Composed

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Composed Page 9

by Cash, Rosanne


  My next record did not, however, benefit from any of this reflection. After writing an entire album, I decided to try another producer, David Malloy, who had made a lot of hit records in Nashville. David and I got along very well and together made a big, flashy, in-your-face, somewhat edgy album. We hired Waddy Wachtel, Bob Glaub, and Vince Melamed, among others, to come from Los Angeles, and used the “Bette Davis Eyes” synthesizers and huge snare drum sounds that were so trendy in the mid-eighties. Columbia had assigned a new A&R guy to me, Eli Ball, and after listening to the record, he decided that it was not finished and insisted that I go back into the studio. (I shudder to think of how much money was spent on this project.) Eli and I did not make a good match; I found him abrasive and pushy, and I am certain that he found me intractable and reactionary. I decamped to New York, where Rodney came back into the picture. We hired drummer Anton Fig, bassist Willie Weeks, and Larry Crane, guitarist from John Mellencamp’s band, to play on more sessions and started basic tracks again. Eventually we brought in a third producer, David Thoener.

  Earlier in the recording process, I had received a call from Tom Petty’s management asking me to come to Los Angeles and sing for a potential sound track, on a song called “Never Be You,” which Tom had written with my friend Benmont Tench. The sessions were a little tough. Jimmy Iovine was producing, and I did not find him to be the most gracious person in the world. However, Hal Blaine was playing drums on the tracks, and again I was awestruck by him. Tom and Benmont were lovely, and I did my best, but I didn’t feel I could deliver what Iovine wanted. Months later it became clear that “Never Be You” was not going to appear on the intended sound track, so I asked Tom and Benmont if I could record it myself, and they agreed. It was one of the new tracks we did in New York, along with a John Hiatt song, “Pink Bedroom.” John was a favorite songwriter of mine, one to whom I felt genuinely connected and one of the few whose work I felt supremely confident in interpreting. The day we cut “Pink Bedroom” in New York was emblematic of the entire process of making the album: Larry Crane had an extremely aggressive acoustic guitar part to play on the song, and although he didn’t complain about it, after a few hours of trying to get a basic track, he calmly pointed out that his fingers were bleeding. I was shocked and thoroughly unsettled by the literal blood on the tracks, but he and Rodney seemed to take it in stride, and we kept going. I can still see Larry wrapping his fingers between takes to stanch the blood, then taking a deep breath for the next take.

  We did more recording in Los Angeles, and by January I was exhausted by the project. We had begun Rhythm and Romance on April 16, 1984, and we mastered it on April 15, 1985. At the end of that torturous year of recording, rerecording, mixing, and remixing in three cities, with three producers, one executive producer, and a lot of fighting, I found that I was suffering from a bizarre kind of trauma. I was absolutely determined that I would never set foot in a recording studio again. I hated the process, I hated the record, I hated Eli Ball, and I did not even want to think about promotion and touring for the record, which for me had become nothing but a painful memory.

  The trauma continued even into the photography for the album cover. After a long day of shooting at a studio in Soho, I left at about ten that night with my arms full of clothes and got into a taxi with the stylist and the makeup artist. The taxi driver crossed himself when we got in, floored the gas pedal, got up some speed, and slammed right into a parked car, injuring the stylist, who had been sitting in the front. We all fell out onto the street, shaking, and got into another taxi, but that image of the driver crossing himself before he crashed, along with Larry’s bleeding fingers, metaphorically summed up what that record meant in my life. I still cannot stand to listen to Rhythm and Romance, even though I think that some of its songs—“Second to No One” and “Halfway House” especially—are among my best to date. Perversely, the album quickly reached number one on the country charts, generating two number one and two top five singles. “I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me,” which I had written with Rodney, won a Grammy, my first, for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. (My mother, upon first hearing the song, had said that no country radio station would ever play it, as it was “too pop.” I called her from the car as soon as I left the awards ceremony, Grammy in hand, and she made some quick revisionist, but apparently heartfelt, congratulations.) I also received the only award that has really meant anything to me, in retrospect, for that record: the prestigious Robert J. Burton songwriting award from BMI, my performing rights organization, for most-performed song of the year for “Hold On.” At the time, however, I was still so unsettled and fragile from the months of work on Rhythm and Romance that I went home the night I won the Burton award and pulled apart the lyrics of the song, going over them line by line with a deeply critical eye until I determined that it did not deserve the award in the least. Even though in my heart I could not really accept the accolade, it was encouraging, and gave me more confidence as a writer.

