I Buried Paul

Author’s Commentary Track

    Ok, I’ll admit this is kind of a strange idea.  We’ve all rented the DVD’s with the Director’s Commentary Tracks.  I figured what the hell?  Why not?  I have as much useless information inside of me as any of those guys.

    So, here you have it.

    I just got my first copies of the book last night.  It’s pretty cool to see it in actual book form.  My story has a face now.

    It’s not exactly what I had in mind and it’s not really a literal interpretation of the story but I do think it kind of captures the spirit of the whole thing.  Overall I’m pretty happy with it.  If nothing else, it’s certainly an eye catcher.

    I had no say in what they did.  Believe it or not, as an author I don’t yet command that kind of control over my books.  In fact, I have very little say at all in what the cover looks like.  I do think it’s kind of funny that now I have two books out and both feature hot babes from days gone by.  I’m not sure what that says about me.

    To start off, I guess I should tell you how I came up with the idea for this story.

    It actually came to me one morning as I was waking up.  I’m not sure if I dreamed it or was just putting it together as I came out of a dead sleep.  Whichever it was, I woke up and made three pages of notes and I Buried Paul was born.

    One of the things I came up with that morning was the title.  I Buried Paul is actually a Beatles reference.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, back in the day there were rumors that Paul McCartney had been killed in a car accident and that the Beatles were using a double in his place.  Supposedly, there were clues scattered throughout many of the earlier albums.

    It was said that if you took the White Album and played the song Revolution Number 9 backwards you could hear John Lennon say, “Paul is dead.  I buried Paul.”  That’s where I got the title.

  Let’s go through from the beginning.

Prologue- I Wanna Be Sedated   

    First off, I named it after a Ramones song.  Originally the book didn’t have chapter titles and a friend of mine (Suki) suggested that I use them.  I came up with song names.  I figured it fit with the Rock and Roll theme I had going.

    The prologue was one of the last things I wrote.  The novel had been completed for quite sometime but I was afraid the beginning didn’t have enough kick to it.  I was looking for something that would grab people’s attention while also giving the reader a look at my main character (Stevey) back in his heyday.  We find him in the middle of a concert whacked out of his mind.  I think it works well.

    I’m not sure exactly how I came up with Stevey’s name.  It just sounded kind of rock star-ish.  A cross between Stevey Ray Vaughn and Keith Richards maybe.

    The band name (Next Exit) was something I had always seen on road signs and I just always thought it would make for a good Eighties band name.

    We also meet some of the other main characters here.  Mainly Francis and Malcolm (the bad guys).  We get a quick glance at both.

    Not sure where Francis’ name came from.  I think I just liked that he was this burley thug with a feminine name.  Malcolm McGraw is a different story.

    Originally Malcolm had a different last name (I can’t remember what it was) but I changed it just so I could use one line.  Way down the road at the end of Chapter Eight, Stevey says, “Lighten up McGraw.  It’s only business.”

    It’s a variation on a phrase that Malcolm uses throughout the story.  It actually comes from a song.

    When I was young there was a local band called Crack The Sky around the Baltimore area.  They were always one of my favorite bands and on one of their early albums they had a song called Lighten Up McGraw.  I changed Malcolm’s last name just so I could use the song name as the last thing that Stevey ever says to Malcolm.  It’s my little tribute to one of my favorite groups.

    Overall, I like the prologue a lot.  It sets up the story quite nicely and I like the tone that it sets.

Chapter One- Comfortably Numb

    Named after the Pink Floyd song.  I love that this song fits perfectly with where Stevey finds himself seventeen years later.  Going through the motions.

    This was one of the most fun chapters to write.  First off, it was fun to set the stage for the whole thing and make up a history for Stevey and his band.

    Here’s how I came up with some of the stuff.

    Food and Lodging I thought was a great name for the debut album of a band called Next Exit.  We’ve all been riding down the highway and seen those signs that say Next Exit- Food and lodging.

    Eyes For You is the name of the bands one big hit.  Honestly, I never intended to name the song that.  It was meant to be a temporary title until I came up with something better.  I guess it was a take off on the old standard, I Only Have Eyes For You. 

   Over time, the name kind of grew on me and I thought it was pretty fitting so I kept it.  It’s just as well, I never came up with anything better.

    Next Exit’s second album was called Letters From the Left Coast.  They recorded it after they had moved out to California and pretty much sold their souls to the record company.  Again, it seemed to fit pretty well.

