Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons
It was a cloudless Northern California afternoon, and our nanny was shuttling my brother and me home from our Orthodox Hebrew day school. My all-consuming mission on this drive was the same as every other day: avoid homework by getting deposited at Tower Records in Mountain View. Mere minutes from our house, Tower was the sole bastion of counterculture in the vicinity. Its yellow and red sign attracted me like an iron filing to a magnet every time we passed.
“I’ll take the bus home,” I implored. “Promise. I just want to look at the tapes.”
More than a mere music store, to a budding musician like me, Tower Records was the Library of Alexandria. Within its hallowed walls, I was free to explore innumerable paths to independence, all organized in rows of musical identity kits. Cameo, Duran Duran, The Bangles, REM. Choose any one of them and enter a colorful kingdom, governed by singular rules.
But first, I needed to gain access to the fortress of knowledge. All our nanny had to do was drop me off and be less one charge for a few hours—not a bad deal, I thought—but it still took some cajoling, school day as it was. Eventually, she succumbed to my begging.
“But you have to take the bus home.”
“Fine. Deal,” I said, clutching my guitar close in anticipation as we neared our destination. (La Bamba was my favorite movie, and I always wore my canvas case slung over my shoulder like Ritchie Valens for the credibility boost.) The second we reached the parking lot, I hopped out of the car and raced away without a look back.
Entering Tower Records felt like an event, causing my belly to go into instant freefall. A C+C Music Factory song blasted at stadium volume, every employee and shopper had multiple piercings, and rebellion was in the air. In ripped acid-washed jeans and a Guns N' Roses shirt, I may have been a hip eighth grader at school, but here, I was a bona fide dweeb. Head bowed in reverence, I walked by floor staff flaunting priceless laminates, customized with buttons and other accouterments.
Hindered by my meager allowance, I relegated myself to the $3.99 “Nice Price” section. Heart pounding, I combed through the cassettes, comparing cover art, inspecting song titles, and weighing the risk-reward ratio of each possible purchase. After a nerve-wracking half-hour of scrutiny, I settled on Aerosmith’s Live! Bootleg and was en route to the register when I felt an adult hand slap my back.
“Hey buddy, wait up,” an unfamiliar voice demanded.
Though I’d done nothing wrong, I was familiar with the heavy-handed rules of the adult world and braced myself for interrogation or worse. To my surprise, I turned around and beheld something wonderous instead. The voice belonged to a pale creature with purple dreadlocks who must have been six feet six inches tall. It wore strategically torn black denim clothing like a member of Motley Crue or Ratt, but was all smiles—a friendly, lanky presence.
“You a guitarist?" the magical creature asked with a practiced dread flick. “Because my band is looking for one.” He spoke the tongue of land—somewhere between suburban skater and the So-Cal patois of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
"Uh-huh.”
The creature leaned in so close I caught a whiff of Nag champa incense coming off its patch-covered jacket. “I’m Ronnie,” it said. “My band is Permanent Psykos. With a k.”
“Cool name,” I replied, trying to sound casual.
Could this enchantment be real? Night after night, I scoured the classified section of Bay Area Music magazine, dreaming of an audition. Unfortunately, all the ads stated emphatically that interested parties needed long hair and pro gear. Both requirements were roadblocks. My guitar was a black Squier Stratocaster, the cheapest model I could find that wasn’t designed for little kids. I’d only recently graduated from a Toys “R” Us model with a built-in speaker myself. As far as hair went, my parents wouldn’t let me grow mine, so I pampered and protected a few protruding tufts in the back. If I had a rock star glow, it was faint at best.
Ronnie pointed at my shirt. “So, you play guitar and you like Guns?”
“Yeah, I play guitar. G N’ R is rad.”
“Right on, dude. Play me something.”
He meant now. There would be no postponement; this was happening. I couldn’t claim I had to go home and set the table for dinner. Real rockers like Ronnie probably didn’t even have parents.
