In the end, the compromise Julie offered them, and eventually Nick, was that they all take a break for two to three weeks, to give her a chance to take Nick home, keep an eye on him, adjust his medications if necessary, and give him a chance to regain his balance and good spirits. But they were unenthusiastic about her suggestion, and more than likely the booking agents wouldn’t have tolerated a two to three week interruption in the trip. It would have cost them money, and hurt the band’s reputation.
And by the time Nick got up, Julie had convinced them to tell Nick how much they appreciated him, which they did. And hearing that when he got up, Nick announced that he had decided he wanted to stay and continue the tour. Julie still had reservations, and told him that he should follow his instincts, and that if it was too much for him to stay, he shouldn’t do it. But Nick’s position had reversed entirely in the past twenty-four hours. He told Julie that if she made him leave with her, he would run away, for real this time. Nothing was going to make him leave, he said. He was going to do the tour, come hell or high water. And he flatly refused to go home with Julie.
I was talking to Julie about it every few hours, and she finally decided to stick around for a while, and watch him. And the one thing she didn’t like, nor did I, was the fact that the boys had been so adamant about his not leaving, whatever the risk to Nicky. They wanted him to stay not out of any disregard for him, but because they didn’t understand the risk to him, and they needed him so badly. I don’t think any of us realized, not even Julie or I, or even Nick’s psychiatrist, how taxing the trip would be for him psychologically, or the revelations he would have to face about his own limits, which ultimately destroyed him. Had we realized the eventual risk to Nick, he never would have been allowed to go on tour in the first place. After all we had done to that point to keep him safe, why in God’s name would any of us have wanted to risk him? We didn’t.
So Julie stayed and traveled with them for a while, and kept an eye on Nick, and his spirits came up again. They got busy with the business of the band, the rigors of the road, and the excitement of their concerts. The tour was going well for them, and it was a rite of passage they all knew they had to go through if they were ever going to make it big-time. And by the time Julie left again, she felt comfortable, and so did I, that he was back on track again, comfortable, and determined to continue the tour. But there was also no doubt in our minds that he was fragile. And he had promised Julie before she left that if he got depressed again, he would in fact leave the tour, and not jeopardize his well-being further.
He wasn’t in his usual ebullient spirits then, but nor did he seem particularly depressed, and he and the other band members were getting on better. Now, with hindsight again, we realize that he was less sociable than usual, kept to himself more, and whenever they had some free time in the towns where they stayed, Nick was more anxious to stay in his motel and rest than to go out and have fun with the others. But he was also tired, and not long after Julie left, he broke his foot onstage during a performance. She flew out again then, and had the foot set by an orthopedist in Nashville. An incredibly nice man, Dr. Greg White, whom Nick befriended. Nick maintained contact with him, I have met him since and we have become friends. And he is every bit as nice and kind and diligent as Nick had described to me when he told me about him. He gave Nick a cast that he could continue to perform in.
Julie also had his lithium levels checked when she was on the tour with him, and so far, everything seemed normal.
And all along the way, I was calling Nick in the van, and he sounded fine to me, and happy to be touring. And from nearly every town they stopped in, he would send me funny postcards, thanking me profusely for letting him tour with the band, and supporting him in what he was doing. I kept most of the postcards he sent, and have since framed them. They are very Nicky.
In his inimitable way, Nick also took his sense of humor on tour with him. And in spite of the initial rocky start, and his broken foot, he managed to come up with some relatively innocent mischief. It was hard to keep Nick down for long, even when he was tired, and squashed in a van with nine other people. There were eight band members, Cody driving the van, Nick, and their beloved friend and roadie Stony.
Nick found a piece of cardboard on one of their stops one day, and wrote a message on it, which he thought would provide them some entertainment. He drew a simple outline of two pairs of boobs, and wrote “SHOW US YOUR TITS!” in bold letters. The message was undeniably crude, and potentially offensive. But in typical Nicky fashion, he thought it was going to provide them hours of fun, and he wasn’t mistaken.
According to Cody, he would smile at women in cars driving close to them, wave, make faces, laugh, giggle, point, and generally charm them. And as they became amused by him, trying his best to entice them from the van driving alongside their car, he would then pick up his homemade sign and hold it at the window. They must surely have been startled, some were perhaps annoyed, but what astonished Cody—and probably the others as well—is that a number of the women who read his sign actually did what he was asking. It worked! Cody and I agreed, as he told me about it, that if anyone else tried it, they’d probably wind up in jail, or the women he’d tried it on would have been outraged. And although some probably were, others apparently thought it was funny, and Nick charming. Enough so to do what he wanted, and laugh as hard as he did. There was no malice to Nick, no evil intent, nothing even remotely sleazy. There was a childlike quality to him from beginning to end. An innocence and ingenuousness that made you want to laugh and hug him.
The sign came home from tour eventually, and amused by it, I framed it. It is an artifact of the tour, so typically Nick, and somehow strikes me funny. It hangs now on the stairs to his room, just below his microphone, which I also framed. They make me smile, just as the story did when Cody told me.
