For Dancing’s fourth season, I was partnered with Karina Smirnoff, a beautiful, Ukrainian-born dancer whose trophy case included five US National Championships. Our first dance was a cha-cha, and I wanted to dance to ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man.” But the producers insisted I dance to “I Want My Mullet Back.” As I think about it, they were setting my ass up from the word go; but I kind of knew that, and I didn’t need their help. I’m perfectly capable of making an ass out of myself, as I proved when Karina and I took the stage in front of 23 million people on live television.
She wore a mullet wig, which I was supposed to pull off her on the final beat of the dance. We practiced that fifteen hundred times in rehearsal, and it worked every single time. But that night, fate had a different plan.
We got to the end of the dance pretty much as we’d rehearsed. I was a little nervous. Bruno later compared me to a bear running through a swamp. But that’s beside the point. When it came time to remove Karina’s mullet, I pulled and pulled. And pulled. By the third time, her eyebrows were raised and I knew that wig wasn’t coming off. The mullet was dead-bolted to her skull. Or so it seemed.
You talk about experiencing a near-death moment of dread and panic; man, I saw the bright light flashing in front of me. I’d hoped Dancing would boost my career. In that instant, though, I realized I’d probably damaged it tenfold, or possibly ruined it forever.
On my way home, I was gripped by a crippling anxiety and had to pull over a couple times because I couldn’t breathe. I puked twice between Beverly Hills and La Cañada. I was beyond embarrassed that I was sick.
At home, Tish and the kids looked at me as I walked through the door. No one said a word. They all just stared at me. So I knew it was as bad as I thought.
Somehow Karina and I made it through the elimination show. I was stunned. My fans were more forgiving than me, I suppose. We were supposed to meet early the next morning at the Y down the hill from my home. We rehearsed there to help me conserve time between the two shows. But I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to face the world—or my Ukrainian taskmaster.
Then I heard my dad’s voice for the first time since he’d died.
“Bo, you’ve been knocked down before,” he said. “Take it one step at a time. Swing your right leg out from under the covers, then bring the other one behind it, and stand up. Then put one foot in front of the other, walk to your sink and brush your teeth, then get dressed, get in your car, and drive to the YMCA.”
“I don’t want to,” I said to myself. “I can’t.”
“Trust me,” he replied. “One foot in front of the other. You’ve been here before.”
Karina was waiting for me at the Y. I felt sorry for her. What a stroke of bad luck for a world champion to be partnered with me. But there was no sorry in her when she saw me lumber into the room. Her eyes narrowed. If she’d had a whip, she would’ve cracked it, I’m sure.
“You’re seven minutes late,” she scolded.
“Well, I—”
“Well nothing,” she said. “You’re late. We’ve got a lot of work to do. I don’t know if you noticed, but our first dance didn’t go so well.”
She played our next song, Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” and informed me that we were going to do the quick step. I couldn’t even do a slow step, I thought. Now we were going to do a quick one? Oh… crap.
“I’m so depressed,” I said.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I suck.”
Karina shook her head. “No more negativity from you,” she snapped, and then began the painful process of teaching me the dance. She invited my children to watch a rehearsal, knowing I wouldn’t complain as much if they were around. And she was right.
On the next show, Len Goodman praised my moves. “You calmed down,” he said. Bruno Tonioli said I was “going the right way” and “the difference in a week is beyond belief.” Carrie Ann Inaba added, “I vote you the most improved dancer from last week.”
Over the next few weeks, Karina yelled at me, hit me, and tied my hands while I danced. She had me jump through hoops. She also switched my legs a few times with a stick. I knew her arsenal included a whip. It also included one other thing: the heart of a champion. It reminded me that winners want to win, and they get back up when they get knocked down.