    Stevey’s solo album was called Claim to Fame and he records it after he’s fallen from the height of fame and fortune and I figured it was a pretty good statement on where he would have been at the time.  The album was recorded on the Furnace Branch Records label.  Furnace Branch Road was a street not far from where I grew up and I always liked the name.  I’m not sure what a furnace branch is but I think it makes a good low budget record label.

    The Bad Apple Café is the name of the club he is playing.  I always thought that if I ever opened my own bar it would have to be called the Bad Apple.  After all, I am a bad apple.  I just happen to be surrounded by a lot of good eggs so it’s hard to tell.

    Another reason that this chapter was so much fun to write was that I really got a kick out of bitter Stevey.  He’s quite the asshole and I have to admit that I love that.  I especially love the morning after he sleeps with the bartender.  It was one of the parts that made me laugh out loud when I was writing it.  Bitter Stevey rocks.

    Oh yeah, Boycott is introduced in this chapter too.  They are the evil, spoiled boy band that stands for everything that’s wrong with popular music.  It was also another name that was supposed to be temporary.  This one I’m still not sure if I like but everyone that read the early versions of the story seemed to like it so I stuck with it.

    During Malcolm’s background story I mention a singer named Johnny Thunder and a band called the Hurricanes.  They are both actually taken from the same Kinks song (One Of The Survivors).  In the song it’s Johnny Thunder and the Hurricanes.  Most people believe that this is where Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls took his name too.

    Bringing Malcolm to life was also a lot of fun too.  He is just the epitome of the evil bureaucratic businessman/mafia type that is bringing down everything that is good about music.  He’s a bottom line kind of guy who doesn’t mind cracking a few heads (or worse) if it helps him get to the bottom line.

    I like the way he works his magic on the young pop diva wantabee too.  He’s quite the sleazeball.  I love when he pulls out the bottle of Viagra.  I’m not really sure if Viagra works that fast but what the heck?  You get the gist of it.

Chapter Two- A Million Miles Away

    This song is named for a Plimsouls song.  The Plimsouls were a band in the Eighties who were only on the scene briefly.  They had a few hits (nothing as big as Next Exit’s) and this was, by far, their biggest.

    The lead singer was a guy named Peter Case.  His name is actually still Peter Case and he’s a brilliant singer/songwriter that does a kind of Bluesy, folksy acoustic rock.  I highly recommend his music to everyone.

    Stevey Richards isn’t really based on a real person but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that he was certainly inspired by Peter Case.  I guess Stevey is what might have happened if Peter Case’s solo career had never gotten off the ground.  At least my own twisted version of what might have happened.

    We open this chapter with Pete Morgan.  Morgan is the drifter, conman whose death really sets the whole plot in motion.  I was a little worried when I was first writing this story if his impersonation plan might be a little too far fetched but I think it works pretty well.

    I love that in this chapter you bounce back and forth between two characters that are going by different names.  Morgan is pretending to be Stevey and Tina Davis is being referred to by the fake name (Belinda Sweet) that Malcolm came up with for her.  Not sure exactly why I love that but I do.

    I don’t know if anybody else gets it or not but I also love when Pete Morgan is trying to pick up Loraine and he starts doing the lyrics to the Joe Walsh song.

    Got me an office with records on the wall

    Just leave a message and maybe I’ll call

    From there we go to where Francis drags Brody into Malcolm’s office after he’s beaten up Tina Davis (Belinda Sweet).  This is where we learn that the death of a Rock Star boosts record sales.  This is the basic premise that allows the rest of the story to fall in place.

     In this scene Malcolm mentions that when Elvis died they couldn’t keep his records on the shelves.  I have some firsthand experience with this.

     My mother was a huge Elvis fan and it just so happened that he died on my birthday.  The next morning my mother took my sister and I around to some of the local record stores.  We would be standing in line at the door before they opened and once they let us in it was my sisters and my job to run past the other adults in line and scoop up all the Elvis albums we could get our hands on.  My mother did pretty well that day.

    I guess my favorite part of this chapter is the way it ends.  With Pete Morgan staring down the barrel of a shot gun and trying to remember the words to Eyes for You.  I love that image.

    I really wanted the song, Eyes For You, to be like a character in the book.  I wanted it to have its own personality and identity.  Years ago I read an interview with Ray Davies of the Kinks and he was talking about his song, You Really Got Me (the name of Chapter Five).  He said that it was a part of his life that he knew that he could never get away from.  It was something he woke up with in the morning and went to bed with at night (I actually even use that line in chapter nine).

    That’s where I really got the idea of what Eyes for You was going to be for Stevey.  It’s like this huge burden that he has to carry around with him that he can never escape.  At least, that’s the way he sees it early on.

