This “flooding of my parched soul” brings on songs. And I’m suddenly scrambling to write them all down. As far as songwriting goes for me, it never rains, but it pours. The songs I write are, to varying degrees, about my spiritual surrender. “It’s Always Something” is the first song I finish, and it’s an acceptance that no matter how great things are, shit will generally follow and, thankfully, vice versa. I mention my sweet old man for the first time in a long time, and his firm and abiding belief in me is finally put into a song:
When I was a kid, the teachers and the priests said,
“Why you let him run around like that?”
My father said, “If the boy wants to play the guitar, I say we let him”
Through the hard years he was my rock when I just could not win.
So it goes, you know my father died just before my leaky ship came in.
The years-long break from touring has enabled me to put some distance between myself and the problem of my sex habit. (When I was seventeen, I don’t think I could have envisioned putting the words “sex habit” and “problem” in the same sentence.) It has been a healthy break in that respect, and I’m hoping that when I do start touring again, I’ll be able to keep my focus and not jump back into the nightmare of fucking every girl I can (again, the seventeen-year-old me wouldn’t understand this dilemma). But the prospect of touring again sometimes feels like an abyss ready to suck me back into it. “Prayer” is a song I write and it is a prayer I send.
And now I feel all I can do is not enough
My Rome is burning and I’m standing at the deep abyss
But every passion started with an act of love
And every act of love started with a single kiss
Father, father, your gift was this world of light
And I’ve betrayed you with a single Judas kiss
I’ve been my own executioner, but it’s not just me anymore
Now I send a prayer to heaven for the chance to be
A better man than the man I see—
I make a commitment to be that better man.
Barbara and I are doing well, and I’m writing love songs about her again. She jokes that “Ordinary Girl” is a kind of backhanded compliment because it professes my love and need for her deep, nurturing side. She wonders where all the songs about our hot sex went! You just can’t please some people …
As I finish writing more songs, I become eager to record again. I have to smile sometimes at my occasionally indomitable spirit. In the face of all the crap I’ve been through, my inner seven-year-old starts pogoing every time we get the chance to make a record. Go figure. I call Bill Drescher, who recorded most of my ’80s songs with me, and tell him I want to make an album and that I’ll pay for it, then turn around and sell it to a label. The music business is changing faster than record companies can fire their overpaid staff, and the internet is opening up some new possibilities—none of which have actually made anyone any money yet, but there’s hope—and as things are looking better for me financially, due mainly to High Tide and some adroit investing, I’m not as worried as I might be about taking on the cost of funding my own record.
Jack White, my longtime friend and drummer, is doing very well too, thank you. Katey Sagal is at the height of her Married … with Children fame when, in 1993, she and Jack meet and marry. Jack now has a bigger house than I do. I’m happy for him and his relationship, which has produced two beautiful kids. Jack has a studio in the garage of his new home and offers it to us to cut the record. Everything goes great. Really, really great. For two weeks. Then Jack and I butt heads. It’s happened before, of course, but it was mostly over girls and the blood was left on the hotel walls. Now, the face-off is at his home, and it’s about territorial pissing. Jack feels that we’re abusing the studio he has kindly offered to us by finishing too late at night and not cleaning up after ourselves. I tell him I can’t make a record if I have a curfew every night and that, yes, we are cleaning up after ourselves and if he doesn’t like it he can take a flying fuck at the moon. We confront each other around the pool. (Maybe there’s something about mid-sized bodies of water and things coming to a head in my life.)
The repercussions of us duking it out are more significant now. We are “men” with families. We should behave with more maturity. So we tell each other, “It’s very clear you’re an asshole, man,” and I bail to another studio to finish the record. My new main man/dog Gomer is there for every session, just as Ronnie was almost twenty years before. When the record is finished, I name it Karma because “Prayer” is too Western-sounding and I want the title to announce that the songs are about aspects of my emerging spirituality. (See, we really do think these things through.) And once the record has found a home at a new independent label called Platinum, who do you think calls me up to get a band together and go on the road? Ladies and gentlemen … Jack White. Our friendship still stands.
