The Armageddon Rag

  Slozewski’s deep voice had taken on a faintly petulant tone. Sandy listened to him with a certain amount of astonishment, hoping it didn’t show on his face. Gopher John’s post-Nazgûl career had been less than distinguished. Nasty Weather, which had formed around Slozewski and Maggio in the aftermath of West Mesa, had been a derivative band at best. The Smokehouse Riot Act had shown a lot more promise and a lot more originality, but internal dissension had torn them apart after only one album. And the less said about Morden & Slozewski & Leach the better. You would have thought that Gopher John would just as soon have all those groups forgotten.

  Still, Sandy managed a thin, sympathetic smile. “I know where you’re coming from,” he said. “My first book, Copping Out, sold twice as well as the later ones. I still get these reviews that say it’s been all downhill ever since. Sets your teeth on edge, doesn’t it?”

  Slozewski nodded. “Damn straight.”

  What Sandy didn’t add was that he agreed with the conventional wisdom in Gopher John’s case. Jim Morden, Randy Andy Jencks, Denny Leach, and Slozewski’s other, later partners had all been competent professional musicians, but not a one of them had been fit to set up Hobbins’ microphone or string Peter Faxon’s bass. Tact prohibited his pointing that out, however. Instead he said, “Still, I can understand why you’re sick of questions about the Nazgûl, but I’m sure you see why Lynch’s murder has to kick up a lot of interest, right?”

  Slozewski scowled. “Yeah, OK. Don’t mean I’ve got to be interested, though.”

  “Have you had a lot of media people coming round to ask questions since the news got out?”

  “Not a lot,” Slozewski admitted. “A guy from a wire service phoned for a quote, and one of the Philadelphia TV stations sent out a crew. I talked to them, but they didn’t use any of it. I didn’t have much to tell ’em. Nothing interesting.” He sipped at his drink. “Got nothing interesting for you either, but if you want to ask questions, go ahead. I got a couple hours till we open.”

  “You have no idea who might have killed Jamie Lynch, then?”

  “Nah.”

  “Or who might have wanted him dead?”

  Slozewski’s laugh was a nasty little chortle. “Half the fucking world wanted Lynch dead.” He shrugged. “At least that was so ten years back. Lynch hadn’t done anything nasty to anybody recently, I got to admit. He wasn’t in a position to. But back when he had clout, he was a ruthless sonofabitch. I guess whoever killed him was someone who held a grudge.”

  “Some grudge,” Sandy said. “You sound like you didn’t get on well with Lynch yourself.”

  “No comment,” said Slozewski.

  “That seems a little ungrateful,” Sandy said. “I thought Jamie Lynch was responsible for discovering the Nazgûl. He gave you your break, made you one of the biggest things in rock.”

  “Yeah, sure. He made us big. He made us rich. And he made himself richer, too. I pay my dues, Blair, that’s why I run this place like I do. I know how to be loyal. But Jamie used up whatever loyalty he had coming a long, long time back. He knew how good we were when he found us. He knew how hungry we were, too. You ought to have seen the contract he signed us to. What the fuck did we know? We were four kids who wanted to make music, get on the cover of Hedgehog.”

  Sandy wrote it all down. “You saying Lynch took advantage of you?”

  “He used us. And he fucked us over royally.” Slozewski’s voice had a bitter edge to it all of a sudden. “You ever wonder why the Nazgûl didn’t play at Woodstock? We were big enough. We wanted to be there. Still pisses me off that we weren’t. Lynch kept us away. Said he’d get us on breach of contract if we went against him, sue us for millions. That fucking contract gave him sole discretion over when and where the Nazgûl played, you see, and he didn’t think Woodstock would be good for us. Good for us! Jesus!” Gopher John’s big knuckles were white where he held his glass. “And then there were the drugs,” he added.

  “Lynch provided drugs for all his groups,” Sandy said. “He had connections, everyone knew it. So?”

