Chapter 78
“You about ready Amanda?” a voice called out from the darkened void just beyond her sight.
Nervously, she ran her eyes once more over the papers in her hand before passing them off to the first person walking by. She glanced down at her feet making sure she was on her mark, then fidgeted with her blouse and skirt. It was hardly a necessary move, but one that made her feel a little more in charge of her situation- one that, at the moment, felt like it was careening hopelessly out of control. She took a deep breath and tried to conceal her jitters.
“Don’t worry, Amanda,” a soft voice spoke to her through her earpiece, “everybody’s nervous on their first day.”
After that small bit of reassurance, her ears perked up to another voice counting backwards followed by “You’re on!”
“This is Amanda Peyton, MTV News.
Veteran metal band, Metallica, kicks off its world tour tonight in Phoenix, Arizona. The band say they’ve put their past problems behind them and are ready to 'kick some ass'…”
As they cut away for the video snippet, Amanda wondered why she ever desired to fill the vacant news job. Sure, it was something she’d always wanted to do, but now that she had the position she once coveted, she hoped she could deal with the pressure. It was a high stress job and you had to be prepared for anything. Another brief countdown in her ear and she was on once again.
“The Metallica tour is expected to keep heads banging through next spring when they wrap it all up in Munich, Germany.
In other news, it was announced today that Goo Goo Dolls front man Johnny Rzeznik and his wife became the proud parents of a baby girl earlier this week. Rzeznik met his wife Gennie during the filming of the pilot episode of our very own On The Road program, which became an inadvertent match making service. Gennie, as viewers may remember, was the fan chosen to document a week in the life of their summer tour last year. By all accounts they hit it off and have been together since the end of the tour almost a year ago. The two were married quietly in Rzeznik’s hometown of Buffalo earlier this year.
MTV News caught up with Johnny and the rest of the band during their recent brief summer tour this August where they explained how they’re changing and putting time into their personal lives.
The broadcast cut away to a clip of an interview with John and Robby sitting outside and squinting into the bright sun. “Yeah, y’know, our music’s really evolving now.”
“Our music’s always been evolving,” Robby tried to correct him.
“Right, it’s always been evolving, but, y’know, things are, like, different now. We’ve grown up a lot lately, y’know. We’ve got responsibilities. And I think that sorta takes the music in a whole new direction.”
“The tour in support of your current album,” came the disembodied voice from somewhere off screen, “was much shorter than past tours that found you out on the road, sometimes, for years. Do you see this shorter, more intense mode of touring as a new way of getting your music out to your fans?”
“We got tired of living on a bus, man!” Robby chuckled. “Besides, there're about a million other ways to reach the fans now too these days with the Internet and stuff. So we’re not by any means looking to abandon anyone… we’re just going about it a little differently. We need more time for ourselves.”
“Yeah, there’s that. And I think we sorta don’t need to go out there for that long anymore. No one’s forcing us to tour endlessly anymore, y’know, and so it seems like a good time to sorta try to get on with the rest of our lives that we’ve kinda had to put on hold for all these years, y’know.”
The camera cut back to Amanda who had watched the video and delivered this news story with particular interest. It seemed her job had sort of come full circle. In many ways, she felt almost responsible for brining them together and now, here she was, announcing the birth of their child.
“Mother and baby, whom they’ve named Eden Rose, are doing fine. Their fans and all of us at MTV wish them well.”
The End