Climbing the Rock

Chapter 5A: Never Kiss a Groupie

January 1, 1983

Interstate 95, Southern Maine

Jake woke up slowly, his head throbbing, his mouth dry and tasting of rum, his stomach knotted with hunger pains. He felt the familiar rocking of the bus, heard the familiar rumbling of its diesel engine as it pulled them up a hill, but he was not in the familiar confines of his fold-down bunk near the back. He opened his eyes slowly, wincing a little at the sunlight streaming in from the windshield up front. He found he was sitting at one of the tables adjacent to the bar. He was still dressed in the jeans and T-shirt he wore last night. He still felt a little drunk as well.

"Christ," he muttered. "What time is it?"

He raised his head up and looked around. The inside of the tour bus looked a little like the hotel room scene on the cover of their album. Empty booze bottles, beer cans, drink glasses, and overflowing ashtrays were everywhere. All that was missing was the naked woman. Matt was lying on the floor, his mouth open, snoring drunkenly. Coop and Darren were lying on the two couches. Only Bill was actually in his bunk, although his arms were hanging limply out.

Sitting across the table from Jake was Greg Gahn, the National Records Artist Development Department representative who had been assigned as Intemperance's "tour manager". Greg was a short man, perpetually grinning, with a strong car salesman personality. His hair was cut short and always neatly styled. He always wore a suit and carried a copy of the Book of Mormon with him. He proclaimed himself a devout follower of the Principles of Mormonism.

"I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't engage in fornication," he told them four days before, when they'd set out from Los Angeles to head for the opening date of the Losing Proposition Tour in Bangor, Maine. "That's why they send me out with you boys. I can keep the tour moving along without succumbing to the pleasures of the flesh or the gross alcohol intoxication that sometimes crops up on these things."

It seemed that the Principles of Mormonism didn't cover cocaine use - or at least Greg pretended they didn't. In the four days they had been on the road, Greg had sniffed and snorted from a seemingly endless supply of high quality blow - blow he was more than happy to share with the five band members he was babysitting.

He was crunching up a few lines of it right now, as a matter of fact, going about it with the anal precision that drove all of his tasks. A bottle of expensive mineral water sat next to him. There was a slice of fresh lemon floating in it.

"Morning, Jake," he said cheerfully. "How you feeling?"

"Pretty shitty," Jake replied, running his hand across his face and feeling a two-day growth of beard there. "Where are we?"

"Within sight of our destination. We just crossed the Maine state line about twenty minutes ago. We should be in Bangor by noon."

"Bitchin," Jake said. "It'll be nice to get off this bus for awhile."

"I agree, although it seemed like you boys have been having a good enough time on our little trip from one corner of the country to the other. We had to stop twice to pick up more liquor for you."

Jake shrugged. Yes, they had partied rather hard since leaving Los Angeles. There was booze and cocaine and high-grade marijuana readily available for their pleasure and there was nothing else to do. There were portions of the trip that he didn't even remember. He would be the first to agree that they were off to a good start in the department of living up their band's name. It was very annoying, however, to have to listen to the self-righteous tripe this little coke-sniffing religious fanatic was always spouting at them during their brief interludes of sobriety.

"Well," Jake said, "you gotta keep the talent happy, don't you?"

Greg laughed as if that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. "Yes indeed," he said, grinning wildly. "That is my job, after all." He leaned down and made the two lines disappear. He sniffed pertly, tapping the sides of his nose for a second and then looked at Jake. "Care for a little wake-up?" he asked him. "It'll probably get rid of your hangover."

He was right. A few lines would nicely erase the headache, the sour stomach, and the dark fatigue that was pulling on him. But he declined nevertheless. He had been snorting a considerable amount of cocaine for the last four days and he thought it might be a good idea to take a little break from it. "That's okay," he said. "I think I'll just grab some aspirin and drink a quart or two of water."

"Suit yourself," Greg replied, his grin remaining firmly affixed. "But don't hesitate to ask if you change your mind."

Jake nodded and stood up, doing it slowly to keep the nausea and the spins to a minimum. He made his way to the front of the bus, toward the small bathroom/shower room. His eyes were now more or less adjusted to the brightness and he took a glance out the window, seeing they were driving down a four-lane Interstate that had been cut through a thick forest. Though the sky was now a brilliant shade of blue that was never seen in Los Angeles or even Heritage, it was clear that a terrible blizzard had recently swept through this area. Snow covered the ground and the evergreen trees. Drifts thrown up by snowplows stood nearly six feet high on either shoulder. It looked cold out there, frighteningly cold. The kind of cold that killed if you ventured out in it without an Arctic protection suit.