  “So. Yeah. So. You don’t get it. Drugs were just like another way of controlling us, you see. Oh, hell, I was real fond of hash, still am, and a little recreational trip every now and again never hurt nobody. That’s cool. I could handle it. And Peter never touched the stuff. Not even grass. He was like that. Hobbins and Maggio, though, they had problems. By the time of West Mesa, Hobbit couldn’t even go on without a mess of pills and a slug of whiskey, and Rick was shooting up regular. It hurt his music, too. You don’t know how many times we had to redo some of those tracks on Napalm and Wake the Dead to get Maggio’s guitar sounding right.”

  “And you blame Jamie Lynch for this?”

  “Hell, Jamie gave old Rick his first needle. As a Christmas present, would you believe it? All wrapped up with a white ribbon. It drove Peter right up the goddamned wall, let me tell you. Lynch didn’t care. Giving us free drugs gave him more control. He was a real moderate user himself. Jamie Lynch was a power junkie.”

  “Sounds nasty,” Sandy said.

  “Yeah, it was nasty all right. That wasn’t the only thing, either. Rick liked the groupies too, especially when he was wired on one thing or another, or after a set. We wouldn’t be backstage for ten minutes before he’d have his pants down and some girl sucking him off. Well, there was this one night, after a concert in Pittsburgh, and Maggio was getting it on with these twins, and all of a sudden Jamie comes barging in with a Polaroid and starts snapping away. Faxon was gone, Hobbit and I were wasted, so nobody did nothing. We all thought it was a big laugh. Maggio giggled and mugged for the camera.” John Slozewski’s scowl was so deep it looked like it was carved into his face. “Turns out those twins were under age. They were fourteen! They didn’t look it, I tell you that, but they were, and Jamie knew it. Well, we never saw those pictures, but Jamie joked about them all the time. Just kidding around, you know, about how we better do like he said or he’d sell them somewhere, heh-heh-heh, and we all laughed. Maggio laughed harder than anybody. Only I could look at his face, and he was sweating every fucking time, no matter how hard he laughed. He knew Jamie wasn’t joking. The fucker meant it.”

  “Why all the sweat?” Sandy asked. “He wouldn’t have been the first rock star to get caught in bed with jailbait. Half the groupies on the circuit were under age.”

  “Yeah, maybe. You don’t know Rick, though. He was just a skinny Catholic kid from the Southside of Philly. An ugly skinny Catholic kid. He never could handle it. He’d try any drug Jamie got him, and fuck anything with two legs that was willing to spread ’em, but all the time he was sort of nervous about it. Like any minute some nun was going to come along and hit him with a fucking ruler. Those pictures bothered him plenty. Peter took care of it, though.”

  “Faxon?”

  Slozewski nodded. “One night he got Jamie drinking, and managed to convince him that he wanted to ogle the pictures a little, you know, and somehow he got Jamie to take ’em out and pass ’em around. And then Peter just took ’em away and ripped ’em into little pieces, right in front of Lynch. It didn’t make much difference. Lynch had lots of handles on us.” Slozewski finished his drink and set it aside. “Hey,” he said, “you aren’t going to print this, are you?”

  “Don’t you want the world to know the truth about Jamie Lynch?”

  “Oh, come on!” Slozewski protested. “Can’t we keep this off the record? I don’t give a flying fuck what the world knows about Lynch, but Maggio’s got enough problems. I don’t care much for him, maybe, but that don’t mean I want to mess him up more than he’s messed up already.”

  Sandy gave a sympathetic shrug. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve got to interview Maggio. He might hang himself with his own words. If he doesn’t, though, I’ll see what I can do to soften the stuff about him. Maybe.” He held up a hand hastily. “No promises, but it’s Lynch I’m interested in, mostly. I knew his rep, but I never really knew the details. I can see why you
aren’t wearing black.”

  That drew a rueful, hangdog grin out of Gopher John. “Yeah, well, I told you.”

  “What about recently? Since West Mesa?”

  “I didn’t have much contact with Jamie Lynch after West Mesa,” Slozewski said. “By choice. His contract was with the Nazgûl, you see. With the four of us. He owned the Nazgûl. Did you know that? You know what Hobbins used to call him?”

  “Mister Lynch Sir?”

