Chapter Nineteen

I'd like to report that Roy had it all figured out, that he knew how to make Mario play, that he knew how to make Mario stop, that he knew how to keep Bobby under control, that he knew which songs we should do, that he knew how to run a tight session, that he had any idea what he'd stumbled across, but I can't, because he didn't. Roy had handled musicians before. He'd been in the business forever. He had had his successes and plenty of failures, but his best days were clearly behind him. As long as it was all just a pipedream, he was fine. His idea of getting Mario out of retirement and onto the radio was a gimmicky attempt that he really didn't believe would go anywhere. He was grasping at straws, but rather than a straw he'd grabbed a hold of something more like a hurricane.

He brought in some help, which was all to his credit, professional studio guys, who did a good job of preparing equipment and managing things behind the glass. In the room, though, it was bedlam. Mario was just what he was, and it turned out it wasn't so easy. The first time, Roy merely plugged him in and off he went. Laura must have known other tricks, or had more patience, or wasn't paying through the nose by the hour, or wasn't really concerned if Mario played or did not ... in fact, all of those things turned out to be true. Laura's way with Mario was decidedly simple; whatever happened, happened. Roy's way with Mario was yelling and screaming and trying and trying. If plugging him in didn't work, which it didn't from the very next session, then he tried playing Mario's old stuff. There was one time that had an effect, but the effect wasn't ewhat he had wanted. Instead, Mario abruptly stood up, letting the guitar fall and clatter to the floor. Roy tried various other kinds of enticements, from different musical varieties, to fruit and cheese plates, to alcoholic inducements which thank God Mario didn't notice, to making squeaky noises with rubber duckies, to showing Mario himself on TV through a live feed in to the studio. Mario was implacable. He was a ghost who wouldn't haunt, a zombie who didn't crave flesh.

Over time it occurred to Roy that it didn't much matter. We would be going on at night at the Festival. No one would see whether Mario was playing or not, and in the meantime, he could just take the tracks that he had, edit them, cycle them up, throw on some effects and move them around. It would all sound the same in the end as if Mario had really been playing. That was the easy part. The rest was another matter. Bobby never let up for an instant. The band had to be called 'Bobby and the Bedouins' and he announced it over and over again. In the real world, out in the actual world, that is what everyone called it. After the newspaper headlines and the local TV news interviews, and the trade rags came out and the people on the street talked about it, the hit and the name became completely conflated. No one mentioned Mario Flambeau without mentioning Bobby O'Bannon, and nobody mentioned Bobby O'Bannon without mentioned Bobby and the Bedouins.

That wasn't enough for Bobby. He wanted in writing, and he wanted it in triplicate, and he wanted his name all over the contracts, and he wanted to set up bank accounts and trust funds and charities and community centers and he wanted the name plastered everywhere. He wanted signage, huge letters, suspended from bridges. He wanted customized stationery, business cards, notepads. He was mad with the idea of himself and his bedouins. In the sessions, he couldn't decide on the songs. We had the three in the can, and needed three more. It was easy enough, according to me. I suggesed three more of the dozen or so that we had, and he agreed readily at first, then kept changing his mind. We finally settled on five, but the sixth one kept changing, so we had to rehearse more than ten by the end.

I guess that was not so unusual, but Roy let him, and that was driving us crazy. Roy was supposed to be in charge, but his inability to control Mario was matched only by his talent of being overwhelmed by Bobby. This led to an attempted Bobby takeover. Bobby started directing the sessions, telling the guys in the booth what to do, when to start, when to stop. At first they were happy to oblige, needing someone in charge, but it becamse pretty clear pretty quickly that Bobby had no idea what he was doing. I'm certain they basically ignored him after that. It was easy for them. They were in another room. Those of us who were with him had a much harder time. Each day it got worse and worse. Bobby knew that I knew the songs, we had played them so often together, and early on he trusted me and Joey Anthony because, if for no other reason, it sounded okay. Soon he wasn't so easily satisfied.

He decided to instruct me on the proper playing of the bass guitar. I could shrug this off. I was used to act like I was going along whether I was really going along or not. Then he decided to instruct Joey Anthony on how exactly he should be playing the drums. This was too much. Joey Anthony was already suspicious the first time he heard about Bobby's last name. He had asked me more than once if I thought that Bobby was Irish. Joey was pretty sure. It would explain a lot, he told me, leaving me to ponder what he could possibly mean. Bobby was as "Irish" as an Irish Wolfhound, as far as I could tell. I remember the first time that Bobby stopped everything, waving his hands in the air until he got complete silence, and then walked over to the front of Joey Anthony's drum kit and said,

"There's not enough snare".

It was a tense few moments, for those of us, unlike Mario Flambeau, who were conscious. Joey Anthony narrowed his eyes and screwed up his mouth. I was sure he was going to say something crude.

"you can go fuck your snare", he said in a whisper. It seemed that Bobby didn't hear, or didn't care to.

"I said", he repeated, more slowly and louder, as if Joey Anthony were retarded", "there ... is ... not ... enough ... snare!"

"You can go fuck your mother's snare too", Joey Anthony said.

Bobby turned around to find Roy, who had taken the opportunity to slip out of the room. This was only rehearsal date five. There were still five rehearsal dates left.