"Why are we back together?" I asked the crowd, which included Sonic Youth"s Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, Exene Cervenka, and L7"s Donita Sparks, as we segued into "Cool Jerk." "We"re still foxy, but we might need a few nips and tucks before we get too old."
We had decided to have fun this time "round--and we did. At one point, Jane even lifted her white T-shirt and flashed her b.o.o.bs. The crowd went wild, and quite a few flashed her back. We were a bunch of forty-year-olds having a girlfest. "Who says women don"t age as gracefully as men?" said one reviewer, who added we were foxier and sounded better than in our heyday.
Our tour took us to Seattle, San Francisco, and through a handful of other Western states. I appreciated the girls more than at any other time since the band"s earliest days. Gina was no-bulls.h.i.t and one of the funniest people I had ever known. Jane was a wonderful eccentric whose creativity bubbled out nonstop and made life infinitely more fun and interesting. Charlotte, aside from being a great writer, was a true Libra. She was able to see both sides of an issue and supply the calm, mature, levelheaded voice the rest of us often lacked. Kathy, a superior musician, was the band"s most honest-to-goodness rock and roller.
As for me, I could see why I gave the others fits. In true lead singer form, I just wanted to have a good time. At home or on the road, I didn"t want to be accountable to anything and the girls let me be, as they always had. While they had busted their b.u.t.ts, I had flitted from party to party, traveled the world, rented stupid cars, bought a racehorse, and done all sorts of dumb things--and still did.
At each stop on the tour, we were asked if we intended to make this reunion permanent. Early on, we didn"t know the answer. If we felt good about the shows and ourselves, we didn"t see any reason why we wouldn"t continue. By the end of the tour, we were already planning a longer, more extensive tour for the following summer and a new alb.u.m, as well as several projects with VH1, including our own Behind the Music episode.
"We"ll tell everything," Jane said to reporters. "It"ll be sa.s.sy and sordid. I don"t care if they know everything."
All of us shared that att.i.tude as we were questioned in front of cameras separately and together. During my interview, I admitted to having had a $300-a-day c.o.ke habit. But I explained that was in the past. I was now married and a mother and living a serene if not downright dreamy life in the South of France, and being in my forties made me more content with myself and into searching for a more spiritual connection. If only such BS had been true.
On-screen, you could see the real story. I looked like s.h.i.t in that Behind the Music episode. Everything I was doing to myself in private, all the things I didn"t admit--the drinking, the pills, the c.o.ke, and the late nights--showed up on camera. When we regrouped in October for QVC"s breast cancer benefit, I was out of control. I got extremely drunk before the show, which was broadcast live. After the second song, I turned to Gina and asked, "How much more do we have?"
As she told me later, her parents watched in disbelief at home in Baltimore. They were mortified for her when I picked up the set list and said, "I hate this f.u.c.king song." Like Gina"s parents, viewers heard everything. Apparently I was bleeped constantly. Our manager, Ged Malone--Jane"s husband at the time--wouldn"t speak to me afterward. I didn"t blame him.
I wouldn"t have spoken to me either.
I dismissed well-intentioned suggestions that I take time off to rest and recover from the road--in other words, dry out. I spent November and December opening for Cher in the UK. At the end of January 2000, I performed at a gay-rights festival in London. Over the next few months, I kept in touch with the girls as they wrote new material. I also worked with Charlotte intermittently on our pop opera.
At home, I went through periods where I tried to be a better person than I was when I was in Los Angeles or on the road. I went through a stint where I enjoyed getting up and walking in my lavender slip like a 1950s movie star out to the chicken coop and getting fresh eggs for breakfast. I took Duke on mini-vacations, just the two of us. As the weather warmed, I also spent a lot of time lying beside the pool, drinking wine, and floating through the day with a mild buzz.
Frequently, I thought about Morgan and Duke with considerable guilt about my inattentiveness. If there was any light in my life, as I well know, it came from them. I was fortunate to have them. When the record deals ended and the crowds went home, they were still there, loving me. Why?
That"s what I wanted to know.
Why did they put up with me when I could barely stand myself?
I didn"t know how to do any better for them. The Go-Go"s weren"t your typical girl rockers for a reason. Similarly, I was not your typical stay-at-home wife or mother. When I thought about it, I had been running away from home since I was a teenager. At eighteen, I left permanently, and I had been on the move ever since. Those Gypsies at the end of our driveway had nothing on me.
