Lips Unsealed (20 page)

However, deep down I knew that I wasn’t being entirely truthful with them or, more important, with myself. Prior to the Roxy shows, I had a glass of wine in my dressing room. What was one glass of wine? Most of the time I didn’t even finish a whole glass. I drank only enough to take the edge off the jitters I always had before going onstage.

It was like there were two versions of me. There was the insecure Belinda who couldn’t believe people would pay money to see her. Then there was the Belinda who drank a glass of wine and turned into a singer. At that point, anything was possible. The Roxy’s audience was full of industry types and characters from the old scene, including Exene and some of her cohorts, who, I was told, came just to cackle. She was in the minority. The hometown crowd roared their approval.

I hung on Morgan afterward, grateful he was there and more grateful that he had stuck with me through some very tough times. I almost believed him when he said that I had given a performance that surpassed everyone’s expectations but his. More than twenty years later, as I was redoing my website, I came across a video on YouTube of me from one of those shows, singing “Since You’ve Gone,” a great song that featured Charlotte playing keyboards. Unsure if I wanted to watch it, I took a deep breath and clicked Play. I was surprised. I thought it was really good.

In June, I went on tour with Robert Palmer, who was having monster success with the chart-topping single “Addicted to Love.” I was his opening act, and he was not very nice to me. He was aloof, condescending, and dismissive. He spoke to me only once during the entire month we traveled together and that was to ask if I had any drugs. I didn’t. It
was the first time I could ever say no. He shrugged, walked away, and never had anything to do with me again.

I struggled with jealousy when Madonna released her great song “Papa Don’t Preach.” From her
True Blue
album, it was an instant hit that took radio by storm and soared to number one. But my problem was with Madonna herself, not the music. I looked at her body and thought, Oh my God, she looks phenomenal and it’s because she’s skinnier than me. I have to get that skinny.

Poor Morgan. When we talked on the phone at night, he would ask me about the show and then have to listen to me go on about the food I ate that day, how much I weighed, and whether I thought I looked fat. Despite Morgan’s reassurances, I never felt thin enough, pretty enough, or good enough.

My fans disagreed, too, but there was one admirer whom I could have done without. A few dates into the tour, my birth father contacted me again. It was the first time since I had seen him two years earlier. Going through my management company, he congratulated me on the new album and asked if he and his family could come to the show when we stopped in New Orleans. I put them on the list, but as the date drew near I complained to Charlotte that I didn’t feel good about seeing him.

“What don’t you feel good about?” she asked.

“Everything,” I said. “It’s a feeling I have.”

“Why?” she asked, pressing me.

“I just don’t want to see him,” I said.

That was exactly it. I didn’t want to deal with the emotions that would surface when I let him back into my life. I was much happier when I avoided him and other unpleasant realities in my life. As I knew, my father was one chapter. I had been telling journalists that I was helped by Alcoholics Anonymous, implying I was sober, when I knew the real story was different. Instead of confronting the truth, as well as why I still drank, I ran from it. Deep down I knew it, too. But … well, there was always a but.

Before the New Orleans show, I was tense and upset and not anything like myself on the previous dates. I thought about him throughout my performance and couldn’t wait to get off the stage. But then that only hurried and exacerbated the confrontation that I wanted to avoid.

Large trailers served as dressing rooms, and I was peeking out the window of mine as he came backstage. He and his daughters got as far as the wooden barricade that had been set up to keep people from entering the artists’ area unless their names were on the list. I watched as a large security guard stopped them and checked my father’s name against the names attached to his clipboard. I took a deep breath; I knew what was going to happen. Indeed, a moment later, I saw the security guard shake his head and my dad turn around and walk away, dejected. His family followed.

I had tears streaming down my face. I felt cruel and sad. But I couldn’t handle seeing him.

I know everyone—record executives, critics, my former bandmates, fans, and myself—all wondered if I would be able to pull off a solo album and tour. Given where I had started from a year earlier, the odds were stacked against me. But my single “Mad About You” reached number three on the charts and the album itself sold more than five hundred thousand copies in the United States, making it gold. It surpassed everyone’s expectations, including my own.

