Of course. Yes, she was beautiful, with a voice like a rusty harp. I don’t blame you. Who would? I was with her, too. We all were. But no, that first night we listened to music. We ate popcorn and sat on that dingy lime green couch soaked with beer, you on one end, me on the other. Heather and Paul suction cupped together in between us. And Seger’s Live Bullet album played. We talked about Detroit, and Michigan, of being home, and the pieces tumbled in the puzzle box like magnets. 

Your father feels like home. It’s the best way I can put it. It felt that way the rest of the tour. Cleveland was the third stop, with twenty more to come. Boy, the boys were excited back then. That was their first tour without Paul’s 1982 Toyota conversion van. They might have still been triple A, but it felt like the pros. The buzz surrounded them at every stop. They couldn’t stop at a grocery store without getting noticed. When they weren’t getting noticed, they were getting heckled for their hair. Those damn hippie punk kids.

Fender, next time you look in the mirror, imagine your hair is long and curly and spiffed just right to rock an arena of amped up maniacs. Now imagine you rocked that crowd so hard they turned the lights on an hour after the set was supposed to close, interrupting your high octane version of “Ooh La La”. You leaned into the mic, sweat damped hair hanging over your eyes, and whispered, “Turn every light in this goddamn building on. We’re not going anywhere.” And you rip the opening licks to “Won’t Back Down” and let the crowd do the singing for you. And think to yourself how a crowd singing in unison is what you’ve been searching for. It’s always been about music and reflecting and telling stories. It’s also been about bringing people together. 

And how after you end the bonus set moments before the red-faced guy in the suit can rush the stage to, what, unplug the amps?, you wave to the crowd, do a small fist pump to yourself, and to the band, and even to me and Heather, who stand in the shadows by the mixing board. Was I tapping a tambourine on my hip during the last set? Was that what you heard during “No Woman No Cry” that threw you off for a minute, Brett? 

Look at yourself in the mirror, Fender. Imagine the long night to follow. The substances and shenanigans. The shower and pass out on the bus on the way to Madison. Waking up and shooting a cup of cold coffee. Going to the grocery store and pushing a cart around like a regular Joe, which you are, and were, and forever will be. Only regular Joes don’t get called a damn hippie punk rock kid while scanning cereal boxes.

It’s no sad story. They were rockstars in the making. Life was good and about to be better. It’s just to say, Tesla was right. “The sign says long haired freaky people need not apply.”

What’s that?

Okay. Correction. Tesla covered “Signs”, but Five Man Electrical Band originally recorded it in 1970. Out of Canada. 

I was saying that people think the world’s more fractured than it’s ever been. Everyone lives in a bubble. They like to think they’re the center of the universe and that what’s happening is the worst it’s ever been. It was fractured long before Spin Cycle made the rounds. It got worse, and better, during those days. And it’s gotten worse since then. And better. When you look in that mirror, imagine all you truly care about in the world, apart from me, of course, is that for one song, one album, one show, you can get people to stop what they’re doing and worrying about, and hating about, from every side and angle, and bring them together to sing and dance together.

Your Dad always joked he and Paul were the inspiration for Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which might surprise some people. Maybe even you. He was a goofball. Witty, clever, and a dork. Always on stage wearing shirts that Booger wore in Revenge of the Nerds. Music as a unifying force, blah blah blah. He’s shaking his head. ‘You’re diluting my message by even talking about it.’ Well, Mr. Carradine, Mr. Urine, Mr. you’re in trouble if you don’t get on board with our message. It’s the truth. You aimed to connect. You succeeded. As much as you wanted to play the James Dean card, you’re in fact a rebel with a cause veiled by profane lyrics. 

Phew. 

Haven’t talked this much in years. 

