The girls had no choice: Destiny’s Child had to go on to Australia without Farrah. By this point, Beyoncé was emotionally exhausted from the last couple of months of group madness. She was not at her best. “You could see a change in her mood,” said one person close to her at the time. “She was definitely frazzled by the last few weeks of Destiny’s Child psychodrama. You can’t go through all of that chaos without it having some effect on you.”
“There was a lot of eye-rolling going on at this time,” was how one of Tina Knowles’s friends put it. “As unique as she was as an artist, Beyoncé was also a typical teenager. Tina had been complaining about it before the girls even left for Australia, but not doing anything about it. She felt it was just because of all the pressure and anxiety. Given all that had happened with LaTavia and LeToya, Tina decided to let Beyoncé’s bad mood ride awhile longer.”
“Just do what I say,” Beyoncé told the lighting director before one of the shows in Australia. “It’s not so hard. It’s simple. Make sure the audience can see us.” Kelly looked at Beyoncé as if she was a person she’d never before met, while Michelle probably wondered what she’d gotten herself into. “Look, I’ve got a lot of songs to sing,” Beyoncé told Kelly at one point. “The least you could do would be to work with Michelle on harmonies, don’t you think?” Kelly just gave her a look. Then she and Michelle sequestered themselves in order to fine-tune their blend, as Beyoncé had suggested.
Despite whatever was going through Beyoncé’s mind at this time, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise that Farrah was now out of the picture. It would be on the Australian tour that DC’s magic three would be born—the grouping of Beyoncé, Kelly, and Michelle, the act that would go on to sell millions more records and redefine for the ages the musical genre of the female singing group.
After the girls spent a day or two restructuring the show and changing the choreography and harmonies to accommodate a trio—not to mention the sound, lights, and other technical elements that had already been set in stone but now had to be altered—they were as ready as they would ever be to perform in front of an audience on July 17. “Before we went out onto the stage, we joined hands as we always do before a show and prayed that this thing would work,” Beyoncé later recalled. “And then we took a deep breath and just went out onto the stage.
“Once we were out there, it was as if there was a new kind of freedom,” she continued. “We were so scared, but had called my dad before we went out and he said, ‘Just do your thing, and don’t worry about it. You’ll figure it out once you get out there before an audience.’ He was right. Once we were out there, it just worked.”
“The best feeling in the world was when we first appeared as a trio,” Kelly recalled. “I remember how intimidated I [once] felt when the others were around [presumably she was referring to girls who had left the group]. I felt insecure around them, like I wasn’t talented when really I was. I felt uneasy. They made me feel shy. Whenever I would finally try to come out of my shell, something would happen, a fight or a look, and I would crawl right back in. Australia was the first time I did not have to hold back one bit because I knew there were two people on either side of me who loved me.”
Without Farrah at her side, Michelle also had no choice but to give her all and hope her talent would speak for itself. It did. She revealed herself to be a dynamic singer and performer who could hold her own with her much more experienced group members. “I can only say that while I was onstage that night I felt a confidence I’d never felt before. When it came to singing the gospel medley a cappella, I knew I had to hold my own with Beyoncé and Kelly, and so I just let it out. I looked over at the girls and they were looking at me, like, ‘Dang! We didn’t know you had that in you!’ ”
After that first show, Beyoncé realized that her solo career had been indefinitely delayed. “I knew that we were a threesome now and that we wouldn’t need to find a fourth girl,” she recalled. She called Mathew from Australia to tell him the news. Beyoncé would later say she could hear the relief in his voice that they didn’t have to break in yet another new girl. In fact, Mathew wasn’t surprised by Beyoncé’s call. After all, he had earlier predicted to Kim Wood Sandusky, when she said she felt that Farrah was probably not necessary, that the situation would work itself out.
