He was a lunatic, a liar, the Lord, and a bandit and a heartbreaker, too. His story was almost as sad as Judee Sill’s/
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Category: Uncategorized (Page 202 of 1031)
ONE
Sit down, Younger Enthusiasts, and let your Uncle TotD tell you all about the Old Days. Of atavistic and skinny-legged men, and of Cadillacs in swimming pools. Of an album a year, and all the cocaine Stevie Nicks could blow up your ass. Of airplanes with shag carpeting and shaggable stewardesses. Of pilgrimages to Graceland, and mud sharks, and some fucker named Roy Harper. Of not being able to decide between the Rolls and the Jag. Of Guitar Heroes and Drum Solos and Acoustic Mini-Sets.
Hold up your lighters, kids. Hold up your lighters if you remember laughter.
In the back of the photo, that’s a Pan Am jet. Pan Am was an airline, and you would shower and wear clean slacks to fly. In the air, you could smoke cigarettes and take the plane hostage with whatever weapon you’d smuggled aboard because airport security didn’t exist in 1970.
In the front of the photo, that’s a Led Zeppelin. They were a British band who played loudly and behaved badly. In their defense, they were showered with rewards for both their volume and their assholery, so why should they have stopped?
In their hands are the master tapes for Led Zeppelin II. You cannot imagine the pace of the music industry in 1970, Younger Enthusiast. Zepp’s first record came out in January of ’69; their fourth was released in November of ’71. This was not abnormal, especially for new bands: Cheap Trick’s first three albums came out in the span of 14 months. Hell, even the Stones came through with a record every year.
However, it wasn’t like they were lolling around the studio waiting for inspiration to strike in between releases. They were on the road constantly, and so had to write tunes in hotel rooms and demo them in local hole-in-the-wall studios. Then, the Rock Stars would fly to Los Angeles to do the mixing. That was the rule. They’d record somewhere romantic–an 18th-century French chalet or a thatched hut in Wales–and then they’d fly to Los Angeles to mix. (And stay in their favorite hotels and go to their favorite bars and fuck their favorite groupies.)
And in doing that, they needed to lug the masters around. Those boxes are not the vinyl versions of the first couple Dick’s Picks, but reels of two-inch Ampex tape. Cassette tapes were a quarter-inch across, so these suckers were eight times better. (That’s probably not correct.) And remember: those are the only copies. The past is not the present, Younger Enthusiast. First of all, it happened a long time ago. Second, there was no auto-save. Nothing automatically copied itself to the cloud. You recorded a song, wrote a novel, whatever? You only had the one copy.
So the guitars and the fanciful trousers go under the plane, but the masters get carried the whole trip.
TWO
This is Jimmy Page. He was a Guitar Hero. Sometimes he wore very cool clothes.
Other times, he did not.
Did your nan knit you your magickal jumper, Jimmy?
“I finished up your Zoso sweater, Nummy.” (Jimmy Page’s grandmother calls him “Nummy.”)
“That’s not how it’s pronounced, Gamma.” (Jimmy Page calls his grandmother “Gamma.”)
“Is it the name of your favorite football team, dear?”
“No, Gamma, it’s very spooky and mystical.”
“Oh, that’s lovely.”
THREE
Percy–they all had nicknames; the British are a people given to the nicking of names–was a puffed-up tosspot, and Jonesy was dull and passive-aggressive; neither of them meant any harm. They stood by while bystanders were being harmed, and were occasionally amused by the harming, but they weren’t assholes. Pagey was a pretentious cheapskate who liked fucking teenagers: Byronic in every way, and so dangerous to know; Pagey was an asshole. But Bonzo? That motherfucker was a monster.
Bozo was the kind of beef-brained thicky who thought Alex and his droogs from Clockwork Orange were the good guys. He dressed like that–and forced his dogsbody Mick Hinton to wear a similar costume–the entire ’73 tour. He lived up to the outfit, too: he punched women from the record company, and men in restaurants, and–since Zeppelin liked to party in drag queen bars–most likely struck at least one genderfluid person. Bozo wasn’t a Keith Moon-like scamp who played pranks that got out of hand; he was stupid and liked to hurt strangers. Y’know what he thought was a funny joke, and would do all the time? Shit in women’s purses. Lady would leave her purse sitting there and Bozo would shit in it. Ha ha ha.
He wasn’t like this at home, all his friends and enablers say in all the books. With his wife and children, he was a calm and friendly bloke, but the road weighed on him to the point where the only remedy was to shit in women’s purses and punch drag queens. Homesickness! All the books say it, and all the books think they’re defending him, but this fact only further damns the man: he wasn’t a psychopath who no control over his actions. He was able, when he chose, to restrain himself and behave like a human.
If you ain’t crazy, then you’re culpable.
FOUR
Zeppelin didn’t do teevee. They did a half-hour set on a Danish program in March of ’69, and that was it. No SNL and no Mike Douglas Show and no Midnight Special and certainly not Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert. You wanted to see Led Zeppelin, then you went to see Led Zeppelin. No freebies, kid. Besides, they didn’t need the publicity.
So the band, image-wise, is locked in ember in 1975, caught on 35mm film in Madison Square Garden. When you picture Led Zeppelin, you picture them from The Song Remains The Same, the concert movie released in 1976.
It is for this reason, Younger Enthusiast, that all Rock Nerds know that Robert Plant wears his root to the left.
That’s the whole film, Younger Enthusiast. It’s just 2.5 hours of Percy’s potato salad and a drum solo.
“Are we comparing bulges, darling?”
Who is that?”
Oh, hey, Freddie.
“Is that what Percy is calling a bulge? It’s all balls.”
I don’t wanna have this conversation.
“Your loss, darling.”
FIVE
This is that Denmarkish teevee show I told you about.
