Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir Read online

  That’s how I work. A little slice of life here, a little piece of a different song there, and bada bing, bada boom, mix it all together and there it is. My musical style has always been a collage of everything. Like Rick would play me “Money Changes Everything” in the style of a Bob Dylan song, and I’d say, “Can we just start it off differently? Make believe you’re playing ‘London Calling.’” Then I’d start singing. The producers’ approach was more traditional, because that’s how it was always done. Except that I didn’t want to do what was always done. So they didn’t want me in the studio when they were doing guitars. So I went straight to Lennie Petze and he stuck by me. And if you listen to “Money,” you can hear the influences of the Clash.

  But everyone was watching me sing, which I think is the worst thing to do, because they all would watch the performance, rather than hear it. I sang it over and over. As I said, I was singing in the key of a trumpet, so after several times when I was pretty sure they had it, I said, “Okay, I think you have it,” and stopped. In that key, it would have been easy to lose my voice. And sometimes Rick would say to use my “head voice.” But women don’t have a “head voice”—only men do. Now that’s biology for ya: For a woman, you either sing high and thin, or you sing low, or you sing in the middle and soft or strong. I found myself trying to close my eyes and forget who I was and try to find the spirit of the story—but there they were, watching me.

  So I tried to create another world for myself where I could be less self-conscious, because the first thing I do whenever I do anything really creative is lose that freakin’ third eye. Because you gotta just lose it all and throw it all down right there. You gotta open up a vein, and you can’t open up a vein if you got all these scientists out there watching you and telling you, “Do this,” or “Do that.” So I started to look for ways that I would have freedom of expression without anyone hovering over me. When I work with new guys now it’s still like that.

  I also had to fight to write a song with Rob, too. They didn’t think I was a good writer, but they did like the way I arranged. They had a Hooters song called “Fighting on the Same Side,” which was a good song, but I thought we should take this new style and write with it. I just kept asking and asking. I started to think, “If we’re fighting on the same side, why don’t you want to write with me?” Eventually Dave Wolff got me together with Steve Lunt, a writer he knew from an English band called City Boy. The first time I came over to see him, he had had some drinks and was a little toasty. He was busy writing and said, “Cyn, I have this idea—it’s going to be great. We’re going to write a song about female masturbation. No other girl has done this before.” I said, “Okay, I’m in.” For a little inspiration, I said, “Let’s find one of those boy magazines for girls,” not realizing that the boy magazines are for boys.

  My thinking for writing “She Bop” was this: I remember when I was a little kid, there was a lot of talk about the Stones song “Get Off of My Cloud.” The rumor was that “cloud” really meant “my girl” or “my prostitute.” I remember thinking, “Oooh! Really?” You spend time thinking about the most ridiculous things as a kid. I mean, how many times did I sit up all night in the park with my friends, discussing if Paul was dead? “Let’s play the record backward! Isn’t that John saying, ‘I buried Paul’?” So I thought, “Hey, why not pass this legacy on? The kids hear ‘She bop, he bop-a-we-bop’ and think it’s about dancing. Then when the kids grow up, they hear, ‘They say I’d better stop, or I’ll go blind,’ and realize what the song’s about and have a giggle.” And that adds a different dimension to a song and deepens their relationship to it. I wanted the song not to be blatant. Steve was on board so we made sure that that song did not refer to hands or touching anything, because if it did, then we wouldn’t be writing a song that was multilevel. And covert is always the tradition in rhythm and blues anyway. We had a lot of laughs writing it. We sat next to each other with these lyrics all over the page, which is how I write sometimes, with a basic melody. But we didn’t know how the song was going to begin. So I said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if the sound was kind of like the Big Bopper, which is what John Lennon did when he did Rock ’n’ Roll, his rockabilly record?” The thing about the beginning riff of “She Bop” was that it was rockabilly but still held true to that electronic, pop modern sound we were doing, with the gated snare. And come on, the Big Bopper? That was funny, too.

