Give Death A Chance Read online

Turned out that Ringo headlocked Eminem a bit too hard, and the dude had passed out. While we were waiting for him to regain consciousness, John and Paul got into one of their take-off-my-own-arm-and-beat-you-with-it-until-I-get-bored battles, which I’m sure sounds fun to watch, dear reader, but, when you’ve seen it as often as I have, it gets old.

  Eventually, the rapper awoke. “Yo, whassup?” he asked, trying and failing to sit up straight.

  John looked at me and said, “And there’s another reason why rap needs to be made extinct. It drives me bloody mad when blokes start their sentences with yo.”

  “Yo, I hear you,” I said.

  As Ringo snorted, John told me, “Listen, you cheeky cunt, just because we’ve kept you alive this long doesn’t mean we’re going to keep you alive…”

  “Let’s be honest here, John,” I said, “if you were going to kill me, or eat me, or Zombify me, or whatever, you’d have done it already. You know it, and I know it, and rap boy over here knows it, too.”

  “Knows what, yo?” Eminem asked.

  John said, “And there’s another reason why rap needs to be made extinct. It drives me bloody mad when blokes end their sentences with yo.”

  Eminem sat up and said, “Yo, suck my dick, yo.”

  Gritting his teeth, John asked Paul, “Can I fookin’ kill him now?”

  “Erm, no, not yet,” Paul said. “I think he can help us. He’s in touch with the teenage girl crowd, and that used to be our crowd. He can tell us how he relates to them.” He looked at Eminem and said, “So. How do you relate to them?”

  Eminem repeated, “Yo, suck my dick, yo.”

  Paul stared at Eminem, then at Lennon, then back at Eminem, then back at Lennon, and said, “Johnny, you may fookin’ kill him now.”

  “With pleasure.”

  Eminem stood up and began to speak in a rapid-fire, distinctly non-street voice: “Wait, wait, wait, no, no, don’t kill me, please, let me explain myself.”

  “What the hell is there to explain?” I asked.

  “A lot,” Eminem said. “You see, I’m a product of marketing.”

  “A what?” John asked.

  “Mania,” George mumbled, rolling his eyes. “Simply mania.”

  Ignoring them both, Eminem continued, “I’m not real. I’m not Eminem. I’m not even Marshall Mathers from Detroit, Michigan. I’m Irving Rabinowitz, from Greenwich, Connecticut.”

  Paul turned to me and said, “Does this mean anything to you?”

  “Apparently,” I said, “Eminem—the toughest white-boy rapper from the toughest section of the toughest town in the country—is actually a nebbish from the ’burbs.”

  “What the fook is a burb?” John asked.

  “Doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that this dude is a poser.”

  Eminem held up a single finger and said, “Not a poser—a product. A well-thought-out, tightly developed, one-of-a-kind rapping corporation. You want to know how I did it?”

  “No,” Ringo said.

  Ignoring him, Eminem paced the room and bulled ahead: “It all started back in 1991, after a Caucasian singing group called Color Me Badd had a massive hit with an African-American approach to music. I thought, With a little work, I could do that, and I was right. It started with lots and lots market research and focus groups. I learned what America would want in the late nineties, what would appeal to both New York and Peoria: A Caucasian rapper with attitude. So I hired multiple public relations firms, and voice coaches, and acting teachers—brilliant ones at that—and my team began charting a course for the rest of my career. If you’ve read Teen People regularly—and I can tell you have—you know what’s happened up until now, but the future will be even brighter. I’ll be doing another stint in rehab in 2012—and when I say rehab, I mean my private island in Hawaii—which’ll give me yet more credibility among the eighteen-to-twenty-nine urban demographic. During those three months, I’ll record an album in which I’m backed by live musicians—it’ll mostly be rap, but there’ll be some actual songs on there—which we’ll release in 2013. In early 2014, I’ll backslide again, and be forced into rehab again, where I’ll finally kick the habit for good, soon after which we’ll release a book about my recovery—the thing’s already been written, actually. Then in 2015, I’ll record and release an album of jazz standards—I’ll be 43 at that point, and our studies have shown that the general public believes a 43-year-old rapping about bitches and hos is just plain silly—which will neatly transition into my leading the house band on The Bill Hader Show—he’s getting a show when Jimmy Fallon replaces Jay Leno that year—and I’ll be set for life, or until Bill gets cancelled.” He paused. “It’s all about planning and marketing,” he said. “Planning and marketing. Planning and marketing. Planning and…”

  John said, “Right, we get it. Planning and marketing.”

