When I toured with that incredible ten-piece band for Hat Full of Stars, I played live with a loop. But I had the drummer retrigger the loop every four or so bars. That way, if I wanted to try something and make a slight left turn in the middle of the song, it was possible. We weren’t so locked in. It made it easier to be spontaneous. And I think you need to have spontaneous combustion sometimes. But to really lead, I needed to learn how to give clear cues and I needed to learn to count well enough to count in and out of the music phrases I wanted to include as we were playing.
So I tried to work closely with the drummer. On the “Hat Full of Stars” tour, I worked with Rocky Bryant and then Scooter Werner. I’d ask, “If I wanted to do this kind of change here, what would be a clear and good count for you?” And they told me. So I’d do that more. I work as close as I can with whatever band I’m making music with. But I think it will always be a process.
Most singers talk in such a cryptic way to these guys it’s a miracle the monitor guy can guess what the heck the singer means. So every time it sounded good to me, I’d ask what he added to my voice or took out. Or I’d ask what kind of speakers he thought would suit my voice best. That helped me learn how to communicate with the monitor guy.
Anyway, back to Sisters of Avalon. Jan and I, and our producer Mark Saunders, finished recording the album in an old mansion in Tuxedo Park, New York, which had its own spirit. I was tired of recording in studios. They’re overpriced and overrated, and with today’s technology you don’t need them. And in Tuxedo Park we had a great view. And a housekeeper. And a chef. Unfortunately when I was planting the last petunias and putting the gnomes next to each room, my manager told me he was leaving to take a job at Sony. He was my second manager since David Wolff.
There were so many tracks that I was proud of. “Say a Prayer” was about Gregory, and AIDS, and the fight between life and death. “Love to Hate” was about the record company and the too-cool-for-school younger artists who were so rude and stupid that they didn’t even realize that half of the shit they did, they did because we did it first. (The eighties have become so big now, and now there are these nostalgia tours with a bunch of acts doing a few hits. I wouldn’t go out on tour like that. I just don’t want to.) And “You Don’t Know” was just about people on television who have no idea what they are talking about, like these so-called political experts—the left suppresses the right and the right suppresses the left.
When we taped the “Sisters of Avalon” video we used a keyboard player who was in a wheelchair. Jan thought everyone would think that was her in the wheelchair, so we never released the video because she was so heartbroken about it. It wasn’t a success anyway because people weren’t focused on it.
When I was in Europe doing promotion that’s when I started trying to get pregnant again. Then in March 1997 I found out that I was finally pregnant. I couldn’t believe it. I wanted this little baby for so long. I used to look at pictures of my husband’s mother holding him with a triangle mouth, and of course now my son has that triangle mouth. I used to call him “Luscious Louie” when he was little. I was so excited, but I didn’t say anything publicly for a while. At first I thought I was going to have a girl, because when I was trying to get pregnant I kept having a vision of twin girls leaving with a suitcase. But as it happens, I had a beautiful boy.
I ended up doing a video for “Ballad of Cleo and Joe” while I was pretty pregnant. It wasn’t supposed to be a video. The record company had me doing press promotion in some design place in New York and I looked around and said, “Hey, I’m all dressed up, I’ve got on a black wig, why not do a video? Just give me a turntable and two lights pointing down on me, aiming for my stomach. You stand up there and film it.”
I made a guy glue tiny mirrors on my big round stomach to make it look like a disco ball, and I wore a silver bikini top because I thought it was funny. I figured this was the only time in my life I could get away with wearing a bikini and not worry that I didn’t have a good shape.
When I was editing the video, I kept getting Braxton Hicks contractions, and the two video editors were looking at me like, “Oh my God, please don’t have your baby here.” People were always saying that to me. Then there are the wise guys. “Hey, lady, what are you having, twins?” David said, “The next time somebody says that, just say, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been drinking a lot of beer lately, but I’m not pregnant.’” I did that once. It was very funny. And everyone touched my stomach when I was pregnant. I felt like saying, “Get your hands off me before I fuckin’ knock you to the ground! I’ll show you what a pregnant woman is like! You better back off.” People don’t bother an animal when it’s pregnant. You just don’t.
