For What It's Worth (A True Story, Most Of It, I Think)
Shortly after my father’s death in 1989,
I was happy to leave The States and return to my army unit in Germany since
that’s where my guitar was. It was around this time the kindling of a rock band
began to smolder after my brother-from-another-mother and I discovered a large,
unused room in the attic in the furthest reaches of the barracks. (Actually, I’d
already known about it since my girlfriend and I usually held our trysts there,
but the prospect of rock stardom outweighed privacy concerns and so I led my
friend there to ‘discover’ the room together.) That brother-from-another-mother,
Rick (R.I.P.), also played guitar and our ‘styles’ (read: schlocking) meshed
well since we grew up on similar rock music. And so, for a while it was just
myself and Rick. At some point we’d heard the tall guy in 3rd
platoon, Fred, was a dedicated Rush fan and played drums. Despite the fact our
abilities were clearly beneath Fred after we heard him play, we convinced him
to join our ensemble without much effort. Frankly, we were shocked that he
agreed, especially so easily, but I guess he really wanted to jam somewhere
other than his barracks room. The core of our garage/attic band (my apologies
to garages and attics) along with Lee, my girlfriend, had been established.
A few people would come and go from the band, like Quinn, who we taught bass and guitar to, which wound up being a mistake because when divorce came down on him, he wrote no less than
On a side note, when I first met Lee, Rick was bringing me over to his house to jam. I was carrying my Fender HM Strat guitar (R.I.P.) and Lee, Rick’s babysitter, shouted down from her parent's apartment balcony to ask Rick who I was. Rick politely introduced us but honestly I didn’t think much of her initially. Sure, she was pretty – and Scottish – but at 16, Too young to consider as a girlfriend, I thought. But Rick mentioned that Lee could sing which prompted me to agree to try Lee out as our singer seeing how Rick and I warbled like fish. She was hesitant since she knew nothing more than old-timey English standards and some Brit-pop but we assured her this wasn’t an issue for our rock band whose songs were all well out of her range, thus indicating how desperate we were to put a band together even if we were going to be terrible. We all started jamming and the chemistry was there even if the talent wasn’t. The chemistry was definitely there for Lee, though that chemistry was for Fred at first. When Fred resisted her charms because he said she was too young for him, I became her Plan B even though Fred and I were the same age and I initially said the same thing about her youth. It wound up being a great relationship and the best situation for everyone…except Lee’s father who simply hated Americans. You guessed it – he was the one who eventually sent her off to boarding school. Or maybe she would have gone anyway, but I like to blame her father for basically ruining our relationship. Anyway, not bitter.
After we got together, I’m pretty sure
the ensuing months were maddening to the rest of the band as it took a crowbar
to pry me and Lee apart most of the time. Of course, we did manage to practice
on occasion and landed our first gig: The Christmas party for our detachment
during which I had to wear a bandana around my neck to hide all my hickeys; couldn’t
have dear ‘ol Dad catching the sight of that! Wanting to make a good impression
on everyone else, we did recruit Rick’s wife, Noel, to sing some of the songs
Lee really struggled with. The end result is that we weren’t super awful,
though I believe the copious amounts of alcohol consumed by our audience may
have had something to do with that. We may not have been very good but we were
smart enough to wait until our audience had at least three beers in them before
taking the stage. Initially naming ourselves For What It’s Worth, because
really, that’s why were doing it, appeared to have paid off.
[We struggled with the band name what
with Rick desperately wanting to go with The Slam Bambies, which I really
like but which would’ve suited a proper punk band more so. That name, however, offended
Fred’s classier rock pedigree, so, no go. We eventually went with The
Underground which, although generic, I found funny because we practiced in
an attic.]
Our second gig was another party, but
just for the American troops in our detachment. I have fond memories of that show
since we were on a proper stage with proper lighting, sounded almost good for
most of the songs, and because First Platoon was completely wasted the whole
time. They razzed me good when, under the hot lights at about the fourth song,
I whipped off my long sleeve shirt. I paid them no mind as I launched into our ‘hit’
song, Song #1, which had the platoon beating on the stage to the drums. It
was an inspired moment that exhilarated me more than any show I’ve played
since. Fueled by alcohol, again, a reputation of sorts began to take shape.
We were soon enlisted to open up for a DOD band (see the flyer above) that was touring Europe and was coming to our base. Thinking this was great but not wanting to be shown up too badly, we decided to scout the band ahead of time the night before at another base they were playing. Rick, Fred, and I sat in the front row and eagerly awaited our rivals. Naturally, they were good, really good; the look, the sound, the showmanship – they had it all. But for some reason we weren’t too bothered by it, perhaps out of respect for fellow musicians or because we were accepting our limitations, who knows. We did find it funny when one of the female singers sat in our laps and crooned to us, obviously not knowing who we were (then again, why would they?). In the middle of their show, however, their drummer bashed out a drum solo and this made Fred smirk; he thought he could do better. Knowing he probably could, we all agreed he’d bash one out during the middle of our show tomorrow. At least we had this on them, the bastards.
