I sang lead on “Shake Your Moneymaker” and played a pretty good harp solo.
But when I came home for Thanksgiving, I discovered that Norm had hired a new rhythm guitarist and changed the name of the band to Norman’s Knights. “Sorry, man,” he said, shrugging. “The offers were piling up, and I can’t work in a trio. Drums, bass, two guitars—that’s rock and roll.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I get it.” And I did, because he was right. Or almost. Drums, bass, two guitars, and everything starts in the key of E.
“We’re playing the Ragged Pony in Winthrop tomorrow night, if you want to sit in. Guest artist kind of thing?”
“I’ll pass,” I said. I’d heard the new rhythm guitarist. He was a year younger than me, and already better; he could chickenscratch like a mad bastard. Besides, that meant I could spend Saturday night with Astrid. Which I did. I suspect she was already dating other guys by then—she was too pretty to stay home—but she was discreet. And loving. It was a good Thanksgiving. I didn’t miss Chrome Roses (or Norman’s Knights, a name I would never have to get used to, which suited me fine) at all.
Well. You know.
Hardly at all.
• • •
One day not long before Christmas break, I dropped by the Bear’s Den in the University of Maine Memorial Union for a burger and a Coke. On the way out, I stopped to look at the bulletin board. Among the litter of file cards advertising textbooks for sale, cars for sale, and rides wanted to various destinations, I found this:
GOOD NEWS! The Cumberlands are reuniting! BAD NEWS! We’re short a rhythm guitarist! We are a LOUD AND PROUD COVER BAND! If you can play Beatles, Stones, Badfinger, McCoys, Barbarians, Standells, Byrds, etc., come to Room 421, Cumberland Hall, and bring your ax. If you like Emerson, Lake, & Palmer, or Blood, Sweat, & Tears, stay the f**k away.
By then I had a bright red Gibson SG, and that afternoon, after class, I toted it over to Cumberland Hall, where I met Jay Pederson. Because of noise restrictions during study hours, we played tennis-racket style in his room. Later that night we plugged in down in the dorm’s rec area. We rocked the place for half an hour, and I got the gig. He was a lot better than me, but I was used to that; I had, after all, started my rock-and-roll career with Norm Irving.
“I’m thinking of changing the name of the band to the Heaters,” Jay said. “What do you think?”
“As long as I get time to study during the week and you split fair, I don’t care if you call it Assholes from Hell.”
“Good name, right up there with Doug and the Hot Nuts, but I don’t think we’d get many high school dances.” He offered me his hand, I clasped it, and we gave each other that dead-fish shake. “Welcome aboard, Jamie. Rehearsal Wednesday night. Be there or be square.”
I was many things, but square wasn’t one of them. I was there. For almost two decades, in a dozen bands and a hundred cities, I was there. A rhythm guitarist can always find work, even if he’s so stoned he can barely stand. Basically, it all comes down to two things: you have to show up, and you have to be able to play a bar E.
My problems started when I stopped showing up.
V
The Fluid Passage of Time. Portraits in Lightning. My Drug Problem.
When I graduated from the University of Maine (2.9 cume, missed the Dean’s List by a coat of paint), I was twenty-two. When I met Charles Jacobs for the second time, I was thirty-six. He looked younger than his age, perhaps because when I saw him last he had been thinned and made haggard by grief. By 1992, I looked much older than mine.
I’ve always been a movie fan. During the 1980s I saw a lot of them, mostly on my own. I dozed off on occasion (Heathers, for instance—that one was a nodder for sure), but mostly I’d make it through no matter how stoned I was, surfing on noise and color and impossibly beautiful women in scanty clothing. Books are good, and I read my share, and TV’s okay if you’re stuck in a motel room during a rainstorm, but for Jamie Morton, there was nothing like a movie up there on the big screen. Just me, my popcorn, and my super-sized Coke. Plus my heroin, of