Once I’m past the shock, it is the anger that comes through in the first songs I write. Anger at the situation, anger at this girl for not choosing me, and anger at my own feelings of never being enough, most pointedly brought to light by this recent fucked-up relationship. “Perfect” is one of the first songs I complete.
I tried hard to be the perfect one
But it’s not enough
It’s not enough. […]
I wish I was perfect for you.
And from “God Gave You to Everyone”:
You make me feel I don’t mean anything to anyone.
I’m as pathetic and broken as I sound in these songs. But I’m not the only one who is treated honestly in them … she is, too. From “Will I?”
Cause you gave it away like it was nothing at all.
And sometimes I just want to tell her in language she may understand. From “Idontwantanythingfromyou”:
But everything you gave to me
You went and gave away to anybody else
With a dick.
And if that wasn’t plain enough, I combine the two themes in “God Gave You to Everyone.”
God gave you to everyone
Cause I’m not enough.
As the writing of the songs progresses, I acknowledge my own part in it, too. From “Beautiful You”:
You took me down on my own knife.
Even feeling as lost as I do, I can see the irony of the situation.
My resentment and pain are pretty raw in these first few songs, and I can still hear it in my voice and in the angst of the guitar work when I listen to this CD now. I don’t listen to it very much. I think I may have been trying to chant my way out of my desperate feelings in “Idontwantanythingfromyou” when I sing:
I don’t hate you
I don’t hate you
I don’t hate you.
It might have been true at this point, but I suspect the opposite.
Gradually the writing of the songs and the releasing of the emotions begin to work. The anger dissipates—or crawls down a sewer or goes wherever anger goes. Through the process of songwriting, I come to terms, to a degree, with the situation and find what has been so elusive: acceptance. To my surprise I even find some compassion for this girl who has tormented me for so long. From “Your Psychopathic Mother”:
I know why you give yourself away
Cause they make you feel special
But you never feel special enough.
And yes, the same could be said for me.
At last I get through it enough to take a hard look at myself and my life. “My Depression” is the result. An abbreviated inventory of my life so far. I’m not happy with what I see:
Looking in the mirror and thinking how it used to be.
Don’t like the skin I’m in
Caught in a tailspin.
And more to the current point:
Oh my God
It’s my life
What am I doing kicking at the foundation?
That’s right
My Life
Better start looking at my destination.
And focusing on my destination is what I do next, in a song that points me home to Barbara, the place I should have been all the time. From “Eden”:
Monday morning in the garden of Eden
Looked over and I saw your face
Never felt what you made me feel
Never felt so out of place
The sinner sleeps with the angel
I heard you breathe my name
Stumbling through the gates of freedom.
And since I’d put my life into the three-minute pop song, “My Depression,” I try to narrow it down to two lines. I think I come pretty close in “Eden”:
I’ve wanted so much in my life, desired everyone I knew
Now I would not take it kicking and screaming, the only one I want is you.
Once more I have to atone somehow for my betrayal of Barbara, and I recommit myself to never letting this betrayal happen again. Writing is my way of healing and dealing with this garbage I have just made us both endure. The only real question is: Will B still have me? I can’t ask her directly. Not yet. Right now all I can do is put it into the songs I write. I know they won’t be easy for her to hear. I only hope that in the end she’ll see where my words finally lead. These songs are my way to own up, confess, and to begin my long journey back home to her.
Thank God Gomer is with me in Las Vegas, or I would probably disconnect entirely. I think about my love … no, I guess “passion” would be more accurate … for dogs. They are the true constant in my life. My dog makes me feel loved without any doubts or whispers from the Darkness. I am seven again when I look into my mutt’s eyes. I’m running through the bright, promise-filled morning fields of Broadmeadows with twenty hounds slavering at my side every time I commune with a dog. It is pure, and there is nothing to confuse it (Dog/God). I often feel I might have been happier in my life if I’d been a veterinarian. But I probably would’ve had to be a famous one … with a TV show … and who girls wanted to sleep with. Jesus, is there no saving me? I keep writing, and thankfully EFX finally grinds to a close. I now know why the shelf life of a Broadway or Vegas star in any given show is usually no longer than two years. After that, the alternatives become either to consume massive amounts of alcohol and painkillers or to shoot yourself in the face.
I head home, like a wounded soldier, for some R & R. How did I ever think I could survive this stint in Vegas without going off the rails? Mr. D had high hopes for much worse, possibly something fatal. But he’s satisfied with what he got. It will take me a year to get through all the feelings I have about this abortive relationship, and the ripples from it will last even longer. But I must get on with my life and my work, and I cannot mentally afford another sabbatical. I know that for my own sanity I must pursue putting all this emotion into the songs that will now carry it all for me. And this simple act is liberating.
