A CELLAR FULL OF BOYS AND THE RIP VAN WINKLE THEORY
(Germany)
Germany has become a haze of little towns you’ve never heard of. Each day begins with a pretty short drive, a hotel check-in, plenty of time to try and fill, a soundcheck, hours of more time with nothing to do, a show, back to the hotel, where, that’s right, there’s nothing to do.
In a small, very pleasant town called Bochum, the band is treated like kings with great food, a high-fidelity soundcheck, and an A-1 hotel. I compliment the promoter by saying, “A well-treated band is a happy band!”
Dahl shoots a scowl at me and intones, “It just makes for a fat and lazy band.”
He was right about one thing: our tour regimen was doing nothing for anyone’s waistline. Simon and Dahl seemed essentially unscathed—Simon due to his youth and Dahl to his abstinence—but even the skinniest Rat was packin’ a tire, the ever-vain Z was getting slightly frumpy, our very own Surf City Romeo, the mighty Tim, was noticeably heading down the Orson Welles highway, and I was doing my share to put the paunch in raunch.
At the Bochum gig, the Master and Quasimodo—Dahl and Simon—consent to allow Rat to do the unthinkable and drive the van back to the hotel after soundcheck. The three of us go back to my room to drink beer and watch MTV—nothing special—but we were quite happy to be out of the club environment and just kickin’ it. Z had also told me that our boss from the record company, Peter, was going to be at the show tonight. He was in town visiting our German distributor. I could grill him face-to-face as to whether we’d be returning to gainful employment or the soup line.
We return to the gig just slightly early. As we pull the van into Zwischenfall’s parking lot, Simon comes running from the club waving his arms.
“Hurry, hurry. You’re on right now! Dahl’s right pissed, he is.”
As ever, Rat is calm. “Why are we on now? We’re not supposed to be on for another half hour.”
“The support went on extra early, and now the management is screaming for you to play!”
“That’s not our fault,” I point out, for if I’ve learned one thing on this tour, it’s to get that finger pointed at someone other than yourself as quickly as possible. “Besides, who ever heard of a band going onstage early? How un-rock ‘n’ roll can you get?”
“It would figure that it’s someone opening for us,” chuckles Z.
We enter the club and all eyes are upon us. Some people start to clap ‘cause they know the wait is almost over. Dahl is not among the cheering admirers. He’s standing with Peter and the owner of our German label. “Nice of you to drop by,” he says to us, and then to the label guys, “the big rock stars had to go to the hotel. That will never happen again.”
After two minutes of flung open guitar cases and furiously untangled patch cords, we get on stage and start jammin’. I’m embarrassed after being called out like that, and kinda pissed, so it makes me wail that much harder. If nothing else, playing is good for getting a day’s worth of pent-up anger out, at least partially.
After the show, Z, Pete, and I have a record honcho hoedown in the dressing room, kicking everyone else out and talking as long as we like. Besides getting reassured that there was no need to fear for my job and that the company was fine, it was nice to have Dahl waiting for us for a change, instead of vice versa as he did his endless fanzine interviews.
We walk out from the meeting. Pete shakes my hand and says he enjoyed our show, and takes off with his German comrade. Simon, meanwhile, walks around like a zombie, slowly moving things, not talking to anyone, looking completely dazed. Is he mad, burnt out, or just hating the fact that he’s still cooped up with us and wishing he were dead? I decide to investigate outside by the van.
“What’s up, man? You don’t look right.”
“I’m fine,” he says in a monotone robot voice, almost as if he was putting me on.
“Is it something I said?” trying to inject that long-lost element of humor.
“It’s nothing.” He blinks quickly and his head suddenly twitches. “It’s everything. It’s you lot. You’re a bunch of miserable bastards. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Go on.”
“Dahl’s a Nazi commando, finally come home to rule in the homeland. Rat’s a sourpuss, dragging around like he wants to die. Tim’s a momma’s boy with daddy’s expense account. And you’re a cynical prick that thinks his shit doesn’t stink!”
“What about Z?” I ask, hating to feel that anyone’s left out.
“Z’s alright. He’s the only one of the lot of you who just takes care of his business and gets his job done without a weird attitude. You all could learn a lot from Z.”
As quickly as he shifts into hyperdrive, he slips back into his lugubrious death march. I decide not to pester him further, in case he might completely snap.
