teeth that were going to give him a lot of problems in the future if he didn’t start taking care of them—made me feel better.
“Door’s shut, freshie. Turn it up and jam out.”
The volume was set at 5. I turned it up to 7, and the resulting WHANGGG was satisfyingly loud.
“I can’t sing worth a crap,” I said.
“You don’t have to sing. I sing. You just have to play rhythm.”
“Green River” has a basic rock-and-roll beat—not quite like “Cherry, Cherry,” but close. I hit E again, listening to the first phrase of the song in my head and deciding it was right. Norman began to sing. His voice was almost buried by the sound of the guitar, but I could hear enough to tell he had good pipes. “Take me back down where cool water flows, yeah . . .”
I switched to A, and he stopped.
“Stays E, doesn’t it?” I said. “Sorry, sorry.”
The first three lines were all in E, but when I switched to A again, where most basic rock goes, it was still wrong.
“Where?” I asked Norman.
He just looked at me, hands in his back pockets. I listened in my head, then began again. When I got to the fourth line, I went to C, and that was right. I had to start over once more, but after that it was a cinch. All we needed was drums, a bass . . . and some lead guitar, of course. John Fogerty of Creedence hammered that lead in a way I never could in my wildest dreams.
“Gimme the ax,” Norman said.
I handed it over, disappointed to let it go. “Thanks for letting me play it,” I said, and headed for the door.
“Wait a minute, Morton.” It wasn’t much of a change, but at least I had been promoted from freshie. “Audition’s not over.”
Audition?
From the storage cabinet he took a smaller case, opened it, and produced a scratched-up Kay semi-hollowbody—a 900G, if you’re keeping score.
“Plug into the big amp, but turn it down to four. That Kay feeds back like a motherfucker.”
I did as instructed. The Kay fit my body better than the Yammie; I wouldn’t have to hunch over to play it. There was a pick threaded into the strings and I took it out.
“Ready?”
I nodded.
“One . . . two . . . one-two-three-and . . .”
I was nervous while I was working out the simple rhythm progression of “Green River,” but if I’d known how well Norman could play, I don’t think I could have played at all; I would simply have fled the room. He hit the Fogerty lead just right, playing the same licks as on that old Fantasy single. As it was, I was swept along.
“Louder!” he shouted at me. “Jack it and fuck the feedback!”
I turned the big amp up to 8 and kicked it back in. With both guitars playing and the amp feeding back like a police whistle, Norm’s voice was lost in the sound. It didn’t matter. I stuck the groove and let his lead carry me. It was like surfing a glassy wave that rolled on without breaking for two and a half minutes.
It ended and silence crashed back in. My ears were ringing. Norm stared up at the ceiling, considering, then nodded. “Not great, but not terrible. With a little practice, you might be better than Snuffy.”
“Who’s Snuffy?” I asked. My ears were ringing.
“A guy who’s moving to Assachusetts,” he said. “Let’s try ‘Needles and Pins.’ You know, the Searchers?”
“E?”
“No, this one’s D, but not straight D. You gotta diddle it.” He demonstrated how I was supposed to hammer high E with my pinky, and I picked it up right away. It didn’t sound exactly like the record, but it was in the ballpark. When we finished I was dripping with sweat.
“Okay,” he said, unslinging the guitar. “Let’s go out to the SA. I need a butt.”
• • •
The smoking area was behind the vocational tech building. It was where the burns and hippies hung out, along with girls who wore tight skirts, dangly earrings, and too much makeup. Two guys were squatting at the far end of the metal shop. I’d seen them around, as I had Norman, but didn’t know them. One had sandy blond hair and a lot of acne. The other had a kinky pad of red hair that stuck out in nine different directions. They looked like losers, but I didn’t care. Norman Irving also looked like a loser, but he was the best