-by MOTHER

When I started a rock band, people asked me if it was an attempt to get in touch with my kids. But, no, it wasn't. Even thought they stayed locked in their rooms most of the time, after I cut off the caller ID on their phone line, they would sometimes not hang up when they heard my voice, so we remain in communication. And, of course, they still came down to raid the refrigerator at 1 am, and I often managed to stay awake that late once or twice a week, so I saw them then. No, forming a rock band was something I did for myself. I am just so creative a person, I needed an outlet. And since I've discovered there isn't much of a market for humorous stories about overweight, gray-haired, bifocal wearing, 50-year-old women, I decided rock stardom was my next choice. The first step was rounding up just the right friends to join the band. I enlisted my husband; I thought he'd want to be a roadie, but he pleaded a bad back, and took the job of keyboard player. I let him have on the condition that he shaved his head and got blue sunglasses. Next I went round to the Mall. Somewhere between the Godiva Chocolateria and the fourteenth shoe store I searched, I found the Muse. She agreed to join, but her instrument of choice was accordion. You can't argue with a Muse; she knows Art. Down at the school yard, in the high grass behind the swing set, I picked up an elephant who was pretty good on the bass. He had a tendency to lay it on a little heavy, but a heavy bass line has certain flair. Up at the County Courthouse I discovered the bear who lives under the Judge's bench was just about fed up with the Judge swinging his legs when he was bored during summations; the bear was a killer on the guitar. For drums I caught one of the grasping, multijointed, knobby knuckled, personal demons that haunt my nightmares; using his long, curling, claws, he proved a wild man on the skins. I had to lay in wait a couple of nights around a neighboring six-year-old's house to catch the Tooth Fairy – you didn't think I was going to exclude the tooth fairy, did you? – but I finally found her on a front tooth run. She wanted to play harmonica, and there was no persuading her otherwise, since it was about the only thing small enough for her to handle. I, of course, would be lead singer and play lead guitar. Finally, my 88-year-old mother-in-law volunteered to be a front man and play tambourine. We had to have to have the Tooth Fairy ride on her shoulder, though, to keep her pointed to the front of the stage, as her cataracts had gotten so bad she couldn't see which way was which. The primary question was, what would we call ourselves? The Muse suggested "Hell's Belles", but the bear didn't like it. My mother-in-law suggested "The Cat's Pajamas", but the Tooth Fairy pointed out that scandalous slang had evolved some since MIL's youth. The Demon was all for "@#$%&*$#^". There was a lot of spirited debate about that one. The elephant liked it, as did my mother-in-law; the Muse thought it was undignified and the Tooth Fairy felt she wouldn't be proper to plug it to her target demographics. We were stymied. Then my husband, with that strange look of patience and exasperation that so often crosses his face, looked around at the flotsam and jetsam of my imagination sitting there armed with instruments of musical aggression and suggested "Mother's Little Helpers". Everybody agreed rather too promptly for my comfort. So, we had the band, we had the name, we'd picked our instruments. Now we had to pick our genre. As leader of the band, I clapped my hands to get everybody's attention and suggested, "Why don't we start by playing together to see how we sound? Then we can decide what kind of music we want to play. How about we try that old summer camp favorite 'Michael Row the Boat Ashore'?" That was when we decided we'd be a heavy metal band. We had the sound for it. Since we played mostly by Professor Harold Hill's Think Method, after 45 minutes of rehearsal we were ready to go. And I don't think most of us were thinking that hard, distracted as we were with citadels of rock stardom: green M&Ms and screaming groupies. Not necessarily in that order. Well, for Hubby, bear, elephant and demon, maybe they were thinking primarily of groupies. But I am sure the Muse, the Tooth Fairy, MIL and I were concentrating on the idea of all the green M&Ms we could eat. I got us a booking at a truck stop bar on Route 41 near the Wisconsin border. The kind of place frequented by truckers who take 41 instead of the interstate, even though 41 has stoplights, because the interstate has tolls. I told everyone to dress up like serious rock stars; we had to look the part to play the part. I got myself the latest in red leather jeans from the Lane Bryant catalog, and a gold lame halter top. I put my hair in a pony tail on top of my head and polished my glasses to a gleaming shine. I even wore makeup. We brushed the bear and scrubbed the elephant. The Muse wore her usual diaphanous robes; the demon simonized his scales. My husband got an electric blue three piece suit with "Mother's Little Helpers" spelled out on the back in flaming letters. My mother-in-law got a brand new pair of sequined sneakers to go with her spangled tank top and hot pink spandex hot pants. As a final touch, the Tooth Fairy dusted us all with pixie dust, which made us sneeze, but that's another story... So there we were, on stage. In the back was the demon, behind his drum set on a riser. Hubby was off to the right behind his Casio keyboard, bear and elephant to the left. The Muse up right-front, where the audience could ogle her and her accordion, MIL in the mid-center with the TF posted on her shoulder to keep her from falling off the stage when the lights hit her. And I, front and center, clutching my guitar, in the spotlight, ready to lead my band, make my debut as a rock star. The demon had set