The Love Song of Jonny Valentine (4 page)

That night Jane said Mrs. Vincent had called her and told her I had the best natural voice she ever heard, and Jane was crying when she hung up and said she always knew I was talented from the way I’d echo songs playing in the supermarket, when I’d wait behind the checkout aisle for her to finish her Schnucks shifts, and that this was the start of something big. I was only seven years old but I was like, “Okay, but why are you crying if you’re happy, Mommy?” and Jane was hugging me and said, “Because you’re my beautiful baby boy, Jonathan.” My father had already left by then. I don’t know what he would’ve said.

Me and Rog ended with an analysis session of Buddy Holly’s “Everyday.” He’s been on a Buddy Holly kick lately, and he said to pay attention to the simplicity of the melody and instrumentation, the drummer just beating out the rhythm by slapping his knee, how it wouldn’t work without Holly’s vocal control and textural smoothness. He had me imitate his “a-hey” and the way he slows down and ranges up and down the scale within a word like his voice is going over a speed bump. I told him to pass on to whoever top-lines the next album that I wanted to do something like this in a song.

When we wrapped up, I said, “Don’t worry, I won’t let anyone mess with my routine in Salt Lake City.”

“Thanks.” He stopped putting his notes away and looked at me. “But after, let Jane know you prefer my techniques. We’re in this together. Right?”

“Right.”

“Good. You’re going to have a long career if you stick with what I tell you.”

As a voice coach, Rog is one of the best out there, but there are probably better choreographers. That’s one reason he has me focus on my singing, even though he says it’s since anyone can dance but no one can sing as naturally angelic as me.

The other reason is that he’s the oldest person on our team. Definitely older than Walter. Up close his eyes crinkle into wrinkles like cat whiskers, and he’s super-tan, but when he looked at me just then, I thought, Man, if I played the age game right now, I’d guess Rog is like sixty, which I don’t usually think because he’s still in good shape, but last week when we were finishing up the Southwest leg of the tour, he was teaching me a new eight-count move with a jump and a deep knee bend, and when he demoed it for me there was a loud
crack!
like his knees were going, Uh, thanks but no thanks for the ten
million
hours of dance practice, Rog, and he acted like it didn’t hurt but he didn’t do any more demos the rest of the day and iced it for half an hour later and popped a bunch of Vikes and told me not to tell Jane since she gets too nervous about other people’s health, which isn’t really true. She only gets nervous about mine and hers.

I said, “I know, Rog.”

We had two nights in L.A. with a concert the second night, so all the backup singers and dancers and crew guys were excited about going home with a day off. But me and Jane didn’t have it off, because the talent’s work is never done, so we had the big strategy session with Ronald scheduled for lunch, which is why we had the early start. I was like, Jane, can’t you go without me, I never have any creative input in these meetings anyway, but she said that Ronald specifically requested me to be present, and Ronald controls the purse strings so we have to pick our battles.

We finally got back into L.A. after a century on the highway. Our bus dropped me and Jane and Walter off at the Ivy. It’s the main L.A. restaurant Jane knew about before we moved here, and the minute we signed for my advance from the label she took me there for dinner.

There were about ten paparazzi, which isn’t that much. You could tell they were bottom-feeder paparazzi, not just because they were stuck working the daytime Ivy shift, but because they dressed really bad and stood out from the lunch crowd. My bus doesn’t have any markings on it, so they didn’t know who it was until we got out. Then they were all like, “Jonny, how’s the tour?” or “Jane, looking hot, give us a smile,” which I thought she might do since me and her got our teeth whitened by Dr. Kim pretour, but she didn’t, and Walter barked in his policeman voice, “Guys, give ’em some air, you’ll all get your nice pictures but you gotta back up!” I always let Jane do the talking and I just smile and once in a while dance if they ask but never sing. You have to save it for when people pay. They shouted for me to do my trademark spin move, but Jane shook her head at me. People must have asked MJ to do the moonwalk all the time, too.

We went up the stairs and through the patio and Julian at the front smiled at us and told us our table was ready. Jane likes the table right next to the fireplace, with her back to the wall. Walter stayed outside and Jane ordered a burger for him to go.

