You Cannot Be Serious (36 page)

Much more successful was my first ever—though admittedly nonpaying—music gig, in Paris, during the French Open. Yannick Noah had started his own career as a singer-songwriter (and has since become a bestselling recording artist in France), and was holding the first in what turned out to be an annual series of music-and-tennis events for his children’s charity. The John McEnroe Band—yours truly on lead vocals and rhythm guitar; the youngsters Chris Scianni on lead guitar and Rich Novatka on drums; and, just for that trip, Matt Kramer on bass—played in front of four thousand people!

It was a rousing start for my rock-and-roll career, and things got even more exciting a few nights later when we became only the second live act ever (after, if you can believe it, Prince) to perform in La Bandouche, a big Paris nightclub. To my amazement, as we played, Joe Cocker actually jumped up on stage and sang a few songs with us.

I wasn’t sure if we were headed for the top, but I felt encouraged when Sergio Palmieri booked us for a two-week tour of Italy, in July. The money wasn’t much—sixteen thousand dollars, split four ways. Still, it was money: We were playing for pay, just like a real band, and it was a serious schedule, twelve gigs in fourteen nights in Sardinia and seaside resorts on the peninsula’s west coast. It was quite a tour.

In my original concept for the band, I wasn’t the front man. My first impulse, again, had been to be a team player: I just wanted to play rhythm guitar, maybe take a few solos, sing a little backup, and leave it at that. The idea had been to lend my name and presence to a solid group effort.

One of my mistakes was to assume that, somewhere out there, a good, unknown lead singer would see an opportunity in working with me—would think my energy and enthusiasm and notoriety could lift both of us to legitimacy.

Never did I picture myself as lead guitarist/vocalist: When it came to actually doing it, it was like that joke line about not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time—I was literally unable to focus on singing and playing my guitar at once. I would forget to breathe, then come in at the wrong place on the vocal, or sing off-key, or hit the wrong chord.

I had figured that if we went places where they didn’t understand English, my roughness around the edges wouldn’t matter—people would just be happy that I was there. They would come out to see the spectacle of John McEnroe playing guitar and singing. I knew I had to be bad before I was good, so I was willing to try to get my feet wet by being
really
bad and taking some abuse.

Little did I realize what kind of abuse I was letting myself in for.

When we rehearsed in New York in June, I brought in a new band member, who had toured with some serious rock musicians. I thought his professionalism would be the glue we needed to hold the band together. He had been on the wagon for years, and this was the moment when he suddenly fell off. It didn’t seem especially significant until we got to our first gig, in a seaside town called Rapallo, at a pretty club where, it was said, Frank Sinatra had once performed. As we prepared to play our first number, I looked around and noticed that our guy was missing.

I found him at the bar, well-oiled. When I told him we were about to play “I Got the Blues,” a standard twelve-bar blues number we’d played dozens of times before, he asked me what key it was in. I blinked. “E,” I said.

“What are the changes?” he asked.

My heart sank. When your very experienced bandmate is asking you for the chord changes to a twelve-bar blues tune, you’re in big trouble. I had no idea, though, what kind of real trouble we were in.

He was our foundation: If we couldn’t depend on him, we couldn’t put together a credible performance. And if you don’t believe in yourself in some way, no one is going to believe in you. Soon the audiences lost interest in us. They booed; they threw things. It was about as bad as you could imagine—and then it got worse.

Halfway into the tour, he went missing. We were scheduled to leave for our next gig, in Forte di Marmi, at noon; by one-thirty, he was nowhere to be found. First we felt worried, then we turned cynical: We told Katia Lesmo, Sergio’s assistant, to call the hospitals and the police station. Sure enough, he turned up in the emergency room of the local hospital. We were later told that the police had found him unconscious, face-down on the pavement outside a nightclub. He claimed that someone had put LSD in his drink. Amazingly, he played the gig that night. Rock and roll will never die.

The rest of the tour became a survival test. Finally, after two long weeks, we flew home with our tails between our legs. I did not read the Italian reviews. For the first time in my life, I was happy I had never learned a foreign language.

