The Book of Drugs_ A Memoir - Mike Doughty [28]
We sat tensely at brunch. A deranged Frenchman in a clown wig wandered between the tables playing the accordion. Our lawyer had gotten us a publishing deal—that meant songwriting. I had exhorted the guys in my band, when they were disinterested, that they should think of it as their band, as well as mine. It didn’t really work at the time. But now it became clear that they expected every bit of money to be split even-steven.
I’d spent eight hours the night before typing out a screed explaining what I thought I had done, how it was significant that I put the band together; twelve dense pages of loopy argument. When I woke up, I realized I was just typing the same thing over and over again, in fact barely saying anything at all. I deleted it. My head spun, trying to devise a way to state my case.
Let’s think about what songs actually are, I said.
They sat scowling.
The drummer spoke: “Yo G, you don’t write the beat. I write the beat. Just because you do the vocal doesn’t mean you’re better than me. Listen to them hi-hat parts there. Nobody told me to do that, that’s my hi-hat part, G.”
Could I disagree?
“Don’t be greedy,” the drummer said.
“We were all doing something else, and then this came along. So this is like a side project for each of us,” said the bass player.
I thought, but didn’t say: This isn’t a side project. This is my life. Everything I’ve ever written I’ve poured into this band. You feel like this is just some fluke you fell into, because for you it is.
But I was ten years younger than these guys, and they were much better at their instruments than I was.
The sampler player pulled out a sheaf of papers. “Look at this,” he said. It was sheet music, with notes, actual super-fancy Western notation notes, written on staves with clefs and the whole respectable-composer package.
“This,” he said, “is music.”
I thought, but didn’t say: You’ve contributed basically one keyboard part, brilliant, amazing keyboard part though it is, around which a song is based—and I put it together, laid it out, I made it into a song.
But I was ten years younger than these guys, and they were all much better than I was.
“I’m not saying we don’t have good lyrics, G,” said the drummer. “Everybody’s going to know we’re one of those bands with good lyrics.”
One of those bands with good lyrics? As if to say, we’re one of those bands with interesting art on their CD covers?
The sampler player pointed at the bass player. “He’s been playing for years. He’s played in so many bands, he’s played with ———” and here he mentioned an ornery avant-jazz legend. “Do you think that guy would even think of playing with you?”
“You act like you’re the only one whose dream it is to be a rock star,” said the bass player. “It’s my dream, too.”
But, I thought, what did you do about it? In your entire life, what have you done? I paid for those rehearsals when I barely had a dime—booked those gigs with those spiteful club people—called everybody I’d ever met in New York to gather a measly crowd for our gigs—
“You play the same riff over and over again, Doughty,” said the bass player, putting a cruelly condescending emphasis on my name.
Yes. Just as some of the great rhythm guitarists and songwriters do, having a style that they modify and return to for their entire careers, I’m not great, but I live by the example of the greats, I could’ve said.
But I was ten years younger, and they were all much better than I was.
Finally, I said, You all sound like yourselves, and you’re all amazing, but I knew what this band was going to sound like before I got you guys together.
They threw up their hands and scoffed, but it was true. I’d sat and imagined it for years, and it sounded as I intended it to. I could’ve said: It doesn’t occur to