by Jake Shears
The office meeting with City Rockers was on a rainy day and felt like a formality. I don’t know if they were hungover, but the enthusiasm in the room was clouded. We agreed on the deal with a handshake. Then: “Guys, here’s the thing,” Phil Howells said. “I don’t hear any other singles. Well, nothing as strong as ‘Comfortably Numb.’ ”
I frowned. “You don’t hear any more singles? There’s about five of them.” I was dumbfounded. “ ‘Take Your Mama’? ‘Laura’? ‘Filthy/Gorgeous’?”
He patted me lightly on the shoulder, as if he were telling me a distant friend of ours had just passed away. He said, “There’s a lot more writing to do.”
He was wrong. I walked out of the meeting seething. The record wasn’t finished yet, but there were a slew of possible radio songs. What, he was signing us on the back of this Pink Floyd cover but didn’t hear the potential in the rest of the music? Why were they even signing us? I had a vision that was forming, and it set my alarm bells off that the label we were about to get in bed with didn’t see it. I knew he wanted more of the electro that everyone else was making, but I didn’t want to sound like everyone else. I got in the van with Ana and Scott and stewed.
A man named Michael Morley was hanging around us a lot; he worked for Zomba and wanted to sign us to a publishing deal. Which meant, in exchange for an advance, Zomba would always keep a portion of our songwriting royalties. God knows we needed the money. Scott and I spent many weeks mulling over whether we’d sign it or not. We were close. It was a hundred-thousand-dollar advance, but the deal was for fifteen years. We were almost going to sign it out of desperation for cash, but we decided against it, thank God.
There were so many of these land mines we managed to dodge. Scott and I kept betting on ourselves. If we hadn’t, our careers and lives would have turned out very differently. It’s a philosophy I still try to practice, not to give up the goods before they’re ready and not to sell myself short. Complete faith has to be maintained while you figure out how to get your work out to the world.
I’ve never believed in bad luck. I mean, yes, awful things happen, a lot of times for no reason at all. But that’s not luck. It’s so easy to blame things on other people, situations, weather, whatever. Life is just the story that you tell yourself about what’s going on around you. You can believe that your fantasies will become real, but you also have to hold yourself, and not the extraneous, accountable for when they don’t.
The week we got back to New York, we heard that City Rockers was having financial problems. “Well, we got a trip and three shows out of it,” Neil said. “Quite a few people saw you play. That’s going to count for a lot.” It was scary that a record deal wasn’t happening now, but at least we hadn’t officially signed. If we had, and the label ended up going under, who knows if we’d ever have gotten out from under that contract.
“Um, I haven’t heard from you for weeks.” Mary sounded far away, as if she was speaking away from the phone. I was in my apartment, my landline’s black receiver cradled on my shoulder. She was the only person who had the number. Every time the phone rang, I knew it could only be her.
“Oh my God, I haven’t gotten my head above water since we got back from London, it’s been full-on. There was an Interview dinner last night for Miuccia Prada, you would have died. I sat next to this rapper lady named Medina. I actually asked her if she was funky and cold. Oh, shit—Cyndi Lauper was there, she was so nice. We were at some truffle restaurant. I didn’t have anything to wear, so Prada let me go in the store and pick out a shirt and some pants. The shirt is so cute, it’s like a navy blue button-up with all these stars all over—”
“It was my birthday on Monday,” she said. “It was my birthday and you’ve forgotten it again. Just like last year and the year before that.”
My breath caught in my throat. “Oh, fuck. Mary, I’m so sorry—”
“No. Not this time.” She was crying. “Clearly you have your own life now. And that’s fine, you can keep trying to pretend we’re still best friends. But you have other things that are obviously more important. It’s just different now, you can’t go on and act like nothing is changing.”
“Nothing has changed, Mary.”
“Yeah you’re right, you manage to forget my fucking birthday every year. I don’t even know why you bother talking to me anymore. I’ve had it with you.” She hung up.
