From The Roy Bluff –Laura Perkins
Trilogy -She Belongs To …
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
When a writer for Rolling Stone or one of those
music-oriented magazines you see flooding the newsstands and supermarket check-
out counters asked Ben Freed, the longtime road manager for Roy Bluff, the
famous hip-hop-infused folk rocker, off the record, on his take on the Roy
Bluff-Laura Perkins flare-up he answered like this:
Sure I knew Roy Bluff on his way up,
and Laura, Laura Perkins too when she came on the scene to help build his
legend, but I will speak of her later. I knew that if he kept plugging away
with his lyrics, his lyrics that spoke to our weird times, the late ‘90s, to
the time of the seemingly end-time great plague in this world, wars, injustice,
inequality, that he would break through the thickets of the music business and
rise to the top, kicking ass and screaming all the way. I knew that if Roy just
kept to his words, to his music, and left the other stuff alone he would be
immortal. That other stuff being a huge reservoir appetite for high shelf
whiskey, high-grade dope, mainly marijuana but later, cocaine and some opium, and any grade women. But that
was what made him Roy, the other stuff, and it was not until later that I
realized that without the other stuff, without living on edge city, without the
high-wire act of his life that he could not produce those words that spoke to
us. Nada, nothing.
I first met Roy one night as he was
working his way up in the music world at the Café Algiers in New York City, in
the Village, where he was working out the kinks for a major tour that Ducca
Records, a label that had just taken a chance on him and had signed him to do
an album. The album finally produced the tour was put together to gain exposure
for him in small concert halls and large hotel ballrooms and to promote (sell)
the records, oops, CDs. So I had been
among the small group that showed up that night as he warmed up for the long
haul road trip.
Now the Algiers was a smaller club than
he would play on tour although frequented by serious music aficionados and some
hanger-on second level celebrities, you know Village-wise artists and musicians
like Manny Ray and The Kinksters and off-Broadway denizens like Mike Ester and
Fiona Florin. During the break between sets Roy headed for the bar and his couple
of shots of then low-shelf whiskey and a beer chaser. I, sitting at the bar,
offered to buy him a drink in appreciation for what was a good performance, one
that touched me at points, one that “spoke” to me in ways that mainline hip-hop
artists did not at that point. He accepted and we talked further and then we
talked later after the show when he again hit the bar. The long and short of it
was that after a few nights of that at the Algiers I became something of a
roadie for him (unpaid at first and then when he hit overpaid). So yeah I knew
Roy for a while, a while before he hit it big, and before he met Laura on the
way to hitting big. Roy, as everybody knows is more that capable of speaking,
of defending himself and his actions, small and large, infantile and immortal.
Laura deep down was another story,
and many a lonely Roy-ing night (a term we shared for the care and protection
of one Roy Bluff and his frailties) we shared a bottle or a joint and
commiserated over that man. One night, one night in Kansas City, after the show
at the famous Hi-Hat Club, and after a particularly tough Roy-ing period for Laura
when, against all good judgment, he had almost hit her when she tried to temper
his furies she laid out some stuff for me about their relationship, about how
it started and so I want to tell you my take on her story, on her flaming love
for the Roy. And yes I had a thing for
Laura, still do as little good as it does me, so let’s get that off the table
right now. Here goes:
As always with Laura she was a
little hesitant even after a few drinks to speak openly of her troubles, her
sorrows, having been brought up in a tight-lipped Irish-Catholic household just
outside of Yonkers. Tight-lipped as I knew from my own experiences with my
maternal grandparents was that you did not air your dirty line in public. And
so Laura hesitated although she knew, or should have known, that I had strong
evidence either by not being blinded by Roy or that he told me in his more
lucid (read: not drunk or stoned) of what was, and was not, happening between
her and Roy.
She started out talking about a
diary that she had started keeping the previous few months out of some sense of
just trying to make things connect, make sense of her life, make the jumble of
thoughts she had about leaving him, about leaving Roy, about pulling up stakes
and going out and starting over. She pulled it out of her purse because she
said she wanted to look up some stuff that she might have forgotten or had put
a certain way as she wrote it out so that I would know what she felt at the time. As she read aloud to me one entry she
laughed, a gorgeous Laura laugh, an infectious laugh she had when she was in
high spirits and that everybody took shelter under. She laughed that she had
like many a lonely schoolgirl, or many a budding literary figure, kept little
nonsense diaries filled with longings and daydreams when she was young, when
she came of age, when the welter of the world’s burdens fell on her shoulders
and she, shy and reticent by nature, needed some way to express the confusions
that made up her life about parents, boys, sex. Mostly, as she reflected now at
another turning point, what to do, or what not to do about sex. She had that
figured as well as any teenager had in this mega-information age, but what to
do with her life was what ailed her. I blushed a little when she detailed some
of her early sexual explorings, although she only made a couple of explicit
references, metaphor unlike with Roy, Roy when non-lyric producing, who swore
and talked obscenely almost automatically, being her forte in talking about
sex.
