by Richard Marx
The next morning, Daisy and I flew home to Los Angeles and immediately sequestered in our Malibu house. So little was known in those early days and weeks about how serious the virus could be and, more frighteningly, how it was transmitted. Was it airborne? Could you get it from touching a grocery bag? We chose to listen to the scientists and medical experts from day one and took every safety precaution we could to avoid contracting the virus, especially as the case numbers began to surge and the death toll skyrocketed. For two months, I didn’t physically see my sons or my mother, and when we finally did, it was at our home, where we wore masks and stayed socially distanced. Daisy and I never ate at a restaurant or even stopped at a coffee joint for nearly six months.
* * *
My tour dates indefinitely rescheduled, the realization hit me like a truck that I basically had a year off. Throughout my life, I’ve been described as everything from a “workaholic” to a “go-getter” to “extremely driven.” I wouldn’t disagree with these assessments. I love what I do, and I’ve never been someone to take extended breaks from my work. In the past few years, I have learned to truly embrace and enjoy vacations with my wife and can spend two weeks in a beautiful locale (we like beaches with warm waters), and I don’t get antsy to get back to work. After a while, though, I feel not only the inherent need to earn and nurture my career, but also the wanderlust that’s been part of my psyche my entire adult life. I feel the need to be in motion.
Now, with the coronavirus stopping the world in its tracks, I had no choice but to be still. The first couple of weeks consisted of a constant thirst for information. Daisy and I read and watched anything we could to try to stay informed and knowledgeable about the virus. One evening, as we were reading about the antibody tests that people were taking to see if they’d ever been exposed to the virus, Daisy said, “I’m now wondering if when you were so sick eight months ago, you had Covid.”
I said, “It was last October. There were no cases in the US until January.” To be certain, we researched further and found more than one article stating there may have been isolated cases as early as October. I called my doctor, who agreed that my October symptoms were very much like those associated with Covid and arranged for Daisy and me to take the antibody test. A few days later, both tests returned a negative result. So, back to careful isolation we went.
When it became clear this initially self-imposed quarantine was going to go on much longer than planned, I started to feel a need to fill my time creatively. I obviously couldn’t do concerts, and without a studio in my house, I couldn’t safely book studio time somewhere and record new songs. Instead, I began filming conversations with various entertainer friends on the Zoom app, asking them about how they were handling this scary and confusing time. I would then post the videos on my social media platforms and on my YouTube channel. I called it Social Distancing and after a month or so, the web series started getting attention from various press outlets. I found myself in a new and unfamiliar role: interviewer. I actually really enjoyed talking to all these people, as most were friends and acquaintances like Kenny Loggins, Rick Springfield, and Olivia Newton-John. But then I started getting requests from publicists asking if their clients could do the show. At that point, I was now finding myself quite busy preparing and researching guests, booking them, and recording and posting the finished interviews.
In addition, I launched a weekly mini-concert series, also on my social media and YouTube channel, called Beachin’. In each episode, I would perform three songs acoustically from our Malibu living room. It was the next best thing to performing live for my fans, and they seemed to really enjoy the performances. It was fun for me because it offered the opportunity for me to play not only the hits, but also songs of mine I rarely or never played in concert.
I was now home, sequestered in our house and, like many other people, unable to work, but also juggling multiple activities and commitments. Daisy joked that I was busier than before the Covid crisis. For about six weeks straight, I kept a solid schedule of Social Distancing and Beachin’ episodes, along with walks on the beach with Daisy and our dog, Bette Davis; and evenings of martinis and long talks about life and the universe.
Until the day after Memorial Day, when everything stopped.
* * *
I had recorded a Beachin’ episode in the afternoon, and Daisy made us a typically delicious dinner that evening. It was about nine o’clock, and I sunk into our living room sofa, scrolled through my Twitter feed for a few minutes, and dozed off. Daisy said I looked so comfortable she didn’t want to wake me and figured I was taking a catnap and would join her in our bedroom soon.
I awoke about an hour later and immediately felt a familiar and unwelcome sensation. Cold chills. The thought that my never-diagnosed mystery illness might be returning flashed briefly in my mind before I chose to shun it, saying to myself, It’s nothing. I’ll wake up in the morning feeling perfectly well.
I woke up in the morning feeling worse. I started coughing within minutes of opening my eyes and felt hot, cold, and clammy all at once. I took my temperature and saw a reading of 101.6° staring back at me. Although Daisy and I had been ritualistically careful about not seeing anyone and following all the guidelines to prevent Covid, we had a few days before agreed for the first time since our quarantine to have my sons, Lucas and Jesse, and their girlfriends come over for a visit. They, too, had all been careful and pretty much stayed at home for months. When they arrived, we wore masks and we didn’t hug (a strange new custom given how demonstrative we’ve always been with each other), and they only stayed a few hours. As I coughed and felt my fever burning, I wondered if I’d contracted the virus from one of them or even from touching a grocery bag of delivered food over the past few days.
