by John McEnroe
In the early years of being on the tour, I’d never realized how good it could be to play music as well as listening to it. When you’re on the road, there’s a lot of time to kill in those hotel rooms and playing the guitar helped relieve the boredom. My first guitar was a very heavy electric Les Paul. I didn’t know there were others out there that were quite a bit lighter. So I struggled on with that for a while. Even though I found it difficult and fatiguing to play because it weighed so much, I continued to take it everywhere with me on my travels. Then one day, about ten years ago, Paul Simon, who used to work out at Pat Manocchia’s gym, gave me a guitar. Or rather, we traded: he was looking to work on his arms, so I gave him a heavy-duty piece of cardio equipment I had, and he gave me a beautiful light acoustic guitar, specially made for me, with marble inlays and my name on it. Something tells me I got the better deal.
In any event, I’ve been playing and making music—well, that’s what I call it—for some years now, though I’ve long since accepted that I’m never going to be Grand Slam standard when it comes to rock ’n’ roll. Patty once memorably said that I “wrestled the guitar into submission,” which sums up my relationship with the instrument. As a matter of fact, I’ve wrestled—or should I say smashed?—a few into submission over the years in frustration, after seeing real musicians like Buddy Guy play, or listening to live tapes of one of my own shows
Much as I love playing, the guitar doesn’t love me back. The same goes with singing. In fact, I’m no longer allowed to sing at home when Patty’s around, which I understand, given that she’s the singer in the family and has built a whole career from writing and singing great music, whereas I can just about sing in key. She put her foot down one day, not too long after we were married, making a couple of things crystal clear. First, if I was still harboring any hopes of getting to play with her onstage regularly, I’d better let them go, because she’d never worked with anyone she was involved with and never would. Second—and this was the killer blow—“The Lord doesn’t let you be one of the greatest tennis players that ever lived and then be Keith Richards. It just doesn’t work that way.” As so often, Patty was right, advising me—no, telling me—to stick to jamming with friends, something that I still enjoy doing to this day.
Occasionally though, a friend will be generous enough to invite me to join them onstage during one of their gigs. Which is how I came to play with Chrissie Hynde. Actually, it wasn’t the first time I’d played a song with her on stage, but in front of a sold-out crowd, at the Garden? That was amazing and definitely one of my top ten rock ’n’ roll experiences.
She told me which song I would be doing—“Middle of the Road”—and I practiced and practiced to make sure I got it right. When I arrived, I was told it would be the second to last song, so I sat backstage, trying to enjoy the evening, but understandably a touch nervous as I waited to be called.
Inevitably, the moment came. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Chrissie announced, “I’ve got a friend of mine, a special guest, who’s gonna come out and play with me: John McEnroe!” That’s when you hope you don’t walk out to “Boooo” from half the Garden crowd—which luckily I didn’t. That would have been somewhat deflating, especially as it’s my home city, my home stadium, and I’ve lost count of the number of concerts, tennis matches or sports events I’ve been to (or played in) there.
Anyway, we started the song, although I was too worried about messing up to be able to enjoy the moment. Then, halfway through, I broke a string. I’m not going to pretend that the whole show fell apart, but it was a pain. I had wanted to feel I was adding something, and Chrissie knew I had the chords down. Even though I wasn’t going to be playing an intricate guitar solo, I wanted her to feel I was hitting the right chords and doing something to justify being on stage with her. So losing that string put me out of tune a bit but, as they say in rock ’n’ roll, “The show must go on.” It was scary, because I’m not as good at adapting when I break a string on my guitar as when I break a string on my racket. But I got through it, to sympathetic cheers at the end, and I’d certainly made progress since Joe Walsh invited me to play with him onstage at the LA Forum, shortly after I’d beaten Borg at Wimbledon, and I’d had to turn him down because I knew I wasn’t good enough (though the fact that he changed the words of “Rocky Mountain Way” in honor of my victory still meant a lot).