  A lot of times, I didn’t know a song was going to happen a certain way until I tried it. Because everything is always like a puzzle, and you start out this way and then all of a sudden the puzzle starts to come together, and sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad. Sometimes you and your writing partners are smacking each other on the back going, “We’re geniuses! It worked!” It’s like when the oil gushes through the derrick, and you’re like, “It’s alive!” Then the next day, or the next week, after you get shot down a little by the powers that be, you’re sitting there looking at each other going, “What the hell were we thinking?” But that’s how it always is.

  I recorded “She Bop” in a room in the back of the studio. It was the big rectangle warehouse room where Kiss rehearsed. I started singing there because it unnerved me to have Rick watching my performances so intently. I was able to convince Bill to run the wires for the microphone and stuff back to the room so I had total privacy.

  So that’s where I sang “She Bop.” I could even take my clothes off and sing and no one would know. So of course that’s what I did, and I tickled myself too. That’s why you hear me laughing, because it was so ridiculous. I was singing half-naked. I heard Yoko took her clothes off for “Walking on Thin Ice,” which I think is cool.

  But most people didn’t get what “She Bop” was about until much later, when I went on Dr. Ruth’s radio show. I was playing along with her, making believe I was in a psychiatrist’s office, but then everything I said was blown up later by the press. Suddenly “She Bop” was on the Parents’ Music Resource Center’s “Filthy Fifteen” list of songs that they said should be banned, like “Let Me Put My Love into You” by AC/DC. I was so mad, because I had made sure that I never mentioned touching myself so that little kids would never know. And then I was found out because of my big mouth. Now every kid knew what it was about, and it wasn’t supposed to be that way. Oh, c’est la vie. That’s French for “whatever.”

  I always tried so hard to make music that would not become dated. And then I had this conversation with Dick Clark and he told me that I was making disposable music. That’s what pop music was—disposable. I said, “No, I did not work my whole life to make disposable music.” After “She Bop,” I wanted to write another song, and Dave Wolff kept saying, “Wait, wait—it’ll come.” But it didn’t, and I had to fight tooth and nail, and finally when the record was almost done I started writing with Eric. It was hard, though, because at the time he seemed a little scattered. Once we’d finally get a sound after working on it for hours—or days—he’d change it. His process would make me forget the melodies I was singing after a while.

  With Rob, his temperament was different and he was easier to remember melodies with. There was a sweetness about him. I felt I could show him poetry. And we were both going through similar things with our relationships: He was just coming out of one that was long and hard, and Dave and I were having a lot of bumps. So Rob and I started writing together. Sometimes in our conversations he’d say something that struck me, and I’d write it down. Like he referred to a “suitcase of memories.” I thought that was a wonderful line so I used it in “Time After Time.” Other lines came from my life. “Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick”—that came from the really loud clock that I mentioned Dave and I had in our apartment. And the part about “the second hand unwinds” was from Rick’s watch. For some reason, it was going backward instead of forward. He kept saying, “Look at this, the second hand is unwinding.” I just looked at him and I’m like, “Oh my God, the second hand unwinding?” and wrote it down. I try
all the time to take stuff from conversations. I always look for words that chew well and sing well.

  When we started writing the song, I needed a fake title as a placeholder for the time being. So I was looking in the TV Guide and saw a couple of movie titles. There was this movie starring Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen called Time After Time, and I said, “Okay, that sounds like a good fake title for right now; it’ll change.” And did I mention I am a huge fan of Mary Steenburgen? She is so funny and a terrific actress. Anyway, when we started writing it, it was like the song title lodged itself into the song. I kept thinking it would be thrown away, but no matter how I tried to remove the freakin’ title, I couldn’t take it out without the song falling apart.

