Reading sample

Pretenders

By Nathan Allen

Copyright 2022 Nathan Allen

Smashwords Edition

Cover image by Colibrian@99designs

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CONTENTS

1992
Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

1993

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

1994

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

 

Also by Nathan Allen

 

All Against All

Hollywood Hack Job

Horrorshow

The War On Horror: Tales From A Post-Zombie Society

The War On Horror II: Return Of The Undead Menace

 

 

 

1992

 

 

Chapter 1

 

 

24 September 1992

 

Dear Fawn,

London calling to the faraway towns!

Yeah, yeah, I know you’re sick of hearing me tell you this, but I’m still going to say it one more time: you really need to get yourself over here, pronto! London, Manchester, Bristol, Reykjavik, Berlin – maybe the message hasn’t traveled all the way across the pond yet, but the nineties will be taking place on THIS side of the Atlantic. This is where it’s all happening. Remember, you heard it here first.

Forget tired old LA sweetie, its moment has passed. I know you had your reasons for staying back and everything, but Europe is where it’s at. This is the land of infinite opportunities. The place is so vibrant, so ALIVE! The wall is down, the Soviet empire has crumbled, the cultures are intermixing, new and old worlds coming together in a glorious melting pot, a hub of boundless creativity unlike anywhere else on the planet. Paris is no more than a short trip on the Eurostar. Amsterdam is a six-hour ferry ride away. Spain is a two-hour flight. The clubs, the fashion, the culture, the atmosphere. You haven’t lived until you’ve been here – you’ve only existed.

And the music! Oh my god, it is PHE-NOM-EN-AL!! Check out this rollcall of talent: Massive Attack. Paul Oakenfold. Spiritualized. Jesus Jones. My Bloody Valentine. Stereo MCs. These are the performances I have witnessed in just THE LAST NINE DAYS!! Some of those names might not mean anything to you, but trust me, the sounds they generate are like transmissions beamed in from the fourth dimension. A soundtrack to a near-future utopia. Track down some of their imports if you can.

I hope all is well in your corner of the world. I’m thinking of coming home for Christmas, but who knows? When you’re living in the center of the universe, why would you ever want to leave?

Anyway, I’m off to Brussels with friends in a week’s time, and then on to Prague after that. I’ll try and get another letter off before then, or maybe I’ll write one on the train ride between the two cities, but if I can’t, I know you’ll forgive me. So much is happening right now that it’s sometimes difficult to remember where I am or what day it is.

Karli xoxoxoxo

 

 

 

Halcyon nightclub was located along a stretch of Los Angeles urban ennui better known for its car dealerships and constantly proliferating chain restaurants than its electrifying nightlife.

The supply closet doubled as the backstage dressing room. A mop and bucket sat in the far corner, filled with murky days-old gray water. The shelves were stacked with gallon-sized bottles of disinfectant and ammonia. There was a distinct rotten cabbage smell, most likely due to a rodent carcass decomposing somewhere in the walls or ceiling.

A sheet of mirrored glass the size of a newspaper was glued to the wall. Beneath that was an old dresser with no two legs the same length. The room pulsated in time with the synth bassline of “I Feel Love”. This was the closing number for Janice, the Donna Summer impersonator currently performing on stage.

Fawn de Jager sat alone beneath a bare light globe hanging from the ceiling. She folded the letter in half once she had finished reading it, then slipped it back into the envelope and stashed it away in her bag.

Two years ago, her best friend Karli Cook had left LA for Europe on what was supposed to be a three-month trip but soon stretched out to six months, then a year, and now indefinitely. It wasn’t difficult to see why she kept putting off coming home. Reading her fortnightly correspondence was like a glimpse into another world, a fantasy life closer to that of an international model or jet-setting socialite than of someone she had known since the age of eleven. While it always brought a smile to her face to hear about the all-night beach parties in Barcelona, the awe-inspiring ruins of the Acropolis of Athens, and the geothermal spas in Iceland, the fact that Fawn had to read about it while sitting on an uncomfortable plastic bucket chair in a dingy dressing room, wearing rubber bracelets and a puffy thrift store dress, and she could not be over there with her, meant that each of these missives came tinged with sadness.

Three quick knocks, and then the door was flung open.

“You ’bout ready, Fawn?” the club’s manager said, sticking his head inside. He was a stout man in his fifties, with a horseshoe of jet-black hair encircling an otherwise bald head. She often wondered why he bothered to dye it – did he really believe this made him look younger, despite it only covering one-third of his scalp? She had met him six or seven times by now and still had not made the effort to remember his name.

“I’ll be right there,” she said.

She couldn’t summon the energy to become upset by the way he had barged into the dressing room unannounced, as if those three rapid knocks were enough to absolve him of inappropriate behavior. After performing for more than half her life, she had come to expect this from a certain type of club manager. She had learned from a young age never to remain in a state of undress for too long, and she knew to drag some sort of obstacle in front of the door should the situation demand it.