The following day we check into a pleasant family run hotel in a place called Osnabrück. There, Simon sits in his room staring at television static and listening to its white noise soundtrack full blast. It’s evident that he’s cracking.
I kill a lot of that day by hanging in the hotel bar, drinking straight bourbon, and eating these cakes that the owner, a big jolly geezer (originally from Hamburg, he tells me) has home baked. Yum! Simon now watches a game show on the lobby television—an improvement, I suppose, over static, though perhaps less New Age—and Tim yakks away about how he’s leaving the tour.
“My dad is sending me a ticket. I’m going to fly to Rome, where we have an audience with the Pope.”
I assume this is bullshit and don’t even comment on it. Simon, still despondent, is seemingly incapable at this point of standard discourse. Later, while driving to the gig, Tim mentions it again.
“What, you were serious before? The Pope?” I query.
“Yeah, no shit. The Pope. My dad gives a lot of money to the church, so we’re invited to hang out with the Pope. I think it’ll be a trip.”
“The Pope’s gonna love you, man. I just know it,” I laugh, and my laughing becomes more uncontrollable. Pretty soon everyone’s cracking up. “The fucking Pope, that’s beautiful. Too perfect. From Jeff Dahl to the Pope. You are truly blessed!”
The Osnabrück onslaught is perhaps the rowdiest and ugliest we would play on our outing, these kids being maybe even more out of control than the outlaws of the Basque in Spain. This Jugend Centrum is another multi-storied testimony to turning kids loose to run their own affairs like Lord of the Flies. There are a lot of zoned-out youth here, with some of the most bizarre hairstyles imaginable, asymmetric shavings, skewed pompadours, sideways Mohawks, and all kinds of damn things. A number of the kids are obnoxiously loud, swilling beer like sailors, and pointing and shouting, sitting near us while we eat and obviously laughing at us. Why? I don’t know. We aren’t particularly funny.
We seek the relative solace, or at least privacy, of the dressing room, where we’ll be for another indeterminate length of time. It’s Friday in Germany, which means naked girls on television. It keeps Dahl appeased, in fact, it’s a bit of a task to eviscerate him from the couch and drag him onstage.
The wildly drunk and high audience is ready for war, heckling us, throwing garbage, falling down loaded, leaping onstage, knocking mics over, pushing musicians, throwing up. We stand our ground, staring the rabble down, shoving them offstage, spitting back, yelling at them. A buzz of warmth and understanding is in the air—somewhere, I’m sure, but most definitely not here.
Following the battle we call a set, I look down and the entire edge of the stage is lined with hypodermic syringes. A wacky teen party, Osnabrück style. Still agitated and on edge, I walk offstage and see our friends from Münster, promoter Alfred, and the six-foot blonde who said she’d be joining him. I invite them up to the dressing room. Alfred declines. She accepts. I realize I’d never learned her name, and find out it’s Rheinheld. You gotta love these European names.
I offer her a soda and she gives me a Marlboro. We relax on the couch. For the first time on the entire tour, we are out of beer as the entire club has been drunk bone dry. There’s absolutely not one drop of beer left. My guess is that all the heroin is gone, too.
Rheinheld looks good to me, with her straight hair parted to the side, tumbling across her face. She’s a natural beauty, relying not at all on makeup or flashy clothes. She’s soft spoken and pretty bright.
“You seemed so angry onstage, tonight,” she observes. “So aggressive.”
“I was having a little trouble communicating with my brothers and sisters in the crowd. I couldn’t ignite the fire of love in the room.”
She laughs and smiles, and notices the television, which now has advanced to softcore sex acts.
“Do you find this kind of entertainment erotic?” she asks with a knowing smile and more than a hint of sarcasm.
“Not really. It’s like watching a film of someone eating a New York steak when you’re really hungry. I prefer live theatre, I suppose.”
We bullshit around for a while—for once, we’re not being raced out of the club and into the van. Alfred appears and says he’s ready to go.
“Okay, I’ll be right down. Walk with me,” she orders, turning to me. In control yet demure, six feet of Germanic dominance. I like this girl!
Halfway down the stairs she grabs me and pulls me to her. I look up slightly to gaze into her eyes.
“I’m sorry I didn’t drive my own car. It was a bit eeefy. But I will see you again, if I can. Here’s my number. Call with some places you will play in Holland. I will try to come see you, and stay with you.”
