Carl was strong at first but it’s hard to watch the guy you love go down like that. Gregory had had unprotected sex when he worked at a bar when he was younger, and that’s how it happened. But people just didn’t know that there was a risk of AIDS then.
When folks ask me why I work for the community, I say it’s because of my friends and my family. My work with the True Colors Fund—and my work with Colleen Jackson on the True Colors Residence, a shelter in Harlem that she had built for LGBT youth who have been kicked out by their parents—is, of course, directly related to all of them. How could it not be? (More on that later.)
I saw AIDS change and then debilitate friends, like my hair and makeup artist Patrick Lucas. He’s still alive but he fights all the time because the disease doesn’t make it easy and you have to take so many drugs. He once told me that the drugs are so hard that AIDS survivors say among themselves that this one or that one is dying of “old AIDS.” Patrick was a huge part of the creation of my makeup and hair in the beginning. We would come up with these ideas and he would execute them to perfection. I’d say I wanted the checkered pattern on his shirt on my eyes and he would paint checkerboards on my lids. He also colored my hair for “Money Changes Everything” when we were on the road and I couldn’t go to Vidal Sassoon. He made my roots blond and my ends red like a flame. He also did my makeup for the Rolling Stone cover. The two of us were in perfect sync. One of my eyes is shorter than the other, though, so I would drive him crazy about making them look the same.
AIDS also took my good friend Louis Falco, who created the choreography in the movie Fame. I hope that one of these years we’ll wipe out the disease for good. But until then, I quote Nancy Cohen, former executive director of the MAC AIDS Fund and former head of the Viva Glam campaign to fight AIDS, who said, “AIDS is 100 percent preventable, and 100 percent noncurable.” You can live with AIDS, but it ain’t easy. And if AIDS don’t kill ya, the meds can. So I’m committed to fighting it and committed to helping the LGBT kids who are on the street.
While Gregory was in the hospital, dying at the impossibly young age of twenty-seven, he asked that I write a song for him. He wanted me to release it in the spirit of “That’s What Friends Are For.” I thought, “What, like Burt Bacharach? Yikes, that is a tall order.” Most of my life I’ve been able to deal with the notion that there will always be people who are better and greater than I am, but I can’t concentrate on other people. So I wrote “Boy Blue.” I poured out my heart, and my liver, into that song, but unfortunately it wasn’t right for repetitive play on the radio. It was tangled up in so much of my sorrow and so cloaked in my sadness that I don’t know if it was good enough for him.
And the True Colors Residence has a plaque on the building with a dedication on it to the memory of “Gregory Natal, Boy Blue.” We couldn’t save him, but maybe we’ll save a few others. I’ve said it before: God loves all the flowers, even the wild ones that grow on the side of the highway.
CHAPTER NINE
IN 1985, LIFE got weirder. Dave Wolff had heard that Steven Spielberg was doing a project with Huey Lewis, and he thought, “Well, why not do something with Cyndi?” Steven had written a new movie, The Goonies, which was a kind of a Raiders of the Lost Ark–style adventure film for kids. Richard Donner was going to be the director. And one day Dave came to me, all excited, and said, “Oh my God, we got a meeting with Steven Spielberg in LA. He wants you to do the soundtrack.”
I was a little frightened. I’d never met him. I knew he was really creative and brilliant and I was such a huge fan but he was also, from what I’d heard, kind of a strange dude. And I was concerned about keeping the integrity of what I was doing. I wanted to stay true to the fan base that I had built.
It meant so much to me to meet Steven, but then when I got to his office in Hollywood, it seemed like such a sexist place. There were no women except this one producer named Terri, who was awesome. You can’t believe how they were all talking about women; like they’d start talking about casting an actress and make gross comments about her body. It made me wonder, “What am I doing here?”
But we stood around and made small talk. At one point Steven said, “Streisand sang to me once.” I thought to myself, “Yeah, but I’m here now. Maybe we could talk about that?” Then he ordered lobster for everyone for lunch, which seemed strange because it just delayed the meeting even more.
