Crash and Burn (20 page)

The next day Adrienne arrived just as I was waking up feeling like the bottom of a garbageman’s work boot. She thought something was wrong, but I told her over and over that I was fine.

“How did the show go?” she asked suspiciously.

“It was fine; everything’s fine, really. I just stayed up too late gambling.”

The whole crew was at the pool for the beauty pageant I had to host. I looked like a newspaper that had been left in a puddle all night: my hair was all fucked up, I needed a shave, and I went down there wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and no shoes, just white socks. I looked like a photo of someone’s grandfather, fresh off the boat in America in the ’40s. I was totally out of place. We taped the show, which turned out pretty bad, and all of us spent the rest of the day and the next few days partying at the pool and in the casino.

The next day, Adrienne, Mike, Joe, and I flew to LA a day ahead of my meeting with Rick Rubin because my manager made it clear that Rick is an early riser so I couldn’t be late. Adrienne and I checked into the Four Seasons and spent the night, and the next morning at seven we were on our way to Malibu to meet Rick just after he’d finished his morning meditation. We were driving along the Pacific Coast Highway, my agent, my manager, Adrienne and I, when I felt heroin withdrawals creeping into my muscles.

Along with the Joe Buck fiasco and the horrendous appearance that got me banned from
Conan
after ten years, my meeting with Rick Rubin is a moment I’ll forever wish I would have been clean for. I was in withdrawal, but still—and this is all because Rick is one of the most special people anyone could hope to meet—the time I spent with him was as close as I’ll probably ever get to what people mean when they talk about feeling enlightenment.

For those who don’t know, Rick Rubin is probably the most important producer of the past twenty-five years. He started Def Jam
records with Russell Simmons and is responsible for producing some of the greatest recordings from everyone from LL Cool J to Metallica to the Black Crowes to Slayer to Johnny Cash. He’s only done comedy records for one guy, the one and only Andrew Dice Clay, so when my agent got a call that he wanted to meet me I jumped at the opportunity. I’d mentioned how much I respected him on the
Stern Show
, and I guess Rick’s girlfriend had read
Too Fat to Fish
and really liked it and told Rick that he should meet me, even just to maybe help me out with my problems. Rick has never touched a drink or a drug in his life; he meditates and is very, very spiritual.

Rick’s house is secluded so it took us a while to find it, which made me more and more anxious about being full-tilt sick in front of him. Finally we arrived at the most gorgeous place you can imagine, with the most beautiful view of the ocean. It was peaceful in every way. The door was answered by what I assumed was Rick’s assistant, a real serious guy with a shaved head. From his monk-like appearance to the impossible tranquility of the place, everything was completely zen. My entourage was put into a living room area where they were served coffee and offered ice cream, while I was taken to a terrace overlooking the ocean. I sat there eating chocolate ice cream until Rick came out a few minutes later sipping some special health drink. He was thin and fit with a long gray beard and the most piercing blue eyes I’d ever seen.

He was very complimentary off the bat, which I could hardly believe because the guy is a hero of mine who has worked with people far more talented than I’ll ever be. He told me how much he loved the
Stern Show
and how much he loved me particularly on the show, and then we started to talk about life. Rick Rubin loves Abbott & Costello as much as I do, so we went on about that, and then I asked him all about how he started Def Jam out of his dorm room at NYU.

“You know, I have to be honest, man,” I said. “When I heard that first Beastie Boys record, my friends and I thought it was a comedy album.”

“It’s interesting that you say that,” he said, “because that’s kind of how I thought it would be taken in the beginning as well, but it turned into this art form.”

We talked about various comedians and the records he’d done with Andrew Dice Clay, then he told me why he’d really wanted to meet me.

“My girlfriend really loves you on the show and she’s read your book and she knows about your problem. I wanted to meet you because if you’re open to it, I’d like to get you into meditating. It might help you out.”

He told me about this woman in Beverly Hills who’d taught him meditation and who is probably the best in the country. He gave me her name and number and said that I should call her because she could help.

“Yeah, yeah, sounds great,” I said. Just like I always did.

“I know you just put out a DVD,” he said, “but I’d also like to say that if you ever have an hour of new material that you’d like to make into a record I’d love to maybe produce it.”

