She gets a determined look on face and it fades to her onstage with her black Les Paul, doing power chords and singing.
na na, na na na na, na na, na na na na, a million miles away.
That dissolves into a scene at a local army base where the soldiers are singing it in time as they march.
The whole video lasted nine and a half minutes, the actual song was only just about four.
It became the unofficial anthem of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflict. Go on any base any where around the world, and you’ll find it on the jukebox.
Suddenly I had to come up with an albums’ worth of songs for her solo project. Jenny had a couple she wrote that were pretty good, we did a couple of covers, Bob gave her a song another writer he was working with and I gave her ‘You Should Have Held On’, my song about Sandy betraying me.
I’ve gotten long winded, sorry. I’ll wrap it up.
……………………..
Moira and I were on the cover of Guitar Player
magazine, surrounded by our guitars, our two Grammys together, my three on my own, and our four CMA awards. She got a contract from Fender to furnish her guitars, I got one from Gibson.
Rolling Stone had Freddie, Jenny, Moira, and me on the cover with the caption ‘Southern Dynasty’.
Faerie did two more albums, Dust, and a live album with three studio tracks, called Tales, before hanging it up.
Jenny still records and tours, as does Freddie.
I nagged Moira into doing a solo project which was well received. She actually opened up for
Freddie on one tour, but retired after that because she said it was no fun if I wasn’t with her.
Horns for Hire made a good living doing studio work, as did Al. I use them quite often.
I pretty much retired to run my studio and produce new acts. I learned a lot working with Bob, and he sold me part of his business and pretty much lets me run it, while he scouts new talent as a hobby.
So there it is, all sweetness and light.
You really think so? Not all the tears we shed were tears of joy.
Every garden has snakes, and the larger and richer the garden, the bigger and slimier the snakes.
Frank and Amber divorced because the horn player I had warned away on the road decided that since we were home she was fair game. He dumped her afterwards, and she moved back home. Frank stayed and does session work, and is still a part of Freddies’ band. The rest of the guys in Horns for Hire were so pissed they threw the guy out.
Jenny got married to a loser who tried to take her to the cleaners despite the prenups, saw he was going to lose, stole everything he could from her and disappeared. She’s seeing someone now who is serious, a rapper of all things, who treats her like gold. We’ll see if it works out.
The worst thing of all was what happened to my best friend and brother in law. Crystal wouldn’t leave our home town, so Jimmy did a lot of commuting. Luckily the older kids were in high school and could help their mom, but things became strained.
Jimmy came to us after the last Faerie album and said he was retiring, the money he made he had invested with Moira’s ex, of all people. Apparently he approved of the rock and roll lifestyle if it paid well. It allowed him to buy half interest in the guitar shop we used to do business with. They were going to expand and he was going to teach drums.
Things had been really tense between he and Crystal, and he was sure his career change and being home all the time would fix it. He had kept it secret to surprise her.
He walked into his house unexpectedly with flowers to give her the good news, only to catch her in bed with someone else. Enraged he started fighting.
The guy managed to get away from him long enough to get his gun and shot and killed him. Crystal was screaming and trying to get the gun away when it went off and shot her. She lasted for a week before passing.
The guy was a cop and shot them with his service weapon. He got convicted of two counts of second degree murder, he’ll be sixty seven before he’s eligible for parole.
Jenny and Freddie sang at the funeral.
We got the kids. One was just starting college, two were in high school. Jan was in middle school, and the baby was in the second grade.
We didn’t have to adopt for Aaron to have brothers and sisters.
I had always been close to Jan, and after a year she and Suzy, the youngest, were calling us Mom and Dad. It was bittersweet.
There was a rift in the relationship between Fred
and I that took a long time to heal.
He had been living with Sarah for a few years, and bought her an engagement ring. Four months before the wedding the gossip magazines linked him with a young singer just twenty one. He denied there was anything to it until Sarah caught them together and moved out. The singer rode the publicity hard and them dumped him.
He stayed away from me for awhile because he knew I was pissed.
It kind of came to a head when Sarah, with no place to go and no money, moved in with us. She told me one night it came as a complete surprise to her, but even if she had known it would have still hurt as bad.
I thought about that for a few days and wrote ‘If I’d Seen I Coming’. I gave it to a well known singer with a deep baritone voice. We did the video with him sitting on a stool singing while I played piano, Frank played a mournful steel, and Sarah and Nikki played violin.
It was powerful. As he sang the last verse, if you watch the video, you can make out the tears in Sarahs’ eyes.
“You thought it was sweet/ your surprise was complete/ when I realized I’d been had
But who am I funnin’/ if I’d seen it comin’/ it still would have hurt just as bad/ yeah it still would have hurt just as bad.”
It went diamond and I got a CMA for song of the year, my third.
Freddie was livid. He hadn’t had a hit for over a year and felt his star was fading. He knew better to come to the house while Sarah was there, so he called and just raised hell.
“Goddamnit! Why didn’t you give that song to me? I need a hit pretty bad right now. I thought we were tight.”
I took a few breaths before answering him.