The bond that I’ve found with other musicians is the strongest I’ve ever known. We are all still fifteen-year-olds at heart, committed to the path of “girls, guitars, and glory.” I am a musician in my soul. We are cursed/blessed with this love of making and playing music, and it’s a worthwhile journey, even though we’ve always been considered one step below hookers in social standing. At least we get our hookers for free, motherfucker.
You may have guessed by now that I’m a bit of an obsessive personality, so it should come as no surprise that I’ve been a “seminar junkie” since attending Lifespring in 1979. The newest and biggest one on the radar right now is from Anthony Robbins, so I head off to an Anthony Robbins Fire-Walking Weekend to try to get a new and better handle on myself. I’m often recognized and occasionally cornered at these types of events, but I also enjoy reconnecting with people once we get past the celebrity thing. And I find it both scary and exhilarating to open myself up in a public forum, where we’re all encouraged to talk about our fears, doubts, and self-destructive issues. As I’ve said, these “self-help” symposiums are all based on the precepts Napoleon Hill first put forward in his 1937 book Think and Grow Rich … oh, and before that, the Bible, right. I’m reminded again of stuff that I already knew but have forgotten.
Seminars like this always push participants to “write things down” and read and reread books that speak to us because, at the root of all this, we’re just dumbshit, eat/sleep/fuck protozoa that have only recently crawled out of the muck at the edge of a stagnant pond. We need to hear about the true direction and path we should be on again, again, and a-frigging-gain. Of course, if God wants to send me an e-mail that says, “I am proud of the battle you wage,” I would be as happy as a bivalve mollusk. But so far I haven’t received anything that clear and direct. Though the hawks were pretty cool. Thanks for that.
After this seminar I toss away the Prozac … so far, so good; I’m feeling strong. Now it’s meditation vs. medication. What a difference one little letter makes. I’m meditating fairly regularly now (with no down-time for forced naps), and I come to understand why the Darkness was making me go unconscious when I tried this before: It’s because medi- tation is the only time I am truly at peace and present in the moment. And with no future and no past, there is nothing for Mr. D to fuck with me about. And he disappears completely. He ceases to exist. He buggers off! Of course, as soon as I finish my meditation, he’s sitting there right next to me picking at his scabs impatiently, but I can now make him vanish anytime I choose. This is startling news and something I was not expecting from meditation. In fact, I don’t know what I was expecting. I assumed it would take the place of prayer in my life, but it’s something else altogether. When I meditate correctly and reverently, it’s true peace, I’m not asking/begging for something, fearing, doubting, looking for an answer, wondering if I’m heard. I’m not seeking. I just am. And because Mr. D disappears now when I meditate, he loses the power to put me to sleep.
I still vacillate up and down, high and low, in and out of feeling good, now that I’ve released
the steady foot on the gas pedal that is Prozac, and I still pray for those I love and (will it never end?) things I want! I understand God as less a literal figure than a presence, an essence. Okay, it’s something I’m still working on. A birthday card from Tim Pierce to me once read, “May God grant you some of your mountainous wants.” Dude. Is it that obvious?
The album Karma is released. Jack and I put a touring band together and we hit the road. It’s been years since I’ve toured in any real way, and I’m anxious before the first gig. We’re playing a new venue in Las Vegas because it puts us close to home. The date is sold out, but I think to myself, How much of this audience is just wanting to see whether or not I weigh 350 pounds now, or to confirm that I have indeed not died from a drug overdose? I don’t know what to expect. I have so many questions: How will I feel when I’m onstage? Do I still “have it” or has “it” taken a hike? Will it feel natural to me, playing and connecting with an audience again, or will it feel forced after so much time away? Do I even have the stamina for a ninety-minute show? How will the audience react? Will they sit fairly subdued, fondly recollecting the old songs, or will they still have the energy I remember? I expect they are probably wondering some of these very same things.
