Night Beat (54 page)

“Really, I don’t know what more I could want—except to know myself a bit better. But then, that’s what I’m trying to do when I write songs.”

A MONTH LATER, Sinéad O’Connor stands before a twenty-three-piece orchestra in London’s elegant Whitehall Banqueting House, dressed in a lime-green low-cut dress, singing a lush and sweet version of Cole Porter’s “You Do Something to Me.” The occasion is a press conference to announce
Red Hot & Blue,
an upcoming double album and television special that will feature pop artists like O’Connor, U2, David Byrne, Fine Young Cannibals, and Neneh Cherry, interpreting the music of Cole Porter. More important, the project will benefit AIDS charities, as well as disseminate information about the disease and its prevention. O’Connor is the press conference’s surprise guest, and it is plain from her performance of this Tin Pan Alley chestnut just what an exemplary singer she is. She rocks gently to the song’s steady but tricky groove, and in those moments when the lyric calls for a subtle roar, she pulls her mouth back from the microphone in the manner of a seasoned jazz vocalist.

After her performance, O’Connor bounds down the backstairs to a waiting car and heads across town to a full day of rehearsals for her own show. In the last few weeks, O’Connor’s world has exploded all over again, though this time in a beneficent fashion. “Nothing Compares 2 U” has become a huge international hit—the biggest record of the year, so far—and earlier in the week,
I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
stormed into
Billboard
’s Top 10. In a few days, O’Connor will begin a lengthy world tour, and in preparation for it, her life has become filled up with appurtenances—like personal beepers, portable cellular phones, and the nice new blue car in which she is being driven around. All these attachments are designed to make things easier and more efficient, but in other ways, they also amount to signs of pressure and obligation. Plus, there are the demands of real life itself: O’Connor’s son, Jake, has had a bad cold in the last week, and O’Connor has been staying up nights with him, then showing up at rehearsals, too tired to sing. In the last couple of days, friends have convinced her that she should get some rest, so now she and Ciara O’Flanaghan are sleeping at a local Holiday Inn, while O’Connor’s husband spends nights with Jake. This morning, O’Connor is in great spirits, though there are times, she admits, when the recent rush of events is exhausting. “It’s like my life is changing,” she says at one point during the day. “It’s like it will never be normal again.”

Later in the afternoon, at her rehearsal, the pressures of the week begin to catch up with O’Connor. She has been in fine voice all day, singing powerful versions of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” “3 Babies,” “Jump in the River,” and “Jerusalem,” among others, but when she begins to work her way meticulously through “Nothing Compares 2 U,” she becomes concerned that she is singing out of pitch. She stops the song repeatedly to ask Ciara and others if they think her voice is turning “croaky.” Despite everyone’s reassurances, O’Connor is convinced that she is singing badly, and eventually halts the rehearsal. On her way back to the hotel, she is almost inconsolable. She is worried that she may be losing her voice just as the tour starts, and that she is going to fail the people who are depending on her. For the moment, she seems in a funk as deep as the one that followed
NME
’s last reprimand.

Back at the Holiday Inn, she lights some candles, turns off the lights, and settles into a chair. She has changed into a T-shirt and jeans and is now barefoot. “I know I’m capable of singing better,” she says, rubbing nervously at her throat, “so I get a bit pissed off at myself. Mainly, things are great right now, though there are times when I’m more stressed. I mean, it’s a bit of a shock to the system. Every week something brilliant seems to happen, and I’m on the phone screeching.”

A couple of minutes later the phone rings. O’Connor answers it, exchanges some pleasantries—and then begins to screech at an ear-splitting level. “You’re joking!” she yells. “I don’t
believe
you. Fucking
ama
zing.” She lets out another scream and begins jumping up and down on her bed. “How the
fuck
did you find out?” It turns out that it is a friend of O’Connor’s, calling to tell her that “Nothing Compares 2 U” has just become the number 1 single in America, after only a few weeks in release. In addition, it appears likely that
I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
will top the album charts the following week. “I can’t believe it,” squeals O’Connor. “I better go and phone my father. Actually, I’ll phone you back. I’ve got to get control over myself.”

