From This Moment On

by Shania Twain

  Then there were in-store autograph signings and special appearances, such as attending the Grammy Awards. Nothing I’d ever done up to then could have prepared me for the workload ahead: ten to fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. I was booked solid six months in advance and would barely have time to come up for air for the next two and a half years, because no sooner would I finish promoting my latest hit than the next one would be released, and the whole cycle would rev up all over again for another three months or so. Now multiply that times eight.

  A typical day’s work itinerary would look something like this, if we assume the stretch begins in New York City:

  4:00 a.m. Wake up!

  4:15 a.m. Depart hotel for Good Morning America

  4:30 a.m. Begin hair and makeup

  5:00 a.m. Call time for sound check

  5:30 a.m. Sound check

  6:00 a.m. Continue hair, makeup, and wardrobe; have a morning juice!

  7:30 a.m. Performance!

  8:00 a.m. Depart GMA for hotel

  8:15 a.m. Arrive hotel; beauty/bathroom break!

  8:30 a.m. Beauty touch-ups

  8:45 a.m. Media interview “Round Up” at hotel

  12:00 p.m. LUNCH BREAK

  12:30 p.m. Depart hotel for meeting with video director

  2:00 p.m. Depart meeting for radio interview at station

  2:20 p.m. Arrive radio station

  3:00 p.m. Depart radio station for hotel

  3:15 p.m. Arrive hotel; beauty/bathroom break!

  3:30 p.m. Journalist interview at hotel

  4:30 p.m. Meet with sick children/fans

  5:30 p.m. Wardrobe meeting for Grammy outfit

  6:30 p.m. Prep for dinner with radio programmers

  7:00 p.m. Depart hotel for dinner with radio programmers

  7:30 p.m. Arrive dinner

  10:00 p.m. Depart dinner for hotel

  10:30 p.m. Arrive hotel—DONE FOR DAY!!

  By now, I had a personal assistant, a super girl named Sheri Fobare, who had three times my energy. Sheri used to prepare my daily itineraries. I knew things were spinning out of control when I noticed that she had astutely started to insert “pee break” in the schedule, because otherwise the opportunity would not present itself, as everything was such a rush, and I’d be sitting in the car ride to the next destination with my knees pressed together. “Snack break” soon got added, too. Life got much more civilized after that. Thanks, Sheri!

  I know, I know: it sounds ridiculous, how could anyone forget to eat and go pee? In the beginning stages of your career, when all the things you have dreamed of are finally starting to happen, you feel compelled not to let a single opportunity slip through your fingers by taking it for granted. We had all sorts of important bookings coming up: appearances on Leno, The Morning Show, and the Country Music Awards, a cover shoot for Rolling Stone magazine, my next music video. Because magazines and TV programs have long lead times, in some cases I’d agreed to do them months earlier, before I had any idea of what my limits were. Okay, so which of these great privileges do you cancel in order to buy yourself a little downtime? You don’t, or at least I didn’t. Each was essential to the success of the album. Also, I didn’t want to come off as a prima donna and seem ungrateful. My jam-packed itinerary was a new artist’s wet dream.

  I just carried on like the Energizer Bunny, even long after I’d established myself. Looking back, I see now that I was exhausted for a good part of twelve years. My weight dropped, and I often became seriously lethargic from malnutrition and fatigue. One time, a journalist conducting an interview noticed me slurring my words and practically passing out. “Are you okay?” he asked hesitantly. “No,” I replied, eyes glazed, I wasn’t okay and really didn’t want to be there. It was the only time I’d ever admitted to not being okay professionally when someone asked me. I would never have wanted to come across as being unprofessional by letting the façade down. I needed to appear “fine” at all times while in the public eye, as though it was a responsibility, an obligation to the privilege itself. He probably thought I had been drinking or was on something. The fact was, not only did I not drink alcohol or take drugs, I didn’t even drink coffee or Coca-Cola. Maybe I should have—drunk coffee or Coke, I mean—in order to survive the grueling schedule with more ease. Once, while shooting a video in London at three o’clock in the morning, I broke down and blurted out, “That’s it! I’ve had enough!” Kim Godreau, Sheri’s successor as my assistant, assumed the worst; maybe I was about to pull a page out of the diva playbook and storm off the set.

