A number of actresses had been brought in to read with Mike Myers and the other producers, who sat at a long table on one side of the room. The lighting was harsh, the climate tense. Though Beyoncé was extremely nervous, at least she looked the part in her 1970s-inspired catsuit and her teased-out hair. Mike Myers’s easygoing attitude also went a long way toward relaxing her. The next day Beyoncé got the call from her agent that she’d been cast.
Panic
The plot of Austin Powers in Goldmember couldn’t have been more convoluted or—as might have been expected—ridiculous. It has to do with the time-traveling antics of Myer’s character Sir Augustine Danger “Austin” Powers, a womanizing British spy whose portrayal is heavily influenced by the colorful hippie culture of 1960s London, and his ongoing rivalry against his nemesis, Dr. Evil (also played by Myers). Beyoncé plays an FBI agent who goes undercover as a flashy disco entertainer. The wardrobe is heavily influenced by 1970s disco culture—and for Beyoncé that meant an oversized honey-brown Afro hairstyle along with lots of gold lamé and shiny leather.
On the first day of production, Beyoncé filmed the opening scene of the movie in her comfort zone, which was as a singer and dancer. She was featured in a major production number built around the song “Hey Goldmember,” along with two other singers/dancers à la Destiny’s Child. “I knew she had worked with other choreographers, so I didn’t know how she was going to be with me,” said Marguerite Derricks, who choreographed the number. “Though we had never worked together before, she came in and acted like she was my student. She didn’t try to manipulate or control or ask me to change anything. She made everything work because she could make anything work.”
Though things got off to a good start, they took a bit of a turn when it came time for Beyoncé to actually act. Singing and dancing came easy to her, of course. Acting was more of a challenge. One of the reasons things worked out so well for her in Carmen: A Hip Hopera was because of the care and nurturing of her director, Robert Townsend. On Goldmember, because there was such a huge cast, Beyoncé had to fend for herself. About a week into production, a rumor spread that she was having trouble remembering her lines and was thus holding up the movie. Everyone was said to be frustrated and supposedly wondered why the studio had ever decided to take a chance on her. Even if Beyoncé wasn’t that quick to recall her script, she was certainly not holding up the production. Still, since she was always the perfectionist, it was going at a pace slower than she would have liked, and she couldn’t help but be self-conscious about it. When the stories got back to her, she was deeply affected by them. “They said I looked pretty and was nice, but I basically wasn’t doing the job,” she later recalled. “I’d rather do an acceptable or exceptional job than just look pretty. I thought, ‘Here I am, new to movies, and this mess is the first thing people are going to hear about me?’ ”
One critical magazine article hit her so hard, she read it repeatedly while trying to divine the writer’s true intention because, surely, she thought, it couldn’t have been just to hurt her. In the end her publicist advised her not to read it again.
“This will keep happening, so you have to accept it and move on,” Tina told her one day on the set in front of witnesses. At the time, Beyoncé was getting her Afro wig styled, and as two beauticians worked feverishly on it, she looked miserable sitting in her studio fold-out chair. Meanwhile, an enthusiastic set photographer took pictures of her. “Smile, baby,” Tina said under breath. “You don’t want to be seen with that frown, now do you?”
“It’s not fair,” Beyoncé said, perusing the article again and ignoring her mother’s advice. “Most of the stuff in here, nobody would ever have said about me. Or would they?”
“First of all, no, they wouldn’t,” Tina answered. She snatched the magazine from her daughter and handed it back to the publicist. More than anything, Tina just wanted Beyoncé to develop a thicker skin. “And second of all, you need to stop,” she said. She told her daughter that one day someone would probably say far worse about her. In fact, she said she could guarantee it. “You know who you are, I know who you are, everyone here knows who you are, and God knows who you are,” Tina said. “That’s got to be enough.” She said that if Beyoncé wanted more than that in terms of acceptance, she would be in for a lot of heartache.
Despite Beyoncé’s best efforts, Austin Powers in Goldmember would be released in July 2002 to decidedly mixed reviews.