CHAPTER TWENTY
HEALING TO DO
BACK HOME
2003–2006
Since there is no rest for the wicked, after a week at home I start recording my twelfth album. It is incredibly cathartic to have finished these songs and to begin recording again, to turn all that pain into something productive that releases my inner fears and doubts. I’m able to put the affair in Vegas behind me for now because I actually get some immediate healing from these songs (seventeen of them), and thankfully, being in the recording studio puts me into the mode of thinking of nothing but the record I’m making 24/7. Again, it’s a pay-as-you-go venture, but my new band is killer and I am turned on to cut these songs, which all have strong hooks and are under three minutes long. Again, if you don’t like this song, please keep your seats because we have another one coming rrrright up.
This is also my way of fighting back. Of standing up and not letting the episode crush me. I am back and doing the only constructive thing I know how to do with all this shit I’m feeling. The whole writing process I went through in Vegas has been a better and faster restorative for my soul than anything I could have achieved in therapy, but a thousand silent, nagging doubts and fears remain: I haven’t confronted my betrayal in my real life or begun to make amends with Barbara. I’ve put everything on hold to complete this album.
Mr. D is not thrilled, as he never gets much of a peek in when I’m recording. If he shows up, it’s just to whisper that he thinks the new songs are crap. I’ve entered into a co-owner studio venture with my new drummer Rodger Carter (Jack White has health issues that have sidelined him from touring), so I’ll finally be making a record in my own (co-owned) studio. The good news is that the songs are all strong (so the Darkness can go fuck himself); the bad news is it takes eleven months to record the album. Rodger will eventually kick me out of the aforementioned co-owned studio business, claiming that I’ve spent too much time making this album. He has plans to rent it out to other musicians so he can make some money. And I don�
�t fire him from my band for evicting me because, well, he’s right: I have spent way too much time recording these seventeen songs. This causes the coining of the phrase “Man, what do you have to do to get yourself fired from this organization?” (We use it to this day, whenever it’s appropriate.) Gomer hangs hard at the studio with me. Rodger, being similarly dog-obsessed, names the studio “The Doghouse,” so how bad can he be, even though he’s covered in tattoos, has a piercing at every curve and fold of his body, and has just asked me to vacate the premises? Until I do, Gomer has Rodger’s many mutts to play with.
With song titles like “I Don’t Want Anything from You,” “Your Psychopathic Mother,” “Jesus Saves White Trash Like You,” and “Every Night I Wake Up Screaming,” it’s pretty obvious what the overall vibe and energy of the new record is.
Now that I’m recording again, Barbara and I don’t see a lot of each other, but at least we sleep in the same bed every night, and there’s a lot to be said for that. I’m feeling a little better and I think she is, too, although we still haven’t sat down for the air-clearing talk we need after Vegas. We’re committed to our life together, though, and sometimes it’s best to simply shut up and live, so we do just that. She is troubled by some of the new songs she hears and realizes that I’m keeping her at arm’s length about them. This album will become her least favorite of all my records—and rightly so.
If I could just pull you out of the narrative and chime in here from 2010 for a second, I would like to state my case regarding my sweet girl Barbara and myself, inasmuch as I am a jerk and she is an angel and a very private person who is putting up with me airing some rather sordid laundry throughout this book. I’d also like to address those perfect souls who are reading this and saying to themselves, “Why is this masochistic woman putting up with this asshole?” I’m happy that your life is so un-ruptured that you can make such a distant judgment call, so I’ll only address the humans in the audience. B and I are together forever and made that commitment a long time ago. Though I have broken the faithfulness clause, I would never want to live without her, or she without me. She has forgiven me more than I have forgiven myself, believe me. I don’t take her forgiveness as a reason to do as I please, although to some it may seem that way. I have struggled with this sexual stuff; I hope the struggle is evident. B is not happy with me telling some of this, but she knows I’ve always been truthful when I write and that my life is what it is. She is the best person I have ever known and I have been and will continue to be her much-soiled knight in rusty armor as long as she will allow me. We have had our battles and our surrenders and victories and are still very much in love with each other. We have both seen friends who were couples break up over much less and be more miserable apart, so we have made a vow to be together at the end. There are limits, of course, and I have pushed these and pray to God that I will push them no more.
Barbara knows I confess, express, and fantasize in the songs I write. Although most of them have been about and because of her, she does know when sentiments other than my love for her are voiced in rhyme. Unfortunately—at this point, anyway—my job, as I have defined it, is to write songs about my life that are truthful. What’s the point of doing it if it’s just a bunch of made-up shit? It is art, after all, and art must be free to express itself, no matter what level or form. And that is what I do. It doesn’t make it right or fair or even “okay,” but she married me and I married her and we will work it out one way or another.
I name this album Shock, Denial, Anger, Acceptance, a corruption of the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross phrase for the emotions that accompany dying. My spirit has come close to dying more than a few times in my life because of my poor choices. This Vegas affair feels like the closest I’ve come to spiritual annihilation.