So mainly she kept the diary because
she felt she needed to keep tabs on what she was going to do about Roy Bluff
and his internal, infernal, eternal needs that seemed beyond her grasp now that
he had become something in the music business. Also apparently had made it his
life’s ambition to drink a river of whiskey, and an acre of ganja (dope,
marijuana for the unknowing), and taste every women with a skirt on (or maybe
better off). She had put up with a lot, a lot of late and she knew she had to
draw some line in the sand ever since that night that Roy, a head full of
liquor and dope (cocaine, sister, snow you know), came within an inch of
hitting her, maybe less, maybe less than an inch. Hence the diary to put those
ten thousand conflicting thoughts together.
Laura made it clear, painfully
clear, and drew a circle in the air as if to make sure there was no mistake about
her feelings Roy Bluff, weaknesses and all, was her man, was her man ever since
that first night they met at the Hi-Lo Club in Yonkers several years before. But
the grind of the road, the grind of the care and protection of one Roy Bluff
rising star, the grind of his excesses had taken a toll and Laura needed to get
things straight in her mind, needed to take a break from Roy-ing. Laura said
that as she prepared to write at length in her new found diary she began to
think back to those first days when love was in full bloom, or the prospect of
love was in the air. Nights then when she was not “blue,” Roy Bluff blue.
Laura spoke of how she remembered
back to the night that she and Roy had had their first fight as a starting
point. Their first, uh, misunderstanding he called it. She more plain spoken
and forthright called it a fight. It had not been long after the night she had
told Roy in no uncertain terms that he was her man and so maybe he was trying
to test her that night, trying to see what hold he held over her. I thought as
she mentioned it a typical guy thing that has been going on since Adam and Eve,
maybe before. I had used a variation on
that theme myself when younger, maybe high school younger, testing some young
thing, testing just to be testing like testing the limits of outrageous
behavior was the be-all and end-all of any relationship. It had been a tough
night before a half-empty ballroom in Butte, Montana, half empty because even
those hearty brethren would not fight five feet of snow swirling outside to
hear a rising star. Catch him come spring one man quipped as he left to fight
his own demon snows. That night whiskey-sated (maybe a little reefer too it was
hard to avoid that mix in Roy’s head
sometimes, or hers too when he introduced to her to dope) he, Roy Bluff, said
he could have had his pick of whatever woman caught his fancy, caught his eye,
or caught his momentary fashion interest.
Reason: Roy Bluff, a guy who had
scrabbled and scrambled hard for a long time finally hit his stride, finally
got the big pay-off for all those lonely half-filled rooms, all those small
make-shift café stages, all those dank church basements replete with
intermission homemade baked goods sold to help defray coffeehouse expenses, all
those play louder than the drunks at midnight, when his brand of hip-hop-infused
folk-rock became a craze. Got his big ass break when Dave Beck, the big
recording producer for Ducca Records, happened to need a midnight drink, maybe
two, and heard him at the El Segundo
Café in Long Beach and gave him a shot.
Roy went on and on about how being a
record contract singer anything, a concert artist anything women started giving
him their keys, or whatever else they had to offer back then, in order to say
they had been with the rising music star Roy Bluff for one night, maybe two at
the most he bragged since Roy was moving fast, as fast as a man could to catch
the rising wave. The she confided in me something she did not think I knew. Roy
Bluff is not his real name, although out of some male vanity, or something he
failed to tell her that until a mutual musician friend of theirs gave her the
skinny on it one night when she kept on hearing him call Roy Ron. His real name
was Ronald Smith, but the performance stage, musical performance concert artist
stage, and maybe the whole world, was filled to the brim with Smiths just when
he was starting out and so one night earlier in his career, one night after a
drunken fight brought on by some loudmouth cursing his music in a Memphis bar, the
Be-Bop Club over off Beale, he “christened” himself with that manly name
despite losing that fight, losing it badly to a smaller wiry man,
[What Laura did not know which I
did, and which she did not find out until later, after the night our talk was
that Ronald Smith was not Roy’s real
name either but Zebulon Jordan. The way I found out about it was the night, the
first night he was busted he tried to use Ronald Smith when I attempted to bail
him out and the hick cops in Louisville couldn’t find the name at the address
given and were going to hold him over. He coped to the Jordan that night. All
of which is neither here nor there since now he has had his name legally
changed to Roy Bluff.]
