praise for say goodbye “Shiner has written a fine novel about rock ’n’ roll by believing more in musicians’ human nature than in their mythologies.” —Mark Athitakis, New York Times Book Review “Say Goodbye resonates like a blue note heard and remem- bered in a smoky, late-night club. Lewis Shiner has written the Citizen Kane of rock and roll novels, a human and mov- ing piece of work.” —George P. Pelecanos, author of The Sweet Forever “Gritty, funny, cynical, and sentimental; a sharply focused epic that brings welcome revision to the sunny, pop-culture success gospels that have led so many naïve talents astray.” —Kirkus Reviews “Every band has an inner momentum like this, its entangles and wreck-tangles, moments of bliss mixed with the jar- ring reality of life in the belly of the music business, and the shared song which makes it all worthwhile. Lewis Shiner sings the tale with harmonic compassion.” —Lenny Kaye, guitarist, Patti Smith Group “Engrossing...Shiner competently vivifies the uncertainties and boredom of the musician’s life, but more impressively, he manages to convey the almost indescribable joy of bringing an audience from a state of apathy to the edge of hysteria...A revealing look at today’s music business.” —George Needham, Booklist “A spare and remarkable book resonating with heart and bittersweet reality.” —Mike Shea, Texas Monthly “[A] soulful elegy...fresh and original...Shiner’s extensive research gives the story an authentic feel and keeps it from becoming a soap opera or a wearisome cover version of every other rise-and-fall parable. Honest, unpretentious and heartfelt, this novel remains a haunting refrain.” —Publishers Weekly “All the virtues of old-fashioned storytelling—a heroine you can love, a world you can live in—told in the key of urban cool. Say Goodbye is a dream of a book, perfectly imagined, perfectly imparted. Shiner’s voice comes through with all his usual passionate authority, and he never hits a false note.” —Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austin Book Club “Uncanny...The details are note-perfect...The completeness of the world Shiner creates brings Laurie to life, and lends a sense of fatedness to her panicked walk toward fame.” —New Yorker “Passionate...charismatic...an absorbing, hard-hitting tale that should be read by every rock-star wannabe.” Dan R. Goddard, San Antonio Express-News “Rock & roll literature? It seems like an oxymoron, but Shiner pulls it off in this artful fictional chronicle.” Laura Morgan, Entertainment Weekly “Say Goodbye is gritty, realistic and often funny, and it shows that Shiner has lost none of his touch. A fine novel, and a fascinating examination of the glamour industry from the bottom up.” Jonathan Strahan, Locus “Shiner has set up a What if? rock ’n’ roll tale that is thor- oughly engrossing and quietly tragic...Say Goodbye isn’t just a cleverly worded portrait of hipper-than-thou characters; instead, Shiner paints a picture of the music business and of dreams that can never shine as bright as imagined....The story—of a million wannabe music dreams snuffed out every year—is all too true.” —Shelly Ridenour, Newcity (Chicago) “Two of [Shiner’s] five books,1993 ’s Glimpses and the newly published Say Goodbye, qualify as the best novels ever writ- ten about rock ’n’ roll.” —Rick Koster, The Day (New London, CT) say goodbye books by lewis shiner novels Dark Tangos (2011) Black & White (2008) Say Goodbye (1999) Glimpses (1993) Slam (1990) Deserted Cities of the Heart (1988) Frontera (1984) collections Collected Stories (2009) Love in Vain (2001) The Edges of Things (1991) Nine Hard Questions about the Nature of the Universe (1990) say goodbye a novel by lewis shiner subterranean press © 1999 by Lewis Shiner Interior design by Lewis Shiner Set in Bembo Author photo © 2008 by Orla Swift LA photo © iStockphoto.com/Hal Bergman All other photos and cover design by Lewis Shiner isbn 978-1-59606-418-8 Subterranean Press PO Box 190106 Burton, MI 48519 www.subterraneanpress.com www.lewisshiner.com the city Signs and portents “It was my first Friday night in LA,” Laurie says in her press kit for the album. “I was stuck on the Santa Ana Freeway, thinking about buffalo. A vast single herd covering the earth from one horizon to the other, the way they used to, placid, lost in their own grassy thoughts, then suddenly careering off at top speed, all of them at exactly the same time. “So there I was, cheek to bumper with all