“…Happy birthday dear Lola, happy birthday to you!” We sang, clustered around Lola’s bunk. She was looking at us through one half-opened eye and while she didn’t seem too happy that we’d woken her up, she gave us all a hug.
“Thanks. Now fuck off and let the birthday girl go back to sleep.” She tried to roll over but George grabbed her before she could.
“Nope, we let you sleep as long as we could. You and Megan have to go do a radio show in an hour, now get your pretty little twenty-six year old ass up.” George, with an unusual amount of care, scooped Lola up and pulled her out of the bunk. She usually wasn’t above hauling us out of bed by our ankles.
“Fine, fine, I’ll get up.” Lola stumbled into the bathroom and a moment later we heard the shower turn on.
“Try to keep her out for a while, we’ve got a lot of things to do.” I said once I was sure she was in the shower.
“I really hope we can pull all this off.” Megan clapped her hand on my shoulder. “Good luck girlies. I gotta go get dressed myself.” With that, she left George and me to our plotting. We had two major surprises planned for Lola’s birthday that were both supposed to happen during our show tonight. I was originally supposed to go with Lola to the radio thing but we’d managed to get Megan switched in for me so I could stay and help orchestrate the surprise prep.
Once Lola and Megan were on their way to the show, George and I went to work. We had to do an extra bit of soundcheck and I had to make a call to an old friend about a piece of music, but by the time the others got back things were already moving smoothly.
It was hard to keep a straight face throughout the day. I did most of the press with Lola and holding back the secret damn near killed me. I was the worst person to plan surprise parties. I always wanted to tell the person what was going on just so they could share my excitement. Mikko actually had to tell me to wipe the grin off my face while we were doing soundcheck. Going off by myself to warm up helped a lot in centering myself and keeping that secret stuffed down my throat.
Finally the show rolled around and we clustered on the side of the stage for our normal huddle during the intro music. I wasn’t the only one who was visibly excited. George and Megan were grinning from ear to ear. Lola hadn’t seemed to notice, or maybe she just assumed it was excitement to get onstage. We were playing in Phoenix tonight but this whole tour had been amazing. We’d been getting nothing but love from the audience every night and we were playing tighter than we ever had.
Usually I wanted the set to go on forever, but tonight I just wanted to get towards the end, when we could put two weeks’ worth of planning into effect. I forced myself to give my whole hearted attention to the set, jumping and running and headbanging as I normally did. I’d started tying my hair back during shows now, just so I didn’t inhale my hair. For some reason letting my hair go back to its natural state had made it that much easier to choke on it.
As we finished up “A Deep Slow Panic,” I made eye contact with Megan, who nodded. Her tech, Tiny, had just run offstage after telling her something. I took that to mean that everything was in place and readied myself for cutting Lola off. She liked to talk to the crowd in between songs but I started talking first.
“Now as you all know, tonight is our beautiful singer’s twenty-sixth birthday.” I waited for the roar to die down. “And as a celebration of that, we have a surprise for you all. I’d like to bring two incredible musicians onstage. One is my beautiful husband, the other is a man I’m honored to call a friend. Ladies and gentleman, make some noise for Myles Kennedy and Slash!” The crowd went wild as the two of them walked onstage. After an all too brief kiss, I handed my guitar off to Myles and took Lola’s bass from her. She was still just staring wide eyed at the two of them, as if she wasn’t sure what was happening.
