WHOoPLA: Chapters 33, 34 & 35

Chapter Thirty Three: “Just Bring Tim in.”

Three days had passed since Arnold had teased The Animal with the story about Curbishley’s call. The Animal was getting impatient was getting hard to contain his frustration. He had abandoned filling his porta potty plastic bag with both number one and number two choosing to piss in the ledge rainwater drain about 20′ down from his encampment just outside the window of the bookkeeping office of Rhonda Stratman. Rhonda was a dishwater blonde former party girl white chick who was now married with kids and settling in to a much more normal lifestyle and body type. The Animal would poke his head through the smaller ledge window into her office to warn her of the impending yellow liquid barrage and she would escape to get a bucket of warm sudsy water to pour down the drain after he’d tucked his cold, shrunken peter back in.

Patti Genko was starting to think Arnold’s claims of talking to the band were just complete bullshit. She started thinking,

“He has no IN there…It’s all a bunch of BS! This is baloney! Lee doesn’t even have an end to this. He’s just waiting for a miracle to happen!’”

She began to theorize that Arnold was purposely keeping Tim out there for the sake of all the attention. Arnold admits,

“I didn’t want Tim coming in too soon. I wanted him out there. It was Tim the Rock N Roll Animal against the elements!”

Arnold now was on the phone with Lynett lobbying for the $40,000 that would finalize the deal but making no headway. He had sold the idea, initially, as one that would be able to be done on sheer hutzpa- for free. Lynett, who was still waiting for the Plan A, had worried that there was no Plan B. Lynett:

“We talked that once and next thing I know Tim was on the ledge.”

This WAS Arnold’s Plan B. And now Arnold was having to argue how important this was to the station but,

“He (Lynett) just didn’t quite understand what it was. Bill was always a dollar short. It was all always about money.”

Lynett sees himself as an, “I’d like to think about it” kind of guy. He doesn’t generally say no right off the bat. But Arnold pressed him for an immediate answer, and when that happens,

“Well, things aren’t going to go your way.”

Arnold spent several hours over two days trying desperately to get him to loosen up the cash that would bring Tim in off the ledge. Now, too, Elliot Hoffman, the band’s attorney, was starting to get upset and threatening to move the open date they had created for Milwaukee to Hartford, CN. Arnold’s relentless pestering of Lynett, who claims to have been “consulting his partners”, resulted in a climatic statement from the battered recipient,

“Look! Just bring Tim in!”

That’s when the first real cracks in Arnold’s porcelain veneered smile began to show. He blew.

“Noooooooo!!!! Are you out of your mind!”

It had been an exhausting run. It was like the 20 mile mark of a marathon. Arnold had hit a wall. For runners, it is an actual physiological and mentally devastating blow that throws them into a slow motion twilight zone of sudden pain. It’s power exerts itself on the mind making even the most seasoned professionals question whether or not they can even finish the final 6 miles. For Arnold it was exactly the same. He worried that his face, his body and the truth that “it still might not come off” would be picked up on by other people in the office who were so closely keying in on his every emotion waiting for word.

They say that part of what makes a fiasco is that at some point all social order completely breaks down and events spin wildly out of control. Arnold was letting himself imagine the nightmare of his failure, of Tim “just coming in” and the chaos that would follow. They also say that we learn as much from those horrific experiences, if not more, than we do the perfectly managed ones. This was the moment when that nightmarish potential was greatest and Arnold’s zooming thoughts left him in a paralyzing state of shock. He needed to make a quick exit and get out of there without anybody seeing him. He needed sleep. So he skipped his usual end of the day stop at the ledge to fill Tim in, ducked his head down, tipped his wide brimmed hat to cover his face and made a brisk exit out.

But in the small penthouse environs, nothing Lee Arnold did went unnoticed and his hasty departure left a pall hanging over our tight knit group that felt like a death bed vigil.

Chapter Thirty Four: Yost Toast.

That Tuesday evening, the 28th of September, The Animal passed the time by watching the now out of town Brewers play the Boston Red Sox on the news room television from the ledge. They won 9-3. That night also, The Who played a show at the Civic Arena in Pittsburg, PA and had gotten creative during the encore. Townsend had decided on his own to start the encore with the unrehearsed song “Athena.” Kenny Jones wasn’t happy with how it came off complaining that when he makes a mistake everybody hears it and saying that their rendition sounded like,

“Dustbins falling from the stairs.”

