The Legendary Bill

A short story all about the power of rock, based on mostly true events, except for the ones that didn't happen

This is a work of autofiction, or maybe autofantasy. Autohistory? You can see it as a what-if, an alternate timeline, what might have happened had a few things gone differently. This is a work of imagination based on things that actually happened. Some names have been changed, some haven’t. Your job is to decide what you think is real and what isn’t. So here we go: A-one and a-two . . .

---

Bill had the greatest rock voice in the history of creation. Problem was, he wasn’t real.

Oh, sure, we were told he existed, in hushed tones of reverent awe typically reserved for celebrity idols and religious figures. But nobody had ever met him, only Luke. And Luke could never get him to sing with us.

“For real,” he’d say, “Bill has the best voice for rock.”

Sure, sure.

“He sang with my band in college and it was like electric. You could feel the energy, we could write hits. Hit after hit.”

Hits. That was Luke’s thing. He was obsessed with writing hits. It wasn’t enough to be good. It wasn’t enough to write and play and record music that was pleasing to us. He wanted to have a go at it, to make a proper career. And more power to him for taking that aspect far more seriously than the rest of us did, if I can presume to speak for John and Jonah on this matter.

Writing for extrinsic reasons was, at the time, a bridge too far for me. I was selfish, pretentious. I thought myself an auteur. Didn’t I also want to make a proper career out of something I’d do for free? Sure . . .but still, I’d do it for free. The hundred bucks we’d get to split four ways wend often get in those days barely covered gas (though the drink tickets were nice), but we were playing our art, man. That was enough, though nobody seemed to care.

It wasn’t enough for Luke. We needed hits. That’s where the legendary Bill, this mythical William, was supposed to come in. To save us from obscurity.

Hits. The quest for these elusive treasures kept Luke up many nights, guitar in hand, recording the same part line into his computer until he got it just right. Kept him working on the same two-note vocal harmony until it felt calculated to make the young girls—aell hits are written for young girls, don’t kid yourself—swoon and buy his record. It kept him from dismissing 99 percent of our songwriting contributions as being “not hits.”

Don’t get me wrong: as an artist, I too can appreciate the obsessive quest for perfection. The problem was, Luke never finished anything. He’d emerge from his workshop with a snippet here, a section there, but no songs, hit or otherwise, for the band to play.

Because he was missing an ingredient. He was missing Bill.

I took to calling him Billiam in my mind. He, being a fake person, didn’t deserve the moniker of conquerors, of kings. From the Germanic, according to the Internet, it has as its roots the words “desire” and “helmet.” So a “desire helmet.” Sounds weird. Sounds like another helmet-looking thing bursting with desire, a real bellend, you get me?

This is why I don’t write hits. Anyway.

Who wears helmets, though? Warriors. So a William is a strong-willed warrior. Not a shadowy, ephemeral so-called “singer” whose voice can apparently make panties wet while bringing down the walls of Jericho.

Yeah, he’s Billiam to me. Billiam, the missing link.

Look, we needed a singer. I tried for a while, but yeah . . . I hadn’t quite learned how to sing at that time. My grasp certainly exceeded my reach. or the other way around, whatever. So we eventually settled on Luke and Jonah sharing vocal duties, with me on back up, and I thought that worked, but not Luke. Forever in his mind was the splinter telling him our chemistry wasn’t complete.

You know how when Ringo sat down with John, Paul, and George, they just knew? No you don’t because you hate The Beatles. or when Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham first played together? You don’t know who they are. Fine. Whatever. We needed hits.

“Dude, he sings like Eddie Vedder or Scott Weiland, but with more range.” Sure. “He can do like Layne Staley vocals perfectly. Or Maynard from Tool!” Uh-huh,. “You know Serj what’s-his -name from SOAD? He can totally sing like that.” Mmm hmm.

Is he better than Mike Patton?

“Nobody’s better than Mike Patton.”

Oh. Funny, because for a while this guy sounded like Mike Patton, Freddie mercury, and, I don’t know, goddamned Frank Sinatra rolled into one.

So where was this fuckin’ guy?” ¿Dónde esta Guillermo? Where was Bill?