the amplifier on stun. Then "One, two, three..." I swung down my hand. It began. We started with "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore", followed by "On the Erie Canal", then "Tom Dooley", then "John Jacob Jinglehiemer Schmidt". The noise was cacophonous. The waves of sound were making my tight leather pants ride up into my crotch. My glasses crazed. My hair took on a life of its own, putting on a sort of light show as it fizzed out in a flaring contrast between the golden brown ends and gray roots. My throat was raw from screaming out the words, not that one of them was discernable over the wailing of the untuned guitars and bass. The demon on the drums seemed to be playing with both arms, both feet, and tail simultaneously. I didn't know an accordion could drown out a keyboard set for maximum feedback. And I silently thanked God my MIL was already deaf, because if she wasn't already, this would have put her over the top. But the audience seemed to be lapping it up. Of course, they were also lapping up beer. Lapping and gulping and guzzling and chugging and draining, and I think I saw a couple of people mainlining as well. But everybody sure was having a great time. So I signalled to my mother-in-law to shake her booty a little harder, let the Muse sing a song or two, and stepped back to suck a couple of Sucrets. We were a hit! Pretty soon we started getting bookings all over: biker bars, raves, leather bars, bar mitzvahs. We played 'em all. We realized it didn't matter what we attempted to play; it was so discordant and loud that the melody and words were obliterated anyway. We recorded a CD called Mother's Little Helpers: Can You Swallow This? We played "The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round" and called it "Commuter Hell". We sang "Mary Had a Little Lamb" as "Slaughter at the Schoolhouse". We retitled "Farmer in the Dell" as "Exploitation by the Land Owners". It went platinum. We were booked on Leno, but his interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury ran over. Our fans rioted and overturned cars all aound beautiful downtown Burbank. We even did a video for MTV. We recorded it in the County Courthouse. It seems the bear became our breakout star. I'm not bitter, even though I was the lead singer. We tied up the court room for three days filming. The judge was pissed, until we incorporated him into the shoot. He got to dance thought the scene in robe and wig singing, "Here come da judge, here come da judge, look out world, here come da judge." The bear stood on the bench as the judge danced past and did some mind bending solos, great riffs, fabulous finger work, considering he's playing with paws the size of basketballs. He ended his number smashing his electric guitar with the gavel. We hung our demon drummer upside down in the chandelier by his tail. We designated the elephant as the official crotch grabber – we were told we had to have one. But I did get to be the one to stick my tongue out. I told the director in no uncertain terms he could let the bear do a solo, and he could do 360-degree pans of the Muse in her slinky gown, and he could shoot all the footage he wanted of the Tooth Fairy rigged out in phony tattoos and piercings, but I was going to be the one that got to stick my tongue out! And we pulled it off. We were in heavy rotation, right up there with Dogg Diggity Doo-doo and Brittany Tiffany Saks or what ever her name is... Every time we turned on the TV we saw our hit "Ashes, Ashes" and all fell down, laughing. But we got too big too fast. The world of rock glory chews you up and spits you out, like yesterday's pomegranate seeds. Too many wild parties, too many awards shows, too much rubbing elbows with the glitteri. We lost the common bond between us and our public. We spun off into our own private hells of booze, drugs, chocolate and, in one really tragic case (I'm not naming names) shoe addiction. It wasn't pretty. The demon, our wild man, went too far in too many directions, ending up in rehab. The last time I saw him, at the asylum, we sat under a tree, weaving playing cat's cradle and reciting poems by Emily Dickinson. Our dear old bear, after dominating the video, was in great demand everywhere. He did cameos in half a dozen other videos, and was a presenter at the MTV Movie awards with Chelsea Clinton. Finally it all went to his head and he jumped ship to play with a new supergroup, the Traveling Bewilderments: Bruce Springsteen, Ozzy Osborne, Bonnie Raitt, and Tony Bennett. The Elephant, after a flirtation with drugs, decided to get back to his roots, traded in his bass for a sitar, and became heavily involved in eastern religions. He is now living in an ashram at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. The Muse, poor thing, sunk deep into the throes of addiction and is now trying to work her way out of debt by teaching classes at suburban art centers in and around Chicago. She refuses all interviews and, if asked, denies she was ever part of Mother's Little Helpers. The Tooth Fairy, perhaps the most stable and grounded member of the group, laughs the whole thing off as a lark and has cheerfully gone back to her night job, none the worse for the wear. She's says it'll be a great story to tell her children. When they are old enough. My mother-in-law started hanging around with Courtney Love and Madonna at the Grammies, hit it off very well, and the bitches convinced her to go solo. She is currently recording a hip-hop album for Inter-Scope records called R U 4 Fi Ber. As for me and Hubby, well, we learned our lesson; life on the fast track is not for us. Simple life for simple people. We took a vow to go acoustic and joined a Burl Ives revival tour. We are traveling the country performing in kindergartens and Nursery schools with the Little White Duck Review. Needless to say, a reunion tour is out of the question.