Things went on well for a while, and he sounded fine to me when I called him. I’d catch him asleep in the van between towns, God knows where, that no one had ever heard of. But it was obvious by then that he loved it. They were all tired, driving endless hours across unfamiliar terrain, but he loved the people they met, the performances they did, and was constantly enthusiastic about it. He said his back was better, though I can’t imagine why, curled up in a van all day, and leaping off the stage all night. It was hardly therapy any doctor would have recommended. But he was young enough to survive it, despite his illness. Or at least I thought so.
And Julie was satisfied that things were going well too. She was flying out once a week to spend several days with him, as promised, although by then it was no easy feat for her. She had just discovered she was pregnant, and hadn’t told Nick. But she knew how important it was for her to be there with him, so no matter how she felt, and often she felt ill, she flew out to meet him. She would rent a car, and have him drive alone with her, so they could talk and she could get a real sense of how he was doing.
But her reports to me were reassuring, although one of the things we were worried about was the possibility that given the long hours, the lack of sleep, and irregular eating patterns, his lithium might not absorb evenly, but so far, we saw no problems. And his weekly lithium tests were normal.
Nick complained about the cast he was wearing from time to time, and I teased him about it.
“You’re falling apart!” I said, and he laughed.
“Yeah!” I could see him smile as he said it, and he inquired about my love life, which was fine for the moment. Tom and I had been talking about making plans for the future again, when we left for Europe.
I had taken the children to London and Paris, and we were in the South of France, when everything went haywire with Tom. It was one of those moments when the planets collide, and all of one’s lucky stars wind up in the toilet. At least mine did. Tom and I had been traveling separately on different continents for two months, and when we got back together, things were out of synch, and suddenly felt awkward. In retrospect one can always find a lot of reasons
why things happen. In truth, one never knows exactly what lights the fuse on the stick of dynamite, but it lit, and the dynamite blew our relationship right out of the water. He left the South of France suddenly, panicked by the complications of my life, convinced that the relationship was unsalvageable, and that it was over. I didn’t agree with his reasons for it, but he definitely convinced me that, for him at least, it was over.
I went back to Paris from the South of France, heartbroken, and cried in all our favorite places. It was definitely a major blow, and along with our romance, and what I had hoped would be our future, went my summer. I flew back to New York with the kids, and then home, to deliver them to John for their vacation time with him, and stayed home to lick my wounds. The rest of the summer plans I’d had with Tom were canceled, but for the time being, I said nothing to Nicky.
Nick breezed through New York on the tour, and my mother and a friend of hers went to see him perform. I smiled, thinking of it, and wished I could have seen it. My mother in silk, as usual, and pearls, amongst Nick’s groupies, and a thousand punk rockers. She loved the performance and her grandson. Now that he was successful, his oddities, like dyed hair, earrings, a nose ring, and tattoos, seemed more like accessories than offenses. And Nick never had a “hard-core” look about him. He had a natural style and elegance of sorts which gave his mod looks real appeal, and only enhanced his appearance.
They got a week’s break from the tour in New York, and Nick caught a bad cold. Julie was there, and his friend Thea came out to keep him company, and he had a good time, but he was feeling fairly lousy. I put him up in a decent hotel, for once, and he wrote and called endlessly to thank me. The comforts that had once seemed ordinary to him were now deeply appreciated and priceless.
He also used the time in New York to take the band to see a well-known music attorney, who was impressed by them, and agreed to represent them.
But it was after New York that things started to go sour for Nick. He was tired, he still had the cold, and the pressures of the tour were beginning to wear him down, until he began to slip slowly into a depression. They had been on tour for eight weeks, and had three more before they finished. More than anything, he seemed tired. But I think what lay beneath the fatigue and the strain was a realization that he confessed to Julie. He knew without a doubt that unless he could tour and hold up to the rigors of that life, his attempts at a career in music would be fruitless. It was something he absolutely had to do if he was going to make it. And what he had discovered in nearly eight weeks of tour was that he felt he couldn’t. He had held up remarkably, but his spirits were slowly sinking. Like the others, he was exhausted. But unlike them, he waged a constant battle against his own limitations. The balance was just too delicate for him, and he told both Cody and Julie in those last weeks of the tour that he had come to realize that he couldn’t do it. It took too much out of him, and the stresses of that lifestyle cost him too dearly. He had begun to fight a daily battle against depression. And he even told Cody that he didn’t think he could tour again. It was too much for him, and he knew it. And what that translated to for Nick was utter failure and crushing depression.
He could no longer see himself doing the European tour, or Japan. And if he couldn’t tour, he couldn’t play, he couldn’t live. Without being able to do what he wanted in the music world, his life was just not worth living. He was a bird with broken wings and he knew it. It was precisely the conclusion we had all prayed he would never come to. We wanted the tour to be a victory for him, but in those last exhausting weeks, it began to backfire on him. But he still insisted he could finish, and not wanting to depress him more, we agreed to let him.