the other cloven-tired, sun-roof-humped, klaxon-horned metal ungulates, stalled on the concrete plains, watching the hot breath steam from their tailpipes, when the sky blew up. “I didn’t know if it was terrorists or nuclear war or the Big One that was supposed to drop us all in the Pacific, but it was clearly the end. Huge concussive explosions and fat orange cinders trailing fire out of the sky. Ashes on the windshield. Cars veering off onto the shoulder and me pretty sure I could feel the freeway shake under my Little Brown Datsun. I kept driving, though, because, really, this was what I’d been waiting for all my life: Armageddon. “Anyway, I finally rolled my window down and looked up and realized it was nothing but the fireworks show at Disneyland. They launch the rockets, apparently, a few feet from the highway and the damned things go off right there over the cars. Some freak atmo- spheric condition was pushing the debris back down before it com- pletely burned up. “So that’s where ‘Just Another End of the World’ came from. That thought: If this is really the end, I won’t have to do laundry tomor- row. My rent check will never bounce. Of course it was just one more false alarm, not even a sign from God, only a sign from Unca Walt, in his block of ice under the freeway, and it had no more cos- mic message to convey than ‘Hey, look at me.’ 1 2 lewis shiner “Though I will say this. Once I was over my initial disappoint- ment, it was a hell of a show. The human mind can’t leave something like that alone. It’s always going to read signs and portents wherever it can. And I remember sitting straight back in my seat, both hands on the wheel, and saying, ‘Thank you. I’m glad to be here.’ ” The Silk and Steel I meet “Fernando”—not his real name—in a bar called the Silk and Steel on Sunset Boulevard. It’s Monday, the 11th of November, 1996, and he is my first official interview for the book. It’s chilly and overcast in LA, and even the clouds seem to be rush- ing off to somewhere important. I’m easing into the writing process by going to the people that are publicly available, the ones that I know will be willing to talk to me. “You’ll recognize me,” Fernando has promised on the phone, and he is right. He’s six-foot-three, lav- ishly tattooed, pierced four times in the right ear, five times in the left, once in the left nostril. He’s shaved his head, but not recently, and he has a soul patch beneath his lower lip. “This is where it went down,” he says, in a somewhat high- pitched, nasal voice. The walls and ceiling are painted flat black, standard decor on the Strip, and the brown shag carpet has mostly unraveled. Afternoon sunlight trickles in the open back door where a kid in shorts and a baseball cap wheels in cases of beer. It’s the kind of place that needs its darkness. “I thought you should see this,” Fernando says, “because it’s the first place Laurie sang in LA. It was an open mike night, like they do every Monday—they’ll be doing it again tonight. I put her and Summer together that same night.” Fernando works in one of the better-known Hollywood music stores. “You get jaded,” he says about the job. “A lot of the big tour- ing acts come in when they’re in town. I’ve met Clapton, Page, both Van Halens—all three if you count Valerie. All the hot studio guys, of course. I must see a hundred kids like Laurie every year, coasting into LA in cars that barely made it over the mountains, desperate for a break. They’ve read about the Viper Room in Rolling Stone or they’ve noticed the LA addresses on the backs of their cds, or they’ve seen palm trees in too many mtv videos.” He met Laurie in June of 1994. She’d only been in LA for a week. “How it happened was, she called the store looking for a four-track recorder. I sold her the same Tascam I sell all the wannabe singer- Say Goodbye 3 songwriters, on special for one-ninety-nine. I remembered her, one, because she was cute—skinny and intense, with this bright reddish- purple hair that was kind of eighties retro. Also she’s one of those people that are a little more, I don’t know, tuned-in or something. Like they’re sucking everything in through their eyes. So when I ran into her a couple of days later at the Silk and Steel, it only took me a minute to place her.” Fernando might forget a face, but never a guitar. Laurie’s, he recalls, was “a cream-colored mid-sixties Strat, very clean,” but not suitable for the Unplugged-style format of the Silk and Steel.