The manager left without closing the door, and she reviewed the setlist one more time. She would open tonight’s show with “Holiday”, as she did most nights, before segueing into the mid-eighties party starters: “Into The Groove”, “Lucky Star”, “Material Girl”, “Open Your Heart”. A few slower tracks would follow (“Oh Father”, “Crazy For You”), before a ninety-second instrumental medley to facilitate a costume change, shedding the puffy dress and oversized neon sweater to reveal a much skimpier outfit underneath, and then onto the fan favorites (“Borderline”, “La Isla Bonita”, “Causing A Commotion”, “Everybody”). She would bring it home with a bracket of classics that should have the dancefloor at least half full: “Like A Prayer”, “Papa Don’t Preach”, “Vogue”, “Like A Virgin”, “Express Yourself”.

She adjusted her wig and did a final touch-up of her makeup. She looked the part, and now it was time to act the part. She would step onto that stage and give it everything she had. She would deliver a show so good that, to the untrained eye or the vision impaired, they were watching the real Madonna – if she happened to be putting on an impromptu performance in a club with a capacity of three hundred, upstairs from an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet.

She was still the most in-demand performer for Ze-Rocks Tribute Artists.

Fawn didn’t always enjoy these shows, and some nights were more of a struggle than others, but she would never dare complain. She was doing what she loved. Being paid to sing was better than any day job. And it would all be worth it in the end.

It had to be. There was no plan B.

 

 

Chapter 2

 

 

The office of Silver Star Records and Ze-Rocks Tribute Artists was situated in a Los Feliz strip mall, accessible only via a narrow staircase. A drycleaners occupied the floor below. Next to that was a shady-looking Armenian guy hawking counterfeit jewelry and fake gemstones to passers-by.

Fawn trudged up the stairs the morning after her show at Halcyon. Gordon, the agency’s Lionel Ritchie impersonator, was leaving just as she was arriving. They exchanged quick hellos as they passed

The haggard appearance of her manager was something she was ill-prepared to deal with at such an early hour. Julian T. Rockefeller had the ash-gray complexion of a man who had gone days without seeing direct sunlight. His eyes looked like he’d been smoking two packs a day and using his own face as an ashtray. Fawn’s heart sank when she saw the condition he was in. She tried to ignore the rumors, and he never did anything in her presence, but his colorful past was all on public record, and the evidence often right in front of her. In addition to every other problem in her life, the last thing she needed was having to worry about her manager, the man who also ran the label she was signed to, making decisions about her career on day three of a five-day coke bender.

His shirt was marked with unsightly sweat patches, and his hair was sticking out at different angles at the back and the sides. The slept-in-the-office look didn’t inspire confidence in his capabilities as a manager. His hair wouldn’t look half as bad if he’d just get it cut. It was thinning at the front, but like so many men staring down the barrel of middle age, he kept it longer in a desperate attempt to hold onto the last threads of his youth. This only accentuated the receding, thereby making him appear older. She’d dropped the occasional hint about how much better it would look if he cut it short, but he never caught on.

“Two more shows have come in for next week,” Julian said, tossing an envelope on the desk after she took her seat. “One’s at a nightclub. The other’s a corporate event.”

She collected the envelope without responding, opening it and tallying up the bills inside. She insisted on being paid in cash after he had written one too many bad checks, and she insisted on counting it out in front of him after he’d short-changed her one too many times. She didn’t bother being discreet about it, either. She no longer cared if it annoyed or offended him.

“The corporate gig’s on Wednesday,” he continued, his eyes becoming even more bloodshot after rubbing them with his thumb and forefinger. “Some accountancy firm, I think. Early evening, mixed crowd, range of ages. Stick to the hits. Nothing obscure. Definitely none of the raunchy stuff, otherwise it might get uncomfortable.”

His British accent was harder to decipher on days like this; a string of syllables mashed into one continuous gurgle. Fawn needed to lean in slightly and pay close attention if she was to pick out enough words to figure out what he was trying to say.

“Friday will be at Velveteen. Younger crowd, so you can throw in some of the newer tunes. A few deep cuts, if you see fit. Might wanna do that new single. I’ll see if I can get you an advance copy of the album. You can ’ave a listen and decide if there’s anything worth adding to your set.”

The new Madonna album, Erotica, was scheduled for release later that month, accompanied by what appeared to be a softcore pornography coffee table book with the less than subtle title of Sex. The hype leading up to the book and the album’s release had been off the charts, with the press getting all hot and bothered over the risqué content, and conservative groups declaring it would lead to the downfall of society and the destruction of the traditional family unit.

Millions of Madonna fans were counting down the days until the 20 October release date, but Fawn was less than thrilled by the prospect. She enjoyed Madonna’s songs, or at least she enjoyed them before she had to sing them every other night for the past two years. She preferred her pop hits of the mid-eighties over her more recent material. But wherever Madonna went Fawn had to follow, which meant she would soon be wearing even fewer clothes on stage and singing about bondage and obscure fetishes, the thought of which filled her with dread. It wasn’t that she was a prude or uptight; it had more to do with the section of the audience that would display their appreciation through wolf-whistles and lewd comments rather than applause. She could be singing about taxation law and she would still have to endure drunken creeps gawping at her. God only knows how they’d respond to these new songs, which were basically three and a half minutes of heavy breathing set to music.