Solo Careers
No, Dad, that’s not what I want,” Beyoncé was saying. It was the spring of 2002, and she was in the Galleria shopping mall in Houston, walking with Lonnie Jackson and talking to Mathew about business. “We had a plan and I think y’all should stick to it,” she continued, talking into her cell phone. Mathew usually acquiesced in these situations. However, it’s fair to say that behind the scenes, his experience and business savvy always prevailed.
As Beyoncé and Lonnie walked along, Lonnie heard some girls talking loudly about Beyoncé. “Ooh, I hate her,” one of them said. “Look at her. She thinks she’s all that!” Beyoncé, still on the telephone, slowed her gait so that Lonnie could walk in front of her, acting as a shield. Though she noticeably tensed up, she had concerns other than those presented by a couple of troublemakers. “No, Daddy, do it my way,” she said. “And then, when it’s finished, I want you to call me and tell me it’s done. Because I mean it, Daddy. Fine. Goodbye.” Then, after a beat, “I love you, Daddy.” There was a pause. She smiled and then clicked off. “Beyoncé would really smash on Mathew,” Lonnie would recall years later, “and be aggressive with him. This was their dynamic together, though. Everyone knew that she wasn’t intimidated by him.”4
Once she was off the phone, Beyoncé and Lonnie quickened their pace as a crowd started to follow them. “We’d better get out of here, right quick,” Beyoncé said with a grimace, “or I don’t know what’s gonna happen.”
For the last few years, Beyoncé hadn’t been able to leave the house without causing a scene of some kind. The escalation of Destiny Child’s career with the Survivor album was swift, if not surprising. The combination of Beyoncé, Kelly, and Michelle had proved to be a winning one, first with the singles “Independent Women” (which went to number one), “Survivor” (thwarted from the top spot by Janet Jackson’s “All for You”), and “Bootylicious” (also number one). The question on most people’s minds these days, those who followed the girls’ success as well as those who wrote about them in the media, was: When would Beyoncé strike out on her own? It seemed inevitable.
Beyoncé was already well on her way to a solo career because of Carmen and Austin Powers in Goldmember. As well as its title song, she also recorded a tune for the latter film, called “Work It Out,” written with Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, that would be the lead single on the soundtrack album.
“Work It Out,” when released in June 2002, would bear the distinction of becoming Beyoncé’s first solo single release. Of course, it was no surprise that she would have a song on her own sans Destiny’s Child. The surprise was that it would turn out to be a big flop. In fact, it wouldn’t even crack the Billboard Hot 100! It also wouldn’t appear on the R&B charts. How was this even possible? Certainly Destiny Child’s entire career thus far had seemed to many observers to be nothing more than a launching pad for Beyoncé’s eventual solo stardom. Now she’d finally taken the leap—and her record had failed?
At about this same time, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams had started talking about their own futures. In discussing it with the girls, Mathew came to an appreciation of what they hoped to do as solo artists. They had aspirations outside of Destiny’s Child, and he realized it would be foolish to ignore them.
Two months before Beyoncé’s record was released, Michelle became the first member of Destiny’s Child to release a solo album—the contemporary gospel album Heart to Yours. Mathew had done an excellent job of presenting her as the first gospel artist of his Music World company, and with a surprisingly stro
ng album. It peaked at number one on the Billboard Gospel Albums chart; it would go on to become 2002’s biggest-selling gospel album. Michelle had been savvy enough to choose for her platform a genre completely different from Beyoncé’s, and it worked to her advantage. Her success did beg the question, though, as to why Beyoncé’s entree as a solo artist had failed.
Adding to the confusion, at the same time that “Work It Out” was released, a duet featuring Kelly was issued from the rapper Nelly’s album Nelly Dilemma. Called “Dilemma,” this was a perfectly constructed rhythm-and-blues song that sampled Patti LaBelle’s classic 1983 song “Love, Need and Want You.” It too was an instant hit, going to number one in ten countries, including the United States. It would also go on to win a Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. Kelly had already finished her first solo album, which was to be called Simply Deep and would be released later in the year. The album would be an unqualified hit internationally, and is to date her biggest-selling record, with over two million copies sold. Its first single, “Stole,” remains one of Kelly’s most ambitious recordings with its message concerning teenage suicide. Listening to her adept vocal performance, it’s difficult to believe she ever had so much trouble in Girls Tyme. Certainly her success was—is—hard-earned.