Success also made comparisons to the Go-Go’s, and resulting criticism, easier to take. I was happy with the album. It was like the romantic pop that I had listened to when I was growing up and lying in front of the stereo speakers. Like all my solo albums since, it reflected where I was at the time.

My life felt inexplicably charmed. Morgan and I sold our respective condos—his was where we’d been living, and mine was left over from my Dodger days—and rented a cute house in Benedict Canyon. He went to work at the William Morris Agency, and I felt like I was getting to start my life over again. I couldn’t begin to explain the turnaround.

Then it got even better. We had barely settled into our rental when my business manager informed me that I had some significant royalties coming in from
Belinda
and should think about investing in a house. I
had never thought about spending such money, but I dutifully looked around without seeing anything I liked except for one weird house up the street. It was covered in vines and looked like an English cottage that had fallen into a bit of disrepair.

I didn’t let the fact that it wasn’t for sale stop me from obsessing about it. I regularly stopped my car and stared at it. One day I left a note on the gate with my name and number, explaining to the owner that I loved the house and wondered if they might be interested in selling it.

The owner, an entertainment attorney, got in touch with me and invited me to see the house. He wasn’t sure he wanted to sell it, but he was happy to show me around. The place was in terrible condition. He had let it get run-down. But I saw only magic. It had once belonged to Carole Lombard, who used it as a hideaway for her trysts with Clark Gable. The kitchen floor included a concrete square with her footprints and signature dated 1936. I wanted it more than ever, but as I left, the owner said he wasn’t interested in selling.

However, a short time later, the house went on the market. It was more than I could possibly afford. Plus we had gone ahead and put a down payment on another house nearby. My heart sank. Then out of nowhere another chunk of money came in that allowed Morgan and me to afford our dream house. We lost the other down payment, but c’est la vie.

Morgan and I hired noted architect Brian Murphy to make our dreams real. I told Brian that I wanted the style to be
“Alice in Wonderland
on acid”—and that’s exactly how it turned out. The kitchen had a lavender slate floor. A mural in the dining room was an homage to Maxfield Parrish. Outside, the French gardens overflowed with flowers and vines that bloomed year-round.

But I was sidetracked somewhat from that very personal project when I returned to work sooner than expected. Miles, who wished that
Belinda
, despite its impressive sales, had been edgier and more in the style of IRS acts, forgot to pick up the option on my contract with IRS and I found myself a free agent. My management and I decided to shop around for a new deal. Miles was furious. But we thought, Why not test the market?

It turned out to be a shrewd move. After a bidding war between several major labels, I signed with MCA in the U.S., kept my foreign rights till after the next record was finished, and eventually made seven figures on both sides of the Atlantic.

In a way it was like a reunion. MCA president Irving Azoff had managed the Go-Go’s after Ginger, and he was very supportive and enthusiastic about adding me to his roster of artists. Irving was also an astute businessman. After spending a significant sum of money to get me, he wanted to recoup it. He put me to work, scheduling the release of my next album for the following fall, barely a year away.

Michael Lloyd expected to work with me again, but Irving had another producer in mind. I was given the difficult, if not heartbreaking, task of telling Michael, who was understandably upset. I felt awful, but it was one of those things. The silver lining was my new executive producer Rick Nowels, who had scored major triumphs working with Stevie Nicks, another MCA artist. In fact, Stevie had suggested he try to work with me. In a way, we may have been destined to partner. It sure felt like it when we met. We had instant chemistry.

Rick was tall and blond, a Californian from head to toe, very passionate and a little eccentric. He wrote songs with Ellen Shipley, an amazing artist in her own right. They created songs specifically for my voice. For me, it was a brand-new and exciting way of working. I had never been anyone’s muse.

