"It ain't gonna happen," Matt agreed. "Let's just cut the bullshit and not rehash this stupid argument again, you down with it?"
Crow sighed, managing to look like his feelings had been hurt. "Okay," he said. "Just thought I'd throw that out there. But the fact remains we need to get you into the studio early in December. That means you need to submit at least twelve songs for our approval by mid-November. That's a little over a month away."
"It's also a little bit impossible," Matt said. "There ain't no way in hell we're gonna be able to come up with twelve tunes by then. We'd be lucky to get three or four going."
"That's all the more reason to consider utilizing some of our pre-written material," Crow said.
Matt got mad. He stood up and slammed his hands down on Crow's desk, hard enough to echo through the room and make Crow back up in fear. "Listen up, fuckdick!" Matt yelled at him. "You don't seem to be absorbing the point here about this pre-written shit your hackers whipped up for us. It will never be recorded by Intemperance! Never! I swear before all that I hold holy and sacred, I swear on my fucking Strat! We will never do it. Never! Do you catch my fucking drift now?"
"Okay, okay," Crow said, his hands trembling a bit. "No need to yell. I think you've made your point quite nicely."
Matt sat back down. He pulled out a cigarette and sparked up. Crow did the same, his hand still shaking.
"Now that we've settled that," Jake said. "We're left with the problem of not enough time to come up with new material. As Matt said, you're asking the impossible here. You need to extend the deadline."
"Now you are asking the impossible," Crow replied. "We can't allow any lag time between the decline of Thrill and the launch of the next album."
"Why not?" Jake asked.
"Well... because you just can't!" Crow said. "Everyone knows that. If you don't keep your name constantly at the top of the charts you fade into obscurity in no time. We need to have that next album out by mid-April at the latest."
They went round and round on this issue for the next twenty minutes but eventually Crow — after having a private conversation with Doolittle like a car salesman consulting with his sales manager — grudgingly gave some ground.
"All right," he said. "We don't usually do this but Mr. Doolittle has agreed to give you a little more time to come up with new material."
"How much more time?" Jake asked.
"An extra month," Crow said. "We'll put off the start of the recording session until the first week in January. That means we'll expect twelve new tunes out of you by mid-December. Do you think you can meet that deadline?"
"That's still a little bit tight," Jake said.
"We're working with you all we can here, Jake," Crow said. "Really we are. But that's the absolute best we can do. Now all of the songs don't have to be masterpieces. Just give us two or three quality pieces for radio play and video production and the rest can be filler. Remember, your image is selling for you now."
Matt opened his mouth to say something — something that undoubtedly would have been profanity-laden and angry — but Jake put his hand on his shoulder, restraining him.
"We'll see what we can do," Jake said.
The meeting came to an end a few minutes later.
"Fuckin' filler," Matt said now, as they sipped from fresh drinks Manny had delivered to them. "I hate the very sound of that word. I do not produce filler. I will not play guitar for a song that is merely filler."
"I agree," Jake said. "I've done a lot of shit in the name of advancing my career. I've put on tight leather pants to play in front of an audience. I've lip-synched to my own music in front of cameras to make crappy music videos. I've given up my Les Paul for a Brogan. But none of that has actually affected the music itself. Pumping out filler tunes or playing crap that other people have written crosses a line that I'm not willing to cross."
"It would be an unacceptable compromise," Bill said. "Absolutely and completely deplorable."
"Let's make a pact," Jake suggested.
"A pact?" asked Matt.
"Yeah," Jake said. "We're the core members of this group, correct? You and I write the tunes and concoct the basic melodies. Nerdly, you're the one who knows the best way to polish those melodies into perfection. We are Intemperance. We are the ones who control the music we put out, agree?"
"Agree," said Bill.
"Damn right," said Matt. "Those two fuckin' druggies in the rhythm section are replaceable assets. I would've replaced Darren's ass a long time ago if they'd let me."
"I understand," Jake said. "And since we're the core of the group and since we control the music, we need to make this pact among the three of us. We need to vow that we will hold to our musical ideals in the production of new music. No filler tunes allowed. We will not allow our music to be compromised by the constraints of time or record company interference. Remember the standard we used before using new material at D Street West?"
They both nodded. The standard back then was that if the three core members were not drooling to play a tune before the audience for the first time, it would not be played. Any doubts about the quality of a new song by either Bill, Matt, or Jake, would be enough to get it banned. It was a rule that was unwritten and undiscussed, but a rule that carried the same weight as the Ten Commandments did for the bible thumpers.
"If we wouldn't play a song in front of D Street West," Jake said. "It doesn't go on an Intemperance album. That's the pact. Any one of us have unquestioned veto power over a tune. It has to be unanimous approval or we shitcan it. And no pressure by Crow or Doolittle or any of those other fuckheads will change our mind. Agreed?"
"Agreed," said Matt.
"Agreed," said Bill.
They sealed the pact the way the sealed any agreement between them. They drank on it and then smoked a joint in celebration.
Chapter 13b: Lines of Persuasion
That night, after eating the dinner Manny had prepared for him — something with an unpronounceable French name that was made out of chicken breast and rich white wine gravy — Jake walked into the office of his new place. There, beside the computer desk and the filing cabinet was a black case that had been moved from his apartment in Heritage to his apartment in Hollywood to a storage house during his first tour to his first condo after it to another storage house during the second tour and now here, to his office in his second condo. The case hadn't been opened in more than two years.
He picked it up and sat on the couch across from the computer desk. He set the case down next to him and opened it. Inside was his old acoustic guitar — a Fender knock-off that he'd purchased in a Heritage music store way back in 1977. Of course the Brogan guitar company — his official sponsor — had given him several high-quality acoustic guitars as well as five electrics, but he had never even opened the boxes they'd come in. This guitar was the one he'd always used to compose with, the one he'd always strummed for the sheer pleasure of strumming, for the thrill of making music, for translating the rhythm and melody in his head into the air around him. He looked at it now. It was covered in a layer of dust despite the case. He strummed his thumb over the strings. The sound was muted and out of tune. He felt horrible as he looked at its condition, as he listened to its imperfection. It was almost like he'd abandoned a child.
Gently he lifted it from the case and set it on the couch. He spent the next thirty minutes polishing it, cleaning it inside and out and restringing it with a set of strings that had been stuffed into the box. He then took out his tuning fork and spent another fifteen minutes tuning it to perfection. He strummed it again, listening in satisfaction as the rich, perfect sound poured out.