Laughing Boy (2 page)

Pete sat silently for a few seconds, looking confused, then said: “Sure,” and reached out for the baby. Carol Anne walked across to him and put her arms around his neck as he nursed young Theo.

Tim sprang into life like a jack-in-the-box whose time has arrived. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “I’ve written a song.”

“A song?” they echoed with mock enthusiasm. “Wow, Tim’s written a song.” Jeez, here we go again, thought Pete.

“Yeh. When you rang me, Zeke, to tell me about young Theo, I just thought, you know, like wow! I flipped, man, I just flipped. A new life, procreation an’ all that. What you’ve done is, like, well, it’s incredible.”

“No it’s not,” Eddie interrupted, “it’s natural. The
difficult
bit is not to have kids,” and the others laughed.

Tim blushed. He was the driving force behind the group, but was the smallest and youngest of them. “Well, man, I just thought I’d make our newest member a little present. It’s nothing, really, just a little nonsense thing, y’know. I have it here, somewhere.” He retrieved his leather jacket from the back of a chair and delved into the inside pocket. “I, er, ran off a few copies. It’s hardly finished, might need a few touches.”

“We gonna lay this down?” Pete asked, handing Theo back to his mother and switching on the eight-track deck.

“Why not.” In a few seconds the room was filled with the noises of guitars being checked for tuning. Tim ran his thumbnail across the strings of his Fender, made a slight adjustment and looked at Pete, who was blessed with perfect pitch. Pete nodded. Zeke manoeuvred himself behind the drum kit and rattled off a few trial rolls.

“We won’t need the cowbell for this, Zeke,” Tim told him with a smile.

“I like the cowbell,” he protested.

“It’s just
tum ta-ta tum ta-ta tum
,” Tim said, tapping out with an imaginary stick, and Zeke responded with the real thing.

“Nothing intricate, just C and F, going to G and
G-seven
,” he told the rest of them. They clipped the sheets on to music stands and shuffled into their seats. Only Eddie, the keyboard man, didn’t take up his instrument. He lifted Theo from Carol-Anne’s arms and walked round the studio with him, pointing to pieces of apparatus, saying: “And that’s a Radio Shack 500 watt amp; and that’s a Yamaha state-of-the art keyboard; and that’s…”

“
One two, buckle my shoe, Uncle Joe is stuck in the glue
,” Tim sang quite slowly, strumming the appropriate chord just once at each change. “
Two three, he’ll never get free, as long as he sits there in that tree
.”

The others joined in as they picked up the melody,
nodding
their heads and foot-tapping to inject some rhythm.

“Hey man, this is cool!” Oscar shouted.

“I like it,” Carlo agreed.

“
Call the fireman, call the vet, call the doctor but don’t call me
.”

Carlo suggested a couple of key alterations to add some variety and they ran through it again at the proper speed. Third time they put it to tape. Pete wrote the details on the label, then asked for another run-through, saying that he’d like Oscar’s bass guitar bringing more to the fore. “Then maybe Eddie can add some flourishes and fancy bits later.”

They all agreed and played it once more.

“Hey, Tim,” Zeke said when they finished, “that’s cool, real cool. I’m touched, man, touched. It’s the best present young Theo could ask for.”

“It’s real sweet of you,” Carol-Anne agreed.

“No problem, man,” Tim replied. “As long as it stays
within these four walls. If it gets out that I wrote it…well, man, my reputation is shot to pieces. Can you imagine? Gee, I’d be dead meat.”

Pete wrote the labels and fitted the reel into its can. This was the most commercial thing that The LHO had ever done, and one thing he was certain of was that it wasn’t going to stay within those four walls. He spun his
wheelchair
round to face Tim and said: “Yeah, man, real cool. Anybody need some draw?”

Three days later KWOV, Sherman Oaks’ very own radio
station
situated on the corner of the same block as Blue Coyote, broadcast ‘Theo’s Tune’ to its peak-time audience. They received three enquiries from listeners wondering if it was available as a single.