Chapter Three- Hotel California

    The line in the Eagles song, you can check out anytime you want but you can never leave was what I had in mind when I named this chapter.  It describes perfectly where Stevey finds himself.

    This is the chapter where Malcolm comes up with his master plan.  It’s the chapter where Stevey gets sucked in.  It’s the chapter where we meet Kathy and Henry.  It’s also the chapter where Stevey writes his first song in over a decade, I Buried Paul.

    Kathy is Stevey’s estranged ex wife.  I actually named her after a girl I dated briefly when I was young.  She dumped me.

    I’d like to say that I modeled Kathy after Kathy but the truth is that I haven’t really talked to her in twenty years so I have absolutely no idea what she is like anymore.  Maybe I modeled Kathy after what I imagined Kathy might be like these days.  Who knows? 

    Henry Floyd was the other character that we meet in this chapter.  Originally Henry had a very small part in the story but I just loved the character so much that I expanded his involvement in the plot.  I even came up with a new character for him to interact with but we haven’t gotten to her yet.  Although, she is mentioned in this chapter.  She’s the Pop singer for Gem records that Malcolm decides to have killed (April).

    This is also the chapter where we see Brody getting tortured.  I can’t help it but I think this part is really funny.  There’s just something dark and funny about torturing a boy band star half to death.  I know it’s a bit graphic but I love it.

    I should say that I do not promote violence against any boy band or pop diva stars.  I’m a live and let live kind of guy.  Don’t get me wrong, I hate that music as you can probably tell from my story.  At the same time, my parents probably hated my music too so I guess it’s a pretty natural thing.

    This chapter ends with Stevey writing his song.  I’ve already explained where the title came from.  It’s one of the things I woke up with in my head on that morning the story came to me.

    In the original version of the story there were no lyrics to the song and I just described it.  A friend of mine (Brian) read one of my early drafts and he suggested I write lyrics to the song.  I was a little leery as I’m not really a poet.  Now, I’m pretty happy with the lyrics.  They fit. 

    Don’t get me wrong.  I realize I’m not going to win any poetry contests anytime soon but I think it passes for a decent rock song and that’s all it needs to do.

Chapter Four- Don’t Go Back To Rockville

    One of my favorite REM songs. 

    This is the chapter where Stevey realizes he’s made a mistake and decides to stand up to the record company.  It’s also where we begin to see just how ruthless and powerful Jupiter Records is.

    In this chapter we meet Little Franky, Francis’ nephew, who is filling in for his uncle torturing Brody.  By this point Brody is pretty far gone.  He has been beaten to a bloody pulp.  Sorry but I still think this is funny as hell.

    When I was first starting to give this story to people to read I was really shocked at how much empathy people had for Brody.  Readers generally felt sorry for him.  I had to keep reminding them that he brutally beat up a nineteen year old girl.

     For this reason I added the scene where Malcolm visits Tina Davis in the hospital room.  I really put this in so I could revisit the attack and remind the readers why Brody was being tortured in the first place.   It also gave me a chance to show what a dirtball Malcolm really is.

    This ended up becoming one of my favorite parts of the book.  I love that she’s lying there in traction half whacked out of her mind on painkillers and Malcolm is feeling her up.  What a sleazy pervert.  And I love that he keeps calling her Belinda and she has no idea what he’s talking about.

    We also meet April in this chapter.  As I said earlier, in the original draft this character was mentioned in passing but you never got to meet her.  I basically wrote her into the story just to interact with Henry Floyd because I liked his character so much and I wanted to give him a bigger part.  I’m very happy with the way she turned out.  She’s got a lot of spunk.  You probably don’t get to see that until later in the story but I like April a lot.

    I named this character after a street name near where I live.  The street is called April Grey Lane and it’s a dinky little road with two buildings on it.  One is a construction equipment rental place and the other is a strip bar.  Whenever I drive by the road I can’t help but wonder who April Grey was.  Was she a dancer at the club?  I have no idea but I named April Lynn Grey after her, whoever she was (or is).

    Maybe my favorite scene in the entire book comes at the end of this chapter.  Where Stevey hits Francis with the guitar and walks out of the studio.  I especially love what the drummer says about him after he’s left.

Chapter Five- You Really Got Me

    Ok, I love the Kinks and I couldn’t not use one of their songs as a chapter title.  I’ve already explained how this song was part of the inspiration for Eyes For You.  It also fits with the chapter as this is where Stevey and Kathy are thrown back together.