SIX
And this is Pagey from The Song Remains The Same.
The tough part is finding the right shoes. What goes with a crushed-velour dragon suit?
SEVEN
The Dead always flew. Some bands had a bus, but the Dead always flew. Commercial at first, and then private. But they never had their own plane.
Button your shirt, Jonesy. You’re not pulling it off. You look like a barrister on holiday in Blackpool; all you need is the knotted handkerchief atop your noggin.
Anyway, that’s the Starship. Here’s another shot:
The plane takes you to the limo which takes you to the hotel which takes you to the venue, and then reverse, and then do it again. Repeat for six weeks or so. Hit the clinic before the flight home. Rock and fucking roll, maaaaaaan.
There weren’t, like, seats or anything so pedestrian inside the Starship. There were couches and tables and thick carpeting and, of course, an organ.
That’s Jonesy playing it.
And that’s Elton John, who loved playing with organs.
There was even a fireplace, because it was the 70’s and everyone was on drugs, including people who built airplanes.
Bobby Sherman owned it. He was a Teen Idol in the 60’s, had a ton of hits and teevee appearances and movie roles, and decided to spread his wings into business in the 70’s. He bought a Boeing 720–the very first one that had come off the line in 1960–from United Airlines in 1973 and Rock Starred up the interior.
It was an immediate success. Zeppelin were the first to lease the jet, and then the rest of the Rock world followed suit: Elton and Alice Cooper and Deep Purple and even the Stones. (Mick supposedly found the plane as vulgar as Oscar Wilde’s curtains.)
The constant touring had the same effect on the Starship as it did the bands, and she was retired in 1978 to be scrapped for parts. Let’s look at John Paul Jones trying to be sexy again:
Oh, Jonesy.
EIGHT
Don’t do drugs and worship Satan, kids.
This was ’77. The tour went precisely as well as this photograph would suggest, and ended with the assault in San Francisco and a phone call from back home telling Robert Plant that his four-year-old son was dead. The band would take 18 months off and return to the stage at Knebworth for two gigs that drew 400,000. In Through The Out Door sold like it was supposed to, but Presence was muddled and it was an open question as to what place Led Zeppelin would have in the 80’s.
John Bonham answered the question on September 25th, 1980. There would be reunions, varying widely in success, but the mighty Zepp was no more.
NINE
This is Lori Maddox. She looks like she’s 14 because she is.
You didn’t think we were gonna skip this part, did you?
Pagey liked ’em young. Now, “liking ’em young” was pretty much industry standard for the time, but Pagey stood out. Shit, he’s still at it:
She’s 22. Pagey has a type.
Lori Maddox was one of a clique of pubescent Los Angeles teens that hung out at an all-ages glam joint called the English Disco which was run by Rodney Bingenheimer, who was a rapey elf. Rock Stars would cruise the dance floor for girls, and they’d always find one. Lori was best friends with Sable Starr. They went to middle school together during the day, and the Rainbow at night.
This is what Lori and Sable looked like when they were partying with Slade:
Pagey saw her at the Whiskey or something one night and dispatched road manager Richard Cole to snatch her up and bring her back to the Riot House. Mostly, he kept her stashed away in his suite. Perhaps this suggests that Pagey knew what he was doing was wrong?
Nope! It says that he knew what he was doing was illegal, but he didn’t think it was wrong.
Maybe because it wasn’t, not at the time. Not in that Los Angeles. None of his peers would have any problem with his actions, and Lori wanted to be there. She’s still alive. Says she doesn’t regret a thing. But she also says she’d now regard any 30-year-old (Pagey is 30 in the above picture) who came sniffing around her 14-year-old daughter (Lori is 14 in the picture) as, well, a pederast.
Times change, and so do people.
TEN
Someone must remember laughter. Are you telling me that not one person has any memory whatsoever of laughter? Nobody? I don’t believe that. Go ask again.
Who are these people?
“Kevin Parker and Travis Scott.”
…
“Kevin’s the white one.”
Those names don’t give much of a clue.
“True. It’s not like Benmont Tench is standing next to Yung Thug.”
Right. You would be 99% sure of who was who in that situation.
“Are we being racist?”
I think we’re just being observant. But we could rephrase what we just said in a way that would make it racist as fuck.
“Let’s not.”
Why do you know these people?
“I did SNL with them.”
Oh, John, do you have another band? Do you need to see someone about this?
“It’s just a sit-in. I wrote the song with Travis.”
Lemme see this so-called SNL performance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcHxxwAXS_E
Is that what we’re calling a song nowadays?
“What was wrong with it?”
It didn’t have a chorus. Or a verse. Or a hook. It was, like a meth addict masturbating, both busy and pointless.
“Your opinion is neither welcome nor informed. Travis’ last record went to number one.”
Sounds like number two.
“You’re such a miserable–”
CELL PHONE NOISE
“–prick. Goddammit.”
Just answer it.
…
“You’re on with John.”
“Jonno, me lad, I hear you’re in need of management.”
“Is this Peter Grant?”
“The one and only.”
“I’m all fixed as far as representation goes, Pete.”
“You call me ‘Pete’ again an’ I’ll rip your fish-lips off, you right cunt.”
“Wow.”
“I’m your manager now. Me and your Jew worked it out when I dangled him out a window.”
“You dangled Irving Azoff out a window!?”
“Jus’ for a little bit.”
“Wow.”
“I’ve booked us some dates. 30 shows in 28 nights starting tomorrow. Also, I get 50% of your earnings from now on.”
“I don’t deserve this.”
Do you have any–
“I have no idea who any of these people are.”
–have any idea…figured.
“I know that one of them is named James Erection. I suppose that’s a punker.”
Jane’s Addiction, Bobby. Two of the men you’re with were in a band called Jane’s Addiction.
“The same Jane from Truckin’?”
