Eddie and the Cruisers Read online

  “I don’t mind telling you, this is going to be some kind of story,” Mannheim said. “It could do a lot for both of us.”

  “You sure?”

  “What I mean is …” There it was again, the pause that suggested he was searching for the right way of putting things. Would you call it a caesura? “I’d like us to work together on this. I want you to be candid with me. There’ll be other people coming to you, wanting to talk, and I can’t tell you not to. I wouldn’t dream of it. But if our story works …”

  “You want me to play hard-to-get? Is that it?”

  “Well, yes. You talk to everybody and the story deflates. If you keep it exclusive … we’ll do better.”

  “Right,” I said. It was odd, having this kid lecture me on how business worked in the real world. Like that, I was his partner. Junior partner. “Our story.”

  “Well, I’ll look forward to working with you some more,’ Mannheim said as the bus rolled in. “I guess my questions took you back a-ways.”

  “They did,” I said, nodding good-bye. Half a lifetime, I thought, as I drove home. And half to go. That was amazing. It’s what I’d meant in my message to Wendell about life turning out to be longer than expected. It wasn’t that Eddie had died so young so much as that the rest of us had gone on living for so long.

  4

  Last night, Herman Biedermann and I made our weekly trip to the I.G.A. store. While he gathered groceries, I called home. I spoke to the kids first—they think I’m taking a refresher course at Penn State. I’m glad I got done with them before Doris came on the line. Her news was unsettling. Someone called her. A Mr. Slocum. Slow-come? Said he was a lawyer. Said he needed to talk to me immediately about a—get this—property settlement. An estate in which I had a “vital” interest. Where could I be reached? Doris had followed my instructions. I was traveling, she said, but I called home from time to time, and if Mr. Slocum cared to leave his number, she’d see that I got his message. Mr. Slocum hung up.

  So now I know they’ve narrowed it down to me. I don’t suppose I’ve got much longer down here. It might take some time, but they’ve found everyone they’ve looked for so far, and there’s no reason to think that I’ll escape. What’s more, I’m not sure I want to. I’m afraid, but there are things I have to know.

  • • •

  Mannheim’s visit changed things in a way that both pleased and disconcerted me. My day-to-day life, though superficially the same, was filled with echoes, resonances, connections. Memories. Things that I thought were dead were only sleeping.

  I confess that in dealing with Mannheim, I had exaggerated my distance from the year I spent with Eddie and the Cruisers. Even before “Far-Away Woman” surfaced, I had sometimes been captured by fragments of the past.

  Those old songs die hard, I used to think. I thought so every year around New Year’s, when radio stations dipped into their archives and played “blasts from the past” and I’d hear us all singing again. It made me sad to know that yet another year had wedged itself between then and now. I thought about it watching television late at night, when some mail-order record house would flog an anthology of golden oldies from the rockin’ fifties. There we’d be, among a dozen others, $5.98 for a three-record set, not for sale in stores, operators waiting for your call. I wondered whether anyone else in the audience could be as moved, or hurt, as I was.

  Maybe the Cruisers. I wondered about them too. I mused about where they were now, how they’d turned out, whether they might be sitting in front of a TV, calling out, “Hey, look, I’m on the tube again!”

  Mostly, though, I thought about Eddie Wilson. That was different. I wondered how he would have aged, what he would have made of the things that happened since he died: the Beatles, the Stones, Isaac Hayes, Woodstock. I wanted him around. I missed his instincts, his emotional outreach, his sense of adventure. The last time I’d heard live music, or closed a bar, or written a line I cared about was when Eddie was alive. So I missed him both for himself and for what he might have brought out in me. He and the person I might have been had died together. The bottom line was sadness.

  “Far-Away Woman” changed that now. I kept my eyes open and saw things I normally would have missed. I listened more often to the radio, I eavesdropped on my students, I read carefully some of the magazines that Mannheim had mentioned. I sensed a quickening, a sharpening of all my faculties. And little by little, it paid off.

  One noontime, I crossed Springfield Avenue to buy a newspaper at Dom’s place, a student hangout. Since I was there already, I sat down for a cheeseburger and a cup of coffee.