I
N EARLY
A
UGUST
, not long after I returned to New York, my divorce became final. I felt as though a huge weight had come off my shoulders (and out of my checkbook!), but my heart still had a gaping hole in it. Soon afterward, I got a call from my friend Lily, in California. She was just phoning to check when I was coming out west, but as soon as I heard her voice, I naturally thought of Patty Smyth. It had now been seven months since I’d seen Patty at the Christmas party, and we hadn’t talked once. I’d kept hoping she might actually stop by my gallery, but she never had. I even went to Los Angeles in April to play an exhibition, but since I was semi-involved with someone at that point, and Patty and I hadn’t seen each other or talked, I figured it just wasn’t going to happen, so I didn’t call her.

I was a fool. I was scared. I had often hidden my fear behind bravado or feigned nonchalance, and here was another instance. No woman I’d seen since my separation had been nearly as impressive as Patty, had caught my soul the way she had, and I was simply frightened she would turn me down if I sought her out.

And so, midway into the conversation with Lily, I said, as casually as I could, “How’s Patty Smyth?”

There was a slight pause. “Oh, she’s fine,” Lily said, with something in her voice I couldn’t quite decipher. The female mafia has its own secret codes.

“She has a boyfriend or something, right?” I said.

More of that odd tone from Lily: “Not that I know of,” she said, in a singsong voice.

“That’s interesting,” I said.

“Oh, yeah?” Lily said.

Something had gotten under my skin—but I was still scared, and I hated to be scared. My solution was to try not to think about Patty. That didn’t work very well.

I went to the U.S. Open that year as a veteran broadcaster of four years’ standing. It was an exciting tournament: Number-one seed Pete Sampras was upset in the quarterfinals by Jaime Yzaga, and unseeded Andre Agassi beat Michael Stich to win the championship.

One week later, I beat Agassi.

It was in an exhibition, in Phoenix, five days after he had won the Open, and I know Andre was probably still a little tired and deflated—but so what? I was thirty-five years old, and I had beaten the twenty-four-year-old United States Open champion in a tennis match. The old dog had some tricks in him yet!

Exhibitions are funny: They always contain that uncertain line between entertainment and serious tennis. In this instance, I think that Andre figured he could have his cake and eat it, too—have fun, make me look reasonably good, and win. I know he was probably toying with me to some extent, but then I put pressure on him after he let down his guard, and I was pumped up, and then it was over. I think he was a little annoyed after that match.

I, on the other hand, was feeling pretty good about myself! Even though I had been around the block quite a few times by now, and I’d learned I wasn’t the king of the world if I won Wimbledon, or the pits of the world if I lost, it was always hard to avoid falling into the trap of basing my self-esteem on my results.

Especially when I won big.

And this seemed reasonably large to me. Suddenly, I wanted to celebrate. When I got back to the hotel that night, I phoned Lily in Los Angeles and asked her for Patty’s number. That took all the courage I had at the moment. The next morning, when I got to the airport in Phoenix—I was on my way to L.A. for five days, before going to Mexico City to play an exhibition with Borg and Gerulaitis—I took a deep breath and phoned Patty. I don’t know why I expected to get her machine on a Saturday morning: Part of me, probably, hoped that I would.

She answered, sounding a little sleepy and annoyed.

“Patty?” I said. “This is John McEnroe. Listen—I’m coming to town for a few days, and I just wanted to know if maybe you’d like to get together.”

There was the tiniest of pauses. “Sure,” she said. “I’m going to a lesbian party tonight. Wanna come?”

Now it was my turn to pause. Was she trying to tell me something here? “Um—sure,” I said. “Are you, uh, sure it’s OK if I come?”

She laughed. “Don’t get any ideas,” she said. “It’s just a birthday party for a friend of mine who happens to be gay, and a lot of her gay friends are going to be there, but I’m sure there’ll be plenty of straight people, too. If that makes you feel better.”

Just hearing the welcome in her voice was making me feel better already.

I picked her up in Topanga Canyon at dusk—a golden Pacific dusk—and we drove up the coast to the party. It was strange: We hadn’t seen each other in eight months, so theoretically we should have had quite a bit to talk about. But I was still tired from the match with Agassi, and the flight, and the drive, and I didn’t have a lot of conversation in me. I explained to Patty, and apologized for my quietness.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I’m pretty wiped, too, actually.”