The three girls then had a group meeting to celebrate the show’s success, and also to contemplate their future. It just so happened that Mathew had recently committed Destiny’s Child to a deal to sing a song and then film a video for the upcoming Charlie’s Angels movie soundtrack. Beyoncé had gone into the studio alone—she did so often when recording demos for songs—and composed a song called “Independent Women.” It said a lot about not only her identity, but her mother’s, too, as well as many of the women she had known over the years.
When Mathew heard Beyoncé’s composition, he was impressed, as were the suits at Columbia/Sony. Without even telling his daughter, Mathew sent the song to Sony Pictures for consideration on the upcoming soundtrack to the new Charlie’s Angels film, which starred Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu. It was accepted; Destiny’s Child would be featured on the album with “Independent Women.” The girls then went into the studio and recorded the song. (They had actually first recorded it with Farrah.)
“Independent Women” was released as the first single from the Charlie’s Angels soundtrack in the fall of 2000 and would stay at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for eleven consecutive weeks. The tune’s staying power would be demonstrated fourteen years after its original release when a rendition of its catchy melody was used by retail giant Target in a 2014 back-to-school TV commercial.
On July 24, 2000, as the girls performed in Hershey, Pennsylvania, their record label announced that Farrah had left Destiny’s Child after just five months. Billy B. recalled, “I remember an interview we did where Beyoncé said, ‘We have a job to do, a responsibility to each other. We show up. If you don’t show up, unfortunately you lose your job. It’s that simple.’ I remember thinking how tough it must be to, on one hand, befriend these girls but, on the other, be equipped to let them go if necessary.”
Michelle was signed to an official contract just as a tour with Christina Aguilera was finalized. It would kick off at the end of July and continue through mid-October with a punishing schedule of thirty-four dates across the country.
“All of the bad seeds are now out of Destiny’s Child,” Beyoncé said in a television interview at this time. Maybe it wasn’t the most magnanimous way of putting things, but it was definitely how she felt.
With the applause of appreciative crowds still ringing in her ears after the Christina Aguilera tour, Beyoncé Knowles returned to Houston satisfied with herself and with her group. Maybe she was becoming a little too satisfied, though. Some of her actions of late did seem out of character. Perhaps it was only natural that she would be affected by her success, especially in that it came at a time in her adolescence when she was just beginning to define who she was as a young woman. She’d certainly been in her teenage-rebellion mode for some time now, often disagreeing with Mathew on important issues—par for the course between them—and sometimes even sassing her mother, which definitely wasn’t acceptable to Tina.
One afternoon in November, Beyoncé, Tina, and Mathew were browsing in a record store when “No, No, No” began to play on the sound system. The Knowleses paused for a second to acknowledge the moment; it felt good. Tina then asked Beyoncé a question. However, Beyoncé found herself distracted by some cute guys who’d noticed her. “I was like, ‘Oh yeah! I’m hot,’ ” she later recalled. She started singing along with her own voice, sexily moving her shoulders to the music and acting oblivious to the stares of the young men. When she didn’t respond to her mother, Tina asked the question again. Still no response. “I’m talking to you, Beyoncé,” Tina said, frustrated. Still no response. Beyoncé was just too involved with showing off for the opposite sex to care about her mom. Finally, Tina had enou
gh. She hauled off and smacked Beyoncé hard, right across the face. Beyoncé was shocked, and her eyes went wide with alarm.
A startled Mathew ran over to his wife and daughter. “What in the world are you doing?” he demanded of Tina. This was unusual behavior. Mathew and Tina never physically disciplined the girls. “I just didn’t get spankings growing up,” Beyoncé later recounted. “They didn’t believe in that.”
“She thinks she’s hot stuff,” Tina said angrily. “Nobody cares about that record,” she said, now facing Beyoncé, her eyes flashing. “You are still my child,” she concluded.
Beyoncé was so stunned, she couldn’t even speak.
“I brought you into this world,” Tina said, still upset, “and I can take you right out of it. Now go sit in the car!”
