Not So Pretty

They rehearsed all day.

Mike was exhausted by the end of the day. Mentally and physically. He'd had to learen twenty new songs between the first two 11 albums.

He started making mistakes trying to do some accompaniment on the guitar near the end of their first day of rehearsal.

"You ok Mike? It's not like you to make that many mistakes." El said stopping their current track.

"We've been at it seventeen hours," Lucas said from the control booth.

"These songs are mainly pop keyboard based songs, too much guitar will drown out the catchy riff's Max is playing.

"Uh, guys," Dustin said from behind his drum kit. "What if we don't add the guitar?"

El frowned, "I want Mike on stage with us. Besides, all the new material is guitar."

"Sure," Max said. But what Dustin is getting at is that, Mike doesn't play guitar on songs from the first two albums, but does on the new songs."

El laughed, "I'm sure that I and maybe the girls in the audience would like to watch Mike stand there and look too cute for his own good for those songs, but he can't be walking off and on stage."

Mike said, "I could play bass, for those songs, and you can just do the vocals, and maybe bop around more?"

"That might be fun." El said nodding.

"This kind of brings up a suggestion I have about the stage show." Mike said.

El looked at him, "We want to really ramp it up. What should we do?"

"El, you have coloratura soprano voice, or maybe even soprano leggero, you seem to be able to go back and forth without any problem. I'll bet there are vocalists out there green with envy."

"What do you want me to do?" She was smiling.

"Start adding to the show, and maybe even record songs that push your voice, or at least use what I've heard you do, but more of it."

"You have some suggestions?" El said, not looking as pleased as Mike thought she would be.

"Well, you could do, Badfinger's Without You, you would do it closer to the way Nilsson does it, but with the power of your voice. You've already done After the Goldrush acapella so you're good there. You could also do Pink Floyd's Great Big Gig In The Sky, and you will be as good if not better than Clare Torry."

"Ok, we have a month to rehearse something new like that." El didn't sound happy about doing that.

XXXXX

Later that night they were all sitting around El's hotel room. El wasn't very talkative and Dustin signalled Max for them to leave her and Mike to themselves.

"What's wrong El? I thought today went pretty good considering. I'm sorry if I slowed you guys down, you aren't used to working with a fifth person." Mike included Lucas in their troupe because he knew their sound better than anybody.

El hung her head. "I feel like I'm losing control of my band."

"El…" Mike said trying to be as gentle as possible. "Maybe you need to stop thinking of it as your band. You have two friends and talented musicians who've been with you from the start."

El looked up at him.

"And if you are serious about new ideas for your stage show, I'm sure we all have ideas. You'd just get mad if you had to come up with ideas yourself."

"I won't do that to you in a studio again…" El said looking down.

"I know, El. I'm just saying you might have to give up a little bit of control."

"Are you saying I'm a control freak? Is that what you are saying?"

Mike froze. Oh no! She couldn't go back to the way she was. A slow mischievous smile appeared on her face. "You should see your face right now."

"Geez, El, don't do that, I was scared to death."

"Relax Mike, I'm not only going to take your suggestions seriously I'm going to actually do them. Anything anybody comes up with I'm willing to try out."

"Not everything will work El, we can filter out stuff that doesn't fit."

"That's what I was thinking," she said.

"Ok, I'm beat, I need to sleep."

"Stay here tonight." El said looking at him.

He couldn't quite read her expression but he said, "no El, if a reporter sneaks up to this floor it's going to be a PR nightmare."

"I just want to sleep beside you, Mike."

"Me too, El…. It's not a good idea."

El sighed in defeat. "You know don't you, that when it's time, I'm going to be all over you?"

Mike laughed. "I'm hoping." He leaned over stumbled a bit and kissed her.

"You are tired." We are back in the studio at 5am. I love you Mike."

"I love you to El." Mike got up and left for his room.

XXXXX

"Ok, guys. Any new ideas." El said, all business but smiling.

Mike reluctantly held up his hand. El nodded.

"Ok something for each of you. I don't know if you had anytime to listen to the radio lately, but Make War Not War is in heavy rotation. I think to give the fans even more we do our solos in the song. My guitar solo and El's first solo are already there."

"Wait… what did you mean by first solo." El said.

"I'm getting to that. Max can you do Toccata and Fugue in D Minor?"

"That was my conservatory exam." Max smiled.

"Ok, but we're going to do it like a cross between Virgil Fox's Heavy Organ album and RDM's Contaminazione."

"RDM?," Dustin said.

"Il Rovescio della Medaglia, or RDM for short, they are an Italian progressive rock group, and Contaminazione is an album based on the life of Bach."

Max smiled, "I have that Virgil Fox album, purists don't like it much."

"Well they'll like it even less when they hear Toccata done as a solo you and Dustin can go nuts on it."

"Am I going to be able to play it? I'm not classically trained" El said.

"You'll be fine. You can play fast and you have good stretch. You'll be great El. I bought a tape of it so you can get an idea of the extra bits that can be done. Lucas?" Mike turned to the control booth.

"Lucas play the second track, Ora Non Ricordo Piã."

Max listened wide-eyed. They all did.

"Mike we, I can't do that." El said.

"You can El, to be fair, Max is handling a lot of the big sound and the classical sounding stuff. I have a huge amount of faith in you El. I'm just doing the power chords, you can already play the bass parts."

"Oh! That's why you had me play that bit on the guitar and the bass?" El was smiling, Mike could see she was getting it.

"Yeah, easy isn't it?"

"You are my favourite boyfriend. Ok, where does my second solo come in?"

"So, I have two ideas for encores, I'm assuming you guys get called for a few of them."

Max said, "We limit it to two and then house lights come on, but if the crowd is really enthusiastic we'll do another."

