Backstage Pass Read online

  Contents

  Backstage Pass

  Afters: about the author, and hot samples from other books

  Credits and copyright information

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  Backstage Pass

  Let’s Make This Thing Happen 1

  PJ Adams

  Like nothing that I knew

  But always had to do.

  There’s half of me that’s you.

  Hey baby, can’t live with only maybe,

  Let’s make this thing happen.

  Ray Sandler

  Prologue

  Tonight on stage, Ray Sandler was all those teenage fantasies come back to life. Sure, those missing ten years had added some silver to his temples, and he was carrying a few extra pounds, but he was looking good. Emily Rivers soaked up his every move and she felt alive again, for the first time in what felt like years.

  She never thought he would actually notice her, though.

  How many times as a teenager had she stared up at those posters on her bedroom wall, gazing into his eyes and imagining that, even just once, he would glance in her direction? Their eyes would lock, he would falter in the middle of a line and then pick up again, always the professional. Even if that look was all she ever shared with him Emily’s life would never be the same again.

  The Roxette was a small venue. Standing room for maybe two or three hundred, and then a balcony level for a few dozen more by the bar. This was the kind of place where you’d see a band before they made it big and years later you’d tell the story of how you had been one of the select few who had seen them, back in their early days at the Roxette.

  Emily stood to the left of the stage, with only one row of bodies between her and Ray. So close she could almost reach out and touch him!

  He had a backing band, but they were very much in the shadows as he stood there at the mike, that battered old Gibson semi-acoustic slung low, legs spread and knees bent a little as if he was forever poised to dive off the stage. Black jeans, black shirt open a couple of buttons; hair cropped close and blue-black under the stage lights, apart from where the silver showed through at the sides.

  He opened with ‘Poison Berries’, an obscure track off the first Angry Cans album, from before they made it big. It was one for the true fans and the perfect track for the venue, somehow wistful and demanding at the same time. A young man’s song played by someone who now had the skill and depth to make it something else entirely.

  Oblivious to the bass, electric piano and drums somewhere towards the back of the stage, Emily watched Ray’s hands on that guitar. Some great musicians look like they’re working hard and you really appreciate all the effort they’ve put in. Others appear to have lazy hands. Hands that drift over a keyboard, hands that stroke the neck of a guitar.

  Ray was definitely in the latter category, working that guitar almost effortlessly.

  And when he sang, he just leaned into the mike as if someone had moved it almost beyond his reach, and his tone was like honey with a smoker’s rasp. He’d never had that extra depth to his voice before. Maybe it was just hearing him live that brought it out, or maybe it was the years and hard living he’d been through to get here.

  “Why does it taste so sweet?” he sang. “When all that you give me is poison?”

  There was anger in his delivery; that old fiery magic, but with a new passion that sent chills racing through her body.

  She’d expected to feel more self-conscious, here on her own like this because her old friend Marcia had pulled out at the last minute. Instead, she felt just a little bit dirty. Deliciously dirty: standing there with the perfect view of Ray, drinking it all in and feeling like a teenage girl again. You’d never have got this kind of view of him back in the day. Side on, she could follow the line of his leg, revel in that swivel of the hips. He really hadn’t put on too many pounds in his time away, and he’d clearly been staying fit.

  Just then, the opening song came to a close. Ray tossed his head back and – briefly – held the pose, and it was exactly how she remembered him from one of those posters.

  Was it wrong for a woman in her late twenties to want to squee like a kid?

  The next track was something new. That’s why they were here, after all: an intimate, unpublicized gig so he could try out new material, after years away from the limelight. It started with a single, sustained note on the guitar, crystal clear, a little flat and then bending the string until it was perfect and you didn’t even realize that he was holding the same note with his voice, too, as the tones merged. Then the band kicked in and it was back to his trademark choppy guitar style. Something about first times... peeling back the layers until everything’s like new. A comeback song if ever there was one. The melody glided above that choppy, bluesy backing. This was going to be a real grower, Emily thought, and then he was looking right at her and...

  He didn’t falter for a moment. It was nothing like that teen fantasy she’d played over and over in her bedroom back when the Angry Cans were just making it big.

  His eyes were on her, connecting, and then almost immediately moving on.

  She tossed her head back and laughed. She’d had her moment. She’d made eye contact with Ray Sandler! She could die a happy woman.

  Then when she looked again, his eyes found her once more.

  “Peel me back,” he sang directly to Emily.

  She faltered, lost track of what she’d been thinking.

  “Make me raw.”

  Her legs were like jelly. Who’d have thought she’d be such a girl tonight?

  “Find my heart, and make me soar.”

  A brief raising of the eyebrows – a reinforcement of that fleeting connection – and then he swung away, and those effortless hands danced up the neck of his guitar as he broke into a solo, full of string-bending and long, mellow sustain.

  Her heart pounded in her chest like an animal desperate to escape.

  If only her teen self could see her now!

  As she watched him, he latched onto someone else in the crowd and sang to her, the bitch. Expert stage technique: sing to a select few and everyone feels as if you’re singing directly to them.

