From This Moment On (40 page)

In August, while “Any Man of Mine” was still riding high on the
Billboard
Hot Country Songs chart, Mercury Nashville put out the lush ballad “The Woman in Me (Needs the Man in You).” It became my third Top 20 hit in a row. The next three singles, issued like clockwork every three or four months, all went to number one: “(If You’re Not in It for Love) I’m Outta Here!,” “You Win My Love,” and “No One Needs to Know.” And there were two more minor hits to follow: “Home Ain’t Where His Heart Is (Anymore)” and “God Bless the Child.” Eight singles in all. This took us to January 1997, exactly two years since we had all kept our fingers crossed when the label launched “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?”

Traditionally, an artist promotes her new recording by going on tour. I chose not to, passing up millions of dollars in the process. But
I looked at it this way:
The Woman in Me
was only my second album, and, as you know, I was less than enthused by the material on my debut. So how was I going to entertain people for an hour and a half to two hours? Play my handful of original hits and lots of other people’s songs? Tell jokes and juggle between tunes? I’d seen other new artists hit the road too soon, to strike while the proverbial iron was hot, and I squirmed in my seat watching them try to fill in and repeat their one or two hits at the end of the performance, in an attempt to redeem their credibility to go from being a cover tune act to being the original artist they wanted to be. That wasn’t for me. It would have felt too much like my days playing the bar circuit in Northern Ontario, only with much nicer outfits, superior lighting, and a more attentive (and sober, I’d hope) audience.

I was now beginning to enjoy performing live, a long way from peeing my pants at age sixteen, but at this early stage of my recording career, I felt that my time could be better spent promoting the music I believed in so strongly. And, I was already looking ahead to the next album. Being on tour leaves precious little room in your schedule for sitting down to write. Many new artists fall into this trap. They’re lucky enough to have a hit album, and so they spend the following year on the road. I’ve heard many a co-artist complain that when they finally return home, fatigued and half crazed, the record company, eager for a follow-up, strong-arms them right into the studio. Except that they don’t have enough first-rate material. (And after a year of largely being confined to a tour bus and hotel rooms, the last thing they want is to be cooped up in the recording studio for the near future.)

It’s well known in the music business that artists have an entire lifetime to write their first album, but less than a year to write their second. So what do you do? Hastily knock out some new tunes, like a teenager who’s put off writing his English paper until the night before it’s due? We all remember how well
that
usually turns out. Or you salvage scraps of what you wrote while on tour, which rarely yield any treasures, because it is hard to feel inspired when you’re doing
the same thing day in and day out. It’s why so many new acts’ second CDs meet with the so-called sophomore jinx. There is no jinx, of course, just a bunch of half-baked songs that probably needed more time and a clear head to develop.

I chose a different route for bringing
The Woman in Me
to public attention: an intense promotional blitz encompassing music videos; media interviews for radio, TV, and the press; photo shoots; and one-off performances like morning television (
Good Morning America
, for example) or entertainment talk shows such as David Letterman’s. Eating up a lot of my time in the schedule was also my hands-on involvement with the art direction of photos, videos, and staging for live performances on both the production side and the performance side. I was constantly working directly with producers and designers for everything I did. I started editing my own videos, right from the beginning, which is a time-consuming, painstakingly tedious job. I was energized being on the production side of my projects, but it was also exhausting playing so many roles at once.

Then there were in-store autograph signings and special appearances, such as attending the Grammy Awards. Nothing I’d ever done up to then could have prepared me for the workload ahead: ten to fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. I was booked solid six months in advance and would barely have time to come up for air for the next two and a half years, because no sooner would I finish promoting my latest hit than the next one would be released, and the whole cycle would rev up all over again for another three months or so. Now multiply that times eight.

A typical day’s work itinerary would look something like this, if we assume the stretch begins in New York City:

4:00 a.m. Wake up!

4:15 a.m. Depart hotel for
Good Morning America

4:30 a.m. Begin hair and makeup

5:00 a.m. Call time for sound check

5:30 a.m. Sound check

6:00 a.m. Continue hair, makeup, and wardrobe; have a morning juice!

