A Glimpse of the Fast Lane

Charles M. Young

When the crowd rose for the national anthem, "Life in the Fast Lane" came over the loudspeakers. It was a successful joke, but in an odd way more significant than a momentary laugh. All of us--rock stars and other royalty included--spend most of our lives in the slow lane, Most of us like it that way, opting for the "lives of quiet desperation" that Thoreau talked about.

Me, I like loud desperation, and that is what both teams were feeling in the weeks before the game as insults flew back and forth between the coasts. Though some of it was calculated for psych-out, it did have a basis in genuine emotion: the Eagles were not fond of our reviews, nor of Random Notes casting aspersions on their masculinity, and we could not get them to take our criticism, or even agree to an interview. So the game was much more than some hoked-up "celebrity challenge of the sexes" where famous people get to run through obstacle courses with other famous people solely because they are famous people. No, for all the publicity hype that surrounded the event, we wanted the Eagles to pay for their insolence. We wanted to teach them a lesson that would make musicians everywhere quake in terror if they had thoughts of back-sassing our reviews.

We got demolished: 15-8.

But it was intense while it lasted, and I have the Eagles to thank for a glimpse of life in the fast lane. That game in front of all those people was as close as any of us at Rolling Stone will come to the World Series.

I was happy to shake Glenn Frey's hand after the game (it turns out he and the Eagles are nice guys). I am, however, still dreaming about rearranging his moustache with the bottom of my shoe from that time he slid safely past me into home plate.

P.S. to Joe Smith, board chairman of Elektra/Asylum and smartass announcer: the only performance I have seen in recent years to rival ours for sheer mediocrity was your acting in FM.