  Before she knew it, the track came to a close and she started to whoop and holler.

  Ray had lost none of the magic, and tonight was proving to be the perfect antidote to the way Emily had been feeling recently. She really needed to get herself out more, have some fun.

  She closed her eyes, and in her head she was back in that moment when his eyes had met hers and he really was singing to her, alone. It had been a nice little fantasy while it lasted, and one she would treasure. And whatever she did, she was most certainly not going to stand here through the rest of the show just waiting for him to make eye contact again...

  1

  Emily Rivers certainly hadn’t expected to be spending the evening ogling one of her big teen crushes.

  The day had started off like any other. Uncomfortable silence with Thom over breakfast, then the sense of relief when she was out of the door and heading off to play sardines with all the regulars on the 7.38 commuter special.

  She wished they would row, get things out into the open, but instead it was mostly those silences these days. Thom always seemed to be biting back on his sarcastic comments about her size, her hair, anything he could take a dig at to make him feel better about the fact that she had a far better job than he had. She’d never seen that streak of bitterness in him when they had married. She’d seen the fun and the ambition and the cute, boyish grin, and hadn’t known that he was only like that when he was on top.

  She was at her desk before nine to clear her in-box, then off across the city for an initial consultation with a potent
ial client, back for a team meeting, then a strategy meeting... Her life was wall to wall meetings these days. Normally she reveled in the bustle, but today her heart just wasn’t in it.

  Over lunch, she’d browsed the web for a dress for her cousin Kayleigh’s wedding. Start at Harvey Nichols and work down was her motto, regardless of what Thom might say if he knew. She’d just dragged herself away from a gorgeous turquoise Kenzo jacquard dress, perfect for her full hour-glass shape, when her attention was snagged by something in her Twitter feed. A tweet from the Cans Fans account – supposedly a fan group, but everybody knew the feed was really run by the management of the long-disbanded group.

  Stars bathe you in their light, Roxette. #ray

  Stars bathe you in their light... That was from the hidden track on the Angry Cans’ second album. As soon as any real fans heard that line the next would follow in their heads: “I’ll play for you tonight”. So who was Roxette?

  Over on the Cans’ Facebook group fans were dissecting the tweet already. Everyone assumed that the ‘ray’ hashtag referred to Ray Sandler’s long-rumored solo project, but ‘Roxette’?

  Emily took her iPhone from her bag and made a call. “Hey, Marcia?” she said. “Remember the Blues Brothers night last November?” Tribute acts, all Fedoras, Ray-Bans and skinny black ties. Emily and Marcia had ended up on stage with half the audience, dancing along to ‘Everybody Needs Somebody to Love’.

  “Sure,” said Marcia. “That was a hoot. I was just thinking it was about time to bust you out again. You got something in mind?”

  “Maybe. Place was called the Roxette, wasn’t it? Out Camden way.”

  She was pretty sure that was the name, and if it was–

  “That’s right. I got tickets through Lucy. Remember Lucy? Used to–”

  “Remember the Angry Cans?” Of course she would remember the Cans. Twelve top ten singles, four successive chart-topping albums, regular outraged newspaper headlines about their latest exploits on tour.

  “Sure.”

  “Any chance Ray Sandler might be playing some kind of unannounced gig at the Roxette tonight?” While she talked, she’d been busy Googling, and now she had the Roxette’s schedule on screen. “Website says it’s a band called The TBCs, ha ha. To be confirmed, indeed.”

  “I never really was an Angry Cans kind of a girl...”

  “And I never understood that about you, Marcia, but I’ve forgiven it.”

  “I’m always up for a night out, though,” Marcia finished.

  “Damn.”

  “No tickets?”

  “None.” So why tweet about the gig if it was sold out? Unless it had only just sold out... There must have been a rush of fans reaching the same conclusion Emily had and working out there might be tickets available. Only faster.

  “Leave it to Aunty Marcia. I’m pretty sure Lucy still works there. I’ll have a dig around.”

  §

  The Roxette was an Art Deco building that had originally been a theater, and then a cinema, and had clearly seen better days. It was a small venue, but somehow managed to look even smaller from the outside, sandwiched between a betting shop and a pawnbroker’s. Emily felt guilty striding past the queue that trailed away down the street, but she was only doing as she’d been told. “Just go to the door and ask for Lucy,” Marcia had said.

  It was a diverse crowd. Middle-aged men in geeky t-shirts and sprawling bellies; well-presented, designer label-dressed couples who could easily be queuing for the opera; kids who would have been at kindergarten when the band split, wearing Angry Cans t-shirts and torn jeans. Mostly, though, the line consisted of women of around Emily’s age, out in small, excited groups. Ray Sandler had been the frontman of the band, and he’d always been the one who got the girls. That appeal clearly hadn’t faded. It was almost a carnival atmosphere as they all queued in the early evening sunshine.

  The posters made Emily smile. They’d taken actual photos of the Angry Cans and Photoshopped them almost beyond recognition so that they had become a different band, disguised in hoodies and wraparound shades but still with eerily familiar features.

