"Does that guy have to be so temperamental all the time?" Taylor overheard his youthful, white-picket-faced record producer ask. "You'd think he was being told to bathe in a vat of varsol after being lashed with a raw horsewhip".
Burton snickered inwardly at the folksy, homegrown "humour" of Jake Scott, dubbed by Peck's longtime friend and bandmate, Michael Hope, as the "Hillbilly Executive". "The guy's too much sometimes", Peck mused, "A real fountain of mirth he's not".
Burton Peck, his somewhat short supply of energy depleted for the day, decided that, after such a harrowing afternoon filming the video for the band's latest single, Nostradamned Us",he deserved a life-restoring drink. After all, it was a comparatively late hour for peck, whose enthusiastic imbibing usually began shortly after awakening.
He was tall, with a semi-angular frame that appeared to have a chokehold on the man's innermost thoughts. It was as though Peck were a colouring book character, forbiddding anyone to crayon outside of the thick lines and thus dribble the brash hues of betrayal all over for everyone to scrutinize. He was, essentially, a very proud and cautious individual and not many got inside to examine the inner workings that made him tick.
On his way out to his car in the half-empty parking lot, Peck happened to confront, with a rush of warm recognition, a "living heritage landmark" of sorts: Rufus Coyle, a happily retired country singer from Peck's hometown of Waco, Texas, who now bided his time remeniscing about his controversial professional and personal past over countless shots of whiskey and beer.
"Hey! A friendly face in a town of devil-worshipping dipsticks! Peck, you old piece of crap! Get over here and throw me some petty change for a good belt, will ya?"
Burton glanced around to make certain that no-one was within earshot of the embarrassing slew of words that slid and bumped awkwardly into one another. "Well, well, well. Old Goofus Rufus actually standing upright, and in the glaring light of day, no less". He waited until Coyle ambled unevenly over close enough to give a vigorous slap on the back.
"Woah, son! Don't knock a poor old man over, now. I'm not ensured up to my eyeballs like you kids, you know". The road map of deeply-etched creases in Rufus Coyle's face burst open and stretched his greyish-green skin to its limits.
Peck, though conscious of the fact tht his geriatric buddy was already hammered, had a great deal of grudging respect for a man who had not only paid the hefty price of musical fame, but was exhorbitantly over-taxed on it as well.
"Come on, you old leatherneck", Burton muttered with pretend exasperation, "I'll buy you a beer or two and we can talk about the days before we become rusty cogs in the great entertainment machine of alcohol-soaked dreams".
Coyle's eyebrows shot up to barely meet his parched, receding hairline. "My, aren't we, uh, eloquent, if that's the fancy-assed word. Can't you just offer the damned charity and keep your high IQed mouth shut?" He laughed so heartily that his ill-fitting, store-bought teeth nearly flew out of his mouth and went bouncing onto the pavement.
Peck quickly ushered Coyle into his car to avoid anymore of the B-movie-type banter out in the public forum. The two of them drove to Burton's favourite watering hole and proceeded to engage in one of their pet extracurricular activities: The repetitive and rhythmic bending of elbows.
Three hours or so later, Peck, his mind bathed in the "etherizing waters of inebriation", as he was to write in his journal that evening, he felt himself finally relaxing for the first time since he'd gotten out of bed that morning. (Both he and Michael Hope kept journals and had sice their days at Waco University. It was an accurate method of documenting their professional careers with their band, Oxymoron. It would also serve as an adequate chronicle of feelings, thoughts and events as they shaped the course of the development of what was to become the world's best-loved and critically-acclaimed rock band.
This particular year, 1993, was a crucial one in their professional growth, a direct result of the public's reaction to the song and video entitled, "The Artist Overwhelmed". It was an unusually emotional and hard-hitting study of a man who feels his very life coming apart and unravelling, despite all his efforts to stop it. It was a highly original piece of work and a drastic departure in style and content for Oxymoron.
