It's a Wonderful Life: Sinatra, Jack Daniels, Shane MacGowan's ghost, and the Gift that is the Sharing of Rock 'n Roll

I handed my pal Lucas a sheet of paper. On it was the letters, words, and phrases of another foolish brainstorm - a work in the making. Or so I thought as we shared some Holiday cheer:

As far as drinks go a Manhattan is pretty sporty. It’s better than a Bronx Cocktail, and far less specific to the occasion than, say, Eggnog, a Gin Fizz, or a Mint Julep at Churchill. The Manhattan isn’t as mired in booziness as the Martini, Screwdriver, or the post-booze restorative of the Bloody Mary. And it certainly isn’t as queer as the Singapore Sling or the Pousse Café. No siree, the Manhattan is a drinker’s drink; it’s got that sweet/bitter rivalry thing going for it which many people - misguided by “tradition” - will attempt to enhance with a sunken maraschino cherry, and be certain that I’d gladly take one myself if you offered it, particularly during these holidays (it’s just that you might want to forget the drowned fruit in mine thank you). You can be certain that the Manhattan, although it has no real edge to it, has its righteous place amongst the cocktail royalty.

Frank Sinatra didn’t like Manhattan’s. Never did. Oh sure, he down one if it was around, but the Chairman of the Board wasn’t a bourbon and bitters man, and he didn’t go much for cherries in his cheer either. In fact Sinatra, who was quite the believer in living lubricated, wasn’t really much the fan of most good cheer to be honest. He’d drink Martini’s (“only before dinner, never during or after, and rarely more than two” Bill Zehme explains in The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the lost art of Livin’), or wine (very expensive wine), and the occasional whathaveyou, but Old Blue Eyes was mostly just a loner, a contrarian of the highest order who, through talent and taste, evolved into the worlds very first rock and roll star. And like all good rock stars from then until now when Frank gave his favor it was to one simple flavor - that mysterious elixir of the Rockingroll Gods, Old #67, our good man Jack - Daniels that is, of course. Two fingers of Jack’s juice, four cubes of ice, and top it off with water. That’s how Sinatra defined his drink; just good old water and Jack. Never too dark, never too clear, it was science. It was rock and roll. It was Jack.

Sinatra set the stage for Jack Daniels as preference with class, a bit of a gentlemanly swagger and the hard earned knowledge that if you’re gonna drink in life, you gotta drink right. So Jack Daniels it was. And Jack Daniels it has always been - from Sammy and Sinatra sitting upon stools onstage with the clinking of ice in ringing through the PA to the maudlin high-flying, zany antics of David Lee Roth gulping from a bottle of Jack like a big-haired jackass baby in Van Halen’s “Panama” video, to the facsimile of a JD bottle that graces Neil Strauss’ embarrassingly pleasurable Motley Crue bio-hype there’s no denying that Mr. Daniels is the drink of Rock kings.

I read Lucas’ face as he read my words. It was a complete blank.

“Who the fuck cares?” was his response as he finished and carelessly tossed the papers onto the beer soaked table. I felt a rush of angry heat in pour through my skin. I’d called up a good friend, served up my swarm of words over a few cans of Stroh’s at a favorite hole in the wall, and all I get is a ‘who the fuck cares’ ?

“This,” he smiled and said, lifting his blue can of Detroit sewage water, “this is what life is all about my friend.” He turned the can up, drained it, and then sighed, “Ahhhh! Now that’s rock and roll buddy.”

I nodded, lifted my can, and knocked it back in one long draw, crushing it with my right hand after the last drop had slipped down my gullet. Garth Brooks had been moaning out of the jukebox for what was beginning to seem like several hours. I hurled the can at the music machine just as Brooks was breaking into some Christmas standard or another and muttered loudly, “Fuck Garth Brooks…fat ass hoo-yah.”
“Easy over there,” came a voice from behind the bar, “it’s Christmas for God’s sake.”

“FUCK GARTH BROOKS!” I howled. “And FUCK Christmas!” My friend laughed.

“No buddy, fuck you!” said the voice at the tap.

“No, no, no, fuck you!” I yelped, pointing right at the bar keep guy. I grabbed my friends empty and heaved it at the jukebox. Garth Brooks just wouldn’t shut up.

“Out! Get out! Now!” My friend behind the bar didn’t seem amused.

