Friend Is Not a Verb by Daniel Ehrenhaft Page A

the stupid name was growing on me.
    True, none of this was terribly original. Half the kids at Franklin wanted to be rock stars (all right, an overstatement). But I wasn’t worried. Their bands sucked. And their strategy was wrong. They played the same crappy clubs for the same dozen friends over and over—until even their own band members stopped showing up.
    I was too smart to go that route. Having steeped myself in Behind the Music lore, I’d learned the two crucial lessons.
    One: You needed a “thing.” And Dawson’s Freak had one. We were the world’s premier nineties nostalgia band. Grunge, rap rock, “The Love Theme from Titanic ”—you name it, we would play it. Two: You needed a connection. We had one of those, too: Emma’s father. (He even represented Nada Surf, one of the big bands of the nineties.) For most of my life I’d known how Mr. Wood made a living, obviously—but only now did I recognize it as the springboard that would catapult me into the stratosphere.
    It was wonderful, really. One day, I was a loser—confounded by secrets, with a batty family in danger of sending me over the edge—the next, I was a player, on my way to immortality. Sure, Dawson’s Freak had a couple of potential weaknesses. We were another power trio, one of maybe five hundred in New York City. Emma, in a bad mood, had once called PETRA “a bad Luscious Jackson rip-off, two decades too late.” But nowthat was a selling point. Plus, we weren’t nearly as annoying as Luscious Jackson. Petra was hotter than any one of their now-grizzled members. Sounding like them could only help .
    Potential problem number two: I was a below-average bassist. Gabriel’s lessons certainly wouldn’t help matters. They might even hurt. I could hold down the roots of the chords, and I had decent rhythm, but I didn’t have an ounce of flair. Every note was a Herculean task to get just right. Then again, Krist Novoselic of Nirvana didn’t have a lot of flair, either. And his best friend’s dad probably wasn’t an entertainment lawyer.
    The other pieces were in place. There was our drummer, for starters. Bartholomew Savage looked like a young Justin Timberlake and played like John Bonham himself. He was also a computer whiz who boasted more homemade beats and clever mash ups than Dr. Dre. Plus, the ladies loved him. I’m talking older ladies. The one time we’d performed live, at a Franklin assembly, untouchable junior and senior hotties had checked him out (while ignoring me). But sex appeal was a bonus; with a name like Bartholomew Savage, he was destined to be famous, anyway.
    And for a not-so-great guitarist, Petra was an incredible stage presence. Her songs were undeniably catchy, too. My favorite was her ode to the STEAL YOUR PARENTS ’ MONEY stickers, called “Ask Me Why I Stole It.”
    You want a real answer? I stole it on a whim.
    I stole it for the sexy man who always calls me “Slim.”
    I stole it for the children, for the helpless, for the poor,
    I stole it for the crazy lady drinking gin next door.
    I stole it for my country, for the people white and black,
    I stole it for my parents, cuz I’m gonna give it back.
    Petra half sang, half rapped the lyrics, her usual MO. The riff was pretty much indistinguishable from Rage Against the Machine’s “Freedom”—but the tempo was slower and funkier and there was more wah-wah. It had a deeper groove, a real power to shake your booty. It would be our hit. All we had to do was record it and pass it along to Emma’s father. Then we would get signed. I figured the whole process would take about a month. (It didn’t take Fiona Apple much longer than that to get signed after a producer heard her demo; it’s true, you can watch the Behind the Music episode.) We’d definitely be signed before school started in the fall. Given the rigorous demands of recording our first album and placing “Ask Me Why I Stole It” in a Nike or Lexus commercial, I’d have to drop out no later