Right now, however, Peck had other things on his mind besides reflecting upon his immense creative success: Such as keeping his colourful comrade under some type of restraint until they eventually left the bar. He wasn't sure which situation was less desirable: Being seen, and thus associated, with this tactless and ill-mannered specimen of nature gone to seed, or return shamefacedly to the studio and that insidious video shoot. Coyle was a good friend, it was true, but in a very drunken state he could be quite trying and obnoxious.
"Frankly, I'd just as soon be torn apart by a crazed swarm of killer locusts", Burton muttered to himself, watching in dismay as Coyle pinched a nubile young bit of peroxided fluff poured languidly into tight leather jeans and a hot pink halter top.
"Hey, lovey, I'd really like to crawl into a kitchen drawer with you and pretend like we're a couple of dessert spoons. You know, them real classy kind".
"Understandably, she was not amused. "Honey, this dessert spoon wants to scoop up somthin' a little more substantial than fake whipping cream," she pouted, frothing at her gloss-kissed lips.
"That's it. I'm out of here!" Peck did not wait for anymore "turnip truck theatrics". He wondered ruefully, as he paid for his and Coyle's drinks and hussled rapidly from the little hotel of horrors, why on earth he continued steeping himself in the squallidly masochistic world of the habitual drinker. We're all part-time sewer-dwellers, he surmised, amazed at the jarring contrast between his personal and professional lives. "Here I am, one quarter of a well-respected rock bad that can evidently do no wrong by our fans and music criics alike, and yet I spend all my off hours wearing the moth-eated hat of the Bowery Boy".
It wasn't just the constant drinking that had the normally bright, quick-witted and impressively gifted young lead guitarist so distorted and psychologically misshapen. He had, on more tha several occasions during the past four or five years, dabbled with he urgency of the New World Explorer, in the underbelly of the drug culture. Eddie was quick to explain that he never tried anything of the hard and addictive persuasion, just enough of the milder variety to "take the edge off".
The other members of Oxymoron were somewhat taken aback by Burton Peck's liberal use of illicit substances; cocaine being a particular favourite, but they hesitated in giving him any of their rudamentary "moral lectures". they preferred to turn blind eyes to the situation and chalking it up to the "Pitfalls of the Lifestyle". It was certainly not of any benefit to Peck that the circle of friends with whom he hung were essentially of the hangers-on variety. They were a lot of predatory leeches who wouldn't give Peck a second glance if he were not the Famous Lead Guitarist of Oxymoron.
Michael had, many times in the past, tried to explain to his friend that nothing could be gained by associating with those people except a great deal of frustration. Burton, however, seemed oblivious to any of this.
"I don't rag on at you about those arty types you spend all your free time with, so butt out!" He'd snapped defensively on one occasion.
Michael had simply shrugged and walked off, leaving Peck to push all disturbing thoughts of agreement out of his mine. Burton was not, as can most likely be concluded, a very happy man, or even a marginally contented one. He couldn't figure out why tha was, for, after all, he had once dreamt of being exactly where he was now, doing what he loved and being paid a staggering sum for it. He was never lonely, far from it, and rarely lacked for any female companionship of an intimate nature.
After living in semi-poverty for most of his formative years, Peck was now the personification of independent wealth. He boasted insurance premiums in the million dollar range and possessed the heady ability of being able to buy anything of a material nature and not have to be the least bit concerned about whether or not he could afford it.
People hung on Peck's every word and he could spout even mindless drivel and be enthusiastically quoted as though he had just said something very profound. He'd always found this bitterly ironic, as there had been a time, during his youthful days of obscurity, when nothing he said held any validity to anyone at all, even when he spoke of matters like pollution with the conviction of a religious zealot.
He even ran for class president in high school and won, causing Burton to be dubbed, "Most Likely To Become The Next John F. Kennedy", but he had shaken his head in disagreement at that predictio. "Politics is far too corrupt and run by big business conglomerates", he had said in the closing day ceremonies in the school gym. "You all know me as the big radical, but my classs buddies know how much I like to rock!"
