I mean, I love it. I think they’re absolutely great together. It’s like I said, you know, Bob has this way of just listening to you—he’s super grounded and human—and I think my mom really needed someone like that. Especially after all the shit with my dad, she just needed someone who was confident and self-assured and had his own thing going on, and more than anything, you know, I think she needed someone who would actually be available to her, you know? Someone who had the space to look at her and be with her and be like: What’s going on with YOU? What’s happening inside of YOUR head? So I’m not surprised that they got along so well. My mom and I are very similar, ultimately—I think we respond to the same kinds of things in people.
Not to mention, like, it’s super-hard for someone like my mom to date, because everyone’s a total freak about who her son is. I mean, yeah, it’s hard for me to really meet people and have an honest conversation with them, but like, it’s also really hard for my mom—maybe even harder—because all these people sort of glob onto her when they find out who she is, and they don’t even want to talk to her about HER, you know? They just want to talk to her about this person she’s connected to. It’s like they think she’s an extension of me—like she’s my regional office. And at least when they’re doing that shit to me, I’m still the focus of their attention.
So, a little while after that first dinner together, I started to hear from Bob or my mom that they were having lunch together, and then I’d hear they were going out to coffee, and then I’d hear they were having dinner just the two of them or like, going on a hike up in the Santa Monica Mountains, and eventually I was just like: Guys, what’s going on here? I sort of confronted them about it when we were all hanging out together at my place. And they both sort of smiled, like, a little embarrassed, and they were both sort of looking at each other like: What do we say? And I was just like: Whoa, really? And they both just sort of looked at me, like: Is that okay? And I was just like: Of course! Wow. Amazing.
And it was actually super-cute, you know? I mean, my mom was just so happy—like, I’d honestly never seen her so in love the whole time she was with my dad—and Bob was just like a little boy. Here was this incredibly intelligent dude, this guy who’s sort of my guru, and I just got to see him, like, smiling and blushing like a little kid with a crush. And they were clearly so relieved to tell me, you know, because I think they were worried about how I might react. I think they were worried it might make me uncomfortable, or like, I might want them to stop. But, of course, I was all for it. I mean, I was worried about what would happen if they broke up or ended up hurting each other, but it was pretty clear after a while that they were both in it for the long haul and that they weren’t taking any of it lightly. You know, my mom had been divorced from my dad for almost a year now, and Bob had been married a few years back, and so this wasn’t their first rodeo. They both knew how to navigate the waters.
And it’s crazy, because like, at the same time Bob and my mom were starting to get serious, I was going through my own sort of whirlwind relationship stuff with Mandy.
She had decided at that point that she probably wasn’t a lesbian, and so we got back together, and it was good for a while—like, it was really, really good—but then we just started having major problems—like, deep, unfixable problems—and there was a lot of love there, but it started to become clear to both of us that like, something just wasn’t right.
The first sort of crack started to show when Mandy showed me this new track from her upcoming album—this was Heartache/Heartbreak—and she asked me to be on it. I don’t know if I’m supposed to talk about this, but the track was “North Star”—you know, the one she ended up doing with Brett Andrews—and Mandy came to me with it, and she was like: Hey, my people think it would be a good idea for us to collaborate on something together, you know, like, a love song that we could perform together at awards shows and all that shit. And I wasn’t opposed to the idea necessarily, but I listened to the song, and I was just like: Whoa. LOL. This might be the worst song I’ve ever heard. I think I even said that to her. Halfway through the demo, I just started laughing and I was like: Turn it off, turn it off, and she was really hurt by that.
I mean, I don’t think I was being that much of a dick—it’s not like she wrote the song. It was probably one of those Australian dudes. I forget which one. I think it was like, Bogz or Da-LITER or someone like that, you know, one of those “New Aussie” people—but Mandy felt like it was a personal attack on her because she really liked it and she thought I was judging her for her taste, which like, I totally wasn’t. I just thought the song was bullshit.