I sometimes thought of the Gypsies with an envious fascination. They hitched their trailers to horses, threw their belongings in a wagon, and moved. I saw in them a sense of freedom from the type of responsibility that I feared. They had wild eyes and untamed spirits. They were mystical and taboo, part of a world I was drawn to. I had created my own complex, taboo world, too. One day I would be driving to a doctor"s appointment on the ancient Roman road that ran down our mountain and thinking about the people who had followed this same path through the centuries. I"d have this weird sense like the one I"d experienced on my mushroom trip of being part of the unfolding of an immense story, like I was where I was supposed to be, on an adventure. Then I would zip back to Los Angeles, get caught up in the Hollywood scene, and end up feeling lost and disconnected, like a grain of sand on the beach.
At nearly forty-two, I should have been more together. Sadly, I wasn"t.
In July 2000, we supported the release of the new Behind the Music: Go-Go"s Collection with a monthlong tour. We coheadlined with the B-52"s, who were as sensational offstage as they were on. We had fun with them every night. It was that kind of tour: special. Everything clicked for us, and it showed. "The Go-Go"s played with the vigor of a hungry young band," said the review after our show in New Jersey. "Adept as ever," said the Boston Herald.
I liked that one reviewer along the way noted how we fell perfectly into sync when we played "How Much More" and chanted, "How much more can I take before I go crazy, oh yeah!" That line could have been a mantra for the band as well as all of us individually, especially me. Apparently we could take a lot. Even the three new songs ("Apology," "Kissing Asphalt," and "Superslide") we debuted from those Jane, Charlotte, and Kathy had finished for the next alb.u.m also went over well.
Gina was emphatic when she declared ours wasn"t "a reunion. We"re back." Given the hot acts were Christina Aguilera and *NSYNC, I wondered. But I found myself rooting for us as we went into the studio that fall and recorded our first studio alb.u.m in seventeen years, G.o.d Bless the Go-Go"s. The good vibes from the tour carried over into the creative process and we actually had a fun time.
If all was good on that front, Morgan and I had reached a crossroads. A few months earlier we had moved from Dave Stewart"s rock star-sized villa into a more normal home of our own on the other side of the mountain. We knew our marriage still wasn"t firing on all cylinders, but we took the place anyway and promised to spend more time together. The house wasn"t my taste, but it was filled with light and felt cheerful and cozy, perfect for a fresh start.
For Valentine"s Day, we went to a favorite little hotel of ours in Florence. It was only a five-hour drive from our house. Morgan had booked a tee time at the nearby golf course, and I was content to be pampered at the spa. On an intimate note, we had never lost interest in the things that attracted us to each other. Our problems related to the inescapable fact that a relationship requires two people making an effort to be together, and I wasn"t always present.
But this getaway started out nicely until Morgan came back from the golf course looking concerned. He said he had been looking out the window in the clubhouse when a black bird had tapped on the gla.s.s right in front of him. He had tried to shoo it off, but it wouldn"t go away.
"It freaked me out," he said with a look in his eyes that telegraphed the reasons he felt that way.
"I understand," I said. "But you can"t freak out every time you see a black bird. It could just be a coincidence. Don"t even think about it."
Early the next morning we received a call from Los Angeles. Morgan"s sister, Porty, had suffered a stroke during a medical procedure and gone into a coma. She had recently struggled with health issues. But only a few months earlier, she had visited us in France. It was something of a triumphant visit, too. Earlier, she and Morgan had learned that their father"s second wife had kept his ashes in a safety deposit box, never having buried him. After their stepmother died in 1994, Morgan and Porty entered into a legal battle with her estate. Finally, they obtained the ashes and Porty had come over to help bury them next to Charlie Chaplin"s grave in Vevey. It was all true to the family"s unorthodoxy.
Porty"s husband told Morgan that he needed to get to Beverly Hills right away. Morgan was justifiably shaken. His sister was all the family he had left. As we drove back to France, Morgan opened his heart to me and talked about how we needed to get our act together. Along with Duke, I was his family, and as he made so very clear to me on that drive, his family was the most precious thing in the world to him.