How true that was, for his youthful political activism stripped away, he was in his heart and soul a musician. With money earned harvesing crops for many long, perspiring hours, he had, at age thirteen, purchased a vintage, second-hane electric guitar from a small pawn shop in downtown Waco. He'd sat alone in his bedroom, practising on it endlessly, forgoing homework, baseball and more than a few meals, in the relentless pursuit of mastering the instrument.
Music was as integral a part of his life as eating and sleeping and nearly all of his cash was immediately transformed into copious numbers of records, tapes, music maganzines, as well as guitar strings, sheet music and amplifiers. He had everything except guitar lessons, which his family couldn't afford. But that didn't really matter, because peck was a natural when it came to learning chords and putting together his own arrangements.
A constant hunger for knowledge, growth and methodology of expression drove he then idealistic Burton Peck to limitless heights and caused him to virtually embody the lofty cliche, "Let the world be your oyster". "You can do anything at all that you set your mind to", his friend and emulator, Justin Stevens had gushed with unabashed admiration on several occasions. "There'll be no stopping you, Burton. Get the hell out of here and do something with your life that's gonna matter!"
Those words, spoken so many years before with such honesty and enthusiasm, now came echoing down the tunnel of blurred memory to slap Peck squarely on the face. As he drove dejectedly back to the studio, where the remaining three quarters of Oxymoron were going through the motions of creating that sorry video, Peck sighed, "Kids. What do they know? All full of promises and dreams. We're all so damned sure we know what it's all about. Well, we don't. We were living in the artificial Paradise of the classic fool, figuring we had these guarantees carved in stone that life was going to do us major favours if we just want something badly enough". Peck turned a corner and gunned the motor in a desperate attempt to beat a taunting red light. "I bought into it just like everyone else. "Peck, my man, you'll change the world someday! You'll have principles! You'll have integrity! Yeah, Taylor, you have a sign on your back that says "I Sold Out". I did shit for civil rights, for my older friends who got herded off to Nam, or for the reformation of lax drug laws. Hell, I broke all the Goddamned drug laws! Eddie, you're not only an asshole, you're a hypocritical asshole, but hey---can you play that axe!"
Suddenly, Peck's foot moved to slam on the brakes as he failed to observe an elderly gentleman walking across the road, clearly possessing the right of way. Burton swerved to miss him and ended up ramming his BMW into a hydro pole.
"Damn!" He hollered, hitting the steering wheel hard and feeling suddenly quite nauseated. Writing this day off as an unequivocable disaster, Peck decided to return home instead of chancing more troubles on the site of the video shoot.
* * * * * * * The music video that had been the cause of Peck's hurried exodus from the studio and resulted in both his rueful remeniscences and subsequent minor auto mishap, was being painstakingly filmed under a deadline that bore down heavily on those involved with its production.
"Come on, fellows. You know the routine perfectly well by now. We can't spend the next six weeks setting this thing up!" Randall Edmunds, the videos's hyperactive director, was at his wits' end because of the myriad of annoying delays that had forced the filming to go into serious overtime and thus, drain everyone, both psysically and emotionally.
"Well, if we were all present and accounted for, things would go a great deal more smoothly", retored his ruddy-cheeked assistant. "Where the Hell is Burton anyway?"
Gill Giles was Oxymoron's thirty-three-year-old bass player. He was fair-haired, bespeckled and the embodiment of studied, well-calculated cool. Looking up from where he sat crouched over a somewhat mutilated piece of sheet music, he mumbled, "Oh, he left some time ago. Didn't you notice?" He smiled inwardly, shaking his head. This project was nothing short of a joke and a poor one at that, Gill thought to himself.
People ran about in all directions, like a sidewalk full of ants just before a threateningly large foot slammed down upon them. Some barked orders and moved their arms about like windmills gone berserk, while others adjusted the painted backdrops and stood back, squinting at them in practised concentration.
Cables snaked everywhere on the tiled floor, several cameras moved in and out of the area, steered with precision by operators, who were trying in desperation to focus their lenses on the exact filming site. The remaining throng of men and women, varying in size, colour and temperament, performed their assigned professional tasks in the creative centre of controlled chaos.