7:30 a.m. Performance!

8:00 a.m. Depart
GMA
for hotel

8:15 a.m. Arrive hotel; beauty/bathroom break!

8:30 a.m. Beauty touch-ups

8:45 a.m. Media interview “Round Up” at hotel

12:00 p.m. LUNCH BREAK

12:30 p.m. Depart hotel for meeting with video director

2:00 p.m. Depart meeting for radio interview at station

2:20 p.m. Arrive radio station

3:00 p.m. Depart radio station for hotel

3:15 p.m. Arrive hotel; beauty/bathroom break!

3:30 p.m. Journalist interview at hotel

4:30 p.m. Meet with sick children/fans

5:30 p.m. Wardrobe meeting for Grammy outfit

6:30 p.m. Prep for dinner with radio programmers

7:00 p.m. Depart hotel for dinner with radio programmers

7:30 p.m. Arrive dinner

10:00 p.m. Depart dinner for hotel

10:30 p.m. Arrive hotel—DONE FOR DAY!!

By now, I had a personal assistant, a super girl named Sheri Fobare, who had three times my energy. Sheri used to prepare my daily itineraries. I knew things were spinning out of control when I noticed that she had astutely started to insert “pee break” in the schedule, because otherwise the opportunity would not present itself, as everything was such a rush, and I’d be sitting in the car ride to the next destination with my knees pressed together. “Snack break” soon got added, too. Life got much more civilized after that. Thanks, Sheri!

I know, I know: it sounds ridiculous, how could anyone
forget
to eat and go pee? In the beginning stages of your career, when all the things you have dreamed of are finally starting to happen, you feel compelled not to let a single opportunity slip through your fingers by
taking it for granted. We had all sorts of important bookings coming up: appearances on Leno,
The Morning Show,
and the Country Music Awards, a cover shoot for
Rolling Stone
magazine, my next music video. Because magazines and TV programs have long lead times, in some cases I’d agreed to do them months earlier, before I had any idea of what my limits were. Okay, so which of these great privileges do you cancel in order to buy yourself a little downtime? You don’t, or at least I didn’t. Each was essential to the success of the album. Also, I didn’t want to come off as a prima donna and seem ungrateful. My jam-packed itinerary was a new artist’s wet dream.

I just carried on like the Energizer Bunny, even long after I’d established myself. Looking back, I see now that I was exhausted for a good part of twelve years. My weight dropped, and I often became seriously lethargic from malnutrition and fatigue. One time, a journalist conducting an interview noticed me slurring my words and practically passing out. “Are you okay?” he asked hesitantly. “No,” I replied, eyes glazed, I wasn’t okay and really didn’t want to be there. It was the only time I’d ever admitted to not being okay professionally when someone asked me. I would never have wanted to come across as being unprofessional by letting the façade down. I needed to appear “fine” at all times while in the public eye, as though it was a responsibility, an obligation to the privilege itself. He probably thought I had been drinking or was on something. The fact was, not only did I
not
drink alcohol or take drugs, I didn’t even drink coffee or Coca-Cola. Maybe I should have—drunk coffee or Coke, I mean—in order to survive the grueling schedule with more ease. Once, while shooting a video in London at three o’clock in the morning, I broke down and blurted out, “That’s it! I’ve had enough!” Kim Godreau, Sheri’s successor as my assistant, assumed the worst; maybe I was about to pull a page out of the diva playbook and storm off the set.

“I can’t take it anymore! I’m—I’m
having a Coke
!” She laughed with relief. To me, needing any sort of substance to keep going betrayed weakness on my part. I had always gotten by on natural energy or somehow managed to run on empty, but it was cold and late,
and we had been on location since dawn. Kim kindly fetched me my Coke, and the kick from the caffeine and sugar carried me through.

And beyond, too. From the video shoot, which didn’t end until daybreak, we headed to the airport to catch a plane to who knows where. For the next few hours, I talked a mile a minute, spewing ideas faster than Kim could write them down. Kim, who is still a close friend all these years later, was exhausted herself from two fifteen-hour days in a row and just wanted to drop off to sleep. At last, she fixed me with a stern expression. “Woody,” she snapped, “
no more Coke for you.
” We both burst out laughing—me probably a bit maniacally—at the absurdity of it all.