  I heard “Far-Away Woman” three times during lunch. Every time it started, with Wendell’s sax sounding like a signal from some distant, foggy island, I tensed and broke out sweating, like a ghost was about to tap me on the shoulder. And I waited for someone to make a remark: Get that dusty piece of shit off the machine! What is it, a 78 or something? But no, they couldn’t tell, or they didn’t care, that it was nearly twenty years since Wendell’s lips touched that sax and Eddie Wilson sang the words that he and I had worked out in the beery back room of Vince’s Boardwalk Bar.

  “Far-away woman

  Passing out of sight,

  Which way you moving

  Into the night?

  Comin’ toward me,

  Or runnin’ away …”

  “Got somethin’ for me, Wordman?”

  Eddie jumped on top of an empty keg of draft and waited for me to begin.

  “I don’t know about the music, Eddie. Whether it’s a fast song or a slow one …”

  “We got musicians,” Eddie said. “Wendell—he’ll turn it into blues and Sally’ll make it a cha-cha. Hopkins’ll beat the shit out of it any which way. You just leave that to me.”

  “All I did was try to write a song about a woman, about—”

  “Hey, Wordman! What say you just read the damn thing to me? Then I’ll know what it’s about.”

  I read it, just the first six lines, which was all I had. All the rest—the false starts, broken rhymes, the self-indulgence and pretentiousness—was under my bed. I read it and waited for Eddie to crack up, or call Sally in to witness my goofiest moment yet.

  “So where’s the rest of it?” Eddie asked, like I’d served him a bun without a hamburger in the middle.

  “I haven’t—”

  “Well, finish it.”

  “You want me to continue?”

  “Might as well.” He was already leaving. I knew that Eddie wasn’t much of a talker. Except for occasional outbursts which were practically soliloquies, he relied on nods, gestures, shrugs—on his body, his eyes. But this was one time I wouldn’t let him get away.

  “Just a damn minute!” I shouted so loud he stopped in his tracks. “What did I do? I’m working the bar. Your garden-variety college dropout. You come to me and you say, hey kid—since you’re here—while you’re resting—why not write me some songs. Something special, just for the Cruisers. That’s not much to go on, you know? But I like you guys. I sit down and I put out. I really try. And I don’t care if this is the worst thing you’ve heard since the ‘Ballad of Davy Crockett.’ I want some feedback. I want to know what you want from me!”

  At the start Eddie was surprised. Then I thought I saw anger. And discomfort. The way he came at me across the room, I thought he might slug me. But he put a hand on each shoulder and pushed me back down onto the keg he’d occupied. Then he hunkered down on the floor in front of me. Then he laughed.

  “Holee shit!” he said. “The things she gets me into. First time outta the gate, I got me a prima donna Wordman!”

  “She got you? …”

  “Just be quiet, Wordman.” He put a finger over his mouth to show me what quiet meant. “We’ve got this mutual friend who thinks you could be good. She told me to try you. I listened to her. Now don’t start asking me what I want from you. I don’t know yet. The question is … what do you have to give? So let’s find out. Now let me tell you so
mething else. About the Cruisers. What I want for the Cruisers. Every night I’m up there working, three, four sets a night, and I look down at people dancing and drinking, which is fine by me. But what I want is …”

  He stopped. He stared down at the floor.

  “… is songs that echo. We play and sing all right, but that’s just the beginning of it. I want more. Most of the stuff we’re singing now, they’re like the sheets in somebody’s bed. Spread ’em and soil ’em and ship ’em out to the laundry. You know? But our songs—I want us to be able to fold ourselves up in them forever.”

  He stayed a moment longer, crouching on the floor, head down. It felt like a confessional. And it embarrassed both of us.

  “That’s as much as you’re gonna get out of me, Wordman,” Eddie said. “Ever.” That night I got back to work.

