In the meantime, True Colors was nominated for a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, but Barbra Streisand had her big comeback with The Broadway Album, and she won. I was always put against the comeback people, like Tina Turner two years before. I don’t know—I think it’s my karma. I’d rather be awarded for my work than for sentimental reasons. Or maybe it’s God telling me that it’s nice to be recognized but awards don’t make the person or the singer.
And then while all this bad stuff was happening, I was talking to Dave about our plan to get married. We had talked about it for a while. I had the engagement ring on my hand. And my manager, who was also my boyfriend since 1982, said to me, “I don’t want to get married on this downswing here. I’d rather get married when we’re doing better.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE ENGAGEMENT RING Dave gave me was a yellow canary diamond. I saved that yellow canary diamond ring for a long time, but it might as well have just been a gold watch for ten years of service. Dave wasn’t going to get married. I wanted the picket fence: I wanted a piano in the living room, everybody sitting together on holidays with dogs and cats, playing music, singing, laughing, eating, drinking. Even if it was some kind of fantasy, I wanted that.
Dave and I would talk about our future together, and he wouldn’t actually say he didn’t want it. He would always just say, “One day we’ll have this,” and “One day we’ll have that.” I remember that when he said that one time, I looked at him and thought, “One day? What about now?” And I had begun to think about having a kid. Three generations of people would come to my concerts, and the little kids would come dressed like that punky girl from the Art of Noise video that I mentioned earlier. I would see them and think, “Look at them—they’re going to grow up listening to my music. In a way, I’m raising them. So why can’t I have my own kid?”
But Dave wasn’t into the idea, because how would we live our lifestyle while I was pregnant? And also, I wasn’t famous until I was thirty, so I was older, which could present some problems (his mother always held that over him). And God knows what else he had lurking in the back of his head. He loved us jumping in and out of limos and being “the couple.”
Well, that was what he loved in public. At home, he’d play video games all the time and shut me out. He needed to unwind because work was such a pressure cooker. He was caught between a woman who wanted things her own way and a record company that changed hands among the biggest, most sexist, most macho guys in the world who married trophy wives—women who shut the fuck up because the man is king.
During the late eighties, all of these powerful men seemed wildly out of control. So many of them were on coke, and everyone was sexist. It was really fucked-up and I had a hard time dealing with that shit. I was surrounded by it—surrounded by men. And I had gotten sick again and had yet another operation.
I did not fit in anymore at Sony, and Dave and I weren’t fitting, either. I’d cry all the time because I couldn’t believe how we had grown apart. And the record company was torturing him. They’d say, “You’re the man—you tell her what to do.” Like, “You’re the man of the house, why can’t you control her?” I knew it was the end when he and I were having a fight and he said, “They’re right. You shouldn’t make your own decisions.” I was a famous woman at that point. I looked at him and thought: “Wrong answer!” But I just said, “Okay, that’s it.” It was the saddest thing in the world for me, because I loved him. Those interfering record company guys really broke us up—they were just pigs, thick-headed with gold chains and hair coming out of their fuckin’ shirts, white shoes, and those fuckin’ golf pants—really wrong, you know what I’m saying?
The breakup with Dave took a long time. My relationship and my work had been everything to me, and I always thought that if I only tried harder, I could overcome the trouble. The truth is, hard work couldn’t overcome it; it just went too deep. And in the meantime I had Sony breathing down my neck. I originally wanted my third album to be a project called Kindred Spirit that was inspired by an old recording. This recording made you feel like you were stepping into another time. I was very much taken with the otherworldliness of it (time being a rubbery thing, anyway). I wanted to create the same kind of feeling on my record, so that’s why the song “Kindred Spirit,” which did make it onto the record, had that old scratchy sound. I played a dulcimer (which I had taught myself) and my voice sounded like it was from another time, too.
I wanted the album to be called Kindred Spirit because all those old recordings were kindred spirits. But the label, big surprise, was more interested in commerce than in art. There’s a way to mix the two, but I never did it the right way. I just thought about the art and the magic of the music.