  At the entrance to the Roxette a shaven-headed black guy stood in front of the swing doors, arms folded across a chest as broad as the bus that had just driven past.

  “I, erm... I was told to ask for Lucy?” said Emily. “She’s expecting me.”

  “You Marcia?” said the guy, his face breaking into the friendliest smile you could imagine.

  “Marcia’s friend. Emily.”

  He turned, leaned in through the doorway and called, “Hey, Lucy. Your friend’s here.”

  Lucy appeared seconds later, all spindly legs and angled, bony features. Emily wasn’t at all jealous. No really.

  They hugged and air-kissed, and Lucy drew Emily into the Roxette’s foyer.

  “Did Marcia catch you?” Lucy said. “No? She called to say she can’t make it, but that on no account am I to let you slink off with your tail between your legs and go back to that miserable, waste of space husband of yours. That okay?”

  Those were exactly the words Marcia would have used. Emily glanced at the doors, wondering if she could outpace Lucy and sidestep big smiley guy. She decided that she didn’t have much chance. Then she pulled herself up short: how had she got this way, always looking for a way out? How had Thom destroyed her confidence so much that she had retreated from the world?

  She straightened, smiled, and said, “Me? Slink off? When Ray Sandler’s going to be on stage in an hour’s time?”

  Lucy grinned. “Ray Sandler? Whoever gave you that idea? It’s the TBCs tonight. Ray doesn’t do shows any more according to his website.”

  For a moment Emily was thrown, then she remembered the posters, and the long queue of Angry Cans fans who were now starting to file in across the black and white tiled floor.

  “Here,” said Lucy. “All the tickets went in a rush today, but put this wristband on and they’ll let you through. Okay? Get you anything before I dash...?”

  2

  Ray didn’t make eye contact again. Every time he turned towards Emily’s section of the audience she willed him to find her, but his eyes always moved on past.

  The set was a perfect mix of old and new. The new material was rich and far more layered than the Angry Cans’ music had been, and even though it was only a simple four-piece band the sound was complex and full. Ray was known as a guitarist who could get the most out of any song, picking out solos while keeping those choppy power chords going uninterrupted. Although she was no expert, Emily was sure it was his playing tonight that made the sound so rich, and it was at its most accomplished on the new songs.

  But it was the old Angry Cans material that teased the crowd into a frenzy, raw and pounding rhythms that played well with the way Ray’s voice had become more growly and mature.

  How many women in this audience must feel exactly the same as Emily right now? She thought of all those women in the queue. Now they were all teenagers again, and it was such a release!

  They finished with ‘Costa del Soul’, ‘Angry’ and ‘Swoon for You’, three of the Cans’ biggest hits, and then with a brief wave and a “Do you think these guys will have us back?” Ray and his backing band were hurrying off stage.

  Immediately, the clapping became rhythmic, matched by a heavy stomping on the floor and calls of “More”, “Encore” and “We want more!”

  Eventually, Ray came out again. He was on his own this time with just an acoustic guitar hanging from one shoulder. “I hope you’ll forgive me,” he said. “But it’s years since I’ve done this shit and I can’t remember half the old songs and I’ve just about run through everything I know, so I’m only going to play one more.”

  He hit a chord and paused while it faded to silence. Something with a jazzy major seventh, definitely not anything the Angry Cans had ever performed. Was he really going to play only one song for the encore and not even something the crowd knew?

  Just as the silence had grown
almost too long and a sense of unease was starting to ripple through the crowd, Ray’s right hand started to move, a delicate dance over the strings in a minor chord. Definitely something new.

  He started to sing, a crooning, swinging melody, kind of Kurt Cobain does the Rat Pack:

  “I never knew I could.

  I knew I didn’t should.

  It always had to be would...

  Hey baby, don’t give me no maybe,

  Let’s make this thing happen.”

  Emily looked around the audience. Was she the only one who got that this was going to be as much a classic as anything the Cans had recorded? Maybe it was just badly judged: the fans wanted a rousing finale, not another new, untried piece.

  When the chorus ended, Ray returned to the dancing arpeggios of that minor chord but then it subtly changed, and the picking became a riff that everyone must recognize! Maybe he was only playing one encore, but he’d just transitioned into ‘Angry’ again, but this time a more delicate acoustic arrangement, a little slower and more mournful than the Cans version he’d faithfully reproduced earlier with his band.

  Emily felt herself swept forward as the crowd pushed towards the stage, caught up in what had been the Angry Cans’ biggest hit.

  Halfway through, there was another chord shift and Ray moved straight into ‘Away From Home’.

  It was a virtuoso performance of cut-down, pulled-around versions of the greatest hits, all run together in a single. protracted mash-up. Maybe twenty minutes later he hit the big chord at the end of ‘Wistful’. As the notes hung in the air and the crowd waited to see what would come next, Ray took a long, deep bow over his guitar, backed away from the mike, turned, and headed off-stage.

  §

  Emily just stood there, eventually realizing she’d been holding her breath.

  It had been a sensational performance, unlike anything she’d seen before. Better even than the couple of times she’d seen the Angry Cans live, all those years ago.