Rocking the Pink (30 page)

When the object of Mark's playful scorn bantered back that perhaps the real problem was Mark's leadership, not the camper's prowess as a guitar player, Mark laughed easily and heartily.

“Well, for some reason, they've asked me to speak to you all about songwriting,” Mark began, turning his attention to the task at hand. “Ah, yes, one of my favorite topics.”

I leaned forward in my seat, my eyes trained like lasers on his magnetic face. He seemed so comfortable in his own skin, so unapologetic.

“It's actually quite simple,” he began. “The song has to tell
the truth.
Dig deep and find the truth.” His voice rose with emotion. “
Always.
Or don't bother writing the song.”

Someone in the audience asked a question then, but I didn't hear what the student said. The only person in the room, as far as I was concerned, was Mark Hudson. Everyone else had disappeared.

“Stand up and be yourself,” Mark responded to the no-name pupil. “Be yourself, in your full glory, in your songwriting and in life. You can't write good songs if you aren't brave enough to be yourself.”

I am certain I gasped.
You can't write good songs if you aren't brave enough to be yourself.
The words took my breath away.

Mark continued to tell some highly entertaining anecdotes about how he had written songs for Aerosmith, Celine Dion, Hanson, and others. And though I listened to every word, I could not move past his bone-crushing thesis:
You can't write good songs if you aren't brave enough to be yourself.

After class, a crowd of fawning campers surrounded Mark, laughing, smiling, thanking him. They were jovial, backslapping. Merry.

I hung back, waiting for everyone else to leave the room. I was not merry. I couldn't breathe.

Finally Mark was alone and I approached, tears threatening to fill my eyes.

“Mark,” I said. “Your words . . . ” I could barely croak out the
phrase. “Thank you” was all I managed. And then, dammit, tears began to distort my vision.

“You're welcome,” he answered offhandedly, still glancing at the dissipating crowd. But then his eyes met mine and he saw the dark storm brewing beneath my contorted face. “Why are you so upset?” he asked, concerned.

“Oh, no, I'm not upset . . . I'm inspired.
I'm so inspired!”
And with that, those damned tears spilled out of my eyes and right down my cheeks. “I've never been so inspired in all my life!”

Mark looked relieved and touched. He smiled at me. He understood.

“Mark, would you mind listening to one of my songs?” I asked tentatively.

“I would
love
to,” he answered, and his interest sounded genuine.

I was overjoyed. “Thank you so much, Mark,” I said, fumbling in my purse for my CD. “Here you go. Thank you! Track three: ‘Float Away'!”

That night, I tossed and turned, imagining
the
Mark Hudson actually listening to a song of
mine.
I just couldn't get over the idea of him listening to
my voice!
What if he liked it? But what if didn't? What if he hated it? What if he told me I shouldn't quit my day job?

The next morning, after waiting for yet another doting crowd to clear out from around Mark, I approached him at the bagels-and-cream-cheese table.

“Good morning,” I said, trying not to seem like a pest, trying to seem like I was only vaguely interested in whether he'd listened to the song.

“Ah, yes, good morning,” he answered, as he poured himself a cup of coffee. “I slept with you last night, you know,” he said. And then, to my expectant face, he explained, “I fell asleep listening to your album, on my third time through.”

I clapped my hands together involuntarily in the universal sign of “oh, goodie!” He had listened to my
entire album?
And
more than once?!

“I couldn't stop listening,” he continued. “
Your voice!
I could feel you in each song.”

I had goose bumps! The great Mark Hudson had
felt
me in each song!

“But, Laura, you need to keep going,” he encouraged, looking at me with those piercing eyes and grabbing my full attention. “You're on the right path. You, my dear, are a songwriter. But you were holding back in these songs, both as a songwriter and as a vocalist. You're just trying too damned hard to be perfect and pretty, honey. There's so much more to you than that. I
know
there's more inside of you! Now go find it. Go deeper. Be willing to fail. Don't get bogged down in trying to do it
right.
Songwriting isn't about being
right;
it's about being
real.”