Nothing more needed to be said, so we started kissing long and slow under the glaring, bright florescent white light in the stairway. Then she’s gone as quickly as she came. Apparently, half the band walked by while we made out and we didn’t notice the onlookers, but I would hear about it for the rest of the night. That’s all right, I thought to myself. We’ll always have Osnabrück.
Marburg is one of the few German cities that has a lot of pre-WWII architecture left standing. We arrive early in the afternoon (surprise) and can’t get in the club. The promoter, who we can’t locate, has the keys to the house we’re to stay at, so Tim goes off on his own (rehearsing his lines to the Pope, we presume) while Dahl hides out in the parked van. The rest of us hike way up this steep hill to a museum and a cathedral, and all of us seem to be in a mellow, good mood for a change. From the hill we can see for miles. We take it easy, taking pictures and smoking cigarettes.
The gig that night begins with a bald guy in a leather jacket (have you noticed this is becoming a recurrence) running up, smashing a beer bottle across the edge of the stage, and bursting into a wild spastic solo dance. Meanwhile, the local metal boys sit sullenly on the edge of the stage with their backs to us, looking out at the crowd. I reward this invasion of our space by going up behind them and jabbing my knees into their backs, leaning forward, then proceeding to rock, using them as a balance point. I have no idea how they will respond. I had assumed violently, but they actually seem to enjoy it. Maybe it’s like some kind of therapeutic massage, I dunno. Whatever the case, they seem to like me now, and offer to take the band out for a drink after the show.
First we go to a bar, and when we ask for some rock ‘n’ roll on the tape machine, they play death metal, then we go to a disco, where the most bumpin’ thing they’re bustin’ out is Sade and some tame acid jazz.
“Hey, man. Ya got anything that will cause booties to move, hips to shake, and muthafuggers to groove,” I ask the uptight DJ.
“It’s Saturday!”
“Yeah, let’s get the party started!”
“We don’t do that here on Saturday!”
“Look at your dance floor. You could drop a bomb in the middle of it and not hurt anyone!”
“Fuck off!”
We bust a move anyway, and as is our way, Rat, Z, and I just start dancing with each other, oblivious to anyone’s opinion or attitude toward us. Our metal boy escorts just watch us, shaking their heads. Are they straight or gay? they seem to ask each other. Funny, that’s precisely what we were wondering about them.
Within a few minutes we’re surrounded by a gaggle of extremely homely girls who want to dance with us. Hey, homely girls need love, too. Meanwhile, I look over at Simon, who’s been drinking a fair bit and is moments away from taking part in a fistfight.
“C’mon, then, you Kraut bastard! I’ll spread your face across the floor.”
“In your dreeeamz, you Engleesh faggot!”
“Alright, fellas, nothing’s that important, let’s all just try to have a good time, eh?” I intervene, stupidly stepping right in-between them.
“I’ll punch your face off just to land a good one on him!” Simon threatens me.
“Simon, mellow out, or I’ll sick these girls on you, and they look way tougher than all of us. Now, c’mon. Let’s just walk away from this guy. Fuck him! C’mon, let’s go get a beer.”
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do McGruff, but fuck you anyway.” With that, he and Tim take their leave for the night. We continue to drink and dance and flirt with the girls, no matter how ugly they are. Z’s making time with an adorable brunette, but she suddenly has to go. So close, so far. It’s all becoming very familiar, isn’t it? As if to keep the déjà vu intact, we return to the band house, and drunkenly awake the other three with our loud laughing and stumbling.
A grizzled geezer straight from a rough night sleeping in someone’s doorway—probably the Chuck Bukowski of Marburg—joins us for breakfast at a café next door to our accommodations. Grumbling in any language is grumbling. He grabs a stack of napkins and starts writing notes to each of us in German. We look back at him blankly, wishing he would simply go away. Just one napkin left, but we all have our personalized notes already. He blows a big green gob of snot into it, throws in on the table, and lurches out of the café. Fortunately no shrapnel hit my muffin. I pop the last of my Excedrin supply and it’s off to the van.
Dahl has an unusually chipper disposition this Sunday afternoon, as we head off to Frankfurt, a town I’ve actually heard of. “Yeah, we’re staying at a really great place tonight. We’re staying at the promoter’s house. It’s really great. We get the basement, with his record collection and excellent stereo, but best of all is his cat, Felix. Greatest cat in the world. And, wait till you have some of his coffee.”
