Chapter 12
ANDREA
Andrea was sitting in on a marketing meeting being led by her head of marketing, with Tommy Dawson’s management team.
Tommy Dawson, whilst publicly stating he would not be leaving his band, was taking some time to focus on a solo album.
Andrea had heard some of the sample tracks, and what was lacking due to the loss of the band Tommy made up for with raw and emotional lyrics.
In her opinion, it was a stripped-bare example of him and his music.
She was more than happy to have him making the solo album under the Stellar label.
They were playing one of his new tracks in the meeting room.
She took her coffee from the large oval table where his management team and several of her colleagues were sitting to stand in the window.
She watched the clouds slowly glide through the horizon as Tommy sang about making changes to his life.
There had been a time she could have fallen for Tommy.
They had always gotten along well, right from the early days.
She’d enjoyed working with him. More than once they’d spent a few weeks ‘together’ and each time had been bliss between the sheets.
He lived up to his reputation and then some in that department.
When it was just them, lying naked in a hotel bed, their bodies entwined, his fingers gently stroking her skin as he spoke to her, there were moments of real soul to Tommy that did not present in the rock star version of him.
The problem was, Tommy’s rock star persona and Tommy’s real life were a blur, and Andrea hadn’t needed a man in her life any of the times they had been together, so she’d had no patience in waiting around for those fleeting moments of tenderness.
Their random hook-ups since the last of those few intense weeks had been just that, hook-ups.
Great sex until they were exhausted, then a test of will over who could politely leave quickest and get back to the important things in their lives.
But as she listened to his music now, the mellow beauty of the guitar, the slower pace of the tune, the soft husk of his voice, she wondered if he really did want to make changes. More than that, she considered whether it was time for her to make changes too. Starting with getting rid of Hunter.
As Tommy sang about being an innocent child before that innocence died, she asked herself how she had gone from being a happy young girl to a sometimes ruthless woman. A woman who was capable of having an affair with a married man, the father of one of her best friends?
Could people really change? God, she hoped so.
Could she be that smiling little girl again?
That, she doubted. Those happy days, before her mom left her, were nothing more than faint memories.
Since then, she’d seen her father be a drunk, brought up her sister as best she could, taken control of the family business and now brought more responsibility upon herself as the CEO of Stellar.
There was a knock on the meeting room door, which interrupted her self-analysis. Hannah held it open.
‘Hi, everyone, this one couldn’t stand you all talking behind his back.’
Tommy Dawson chuckled as he stepped into the room in all black – jeans, leather jacket and shades – with two large suited security men in tow.
He glanced around the room, then his eyes fell on Andrea. He took off his shades and his cheekiness creased his bright eyes – noticeably brighter and cleaner than Andrea had seen them for a long time.
‘Bringing out the big guns for me, huh?’ he asked.
Andrea glared at him. ‘Too much of a star to be on time, huh?’
They both laughed and Tommy pulled out a seat at the table. His guard dogs stood like statues at the back of the room. Tommy greeted everyone as he poured himself a glass of water.
In times gone by, Tommy – if he came to a meeting at all – would have slouched in his seat, tapping out a beat with his foot and drumming his fingers on the tabletop as he wrote a melody in his mind.
Then he would have asked for a whiskey on the rocks – a poison he and Andrea could agree on and which they’d shared too much of in the past. He would not have taken off his shades, politely conversed with his management team and poured H-2-O. No siree.
Who was this man?
‘Guys, I gotta tell ya,’ Tommy said, ‘this album is my baby. I want to be heavily involved in every aspect of what we’re trying to achieve here.’
A general chorus of assurance followed.
‘I’ve had a few ideas,’ Tommy continued. He took a small black notebook from the inside pocket of his leather jacket and Andrea almost choked, for one of two reasons.
Either he was about to share his little black book of women – which didn’t seem big enough to reflect the reality of his one-night stands, unless it contained only the ones he’d been sober enough to remember.
Or he was a man who made business notes now.
The second option was by far the most shocking.
‘Don’t worry, it’s not as full as my little black book,’ he joked, winking at Andrea as if she’d spoken her thoughts aloud. Despite herself, she smirked.
