by Richard Marx
I don’t think it was more than twenty minutes after Joe left the bus that Keith and I had finished the lyrics. But we both agreed the song needed a bridge, and with Keith’s pending sound check and show, we were out of time.
“We can finish it on Skype!”
Ah, the advancements in technology. Who needs to be in the same room to cowrite anymore?
A few days later, I flew to Brazil where I was performing in a few cities there. My first stop was Rio, and my hotel suite came equipped with a drop-dead gorgeous panoramic view of the Atlantic. I opened the sliding glass door and sat on my balcony, breathing in the beauty, when both a melody and lyrics arrived in my brain. It was the bridge to “Long Hot Summer.”
The only place that I wanna be is…
where you are…
’Cuz any more than a heartbeat away is just… too… faaaarrrr
I sang this little fifteen seconds of inspiration into my phone and texted the file to Keith. Within an hour he texted back, “It’s perfect, Ricardo. I’m cutting this song tomorrow!”
“Long Hot Summer” was released as the third single from Keith’s Get Closer and went to number 1 on the Country singles chart in October of 2011. It became my fourteenth number 1 song as a writer, and also gave me the distinction of having written a number 1 song in each of four different decades.
I’m not a greedy man, but I do hope to see a fifteenth number 1, and sixteenth, and as many more as I can get.
41 A SUCCESSFUL MARRIAGE
I’m a true believer in the idea that anyone’s personal life, whether they choose to be in the public eye or not, is something to be shared solely at that person’s discretion. There have been many celebrities who have routinely made the details of their relationships fodder for the tabloids and for their fans, and that’s their prerogative. It’s also their right, no matter how often they’ve been open about that stuff, to choose to keep something private. Unless it involves illegal behavior, there’s no “right to know.”
Since my career began in the ’80s, I have been fiercely private about my personal life. I was never in the tabloids. I was never on Behind the Music. I enjoyed the fact that my songs were world famous while I personally carried on a pretty normal existence.
In 2014, I received some tabloid attention for the first time when Cynthia and I decided to divorce after a twenty-five-year marriage. There was no announcement by us. No press release. Nothing. Unfortunately, divorce proceedings are a matter of public record, and there are people who make their living scouring court briefings looking for the names of celebrities. Pretty gross, to me, but whatever.
Within forty-eight hours of our filing, my manager received a call from a reporter in Chicago looking for a comment. I gave none. In the years since our divorce, I have spoken very little about it and even then only in general terms. I have no intention of ever deviating from that.
People get married, and people get divorced. There’s nothing novel about either decision. Sometimes marriages are immediate disasters, sometimes they last forever, and sometimes, believe it or not, marriages last just as long as they are meant to.
I had a conversation a few months after my divorce with an acquaintance I’ve known for many years. He said, “I still can’t quite get over the shock that your marriage to Cynthia failed.” I looked at him, then around the room, gathering my words carefully, took a deep breath, and said, “We were married for twenty-five years and had three sons who have all become exceptional young men. If you call that a failure, I’m not sure what to tell you.”
For me, the year between Cynthia and me separating and finalizing our divorce was one of immense pain, fear, and confusion. It was also one of discovery, excitement, and deep enlightenment. I had never really known an adult existence as a single man. And though being free to date women was a bit like being let loose on a playground, it was the time I spent alone and nurturing my relationship with myself that was most valuable.
I spent days on end listening to lectures and voraciously reading as many books on “the soul” as I could find. Ultimately, it was one written in 1903 by a British philosopher that changed my life forever. James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh was the catalyst that enabled me to finally understand that one’s life is truly and inextricably connected to his thoughts.
A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.
I read this book over and over, committing myself more each time to the dedication of improving the selection of my thoughts. Sure enough, my inner turmoil began to ease, and the darkness and depression inside me became more like manageable visits rather than a permanent residence. I still keep a copy of it on my nightstand and have gifted it to many friends, all of whom have gratefully benefitted from its pages.
In time, communication between Cynthia and me became more comfortable and our common concern for our boys’ well-being is a bond we will share forever. We had some wonderful years in our marriage, and I consider her a truly kind and exceptional human being.
Despite all living very near me in California, my sons still have a close and loving relationship with her and also have a lovely and unique bond with Daisy, whom I’d say they consider more of a good friend than a stepmother. Our family dynamic is pretty damned functional, and not a day goes by when I’m not consciously grateful for it.
42 “EYES ON ME”
I have no problem admitting that I’ve always been an unashamedly romantic guy. I love romance, and I love the process of seduction, though with Daisy I would discover that in the right love affair, the seduction never has to end. Most of my songs are about women. Women I’ve loved, women I’ve married, women I’ve been fascinated by, and women I’ve never even met. They say an artist needs a muse, and I’ve had several in my lifetime. But never before have I experienced a level of captivation as the one I have with Daisy.
