16 comments/ 18199 views/ 15 favorites Ravens Fly at Night By: Stultus Copyright© 2007 by Stultus Thanks to my Editors Fuzzywuzzy, Dragonsweb and several advance readers who prefer to remain anonymous Synopsis: A struggling journeyman musician finds musical success but fails at winning the romantic acceptance of the troubled young lady songbird he loves, but cannot seem to have. A romantic drama of unrequited love . Sex contents: Some Sex, mostly at the end Genre: Romantic Codes: MF, FF, Slow, Humor, Tear Jerker, Consensual, Caution, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual, Group Sex, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Cream Pie, Body Modification Originally Posted at SOL: 2007-05-16 (re-edited and slightly revised) ********** CHAPTER ONE *********** I knew within five minutes of walking into the room what the trouble was, and I nearly decided to turn around and walk out right then and there. But I didn't... and I nearly came to regret it, but now I can look upon it as a learning experience. Sometimes in life you really do have to eat all of your vegetables before you get to enjoy your dessert. The Montrose Ravens were a local Houston metal band, better than most actually, possessing a couple of very talented musicians that could have their pick of working for nearly any local band with a snap of the fingers. They were also masters of the fine arts of infighting, backstabbing and other numerous self-inflicted wounds that are invariably fatal to any working band. They were ripe for a break-up long before I walked in the door. Only the presence of a signed contract requiring the MR's to spend the next three months as the supporting and opening act for larger touring band (and the significant cash advance already received and spent) was enough to keep the band even remotely functioning together. This wasn't the big time by any stretch of the imagination, but it was national exposure, and if nothing else a wider area to spread ones musical resume over. I was to be their new replacement bass player, Carl Hawkins, by name. Veteran of 10 years of the pop wars of the 1980's, and at least as many local and regional bands. I hadn't had very good luck finding the right fit long term, but I had built a solid reputation over the years for both professional reliability and my 'progressive' influenced skills with the bass (an instrument of considerable underrated ability in the hands of a master like John "The Ox" Entwhistle, John Paul Jones, or my favorite bassman Chris Squire of 'Yes'). My predecessor, whom in my opinion was an untalented hack that did little more onstage than repeatedly "bang the root note", had clearly been their musical weakest link and was now gone for good. In a tale that would have been quite funny if it wasn't really rather sad, he had been caught as part of a late night police sting operation at a popular Houston public park at a spot notorious for nighttime 'pervert activity' with his pants around his ankles and his pockets stuffed with drugs and paraphernalia. He was now spending his days more fruitfully at a long term drug rehab facility, and was frankly being missed by no one. It was their remaining weak link, Samantha, aka "The Dragon Lady", that was the main focal point for trouble. Early in the band career, when they had seemed poised for some success, she had starting to "hang out" with the band and sunk her nails into Darryl, the front man, lead guitarist, and main songwriter for the group. Once ensnared, she then committed the most selfishly evil act I'd ever heard of by deliberately getting Darryl hooked on increasingly powerful narcotics in order to better manipulate and "control him". He was now an addict and utterly dependent upon Samantha to do virtually everything in his life. Her ego unchecked, she was now pretty much the 'face' for the band and had taken center stage performing most of the main vocal duties. Not well in my opinion, even for the light demands of metal rock. I started to call her "Linda", after Linda Eastman who had a similar ego and often sang and played keyboards (both excruciating badly) for her husband Paul McCartney's band 'Wings'. (Don't believe me? If you look hard enough on the Internet you can find "Soundboard" tracks from concerts of just her singing tracks. It raises the challenging question of demoting Yoko Ono from her throne of "Worst singing Beatle Wife who just won't shut the fuck up".) Darryl had been very talented, and the driving force for the band in its early days. He played lead well, in an extremely unhurried and understated sort of way that imparted a good deal of emotional tones to his songs, which used to be quite first rate material. He was no Clapton, Page or Beck, able to rip off blistering riffs but he didn't want to play like that anyway. If he could be straightened out he could vague resemble something like a 'lite' version of David Gilmore. There are much worse things. Darryl controlled nearly all of the music rights; they were mostly his songs, and he also had the technical ownership of the legal rights for the band. Samantha controlled him... and thus by proxy the entire band. She set the band's schedule and controlled every single band expense to the last penny. Skimming the cream at the top and making every else below her beg to even receive gas money. Voting her out was an utter impossibility. Darryl was essential to the band and she was essential to Darryl. The only way out was for everyone else to quit — which every other band member was quietly (or not so quietly) planning to do after this 3 month tour. I was brought in to be temporary hired help only. Kind of like a long term session player. No 'shares', just a small signing bonus if I accepted the job and a flat rate per diem once we got out on the road. There were vague promises of 'reevaluating the situation' at the end of the tour, but nothing in writing. From the looks of things most of the band wouldn't even be around by that point anyway. The drummer Irv (he hated Irving), was a spacey gangling galloot who tied his long way past shoulder length red hair into a pony tail and abused his drum kit nightly like a man possessed. His hero was Ginger Baker of Cream, and he must have watched "Goodbye Cream" at least 10,000 times. He made a habit out of destroying his apartment and hotel furniture everywhere he went by constantly beating out rhythms with his drumsticks upon anything that wouldn't move... and some things that could. Irv may have been a total head case, but he came by it honestly and not via chemical additives. I never saw him once with his eyes opened while playing, he "felt the music" and let it flow within him. He had the true musical instinct needed for good improvisational playing, and more importantly he "listened" well to what I was doing and soon became able to anticipate melody changes and we could soon almost effortlessly anticipate the 'others changes from one rhythm pattern to the next. More than anything, it was my first jam session with Irv that convinced me to accept the temp job and stay. Separately we were each very good musicians; together we began to show signs of creating an entire new (and much improved) foundation for the band to build upon. Simon, our keyboardist was old school 70's Progressive rock all the way. He had a formal education in classical music and had trained in that genre fervently since childhood, but now he found it much too limiting. He admitted in private to me that it really sucked and killed his ego to hear 10 year old geniuses play a classical piece far better than he ever could). His rock music influences were primarily Keith Emerson (ELP) and Rick Wakeman (Yes), in other words WAY over the top bombastic Mellotron and Mood synthesizer eruptions. It was pure Prog masturbatory wanking excess... but it was occasionally pretty good Prog wanking. The problem was it just didn't mesh well with the stripped down and subtle style that Darryl was playing on lead. He needed to listen to the rest of the band a bit better and not just follow one of his random whims of excess. Despite these faults there was no disputing that he was talented and sometimes, even in his excess, there were moments that showed "potential" for better things the band could do in the future. Next to Irv, Simon became my closest friend within the band, and the three of us started to hang together and jam at every opportunity. Eric was our rhythm guitarist and the source of our 'signature sound', a pounding whine of non-stop power chords. There was nothing subtle about his approach whatsoever, and from his on-stage posturing (next to Sam he was the flashiest performer) I can only guess that he spent his childhood chain-playing KISS Alive II and pretending he was Ace Frehley. As the 'pretty boy' of the group he was always fighting Samantha for face time with the music reporters and he tried to bang more than his fair share of the groupies. Fortunately, he couldn't sing worth a darn and that helped keep his ego mostly in check. He was a bit of a loner backstage and was already making his plans to parachute out of the band at the last second he could 'before the plane crashed'. His dedication and motivation to succeed was suspect at best. He was usually the last one to arrive and the first one to leave a band meeting or the gig. An ok guy; a fairly competent player, but certainly not irreplaceable in my opinion. We had a week of pre-tour practice sessions in which invariably at least one person would get pissed off at somebody and leave early for the night. Situation "normal" I was told by Irv and Simon, and by our last night when we had a dress rehearsal gig at a local club, everyone was sullen and pretty well out of sorts, and our playing pretty much reflected that. The crowd mostly didn't notice or care, but I did. And our 90 days of hell on the road began... and it was definitely hell. Our playing was so obviously disjointed the first few weeks that we were almost fired and very nearly released from our contract to be the opening act for this tour. The only thing that saved us was the promoter couldn't find anyone else to replace us on such short notice and we had already received substantial non-refundable advances. Thus we kept our jobs, but barely. Really for all intents and purposes we became at least two separate bands all playing differently on the same stage, and on some early "really bad nights" it sounded like no two of us were playing the same song at the same time. Irv, Simon and I gelled together more with every performance and we began to do long improvised jams together on our right hand side of the stage. Back over on the left and center sides, Darryl, Eric and Sam were stuck in "the way we've always done it" and the slightest change was likely to throw Samantha into a furious on-stage snit fit. As the first awful weeks passed and as we played more together, Darryl started to get the feel of what we were doing and by mid-tour was drifting more and more to our end of the stage, to Sam's volcanic fury. Eric, was well... Eric, and did his own thing on his far left hand side of the stage, and I doubt he ever noticed a thing anyone else was playing or doing. Most nights the aggregate was still a heaping mound of shit, but more and more often now we would have a few little flashes of brilliance where we would look at each other while playing and think aloud to ourselves "This is good, keep it going!" Matters came to a head about two thirds into the tour at a gig in Evansville, IL, when Sam got so angry at everyone that she stormed off the stage before the show was over and dragging Darryl off with her. We finished the last two songs of the set without them, in full "Wank mode" improvising as wildly as we could, Simon handling the lead vocals at least as adequately as Sam was capable of. For the first time, we got hearty sincere applause of appreciation, and even managed to catch the Promoter off-guard and confused, but smiling at us. Sam and Darryl were already on the tour bus waiting for us and World War III was declared all the way to Chicago, with Samantha in full volcanic eruption. We were "ruining the sound of her band" and "playing badly deliberately just to sabotage things", she screamed on and on, mile after mile, while we mostly pointedly ignored her. Darryl once tried to take our side of things saying he thought "they sounded nice and tight tonight". That started another row until she cowed him into silent submission, and by the time we were in our hotel bed in Chicago she was furious at