But then we finally started talking about the movie and how he was going to direct my music video for the soundtrack, which was so exciting. His idea was for me to perform in front of an old film projected onto a green screen behind me. I was crushed. What I should have said was something like, “You know, I came all this way to work with you, and I was just hoping to work with you on a real set—working on a green screen is kind of disheartening for me, even though it’s you.”
But did I say that? No. I just didn’t know how to be diplomatic. So I blurted out, “That’s not very creative.” Everyone around me choked on their lobster. And of course, I just had to keep going, so I added, “Maybe we could do something a little more inspiring.” And he got up and said, “I think I was told I wasn’t creative.” Then he said he wasn’t going to work on the video anymore—I would work with Dick Donner. Fine, I said. And he walked out.
I never got to tell him what I really meant to say, but that’s me: I always say the wrong things to the right people. I had no filter, and I was just thrown into these situations. I didn’t know how to mix with the big guys. I only know how to do what I do. I don’t have many famous friends. I work every day of my life—that’s all I do. I live for my work.
And although at the time what I should have been working on was my next record, I threw myself into the Goonies soundtrack. I was working twelve-hour days in Los Angeles, living in motels and getting sad, because it was lonesome and LA was very cliquish. But I got all these artists like the Bangles and Teena Marie on the soundtrack, and it was going well until Spielberg went in and stripped most of the music from the film. Apparently he felt like there was too much music, so the soundtrack was meaningless because most of the songs weren’t in the movie. The only thing that ended up in it was my voice here and there.
But we had a blast shooting a two-part video for the Goonies single, which no one had ever done before. I got all these wrestlers to be in it, like the Iron Sheik, Roddy Piper, “Classy” Freddie Blassie, and Andre the Giant (who saves the day at the end of part 2). The Bangles played pirates, and the night before the shoot, I dyed their hair crazy colors in the bathroom of the Sunset Marquis Hotel. There was an ant trail in the room, in a perfect line like a marching band—these were Catholic-school ants. The videos were a lot of work but I really cared about them. That was maybe the problem—I focused on each little thing I did too much, and it slowed things down and drove me crazy, but I couldn’t help myself.
After the videos were done they wanted me to change the song title from “Good Enough” to “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough.” And I didn’t want to, because I thought if I put the word “Goonies” in, it would sound cheesy and no one would want to play it—and that’s exactly what happened. Even though they squashed it on commercial radio, it became an underground hit, at least—because there are so many kids who are just Goonies. But I was so bothered that they ruined the name of that song that I refused to sing it for years. I finally started again a few years ago.
In the summer of 1985 I went to Nashville for a radio convention and that’s when I found out I had endometriosis. I had a tumor in my stomach the size of a grapefruit, along with all these other little ones. I went into the hospital, and the doctors were saying scary things like “We need to operate now.” But when they gave me the consent form they always give you to sign before you get operated on, outlining the potential risks and stuff, I went through it, saying, “I’m not doing this, I’m not doing this, and I’m not doing this.” I said to this poor doctor, “I want you to write down exactly what you’re going to do and initial it. You can t
ake out all the endometriosis, but you can’t take out anything else—not one tube, not one ovary, nothing.” She said, “That’s pretty severe—what if I have to save your life?”
I said, “Then wake me up.” I was being cautious because my aunt went in to have a lump removed and they fuckin’ took everything: her breast, the flesh under her arm. She was scarred for life. I don’t think they ever saw a patient do what I did, but I knew what happened when you signed away your rights. I still held out hopes for having a kid, and I felt like, “This is my body.” It sounds extreme but I had my own beliefs and convictions, and I was going to live by them—or die by them. So the doctor went in and took the endometriosis tissue out (there were no lasers back then) and there was a lot of scar tissue. I stayed in the hospital for at least a week, and then I was flown to Boston, where I was wheeled to a car. Dave took me to my friend and producer Lennie Petze’s house on Cape Cod to recover. Lennie was so sweet and his whole family took me in.
