“Jamie,” I said. I desperately wanted these guys to like me—to let me in—but I didn’t want to start whatever relationship we might have as nothing more than Mr. Football’s kid brother. “I’m Jamie.” I held out my hand.

Their shakes were as limp as Norman’s had been. I’ve gigged with hundreds of players since the day Norman Irving auditioned me in the GFHS Band Room, and almost every guy I ever worked with had the same dead-fish shake. It’s as if rockers feel they have to save all their strength for work.

“So what do you say?” Norman asked. “Wanna be in a band?”

Did I? If he’d told me I had to eat my own shoelaces as an initiation rite, I would have pulled them from the eyelets immediately and started chewing.

“Sure, but I can’t play in any places where they serve booze. I’m only fourteen.”

They looked at each other, surprised, then laughed.

“We’ll worry about playing the Holly and the Deuce-Four once we get a rep,” Norman said, jetting smoke from his nostrils. “For now we’re just playing teen dances. Like the one at the Eureka Grange. That’s where you’re from, right? Harlow?”

“How-Low,” Kenny Laughlin said, snickering. “That’s what we call it. As in How-Low can you shitkickers go?”

“Listen, you want to play, right?” Norm said. He lifted his leg so he could bogart his cigarette on one of his battered old Beatle boots. “Your brother says you’re playing his Gibson, which doesn’t have a pickup, but you can use the Kay.”

“The Music Department won’t care?”

“The Music Department won’t know. Come to the Grange on Thursday afternoon. I’ll bring the Kay. Just don’t break the stupid feedbacky fucker. We’ll set up and rehearse. Bring a notebook so you can write down the chords.”

The bell rang. Kids butted their smokes and started drifting back toward the school. As one of the girls passed, she kissed Norman on the cheek and patted him on the butt of his sagging jeans. He seemed not to notice her, which struck me as incredibly sophisticated. My respect for him went up another notch.

None of my fellow bandmates showed any signs of heeding the bell, so I started off on my own. Then another thought crossed my mind, and I turned back.

“What’s the name of the band?”

Norm said, “We used to call ourselves the Gunslingers, but people thought that was a little too, you know, militaristic. So now we’re Chrome Roses. Kenny thought it up while we were stoned and watching a gardening show at my dad’s place. Cool, huh?”

In the quarter century that followed, I played with the J-Tones, Robin and the Jays, and the Hey-Jays (all led by a snazzy guitarist named Jay Pederson). I played with the Heaters, the Stiffs, the Undertakers, Last Call, and the Andersonville Rockers. During the flowering of punk I played with Patsy Cline’s Lipstick, the Test Tube Babies, Afterbirth, and The World Is Full of Bricks. I even played with a rockabilly group called Duzz Duzz Call the Fuzz. But there was never a better name for a band, in my opinion, than Chrome Roses.

 • • •

“I don’t know,” Mom said. She didn’t look mad, she looked like she was coming down with a headache. “You’re only fourteen, Jamie. Conrad says those boys are much older.” We were at the dinner table, which looked a lot bigger with Claire and Andy gone. “Do they smoke?”

“No,” I said.

My mother turned to Con. “Do they?”

Con, who was passing the creamed corn to Terry, didn’t miss a beat. “Nope.”

I could have hugged him. We’d had our differences over the years, as all brothers do, but brothers also have a way of sticking together when the chips are down.

“It’s not bars, or anything, Mom,” I said . . . knowing in some intuitive way that it would be bars, and probably long before the most junior member of Chrome Roses turned twenty-one. “Just the Grange. We have rehearsal this Thursday.”

“You’ll need plenty,” Terry said snidely. “Gimme another pork chop.”

“Say please, Terence,” my mother said distractedly.

“Please gimme another pork chop.”

Dad passed the platter. He hadn’t said anything. That could be good or bad.

“How will you get to rehearsal? For that matter, how will you get to these . . . these gigs?”

“Norm’s got a VW microbus. Well, it’s his dad’s, but he let Norm paint the band’s name on the side!”

“This Norm can’t be more than eighteen,” Mom said. She had stopped eating her food. “How do I know he’s a safe driver?”

“Mom, they need me! Their rhythm guy moved to Massachusetts. With no rhythm guy, they’ll lose the gig Saturday night!” A thought blazed across my mind like a meteor: Astrid Soderberg might be at that dance. “It’s important! It’s a big deal!”

“I don’t like it.” Now she was rubbing her temples.

My father spoke up at last. “Let him do it, Laura. I know you’re worried, but it’s what he’s good at.”

She sighed. “All right. I guess.”

“Thanks, Mom! Thanks, Dad!”

My mother picked up her fork, then put it down. “Promise me that you won’t smoke cigarettes or marijuana, and that you won’t drink.”

“I promise,” I said, and that was a promise I kept for two years.

Or thereabouts.

 • • •

What I remember best about that first gig at Eureka Grange No. 7 was the stench of my own sweat as the four of us trooped onto the bandstand. When it comes to sweat, nobody can beat an adolescent of fourteen. I had showered for twenty minutes before my maiden show—until the hot water ran out—but when I bent to pick up my borrowed guitar, I reeked of fear. The Kay seemed to weigh at least two hundred pounds when I slung it over my shoulder. I had good reason to be scared. Even taking the inherent simplicity of rock and roll into account, the task Norm Irving set me—learning thirty songs between Thursday afternoon and Saturday night—was impossible, and I told him so.

He shrugged and offered me the most useful advice I ever got as a musician: When in doubt, lay out. “Besides,” he said, baring his decaying teeth in a fiendish grin, “I’m gonna be turned up so loud they won’t hear what you’re doing, anyway.”

Paul rolled a short riff on his drums to get the crowd’s attention, finishing with a cymbal-clang. There was a brief spatter of anticipatory applause. There were all those eyes (millions, it seemed to me) looking up at the little stage where we were crowded together under the lights. I remember feeling incredibly stupid in my rhinestone-studded vest (the vests were holdovers from the brief period when Chrome Roses had been the Gunslingers), and wondering if I was going to vomit. It hardly seemed possible, since I’d only picked at lunch and hadn’t been able to eat any supper at all, but it sure felt that way. Then I thought, Not vomit. Faint. That’s what I’m going to do, faint.

I really might have, but Norm didn’t give me time. “We’re Chrome Roses, okay? You guys get up and dance.” Then, to us: “One . . . two . . . you-know-what-to-do.”

Paul Bouchard laid down the tomtom drumbeat that opens “Hang On Sloopy,” and we were off. Norm sang lead; except for a couple of songs when Kenny took over, he always did. Paul and I did backing vocals. I was terribly shy about that at first, but the feeling passed when I heard how different my amplified voice sounded—how adult. Later on I realized that no one pays much attention to the backup singers anyway . . . although they’d miss those voices if they were gone.

I watched the couples move onto the floor and start to dance. It was what they’d come for, but in my deepest heart I hadn’t believed they would—not to music I was a part of. When it became clear to me that we weren’t going to be booed off the stage, I felt a rising euphoria that was close to ecstasy. I’ve taken enough drugs to sink a battleship since then, but not even the best of them could equal that first rush. We were playing. They were dancing.