She also doubted Julian had the industry connections to score an advance copy of what was one of the year’s most anticipated releases. This may have been his attempt at impressing her, talking himself up and exaggerating his influence, which he had a habit of doing. She hoped that’s all it was. It would be concerning if he believed he still had that kind of power.

“Can’t wait,” she said, as she went to stand. The back of her chair bumped against the filing cabinet as she pushed it out. The office was about the size of a walk-in closet. The windows didn’t open, or if they did she had never seen them open, and so the place always smelled like the inside of a cupboard. When she first came here, Julian insisted this was just his temporary base, but it soon became clear this was all he could afford.

“Fawn, before you leave, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, motioning for her to sit back down. “What do you think about Cher?”

“What about her?” Fawn said.

“I’m thinking about adding a Cher to the talent roster. She’s more popular than I realized. I assumed she was past her prime, but it turns out the poofs love her. We’ve been getting a few requests, so if you’re interested in picking up some extra work, let me know.”

“You’re asking if I want to do Cher shows as well?”

“It’s a chance to double your work and take home some real dosh. You could be doing shows every night of the week, if you wanted.”

Fawn closed her eyes and let out a small sigh. “Julian, I do not want to do shows every night of the week.”

“No bother. I just thought I’d offer it to you before I took out an ad.”

“But why would you even ask me that? You know I want to stop doing the tribute act stuff and start focusing on my own music. You said you were going to help me with that.”

Julian winced, as if struck by a stabbing pain between his ears. Fawn wasn’t sure if it was her words that had caused this, or if this was his nocturnal activities catching up with him.

“We’ve discussed this already,” he said, opening the top drawer of his desk and rummaging around inside. “I will help you with your own music. Soon. But these things take time, kid.”

“I’ve given it time. More than two years of my time, in fact. I never wanted to sing other people’s songs in the first place, and I want to do my own stuff now.”

“I understand, but it’s simply not possible at the moment. The money’s just not there. Everything we have is tied up in the Warpistol album.”

Warpistol. A bunch of underperforming and overindulged adolescents. Just hearing their name was enough to make Fawn retch. Julian, for reasons known only to himself, had funneled a river of money into their career development and hedonistic lifestyle ever since he signed them. Fawn had unwittingly contributed to those funds, thanks to the revenue she had generated with her Madonna performances.

“Their album is almost complete,” Julian continued, eventually finding what he was looking for – an aspirin packet. He popped three tablets from the blister pack. “It’s slated for release early next year. Once it’s done, they’ll head out on tour and we’ll have a much healthier cash flow. Then we’ll have the resources to devote to your career, and you will become Silver Star Records’ number one priority. Nineteen ninety-three will be your year, I promise.”

I promise. Two words that came easily for Julian. Fawn had heard them so many times that they had been rendered meaningless. It was a verbal tic, a way to end a sentence, the way others finished their sentences with “you know what I mean?”

The sad thing was that she had no choice but to go along with it. She had put all her faith in Julian, trusting him when he said he could turn her into a star. This was the sunk cost fallacy; she continued to do everything he told her in the faint hope that he would eventually deliver on his promises. The alternative was to cut her losses and throw away the last two years of her life – something she could not afford to do.

 

 

As with many things in Julian T. Rockefeller’s life, his entry into the music business was something he fell into without much planning or forethought. He was born in Reading, England in 1949 to an upper middle-class family, and he breezed through his school years without exerting himself any more than necessary. His parents knew that he was spoilt and sorely lacking in ambition, and so shortly after his final exams he was put to work at Lipshut’s Electrical, the business founded by his grandfather and run by his father and uncle.

He had about as much enthusiasm for the job as he did for his studies. Having to rise early and put on a shirt and tie was an unfair imposition on an otherwise carefree lifestyle. His days were nine-hour sentences of sweeping floors, counting stock, and trying to talk housewives into purchasing the more expensive vacuum cleaner over the cheaper version, even though they more or less performed the same task. The part of the job he hated most was the loading of cumbersome washers, dryers, and refrigerators into the company truck and delivering them to customers’ homes, where he would then have to unload them and lug them inside the house. This was torture for someone with a pathological aversion to physical work, although there was one fringe benefit to all of this – it gave him round-the-clock access to the keys to the truck.

The late sixties witnessed a surge in demand for young men in sharp suits belting out the pop hits of the day. Exciting new bands such as the Beatles, the Who and the Rolling Stones had turned a generation of teenagers on to the thrill of pop and rock music, but few fans would ever have the opportunity to see these bands up close. The next best thing was having their hits replicated at the local clubs and dance halls by one of the many combos that had sprung up across the country.

Julian lacked the talent to play in a band – he could wring a few chords out of a Rickenbacker, but he couldn’t keep time to save his life. The one thing he did have was access to a large vehicle. The company truck may have been an industrial refrigerator on wheels with the turning ability of the QE2, but it was perfect for transporting bands and their gear to and from gigs. He took it out whenever it pleased him, and he made some easy cash by renting out his services three or four nights a week.

