Prologue
There came to him an image of man’s whole life upon the earth. It seemed to him that all man’s life was like a tiny spurt of flame that blazed out briefly in an illimitable and terrifying darkness, and that all man’s grandeur, tragic dignity, his heroic glory, came from the brevity and smallness of this flame. He knew his life was little and would be extinguished, and that only darkness was immense and everlasting. And he knew that he would die with defiance on his lips, and that the shout of his denial would ring with the last pulsing of his heart into the maw of all-engulfing night.
—Thomas Wolfe
I say there ain’t nobody. I say there ain’t nobody not out there that even wants to be a little bit mellow, now is there? Anybody who wants to get mellow, you can turn around and get the fuck outta here, alright!
—Ted Nugent
Excerpt from Chapter 11: Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)
Karl called well after Leo’s 10:00 p.m. phone cutoff, so he raced to pick it up. “So just to be clear, you’re up for cutting school on Friday and getting to Tapeville by ten when they open.”
“Yeah, but I’m not biking. I can’t believe you convinced me to cut school again.”
“Fucking suburbia. Can’t get anywhere without Mommy or Daddy driving you.”
“You don’t even hate your parents.”
“Okay, here’s my plan. When we get back with the album, we don’t listen to it. First we smoke the joint Johnny got us, then we listen to Free for All. Whole thing. Even ‘Writing on the Wall.’ And I’m going to break out the new stylus my uncle got me.”
“Seems like a good plan,” Leo concurred. “Even though that song sucks.”
“All of Meat Loaf’s songs suck. They kicked him off for Cat Scratch Fever.”
“Yeah, but I read in Circus that he’s making his own album.”
“I’ve created a monster,” Karl said. “It’s called a solo album.”
Under Karl and Johnny’s tutelage, though he still felt like he didn’t know much, Leo had purchased a few albums—Yes’s Songs, Deep Purple’s Live in Europe, Rainbow’s Rising, Led Zeppelin IV and The Song Remains the Same. Joining Karl as a massive Ted Nugent fan, he owned both Ted Nugent and Free for All. When either of his parents were home, he played his albums on an old portable record player. When they weren’t, he picked the lock on the stereo and played them on his father’s fancy stereo, turning it up as loud as it would go.
Because Ted Nugent wasn’t that well-known, Spencer’s Gifts didn’t carry any of his posters. Karl had two from other means—the Free for All advertising poster from Epic Records, and a poster of Ted Nugent sitting on his jeep from Creem magazine, which Karl insisted was better than Circus for real heavy metal fans. Of course, both were better than Rolling Stone, which was a mainstream joke.
“Maybe we should go to the City,” Karl said again. “To Sam Goody's. Tapeville might sell out.”
“Calm down,” Leo told him again. Not that he had any idea if Cat Scratch Fever would sell out or not, but he wasn’t cutting school and then taking the bus all the way down to the City to make sure he got a copy of an album the day it came out, even a Ted Nugent album.
“The phrase is ‘chill out,’” Karl instructed. “And it’ll be your ass if Tapeville sells out.”
In the cafeteria the next day, Karl spread out a bus schedule like it was a treasure map. “Look,” he said. “We can take the 42 bus at 8:30 to the hospital and then transfer to the 30 bus. Then I think we can walk from there.”
Leo tried to make sense of the schedules spread across the table, but it was as dense as Hebrew. “Where’s the 30 bus?”
“Right here,” Karl said, but when he pointed, he hit a milk carton and the straw flicked out and got drops of milk on this girl’s homework, which you wouldn't think was a huge deal. But she yelled, “Watch it, dickhead,” and stormed off to get more napkins.
“Sorry,” Leo said when she returned, though he hadn’t done anything. Then when she sat back down, he realized it was Melanie Sherman, who had always been this tiny little frizzy-haired girl who had been too small to play kickball at elementary school and loved fairies so much that they had teased her and gotten into all that trouble in sixth grade. She wasn’t so tiny anymore, and she had cool curly hair held in place with a gold headband. Her nice dark skin from where she was bursting around the edges of her tube top was as smooth as peanut butter.
“Melanie Sherman,” Karl said, unfazed as usual. “Look at you.”
“Karl Poser, look at you,” she answered back. Leo just stared at her. It was so crazy, the way some tiny little girl you never even noticed would leave school one day and then show up the next day wearing a woman’s body, as if she had gone into the City and purchased it at some secret store. “What am I going to tell Mr. Anderson about my homework?”
“Tell him we spilled milk on it. He already thinks we’re idiots.”
“That’s plausible,” Melanie said, looking at him. “By the way, my sister has a car.”
“What’s that?”
“My sister has a car. She’d drive you dweebs to Tapeville if I asked her to. Look at my homework,” she added, pointing again at the splotches that reminded Leo of the burnt patches in the woods in his backyard after he and Johnny had nearly burned them down as kids. “She’s always looking for an excuse to go. Doesn’t matter what kind of shit music you listen to.”
“Look at the mouth on you,” Karl said, while Leo still sat in stunned silence. “Last time I heard you say anything, it was to yell at me to give back your Queen of the Fairies in like third grade.”
“Sixth grade,” she said without shame. “And it was Queen Sunflower. And I did more than yell at you if I remember.” She looked at Leo. “What’s the matter, Leo, tits got your tongue?”
“Ohhhhhh! Psych!” Karl said, and he and Melanie laughed while Leo blushed.
“No,” Leo said, annoyed at Karl. “I was just wondering why I haven’t seen you in so long.”
“My sister and I moved to San Francisco,” she said a bit more hurriedly, and without the tough-girl edge. “If you come by my house at 9:30 Friday morning, we’ll get you to Tapeville before it opens.”