The other problem is that I’m a lefty. Unless you’re Jimi Hendrix and enough of a genius to play a right-handed guitar upside down, then the only way you can play is if you bring your own guitar, which is good in a way, but in another way bad, because if you do bring it, it’s like, “Oh, I happen to have my guitar with me.”
I’ve never had any illusions about my level of musical ability. On the rare occasion when anyone is kind enough to give me a compliment in that area, I’ll usually reply to their somewhat over-generous “You’re a good guitar player,” with: “Yeah, for a tennis player, really good. But for a musician, er…”
Being lucky enough to watch very talented people play up close is one way of keeping your feet on the ground about your own abilities. One time in the 1990s I went with Chrissie to see Jeff Buckley play at this tiny place, when he was just starting out. It wasn’t my cup of tea musically, because I didn’t know his stuff at the time and he was singing in this bizarre voice, but there was no question the guy was a hell of a musician. Chrissie asked him if he wanted to come along and jam at her rehearsal afterward, and he did. So then he stepped up and it turned out he knew every song the Pretenders had ever written, and every note the original guitar players had ever played. He even seemed to be playing better than them—“Oh my God, this guy should be in the band.” What a great night that was. But sadly Jeff died—drowning in the Mississippi—not long afterward. The mortality rates in rock ’n’ roll are no joke.
I can’t deny that the time when I suddenly found myself hanging out with the rock musicians I’d admired from afar was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. One minute I was playing air guitar in Rob Ellis’s basement with my high school fraternity friends, and going to see Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden as a fan and complaining ’cos the gig didn’t sound exactly like the records. The next thing I knew I was hanging out with Robert Plant and he was telling me what I did was cool. There’s a quote by the film director Richard Linklater—I was reading an article recently about him in Men’s Journal—where he says “If someone says to me the best years of your life are in high school, I’d say that’s fucking pitiful.” Well, that’s me in a nutshell. If I didn’t ever talk again about the first eighteen years of my life, I’d be perfectly fine. Because to me it all changed in a dramatic way when I went to Wimbledon in 1977. Before that I don’t remember much anyway—which pisses Patty off. She’ll say, “Not one Christmas? Not a birthday?” But that’s the way it is.
I guess there was a fair amount of tennis practice involved, plenty of tournaments, a lot of traveling. The tennis wasn’t full-time until I was eighteen, but it was always enough to make me feel separated from the other kids at school, because most kids didn’t play tennis. Unlike football or baseball, tennis wasn’t considered cool—everyone thought it was a sissy sport, so I felt out of the loop.
What made it worse was that, apart from me and one other person in Douglaston Manor—which was where I lived—all the other kids went to high school in Queens. That one other boy who went to the same school as me—Trinity, in Manhattan—got expelled for cheating in the tenth grade, so from that point on I was the only one. It wasn’t that I didn’t have any friends, but when I’d be with them I felt that they were always a little closer-knit with each other than they were with me.
Commuting was a major factor. Because I was the only kid at school who came from Queens, a lot of the parties—especially early on—I wasn’t invited to, or if I was, I’d have to be home and not stay out too late. I couldn’t learn to drive until I was seventeen, which was halfway through eleventh grade. So that was one reason I didn’t
enjoy high school—not that it was terrible, the whole thing just seemed a bit off to me. I remember praying that these wouldn’t be the best days of my life, and as it turned out, they weren’t.
As a teenager, I remember sitting up and taking notice when the girls started screaming for Björn Borg in his first year at Wimbledon. It was like something out of Beatlemania. I began to take the sport I was playing a bit more seriously.
Once I started going to Europe to play Wimbledon every year, I went from being the kid who played the sissy sport to someone who was cool enough to hang out with the British rock stars who’d been my heroes. That was one of my greatest perks when it came to success on the tennis court. I’d never have imagined rock guys like Robert Plant being into Wimbledon—that was the opposite of what I would’ve expected. But the Stones, Zeppelin, all these bands I’d grown up loving—even Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath—were telling me, “You’re great,” or, “Wow, I really respect what you’re doing.” I was still only a kid at the time, and I remember thinking, “Holy shit! This is amazing!”
