The Scar Boys Read Online Free PDF Page B

all began.

DAYDREAM BELIEVER
    (written by John C. Stewart, and performed by The Monkees)
    That same afternoon, the day Johnny had suggested the idea of a band to soothe my dented ego, we were lying on his bedroom floor, daydreaming and planning our meteoric rise to superstardom. We were at an age when kids were starting to identify themselves by the music they listened to: there were the headbangers and clubbers, the rockers and punks, even the Broadway musical wannabes. And then there was us, determined to defy definition.
    Johnny’s older brother Russell had a collection of albums spanning thirty years and we devoured every disc, every track, every groove. We started with the Beatles (
Help!
and
Rubber Soul
all the way through
The White Album
and
Abbey Road)
, graduated to
Exile on Main Street, Physical Graffiti
, and
Quadrophenia
(the greatest album ever recorded), and did our postdoctoral work with Elvis Costello, Richard Hell,and the Clash. We sampled Miles Davis and John Coltrane. We even dabbled in Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard. Nothing eluded our grasp.
    Every day we spent hours and hours watching those black discs spin, listening to the pop and hiss of the needle riding the imperfections in the vinyl until the first chords took over. We’d lie on our stomachs poring over every inch of the album cover, the back album cover, the liner notes, and, if we were lucky enough to have them, the lyrics.
    As we lay there that day, a new record from a band called Black Flag was on the turntable. If the Sex Pistols made the Who and Led Zeppelin sound like they were singing anthems from another age, Black Flag made the Sex Pistols seem overproduced and corporate, if that’s even possible. This was a bunch of guys with a guitar, a bass, and a drum set that were—or at least it sounded like they were—recording in someone’s living room. And they sounded drunk. (While I didn’t have any frame of reference for knowing what a drunk band would sound like, I was pretty sure this was it.) Songs like “Six Pack,” “TV Party,” and “Gimme Gimme Gimme” stitched themselves into a kind of manifesto for Johnny and me.
    These guys really didn’t care what anyone else thought. It’s like they were giving the world the finger, and they thought it was really, really funny. We did, too. The entire album, from the first note to the last, infused ourconversation with energy and excitement.
    Johnny, as usual, did most of the talking. He would be the lead singer. I would play guitar. We’d find a drummer and a bass player, and maybe a second guitar player. We’d write our own songs because nobody cool ever did cover tunes. We’d have “gigs” (a new word for me that day) at clubs in the Village, and we’d drink beers, and we’d go on tour, and we’d meet girls, and we’d get laid. (Not a new word.)
    I just listened, letting the daydream wash over me, cleansing Gabrielle from the surface, letting her sink to a deeper place where she could live in my memory to teach and occasionally haunt me.
    “What should we call ourselves?” Johnny asked the question more to himself than to me. I’d hardly said two words as he laid out his vision for the band, so I surprised us both when I spoke.
    “How about the Scar Boys?”
    For a moment, Johnny was startled. Then he smiled wider than the Grand Canyon. “Brilliant, Harry. Fucking brilliant!”
    When I woke the next morning, a rain-soaked Monday, the memory of that afternoon seemed real but insubstantial, like steam. I knew all that stuff about starting a band would be forgotten as quickly as it had been said, that its purpose was to make me forget about Halloween, to ease the blow of getting dumped before ever having hada girlfriend. But when I caught up with Johnny at school, he was standing at his locker with a seventh grader I recognized but didn’t know. “Harry, meet Richie, the Scar Boys’ drummer.”
    Richie, whose unruly chestnut hair made him seem every bit of his five