Suck and Blow

by John Popper

  I would start to meet girls through being in a band, but all the while I was secretly in love with Felicia. I would formulate love affairs in my mind, and rather than disturb the bubble, I would keep it a secret. She was the source of songs like “Run-Around.” It was me trying to confront her with my love for her well after she had a boyfriend. The worst part was that through it all I suspected she just didn’t feel the same way that I did.

  Carolina was this passionate Italian girl. She adored me and I loved her, but I wasn’t in love with her that way. I remember her punching me square in the face because we just had sex and she said, “I want you to know I will wait for you.” And I said, “That’s good, because I don’t know . . .” What a thing to say to somebody. She was like, “What did you say?” I tried to explain myself rationally, but then the “fuck yous” started, and she full-on punched me in the face and gave me a bloody nose. So I told her to go upstairs and I waited downstairs and then drove her to her train. That’s what that song “Carolina Blues” is about.

  I also wrote “Yours” about Carolina because she was so passionate. A few years earlier I saw that Beethoven movie Immortal Beloved and wanted to go write a song that was passionate. Looking back, Carolina was very good to me, but I kind of treated her like shit, although she ended up treating herself like shit too—she loved to be a pariah.

  Around the time we were starting to get on David Letterman I had a brief fling with Claire, who had been dating Dave Graham as well Eric Schenkman and, I believe, Dave Precheur for a second. We had developed a strong friendship, and I finally got the nerve to act on it at Wetlands after they aired our appearance on Letterman.

  At the moment of our very first kiss Tom Gruber, who worked for Dave Graham, walked up and started to kiss the both of us, which kind of ruined it. (Tom was really hard-working and dedicated but almost too dedicated.) Perhaps that awkward beginning was a foreshadowing. We lasted about three months. She was one of my very first sexual experiences along with Carolina and the unnamed crazy girl.

  I had so many coping mechanisms during this period that kept me out of actual, healthy relationships. For instance, I employed faux intimacy, where I would share so much about myself that I would scare off women. Or I would have these feelings that were pretty much a bubble in my head—I would fall in love with people from afar and hold these huge crushes on them without actually living it.

  After I broke up with Sarah the bubble needed to be replaced with a new goddess upon the pedestal. This would gradually become Felicia, who played violin and joined Blues Band as our earnest but terrible bassist. She was a friend of mine, someone to whom I could piss and moan about my unrequited love for Sarah, and she was really brilliant, and I think she liked the attention, certainly the friendship. I would write songs about her, and along with the songs about Sarah, these became the bulk of our work in the early days.

  Felicia became my very best friend, my confessor, and, eventually, a crush that would become a blindingly powerful love in my own mind. She was utterly brilliant and was quite a guide for me in the early days, as she seemed to have no end of advice for me and a sense of wanting to take care of me. I even found the fact that we were not acting like we were attracted to each other as respectfully keeping the secret of my unrequited love. That’s the beauty of such a ruse: by not acting on it, you are making it that much more real, because it still exists as a silhouette’s darkness does against the light.

  She was always willing to accompany me to events like the Grammys, and in her mind she was going somewhere with her friend, but in my mind I was thinking, Finally I get to take Felicia to the Grammys or Finally I get to take Felicia to the Howard Stern movie opening.

  Walking down that red carpet at the Private Parts premiere, Felicia became terrified by the screaming throngs and wanted us to get through the red carpet as quickly as possible. I think that was the chief difference between us—I needed the crowd in a way she could never understand.

  I couldn’t help but notice a wave of sympathy from Felicia as I got more and more obese. I think there was a point where she was beginning to humor me, not knowing what else to do. And she did value the friendship we had and still does to this day. But at some point I had to confront her, and it did not go well.

  Felicia inspired most of the Blues Traveler love songs from Save His Soul through Bridge. This also was true of any song in Zygote, where “Once You Wake Up” was my coming to terms with Felicia not being in love with me. I found that the most honest songs that I wrote during that period were ones where I expressed and explored unrequited love, and I think Felicia was the perfect model for that.