  After a year or so, I received a letter from Columbia’s lawyers informing me that I owed the label a record, and since I clearly was not in preproduction, I was in violation of my contract and they were suspending me. My contract would be extended by the amount of time I was in arrears. I got three or four more letters like this, but each time I crumpled them up and threw them away. Winning a Grammy had not done anything to change my mind about recording again. I toured a bit after Rhythm and Romance, but not seriously; my heart wasn’t in any of it, even though I had the privilege of working with some of the most gifted musicians on the planet. Larrie Londin, one of the greatest drummers who ever lived, went on the road with me, and with Rodney as well, out of pure love for the music. Larrie was so much in demand as a session musician that he lost money by touring with us, but he did it anyway. He was such a dear soul. He was physically enormous, and he and I used to tease each other mercilessly. I told him fat jokes and called him names, and he told me my ass was just like Diana Ross’s. (He should have known. He played behind both of us.) We adored each other. When we went out on the tour bus, I gave him the back bedroom, as he literally could not fit in one of the bunks. It was the least I could do. But even though I had wonderful opportunities to play live with people like Larrie for decent money, I didn’t want to go out. I was enjoying summer afternoons at the house in Brentwood, taking care of the girls, playing volleyball with friends in the yard, having parties, and traveling for fun rather than work. My memories of Rhythm and Romance continued to distress me, and I still felt a deep exhaustion from the experience. The very thought of going back into the studio was overwhelming and enervating. After a year went by, Rodney started to talk to me about ideas for a new record, but I made it clear that I was not interested, and resisted every idea he had. He grew more insistent, but I remained unmoved.

  During this time I got a call from my dad, in which he made some small talk and then said, “I have to ask you something. What’s your royalty rate at Columbia?” I told him; he harrumphed, said, “Okay,” and hung up. Shortly afterward, Columbia dropped him. I was devastated for him and, embarrassed that I was still on the label, started thinking about bigger changes for myself.

  Months went by until one afternoon when I was sitting in the kitchen of the log house and Rodney rushed in through the back door, his eyes wide. “I have the vision for your record,” he said excitedly. “I saw it all on the drive home from town.” He described it—sonically, thematically, musically, and emotionally—in great detail, and the more he talked, the more I was drawn in, so contagious was his excitement. What he described that day was almost exactly what King’s Record Shop turned out to be. He described a more roots-sounding record, not just in reaction to the heavy pop vibe of Rhythm and Romance, but as something fresh and more suited to my natural instincts. I studied Bob Dylan’s Writings and Drawings as if it were the Dead Sea Scrolls, and dissected Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt songs as exercises to better myself as a songwriter. I should, I thought, make a rec
ord that reflected those sensibilities. And most important, no big synthesizers and no executive producers.

  We began recording on Valentine’s Day of 1987, and the engineers had flowers waiting for me in the studio. I wore my black leather biker jacket to the first day of sessions, thinking that sartorial toughness would make me less nervous. But there was no need. There was genuine camaraderie in the studio and no drama or struggle. I felt like I was part of a working band again, a sentiment that had been entirely absent during the previous project. The studio was comfortable, the engineering crew was soothing and accommodating, and Rodney and I hit a stride musically.

