Usual Disclaimer Applies: I do not own any characters of Sailor Moon- The credit goes to the great Naoko Takeuchi. Nor do I own any songs mentioned in the story- All of which are sung/written by John Mayer. Sadly, I don't own him either. Rolling Stone Magazine; March 2004 Issue - the last article in this Chapter about "Darien Briggs, famous Guitarist" was taken off RollingStone.com, which was originally found as an article on John Mayer.
Title: Bound for Glory
Chapter Title: Meet the Musicians
Author: Marmalae
Concert at: FrankErwinCenter; Austin, Texas, USA
Date: 11/16/03; 7:30-10:00PM CST
Darien Briggs: All Access Pass
Entitled to: Serena Hewitt and Rei Harmon
Tucking golden blond wisps of hair behind her ears she looked ahead, making a mental count of how many people were ahead of her- grunting, she mumbled, "About 83 ahead of us. Not a single soul behind us."
"What was that," A certain raven haired girl asked, a pair of deep violet eyes looked at her curiously. "Serena, I know you're excited to get the autograph, and I am too, but face it, the line is huge and there's only one person up there to sign all these posters!" Rei, a school friend of Serena's, giggled and clutched her own picture of the famous singer-guitar player close to her chest. "He's so hot though!"
Rolling her eyes Serena turned back to looking ahead, the line was moving at about one step forward per minute. At this rate it would be past midnight when they even managed to reach the front! She angrily grasped the glossy poster of the man, but soon loosened her grip, careful not to wrinkle the paper. Her frown melted away to a faint smile when she stared down at the picture: A pair to ocean blue eyes seemed to stare back at her, with a pair of sensual lips curved upward in a smile he held his smoothly sculpted instrument in his lap, a finely tanned arm wrapped lazily around it. "Yeah," Serena nodded in agreement with Rei's last statement. "He is… muy caliente!" She laughed along with her friend as they tried to formulate a statement in Spanish meaning, 'Very hot.'
"Well, thanks for waiting so long! I didn't know my fans were so committed that they'd stay here till 1 in the morning for an illegible scribbled signature on a piece of paper." He winked, but his smile was forced and posture slumped, probably from the heat of the day, Serena concluded.
She knew from the beginning of his concert she was going to do something dazzling to him, something so stupendous, that when he walked away from her he'd be thinking, 'Wow. I love this place. I love that girl.' But, unfortunately for her, nothing like that managed to happen. Instead, the only words that came from her mouth were, "Whoa. Damn, you're tall." TALL?! Serena mentally smacked herself. 'Shit.' "Uh, I mean…" Serena turned tomato red and held the poster she wanted to have signed (eventually,) at her feet.
"Excuse my dumbfounded friend here," Rei butted in. "Hi, my name is Rei Harmon, and I'm like, your biggest fan! All I'd really like is to have these posters autographed. I love your songs, my personal favorite is 'Comfortable' – it's so romantic!"
He smiled one of those heart melting, sensual smiles at Rei and wrote in big loopy handwriting on her poster, "Darien Briggs."
"And you?" He turned back to Serena, whose face was slowly but surely turning back to its original peachy color. "Surely you have a favorite song if you came to my concert." He raised one thick eyebrow, as if expecting to hear a quick answer. Celebrities and their big egos, please, spare me!
"Uh, well…" Stammering with her words Serena spoke broken sentences, "I like all your songs. They're all so thought provoking. Yeah, sweet. And your lyrics are so beautiful about love and people's lives."
"Fine words coming from a girl who probably hasn't even hit puberty yet." He mock laughed.
"Now wait just a minute here…" Serena pointed an accusing finger at him, blond eyebrows furrowing, it was easy to see she was becoming frustrated.
"Don't worry, I was only kidding! You're what, about 13 years old, of course you've hit puberty, but the only problem is that it just doesn't show yet." He smiled and winked again.
For the second time in five minutes Serena's face was turning red, sudden blood rushes to the face aren't healthy for young girls, y'know. "Excuse me but, what right do you have to tease strangers- especially ones that are your fans? For all you know, I probably hate your 23 year old guts now!"
