American Outlaw - Jesse James [58]
“It never should have happened,” I said hoarsely that night on the phone with Karla. I tried to express the grief that was overwhelming me. “They didn’t have to pull him down like that.”
“I’m really sorry, Jesse,” she said. Her voice was soft. “I’m so sorry that happened.”
“The worst case should have been to take that kid and throw him out of the show, you know?” I choked.
“Yes,” Karla said.
“He’s listening to his favorite band, crowd surfing, going nuts—and then suddenly, he’s outside, listening to the show. That’d be enough of a lesson, wouldn’t it?” I sniffed. “Instead, they broke his neck and he’s fucking dead.”
Karla was quiet for a moment. “Is there any way you could change things?”
“Meatheads rule this job. I can try to tell them to use less force. But I don’t know if they’re gonna listen.”
“Jesse, you are so gentle,” Karla said. “You look like such a big, tough guy. But you’re just this little gentle guy inside. Aren’t you?”
“Yeah, right,” I grumbled. “Whatever.”
“Hey, wait a second,” Karla said, seriously. “I love that about you. You understand that, right?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I love you, Jesse.”
I didn’t respond. Just listened to the hum of the phone. “I better go,” I said, finally.
“I said, I love you,” Karla repeated. She waited. “Got anything to say to that?”
——
From that day on, I made sure that if I was going to work, part of my job would include training the arena security on the day of the gig.
“These kids are going to mosh,” I told everyone. “They’re going to look like they’re killing each other. But they aren’t. If anyone’s fighting for real, drawing blood, or actually posing a real threat, just grab them and escort them out, and shut the door behind them.”
I was greeted by nods and affable shrugs.
“Do not injure anyone,” I said.
But it’s tough to change the way aggressive men operate. Aging jocks with pale-yellow security jackets and thick beer bellies continued to break punk heads all across Ann Arbor, Boston, and New York City. I probably even broke a few myself. Bit by bit, I felt myself growing disgusted by the entire enterprise.
“I’m thinking about turning in my stripes,” I confessed to Eerie Von, Danzig’s bassist.
“Yeah,” he said.
“You’re not surprised?” I asked.
“Jesse,” he said, “you are way too smart for this.”
“Ah, shut up.”
Eerie shrugged. “I don’t see you being sixty years old and still knocking people on their heads.” He took a long pull at his beer, and stared at me incredulously. “Do you?”
With Eerie and Glenn’s encouragement, I segued into tour management. Now, instead of being in the front lines, I was handling the day-in and day-out needs for the bands. I was accountable for an exhausting litany of tasks, including but not limited to: checking the musicians into their hotel rooms, getting their keys, producing a reliable itinerary, schmoozing the front desk, standing up to the concert promoters, and making sure there was Jim Beam and not Jack Daniel’s in the dressing rooms—or Gummy Bears and not Jujubes.
This is totally fucking absurd, I realized in no time at all. Rock stars were very talented at what they did, to be sure, but they were also coddled little children who were generally used to getting their own way. I was not very good at coddling. It was not part of my skill set.
I was pretty damn proficient at collecting the money, though. Concert promoters, notorious for lying about the gate, often put their heads together with sleazy tour managers to stiff the record companies and skim great profits off the top. I was a record company’s dream—no concert promoter in the world was going to swindle me. I looked way too scary. At the end of the week, I’d fly out to the record executives with a big briefcase full of cash, feeling like a Mafia don.
But the thrill of transporting someone else’s hundred-dollar bills was fleeting. I wasn’t quite dumb enough to think there was a future in what I was doing.
Then one day Eerie came to me, looking low.
“Jess,” he said glumly, “you’re going to have to book Chuck a flight back home.”
“Why’s that?”
“Dimwit,