Like a Rolling Stone

The first time promoter David Fishof organized the Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp, Jay Leno suggested you could get a better return on your five thousand bucks by checking into the Betty Ford Center, where you’d be certain to meet a higher caliber of rock star.

On Sunday, the second time Fishof held the event, he bumped up against another taunting celebrity: Homer Simpson. In the season premiere of “The Simpsons,” which aired on the camp’s opening night, Homer attended a rock ‘n’ roll fantasy camp at which fans were drawn to every manner of rock vanity, right down to the ethos of stuffing your pants to attract groupies.

The programming coincidence underscored the way many people sneer at the idea of blowing the family vacation budget on Dad’s midlife crisis. But a funny thing happens when you walk into a cavernous rehearsal studio in Hollywood where Fishof’s 2002 camp has attracted 70 ax-slinging and drum-pounding true believers from Delaware to Ohio to Florida: Homer Simpson’s not here.

Jim Mitchell is.

Mitchell, who works in insurance, is one of those guys who loves to play -- with bands, in church, any time. His instrument is the electric bass, and he plays it with a precise zest. “Music is where I live,” he says without a hint of pretense. “I have to do it.” You can consider him Exhibit A in the case for why the Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp has a certain goofy nobility that transcends “The Simpsons.”

On TV Sunday, Marge Simpson drove Homer to camp after he embarrassed her with another self-destructive bender rooted in his failure to realize his youthful dreams (rock star or Playboy photographer). In the real world, Mitchell’s wife, Rose, conned him into driving from their Mount Washington home to the Hyatt hotel in West Hollywood, telling him they were going to a wine-tasting dinner.

Once inside the hotel, Rose sprung it on him: Jim was going to be a camper as a 47th birthday present. One floor up from the front desk, Fishof’s resident pros -- mostly sidemen who’ve played with everybody from Joe Walsh to Billy Joel -- were conducting auditions to check each participant’s skill level.

Two hours later, Mitchell was going eye to eye with Joel’s drummer, Liberty DeVitto, in a five-minute jazz improvisation. Four hours after that he was playing with other pros at a party set up at a pricey guitar shop. The next afternoon he was inside SIR studios on Sunset Boulevard, thrown together with half a dozen other amateurs, singing “Mustang Sally” as his new mates began getting ready for the camp’s climax: a performance at the House of Blues Thursday night, in which every camper will get time onstage.

In six other rooms of the rehearsal studio, knots of campers were reveling in the same pressure under the tutelage of pros like Mark Farner, ex-lead singer and guitarist of Grand Funk Railroad; singer-saxophonist Mark Rivera, a longtime member of Joel’s band; organist-guitarist Bobby Mayo, who toured with Peter Frampton; guitarist Derek St. Holmes, who played with Ted Nugent; and bassist Jack Blades, who fronted Night Ranger.

A sudden celebrity

“Idon’t think I’ve taken a full breath since I’ve been here,” said Mitchell, whose prowess (and the camp’s short supply of bass players) made him a quick celebrity.

In Homer’s fantasy camp, guitarist Brian Setzer demonstrated the key art of setting your guitar afire, while Mick Jagger reminded campers to routinely proclaim tonight’s audience “the wildest ever.” In the real-world fantasy camp, there was little time for dilettantism. People were simply dying to play.

In that sense, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp felt like its model, the major league baseball fantasy camp, where aging fans play ball with their aging heroes. The difference is that time is kinder to musicians’ muscles (Fishof’s camp counselors effortlessly sound like the world’s greatest wedding band during nightly jam sessions). Though a couple campers showed up with zero chops, most walked in with the ability (if not the nerve) to stand up and play. When Farner demonstrated the sustained “power G” chord, they could do it.