“He’s back in New York. I’m trying to get him to come visit just to jam with us, but it’s tough with his work. [ed. some finance shit]. Or . . . you know, we could go there.”

Yeah right dude. Let’s schlep our stuff and drive like 300 miles to upstate New York just so some business school square can blow us away with his vocal prowess. Nice try.

Nothing much happened for a few months, just us plugging away at our day jobs, those of us who had them, hoping for a break that never seemed to come. “Hope is not an action plan,” a teacher told me once. “Hanging or in quiet desperation is the English way” another professor of sots told me once as well; swap “American” in for “English” and he’s literally me.

But a funny thing happened: obsessive-compulsive Luke never stopped working behind the scenes, The guy never quit, never stopped making phone calls, never stopped hustling. Oh yeah, that’s right. One day, one gorgeous summer day on a day I’ll never forget—August 12—Luke told us we had to rehearse, because he was coming. He would be here. He, he, he. Who? Oh, him.

Bill. The Bill. Alexander the Great and William the Conqueror rolled into one. The man with the golden voice. The legendary Bill.

He was not as legendary as I expected. Short, for one, though not as short as John (the Jonah, I, and Luke were 6’ 1” to 6’ 3” respectively, up in a line, while John stood at 5’ 5”). And he had short hair, almost a buzz cut. Square jaw, wire-frame glasses, thick neck . . . dude looked like the well-fed frat boys I’d see at college, with a few extra post-grad years of beer and fine meals in his system. This dork would save us? Would save rock n’ roll? Please.

And his clothes: unfashionable jeans, a polo or golf shirt tucked in, and those “lifestyle” sneakers that were prevalent in the early/mid- aughts, you know, the type that can’t tell if it wants to be a sneaker or a soccer cleat. Worst was his energy, what kids now call vibe: he had swagger, all right, but not the world-striding rock god swagger everyone from Roger Daltrey to Liam Gallagher had. Bill’s was the swagger of someone who had a better job and more money than you, and was happy that you knew it as well. Fuckin’ tourist, I thought.

“Hey,” he said. Hmm. A perfectly ordinary sounding voice to me. No trumpets blaring, mountains crumbling, seas parting and settling down in different places on account of all the unusual and abruptly drastic continental drift I was reliably informed for years would happen when this mystic-voiced guru would vibrate his vocal cords.

”Hey,” I said back. “Nice to meet you.”

Now Luke was buzzing. Now Luke had the energy only some 3,500 espressos downed in rapid succession could give, or cocaine. Did Luke have a secret habit? No, not Luke. Guy barely drank. He was just excited. I felt bad that it was probably going to suck.

Non-musical interlude: What a horrible attitude, right? Definitely not a growth-mindset. The opposite, in fact, where you assume all change is bad and you not-so-secretly don’t want things to work out because you’re more comfortable in familiar misery than uncomfortable success. I don’t remember the technical term, so let’s just call it ass-mindset.

All right, so there we were, all set up in John’s basement where we’d been practicing for years, where Luke and Jonah and Mare had been practicing since grade school (they grew up together; I was the foreign interloper). and there stood Bill mic in hand, slightly bemused look on is face as if he couldn’t believe he was here slumming it with us dorks .I had a bad feeling about this. Ass-mindset.

“What songs does he know?” I asked Luke, as if Bill wasn’t there.

“Anything. Our own songs,” said Luke. “We listened to some of our practice tapes on the ride down. And he’s wicked good at making up words on the spot. He’s got some ideas, right man?”

Bill nodded. Didn’t want to overwork that larynx, right?

I nodded back. “Okay. Let’s run or set then.” Skeptical only began to describe my mood. I tended to run rehearsals, so I counted us off into our opener.

Luke hit that A minor in machine-gun rhythm: “Daka-daka-DAK!” Then Jonah responded: “Daka-daKa-DAK!” Then I joined in. But some thing changed: Instead of coming in with the drums, Bill started singing in the space between Luke’s intro and Jonah’s entrance:

You knocked me . . .
Down and . . .
I get back up again . . .