  When Rick heard the song, he became very protective of it. If he thought people could kind of hear the song outside the door, he’d shut all the music off because he worried that somebody would copy us. Pretty early on, he felt it was really something extraordinary. The record company loved that song, too, and I kept saying, “Why did you make me do all this other stuff? I could have been writing more songs all along.”

  We recorded the album in a couple of months, and we became like a little family. Lennie Petze likes to live, he likes to eat, he’s just a joyful person, so he’d come by and take us to that Japanese steak house Benihana, which we called Beni Ha Ha. One time during the Fourth of July he brought firecrackers, and we shot them off at the studio. Lennie was always so real and a good guy, very nurturing. We were like kids. And I thought that Rick was pretty fantastic, and I had a great time with him, but he wasn’t used to the singer being so damn vocal, I think. He is a great producer and I did learn a lot from him. And we made an album that has lasted a long time.

  We didn’t know what to call the album. There was a song we were doing, just kind of playing around with, called “He’s So Unusual,” recorded by Helen Kane, a singer from the twenties who was the inspiration for Betty Boop. And we used to laugh because my friend Rose would come over and talk about her boyfriend Joe. It was Joe, Joe, Joe, all the time (her husband now for some time). My downstairs neighbor Carl and I used to laugh that the lyrics to “He’s So Unusual” sounded just like Rose going on about Joe (“He’s handsome as can b-e-e-e”).

  I would always find wacko songs like that and just stick them in the middle of other music we were doing to make Rick laugh. And of course we kept She’s So Unusual for the title.

  Everything for that album came from my life—even the record cover. I was inspired by a picture that I had seen in a book of photos of South America that my friend Ken Walls had. He worked on Blue Angel’s three videos, and I dated him for a while, and we stayed friends. He always showed me books of art and photography, and one time I found this photograph of a girl standing in the midday sun. She had a colorful skirt and a bouquet of flowers and the sun cast a shadow that was just right. I said that there should be a beach umbrella on the cover photo with me, and it was the art director’s idea to go to Coney Island. We went there (after getting lost) and started walking around, and I found this one street that had really great color, like in South America, and it was in front of an old wax museum. There was midday sun and that was it: We found the location.

  Then I went to Screaming Mimi’s, where I had worked, to pick out my wardrobe. In the shop I had seen this wonderful picture of Jane Russell, a beautiful actress from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. In the photo, she had a blouse that was off the shoulders; espadrilles, which were popular then; and a full green skirt that looked like this red skirt that had come into the store. Her outfit had a whole South American feel. And I had already worn a bathing suit under a big dress when I opened for Peter Frampton in Puerto Rico, so I knew that could work for the top. Laura Wills, who owned the shop and was a genius, helped put together the look. I used to see how stylists would come in and ask Laura to put something together for them, and they’d take the credit. I’d say to her, “When I get my album, you’re going to be named as the stylist.” (Of course, what did I do? I misspelled her name in the first round of credits. I’m such a fuckin’ idiot.)

  For the cover shoot, I didn’t have anybody doing my makeup—I did my own. Laura did the styling, but we got Annie Leibovitz to do the shoot. I found the Polaroids recently, which are wild to look at now, especially the one Annie gave me after we figured out the back cover together. I had gessoed my shoes for the shoot. I had been dreaming of my feet in the air with the parachute jump in the background ever since we first went to Coney Island. If you’re from Coney Island, or New York, you recognize that scene immediately. To me, it’s the Eiffel Tower of Brooklyn. I didn’t have time to paint so I found a book with prints of van Gogh, my favorite painter. I studied him in school too. I gravitated to the color and broad strokes of his work. I’m also fascinated with the soles of shoes, because when you look at them, you see how a person walks through their life.

  So I cut the painting Starry Night along the outline of my shoes, so that I had pieces of van Gogh, I had art, on my soles. When I went to art school, I read Vinnie’s letters to his brother, Theo. I kind of wished I could have written Vincent and told him I used his work to make living art of Starry Night in a photograph nearly a hundred years after his death and hoped it was okay with him.