  Sitting in Dom’s Varsity Luncheonette, the record sounded incredibly old to me; a Caruso aria couldn’t have seemed more out of place. But the kids liked it fine. Why? Was Eddie so good that he could jump the years and come out sounding like new? Or were the kids such indiscriminate consumers, so beyond critical thought that they gobbled up songs like so much junk food? There were dozens of other songs on that jukebox, lots of buttons to push, yet they chose Eddie Wilson and the Parkway Cruisers again and again! Why?! For the thousandth time I wished I could get inside their heads. Usually I felt that way in class, when I was angry or frustrated, when I didn’t know what it took to get through to them. But this time it was different. I looked at them while Eddie was singing, looked at this generation of T-shirts and cheeseburgers, and wondered.

  Maybe it was time to let go of the deal I’d wanted to make with them a dozen years before. If I couldn’t make peace, at least I should call a truce. They couldn’t keep me young or make me happy, and I couldn’t make them wise. My life mattered more to me than theirs. And my youth, so far behind, was more important to me than theirs. Maybe there’d come a time when the kids and I could work it out. Not now. Not when I felt so incomplete. My life was fragments. I needed to pull it together, form a whole—all the way from then till now.

  Eddie Wilson and the Parkway Cruisers’ “Far-Away Woman” was Number Three that week, and “Down on My Knees” was climbing the charts. The first time around, “Far-Away Woman” had barely cracked the Top Ten, and that was about the biggest hit we ever had. “Down on My Knees” had missed the Top Forty altogether. It was pretty ironic, and I wondered if anyone else felt the same way. They did.

  DEAD SINCE ’58

  JERSEY’S EDDIE WILSON

  FOCUS OF MUSIC REVIVAL

  Two decades after his death in a car crash on the Garden State Parkway, Vineland-born musician Eddie Wilson is finally where he’d always dreamed he would be—near the top of the nation’s list of top-selling records.

  “Far-Away Woman,” recorded by Wilson and the Parkway Cruisers, was Number Three and climbing last week, Billboard magazine states. Other Wilson songs are also coming to the fore.

  “There have been posthumous hits before,” declared New York-based film and music critic Jay Whitehead. “But usually, they came right after the singer’s death, right on the heels of the tragedy, as in the case of Sam Cooke (‘A Change Is Gonna Come’), Otis Redding (‘Dock of the Bay’), and Jim Croce (‘I Got a Name’). I don’t think there’s ever been such a surge of interest in a musician who’s been dead twenty years.”

  Wilson recorded a dozen songs in the year preceding his death. His songs were “moderately successful,” and this success sent the Wilson group on an East Coast tour that was cut short by his death, near Asbury Park, New Jersey, on June 8, 1958. Wilson’s group disbanded soon afterward.

  The “Wilson Renaissance”—that’s what insiders are calling it—was spurred by tributes from British groups who say they were influenced by Wilson’s records. Now, however, the phenomenon has a momentum of its own, with original Wilson 45’s bringing up to a hundred dollars from “oldies but goodies” collectors.

  “We’re sorry Eddie couldn’t live to see all this,” the late singer’s 70-year-old father, Harding Wilson of Vineland, told the Press-Courier. “But his mom and I are glad that we’re still here. And we want to thank all Eddie’s fans—the old ones and the new ones.”

  The senior Wilsons aren’t the only ones elated by the revival. One of Wilson’s busiest new fans is a Patterson-based entrepreneur who purchased rights to Wilson’s records “for a song” from the now-defunct firm which originally released them.

  “Don’t call it a business, call it a hobby,” cautions Lewis Eisen, president of bustling Ekko Records. “It’s like mining stocks, these old copyrights and records. You assume they’re worthless. That’s the safe bet. But sometimes you’re wrong. It’s nice being wrong.”

  That same week, a newsmagazine placed us among their “best bets for summer.”

  SOLID GOLD: Eddie Wilson and the Parkway Cruisers were a small-time New Jersey-based rock ’n’ roll group of the late fifties. Disbanded and forgotten after Wilson’s death in a car crash, the group’s sole album is the surprise find of the summer. Though technically primitive, the Cruisers’ songs bristle with a vitality and feeling rare in today’s discs. Indeed, the music’s curiously dated quality is among its most appealing traits. “Far-Away Woman” pulsates with a Gatsby-like romanticism. “On the Dark Side” signals an early white fascination with black music and culture. “Blue Lady,” “Call on Me,” “Down on My Knees,” indeed, all the tiny Wilson repertory brims with a special sense of time and place. The Cruisers’ album will carry you back. Don’t miss it.