So it wasn’t that he was agile,
handsome or beautiful, if a man can be beautiful in this wicked old world that
drew the women to him, as much as that he had a certain serious jut-jawed look
borne from out in the prairies, a kind of cowboy look, that appealed to women,
lots of women. Appealed to Laura for that matter.
Roy continued on that line about the
women as he stated that he had run through the alphabet with such catches,
blondes, brunettes, red-heads, especially a couple of wild red-headed sisters,
college students, young professionals, slender, not so slender, yeah, the whole
alphabet to fill his dance card and share booze, dope and whatever was at hand,
sometimes, as to be expected, getting out of hand. Hell, he liked it, loved it
for the while he was on edge city. And so it went as he puffed himself up in
his own mind as least. That was not a good night as he ranted on unto
exhaustion.
Later full of bad booze and sorrows
Roy, trying to make up, said that was his act until she came along. Until she,
Laura Perkins she, whom he called his “sweet angel,” called her sweet angel
when he was having one of his better moments, had gotten under his skin, gotten
the best out of him. And waxing a little poetic he said wherever the winds
would take them, or not take them, she would always get under his skin, that
was just the way it was almost from the first, and he said he accepted that
sometimes with a sly grin and sometimes with daggers in his eyes. She merely
waved him off having heard that line of defense (and contrition) before, by him
and others. They did, to keep the Butte snows at bay, Laura laughed as she said
this, make love that night.
She said Roy used to drive her crazy
when he got into his “maybes” mood, something that had been happening a lot
more of late Usually he would bring it up to settle himself down at some pre-performance
moment as he prepared his play-list in his head, and he was in a sly grin mood.
As he set himself up for the day’s work, actually night’s work since he would
be giving a concert later that evening, he would start. The maybes, as I knew
because more than once he had used me as a sounding board, being a little game that he, previously
nothing but a love‘em and leave ‘em guy, played with himself trying to figure
out just how, and the ways, that she, one Laura Perkins, got under his skin.
The first maybe was that Laura was
not judgmental, not in a public sense anyway, and not in any way that would let
him know that she was. She had given him a lot of rope, had accepted his
excuses, his frailties, and his rages against the night (as she tried like hell
to temper them and made a point, a strong point to me of not wanting to discuss
those efforts since this was about leaving him and she wanted to interject some
sunnier days into what she had to say). She said Roy had told her he would laugh
to himself as he thought about the circumstances under which they had met and he
knew deep down that, publicly or privately, judgmental was just not the way she
was built. She said she had let a little grin form on her face in recognition
of that trait, a trait that she told me she was particularly proud of.
Then Roy would describe to her his thoughts
on that first night, he had just got into one of the ten thousand beefs that he
got into when he was drinking back then. He was working his first major tour,
major in those days being working steady and working in small concert halls and
large ballrooms throughout the country (no more dank basements and crowded cafes,
not for Ducca recording artist Roy Bluff). Some customer at the famous Hi-Lo
Club in Yonkers who didn’t like his song selections told him about it, told him
loudly.
Roy, having been drinking (and
smoking a little reefer) all day, responded with a brawl, getting, as usual the
worst of it, when Laura walked in with a girlfriend. Laura told him later that
she did not really know who Roy was but her girlfriend, Patty Lyons, dear
Patty, had heard his first album and was crazy to see him in person and so she
had persuaded Laura to tag along. The truth was that Laura had heard about him
from a musician friend who had heard him at the Café Algiers in the Village a
few weeks before and so had not so much tagged along as was intrigued by what
she had heard about him. That musician friend, a woman, a woman whom Roy had
slept with at it turned out, was the one who drew her attention to that
jut-jawed cowboy aura and thus the intrigue.
She had given Roy a look, an honest
look, a look that said yeah I might take ride with that cowboy (laugh, cowboy
from Portland up in Maine, Maine born and bred), an instant attraction look, and
Roy, bloodied and all, gave one back, ditto on the attraction look. Later, just
before he started his second set he asked the waitress what Laura was drinking,
he then had a drink sent to her table, and she had refused it, saying that if
he wanted to buy her a drink then he had better bring it to the table himself. Funny
she said since she was a struggling student over at Pace University in
Tarrytown at the time she would normally accept when a guy, almost any guy who
looked like he might not be a crack head or crackpot, offered to buy her a
drink, or two.
