By the end of summer vacation, Sonny was making pretty good progress. He had a couple of major scales down and was able to play them all over the neck. He had learned all of "Smoke on the Water" and I was beginning to show him fingerrpicking stuff using "Stairway to Heaven" and "House of the Rising Sun" as examples. I decided to allow him to begin taking my Epiphone acoustic home so he could practice more, but only with the proviso that he would quit his job and then come over to my house right after school to do his homework. Then I would let him practice on my black Strat. He was more than glad to ankle the fast food toil in favor of working on becoming a rock star. He would go home for dinner and then come right back to my place to play guitar, sometimes while he watched me rehearse with the band. We let him play that famous DP song with us a couple times and the feeling of doing that definitely gave him an incentive to work hard at becoming an axeman.

There was also the macho factor. He didn't like it one bit that I could run circles around him on the six string and sometimes he would take it out on me in bed by fucking me really aggressively. I would have a couple of orgasms, but I would also be sore afterward.

The band did our scheduled college gigs that September, which was a blast. I admit that I went back to the dorm room of a couple of students for a good old fashioned rutting. I knew at the time that they would be telling everyone that story if I ever became famous. But you gotta live life.

There were some great albums released over the course of the summer. I had the band learn "Once Bitten, Twice Shyy" and "I Get So Excited" off of Ian Hunter's debut solo opus, "Walk this Way," "Sweet Emotion" and the title track off fof Aerosmith's "Toys  in the Attic" LP, "Nazareth's "Hair of the Dog," "Rock Show" from Paul McCartney's "Venus and Mars" record, "White Punks on Dope" from the Tubes' debut, "Shoot Shoot" and ":Let it Roll" by UFO from their "Force It" platter, and, from the first Rainbow album, "Man on a Silver Mountain" and "Catch the Rainbow." Kiss finally released "Alive" and we learned "Strutter" and "Deuce," and from Ted Nugent's famous self titled effort we added "Stranglehold, "Just What the Doctor Ordered," "Hey Baby" "Motor City Madhouse" and "Stormtroopin.'"

In October, Rory Gallagher's "Against t the Grain" was put on the market and we slotted "Souped Up Ford" into our repetoire and Angel's "The Tower" we picked up from their first release. And then Heart's "Dreamboat Annie" hit the stores and we added "Crazy on You" and "White Lightning and Wine" from it.

In addition to all that, I learned pretty much everything off of the first Fleetwood Mac album with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.

I suggested that we do a Deep Purple tribute show the first week of December not just because we wouldn't be competing with big rock tours at that time (of which there weren't any), but the marked unhappiness with the Tommy Bolin edition of the band could be an opportunity. We would do the landmark "Machine Head" record in its entirety

We decided to open with "HIghway Star" and follow it with "Hush," "Mandrake Root," "Woman from Tokyo," "Mary Long," "Pictures of Home," "Lazy," "Mistreated," "Just Might Take Your Life," "Stormbringer," "Space Truckin', "Demon's Eye," "Child in Time," "Strange Kind of Woman," "High Ball Shooter," "Speed King," "Wring That Neck," "Flight of the Rat," "Hard Lovin' Man," "Black Night," "The Mule," "The Gypsy" and "Maybe I'm a Leo" for our main set. For our first encore, we would do ""Never Before" and "You Fool No One." For our second encore, we would do "Burn" and "Lay Down, Stay Down. Our third encore would be just "Smoke on the Water." That would be better than a two and half hour set. If they absolutely insisted we come out again, we would do "Man on a Silver Mountain" as a kind of recognition of where the creative force behind Purple went.

I booked a couple of American Legion halls because I thought we could sell a fair number of tickets doing this. As it would turn out, I wished we would have organized more shows because both of our Deep Purple tributes sold out and we had to turn people away. Unfortunately, they would also be our last concerts with our then lineup. I'll talk more about that later.