  Slozewski laughed. “No. But you can figure it out. You know where the name came from, don’t you? The Nazgûl?”

  “Patrick Henry Hobbins,” Sandy said. He’d included the anecdote in both of his earlier interviews with the group; it was a well-known piece of their history. “Hobbins was quite short, only five-two, and he had all that white hair, including some on his feet, and he smoked a pipe. Filled it with grass, but it was a pipe anyway. So when Lord of the Rings came out, it was natural that he got nicknamed Hobbit. That got him into the whole Tolkien bag, and he was the one who named the group the Nazgûl, after the flying baddies in the books.”

  “Yeah,” said Slozewski. “So guess what he named Lynch?”

  It had been a long time since Sandy had read the Tolkien trilogy. He had to think for a minute. “Sauron,” he said finally. “Sauron owned the Nazgûl.”

  “Give the man a beer,” Slozewski said. He drew one and shoved it across the bar. “Jamie loved it, actually. After Hot Wind out of Mordor climbed to the top of the album charts, he gave us four matching rings to commemorate the success.”

  “Cute,” Sandy said. He took a sip of the beer. “I’m not sure I understand, though. What do you mean, Lynch owned the Nazgûl?”

  “He owned the name,” Slozewski explained, “and he owned the right to manage any band that included at least three of us, so we couldn’t just break up and re-form under a different name to get ourselves out from under. He had us just where he wanted us until West Mesa. But when Hobbit was killed, it changed everything. Lynch wanted us to get a new lead singer and go on. Peter was having none of it, though. He freaked out after West Mesa, just gave up, and Rick and me formed Nasty Weather, which Lynch got no part of. There wasn’t one fucking thing he could do about it, either. I used to hear from him every year or so, always full of schemes for getting the Nazgûl back together. He’d try to sell me on the idea, and I’d tell him to fuck off.”

  Sandy tapped his pen thoughtfully against his notepad. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “Jamie Lynch still managed the Nazgûl?”

  “If you can manage a band that ain’t existed since 1971, yeah, he managed us. Fat lot of good it did him, with us all going our own ways. Jamie was such a bastard, though, he wouldn’t let go of that contract, not for anything.”

  “Did the question ever come up?”

  “Oh, yeah, a couple times. When I opened this place three years back, I thought I could get a lot of publicity by having the Nazgûl do a set on opening night. Just a gimmick, you know, a few old songs, not a real revival. But it would have packed the joint, and Peter was willing to do it as a favor, and Rick was eager. Things haven’t been so good for Rick, and I guess he saw it as a shot. Well, Jamie stomped on the idea. Demanded some absurd fee that I couldn’t afford and threatened to sic a high-priced lawyer on me. It wasn’t worth the hassle, so I dropped the whole idea.” He snapped his fingers and pointed one at Sandy. “The other time was just like a month ago. I got this letter from a promoter, weird guy by the name of Morse, who had this scheme for a big Nazgûl comeback tour. He’d already sold the idea to Maggio, who called me and pleaded with me to go along. Well, hell, I wasn’t really the least bit interested. I didn’t need the money that much, and the Gopher Hole means more to me now than the Nazgûl. But I could tell how much Maggio wanted it, and there was no sense in getting into a nasty argument with him over a dead issue. So I said sure, I’d go along, but they had to get Jamie’s approval. See, I knew there was no way in hell that Jamie Lynch was going to turn over the Nazgûl to any other promoter. Sure enough, that was the last I ever heard of it. Jamie killed it dead one way or the other, him and that contract of his, that wonderful iron-clad unbreakable lifetime contract.”

  Sandy glanced up at Gopher John, and then off toward the vacant stage, with its clutter of instruments and sound equipment. He chewed on the end of his Flair thoughtfully. “Lifetime,” he said. “Interesting word, that.”

  Slozewski frowned. “Hey,” he said. “That’s right.”

  “With Jamie Lynch dead, you may be hearing from that other promoter again. What’s his name?”