"Oh, but I know you don't." He reached his hand out asking for the poster in Serena's hand. Rolling her eyes, she handed it to him hoping to see him sign it in that silver sharpie pen he'd used on Rei's paper. Instead he reached for a stamp, pausing to dip it in ink- then, in one swift motion stamped his name in bold red letters on her paper. Serena stared, mouth hanging open, eyes wide, and arms folded across her chest.
"What? I did NOT just wait 4 hours in line to see you STAMP my poster with red ink!"
"Now you hate me." He chuckled mischievously. "I'm sorry." The former-favorite celebrity of Serena's made a fake puppy-dog face and then turned it into an evil scowl. "Hey Andy, let's get rolling!" He motioned for his good friend, and also the travel manager for the band, Andrew Anderson to finish packing and load the 18-wheeler tour bus they were using to move from state to state around the US.
Contemplating on whether or not to kick Mr. Darien Briggs's nonexistent ass back to hell (it was a lovely ass, by the way,) Serena watched his band pack up and the "clean-up" crew begin their usual routine: Take down lights, take down curtains, take down equipment – you get the idea.
"Serena," Rei spoke idly, while twirling her long, raven locks between her fingers, "How are we supposed to get back to my house from here?"
"WHAT?" This day went from bad to worse in less than two seconds. Really now, and they had always said the dumb ones were the blond haired. My dear friends, Rei is living proof that brunettes fall into a category by themselves. "So you're saying, your Mom drove us here, told us to have a great time at the concert… but did not intend on picking us up?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Thank god for cell phones…" Serena mumbled appreciatively.
Private Residence: 12800 Rustic Rock Drive; Austin, Texas
Owners: Mr. and Mrs. Hewitt
Conversation: Serena Hewitt and Mother
Date: 11/18/03; 6:35PM CST
"And that, dear mother 'o mine, is why I'd like a guitar."
"I've told you once Serena, you want a guitar? Well, go buy it yourself. For goodness sakes you're a 13 year old girl, go baby-sit, mow the lawn, walk a dog, get off your lazy little butt and do something!"
Ah, time to switch to the old, I'll-love-you-forever-and-live-in-eternal-gratitude look. One of those and she'll never say no again. Electric guitar, here I come!
"You know what, I'll buy you a guitar, but you better practice. I'm serious. If you don't, and not only will you be paying for the guitar, you'll be doing chores you didn't even know existed. You understand, young lady?"
"Yes ma'am." Score, baby!
E-mail From: "Serena Hewitt" guitargrlyahoo.com
E-mail To: "Rei Harmon" dariensexybeasthotmail.com
Title: Holy Crap!
Time Sent: 11/18/03, 10:38PM CST
Rei! You WILL NOT believe what just happened! Guess who just got conned into buying me a guitar? (Plus the case, amps, pedals and metronome that goes with it!) We stopped by Strait Music this evening to get the stuff. The guitar's a beauty, by the way. Now, if I could only play it…
E-mail From: "Rei Harmon" dariensexybeasthotmail.com
E-mail To: "Serena Hewitt" guitargrlyahoo.com
Title: RE: Holy Crap!
Time Sent: 11/19/03, 6:14PM CST
Serena,
It was your Mom who bought it. No duh. She's so gullible. (No offense…) Well, glad to know you FINALLY got the goddamn thing. Playing? Practice makes perfect, right? Which leads me to think: Nobody's perfect, so why practice? But then again, practice makes you better. But why waste time, when you know there's always gonna be someone better than you?
Crap. I should think of it best not to think in certain situations.
On another note: Jazz Band has officially decided to drop their one (and only,) guitar player, Mr. LaCour is desperate to find a player. You gonna audition?
Telephone Conversation: Briggs to Anderson Residence
Type: Local Call (New York)
Date: 12/05/03; 1:37PM EST
Briggs: Hey Andrew.
Anderson: Please tell me you have a reason for calling.
Briggs: No.
Anderson: Listen man, enjoy your month break as long as you possibly can, 'cause when we get back on the road and start touring again, you're gonna wish you were sitting in your apartment.
Briggs: I know. But if you were as miserable as me…ugh, no girlfriend, no friends – that are around for the holidays at least – and not a single thing to do in my "pent house" of an apartment!