Z, Rat, and I look over at Dahl, but say nothing. I suppose the knowledge that we have a world-class fur ball and an award-winning cup of Joe just over the horizon has rendered us speechless.
We pull up to the club, aptly named Negativ, at precisely 3:00 p.m. A cold basement with grungy toilets and cracked mirrors, a slightly less cold upstairs with stools and a foosball table will be our world for the next ten hours. Outside, the entire city of Frankfurt is shut down. There ain’t nothin’ open. I walk for blocks just to find a pack of cigarettes, at least I kill a little over a half hour this way. I almost feel like going back for gum just to have something to do and chew up.
I spend an inordinate amount of time in the men’s room toilet stall; for some reason now I have to defecate about every half hour. How could my body hold this much shit? At least the stall is covered with hilarious wall-to-wall graffiti to keep me amused, etched no doubt by countless traveling minstrels such as myself. My favorite ink-drawn caricature looks back at me dead on at eye level as I sit. It’s a gnarly-looking horned devil skull, with these pleading, fearful, worried-looking eyes. Underneath is the inscription: “I can’t stop shitting!” Apparently someone else found that this is what happens by the time you get to Frankfurt. Six weeks of bread and cheese are looking for an escape route.
Somehow I fall asleep upstairs in a chair while the soundman plays Alice In Chains at ear-splitting volume to an as yet unopened club. The other guys take turns thumbing through foreign newspapers and playing foosball. They spend a lot of time sitting in chairs looking off into space. Hours crawl past at a snail’s pace.
After my eighth or ninth crap, I walk over to the bar, where Jurgen the promoter is cooking up some chicken and potatoes and generally doting after us. The club is now open for business. I get a beer and have a seat when, quite unexpectedly, in walks the same cute blonde who wanted me to go to a party in Munich, comin’ in with some alterna-rock lookin’ dude. I walk up to her to see if she remembers the sad rock loser.
“Of coourse I remembah. I knew you were playin’, thaz why I caame!” Her name is Elke, I learn, and she works for Warner Brothers publishing, based in Munich. And, despite Frankfurt’s Sunday kind of ghost town, she informs me she’s in town for a big music business convention, and that our show should be packed tonight. The fellow she’s with is just a friend, well, I think that’s her opinion, he might have different thoughts. The three of us blab about nothing much for a while, and then, showtime.
Z now plays like a drum machine. He looks so bored and tired. His thing the last few days, with the exception of escape into the Marburg night, has been to sleep as much as humanly possible.
“See, if I sleep all the time we’re not doing anything, which is more or less all the time, I can trim the days down to four or five total hours of consciousness. That way, the remaining two weeks of the tour will only seem like three or four days.”
“You don’t think there’s any hope for us to have mad, hedonistic fun on this crazy continent?” I plead.
“McGruff, you’ve been here, right? You think everything is just gonna magically change in the eleventh hour? Forget it. Turn into Rip Van Winkle, like me.”
Fuck that, there has to be hope. I plop down on the bar stool adjacent to the lovely Elke. I’m feeling a little dejected suddenly, but try not to show it. “Don’t tell me you’re too tired to come out with me tonight,” she wants to know. “We could really have a time. I’ve got this!”
She reaches under her coat and into her blouse and whips out...a corporate credit card. “Back at my hotel, the bar’s open till 4:00 a.m. John Entwistle has been staying there, getting drunk as can be every night, buying drinks like nobody’s business. It doesn’t matter anyway. I can charge as much alcohol to Warner Brothers as I want.” She leans in closer. “I’ve got a great hotel room.”
Let’s see: a willing, bountiful blonde with a sky’s-the-limit expense account hanging around the world’s greatest bassist, Mr. John Entwistle. How can I screw this up?
“You got a car?” It had become a familiar question I present to the locals.
“No, dahling, but I can put a taxicab on the credit card.”