I was blown away. He had hit the nail on the head. I nodded my assent, at a loss for words.

“Be willing to fail,” he said, his tone gentle, “and I promise you will soar to great heights.”

Mark was right. I had been holding back, afraid to fail. In my songs. And in life. The songs on my album—all written when I cared what others thought of me, before I'd fully committed to following my heart, back when I'd been afraid that people might call me a “dreamer,” before I'd been ravaged by cancer and forced to own the
deepest truths about myself—were not as vulnerable, as real, as the songs I'd been writing since my treatments. Mark Hudson was right: It was time to let go and expose myself in all my flawed glory—both in life and in my songs.

I felt that familiar electric current coursing through my body:
I have to record a second album.

The next day at camp, famed Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley talked to us about some of his musical adventures. After his group question-and-answer session, I managed to chat briefly with him one-on-one.

“You can have a big house with maids and a garage full of cars,” he told me in his tough-guy voice, straight out of
Goodfellas,
“but you gotta be inspired every day, or it's all nothin'.”

I nodded. I hadn't expected Ace Frehley to be so deep.

The next day, Meat Loaf walked into our rehearsal room in the middle of a song. When we had finished, he beelined over to me.

“You need to
own
it,” he counseled me urgently. His eyes were aflame. “
This is your stage.
Don't hold back! You're holding back!” He raised his arms in a dramatic flourish to emphasize his point.

“Thank you . . . Meat Loaf.”
Mr. Meat Loaf? Mr. Loaf?
“I'm . . . yes . . . Thank you. Will do.”

It was surreal. I was getting performance advice from Meat Loaf! The original bat out of hell! And he was beating the same drum I'd been hearing all week: I was holding back.

It was time to let go, to expose myself, to take a flying-squirrel leap with all my heart. It was time to go bare-assed in the display window at Macy's.

The next day, the camp welcomed Jon Anderson, the wildly talented front man and songwriter for Yes. You know, “Owner of a Lonely Heart”? (And now you have that song stuck in your head, don't you?)

Before Mr. Anderson's arrival, we campers were warned not to get too touchy-feely with this particular rock star. Admire him without touching, we were told—hugging, hand shaking, and groping were no-no's. Apparently, Mr. Anderson had recently been felled by a nasty flu, and, understandably, he'd grown leery of being pawed by his germy, though adoring, public. Adoration: good. Germs: bad.

And then, only a few minutes after the enunciation of Mr. Anderson's “no-germ policy,” there he was: blond hair, boyish face, unassuming and gentle demeanor. He reacted to our boisterous applause with a crooked smile and a wave, and we all settled into our chairs in anticipation of a camp-wide question-and-answer session.

Much to the thrill of the audience, Mr. Anderson picked up an acoustic guitar and performed an angelic, simple version of “Starship Trooper,” for which everyone gave him a standing ovation. His iconic voice was pure and without pretense.

The hair on my arms stood on end as I listened.
This is exactly what Mark Hudson was talking about,
I said to myself as I applauded enthusiastically.
I understand.

“Thank you so much,” Mr. Anderson said humbly. “Thank you.”

And with that, the question-and-answer session disassembled and we campers separated back into our individual bands for further rehearsals.

Just as I was singing my heart out in my band's rehearsal room,
Mr. Anderson entered the room. After watching for a moment, on a whim, he walked over to a spare microphone and began singing backup to my lead vocals.

My singing quickly devolved into a sort of singsong laughter—the sound that comes out of someone experiencing unadulterated glee.

At the end of our spontaneous joint performance, Mr. Anderson approached me, smiling. “I like your voice,” he said, and I blushed.

Don't touch him,
I reminded myself.
Germs: bad.

“Thank you,” I responded to his kindness, taking a careful step back. “I'm actually a fledgling songwriter,” I told him. “Could you please share any songwriting advice?” I looked at him hopefully, careful to keep my germs at a distance.

