indie albums during my dues-paying years on the road, but never heard myself on a major label until I filled in at a Neil Diamond session for a rhythm guitarist who had come down with mono. I was terrified that day—sure I would just lean over and puke on my SG—but since then I’d played on lots of sessions, mostly as a fill-in but sometimes by request. The money wasn’t great, but it was far from terrible. Weekends I played with the house band at a local bar called Comstock Lode, and had been known to filch gigs on the side in Denver. I also gave music lessons to aspiring high school players at a summer program Hugh inaugurated after his father died. It was called Rock-Atomic.
“I can’t do that,” I protested to Hugh when he suggested adding this to my duties. “I can’t read music!”
“You can’t read notes is what you mean,” he said. “You can read tablature just fine, and that’s all these kids want. Fortunately for us and them, it’s all most of them need. You ain’t going to find Segovia up here in the hills, my man.”
He was right about that, and once my fright wore off, I enjoyed the lessons. They brought back memories of Chrome Roses, for one thing. For another . . . maybe I should be ashamed to say this, but the pleasure I felt working with the Rock-Atomic teenagers was similar to the pleasure I got from feeding Bartleby his morning apple slice and stroking his nose. Those kids just wanted to rock, and most of them discovered they could . . . once they mastered a bar E, that was.
Studio 2 was also dark, but Mookie McDonald had left the soundboard on. I shut everything down and made a note to talk to him about it. He was a good board guy, but forty years of smoking rope had made him forgetful. My Gibson SG was propped up with the rest of the instruments, because later that day I was going to play on a demo with a local rockabilly combo called Gotta Wanna. I sat on a stool and played tennis-racket style for ten minutes or so, stuff like “Hi-Heel Sneakers” and “Got My Mojo Working,” just limbering up. I was better now than in my years on the road, much better, but I was still never going to be Clapton.
The phone rang—although in the studios, it didn’t actually ring, just lit up blue around the edges. I put my guitar down and answered it. “Studio Two, Curtis Mayfield speaking.”
“How’s the afterlife, Curtis?” Hugh Yates asked.
“Dark. The good side is that I’m no longer paralyzed.”
“Glad to hear it. Come on up here to the big house. I have something you should see.”
“Jeez, man, we’ve got somebody recording a half an hour from now. I think that c&w chick with the long legs.”
“Mookie will get her set up.”
“No, he won’t. He’s not here yet. Also, he left the board on in Two. Again.”
Hugh sighed. “I’ll talk to him. Just come on up.”
“Okay, but Hugh? I’ll talk to the Mookster. My job, right?”
He laughed. “I sometimes wonder what happened to the wouldn’t-say-shit-if-he-had-a-mouthful sad sack I hired,” he said. “Come on. This’ll blow your mind.”
• • •
The big house was a sprawling ranch with Hugh’s vintage Continental parked in the turnaround. The man was a fool for anything that slurped hi-test, and he could afford the indulgence. Although Wolfjaw did only a little better than break-even, there was a lot of elderly Yates family dough in blue chip investments, and Hugh—twice divorced, prenups in both, no children from either—was the last sprig on the Yates family tree. He kept horses, chickens, sheep, and a few pigs, but that was little more than a hobby. The same was true of his cars and collection of big-engine pickup trucks. What he cared about was music, and about that he cared deeply. He claimed to have once been a player himself, although I’d never seen him pick up a horn or a guitar.
“Music matters,” he told me once. “Pop fiction goes away, TV shows go away, and I defy you to tell me what you saw at the movies two years ago. But music lasts, even pop music. Especially pop music. Sneer at ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head’ if you want to, but people will still be listening to that silly piece of shit fifty years from now.”
• • •
It was easy enough to