“Tina had been seeing little signs of Beyoncé getting a big head,” said one of her relatives, “and she didn’t like it. She wanted to put an end to it in a dramatic way, and she certainly did just that. She didn’t feel badly about it, either. ‘It had to be done,’ she said. Later she told both Beyoncé and Solange, ‘I will set you straight when I see the need to do so, so don’t y’all forget it. I mean business.’ It never happened again, at least not to my knowledge.”
“It was the best thing she could have ever done,” Beyoncé would say many years later, “because for the first time I realized I was losing sight of what was important.” When she talks about it today, she can’t help but laugh. “She slapped the crap out of me,” she told interviewer Steve Jones on television many years after the fact. “Well, I needed it,” she said. “And guess what? When my child does it, I’m gonna do the same thing.”
Why Ruin the Moment?
In January 2001, Beyoncé Knowles and Lyndall Locke had been together for seven years. She was twelve when they met. Now she was nineteen and he was twenty-one.
A month earlier, Lyndall had joined Beyoncé on the West Coast on a business trip; the two stayed at the plush Beverly Wilshire hotel in Beverly Hills. “She told me that this was the hotel where Richard Gere and Julia Roberts shot Pretty Woman,” he recalled. “She was excited about staying there. While she was working, I ran into [actor] Brian Dennehy in the elevator. I didn’t know what to say, I was so tongue-tied. Then I found an old-school barbershop, got a nice shave and [hair]cut, and, on my way back to the hotel, ended up being harassed by a couple of cops. It was sort of ugly. They weren’t used to seeing a young brother in that particular neck of the woods. So at that point I was definitely not feeling this new world of Beyoncé’s.”
A couple weeks later, on December 31, the Knowleses would be invited to NBA all-star Lakers player Shaquille O’Neal’s New Year’s Eve party in Los Angeles. The party was to take place at the recently opened Staples Center; Destiny’s Child—who’d just received Billboard’s 2000 Artist of the Year award—was scheduled to perform. For safety reasons, it had been decided by Staples officials to stop serving liquor in the arena at 11:00 p.m. “But it was New Year’s Eve and my whole thing was, ‘Hell no. I want to drink,’ ” Lyndall recalls. “So I left the Staples Center and walked all the way back to the limousine that had taken us there—must have taken me thirty minutes. When I got there, I filled a big ol’ Styrofoam cup with booze that was stocked in the vehicle, and then walked back to where we were all sitting.” Upon his return, Mathew and Tina gave Lyndall a stern look of disapproval.
A few days later, Mathew had words with Lyndall. “Why are you still not representing yourself well?” he asked him. Returning to the limo for liquor was, as Mathew put it, “definitely not cool. How do you think that makes Beyoncé look?”
Filled with remorse, Lyndall could do nothing but agree. He had made a vow to be more concerned about Beyoncé’s image, and now he had slipped up once again. “It’s like I’m still down on the street corner in the ’hood, and you guys are way up there on the hill, ain’t it?” he asked Mathew.
“Then get your black ass up the hill,” Mathew exclaimed. He said he couldn’t help but wonder how many more times he was going to have to tell Lyndall to check himself. He then again asked: What was it going to take for Lyndall to be the kind of man with whom Beyoncé could be seen in public?
“Maybe I’m not that guy,” Lyndall said sadly. “I know who I am, Big Mac. And maybe I’m just not that guy.”
Mathew nodded, smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. “Okay,” he said, patting Lyndall on the back. “I get it,” he added, looking at him earnestly. “See you ’round, then, brother,” he concluded as he walked away. To Lyndall, it felt as if in that moment Mathew Knowles had completely washed his hands of him.
The next day, Beyoncé took her turn with Lyndall. “You so didn’t have to do that shit with the cup of booze,” she told him. In fact, she disapproved of it anytime Lyndall drank alcohol. (Once, a writer for Rolling Stone wrote that she’d been drinking champagne at an after-party hosted by Wyclef Jean; she took umbrage. “I don’t drink,” she later told the magazine.)
