THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 22, 1995 TAG: 9512220056
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL GREEVES, SPECIAL TO THE DAILY BREAK
LENGTH: Long : 285 lines
THE BAND WAS life; life was the band.
That was the unwritten motto of Legend and the creed I unconsciously lived by for 18 months - 18 months of growth, hardship, excitement, pain and anger that had a profound impact on my life and goals, my understanding of people and my love of music. Understanding can only come with telling, so I will start at the beginning.
Before our first jam session, in July 1993, I wondered what we would do with the time. I sat in the darkened garage of my parents' house that had been converted, in part, to a music studio. I looked at the shelves, some lined with spray paint and lawn bags, others filled with music magazines and extra drum hardware.
We had never played together before (with the exception of the bass player, Phil Hess, and me). I had never even met Gary Spear and Shannon McPeek. They were ``friends of a friend'' of Phil's and I was skeptical.
They arrived, and after 15 minutes of the ritual tuning process, we began the circular dialogue of musicians playing together for the first time.
``Well, what can you play?''
``I don't know. How about you?''
``I can fake it, whatever we do. Know any Queensryche?''
``Who?''
``Never mind. How about Pearl Jam?''
``I hate Pearl Jam. Let's do some Van Halen.''
``Yeah, how about `Jamie's Cryin'?''
``No, how about their version of `Pretty Woman'?''
``You want to do our version of Van Halen's version of a Roy Orbison song?''
``Why don't we make one up? Just start playing something and everybody join in.''
``OK, I made up a cool new melody last week.''
``Cool, let's hear it.''
Gary stared straight ahead at the white, empty wall. His eyes drifted downward until he seemed to be gazing at something beneath the floor, beneath the earth. His body seemed frozen in place, except his hands gently caressing the strings of his guitar.
It was a slow and sad song that reminded me of rain and anger and the death of my grandfather all at once. I was not used to playing music with someone who could evoke such feelings.
Gary's hands made their repetitive journey over the six tightly wound coils of steel stretched over the wood of the fret board. The music washed over me, now accompanied by the solemn and mournful notes of Phil's black, sharp-angled bass. I was excited, but tense. I did not want to endanger the beauty of the melody by erupting my drum kit into a loud and violent pounding in my impatience to add my foundation to the song.
When I began a soft rhythm on my ride symbol and snare drum, Gary gave me a slight smile, indicating his happiness with my addition.
Shannon pulled a sheet of lyrics from the big, black, three-ring binder where I kept the songs I wrote. He chose ``Bloodmoon Rising,'' a song that I had won a poetry contest with the year before. It was the story of a dragon's birth, flight and death over a medieval village, an allusion to the world today and the consequences of violent action.
Shannon's voice was well-trained and powerful, moving up and down the scale of notes in time and harmony with Gary and Phil's playing. The muscles of my arms, legs and neck loosened as I slid into the ``groove'' of the song.
My mind moved to thoughts of MTV interviews and multi-platinum records, but my body remained focused on weaving the intricate rhythm I had prescribed for ``Bloodmoon.'' Delusions of grandeur continued to glide high in the air, but back in the garage the power of the song consumed my body.
As we played the song for the second and third times, I concentrated on not concentrating and began to feel and notice my surroundings. The smell of my own sweat, the fertilizer on the shelf above me and the gasoline from the lawn mower in the corner of the garage formed a pungent odor in my memory that to this day.
There, in that garage, embodied in the four of us together, was a chance at greatness. I forced my limbs to keep driving on until that brief respite between takes, a moment of reflecting, and studying the three musicians whom I had such newly found respect for.
The players
Gary was large, but he was not fat. He was a combination of width, muscle, height and presence. He stood about 6 feet, 3 inches, about 4 inches taller than I. His hair was long on the top and short on the sides, brownish blond and it appeared rather dark in the dim lights of the garage. He was quiet for most of the first practice - his few comments limited to praises about the roles we played in his melody.
He had a Jackson six-string electric guitar with curved, smooth edges and a deep, Gothic red color. When I was younger, someone told me that there are two kinds of blood in your body - bright red blood, the kind you see when you scratch your knee, and lifeblood, the deep, red, ocher blood far beneath the skin. That was the color of Gary's guitar, beautiful and bottomless.
Phil's bass guitar, on the other hand, was a flat, black, sharp-angled apparatus that looked more like a weapon of war than a musical instrument. It was called a B.C. Rich Warlock, with jutting edges that shot out of the top and the bottom. The guitar was a fitting contrast to its owner. Phil had long blond hair and a fair complexion that contrasted with his preferred dark clothing and ebony bass. He was tall, lean and silent and came to be known in the band as the ``Yes Man,'' because whenever we asked his opinion, he would just agree with someone else.