He asked me if I understood.
With tears streaming down my face, I nodded yes.
"I want to keep it together," he said. "I love you."
"I love you, too," I said. "And I want to always be together, too."
Whether I could get myself together ... well, that was another matter. As much as I wanted to, as much as I promised to try, I didn"t know if I could.
twenty-four.
MISS AUGUST.
WHEN THE GO-GO"s. .h.i.t Las Vegas for a couple of corporate dates in mid-January 2001, I made a vow to stay healthy for the tour. I wasn"t telling many people why I had cut back on my drinking and made a point of hitting the gym. As they would see soon enough, I had posed for a Playboy magazine pictorial scheduled for later in the year. In the process, I had gotten into pretty good shape. I couldn"t remember starting a tour feeling this good. It was better than being hungover.
Like the other girls, I had high hopes for our new alb.u.m, G.o.d Bless the Go-Go"s. We heard positive comments from those who got early listens. We felt like it would be welcomed by fans without giving critics a reason to ask why a couple of forty-plus-year-old moms and their gal pals had gone into the studio to play rock star. Whether it could compete commercially with younger acts was another question. All of us were hopeful. We crossed as many fingers as possible.
My expectations were dashed when our management team gave us a frank talk about the latest rules of radio. You had to buy your way into the top 10 these days, they explained, and the cost was several million dollars. Since that sum was beyond the means of our tiny label, we were told they had obligated us to do a million dollars" worth of personal appearances for Clear Channel. To hype the alb.u.m, we were told. Groans filled the room. We knew better.
But we believed in the alb.u.m, so we grudgingly agreed to go forward with the grueling promotional schedule. We began in March with a ton of radio and press and a performance on The Late Show with David Letterman. We also partic.i.p.ated in a tribute concert to Brian Wilson at Radio City Music Hall. We were the only act whose dressing room was in a completely different building. We figured they must have heard about our reputation. You couldn"t have found us if you wanted. We joked about having to take a cab to the show. But we had a good old time.
I was obsessed with meeting Elton John, who was among the other partic.i.p.ants. I had met his boyfriend, David Furnish, at soirees in Nice, where they had a house. But I had never had the honor of meeting Sir Elton, one of my heroes. I kept a lookout when we were onstage, but they herded us on and off so quickly I didn"t see anybody until we were led back onstage for the finale, which included all the partic.i.p.ants joining voices on "Good Vibrations." Then I saw Elton across the stage.
As soon as the song ended, the producers tried to usher everyone off to different sides of the stage. I saw Elton being directed to the opposite side. It was as if someone knew what I had in mind. I said to myself, "No f.u.c.king way." I tore across the stage as if I was back on the high school track team and introduced myself to Elton, who was warm, gracious, and friendly.
"My boyfriend is always going on about you," he said. "You live right near us in Nice, don"t you?"
"Yes," I said.
"Why don"t you just call us when we"re there and pop over?" he said.
A moment later, I was writing down Elton"s phone number and promising to call. Inside, I was thinking, Yeah, right, like I"m going to just pop in on Elton John. It was too bad that real life wasn"t as accommodating; I bet Elton and David were a hoot. But I didn"t have time to socialize.
In May, G.o.d Bless the Go-Go"s was finally released to the kind of warm critical reception we hoped for: a B+ from Entertainment Weekly, four stars from Blender, and a three-and-a-half-star high five from Rolling Stone, which said, "Leave a bottle of champagne out for twenty years, and you"d expect its essential bubbly brightness to be ravaged by ... let"s not fool ourselves: drugs, infighting, egotism and what have you. To the credit of the Go-Go"s, they don"t forfeit any California sparkle with this slick and listenable reunion effort."
With the alb.u.m"s release, we set off on a month of nonstop promotion the label had arranged without considering the effect of such a grueling schedule. Or maybe they had but didn"t care if we were run ragged. We did a show in Irvine, California, then a USO show in Turkey, then television in New York, in-stores, radio shows, and more. We ran from morning till night. I thought it was bulls.h.i.t. I broke down at a golf tournament in Chicago. We were only two weeks into the schedule and we had an arts fair and a chili cook-off ahead of us. I just started to sob hysterically.
