Authors: Jeremiah Healy
Given my day so for, a little semi-fresh air sounded good.
Show me the way.”
Biggs waited until I reached the end of the corridor. In person, he was about six feet tall and more stick-skinny than just slim, a sleeveless sweatshirt and contrasting sweatpants almost falling off him. The hair was stylishly razored half-an-inch off his scalp. His face looked drawn, though, the whites of his eyes sallow around the brown irises. Almost ebony in skin tone, Biggs had several irregular blotches on his neck that looked purplish in the hallway lighting. A single gold earring pierced the lobe of his left ear, and what I at first thought was an insignia on the sweatshirt turned out to be the looped and pinned red ribbon of AIDS Awareness.
”Most times, now, I take my nicotine break out by the pool.” A pause. ”Family don’t use it much no more.”
I didn’t nod this time, but I did follow him through another corridor of white tile and walls into a matching kitchen with a large central island and murals of mountain scenes over the wide counters. Biggs slid open half of a double glass door onto a patio that acted as an apron around a pool with water the color of a glacier. Everything else—tiles, lounges and chairs, resin cocktail tables—was white, though, Biggs seeming like a piece of abstract art as he crossed to a shaded alcove with a pair of chairs and one of the small tables between them. The air felt warm but kind of... real, after the antiseptic, reconditioned atmosphere in the house itself.
Lowering himself into the chair farther away from the pool, Biggs said, ”Not crazy about the sun myself, but you want, pull this other one out a ways.”
”Shade’s fine with me, too.”
Biggs set the soda can on the table, then lit up as I sat down. ”Expect you want me to talk about Very.”
”Eventually. I’d rather start with how you came to join Spiral.”
A frown as he took a long drag on the cigarette. ”You mean, like, way back?”
”Right.”
A shrug, the smoke coming out his nostrils like a cartoon of a raging bull. ”Might be this’ll turn into a three-butt break.” After tapping some ash into the soda can’s opened top, he looked at the smoldering end of the cigarette. ”Man, but that first puff, it always the best.”
”The Helds don’t want you smoking inside the house?” Another shrug. ”Don’t nobody want us coffin-nailers smoking inside anywhere. I hear out in California now, they went and outiawed it every which place—even bars, man. You a nicotine-fiend, how you supposed to enjoy a drink, you can’t smoke, too?”
”Don’t know, Mr. Biggs. Never picked up the habit.”
He eyed me, then a cagey smile. ”Second time you call me that, babe.”
”What?”
”‘Mr. Biggs,’ like I’m some kind of record-company honcho and you my ass-kisser.”
”Just trying to be polite.”
”To the house nigger.”
Biggs sent two more plumes of smoke out his nose.
I said, ”You weren’t black, and used that word, I’d ask you not to use it again.”
Head cocked again, but a little differently. ‘You in the war, right?”
”Vietnam, anyway.”
”What other one there been, babe?”
”Persian Gulf.”
”No,” said Biggs, shaking his head as he drew another lungful. ”You too old for that one, and besides, you got the look.”
”The look.”
”Yeah, like what some of my homeboys used to get, they come back from over there and I use ‘honky’ or ‘offay’ in front of them.”
I heard a sudden, buzzing sound to the right, and turned that way. Someone had suspended a hummingbird feeder on what looked like monofilament fishing line from the outside beam of the alcove. One green hummingbird was hovering over the red cover of the feeder, about to land on the clear plastic rail around the bowl part, when another hummingbird strafed it from an oblique angle, both zooming off in different directions.
Biggs said, ”Bother you to talk about the war?”
I turned back to him. ”Bother you to talk about how you came to join Spiral?”
A raspy laugh, then a cough before another deep drag on the cigarette. ”You got a little of the bulldog in you, babe. But I admire that, so we cool.” More exhaled smoke. ”Okay, here’s how the shit happened. I was doing studio work—you know what I’m saying?”