“That’s the problem,” I said to my friend as I grabbed my hat and coat. “Ain’t none of them got that…that…that thing anymore. That Sinatra thing, that thing Jagger had way back, that charisma, that energy…that star power that never tried to blind or overwhelm you but rather wanted to illuminate. Wanted to show you the way, wanted to carry you out of the shithole you felt trapped in. It’s got nothing to do with class, which Sinatra had in spades, but the thing is, it was his kind of class. They were his rules. He could sing Christmas! Hell Johnny Rotten never had that sort of class, but he did have the same goddamn “thing”, and he did it with dignity - his kind of dignity, on his terms. Do you think that he didn’t know that he, that his music, that punk rock was an escape - a conduit to take you from the bitterness of certain realities to someplace you’d always rather be. And he’d put some spirit into a Christmas cut. At least I’d buy it.”

“Get out…NOW!” said the barkeep.

“I’m going.”

“And have a Merry Christmas,” he added dryly, without the slightest hint of sarcasm.

“Yeah, whatever,” I said as I hit the door. “And you can go fuck Garth Brooks.”

The cold slapped me sober for a moment as I fumbled in my coat pockets for my car keys amongst the scraps of old Kleenex, gum wrappers, bottle caps, and crumbs from God knows what. “Merry Christmas my ass,” I mumbled, adding an emphatic “shit!” after dropping my keys into the freshly fallen snow. “Fuck Garth Brooks and Christmas.”

I shook the snow off of the keys and dried them against my jeans. I got in the car, turned the engine over and watched the steam of my breath crystallize on my windshield. I cranked the heat up which, in these twilight days of the old clunkers useful life, sapped the engine of just enough power that it would threaten to stall if you didn’t work the gas pedal just right. It was an orchestral movement that required concentration and coordination, both of which I’d been stripped of by the beer and Lucas’ lukewarm reaction to my scribblings.

The car lunged forward as I let the clutch out and I turned the beast over again. I maneuvered my way out of the parking lot using an old scrap of newspaper to manually “defrost” the windshield. The light snow had grown steadier and the road was now covered. As I wove across what I assumed to be road the beer began to soak in, working in tandem with my leaning efforts to keep at least a peephole of visibility on the windshield I was driving more drunk than I’d actually drunk. I eased the car around a curve and saw a set of familiar railroad crossing gates. I aimed the car between them and wiped my windshield once more before reaching down to turn on the car’s defrost. I must have glanced down for a split second, or maybe I’d focused too much on those damn gates through my small window on the world outside, but I swear to God that I never saw the guy before I hit him.

I just heard a dull thud, a short, loud moan, and then looked up in time to see a dark figure rolling off of the left side of my car’s hood. I hit the brakes and came to a stop on the tracks. I quickly jammed the car into reverse and pulled her off the roadside and burst out of the door, galloping toward the darkened figure of a body that lay motionless in the street. I was about ten feet away when the figure sat straight up.

“Christamighty!” a voice slurred with Irish brogue said. “You gotta watch ya’self when you drive that thing.”

It was dark and I was frozen, in shock, standing a full ten feet away when the figure rose to his feet and dusted the snow off of his ratty looking outfit.

“Y-y-you’re okay?” I said and asked at the same time in amazement. “I mean, are, are you okay?”

“Of courz I’um,” the apparently drunken leprechaun replied. “I cannnt be hurt when I’ms like dis.”

“Drunk?” I quizzed to no reply, just a cold stare. “I mean, you…you… you say that you can’t be injured when you’re drinking?”

The man stepped toward me. I inched back, stumbling into my car and under the streetlight. As he slipped the bonds of darkness his face began to come into focus. It was a familiar face, but one that was tough to place right off. He was slight with mussed up hair and an unshaven chin. His eyes were sunk at least two inches into his bony head. I knew I’d seen him before, but couldn’t quite make the connection. That is until he mumbled something that was entirely incomprehensible to me and was, apparently, more than just amusing to him. As he came into the light he was, at first, smiling to himself. As his smile broke toward laughter it the dots were connected. His teeth were an unholy mess. All browns, dingy yellows, and black decay. A full mouthful of it. I should have been sickened, but instead I yelped, “Shane? Shane MacGowan?”

