CHAPTER TWO : i'm in the band

( come and get it, part iii )

IN 1971, CHUCK LOVING made the decision to leave The Dunne Brothers. In one brief statement, he reported, "While I love music, and it will always be my first love, I had to think practically." Chuck went to school for dentistry and still works as a dentist as of the writing of this biography.

     MARILYN: Chuck leaving was a bit of a — no, a lot of a shock. I'd just landed the boys a gig opening for The Winters, some of my finest work, and he goes and leaves with less than a week's notice.

     EDDIE: Dick move, man.

     MARILYN: Billy started his scheming, started moving Eddie off of guitar and to bass, and himself to double duty on vocals and guitar, and I found myself an in. A. Because Eddie looked genuinely very uncomfortable with the idea of suddenly switching to an instrument he had no experience with, and B. I wanted to be in the fucking band. I was so tired of standing on the sidelines.

     BILLY: I said no.

    WARREN/EDDIE/GRAHAM: I said yes.

     MARILYN: Billy was outnumbered three to one. I mean, I'd been teaching myself the bass parts to every song in their catalogue, and Graham and Eddie took turns teaching me the lead and rhythm guitar parts, so I was totally prepared if either of them had to pull out at a moment's notice as well. I obviously knew that jumping into a band days before their next show would be a dumb move if I was starting from scratch, so, y'know, good thing I practised before. So, The Dunne Brothers got themselves a new bassist, and, well, the rest is history, right?

That next Thursday, The Dunne Brothers performed for the first time with Marilyn as part of their group.

BILLY: I was genuinely terrified. I was convinced Mari would screw something up.

GRAHAM: She killed it.

KAREN SIRKO: (keyboardist, Daisy Jones & The Six) The second I saw The Dunne Brothers take the stage, I was kind of... drawn to Marilyn. I kind of felt like, from afar, at least, we were the same person. Like, both of us being the only women in otherwise male-dominated groups, both of us focussing more on our work than any of the men around us, neither of us taking any shit. I could tell that [Billy] wasn't totally happy about her being in the group, being The Dunne Brothers, and all, but I thank whatever God exists that she joined the band.

MARILYN: After the show was done, we were all hanging around, and I ran into Karen. Like, literally. I wasn't looking where I was going and we full-on collided.

KAREN: I had a bump on my forehead for a week.

MARILYN: Sorry, Karen.

KAREN: After apologising very profusely, she asked me my name, and I said "Karen," and then she asked me my name again, and I said "Karen," again. And, then she looked at me like I was some kind of idiot.

MARILYN: I asked her what her last name was the second time around. She misheard me. In hindsight, yeah, I should've realised that much quicker. In real-time, I think I said something along the lines of, "do your parents hate you?" I really needed to work on my filter.

KAREN: Yeah, she never did work on that filter of hers.

MARILYN: When I caught back up with Billy and Graham, they told me that they'd just spoken with Rod Reyes, and they seemed pretty excited about that but, I'll be honest, I didn't recognise the name. They said he had all of these ideas for the band, but the number one point on the list was to, quote, "get the fuck out of Pittsburgh." So, we got the fuck out of Pittsburgh.

a/n:
sorry it's taken so long!! i've been super busy recently but i'm FINALLY freed up now.

i'm hoping that the chapters from now on will be longer now that we're officially entering cali, so fingers crossed!

published : march 27, 2023
word count : 0.7k