everyone. But she did have a plan up her sleeve. Sensing that I was the core troublemaker, she came knocking on my door just as I was about to put the light out, and greeted me with soft tones and wearing a short silk kimono robe wearing obviously nothing underneath it and asking "if she could come in just for a moment so we can talk". As we politely talked she began to openly hint that she could become "much more friendly with me" if I would support her and "stick with her program", and play a bit more "the way we're all used to". Luckily, I had been warned that Sam might pull this ploy by Irv and Simon and was well prepared for it, not that I would have touched her anyway even with one of Irv's mangled old drumsticks. I suggested that she show me "just how friendly she was prepared to get" and was rewarded by the sight of her removing of her robe, confirming that she was indeed quite naked underneath it. She did have some attractive external qualities, nice tits and a very fuckable ass, but her soul was certainly definitely pure poison. A minute later I was telling her exactly what I thought about her and tossed her nude screaming ass into the hotel hallway and slammed the door on her, leaving her robe with her room key in my room. She made enough noise to wake most of the floor (it was early in the morning) and quite a few folks got a good look at her charms as she eventually gave up trying to beat down my door and hammered on her and Darryl's room as she tried to wake him from a stoned slumber. There was some hell to pay for this moment of amusement, but it was worth every little bit of it. She and Darryl refused to perform that next night in Chicago, and also the following night in Milwaukee, but that fazed us not in the slightest. We cut our 45 minute set list from 7 songs to just the 4 ones that Simon could handle vocally best, and we jammed out every song to the fullest. Without a doubt, they were our two single best shows of the entire tour. I recently heard a poor quality bootleg recording of that Chicago show for the first time, and it still sounded good nearly 15 years later. We were definitely on to something! Hearing the wild ovation we got both nights, Sam concluded that since we weren't going to collapse and fail on our own without her, she'd have to come crawling back for at least now. Her ego demanded that her ass be right there on that center stage to receive that applause that was rightfully hers, so it was back to business as usual the next night and for the rest of the tour. The music went back to sucking again, but none of us really cared by that point. By our final note at the end of the last San Francisco show, the band was officially dead. Eric, predictably, already had his plane ticket ready and left directly from the show to the airport to join his new band in Atlanta; as I said earlier, small loss. Before I left, I managed to get five uninterrupted minutes talking with Darryl (that had almost never happened before, but Sam was trapped dealing with the promoter handling final post-tour arrangements and I got him alone, out of her sight. I told him in the bluntest way I could that Samantha was "poison" and she was going to utterly rot him out from the inside and steal him blind before she dumped him for fatter pickings, sooner rather than later. He had great potential within him, he was a good guitarist and his songs used to be good ones, full of meaning. I encouraged him to break his drug habit and her control of him and escape while he could. With those last words of advice, I formally quit the band. Sitting together later that night in a North Beach all night bistro, Irv, Simon and I put our hands together and decided to form a new band. Now we just needed a lead singer and a guitarist, and we returned to Houston the next day much encouraged and full of hope for the future. ****************** CHAPTER 2 There are no shortages of lead guitarists in the world, and we found a couple with decent resumes and some clear talent that we thought "would do". The problem was, none of them were especially crazy about us and didn't want to be in a "Prog band". That was too "70's" and "went out with platform shoes". I couldn't say that I blamed them -- neither did I. We were "missing something" from our sound and I kept hoping the next guitarist or singer we interviewed would provide at least something new to the puzzle. We put out all of the usual contacts within the local and not-so local world of musicians but found nothing definite, and then we put more ads in the local alternative newspapers. Still nothing seemed to materialize. We soon realized that we had another problem to consider. Songs; none of us was a natural songwriter. Irv could definitely create parts of a melody, as could Simon and I, but our first round of group lyric writing was utter rubbish. I had a few things that didn't completely suck that I'd written over the years (I only come up with about one good "B" side quality song a year on average) and Simon offered up for good natured ridicule his own equally small batch of treasures. We tossed everything we had into a pile of index cards, shuffled them around and tried to make a few things fit. Using this 'demented jigsaw puzzle' method of song-writing we ending up with 4 solid new songs that were "ours" and that we weren't totally ashamed of, so that we wouldn't be just another pathetic "cover band". We tossed the remaining lyric index cards back into a box to await future inspiration later. At length, a friend of a friend contacted us about their friend, a guitarist in his late 30's that was "pretty good" and taught guitar lessons, but had never been in a band. Discouraged with our luck so far we agreed to meet with him. His name was David and he liked our sound and agreed to perform with us for "local gigs", but preferred not to travel on the road. He and his wife, a very sweet lady named Virginia, had just started their family recently and they had a young toddler with another bun in the oven set to come out by mid-summer. He was certainly better than nothing, and was very reasonable in the split of the band's take he requested as he was with us "more for the fun, than the babes and glory". That left only our new singer to find. We had one fairly likeable short young guy named Byron interview and he sang a few nights for us at local gigs. He was ok, but not quite the right sound and just didn't have any 'stage presence', however, he was young, enthusiastic and wanted the experience, so we offered to keep him "as a temp" until the right person came along. He took the failure much better than we would have predicted, he was a bit too young and he did need more experience (and didn't quite have enough of a vocal range) for a lead 'singers job. He was however, a genius behind the mixing board and great at making deals with people, and before anyone realized it we now had our Booking Manager and Sound Editor rolled into one small, inexperienced (but inexpensive) package. He would often sing hidden backup vocals for us off-stage at his mixing board from then on, but he soon never missed being out "in front" where we were. He did make mistakes in the early days, but never the same ones twice and I think our road to success would have been twice as hard without him. Hurray for Lord Byron! We were still stuck for our vocal sound when far too early one morning I received a phone call from a young lady saying that she had seen our ad for a singer in the local University newspaper that morning and when could she interview? Obviously she didn't realize most working musicians keep very late hours and are not normally "morning people". She sounded very earnest and almost pleading in her tone. When I did wake up enough to make a little bit of sense, I asked her if she could meet us a local Montrose area restaurant that evening at 6 p.m. and we'd then take her to our rehearsal hall. We actually did have a pretty good place to hangout and practice, which we did nearly every non-gig night. Simon's father was the CFO for a very large commercial real estate company that was buying up all of the old commercial warehouses downtown near where the new baseball park was likely going to be built, and gave us the use of one to use semi-indefinitely until the property value of it had arisen enough 4 years later to resell for redevelopment at an obscenely fat profit. Ravens Fly at Night Our young would-be songbird did not inspire instant confidence upon our first glimpse of her. She was of good stature and very slim, probably too thin to be entirely healthy at her age. Her hair was cut quite short in bangs around her eyes and just above her shoulders. It was dyed raven black, but her roots hinted that she might be a natural redhead (wow, four redheads in one band - Simon, Irv and I were all redheads of varying shades). She was dressed from head to toe in black leather, with more black (a corset?) underneath and a black velvet collar around her neck. Her shoes were black patent leather platforms, that I could tell were not easy to walk around in and she tended to control her movements extremely carefully. Her makeup? Heavy black, of course. Every inch of her screamed out "Gothic" This was still sort of a new trend and mostly in the fashion underground in those days, and not yet as common as it would become in a few more years. To us the look was new and fairly exotic. We all collectively shook our heads over her and thought that "she'd never work out", but we had promised her an audition and we took her over to our rehearsal hall right after dinner (which she looked like she had desperately needed). Talking with me on the short drive over there I found out that she was not a total music rube. She had been a music student at the University for about 6 years and was working on her Masters. She knew all the theory, probably better than we working blokes did. She asked for a lyric sheet and for us to play the first piece through "as you would normally". Ok, we played our first number through for her and she seemed interested. She asked us to repeat a certain part that seemed like it was a bit tricky to play and would probably be even harder to sing correctly, and we watched her work out the phrasing in her head. She jumped up and announced she was ready and ordered us to "Take it once again from the top, guys". We did, and she started to sing... and how! Her voice was a mezzo-soprano that soared and filled the entire warehouse. She could hold a note pitch perfect seemingly forever. She sang our song in a way we had never even before considered, and it was lovely. Seems our pretty dark angel songbird was a would-be opera singer. We spent the rest of the evening teaching her our other 3 completed songs, and she got each of them note perfect on the first try. We didn't by that point even try offering different suggestions for how each song could be sung, why screw with perfection. To this day no one remembers who actually offered Erin, our Goth wonderette, the job, or if in fact anyone actually ever formally did. From the moment she joined us for a late night snack at a local 24 hour greasy spoon she was "Our singer." Done and done! ************ I drove her home that first night about midnight, as she didn't have a car and normally took the bus to University. It was late spring and nearly the end of term. She "hoped" to be available most evenings "soon" but had to "check with her partner first". We lightly discussed future plans and I made arrangements to pick her up from her flat at 7 p.m. the next evening, which I did, and received a great surprise. Erin, dressed head to toe in her usual black, was sporting a large shiner, and from the way she was holding herself I could have placed any bet that more bruises could be found on her arms and elsewhere else. I was livid, and ready to go upstairs and have a few ungentle words with anyone who would lay a hand in anger against a young pretty woman. Erin pleaded with me "not to make more trouble" until I agreed (unhappily) not to interfere... "Only for right now..." I muttered. The story it seemed was that Erin's "partner" was an older woman that she had been in a lesbian relationship with for awhile, and was "very controlling". If Erin could be home no later than 10 p.m. that night, there would probably be no problems, she insisted. Erin's sudden decision to join a band had been a rather "sudden shock" for her, and her temper had flared "just a little bit". "It was entirely my fault anyway," Erin kept repeating over and over again as if it were almost