Since  Pete was still going out with Lynn, I didn't sleep with him again after they hooked up. Moreover, Sonny got himself a regular girl, too, so my opportunities to ride that killer dick of his went out the window. It's not that he didn't want to fuck me, it was that I wasn't going to if he was already banging somebody else out of fairness to her. He was still coming over for his daily guitar lesson and his playing improved bit by bit. For Christmas, I surprised him with a cheap Japanese Les Paul copy guitar that I had modified with better tuners and pickups so that he would have something he could practice on at home as well as a little Pignose amp.

In January,  1976, John left the band after auditioning with a group that already had a label deal and he got the job. The same thing happened with both Cliff and Danny. None of those bands really panned out in the way of commercial success, but I was glad to see them take the shot. John's girlfriend had been pressuring him to quit music and get a regular job so that they could get married and start having kids. Once John was in that outfit, he dumped her for not believing in him and good on him.

This left Joe, Pete and me in a quandry as to our future together. For now, we opted  to carry on without a keyboard player and begin auditioning drummers and singers. However, I also told them to not pass up any good opportunities out of a sense of loyalty. I was just doing the band for fun and enjoyed playing other people's songs and that was all I wanted to do for the foreseeable future. We also decided to stay a heavy rock band rather than a general purpose cover group because it was more fun playing harder music.

Frampton Comes Alive hit  the shelves that same month and would go on to become the biggest selling album of all time. We learned "Show Me the Way" off of it, but that was all even though we liked most of the songs on it. Unfortunately, they were just too lightweight for us. God bless Peter Frampton, though. Great guy, great player.

David Bowie abandoned his flirtation with R&B and went back to a more art rock approach with "Station to Station." The three of us learned the title track while I personally also added "TVC 15" and "Stay" to my personal assortment of tunes. We also added the Outlaws "Green Grass and High Tides." From there, we went on an Allman Brothers binge, too, because their music was so tasty. I picked up all the albums before Dickey Betts left to form Great Southern and we set about endeavoring to nail material from them.

February also came and went, but first not without Lynyrd Skynyyrd putting out "Gimme Back my Bullets,"  the title track of which we all thought was great and slotted it into our rrepetoire straightaway. Also, the first post-Peter Gabriel Genesis album, "Trick of the Tail," came out and was definitely on a par with their previous records. We decided to learn "Robbery, Assault and Battery" and "Squonk." It would be the last Genesis record I ever liked, though, since they went tto more of a corporate rock direction afterward. 

In addition, Be-bop Deluxe proffered "Sunburst Finish," and we learned "Fair Exchange," "Blazing Apostles" and "Ships in the Night" off of it. It was easily the best thing Bill Nelson's band ever did. Just about out every song on it was a gem.

The same week that the Be-bop Deluxe LP was in the stores, Joe was introduced to the sister of one of his music major classmates after Joe had lamented that we were having a bad time finding replacements for Danny and Cliff. She was a vocal performance major, played piano and admired Janis Joplin. Joe had her come to my house to try out. Her name was Jessica Cross and she was a big girl at about 5'9" and 140 pounds with D cups and she had power to burn. Her phrasing was still raw and she had no idea at all, really, on how to look and act like a rock singer because she'd mainly performed in school and church choral groups. Nevertheless, I couldn't pass up the challenge at turning her into one. Because she was only 19 she wasn't that set in her ways yet. So there was a lot to work with. Her voice had a slightly husky edge to it, but not that "smoked five packs a day for  40 years" Bonnie Tyler or Tom Waits sound.