"Wassup, Ken?" Jake asked as he approached the small door to the bathroom. Ken Adopolis was one of the two bus drivers assigned to the Intemperance tour bus. Robert Cranston, the other driver, was currently crashed out in his small bunk next to the bathroom.

"Jake, my man," Ken greeted, turning towards him for a few seconds before putting his eyes back on the road. "How you doing this morning? A little hung?"

"I've been worse," Jake said, looking at the mess that surrounded Ken's seat. There were several empty soda cans, the crumpled remains of various fast food and processed food wrappers, and, of course, the inevitable ashtray full of cigarette butts and marijuana ashes. Ken was a voracious smoker of pot. He claimed he didn't know how to drive the bus when he was straight.

Ken picked up a marijuana pipe that he always kept loaded. He offered it to Jake. "Care for a little hit?"

"Maybe later," Jake replied.

Ken nodded, putting the pipe back down. "I heard you guys' song three more times on the radio since I got on shift," he said. "They're playing it on all the rock stations I've been getting."

Jake smiled a little. "That's what I like to hear," he said, although by this point the novelty of hearing himself on the radio was starting to wear off, especially since during waking hours - which consisted of about eighteen out of every twenty-four so far - the drivers had made a point of blasting Descent Into Nothing at top volume whenever they happened across it on the radio waves. When this happened everything else that was going on would stop instantly and they would all sing along and play air guitars and cheer - their revelry proportionate to the amount of intoxicants they had in their systems. This was something that happened fairly frequently on the trip because Descent was fast becoming one of the most played hard rock songs in the nation. The single had been released to the radio stations on November 20, more than two weeks before being made available to the public. Thanks to the National Records Promotion Department - who had connections with pretty much every major radio station in the United States and Canada - rock DJ's across the country had started playing Descent the very next day, at first during new music segments and then as a regular part of their programming.

Jake would never forget the first time he'd heard the song on the radio. He had been in Angie's apartment and they had been naked in her bed, cuddling after an extended session of lovemaking. Both had just been drifting towards sleep, the radio alarm clock nothing but background noise, when Justin Adams, the night DJ for KRON had come back from a commercial break.

"New music here on the Krone bone," he said. "We just got this tune the other day. The album is not even in stores yet. It's a band from Heritage if you can believe that. You ever heard of Heritage? It's a little cow town up in northern Cali somewhere that makes Bakersfield look like friggin Beverly Hills from what I'm told. Its where they grow most of our tomatoes and our rice and where having a good time means shutting down the still for the night and going over to the grange hall."

Jake's eyes popped wide open and he sat up, startling Angie. "Holy shit," he said.

"What?" she asked, looking around.

"Shhh," he hushed her. "They're talking about us! They're gonna play our song!"

"Your song?"

He hushed her again.

"Anyway," Justin Adams continued, "I guess they're capable of producing something other than produce and cheap moonshine up in those parts because I gave this tune a listen and... well... it friggin rocks. Here it is for your listening pleasure. The band is called Intemperance..."

"That's you!" Angie had squealed. "Oh my God!"

"Shhhh!"

"... and the tune is the title cut from their up and coming album: Descent Into Nothing."

And then the opening riff of Matt's guitar began to sound from the tinny speaker. Jake reached over and turned it up and both of them listened transfixed as the power riff began, as the piano chimed in, and then, finally, as Jake's voice began to issue from the speaker.

"It's really you," Angie had whispered in awe. It was the first time she had heard the song.

"It really is," Jake agreed, just as awed though he'd heard the song a thousand times.

They'd listened to it all the way through and then Angie had looked at him seriously, a tear running down her face.

"What?" Jake had asked. "What are you crying about?"

"Nothing," she said. "Just love me."

He'd loved her, sliding into her naked body less than five minutes later.

On the day they'd left Los Angeles for Bangor, the album and the single had been in stores across the nation for twenty-three days. Album sales were less than twenty thousand at this point - well over ninety percent of those from the greater Heritage region - but sales of the Descent Into Nothing single had broken into Billboard's Hot One Hundred with a bullet - a remarkable feat since techno and punk music were the current fads. It was projected that the song would be played on the Top Forty countdown the following week.