    After walking out of the studio, Stevey ends up in a bar listening to a guy play the guitar.  The guy’s song list was supposed to mirror the events of the book to some degree but I’m not sure if that part really works or not. 

    He opens his set with Travelin Band by Credence Clearwater Revival kind of like the story opens with Stevey still in Next Exit.  From there he goes into Dedicated Follower f Fashion (another Kinks song) which was supposed to be a reference to Stevey and his band selling out.  Next is B.B. King’s The Thrill is Gone which represents Stevey’s fall from Grace and where he’s ended up and it’s followed by Dire Straits’ Romeo and Juliet which I suppose is a reference to his relationship with Kathy.  Like I said, I’m not sure if anybody but me gets the connection to the songs but at the very least it gave me the opportunity to mention some great music.

    While in the bar, I give a short history of Stevey’s life.  This wasn’t in the original either.  I just felt like it was a good spot to expand on Stevey some and another excuse to bring up some more great music.

    He ends up looking Kathy up in the phone book at the end of this scene.  Her address is 157 Riverside Avenue which is an old REO Speedwagon song from long before Hi Infidelity, back when they were kind of a Southern Rock Jam band.

    The big scene in this chapter is when he shows up at Kathy’s house.  I think it’s pretty funny that she thinks he’s some kind of paranoid junkie in need of medical help.  I like that she doesn’t believe him until Francis shows up and she sees the guitar string scars on his face.

    Francis again ends up taking another beating from Stevey.  This time it’s from hot coffee, a glass coffee pot broken on his head and an iron frying pan.

    I thought it was important that Stevey not come off like an action hero.  I knew there had to be some action and some confrontations but I wanted to make sure that Stevey was never really good at that sort of thing.  Every time he prevails in one of these situations it’s almost by accident.

    This is where I bring Henry back into the story.  Stevey and Kathy contact Henry because they want him to help get Stevey’s story out.  Before we get to see Henry again, we meet Ganga Joe, the Jamaican hit man brought in to eliminate Stevey.

    I had one friend who argued constantly that I needed to change this characters name and I almost did.  His argument was that the name was too cartoony and took away from the realism of the story.

    For months I went back and forth on this one and I tried to come up with another name but I never found anything that I liked better.  In the end, I decided that I could live with cartoony.  After all, my story is essentially a dark comedy with a Rock and Roll theme and I think there is something very Rock and Roll about a Jamaican hit man named Ganga Joe.

    One of my biggest concerns at this point in the story was the pace of Stevey and Kathy’s relationship.  I thought it was very important that I not rush the two of them getting back together.  I knew from the beginning that they were going to hook up again but I tried to give it a realistic slant.  I tried to make it a slow process and incorporate it into Stevey’s self realization.  Kathy is actually dead set against it.  I think it works pretty well.

    At the end of this chapter Stevey is forced to come to Kathy’s rescue and save her from the Jamaican (even though she actually shoots him).  Once again, he does it pretty much by accident.  I thought it was pretty funny that he saves her by not being able to drive a clutch.

    This is where Stevey and Kathy are really cemented together for the rest of the story and they realize they will have to work together if they’re going to survive.

Chapter Six- All Along The Watchtower

    This is the name of a Bob Dylan song but most people probably remember the Jimi Hendrix version as it was much more popular.  I probably had the Hendrix version in mind when I picked it.

        Stevey and Kathy are working with Henry to expose the record company.  This is where the plot really thickens and the thriller part kicks into high gear.

    I was really happy with the pace of the action and the story here.  I think things move along very well here and the various twists and turns fit right in.

    There’s no need to go into too much detail here as I’m assuming you’ve read the book if you’re reading this.  If you haven’t, I don’t want to give away too much.

    The scene in the café where Stevey borrows the guitar and sings I Buried Paul to Kathy is a big turning point in their relationship.  It also gives us a chance to see the second verse of the song.

    Magically, the second verse just happens to fit exactly with where we are in the story.  What a coincidence. 

    As I said earlier, I’m pretty happy with the way the song turned out.  I don’t expect any poetry publishers to come beating down my door for poems but it fits with my story.

    My favorite part here is when the folk singer turned stool pigeon (Thurston Styles) gets what he has coming to him.  I can’t help it.  I like that dark humor thing and I think it’s pretty darn funny.

    Of course their plan to expose the record company doesn’t work and Kathy and Stevey are back to square one.  This is the part where Stevey is ready to give up and Kathy has to set him straight.

    Another thing that was important to me was to make sure that Kathy’s character had a strength about her.  She is where Stevey gets his strength. 

