For What It's Worth Read online

  “Where’d she move from, Minnesota?” Ryan asks. “It’ll be a hundred degrees by lunchtime—she’ll bake like a sausage.”

  I can already see Lindy and Ashley snickering at the new kid from their seats. But I’m no longer focused on her clothes or short brown hair; what holds my attention is the black-and-white picture taped to the front of her binder. It’s the photo of the girl screaming over the dead body of a student at Kent State.

  As Mrs. Clarkson writes on the board, I run through an internal debate: hang out here with Willy and Ryan or actually have a conversation with the new girl? First off, she carries a notebook around like Yours Truly. (Yes, I know it’s school and we all have notebooks, but hers seems particularly worn and comfortable, like the one I make lists and notes in for my column.) And second, it’s got that gruesome Kent State photo on it, the same picture that Neil Young saw in Life magazine that inspired him to write the song “Ohio.” I decide the musical coincidence is too much to ignore and weave my way through the desks, brushing off Willy’s and Ryan’s comments.

  This year is going to be different. I can feel it.

  I slide into the chair beside her. “Did you just move here?” I ask. Smooth, very smooth.

  “From Connecticut.” Her face blushes a deep pink. “I feel totally out of place.”

  “You’ll love it. There’s lots to do, that’s for sure. My name’s Quinn.”

  “Caroline.”

  I point to the notebook she now holds tightly to her chest. “That photo from the Kent State massacre—is that for a report?” Now THAT was stupid. How can she be doing a report on the first day of school?

  She relaxes anyway and puts the notebook down. “Do you think it’s morbid? It’s one of my favorite photographs.”

  As she talks, I can see Willy and Ryan making fun of me behind Caroline’s back.

  “The guy who took this was in the student photo lab when he heard the commotion outside.” Caroline becomes more animated and her red cheeks slowly fade. “He thought the National Guard was shooting blanks, but they were using real bullets. He was almost out of film when he took this shot.”

  I remember what my mother said this morning and try to broaden my subject matter. “It was a protest about the war, right?”

  “The invasion of Cambodia,” she adds.

  Caroline is obviously a hundred times smarter than I am, but I try to keep up. I tell her my sister flew to DC five days after Kent State to join a demonstration of a hundred thousand people. I DIDN’T tell her Soosie wanted to initiate me into her world of activism by dragging me along but I chose to stay home to catch a glimpse of Zeppelin checking into the local Hyatt instead. That doesn’t make me a bad person, does it?

  “My brother flunked out of school last semester,” Caroline continues. “He’s nineteen—I hope he doesn’t get drafted.”

  The conversation suddenly seems insanely heavy, so I try to lighten it up. “Is that what you like to do, take pictures?”

  She reaches into the patchwork bag beside her desk and takes out a camera. “I spent most of this summer in the darkroom.”

  “Sounds like torture.” As I watch her face fall, I wish I could take the comment back. To change the subject, I motion to the girl in the picture. “Must’ve been horrible for her to watch her boyfriend get shot.”

  “She didn’t even know him. She was our age, a runaway. Didn’t go to Kent State.”

  “Really? She sure picked a bad day to pass through campus.” Ashley and Lindy are now joining in the fun, four of my friends having a good old time goofing on me talking to the new girl in the strange clothes. But Caroline’s so focused on our conversation, she doesn’t notice.

  I tell her how CSN&Y recorded “Ohio” quickly and less than three weeks later, it was playing on radios across the country.

  “Really? I’ll have to hear it sometime.”

  I jump out of my chair with so much force, I knock it to the floor. Ashley and Lindy burst out laughing. Smooth, Quinn—nice going.

  I set my chair right and try to avoid another catastrophe. “You’ve never heard “Ohio”? It went to #14 on Billboard? “Find the Cost of Freedom” is the B-side?” I realize I’m getting carried away but can’t control myself.

  Caroline looks around, embarrassed the other students are watching us. “I guess I’m a little behind on my music,” she stammers.

  Mrs. Clarkson finally finishes lining up the papers on her desk in ninety-degree angles and tells us to settle down. Her baby’s not due for months, but her belly looks about to explode anyway. I head back to my seat between Willy and Ryan.

