Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir (25 page)

I also met this Russian guy Igor, who was a riot. He took me all over the place to sightsee and Laura was always looking for me (David made her responsible for me). I think Igor had a crush on me. I remember I had brought food from a health-food store at home and Laura goes, “There’s no food here, and you bring over food that tastes like dirt?” Which was true—I did. In Russia, you could choose between mystery meat in gelatin or caviar, which made your tongue swollen, but to them, that was very expensive food. Listen, they gave us the best of what they had. They were really very sweet to me, these big, burly guys, even though they weren’t used to women doing this kind of work. There wasn’t much drinking water available so they kept saying to me, “Drink this. Vodka.”

I was there for two weeks, and the trip woke me up a little. I had a moment of clarity when I was on that train. I was really, really lonely and Dave had already left to go back to the US I looked at the tracks and I thought, “Why don’t you just kill yourself? You thought that this would be the pinnacle of your life, and now where are you?” I was
so tired of being told what I couldn’t do by the record company, of being isolated and having people tell me what they thought I was. My relationship was ending. The movie I had done flopped. I was like, “I can’t take this life anymore. I can either jump off the train or have an affair with this guy I don’t know, get on with my life, and just break ties with Dave.” So I had that affair with French Fry.

When I came back from Russia I moved into the Mayflower Hotel for a long, long time, and I left Dave in the loft. Hotel life is very sad. And after the Russian trip, I was still going around with French Fry even though he was seeing his old girlfriend and they were moving in together. I couldn’t understand why he was moving in with someone and still calling me. My housekeeper Ann didn’t like him, and she finally ended it with him. When French Fry called she never told me, so I thought he lost interest. I kinda felt like I loved French Fry, but then I realized I was just still heartbroken about Dave.

When you start out and you have nothing, and you make it to that pinnacle of your life, you think that your fame and your success are a redemption for everything that ever happened to you. It’s not true. Because at the end of the movie, the credits roll—but in your life, that doesn’t happen. Credits don’t roll. I had to continue living. My whole life up to that moment was about getting there, but now that I was there, it wasn’t so rosy. I wanted my life to go better, and I thought it was gonna, but it didn’t. Because what I gave up along the way to get to that pinnacle was my relationship. I thought that that was the most important thing to me, and that’s why I was still a good soldier about everything Dave had me do. He continued to be my manager, and even though I was worried that the record company was a complete mess, I thought that no one else would really want me as an artist. I never felt that successful, because I was always working so hard.

I got one Grammy that year, but I disappointed the record company because I didn’t come home with an armful like they expected. It was always like that—it was never enough. I had come so far but felt like I had failed.

There was this idea out there that I was rolling in money, but let me tell ya, I wasn’t. For instance, I really busted my ass touring and promoting my records internationally, but I got a penny a record in Europe. I remember asking my accountant around that time, “How much money do I have?” He said, “You have a million dollars.” I felt like Ralph Kramden. I was like, “I’m rich!” What he neglected to tell me was that half of that million would go toward taxes. I was never good with money.

It was such a dark time for me. When I was living in the Mayflower, I was two steps off of that balcony. I would go to the studio and make my record, and then sit in my dark room and drink vodka (which I didn’t even like). The moon would shine into the room past the balcony, through the window, and onto the floor. And I’d sit on my chair and talk to the moon. I would toast her and tell her I was named Cynthia, after the goddess of the moon. Then I’d just cry while gazing up at her. I didn’t call anyone; I was so upset I couldn’t even talk. I would see my family occasionally but I had to spend most of my time making my record. I was alone. But I wanted to be alone. I was grieving. I thought the sadness would never go away. I must say the only thing that always prevented me from suicide is that I never wanted a headline to read,
GIRL WHO WANTED TO HAVE FUN JUST DIDN’T
. That’s how stupid and ridiculous I thought the press was, and I didn’t want my life to be reduced to that.

My friend Katie Valk had introduced me to her friend Tracey Ullman, so I hung out with her a little bit. I told her that thing about how I’d jump except for the headline, and Tracey looked at me and said,
“That’s the second time you said that to me. I think you should start seeing a therapist.”