That conversation with Mary stung. Partially because I knew she was right. I hadn’t been as good a friend as I could have been. I wasn’t good at remembering anyone’s birthday. But I should have made a point of remembering hers. I could just envision her that night, sitting by herself in her Seattle apartment, watching TV, not having the will to go outside, where she’d be scrutinized. Mary liked living in Seattle, but I don’t think she had made many friends. I suspected she was skipping workdays and not leaving the house.
Mary felt like she was losing me. During these conversations I would try to reassure her that I was still totally there for her, but to no avail. She refused to accept that I still loved her. One night I was out really late and got drunk. The next morning I realized I had a studio session with Scott. It was a weekday and we had laid down a haunting chord progression the day before. I was so hungover standing on the train platform thinking about how Mary must have felt on her birthday. In my head I sang the melody. “Mary, you shouldn’t let ’em make you mad, you hold the best you can.”
In the studio, even though I could barely open my eyes without a stabbing pain shooting between them, I sang the melody over the chords we’d laid down. As I wrote the verses sitting back on the couch, I thought of the friendship I’d had with her that had lasted almost ten years, and I just wrote the song for her. Multiple times that day, I was feeling so raw I teared up as we wrote.
I burned the rough version on a CD and mailed it to her with no note, wanting the song to be the last word in this conversation. The point, which I hope she got, was: “Don’t you ever say again that I’m not your best friend, because I will always be, and I refuse to have this argument ever again.”
AS OUR OPERATION GREW, OUR shortcomings were becoming more visible, at least to me. All I wanted was for us to be a real band, but we still felt like an “act.” Having Derek on guitar made a big difference, but how would people take us seriously when we were still using a minidisc player as a backing track? However, any small growth spurts changed the landscape of the venues we were able to play. It was a lot more difficult now to get the four of us performing on the top of a bar.
Formika was a drag queen staple of downtown. She used to host SqueezeBox and knew how to sell debauchery. The year before, she had roped me into hosting some weekly night in a Midtown theater. I made my own little flyers, thinking I’d give promoting a shot. Maybe it was one of the other mean hosts who turned me off, or the full bottle of poppers I spilled on myself and the dance floor, but I decided I was never really meant to be a party promoter, so after only a couple weeks, I gave up. But Formika was still friendly with me and booked the band multiple times at her party Area 10007. However, since we’d added Derek, it was going to prove a tight fit.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to play the party anymore,” I said on the phone, apologetic when she tried to get us back. “Our setup has gotten a little more complicated with the guitars and all. We have a manager now, too, who’s handling all this stuff.”
“Who is this manager person?” she huffed. “You’re telling me you can’t play my party?”
“Not unless there’s a proper stage with more inputs, unfortunately.”
I heard later that Formika proceeded to talk shit about the band around town. Apparently she was saying that she’d booked us to play and we didn’t show up. This remains secondhand information, and who knew if it was true, but it still hurt my feelings. I thought Formika and I were friends, but I guess that’s nightlife.
A drag queen I really loved was Sweetie. She was a very large broad, with towering hair and a fo
ul mouth. Sweetie threw a party called Cheez Whiz at the Parkside Lounge on Houston Street, and the small room with its mini-stage was the perfect size for the four of us. But every Sunday night, it was Sweetie who was the real star. No one could nail a dramatic lip sync like her, a vision with her massive, sparkling frame. Her performance of “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” by Dolly Parton would raise the hairs on the back of your neck. To this day, she’s one of the best performers I’ve ever seen.
A lot of weirdos and notorious downtowners would come to hear Sammy Jo DJ. Flawless Sabrina would show up every week, a living legend, working looks since the fucking ’60s. The wig might have been as old as she was, but hell if she wasn’t the loveliest soul. Rose, who served cocktails and dressed like an art deco lampshade, was kind, slipping us some free drinks when she could. Jayne County would amicably stand on the side of the stage sometimes, smiling with an occasional twitch.
