow gave to me," Perkins said. "I am told that you and all of the other guitar players of the group are now independent agents for touring contract endorsements."

"Yes," he said carefully. "I suppose we are. What exactly is it that you want, Mr. Perkins?"

"Please," he said, "call me Ted."

"Ted," Jake said. "What is that you want?"

"Well, I want to offer you an endorsement contract," he said. "I know you like our guitars, Mr. Kingsley, and it is our hope that you will continue to play them onstage."

"What kind of endorsement contract?" Jake asked.

"We should probably discuss this in person. Would nine o'clock tomorrow morning be convenient?"

"Tomorrow?"

"I could send a limousine to your residence to pick you up if you wish."

"Uh... why don't you just give the basics of what you're offering right now?" Jake asked. "And then we'll go from there."

Perkins didn't seem to like this but he went forth anyway. "We are prepared to offer you a five hundred thousand dollar endorsement fee if you would agree to exclusively play Brogan guitars on your upcoming tour and another five hundred thousand on any subsequent tours. In addition, we will provide you with free instruments for the duration of this contract."

"Half a million bucks a tour?" Jake asked. "Is that what you were paying National before?"

"I'm afraid I am not allowed to discuss the details of contracts with other clients," Perkins said.

"When would I get that money?" Jake asked.

"It would payable upon the signing of the contract," Perkins said. "Of course, if you were to not go out on tour for whatever reason, or if you were to play different guitars on stage, you would be obligated to return that money to us along with a moderate breach of contract fee."

"Of course," Jake said. "Look, Perkins, let me think this thing over for a bit. I'll get back to you."

"Uh... well... sure," he said. "But how about that meeting tomorrow? Are we still on for that?"

"I'll let you know," Jake said. "What's your number?"

He recited his telephone number and Jake wrote it down. Before he could say anything further, Jake hung up on him. He consulted a sheet of paper and dialed the number for the Hyatt Hotel. Pauline had moved in there the moment her hundred grand had been deposited in her account. She too was now looking for luxury apartments in the LA area.

"What's up?" she asked when she came on the line.

"I just got this phone call," Jake said. He then told her about his conversation with Perkins.

"Half a million bucks, huh?" she said, whistling appreciatively. "Not bad for just playing a certain guitar. I bet you can do better though."

"You think so?"

"It's worth a shot anyway. Didn't you always say you loved your Les Paul but you only liked the Brogan?"

"Yeah," he said. "I did say that." This too was true. Though the Brogan was actually a little bit sturdier of an instrument with more modern components, a Les Paul was a classic, the kind of guitar a musician could bond with.

"Why don't we call up Gibson and see if maybe they are interested in an endorsement contract? It can't hurt, can it?"

"No," Jake agreed. "I guess it can't. Will you talk to them for me?"

"What are big sisters for?"

As it turned out, Gibson was very interested in an endorsement contract with Jake Kingsley. They offered him a million dollars per tour and free instruments for life if he would exclusively play the Les Paul onstage. Pauline told them they would check with Brogan to see if they were willing to make a counter offer. Gibson then upped the offer to $1.5 million per tour and, in addition, they promised to release a Jake Kingsley signature model Les Paul for sale to the general public and they would give Jake a commission of twenty dollars for each one that was sold.

"Where do I sign?" Jake asked.

"But, Jake," Pauline said, "shouldn't we run this offer through a few more guitar makers first? There's a good chance that Brogan or Fender might up it."

"Nope," Jake said. "The deal couldn't get any better for me. I was planning on playing my Les Paul onstage for free anyway. Let's wrap it up and get it signed."

They wrapped it up and got it signed. Since Pauline had brokered the deal, she received $300,000 of the $1.5 million and would get four dollars for each guitar sold. Jake looked at his bank balance the day the money was wired and stared at the amount for almost fifteen minutes. There was now $1,279,203 in there. It was now official. He was a millionaire.

