No Way to Say Goodbye (18 page)

When Jerry Letter had knocked on the door with Sam’s prize possession carefully boxed – her emancipation reliant upon a signature – it had been a good day, despite his unfortunate circumstances. Once the front door was closed he had set about freeing her with a ferocity that matched a zealous child’s on Christmas morning. However, he was forced to leave the unveiling to Mary. And, once she was revealed, he had paused to gaze at her as though he was seeing her with new eyes and new appreciation.

“Hello, Glory!” He’d sighed.

“It has a name?” Mary inquired.

He didn’t care if she thought him stupid – a hero of his had named that guitar and that was good enough for him. And now, alone in his own home and fabulously free from pain, he took Glory out and held her on his lap, his right hand sliding up and down her neck, his left cupping her body. Until his time on Mary’s floor he hadn’t played guitar in years – in fact, he’d only ever played this instrument once before on the night it was presented to him by Leland when Sam’s first signing for Seminy Records had gone platinum. He had taken her home and tinkered with her, but he was drunk and she was the original Scotty Moore Gibson ES-295, so he’d thought better of it. When he was sober, the guitar embarrassed him. As much as he loved her and the idea of her, he had a deep-rooted fear that he wasn’t worthy of her. She was used to being played by one of the all-time greats and Sam had long ago proved that he was mediocre at best. So Glory’s new owner retired her and Scotty Moore’s Gibson was designated to become a museum piece, an expensive element of a businessman’s décor.

Alone and lost in a distant memory, he held her for five minutes before he strummed. She needed tuning. He didn’t have a tuner so he set about doing it by ear. This took a little while but when he’d finished she was perfect. He placed his fingers on the first chord and then she sang “Hotel California”, one of his granny’s favourite tracks. He followed up with “Life In The Fast Lane” forgetting the mid-eight but returning to it after the second verse. He played it again three or four times until it flowed and his hand was less stiff. The Kinks were next – working out “Louie Louie” took him until tea-time. He stopped to fry up some French toast, then resumed, playing Steely Dan, the Grateful Dead, a little Floyd and, of course, he couldn’t resist Led Zeppelin. It was after ten when he put her down and, exhausted, took to his bed, his mind buzzing with something he had long ago forgotten about. Sam’s gospel phase was over.

Music had mattered to him once, before he’d been disappointed too many times. His first band Diesel, featuring Hilarie, the dick-licking bass player, had lasted a mere six months. They’d broken up when the drummer fractured his leg in a car crash and Hilarie decided she wanted to be a nurse.

Sam had also been hospitalized but for different reasons. He hadn’t broken any bones, but his injury would take the rest of his life to heal. He had also moved schools that year and spent his last year of high school as a recluse. He didn’t bother with college but, desperate to leave home, he found himself a job in a music shop and rented a boxroom in a tiny apartment he shared with a lesbian couple, Ronnie and Sue. It was Ronnie who had introduced him to the bass player in the band Limbs, an all-guy unit made up of three art-school dropouts, Fred, Paulie and Dave. They used to joke about it, saying they were missing a limb, as if it was funny, but he guessed that when you were twenty-two and high, it pretty much was.

The music was serious, though. Fred was the bass player and lead vocalist – he had a set of pipes on him. Paulie was the drummer, and what he lacked in talent he made up for in raw energy and enthusiasm. Dave, on guitar, was the quiet one and the main songwriter. They wanted a second guitar player and Sam fitted the bill. He would have been designated “the pretty one” but the epithet was used only once: Dave and Fred had to pull Sam off their terrified drummer, who sustained a black eye and a fat lip. Although Sam apologized for the seemingly unprovoked attack, he didn’t explain to his new band mates why he had torn into Paulie.

