Say Goodbye Read online

  “I said, ‘Has anybody ever told you you’re a little weird?’

  “ ‘Actually, no,’ she says. ‘I’ve done a pretty good job of hiding it until now.’ Maybe she was pulling my chain, but I believed her. I believed I had walked in on the first stage of her metamorphosis from something kind of ordinary and simple into, like, the refined essence of Laurie Moss. It was like this other person was coming right out through her skin, and it was intensely, physically painful for her.

  “She said another thing that really touched me. She said, ‘Listening to that tape just now was the first time, ever, that I believed something might happen with my songs. That somebody might actually want to buy an album to listen to them.’ And she said it was me that made that happen, which is ridiculous, but it was still a really nice thing for her to say.”

  They wrapped up the other three songs in less than two hours. “One or two takes was all it took. I mean, I still remembered them from hearing her play them, once, at the Duck. She wrote me a check while I packed up, and I started out the door, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just walk away.”

  Suddenly Gabe switches off the tape player, puts the tape back in the case, and hands it to me. “Here. I’ve got another one. I can see that you really need to have this.”

  I protest unconvincingly and then let him give me the tape. The insert, obviously produced at Kinko’s, features a fuzzy photo of Laurie, her name, and the title Red Dress of Grievances. “Thank you,” I say. “I can’t tell you…”

  “You don’t have to,” he says. “I basically feel the same as you do about her. I was already feeling it when I played on that tape. Which I guess is why I turned around in her doorway and asked her what she was doing the next night. She stood there and stared at me—I mean, she obviously thought I was coming on to her. So I said, ‘It’s not like that. It’s just that there’s some people I think you ought to meet.’ ”

  THE BAND

  Whittier

  One truth about LA is that it’s a city made up of small towns. Each has its own personality—from the cool, piney elegance of Pasadena to the carnival excess of Venice, from the high-walled pretensions of Bel Air to the border-town hustle of Santa Ana—and at the same time they’re united by a top-down, palm-trees-and-stucco, drive-in kind of feeling that is the essence of LA. The only part of the city that doesn’t belong is the concrete and mirror-glass heart of downtown Los Angeles itself.

  What better place for the entertainment industries that service the world than a city with a hundred different faces, all wearing the same distracted smile?

  It’s the evening after my first interview with Gabe, a clear Thursday night in November, and I’m in Whittier, ten miles southeast of LA’s central business district. This was once a Quaker city, named for their poet laureate, as is Greenleaf Avenue, which runs through the middle of their one-story 1950s downtown. Richard Nixon grew up here, working at the family grocery store, back when Whittier was covered by orange groves. The orange groves are gone now, of course, throughout LA County and neighboring Orange County too. The land is worth too much to waste it on trees.

  Jim Pearson, Laurie’s keyboard player and co-producer, lives five minutes from downtown Whittier in a neighborhood of fading three-bedroom, forty-year-old, California ranch-style houses. As I park at the curb, I can hear music straining through the foil-covered windows of his garage. It’s a presence more than a sound, bass guitar and the faint crack and swish of drums.

  I try to imagine how Laurie felt walking up this sidewalk for the first time. Gabe had told her only that it was a garage band, that they played a couple of times a week, that there were three others besides himself: a guitarist, a drummer, a keyboard player. She knew how good Gabe was, and how reluctant he was to talk about the group. She must have suspected something—slumming superstars, illegal Haitian Kreyol musicians, Buddy Holly back from the dead. If she was nervous about playing a tape for Gabe in her own apartment, she must have been petrified at the thought of jamming here with strangers.

  Or did she feel, as Bobbi D’Angelo put it, Destiny’s hand on the phone, about to dial her number?

  The concrete slab that forms the porch is sinking, and oleanders have overrun the wooden trellises on either side. At the front door I’m afraid to ring the bell because I know Jim is recording. I knock quietly and the door opens on a light-skinned black woman in her thirties, close to my height, very thin. Behind her is a seven-year-old boy in shorts and a navy-blue sweatshirt, holding one shoe in each hand. He is fair-skinned with dark brown peppercorn hair. “These are the new shoes,” he is patiently explaining. “I want the old ones.”