“Three,” Pete repeated when he heard the news. “That’s not many.” He was sitting in the outer office of the station, sharing a joint with the station’s owner and chief DJ. With their long hair and Pete’s headband they could have been pirates, discussing a raid, and in many ways they were.

“Hell, man,” the DJ replied, coughing as he drew on the joint, “I don’t wish to minimise the influence of li’l ol’ KWOV on the good residents of downtown LA, but if you took three as a fraction of our total audience, then
multiplied
it by the population of the entire US, it’d prob’ly work out at about a hunnerd million people. That’s a hit by
anybody’s
standards.”

“You reckon?”

“I reckon. Hell, man, we only had
two
calls about the moon landings.”

Pete had a demo disc made and it was played by several other local stations. One by one the band members heard
themselves
on radio, belting out ‘Theo’s Tune’, and were pleased and bemused. They were in the business to be heard and to make money. Artistic integrity didn’t pay the bills.

Tim didn’t agree. He called Pete as soon as he found out what was happening and said some things he later regretted. Pete, fortunately, had just taken delivery of a stash of Aztec Honey and was feeling particularly mellow. “Hey man,” he responded. “I made you famous. I made you goddamn famous.”

They held a meeting and Tim berated them all for not respecting his
intellectual property
, as works of art are known in the business. He told them that The LHO had built up a reputation for its anti-establishment, anti-government,
anticapitalism
, anti-war, anti-
everything
, stance, and that could be destroyed by a silly sentimental song like ‘Theo’s Tune’. They had a growing audience of young disaffected Americans, black as well as white, and they could easily lose them.

Eddie put the opposite view forward. Much as he enjoyed making good music, he was in it for the money. There were places he wouldn’t go, depths he wouldn’t reach, but ‘Theo’s Tune’ wasn’t quite there. He was happy to be associated with it. “An’ listen, man,” he concluded, “if we don’t do it somebody else will, and we can always use the bread.”

Tim was adamant, but eventually a compromise was reached. They’d release ‘Theo’s Tune’ as a single under the name of Blue Coyote, with a Bobby Vee number on the
B-side
. Everybody was pleased.

The record was a slow burner, as they often are in America. There is very little national exposure but local stations play certain discs
ad nauseam
and listeners on the fringes of the reception areas then ask their own stations to play them. So popularity spreads across the country like an infectious
disease
, or a plague of crop-devouring insects. But once the momentum starts, there’s no stopping it, and soon Blue Coyote’s only record had sold more copies than The LHO had in its entire career. There were rumours about Blue Coyote, and one or two more perceptive rock journalists
noted that Zeke’s new baby was called Theo and drew the obvious conclusions. But when they printed their theories the boys just grinned and said: “Not us, man. No way.”

The summer season ended with sell-out gigs at the Greek and Balbao Park, and The LHO settled into a tour of the various indoor venues around LA, with names like It’s Boss, Le Parisien and Gazzari’s. They’d hammer out their own special brand of folk-rock and garage-band, Tim yelling his anti-war lyrics to an audience who lived in fear of finding a US Government letter in their mail. A letter that might say they were required to report for training, or, God forbid, that a brother wouldn’t be coming home.

Towards the end of every concert some joker in the
audience
would shout a request for ‘Theo’s Tune’. “Not us, man,” Tim would respond, and go straight into his new hit song – ‘Breakfast at Da-Nang,’ or ‘Eye of the Storm’ if it was curtain time. Nobody argued, although Eddie firmly believed in giving the people what they wanted. Meanwhile, ‘Theo’s Tune’ kept clocking-up the air-time. They heard it in hotel foyers and on garage forecourts; bus drivers sitting in gridlocks tapped their steering wheels to it and hopefuls on
second-rate
TV talent shows hitched a ride on its popularity.

The day before Thanksgiving they played the Graffiti Club on the edge of Compton, a largely black and Hispanic quarter of Los Angeles. Tim, for some reason, wanted to start with ‘Eye of the Storm’. The others pointed out that they usually finished with it, to bring the audience back to ground level, but Tim just said: “OK, so we reprise it. What’s the problem?”