I don’t think so.
“Branford’s here.”
Nope.
We’re running out of divas, aren’t we?
ONE
Led Zeppelin is a 15-year-old’s unwanted erection: you can neither engage with it nor ignore it, but he thinks it’s special. 15-year-old boys and their erections are Zepp’s audience, both when the group existed and today.
TWO
Blondie on the left is Robert Plant; he was a twit.
Behind him is John Paul Jones, who was the best musician of the four of them, and also the least interesting.
The foppish man taking a guitar solo is Jimmy Page. I do not know for sure that he is soloing in the photo; if he wasn’t, then he soon would be.
On drums is the Philadelphia Flyers’ new mascot, Gritty.
“Oi! I’ve pissed meself again!”
Shut the fuck up, Gritty.
THREE
Zepp is the fount from which all great Rock Clichés sprung. Preening, egotistical lead singer with great hair? Bringing the occult into it for no reason? Staying at the Hyatt House in LA? Semi-human drummer? Violent management? Deflowered schoolgirls? De-furnitured hotel rooms? That was all Zeppelin. They were to Rock n’ Roll what Orwell is to people complaining about Trump.
FOUR
Robert Plant was the mirror universe Robert Hunter: Hunter never wrote an embarrassing lyric, and Plant never wrote anything but. Percy (everyone called him Percy because, well, just fucking look at the poncey bastard) had two themes he returned to again and again:
- Women, and their wickedness.
- Hobbits and vikings and bullshit.
It would be an insult to serial rapists and lady-murderers to call this shit misogynistic: it’s galaxies beyond misogynist, spectacularly so, almost impressive in the venom reserved for women. Devils! Succubi! (Or incubi; whichever is the lady version; I always forget.) Mean mistreaters and lowdown cheaters! And those are just the ones that won’t fuck him. The ones that will want too much from Percy: even his powerful juices are not enough to quench her thirst, which leads to her running around, all over town, getting him down and making him frown.
Woman, right?
FIVE
This is 1975. Sound quality’s good, but the band’s already slipping. Robert Plant stopped sounding like Robert Plant in about 1973, and Jimmy Page was getting sloppier by the day. (Plus, he had broken the ring finger on his fretting hand the day before the tour started.)
And there’s this bullshit:
30 minute drum solo? Go fuck yourself and all your ancestors, Bozo. Just one asshole and one drum kit? Not two guys (plus guests) wandering around playing all sorts of different percussion instruments? At least there’s some variation there PLUS Billy and Mickey didn’t take a fucking half-hour. The longest Drums I can recall Without Research are from Spring ’78, and they were 20 minutes, but that tour featured the ultra-rare Full Band Drums. Garcia hopped on the steel drums, for fuck’s sake! That’s worth five minutes right there.
(They didn’t play Dazed and Confused for 42 minutes. They started it, then went into other jams and songs, and then ended with the ominous, stolen riff.)
SIX
Jimmy Page loved Satan. Or he was a junkie with shit taste in writers. Either one.
That’s Boleskine, which was previously owned by…wait for it…everyone’s favorite mountain-climbing, dope-sucking, received-wisdomifying nutty uncle Aleister Crowley. He did a lot of ritual sex magick at the house; I am assuming Jimmy had the couches deep cleaned. Also: the house was built on the site of an Medeival church that burned down with all the village’s children inside. And it was literally on Loch fucking Ness.
One can only imagine what Jimmy Page’s conversations with his real estate agent were like.
“Jimmy, I have a beautiful Georgian mansion in the West End that’s just come on the market.”
“Mm-hmm. Is it haunted?”
The other three Led Zeppelins bought farms in the North of England, like proper British Rock Stars.
SEVEN
The hero needs a magick sword, that’s all there is to it. Garcia had Wolf and Tiger, and Eddie Van Halen had the Frankenstrat, and B.B. King had Lucille, and Jimmy Page had the double-neck. Bill Graham recognized its power: when the band was late getting to the stage at one of his Days on the Green, he took the microphone and asked the crowd for patience. It was a rowdy crowd, not like the kids the Dead drew, and they were getting bored and angry.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll just bear with us. The band will be out here in a moment, but Jimmy’s having some problems with the double-neck. He really wants to get it right for you, but he’s having troubles with the double-neck.”
And the kids calmed right down.
It wasn’t a custom job. That is the Gibson EDS-1275, and every self-respecting guitar shop has one hanging on the highest peg on its wall. They still make it; you can have one overnighted to you if you’ve got seven grand. Pagey wasn’t even the only Guitar Hero to wield the double-neck, but he owned it, mostly because he was the only one who managed to make it look cool.
EIGHT
The songs don’t need to be this long, guys. This is someone who listens almost exclusively to the Grateful Dead saying this.
NINE
Speaking of the Dead, Zepp toured just as incessantly, and in parts of the world that our notoriously border-averse Boys never even considered playing. (For the first few years, at least.)
Who the fuck played Iceland in 1970? Did Iceland even have electricity in 1970? I think they were still lighting whale-oil lamps to ward off the nightly fairy attacks in 1970.
And they played the hell out of their shows, too; Zepp blew everyone off the stage when they were openers; some bands just gave up their headlining slots in order not to have to follow them. There’s the famous Boston Tea Party show in ’69 where the crowd called them back for 12, 13, 14, 15 encores–there is no recording of the show, so the number of encores rises every year–and the three and four-hour marathons of their later years: they weren’t KISS. No tight 90-minute gigs for the Mighty Zeppelin.
(And, it must be noted, no set breaks. Sure, Percy, Pagey, and Jonesy would get a breather and a blowjob during Bozo’s drum solo, but no organized intermission. Unlike some groups I could mention.)
TEN
The show also featured an Acoustic Mini-Set. The AMS is a high-level Rock Move, and there are specific requirements.
