Rivington Was Ours: Lady Gaga, the Lower East Side, and the Prime of Our Lives

by Brendan Jay Sullivan

  “Hey,” I said. I didn’t want to contradict her feelings or the work she’d put in without me in LA or her need to check every possible thing off the list before our big weekend. But I added one thing. “You don’t need it.”

  If this is it, please let me know

  On March 27, I looked in my tour bag with a mix of excitement and terror. That’s it? A lot was riding on what would happen as I packed my three pairs of underwear, two shirts, and my equipment. It couldn’t have been midnight, but I made the executive decision to stay up all night. I checked and rechecked my equipment, careful to bring a backup system in case anything went wrong. Extra cables and a spare pair of needles.

  Leigh had packed me a little lunch to take on the plane. In the past few weeks I managed to save a few dollars for my trip. She walked up the spiral stairs from the kitchen. She started to cry at the door. “I just realized how much I am going to miss you.”

  She gave me a huge hug and she cried with her whole body, faltering from chin to elbow. Her skin felt hot to the touch and her knees wobbled.

  “I’m going to be back.”

  “But you don’t even know when,” she whimpered. St. Michael would say that on the inside Leigh there was a baby crying out because it wanted to be held. We gripped each other like two airline passengers who had survived a water landing. We used our relationship as a flotation device. We didn’t have anything else to hold on to.

  “I need you to trust me that this is a good thing and that we’re doing the right thing. This is what it was all for. The years of waiting tables and taking shit and letting other people treat us like they did. It could be over. If I do it right. This could be a good thing.”

  “Don’t you come back talking all LA like that.”

  “I won’t. C’mon. It’s me.”

  “Are we broken? Is it all over now? You and I.”

  “Never,” I said. And I wished I could have been sure of that. I’ve seen this happen to bands before. You have a girlfriend and she thinks that you’re the most adorable thing to play a bass guitar. Then the band becomes another girlfriend, dealing with the band becomes a chore, and it only gets worse. Leigh knew that Miami meant fans in bikinis, and Hollywood meant those cartoonish and embellished devotees you see on TV.

  “Will you call me when you land? And call me when you get to your hotel so I know you’re safe?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  “And will you call me to tell me how it’s going?”

  “Yes.”

  “And will you tell me you love me?”

  “Yes. Any time you want. I love you. I knew I loved you before we started dating. I love you just the way you are.”

  “And you promise you’ll come home? You won’t run off with a backup dancer and leave me here in New York all winter?”

  “It’ll be spring when I get back. Can you believe it?”

  “Can we go on bike rides and get dinner together?”

  “Yes. If this works out we can do it even more. We could even do something crazy like go out for dinner on a weekend.”

  “Or get brunch and not just because we have to be at work in an hour?”

  “Or maybe we’ll do something else after this. Maybe it won’t work out and I’ll go work for a newspaper again.”

  This straightened her countenance. “No.” She walked over and straightened the lapel on my jacket. “You’ll be great. You are great. You’re going to do great. I’m just going to miss you. But I know you really want this to work out.”

  “I’m barely doing anything while I’m there.”

  “But you can finish Mercutio.”

  “And I will.”

  I went downstairs into the living room one last time to double check my bags. If I forgot even the smallest piece of equipment, I wasn’t sure I had enough money to replace it. I felt like I was moving out or getting sent away from school. And I still didn’t even know when I would ever get home.

  “Hey, Brendan,” Leigh called out from upstairs.

  I walked up, following her voice. “Yeah?”

  She stood in the middle of the room. I looked around to see if anything was the matter. Her lower lip quivered. “Nothing,” she said. “It’s just that tomorrow when I call out your name I won’t be able to see you.”

  Get me to the airport; put me on a plane

  For my good-bye tour of New York City, I took the subway to Union Square for the millionth time. On the Manhattan Bridge my phone buzzed with sweet messages from Leigh before the train went back into the tunnel in Chinatown in a smooth, labored arch like a magician’s deck of cards flying from one hand to the other. At Union Square I came out on the western edge over a neon sign—COFFEE SHOP—and made the surprisingly long walk to Beauty Bar.