The show was going smoothly enough for us
despite being under the scrutiny of the DOD band who sat in the front row after
realizing we were at their show the night before. Then Fred smirked that smirk
and started bashing away. I looked at their drummer; he WAS NOT amused. Did we
(Fred) just embarrass them? It was a sweet thought to entertain. (I’m
competitive, sue me.) We wrapped up, managing to get through all of our songs
with a minimum of flubs and alcohol in the room, and relaxed while the DOD band
set up. They did their thing just like the previous night, except when the
drummer got to his solo, he played twice as long as before and looked angry
doing it, and this appeared to surprise his bandmates. Sheesh, dude! The idea
wasn’t to make them mad; it was just a friendly rivalry kind of thing. Perhaps
coincidentally, no DOD band ever came to our unit again as long as we were
stationed there. But band life is not all unicorns and rainbows.
One morning, Fred came knocking on my
door rather insistently, waking me up on Saturday morning and telling me we had
a gig downtown that afternoon. A guy in our detachment (Archer! I hated that
guy!) had been at a bar the night before and had been talking us up to the organizers
of a Battle of the Bands contest. The organizers apparently decided that if we
were as good as were to be believed, we should open the show for the winning
band at the Brewfest downtown Saturday afternoon. Not only should we open the
show but we would have a two-to-three-hour block of time to play. When Fred
told me all this I didn’t think, Hey,
this is our big break. No, I started thinking that we only knew, at best,
40 minutes of material. An hour or so before show time, the band found
ourselves behind the performance tent desperately trying to figure out some
cover songs we could fake our way through – AND without a lyrics sheet for Lee
who wasn’t much familiar with American rock. This was going to be ugly, like,
Hunchback of Notre Dame ugly. But I guess sometimes in life you just have to
say, “Fuck it.”
When we took the stage, we started with
our strongest material. We sounded a little strange, though, which I chalked up
to the sound engineer insisting we use their PA system and not letting us just
dial up our amps like we were used to doing. This would have preoccupied my
mind but I was more concerned with the occasional drunk lad running on stage
and accosting Lee. That was really pissing me off but I kept biting my tongue
and continued playing. I also needed to concentrate under the intense glare of professional
stage lights which the stage lights of our second gig hadn’t prepared us for. We
played and played until I was forced to keep coming over to Rick between songs and
remind him we were running out of gas; we were going to have to give up soon
and just as well because it was visible that one of the festival organizers
didn’t like our tone both figuratively and literally. At least I can say we literally
didn’t have good equipment this early in our ‘careers’ and that compromised our
sound, so I don’t completely fault them, not like I did Lee’s dad for simply
being ‘a Yank.’ (Our only good pieces of equipment were Fred’s high-end
Zildjian cymbals which he stole from a music store a few towns away from our
unit.) At any rate, the band we were opening for were going to have to take the
stage earlier rather than later which was fine by me since we were getting paid
in beer.
The Battle of the Bands winner was
lightyears better than us and I don’t say that because I’d had too many drinks.
They had their shit together. I was particularly mesmerized by their female
bass player. No, it wasn’t that she was physically attractive; she wasn’t to me.
Rather, she was one of the most skilled bassists I’d ever seen, male or female,
professional or otherwise, back then or even now. My diverted attention got way
under Lee’s skin as she thought I was transfixed by the band’s lead singer who was
nothing short of a face-melting metal sex goddess, not that I noticed at some point. Lee didn’t believe me for a
second about the bass player and went home super angry that night. I was glad the
gig was over despite that, but felt the show damaged us in a way we couldn’t
recover from. Or I’m just being dramatic. It was probably our inability to
evolve that wiped us out, struck by the mile-wide asteroid of complacency and
just doing it for what it was worth. Time erases all the greats, anyway.
In the end, I look fondly back upon that
time except for one little thing. I have to apologize to Fred. Why? Rick and I
never learned to play any Rush songs which he would’ve liked to cover. Also, it
was me. I’m the one who was playing his drums when I shouldn’t have been and broke
his precious wood block. I put it back together to make it look unbroken,
leaving him to ‘break’ it our very next jam session. Sorry about that, Fred. I
was a dick. And I was a rock star in my own mind.
For What It’s Worth/The Slam Bambies/The Underground 1989-1991
Notable Songs:
Song #1 (written by Rick, John, and Fred)
Drunk (written by Rick and Fred)
The Blind (written by Fred and John)
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| Our defining bit of 'soundproofing,' a derelict piece of carpet we all wrote on. |
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