Chapter 1 #2
There’s a look every musician gets when they’re ready to play. Really play. It’s a belief that the music matters. It’s the most powerful emotion I know. It sparked in Angela’s eyes.
She nodded, stood, and headed for the rear-stage entrance. But she stopped at the black curtain, turned her head back. “Thanks, Jack.”
I threw her the horns, as we called it—a fist with index and pinkie fingers pointed up. She ducked through the curtain.
In the sudden quiet, decades of metal history—on the walls, in the furniture, drifting through the air—reminded me of what I’d just lost. I shifted on the old couch, found the Hounds of Winter patch, and punched it again and again and again, dust pluming around me.
When that wasn’t enough, I tore it from the couch.
For years I’d chased this dream and now the Hounds would play Wembley Stadium without me. The dread of being left behind made me feel sick inside, and every pulse of my heart pounded like a bass drum behind my eyes.
It was the old pressure.
In my mind, I glimpsed the reflection of my ten-year-old self standing alone in a window.
I threw the patch on the floor, hooked a finger under the hair ties around my wrist, stretched them out, and snapped them back against my skin. The familiar sting eased the pressure, but the cramps in my belly and the jackhammering pain in my head quickly returned.
I pulled the hair ties back as far as I could to try again, but before I could let go, Angela’s band started to play. The distant rumble washed over me and with it a different memory arose.
Chuey had invited me over after a library session.
I’d shown up with a face full of bruises—got in a lot of fights back then, and frankly didn’t care.
He led me down into his moldy basement, where his family’s wet laundry hung from crisscrossing clotheslines.
We’d sat there with three other guys listening to Judas Priest, Pantera, and countless other bands.
I’d never met any of the other kids, but from that first moment, as we struggled to explain the raw power of the music to each other, we became friends.
I grew to love the smell of wet laundry.
And the music somehow relieved the pressure that had begun when Mama left.
It worked better when the music was live, better still when I was performing songs of my own.
But when I couldn’t get some music in my ears, I had the hair ties.
Both were miracles compared to what I’d done to cope in those first few years after she was gone.
I didn’t like to think about that time in my life.
But damned if Chuey hadn’t saved me from all that, too.
Just then, the door opened and Henry slipped in, a grace in his step that belied his seventy-plus years. With Angela’s music in my head, the pressure began to recede, and I eased the elastic ties back down.
Henry draped his rag over his shoulder. “I had a feeling you’d get through to her. Thank you, Jack.”
I gestured at the photos on the wall. “Nothing you haven’t done a thousand times.”
Henry came and sat down beside me on the grimy old couch and gently placed his hand on the cluster of hair ties on my wrist. “Well, the pair of you have something more in common, don’t you?”
His big, steady hands were always a comfort.
He smiled. “Make any progress on your third verse?”
He was talking about “They Always Go Away.” How many variations had I tried? It’s hard to sum up your runaway mother in a few lines. I’d finished a version the Hounds could play live—the version everyone knew. But it wasn’t right. The third verse was missing . . . something.
“A little,” I answered.
“Let’s have it, then.” Henry gently squeezed my wrist and let go, sitting back to listen.
I let out with the first few verses—my father pushing me away, the death of my brother Dan—those hadn’t changed in years. Then I skipped
the chorus and hesitantly started the third verse. The one about Mama leaving. About watching from the front-room window as the sound of her car engine faded down the street, the house suddenly becoming so damned quiet.
Halfway through I stopped, the anger still churning inside me. “Words aren’t there yet.”
Henry nodded. “If you don’t mind my saying, the melody sounds a bit too nostalgic. Almost as if you’re not going deep enough.”
I stared at the ceiling for a minute while Henry’s words bounced around in my head. He’d nailed it. Other than Chuey, Henry was the only one I’d told this story, but neither of them knew everything. And nostalgia was definitely not the right sound for it.
“Such an important song, Jack,” he added. “Important songs can hurt.
But don’t you give up on it.”
Angela’s music was thrumming through the walls now, rattling the pictures, and easing the last of the pressure behind my eyes.
Henry pointed at one of the jouncing photos.
“What a great night that was.” The picture was of the Hounds’ first gig at the Iron Horse.
