Asturias (10 page)

18

STAGEFRIGHT

The first notes come out of the darkness, soaring into the air above the auditorium clear and precise, then a laser-thin pencil spot picks out the guitarist's hand and slowly expands to light the guitar then the whole person. He is young and good-looking, dressed in black leather and standing alone at the side of the stage. The music is hypnotic
—
a driving, rolling tapestry of sound that seems to swell into something bigger than one pair of hands and six strings could possibly produce.

And then he is no longer alone.

A new rhythm begins weaving in and out, mellow and delicate beneath the first. And as another spotlight cuts the blackness at the far side of the stage, the girl is revealed, holding a bass guitar so huge that it seems to emphasise her tiny stature. Her hair is long and black, falling like a frame around her face and reaching almost to her waist.

She slaps a sudden staccato rhythm and the stage flares into light, as the keyboard and the drums cut in and the original melody transforms again. Now it is a wall of sound, with rhythm and counterpoint building to a crescendo that fills the hall, and then drops into a sudden brief silence which is almost physical.

It is into this silence that a new sound crashes: a twelve-bar riff, repeated twice and building in momentum, as smoke pours from the stage-floor and a strobe begins to flicker wildly.

A searing white spotlight illuminates a point to the right of centre-stage, and through the smoke a figure comes tumbling
—
a perfect somersault into a handstand split, then slowly, in direct contrast to the beat of the music, one leg at a time to a standing position in front of the mike-stand. Just in time to begin singing.

Tasha K. has arrived, and the audience is hooked.

“Catch me if you can” she sings …

TASHA'S STORY

It was impossible.

I kept telling myself I was an idiot to ever have thought I could do it. All those months while we were rehearsing and recording, and even when the single was released, it was just some kind of dream. It wasn't happening to me. I was standing outside myself, looking on.

And in a dream, anything is possible.

But standing there in the wings listening to the opening sequence, I knew that in real life some things really
are
impossible. Like walking out in front of all those strangers and performing as if I was born to it like the others.

I was scared shitless. My throat was dry and I could feel myself trembling. The only thing that kept me from running out of the building and catching the first cab home was the fact that it wasn't just me.

Out there on stage were the people I'd come to think of as family. And a family depends on each of its members, or else it's just a bunch of strangers sharing a life.

What was it Chrissie had said? “You'll probably take the rest of us down with you …” They'd worked so hard to get me as far as this that I
had
to go through with it. Even if I failed. I couldn't just run out on them.

Or on Max.

He was probably in a worse position than any of us. He'd gambled his whole career on a single project, and we were it. He believed in us and he cared for us. I knew it, and the knowledge sat in my stomach like a brick.

I heard “Asturias” building to the climax, then I heard the riff start — “Catch Me if You Can”, my big entrance.

If I'd been less preoccupied with feeling sorry for myself I might have noticed the sandbag lying between Marco's drums and where Chrissie was standing; right in the path of where I was supposed to run on. It was there to support the cymbal stand; to stop it crashing over if Marco got carried away.

I'd taken three or four steps, just enough to build up some speed, when I hit the bag and started falling.

It's a funny thing about reflex conditioning. It never really goes away. For six years my parents had driven me every Saturday morning and Thursday afternoon to gymnastics training. I was never going to be an Olympic gymnast, but I enjoyed it a lot, and when you do it for that long, the basic movements, the tumbles, the handstands and the splits become so ingrained that they're more like an instinct than a conscious movement.

So as I fell, my body took over. One and a half somersaults, a handstand split and a slow recovery.

It had to be that combination. I was wearing the stupid high-heeled boots that Penny had insisted on, so if I'd tried to roll straight out of the somersault onto my feet, I'd probably have twisted an ankle.

The result?

An entrance we'd never even dreamed of. You could hear the gasp, even over the music.

But something else happened that was even more amazing. The nerves were gone. In that instant of doing something so familiar and natural, I forgot to be scared. By the time my feet touched the floor, I was into the opening verse and there was no turning back.

Halfway through the song, when Alex slipped into his guitar-solo, I looked across at Chrissie.

She winked at me and smiled …

The final chord hangs over the audience, then fades to silence. For a brief moment time freezes. The figures on the stage are motionless, the audience is still lost in the song.

Then someone whistles and the applause begins, swelling like a wave until the sound of it is deafening. On stage, five young people stand where they finished the set. They look at each other, then out at the audience. And then they bow.