Ironically, at one of my last dances, the Greatest was there, Muhammad Ali. (His daughter, Laila, was a fellow contestant.) He was sitting in the corner of the floor. Everyone has heroes, and Ali was one of mine. When I finished my dance, I went over and shook hands with him. “You’re the greatest,” I said. He made a fist and winked at me. I felt the heart of a champ, the champ. That was worth it all. And you know what? If I hadn’t gotten back up after that first night I got knocked down, I never would’ve had that moment.
Each week, my entire family sat in front of the TV set. If they weren’t at the show, they made sure to watch it—and for one reason. They loved seeing me make an ass of myself. I could only imagine their text messages: Make sure you’re home in time to watch Dad make a fool out of his fat ass in front of the entire country.
Amazingly, I made it through the foxtrot, the paso doble, and the jive, and all the way through the quarterfinals, before getting eliminated. It was the eighth week, and I didn’t have to be told that I’d stayed way longer than I should have. Nor did I have to be told why I’d lasted. It was the fans. I had the greatest fans in the world. They wanted to see me do well on the show. I loved ’em for that.
There was a payoff to my tenacity. On the night I left, Laila Ali’s father, boxing icon Muhammad Ali, was in the audience. He was my hero. She graciously introduced me. I turned into a fan myself, not something that happened to me very often, and I explained that one of my earliest and fondest memories was listening to his fight against Joe Frazier on the radio with my dad and my papaw.
“Thank you,” he said.
My dad would’ve loved hearing me tell him about Ali. Life never ceased to surprise me.
CHAPTER 30
“Ready, Set, Don’t Go”
ONE ON ONE, I’M reserved and fumble for words, unsure how much to reveal and uncertain how to do it. But get one of my CDs, push PLAY, and you get a clear view straight into my heart. Take the song “Ready, Set, Don’t Go.” It’s about a father letting go of his daughter, and it takes you straight into where I was in that precarious time during Hannah Montana’s second season.
The show’s writers incorporated it into the thirteenth episode, in a show titled “I Want You to Want Me… to Go to Florida.” In it, Robbie Ray injures his back and can’t accompany his daughter to a show in Florida, forcing her to cancel the appearance. When she sneaks off anyway, he tracks her down and, in an emotional moment on the plane, sings her the words he’s not able to say.
The story behind the song was even better. The day Tish and the kids were moving to California, I stayed behind in Tennessee to take care of all the business, secure the farm, and make sure we were ready to set up shop in L.A. I would fly out a couple of days later.
I stood in front of the house and waved good-bye as they disappeared over the hill and down the driveway. I walked slowly back into the house and, as I took my boots off, I noticed a card on the kitchen table. It was to Braison, from his little girlfriend. He’d fallen in love for the first time, and leaving her was hard, possibly his first heartbreak.
I picked up the card and noticed on the front were two stick figures, hand-drawn like a kid would do, and beneath them it read, “Ready.” I opened the next page and there was a picture of the same two figures poised at the starting line of a race. It said, “Set.” Then I opened up to the last page and it was just the girl figure by herself. She held her hands over her heart. That picture said, “Don’t go.”
I put the card down, turned around, and there was my old guitar, the one I call the songwriter. It was in the corner, waiting for me. It might as well have said, “Come on. You know that’s a song.” It’s true.
I was already hearing the words and the melody.
Within minutes, I had a written a pretty good piece of it, and then my instinct told me to call my neighbor Casey Beathard, who was a hit-song-writing son of a gun himself, one of the best in Nashville. “Hey, my family just left for California, and I got a great hook,” I said. “It’s called ‘Ready, Set, Don’t Go.’” He said, “Man, I’ll be right over.”
Minutes later, he showed up with his gut-stringed guitar, like the kind Willie Nelson plays, and soon the song was completed. We laid it down on my BR 1600 right then and there, and we knew it was special.