His father and uncle eventually caught on to what he was doing, but by then he had saved up enough to buy a second-hand lorry of his own. He ignored his father’s protests and quit his job, and he spent the next few years as a driver/roadie for dozens of local bands. He grew tired of the physical work soon enough, but by then he had figured out that he could make more money for less work by becoming these bands’ tour manager. He also began putting on shows of his own – booking venues, hiring the talent, selling tickets, and not really caring if anyone other than himself got paid in the end.

After a decade of managing and touring with countless groups, he had seen just about all the British Isles had to offer, along with the occasional jaunt over to mainland Europe, but what he really wanted was to get to America. His wish was granted in 1979, when he talked his way into a job as part of Status Quo’s touring party. He was hired as stage manager – a role he wasn’t remotely qualified for, but one he managed to bluff his way through by delegating his tasks to anyone beneath him. His greatest contribution to the tour involved sourcing drugs for the band and their hangers-on; something he discovered he had a unique talent for.

Status Quo returned to the UK following a disappointing tour, but Julian stayed behind. His newly discovered drug-sourcing ability had made him popular with many of the American bands whose orbit he had come into. He crisscrossed the continent for several years, bouncing from road crew to road crew, and he was never short on work – this was an era where no serious rock band was complete without at least one British guy in their entourage. His Rolodex, brimming with the names and phone numbers of the premium narcotic suppliers in every major American city, guaranteed his job security.

In 1982, his industry connections helped him land a job as a talent scout for Atonal, a young independent label based in Los Angeles that specialized in the new hard rock sound exploding in popularity across the world. He was there for eighteen months, where he spent more time propping up the bar at the Rainbow and the Whisky A Go Go than at the label’s Palo Alto headquarters.

Atonal was acquired by Atlantic Records in 1983. Despite Julian achieving nothing of note during his year and a half at the label, his new employer chose to retain his services, and he found himself with a steady salary for the first time in his life. He also had a job he had no desire to do – a position in sales and marketing, something he found almost as mind-numbing as selling vacuum cleaners. He was more interested in hitting the town with the label’s talent roster, many of whom were happy to invite this yappy Brit with access to the best coke and Mandrax pills into their inner circle.

Employee turnover at most labels was high, and Atlantic Records in the mid-eighties was no exception. Staff were quitting or getting fired on a weekly basis, which allowed Julian to move up the ladder by dint of keeping out of the way. He went from his sales and marketing role to publicity rep, then to head of press, and then on to artist relations. He only ever did enough work to get by, but he could think on his feet and play label politics as well as anyone. He wouldn’t hesitate to throw a colleague under the bus if it helped him get ahead, and he would happily take credit for the success of bands – such as Foreigner, AC/DC, and Quiet Riot – that he had nothing to do with.

In 1986, the Atlantic Records board of directors, mistaking proximity for competency and correlation for causation, promoted Julian to the head of A&R.

This was where he really came into his own. Armed with a thick book of blank checks, he embarked on a spending spree that would make Liberace blush. Obscene sums of money were thrown at any band with long hair, loud guitars, lipstick, and leather trousers. Ninety percent of them came and went in the blink of an eye, ending up as nothing more than tax write-offs, but every so often a Twisted Sister or Cinderella or Ratt or Skid Row would break through, and their success allowed the powers-that-be to look past his many failures.

His behavior during this period epitomized the era. It was all about excess, all the time. Everything had to be bigger, brasher, in-your-face, more. Why spend two hundred grand on the debut record of an unknown band when you could blow through two million? Why shoot a music video in two days on a Burbank soundstage when you could fly the band and their entourage to São Paulo on a private jet and spend a week filming on location? It was a philosophy that crossed over into his personal life as he burned through multiple cars, homes, friendships and marriages, his lifestyle fueled by a never-ending expense account and South America’s highest quality pharmaceuticals.

During his tenure, he managed to alienate and ingratiate his colleagues in equal measure. He was forever burning his bridges and rubbing people the wrong way with his boorish behavior, but as long as the river of cash continued to flow, he was allowed to get away with it. Perhaps his most notorious legacy was his penchant for shameless publicity stunts. He loved nothing more than using an offensive quote or a salacious rumor to drum up some free press; anything that would stir up controversy and get his artists’ names in the papers. He knew that any instance of outraging public decency translated to an extra hundred thousand record sales.

He was on top of the world, and he bought into the hype. He believed everything that was said about him, and he grossly overestimated his own abilities.

But as the decade wound down, signs were afoot that the era of decadence and these garish rock and roll Caligulas might be coming to end. Top ten singles came around every six months rather than every six weeks. Albums that would have shifted three million units had they been released in 1985 struggled to go gold in 1989. The public were harder to shock, and so Julian’s stunts weren’t nearly as effective as they once were. Strange, foreign sounds without a guitar in sight were infiltrating the top forty, and selling dumb rock music to dumb American teenagers was no longer the fish-in-a-barrel exercise it once was. He threw record deals at scores of bands that were blatant rip-offs of other successful acts: there was a Guns N’ Roses clone, a Bon Jovi clone, a Def Leppard clone, and about ten Mötley Crüe clones. These acts replicated the bands they mimicked in every conceivable way except for sales figures. One by one, their albums stiffed. He let Faith No More slip through his fingers, and he passed on Soundgarden and the Black Crowes. Pressure was building to deliver the hits and keep his job, and he grew desperate.