I met the rest of the Pretenders before I met Chrissie. They turned up at the flat I was staying in on the night I won Wimbledon for the first time, in 1981. In fact, they were the reason I got in trouble for not going to the Champions Dinner. My father called me and said, “Look, these guys, they want you to go to this dinner.” I asked him, “Do you think it’s important to go?” And he said, “I don’t know. I’m not going to say yes or no.”
At that point I remember thinking, “Look, I’m hanging out with these rock guys—why the hell would I want to leave all this behind to waste my time with some bunch of old farts?” So I said, “Forget that, I’m not going.”
I might’ve been the Wimbledon champion, but I knew I wasn’t in the same league as these rock guys when it came to partying. At one point the Pretenders’ guitarist James Honeyman-Scott asked me, “Do you know where I can get an eight-ball?” I wasn’t even entirely sure what that was—I guessed it was a mix of heroin and speed or cocaine or whatever, but either way, it was a long way out of my comfort zone—which was probably just as well; less than a year later, James sadly died of a drug overdose. Within another year or so the Pretenders’ original bass player, Pete Farndon, was dead too. Chrissie and the drummer—my old buddy Martin Chambers—were the only survivors.
The Rolling Stones were also people who took it to another level. The first time I met them was in 1981, on the Tattoo You tour at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. As usual, it was Vitas who took me backstage. After making our way through all the different areas you have to go through, we eventually got back to a room where only Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and the guitar tech were hanging out, and they said, “Come on in.” They were warming up before the show, having a drink and partying pretty hard. I was thinking, “How the hell are these guys going to play?” I’m not sure what the exact time was. I think they’d announced to the crowd they’d be going on at 9.30, but the crew knew the real time would be well after 10. As they were hustling us out so they could finally go on stage, someone said, “Mick Jagger wants to say hello,” so the next thing we know Vitas and I are smoking a joint with Mick Jagger. He’s talking away and seems reasonably happy to see us, but all the people running things were totally freaking out because by now they were well past the time that even the Rolling Stones knew they were meant to be on at—heading for what would later become Axl Rose territory. That was a memorable night.
The next time I saw them was not long afterward, when Ronnie and Keith came to the ATP Finals at Madison Square Garden—the big end-of-year tournament which is now held at the O2 Arena in London. I was playing Vilas in the semis. Of course they showed up late. I was at the changeover and someone started tapping me on my shoulder. I’m trying to ignore it, because that’s how you are in a match, but this guy’s going, “John, John.” I’m about to tell him to get lost, but when I turn round, it’s Ronnie! I had this incredible jolt of adrenaline, I’ve got to say, to see Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards sitting in their leather pants at a tennis match.
Athletes tend to be lean, but these guys have absolutely no extra bodyweight on them. It’s amazing how skinny they are—they make Iggy Pop look fat! Patty and I went to Ronnie’s house in London once, where he lived for twenty-five years. He and his then wife Jo were the nicest people in the world, Keith and his wife came over too, and the two Rolling Stones’ wives cooked us this huge elaborate dinner and served it, buffet-style. Now both of these guys load huge amounts of turkey-meat onto their plates—it felt like Thanksgiving to me—but they don’t eat any of it. I’m thinking, “I’m the only guy eating, this is amazing!”
A few years later, Ronnie invited me to his place again. He told me, “John, I haven’t had a drink in nine days,” and I said, “God, that’s great, Ronnie.” Apparently he’d gone to the hospital and the doctors told him, “Your liver’s so shot, you’re going to die if you keep drinking the way you have been.” But then Ronnie asked me, “You want a bump? You want a hit of weed?” I remember thinking, “Are coke and weed OK now?” That was pretty unconventional medical advice, but I guess desperate times call for desperate measures. What do I know?
