WE’RE NO RADIOHEAD

OR

HERE I GO AGAIN ON MY OWN
(part 6 of 6)

Interview of Particle Board for World Recovery singer Shane Glory and guitarist John Largo by Tumbling Dice Magazine writer Zeke Hammersmith, Chateau Marmont, Los Angeles, June 5:

Zeke Hammersmith: There’s quite a buzz around the band’s new record. Critics are calling it your best yet and “Streetfighting Girl” is your first top 10 hit in more than five years. I imagine you must be feeling on top of the world.

Shane Glory: Actually, Zeke, I’m feeling more Antarctic than Artic.

John Largo: I feel like shit.

Zeke: What? Why is that?

John: Lots of reasons. But mostly it’s because I have to stay sober all the time and I fucking hate it.

Zeke: I noticed you’re drinking Perrier.

John: Yeah, quitting things is my new addiction.

Zeke: You look a lot better than the last time I saw you. You actually have skin tone now. When was the last time you did heroin?

John: Just celebrated my nine-month anniversary.

Zeke. Congratulations. What’d you do to celebrate?

John: Heroin of course.

Stunned pause…

Zeke: You’re kidding right?

John shrugs.

Shane: Yes, he’s kidding. I’m proud of my brother here. He’s gone from the most fucked-up guy in the band to the soberest guy in the band. And that’s the main reason the record turned out so good.

Zeke: And how about you Shane? You said you aren’t feeling very good either?

Shane: Nah, I’m okay. I really like the new record, I got a girlfriend I’m really into and my band is back together. But, see, I’m just one of those people who doesn’t trust it, you know? See, I know it can’t last. Something shitty will happen soon enough and all this bliss will be a faded memory. It’s all fleeting, Zeke. Once you realize that, you’re better off.

Zeke: You’re a real optimist, Shane. Tell me how this new record came about.

Shane: It all started with John. See, Renner and me were just kicking around LA while John was up in rehab last year. I was concentrating on buying and crashing as many Porsches as I could get my hands on — it was this Guinness book of records goal I had for awhile — and Renner was mainly focused on smoking pot and organizing an expedition to the deepest, darkest corner of Africa to search for some doctor or something. Anyway, we both ended up living at John’s house cuz he has the nicest house of all of us …

Zeke: This was while John was still in rehab?

Shane: Right.

Zeke: John, did you know they’d made themselves at home, so to speak?

John: No. I didn’t find out until I got home from rehab in Malibu and the stink hit me flat in the face when I opened the front door.

Shane: So anyway, one night I couldn’t sleep and I found my way to John’s home studio. I stumbled on to all these CDs of songs he’d made while he was wasted on The Big H and I listen to them. I was totally mesmerized. I went upstairs and literally dragged Renner out of bed and made him listen to them too. They were so infectious. Then Ren and me started playing ‘em. We began shaping ‘em until John came home. Then we worked on ‘em, the three of us, day and night for a couple months or so and made a demo. That’s when we knew we had something.

Zeke: And your drummer, Wammo, he wasn’t there at the time?

Shane: No, Wams didn’t come into the picture until later. We originally thought we were gonna have to replace him, which we really didn’t want to do.

John: Yeah, we were fucking hating that. Shane and Renner played drums on the demo. We couldn’t even talk about it for the longest time.

Zeke: Because of his heart attack?

Shane: Yeah, that was a real eye-opener for al of us. Turns out if you ingest massive quantities of cocaine over a years-long period, it’s not good for your heart. Who knew?

Zeke: Well, doctors, for one …

Shane: Yeah, well, doctors were the fucking problem if you ask me. They told Wams he couldn’t play drums anymore because of his heart, you know? It was irrevocably damaged or some shit. These fuckin’ pieces of righteous shit wanted him to sit around for the rest of his life and wait to die. So Wams finally said to these bastards, ‘Go fuck yourselves.’ You know, if he was gonna die, he’d do it on stage, doing what he loves. And that was that.

The Greek Theatre, Backstage, June 17

Whitey Osgood looked around the backstage area and smiled. He thought he’d never see his boys on the road again. John was in the corner with his trainer throwing kicks and punches at a set of pads the trainer had strapped to his forearms, trying to substitute health for heroin. Renner and Shane were lounging on the couch with Shane’s Harvard-business school educated girlfriend, Hillary, laughing like a threesome waiting to happen and passing a fruity-smelling joint between them. Wams was still on stage making last minute adjustments to his drum set. Smooth sailing ahead, Whitey thought. How times change, he thought for the millionth time that day.