So what was one to make of the fact that the two “other” girls in Destiny’s Child had solo hits while the group’s leader, Beyoncé, floundered with her first release?
Much of the disappointment of the performance of “Work It Out” in the marketplace had to do with the song itself. With its retro, brass-infused feel, it sounded very much like something that might have been recorded by James Brown’s backup band, the Famous Flames, back in the 1960s, maybe the early ’70s. It was a funky sound, but maybe not commercial, not contemporary enough for a record-buying audience of 2002.
Also contributing to the song’s failure was a definite sense of inflated confidence from her record label where Beyoncé’s solo career was concerned. It was mistakenly thought that whatever they released would be a hit as long as her name was attached to it. However, the expectations from her public for a first release were so high, she really needed stronger product than “Work It Out” to satisfy. It was quickly decided that the best thing was for everyone to just forget all about the song.
Beyoncé’s early stumble aside, when people wonder why the girls in DC have been able to remain close friends despite her subsequent towering presence, they need look no further than Mathew for the explanation. In what is considered a masterful strategy in the pop music world, Mathew would eventually do with Destiny’s Child what Berry Gordy Jr. had never thought to do with the Supremes (or with any of his other groups, for that matter)—launch each member into a successful solo career. Because Mathew would allow each an outlet for her artistry, a reason to feel proud and accomplished, Beyoncé, Kelly, and Michelle would be able to avoid the kinds of petty jealousies and resentments that had been the ruination of many popular singing groups preceding them in the business.
Beyoncé Doesn’t Forget
It was the spring of 2002. Since her relationship with Lyndall ended, Beyoncé had made two movies, Carmen: A Hip Hopera and Austin Powers in Goldmember. Both experiences had been fulfilling, even if she had to admit to being lonely at times along the way. While singing with Destiny’s Child, she’d also begun to recognize the conundrum experienced by so many superstars before her. Millions of people adored her and recognized her for her beauty and talent. In a sense she regularly made love to enormous audiences. Yet there wasn’t that one special person in her life, a romantic interest with whom she could share the realization of her dreams. Of course men wanted to meet her. But she had to wonder, did they care about who she really was, or just her superstar status? That concern presented a hindrance to finding a real relationship. Kelly was more relaxed, telling her to enjoy this time while she could, because soon both would be married with children, “and then it’s gonna be a whole different kind of drama.”
Lyndall’s situation was different. Finally getting his life together, he had enrolled in culinary school in Austin. It’s likely that Mathew would have been proud of him. “You want to be a better man?” he used to ask him. “Then be one!” It took a while, but maybe Lyndall’s mother, Lydia, put it best when she concluded: “My son proved that direction is sometimes more important than speed.” What Lyndall really wanted, though, was for Beyoncé to look at him with new eyes, and miss being with him. Since the two were still on good terms, they would try to see each other in Houston whenever she was in town. Lyndall would take those opportunities to try to reconcile with her, but she wasn’t having it.
“I was angry and feeling rejected,” Lyndall Locke would admit many years later. “She could be stubborn when she wanted to be; she had dug her heels into the ground and wouldn’t give me another chance. I did everything I could to get back with her and she was not budging. My whole thing was, ‘I’m very sad and upset about the end of a romance that’s been in my life for almost ten years, so why isn’t she?’ ”
One muggy spring evening in 2002, Beyoncé and Lyndall were driving to her parents’ Swan Isle home, Beyoncé behind the wheel of her Jag convertible, the top down, as usual. She never liked to drive, but toward the end of their relationship and especially now that they were broken up, she insisted on it. Maybe it was her way of feeling in control. She was home for just a few days before leaving for New Zealand, where on April 27 she and the girls would begin Destiny Child’s world tour, the one that had to be rescheduled because of the September 11 tragedy. That she was about to embark on such an exciting adventure, yet had so little to say about it, made Lyndall feel even more disconnected from her.
