Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story (26 page)

I went back to the studio questioning my new direction when I got a
call asking whether I would open for Neil Young. So I left the studio and went out on the road. Meanwhile, Atlantic decided to take another run at “You Were Meant for Me” for radio one more time—with the original version. Neil was intimidating to open for, as he was playing large outdoor sheds with Crazy Horse. It was usually still daylight when I took the stage, and I had to work hard to get the fans to notice me. Ten stops into the tour, at Jones Beach with the flu, I had to keep giving my guitar player long solos so I could run offstage, and Neil watched me throw up in a potted plant standing in the open-air courtyard.

Neil did pull me aside early on in the tour and asked me how I was. With little more than that invitation, I let the floodgates open and told him about all the pressure I felt to get on the radio, how my first record was considered dead, and how I was trying to write songs that would get played or sounded like what was happening elsewhere in music. He listened quietly, and then became quite serious and said, “Do not ever write for radio. Ever.” All that mattered was staying true to myself, and touring and singing for the people. No one else mattered. Not the press. Not radio. It was advice I sorely needed. Midway through our tour, we were playing Madison Square Garden, and I must have looked nervous, because Neil stopped me as I walked past a common area and asked what was wrong. Was I nervous? I looked him in the eye and said, “Yes! I am nervous! You are Neil Young and you have Crazy Horse with you, and a stack of Marshall amps up to the ceiling, and we are at the Garden, and they are gonna murder me out there!” He got very stern and pointed his finger in my face, and said, “Look. This is just another hash house on the road to success. You go out there and show them no respect.” I had gotten my marching orders: Don’t be intimidated by anyone. I went out there solo acoustic, walked past my mic and out onto the keyhole stage reserved for the middle of Neil’s show. It took a while for the spotlight to find me, and a mic to be run out. The crowd talked noisily. I decided to switch
things up, and instead of rocking with my band, began a stripped-down version of the classic “Summertime.” I sang in the quietest tone I could, almost in a whisper. Gradually everyone began to wonder what I was doing and saying. I could see them all begin to shush one another until the room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. I had them. And they would stay with me for the whole set.

On a day off I filmed a video for “You Were Meant for Me” with the director Lawrence Carroll, featuring Steve Poltz, and finally the song started to get some traction on radio. A full two years after
Pieces of You
came out, it picked up momentum. It had been a long road to get there—what the press was calling an overnight success had been a lifetime of bar singing, writing, and two years of grinding it out in dives and clubs and being told folk music was out and I would never break through. And now, I had somehow made my voice heard amid the angst of grunge, boy bands, and the shiny super-girl groups like the Spice Girls, and gotten a simple country waltz played on pop radio. I went from selling several thousand copies over twelve months to selling five hundred thousand every single month. It was staggering. A tiny snowball in hell had caught enough momentum to create a tide change. It was wild to read the very same critics who’d praised the CD when it came out now saying it was self-absorbed navel-gazing. Critics who were still clinging to cynicism and grunge like a badge of honor. I learned to turn a deaf ear to them.

I had fans to talk to now, to share what I was learning about hope and what I called informed optimism. The critics seemed to think it was somehow cooler to be cynical, but I saw that as a lack of discipline and a weakness. Informed optimism is different from a willful ignorance that simply wishes not to see bad in the world. Seeing the truth and choosing every day to see it, letting life break your heart but doing something about it, took courage. It was not about hiding your head in the sand, but rather digging in, accepting the challenges, and doing the hard work it
takes not just to complain about a problem but to be the solution. I handed out flyers and used the Internet (social media in its infancy!) to let my fans know who I was and what I stood for. It was the fans who really changed the mainstream acceptance of me, and artists like me, and the music industry eventually came around too. People wanted to feel better. They didn’t only want feel-good songs, and they didn’t want to numb out either. They wanted to earn happiness in their lives just like I did. I was working harder than ever, although it no longer felt like I was pushing water uphill but rather like I was being swept along in the current. The most surreal moment came when I was in an airport on the way to tour in Europe and there was my face on
Time
magazine in every newsstand with the headline that summed up everything: “Macho music is out. Empathy is in.”