"Both the fifteen to eighteen and the eighteen to twenty-five crowd loves the song," Acardio had told them. "It's going just how we planned. As soon as the song peaks and starts heading back down the charts, we'll release Who Needs Love as a single and get the radio stations to start pushing that one. When that happens, album sales will start to pick up dramatically. It generally takes two hit songs before people start buying the album in droves. And if we can squeeze three hit songs out, the album is almost guaranteed to go platinum."

Platinum, Jake thought as he entered the bathroom and closed the door behind him. So we can make an honest fourteen grand. His mind wanted to be bitter at this, as it had so many times before, but it simply wouldn't take today. His hangover - which was really a four-day hangover - coupled with his nervousness at their first real concert, simply wouldn't allow it. And then there was his parting with Angie. That weighed heavily on his mind as well.

He had grown very close to Angie during the last few months - at least as close as he'd been to Michelle during the peak of their relationship. Parting with her had not been easy, especially since their tour schedule - which was quite grueling when you sat down and looked at it - would not even begin to approach the west coast any time soon. So far, the first leg was all that was planned out. Jake remembered reading it over for the first time.

Jan 1 - Bangor, Maine; Jan 2 - Concorde, New Hampshire; Jan 3 - Boston, Massachusetts; Jan 5 - Buffalo, New York; Jan 6 - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Jan 7 - Cleveland, Ohio; Jan 10- Cincinnati, Ohio; Jan 11 - Indianapolis, Indiana; Jan 12 - Chicago, Illinois; Jan 13 - Minneapolis, Minnesota; Jan 14 - Des Moines, Iowa; Jan 15 - Peoria, Illinois; Jan 16 - Kansas City, Missouri; Jan 17 - St. Louis, Missouri; Jan 18 - Springfield, Missouri; Jan 20 - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Jan 21 - Amarillo, Texas; Jan 22 - Albuquerque, New Mexico; Jan 23 - El Paso, Texas; Jan 24 - Austin, Texas; Jan 25 - San Antonio, Texas; Jan 26 - Houston, Texas; Jan 27 - Dallas, Texas; Jan 29 - Little Rock, Arkansas; Jan 31 - Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Feb 01 - New Orleans, Louisiana; Feb 02 - Jackson, Mississippi; Feb 03 - Memphis, Tennessee; Feb 04 - Nashville, Tennessee; Feb 05 - Louisville, Kentucky

And that was just the first leg. Five legs were planned. There were days off included in there - occasional ones - but those were mostly due to particularly lengthy travel times between shows. It wouldn't be until at least the first week in February when he might get a chance to get back to Los Angeles to see Angie. A two-week break was included before the second leg of the tour began.

"I'll be back then," he'd told her at their last meeting - just hours before he'd climbed onto the tour bus for the first time.

"I know you will," she responded, kissing his face again, her arms around his body, hugging him tighter, not wanting to let go.

"And I'll call you every day," he added. "Twice a day when I can."

The tears had started to run at this point, glimmering drops that slid down her cheeks. "I know," she answered. "I know."

And then she reluctantly released him and walked back to her car, openly sobbing by that point. Jake had looked after her, puzzled, wondering why she was so emotional. It was only going to be about six weeks before he saw her again. She was acting like they were saying goodbye forever.

The convoy Intemperance was traveling with consisted of six tractor-trailer rigs and six tour buses. The road crew, or "roadies" as they were known, occupied three of the tour buses. The other three were the two rock bands and their management staff. Contained within the trailers was a complete stage assembly, scaffolding to hang lights from, a complete stage lighting set with swivels, gimbals, and cooling systems, twenty-seven high performance amplifiers, more than a mile of electrical cable and power cords, and, of course, all of the instruments for both Earthstone and Intemperance. The convoy crossed the Bangor city limits just before noon on New Year's Day. The bulk of the vehicles headed towards Bangor Auditorium downtown, the site of tonight's show. The tour buses belonging to Earthstone and Intemperance, as well as one other that belonged to the management staff, peeled off and headed for the Bangor International Hotel near the airport.

The hotel was not nearly as classy as it sounded. It was, in fact, just a half step up from your standard Motel 6. The buses pulled around back and sat at idle, the heaters continuing to blow, the band members remaining onboard, while Greg and Joe Stafferson, who was Earthstone's tour manager, went to check in. About twenty minutes passed before they returned.

"Okay, boys," Greg told them. "You have room 107 and 108. How you want to divide yourselves up is up to you."

