by Jewel
I had taken a general acting lesson in high school but there hadn’t been much theory or technique involved. There was one line in particular in the show that I had no idea how to deliver sincerely because it was so unlike anything I would say. I think it was something very simple, like “Oh golly.” I visited with Sean about my conundrum. He asked what I would say instead. “Um, I’m not sure, but probably something like ‘Holy shit!’” He said, fine, say that with my body and my voice but use the words in the script. He explained that what gets communicated has very little to do with what we say. Simple but profound acting advice. Life is full of body language and subtext and people rarely say what is actually on their minds, but it all gets communicated anyway. I loved this about acting. When I wrote songs, the subtext and psychology of the characters were limited by the fact that songs are so short. Acting, I quickly saw, was all about subtext, and I was hooked.
As I stepped onto the stage to sing “Over the Rainbow” with Ry Cooder playing guitar and a full orchestra and the Harlem Boys Choir backing me up, and as I looked out into the beautiful auditorium of Lincoln Center and all the people sitting there, I was so overcome I could hardly sing. The recording reveals my voice cracking at the high note because I was choking back tears. When I said that famous line—“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore”—I meant every word. It felt like a tornado was carrying me along and delivering me to a strange and magical new world. I had no way of knowing then how many other parallels there were, and that the all-powerful wizard was not real in my life either. There would be lions and tigers and bears, oh my! and the way home was not in someone else’s hands, but in my own. Behind the curtain there was a drama that would take years to unfold. But for now I was Dorothy, literally and figuratively. And I was just arriving.
twenty
the long shot
While I would like to have done some things better, I was proud of myself and of the whole Oz cast. The standing ovation at the end was overwhelming and felt good. Afterward there was a party, champagne was sipped in fancy glasses with pinkies extended, and everyone was dressed in expensive clothes. Apparently black was all that was available in New York City stores, and people let you know how important they were by the way they stood and how they treated the people who served them. My dad had been a good influence on me—he talked to taxi drivers the same way he did famous actors, and I loved this about him and still follow his example to this day.
My mom was in all her glory, and was eating up the attention and culture. You would never have known she was raised in a tiny cabin in Alaska; you would have thought she came from money and power. I noticed that when people congratulated her on my performance, her reaction just seemed a bit off. I didn’t know how to put my finger on it except to say that while my dad was eager to let people know how hard I’d worked, my mom gave the impression somehow that she was responsible for my performance. It was just a sense that I got. Like she was envious. It was a strange feeling to have a talent and an opportunity that somehow she wanted to claim as her own.
Things with my mom had become increasingly complicated. At first she was just looking out for me in my career. I trusted her because she was my mom, after all, and her interest and caring had been so hard to come by. I was desperate to feel safe and loved, and it seemed that since I’d been signed to a record label, my mom had really stepped it up, wanting to be sure I was not taken advantage of. It wasn’t long before she brought up the question of compensation for her time and dedication and her unique wisdom and so I had a talk with Inga about sharing the management role. Inga was commissioning 15 percent—of nothing, as I wasn’t making anything yet, but 15 percent at any rate. My mom wanted an additional 15 percent. I felt that was too much, but it was hard to argue with either of them, so I asked them each to take 10 percent, and we would all eat the cost of having two managers. An artist is responsible for all costs, so managers can charge back hotels, flights, food—anything related to managing the act. Plus they commission the gross of any income, taking their share before the cost of doing business. So theoretically if I make five hundred dollars for a gig, the managers get 20 percent of it. Then I have to cover the costs of touring, which are most likely higher than five hundred dollars because I have to pay a tour manager, a sound guy, and for a vehicle to get around in (assuming I don’t also have a band to pay), and so I borrow money from the label that I will owe back to them. Then the managers charge me for their plane tickets and hotel if they came out and helped on a show. Then a video costs about five hundred thousand dollars, and a marketing budget is way more expensive—and the costs stack up against the artist. An artist is about one million in the hole just to see if a record even has a shot at working, and then that money needs to be paid back to the label before it starts splitting the profit with you once you have recouped. The odds of recouping and making money before you are dropped from the label are very slim. Then you pay your agency 10 percent of the gross of all touring, your lawyer fees, then pay all your costs of doing business out of what’s left over, then pay taxes . . . and that’s how a lot of artists are signed to a big record deal and may even sell a million records and not be recouped and are dropped without ever making a cent. If an artist has taken a big advance on signing a record deal, that will have to be repaid as well.
Needless to say I didn’t feel good about giving up more percentage points for my mom to manage me, but I desperately loved her and believed she was the only person looking out for me. She went with me everywhere. It was the closest we had ever been and it made my child’s heart so happy to have her with me. But she also had incredibly specific views on things, and she always seemed to set herself up as the wisest person in the room. Increasingly I found my own self-esteem shrinking as her magnanimous spirit permeated every aspect of our lives. I began to believe she knew more than I did about everything and that I would be nothing if she weren’t looking out for me. Having my mom around simply felt good. She said she was my soul mate, and we were meant to do great things together. If I listened to her, everything would be just fine. My lack of confidence, my fear, and my need to be loved created a perfect breeding ground for doubt and dependence—she was the only person I needed to listen to.
