Stories to Tell

by Richard Marx

  When we saw the REO guys a few days later to reconvene that tour, every member of my band and I walked up to the members of the REO band and crew and hugged them. And when I became a headlining act, I made sure that every opening act on my tour was either given a sound check or an apology and explanation for not getting one. I’m proud to say that thirty-four years later, Kevin Cronin and I are still good friends.

  17 “EDGE OF A BROKEN HEART”

  By the time 1987 became 1988, my career was what anyone would consider hot. I was releasing my third single, “Endless Summer Nights” from my debut album, after seeing the first two (“Don’t Mean Nothing” and “Should’ve Known Better”) both reach number 3 on the charts. I was also beginning my first headlining tour in large clubs and theaters that would last till the fall of ’88.

  By the time the first tour wound down, I’d been on the road for fifteen months straight and had played over two hundred shows. There were many times when I did two shows in one night, and I recall at least one masochistic day when I played an afternoon show at a high school in Milwaukee, then drove immediately to open for REO at 8:00 p.m. in Madison, and then jumped right back into the bus and hauled ass to Green Bay, where I played a late-night club show. I also remembered that I did not have the next night off.

  I was exhausted but exhilarated by the heady experience of having my records rising up the charts and the venues we played getting bigger and bigger. Each day was pretty much straight out of the movie Groundhog Day. Wake up around 6:30 a.m., guzzle some iced coffee, and go to the biggest radio station in whatever town I was in for their drive-time morning show, where I’d endure the hosts’ “zany” on-air “antics” with a smile, then be driven across town to the second-biggest station for some more predictable questions the jocks thought were insanely clever like, “Any relation to the Marx Brothers? Aaaah-hahahaha!!!!!” Next, lunch with either the local sales or promotion person from my label, then maybe (on a lucky day) a quick one-hour power nap before heading off to the venue for sound check, followed by another radio interview backstage before the show. Hit the stage and finally play my set, then a quick bite in my dressing room and either onto the tour bus or back to my hotel room to sleep as many hours as possible (although it takes so long to wind down after a show for screaming fans that “sleep” was often elusive) only to wake up and do it all again.

  Let me be crystal clear: I’m not complaining. I was always, even when bitching to my manager or friends, very aware that I not only had an incredibly fun job, but I was doing exactly what I’d dreamed of doing. That said, it required great stamina. It also left extremely little time for my great love: creating new songs. I did write on the road, but only in small windows of moments between all the other activities and commitments. So when, in early ’88, my then-manager Allen Kovac called me about writing and producing a song for a new all-girl hard-rock band, I was both completely psyched about it and incredulous that I could physically pull it off.

  * * *

  The band Vixen had just been signed by the same label I recorded for, EMI. They were also being managed by Allen, and they were nearly finished recording their debut album. Allen called me in some town somewhere in the world and told me about this four-piece group, saying he felt they had a real shot to be huge. “They could be the female Bon Jovi!” said Allen, with his typical over-the-top hyperbole. “But we don’t have a first single. We’ve got good songs but need that no-brainer, one-listen smash. And I want you to write and produce it.”

  Allen knew my background was in writing songs for and with other artists; he knew I was prolific and knew how to write a hit chorus. They needed to have this song mixed and delivered to the label within two weeks, and I only had one forty-eight-hour window between Allen’s phone call and the delivery due date. I wrote the melody and music that night after my show, and when the chorus melody revealed itself, I instinctively sang “I’ve been livin’ on the edge of a broken heart.”

  Lyrics have always been much more difficult for me to write than music. I mean, I can always write lyrics, but I’m talking about great lyrics. Historically, I’ve tended to write my songs by myself. But in my years of collaborating, it’s almost always lyrics with which I’ve gotten help. In the case of this song, I not only needed great lyrics, I needed them fast. So I rang up the best lyricist I know: Fee Waybill.

  With me in a St. Louis hotel after my concert and Fee at his home in Westwood Village, we wrote the lyrics over the phone the night before I flew to LA to produce the track, with Fee having written a great first draft on his own. Any changes I want to make on lyrics Fee writes are never based on quality or content, but rather only on whether or not the words he’s written sing as well as they could. There are many words that just don’t sound pleasing to the ear when sung. Fee is, at heart, a poet and doesn’t concern himself with how a word sounds when it’s sung. But I think that’s a crucial component of a great song, and certainly of a hit song. I can’t recall the handful of words in Fee’s original draft of “Edge of a Broken Heart” that I wanted to change, but there’s no ego between us, so we jumped on the phone and modified them easily.

  * * *

  The next day I went to a rehearsal space in Burbank to meet the girls in Vixen for the first time. Roxy Petrucci was the drummer, Share Pederson on bass, Jan Kuehnemund on guitar, and on lead vocal was Janet Gardner. The main reason I wanted to work with the band, aside from my manager’s request, was Janet’s voice. I loved her sound. Very powerful but clearly versatile. I was really looking forward to producing her vocal. The girls were all sprawled across two large couches at one end of the large rehearsal room, each wearing the epitome of classic ’80s hair-metal garb. Leather jackets with studs and fringe; skin-tight jeans with patches and strategic holes in the knees, as well as frayed at the bottom; depending on the girl, either big, clunky biker boots or snakeskin cowboy boots; and all covered in scarves, chains, and tons of bracelets. Like a million other people in the late ’80s, none of these ladies could ever possibly sneak up behind you without creating a cacophony of noise from all the silver, gold, and beaded shit they were wearing.

