From This Moment On (38 page)

Marriage came on suddenly for us, to say the least, with Mutt and I saying “I do” only six months after we met. I had been in a couple of long-term relationships, especially with Paul, but had never felt like I was truly ready to get married. So I wasn’t prepared for the
powerful feelings that would take hold of my heart in such a short time. I think the same was true for Mutt, who was seventeen years older than me and had been married twice before. We were both sure of what we wanted, and that was a lifetime commitment to each other.

We were married on December 28, 1993, at Deerhurst Resort, for the convenience and proximity to my family and the familiarity of the place, which made a short-notice wedding easier to pull together. It was forty-one degrees below zero, yet there was no wind; it was sunny and bright, a dream winter wedding. I remember my wedding day as being the happiest day of my life. I giggled like a little girl all the way down the aisle. It was small and intimate, a beautiful start to our lives together. We were happy and sincere about the vows we’d written ourselves for each other. We chose our wedding song together, “Let It Be Me” by the Everly Brothers, my mother’s favorite vocal duo. It went, “I bless the day I found you.” My mother’s only sibling, my uncle Don, walked me down the aisle to give me away. We had a few immediate family members in attendance from both sides of our families: the Twains drove up from Timmins and the Langes flew in from South Africa.

Mutt and I honeymooned on the Caribbean island of Anguilla, which was a great escape from the January cold of Canada. I was in heaven, especially because this was my first trip to that part of the world and couldn’t have been more perfect as a romantic dream of a bride. I was very inspired for songwriting by the incredible atmosphere of sun, sand, and crystal-clear waters. We affectionately called ourselves a two-guitar family, as we brought two guitars with us no matter where we traveled together. Two guitars were necessary while songwriting, and we found it frustrating having to pass one guitar back and forth all the time. Marriage was so new then, and I enjoyed the novelty of being referred to as a “family.” That unity was so meaningful to me in that sense that I took Lange as my new family name and left Twain now only as my professional identity.

Listening sessions with label personnel during various points of a recording process were common then, in order to make sure they felt the record fit within some kind of acceptable margin that worked for the genre. That kind of artistic constraint was exactly what Mutt and I were trying to avoid. I was not experienced in the world of making records, but I was so in sync with Mutt’s conviction not to necessarily make a genre-specific record, but to make a great record, period. Our idea was to create something unique, unlike anything else; something that would stand the test of time, groundbreaking music the listeners would turn their heads to when they heard it for the first time. This was Mutt’s way of looking at making a record, and it rubbed off on me. The personal conviction it took to stand behind your own creative ideas took guts. I never witnessed Mutt wavering from outside pressure, and I admired this. I felt protected as an artist that my
producer was going to make sure my record was the best it could be before anyone else got his hands on it.

It was only when we were in the final stage of mixing the tracks that we invited department heads from the label—eight altogether—to meet us at Morin Heights Studio, located just north of Montreal, for their first listening session.

Mutt set up a playback session, and from what I recall, it was outside the control room where everyone could fit around the sound system. I do remember, however, that the reaction was mixed. Mostly that it wasn’t country enough or at least not familiar enough to what they were used to hearing. But even those who had reservations about the music acknowledged that we had achieved something new, different. In fact, that’s the trouble some of them had with it: it sounded
too
different. That’s all we needed to hear. We didn’t need approval in regards to the standard of the record we had. I already had total confidence in Mutt as the producer, he had the same confidence in me as the artist, and we both believed in the songs. We were more concerned that the execs
got
what we were doing than with whether or not they
liked
it. Most important, the music provoked a big reaction, with lots of discussions taking place in the days that followed.

I personally loved my/our new album. This was a teamwork project between Mutt and me, and it feels awkward to say it was “my” record. Although I was the artist, Mutt was a very involved producer and cowriter and I saw the record as a team effort. I was excited about how it sounded so bold and dynamic and, as a style, almost unidentifiable. Mutt’s own voice was layered in the background as backing vocals, with the unexpected arrangement blends of fiddles backdropped by concussive kick and snare drums, and steel guitars intertwined with the range and sexiness of distorted rock guitars. All this contrast was exhilarating, and sometimes I didn’t know where to listen. It was as if I could almost watch the sounds and effects coming out of nowhere from all directions, similar to 3-D visual animation, only sonic.

In the end, Luke Lewis stuck his neck out and decided to take a chance on
The Woman in Me,
regardless of the reservations or the concerns of others. In fact, he was more optimistic about its reception than I was. I can remember sitting in his office in late 1994, just before the album’s release, and a bunch of people from the label were playing at guessing how many copies it would sell. At that time I didn’t actually have a number in my head. I wasn’t even thinking numbers yet. Later, although it was still in the earlier stages of the album’s release (though it was showing exciting possibilities of being a big seller), Luke phoned me at home in upstate New York from his office in Nashville to share his anticipation of the record’s realistic potential. He wanted me to take a guess at what I thought it might climb to in sales.

“Well, I know that Reba McEntire’s last record sold three million copies; I would
love
to equal that.” Come to think of it, I really didn’t answer his question, did I? I was just daydreaming aloud about how
many albums I
imagined
it could sell; I honestly did not think it could even approach such a huge number of three million, as that was giant for a female at the time and fifteen years later was still a big number. So I was pleasantly surprised when Luke said, as I imagined him shaking his head on the other end of the line, “I think you’re aiming too low.”

Whether we did or did not achieve platinum sales, or even gold-record sales of a half million, clearly my career was moving into a new phase.

Luke was open to new ideas and to going outside the box on all levels, giving me a lot of freedom with the art direction with
The Woman in Me.
My manager, Mary, felt brave and thought she’d approach someone completely out of the scene to take the photographs for the album cover. She asked John Derek if he was interested, and although he wasn’t, his wife, Bo, took it upon herself to respond with a yes, and John reluctantly went along with it. John Derek was an actor, director, and photographer, well known especially for photographs of his gorgeous and famous wives, Ursula Andress, Linda Evans, and Bo Derek. He himself was a very handsome man, and although there was a thirty-year age difference between him and Bo, I thought they looked good together. Bo was stunning in every light and John, although in his late sixties when I met him, had aged well and was still very attractive. I was too young to have known of John Derek and his fame, but I knew Bo as the perfect ten on every man’s scale of female perfection, most famous from her starring role in the movie
10.
Bo lived up to her movie-star, sex-symbol beauty in person. It was hard for me not to stare at her, in fact. I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone so pretty in real life before.

When I arrived at John and Bo’s ranch in Santa Ynez, California, they explained in a very frank and forward manner that they didn’t normally do this sort of thing—that is, take pictures of other people. John warned me that part of the reason he no longer bothered to photograph any women other than his wife, Bo, was because no other
woman could tolerate his severe honesty. I personally also got the feeling that he genuinely felt that there was no one more naturally beautiful who was worth photographing.

John continued with an example of how he would express this honesty by telling me that I was overweight and that he didn’t like my crooked nose. Compared to Bo, I was overweight at 115 pounds and, yes, my nose is crooked, so he was right. It didn’t bother me to hear things I already knew, and I didn’t see any reason why that would make me not want to work with him. He went on to tell me that the last time Raquel Welch tried to get him to photograph her, she ran off crying. I believed this was probably true as, for one, he didn’t seem like the type of guy who would bother bullshitting me, and two, most girls are sensitive to criticism, even if constructive, regarding their appearance.

Thinking maybe John misunderstood the intentions behind me wanting him to take my photos, I explained to both John and Bo that I wasn’t there to be photographed as a model, movie starlet, or sex symbol. I was none of those things, and I knew it. I was there simply as a recording artist needing photos for my album cover and promotion. I wasn’t selling my beauty, I was selling my music, and I needed some visual artwork for the packaging. I went on to say that if he made me look as good as I was capable of looking, that I would be satisfied, as long as he was willing to work with my looks, since it was clear they didn’t meet his standard of beauty. I was a pretty straight shooter, and I think he appreciated that I could be as frank with him as he was with me. It was actually refreshing and appealed to my Northern Canadian lack of political correctness, which I was being told I needed to temper if I wanted to make it in country, but which John and Bo didn’t seem to mind.

In our first shoot together, it took no time for John’s character to become full blown. One particular shot got John very frustrated, as my nose was posing all kinds of beauty issues for him. He started cursing and swearing about it as if it were a person itself, like me,
the person
, didn’t actually belong to it. He finally piped up to say
something to the effect of, “Someone give me a goddamn knife so I can cut off that nose.” Although not okay with him cutting off my nose, I was fine with the fact that he wished he could, and we just carried on shooting.

It was humbling to me that the real beauty, Bo, followed me around with light reflectors, trying to flatter me with the best light possible, while John snapped the photos. The photo of me in the water was actually done in their personal swimming pool, and the water was chilly. After an hour in cool water, it gets uncomfortable, but Bo was right in there with me, holding her reflector, taking orders from John. The pink hat I wore was hers, and she’d pulled it out as a prop since the wet hair wasn’t flattering me so much. This photo is on the album cover of
The Woman in Me
and is one of my favorites.

We would work together on two more projects: the “Any Man of Mine” and “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under” videos. Bo took photos as well, which we used for a few things. She had a great feel for candid shots.

I loved working with John and greatly respected and admired him very much. Both he and Bo were incredibly professional in their commitment to the work and took it all very seriously. I appreciated this, and it made me want to keep up and do as good a job as I could possibly do. They made me want to work for the best results. I matured a lot working with them, and I believe by being in their company so early in my career, I learned a great deal about my face, lighting, shooting, filming, and, maybe most of all, about tolerance and teamwork.