This Audible Is Loud : Marinovich Comes Down With Scurvy (the Band)

The T-shirt and jeans hang from his frame like billowy drapes. His hair is red and cropped close. His sneakers are black and clunky.

While whipping his hands across his guitar, he leans into the microphone and bares his teeth.

Filling the small, beer-reeking room is something that sounds distinctly like rage:

“Some say that we’re lunatics . . some say that we’re freaks.”

At this moment in a small dark club in Hollywood, some are saying other things.

They are shouting for the red-haired guy to get off the stage, to give it to the real musicians.

“Go home!” they scream.

Todd Marinovich stares into the smoke and does what he has done, in one form or another, to Larry Smith, to Al Davis, to the entire NFL.

He clenches his left hand into a fist. He raises it high above his head.

He unfurls the middle finger and shakes it long into the night.

*

Where once there were Raiders, now there is Scurvy.

The rock band features Stoner on drums. Chimes on vocals. Machine on lead guitar. Marco Forster on bass.

And a former NFL quarterback on rhythm guitar and vocals.

No nickname. Just Todd, a 25-year-old who has once again traded an opportunity at sports stardom for the chance to be himself.

He has done it before. He disappeared for a year of surfing, painting and partying after he was released by the Raiders in 1993.

But last spring he resurfaced and signed a contract to play football in Canada, where he lasted three weeks before suffering a knee injury.

This winter, the knee repaired, football awaiting, he has changed directions again.

A friend taught him to play serious guitar. He convinced several Orange County buddies that they could make this music together.

Scurvy was born, founded and funded by the wealthiest weekend rocker in the Southland.

Finally, it seems, Marinovich has traveled to a point of no return.

From his shockingly thin appearance to his extraordinarily mellow demeanor, he has not only escaped his former life, he has inexorably altered it.

“Yeah, right now, when you look at what I’m doing, I guess you’d have to say that there isn’t much chance I would play again,” Marinovich said. “That could change, but right now. . . .”

He says this with no trace of bitterness. He speaks softly and graciously.

Apparently at peace with himself, one of the area’s most recognizable football heroes is having a blast making music and watching jaws drop.

“You should see the people that come up to me during performances and look at Todd and say, ‘Geez, is that really him?” said Doug Krone, the manager of the group.

And can this really be his life?

Where once there was a $2.25-million contract, now there are nightly gigs that pay Marinovich $60. Minus his expenses for beer, food and cigarettes,

Where his teammates once had shoe contracts, now they have tattoo endorsements. Stoner’s right arm was decorative enough to convince a Lake Forest shop to make him a spokesman.

“I love this,” Marinovich says.

Where once there were first-class hotels and national television, now there is a Marinovich-owned warehouse in Laguna Hills where Scurvy practices until the early morning, its members squinting to see each other through the smoke and dim light.

Where once he was known for his long red hair, now that hair is cropped, military style. And it is not always red. The other week it was black. A couple of weeks before that, blue.

It appears he has lost much of his muscle too. He is down 25 pounds from his playing weight of 220. His only knee rehabilitation occurs on a faded machine that he has owned since high school. It sits in the corner of his warehouse and doubles as a clothes repository.

“At this point, I just want to be able to get the knee well enough to play basketball and surf again,” he said.

Where once there were perfectly manicured fields and thousands of witnesses, now there are clubs with bars on the windows and drunks on the floor.

Scurvy has played only about a dozen gigs, usually leading off for a popular local band, Standing Hawthorn. Club owners say they like Scurvy’s old-time rock ‘n’ roll sound. Fans show their appreciation in a different way.

In Marinovich’s previous life, it was a good day if he was not hit. Here, it is a good day if he is hit, by one of the crazies in the audience who show they like his music by knocking each other over while “slam dancing” in front of the band.

It was such a good night recently at Bob’s Frolic Room III that the weak-hearted were diving for cover.

“Cool, huh?” Marinovich said.

His friends agree. From out of his past at high school and USC, they appear at his performances, crowding around the front of the stage for a truly unusual sight.

Imagine that, they say. Todd Marinovich actually enjoying himself.

“For the first time, he is living life on his terms,” said Maili Bergman, a friend from USC who attended his hourlong show at Bob’s. “It’s great that he’s finally doing something he loves.”

Other, older football people aren’t quite so excited. Where once he was given their approval as one of the game’s rising stars, now he receives what sounds like their pity.

“It’s a real crime that talent went to waste,” said Sid Gillman, quarterback consultant and Hall of Fame coach. “A rock ‘n’ roll band, that’s probably where he belongs. He’s a nut.”

Marv, his father whose regimentation of Todd’s childhood has been publicly scrutinized, sounds mostly undecided. There is acceptance, but it is diluted with pain.

Todd has not yet invited him to a performance because he feels the band is not polished enough. But Marv said when he is summoned, he will go.

“I don’t know whether you can say his football talent is a waste or not, but I can understand people’s attitude about that,” Marv said. “I’d like to think how good he could have been--but it’s his decision.

“If he enjoys doing his music, then I’ve got to respect that.”

Even if Marv hasn’t quite figured that music out.

“He sent me a tape and, well, I guess there is an age gap there,” he said.

*

Late one chilly recent night at his warehouse, after rehearsing in a T-shirt, gym shorts and orange stocking cap, Marinovich talked softly about feeling heat.

He felt it at USC. A sign in the warehouse that reads “Vote No . . . Larry Smith” was gleefully heisted from a roadside by the quarterback.

He felt it with the Raiders, beginning with the constant drug tests that stemmed from the cocaine possession charge filed against him shortly before his first training camp.

Marinovich said the tests, which sometimes were administered to him five days a week, never revealed drug use.

“But they did show alcohol, which got the Raiders all bothered,” he said.

Marinovich said he is not an alcoholic, but nonetheless attended several alcoholism treatment programs “that were like AA,” he said.

He says he was also hassled by “The Yellow Card,” which he said is Raider slang for the cards upon which owner Al Davis draws up plays.

“Al would watch films all week and then draw up a play before the weekend,” he said. “We would be going through our walk-through on Saturday and all of a sudden, here comes a yellow card with a play that we had never heard of before . . . It got to be kind of a joke.”

The Raiders often considered him that same sort of joke.

Steve Ortmayer, who was the general manager during Marinovich’s two seasons there, said, “He had the ability to be very, very good. The only problem was a lack of commitment to responsibility, both professionally and personally.”

When he was finally cut at the end of the 1993 training camp, after two seasons, eight games, eight touchdown passes and nine interceptions, he said he was relieved.

Now that he may never return, Todd Marinovich is asked for one more interesting story.

He thinks for a minute. Then he starts talking about the late rock star, Jimi Hendrix.

“It was Halloween, my second Raider season,” he said. “I came to work dressed up like Jimi Hendrix. The Afro, the black-face, the bell-bottoms, everything.”

Marinovich said he was--surprise--the only player on the team who dressed up.

He said amid much snickering, he actually went through a walk-through on the field while wearing the outfit. Once the team donned pads, he lost the bell-bottoms, but kept the Afro and blackface.

“Squeezed my helmet right over my wig,” he said. “By the end of the day, everybody in the office was coming outside to take a look at me. Man, that was wild. That was fun .”

It figures that Scurvy’s only song featuring Marinovich on lead vocals is something he wrote, “Leavin’ and Teasin’.”

Has anybody ever been better at both?