"Well... that's not what the song is about," Jake said. "Descent is about the struggles of growing up, about leaving childhood behind, about the disillusionment of becoming an adult. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Satanism."
Max rolled his eyes again. "Nobody gives a fuck what you think the song is about."
"What I think the song is about? I wrote it! I'm pretty fucking sure that's what its about!"
Max waved this off. "Videos about the struggles of growing up don't sell albums and that's what we're here to do. Now I've had about as much of this shit as I'm going to take from you punks. Norman is producing this video and you are employees of National Records and you will do exactly what he tells you to do. Is that clear?"
It was clear. It took almost a week of ten-hour days, but they shot the video. They did what they were told, like good National Records employees.
Chapter 5A: Never Kiss a Groupie
January 1, 1983
Interstate 95, Southern Maine
Jake woke up slowly, his head throbbing, his mouth dry and tasting of rum, his stomach knotted with hunger pains. He felt the familiar rocking of the bus, heard the familiar rumbling of its diesel engine as it pulled them up a hill, but he was not in the familiar confines of his fold-down bunk near the back. He opened his eyes slowly, wincing a little at the sunlight streaming in from the windshield up front. He found he was sitting at one of the tables adjacent to the bar. He was still dressed in the jeans and T-shirt he wore last night. He still felt a little drunk as well.
"Christ," he muttered. "What time is it?"
He raised his head up and looked around. The inside of the tour bus looked a little like the hotel room scene on the cover of their album. Empty booze bottles, beer cans, drink glasses, and overflowing ashtrays were everywhere. All that was missing was the naked woman. Matt was lying on the floor, his mouth open, snoring drunkenly. Coop and Darren were lying on the two couches. Only Bill was actually in his bunk, although his arms were hanging limply out.
Sitting across the table from Jake was Greg Gahn, the National Records Artist Development Department representative who had been assigned as Intemperance's "tour manager". Greg was a short man, perpetually grinning, with a strong car salesman personality. His hair was cut short and always neatly styled. He always wore a suit and carried a copy of the Book of Mormon with him. He proclaimed himself a devout follower of the Principles of Mormonism.
"I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't engage in fornication," he told them four days before, when they'd set out from Los Angeles to head for the opening date of the Losing Proposition Tour in Bangor, Maine. "That's why they send me out with you boys. I can keep the tour moving along without succumbing to the pleasures of the flesh or the gross alcohol intoxication that sometimes crops up on these things."
It seemed that the Principles of Mormonism didn't cover cocaine use - or at least Greg pretended they didn't. In the four days they had been on the road, Greg had sniffed and snorted from a seemingly endless supply of high quality blow - blow he was more than happy to share with the five band members he was babysitting.
He was crunching up a few lines of it right now, as a matter of fact, going about it with the anal precision that drove all of his tasks. A bottle of expensive mineral water sat next to him. There was a slice of fresh lemon floating in it.
"Morning, Jake," he said cheerfully. "How you feeling?"
"Pretty shitty," Jake replied, running his hand across his face and feeling a two-day growth of beard there. "Where are we?"
"Within sight of our destination. We just crossed the Maine state line about twenty minutes ago. We should be in Bangor by noon."
"Bitchin," Jake said. "It'll be nice to get off this bus for awhile."
"I agree, although it seemed like you boys have been having a good enough time on our little trip from one corner of the country to the other. We had to stop twice to pick up more liquor for you."
Jake shrugged. Yes, they had partied rather hard since leaving Los Angeles. There was booze and cocaine and high-grade marijuana readily available for their pleasure and there was nothing else to do. There were portions of the trip that he didn't even remember. He would be the first to agree that they were off to a good start in the department of living up their band's name. It was very annoying, however, to have to listen to the self-righteous tripe this little coke-sniffing religious fanatic was always spouting at them during their brief interludes of sobriety.
"Well," Jake said, "you gotta keep the talent happy, don't you?"
Greg laughed as if that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. "Yes indeed," he said, grinning wildly. "That is my job, after all." He leaned down and made the two lines disappear. He sniffed pertly, tapping the sides of his nose for a second and then looked at Jake. "Care for a little wake-up?" he asked him. "It'll probably get rid of your hangover."
He was right. A few lines would nicely erase the headache, the sour stomach, and the dark fatigue that was pulling on him. But he declined nevertheless. He had been snorting a considerable amount of cocaine for the last four days and he thought it might be a good idea to take a little break from it. "That's okay," he said. "I think I'll just grab some aspirin and drink a quart or two of water."
"Suit yourself," Greg replied, his grin remaining firmly affixed. "But don't hesitate to ask if you change your mind."
Jake nodded and stood up, doing it slowly to keep the nausea and the spins to a minimum. He made his way to the front of the bus, toward the small bathroom/shower room. His eyes were now more or less adjusted to the brightness and he took a glance out the window, seeing they were driving down a four-lane Interstate that had been cut through a thick forest. Though the sky was now a brilliant shade of blue that was never seen in Los Angeles or even Heritage, it was clear that a terrible blizzard had recently swept through this area. Snow covered the ground and the evergreen trees. Drifts thrown up by snowplows stood nearly six feet high on either shoulder. It looked cold out there, frighteningly cold. The kind of cold that killed if you ventured out in it without an Arctic protection suit.
"Wassup, Ken?" Jake asked as he approached the small door to the bathroom. Ken Adopolis was one of the two bus drivers assigned to the Intemperance tour bus. Robert Cranston, the other driver, was currently crashed out in his small bunk next to the bathroom.
"Jake, my man," Ken greeted, turning towards him for a few seconds before putting his eyes back on the road. "How you doing this morning? A little hung?"
"I've been worse," Jake said, looking at the mess that surrounded Ken's seat. There were several empty soda cans, the crumpled remains of various fast food and processed food wrappers, and, of course, the inevitable ashtray full of cigarette butts and marijuana ashes. Ken was a voracious smoker of pot. He claimed he didn't know how to drive the bus when he was straight.
Ken picked up a marijuana pipe that he always kept loaded. He offered it to Jake. "Care for a little hit?"
"Maybe later," Jake replied.
Ken nodded, putting the pipe back down. "I heard you guys' song three more times on the radio since I got on shift," he said. "They're playing it on all the rock stations I've been getting."
Jake smiled a little. "That's what I like to hear," he said, although by this point the novelty of hearing himself on the radio was starting to wear off, especially since during waking hours - which consisted of about eighteen out of every twenty-four so far - the drivers had made a point of blasting Descent Into Nothing at top volume whenever they happened across it on the radio waves. When this happened everything else that was going on would stop instantly and they would all sing along and play air guitars and cheer - their revelry proportionate to the amount of intoxicants they had in their systems. This was something that happened fairly frequently on the trip because Descent was fast becoming one of the most played hard rock songs in the nation. The single had been released to the radio stations on November 20, more than two weeks before being made available to the public. Thanks to the National Records Promotion Department - who had connections with pretty much every major radio station in the United States and Canada - rock DJ's across the country had started playing Descent the very next day, at first during new music segments and then as a regular part of their programming.