After two weeks, when I was starting to walk, Bob Geldof invited me to participate in Live Aid. I really wanted to go, and Boy George was encouraging me, too, but at that point, my stomach was still distended and I could hardly pull myself up. It took a while to fully recover, and endometriosis caused me to be in and out of hospitals for the next few years.
After The Goonies sucked up so much of my time, and then my illness, I didn’t even start working on my second album until the fall of 1985. And then I had another operation, and no one was supposed to know I was sick so it was very difficult because I had to first come back health-wise, to have the stamina to work on the album, and then get myself together creatively.
And then Gregory died.
He gave me his beaded Miss Piggy when he died. He loved Miss Piggy. Gregory and Carl bejeweled almost everything they touched—even me. After his funeral, Carl and I, Diana, and our friends Miss Aida and Bobby came back to my apartment in the Thread Building downtown. We were all dazed with grief, and then the piano tuner arrived. I was crying a bit—we all were—and through it all, there was the piano tuner tuning up the piano, note by note. It was the most bizarre thing, but I couldn’t tell him to leave, because I needed the piano for work the next day.
It was the saddest time. But at that point, my album was late. So I had to get going on it. To me, music was this: You take everything in your life, you put it in your work, and then it transcends and transforms.
I was wearing black all the time then. I needed it to hold myself together emotionally while I was working. It was then that I heard a little song on a demo that Anne Murray had turned down. It was written by Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, and it was called “True Colors.” It was kind of a country ballad with gospel overtones. I heard the lyrics and the melody and thought, “Well, if it’s a kind of prayer to feel better, then it should be sung like one.” So I asked Peter Wood (my keyboardist who also did a lot of arranging with me) to simplify the chords and play the kind of chords we play, which is open fifths, gently—we don’t play every part of the chord. I wanted to sing it softly to Carl and all the folks who loved Gregory. I knew it was special, that it was a healing song, and I wanted us to heal a little.
As for the arrangement, it was important to create an archaic drum sound, to penetrate a person’s inner being—to call out to that archaic imprint that was created when cavemen first heard a drumbeat. I sang the words almost in a whisper, and we kept the music spare because if the sentiment is that strong, you can’t overdo it. I had to give the song depth so I could really speak to a person’s soul (as opposed to singing my guts out, which would have been the easy way to go). I wanted to create an otherworldly feeling on the radio and I worked to make my voice sound like it was whispering in your ear, even if you were listening to it in the car. For that, we used a Dolby processor. It brings the air out and makes more of a sssss sound.
By singing quietly and using that effect, I tried to resonate with the smallest and most innocent part of a human being, to convey this heavy sentiment in the most delicate way I could. I used the power of being still and not singing out but singing in. From that experience, I learned that the weight of a feather sometimes can topple a mountain, a lesson I’ve remembered all my life.
We recorded the song live. I had many visions while I sang, one of which was of angels on the ceiling—the whiteness and the wings. I also saw the audience in front of me. With these visions surrounding me, I sang this healing song. I had to get out of my way and know that it was not about me. I had to stand there and wait for the spirits to come, and allow them to go through me. I always want to create music that beckons the spirits, whether it be rock or hip-hop or whatever it is. Some rappers smoke pot to put them in a state to make them them forget, so that they can remember—ya know what I mean?
Later, when “True Colors” came out, it was very hard to perform, because I’d be standing there in front of all these people who were keyed up, and I was keyed up too, and I’d have to sing from that place of emotion. When I did get to that place though, this radiance would come from my heart and travel to my arms and hands. It made a bow that encompassed me, like a hug, and it would go out in the world and do the same thing to the audience.