Daisy felt totally fine, but I immediately stayed away from her despite her optimistic assurance that this wasn’t Covid. I decided to wait another day to see if it was simply some twenty-four- or forty-eight-hour bug, but by that evening my fever was spiking to over 103°, and I felt like a building had fallen on me.
I called my doctor, Rob Huizenga, the next morning, who immediately said, “Sounds like Covid, for sure. Come in for a test right away and stay away from Daisy!” We decided she should be tested, too, so we masked up and drove to the doc’s office with Daisy driving our SUV and me sitting two rows behind, with the windows down. Dr. H had created a coronavirus testing station in the parking lot of his office building, and he and his nurse met us outside to do the swab tests.
Rob has been my physician since I was nineteen years old, and we became great friends early on, socializing often. Rob pulls no punches.
“Ricardo, this test is going to come back positive. I have no doubt that you have Covid, and I don’t want you to worry because we’ll treat you immediately, and you’re already in amazing health.”
At the time, Daisy and I still owned two homes between which we would regularly divide our time, and I immediately isolated from her as we awaited our results.
The test came back negative, as did Daisy’s. Rob was shocked but explained that a negative Covid test has a 30 percent chance of being a “false negative” and urged me to take another test. I was still feeling awful with a severe cough and high fevers, so Rob, who lives only ten minutes from us, stopped by the house where I was sequestered and administered a second test in the driveway.
Two days later, that test also came back negative.
“I’m telling you, you have Covid!” he exclaimed. “There’s still a slight chance of a second false negative, so let’s get a chest X-ray to at least rule it out, and maybe do a third test. But I’ll bet you my practice it’s Covid!”
I should have held him to the bet. My chest X-ray was totally clear, and my third Covid test was negative. It was not Covid. My relief turned immediately to fear.
“Then what do I have?”
Thus began a rerun of the past October with me getting my blood tested for every virus, disease, and infection known t
o medicine. I also had MRIs of my entire body and brain to see if anything revealed itself. Nothing did. But this time, unlike my October illness, which lasted about two weeks, this fever was not going away. After week three, I started feeling better. Less fatigue and little to no fever during the day, but every single night at around seven o’clock, I could feel a change in my body, and every single night I’d have a fever of 101° or higher.
This prompted concern from Rob Huizenga as well as the specialists who were now involved in diagnosing my illness. The nightly fevers lasted forty-three straight nights before finally leaving me alone. It was frustrating not only to have no diagnosis, but to be steadily feeling better and better despite the fevers.
I started taking walks with Daisy and Bette, which turned into easy to moderately challenging hikes, and before I knew it, I felt 100 percent fine, working out and totally back to normal, but still the fevers would come. Hearing sentences like “We need to rule out lymphoma” and “It’s possible this is an infection in your heart” were unnerving, but they forced me into a perspective about life that would benefit my psyche to this day.
* * *
My health is literally everything. I’ve been incredibly fortunate in my fifty-seven years on earth to have had very little in the way of maladies. My hips gave out after years of running around stages and jumping off the tops of pianos, and I had them replaced in 2013. Other than that, I’ve been in near-perfect condition. I work out every day and eat a plant-based diet, and other than indulging in martinis and some top-shelf tequila (and an occasional vegan doughnut), I’m a very clean-living guy, and I definitely took my good health for granted.
That second illness also made me confront the fact that keeping myself busy all the time was simply a lifelong habit and one that didn’t really serve me. Could I just take this time off and relax? Not do an interview show or mini acoustic concerts or write songs or record in the studio? Just… be? I needed to find out, and I’m eternally grateful that I did.
Between my own hits as a singer-songwriter, and my hits as a writer and producer for others, I have a track record anyone should be proud of, or at least somewhat impressed by. I’m so grateful for the run I have had. It’s never lost on me how fortunate I’ve been. So, it’s always somewhat baffling to me when I hear or read things that essentially say, “Whatever happened to…?” or “Is he even alive?” It’s not even that I’m offended personally. I’m confounded by the mind-set of people who say or write those kinds of things about any successful artist or actor or author.
I remember an interview with Burt Reynolds in 1997, when his work in Boogie Nights was nominated for an Oscar, putting him back in the headlines after an already spectacularly successful career. He said, “Show business has a strange distinction. In all other walks of life, people are remembered for their greatest moment, their greatest achievement. In showbiz, people are only remembered for their most recent.”
Here’s the deal: about 1 percent of people who write songs have a hit, let alone a slew of them. Same thing with people who act. Maybe 1 percent make an actual living, and fewer become famous. For an author to write a bestseller, the odds are colossally against them. So, I find it odd that people ask “Whatever happened to…?” because my feeling is, “Isn’t the success I had enough?” It is for me.
As I write these words, I have a peace of mind that had long eluded me. That peace doesn’t come from working hard or creating prolifically. It comes from listening to my own breathing, meditating, and being as present in each moment as I can be. It’s an easier task when I’m forced into a long period of being off the road and out of the studio, as there are minimal distractions to pull me away from the act of simply living my best life. I feel like, to quote the late novelist Tom Wolfe, “a man in full.” My sons are healthy, I’ve found the deepest and most rewarding relationship I’ve ever known with Daisy, and I feel proud of the work I’ve done and optimistic about the work I may still do.