  The city seemed empty that night as I walked past the furniture stores and closed sandwich shops. I was the only man for 238 blocks in every direction, as alone as I had ever been. In these situations you hope for the best, dream for the greatest, and then sorta expect things to work out but with a bit more disappointment and headaches.

  The dancers lived in one of those Manhattan minimum-security prisons for models. I had heard of the fabled model dorms over the years. The buildings had multiple uses, but a large number of them were rented out by indentured models who were fronted the rent money by an agency that would nickel-and-dime them through fashion week. Usually a live-in madam would weigh them each day and serve warnings to girls who couldn’t drop weight in time for runway season. Leigh was one of them once.

  The entrance had gates like a college campus, where you could swipe your card in for security. Only, just like in luxury buildings, you could get in by telling the overtired doorman the name of any human being on the planet. Then when they say “Huh?” you just make up the number of any plausible apartment—keeping in mind, for example, that a seven-story building will never have an apartment that begins with the number eight.

  Upstairs I found Katie and Sheryl lying on the same mattress. They had set alarms but were in no way up, and just barely awake. They both had with them a sort of school bag complete with airplane supplies—laptops, magazines, headphones, and sunglasses. And they both had one of those rolly suitcases that looked like it had been fabricated out of the trunk and wheelbase of a Toyota. They also had a couple of backup costumes for the shoot. I now had the great position of baggage handler on the tour.

  Katie had done some featured dancing in the montage-heavy dance movie Step Up 2: The Streets. Sheryl taught at the dance studio. I did not actually know if they were roommates or not, but they did have that familiar comfort of two girls in a high-pressure academic environment.

  They had wildly divergent personalities. Sheryl was the female Asian version of a tough-talking, Marlboro-smoking wartime sergeant. Katie almost perfectly resembled the neophyte main character in dance movies—somewhat shy at first and then she comes alive in the final sequence. The time between then and when she would in fact come alive depended on a montage that had yet to begin.

  “Are we really going to do this?” Katie said from the bed, the hood of her sweatshirt shielding her eyes like overgrown bangs.

  “It’ll be fun!” I said with my usual Disney-like enthusiasm.

  “Ugh,” Sheryl said. “I just want this day to be over.”

  BEGIN MONTAGE: Young group of impossibly hip kids in various layers of clothing step out of a typical building in lower Manhattan. They wear sunglasses at four-thirty a.m. and scowl at the inherent self-righteousness of a passing jogger. Manhattan yawns in the morning light, and the rising sun reflects off the yellow cabs as they speed down a deathly silent Park Avenue. The midtown tunnel on Thirty-Fourth Street, damp with morning dew, swallows them up only to spit them out on the other side of airport security, wrestling laptops back into their bags in bare feet while the security staff scans and rescans their studded belts. The team collapses on the floor in front of their gate, ignoring the desire for coffee from the off-hours Starbucks. The male member suddenly
remembers a bag of costumes left at security and runs through the crowded airport only to return triumphant moments later with all of the matching hats and sequined accessories. On the flight there is no remaining luggage space. The man sews the holes in his leather jacket with dental floss. Seconds later they are woken by the ding! that follows the captain turning off the fasten-seat-belt sign. The man casually brushes off a slight amount of backup-dancer drool from one shoulder as he helps the other get her bag. After what seems like an eternity (they all have to pee) they walk down the Jetway, which opens directly into another cab. There is no time to go to their hotel. The group, still wearing their in-flight PJs, enters an elevator at Winter Music Conference in medias res for sound check of their first rooftop show. There are tech problems. Cut to a single, smug still-shot of the DJ presenting the sound engineer with the missing cable, fresh from his luggage. Everyone around the room has a lot riding on sound check. There is muttering from the hastily introduced record-label execs. People who once only existed as email addresses now have to interact with each other in real life. The DJ steps behind the lifeless booth, flicks just the right switch, turns on a wireless microphone, and for the first time Miami Beach hears the infectious synthesizer opening to “Just Dance.” Instead of waiting, the girls take their places. Gaga taps the mic, and slowly the audience draws around her. Label execs clasp their hands in prayer, thanking the young man who can’t be heard over the music, but whose mouth flaps, “No problem,” and then, “I’m a real DJ.” The party has not really begun, the public isn’t allowed in, Winter Music Conference hasn’t begun. But you wouldn’t know it from the flashbulbs and the dancers who hit every cue perfect, nor from the DJ who flips all the right switches in choreographed perfection, nor from the singer who should save her vocals for later but just can’t help belting out that single that made every single thing in this montage possible. They walk off stage with their luggage through the doorway to the rooftop, which opens up ten blocks away at their lush beachfront hotel rooms.