So I went to a therapist for a second, but it seemed to me that she agreed with me too much, and you can’t have somebody just agreeing with you. You have to have somebody who will listen and be objective and ask you, “Has that ever happened to you before?” and “How do you feel about that?” You need somebody to help you climb back up. I just collapsed. The rape, the dark parts of my past—everything caved in at that time and I was lost. I’d go to the studio stoned and Eric would look at me and go, “Cyn, what are you doing? Make your work. Come on.” But I would see him working with Robert Palmer, who had this really young girlfriend. It was just like everywhere I looked there was a form of weird sexism. Then I’d watch his “Addicted to Love” video and see a girl swinging her tits around, and none of them could play instruments. What the hell is that?

Dave was still my manager, but I knew that wasn’t going to last forever. I thought next time around I should really get a female. I really wanted to work with Sharon Osbourne, who was so cool and always spoke her mind, but people (usually men) told me all this shit like, “Oh, she’s crazy.” But I see now that what really happened was she stood up to them and they didn’t like it.

I lost my relationship, I lost my work, I lost my focus. And I had no one to go to, really. I came into the music business with good intentions, with honesty, and everything I made was organic. Nothing I did was preconceived. I believed that music could lift people up and make them happy. Then I was just sucked up and considered disposable trash, and I felt like, “That’s not what I came to do.”

In the meantime, Dave said, “Cyn, listen, I feel ridiculous. I’m supposed to move out, not you.” We always stayed friends. So I came back and he moved out. And Dave arranged for me to do an interview for
the cover of
Details
magazine, and that’s how I met Annie Flanders, the founding editor, who became a friend. We’d meet at the Russian Tea Room. She was one of the few people I could talk to. Annie was so creative and so cool. I did some research for what I thought would look nice for the cover. Then Laura Wills suggested Alberto Vargas’s style to me (he painted all those pin-up girls in the forties), so I went to the bookshop and found a Vargas book to bring to Annie.

When I presented it to her I told her that when I thought of the cover, I imagined a painting. And she said, “I know a guy who could maybe paint it.” So the cover was a painting of me, Vargas-style, with a very classic-Hollywood, platinum-blonde look, like Jean Harlow, and I was framed by gardenias. That was going to be my new image for
A Night to Remember.

A Night to Remember
came out in 1989, and “I Drove All Night” went to number six. It was huge all over the world. (This time Dave didn’t play the guy in the video—I got someone else.) But again, the record company was disappointed. But like a good soldier I toured the world in support of that album. The record company wanted me to work Europe and the rest of the world while they broke their new acts in the States, so they could just live off of whatever I had left in me. That’s how they are. I remember I went to Italy to do this wild, crazy show in Bari. It was a festival with about thirty acts, one after the other, and it was all televised. When there are that many acts, it’s easier, and the sound quality is better, to sing to track (where the track plays without the vocal and you sing along to it) rather than to do it all live.

There was a mix of well-known acts and then Italian acts that I didn’t know, which was fantastic. I traveled to the show with Justin, my hair person, because I was going to be on TV. Justin had a beard and long hair down to his butt. Then there was Jodi, my makeup artist, who was tiny, and Laura Wills, too, who was five foot ten, and
Dave. And me, I was right in the middle. The car was stuffed so full with all the luggage and the crap that we needed for the television show that the trunk wouldn’t close and we had to use rope. So when we arrived at the festival there were kids waiting around and screaming as each artist emerged from their car. When we all got out the kids started singing the
Addams Family
theme! I laughed so hard. I could not believe that this was happening in Bari. I thought, “We
do
look like the Addams family.”

Then a little Italian kid ran up to Laura Wills, looked her right in the face, stamped on her foot as hard as he could, and ran away. They were out of their minds. We just started laughing all the time because our lives were so ridiculous. After we did the TV show, we were brought to this restaurant where all the Sony artists from all over the world were. The Italian artists were sitting on the left and they started singing as the waiters brought out this incredible food. Then everybody started drinking and singing. I listened to this guy, Massimo, from the record company talk, and he said, “In the seventies, we had the Beatles and the Stones, and now we have Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet.” And I kept thinking, “I don’t think so. Those aren’t the new legends.”