  I introduce myself.

  “I’m Molly,” she says, offering her hand. “This is Sam.” Without looking away from me, she slightly hardens the pitch of her voice. “We can’t find the old shoes. Put those shoes on and let’s go.” She smiles. “Jim’s in the garage. Take a left at the kitchen to the end of the hall. Don’t knock, just go in.”

  It was barely a two-car garage to start with, and Jim has turned the back third, the third I’ve just entered, into a sound booth. Jim sits on a barstool in front of a plywood countertop, his fingers lightly touching various knobs and faders. He has curly orange hair over his ears and an orange beard and mustache. He’s in black jeans and a worn, tan, 70s-looking sport shirt that stretches tight over his stomach. Next to him, inch-wide brown recording tape runs through an Ampeg deck with reels the size of dinner plates.

  He nods to a second stool and I sit down. In the rest of the garage is a four-piece band, three women and a man. The music is dissonant in a practiced, deliberate way that appeals to me. The singer makes sudden leaps with her two-octave range while the drummer keeps up a steady throb with her toms and kick drum.

  Moth-eaten blankets hang from the rafters and there are egg cartons glued to the ceiling. A battered sofa leans against one wall next to a half-sized refrigerator. What light there is comes from various mismatched table lamps on the floor, some of them with bandannas over them, casting odd shadows on faces and making the corners seem to writhe.

  The take breaks down and Jim says, “Not bad, that was really close,” into an intercom. “Why don’t we start fresh tomorrow night?”

  I introduce myself, and Jim says that he’s glad to finally meet me in person. We shake hands and he tells me the band is called Estrogen. “Actually, they knew Laurie. We did some shows together, and Laurie used to borrow Dan’s amp in the early days.”

  We move into the kitchen, where Jim gathers up Little Caesar’s pizza detritus from the green Formica table and takes orders for coffee and Cokes. Dan, the dark and massive lead guitarist, leans on his forearms and says, “She had to remind me of it later, but I actually talked to her on her second night in LA. We were doing a no-cover Monday at the Whiskey and she came up after and told me she really liked us. She said if there was any justice we’d be famous. I told her I’d settle for luck. This was around the time of the O.J. murders and all. I told her justice was tricky and you never knew what it was going to cost.”

  Jim finally sits and pours himself a Coke from the three-liter plastic bottle in the middle of the table. He talks to the band about the evening’s work for a while, then they excuse themselves to pack up for a gig. When they’re out of earshot, Jim says, “They’re pretty talented. Also very professional and patient. They’ve all got day jobs and they’re funding this out of their own pockets, so I’m undercharging them rather seriously. They’ll press about a thousand CDs, which they’ll sell at their shows. With any luck they’ll eventually get their money back and maybe some college stations will play a cut or two when they hit town on a tour.”

  I get out my recorder and set in the middle of the table. “Is this okay?”

  Jim nods and tells me how he’d wanted his own studio since he was in a bar band in the late seventies. “Some people build model railroads. I wanted to put together overblown rock symphonies—you know, the whole pretentious classic-rock keyb
oard trip. It started out as pure self-indulgence, but eventually I fell into recording other people to help pay for my habit. Now I bring in enough from recording and producing that I only have to work 20 hours a week at my straight job.” The straight job is printed circuit design, which gives him a flexible schedule and lets him do a lot of work from his house.

  The jam sessions evolved over a period of two years “or thereabouts. There were three of us that were the core, with different drummers. It was what we did instead of poker, I guess, an excuse to get together and drink a few beers and not have to talk about anything too serious. Dennis had been drumming with us for three months. He was younger than the rest of us, but reasonably unobnoxious for a drummer, and we were pretty sanguine about the whole setup.”

  Jim pauses, then says, “Obviously Gabe was not that sanguine, or he never would have brought Laurie in. I remember when he told me he’d invited somebody, I nearly had a seizure. It was a bit like telling your wife you’d invited a movie starlet to sleep over. We didn’t do things like that.”

  “So you didn’t like the idea.”