I knew what my mom’s reaction would be. She had told me I was but the tip of an iceberg, the part above water that people could see, but that she was the greater body that existed beneath. She was the reason any of my success existed. And she wanted more because of it. She wanted my manager Inga out. She wanted control of the money and she wanted a salary of half of everything I made. I looked at the magazine cover, and while part of me was excited and proud, the other part saw my face as just the tip of the iceberg.

Looking back now I can see that as a child I was street-smart and savvy. No one had taken advantage of me as a destitute homeless kid, but when it came to my mom I had a massive blind spot. I wanted her love more than I wanted the truth. I thought she was a god, and thought myself insignificant compared with her. I was born with the instinct to love my mom. I don’t believe she loved me like I love my son. The imbalance made me vulnerable, as my love worked against me like a weapon. As a child, the pain of my relationship with my father made me place her in a role of mythical proportion. Dad was the dragon who hurt me and took
us from our innocent mom. My mom was a distant martyred queen pining for her children. She wrote me letters on holidays that I saved as proof of her goodness and love. She taught me about the power of my mind and made me believe I could do everything. As time went on, her views became even more appealing to my natural senses:
Surely you don’t think all this is just for you. Abundance is for the greater good of the community. It is a river that flows through you. If you dam it up, it will dry up.
If these tactics didn’t work, she would shame me and I would feel so badly about myself that I would do anything to earn back her affection. It was a slow and gradual transformation as I emptied myself of my own instincts and replaced them with her wants and her needs, until eventually I was basically incapable of making any decision without her counsel. I heard a story once. If you place a lobster in boiling water it will scream. If you place it in cold water and then turn up the heat gradually it will not protest as it goes to its death.

At the beginning of the album’s success, my mom decided to bring Jacque, the woman who channeled Zarathustra, into our circle. When I’d moved back to California at eighteen, I’d seen no harm in going with my mom to the gatherings. It was informal and supportive, and it felt good to have a group you felt seen by and loved by. We all sought to know ourselves better and to be of service in the world. I also hoped it would help to heal my kidneys. If I could just raise my frequency enough as I was taught, I would quit being ill. I felt like such a failure every time I got an infection. I resolved each time to pray harder. To be better . . . more pure . . . more full of light.

When my mom had left San Diego, I’d quit going, and discovered that when I relied on myself and my own feelings and instincts, I did so much better. But as she lobbied for greater income or power over my career, and as I resisted, she would now say, “Don’t take my word for it. Ask Zarathustra.” As her influence grew, so did my dependency on Z. And
Jacque. Jacque had become a de facto mother to me. She was warm and loving and when I struggled with my weight or binge eating it was her I called for love and support. I loved her and I believe she loved me. As my fame and popularity grew, my personal life became increasingly strained and difficult—suppressing your own thoughts and instincts takes great effort. I tasked myself unrelentingly to be more spiritual and less selfish and to give back and to know nothing was mine—it belonged to my mom and her vision for the future. I never did care if I had millions; I just wanted enough to be taken care of. If my mom wanted it that badly she could have more—though I could never agree to half. It just didn’t seem fair. So her campaign continued.

I remember the day Eric Greenspan came to a show of mine at the Wiltern in L.A. and handed me a one-million-dollar check. He was so excited and proud to surprise me with it. I think my reaction disappointed him. I had already been conditioned enough to have no sense of joy, pride, or accomplishment when he presented it to me. I already knew it wasn’t really me who’d earned it. It also scared me to get a check like this—I was afraid that much money would jinx me somehow. I smiled and was shy about it and had no idea how to take it all in. It was incomprehensible to me. Later it was handed over to my business manager. I knew nothing about money. Less than nothing. I had never had a bank account, and I did not know how to open one. I had never paid a bill other than rent and utilities. I went from being destitute to having Atlantic Records pay bills for me to hiring a business manager to do it for me—finances were complex and there were lots of folks to pay. All I cared about was paying for medication and insurance if I got sick, and that if I wanted to go to a movie or fly somewhere I had the money to do it. Those were real luxuries for me. Not the glitz or the fancy cars.