There were other artists from Australia there called Noiseworks, and they started playing, and we started playing, too, and I just fell in love with what was going on—eating, drinking, and singing. So I started singing with them—harmonies, whatever I could. Then the place went a little loony. They were pouring vodka around, and I found myself on a chair at the end of the night singing “True Colors” with the singer from Noiseworks and the dishwasher, who was playing harmonica. I thought, “What the heck—this is great. This is what it’s about, this is rock and roll at its finest.” It was well worth the trip. In that moment, the joy came back to the music for me.

I always had fun in Italy. The first time I went there I had to go on another Italian TV show to perform “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” which, if I remember correctly, was a lip-sync. Before I went on, I was telling a producer that my family came from Sicily. He was Sicilian, so that was a big thing. And then I heard a chicken.

“Excuse me—is that a chicken?” I asked.

“Yes, that was a chicken.”

“Let me get this straight. I’m opening for the chicken?”

“Yeah, you are,” he said.

Hey, why not? That was crazy European television. (When I was promoting
Hat Full of Stars
there, some sheep opened for me, but they peed on the monitors, which wasn’t a good thing.)

Another time I went on French TV to sing “I Drove All Night,” and I wanted to do a performance-art piece where a car driving along a road is projected onto my naked body, like in the video. So I worked with this lighting woman Carol, who recommended that I get this stretchy, reflective material to wrap around my body. We couldn’t get the fucking projector to work though, and my tour manager, Robin, started sweating profusely because it was live TV and we had to go on soon. And these fifteen French guys were standing around the projector, smoking cigarettes and speaking French, trying to make the thing work. At that time Simply Red had that rendition of the song “If You Don’t Know Me by Now” and Jodi kept singing, “If it ain’t working by now, it ain’t never gonna work.” I was laughing, thinking, “Oh, my God.” The clock was ticking and finally Robin just pressed a button and it worked. I thought, “Ohhh, the on/off button. Excellent.” Things like that happened so often. Hey, as long as I could make an art piece, I was happy.

The “Night to Remember” tour took me to many places, including all through Mexico, which I loved. The only problem was that I
was playing in bullrings, and I kept losing my voice. I realized that I was sucking in the dirt that was being kicked up from the dirt floor as everyone got excited and started to dance. Once we figured that out we got a fan to blow the dust away from me. I got sick in Hong Kong too because of the air-conditioning (they didn’t always clean the filters) and I got bronchitis. It was so bad I had to cancel dates, and then I went to Australia and the Philippines and sang the best I could, with me having bronchitis. In Japan I took every vitamin known to man and started getting better. (And I started to have an affair with another guy, a really handsome Australian journalist who interviewed me. I had no clue that he was going to hit on me. I kept talking and talking and talking about my art, and finally he just picked me up and headed to the bedroom and I said, “Oh.”)

I started wondering if maybe I should stay in Australia and make my next record. It would mean leaving everyone I had worked with for eight years to make music. But at least it would be a fresh start. Noiseworks was there, and maybe I could do some work with them. It could be fun. I stood at Bondi Beach looking out at the end of the earth. I realized I might be very lonely. I would be really far away from everything I knew. I had done it once before in my life, but I wasn’t sure I was up for it again. And I wasn’t sure I could make the kind of record I wanted in Australia. Plus, I couldn’t drive. I’m a New Yorker and I never got my license. So I returned to New York. But I always wonder what my music might have been like if I’d stayed.

I had been away for three months, and when I got home it was near Christmastime. I had shopped and shopped for all the presents. Dave came over and packed them all up in his car so we could go visit Lennie and give everyone their gifts. He and I almost reconciled before we left. We made love and then went down to the car, which
he left parked in front of the building with all the presents stacked up to the roof. Of course someone broke in and stole them. What a surprise! And what might my old friend Aesop have had to say about that? “Don’t be lame and leave the fuckin’ car filled with presents for people who might want to steal them!”