Between a Heart and a Rock Place (22 page)

Even though we'd been touring for years and had played in these cities hundreds of times before, this time was different. We got to explore cities through Haley's eyes, creating wonderful memories along the way. She learned to walk in Minneapolis and had her first birthday in Detroit. She loved the bus. It made her sleep better, which was a blessing because I needed to sleep in order to sing. When she wasn't sleeping on the bus, she was taking in the outside world as it flew by the oversized glass of the tinted windows.

On that tour, my philosophy about many things changed. I didn't
want to put on an outrageous show. I wanted to give the audience a layered offering of our music. It was less about the act, more about the music. While this shift made sense for a lot of reasons, my voice paid the toll for that road, too. Because my vocal cords had gotten no rest, I started having throat problems for the first time in my life. I truly felt like I was the caboose of this train, being pulled along with no chance to ever catch up to the rest of it. Doctors were brought in, but all they could do was tell me to take a break from singing and shoot cortisone in my throat.

The whole tour was supposed to stretch out over a period of a few months without interruption. We didn't even have a chance to come home. All this would have been fine if I'd been in great physical shape, but I wasn't. Of course, when I asked them if I could take a few dates off so that my voice could recover, their answer was a resounding no.

“Look, if you don't do these five shows, here's how much we'll lose. You've got to look at the bottom line. You may want a day off, but we're still paying the crew. Look how much that costs!”

When I'd resist, which was most of the time, they'd bring out the big gun: “You've got forty employees who depend on you. Do you want to be responsible for them not getting paid? Those people have families.”

That was what always got me. They used my nature against me. Those guys all knew that I was a straight shooter, always the good girl trying to do the right thing. I was a conscientious, ethical person. And they knew that talking about people depending on me would bring me around every time. It's my worst character flaw—not so much guilt as it is that I simply cannot quit. No matter the circumstance, I will be compelled to complete something if I've committed to it—regardless of whether or not I should. The knowledge that people were depending on me only exacerbated this personality trait, pushing aside what was right for me in favor of what was right for others.

I let them bully me into doing what they asked and I stayed out on tour. I couldn't quit and they knew it. Each time they pulled that I
said to myself:
This is sickening! They are just playing you, figuring out the way to make you do something that is not in your best interest. Not if you want to keep your voice, anyway.

But instead of telling them I was onto their tricks, I usually said, “Okay. I can do it. I can do it.”

And I did.

 

W
HEN THE TOUR WAS
finally over, we returned home and at last got some time off. It was the first time in seven years that we were home and
not
working in some capacity. This was a wonderful period for our family. We were basically having a “normal” life—eating dinner at home and putting our child to sleep in a bed, not a bunk. We had barbecues, saw our family and friends, went to the park—all the things we'd never been able to do before.

Being home felt so good that it overshadowed the fact that a month earlier I'd been handed my first Grammy loss. “Invincible” had been nominated, but I lost to Tina Turner. It was a disappointing end to a disappointing year, and we were ready to put the whole mess behind us. I remember making a note to myself that it seemed unfair that your professional life had to suffer in order for your personal life to thrive. I'd have to work on that.

That balance was something that I thought a lot about when we started talking about the next album. The time off allowed Spyder and Myron to write songs at their own pace, and as that happened we collectively began to figure out where we'd go from there. Long ago, I'd stopped worrying about whether each record outsold the last one; I understood that careers don't work that way. And I wanted my career to work my way. But that didn't mean that I shrugged off my frustration with
Seven the Hard Way
.

In 1987, we finally took the material we'd been working on into Spyder's Soul Kitchen, setting out to record what would become
Wide Awake in Dreamland,
and from the outset, things went incredibly well—the best they'd been since
Tropico
. The difference between recording at a huge studio and doing it at home was like night and day. There was a relaxation to everything we did, an ease to our approach that none of us had felt in years. It didn't hurt that Haley was a couple of years older now, and appropriately, she was more independent.

Being in our own studio emphasized that this was
our
record we were making. It was more on our terms than anything we'd done in years. With
Wide Awake,
the music took the listener into our world both sonically and personally. We recorded what would become our first single from the album, “All Fired Up,” as the last song for the record. Peter Coleman and Spyder produced all of
Wide Awake
except for this song, which Spyder and Keith Forsey produced. We were actually enjoying the process again. We were happily doing what we'd always done: creating, writing, and recording. I had gotten motherhood under control. Our personal lives were in order. I was ready to go back to being a rock star in a big way, but what I didn't fully understand was just how screwed up things had become at Chrysalis.

Despite the fact that the album was progressing nicely, Chrysalis was collapsing around us. Before his departure, Terry had been in charge of the U.S. portion of the company and Chris had run the UK and international divisions. As a result of this hierarchy, we hadn't dealt much with Chris. We had a more casual relationship with him. Chris was more of a businessman, whereas Terry worked a lot on developing talent and promoting records.

All that changed when Terry left and Chris was forced to take a more active role in the U.S. business. Chris didn't seem that interested in the day-to-day running of the American company, so he hired an endless stream of “presidents” to do the hands-on work—some good,
some not so good. It was a revolving door, with people only staying a short time, which made doing business with them chaotic and disorganized.

This turmoil at the label ended up having a disastrous impact on the release of
Wide Awake in Dreamland
and the subsequent tour supporting it. When the record came out, we went out on tour, but for the first time since 1979, we weren't selling out venues. Right away we could see that this tour was a bust. This was partially due to audience fatigue. Our ridiculous schedule of an album and tour every nine months had officially come back to bite us in the ass. The audience had seen us a lot. We had saturated the market, and this backlash was a direct result. Tours were supposed to be special, unique experiences, and there were very few audiences that were truly insatiable for them. After a certain point, they've had enough, and it seemed we'd reached that point. Our career was slowing down.