It wasn"t a good vibe with the record company either. As veterans, we knew how the business operated. We also had ambitious expectations for the alb.u.m. But we heard the label was having financial problems. It wasn"t a good scene.
As a way of coping with the stress and exhaustion, I slipped back into party gear. It was good-bye gym, h.e.l.lo late nights, booze, and c.o.ke. I got on a roll where after shows I invited people up to my room without any idea of who they were. If they wanted to party, my door was open. In one Midwestern city, I had about thirty people in my suite. As I walked through, I realized that I didn"t know a single person. It was like that night after night. I continued the party wherever we went. It was the same circus in each city, just with different clowns.
When I think about it, I was courting danger. I could have been letting all sorts of crazies into my room. I probably did, in fact--and who knows, I may have wanted something bad to happen as a way of getting me out of that situation. I remember that I panicked every day when it was time for me to call home and check in with Morgan and say good morning to Duke. Sometimes I was still off my trolley. I always felt like s.h.i.t, both physically and about my ability as a mother.
How I got to there from the place I was when I shot my Playboy layout was a sad commentary on the sneaky hold of addiction. The August issue of the magazine came out at the end of July, during a short break prior to the last leg of the tour. I had been at home in France when my manager had called with an offer from Playboy. I reacted by going, Me? My parents happened to be visiting, and my mom immediately said, "It sounds great. You have to do it!"
I thought, If my mom says it"s okay, I might as well consider it. So I went to New York and met with a team from Playboy. I explained that I would pose if I could do it in the guise of a 1950s pinup. I didn"t have a problem with nudity, but I wasn"t an exhibitionist either, so for my own comfort I needed to feel like I was playing a character. I also insisted they keep the airbrushing to a minimum so I could show the real me. I was intent on making the point that you don"t have to be skinny, blond, wafer thin, have fake b.o.o.bs, or be twenty years old to be s.e.xually viable.
Morgan enjoyed the idea. He had dated Playmates before we met--but never, as I pointed out, a Miss August.
I did take the magazine up on its offer to work out with a trainer. I thought, Why not? This was an opportunity to get in incredible shape, something I would never do on my own. I also needed to clean up for my sake and Morgan"s. So I flew back and forth to work out with veteran trainer Dion Jackson. I worked my a.s.s off for a month, lost twenty pounds, and could see and feel the difference in my body when it came time to drop my robe in front of the camera.
I did the shoot in Thailand. Duke came along for the adventure, though I made sure that no one told him what I was doing there. A few years later, when he was twelve years old, he found a stack of the Playboys at home and freaked out. But until then he was blissfully unaware. I had a blast taking the photos. They put body makeup all over me, lit me perfectly, and made me confident that I was going to look my best.
When I saw the test photos, I flipped. They were gorgeous, and I got even more into the session. It was only when I was back home and heard that the same person who airbrushed Elle Macpherson and Pamela Anderson was also working on my pictures that red flags went up and I said, "Uh-oh, how is this going to look?"
Then I saw the photos and they were beautiful--but it wasn"t me. The girls in the band thought they were great. My gay friends didn"t look--or they didn"t tell me--and my straight guy friends didn"t bring it up and I didn"t ask. I didn"t ask my family for their opinion either. I thought I"d leave that alone. However, a girlfriend of mine was looking through the magazine one day and let out an envious sigh that spun me around. What? She pointed to a picture of me holding a parasol and looking over my shoulder and said, "I wish I had a b.u.t.t like that."
"I do, too," I said. "Because the one you"re looking at isn"t mine."
A month later, I was in Italy, finishing a late lunch with an Italian friend at my favorite little restaurant, when Morgan called my cell phone and informed me that America had been attacked. My voice resonated through the small restaurant as I shouted, "What?" He told me about the planes crashing into the World Trade Center, the people fleeing through the streets of New York City, and the chaos, concern, and uncertainty he was seeing and hearing on news reports.
I hung up and looked off in the distance, dazed. I filled my friend in on the details, at least what I knew, and paid the bill. I wanted to go home. On the way to the car, we stopped in a delicatessen for cheese and sausages. Then I was walking back to my parking s.p.a.ce when an older Italian man approached me and asked, "Are you an American?"
"Yes," I said.
He reached out, wrapped his arms around me, and squeezed. It was such a warm embrace I could almost feel his heartbeat. He let me go and looked in my eyes.
