You, You, You

INTRODUCTION

So this is what it feels like, I thought to myself as the plane touched down in Mountain View, California.  I tried to control the butterflies that were apparently pile-driving each other in my belly.  This is what it’s like to finally bust out of your hometown.  I hadn’t been very far from my home in Detroit, MI in the last ten years.  Sure, there were family vacations to North Carolina and Chicago as a child, but those memories seemed cloudy and distant at best.  It was as if in the last decade, while me and my band mates in Spin Control had worked like dogs to gather the modest local following we had, everything before vanished into obscurity.  The music and my band mates— that was my main focus all these years, and now it had finally paid off.  I felt like this was happening to someone else. It couldn’t be me… could it?
                Unbuckling my seat belt and waiting to gather my carry-on from the overhead compartment, I felt a slap on my left shoulder.
                “Can you even fucking believe ANY OF THIS, Iz?!  I think I’m going to throw up!”  It was our bassist and my oldest childhood friend, Liz.  She occupied the seat directly behind me, closest to the aisle.
                “Yes I can believe it, Lizard Breath, and if you’re going to puke, do it on that old lady across the way who wouldn’t stop staring at us the whole flight.”  I played it cool, but I honestly felt like I could lose my lunch from excitement as well.
                 I had to admit, me and the girls did stand out in a crowd.  It was 1992, and in the midst of all the neon warmup clothes, fanny packs, grunge flannels and scrunchies, the ladies of Spin Control looked like a combination of Sid Vicious, Cyndi Lauper and aliens from Mars.  
                There was Liz Cleary, affectionately nicknamed Lizard, percussive bassist extraordinaire, who looked exactly like something out of a Sex Pistols publicity photo every single day.  She rarely wore anything that wasn’t a plain t-shirt, black pants, and a leather jacket.  Some days her face was veritably swallowed up by layers of excessive eye makeup.  She preferred to cut her naturally straight, long, black hair into choppy layers of all lengths, and to get those layers as pointy, messy and spikey as possible.  Think Joan Jett with a lot more styling wax.  The hairstyle and makeup perfectly accentuated her piercing, pale blue eyes that seemed to burn holes through any male audience member’s head and heart.  She definitely had no problems in that department.  She was also the closest thing I ever had to a sister; we were practically inseparable since grade three.  Liz was everyone’s best friend, even when the other band members were at each other’s throats.  She definitely served as group peacemaker—something that, at times in the past, was invaluable to the life of Spin Control.
                Then there was the baby and drummer of the group: tiny, blonde, brown-eyed, pixie-haired Jamie Dunn—or James, as the we were fond of calling her.  After a string of five (yes, five) fired drummers, it was seventeen-year-old Jamie who came to an audition in 1990 and graced us with her signature style and energy.  Jamie was younger, with nineteen years under her belt compared to my and the other girls’ twenty-seven, but make no mistake:  she was a powerhouse behind the kit.  She was only five feet tall and somehow managed to develop muscle power fit for a pro wrestler.  She never gave out, and she never gave anything less than her absolute, sweaty all on stage.  I truly never understood how she pulled it off.  Icing on the cake? She worshiped Cyndi Lauper.  She was a tutu fanatic, glitter fiend, and lipstick aficionado who happened to eat drums for breakfast.  She was Spin Control’s lucky charm.
                On lead guitar was the brooding, soulful Ruby Cameron, with appropriately fiery red hair falling in a mass of curls across her blue-green eyes when she played.  I was always jealous of her freakish, kind of scary beauty.  Sometimes she gave me the chills, and I am straight as they come!  She had guitar chops that could stand up to the best of ‘em—it was hard to find another female lead player with as much raw talent and melodic intuition as Ruby possessed.  She was moody, often to a fault, and we actually fired/rehired her a whopping six times throughout Spin Control’s history together.  She would fire up, lose her shit on what would seem like a whim, do something stupid to get herself ousted, and then we would eventually realize we would never find a better player and ask her to come back.  It seemed like a cycle that would probably never end.  Ruby had a lot of demons in her past from childhood.  Liz and I knew full well what she had been through, but we learned not to bring it up for fear of beast-Ruby rearing its ugly head.  We let her channel her pain and frustration into her guitar playing, which seemed like the best solution for all of us, at least for now.
                Then there’s me, Isabelle “Izzy” Starnik, rhythm guitar player, passionate lead singer, seasoned loudmouth, social activist, and anchor of the group.  At least that’s what Spin Control’s last write up in the the paper said about me— I wasn’t so sure about all that, especially the “anchor” part.  What a load of bullshit.  I just thought of what I did as being myself… and singing like no fucking tomorrow.  I hated the standards and expectations hanging over female musicians like lead weights about to drop.  Gotta be pretty, gotta wear this, gotta move this way, gotta sing that way.  It all seemed like a farce, and one that I was more than eager to point out on stage.  I liked to feel masculine, to feel aggression and show it, while performing.  Anything else would have felt unnatural to me.
                It was my idea to change the name of the band from The Joysticks to Spin Control in 1984, after our music took a sharp turn from generic 80s pop-rock to the searing, commentary-loaded, feminist, political hard rock we became known for around Detroit.  My other nickname was Medusa, or just “Do”, a direct result of the untamed mess of long, light brown, wavy hair I have atop my head.  Many times my eyes were closed when I sang, but then they would open wide and charged with energy, revealing their unique shade of mesmerizing olive green.  Again, the local paper’s words, not mine.  Mesmerizing?  I think I’ll just go with boring and deep set.  I went through many stages of personal style, some more girly, some more edgy, but lately I had settled on a fairly steady flow of tight black jeans, chucks or Doc Martens boots, and a shirt with a statement.  I had been onstage wearing everything from a see-through mesh blouse with a picture of a coat hanger covered in fake blood, to simple t-shirts with slogans like “fuck Reagan” or “burn down the patriarchy”, to just a plain black bra with the word “slut” scrawled across my stomach in permanent marker.  I was more energetic than the other girls, too, thrashing and jumping all over the stage when I played.  It’s not like the other girls were statues, but I always had people staring at me more than them.  Never really got used to that completely.  Here’s how I try to explain it— when I performed, something took me over spiritually, and no one could bring me out of my trance until I was ready to emerge.  Sometimes  I’d stay in this mode for an hour or more after a set, my band mates learning to let me cool off until I decided to relax and be social again.  I am a mysterious, intelligent mad hatter, and a force for any other frontman (or woman) to reckon with… Oh, please.  By now you must know, the paper, not me.  
                It was time to exit the plane, now, and experience the bright sunlight of Mountain View, California.  We emerged, one by one, and smiled into the warm glow of a place that, to us, represented success, adventure, pay-off and validation.  All four of us brimmed equally with gratitude and joy.  Here goes nothin’…