"We only get two rooms?" Matt asked. He had imbibed in Greg's offer of a powdery wake-up/hangover potion and his eyes were glinting quite brightly. "The guys on Earthstone all get their own rooms. What's up with that?"

"It's Earthstone's tour," Greg told him. "The headliner gets certain privileges. Now, as for your laundry. Just bag it up and put it in the back of the bus. Ken and Robert will see that it's cleaned. Be sure to label your bags. This will be the procedure for laundry in every city we visit, so get in the habit."

As he had no doubt intended, the subject of what to do with their laundry distracted them from the subject of sharing rooms. He handed one key to Jake and one to Matt and then turned and headed out the door.

"I really don't like that guy," Jake said as they watched him go.

"He's not that bad," Matt said, clapping him on the shoulder. "He gets us some pretty bitchin' dope, doesn't he?"

"Fuckin' aye," Coop said.

"The coke's not as good as Shaver's," Darren pointed out.

Jake gave up. He went and gathered up his single suitcase, which contained pretty much everything he had been allowed to bring with him, and then stepped off the bus.

They decided that Jake and Bill would share one room, Matt, Coop, and Darren the other. They would then rotate roommates from night to night as the tour progressed, the scheduling for this rotation automatically assigned to Bill, their resident scientist, nerd, and mathematician.

"Jesus fucking Christ, its cold out there," Jake said as he emerged from the bathroom after shaving and showering, a towel wrapped around his waist. "What kind of morons live in a place where the temperature is three degrees at 12:30 in the afternoon?"

"I never felt wind like that before," Bill agreed as he stripped off clothes in anticipation of his own hot shower. "My dick isn't that big to begin with. I don't need a minus twelve wind chill factor to make it smaller."

Jake looked at him as he pulled a pair of underwear and a clean pair of sweat pants from his suitcase. "You know something, Bill? Not many people can work meteorological terminology into a witty retort, but somehow you pull it off."

Bill laughed his signature honking nerd laugh. "I guess it's just a gift," he said, pushing his underwear down and putting them with the rest of his dirty laundry. "And now, I'm going to shower and then catch a couple hours sleep before we go to the sound check."

"Amen to that," Jake agreed, dropping his towel on the bed so he could get dressed. "A little nap is just what I need. But first I'm gonna call Angie and let her know we got here safely. What time is it back in L.A? Is it three hours earlier?"

At that moment they heard the sound of a key turning in the door lock. The door swung open, letting in a cold blast of arctic wind, and Janice Boxer came into their room. Janice was a representative of National Record's Publicity Department. She had been assigned the position of Intemperance Publicity Manager. She was a tall, attractive, aristocratic woman in her late thirties, an almost perfect snob, and the wife of the head of the label's legal department. Rumor had it that Alvin Boxer sent her out on tour so he would have more time to spend with his various mistresses (and misters-but that was yet another rumor).

"Jesus!" Jake barked, quickly snatching up the towel and covering up. "Don't you know how to knock?"

Bill actually let out a squeal that was almost feminine. He had no towel handy. He grabbed his dirty shirt and held it over his genitals.

Janice looked startled for the briefest of seconds, but quickly recovered. "Sorry," she said, a hint of disgust in her voice. "I didn't know you were going to be..." A knowing look came across her face - with it, a little twinkle. "I wasn't uh... interrupting anything, was I?"

"Nothing but us taking showers and getting ready to crash out for a bit," Jake told her, irritated. "Is there some reason you came barging in here?"

His tone caused her expression to change to one of displeasure. "I do not barge anywhere," she replied. "I simply walked in. And as for 'crashing out', you can just put that thought out of your head. We're due at WZAP in forty-five minutes."

"WZAP?" Jake asked. "Forty-five minutes? What are you talking about?"

"It's part of the publicity campaign," she replied. "WZAP is one of the local rock music stations - one of the stations that has been playing that little song of yours and introducing our product to the people of Maine. You're going to go on the air with them for a ten minute interview and then you're going to record some sound clips for them."

"On the air?" Bill asked, his eyes widening in terror. "You mean... live?"

"I mean live," she said. "It's standard in every city we go to."

"What do you mean, 'sound clips'?" Jake asked her. "Are you talking about musical stuff?"

"No," she said. "I'm talking about radio station plugs that they can play before songs - usually your songs. That too is standard. And after that, we're going to a local record store so you can sign autographs. I need you guys dressed and ready to go in ten minutes."

With that, she turned on her heal and went back out the door. They were dressed and ready to go in ten minutes. Jake decided he would have to wait until later to call Angie.

