Putting a job solely in the hands of Napper and myself in the later years of the 20th century wasn’t something anyone recommended, and I can’t recall another time anyone ever did, but Eddie Oddo was to be married in the coming weeks and I suppose if you were to give bachelor party responsibilities to anyone at the time it would have been us.
As the Best Man the job was Nap’s, but we came as a package deal in those days so the implication was there for it to be a team effort. We were single, we were legends in our own minds, and we had a knack for building a story.
I was getting some sun on the stilted porch that precariously hung from the back of Napper’s house in Dunwoody when he casually walked out and dropped a bottle of beer beside me. I was living there at the time with a makeshift office in the basement, right next to the dartboard and about twenty feet from the drum set that served as the finale of Date Package A (keep reading).
“I’ve got to put together this party for Eddie,” Napper said. “Any cool ideas?”
Collective Soul’s newest album started playing inside and Napper left the door open when he came out so we could listen. He held the CD cover in his hands and started reading through some of the lyrics of their newest songs.
Napper continued reading the album jacket and making comments as I thought about ideas for the bachelor party and how to selfishly maximize the benefits directly for the two of us.
“Have you ever looked at the amount of random people that have to be listed on the credits of one of these albums,” he asked. “Who the hell is this guy? Brandon Myers? He probably didn’t do shit. He’s probably in charge of ordering pizza for the tour bus for something.”
“Who the hell are any of those guys?” I asked. “I like their music but I wouldn’t know that band if they walked out here right now and handed me another beer.”
“Yeah, me either,” he agreed. We both stared off in thought.
“Me either.”
And that was the impetus of what would become one of the greatest nights in the history of Buckhead. For us anyway…
How-to discussions on cultivating a master experience for all involved in the bachelor party consumed our time in the days leading up to the event. There was little time for either of us to put any real effort into our normal jobs. That was hardly new as a plethora of distractions commonly led us astray. But in this case we were laser-focused on one thing: an elaborate con the likes of which would never be topped within our friend group again.
There were multiple trips to consignment stores, calls to girlfriends requesting odd favors with no questions asked, and drunken brainstorming between Napper and myself through the week leading up to the event. In the end, if someone lucky enough to be included other than me took the time to write it all down I imagine it would have read something like this:
~
We didn’t really know what to expect on the night of Eddie’s bachelor party, we just got invites telling us to meet at Buckhead Saloon on a certain date and time and that “clothes will be provided”.
The inclusion of Buckhead Saloon should have been a hint as to the direction of the evening seeing as it was the crescendo venue to of the infamous “Date Package A” con that netted Napper so much success in our 20s. The basic program was an elaborately camouflaged assault on the thoughts and emotions of an unsuspecting, but lovely member of the opposite sex.
When Napper signaled a “Date Package A” it triggered a series of events for his evening that would involve a number of his friends planted at various locations to navigate a smoke and mirrors campaign specifically designed to subtlety manipulate his date into believing he was someone he was not, and someone she couldn’t live without – for that night anyway.
The true hook was that every place they went during the date was seemingly thrown together on the fly even though the agenda was the final product of years of trial and error. Napper would audibly fumble with thoughts on where to stop for a few drinks, maybe a quick app, before deciding at the last second to duck into a place he “hasn’t been to forever”. Inside, someone like Todd/Teo, or any of our close friends that had never met the mark before, had already arranged a scene that made it appear that Napper was possibly the coolest person to exist in Atlanta. The bartender would call him by name, random people at the bar would buy the lovely couple champagne – you get the picture. And the tab was magically taken care of courtesy of the establishment. “It’s just great to have you here”, was commonly heard across Buckhead. By the time the poor girl got to Buckhead Saloon she was floating on a cloud of misdirection, and unfortunately for her, The Saloon was where the absurdness really went off the rails.
Buckhead Saloon was our home court in those days. There wasn’t a bartender or server or owner that we didn’t know. They had a house band at that time and one of the owners was the lead singer. They played every Friday and Saturday night, which was a tent pole of the entire operation. Napper would end the date by suggesting a nightcap at The Saloon as they coincidentally walked by on their way back to his car. By this time, all the pawns of the rouse had gathered within the crowd to bring it home.
After the bartender handed him another round of drinks “on the house”, Napper would escort his date toward the dance floor where the band had reached its fever pitch for the night. The co-owner/singer was tipped to his arrival and once they made eye contact, whatever song being played would immediately stop. He would look into the crowd toward Napper, who had already made the case that he hadn’t been to The Saloon in years, and say something like: “Is that Scott Taylor? Man, where have you been? It’s great to have you in here tonight! Can we convince you to come up and play a song with us?”
Napper would feign embarrassment and signal the offer off a few times before finally conceding. Our friend group was there to serve as host to his date, which appeared chivalrous as he made sure several times that she was comfortable without him before taking the stage.
Napper could play guitar, but his repertoire was hardly fine-tuned. He found it wise to perfect one song so when placed in these situations he could deliver. Not wanting to admit that, a back and forth with the singer was crafted to give the impression that whatever song the band chose was just fine with him. In reality, “Blister In The Sun” would be played or the whole thing would collapse into itself like a dying star.
And with that came the opening guitar riff from Napper’s hands, and looking into her eyes you could feel the Venus Fly Trap closing around the unsuspecting girl in the front row.
So back to the bachelor party…
We gathered to find Napper and Teo in charge of the scene at Buckhead Saloon. We had a few rounds of drinks and even more rounds of shots in prep for whatever was about to happen. We were all in the dark, including Eddie, and Napper and Teo had these really sinister grins on their faces. Also, for some reason, they were wearing eyeliner. It was unsettling.