                Two weeks prior, I received a phone call from a secretary who claimed she worked for Neil Young.  Thinking it was a joke, I said something wildly sarcastic into the receiver and hung up promptly, only to hear the phone ringing again three minutes later.  This time the voice on the other end was male.
                “Hi, am I speaking to Izzy Starnik of Spin Control,” the voice asked in a friendly, if nasal, tone.
                “Yeah, you are. Do I know you?”
                “Uh—no, not really, but I’ve been following you and—“
                “Ok, listen freak, I don’t know what you’re getting at but I don’t really have time for this.”
                “Izzy, my name is Neil Young, and I’m a big fan of what you ladies are doing up there in Detroit.  I’d like you to come play at my Bridge School Benefit concert next month if you can squeeze it into your schedule.”
                “I—could you run that by me again?”
                “Neil Young here, requesting Spin Control to play the Bridge Benefit in two weeks… I’d be glad to fly you all to California and put you up if that would be all right.  I think more people need to see you perform.”
                “And how do I know you’re not some bozo from Highland Park making a prank call?”
                “Have you checked your mail lately?”
                “No… uh, hang on one second.”  I left the phone dangling from my apartment wall and ran down one flight of stairs to unlock my neglected and overstuffed mailbox.  I ran back up to the phone with the pile of mail and discovered a large manila envelope from Neil Young’s manager’s office.  It had been postmarked from California five days ago.  I ripped it open and found a letter of invitation for Spin Control to play the benefit concert.
                “Oh… my… God…” was all that I could get out.  Neil began laughing on the other end of the phone.
                “Believe me now?  Listen, I think you ladies are an important voice in rock and roll—one that doesn’t get heard often enough.  Your music is outstanding—I saw you at I-Rock twice this year, and I gotta tell ya, you inspired me.”
                “You… saw us?”
                “Yeah, I happened to be in town on tour and I wanted to see a local show the night before our gig.”
                “Yeah, I couldn’t go see you because we had another gig the next night… I’m sorry for being so rude. This is pretty bizarre.”
                “No harm done, Izzy.  Listen, you talk it over with your bandmates and give my secretary a call back by tomorrow morning if you can.  Like I said, don’t worry about expense— just bring your gear and the clothes on your backs.  Everything else would be on me.  Take care, now, okay?”
                “Okay… hey.  Thanks, Neil… wow, that sounds ridiculous.”
                “My pleasure.  I look forward to hearing your decision.  Peace.”  The receiver clicked.  I stood staring at the letter in my hands, seemingly unable to move.  Ten seconds later I sprang from my seat by the phone and ran up two flights of stairs to Liz’s apartment in the same building.  I swear I nearly beat down the door.  It slowly opened with a creak.
                “Ohhhhhhh my God, Iz, what the fuck do you want?  It’s 8 a.m…”  Liz grumbled in her pajamas from the doorway.  I shoved the letter at her, and after some focusing and refocusing, Liz managed to read it in full.  She passed out and hit the floor with a thud.
                In the next couple of hours, Liz and I visited Ruby and Jamie, and before long everyone was on board.  Now we were here in California, ready to meet one of our musical heroes, hang out with a slew of recording artists we listened to and loved, and play a show that would expose us to a bigger audience than we’d ever known before— all for a wonderful cause.  It was absolutely surreal!  I knew, I just had an overwhelming feeling, that this was going to be the beginning of the rest of my life…