Anderson: Relax. Girlfriend? I thought you were going out with, what's her face, Beryl Connelly? No wait, let me guess, she dumped you.
Briggs: Good job, genius. Hmph, you'd think she could at least inform me, right? She went to the Grammy's stuck like glue, literally, with some guy I couldn't even recognize. Can you say bitch? Can you?
Anderson: Bitch?
Briggs: Very good! Kudos for you…
Anderson: You know, for some guy who can supposedly point and say, 'You, over there, I want you,' you're having a pretty hard time getting into a steady relationship.
Briggs: …I just said Kudos…
Anderson: Forget that, the guys and I are going over to Chad's house this evening. Nothing's better for killing brain cells than playing video games. Care to join us?
Briggs: Nah, I think I'll pass on this invite, killed enough brain cells working at a gas station back during the stale music period. That's definitely something I don't want to repeat. Anyway, I've been working on a song, it's half done and –
Anderson: And you're not gonna step out of your apartment until you're finished. Am I right?
Briggs: Yeah. I've got a feeling on this one though, it was all like, 'Bam!' and I had it! I'm sure I can finish it…
Anderson: You do that, then.
Briggs: Yeah. Talk later.
Anderson: Bye.
[Dial Tone]
School Notice [Private]: Serena Hewitt- Jazz Band!
Sent By: Steven LaCour; Jazz Band Instructor
Date: 12/10/03; 3:25PM CST
To Serena:
I've heard you've started guitar. (Don't ask me how I know, it's a teacher thing.) Would you be interested in joining Jazz Band? We're short a guitar part. I'd be glad to teach you and help you out along the way; the guitar is an amazing instrument! I'm so glad you've decided to play it!
Sincerely,
Mr. LaCour; Jazz Band Instructor
School Notice REPLY [Private]: Serena Hewitt- Jazz Band!
Sent by: Serena Hewitt; StudentRm. 420
Date: 12/11/03; 8:10AM CST
To Mr. LaCour:
Thanks for giving me this privilege of joining Jazz Band! I was actually going to ask you this afternoon, but it seems like you got the news first! I'd love to join and have talked to the counselor about a schedule change! When do you do lessons?
Thanks,
Serena Hewitt; Rm. 420
School: Canyon Vista Junior High
Area: Band Room
Date: 12/11/03; 3:40PM CST
"Uh, Mr. LaCour," Serena placed her guitar (in its case,) carefully on the ground before advancing towards the daunting office.
"Hey, Serena! Glad you could make it after school today!" Mr. LaCour was an old man, in his late 50's, at about 5 feet 7 inches tall he didn't really intimidate anyone; he had a round head that was as shiny as a bowling ball, wrinkle lines around his eyes and on his forehead, and a kangaroo-pouch stomach. Nope, he wasn't much of a looker, but spirit-wise, this man covered much ground. "Ready to get started on that lesson?"
"Already, sir?" Serena questioned him, of course she was hit by surprise at his sudden comment because she'd come here only to discuss lesson times and the cost.
"Cost?" he chuckled casually, "No need for it, I'm only glad you decided to help out the band! The least I could do is help you out! About lesson times, hmm, we'll just say everyday right after school for two hours."
"TWO hours?!" Serena exclaimed, this was just an instrument – no way was she going to play on it for two hours right after school! What about friends? Sports? Her LIFE in general?
"Listen Serena, you wanna play guitar, right? You wanna be good, right?" he spoke calmly, as if he knew that Serena had come to him for those reasons only. "I'm sure you can take 2 hours and play your heart out for me." His response came in a small, slow nod.
A sleek electric guitar came out of its case, colored brownish, reddish and yellow it modeled an old Stevie Ray Vaughn Stratocaster, one of the best of its time.
"I'm impressed!" Mr. LaCour spoke, "It looks like you chose a good model!"
"Thank you, sir!" came an instant reply, "That Strat cost quite a bundle also!"
"That might be so, but it won't do any good for you…"
"WHAT?" exclaimed Serena, "You've got to be kidding me!"