Somehow he managed to stop drinking—I think he’s still sober at the time of this writing. You can tell how long ago this was because it was back in the days of fax machines. Apparently Ronnie sent a fax to Keith, who was at his place in Connecticut, saying, “Look, I haven’t had a drink for nine days.” Now Ronnie loves Keith like he’s his older brother—basically looks up to him more than any human being on earth—so he adds something like, “Aren’t you proud of me?” And Keith sends him a fax back saying, “You’re a fucking pussy, call me when you’re drinking again.” I remember Ronnie started laughing hysterically—he thought that was the funniest thing ever—and that made me start laughing too.
They’re two very different disciplines—rock ’n’ roll and sports. People ask me: “If you had the choice, would you rather have been a tennis player or the guitarist in a rock band?” And even though there’s something unbelievably intoxicating about the idea of being in a band, ultimately I’d always pick sports.
First because I love sports—not just tennis, but basketball, football, athletics, boxing, whatever—but also because, for me, there’s always a certain time of night where I’ll get jittery and start to think, “I’ve got to go to sleep.” That time might have been four in the morning when I was younger. But now if there’s a gig someone wants me to go to that doesn’t start until eleven or twelve, I’ll say, “Isn’t it a little late?” Maybe age has turned me into a lightweight, but I couldn’t handle the world Keith and Ronnie live in (although I did try). Those guys are night owls.
6
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Samuel Beckett
If I tried to convince you I’d got that quote from my close reading of the work of the Nobel Prize-winning Irish writer, you’d probably think I was bullshitting. And you’d be right. I got it from a tattoo on Stan Wawrinka’s arm. No one bats an eye when a tennis player gets a tattoo these days, but imagine the kind of British tabloid shitstorm there would’ve been if I’d turned up to Wimbledon with one in the late seventies! Going back to Samuel Beckett, though, he definitely had the right idea when it came to my career hosting TV shows.
One afternoon in 2003 I was on my way to play tennis in New York when I got a call from the producers of the David Letterman show. The host of the huge, daily, prime-time Late Show had come down with shingles and could I stand in for him that afternoon? “What, now?” “Yeah, now. Come down to the studios, we tape in a few hours. Can you do it?” “Er, yeah, I guess, sure!” I mean, what else could I have said? “Sorry, I’ve got to go practice?” So I literally did a U-turn in the street and headed downtown to the studios, like Superman saving the day, only minus the tights with the underpants outside.
I thought they’d be all over me as soon as I got shown into th
e studio—thanking me profusely, briefing me on what to do. But it was like “no big deal.” I waited around for a while, but no one even approached me, so I went to find someone who looked like they were working on the show. “Maybe we should try to decide what we’re doing here… do we do a monologue or not?” I asked. “Do you wanna do one?” “I don’t know… er… maybe?”
To me, this seemed the kind of basic question anyone would want answered if they were being asked to step into Letterman’s shoes for the first time at such short notice. But could I get an answer? Everyone was so casual, no one seemed to care about what I should or shouldn’t be doing. I like to think I’m good under pressure, but this was somewhat outside my comfort zone. Nowadays, I’d probably be more relaxed, but at the time, I needed to know what was going to happen. After all, this was a show that a lot of people would be watching, and I didn’t want to be known as the guy who replaced Letterman and totally sucked.
Not long before we started taping the show—which was to air later that evening—somebody did finally run through a couple of last-minute jokes they’d written for me. The material wasn’t too bad and I delivered it with as much conviction as I could. But throughout the monologue I heard myself blurting out, “Hey, pretty good for a sports guy!” which was kind of lame, although it was probably an accurate reflection of how I was feeling.
You might be wondering why I got the call-up in the first place. Don’t think I didn’t ask myself that same question. It’s possible they’d asked half of Manhattan and everyone said no, so that’s why they’d wound up at my door less than two hours before the show. Or they might have been waiting until the last minute to see if David would pull through. He must have been really sick because he missed a month of shows. Bruce Willis did one the day after me, so there were some bigger names than me in the frame. Presumably my name came up because I’d been on Letterman regularly for the last I-dunno-how-many years, I’d had meetings over the last two or three with David and his producers, and they were saying positive things about me and how I should do more TV. But I was still surprised to get that call.