Matt was the next to become a millionaire. Learning from Jake's experience and utilizing the negotiation skills of Pauline, he signed an endorsement contract with Fender to do exactly what he had already been doing: play his Stratocaster onstage. They gave him two million dollars per tour and promised him thirty dollars for each Matt Tisdale signature model that was sold to the public.

This led to the rest of the band signing endorsement deals of their own. Bill accepted $750,000 to play a Steinway Concert grand piano while on tour. The Steinway people even promised to install high-fidelity pick-up microphones for optimum sound reproduction. Coop, from within the walls of the Betty Ford Center, actually got a bidding war going between Ludwig, Pearl, Lexington, and Yamaha, with Yamaha finally offering him half a million per tour and giving him a commission of twelve dollars per John "Coop" Cooper signature starter set that was sold. Darren was the only one who didn't get a six-figure deal. Brogan ended up offering him a relatively paltry $75,000 to continue playing their bass guitar during tours and to appear in advertisements in various rock music magazines. There was no Darren Appleman signature bass proposed and, thus, no commission. Part of the reason Darren didn't fare as well as the others in the endorsement game was because he was a bass player and that was simply not perceived to be as glamorous as the other positions in the band. A bigger part of the reason, however, was that he chose not to use Pauline as a negotiator and mouthpiece for brokering the deal.

"I ain't paying her twenty percent to get me a fuckin' deal with a guitar company," he said stubbornly when Jake — during one of his visits to the Betty Ford Center — suggested that it might be a good idea. "It's bad enough I had to give her twenty percent of the hundred grand we got for signing the contract."

This was typical of Darren's attitude toward the rest of the band during this period. While Coop seemed to be responding well to the treatment and seemed genuinely happy to be shaking off his heroin addiction, Darren was full of excuses and resentment. Counselors told Jake on several occasions that he hadn't even acknowledged the first and most important step of the therapy, which was to admit that he was addicted and had a problem. As a result of this stubbornness, Ted Perkins met with Darren on day 24 of his stay at the Betty Ford Center and put an endorsement contract before him that offered perhaps half of what he would've got with Pauline's help and was chock full of loopholes such as the magazine advertisement requirement, a rider that dictated he would not get paid until the tour actually started, and that he would have to reimburse Brogan a proportionate amount for any tour dates that were missed.

"We're gonna keep having problems with him," Jake opined on day thirty of the rehab, the final day.

"Yep," Matt agreed. "The best we can hope for is to keep him in line through the recording process and the tour."

On October 3, 1985, Intemperance entered their rehearsal warehouse (the rent on which was now entirely paid by National Records instead of being recouped from band profits) for the first time since recording the atrocious demo tape that had kicked off the dispute and eventual renegotiation. Their instruments were dusty and out of tune, requiring two hours of cleaning and maintenance before they could even begin playing.

"Jake and I have both been working on new tunes during this whole thing we've been going through," Matt said. "I have about six and Jake has seven or eight, right, Jake?"

"Probably seven," Jake said. "I'm not really sure about that last one I was working on."

"Fair enough," Matt said. "But for now, how about we start by refreshing ourselves on the three main tunes we had done before this whole thing started? Does everyone remember them?"

"You mean the ones you said sucked ass?" asked Darren. "The ones you replaced with that crappy shit we put on the tape?"

"You know why we did that," said Jake. "That got us the new contract we're under, remember?"

"I kind of liked the old contract," Darren said. "Nobody asked me or Coop if we wanted to change it."

"You liked it because it let you shoot heroin to your heart's content," Jake told him. "You didn't even care that it was bankrupting you."

"Hey, fuck off, Jake!" Darren shouted. "Just because you scored a fucking million and a half endorsement contract off this new deal doesn't mean the rest of us have to like it!"

"Hey!" Matt yelled. "Knock it off, both of you. We ain't going there. We're here to play some music and get an album together, so let's fuckin' do it."

Jake and Darren both glared at each other for a moment and then nodded.

"Let's do it," Darren said.

"Yeah," Jake agreed. "Let's see if we still got it."

"That's the fuckin' spirit," Matt said. "Let's do Service Me first.