We hit the stage and the audience immediately explodes. As far as I can see, no one sits down again, either. I’m standing onstage after years away from touring, and the seven-year-old has at last been let out of his room. But I don’t know how the crowd will react to the new music, and as the band launches into “It’s Always Something,” I’m watching the audience and listening for signs that they aren’t getting it. At the second verse I sing the line: “My father said, ‘If the boy wants to play the guitar I say we let him …’” and a roar goes up from the crowd. I look around to see if something has happened onstage that I might have missed, but the audience is still looking my way. I realize that they’ve just shouted their affirmation of my dad’s words. I’m warmed and strengthened by the crowd’s vocal support and their obvious agreement with my dad’s belief in his young son’s choice of a career, despite the lack of support from anyone else. My champion gets a nod … and, it seems, so do I.
I accidentally smash one of my $3,000 guitars during a hot minute, but I’m okay with it. I have faced a moment of truth and proved to myself that my passion for playing is still alive and well. My guitar tech, who was with us through the ’80s, says laughingly, “It’s like I went to sleep in 1980, woke up, and everything’s still the same.” It’s a relief, and the seven-year-old in me is beside himself. He’s missed this intensely. But offstage, away from the happy frenzy of performing, I have to face the sexual temptations that lurk out here on the road. They wear short skirts and they smell good.
Love is spiritual, sex is biological. But Stein always insisted that there was something spiritual I was looking for with all the fucking around. He said (true to Jungian philosophy) that there was a god behind my sexual stuff. He would talk about Eros and that I needed to honor him. At one point I tried to tell myself that this meant he thought I needed to get laid more. He meant I had to direct my sexual energy toward the god and not the women I was nailing in the name of Eros; to use sublimation and direct whatever powerful sexual energy Eros was representing to a more constructive pursuit—for example, writing songs with that passion, which I guess has happened from time to time when I was denied the sexual gratification I wanted (thank you, Gary’s stained-glass-making girl).
We also delved into the fact that I was seeking validation from women: that I’m okay, meaning desirable. There’s a lot of that in my drive to succeed as well. If I could do this, screw her, reach that, then it proved I was worthy, right? Well, that only lasted as long as the distraction that came with seeking lasts. Once I was no longer distracted, then I was left with the hard fact that the girl wasn’t screwing me, she was screwing an idea, a fantasy projection, this famous guy: RS. And that didn’t contribute to my self-worth in any way. Hence the whole collapse by the poolside that morning when I realized that all the career achievements didn’t translate to me being worth anything more.
The sexual issue had also become a habit just because I’d been doing it for so long. I never felt better from it, or higher, or less depressed, I just did it because it was “what I did.” It’s a little like what drinking is for confirmed alcoholics—only more fun (sorry, I didn’t just say that). It also booby-trapped me when I came home to Barbara, the one person who truly loves me for me. The person who fell in love with me, was okay with the man I was then, and with whom I had such great sex before I had any fame and fortune. The one who sticks with me through losing our house, my depression, and my infidelities, and the one who bears our children. In short, the one person who could truly give me the validation I seek. Stein had said I’d possibly blocked B with my single-minded pursuit of success and my ego-seeking screwing around. And that she is the one true soul who is in my corner and could help me transform and develop the self-worth I’m so desperate to find.
He wondered also if it was true (and I had always had an inkling of this) that perhaps I had hurt my life and career by having too much sex. He meant sex unconnected to love. You know, just mind-distracting screwing. He likened it, in its destructive potential, to drinking too much alcohol or taking too many drugs. Overindulgence in sex could be just as harmful to my spirit and sense of self-worth as any other obsession. I think he was onto something. Again I miss the connection we had and the knowledge and understanding of me that died with him.
We start to tour the U.S. and my old demons are right there looking for action. Let me be clear: I don’t mean that I see hot women as demons. It’s the demons in me that want me to abuse my sexual need and damage myself, my family, and my life if I may employ a drug term—by using. At times it’s a battle, but I do okay.