  “I can’t take it anymore! I’m—I’m having a Coke!” She laughed with relief. To me, needing any sort of substance to keep going betrayed weakness on my part. I had always gotten by on natural energy or somehow managed to run on empty, but it was cold and late, and we had been on location since dawn. Kim kindly fetched me my Coke, and the kick from the caffeine and sugar carried me through.

  And beyond, too. From the video shoot, which didn’t end until daybreak, we headed to the airport to catch a plane to who knows where. For the next few hours, I talked a mile a minute, spewing ideas faster than Kim could write them down. Kim, who is still a close friend all these years later, was exhausted herself from two fifteen-hour days in a row and just wanted to drop off to sleep. At last, she fixed me with a stern expression. “Woody,” she snapped, “no more Coke for you.” We both burst out laughing—me probably a bit maniacally—at the absurdity of it all.

  Just a thought: good thing that no snoopy reporter was within earshot, or else the tabloids would probably have been shrieking the news about Shania Twain’s out-of-control Coke habit.

  As my success began to build, I started to experience being recognized in public. I remember the first time I was at an airport and could sense people hovering around me. No one approached; everyone stood at a bit of a distance, but whispering and staring. I felt as if I was on display, and it was uncomfortable, as I was there for the same reason they were: to take a plane. This had never happened to me before, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. I’m sure you can imagine how awkward it would feel if perfect strangers started staring at you in public, especially if this was all new to you. You’d probably wonder, Did I put my skirt on inside out? What’s everyone looking at? I decided to get up and walk to a pay phone around the corner, figuring that if I stayed out of sight—and, for good measure, pretended to be engrossed in a phone conversation—no one would bother me. It worked.

  Although I gradually learned to deal better with my newfound celebrity, it comes with certain aspects that I cannot imagine anyone finding tolerable. As I said, I like talking to people. But there is an inherent imbalance in the relationship between stars and their public. Because of all the magazines and TV programs—cripes, even a whole network—devoted to chronicling the lives of those in the public eye, fans sometimes come to know more intimate details about their favorite performers than they know about members of their own families. Depending on the source, the fact that much of it is libelously untrue often gets overlooked.

  But this worship of celebrities can fabricate an artificial sense of familiarity on the part of fans. A fan might approach a celebrity in public feeling very much like the celebrity is an old friend, and that can be very flattering. But the celebrity knows absolutely nothing about the person, making for an unnatural, one-sided connection. And because people may view you as someone with whom they feel a kinship, they can be demanding or just plain pissed off when you don’t treat them with equal familiarity.

  After a while, you start to feel as if everyone wants something from you, even if it’s nothing more than an autograph, and you begin to question people’s motives even when their motives are completely innocent. I’m writing this bit to explain my personal point of view as someone who at that stage of my career was new to celebrity and public attention. I’m not sharing it with you to complain about being a celebrity, but to shed light on the realities of being famous for those who may not understand it,
or whose only exposure to it is through the media and not personal testimony.

  I am friendly to strangers and would be whether or not I was famous, but as for anyone, appropriate boundaries are necessary. It’s not always easy to be objective, but I’ll give you an example of one attempt to transition to my new fame as Shania Twain from life as plain old Eilleen. I’m at an airport and a man approaches me at an uncomfortably close distance and starts asking a string of questions: Am I traveling alone? What time is my flight? Where am I going? He even wanted to know who I was meeting. A little too forward, don’t you think? But I try to be gracious, while answering as vaguely as I can; believe me, I take no pleasure in offending fans, or anyone, for that matter.

  The guy had one more question for me.

  “So,” he says, suddenly full of swagger, “what’s your name?”

