Between a Heart and a Rock Place (23 page)

And then he laid it out for me in no uncertain terms: there were large-scale issues with how our affairs were being handled. For a couple years some things had been going on that we hadn't bothered to take control of; now all that had to change. These problems began with
Newman but they didn't end there. Because money was always an issue and Newman was pretty overwhelmed with his various responsibilities to us as well as the club, he eventually took on a partner, a guy named Richard Fields.

Appropriately, this had all started around the time we made
Get Nervous
. At first Fields didn't actually work with us—he worked with Newman. Fields's job was to help Newman run the business of the club and the comedians that Newman managed, and we were adamant that it stay that way. But Fields wasn't content doing that. All the fun stuff was happening in our world, and slowly he began to infiltrate it. That was when we learned one of the ugly axioms of the entertainment business: if someone works directly with your manager, they are also working with you. Don't dream that they're not.

Spyder and I protested his involvement. We didn't want this guy to just waltz in after all of us had worked so hard together to achieve what we had. But Fields was crafty, making us feel at ease and showing us how much this would help Rick out. Little by little he worked his way in, and we started to see the impact here and there. When we filmed an HBO special, his name appeared as a producer. When decisions were made, he was always there. And he seemed to think he was a Rockefeller. The next thing I knew, our most trusted business manager had been let go. Fields became more involved in everything. Suddenly we had Dom Pérignon in the dressing room. We had fleets of limos taking us around town. We were staying at the St. Regis. We were encouraged to spend money as well. At Fields's suggestion I once bought our attorney Owen a DeLorean, as compensation for doing such a good job on the renegotiation of our record contract. Money was being pissed away moment by moment.

Millions of dollars were coming in the door, and a lot of it was going out for no good reason. We weren't completely oblivious and we didn't go broke, but we weren't in control as much as we needed to be because everything was channeled through my management. I kept
feeling like something was very wrong, that what had basically become a show-business empire was in danger of going in the dumper. The money we got from our writing, for example, we protected. But there was money coming in that we couldn't even track. My management even took out a million-dollar life insurance policy on me, using power of attorney. Apparently this was not illegal, but crazy, nonetheless.

There were other reasons that some of this maneuvering slid past us at first. Fame brought more than money in the door. For a while I had a Winnebago full of FBI agents protecting me from a stalker. Out of the blue one day, some crazy guy's parents contacted our office. It seemed their son had just been released from a mental hospital in Georgia because of some loophole that prevented the hospital from keeping him. During his time there he'd written threatening letters saying that
he
was the real Neil Giraldo and that Spyder was an imposter living in his home with his wife and child. The letters claimed he was going to California to set it all straight, even if it meant killing Spyder. Now, I've been around weird people all my life, but the crazies, they're scary. So the FBI was brought in and they lived in our driveway, in a Winnebago, for six months. They finally caught the guy; he'd made it all the way to Denver.

In the end, between the fleets of limos and expensive hotel suites, I would guess that the new partner cost us about half a million dollars. We probably wouldn't have ever discovered the full extent of what was going on if it hadn't been for Owen's death.

As Gerry laid everything out for me, I felt like I'd come out from inside a cave. This had all been happening under our noses. We took a serious look around us, and it wasn't pretty. With the exception of everything surrounding
Wide Awake,
the last few years had been incredibly good to us professionally and financially, but the rate at which everything had unfolded caused us to commit to things without fully understanding what we were getting ourselves into and what the consequences might be. The music business is littered with these situations.

If I was going to be the mother I wanted to be, I needed to be protective. I began to see the future in terms of taking care of a family, of providing for a family's future. All of a sudden it wasn't our money, it was for our daughter, and that realization helped me to see I didn't have to be so nice about things anymore. If I questioned what people were doing, I wasn't being a selfish pig. I was looking out for my child. I became a viper. I ended up marching in and saying, “What the hell do you people think you've been doing? I want an accounting. I want to know where every dime is. And if you don't know where it is, you better be able to explain why.”

It was like day and night. I'd drawn a line in the sand. I called each and every asshole on the carpet and started heads rolling. People got fired. People got scared off. People realized that we were done bank-rolling whatever they wanted. It was a beautiful thing to see.

While it felt good to take control, in reality this turn brought about one of the saddest points in my professional career. All of the aggravating and tedious experiences we'd been through with the label paled in comparison to what it felt like when we finally had to confront Newman about what had been going on. Newman was one of my oldest friends, going back even farther than Spyder. From the first moment that I stepped off the stage at Catch, he'd been there, listening to my crazy ideas and helping me make them realities. Even when he wasn't sure he agreed or understood what I was talking about, he'd cheered me on. He was my confidante, my manager, and my friend.