  “What’s your girlfriend’s name?” Willy asks.

  “We’re going to bust your chops all day,” Ryan adds.

  I tell them both to shut up and slouch into my chair. Like a moron, I had to try and make some progress in my girlfriend quest ON THE VERY FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. I couldn’t have waited for a few days to get my footing? And this girl is SERIOUS. While I spend my days dissecting the lyrics to “I Am the Walrus,” Caroline’s worried about stuff going on in the outside world—just like my crazy sister. I mean, who wants to think about things like Vietnam if you don’t have to? But maybe I did make a good impression on her. Maybe right now Caroline is drawing my name in the margins of her Kent State notebook, wondering when I’m going to make her day with another stimulating musical tidbit. I mean, it could happen, right?

  Even I realize how delusional this train of thought is and get down to the real business at hand—revising my column on Club 27.

  Be honest—it didn’t go badly, did it? I mean, Caroline will talk to me again, right?

  I can’t tell anymore. I’m like a one-hit wonder with girls. A teenage Norman Greenbaum.

  PLEASE tell me you get the reference.

  And for those of you who disagree and say that “Spirit in the Sky” is not Norman Greenbaum’s only hit, I say to you, “The Eggplant That Ate Chicago” and “Canned Ham” are novelty songs and don’t count. I told you, I take this stuff SERIOUSLY. You should too if you’re going to read my columns.

  FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH

  9/71

  A few years ago--June 8, 1969, to be exact--Mick Jagger and Keith Richards visited Brian Jones at his home and kicked him out of the band he founded, which he named after glancing at an old Muddy Waters album. (“Rollin’ Stone” didn’t just influence the name of Jones’s band--Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile,” and the infamous rock magazine all were homages to Muddy’s song.)

  Less than a month after getting booted from the band, Brian Jones drowned in his swimming pool at the same country estate where A. A. Milne of Winnie-the-Pooh fame used to live. He was Club 27’s first member, if you don’t count blues legend Robert Johnson, who died in 1938 of strychnine poisoning at that age too. I’m usually not superstitious, but 27 is NOT my favorite number.

  Because Ryan is a giant Doors fan, he suggests we spend Saturday paying tribute to Jim Morrison. Willy opts for surfing in Santa Monica, but I happily oblige. I just hadn’t planned on Ryan’s enthusiasm; he rustles me out of bed Saturday morning with a full itinerary. I throw on some clothes and leave my parents a note.

  I haven’t been downtown since last winter when my Dad and I went to check out the damage from the 6.5 earthquake that killed sixty-five people. The windows of almost every storefront on Broadway had blown out, and the pavement glistened with shards of glass. We picked our way around police barricades, grateful our home had been spared. As Ryan and I descend from the bus today, we almost have Hope Street to ourselves.

  I pull out a tasty tidbit from my column on the Doors. “You know ‘Mr. Mojo Risin’ ‘ is an anagram for Jim Morrison, right?”

  “I knew that before I read your column.” Ryan laughs. “Let’s get something to eat.”

  We find a doughnut shop on the corner where we’re lucky enough to catch the woman taking a tray of glazed doughnuts out of the oven. Bacon doughnuts.

  “I don�
��t think I’ve ever had a bacon doughnut before,” Ryan says. “Why didn’t somebody combine these two a long time ago?”

  “Never mind bacon—I’ve never had a warm doughnut,” I answer with my mouth full.

  We order an extra two for the road, which we end up eating before we leave the shop. Then we head to our destination: the Morrison Hotel. When Ryan asks a mailman to take our picture out front, he begrudgingly agrees.

  “The guy behind the desk told the band they couldn’t pose in the lobby,” Ryan says. “So when the clerk went upstairs, the Doors hurried inside and their photographer shot a few photos from the street.”

  I nod as if I don’t know this piece of album cover trivia, hadn’t written about it in my column, oh, I don’t know, LAST YEAR. I keep my mouth shut though, because between the two of us, Ryan is the real Doors fan so I’m happy to let him be the expert today. We hang around downtown for another half hour then catch a different bus to Venice Beach.