For a video shoot, the scene was all-too-typical: Everyone knowing what they had to do, but never having ample time to do it to their collective satisfaction. The bottom line was: Hurry up, wait and hurry up some more because we're running overtime".
Partly obscured in a darkened section of the studio, off to the side and out of the fray, stood a young man clouded in quiet intensity. He carefully studied each and every detail of the filming process, paying special attention to the camera angles, lighting and positions of the young men who were standing in for the band members. He held a clipboard tightly against his right arm, as his left hand darted over it swiftly with a disarmingly leaky pen. He was somewhat diminutive in stature and build, quite slim but at the same time relatively large-boned and had short-cropped hair, dark locks, which were thinning out in several places.
His eyes, framed with long, thick lashes, were unusually large, exaggerated even more so by the fct that they were set in a narrow, slightly drawn face. It was a still-youthful countenance, posssessing a long, aristocratic nose, turned up at the end, a mouth impressive in its fullness, and with the upper lip protruding sensually over the lower one. He had a somewhat jutting chin with a cleft carved to perfection, with all of this pristine finery marred only slightly by a complexion which had weatheerd the savage storms of adolescent acne. They were the battlescars that announced to the world how severe that war indeed had been. In short, he was indeed striking in appearance, but neither classically handsome or "terminally pretty".
On this day he was wearing an olive-green, wide-legged suit that looked as though it had been purchased in a local Goodwill Thrift Shop and heavily-scuffed black shoes, customarily sported by a homeless rubby on skid row. Nobody would ever suspect him of being a wealthy rock star at first glance.
Suddenly, a voice sliced into the relative calm of the studio. "Hey, Michael! Get your ass over here! We're ready to roll, with or without ". Michael Hope, Oxymoron's lead singer and official spokesperson and reluctant poster boy for the band, set his clipboard aside and dutifully followed orders. He wanted everything to run smoothly and swimingly, but saw very little evidence of that actually happening on this particular day.
The video, a four-minute-plus "moving illustration" of the second single being released from the band's sixth and by far most widely successful album, the aforementioned "Nostradamnd Us", had seemingly been a intollerably neverending project, fraught with many delays, glitches and personality conflicts.
The song was a vituperative dissertation upon the aftereffects of a nuclear holocaust. A man stands amid a devastated and defiled world and laments the unthinkable act that now must not only be pondered, but experienced as well. The two Superpowers, the United States and the USSR (remember, the latter country hadn't yet fallen at this time) have "duked it out" by detonating every thermonuclear weapon that had previously been constructed, ostensibly for "peaceful purposes" and the sole survivor, looking decidedly the worse for wear, utters words of despair and bitter warning to any other living creatures of the universe not to make the same mistakes "we earthlings" did.
Michael, a longtime member of a well-known and highly-touted anti-nuke organization, wrote the lyrics in response to a book he'd recently read about the famous psychic, Nostradamus, who had, many years before, predicted a man-made apocalypse, among other things, a long time before North America had even been settled. Hope had been fascinated by the eerie accuracy of Nostradamus's forecasts and had become somewhat convinced that we should all consider ourselves severely warned.
"Michael, you are far too concerned about things you can't do a damned thing about", Peck had criticized his friend after reading the words to the song. "It's nothing but a waste of time and energy".
"If everyone thought that way, we'd never make any inroads toward progress", Michael had responded, shrugging off Peck's rampant negativism, as he'd learned to do with a great deal of experiene with Burton in recent years.
Oxymoron's world-weary lead guitarist, had he himself been afforded the gift of prophecy, would have paled with disgust and distaste at his older image, spouting acrid disclaimers to the idealistic Michael.
As Michael, Gill and drummer, Paul Perry, readied themselves on the "Nostradamned Us" video set in order to perform a series of takes for the camera, Burton Peck, having retuned home to the place he shared with his live-in girlfriend, Anna Kane, poured himself a hefty drink and sat alone in the couple's large, impressive music room, bathing in some of his favourite classical jazz.