  “No, actually, I thought it was great. So maybe I wasn’t that sanguine either. But there were those among us who were definitely not going to like the idea. One of us. There was one of us. Gabe said, ‘I don’t care. We need this.’ And I said, ‘Fine, but you’re telling him, not me.’ ”

  “ ‘Him’ being the legendary Skip Shaw.”

  Jim nods and refills his glass.

  Jamming

  Jim remembers answering the door to find Laurie on the porch, flanked by her father’s guitar case and a practice amp the size of a large purse. She shook his hand and said, “Laurie Moss.”

  “Well,” Jim said, “I guess you won’t be dating Mick Jagger.”

  “Pardon?” She was nervous and confused, and Jim saw this had sailed right past her.

  “Rolling Stones?” Jim said, embarrassed now himself. “Gathering no Moss? Sorry. I can’t seem to learn not to make fun of people’s names. It only pisses everyone off and makes me look like an idiot. This way.”

  Gabe was already in the garage. Jim introduced Dennis, no more than a mane of yellow hair behind the drums, and Laurie nodded. She seemed to be trying to take in all the details without looking naive. There was Jim’s Yamaha DX7 keyboard, state of the art in the 80s and something of a relic in 1995. In the corner was a beautiful black vintage Fender Twin Reverb amplifier that was unaccounted for.

  Jim pointed to her practice amp. “You want me to plug this in, or do you want to use Skip’s amp until he gets here?”

  “I don’t think Skip would like that, man,” Gabe said.

  “My amp is fine,” Laurie said. “Who’s Skip?”

  Jim made covert eye contact with Gabe. “Our guitar player,” Gabe said, at the same moment that Jim said, “Skip Shaw.”

  “You mean, the Skip Shaw? As in ‘Tender Hours’ Skip Shaw? He’s still—”

  “Alive?” Jim said. “Ambulatory? Able to play? Yes to all the above, amazingly, despite certain ongoing efforts on his part. I’m surprised you know who he is, actually.”

  “My dad absolutely loved him. He’s really coming? My dad will simply die.”

  From behind her a hoarse baritone said, “He’s here. Feeble, wizened bastard that he is.”

  She turned and Jim saw their eyes lock. Skip was well over six feet tall, thin in the chest, somewhat thicker around the middle. He wore faded jeans, cowboy boots, a mostly-yellow Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned halfway to his waist. His face was weathered to a walnut color and crinkled at the corners of the eyes and mouth; his long, graying brown hair was combed straight back from his high forehead. He had a battered guitar case hanging from one hand and a Lucky Strike burning in the other.

  “Laurie,” Jim said, “this is Skip.”

  “Hi,” Laurie said. Jim thought she looked twelve years old at that moment. “I always loved ‘Tender Hours.’ It’s a beautiful song.”

  “Ah yes,” he said, walking to his amp. “ ‘Tender Hours.’ Those were the days. Folk rock. Model ‘A’s. Flocks of passenger pigeons that blotted out the sun.”

  She looked to Gabe for a clue as to how she should react. Gabe shrugged and turned away. Skip opened his guitar case and took out a weathered red Gibson hollow-body and strapped it on. “Don’t pay me any mind, sweetie,” he said. “Deep inside I’m touched that you’ve heard of me at all.”

  The “sweetie” must have seemed especially patronizing, but then Skip was, in fact, old enough to be her father. Jim watched her opt for professionalism, crouching on the floor with her electronic tuner and getting ready to play.

  “Jim,” Skip said. “Gimme an E.” He was still watching Laurie. Jim played a note on the keyboard and Skip tuned up at full volume, giving each peg a sharp, strong twist. Laurie plugged in her father’s guitar and, when Skip stopped to light another cigarette, tried a chord.

  Jim put a microphone in front of her amp. “Don’t want you to get drowned out.”

  Skip took a Budweiser out of the refrigerator. “Anybody else?”

  “Me,” said Dennis from behind the drums. Skip took one over to him, walking closer to Laurie than strictly necessary, clearly and deliberately moving through her personal space. Jim noted the way she held completely still as he passed, not even breathing.