I mean, I don’t mean to talk shit about Mandy at all, because like, I have a ton of love for her and I always will, but I just think at that time she had a sort of limited conception of what was possible as an artist. We both sort of came up as these “kid” musicians, you know, these “kid artists,” and our sounds really weren’t that different at the beginning, but my way out of that, like, my way of emerging from that was to do all that shit I was doing with Deez and Trick and Z—you know, like, the sort of more progressive, edgier, crazier stuff—and for Mandy that just wasn’t really an option, you know, because like, how was she even gonna hang out with those people in the first place? It was one thing for those guys to be smoking weed and chilling in the studio with a fifteen-year-old BOY, you know, or like, drinking champagne and having all these girls in the jacuzzi with a fifteen-year-old BOY, but like, you can’t do that shit with a GIRL because then you might actually go to JAIL. Like, a fifteen-year-old girl at your house party is just a liability for everybody. And so that kind of meant that Mandy was mostly still hanging out with her Kidz Spot crew, and the same team that was managing her through her first album was managing her through her second album, and so the sound just kind of stayed the same and so did the image. You know, like, every scene in her music videos would still just be her SMILING every time she looked at the camera, and like, dancing on the beach and singing with this fake backup band that she didn’t even play with, and the whole thing just felt like an advertisement for an amusement park or something, you know? Like, that was the vibe she was on. It was like: It’ll be fun for the whole family! And when I’d bring Mandy around to Deez’s house or Trick’s house, it’s not like those guys were mean to her or anything—I mean, they actually really loved Mandy, and they all thought she was next-level talented—but the vibe would definitely change. All of a sudden, it was like I wasn’t their younger brother who they were taking to the strip club for the first time or like, convincing some older girl to hook up with. All of a sudden, it was like: Whoa. There are two CHILDREN at our party. And that was really tough for Mandy to deal with.
It was especially shitty because her image and her sound and everything were all about innocence, you know—like, it was all so wholesome and good and clean—but the obvious next step for her, like, the obvious next phase of her career was for her to become “sexy” in one way or another. Like, everybody was pretending for the moment that she didn’t have boobs and they didn’t want to fuck her, but like, the SECOND she turned eighteen, like, the literal moment when the clock struck midnight, everybody was expecting her to drop some video where she was in a bra and panties and like, she was all lubed up with grease in a mechanic shop, humping a wrench and singing about some guy “fixing her up like a carburetor.” But Mandy couldn’t do that shit yet because it basically would’ve been child porn, you know? Her team kept trying to come up with all this shit for her to do—like, they were trying to come up with stuff that was like, still hot and catchy and could still get people dancing but that wasn’t too overtly sexual—but the result, to me, just felt like lies. It just felt really dry and empty and manufactured. And I mean, it worked—like, the fans still loved it, and they still played it on the radio, and Mandy still had a sold-out tour with L.A. Baby and Heartache/Heartbreak—but I just kind of couldn’t stand the music she was making. Honestly, I got the sense that neither c
ould she. I mean, that was always the sad part to me: She has this next-level voice—like, honestly, Mandy has one of the best singing voices I’ve ever heard. It’s like, actually, technically perfect. And it’s not just like she’s naturally talented or something. I mean, she IS naturally talented, that’s not even a question, but like, the thing about Mandy that I don’t think a lot of people realize is that she’s this incredibly skilled musician. You can give her a piece of sheet music, like, literally anything, and she can sight-read it for you first try. It doesn’t matter if it’s new shit or old shit or if it’s even in her key. She can do it—but it just seemed at the time like she didn’t really know WHY she was singing, you know? It seemed like she didn’t really have a REASON. The dedication was all there, the work ethic was all there, but she didn’t have any DIRECTION. She was like one of those kids who’s crushing it in high school and getting straight As and playing the violin and like, joining all the clubs, and running track, and then like, if you ask them why any of this shit is important to them, they just look at you like: What the fuck are you talking about? And so whenever I’d be like: What kind of ARTIST do you want to be? What do you want to be singing about? she would always just get really pissed off and defensive.