  What’s my name? I couldn’t believe it. I realized then that this guy wasn’t looking for an autograph or a picture, he was trying to pick me up! He didn’t have a clue as to who I was.

  The episode upset me anyway. It disturbed me that I’d let the fact that I was now a public figure override my natural instinct to get away from this person. It made me feel vulnerable and wonder, Don’t I have the same right as everybody else to decide for myself whether or not I wish to respond to a stranger who engages me in conversation? The fact that I had utterly misread the situation also made me start to question my own judgment. I was in the middle of the transition period between the before and the after of fame. Throughout the rest of 1995, as album sales surpassed one million, two million, even three million, I would find myself having to squirm out of far tighter spots than that.

  One time, in upstate New York, my sister Carrie and I hit the mall for a bit of shopping with her nine-month-old son, Dylan. We started off okay, zipping in and out of a few stores, but as more shoppers began gathering around us, our pace slowed until we were trapped in a crowd and unable to budge. Baby Dylan, looking up at the mass of people from his stroller, was getting antsy with all the fuss. For that matter, so were Carrie and I; this was still new for both of us, and we really did not know what to do.

  A pen materialized, and I began signing autographs and smiling through it, but the more I signed, the more the size of the crowd just mushroomed until, finally, mall security came along to break it up. As they escorted us out to my car in the parking lot, I could feel whatever normalcy remained in my life slipping away. A simple outing to a mall with my sister and nephew was no longer simple; would it even be possible anymore?

  To this day, I make every effort to be gracious, patient, and polite to anyone who treats me with the same respect. I do my best to live up to the public’s expectations, but of course it’s impossible to please everyone, all the time.

  Before the promotional tour for The Woman in Me was over, I had to hire a security staff for being out in public. Maybe if you are born to royalty, you get used to that, but for me it was a very hard adjustment. It’s pretty impressive, in an adrenaline rush kind of way, the first time you’re part of it—like a paparazzi car chase, for example; you feel like you’re starring in a James Bond spy thriller. The tension can get hairy and scary; after all, look what happened to Princess Diana. Things can get out of hand pretty fast. I can’t imagine being president or the Queen of England. All I can say is that everyone at the beginning of her public career is faced with a transition from not famous to famous, which for some celebrities can come seemingly overnight. It’s an adjustment and gets very little sympathy or understanding from the press or the public. Whatever that means to you; I’m just sharing my perspective based on my initial, youthful experience of having a public profile.

  You know what’s ironic? The whole purpose of making music is to connect with people, and yet the more your popularity grows, the less you are able to interact with your audience any closer than from the stage and through your records. Fame can be isolating. I know it was for me for a very long time.

  When I’m making a public appearance, I consider it a pleasure to set aside time for the fans. If not for them, entertainers simply would not have a profession. But it can be frustrating when a line is crossed. Once, I was out at a restaurant, minding my own business, and a woman approached me to ask if I would mind wishing her friend a happy fortieth birthday. They were sitting in a private room nearby, and I obliged, following behind the lady. When she reached the doorway to the birthday room ahead of me, she held her hand behind her, signaling for me to stop, and then bellowed into the room, “Hey, everybody, look what I found!” This spoke volumes to me about what I truly represented to this person. I was an object, not a person. I was an “it,” not a “who.” This is the reality a lot of the time when you are a display item, as is often the case for a celebrity. If you are someone looking to be famous, make no mistake, this is all a part of that reality. Of course, today I personally accept that this comes with the territory and just go with the flow as much as the situation allows me to.

  Earlier in my career, however, while still adjusting to this type of treatment, my way of coping was to walk with my head down, avoiding people’s gazes. Because once you established eye contact, it was as if you had extended an invitation for someone to intrude upon your personal space. I also began to walk really, really fast, everywhere. I used to laugh watching the security guys in the cars ahead of me jump out practically before they’d come to a full stop in order to get a head start. Otherwise, I’d be halfway down the street, with these big bodies panting to keep up. What a pain I must have been for them!