If this were the old days, John would have been in his private dressing room with a leather belt tied around his bicep and syringe in his right hand. Wams would have been in his dressing room shoving as much white powder up his nose as humanly possible without dying. Shane would have been off whoring and picking fights, while Renner would have been sulking in the corner with a hangdog expression on his face and the weight of the world on his shoulders.

And as for ol’ Whitey, well he would have a been a nervous wreck wondering how to get these children not only to play together like a force-to-be-reckoned-with-rock-and-roll-band, but to actually all arrive at the stage at the same time, Whitey thought.

His mind wandered back nine months. He’d been sitting at his desk — more like a cubicle really — in the bowels of one of the largest talent agencies in Los Angeles. He’d been surrounded by interns from UCLA, Brown, Tufts and Yale who were eager to fuck, lie, cheat, steal, scheme, emasculate and hoodwink anyone they thought would get them, or stood in their way of an acting or directing job. He’d felt like a grandpa. He’d felt like a failure.

Just then, one of the firm’s so-glowing-she-was-practically-fictitious receptionists approached his desk wearing the Teflon smile and silicone implants requisite for the job. He knew from experience she was not about to ask him if he wanted to play with her implements.

“A man just dropped this off for you, Mr. Osgood,” she said, handing him a manila envelope. “Hope it’s good news!”

“Thanks, Chrissy,” he’d said.

“It’s Sissy,” the girl corrected sweetly before whirling around alarmingly and walking like a runway model back to her perch.

“Right, Sissy,” Whitey had said. “Sorry about that.”

Whitey opened the envelope and shook out the contents. A lone CD dropped out along with a handwritten note. The note said: “See what you think of this.” Whitey recognized Shane’s handwriting and was surprised at the lack of anger it provoked. The final parting between Whitey and the band he’d managed from infancy hadn’t been pretty. He’d said some things he wished he could take back. But worse than that, he had blamed Shane and the rest of them for ruining his life by not living up to their potential and acting like, well, rock stars. But it didn’t take long for Whitey to come to the conclusion that it wasn’t them, it was him. He’d chosen to give the band the most productive years of his managerial life. And while it was true that he’d done it because he believed in them and it was also true they’d let him down, as well as themselves, it was equally certain that his life was his life and no one else’s. After a few weeks of feeling sorry for himself, Whitey dragged his sorry, aging ass off the couch and got on with his life. He hadn’t realized he’d forgiven Shane and the rest of the Particle Board for World Recovery until the moment the contents of the envelope landed in his lap.

He picked up the CD and stared at it. There was no writing on it and no hint of what it might contain. Was it Shane’s solo record? He wasn’t thrilled about that prospect. Maybe it was a band Shane wanted Whitey to champion? Or was it the band? Had the Particle Board pulled it together?

Oh, what the hell, he’d thought. Whitey grabbed his jacket, made his way through the maze of preening interns, male and female, past Sissy, who was sitting at the reception desk studying her bright pink fingernails as if they hid a secret code that revealed the location of tonight’s coke party.

“Gong to lunch, Sissy,” he’d said.

“Eat healthy, Mr. O,” she’d chimed.

He’d gone directly home, poured the first gin martini of the day and popped the disc into his stereo. The sounds that emerged were distinctly Particle Board-esque. Still, he wasn’t sure what it was. It was a damn sight better than anything the band had ever done, By the end of the hour and half long disc, Whitey knew it was them and he knew they’d made the record he always felt they were capable of making. His heart swelled with pride (and gin).

He’d called Shane that night and told him what he thought. Shane asked if he’d come back as their manager and Whitey jumped back in with both feet. He’d quit the talent agency the next day and everything had almost effortlessly fallen into place. Wams rejoined the band a week later and Whitey enlisted one of the most respected record producers in the business to record the band’s masterpiece, which they titled Striking The Middle.

A roadie knocked on the door and entered the room. “Five minutes, you guys,” he said and left. Shane wandered over and passed Whitey the joint.

