Between a Heart and a Rock Place (16 page)

The combination of the video and the song proved unstoppable, propelling the song to the top of the charts, our highest-ranking single. We'd gone with our gut, and once again it had paid off. The signature dance beat that Chrysalis had hated so much would go on to be imi
tated by several musicians, including Don Henley for his hit “The Boys of Summer.” The different sound to the song expanded our audience yet again, with even younger rock and roll fans beginning to follow us. Of all the surprises that video brought, perhaps the most amusing was that a klutz like me would be forever associated with the iconic dance move the “shoulder shake.”

After the song's success, everyone who'd bad-mouthed it in the beginning was suddenly on board, swearing that they'd known it would be a hit all along. Mike Chapman had hated what we'd done with his song at first. After it became a hit, he thought it was a classic. (As a songwriter, Spyder laughingly says that he understands. When a songwriter hears major changes in his music, he or she is often shocked. But you have to learn to let go of that.)

Of course Spyder and I knew better. We'd triumphed. We hadn't given in, and we stayed true to our beliefs. In addition to earning us our fourth Grammy nomination, becoming a top-five single, and inspiring a groundbreaking video, “Battlefield” changed the way we made records. It reinforced the idea that we could tap into something that the label couldn't see. Our instincts were the right ones.

A
FTER WE GOT MARRIED
, Spyder and I lived in the house I'd bought when we separated, but we only stayed a short while. Neither of us felt comfortable there, partly because it reminded us of the time we'd been apart, but also because I'd purchased it myself. That house I owned was beautiful, a midcentury home on a cliff overlooking the lights of the San Fernando Valley. It had a pool and lots of big glass windows so you could see the lights of the valley from almost every room.

Wonderful as that house was, Spyder and I wanted a fresh start. It wasn't
our
home, it was mine. We quickly sold it and bought a house on Rancho Street in Encino. This was a family home with a brick front, shutters, and the all-important white picket fence—literally. It also had a guesthouse in the back, which Spyder promptly turned into a recording studio. I went about decorating and making our house a home while Spyder locked himself away in the studio, happily doing what he did best. He named the studio “Spyder's Soul Kitchen,” and it would become integral to our creative process moving forward. For the first time since our relationship began, we had peace.

When I wasn't on the road or recording, I was (and still am) basi
cally a stay-at-home type of person. I preferred cooking in my own kitchen with my family around to being out on the town. The more fame we achieved, the more reclusive I became. I didn't feel that way in the beginning, but as things escalated, I retreated from the spotlight as much as possible when we weren't on the road. Much of this was in response to having a profession that required spending huge amounts of time socializing with people I didn't know. Touring, especially the backstage “meet-and-greets,” was like being at a wedding where I was the bride every night. When we were home, my mission was solitude, plain and simple.

That's not to say that I was a shut-in; I simply chose my company carefully. The times that I was able to be home were my refuge, my chance to regain my footing. It's hard to catch up if you never slow down, and those times between tours and albums were the best opportunity to do just that. Because of this, I was never in the whole club scene. Maybe we'd have a few friends over for dinner, but those friends were seldom in the entertainment industry. Spyder and I kept to ourselves and spent most of our time within our inner circle—Myron and his wife, Monica; my assistant, Janie, and her husband, Scotty; my brother, Andy; Newman and his girlfriend, Renee. It wasn't that we didn't enjoy being with our celebrity friends, we just didn't want to talk shop all the time. For four years we'd been on such a ridiculous schedule. We'd been living and breathing the music business so intensely, and we just wanted to have a normal life, with regular people who didn't talk about business all day. Despite the fame, we were still very ordinary people, and this was our chance to act like it, the first time since everything started that we were able to separate our life from our work. Before, our life
was
our work.

For the most part we were just too busy to cultivate friendships with famous people who, like us, were constantly on the go. When you are out on the road, chances are everyone else is as well. In truth, there
weren't that many opportunities to socialize with other artists. Music careers don't lend themselves to having lunch with your peers. While we all knew each other and I'd see various people at events, festivals, award shows, or parties, my list of meaningful celebrity encounters was pretty short. I did finally get to meet one of my childhood idols, Robert Plant, once when we played a concert in England. He was backstage, and all I could think of was how crazy life was. I'd spent years listening to him sing, dreaming of being like him when I grew up, and then he was in my dressing room and we were chatting like old friends. I never got to meet John Lennon after being so crazy for the Beatles when I was a kid. But I got to meet Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr on different occasions, which didn't seem odd at all. Bruce Springsteen had a surprisingly unassuming manner—very laid-back, a real down-to-earth guy. Everything you think about Bruce is true—he's a nice person who treats everyone with respect. What you see is what you get.

In the end it wasn't so much a deliberate choice to avoid the various scenes out there. We simply didn't have the time, and when we did, we spent it with our true friends. The only thing that we consciously distanced ourselves from when we were at home was work. One of the things that Spyder and I realized after we got back together was that music had taken over our lives, and more than anything else, this was why we'd broken up. We had allowed music to control every aspect of our earlier life together, and it had almost destroyed us.