The DJ's name was Mike Chesnay. They met him briefly when they first arrived - long enough to make introductions and shake hands - and then he disappeared from their sight. He interviewed them from a booth in one part of the radio station while they listened to him through headphones and responded to a microphone in a different booth next door. His questions were fairly generic and non-threatening. How does it feel to be on your first tour? How does it feel to open for a band as great as Earthstone? How does it feel to be doing your first show? What musical groups or individual musicians influenced you the most?

Jake, as the voice of the band, was saddled with the responsibility of answering most of the questions. Though he was nervous about his voice being transmitted live to half of Maine, he did a respectable job. Part of that was the cocaine. In order to stave off the sheer exhaustion that threatened to pull him to sleep where he sat, he had accepted Greg's offer of a little pick-me-up on the way to the radio station.

Chesnay wrapped up the interview by thanking them for their time, telling them he would see them at the show tonight, and then playing Descent Into Nothing for the eighth time that day. While he did this Jake and Matt - the only two the station wanted sound clips from - were taken into yet another small booth where they spent half an hour saying things like: "This is Jake Kingsley from Intemperance and whenever I'm in town to party down, I listen to WZAP, Bangor's premier rock station."

Finally, they climbed back on the bus and headed for the local branch of Zimmer's Records where they were set up behind a small table in the middle of the store. Sitting before them was a stack of 45-rpm singles of Descent Into Nothing, which sold for $1.10 apiece. A sporadic stream of people came by to chat with the group for a few minutes. This came easy to them. They were all accustomed to fans talking them up, telling them how good they thought their music was, asking them questions that were sometimes intelligent but were usually inane. Many of these fans - about half were male and half female - purchased copies of the single and had the group sign the protective cover. In a future time - when a thing called the Internet swept the nation and a service called eBay came available there - some of these first release, group autographed singles would sell for more than a thousand dollars if they could be authenticated and were in good condition.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when the autograph session came to an end. They climbed back in the bus and were transported across town to Bangor Auditorium. On the way there Darren asked Greg if he could set up a few more lines of blow for him.

"Most certainly," Greg responded. "In fact, I could use a little more myself." He reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and removed his jeweled coke-sniffing and storage kit.

"I don't think so, Darren," Matt said, his eyes creaking open from the semi-dozing position they'd been in. "It's too close to showtime. You know the rules."

"Ahh, Matt, it's only coke," Darren whined. "Its three hours 'til showtime. It'll be worn off by then."

"You know the rules," Matt repeated. "You party after the show, not before it."

"Oh come on, Matt," Greg said lightly, opening his case and pulling out the seemingly bottomless vial he stored the drug in. "A little pick-me-up never hurt anyone. You could probably use one yourself, couldn't you?"

For the first time since meeting him, Matt cast an irritated look at Greg. "Our rule is no mind-altering substances of any kind when it passes four hours to showtime or rehearsal. That rule has been with us since the beginning and we're not going to change it now."

Jake followed this exchange closely, half-expecting Greg to try to pull rank and say that Darren could have as much coke as he wanted whenever he wanted it. He wondered how Matt would react if Greg did do such a thing. But Greg didn't. He simply shrugged, his car-salesman grin firmly affixed to his face.

"Sorry, Darren," he said. "The boss-man says no blow for you. I'll set you up after the show though. I promise."

Darren sulked but didn't try to push the issue. A few minutes later they arrived at their destination and the matter seemed forgotten.

The bus parked in the loading dock area behind the auditorium. The tractor-trailers and the other tour buses were parked side by side near the service entrances. Before allowing them to exit, Greg handed each of them a laminated card with their picture on it and the words: Earthstone-Intemperance US Tour, 1983 - Unlimited Access Pass. Each card was attached to a nylon holder designed to be worn around the neck.

"These are your backstage passes," Greg told them. "You must wear them at all times when we are in the venue. Don't start thinking that just because you're a member of the band it's not necessary. Our tour security is augmented in every city by local security guards and/or law enforcement officers. A lot of these local security personnel are not rock music fans and will not know any of you from Adam no matter how famous you get. And in most venues they will be the ones guarding the performance entrance and patrolling the backstage area. If you try to get in without your pass on, they will bar your entry. If they catch you wandering around inside without your pass on, they will eject you from the facility, by force if they have to. There have been cases of performers being handcuffed, maced, struck with nightsticks, and even arrested. It creates a big pain in the behind for all of us if that happens - not to mention delaying the show - so remember, if you're in the venue, this pass needs to be around your neck. The only exception is when you actually step out onto that stage. Do we all understand?"

