270. Rock Me Tonight

The venue can be beautiful and high tech and still not perfect. Soundcheck was slightly delayed while some tech problem was sorted out, so the whole band was there on the stage before I had a chance to play my usual warmup.

Petey, the island of salt and pepper hair on his balding head sticking up like he’d been pulling on it, said to me before we started, “If you’re going over tonight, city ordinance says sound’s got to be off by 10pm sharp.”

“Don’t worry, Pete,” I said. “Show’s starting at five, there’s no way I’m keeping us that long!”

“Can I get that in writing?” He cracked a smile.

After check, I went back to the dressing room to change clothes and get my eyeliner on. My “crazy face” as Marty would put it.

I told Ziggy that after he had lined my eyes. We were sitting in two chairs facing each other, knees interleaved.

He laughed. “You want to see something really crazy? Check this out.” He dug into a bag and pulled out a packet of sequins, brand new, still with the price tag on it. Where he’d found a craft store I don’t know.

I felt a sudden chill. That image of his face, the album cover that only existed in my mind, haunted me. “Shiny,” I said.

His hand fell warmly on my knee. “You don’t think so?”

“For your clothes or your face?” I asked.

“Crazy face,” he quoted. “I was thinking around my eyes, maybe. I have to play with it and see.”

“Uh huh.”

He squinted. “What’s the matter?”

What was the matter was that it felt like a ball of ice had just formed in my stomach. “Nothing. I’m just tired from not sleeping enough.”

“Daron.” His voice was soft and he leaned forward. “You gotta tell me if there’s something.”

I just shook my head. “Just my usual shit,” I said. “You want to work on something? Let’s work on a song for the recording day in New Orleans.”

He sat up straight and looked around. No one else was in the room at the time, but he said, “Let’s go work on it in the bus.”

“Okay.” I trusted him enough at this point that I didn’t immediately think he was maneuvering me into a compromising situation.

And he wasn’t. We actually worked on a song.

“What do you think,” he said, as we settled onto the benches in the back lounge. “Something you wrote or something I wrote?”

I had the Ovation across my lap and tuned it a little. “I think the question is what do we want to give up. I mean, if this song shoots its wad we can’t put it on the next album, right? So it has to be something we’re willing to let go.”

“We should pick something good, but I get what you mean.” He sat cross-legged. “Definitely not ‘Changes,’ or whatever we’re going to call that. Definitely not that one you’ve been working on.”

“Infernal Medicine?”

“Yeah. Although play me how that goes again? We should totally work on it tomorrow.”

I played through what I had. I’d figured out some more of the incidental riffs and I sang through the first verse.

Nothing tempts me like your lips
Lush as honey and twice as sweet
Your skin slips under my fingertips
As silvery cool as a satin sheet

“I like silvery instead of slippery,” he said, when I was done.

“You know, I think maybe it was supposed to be slippery but silvery came out when I wrote it down.” I didn’t have the original note sheet on front of me now. “I’m not even sure it’s a word.”

“It is now.” He grinned. “Okay, my turn. I think I know what song we should try.”

“Something I haven’t heard yet?”

He nodded. “I got this idea watching TV. If we use the words ‘good to the last drop’ do you think that coffee company could sue us?”

“I have no idea. That’s a Digger question. For now, though, I gotta think quoting is okay.”

“Okay. I’m thinking this one needs the same kind of guitar as Grenadier. Loud and explosive.”

I nodded.

“But for now, here’s a softer version. I’m calling it ‘Milking It.'”

Now, not every singer can just belt something out with no accompaniment. But as I think I’ve said multiple times, Ziggy wasn’t your run-of-the-mill singer.

Here’s what he hit me with.

Milking it for all its worth
Good to the last drop

Good to the last drop

We sat there staring at each other when he was done. I wanted to ask when he wrote it. But I didn’t trust my voice just then. Instead I picked out the melody, or a piece of one that might fit, anyway. He’d sung it with a tune but it was clear to me it was a working tune, not a full melody. That wouldn’t come until all the chords were hanging around it.

I cleared my throat. “I could start it kind of quiet, actually, with the twelve-string maybe? And then go electric when the first verse kind of bursts out?”

His eyes lit up. “That wouldn’t be too much like that Bon Jovi song? Dead or Alive?”

“Not too much,” I said. I knew what he meant. “But just try that verse with me now, I’m thinking this.” I strummed a chord progression with a jazzy kink in the middle.

His eyes got wider. “Ye-e-e-e-sss,” he said. “A little ‘Cabaret’ note. Oh yes.”

“To go with the ‘Lady Luck’ reference,” I said.

We played the verse through, with him firming up the melody, and wrapping his voice around that twist.

Fuck, it was good. He gave a little clap at the end and said, “God, I love…! That.”

I’m not an idiot. I heard that hesitation. I don’t have the best ears in this fucking band for nothing.

“Let’s hope the producers love it, too,” I said, and stood up, stretching, the guitar in one hand by the neck. “Come on. Let’s see how the crowd looks.”

“Okay.” He held out his fist though, and I bumped it boy-scout style, like a hammer. He hammered back when I kept mine there, and out we went. I don’t think either of us was satisfied with that as punctuation on the end of the not-conversation we’d just had, but there you go.

—