Page 2 of Banging the Drummer

“Come on, guys. It wasn’t all bad. We used to have fun together. Don’t you remember how great it felt to hear the crowd roar?” Crue asks, clearly trying to rally us up. “Doesn’t that count for something?”

“Oh yeah. Nothing fills the soul quite like having underwear thrown at you every night by screaming teenagers and running from paparazzi during the day,” Jax grumbles.

“It sounds like hell.” Asher winces, his face going pale. “Please remind me why we’re doing this to ourselves again?”

“Alright, alright. I’ll admit the fans could be...intense. But the point is, we had some crazy times together back in the day,” Crue says.

He’s not wrong. There was a lot to hate about our lives back then, but not everything was bad. The no privacy thing was the worst for me. I’m not a limelight kind of guy. Which has never really mattered to the rest of the world considering I was born into Broadway and West End theatre royalty. My father, the new generation’s Andrew Lloyd Webber and my mother, the lead actress with eleven Tony’s to her name. She’s only one award shy of the EGOT. That elusive Oscar.

“It wasn’t all bad,” Crue says.

“Says you!” Jax growls, his jaw clenching. “You weren’t the one getting blasted by the press for every late night out or questionable girlfriend. “’Soul Obsession’s Bad Boy Caught in New Scandal’,” he says with air quotes. “They ate that shit up.”

“Only because you kept feeding it to them!” Crue barks. “If you didn’t sneak out to a party or hook up with a new girl every night, they’d have had nothing to write about. Or maybe if you didn’t get stoned and tumble out of clubs?”

Jax rubs a hand down his face. “I was nineteen, man! What was I supposed to be doing, knitting sweaters and baking cookies?”

“Cookies sound good right now,” Asher mutters.

I take the opportunity to hopefully add some much needed lightness to this discussion. “You do knit a mean scarf, Jax.”

Jax sighs. “Shut up.”

“Yeah, leave the guy alone. We were kids, we all did stupid shit. Isn’t that why we’re here? For the fat paychecks so we can finally get the record label off our backs?” Jameson asks.

“I’m ready to be done with all this shit,” Asher says.

Jax grunts.

“This reunion is about more than money. It’s about giving the fans the closure they deserve. We owe it to them—and ourselves—to do this right,” Crue says.

Again, he’s not wrong. We didn’t end things right the first time around.

“Just say you miss the limelight, man," Jax says, his dark eyes roll.

Crue lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “Maybe I do miss parts of it. Sue me for loving the music that made us famous in the first place. But don’t pretend you all don’t miss it too. The music brought us together. Through all the messy stuff, that was the one thing we always had.”

“I miss some things more than others,” Asher says.

Jameson nods. “Crue is right. The music was always there for us, even when things got tough. I know I complained about the fans but seeing their smiling faces in the crowd…there was no better feeling.”

“How poetic, Jameson. Did you rehearse that, or are you just naturally this sentimental?” I tease.

“Naturally,” he says, not missing a beat. “Comes with the crooner territory.”

“Can you guys focus?” Crue says. “This is about more than closure. It’s our shot at finally controlling our narrative. We’re not those kids anymore. For once, we get to decide how we’re remembered.”

“That’s the important thing as far as I’m concerned. We get to introduce the world to the real Soul Obsession, the band they never got to meet back then. We get to decide how this ends for us. Not the label, not the tabloids, but the five of us. That’s worth all the bullshit.

Asher sighs audibly. “Just so you know, it kills me to admit you’re right.”

“I’ll admit it. We did kick ass together,” Jax says, surprising all of us.

“So, are we good? We gonna bring the fire one last time for our fans?” Crue asks.

“Let’s light this shit up!” Jameson grins.

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