"I can't believe this", he mumbled aloud to the air, "I'm actually hiding out in my home from my own band. I'm running away instead of standing firm, telling that loud-mouth director to shove his orders up his ass and informing Michael that I am definitely not going to appear as any ghostly apparition, bemoaning the loss of my miserable life in a mythical nuclear war! I do have a few creative standards, after all". Taylor drained the remainder of his glass and considered filling it again before Anna returned and berated him severely for "drinking like a manic fish".
Ah, Anna, weaver of wily wit and understater extraordinare. He dismissed his futile ruminating and hastily fixed another drink, wholly prepared to defend his actions if his work-weary mate came bearing down on him in her spiked, stillettoed heels and diamond-patterned panty hose.
Unabashadly flawless and coiffed to model-perfection, Anna Eleanor Kane gave the initial impression of beig somewhat of an airhead, as her beauty appeared to translate, for some anyway, into stark lack of any cerebral activity going on. However, first impressions can be false, and in Anna's case, they most certainly werr. She may have been striking in appearance, but a woman had to possess more than a pretty package to catch, then hold, the eye and attention of someone as particular as Burton Peck. Anna was the most self-assured, outspoken and courageous person that he had ever known, as she feared no-one and steadfastly refused at all times to be intimidated.
Never having had someone of the female persuation stand up to and challenge him before, Taylor was grudgingly impressed after Anna told him off in a brash, high-deciballed voice, following a comment he made regarding her unusually full mammary glands.
"Well, you sure have a fine set of hooters there", Peck had brashly remarked soon after they'd met, as she modelled a new cashmere sweater for him. The observation had been made in all innocence, but Anna had not taken it well.
"What did you say to me?" She blustered, smacking him with the brute force of Stallone in one of those many "Rocky" films. "A fine set of hooters!!! A fine set of hooters??? Why you drooling, drivel-drenched, duck-tailed adolescent! You're no rock star, Mister Burton Peck. You're a low-life garbage hustler with the IQ of a blowfish and a mind stuck hopelessly in the zipper of your pants!" With that, Anna Kane had turned on those piercing heels of hers and had flounced out the door and into the night, with all the well-rehearsed melodrama of a 1940's Saturday matinee engenue.
Peck smiled with the recollection, even though it was far from a sentimental one, and remembered how, seconds later, the irate miss had retuned, hands on her boyish hips and hollered loud enough to crack crystal, "Wait a minute!! I live here! You get the hell out! Now!!"
That was it, Burton had glimmered excitedly; that was definitely the gal for him. An uneven courtship was followed by an unwanted pregancy, forcing the two of them to consider marriage for the sake of the child's legitimacy, but they decided against it at that particular time. They both realized that if they wed solely because of the impending baby, it would never last. However, they were, at that time, very much in love.
Anna Kane, bluntness and brimstone aside, was a warm, affectionate and multi-faceted woman who held nothing back in any part of her life. She adored Taylor, who, around the time of their meeting, still retained a great deal of his youthful, idealistic enthusiasm and who'd impressed her as a man who would really instigate a lot of positive changes, both in their lives and the lives of people in general.
Anna's pregnancy ended, unfortunately, with a miscarriage after three months and resulted in a lenghty period of depressin and dark reflection for both of them. Peck's drinking, always a concern, became rather alarming during this time and set the stage for a series of arguments that had never been resolved. Now, in 1991, they were still taking place on a regular basis.
"Maybe I should quit this crap", Peck mused half-heartedly, looking askance at his half-empty glass. "Anna may well be right. I'm slowly pickling my insides and corroding my liver to the stage where it's going to simply dissolve into a heap of rusty powder one of these days".
That was it. The page had finally been turned to reveal "The End" printed boldly at the conclusion of his ten-volume encyclopedia of "Alcohol Abuse". "The Almanac Of Abstinence" won't be nearly as difficult to put down. My nose won't constantly be in it as it was in that other tome", Peck muttered, trying to convince himself that he was doing the right thing.
