Could It Be Forever? My Story (34 page)

When she died, I realised I had been so protected and kept away from the business that I had no professional relationships or connections. And really, at that point, I did not know what to do without her. I was completely lost, because I had known nothing but her guidance.

She and I would sit for hours at a time talking about what we should do next and how to do it. And she would go and make it happen. For a long time, I didn’t know how to function without her. I was crippled by her death. Had she lived, my career would not have had such a large hole in it. I would have found my way a lot sooner, figured out what I wanted and at least moved towards accomplishing whatever that was. We had started to set a lot of my goals in motion – as an actor, as a recording artist, as a writer, a producer and all the rest of it. Then she died and it all died with her.

R
CA wanted me to record more because my first solo album and single did so well. I think it sold two million copies outside the U.S. But because of what was happening in my life, I didn’t have any idea of what I wanted to do musically. I was just searching on the
Home Is Where the Heart Is
album.

I started writing more songs with Gerry Beckley, from the group America. And it was really just wild. Every night we’d get to the studio at seven, have some food sent over and stay until four or five in the morning. We’d go home when it was getting light, sleep almost all day, then go back to the studio. It was perfect for me. I’ve never been someone who can function in the mornings. I was too distracted
during the day. Nighttime, when everybody else was asleep, is when I would play and write. I loved the vibe of what we were doing on that album. There were a number of different people who would drop by the studio – Sly Stone, Buddy Miles, Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart – brilliant musicians all.

We shot the album cover in an apartment that was a museum of art deco and art nouveau, off Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. It was magnificent. They showed me two locations and when I saw that one, I said, ‘Stop. This is where we’ll do it.’ It was just like a womb, and the title of the album,
Home Is Where the Heart Is,
signified the safety of home.

I had my friends around me, people I felt really comfortable working with. They were working with me as contributors, not just as musicians for hire. We were developing the stuff together and it was a really creative time for me. I was trying to escape the difficulties of losing my dad. It was a time when I was trying to become a human being again, to find my place in society, after having basically lived in a vacuum for six years. It was an undisciplined life; I could go to bed when I wanted, wake up when I wanted and had no responsibilities except to work when I wanted to work.

On
Home Is Where the Heart Is
, I covered the McCartney song
Tomorrow
, which was on Wings’
Wild Life
album. I loved the song. There were three or four songs that he wrote after he left the Beatles that I thought could be embellished upon. Paul told me, ‘It was pretty cool.’ I played an old piano live on the track. I hated playing piano with a band because I’m not a trained pianist, and when you have to play your part with a band it’s much tougher than when you play on your own. But I played it because I had arranged the piano part. Bruce Johnston arranged the background
parts in the middle of the track. It’s beautifully done. Bruce had just done
Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me
and other great tracks for Elton.

For the next album for RCA, we went to Caribou Ranch in Colorado, where Elton had made the
Rock of the Westies
album. I had worked with his bass player, Kenny Passarelli, and I knew a couple of the guys in the band a little bit. I
had heard some of Elton’s tracks, I’d seen him live and even played with him, and thought there was some magic to going to the studio together. I rented a Lear jet and brought my dog Bullseye with me. He wouldn’t go in a regular plane; he couldn’t handle it.

We spent a month there recording
Gettin’ It in the Street.
Bruce Johnston was getting more and more involved in producing and working with the Beach Boys again, so he wasn’t very available. Because I had started working and writing with Gerry Beckley, I asked him if he wanted to co-produce the album.

I had never been to Colorado and found that I couldn’t sing up there because of the altitude and because it was so dry. I lost the top few notes of my vocal range. But we had a lot of fun there. We went horseback riding every day and there was plenty of frivolity – lots of very pretty girls worked there. I invited guitarist Mick Ronson up. He’d done a lot of work with Bowie and I loved the
Ziggy Stardust
album. I flew Mick up and he stayed for a couple of days. We jammed
and we’d get all worked up about songs and ideas. He was one of the most unusual guitar players I ever worked with. His style was so different. There was nothing conventional about what he did; which is why it was so interesting. I think he was very flattered that I wanted him to play, but I think he was worried that the fan base that he had established in that avant garde, Velvet Underground kind of world was going to elude him if he went too mainstream – from being David Bowie’s sideman to David Cassidy’s sideman. And I don’t think he was wrong. But we had great fun together.