They didn't still have it, not at first anyway. One or the other of them would constantly miss a cue or play the wrong piece or flat out forget what they were supposed to be doing. Jake screwed up the lyrics, letting entire sections go unsung. The harmony of the rest of the members during the chorus was unharmonious at best. But they kept at it, referring to music sheets and lyric sheets and starting over again and again. Finally, after almost two hours, they managed to play the entire song all the way through without having anyone screw up.

"All right," said Matt, nodding in satisfaction. "That was almost un-shitty. Now let's do it again. From the beginning."

They did it again, almost flawlessly. And then they did it again. And as they played and sang, gripping their instruments, pounding their drums and piano keys, letting their voices be heard, the magic of making music slowly overtook them. They let their fears and resentments, their worries and anxieties, slip away from them, floating out on a stream of electrons through wires, pounding out as vibrations through the air emitted by amplifiers. They became a band again, doing what they did best: playing their music. By the time they called it a day at six o'clock that evening, they'd dialed in two of their previous tunes and were well on their way to dialing in the third. They left the warehouse in much better moods than they'd entered it with, even Darren, who was still pondering how good it would feel to drive a needle full of heroin into his vein and wondering when the scrutiny would be off of him enough that he could do it again.

There wasn't a day that went by that Steve Crow didn't call either Jake or Matt to hound them about when he could expect a demo tape on his desk.

"We're already out of the Grammy Awards for next year since there's no way in hell we're going to get an album out by January 1," he complained to Jake one day. "And that fucking band of spics you got in a fight with released their new album three weeks ago. Have you heard that shit? They're already tearing up the charts! They're going to go gold in less than two months!"

"What does that have to do with us?" Jake asked.

"It means they're going to be in the awards and you are not," Crow said. "Do you have any idea how much free publicity we're missing out on by not being in the awards?"

"We're going as fast as we can, Steve," Jake said. "Have patience."

"If you would've been working on this new material during the contract negotiations you could've gone right into the studio once it was signed."

"Steve, think about that for a minute," Jake told him. "If we would've done that our entire negotiating position would have been compromised. You're lucky that Matt and I were even composing new tunes during all that. We could've just been sitting on our asses."

"I suppose," he said. "I'm just letting you know that you're in danger of obscurity. It's been almost two years since Thrill was released. A lot of your fans might have forgotten about you."

"Is that why Thrill is still in the top ten album chart?" Jake asked. "Is that why three of the songs on Thrill are still the most requested on rock radio stations nationwide?"

"That's now," Crow said. "It'll still take at least three months to record your tunes once they're submitted. A lot can change in three months."

"We will record no tune before its time, Steve," Jake told him. "We're getting there, okay? When we have the demo tape ready for you, we'll submit it."

"Three good songs and seven filler tunes," Crow pleaded. "That's all we ask, Jake."

"We don't do filler tunes," Jake replied. "You'll get ten good tunes and the album will sell like mad. Don't worry."

But, of course, he continued to worry and continued to hound. The band did their best to ignore him and continued with their composition, working at least six hours, five days a week, composing and perfecting, honing and rejecting. By mid-October they were well into the rhythm during their sessions, even Darren and Coop, and it was almost like old times. The suggestions flew and the changes were tried and incorporated. New songs were introduced one by one and then perfected. Finally, on November 7, they had twelve songs ready for submission — five by Matt and seven by Jake. Putting themselves under Bill's direction, they recorded a demo tape over a period of three days, working through the weekend. On November 11, the following Monday, they put the demo tape, the lyric sheets, and the music sheets on Steve Crow's desk.

"This is the real thing this time?" he asked as he opened the envelope and removed the contents.

"The real fuckin' thing," Matt said. "Some of the best tunes we've ever done are on that tape."

"Okay then," he said. "Let's give it a listen."

They gave it a listen. For the first time since being assigned to Intemperance, Steve Crow found himself in awe of them. Rich, melodic, and most of all, complex rock and roll music poured out of his speakers for more than fifty minutes and he drank it in. When the tape finally ended he looked up at them, respect showing in his eyes.

