Go Find Yourself (From: Rock Invasion)

“Hey! Go find yourself!”

Johnny Splits Town 1972

It was a hot Sunday morning, in early October of 1972, when Johnny floored his Blue Shelby Mustang out of Los Angeles and blasted through the desert toward Las Vegas. He was in a big hurry to get as far away from his personal heartbreak and his failing singing career as he could. 

Johnny sighed and started to unwind as the Mustang roared toward Nevada. 

“Ahhhh, the open road.”  

He decided to spend the morning listening only to the sounds of the desert wind and his GT500 as it shot along the hot black pavement.

There would be no music playing on the radio today. He was done with music, and Cori, forever.

Well, kinda.

Along the interstate I-15 in the 1970s, before the malls, there were indeed large stretches of empty hot desert between the two popular destinations. 

Johnny found out shortly that he couldn’t separate himself from music. After two hours, the runaway pop star had caught himself singing to the music that never ceased playing between his ears. 

It was already noon, and he wasn’t feeling the least bit relieved to have left his old life behind. Johnny forced himself to pull his car over onto the side of the road, and let out an “O.K., this is fun! - No it’s not. This is already getting really boring. What am I doing out here in Dullsville? 

After a stretch, and a cold soda from his cooler, he headed back on down the ol’ dusty road.

Johnny, hadn’t thought of the beautiful Cori for over twenty minutes. “Just DON’T think about her dancing.” 

It was hard to forget about the first time that he saw his “goddess” who was busy “unwinding” on top of the Biggie’s Nutshell bar. She was twirling her “girls,” Kilimanjaro and Matterhorn, the hypnotic “Gemini Twins.” 

Instead, it would be Cori’s voice, with her lively Irish touch, that would provide a soundtrack as he drove on. For the next forty miles, he could hear her singing along to the 50s and 60s music on the Nutshell’s jukebox. 

Strange. Cori, was singing songs inside of Johnny’s head that he’d never heard before. 

The new songs were good. They were very good. “Heck, gosh-darnit! They were the cat’s meow!”

Johnny was stoked. Why did he have this feeling? Did Cori feel the elation as well even though she was back in L.A.? Was she as thrilled about creating new music for Johnny’s journey through the desert as Johnny felt by hearing these brand new songs?

Maybe the songs were his?

________

  It was nearly two in the afternoon, when a white Cadillac limousine began to pass Johnny in the left lane. It slowed down until it was keeping pace with Johnny’s hot Ford. 

A bearded old fart in the back seat of the limo had rolled down the back window and shouted across to Johnny, “Hey! Check this out!” 

Then the ratty old fucker spun around inside of the big car and mooned Johnny.

The singer, who had seen more bizarre behavior in his decade of musical stardom than most people would experience in their lifetime, was shocked.“Crazy bastard! What’s the old geezer doing?” 

Then, “Poor little Johnny,” as his agent, Al, called him, began to release the tension. It was those years of excess money, fame and adoration, that he had been holding in for years. 

The pent-up singer was having, a badly needed nervous breakdown. 

Johnny started laughing so hard that real tears streamed from beneath his Ray-Bans. 

He’d saved his very last joint for a moment such as this. He lit up and moved on.

New movement caught his attention when he’d glanced at his side-view mirror. He wiped the tears and smoke from his eyes and looked again. A desert bird. A roadrunner was dashing along the right side of his Mustang. It was being chased by a big red coyote. Both animals were not only keeping pace with the Mustang, but were starting to pull ahead of the speeding car. Abruptly, the two critters pulled a sharp left turn in front of Johnny, whose eyes were still clouded over from laughing, when he nearly lost control. 

Johnny quickly swung the steering wheel to the right, and barely missed the billboard advertising the new ACME giant rubber mallets, bear traps and guided missiles. 

When he jerked back to the left, Johnny nearly sideswiped the Limo. He could see the geezer still cracking up in the back seat.

“Jeeez!” Johnny thought. He needed to stay focused.“ Put out the joint. Eyes on the road, Johnny boy.” 

The white Limousine was still keeping pace with him, neck-and-neck, on his left side.

“ Go find yourself!” the crazy old bastard had screamed as the limo shot away and left Johnny eating desert dust. 

“Did he say find?” thought Johnny.“Sure.Why the hell not?”

_______

“Finding himself” lasted all of fifteen minutes for the pop singer. Johnny immediately found someone else who would be much more fun and interesting to explore. 

A petite, tattooed beauty with jet black hair, named Shannon, was hitchhiking on the side of the Vegas highway in a sheer blouse and hip-hugger jeans. 

Even as he whooshed by at 75 miles-per-hour, Johnny had committed every detail of her body to memory. Her face was already familiar. 

Always-the-gentleman, he stomped on the brakes, and again, had nearly spun out and off of the hot pavement, this time careening within inches of an ACME dynamite plunger that had been carelessly left near a cliff. 

Gaining control, Johnny backed up to offer the damsel-in-distress a ride. 

Self-discovery had taken a quick detour.

The limo sped by in the opposite direction.

Insane geezer laughter trailed off down the road. 

_______

It’s a Teensie Weensie World

Once the girl had hopped in, he had noticed that she was probably about twenty-five-years-old, and more than familiar. He opened the cooler and offered the sun -baked beauty a cold drink.

Johnny soon found out that Shannon was, Shannon Boone, the girlfriend of an old rival high school band leader from his old home town. She was Mark Mangione’s girl. 

Mark had been the lead singer and saxophone player in a rival High School band called “The Skid Marks” before he went on to become a rich dentist. 

Shannon had seen Johnny play, once or twice, when his name was Ionel and his band was the Nuclear Threat. She saw him sing and play at the Westchester High School dances over a decade ago. Shannon had no idea that Johnny was still rockin’ and rollin’. 

She’d had never heard of “Johnny Passion” or knew that the once skinny geek had become an bloated international megastar. Shannon Boone didn’t know any of this, that is, until Johnny had let the facts “accidentally” slip out.

“You never heard of me? Where’ve you been? Hiding in a cave?” 

To his astonishment and disappointment, Shannon didn’t give a shit. She just lit a cigarette and stared out into the desert as they sped down the highway.

Shannon faced the deflated Johnny, and told him that she had very little time to read the newspapers or watch television. She was a busy girl, an “entertainment scout” in Las Vegas. 

“Entertainment scout? Really!” 

He wondered “How could she NOT hear about me?”

Shannon had no idea that Vegas lounges were inundated with Johnny Passion impersonators. 

She only worked as a scout for one particular client.

Shannon lived a very sheltered life, only leaving her “digs” when it was necessary to go “hunting.”

________

After a moment of silence, Johnny told Shannon that he’d come out to the desert to do some soul searching, “To commune with nature.” 

“Hippie babble.” She thought. 

Not only did Shannon NOT give a shit, it would turn out later, that she wouldn’t give a fuck as well.