We were determined to never let that happen again. If we were going to stay together, we had to set boundaries for ourselves when it came to work, and these boundaries would have to be steadfast. No talking about music, no discussing scheduling, no complaining about the label. We were adamant about not letting music encroach on our private time, and bit by bit, we began to regain control of our lives. We stopped being accessible twenty-four hours a day, ceased planning con
ference calls after six
P.M
., refused calls on the weekend unless it was an emergency. We were going to have a life and we strongly encouraged everyone around us to get one as well.

This break after the release of
Live from Earth
was the first time that we really got serious about imposing these rules on ourselves. When we'd had enough of a break that we could start to think about work, we turned our attention to writing, but we would do this in concentrated batches, not all the time. By this point, with several albums under our belt, I had a good sense of what conditions worked best for me when it came to writing songs. I'd written enough to know that it was not something I could just do on command. Songs just didn't hatch fully formed (or at least they never did for me). It was a much more organic process and it was never forced. Words are very important to me and finding the optimum way to say what I'm thinking is paramount. I don't sit with a thesaurus in hand; I want to find the word in the same way you might find an exquisite shell on the beach: by accident.

While Spyder and I were home, we tried to write as much as possible, getting into a pattern that works for us to this day. We would seldom write together. I was actually that way with other writers, too. Over the years I wrote a lot with Myron, and we rarely worked on our songs while we were sitting in the same room. We'd go back and forth on the telephone. The most important thing I needed for writing was solitude. I could begin an idea with Spyder and Myron, but then I'd have to step away and work on it for a while on my own. After I'd gathered my thoughts we could come together again and continue. They didn't like it at first, but after a while we created a rhythm that would be our lifelong writing style.

Furthermore, I didn't like writing for a specific album, preferring a more low-pressure situation when I had time to just flow with the creativity. When Spyder and I felt that we had enough material, we'd start to think more about what might fit together in an album, but creativity
would come through the writing and recording process. Sometimes I'd get a burst of energy right at the end of recording, and instead of trying to force it into the record on hand, I'd end up with songs for the next record.

Regardless of where we were in the process, patience and time were key components to getting the right songs on the right albums. This was largely why Chrysalis's incessant requests for new records were so stressful: it was antithetical to my creative process. Some people do their best writing when they're pressed for time, but that was never the case for us.

For the most part, Spyder came up with the melodic stuff and I focused more on writing lyrics, although we would take turns doing both. The times I got into working on a melody were when I heard something in my head that felt good vocally. Then I'd sing it so Spyder could see why that particular melody was best for the composition. We'd do more writing between tours than on the road. When we worked together as writers or in the studio, we each had a spark that the other would ignite. It's a cosmic, spiritual thing—there really isn't any other way to describe it.

Spyder wrote more often than I did—he was constantly working on songs. I think one reason he wrote so much was because of his continuing interest in experimenting with our sound. If we relied on songwriters too much, we'd run the risk of our sound becoming static. We had no interest in receiving unsolicited outside material any longer, and we'd only write with friends or writers whose work we admired. Often, when outside songwriters would bring us material, it would sound like stuff that belonged on our previous record. It would mimic without elaborating. We became insulated, locking ourselves up with the band and maybe Peter Coleman and making music undisturbed. We were always trying to evolve and experiment—it was a very prolific and satisfying time.

Our writing usually went something like this: Spyder would come
out in the morning and tell me he had a title. If I hadn't had my coffee yet, I'd wave him away for the time being.

“Get out of my face—it's only six thirty!”

“But I've got a title. I'm gonna leave it on the counter.”

He'd put down a little piece of paper with his idea, walk out of the room, and let me wake up, knowing full well that the minute I saw the title I'd start thinking about the lyrics. He knew I'd be compelled no matter what the hour (it's an annoying, dirty little trick that he's played on me throughout our life). He'd come back in an hour or three, ready to work on it again, and by then I usually had the chorus and most of the verses. I'd almost always start by asking him about the melody.

“What's in your head? What chords do you have so far? Give me a hint where you're going with this.”

“It doesn't matter,” he'd respond. “Just let me see what you've written.”

Once he'd read the words, he would sit down at the piano and start working on a melody that he already had in his head. I'd go off and do something else while he worked on that, and after he'd been at it for a bit, I'd come back to see what he'd done. And just like that, it would come together in a very organic way. We'd play off each other, back and forth, even though sometimes to an outsider it might have sounded more like fighting than collaboration, as if we were bickering like the married couple we were.

If he did something I didn't agree with, I never sugarcoated it for him.

“Are you nuts?” I might say. “There's no way that's going to work.”

“You're impossible. It
will
work. Don't be so stubborn,” he'd shoot back.

“No, it won't. And I'm
not
singing it that way. Pick a key that humans can sing in.”

“You're such a pain in the ass. Just sing it, for chrissake.”

Or sometimes I'd come to him with an idea that he fought me over
for a time. I remember one time in particular, Spyder was convinced that a song would not work for us, and we argued about it.

 

 

Photographic Insert

This was my first head shot, taken around the time I first moved to New York and started performing at Rick Newman's club, Catch a Rising Star.
Photograph by Jerry Tyson

 

 

From the very beginning, I loved being in front of a crowd. There was nothing like working the room and keeping the energy high.
Photograph by Joe D'Amato