  Eventually as a result of Felicia’s rejection of me as a love interest and my corresponding rejection of Carolina as a love interest, I would come to have a catharsis. I decided that I wanted to have these experiences and feelings for real and that the only way to do that was therapy. It was about developing my own life. After twelve years, all I knew of my identity was Blues Traveler. I had to develop my own identity, and it was in there somewhere. I had a lot of work to do in establishing that identity outside of the band, and the shrink was helpful in my doing that work. They don’t do the work for you; they’re more like line judges while you work it out. They keep you honest. So in order to get to a place where I could have love, I had to start with me.

  This is what led me to my Zygote album and also a brief but positive relationship with Tiffany, a really cool girl I met at shows—she was with me when I had my chest pains, although we didn’t last much longer than that. Tiffany represented life after big crushes and unrequited bubbles, and though the relationship was short—it didn’t go six months—at least it was real, probably the most real relationship I’d had to that point.

  Then after Bobby died and I lost the weight, it was a very different life for me. I couldn’t recognize the guy I used to be. I see pictures even now and remember consciously being there, but I can’t to this day imagine what it felt like to have three of my friends help me out of a chair or to discover a barbeque sauce stain on a part of my belly I couldn’t even see. It’s an amazing thing your brain does—selective amnesia, I guess—but I started to see myself more as a sexual being and, therefore, other people could too.

  That’s when I met Delana. Chan’s wife, Serena, knew her; she was Serena’s sister’s nanny. Delana was a breath of fresh air, about thirteen years younger than me and was there at the time when I was remaking myself, so it was easy for me to embrace something new, as she came to represent. We had a four-year relationship, the longest one I’ve ever had. She was the one who led me to move from Pennsylvania to Washington State in 2004; she had a connection there. I proposed to her on the last day we were at my house in Quakertown and totally caught her by surprise. I faked her out because she thought I was going to propose the day before. Here’s a life lesson: never let a girl drive just after you give her an engagement ring because she’ll stare at it, and you’ll drive off the road.

  Ultimately it was too destructive a relationship. We had a lot of fun at first, and I still care a great deal about her to this day, but Delana was really allergic to alcohol, and when Bobby left she became my new codependent. At times she would put herself in dangerous situations, which would terrorize people. And now that I couldn’t use food the way I once did, I discovered drugs and alcohol.

  A year after we moved she broke up with me. I think also the fact that she needed a live body in her bed to cope with what she was dealing with from her past was incredibly important and sort of a deal-breaker. She just became too lonely. We were six months from getting married. She helped me find a house and then moved into my guesthouse for a while, so it was amicable. I think she wanted to prove to her mom that she could live a conventional life, but her version was to marry a rock star, so it really wasn’t that thought out.

  After we broke up I did an Air Force Reserves tour overseas with the New England Patriots cheerleaders, and I instantly fell in love with Amber. Not much ha
ppened there, although she used me to get out of a relationship. We became friends, but there were always a few guys after her; eventually it became clear she was stringing me along. Still, in the first five days I knew her I wrote five songs. There was something inspiring about her. Perhaps it was her noncommittal nature or perhaps it was the mystery of hoping she’d be tamed if I just wrote one more song. I haven’t heard much from Amber; I hope she’s well. Her father was a New England Patriot, her husband was a New England Patriot, and if she has a son who grows up to be a New England Patriot, then I think she’ll have pulled the hat trick.

  It was through Amber that I met Kristen. She was another cheerleader and became a friend on whose shoulder I would cry about Amber. We were friends for a year and half and then began a real relationship that lasted a year. That fizzled out because I was gone a lot and because her dad was only four or five years older than me. She was sixteen years younger than me, and I think that messed with her head. That one really broke my heart; it was a tough one.