He decided to go for his most audacious publicity stunt to date. It was one that was of questionable taste. His colleagues warned him not to do it, but he ignored them. Julian was a lifelong gambler with an addiction to risk, and so he went all in.

The band he was attempting to launch was called Obadiah. In their publicity shots, they wore black cowboy hats and leather jackets with no shirt underneath. They hadn’t done much for Atlantic Records besides hoovering up their money, but Julian was convinced he had discovered the Iron Maiden of the nineties. He only needed to get their name out into the wider world to set the ball rolling.

A press release was sent out stating that the light aircraft the band was traveling on had disappeared somewhere over Arizona. Authorities were scouring the area for the wreckage, but it was presumed that all five band members on board had perished, along with the pilot and several crew.

The top brass at Atlantic were furious when they found out what Julian had done, especially after he had explicitly been warned not to, but he was unapologetic. He assured them he had everything under control. The press would soon run stories lamenting the tragic loss of life, these five young men cut down in their prime, before the band would emerge days later, having fortuitously missed their doomed flight due to their vehicle breaking down on the way to the airport, leaving them stranded and cut off from all communication. Their remarkable tale would be irresistible fodder for the news media here and around the world, leading to greater name recognition, increased radio play, and ultimately record and ticket sales.

He knew the risk he was taking, but he also knew he could get away with literally anything if it made money. The board could bellyache about ethics and morality all they liked, but their only real concern was the bottom line. He even promised that if he was wrong about the stunt and Obadiah did not have a platinum record by the end of the year, he would walk away from his position as head of A&R.

They would never find out whether or not the stunt would have worked. That was because a day later, on 27 August 1990, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s life was tragically cut short when his helicopter crashed shortly after take-off following a show in Chicago. Prior to this, Julian’s plan to fake the band members’ deaths in an aviation accident was considered to be in poor taste. Now, it was indefensibly loathsome.

His fate had been sealed. Ahmet Ertegun himself ordered his immediate termination.

He may have found himself out of a job, but the setback barely made a scratch in Julian T. Rockefeller’s unshakable self-belief. He had been one of the industry’s most successful executives, and in his mind there was nothing stopping him from reclaiming that mantle. He would do it all again, only this time he would do it on his own terms. He now had free reign to do what he liked without all the lawyers and bean counters breathing down his neck.

Five days on from his dismissal, following two nights of heavy partying at CC DeVille’s Calabasas mansion, he decided to start his own label. He would call it Silver Star Records.

Few noticed when Obadiah, the band that was said to have perished in a fiery plane crash five months earlier, released their debut album in February 1991. It sold 6,492 copies in the first year of release. They were dropped from Atlantic Records and disbanded a short time later.

 

 

 

Chapter 3

 

 

From a distance, the Van Nuys apartment complex that Fawn called home looked like half a dozen pink and white shoeboxes stacked on top of one another. Eighty percent of the occupants were dewy-eyed actors who had migrated to LA in pursuit of fame and fortune. The remaining twenty percent were recent divorcés in between permanent residences.

The complex was a ninety-minute, two-bus journey from Julian’s office. The rent ate up a substantial portion of her weekly income, but anything cheaper would come with an even more grueling commute. Fawn always stepped off the bus two miles before her stop to walk the rest of the way. If she ever saw an opportunity for exercise, she took it.

She kicked off her shoes as soon as she walked through the door. She rehydrated with a glass of cold water and went about finding something to eat. She opened the cupboard, her eyes alighting upon an unopened box of soda crackers, before closing it again. Snacking in between meals was a bad idea, and it would cancel out the calories she’d burned on her two-mile hike. Instead, she went straight to the bathroom and stepped on the scales. She was up to 121. Her hunger disappeared when she saw those numbers. She had gained three pounds in the past forty-eight hours.

An acapella rendition of “I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here” from Annie filtered through her walls, courtesy of her new neighbors – a thirtysomething woman and her preteen daughter who had moved in a month ago. They had ventured to Hollywood from somewhere in the south for pilot season, and they spent much of their spare time belting out showtunes duets at full voice; something Fawn found impossibly charming the first time she heard it, but whose charm had faded considerably in the weeks since.

She could feel a headache coming. She wanted to lie down on the couch in front of the TV and forget about her problems for the next couple of hours, but she knew she couldn’t do that. There was too much to do. There was always too much to do.

Her bag was still unpacked from last night’s performance. She tipped all her clothes into the middle of her bedroom floor, tossing anything that needed to be cleaned into the laundry pile and squeezing the rest into her bulging wardrobe. Madonna’s ever-evolving look meant that Fawn was forever shelling out for new outfits and changing her style to keep up. It was expensive, even if she could claim it all on tax, but at least she didn’t have to go through as much as Kelvin, the agency’s Michael Jackson impersonator.

