Suck and Blow

by John Popper

  Bobby’s move to New Orleans was the equivalent of me moving to McDonaldland where Mayor McCheese was in charge, I would have to put up extra security because the Hamburglar was on the loose again, and Officer Big Mac would come by and visit.

  The last gig Bobby played with us was with his childhood hero, Phil Lesh, and Bobby couldn’t really appreciate it because he kept comparing Phil to some of the people he had met in New Orleans. Bobby started hanging out with this negative crowd down there. At that time all the musicians would go to New Orleans, thinking it was the music mecca, but then they couldn’t find steady work because there were so many knowledgeable, brilliant players. In a scene like that, especially where substances are involved and people are scratching to survive, things can turn bitter. And I think he was sucked in by people who envied his situation. As a result, he didn’t get to appreciate his situation as much.

  I remember visiting him once there, and his place had people in it all night. There was never any privacy, never any quiet time. Good enough people, but a scene like that really wasn’t a rest.

  Bobby and I were both self-aware, but we both decided we weren’t supposed to live very long. I had it in my head that thirty-seven was the year I was going to die. A lot of the rock stars we had grown up on had died young, and here I was arguably the best harp player in the world, and this band had gotten everything it had dreamed of. So there had to be some horrible thing coming. We looked at it very fatalistically.

  The problem with thinking fatalistically is that it can prevent you from trying to take part in your fate. And then it’s not really fate; it’s something you’ve affected because of your view of your fate.

  After Bobby died, I was looking at my Jimi Hendrix poster and thinking about Bobby and Jimi, how they lived life so black and white—“Do what’s good, and good things will come back to you. And screw the annoying parts.” But then Felicia said to me that the real courage is that life usually isn’t a black or white thing; it’s actually gray. It isn’t an adventurous or heroic decision; it’s cooperation or compromise to get the things you need, and that’s actually the true heroism.

  We both had these views that we were supposed to die young—“Think about how lucky we are; think about the lives we’ve lived. It’s okay if we don’t live long as long as we’ve lived honestly.” And I think Felicia’s point is that it wasn’t as honest as we might think. It was easier, but it wasn’t honest. And truthfully I’m not sure there is any life that doesn’t have hypocrisy. You can’t really live honestly in this universe. You can live as honestly as you can—I love the Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, you can keep it as one hundred as you can—but sooner or later, when you’re on the toilet, it’s just not pretty.

  Existence requires some sort of coming to terms with the fact that you’re a blop of molecules spinning around on a planet, trying to ascribe meaning to things, and the very attempt of putting language together is hypocritical.

  Bobby and I were working on the presumption that our lives were so blessed that we couldn’t live very long, that we had done too many amazing things. But as I wrote in “Pretty Angry,” I basically blinked. I realized that I don’t want to die. It was the first time I knew that for a fact, and it took the loss of my friend to show me that death is right here. That was after having an angioplasty and after the bike wreck.

  I spent the nineties thinking I might live and I might die, and that became a regular existence for me. Then when you actually lose somebody, it drives home the stakes of that and what it means to people.

  “Pretty Angry (for J. Sheehan)”

  I wish I drank tequila.

  I wish I stayed up late.

  But lately when the sandman comes,

  You know I just can’t wait.

  No lately I can’t wait.

  And we packed up all your boxes.

  It’s all been hauled away.

  I never stare at walls so bare

  ’Cause something always stays.

  Yeah, something of you stays.

  And I wanna shout from my guitar,

  Come out, come out wherever you are.

  The joke is over, open up your eyes.

  A heart like yours it never dies.

  And I found your keys behind your chair.

  I still can see you sitting there.

  This isn’t funny, don’t fool around.

  You let me go, you let me down.

  And I guess I’m still pretty angry

  And I don’t wanna be.

  I don’t know which was the bigger waste of time,

  Missing you or wishing instead it was me.

  I wish I walked on water,

  Pulling rabbits from my sleeve,

  Guessing cards and saving everyone.