  They all stood up and greeted me warmly. While they were all certainly attractive, Janet was particularly striking, and through the process of making the record and several interactions thereafter, she and I developed a harmless crush on one another.

  After a few minutes of small talk during which the girls outed Jan as having a poster of me on her wall for the past several months (which flattered me greatly), I grabbed a guitar and started teaching them “Edge of a Broken Heart.” We were going into the studio the following day, and I had a concert out of town the night after that, so it meant we had to fully record the song, including lead and background vocals, in one day. That was not a common practice at that time, and though I felt pressure, I actually thrived on it. I had hoped that spending a few hours with them the day before to learn and rehearse the song would facilitate our time in the studio.

  The girls really loved the song (looking back, I still can’t believe everybody just took the leap of faith that I’d not only write the right song but be able to produce it in a matter of hours), and we started working out the parts. I felt very quickly that it was going to go well. The only concern I had at that rehearsal was the guitar player, Jan. There was no doubt she was an accomplished player, but she seemed quite slow to learn the parts and play them correctly. Since we recorded the rehearsal on a cassette, I figured she’d have a night to hone her parts and all would be fine the next day.

  I was wrong.

  * * *

  We started the session at A&M Studios in Hollywood (now Jim Henson Studios) in studio A at 10:00 a.m. Since we had to cut everything in one day, there was no luxury of starting at a rock and roll–preferred hour later in the afternoon. The recording engineer, Brian Foraker, and the studio staff had been there setting up since 8:00, and I arrived around 9:30 to make sure we could be ready to get cracking when the girls showed up. Everyone
was prompt, and so we dove into recording, with Roxy, Share, and Jan out in the large live recording room, and Janet in a nearby isolated vocal booth.

  After about an hour of tweaking sounds and playing the song several times, two things were clear to me. One being that the main rhythm track of bass and drums would be easily done in no time. The other being that getting great guitar tracks from Jan would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. I kept trying again and again to be encouraging as I would stop the takes at various points in the song, explaining that Jan wasn’t playing her part right. It wasn’t even that it was wrong notes. It was just completely lacking in tone and style. It was rhythmically all over the place and just sounded so amateurish.

  I could see she was getting frustrated, and she could see the same in me. Normally, I’d have taken all the time needed to work with her and get a killer performance, even if it meant doing it line by line. But the clock was ticking fast, and I knew that if I didn’t make a judgment call, the whole record could easily be a casualty.

  After at least another ninety minutes of trying to get even a marginally good “full band” take, I pushed the talk-back button and said, “Okay, let’s go again.” Only this time, in the control room where only myself and the engineer could hear, I muted Jan’s guitar tracks and listened only to the bass and drums. Roxy and Share were in a great zone, and after a couple minor tweaks, I had a perfect take.

  I said, “NICE, ladies! We’ve got the take!”

  As the girls walked into the control room, I knew they’d want to hear a playback, and Jan’s guitar performance was still far from any good. I said, “You guys, I just need you to trust me. Time is running out and I still have all of Janet’s vocals and backgrounds to do, as well as any keyboards I’m going to add. But it’s going to be killer.”

  They weren’t thrilled about it, but they each reluctantly hugged me and left the studio so I could zero in on the other work. I already felt a bit of a connection with Janet, so when the other girls left, I said to her, “Can you give me a couple hours to put this track together in a better way so you’ll really enjoy singing to it?”

  She gave me a somewhat suspect look but agreed and went to a nearby restaurant for a bite. The door behind her hadn’t even closed when I grabbed the studio phone and called Mike Landau.

  All through the ’80s and into the ’90s, Mike was the busiest and most sought-after session guitarist. He played on nearly everyone’s records, from Rod Stewart and Steve Perry to Stevie Nicks and Kenny Loggins, plus hundreds more. Having worked with him on my own album, I knew Mike was not only an amazing musician, but also a really quick study. By some fluke, I caught him at home where he’d just returned after a long morning session. I explained that I had an emergency, and he arrived at the studio about forty-five minutes later, accompanied by a van carrying his extensive guitar-god gear. As expected, within an hour, the guitar parts were not only done but magnificent. It suddenly sounded like a big hit rock record.

  Janet returned to the studio just as Mike was leaving and stared at me with an icy glare.

  “What’s going on?”

  I said, “Please sit down. I need to explain.”

  I told her I’d had to mute Jan’s tracks because I couldn’t get a decent rhythm take, and that I had decided hours before I would need to bring in another guitarist. Janet was livid.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are? We’re a BAND! We don’t use studio musicians! This is bullshit!”

  I said, “Look, I get it. But these are peculiar circumstances, and if I didn’t do this, the whole thing would be fucked. So before you yell at me some more, all I ask is that you listen to the track.”