I read fan emails while I was pregnant. You gotta understand, email was new in those days. It was like Star Trek, like I was writing in outer space. Many of them were from people who told me about how it was really tough for them to come out and that the song “True Colors” really saved their lives. When they announced that they were gay, they were disowned by their family and friends and lost their jobs. Some were suicidal. But instead of committing suicide, they would sing this song to themselves, in the same way that I would sing “Across the Universe” to myself.
As soon as I started answering those emails, they started coming in heavy. I don’t even know how many—I just knew it was a lot, and that every single one was the same. And that’s when I realized that the gay community had embraced this song. I immediately called my sister and told her about the letters and said that if there’s ever a time that we could help out the gay community we should. And when the time came, we did PFLAG’s “Stay Close” campaign together, which featured celebrities and their gay family members, with a message to support your gay loved ones.
I was also the opening act for Tina Turner’s summer “Wildest Dreams” tour while I was pregnant. This wasn’t an eighties thing: Tina was promoting new material, and so was I. But my mistake was that I did alternative songs from “Sisters of Avalon,” and it just didn’t suit that audience. The tour helped her but it didn’t help me at all. It hurt me. It made me an opening act.
Famed photographer David LaChapelle wanted to take pictures of me pregnant. So I told my publicist Kathy Schenker and she said, “He doesn’t want to take a picture of you.” I wasn’t sure why she was my publicist in the first place—it wasn’t like she was bringing me anything earth-shattering. Years later, David asked me what happened with him taking a picture of me and I told him, “Kathy Schenker happened.” That’s how this business works. It’s kind of fucked-up.
The album came out in 1997 and the record company let it fall through the cracks. Jan was surprised; she just didn’t expect for it not to achieve anything, but I did, because I knew the record company had no intention of doing anything for that CD. It was on the Billboard album chart for a week. We sold sixty thousand copies on tour and it was just heartbreaking. When I was pregnant and on tour with Tina Turner, no one from the record company came to see me.
Tina was nice but we didn’t get that close, if ya know what I mean. I connected much more with Cher when we toured together in 1999 for her “Do You Believe” tour. Cher is amazing, just the coolest person. When she invited me on the tour, she said, “Come on, we’re gonna do great together.” She was right.
Cher would do things like rent out an entire movie theater for everyone on a tour stop and we’d all watch a movie. God bless her, every day she did her yoga, every day come hell or high water. That’s a pain in the ass but she could do it all. She was disciplined and she did the right thing and she was pleasant and she’s just cool. If there was a problem, you’d hear about it, she’d come up and talk to you, and then it was done.
By the time she invited me on her 2002 tour, I had just lost the label I was at, and I thought indie was the way to go. But a million people saw that show—a million. And it was kind of awesome because we were able to put on a really great performance. My band was inc
redible. Cher started to have me on the JumboTron, and then she began to direct me. I don’t know where she got the time, but she did and at one point she pulled me aside to say, “Listen, when you wear all that dark eye makeup I can’t see inside your eyes.” She suggested I wear other makeup and put more light on me.
During the day, I did in-store appearances, because I didn’t want to just be on the tour, I wanted to really contribute. That’s why I recorded “Disco Inferno,” too, on producer Jellybean Benitez’s label—so I’d have some new material. And I bought clothes to look as great as I could for Cher and for me. My husband had said, “If you want to be successful, you have to look successful. You can’t wear cheap shit.” So I hired a stylist and she bought me stuff from all over the place, including Dolce & Gabbana. Anna Sui also gave me a suit and a pair of leather pants, God bless her. For in-store appearances I put on white jeans and Etro shirts. Onstage I wore suits and ruffled shirts, kind of what I remember Otis Redding used to wear.