“Yep, that’s me name,” he said through a chortle.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Getting’ hit by you and your carriage bloke. You really need to watch that sort of driving, you know? You been drinkin’?”
“Yeah, a bit…but what in the hell are you doing here?”
“I came for you my man.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, yeah, some sort of Dickens-ian thing that the big guy likes to pull every year or so. You know he really liked that Scrooge book thingy.”

“What?” I glanced around to see if anyone else was nearby. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Oh you know the old drill. Some bloke gets all down on the season, hits the spiritual skids so to speak, and the big guy sends along some ghosts to scare the senses back into them. Unfortunately, I’m that ghost.”

“But…but…but you’re, I mean, I didn’t think that you were, um, you know…”

“Dead?” he interrupted. “Yeah well, I guess technically I’m not. But I’ve always been teetering you know. And people have expected me to kick it for so long now that I’d figured I might as well just get a leg up on the whole afterlife affair.”
I must have looked like…

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” MacGowan, or rather this specter of Shane MacGowan said to me.

“Yeah, well…” I laughed. He didn’t.

“Well, you know how it goes, I’m here to learn you a lesson about Christmas and all that,” the apparition explained. “You do know about A Christmas Carol don’t you? I mean you know al about Ebenezer Scrooge, the ghost’s of Christmas Past, Present, and Future do you not?”

“Yeah, I do,” I said quietly.

“Well consider me the ghost of Christmas Past Imperfect,” he said with a snort and then a laugh. “You got any booze on ya?”

“Um, no I don’t.”

“Well then, let’s go now then.”

The MacGowan figure walked toward me and I reached out my hand and closed my eyes. I wondered what my ghostly flight woule be like, what visions would be reveal…

“Well get in the damn car will ya?” the angry vision yelped. I turned and saw MacGowan sitting in the passenger seat lighting a Turkish cigarette. “Hurry up, I’m getting’ cold here.”
“But I thought,” I said as I sat in the drivers seat, “I thought you were going to take me somewhere.”

“I am,” he replied, but I sure as hell ain’t walking.”

“I…I…I guess I expected…”

“Expected some sort of mystical supernatural journey?”

He laughed again, bearing those hideous choppers. “That ain’t the way it’s done in the real world buddy. Now shut the door and let’s get going. I ain’t got all night.”

I shut the car door and easily got her rolling this time around. MacGowan’s spirit sat in the passenger side rifling through my CD’s, chain smoking his exotic cigarettes, and keeping an eye open for a drive thru where we could get “something to cool the larynx”.

“None of my discs here, eh?” He rolled down the window and hacked up some phlegm, sending it flying out into the new fallen snow.

“I’ve got all of your stuff at home,” I replied rather meekly.
“Well play me something,” he demanded. “We have a bit of a haul in front of us.”

I punched the stereo on, not recalling what it was I’d been listening to before running over Shane MacGowan’s ghost back on those railroad tracks.

“Well I had to leave town for a little whiiile,” moaned a voice. “You said you’d be good while I’m gone, but the look in your eye told me you’d told a lie, I know there’s been some carrying on.” I looked at MacGowan. He looked at me. The voice exploded: “Baby (baby), you’re wearing that loved on look.”

The Sadies were knee deep in the most bad-assed real rock groove I’d heard in the past year or two. MacGowan’s ghost was boppin’ up and down. I was swaying to a fro. Both of us howled the lyrics at the top of our lungs and rolled down the car windows. It was a moment like no other, but very much like so many in the rockroll life I’ve loved. My life as second rate B-grade road movie - and I loved it that way.

The song wound down and MacGowan pressed the repeat button. The Sadies slow and dramatic lead kicked off the song once more, leaving us both on edge - ready to pounce at the exact moment the song turned over on itself. It did - and it was exhilarating, it was always exhilarating, and I knew it always would be exhilarating. Great rock and roll never lies - and the Sadies were putting out some seriously great rock and roll at this moment. MacGowen broke a sweat. His rotten mouth, gaping open in song, seemed to find a way to gleam. The whole car shook with our spastic convulsions, right into the parking lot of a beer carryout store. We sat as the song closed down again and I turned the stereo down.

“Let me give you a few bucks for the drink,” I said as the MacGowan’s spirit eased out of the car.

“After turning me on to that cut?” he said incredulously. “No fucking way. I owe you my man.”