The record is released on my own Gomer Records label (you were expecting another name?) and in the next few months I build my own studio (screw you, Rodger) and marvel at how the record business, after all its success and excess, has returned to what it was at the beginning—a cottage industry. Because I’ve always been “the boy who loves monsters,” I name my studio The Black Lagoon, and Rodger isn’t allowed to record in it … ever. Our friendship still stands, which is what I love about musicians, especially drummers. Although, theoretically, drummers aren’t really considered musicians.
Hahahahahaha.
My spiritual path has seen some serious neglect up in the wastelands of Las Vegas, so when Richard Page, my friend, former ’80s background singer, and Mr. Mister alumnus, gives me a copy of a book entitled The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, written by the master who he and his wife Linda follow, Sogyal Rinpoche, I latch onto it hungrily. It is the first Western view of Buddhism I’ve ever encountered. Barbara and I begin going to the Pages’ house once a week to meditate with their group, even though I haven’t been involved with a spiritual gathering in many, many years. It’s a great way to reconnect with B through doing something together that’s good for our souls, and I also reconnect with my meditation.
We sit in a circle and one of us leads the group. It’s a different meditation technique than TM, in which a mantra is repeated. Master Rinpoche encourages completely freeing up your mind through focusing a little on breathing, a little on relaxing, but mostly on just being. It’s difficult at first with my monkey-mind chirping in every two or three microseconds: How big a jerk was that guy who cut me off on the freeway? Man, wouldn’t a cappuccino be great right about now … hey, I forgot to pick up those jeans from the dry cleaners … but when peace arrives, I feel utterly free. We all connect, and that alone is good for B and me. This is truly the only way I find peace in my life, no matter how great things get or how high I climb or how much I acquire or how many women I have sex with or how much money I make or how much my dog loves me (wait, strike that last one) or how loud the applause—it all comes down to me, alone in my room, communing with God. It sounds so simple; why don’t I live there? I try, but life keeps getting in the way.
We start up a new tour. I have residual concerns about my faithfulness on the road, but I’m feeling like I’ve learned a hard lesson from my major screwup in Vegas. It has taught me something after all. And aside from that rather huge exception, I’ve been doing okay regarding abstaining from the “musician’s life.” Vegas is also the reason I am no longer drinking heavily, as twisted as that looks in print. I’m no longer getting laced before a concert, and our gigs get better and better. All hail the resilience of the human spirit.
At one show, a persistent fan tries to shove a bunch of roses in my hand while I’m playing a guitar solo. I yell at her over the sonic boom of the band, “I’m busy, dammit.” She keeps it up, shoving and poking me with the roses. I grab them from her and windmill them against my guitar strings in frustration. The red petals blast across the stage like they’ve just hit a wood chipper and the audience reacts. The first ritual “rose decapitation” has occurred, and our stage will be showered with rose petals at every show from that moment on as fans come forward with bouquets and I happily comply by guillotining the petals on my guitar strings, becoming kind of the Morticia Addams of the guitar world.
The concert tour is going full-throttle, with the new, more aggressive album making it safer for guys to show up as well. Eventually we take the show to Japan, where the audience is 95 percent male. It’s a new energy for me. We ask one of them why there are so many guys at my shows now, and he says “Back in the ’80s the girls kept us away so we couldn’t go. Now we buy the tickets first!” Through the passage of time, meditation, and a new commitment to the right path, I finally begin to change, so the whole twisted sexual draw of Japan is now pretty much a memory. I think it’s been so long since I’ve been involved in the sexual excess of the road that I’ve gotten out of the habit. A lot of it was just that, in the end. Habit. That whole “this is just what I do” thing is gone. And I play better, too. And have more time to see the sights.
I sink a bunch of my own bread into the promotion of
the Shock album (as it becomes known for short), but radio is in even more of a mess and hip-hop has a stranglehold on the charts, so there’s still not much room for rock and roll. The album does end up at the top of a few “Best of 2004” lists, but that’s about it.
I’m fired up again to get things rolling and working smoother so I can enjoy them more. I sign on with a new manager, Rob Kos, who turns out to be the first real music manager I’ve ever had. He is sharp, tough, and well versed in the business, and he’s also a musician himself. Things start to take a turn for the better immediately. Wonder of wonders, General Hospital calls after twenty-five years and asks if I’d like to come back for a story arc on the show. Did you guys lose my number or what? I think about it, and Rob and I decide to do it and see what happens. The press is big around the first episode and the show goes to Number 1 in the ratings that week. I guess a lot of people were curious. The writers bring my character back as an alcoholic—was someone trailing me for the last four years taking notes?—and the scripts aren’t as bad as I remember.
It’s bizarre to see doctor’s scrubs hanging in my dressing room again with a “Noah Drake” tag attached. And the first scene I have with Jackie Zeman (my GH love interest twenty-five years before) is positively surreal, because our characters discuss how we both have grown kids now and how much time has passed—and in real life, enough time has passed that we both really do have grown kids. A soap is the only type of show I can think of where an actor gets to play a scene pretending twenty-two years have passed, and twenty-two years actually have. One of the freakiest acting experiences of my life.
Late, Late at Night Page 31