Plus, like, on top of it all—and Mandy probably doesn’t want me saying this, but like, whatever, I’ll edit it out if she really asks me to—I think a big part of the reason we started to see that our thing wasn’t going to work was that Mandy just couldn’t stand Bob. I mean, they got along fine at first, you know, because Mandy’s a really sweet person and she’s not gonna be mean to anybody unless she decides that she doesn’t like them, but Bob’s kind of this no-bullshit guy—like, he just says what he thinks one hundred percent of the time—and so being around him, like, he demands everyone’s full participation in every conversation, and I think Mandy just found it exhausting after a while.
I remember Mandy crying after this double date we had with Bob and my mom where she was like: He makes me feel so STUPID. And I just started laughing, and I was like: Bob makes EVERYONE feel stupid. Isn’t it amazing? And Mandy was like: No! It makes me feel awful! And then she started telling me about how she was losing fans because of the shit Bob had said about gay people, and how she really didn’t think it was a good idea that I was so closely associated with him, and I was just like: Shit. I’m gonna have to make a decision here. Like, I’m gonna have to choose between Mandy and Bob. And that honestly wasn’t that difficult for me. Mandy’s my girl for life, no question about it, but it was just so clear at that point that we were heading down different paths, and Bob was like, I mean, at that point, Bob was already my family.
* * *
Yo, but I’m realizing, it’s pretty crazy that I’ve been writing this thing for as long as I have and I haven’t even said anything about my security team!
I just thought about them, because, like, during all the shit with Mandy, I remember we would be fighting all the time in front of these dudes, and at a certain point, I remember looking at Patrick—that’s one of my guys—after we dropped Mandy off at her house one night, and Patrick was just like: Bro … And the two of us just immediately started laughing like crazy. He almost knew before I did that things were going sour, you know, because he just spends his whole day, like, watching me, observing what’s going on, so he’s got a pretty clear picture of what’s happening in my head.
I know it’s their job to like, stay in the background or whatever and sort of keep a low profile, so I won’t say too much about them, but it just feels insane that I spend so much of my time with these guys and I’m writing this book and I haven’t even told you anything. I’m sitting here on the jet right now, looking around and taking a break from writing for a minute, and I’m realizing like: I hang with these people probably more than any other people in the world—they’re the only ones who ride with me everywhere when we travel, they’re the only ones who sleep in the house—and in a way, like, these guys are my closest friends. I’m not ashamed at all to say that: My security team are some of the most important people in my life.
First of all, let me just say that I never would’ve imagined when I started all this—like, it never would’ve crossed my mind when I was making those recordings with my dad back in St. James—that when I “made it,” that would mean I’d be spending the biggest chunk of my time with these enormous dudes who used to be Army Rangers and professional wrestlers and mob enforcers and Secret Service members. LOL.
Not to say that these dudes are scary. I mean, if you fuck with them, one hundred percent they’ll get in your face, but I honestly have some of the best, like, coolest, most professional and hilarious and amazing guys protecting me on the day-to-day. I’d probably just be straight up dead without them. Seriously. I would’ve just like, exited my car one day and been torn to shreds by a bunch of crazy ten-year-olds in Argentina. That’s how bad it was getting.
I first realized I needed a security detail when this woman tried to kill me in Australia.
