Rock and Roll Heaven (2 page)
“Looks like you stumbled into the wrong heaven,” she said.
“I'm looking for rock & roll heaven,” I said.
She held out her hand.
Frieda was not in costume. Actually she lived in polka heaven, but worked musicals on the side. Her outfit pretty much restricted her to
Fiddler on the Roof
and revivals of
Heidi
. She took me home with her.
Frieda's father weighed three hundred pounds. He was wearing lederhosen and a cap with a tassel. He played accordion. Frieda's mother played tuba. Neighbors roasted chestnuts, kartoffels and bratwurst, raised steins of black beer and stamped over the floorboards of the tiny apartment. I danced with Frieda. She took me into a corner and held a wet sausage to my lips. Then she drew the cotton from her cheeks and kissed me. It was all very gemütlich. And yet it wasn't rock & roll.
Frieda's directions led me straight to rock & roll heaven by way of turkey-in-the-straw heaven and bossa nova heaven. Rock & roll heaven looked a lot like the Felt Forum. There were lines of people outside. The people were drinking white port from the bottle and smoking dope. Some of them were hawking tickets. I heard the strains of
Jumpin' Jack Flash
and knew I was home.
I pushed through the crowd with my axe held high. A man in a
Vita Brevis, Ars Longa
T-shirt stopped me at the gate. “Where you think you're going?” he said.
“Inside,” I said.
His hair was like plant life. He was big enough to break the backs of normal people like breadsticks. “Oh yeah?” he said. “Well let me tell you something: I don't recognize you.”
I unhoused my axe, plugged it into one of the hundreds of amps stacked up round the gate, and gave him a dose of
Treetorn Boogie
from our last album.
He folded his arms. “Still don't recognize you,” he said.
“Lead guitar with The Toads.”
“Never heard of them.”
I was stunned. “Never heard of us? We cut eleven albums for Electra. Cover of the
Rolling Stone
, coast-to-coast TV. When I split up with Krista I got 20,000 letters in one day.”
“Sorry.” He struck a match on his bicep and lit a cigarette.
I lashed into
Serengetti Serenade
, our big single. The chords mounted like leapfrogging thunderstorms. I played the savannah, the spring of the springbok, the roar of the lion. I played the heat of midday, the solitude of the baobab, the deathscream of the hyena. I played my heart out.
He was laughing. “You couldn't even make a session man around here, brother,” he said. “I mean this is rock & roll
heaven
. We got the King here. And everybody else you ever heard of. What do you think, we let just any hack off the street in here?”
I stretched my axe on the blacktop like a crucified christ. Feedback hissed through the amp. Inside they were playing
Rock & Roll Never Forgets
. I turned my back on the gate and made my way through the crowd, wondering how long it would take to learn tuba.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“Mise en Scene” originally published in
The North American Review
(Spring 1976), “Crossings” originally published in
The North American Review
(Summer 1977), “Rock & Roll Heaven” originally published in
Fiction International
12 (1980)
Copyright © 1976 “Mise en Scene” by TC Boyle
Copyright © 1977 “Crossings” by TC Boyle
Copyright © 1976 “Rock & Roll Heaven” by TC Boyle
Cover design by Steven Seighman
978-1-4804-2815-7
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