Next, she hauled a cardboard box filled with her ex-boyfriend Jesse’s CDs, magazines, clothes, and other junk out to the sidewalk and propped it up on top of a trashcan. This was something she had been threatening to do for months, and now she had finally done it. She held onto the three good CDs he owned for herself (Purple Rain, Tango In The Night and Remain In Light) and left all the soft rock and camp metal for any passers-by to rummage through. She pictured a bunch of impressionable teenagers coming across the stash, filling their pockets with freebies, and then going on to form some godawful band in which they wore leather waistcoats and performed songs influenced by Judas Priest and REO Speedwagon.

Jesse played guitar in a group called Kilgore Trout, although he and Fawn had met when he was part of Ze-Rocks’ Queen covers band. They had broken up two months ago, and she had contacted him numerous times to tell him that she would dispose of his belongings if he didn’t come around to collect them soon. He kept promising to pick them up, “when I get around to it, babe”. She decided that she had given him ample opportunity to do this. He probably assumed she wouldn’t follow through with her threats.

He had pursued her for months before she agreed to go out with him. She brushed off his advances to begin with, not because she thought it would be a bad idea to become involved with someone who was basically a co-worker – although that was part of the reason – but because she’d been around enough musicians to know it was best to avoid them. He was persistent though, promising that he was nothing like those malignant LA douchebag rockers she might have encountered before, and that if she could look past the hair, the clothes, and the tattoos, she would see that he was a well-raised, respectful Midwestern boy who only wanted to play music. Eventually, she gave him a chance.

He broke it off with her three months later when Julian offered him a spot in Warpistol as third guitarist for their live shows. He was apologetic but insisted it was for the best, claiming that he did it to protect her feelings. He believed the relationship was unlikely to withstand the pressures that came with life on the road, and it was better they end it now and remain friends before real feelings were hurt. She didn’t buy that excuse for a second. She knew that he would soon be off touring the world and partying with the likes of Aerosmith and the Red Hot Chili Sex Pests, with the accompanying smorgasbord of groupies and controlled substances, and he just wanted to indulge in as much as possible with a clear conscience.

She went back inside once she had cleansed her apartment of his remaining junk, and she peeled the shrink wrap off one of the CDs she had purchased on her way home. Julian’s office may have been in an inconvenient location, but it was also a short walk from Redacted Records, a goldmine of a store that she had stumbled across one day that specialized in cheap second-hand CDs, tapes, and vinyl, as well as not-so-cheap rarities and imports.

The CD she had purchased today was by a UK group called Orbital. Karli had recommended their eponymous debut album in one of her recent letters, and Fawn always loved the music Karli would tell her about. Listening to them made her feel that little bit more connected to her best friend, despite being on opposite sides of the world. Her CD rack was filled with albums bought solely on her recommendation: Screamadelica, Blue Lines, Loveless, Lazer Guided Melodies, The Stone Roses, Nowhere, Club Classics Vol. I, The White Room, Pills ’n’ Thrills and Bellyaches, Connected. Groundbreaking sounds were emerging from the UK and Europe, where it seemed like music was being reinvented on a weekly basis. Acid house, ambient techno, Balearic beat, shoegaze, trance, trip hop, breakbeat; it was like nothing that had come before. Little of it had caught on Stateside, but that was only a matter of time. Music this revolutionary couldn’t be confined to just one corner of the globe.

The disc loaded and she pressed play. Track one opened with a Star Trek sample, followed by a sequence of hypnotic alien bleeps. Fawn fished Karli’s letter from her bag and laid down on her bed.

Reading these letters was always bittersweet. She was happy that Karli was having such an amazing time, but a little forlorn that she couldn’t be there with her. This felt like an encapsulation of Fawn’s current experience – everyone else was off having the time of their lives, while she was spinning her wheels and going nowhere. She knew it was wrong to envy someone you cared so much about, but it wasn’t always possible to control your emotions.

The hardest part was knowing that she could be over there too. When Karli and Fawn turned twenty-one, they both gained access to the trusts holding the money they had earned as kids. It wasn’t a life-changing amount, but it was more than either one of them had ever had before. Karli made plans to head to Europe, and Fawn was ready to go along with her – but then the deal with Silver Star Records came along, and she decided to stay back and focus on her music. Things were just starting to happen for her, or so she was led to believe. Had she known she would spend the next two years performing cover songs to indifferent audiences, she may have reconsidered.

The Orbital CD had stopped for several minutes before the silence registered. Fawn looked across to her stereo. The album had played all the way through to the end. She had wasted more than an hour lying there, and it was now 5:05 p.m. If she was going to do a show at the Holloway tonight, she had better get moving.