The band gets tighter through the tour. The crowds get crazier. The seven-year-old in me is a very happy boy. The adult me, not as much. Although I love playing live, my desire to push it further is kicking in heavily and I want more and more of this, even though by normal thinking, things are going pretty fucking great. And so I get to feeling unsatisfied with things as they are. The problem with being so driven, always wanting to do better and be more and reach farther, is that it’s not possible to fulfill and satiate this completely. I know that as long as I’m not truly happy, the Darkness will be with me. I know that as long as the Darkness is with me, I will feel inadequate. And as long as I feel inadequate, I will be driven. And as long as I’m driven, I’ll never be truly happy. Do you see my dilemma?
So does Mr. D. “We’ve been through a lot of shit together,” he says. “And most of it is your fault.” He has a way of putting things that make them hard to argue against. During VH-1’s Behind the Music, I mention my battle with depression publicly for the first time. The Darkness is ecstatic. “All right!” he says. “Now I’m famous, too.” Because I’ve done my best to take sex off the table as a viable option, I begin to drink more heavily than I ever have before. Never alone, thank God, but I certainly overindulge at dinner before a show. It makes playing the show a little riskier for everyone, band and audience, because I get sloppy. So our live shows can flip from being really great and tight to being loose and unfocused. This is not what I came out on the road for.
It’s not an easy life sometimes, with all the traveling and time away from home, but it’s ten times worse with a hangover. I’ve always been able to reel in my drinking when I felt it was getting out of hand, but it’s harder now that I don’t have the sexual free-for-all to run to after a show. The only relief I get now is from alcohol. I know I need to get a handle on all this red wine consumption, but I think I’m waiting for “the wall.” You know, the wall we hit when things get too far out of hand. It’s painful, and it can really wreck your front end, but it does tend to stop you in your tracks. And mine is in my future.
Deep inside I understand that I’m just trading one dependency for another, but I think to myself, “It
’s only red wine, for God’s sake, so what’s the big deal? It’s not like I get so blasted I can’t perform or can’t have a life. And the only one I’m hurting is me.” Now, this is a big point. Because I’ve been so ready to hurt myself, my family, my life, and my career with my sexual stuff, it seems like a step in the right direction that I begin to damage only myself. The Darkness thinks it’s a capital idea and even gets people to buy me drinks. I have begun to self-medicate. It will take me a while to get a handle on my drinking, but I’m only minimally aware of the danger it holds for me and my family, and I’m not prepared to do much about it for now.
Barbara and I are feeling some tension between us now that I’m back touring, and of course she has very reasonable concerns about me and my fidelity. I understand her fears and can’t blame her, based on my past. It’s difficult to live with her suspicion day in and day out, though she has stood by me when millions wouldn’t have—I decide I owe her some leeway, for Chrissakes. So who should call when I least expect it and I’m in this still-precarious state? Las Vegas: home of hot showgirls, almost-legal hookers, and the fabulously self-destructive motto “Whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
Right in the middle of my tour, Las Vegas picks up its golden telephone and calls me. The big show at the MGM Grand is a $60 million audio/visual assault called EFX. Michael Crawford has been the lead since it opened two years ago, and now he’s leaving. MGM wants to know if I would like to take his place. I fly up to meet the producers and see this musical that looks like a Broadway show on acid. It’s an almost incomprehensible, startling, dazzling, special effects–driven spectacular featuring forty-foot-tall fire-breathing animatronic dragons, giant spaceships landing from the stars above, huge sets that rise up through the massive stage floor and swing in from the sides, the biggest Vari-Lite system in the world, explosions, fireworks, and a cast of thousands. It also has lots of singing, acting, and dancing. I’ve done okay in the first two endeavors, but dancing is a bit of a reach. It’s a year-long commitment at least, and I’m really enjoying getting back into writing, playing, and touring, so I pass. And anyway, Broadway is calling, too. And they only want a month.
Late, Late at Night Page 28