There wasn’t one, and it went well. The audience
identified
with the lyrics – those they could hear – and bounced along to Zeke’s driving rhythms. The aptly named Graffiti was a large converted cinema with the seats torn out, and every ticket was sold. Eddie let rip on the keyboards and Oscar laid down a bass line as solid as stepping-stones across a river. Tim turned as Eddie played the opening bars of
‘Breakfast at Da-Nang’, and grinned at him, nodding to the beat. Eddie added a flourish and Tim launched himself into the song:

The audience loved it, some swaying to the music, others
jiving
with or without partners. Eddie cast an expert eye over the girls and wondered whether the roadies would invite any black chicks to the party. It might not be wise.

The irony of the song was lost on the audience. The mood now was “Let’s bash the Commie bastards.” Napalm was what they deserved. Eddie saw a black girl with eyes like moonrise in the desert and fell instantly in love with her. He smiled and she smiled back at him, reflected light from the spots glinting off her tooth brace. He fell out of love just as quickly as Tim went into the last verse:

The applause came like the surf down at Redondo Beach, crashing and tumbling as each new wave filled the trough left by its predecessor. Tim lifted the strap of his guitar over his head, took a step forward and bowed. It was his sign that
the concert was over. Oscar looked at Carlo and they both looked across at Eddie. Eddie shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. The applause from the audience settled into a rhythm, the calls for more growing until it was a battle of wills between the audience and the band. Tim turned and took his place in the line again, absorbing the adulation but determined not to play any more.

“I thought we were doing ‘Storm’,” Carlo shouted at him.

“We did it.”

“A reprise.”

“We did it once.”

“We can’t leave them like this.”

“Wanna bet?”

The applause had settled into a chant. Then somebody near the front shouted: “Do ‘Theo’s Tune’!”

“Yeah! ‘Theo’s Tune’!” came like an echo from the back of the hall. Soon everybody took up the call: “Theo! Theo! Theo!”

“Let’s do it,” Zeke shouted from behind the drums.

“No!” Tim screamed back. “That’s it! We’re through.”

“Theo! Theo! Theo!” they chanted.

The club owner, his face etched with panic, strode onto the stage trailing a microphone lead. He attempted to speak into it but didn’t make a sound and only encouraged the crowd to double their efforts. He was wearing a business suit that immediately marked him as part of the enemy, one of the fat cats living off his warmonger shares. He tapped the mike then abandoned it. “You can’t leave ’em like this,” he appealed to Tim. “They’ll tear the fuckin’ place down. Play something slow, for Chrissake.”

“We don’t do slow,” Tim replied, stepping away from him to take what he intended to be his final bow.

“Theo! Theo! Theo!” they chanted.

Eddie took over. He slid the controls on his keyboard over to maximum, turned to do the same with the volume on the amplifier, and played the opening riff of ‘Theo’s Tune’. It
cut through the hall like a jet plane and the chants turned to cheers of approval.

Dum dum, di-dum dum dum
, he played again, and the crowd fell almost silent.

Dum dum, di-dum dum dum
.

The others looked across at him, Zeke grinning, Oscar and Carlo confused and Tim’s face hollow with
disappointment
.

Dum dum, di-dum dum dum
.

Zeke took it up, adding his
tum ta-ta, tum ta-ta, tum
behind Eddie’s keyboard, and Oscar thought, What the hell! and laid on his bass line.

Tim stood for a moment, his back to the audience, guitar held by the neck in his right hand. When Carlo started to pick out the melody he hurled the three hundred-dollar Fender at Eddie, catching him a glancing blow on the
shoulder
. The instrument, mute without its power lead, hit a speaker and fell to the floor. Tim stormed off the stage.

“You take it,” Eddie shouted at Carlo, who duetted with Tim on several numbers and had the better voice. Carlo stepped forward and the band fell into time for the first
public
performance of ‘Theo’s Tune’.

One two, buckle my shoe
, Carlo sang, and the bemused audience stopped laughing at Tim’s antics and sang along with The LHO’s new front-man: