Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir Read online

  Now, Minnie was an older woman—around seventy. Not that Santa’s a young guy or anything but Minnie was heavyset with (very) wide hips. She wore black every day. Now that I think about it, she was actually kind of punk and she didn’t even know it. Her hair was dyed dark brown and she wore stockings that went above her knee. She always had on the best platform orthopedic shoes that looked just like the ones that Pearl Harbor (of Pearl Harbor and the Explosions) wore. Later on, when I wrote my Christmas album, I had a song called “Minnie and Santa.” That was Minnie.

  There was this one woman who looked like a vision every time she entered the store. The first day I met her, it was nasty out. I was watching the rain pour down and bounce off the bus shelter by the corner and up off the sidewalk. Doris’s counter was right up in the front of the store, and if there weren’t any customers, I could stare out the big front windows. Well—in walks this tall woman, with her platinum hair tied up in a tall French knot in the back and curled in the front. And a kerchief with a pink and red floral print, framing those high curls in the front and her face. She wore a bright, cobalt-blue raincoat and had on the prettiest bright pink lipstick too. It was very sixties. And I said to her, “Wow, you look great.” And she said back to me, “I always wear my brightest colors on the darkest days.” It made my eyes happy to see her against that gray day. For a long time, what she said stuck with me. And years later, I kept it in mind when I stood in front of the old wax museum in Coney Island and took the album-cover photograph for She’s So Unusual. I thought of that woman when I was dancing barefoot, in a piss-stained alley, dressed in red, against a bright yellow door and bright blue brick walls that I knew would strobe against the red. I thought, “In the darkest place, shed the brightest light.”

  The best part of working with those women was how much fun they made it. These were woman who would be nice to you all day, and at the end of the day they would get really lewd and rude. And they knew Steve and I loved them for all their nastiness. We always felt they were kindred spirits and I just thought I was extraordinarily lucky to have the job and to know those people, and for the people who ran that little department store to have enough kindness and room in their hearts to hire such characters. There was so much personality and humor in that store. It’s not the same anymore. Everything has gotten so corporate that the humanity is kind of gone from those shops.

  So I spent my days working at the department store and my nights doing gigs or recording. Then I’d go back to my apartment in Queens. I’d take the Woodhaven Boulevard bus, where you’d transfer at London Lennie’s, a restaurant that my mother loved. She thought that the shrimp was incredible. I just loved the name “London Lennie’s.”

  Going to any of my apartments was a challenge because I always had tons of bags with all this shit in them for my gigs. I’d bring this heavy stainless steel pot with a hot plate so I could steam my throat because I was so worried about losing my voice, and some Vicks, and a vibrator for my neck to make sure it wasn’t tight, and vitamins, and God knows what else.

  When I moved to the city, my sister, Elen, came with me. On the mailboxes she saw the name of a friend who used to be a neighbor of hers. She had lost contact with him, and incredibly, there he was, right downstairs from my apartment. So she knocked on his door and said, “My sister’s moving in upstairs—can you keep an eye on her for me?” His name was Carl Eagleston, and that’s how I met him and his boyfriend, Gregory, who became a really close friend and later inspired my song “Boy Blue.” He was called Blue because his eyes were so blue. I never called him that, but his cousin Diana, who was a transgender woman, did, and another woman who took him in off the streets when she saw him sleeping in the park.

  It was 1980 and Elen had just moved away from NYC to Newport News, Virginia. She was working as a pipe fitter at the shipyard there. El always wanted to learn how to do things and went about her life like an explorer trying different jobs and lifestyles. I guess I did too. El and I wanted to change the world for the better, wanted to be all we could be (who knew the army would take that line?).

  El is older than me by a year and a bit. When we were small, folks would ask my mother if we were twins (mainly because she dressed us alike) and my mom would reply, “Almost.” I can’t even get into what the heck that means, because either ya are, or ya aren’t. Some people called us Irish twins, which is really confusing since we were Italian and German/Swiss. But whatever the case, my mom always said I was born to be Elen’s friend and told my sister to always watch out for me. When we were small children I took everything very literally, and because she was supposed to watch out for me, I became Elen’s shadow. And as much as she tried to push away her tantrum-y, demanding little sister who felt the need to be with her every second, she still watched out for me. Basically, I thought I had to have special consideration because I was born to be her friend. It’s a long story. Maybe that’s what my mom meant when she said we were “almost twins.” I probably would have squeezed into this world with her if I could have. So here she was, once again watching out for her little sis, who was moving into the big city for the first time. And if El couldn’t be there for me all the time, she felt Carl would watch out for me.

  Before I met Carl and Gregory, I had a dream about two little old ladies who lived in a shiny pink castle. Then when I met them, I saw that they had painted their apartment pink—like cotton candy, Pepto-Bismol pink, and they put crushed mirrors into the paint. It was just about the most amazing thing I ever saw, and I realized that these guys were the two little old ladies. Carl would cook, and I would go downstairs and eat with them. I had no money, but I’d bring something, and they’d say, “Oh, don’t bring anything.”

  I used to wear muumuus all the time with flip-flops, and then I’d tie my hair up in a turban. Carl would look at me and go, “Mrs. Feeney!” He just thought I looked like a Mrs. Feeney, so he made up the name, and that’s who I became.

  They used to play all these old records and show me how to dance the fox-trot. They had a studio apartment and built a loft bed and moved most of the furniture out so there was more room to dance. They put pillows on the floor and we sat cross-legged to eat dinner. Every day it was a picnic. They’d always change the paint in the loft. Like one year it was a garden terrace so everything was bright yellow and green. Once Carl came up to my apartment, looked around at the white walls, and said, “Cyn. Mrs. Feeney. Look at this place. You’re not a white-wall gal. We’re going to the paint store, and we’ll find out what you like, what you are.” So we went to the store and I painted one wall of my apartment rust and the other walls light tan, and I covered them with, like, twenty antique mirrors, and he built a loft bed for me. My apartment also had a floor that was slanted, so whenever you dropped anything, it would roll to one side. Then they would say, “Mrs. Feeney is bowling again.”

  After I moved into the city, I went to the store Trash and Vaudeville and bought clothes that I liked. We were playing Manhattan clubs, and I didn’t want to dress like somebody from Queens anymore. I bought this really cute black and white sheer vintage blouse with a black vest, and drape-y pants with stars on them that kind of had an Ali Baba look, but not as severe. And I would go to Screaming Mimi’s, a vintage clothing store where I later worked, and try on vintage clothes, turning and swirling to see how I could perform in them and what they would look like onstage. I used to go out and find the clothes, but now I’m so busy that I have a stylist who shops for me. I look through what she brings to see what speaks to me. She and I have worked together since 2004. She’s a kick-ass stylist. I always tell her, “Elegant, but not conservative—ever.” And she gets it. We do have different mind-sets. For her, it’s about style, but for me, it’s about the performance and how the clothes will move when I’m dancing onstage.

  And of course I always liked to try new things with my hair. Like, when I was in Blue Angel, my hair was blond in the front and brown, and I would twist it and do different ponytails and things. I made it up myse
lf. The only reason the front of my hair was blond was because of Ed from Flyer. He used to tease me and say I had a mustache, so I tweezed it. Well, it came in darker, so I bought this Jolene bleach stuff. I put it on my mustache, and while it was working I was looking at myself in the mirror. There was some Jolene left over, so I put it on my bangs, so the front was blond and the back was brown. Which was a good look, I thought.

  It was such an exciting time for all of us. A radio station ran a contest, “Win a date with Cyndi from Blue Angel,” for Valentine’s Day. So Carl and I and another friend, John, who has since passed away, and all my colorful friends from downstairs in my apartment building, helped me draw a big heart that said “Happy Valentine’s Day,” and put ruffles around it and cut two armholes in it so when I came out, I had a “heart on” . . . get it? That was a thrill because it was the beginning of all the performance art that we used to do.

  And we did some shows in Puerto Rico, because not too many famous people from the United States would play in Puerto Rico—at the time, there were no direct flights, so it wasn’t convenient. Plus, it wasn’t seen as this big market. But since I didn’t have a market, it didn’t matter. As we were planning the trip, I thought that since no famous people would go to Puerto Rico, why don’t we just dress like we’re famous, and act like we’re famous, and wave grandly to everybody? So that’s what we did.

  I remember for my “arrival,” I wore pedal pushers like the ones on the Blue Angel album cover, and little bobby socks with hearts on them. I used to like to mix patterns, like a print and checks and plaids, and for some reason that used to upset a lot of people. I always thought plaid and leopard were really good together, but it wasn’t until later on in the nineties that it became acceptable when Vivienne Westwood did it. Not that I’m saying I did it first—I just did whatever I liked. Blue Angel once got a review and the person wrote, “I can’t even hear her sing because of her clothes.” I didn’t care. I dressed however I wanted onstage, because there were also other people who would say, “Oh my God, what a voice.” Sometimes when I was onstage I would throw my shoes off and dance barefoot because I could dance better. (I don’t know if that was a good idea, because now my feet are killing me.)

  When Blue Angel opened for Peter Frampton, I bought this little pink fifties bathing suit and a button-down green dress for the stage. I couldn’t run offstage and do costume changes—I had to do it right there. So I took the dress off during the show, and then I danced around in the bathing suit. Hey, Debbie Harry did it in Blondie, and talk about style: She wore a bathing suit with a suit jacket, which was so sexy and great. She wore a trash bag onstage and made it look good! So I improvised too. I’d come out with sunglasses and take them off, or a cap, and then I’d pull my cap off and there would be my brightly colored hair spilling out. So I basically peeled off things as I performed, which made me feel freer emotionally, too. I was young and skinny, and, you know, when you’re twenty-seven, you can put anything on and look good.

  Then we had a meeting over dinner with the head guy from Germany (the label was a German company) and they liked our cover of “I’m Gonna Be Strong” and told us there was going to be a big push for that. Which was fine, but then they also told me they were going to make me into the next Streisand. I said, “Oh no. You can’t do that. I’m a rocker. Why don’t you make somebody else into the next Streisand?” Of course, because I said this to the head of Polydor, everybody choked on their food. They kept wanting to make me into a balladeer, because I could sing a ballad. I told them, “I can’t take enough medications to stand still that long, okay? I can rock out better than most, and I’m not going to let you put a brace on my brain and spirit.”

  But what really put a nail in our coffin was the way our manager arranged to record the album. Say that we had a hundred thousand dollars to do it—well, he made a deal to keep whatever money wasn’t used, so that if it cost, say, seventy-five thousand bucks, he got twenty-five. Not a good idea, because in the end, there were no background vocals, there were no extra musicians, nothing. Just us. The album could have been better than it was if we had had some help. But that was my first album. I didn’t know. And the band was happy.

  The plan was to break us in Europe first, which the labels often did at the time. So we went to Germany, and there was a really wonderful woman who was assigned to us, who constantly walked behind me and said, “Schnell” (which meant “quick”), with a kind word attached to it, because I always had too many things to carry, like my steam pot. She helped me as best she could.

  Things were good in Europe, but when we came back to America, Billboard had decided that bands like ours were retro and they weren’t going to cover them. This resulted in another round of meetings with Polydor, who kept telling me, “You’ve gotta lose the band.” I told them no. Producers were offering to put a choir behind me, but I just kept saying no, no, no. I felt I should stick with the band. In another meeting I had a guy draw up a pie chart and tell me how I was going to make money if I would sell all of my publishing to him. You always heard from older songwriters about how they got one little piece of the profits in the beginning and that was it. I had been raped in my first band, I had been abused every which way, and then here’s this guy telling me how I’m going to make money if he buys everything I create. I knew this guy was a crook, and if he took me for a ride and took all my publishing, then I still wouldn’t be making any money to this day if they ever used one of my songs in a movie or anything. That’s your old-age pension, John Turi used to tell me, when you become an outsider—which, for most people, is sort of inevitable.

  But I said some really nasty things. I used the N-word in a meeting because I grew up listening to that John Lennon song “Woman Is the Nigger of the World,” and in this band, I was always being told, “You gotta listen to what the producer is saying,” and “Sing what you’re told,” or that the label had “filled their quota” of women. So in this one meeting, I said, “Listen, I hear what you’re saying, but you see this nigger over here? I ain’t doing it, go find some other ones.” Because I have always felt that women really are the N-word (especially in the music business) and honestly, if you look at the whole world today, not much has changed. But the N-word comes with a long history of abuse and slavery and horror, and I wasn’t sensitive to that. I was still on the John Lennon jag, and as I mentioned, I was always on another planet. And I didn’t have the wherewithal, I didn’t know how to fight anybody. They thought I was racist, but what I was saying is that women were lower than low. You can spit to the bottom of the barrel, and on the bottom are women and children. But that’s me—I’m always saying the wrong things to the right people.

  Another time I had a taste of it with Roy, our record producer. There was one song that didn’t come out so good, so we wanted to have a talk with him about it. And he turned around to me and said, “I have an idea. Why don’t you mix your version, I’ll mix mine, and let’s see what the record company thinks—what do you think about that?” I looked at him and said, “I think that’s baby shit, if you want to know.” Then the people who signed us at Polydor left, and they brought in a new president. I remember one meeting in his office. His assistant came in and announced she had the new single from the Jam, and put it on the turntable for everyone to hear. Except it sounded like it was in slow motion. And everyone was bobbing their heads and listening like they were really enjoying it. I looked at the label head and looked at the assistant, who wouldn’t dare open her mouth. So I got up and walked over to the turntable, and I saw that the speed was on 33, and the record was a 45. I was thinking, “Okay, now I’m in Cuckoo Land.” So I moved it to 45, and all of a sudden, there’s the Jam. The president’s eyes lit up and he said, “Ohhh.” Of course, maybe the right thing to do was not to touch it, but I was curious to see what the hell the real Jam single was.

  Meetings were not my strong suit, because I was never good at doing what the record company wanted. But it didn’t take a genius to see th
at Blue Angel was on its way out, anyway.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE REASON I kept resisting the record company guys who told me to sing ballads was that the more I worked in the music industry, the more I realized that your first hit was what identified you for the rest of your career, and I wanted to make sure mine was uptempo so that I wouldn’t be pigeonholed. I also fought because I noticed that everybody who rolled over failed. All the cool performers, all the great ones—the Clash, Elvis Costello, the Pretenders—those people did not have the record company invent them. The artists that the record company invented had a fuckin’ shallow life. Because if the record company really knew how to make music, they’d be making music, not selling it, right? What I saw was, “Hey, come listen to the new 45 single from the Jam on 33.” I’m going to let those guys tell me what to do?

  But Blue Angel was going downhill. Our single “I’m Gonna Be Strong” reached number 37—in the Netherlands. No one would accept our demos anymore. It was getting worse and worse, and once again the money was not coming in, and we all started to starve. I remember my friend Jutta—she’s German—used to tell me that there were two kinds of people in the world. There are the kind of people who sit around and think about their problems, and then there are the kind of people who sit around thinking about how to solve them.