In keeping with the rest of the day’s non-activities, the aftershow dragged on interminably through time. Dahl was doing two lengthy interviews, Simon and Tim were having their billionth foosball championship, Jurgen was puttering around in the kitchen all in a tizzy, Z and Rat were lightly dozing on a couch, and the majority of the audience had moved on. Downstairs, by the decrepit, odorous bathrooms, Elke and I were passionately kissing. She confessed to me that she drinks too much and is probably an alcoholic, but who was I to cast aspersions in the lost city of Frankfurt. In a normal band, on a normal tour, I would have packed my equipment, placed it with the rest of the band’s stuff, and hopped in a cab with my blonde Venus/Blue Angel, but this was—needless to say, I explained to her—the way of Factsheet as best I could, and she laughed and laughed, and after awhile, she came to actually believe the oblique tales of the sorry loser rockers were in fact true. “You seem so frussstrated.”
Castrated was more like it. “Here’s the deal: I can take off with you after the gear is loaded providing I can get everywhere I need to go independently of the rest of the band. Problem is, we’re staying at this guy Jurgen’s house. We’re to follow him there. His address isn’t even in the itinerary. I have no idea where it is, and I don’t know my way around, obviously. So, I need to get back to Jürgen and Felix’s—that’s his cat, you see—house in the a.m. in order for us to get an early start for the next club so we can sit around there tomorrow all day and do nothing for a thousand hours in a row. I need to know exactly where his place is from your hotel or these guys will just leave me here.” I reconsider my last statement. “Hang on, maybe I’m onto something.”
“But Dahling, I don’t know my way around Frankfurt. I’m a stranger here, also. Maybe thiz Jurgen vill help.”
Being that she shares the German language with Jürgen and that she’s an all around go-getter to boot, she has a five or six minute talk with Jürgen to sort out these pending logistics. Great, we should be on our way in moments now. Apparently preliminary negotiations don’t go well.
“Well, I don’t know. He gave me very confused directions. He says he doesn’t really know how to get back and forth. This he told me after he said he’s lived here all hiz life. The fact is he dozen vont you to go with me.”
“What does he care?”
“He vonts all the leedle rock boyzz unter hiz rooof. Dahling, he’s a faaahhg!”
Okay, Okay. So he’s been swishing around all day like Liberace on Vaseline, that’s no reason to banter about derogatory remarks. Looks like we’re under the care of the Brian Epstein of Frankfurt, who wants nothing more than a Cellar Full of Boys. Great.
Elke hangs on my shoulder and leans over to kiss my neck, laughing. She laughs a lot, the lovely sound of gentle feminine amusement. It’s hard to express how happy I am that she has found humor in my continuing situation. I look over and Simon, Z, and Rat just glare at me. Her “friend” also seems to be doing a fair amount of glaring. On the other side of me at the bar, two amazing, exotic Arabian-looking girls in matching jumpsuits sit down. They start singing Motown songs a cappella and trying to get attention. Tim walks up and whispers to me, “What’s up with these girls? They look hot and ready to go.”
“Well, tell ‘em you’re a big American record producer, and you’d like to engage them in a little late-night artist development. You’ll have a session going before you know it.” Sheesh, do I have to think of everything?
Amazingly, this advice works, and now Tim has a double good, Doublemint dream date on his hands.
“We want to go to Mecca viss you, blon’ boy.”
“McGruff, what do they mean?” he asks.
“I think it’s a religious thing. Just be cautious when they pull out those serrated sacrificial carving knives. Could get messy.”
“Mecca is for dancing. It is in town.” A club, in other words.
“There, you see, Tim. ‘In town.’ Better start working on your one-way ticket outa Jürgenville.”
“What are you going to do, dahling,” demands Elke sternly, who doesn’t really care to exchange small talk with the Supremes of Tunisia.
“Well, I guess I’ll go to the house, since the princess won’t give us proper directions, and take a cab from there. Or maybe I can sweet-talk him into dropping me off at your hotel. I’m going to get there, don’t you worry your pretty little face.”
Simon, the band, Tim, and the Tunisian Supremes all pile into the van. The girls bounce up and down in the front seat, chanting, “Mecca! Mecca! Mecca!” Jürgen does know where that is, so he runs us by, presumably to off-load the girls as quickly as possible. Everyone encourages Tim to go with them, but he declines. He too has the Factsheet flu. “Noooo, I better nnnnot,” he sheepishly whines.
I’m just as bad. I should get this queen’s number, go to Elke’s hotel, and just call them in the morning and tell them where I am. I could be exchanging bass secrets with John the Ox and rolling in satin sheets with a blue-eyed German temptress, but instead I’m racing toward potent coffee and a cat named Felix.