I immediately made a bunch of cassettes for her of great singers. Ann Wilson, Tina Turner, Etta James, Billie  Holiday, Laura Nyro, Robert Plant,  Ian Gillan, David Coverdale, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Mamie Smith, Koko Taylor, Steve Marriott and yes, Steven Tyler and Paul Stanley, though the latter two for more how they comported themselves on stage than their actual vocal chops and made her learn a song a day ffrom each of them and then had her do them for me the next day. I also iinstructed that no matter who you are in reality, you have to be bigger than life when you're on stage to get across to an audience. I took her to Hollywood and bought her a bunch of rock star style outfits and then worked with her for several hours a day on weekends on how to move, pose and command an audience. Her height had made her feel huge and self conscious iin high school even though she was actually very cute. I had to keep advocating for her to use it to her advantage. When I put her in black six inch platform boots she said she felt like Elton John in the "Pinball Wizard" sequence of the film version of Tommy, which was a pretty funny remark.

While I was relentlessly working on Jessica's approach, Joe, Pete and I were becoming frustrated with the aspiring drummers we were seeing. Cliff set the bar high and we really didn't want to deviate from that standard. I started hitting the clubs in Hollywood again trying to find someone I could poach. After a couple months, I hit paydirt. At the Rock Corporation, I saw this totally crap band that had a terrific skinsman and I buttonholed him after the show. As it turned out, the group he was in was based in the Valley, where he was born,  but when his dad got a job at a different aerospace firm in Orange County, they moved to Lakewood to be closer to that workplace. The guys in his band were friends of his from way back, but he knew that it sucked and the schlep up the 101 freeway was burning him out. Thus, he was quick to take my offer, especially after learning that my previous drummer had been picked up by a signed act and that I had a rehearsal space in my house.

I called Pete the next morning and let him know that I had solved our drummer problem. We now had a complete group again. I bought a Yamaha electric piano and amplification equipment for Jessica and a new double bass drum kit for the incoming percussionist, Kelly Helton. We began  rehearsing everyday so that Pete and Kelly could get into the pocket with each other. Furthermore, we had to expose both Jessica and Kelly to  the wide range of material we did. Kelly already knew a lot of the Led Zeppelin tracks because he was a huge John Bonham fan, as were most drummers of that era. He still wasn't as loud as Cliff was, which made rehearsing with him more comfortable than with hiss predecessor.

In March, Kiss' "Destroyer" was out on the street and we learned "Detroit Rock City" from it. Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak" appeared as well and from that we  studied the title tune as well as "The Boys arre Back in Town," Cowboy Song" and "Emerald." Then Led Zep birthed its "Presence opus" and "Achilles Last Stand" went into our main set straightaway while we also .acquired "Hots on for Nowhere."

Pete, Joe and I decided that to keep stretching Jessica out, so we would schedule a Zep tribute show for August. I asked Kelly if he could hack playing three hours of that band's songs. "Fuck yeah, man!!" he enthused. Jessica wasn't so sure of herself and that was the point. She needed to have her limits pushed and forcing her to ready herself for a concert was the only way to do it. We gave her Mondays and Thursdays off to rest her voice while the rest of us met everyday. I suggested that she might want to begin running in order to improve her aerobic health and stamina.

In April and May, Bob Seger's "Live Bullet" was issued and I had everyone learn Bob's cover of Ike and Tina Turner's "Nutbush City Limits" as well as two originals of his, "Heavy Music" and "Katmandu." Pat Travers debut surfaced and we llearned "Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights)." From Rainbow's "Rising," we cadged "Stargazer," and we took Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" off of its Agents of Fortune platter.

The first Ramones record saw the light of day and set off the punk revolution, but it wasn't our style, even as great as it was.  I also obtained an import ccopy of AC/DC's "T.N.T." and cajoled everybody into getting the title tune, "It's a Long Way to the Top (if You Want to Rock and Roll)," "The Jack" and "Live Wire."

The highlight of that month for me, though, was the release of UFO's "No Heayy Petting," an unsung classic album. We worked on the first four songs on side one and then "Highway Lady" on side two. "How come we're learning so many songs?" Jessica wondered. "Because that is what cover bands do. We can't keep playing the same set year after year," I propounded. In fact, we  mandated that Jessica would have one month to learn the lyrics and vocal melodies to our set list for the Zep tribute show as well as those for the 30 other songs I listed on a piece of paper I gave her or she was gone. "This is how things are done in this band, babe. The question is if you want it enough to display the dedication of a professional musician," Joe stated. She didn't  though, have to know the piano/keybyoard parts yet. We would give her more time for that. The same would hold true for Kelly. .