They all understood. All of them dutifully hung their passes around their necks.

"And one other thing," Greg told them. "These passes are different from the ones we give out to the media and to radio station contest winners and people like that. Only members of the tour possess these. As such, memorabilia traders are willing to pay top money to get their greasy little hands on them. Keep your passes away from the trollops you fornicate with after the show. They will attempt to steal them right off of your neck while they're sticking their bosoms in your mouth."

"Oh, Greg," Matt said breathlessly, "you talk so fuckin' hot. You're giving me a boner."

Greg laughed at this of course. He laughed at everything one of them said if he sensed it was supposed to be funny. "Okay, okay," he said. "I think you boys got the point. Let's get inside."

The entrance was indeed guarded by a private security guard and he did indeed check their passes. Once the guard satisfied himself that they weren't terrorists or perhaps something even worse, he opened the door and allowed them entry. They passed through a narrow, ground level corridor and arrived a short time later before a door that led to the dressing and locker rooms. Another guard stood vigil before this entrance. This one had actually heard Descent Into Nothing a few times and told them how much he liked it.

There were several dressing rooms beyond the door. They were led to one of the smaller ones. It contained six sinks complete with lighted mirrors. The names of each band member were taped above one of the mirrors. A door in the back of the room led to a locker and showering area.

"This is where you'll get dressed prior to the show," Greg told them. "Reginald will lay the stage clothing you'll be wearing out on the chair before your mirror. Be sure to shower first. We'll need you dressed by 5:30 and then Doreen can get your hair done. They open the doors at 6:00. A little bit after that we'll take you backstage so you can meet the various DJs and media folks and winners of the radio contests. I'm sure I don't have to tell you to remain polite to these folks, but stay in character. Remember, you're ambassadors of debauchery, so don't be afraid to make lewd, yet tasteful comments to any women who happened to be among the greeters."

"Lewd, yet tasteful?" Jake asked.

"You know," Matt said, "don't say shit like 'I'd really like to tap that ass of yours.' Say 'I'd really like to penetrate your anal orifice with my phallus'."

"Ahh," Jake said, grinning. "I see."

"Shit," Coop said, "Nerdly oughta be good at that. That's how he fuckin' talks anyway."

Greg gave his dutiful laugh and then went on. "Also, be sure to comment about how you plan to party hard and imbibe in alcohol after the show. You can imply that you'll be imbibing in other recreational pharmaceuticals, but don't actually come out and say it. We don't want to upset Nancy Reagan too much, do we?"

"No," Darren said. "We sure as shit wouldn't want to do that."

Greg had a brief conversation with the security guard outside the door. The guard spoke into a portable radio for a moment, received a squawky answer from whoever was on the other end, and then nodded to Greg. Greg then turned back to the band and told them that the roadies were ready for them to do the sound check.

They followed him back out of the dressing room and through the corridor to where they'd come in. Another security guard - this one a part of the tour's security force - was waiting for them. He led them through another door, another small corridor, and down another flight of steps into a dimly lit, claustrophobic tunnel about ten feet wide. The tunnel, the guard explained, was actually underneath the floor of the auditorium and served as the conduit to get to the backstage area.

"Did the roadies have to carry all the equipment through here?" Coop asked.

"No," Greg replied. "There's a freight entrance from the loading dock but it's only meant to be used when the auditorium is empty. This tunnel is to get you backstage from the dressing rooms without having to go through the audience."

They went up another two sets of concrete steps at the other end of the tunnel and emerged into the stage left portion of the backstage area. Here they encountered a considerable amount of activity. Roadies were moving everywhere, stringing cables and wires, climbing ladders to attach lighting sets, carrying boxes and crates from one place to the other or pushing them on dollies. All of them were wearing the tour member backstage passes around their necks. Many of them were smoking cigarettes and flicking the ashes carelessly on the floor. Security guards, about half tour personnel and half private, stood here and there, generally not socializing with each other. There was a large, plywood partition that separated stage left from the main stage. The door that had been cut in it was being held in the open position with a bungee cord. Jake could just see a microphone stand and a portion of Coop's new drum set through it.

"The sound guys are all ready for you," Greg told them. "Be extremely careful walking around back here. In fact, try not to come back here without an escort, and if you do, stand and sit where you're told. There's a thousand things that can hurt you back here - high voltage electricity, suspended sandbags, propped up scaffolding pieces, you name it."