It was about that time that a bus pulled up to the front door and we were all instructed to pay our tabs and load the chariot. With that, all would be revealed. And we did, and it was.
The scene on the bus wasn’t what I expected. My first thought was that maybe there was a stripper on board and we would be enjoying some exotic dancing while cruising through Buckhead. That seemed logical. Instead we were looking at grocery bags with our names written on them.
The bags were filled with disco-like 70s clothes complete with a shirt, pants, shoes, and an accessory. In my case I had a purple boa. In another’s case it was a snap-down hat from the Fat Albert cartoon collection. There was also a plethora of tacky jewelry: necklaces, rings, clip-on earrings. Everyone had a bag; everyone had an outfit.
Teo has always served as our group historian and his contribution was creating and writing elaborate back-stories for each attendee. This information was also in each bag, which started to bring everything a little more into focus. But we still didn’t really get it. Then Napper started to speak.
“Tonight we honor our friend Eddie, and our plan is to send him out in style with an epic evening. Teo and I have slaved all week to put this together, and we firmly believe this ridiculous idea will actually work. Eddie and I have played music countless nights together on stage in Auburn and surrounded by friends at campfires. Like anyone who’s ever picked up a guitar, we’ve lived our lives dreaming about what it would be like to be in a successful band – Sex, drugs, rock-and-roll … you know, all the important parts. Tonight, we’re giving him that gift. Tonight, Eddie and I are the Brothers Roland, Ed and Dean. Teo is our drummer, Shane Evans. Robin is our bassist, Will Turpin, and Mugsy is our lead guitarist, Ross Childress. Tonight, we’re Collective Soul.”
With that explanation it all became clear: we’re pretending to be famous. That made total sense and was 100% on-brand. I looked at my dossier again and realized that I was their tour manager. Others were head of security, band manager, guitar tech, sound engineer, etc. Teo had everyone fully back-storied based on the actual person in real life. It was a fine piece of work.
Napper continued.
“Teo and I thought about this a lot, and it’s our contention that even though Collective Soul is a double-platinum, popular band, the average person wouldn’t be able to pick them out of a line-up. The success of our evening hinges on this gamble. How this night goes is fully dependent on you selling it. From this moment on you will fully become your given persona. From this moment on I will not answer to anything but ‘Dean’. From this moment on, we ARE Collective Soul. The clothes are just an easy way for us to pass off the forever-partying world of rock and roll while also allowing us to be further disguised. Bands don’t need a reason to look crazy. And with that I’ll leave you with a simple piece of advice to refer back to all night,”
He paused for dramatic effect.
“It’s not a lie if you believe it.”
We all got dressed, passed around the bottles of liquor the stocked bus had to offer, and started cruising the streets of Buckhead causing a scene. Our first stop brought females onto the bus, but not the kind we were expecting. Three or four girls piled in from a Buckhead corner and they were friends of ours. They were dressed just as bizarre as we were, but in a more thought out and sexy way – think Heather Graham and Beyoncé in Austin Powers. They were there to give us credibility, and it worked.
We were all having a great time and almost forgot why we were there. In fact, until the bus stopped in front of Bell Bottoms it hadn’t occurred to me that I had yet needed to lie to a stranger. The time had come.
Bell Bottoms was always packed, but on that night there seemed to be a lot more people than normal gathered outside. From the bus window I recognized our friend Tanya, who was furiously taking flash photos of the bus as it came to a stop. Others were too it seemed. This crowd was waiting for us! Later in the evening it was revealed that Tanya was planted to create a buzz. She had actually called Bell Bottoms earlier in the evening to ask if the rumor was true that Collective Soul was going to be there that night. The management wisely avoided any confirmation, when in reality they knew nothing about it. The architects of the evening, our hosts, figured the call by itself would leak and cause a stir. They were right. There was a crowd waiting to greet their favorite locally based band. This was the moment of truth.
We unloaded the bus into a pile of our fans. There were a few pictures taken and a few autographs given, but luckily the front door security escorted us past the line and into a private section of the club without asking a question. The damn thing actually worked.
We spent the entire night being as elusive as possible while fans vied for our attention. The key became giving vague answers to any questions and just acting distracted at all times. Teo had included all kinds of song and album information in each of our backstory sheets along with general band info. Following the strict instructions, we all memorized as many things as we could on the bus in order to pull off the elaborate lie. There was a tricky moment when someone from the management asked Eddie if he and Dean would agree to play one of the songs from our newly released album. We all held our breath as Eddie contemplated his reply. It was perfect.
“I appreciate the offer but I really want to lay low tonight. I’m just trying to have a good time with the whole team. I don’t want it to just be about Dean and me.”
The night got pretty blurry after that. I can tell you that everything that they envisioned when planning that night came to fruition. Eddie had the most satisfied look on his face that I had ever seen, and Napper and Teo were just watching us all bask in the glory of their fabricated reality.
On that night, more than any other, we were famous.
~
AFTERWORD
A mere fifteen years later, Napper found himself barhopping in Orlando with Dean Roland of Collective Soul, his one-night alter-ego. The entire night a dirty secret involving eyeliner, a wig, and a busload of posers was burning a hole in his gut until he finally decided to come clean.
“Dean, I’ve got a confession to make,” Napper began.
He followed that with a short form version of what we’d done as a founding member of Collective Soul listened intently. When it was over, he stood silent for a few moments as Napper braced for the worst.
“I guess I only have one question for you,” Dean began. “Did I get laid?”