Sean and I parted ways before I ever became famous. The breakup was hard for me. My self-worth came from outside myself, from the approval of others. After Sean, I turned to my mom with more resolve. She was more than happy to be my source of self-worth. It seemed she gave or withheld tenderness depending on how I behaved, and I could be trained the way dogs are trained with treats. I would do anything for love.
• • •
WHEN I WAS SIXTEEN I had a dream that I got to open for Bob Dylan. I had just started writing songs and of course he was an idol of mine. I had no intentions then of becoming a professional musician, but I suppose my submersion in Dylan’s music could not help causing my subconscious to dream even if I dared not dream that big during waking hours.
I studied my favorite writers for years prior to writing songs. Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz fired my passion for revolutionary writing that honored nature and the courage of the common man, giving a voice to the voiceless. Bukowski and Anaïs Nin taught me to be brave and honest as a writer, and not to use art as propaganda to sell yourself as more perfect than you actually are. Steinbeck and Flannery O’Connor taught me about character development and about the nobility in working-class heroes. Nabokov and Dostoevsky brought color, psychology, and intensity to fiction. Plato and Pascal taught me about economy and potency. I studied writers more intently than I did musicians. I studied singers, which led me to Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald and to great trumpet players like Miles Davis, who used tone and phrasing to convey emotion—which is what pure singing should do, when words don’t get in the way.
But at sixteen I began to get into singer-songwriters, ones who embodied all the traits I admired in my authors. I loved Loretta Lynn’s honesty and pride
and authenticity—her song “The Pill” blew my mind with her frankness in saying that she no longer had to feel like a hen in a coup laying eggs, that she didn’t have to keep having babies every time her husband got a hankering for sex. Joni Mitchell, of course, blew me away with her originality and her poet’s voice and complex chord and melody structure. Neil Young with his grit and tension, which was married to a softness that could be heard on Harvest and Harvest Moon. Merle Haggard, who was so prolific and willing to say what was on his mind, and to also pay unabashed tribute to his heroes. I suspect he also listened to jazz, as I could hear strains of elegant melody and passing chords amid his everyman’s topics. I loved Tracy Chapman and saw her as a modern troubadour whose heart was full of a soulful need to give a voice to the underrepresented. Rickie Lee Jones with her whimsy and her bite, her unique harmony layers and her funky rhythmic beats. And then there was Dylan, of course. Whose intelligence and beatnik New York City background and whose fascination with the great folk heroes before him all combined in a revolutionary way that still leaves a footprint so large it takes several of us to fill any one step.
As a new songwriter, I found that all these influences, along with my own hurt, my own longing to give a voice to the voiceless, my own need to make sense of the world around me, made their way into my songs. I did not write love songs as a sixteen-year-old. I did not write about crushes or about mean girls. I wrote about my life—about the injustices and inequities and the search for answers and self-responsibility. Songwriting lit me up because for the first time I was able to combine many of my passions: poetry, storytelling, character development, melody, shape, and singing. I was in heaven. I had no idea that a mere five years later my dream of opening for Dylan would come true, or that many of my heroes would actually mentor me.
When I got the call to open for Dylan, my first record was considered a failure. I had received critical praise—the London Times said I was the most glittering singer-songwriter since Joni Mitchell. The New York Times said I was bursting with talents. But many others called me naive, overly optimistic, and completely off-trend in a country gripped with a fascination for grunge and obsessed with apathy and cynicism. While I was living in my car I had learned to let go of cynicism in order to survive. True cynics all kill themselves. The rest are posers, trying to use clever sarcasm and snarky remarks to hide insecurity and the fear that if they put themselves out there they will fail. I learned that inner safety exists only in vulnerability, in having the courage to admit that the glass is half full and half empty, and to choose to live your life within the part that is half full. To have faith. Anyone can try to beat life to the punch, lower their expectations, and feel smart because they predicted disappointment, even braced and hardened their hearts for its impact. But to look at life with an open heart, take it on the chin and say I am more yielding, I am more open, takes real courage. This is where I was in my life and in my writing. I wanted to document my yearning to not be a victim in my life, but to affect its outcome.
And I was on fire. I didn’t mind if I was called naive. The critics and journalists who responded with acrimony to my music betrayed their own sense of fear and their unrealized dreams, as far as I was concerned. I learned to toughen my skin and ignore them while at the same time remaining soft enough to create and to feel the people I actually sang for. I saw a different response to my music in my fans—people like me, out there struggling every day who were desperate for a way to feel empowered and more hopeful. They weren’t concerned with being cool, they were earnest and eclectic, and they wanted a sense of camaraderie and support. We found a way to connect to each other online, in the early days of the Internet. Fans began to call themselves EDAs—Every Day Angels—a term coined from a lyric in “I’m Sensitive.” They shared bootlegs of live shows and lyrics to unreleased songs and built a community.
Still, after a long year of playing for fifteen people in each town I visited, the record had gained no real traction. Atlantic Records had tried all year to get me played on the radio at the height of grunge, and I was beginning to fear that I would be dropped and wind up in my car again. I played my guts out that year, opening for the Ramones, Belly, Catherine Wheel, and grunge audiences. The difficulty of playing for the audiences, along with being called worthless by the press, would make anyone lose some heart.