Out on a worldwide concert tour in the early ’90s, I ended up spending a rare afternoon off in my hotel room somewhere in the continental United States and, as millions of others did every day, turned on MTV. That particular day I spotted a new VJ named Daisy Fuentes. She was hosting the Top 20 Video Countdown, of which I just so happened to be a part.
Daisy was stunning. Physically, as gorgeous as it gets, but she had this other quality that exuded through the TV screen. She seemed cool. And funny. And unlike anyone else on TV, let alone MTV.
From that day on, I would turn on MTV more often than I ever had before, hoping to catch her shift. Months later, I appeared at an album-signing event at a big record store, and after the long line of fans had passed by me to get an autograph or photo taken, the store manager said, “Feel free to grab a few items to take home. On us.” I gratefully browsed the store and helped myself to a few albums I wanted to check out, and as I was leaving I distinctly remember passing a rack of celebrity calendars. There, staring at me, beckoning me really, was the face of Daisy Fuentes. The calendar featured fourteen of the most gorgeous and sexy photos I had ever seen. It didn’t surprise me to learn that it was one of the store’s bestsellers.
Strangely, despite Daisy’s massive success on MTV as host of the countdown and then House of Style, not to mention many other shows on the network, and my near constant presence appearing on various MTV performance shows, our paths never crossed.
Until May 2013.
Daisy and I had interacted on Twitter the year before, as we both follow the former MTV VJ, Martha Quinn, and found each other in a tweet thread. We’d exchanged some funny quips and she seemed as cool as I’d always suspected. The following spring, I played a show at LA’s Grammy Museum that was filmed for broadcast, and I invited several LA-based friends to attend. I sent a DM (direct message) to Daisy on Twitter to invite her as well, and she happily accepted. She sat in the front ro
w along with a friend who accompanied her, and we briefly met backstage afterward. Her presence was unlike anyone’s I’d ever met. Stunningly beautiful, obviously. But she had an energy that was certainly reminiscent of what I’d enjoyed when watching her on MTV decades before, but now mixed in with an elegance and grace that was unique unto her.
I was in the process of separating from Cynthia, and though I was captivated by Daisy, it wasn’t until months later when I moved from Chicago to Los Angeles that I got in touch with her and asked her to dinner. It wound up being a three-hour gabfest over dinner at the Sunset Marquis Hotel restaurant in West Hollywood. It seemed that in addition to our natural attraction to each other, we just couldn’t seem to run out of things to talk about. (I’m happy to say that is still the case, if not even more so.)
She was hosting a music competition show on Telemundo called La Voz Kids, which was like The Voice in Spanish with all the contestants between the ages of seven and fifteen. The show filmed in Miami. A month after that first date, I asked if I could come visit her for a couple of days. She said she had very little free time, but if I was cool with keeping myself busy most of the day, she’d be able to have a dinner or two with me. I simply wanted to be near her, so any time I could spend with her was valuable to me.
I checked into the same hotel where she was staying in a room a few floors below hers, and around six that evening, she texted me that she had just returned from filming and would love to have a drink with me before dinner. I picked her up at her room and we headed down to the bar and ordered martinis (our go-to cocktail to this day: Belvedere, straight up, no vermouth, olives, thank you very much) and launched into another wide-ranging discussion.
One of the ninety-three questions I asked her was, “What music do you love?” And I was somewhat taken aback with not only her answer, but the immediacy of it. It was as if she’d been prepped. She said, “I love Burt Bacharach.”
Now, here was this drop-dead gorgeous woman who’d been on MTV during its heyday, who was always cranking up Jay-Z in her Rolls-Royce, and knows the words to almost every pre-1999 Bon Jovi song, professing her love for Burt Bacharach. I was already incredibly smitten with her, if not fully in love. And that answer shifted my attraction to her into another gear. As someone who considers himself primarily a songwriter, I have intense regard for the songwriters before me who shaped the landscape of modern music. And Bacharach is at the top of the list.
I have always channeled my emotions into songs. I’m a fairly articulate man, but I can’t really say exactly what I’m feeling as well as I can write it in a song and sing it. It was a mere couple of weeks after I started dating Daisy that I found myself writing songs about her and what I hoped our relationship might become. The first song was called, “Like the World Is Ending.”
I wanna watch you cross the room
Be the one you’re walking to
See our shadows fall down this bedroom wall
In neon blue
Touch me like you can’t let go
Burn into me soft and slow
Prove to me you’re not pretending
Kiss me like the world is ending
I think it’s one of the sexiest songs I’ve ever written, and it was a direct result of the fever-pitch level of seduction in which I was engaged with her. I was trying to sweep her off her feet. I was trying to constantly impress her. It turned out that while she was charmed by this relentless and impassioned courting on my part, she was really more interested in trying to discover who I really was. That took a minute.
* * *
A few months later, we had become closer, and while I was fully and completely in love with her and wanting to be in a committed relationship, Daisy was not yet on the same page. Still, we were having a lovely time together.
