Beckman was Blackbird.
A tidal wave of relief passed over me. It wasn’t the Russian mob or nationalist extremists or over-the-top Joan acolytes. It was an aging rocker who knew my parents back in the day. This I could deal with. I might not understand the why of it, but I understood the who of it. And I was going to get those sketches back. “Call your babysitter. Tell her you’re finally going to meet Peter Beckman.”
From Wikipedia
The Free Encyclopedia
The Ravens (Band)
The Ravens were an American rock band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1974 and are considered pioneers of alternative rock. The band was composed of vocalist and guitarist Peter Beckman, guitarist Dean Lawrence, Lawrence’s brother, bass guitarist Nick Lawrence, and drummer Colin Beardsley. Peter Beckman and Dean Lawrence met at Santa Monica College in an accounting class. They dropped out of college six months later, after a demo single became a radio hit. It would be several years before Righteous Records released a full album. Following several critically acclaimed albums, including Here & Now (1976), What Was the Point (1978), and Yes & No (1981), the Ravens disbanded in 1984 with the individual members pursuing their own careers. Though the band never experienced any significant commercial success, they did enjoy critical respect and have been cited by many bands as a key influencer. Yes & No was cited by Rolling Stone as #12 on the Most Influential Albums of All Time in a 2008 list.
The Ravens were influenced by the Rolling Stones, Faces, Big Star, and Lou Reed, as well as punk bands such as the Ramones, the Clash, and Dead Boys. Unlike many of their Southern California contemporaries like Black Flag and Germs, the Ravens were noted for their melodic rock, self-deprecating lyrics, and songs that lasted longer than two minutes. Lead singer and songwriter Peter Beckman was both the heart and the face of the band. With his intimate songwriting and raw singing style, Beckman is often seen as the precursor to Kurt Cobain. Cobain himself noted in a Rolling Stone interview in 1991, “There would be no Nirvana without the Ravens.”
The Ravens were a notoriously inconsistent live act, sometimes showing up onstage too drunk to perform or storming offstage if the crowd wasn’t paying enough attention. In 1978, they were kicked off the Rolling Stones tour when they failed to complete a single song as the warm-up band, playing only snippets of cover songs instead. In 1982, lead singer Beckman was charged with being drunk and disorderly on a plane, one of the first documented cases of air rage. Beckman did three months in jail for destroying a drink cart. By the end of the band’s run, they had matured as performers, and before disbanding, the Ravens did fourteen straight nights of live shows in Southern California, performing everywhere from the Hollywood Bowl to the Motel in Pasadena to the parking lot of a 7-Eleven in Montebello. This send-off tour is known as the Fortnight.
The band broke up in late 1984, releasing a statement that read, “It’s been real. Thanks for the memories.” They were sued by their record company for breach of contract, a suit that was settled out of court. They never reunited for any reason. In 1995, brothers Dean and Nick Lawrence were killed in a plane crash while piloting their own single-engine aircraft over Napa Valley where they owned a winery. Colin Beardsley currently works as a producer in New York City and has worked with bands like Blink-182, Green Day, and Hole.
Peter Beckman solo career
Though all the Ravens’ songs are credited to all four of the band members, it’s long been known that Peter Beckman was the primary writer of the band’s material. In the early 1990s, Beckman released two solo albums that garnered some attention. Nice Try (1991) reestablished Beckman as a songwriter of substance and his solo acoustic tour was well received. Yes, It’s Me (1993) was a commercial success and received four Grammy nominations, but no wins, in the Rock category where he lost to Eric Clapton, as did Nirvana. Beckman did not attend the ceremony, nor did he tour with the record. In a profile piece in Spin magazine in 1993, Beckman stated that he became a “colossal asshole as a touring rock star. Being onstage made my ego grow and my self-esteem shrink. I drank so I could get up onstage and be huge and then I drank more when I got offstage so I could be invisible. I could not handle any aspect of being famous. Not one. It all brought out the worst in me.” Beckman has rarely been seen onstage or in the media since 1995. It is said that the deaths of his former bandmates that year may have sent Beckman from the limelight.
Peter Beckman now lives outside of Paris in Rouen, France, where he runs Fortnight Studios. He is a versatile and successful songwriter for pop signers like Pink and One Direction. Beckman also cowrites, working with such bands as Good Charlotte and Fall Out Boy.
Beckman is unmarried, but had a longtime relationship with singer/model Carla Bruni that ended in 2007. Since 2007, he has been romantically linked to several women, including jewelry designer Maeve Kincaid and painter Estelle Martine.
Chapter 17
Oh, the game was on now. “Impasse Ronsin in Montparnasse. That’s the next meetup spot. It’s a famous alley where a bunch of artists had studios in the early-to-mid part of the twentieth century. This one was obvious.” Blackbird’s losing his edge. I thought about the drawing of my mother in the envelope. That must have been done during Bright & Dark.
Nate checked his watch. “That gives us about four hours to sleep.” He wasn’t exactly enthusiastic.
And neither was I. “You know what? Screw this. We’re not going to run around all night trying to figure out this clue and wait around at dawn for another envelope. This has to stop. Now that we know who he is, we get to be in charge.”
“I like Fired-Up Joan,” Nate said as we entered the hotel lobby and strode past the desk. No Claude. The hotel managed to find another employee to work a shift. It was two in the morning and we were done, on every level. “We can call the police on this asshole and let them go after him. Attempted murder and theft are crimes, not games.”
“Well, it’s a little bit of a game, don’t you think?” The whole mess had gone from a professional nightmare to a personal one. There were certain facts about my parents that even I didn’t want to know, and the relationship between my mother, my father, and Peter Beckman was starting to look suspicious. My new goal was to prevent family secrets from spilling out in front of Nate or the French police, or the museum for that matter. “I’d like to see this through on my terms, without involving the police. And frankly, they haven’t been any help so far. I want to get the Panthéon Sketches back to the museum, or into the hands of the interested buyer, if that person exists. And, if there is any chance that this Beckman guy has even one of my father’s notebooks, I don’t want them confiscated as evidence or anything like that. The French government may feel they have some claim to them now, if they’ve been in this country for a while. I know that sounds unlikely, but everything about the last seventy-two hours has been unlikely. And countries appropriate art all the time. Ask the Greeks about their marbles.”