“Really? That’s unbelievable. That would be an honor, man, thank you.”

Rick Rubin was so peaceful and full of energy that his vibe stopped my withdrawals. I’m not kidding in the least. It was weird. I’d felt sick until the moment I arrived, but I felt completely fine during our time together. We spoke for three hours and I felt like I was completely clean.

It didn’t last, though, and by nighttime I really started to feel sick, and crashed out hard at the Four Seasons before catching a red-eye back to Jersey. The
Stern Show
was starting back up, and I was in trouble. I’d need opiates immediately when I landed if I stood a chance of getting to work in anything close to good shape. I arranged for that and realized that I was on the train again and probably wouldn’t ever get off this time.

When Adrienne and I landed in Jersey, I was pretty groggy because
I’d taken some sleeping pills for the flight that I’d gotten from some guy on the plane. We pulled in bright and early and both Adrienne and I were both too tired to drive down to my shore house. My apartment was getting painted at the time and everything was covered in tarps, so I did the sensible thing and got us a $1,500-dollar-a-night room at the Mandarin Oriental. That was me—it couldn’t be a fucking Sheraton even though we were both so exhausted all we needed was a bed. What can I say? I love that hotel.

I pulled in there in the black Mercedes SUV I was driving as my loaner car and left it with the valet. Our plan was to sleep there for the night and drive down to my beach house the next morning to prepare for the Fourth of July party I’d planned to have. As we got settled into our room and into bed, withdrawals started to kick in and I started to feel really sick. Adrienne was about to fall asleep, which meant I might be able to slip out without her wanting to come along.

“Oh my God!” I said in a dramatic whisper. “I just got a text from my buddy in Jersey; he needs my help. I’ve got to leave right now.”

Let’s just say she was pretty suspicious; as sleepy as she was, she gave me a sidelong look. “All right,” she said slowly.

“Stay here, I’ll be back in a few hours.”

I got my black SUV out of the valet and drove into downtown Newark, New Jersey, where I scored heroin and some sleeping pills. The way I always have, as soon as I got the drugs, I did some: I pulled into a parking lot and snorted a couple of lines of heroin off the dashboard. That hit the spot and I started to feel okay. I did one more for the road then got back on the Turnpike heading toward the Holland Tunnel and Manhattan, where I drove straight into bumper-to-bumper traffic. There was no worse place I could possibly be. After a red-eye flight featuring a generous dose of sleeping pills to keep the withdrawals at bay and a few lines of heroin, sitting in traffic while behind the wheel was a recipe for disaster. I nodded out in no time,
and when I did my foot slid off the brake, sending the truck forward, right into the back of a huge, brand-new BMW SUV.

The BMW didn’t take much damage, but the front of the SUV I was in was wrecked—the hood was bent and the radiator cracked. The impact woke me up and I was coherent enough to realize what had happened. It was now about eleven a.m. and we were right in the middle of serious noontime Holland Tunnel traffic. I got out of the car and walked over to the window of the BMW. There was one guy in the front and a few in the back.

“Are you okay?” asked the guy in the driver’s seat.

“Yeah, man, I’m fine. You guys okay?”

The guy in the passenger seat was pissed off. “What the fuck is your problem?” he asked.

“I don’t know, I took a red-eye flight in this morning, and I’m really tired. I’m sorry,” I said. “But more important, are you okay?”

That calmed him down a little bit. “Yeah, I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said. “Wait a second . . . Artie?”

“Yeah, man, that’s me.”

It got a little awkward for a second because those kind of things can go either way, then he said, “I used to work with your publicist. He’s a friend of mine.”

“Oh, no way, really?”

Now I’m having this conversation in the middle of traffic with a nearly totaled loaner SUV on my hands. A minute later five cops showed up, and in case you forgot I was holding enough drugs to put me away for a while. Luckily every single one of them was a huge
Stern
fan. So before I knew it I’m signing autographs and telling stories but I can’t help thinking how bad it had to look and what they were going to do about it. There was a totaled SUV driven by a known drug addict who probably still smelled like booze. And God help me if they searched my pockets.