And then what happened was, they switched label heads again. The new guy in charge just loved Diane Warren, who had written so many hits, like “If I Could Turn Back Time” for Cher and “I Get Weak” for Belinda Carlisle. She had originally written a song called “I Don’t Want to Be Your Friend” for Heart, and they brought it to me. But I didn’t want to sing like Heart. Like I said, I wasn’t in a cover band anymore. So I took it and lowered the key and had the zydeco player Rockin’ Dopsie play button accordion, and I made it into a Cajun march. Then I also got Baghiti Khumalo, the South African bass player who worked with Paul Simon, to play on that track, so it had a sort of New Orleans jazz-funeral sound. And Phil Ramone helped me produce that track (I think it’s a beautiful rendition, but apparently Diane later called up the record company and bitterly complained about it).
In the late eighties, the A & R guy was the genius, not the artist, and because the album wasn’t their creation, and because I wasn’t doing exactly what those knuckleheads wanted, it was wrong. Lennie and Eric Thorngren, the poor guy who was producing and arranging some of the tracks with me, kept looking at me and going, “Cyn, what’s wrong with you? You’re the Vinnie van Gogh of rock, do your thing, don’t listen to them, come on!” But I was so used to being a good soldier that I didn’t know when to say enough was enough (even now, that happens).
At one point some of the Sony executives even made a special trip from Japan to meet with me. They took me to dinner and said, “Cyndi, we believe in you, and we want you to make music again.” But nobody in New York said that to me. There was no communication. So I tried for a more commercial album and did 1989’s A Night to Remember. Which I call A Night to Forget, because it was one of those albums destined to be doomed because the record company was changing again. Then Lennie fell on his boat and broke his leg and was in the hospital. After that he left the company, which was devastating to me. So I had to deal with the new heads of state. I couldn’t please the new A & R guy. No matter what I played for him he said, “That’s nice ear candy.” Never “Oh, that’s a good song,” or “That’s catchy.” I’d be like, “Fuck you and your ear candy.” With all of them, I really felt like I wanted to say, “Get out of my face.” And the whole time I was breaking up with Dave.
I should have gotten out when that record executive asked, “What are you wearing?” He was in his own private Idaho. They wanted me to conform, and unfortunately they hired a nonconformist. You can’t get a chicken and turn it into a duck. The corporate world was standing on top of everything and that’s why the music went south. If you look at music in the early eighties, it was artist generated. So were the looks. The company didn’t say to Flock of Seagulls, “Why don’t you wear your hair like that?” That came from the band.
In the studio, I was stuck with this guy Lennie had hired who was a total alcoholic. It was so awful that even the musicians were looking at me going, “Cyn, this guy, he’s drinking at fuckin’ ten in the morning.” And I couldn’t get him to do anything because he had his own opinions. At one point he was talking about the sound of something, and he said, “It’s just a cunt-hair off.” Big surprise that I took real offense to that. I was like, “You know what? I’m paying you to collaborate with me, and I don’t want to be talked t
o like that.” And while I was trying to make the record, the promotion staff was in the studio. Imagine having the promotion staff in there telling you what to do while you’re trying to make music! The atmosphere got so bad that I had to stop production. I had heard about this event in Russia, a kind of writing summit between Russian and American songwriters, so I decided to go.
The Soviet Union in 1989 was a real different place from what Russia is now. I took bottled water with me, and toilet paper. I was also careful about sitting on the toilet because the toilet was one length and the toilet seat was another. And I felt like I was being spied on all the time, so I used to try to look good when I got into the tub at the American Hotel, where I stayed. Then I remember I lost something, jewelry maybe, and I couldn’t find it, so I said out loud, “Where is it? I know somebody took it. It was right here.” And then later, after the maids came in, it was back on my bed. That’s how I knew everything was bugged.
Russia was a strange place, because it was so hard to do what you loved to do. People just wanted to create, but at that point, it was against the law to make a video (and some of those musicians were dying to make videos). There were a lot of really fantastic underground bands.