My mom never shared my conservative tendencies but I loved for her
to have what she wanted. I bought a home for both of us to live in, located in an orange grove in Rancho Santa Fe, an upper-class area of San Diego. It was a heady time in many ways. I was working constantly, but I was becoming successful and I had my best friend with me every step of the way. My mom and I were close. We stayed up late talking, and I finally had a maternal shoulder to rest my head on and watch movies with. It felt good. It felt right. She meditated constantly and was always connecting to the “source” to guide me in my career and inspire me to work harder. We held hands and giggled a lot and I was so happy to have my mom finally to myself. Two souls in the same body came to mean I was an extension of her, and it gave me a sense of belonging. In hindsight I wish I’d believed in myself enough to just go my own way.

One day my mom came to me when I was home between tours and accused my business manager of stealing from me—not a lot, just a little—but that she felt why trust anyone else? I got all fired up and said, heck yeah. We agreed she would handle all the money and she got the forms for me to sign. I was so busy being angry about the accusation that it never dawned on me to ask for proof, or to talk to the guy. To this day I have never seen proof. I just felt lucky my mom was my best friend and there to look out for me. I confided everything in her, and when I heard horror stories about other kids with parent-managers I felt so sorry for them. Everyone at the label knew to deal with my mom, and increasingly it seemed like a waste, she said, to be paying Inga to do something she was basically doing already on her own. Soon Inga was fired and my mom was in total control and managing me, and I was so grateful she was taking the time out of her life to help me with such care. She reminded me how lucky I was every day and of the unique gifts that only she could bring to the table. Looking back I remember making decisions about my career. I dealt with videos, treatments, timelines, release dates, tours . . .
and my mom and I had a huge staff who executed them all. But still I saw her as some integral part of myself that I could not do without. I would be lost without her.

As time passed and I started touring in larger venues, the money must have been pouring in, but I had no idea what I made from a show. Once my mom was in charge of it, I just let go of looking at any of it. I trusted her implicitly. If she had not been in the picture I know I would have been on top of every detail, but because she was looking out for me I relaxed about it and focused on work. And I worked a lot.

She steadily built an empire. A publishing arm. A screenwriting arm. A charitable arm (which I was excited about, the opportunity to give back and fulfill a promise I had made to myself years earlier on the street), an accounting division. I think by the end of it there were around twelve different business entities. All the salaries were being paid by me. And I was kept on the road working so much that I had no idea what was going on at home. My mom believed herself to be the reincarnation of a famous entrepreneur, though the problem was she had no business training. I was aware of all this in a vague way. There were aspects of the company that were exciting as well, like the nationwide talent search called Soul City Café that discovered singer-songwriters and gave them the opportunity to open for me across the country. My mom said she was building something that would help support me later, and that seemed like a good idea. All I knew at the time was I was working a lot and my mom lived like a rock star. She flew in yoga instructors from Hawaii and took jets everywhere, and if I was too tired to work she said I needed to be more disciplined about my meditation and to focus more. To connect to the source for more energy. God forbid I stop touring and rest for a second.

twenty-two

let your light shine

I
had little time for or interest in dating. My career was my mistress and the effort it took to keep the ball rolling and capitalize on that momentum was dizzying. I had flown a million miles by my early twenties. I went around the globe without going home more than a handful of times in a year. When I wasn’t touring the States, I was trying to break Europe—a market that escaped me no matter how often I toured there. I had looked at Europe as a retirement policy. Europeans had a reputation for being less fickle, and when musicians could no longer sell a lot of tickets in the States, they could go to Europe and sell out. But my music was so different from what was happening there and it never took hold on radio. In some markets I was able to play large venues like the Royal Albert Hall in London, while in others I would open for Willy DeVille in five-hundred-seat clubs. Australia and Asia were better markets for me.