"This album is going to sell a lot of copies," he said.

"That's the idea," Jake said. "When do we go into the studio?"

"Soon," he said. "As soon as I can book the time. Meanwhile, let's get Doolittle in here and we'll start working on the production list."

National was so desperate to get the album into production they fought very little with the band on which songs would be included and in what order they would be played. The only time they used their veto power was when Jake suggested they record It's In The Book and name the album that. The band didn't fight the issue. Eventually they settled on ten of the new songs, six of Jake's and four of Matt's. Two of the songs were ballads, which National was particularly fond of since those tended to translate into best-selling singles. The title cut of the new album was to be Balance Of Power, one of Jake's songs that dealt with the subject of asserting yourself and taking control of your own destiny — a subject that no one at National seemed to realize was about the whole dispute they'd just had with their best-selling band.

They entered the recording studio on December 6 amid much gossip media coverage. Throughout the entire negotiation process the reporters had continued to hound both the band and the National executives about rumors of a new contract and the fact that a lawsuit was still on record. This attention increased to a frenzy once it was reported that National had dropped the lawsuit. Now, on the day the band actually started recording, National triumphantly announced that fact to the world, stating that since two of the members had successfully completed rehab at the Betty Ford Center for drug addiction, the band was now on track and anticipated finishing their new album by spring.

"What about the rumors of a new contract?" asked several reporters.

"There is no new contract," Crow replied. "The band is operating under their current contract and will remain so until it expires."

Recording, including remixes, dubs, and overdubs, for Balance Of Power was finished on March 3, 1986. National rushed the album into production as quickly as possible, with plans to get the first single — I've Found Myself Again — on the radio by the first day of spring and to put the album itself into record stores by April 1.

"Now it's time to get the video for Found into production," Crow told them on March 4. It needs to be on MTV simultaneous with the release of the single. That doesn't give us much time."

The filming of the video turned out to be the first major test of the new contract and the powers that had been granted to Intemperance under it. The band met with Norman Rutger, the man who had produced and written all of their previous videos. His idea was to continue the Satanist theme started in the other videos. He envisioned the band dressed in black leather and roaming through dank underground catacombs, searching through rooms full of torture equipment and splattered with blood. During the chorus of the song Jake would find a smiling duplicate of himself in an embrace with a winged demon in one of the more hideous rooms.

"No fucking way," Jake said when he first heard this. "That is not what the song is about and I will not sign off on any video that represents one of my songs incorrectly."

Rutger, of course, started his whole spiel about how he couldn't work under such conditions and how the "visionless buffoons" had a lot of nerve questioning his inspired imaginings.

"We'll do it my way or we'll use our veto power," Jake told Crow and Doolittle when he was called into their office.

"But Rutger is the premier video producer," Doolittle said. "He refuses to take direction from a musician."

"He does have a good sense of what the audience is looking for in a video," Crow said. "Two of your other videos were almost nominated for awards."

"I don't give a shit about videos or video awards," Jake told them. "I thing videos are destroying music and perverting this entire industry. The music world would be much better off without them. But if you insist upon us making one, it is going to be a video that is true to the meaning of the song. I will not compromise on this. I've Found Myself Again is a song about being on the road, about the frustrations and the boredom and the burnout and about how all that disappears when we hit the stage each night. We make a video about that or we don't make a video at all. It's your choice."

"But Rutger refuses to take input on the content of his videos," Crow said.

"Then find someone else to produce it," Jake said. "Someone who does take input."

Left with no other choice, they did as Jake asked (cursing the new Intemperance contract all the while). They found an unknown producer named Erica Wilde, a woman in her mid-thirties who held a degree from a prestigious filmmaking school but who had spent her entire career making commercials for auto makers and soap manufacturers. She had never done a video before but she was eager to give it a shot.

Erica was an overweight, bespectacled librarian-looking woman who had very little fashion sense. But she proved to be an intelligent and open-minded filmmaker. "What are we going for, here?" she asked Jake at their first meeting. "My understanding is that you have specific imagery you wish to convey with this video and that I am to follow your suggestions to the best of my ability. So what are we talking?"