Dave Wolff was still my manager so he came with me, even though we weren’t together anymore. But he didn’t come along when some of us took a trip on the midnight train to Leningrad and I ended up sitting next to an Italian guy from Jersey. Laura Wills, my stylist and friend from Screaming Mimi’s, was with me, and she started calling him “French Fry,” so I called him that too, and the name stuck. We were all feeling pretty loose, because we were all artists and that’s the way artists are. Anyway, French Fry was so funny. He had pockmarks on his face, but he had touched them up on his passport. He kept making me laugh, and one thing led to another and we had a little affair. While I was doing that, everybody else was having their little flirtatious moments, too. (Diane Warren was on the trip, and even though I was mad at her because she badmouthed my version of “I Don’t Want to Be Your Friend,” I gotta say, she was funny and she was after the Secret Service guy. She thought he was cute.)
I also met this Russian guy Igor, who was a riot. He took me all over the place to sightsee and Laura was always looking for me (David made her responsible for me). I think Igor had a crush on me. I remember I had brought food from a health-food store at home and Laura goes, “There’s no food here, and you bring over food that tastes like dirt?” Which was true—I did. In Russia, you could choose between mystery meat in gelatin or caviar, which made your tongue swollen, but to them, that was very expensive food. Listen, they gave us the best of what they had. They were really very sweet to me, these big, burly guys, even though they weren’t used to women doing this kind of work. There wasn’t much drinking water available so they kept saying to me, “Drink this. Vodka.”
I was there for two weeks, and the trip woke me up a little. I had a moment of clarity when I was on that train. I was really, really lonely and Dave had already left to go back to the US I looked at the tracks and I thought, “Why don’t you just kill yourself? You thought that this would be the pinnacle of your life, and now where are you?” I was so tired of being told what I couldn’t do by the record company, of being isolated and having people tell me what they thought I was. My relationship was ending. The movie I had done flopped. I was like, “I can’t take this life anymore. I can either jump off the train or have an affair with this guy I don’t know, get on with my life, and just break ties with Dave.” So I had that affair with French Fry.
When I came back from Russia I moved into the Mayflower Hotel for a long, long time, and I left Dave in the loft. Hotel life is very sad. And after the Russian trip, I was still going around with French Fry even though he was seeing his old girlfriend and they were moving in together. I couldn’t understand why he was moving in with someone and still calling me. My housekeeper Ann didn’t like him, and she finally ended it with him. When French Fry called she never told me, so I thought he lost interest. I kinda felt like I loved French Fry, but then I realized I was just still heartbroken about Dave.
When you start out and you have nothing, and you make it to that pinnacle of your life, you think that your fame and your success are a redemption for everything that ever happened to you. It’s not true. Because at the end of the movie, the credits roll—but in your life, that doesn’t happen. Credits don’t roll. I had to continue living. My whole life up to that moment was about getting there, but now that I was there, it wasn’t so rosy. I wanted my life to go better, and I thought it was gonna, but it didn’t. Because what I gave up along the way to get to that pinnacle was my relationship. I thought that that was the most important thing to me, and that’s why I was still a good soldier about everything Dave had me do. He continued to be my manager, and even though I was worried that the record company was a complete mess, I thought that no one else would really want me as an artist. I never felt that successful, because I was always working so hard.
I got one Grammy that year, but I disappointed the record company because I didn’t come home with an armful like they expected. It was always like that—it was never enough. I had come so far but felt like I had failed.
There was this idea out there that I was rolling in money, but let me tell ya, I wasn’t. For instance, I really busted my ass touring and promoting my records internationally, but I got a penny a record in Europe. I remember asking my accountant around that time, “How much money do I have?” He said, “You have a million dollars.” I felt like Ralph Kramden. I was like, “I’m rich!” What he neglected to tell me was that half of that million would go toward taxes. I was never good with money.