  Most of my communication was happening through things like interviews and work meetings, so all I ever talked about was career related. This was soul destroying, as conversation rarely went on to subjects not related to my professional life, and I never got to talk about the inspiration I drew from exploring and experiencing new things, like vacationing somewhere of my dreams and meeting new people who were interested in the real me and not the “Shania” me. After a while, you start to develop two very different existences. The private world of me, Eilleen, is safe for her to be herself, to swear, to drink too much, to wear the wrong clothes, to sing out of tune, to be late, to behave regretfully—the list of imperfections that I’m allowed to display without being judged or criticized goes on and on. As Shania, however, I’ve spent years being overly attentive to how people perceived me, at all times. I’m less concerned in this regard now than I was even five years ago, however. Not that I would say I don’t care what people think; in fact, I’m less likely to pose nude for Playboy today than ever before, especially now that gravity is having its way with me. But I am more relaxed about criticism and sense I’m less affected by the things I cannot control.

  Trying so hard to keep up with what I expected from Shania, I began retreating from people and keeping them at arm’s length. This can get to become such a habit that it spills over into your personal life. I found myself feeling increasingly distant from childhood friends and even from my family. On the road, it was next to impossible to find a block of uninterrupted time to chat on the phone, and although I would invite friends and family to meet up with me, they could not just drop their jobs and families to come hang out. Not that we got to do all that much hanging out on the rare occasions when they could get away; mostly, they got to watch me work. It was wonderful for me, as I felt buoyed by their presence and moral support, but less so for them.

  In a way, the people I was living with day in and day out—Sheri and Kim and publicist Patty Lou Andrews—traveled with me the most and became a surrogate family. Road siblings, I called them. We went through so much together and bonded quickly, kind of like a platoon of soldiers who’d served together and come home with war stories that only they can fully understand. Mutt’s love was in the studio, not on the road, and we spent long stretches of weeks and sometimes months apart, as my schedule was relentless, and unless he came to me, we simply didn’t connect.

  I had moments of sheer desperation over these years,
and although I never contemplated suicide, I was looking for an escape. I even wished I would catch the next bad flu going around, so that I could get a forced rest, or for the album suddenly to lose steam so it would be time to get off the road and pass my hours with my guitar just writing in peace with a few friends around the fire. I hoped for doom because a break was no longer optional. Rest was a selfish request that compromised the success of my work, and so many people were contributing to what I was doing: from my record company and my own staff to Mutt and every person related to the project who was relying on me to carry the torch until it burned out. I felt as if it was all riding on me. It was clear that when I stopped, the whole machine stopped.

  I didn’t drink alcohol at all, took no drugs, barely even a painkiller, let alone Ambien or other soothing helpers. I didn’t turn to food to comfort myself, nor did I have a therapist. I was alone in this mess with seemingly no way out. I was meant to be a soldier and just stick it out in this prison of exhausting loneliness.

  I remember speaking to Luke on the phone from a Las Vegas hotel room. It was a large suite and had huge floor-to-ceiling windows that spanned the width of the living room. I was way up somewhere on who knows what floor towering over what seemed to be everything else. Although it’s hard for me to imagine my thought process in the moment back then, this was what I was experiencing. The living room was spacious, and as I was talking to Luke, listening with one-half of my brain and contemplating with the other, it occurred to me that all I had to do was move the coffee table out of the way, and I’d have a good, clear run at the window with enough force to actually break through and jump. It wasn’t anything Luke was saying that brought this on, of course, as Luke was always very compassionate and sensitive to me personally. I may not have even told Luke more than that I was tired and could use more rest, but I wouldn’t have expressed the true depth of my desperation that night. I was too strong, or maybe weak, depending on how you look at it, to burden anyone with my pain. It would have been more painful to do that than to jump through the window, in my mind. I was experiencing amazing success, and my thinking was that I didn’t have the right to complain about it.