  Oh, I wish I still believed.

  Oh, I wish that I believed.

  That I could also channel voices,

  That I’ve endured the burning blade,

  That I could make some of your choices.

  I wish I weren’t afraid

  Of those choices that you made,

  Like I could give you what you need.

  So ally ally oxen free.

  The game is up and I give in.

  So show yourself so that you can win.

  Come claim your prize and I don’t care.

  I still can see you standing there.

  How you could leave, how you could lie.

  You cut me off in midreply.

  And I guess I’m still pretty angry

  And I don’t wanna be.

  I don’t know which was the bigger waste of time,

  Missing you or wishing instead it was me.

  The will to win, the urge to race,

  I still can see it on your face.

  Thought I’d keep up but only crashed.

  I wasn’t built to move that fast.

  Thought I could match you stride for stride,

  But I was on the other side

  And holding on to the safety rail

  With knuckles white complexion pale.

  A cloud of dust and you were gone.

  Thought I would catch you later on.

  I limped behind your race was won.

  But were you racing or on the run?

  How you enjoyed, you loved to drive.

  And I’m destroyed

  Cause I’m alive.

  Cause I’m alive.

  And I guess I’m still pretty angry

  And I don’t wanna be.

  I don’t know which was the bigger waste of time,

  Missing you or wishing instead it was me.

  I guess I’m still pretty angry

  I don’t wanna be.

  I don’t know which was the bigger waste of time,

  Missing you.

  24

  I WANT TO BE BRAVE

  Zygote was ten days from release when I found out Bobby died.

  Kurt Loder had come to my house to shoot some guns, and this was supposed to be part of a half-hour special about my new record. It turned into a five-minute piece, Is There Life After Blues Traveler? They had a shot of me brushing a bug out of my face that they slowed and converted to black and white so it looked like I was having a breakdown. Entertainment Tonight did the same thing.

  I had booked all of this press for a huge release. In our A&M contract I was allowed to record a solo record and they were obligated to pay for it. They were supposed to eat the loss, but they used the fact that Bobby died as a technicality to wriggle out of it, and in the process I was screwed out of $170,000.

  Tom Whalley was the head of the record label. He came out to our Zygote band’s gig at the House of Blues LA to say, “I want you to know we’re killing your album, but have a good show.”

  You’d think that’s as bad as it could get, that that’s the final thrust of the sword you could do to a band. But he had one last spike to shove up my ass. The next day he called after having seen us play live for the first time and said, “I didn’t know you g
uys were good. Fuck, I could have really helped you too.” And then he said, “Do you know what you should have done with the song ‘Home’?” He used his old producer chops and solved the chorus for me over the phone just to prove that I alone could make your record better but I didn’t know you were worth anything. Sorry we killed you, oh well.

  I suddenly had to take all the canceled Blues Traveler gigs and work my band just to pay the bills. I wound up quite in the hole after the record company decided to withdraw their support because they could do so legally after our bass player died.

  Blues Traveler was supposed to play in Reno for three to five thousand people for New Year’s Eve, and in order to help pay my bills, that gig got transferred to me for the John Popper Zygote tour. I had a horrible flu and had to fight with band to get them to come and do it because they knew the project was ending and three hundred people showed up. That’s how I rang in the new century.

  There was a sense of disorientation. I wasn’t altogether sure what would come next.

  It was Chan and his wife, Serena, who were instrumental in finding the gastric bypass operation for me. Chan’s point was, “I’m not going to lose another friend by doing nothing.”

  I had become resigned to the idea that I just couldn’t address my weight. I thought it was hopeless, and truthfully, if I’d come to that point five years earlier, it would have been hopeless. The technology to do a gastric bypass was brand new and usually involved a very invasive surgery in which they literally sawed you open and tied a knot in your stomach. But now there was a new procedure in which they could do it laparoscopically, so the risk was a lot lower. There was one guy in America, a doctor from Holland practicing in New York, who was licensed to perform the new procedure laparoscopically.