Even today, I don't
really
know what happened, and I'm not sure I want to. Somewhere, as things progressed, boundaries became blurred, ethics were pushed aside. People justified their actions and codes of conduct were relaxed in the name of compromise. Being forced to see it all in the daylight hurt immensely. Newman didn't do anything out of malice; that much I knew for sure. His intentions were good and his heart was always in the right place, but he was in the horrible position
of keeping the peace between all the parties. Something had to give, and unfortunately that something turned out to be us.

To some extent, I think he and I were both naïve and trusting, and people took advantage of that. I took full responsibility for my part in all of this, but I held everyone else accountable as well. Newman had allowed Richard Fields to play far too prominent a role in our affairs. Fields's actions may have hurt us, but they destroyed Newman.

We parted ways “amicably.” It broke our hearts, because Newman was a friend, but for both our sakes, we had to sever the old tie. It was 1988, and I'd been with him for over ten years. Now for the first time in my professional career, I didn't have a manager.

As if that weren't a sea change in itself, there was still one surprise waiting for us. As big as Gerry's discovery about our managerial problems had been, it was not the most shocking thing that he had uncovered when he went through Owen's paperwork. Rustling through the reams of contracts and decade-old documents, he made the most important finding of all: our contract with Chrysalis was no longer legally binding.

It seemed that under California law, a person could not legally be bound to a personal service contract for more than seven years. Though the original document was signed in New York, which didn't have that law, when we had renegotiated our contract with them in 1980, it was done in California, so the law applied. It was now 1988, meaning that more than seven years had elapsed. They had been so caught up with everything happening in their company and focused on pushing us back into the studio that they hadn't realized their mistake until we brought it to their attention. Just like that, we could walk—no lawsuit, no lawyers. We simply could walk away with no repercussions. It was crystal clear; we were
free.

T
HE NEWS THAT WE
were no longer obligated to Chrysalis came as a complete shock. We'd been waiting for this moment for so long, we almost didn't know what to do with it. But as monumental as it was, it was almost overshadowed by another, equally dramatic development.

Unbeknownst to us, while we'd been on our problematic tour for
Wide Awake,
Chris Wright had been busy laying the groundwork for a deal that would give the international record giant EMI full control of the U.S. division of Chrysalis, with Chrysalis selling 50 percent of the company to EMI/Capitol. Chris never discussed his plans with anyone from our camp, and we didn't know what was happening until it already had. When the news was announced, we were in disbelief. As bad as things had been, after ten years of being with one company, we were being sold to a group of strangers.

At this point, we were without a manager, and while it was extremely liberating, it was a little unnerving as well. We weren't set up to take care of the huge responsibility of running our careers. We went on the hunt, interviewing several people for the job and ultimately deciding on Danny Goldberg. Danny was well respected in the industry
and had an eclectic roster of successful artists such as Nirvana, Bonnie Raitt, and the Allman Brothers. He was a talented, decent man, which was crucial because he had a challenging job ahead of him: fixing the mess we were in and restoring our status.

With Danny signed on, we all went to work repairing the damage that had been done. The first order of business was straightening out our relationship with the record company, and we went in with every intention of crucifying them. As free agents we were in a position to decide if we even wanted a relationship with them anymore. We went with a hard line:
If
we decided to work with them,
we'd
choose the kind of record we were going to make, and it would occur under the conditions and terms that
we
dictated. It was a very big “if.” It was unfortunate, but they were going to pay for the sins of their predecessors.

Once the deal was finalized, the two new presidents—Joe Kiener, who was the former vice president of A&R and marketing for Adidas, and Jim Fifield, who was with EMI—came to L.A. to meet with us. The company was “under new management” and they wanted to show us this by having our first face-to-face sit-down. Right away, it was clear Kiener and Fifield were both affable, decent people—a far cry from the people we had grown so used to dealing with. These new executives were actually gracious and amiable people, but they clearly had no idea about our history with the label. They were completely unaware of how contentious things had been and the hell we'd been put through. Chris Wright hadn't bothered to fill them in on our turbulent relationship. Neither of them knew about the discovery Gerry had made about our contracts. They had signed on to Chrysalis thinking that they were getting us along with the company, and I was all too happy to tell them this was not the case.

When we finally got down to business, I was incredibly blunt. I told them in no uncertain terms that we did not owe them another record, and that if we decided to do anything with them in the future,
it would be on our terms. We were free to dictate everything that we wanted. They were not going to tell us how to make records.

