Band On The Run

You Know We Can't Go Back

For once I was quite happy with having the morning tabloids, peering over them with raised eyebrows.

During a short reprieve I'd called because my head was aching too much to do anything concrete, I'd headed out to a coffee shop just a short walk down the road. To be honest, I was sick to death of the coffee at the studio and we'd run out of milk. So while the boys went to the sandwich spot in the other direction, I'd been in a more dire need of coffee – a pooling of guilt had lead me to take their orders as well.

It just so happened that there was a newsstand right next to the rather corporate coffee store. The sight of not only my own face but a dozens of other familiar ones had me slowing down in my tracks. If it had only been my reflections in a dozen different positions looking at me, I probably wouldn't have bothered to stop.

As it happened, it only took a total of thirty four seconds of staring to make the decision to forgo the sandwich shop entirely.

Not upset in the least about missing out on the lunch opportunity with the boys, I filled my arms with a stack of the most interesting headlines and eye catching photographs. Laden down with the coffee and magazines, I made my rather precarious way back to the studio. The tabloid magazines were causing my bag to bulge and pull me onto to one side as I carried the two trays full of coffee, but I made it the entire way without dropping anything.

Once I'd hurried through the lobby and down the stairs to my studio, I placed the coffee down on the table before yanking the magazines out of my bag and spreading them before my eyes. I had to see them altogether to decide where to start.

There were complimentary photos to the worst that could be possibly taken, even multiple as the writers tried to work up some sort of drama to it. If there was one thing tabloid journalists knew how to do it was hang a completely fake story around a photograph or quote. Every magazine had a photo of me or a member of The Spares on it, headlines capitalized to make the biggest impact with exclamation points. They were rather dramatic. Jude and Red Riot happened to be in some of them as well, just adding to the conspiracy theories that they loved to spout.

"The Spares Spiralling Into The Past!"

"Jude Turner and Keely Staub Debauchery!"

"The Spares Stir Up Controversy With Leaks!"

"Red Riot Get Taken On The Town!"

"Where Are These Songs Coming From?"

"Drunken Adventures From The Spares!"

"Is Keely Staub Using?"

"The Spares Causing Tension For Keely And Nick? Of Course!"

"New Best Friends Take New York By Storm!"

"Old Spare Demos Leaked From Unknown Source!"

"Are The Spares Corrupting ANOTHER Band?"

Giving a snort, I stopped reading the headlines to pick up that last magazine, it sounded the most amusing to say the least. The cover showed photos snapped from the bar that night that were all badly timed, to be fair there might not have been many good photos snapped of us then. There was sloshing alcohol and pictures of Jude sneaking out of the bathroom with the people she'd invited, leading the journalists to speculate that she was either doing drugs in there or having an orgy. In the end they hypothesized that she really could have been doing both.

I'd thought that the coverage would have died down by now, considering that it was now a week later and Red Riot had left town the night of their second show. Kanye obviously hadn't done anything exciting lately, because the press still weren't done pissing themselves in excitement at all the stories we'd given them.