STOOLS It’s not an AMS unless the entire band comes downstage and shows how sensitive and versatile they are via cunning use of stoolery.
WEIRDO INSTRUMENT Someone’s gotta break out a mandocello or a treble ukulele or a tin whistle or something.
HARMONIZIN’ Boys, that sure do sound fiiiiiine.
DRUMMER’S GOTTA BE THERE He doesn’t have to actually do anything, but he has to come and sit on the stools with the rest of the band. No drummer, no AMS.
There are rules to this sort of shit, Enthusiasts.
ELEVEN
They were monsters, and they hurt people like other bands didn’t. The Stones left corpses in their wake, but not out of cruelty; the Stones just didn’t give a flaming shit about anyone but themselves and would gladly sacrifice you the moment you became boring. Zeppelin went out of their way to hurt people.
This is Peter Grant.
They called him G. He’s the guy who doesn’t look like a Rock Star, or Tony Clifton there on the right. (Bozo was as unpleasant looking as he was unpleasant.) Percy is 6’1″ and most likely wearing those platform shoes he dug, so you can’t tell that Peter Grant is 6’5″. He started out as a professional wrestler–I swear–and got into the music management business via Don Arden, who was another psychotic criminal. He was the British Colonel Parker. He was the English Suge Knight. FUN FACT: Each of the men in that photo received an equal share of the profits and owned an equal share of the band.
Grant was there first, along with Pagey. The Yardbirds broke up in ’68–the singer was a drunk, Jeff Beck wanted to fuck off and play jazz or whatever it is he does–but they were still contracted to play some shows. There was money on the table, and neither men was hot on the idea of leaving it there. (Jimmy Page is so cheap that his nickname among the crew was Led Wallet.) So, Grant got the soon-to-be-ex-Yardbirds to sign over the rights to the name so Pagey could scrape together a pickup band to play the gigs.
So Pagey makes some calls and Percy comes along with Bozo in tow, and then Jonesy shows up. You know the story. It’s not a particularly interesting one. Enthusiasts have the serendipitous meeting between Garcia and Bobby on New Year’s Eve, and Phil and Mrs. Donna Jean presenting themselves in times of need, and a magick dictionary that named the band, but Zepp’s Origin Story has very little mysticism inherent. The name was a Keith Moon joke, and it was misspelled deliberately to prevent the deejays from calling them Leed Zeppelin.
And Grant was there. Most managers stay in their offices, employing a road manager to take care of the band on tour, but not Grant. He was there making sure the money got to the band and not the local promoter, and buying off the local cops, and paying for blitzed hotel rooms, and thrashing any taper he caught in the audience. Sometimes on tour, he would stop at local record shops; if he found bootleg Zepp albums, he would fuck the whole store up.
Look at him again:
That guy could fuck a whole store up. You didn’t want his full attention.
There was nothing Bill Graham could do. Grant had locked the trailer door, and one of his thuggish road crew was holding it closed, too, so Bill Graham couldn’t do anything. He yelled for help. He beat on the windows and walls of the trailer with his fists. Nothing was accomplished. The band was onstage, and Graham has brought his man to one of Led Zeppelin’s trailers. There has been a misunderstanding between the man and Grant’s son. There are differing accounts. Grant wishes to speak with the man. He wants to find out, he tells Graham, what really happened.
Before the knock, the door flings open and Grant yanks the man in. The two are not by themselves; there are three others in the trailer, John Bonham and Richard Cole and John Bindon*, and they all set upon the man. His name is Jim Matzorkis. The four men who beat him to nearly to death most likely do not know that, but do not let that fact get in the way. Bill Graham can do nothing.
The band leaves the stage and the entire entourage immediately leave the venue. There is another show scheduled for the following evening. Not too many hours later, a messenger arrives at Graham’s office. The message is from Grant. The band, Grant relays, has told me they would feel uncomfortable playing the show if you didn’t indemnify them and their employees against any action from what may or may not have occurred this afternoon.
The band used the word “indemnify?” Graham responds.
Grant refuses to return phone calls all night, and the next day, and then sends over some papers releasing Zepp from any legal responsibility in the beating right before the show is scheduled to begin. The teens are already in the venue. Fearful of a riot if the band doesn’t play, Graham signs the document. He does so with his left hand, believing that this makes the contract null and void. Graham believes this because he watches too many movies. (The agreement wasn’t legal anyway, because you’re not allowed to make people sign shit by threatening them.)
Grant and the three others are allowed to leave San Francisco on their private jet, but they are arrested at the next stop on their route, New Orleans, which was to be the last show of the 1977 tour. The band never returns to America. Graham dies in a helicopter accident in 1991. Grant dies of a heart attack in 1995.
TWELVE
*John Bindon was a gangster. Sometimes he got paid to be an actor, or a bodyguard, and he made it into the gossip columns for the socialites and movie stars he impaled with the–according to legend–cock large enough to balance three pint glasses on, but he was a gangster. Buddies with the Kray Brothers and everything. He was the British version of Johnny Stompanato.
And Led Zeppelin hired him.
THIRTEEN
Quick quiz, hotshots: Led Zeppelin quote about the fourth album, or outtake from Spinal Tap?
“I think the lack of a name says more about the record than any name ever could.”
FOURTEEN
The Dead were in Minnesota recording Dick’s Pick 26 that night, so Zeppelin took care of San Francisco. (They had also played Winterland that weekend.) The tape is astounding, even via YouTube’s compression, all chunky and airy and whatnotty. The first record had just come out and they barely knew any songs so they jammed everything out for ten and fifteen minutes; this was before the mellotron and the grand piano, just guitar, bass, and drums, and Percy still in dewy, screeching voice.
Feel free to skip the last 30 minutes, which–as you are probably guessing–is a drum solo followed by Dazed and Confused.