At one of the gigs we did there, I tried playing an electric guitar for “Tits on the Radio.” Neil pulled me aside later and said, “Please never do that again. You’re a terrible guitar player. And by the way, you looked like a waiter in a bad restaurant in Tuscaloosa.” I guess you could at least count on Neil for some gritty honesty.
I was soon hit with my first moment of songwriting depression. I came into the studio one day, and Scott and I started writing something that wasn’t going anywhere. I thought about all the great songs we’d written so far, and I felt a curious, creeping dread that we’d be unable to write anything of that caliber again. All of a sudden our work seemed overwhelming and impossible. The first time this happened, it only lasted a day, but the feeling would eventually overtake my whole life.
Some friend of Neil’s from Italy had been coming to our shows at Luxx, and he booked us to play this mega-club outside Florence. The trip was going to be very quick, just two nights, then back to New York. It was the farthest distance we’d traveled as a band. But we’d be doing it without Derek on guitar.
There was something wrong with Derek’s leg. Doctors had found holes in his bones that were being filled by foreign matter. They weren’t quite sure what was happening: No one was saying the word cancer, but it sure was bouncing around our heads. Derek was stoic and didn’t let on that he was worried about anything. But he was saddled with appointments and had to stay behind.
The ride from the airport in Florence was all rolling hills and windy roads, so picturesque. It took forever to get to where we were going, which was a ways out of the city, but Scott, Ana, and I were happy to be on such a glamorous-feeling trip. The hotel was above standard, and our host took us out to dinner. Those hours before the show, often the promoter takes the band out to a nice meal. It’s always a sweet gesture, but I’ve always found those dinners can be difficult. During the three hours before stage time, I can become both nervous and bored: Time can feel like it’s dragging by in the dirt. I get too preoccupied to be able to carry on conversations. It can take too much energy before a show to be “on.”
After dinner we were backstage waiting to perform, simmering in our excitement. This was the biggest club we’d played so far. I had a great feeling we were going to set the room on fire.
We were introduced, and hit the stage in front of the swarming, noisy club. I knew right away this was not going to be our kind of crowd. The women were in very high heels, short dresses, lips plumped, hair blown big. The men were all in suits. We began playing “Electrobix.” The sound just kind of drifted out into the air, barely penetrating the noise of patrons, milling around and talking. They couldn’t have cared less that we were onstage. A shot of panic hit me. How the hell were we going to get through all five songs like this? It was nightmarish, like we were singing underwater. People were actually pretending not to see.
During “Filthy/Gorgeous,” Ana strode down the catwalk and asked a man and woman who were at the front of the stage but faced away from us, “Are you aware there’s a band playing right now, sir, madam?” Ana bent over and aggressively stuck her face between theirs and started singing. The whole thing was getting borderline hostile. I signaled to Scott that we should break into “Comfortably Numb” next, because at least they might be familiar with the song, and we could win a few people over. When it started, my fear escalated. There was no recognition in the room. We cut a song and ended our set early. The gig was a flop.
Back in the hotel room Babydaddy and I were sharing, we fell apart. He was sick with some kind of strep throat. “Obviously we’re doing something wrong.” His head was in his hands. “How did that just happen?”
“They were a bad crowd,” I said. “It’s gonna be inevitable sometimes.”
“Our style is totally off. We look ragtag. In fact, we don’t even have a look. And people think this is just more electroclash bullshit.”
“We need a fucking drummer.” I was getting wound up. “We can’t be just playing these dance club gigs. These kind of people don’t want to see a band. They’re out clubbing.”
“We cannot be Fischerspooner! We’ll look like we’re following some kind of trend.” We were now yelling.
“Of course we can’t be Fischerspooner!” I screamed, and pointed at myself. “They wear fucking pantyhose on their heads!” The morning sun was already lighting up the room, and we had about three hours to sleep before we had to get up for the plane home. We were tired and hurt that we’d traveled all this way for the show to be so horrible.