When Rick and I talked about the album and how we envisioned it—what we wanted it to feel like and how we wanted the listener to feel—I had the sense he was reaching into my soul, removing tiny pieces, and magically turning them into songs. I was at his house when I first heard “Circle in the Sand,” and I thought, Oh my God, this is so good. He and Ellen topped themselves with “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.” I heard the song the day after it was written. Rick sat at the piano, and Ellen sang. It was like they were showing me a newborn baby.

I’ve had few reactions like the one I had after hearing them. I knew the song, even better than a hit, was a classic. Then the great songwriter
Dianne Warren came into the studio one day and played me “I Get Weak.” Few people know the quality of Dianne’s voice; it’s gravelly and soulful and always moves me. “I Get Weak” was a perfect example. As she sang the final chorus, I literally felt weak myself. Again, I wondered how I got so lucky.

At the same time, I had never worked as hard. Rick made me sing parts forty or fifty times. I could never figure out what specifically he was listening for. Thank God he eventually heard it, though, or I might still be there.

Everything fell into place. Through Morgan’s best friend, John Burnham, I was fortunate enough to get Academy Award–winning actress Diane Keaton to direct the videos for “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” and “I Get Weak.” I was almost intimidated to meet her, but she was utterly charming and thoroughly inspirational in her approach to work. I only had to look at her body of work or the way she dressed (beautifully and with style) to know she had great taste, so I said, “Just do what you want.”

She came back a week later with concepts and a storyboard. I said great, and we got started. On September 18, “Heaven” was released as the first single. Within two months, the song hit number one in the U.S. It also topped the charts in the UK, Germany, and a handful of other countries. It’s rare that lightning strikes twice. I knew the odds against it happening to me a second time. I had to pinch myself when my album, released in October to mixed reviews, turned into a worldwide hit: a top 20 platinum seller in the U.S. and multiplatinum around the world.

As I kicked off the “Good Heavens” tour, I asked Morgan if it was real or if I was dreaming. It seemed like a mistake. I figured it had to be. He didn’t know how to deal with that kind of mind-set other than to tell me to realize that these things were
not
accidents; I had worked hard for years.

His comment caused me to flash back to a time when I was on tour in the early days of the Go-Go’s, just as the band was first taking off. It all seemed too fantastic; I had a moment right before we went onstage when I wondered where I was going to be ten years later. Now I knew. A couple days into the tour, I had another similar sort of moment. I
was standing behind the curtain, atop a small platform, getting set to descend the three stairs as the spotlight hit me, and yet instead of breathing, focusing, and doing all the things I normally did in the seconds before the show started, I was thinking about how weird it was that I was doing this.

Me? Belinda Kurczeski from the Valley? What was I doing here?

I felt an odd and slightly unnerving disconnect between what I was doing and … and me … whoever that was.

WHO WAS I?

It was a good question, and one I was trying to figure out. For the
Heaven
album and tour I grew my hair long and dyed it red. I was wondering if being punk’s Ann-Margret suited me when I was walking down the street one day in Beverly Hills and ran into the Sparks brothers, Russel and Ron Mael, whom I hadn’t seen in a while, and Russell blurted out, “Oh my God! You’re a redhead! It looks great!”

He had great taste, so I figured it must be true. My friend Jeannine, who had been my roommate after I split with Mike Marshall, also reassured me it was a good color, and she had excellent taste, too. She came on the road with me, along with Jack and Charlotte, all of whom knew to one degree or another that I needed their friendship and support. They didn’t know how badly I needed it, though.

On my previous tour I had seen Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” video and got it in my head that I had to be as thin as her. For this tour, I wanted to be even thinner. The irony was I knew I photographed well no matter what I weighed, and beyond that, in discussions with friends, I always took the position that you didn’t need to diet or reshape yourself to look a certain way in order to be beautiful.

I could even hear myself telling girlfriends, “You can diet all you want, but beauty comes from the inside. You have to like yourself before you can ever feel beautiful.” But I wasn’t listening to my own advice. I had become my mother, a gorgeous woman who had, when I was growing up, always been on a diet even though she didn’t need to lose weight. I never understood that until I had done the same thing and later came
to realize the diet wasn’t at all about weight; it was about feeling inadequate and wanting to be in control.