On
Gettin’ It in the Street
I was trying to experiment with different genres and ideas. I wrote a song called
Junked Heart Blues
and that one has always stuck with me. People sometimes come up to me and tell me how cool they think it was.

I tried to stretch myself musically during that period.
Those three RCA albums were the most interesting for me because I didn’t do them for commercial purposes. That’s not why I ever went into the recording studio. Record companies want you to make commercial records. They don’t want you to change. RCA was not terribly behind the idea of me exploring my creative side, my dreams. I wanted to see how far we could take this. But the way RCA looked at it was, ‘Well, we’ve made money with him, but we don’t get it. We don’t hear a hit here.’ There wasn’t a hit on that third album like
Rock the Boat
, RCA’s big single for the year. And there were personnel changes at the label, so suddenly there were new people there who hadn’t been involved in signing me.

I wasn’t making disco music, nor was that the direction I would ever go in and that’s what RCA wanted. The label was completely unsupportive about
Gettin’ It in the Street
. They thought the album was too hard, too edgy and not commercial enough. I had made the decision not to tour, but I now think that if I had toured and really cultivated the relationship with RCA, the record would have done much better.

From a business standpoint, RCA was probably right. I’ve learned to be a good businessman from the mistakes that were made on my behalf and the mistakes that I personally have made. But I don’t regret any of my mistakes. Honestly. I wouldn’t have traded the experience of doing what I love to do and having it on vinyl forever.

The Higher They Climb, the Harder They Fall
,
Home Is Where the Heart Is
and
Gettin’ It in the Street
are much more
‘me’ in terms of the music. I played on all the tracks, I wrote a lot of them, I explored my musical vision with other great writers, singers and musicians. My fans love those albums. It was a very dark period for me in a lot of ways, as I’ve said, so I’ve tended to disconnect myself from that material, although I still do one or two of those songs live, like
Common Thief
, because it represents that period of time for me. I love to surprise people and I wanted to expose a lot about myself through those albums. I think I achieved that.

I
n 1977, I married Kay Lenz, a sweet, bright, beautiful actress whom I’d known for all of six weeks. We instantly hit it off and became great friends. She was funny, she was smart, she was talented. What did we have in common? We’d both just recently lost our fathers, we were both feeling lost and lonely and we were both actors, with all the insecurities and self-absorption that seems to go with the occupation. We were two lost souls who made each other laugh. That seemed good enough to me.

By the time Kay and I met, she had already done more than 20 different TV shows, including the acclaimed miniseries
Rich Man, Poor Man
. She’d won an Emmy and had been nominated for another, not to mention a couple of
other awards. When we married, I had not been working at all for the last couple of years, so I’d stay home and she’d go off each day to work. It’s funny how life works out. I was now in much the same situation my father had been in years before – married to a much-in-demand actress who was the household’s principal money-earner.

Unfortunately, we had married for the wrong reasons. We were both immature and we really weren’t compatible as a couple. It became apparent almost immediately after we married that Kay wanted much less emotional involvement than I did. I felt I gave up a lot the day I married her. I gave up being old ‘Jack the lad’ with countless women and the freedom to do anything I wanted. And Kay, I discovered to my dismay, was actually not that interested in me. Her career, I soon realised, definitely came first. I thought,
What irony! I marry the one woman who doesn’t want me
.

The truth is, we should have just remained friends; we would have been the greatest of friends. We should have just lived together for a while to see how things worked out before making such a commitment. The problem was neither of us had any guidance. No one said, ‘This is a mistake. Don’t do it.’

She is a great person. She’s got a lot of good qualities. And I identified with that; she was a lot like my mom, people I grew up around, my family. I still have nothing but great, great feelings for her. I don’t know how she feels about me. The marriage got in the way of the bond we shared as friends. We didn’t know enough about each other to know what wasn’t right about the relationship.