A few seconds later, the phone rings again. It is her assistant, Ciara, telling O’Connor that her manager, Steve Fargnoli, is in the bar downstairs and wants to congratulate her. O’Connor bolts out of the door for the elevator, bouncing up and down in the hallway barefoot, exclaiming: “Number
one!
In
America!
For the next couple of hours, O’Connor is a model of exultation and childlike glee, ordering Singapore Slings two at a time, calling her father in Ireland on the cellular phone (when Ciara points out that it’s an expensive call, O’Connor says, “I know, but when you’re number
one
in
America—
then breaks into a blush, laughing). “From now on,” she tells her friends in the bar, lifting her drink and tilting her nose in a mock high-society manner, “we are to refer to me as
’M’lady.’ ”

Later, though, back in her hotel room, when asked what it means to her to have a number 1 single in America, O’Connor greets the question seriously. “I don’t feel like it’s
me,
almost. It’s like a big fantasy. All the time you grow up, watching ’Top of the Pops’ or being interested in music, you always wonder what it would be like.

“I mean, I’m very excited and very grateful that it’s happened, but it really doesn’t change what I said before. I don’t want to be a rock star, I don’t want to be treated like one, and I don’t want any of the associations that go with it. I just want to be treated like an ordinary person, and I want people to remember that the most important things in my life are
not
making records and going around the world on tour. The most important thing is my family, and my spiritual beliefs. If I didn’t have those things, I wouldn’t be inspired to do anything.”

O’Connor pauses, and then blushes. “I just remembered something,” she says. “My publicist tells me that once I told her I wanted to be as big as Madonna. It surprises me that I said that. I was young, foolish, I suppose. Well, I’m a very different person now.”

O’Connor seems utterly sincere and assured in her comments, but earlier, Chris Hill had said something trenchant about her capacity for success: “I think she has a fire in her to be the biggest. In fact, she once told me, ’I’m gonna be the biggest star there’s ever been.’ And I think she certainly likes the fame. But I also think that there’s a point where she won’t give any more than she needs to, and where she’ll say, ’Fuck it, I’m not doing any more than
this;
the rest of my life is mine.’ She could actually do that next week. She could turn around and say, ’This is as big as I want to be; beyond here I don’t like it.’

“But at the moment,” Hill continued, “there is a more important question that confronts Sinéad: Does her art always have to come from pain? And it
is
an important question. I mean, David Bowie hasn’t made a fucking record worth thruppence in the last ten years, and the reason is, he’s happy. It’s also the reason why Keith Richards actually makes better records than Mick Jagger, because Keith is relatively fucked up, compared to Mick Jagger.

“With Sinéad, we won’t know for years, because she’s still a child compared to these others. She will still go through extremes of happiness and unhappiness in the next few years, unless she is in control of the unhappiness so much that she never again has to suffer from it. And I pray to God she’ll be able to make great records when she’s happy—not for our sake, because all we have to do is sell them. It’s for her sake. No one should be sentenced to the unhappiness of a Van Gogh just because that’s the only way they can work.”

Watching O’Connor, as she calls friends and relatives and, with a sweet mix of shyness and pride, tells them that her single has gone to number 1, the last thing anyone would wish on her would be more hurt—even if it
would
make for more records as meaningful and captivating as
I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.
Indeed, if the depths of the heart and mind can be determined by how one deals with unforgettable losses, or unattainable longings, then O’Connor has paid for her depths. She has learned some bitter truths—that life and love will break your heart, that success and fame are at best fleeting victories, and that no matter what blessings she finds in adulthood, nothing can undo the scars of past experiences, or undo their memories. And though she has found a way to accept those truths, she has also found a way to rage back at them.