a mantra. I was barely mollified, and when I dropped her home at the dot of 10 p.m. that evening I gave her a card to keep in her purse with my home phone number, and ordered her in the firmest voice that I dared to use, to call me "at the slightest hint of trouble, and I would come running!" She accepted it and hugged me. There was no trouble that night, nor for the rest of the month. For working purposes, we became "The Blackbirds" and everyone tried dressing up in as "dark and brooding" a manner as we could get, but to nowhere near the extent that Erin could manage. I settled for just a pair of black cowboy boots, black jeans and a shirt. That's about as dark and brooding as I could manage, at least for the time being. We began to work as steadily as we wanted, and our erstwhile new Manager Byron began to "fill up the bookings" for a series of "short, out-of-town" late spring/early summer gigs mostly at or near college campuses. When we finally saw the completed list, we all just about flipped. This "short" tour managed to encompass 25 cities in just 30 days, eventually ending up with a booking at an "alternative music" festival in New York. Our Lord Byron had been far more productive and enterprising than we had ever imagined. Dave of course had a near heart attack. There was "no way", he exclaimed to everyone and anyone that would listen, that he could be gone that long from his wife and family. At length, he agreed to accompany us as far as the New Orleans show, but then he "would have to return". Having some of Dave was better than none of him at all, and we grudgingly agreed to this. We started to hunt for another replacement guitarist, but finding the right one still continued to elude us. By the end of May, we started to do a few overnight gigs in College Station, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas to start running "dress rehearsals" to iron out the logistical kinks of traveling a few hundred miles, setting up our own gear, doing a show, then doing a breakdown and reloading the truck for another long 'nights drive to another show. Most of us had some experience with doing all this before in other bands, but we were a bit rusty - on the last ill-fated MR tour the promoter had arranged a small crew for us that had handled nearly everything as part of the contract. He had done most of the work -- and earned most of the profits. We were now on our own and learning that part of the business from the ground up. There were plenty of mistakes, bad screw-up's and shows from hell that I'd never want to relive, but we tried to keep a humor about things and chalked everything up to a learning experience. We pooled our money and made two major purchases for the road shows. First, an old converted midsized school bus that had been overhauled and redecorated inside with bolted down sofas and lounge chairs with a working refrigerator and hotplate, allowing folks a little amount of budget comfort in our "Tour Bus" on the road. The other was an equally old and temperamental small delivery truck that had just enough space for all of our gear (Irv's steadily growing drum kit and Simon's equally expanding collection of keyboards and what-have-you took nearly half of the space, and amps and speakers took up much of the rest. The truck had a stick shift and an annoying clutch that no one else but me could seem to get the hang of, and I quickly ended up as our permanent truck driver. Usually in the past whenever we had done a fairly local gig, everyone (except me and, sometimes, Irv) had ridden in Dave's big family sedan, Erin always getting the front passenger seat. Now that we started longer day trips, I was surprised to see Erin more and more often, opting to ride next to me for those long drives, alternating pleasant conversation with frequent jottings in one of her ever present spiral notebooks. I love Irv to death, but listening to him smack the dashboard with drumsticks for 200 miles non-stop would drive any rational person to madness. One late morning at the start of our last warm-up run, a 4 cities in 4 days trip to Dallas/Waco/Killeen/Austin and then back home, I noticed that Erin climbed into the truck cab passenger seat very gingerly and seemed in some considerable pain, but insisted nothing was wrong. The long 4 hour ride seemed if anything to make her even more uncomfortable, and she was pretty much in tears by the time we got to the club. The show went off just fine, and we seemed to make a lot of new fans who kept asking if we had a CD. "Not yet", we were forced to reply and we decided to get out at least a demo CD as soon as possible. Our hotel for the night was a Motel-6 on the outskirts of Waco, and Erin wasted no time in dashing for her room once she had her key. I noted some dried blood spotting on the cheap vinyl and I then knew for sure that something was terribly wrong. I made sure the truck was padlocked and parked secure for the night, and then dropped my bag into the room I usually shared with Irv. Then I went to borrow David's car. Since I was pretty sure I knew what the problem was, I got directions and drove over to the nearest 24 hour drugstore where I quickly got a few items I was unfortunately pretty sure I would soon be needing, and returned to pound on Erin's room without mercy until she gave up and let me in. She had been still in the shower (she tended to live in the bathroom and showered at least twice a day, if the opportunity existed) and was wearing just a towel when she finally answered the door and admitted me. Sometimes I just don't hear real well when people are telling me to 'go away'. I wasted no time, "Ok, go lie down on the bed and let me see what that bitch has done to your cute little ass." She started to protest, saying she was fine and nothing was wrong, but I put on my most glaring squinty-eyed look of implacable determination and just pointed at her bed and said "Go! Now!" Without uttering another complaint she dropped her towel on the floor and stood before me completely nude and wet before turning to go lay down on her stomach on the bed. I really only had a second or two to appreciate the full package that had been unveiled so unexpected for me. The package was well worth any admission price, her breasts were well shaped and somewhere between a B or C cup I guesstimated, the nipples were at least an inch long and were both pierced with gold rings. Their beauty was much offset by a near all-over pattern of red and purple bruises and welts, some of which had broken skin and had bled. She had a few tattoos, but they were pretty ones and I did not at all consider them any defect to her beauty. Her vaginal area, from the brief glimpse I got, was shaved smooth with a colorful tattoo of a butterfly on her pubic mound. Her clit and both sets of labia lips showed sparkles of additional ring piercings. Inspecting her bottom, her lower back, ass and upper thighs it was clear that she had been well flogged with what was probably a riding crop or else a thin cane. This whipping here had been at least as equally violent as the marks that I had briefly noted on the front of her breasts. Gathering my newly acquired first aid kit I began to get to work. I cleaned all of her wounds with peroxide and strips of soft gauze, and 'band aided' over the worst of the skin breaks and abused areas. This stung a bit, but she submitted to my care and began to relax. I finished by gently applying some Witch-Hazel to the inflamed areas to cool and sooth them. I resisted the near overpowering urge to gently kiss each and every sore spot and abused area. "You don't have to if you don't want, but may I take a look at the marks on your front and chest?" She immediately rolled over for me and lifted her arms above her head and even spread her legs a little bit for my very complete and thorough inspection. The damage done here to her breasts, stomach and upper thighs seemed a bit less severe, and more quickly attended to. I offered to let her do the gentle patting with the Witch-Hazel or I could just leave the bottle with her, but she asked me to continue and as I applied the soothing cooling liquid around her breasts her nipples seemed to grow even larger. She didn't even offer the slightest resistance when I treated the bruises and beating marks around her vaginal area, in fact she spread even wider for me to give me a completely unrestricted view and access to her most intimate and delicate regions. This was becoming very distracting for me and I finished as fast as I could being thorough without taking any liberties on her trust. I started to cover her back up with her bath towel so that she could relax with lessened pain for a few more minutes, but instead she asked me to get her bath robe for her from the bathroom and she still showed no shyness at all about sitting up in front of me and dressing. After her robe was on, she laid back down on the bed and asked me to turn off the overhead light for her, which I did as I was about to leave. "Please don't go! Don't leave me just yet, just come lie next to me for awhile and please hold me." I couldn't refuse. I kicked off my shoes and lay down beside her, almost but not quite touching her. She rolled over into my arms and snuggled her head into my shirt and began to softly cry for a very long time as I held her. We ended up talking for most of the night, about our current and past relationships. I currently didn't have a steady girlfriend but had "lived with a few" young ladies in the past. Being a musician is an odd sort of job and comes with extreme built in jealousy problems 99 out of 100 women can't handle, even if they think they can. I would always be out on the road or up until dawn nearly every night while my girlfriend would be brooding alone in bed each night wondering what groupie was warming mine. 99% of the time, there was none - I'm not a saint, but I do try to be a "one-woman" man... but no woman was ever going to believe that. I'd come home to accusations that were impossible to defend against and eventually I'd just come home to an empty apartment, if I went home at all. She had only had one prior male lover, back in high school and it had not ended particularly well. In college she "discovered girls" and had enjoyed it, soon becoming, she felt, "nearly 100% lesbian". Her taste in women was admittedly poor, and she was attracted to older successful "strong" women, and especially ones that seemed to have a dark "tormented" side. As a result she would move from one abusive relationship to the next, her current one of less than a year, the most physically abusive of all. She admitted she enjoyed a bit of rough handling would be happy in a stable D/s relationship but there was a limit to the amount of abuse she was prepared to take and she was reaching that point. She felt currently trapped in a loop of offering loving support and forgiveness which was eventually repaid each time in return by another violent "episode". Her lover, Marla, she eventually admitted to me, needed professional help for her "anger management" problems. For those four nights of our mini-tour, I never did get to sleep in my own bed but neither did our relationship progress to physical intimacy. She showed no shyness whatsoever in changing clothes or even being completely nude in front of me, but during our constant late night talks until she fell asleep in my arms, she would usually wear her robe or a long oversized t-shirt, and I stayed in shorts and a t-shirt. She wanted for me to be her friend and confidant, but not her lover. I kept my increasing amorous thoughts, and hands, to myself. Besides, intra-band relationships always go bad and end up screwing up the music. I didn't want that. By the end of the tour and for most of our drive home, Erin was in top spirits and bubbled confidence and happiness. She had decided that she would press Marla into accepting counseling as a condition for Erin staying with her, and felt sure that she would accept. I cannot say that I was entirely happy with this decision, but felt that I must be supportive of my friend, who came to me with her trusting open arms, but alas never her spread legs. Erin did allow me at last to peak at her notebooks and read to me some of her poetry, all of it I thought excellent and some of them I told her would have excellent potential as song lyrics. We dropped Erin off at her home first and then we guys, utterly exhausted, unloaded the truck one last time into our rehearsal hall. We had about two weeks until the start of the big tour and had pretty much decided that