Marco cannot resist a flourish on the drum and a final crashing stroke on the cymbal, and Tasha reaches down to pick up the studded jacket from the floor beside the keyboard.

They bow once more and move off-stage.

While up at the back of the auditorium, a man smiles to himself and looks smug.

As the m.c. moves onto the stage, Max Parnell makes his way around the outer wall to the stage door. He shows his pass to the huge security guard and makes his way through. The guard closes the door behind him and turns back to watch the crowd.

THIRD MOVEMENT:

APPASSIONATA

The deeper the sorrow the less tongue it hath.

The Talmud

Sweet dreams and flyin' machines,
In pieces on the ground
…

James Taylor, Fire and Rain, 1970

19

THE DARK SIDE OF THE DREAM

ALEX'S STORY

… In only twelve months, Asturias has become a fixture on pop-charts in this country, and rumours are beginning to circulate that an overseas deal isn't very far away
…

Twelve months of concert tours and recording sessions and t.v. spots. “Fame and fortune”. The ride was every bit as exciting as they'd promised.

I was reading an article about us in one of the fan-mags, celebrating the anniversary of the release of “Falling into the Sun”, and it suddenly struck me.

A year, and already my life before Asturias had become a blur. We spent as much time at home as the schedule would allow, but we were on a “growth curve”, and there were things that “needed doing” if we were to make the jump to the “next level”.

“Asturias”, the band's self-titled first album, is already one of the most successful debut albums in Australian recording history, producing no fewer than four Top Five hits, including the Number One smashes, “Falling into the Sun”, “Catch Me if You Can”, and the sensational cover-cut of the old Led Zepp classic, “Stairway to Heaven”. And the word in the corridors of CTT is that a new album is due for release like
now.
For a band which has not had a single day out of the charts since it first exploded onto the scene, a new album is
…

I tossed the magazine aside. I knew exactly what a new album was.

The next “moment of truth”.

Funny thing about fame. It creeps up on you.

Not the fact of it. In our case, once the first single hit number one, we were flavour of the month, and you couldn't help but be aware of it.

It's not the fame itself that creeps up, it's what it means, exactly, to
be
famous.

When you're a “wannabee”, trying to get there, all that's important is “the chance”, the one opportunity to make a grab for the brass ring.

But then you grasp it and you hang on while it drags you off the ground, and you feel things rushing past you, too fast for you to take in. And all you can do is hold tight and pray that the ride doesn't end and that you don't accidentally let go.

Because, of course, you'd never let go on purpose. It's the ride of a lifetime. One that so very few have the chance to take at all. And the fear is always there that it's just an illusion; a bubble that can burst at any moment, leaving you to fall back to earth, to be the person that you always knew, secretly, deep-down beneath the hype, you always were.

Only that person no longer exists, and it terrifies you to think that you might have to live his life again, after you've lived the dream.

Then after a while you get used to the ride, and the fears subside, and for a time you enjoy yourself. You know it's all illusion, a trick done with smoke and mirrors and a well-oiled publicity machine, but it doesn't matter.

It's the music that counts, isn't it?

Isn't it?

And suddenly a new fear begins to grow. You realise that from the moment you took hold of the ring, and began the ride, you have never really looked at what it is you're holding on
to.

The brass ring.

That's exactly what it is. Brass. Not gold. It shines like gold, it has a colour that might be mistaken for the real thing, but in the end it's only an imitation. And you begin to fear again.

That's when the truth about fame begins to creep up on you. With one hand it gives you the dream, with the other it takes a subtle payment. It makes you doubt whether you deserve the dream at all.

And pretty soon, you reach the stage where you feel you have to prove that you do. Deserve it. And the pressure that puts on you is … Well, I guess you've heard the stories and seen the films.

They just love to make movies about the price of fame.

And they love all the sordid stories. Munroe, James Dean, Elvis, Joplin, Hendrix, River Phoenix, Kurt Cobain.

It's the dark side of the dream; the pressure that can transform you into someone you don't know. Because fame is a drug, and once you're hooked you're like any other addict.

Of course, it's easy for me to talk about it now. After the event. I could talk your ear off, if you were that patient. But at the time all I could see was the “next level”, and what it would mean if we didn't make it.

CHRISSIE'S STORY

It all happened too fast.

