The crack started on the rooftop of a Boston hotel. It was raining and I didn’t notice the tiny blooming fissure because I was too busy letting my fifteen-year-old out to have a good go at play—ignoring that I was thirty. Literal jumping in puddles. It was the night Nirvana’s Nevermind was released. The band had played a small club downtown the night before. Their songs had spun me into bliss, the raw power rolled raw with melody, the musicians filled with fuck-all, yeah-I-can-do-that-ness. My heart had grown a few sizes. I’d stayed up all night, then missed my ride home the next morning—revisiting my high school proclivity to play hooky. Although from work rather than school, I felt not one gram of guilt. Instead, it was all joyous jumping and sliding into puddles with the band’s drummer. This was the kind of fun I hadn’t given myself permission for in my job. I’d watched plenty of bands exercise (& exorcise) their demons in mischief-making. I’d watch closely from the margins and write it into stories. Staying steady so that I wouldn’t miss anything. I wanted to get it all down and if I was all in, I wouldn’t remember any of it. But tonight I was off the clock. This wasn’t on the record, it was in the moment. My moment. And the little zzzzst that opened up inside me was a glimpse of camaraderie.

One of the reasons I love music—even if I’m anemic in that love currently—or rather can trace my passion back to its center, is the relationship between the musicians, their music, each other. I was obsessed as a young’un with reading about bands and their hijinks in Hit Parader and Creem, Rolling Stone and The Face. It all seemed so swashbuckling and romantic. Of course it did. Men. On the road. One for all and all for one. Getting up to no good, then channeling all that into live sweaty concerts. I did go through a phase of singer-songwriter-ness. Joni, Carole, James. But those were more singular moments of soppy sentiment even recognizing that more than not, those songwriters were channeling plenty of rage and spot-on stuff far from soppy. I mean “Fire and Rain”? “Both Sides Now”? Those were songs that made me cry with their power. But crying was something I wanted to avoid as much as possible. So I turned to sturm&drang. Cherry Bomb and the like. (Digression: Watching the video just now for “Cherry Bomb,” I’m struck by the absolute, front&center positioning of Cherie Currie’s sexuality in both camera work and lyrics. She was sixteen during the band’s heyday and at the time, for me, it felt radical to own my sexuality. Flaunt it and all. Now, understanding that a man—Kim Fowley—controlled the band and, per stories I find completely believable, abused that power is a very real example of what I was banging up against but didn’t see in the moment.)

My entry into musical escapism beyond reading everything I could about the hijinks of my favorite bands and memorizing all their lyrics was for me a solo experience: listening to Led Zeppelin faceup on the rug in my teenage bedroom, big black headphones on, connected by a thick, curly-cue cord plugged into my turntable; body rippling on my waterbed while my college roommates smoked a bowl in the other room and I let Roxy Music roll through me instead; walking down the streets of New York with headphones plugged into my Walkman as Soundgarden lifted me above the sidewalk. By the time I was tripping on that NYC pavement, I was getting paid to write about bands. I remembered what I’d always wanted to know: the nitty-gritty behind-the-scenes moments that made me feel as if I were there. And I did that. A lot. Edged right up to the madness pre-show, post-show, during the show. Onstage, offstage, center stage, backstage. I watched but didn’t join in because I definitely didn’t trust I could carry a HunterS. or even Tom Wolf-ian kind of angle given letting go too completely would lose my perspective. I absolutely did a good imitation of unfurling my fuck-it-all flag but really I kept a lot of the corners tucked in, dancing on a whole lot of tables in bars, yet always keeping an eye on where the edge was so I wouldn’t fall off.

Which was why that night on the roof was so damn freeing. I let myself fall. And dance. And stomp. Get wet and not care. We made such a ruckus that one of the hotel’s security guards came up and chased us off. The roof was off limits to guests just like me sinking myself in this kind of fun with a musician who I would definitely be writing about in the future was possibly a no-no. But I didn’t give two twists about that. The little crack had let in some light around being a part of something. A taste of the connection and magic that is heady around being given permission to let loose, hell, be expected to let loose. Obviously, this isn’t something only R&R musicians own but I’d watched that world for so long, it was the one I wanted to bash into. And that night I did. Fully. Even after the guard sent us back downstairs and into the future where we had more fun than not. For a while anyway. It wasn’t constant, but sporadic enough over the next many months to remind me what this kind of connection inside a band, music, a musician can feel like. Until it wasn’t anymore. The tapering off of the moment wasn’t acrimonious at all. More just life stepping in. And even a decade later there was still a good brief flash of connection between us until the stratosphere took him well beyond my world.

The lingering effects of this shift in our friendship was much more subtle though. At the time I was also realizing that my idea of music’s magic was so much more complicated as a woman in the business of it. Much like the Runaways observation above, I was on guard against assumptions and sexism in the industry more than I wasn’t. The sense I’d embraced my own swashbuckling sexuality and could damn well do what I pleased with it had the sword’s blade turning ever-so-slightly in my direction. And I got pricked. And I wouldn’t cry. But the problem was, music made me cry. Had me feeling things that required my softening up and letting go. This felt dangerous. The who I was playing in those puddles on that rooftop, open to it all, wanting it to go on forever, had become the who too exposed, and, in the words of another Who, I’d decided I wouldn’t get fooled again. Into letting down my guard. While I wouldn’t trade in that rooftop frolic and all its subsequent fun for anything, in a larger sense, my equilibrium was not in any shape to recognize it was OK to feel deeply connected while still protecting myself from the larger world of manipulation and bullshit. I just didn’t know how. And I didn’t know where to start to figure it out.

So I pulled an inner gate down and stopped letting the music in. By the time I was at Elektra in the business of the business and the music I loved had in a lot of ways come apart at the seams or at least began to mature into something other, I’d let my cynical self decorate the place. Twenty-plus years later and I still stare at the pictures I put on those walls. Slashy bits that will not invite tears. When I step outside the room, I see my fear squireling around trying to dodge musical emotion, which I connect with manipulation. I also recognize how that comes from a lack of courage to let the cracks happen so the place can fall down and I can start again. If I’m ever going to finish this book I’m writing, I’ll need to enter the rubble. A sledgehammer of sorts has come while listening to Bono read his book Surrender. I’ve been taken by surprise as he chips away at my resolve, er, wall, around music and emotion. The soundtrack of the book has got me weeping. His storytelling has got me doing that too. I neither good nor bad either. Just is as things tend to be. Exposed. Which is the point. One crack leads to another, but the tumbledown doesn’t destroy altogether, maybe just clears the way. I just need to remember that.