”Teach me.”
Another raspy laugh. ”Studio musician, he play for a recording session with a singer don’t got their own band. Producer find out you can lay the tracks down fast and clean, he keep hiring you, account of you save him money.”
”By shortening the session and the rent on the studio?”
”Now you got it.” Biggs dropped the remainder of his cigarette into the can, but didn’t light another right away-”So, like I was telling you, I’m working this studio, and Mitch Eisen—he Spiral’s manager?”
”We’ve met.”
”Mitch, he say to me, ‘Buford, I got this white kid, wrote a couple songs I think might fly. You want in?’”
”Just like that?”
The frown. ”Just like what?”
”Eisen has you match up with another musician you’d never met?”
”Oh, babe. You in the war, but not some time capsule, right? Back in the early seventies, everything be real loosey-goosey. Wasn’t no ‘courtship’ kind of thing. Some bands, now, they been messing around since they in junior high, but lots of groups, they got put together by the front office, you dig?”
”Go on.”
Biggs shook another cigarette from his pack. ”Anyway, I go in this session, and Mitch already has Gordo lined up for bass guitar—I tell you what I play?”
”Eisen said you were the keyboardist.”
”Okay, then. Spi, he was lead guitar and lead singer, and I did backup vocals. This spaceshot name of Tommy O’Dell, he on drums—not to mention more drugs than you could find at twenty Walgreens.”
”I know O’Dell died of an overdose.”
”Yeah, yeah. But that’s a long time later.” Biggs lit his second cigarette. ”You want the early days, right?”
”Right.”
”Okay. Mitch gets us four together, and fact is, we don’t sound half bad. Mitch, he has like a talent for that.”
”For the right mix of people.”
”Yeah, but more than just the music.” Another cocking of the head. ”Name me one brother who play in a rock band, you can.”
”Jimi Hendryx.”
”The main man. Name me another.”
”You.”
The cagey smile. ”How about a third one?”
I thought about it. ”Tapped out.”
Biggs inhaled some smoke and settled deeper into his chair. ”Don’t feel too bad, babe, ain’t many remember the others. There was a brother played with the Allmans— which was a hoot for another reason. And then the bass player for the Doobies—notice any pattern?”
”Black musicians in ‘brothers’ bands.”
”You got it. Make the groups seem like real ‘family.’ The world of rock just one fine rainbow of a place.”
”Which was Eisen’s idea for Spiral, too?”
”Bet on it. He sure did.”
”Meaning?”
”Meaning Mitch, he bankroll our first album—which in those days was a hell of a lot more bread than the four of us could of raised. This was way before Spi’s daddy got himself rich.”
”Go ahead.”
”Okay, so we cut this album, and it hit.” Biggs came forward in his chair. ”Oh, babe, how it do hit. We climb the charts, all of a sudden everybody be calling Mitch, want us to play their venue.”
”Venue as in concert hall?”
‘Yeah. Venues, they get measured by the number of seats in the house. At our best, we couldn’t fill no Yankee Stadium. But our first concert gig, we sell out a forty-five-hundred place called ‘Winterland’ by San Francisco, and then Boston Garden and the Cow Palace—also San Fran’— and they like fourteen-, fifteen-thousand seats each.”
I blocked out the Bay Area references. ”So, success came early.”
‘Yeah, babe.” A long thoughtful drag on the cigarette. ”Early, but not often.”
”How do you mean?”
Biggs settled back into the chair again, watching me. ”Probably should’ve told you this up front. I ain’t hired no lawyer for this Very thing.”
I didn’t reply.
Biggs said, ”And the way I heard it from Spi, his daddy want us to be straight with you, right?”
”I believe that would be appreciated.”
The raspy laugh. ”Okay, babe. ‘Appreciate’ this, then. Manager, he supposed to get only ten, maybe twenty percent of the gross a band make from every kind of thing it does.”