It was such a dark time for me. When I was living in the Mayflower, I was two steps off of that balcony. I would go to the studio and make my record, and then sit in my dark room and drink vodka (which I didn’t even like). The moon would shine into the room past the balcony, through the window, and onto the floor. And I’d sit on my chair and talk to the moon. I would toast her and tell her I was named Cynthia, after the goddess of the moon. Then I’d just cry while gazing up at her. I didn’t call anyone; I was so upset I couldn’t even talk. I would see my family occasionally but I had to spend most of my time making my record. I was alone. But I wanted to be alone. I was grieving. I thought the sadness would never go away. I must say the only thing that always prevented me from suicide is that I never wanted a headline to read, GIRL WHO WANTED TO HAVE FUN JUST DIDN’T. That’s how stupid and ridiculous I thought the press was, and I didn’t want my life to be reduced to that.
My friend Katie Valk had introduced me to her friend Tracey Ullman, so I hung out with her a little bit. I told her that thing about how I’d jump except for the headline, and Tracey looked at me and said, “That’s the second time you said that to me. I think you should start seeing a therapist.”
So I went to a therapist for a second, but it seemed to me that she agreed with me too much, and you can’t have somebody just agreeing with you. You have to have somebody who will listen and be objective and ask you, “Has that ever happened to you before?” and “How do you feel about that?” You need somebody to help you climb back up. I just collapsed. The rape, the dark parts of my past—everything caved in at that time and I was lost. I’d go to the studio stoned and Eric would look at me and go, “Cyn, what are you doing? Make your work. Come on.” But I would see him working with Robert Palmer, who had this really young girlfriend. It was just like everywhere I looked there was a form of weird sexism. Then I’d watch his “Addicted to Love” video and see a girl swinging her tits around, and none of them could play instruments. What the hell is that?
Dave was still my manager, but I knew that wasn’t going to last forever. I thought next time around I should really get a female. I really wanted to work with Sharon Osbourne, who was so cool and always spoke her mind, but people (usually men) told me all this shit like, “Oh, she’s crazy.” But I see now that what really happened was she
stood up to them and they didn’t like it.
I lost my relationship, I lost my work, I lost my focus. And I had no one to go to, really. I came into the music business with good intentions, with honesty, and everything I made was organic. Nothing I did was preconceived. I believed that music could lift people up and make them happy. Then I was just sucked up and considered disposable trash, and I felt like, “That’s not what I came to do.”
In the meantime, Dave said, “Cyn, listen, I feel ridiculous. I’m supposed to move out, not you.” We always stayed friends. So I came back and he moved out. And Dave arranged for me to do an interview for the cover of Details magazine, and that’s how I met Annie Flanders, the founding editor, who became a friend. We’d meet at the Russian Tea Room. She was one of the few people I could talk to. Annie was so creative and so cool. I did some research for what I thought would look nice for the cover. Then Laura Wills suggested Alberto Vargas’s style to me (he painted all those pin-up girls in the forties), so I went to the bookshop and found a Vargas book to bring to Annie.
When I presented it to her I told her that when I thought of the cover, I imagined a painting. And she said, “I know a guy who could maybe paint it.” So the cover was a painting of me, Vargas-style, with a very classic-Hollywood, platinum-blonde look, like Jean Harlow, and I was framed by gardenias. That was going to be my new image for A Night to Remember.
A Night to Remember came out in 1989, and “I Drove All Night” went to number six. It was huge all over the world. (This time Dave didn’t play the guy in the video—I got someone else.) But again, the record company was disappointed. But like a good soldier I toured the world in support of that album. The record company wanted me to work Europe and the rest of the world while they broke their new acts in the States, so they could just live off of whatever I had left in me. That’s how they are. I remember I went to Italy to do this wild, crazy show in Bari. It was a festival with about thirty acts, one after the other, and it was all televised. When there are that many acts, it’s easier, and the sound quality is better, to sing to track (where the track plays without the vocal and you sing along to it) rather than to do it all live.
Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir Page 19