“We’re sold out, right,” he asked.

Whitey took a small puff, handed it back and said, “You know it is. Tickets have been gone for a month.”

“Just checking,” said Shane, turning to his mates. “Everybody ready? Let’s rock.”

Greek Theatre, Backstage, post-show, June 17

The room was now crammed with people drinking and spewing slobbery accolades at anyone remotely associated with the band. The show had been brilliant. It was the first show of the tour and it looked like it was already a smashing success. Shane was huddled with Whitey and the record company goons going over last minute details of the tour when a tall, lean but powerfully built man with a high and tight haircut entered the room. The man looked around for moment, spotted Shane and strode over. Renner had seen him come in and pegged his age at about 35 and his profession as cop or soldier. He watched as the man walked up to Shane and put his hand on his shoulder. Shane turned around, looked momentarily confused, and then the two men embraced like brothers. Renner was thinking the guy was pretty hot when the crew-cut man and Shane walked out the door.

Greek Theatre, Backstage, Shane’s dressing room, June 17

“Jesus, George fucking Jones, it’s been a long time,” Shane said to the man with the crew cut.  “What have you been doing with yourself?”

George paused a few seconds before he answered and Shane could see that his former comrade had changed over the last seven years. The spark of mischief in his eyes was gone, replaced by something black, and suggesting he’d seen too much and was too exhausted because of it to bother anybody with the gruesome details.

“I been here,” George said. “I been there too. Mostly there.”

“I hear it’s hot over there,” Shane said.

George paced around the room, picking up this and that and putting it back down nervously as Shane watched him. A nagging sense of foreboding began to form in the pit of Shane Glory’s stomach.

“You’re not here just to say hi are you?” Shane asked.

George looked at him with infinite sadness in his once-joyful eyes. “No, I’m not,” he said.

“Well, spit it out then.”

George took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m here to ask you to come with me.”

“Come with you where?”

“To the Middle East.”

“Yeah right. Get the fuck out of here.”

“I’m serious, bro.”

“You gotta be out of your fucking mind to ask me a question like that.”

“We’ve been … keeping tabs on you for the past year or so. We — they — know what you’ve been doing. And more importantly, others — the real they — are close to finding out what we know.”

“So you know I’ve been going to stuntman school, so what? What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I’m not talking about the stunt school,” George said. “I’m talking about what you’ve been doing with … the McDonald’s stuff.”

Shane stopped dead. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Sure you do. See, here’s the problem: The FBI isn’t far behind you. It seems you pretty seriously pissed off the McDonald’s people and, believe it or not, they’re big political donors. And they want to know who’s been blowing up their restaurants. They want to know real bad. You follow me?”

“So the deal is I go to Iraq and start killing people again or you turn me in to the FBI, is that it?”

“More or less, yeah.”

“Do you know what you’re asking? You were there in Mogadishu, bro, you know what went down. Don’t ask me to do that again.”

“It’s not me asking, Shane. Besides you were the best damn operative of your generation. We need you over there.”

“You don’t understand. I don’t think I can handle it. I’ll crack up.”

“They don’t think so. Look, I’m sorry Shane …”

“Fuck you. Just spell it out, asshole, and get the fuck out of here.”

“Okay. You can finish the tour. Six weeks, right? After that, you meet me at Bragg, we put you through the wringer for a while and off you go. We need good thinkers on the ground. Simple as that.”

“So the president and his Haliburton buddies can have the perpetual war they need to line their pockets. I won’t do it, dude. I can’t do it.”

“Then, my friend, you better get used to eating dog chow and being regularly ass fucked.”

“How long’s the commitment?”

“I can’t say.”

“Jesusfuckingchrist,” Shane said.

Shane sat stunned.

“And if I do it, you fucking people make the FBI back off for good?”

“That’s the deal,” George said.

George handed him a blank white card with a handwritten phone number on it. “Call me there within 24 hours and let me know your decision. If I don’t hear from you by then, I’ll assume you’ve chosen to spend the rest of your life in the pokey. See ya, Shane.” George walked out the door, closing it quietly behind him.

Shane sat down in the orange molded plastic chair that was just like the plastic, orange molded chairs in every backstage dressing room in every arena in America, and, for the first time in months, wondered what a .357 bullet might taste like.