The next day, we took a ferry from Vancouver to Victoria. Victoria is especially beautiful in October. It’s really sweet up there. The leaves were magnificent—at the height of changing colors—and they were falling everywhere. We walked around Victoria and found this beautiful old building with these magnificent grounds. There was a huge pile of leaves, and Julie jumped right in there and started rolling around. We had the best time on that trip. A year later, after we became a couple, Julie gave me a frame she had made. Mounted inside were some leaves she had taken and saved from that gloriously wonderful day in Victoria. I still have that frame in my house.
This photo was taken on the day I met Julie, while shooting my first video. That’s John Shanks behind me.
Two years later, in Victoria, British Columbia
Turning twenty-five. I wished for a record deal …
Celebrating my thirty-seventh in Santa Fe
A couple of days after returning to Los Angeles, I stopped by to see Julie at her house in Laurel Canyon. I was on my way home from an appointment. It was a hot day and she had a blue summer dress on. We were just sitting and talking. Suddenly, she leaned over and kissed me. It was one of those perfect kisses. We slipped onto the floor, still locked together. It was a very serious kiss. I was confused yet again, but also delighted and deliriously happy. We made plans to see each other later that day at my house, before my show at the Roxy that night. Then I left. I probably looked really stupid as I drove down Laurel Canyon with a big, goofy grin on my face.
In the world of rock and roll, especially in Los Angeles, playing the Roxy is a really big deal. I dreamt of playing the Roxy when I first moved to L.A., and I had opened for Lyle Lovett there before my first record was released. Playing it again as the headliner was a big moment for me, so I had a preshow party at my house for all my friends who were going to the show. I was still living with Kathleen at this point, and while the party was going on around me—all my friends, Julie, Kathleen, the show at the Roxy—I just felt alive, like all my senses were on full alert. The mystery, the intrigue, the excitement took that Grandma’s-coconut-cake feeling to a whole new level. Eventually, everyone left the party, and Julie and I were alone, standing in my backyard, talking. Just like earlier in the day, she stepped right up and kissed me. It felt so good to lose myself in her. To sense the promise of what we might have together …
Needless to say, the show at the Roxy rocked. Only four hundred people were there that night, but, I swear, thousands have come up to me over the years and said they were there the night I played the Roxy. It was a magical moment in my career. Both Julie and Kathleen were there, but I played to Julie all night long. When it came time for “Like The Way I Do,” I sang it straight to Julie, pouring it all out for her right there. I have no idea if Kathleen noticed or not, but I must have been pretty obvious. I got completely lost in that performance, and I wanted to give all of me to that night, that show, and that woman.
It was that second kiss, which was a really good kiss, that was the inspiration for “Must Be Crazy for Me.” Even though Julie had kissed me the first two times we kissed, she was also sending me very clear signals that she did not want to have a relationship with me. Every time we connected or I tried to get close to her, Julie would run away from the situation as fast as she could. I would make a move, slide closer to her, and she would tell me to take my thigh off of her. She kept shutting me down, which was a clear sign that she must really be crazy for me, right? Although I didn’t have the self-esteem to write this song in the moment, I did write it about the moment, after Julie and I had finally united as a couple. Admittedly, “Must Be Crazy for Me” is a bit of a cocky song, but that’s who I was in those days. It was deliriously fun.
MUST BE CRAZY FOR ME
You tell me not to call you up
Cause it ties you down
Don’t tell your friends
You’ve been hangin’ round
You must be crazy for me
You say you’ll see me once or twice
Every week or two
There’s more important things
That you’ve got to do
You must be crazy for me
Cause when I kissed you last night
In my own backyard
You ran so fast
And you fought so hard
You must be crazy for me
You must be crazy for me
You don’t like my hair
You don’t like my car
You don’t like my friends
You met at the bar
You must be crazy for me
I see you shake your head
And you roll your eyes
Your firm remark
To remove my thigh
You must be crazy for me
Do not expect you to wait
Do not expect you to phone
Do not expect anything
When I catch you alone
You must be crazy for me
I left to tour Europe not too long after that, and I really wanted Julie to meet me in Switzerland. I had a few days off, and I wanted to spend them with her. I was elated when she said that she would join me, but she made it clear to me that she was still struggling with her marriage and just wanted to be friends. That was hard for both of us because we were feeling so uncertain about what was happening. We were absolutely perplexed by the dilemma our emotions were placing us in.
I met Julie at the airport and we took a train back to Lausanne, where we stayed at this small, charming hotel in a vineyard right by the train station. We walked around the city and drank cappuccinos and ate éclairs de chocolat, and we got to know each other on a different level—in person together; not with the boundaries of a telephone between us. That night, after a lot of deliberation and trepidation, we made love for the first time. It was incredible. It was emotional and loving and sexy and everything I had dreamed it would be. We left Switzerland and went to Rome and then to Stockholm. It was a wonderful, beautiful, magical time for both of us.