Sam was desperate to be in a successful band and he knew that, with the right songs, these guys could go all the way. Dave’s were shit so he hoped that after an apprenticeship he could introduce a few of his own, and maybe then they’d rocket and he’d no longer be window-dressing. It didn’t work out like that. Dave was precious and, although Sam’s songs were infinitely better, Dave was boss. It was his band and Sam could fuck off if he thought he was coming in to take over. So he did fuck off. Instead of trying to hook up with another band he auditioned for his own. That was how he met Sophia Sheffer, the rocker chick with the big hair, hips and voice. He knew instantly that she was the one. He also knew that she was into him, and he slept with her that first night, sealing their newly formed partnership. He wrote the melodies and she wrote the lyrics – she insisted they had to mean something to her. He didn’t mind because she wasn’t bad and it felt right that she should sing about chick stuff – he definitely couldn’t write that.

He plugged them as the Carpenters of the late eighties. Of course they sounded nothing like the Carpenters, and their songs were hardcore rock anthems, which they considered an antidote to Karen and Richard’s squeaky-clean soft pop-rock. Also, they weren’t related, which was good because they had sex at any given opportunity. It wasn’t love, and Sophia understood the concept of opportunistic fucking – she was a rocker, after all.

They worked well together; he secured them paid gigs early on and free recording time, finding that he could schmooze with the best of them. She was serious about improving vocally, became stronger with each passing day and was dedicated to working on her image. Neither batted an eyelid when the other slept with someone else. He acted as manager and found that for some reason doors were quick to open. Maybe it was because he flirted with the PA to every record-company executive in New York and maybe not, but their demos were always heard. Sam was always working. When they weren’t gigging, they were writing. When they weren’t writing, they were practising. When they weren’t practising, he was networking.

They’d been together for nearly two years when the buzz started. Vocally, Sophia had found her niche – one critic describing her voice as husky, dark, warm, sexy and pitch-perfect. The music was strong too, reminiscent of Janis Joplin’s raw iron but hinting at what would later become grunge. But music is all about timing: what’s hot today isn’t tomorrow, and it turned out that Sam’s burning, pain-soaked anthems were a little ahead of their time. The world was still into metal-inspired rock ‘n’ roll and the charts were dominated by bands like Guns N’ Roses teasing the girls and instructing the guys with tracks like “Patience”, and on the other side, U2’s
The Joshua Tree
had delivered America a new-found church: the Church of Bono. Record companies with little imagination were looking for the next U2 and the next GN’R. Sam and Sophia didn’t fit the bill but Sophia alone – well, she had a voice that could raise the roof, just like Axl and Bono and all those guys, but she was different because she was a girl. Better than that, she was a girl with balls and Max Eastler, the hottest A&R guy on the east coast, had wondered the first time he’d seen them play how much better she would be with a shit-kicking band around her.

He’d sat back and watched her on the stage, analysing her dirty against her guitar player’s pretty. He had liked the songs but the songs were the guy’s and he was a complication. Besides, Eastler
had
songs – great writers, great producers, great players were all available to him – so all he had to do was get rid of the blond kid.

It wasn’t hard to persuade Sophia to abandon Sam – after all, they had no allegiance to one another, not sexually and certainly not emotionally, and, hey, business is business, after all. Just when they had a chance to get somewhere, she walked and his faith walked with her.

“Please don’t do this,” he’d begged.

“It’s done,” she said, unable to look him in the face.

“Please.” He was on his knees.

She shook her head. “You’re a good player, Sam, but we both know that you’re never going to be great.” She still couldn’t meet his eyes.

“I’ll work harder,” he pleaded.

“Max is right – talent like yours is… Well, you’re expendable. I’m sorry.” She paused and added, “This is my shot and I can’t blow it on some guy I probably won’t even remember in ten years.”

Sam was crying when she left, and he hated himself for it but he hated her more. Her desertion and her reasoning had hit him hard, knocking his confidence so much that he retired his guitar and swore he’d never trust anyone again or ever again show weakness. He meant it and was blessed – or cursed – with great resolve.

During his time with Sophia he had realized something interesting about himself: he was an intuitive businessman and, better than that, he had the gift for spotting talent. He could walk into any club in New York and put money on the bands who would make it versus those who wouldn’t. And if he had been Max Eastler, he would have done the same thing, because Sophia was better off without him. Still, he despised her for doing to him what he knew, given the chance, he would have done to her, and he was determined she would pay.