  “But what about music?” Ringo asked. “Do you even care about that?”

  John said, “Not that hippety-hop is music.”

  Eminem said, “Mr. Starr, I haven’t rapped a single word since my first album. It’s all computerized.”

  “What in particular is computerized?” I asked.

  “Oh, everything,” Eminem said. “My voice, my lyrics, my beats, the whole shebang. I don’t have time to make music, because aside from maintaining the Eminem brand, I’m running four multinational corporations. We sampled the heck out of my voice, and we’ve come up with some wonderful technology. Expect the software on the market in 2017.”

  Paul stared at Eminem, then at Lennon, then back at Eminem, then back at Lennon, and said, “Johnny, you may fookin’ kill him now.”

  John said, “Finally. Thank you.” And then I saw things that, to my eternal regret, I’ll never be able to unsee.

  First: John stood up, grabbed Eminem by the scruff of his neck, lifted him over his head, then threw him towards the sky at what had to be more than 25 mph. Eminem’s body bounced off the ceiling, then plummeted straight on down; he hit the floor with a sickening thump.

  Second: George kicked the rapper in the temple so hard that the toe of his shoe came out the other side of Eminem’s head…as did a piece of gray matter.

  Third: Paul pounced on the chunk of brain, popped it into his mouth, chewed it frantically, as if it were the tastiest piece of gum in the history of gum, then blew a bubble, which popped on his face. He wiped the goo from his cheeks and threw it at Ringo’s feet.

  Fourth: Ringo picked up the bits of brain, shaped into a perfectly rounded ball, and shoved the ball into the hole on the side of Eminem’s head.

  Fifth: George ripped off Eminem’s foot and jammed it into the hole on the side of Eminem’s head, to seal the wound.

  Sixth: John knelt down and ripped open Eminem’s chest, exposing his heart, his lungs, his guts, and other organs that I couldn’t identify without an anatomy book.

  Seventh, George knelt down and ripped out a handful of Eminem’s small intestines, then slathered the bloody mess all over his own chest. (When I asked George why he was doing that, he said, “It’s a Zombie thing. You wouldn’t understand.”)

  Eighth, Paul and John followed George’s lead, until all of Eminem’s guts were stuck to the three Zombie Beatles’ respective torsos.

  Ninth, with his dying breath, Eminem, aka Marshall Mathers, aka Slim Shady, aka Dr. Dre’s bitch, gasped something unintelligible.

  Lennon took a nibble of large intestine, then tenderly put his hand on the rapper’s pale check and whispered, “What was that, mate?”

  Eminem’s whisper grew fainter.

  “It’s okay,” John said. “Take your time. I want to hear what you have to say, and I’ll wait as long as necessary.”

  Eminem gurgled.

  John cuffed Eminem on the ear and yelled, “Speak up, wanker!”

  The rapper’s eyes opened wide, and, with his dying breath, he croaked, “Gagaaaaaaaa.”

  “What?” John asked.

  “Gagaaaaaaaaaaaa. She can tell you what you need to kno
w. She knows all.”

  “Who knows all?”

  “Lady Gagaaaaaaaaaaaaa. The answer lies with Lady Gaga. Find her. Talk to her. She’s at the Garden in two days. Go to her. Go to her. Go to…” And then he lost himself in the music and bit it.

  As we walked back to the van, George asked, “What’s the Garden?”

  I said, “Madison Square Garden.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “New York.”

  John grinned, sang, “The Statue of Liberty! Que pasa, New York!” then let loose with a Zombie moan that shattered the windows on Eminem’s mansion, and killed all the koi in Eminem’s pond.

  JULY 23, 2009

  As we rolled back across the country in that smelly, smelly van, John kept assuring me that we were getting close to the Toppermost of the Poppermost. “If all goes properly in New York,” he’d over and over again, “we’ll only have one more stop, and then you can go on your merry way. Or you can stay with us and write about what it’s like to rule the world. I don’t fookin’ care. But if you split, just make sure I get those bloody notebooks.”