Jürgen lives far from the club in some suburb or something. Hell, we might have been driving in circles for all I know. Down in the basement, everyone is hanging out and Jürgen is showing off his extensive collection of Fela Kuti records.
“Hey, Jürgen. Let’s go out. Whatdya say?”
He looks at me blankly.
“Yeah, you know, go get a drink. Just you and me, whatdya think? Well, whatdya know, I got the address to a great little bar right here in my pocket. See?”
He looks, and his eyes cross as his brow tenses. “That is a hotel.”
“Yeah, well, it’s got a bar, a damn fine one, I’m told. Open all night!”
“Not on Sunday.”
“The hell you say! Especially on Sunday.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. You guys need your rest.”
“Jurgen, I’m serious. Look at me, I’m rested. I’ve either been on a barstool or a toilet all day. I’m rested. Any more rest and I’m gonna bust.”
“No, no.” He begins looking around the room at everyone else.
“Just go and take a cab, McGruffwich,” say Rat, as he takes off his pants, revealing his scanty briefs, which in turn greatly diverts Jurgen’s attention.
“Right. Jurgen, how much is a cab gonna cost me to get to this hotel? Jurgen? Jurgen??”
“Oh, I don’t know. A lot. Stay here.”
Z starts giggling to himself. He looks at the record collection stashed in the corner. “Got any Benny Goodman?” he half-heartedly inquires.
I try for another twenty minutes to negotiate directions and a cash advance toward cab fare, but Jurgen is aloof, quietly waiting around for the next boy to disrobe. This is too much. I don’t even have enough money to afford a few hours of freedom. No Elke, no expense account, no Boris the Spider. I finally have the perfect night lined up, exactly as I’d professed to Z was still possible, and I can’t pull it off. I can’t get a ride, or pocket money, or directions, or our host’s address to return to should I escape, or a phone number to call back in the morning and tell them where to pick me up. These would all be normal things that guys would be willing to work out in the regular world. But in this parallel dimension, this backward world, I can’t even get this together. It’s better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven’t done—it’s an age-old proverb of more than a little truth. I give up and go to bed fully clothed—no assistance getting a ride for me, no floorshow for our host.
The next morning begins with the usual grog, as guys in long underwear and day-old stubble arise to scratch their balls and seek out a cup of coffee. Jurgen’s parents are up and about upstairs, stern looking upper-middle class folks who appear to be wondering just exactly where they went wrong in raising their only son. Sashayin’ around in a housecoat, fetching cappuccinos for the travelin’ old-school punk rock minstrel show. Already losing his hair and gay to boot, Jurgen was a skeleton in this reserved family’s closet. I nod to the barely-tolerant father as I pick up his phone and dial.
I ring up Elke’s room to see what sort of shenanigans I missed. Why I decide to torture myself in this manner is unknown to even me. It was no surprise she was in the early stages of nursing a hangover, but reasonably chipper just the same. I explain the tribulations that caused my failure to attend the festivities. Yes, Entwistle was there, drinks flowed all night long, blah blah blah. “But if you were here, I’m sure we wouldn’t have stayed on long with them. We’d have come up to my room, but I doubt we would have slept much.”
I can’t take it. I drop the phone. These were words of hope and desperation for me and my penis to hold on to for a while. Once again, the loser aspect of life on the Factsheet Euro-Blur Smell o’ Death Extravaganza had made a joker out of me. Words to remember as we lamely limped to our next destination, wherever the hell it might be, as we began to wind up our little musical vacation. Down in the basement, Ratboy has the ever-present sounds of Mr. Tom Waits on the stereo.
Well I’ve lost my equilibrium
And my car keys and my pride
The tattoo parlor’s warm
And so I huddle there inside
The grinding of the buzz saw
“What you want that thing to say?”