He was still a rogue but perhaps a redeemable one in this moment.
* * *
Though she hadn’t intended to sit in on the entire meeting, two hours, two coffee runs and a plate of baked goods later, the meeting about Tommy’s solo album drew to close.
Hannah reappeared to show everyone out of the room and to the elevators. Andrea stood at the door, shaking hands as each person passed, as if she were part of a wedding line-up.
Tommy was last to leave. He waved his team off and asked Andrea, ‘You got a sec?’
‘Sure. Do you want to come along to my office? I think this room is booked out.’
They made their way along the corridor, with Tommy’s personal security following closely behind and with Tommy turning the heads of every PA as they walked by.
Andrea smiled to herself, remembering the early days, when Thomas Dawson was nothing more than a freeloader, sofa-surfing his friends, including, once or twice, Andrea.
Turning up to Sanfia Records in the same pair of track pants day after day alongside his band members.
He had been talented then but he hadn’t known how good he was as a frontman.
Boy, how times had changed .
It was the remarkable thing about the music industry.
Sure, there were mediocre artists who could sing and play but couldn’t blow anyone away, whose lives never changed much from release to release.
They earned a living doing what they loved.
They had a steady fan base. Then there were the people like Tommy, who gave up everything to commit to their dream.
Who had a spark, something magical in their music, and whose lives were projected by the industry from rock bottom to rock stars .
‘Nice digs,’ Tommy said when Andrea showed him into her office, his security standing watch like mastiffs in the corridor.
Through the glass panes, the PAs continued to ogle Tommy, until Andrea threw them a scowl that was intended to have the effect of an ice-cold power hose on their horny libidos.
‘Make yourself at home,’ she told him, gesturing to the suede sofas that occupied one half of her office space.
Tommy walked beyond the sofas to the wall of shelves stacked with LPs that Andrea had collected over more than two decades and didn’t have space for in her apartment.
‘Would you like a real drink?’ she asked, moving to the bar table in the corner.
Tommy kept his eyes on the records, pulling out a Jimi Hendrix album, Band of Gypsys , and looking over the track list.
‘No, thanks, I’m trying to cut down,’ he said. He turned quickly and added, ‘Not stopping. Just keeping it for dark.’
Andrea removed her hand from the bottle of Macallan whisky she’d chosen and moved to Tommy’s side.
‘That was his best album,’ she said, nodding to Jimi Hendrix in bright colours on the record cover. ‘“Machine Gun” arguably did more for the industry than the King himself.’
‘Agreed,’ Tommy said, setting the album back on the shelf. ‘These days people take distortion and feedback for granted. Though I probably wouldn’t go around busting Elvis’s ass.’
Andrea smiled with amusement. ‘So, what did you want to see me about?’
‘I wasn’t expecting you to be in the meeting today.’ He moved to sit in one corner of the sofa as he spoke.
‘I hadn’t intended to stay, to be honest.’
Tommy looked around the room they were in, then took in Andrea, in her pencil skirt and tailored blouse, the high heels she’d finally gotten used to wearing at work all day.
Just as she felt he was scrutinising everything he saw, he shifted his attention to look out of the window, rubbing the gruff of his chin contemplatively.
‘Do you miss being in the studio?’ he asked.
She’d been too busy recently to think about being in the studio, but whenever she did, she definitely missed working with artists, being creative.
More than that, she missed the early days, before she’d become so heavily involved in the business management of Sanfia Records, when the big decisions at Sanfia were made by her dad and she was able to focus on the music.
When she could turn up to work in jeans, a sweater and sneakers.
She nodded as she came to sit in the opposite corner of the sofa to Tommy. ‘I’m mostly too busy to think about it.’
‘Do you remember those first EPs we made together?’
She nodded again, smiling at the memory of being blown away by Tommy and his band. Back then he’d had a great sound, but it was rough around the edges and he was shaggy looking, unintentionally, not like the polished, intentionally unkempt rock god he was now.
They’d spent weeks in the studio, often working into the early hours, collaborating to make the kind of music that Andrea felt in her core.
‘It was fun, wasn’t it?’ Tommy continued.