But while there was no doubt that we'd been on the road too much, it was the confusion at the label that really sank the record and the tour. Chrysalis was in transition; they didn't focus on marketing and promoting the record as much as they should have or as much as they had with past records. This combination proved fatal to the album and the tour.

Of course we didn't realize this until it was too late, and we started off the tour feeling as confident as ever. At first we simply kicked back and had a great time with Haley on the road. She loved it—and the “house-bus” was her favorite part. She decorated her bunk and was the little queen with an extended family totaling nearly forty people. Her parents and godparents were with her every day. Before she was born, I'd sleep until one
P.M
. when we were on the road, usually because I'd been up 'til four
A.M
. the previous night. Now, we were up and out the door first thing in the morning, always looking for ways to entertain an energetic three-year-old. Up until this point, I'd led a pretty insulated
and reclusive life, but with Haley we had lots of visits to museums, parks, kid movies—even the dreaded mall.

Though only three, Haley was an avid shopper, and I found myself traipsing through places like the Mall of America with a huge African American bodyguard and a three-year-old decked out in a Disney Princess costume (complete with tiara and “sparkle shoes”) and trying to blend in. Women would stop us, oblivious to me, but dazzled by the child and say, “Oh! Isn't she adorable? Is it her birthday?”

I'd smile and say, “Yes…. Yes it is,” and then I'd get the hell out of there.

We spent many days teaching Haley how to swim in pools across America. Spyder taught her how to play baseball in the artist's parking lot of Pine Knob Music Theater outside of Detroit. Eventually Haley became such an experienced traveler that she would walk into our hotel suite, go straight to the phone and say, “Mommy, I'm going to call room service and see if they have crème brûlée.” She was incredibly precocious and sweet, and we adored her.

While all this was fun for us, it was not exactly the rock star life that most people imagined. When I was plugging the new record, I went on Howard Stern, who was in L.A. promoting his new radio show. I had met Howard years back in New York before he became the shock jock he is today. I did my interview first; we were talking about how normal my life was, considering my profession. You know, no trips to rehab, actually married to my daughter's father—the usual. Between takes we talked about having kids, and he asked me where he could get a Disney princess costume for his little girl while he was in L.A.

Also on the show was Robin Leach, who was the host of the show
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
, and when Howard started interviewing Robin, Robin launched into his stable of great stories about the excesses of the wealthy. When Robin's aristocratic British voice came to
a break, Howard chimed in: “Robin, you should have Pat on the show sometime.”

Robin deadpanned, “She just spent twenty minutes telling you how boring she is. Why would I do
that
?” All I could do was laugh, but I had to admit, the man had a point.

But as much fun as we were having, the actual shows themselves became increasingly lackluster. Venues were undersold; the crowds weren't showing up in the same numbers. “All Fired Up” was flying up the charts, but even that wasn't enough to stop the tour's break-neck downward spiral. Promoters began panicking, and before long, our booking agents for the tour were suggesting that we cancel the tour and cut our losses before there was any more bloodletting. We had to protect our relationship with the promoters for future touring. Spyder and I were reeling; we immediately went into survival mode. Our first priority was salvaging everything we could. We'd put our heart, soul, and blood into this for the last nine years. After all the shit and sacrifices we'd made in our personal life there was no way we were going to sit idly as it all went up in flames.

We met with our attorneys and business manager and proceeded with triage. Besides all the damage that had been done to our reputation, there was one truly terrible question to face: we had a crew of forty people who depended on us for their livelihood and if we canceled the tour, what would happen to all of them? The very thing that they'd used to manipulate me on the
Seven the Hard Way
tour was about to come to pass. I was sick. We had to do the right thing. Some of these people had been with us since the beginning. Everyone was paid a severance and released from their obligation to us so that they could work elsewhere.

In the aftermath, I was furious. How had no one seen this coming? The label alone was not to blame. What had our side been doing? Where were our people? How had things gotten so bad? It seemed incredible that everyone was so complacent and hesitant to take a pro
active approach to protect all of our interests. We were rife with questions and had very few answers.

 

G
ETTING OUR FIRST TASTE
of real failure was eye-opening, but we didn't come back from the
Wide Awake
tour to feel sorry for ourselves. We were eager to pick ourselves up and figure out where we'd go from there. As luck would have it, a peculiar chain of events led to a dramatic turn that would reshape our entire career and impact the rest of our lives.

It all began shortly after we returned home from our aborted tour for
Wide Awake,
when our attorney, Owen Epstein, died of a brain tumor. Newman and Owen had been best friends, and for years he'd represented Newman with the club and many of his comedy acts. Our A&R guy, Buzzard, was close with Owen as well. This strange triangle was a little too cozy for comfort, and it inevitably created a conflict of interest for Newman and Owen. Where did their allegiance lie—with us or the label? For years, we'd looked the other way, but the combination of the
Wide Awake
disaster and Owen's death meant that we had new incentive to take hold of the situation.

After Owen died, I retained new counsel, a man named Gerry Margolis who had been Spyder's original attorney for a short time in the very beginning, and the first thing Gerry did was clean house. He examined all of our current contracts and associations, and as we sorted through the documents, it immediately became clear that we had major problems with how our management had been handling things. He sat me down and said it simply and clearly: “The bad news is that there are a lot of problems here. The good news is that they are all fixable.”