by Teddy Wayne
“But when things go bad for us, it really makes them happier about their own lives,” I said. “And when they make fun of my mother, it makes them feel better about how they raise their own normal kids. So even when they think they love you for not being like a normal person, underneath it they actually hate you, because that’s the part that hates themselves for not being special, and for knowing they couldn’t handle the pressure of being famous anyway.”
This shut the crowd up, and even the host. I was afraid to say anything else. It was tense until Tyler said, “I paid him to say that.” Everyone cheered, and he took his wallet out and handed me a twenty-dollar bill and stuffed it into my track sweater pocket, which made them cheer even louder. I don’t even own a wallet. Tyler wasn’t only a better performer, he was a triple-threat entertainer: singing, dancing, and personality, which meant he could act. And I got the sense he didn’t even care about it all that much, but he could turn it on at any moment and think fast and always win over the audience, and he knew it. Me, I needed dialogue coaching and an allied interviewer and a receptive crowd, and even if I won them over the last twenty times in a row, I wasn’t sure I could do it on the twenty-first.
The host thanked us both and plugged my concert again, and the show was over. The band kicked in, and he pretended to be talking to us, but he was mouthing words, and when the producer said we were clear, he walked offstage without saying good-bye. It was only a job to him, too, and it ended the second his show was over. It must be nice not to have to kiss anyone’s ass.
Someone led me and Tyler backstage, and Jane was waiting right there. She congratulated both of us and waited till he walked down the hall and around the corner to his private greenroom.
“That was a really bad answer,” she said. “But it’s not your fault. They explicitly promised me there’d be nothing like that. I’m going to yell at someone.” The shadow of a body was on the wall by the corner Tyler had walked around. I got all hot, even though the studio was like fifty-five degrees, thinking about him listening to Jane criticize me post-performance. His manager wouldn’t do that.
She told me to eat in the greenroom and she’d be over soon. The guests who were on earlier had already left the greenroom, so it was only me in there with the whole buffet to myself. I wondered if Jane had even fully heard what I’d said on the show. She probably agreed with me, too, but didn’t want to admit it, since she used to be one of those regular people who worshiped celebrities, and even though she is one now herself, she still does, at least the ones who are more famous than her.
In a couple minutes Tyler came in. “Hey,” he said. “The spread in my greenroom was shitty. Mind if I crash yours?” I said that was cool. He scooped up nearly everything on the buffet line.
Once he sat down, I said, “Thanks.” He nodded as he stuffed his face. We didn’t need to say any more. Musicians are like athletes. They all know who the MVP is.
“Starving,” he said between bites. “You not allowed to eat before a show, either?”
“Sort of.”
“I get sixteen hundred calories a day. You’re lucky. My metabolism is slow as hell. But I’m on break now, except for this. So, fuck it.”
I picked at some salad. I didn’t want Jane coming in and catching me scarfing down crap and thinking this was why I was less successful than Tyler, even though he was the one eating like an elephant. She did come in a minute later and said how great he was, and told me she was still talking to the producer and she’d be back in a few.
Tyler tossed a piece of sushi into his mouth like it was popcorn. “Your mom’s always been your manager?”
“Yeah.”
“Who produces you?”
“We’ve had a couple. Jane always thinks they didn’t do a good enough job and finds someone new.”
“You should work with my guy. I can set it up.” I thanked him, and he added, “Then maybe I’ll produce you.”
“You produce?”
“Not yet,” he said. “But the plan is to start in a couple years.”
“You’re still going to sing, right?”
He shrugged his shoulders as he poured barbecue sauce over his filet mignon. For such a small guy, he could seriously pack it away.
“A little, to keep up a profile,” he said. “But performing is for amateurs. The people with real power are always behind the scenes. Talent gets chewed up and used. Better to be the one chewing.” He yanked off a huge chunk of the filet mignon with his teeth and gnashed it loudly as a joke.
It made sense. You didn’t want to be the cow. Because even if you were filet mignon, the best meat, you got chewed up. You didn’t really want to be the human who ate the cow, either, since he was just like another farm animal. You wanted to be the human who sold the cow to that guy. And compared to Tyler, I wasn’t even filet mignon. I was the roast beef sandwich you ate when you were trapped in your airplane seat. Plus I wasn’t the kind of person who could ever chew anyone else up. Tyler wouldn’t have thought that when he was eleven, either. He blew up when he was thirteen, so he didn’t have exactly the same career trajectory, but it was close. Maybe Jane would let me call him when we got back to L.A. I’d tell her it was to ask him questions about his career, and I really would ask him about it. But he also knew what it was like to be someone like us. Zack was a different type of musician, and he didn’t seem interested in talking to me anymore. Lisa Pinto was an actress first, and she definitely wasn’t interested in talking to me. Tyler was like me, the same kind of meat. Just a better cut.
CHAPTER 21
New York (Second Day)
I was so amped up for the Garden show that I woke up way early, even before Jane. I grabbed the USA Today outside my door to kill time and to see if they mentioned anything about us or my show.
I had zero real estate, but there was an interview with Zack. The intro explained how he’d been kicked off our tour and out of the label after the Memphis incident:
Q: What are the Latchkeys’ plans now?