“Sure.” I held my breath and unzipped my gig bag, lamenting my lack of a hard-shell case. Then I kneeled on the floor, right beside the New Releases display, and launched into a derivative funk riff I’d been woodshedding for a few weeks. I played it far too fast, but with some flashy 7th chords and percussive strumming, I thought it sounded like I halfway knew what I was doing.
Focusing on my fingers, I pushed away thoughts of baffled parents and disappointed rabbis and tried to telegraph experience. I looked up for a split second between sixteenth notes and noticed a few shoppers checking us out. A dreadlocked tree creature and a prostrating minstrel—what a pair we made. Still, energized by the attention, I banged louder on my unamplified axe. Ronnie looked like he was buying it, nodding his head in time to my half-baked display.
“Alright. OK. Cool,” Ronnie said, enthusiasm growing as the wheels of opportunity began to revolve. “You should come jam with us sometime. Like I said, we need a guitarist.”
I looked up from the floor and into his eyes where I saw Finnegan, Lampwick from Pinocchio, and other archetypical corrupters of youth. How old was this Ronnie, anyway? I was only a kid. Did he believe I was Permanent Psykos material?
Ronnie must have known I was wavering because he swooped in to close the deal. "Here’s my number,” he said and passed me a matchbook cover with a 408 area code followed by seven other digits. “I live with my drummer in San Jose. Come hang out, and we’ll play some rock and roll.”
As I took the scrap from his hand, I tried to imagine where Ronnie lived. Probably some dimly lit garage filled with black light posters and water bongs. “Sounds awesome, man. I’ll call you,” I said, like I tried out for rock bands every afternoon.
If my cracking voice betrayed me, Ronnie didn't appear to notice. He slapped me on the back and returned to roaming the floor, wearing the satisfied grin of someone who would never again have to do math worksheets or English assignments. Maybe he was on drugs. Who knew? Who cared? I stood up and re-bagged my guitar, unsure of exactly what had occurred, but convinced I’d passed some sort of test.
The clanging opening guitar of "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour exploded from the Tower sound system, jogging me from my daze. The digital clock near the video department read 5:15 PM, which meant dinner was forty-five minutes away. Shit. My carriage was about to turn into a pumpkin. I scurried to the checkout counter to pay for my tape and double-timed it to catch the bus.
As the #40 bumped along San Antonio Road, I rested my forehead against the dirty window and pictured myself onstage with Permanent Psykos playing to a packed San Francisco club. In my daydream, I stood beside Ronnie, miraculously equal in height, trading stage smiles and posing in all our rock glory. Like Cinderella at the ball, my sticker-covered Strat transformed into a shiny, dignified Les Paul. Best of all, my hair now spilled over both shoulders—long, voluminous, and utterly pro.
Back at home, as I set the dining room table, I felt the the frustration of youth and the sting of missed opportunity. My fantasy was slipping away. I was a preteen junior high student, not a club musician. I couldn’t actually use Ronnie’s number, couldn’t be a Permanent Psyko. As much as it pained me, I wasn’t yet ready for the big leagues. Sure, I’d fooled him for a few minutes, but my guitar chops would never cut it in a San Jose rehearsal room. I still had to earn my wings.
Placing the final fork down on its napkin, I saw I still had fifteen minutes before dinner. The unexpected liberation made me giddy with possibilities. Perhaps it was the spell Tower Records cast, but meeting Ronnie confirmed one thing: I was now on my way. With a bounce in my step, I dashed upstairs to listen to my Aerosmith tape and dream up a rock and roll future.
Ari Rosenschein (he/him) is a Seattle-based writer whose essays and fiction appear in Entropy, Noisey, Observer, KEXP.ORG, The Big Takeover, The Bookends Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch Los Angeles. A lifelong musician, Ari lives with his wife and dogs and enjoys the woods, the rain, and the coffee of his chosen region. Coasting is his debut collection.