She’s gotta do what she’s gotta do
And I’ve gotta like it or not
She’s got dreams too big for this town
And she needs to give ’em a shot
Wherever they are
Looks like she’s all ready to leave
Nothing left to pack
Ain’t no room for me in that car
Even if she asked me to tag along
God, I gotta be strong
She’s at the startin’ line of the rest of her life
As ready as she’s ever been
Got the hunger and the stars in her eyes
The prize is hers to win
She’s waitin’ on my blessings
Before she hits that open road
Baby get ready, get set, don’t go
She says things are fallin’ in place
Feels like they’re fallin’ apart
I painted this big old smile on my face
To hide my broken heart
If only she knew
This is where I don’t say
What I want so bad to say
This is where I want to
But I won’t get in the way
Of her and her dreams
And spreadin’ her wings
She’s at the startin’ line of the rest of her life
As ready as she’s ever been
Got the hunger and the stars in her eyes
The prize is hers to win
She’s waitin’ on my blessings
Before she hits that open road
Baby get ready, get set, don’t go
She’s at the startin’ line of the rest of her life
As ready as she’s ever been
Got the hunger and the stars in her eyes
The prize is hers to win
She’s waitin’ on my blessings
Before she hits that open road
But, baby, get ready, get set, please don’t go
Don’t go, mmm don’t go
She’s gotta do what she’s gotta do
She’s gotta do what she’s gotta do
The Hannah Montana episode featuring the song aired in July 2007, the same week my album Home at Last came out. Helped by the exposure of “Ready, Set, Don’t Go” on TV, the album was my highest-charting record in years: No. 3 on the country chart and No. 20 on the pop chart. Guess who was in the top spot? Miley and her album Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus. I knew how my dad must’ve felt. I couldn’t have been prouder. And as long as I saw the name Cyrus was next to No. 1, I couldn’t complain.
In October, as “Ready, Set, Don’t Go” was already climbing the charts, Miley joined in on the record with me. I tweaked a few lyrics, and suddenly there were two versions of the song—and it took off all over the world. We performed it on Dancing with the Stars. Two months later, we sang it again on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Find the video on YouTube—she sings the stuffing out of that song and you can’t get a truer picture of our relationship at the time than when I sing, “Don’t go,” and Miley responds, “Let me go now. I’ll be OK.”
I went through the same thing with all of the kids. Trace had his own band, Metro Station, and like me, he was married to his music. He’d worked as a roadie for me starting when he was in eighth grade, and loved the lifestyle. All he wanted to do was change strings and ride the bus with me. He loved being part of the band and the crew, and he’s like that to this day.
So is Brandi. By her late teens, she was singing and writing songs and wanting to get onstage. When I saw how committed she was, I hired her to play guitar in my band. I knew if she played with Sly Dog, she’d only get better. There wasn’t any stopping her anyway. She had the music in her soul. And now she tours with her own group, Frank and Derol.
As for some of the typical teenage milestones, like teaching the kids to drive, well, I got ’em started early. Like most kids who grow up in the country, they were driving vehicles around the farm about four days after they learned to ride a bicycle. They started on four-wheelers, graduated to my Kawasaki mule, and then grew into my truck. Just in case we were out back in the woods and I had a heart attack or whatever, I wanted them to be able to get us home. At least that’s how I justified it.
Unlike Brandi, who wasn’t interested in boys until later on in high school, Miley liked them as far back as I can remember. During Doc, she fell for the little boy who played my son, Tyler Posey, who went on to star in the series Teen Wolf. On Hannah Montana, she and Nick Jonas connected instantly when the Jonas Brothers guest-starred on the show. I saw that chemistry happen right before my eyes.
Again, it was art imitating life or life imitating art. Take your pick. But everyone saw they had a big crush on each other and that things just grew to where they were inseparable. I liked him. I thought he and his brothers were very talented… and nice guys. By the time Miley and Nick were together, we had moved again to Toluca Lake, into a large, Mediterranean-style home behind fifteen-foot gates, and one night, hearing them come home after a night out, I hid in the pantry and jumped out when they walked into the kitchen. I scared the crap out of them. It was pretty funny, and we all laughed. That night, Nick, Miley, and I sat by the fireplace and talked for a while. The Jonas Brothers weren’t really famous yet. They were just getting loaded up to take off. And so again, I knew this might be as close to a normal boyfriend relationship Miley would ever know.