Maybe that's a cliché, but it also happens to be true. In the beginning I blamed myself. After all, I was the oldest. If anyone could have kept it from happening, held it all together, it should have been me.

But hell, I was only twenty-two myself.

Max was twenty-eight, and he had a lot more power in the company than we did, and even he was helpless. I tried blaming him. I shouted at him and even hit him, but he just stood there and took it, and I realised that there was nothing I could say to him that he hadn't already said to himself.

And I realised, too that it wasn't any more his fault than it was ours. It was the system, and the world, and human nature. And each of us was a part of all of them.

It's funny. Looking back, you can see where the cracks began to appear. But when you're caught up in the whole mad scramble, things can be crumbling all around you and you can convince yourself that everything's on track.

How could anything go wrong? You're on top of the world.

Which is great. As long as you don't look down.

I guess it started with Marco.

Not that it was his fault, either. It just happened that his problems surfaced before anyone else's.

In the shape of a relic from his past …

20

WHAT A MAN'S GOT
TO DO …

MARCO

“Yes?”

The boy holds the door half open, behind the locked screen-door. He is wet beneath the robe he threw on when the doorbell rang.

The man is standing with his back to the door, admiring the garden and the beach beyond.

“It must be nice to have a garden of your own.”

Still he doesn't turn around.

“What can I do for you?” He can hear a nervous edge to his voice as he studies the man's back. There is a vague familiarity about the way the guy stands with his head held slightly to one side.

“You moved house.” The man reaches up to touch the column which supports the roof of the verandah. He examines the texture with his fingertip. “I had a hell of a job tracking you down. Nice view of the beach, too. Very nice.”

“Do I know you?”

“Ah, well … I guess that's the million dollar question, isn't it, Marco?” Slowly the man turns, until he is facing the open door.

That face.

Ten years have added lines around the eyes and mouth, but the strange, dead grey colour of those eyes is still the same, and the smile — half amusement, half sneer.

“What are you doing here?” He intends the question to be aggressive, but it sneaks out almost timidly.

The man takes a step towards the doorway.

“What kind of question is that?” The smile remains, crooked and a little threatening. “I heard your mother is dying. So I thought, ‘A man's got to do what a man's got to do.' I've come back to look after my only son.”

The boy's knuckles go white as he grips the door-handle. Ten years are not long enough to erase the memories …

14 April 1986

At the sound of the crash the boy sits up in bed. The bedroom door is closed and the room is dark, but through the crack beneath the door the light and the noise of shouting filter in.

Slowly he turns back the covers and slides to the floor. The vinyl is cold under his bare feet, and he is trembling. But not from the cold.

His fingers close around the door-handle, and as he turns it, and pulls the door silently open, the muffled rantings take on a recognisable form.

“…
don't give a stuff! What I do for fun when I'm out is
my
business. And if you weren't such a lazy, fat pig, maybe I wouldn't have go out and look for it at all.”

“So now it's
my
fault?” His mother's voice is raised for once, and the fact of it surprises him. “I suppose I gambled away your pay packet. And
I
got too drunk to remember whose bed I was supposed to be sleeping in.
Again …”

The boy watches, frozen in the doorway, as his father advances towards his mother. Too late, she realises the fury her words have unleashed. The man raises his fist, and she cringes.

“Nooo!”

He is five years old, thin and almost weightless, but he lunges at his father's upraised arm, grasping the wrist in a two-handed death-grip. The man turns and tries to throw him off, but he hangs on desperately, until his father's greater strength prevails, and he is thrown heavily into the settee. He hears the wooden frame crack beneath him, but the cushioning is thick and he feels no pain, though the breath is driven from his lungs.

The man turns back towards his wife, but she no longer cowers. She has moved across to the sink, and now she turns to face him, a long-bladed knife held tightly in her hand.

Her voice is deadly quiet, almost controlled.

“Get out!” The words hiss. She raises the knife level with her chest. “And if you ever come back
…”

The threat is left unvoiced, but it is real, and he knows it.

He hesitates, then makes for the door. A single glance back into the room, and for a moment his gaze and the boy's are locked.

But only for a moment. The boy breaks the link and looks towards his mother. She is standing in the same position, breathing heavily, and trying to hold back the flood building up behind her eyes.

When he looks back, the door is closing and his father is gone.

He follows his mother into the bedroom and watches as she takes her husband's clothes and shoes and belongings and throws them from the open window into the courtyard two floors below.

