"Johnny! Johnny! Johnny!"
There must have been hundreds of them--maybe even thousands. Taj wasn't sure. Some were holding up
278
signs, johnny silver is my idol!!! we love you johnny!!!
WILL YOU MARRY ME JOHNNY?? JOHNNY SILVER ROCKS!!!!!
Waving bouquets of white lilies. (His favorite flower, according to his TAP profile.) Pointing their cell-phone cameras to the sky. Crying into their glitter press-on Johnny Silver T-shirts.
She noticed that traffic on Sunset Boulevard was backed up in all directions, and there were even policemen on horseback trying to manage the crowd. It was absolute mayhem, madness, total insanity. This was the Beatles landing in New York, this was Michael Jackson dangling Prince Michael III off the balcony in Berlin, this was Gwen Stefani in the middle of Tokyo.
Taj pulled the curtains firmly shut, and her tiny gesture sent a ripple through the crowd down below--the roar intensified. She raked a hand through her long, blunt-cut bob of shiny black hair. The severe cut could have been disastrous, but it only served to highlight the exquisite proportions of her beautiful face: large, slightly slanted green eyes, an adorable button nose, that sharp, Keira Knightley chin. She was model-slim and stunning in her striped French sailor's top layered underneath a shrunken antique denim jacket, tight cutoff leggings, and incongruous red patent Doc Martens. Taj didn't dress like anyone else in Los
279
Angeles, where the female population tended toward midriff-baring sweats or plunging jersey V-neck tops. Instead she always looked like she'd stepped out of a funky avant-garde European photo shoot. Edie Sedgwick for a new generation.
She stepped away from the window and took a deep breath. She was not prepared for this. She was not prepared for any of it.
For a moment Taj wondered if it was all a dream. The lavish penthouse suite, the screaming fans, the Rolling Stone cover shoot that was underway in the next room.
Tonight Johnny was headlining at the Viper Room, to launch his new album. It was meant to be a small, intimate concert, VIPs and industry insiders on
ly, but demand was so intense, they opened it up to the public. When tickets went at record-breaking levels--two and then four more dates were added. Now his label was talking world tour, even before he had sold one copy. Stadiums in Germany, airfields in France, the Staples Center. They were talking laser light shows, digital projection screens, adding a twenty-piece string orchestra and a gospel choir. It was going to be a production, an event, bigger than Woodstock, bigger than Lollapalooza, bigger than anything the world had ever seen.
And it had all started on TAP
280
With a simple TAP request.
JohnnyS11 wants to be your friend. Approve? Deny?
Taj had checked out his page--noted the moody, black-and-white photo of Johnny bent over a guitar, his white-blond bangs covering half his face. Made a note of his interests: taxidermy, ukelele, the Church of the Sub-Genius. Usually Taj never approved requests from boys she didn't know. So many of them were simply collectors, posting up pictures of half-naked women on their sites like baseball cards. The collectors always wanted to know if she had a webcam (she didn't). Her TAP icon was like a magnet for the crazies and the weirdos. But JohnnyS11's friend list was a normal array of slacker boys and nerdy-chic girls. His quote was the usual Andy Warhol one about fame, except in reverse: "In fifteen minutes, everybody will be famous." Taj was intrigued. She'd clicked Approve.
A few days later there was an e-mail message.
Check out my new show. Johnny Silver's Manic Hour.
It was on a college radio station Taj sometimes listened to late at night. Most of the time it was utter crap--just a bunch of pretentious college kids playing
281
their jazz records and thinking they were cool. The kind of kids who turned up their noses at Franz Ferdinand when the band hit the mainstream.
Johnny had started out as a break-staff DJ, one of the high school kids who ran the radio station over the summer and holidays when the college kids went home for break. Johnny's show was different. It was obvious he loved music, and not just what was obscure or hard to find; he was as liable to play a Dylan classic as he was an unknown garage band. His energy was infectious and his playlist eclectic.
On a whim Taj had called the station to request a song, and soon the two of them were talking well into the night, Johnny's voice low and slow over the wires-- he had such a radio voice, the kind that melted in your ear and made you want to never turn off the dial. And unlike most DJs, he actually looked like he sounded-- sexy. Justin Timberlake might have brought sexy back, but Johnny Silver had never lost it.
That was a year ago. Now Johnny wasn't just playing the records. He was making them. And those songs-- those songs he had played for her in her bedroom, those songs he'd sworn were hers alone--had made him a star. It had all happened so fast: He'd posted a few of them on his TAP page, and before you knew it, the kids were downloading them, trading them, begging for more. Then
282
the TAP parties happened. He'd played a beach house in Malibu, a birthday party for some celebrity at Hyde, then to a standing-room-only crowd in Palm Springs. More and more kids began coming to the gigs, and the legend of Johnny Silver grew . . .
And now here he was, at the top of the Chateau Marmont, the famed Hollywood hotel known for the numerous celebrity scandals it had weathered inside its fortresslike walls. John Belushi overdosed in Bungalow 2. Jim Morrison hurt his back jumping off the balcony. Greta Garbo repaired to its premises when she "vanted to be alone."