Yeah, yeah that was the start. After
Roy had finished the set he did bring that drink over. She never asked him
about the fight, about the cause of it, or even about how his wounds were
feeling but rather stuff about his profession and the ordinary data of a first
meeting. All she knew was as close as he had come a few times afterward that
was the last time he fought anybody for any reason, fought physically anyway. He
would always bring that up when they were in fight mode as some virtue that
would not have occurred except for her and by implication that if she left him
he would fall back on his wicked ways.
Then Roy would move on to a blow by
blow description of what happened after that. He would start with maybe it was
that at the beginning, not the beginning beginning, not that first night when
after his set was finished he brought that drink over to her table (and to be
sociable one for her girlfriend too) but after he had gotten used to her, had
been to bed with her and she had said one night out of the blue, that he was
her man (she said he said she had put it more elegantly than that but that was
what she meant, and she agreed, agreed she put it more elegantly than that )
and that she would pack her suitcase if she was ever untrue to him. Those were
the days when he was still grabbing whatever caught his eye (including that female
musician friend), and reasoned what guy who was starting to get a little
positive reputation in the music business wouldn’t grab what was grab-worthy.
But after that he said he too silently and almost unconsciously took what they
later called the “suitcase” pledge although he never told her that, never told
her he took the pledge, it just kind of happened. A patent lie, no question.
Then he went on to speak of a maybe that
totally befuddled him. It was that Laura would refuse the little trinkets that
men give women, hell, she wouldn’t even accept roses on her birthday. She only
wanted a quiet moment alone with him away from the helter-skelter of his public
life. One night when he and she had been smoking a little dope and she was
“mellow” and ready to shed a little of her private thoughts she had told him
about a man, an older man (older then being twenty-five she being eighteen at
the time, but more that she was unworldly or really not ready to accept the
wicked old world on harsher terms and so malleable) who had lavished her with
gifts, money, some jewelry (later found to be some reject stuff) only to
confess one night that he was married and as part of that package had beaten
her up as he walked out the door after she had called the whole thing off. She
said if what she and Roy had wasn’t good enough without trinkets then they were
doomed anyway and she would not want reminders of that failure around.
Roy would then give the full-court
press. Maybe it was as they grew closer,
as they got a sense of each other without hollering and as his star started
rising in the business after his first big album hits, that she tried to
protect him from the jugglers and the clowns (her words), the grafters,
grifters, drifters and con men (his words) who congregate around money as long
as it is around. Better, she protected him against the night crawler critics
and up- town intellectuals who gathered around him as they saw him as their
evocation of the new wordsmith messiah and who were constantly waiting, maybe
praying too if such types prayed, for him to branch out beyond the perimeters
that they, yes they, had set for his work, for his words. Waiting to say
“sell-out.” Yes, she had protected him from the scavengers as I had, maybe
better since she did not have to deal with them like I had to.
Which led to maybe it was the
soothing feeling he got when after raging against the blizzard monster night of
the early years, those bleak years right after the turn of the new century, on
stage, in his written down words, after hours in some forsaken hotel room town,
nameless, nameless except its commonality with every other hotel room, east or
west, she softly spoke and made sense of all the things that he raged against,
the damn wars, the damn economy, hell, even his own struggling attempts to
break-out of the music business mold and bring out stuff on his own label.
Maybe too it was the tough years,
the years when he was still drinking high hard sweet dreams whiskey by the
gallon, still smoking way to much reefer (and whatever else was available, everybody
wanted to lay stuff from their own personal stash on him, some good, some bad,
very bad) when she took more than her fair share of abuse, mental not physical,
although one night, a night not long before he finally crashed big time and had
to be hospitalized (and not long before she started keeping that diary), he
almost did so out of some hubristic rage. She waved him off when he tried to
explain himself. She said “let by-gones be by-gones” and that ended the
discussion.
Then out of the blue one Roy Bluff a bundle of walking
contradictions, all tongue-tied and timid floored her with this- and she quoted
it from memory-“And maybe, just maybe, it was that out in the awestruck thundering
night, out in the hurling windstorms of human existence, out in the slashing
muck-filled rains, out, he, didn’t know what out in, but out, she was, she just
was… “ And as the tears slowly formed as she finished the quote she floored me
with this. She thought, thought hard and fast that maybe, just maybe, she would
give her walking daddy, her jut-jawed cowboy walking daddy just one more try.
Damn.
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