we needed to get "something... anything" recorded onto CD to sell at our gigs. We considered we had enough working material now to create something 'decent" at last, and after planning to give ourselves one day of rest, we agreed to start early the following day, recording tracks for the demo record. Erin's next crisis nearly derailed all of that. ************** Chapter 3: After helping to unload the truck from our four day trip, I got home, quickly showered and threw myself into bed intended to sleep the next day straight through. Instead the phone rang just a few short hours later. It was Erin and she needed my help, "I need you to come get me now", was about all that she would or could say, but she sounded hurt... badly. I drove like a man possessed and ran every stop sign and red light on the way and got to her house in less than ten minutes. I began to ring the doorbell and just about broke the door beating on it. In a few minutes Erin shuffled slowly to answer the door, and I barely recognized her. She had been beaten all over and her face and arms were a solid mass of bleeding welts and swelling bruises. She was bleeding seemingly from everywhere and the blue terrycloth robe she was clutching around her now was spotted all over with purple bloodstains. I sat her down into a chair to cry, and immediately called 911 and reported a domestic assault and requested an EMS unit. I then asked Erin where her clothes and things were kept and where I could find some suitcases, and so informed I went upstairs and began packing her things. To say that I was incandescent with rage would be an understatement, and she was not going to spend another minute in that house if I could help it. I had left the front door wide open for the Police, who responded extremely promptly, and before I knew it I was being confronted by a woman officer who had a gun drawn on me and I could tell she was just itching for any excuse to pull the trigger. I kept my hands high and identified myself repeatedly as Erin's friend who had come to her aid, and not her abuser, but I would gladly lie peacefully on the floor so she could cuff me until my story was confirmed, which it fortunately soon was. The officer never did quite apologize for nearly shooting me, but she did help me finish packing Erin's things and take them out to my car. At the last moment, I found the bloody rattan switch that Marla had used (among other things) to beat Erin with and I took it with me. EMS by then had arrived, and they wasted little time in getting her into the wagon and off to the hospital with the sirens wailing to clear the way, with me in my car right behind them. She spent the next six hours in the Emergency Room where her wounds were cleaned and bandaged and x-rays taken (2 cracked ribs and a minor concussion from being repeatedly struck and then pushed down the stairs was the worst of the damage). There was a little internal bleeding due to some vaginal tearing, but it soon stopped and was not considered to be significant fortunately. Eventually an official Police Complaint was dictated, written out and signed by Erin and we filled out the forms to get a Restraining Order against Marla, preventing her from contacting Erin in any way. Ravens Fly at Night "Your offer of reconciliation didn't go over as well as you had hoped, I see", I quipped, once we were alone together many hours later in her hospital room. She tried to laugh herself silly, but her ribs hurt a bit too much and I promised to make no further jokes and just held her hand. She soon she drifted off to sleep in a medicated fog, and I got a few fitful hours of sleep myself in the chair beside her before she was released the following afternoon. We picked up her prescriptions that included some pain killers, and I took her to my apartment and put her into my bed where she slept all of that day and a pretty decent chunk of the next full day as well. Naturally, we canceled the first few intended days of our recording sessions, and my apartment was constantly flooded with band mates and assorted friends and well wishers. Invariably someone was now always crashed out on the sofa (usually Irv), so I grabbed some sleep in my mother's old rocking chair next to her bedside. When awake, and not otherwise engaged, I began to read through her collection of hand-written spiral bound books of poetry. Those had been among the first items of hers that I had packed at her ex-lovers home. She began writing when she was just 14 (now about to turn 27 later this summer). The material was special, and some of my favorites I flagged with book markers for her to later sing for us in the studio, assuming we could find the right musical accompaniment. It took a day or so, but eventually I finally got nearly everyone thrown out of my apartment, except for Irv, who defied every hint I offered that it was ok for him to go home now, and who now seemed to be permanently implanted upon my sofa. I did have one surprise visitor from one of the last people I ever would have expected. Darryl! He looked thin, but healthy, his eyes showing that he was off of "the junk" and that he planned to stay that way. Just as I had predicted, nearly immediately after the breakup of the band, Samantha had dumped him in Kansas City and split town with a new boyfriend, and with the rest of Darryl's cash. One of his new band mates gave him the money for a bus ticket back to Houston and he had been back "getting my head straight" for the last month or so, and had just now started to check back in with old friends. I had never met Darryl before he had become the drug addicted pawn of Samantha, and I must admit I liked this "new" Darryl. He mentioned before leaving that he might swing by our practice hall to hear the new sound of things before we left, and I encouraged him sincerely to please do so. The next morning, Erin was ready to be up and about, and she sat at my small dinette table while I started to cook the three of us breakfast wearing just a pair of old shorts. I was out of clean t-shirts, as Erin was now wearing my last one... everything else I owned was now in the washer. Irv as usual, was seemingly asleep on my sofa. Erin came into the kitchen and hugged me from behind, and asked me the serious question that I had been expecting for some time. "How come, since we've now been sleeping together for over a week, you have not tried even once to kiss me, let alone try and fuck me, and I've seen the way you look me. You want to do both... badly". I turned to face her, and holding her I kiss her bruised forehead gently. "Don't you think the timing lately would have been just a little bit poor for either of those things?" I said with a wink. She hugged me closer. "I would love to do both of those things", I continued, "but the timing has been far from right, and besides you're supposed to be a "confirmed lesbian" with little or no interest in feeling my lips kiss you, or any other enjoyable activities involving any of our other hot and sweaty body parts. I don't think you've made the decision that you want me to be your lover as well as your friend, and at this stage, that most definitely is your decision, and yours alone." "Besides", I added as we briefly separated which revealed her robe to be partially open revealing most of her still bruised breasts and vaginal area, "I think 'the girls' and your lovely region further south are still a bit too bruised at the moment for any further attentions, however gently offered". She laughed and hugged me tight again, her robe now nearly fully opened, and for the first time I felt her pierced bare breasts pressed against my naked chest. From that moment on I never wanted to let her go, and I think we were both gently leaning for that first tentative kiss when the door rang. Erin refastened her robe and I answered the door to find an older woman in her late-30's with an angry sour expression on her face. Without a word uttered, I knew that this was Erin's ex, Marla. "I've come for Erin", she said without preamble, and those were the last words that I let leave her mouth. I had picked up the blood stained thin rattan switch, which I had left next to the door for this very purpose, and brandished it in her face. "No one has anything to say at all to you, and you are going to turn around and leave right now without Erin and return to your pathetic violent life without her. If you set so much as a toe through this doorway, I will consider her life and mine in 'mortal peril' and I will use your own whipping cane against you. In fact, I really, really WANT the excuse to beat you into a bloody pulp, and although I've never stuck a woman in anger in my entire life, I'm willing right now to make an exception for you, because you are definitely no 'lady', just a bitch that needs a good bit of time on the other end of a whipping. Please, just give me the slightest excuse..." Whether it was the glow of outraged fury in my face or the sight of Irv now taking a supportive position behind me and in front of Erin, I don't know, but she spit at me and left without uttering another word. The crisis for now was over. We called the Police officer who had filed Erin's initial assault report and later received the information that Marla had been picked and charged with violating the Restraining Order but was now out again already, released on bail. The next day was quiet. Erin continued to heal and as no further crises had arisen, we began to relax a bit, and even planned for us all to start our delayed recording session the following day. We had less than a week to go before the start of our tour and we were already well behind schedule on preparing anything for our demo CD. This schedule again went to holy heck, when late the next morning Marla tried to shoot us both at the entrance to our warehouse practice and makeshift recording studio. She fired off two shots from a hunting rifle from out of the window of her black Mercedes sedan and then peeled out, tire rubber squealing and smoking. In her panicked escape, she briefly lost control of her car and sideswiped David's beloved family sedan as she drove off. Both shots missed just over our heads missing us by bare inches. The Police were called once again and everyone gave statements. Within an hour Marla had been arrested and a recently fired .308 deer hunting rifle with two ejected shells was found inside her car. The scraped paint on her front fender was easily proven to be an exact match with David's car. It was a slam dunk for the prosecution and while we were gone on our tour she ended up accepting a plea deal for 2 counts of attempted murder and a felony unregistered firearms charge, to serve a guaranteed 8 years before chance for parole. We never saw or heard from her ever again. Years later we were told by her Parole Officer just before her release that she had pretty much forgotten about Erin, and was now totally fixated upon a cellmate of hers that had been released about a year earlier. Soon afterward we received a final parting call from the PO that concluded the tale of Marla's sad and sordid life. Tracking down her new lover, she found her former partner had been unwilling to wait for her and had a started a new lesbian relationship. The two now being quite happy with each other, they wanted nothing at all to do with Marla. Marla flipped her last mental switch, and killed her new rival for her love with a kitchen knife and then proceeded to hold her old lover hostage for a few hours before tragically killing her and then herself. Sad, but if Marla had realized that her father's old hunting rifle scope had been sighted for a distance of about 500 yards, rather than the less than 50 she had fired at us from, Erin and I would have been her first victims. Our recording work for that day was canceled, lost in a sea of police paperwork, red tape and yellow crime scene tape. We now had only six days left and we used every minute of them, recording and doing over-dubs in a completely caffeine fueled frenzy. Darryl came to our first warm-up session for the first song we intended to record and at our invitation began to jam along with us. It sounded better than good, it sounded like the last piece we needed to find our sound. It was like old times, except much better, Darryl's slow haunting lead style fit right in with our sound, and by the end of the first completed track, the Raven's were back together and playing again as a band. Although we agreed it was time for a new name, we tossed around 10 or so, but never found one everyone liked, so we kind