Die behind the wheel, p.1
Die Behind the Wheel, page 1
DIE BEHIND THE WHEEL
Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan
Edited by Brian Thornton
Compilation Copyright © 2019 by Brian Thorton
Individual Story Copyrights © 2019 by Respective Authors
All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Die Behind the Wheel
Foreword
Jeffrey Weber
Introduction
Brian Thornton
Dirty Work
Cornelia Read
Your Gold Teeth
Nick Feldman
Home At Last
Sam Wiebe
Haitian Divorce
Simon Wood
Black Cow
Linda Joffe Hull
Pretzel Logic
dbschlosser
Green Earrings
Bill Fitzhugh
Josie
Stacy Robinson
Do You Have A Dark Spot On Your Past?
David Corbett
On Your Knees Tomorrow
R.T. Lawton
Harley Quinn Is Dead
James W. Ziskin
Show Biz Kids
Brian Thornton
About the Contributors
Preview from Swann’s Down by Charles Salzberg
Preview from No Salvation by Jeffery Hess
Preview from Charlie-316 by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro
FOREWORD
Desire, then envy. Those are the two emotions that occur when Los Angeles musicians learn that Steely Dan will be recording their next project in town.
Known for their meticulous production, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen had a history of selecting the finest musicians on the planet to contribute to their endlessly fascinating work. Playing or singing on their albums was as much a validation as a tribute. Yet, Walter and Donald had an inner sense of precision and perfection and often asked their musicians to record up to forty takes on each track. On at least one of their albums, they spent over a year in the studio.
Weary of the road in their early years, Steely Dan became a studio only band for quite a while. It was difficult to get studio musicians to go on the road then, and Donald, because of an intermittent panic disorder, was reluctant to sing live so they retreated to the studio. It became their home.
As a music producer for forty years, I too, take great care in hand-picking the finest musicians I can find to complement the artist and the music that I am recording. I have used a great number of the same musicians as Walter and Donald did to perform on my recordings. (Special musical gratitude to Michael McDonald, Jeff Porcaro, Dean Parks, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, Victor Feldman, Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour and Pete Christlieb.) These session musicians, as they are often called, are my insurance policy. They perform at a staggeringly high level. As a producer, if you’re smart, you’ll sit back and let them do what they do. They represent the highest level of artistry in music. Actually, they make producers like me look like a damn genius.
In addition to music production, I am a collector of signed, first edition, crime fiction. Reading was, and is, more than a simple passion. For countless years, it was an addiction so all-encompassing that as my library grew and grew, I had to negotiate with my wife for floor space for my collection. Many of the authors in this anthology have resided on my shelves for decades and brought me immeasurable hours of enjoyment.
It was clear to me that Walter and Donald were readers with the same degree of exploration and passion that I had. It guided them as they hand-picked the musicians that would deliver just the right tone of their music to their eager audience. To Walter—guitars, bass, background vocals—and Donald—keyboards, lead vocals—these stunning players were an integral part of the equation.
For about ten years, they blended jazz, pop—as we knew it then—and R&B with thematic lyrics that were cryptic, ironic and open to intense interpretation. That might have been obvious had you known that Walter and Donald named the band after a series of strap-on dildos mentioned in the William S. Burroughs novel, Naked Lunch.
Their lyrics have been the subject of speculation for years. Some have said that Steely Dan never created a heartfelt love song. Some believe that their songs deal with personal passion in the guise of a destructive obsession or a delusion. Populated by victims, derelicts, bottom feeders and failed dreamers, their lyrics feature disturbing twists on various realities such as love, prejudice and poverty. And then there are even darker themes exploring incest, pornography and prostitution. Perfect for this anthology!
In Los Angeles, they often recorded at Producer’s Workshop, a small, cinderblock studio, completely hidden behind a well-known mastering studio, in the thick of Hollywood. Right smack on Hollywood Boulevard, no less. As is the case with most recording studios, if you know about it, you’ll find it. If you don’t, you won’t. Producer’s Workshop had its own notable history in that Pink Floyd’s The Wall was recorded there along with projects by Alice Cooper, Ringo, Neil Diamond, Carly Simon, Fleetwood Mac—Rumours—and, of course, Aja. I recorded a few of my own projects there, too. Back then, the studio was co-owned by Liberace. Who knew? It’s still there today, and that well-known mastering studio in front of it is now “The Museum of Death.” Only in Hollywood.
Besides having a celebrated history of success on the charts and at the Grammy Awards, Steely Dan’s music was coveted by a niche of music enthusiasts known as audiophiles. Audiophiles search the world for music that has the exuberance of extreme dynamics. If the bass doesn’t whip your clothing and shake the lighting fixtures, then that recording is tossed. If the mids and the highs are clean and tight without being strident, then that disc may be a keeper. It wasn’t so much the message as it was the purity and punch of the sound. And Steely Dan’s recordings really delivered.