I was doing this thing at a radio station in Sydney, and this was right when the first album dropped, you know, so we were still sort of adjusting to the magnitude of the thing we had created, and so we pulled up to the radio station, and like, yeah we were expecting a crowd, but when we got there, it was a fucking army. It was just me at that point and my dad and my road manager, Bobby, and like, I guess the person that the radio station had sent with us to come pick us up at our hotel, and the second we opened the door to the SUV, the whole crowd just MOBBED it. It was like they were a pack of zombies and we were the only people left in the world with fresh blood. And this fucking girl, like, this absolutely insane woman, just out of nowhere, comes rushing up to me and starts kissing me on the mouth. Like, they weren’t sweet kisses or anything like that—she wasn’t being cute about it. They were really aggressive, like, really violent kisses, like she was trying to suck a demon out of me or something. And remember, I’m fourteen at this point, so I’ve hardly even kissed anybody in my life. And now here was this like, to my knowledge, fully grown woman, just aggressively kissing me and biting my neck and shit, and she looked like a fucking vampire. Like, if you had told me she had been exposed to some crazy chemical in a lab and that she was a mutant now, I’d believe you. She did not look human.
And my dad and Bobby were trying to pull her off of me, you know, and we were all kind of freaking out, and she took out this nail file and started swinging it around at everybody. I’m not even sure it was a nail file. In my mind when I remember it, I always think it was a little scalpel or something, you know? Like, what scientists use to scoop up a bit of sample?
And, thankfully, the guy who was riding with us from the radio station just socked her in the face. LOL. Like, it was some Street Fighter shit. He just shot his arm out and then, boom, she was out. But that really shook us all up. It took me a long time before I was even comfortable playing in Australia again.
So that’s when Curt and Patrick came on board. At the beginning there was this other guy Steve too, but I had to let him go. I can’t talk about the reason I fired him because we both signed this nondisclosure thing, but whatever. Dude was a fuck-face. Let’s just leave it at that.
Curt and Patrick and Mo, on the other hand, are the real fucking deal. Mo got hired after Steve was gone. It was only once those dudes came into my life that I realized what it did to me, you know, being an only child.
I remember at his job interview, Patrick was wearing this pro-wrestling shirt, and, you know, I think he was expecting to show up and I was gonna be this like, “girly-boy pop star” or whatever. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If you’re a girly-boy, be a girly-boy, that’s cool. But I saw Patrick’s shirt, and it had the Bones on it, and I was like: YOOOO, it’s the Bones! And he was like: Whoa, bro, you watch Thursday Night Mayhem? And I was like: Of course! BONE CRUSHER! And he just, like, picked me up right there in the middle of the interview and did the move on me, and my parents were looking at us l
ike: What. The. Fuck. But I said on the spot, like: This guy’s on the team. I want this guy protecting me.
And more than a lot of people in my life, Patrick’s just been there for me when shit was tough. I mean, Patrick’s this enormous dude, and like, he used to crawl around in the desert in Afghanistan shooting Al Qaeda guys or whatever, but he’s an amazing listener. He’s actually just such a sweet guy. And he sacrifices so much to be with me. He’s got a wife and a daughter, and they hang around every once in a while—Gloria’s awesome, and Amelia is like, the cutest little baby I’ve ever seen—but for most of his life, Patrick’s just hanging out with me, watching my back. He’s there at every concert, standing by the base of the stage, scanning the whole place with his eyes, looking out for trouble. And when it counts, he’s there. Not just with the protection, but like, with his friendship.
I mean, I told you about the scene at the airport when I found out my dad was dead. Curt and Patrick and Mo just rushed me the fuck out of there. I don’t even know how they were able to do it so fast: They just got me right into the car, and we were on the road. They knew that like, I wouldn’t want any cameras seeing me crying, and so it was just like, their adrenaline kicked in, and they made sure that everything that needed to happen happened. I mean, I guess that’s the benefit of hiring all these military guys and sports guys is that they know how to perform under pressure. They make the impossible possible.
And it was only once we got into the Escalade and like, got the windows up and got going on the freeway that I even allowed myself to feel anything about what had happened. I mean, I never cry, you know? Like, I probably hadn’t cried in ten years. I didn’t even cry when Mandy and I split up. But now it was just like a fucking river. It was like a pipe had burst. It was like an anime movie or something. Just WAAHHHHHH. Like, those big animated tears flying everywhere like a sprinkler.
Famous People Page 5