of alternated band names for the first few weeks but kept coming back to some variation of The Ravens. We hit the road already exhausted but with 500 copies of our debut demo CD hot from the press. It was definitely not any masterpiece, by any stretch of the imagination, but for a small indie band with only six days to record, it was the best we could do. Unified as a band we began the "Tour from Hell, Part II" as we ended up naming it by tours end nearly six months later. Why can't anything ever be simple? ************ CHAPTER 4 I've read numerous accounts written by others stating that we were almost immediately an overnight success. Not quite. It took the first few nights of the tour get to get into any sort of routine, and just when we thought we had found a groove Dave played his last night with us in New Orleans before returning home to his extremely pregnant wife. He never played with us onstage again "officially", but he always kept in touch with us and remains part of our 'family' to this day. He jokes now that he became "another Pete Best" and missed the soft life of riches and fame, but actually he loved his family far too much to enjoy the life of a road musician (they ended up with 6 children) and he had a good corporate career job that brought home more money than they ever wanted to spend anyway. His regrets, if any, were very few and minor. It is true that we started to accumulate an "entourage" nearly immediately, and at our second gig we met an experienced "road equipment manager" named Gus (figures), who was a gruff curmudgeon on the outside but an absolute creampuff in his gooey center. He had been working for that nightclub part time at minimum wage, and we hired him on the spot (for scarcely more) to be our "Ramrod," and he has performed the job flawlessly for us ever since, albeit with a large increase in pay over the years. We started developing fans that would follow us for a city or two to hear our concerts, which began to slowly evolve on the road. We first began by adding the old "MR" songs that nearly all of us already knew in our sleep, and twisting them into fitting our new playing style. We didn't have a name for our style yet, but it was definitely sort of Goth/Prog/Opera/Metal. I still don't know what to call it, but right now the sound was unique and ours alone. Slowly and much more carefully, we started to craft melodies that would fit Erin's poetry, and one by one new and better songs began to emerge. Our available set list now included about 20 original songs we were comfortable with, another five or so cover songs we really enjoyed playing and thought we put a different sort of spin on. This let us create alternate set listings, so that we didn't have to play the same damn songs every night. That gets old fast, especially on the road! By our Atlanta show, playing to a 500 capacity club near one of the colleges, there was absolutely zero doubt that Darryl was our permanent lead guitarist. Apparently he had never been really comfortable being the front man for the old band and now he was quite happy to let Erin handle all of the lead vocal work. Once removed from the pressures of the spotlight, he now devoted his full concentration to his guitar work, and soon he was improvising right in tune with his rhythm section and Simon's keyboards, which still sometimes got a bit too "wanky" for my taste. Also by Atlanta, we had sold all of the original 500 copies of our self produced demo CD, and used one of our precious days off in getting another 1000 duplicated. One night after Simon had creamed all over himself in an especially lurid and messy "Wakeman-gasm", I forced him into my truck passenger seat for the drive to Charleston, SC and made him listen to some of my early Genesis CD's and bid him to "shut up and just listen to Tony Bank's keyboards". I played the CD through and he asked me to replay a few songs, such as "Watcher of the Skies" over again, which I did. Simon sat lost in thought for a moment and exclaimed to me in delight, "That evil genius is playing everything the wrong way", and he explained (although I already knew the answer). "Every other keyboard plays lower melody with their left hand and 'lead' with their right hand. He often does it the other way around, making the lower 'sadder' notes the leading part of the melodies. I should do that with Erin's slower and moodier pieces!" Hurray! The light had finally dawned on our likeable but hyperactive keyboardist. The change did not occur overnight, and he had the occasional backslide, but slowly he began to create his own deliberate and moodier style of playing our material, and that new sound was a much improved fit. By Baltimore, we had also acquired two young roadies that wanted to do something fun for the summer and were willing to learn the trade from Gus. One of them even mastered the art of driving our temperamental band truck so sometimes I could now get some much needed rest, instead of worrying about falling asleep at the wheel. We were followed now by a caravan of usually 5-10 cars of kids who loved our sound and followed us to our next shows sometimes even for a week or so, before heading back home. Our sound improved every night, and I would have been in heaven except that my relationship with Erin seemed to be frozen in place. She slept every night in my arms, but always at least partially clothed. I often saw her nude while changing and she didn't mind much either if she caught me nude changing clothes or in shower one bit. She had such little personal modesty that she would even come in to use the toilet while I was next to her in the shower or even once while I was shaving. I was stuck in "gentleman" mode, and was determined that I was going to let her make the first serious move. We had managed now to kiss lightly a few times, but never open mouthed... until that night in Baltimore. We had had a hard trip getting there due to heavy rain storms, and got to the club later than scheduled and we set a record for getting the stage setup and it was a miracle that we only started the show about thirty minutes late. The show itself went fine, but everyone was ragged out and mentally and physically exhausted. Usually we drive through the night to the next town so that we can sleep in late until it's time for the setup and sound check, but everyone was too tired to budge tonight. I was thoroughly knackered and was the first one to hop into bed wearing just my usual comfortable old pair of shorts, while she took her usual epic length shower. I have no recollection of her coming to bed at all and when I awoke in the morning I found my shorts pulled down to about my knees while Erin, wearing only a pair thong panties, was playing gently with my arising cock and balls, seemingly fascinated by what she had discovered. This was definitely a first. I sat up a bit to face her and she warmly kissed me good morning and then kissed me again a bit harder, this time opening her mouth so that our tongues caressed for the first delightful time. Her hand kept a grip on my now hard cock and I gently move a hand to one of her soft breasts and began caressing it. I had just started to lick and suck on one of her magnificent pierced nipples, and things were about to get very interesting as she was starting to remove her thong when a loud knocking at the door interrupted us. I heard Byron's voice yelling something about a "band meeting". A band meeting? This was much earlier than usual for that sort of thing; NONE of us were morning people. We got very reluctantly dressed and went downstairs to see what the fuss was about. How I managed to fit my cock back into my shorts without breaking it into two, I'll never know. We all gathered in the hotel lobby but no one seemed to know what was up, or was really awake enough to care. After our last straggler had arrived, Bryon came out from wherever he had been lurking, but he was not alone. With him was a tall slender woman of about our age (about 30), even at first glance she grabbed our attention, and in an instant I knew what all this was about. Her name was Faith; she was a singer, a high soprano, also of operatic inspiration and training, who had seen last night's Baltimore show, loved us and wanted to get her foot in and see if we were in the market for a backup singer. No one seemed opposed to this, and as we had just a short drive to tonight's show in DC, we could easily get set up early in time to give her a proper audition to see how well her voice mixed with Erin's. Much to my disappointment, we decided to pack up and get going on the road now, as early as possible to have an extra long sound check and audition for Faith. Erin and I were both disappointed but we assumed we'd have some quality private time later. It was obvious from Faith's looks, that if her pipes were at least half as good, she'd get the job - and she did; unanimously. Onstage she was the exact photographic opposite of Erin in appearance, where Erin was our dark angel with black hair and dressed in a black leather corset, mini-skirt, fishnet hose and tall high-heeled boots, Faith was a long haired honey blonde, dressed in flowing white lace and silk. Her voice soaring to the heavens; in every way the angelic counterpart to Erin's 'darker' onstage persona. Together, their performance became a sort of religious "Passion Play" and our audience that night was enthralled. Everyone was quick to consider all of the possibilities and ramifications of Faith's addition. Simply put, we were a much better "band" with her and our potential was now limitless. Well nearly so, we were still very weak in the guitar 'metal sound' and we sometimes missed Dave's growling rhythm guitar sound on some of our louder songs, but that was now a very minor consideration. There was one major fly in the ointment, at least for me, and I could see the trouble coming all the way down the highway with its headlights on. Faith was a delightful, pleasant, well spoken and personable woman who never caused anyone the slightest amount of trouble, and had the knack of easily making friends. She was also however, another "confirmed lesbian" who had never had a male lover in her entire life. I knew in that moment, when Erin agreed to share a hotel room with her, that all of my hard-won progress with Erin was now lost. Indeed, by our big New York Indie gig, they could scarcely be separated from each other. Now it seemed to be impossible to get in a word with Erin alone, not that we really had very much that was private to say. She now had a new confidante and bed partner - I was back to rooming with Irv. It didn't seem like a fair exchange. Ravens Fly at Night Soon it became quite clear that our aborted romantic encounter in Baltimore was now doomed to never again be repeated. The New York show was a triumph, by any definition of the word. We played a one hour long set of our six best songs for a vocal crowd of ten thousand alternative music enthusiasts, who loved every moment of it. The promoter of the festival even had us do an encore (which was supposedly against the rules for any band to do). The festival merchandisers had sold every last copy of our 2nd run demo CD pressing even before we had left the stage and with our quick "ok" they rushed out to get more duplicated ASAP on their own dime and quickly sold most of those as well! In the days that followed we had three offers for corporate worldwide distribution of our next CD and more merchandising deals than we could even count. We politely accepted all of the proposed contracts for our review, but refused to sign anything "until our lawyers" had been over them. No one actually knew any lawyers except for Erin, whose father was a hot shot corporate attorney. They were a bit estranged, but still on speaking terms with each other, and when she called he agreed to review all of the documents. Eventually with his invaluable help we did sign a few marketing deals that did make good financial sense for us. The big problem was that our "band name" still kept evolving from show to show. We gave up and put to a vote of all of the band, roadies, cast and crew (and a room full of new friends). The winning vote ending up being "The Dark Ravens of Light" or DROoL as we began to laughingly call ourselves to each other. It was no ones favorite choice for a name, but it was nearly everyone's 2nd favorite one, and won purely on points. The actual name with the most #1 votes was "The Ravens Fly at Midnight"; not bad, but it reminded me too much of the terrible old Jack Benny movie about a bunch