I sang fifty minutes a night and I wanted to do something special for the people who came to see me. I knew that Cher’s fans were sitting in the front, but my fans were in the back and I wanted to make them feel important, too. So I’d run to the back of the venue and climb up the back stairs while I was singing. I’d rouse the whole place. I had a fantastic sound engineer so it sounded great. And there’s nothing like making a whole bunch of people who are very impressed with themselves feel like they don’t matter by excluding them.
The tour was a blast, but unfortunately I was working so much that I started to wear myself thin. During our show in Oklahoma, I fell while running down the stairs to go in the audience and I really hurt myself. The metal on the steps dug into my leg, so there was a gash and I couldn’t get back up again. I felt so bad because Cher’s dancers looked at me and got really worried. They got people to run backstage to get something, anything, to help me, and brought me bags of ice to put on my leg. Even though I couldn’t move, I finished the song.
And then I went to the hospital and got it bandaged up and was given some painkillers. But I still wasn’t myself, and I said, “I can’t do this, I have to go home.” When my little boy saw me with crutches he started crying, but he calmed down when I told him I’d be okay.
At first Cher’s people totally understood that I needed to rest and one of her people, who I’ll call Mr. Smiley, wanted me back. I couldn’t go when they wanted me but as soon as I could, of course I did. I only missed two or three shows. At first I had to perform in a wheelchair and one time I almost fell off the stage. And then gradually my leg got better and I switched to a cane, and then I was fully back. But I haven’t been able to jog ever since.
One time when we were heading for a show in DC we wound up getting stuck in terrible traffic and we had a flat tire, and I was going to be late for the show. You’re not going to believe what happened. They sent a police escort so we could make it through. We quickly got dressed in the back of the bus and walked right off the bus onto the stage. It was so dramatic and wild. But I also felt really bad. Cher was a stickler for being prompt and Mr. Smiley said, “You can’t be late anymore. If you are, I’m going to start to dock you.” But that experience taught me to be more on time, which I’m so grateful for. (I still am a little late, though. I’m trying. There’s a lot of shit to do to pull this old ass together—I do the singing exercises, the eyelashes . . .)
Another time we were in Laredo, Texas, and I was running late after an in-store again. My assistant Jackie and I had to pack up everything (she did most of the packing), quickly get dressed at the hotel, and get to the gig. But someone forgot to have a car waiting. So my assistant Jackie got a cab for us and we started shoving all of our shit in it for the show. We tried to get this poor Mexican cab driver to get to the stage entrance as soon as possible: “Drive on the grass and go backstage. Come on, you gotta go, you gotta go!” So this poor guy who was absolutely horrified drove on the grass, not knowing who the fuck we were. Then we were blocked by a bunch of people who were lined up to see Cher so I stuck my head out the window and yelled, “Please let me through! I’m gonna be late, I gotta be onstage, I’m supposed to be onstage, please, please, let me through.” Some of them were like, “Fuck you.” But some of them just looked at me going, “Oh my God, it’s Cyndi Lauper!” and moved over. We finally pulled in backstage and all our trunks were outside because it was a small venue and Miss Thing had everything inside, including the elephant and the kitchen sink. We ran out of the cab, popped open the trunks and pulled out all our shit, and I ran onstage. It was so ridiculous, and again, I was mad at myself because I was late.
Then after we took a break for Christmas, Cher wanted to go back out, but I had to be with my kid because he was such a wreck. He missed his mom. I think Cher understood. After that, whenever she did something good I’d call her up and congratulate her. I think she’s awesome. It’s just really hard to be friends with famous people because they’re really busy.
It’s funny—I did the Cher tour, but I was never invited to the Lilith Fair. There was supposed to be a “women in rock” moment at the end of the nineties but it was really a Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears moment. Those two were like me and Madonna, head to head. But Christina was a different kind of performer from Britney—and although everybody says Britney can’t sing, it’s bullshit. She can sing—she just can’t sing like she does on the record, because no one can, really. Those Swedish producers she worked with made her stop at every word. That’s why her voice sounds like that—so controlled. I would have killed those producers. They would have been dead.
