FULL-BORE INTO THE MAELSTROM!

FULL-BORE INTO THE MAELSTROM!

FEATURES

Án Evening of Platter-Chatter With THE RECORDS

by

Jeffrey Morgan

We're not about to admit to anything.--Will Birch

CHAPTER ONE:

Wunderkind On The Rewind

Is this the real life?

What?

Is this just fantasy?

The Writer opened one eye and cautiously scanned the surrounding sunlight. Morning?

Caught in a landslide.

Where the—right. Suite 1734. The Chicago Hilton. September the ... Saturday!

“Tacker!”

No escape from reality.

“Tacker, shut that goddamned thing off!”

Open your—the cassette recorder snapped off from somewhere in the direction of the bathroom. He heard her voice drifting forward. “Is that you?”

“What time is it?” he yelled, momentarily forgetting that the tape machine had been turned off.

“Eleven-thirty,” said Tacker, casually walking into the bedroom, zipping up her dark green vinyl slacks.

“Eleven-thirty? Jesus, Tacker. We’ve got a flight to catch in 90 minutes. Why didn’t you wake me?”

“You looked like you needed the sleep. Besides, have you forgotten how much alcohol you polished off last night?”

The Writer sat up slowly. Hell yes, she was right. There was nothing in this world like a bottle of pure wood-grain to prime the brain for the realities and horrors that only a city like Chicago can muster up. Chicago, where even in direct sunlight it’s a world forever twilight. And nothing like a top-level blast of Queen first thing in the morning to pull the trigger on an already dangerously overloaded skull._

He managed a thin, rather groggy smile. Death on two legs, indeed. Death should feel half as snookered as he did.

“By the way, you got a telegram. Here.” .. Tacker (he called her that—short for Attacker—because her full-bore attitude to life greatly resembled his own) leaned over the bed.

The Writer opened the envelope and extracted a small sheet of papef.

IMPORTANT FEATURE ON THE RECORDS NEEDED FOR DECEMBER ISSUE. STOP. PLAYING TORONTO SEPTEMBER ELEVEN AND TWELVE. STOP. CALL FOR FURTHER DETAILS UPON ARRIVAL. STOP. GO. STOP.

The Writer paused to look at his watch. September the eleventh. He read over the telegram again. It had all the earmarks pf the beginnings of a real mystery. Who—or what—were the Records?

“Trouble?” Tacker sat on the edge of the bed, carefully applying a thin layer of black polish to a nail.

“Maybe. Maybe not.” The Writer smiled and walked into the bathroom. Popping a cassette of Morrison Hotel into the machine, he cranked up loud on “Roadhouse Blues”—real wake up music for a generation weaned on vodka and orange juice at seven o’clock in the morning.

Tacker said something from the next room, but The Writer couldn’t hear. Besides, he was far too busy thinking. In a few hours he would be back home'. Home and on the rock ’n’ roll road once again.

And, as always, he would be ready.

☆ ☆ ☆

Making love. Watching a great baseball game. Playing pinball. Experiencing the pull of a jet takeoff. Rock ’n’ roll. These were some of the things worth living for and these were some of the things The Writer contemplated as he sat at a comer table in Trader Vic’s.

Overhead, Phase Linears ground out “1 Do The Rock,” Tim Curry’s pseudo-Euro paean to contemporary popular culture. The Writer instinctively nodded along in silent approval and continued leafing through the Records’ press kit before him. He had found it, along with a copy of the debut album itself, mixed in among the rest of his mail upon his arrival in the city a few hours earlier.

Between long distance phone calls he had given the disc a few cursory spins. Sure, they were power pop—but what did that mean? Were they, as their bio claimed, heirs to the much vaunted Badfinger/Raspberries throne or did they lack the necessary drive ’n’ direction needed to ascend? On the one hand, there was the darnaging evidence of “Starry Eyes,” which sounded too close to the Rod’s “Do Anything You Wanna Do” for comfort. On the other, with a line like “I wanted a change of style/To be with a juvenile for a week,” how could he fault them ? Did someone say easily?

What the hell. Pragmatic to the end, he ordered another double scotch. Washing down the warm waves of welcomed relief, The Writer leaned back in his chair and awaited the band’s imminent arrival into his inner sanctum.

CHAPTERTWO:

• Mind Melt In The Cold Room

He could feel the Maelstrom breathing heavily down his nape. So soon! Not yet early evening and already it was happening: the strange correlation of events which would ultimately weave itself into a lethal network of—

The lids jerked up andthe pupils dilated, flooded with grey light. j

Thank heaven for little girls and cassette recorders, The Writer thought as he dimly refocused on the four alien shapes sitting opposite him in the dark, freezing hotel suite.

How long had he been asleep? Seconds? Minutes? Had they noticed? No...

TURN TO PAGE 63

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31

Discreetly he checked on his tape supply, praying to God that it would last. By this time, the double scotches were beginning to exact their inevitable toll—and without some kind of magnetic record for him to refer back to when it came time for him to beat the editorial clock, he knew he would be going straight to hell on a handcart.

In other words, The Writer was hitting his nightly stride and more than ready for a full-bore, pre-frontal assault into the heart of thevMaelstrom.

“Tell me,” he said, turning to drummer Will Birch, “what do you think the biological function of art is: to entertain or to instruct?”

“Not to instruct, certainly not,” said Birch, looking straight into the eyes of a vacuum. “I think the function of art is to reflect what people feel but don’t recognize that they feel until it’s pointed out to them by art—and then to entertain as well. Also,'to provide a basis of expression for the artist.”

“Alright, that’s vague enough,” said the double scotches, losing interest in the topic. “What’s the favorite drug in the band? Coffee, alcohol, TV, heroin ...”