It’d been taken from the stage with the audience behind us.
There were only a dozen people in the crowd, but Henry mugged for the camera like he’d just discovered the Who.
Seeing the guys felt like four divorces all at once. “That’s over now.” “They give you a reason?”
“Said I was always putting other things ahead of the band.”
Henry scrubbed his chin. “What would make you do such a thing?”
I shrugged. “Anyway, they’ve hired a management company to ‘get things back on track.’ Turns out the company has a singer already under contract.”
Henry sighed. “So, they wanted to make the change before the Hounds open at the festival next week.”
No Sabbath story for me. “A few labels are gonna be there to check them out.” I scanned the countless band photos on the wall.
“I’ve been at this for almost twenty years, Henry.
This was my shot . . . Some people are doctors, others build things with their hands.
But me? This is all I’ve ever wanted. It’s all I know. ”
Henry didn’t speak. He knew better than anyone how to keep a silence. But the reassuring weight of his hand came again, this time resting on my shoulder. I exhaled long and slow, like I’d been holding my breath all night.
Angela’s band fell into a low, grinding rhythm—drop-D tuning giving the guitar a forceful plod that could crack your dental fillings. Beautiful. She had a gift.
“Did you know,” Henry finally said, “that the Who wasn’t the first band Keith Moon drummed for?”
Henry loved the Who, claimed he’d been the first one to book them, right here at the Iron Horse. Same as Zeppelin.
“And did you also know,” he went on, “that over its long history, the Iron Horse has always played host to something music-related—everything from Duke Ellington’s residency to a luthier shop to medieval liturgical choirs.”
“That right?” The familiar back-and-forth helped, and Henry knew I was a history buff.
“The point, Jack, is that we all go through changes, but we all come around to where we’re supposed to be.”
“And my music?”
“Oh, your music is far from finished, my boy. You’ve a gift to look inside a thing, find the songs no one else can see, and give them a voice.” He squeezed my shoulder. “But music is meant to be shared, isn’t it? Just like the Iron Horse itself.”
Henry looked down at the floor. I followed his gaze to the Hounds patch lying near our feet and picked it up. “I’ll sew it back on,” I said. “And I’ll find another band.”
Henry clapped my back. “Damn straight.”
After Angela had finished her set, Henry and I wandered into the pub. Conversation stopped as friends and regulars turned my way. Word
spreads fast in the metal community. And everyone here knew what the Hounds meant to me.
In the relative quiet, Henry, voice rough with age, started to sing the chorus to “They Always Go Away.”
“Henry, don’t.” He kept on.
Chuey turned to us and shouted, “Hells yeah, brother. This ain’t no pity party. Westmont strong.” Then he stood up, all wiry five feet nine of him, onto the bench of our booth—symphonic metal—ran a hand over his buzz cut, and with his terrible voice, joined Henry.
A moment later, one of the Iron Horse regulars, Church, a heavyset chap who usually sat at the classic-metal table, tamped the floor with the cane he didn’t need, pulled the stogie he never lit from his mouth—Winston Churchill–like affectations that had earned him his nickname—and joined them in a rich baritone.
Then, another regular, Mary Rose, whom everyone called Lady for reasons I’d never learned, swiveled around on a barstool reserved for Queen fans.
Auburn hair and green eyes made her freckles all the darker.
Setting aside her leather corset—onto which she was sewing a band patch—she raised her needle to toast my fortunes and came in with a dusky alto.
From a step stool, Jimmy Bates, the Iron Horse janitor, threw in, too.
Jimmy didn’t need a nickname. He was built like Jimmy Stewart, and had a bit of a stutter like him, too.
Jimmy had been hanging boots like ornaments from the overhead water pipes.
Sixty years old with perfect pitch—something I discovered teaching him guitar a few times a week—Jimmy liked old-school punk.
Then the entire thrash-metal table—Westy, Ella, the Parley twins—put their endless “talent versus training” debate on hold and picked up the song midbeat: “I will be one who stays!”
Soon, everyone in the bar was shouting out the words. It wasn’t the first time the Iron Horse had sung together. But it was the first time they’d done a song of mine. Hell of a feeling.