”Meaning albums, concerts—”
”Meaning everything that’s entertainment. Well, since Mitch put the band together, he own the name, he own the logo, he practically own us. We have three, four great years, then the bubble go ‘pop’ like a little kid with his chewing gum.”
I thought back to Eisen’s short course on the history of the music. ”Other groups pushed you off those charts.”
”Not just other groups. Hell, babe, we could rock with the best of them. Problem was other sounds, other kinds of shit. The music was evolving, and Spi, he couldn’t evolve with it. He stuck with his sound.”
”Which was?”
”Raunchy-rock.”
Eisen’s term, too. ”But even after you stopped making albums or doing concerts, you still got royalties or whatever, didn’t you?”
The cagey look behind a cloud of smoke. ”Mitch, he tell you that?”
”We didn’t spend much time on the money side.”
”That don’t surprise me none. Mitch, he spend his own time on the money side, but the man don’t share much of it with the rest of the world.”
I turned that over. ‘You think he cheated you?”
”Oh, he cheat us all right, but he do it by contract, dig? Or by law. Contract say, he own the name and shit. Law say, only the writer of the song get money from ASCAP or BMI when they collect it from the stations.”
”So only Spi Held got royalties from radio play of Spiral’s songs?”
”And Mitch.”
”I don’t follow you. Eisen wrote some of the songs?”
”No, babe. Our ‘personal manager’ had us all do wills with him as the winner.”
”The winner.”
”One of us die, that share go to him.”
I got it. ”So when Tommy O’Dell died...
?”
”…all O’D’s royalties for writing the lyrics go to Mitch.”
”With nothing for the other musicians?”
As Biggs started to speak, the hummingbirds came back to the feeder. This time, the two arrived nearly simultaneously and chittered at each other before a third dive-bombed them, the sound now more of clashing wings before all three zoomed away.
Biggs said, ”That’s what break up bands, too.”
I turned back to him. ”Fighting over the goodies.”
”Right on. Those birdies, they just learn to share, everybody get plenty to eat, account of Jeanette, she keep that bowl just as full of sugar water as it can be.”
”Kind of like a ‘royalty bowl’?”
The eyes behind another cloud of smoke went sad for a minute. ”Band usually got just one songwriter. Couple bands—Beatles, now, best example—they had two or three doing it. Spiral, for most of the good tunes, it was more like a collaboration.”
”Meaning you all contributed to the writing.”
”Some more than others.”
”And you more than Gordo Lazar?”
”Right on again, babe.” The sad look still. ”I didn’t know jackshit about this royalty stuff back then. None of us really did, and I mean most every player from the sixties, early seventies. Wasn’t till some bands got lawyers to watch their managers, and then other lawyers to watch their first lawyers, any of us knew what the hell was going down.”
I waited a moment before, ”Yet you signed on for the comeback.”
The cagey look again. ”I sign on for the money. Mitch, he track me down through the union, tell me he got Spi’s daddy to bankroll us for another album—or CD, shit, it’s still just music for the masses, dig?”
”So your heart’s not exactly in it.”
”Wasn’t never my heart.” A change of tone. ”You get to be good foxhole buddies with some brothers over in Vietnam?” I thought back, more to the streets of Saigon than the bush. Dave Waters during Tet, Calvin Mildredge losing an arm, Luther—
”Hey, babe?”
‘Yeah, I had black friends there.”
”Well, then, you got a lot farther along the road of racial harmony than Spi. He was one major pain in the butt, that way.”
”Racist?”
”More just resentful. He knowed how much I help him out on the keyboard with the arrangement of his tunes, but he also knowed he don’t have to share none of the royalties. So there always be this... curtain, like, between us.”
”Same with the others in the band?”
”Have to ask them, babe.” Biggs stubbed out his cigarette on top of the can before dropping it through the hole. I got to be going.”
”What about that third smoke?”
Biggs looked up, the eyes now more baleful than sad. ”You see these here things on my neck?”