We rode mostly in silence—but oddly enough, it was comfortable silence, the kind of quiet that two people who’ve known each other a long time can enjoy.

It was a big Hollywood party, with a slightly different crowd than I was used to, but it was Hollywood. Buck Henry was there. So was Tom Scott, the saxophone player from L.A. Express, and his wife Lynn, and it turned out that they were close friends with Patty. When the two of us walked in, a big cheer went up: later, Patty told me that she’d sworn off dating quite a while ago and had started going everywhere with Tom and Lynn—to the point that people had begun calling her “the other Mrs. Scott.” That afternoon, she’d phoned them to say she was actually bringing a date to this party, and guess who it was?

The party had a warm feeling, and I felt completely comfortable being there with Patty. At one point, we were sitting in the living room talking with some people, and I put my arm around her shoulder—and was suddenly surprised at how totally natural the gesture felt. Fortunately, Patty seemed to feel good about it, too.

I started to yawn, and she hit me playfully on the shoulder. “That’s rude!” she said.

“I’m sorry. I’ve really had it,” I said.

“We’d better get you back home,” Patty said.

I asked her if she would drive my car, because I was so tired. She agreed, a little grumpily. “What do you live out here for?” I asked her as we rode. “You’re a New York girl. It’s not right that you live out here.”

I was giving her a hard time, half joking and half serious. The serious part was that I wanted to spend more time with her, a lot more time, and my kids were in school in New York, and Ruby was in school here. It was adding up on so many levels, but the logistics stank.

I dropped Patty off at her place, and we kissed for a long time at her front door. “This was really, really nice,” I said. “I really want to see you again.”

“OK,” she said.

“How about tomorrow night?” I said.

“God, you move fast, Mr. McEnroe.”

“Hey, that’s why they pay me the big bucks,” I said.

I had to fly to San Francisco the next day, to play an exhibition with Michael Chang for Michael’s Bay Area charity. The whole way up there, I couldn’t stop thinking about Patty. I had looked at the airline schedule and figured out that if the match ended by eight o’clock, I’d be able to fly back to L.A. and drive over to her place. I could barely wait—I would let Chang bulldoze me, if that was what it took.

When I got to the auditorium, Michael told me the event was sold out. It seemed like a good sign
—all
the signs were good.
My luck is finally changing,
I thought. I felt euphoric as I stood in the locker room putting on my tennis clothes.

Then someone walked in and told me that Vitas had died.

No one knew any details, but I later learned that his body had been found on Sunday morning in Marty Raines’s guest house, in Southampton. Marty was a real-estate developer whom both Vitas and I had known for a long time: I’d bought my 90th Street co-op from his organization. Apparently Vitas had been in the Hamptons to play in a charity tennis clinic, had taken a nap at Marty’s, and had never woken up.

I was staggered. Vitas had just turned forty in July: he was still a young man. I had worried about him for a long time, but lately he seemed to have turned his life around. He was taking better care of himself, and so my first natural suspicions just didn’t add up. (It later turned out that Vitas had died in his sleep of carbon-monoxide asphyxiation from an improperly vented space heater in the pool house.)

I went numb. I kept thinking,
Oh my God, this is so bad. This isn’t possible.
I walked onto the court, numb. Was I going to play tennis? Apparently, I was. I started to hit with Michael, just going through the motions I’d gone through a million times before—forehands, backhands, volleys, overheads. “Mr. McEnroe has won the toss. He has elected to serve.”

I served, still numb. Ace. Fifteen-love. I served again. Numb. Thirty-love. Two more points. “Game, Mr. McEnroe. He leads, one game to love.”

I simply couldn’t miss. I can’t explain it.
I couldn’t miss anything.
The tension of what I had come to do had totally evaporated. Nothing mattered anymore. I could see the odd look on Michael’s face: He was trying as hard as he could, but there was nothing he could do against me.

I won the first set, 6–4, gathering speed, and before I knew it, I was ahead, 5–1, in the second. It was five minutes after seven. I let Michael win a couple of games, to make it look better, and then the match was over, 6–4, 6–3. I had destroyed Michael Chang, number five in the world. I’d cleaned his clock.