Here’s the thing that’s so bizarre to me. When producers contact you to work together, it’s because they hear something in your work that they want to combine with what they do. So it’s so strange when they make you unrecognizable—unless, I guess, you want to do something unrecognizable. Which I think is very plausible for me—I sometimes wondered if I should just hide my name the next time, so people would just hear my singing without knowing who I was. I could put together a persona like Daft Punk. You don’t even know who those guys are or how old they are. That’s the wonder and the beauty of it.
The whole idea that young people are the only ones making good music and that older musicians do some form of old-fart music is bizarre to me. A lot of the younger artists now, they sing literally one word, and then the producers piece it together with the other words using Pro Tools. When I did Bring Ya to the Brink and I worked with Swedish writers who acted like I was Svengali because I was adding my own input, I just looked at them and thought, “They don’t read credits, they don’t know what I do, they don’t know that I’ve produced.”
When one producer started directing how I should sing I said, “You’re a wonderful drummer, why don’t you show me how to sing like a drum?” And I directed him on the bridge to make it like an echo. And the song “Echo” really worked; it’s catchy and it’s fun. It’s a great dance record. But it was not a priority. The record company had four other acts that were priorities, and unfortunately there was nothing I could do.
Which, by the way, is what’s so great about this musical Kinky Boots that I’m doing with Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Mitchell. I couldn’t have walked through the world of Broadway with two better guys. They’re very gifted. They know the world they live in and they really like my music; that’s why they have me there. It’s not like they just threw me in there because of my name. They’re not trying to change me. It’s been exciting because I don’t have to worry that someone’s going to tell me to do something ridiculous that is not me at all (and if they do, Harvey says, “That’s ridiculous”).
And like I said, when I sing something, I really want to connect to something bigger than myself. I don’t want to just sing. I have always wanted to escape, and when you sing in the right rhythm in the right key and say the right things you can open up that corridor. That is the only place I want to go when I sing. Singing makes you bigger than who you nor
mally are. And thank God for my teachers and all the singers who came before me and who are singing now. We all learn from one another and are connected.
So anyway, back to 1997. Declyn Wallace Lauper Thornton was born in November of that year. We named him after Elvis Costello (whose first name is Declan). It’s just like what they say: Your whole perspective changes when you have a kid. After he was born I had a meeting with the record-company people out in New York and they brought in a new A & R guy, Peter Asher. But the head guy was the same guy I met in Paris before I was pregnant who told me everything was going to be good. You can’t listen to a lie twice. I had one more album on my contract and I said, “Listen, if you’re not going to do anything to promote it you might as well let me go. I don’t want to go through that again. I worked really hard, I tried really hard, I gave a really great image, tried to make a really great album cover, but it all doesn’t matter if you guys are not going to promote it.” And this one guy said, “No, this time we’re going to do something. Why don’t you go home and sleep on it?” He was trying to placate me. I pulled out my baby’s picture and said, “Why don’t you go home and sleep on this? Tomorrow when you’re shaving, look at this baby’s face in the mirror and tell him how his mother had to get another job, because you wrecked her career. You can do that to me, but you’re not going to do that to my baby.” Peter looked like he was going to fall down; he couldn’t even believe it.
I tried to leave, and they came after me and said, “Okay, you just have to make a Christmas album.” That would be my final album for Epic and then I could get the hell out. I said that I just happened to be working on a Christmas record because I always wanted to make one. I love Christmas. So that’s how it happened. Jan came back to stay with me upstairs at our house in Connecticut with her son, who was eight or nine. We had worked together so well that it was a natural next step to keep writing. And Declyn was just born, and a nice woman named Delilah was taking care of him. Dec was the most awesome little kid. He was funny and laughed a lot—just a sweetie. Jan and I wrote in the living room. I made a lot of great music in that house (what I consider great, anyway). I wrote all of Hat Full of Stars and Sisters of Avalon in that living room. Later I wrote Shine in there, too.
Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir Page 23