“Well ... the one thing we worked on at the audition was simple ... not very technical at all, but ... well ... I guess it was okay, for a pop song anyway. It was little like some of the stuff we used to play in jazz band ... in a way, anyway.” Another shrug. “I don’t know. I’m a snob when it comes to music. You know that.”
“I do,” said, looking at the clock next to the bed. “Well ... keep me updated on how it goes. And stay away from this Ben guy. No one gets to play in the fire but me.”
She leaned over and kissed him. “My fire is only for you,” she assured him.
A minute later he was up and climbing into her shower for a quick rinse. He couldn’t go back to the practice smelling of fire now, could he?
It occurred to her as she watched his steam distorted image through the shower door that she had gone out of her way not to mention anything about Kingsley. Dave certainly didn’t need to know that she would be spending twenty-four hours a week with someone as notorious as that.
Chapter 4: Making Things Click
Santa Clarita, California
July 17, 1991
Laura came pretty close to just telling them all what they could do with their fifty dollars an hour by the time they broke for lunch the next day. No amount of money was worth this abuse, this questioning of her musical abilities.
They spent the first two hours working on The Struggle. While the tune was actually starting to grow on her a bit—it really was poignant when you considered the lyrics—she could not seem to make Celia and Kingsley happy with her rendition of the simple melody that was required.
“It’s coming out flat,” Kingsley told her bluntly. “You’re just mouthing the notes mechanically. You’re not putting any emotion into them.”
“I’ve never had any complaints about my phrasing before,” she insisted. “Especially on something as straightforward as this.”
“Well, you’re getting complaints now,” Kingsley told her. “It’s listless and flat. We can’t do anything with what you’re putting out.”
Her appeals to Celia did no good. Though she was kinder in her words than Kingsley, her opinion was no different. “I’m not feeling the expression I’m trying to convey with the tune,” she told Laura. “I’m hoping to start hearing some improvement as we go along, but we seem to be stuck in a rut here.”
“I have the notes down,” she insisted. “I don’t even have to look at the score anymore. It’s a three-chord melody for heaven’s sake. How am I supposed to phrase it any differently than I have been?”
“Phrasing is the signature of the musician,” Celia said. “It’s up to you to come up with the way to shape it.”
“Yeah,” Kingsley grunted. “And right now, that signature is being shaped by a daisy wheel printer in block letters. It’s mechanical and flat.”
They tried a few more times. The results were the same. She played the notes out perfectly, but they weren’t happy with them. And, in truth, part of her knew what they were talking about. It really was a listless rendition. She just couldn’t feel their music the way they wanted it to be felt. There was very little enthusiasm for her to put into it. That was hardly her fault, was it?
They then moved onto another tune, this one called Done With You, and things got even worse. It was an up-tempo tune and Kingsley’s electric guitar was the primary melodic instrument. It was not quite heavy metal, but it was a long way from jazz. Celia wanted her to provide fills throughout the tune with her sax and then, perhaps put in a solo.
“A solo?” she asked, surprised. “Who is going to compose it?”
“You are,” Celia told her simply.
“It is traditional for a musician to compose her own solo in rock and roll music,” Mary said.
“But ... I’m not a composer,” she protested.
“Neither am I,” Mary said, “but I’ve put together a nice little solo for Jake’s tune, Insignificance.”
She looked at her in surprise. “He has a violin solo in one of his songs?”
“Strange but true,” Kingsley told her. “She nailed it too.”
“It’s still a work in progress,” Mary said modestly. “I’ll play it for you if you think it’ll help.”
“Well ... I don’t know,” she said.
“How about we don’t worry about the solo just yet?” Kingsley suggested, his voice more than a little impatient. “We haven’t even tried her on the fills yet. Let’s work on those first.”
“Uh ... sure,” Laura said, still trying to picture how a violin would fit into one of Kingsley’s songs. What kind of atrocity were they putting together?
They ran through Done With You and Laura did not have a good opinion of it. True, it had a catchy beat, and Mary’s violin provided a flowing accompaniment over the top of the piano, and Celia’s voice carried the lyrics well, but that electric guitar noise! She couldn’t get over it. It jangled at her nerves just to hear it! And there was a synthesizer mixed in as well. How was she supposed to provide fills atop of all that?
“Okay,” Celia told her after they played the first two verses without her. “This is where we start plugging you in. You can see on the score where your fills go over the top. We want loud and strong, almost overwhelming to everything but Jake’s guitar and the backbeat. Jake, can you play the basic gist we’re shooting for here so she can hear it?”
“I can,” Kingsley said. He picked out a distorted electric version of the primary fill they wanted, his fingers pressing on the G and B strings, moving up and down through the fret boards.
The sound of it actually caused her to wince. Something that did not go unnoticed by Kingsley. “A problem, Ms. Best?” he asked her.
“No ... not at all,” she replied. “I’m just not used to that much distortion. It’s kind of ... rough.”
Kingsley nodded. “That’s why we want you to play the notes and not me,” he said. “Why don’t you give it a try. Work it up a few times and then we’ll try it with everyone in.”
She looked down at the score before her, back up at Celia, and then put the mouthpiece to her lips. She blew, working through the notes of the flourish at half speed. Even she could hear the flatness issuing forth.
“Not the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard,” Kingsley pointed out.
“It’s my first time playing it!” she barked back at him. “Give me a few run throughs before you start hating it.” She then blanched as she realized she had just yelled at a man who was not only her employer, but who had been known to beat women severely—it was said that he had even thrown one girl off a boat after raping her. “I’m ... uh ... I’m sorry,” she told him. “I’m just getting a little stressed, I think.”
“No problem,” Kingsley said, his voice calm. “And I accept your offer.”
“My offer?”
“I’ll give you a few run throughs before I start hating it. Sound good?”
She cast her eyes away from his, seething on the inside. That was when she first started thinking about just walking out.
She did not improve much on the piece as the morning went on. As with Struggle, she could play the notes without any problem but she just could not feel the music enough, could not appreciate it enough to phrase it in anything other than a mechanical fashion. She tried faking it, drawing out the notes a little here, varying the strength of them there, but it did not make Celia or Kingsley happy and, truth be told, it did not make her happy either. She knew they sounded flat. Could not deny it even to herself.
At one o’clock they broke for lunch. She was more than grateful for the interruption.
The catering company that KVA did business with brought in a tray full of sandwich makings and a variety of breads, a tub of potato salad, and an ice chest full of soda and fruit juices. Everyone went about fixing themselves plates and then they drifted over to various places to sit and eat. Talk was minimal during this, and what little there was had nothing to do with music or music production.