But what he lacked in voice he made up for in his music. The bass notes are not always distinguishable in rock music, but they are vital to its foundation. A listener might not have been able to hear Phil, but if he stopped playing, the song would have sounded hollow and incomplete. So Phil was content to stay in the shadows, laying the foundations to the rhythms that Gary created and defining a bottom for Shannon's vocal range.
Even from our humble beginnings, Shannon carried himself with the air of a celebrity. His personality was a combination of showmanship and standoffishness to those he didn't know, but to those close to him he could be a very good friend.
I thought from the beginning that he looked the part of a lead vocalist, even though Legend was his first attempt at rock music. He was tall and well-built with long, straight, brown hair that was a constant source of attention. He wore dark pants and shirts that opened in the front and lots of silver jewelry. He seemed to be a natural at the role of band frontman.
Shannon had 10 years of chorus and three years of drama performance at Indian River High School before Legend. He smiled and laughed between songs and away from practice, but never while performing. At first, when I would catch his eye, he would look at me as if I had killed his dog or stolen his girlfriend. He seemed so angry when he sang. But he later explained to me his expression: ``I take the music very seriously. Everyone tells me I always look angry, but it's just because I'm concentrating.''
The making of a musician
I often wondered what my own face looked like as we played, and I often thought of humorous subjects to keep me smiling through difficult and strenuous songs. One topic that always brought a smile to my face was my early years as a musician.
When I began playing, my parents were reluctant to pay for a real drum set. They doubted my interest. After shelling out $50 for a karate uniform worn twice and $300 for a surfboard that served only as room decor, who could blame them? Eventually I convinced my father to help me buy a real set of drums, although I don't know if it was because he wanted to help me or if he was tired of replacing trash cans.
We purchased a used set for $185 at a pawn shop called Moe's Music. It consisted of a bass drum, two toms, a snare drum and two tarnished, scratched and dented cymbals. I later learned that the set was made by Sears, and released in the late 1960s. But I didn't care. I loved it and I banged away all day and as much of the night as possible.
I took two lessons from a stuffy professor who wanted me to learn about stick-holding techniques and rhythmic balance, so I quit and taught myself by playing along with John Mellencamp, Van Halen, Rush and anybody else whose music I admired.
By the time Legend formed, I had moved up to a $4,000 model - a Pearl Export Pro wine-red, double bass rack kit.
I chose to attack it with 2B Oak Pro Mark Natural nylon-tipped sticks, a fancy title for a stick with the varnish left off for better grip. The shaft was thicker than most and suited me fine since I had a tendency to play loud and hard. The nylon tip allowed me to get better response and tone out of my cymbals and snare than wood, although wooden tips are stronger. Each pair cost about $6, and I usually went through a pair a practice, two pairs at each show.
So together with Phil, I laid a solid steady backbeat for our songs, not overpowering but always loud enough to be heard.
The future's so bright . . .
After playing ``Bloodmoon Rising'' for two hours straight, we sat down on the floor of the garage and talked about the future. We decided to be an original band - no covering the songs of other groups. Our sound would be dark and Gothic, very moody.
We kicked around fantasy names like Dark Winter and Dragonsbane and finally settled on Legend. It summed up our mood, style and subject material all in one. We listed the clubs we could play in, the friends we had in other bands who might let us be their opening act, and we discussed how we could get in contact with record labels and other bigwigs in the music industry.
Everyone walked away that night with a sense of accomplishment and pride in what we had done. I was looking forward to many long nights of hard playing that I believed would result in recognition, praise, money and fame.
As I lie in bed that night, I could not sleep. I fantasized about playing in front of an audience and recording our own album and signing autographs.
Our first gig
Four months later, in November of 1993, we prepared ourselves for a milestone on our road to glory: our first stage performance. We had signed up for open mike night at Cogan's Instant Art Bar in the Ghent Section of Norfolk. We knew that the bar required no talent whatsoever to perform on open-mike night, but we had to start somewhere.
We reserved our 15-minute slot the week before the show and the days dragged by, filled with visions of slam-dancing crowds and endless praise for our incredible sound and energy. We just knew that we would make some kind of history by being spotted by a record producer on our first night out.
We prepared by making 300 fliers and distributed them in malls and music shops. I wallpapered the Old Dominion University campus, and Phil covered the bulletin boards at the Virginia Beach campus of Tidewater Community College. It only occurred to me later that no matter how many fliers we posted, no one knew who we were.
And then the night arrived.
We were scheduled to play at 9:45, and we arrived at 6:30, just to be safe. We were the first ones there. We waited outside for 15 minutes for the owner to open the place.
The stage was small, about 8-feet deep and 15-feet across. We couldn't set up because another band was scheduled to play at 9:15. Fifteen minutes of playing for them, five minutes for them to remove their equipment, 10 minutes for us to set up ours, and 15 minutes for us to play - that was the supposed schedule.