  I think that after Kristen I didn’t feel so much like a kid anymore. With Felicia it was more in my head, and with Delana, Kristen, and even Amber, this was me going out in the world and getting my heart broken. When you’re fat and you get your heart broken you can say, “Oh that was because I was fat.” When you don’t have that excuse anymore it becomes about you. That’s something even a fifteen-year-old learns, but for me it was much later. I think I got tougher or at the very least learned that real relationships are harder than a storybook thing. I was thirty-eight years old, and it was weird that it took me so long to realize that. I became more jaded at least in the interest of my own survival.

  For the next four years I was doing my best to play the field. I met some interesting women, like Joy. I knew I liked Joy on the first night we met when I fell down a flight of stairs while we were holding hands, and instead of letting go of my hand, she chose to fall down the stairs with me. From that point we cared about each other, although the romantic aspect didn’t last very long. She’s still a very good friend to this day.

  My next real shot at a relationship came in late 2011 with Caitlin. We met after a gig in a Vermont bar, and a few buttery nipple shots later we had a kiss and decided to see where it would lead. We had a good time, but she had her own life in Vermont and couldn’t leave, and I just didn’t have it in me to move to Vermont—part of that old and jaded thing—but I value that relationship.

  About a year after Caitlin and I broke up I would meet Rachel and again try living with someone. She needed a place to stay, so I had her come live with me. She was cool, and it was kind of a light thing, where we had an open arrangement.

  It was during this period that I had an incident with a Vegas prostitute that made the news after she roofied me and stole my Rolex. My manager had some party, and I drank way too much whiskey and then went back to my hotel, where I got it in my head that I wanted to go to the bar and get a drink, but I’m not quite sure what really happened next. I remember a young woman coming up to me in the bar; I have some sense of being in an elevator headed up to my room. The next thing I knew I was in my underwear, not having done anything, and my wallet was empty and my watch was gone. I wasn’t looking to buy a prostitute, although my arrangement with Rachel would have allowed it. I eventually pieced together that I must have been roofied. I went to the police but never got my watch back, although it was insured, so that turned out okay.

  I have had a few encounters with prostitutes over the years, and they have not gone especially well. The sexiest part of a woman is her enthusiasm, and that’s what you lose with a prostitute.

  On our very first tour of Europe in 1992, when we pulled into Amsterdam, everybody was talking about how they were going to get one of those women in the windows. In response, I went on and on about how I would never treat a woman that way, that I could never purchase a woman for money, and I ended up being the only one who went—everyone else chickened out.

  I wandered over, and on the way I stopped in at one of those coffee shops and had three space cakes. As they were kicking in, I saw this lovely Austrian woman in a window. I lingered too long, and she said, “That’ll be 25 guilders if you want to come in.” I thought, Why not? and 50 guilders later, I left. From there I went to a live sex show, where I witnessed sights I’d never even imagined, including the longest penis I’d ever seen—it curled around like a monkey’s tail.

  Then, as I was walking back to where I thought the hotel was located, I noticed the woman in the window I had just been with. So I gave her a casual wave, being very sophisticated, and she stepped out of her window, ran to the door, and informed me that I had left my passport behind and that she’d given it to the police.

  She told me how to get to the police station, but I got completely lost until I finally stumbled into one and said to the officer behind the desk, “Excuse me, I hope you’ll bear with me because I’m high on one of your many legally obtainable hash cakes, but I was enjoying the company of one of your legally obtainable prostitutes, and she said that I left my passport.” The cop instantly ordered me to get the hell out of his building. That’s when I realized that just because these things were legal in Amsterdam, they weren’t necessarily socially acceptable to everyone.

  The fun part was the next day, when we had a gig at 5 p.m. in Belgium. So first I had to walk back to my hotel, which I kept thinking was right around the corner because I was really high on the legally obtainable space cakes, but it was actually on the other side of town, so it was a long walk back.

  Everything opened at noon and closed at three and was scattered all over town: the US consulate, a passport-worthy photographer, and a police station. I had to go to one place to report the theft, go to the next place and get a form, and then go to the photographer before circling back with the picture. It was very close, but we did make into Belgium in time.