"Look," Jake said, "I'm not trying to control your production of the video. I am a musician and I know next to nothing about filmmaking. All I want is a video that is true to the theme of the song. Do you think you can do that?"

"What's the song about?" she asked.

Jake popped an advanced copy of the master recording into a cassette player. "I just happened to have the song with me," he said. He pushed play. "You tell me what its about."

She listened to it and then had him rewind it and listened to it again. "Not bad," she said. "I'm more of a soft rock fan but that is good music."

"Thank you," he said. "So what is it about?"

"Well, it's a road song, obviously. That's a fairly common staple of musical recordings, isn't it? Wheel In The Sky by Journey, Homeward Bound by Simon and Garfunkle, Turn The Page by Bob Seger. It's in the same genre as those tunes. Yours is a little different though. It describes the boredom and the long hours and the fatigue and the nameless groupies but it also expounds upon the reason you're out there in the first place, the thrill you get when you step out onto the stage and hear the crowd screaming for you."

Jake was grinning as he listened to her words. "I think you know a little bit more about music then you're letting on," he told her.

"Maybe," she said. "So do I pass your little test?"

"You do," he said. "So let's talk about what we're gonna do with this song, shall we?"

They talked, and as they did, Jake started to like this mousy, unassuming woman more and more. When Jake told her that National had some fifty hours of video that had been taken during the Thrill tour, footage that included activities during the bus trips, activities back stage, and activities onstage, her interest perked up considerably.

"I'd like to see all of that footage," she said. "Do you think they'll let me?"

"If it will get their video shot by March 20, they'll let you," Jake told her.

They let her. And from those randomly shot tapes she formed the basis of the video, taking cut scenes of actual tour life and mixing them with other scenes that she carefully directed in the video studio rented for her use. The final result was a moving and very deep representation of the rigors of life on the road and the animation that filled the band when they actually stepped out onto the stage each night.

"It's a fucking work of art," Matt proclaimed when a copy was screened for them on March 16.

"You are a true talent, Erica," Jake said. "You captured the essence of my song perfectly."

Even Darren agreed that it rocked, although he complained that there wasn't enough footage of him and his bass.

When they screened it for Crow and Doolittle, however, they only grunted.

"I guess it'll do," Crow said.

"Yes," agreed Doolittle. "It's better than nothing, but will you let Mr. Rutger produce the video for Service Me when the time comes?"

"No," said Matt. "I want this fine-ass filming bitch here to do all the videos for my songs as well. She fuckin' rocks."

Erica beamed at his praise. The two executives rolled their eyes upward but didn't disagree. After all, the alternative was no video at all.

Tour planning began two days before the first single from Balance Of Power was released. The band and National butted heads in the first ten minutes.

"What the fuck is this shit?" asked Matt as he looked at the first piece of paperwork that had been handed to him.

"It's the tour schedule," Crow said. "Is there something wrong with it?"

"We're starting on the west coast," Matt said. "That's all cool. It means we won't have to drive all the way across the fuckin' country just to hit the first date, but Heritage isn't on this list."

"We're anticipating much greater response to this album than the last," Crow said. "That means you'll be playing top venues on the tour. Heritage doesn't have a large enough arena to justify stopping there."

"Heritage is our home town," Jake said. "We have to play there."

"The Heritage fans can come to one of the shows in Sacramento," Crow said. "We're doing two of them there and its only sixty miles away."

"We will do a show in Heritage or we won't do any shows anywhere," Jake said. He pushed the piece of paper back across the table. "It's our home town and the people who live there are the ones who made us what we were when we first signed. We will not skip them on any tour, ever. Add Heritage in."

"Preferably first," Matt added. "I think they should get that benefit."

Crow fumed and blanched and gritted his teeth for a few moments but he finally took the paper. "I'll see what I can do," he finally said. "Now let's go over the rest of the production."

They did, and the band didn't like what they heard. National was proposing an extravagant production that involved multiple pyrotechnics, six separate laser shows, and a harness and pulley arrangement that would make Jake fly across the audience for the closing number. In addition, the wardrobe department had them dressed in the same leather clothing they'd hated so much on the first tour.