“We’re not about to admit anything,” said Birch, shifting ever so slightly in his chair.

“We don’t take any drugs whatsoever,” lead guitarist Huw Gower disclaimed. “We don’t take drugs at all. Especially cocaine. We don’t touch cocaine. We think it’s really bad. And when people give us cocaine every day, all day, we say, ‘No, no, go away .Don’t bother us with this evil drug’. ”

The Writer looked up with interest. “Well, where do you put all of it?” he asked, scanning the room for a hidden cache or two.

“Up our nos—I mean—” stammered Gower, but it was too late. The Writer sat back'in disappointment, unconvinced, despite the rash outburst of false bravado. The Records were obviously rank amateurs—no small feat, considering that their generation wasn’t born with a silver spoon in its collective mouth but, rather, a plastic tube up its nose.

“It’s shooting up the charts,” said Birch proudly in response to a rather mundane question about album sales. “It’s taken us completely by surprise. In Cash Box today it’s 52, 635in Billboard. It’s great. It feels good. It feels very good indeed. ”

“This is your second time in America,” The Writer asked, continuing, for the moment, a more traditional line of questioning. “Have you formed any opinions of it yet?”

Bass player Phil Brown grinned. “It’s .bloody well bigger than we thought it was. To get from one gig to the next we have to travel the whole length of England.”

Birch leaned forward. “I realized today— and I know it sounds entirely pretentious— that Elvis Presley completely symbolized America inasmuch as he came from a working class background; he was a truck driver and he got a break—in other words, this is the land of opportunity—he got a break and he made it on his talent and by being a rebel. And when his time came to serve in the Army,, He very patriotically said, ‘Yes, sir, I will do it,’ and he symbolized America in that respect. And, in the end, he symbolized America by eating himself to death.

“So Elvis Presley is the symbol, for me, of what I’ve seen of America so far. ”

It was an interesting enough analogy. The double scotches were almost listening. “Just how long have you been on the road?” The Writer asked on their behalf. “Four weeks,” said Birch.

Right. The. Writer turned to rhythm guitarist John Wicks. “I don’t suppose you’ve noticed any kind of direct resetnblance between ‘Starry Eyes’ and ‘Do Anything You Wanna Do,’ have you?”, Wicks laughed. “No, no. None whatsoever. The thing is, ‘Do Anything You Wanna Do’ was a great single—”

“I agree,” The Writer interrupted. “How did it end up on your album?”

“The truth of the matter,” interjected Gower, “is that Graham Douglas, who used to be in Will and John’s old band—the Kursaal Flyers—is now in the Hot Rods. I mean, for what it’s worth, we all think it’s a really great song. I really like the lyrical content of ‘Do Anything You Wanna Do’ because that’s my philosophy in a way.”

The Writer looked Birch in the eye. “Why don’t you guys use the medium to its full advantage and create a real epic for our times—like Quadrophenia or Berlin?”

. Birch stiffened. “I think a lot of writers resort to the concept album when they kind of draw it up,” he began slowly.

The Writer’nodded in supposed agreement. Draw it up? What the hell was he .talking about?

“For example,” Birch continued, thoughtfully illustrating his theory, “Ray Davies has made seven or eight concept albums and for each one he had to write ten or eleven songs. It was a crutch. He made it easy for himself because he had the framework to work in. He didn’t have to drive himself nuts searching for the inspiration for each song, all he had to do was find the songs to fit into the story line he’d established. Which I thought was a load of rubbish. Like Schoolboys In Disgrace. Alright, what are you going to do? You can write a song about school, another one about homework ... It’s a cop out—and I feel much the same about Quadrophenia. ”

Brown agreed. “There’s no good songs on it,” he said, nodding in assention.

“Tommy I kind of liked,” Birch reflected. “I don’t know. ”

I’ll say you don’t, The Writer thought, closing his eyes in quiet exasperation and quickly albwing four distinct voices to merge into one unidentifiable band of white noise, wildly careening off into the darkened recesses of the room.

CHAPTER THREE: Shutdown

The taxi lurched to a stop in front of the dingy nightclub, snapping The Writer out of nis momentary reverie. Twtee in one day: those weren’t good odds for survival considering the line of work he was in. Was it jet lag or something slightly more pharmaceutical?

Crawling out of the cab, he surveyed the exterior of the darkened brick edifice before him. Rock ’n’ roll comes to Auschwitz, he thought to himself as he flashed the necessary I.D. needed to get inside the building.

Through the smoke he spotted Tacker waving to him from a side table. Maneuvering through the din, he pulled up a chair opposite her.

“You’re late,” she said, smiling. She looked like something out of an Emanuelle movie.

“Yeah, I know. How long have they—” he motioned towards the stage—“been on?”

“Fifteen, maybe 20 minutes. They’re not bad, you know. They sound a lot better live than they do on record. More powerful.” She looked at him closely. “You feel OK?”

The Writer nodded in the affirmative. He was trying to come up with an appropriate title for his story. Off The Records? He liked that. Sort of had a gangster feel to it.

Unfortunately, watching the band piledrive through what little remained of their set, he knew in his heart that he honestly wished them every success in their rock ’n’ roll endeavors. After all, it was a hard market they were trying to crash and they were going to need all the help they could get.

He flashed back to something Huw Sower had said a few hours earlier: “I mean, everybody has to work and everyoody has to live. I’m not making any more money now than I was doing what I was doing before—but I’m doing something that I want to do. And that makes all the difference in the world.”

Hearing last call, The Writer flagged a beerslinger and ordered one for his baby and one more for the road.