The other band arrived at 7:30 p.m. They were from Williamsburg and called themselves Friday's Child. The singer was a lanky, 6-foot guy with tight dreadlocks. He introduced himself at ``Roi, spelled with an i.''
Our attitudes immediately flared as soon as Roi departed from the immediate vicinity. We insisted on pronouncing his name ``Row-I'' instead of Roi.
In an impromptu soliloquy, Gary described, in infinite detail, the benefits of his Charvel guitar over the Ibanez guitar being tuned up on the other side of the room by the guitar player for Friday's Child.
Meanwhile, I wondered where our supporters were and realized that few people on our list had shown up. My stomach was queasy. Phil, of course, said nothing, content to sit at the bar and fiddle with the straps on his Reefs sandals.
Backstage was actually outdoors. The entrance to the bathrooms was so close to the stage that many times during our performance Phil had to point his bass toward the audience so a toilet-bound fan could open the door leading to the hallway that led to the bathroom.
Since all the other local bands had signed their names on the surrounding walls, Shannon climbed from the back of the toilet in the men's bathroom up into the rafters and wrote our name on the ceiling with a fat black marker.
Obviously the blood had rushed from his head as he dangled from the water pipes for he spelled our name ``Legened.'' Not to be discouraged, he climbed back into the rafters and added a disclaimer to the effect of ``I'm in the band and I can't even spell the name!''
After a few duets with saxophone and acoustic guitar players, the final solo acoustic guitar act took the stage. He was a short Latino shipyard worker who sang a song about the skeleton of a girl that had been found in the innards of a decommissioned freighter sent to the shipyard to be scrapped. It was titled ``Skeleton in the Smokestack.'' I knew at this point it was going to be a long and distasteful night, with us as the main act.
Friday's Child was the only other true band on the bill, and they started at 9:30 p.m., with a mix of funk and hard rock. Roi danced and flailed his arms all over the tiny stage to draw the crowd's attention.
Finally, we were on. My stomach shrunk to the size of a tennis ball as I stretched my arms and hands and rubbed my sticks to increase my grip. We looked at one another and gave the silent signal to begin. I prayed that we wouldn't screw up too bad and that if we did, it wouldn't be my fault.
We began our set with a song Shannon wrote called ``Come To Me,'' about a vampire in love with a mortal woman. We played faster and harder than we had ever played in the garage, and by the end of the song, my hands were burning from blisters forming on my fingers and palms.
The sweat from my arms found the tender exposed skin and my palms began to burn even hotter than before. But I didn't care. I blocked it all out and concentrated on the song. We exploded every note, every rhythm and every word into the audience in perfect sync, and my adrenaline level increased until it felt as if I would rise up off the stage and fly in the air on the power of our music alone.
At the end of the set we flourished with a climactic improvisation of crashing cymbals, rapid tiny drum rolls, high guitar notes and a sustained vocal note. We ended in time together to the wild applauding of our small but enthusiastic audience.
So what if they were all friends and family? We knew that everyone had to start somewhere, and that we had just come through our very first stage performance flawlessly. We were soaring as we packed up our things and moved them backstage and onto the grass.
``Dudes!'' Gary exclaimed. ``We just jammed that place!''
``Yeah!'' I answered. ``We tore it up!''
``Friday's Child sucked, man. Nobody even came to see them,'' said Phil.
``Do you realize that we sounded a hundred times better in there than at practice?'' Shannon asked.
``Yeah,'' answered Gary, ``we were all psyched 'cause of the crowd. We rule!''
``Yeah,'' agreed Phil.
``Yep,'' said Shannon.
``No question,'' I said.
We established an informal receiving line as our audience filed out the door. My mother commended our playing, and I could tell my father was proud, although his only comment was: ``Does it have to be so loud?''
As I loaded up the back of my father's station wagon with my equipment, Shannon was approached by a teenage girl who handed him a business card. She told him that her friend inside was a music producer and that she was impressed by our music. She wanted to meet with us to see if we might be interested in recording an album with her record company.
I got dizzy and sat down on the curb and catch my breath. Could this be real? Could we really be looking at a record contract after our first show?
Our dreams were turning into reality almost as fast as we dreamed them. I drove home that night with thoughts about recording a platinum debut album and making MTV videos. We had scheduled a meeting with Anna for the following Tuesday.
As it turned out, Anna was an independent sound engineer. She did not own a recording studio. Basically, her contract would only provide us with her as a sound engineer for a fee of $30 an hour. In addition, we would be paying for recording costs, production costs and packaging costs.
It took us very little time to graciously decline her offer. We were appalled and disappointed, but not discouraged. We had learned a valuable music industry lesson: If it sounds too good to be true, then without a doubt, it is. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo courtesy of Bill Greeves
B\W photo
[the Band]
by CNB