"When would I get that money?" Jake asked.
"It would payable upon the signing of the contract," Perkins said. "Of course, if you were to not go out on tour for whatever reason, or if you were to play different guitars on stage, you would be obligated to return that money to us along with a moderate breach of contract fee."
"Of course," Jake said. "Look, Perkins, let me think this thing over for a bit. I'll get back to you."
"Uh... well... sure," he said. "But how about that meeting tomorrow? Are we still on for that?"
"I'll let you know," Jake said. "What's your number?"
He recited his telephone number and Jake wrote it down. Before he could say anything further, Jake hung up on him. He consulted a sheet of paper and dialed the number for the Hyatt Hotel. Pauline had moved in there the moment her hundred grand had been deposited in her account. She too was now looking for luxury apartments in the LA area.
"What's up?" she asked when she came on the line.
"I just got this phone call," Jake said. He then told her about his conversation with Perkins.
"Half a million bucks, huh?" she said, whistling appreciatively. "Not bad for just playing a certain guitar. I bet you can do better though."
"You think so?"
"It's worth a shot anyway. Didn't you always say you loved your Les Paul but you only liked the Brogan?"
"Yeah," he said. "I did say that." This too was true. Though the Brogan was actually a little bit sturdier of an instrument with more modern components, a Les Paul was a classic, the kind of guitar a musician could bond with.
"Why don't we call up Gibson and see if maybe they are interested in an endorsement contract? It can't hurt, can it?"
"No," Jake agreed. "I guess it can't. Will you talk to them for me?"
"What are big sisters for?"
As it turned out, Gibson was very interested in an endorsement contract with Jake Kingsley. They offered him a million dollars per tour and free instruments for life if he would exclusively play the Les Paul onstage. Pauline told them they would check with Brogan to see if they were willing to make a counter offer. Gibson then upped the offer to $1.5 million per tour and, in addition, they promised to release a Jake Kingsley signature model Les Paul for sale to the general public and they would give Jake a commission of twenty dollars for each one that was sold.
"Where do I sign?" Jake asked.
"But, Jake," Pauline said, "shouldn't we run this offer through a few more guitar makers first? There's a good chance that Brogan or Fender might up it."
"Nope," Jake said. "The deal couldn't get any better for me. I was planning on playing my Les Paul onstage for free anyway. Let's wrap it up and get it signed."
They wrapped it up and got it signed. Since Pauline had brokered the deal, she received $300,000 of the $1.5 million and would get four dollars for each guitar sold. Jake looked at his bank balance the day the money was wired and stared at the amount for almost fifteen minutes. There was now $1,279,203 in there. It was now official. He was a millionaire.
Matt was the next to become a millionaire. Learning from Jake's experience and utilizing the negotiation skills of Pauline, he signed an endorsement contract with Fender to do exactly what he had already been doing: play his Stratocaster onstage. They gave him two million dollars per tour and promised him thirty dollars for each Matt Tisdale signature model that was sold to the public.
This led to the rest of the band signing endorsement deals of their own. Bill accepted $750,000 to play a Steinway Concert grand piano while on tour. The Steinway people even promised to install high-fidelity pick-up microphones for optimum sound reproduction. Coop, from within the walls of the Betty Ford Center, actually got a bidding war going between Ludwig, Pearl, Lexington, and Yamaha, with Yamaha finally offering him half a million per tour and giving him a commission of twelve dollars per John "Coop" Cooper signature starter set that was sold. Darren was the only one who didn't get a six-figure deal. Brogan ended up offering him a relatively paltry $75,000 to continue playing their bass guitar during tours and to appear in advertisements in various rock music magazines. There was no Darren Appleman signature bass proposed and, thus, no commission. Part of the reason Darren didn't fare as well as the others in the endorsement game was because he was a bass player and that was simply not perceived to be as glamorous as the other positions in the band. A bigger part of the reason, however, was that he chose not to use Pauline as a negotiator and mouthpiece for brokering the deal.
"I ain't paying her twenty percent to get me a fuckin' deal with a guitar company," he said stubbornly when Jake — during one of his visits to the Betty Ford Center — suggested that it might be a good idea. "It's bad enough I had to give her twenty percent of the hundred grand we got for signing the contract."
This was typical of Darren's attitude toward the rest of the band during this period. While Coop seemed to be responding well to the treatment and seemed genuinely happy to be shaking off his heroin addiction, Darren was full of excuses and resentment. Counselors told Jake on several occasions that he hadn't even acknowledged the first and most important step of the therapy, which was to admit that he was addicted and had a problem. As a result of this stubbornness, Ted Perkins met with Darren on day 24 of his stay at the Betty Ford Center and put an endorsement contract before him that offered perhaps half of what he would've got with Pauline's help and was chock full of loopholes such as the magazine advertisement requirement, a rider that dictated he would not get paid until the tour actually started, and that he would have to reimburse Brogan a proportionate amount for any tour dates that were missed.
"We're gonna keep having problems with him," Jake opined on day thirty of the rehab, the final day.
"Yep," Matt agreed. "The best we can hope for is to keep him in line through the recording process and the tour."
On October 3, 1985, Intemperance entered their rehearsal warehouse (the rent on which was now entirely paid by National Records instead of being recouped from band profits) for the first time since recording the atrocious demo tape that had kicked off the dispute and eventual renegotiation. Their instruments were dusty and out of tune, requiring two hours of cleaning and maintenance before they could even begin playing.
"Jake and I have both been working on new tunes during this whole thing we've been going through," Matt said. "I have about six and Jake has seven or eight, right, Jake?"
"Probably seven," Jake said. "I'm not really sure about that last one I was working on."
"Fair enough," Matt said. "But for now, how about we start by refreshing ourselves on the three main tunes we had done before this whole thing started? Does everyone remember them?"
"You mean the ones you said sucked ass?" asked Darren. "The ones you replaced with that crappy shit we put on the tape?"
"You know why we did that," said Jake. "That got us the new contract we're under, remember?"
"I kind of liked the old contract," Darren said. "Nobody asked me or Coop if we wanted to change it."
"You liked it because it let you shoot heroin to your heart's content," Jake told him. "You didn't even care that it was bankrupting you."
"Hey, fuck off, Jake!" Darren shouted. "Just because you scored a fucking million and a half endorsement contract off this new deal doesn't mean the rest of us have to like it!"
"Hey!" Matt yelled. "Knock it off, both of you. We ain't going there. We're here to play some music and get an album together, so let's fuckin' do it."
Jake and Darren both glared at each other for a moment and then nodded.
"Let's do it," Darren said.
"Yeah," Jake agreed. "Let's see if we still got it."
"That's the fuckin' spirit," Matt said. "Let's do Service Me first.
They didn't still have it, not at first anyway. One or the other of them would constantly miss a cue or play the wrong piece or flat out forget what they were supposed to be doing. Jake screwed up the lyrics, letting entire sections go unsung. The harmony of the rest of the members during the chorus was unharmonious at best. But they kept at it, referring to music sheets and lyric sheets and starting over again and again. Finally, after almost two hours, they managed to play the entire song all the way through without having anyone screw up.