Kiss and Make-Up (35 page)

Finally, Shannon went into labor in the middle of the night. We got into the car, and I drove her to the hospital. It was all very calm. We had taken Lamaze classes and knew that we were supposed to control labor with breathing, not rush to the hospital in a panic, but take it slow and easy. When she went into the delivery room, it was for a labor that lasted about twenty-three hours. Every once in a while I’d go into the room and feed Shannon some ice cubes. We have always joked around a lot, so while she was in pain, she’d say, “Don’t ever touch me again. Don’t you ever put your hands on me again. Look what you’ve done!” The jokes would soon die away because the pain would come back. I was there for every second of
that birth. I watched the birth happen. I was the first person to see the crown of my son’s head appear. I was the first person who held my son. When my son first opened his eyes, he saw me. I was the first thing he saw. I cut the umbilical cord—you have to cut it twice, once in the middle and once up close. Nicholas Adam Tweed Simmons was born at eight pounds eleven ounces.

Aside from a man’s own birth and death, I would have to say the birth of his child is probably the pivotal point in his life. Emotions were running like crazy. I felt like I was on a roller-coaster ride. I don’t know if I ever blinked my eyes, but I have the sense that I didn’t. I wanted to keep all my senses wide open, so I could record this moment, which I never imagined would ever happen. There I was, holding in my arms a real live human being who was looking at me—and who was going to be looking to me for everything: for life, for sustenance, for knowledge. I was going to have to be there. They talk about the maternal instinct, but there’s a paternal instinct too, I’m sure.

A man came toward me, and I heard these soothing words: “All right, Gene, that’s the doctor. He’s going to take the baby and clean him up.” While I understood the words intellectually, I emotionally didn’t want to let my baby go. I kept repeating this to my son, to Shannon, to the doctor. I didn’t want to let him go. I remember resolving that, if it came to it, I would fight to the death. It was like when guys fight on the street. When you’re fighting to the death, when an animal’s cornered, fists aren’t even an issue. I had a picture in my mind of completely enveloping the doctor with my legs and arms and sinking my teeth into his neck. I would cut his jugular and kill him where he stood because he was taking my son. To this day I have a mental picture of that poor innocent doctor in his death throes—he is drowning in his own blood with his jugular completely torn apart, and my face is covered with his blood. I had never felt anything like that before in my life. I didn’t understand that kind of rage. I remember Shannon saying something like, “Gene, it’s okay.” I must have had my eyes wide open and my nostrils flaring.

I gave up my son to the doctor. But what they did next seemed like torture. They took Nicholas’s finger and stuck it with something
sharp so it bled. I wanted to kill the nurse, even after she explained to me that they were testing for clotting factors. Then they stuck a tube down his nose and his throat to get out all the liquids. They put things in his eyes. They circumcised him. Then it was all over.

I don’t know that I slept at all for two or three days. I must have stayed awake around the clock just watching Nicholas. He kept looking at me. I felt a little inadequate. As a man, all I knew how to do was make money and chase skirt, and all of a sudden here was a baby who was now depending on me for everything. Was I doing it right? Who knew? What do you do when a baby poops in your hand as you’re holding him? Do you put him down? Do you wipe?
Help!
That’s all I remember saying for many weeks. And then the months went by, and the first word he said was “Daddy.” I remember my knees buckling. I thought about taking all my credit cards and saying, “Here. It’s all yours. Just keep saying ‘Daddy.’ ” I never thought I’d ever hear those words from anybody. It’s true that I lived with Cher’s children and Diana’s children, but they were at ages where they could take care of themselves. Here, instead, were the challenges of real fatherhood, and for me there was an additional challenge: would I be like my own father, or would I stick around and do what I was supposed to do? In my mind—but more important in my heart—there was never any question.

Nicholas was a dream baby. When he’d cry in the middle of the night I would jump up and run to him, not that I would necessarily know what the hell to do when I got there.

One afternoon, between tours, Shannon was changing his diaper, and she called to me to come in and help. I rushed in and she asked me to take over. I grabbed both sides of the diaper as if I were a skilled surgeon and was admiring the fact that my son was defying gravity with his appendage even at such an early age. I remember smiling as I leaned over to close the diaper, when Nick let me have it straight in the face. I caught Shannon laughing in the other room. She had timed it just right.

When he turned two, I arranged for a full petting zoo to be brought over and set up on the tennis court. There were more kids and parents there than I had ever seen assembled in one place. Besides all the ducks, rabbits, and rams there was a miniature horse. Nick was helped on and took his first ride. I had to wait until I was about seven to get dressed up as a cowboy back in Israel; I never got a chance then to ride a horse. My son would beat me to it by the time he was two.

I was reliving my childhood through my son.

