Roads, Mills, Laps

You aren’t human if you don’t have a story to tell about the time you ran into some celebrity. I have two such stories. The first one is banal. It involved seeing Huey Lewis walking down the streets of Zermatt, Switzerland. I had dropped my glove and was too stubborn to tell anyone that I had dropped it so I was in a perpetual Napoleonic stance keeping the ungloved hand tucked in my jacket at 10,000 feet. I skied all day as Napoleon and managed to probably convince some onlookers that I was a poor handicapped skier sans hand. Huey had just crossed the street. It was 1989, and he and “The News” were just starting to wash up on the billboards of the world.

He was probably on a three-day coke binge. He didn’t want to be seen or recognized. He probably thought he was getting away to a quiet village in the Alps that just happens to have one of the highest Americans per-capita ratio of anywhere in Switzerland. So I called out to him with 1 arm outstretched like I was hailing a cab on the way to the Battle of Austerlitz, “Hey Huey!” “That’s Huey Lewis!”

Huey crossed the street, looked both ways and whispered to me in his characteristic deep baritone voice looking down from his Ray Ban Wayfarers, “Shhh. Hey man hows it going?”

I stumbled, mumbled and forced out a courteous cliche’, “Goin’ good man. Goin’ good.” In an effort to make quick small talk banter, he then asked me how the skiing was at one of the runs that was visible from where we were standing. Napoleon had not been on that run, but I couldn’t tell him that. So I lied and told him it was the best runs in the Alps. He thanked me and went to shake my hand at which time I offered my left glove then realized my error and came out of my Napoleon stance with my right hand. Quick picture and Huey was gone. A very non-story indeed.

The other story is much more entertaining.

I choose to write about it today because I noticed that Green Day premiered a video for their “Wake Me Up When September Ends” song. In the video, we see the tired and worn story that goes back to Homer - boy and girl fall in love - boy joins the military and goes to war - girl cries - boy grits teeth as he fights his demons. Way back in 1989 after returning from my Swiss exchange, I came back to Benicia. I left good friends that innocently skateboarded, listened to the Red Hot Chili Peppers before they were big, called their parents for rides, and dreamed of getting a kiss from the senior girl.

I returned to changed friends. My friends now had girlfriends, cars, stories juicier than a kiss from the senior girl, and more importantly connections to the East Bay blossoming grunge scene. In one short month, I went from mueslix to mosh pits. Friday nights were no longer spent skating away from cops and sneaking into construction sites to steal lumber. They were spent instead driving to concerts at THE place to catch a good show - Gilman Steet. Gliman Street was four graffitied, stained, sticky, sweltering walls and a roof located conveniently at 924 Gilman Street in Berkeley.

It was called ‘Gilman.’ Going to Gilman meant that you were in for something you’d never see on the quiet streets of suburban Benicia. - body piercing before it was cool and overdone, mohawks, chains, screams, and anything else revolutionary you can imagine. Most importantly for us angst-filled pubescent budding men was the mosh pit. So as with all human connections regardless if they involve politicians or punks, my friends and I entwined ourselves in a web of friends that traced themselves to a growing, hot new band from the East Bay - Green Day.

We followed Green Day from show to show. Wherever their characteristic VW bus with spray painted letters went, so we went. As a short caveat, allow me to footnote that the use of the phrase ‘we’ is not quite true since I was in Switzerland when this groupie activity occurred. Nevertheless, Green Day played everywhere from basements to garages to VFW halls to Swimming Pools. But their best concert was the night we got them to play at TC’s house.

In a spontaneously patriotic or desperate moment, TC decided to join the Army. TC was the oldest of our friends (not counting his older and legal brother MC. who was our Mickey’s 40 ounce beer supplier), and as such, TC was the first of the friends to leap from the nest. Seeing a good friend grow up and go into the Army even before 9/11 and Iraq, was a wakeup call to the crew. Enlisting in the Army called to mind Stripes, IQs of 2, southern drawls, penchants for watching hunting shows, desperation, and worse - getting shot. Accordingly, we wanted to send TC off on his Odyssey with a bacchanalian backslap. We wanted beer, girls, and Green Day.

So we reached out to the Gilman network. A friend of a friend was dating a guy that was friends with a girl that knew Billy Joe, Green Day’s lead singer. These were during the days before email and cell phones, so all network activity was conducted with a horde of dimes at the Raley’s pay phone. We used every connection we had. We offered favors and dropped names.

We got Green Day.

Well, kind of. Their drummer, John (not the current drummer) decided that he was going to conscientiously object from playing a free concert for a kid going into the Army. Green Day’s appearance at TC’s was pronounced with the metallic sputter of their VW van. Like the Pied Piper of Hamlin, the VW van was followed by tens of Trout cars that surrounded the VW van like remora. Trout are what Billy Joe like to call his girl harem of groupies that followed him around the Bay Area. Apparently the nodding of the heads up and down reminded Mr. Joe of trout.

Seconds afterwards, MC turned the corner in his Pinto back from the local Indian-run Superstop store with an entire backseat full of Mickeys 40 ounce beers. Within one minute, we had beer, girls and Green Day. Bacchus shined upon us and we owed him an offering. I don’t remember much about the concert other than it was really loud. Between breaks, I recall swigging beer with Mike the bassist in the C kitchen and all I remember is that I used deep insightful phrases such as “that last set was really good dude.”

I remember Billy Joe. He had his characteristic eye shadow and starched hair. He would swim into the kitchen and back out in loops looking like a young Robert Smith from the Cure. Just a hair’s breadth away from him were his trout trying to catch their elusive mate. The most memorable part of the evening was when TC’s parents had it. I could write an entire essay alone about the C family. Suffice it to say, we had talked Mr and Mrs. C into sequestering themselves in their upstairs bedroom during this concert and after two police visits at 12am, they had had enough. Mr. C stormed onto the makeshift stage next to last year’s Xmas tree and grabbed the Mike away from Billy Joe. It looked like something you’d see in the 60s with the police storming a stage of hippies at Woodstock. Mr. C was met with boos, bananas, cigarettes and other things. He looked like Chris Farley with a tight brown bowling shirt and a beard. The mic. wailed and screeeched and all we could decipher was, “Can I get a break HERE?” “MY WIFE HAS A JOB. OK. SHE HAS TO GET UP IN 1 HOUR. CAN YOU PLEASE DISPERSE? CAN I GET A BREAK HERE?” Any question asked to a bunch of drunk punks, skaters and trout is sure to be a rhetorical one. More objects were flown and Mr. C persisted. “LOOK. PEOPLE. THIS IS MY HOUSE? AND IN MY HOUSE WE HAVE MY RULES OK? YOU ALL HAVE TO LIVE BY MY RULES. PLEASE, MY WIFE HAS TO GET UP IN AN HOUR. I NEED YOU TO GO HOME NOW!”

During his desperate pleas, Billy Joe was looking at him down condescendingly from his darkened eyes, shaking his head, and soliciting a typically rebellious reaction from the mob. After about two more encores, Green Day packed up and left on their terms — doors closing, high fives, and then the characteristic rattle-rattle of the VW bus followed by a long chain of the trout’s red taillights. As a 16 year-old punk, I thought this scene was hilarious, but as I grow in age and wisdom and think back on this memory, I feel more and more sympathy for Mr C and his brown bowling shirt. With the exception of the horribly rich and spoiled Green Day now reaching into their late 30s, the rest of us have to create rules in our households. We have spouses with jobs, sleeping children, and a pathetic order to maintain so that we can keep our sanity.