  “Morse,” Slozewski said. “Edan Morse. Shit. I hadn’t thought of that. I’m going to have to have it out with Rick, then. No way I’m going to just chuck everything I’m trying to do with the Hole here and go back on the road. Besides, it wouldn’t work anyway. I can’t imagine having the Nazgûl without Hobbins.”

  “A new singer?”

  Slozewski grunted derisively. “Yeah. You might as well set up a Beatles reunion and hire Peter Frampton to fill in for John. Fuck no. It would never work. Besides, Peter would never do it.”

  Sandy grinned. “Frampton or Faxon?”

  “Either one,” said Slozewski. “You want another beer? You’re dry.”

  “Well…” Sandy said. “I don’t know. I could use something to eat, though.”

  “Got no kitchen here,” Slozewski said. “I could get you a bag of potato chips, maybe.” He looked at his watch. It was a digital watch, Sandy noted. Somehow he found that vaguely surreal, the very idea of Gopher John of the Nazgûl wearing a digital watch. It was like the idea of Richard Nixon having sex; you knew it happened, but somehow it was too utterly strange to contemplate. “Look,” Slozewski said, “the rest of my people will be getting here soon, and the band will be coming in to set up and rehearse. You won’t be able to hear a thing. You want to go get dinner? There’s a pretty good steakhouse about a mile down the road.”

  Sandy got up and stretched. “That sounds like a perfectly wonderful idea,” he said. He picked up his coat. “Let’s go.”

  Out in the parking lot, Sandy hesitated between Daydream and the black Stingray parked beside it. “You want to take your car or mine?” he asked Slozewski.

  Gopher John laughed. “The ’Vette belongs to Eddie,” he said. “That one’s mine.” He pointed to the tiny Toyota on the other side of Daydream.

  “We’ll take mine,” Sandy said. He unlocked the doors, and Gopher John wedged himself in on the passenger’s side.

  The steakhouse was only a bit farther than Slozewski had said, and nearly empty. “Jared Patterson is paying for dinner,” Sandy said after they’d been handed the menus. They both ordered rare prime rib, along with a bottle of the most expensive wine in the house. The restaurant was a quiet place, with red tablecloths, candles burning in little teardrops of colored glass, and thick dark carpeting. Sandy sat staring out the window at sunset while they waited for cocktails to arrive and Gopher John chatted with the owner, a fellow member of the Chamber of Commerce. Beyond the window cars sped by, and one by one their headlights began to come on as the gloom outside thickened. Sandy wondered how to ask Slozewski the questions that remained, and how much to tell him of what had gone on up in Maine. By the time the drinks and Gopher John came back to the table, he had made up his mind.

  “A few more questions,” he said, taking out his notepad once more.

  Slozewski rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. “I hate you fucking journalists,” he said in an even conversational tone. “Go on.”

  “I want to know about your fans,” Sandy said.

  “I got a cat that’s real excited about me.”

  Sandy smiled. “The Nazgûl must have had a few weirdos hanging around in the old days. Fringe types. Was there ever any one particular person? Or a group of people, maybe? People who were real into your music?”

  “Lots of people were into our music. Hundreds of fucking thousands. Millions. We were the Nazgûl. Shit, you know that.??
?

  Sandy waved impatiently. “Yes, but I don’t mean ordinary fans. I mean nut cases, people who maybe thought you were speaking right to them, who tried to live by your music, who identified with you.”

  “We had a big fan club. They called themselves Orcs.”

  “No, no. I mean dangerous people. Manson types. Mark David Chapman types. You know.”

  “Nah,” said Slozewski. “Nothing like that. Brown-nosers and groupies and Orcs, that’s what we got.” He tasted his drink.

  Sandy frowned and took a slug from his own Scotch-and-soda. This wasn’t working, he thought. Either there was no Nazgûl cult or Slozewski didn’t know about it, or he was holding back, but Sandy didn’t know how to find out which one it was. “One last thing,” he said. He set down his drink. Moisture had formed on the outside of the glass. He stared at it and absently drew a peace symbol with a finger. “Where were you on the night of September 20th?”

  Slozewski laughed. “This one or the one back in 1971?” he asked.