  For the front cover, I wanted flowers like the girl in the South American picture, and I wanted a chain on my ankle and on my hip, to stress that woman is the slave of the world. Slavery is not just black and white. As I said, for Sicilian women, slavery was a mind fuck, a way to keep them in the house, as domestic slaves and bearing a man’s children. So that chain was very symbolic to me.

  I placed the flowers, the shoes, and the umbrella on the ground. And I brought the unfinished tapes from the studio so that I could play the music and dance to it while Annie was shooting. I wanted the sound of the music and the visual to marry, and that was the only way Annie could understand what it was she was taking a picture of.

  Annie kept going, “Cyndi, pull your dress up.” I just felt like, “No, I don’t want to do that. I want to do the strong dance art thing.” So I did both, and when it came time to choose the image, the record company was really vying for the one of me holding my dress up with the slip showing. I went around and asked people, “Which one do you like?” The people under thirty liked the strong one, and the people over thirty liked the more passive one. So when I presented it to Lennie, I told him that people under thirty liked the strong one, and I said we should go with that. He did. Lennie allowed me to have some freedom of speech and mind, and I’ll always be grateful to him for that.

  I’ll tell you something else: I also did nude pictures with Annie. I was always an artist’s model. I thought we were going to make great art, and some of it was, but I was a pop star and you couldn’t have those kinds of pictures around. (I had them in a drawer; when my kid was born one of my assistants cleared all my pictures away, but I just found them.)

  When the album was completed, the label wanted the first single to be “Time After Time.” But I kept saying to them, “Listen to me—releasing a ballad first defines you in a certain way. You become known as a balladeer, and it can kill your career.” Dave Wolff fought for me and kept saying that “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” could be an anthem, and finally everyone got excited and agreed it would be the first single.

  The album was released in October of 1983. I was about to become famous, and it wasn’t at all what I pictured.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WHEN IT CAME time to choose a director for the video of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” I had Edd Griles in mind. I liked how he directed the Blue Angel video “I Had a Love,” which won an International Film & Television of New York Award. And I liked him because he was personable and had a sense of humor (that was so important) and he was visual. For instance, when we shot the “I Had a Love” video, I had this idea of my boyfriend in the video and me watching TV; I’d then go turn the TV set off and my skirt would wipe the screen, wiping you into anoth
er scene. Visuals like that always went through my head, and sometimes it was kind of hard to get other people on board, but Edd and I were in sync.

  He was open to doing the video, and once he was in, we started having meetings. He had this concept of having all these girls in it, like a Busby Berkeley musical, which I thought would be great. (I didn’t really have time to write a treatment because at the time I was doing so much promotion for the album.)

  What Edd did that was so special was that he was open-minded enough to see that the whole video was a creative collective. People in the public eye often see things as “It’s either all me or all them.” That’s not true. It wasn’t all me or all them: it was us. The video was made with a combination of input from all the creative people on the set—the set designer, the stylists, Edd, my friends, me, and Captain Lou Albano, the wrestler who played my dad. Everyone felt free to contribute. I met Captain Lou when I was in Blue Angel. We were on a plane ride coming back from Puerto Rico. Originally they wanted the wrestler Gorgeous George to be in the video, but I said, “No, Captain Lou’s the one.” I had kept in touch with him and had his number, so Dave called him and he signed up immediately. When I was in Blue Angel I had an idea for a funny radio commercial with the voice of Tom Carvel, the founder of a chain of ice cream stores called Carvel’s. But we couldn’t get him, so we used Arnold Stang for the radio commercial and Captain Lou for the video. The rest became rock and roll history. Lou was sweet, and kind of a rock and roll character, too. The band NRBQ loved him as well. He was so funny. He made all the promotion fun. He was like this wacky big kahuna with his Hawaiian shirts and bushy eyebrows. He was so ahead of the curve.