Just a thought: good thing that no snoopy reporter was within earshot, or else the tabloids would probably have been shrieking the news about Shania Twain’s out-of-control Coke habit.

As my success began to build, I started to experience being recognized in public. I remember the first time I was at an airport and could sense people hovering around me. No one approached; everyone stood at a bit of a distance, but whispering and staring. I felt as if I was on display, and it was uncomfortable, as I was there for the same reason they were: to take a plane. This had never happened to me before, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. I’m sure you can imagine how awkward it would feel if perfect strangers started staring at you in public, especially if this was all new to you. You’d probably wonder,
Did I put my skirt on inside out? What’s everyone looking at?
I decided to get up and walk to a pay phone around the corner, figuring that if I stayed out of sight—and, for good measure, pretended to be engrossed in a phone conversation—no one would bother me. It worked.

Although I gradually learned to deal better with my newfound celebrity, it comes with certain aspects that I cannot imagine anyone finding tolerable. As I said, I like talking to people. But there is an inherent imbalance in the relationship between stars and their public. Because of all the magazines and TV programs—cripes, even a whole
network—devoted to chronicling the lives of those in the public eye, fans sometimes come to know more intimate details about their favorite performers than they know about members of their own families. Depending on the source, the fact that much of it is libelously untrue often gets overlooked.

But this worship of celebrities can fabricate an artificial sense of familiarity on the part of fans. A fan might approach a celebrity in public feeling very much like the celebrity is an old friend, and that can be very flattering. But the celebrity knows absolutely nothing about the person, making for an unnatural, one-sided connection. And because people may view you as someone with whom they feel a kinship, they can be demanding or just plain pissed off when you don’t treat them with equal familiarity.

After a while, you start to feel as if everyone wants something from you, even if it’s nothing more than an autograph, and you begin to question people’s motives even when their motives are completely innocent. I’m writing this bit to explain my personal point of view as someone who at that stage of my career was new to celebrity and public attention. I’m not sharing it with you to complain about being a celebrity, but to shed light on the realities of being famous for those who may not understand it, or whose only exposure to it is through the media and not personal testimony.

I am friendly to strangers and would be whether or not I was famous, but as for anyone, appropriate boundaries are necessary. It’s not always easy to be objective, but I’ll give you an example of one attempt to transition to my new fame as Shania Twain from life as plain old Eilleen. I’m at an airport and a man approaches me at an uncomfortably close distance and starts asking a string of questions: Am I traveling alone? What time is my flight? Where am I going? He even wanted to know who I was meeting. A little too forward, don’t you think? But I try to be gracious, while answering as vaguely as I can; believe me, I take no pleasure in offending fans, or anyone, for that matter.

The guy had one more question for me.

“So,” he says, suddenly full of swagger, “what’s your name?”

What’s my name?
I couldn’t believe it. I realized then that this guy wasn’t looking for an autograph or a picture, he was trying to pick me up! He didn’t have a
clue
as to who I was.

The episode upset me anyway. It disturbed me that I’d let the fact that I was now a public figure override my natural instinct to get away from this person. It made me feel vulnerable and wonder,
Don’t I have the same right as everybody else to decide for myself whether or not I wish to respond to a stranger who engages me in conversation?
The fact that I had utterly misread the situation also made me start to question my own judgment. I was in the middle of the transition period between the before and the after of fame. Throughout the rest of 1995, as album sales surpassed one million, two million, even three million, I would find myself having to squirm out of far tighter spots than that.

One time, in upstate New York, my sister Carrie and I hit the mall for a bit of shopping with her nine-month-old son, Dylan. We started off okay, zipping in and out of a few stores, but as more shoppers began gathering around us, our pace slowed until we were trapped in a crowd and unable to budge. Baby Dylan, looking up at the mass of people from his stroller, was getting antsy with all the fuss. For that matter, so were Carrie and I; this was still new for both of us, and we really did not know what to do.