Within weeks he’d picked himself up and made a decision. He was never going to be the next Santana but, sure as shit, he was going to be the next Clive Davis, the next great music executive in America. He’d never again be expendable. He’d be the best in his chosen profession – and if being the best meant being a complete fucking asshole like that guy Eastler, then so be it.

Fate must have taken him in hand because a week later he bumped into a blue-eyed blonde called Frankie. Mesmerized by her unaffected beauty, he offered to replace the coffee she’d just spilled over him. Half an hour later she had made the decision to dump her boyfriend of three months. On their second official date Frankie mentioned she was the daughter of Joe Merrigan, head of New Moon Records. Sam couldn’t believe his luck. Six weeks passed before he met Joe for dinner in his mansion. Joe conducted the meal as if it was an interview and Sam, ever prepared, came through with flying colours. Afterwards, when Frankie and her mother were making drinks, Joe told Sam dirty jokes, which he described as his weakness and not tolerated by his wife and their squeaky-clean daughter. Sam indulged the old man by responding appropriately and telling a few of his own. Joe smacked him on the back, laughing hard, and Sam knew he wouldn’t have to wait long.

When he wasn’t brown-nosing Joe or having polite sex with the man’s sensitive daughter, he was trawling clubs looking for that next big act. Early on he narrowed it down to six bands, following them night after night and gig after gig, then narrowing them down again until, four months into his relationship with Frankie, he’d found the Dead-beats, his first great act.

He’d phoned her dad in his office at around noon. He told him he’d discovered a great band and respectfully asked if he would attend their gig later that night. Joe had laughed, saying he had young guys who did that, but Sam was insistent. Joe broke, and met Sam after eight in a small club in Hoboken. The band played and Joe’s initial bemusement turned slowly to interest. After their fourth song he was hooked. Over the months Sam had cultivated a relationship with the band and introduced Joe to them. As instructed they sucked ass. Joe was really impressed with their knowledge of his medium-sized company and of its many quality acts. He was especially impressed with their lack of ego and commitment to the process of making music – in which Sam had spent most of the day indoctrinating them.

Later at an all-night diner and over pancakes, Joe offered Sam his first job in A&R. He started the next day and at first he worked under a gay guy called George Le Forge, a coiffeur turned A&R in the late sixties after a chance encounter with Misty Day, a buxom blues singer he had introduced to Arista Records. She went on to sell eight million copies before she died of a coke overdose in the early eighties. Then he’d found a metal outfit who were doing nicely for Blue Moon. Sam guessed that George had been lucky – he’d only discovered two acts in ten years while he himself was planning on discovering one a year. Within six months Sam controlled the Deadbeats and George was back doing hair.

After he had successfully signed another two million-dollar acts, he migrated to RCA America, leaving Frankie and Joe devastated. Frankie had lost the man she thought would marry her and Joe a natural son-in-law and heir. Sam felt a clean break was best. As much as he liked Frankie, she was a little too fragile for his taste and, besides, he had enough of his own shit to deal with. He didn’t love her so he reasoned that he was doing the right thing. He didn’t look back, not even when Frankie ended up in hospital having starved herself for six weeks.

A year later, with two more massive acts tearing apart the charts, he was said to have the Midas touch, and described as a hardcore asshole. After he had taken over Max Eastler’s job and axed Sophia’s band Demonic – having explained to them that, in the current climate, they were expendable – he left RCA America to head up A&R at Seminy Records. The owner Leland Vander had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Seminy was a hot new label nipping at the heels of the establishment.

At twenty-six Sam was one of the biggest players on the American music scene. He was sitting on top of the world and, deep inside, he knew that, for him, the only way was down.

Sam had navigated his way through eight weeks of rehab without really examining who he was, yet while he was alone and playing his guitar it was all he could do. He had been such an asshole for so long. He hadn’t wanted to be – he’d just wanted to succeed so that the pain would go away. He’d believed that if he was the best nothing could touch him. He was wrong, of course. The gold records, the penthouse, the limos, the sexy girlfriend, the money, the suits, the great restaurants, the cool clubs, the awards – none of it had made any difference and, in the moment he’d realized he couldn’t escape himself, he’d lost himself.