They were stunned. Not surprisingly, they had no idea our contract was up. They'd assumed we were locked in and were astonished to learn we were no longer under contract. While our last two albums had not measured up to our previous sales and Chrysalis had recently hit it big with Sinéad O'Connor, we still had a history as one of the original artists on the roster. We were no longer the lead artist, but we had been responsible for much of the earlier success that had helped build the label into what it was.

Regardless of what our recent sales had been, they made it clear that they wanted us to be a part of the label going forward, and speaking to our specific concerns, they made it clear that they'd never even thought about interfering creatively. “We would never tell you how to make a record,” they told us. “We're businessmen. You make it, we'll sell it.”

 

T
HOUGH MY GUT REACTION
was skepticism, their overtures seemed genuine. There was nothing about their approach that seemed calculated to placate us or kiss our ass so that we'd stay and they could screw us over later. Still, we proceeded with caution, agreeing to do another album with them, but only
one
. We had options for more albums, but those would only happen if we all agreed to continue. Spyder and I would wait and see how well they did their job, then we'd decide whether more albums were in the cards. On this next album as well as any subsequent albums, they increased our advance and royalty rate. Going forward, we would now own 100 percent of our publishing, beginning with our next album, which would be called
True Love
. There was also a provision that increased the royalty rate for all our previous records, both retroactively and on any future sales, to make up for the
increased rates that our previous attorney had failed to negotiate on our behalf.

As we signed our names to the new deal, I felt the most tremendous sense of freedom. At last it was there in writing. We'd won. We were calling the shots. We were the ones making informed decisions based on personal comfort and artistic merit as opposed to financial gain. We were finally able to put our best interests, desires, and passions above all. Our contract gave us complete creative control. We could play whatever we wanted, do whatever we wanted, tour whenever we wanted—and there wasn't a damn thing anyone could do about it.

 

T
HE IMMEDIATE IMPACT OF
our new deal with Chrysalis was that we had downtime. There was no one rushing us back into the studio, no one asking when we were going to get back on the road. With the fallout from the
Wide Awake in Dreamland
tour still fresh in our minds, we knew that we had to be shrewd about where we went from here. We wanted to tread carefully, but we also were not interested in recording anything right away.

This break enabled me to donate some of my time to things I really cared about—children and family. Ever since writing “Hell Is for Children,” I had been advocating for children. Controversy aside, the song and its response had a profound impact on my life, leading me to do whatever I could to improve the lives of children. Becoming a mother myself only deepened my commitment. Any time an event, benefit, or recording that was attached to a children's organization came our way, we participated.

It was around this time that we were approached to participate on the second record of Marlo Thomas's
Free to Be…
series. The original
Free to Be You and Me
came out in the early seventies, and it used songs, poetry, and sketches to teach kids essential values. This sequel,
Free to Be
a Family,
was in much the same vein, but for an entirely new generation of children—Haley's generation.

Growing up, I loved Marlo Thomas. I was a devotee of her TV show
That Girl,
and I'm pretty sure my rabid affection for heavy, long bangs can be attributed to her. I also had fond memories of her dad from
Make Room for Daddy,
and I'd always loved the story of how he created St. Jude's Hospital, where no sick child is ever turned away for the inability to pay. The idea that one man's heartfelt prayer turned into a safe haven and lifesaving facility for the world's children touched my soul.

Because of all this, the prospect of working with Marlo Thomas on
Free to Be a Family
was incredibly appealing, and we happily signed on. The album consisted of material taken from the book of the same name, and like the first one, it empowered children by tearing down the stereotypes about boys and girls. Marlo asked us to record “Jimmy Says” we'd never done anything like that before, and it was a great experience and a positive message for kids.

Another project I worked on during this time was especially important to me, because it gave me the opportunity to meet one of my inspirations, Elizabeth Glaser. It's been so long now since Elizabeth died in 1994, and I hope people haven't forgotten her and the important work she did. She was the wife of actor Paul Michael Glaser and was one of the first and most visible victims of the AIDS epidemic. In 1981, while receiving a blood transfusion during childbirth, Elizabeth was infected with the HIV virus. Her newborn daughter, Ariel, contracted the virus through breast milk, and the Glasers' son Jake, born in 1984, was also infected. It was not until 1985 that any of the family underwent testing and learned they were HIV positive.

In 1987 the Food and Drug Administration approved AZT as a treatment, but only for adult patients. Elizabeth and Paul fought to get Ariel the drug that might have made a difference, but it was too late, and Ariel died in 1988. Elizabeth then founded the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, working to raise awareness and research
funds. Her story is heartbreaking and heroic. She told it in her 1991 book,
In the Absence of Angels
.