Farner, 54, whose fame came half a lifetime ago, says he takes pleasure now in connecting with people he knows are nervous just being in the same room, letting them know “I’m just as fragile as they are.” They tend to be people like Bill Perry, a 39-year-old Chatsworth Web site designer who played guitar on and off most of his adult life and aspires only “to play in a crappy little blues band that plays in stinky little bars on Tuesday night.” Or Mike Darpino, 42, a government bond broker from New York City who plays a muscular lead guitar. (“I’ve done a lot worse things with my money.... I could do this every year. I don’t want to eat now. I just wanna play.”) Or Lynn Mullings, 34, of Jupiter, Fla., the mother of a 1-year-old and lover of ‘80s music who sent herself here as “my little reminder that I’m a real person and not just somebody’s mommy.”

The basic drill here involves breaking up into seven bands (suffering from an oversupply of guitarists and drummers), rehearsing up to six hours a day on three songs (two cover versions, one original) that will make up the House of Blues show. Fender, one of the camp’s corporate sponsors, has stacked Stratocasters like doughnuts for the campers who didn’t bring their own guitars. In between rehearsals, Fishof has hired B-level rock celebs like George Thorogood and Dave Davies to visit with war stories, tips and the inevitable jams.

Most campers are in their 30s or 40s, with a smattering of those in their 50s and a pair of 17-year-olds, including a rosy-cheeked guitar whiz named Ed Hill, who won the trip in a Chicago radio talent contest.

When Hill cut loose with a series of Jimi Hendrix-like riffs during Sunday’s auditions, Russell Jeffries, the chief executive of a Virginia high-tech company who was taking his first vacation in eight years, feigned exasperation at somebody so good so young.

“I’ve got socks older than that kid!”

Jeffries, 45, who collected the pros’ autographs on a newly bought white Fender, shared with many campers a reborn love of the instrument: Many of them had been in bands when they were younger, started careers, ran out of time and then began rekindling the hobby, sometimes finding new collaborators with the same history.

“Once I plug the guitar in, the rest of the world fades away,” Jeffries said. “There could be arterial bleeding. If the amps are on, I don’t care.”

Paul Jonke, 38-year-old tax assessor in Putnam County, N.Y., said he wound up here once his guitar became a therapy tool. He broke up with his fiancee after an argument about the size of her wedding ring (“she wanted four carats”) and spent the money on the fantasy camp.

Another camper, Fred Ricart, a Florida car dealer with a love of collecting vintage guitars, prides himself on a showroom where salesmen are free to carry their axes.

In “The Simpsons” fantasy camp, Homer and his gang trashed Tom Petty’s serious lecture on songwriting, caring only about lyrics involving sex and booze. In the real camp, Poison’s Bret Michaels and ex-Kinks guitarist Davies were afforded rapt silence as they described the mechanics of turning heartache into song.

Michaels, whose music is more popularly associated with debauchery, described having his heart broken by a cheating stripper after finishing a disappointing gig, then sitting in a coin laundry with the cheap acoustic guitar of his childhood and composing “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.” Davies went him one better, retelling a 30-year estrangement from a teen love that filtered into more than a dozen of his songs.

The second time around

Fishof organized the first fantasy camp in Florida in 1997, intending it to be an annual event. But then he began promoting Ringo Starr’s annual “All-Star” tour and the camp withered. When Starr took 2002 off, Fishof decided to try it again at $4,950 per head. “I lost a ton of money the first time,” he said. “I’d do better with a tall men’s shop in Tokyo.”

Homer Simpson is allowed only to be a roadie for the Rolling Stones in his fantasy camp. By contrast, late in Monday night’s camp jam session, Scott Seville, who plays with a band in North Carolina, was onstage singing a torrid version of Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re an American Band,” accompanied on guitar by Mark Farner, who congratulated him with a high-five.

Later, Terry Dobson of Vero Beach, Fla., climbed onstage with his video camera during a grinding rendition of ZZ Top’s “La Grange” to sing a verse. Bassist Blades slid over and took the camera from Dobson, then handed it to bandleader Rivera, who shot a couple seconds of Dobson, then turned the camera toward the audience of campers, gesturing for them to applaud wildly as Dobson kept singing.

This being a fantasy camp, they did exactly that.