Still, there are moments when O’Connor can be talking about all the newfound peace in her life, and a tortured look will suddenly cross her face. Maybe in those moments she fears the happiness as much as she ever dreaded the hurts—because few things hurt more than realizing that, sooner or later, happiness goes the way of all evanescent dreams. Or maybe it’s a fear that what Chris Hill and others say is right: that maybe pain
is
the source of her art, and that she may have little choice but to serve that particular muse. In moments like that, sitting in crowded rooms with all the lights on, Sinéad O’Connor may not be all that distant from an all-too-familiar darkness, though maybe now it’s been internalized into a more manageable or companionable place.

Whatever the sources of that look, O’Connor wears it with a brave face. “Every experience I’ve had,” she says, “is a good experience, even the bad ones. An understanding of sorrow and pain is an important thing to have, because if nothing else, it also gives you an appreciation for happiness. People who’ve been brought up happy and normal often don’t have an understanding of what life might be like for other people. Whereas people who have had an unhappy life
have
that understanding. In the kind of work that I do, it’s important to understand pain and what life is like for other people—and I never take that knowledge for granted.

“I realize,” she says, offering a shy smile, “that I’m in a very lucky position, and maybe something I pass along in my songs might be able to help somebody else. But that couldn’t happen if I didn’t have the experiences I’ve had.”

david baerwald’s songs of secrets and sins

D
avid Baerwald sits at an upright piano in the den of his mother’s home in Los Angeles’ well-heeled Brentwood district, and plays a private recital of a song called “Secret Silken World.” It is a darkly humorous and unsettling song about a man who is lured into a world of power and sex and seduction—it is, in fact, about the bond that exists between the seducer and those whom he seduces. Some of Baerwald’s friends—including Joni Mitchell—were so disturbed by the song’s mix of damnation and glee that they persuaded Baerwald to leave the tune off his fine 1990 album,
Bedtime Stories.
Still, Baerwald takes a certain pleasure from regaling the occasional visitor with the song in its full, uncensored form. “The seats of his car were like velvet skin,” Baerwald sings, glancing over his shoulder with a smile. “They made me think about all those places I’ve been/They made me understand violence . . . and sin. . . . /He said, ’Things would go better if you would be my friend/You don’t have to like me but I can be a means to an end. . . . /It’s a secret silken world/Of sex and submission/Of money and violence and acts of contrition/Where your enemies succumb/And the ladies all listen. . . . ’ ”

At song’s end, Baerwald studies his thin hands resting on the keyboard, then laughs. “You know what I think after singing something like that?” he asks. He strides over to the far side of the den, gesturing at something that hangs on a wall around the corner. It is a hand-tinted picture of Baerwald himself, at about age fifteen. His hair is browner and his face is fuller than now, with none of the lines, scars, and sunken pockets that currently make up his hawklike visage. It’s a smiling and sweet face that looks out from the picture, but there is something lopsided and sly in its smile, not unlike the smile with which Baerwald now regards the photo. “Look at that face,” he says, gazing at his former self. “Whatever happened to that kid? He looks so innocent—at least compared to this snaggle-toothed guy, singing about sex and violence.”

Baerwald studies the picture for a moment longer, his thoughts seemingly far away. “What happened to that kid?” he says one more time, with a mirthless laugh.

IN ONE WAY there’s an easy answer to that question: What happened to David Baerwald was that he became an uncommonly literate and seasoned songwriter. That is, he took the experiences and perspectives of a life lived hard, and fashioned them into a part-hard-boiled, part-empathetic lyrical sensibility that—in his songs with the much-acclaimed L.A. duo, David + David, as well as his own solo work—rivals the best musings of such similar-minded Southern California pop artisans as Warren Zevon, Randy Newman, and Donald Fagen. But whereas Zevon and Newman typically write in fictional modes, there is something deeply personal about Baerwald’s scenarios. It’s as if the voice singing about those who are living existences of ruin and longing has also known that existence himself.