I was smitten. I definitely thought that this was it. I was going to settle down. Here we go. After my string of nonmonogamous relationships, I was completely ready to have a loving one-on-one love affair. Before Julie left Europe, I told her how I felt and that I thought she needed to go home and tell Lou what had happened. I didn’t want to have an affair. I wanted to make a life with her. It wasn’t an easy conversation. As hard as it was for me, I am sure it must have been even harder for Julie to have to go home and face telling her husband that not only had she had an affair, she had had it with a woman. I suggested to her that she seek therapy to help her understand what was going on inside her head and with us, and why this was happening. I have been in therapy for many years, and I really believe that it’s a fabulous way of breaking through those walls in one’s life and understanding the detours on the road that suddenly seem to come out of nowhere.
When I met Julie, she most certainly had not been with any other women; as far as she let me know, she had never even thought about it. Because she had married Lou when she was twenty-two years old, she hadn’t even had that many relationships. She went back to Los Angeles and tried to make her marriage work. She told her husband everything, but the marriage couldn’t survive. I don’t think that it failed because of our liaison. I think that it suffered from what damages many young marriages: There wasn’t enough communication or understanding about relationships and life.
Before Julie divorced Lou, we all tried to maintain some kind of friendship together—as strange and as awkward as it seems, looking back on it now. Lou finally got to a point where he had to just emotionally check out of the relationship. It was clear that their marriage was not going to work, and he was well aware of my feelings for his wife. Julie tried to keep everything amicable for everyone involved. She’s very much that way. She’s the kind of person who can stay friends with her ex-lovers. Even after she had left Lou and we were openly dating, we tried to see him occasional
ly. He had a Texas blues band that he played in, and we’d all get together and jam. Whenever I’d ask him how he was doing, he’d only talk to me about business. We kept this going for a few months after their breakup, but he was slowly moving away from the situation, and I can understand that it must have really been hard for him. I think that it became too painful for Lou in the end, and he ultimately closed that door.
A year after we made love for the first time, Julie filed for divorce. I was genuinely sad for her and Lou’s failure. I had considered him a friend, but I was so happy about our being able to come together. It was everything I had ever wanted. I said good-bye to Kathleen. I said good-bye to Jamie. I left my past, and all of the patterns that had gotten me to this place, behind me. This was going to be my true love. The one I had waited for my entire life.
When people ask Julie about how she fell in love, she always says that she fell in love with my soul, with me as a person. Gender simply was not an issue. Whatever our dysfunctions were, something clicked between us and worked for us.
I was anxious to finally have this relationship that I had always dreamed of—the movie fantasy—so I was probably very demanding in the beginning. I had been through the dating thing, and I wanted no part of that world anymore. I had found the love of my life. When Julie and I met, I felt, for the first time, that I wanted to clean up my act and be committed. I wanted to make the relationship all about her. (Later, I would discover that this was not a good idea. You can never make a relationship work if it’s all about only one of the partners.)
Finally, I’d found the relationship that I could commit to, the relationship to be monogamous in. Even (and this was a radical thought in those days) the relationship to raise children in … I think Julie might have preferred to date some other people before we really settled into our relationship. Men or women or both. But we were devoted to each other. And, for a while, that was enough.
Brave and Crazy
• • •
AFTER MY FIRST TOUR ENDED, I WENT RIGHT BACK INTO the studio to rehearse the songs that would become my second album, Brave and Crazy. I was still working with Kevin McCormick and Fritz Lewak. We had a rehearsal studio in North Hollywood. Someone comes in to tell me I’ve got a phone call, and I walk down the hallway to the pay phone. Bill is calling. He says “Are you sitting down?” I laugh because that’s always what Bill says, and I’m never sitting down. “You’ve been nominated for a Grammy.” I should have been sitting down. What he’d said was so completely out of left field! There wasn’t one thought in my head about actually being nominated for a Grammy Award. I mean, I’d done okay. I’d been on some radio stations, sold some records, but it wasn’t like I was on my way to becoming a superstar. I hung up the phone and instantly told everyone I knew. It was such a rush.
I was nominated for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, up against Sinead O’Connor, Toni Childs, Pat Benatar, and Tina Turner. It was such an honor, so completely out of nowhere. And not only was I nominated, but I was going to get to perform on the show too! It was the year of Tracy Chapman, and there was this bill of female artists, so they decided to showcase us. Which I sure wasn’t going to complain about.
I flew in from my gig in San Francisco the night before, so I was ready to go. I was still with Kathleen at this point, so, of course, she was my date. There was an odd moment when we first arrived because it suddenly became clear that they’d show us on camera as the awards were being announced. Bill pulled me aside and told me that he’d like to sit next to me. For a moment, I was frozen. Did he want to sit next to me because he deserved it as much as I did? Which, of course, he did. Or was it to camouflage the fact of my sexuality in front of a television audience? I didn’t know. But Bill’s my manager and I loved him, so of course I said yes.