“I remember looking into the side-view mirror of the car at my reflection and thinking, ‘Dude, what are you gonna do? What can you do?’ ” Lyndall Locke recalled. “I turned and looked at her and she was so gorgeous, her long hair blowing in the wind, such a classic-looking beauty. I thought, ‘Goddamn it, Lyndall, she used to be all yours. How’d you screw this thing up so bad?’ She turned the steering wheel, and as we were hanging a left, the words came tumbling out of my mouth.
“Just so you know,” Lyndall began, “after we got back together, a real long time ago? I cheated on you again.”
Beyoncé didn’t take her eyes off the road. “Exactly what do you mean by that?” she asked, her tone even.
“Well, I had sex with other women.”
Though Beyoncé nodded, she didn’t say a word. It wasn’t the reaction he had expected. Because of the way her aviator sunglasses shielded her face, he had a hard time reading her expression. Like her mother, Beyoncé would never let a man see her true hurt feelings. “How many, Lyndall?” she asked.
“A few,” he said, now not even wanting to look at her.
She took in the information and nodded thoughtfully. “All right,” she said. “Thanks for being honest.”
“I didn’t know where that left us,” Lyndall would recall. “I felt like crap. Her reaction told me that we were definitely over. I knew Beyoncé well,” he concluded, “and I knew that she would never forget. Beyoncé doesn’t forget. Beyoncé remembers.”
World Tour 2002
Destiny’s Child’s world tour of 2002 was, not surprisingly, an unqualified success, with every date sold out—Australia, Japan, France, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, England, Ireland—all a mad rush of countries, with no time for the girls to really see any of them. The schedule was packed not only with concert dates but also television and radio appearances, as well as photo sessions. There was no end to the technical challenges faced on the road, with lighting, sound, and other issues, not to mention the basic transportation of such a mammoth presentation from one country to the next. Mostly the girls tried to stay focused on their job—which was to perform. Beyoncé, though, couldn’t help but want to know a little bit about everyone else’s purpose; she was intrigued by—and very determined about—trying to influence as much of it as poss
ible, especially the sound and the way it was mixed as it was being transmitted to her audience. Lighting cues were also an important concern of hers.
“As soon as we start to sing, the lights have to come up on cue,” she said during technical check in Gothenburg, Sweden. “If you guys are even a second off, it’ll completely ruin the moment.” When the technician said he would do his best, Beyoncé frowned at him. That wasn’t good enough. “You’re not part of our crew, are you?” she asked skeptically. Of course, she knew he wasn’t; she was familiar with all of those on the technical crew of their company. This particular person was just a freelancer brought in to assist. “Well, y’all need to check with each other,” she said, “’cause if this doesn’t work right, someone’s gonna be really pissed off,” she said, sounding stern. “I ain’t kiddin’, either.”
“Yeah,” Michelle agreed. “Someone’s gonna be really pissed off,” she repeated, motioning to Beyoncé.
“Not just me,” Beyoncé said with a playful push at Michelle. “Your ass is gonna be in the pitch-black dark, too.”
“Well, I don’t need no light,” Michelle said, teasing. “I’m my own light, that’s how bright I’m gonna shine tonight.”
“Okay, well good luck with that, then,” Beyoncé said. “Me? I need a spotlight,” she added, turning back to the technician. “So you best be sure I have one, and it better be big and bright, too.”
The two girls then dissolved into laughter.
While on tour, Beyoncé had to make up her mind as to how she felt about Lyndall, especially in light of her growing interest in Jay. She actually couldn’t get Lyndall off her mind. Even though he had let her down, in her mind he still must have seemed like family. It did seem as if she was able to see past his infidelity but still that kind of behavior wasn’t what she wanted for her future. However, she didn’t want to cut Lyndall out of her life. He was perhaps too much a part of her, especially in that he represented a time in her life before she was famous. “I feel like I need to hang on to him,” she said at the time. “Maybe I’m just trying to hang on to who I was before all of . . . this,” she added, referring to her fame. She didn’t care, though. She wanted Lyndall in her life, and so he would remain in it—at least for the time being.
Becoming Beyoncé Page 36