Jon Anderson assessed me, a relaxed, earnest smile on his lips, and then took a bold step toward me, right into my personal space (and into the zone of optimum airborne-illness transmission). And then, much to my shock, he grasped my shoulders and gazed straight into my face. “I see you,” he said. “You are beautiful. Just let the songs come through you. Don't stop to think; just let them come through you. Just let the world see exactly what I see right now.”

Our eyes were locked for a moment, his hands pressed firmly against my shoulders. Words wouldn't form, so I collapsed into him and hugged him, a surge of emotion overcoming me.

He hugged me right back, tenderly, sweetly.

When we pulled apart, he nodded his head and whispered, “Namaste.” And then he waved to everyone and left the room.

It took me over an hour to fully regain my composure.

 

 

On the last day of Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy Camp, campers and counselors alike trekked over to the Whisky a Go Go, where each band would perform a camp-closing set of songs. Déjà vu flooded me as I walked through the door of the Whisky and onto the floor adjacent to the stage: It had been twenty years since I had stood in exactly the same spot with Amy Bo Bamy and Marco, clutching my sides with laughter at the sight of Val Kilmer's pirouetting dance double. Twenty years! Where had the time gone?

“Laura, we're up,” my bandmate called to me, and I was startled back to the present. It was time for us to make rock history, baby!

I followed my bandmates up one flight of stairs to the balcony, across the dilapidated upstairs viewing area, and then down another flight of back steps leading to stage access. After exchanging high fives and “break a leg”s with my band, I stepped out onto the Whisky stage and right down to front and center, to the precise square inch of real estate that had been calling my name for twenty years.

This was the
exact spot
where the iconic Jim Morrison had performed “The End” forty years before, and where Val Kilmer had
simulated
the iconic Jim Morrison performing “The End” twenty years before, right in front of my nineteen-year-old, starstruck eyes. This was the very coordinate on Planet Earth I had lusted to occupy as I'd watched Val Kilmer writhing around in his black leather pants—back when I'd been certain that my jaw-dropping performance as Girl One would rocket me to superstardom.

And now here I was, not quite the superstar I had once envisioned, but a thirty-nine-year-old woman, wife, and mother of two—a survivor who'd been to the hinterlands of hell and back.
And I was standing on the Whisky stage, at long last, ready to claim my long-awaited moment in the spotlight.

And what song was I slated to perform that night at the Whisky? None other than the Doors' classic “Love Me Two Times”! On top of that, in one of those instances that beg the question whether “coincidences” exist, the mystery rock star joining my band on guitar that night, arranged by the camp, was none other than Robby Krieger himself, the real-life legendary guitarist for the Doors.

I had fallen into a wormhole.

I looked over at Robby's mellow face and nodded my head—
let's do it—
and he started playing the familiar guitar introduction to “Love Me Two Times.” My heart was thumping in my ears and my head was spinning. And, yes, of course, my hands were shaking, too.

I'm pretty sure I flubbed the lyrics to the song (which takes a written book of instructions to do, simple and iconic as it is), though it's all a blur now, and I'd be surprised if I was on pitch more than half the song. But, of course, I was enthralled during every second of the performance. It was truly a rock 'n' roll fantasy.

As I climbed up the steps leading off the stage and onto the balcony, Mark Hudson was waiting for me at the top.

“You did good, kid,” he said. And then he shot me a beautiful, wide smile, framed perfectly by his rainbow-colored beard.

 

 

Walking through my front door after arriving home from Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy Camp, I instantly began yammering breathlessly to Brad about every detail of my week. Mark Hudson!
Meat Loaf! Ace Frehley! Jon Anderson! I thanked him for holding down the fort yet again, and for allowing me to gallivant through yet another exciting adventure. And then, finally, after I'd exhausted every last anecdote about my week in la-la land, I dropped the bomb: “Babe, I've decided I absolutely
must
record another album.” I paused for effect. “
Right now.”