"Its strings are out of tune," began Mr. LaCour, but before he could continue, an enraged Serena Hewitt broke in:
"I…no wait, my Mom paid good money for this instrument, and I bet its strings were in tune when we bought it!" Causing Mr. LaCour to smile and then break into a chuckle, Serena could only stare with a completely dumbfounded look and wonder what she had said wrong. Grabbing a piece of chalk, he went to the board and wrote: 'Guitar 101.' After underlining it multiple times he turned back to Serena and spoke:
"Serena, you've got a lot to learn, so sit tight."
The two hours flew and before Serena knew it, she
realized that playing a guitar didn't mean strumming its strings and
moving your fingers around to make a sound, it meant learning notes,
clefs, tuning, dynamics and other things that went completely and
totally over Serena's head the first time she heard them.
"Tuning," she spoke proudly after her first lesson with Mr. LaCour, "It means to adjust the string to its right pitch by using the pegs at the top of the instrument or the fine tuners at the bottom. An instrument can easily go out of tune but can be fixed in a matter of minutes by using your ears to figure out the pitch or by buying one of those real expensive tuning devices. And since I'm broke, so I guess my ears will have to do." Serena smiled cheekily, this had been a progressive day to say the least.
"Nice, Serena! I'll see you tomorrow during 3rd period and after school at 3:30 sharp!" Mr. LaCour spoke to the retreating figure walking out the Band doors with her guitar.
Giddy and excited she headed back home, instrument slung over her right shoulder and backpack over her left.
News: Rolling Stone Magazine; March 2004 Issue
Featuring: Darien Briggs
Title: Songs in the Key of Briggs
Interviewee: Jennifer Carlton
Intro: He talks a blue streak and longs for love, but if you call him sensitive, he'll smack you…
Darien Briggs is picking up serious speed as he cruises down a New York highway in his steel-blue BMW. "Turn on the butt massager," he says, then demonstrates the car's assortment of toys: ventilated seats, voice-activated radio, computer navigation system, built-in phone. A few minutes later, just when our asses have started to limber up, a police car pulls out behind us, siren blaring. On the side of the road, the twenty-three-year-old musician lets out a sigh of resignation, reminds himself of the etiquette in these situations -- "Hands on the wheel, windows down, radio off" -- and assumes the position as the cop approaches his window. "You were doing 74 in a 55," says the Officer, who obviously doesn't recognize the multiplatinum-selling Grammy winner. Briggs folds the ticket into his pocket without examining it and gets back on the road that leads to Jones Beach in Wantagh, New York, where, in a few hours, he will play for a sold-out crowd of 14,000 fans.
"I'm not going to let this ticket thing bother me," he says, more to himself than to me. Briggs's mind never lingers on one thing for very long. Behind his wide blue eyes there is a constant buzz of thought, like the purr of a computer booting and rebooting and rebooting. He talks a lot, and haphazardly, but is rarely less than articulate and often sounds as if he's quoting a lyric he has yet to write down.
Out-of-the-box success is a new thing for Briggs, whose previous CD, Room For Squares, was a slow burner that was out for nearly a year before it went platinum. Briggs sold 3 million records without any glitzy marketing push, building an audience the old-fashioned way, by touring relentlessly. With record sales sinking in the past couple of years, Briggs and artists such as Beryl Connelly (who toured with Briggs last year) have been able to attract an unusually broad fan base: everyone from frat boys to soccer moms.
Except for his bedroom, where clothes are strewn across the floor and on top of his unmade bed, Briggs's Manhattan apartment is neat and free of clutter. In the living room, a baby grand sits next to a taupe sectional couch, and his Grammy is perched alone on the fireplace mantel. "Want to hold it?" he says playfully, and, of course, I do. He still has the foam padding -- with a cutout in the shape of the little gold gramophone -- that cushioned the award in the mail; he's thinking of having it framed.
Today he is dressed in loose-fitting jeans and a brown polo shirt with a tiny embroidered silhouette of himself where the alligator might normally go. "An ill-founded merch idea," he explains, and then gestures to four light towers behind the sofa. "That's the gayest I ever got, putting four different -- color gels in those lights." This duplex costs him $7,500 a month, but he thinks it's worth the expense because he wrote a record here.