None of them answered. They were all looking around in awe at the mechanics of putting on a rock show. Though all of them had been to dozens of concerts, none had ever been backstage of a professional tour.

Greg led them through the stage door and onto the actual stage they would be performing on. Constructed of one inch plywood supported by a frame of two by fours, it was forty feet wide and thirty feet from front to back. The entire thing could be broken down in less than thirty minutes and stowed in the back of one of the trailers, taking up barely ten feet of trailer space. The band knew its dimensions intimately. For nearly a month they had rehearsed their set on it in a rented warehouse in Burbank. On either side of the stage were the amplifier stacks - huge collections of commercial amps standing more than ten feet high. On the stage itself the drum set belonging to Gordon Strong of Earthstone had been assembled atop a wheeled platform and was pushed off to the very back corner. Coop's drum set was standing near the middle rear of the stage, a small collection of microphones placed in strategic locations to amplify the backbeat. In a venue of this size, going acoustic on the drums was no longer an option. Sitting in front of, and slightly to the left of the drum set, was the brand new grand piano graciously donated to Bill by the Caldwell Pianos Corporation. It was polished black and turned so the brand name was prominently displayed to the audience. Though an electric piano actually sounded superior when played through an amplification system, both National Records and Caldwell Pianos had insisted that Bill play an acoustic equipped with microphones onstage. All the better to advertise their brand with. At the very front and center of the stage was Jake's microphone. At stage left and slightly back was Matt's. At stage right and back even further, was Darren's. All of the various effects pedals were neatly arranged at the base of their respective microphones. Above their heads was a complex array of aluminum scaffolding - all constructed by the roadies - that supported more than a hundred high intensity lights.

Out beyond the stage was a flat auditorium floor surrounded on all sides by bleachers. About fifty feet out from the stage, in the middle of the floor, a large soundboard sat atop a four-foot plywood platform. Here the more technically savvy roadies would control all aspects of the sound and lighting. There were six of them out there now - longhaired men who looked like bikers - intently staring at a complex array of knobs, switches, and dials.

"Jake!" yelled a familiar voice from behind. "How was your trip across the country?"

Jake turned and beheld his friend Mohammad Hazim, the lapsed Muslim bartender from D Street West in Heritage. Part of the touring contract had specified that each band member could hire one person of his choosing as his personal assistant provided that person met the qualifications. The qualifications were fairly loose - only specifying that the employee be able to play and tune the band member's instrument and were passingly familiar with audio set-ups. Mohammad had jumped at the chance even though it meant leaving home for an indeterminate amount of time and even though the pay was only minimum wage - and it was only accrued when they were actually setting up, running the concert, or tearing down.

"Wassup, Mo," Jake greeted, giving him a hug of greeting and their customary handshake. "We were pretty much trashed the whole time. How was yours?"

"About the same," he said. "Lots of booze, lots of crank."

"Crank?" Jake asked, raising his eyebrows a bit. Crank was methamphetamine - a synthetic stimulant that was also known as poor man's cocaine. It had become popular the last few years and was widely regarded as the up and coming thing, particularly among those who needed to remain alert for long periods of time. Jake himself had never tried it, although Matt had and declared it 'a little too raunchy' for his tastes.

"They say if I wanna be a roadie I'd better get used to snortin' crank cause that's what fuels the show."

"No shit?"

"No shit," Mo confirmed. "So I've been doing my damndest to get used to it." He grinned. "I don't think I've slept more than a few hours the whole trip."

"Be careful with that shit," Jake warned. "I hear it'll eat your face right off your head after awhile."

Mo shrugged. "What's a man need a face for anyway?" he asked. "You ready for the sound check? I got your guitar all dialed in."

"We're ready," Jake said.

Mohammad disappeared through the stage left door and then returned a few moments later. In his hands he carried the Brogan six-string that Jake had agreed to play on the tour. Following behind him was Larry Milgan, Matt's personal assistant. Larry was one of Matt's friends from the Heritage Community College classes he'd been enrolled in before they started to get regular gigs at D Street West. He was carrying the black and white Stratocaster that Matt had successfully gambled their entire music career on.