I says, “Just don’t misspell her name
Buddy, she’s the one that got away
Hanover, at least the area we are in, is a sleazy place. If you’re looking for quick, meaningless homosexual encounters and an easy place to score street heroin, let me recommend Hanover for your upcoming holiday. We get a buyout at the club and decide to turn as much of a profit as possible. A buyout means that rather than feeding us, the promoter gives us money to go out and buy our dinner. To turn a profit, the cheapest food rendering the most change is the goal. Our whole party—except for Dahl (is it even necessary to point out his absence on such expeditions away from clubs and hotels anymore?)—walks several blocks to the nearby McDonalds. On the way, hordes of dazed-looking young men in leather accost us with all manner of propositions, from male prostitution, drug deals, to offers of quickies in a nearby alley. In the McDonalds, similar freaks intermingle with normal folks in search of leftover junk food tidbits and a modest variety of other quick hustles. This Mickey D’s has an upstairs, where we settle in amidst florescent light and Ronald McDonald bright vinyl benches and tables. A guy stumbles up next to us and scrounges a goopy mound of melted ice cream directly off the adjacent table. Mmm mmm good. He falters back from the table, nearly losing his balance, rights himself, and then stares us down. While he fixes his unfocused gaze at us, we notice the crotch of his Levi’s darken as he wets himself. That completed, he trips off just as quickly.
Z is more depressed than ever. He no longer desires to leave the hotels during the day, much like our leader. Ratboy and I have been spending the recent German days scouring the local record shops, scoring some noteworthy finds, but Z is too bored and dejected to tag along. After the Hanover performance, he disappears.
“You probably know Z the best, wouldn’t you say?” Simon asks me when no one’s paying attention.
“Yeah, me or Rat, that would be fair to say.”
“He told me he was going back toward the red light district to score some heroin. What do ya reckon?”
The fact was that Z was no stranger to the breakfast of chump-ions. He had a problem before, especially during his rock ‘n’ roll slumming days in the seedier parts of Hollywood. But that was quite a while ago. Surely he wouldn’t backslide now, here. I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
“Naw, he was just pullin’ your leg. I’m sure he’ll be right back.” That’s what I say, anyway, but in reality I am more than a little worried. After we load the van, he turns up and claims he just took a stroll through the red light district. Duly noted. He hops in the van, and we head to the hotel.
After some morning CD shopping in beautiful downtown Hanover, we make the short drive to Kassal, where Z and I share a room. Z makes a less-than-startling confession.
“The truth is, I did buy some heroin last night. Fifty marks, I got this much and an outfit.” He rolls up his sleeve and begins the ritual. I guess I’m in no position to chastise him, as I had purchased a huge chunk of hashish, which I was rolling up with some tobacco as Z fixed.
“You wanna snort some?” he offered.
“No, that’s okay. I’m fine with my hash. Are you sure that’s a good idea for you? You remember how fucked up you got behind that shit before?”
“I don’t care anymore. Fuck it.” He pushes the plunger in, while my Bic ignites a hashish spliff. A moment later, Z is at the sink, vomiting. What a joy being a full-time junkie must be, daily puke fests being just a sidebar to the complete article. Z looks sick the rest of the day, colorless and vampiric. I’m pleasantly stoned as we walk through the one-street curiosity known as Kassal to get some air, but Z is almost greenish, deathly looking. But it ain’t my place to play daddy, besides, Z is his own man, he’ll do what he wants anyway, even if he knows full well that it’s stupid.
The gig tonight is at Spot, and I think they mean that as in blemish. The outside walls of the venue are decorated/defaced with skinhead and Satanic graffiti. Make no mistake, the Devil walks among us has a lot of pals amongst the youth of Germany. Spot breaks three existing tour records all at once: It is the absolute coldest place we’ll play, even worse than the meat locker in Montargis. We will remain longer on the premises than any other place we are to play, longer even than the Frankfort/Jürgen holding tank. And it will have the worst sound, even topping the incompetence of soundmen in places like Italy and Spain. Even our buddies, Mind Overboard, who theoretically are more used to this than we are, seem to be freezing to death and restless.
The pinball machines don’t work, even Tim and Simon seem like they can take foosball anymore. Rat and Z play pool (poorly) in a dormant lounge beside the main concert room. Dahl is once again sniffing and sneezing, sitting in a corner looking miserable. We find a boom box and some tapes behind the bar, and crank up some unknown surf music. Z retrieves a Sinatra tape, and, in what is a teary, touching scene, Rat and I slow dance to “The Shadow of Your Smile.” Something in 3/4 kicks in, and Rat attempts to teach me how to waltz, proving that proper European breeding has its cultural advantages.