FIFTEEN
Put the bow away, schmuck.
SIXTEEN
Re: The Albums.
Coda and Presence suck. I’ve heard II and IV too many times to ever listen to them again. Houses of the Holy gets points off for The Rain Song, which is nine hours of dippity-doodle nonsense, and Physical Graffiti gets bonus points for the song Houses of the Holy. In Through The Out Door is underrated. III is for some people, I suppose.
SEVENTEEN
I have more to say but no night left with which to say it.
Jesus.
“Look! Bruce!”
Is he alive? Like, all the way?
“Why must you be this way? Bruce is fine.”
He looks like he just saw a ghost. And then dropped dead.
“The man is healthy as a horse.”
Barbaro?
“As healthy as a healthy horse.”
If you say so. Tell him I can’t tell that he dyes his hair.
“What is your hang-up with men dying their hair?”
If I gotta be gray, then so does everyone else.
“Misery.”
CELL PHONE NOISE
“Asshole.”
Yup. Pick up the phone.
…
“You’re on with John.”
“I CAST ASIDE YOUR MUGGLE NAME AND CHRISTEN THEE FANGORIO!”
“Uh-huh. Who’s this, please?”
“I am Crowley, the Grand Abbot of Thelma and Lord Pooh-Bah of Ordo Templi Orientis.”
“Uh-huh. Who?”
“You never read Hammer of the Gods?”
“About Zeppelin? Always meant to. Is that the one where they stick the fish in the chick’s–”
“That one, yes. What about Ozzy?”
“What about him?”
“He wrote a whole song about me.”
“Would I know you from anywhere other than classic rockers trying to seem scary?”
“I guess not. But I assure you: I am wicked.”
“Wicked what?”
“Huh?”
“Wicked smart, wicked drunk, what?”
“I’m not from Massachusetts, you flea-brain. I meant ‘wicked’ in the Biblical sense.”
“Ohhhhhh. Okay.”
“Y’know what? I’m just gonna call the guys from Greta Van Fleet. They’ll know who I am.”
DIAL TONE EVEN THOUGH PHONES NO LONGER DO THAT
…
“Jackass?”
Mm-hmm?
“Could you not let your momentary Zeppelin fanhood leak into the rest of the universe?”
I can almost guarantee that Peter Grant will be managing the Grateful Dead within hours.
“Figures.”
Anything’s sacred if you soak it in enough blood. The hill on Calvary, and the fields of Flanders, and that plaza in Dallas: the blood sticks the stories to the ground and now visitors are mournful and respectful and keep their hands clasped in front of them. Or not. Thermopylae is a thruway now and they stuck an office building right where the last two used to be in Lower Manhattan, and there is a rock a quarter of the way up Pulaski Peak in the backyard of a man who made a tidy living selling novelty underwear. More of a boulder than a rock, and at least half-buried, he balked at the cost of digging it up and just integrated it into the landscaping around the pool. It was flat on top, so the man who sold novelty underwear attached a diving board. The contractor countersank fat metal bolts into the sandstone and noticed that the rock was only red on the surface.
“Set him down, cousin.”
“We need to bring him back to the village. His wife needs to see him.”
“Throwing Knife is across the lake having babies.”
The two Pulaski were in a natural clearing that surrounded a rock–at least half-buried, and more of a boulder than a rock–with a flat top. Talks To Whites did not remember the walk down from the pass. There was the gunshot and then Black Eyes killed those two men, and he another, and Here And There arrived. He remembered picking up Cannot Swim in his arms, and struggling with him until Here And There took him by the elbow and then his cousin was almost weightless. Black Eyes silent and watching and bloody as Here And There stood over the bodies of the Blacks and the White, muttered words in a tongue foreign to Talks To Whites, torn fabric from their clothes and plucked hairs from their heads; he remembered that, too. But not the walk down.
“Set him down.”
“We don’t have the funeral shroud.”
“Ask your cousin if it bothers him,” Here And There said. “And then set him down.”
He could not. Cannot Swim was heavy air in his arms, barely felt, and a good splotch of his blood and some brains were unwiped on Talks To Whites’ neck and ear and shoulder. Both rifles were strapped to his back, along with two satchels stuffed with everything worth stealing off of the dead White. He did not notice the load, and he could not relinquish it, just stand there dumbly, arguing with a shaman.
“Your cousin is larger than you, Talks To Whites. He is a heavy burden.”
“I can carry him.”
And now Cannot Swim was no longer weightless; Talks To Whites’ knees buckled, but held, and his heart raced and beads of sweat popped out on his forehead and forearms. It is a terrible idea to argue with a shaman. He held up for longer than Here And There thought he would, but soon he placed Cannot Swim on the rock, which was more rightly a boulder. His head pointed west, back towards the village and the valley and the lake and the harbor and the entire world, and Talks To Whites set down the weapons and bags and arranged his cousin’s hands so that they were resting on his chest. Then, he stepped back some paces, a respectful distance, and began to sing.
Talks To Whites sang about The Turtle Who Once Was And Will Be Again. About his eminent return. Very soon, The Turtle would regain his power over man. The Turtle would make all the decisions, as he did in the days of the ancient ones. Any day now.
He stopped singing and walked over to Here And There, who was sitting on the grassy ground.
“Why didn’t you stop this? You know powerful magick,” he said. Talks To Whites was pointing his finger, and his eyes were narrowed. “Cannot Swim told me all about the things you can do.”
“Did he?”
And now Talks To Whites was buck naked. It is a terrible idea to point at a shaman.
Here And There had been an odd child. She was born with a caul; the midwife carefully sliced it from her tiny face and buried it by the lake once she was suckling. I am part of the earth, she told her peers once she got a little older. None of the other children knew how to process that statement. She refused moccasins and went everywhere barefoot. Before she was near old enough to chew the leaf, she did so openly and none of the adults or elders made any attempt to stop her. The tribe’s dogs looked to her before following anyone else’s commands.