  The call came late Friday morning, a week after Mannheim’s first visit. The assistant principal’s secretary came into my third-period study hall with a message to return a long-distance phone call. I didn’t recognize the area code—it wasn’t New York City’s 212—and I assumed that Mannheim must have unearthed another aging Cruiser. Maybe he was with one of them right now, waiting for me to call.

  I left a frightened secretary in charge of the study hall and rushed to the bank of pay phones in the main lobby. I’d begun to look forward to my next session with Mannheim.

  “KCGM.”

  “I’m sorry. Is this 511–274–5486?”

  “That’s right. Voice of the Poconos. Who do you want, please?”

  “I don’t know. My name’s Frank Ridgeway, and I’m returning a call. I think it’s from Elliot Mannheim.”

  “No Mannheim here. Hang on a minute, I’ll ask around.” I heard someone shouting my name and, from somewhere, a muffled reply.

  “Where are you calling from?”

  “A phone booth.” I gave the number.

  “Stay there for five minutes. He’s on the air now. He’ll call back.”

  For five minutes I waited obediently, reading graffiti that were scratched and penciled onto the walls. An overrated genre, crudely obscene when not self-consciously clever.

  The phone rang.

  “Hello, Wordman.”

  It gave me a chill, hearing my old Cruiser nickname again. I felt like some deep-cover spy, settled down happily in a foreign country, suddenly receiving the code word that meant it was time to rise and strike.

  “Who is this?”

  “You get one clue,” the caller said.

  There followed a few seconds of silence.

  “Ready, Wordman?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is the night-stalker, the blues-talker, the water-walker, bringing you his special magic from the land of doo-wap-de-wap. Lord of tides, taker of sides, master of time and rhyme, hold onto your heart, little girl, I’ll make it mine, ’cause I’m comin’ on strong, stayin’ long, talkin’ loud and drawin’ a crowd, and hey there, Wordman, say there, Wordman, what ever happened to you?”

  Now I knew. How many times had I listened to his doggerel raps, part Walt Whitman and part Wolfman Jack? In bars and truck stops, while we set up and packed up, all along the road, all that year, there was no one else quite like him. Even now, mira
culously, I could still remember the reply.

  “Master of voices, maker of choices, unmoved mover, and man of the hour. Whatever happened to you, Doc?”

  “I’m a disc jockey, Wordman. I play beautiful music for beautiful losers. Voice of the Poconos. Say, what’d you tell the squirt?”

  “The squirt?”

  “Mannheim. He was out here yesterday. He should have saved the bus fare. With what I gave him and a nickel, he could weigh himself. How about you?”

  “He wanted to know how I joined the Cruisers, what they were like.”

  “Yeah, sure. He was jerking you off, but good.”

  “He said he wanted another session. When I got your message, I thought it was him calling.”

  “And you were ready and willing, right? Like he’s Ralph Edwards and This Is Your Life.”

  “Not my life. Eddie’s. And I don’t see the harm in it.”

  “No, Wordman, I’m sure you don’t.”

  “Look, if there’s something I should know …”

  “Tell me this, Wordman, this Mannheim, after he got done asking you about what came first, words or music, and who taught you how to play the guitar, and how did you join the group, he didn’t just happen to inquire about those Lakehurst sessions, did he? Did he mention Lakehurst?”

  “Yes, he did, but only in passing. It was one of the topics we were going to cover next time.”

  “He had you right where he wanted you, hot to give him everything for nothing. For Eddie, right? You were doing it for Eddie. I knew I better call. Look, when can you get over here. How soon?”

  “Why?”

  “You need me, Wordman. You need me fast and you need me bad.”

  “Why?”

  “Just trust me! You trusted that creep kid with the tape recorder, so trust your old coach.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Just across the border.”

  “Canada?!”

  “Pennsylvania. Stroudsburg.”