But for the rest of us, the grateful and enduring fans, the release of a new Steely Dan recording was cause for celebration. We looked forward to discovering the pleasures of the complex arrangements. The tightness of the production. The richness of the harmonies. The crispness of each instrument as it was carefully yet effortlessly brought to life in the mix. And then there were the lyrics. We could use our imagination to dig deep as we interpreted each lyric’s cinematic script. Sometimes whimsical, sometimes dark, sometimes fanciful, sometimes dangerous, but always stimulating. Always thought provoking.
Time and again, Steely Dan displayed the finest in the recording arts. Their music proved to me that, as a producer, I needed to up my game. Their music allowed me a glimpse of what could be done. But, more importantly, their music provided insight as to what must be done.
I’m getting there.
—Jeffrey Weber
Jeffrey Weber has produced over 200 CDs. His projects have yielded two Grammys, seven Grammy nominations, at least seventeen top ten albums, two number one albums and an assortment of other honors. He is the author of You’ve Got a Deal! The Biggest Lies of the Music Business, and We’ll Get Back to You! Even Bigger Lies of the Music Business.
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INTRODUCTION
Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were responsible for some of the most subversively slick pop hits of the 1970s. The two were jazz lovers who met while undergraduates at Bard College, toured as part of Jay and the Americans, and then parlayed jobs as staff writers for ABC records—where they wrote, among other songs, “I Mean to Shine,” later recorded by Barbra Streisand—into a recording deal with the type of creative control most artists only dream of.
The result was a string of jazz albums masquerading as pop-rock albums, possessed of sterling production values, sharp, enigmatic lyrics, and chops executed by some of the best studio players ever to record. Starting in 1972 with Can’t Buy a Thrill and running through 1980’s Gaucho—as well as two more albums and countless tours since reuniting in the early ’90s—Fagen and Becker wrote cynical, often wry lyrics which owed a considerable debt to the tropes of crime fiction.
Songs about whorehouses, “Here at the Western World;” the “colorful” parts of town, “Pearl of the Quarter;” smoking heroin and the toll it takes, “Time Out of Mind;” and failed relationships, “Everything You Did,” “Reelin’ in the Years,” “Dirty Work,” “My Old School,” just to name a few; vied with titles like “Don’t Take Me Alive,” songs like “Kid Charlemagne”—based in part on the life of Owsley Stanley, the first drug chef to whip up LSD and sell it in mass quantities—and whole albums such as their bleak, gorgeous masterwork Aja, to paint a desolate world populated by noir heroes, sometimes successful, just as often not.
A number of years back I had the idea that it might be interesting to take something by Steely Dan and use it as the inspiration for a story. After all, there was already a crime fiction connection there. Fagen even included a song entitled “The Goodbye Look” on his first solo album, The Nightfly—a title lifted from a book by hard-boiled/noir master Ross MacDonald—to whom the song is intended as an homage.
I quickly came up with a plot, wrote half a draft, and then shelved it when my son was born. And there it languished until September 2017. Specifically, the day Walter Becker died. (The finished product, “Show Biz Kids,” is included in this collection.) I wrote a tribute on my blog, including in part: “I’ve often said that the music of Steely Dan would lend itself to a themed anthology of the type recently collected by Joe Clifford, and centered around the music of Johnny Cash.”
And then my wife, who is my first reader and perennial wisest counsel, asked me, “Why don’t you do it?” Turns out she soon had company. Several friends asked the same thing after reading that piece.
The idea sold itself. I approached Down & Out Books publisher Eric Campbell about it, and we quickly worked out a deal. And there was such an enthusiastic response to my request for stories inspired by the music of Steely Dan that our planned collection quickly ballooned in size.
That single anthology “morphed” into two companion anthologies, you could even say, “It changed, it grew, and everybody knew….”: the one you’re currently holding and The Hangman Isn’t Hangin’: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan, which will be out later this year. Note that there is no “Volume 1” or “Volume 2.” These anthologies are thematically linked, yet truly stand alone.
It has been genuinely humbling working with the terrific crew of writers whose efforts populate these pages. Their creativity, their flexibility, their bonhomie suffuses this anthology, and has rendered this collection the better for their collective presence. I thank each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart for giving so freely of your time and of yourselves. You have done great work!
I would also like to take a moment to thank Eric Campbell and the crew at Down & Out Books. They have been incredibly supportive and helped make the process of collecting and editing this group of stories a relatively painless endeavor.
