Part 39 (1/2)

He wanted, needed, to recapture that towering high of excitement when

success had been new, when the band, the unit of them, had been like one

electric force smas.h.i.+ng through the world of music and public

recognition. Over the past year, he had sensed that electricity, that

unity, slipping away like the sixties themselves. He'd felt it forge

again at Woodstock.

When they boarded the plane, leaving the faithful at Woodstock behind,

Brian fell into an exhausted sleep. Beside him, Stevie carelessly

popped a couple of barbiturates and zoned out. Johnno settled back to

play poker with some of the road crew. Only P.M. sat restlessly by the

window.

He wanted to remember everything. It annoyed him that unlike Brian, he

saw beneath the symbolism and statement of the festival to the miserable

conditions. The mud, the garbage, the lack of proper sanitary

facilities. The music, good Christ, the music had been wonderful,

almost unbearably so, but often, too often, he'd felt the audience had

been too blissed out to notice.

Still, even someone as pragmatic and simple as P.M. had felt the sense

of commitment and unity. Of peace-a peaceful trio of days with four

hundred thousand living as family. But there had also been dirt,

prolific and heedless s.e.x, and a careless abundance of drugs.

Drugs frightened him. He couldn't admit it, not even to the men he

considered his brothers. Drugs made him sick or silly or put him to

sleep. He took them only when he saw no graceful way not to. He was in

turn amazed and appalled at the cheerfulness with which Brian and Stevie

experimented with whatever came their way. And he was more than a