Miles to Go (7 page)

Amazing Grace

W
ell, I think I’m ready to go back to the very beginning now. It’s tough to remember so far back when you’re an old, wise broad like me, but here I go. Waaay back.
(Note the subtle tone of sarcasm?)

I know that it seems like I took the whole Hannah thing in stride. Don’t think I wasn’t completely over the moon. But I also had an advantage. As a little girl, I had had my fair share of the spotlight. When I was tiny, I was my dad’s shadow. He kind of got used to having me around. So when he went on the road to play concerts—my dad was always a singer, this acting thing came later—he wanted me with him as much as possible. And he was in the fast lane for a while there. I sat on his shoulders in front of thousands of people.

I rode helicopters, Lear jets, buses, and limos. Sometimes he’d bring me onstage to sing “Hound Dog” with him, and I’m told they had some trouble getting me off. At the end of each show, when the fans gave him gifts, I’d run out in front of the cheering crowd, help my daddy gather up the flowers, homemade bracelets, and bras, and then we’d go straight to a hospital to donate them. Except the bras. They made excellent hammocks for my dolls.

When I was all of two years old, my dad brought me along to an Elvis Presley tribute. Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley had organized the event—which was being taped live for television—at the Pyramid, a 20,000-seat arena in Memphis. It was an all-star lineup: Aretha Franklin, the Jordanaires, Eddie Rabbitt, Bryan Adams, the Sweet Inspirations, Tony Bennett, all singing Elvis songs. Dad’s turn came in the middle of the show. He sang “One Night with You” while I watched from backstage with Mammie in my frilly little party dress. Then, for the grand finale, Dad started singing “Amazing Grace,” and all the other singers came to join him onstage one by one.

It was a bluesy, rock ’n’ roll, Memphis-style rendition of “Amazing Grace.” I can’t really say whether I remember the moment, or whether it’s been told to me so many times that I feel like I remember it, but finally I couldn’t hold back any longer. I broke away from Mammie and ran out onto the stage. As Daddy tells it, the Sweet Inspirations just scooped me up and held me high, looking out at the audience.
There I was, taking it all in, feeling the spirit of that song, the music, and Elvis as much as anyone—in front of thousands of people!

The Sweet Inspirations passed me to the Jordanaires, who passed me to Eddie Rabbitt. (Sort of like the famous-singer version of hot potato.) I was waving at the audience the whole time, loving it. The last person to hold me was Tony Bennett. (Sort of like the famous singer getting stuck with the hot potato.) At the end of the song, he brought me back to Dad, looked him straight in the eyes, and said, “You’ve got a special little girl here.” When Dad tells this story
(like, every day)
, he says that Tony Bennett said it like he meant it. Like he was really saying,
Man, she’s got something really special. A certain charisma. She connects with people.
That’s my dad for you. Always embellishing his stories in my favor.

I don’t know what to say about Tony Bennett, but what I do know is that I wasn’t a bit afraid of the stage. I was with my daddy, I dug the music, and I felt like I belonged there—as if the stage was a puzzle, and I was a missing piece that fit right in. Or maybe I was the puzzle, and being onstage was a missing piece of me. Okay, let’s just say I felt a lot more comfortable being up onstage than I do now trying to make up analogies!

Hunting Rabbits

M
y earliest music memories aren’t all on stage. As early as I can remember, music was part of my everyday life. Pappy’s father, my great-grandfather (E. L. Cyrus), was a Pentecostal preacher. On top of being a legislator for the state of Kentucky, Pappy (Ronald Ray Cyrus) sang with the Crownsmen for a time and always had a gospel quartet. My dad’s mother (Ruthie Cyrus) was also musical. She sang and played piano by ear. And when it came to our house, Dad’s guitar was always out. He, my uncle, and my Pappy would sing “Little Red Caboose” or “Silent Night.” Especially around Christmas, the house was full of carols.

When I was growing up, Dad brought home lots of his musician friends. I sat on Waylon Jennings’s lap while he sang “Good-Hearted Woman.” When I was ten or eleven, Ed King
(The Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist. How cool is that?)
showed me the chords for “Sweet Home Alabama” on my first guitar.

One day Johnny Neel
(a former keyboardist for the Allman Brothers)
came to visit. Daddy and I took a walk with him up to the top of a hill near our house. Johnny was blind, so we walked carefully. He used a cane while I held his other hand. When we sat down at the top, Johnny said, “It must be so beautiful up here. I wish I could see how beautiful it is.” This happened before I can remember, but according to Dad, I said, “Just listen to the wind. You can hear God’s voice in the wind.” And when Johnny Neel just sat there quietly, I said, “Put your head down close to the grass so you can hear it.”
(Dad = wrapped around my finger.)
He got down on all fours, put his ear to the ground, and said, “You’re right, baby.”

