“What inspiration?”
“I’ll tell you in a few minutes,” Celia said, stepping back and closing the shower door. “Now sing.”
Pauline sang. It was uninspired and forced.
“No!” Celia cried at her. “Sing it with soul! Sing it like you fucking mean it!”
Pauline started over, intoning about that cold late night, so long ago, when she was not so strong, you know. This time it was better. By the time she got to the first chorus, she was really into it. Her voice was not going to knock Ann Wilson off the map, that was for sure, but it was pretty and she could carry a tune. How insane was the idea she was having?
“That’s beautiful, Paulie!” Celia encouraged. “You can sing!”
“Well, in the shower anyway,” Pauline said. “I’m about done in here. Can I come out now?”
“Yes,” Celia told her. “Please do.”
The water shut off and Pauline stepped out, grabbing the towel from the rack. She looked at Celia, who was still standing there—in nothing but a towel. “Uh ... is this like a lesbian thing?” she asked. “Because if it is, I’ve never done anything like that before, though, to tell you the truth, I have thought about it on a few...”
“No,” Celia said, chuckling. “It’s not a lesbian thing. I heard you singing in there and realized you were a soprano and I...”
“Celia, I don’t know what the hell a soprano even is, other than it has something to do with opera, right?”
“It’s the highest of the female singing voices,” Celia explained. “Between middle C and high C, loosely.”
“I don’t know what that means either,” Pauline said, exasperated.
“I’m a contralto. My range is lower in pitch than yours. A soprano complements a contralto quite nicely in duets, and vice versa. I need a soprano to double with me on several of my tracks, and here you are!”
Pauline nearly dropped her towel. “You’re saying you want me to sing with you?” she asked. “On the album?”
“That is exactly what I’m saying,” Celia said. “Tell me you’ll do it!”
“C, I’m not a singer,” she said. “All I know about putting voice on musical tracks is that it’s much more complicated than it appears. I sing in the shower. I sing in my car. I sing while I’m doing housework. I do all this for the sheer enjoyment of singing, but I do not sing into microphones.”
“We can work with you,” Celia promised. “Jake and I both can teach you what you need to know. You can do this, Pauline! I know you can!”
She looked at her and took a deep breath. “Well, can we maybe run this by Jake? See what he has to say about it?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Let’s do it right now.”
“Okay,” Pauline said, slowly. “But maybe we should get dressed first?”
“Oh...” Celia said, realizing that she was still in a towel and that Pauline was still buck naked. “I guess maybe that would be a good idea.”
“Is this some kind of a joke?” Jake asked when they told him the idea fifteen minutes later.
“No joke,” Celia said. “She has a pretty soprano voice. Haven’t you heard it before?”
“Well ... sure,” Jake said. “I used to hear her singing in the shower all the time when we were growing up, as I’m sure she used to hear me, but...”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?” Celia demanded. “We’ve been looking for a soprano all this time and you didn’t tell me your goddamn sister was one?”
“She’s not a singer,” Jake said, exasperated at her anger. “She has a good voice, that is true, but she has no vocal training whatsoever.”
“I tried telling her that,” Pauline said.
“We can train her,” Celia insisted. She turned to Pauline. “Sing for us, Paulie!” she barked. “Do ... oh, Dancing Queen this time. That’s a soprano piece.”
“Celia, really...” Pauline said.
“Dancing Queen?” said Ted, who was sitting on the couch near them. “That’s some cheesy-ass shit right there, isn’t it?”
“Shut up, Ted,” Celia barked. “Sing, Paulie. Fucking sing!”
“Hey,” said Ted with a chuckle. “Remember Rule Number 5.”
Pauline sighed and began to sing, obviously acutely embarrassed about it, but she put some soul into it. They listened to her intone through the first two verses and choruses. It wasn’t bad, Jake had to agree with that, but it was far from professional.
“You see?” Celia said, patting Pauline on the shoulder affectionately.
“I see,” Jake said with a nod. He turned to his sister. “Paulie, what key is Dancing Queen played in?”
Pauline shook her head. “I have no idea,” she said.
“Uh huh,” Jake said. “And if I told you it was in the key of A major, would that mean anything to you?”
She shook her head again. “Not a goddamn thing,” she admitted.
“Jake...” Celia started.
“Hold on,” Jake interrupted. He turned back to his sister. “And if I told you that you were singing that song in the wrong key, that you, in fact, moved between several different keys while singing it, would you know how to correct that problem?”
“No,” Pauline said. “I don’t even know what a key is.”
Celia rolled her eyes. “The key is the scale of notes that the...”
“It doesn’t matter!” Pauline barked at her. “I don’t know what the scale is either. I know what notes are, at least I think I do, but that’s as far as it goes. I’m not a musician, Celia. I don’t think I can do this. I’m sorry.”
“I think you can,” Celia insisted. “I know you can. Let Jake and I work with you a bit and we’ll get you singing like a pro.”
“Celia, really, I...”
“I need you, Paulie,” Celia insisted. “I really need you. If it doesn’t work out then it doesn’t work out, but can you at least try? For me?”
Pauline sighed. “All right,” she said. “I’ll try.”
Celia smiled. She then turned to Jake. “And you,” she said. “Will you help me work with her? Will you help shape that voice and give her enough training so we can pull this off?”
Jake gave a sigh of his own. “For you?” he asked.
“For me,” she confirmed.
He nodded his head. “I’ll give it a shot,” he said. He turned to Pauline. “It’ll actually be kind of fun to get to boss you around for once.”
Pauline pointed her finger at him. “You boss me around and I fuckin’ walk!” she threatened.
“Hey now,” Ted said from the couch. “That’s another Rule 5 violation there.”
Chapter 6: Coming Together and Falling Apart
Washington DC, USA
October 29th, 1991
Matt stood on the stage under the bright spotlights, his iconic black and white Fender Stratocaster—the only guitar he had ever played before an audience—in his hands, his fingers moving surely and steadily over the fretboard with a skill and talent nearly unequaled among current guitarists. He was alone on the stage, ten minutes into a long, drawn-out guitar solo he had composed just for his live performances. The members of his band—John Engle on bass and Steve Calhoun on the drums—were sitting backstage at the moment, waiting for the end of the solo and their cue to return for the final number before the encore break.
The cheers from the audience as he played his instrument were loud and enthusiastic, but not deafening by any means. They were certainly nowhere near the volume he’d received regularly when he’d done his requisite live solos while playing with Intemperance. A big part of that was the size of the audience. Though the arena he was playing in—the same one where the Washington Bullets played hoop for the hometown crowd—had a capacity of more than sixteen thousand for concerts, it was not even half full for tonight’s Matt Tisdale concert (with Breakdown, a new death metal band recently signed by National, opening for him). This was typical so far, at least after the first fifteen dates of the east coast leg of the tour. He had not sold out a single venue since then. The scalpers weren’t even bothering with him, as there were always tickets available at the door on show nights. According to Greg Gahn, his tour manager, the night-of-show tickets accounted for approximately twenty-five percent of all ticket sales on any given night. That was absolutely pathetic, Matt had to admit to himself. Especially when Intemperance tickets, during their prime, had been going for several hundred dollars apiece on the illicit resale market, which was arguably—since it was the free market system truly unrestrained—the best marker of how popular a band really was.