A: We are in the process of inking a deal with a small label, and believe we will be well taken care of in our new home, which respects our independence and provides artistic, not merely financial, support. And lower-back support.
Do you regret signing with a major label?
Well, they did help put us on the map, which resulted in interviews in august publications like your own, but on their terms, both musically and presentation-wise. Complete control.
If you could do it again, would you have toured with Jonny Valentine?
That was a decision made for us, so we went along with it. But you can’t regret your actions, even when they’re regrettable. Hey, how about that: the world’s worst needlepoint sampler.
What’s Jonny like offstage?
He’s a good kid.
And his mother, Jane Valentine?
I would prefer to talk about the Latchkeys and our exciting musical future.
You have nothing to say about the situation?
This is my final statement on the matter: It’s an environment I wouldn’t subject my own child to. Not that I have a child born out of wedlock I’ve been keeping in hiding in Raleigh, North Carolina, for seven years, whom I see only on layovers. Wait a minute, is this why you interviewed me, simply to ask about these items of lurid interest to the entire nation, and not because you like my limited body of work beloved by a small coterie of music consumers? God, I feel so used.
If Zack liked me so much, and if it was an environment he wouldn’t raise his own child in, how come he hung up so quickly and didn’t ask if I wanted to hang out in L.A.? He pretended to be so concerned about me, but he just rode me and my fan base to develop the Latchkeys’ brand. He could say it was a decision made by the label, but I’m sure the band loved it. They’d never sell that many seats on their own. And Dana was right. He tried so hard to be clever.
I bet the interviewer didn’t get the reference to “Complete Control,” though. I’d have to find a way to listen to t
hat song again sometime.
The phone rang as I read a preview of the baseball season and their fantasy-baseball picks. If there was a fantasy-pop-star draft, Tyler would go first overall, and I’d probably drop to the third round now.
I picked up the phone and said, “Hi, Jane.”
“Hi, Jonny. This is Stacy Palter, from creative.”
“Oh, hi,” I said. This was the first time anyone from the label had ever called me on tour without going through Jane.
“I hope I didn’t wake you? It’s five-thirty here, so I figured you’d be up by now.”
“I’m up. Did you want to talk to Jane? She’s in room 1812.”
I was hoping she’d say, “Eighteen twelve, good year,” because even I knew there was a war then, but she said, “No, I actually wanted to talk to you.” She paused like she was about to drop bad news. “I saw the show last night. Your performance was great. And your interview was fine until that part at the end.”
“Uh-huh.” I was glad she didn’t mention my fuckup on “Guys vs. Girls.” Even professional talent evaluators don’t know what’s going on a lot of times.
“We don’t want to tell you how to conduct yourself in interviews,” she said. That’s how they talked at the label about business decisions no one wanted to take responsibility for. They always said we, even if it was only one person in the room or on the phone. “But we’d love for you to be more professional in the future. This has been a rocky tour, and we’ve had to devote a lot of PR resources to deflection. We want to be promoting you, not defending you from gaffes.”
“Uh-huh,” I said again, but I was thinking, How about you go onstage four nights a week for a month and a half, and on top of that do a bunch of interviews including with a TV host who’s making fun of you in front of a national audience, and everyone’s attacking your mother, and your best friends keep disappearing, and see if you can avoid any gaffes.
“And if this continues, it’s something we’ll have to take into account when your contract sunsets.”
Oh. All the times Jane said our career really was in jeopardy, I didn’t totally believe her. But if Stacy was calling me at 5:30 in the morning L.A. time, this was serious. Now I had to do really good tonight, to rack up a ton of live-stream sales, first so that my career trajectory pointed up again, and also so that Stacy would apologize, and when they wanted to re-up my contract, I could say, “Sorry, I didn’t feel you respected my independence, I want to go with a label that provides artistic, not merely financial, support.” Or even that I was through with this cutthroat industry and going back to school, or going to Australia where I could really have an adventure, and it was too bad they threw away millions in future revenue. Except they’d just find someone else. Besides freaks like MJ and Tyler Beats, even top-shelf talent can be replaced.
“I understand,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
“Great!” she said. “I’m so happy we could have this dialogue. And there’s no need to talk to your mom about this. We just wanted to reach out to you.”
Right, I thought after we hung up. You know Jane would be seriously pissed you didn’t consult with her, and you went over her head to put a real scare into me. Still, though, I wanted to handle it on my own. And I guess Jane agreed with Stacy on this. Maybe she really would have been promoted at her marketing firm if she hadn’t had me.
If I kept this up, it wouldn’t be long before they’d have me and Lisa Pinto do a fake breakup, and since she’d be higher up the label’s food chain, they’d make it seem like she ended it. Her statement to the press would be like, “While I have decided that I will no longer ‘be his girl today,’ I remain dear friends with Jonathan and wish him the best in his professional and social lives.” Only they wouldn’t do it just yet, not with her album dropping and me getting tons of publicity lately, even if it was all negative.