“I don’t even know where you live,” Karl said.
“Moron,” she replied, “I live practically around the corner from you.” The bell rang, and she gathered up her stuff and left them.
“Does she really live right around the corner from us?” Karl asked Leo.
“Sort of. Halfway down Summer Street. We used to wait for the ice cream man together.” Leo thought about the time Melanie’s mom had bought him a bomb pop and then suddenly realized something. “Oh crap. Didn’t her mom die from cancer in like seventh grade?”
“Oh yeah. I think. That must be why she moved.”
On the morning of May 13th, 1977, most likely picked as a release date by Ted Nugent because it was a Friday the 13th, Karl and Leo snuck away from the school bus stop and walked to Melanie Sherman’s house. On the way over, Leo showed Karl what Johnny had given him for the occasion, a thick joint. “He says it’s Panama Red,” he announced. When they arrived, the door opened and Melanie came out on the steps. Her hair was subdued in a long ponytail and she wore a different tube top under a down vest, along with a long flowing hippie skirt. Leo couldn’t take his eyes off her shoulders and the beachy smoothness of her skin.
One of those weird bulbous Pacers backed out of the garage. “This is Trixie,” Melanie said after they got in. Somehow, even though the car was so round, they still had to cram into the back seat. Trixie was like a fairytale princess come to life, with long, shampoo-commercial blonde hair, a freckled nose, and a big warm smile on her face. “Who’s ready to cut school? Oh, look at little Karl Posner, just about all grown up.” She laughed. “This album better be good. At least as good as Free for All.”
“It’s all just noise to me,” Melanie added.
“Really,” Karl said, “what do you listen to, fairy music?” Trixie snorted.
“No. I’m a Grateful Dead fan. Ever heard of them?”
They got to Tapeville before it opened and stood outside with two burnouts from Ramapo High. One guy had fallen asleep, leaning against a newspaper box. As soon as the door opened, Leo and Karl rushed over to the New Albums section, where they found a hundred copies of Cat Scratch Fever. “Wow,” Karl said. “I didn’t think they’d have so many copies.”
“Look at his eyes,” Leo said, mesmerized by Ted Nugent’s impossibly wide-eyed gaze staring at them, as if his eyeballs were about to pop out of his head.
“It’s crazy.”
“It’s gross,” Melanie said. “Maybe his pants are on fire,” she added before wandering off.
Leo checked the run time to make sure a 46-minute Maxell tape would work, which it did, so he went to get one.
“You know, it’s illegal to tape an album,” one of the burnouts said to Leo. He wondered if it was true or if they were just fucking with him.
When Leo got back from the blank tape section, Karl was standing near Melanie in the G section, looking at Grateful Dead albums. Leo wandered around the store for a while, ready to go, so they could go home and smoke the joint Johnny gave them and listen first to Free for All and then, triumphantly, the new album.
A few minutes later, Karl came over to him. “I think I’m going to get this,” Karl said, holding up a copy of the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty.
“Cool,” Leo said, a little distressed by this sudden interest in something so alien to heavy metal fans.
“You’ll tape yours for me, right?” Karl asked. “I don’t have enough money for both.” Leo looked at him, struggling to find words, the way he had when his mother had told him his Nana had died. “And you have to let me borrow it,” Karl added, responding to something in Leo’s eyes. “So I can play it on my stereo.” The thing Karl was not saying, because they both knew it, was that he would not be listening to Cat Scratch Fever later that morning. He would be listening to American Beauty. And he wouldn’t be listening with Leo.
Leo had a crazy thought, that maybe he’d ask Trixie to listen to the new album with him, since she had seemed so cool and knew about Free for All. But when she came over, she was holding a copy of Billy Joel’s Turnstiles. “Jesus,” she said, looking at the undisguised contempt in Leo’s face and laughing. “I’m guessing you’re not a Billy Joel fan,” she said as they went up to the register, then turned to her sister. “I think he might murder me in my sleep.”
“Oh, I think he’s alright,” Melanie said. “Leo doesn’t seem like the murdering type.”
They all made their purchases and then piled back into the zit-shaped Pacer. While Melanie explained the Grateful Dead to Karl, who kept leaning forward to see whatever Melanie was pointing at, Leo fumed in his seat, hating all of them. And he felt that hatred burning in him, and he was glad to be a metal fan, as it encouraged his own natural anger. Though it was all new, there was something in the newly tapped, unleashed hatred that made him vow to stay a fan forever, no matter what Karl or anyone said.
“You can drop me at my house,” Leo said as they got back into the neighborhood. Trixie pulled over and Leo started to get out, but Karl grabbed at his sleeve. Hopeful that maybe he was changing his mind and coming to his senses, he looked back at Karl, but he only nodded and jabbed his finger in Trixie’s direction, and then Leo understood. “Thanks for the ride,” he sheepishly said.
“You’re very welcome,” Trixie said. “As long as you don’t kill me tonight.”
“I’ll talk to you later,” Karl said.
“Sure,” Leo said, walking away from the Pacer as it waddled off. He went out back to smoke Johnny’s joint by himself. He had trouble getting it lit, and it kept going out, but he persevered. Even though he knew he shouldn’t, he smoked the whole thing by himself before heading into the house to listen to the new album on his father’s stereo, which sounded better than Karl’s anyway.
Alone in the basement, he used his thumbnail to slit the plastic seal, slid out the gleaming new album and, cradling it by the edges, set it gently onto the turntable. He set the stylus down on the edge, turned up his father’s stereo as loud as it could go, and lay down on the couch.