Ronald wasn’t there yet, so Jane got an Ivy gimlet plus a Diet Coke for me and asked the waiter to take away the bowl of mixed nuts, even though he told her there weren’t any peanuts. When he brought me my drink I said, “Thank you,” and “Thank you” again when he set Jane’s down since she never makes eye contact with waiters. Maybe it’s because she used to be a waitress before Schnucks and before she was a secretary for a few months at a marketing firm, and she said it was the worst job she ever had, so that should make you friendlier to waiters, except we go to gourmet restaurants where they’re paid pretty good, and she worked at a diner. But she’s a generous tipper, and sometimes it shows up in the press that she gave a tip bigger than the meal, so people might think she does it for that, but it’s really because she used to get stiffed by her customers all the time.

Jane worked on her phone while we waited. I straightened up in my seat to see. I wondered if she knew about the comments from Albert Derrick Valentino, too. But she wasn’t on any fan sites or Twitter. She was browsing my mobile app and probably coming up with ideas for how to diversify it and attract more JV/Varsity Club memberships.
She has a lot of street cred in the industry for her innovation in the digital space, and she’s an excellent multitasker and doesn’t waste time when she’s working. She says it’s from years of packing grocery bags and dealing with screaming mothers and crying babies and her asshole supervisor and incompetent coworkers. Ronald calls her “the Architect” because right when she started she had an idea of how to build my career and insisted she would be my manager, even though the label strongly recommended an experienced manager, but she was always into movie stars and celebs and used to take old copies of
InStyle
and
Us Weekly
and
Star
home from Schnucks and read them for hours at night, except now they’re tentative allies who could betray us any second and we’ve got to be careful.

Ronald was late, so Jane asked for another gimlet and Diet Coke. When he showed up in a few minutes he apologized for the delay, but Jane said, “That’s fine, we just ordered our first drinks.”

Ronald is only a couple inches taller than Jane and balding but he has a raspy voice that makes everyone pay attention and dresses in expensive suits so he seems taller. He’d brought a woman a few years younger than Jane that we’d never met before. She wore black-framed glasses that made her look smart, and she was thin without looking like she had to work out for it.

“This is Stacy Palter,” he said. “She’s our new EVP of creative.”

Stacy smiled like an emoticon and said, “Jonny, I’m a huge fan of ‘Guys vs. Girls’ and just about everything else you’ve recorded. And, Jane, I’m really excited to be working with you.”

Jane smiled back a little when she said hello. After they sat down, she asked, “So, Stacy, how long have you been in the industry? I only ask because you seem quite young to be head of creative.” Jane was good at flipping someone’s advantage into a weakness.

Stacy laughed once to herself and looked at Ronald for a second and said, “Well, I began as an intern while I was at Columbia—”

“Did you work with Dan Freedman there?” Jane asked.

“Which department is he in?”

“Creative.”

“Oh!” Stacy laughed again. “I’m so sorry, I meant Columbia University, not Columbia Records. I interned for a few indie labels when I was a student there. Econ major.”

Jane smiled but didn’t say anything, so Stacy talked about how she’d gotten a job in the industry after she graduated and then became Ronald’s assistant and worked in creative at another label before Ronald poached her.

Ronald grinned with his crooked old-person teeth like he was her father and they were used to joking around. “
Enticed,
Stacy, I
enticed
you back,” he said. “Stacy’s got a gimlet eye for spotting talent and knows how to position artists better than anyone else at the label.” I was trying to figure out if
gimlet eye
meant the same thing as Jane’s drink, but didn’t want to interrupt Ronald, who added, “The opening group that’s filling in for the rest of the tour, the Latchkeys? Stacy found them.”

“I haven’t had a chance to give them a listen yet,” Jane said.

“They play edgy rock, literate lyrics. The front man, Zack Ford, dresses in a vintage suit,” Stacy said. “Stones meets the early Strokes.”

“Doesn’t seem like a fit with Jonath—Jonny’s sound,” Jane said.

“It isn’t, exactly, but they have a big teen-girl fan base, which loves Zack,” Stacy said. “They’ll catapult off and age up Jonny’s listenership. And they’ll certainly fill more seats in the Midwest than Mi$ter $mith.”