The catch is, while Baerwald likes to joke about his own dissipated image, he isn’t overly fond of disclosing the details of what shaped that sensibility. Indeed, Baerwald can prove a bit of a perplexity: He can speak endlessly and compellingly about a wide range of matters—from his favorite American authors (which include Raymond Chandler, Paul Bowles, Raymond Carver, and Andre Dubus) to his political passions (which lean toward unsentimental leftism), and he can tell hilarious off-the-record tales about some of his more famous acquaintances. But for all his obvious intelligence and wit, there is an unequivocal streetwise quality about Baerwald—an edginess that comes across in flash-quick moments, when a dark glare can cross his face, as a warning against delving too deeply into certain private concerns. In other moments, Baerwald can turn resolutely vague. For example, a few minutes later, as he sits on the veranda of his mother’s home, he seems both nonplused and cagey when the question is put to him directly: What
did
become of the young innocent-looking kid in that class photo? What is it about his past that turned him into such a keen profiler of bad-news souls?

Baerwald regards the question quietly for several long seconds, staring at the sharp points of his faded brown boots. “Um . . . I guess I gained perspective,” he says, beginning softly, “and, uh, strength and, uh, knowledge. And I think I lost unquestioning good faith and innocence and, uh, you know, the youthful optimism that is untempered by facts. I’m not sure that those are terrible things to lose. But what I’m
really
upset about,” he adds, pausing and fixing his visitor with an utterly sincere look, “is my complexion.” Baerwald beams a quick, roguish smile, then lets out a loud laugh that echoes off the nearby hills.

Over the next hour or two, a slightly more detailed answer emerges. Baerwald was born in 1960 in Oxford, Ohio. His father was a respected political-science professor and his mother taught English and music. When Baerwald was five, his father accepted a position as Dean of Students at an English university in Japan, and moved the family to just outside Tokyo. Baerwald is sketchy about what the family life was like. There were two older sisters—both were musical prodigies, and both went through long unhappy periods—and his parents’ marriage, he indicates, was strained and would eventually come apart. “They were an odd pairing,” Baerwald says. “My father’s a very austere, aristocratic German intellectual, and my mother’s a warm midwestern woman from a family of farmers. I’m still pretty close to my mother [now a psychologist], and I have a very, uh,
cordial
relationship with my father. The two of us are definitely cut from the same cloth, which can be a bit distressing to admit.”

It was a tumultuous time to be living abroad. America was involved in Vietnam, and there were riots and military actions at the university where Baerwald’s parents taught. As a young American, Baerwald shared sympathies with those who protested the war, but he was also drawn to some less peaceful ideals. “I got interested in the way the Japanese cultural aesthetic can combine serenity with sudden violence,” he says. “It’s a trait I find I have an affinity toward, that warrior-poet ideal.” In time, Baerwald found he had an even stronger affinity for the rock & roll revolution that was taking place back in America and in Britain—especially the music of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and the Band. To his parents’ distaste, Baerwald began playing his own rock & roll, and shortly began writing some politically acerbic songs.

When he was twelve, the family moved to the Brentwood district around UCLA, but Baerwald found Los Angeles’ air of cultural languor disorienting. “I mean, this neighborhood,” he says, gesturing at the sprawling hills around him. It is a seductive landscape, brimming with beautiful homes tucked into rolling hills of affluence and privilege. “It just seemed kind of unreal, especially after coming out of a very vibrant scene. It’s like, what’s
really
going on here? You see nice houses, and nice people in nice cars with nice clothes, and you can’t believe it’s as idyllic as it looks.

“Anyway,” Baerwald continues, “I started getting ejected from my junior high and high schools. I had a terrible temper, and I felt that the educational system existed solely to kill thinking. Coming from my background, there was nothing of interest to me in school. I’d already read and understood the religious symbolism of
The Scarlet Letter
at eight, and I wasn’t going to get anything more from it at age fourteen. So I became a problem student. It started out with a war because I refused to wear shoes. And it deteriorated from that to, uh, violence.” Baerwald pauses and smiles grimly. “It would be fair to say my teenage years were filled with violent explorations. Which I still draw on.”