Naturally, this attracted the shaman’s attention. He had been waiting many years for a replacement. The first words he spoke to her were,
“What does magick cost?”
She answered,
“Life.”
He asked,
“Whose?”
Here And There laughed and shrugged her shoulders, which was the right answer. The shaman took her from her parents’ kotcha and she came to live outside the village, about two miles to the south. The shaman kept his own fire. He taught her about the peregrine maria tree and the cybellinus mysticus mushroom. She learned the forgotten language, the original language that they spoke in Babel, and she learned the resonant frequencies and how to bother crickets. When he died, she never spoke his name again.
“Sit with me, cousin,” she said to Talks To Whites.
“Can I have my clothes back?”
He was naked and covering his cock and balls with his hands. It was warm, he thought. At least he had that going RONCH Black Eyes leapt at one of the vultures circling Cannot Swim and the funeral rock, got it by the nude throat, shook twice three times, and the other birds hopped from claw to claw, heads swiveling between the boy and his dog.
And now Talks To Whites had clothes on again. Breechcloth, tunic, stiff leather leggings, moccasins.
“Sit.”
He did. The grassy plateau was open to the sun, which was high and unguarded by clouds, and wildflowers bloomed like they did after every rain, purple and red and yellow, and these attracted fat bumblebees that plopped along and made a low noise like thrrrrrrrrrm.
THRRRRRRRRRM is the sound of the LAPD (No, Not That One)’s helicopter warming up, rotors still, on the helipad atop the police station on Peel Street. It was a Bell model, the one with the bubble-shaped glass cockpit and the blades high above that on the end of a metal stanchion. The chopper was intended for the Korean War, but didn’t quite make it to the Salt Wharf. Some call the helicopter a conscientious objector. Others say that the cops stole it from the Army. Locals despised the machine; it was just so unsporting, like hunting deer by laying a minefield.
Little Aleppians would not be hovered at, thank you.
The widespread irritation never boiled, though, as the helicopter had flown less than a dozen times in the 30 years the department had it. It turned out that it was far easier to steal a chopper than to fly one, and both of those activities were cake when compared to maintaining one. The Brass paid for Officer Saccocetti to take a correspondence class in helicopter repair, and he did the best he could, which consisted mostly of gazing in confusion at the intake valves and begging his superiors not to let anyone fly in the damned thing. In the end, the Chief and his Captains didn’t want to budget the money for the chopper, preferring instead to spend the money on themselves.
This led to a very dumb behavior loop: a criminal would win a car chase; the Cenotaph would print an editorial asking what the hell the chopper was for if the cops weren’t going to use it; whichever Town Father was currently about to be indicted would hop on the story to distract everyone from his or her nonsense; the Brass would try to blame each other while secretly hiring a mechanic to get the bird back in flying shape. The Bell ‘copter would then be flown around the neighborhood, at which point everyone would lose their fucking minds and walk down to the police station on Peel Street and scream and throw fruit. The helicopter would be covered with a tarp when it returned. All involved would forget about the whole incident. Then, a criminal would win a car chase. Repeat until terminal metal fatigue.
But Frenchy Somme needed impressive hardware to stand in front of while he avoided questions about what the police were doing about the Downsider, and since it was 198- and the cops hadn’t been given tanks yet, the helicopter would have to do. He pressed the station’s car mechanic into service that morning.
“No comprende.”
“It’s a fucking engine, Luis.
“Es helicóptero.”
“Engine’s an engine. Just get it running. It doesn’t have to fly, just idle.”
“Podría matarnos a todos.”
“There’s the spirit. Reporters’ll be here at two.”
When the reporters arrived, they were treated to coffee and a variety of pastries. None of the cops winged their shoes at any of the reporters’ heads, which is not unheard of; they were under strict orders to be pleasant. None of the LAPD (No, Not That One) cared much for the Fourth Estate, but they did care about winning the blame game with the Town Fathers. Or the fire department. Or the teachers or local criminals. It did not matter who was deemed responsible for the Downsider, the cops thought, as long as it wasn’t them.
Stalin knew how to deal with reporters, Chief Somme thought. He had a podium that a rookie had humped up the stairs, and all the Brass stood behind him on his left, and the chopper was to the right, and beyond all of them were the seven green Segovian hills. The tableaux said strength, authority, competence, and helicopter. There were two cameras, both from KSOS, and at least two dozen microphones arranged in an electronic bouquet atop the lectern; this blocked the captain’s face in both shots.
THRRRRRRRRRRRRM.
The cameras each came with an operator, and a producer, and a talent (Cakey Frankel and Flip Chares); there was an intern from KHAY buckling under the weight of her tape recorder, sundry slobbish types with pencils and notebooks (among them Iffy Bould and Lolly Tangiers), and Luis.
“I have some prepared remarks and then I’ll take your questions. Okay. The Little Aleppo Police Department is committed to the safety of the neighborhood’s residents, and we are sworn to uphold the law. This vigilante jackass, some people are calling him the Downsider or whatever, is a criminal and he’ll be treated as such. He’s put ten or twelve people in the hospital. Sure, all those people were scumbags, but we’re just not gonna have it anymore.”
Chief Somme knew he would be standing for a while, so he had fortified himself with an extra vicodin or two. His knees felt wonderful.
“We’re not waiting for the Town Fathers to come up with a plan,” he said, and peered over the microphones to make sure the print reporters had jotted the sentence down. “I’m announcing the formation of a task force designed to hunt down and capture the Downsider. This task force will be given the money and material needed to bring this law-breaking maniac into custody. We’ve already got the chopper up and running.”
THRRRRRRRRRRRRM.