I owe a further debt of thanks to Jim Thomsen, Stacy Robinson and David B. Schlosser, for their terrific proofreading and tireless editorial assistance. Thanks, you three. Fresh eyes are a must when working with stuff like this. Talented ones are a bonus.
Lastly, thanks to my wife, Robyn Thornton: first reader and final editor. For the support in myriad ways, and for pushing me to commit to this idea in the first place. Love you, honey!
—Brian Thornton
January 2019
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DIRTY WORK
Cornelia Read
Lonergan kicked me off the hay truck around noon.
It’s dirty work. Shards of alfalfa chuff off the baler and catch in the sweat that forever streams down your back by late summer. They prickle and chafe and pretty soon you’ve got a thousand tiny nicks everywhere: itching, wet, and salty in August’s miserable stillness of leaden heat.
Field hands used to knock back cold stoneware pitchers of a drink they called “switchel.” It was an ersatz lemonade, with cider vinegar mixed into the chilled maple-sugared water in lieu of citrus.
Turns out if you’re overworked and dehydrated in the high-noon sun, switchel can stop your heart.
We might have tried it if Van Wyck Durant had been a farmer.
Sadly for all concerned, the smug old bastard taught semiotics at Bard, and I owed him a hundred more pages of my undergrad thesis on The Meaning of Meaning before he’d deign to let me graduate.
Wyck knew full well I didn’t have the money to stick around for the summer without a job.
“You got yourself into this, Tommy,” he’d said, leaning back in the leather chair behind his campus desk. “You’re bright, but you’re a lazy little fuck for a boy who thought he’d just breeze through this place on a full ride.”
“I suppose that’s right, sir.”
“And I suppose you expect my help, but you’re shy three credits and without my say-so on this piece of shit you’re calling a thesis….”
He was a big guy and handsome, a Ted Hughes who’d have preferred the rugby scrum to verse.
You wouldn’t think to look at him that he was the sole heir to gobs of money, or that he’d never had to work a day in his life unless it amused him. Not unless you looked at his hands.
My mother was home alone in Allentown, no doubt ginning herself up to work her second shift at the Econo-Lodge.
I sat up straighter. “Sir?”
It was late afternoon on the day I should have graduated. Giddy familial congratulations echoed across the verdant expanse of Bard College, outside Wyck’s leaded windows. We were on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, her waters cobalt and stately as they rolled out with the tide.
Durant let me swing for another long moment, as though deciding whether to temper my fate with a soupçon of noblesse oblige.
We both knew he would, but that he’d make me pay.
“I could use another hand at the farm,” he said.
“Certainly.”
“Ask for Lonergan at the barn, tomorrow at six.” He tore the end off a sheet of foolscap and scrawled the address.
“Excuse me, sir, but, ah…what’s the going rate?”
“Three hots and a cot until I approve your thesis for the panel. That’ll light a fire under your ass.”
“I expect so, sir.”
“You’re welcome,” he called after me, as I started down the darkened hallway.
I started fucking Durant’s wife halfway through June, but I hadn’t wanted to kill him. Not at first.
The old story: Holly’d been one of his students, a Botticelli redhead with long legs, no tits, and an ass like a choirboy.
Mrs. Durant the First bowed out with grace, her long-ordained departure sweetened with a large check and two villas in the Azores.
I knew who Holly was, of course, and she first saw me when she’d come in from an early-morning gallop along the river on her big gray hunter.
The day was already steamy, though it wasn’t yet eight o’clock. I’d been mucking out stalls for Lonergan in a sweat-dark T-shirt, stinking of horse shit.
I’d stumbled back out into the sunlight, blinking, when I heard Holly clatter to a halt beside the mounting block.
I guess she still liked what she saw. Ten minutes later we were rutting like minks in the hayloft while her gelding, abandoned, whickered at a hitching post.
Six weeks after that, Durant was away at a conference in Chicago, and I watched Holly lock the last door behind their old cook Gladys for what seemed like the thousandth time.
She led me upstairs to where she’d lit a few dozen candles in the master bedroom, fat squat little things that perfumed the summer night with the scent of linden trees in full blossom.
I roped her long red hair around my fist, leaning in to kiss the side of her neck. Her silken shirt slid off that shoulder to reveal smudges of bruise marring the tender skim-milk perfection of her collarbone.
“It’s nothing,” she said, but he’d spoiled what was mine and we both knew he had to go.
I took her from behind.
As we lay across the tangled sheets of their marital bed, her head light on my chest, Holly started talking.
“He doesn’t do it all the time,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Hurt me.”
“Once is too much.”
“It’s mostly when he’s bored. Like a tantrum. It passes.”
“Leave.”
“I won’t give him the satisfaction, and he knows it. I’m not going out on the street so he can sweep up his next possession. Someone younger, more vulnerable.”