    I knew it would be very easy to make her come off wishy washy considering she was basically getting back together with the guy who screwed her over years before.

    Kathy has a lot going for her but at the same time you get a sense that she’s kind of lost too.  Maybe not to the degree that Stevey is but you kind of feel like these two people belong together.  At least, that’s what I thought.

Chapter Seven- Train In Vain

    The Clash is one of my favorite bands of all time and I had to use one of their song titles in my book.  I’ll admit that this title might be a stretch as far as it fitting in with what’s going on but the in vain part seems to work.  Besides, it’s my book and I can do what I want.

    The chapter starts off with Stevey and Kathy finding out what’s going on with Brody and they use the information to get back at Malcolm and the record company.

    Brody is pretty far gone by this point.

    The scene where Little Franky is duct taped to the commode is one that I wrote in later.  Quite a few people who read the book suggested that I do a sequel to it.  The problem with that is I kill off most of the characters by the end (hope I didn’t give anything away).  So, I wrote this scene to leave an opening for a future book that I will probably never get around to writing.  I’m not sure I’m a sequel kind of guy.

    If I did write a sequel, it would be called I Buried Paul Too – Little Franky’s Revenge.

    My favorite part of this chapter is Henry Floyd’s big scene where he thinks he’s standing up to the record company thug but it turns out to be some guy promoting a rock band.  This is another part that I added later to beef up Henry’s role in the story.

Chapter Eight- It’s Only Rock and Roll but I Like It

    I had to throw some Stones in there.  This is probably my favorite chapter title.

    This is the big finish where everything gets wrapped up.

    Brody bites the big one.  Stevey and Kathy do it.   Henry and April finally meet.

    I’m not sure which part I like the best.  I really like the way this chapter comes together.

    The interaction between Henry and April is pretty cool and I love the goofy word game they’re playing as they try to get out of the hotel.  We even get to see April’s Rolling Stones tattoo.  Ok, we don’t actually see it but you get my meaning.

    Stevey and Kathy are at a hotel too.  The one they’re holed up in is called the Entella Hotel which is named for a Peter Case song.

    The whole sex scene was a little nerve racking to write.  I knew they would have to do it but I wasn’t sure how to handle it.  I didn’t want to make it some kind of glorified porno scene and I wanted to relate how it was for Stevey.  How it was different than just having sex.  I decided the best way to do this was to pick up from the following morning and have him remembering the night before.  I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out.

    I like the low speed car chase across town too. 

    Probably the most stressful thing to write was Stevey’s big confession under gunfire at the end of the chapter.  I was going for the dramatic moment but I was afraid it might come off forced.  I figured the bullets flying over his head would add to the intensity of the scene.

    Overall, I think it works pretty well but it took me some time to get comfortable with it.  I guess enough people have told me they liked by now so I have a lot more faith in it.

    I like the way he kind of purges his soul and ends up taking responsibility for the failures of his life.  It’s really the whole point of the book.  I always thought the story was more about Stevey’s journey than it was about the thriller angle.

    The clean up crew in the record company garage is something I went back and added too.  They have to go and put everything back together and patch up the bullet holes and what not.  I love that it’s no big deal to them and they see this kind of thing all the time.

    Dominic Vitelli is the CEO of GEM Records and I know he’s kind of a mafia cliché but he was really intended to be.  I wanted to bring the whole record industry/mafia connection together.

    And of course, the last thing Stevey says to Malcolm is my Crack The Sky tribute, Lighten up McGraw.

Chapter Nine- Eyes For You

     I figured after eight chapters of everyone else’s songs it was time to give Stevey some credit.  This chapter is basically a wrap up where I tell you what happened to all the characters.

    Stevey goes on to have a successful solo career very reminiscent of Peter Case.

    I like that all of the performers are all on kind of the same ride but they are all at different points.  Stevey had reached the pinnacle and fallen to the bottom only to pick himself up again.

    By the end of the story, Boycott is fallen from the top and one of the members is playing dives and Holiday Inns by the end of the decade (like Stevey was at the beginning of the book).  Tina Davis has become Belinda Sweet and rises to the top of the charts with the help of GEM Records.  You get the sense that she is following the same path as Stevey.

    I think the thing I love most in this chapter is the way Stevey reconciles with his song and ends up accepting it.  As I said earlier, I always wanted Eyes For You to be like a character in the book and I think this drives it home.

    This is the third time that Stevey sings Eyes For You and I like that each time Stevey has an entirely different mindset about the song as he sings it.

    We also get the third verse of I Buried Paul.  Once again, the lyrics fit exactly with where Stevey is at in the story.