I had just read this gut-wrenching book and was still reeling with emotion when I was approached to participate on the album
Disney for Our Children: To Benefit the Pediatric AIDS Foundation
. We could choose any song that we wanted, and I remembered that a dear friend of mine, Michita, who was a fellow mom at Haley's school, had once mentioned that she'd love to hear me record the hymn “Tell Me Why.” When they asked us to do the record, I immediately thought of Michita's suggestion; it was perfect. Spyder and I decided to record the song in its simplest and purest form, like a lullaby.

All the artists who had signed on to do the record were invited to New York to hear Elizabeth speak, and when I met her in person, it was almost spiritual. I don't have a lot of experience with the metaphysical side of this world. I haven't had those kinds of encounters. I don't even know how I feel about them, although I do keep an open mind. But on that day, I felt like I was seeing another plane of existence.

I walked into the large banquet hall that had been set up with a podium and rows of chairs. It was packed with people mingling before it was time to take their seats, but I could see Elizabeth at the far end of the room. We had spoken on the phone but never met each other in person. I made my way to where she was standing. I could see this glow around her. I kept thinking,
What is that? My God, this woman is surrounded by light
. It was truly astonishing, and I couldn't figure out if I was hallucinating. I found myself staring around at other people to see if they were seeing the same thing. Did anyone else see it?

It was a beautiful, soft, warm light. It made you want to be closer to it. Not only that, but there was a powerful vibration coming off her body that was so intense I could actually feel and hear it. It made a humming sound, a low
mmmmmm
. When I finally reached her and we said our hellos, I took her hand, and it was like an electric shock,
a jolt—the most wonderful feeling. Her very being simply radiated energy. We both looked at each other and smiled. I knew I was in the presence of an angel. I felt blessed to be there with her, to stand in a space close to her.

And I was blessed again when they asked me to come back so that along with former president Reagan, I could present a check to the foundation. Spyder and I went with Danny Goldberg. While we were waiting in the greenroom for the presentation, President Reagan, the former first lady Nancy Reagan, and a bunch of Secret Service people were there with us. The two of them were just a darling old married couple. As we waited, President Reagan perused the dessert table and he grabbed a couple of chocolate-chip cookies. He began eating them and turned to Nancy, saying, “Aren't these delicious?” with chocolate all over his mouth. Just then Nancy noticed his face and looked like she was ready to faint. She rushed over to wipe his face with a napkin.

I've never been one to be starstruck, but I had never been near a former president before and I figured I might never be this close again, so even though it was completely out of character for me, I walked over to him and said, “Mr. President, would you sign an autograph for me?”

“Sure, sure,” he said with a smile. “What's your name, dear?”

“Pat,” I replied. I knew he had no idea who I was, so I said, “Just sign it to Pat, please.”

“What?” he asked.

“Pat.”

“Cat?”

“No, Pat!”

The first lady chimed in with a little frustration in her voice. “Pat! P-A-T!”

You just had to smile because she was both exasperated and protective. It reminded me of the kind of exchanges Spyder and I, and most married couples, have from time to time. It made them human to me. It substantiated what I'd always thought—that people are all the
same. I don't care what heights you get to—you're not that much different from the next guy. We all get chocolate on our face sometimes.

I did a few other public-service and charity type things during that time, but mostly we kept out of the public eye and out of the recording studio. The bottom line was that everything from the last few years had caused a lot of emotional stress. Between the problems with
Wide Awake in Dreamland,
the backlash from our tour, the messy end to our relationship with Newman, and the management change at Chrysalis, I just didn't know how much more I had in me. This downtime allowed me to feel that recording was something I could live without. The cumulative effect of ten years of shit had taken its toll. I began thinking that I was ready to hang up my tights and throw in the musical towel for good.

The more I considered it, the more I realized this wasn't just something I was kicking around in my head. This was real, and I meant it. Finally I told Spyder in no uncertain terms that I intended to quit. He could continue on his own—producing, writing, and playing—but I was finished. I was going to stay home and raise our daughter. A few years earlier I would have been shocked to think those words, let alone say them out loud or actually mean them. But I meant them. I meant every syllable. I was exhausted physically and emotionally. For a decade, I'd given my career everything I had—twenty-four hours a day, seven days week. In that time we'd accomplished more than most artists do in their entire career. We didn't have to prove anything to anyone, least of all ourselves, and it wasn't enough fun anymore to do it for its own sake. It hadn't been for a long time.