Sandra drove down Sunset past the Trocadero and Ciro’s, relics from another time in Hollywood. The Strip was at the center of something bigger. Most of the mile-and-a-half stretch of Sunset Boulevard known as Sunset Strip was littered with fading, seedy clubs. Its location outside Los Angeles city limits made it a place where the underbelly of Hollywood’s nightlife had thrived. She had a soft spot for the old haunts although she wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was that her dad knew everything about this stretch of LA. He’d drive her down through here when he was running errands and give her the history of every establishment. If he thought she wasn’t listening, he’d quiz her on the return trip. She knew all the good stories: Betting that Prohibition was going to be repealed, Billy Wilkerson, owner of Ciro’s and the Trocadero, spent every penny he’d brought with him on a European cruise to buy French wine. The wine sat in San Francisco Harbor until Prohibition was repealed, but it established Sunset Strip as the place to go for nightlife. Or the untrue legend that Lana Turner was discovered at Schwab’s Pharmacy (she was not). To her father, the real story was that F. Scott Fitzgerald had suffered a mild heart attack outside the store (he would drop dead after eating a candy bar two months later). It was a warm night so Sandra rolled down the window to let the breeze in, and she turned down her radio. KHJ-AM was playing some B. J. Thomas song that wasn’t her favorite. Instead she focused on the sounds outside: horns, the hum of crowds, drunken laughter, and music—sitars and something that was Indian, but also makeshift drums. Saturday nights, the Strip was so crowded that pedestrians often took to walking in the streets, so seeing musicians carrying their gear was not uncommon. It was taking her a long time to get down to the Shack. Traffic was at a standstill, motorcycles idling and lurching. She had time to read the vanity billboards that lined the streets, artists looking for comebacks, little-known celebrities hoping an executive would notice them on the way to the studio. On the billboard in front of her, a cowgirl statue peered down at a sign advertising the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas. She knew it was a prop for some new Raquel Welch film but was not sure which one.
What had happened tonight? The smell of death was something that had followed her since she was a child, but the ability to heal someone was completely new. Her life had been filled with incidents where she had to cover to appear normal, try to fit in. First she was a piano savant, and now she could apparently heal people. She studied her fingers at each stoplight, looking for something different about them, but they looked like they always did.
With its burned-out bulbs on the sign, the remaining letters reading ACK, the Shack was one of the older clubs on Sunset Strip. It had taken Sandra weeks to work up the courage to ask Milo for a shot at an off night like a Tuesday. Tonight the little man greeted her warmly and said that Rick Nash had just called.
“Nash was right. He told me Julie from Mod Squad was coming to see me.” Milo winked. Sandra had dressed the part. Knowing Milo was a flirt, she’d changed into a yellow blouse, brown suede mini skirt with fringe, and boots. He showed her to a seat at the bar and asked what she wanted to drink. Sandra asked the bartender for a gin and tonic.
She had expected to have to do a bigger sales job, but the man said Rick vouched for her and she was beautiful—he didn’t need to know any more. He wore a white suit with extremely flared pants. The suit was so small that she wasn’t sure it hadn’t come from a children’s shop.
“Can you play?”
She nodded.
“Then come by Thursday night. Setup begins around five. If I like you, you can come back. Agreed?”
“Yes.”
“Good!”
To get a job as a house band on the Strip was a dream for any band. While doing a regular paying gig, the band could work through their sets, make some money, and perfect their sound in the hope they’d get a studio interested and a fan following.
On Thursday they took the stage for the first time at the Shack. Hugh was the focal point of the band—a force onstage—something Sandra was grateful for. There seemed to be something that caused her to feel she needed to not be seen.
They ran through a total of twelve songs for a forty-minute set. Hugh had taught Lily some basic guitar chords, and she could handle a few of the electric guitar parts while Hugh layered on the acoustic. Ezra had cleaned himself up, and his drum playing was never better. The crowd responded. The confessional lyrics, the harmonies between Hugh and Sandra, the haunting melodies with such a hint of nostalgia. The band had transformed. The show was good.
Rick showed up at the Shack at their opening show, a Nikon and a Leica each dangling from a shoulder. The fact that Rick Nash was photographing them performing live was huge since he was known for usually covering bands that had already made it. He walked around the room composing the shots. The band setting up, the frustration of waiting, the anxiety on Hugh’s face, and then the show itself: the band and the crowd.
The next day, after Sandra’s shift at the A&P, Hugh called her to tell her Rick had developed the photos from the Shack. “They’re so groovy, Sand,” he crooned. “You’ve got to get up here and see them.” She heard something. “Lil says you need to see them, too.”
After she’d closed the store with her dad, she drove up to the Canyon. She’d gotten there later than she’d hoped so everyone at the house was gone except for Rick, who was in the darkroom. The darkroom was created by another shed space around the corner from the house and like the pottery studio, it also seemed to have a sagging roof. Sandra had never been in a darkroom before. Rick seemed to be expecting her and was happy to see her. In the soft glow of the room, she worried it would be awkward around him, but as he moved through the studio, putting paper into a solution, dipping and swishing it around, he talked to her about the band.
“You really need an official photo,” he said. He watched the photo like it was cooking in a pan, pulling it out and clipping it to a line, where other shots swayed like laundry.
“You think?”
“You guys are getting better. You’re going to need some publicity shot for posters. I was hoping I might have something here, but I didn’t get one of the four of you.”
Sandra studied the photos drying on the line of an actress.
“She’s beautiful,” Sandra said. “Great shots.”
He stopped what he was doing and came around to stand behind her.
“Where was it?”
“The Roosevelt.” Sitting by the pool, his subject—an exotic and moody brunette—was dressed in a bathrobe, looking bored and smoking a cigarette.
“Were you lying on the ground to take this shot?” Sandra leaned in closer. The angles of the photo were dramatic and irreverent.
“I was.” He laughed. “She was completely strung out. We had to get her in the shower to wake her up. That’s why her hair is wet. I did what I could. I thought a more artistic shot might work. It’s for the style section. They’ll like it.”
Around the darkroom were shots of Jimi Hendrix at the Forum, Jim Morrison at the London Fog, Elton John at the Troubadour, the riots on Sunset, another actress Sandra didn’t recognize at the Chateau Marmont. Her favorite photo—and from the position it enjoyed in his studio, she suspected it was his favorite as well—was another outtake of Janis Joplin at a party in what appeared to be Rick’s living room, wearing a feather coat and octagonal purple sunglasses, deep in conversation on his sofa.