It broke to silence for a long, anger-filled pause . . .
Then it crashed down to the chorus, which I’d written to try to find my way out of the disappointment and pain. It built, line by line, each chord change resolving into the next and the next. It grew like a tidal wave, my clean tones darkening with brutal screams that moved the sound of abandonment beyond the madness it had caused me.
At the apex, I let it all go, bearing down on that mic as if I could bring Wembley down with my voice.
The sound guy dialed in the delay, and my last note echoed out over the empty stadium as if the place were a dying civilization.
Then the music dropped, the second verse cycling in.
I pulled the mic from the stand and stepped to the edge of the stage, my skin rippling with the same raw emotion now aching inside me. The tear in my soul throbbed with the memory of Dan in his casket.
A couple of the suits were shaking their heads as if they didn’t believe what they were hearing. Roadies had stepped into the side stages to listen. Stadium workers now stood at entryways and in the aisles.
I barely noticed. Time may have been passing for the people who’d stopped to listen to me sing my darkest heart. But I wasn’t there. I’d gone back to those moments that gave me those notes and words. And I was damn sure going to give them everything I had if this was the last great stage I’d ever sing them on.
The second time through, across the silent break, I screamed out a lone, savage cry against the great empty theater. The echoes lifted up into the sky, filling all the space I could see.
A moment later, the chorus cycled back again. I bore down on the mic and sent it out hard.
Then the music dropped to the third verse. The one I’d never gotten quite right. The one about Mama.
I’d gotten close the day Jimmy died. I’d gotten closer in the afternoon sun of the Iron Horse, when I’d looked into my own shadow and nearly seen a part of me that I hadn’t been ready or willing to see before. But I’d gotten closest the night I smashed the greenroom guitar, realizing there might be something more inside me for Mama than hate.
Still, something had always been missing. But I’d learned what it was the night I lay in the Highgate Cemetery staring through a hole in my heart. Only then had I finally recalled the last, worst part of it.
I fixed Mama in my mind—the loving face that had made me that promise, then left anyway to start a new family. And I sang the heartbreak of a child who learns too young that the hero he’d always believed in . . . would disappoint him.
I sang about the aching hallways of my childhood. The alone days. The endless unanswered prayers asking “why,” and begging for her to come back for me.
All the words were there, as if they’d existed from the start, waiting for me to find them. And I screamed the living hell out of every painful word. It felt almost like I was fighting to get them out of my mouth, purging the images and anger with the force of rough-throated melody. Good God, did it feel good. I was finding the third verse. I was standing on the other side of what I’d been trying to write all these years—Mama’s side.
And that’s when I pushed it all the way through. I was angry at Mama for leaving, but a small part of me was happy for her,too. She’d escaped a bad life. Even though I missed her, and wished I’d been enough to keep her home, a part of me was glad she’d gotten free . . . because I loved her.
Memory isn’t always about regret.
I put all the raw honesty of those conflicting emotions into a single line that I screamed out over the last notes of that beautiful, terrible third verse. All of Wembley seemed to shiver at the sound of it. The sutures in my soul pulled nearly to breaking as the wound threatened to tear open with the rush of memory.
The scream echoed out over the silent break with all the hate and love inside me.
Then the chorus dropped back in, violent and beautiful. I set my feet. My body would be in this one. The release more certain, more deserved than it had ever been.
I climbed steady and sure, letting my voice take me higher and rougher. It came more savage-filled and in need of mercy than any sound I had ever let go. That chorus spoke about standing firm, about finding people . . . who stay.
At the end, I threw my head back at the torture of the song and let out the final note. I held it, not ready to let it go, driving it louder and higher, more resonant and rough, then finally ending in a long vibrato that tore up from my throat.
Then I stopped.
The song echoed to silence. And stillness.
No one spoke or clapped or whistled. They just stood perfectly still, watching, as though talk or movement might put an end to a beautiful thing. A peace came over me as I stood there alone in front of the mic.
I’d finally finished my song.
I’d finally started to forgive Mama. And I think it was because I could now sing the fuller picture of who she was—not just the woman who left but the mother I still loved. I’d come toWembley to try to forgive the Hounds. I hadn’t expected I might start down that path with Mama. And the sutured tear in my shadow had begun to itch pleasantly—not healed but healing. It was a start.
I hoped what I’d tried to do about Mama with my song and singing here for the band might be enough that the Ward would take me.
The sound of one person clapping behind me pulled me from my reverie. It was Lynn, standing next to the drum riser with the rest of the Hounds. They started clapping with him, and a moment later they were all walking my way.