Now I was even more wound up about my concert, but I was afraid to use the glossy again because Jane had access to my hotel room and she’d sit me down like they do on sitcoms and say, “We need to have a talk about the birds and bees,” and I’d have to say something like, “Jane, I have a song called ‘This Bird Will Always Bee There for You,’ I get it.” She wouldn’t be the one to have the dialogue with me, though. She’d ask Nadine to do it. Or maybe Walter.
Jane gave me a personal wake-up call at nine. “Make hay while the sun shines,” she said. “You have an estimated twenty-three thousand, three hundred and thirty-five days left on earth. Make this one worth it.”
The way she said it, I could tell she was thinking, This is the biggest day of your career, you’re about to be watched by tens of thousands of paying customers worldwide, but she was trying to sound like, Hey, time to get up, it’s just a regular morning.
She gave me the itinerary for the day. She was going to Madison Square Garden early to run through some logistical issues, but she wanted me to get a workout in with Walter without pushing myself too much, and to play Zenon and do whatever I wanted to help me rest and relax before sound check. I didn’t tell her that there was no way I could have relaxed normally, but especially not after Stacy’s call, plus I didn’t know if my father was showing up and how I’d even meet him if he did.
Me and Walter hit the executive hotel gym that was reserved for celebrities and super-rich people. That’s the good thing about New York, they have everything set up separately already for celebrities and rich people. They have it like that in L.A., too, but so many people are celebrities in L.A. it’s harder to divide them, so instead it’s more like keeping the A-listers from the B-listers and down. Jane had to remind Walter to run me through my cross-training cardio routine, though she didn’t say what we were all thinking, which is that Rog usually does it. I know all the routines by heart anyway.
Walter wanted to shower in the executive locker room instead of his hotel room since he didn’t like the water pressure there, and there was security for the gym so it was okay for me to be alone for a couple minutes. I waited there for him all sweaty because I’m never ever supposed to shower in a public place. A computer terminal for guests was near the door. Now at least I’d know if my father was coming, and if he couldn’t afford it, I could ask Walter for help. Walter would do it. He owed me still.
My pulse jumped like it always did when I saw there was an email from him from two days ago.
At your invitation I got a ticket for the concert. How do I meet you?
He left his cell number. So he really was coming. If I asked Walter to call him, he’d know something was up and would tell Jane because he was afraid of getting fired again. And even if I used my room phone and reached him, I’d have to get away from Jane somehow and he’d have to convince security that Jonny Valentine had asked to see him privately, and they’d probably be like, Certainly, sir, please get in line behind all the other child predators who want to molest him. I wrote
I am figuring it out. I can’t check this again before tonight.
At lunch I ate soup and nothing else that would make me throw up and drank tons of Throat Coat with honey. Even though I was near the end of the game, I didn’t play Zenon like Jane said I should, since I wanted to stretch more. I did vocal warm-ups on the way to the Garden the most carefully I’d done them in a long time. Walter didn’t even talk to me in the car like he usually does to calm me down. He could see how serious I looked. I might not have the raw and refined talents of Tyler Beats, but no one can get into the Jonny Zone like I can.
When we pulled up to the Garden for sound check there was a crowd of security guys waiting for me. That’s one thing New York is worse for than L.A., everyone still has to go through the same streets and entrances. But the car we took wasn’t flashy and it was early enough in the day that no one really noticed me, except having five huge security guys with headsets huddled around me made people stop and stare on the street since they knew someone important must be around, and that made more people stare. Sometimes I think if I walked around normally by myself f
or a day in regular clothes and my hair not in The Jonny, no one would pay any attention.
I looked for my father in case he was hanging around outside the Garden, but there were a million guys who could’ve been him from a distance, and besides, obviously he wasn’t, and even if he was, Jane was with me.
The star/talent room was the best one I’d had on my entire tour. It was the size of our entire living room at home, and there was a big-screen TV set up with an eight-speaker sound system.
I was on Level 100 of Zenon, so I could’ve even finished the game before the concert started, but I also didn’t want to distract myself when I was in the Jonny Zone. Jane came in and told me I had an hour to kill and I should just relax. Her telling me to relax so much made me not relaxed. Someday before a concert she should tell me to get super-nervous, and then I’d probably feel totally relaxed. She was wound up, too, because I could tell she wasn’t looking up presale numbers today on purpose. They had to be low still, or else Stacy wouldn’t have cared about my late-show interview. The label doesn’t mind what you do as long as you’re moving product.
So I walked around the Garden tunnels with Walter, and barely anyone was in them yet. There were a lot of tunnels, but with maps everywhere telling you where you were so you didn’t get lost. Walter didn’t talk while we walked. In the middle we found a side entrance opening to a path to the stage, and I poked my head out for a second to take it in. It was the same size as any regular arena, but it seemed a lot bigger. Empty preshow arenas always look huge, though. In my head I ran through the set list for the night at first, but then I tuned out and didn’t think of anything besides my breathing, except every few minutes my brain would be like, I wonder if I’ll see my father tonight, or if he’s actually coming, or if it’s all a prank, or what I’ll say if I see him, and I’d notice I wasn’t breathing too good. I kind of wished we could keep walking around like that in the tunnels forever. Most of the time on tour, I went in cars from hotels to venues to the bus. I never got to explore.