They were all over the teen magazines and tabloids. Miley was in the teen magazines and tabloids every week and also pictured daily on the Internet, where celebrity websites exploded in popularity and changed the whole landscape. Paparazzi took pictures of Miley—of all of us—every time we stepped outside. They waited in front of the house, followed us to the store, and parked behind us in the drive-thru at McDonald’s. We were constantly followed. It became part of normal life… if that was normal, though by then, for us, there was no normal. I knew from experience, the teeter had done gone to totter. People always ask if Tish and I would close our bedroom door at night and ask each other how we were going to handle things with Miley and the other kids, and I say, “Oh yeah. About a hundred thousand times.”
From October 2007 through March 2008, Miley took her Hannah Montana: Best of Both Worlds tour around the world. I toured and recorded my own music. We stayed in touch by phone, fax, and Internet, and spent a small fortune chartering private jets to ensure family time.
But Miley’s fame made even family time newsworthy. At the end of 2007, a photo of her sharing a piece of red licorice with a friend at a sleepover was leaked to a website. Suddenly, the Internet lit up with talk she was a lesbian. Miley laughed it off but felt sorry for her friend who, as she lamented to a journalist, “had to go back to school and deal with that crap.”
Then, in February 2008, the Hannah Montana: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour was released and someone noticed a scene where Miley and I were in the car and not wearing seatbelts. The little girls on the sleepover circuit who made the film a must-see and a box office smash didn’t seem to care—or notice—but the grownups in the media turned it into a major issue.
Disney executives insisted on a response. We had numerous meetings about it. While I never claimed to be the world’s smartest man and I sure as hell ain’t the world’s greatest parent (thank God the Internet wasn’t around when the kids were little and I had them on an ATV without helmets), I understood their point.
And actually felt bad about it.
“How about we say we’re sorry?” I said. “That’s what I usually do when I screw up.”
And that’s what we did. We said we were sorry and reminded people they should always wear a seatbelt… Seatbelts save lives.
As soon as that story went away, others popped up. Miley’s cell phone seemed to get hacked regularly or her friends posted pictures that were taken at parties, sleepovers, or when Miley was out having fun. Were we happy to see a photo of her mooning a camera? I can’t speak for Tish, but at fifteen years old, my idea of fun was streaking through town.
Of course it wasn’t that simple for her. In April, a Vanity Fair magazine photo shoot with famed photographer Annie Leibovitz included a setup of Miley from the waist up wrapped only in a satin sheet. When the photo came out… BOOM!… another explosion. Our phone rang nonstop. E-mail poured in. Meetings were called. You would have thought Miley had posed for Playboy.
We were caught completely off-guard. Keep in mind, we didn’t raise our children in a bubble. We were living our lives, managing careers and kids, and still trying to hit church every Sunday. Really, we were doing the best we could do under extraordinary circumstances.
Here’s what I remember. Annie had shot me previously for the popular “Got Milk” ads, the milk mustache series (psst—wanna know a secret? that white stuff is yogurt), and I thought she and I were friends. And we still are. Annie is a great photographer. We were honored she had been assigned to shoot Miley for Vanity Fair. Tish and Miley’s grandma Loretta and Miley’s publicist were at the shoot. At Annie’s request, I swung by to pose with Miley. I was on my way to play for the troops in Washington State, so I didn’t have a lot of time. I took a few pictures, hung out, and then caught my plane.
After the shoot, a picture was released on the Internet. Suddenly, the world asked, “How could she? Where were her parents?” As I said, I was gone. From what I understand, the shot was the last setup of the day. Looking back, would I have stopped it if I’d been there? Honestly, I don’t know. I’d a have to have been there. But who knows, Annie might have wrapped my fat ass in a sheet.
Hillbilly Heart Page 23