The expansive staircase was wooden with ornate railings and a bloodred runner. Myron started up the stairs. The music, still faint, grew louder. He reached the top of the staircase and started down the long corridor. The wall on the right was loaded up with HorsePower’s framed platinum albums and records. On the left were photographs of India and Tibet—places frequented by Gabriel Wire. Supposedly Wire had a luxury home in posh south Mumbai and often stayed, undercover, in monasteries in eastern Tibet’s Kham district. Myron wondered about that. This house was so damn depressing. Yes, it was dark out and the weather could have been better, but had Gabriel Wire really spent most of the last fifteen years cooped up here alone? Maybe. Or maybe that was what Wire wanted people to believe. Maybe he was indeed a crazy, world-class reclusive in the vein of Howard Hughes. Or maybe he had just had enough of being the famous, constantly-in-the-spotlight front man Gabriel Wire. Maybe the other rumors were true and Wire went out all the time, wearing simple disguises so he could visit the Met in Manhattan or sit in the bleachers at Fenway Park. Maybe he had taken a look at when and how his life had slipped off the rails—the drugs, the gambling debts, the too-young girls—and remembered why he started, what originally drove him, what had made him happy:

Making music.

Maybe Wire’s behavior of shunning the spotlight wasn’t so crazy. Maybe this was the only way he could survive and thrive. Maybe, like anyone else who makes a life change, he had to hit bottom and how much lower can you get than feeling responsible for the death of a sixteen-year-old girl?

Myron passed the final platinum album on the wall—a record called Aspects of Juno, HorsePower’s very first. Like any other casual music fan, Myron had heard about the legendary first meeting between Gabriel Wire and Lex Ryder. Lex had been performing at a sketchy pub called the Espy in the St. Kilda area near Melbourne on a busy Saturday night, playing something slow and lyrical and getting booed by the rowdy, drunken crowd. One of those in the crowd was a handsome young singer named Gabriel Wire. Wire would later say that despite the din around him, he was both mesmerized and inspired by the melodies and the lyrics. Finally, with the boos reaching an earth-shattering decibel, Gabriel Wire took to the stage and more to save the poor bastard than anything else, he started jamming with Lex Ryder, changing his lyrics on the fly, speeding up the tempo, getting someone else to pick up a bass and the drums. Ryder started nodding. He came back with more riffs, moved from keyboard to guitar and then back again. The two men fed off each other. The crowd fell into a respectful hush, as though realizing what they were witnessing.

HorsePower was born.