My dad tells all these stories about me and his musician friends. But my favorite is the one about Carl Perkins.
(The great rockabilly pioneer. You know, "Blue Suede Shoes.")
Carl Perkins brought his rabbit hunting dogs over from Memphis to walk around the farm with Dad. Dad and Carl weren’t really hunting. They just liked to watch the dogs trail the rabbits. I was six years old, but I went with them. I always went with them.

So Carl’s dogs were walking through the field, they caught the scent of a rabbit, and they took off into the hollow. Carl looked down at me and said, “Now, honey, I want you to remember this day. Me and your dad, we ain’t carrying no guns, but we love rabbit hunting. Always remember that rabbit hunting is just like the music business.” That made no sense to me. “What do you mean?” I asked. He said, “It’s not about killing the rabbit. It’s about enjoying the chase.” Daddy says that the dogs were howling, and we were standing there—him, me, and Carl Perkins, and he remembers that moment like it was yesterday. I’m not sure I remember it quite that clearly, but I know that day is still with me.

No single one of those encounters made me who I am. Not one of them convinced me to be an actor or a musician. But our hours and days add up. Little moments attach themselves to other little moments and collect into big dreams. A sunset, a walk, a few small words of wisdom.
We become what we experience.

Hannah and Lilly

M
aybe my childhood experiences did have a little something to do with getting the part on
Hannah Montana
, but none of my dad’s friends gave me any nuggets of wisdom about life on the set with my costars. If a TV show is like its own little world, then, in the beginning, the kids on our show were like an entire junior high school class. There was jealousy. There were fights. There was friendship. There was love. The only thing that was different: there were only three of us.

Emily, Mitchell, and I are all close in age. Three is never a good number. At any given point, someone’s going to feel like a third wheel—that’s just the way threes work. Mitchell and I were sort of insta-best friends. We’re both crazy, silly, fun, high-energy, joking around with no real filters on what we say or do. We even had a little case of puppy love for a while there. It was sweet.

Meanwhile, Emily’s more reserved. Also, she’s beautiful and athletic. There was competition between us—girls struggle with that, and we were no exception. I didn’t do much to fix it. I mean, I wanted to, but I had no idea how to go about fixing it. I never got along with girls as well as I did with guys. Hadn’t I just endured Operation Make Miley Miserable, which was an all-girl campaign, for a year?

Emily and I tried to be friends, we really did, but it always ended in a fight.
We’re just so different. She’s from L.A.—I’m from the South. She’s opinionated. I’m not opinionated . . . but I’m so not opinionated that I’m opinionated about
not
being opinionated. She’s supersmart. I felt dumb. Once in our classroom on set we got into a huge yelling argument after the teacher left. It was so bad, and we were so upset, that we each went home and told our parents. Both families all sat down together and tried to work it out. After those peace talks, we tiptoed around each other for a couple of weeks, but it didn’t last. Soon enough we were back at each other’s throats.

Usually on set everyone’s mellow if someone flubs a line. Not us. We’d be, like, “Gosh,” and roll our eyes in exasperation if the other one messed up. As soon as a take was over, I’d say, “Are we done with this scene now?” or she’d say, “Can we go?” There was no warmth, no chemistry. We were playing BFs, and neither of us wanted to be there. Finally the producers said, “You two have to pull it together.” I think sometimes people forget how old we are. They wonder why we’re behaving the way we do. The pettiness. The drama. The acne depression—I’ll get to that later. We’re teenagers! Our job is to fight. That’s gotta be the downside of making a TV show about teenagers. You have to work with teenagers. On the upside . . . hmm. Maybe there isn’t an upside.

I really wanted to be best friends with Emily. My dad was playing my dad. Jason Earles, who plays Jackson, was like a big brother to me. The show felt real to me, and I wanted my relationship with Lilly to feel real too. I knew it didn’t have to—show business is show business—but I was disappointed. There were times when I didn’t think we could ever be friends. We just couldn’t figure out how to get along.

Time went on, and the three of us—me, Mitchell, and Emily—were stuck together. So we stuck together. And over time we found ways to genuinely bond. There was a narrow wooden catwalk up above the set. We called it the “C.A.D.” room.
(C.A.D. = inside joke)
Getting up to the C.A.D. room was precarious. It was several stories high! You had to hang on to a bar or you’d fall down to certain death. The producers must have been glad to have us out of their hair. They didn’t care where we went: “We don’t see anything. We don’t know anything. This isn’t on us,” was their attitude.

We’d sneak up there for lunch, and for an hour it felt like we were hiding out in a treehouse, high above our jobs and homework and parents. We were all in the same situation—we had a great opportunity. It meant working like grown-ups, but it wasn’t always easy to behave like grown-ups. Witness my spats with Emily. But up in the C.A.D. room we got to be normal, mischievous kids for a change. The pressure was off, and there were even hints of fondness between Emily and me. Our characters got along so well. Why couldn’t we act the same in real life? For all our troubles, deep down I
think
know
we loved each other, even then. But we had a long way to go before we’d really be friends.