We get another buy-out, but only the Factsheeters are interested in eating. Actually, we’re more keen on thawing, so we walk a couple of blocks to an Indian restaurant with superb food, best since Italy. When you’ve been eating almost nothing but bread and cheese and McDonalds buy-outs, a really killer meal is all the more head spinning and hallucination inducing. We sit, eat, and grouse about what a fuckin’ drag this whole thing has become, how the days and nights have begun to stretch out into eternity since we’ve been crawling through Deutschland.
Upon returning to Spot, Dahl informs us that he’s instructed the DJ to play some Johnny Thunders records—two more songs to be exact—and then we’re on. Beginning to feel the consequences of our elaborate curried cuisine, Rat and I inform the Master that we need to defecate prior to dishing out the rock.
The men’s bathroom is as fucked up as everything else at Spot. There are five stalls, three of which appear to be unoccupied and locked from the inside, while a fourth is backed up and unusable, and the fifth occupied by somebody who isn’t in much of a hurry. Finally, he exits, as Johnny Thunders’ “Pirate Love” jams through the P.A. Rat goes up to bat. I wait. These things must be done delicately, ya know. Finally, as Thunders’ “Goin’ Steady” begins to rock the house, it’s my turn. I’m dealing with the situation at hand when the song ends, and I hear Dahl’s voice through the P.A.: “We’d like to start but our bass player’s takin’ a shit!” Jeff then plays his solo rendition of Thunders’ “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory.” He could have just waited one more DJ song, but oh well, if he wants to play solo, that’s cool with me.
I emerge from stall number five, get my bass, and walk onstage, smiling, as I think it’s pretty funny in a way that the audience knows what I’ve been doing. Dahl is not sharing in my mirth. In fact, he’s pretty pissed off. “Thanks a lot!” he snaps at me, as if I’ve ruined the whole show.
Rat looks at him, then at me, and just shakes his head. Dahl wants to be a little baby, so I decide to join him, and instead of doing our usual rock show, I just stand back by Z and stare stone-faced at the crowd. I pass on my vocal parts, too. Knowing full well there’s fuck-all to do in this shit excuse for a place to live, when the show’s over, I just wanna get the hell back to the hotel, smoke hash, and not be bothered by anyone.
“He’s insane, you know that, don’t you?” Z asks, once inside our little drug den.
“Who?”
“Dahl. That was the fucking stupidest thing I ever saw tonight. Who cares if we can’t start the split second some Johnny Thunders record ends. Rock music shouldn’t run on such a tight schedule. It’s not the evening news.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I agreed, starting to get riled up. Z, after being high for quite awhile, decides to nod off. He makes strange weeping-singing noises in his sleep while I toss and turn, haunted by a sense of boredom mixed with a doom that I can’t quite get a handle on. Tomorrow, we take Berlin.
The drive starts off on a bad note when I, referring to our leader, loudly ask Tim, “Where’s Dickface?”
“He’s up on top in the back,” which meant that he indeed heard me reducing myself to such childish retaliation as name-calling. Meanwhile, Z is junk sick in the back seat. I’m sure he did the rest of his score this morning, as he spends a fair amount of time at our roadside stops throwing up. Z has only told me that he had the junk, but Rat figures it out easily enough.
We get to Berlin with extra time to see the sights for a full two hours. Dahl naturally stays in, Rat decides to make some calls, and Z has a sleep in hope of recovery. The remainders head off to the Berlin Wall, where we each buy a small piece of it for a couple of marks. We see Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gates, and walk into East Germany. We see various remnants and reminders of the armies and generals who once raged as kings down these very streets. Two hours pass fast, and we’ll never make it all the way back in time for soundcheck on foot, and not wanting to cause yet another uproar, we pool our dwindling German money and cab it back to Factsheet Central.
The club is called Trash, and it’s the kind of well set up, yet much worn club that you expect to see in a major city. The staff is rude and unfriendly, but the audience is one of the best we’ve had, making it our first straight-up fun show in some time. The Mind Overboard guys come onstage and join us on such essential rockage as “Sonic Reducer” and two complete run-throughs of “Louie Louie.” It’s the last show with Overboard, which we’ll miss in a way. They invite us out for drinks, but of course we don’t go, not at this point, not in the Master’s van, not as broke as we are.
No one, band or crew, is talking to Dahl. It can be real tough to be the boss, sometimes. The good news is, we can once and for all say auf Wiedersehen to Germany.