them shoot you.”
So I sit amid the machine gun clicking of the cameras, which is amazingly intense. I smile, and, yes, there is this thrill that goes through me when I realize that they are working in relays because there are so many of them.
When the window goes up, they are all gone. I sit back and close my eyes, and for just a second the world is not there. Then I hear the gargling sound of Mom sucking her plastic cigarette. I open my eyes and watch Amber writing on a pad. I mean, she actually does this. Every other reporter I’ve met never wrote a thing down and just made up all my quotes. This is real, though. It’s not a tab, it’s People, for Chrissake.
The door opens, and we’re in the forecourt, which is full of bamboo and palm trees and blooming lantana. Then Willie comes out with Sassy Lester, my arranger.
“Mel, they’re just brilliant, brilliant ,” she says. She looks at Mom. “Oh my God, Hilda, aren’t they fabulous ?”
“I know. We’re so proud of her.”
I actually haven’t played any of these demos for Mom yet. And for a reason—she’ll be too critical.
We go down the long hall paneled with blond wood and hung with pictures of people from ancient history, like Sandra Dee, and more recent ones, like Sister Hazel. There is a picture of me at the end of the hall, the one that was taken by Rod Gilliard last April. ’Course I know that it will be gone eventually, replaced by a picture of the next instant superstar.
But it sure does make me feel important, especially when I go into the isolation booth where I will spend the next however many hours. Inside I find the spritzer of mint Listerine that I like, a box of Altoids, and six-packs of Evian and fruit punch Gatorade. Nobody asked me my preferences. They found out on their own.
My demo comes through, and the first song we run is “Flying on Forever,” which is almost whispered, with long bass notes backing it up, and I’m thinking we should add something like a theremin when Sassy says into my earphones, “When I heard this, I said to Willie, this is slow and dreamy.”
“Kids need to be able to dance to it,” I say. “Think slow dancing, just a few kids in somebody’s rec room with all the lights turned off,” I add.
“I think our girl’s done this before,” Willie says.
Then my voice comes into my ears, and I start singing to it, and I feel like I’m flying.
“Flying on with the stars, with the clouds that love me, flying in the dark when you cannot even see, flying on forever . . . forever . . . forever . . .” Again I’m up on that railing and the wind is blowing my silk nightgown, and I sing, “When you are remembered, you’re not remembered at all, nobody’s real, nobody falls, nobody at all . . . ’cause we’re all flying on forever . . . forever . . . forever.”
I stop and after a second the scratch track stops too. Willie says, “Good. We’ll take some of those.”
“I need a punch in ‘you’re not remembered,’ ” I say. “I dropped off-key.”
Then Mom’s voice comes into the mix. “Is this a song about suicide?”
“No, Mom, it’s about flying.”
“We don’t need people blaming us for kids killing themselves, Mel.”
“My music is about coping with emotions, not giving in to them.”
I remember the weirdo standing back in the shadows. Somehow he had stopped me.
“Flying on forever,” I sing, “forever . . . forever . . . forever,” and so it goes, on and on. I do my lyrics again and again and again. Hopefully what comes out the other end will sound rad, and I’ll get amazing downloads and have a hit.
Some musicians will do fifty takes or more. But I can’t do it that way. I’ll sing it through five or six times, feeling it down deep in my blood.
Then we move on to “So Not Free,” which I think will be the big seller on this album. I can see Mom outside the sound room with her plastic cigarette, glaring. She is not liking these songs.
“You think you’re on the
So I sit amid the machine gun clicking of the cameras, which is amazingly intense. I smile, and, yes, there is this thrill that goes through me when I realize that they are working in relays because there are so many of them.
When the window goes up, they are all gone. I sit back and close my eyes, and for just a second the world is not there. Then I hear the gargling sound of Mom sucking her plastic cigarette. I open my eyes and watch Amber writing on a pad. I mean, she actually does this. Every other reporter I’ve met never wrote a thing down and just made up all my quotes. This is real, though. It’s not a tab, it’s People, for Chrissake.
The door opens, and we’re in the forecourt, which is full of bamboo and palm trees and blooming lantana. Then Willie comes out with Sassy Lester, my arranger.
“Mel, they’re just brilliant, brilliant ,” she says. She looks at Mom. “Oh my God, Hilda, aren’t they fabulous ?”
“I know. We’re so proud of her.”
I actually haven’t played any of these demos for Mom yet. And for a reason—she’ll be too critical.
We go down the long hall paneled with blond wood and hung with pictures of people from ancient history, like Sandra Dee, and more recent ones, like Sister Hazel. There is a picture of me at the end of the hall, the one that was taken by Rod Gilliard last April. ’Course I know that it will be gone eventually, replaced by a picture of the next instant superstar.
But it sure does make me feel important, especially when I go into the isolation booth where I will spend the next however many hours. Inside I find the spritzer of mint Listerine that I like, a box of Altoids, and six-packs of Evian and fruit punch Gatorade. Nobody asked me my preferences. They found out on their own.
My demo comes through, and the first song we run is “Flying on Forever,” which is almost whispered, with long bass notes backing it up, and I’m thinking we should add something like a theremin when Sassy says into my earphones, “When I heard this, I said to Willie, this is slow and dreamy.”
“Kids need to be able to dance to it,” I say. “Think slow dancing, just a few kids in somebody’s rec room with all the lights turned off,” I add.
“I think our girl’s done this before,” Willie says.
Then my voice comes into my ears, and I start singing to it, and I feel like I’m flying.
“Flying on with the stars, with the clouds that love me, flying in the dark when you cannot even see, flying on forever . . . forever . . . forever . . .” Again I’m up on that railing and the wind is blowing my silk nightgown, and I sing, “When you are remembered, you’re not remembered at all, nobody’s real, nobody falls, nobody at all . . . ’cause we’re all flying on forever . . . forever . . . forever.”
I stop and after a second the scratch track stops too. Willie says, “Good. We’ll take some of those.”
“I need a punch in ‘you’re not remembered,’ ” I say. “I dropped off-key.”
Then Mom’s voice comes into the mix. “Is this a song about suicide?”
“No, Mom, it’s about flying.”
“We don’t need people blaming us for kids killing themselves, Mel.”
“My music is about coping with emotions, not giving in to them.”
I remember the weirdo standing back in the shadows. Somehow he had stopped me.
“Flying on forever,” I sing, “forever . . . forever . . . forever,” and so it goes, on and on. I do my lyrics again and again and again. Hopefully what comes out the other end will sound rad, and I’ll get amazing downloads and have a hit.
Some musicians will do fifty takes or more. But I can’t do it that way. I’ll sing it through five or six times, feeling it down deep in my blood.
Then we move on to “So Not Free,” which I think will be the big seller on this album. I can see Mom outside the sound room with her plastic cigarette, glaring. She is not liking these songs.
“You think you’re on the
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