Nick at nineteen (photo credit 1.33, 1.34, 1.35)
Nick and Chris Campbell (photo credit 1.36, 1.37)
Julie flew home again in those last days of the tour. She was sick from her pregnancy by then, but Nick didn’t know anything about it. She had been with him for weeks, driving fifteen hours a day with him, standing around in concert halls and nightclubs, and talking endlessly with Nicky. But she and I had both agreed that for the moment at least, her pregnancy had to remain a secret. Nick was always thrown off by change. And he needed so much of her time and attention that the arrival of a new baby in her life was going to present a real threat to him. We wanted him home again, rested, and settled down, before she told him. And as usual, she sacrificed herself, and her health, for his well-being. She had spent the entire summer commuting to be with him, and enduring the rigors of the tour almost as much as he did. As worried as I was about Nick, I was also worried about Julie. And with good reason, the night before Nick came home, she lost the baby, which was devastating for her. But even then, her thoughts had to turn instantly to Nicky. She had no time to recover.
The band drove to the Midwest after New York, and although Nick appeared to be okay, in fact he wasn’t. He went out with the band one night, got drunk, and smoked some pot, which was potentially disastrous for him, and he knew it. The boys in the band called Paul, Nick’s attendant, at the motel immediately, and told him what had happened, as they promised they would do, if Nick ever did anything he shouldn’t. Paul went to pick him up, and when they got back to the motel, Nick called Julie. He was panicked by what he’d done, knowing that with him it was a sign that he was falling apart, and he knew it. She asked him if he wanted to come home, and he said he would do whatever she wanted, which knowing Nick, meant he wanted out. The fact that he had smoked pot and drank was his way of saying he couldn’t do it anymore, we all knew that, and so did Nicky.
Julie said, “What if I tell you to come home, Nick?”
“I’ll come,” he said sadly. No fight, no argument. He knew then that, for him, the tour was finished. But more than that, he knew it had far greater implications for him. He knew better than anyone his own handicaps and limitations.
Nick knew he had to go home, to put himself back together, but he also knew that his agreement with the band was that if he had to leave the tour, at any point, they would fire him. That had been his deal with them, and knowing that, to spare himself the embarrassment of being fired, he told them he had to go home and was quitting Link 80. They didn’t argue with him. They were exhausted by the tour, and tired of Nick’s problems. They were finished with him. Nick was devastated that his three-year love affair with Link 80 was over. He had been on tour with them for nine and a half weeks by then, through thick and thin, across the country, and nearly back again. They had less than two weeks of the tour left, and without Nick, it would have to be canceled. And they were furious with him for leaving. Nick’s sense of defeat was total.
Nick left them quietly, and got on a plane in Minneapolis. Julie met him when he arrived, and brought him straight home to me. We were dying to see each other, and I was desperately worried about him. I supported wholeheartedly his decision to leave. The fact that he’d allowed himself to drink, knowing how unwise it was for him, and how atypical for him, told me just what rotten shape he had to be in. And I was even more worried when I saw him. He had lost weight on tour, he was thin, and pale, and tired, still wearing a cast to his knee, and he looked mortally wounded. Despite nine and a half successful weeks on tour, the fact that he couldn’t finish it made him feel like a failure. And the fact that he had quit, and they had let his decision stand and agreed with him, after all he’d done for the band for three years, nearly broke his heart. In fact, I think it may have. For the last ten days of the tour, Nick was like a fighter on his knees, not knocked out, but going down slowly, and he knew it. And when he came home finally, he was beaten. It had all gone wrong in those last two weeks, and it had been too late to stop it.
In retrospect, it’s easy for all of us to say that he never should have done the tour, and I blame myself of course, for letting him do it. And yet not to let him would have been a blow of such catastrophic proportions for him that it would have broken his spirit. It would have been a way of telling him that he was an invalid and would never be abl
e to pursue the dream he had worked so hard for. What I wanted for him was that he be able to do it because Nick himself wanted it so badly. It was what we all wanted, and we had had high hopes for him, no higher than his own. I thought the tour more of a victory for him than a defeat, and it had been an extraordinary experience for all of them, but having to leave the band had filled him with panic. The band was everything he had lived and worked for.
And although I wish they had viewed his early departure differently, and not taken as hard a stance on it, in some ways, I cannot blame them. They were fed up with him. No matter how talented he was, he brought a lot of problems with him. There was no way for them to understand the magnitude of his illness, particularly with Nick going to such great lengths to conceal it from them. He didn’t want them to know how sick he was, and they didn’t. Besides, asking them at their age to understand the intricacies of what it took to manage it would have been far beyond them. What Nick hoped, and what I did, when we met that night, was that they would relent when they got home, and ask him to come back to the band. I felt sure they would when they calmed down, came home, and were themselves less stressed out and more rested. For the moment, I suspected that, like Nick, they were irrational and exhausted.
His Bright Light Page 25