Lyndall agreed with Beyoncé that the enormous cup of liquor had been a bad idea. However, he explained that he’d felt so uncomfortable and out of place at the event, he just needed some reinforcement. “All of those famous people high-fiving each other, slapping each other on the backs, and talking show business,” he told her, “made me feel like I didn’t belong.” In fact, he said that he would have been a lot more comfortable sitting next to the chauffeur in the front seat of the limo and just having a nice quiet drink with him.
“Boy, stop your trippin’!” Beyoncé said, frowning. She then leaned her five-foot-seven frame into his own, which was just slightly taller. Giving her a lopsided, boyish grin, he pulled her in even closer, sliding his hands down her back. He loved her, he said, and didn’t want to embarrass her. “But I gotta be honest with you, Beyoncé,” he confessed, “I’m feeling like I’m getting in way over my head.”
“You’re not,” she insisted. “But you really have to be more conscious of how things look,” she said. “We talked about this before! I need to worry about . . .”
“I know . . . your image,” Lyndall said, with an edge to his voice.
“I promise you,” she said, “that one day I’ll be such a big star, it won’t matter what people say.”
Before she could continue, he pulled her in and kissed her fully on the mouth. Years later, Lyndall Locke would say that he didn’t believe for a second that a time would ever come when it wouldn’t matter to Beyoncé what people said about her. But why ruin the moment?
A Man in Her Life. Not a Boy.
It had been building for some time. By the beginning of 2001, it was obvious that Beyoncé’s time with Lyndall was about to end. As often happens in troubled relationships, the two began to argue about subjects that weren’t really at issue, since the ones that actually were crucial—such as what he was going to do with his life—seemed to have no easy resolution. For instance, they began to have petty disagreements about her hectic schedule.
Very often, Beyoncé would blow into town after having been on the road for a while and expect Lyndall to be completely available to her. It was understandable that she wanted to spend time with him. “I was in love,” she would later say, “and it was so scary. Just the thought of completely letting go was dangerous.”
Taura Stinson recalled, “My impression of the situation was that once Beyoncé started to see her dreams come true, she wanted to focus more on this love thing. So, she started to embrace the relationship with Lyndall even more, but she was also incredibly busy, which complicated things.”
It was also understandable that Lyndall didn’t want to feel controlled by Beyoncé and be ruled by her unpredictable itinerary. “We had this conversation multiple times,” he recalled, “where I would tell her, ‘Look, don’t expect me to drop everything just because you come back home to Houston.’ I was trying to act like I had a life. Who was I kidding? I didn’t have no life. I just didn’t want her to know it. I was dabbling with rapping at the time, like all of my fri
ends, but I sure was no a rapper. I was a long way from being serious about it.”
On February 8, 2001, Destiny’s Child had a major concert in San Antonio at the Freeman Coliseum, then another brief performance five days later at the Hasbro corporate office in New York. At Hasbro, the girls were scheduled to do a few songs for the executives to celebrate the brand-new Destiny’s Child dolls, which would hit the market in September. The original plan had been to go straight from Texas to New York. However, Beyoncé decided to pop into Houston on February 10 for two days, and then go on to New York from there. “Guess what, Lynnie?” she asked on the telephone with him. “I’m back! Let’s hang out. It’s Saturday night. Come on over!”
“No, Beyoncé,” Lyndall said, already standing his ground. “I have plans. We talked about this! I told you, please don’t surprise me, girl. I’m going to the studio with Joe and them, and I’ll call you after.”
“Who the hell is Joe and them?” Beyoncé demanded to know.
“Joe is one of my best friends and . . .” He stopped himself. “Wait a minute. Why the heck am I explaining this to you? I’ll see you later, girl.” And with that, he hung up the phone.
Becoming Beyoncé Page 30