"I"m so sorry," he said. "I"m so sorry for what happened to your great country today."
Throughout that day and week, my European friends called and expressed their sorrow and condolences as if I knew the victims. What I realized when I woke up from the shock was that it didn"t matter that I wasn"t personally acquainted with the people who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks. In one way or another, we were all connected--and affected. I watched news reports nonstop that first day and night, but then turned the TV off after I realized it was making me sick.
In the months following that profoundly tragic and sorrow-filled time, I came down hard on myself. Why, I asked myself, was I such a mess when I had so much going for me? Why was I unable to get it together? Why were things such a struggle? Why did I feel full of gloom and despair?
Obviously I was an addict. But I wasn"t facing that reality, not when I relied on drugs and alcohol to take me away from my guilt, shame, and depression.
More conveniently, I a.s.sumed my problems stemmed from an inability to connect with the world and with life, not myself. I was so happy one day when I picked up the book The Buddha in Your Mirror: Practical Buddhism and the Search for Self. I had been reading various related books, but this one practically screamed at me to pick it up. It was about Nichiren Buddhism, the practice of chanting "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo" as a way of recharging physically, mentally, and spiritually, and also getting to enlightenment, or Buddhahood.
The book was clearly and simply written, the sentences acting like translators to make a complex idea accessible. I thought the idea of finding peace through this chant, which means "I devote myself to the mystic law of cause and effect through sound," was a beautiful idea. The author recommended chanting with other people and finding them through local sects of Soka Gakkai International, Nichiren"s global organization. I learned there was a headquarters in Santa Monica and another in New York City. I contacted both, and a woman from the Santa Monica group called me back. Vera and I had an excellent, thoughtful talk, and the next time I was in Los Angeles, I met her at a morning meeting, gongyo, at her home in West Hollywood.
Gongyos were twice-daily services where people recited the Lotus Sutra, the highest teaching of Buddha. There were twenty of us at this first one I attended. We sat in front of a gohonzon, a large mandala, beside which were placed displays of water, plants, fruit, and incense. Once the group began to chant, the room took off. It filled with an energy that sent me flying through a different dimension. I had no idea what to expect; it turned out better than I could have imagined.
Back in France, I started chanting on my own to a gongyo tape, but it wasn"t the same. Through a French chapter of Soka Gakkai, I was referred to a woman in Valbonne who organized Soka Gakkai meetings at her house. She turned out to be from San Francisco. We bonded over the difficulty of practicing in French. Little by little, though, I proved myself adept enough to receive my own gohonzon.
Despite my twice-a-day chants, I ended up more torn apart than enlightened. All that time sitting still and thinking seemed to cause the s.h.i.t in my head to line up like soldiers in front of a review panel. During chants, I asked to be freed from my obsession to use. I pleaded for guidance. I wanted answers. Most of all I wanted release and relief from the dark alleys and self-destructive corridors I walked day in and day out as if I was held captive in a maze.
At the end of the day, chanting forced me to sit with myself and face my feelings, my sense of failure and regrets, my guilt and shame, my fears and insecurity. None of the stuff that other people saw--the rock star, the lucky marriage, the exotic life in a foreign country--none of that mattered. None of it was even relevant when I sat face-to-face with myself. Never mind posing for Playboy. People talk about the naked truth. The person I saw when chanting was the real me, the naked truth. I was f.u.c.ked-up, unhappy, and seriously depressed.
Maybe that was enlightenment.
If it was, I was in trouble.
twenty-five.
I PLEAD INSANITY.
DESPITE MY best efforts, the inside of my head was not a pretty place. Even while touring with the Go-Go"s in February and March, and then on my own after the group went on a yearlong hiatus as Kathy waited to give birth to her first child in October, I chanted twice a day and said my recitations, always with the same hope that such religious devotion to the mystic sound would free me of my addictions and deliver me into a normal life. It didn"t.
I was spiraling deeper into negativity when I met a drug dealer in a Belgian restaurant, a meeting that put my life in danger, though I didn"t know it at the time. I had made a brief trip to Belgium, and while lunching with a friend I asked if she knew where I could get drugs. She nodded toward a waiter, then got up from the table, walked across the room, and gave him a tap on the arm as she walked past. They met in the back by the bathrooms, spoke briefly, and she told me everything was taken care of.
