I Reject You First: Fame, Fame, Fame...

Who's the most famous person you've ever met? I was having this conversation the other day with some of the other Reuters Fellows. It quickly became apparent--as they reeled off the names of movie stars, professional athletes and respected statesmen they had dined and vacationed with--that I don't get out enough.

Of course, it doesn't help that I live in Washington. "Hollywood for ugly people" is only one of the nicer epithets attached to the U.S. capital. Seeing Newt Gingrich at a Redskins game or watching Robert Reich cross the street just isn't the same as snorting cocaine off the back of a dolphin with Bono and the Dalai Lama at an Oscars after-party.

But who cares about famous people, besides, I mean, everybody? I'm more interested in people before they become famous. You know, stories that go: "And that ugly girl with braces who helped light my Bunsen burner in 10th grade chemistry? That's right, she became Scarlett Johansson."

Sadly, I don't have any of those stories, either. But I do have a story about how I know the editor of Wired magazine, Chris Anderson, who, I guess, passes for famous in the world of geek-publishing.

When I was in college my room mate, Pat, and I wanted to form a new wave band. He played guitar; I played the drums. All that was standing between us and musical world domination was the lack of a bass player. Anyone who's ever been in a rock band knows how hard it is to find a bass player. No one in his right mind starts out wanting to play bass and thus they are as rare as jockstraps at a nudist colony. We tried all the usual methods: ads in the paper, flyers up in music stores, word of mouth. Nothing seemed to work. (I remember carrying all my drums up to a loft in some group house to audition a midget hippie bass player. Seriously, he was like a perfectly-scaled down human, all beard and bellbottoms and flannel shirt. Needless to say, it didn't work out. [That man? That's right, he became Scarlett Johansson.])

Our leads exhausted, Pat and I thought it might be easier to grow a grow a bass player ourselves in a hydroponic garden. Then, a lead: Pat and I had started going to a new nightclub downtown, an atmospheric dump on F Street NW called the 930 club. We'd primp in front of the mirror in our Langley Park apartment, making sure our skinny ties were on right, our Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello buttons arranged just so on our lapels. We'd drive downtown in his Plymouth Duster or my Mercury Comet, then smoke Camels, drink beer or gin ad tonics, and dance, occasionally with girls.

One night Pat went by himself and when he returned early in the morning he announced that he'd found a bass player. It was like hearing Arthur describe how he'd pulled Excalibur from out of a rock. There'd been a skinny guy leaning against one of the pillars at the 930 club. For some reason, he caught Pat's eye. He had the right look. Pat struck up a conversation, eventually asking if he'd like to play bass in a new wave band called the Item. Yes, he said. He didn't actually play the bass, but he had one and sort of wanted to learn. He even had a place to practice. He lived at home in Glen Echo, a funky but affluent Maryland suburb of Washington, and he was sure his parents wouldn't mind us playing there. His name was Greg Anderson. (Why does the world know him as "Chris"? I'll get to that.)

The Beatles created the rock and roll band myth and they also destroyed it. Every band wants their life to be "A Hard Day's Night" and it is impossible to achieve. There's a sadness when you realize that. Still, we persevered, after a fashion, carting our instruments to Greg's living room. Greg wasn't what you'd call a natural musician but Pat taught him where to put his fingers to pluck out what was needed for our somewhat uncomplicated songs. We'd go see bands together. Greg spent a night on the floor of our apartment.

We played a ramshackle gig in the basement of a dorm at the University of Maryland (where an attractive, if shrill, co-ed complained that we were too loud [that woman? That's right; she became My Lovely Wife {really!}]). Our proper debut was in December 1980, at a tiny downtown club called d.c. space. It was part of something called the Unheard Music Festival.

One of the great rock divides separates bands into those who like to wear matching outfits and those who don't. Pat and I were in the former (see "Hard Day's Night, above). I'm not saying Greg was adamantly on the other side of the schism, but I think he grumbled a bit when we asked if he would wear a striped shirt. None of us had the exact same striped shirt--Pat's was orange and white and collared; mine was an old soccer shirt, green and white; Greg's was blue and white and striped horizontally--but we were going for a look and I think that smacked of artifice, offending Greg's sensibilities.

You see, the outfit thing is just an indicator of where you fall on the pop-punk continuum. I like the Clash. I like the Sex Pistols. But I make no apologies for wanting to be the Beatles or, in a pinch, the Partridge Family. Greg showed up at the gig with his hair newly-bleached and spiked and an "X" emblazoned across the front of his Rickenbacker 4003 bass in white athletic tape. Greg didn't want to be in the Beatles.

There exists a black and white videotape of the Item's performance at the Unheard Music Festival. I have a copy back home, in Washington. We aren't bad, actually. We were certainly the only mildly poppy band on the bill, one of only a few not to do a 1-minute, 15-second version of the Monkees' "Stepping Stone." (One of the bands that did, a little combo called Minor Threat, wouldn't be unheard for much longer.)

But the night belonged to punk. Greg broke a string on the last song (a bass string; that doesn't happen often). A few days later he told us he didn't think he was a good fit for the Item.

Bands are funny things, roiling balls of ego and creativity, madness and humor. Good ones are more than just units that can play notes or keep beats. They're organisms that open up to one another and live and breathe as one. When one person wants to leave, it hurts. Because music is so elemental, rejecting it is like saying you don't like someone's soul. That's why band splits are so fractious, like the bitterest divorce. Civilians might be amazed by the rancor and vitriol that attends something like the Eddie Van Halen/David Lee Roth battles. Anyone who's spent any time in a band just gives a sad and knowing nod.

Pat and I cursed Greg to each other, but he'd been right. We weren't a good fit. Greg want on to join a band called Egoslavia that was kind of Talking Heads lite. They released an album locally and even opened for the Psychedelic Furs at the University of Maryland's student union. There must not have been any hard feelings, since Greg put Pat and me on the guest list. Or, rather, Chris did. He'd had to change his name because the leader of Egoslavia was named Greg.

The Item found a replacement bass player, a 15-year-old wunderkind named Eric who was sensational, much better than we deserved. Then we played a lot of Thursday-night gigs not opening for the Psychedelic Furs.

I touched base with Chris Anderson when he was working for the Economist and was back in town to visit his family. Next I heard he'd become editor of Wired (a magazine so cool that in its early days it had a design that rendered it practically unreadable, as if to actually read the articles would in some way sully them).

Not that Item veterans are slackers. Eric had to leave the band when he graduated from high school. He want on to earn his PhD from MIT in the history of science and works in academia in Cambridge, Mass. His replacement, Tim, teaches economics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Pat does something I don't quite understand for Freddie Mac, the home loan outfit. After 10 years he picked up his guitar again and now plays all around Washington with an acclaimed rockabilly band he put together called Western Bop. I'm a journalist, though not as famous a one as Chris Anderson. And I still play the drums.

If you poke around online you will find Chris Anderson talking about his musical experience. He focuses on the art-punk of Egoslavia, not the power pop of the Item. But trust me: I once made him wear a matching outfit.