I was able to speak English, Hungarian, and Hebrew, as well as some German and a few Japanese phrases. I had a B.A. in education and had taught sixth grade. I was a self-made man, and yet I found Shannon had a sort of life wisdom I never even contemplated. For one thing, prior to becoming a father, I never really imagined wanting children. After becoming a father, I couldn’t imagine not wanting children. Shannon seemed to know this about me. She never questioned my decisions about not wanting marriage or children, but she didn’t seem as shocked as I was at how much I loved being a father.

At an early age my mother used to tell me, “I would throw
myself in front of that truck for you.” I never knew what she meant by that. Why would she want to do that? Later I found myself telling Nicholas the same phrase. I’m sure he thought the same thing I had.

By Nick’s second year, he slept with us in a six-and-a-half-foot-wide, seven-foot-long gigantic bed. The accepted wisdom was to let your child sleep alone. We didn’t care. We wanted to be together twenty-four hours a day.

California was everything New York wasn’t. The weather was paradise and people seemed nicer. I am reminded of the New York joke that goes “A man from California visits New York and asks the first gentleman he meets, ‘Excuse me sir. Is this the way to the Empire State Building or should I just go fuck myself?’ ”

I was to find out that paradise had its problems as well. Late one night, the silence was shattered by a 6.7 earthquake that shook Los Angeles within a 150-mile radius. It literally shook like a carnival ride. I immediately jumped up and grabbed Nicholas and, with Shannon running behind, we first stood in the doorway of the bedroom and then ran down the stairs that were shaking and swinging. Luckily the house was not damaged much, but when we watched the news it looked as if Los Angles had been in a war zone.

Nicholas at age five.

I wasn’t the only one who was feeling the pull of domesticity. A few years later Paul met Pam Bowen and soon decided to marry her. The wedding was to be held at the Bel-Air Hotel. Before the event, I racked my brain for a present—I just couldn’t figure out what to get Paul to show him how much he meant to me.

I was the best man, and at the wedding I was scared stiff. It wasn’t my wedding, but it was close enough. Afterward we went inside for food and music. Guests got up and wished Paul and Pam all the best. At one point I grabbed the microphone and asked Paul for his permission to do something out of the ordinary. Then I parted the curtain and gave the stagehands a nod. They brought out a large television set. I stuck a cassette into the video machine, and there was Tony Bennett, holding a champagne glass in his hand. He toasted the couple, sang “To the Good Life,” and wished Paul and Pam all the happiness in the world. I had called Tony Bennett, and he was kind enough to make all this happen. A kinder and classier guy doesn’t exist.

It was an era of good feeling, a time when emotional bonds were solidifying and new life seemed to be blooming everywhere. Maybe it was inevitable, then, that the happiness would be counterbalanced by some sadness. When we got off tour, Eric Carr called me and told me that he had woken up one morning coughing blood. The very thought sent a chill up my spine. He was immediately placed in the hospital, where doctors found a growth on his heart. They told him that he would need emergency open-heart surgery.

Paul and I immediately flew to New York to be with Eric the night before the operation. When I walked into his room, he was in great spirits, alert and joking. We offered to get him anything he wanted. He asked for a McDonald’s hamburger and fries, which was what he practically lived on while we were touring. We brought
back the food, and we all joked together before we left. A few days later we visited Eric in the hospital again. All had gone well, he said. The doctors were happy with the results. Paul and I felt relieved. What we didn’t know—what Eric wasn’t telling us—was that he had cancer. Fairly quickly he became very ill. He lost all his hair, his huge Italian afro, and it broke our hearts. We were getting ready to record an album that we planned to call
Revenge
, and Paul and I decided that although we would pay for all of Eric’s medical expenses and do whatever we could to help him fight his illness, we needed to start our album. At least for a time, that meant replacing him with a studio drummer. We tried our best to explain, but I’m sure it still hurt him.

By early 1991 we had decided to give Bob Ezrin another shot at producing. We still felt that
Destroyer
was one of the strongest albums we had ever made. And while we weren’t sure Bob was up to it—especially after the bad experience of
The Elder
—we were interested enough to do one song with him as a kind of test. The producers of the film
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
needed a song for their soundtrack, and they wanted us to record “God Gave Rock and Roll to You.” Bob, Paul, and I rewrote the lyrics and rerecorded the song, which went into the Top 10 in England. That was reason enough to stick with Bob for a full record.

Since Eric Carr was still sick, we went through another round of drum auditions. After we failed to find the right drummer, Paul suggested Eric Singer for the album and brought him on for a few months. Eric Singer was a very funny guy, completely professional. We were not planning to bring him into the band, since we were hoping for Eric Carr’s recovery. When it came time to shoot the video for “God Gave Rock and Roll to You,” Eric Carr begged to be in the video, even though he hadn’t played on the recording. We were concerned about whether he was healthy enough or strong enough to do it. But we agreed.