When she is finished, she walks from the room into the kitchen and fills the kettle. The boy looks after her, then he turns towards the window. On the floor beneath the sill lies a single dark green sock. He looks at it for a few seconds before bending to pick it up.

He reaches out beyond the window and releases the sock, watching it spiralling slowly away into the dark.

Then he closes the window and moves into the kitchen. His mother is sitting at the table with her head in her hands.

Slowly he approaches her and places an arm around her shoulder. She looks up and attempts a comforting smile.

She does not speak. There is nothing to say
…

* *

“So, what did you do?” Mindy sits next to him at the desk they have set up in a small office of the studio complex.

She is holding his hand to comfort him, and he looks down at her long manicured fingers. It is the first time she has ever actually touched him, and, strangely, the thrill he had expected to feel at her touch is not there.

She is concerned for him, and the professional detachment that marks their sessions together has disappeared for the moment. But it is a moment of realisation for him. He feels the infatuation die, and she becomes, finally, what in fact she has always been. His teacher. And his friend.

“Marco?”

At the worried tone in her voice, he forces himself to focus on her question.

“What did I
do?
I slammed the door in his face and told him to piss off. Ten years, he left it. He didn't even send a Christmas card. Nothing. If he thinks …”

The words trail off as he stands and moves across to the window, but he does not look out. Instead, he leans against the sill and stares at her.

“Just like that. ‘I heard your mother is dying.' ” He almost chokes on the word. “Ten bloody years, and
they
have to be his first words. He thinks he can just walk in …”

He struggles to control the rush of tears, but fails, and Mindy moves across to put her arms around him, drawing him close. And as he slides down the wall, to crouch there in his despair, she is with him, coaxing out the pain that he has held too long inside …

ALEX'S STORY

The kid was doing it tough.

His mother's condition was way beyond critical. The cancer was spreading more and more rapidly, and the doctors had given up even pretending there was anything they could do. She was doped up on pain-killers most of the time, and half the time she wasn't even aware he was there.

It was lucky, in a way, that we were “between gigs”. The last tour of the year was over, and the hype surrounding the new album hadn't yet reached beyond the teaser stage, so he could spend most of his waking hours at the hospital. We had an informal kind of “support roster” organised, so that someone could be with him most of the time.

Rehearsal schedules were cut to a minimum, and often we practised without him. It wasn't as much of a problem as it might have been. Marco didn't need the practice anyway. Once he'd played the arrangement a few times, it was programmed into him like a machine, and he could reproduce it at will. Perfectly.

But Symonds wasn't impressed.

His spies were doing their usual efficient job, and he began dropping in, making veiled comments about “falling behind on the schedule” and “professional attitudes”. Until Chrissie told him to get stuffed and leave us to get on with making him his fortune.

Which he did. But not before he delivered his parting shot.

“The kid's becoming a liability,” he said. As if Marco was some kind of corporate expense. “No one is indispensable. Especially not a drummer.”

I was looking around for something to throw, but Chrissie put a hand on my shoulder. Then she got up and walked across to stand in front of him. She gave away a good twenty centimetres, and maybe seventy kilos, but there must have been something in her eyes that made up for it. She had her back to me, so I could only see Symonds' reaction, but it was worth a thousand words.

He went to say something, but she was primed.

“That … liability is twenty percent of a double-platinum record and three number one singles, all of which help to pay your salary, and keep your fat-arse shareholders happy. And if you were a musician instead of a … parasite, you'd know that in a band,
everyone
is indispensable. Everyone. Screw with Marco and you screw with me. And the rest of the band. And I'm not so sure that would impress the shareholders a whole lot. Now, if you'd like to go back to terrorising your secretaries, maybe the band can get on with this rehearsal.”

She turned her back on him as she delivered her parting line, and if looks could kill she would never have made it back to the stand where she'd left her bass. But by the time she'd slung it over her shoulder and turned back around he was gone.

Round one to the good guys.

We didn't tell Marco. He had enough on his mind.

But we did tell Max, who looked more than a bit worried.

An understatement. He looked like someone had just informed him that he'd won the trip of a lifetime. On the Titanic. But Max was a natural born worrier. Everyone knew that.

Symonds was a bad enemy to have, but we figured that as long as we remained successful, he would have no reason to cause us any trouble.

Which shows how little we knew about the politics of power.