I began to doubt that the small groundswell I’d somehow inspired would ever become more than a ripple. I started to feel silly and awkward and like maybe I should just try to write stuff that sounded like what was on the radio. I could do that. I could change, if that’s what it would take to stay out of my car.
The decision not to take a huge advance bought me a lot of time at the label, because I was affordable. I didn’t cost a lot to support on the road—I toured in a rental car with a friend driving. No tour manager. No fancy bus. Hard wood grows slowly, and I was trying to live by that idea.
It ended up being the best thing I did because it continued to ensure that I was the cheapest act to support, even if I had the most difficult music to break. I wrote letters to every secretary at the label, the ones who did a lot of the real work, as well as the department heads who were fighting for me. I sent postcards from the road to thank them for what they were willing to do to help me live my dream. I tried to make sure people knew what this meant to me, how deeply I cared about it, and how thankful I was. I hoped everyone would feel gratified and energized to keep fighting for a long shot like me. I learned that a lot of the artists and mangers were brats. They beat the label up, they complained, felt cheated, were suspicious, ranted and raved. I worked hard, and if they said jump, I said, how high? Every artist on the label was talented—the only competitive edge I had was to be the person they would rather pick up the phone to call. It was so humbling to have a team of people fighting to help me achieve a dream.
We first tried to get “Who Will Save Your Soul” onto the radio, but after a year we gave up and tried with “You Were Meant for Me.” But it was too simple, everyone felt—a country shuffle and four minutes long, a full minute longer than songs on the radio were supposed to be. We decided to revamp it to make it sound more “radio,” and hired Juan Patiño, who had produced Lisa Loeb’s “Stay.” I gutted sections of the song to make it shorter, we cut it faster and with more of a pop sound. I was enthusiastic about trying to make it work, but when all was said and done, I was too embarrassed to tell Atlantic I hated it. It cost about forty grand to recut, and I deeply feared that if it became a hit, it would be my only one.
To my amazement, Danny in the radio department caught me in the hallway of the New York office one day and said he didn’t want me to change for radio. He wanted radio to change for me. He and Andrea Ganis redoubled their efforts to gain traction on “Who Will Save Your Soul,” and we came up with a strategy for college radio. I began touring college campuses and building another small groundswell with students. Enough to get a little more notice.
Enter Bob Dylan. He was looking for an opening act for an East Coast run and somehow my name came up and I was asked to do it. I was ecstatic. I never expected to meet him—I assumed I was some promoter’s idea. At the first show, his tour manager came out and said, “Welcome to the road. You have thirty minutes—don’t get offstage late. If anything, get off early. And just wanted to let you know, Dylan will not see your show or meet you. He doesn’t really do that, and I’ve found it’s better to let the opening act know that upfront.” “No problem,” I said.
Four nights later he came up to me again, and said, “Well, you’re not going to believe this. Dylan heard your stuff and he’s been watching your show. He wants to meet you downstairs in his dressing room.” I was stunned. I walked downstairs and knocked gingerly on his door. I heard that iconic nasal voice say, “Yeah. Come in.”
I opened the door and there I was face-to-face with my hero. I tried to take it in stride. Or at least to not trip awkwardly before I even said hello. I sat down im
mediately just to be sure I wouldn’t, and then had no idea what to say. Luckily I didn’t have to. He was full of questions. “Hey, uh, I like your song ‘Who Will Save Your Soul.’ How did you write that?” I’m sorry? Was Bob Dylan asking me how I wrote a song? My mind was spinning and my mouth would not open to speak. I sat staring at him like a deaf mute. Maybe fearing I was a bit slower than he anticipated, he approached it from another angle. Quoting my own lyrics to me. Again. Flabbergasted. I must have managed to stammer out some kind of response.
“I see you reading side stage before you go on—what are you reading?” he asked. Proust, I told him sheepishly. “Oh yeah, I learned French to read him.” Of course Bob Dylan learned French to read Proust.
Dylan invited me to his dressing room after every show. He went over lyrics with me, talked about books, asked me what I was listening to. Far from the stories I’d heard about how eccentric he was, in our conversations he was curious, humble, engaging, sweet even. He seemed to believe in me and later I heard that he liked the fact I was touring without a band, just my guitar. It’s harder if you can reach someone else’s audience like that, it means something. He liked my yodeling and asked if I’d heard of the Blue Yodeler. No, I said, he sounds like a superhero. “Oh, he is,” Bob said, clearly a fan. He asked for my address and said he was going to send me some CDs.
One night I worked up the courage to ask Bob a question in return. I sat there night after night looking at Dylan’s nose and tried to resist the urge to reach out and give it a squeeze. Finally I blurted out, “Can I feel your nose?” Much to my surprise he simply shut his eyes and leaned forward and presented it to me. I squeezed it firmly but politely. As I’d imagined, the curve at the tip had a springy cartilage-y feel that was very satisfying. I filed it away mentally in my data bank and we resumed our conversation without ever referencing it again.