Heritage, California - October 4, 1981
D Street West was packed to the walls, the air thick with cigarette smoke and the heady cocktail of sweat, beer, and anticipation. It was Friday night, and the place had reached its boiling point. The crowd was shoulder-to-shoulder, jammed in tight enough to make even breathing a conscious effort. A hundred conversations blurred into a wall of noise that drowned out the overhead rock playlist. Behind the long bar, six bartenders moved in overdrive, slinging drinks as fast as their hands could pour.
Fights broke out here and there - short-lived, clumsy brawls that fizzled out as quickly as they started. Nobody had space to throw a decent punch. Not on a night like this. Not when The Saints were playing.
The opening act, a blues-rock band called Airburst, had taken the stage earlier. They were tight - clearly a mashup of the best members from other groups that had floated through the B-list circuit over the past year. Their sound had Southern grit, somewhere between Lynyrd Skynyrd and Molly Hatchet, but what really set them apart was the female lead singer. That alone was enough to keep the audience paying attention.
They played well. Got a few real cheers. But no encore. Only The Saints had ever earned one of those at D Street West.
Now, ten minutes before showtime, Jake and Matt stood tucked into the backstage alcove, watching the packed house. It had become a bit of a pre-show ritual - Matt scanning for post-gig prospects, Jake still quietly amazed that this many people were here for them.
Jake felt the old tickle of stage fright stir in his stomach, but it wasn't the paralyzing terror it had been during their first gigs. They were pros now. Rehearsed. Tight. The Saints knew how to command a stage, and the crowd knew it too.
Of course, even seasoned performers ran into snags.
Guitar picks got dropped or snapped mid-song. Jake and Matt had each done it dozens of times by now. Jake once busted his A string halfway through Worship Me, a tune built around fingerpicking that exact string. Coop, their drummer, had broken sticks at least six times, though he'd never dropped one - not even while twirling or tossing them in the air between beats. Darren had managed to yank his bass cord out by accident during a set, nearly eating the stage before catching himself. And Bill… well, Bill once leaned too far into a keyboard run and cranked the volume to max, blasting out a screeching feedback so loud it practically shaved the skin off everyone's eardrums.
But these were live shows. Mishaps happened. What mattered was how you recovered.
By now, they were experts at brushing off the chaos. If a pick flew off, the guys switched to finger strumming. If there wasn't a planned pause between songs, they threw one in while Jake tossed a casual "Y'all havin' a good time?" to the crowd. Coop had mastered the art of replacing a drumstick mid-song without missing more than a beat. The audience barely noticed.
When they did notice - like the ear-splitting keyboard incident or the snapped string - Jake rolled with it. After Darren's stumble, he'd stepped up to the mic with a grin and said, "That's a new dance move Darren's workin' on. Still needs a little polish."
Laughter followed. Tension broke. They rolled right into the next track.
The most legendary recovery? That broken A string during Worship Me. Jake adapted the melody on the fly, rearranged the rhythm, and kept playing. When the song ended, he stepped up to the mic with a smirk and said, "Looks like I played that one to death." Then he told the crowd to hold tight and disappeared backstage for a hasty string replacement.
Meanwhile, the rest of The Saints improvised an off-the-cuff jam. Matt and Bill dueled with solos while Darren and Coop held down a steady groove. When Jake came back, re-tuned and ready, he plugged in and jumped right into the middle of it like nothing had happened. Together, they built the jam to a spontaneous climax and ended it with a dramatic, unified crash of instruments.
The place exploded.
When the ovation died down, they picked up the setlist exactly where they'd left off. Pure rock and roll professionalism.
Moments like that were rare, but they were what separated a band from a legend. Most nights, the set flowed exactly how it had been rehearsed. The Saints had a rotating roster of thirty-three original songs, and they swapped the lineup every two weeks. Each month, they added a new track. Tonight's debut was It's In The Book, and it would be the first time the D Street crowd heard it live.
Matt exhaled smoke and nodded out toward the floor.
"Check out that brunette in the purple blouse," he said.
Jake squinted through the haze. "Which one? There's like five hundred people out there."
"Over by the bar," Matt clarified. "Next to the big girl and the dude with the crew cut. See her?"
Jake found the girl in question. "I think that's lavender, not purple."
Matt looked at him like he'd just confessed to wearing lipstick. "Lavender? Jesus Christ, Jake. You smokin' dicks now?"
Jake grinned. "Forgive me, Father. What about her?"
"She's mine tonight," Matt declared. "She just doesn't know it yet. Look how shy she looks. Total virgin vibes."
Jake raised an eyebrow. "What if she doesn't come to the after-party?"
"Then she misses out on the once-in-a-lifetime experience of getting plowed by the great Matt Tisdale." He jerked his thumb toward the other end of the bar. "I got a backup. Blond chick. Glasses. Real librarian type."
Jake pretended to spot her. "And if the first girl does show but isn't interested?"
Matt looked genuinely puzzled. "Why wouldn't she be?"
Jake just laughed. Matt wasn't exactly wrong. So far, every girl he'd picked out had ended up in his bed. At one point, he and Coop were betting on Matt's hit rate. Coop would pick a random girl at the party, and Matt had to close the deal before sunrise. Matt had never lost. Odds eventually shifted to ten-to-one just to make things interesting.
"What about you?" Matt asked. "You gonna get your weenie wet tonight or what?"
Jake sighed. "Still a little hung up on the whole Michelle thing."
"That didn't stop you Wednesday night. That Brooke Shields lookalike? You handled that. Proud of you, man. She any good?"
Jake shrugged. "She was… very talented. But I was drunk and stoned. I wouldn't have gone through with it otherwise."
Matt laughed. "You'll be drunk and stoned tonight too."
Jake smirked. "You're not wrong."
"That's my guy!" Matt slapped him on the back. "You should call that Catholic girl while you're going at it. Put the phone by the action and let her hear what she's missing."
Jake rolled his eyes. "You'd do that."
"Damn right I would."
They went quiet for a moment, the energy of the crowd buzzing just beyond the curtain. Matt took another drag. Jake sipped his water.
Eventually, Jake broke the silence. "Darren's stoned out of his mind."
Matt nodded. "Oh, I know. I can smell it on him. But even if I couldn't, just look at him. He thinks he's slick, but we've been stoned together enough times to know the look. He's flying."
"You think he actually believes he's fooling us?"
"Yeah," Matt muttered. "Idiot."