Late, Late at Night

by Springfield, Rick

  The script for Hard to Hold hasn’t changed all that much by the time we start shooting the first scenes, but I’m feeling confident that I can make the movie into something really worthwhile. My expectations are shaped by the control I have had in the recording studio. I believe this will be a similar undertaking. It’s not. And I learn the hard way. There are a writer, a director, an editor, other actors, the director of photography, and the studio heads. They all have their say, and it starts to feel like we’re designing a racehorse by committee and will shortly end up with a very lumpy camel.

  During the filming I write more songs, this time for the Hard to Hold soundtrack album. But time is tight and I have to do it on the set. It’s a challenge getting a vibe going on a song when everyone keeps yelling for you to shut the hell up, the cameras are rolling. I write a song called “Love Somebody” in the penthouse suite of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco between shooting scenes with Patti Hansen (Keith Richards’s girlfriend and, later, wife), and the song has elements of her personality in it. I also think the song is a plea from my brain to me to stop all the fucking around, which I’m still doing—on the set, in my dressing room trailer, and in hotel rooms.

  Keith Richards (looking astoundingly like Dracula) pays a visit to the set one night to visit his girl and check up on me, vis-à-vis his girl. I’m flattered that he would even think there might be something going on between us (there isn’t), but I’m more excited just to talk with him. I was fourteen when a girl told me that she thought I looked like Keith Richards. It was the coolest thing anyone had ever said to me. That old moment keeps jumping into my head as we’re talking, and the fourteen-year-old in me wants to stop the conversation and scream (in a high, my-balls-haven’t-dropped-yet falsetto) “Oh my GOD! It’s Keith fucking Richards!!” But I manage to restrain myself.

  Filming and recording of some of the new songs continue. I meet a couple of fans outside the studio one night who are excited when I invite them in as we finish up mixing the song “Love Somebody.” They expect to hear the song once and then we’ll get crazy and party, but the recording business is slow and tedious and they’re soon bored shitless. Truly, for the uninitiated, attending a recording session is about as thrilling as watching a vacuum cleaner being repaired. “We gotta go,” they say and split. To quote a line from Hard to Hold: “It ain’t all tits and champagne.”

  When we finish filming, I hit the road.

  The new stage show begins with the opening bars of “Affair of the Heart,” the first single off the Living in Oz album. The heavy bass riff is pulsing through the darkness from the giant array of speakers that encircle our stage, and you can literally feel the tension in the arena building. At the end of a crashing chord from the band the spotlights arc on and reveal yours truly, standing on a small, table-sized elevator platform, fifty feet in the air. The first night we play, the piercing screams that follow are of such a volume and high frequency that I completely lose my equilibrium, drop to my knees, and start to tumble over the edge of the dais. I am still fifty feet above the stage. I grab at anything, terrified I’m going to fall, and a hand finds a hold: I ride the damn thing down to the floor on my knees. Not the cool and rocking opening moment I was hoping it would be. The next night I wear earplugs and it works waaaaay better.

  College kids are starting to show up for us at festivals and outdoor shows, with my song titles painted all over their cars and Winnebagos. Promoters who thought I would be toast by this time stand open-mouthed on the side of the stage, stunned by the enthusiastic receptions we’re getting. And the Springfield School Bus for Undisciplined, Very Naughty Girls rolls on. Brett, my keyboard player, and I are actually starting to have late-night conversations about what we’re doing to our girlfriends. He has a girl who he’s serious about as well, and my guilt at my infidelity is leading me to examine my behavior a bit deeper. Not stop it, mind you, just try to understand it.

  By now I’ve reasoned myself into believing that there is no God. I’ve read and listened to a ton of opinions on the subject and have done a lot of navel-gazing myself during sleepless nights alone in my bunk on the bus. So there is no help from God for me at this time, by my own design. Brett and I, trying to find some understanding of our natures, zero in on our loving but withholding mothers. Maybe they are at the root of our neurotic sexual appetites and lack of self-control … maybe. We’re looking to blame someone. But we also discover that we were both pretty sexually aware at a very early age. That might have something to do with it. Whatever the cause, I resolve to change my ways but am powerless to alter my course when presented with an opportunity. Which is often. Very often.

  Doug Davidson marries his long-time girlfriend, Cindy, at a ceremony in Santa Barbara and I’m in the wedding party. Barbara and I drive up during a break in touring, along the coast in a ’63 Corvette Stingray I’ve recently bought. The wedding is a hit and everyone has a great time, toasts are made, tears are shed, jokes are told at every wedding party member’s expense, drinks are drunk, and then Barbara and I get back into the Corvette for the drive home. It’s now been nearly four years since I proposed, and we have yet to set a date. Considering this, there’s nothing like going to someone else’s wedding to get that shit really stirred up. I’ve been busy over those years, admittedly, but I’ve also been dragging my feet even though I truly love this girl. I’m clearly confused about my commitment, given all my disloyalty on the road. We’ve already broken up and gotten back together so many times that whenever she comes in the front door, our crazy housekeeper (a Chinese guy we call “T”) doesn’t know whether to welcome her or alert me that there’s an intruder.