After concluding the rehearsal and sending Jessica and Kelly home, Joe Pete and I put together another setlist for our non-tribute gigs. We would still open with "Now I'm' Here" and segue into "Stone Cold Crazy," but then, after a break to greet the audience, would follow that up with "Just What the Doctor Ordered" and Heart's "Magic Man." Following another stage rap, we would shift into "T..N.T." and "Cowboy Song/The Boys are Back in Town." Another brief conversation with the audience and then we would rev it up into "Achilles Last Stand," "Burn" and "Shoot Shoot." And so it would go through "The Ripper," "Hair of the Dog," "White Punks on Dope," "Detroit Rock City," "Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights)," "Katmandu," "Don't Fear the Reaper," "Man on a Silver Mountain," "Fair Exchange," "Gimme Back My Bullets," "Ridin' the Storm Out" and "Green Grass and High Tides."

For our first encore we would do "Hey Baby" and "Smoke on the Water." For our second it would be "Doctor Doctor" and "Free Bird. If they still wanted more we would do "Rock and Roll All Nite" and that would be all.

In the midst of all  this work, my pussy was being relegated to solitary confinement in my panties except for occasional visits by my fingers while I recalled the amazing sensations and emotions I experienced when Jim fucked me. Everybody I knew had a girlfriend plus my entire social life had revolved around the band for the past few months. Fortunately, it was now June and the weather was quite warm. I started slipping on a t-shirt and shorts over bikinis and going to the beach every morning to lay out, take long walks and do a spot of swimming before returning home to eat dinner and rehearse. When school was out, I began inviting Jessica to go with me and it enabled us to get to know each other on a more personal basis. We commenced jogging down by the waterline every morning and then we laid out to work on our tans before returning to my place to practice. Jessica's long fingers felt great when she oiled my body up with sun screen and I certainly enjoyed doing it for her. I wanted to make a pass at her really bad, but I did give her lots of compliments on her looks  like, "I wonder how many guys' eyes are following you right now." "Those eyes are probably for you, Melody," she  modestly retorted. I couldn't just come out and say I wanted to bury my face in her pussy because, back then, hetero chicks would have flipped out if they thought their friend or coworker was gay or bi. I didn't want to end up chasing her out of the band if she wasn't into girls. The other thing was that I didn't want a relationship, just some recreational sex.

Since Pete, Joe and Jessica now had their days free, we were able to make it so that I now had my evenings largely to myself because we could rehearse in the afternoons. That month, the debut from Starz came out and I had the band learn, "I Pulled the Plug," a ditty about euthanasia, as well as "Keep Pushin'" by REO Speedwagon from their then latest opus.

By the end of the month, both Kelly and Jessica had learned all the songs I had demanded and then it just became a matter of helping Jessica polish her stage presence. I took her out to my school one Saturday morning in early July and had her stand on the stage of the amphitheater and work on that. I brought my Les Paul and one of our mic stands with a mic. I ordered her to sing "Immigrant Song" as loud as she could wiithout straining her voice, something she initially expressed embarrassment about. I explained to her though, that if she was shy singing in an amphitheater of a totally empty high school campus then what was she going to do in front of 200 people? Run behind the amps and hide? She relented and for three hours I put her through her paces. It was fun hearing her leather lunged vocals reverberate around the concrete and wood amphitheater. I did the same thing with her Sunday, too, and she was much more brave and assertive that time and was getting the hang of it. In fact, I think she was getting off on hearing her voice come back at her.

When we rehearsed with the rest of the group later that day, I saw a different dimension of her emerge. There was much more attitude and attack in her approach, as she finally seemed to be getting the message to either go balls out or go home. That night, she never went home, but not because of her improved stage presence.