Saw a Tiktok of Keery being mesmerised by Quinn and I don’t like speculating about real people but it did make me think about Famous Eddie/Just Some Guy Steve.
Like Steve is just that cute guy that sometimes appears in pics backstage or on the road in CC photos. He’s driving the bus in the early days, unloading equipment, setting up everyone’s positions on stage, carrying water bottles.
Like he’s just in the background doing a little bit of everything until CC starts making a bit of a name for themselves. They start making enough money to hire people to fill all those roles but Steve’s still there if you look. He’s still walking alongside Eddie in most paparazzi photos - he gets call a body guard, a personal assistant, a manager. His appearances get less and less frequent as time passes. Eddie gets asked all the time who this man is that’s always just around. Eddie tells wilder and wilder stories in response.
‘Oh that’s my demon slayer. I made a deal with the devil you see, and he keeps me safe.’
‘Oh that’s my lifeguard. I just keep him around. Deathly afraid of sharks and Charlie horses ya know?’
‘That guy? That’s my hairspray guy. That backpack is actually just packed with Farrah Faucet spray. I’ve got an hookup since it was discontinued.’
‘Oh man, yeah that’s Steve-O. He’s an after hours drag racer. I need a get-away driver more often than you think.’
So people just stop asking. Or really it becomes a bit of a deep cut joke for the ‘in the know’ interviewers to ask about Steve just for the wild story they know Eddie will tell.
Then, decades into their career, Corroded Coffin is months away from being inducted into the Rock n’ Roll hall of fame. The interview is intense and heartfelt. Eddie, along with the rest of the band, has really let himself open up: about growing up poor in small-town Indiana, about outrunning peoples perceptions of you, of fame and how it’s changed their dynamic.
When the questions wind down and the conversation naturally takes a turn towards the more lighthearted, the interviewer asked the question.
“So- inquiring minds want to know.” The woman asks, throwing a mischievous grin at the band. A PA from off camera snickers as he ducks his face away from the camera to set up an easel beside her. He puts a big poster board of something on top of it before racing out of frame.
The interview pulls a piece of paper, loosely taped, off the board and it it’s a compilation of grainy photos. All of them of Steve and Eddie. There’s dozens cluttered together.
“Who is this?” She asks.
The compilation is just so thorough that Eddie thinks maybe she’s sussed it out but no. She looks like she’s waiting for the same silly answer he always gives.
The band around him gives his shoulders a few firm squeezes because they’d talked about this already, about what it would mean, about what it might risk but it isn’t the 80’s anymore, god damnit.
“Well,” Eddie replies with a big smile. Suddenly he’s choked up. His eyes water and the guys all scoot a little closer, murmuring reassurances the audio doesn’t quite catch. Eddie just nods at them and takes a deep breath. “As of last week, thanks to the world finally catching up to what I knew back in ‘86, that’s my husband.”
