How to Kill a Rock Star (46 page)

She started off with the day Feldman invited her to the Kiev, then gave me an overview of life in the penthouse, and I have to admit, when she told me what a good friend Loring had been to her, my initial fondness for the guy returned. In my head I wrote him a thank-you note, one that, if not for the circumstances, I honestly would have sent.

“Dear Loring: Please accept my sincere gratitude for taking such good care of Eliza during her period of Paul-less dementia.” How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 5:00 PM Page 411

But then I made the mistake of asking Eliza if Loring was any good in bed and because al she did was giggle and say “that’s completely irrelevant,” my sympathies for him vanished.

Jil y Bean was a topic. Amanda was a topic. I even confessed to the two other lapses of judgment I had on tour.

Okay, three.

Okay, four.

These were the times I actual y prayed for a little regular turbulence.

We talked for a while about Feldman and why he’d agreed to help me, and for the first time Eliza acquiesced that maybe Feldman had a heart after al . But she felt the need to add that he probably had plans to turn me into the next Nick Drake, too.

Twenty years from now my songs wil be background music for car commercials, just you wait and see.

Another big topic was where we were going. Nothing was carved in stone. Our immediate destination was only tempo-rary, and we made a plan to travel around until we found a place we want to stay. We both agree that settling in a big city is probably not a good idea, but other than that the world is our goddamn oyster.

How we’re going to make a living is stil up in the air. Not that it’s a real concern at the moment. I’ve got my goddamn advance to tide us over until we figure things out.

“Why don’t you talk about the Chunnel, cocky-bastard?” That was my betrothed, in case you didn’t recognize her voice.

“Go on, I’d real y like to hear your version.” Not going there.

“Give me the recorder, I’l tel it.” There’s nothing to tel about the goddamn Chunnel. It’s a train. Somehow it runs under the water. It goes real y fast, it smel ed like burning flesh, and it took, like, twenty minutes to get from England to France. Enough said.

41“Give it to me.”

No. Get your own goddamn—Hey—

“Hi. This is Eliza. I’d just like to say that Wil sat on the floor with his head between his knees, moaning and holding his pancreas the whole time.”

I did not.

“Did too.”

That’s because you kept laughing and saying, “How does it feel to be a hundred and fifty goddamn feet under the sea?” Al I can say is you better watch out the next time we get on a plane. I’m going to make Ian Lessing look like a saint. Now give me my goddamn tape recorder.

“Here. Take the stupid thing.”

Thank you. I apologize for that interruption. Where was I?

Plane ride. Eliza freaking out. Talking. Questions. Eliza freaking out. Ice cream. Eliza freaking out. Oh, right. Eliza was calm after the ice cream.

Marginal y, at least. Enough that I final y felt okay about getting up and going to the bathroom—I’d had to piss for hours. But when I came back she was al melan-choly. Not scared so much as just plain sad. I asked her what could have happened in the two minutes I was gone and she confessed that she’d been sitting there wondering if we were cowards, if what we were doing was tantamount to surrender.

My holy goddamn
no
was emphatic. I might be fooling myself, but I truly believe surrender would have meant giving Winkle his hit songs, his Gap ads, his flashy videos, and his power bal ads. It would have meant making concessions. It would have meant joining hands with the heathens and pagans in a happy little game of ass-kissing ring around the rosy.

Eliza’s afraid that someday I’m going to regret giving it al up. She said she doesn’t understand how I could turn my back on what I love more than anything in the world.

I know, kind of sanctimonious coming from her, considering how she fed me to the sharks.

But the way I see it, I haven’t given up that much. Am I going to miss the live shows? Hel , yeah. But it’s not the end of the world. I’m stil going to play my guitar, write my songs, and sing them into my four-track. It’s just that, at least until I croak anyway, very few people wil get to hear them.

What I love, what it’s about for me, and what it’s always been about, is the music. Everything else I can use to wipe my ass.

It’s pretty simple, real y, when you think about it: We al start out as little fishes in our daddy’s pants, and we al end up a Thanksgiving feast for the worms, and in the meantime we have to find a couple good reasons to give a fuck.

I’ve got my girl and my guitar, and for me that’s enough.

The rest is yesterday’s news.

Eliza was stil pondering al this stuff when we started our approach into Heathrow. I could tel by the way her eyes looked.

She was also exhausted—neither of us had slept at al . And the first thing she did after we touched down was start bawling.

Then she kissed me and thanked me and I thanked her back, and let me tel you it was a pretty amazing moment al around.

As we were taxiing to the gate, she lowered her chin and blinked, and I knew she had at least one more thing to say. I told her to spit it out and she goes: “With a little compromising on your part, you might have been king of the heathens and pagans, you know that, don’t you?” The plane came to a stop, the bel dinged, and I unbuckled my seatbelt. “Wasn’t worth it,” I said. “Besides, I don’t think I ever wanted it badly enough.”

She cal ed me an anachronism. She said that if I’d been twenty-nine in 1969, everything would have been different. I might have been a legend.

I stood up and took her hand.

“Yeah, wel ,” I said as we began walking off the plane.

“And if my aunt had bal s she’d be my uncle.” Over.

The world is filled with people who are no longer needed—and
who try to make slaves of all of us—and they have their music
and we have ours.

Theirs, the wasted songs of a superstitious
nightmare—and without their musical and ideological miscar-riages to compare our Song of
Freedom to, we’d not have any
opposite to compare music with—and like the drifting wind,
hitting against no obstacle, we’d never knows its
speed, its
power.

—Woody Guthrie

LINER NOTES

My thanks go out to al the artists and music industry profes-sionals who spoke so candidly with me about their experiences in the music business.

I also need to wholeheartedly thank my agent, Al Zuckerman, for his undying patience and support. And my editor, Hil el Black, for being such a joy to work with.

Friends, family, and inspirations: If your name is on this list, then you fal into one or more of those categories, and I thank you with al of my being: Mom, Dad, Lisa DeBartolo, Nikki DeBartolo Heldfond; Nashara Alberico, Barry and Jen Ament, Bambi Barnum, Sebastian Beckwith, Jack Bookbinder, Gene Bowen, Seymour Cassel, Teressa Centofante, Corrine Clement, Liad Cohen, Denise Coleman, Jean-Paul Eberle, Jonathan Fierer, Sean Gauvreau, Savita Ginde, Jimmy Gnecco, Elizabeth Graff, Ben Heldfond, Eddy Midyett, Gunita Nagpaul, Peter Prato, Race, Troy Reinhart, Jennifer Roy, Sean San Jose, Scott Schumaker, Kira Siebert, Sasha Taylor, Sep Valizadeh.

To the greatest rock ‘n’ rol band in the universe, U2, who for over two decades have made it easier for me to believe in love amidst the chaos and contradictions of life. Thank you for never letting me down.

To Asher: may the words of the radio prophets touch your soul.

And last but not least, to JB. Angel and muse extraordinaire.

To contact the author, go to www.tiffaniedebartlo.com To help music make a difference in the lives of young people, visit www.roadrecovery.com
Document Outline

Copyright Page

July 24, 2000

July 25, 2000

August 1, 2000

September 18, 2000

September 26, 2000

November 12, 2000

December 7, 2000

July 28, 2001

Part Two: Everything Is a Complete Disappointment

September 18, 2001

January 14, 2002

June 14, 2002

July 4, 2002

August 4, 2002

October 11, 2002

Part Three: Sometimes a Person Has to Die in Order to Live or (Why are the ones who need the most shelter always the ones left out in the rain?)

October 21, 2002

December 7, 2002

Coda: Art & Love: The Only Things That can Bring a Person Back to Life

February 16, 2003