of hapless musician angels in heaven called "The Horn Blows at Midnight". Anyway, DROoL might have won the voting for external use, but we remained 'The Ravens' amongst ourselves. I mentioned earlier that the tour had been originally scheduled to end in NY, but of course our manager Byron had other ideas. By the time he finished tweaking our schedule with last minute changes we still had another 60 shows to go. Next, was a night in Boston, and then three quick dates in upstate NY at Albany, Syracuse and then Buffalo. Mostly stops along the college music circuit. No one was burned out yet by the road and everyone seemed in pretty high spirits... except for me. I was feeling "a bit low" and the deep pains of emotional loss seemed only to get worse for me as each day on the road passed without any sort of meaningful exchange between Erin and myself. I began to fear and suspect the worst, but just couldn't bring myself yet to confront the situation. By Buffalo my fears were confirmed, the two women had indeed become lovers. It was obvious in the 100 different little things that lovers do. It was apparent in the way they looked at each other, the way they secretly held hands under the table at meals, and especially in the way that they deeply kissed after getting onto the motel elevator, apparently not seeing me behind them. I went back to the bar downstairs and had a beer, but didn't enjoy it much and left it still 2/3 full after about 20 minutes and went upstairs to their room to see if I could get Erin to speak with me at least. Instead, I could clearly hear the unmistakable sounds of female lovemaking on the other side of the door. Few of the words were distinguishable, I could once hear Erin's voice clearly say, "Oh yes, keep licking my clit just like that". My worst fears confirmed, I no longer had anything left to fear or lose. I knocked on their door. A minute later, Faith answered the door, still adjusting her robe, her face and chin still wet with Erin's cunt juices. I asked if I could talk to Erin for just a few moments, and that I felt "it was important". Faith invited me into the room where Erin was still in bed, obviously still naked under the sheets. She pleaded that she was "tired" and they wanted to "get back to sleep". "It can wait", she said with a tired and slightly annoyed look on her face. I turned and left without saying another word, but I think Faith could see that my heart was broken utterly in two at this final rejection and I left the shattered pieces in trail the long walk out of their room. ************ I don't remember much of the next month or so... really I don't. The memory of doing the Midwest span of that tour rings absolutely no bells for me, and I couldn't even name five of the cities that we played in. I wasn't eating or sleeping well, and I started to become like Eric, becoming the last one to get on the stage and first to try and leave it. I stayed 100% of the travel time on the band truck now, usually driving in a state of zombie exhaustion until I had one "close-call" too many and Gus took my set of truck keys away from me. I took to "hiding" in a small unoccupied dark corner at the back of the truck where I could be by myself, to think and try and get a little rest, but I mostly just brooded instead. It should have been so simple! I had waited for her to choose me and she instead selected someone else. Fini. Done. Get over it! But it wasn't that simple for me. I'd had lovers before, but this was the first time I'd ever really been "in love", and it hurt... badly. I felt as if I'd never be happy ever again. In Cleveland, we picked up a new permanent member of our entourage, Pamela, who was a news editor for a local alternative newspaper. She took photos of everything, and banged out press releases on an antique portable typewriter and before we knew it we had an official "Fan Magazine". Later when we reached Portland she met another new fan of ours who was even better at photography than she was and he became our official photographer. They were happily married after a whirlwind romance by the time we left California a month later. Erin, sensing the despondency I was now mired in, now tried to get me to me to speak with her, but I rebuffed all of her attempts by throwing "I'm tired - it can wait" repeatedly back into her face, and if her face now seemed to have more shadows around her eyes and occasionally looked red from tears, I never noticed it. By Chicago, I was apparently openly muttering thoughts about quitting the band to the horror of everyone. Irv and Simon now seemed to be stuck to me like glue, one of them around me night and day following every move I made, as if I had become a loose cannon... and maybe I had. I started drinking a little more than usual, but I don't have the temperament to be a drunk, my "enough" switch always kept kicking in. Irv especially kept trying to talk sense into me, "Erin's a lesbian and has been one for years, and so is Faith, for even longer. THEY'RE BOTH LESBIANS; of course they're now together. What did you honestly expect?" I could never quite get him to understand that I had expected Erin to remember that I cared deeply about her and wanted that golden lost opportunity in Baltimore back to prove to her that I could give her the all of the comforting love and care she needed, and maybe that could be enough for her, and then she could someday love me back in return... even if just a little. It would have been enough for me. Irv just couldn't understand that, probably because he was now very much in love himself. In Chicago we had opened for a very popular all-girl local band for three nights in a row, and he had fallen head over heels for their bass player. The two of them tore up a hotel room together and were nearly inseparable thereafter. Everyone else seemed to be finding some sort of love or comfort on the road, except me. In Syracuse, Simon had met a groupie that was a seamstress with an interest in Gothic and macabre costuming. She joined our caravan entourage and within a week they were a fixed couple sharing their lives together. Everyone I looked at now seemed to be pathetically happy. Now that I was spending all of my nights alone again while everyone else was with someone they loved, this just seemed to make things even worse. Conversely to my pathetic mental condition, folks were saying that I had never played the bass better before in my life. I was staying fixed on my right side corner of the stage with my eyes closed the entire length of the show just letting fingers express the emotions that my mouth could not. My fingers ran up and down the strings so fast our last night in Chicago that when the show was over I noticed that my fingers were bleeding on both hands. One of Pam's early photos from that show that later became the cover of our first fan magazine issue, showed my bleeding fingers dripping down all over my blood splattered bass guitar while my eyes were closed, utterly lost in the bliss of what I was playing. Last year the Rock & Roll Museum called our office to see if they could get a good print of that photo to hang in one of their exhibits. Another is hanging right now over my home office desk. From pain can indeed come beauty. Certainly at that time my soul was definitely in considerable pain. There are folks who have heard hundreds of our concerts that say those Chicago shows were among our best ever, despite our lack of a good metal rhythm guitarist. I've heard a few tapes of them, and I believe them. Things came to a complete head when we reached Clinton, Iowa. My father had died here when I was just a young boy, too little to understand what was happening. I have almost no memories of him, and remember absolutely nothing that he may have told me as a small child. Early in the morning I got up and left a message for Byron, my head jailer these days, that I was running up to the local cemetery for a bit, and should be back by the sound check at 3PM, and off I went. The distance wasn't very far up the hill from our hotel on the slender banks of the upper Mississippi, and with the help of some of the cemetery staff I soon found my father's grave, and sat on it and began to talk. I regretted that we had so little time together, and that I had hardly known him at all. I told him of my life, and my hopes and dreams for the future, and then began to cry. I was still crying at his tombstone hours later when darkness had began to fall, and my keepers had found me. I was still sobbing gently but uncontrollably hours later then they put me on the band bus heading for Davenport. I think it was one of only two concerts I have ever missed on a tour, even playing a few times later on when horribly sick with flu. Irv's girlfriend filled in for me and did an acceptable job, but everyone said it wasn't the same without me. We reached our hotel in Davenport in the early morning hours but I knew I wasn't going to get any sleep and I walked over to the crowded 24 hour diner next door. For the next half hour or so I moved a small piece of apple pie around on its seemingly impossibly huge plate. Everything seemed vaguely odd to me and familiar objects like my plate of pie now seemed strangely malformed. I don't think I noticed Faith sit down in the booth opposite me for several minutes, before she took my hands in hers. I had a hard time concentrating enough to see her face, but I did notice that she had been crying too for some reason and I gently dried her eyes with my unused napkin. The conversation that followed seemed absurdly existential in a way as if we had become an actor and actress in some incomprehensible 1960's European art house film. "Why do you hate me so?" She asked, still drying a few wayward tears. "I don't" I replied, "Quite on the contrary, I have the highest regard for you and believe you to be the most beloved creature and favorite of all of the Gods, because for your blest slumber each and every night you lay down your lovely head on such exalted pillows that mine eyes are unworthy even to bear their sight. Had mine eyes not first beheld the fair Erin, I would have indeed praised your beauty as being the highest I had ever seen, and I would be even now at your knees begging for but the smallest token of your favor. But, alas, now I have indeed many dragons that require smiting, but now I have no Lady Fair to bestow upon me her token before I doth ride off to battle. 'Tis a great shame and pity." There was dead silence in the diner and it seemed like a hundred eyes were upon me, but I continued undaunted. "No fair lady I do neither hate nor despise you. Instead it is I who am envious over your true-found love, for your victory means my most utter and total defeat, for you have won the greatest of all prizes there is to be earned, and it is her soft shoulder and fair breasts that shall give thee respite from thy labors, and peace and joy within your heart and soul, but never again within mine." There was more dead silence in the restaurant, until our waitress completely dropped her load of dirty dishes she was carrying, I think, utterly agog with disbelief. I pushed my plate of dissected pie toward Faith and stood up to leave and kissed her goodbye on her forehead, bid her to "subdue at last for me this one last remaining foe that doth mock us both!" With that I left the restaurant to return back to the hotel to seek slumber. That is I 'thought' I was heading to the hotel which was right next to the diner, but I somehow wandered off the entirely wrong direction, walking down the state highway until I eventually ended up at daybreak nearly at I-74. I knew then something was terribly wrong, and started to head back the way I'd came, but I wasn't 100% sure about any side roads that I might have taken. By noon I realized I was hopelessly lost, but I had just enough remaining sense left to flag a taxi and have him ask his dispatcher if anyone knew what nightclub 'The Dark Ravens' were holding a rock concert at this evening. In a surprisingly short amount of time I had the name of my destination; the dispatcher's teenage daughter had been talking of nothing else for over a week. I paid the cabbie and he wrote down the name of the daughter of the dispatcher for me and I told him I'd leave her some free tickets at the box office window for her. I waited sitting at the back loading dock doors until some of the club staff arrived and let me in early right before three. I left the promised note for the promoter to have the ticket staff leave the promised four tickets for the young lady who