  She graciously took a deep breath and turned her chair toward the big speakers in the control room. The engineer hit Play. And when the song faded and the Stop button was pushed, she just sat there, staring straight ahead. Finally, after what seemed an hour, she quietly said, “Jan could never have played like that. It’s… amazing. Holy shit.”

  I knew I needed to be the one to try to explain things to Jan, but Janet insisted that it should come from her. Regardless, all that had to happen later. I needed to get Janet’s vocals recorded, which turned out to be a fun and effortless task. She sang the song as if she’d written it herself, and I loved that no matter what I suggested she try, she nailed it immediately every time.

  By the time her lead vocal and all of her background vocals were complete, and I had added some simple synthesizer pads I played myself, it was past midnight. I had a 6:00 a.m. pick-up for a 7:30 flight to my next gig.

  Fast asleep while my plane was in the air, Janet made the call to Jan to tell her the good news/bad news. The bad news was I’d had to use a session guitarist on the song. The good news was that he didn’t care if he was credited, so no one other than those in the studio would know it wasn’t her. To Jan, there was absolutely no good news whatsoever, and she went ape-shit. I totally understood her anger. I felt horrible. But I didn’t see another alternative under the circumstances. It wasn’t at all that Jan wasn’t a good player. It was that she couldn’t do what was needed at that high a level within those time restrictions. A couple days later, I got a call from my (and Vixen’s) manager, Allen Kovac, saying that everyone was raving about the track and that it would be the band’s first single.

  * * *

  About six weeks later, a video was filmed for the song in LA, and I happened to be playing a show in town the next day, so I was asked to come by the filming and make a brief cameo. It would be the first time I’d see the members of Vixen since the recording session, and I had heard from Janet that Jan, if anything, had only grown more angry and bitter about my replacing her guitar parts. In fact, she told me that Jan had now taken to regularly using the poster she had of me on her wall as a dartboard.

  My cameo in their video was simply me greeting them with kisses on a street in Hollywood. Janet, Share, and Roxy were genuinely happy to see me. Jan smiled for the camera but was pretty icy to me when we saw each other. In retrospect, I should have said to her, “Look, I know you’re very angry with me, but let’s go somewhere and talk and see if we can put this behind us.” But there were crew people everywhere shooting the video, and it just wasn’t the time or place.

  “Edge of a Broken Heart” became a hit at both rock and pop radio and the video got heavy play on MTV. The band’s debut album went gold, and they did some pretty big tours with major rock bands. They were never able to follow that success on the charts and ultimately broke up within a few years, a very common fate for bands in the ’80s.

  Although Janet and I stayed in touch now and then (she sang background vocals on “Hands in Your Pocket” on my 1991 Rush Street album), I never saw the other girls again. Jan had left the music industry and was living in Colorado when she passed away from cancer in 2013 at the age of fifty-nine. Although I’m sure our studio incident had faded from her mind long ago, it saddened me greatly that we never got the chance to talk and put it behind us.

  While it wasn’t one of the biggest hits I was involved with, it’s a song that people clearly remember from that time. A couple years ago at one of my solo acoustic shows, in between songs, I heard a woman’s voice yell out “Edge of a Broken Heart!” So, I sang a chorus from it, and the whole audience cheered.

  18 “BURNING OF THE HEART” (THE RICHARD MARX AMENDMENT)

  “Don’t Mean Nothing” launched my career quickly and decidedly. As soon as the song began to peak on the charts, we readied my follow-up single, “Should’ve Known Better” by shooting a video in downtown LA and within a few weeks, the new single was climbing the charts and passing “Don’t Mean Nothing” on its way down. The same thing happened with the next two singles, “Endless Summer Nights” and “Hold On to the Nights.” Each single did progressively better on the charts, with “Hold On” reaching number 1 in the summer of 1988.

  In addition to the success of the album and its singles, I toured exhaustively for fifteen months, starting
in small clubs while promoting “Don’t Mean Nothing,” graduating to larger clubs (with dressing rooms!) and opening for bands like REO Speedwagon and Night Ranger at outdoor amphitheaters, to playing smaller theaters and eventually headlining the same amphitheaters I’d played the summer before as an opener. It was a slow and steady build, and I worked my ass off, sometimes doing as many as thirteen and fourteen nights in a row with many of those days having two shows in a day. I was twenty-three, healthy, hungry, and laser-beam focused.

  I appeared on as many television shows as would allow me. I was usually up at 6:00 a.m. on tour to do live morning in-studio radio interviews and performances in whatever town we were playing that night and doing phone interviews with music journalists around the world. I barely had the time or energy to eat. But I was seizing the moment, and, in retrospect, I’d have done nothing differently.

  All that hard work paid off: a Top Ten double platinum album (it would eventually sell over four million), with four Top Three singles. By the time my third single, “Endless Summer Nights” was climbing the chart, it was that time of year when Grammy nominations came out. People around me were saying, “There’s no way you don’t win Best New Artist.” It was true that no other debut artist had had close to a better year than I had, but I don’t like to overthink those things. I just kept working.