When the finalized contract arrived in the mail—eighteen pages of legalese—Daniel belatedly suggested getting a lawyer. Joe said no, because he trusted Eric and Randy. Daniel suggested involving Professor Harris. Again, Joe said no.
He wasn’t anybody’s ward. He was impulsive and vulnerable. His own weaknesses told him, directly, that he didn’t need protection.
It wasn’t paradoxical. It was tautological, like all the most daunting and bewildering things in life. Things are the way they are: unthinkable. Trying to understand can feel like a struggle, but the conflict is internal to each of us, ending in surrender each night when we close our eyes.
Looking through the countersigned contract months later and seeing points he maybe should have argued over, Daniel couldn’t say for sure whether Joe had gotten a raw deal. Maybe other fledgling artists were being treated better; he didn’t know. In absolute terms, it was a gift. Joe had gone straight from babysitter to rock star, while there was nothing in the contract that would oblige him to give up babysitting.
RANDY WANTED TO MAKE AN ANTI-FOLK RECORD WITH ROCK DRUMMING À LA BECK OR major-label Butthole Surfers. He claimed that Joe’s vision of bubblegum dub was an audience-free joint that wouldn’t even fly in Brazil. That’s how he phrased it, thinking Joe would get bewildered and surrender. Joe did not. It seldom impressed him that things are the way they are.
“The bass on Doggystyle makes my vision go blurry!” he insisted to an elevator full of random label employees after his third chaotic five-minute meeting with Randy. “That’s what I want! Deep music for deaf people!” He told Daniel, who was waiting for him in the lobby with Flora to go to lunch, that Atlantic was going to turn his lovely demos into crashy-bangy alternative rock.
“It worked for Suzanne Vega,” Daniel pointed out. “They add kick drum and hi-hat to some folkie vocal thing, and there you are. That’s how CBS made a number one hit out of ‘Sound of Silence.’”
“That’s the main substance of my lament!” Joe said. “With too many drums, you can’t hear the music. I don’t need drums. I have my rhythm in the music where it belongs!”
“That’s good. Try that on Randy. Say what you just said to me.”
“You do it! He doesn’t listen to me.”
DANIEL, IN HIS FUNCTION AS PRETEND MANAGER, CALLED RANDY THE NEXT DAY. IT wasn’t a productive conversation. Joe had presented an irresolvable impasse as mere friction. Randy informed him that Joe was all set to make a record that the label would never release. Subsequently he would be free to go on making records for them at his own expense forever, until he happened to make one they liked.
Daniel replied, “That’s a no-good deal, and you’re a piece of shit.”
“Am I now,” Randy said.
“If you pile roadblocks on the creativity of Joe Harris, that’s exactly what you are. An ignorant, self-defeating piece of shit.”
“I didn’t say he can’t record any album he wants,” Randy pointed out. “I just said we won’t release it.”
“Fuck you, ass-wipe,” Daniel said, marveling at his own inarticulacy.
Randy referred him to a senior executive producer, a blond surfer-snowboarder of fifty who called himself Daktari.
DANIEL WENT WITH JOE AND FLORA THE FOLLOWING WEEK TO SEE DAKTARI, WHO TOLD them he’d be adding a rhythm track whether they liked it or not, and that from what he’d heard people saying around the office, Music for Deaf People would be an excellent working title.
Daktari was handsome and regularly spent time in France. Many years before, someone in Paris had told him it was a mark of breeding to insult people to their faces without breaking eye contact.
His skills were wasted on Joe, who replied in gratitude that he had resolved to call his opening track “Daktari.” He started writing it right there. Tapping his foot, he sang, “Daktaree-ee-ee, is Randy’s boss so maybe he can te-ell me, if we need drums on this so give the bass to me, I’ll show you drums are not the sole reason to be.”
“A percussion jam is a big crowd-pleaser,” Daktari interrupted. “Don’t you want to be bigger than Jesus?”
Switching back to normal conversation, Joe said, “Lots of Aretha Franklin songs don’t have drums!”
“Afraid of the neighbors? We can find you rehearsal space.”
“It’s not the noise,” Daniel interposed. “He has this inability.”
“You mean disability?” Daktari looked closely at Joe’s body. A flicker of horror crossed his beauteous mien at the idea that the label might have signed a disabled person.
“Inability,” Daniel said. “He can’t really listen to loud noises that sound like explosions all the time.”
“Because of what, war trauma?”
“He’s unable. It’s like when you say you’re unable to come to the phone or unable to forgive somebody. On the one hand, it’s an admission of weakness, because you’re saying you’re at the mercy of forces beyond your control, but to other people it sounds arrogant, since those forces might be you.” Flora was pushing a six-inch beanbag hippopotamus up his pants leg, and he leaned down to pet her head, the way he always did when speaking an eternal truth he hoped would accompany her on her way.
“In other words, it resembles my inability to put out a hit record with no percussion,” Daktari countered.
“I didn’t say ‘no percussion,’” Joe said. “I love congas and bongos. Can we get a studio with congas and bongos?”
“Our studios have pro arrangers and session musicians and every goddamned instrument in the book,” Daktari said. “Bring me hit tunes, and I’ll record them any way you want.”
RIDING HOME ON THE BUS, DANIEL LOUDLY MOURNED THEIR FAILURE TO SIGN WITH AN independent label. He was tortured by the illogic of their discussion with Daktari, who had bested him in negotiations without negotiating or even paying him any attention. Instead of gaining the label’s assent to songs without drums, he had committed Joe to earning congas and bongos with all-new material.
They stood for a long time talking about it at the playground. Daniel set Flora down on the ground. Indoors she was a floor baby, but outdoors she was a baby rooting for acorns in mud. Sandboxes were rare in New York, considered dangerous because of pet feces. There was never an evening when she didn’t need a bath.
“I screwed up,” Daniel said, turning over a succession of fallen leaves with his foot. He saw a shard of broken glass and picked it up so he could throw it in the trash. “We should have signed with Matador.”
“That guy likes hit songs,” Joe said. “So I’ll write hit songs. He’s going to love my new songs. Everything’s completely fine, so stop worrying.”
“My feeling was that he hated us. I mean all of us, even Flora.” He looked down. She had placed a cigarette filter in a bottle cap so that her hippo could eat it off a dish. When the hippo failed to react, she mimed eating the filter herself. “That’s a no-no!” he said. “Don’t eat litter!” She put it back. With her help, the hippo extended its prolapsed pink mouth like an amoeba over the bottle cap and its contents. “Hippos hate cigarette butts,” he said, picking it up so he could throw it away. “Even though they’re rich in minerals and fiber. They prefer grass. Why don’t you offer him some grass from your open hand?”
“Where’s any grass?” she said. “I don’t see grass.”
“I see dandelions,” Joe said. “That’s hippos’ favorite food. They call it hippo-pot.”
“I see hippo-pot!” she said. She