He grabs a bag of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies as he leads me up the stairs to the modest recording studio on the second floor. On the studio wall, a framed platinum album for Room for Squares and a black-and-white photo of Jimi Hendrix playing at the Isle of Wight festival; on the desk, a multitude of hard drives and unopened mail, including a box containing the Proactiv skin-care system, ordered from a TV infomercial. ("If they jacked the price up to fifty dollars a bottle, I'd still pay it," he says.) "This room is the pride and joy of my life," he coos, staring out of the windows at uptown Manhattan. "Look at the view. So cool." And then he adds a classic Briggs non sequitur: "I fear snipers sometimes, and then I have to move out of the way."
In the back lounge of his tour bus, Briggs is still dressed in his sweat-soaked clothes from tonight's show at the Tweeter Center in Camden, New Jersey. He looks in the mirror, grabs an Afro pick and combs his hair flat against his head. Then he swoops his bangs upward, so that he's got a curlicue that wouldn't look out of place in a John Waters flick. "I wrote a fan letter to Michael J. Fox when I was eleven, asking how I could get my hair like his," he blurts. "Around the time of Secret of My Success, he had a little mullet, with a tuft thing behind his ear. I tried to get that going, but my hair is too thick."
A week after the show in Camden, I meet Briggs's parents, Margaret and Richard -- a retired schoolteacher and principal, respectively -- at their home in Fairfield, Connecticut. Darien is the middle child between his older brother Carl, 27, and his younger brother Ben, 24, and Margaret says that her pop-star son was always "a peaceable kid." She has laid out a plate of Milanos on the table on the back porch of the home the Briggs's have lived in since 1984. "He would not demand a lot of attention," she says. "He would go off and do things by himself."
Before he picked up guitar, Darien wanted to be a radio announcer. "Maybe it was the booming baritone or the glib delivery," he says. "I used to sit in the bathroom with the lights out and just talk. Just riff. I'd go for hours. I also used to record radio shows in my bedroom. It was, 'WDARIEN, your Number Two radio station, because you're always going to have one better than this.' "
Everything changed in 1990. Darien's neighbor gave him a tape of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble. Listening to it, Briggs had a revelation. "It was like, 'What is this, and where is the rest of it?' "He says. "It was the sound of perfection for me. That sounds totally corny: My life was black-and-white and then it was Technicolor. But I just remember going on this hunt for the rest of it."
He became obsessed with Vaughan and Hendrix and Buddy Guy and Robert Cray; all of his free time was spent playing his guitar. His grades suffered, and several times he asked his parents to let him drop out. As he saw it, he was going to be a famous guitarist, so why bother with high school?
"It frustrated the hell out of my mom," he says. "She saw my conviction as though I was in a cult and needed to be reprogrammed. So she took me to two different therapists to try to get me to stop playing guitar." He says his first hit; "No Such Thing" - about a kid who's tired of being told "to stay inside the lines" -- was largely a response to his parents' skepticism. "I remember standing at my mom's door and saying, 'Just watch, just watch,' " says Briggs.
"We've seen so many teenagers who didn't pay attention to their studies because they had dreams of being a basketball star or whatever," Margaret offers. "And in the end they got nowhere. We didn't want to just go, 'Oh, yeah, Darien, good idea.' "
"I am no judge of his music," says Richard, who at age seventy-six is nineteen years older than his wife. "I am the most un-hip guy you'll meet, but my experience with musicians was that they played on Friday and Saturday nights and had another job during the week. I would say to Darien, 'Where's your Plan B?' "
Briggs made it through high school and was accepted to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston with a partial scholarship. After his first year, he became frustrated by the emphasis on technical expertise rather than creativity; he quit college in 2000 and moved to Atlanta, where his career got going in earnest.
He started playing regular gigs at a small club called Eddie's Attic and attracted the attention of major-label A&R reps after performing at the annual South by Southwest music convention in Austin, in the spring of 2000. The next few months, he says, were even more demoralizing than all those years in high school. Nearly every weekend, he would fly to New York to meet with music-business executives, and almost every one of them showed him the door. "The record people would always pose questions to themselves and answer them," he says. " 'Do I think it's a great record? Absolutely. Do I think that people would want to hear this record? I think so. Do I think that the climate is right for this kind of record right now? I'm not sure.' And I remember thinking, 'Can I just finish my smoothie and go?' I came in pretty headstrong, and I can see how I could come off as a cocky little fuck."