  We’re arguing on the drive home from Doug and Cindy’s wedding and I make a decision. Maybe it’s powered by alcohol, but I like to think I also have reasonably good intentions—although, looking back, it’s hard to say precisely what they were. I pull the car over to the wrong side of the freeway and confess everything I’ve been doing on the road. Barbara is crushed. She tells me she’s moving out and that we are over, you fucking bastard. We drive the rest of the way home in silence except for her soft sobbing. I feel a sense of relief, like I’ve done the right thing. When we get home around three in the morning, I watch as she packs up all her things one final time. She looks defeated as she walks around the house gathering up all the small mementos that are precious to her. She says nothing to me, kisses Ronnie on his head, and moves out of the home we have built together. I don’t have the same sense of relief as I did when Diana and I split. It’s altogether a different feeling. When Diana and I broke up, I was sure that what I really wanted was to be unfettered and live my life the way I want without any unrealistic commitment to another human soul. But now that is apparently not the case. Already I’m having second thoughts.

  Barbara moves in with her mother. She lives in an area of Glendale where the serial killer the press call the “Night Stalker” is just getting his career going. A couple is murdered a few weeks later on a street just over from where Barbara is now living. I’m freaked when I hear this. And so are they. I go to their apartment and suggest that Pat move into my old house on Broadview Drive and that Barbara move back in with me.

  There’s more to Barbara moving back in with me than just distancing her from Richard Ramirez’s killing ground, however. I want her back. Now I need to prove to both of us that it’s not just going to be business as usual. We talk about marriage for the first time in a long while, but we still don’t settle on a date. I leave for a three-week tour of Japan amid a rash of promises to commit and pledges to change. Japan has always had its own set of rules as far as we touring bands are concerned. It’s really difficult to know if you’ve offended a girl over there by asking her to suck your dick or if, although there is a lot of cultural shyness in Japan, she would really love to. The authorities are very, very anti-drug, and yet there are graphic porno magazines full of young girls covering themselves in their own shit—I’m not making this up—for sale at the local g
rocery market where moms shop with their kids.

  We’ve sold out three nights at Tokyo’s Budokan Hall, and although the audience is screaming and yelling and is as wild as any in the world, the promoter tells me that Japanese law forbids me from jumping off the front of the stage and joining the crowd during the show because it’s considered sacrilegious for the soles of my shoes to touch the same floor that thousands of kids are jumping up and down on at that very moment. Then they take us to a bath house so we can screw our brains out. Amid this strange dichotomy, I’m not sure if my promises to Barbara are actually legal in this part of the world. C’mon, I’m joking. Well, sort of. It’s a hard drug to quit cold turkey, this sex thing. The shows are a blast. And there are girls. I satisfy my old obsession for a while by hearing about and occasionally watching crew and band members have their fun in the hotel rooms around this country … but temptation is pulling at me, as is a more sinister yet familiar voice. “Go on, Rickyboy. Barbara’s ten thousand miles away. And these girls won’t always be around, ya know. It’s all gonna come to an end someday. You don’t have more than a year left at best, I’d say.”

  I weaken and, to my ultimate sorrow, I join in.

  I call Barbara all the time. I miss her and want to connect with that part of my life she owns, the part that’s still any good. She is my rock. My anchor in uncertain seas and in the course I am charting. I have only a vague yet palpable sense of what the consequences will be for me if I stray too far. I want us to work. Maybe she can sense that I’m reaching out to her because out of nowhere she suddenly says, “Let’s get married at your mum’s church.” Sitting on the edge of my hotel bed in Tokyo, I think, “What the hell am I waiting for?” We arrange for her and her family to meet me in Australia. We’ll get married at the church that held the service for my dad. My mum freaks out when I call her. She has two weeks to book the church, alert everyone on our side of the family, hire a caterer, and find a photographer who won’t sell the photos to the magazines.

  She pulls it off. It’s as natural as Barbara and I could ever have hoped. In fact, it feels so right that I wonder why we didn’t do it sooner. I still haven’t grasped how I will adapt to this new level of commitment, assuming I will adapt. And it will be a while before I understand the whole concept and benefit of commitment in a relationship. It’s like trying to advance in a video game. I’ve just entered a room and am waiting for the door ahead of me to open and let me through, but I’m keeping the door behind me still ajar just in case escape becomes necessary. But it’s only by shutting off my exit, and being okay with no way to back out, that the door ahead will open. I do get it eventually, although I don’t manage to close that back door for some time yet.