The chief waved his arm at the helicopter, but felt like a model on a game show standing next to a pair of jet-skis, so he turned the wave into a thumbs-up and that was awkward, too, so he pointed vaguely into the small scrum.
“Questions?”
Iffy elbowed Lolly in her ribs, sharpishly. He had told her on the walk over that she was to ask the first question. The Cenotaph always asked the first question. The world had certain rules to it, he told her. She barked out,
“How many officers will be on the task force?”
“As many as is necessary from a tactical point of view.”
“And how will they be deployed?”
“Tactically. Cakey?”
Cakey’s hair was particularly massive, and her earrings were small gold crosses. Her scarf was diaphanous, yet welcoming.
“I didn’t even have my hand raised.”
“That’s okay. Do you have any questions?”
“Wasn’t there a family of possums living in the helicopter?”
“There was. Luis got ’em out.”
Chief Somme gave Luis the thumbs-up, then worried about giving too many thumbs-ups. He’d been out here for only minutes and had done it twice already, he thought. Knock it off, Thumbelina, he thought. Luis did not have any problems with giving a thumbs-up, and so he did.
Cakey turned to him and said,
“Good for you. So brave.”
“Gracias.”
Iffy was slouching and smoking, and he called out,
“What exactly will this task force be doing? Like, what are they gonna do that you’re not capable of doing?”
“The task force will require different skills than normal police work. For example, we’re going to need a computer expert, a master of disguise, an explosives guy. I’m waiting on a call back about a genuine Indian tracker. And a big strong guy. Always need one of those. You. In the glasses.”
A thin young man with thick black spectacles looked at his notes and asked,
“Chief, have you heard the new Herpes 7-inch? And what do you think about Carcass Canvas breaking up?”
“Where the hell are you from?”
“I have a zine that covers Little Aleppo’s underground music scene.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Chief Somme said. “Flip, did you have a question?”
Flip Chares and his immaculate combover did have a question, and it was,
“Does the task force have a name yet?”
“We are hung up on that, to be honest. Whole station’s arguing about it. Some officers want the name to be what you’d call ‘heavy-metalish.’ I’ve heard ‘Street Dragons’ and ‘the Fistpunchers,’ which I told ’em didn’t make any sense, but these are younger officers and they’re excitable. There’s a large contingent pushing to go understated with it. ‘The Firm’ or ‘The Squad’ or something real plain like that. Detective Haney likes ‘Mix’tlaoc’lkal,’ which he says is Ancient Aztec for ‘a hunting party where the prey is a god.’ Haney’s probably been working Narcotics a little too long.”
Flip had another question, which was,
“Will there be a telephone hotline set up?”
“Absolutely not. No one takes them seriously when it’s not about a kid. Jackasses call in breathing heavy or trying to lure officers into elaborate traps. When the Fifth First Bank got held up and we had a hotline, some idiot kept calling up and putting us on the line with pizza places and the zoo and wherever. You’ve all heard the tapes.”
Some of the reporters were too polite to nod, and the rest were professional except for Lolly who SNORFED out of her nose. A local who went by Phoney Maroney got the cops on three-way calls with random establishments around the neighborhood, and neither party would know who called who and the confusion was often comical, mostly because Officer Arellano was on hotline duty, and Officer Arellano responded to confusion with belligerent yelling. “I’LL SHOOT THAT FUCKING GIRAFFE,” was one of the more printable quotes from the conversations. Phoney Maroney recorded these dialogues, and they went from tape deck to deck around Little Aleppo. It was a rite of passage to drive around getting high and listening to the tapes. Iffy elbowed her in the ribs again. She counter-elbowed, but he bent his back around the blow. Iffy was quick for a shambler.
“Chief?”
“Iffy?”
The Chief’s knees were feeling utterly delightful.
“What exactly is the Downsider wanted for?”
“Questioning.”
“Do you have a warrant?”
“It’ll come. All things in due time.”
“I don’t think that’s how warrants work.”
THRRRRRRGANGALANGACHANGABOOM
Chief Somme came around from the podium and waved everyone towards the access door to the roof.
“Let’s go. Inside.”
First the reporters and then the Brass and it was just the Chief and Luis and HONGADANGABANG from the chopper.
“Te dije que esto pasaría.”
“Just shut the damn thing off!”
And then it was just Luis on the roof.
The briefing room wasn’t big enough for all the Brass to stand behind Chief Somme, so the press waited while they argued about it, and then they finished up. The teevee crews were happy because they thought the change of venue added production value, and the print reporters were happy because there were pastries left. Questions were asked, responded to (though usually not answered), notes were taken. Many sports metaphors were used, and the movie Patton was quoted at length.
“How can my cousin be dead?”
“The Turtle Who Once Was And Will Be Again did not make the Whites. That was a different god. That god did not teach the Whites not to shoot strangers. The Turtle did not teach us that, either, but we did not have guns until the Whites brought them.”
The bees made a low sound like thrrrrrrrrrrrrm as they bounced among the flower petals getting sticky with pollen and full with nectar. More vultures had arrived, black and turkey, and so had condors. They flared their massive wings and hopped up and down. There were two groups of the scavengers: one around the rock that bore Cannot Swim’s body, which was protected by Black Eyes, and a smaller circle around the vulture whose neck Black Eyes had snapped. The dog did not growl. She did not need to. She walked the perimeter of the sacred rock and made aggressive eye contact with the birds.
“So maybe I didn’t have much of a point.”
“Bring him back,” Talks To Whites said. “You can do that.”
“I can? How?”
Talks To Whites waved his hands around in what he felt was a magickal fashion.
“With all that.”
“Let me try.”
Here And There waved her hands in a similar fashion.
“Did it work? Go poke him.”
