I’d never been popular before. I’d never been a success at anything or had strangers cling to me in case I had something to offer. What must it have been like for pretty girls back in school? I wondered. Or just for someone who runs a popular local restaurant? Because people who wouldn’t have given me the time of day before were now pulling me aside to talk my ear off, with this wild look in their eyes. More than once I hid in a stairwell at an obligatory New York or Los Angeles music-biz party just to get some quiet—to grab a moment where I wasn’t looking out of a fish-eye lens watching some stranger’s mouth move as I nodded. There was the other side of that coin too, as certain old acquaintances now seemed to subtly exude a whiff of resentment or outward bitterness toward me. I wondered if I was imagining it, and that in itself began to get into my head.
I’ve never experienced an ass-kissing quite like the one Robert, Darren, and I got on our first record release, when we were a clean slate, all potential, no string of failures—or successes. The new “it” band, the band to watch. We weren’t famous yet, but word in the biz was we might be soon. Get in while you can! I remember needing assistance from a couple of security guys for the first time, pushing fans back just to get to the stage for our third gig at the tiny East Village rock club Brownies.
Some of that intensity at the beginning stage is due to the fact that an artist is still accessible when they’re the “next big thing.” And those who want to hitch their wagon to you understand this very well. Once you get going and become professional, you don’t look like prey anymore. You adjust, and things normalize. You learn who your friends are, and the sharks disperse to find the next new thing to latch on to.
This sudden fame, or promise of fame, wasn’t all bad, of course! There was also plenty of earnest excitement and innocent attention. It was wonderful at times. It’s just hard for someone who’s not used to causing such a fuss to figure out how it all works. But it did get to my head some. Luckily, I was in my late twenties for this and not my late teens. I can’t imagine how those who make it much bigger, much younger, can possibly cope. Hats off! Because there are so many levels to celebrity and ours wasn’t even megastardom—Elvis or Beyoncé style. Ours was on a much smaller scale, even at the height of our career. But our ascent began back in another era, much different from now, when the money was flowing, when video budgets were a quarter of a million dollars, and a band like ours sold forty thousand records a week without blinking. Prior to the internet, a rock band reached audiences through a limited number of outlets like radio, TV, and magazines. And overnight we were pouring out of all of them. So, yeah, it was all quite a big deal, at least to us. I was damn near numb for most of it but kept my balance by remaining centered on the task at hand: the music and loading my own piano into rock clubs. The social part, the immersion in quasi-fame, sent my soul running for the recesses of my skull, where it crouched in hiding for years.
The thing about “making it” in the music business was best explained to me by my friend John McCrea of Cake, who put it this way (roughly): “Being a rock star is, of course, every fifteen-year-old boy’s dream. You wish for it when you’re young. And just when you’re too mature to be a rock star with a straight face, that’s when the wish is granted and you get the job.” I don’t believe John meant he had wisher’s remorse. But the opportunity to ride the bull for a while in the goddamn music business isn’t something you turn down, especially when you’re otherwise qualified to bag groceries and wait tables. It’s just that as an adult, you question the dreams of your fifteen-year-old self.
I often thought about what John said, and years later I wrote a song called “Draw a Crowd,” where I likened achieving fame to ordering a package that arrives once you’ve forgotten you ordered it. Haven’t you ever been surprised by an Amazon order that appears on your front porch—something you ordered drunk last week and never thought about again? Whaaat? A book on identifying North American birds…? Oh! Right! I’d totally forgotten….
I ordered something
It took a while
This morning something
Was on my doorstep
What’s this I’m holding?
Time capsule order?
’Cause I’m a brand-new man and I don’t think I want it!
—From “Draw a Crowd,” The Sound of the Life of the Mind, 2012
I have drawers full of youthful photographs of Robert, Darren, and me from when we were the next big thing, doing our first TV shows, gigs big and small, business meetings, and fancy parties. It was quite a roller-coaster ride. In fact, these old photos remind me of the actual roller-coaster photos they try and sell you for ten bucks as you step off a ride at Six Flags—your very own snapshot of yourself and some strangers captured by automated camera at the most thrilling turn. Around you, twisted, terrified expressions of those hanging on for dear life, as well as the calmer expressions of the more stoic passengers. And, of course, the ecstatic faces of those having the time of their life, frozen in time with two hands in the air and eyes on fire. When I see our old touring photos, I’m not sure which roller-coaster passenger I am. The brave one with hands waving over my head, or the one clutching the safety bar in fear, looking like he might be ill. But this music-business ride was what I’d asked for, even if I’d placed my order as a teenager. And it had now arrived on my front porch along with all those boxes of free CDs. I was in the goddamn music business.
HAND ME THAT PIANO
WE’D GOTTEN THE MUSIC-BIZ THUMBS-UP. v of the industry allowed us passage to the next round and we would proceed until apprehended. The hype men and women of the music business were chanting and beating drums, as was the ritual. But even an anticipated debut album is a drop in the ocean of music releases. The mortality rate in the world of new music has always been grim. Those images from biology class of hundreds of thousands of sperm competing to survive come to mind. It was time to earn it or be sent home in shame.
We loaded the Baldwin baby grand piano into our converted Ryder box van and hit the road with old-school folding road maps. Analog, baby! Of course, cellphones weren’t a thing yet either, so we had to get directions and discuss load-ins with the club owners on the landline before hitting the highway. But it was this hard work, these long drives, the shitty food, the sleeping on the floors of bad hotels, that was my lifesaving counterbalance to all the ego-stroking. It kept us honest, as the old-timers say.
Our old yellow van was outfitted with a generator, a sofa nailed to the floor, a small TV with a built-in VHS player (with an array of absurd seventies’ kung fu movies and the silent film Metropolis), a mattress over the driver’s cab, and some plywood cubbyholes for our bags. I usually drove, because I was too nervous to let anyone else do it. I kept awake by making myself moderately ill with as much Mountain Dew as it took not to fall asleep at the wheel and die. It was a lot of time in that van, and it was becoming more obvious that we only just met each other a year ago. Our days were now spent in each other’s back pocket, our finances were tied, and we each pondered our changing lives as highway after highway unfolded, eight or twelve hours a day. Darren would put headphones on when he didn’t want anyone talking to him. They were like a sign that read PLEASE DO NOT SPEAK TO ME, OR EVEN LOOK AT ME. Good idea. Soon we all had headphones on all the time, and I suspect they weren’t always connected to music.