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Chapter Eleven - Fate - |
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As all this was going on -- getting swallowed by the stupid job, the marriage falling apart, I was getting tired. The knocks I’d taken over the years were taking their toll. Rather incongruously, the band got a badly needed shot in the arm, courtesy of Columbia Records. They signed us to a demo deal and quickly put us into the studio with an unknown producer. A Very Famous Band was working on what would become their first number-one record in the studio next to us. We weren’t allowed anywhere near the room because the VFB didn’t want anyone to see they weren’t actually playing on their own record. The label was unsure of the tapes that resulted from those sessions, but determined to groom us for stardom. They gambled that it was the fault of the unknown producer and upped the ante. They hired Rick Springfield’s producer, Prince’s engineer, and an expensive studio. The new sessions were charged by the label’s confidence. The head of the label brought girls and coke to the studio. We were happy, the label was happy, and when the songs played back everybody was smiling. The full-on record deal was a mere formality. Finally. We breathed a collective sigh of career relief.
•••
There is no quarter bearing the date 1975. In that year, the U.S. Mint instead produced roughly three billion twenty-five cent coins inscribed 1776 1976 in honor of the nation’s bicentennial. Just over one and a half billion of those coins were produced at the mint in Philadelphia. Of those, seventy-five percent were put into general circulation, the remainder sold to collectors and dealers. Among the circulated coins, one bag containing two hundred dollars’ worth of the commemorative quarters was delivered by armored car to the Kroger grocery store in Huntington, West Virginia. On an unseasonably warm September 19th, 1975, eleven-year-old Dwayne Morton entered that Kroger to purchase a Bomb-Pop and a pack of Bazooka bubble gum. The total of the sale was seventy-four cents. Dwayne handed cashier Marie Kennedy a worn one dollar bill his father had given him that morning as part of his weekly allowance. Ms. Kennedy made the correct change of one 1968D penny and one shiny new bicentennial edition quarter. Delighted with his new acquisition, Dwayne promptly stowed it with his other rare and valuable coins in the Addidas shoe box stashed in the secret corner of his closet, on the shelf above the clothes rack, safely out of reach of his younger brother, Kenny. The quarter remained in that shoebox till the fall of 1984, when Dwayne, then a junior at Kent State majoring in economics, phoned younger brother Kenny, a senior and captain of the debate team at Roosevelt High. Dwayne was busted for possession of one ounce of pot and, not wanting to alert his parents to his predicament, instructed Kenny to immediately and discreetly cash out his coin collection and wire the funds to the bail bondsman. Kenny was eager to help out his brother, especially since it involved a degree of covert maneuvering around their watchful parents. Rather than waste time negotiating with a coin dealer, Kenny simply did all his business at the Union Bank on route 12. It was a one-stop transaction that saved precious time. Nina Patchell, 19, the teller on duty, paid no particular attention to the dates or other markings on the coins Kenny handed her. Somewhat annoyed that the coins were not sorted and wrapped, she nonetheless assisted Kenny in the professional manner that would eventually earn her a promotion to assistant manager of customer service, a position she holds to this day. The bicentennial quarter, along with all Dwayne’s collectables, was placed into general circulation in impeccable condition. The quarter found its way next into the pocket of a trucker hauling broccoli to Salt Lake City; a soft drink machine just outside Portland; the pocket of an unscrupulous vending machine employee; the change back for a Heineken returned to a guitar player passing through Portland on his way to Seattle to start a hard rock band; the floor of a nightclub in Seattle where it fell from a hole in the guitar player’s jeans pocket; the hand of the CNN cameraman who was part of the crew doing a story on the music scene in the northwest and who picked it up thinking it fell out of his own pocket; the change bucket held by the CNN segment producer who charged his staff twenty-five cents for swearing; the desk of the financial analyst who won the bet with the segment producer regarding the sexual orientation of a certain female on-air personality; and finally, in the hand of Ted Turner, who never carried cash, but borrowed the quarter from the analyst to decide if he should attempt a leveraged buyout of CBS. The quarter came up heads and he did try to buy CBS -- all of it. What should have been a routine transaction between billionaires quickly degenerated into a battle of rich penises. To fend him off, CBS raised capital by firing two hundred employees, including (how could it be otherwise?) our A&R rep. With her gone, we had no one to shepherd us. Those who remained distanced themselves from the projects left by the departed. The head of A&R was a coward who didn’t trust his own ears. He was a person devoid of an opinion, relying instead on others to provide him with one. The person he selected to give him an opinion on our tape was the Producer of the VFB that didn’t play on its own record. “What do you think of these guys,” the A&R head asked. “I think that Very Famous Band are better writers,” came the Very famous Producer’s nonchalant reply, thus ending our career at CBS. Actually, that one sentence ended the band, period. The stink was on us. If CBS, having put us in the studio twice, with all that platinum talent, still wouldn’t sign us, nobody would. The producer’s offhand remark was especially painful, given that Very Famous Band didn’t write any of their hits. You’d think that would be the end of the story. You’d be wrong. The unknown guy who produced our first sessions ended up working with the VFB Producer. After a couple years, he brought us up. “Remember that band I worked with at CBS?” “Whatever happened to them? I really liked them.” “You did?” “Yeah, I thought they were great.” “Then why did you kill their deal?” “Look -- I could have the label pay attention to my band or your band. What would you do?” Chilling.
I bore no grudge against the VFB Producer. He was just looking out for himself. He’ll spend eternity in his own private hell. For a while I blamed Ted Turner for the whole mess and boycotted CNN. That didn’t last too long. It seemed ridiculous even to me to take it personally. I do, however, begrudge the Universe for fostering a world where such an offhanded action by one person can destroy the life of another. I understood why the producer said what he said, but all the understanding in the world couldn’t put me back together again. Losing my ability to take a punch made it that much easier for me to get even more lost.
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