would call for them later at the window. My last quest completed, I then curled up on a comfortable sofa in the artist's dressing room and fell fast asleep. When I awoke next I found that I was undressed and in a hotel bed. It seemed to be dark outside and there was a hand wrapped around my chest. Erin was with me, still dressed and sleeping on top of my sheets with her left arm wrapped tightly around me, but when I awoke again in the early morning, she had already left, if indeed she had ever been there at all. I began to think I had dreamed it. ************ Things got somewhat back to normal. No one said a word about my having missed two shows in a row. We had a quick early meeting at which everyone seemed glad to see that I was "feeling better" and we hauled ass on the road. We were about six hours behind schedule but had thirty-six hours to make it up for our next show in Nebraska. I resumed my usual seat on the truck with our gear, and everyone pretended to leave me alone, while keeping a very close eye on me. I caught up on a bit of my lost sleep and became slightly more cheerful. My depression seemed mostly gone now, but instead I was left with a deep sense of loneliness and loss. I still hurt, and mostly still kept my eyes closed when I played (with slightly less mania now) and almost never faced or looked at Erin and Faith at all when on-stage. By Denver, I was one again openly thinking about quitting the band after the end of the tour, and folks became gradually resigned to it. Denver wasn't all bad though, Darryl met a woman metal guitarist who very much interested him and vice versa. It was not quite instant overnight love at first sight, but they grew on each other and complimented each others weakness amazingly well. They dated for about a year and when they finally married she joined the band and provided that missing metal rhythm guitar sound that we had previously lacked. Erin and I managed to talk a few times privately, mostly on one long trip with her joining me in the gloom of the back of the truck between Medford, Oregon and Sacramento, CA. She and Faith were "happy together" and "thought they were in love", but she acknowledged under pressure that "something did seem to be missing" in the relationship. She confessed that she deeply missed our late night talks and companionship, that they provided something to her that was now somehow absent. She obliquely mentioned our one aborted lovemaking attempt, and mutual heartfelt "regrets" were jointly expressed. She felt "confused" and unable at present to sort out her conflicted feelings, but was ever so thankful that I had never pushed the issue emotionally with her. I did confess that seeing the two of them together still hurt my heart tremendously and that it was insane for me to keep allowing myself to be hurt — I would leave the band at the end of the tour. Their voices were irreplaceable; a bass player, even a decent one, was not. We began to carefully avoid each other again, but once while I was driving the truck (Gus had given me back my set of keys) between Phoenix and Tucson near the end of the tour, Faith surprised me by joined me in the cab as my passenger for the trip, and after some initial hesitation the ice was quickly broken and we chatted like old friends for the entire trip. She was in every sense a good and delightful person, it was just a shame that we were in love with the same woman, I joked. Once, she even kissed me on the cheek. She'd always liked me, but my insane sleep deprived soliloquy to her at Davenport had further raised me much in her good opinion. I'm quite sure she intended it as a compliment when she told me that although she had never made love to any man, if it ever had to happen, she hoped I would or could be that man. In one of her last remarks to me as we pulled off of I-10 in downtown Tucson, just blocks from our hotel and club was "She still loves you, you realize. You occupy a special and unique place in her heart despite the fact you've never had sex together. Someday she just might come back to you, but if she does it won't be behind my back. The three of us should never have any secrets from each other. We both love her; let her continue to choose her path". I agreed. We fondly hugged after getting out of the cab and let the roadies do their bit. Faith I'm sure went straight to Erin and told her of all that was said and done. I had no nocturnal visitors over that last week and we arrived home exhilarated but utterly exhausted. For better or worse I had already made my decision. My letter of resignation was already written, typed out actually on Pamela's typewriter since my own handwriting is close to illegible. After all the unpacking was done in our warehouse, I left the letter on Irv's drum kit. Chapter 5: After leaving my resignation letter, I went home only long enough to dump six months of ill-laundered clothes that would probably never become clean again, and grabbed the remaining part of my casual wardrobe that I hadn't taken on tour, and threw it all into a different overnight bag. After checking over six months of accumulated mail (my rent was automatically debited from my checking account and I had no other recurring monthly bills that I hadn't paid while on the road) I skipped town as fast as I could. Ravens Fly at Night Call me chicken, if you will, but I wasn't going to let everyone talk me out of my "noble act" of quitting. I hit Hwy 288 South and headed south for the beach and spent the entire next month being a beach bum, traveling from one small coastal town to next. Being a redhead, of course I didn't tan, but my freckle collection did increase. I fell in love with the southern Texas coast, and drove as much of it as the poor coastal county roads would allow. I especially fell in love with a small forgotten coastal town called Lovett that had an extremely casual laid-back (and clothing optional) view of life. I made a note that when I got rich and famous with my next band I was going to retire here and live the proper lifestyle of a rock and roll degenerate. The problem was, I really didn't have any urge to find another band or get back to work right away, or even to play music for just myself. I took out my acoustic guitar for a few nights camped alone on the beach, but I was never really in the mood to play for very long, and soon the only sounds that was being made was by the wind and the surf. I returned home not much poorer than when I left, I've always been good about saving my earnings and not spending like a drunken sailor on shore leave when a tour was over. Braving the fates, I went to collect my hate mail... and there was a lot of it. Pleading letters from every member of the band, including tearful ones from both Erin and Faith that hinted that 'special accommodations could be made" if I would return. I was much saddened, but still resolved. A love triangle might settle the issue for the short term, but eventually Erin would have to make a "choice" between her two lovers that she probably by then would love nearly equally. Feelings would be hurt; someone would undoubtedly have to leave. I'd already left... so it just might as well be me and I resolved to "stay gone". There were undoubtedly also untold angry phone messages, possibly hundreds of them. I couldn't bear the thought of actually having to listen to them all, so I just unplugged the answering machine and threw it into the trash without playing a single message. Another problem solved. I started to look for a new apartment so I could move and make a clean break with everyone for a year or two, and I would have gotten away with it "if it hadn't been for those darned kids". Someone (probably one of my neighbors) ratted me out that I was back but moving out for good, and I soon faced Irv's mighty wrath just as I was walking out of my old empty apartment for the last time with my final box of stuff to take to the new place. I missed a clean getaway by less than five minutes. He called me every name in the book, and I 'fessed up to some of them. I let him finish his speech, which he had obviously spent some time rehearsing and I didn't want to spoil his moment. When he finished I said simply "My mind hasn't changed. I've quit and I'm not coming back." He blinked at me a few times and muttered, "Well, I wanted to hear the words from your own mouth. Still friends?" "Forever", I assured him and I promised that I would get back in touch after a few months or so. He didn't ask for my new address or phone number, I think he could tell that I wouldn't even give it to him, or worse... would lie to him. I did try to get back into my pre-Ravens routine of teaching bass classes again and looking for a good band that would be fun to play an occasional weekend gig with. My reputation had never been higher. Bass Player Magazine did a brief story on me as "a new rising star", and I started to receive offers from long established local working and touring bands, but I couldn't seem to find a good fit. I did eventually accept one offer from a nationally established and well known band with a big record catalog to fill in on short notice for a twenty city US tour followed by a ten city European tour after the sudden illness of their bass player. It was a fun series of concerts, playing to stadiums and big auditoriums with tens of thousands of screaming fans (and first class groupies waiting to party back backstage or at the hotel suite after the show -- usually both). But although my playing was top notch and I had fully earned the respect of my illustrious peers, I was after all, just hired help, and I never quite fit in with them. Most of the group had various assorted chemical dependencies and I've never been comfortable in that sort of environment. I did enjoy seeing Europe for the first time in my life and that alone was worth my time, and the primary reason that I agreed to do the tour. At the end there was a vague offer to stay with their organization for awhile and maybe help add redubs onto their next studio album, but I gracefully declined and they didn't press the offer. Home once again, I found that DROoL had finished their 2nd CD, their first to receive national and worldwide distribution under the new fat contract from the major label. I bought a copy and played it; it was good but I didn't think it was great. I'd heard all of the songs performed much better before. It was also little over-produced, like Byron was desperately trying to do too many things at once and had gone crazy with the over-dubs. But the main flaw to my ears seemed to be that the music just sounded flat, that no one had played particularly up to par. It sounded nothing like our previous live shows, even the singing sounded flat and listless, as if something was missing and they were just going through the motions. The less I say of their replacement bass player, the better. His playing made me nostalgic for the MR's first original bass player, the one who just banged the root note repeatedly for every song. They were on a short spring tour to promote the new album at a select number of dates, mostly big cities with at least a couple of days between shows. The tour seemed to be going ok, and the album was getting good airplay on the independent college radio circuit and seemed to be selling well, even cracking the Billboard Top 50 for a brief while. I did read one concert review in Rolling Stone about their Indianapolis show that suggested all was not total happiness and joy, and hinted that there was "unrest backstage" and "what the heck happened to their original 'genius' of a bass player anyway?" Sorry, I made that last one up, but there was a comment about the "rhythm section being out of synch". I saw further hints of trouble in paradise when Spin ran an interview with DROoL's songbirds, Erin and Faith, who gave their usual routine interview answers to most of the questions, but mentioned that they were "playing without their musical anchor". The interview also hinted that the girls didn't seem to be having as much fun on stage and the overall tone of the tour was alike to "the sadness and silence of a half-filled in grave". The apparent fact that the group after my departure was a much saddened one, significantly depressed me. I began to feel I had acted selfishly and immaturely, and had unknowingly caused my friends a good deal of hurt. I left a phone message with Bryon's answering service (they didn't quite have a permanent office and staff set up yet) saying I'd like to "swing by and say "Hi" the next time everyone was back in