Somehow none of this happened. I exchanged insurance info
with the BMW driver, charmed the cops as best I could, and tried to act casual. The other driver was really cool; he said he wouldn’t sue, he just wanted money to fix the car, and he stayed true to his word. I can only imagine what my insurance company had to pay out, but that’s what insurance is for. And the cops—I guess because they were fans—were so great. They didn’t make me take a sobriety test, and they never even talked about searching my car. They were more concerned about how I would get back to my hotel.

“Is this thing running okay, Art?” one of them asked.

“I think I can drive it. Don’t worry about it, man.” This was a ridiculous thing to say because one wheel was completely bashed in and would barely move.

“Okay, man,” they said. “Go ahead, we love you.”

I’d dodged a huge bullet and once I got in the car and got it started I breathed easy. That could have been the end of so much for me. I started driving and immediately realized that this SUV wasn’t going vary far because it was very screwed up. I made it through the Tunnel, past the West Side Highway, but at Tenth Avenue, the thing just stopped—completely dead, not moving at all. Cars whizzed by me as I triple-checked to make sure I had all of my drugs. I called a tow truck and twenty minutes later this amazing Puerto Rican guy showed up and helped me out. He called the rental company for me and took care of everything. Then I spoke to the girl there and they couldn’t have been nicer: they sent another car out to meet me at the Mandarin, and I liked the girl on the phone so much I offered her tickets to my Beacon Theater show later in the year.

I can only imagine what the valet at the Mandarin Oriental was thinking when I pulled up: I’d arrived in a black SUV, I was returning in the cab of a tow truck with the SVU from before totaled on back, and just as I was about to go inside, my new car showed up, which was a Honda Civic.

“Hey, Mr. Lange, it’s good to see you again,” was all he said.

Up in our room Adrienne was taking a bath and she came out
and eyeballed me even more suspiciously than before. She could tell something was off.

“I’m gonna take a shower,” I said, and that’s what I did.

While I was in there she went through my pockets and found the sleeping pills, but thank God not the heroin. She got really mad and flushed all of the pills down the toilet, which would have made me furious if I didn’t have some heroin. This started high-test tension between us.

“Forget it, Artie, let’s try to get some sleep,” she said.

I was pissed at her for taking my pills, so I wasn’t going to just roll over. “No, I want to get out of here right now,” I said. “I want to get down to the shore.”

“Artie, what are you talking about?!” she said.

“I want to leave. I want to leave right now.”

This kicked off a huge argument that ended with her agreeing to leave the hotel. There was no reason for it aside from my stubbornness, which caused me to pay $1,500 for an amazing room that we only stayed in for four hours. Adrienne didn’t know what to think when she saw the car, and I can’t imagine the doorman did either: he’d seen me get out of an SUV, a tow truck, and a Civic within four hours. Adrienne knew I was screwed up and now she knew that I’d screwed up.

“Are you even going to bother to explain this car and where you went?” she asked me.

This kicked off a huge screaming match as we drove from Manhattan to Hoboken, and that fight was all my fault. When I was busted I always got angry. We were no closer to resolving shit by the time we got to my apartment (where her car was), and I couldn’t take it anymore.

“You know what?” I said, “I’m not taking this shit down to the shore. I’m not going to be fighting with you at my party. Go sleep in my apartment!”

It really wasn’t the nicest thing to do because there may have
been a bed there, but the whole place was covered in tarps and still smelled of paint. She was so exhausted that she just pulled the tarp back off the bed, crawled in, and got some rest.

I drove down to the shore in the Civic that night and wasted a perfect day the next day sleeping in a darkened room in my beautiful $2.5 million shore house (another great move—spending that much on a shore house in 2007, just before the real estate crash). Adrienne and I made up on the phone at some point and she ended up coming to the Fourth of July party a few days later and we were fine. But the drugs were taking their toll on our relationship and things between us were about to get worse.

After the
Stern Show
returned from vacation I didn’t let up with the live gigs like I’d planned to, even though everyone in my life had told me to do otherwise. They all reminded me—Howard included—about the plan I’d agreed to with Don Buchwald. Like I’d done the last time this was brought up, I said I’d get through my current commitments with the book tour and stand-up and then I’d change everything.