The Holloway was a venue in North Hollywood, and one of several where she regularly performed her original material. Anyone was allowed onstage, and no money was involved. Countless bands, from Oingo Boingo to Jane’s Addiction, had played there over the years before they made it big. It was sometimes difficult for Fawn to find the time and the motivation to do these shows, especially with her Ze-Rocks commitments taking up most of her nights, but she made the effort to keep turning up. If she took a night off, she’d be climbing the walls wondering if that was the night Prince wandered through the doors, spotted her performing, and decided that she would become his next collaborator. There must be thousands of brilliant artists out there languishing in obscurity who would never know they had missed their one and only chance to make it big because they had taken the wrong night off.

If she wanted this badly enough, she would force herself to get out there and do it. If she didn’t, somebody else would take the spot that should have been hers.

 

 

Los Angeles was a brutal town, and not for the meek or the timid. When Fawn first began actively pursuing a career in music, she sought out a community, a movement, a happening; something like the vibrant San Francisco scene of her parents’ era, or London in the Swinging Sixties, or the New York of the late seventies. A haven for creative types, and a fertile environment simmering with endless possibilities.

She soon discovered such a thing did not exist in LA. It never had, and it probably never would. Seattle and Manchester may have been having their moments in the spotlight, but here it was much different. It was dog-eat-dog, crabs-in-a-barrel, every man, woman, and child for themselves. Musical Darwinism, a rock and roll Lord of the Flies. If you wanted to make it, you had to fight for your spot and not be afraid to fight dirty, otherwise you’d get trampled on.

 

 

 

Chapter 4

 

 

The first Fawn heard of Silver Star Records, the new label founded by former Atlantic Records honcho Julian T. Rockefeller, was through an article in the LA Weekly toward the end of 1990. Their inaugural signing was Warpistol, a white-hot local glam metal act that combined Halen-esque riffs with KISS’s theatrics and the outlandish wardrobe of the New York Dolls. The label’s formation and Warpistol’s seven-figure multi-album deal were both announced at a notorious press conference held at the Chateau Marmont, which ended with band members gargling Smirnoff, picking fights with journalists and each other, hurling furniture into swimming pools, and making widely criticized comments about the ongoing tension in the Middle East.

Fawn was in her early twenties, but by that point she had been writing her own songs for ten years, having first tasted fame at the age of eleven as one half of the Christian pop duo Pure N Simple. She had sent her demo to as many labels as she could, where she received the occasional “thanks, but no thanks”, although most enquiries were met with a cold shoulder. She often wondered if any of them had bothered to listen to her tape at all. Maybe they saw her name and remembered her as the plump preteen from that corny early-eighties pop act, and the tape went straight in the reject pile.

She wasn’t about to give up on her lifelong dream though, and so she kept plugging away, working on new songs every day and putting on shows wherever she could. She tracked down Silver Star’s address and mailed in her demo, along with a short note detailing her background and hopes for her career. She didn’t have high expectations – she was a long-forgotten former child star trying to make the difficult transition to adult pop stardom, whereas Julian T. Rockefeller was famous for working with the hard rocking, hard partying hellraisers that tore up the Sunset Strip during the eighties – but she figured she had nothing to lose. Much to her surprise, he called her up a couple of weeks later to invite her in for a chat. She was even more surprised when he offered to manage her and give her a record deal within the first ten minutes.

The meeting passed in a blur. Fawn barely had to say a word as Julian rhapsodized about his plans for the label, her career, and for shaking up the industry at large. He was effusive when praising her music, declaring that within minutes of popping her demo into the tape deck he had glimpsed the future of commercial pop. He wanted to put her in the studio as soon as humanly possible. He was going to get her music in record stores, on the radio, and on the soundtracks of major Hollywood movies, or he would die trying. The public needed to hear her remarkable talent, and he would do everything in his power to make that happen.

This was the first instance of Julian overpromising and underdelivering, and it would not be the last.

The label burned through a good portion of its cash reserves much faster than anticipated, mostly due to Julian’s permissive attitude toward Warpistol, showering them with money the way he did with his bands at Atlantic, only without the benefit of a major conglomerate like Warner Music to supply the checks. His solution to these financial woes was to start up Ze-Rocks, a talent agency that booked cover artists. Tribute acts were commonplace in the UK, but less so in the States, and so he saw a gap in the market where there would be little competition. This new venture brought in some much-needed revenue and helped keep the label afloat.

Plans for Fawn to record were placed on hold, and Julian convinced her to do a few gigs as a Madonna tribute act in the meantime. He assured her that this would provide her with more on-stage experience, and it was an opportunity to hone her skills and become “match fit”, like an athlete preparing for the big leagues, or the Beatles in Hamburg.

The shows were fun to begin with. She was being paid to sing on stage and in front of an audience, even if they were someone else’s songs while she was doing her best facsimile of that person. She dived into her new job with the same zeal and ferocity that she brought to her singing career. Other performers would do a passable imitation of the artist they were covering, but Fawn strived for authenticity. She learned Madonna’s entire back catalog, from early obscurities through to B-sides and album deep cuts, even though she would never need to sing most of those songs. She studied and practiced her dance moves, mimicking her idiosyncrasies and mannerisms right down to the way she held the microphone and flicked her hair from her eyes. She was a technically more proficient singer than Madonna, so she trained herself to sing with a slightly limited vocal range. She rehearsed every single day, and she spent a small fortune in keeping up with her ever-changing style. The regular income meant she didn’t need to wait tables anymore.