  Whether it’s because he’s an only child or because his parents are divorced, Ryan’s always had more freedom than I have. I don’t know any other kid with divorced parents, so I’m curious about how things work with two separate households. But even though he’s my best friend, I’m too uncomfortable to ask for details, so we spend the ride talking about how Ryan just painted his bedroom at his dad’s place black and got UV lights to show off his black-light posters. It’s like a psychedelic music den that he insists makes his albums sound a hundred times better, and based on listening to Grand Funk’s Closer to Home the other day, I have to agree with him.

  It’s eighty-eight degrees by the time we get to Venice so we go straight to the beach. The boardwalk is full of tattoo artists, tourists, and hustlers.

  “This is the year we start a band.” Ryan picks up an empty soda bottle, pretends it’s a microphone, and feigns a Lizard King pose. Two little girls in bathing suits walk by and laugh.

  “I play guitar and transcribe music. You play three chords and wear vinyl pants—not even leather ones. Great band we’d make.”

  Ryan tosses a handful of sand in my direction. “It’s still the best way to meet girls.”

  As much as I love jamming with Ryan, we come at music from two different places. For Ryan, music is a basic pleasure as enjoyable as those warm doughnuts resting inside my stomach. Of course music is fun—nothing brings a grin to my face faster than nailing an elusive chord for the first time—but it’s more than that too. For me, there’s an internal structure, a language I want to be a part of. I care more about how Ray Manzarek played bass on the keyboards than I do about Morrison’s drunken theatrics.

  Ryan and I walk around the boardwalk and more than once, I miss Soosie’s protective presence. Not that the area is dangerous this time of day, but it’s a part of town I’ve never been to with just a friend. Later, we split a plate of ribs at Olivia’s Kitchen, the small restaurant Morrison based “Soul Kitchen” on. Walking back to the bus stop, I grab Ryan’s arm.

  “What is that?”

  He and I stare at a kid our age cruising down the boardwalk on a piece of wood with wheels. The kid wears a huge smile as he weaves through the pedestrian traffic.

  “No idea, but it looks like he’s having a blast,” Ryan answers.

  On the bus home, I think about how big the city is, how each section of Los Angeles has its own personality and tribe. You don’t have to be someone who’s lived here forever to notice the differences between Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards—and they’re only a block apart. Even though I’m a native Angeleno, there are so many parts of the city I haven’t discovered yet. As much as I love knowing a wild and diverse city awaits, I also take comfort in the fact that I can call the cozy Canyon home.

  We take photos of the Alta Cienega Motel, where Morrison lived in room 32 for a while. Outside the Whisky a Go Go—where the Doors made their groundbreaking debut that got them a record contract—a few other people take pictures.

  “Tourists,” Ryan mutters underneath his breath.

  “They’re probably paying tribute to Morrison too.”

  “It’s different,” Ryan continues. “We live here, we knew him. He used to talk to us.”

  I burst out laughing. Morrison talked to us ONCE, a few years ago when we skidded on our bikes and nearly crashed into him walking up Lookout Mountain Avenue. He looked like he’d been wearing the same clothes for days and swore at us as he stumbled back up the road. Even in the broadest definition of the word relationship, we didn’t have one with Morrison. My mother, however, gave lots of advice to Morrison’s girlfriend, Pamela, when she set up her own boutique on La Cienega. Mom never looks at other people opening stores as competition; her philosophy is always inclusive and communal.

  Ryan elbows me again. “Well, look who’s here—your new girlfriend.”

  I don’t know who he’s talking about until I see Caroline come out of a bookstore with an older woman, probably her mother.

  “Look what’s she’s wearing!” Ryan says. “Is she insane?”

  Caroline sees us and waves self-consciously. She has on a pleated navy blue skirt, but that’s not the worst of it. What I can’t get my head around is that it matches her mother’s. I want to die of embarrassment to save her the trouble.