The subject of their guitars had reached a quick and immediate head on the very first day of tour rehearsal. Jake had understood from the start that they didn't want him to play his old Les Paul. Though he hadn't been happy about this, he hadn't battled them too much. Brogan guitars - with whom National Records had an endorsement contract - were good instruments. The only problem he'd had was that they'd wanted him to play six different guitars during each set, to switch them out depending on which song was being performed. All the better to advertise the product with. They'd eventually agreed to allow him to play only one instrument - the Brogan AudioMaster 5000. This was a red and white model with dual humbucker pick-ups - basically a Les Paul knock-off, but a knock-off that was actually superior to the original. It could produce the distorted electric backing and the smooth acoustic finger picks that were Jake's signature sound.

Matt, on the other hand, absolutely refused to go onstage with any guitar other than his beloved Strat. He would not even rehearse the set with a Brogan guitar.

"I'll play the Brogans when we record," he told every National Records representative who tried to pressure him otherwise, "and I'll even spout about how fucking good they are when magazine and other media people interview us. But I made a vow when I bought my Strat that I would never play any other guitar on stage and I'm sticking to that vow. I tour with my Strat, or I don't tour at all."

"That will put you in breach of contract," he was told time and time again. "You'll be finished as a musician if you do that and we'll sue you for every penny you ever make doing whatever menial job you manage to get next."

But Matt didn't give a rat's ass about that. He was willing to trash his career and the career of his bandmates over this issue and eventually, after threatening, pleading, trying to get Jake and the rest of the band to apply peer pressure, and even getting the actual CEO of National Records to talk to him on the phone and threaten him some more, Acardio was forced to conclude that Matt really was serious about this. They finally agreed to let him play the Strat onstage. But there had been a certain look in Acardio's eye when he'd given the agreement.

Matt had picked up on this. His eyes narrowed dangerously. "And there better not be any fucking accidents with my guitar either," he warned, his voice low and menacing. "That thing ends up with so much as a scratch on it, I'm walking away from this whole deal. And not only that, I'll come after your ass, Acardio. I know what fucking building you work in and what kind of fucking car you drive."

Apparently Acardio believed that Matt was crazy enough to do what he threatened, because when Matt looked the guitar over it was in the exact same condition it had been in when he'd surrendered it to Larry back in Los Angeles. He took it from Larry's hands and caressed it like a lover, putting a kiss on its neck and whispering words of endearment to it.

"What is it with him and that guitar?" Greg whispered to Jake.

Jake looked at him for a moment and then said, "It's the first really nice guitar - the first really nice thing he ever bought for himself. It's maybe the only thing he's ever cared enough about to even want to earn it himself. That guitar is his God and he worships it a lot more than you worship your God."

Greg looked immediately offended by this suggestion. He opened his mouth to say something.

"If I were you," Jake continued before he could, "I'd do whatever was within my power to make sure nothing happens to that guitar. You dig?"

Greg wandered off, shaking his head in disgust. Jake could tell that he dug though.

The sound check took about an hour. They strummed guitars, sung into microphones, pounded on drums, hit piano keys, and then did all at once, their every action dictated by two of the longhaired biker types manning the soundboard. Levels were adjusted up and down and then up again. Through it all Jake could see Bill gritting his teeth in frustration that he was not allowed to participate more directly. He had been admonished way back in the rehearsal stage for interjecting his opinion on this matter.

"They're adjusting Matt's guitar and Jake's mic way too high," he'd complained during the very first sound check. "They're going to drown out the rest of the instruments!"

"People will be coming to hear Jake's voice and Matt's guitar," Acardio had told him. "The rest of the instruments are nothing but filler."

"Filler?" Bill had cried, his face turning red with anger. "A proper mix is what gives us our distinctive sound!"

"And we did that on the album," Acardio said. "A concert is different. It's impossible to recreate the intricate mixes of the instruments in a live venue."

"We used to do it at D Street West," Bill shot back. "Just let me dictate how to adjust the levels. I can..."

"You can play your goddamn piano when you're told and otherwise shut your ass," Acardio told him. "These are professional concert sound techs we have working those dials. They know a lot more about this shit than you do."

Bill played when told and shut his ass. He didn't like it, but he did it. As such, when the sound check was declared complete and they were sent back to their dressing rooms to chill out, Bill was complaining the entire way.

"Way too much volume on the bass," he mumbled. "Way too little higher freq on the other instruments. And the harmony mics..." He shook his head in disgust. "Don't even get me started on those."

They didn't get him started on those. By now they were used to his tirades. And, though they unanimously agreed that Nerdly probably could mix their sound better than the techs National had hired, it simply wasn't within their power to do anything about it.