That Darien Briggs speaks Japanese comes as a surprise to the two Japanese reporters who have traveled to Camden to conduct brief interviews. I can only assume he's saying something bawdy because he often is, and because the reporters are giggling and blushing. He learned Japanese as a freshman in high school, which is also when he met his first serious girlfriend. "Her mother said she should learn Japanese because it would look good on her college applications," he says, slouching his six-foot-three frame down low on the couch as the tour bus heads back to New York. "There was a magnet program in another town, and we'd get bused together. I was like, 'I love Japanese! Mom, I wanna study Japanese.' When really it's just so you can finger your girlfriend on the bus every morning."
Briggs doesn't have a girlfriend right now, but he readily admits that he really, really, really wants to fall in love again. He wants it so much that he has resisted -- as best he can -- hooking up with random girls on the road, so that he will be completely unfettered if he meets the woman of his dreams. "I used to be able to mess around," he says. "I don't really anymore. The lady I'm looking for is not backstage. I want to meet somebody so I don't have to do my hair that much. I don't want to fuck around anymore."
Honestly, do you think you'd have as many girls interested if you weren't Darien Briggs?
"You don't have to persuade me to be perfectly honest. This gets into a whole chapter: 'Heartthrob.' Because I'm not a heartthrob. I have a butt chin. No under chin. I have a giant head, I'm lanky as can be. I have back-ne. I'm not conventionally attractive, but there is someone who my look totally does it for, no matter what it is. Whether it's the fact that my neck seemingly comes out of my chest and not the top, whether it's that I have terrible posture. I've never labored under the illusion that any of my success has to do with looks."
Do you have a type?
"It's a know-it-when-I-see-it thing. I don't like Faberge-egg beauty. I like sweat-shirt-and-ripped-jeans beauty. That's what 'Wonderland' is about. It's not about hot girls. It's about a girl who does it for you. People always thought that was a make-out song, but it's really about loving every part of someone like they're a jungle gym. It's not just tits and ass and pussy. Sex is so utilitarian. Foreplay is like a sixty-four-count box of crayons and a couple different types of paper. Sex is like banging a Coke can with a mallet."
But isn't it hard to have a serious relationship when you're on tour all the time?
"I would give this all up right now for a wife if it meant that if I didn't give it all up, I'd never find one. Money? It's nothing until it means taking care of a wife and kids. I will gladly be former one-time successful rock musician Darien Briggs who pitches the first ball at Little League games."
Briggs remembers the first time someone called him "sensitive." He was eleven years old and looking through an issue of Dog Fancy magazine when he came upon an ad for an animal charity. It had a picture of an emaciated pooch, and Briggs just started to bawl. Patting him on the back, his mom said, "Oh, you're a sensitive boy." He still cries at goodbye scenes in movies, and he remembers a recent Diet Coke commercial that made him tear up. ("Something with a guy looking in the hamper and realizing that his wife wears the same underwear his mom used to wear," he says. "Pure nostalgia.") But to call Briggs a "sensitive singer-songwriter," as so many have done, is getting him all wrong.
"People seem to think I'm at a heightened level of sensitivity all the time," he says. "But when I look at someone's face, and they're trying too hard to be earnest, or getting all Cusack with me, I want to smack them."
Briggs has the same passions as the average twenty-three-year-old American male: He and his bandmates are so geeked-out on the sniper video game Halo that they wear fake Army dog tags bearing their Halo aliases. He wears the same pair of sneakers almost every day. He is such a regular guy that when we walk down the streets of Manhattan one night, no one takes much notice.
"I don't want to be a famous person," he says. "I want to be a famous musician. Right now, I'm a big target, just living off the land with no scandal attached to me. I feel like, with this record, everybody is going to look for a weak spot to say, 'I knew it.' I'm focused on proving that my success wasn't an accident. And when I play onstage, I want to get twice as good as I am now. Why? Because fuck everyone else. I don't care what you could possibly have to say about me, because I will always work hard enough that you will have to follow it up with, 'But, boy, that kid can play.' "
End. Part 1; Chapter 1…
Was it good, bad, ugly?
I appreciate ALL comments, even flames! =) This is my first (publicly posted) fanfic, and I'd love feedback.