  I kept telling him, “I don’t know if you’re going to like what I wrote.”

  “Did you write down the facts?” he’d say.

  “Yeah,” I’d say, “but there’s some editorial commentary in there that it’s doubtful you’ll appreciate. Maybe I should edit it before I turn it over to you.”

  “Won’t bother me, mate,” he’d say. “Sticks and stones and all.”

  “Right,” I’d say, “sticks and stones.”

  The lads were oddly quiet during the drive: No verbal arguments, no physical battles, and limited Alan abuse. My journalistic side wanted to find out why they were being so contemplative, but my I-want-to-survive-this-mess-with-my-sanity-more-or-less-intact side wanted to sleep. The I-want-to-survive-this-mess-with-my-sanity-more-or-less-intact side won out, so I barely said a word.

  And then, New York.

  It was a typical balls-hot July day in Manhattan, and, as is often the case on balls-hot days, the city was on hair-trigger. Then again, the incessant horn-honking and bird-flipping probably would’ve come to pass regardless of the temperature, because, as noted, Paul McCartney is the worst driver in Zombie history. When we pulled up to the rear entrance of Madison Square Garden in the late afternoon, it took all my restraint to keep from jumping out of the van and kissing the dirty Eighth Avenue sidewalk.

  As was the case before the Justin Timberlake show, I had to slather makeup all over Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison, as well as put them in some clothes that would help them blend it. (For a giggle, I dressed them like massively uncool bridge-and-tunnel-types, replete with cheesy NBA, MLB, and NFL gear. You take your laughs when you can get them, no matter how small they may be…although they laugh wasn’t as fulfilling as I would’ve liked, because they thought they looked fab.) Even though Gaga’s ardent crowd might not be hip to the Beatles, they were definitely hip to Zombies, and the last thing the Beatles wanted was for the crowd to create a scene before the Fab Four could create a scene.

  At 7:45, 15 minutes before Gaga’s scheduled start, it was go time. As we left the van, George said, “What it is with you Americans and these bloody nicknames? Eminem? Lil Wayne? Lady Gaga? Is it so bloody awful to use the moniker your parents gave you?”

  I pointed at the Garden and said, “This one’s real name is Stephanie Germanotta, and that’s kind of pretty, but apparently she thought she’d have a better shot at a record deal as Lady Gaga. Turns out she was right.”

  Paul asked, “That fake name shite was our idea, y’know. We did that first, back in 1967. If you’ll recall, we renamed ourselves Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

  “Yes, Paul,” I said, “I recall.”

  John said, “Paulie, you renamed us Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I thought the idea was bollocks.”

  “It was brilliant, y’know,” Paul said.

  George said, “It was bollocks.”

  “It was brilliant.”

  “It was bullcrap.”

  “It was genius.”

  “It was mania.”

  I’d been with the lads long enough that I could literally smell a fight a mile away—turns out Liverpool Zombies emit an odd, not-unpleasant scent right before they go into battle against one another—and I wanted to put the kibosh on it, because the faster we got to work, the faster they could do what they were going to do to Lady Gaga, and the faster they did what they were going to do to Gaga, the faster I could be free. So in what I thought was an inspired attempt to defuse the situation, I said, “Listen, Paul, the Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band thing was a perfectly clever idea, but the fact of the matter is, it doesn’t matter what you called yourselves. You’d have sold as many records if you were called Randy and the Rockets, or the Plastic Ono Band, or Wings, or the Traveling Wilburys, or Ringo Starr’s All Starr Band, or the Firemen, or the Four Arseholes of the Apocalypse. Your music is beloved, no matter how it’s presented.”

  After a moment of silence, John said, “Thanks, Scribe. That’s the first time somebody’s said something nice about us in, fook, I don’t know how long.”

  “Well,” I said, “when you end your concerts by killing the crowd, you have to expect backlash.”

  Ringo said, “He has a point. Maybe we should reconsider how we handle the upcoming tour.”

  John said, “There won’t be an upcoming tour until we talk to this Goo Goo cunt.”

  “Gaga,” I said.