Walking in, though, I had no idea what to expect. How could I? I’m sure I had this wide-eyed glaze that everyone has their first time. There were so many people there who I admired, who’d influenced me over the years. I was definitely a little starstruck. Of course, I didn’t win, Tina Turner did, but that didn’t really matter. After all, I was gonna play, right?
I remember Billy Crystal introducing me as I was standing backstage. I was so wired, so filled with expectation and emotion and nerves and desire … it was just like doing the Bob Hammill Variety Show for the first time, only multiplied by a hundred. I wasn’t playing to a big room or an arena. I was playing to sixty million people!
So I did. I went out there and did “Bring Me Some Water,” and I felt huge. Like I was on fire. Like I was playing my heart out. I looked out at the audience … and no one was moving. Nothing. Only Stevie Wonder bobbing his head a bit as he listened. It was a huge surprise. I mean, I’m used to people moving when I play and this was just … nothing. They just sit there at the Grammies. It’s got to be one of the hardest places on earth to play. It’s just horrible. So I looked right at Stevie and played the whole thing to him. I finish, and there’s this huge round of applause. I guess they liked it, but they sure didn’t show it at the time. The next day, there was a huge jump in my record sales. Something like 60,000 records, all over the world. That performance, I think, was instrumental in setting the stage for the growth of my career.
I went to the party afterward with Kathleen, and met folks like George Harrison and Tom Petty, which was great. Then I spotted this gal in the corner, just a cowboy girl head to toe, with this harsh buzz haircut. And she was standing there with what was clearly her girlfriend. So Kathleen and I slide on over there and start chatting with k.d. lang and her girlfriend. K.d. and I instantly hit it off. Though there was never a physical connection between us, we always had a great time together.
After the Grammies, I went back on the road. Practically doing nothing but touring and waiting for the fallout between myself and Kathleen, and Julie and Lou. When I finally got back to L.A. six months later, things had been resolved. Julie had left Lou, and Kathleen had moved to Atlanta. Getting off the road was great. Julie and I could finally spend the kind of time together that we needed.
K.d. lang was in L.A. for a while and stayed at my house. The first time Julie met k.d., she was very intrigued and seemed to be immediately attracted to her. I think there was this door that had been opened within Julie. It made her feel like she needed to better understand what it meant to be involved in a relationship like ours. I believe she felt that in order to have the experience, she wanted to know more about the experience. That’s Julie. She’s intense, smart, inquisitive, and strong. How could I not understand her curiosity? I didn’t like it, but I felt at the time that I had to accept her request. Julie said that she had developed a strong desire for k.d., and, in a very truthful way, she told me she wanted to sleep with k.d., which completely shook the foundations of my world, bringing up all my issues and insecurities. My deeply intense emotions were completely assaulted. I was unaccustomed to talking about infidelities prior to anything actually happening. My history was to deal with it after the fact, if at all.
Since I was the first woman Julie had ever been with, she was curious to know whether she was attracted to other women. She came to me and said that she would like to experience another woman. This had been a common theme throughout my past relationships, and I really did not want it with my new love. The women I had been involved with prior to Julie, though they were very close relationships, they were definitely not monogamous. Even though I believed an “open” relationship was a good idea at the time, it always hurt me when past girlfriends went out with someone else, and I carried that pain into my relationship with Julie, whether I was aware of it at the time or not. Of course, it never seemed to bother me quite as much when I went out and did it. What a double standard. But Julie was the first woman I never wanted to have an affair on. I so wanted to be committed. Her to me and me to her.
So here comes Julie, openly explaining her wish to be with someone else, and then totally reassuring me that she still loves me and that this desire doesn’t mean
that she wants to leave me. What was I supposed to do with that concept? That was a first for me. I was angry, jealous, hurt, and confused—not just with Julie, but also with k.d. I selfishly pleaded with Julie to not go through with it. I wanted her all to myself. I looked at our relationship as a precious physical sharing of sexuality that was supposed to be only between Julie and me.
Somewhere inside of me, my ego was terrified and lost and broken down, but I felt that I couldn’t deny this person I loved so much an experience she wanted to have for herself. Looking back on it now, I probably feared losing Julie if I didn’t support her desire. It became obvious to me that, once again, I had selected a partner who was not ready to settle down when I was ready. I didn’t want to lose my relationship; I was completely in love with her. Inside, I was pleading, “No, no, no! Please don’t do this to me, to us, to our relationship.” As strongly as I felt, I somehow understood that I wasn’t going to lose Julie over this. But in the same breath, I knew that I would never really have all of her either. And interestingly, after that experience, Julie never saw k.d. again—at least not in that way. We still see her socially from time to time, but the friendship has never really been the same.
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