I started a new project, a book called The Resurrection about a middle-aged rock star trying to get his group back together. It's going pretty well as far as my projects go. The challenge is always trying to find enough time and motivation to write. Here's a little preview of the very first chapter (a sermon, really).
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Sermon Numero Uno
I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, luv: every rock ‘n’ rolla sells out.
The Stones. Sold out. DC-wee-see. Sold out big time. The Stripes. You hear their music in car commercials.
But what the great ones have, luv, is a certain factor. A coolness. A winking eye that says “I’m above it all, friend. I might’ve shat in the corner and got a lump of coke stuck in me left nostril, but I’m a cynical sage for a cynical era. You can trust me. I’m cooler-than-thou.”
They say it, and their powers of persuasion are so immense, that you believe it.
I’ve always been of the opinion that a lie isn’t a falsehood if you really believe in its truth. What did the space wizard say? “It’s true, from a certain point of view.”
But you can’t sell out if you never had anything to sell.
Nobody epitomizes this fact better than the Back. You know the Back. The Paddle Pop Lion wrote about how he likes the trousers of his lady friend around his feet. He doesn’t want to go to San Quentin because it would probably be an unpleasant experience for all parties involved. You know that scene at the end of Blues Brothers where the band is playing “You Ain’t Nothing But a Hound Dog” for all the prisoners? Can you imagine a bunch of lifers listening to the Back? Imagine that you had the misfortune to be born on the wrong side of the tracks, and maybe you had to rob a liquor store because you were all out of boxed wine, and the goddamn flunkie behind the counter wouldn’t take your Euros even though the exchange rate was favorable, so you had to give him a slap or two as befits his station, and all of the sudden the place is surrounded by bobbies, and because you’re drunk you grossly misjudge the situation, and unzip your pants to prove to the entire crowd that yes, you are packing, and so you end up in prison for much longer than you should be, and after months of rubbing shoulders with hardened criminals you are rounded up in the atrium, only to learn that your live entertainment is the fucking Back of all bands? Can you fucking imagine?
It’s not that the Back are especially bad compared to other post-grunge groups. They took the sludgy Seattle sound and pulled a Black Album and shined it up. And I’m not jealous of their success. I’ve done alright for myself, but I’ve not sold 60 million albums. You can’t begrudge them their success.
It’s just they never had it, luv. They never had Jagger’s swing. You never believed that they were on the Highway to Hell. None of them ever studied taxidermy and inserted little notes inside upholstery. Far as I know, the Paddle Pop Lion never dated a transsexual or suffered electroshock therapy for his sexual proclivities.
It was like they were spawned in a Clear Channel laboratory, with their shiny, gelled hair and designer faded jeans. They all looked like put-together frat lads, the sort that you might not initially object to being your daughter’s boyfriend, provided that he prove himself. Sure, he played guitar, but he had nice shoes and no visible tattoos, and he sold cellphones for a major wireless carrier.
There ain’t any danger in that, is there, luv? If the music is perfectly compressed and all the guitars come in on time, and every three minutes somewhere in America someone is hearing the song about the trousers around the feet, then you’re not part of the counterculture, are you now, Mr. Paddle Pop Lion? If you’re the very subject of “In Bloom,” can you be a rock ‘n’ rolla? You’ve mastered the stylistic underpinnings but you’re totally lost on the internal subtleties. It doesn’t matter, though, does it? It didn’t matter for Jovi. For Joel. Or for that bald guy who won American Idol and went by his last name like he was fucking Prince or Cher or something. Not a fan of that guy, luv. We can do better.
So here I am. My band has fallen apart. My personal life is the kind of questionable morass that befuddled biographers while enticing them like the siren’s song. My cultural relevancy has decreased exponentially, to the point where your average lad or lass doesn’t know my name. “Mercy Maddock? Who’s that? Did he have a crime program in the eighties?”
But life is about come backs. Jesus Christ came back from the dead, and now I’m in charge of the Resurrection. I’m on a mission from God, but without all that what-would-Jesus-do crap. I know what Jesus would do. He would get the band back together, and then he would fucking party.
We’re gonna find it because we had it and once had, it can never be truly lost.
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