  MIAMI

  Rockman lovers driving Lamborghinis

  Rental cars lined the palm-treed streets with the bright stucco buildings beaming back at the hopeful faces on Collins Avenue and A1A. Winter Music Conference was the largest of its kind, and it not only included music and new musical acts but every breathing product associated with music. New artists schmoozed DJs and radio programmers, and satellite radio stations schmoozed the new networks, often by scoring an interview with a new artist. And just as music magazines were supported by ads from Red Bull and Levi’s, Winter Music Conference depended on the strangest of trade shows. On the roof of the Raleigh Hotel, at the Armani Exchange party alone you could talk with the reps from Skullcandy headphones, Stanton electronics, and a whole slew of off-brand energy drinks and phone apps. Inside the glass penthouse the Armani Exchange people seemed like an afterthought—their new line of sunglasses was the star.

  The majority of the Armani Exchange party went on indoors with a breed of DJs that I just don’t get. They were a small herd who had their sets all worked out, and they only played the clean version of songs for Internet radio. In many ways they were more underground than our music scene because, well, people actually came to see us spin. Some of them had big names that I recognized. I felt some of that competition you hear about, like how the navy thinks that the air force is a bunch of jackasses. Then I remembered that I’d only slept two hours and I let it go.

  Thankfully there was one company representative on the roof with a new product to help me. Café Bustelo, the dirt-cheap bodega brand of coffee, was trying to launch a canned coffee energy drink to compete with the Starbucks Doubleshot. I must have had about eight. They gave out T-shirts and tote bags that read “I ♥ Café Bustelo” and that were inspired by the bright yellow sacks of ground coffee you can find at the bodega.

  I am also quite grateful that Stanton electronics had a booth at this thing. Stanton makes, among other things, phonograph needles and DJ headphones. Normally I would be opposed to product placement and posing for free endorsements . . . but this professional DJ somehow managed to leave his needles and headphones at home. Their representative became my new best friend.

  Throughout Winter Music Conference there was the spirit of a swap meet. No one knew who would come to this thing, but in staffing alone they had plenty of people. Vendors traded sunglasses for headphones, and needles for a case of some unheard-of energy drink. Besides the fact that everyone here was constantly reapplying sunscreen on their pasty necks, it seemed like any other conference in any other part of the country, where people from the same industry overlapped and worked with people in another industry. Everyone was halfway familiar with each other. Until that curtain went up, we were, after all, just a bunch of young employees on a business trip. Many had clients to entertain later that night and we would still need to get up for breakfast in the hotel and check in for various conference meetings. Once upon a time this conference might have featured dozens of CD singles and hungry DJs trying to snap up the two constantly sought-after copies on vinyl of next summer’s hottest hit. But that was another time. Not that any would be sold at Winter Music, but in past years you might see record collectors and rare vendors selling to the hungry crowd. Now, not so much.