When we met back up in the lobby the next morning, Scott looked like he’d just slept in a ditch. He was really sick. As we checked out, he asked me to get him some orange juice. “That’s gonna hurt your throat,” I said. “Scott, it’s so acidic.”
“What, are you my fucking mother?” He stormed away to get it himself and I felt like a total asshole. The ride to the airport was leaden. I just stared out the window feeling resigned. Something in me thought whatever just happened might be irreparable, the end of the band. We’d put in all this work to come out here for nothing.
Whatever bad vibes Scott and I had were quickly slept off and our next trip as a band was to Germany. I had spent so much time hanging at the Berlin mega-club Ostgut during my previous travels, it felt like an honor to play its last days, before it was to be demolished to make way for an O2 arena. Two DJs named Boris and ND, whom I had befriended, asked if we would come out and play the last weekend at Ostgut, home of the infamous original Panorama Bar. We were to perform at Panorama well after midnight, and Peaches would do the main room at 9 a.m. This was all happening on New Year’s Eve.
The club was in a desolate part of the warehouse district in East Berlin, seeming like the middle of nowhere, with dirt roads. It didn’t even feel like you were in a city. The club was huge and unadorned, sharp and dangerous around its edges. Many of its industrial features were left untouched among the mixed crowd, queer and straight. The main floor played harder techno, and Panorama Bar was more eclectic. The smaller space was so named because it was flanked by two massive walls with windows that overlooked Berlin’s city skyline: When the night brightened into morning, the sunrise and all its colors washed the room in a gentle glow. Within minutes, blackout blinds would be drawn closed. Then it could be any hour of the day and it didn’t matter.
Derek came on the trip but was limping around, post-operation. He was on crutches and his foot was in a cast. Doctors had checked his bones, and now he was waiting to hear some kind of diagnosis. We stayed at the art’otel in Mitte and it was so cold, it felt like your body was shrieking when you walked outside. The night before the gig, we had all gone out to some bars, and Ana had barfed on the front of the hotel upon our return. We joked that she provided her own, special temporal art.
Jet-lagged, I slept through the entire day and got up in the early evening, knowing we would be up all night. The band ventured out of the hotel to find food in the freezing cold, but walked forever, not finding anything open. We screamed as firecrackers were thrown off balconies at us from all directions. Apparently
that’s what they did in Berlin on New Year’s Eve.
I remember tromping through an iced-over grassy field. “Oh, we’re in Mitte?” Ana said between firecrackers. “More like the Mitte of nowhere.” We finally found a grotty sandwich shop that sold us some panini. As we clutched ourselves to keep warm, slowly plodding back to the hotel, poor Derek kept screaming every time he was startled by the firecrackers. He’s always been sensitive to loud noises, and being on crutches seemed to make it all the sadder. By the time we all made it back to our hotel to be transported to the gig, we were traumatized, and Ana was in a bad mood over having forgotten her wig.
Our set was at four in the morning. The warm Panorama Bar was full of friendly faces, and the crowd was welcoming and excited. But the stage monitor scenario was a mess. Monitors are what make you able to hear what you’re playing or singing onstage. We were having to use the room speakers to hear ourselves, which can cause weird sonic delays. But no one in the audience cared as we played the show; everyone in the room was just happy we were there.
Ostgut was set to be open for at least the next twenty-four hours, and I wasn’t supposed to fly out until that night, so I immediately dropped an E and half a hit of acid. We were sharing a dressing room with Peaches and I was starstruck. It hadn’t been that long ago that her performance at the Knitting Factory had picked at me like a loose thread on a shirt. Every artist I’d seen and loved had all pulled on that thread, making a hole that only I could sew up again myself with my own stitch witchery. Peaches was very kind, although everyone seemed to be calling her Merrill. I guess a lot of us music folks have two names, I thought.
At one point, I sat down next to Derek. He had his cast-covered foot set up on a chair and looked morose, kind of staring at the floor. “You okay?” I asked him.