  During the weeks in the studio, the engineers pirated a pay-per-view channel that was showing Aliens, and we had the film running in a continuous loop on a monitor above the recording console. Throughout each day we would look up to watch a few minutes of the film, until we could all recite the dialogue in our sleep and knew every scene forward and backward. I still have a strange visceral connection between King’s Record Shop and Sigourney Weaver and the terrifying creatures in that film. (Years later, the night of my first performance at Lincoln Center, my dear friend Liz Tirrell hosted a party for me after the show, which Sigourney attended. I told her about the bizarre association I had between her and the record, which seemed to amuse her.)

  The musicians on the King’s sessions were phenomenal. The great Barry Beckett was on keyboards, Michael Rhodes played bass, Eddie Bayers was on drums, and Rodney had found a tremendously gifted guitarist, Steuart Smith, whom I had met for the first time when we were in preproduction a few weeks earlier. I didn’t understand Steuart’s working style at first and made fun of him a bit to Rodney. He seemed extremely obsessive and overly meticulous, and I sensed a self-consciousness in his demeanor that made me feel awkward. I slowly realized, over the course of the first few weeks of work, that Steuart was one of the most deeply sensitive musicians I had ever encountered, and that the depths of his soul came right out the ends of his fingers when he played. Living in mundane reality was often almost excruciating for Steuart. He is not the first artist I have known with so few defenses against the world, and certainly there have been many, many times I have felt that vulnerable and exposed myself. He became a collaborator and such an inspiration to me that when I produced Interiors a few years later, I sought him out for help with arrangements, and he proved invaluable.

  During the first week of working on King’s, we recorded my dad’s song “Tennessee Flat-Top Box.” (I mistakenly thought it was in the public domain, its true author lost in the mists of time—an error that was made much of in the press later. Even my dad took out a full-page ad in the industry weeklies crowing about the fact that I hadn’t known he had written it before I recorded it. He was delighted. In fact, it was a simple mistake: I had known my dad’s version of the song for my entire life, the way that a child thinks that something she’s been familiar with since birth must have always been there.) Eddie Bayers stopped after the first take, drumsticks in hand and tears in his eyes, and said to the rest of the band, “Pay attention, boys. We won’t pass this way again.” Randy Scruggs came in to play the signature guitar line, which was an emotional and musically satisfying experience for me, and the record became a huge hit.

  A few years prior, when Albert Lee had left my touring band, Rodney suggested that I bring in this guy named Vince Gill to play lead guitar, and he went so far as to hire him before I had ever played with him or even met him. I showed up at rehearsal for a tour for Rhythm and Romance the first day with Vince in the band with a huge attitude against him. I was barely civil. I was distraught over losing Albert and I had no confidence that Vince, who came from the band Pure Prairie League, could fill Albert’s shoes. During the very first song of the day, when it came to the guitar solo, Vince played a wicked, full-bore, wildly confident solo and I jerked my head around to look at him. I didn’t say anything, thinking it might be a fluke. In the second song, he upped the ante when the instrumental break came and I was riveted, and stunned. An hour later, when we took a break, I gave it up to him right away. “I didn’t think anyone could ever replace Albert,” I said. “I apologize. You are incredible.” He didn’t say a word, just pushed the back door open and walked outside and yelled at the top of his lungs. The tension broke for both of us and we became great friends. (Vince, of course, was meant for much bigger things than being anyone’s sideman.) He came in during King’s to put on some background vocals. I had recently been invited to sing on a Yoko Ono tribute called Every Man Has a Woman, a record that had been John Lennon’s idea. Yoko had asked me to sing a song called “No One Can See Me Like You Do,” and Vince had performed gorgeous background vocals. (Going to Yoko’s apartment in the Dakota to celebrate the release of the album was incredibly exciting for a diehard Beatles fan like myself. I had been so flustered when Rodney and I attended the party that I got out of the taxi and introduced myself to the doorman: “Hi, I’m Rodney Crowell, and this is Rosanne Cash.” He just looked at me without smiling, as I’m sure I wasn’t the first idiot to get dismantled by the proximity to John and Yoko.) I also recorded another John Hiatt song for King’s, “The Way We Make a Broken Heart.” It was a heady time for me, a pinnacle of success. But I wanted something else.

