High Tide in Tucson_ Essays From Now or Never - Barbara Kingsolver [53]
I tried to be dependable and invisible and watch my little synthesizer buttons so I wouldn’t come in sounding like a horn section when I was supposed to be an organ, or vice versa. I didn’t want Al Kooper to roll his eyes at me. (I’ve found out since, he rolls his eyes even when he likes you.) I wanted to belong to this gang, and I wasn’t going to do it by being the class clown or the silver tongue. We were a whole class of clowns, a league of quick wits, but so what? Can a good pig fly? When we got on stage, we were going to have to be a band.
Everybody else developed at least a song or two that was his or her own moment in the spot—Amy had her glorious black-leather “Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” Tad embraced “Chain of Fools” with her soul, Ridley committed a righteous “Nadine,” Steve excelled (of course) at teenage death songs, and Dave endowed the sixties standard “Gloria” with a new attitude. I supposed I ought to brave center stage too, but the keyboard grows where you plant it, like a tree. It’s more of a workhorse than a dance-around-the-stage-and-bite-things type of instrument. Think of one single rock band with a flashy, standout player on boards, if you can. For reasons partly beyond my control, it was very easy for me to fade into oblivion behind Roy Blount’s Hawaiian shirt. (In our video, there’s no appreciable evidence that I was there.) But bowing to peer pressure, I rashly volunteered to step away from my synthesizer and sing “Dock of the Bay.” I regretted it instantly.
“Dock of the Bay,” Otis Redding version, is my favorite song. To my mind, it speaks to the universal human theme of being washed up somewhere with dashed hopes and poor employment prospects and nobody to hold your hand. I’ve sung it nine million times in private places, mostly tiled and wet. But I don’t sing with my clothes on; it’s the principle of the thing. I know my limitations. Or should.
The first time we went through “Dock of the Bay” in rehearsal, my throat was the size of one of those tiny plastic straws they put in your margarita. The guys faithfully played their chords behind my soulfully inaudible rendition, but they examined their sneakers closely when it was over, and I scooted back behind my keyboard like a hermit crab into its shell after a brief interlude of nakedness.
I kind of hoped that song would go away. But Al made me do it again, every day. (He pulled me aside one day and advised that I learn the words. I said, “I know the words, I just can’t sing!”) In time I got the volume up, but not to the point of feeling entitled to sing in front of an audience that had actually paid, in cash, to be there.
This entitlement may or may not have been an issue. The band was philosophically divided on the subject of music. In rehearsal we worked much harder than any of the guys are ever going to admit. We didn’t want to embarrass ourselves utterly. But in interviews we knocked each other down in the scramble for the title of Lowest Musical Self-Esteem. It’s a face saver. We all knew no amount of rehearsal could ever make us into a first-rate, or even cut-rate, or irate, or reprobate, rock-and-roll band; in that case it’s better to pretend you’re not trying very hard than to let on that this is really your best effort.
So what was the point, exactly? I found myself brooding a lot, those first early mornings in my Boston hotel room. Why go public with something you know perfectly well you’re not doing all that well? Why should good writers play mediocre music? If this is multitasking, I might as well go home and sing “Dock of the Bay” while doing something useful, like