  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little concerned about the fan reaction to my marriage. The paparazzi were much more restrained in the ’80s than they are now, but they had already taken furtive photos of Barbara and me walking around our canyon neighborhood and published them with lame, untrue stories about us taking separate planes to destinations so fans won’t find out we’re a couple. And I’ve received some nasty “fan” letters containing charming things like drawings of gravestones with Barbara’s and my names written on them in what appears to be blood. Apparently these sweet people now want us both dead.

  It makes me remember an insidious meeting at our Toluca Lake house between the “lawyer,” the “business manager,” and Joe, months earlier, when they became aware of our wedding plans. They ganged up on me in my backyard and told me that Barbara’s mother had said to them that if her daughter and I split up, she would “take me for all I was worth.” Pat has always been our advocate and is a sweet, soulful woman. I know she would never in a million years say something like this, especially not to these idiots. I should have bailed on them all then, but I guess I thought they were trying to protect my interests. They weren’t. They were trying to protect their own. And apart from having a drink thrown in my face while B and I are walking through a hotel lobby after a show one night, the fan reaction is pretty minimal.

  The only thing I remember about the wedding, and the party at my old mum’s house later, is that I have bright purple streaks in my hair (thank you, 1980s), that Barbara’s hair is Lucille Ball red, and that I tweak her nose softly when she says “I do.” This is the last time I’ll see some of my uncles and aunts, as they will soon be joining my dad in the place where all the good people go after they die. And the old folks aren’t the only ones at death’s door. As I said, I’ve never been a big fan of shooting videos for my songs, but I have had a director I like very much. His name is Doug Dowdle. Doug is responsible for a lot of the more well-known and heavily played videos I’ve filmed.

  While Barbara and I are celebrating our wedding and all the happily-ever after we believe it will lead to, I get a phone message from Los Angeles telling me I should call Doug in Hawaii. I do, and he tells me in a voice thick and heavy with painkillers that he has cancer (at age thirty-two) and is “on his way out.” I am stunned. I have never spoken with someone about their impending death before and I’m scared that I’ll say the wrong thing, which, of course, I do. I end our final conversation on this earth with something stupid like “Be well, man. I’ll see you soon.” He’s dead before we even make it back to the U.S.

  I am determined that with marriage I can change. I don’t realize at this point how dramatically my whole life will soon be transformed, when, right on cue, three months into our marriage, Barbara is pregnant. This is incredible news for both of us, although I have the distinct impression at this point that the baby will be more like a cute performing seal I can take around with me so people can “ooh” and “aah” over him/her and tell me how much he/she looks like me.

  Clearly I don’t have a clue about what lies ahead.

  Meanwhile, back at my 9-to-5: the Hard to Hold soundtrack is a hit, with “Love Somebody” becoming my biggest single since “Don’t Talk to Strangers.” I turn on the radio one day and spin the dial: four of the biggest Los Angeles stations are all playing the song at the same time. This impresses even me. The movie itself does less well and is pretty much raked over the coals by movie critics, although they do seem to think I can act. (Thanks for that.) It is my first real defeat since “Jessie’s Girl” launched me into the inky firmament, and I wake up one morning, not long after the miserable failure of Hard to Hold, feeling like someone has just slapped me. I shake it off and launch into writing a new record.

  Ever since I pilfered that book from the hotel room in Osaka, I’ve been delving tentatively into Buddhism, Taoism, and anything else that doesn’t resemble the fire-and-brimstone religion I was raised on. It gives me some peace to understand that these Eastern paths place God inside me rather than up in the sky, where the punishing Father dressed all in white that I grew up with was thought to dwell. I should say here that, were I on a crashing airplane at this point, I would fall to my knees and pray to the Christian God I’ve known all my life. And I do realize that those teachings will always be a part of me. But I’m searching for some alternative views. I need some beliefs that will sustain me, and I’m casting my spiritual net out there to try and find a friggin’ fish. Most of the new songs, which become my album Tao, are about a spiritual search, although I’m light-years from actually finding anything. One song deals with the loss of my sweet old man and my consequent loss of faith in God as I once knew him.

  I’ve been writing lines about my dad’s death on scraps of paper for a month or so, but I’ve avoided sitting down and focusing on putting it all together as a complete song. I know it will hurt. One day I make the decision to finally write it. All I know for sure when I sit at the piano is that the song will be called “My Father’s Chair” and will focus on my dad’s favorite chair, which stands empty in the years since his death—a potent symbol of his absence for me, my mum, and Mike. I cry and ache all through the three-hour writing session, and when I am done, so is the song. And I realize that this, finally, is my memorial to
my dad. Not the flowers I bought or the service I attended or the times I’ve talked about his loss or the prayers I’ve offered up for his soul. It is my proudest moment as a songwriter. And as a son.