town and very bravely left my new unlisted home phone number. I received one very strange phone call a short time later; it was from Erin's father, inviting me to a restaurant for dinner with him and Erin's mother. I had no idea what this was all about and knew little more 2-1/2 hours later after we all left. I had dressed in my best (and only) suit and employed the best table manners I knew how. I hadn't quite been brought up in a barn but I was fairly rough around some of the edges. All I could gather is that Erin spoke of me often, and had asked if they would "check up on me" for her, as she was "very worried and hadn't heard from me in some time." I was glad to see that her family relations seemed to be much improved, and she called them nowadays at least once a week. I definitely got the impression that her mother knew MUCH more than she was willing to impart to lowly me. Still, I enjoyed my evening with her parents, and might possibly have removed from them the fear that I was a deviant sex fiend and tattooed rock and roll maniac. I think we parted friends, but they kept their cards awfully close and hidden from me. DROoL returned in early summer from their tour and everyone split their separate ways for at least the next month. Darryl headed immediately to Denver to spend some time with his girl, where he did finally pop the question. I got to catch up on things with Irv and Simon who cautiously admitted that the last half of the tour had been a "rat-fuck", and everyone had unanimously fired my replacement with still two shows left to go, and played remaining shows with Irv's girlfriend. Apparently the entire mood of the tour had been bad to start with, and everyone soon got on each other's nerves. For awhile, nearly everyone had become angry at me, because I had been seen as the "the anchor" of the band and now that I had deserted them, they seemed hopelessly adrift. The band more than once had nearly split, and still seemed deeply fragmented. I was asked if I would "at least consider" doing the bass lines for their next studio album that they would be starting in early August before their next tour? I wouldn't have to see either of the girls if didn't want to, and I could come in to work on doing my tracks later or earlier than everyone else and avoid anyone I wanted. There was more than a strong hint of "please" involved and I honestly could no longer come up with any valid reasons to decline. I said "Yes", but I would prefer to work a bit on my own, at least at first, and more importantly I'd like to get a rough demo tape of the new songs now with their lyrics so that I could take some time to provide a proper accompaniment. Also, if no one objected, I had a small original instrumental song of my own, probably a 'B' side, but I thought it would fit the band if they needed 'filler'. They gleefully agreed, and I soon had the proposed track list. It included four new songs from Darryl that were quite up to his usual high standards. There were three songs from Erin, all older poems from her notebooks that I had liked very much and had bookmarked for her to use, but nothing 'new'. They were all absolutely beautiful and I already had ideas about how I wanted to perform them. Faith had also contributed a lovely little bittersweet song that spoke of the "sadness of joy" and "thorns of the rose". Irv and Simon had even collaborated on an interestingly little number of their own. Not bad at all. All of them seemed to be much better than my tiny contribution. The tenth and last song was an old cover song that we had turned completely inside out and that we often had performed on stage. For good measure, another half dozen other songs were added to the mix as backups, but weren't expected to make the final cut this time around. Using the rough demo tapes as a beginning, I began to craft my first rough bass line recordings. The record process continued in a very haphazard fashion the whole month, sometimes one or two folks drifting in and working for awhile but leaving right when they thought someone else might be coming in soon. Occasionally Irv, Simon and I would all be there together and we'd get in some serious jamming and we developed more than a few good melody arrangements that way. It was almost like old times again. They tinkered with my arrangement for my instrumental song contribution a bit, but they thought it had some real potential and would probably make the final cut. There was also a cryptic comment that some of the other band members had been giving my tape a listen and might have an idea or two to contribute to it later. At the start of August my work was mostly done, the band started to gather together in full force to review the raw demos in detail and started to work on the lead instrumental solos and the vocals. I wasn't quite up to seeing Erin or Faith and I tried to avoid them. Since my work was mostly done for now, I didn't have much difficulty. Arriving late one night, I did find that Faith was still there, hours after I had expected her to have left, listening to various takes and consulting with Bryon and Irv, who tended to be the main producers for this album. Both having the best "ears" for listening to endless retakes and knowing which one was the exact right one to use. She greeted me with a squeal of delight and ran up to me and just about squeezed me half to death, before rewarding me with a kiss right on the lips. Wow. She scolded me at great length and with words I could not even begin to repeat, about my "overlong absence" and not calling some "misguided folks who loved me very much and were saddened by my disappearance and negligent silence". She then quite forgot that she was still quite angry with me and took my hand so that she could show me the latest new vocal arrangements she and Erin had devised. I, in turn played her the instrumental song I had written and that Irv, Simon and now Darryl had added their own accompaniment to. She soon left for the night, but not before kissing me goodbye, again right smack on the lips and growled that she expected to see much more of me in the near future. It was now an open secret that Erin and I were actively trying desperately to avoid each other, and it became conventional wisdom among the production crew that it was because if either one of us ever caught sight of the other, we would probably immediately fall into each others arms and start doing it "right there in the middle of the street and frighten the horses and the children". It was eventually decided that of Erin's three songs, she would be doing the lead vocal on two of the slower and much sadder ones of the three, with Faith providing backup, and then vice versa singing lead for the other one, with the two of them splitting the four songs Darryl had written. I finished my final bass tracks for all of Faith's vocal lead songs fairly easily and without any problems. They all came out lovely and received only minor later tweaking before being called "done". Erin's vocals were a different matter and I asked if I could wait and do my last tracks after she had finished her final vocal take. No one was quite happy about this, but the complaints were relatively minimal and folks agreed. A few evenings later, I received the shock of my life. I was with Bryon, Irv, Simon, Darryl and Faith listening to the bass takes I had just finished dubbing for the four songs Erin was singing lead on, when they slyly pulled out a brand new tape for me to listen. This recording containing Erin's favorite take of a brand new song she had been working on this week. When they played it I was flabbergasted. Erin had written some lyrics to match the instrumental piece that I had crafted earlier! This was apparently the 'later contribution' that Irv and Simon had been hinting about earlier. It completely changed the mood of the song... but it was glorious. The sadness of her vocals drove me to tears nearly immediately and soon everyone else began to pretend that they weren't crying either. It was a song of irreparable loss and sadness, of a love unrequited and now forever lost, as if the singer would never feel happiness ever again. It was very much in the style of Edith Piaf. Each word felt like the point of a dagger and my tears now felt like acid rolling down my cheeks. After it was over, and it was a long slow song, I went outside without saying a word to get some fresh air for a few moments to clear the tears. The song was almost perfect, but I'd have to re-do my original bass parts to fit the new lyrics and tone for the song, and I wanted to record it now while my heart knew exactly what I wanted my fingers to say. I started slowly but gradually began to wrap my bass melody line around the tone, gently caressing each one of her words, my playing become not quite faster, but more emotional, as my bass guitar added my own wails of insurmountable sadness to her haunting voice. Even as her voice finally murmured into nothingness, my own grief was not quite yet quite completed and bemoaned the final sounds of my heartbreak with an explosive barrage of 1/32nd time notes growling at the bottom of my bass line as if my tower fortress home with everything in it I loved was crashing into ruin into a raging and merciless sea. For a long time no one said a word, and the recording just continued to collect our collective silence until Byron finally stopped the tape, uttering nothing but "wow". Faith was openly bawling her eyes out and both Irv's and Simon's girlfriends had now appeared from somewhere farther back in the old warehouse and joined Faith in hugging me nearly to death; everyone crying their eyes out. I had the sudden feeling that those young ladies might not be the only ones that had been hiding out of my sight, but within hearing, and I quickly packed up and left. I simply could not face seeing Erin now. Obviously there was no need for a second take. I stayed well out of the way for the remainder of the month, but called Irv and Simon at least weekly to see how the final mixing was going. "Very well" they thought, and hinted I might enjoy a surprise or two in the final advance distribution CD, of which a copy would be in my mailbox before the record company received their master tapes in a week or so. They were right, there had been a little last minute remixing, and my bass track seemed to be a bit more prominently featured than I would have expected. The real surprise was that "our song" was now the final closing track of the album. My bass had become the featured instrument for that song, with everyone else's parts now just becoming background accompaniment. Hearing it complete at last, I knew at once that it was a masterpiece. Fittingly, she had renamed the song to "The Tower of the Doomed Lovers". I played the entire demo of the album non-stop for days, seemingly without end. It was going to be a monster of a record, going Gold at the very least, and already the band was assembling its crew and preparing to go out once again onto the road, playing bigger venues now and with a sure to be hit record under their belt. I quietly left town again and revisited Lovett and made some new friends there for a week or two until I was certain that they had already left to start their fall road tour. I couldn't take any chance that Irv, Simon, Darryl or especially Faith would ask me to join them. There was far too much chance that I would now say "Yes". I was doomed and knew it. It came as no surprise to get a phone call from Byron a few weeks after my return to town with the predicable message. The tour was a smash hit with sellout crowds everywhere. Irv's girlfriend was an improvement over their previous bass player (that wasn't hard) but she was certainly not me, and couldn't duplicate my playing on "Tower" at all. They had brought in yet another veteran temporary bass player to handle the trickier bits but even he couldn't get the nuances right. DROoL was scheduled to be a featured headlining act at a big music festival in Philadelphia in late September. All of the corporate big wigs would be there and there was a fat contract offer for a European tour in the works. Everyone wanted to hear "Tower" live, and of course without me it couldn't be done. Our simple little song that I thought would be just filler was now a major anthem on FM radio and MTV was screaming for a music video. Would I consent to do "just that one show", and make everyone (including a live MTV audience of millions) happy? My reply was only "What's the date, and will someone make all of the travel reservations for me?"