  It was late in the making of King’s that I had a dream that changed my life.

  I had met Linda Ronstadt a few times—in Los Angeles, while I was recording at Lania Lane; when I opened for Bonnie Raitt at the Greek Theater and Linda had come to see the show; and on a number of other occasions, as we traveled in the same circles and worked with many of the same musicians. Her record Heart Like a Wheel had profoundly affected me as a young girl, and I had studied it assiduously as a great example of a feminine point of view concept record, the best one since Joni Mitchell’s Blue, I thought, and equally important in the template I was creating for what I might do in my life. I especially admired her thoughtful song selection, which resulted in a very well-balanced album, and I wanted to make a record with a similarly unified concept, but as a songwriter.

  Just as I was beginning to record King’s, I had read an interview with her in which she said that in committing to artistic growth, you had to “refine your skills to support your instincts.” This made such a deep impression on me that I clipped the article to save it. A short time after that, I dreamed I was at a party, sitting on a sofa with Linda and an elderly man who was between us. His name, I somehow knew, was Art. He and Linda were talking animatedly, deeply engrossed in their conversation. I tried to enter the discussion and made a comment to the old man. He turned his head slowly from Linda to me and looked me up and down with obvious disdain and an undisguised lack of interest. “We don’t respect dilettantes,” he spat out, and turned back to Linda. I felt utterly humiliated and woke from this dream shaken to the core. I had been growing uneasy in my role in the Nashville community and the music business as a whole. I thought of myself primarily as a songwriter, but I had written only three songs on King’s. I was famous and successful, but it felt hollow, and the falsehoods were piling up. With more success had come more pressure to be a certain way, to toe a certain line, to start a fan club (which I refused to do), to participate in big, splashy events, and to act as if the country music scene were a religion to which I belonged. I resisted the push to conform, to buy into a certain narrow aesthetic, and to become part of the established hierarchy. I didn’t want a lofty perch; I wanted to be in the trenches, where the inspiration was. My unease led me to that dream. Carl Jung said that a person might have five “big” dreams in her life—dreams that provoke a shift in consciousness—and this was my first.

  From that moment I changed the way I approached songwriting, I changed how I sang, I changed my work ethic, and I changed my life. The strong desire to become a better songwriter dovetailed perfectly with my budding friendship with John Stewart, who had written “Runaway Train” for King’s Record Shop. John encouraged me to expand the subject matter in my songs, as well
as my choice of language, and my mind. I played new songs for him and if he thought it was too “perfect,” which was anathema to him, he would say, over and over, “but where’s the MADNESS, Rose?” I started looking for the madness. I sought out Marge Rivingston in New York to work on my voice and I started training, as if I were a runner, in both technique and stamina. Oddly, it turned out that Marge also worked with Linda, which I didn’t know when I sought her out. I started paying attention to everything, both in the studio and out. If I found myself drifting off into daydreams—an old, entrenched habit—I pulled myself awake and back into the present moment. I opened my eyes and focused. Instead of toying with ideas, I examined them, and I tested the authenticity of my instincts musically. I stretched my attention span consciously. I read books on writing by Natalie Goldberg and Carolyn Heilbrun and began to self-edit and refine more, and went deeper into every process involved with writing and musicianship. I realized I had earlier been working only within my known range—never pushing far outside the comfort zone to take any real risks. I had written songs almost exclusively about romance and all the attending little dramas of loss and lust. It was legitimate, certainly, but only one small mode of transportation over a vast landscape of experience that might be fodder for whole new categories of songs. I started painting, so I could learn about the absence of words and sound, and why I needed them, and what I actually wanted to say with them. I took painting lessons from Sharon Orr, who had a series of classes at a studio called Art and Soul.

 

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