  I was willing to do this operation because I thought it wouldn’t work, my friend was dead, and I was ready to die. I had that angioplasty a month before Bobby died, and I had a real feeling the end was coming. As I met with the doctors, I discovered there was an entire subculture of really obese people who were just ready to die. The doctors kept trying to talk me out of my fatalistic attitude. I had made my peace and figured it was meant to be. But then they’d tell me, “No, that’s insane. You should do something about it. You should save your life.”

  On the day of the surgery I learned there was a 10 percent chance I might not be able to sing again because of the operation and the way they had to go down my throat. To their minds that wasn’t a reckless decision as long as I was trying to live. As they were wheeling me down the hall to begin the surgery, Chan was there and said, “I’ve got your twenty dollars.” He’d owed me twenty dollars for about a year and chose that moment to pay me back. So he put a twenty on my belly, and as they wheeled me away, I was gripping Chandler’s twenty dollars.

  Apparently I have this ability to endure being cut open, because the surgery seemed to work.

  They tell you that you can never eat beef again, so I’d had all these farewell meals, but it turned out I could eat beef and all these other things, but just in very small amounts and not right away. The first thing you do is you vomit up all your food. If I had anything with sugar, I immediately shit myself. Your body undergoes this incredible shock. It’s like you have a baby’s stomach.

  I thought if I smoked pot, that would treat the nausea, but I found that I was just stoned and throwing up. I eventually learned a Pavlovian response to food. I can remember the first time somebody brought in a plate of homemade cookies and I felt this aversion to them and wondered, Where did that come from? It was because I had vomited up so many cookies trying to sneak them into my new stomach. I also learned to feel nauseous when I was too full, which is something I should have figured out when I was a kid. But what I learned instead at age nine was that if I just kept on eating, that nauseous feeling would go away.

  Then I had to survive the scars and everything else that came from the operation. I lost an average of five pounds per week over ten months. It was quite an adventure, and quite a depressing year.

  As I said, having that stent in my heart and then having my best friend die really drove home the fact that I’m going to die, so I was ready for that. But what was weird is that when I didn’t die, I wasn’t quite prepared for that because then I had to deal with all the emotional aspects of not being fat anymore. Because if a girl rejected me, I could tell myself, It’s because I’m fat—she doesn’t see the real me.

  But then when I was no longer fat, to be rejected and have it just be because she doesn’t like me—that’s something most people deal with when they’re fifteen, but I was dealing with it at thirty-two. It was that kind of a catch-up where I had to let myself be an adolescent in a way but I could also never truly be an adolescent now because I’m an adult. So it was a really weird time.

  I got laid even in my fattest days, but I had to sing a lot for it. This was a real recalibration.

  When I was obese I didn’t care how I looked, and there was a freedom to that, a liberation. There’s an incredible power when everyone knows you’ve walked into the room just by the size of you. They’re very aware you’re there. People get out of your way because they can’t quite figure you out. But they also make a point to listen to you—“I don’t know what his deal is. Let’s try to find out.” Then when you “look like everyone else”—you know, a human shape—people are trying to tell you what they’re thinking or trying to assimilate you into what they’re thinking.

  The band used to tell me that after I lost the weight, I would be in the room and they didn’t notice me. It was very creepy to them. It was like when I was four hundred pounds, I was wearing a bell and they just sort of knew where I was.

  I also decided to ditch the harmonica belt at that point. When I lost the weight my balance changed. I was light on my feet and felt like darting around. With a harmonica belt you don’t dart as much. When I was fatter I would just plant my feet and lumber along, so what did it matter if I had some more things on me? When my body image was a platform, like an aircraft carrier, I didn’t mind holding a lot of things, but after I lost the weight and felt like a person, I wondered, Why am I wearing this ridiculous harness?

