“Hey,” Matt said. “They’re selling copies of it right fuckin’ there.” He pointed to the manager’s display. “Get one now and I’ll sign it too.”
The kid shook his head. “I’m gonna pass on that,” he said.
Matt looked up at him. “You’re gonna pass?”
“Yeah,” the kid said. “I like your real shit, dude, not that fuckin’ sellout shit you just put out.”
“Sellout shit?” Matt asked incredulously. “You think my new shit is selling out?”
The kid shrugged. “Don’t you?” he asked. And then he walked away without another word.
Matt continued to sign autographs and make conversation until 3:30, when it was time to head for KROK, the most popular of the local hard rock stations. But the kid’s words kept echoing in his mind, bothering him.
The echoes got worse during the radio interview with Jack Flasher (not his real name, obviously), the afternoon DJ at KROK. After the usual blather about the show tonight, the direction Matt was taking his music, a few anecdotes about life on the road, Flasher asked a loaded question.
“A lot of our listeners are giving us feedback on the two cuts we’ve been playing from Hard Time,” he said. “They seem to feel that you’ve gone quite a few steps into the mainstream with this album, that you’ve tailored your music to appeal to a broader demographic. Many of them feel that you’ve sold out to some degree, that you’ve sacrificed the integrity of your art in order to make money. How would you respond to that?”
It was fortunate that the station manager had taken the precaution of setting up the interview with a ten-second delay, or they might very well have been fined by the FCC.
And then, just before the opening band took the stage, Matt and the rest of his band were backstage, meeting with the locals who had won various radio contests or, through whatever other means, managed to get their hands on backstage passes to meet the performers. One of the locals was a hard-core metal chick, one of the few dedicated fans of Matt who did not have a Y chromosome. She was dressed in a leather miniskirt, a black Hard Time Tour ‘94 t-shirt, had multiple piercings in both ears, her nose, and her tongue, and a tattoo of the Intemperance logo on her right shoulder.
“I fuckin’ love you, Matt!” she told him enthusiastically as she hugged him tightly and suggestively after he introduced himself. She made a point to grind her ample breasts into his chest.
“Damn, baby,” Matt told her, wondering what it would be like to get a blowjob from a chick with a tongue stud. Something to add to the to-do list for sure. “It sure seems like you do.”
She broke the embrace and then asked Matt if he would sign her tit.
“Fuckin’ break it out,” he told her.
She rucked up her shirt, revealing the fact that she had no bra on and that she had tremendously huge breasts. He took a sharpie from her and signed his name just above the left nipple while she giggled at the touch.
“Tomorrow morning,” she told him, “I’m going to the tattoo parlor and having him tat that signature in for good. For the rest of my life, I’m going to have Matt Tisdale’s autograph on my tit.”
Matt nodded, impressed at her dedication. Maybe he should invite her backstage after the show? She was moderately good looking in a young female sort of way, and he could scratch the whole blowjob-by-a-tongue-stud thing off the list on the same day it was put on there.
Before he could make the offer, however, the girl—her name was Anna—pulled a long-haired male, perhaps a year or two older than her, forward by the arm. “This is Clay, my boyfriend,” she told him.
Clay was a formidable looking man, well-built, well-muscled, and with the air of someone you did not want to trifle with. He was wearing jeans and an Intemperance t-shirt from the Lines on the Map tour.
“Hey, Clay,” Matt said, holding out his hand for a shake. “How they hanging?”
Clay did not shake with him. “Like they should,” he said plainly. “Unlike yours.”
“Clay!” Anna barked at him, her face alarmed. “I told you not to do this shit! This is Matt Tisdale!”
“I know who it is,” Clay said, contempt in his voice. “The guy who used to be the greatest fucking guitar player on the planet, but who is now nothing but a sellout.”
Matt glared at the man, slowly letting his hand drop back down. “Sellout?” he asked. “You’re calling me a fucking sellout?”
“You are a fucking sellout!” Clay told him. “You went mainstream, dude, just so you could sell a few CDs to the unsophisticated who are too fuckin’ dumb to get your music! That is selling out!”
“That’s fuckin’ bullshit!” Matt told him, taking a step forward.
“Clay!” Anna said, trying to grab his arm again. He shook it off and continued to stare at Matt.
“I used to worship you, man!” Clay told him. “I used to listen to every cut on your albums and try to imitate what you were playing. I never could get it right, man, because that’s how fuckin’ awesome, how fuckin’ fast you are! And now I want to puke when I hear that pop music shit you just put out. It’s fuckin’ garbage!”
The security guys, who had been standing over in the corner, started to move in their direction. They knew Matt well enough to know that when someone talked to him like that, some sort of physical confrontation was about to happen. They were not wrong.
“Hey, fuck you, bitch!” Matt said, stepping forward into Clay’s personal space. “How dare you come onto my stage and accuse me of selling out! Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“Someone who knows the fuckin’ truth,” Clay told him. “You’re an ass-sucking little sellout who compromised your music just to make a little money. Admit it!”
“I think you better leave right now, motherfucker,” Matt said, “before I start mopping up this stage with your fuckin’ face.”
“Clay! Let’s get out of here right now!” Anna cried.
Clay ignored her. “Give it a shot, sellout. I’d love to kick your ass for you.”
Matt gave it a shot. He threw a sharp right directly at Clay’s face. Clay, expecting the jab, blocked it easily and then countered with a right of his own. Matt, however, was a veteran of many brawls and was quite wily. He grabbed Clay’s jabbing hand in his, grasping it tightly, then twisted it to the outside, causing Clay to have to bend sideways to the right and take a step in that direction to keep from falling down. This left his face exposed. Matt immediately began to hammer that face with right hooks. He managed to get three of them in before the security guys got hold of him and dragged him away.
“You’re still a fuckin’ sellout!” Clay yelled after him, his nose dripping blood, his left eye already starting to swell. “Go on, go sing some of your fuckin’ pop music for us!”
Matt had to take a couple of Ibuprofen from Greg’s little black bag in order to go on stage two hours later. His hand was sore where he had punched the asshole’s face in. Fortunately, it was his picking and strumming hand, not his chording hand. Still, the experience left a sour taste in his mouth and the confrontation continued to bother him all throughout the show that night. He was a professional, however, and he played just as he always did: with heart, with emotion, with feeling. The cheers he received after each song were genuine.
After the final encore, while the house lights were coming up behind him and the audience was starting to make their way to the exits, Matt walked off stage into the stage left area and found Greg Gahn and Jack Ferguson (head of tour security) standing next to a couple of Denver police officers.
“What’s this shit?” he asked them.
“You don’t have to say anything to them, Matt,” Greg said. “I’ve already got our lawyers working on it.”
“Working on what?” Matt asked. “What the fuck is going on?”