And when “True Colors” became a hit, I realized that I had fulfilled Gregory’s dream—I sang something about him that became popular, like “That’s What Friends Are For.” I didn’t know it would inspire so much activism until later on, in 1994, when I sang at the pier for Gay Pride in New York City. At rehearsal, when I was sound-checking the song, a sweet-looking man handed me a rainbow flag. He said he was inspired by the song to design it. When he told me that, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I wasn’t sure if it was true, but I wrapped that flag around myself that night and told the crowd about how Gregory wanted a famous song for him—and this was the one. I saw him in my head so clearly. I sang into the breeze where I imagined he was and told him he got his wish because his community had taken the song I sang for him and for us. It had become an anthem. Ever since that night when I sang “True Colors,” I never heard the song the same way. Not ever again. It had become a song of healing, of inspiration, for the community.
Originally I had talked with Rick Chertoff about producing my second album, but he wanted to control everything, while I wanted to coproduce, so that I could grow. So I ended up not working with Rick, and because I didn’t work with him, I couldn’t work with Rob Hyman, either, because they were affiliated. So there went the band and the sound that I created with them.
Anyway, for True Colors, I coproduced the album with Lennie and this time we hired session guys. I was always used to being in a band and felt amiss that I wasn’t. And even though we were working with really good musicians, I didn’t know how to articulate anything to them. I mean, I had Adrian Belew on guitar, who was the greatest player ever, and the fantastic Peter Wood, and Lennie brought in Aimee Mann, who was on my label, to sing background. But you can’t tell Adrian Belew to play like the Four Tops or get in the funk—it’s Adrian Belew, motherfucker! He was in King Crimson! Get with the fuckin’ program!
So I wrote with a bunch of different people and just felt kind of lost. When you’re on the bottom and everything changes, it’s good because it can only change from bad to good. But when you’re on the top and everything changes, you worry that the other shoe will drop. But I wanted to continue my work. I didn’t want to stop.
I teamed up with Tom Gray (he wrote “Money Changes Everything”) and we started writing a song called “A Part Hate,” because I felt strongly antiapartheid and was very upset about Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment. The problem was that I had also covered “What’s Going On,” because I loved Marvin Gaye. And with those two songs and the title track, all of a sudden True Colors became a very heavy, serious album. So the label didn’t want “A Part Hate” on it because they thought it was too political.
I couldn’t believe it. They said it was too much of a change—that the Girl Who Just Wanted to Have Fun
couldn’t suddenly become political. I said, “‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ was political—don’t you get it?” They didn’t. They were frightened. They were fuckin’ pussies. They paid lip service to being politically aware, but they weren’t really activists. So I couldn’t put “A Part Hate” on True Colors. (In fact I didn’t put it out for seven more years.) Me, I still believed rock and roll could change the world and I had seen how it had been done. I made a big impact on Japan and opened up their minds, and what I didn’t do Madonna and Janet Jackson went in and did.
The label kept saying, “Where the hell is the music on the ‘True Colors’ single?” Because that single was very spare. I guess they wanted more upbeat pop. But you know what? Unlike a lot of people, I lived a lifetime before I was even twenty. And I had been through so much that year. I had been in the hospital; I almost thought I was going to die. No one at the label except Lennie knew I was sick. I should have let them know—let them feel like they were going to lose me. Then maybe they would have welcomed my second record a little more than they did instead of fighting me all the time. Of course, there were a few lighter moments on the album, too. Paul Reubens—you know, Pee-wee Herman—was a telephone operator on the track “911.” We met in 1985 when he was the MC at the MTV New Year’s Ball and we became fast friends. He was so easy to be with and funny and we had a similar sensibility. We would figure out things to do together on television, like we went miniature-golfing together on Entertainment Tonight. Then when he developed his own TV show, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, he wanted me to sing the theme song. I told him I would, but I couldn’t have it under my name because I was going to put out True Colors, which had a serious tone. In our superficial world, people couldn’t accept both at the same time. So I sang the theme song using the pseudonym “Ellen Shaw.” And then Paul sent me back a tape that was so hilariously funny, of me singing the theme with him in between saying, “Oh no! My career is ruined, oh no!” He’s a nut. I love him.
Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir Page 16