So Heather and I followed the tour bus in my car. Eventually, they sent us in to buy groceries. It was equal parts ego, laziness, and avoidance of all things grumpy people who don’t understand youth culture. Change doesn’t happen without groups like Spin Cycle. And I was happy to fuel them with Doritos and frozen burritos and pistachios. Deacon didn’t ask for much. He did his job and he stayed behind the scenes until the scene demanded him, and then he faded into the background. The most connected man in the world who couldn’t care less about attention. “Fame,” he’d grumble, and then close a six figure deal. The man loved pistachios, and none of the already shelled kind you find these days. He liked the effort it required. Same with lobster, on the occasions we’d find a buffet and fill our stomachs with delicacies. The juice was worth the squeeze mentality. 

Did you know lobster used to be considered the trash of the ocean? Bottom feeders. Poor man’s food. So much to go around it was cheap and available for broke folks. Hell, they were feeding it to pigs and goats. No difference between the poor and animals there. Consider the lobster, and then consider how it changed. Train travel meant people not living on the coast got a taste for it. Tourism meant the demand increased. Throw in chefs realizing that lobsters taste better when they’re cooked alive. You get tastier lobster shipped across the country to people who are willing to pay higher prices and don’t know it was viewed as food for the slums. Now the poor people can’t afford it. 

Where do you think “Lobster For the People” came from? 

Crack the hinges and light the fire;

Smother me with butter and desire.

Slurp it up and eat it fast,

Poor people never going to last.

We’re always making decisions for people based on assumptions that might have nothing to do with how they actually feel. Let them decide.

The tour moved west through the mountains, up to Seattle, where the grunge scene was bubbling from every surface. Nirvana was what, Brett, ‘86? ‘87? Founded then, at least. Grohl didn’t join until ‘90. So that means “Teen Spirit” drops the following year, and that fire burns bright like gasoline poured punk rock. Nirvana doesn’t happen without Spin Cycle. Pearl Jam doesn’t happen without Spin Cycle. Green Day. Blink-182. Smashing Pumpkins. I’m being a homer, but not entirely. How do I put this? If Eddie and the Cruisers were a real band, they don’t happen without John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band. It’s not like your Dad was singing for Billie Joe Armstrong in ‘90, but his spirit is in the attitude and energy and messaging. Consider this. 

Sorry, Brett. I’m going down this rabbit hole. 

In “Basket Case”, they sing: 

Do you have time to listen to me whine

About nothing and everything at once?

I am one of those

Melodramatic fools

Neurotic to the bone

No doubt about it

Sometimes I give myself the creeps

Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me

It all keeps adding up

I think I’m cracking up

Am I just paranoid

Or am I just stoned?

Your Dad wasn’t paranoid, most of the time. He always said he wanted Spin Cycle’s catalogue to be as compact as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Gonzo music, he called it. 

“Isn’t all music ‘Gonzo Music’,” I asked him once.

“What do you mean when you say that? That all music involves me? I’m the reporter of my own story? I’m the center of attention? This is the most personal experience I can reveal via first person narration? And therefore the listener experiences this wild ride of hyperbolic happenstances and critiques so severe entire countries seek to ban you on principle alone, not to mention lyrics such as:

Eat her ass like government cheese

Sir, can I have another? 

Don’t mind if I do,

No thanks to you

Get on your knees and lick dees”

I’m laughing, Fender. Some people speak in a way that burns the words through your retinas and into your brain. I saw the words when he sang them. They floated through the air like smoke from his mouth. The crowd sucked that smoke in and got high. 

That crowd included bands like Green Day. I’m not saying anything you don’t already know. They’ve acknowledged Spin Cycle’s influence, the same way Brett and Larry and Paul thanked Iggy for being Iggy, and Bob Seger, and even Chuck Berry and a thousand others. Do you remember the interview they did with the BBC? Paul said, “Art’s all about soaking in the work of others and doing your best to create something original that speaks to others in your own voice.” 

That gets to the part of the story where Brett and Paul partnered to write most of their music. I won’t step on his toes. You’ll get to him eventually and hear his side of things. I’ll just say that both of them were right, and both of them were wrong, at different times, and about different things. Nothing is ever cut and dry. Or else they’d still be touring.

That’s an easy out but it’s also the truth. It’s not my responsibility to tell you. And if I’m being honest, sitting here with your father, rather than make him relive negativity, I’d prefer we tell stories about the fun we had.