  “Goo Goo, Gaga, who gives a fook? She has what we want—America’s ears, hearts, and souls—and we’re going to bloody figure out how she got it, and then we’re going to bloody well take it from her, and then we’ll bloody well get to the Toppermost of the Poppermost.” He straightened his New York Yankees hat, rolled up the sleeves of his New Jersey Devils jersey, and told his band, “All I’m saying is, boys, is let’s show Goo Goo she can give death a chance.”

  “That’s a good thing to say, y’know,” Paul noted. “Now, erm, let’s put it into action.” Then they ate the brains of several dozen cops and security guards, and off we went.

  I’d never been to a Lady Gaga show—can’t say I was a fan, although I will admit she has a smokin’ bod—but I didn’t live in a cave, so I knew what she was all about: flamboyant, revealing costumes; oddball makeup; controversial stage theatrics; and fluffy, vaguely provocative songs that she insists she doesn’t lip synch in concert. She refers to her fans as Little Monsters, which is at once precious and pretentious.

  When I reiterated this to the lads as we approached the backstage area, they came to a screeching halt. Paul asked, “Wait—what does she mean, Little Monsters?”

  “I don’t know what it means, exactly. It’s a term of endearment, I guess. Kind of like Beatlemaniacs.”

  “We didn’t call our fans Beatlemaniacs,” George pointed out. “It was the goddamn press who coined that shite. That was just part of the mania.”

  “Christ, enough with the mania shite, Georgie,” John said. “It’s 2009. Let it go. Cheer the fook up. We need to deal with this Little Monster bollocks.”

  I asked, “Why do you care about this chick’s silly nickname for her crowd?”

  John turned to Paul and said, “Tell the Scribe about the Little Monsters.”

  “Alan is Mister Liverpool Zombie Expert,” Paul said. “He should know, y’know.”

  “He clearly doesn’t,” John snapped. “So fookin’ tell him. You know that crap better than I do.”

  Paul sighed. “Okay. In the summer of 1960, John and I were wandering around the Liverpool sewers…”

  “I fookin’ hate the sewers,” John mumbled.

  “And we ran across an undead bloke who called himself Slappy Pappy Happy Crappy…”

  “A fookin’ nutter, I say,” John mumbled.

  “But this Slappy fellow wasn’t the normal Zombie you found in the Liverpool underground. First of all, he was mutated, y’know,
with Vampire teeth, and the gills of a fish…”

  “The fookin’ nutter could breathe on land and sea,” John mumbled.

  “And the hair of a hippie. I couldn’t help but stare, y’know, even though John was tugging on my shirt, trying to get me out of there…”

  “I fookin’ hate the sewers,” John mumbled.

  “So finally I said, ‘How long you been undead, mate?’ He smiled at me with those freaky teeth—which I saw were covered with blood, which was odd, because, as far as I knew, there weren’t any beings who had blood living down in the sewers—and said, ‘I ain’t undead, you Zombie arsehole. I’m a fookin’ Monster.’ Me and John laughed at that, y’know, because the thought of Monsters living in a sewer is ridiculous. Zombies, sure. Vampires, okay. Swamp Things, no doubt. Blobs, naturally. But Monsters? Bloody hell, Monsters don’t even exist.”

  “Turns out that Monsters did exist,” John mumbled.

  “And it turned out that Monsters could do damage to Zombies, even ones as strong as Johnny.”

  “Lots of damage,” John mumbled.

  “Erm, the Monster went after us—for no reason, mind you, we were being perfect gentlemen—and it wasn’t pretty.”

  “It was fookin’ ugly,” John mumbled.

  “Yeah, he ripped off both of our plonkers and stomped on them until they were as flat as shillings. And then he gave us both karate chops that knocked us out for a good long while…”

  “Four fookin’ hours to be exact,” John mumbled.

  “And when we got up, he was standing over us, saying over and over again, ‘You think that was bad? Wait’ll you meet the Little Monsters. You think that was bad? Wait’ll you meet the Little Monsters. You think that was bad? Wait’ll you meet the Little Monsters…”

  “And here we are, meeting the Little fookin’ Monsters,” John mumbled.

  I said, “Guys, Lady Gaga’s fans are mostly depressed and weird teenagers looking for somebody to tell them it’s okay to be depressed and weird. They won’t hurt you. Hell, they can’t hurt you.”

  Ringo said, “I don’t know, mate, depressed and weird teenagers can be goddamn dangerous.”