Not the most original, but his voice was kind of a low, pleasing tenor croon. I didn’t cum in my shorts, but hairs definitely stood on end all over my body. And that melody, vaguely Eastern but Still within rock’s bluesy tradition . . . it was perfect.

Time for, me to stand . . .
The running is over . . .

Drums in now. Close to my favorite part, a strange chord sequence Jonah came up with followed by a syncopated phrase in seven.

Second verse. I started to sweat, and not just because it was hot in that basement. I had a hard time playing if I listened to Bill too much. Luke had been right, that wonderful bastard, there was something here. Something electric. My sense of smell was bad on a good day, but was there a hint of ozone in the air? Arc lightning. I thought that stuff was all metaphor. Corner of my eye, some papers began to lift from cardboard filing boxes. That can’t be happening, can it?

Chorus. Where Luke and Jonah and I all hit distortion pedals. Bill hunches over, mic to mouth and as he straightens then arcs his back, he lets out the most powerful sound I have ever heard, the essence of rock distilled into a single word:

YEAAAAHHHH!

I flew back. Literally flew back, slamming into a metal support post. Luke and Jonah hit the walls. Even John flies back, bounces against the stairway, lands back in his seat. But we have to keep playing, keep going. This is working. This sounds so good. This is HITS.

Pain. Ecstasy. Bill keeps singing. Lightning shoots from his eyes I swear to God. This is not metaphor. This is literal. Electricity sparks between my fingers and the strings of my bass. It hurts. My ears bleed. I know because the other guys’ ears are bleeding too. Then our noses. Don’t care, keep playing, keep rocking, hold on to the muse and never let the bitch go.

A vortex of paper and other bric-a-brac swirls somewhere. Thunder crashes—“SONIC BOOM”—and the band plays on. I levitate like motherfucking David Copperfield, fall hard, and my ankle snaps audibly above our glorious music, gross, I don’t care, I keep playing from a sitting position. One of John’s eyes is bulging and red like he’s on the surface of Mars. Jonah’s hair is on fire as he solos, fingers flying faster than I’ve ever seen them go. Luke’s teeth are breaking as he grins, not falling out, but shattering like bullet-struck ceramic. Only Bill is unharmed, Bill the lightning god, Bill the strong-willed warrior. My king! My liege!

The breaker box sparks, and fire blooms as we play. The air grows hot and shimmers. A great arc of pure energy shoots from the box to Bill’s microphone, or was it the other way around? Something catches between that and the electricity-filled vortex now swirling in the basement corner, and the house blows up. We die. All of us, even Bill. It seems no one can cheat death, not even gods.

“Bad wiring,” is the official ward. Old house, not kept up to code, coupled with a gas leak. Spark. Boom. Terrible tragedy. At least John’s family wasn’t at home. Freak accident, very sad, and I am telling you this from the after life. That’s the power of rock.

Sort of.

You know that swirling vortex I kept banging on about? That was an actual thing. Before we died, we were sucked into that black hole or whatever thing—I can still see the guys stretched out like cartoon characters on a rack, the image of Jonah’s elongated eyeballs still giving me nightmares—and then we emerged in a world just like ours, but a little different. In this new world, nothing blew up and no one died. The music we made sounded great, but its effects remained the thing of metaphor. We finished the song, looked at each other and shared a collective, silent “whoa,” and then moved on to the next song. Then the next one, and the next one.

We’re on album six, now, touring again. Luke got big into production, but we can coax him back out on the road every few years. Life has been good, and I like to think we made a proper go of it after all. I’m on solo album number three myself. I do feel bad for our families in that other dimension, but it’s not like we planned this. We were just experimenting. Throwing ingredients together and observing the results. Chemistry? Alchemy? I don’t know for sure, but I do remember enough high-school chemistry to know that Bill was the catalyst (I still call him Billiam sometimes). So thanks Bill, you martyr, you legend. Shine.

---

For the record, we never met Bill. But what if we did, dear reader. What if we did.

- Alexander

---

Thank you for reading this short story. If you would like to read more of my fiction, please check out my books on Amazon, including my Pulp Rock anthology of music-themed stories. You can also toss a few drachmas into the tip jar at Buy Me A Coffee. Thank you, and God bless!