“No way, you’ve made some of the greatest music of my lifetime,” I gushed, beyond embarrassment. “I’ll pick up the tab.”

“Look,” MacGowan sat back down, “This is from me to you…a Merry Christmas have you. A gift. Just do me a favor…” he paused.

“Sure, anything.”

“Just don’t be so bitter. You’re doing a good thing you know, with the writing and all. You’ve got the right mindset; you’ve got the heart for it. You’re doing your writing for the right reasons. Whether you know it or not, you get at people…people who understand. People who care. People who you make care.”

I had nothing to say. MacGowan, or his ghost, or whatever the hell it…he was, ambled into the store. I rubbed my by now tiring eyes and stared up at the sky. Low marshmallow clouds drifted past the moon. The cold air came through the open car windows and stiffened me. Then a voice broke my short moment of serenity.

“That was hot!”

I turned and looked over my left shoulder. There was a kid pumping gas into his car, his girlfriend was leaning out the passenger window laughing.

“Play it again my man, the girlfriend here loves it!”
I looked to my left to make sure it was me he was talking to.
“Play what?” I said.

“That song you were blasting when you pulled into the lot here my man. That hot tune was badass! And my little lady was really diggin’ it.” He smiled a corny smile and the both of them laughed loudly. Their reverie echoed off of the dark skies.

“I can’t,” I said, playing the spoiler, “Not until my friend comes out with the beer at least.”

“Your friend?” the kid said, stifling his girl’s laugh. “What friend?”

“That shabby cat who just went in to get us some beer. Kinda scrawny and dirty lookin’, he’s a musician,” I pathetically proclaimed.

“Nobody went in there. None that I seen.” The kid turned to his lady friend, “Did you see anyone go in that store baby?” She shook her head. “It isn’t even open,” she giggled.
I leaned out the window and looked. She was right, it was one of those places where they have a little sliding security tray to collect after hour’s money. Where the fuck did Shane go?

I rubbed my eyes and looked again. I got out of the car.
“You okay mister?” the girl said.

“Yeah, I think I am,” I lied. “So you guys never saw anyone get out of the car?”

“Just you pal,” said the kid. “You trippin’?”

“No, no. No I’m not…I don’t think.” I stared into the store, looked up and down the street.

“Hey mister,” the girl called, “you sure you ok?”

“Yeah, yeah I am thanks.”

“That was a great song you were playing, the one when you drove in here.”

“The Sadies,” I said, still staring off into the distance.

“What?” she asked.

“The Sadies,” I repeated, “that’s the band playing that song.”
“I’ve never heard of them. They from around here?”

“Chicago,” I said, turning my attention to her. The kid was at the window to the place paying.

“It sounded great. It sort of sounded old and all, but I really liked it.”

The kid collected his change and jogged back to the car faking a few basketball moves along the way.

“Hey kid,” I called out, “What time is it?”

“Ten after twelve,” he snapped after glancing at his wrist.

“So that makes it Christmas now doesn’t it?” The girl smiled. The kid leaned down and kissed her.

“Yeah sure does Mister,” the kid answered as he rounded the front of his car, kicking up a cloud of snow.

“Hang on one second before you go,” I called out. “Just a second.” I went over to my car and grabbed The Sadies Tremendous Efforts disc and placed it into its jewel box. I trotted over to the kid and his lady’s car. They were making out between “merry Christmas’s” and “I love you’s”.
“Here, this is for you two,” I said as I handed the girl the disc. “The song is cut two. I hope you’ll get a kick out of it.”

“Wow, thanks Mister,” said the girl. She smiled and looked at the cover.

“Yeah, thanks,” added the kid, “Merry merry.”

“Merry Christmas to you too,” I said.

I turned to walk to my car. The kids spun his tires in the snow and roared out of the parking lot. As I opened my car door I could hear that song go sliding down the icy street.

“Baby (Baby!), you’re wearing that loved on look”

I started my ride and backed it out of its parking spot. I paused for just a second and looked out into the newborn days darkness. Confetti snowflakes filled the night sky. I glanced up, hoping, but not expecting, my haunting friend and Christmas spirit would return. I knew that he wouldn’t, and that it did. I pulled out onto the snowy roads and head home. Somehow, rock and roll seemed to save my life - or at least something in it - again.

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