  “So,” Skip said. “You guys want to try and play something?”

  “We could,” Laurie said shyly, “do something of yours.”

  Skip waved the idea away. “I’m sick of all that shit. Why don’t we do one of these songs of yours that Gabe was so hot and bothered about?” She glanced up too late to find sarcasm, if it was ever there.

  “What about that minor-seventh blues thing?” Gabe asked.

  “Um, you mean ‘Neither Are We’?”

  Gabe nodded. Skip said, “Go for it.”

  Laurie ran through the chords for Skip and Jim with self-conscious bravado. Gabe fell in as soon as she began to play in rhythm, and it visibly buoyed her. “What do you want from me?” Jim asked. “Kind of a three AM tinkly piano?”

  “Organ,” she said. “That B3/Leslie sound, real throaty and spare.” She eased in beside him as he changed his settings, saying, “The melody goes dah da-da-dah da-da-dah dah, and you do a response, dat daaaah dat, like a horn part.” She played it on the DX7. “Then through the progression.” She showed him the rest of the chords.

  “So you play keyboards, too?”

  “Not really,” she said, stepping back, trying not to look too proud, Jim thought, at having successfully shown off. “Some piano lessons as a kid.”

  He played the part through a couple of times while Laurie went back to guitar. “I get it,” he said.

  Dennis built quietly on his toms then went to the ride cymbal and snare.

  Her face relaxed into quiet pleasure. After half a minute Jim saw her glance at Skip, but he was no longer watching her. His eyes were closed and his head leaned forward as if he’d fallen asleep on his feet, except that his left hand moved silently up and down the neck of his guitar, feeling its way toward something. Suddenly it slid high up to squeeze out a single prolonged, piercing note.

  Laurie walked over to a vocal mike in the middle of the room, stopped playing long enough to switch it on, opened her mouth, and sang.

  It came together that fast, and everyone in the room knew it. Jim looked at Gabe and got a nod and slow smile in return. The air was sweet with the smells of hot electronics, camphor from the drums, the crème rinse in Laurie’s sweat-damp hair, the ancient musky odor of the garage. The pressure of the sound waves caressed their skins and vibrated all the way through them.

  At some point Skip stopped them long enough to say, “How about we roll a little tape on this?” And much, much later, after Laurie did a final vocal take, standing alone in the center of the garage in headphones while Gabe and Skip sat on the couch and Dennis lay on his back on the floor, she looked at her watch and said, “Oh my god. I have to be at work in f
ive hours.”

  Everyone left at the same time. Nobody said anything about doing it again. “But really,” Jim says, “I think everything after that first look that passed between Skip and Laurie was inevitable. Everyone in the room knew the two of them were going to end up in bed together, and every one of us, for our own individual reasons, tried to talk ourselves into believing we were wrong.”

  Jim plays me the version of “Neither Are We” they recorded that night. It is nearly the same arrangement as on the album—the recording quality not as pristine, the fit of the parts somewhat looser, Skip’s guitar more drawn out and showy, Laurie’s voice slightly hoarse from the long night’s work. Getting to hear it is a privilege, payback for these long days and nights away from home.

  “So,” Jim says, walking me out to my rent car. “Have you been in touch with Laurie at all about this?”

  “I wrote her. And left a couple of messages on her machine. But she hasn’t answered. I don’t think she wants to be involved with this. Which I can understand.”

  “Have you tried email?”

  “Email?”

  “She hates phones, and she thinks letters are too much work. But I still get email from her a couple of times a week. If you’ve got an address, I’ll pass it along to her. No promises, but it’s worth a try.”

  I give him the address. This seems too good to be true, especially after the unexpected bonus of hearing the tape. I head for my kitchenette in Anaheim, feeling hopeful for the first time in days.

  Summer

  On Friday night I drive back to Santa Monica to catch Summer at the Duck. She is headlining and the bar is two-thirds full as she takes the stage for her first set. I’ve gotten a definite sense of scene-in-progress for the last half hour, with people moving from table to table exchanging glancing kisses and handshakes, but now everyone quickly finds a seat.