  I was hiding behind this belt, and maybe that was the intention all along. I had this hulking body, so maybe I should hide it or put something on to augment it and give it some kind of strangeness. It was certainly useful—I learned to play off the vest—but it wasn’t that big an adjustment to bring a case full of harps and work out of it. That adjustment was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

  After the angioplasty I was afraid of having one single cigarette because I thought I would die. But I went back to smoking because everybody was eating cheeseburgers from Carl’s Jr. at a band rehearsal in San Diego, and they forgot my sandwich, so somebody ran out to the truck and brought me a shitty turkey sandwich they’d picked up at a gas station. I looked at the sandwich, looked at them, smelled the Carl’s Jr., said, “Fuck you guys,” got the keys, and drove off to Carl’s Jr. to get myself a big, juicy cheeseburger. I took a big, juicy, defiant bite out of it and then vomited all over the place. So I said, “Fuck it, give me the cigarettes,” and I haven’t stopped smoking since.

  Still, some part of me thinks like a little kid. Chan used to say, “Life is about steaks and beer,” and I’d tell him, “Sometimes it’s about Twinkies and grape juice.”

  I think the most sophisticated I get is barbeque, because there is barbeque that is better than McDonald’s, by far. If you’ve got some real Kansas City barbeque on your hands, then screw the McRib sandwich. But now, with a gastric bypass, I need six hours to eat barbecue.

  To eat a rack of ribs I need to be naked in my bed. I can be in my underwear—it’s not like I’m going to get sexual with the ribs—I just need to be unencumbered by clothing and to be in a bed. I will play a Ribfest, where all day I’m smelling it, will demand a rack of ribs I’ve been drooling over, eat half a rib, and I’m done.

  So I gotta get the ribs back
to my hotel, get in my underwear, and turn on the TV. Then I’ll pass out from all that fat and sugar and then wake up forty-five minutes later and say, “Oh look, ribs.” So I’ll start eating the ribs again and pass out. This goes on for hours. I’m like a lion at a kill, because then a slab of ribs becomes an all-day thing. In the nineties that would have been a footnote in an all-day meal that involved many, many other foods. And really, if I eat a rack of ribs, I’m done for the day if I can get through a whole rack. I don’t do that every day or, literally, I’ll never be able to leave my room.

  What is weird is that after the gastric bypass, I have had so many really obese people come up to me and say, “I wasn’t going to do it until I saw that you did it.” And then I did feel a certain responsibility as a human being to at least talk about it and share my experience with it as others had done for me.

  There was a guy in his fifties; he was 450 pounds and said, “I’ve come into this waiting room twenty times, and I always chicken out and leave.” I talked him into staying and at least discussing bypass with a doctor. And I know what the fear is, that you think it won’t work, that you’ve always held out hope—“I can always get a gastric bypass”—and then you discover you’re not a candidate or it won’t work and you realize you’re doomed.

  But the cool part is that it does work. Weight loss is still manageable, and gastric bypass is available. And I know if someone hears that and they’re 700 pounds, they’ll say, “Bullshit. I’m way too far gone.” And yes, 700 pounds is way the fuck down the road, but you can still climb out of that. Seven hundred pounds takes twice as long as what I did. I went from 436 to 238 in ten months, and believe me, I was throwing up. (I gained about 45 back over the next three years, and whatever you gain back over after those three years stays that way.)

  It was at this time that I got my one and only tattoo to remind myself to go out and not be a shut-in because that felt like normal behavior to me. That was my comfortable instinct, but I realized that what I needed to do was go out and meet people, hang out with them, and do what was uncomfortable. It was the beginning of a new sociability for me. So I put “I Want To Be Brave” on my chest backward so when I get up in the morning to take a leak I’ll look in the mirror, see that mantra, and say, “Oh yeah, that’s right.” And as long as I remember to do that, my day works out. You have to do the thing you’re not used to and leave your comfort zone. And if I remember that I want to be brave, I’m going to try things that don’t feel comfortable right away but eventually they become comfortable.