As they had been back in Heritage, Jake and Bill were roommates in Los Angeles as well, and for the same reason. They needed to split their living expenses in order to survive. Their apartment in L.A. cost almost one hundred dollars a month more than their apartment in Heritage had. And calling it a dump would have been giving it more credit than it was due.
It was in a squalid post-war era tenement building off Hollywood Boulevard, just two miles from the National Records building, but in a completely different world just the same. The complex was home to parolees and registered sex-offenders, to off-duty hookers and failed actors. It was the kind of place where nickel bags of marijuana were offered for sale to passing motorists out in front, where people sat on the stairs at all hours of the day and night drinking forty-ounce cans of malt liquor and smoking generic cigarettes. The sound of police helicopters hovering overhead and the sound of gunshots in the night were so frequently heard that they were rarely commented on. It was a complex that the LAPD visited at least three times in any given day, breaking up domestic disputes and handling overdose calls.
Their apartment was on the third floor of this building, tucked away in the rear. It was a two-bedroom and consisted of 642 square feet of living space. The carpet was a threadbare shit brown that radiated the faint odor of cat urine no matter how much they cleaned it. The bathroom featured a cracked and leaky toilet, a bathtub that was unusable because of the rust and mildew spots, and a showerhead that produced a pathetic trickle of lukewarm water at best. When Jake and Bill entered it after their recording session that day, it was stifling hot. There was, of course, nothing that resembled air conditioning available for their comfort.
"Damn, I hate this place," Jake said. "Let's get the fans turned on."
"Right," Bill agreed, setting down the twelve-pack of beer they'd purchased on the way home.
They opened all the windows and turned on all three of the fans they'd begged or borrowed when they'd moved here. That at least got the hot, sticky air circulating a bit and allowed fresh smog to be blown in from outside. They each grabbed a beer from the twelver and sat on their couch, which was pretty much the only piece of actual furniture they possessed.
"I hate L.A.," Jake said, taking a drink. "If we make it big with this recording deal I'm going to live anywhere but here. Hell, I'm not even going to come to this part of the state if I don't have to."
"This is a rather depressing existence," Bill said, taking a swig from his own can. "Do you really think we're gonna make it big?"
"Yeah," Jake said. "I do. The question is, are we going to be rich as well as famous?"
"Not under this contract we're not," Bill said. "That's for damn sure."
"What do you mean?"
"I've been doing some calculations."
"You, doing calculations?" Jake said with a grin. "Who'd have thought?"
Bill smiled briefly. "Make fun of me if you will, but know that I'm right as you do it. We've been screwed."
"I already know that."
"You may think you do," Bill told him. "But I don't think you appreciate the depth of our screwing. Our royalties are going to be ten percent, right?"
"Right."
"And that figure is based on a retail rate of five dollars per album, right?"
"Right," Jake said again. That had been a major negotiation point prior to signing the contract and the one thing that Shaver had fought tooth and nail for. The actual retail rate for an album was seven dollars but many first-time bands ended up having their royalties based on the wholesale rate, which was typically in the vicinity of two to three dollars. Shaver, wise to the ways of record contracts, had advised them to refuse to accept the wholesale rate. They did this but Acardio and the reps from the National Records business and legal departments had refused them a full retail rate. Five dollars per unit was the figure they'd eventually agreed upon.
"So let's be optimistic here and suppose our album goes platinum," Bill said. "That's one million albums sold, right?"
"Right."
"Which means we would get fifty cents for each album, or five hundred grand as a base rate."
"Yes," Jake agreed. "And I know that the recoupable expenses and Shaver's fee all come out of that."
"But have you ever actually added all of this up? It's kind of depressing."
Jake sighed. He didn't want to hear this, but he supposed that he needed to know. "Okay," he told Bill. "Depress me. Let's hear it."
Bill pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper upon which his calculations were written. "Okay, assuming we go platinum, our base royalty is half a million bucks. However, there's that ten percent breakage deduction that they threw in there."
"Yeah," Jake said bitterly. That meant that the label was assuming that ten percent of all the records they shipped would end up broken and un-sellable in transit. So if they sold a million copies, they would only be credited with nine hundred thousand for financial purposes.
"That brings our royalties down to $450,000. But then there is that 25% packaging fee."
Jake nodded. That was another figure the label wouldn't budge on, despite Shaver's wholehearted efforts to bring it down. The packaging fee was reported to be the costs associated with making the actual albums, the covers, putting them together and shipping them to the retail outlets where they would be sold.
"That's $112,000 off the top, which brings us down to $337,500. That also brings us to the biggest hit to our income, the recoupable expenses."
"The fuckin recoupables," Jake groaned. That had been the sorest part of the negotiations.
"The first thing is the advance they gave us when we signed. That was $50,000. Then there's the estimated studio time costs of $86,000, and the anticipated album promotion costs of $52,000. All of this is one hundred percent recoupable before a royalty check is ever issued and it adds up to $188,000. But it doesn't end there. We're responsible for half of the tour costs and half of the video production costs. That subtracts another $61,000, bringing us to a grand total of $249,000 in recoupable expenses. Do you know what that leaves us with?"
"How much?"
"$88,500," Bill said. "And don't forget Shaver's share. He gets twenty-one percent. That means we peel another $18,585 off, leaving us with $69,915. When you divide that figure up among the five of us, it comes out to $13,983 apiece. And that's assuming we go platinum. Cut that in half if we only go gold and sell half a million albums. If we do much worse than gold, we won't be able to cover the recoupable expenses at all and we'll be in the hole for the next album we do."
"Fourteen thousand bucks," Jake said, shaking his hand as he pondered the horror of that. "That's not even a living wage."
"You and Matt are entitled to extra royalties because you're the songwriters," Bill said. "But they don't amount to much. You can maybe add another thousand dollars apiece for that. And don't forget, we haven't even discussed taxes yet. Although they shouldn't be that bad since we would technically be below the poverty level."
"Jesus," Jake said. "That's what we get for all this work, all this sacrifice, for selling a million fucking albums? Fourteen grand?"
"Fourteen grand," Bill said sadly. "Hardly seems worth it, huh?"
"You seem depressed tonight," said Angelina Hadley, the waitress whose pants Jake had been attempting to penetrate the other night when he did his illegal concert. "I've been flirting with you like mad every time I come back here and haven't gotten a single return flirt." Angelina, or Angie for short, was an aspiring actress. At twenty-two years old, her body was absolutely fantastic, with curves in all the right places, a set of breasts that were the epitome of perfection, and legs that any man yearned to have wrapped around his back. Unfortunately for her career, her face was not as perfect. She had some acne scars left over from her adolescence, a nose that was just a little longer than optimum, and a mole just right of center on her chin. She was not ugly by any means, but these imperfections precluded her from any role in which her face needed to be seen, which pretty much precluded her from the profession of acting in general. She had had a grand total of three parts in her two-year career, two of them as body doubles for other actresses where a nude scene was required and one in a weight loss product commercial where her legs and tummy were shown bare but her face was never seen.