  She introduces us to her mom, who shakes our hands. I can tell from Caroline’s face that she’s horrified she ran into us and I pray Ryan doesn’t make this chance encounter harder for her than it has to be. We tell her about our Doors day.

  “I love ‘Riders on the Storm,’” she says. “I love the sound of the rain.” She seems proud to have more musical knowledge than our last conversation.

  “Are you two out on your own in a city this size?” Caroline’s mother asks.

  “We grew up here,” Ryan answers. “It’s kind of our neighborhood.”

  I decide not to throw in the added detail that we just got back from Venice Beach and that I left my parents a note telling them where I was while they were still asleep. Thinking of my mom gives me an idea.

  “You should check out my mother’s shop.” I point down the street. “It’s only two blocks down—it’s the best clothing store in the city.”

  Caroline looks at her mother imploringly.

  “Tell her you’re a friend of mine and she’ll definitely give you a discount,” I say.

  Caroline’s face lights up, and I wonder if it’s because of the discount or that I just referred to her as a friend. Do I sound like a moron if I hope it’s the latter?

  “She may not have that many mother/daughter outfits, but she does have good stuff,” Ryan adds.

  I want to bash Ryan with his own camera as I watch Caroline’s smile deflate.

  “Let’s do it,” her mom says. “We definitely need some new duds.”

  I give them directions then turn to Ryan when we’re alone.

  “Duds?” he says. “What in the world are duds?”

  “You’re a dud,” I say. “Why’d you have to make her feel worse than she already did?”

  “Sorry I insulted your girlfriend,” he says. “Come on, we have one more stop.”

  As we head to Santa Monica Boulevard, I look over my shoulder to watch Caroline and her mom. The last thing I want to do is hang around my mother’s store while a girl I barely know tries on clothes, but part of me also wishes Ryan would hurry up and finish with his tribute already.

  Even with Morrison gone, the Doors’ office and studio bustle with activity. I heard a rumor that the surviving members of the band were making another album without him; turns out it was true. Robby and Ray split the lead singer duties and the album comes out next month. The receptionist downstairs waves us in when we tell her we want to take a photo of the bathroom. I guess lots of other Doors fans have already made the same pilgrimage.

  Morrison recorded one of the Doors’ very best songs—“L. A. Woman”—in the bathroom here in one take. Jim thought he could get a fuller sound there and he was right. Soosie and I always raced for the volume
knob on the car radio whenever the song came on. It isn’t just that the song is about our town—it rocks. I remember being in Soosie’s van with three of her friends, all four of them singing at the top of their lungs, windows open, not caring one bit about the businessman at the red light shaking his head and laughing. “Are you a lucky little lady in the City of Light?” I sat in the backseat singing too, taking in the scene as a window into the secret lives of girls.

  I snap a photo of Ryan sitting on the toilet seat as if he’s also making a hit record there.

  “I know Morrison was a mess,” Ryan says as we walk home, “but I’m still really sorry he’s gone.”

  Maybe because it’s Caroline’s favorite, but I can’t get the eerie thunder and rain opening of “Riders on the Storm” out of my mind. The day that album came out last spring, Ryan raced into my house and insisted I listen to that track right then and there. It was rainy that afternoon—a rarity in L.A.—and the song matched the ominous skies perfectly, an uncanny combination of life meeting art head on. It seemed as if it were written for that exact moment, just for us. When the song finished, Ryan turned the album over and played the other side while the two of us sat on the braided rug taking it all in. This is what I can’t explain, how there’s so much more to music than forming a band for the sole purpose of attracting screaming fans. How those moments of bonding with a song are holy—dare I say it?—even one of the reasons we’re here. The rainy afternoon Ryan turned me onto that song is etched into my being forever, part of my musical DNA. I get another idea for a column and race home to write it, NOT just to see if Caroline stopped by my mother’s store.

  I know what you’re thinking—isn’t this the same guy who was hopping around like Robert Plant a few weeks ago? Why so high and mighty all of a sudden?

  And to you I say, “Guilty as charged.” That being said, I meant every word about music saving your life, music being sacred. I believe in that 100 percent. So what’s wrong with adding a few screaming girls into the mix?