Every single time I write a new song, I get that same rush I always have. It’s still a completely magical experience. One minute there is nothing; the next, there is this creation that will live on long after I am gone. I’m humbled by that concept alone, but then to have been gifted over and over with the euphoria that comes with seeing and hearing thousands of people sing these songs I made up in my head right back to me. That’s a feeling I couldn’t truly describe if I wrote a thousand pages.
I love being known as a songwriter. When I travel internationally and have to fill out customs forms, in the box labeled “Occupation,” I never write “Performer” or “Singer.” I always write, “Songwriter.” I consider writing songs to be an elegant and noble profession.
And I plan to never retire.
1967. Age four.
1970. Singing a jingle.
1982. First year away from home outside the Motown Studios where Lionel Richie was recording his first solo album.
1984. With Lionel Richie after singing background vocals on his classic “All Night Long.”
1984. My first live gig ever at a long-gone club in Studio City, California, called Sasch.
1984. In the studio with Kenny Loggins.
1986. Making my first album. Recording background vocals on “Don’t Mean Nothing” with Randy Meisner and Timothy B. Schmit at Capitol Studios.
1987. Backstage with REO Speedwagon on the last date of the summer tour as their opening act. (Left to right: Dave Koz, Paul Warren, Jim Cliff, Gary Richrath, Mike Derosier, Alan Gratzer, Neal Doughty, Kevin Cronin, me, Jon Walmsley)
1988. Backstage after a concert with my grandfather Duane celebrating the news of my first number one pop single, “Hold On to the Nights.”
1988. With my parents, Dick and Ruth. Photo by Nels Israelson
1988. In the studio with (left to right) engineer Brian Foraker and Vixen band members Share Pedersen and Janet Gardner recording “Edge of a Broken Heart.”
1988. With David Cole (left) and Bobby Colomby.
1990. Backstage with Olivia Newton-John after my performance at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.
1990. Onstage at Miami Arena singing “You May Be Right” with one of my songwriting heroes, Billy Joel.
1991. With Bruce Lundvall (who gave me my first record deal) during my record-setting Rush In, Rush Out, Rush Street tour.
1991. Undertaking photographer Nels Isrealson’s experiment in the making of the Rush Street album cover.
1998. Rehearsing with Luther Vandross for the Music for Life benefit in Chicago.
1998. Backstage at The Vic Theatre in Chicago before the Music for Life benefit concert. (Left to right: Michael Bolton, me, Fee Waybill, Kenny G, Luther Vandross, Kevin Cronin)
1999. In an Orlando studio recording “This I Promise You” with NSYNC. (Left to right: Justin Timberlake, Lance Bass, Chris Kirkpatrick, JC Chasez, me, Joey Fatone)
2000. With Kenny Rogers and engineer David Cole.
2000. With Cynthia and our boys outside our home in Lake Bluff, Illinois.
2004. Onstage in New York City.
2010. Onstage with Matt Scannell during our Duo tour.
2011. Backstage with Hugh Jackman after filming my PBS special, A Night Out With Friends.
2012. Backstage with Joe Walsh at a benefit for Senator Tammy Duckworth.
2014. Finally learning to play as hard as I work.
2014. With Ringo Starr at his home in Los Angeles after writing “Not Looking Back.”
2017. With Fee Waybill.
2018. Valentine’s Day at our home in Malibu with James Brolin and Barbra Streisand.
2018. Backstage with Keith Urban in Sydney at the Aria Awards.
2018. Outside Woodshed Studio in Malibu, California, with the legend known as Burt Bacharach (left) and Greg Phillinganes.
2019. With my sons Jesse, Brandon, and Lucas.
On a plane going somewhere with my partner in everything, Daisy Fuentes.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Daisy Fuentes: There’s no
thing I could write here that I haven’t already said to you. You have made me happier than I’ve ever been. I worship and adore you.
Brandon, Lucas, and Jesse: To be able to say that my best friends are my own spawn may be the greatest gift a father could know. I love you even more than you could comprehend.
Sincere thanks to: Diarmuid Quinn, Matt Scannell, Fee Waybill, Hugh Jackman, Bobby Colomby, Bruce Gaitsch, Cynthia Rhodes Marx, Roe Conn, David Cole, Mike Landau, Humberto Gatica, Bernie Gudvi, Ivan Brailsford, Rob Huizenga, Chip Matthews, Wayne Isaak, Lionel Richie, Alan Silfen (the great photographer who introduced me to Lionel and took this book’s cover photo), Terry Williams, Barbra Streisand, Linda Thompson, Olivia Newton-John, Dave Novik, Marissa Matteo, Keith Urban, Dave Grusin, Jimmy Harnen, Scott Borchetta, Allison Jones, Geoff Bywater, Martha Quinn, my BMG family, Sean Manning and the S&S team, Sam Walton, the Brijbag and Fuentes family, all the musicians who have contributed their talents to my work, and all the songwriters with whom I’ve spent time trying to catch lightning in a bottle.