There was no such rule in the band Veteran.
Every night, before every show, Mike Hamm, Jerry Hawk, Rob Wilkes, and Steve Carl drank no less than eight beers, snorted endless lines of cocaine, and smoked bonghit after bonghit while waiting backstage for their opening band to finish up. By the time they took the stage each night, all four of them were cruising far above the stratosphere and in considerably less than ideal shape for putting on a concert.
Hamm and Wilkes were the worst of the bunch, and the most prone to making the errors that went along with gross intoxication. Rare was the show where Hamm didn’t start playing the wrong part of the rhythm for at least one of the songs, or didn’t lead through a switchover the way he was supposed to, or sang out a backing vocal at the wrong time, when he wasn’t supposed to be singing. And Wilkes ... it was amazing that he made it through any of the shows at all. He could barely walk at times up on the stage. His lyrics were slurred and he often sang the wrong verses, or came in late, or missed his cue entirely. And his between-song banter! He couldn’t remember what the hell he was supposed to be saying half the time. When he did speak, his slurring was even worse and the audience could barely understand him. Twice now he had actually gone off into rants about anti-nuclear shit and banning the fur trade—topics that were most assuredly not scripted into the banter.
Coop had tried to reason with them, had tried to explain that they would put on a much better show if they could simply hold to a four hour window of sobriety once a day when they were scheduled to perform, but his pleas had fallen on deaf and hostile ears.
“That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard!” declared Hamm when the suggestion was first put to them. “We’re fucking rock stars! Getting wasted before a show is what we do.”
“Fuck yeah,” agreed Wilkes. “Our fans expect us to be fucked up.”
And the truth of the matter was, that actually seemed to be the case. Whenever there was a screw-up onstage, the fans cheered louder and held their lighters higher. The reviews of their shows—which Coop considered to be pathetic shadows of what they truly could be with a little discipline and effort—were almost universally positive. All of this pleased Aristocrat management in general and Larry Candid—their tour manager—in particular.
“You boys just keep doing what you’re doing,” Larry told them after each review came out. “You’re killing this tour. Absolutely fucking killing it!”
We’re killing it all right, Coop thought now, as they prepared to close out the Detroit show. Fucking Wilkes had just sung the wrong verse again, putting the third verse where the second one was supposed to be. Coop followed along the mistake, leading the rest of the band through it as well, but that meant that they’d skipped the entire bridge section and the guitar solo. And no one onstage even seemed to realize it!
The audience did, however. They were playing Off Track, the second release from the album, a song that was now in the midst of heavy airplay on the radio. A chorus of boos erupted when it was realized that they were closing out the song without the solo. But even the boos seemed playful and understanding, more amused than angry.
Coop sighed as he played out the outro to the tune. They had just started the second leg of the tour. There were two more to go after this one and he had even heard talk of an international tour of Europe and Asia. He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take.
The tune mercifully ended and the crowd cheered with their normal enthusiasm despite the screw-up. Coop threw his drumsticks into the crowd and stepped down from his set.
“Thank you, Cleveland!” Wilkes shouted out to them. “We love you! Thank you and good night!”
Another chorus of boos erupted from the crowd, this one considerably louder and angrier.
Jesus fucking Christ, Coop thought helplessly. Fucking Cleveland? Cleveland was where they had played last night! That drunk asshole had just shouted out the wrong goddamn city—an unforgiveable blunder.
Coop grabbed the singer with one hand, the bass player with another, and dragged them off the stage, wondering how they were going to fix this fuck-up. Should Wilkes apologize to them? Should he just not mention it when they came out for the encore set? He didn’t know. This was a little beyond simply missing a solo.
“What are those fuckers booing us for?” Wilkes shouted once they were safely in the stage left area.
“You shouted out ‘thank you, Cleveland’,” Coop barked at him. “We’re in fucking Detroit, you moron!”
Wilkes looked surprised for a moment and then started laughing hysterically, as if that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “Did I really say that shit?” he asked.
“You really said it,” confirmed Larry, who was looking at the singer sternly. Though the musical screwups did not bother him, he did not seem amused by this particular brand of fuck up at all.
Wilkes laughed even harder. “Fucking classic!” he declared. “Oh my God, I’m fucking wasted!”
“Yeah, no shit,” Coop said.
From out on the arena floor, the sounds of stamping feet had begun, calling for the encore. The audience was chanting something as well, and it wasn’t “more, more, more” or some variation of that, the normal encore call. They were chanting, “We’re NOT Cleveland! We’re NOT Cleveland!”
“All right,” Larry barked over the noise, “this is how we handle this. Wilkes, when you go out for the encore, you need to...”
The sound of violent retching interrupted him. Everyone turned to see that Mike Hamm was now bent over a storage box, emptying his stomach onto the wooden stage floor. The vomit smelled strongly of beer and had chunks of hot dog in it.
“Fuck me!” Larry said, shaking his head. He pointed to one of the roadies. “Go get some towels so we can clean that shit up!”
“Right,” the roadie said, rushing away toward the bathroom area.
The retching went on for the better part of two minutes. The chants of “We’re NOT Cleveland!” continued unabated, as did the angry stamping of thousands of feet. When the vomit finally stopped pouring out of Hamm’s body, he remained in that position, slumped over the storage box, drool running out of his mouth.
“All right, Mike,” Larry said, putting his hand on Hamm’s shoulder. “You got it all out, now let’s get you boys back out there for the encore.”
But Hamm did not respond to him. He remained as he was, only grunting when Larry shook his shoulder and told him to wake the fuck up.
“He’s fucking passed out!” Coop said in disgust.
“I can see that,” Larry said. “Do you have anything helpful to add, Coop?”
“Yeah,” Coop said. “This is why we shouldn’t get wasted before a show. This ain’t the way the world is supposed to work, Larry!”
Larry dismissed that with an angry shake of the head. “He’ll be fine in a minute,” he said, pulling his radio from a holder on his belt. He keyed it up. “This is Head Man,” he told whoever was on the other end, using his official code name (with its double meaning). “Bring me two lines of coke as quick as you can fucking get them here.”