Wednesday night they would be performing at The Market Square Arena in Indianapolis, IN.

By Wednesday morning The Animal had abandoned his porta potty for good. Now he was angrily coming in off the ledge and walking right through the lobby and sales offices whenever he had to use the bathroom. The path would take him right past Arnold’s office and he hammered on the closed door as he passed by to let his presence and feelings on the matter be known.

Lee Arnold was buried in there having returned refreshed and just plain mad. His call to Lynett was terse and to the point. He offered to let Lynett take $1,000 per month off his salary for the next 40 months to pay for the concert. He was making about $36-50k per year so the offer was not only substantial but just plain absurd.

“If you’re not gonna pay for it, I’m gonna pay for it because I’m NOT gonna let my career end in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I can’t let the greatest thing that I’ve ever done in radio not happen because of $40,000….I’ll pay for it!”

It may have been that nearly three days of listening to Lee Arnold just wore him down or it may have been that Arnold’s conviction finally showed him just how important this was. There’s also the possibility that Bill Lynett finally did understand that this would be a just plain old good investment. Whatever the reason, Lynett finally relented. “Really fucking cheap Bill Lynett” was actually going to fess up forty thousand 1982 dollars! For everyone who has ever worked under Bill Lynett, that will be Arnold’s greatest achievement. The Who? Well, The Who isn’t as powerful as Bill Lynett is cheap.

Lee Arnold had done it. He hung up the phone and threw his arms and head back and took a long, deep breath of the crisp, clean, 26th story air as he sat in his 21st story office. It was over.

Arnold kept his cards close to his chest as he worked to finalize the details with Curbishley. Another day was going to have to be added to The Animals ledge adventure. It was OK as Tim, Patti and Mike Wolf were enveloped in the Brewer game against the Boston Red Sox that night. It was a great distraction as backup catcher and future Brewer Manager Ned Yost’s top of the ninth pinch hit, his lone home run of the season hit with a borrowed bat, sailed over Fenway Park’s Green Monster to give the Brewers a four game lead with five games to play. It was one for the ages.

Chapter Thirty Five: The Cat on the Roof.

Arnold’s pleasure with his accomplishment wasn’t being hid too well. Even without the details, everybody could see his mood had changed for the better. It’s a look that we don’t get to see in people very often. That poor attempt at hiding your jump up and down happiness. The ability to verbally restrain yourself but a distinct inability to hold back all the other loud, nonverbal, interpersonal tells. We knew he had it and the anticipation of Tim’s emancipation announcement made the place spin and bounce like a merry go round at double speed.

The Who played the Pontiac Silverdome just outside Detroit on Thursday the 30th to a crowd of 70,000+ as Lee Arnold, Bill Curbishley, Shamrock and Elliot Hoffman firmed up the agreement.

The deal was done.

Late that night in the after hours, Tim heard an unusual sound coming from the roof just above him. He’d acclimated to the pigeons sudden wing flaps and the creaks of the steel blimp dock as it swayed in the wind, but this was more. He looked up.

“TIM THE FRUCKIN FROCK N FROLL HANIMAL!!!!”

It was a very drunk and wobbly “30 something” tall, thin man in an auto body shop work uniform standing at the roofs precipice and trying to light a cigarette.

“FFFFROCK ON MILFFFFFWAUKEE!!!”

That garbled sloop caused both the cigarette and his lighter to tumble down onto Tim’s cot on the ledge below. The drunken Spiderman made a quick attempt to catch each as they fell. That scared the living shit out of Tim as the inebriated tightrope walker teetered and then tipped dangerously forward to catch himself. Finally, he dropped to his knees and reached out his arm asking Tim to hand the lighter up to him as his other blackened, greasy hand fumbled for another cigarette from his shirt pocket. The Animal, relieved that there wasn’t a dead body lying in the 6th & Wisconsin Avenue intersection, encouraged him to come into the station and hang out. He did. He’d apparently made it through the front doors of the building, which sometimes were propped open with a mop by the cleaning crews, and up to the 21st floor only to be stuck outside the penthouse in the elevator corridor. One door there leads to the steps that go to roof and he had found it. He was now sharing a coffee with the soon to be victorious lion in Milwaukee’s Coliseum of Rock.

With the allegory taken care of The Animal was ready to end the story.

~ by Scott on November 30, 2007.