Anna would be pleased, he reckoned; not to mention the guys, especially old mother hen Michael. "He's been on my case since 1982. Burton, you drink too much. You aren't the stuff of which legends are made so your death from self-abuse won't grant you immortality like Elvis". Or another pet line of his was, "Burton, you're looking awfully dissipated lately. You're the Lenny Bruce of hard-drinking rock stars". Man, that Michael could be irritating.
Peck remembered telling friend, Daryl Hammond on the eve of their high school graduation, "This university thing is just not sitting too well with me. I mean, what the Hell makes me think I want to go into commercial advertising? Do I honestly strike you as a guy who sketches pictures of soup cans and cola labels for a living?" He was, even then, fully aware that he was destined for bigger and better things.
Back in those early days, Peck was a visually-appealing individual, with his long, dark mane of hair and deep, snappingly brown eyes, which offered him a kind of wild man mien. A quirky, crooked smile completed the portrait of the English-looking choirboy gone to secular seed and this look ultimately stood the ravages of time to offer credibility in the 1990's. He nearly always wore sunglasses, with the confident air of a man who knows that they represent style and not simply crass affectation. He dressed with a unique flair for the "radically-edged conservative", a brilliant self-invention that worked.
In short, Taylor was not destined to be the Andy Warhol in yuppie garb. His friends knew it, his whole high school knew it, and despite enrollment at Baylor University in Waco, early in 1976, Peck ended up colliding artistically and compatibly with fellow Fine Arts major Michael Hope. The rest can be summed up neatly as a Rock and Roll Fable.
"Hmmm, I wonder if I have to give up the recreational drugs too?" Peck wondered, his mind snapping back to the present. Second thoughts were washing the schools of grey cells that had already begun to cry out, "Come on, Peck!! Abuse us! Pour some One Hundred Proof over me now!!" Burton decided that he couldn't deprive his poor brain of everything all at once. "Well, we can't get carried away too much with this reformation shit".
* * * * * *
"Okay, okay, we've done about as much damage as we're gonna do with the three of you guys. Let's call it a wrap for today". The director with the mouth like a machine gun firing slapped his hands together to accentuate his vocals and exited the set.
Michael had previously changed into ragged, grey fatigues, with several large holes strategically burned into them to simulate fireball singes. He wiped his face with a damp rag to get stubborn coal dust off it and asked, "Do I look okay now?" He was convinced that that last bit of film made him look like an absolute idiot, lip-syching the words of his own song. "I mean, I can't believe I came off looking any better than something from a Saturday Night Live sketch".
"You were fine. Just play it as it lays", the director's assistant said, then followed his boss off the set.
Gill Giles had been heralded the least fetching member of Oxymoron until quite recently, when he began to acquire a slight glamour status among newly-awakened fans. He packed up his instruments, music and various accoutrements with his mouth set in a grim line. "The guy's a jerk and so is Edmunds. Who the Hell hired them?"
Gus Abrams, one of the technical advisors on the set, brushed by with a hastily uttered, "You fellows did, Don't you remember? Edmunds is supposed to be one of the best".
"One of the best incompetants", Gill muttered, eager to see the merciful end of the shoot but seeing no glimmer of it yet. He stood up and said, rather crossly, "And as for Burton, he's gettig a choice piece of my mind for ducking out this afternoon. He's been as unprofessional as Hell lately".
Abrams shrugged. "We didn't really need him here, Bryan. His image is basically just a hologram that's already been filmed and the music's already recorded. So what's the problem?"
Lee, his face showing some evidence of pushing his life hard to its utmost limits in recent times, was not assuaged. "Just the same, he should have been here, dammit! I thought I knew him, even better than Julian and certainly better than Calvin, but maybe, well, maybe I actually don't. He's changed a Hell of a lot since we met eleven years ago."
Abrams barely suppressed a hearty guffaw. "And you haven't? You're a fine example of what my dear, sainted grandmother would call "the pot calling the kettle black", Calvin. Think about it".
Perry ignored this lame chatter and moved with his trademark southern swagger as far away from the area as he could without giving the impression of hurried flight.
That, he knew very well, was most definitely not "Oxymoron Cool".