Friend Is Not a Verb by Daniel Ehrenhaft Page B
Authors: Daniel Ehrenhaft
Tags: David_James Mobilism.org
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than Christmas break.
And after that…well, the next forty years would be a string of delicious clichés. World tours and Wal-Mart in-stores. The record for most iTunes downloads. Drug busts in Japan. Meetings with the Dalai Lama. Guest voiceovers on The Simpsons. Orgies at the Plaza Hotel. Séances on Loch Ness. A brief stay at the Betty Ford clinic, followed by plastic surgery—whereupon I would emerge fit as a personal trainer, after I’d drunk four bottles of whiskey a day and snorted up 5.02 percent of Bolivia’s total cocaine export. (On second thought, maybe I’d skip thedrug phase. I’d have a sex addiction instead.) And, yes, later: the bitter breakup, the solo projects, the years of seclusion…then the reunion—a comeback worth zillions and capped off in 2036 by a tearful induction ceremony at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Oh, and somewhere in there, Petra and I would get married and divorced twice and still be the best of friends. By which point I wouldn’t even care why Sarah had run away. It would all be long forgotten, and she’d be a quiet, gray-haired shrew, tending the five-acre topiary garden I’d purchased for her on the outskirts of Paris.
In the end, I would be to nineties nostalgia bass playing what Keith Richards is to classic rock guitar. (Laugh all you want now, but watch me in an American Express Card ad campaign coming soon.) I remembered seeing Keith on an HBO special a few years back, jovial and swarthy—smiling as he played all of “Tumbling Dice” a half-step flat. Emma had been with me. She’d started cracking up, her hands mashed against her ears. The sound was so sour, so preposterous, that even the most die-hard Stones fans in the televised audience gazed at each other in disbelief, their faces shriveled like prunes. But Keith kept right on grinning. He jerked and danced and postured. Did he know how terrible he sounded? Did he care? Did it matter? No. Another fifty thousand worshippers would pack the stadium the next night, regardless of how he played. He was beyond criticism: a god.
And that would be me.
Somehow, it made standing there while Emma lectured meabout how stupid I was for rejoining Petra’s band all the more poignant.
“As it turned out, Hen didn’t have to worry about confessing to the crime of the stolen manuscript,” Jim Forbes said. “The FBI appeared that very day to haul Gabriel Stern away in chains. Hen was no stranger to lucky breaks. The soon-to-be legendary bassist was happy to bid both the lessons and teacher farewell. Years later, when Dawson’s Freak broke Michael Jackson’s record for most sales of a single album—”
“Hen!” Emma barked.
“What?”
“Are you even listening to me?”
I swallowed. I could feel myself blushing. “What?” I said again lamely.
“Never mind. Jeez.” She rolled her eyes and turned her back on me, then stomped down the stairs. “Oh, and by the way? You’re welcome.”
So, okay: The FBI didn’t appear to haul Gabriel away in chains that day. He called me at around 10:30 to apologize for the half-assed bass lesson yesterday. He also said he had a plan now. Actually, the word he used was “curriculum.” When I laughed, he did, too—but, as always, I couldn’t tell if he were joking or not because his tone was unreadable. He’d snuck out and purchased a laptop so he could download songs we could both play along to. We could even download bass instruction videos if we wanted.
“We’ll break the lesson down into segments,” he told me. “Fifteen minutes of warm-up and scales, fifteen minutes of free-form jamming…that sort of thing.”
I made the mistake of telling him that I could use the structure. Because, yes, I, too, was in a nineties nostalgia band—and our first real gig was at the end of the month.
“No way!” he shouted so loudly that I winced.
I sort of had the feeling he was going a little stir-crazy. It was hard to get him off the phone. He took the news of my gig
And after that…well, the next forty years would be a string of delicious clichés. World tours and Wal-Mart in-stores. The record for most iTunes downloads. Drug busts in Japan. Meetings with the Dalai Lama. Guest voiceovers on The Simpsons. Orgies at the Plaza Hotel. Séances on Loch Ness. A brief stay at the Betty Ford clinic, followed by plastic surgery—whereupon I would emerge fit as a personal trainer, after I’d drunk four bottles of whiskey a day and snorted up 5.02 percent of Bolivia’s total cocaine export. (On second thought, maybe I’d skip thedrug phase. I’d have a sex addiction instead.) And, yes, later: the bitter breakup, the solo projects, the years of seclusion…then the reunion—a comeback worth zillions and capped off in 2036 by a tearful induction ceremony at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Oh, and somewhere in there, Petra and I would get married and divorced twice and still be the best of friends. By which point I wouldn’t even care why Sarah had run away. It would all be long forgotten, and she’d be a quiet, gray-haired shrew, tending the five-acre topiary garden I’d purchased for her on the outskirts of Paris.
In the end, I would be to nineties nostalgia bass playing what Keith Richards is to classic rock guitar. (Laugh all you want now, but watch me in an American Express Card ad campaign coming soon.) I remembered seeing Keith on an HBO special a few years back, jovial and swarthy—smiling as he played all of “Tumbling Dice” a half-step flat. Emma had been with me. She’d started cracking up, her hands mashed against her ears. The sound was so sour, so preposterous, that even the most die-hard Stones fans in the televised audience gazed at each other in disbelief, their faces shriveled like prunes. But Keith kept right on grinning. He jerked and danced and postured. Did he know how terrible he sounded? Did he care? Did it matter? No. Another fifty thousand worshippers would pack the stadium the next night, regardless of how he played. He was beyond criticism: a god.
And that would be me.
Somehow, it made standing there while Emma lectured meabout how stupid I was for rejoining Petra’s band all the more poignant.
“As it turned out, Hen didn’t have to worry about confessing to the crime of the stolen manuscript,” Jim Forbes said. “The FBI appeared that very day to haul Gabriel Stern away in chains. Hen was no stranger to lucky breaks. The soon-to-be legendary bassist was happy to bid both the lessons and teacher farewell. Years later, when Dawson’s Freak broke Michael Jackson’s record for most sales of a single album—”
“Hen!” Emma barked.
“What?”
“Are you even listening to me?”
I swallowed. I could feel myself blushing. “What?” I said again lamely.
“Never mind. Jeez.” She rolled her eyes and turned her back on me, then stomped down the stairs. “Oh, and by the way? You’re welcome.”
So, okay: The FBI didn’t appear to haul Gabriel away in chains that day. He called me at around 10:30 to apologize for the half-assed bass lesson yesterday. He also said he had a plan now. Actually, the word he used was “curriculum.” When I laughed, he did, too—but, as always, I couldn’t tell if he were joking or not because his tone was unreadable. He’d snuck out and purchased a laptop so he could download songs we could both play along to. We could even download bass instruction videos if we wanted.
“We’ll break the lesson down into segments,” he told me. “Fifteen minutes of warm-up and scales, fifteen minutes of free-form jamming…that sort of thing.”
I made the mistake of telling him that I could use the structure. Because, yes, I, too, was in a nineties nostalgia band—and our first real gig was at the end of the month.
“No way!” he shouted so loudly that I winced.
I sort of had the feeling he was going a little stir-crazy. It was hard to get him off the phone. He took the news of my gig
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