She soon became Ze-Rocks’ most popular performer. There were times where some in the audience believed they were watching the real thing, although those that did were usually very young, very old or highly inebriated.

But as the months rolled on, the thrill of doing the shows wore off as Fawn watched her own dreams go nowhere. These gigs were only supposed to be a temporary diversion, but as more time passed, Julian displayed less and less interest in developing her career. He appeared happy to keep her where she was, bringing in money by having her play casinos, fairs, festivals, clubs, bar mitzvahs and birthday parties.

Julian insisted he knew what he was doing. He assured her that he had a clear career path mapped out for her. Nothing happened overnight, he would tell her, and she needed to pay her dues and go through a period of struggle, otherwise she would have trouble appreciating success when it eventually came. The worst thing that could happen to an artist was for them to get everything they ever wanted right away. “Look at Clapton,” he once said when she complained about his lack of action. “He wanted Pattie Boyd and he couldn’t have her, so what does he do? He’s inspired to write ‘Layla’, one of the greatest musical compositions since Edison invented the phonograph. That’s what suffering does for your art. You can’t write a song like that just by imagining what it must be like to be in love with your best friend’s wife. You have to live through the pain. But then she ends up leaving George Harrison and shacks up with him, and he was never the same after that. That creative fire was extinguished, and he starts writing maudlin pap like ‘Wonderful Tonight’, one of the worst pieces of music since Edison invented the phonograph. The lesson here is that if you get too much too soon, it can affect you in the long-term.”

Fawn went along with Julian’s plan to begin with, albeit begrudgingly. He was older and had more industry experience, and so she assumed he knew what he was talking about. But as more time passed and he continued to stonewall, she began to lose faith in this strategy. It made sense for her to gain onstage experience, just as it made sense for Daniel LaRusso to paint fences and wax cars to learn the fundamentals of karate, but if he was made to do this night in, night out for years on end and with no end in sight, he might begin to suspect that Mr. Miyagi was just using him as a source of free labor.

A dozen other acts had signed with Silver Star Records around the same time as Fawn. One by one, they departed the label when better offers came along, or they simply grew disillusioned with Julian’s empty promises and gave up. By mid-1992, only her and Warpistol remained.

She didn’t want to come across as ungrateful. Singing pop songs in nightclubs was far from the worst way to make a living, and it was much easier than telemarketing or waitressing, but now she was over it. She was no longer just stagnating; she was regressing. She had to move forward, or she would be stuck doing this for the next ten years. The industry was becoming increasingly youth focused, which meant her window of opportunity was shrinking with every day that passed. Something needed to happen soon, otherwise it never would.

 

 

Even though she didn’t arrive home until well after midnight, Fawn still set her alarm for six-thirty to go for an early morning run. The 121 pounds on yesterday’s scales played on her mind throughout the rest of the night. She tried not to let it affect her performance, but she couldn’t say for sure that it hadn’t. She could hear the voice of the Whispering Cynic, that malicious internal heckler who loved nothing more than to feed her self-doubt and point out her every shortcoming, snickering in her ear at least once.

The gig itself was unremarkable. She was given a twenty-minute, five-song slot, wedged in between an arty noise-rock trio and an all-white reggae collective. She played to an audience of seventeen, none of whom were diminutive purple-clad musical geniuses from Minneapolis. One or two songs received polite applause; the rest were met with polite indifference. Several drinkers moved away when she began so they could drown their sorrows in peace. Tuesday was never the most exciting night at the Holloway.

She returned from her run after ninety minutes, her joints aching and her legs and lungs burning. She had a quick shower, then spent the rest of the morning putting together another demo for an independent Chicago-based label she had heard about. She compiled a list of fifteen songs that she thought would appeal to them, which were narrowed down to five and shifted around several times to determine the optimal running order. She then screwed up the sheet of paper and started over. She did this three more times before settling on the eventual track listing. The songs were dubbed onto a cassette, and she composed a short note to introduce herself and explain why she would be a good fit for their roster.

Once she had that ready to mail, she pulled out the CT-660 keyboard she had used for the past few years, and the HR-16 drum machine she had picked up from a pawn shop a few months ago, and she spent the next two hours trying to come up with something for a new song.

For as long as she had done it, songwriting had been this enigmatic process that she still didn’t really understand. There were times where melodies and lyrics would come to her at the most arbitrary moments – in the shower, on the bus, in her sleep – but the minute she sat down to develop them into something more than abstract ideas, inspiration was nowhere to be found. Sometimes she listened back to one of her compositions and couldn’t believe how good it was, as if it had been written by a much more accomplished songwriter. Other times she felt like quitting, steadfast in her belief that her talent had peaked, her best work was behind her, and she would never create anything worthwhile again. Sometimes it felt like the more she learned, the less she understood.

She managed to put together a simple five-note minor key melody that might one

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 22.03.2022
ISBN: 978-3-7554-0997-7

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