  I think I finally realized I’m really not a prostitute guy years ago in LA when I ordered an escort service, and this woman came to the door and asked me, “What turns you on?” I made the classic mistake of saying what nonprostitute people say, what a normal healthy person would say about someone he’s having sex with, which is: “What turns me on is really what turns you on.” So oddly I spent $800 talking until 4 a.m., but that’s really not why I called her. I just didn’t have the nerve to tell her that.

  A number of years later I was in Vegas and was single. I had mentioned to one of my managers that I wasn’t good at getting prostitutes, so without my knowledge, they tried to help me out. I met this girl who was hanging out, and she seemed to be paying attention to me, so I bought her breakfast. She asked if her friend could come along with us, and I said, “Sure,” and I just hung out with them. The next day the band told me that they had hired her for me, but I just didn’t realize it. That was lost on me, and really that’s me with a prostitute.

  Another time a girl I was dating hired an escort to dance for us in our room. The dancer was not there to sleep with me, but she seemed to like me and took me aside. So I looked back at the girl I was dating, and she said, “Go for it.” I was pretty drunk, so I said, “Ohhh, okay.” It turned out she was just testing me. But, as I later explained to her, I just don’t take tests well.

  As for the roofie incident in Vegas, shortly after I reported it the story was all over the news. I couldn’t quite figure that out until I realized that the first guy I spoke with and said, “Oh yeah, I got roofied” was the person who was the head of the Las Vegas press, and suddenly it was all over the wire. I didn’t really mind because it’s good to come clean about things like that. What you don’t want to do is have a secret life. I think a secret life is much worse.

  When Rachel had moved in, to keep things on a pseudo-independent level, we agreed that she would primarily live in the guest house when I was gone. This way she could bring all of her stuff and I didn’t have to move any of my stuff.

  When I began dating Jordan, who is now my wife and the mother of my
daughter, before it got very serious—and it did get serious fast—we felt it only fair to tell Rachel, and that was a painful experience.

  At the outset I had promised Rachel that if she moved to Washington, I would guarantee her a place to stay for at least a year. Some people thought my home life was a little strange because Rachel kept living in my guesthouse after we broke up but I stopped charging her rent. She had wanted to pay rent when we were together so she could remain independent, but after we broke up I said, “You just take care of the house and my truck while I’m off on tour or in the recording studio.”

  After Rachel found a place to live and met her current boyfriend, the timing seemed to work fairly well for Jordan to come move in with me. I’m still friends with Rachel and wish her well too. I’ve been pretty happy in that I’ve been able to remain friends with most of the women I have been serious about. I wish them well (and offer apologies to any who weren’t mentioned here).

  I do think that these experiences have had a tangible impact on my songwriting. One of the things that I think I can contribute is dealing with how bumpy life is and how hard it can be and then expressing how we find strength from love. I do have some catchy rhymes, but I think that’s the meat of it.

  I don’t think a song can really work when all it does is express how everything in life is just great. The exception, of course, is that song from the Lego Movie, and who sings that? Toys sing that.

  I think Chris Barron is one of the best songwriters around. He can come up with something catchy and brilliant in the same song. He can write you something about dishwashing detergent that will make you think, and that’s kind of fucked up but it’s a good thing. His song “How Could You Want Him (When You Know You Could Have Me?)” is one of the best confessions in rock and roll—to say that for all of my parading and confidence, I’m really expressing this pain that you rejected me. His favorite line is “Saint Christopher lives on the end of a quill,” and that’s a good line. He loves the pretty stuff, but it’s the confession that’s the thing. All of it builds to where he is forced to say it out loud—“How could you want him when you know you could have me?” The singer still can’t believe it. The version they did on the record is pretty good—they added a little more guitar and put thought into it, and it’s still a great song—but I’ll always prefer the spare confessional that I heard in the take on the demo.