"Ok for one of them, it's all El. She does Make War Not War, but she does it acapella, and instead of screaming the last line like it is on the album and the full version with solos, she barely whispers it.

"When she is singing softly like that, you'll hear a pin drop in the audience. I can't guarantee it, but I'd bet on it."

Throughout the month they rehearsed, fine tuned the solo's, made changes here and there. Finally they were told to hit the road with the new show.

XXXXX

Mike was not prepared for how good El was in working the audience. She would prance around, bounce back and forth to each side of the stage, suggestive come-on's, and almost ear splitting vocals.

At one point, she told Lucas to cut off her microphone. She sang Neil Young's After the Goldrush, but used Preludes style to do it. Acapella but with strong powerful vocals. They could hear her at the back of the stadium.

Mike would swear he heard some people crying in the audience.

Mike wasn't surprised at the end of the show to come out for the first encore.

A red spotlight lit El up. And she began:

I see the faces, sad with their tears

They don't want us to stay

I see the faces, haunted with their fears

That we aren't going away

I see the uniforms, bloody on the recruits

They get told what to say

They stand so proud, in their once shiny boots

Shiny like the bullets they spray

I say no

That's not not what we're for

I say no

Make war not war

The song continued. The audience was respectfully quiet. Mike could see they were entranced with this new version of the song. Their rapt attention, their respect for the lyrics and for El Hopper, gave Mike a lump in his throat that he had a hard time swallowing away.

She stood there in torn army fatigues singing it.

When she finished there was a a full three or four seconds of silence. Then a lone, slow clap, then more than faster clapping, and then cheering…

… and then standing.

They were giving an El a standing ovation. She smiled and bowed.

She took off the army fatigue jacket she was wearing and with a single blue spotlight she started her apology to Mike with her song, Not So Pretty.

Again, not a peep from the audience, no murmurs of quiet talking, total pin dropping silence.

Just like the version on the album, she broke down crying at the end and sank to knees. Mike went over and helped her up, gave her a kiss and hugged her. They had not talked about doing this in rehearsals, and the audience could tell it was totally spontaneous.

They went nuts, cheering and crying at the same time. They didn't stop while MIke hugged her.

They didn't stop after five minutes.

They didn't stop after ten minutes.

A full seventeen minutes, before Mike heard El whisper in his ear. "One more Mike, then I'm done for tonight."

She ran behind a stack of amplifiers, for a quick change, then found her mark centre stage.

Suddenly a soft, but bright white spotlight hit her, she was wearing long flowing white robes. Mike thought he'd never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

El started to sing Amazing Grace.

Mike and Max, played very low key bass lines, to counter point El's El's soaring vocals

The audience was respectfully quiet. Mike felt they were having a hard time coming to grips with El's performance. Crying from several could be heard as El delivered her emotional version.

As she was winding up, she threw her head back, and raised her arms out to the sides. And slowly lifted off the stage. Mike and Max stopped playing.

Mike was in awe. How had El gotten into a wire-flying rig so quickly? There was no way she could have practiced this. He'd known where she was all the time.

If it was even possible, the audience had gone into a deathly silence.

The lights came on. El hung in the air as the crowd silently left the arena.

XXXXX

If you haven't seen 11 in concert with their Not So Pretty tour. You are missing an event. The first show of the tour was spectacular. This reviewer was stunned. No vocalist to date has made me cry like that. I suspect it's just a matter of time before El leaves her band and strikes out on her own. I can't think of one song she won't be able to sing.

And yes the rest of the band, was just as good. The long version (with just as spectacular solos) of Make War Not War is going to be 11's anthem, as we near the end of the Viet Nam era, was an event in itself. The acapella version was spectacular. No other way to put it folks, I'm running out of superlatives. And then the acapella version of Not So Pretty, clearly an appology to band member Mike Wheeler was heartfelt. She broke down crying and he came out to give her a hug. They still claim not to be a couple.

For those of you who saw it. The final song a traditional version of Amazing Grace with the low Hammond B3 sounds from Max Mayfield, and Mike Wheeler on bass for this song… [wiping eyes] um, have I said spectacular yet? The visual effect of her rising into the air is one of the best I've seen on stage or at a circus. The show was perfect.

You need to be a fan. Now.

- Rock Music Magazine

XXXXX

El was tired, but jazzed at the audience and the rest of her band's reaction to their first show, after talking to the record company, she ran to tell Mike the news.

Mike was having a shower, he opened the shower door and El was standing there. They had exchanged spare keys earlier.

"There we go, now we're even." She giggled.

"El!" Mike turned around covering himself with towel at the same time.

"Mike you need to wrap it all around yourself, I can still see your bare bottom."

"Arggh! You did that on purpose!"

"Yes. All the awkward bits out of the way now. You are all red Mike."

"I hoped you liked what you saw." Mike shrugged, "It's all I've got."

"You are beautiful Mike." She said mirroring his compliment to her over a month ago. She turned to leave the bathroom to let him get dressed.

He walked out in his pj's, "That was a good show tonight. Exhausting, but a good show."

"You get used to it. Life on the road really sucks, but we have each other. Speaking of which, good news bad news. Good news first."

"The record company really liked the unscripted crying and hugging. They no longer want you to be negative or the bad boy, or the fact the we aren't a couple. They told us that screaming fans can have their way, we get to be a couple. We don't have to fake it one way or the other."

"That means we can sleep beside each other tonight?"

"Yes, but only sleeping Mike."

"I know the rules El." He smiled her, "uh, so what's the bad news?"

"Yes, the bad news." El looked down.

"Um, Mike that wasn't a special effect at the end."

Mike snorted, "are you trying to tell me you can fly?"

El said nothing. "You're serious!" Mike said.

"Sort of, I have a very long story to tell you."