So no one could understand
When the police found Johnny hanging in
the attic that night.
Suzy picked up the newspaper that day.
Headline said, “Local Boy Dies.”
She knew her Johnny was gone.
So she took a razor blade and slit
out her own eyes.
Johnny’s dead,
Johnny’s dead.
Did you see what the newspaper said?
It said, Johnny’s dead.
Everyone went to his wake,
Saw him lying there with his guitar.
They all said he tried too hard
To be a rock-and-roll star.
Johnny’s dead,
Johnny’s dead.
His mother’s confined to a bed
Because Johnny’s dead.
Now all the parents in the neighborhood
Are acting like they really care,
Just so their little Johnnies
Won’t go leaping off the kitchen chair.
Johnny’s dead,
Johnny’s dead.
Did you see what the newspaper said?
It said, Johnny’s dead.
Johnny, that crazy, controlling son of a bitch, had written his own funeral dirge. I read once that Winston Churchill had planned his own funeral—the route the procession was to take through the streets of London, who would speak and who would not, the whole damn thing orchestrated to the last detail from the grave. Johnny’s song reminded me of that.
The chords he had written over the words were mostly minor chords, and knowing Johnny, I think he intended us to play it slow, plodding. It took us about five seconds to reject that idea and to give it, to give Johnny, the edge and attitude that both he and the song deserved.
RICHIE MCGILL
It was a fucked-up time when Johnny died. That was the only time I really thought the band was over. I figured we were just cursed.
But Johnny saved us. I mean, he saved the band.
Shit, I don’t know. He saved us, and he saved the band.
The first thing we did after leaving the diner the night of Johnny’s wake was fire Jeff. Harry did it. He called the guy’s answering machine from a pay phone and said it pure and simple: “Jeff, it’s Harry from the Scar Boys. You’re fired.”
The dude tried calling us, showing up at Harry’s house, coming to gigs, but we always just chased him away. Turns out he really did have some A & R guys at that Irving Plaza gig, and it led to a record deal. Once we started to get successful, Jeff sued us, the freaking wanker. The case is still going on.
Truth is, and no disrespect to the dead, I always thought we were a better band without Johnny, even as far back as that first night in Athens. Everyone thought Johnny was the center of the band, but from where I sat, he was the odd man out. Part of me wonders if he thought that, too, and that’s why he, well, you know, did what he did.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Johnny’s book is the proof.
The record advance was enough that Cheyenne quit her job, and Harry and I got an apartment in New York City. Chey still lives at home, technically, but she doesn’t sleep there a lot. She’s living the rock-and-roll life. Harry still worries about her, though. Even when he doesn’t tell me he’s worried, which is, like, all the fucking time, I can see it. But from where I sit, we gotta let Chey be who she’s gonna be.
One of the biggest changes is that Harry has a girlfriend, Thea. She’s got something wrong with her face, too. I don’t mean that to sound bad; she’s actually totally hot, but her chin and the side of her face are all discolored. She says it’s a giant birthmark, something called a port-wine stain. I don’t know anything about that stuff, but I actually think it makes her look kind of cool. It’s like one of Mother Nature’s tattoos.
When we started to get popular, we got a lot of people whose faces were fucked up in some way or other turning up at gigs. I mean, they saw Harry as a kind of hero.
Harry, the jerk, was pissed off all the time when he started dating Thea. Some bullshit about how disfigured people should date normal people to prove some point or something. Harry always saw his scars worse than the rest of the world did. Well, worse than I did anyway. Luckily, he got over it, because she’s awesome. She’s kind of become our unofficial road manager.
As for me, I try not to worry about things. Hell, I’m just happy I get to play the drums every day. I mean, people are paying me to beat on shit. How cool is that?
HARBINGER JONES
I found myself back on Dr. Kenny’s couch a week after the wake. I was feeling so messed up that I thought I might explode. Kenny had lost a patient to suicide a couple of years earlier, and I figured he might be able to offer me some perspective.
“That was quite a memorial service,” he said. I didn’t even realize he’d been there. That was pretty much it for the small talk.