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“I can’t figure out who you’re trying to be,” Ryan jeered, “an angsty Randy Newman or an emo Ross Bagdasarian.”
I had to ask Ryan later what that insult meant. Randy Newman is the guy who wrote ‘Short People’ in the ‘70’s, and does all the Pixar movie songs now. Ross Bagdasarian was the guy who came up with Alvin and the Chipmunks in the 1950’s.
Basically, both are kind of novelty lyricists, to put it nicely.
But Derek, even though he was a rock star, was still a music nerd – and he knew exactly what Ryan was saying.
“Fuck YOU. You make Ween sound like Jimmi Hendrix,” he roared.
If you don’t understand
that
insult, just Google the video for “Push Th’ Little Daisies.” Better yet, watch Beavis and Butthead’s takedown of it during MTV’s heyday.
Anyway, Derek and Ryan started not speaking to each other.
Then they started not being in the same room with each other at the same time.
Ryan would lay down his tracks. Derek would sing lyrics that totally trashed the intent of the song. Ryan would respond by out-badassing Derek, which would just make Derek step it up a notch when he re-recorded the lyrics.
It was like watching a tiny country go through a civil war with opposing one-man armies.
I asked Ryan at home what he hoped to accomplish with this.
“Derek’s right,” he said stubbornly. “I don’t fight. And now it’s time to fight.”
“Why don’t you fight for your original music? The stuff you actually created?”
“Because the only way to beat Derek is at his own game.”
He was doing a pretty good job of it, actually. The final products were like Bigger’s previous hits distilled into lines of cocaine with a 190-proof chaser.
But when you only get three songs done in the time you could have finished recording six or seven, it kind of eats into the budget.
A lot of bands might create their work in the recording studio from scratch, but Bigger was famous for going in with songs that were 80% finished and merely tweaking them before recording them. By comparison, their current output was glacial.
The normal process used to go something like this: Riley on drums, then Ryan on bass, then Killian on rhythm, Killian again on lead, then Derek. And then the producer would mix it with the engineer’s help.
Instead, the process turned into Riley on drums, Ryan on bass, Killian on rhythm and then lead, Derek fucking things up with inappropriate lyrics, Ryan topping him by rewriting the song, Killian doing a temp track with the changes, Riley having to redo the drums, Ryan re-recording the bass, Killian redoing all the guitar parts, Derek getting even angrier and making more changes – and then usually it all started over again in a vicious cycle.
It would have been a whole lot more efficient just to have them hammer things out in rehearsal – but Derek and Ryan refused to be in the same room together.
After two weeks of the runaround, Miles lost it. “You fuckin’ twits are burning money by the bushel, you know that?”
Derek pulled out a wad of cash from his pocket, unclipped it, and threw the money at Miles’s feet in a flurry of bills, like some villain in a bad western throwing coins at the feet of a prostitute. “If you need more, then ask for it instead of bitching. But otherwise, SHUT THE FUCK UP.”
“Make it another forty thousand dollars, you fuckin’ – ” and then Miles dropped the c-word as Derek flipped him off.
This went on for days.
It might have been bearable… except that Derek stepped up his advances towards me, too.
91
First it was little run-ins at the studio. Me getting a drink and him cornering me.
“You should be with me.”
“Stop.”
“You know he can’t make you feel the way I do.”
“What, cheated on and miserable?”
“Never again, Kaitlyn, I
swear
it.”
“You do a lot of swearing, I’ll give you that.”
“I know how to make
you
say things that’d make your little boy scout blush. Do you talk dirty to him in bed, like you used to do to me?”
“Get away from me,” I seethed, trying to push past him – because, unfortunately, it was turning me on to remember the things he used to say to me, the things he used to do to me.
“Kiss me,” he whispered in my ear. “You know you want to.”
I had to dump water, soda, even coffee on him to get him to leave me alone.
But he just came back for more.
His presence… his intensity… his sexual mojo, whatever you want to call it… his
smell,
the pheromones he was putting out, matched with a hint of his cologne –
unhh –
It was beginning to wear me down.
So I stopped going out of the control booth. Or I wouldn’t leave Ryan’s presence.
That’s when Derek started flirting with me shamelessly in front of whomever happened to be there. Avi, Miles, Riley, Killian. Derek even started breaking the ‘I won’t be in the same room with Ryan’ rule – but only to flirt with me.
I watched Ryan try to keep control, but eventually his fuse became shorter and shorter. Once he actually pushed Derek, ready for a fight. Miles and Avi jumped in to hold Ryan back.
Derek just laughed and laughed, like he’d won.
And Ryan got even angrier.