Somewhere along the line, Baerwald fell into trouble with the law, and ended up on probation. When this subject comes up, the singer leans forward with a dour look on his face and makes an admonishing gesture. “I will
not
go into the details of this,” he says flatly. “Suffice to say that I survived it. And let me make one thing clear: It was
not
drugs that endangered me. I never had a drug problem, or anything on that level. It was
people,
you know? People were dangerous to me; drugs weren’t.”

Baerwald realizes he has tensed up, and leans back in his chair, offering an appeasing chuckle. “I’m going to do everything I can
not
to talk about that stuff, because it would end up becoming a focus. It’s just something I went through, and it’s over.” He pauses. His eyes flicker warily behind his sunglasses, and for the moment, his thoughts seem to scan distant memories. “The people I knew then . . . ,” he says after a bit, “the experiences I was involved in, the things I did . . . ” He lets out a long sigh. “Those are things that I will probably continue using as details or colors for the characters in my songs for as long as I write.” Baerwald fixes his visitor with a level gaze and crosses his arms over his chest. This subject, he signals, is closed.

In general, the late 1970s was a restive time for Baerwald. He recorded with one L.A. punk band, the Spastics, then spent three years playing bass, singing lead, and writing for another, the Sensible Shoes. “There was a part of me that knew that world was not a place I belonged,” he says. “It seemed to me that punk had just become a cartoon of itself, and I didn’t want to be in any more nightclubs. That life was too stupid and pathetic.”

IN 1984, BAERWALD began collaborating with an old acquaintance, David Ricketts, a musician of serious training who had played in the Philadelphia club scene in the 1970s, and who had moved to L.A. in hopes of writing film scores. The two Davids were markedly different people—Baerwald held bedrock musical values, Ricketts was more attuned to jazz and progressive musical forms; Baerwald was impulsive and moody, Ricketts, methodical and introspective—but somehow the combination worked. “We just plugged into each other at exactly the right time,” says Baerwald. “I remember the first thing we wrote was an abrasive punkish piece, and the second song was this sweet piano-and-string ballad. We did both in the same day, and we looked at each other and said: ’There’s no limit to what we can do.’ It felt like an incredible freeing up. Basically, I backed off from the music part, and Ricketts had no lyrical input or sense of what the lyrics were. So it was extremely easy to work together.”

Almost immediately, Baerwald began to focus on songs about desperate dreamers, wounded lovers, and corrupt visionaries. “I could sense that I had a good well to draw from,” he says, “that I had been living in a story-oriented environment. Also, I was formulating my experiences of the past, and I felt I had a lot to say about it all. I remember driving down Sunset with David, saying, ’Let’s write the archetypal record about L.A. as metaphor.’ I
actually
said that to him. It seemed like a fertile starting point for making records. So we approached it as if it were a first novel, setting the groundwork for everything else to come. The idea was to provide a cast of characters that would give us a deep
oeuvre
to work in.”

In 1985, Baerwald and Ricketts signed a deal with A & M Records as David + David, and shortly teamed up with critic and producer Davitt Sigerson. Within a few sessions, the crew had fashioned
Boomtown,
a work that took a significant step toward realizing Baerwald’s highfalutin literary ambitions. Indeed, like the L.A. literature of Raymond Chandler, John Fante, Diane Johnson, and James Ellroy, Baerwald was writing stories about the hopeful and the hopeless interconnecting in a desperate and morally polluted cityscape. Some of these characters come to the city with excited, even virtuous dreams of love, luxury, and salvation. Others—like the chronic, pathetic wife-beater of “Ain’t So Easy” or the drifters and grifters of “Swallowed by the Cracks”—have darker needs, like uncaring sex and obliterating drugs, and as their own mean dreams fail, they take the innocent and loving down with them. Says producer Davitt Sigerson: “Baerwald wrote about some typically romanticized rock & roll characters—the down-and-outers—in a way that was unmawkish and that seemed to capture those people. And the musical settings that Ricketts came up with did a great job of cinematizing those stories. We always had this picture of the music as a beautiful setting with people losing their grip on life in the middle of it.”