Whenever Jane’s studying the career longevity of pop stars, she’s like, Thank God you’re not black.

Jane sort of cleared her throat and took a sip of her gimlet. Ronald said, “Stacy also helped develop Tyler Beats—though, obviously, not for us,” and Jane looked up and asked, “Really?” and Stacy told her how she saw videos of Tyler singing on YouTube before anyone knew who he was, the same way I was discovered, and she got her label to sign him right away, and Ronald said she was instrumental in packaging him, especially overseas.

So Stacy actually did have a gimlet eye for spotting talent, which was what made her different from the fakes on those reality shows that pick singers who have no originality, and made her
really
different from the people who watch those shows who have no clue what makes a good singer and vote mostly on personality and song selection. People who don’t have any talent themselves always want to believe they can at least spot good talent, like that’s a talent itself. But they usually can’t except when someone’s a singing and dancing freak, like with MJ. Or Tyler
Beats, though maybe it wasn’t so obvious when Stacy signed him. My skills were raw before the label groomed me.

Stacy excused herself to the restroom. “Is she even thirty, Ronald?” Jane asked. Ronald sighed and said yes and that everyone in this industry is young and you know that, and Jane was like, “I’ve simply noticed you tend to promote a lot of young women who’ve worked for you, is all,” and Ronald said she wouldn’t have gotten the job if she weren’t extremely qualified, and they had some fresh ideas they wanted to bring up with us and Jane would be well served to listen with an open mind. She picked up her menu even though she always gets the grilled salad.

When Stacy came back she asked me how the tour was going.

“It’s good. A lot like the last one.” I didn’t mention I was seeing a few empty seats this time around. She’d already know anyway.

“Any fun stories?”

I was starving and tore off a piece of walnut-raisin bread. Jane wouldn’t say anything in front of them about it. I repeated what she’d coached me to say if they asked about the tour: “No, we’ve been working super-hard, so we don’t have much time for messing around. But the shows are hella fun.”

Jane’s been trying to get me to say
hella
more in interviews to make up for any conversational accent I have left from St. Louis, so I knew this would please her and make her forget about the bread.

Ronald laughed and put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Kid’s got a work ethic like a Korean immigrant,” and Jane laughed with him, but Stacy looked down at her drink and half smiled.

They gossiped about which musicians and execs were going to rehab or were out of rehab and whose careers were crashing or stalling or supernova-ing. When our food came, Ronald said, “So let’s get down to brass tacks,” and Stacy took a folder out of her bag whose cover page said

JONNY VALENTINE 2.0 BRAND-EXTENSION STRATEGY

Stacy said, “Peruse this at your leisure. It’s a comprehensive overview of the market, Jonny’s salability and performance strengths and stumbling
blocks, and what directions we can go in. I’ll touch on the main bullet points.”

She discussed the record industry for a little while, but I tuned out and ate my lamb burger and drowned my fries in ketchup and thought of the opening lines to “Guys vs. Girls” the way I always do when I see a burger now, even a lamb burger from the Ivy: “Girls and guys, burgers and fries, all gets ruined with a coupla lies.” It was the same stuff about shrinking sales and a contraction in concertgoers from the recession and media fragmentation and limited control over talent perception that Jane had been complaining about a lot the last few months.

Then Stacy said, “We think, after this tour, it’s time to reassess Jonny’s image and his music.”

Jane’s fingers gripped her fork tighter but she kept her voice calm. “What do you mean, reassess?”

“Ish. Reassess-ish,” Stacy said. “I don’t want to step on any toes here, but Jonny’s second album hasn’t done nearly as well as the first even though we poured in marketing resources for it and he had the shoulders of a major platform to stand on.”

I pictured a huge platform with a pair of shoulders and no head that I was standing on.

Jane said, “Debuts traditionally outperform sophomore albums, if you’ve had the kind of market penetration Jonny had.”

Stacy looked to Ronald for the thousandth time, and he was like, “Jane, we know that, but please hear us out.”

“Jonny, you turn twelve in two months, right?” Stacy asked. “So the deliverables for your last album under contract would, best-case, be ready later this year, and when it hit shelves, you’d be around thirteen.”