One night I went to her house to take her out to dinner. We had a quick drink there and were about to leave for the restaurant, and Daisy said, “Just give me a minute to freshen up” and stepped into the bathroom near the front door. I stood there in silence for maybe thirty seconds before singing a melody out loud. “Da-de-daaa-deda… da-de-daaaa-deda… da-de-daaaa-deda… da-de-da.” As usual with my songwriting, I could hear the entire finished music in my head. With strings, piano, nylon string guitar—everything. It was as if I’d rehearsed it. I knew that what was in my head was really beautiful.
Just then I heard a click as the bathroom door opened and Daisy said, “What was that you just sang?”
I said, “I don’t know, it just happened.”
She said, “Wait. You just made that shit up in your head just now?”
I said, “Yeah. That’s what I do.”
The next day I was at my house and went to the piano and worked out the melody and chords. I had imagined in my head the previous night a chord change I’d never used in a song before. I’ve found historically that the less I write at or with an instrument, the better my melodies and chord progressions are. You see, if you write with a guitar or at the piano, no matter how proficient you may be, you’re limited to writing what you’re able to play. But as a singer, just imagining music in my head opens up endless possibilities.
Now, it was all about the lyrics. I tend to struggle and slave over lyrics whereas music comes to me fairly easily. And the more excited I am about a new melody, the more pressure I create for myself to meet the challenge with the lyrics. In this case, I not only wanted to write an amazing song: I wanted to really impress my muse.
A day or so later, I was alone in my bed about to drift off into slumber when I remembered a text exchange between Daisy and me from about a month prior. I had traveled with my kids, mother, and several friends to Italy where I’d rented a house in Tuscany to celebrate my birthday. I had desperately wanted Daisy to join me, but we both agreed it was too soon in our relationship for a trip like this with my sons.
She was home in LA, and we texted each other every day, with me sending her photos of the gorgeous home and countryside around it. One day, I texted her and asked if she’d send a photo back to me. Not in a dirty way, although I’m certainly not shy about requesting sexy photos of her these days. I just wanted to see her exquisitely beautiful face. She obliged with a selfie from the set of a photo shoot she was doing. The photo definitely had the desired effect. I was almost frozen by how stunning she was, as I still am now.
I texted her back, “My God. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I… can’t… even… breathe.”
And she responded, “I live to take your breath away.”
Hence the lyric in the bridge of the song (ultimately titled “Eyes on Me”):
I don’t know why
I don’t know how
But you’re burning me from the inside out
And now I live
Oh, I live to hear you say
It’s you who lives to take my breath away.
“Eyes on Me” was included on the album I recorded soon after writing it. The album is called Beautiful Goodbye and features quite a few songs inspired by or directly about Daisy, my pursuit of her, and our courtship.
The title track, we actually wrote together. I had written a piece of music I loved but had no idea for a lyric. I played Daisy the music track and she said, “This is so good! And hauntingly sexy.”
I said, “The only words I keep singing are in the beginning of the chorus: ‘Oooohhh… maybe this was meant to be a memory…”
She looked at me for a second and very matter-of-factly said, “Everything is meant to be a memory.”
I said, “Shit! Yes! So much better.”
“You know, if you—Mister Love Song King—could write a breakup song that wasn’t sad or forlorn but was basically a celebration of a love affair that simply ended, that would be cool.”
And she started saying phrases to illustrate her idea.
I said, “Daisy, that’s all really good. We should write these lyrics together.”
“I don’t know how to write songs!”
�
�But you’re kind of writing it right now. Let’s grab a bottle of wine and sit at a table and just figure it out.”
And the next evening we did just that. Her lines are my favorites, by the way.
No regrets, come to bed
I’ll set all your worries free
Come with me, it’s what you need
Shut your mouth, just let it be
Just let it go and let it be
I love this song not simply because I believe it to be well crafted but because I’ve never heard one quite like it.
Six months later, Daisy costarred in the video for “Beautiful Goodbye,” which was also somewhat of a “coming out” for us as a couple. Before the video, and even for more than a year after it, there were no photos of us together anywhere. Not until our wedding announcement. We kept our relationship private, as we’ve both individually kept our lives, historically. I can’t deny, however, that for quite a long time, part of me wanted to shout my love for her from the rooftops. I’m glad I can do it now.
* * *
Daisy and I married in December of 2015. Looking into her eyes the first time truly felt as if I’d been struck by a lightning bolt. And five years and a marriage license later, I’m still as captivated. Probably more, actually. I’ve never felt happier or more in love.
And I can tell you that my current state of bliss was an initially unconscious telepathic pulling of her into my life that began twenty-five years ago but became a meticulously conscious act of attracting our souls together after I met her. It was beyond “courting,” although I definitely pursued Daisy in as chivalrous and persistent way that I could. But I’ve always had the ability to will people into my path.