After dinner, my friend and I walked to a nearby bar and a few minutes later the waiter came in and sat at our table. A few minutes after that, I had some c.o.ke and a new contact. I used him a number of times over the next few months. Then he started to blackmail me.
It was early summer 2003, and I was in Los Angeles, rehearsing for Go-Go"s dates in August, when I received a message from him. What drug dealers call their clients? It doesn"t work that way. I listened to the message and turned ice cold. He wanted money from me, a pretty good sum, and he threatened to go public with my drug use if I didn"t give him what he wanted.
Obviously something was going on with him. I didn"t want to know. I just wanted to be able to get rid of this problem. But I didn"t know how. I had no idea what to do.
I thought about telling Morgan, but I chickened out after considering all of the confessions I would have to make and the repercussions. Instead I did nothing. I appeared on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and the British version of h.e.l.l"s Kitchen (the show"s star, chef Gordon Ramsay, made me mop the floor), and then I returned to France until I had to go on the road with the Go-Go"s.
Once the monthlong tour began at the end of July in Redding, California, I immediately slipped into that place I got to only on the road, when I could drink and use and isolate myself from the responsibilities and concerns of real life, including the drug dealer trying to extort money from me, which I thought about from time to time. It always upset me. It was one more secret I kept that weighed me down.
In mid-August, the Go-Go"s played the Summer Sonic Festival in Tokyo, and I was boozing and using heavily. We opened for Green Day, and thanks to our friendship with Billie Joe Armstrong, who had cowritten "Unforgiven" on G.o.d Bless the Go-Go"s, they rolled out the red carpet for us. Literally. They had a red carpet to the side of the stage, with our own little tent stocked with coolers of booze and beer. A sign said GO-GO"S ONLY. And I took full advantage of it.
The Green Day guys had us over to their hotel several times for champagne and caviar. We ended our nights drinking at two or three in the morning. One night they took us to the hippest rock-and-roll bar in Osaka and I ended up dancing on top of the bar to "Immigrant Song." The next night, Green Day performed the Led Zeppelin cla.s.sic onstage and dedicated it to me.
I went out drinking afterward with the guys and followed Tre Cool, Mike Dirnt, and a couple of Green Day roadies back to Tre"s hotel room for more of the same. From what I heard through the grapevine later on, they told people they were amazed the Go-Go"s could outdrink them. I saw them a couple years later, after I had been sober for a while, and they said, "You look really good. And different."
"I got some sleep," I said.
They thought I was a bada.s.s, hard-partying rocker, which they said was even cooler since I was a chick. They had no idea I was an addict whose life was out of control.
I had left home in bad shape, and I returned in worse. Worn-out and drugged out, I was in a depression that had me feeling empty, worthless, hopeless, and like I had nothing: no energy, no thoughts, no anything. I thought about taking my life. It seemed like a solution, even a resolution to many problems. I had hurt too many people. I thought things might be better for me and everyone else if I wasn"t around.
I considered various ways, some painless, some inexplicably gruesome, like taking a handful of pills or veering my car off one of the steep mountain roads. I figured Morgan might be able to deal with it, but each time I was stopped when I thought of the pain I would cause my son. Even in the depths of my sickness, I couldn"t be that selfish and heartless.
I was stuck in that state of mind until September, when Morgan had enough of the depression and drama. One day after Duke, now twelve and old enough to know what was what, went to school, Morgan confronted me, insisting I tell him what was going on. He was angry and scared--angry at whatever I was doing and the life I was wasting, and scared that he and Duke might lose me.
That was the trigger. I couldn"t pretend or hide any longer. Nor did I want to. Crying, I told him everything. I was mortified, ashamed, and sorry. I wished that I had told him sooner. I wished that none of it had ever happened.
I asked Morgan to hold me. I needed to feel safe and protected. If he had said no, I don"t know what I would have done next. But Morgan took me in his arms and held me for a long, long time. Only G.o.d knows why, but he had an amazing ability to love me.
"This is all drugs and alcohol," he said. "It"s not the real you. You have a problem. You need treatment. And if you don"t deal with it, I"m going to tell you this right now, our marriage isn"t going to survive."