"No, no, no!" Matt said. "We ain't doing none of this shit!"

"None of what shit?" Crow cried.

"None of the lasers, none of the pulleys, none of the fuckin' leather, none of the pyrotechnics," he said.

"Especially none of the pyrotechnics," Darren added with a shudder.

"This is standard industry production!" Crow cried. "Your fans expect to see you in leather! They expect to see lasers and explosions! You can't pull that off on the last tour and then not do it one better on the next!"

"Why not?" Jake asked.

"Because you can't!" Crow said. "Each tour has to be better than the one before it."

"And it will be," Jake said. "It will be a concert, just like we used to do back in the day."

"You got that shit right," Matt said. "No leather, no lasers, no fucking bombs blowing people through the air, just music. That's what we're about."

"We'll do a ninety minute set," Jake said. "We'll open with Found and close with CTL. There will be two encore tunes after that. The lighting will be standard and there will be no lasers, pyrotechnics, or any other freaky-ass, high-tech shit. That is not what the fans come to see."

"And no fucking leather," Matt added. "I will never don another pair of leather pants as long as I live. I started out in this business wearing Levi 501 jeans onstage and that is how I will finish out my career."

"Guys," Crow said, "I think you're letting the tour profits go to your head. Sure, its nice if you make money off a tour, but the purpose of touring is to get people to buy your albums. Don't start trying to eliminate the expensive items like lasers and pyrotechnicians in the name of profit. That's a big mistake."

"That's not why we're doing it," Jake said. "A concert is about the music and the band that plays it. We put on a good show. We always have. People won't be coming to see us because of the lasers or the lights, they'll be coming to see us because we're Intemperance."

"And they know that Intemperance knows how to fucking rock," Matt added.

They fought and bickered about this for nearly two days but eventually National had little choice but to give in. After all, with the new contract, the band had the right to veto any tour schedule or production detail they didn't like. The alternative was no tour at all.

"You're destroying your career," Crow warned them. "I just want you to know that."

"We still have the option of not picking you up for the next contract period," Doolittle warned, upping the ante a little.

"You'll be eating your fucking words when this is over," Matt replied. "So should we start putting this thing together, or what?"

Crow sighed. "Yeah," he said. "I guess we should."

The rehearsals started. The show the band planned to do in cities across America and Canada from May 1 through November 11 was a simple show, consisting of little more than the band taking the stage and playing their asses off. They had a song list and an encore list that they would religiously follow but other than that, there was nothing in the way of lighting effects or acrobatics or choreography rehearsed. They would simply keep the lights shining brightly on them and use their own instincts when they hit the stage.

On March 21, 1986, the single of I've Found Myself Again was released to radio stations across the country. Within two days it was the most-requested song nationwide. On April 1, 1986, Balance Of Power, the album, was released for sale in record stores. It set an all-time record for most sales in twenty-four hours, with a staggering 83,429 copies purchased.

"It seems that people don't think it's too shitty," Matt told Crow after a rehearsal on April 2.

"Let's hope you're right," Crow returned.

He was. In the thirty days between the release of the album and the start of the tour, I've Found Myself Again shot up the singles chart to number six and showed every sign of continuing its climb, and Balance Of Power, the album, actually debuted at number one. Reviews came out and the album was declared "the best effort by Intemperance yet". Tickets for upcoming shows went on sale all along the west coast and sold out within minutes. Scalpers were reportedly asking more than ninety dollars a ticket for the shittiest seats. Even Matt, Jake, and Bill were surprised.

April 30 came and the band climbed on the same old tour bus. They drove upstate to Heritage and on the evening of May 1 they stepped out on the stage, knowing that Jake's parents and sister, Bill's parents, and many thousands of people who used to pay the cover charge and come to their shows at D Street West were out there watching them.

The lights came up and the music began to play. Jake knew, when he heard the cheers, that he'd found himself again.

They began to play.

The End of Book I