They were sitting on the thick grass to the west, which was upwind of the funeral rock. Here And There wore her hair loose and so long it brushed against dandelions; there were seven ice-white stripes running from her forehead to the ground. She was the only Pulaski with freckles, which spread out under her eyes like bat wings. The tribe wore tunics that were sleveless and made of soft deerskin and hemmed well above the knee. Loud Fingers did the embroidering, and each Pulaski chose their own designs. Talks To Whites had hummingbirds, for no other reason than he liked hummingbirds; Here And There’s tunic had glyphs and sigils all over it and she wouldn’t tell anyone what they meant. Also, Loud Fingers grew hair all over his back and lost his voice and kept waking up in trees while he was sewing in the symbols.
“Magick is about existence. The past exists no longer. The future does not exist yet. What exists is the present. And in the present, our cousin is missing half his head. So we will sing for him and then return to the village.”
“The hunters will want revenge,” Talks To Whites said.
“So will their hunters. I see darkness coming.”
“You said you couldn’t see the future.”
“Don’t need to be a shaman to smell blood in the air,” Here And There said, and she whistled FEEtwee and Black Eyes sprang forward and snatched a turkey vulture by the neck, shook twice, dropped it. She pawed back away slowly, and the other birds surrounded the carcass.
TINKadink went the bell on the door to the bookstore with no title; a man with a thick beard walked in and up to Mr. Venable’s desk. There was a teevee on it. Portable and newish, white, with a handle on top for ease of carry, and rabbit ears. The picture was smudgy and saturated with thick reds. The set usually resided in the office behind the secret door in the bookcase, but Gussy didn’t know about his office or the secret door yet, and he didn’t want to tell her, so he quick-snatched the teevee out of there when she wasn’t looking and set it up on his desk. He was in his customary spot.
“Do you have anything on traditional burial practices?”
“Shh!”
Augusta O. Incandescente-Ponui, whom everyone called Gussy, walked out of the shelves to the rear of the shop and said,
“Don’t shush customers.”
“Then what’s the point of having them?”
Gussy planted herself in front of the man with the thick beard and smiled her best retail smile.
“Did I hear you ask for traditional burial practices?”
“Yes,” he said.
She pointed back the way she came.
“Go down the middle aisle until your first left. Then take seven more lefts. Every first left you come to, take it. Seven times. No! Eight. If you get an overwhelming sense of dread, you’ve gone too far.”
The man sauntered off. It was not his first visit.
“Gussy! It’s almost time!”
“You’re a child.”
Buh-BAAAAAA-duh-bah went the theme music for the KSOS Evening News with Trusted Meese. The graphic was a globe with a glowing star marking Little Aleppo; it was spinning a tiny bit too fast, and the image faded into Trusted’s face. It was a good face. It was the kind of face that could spot lies but not spout them. You could use Trusted Meese’s face as collateral on a bank loan, metaphorically. (In actuality, the bankers were just confused when Trusted tried. “We can’t take your face as collateral, Mr. Meese,” the bankers said. “How about my hog?” Trusted said, and took out his dick. The loan was not offered.)
Gussy leaned on the top of Mr. Venable’s chair back. He had his feet up, and was wearing his customary suit.
On the screen, Trusted looked into Camera One.
“Little Aleppo, it’s five o’clock and here’s the news.”
He turned to Camera Two.
“Dueling press conferences today as both the LAPD (Not, Not That One) and the Town Fathers announced their plans to deal with the costumed vigilante known as the Downsider. We have wall-to-wall coverage and exclusive interviews with Police Chief Somme and two Town Fathers, one of whom was not on PCP. ”
Mr. Venable was smiling. It was not natural to him, and his cheeks began burning right away.
“You’re smiling.”
“I love a shitshow, Gus. The cops and the politicians are now fully involved. Nothing but fun from here on in.”
“Seriously, it’s weird when you smile. It’s like seeing the Mona Lisa’s tits.”
Footage from the press briefing at the police station was first, and it led off with multiple angles of the helicopter seizing up and stroking out. Then Chief Somme–stern, commanding, swaying slightly–announcing the task force.
“A reaction. Finally. The authorities have recognized the problem, named it, and thus made it official. Stage two.”
“There are stages?”
“To all of life. And this is stage two.”
“What’s stage three?”
“Did you ever read comic books as a kid?”
“Archie.”
“No superheroes?”
“Ugh.”
“That explains it. Had you been versed in the form, you would realize that we’re missing something. You have your hero, and he lives in a city, and–”
The teevee screen went SHVAZ and the horizonatal lost its hold; the picture flipped upupupupupup and the sound went FLERSHFLEEEEEEEEEE and then there was a figure shot from the shoulders up. Helmet, mask. Both made from copper, it looked like.
“Good evening, Little Aleppo. My name is not important. What is important is that the man calling himself the Downsider reveal his identity and take nude photographs of himself. If my demands are not met, things are going to start blowing up. This is the part where I show you I’m serious.”
The door to the bookstore with no title opened onto the Main Drag, and beyond that was a dull BOOM and then a glow that shone through the window.
“I am not telling you how much time you have, but the clock is running. Back to you, Trusted.”
The screen went SHVAZ again and the sound went FLERSHFLEEEEEEEEEEEE and then there was Trusted and his face.
“–he has an arch-enemy,” Mr. Venable concluded the thought that had been interrupted.
Gussy walked around the desk towards the door, and Mr. Venable followed after. The bell went TINKadink and they stood on the Main Drag in the quietly failing light as sirens flashed to life around them and all the dogs were howling in Little Aleppo, which is a neighborhood in America
But I think it’s happening.
The men can get to work now
With their motor-trucks
And tools.
The walls and roof to the dump
And the flooring
Everyone’s taken their souvenirs
It was just an armory with an ego, anyway.
Last call
Last dance
Someone play Greensleeves so the kids know to go home.
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