  But what about everything else that cool music sells? They still have to design new kinds of cars into those eye-catching, hip, young boom boxes on wheels. People from the Muzak service gave panel discussions on marketing your music. Even without the once-booming CD there were still huge open-bar parties sponsored by Stoli vodka to toast the winners of the International Dance Music Awards. The entire event was tinged with the excitement of meeting important people face-to-face and learning about your industry. But more than anything it seemed like a chance to meet the top brass, to regroup at a music retreat, and to hear from the great voices of a crumbling empire—every panel should have been called, “So, What Do We Do Now?” And it all came glowing in that first month of beautiful Miami sunshine, where the clouds came around smiling and the amount of free shit in your bag made it all worth it. Conferences—as lame as they can be—do have that flavor of youth that comes from the fidgety lessons of how to succeed at things you haven’t failed at yet.

  Like in all schools, of course, there were little cliques, but the nature of WMC sort of forced us into little groups at mealtimes, just like students in the school from Harry Potter. On the one hand you had the Label Whores: a group of hired faces who went around promoting records and getting phone numbers and asking about cool parties. The Label Whores made a sluttish moan when they heard you were a DJ and they always found time to invite you to have a beer with them later. Always the same phrasing. Then you had the Gearheads, who rushed around in band T-shirts with things clipped to their belts in case something needed an emergency gaffer taping. The Gearheads were a nice bunch, mostly because their job for the weekend was to wind cords and make sure that no microphone in their quiver ever gave feedback. They were as evangelical about their particular religion of music-processing equipment as anyone in a youth group might be about their church or sect. Right behind them, and sometimes dependent on them, were the Mean Girls, a group who flew in from uptown neighborhoods all over the world to present this plebeian universe of fashion disasters with this summer’s coolest accessories—not that you dweebs could appreciate it. The guys associated with this group were also Mean Girls because they were even bitchier. Like the Mean Girls in school, they are also the ones who have to say no the most. No you can’t come to our fashion launch in the penthouse without a press pass. No you can’t have a free pair of the expensive sunglasses that we all wear. No we don’t want to come outside of the penthouse and watch your band on the hot roof. We’re wearing eight pounds of fucking foundation—not that you’ve heard of it.

  The Mean Girls had an offshoot of guys and girls from the record labels who made you think they ran the show. They became known as Pro Tools. Even though they were crashing the Armani Exchang
e party, they ran around, commanding things they could never really understand. “Can you turn up the bass in the whoosywhatsit . . . ?” they would say, trailing off like the hotshot in Spanish class who couldn’t conjugate a simple verb. The Pro Tools liked to move around the room adjusting and fine-tuning things because the existence or disappearance of a recording career may possibly be due to which way a free promotional CD got placed on a stray lounge table. Pro Tools liked to shake hands; they liked to meet and greet. They sidled up to the bar with impossible dietary restrictions on their alcohol-free drinks: “Diet Coke, not too much ice, and a splash of Coke with a lemon twist. Thank you, Charlie. It was Charlie, right, Charlie? That’s for you, Charlie.” Much of their work took place behind the scenes and they enjoyed watching it, although they stood hawkish on the empty roof, waiting for things they had arranged weeks ago to begin. Pro Tools had set this up extremely last minute on the rooftop stage of a packed event. We weren’t on the official WMC schedule. They didn’t actually do anything or get involved in any way. Observing what they had prearranged was good enough. They stood off to the side with the smug satisfaction of a father who had just orchestrated his only daughter’s shotgun wedding.

  Then there’s that group on the fringe. Every high school has one. They sit at the edge of the parking lot, smoking cigarettes and looking jaded and disaffected as if while the rest of the class came home from practice and hit the showers, they had to work late. Their eyes cast low and unmoved by the circus around them. They didn’t have to be there but somebody made them come. Other outsiders found themselves attracted to the abuse of this crew, sauntering up to them in tight jeans in the Miami heat, pulling a crushed pack of cigarettes from their leather jackets and trying to bum a light as if there were no other way to start a conversation with the other outcasts. The Mean Girls’ baggage handler and the Pro Tools’ driver and the Gearheads’ assistant sound tech. They seemed to have flown all the way to South Beach to sit around in sunglasses, smoking and looking as if they might fall asleep in the back of their next class. They were us.