Being Frank by Nigey Lennon

had no idea what to expect. Anything could happen .
    When I couldn’t stand to wait around any longer, I crossed the street and climbed up the steps that led into the auditorium. The equipment truck’s back door came clanging down as I walked past. Inside, I nearly stumbled in the dark; sunlit trails still glared in front of my eyes. I could smell the warm dimness of an old auditorium, the moldering wool upholstery of the seats, the forgotten butts of a million and one cigarettes that had been hurled into the void for the past 75 years.
    Some of the band members were already on the stage, tuning up, There was no sign of Frank, I was in the process of hesitantly introducing myself, meanwhile keeping a sharp lookout for the telltale signs of substance abuse, when all of a sudden I felt a pair of arms, surprisingly strong, grab me from behind. I turned around, and there he was: wild-haired, grinning like a buccaneer in the red light district, his eyes like exploding nebulae as he hugged me with mock ferocity. His mustache brushed teasingly against my cheek. “Heyyy!” he exclaimed, Then, feigning solemnity: “How do you like the ever-sospiritual Berkeley ambiance? ”
    He had to do an interview before the sound check, and in his businesslike fashion he made sure I accompanied him when he went to sit down with the interviewer in seats several rows back in the auditorium. It was a technical discussion for Guitar Player magazine, and I listened carefully, hoping he’d reveal the true source of inspiration for his personal musical universe. He didn’t, but if I’d been paying more attention to detail I could have undoubtedly duplicated his guitar style — he described it minutely, right down to his preferred string gauges, pickup configurations, amp EQ settings, favorite effects devices, the size and shape of pick he used, and a lengthy explanation of how he’d just discovered a perverse and thrilling “cream-puff effect” in the studio by pumping his guitar signal directly into the board. I wondered whether he was spouting techno-babble at least partly for effect; I’d never heard anyone sound so thoroughly immersed in the arcana of audio before. (By the time I left the tour two and a half months later, he had taken both of the pickups off my old Gibson 335, messed with the wiring, replaced them, fixed a longstanding string buzz, and changed the strings to a much lighter gauge — all in odd moments during soundchecks or before shows, After he got done with ‘my baby’ I barely recognized it, so I let him keep it for the rest of the tour. But by then I understood that for him, ‘tech’ wasn’t just a nifty way to get girls, it was his life’s breath: I putter, therefore I am .)
    After the interview, he got up, looked around for the errant band members, put two fingers in his mouth, and whistled shrilly. They all appeared from various nooks and crannies where they’d been stealing a hit or a snort, no doubt, and he herded them onto the stage like a football coach mustering the offense. Before I could ask him if I should join them, he had given the downbeat and kicked off a song. I sat down in the front row, feeling slightly crushed. They ran through the number, then Frank cut them off with a perfunctory but emphatic gesture. Evidently the sound was satisfactory. “See you back at the motel later,” he told them, and jumped down off the stage.
    He came over to where I was sitting. “Let’s go,” he said. At the exit we picked up a pleasant-faced fellow in his early 30s, I guessed (anyone over 30 seemed chronologically challenged to me — even, I’m sorry to say, Frank), who was standing around there as if he had nothing else to do. This was Dick Barber, the band’s road manager, a down-to-earth sort of guy whose tonsorial style — balding on top, little ponytail in back — pre-dated by more than two decades the