Free Armageddon Rag by George R.R. Martin

more than he’s messed up already.”
    Sandy gave a sympathetic shrug. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve got to interview Maggio. He might hang himself with his own words. If he doesn’t, though, I’ll see what I can do to soften the stuff about him. Maybe.” He held up a hand hastily. “No promises, but it’s Lynch I’m interested in, mostly. I knew his rep, but I never really knew the details. I can see why you aren’t wearing black.”
    That drew a rueful, hangdog grin out of Gopher John. “Yeah, well, I told you.”
    “What about recently? Since West Mesa?”
    “I didn’t have much contact with Jamie Lynch after West Mesa,” Slozewski said. “By choice. His contract was with the Nazgûl, you see. With the four of us. He
owned
the Nazgûl. Did you know that? You know what Hobbins used to call him?”
    “Mister Lynch Sir?”
    Slozewski laughed. “No. But you can figure it out. You know where the name came from, don’t you? The Nazgûl?”
    “Patrick Henry Hobbins,” Sandy said. He’d included the anecdote in both of his earlier interviews with the group; it was a well-known piece of their history. “Hobbins was quite short, only five-two, and he had all that white hair, including some on his feet, and he smoked a pipe. Filled it with grass, but it was a pipe anyway. So when
Lord of the Rings
came out, it was natural that he got nicknamed Hobbit. That got him into the whole Tolkien bag, and he was the one who named the group the Nazgûl, after the flying baddies in the books.”
    “Yeah,” said Slozewski. “So guess what he named Lynch?”
    It had been a long time since Sandy had read the Tolkien trilogy. He had to think for a minute. “Sauron,” he said finally. “Sauron owned the Nazgûl.”
    “Give the man a beer,” Slozewski said. He drew one and shoved it across the bar. “Jamie loved it, actually. After
Hot Wind out of Mordor
climbed to the top of the album charts, he gave us four matching rings to commemorate the success.”
    “Cute,” Sandy said. He took a sip of the beer. “I’m not sure I understand, though. What do you mean, Lynch owned the Nazgûl?”
    “He owned the name,” Slozewski explained, “and he owned the right to manage any band that included at least three of us, so we couldn’t just break up and re-form under a different name to get ourselves out from under. He had us just where he wanted us until West Mesa. But when Hobbit was killed, it changed everything. Lynch wanted us to get a new lead singer and go on. Peter was having none of it, though. He freaked out after West Mesa, just gave up, and Rick and me formed Nasty Weather, which Lynch got no part of. There wasn’t one fucking thing he could do about it, either. I used to hear from him every year or so, always full of schemes for getting the Nazgûl back together. He’d try to sell me on the idea, and I’d tell him to fuck off.”
    Sandy tapped his pen thoughtfully against his notepad. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “Jamie Lynch
still
managed the Nazgûl?”
    “If you can manage a band that ain’t existed since 1971, yeah, he managed us. Fat lot of good it did him, with us all going our own ways. Jamie was such a bastard, though, he wouldn’t let go of that contract, not for anything.”
    “Did the question ever come up?”
    “Oh, yeah, a couple times. When I opened this place three years back, I thought I could get a lot of publicity by having the Nazgûl do a set on opening night. Just a gimmick, you know, a few old songs, not a real revival. But it would have packed the joint, and Peter was willing to do it as a favor, and Rick was
eager
. Things haven’t been so good for Rick, and I guess he saw it as a shot. Well, Jamie stomped on the idea. Demanded some absurd fee that I couldn’t afford and threatened to sic a high-priced lawyer on me. It wasn’t worth the hassle, so I dropped the whole idea.” He snapped his fingers and pointed one at Sandy. “The other time was just like