Lips Unsealed: A Memoir Part 5

Like the t.i.tle, I came up with the concept for the alb.u.m's front and back cover before we ever left L.A. I thought putting us in face masks and wearing only towels was a look that would be timeless. Take away our ident.i.ties and clothes and we were women who would be just as current in twenty-five years as we were then. And I think I was right. The back cover, showing all of us in a bubble bath, was supposed to be pure girly fun, and it was--except we shot the photo in our hotel room and the Mr. Bubble in the tub gave all of us an infection.

We were back in L.A. and rehearsing for upcoming gigs in one of the large rooms at Studio Instrument Rentals, or SIR, a Hollywood production facility, when the label messengered a copy of the finished alb.u.m to us. We ran out excitedly to the parking lot and listened to it from start to finish in someone's car. Our hopes were so high and before we pushed the Play b.u.t.ton we were all shus.h.i.+ng one another. Then the drums kicked into the first cut, "Our Lips Are Sealed," and we quieted down. We let the next ten tracks play without too many comments either way, and finally, after about thirty-five minutes, we just looked at one another for reactions.

We weren't happy--or as happy as we had hoped. In the studio, we had thought we were making a great punk alb.u.m. On hearing the final version, it sounded more pop than we had antic.i.p.ated.

We weren't going for anything as hard as Margot had wanted, but we'd had more of an edge in mind. Everyone had little criticisms. In my case, I was horrified by my vocals. They had been sped up and I found it painful to hear myself race through those songs.

Don't get me wrong. We recognized the alb.u.m's charm. But we still wanted it remixed.

We took our case to Miles, who said no. As he explained, he got exactly the record he had wanted from us. He loved it. Then, of course, as a wider audience responded positively to the alb.u.m, all of us began to change our opinion and think, Oh, it's not that bad. Later on, we upgraded it again. On June 12, "Our Lips Are Sealed" was released as the first single. We promoted it with an in-store appearance at the Licorice Pizza record store on Sunset Boulevard, and thanks to nonstop promotion from Rodney, plus advertising, the store was already mobbed when we pulled up in a limo. We stayed all afternoon, signing autographs for every single person.

I was in Buster's car the first time I heard the new single on the radio. We were on Sunset, and he turned up the volume. As much as I didn't like my vocals, I couldn't stop grinning, moving, or singing along with the radio. I was on the radio: I felt like a rock star.

We celebrated the single with a sold-out show at the Roxy, and then a month later, at the end of July, we played one show in Palo Alto and immediately followed that with a much bigger bash at home. "Cute. That's what I thought two years ago when I first saw the Go-Go's," wrote critic Robert Hilburn in the Los Angeles Times. "Great. That's what I thought after seeing the Go-Go's concert Friday night at the sold-out Hollywood Palladium. The quintet not only has more spirit than ever, but its musicians.h.i.+p is also vastly improved ..."

For me, though, that show was as much a good-bye as it was a triumph in front of the hometown fans. I had moved with Ann McLean into the Trianon Apartments from Disgraceland, where, sadly, I felt a little too exposed and unprotected. I didn't know how to deal with losing my anonymity. I just knew it made me uncomfortable. But I had no time to think about that or anything else.

In August, we hit the road for a month of shows back east. We rented a big white van and piled in, all of us: band members, roadies, and equipment. We turned the van into a pit on wheels; I mean, we defaced it in every possible way, letting trash and stink pile up and writing on the walls as we drove from Boston to Philadelphia and into Canada, opening on an all-IRS lineup featuring us and Oingo Boingo and topped by the Police, who provided our first up-close exposure to real rock stars, with their big entourages, bodyguards, fancy coaches, and private jet.

Sting was nice but aloof and seemed to be reading a Sartre book whenever he had free time. Gina palled around with Stewart, and Charlotte had a brief fling with Andy Summers. All of us attended Miles's wedding in New York and jammed at the beautiful reception he had at Tavern on the Green in Central Park. We also played a show at the Ritz, where I spotted the Who's Pete Townshend and other rock royalty checking us out. Even though I was not starstruck, I regretted not having been able to hang out with them.

In September, as reviews and mentions of us appeared in People and Rolling Stone magazines, we returned to L.A. and watched with a mix of curiosity and amazement as our video for "Our Lips Are Sealed" hit MTV, the brand-new music TV network that had launched only the month before. I was clueless about the impact it would have on music, fas.h.i.+on, and pop culture.

Just to show where my head was at, I thought making a music video was a stupid idea. I had grumbled about it being a waste of time and asked why I had to do it. It just seemed ridiculous, and so I gave it a half-a.s.sed effort. I couldn't even be bothered to get out of the car when, after tooling around in the convertible, we pulled up in front of Trashy Lingerie and Jane did her solo, singing, "Hush, my darling." If you look close, you can see me hiding; I'm bent down but the top of my head shows.

We also tried to amuse ourselves by getting arrested. That's how we ended up frolicking in the water fountain at the intersection of Wils.h.i.+re and Santa Monica boulevards. We thought if we jumped in, a cop would see us, stop, and there'd be a confrontation, which we would capture on tape. But n.o.body came to arrest us. Cars just slowed and some guys honked and whistled at us.

When I think back on those early days of MTV, all I remember seeing is a lot of the Split Enz hit "I Got You." I noticed them because of a funny thing that happened a year earlier when I was living at Disgraceland. It was the night we were having one of the more infamous parties in that place's history, an event we had dubbed the Forbidden Foods Party. It was girls only--no boys allowed. About thirty of us got together, and the two requirements for admission were that you had to wear a negligee and bring the most fattening food you could find.

We were in the middle of this party, drinking from a giant bowl of alcoholic punch, dancing around, eating, and acting crazy, when there was a knock at the door. We opened it and Neil Finn and some of the guys from Split Enz were standing there. They said they had just come to town and heard there was a party, so they showed up. It made perfect sense to me. What do you do when you get to town? You find out where the party is and go. So I told them to come on in and enjoy themselves.

How could they not? There were thirty girls prancing around half-naked, eating pizza, French fries, cannolis, and cream puffs. They didn't know what hit them. To this day, whenever I see Neil, he says, "Do you remember that party?" And there's always a twinkle in his eye.

In October, we flew to Rockford, Illinois, to open for the Rolling Stones, which was incredible just to say out loud. It was also weird, thrilling, and probably the most nerve-wracking gig I had played to that point--not because of the size of the crowd as much as knowing Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and the rest of the legendary band were watching us. Only a few years earlier I was in high school and listening to their alb.u.ms.

Unfortunately, I didn't have any interaction with them other than seeing Mick stretching before the show. But that's how those shows could be; you could have several bands backstage and they never saw one another because of their different preperformance rituals.

Then we flew back to L.A. and performed several concerts up and down the coast before finis.h.i.+ng up with three star-studded nights at the Greek Theatre. Talk about a great venue. The theater was outdoors and nestled in the hills of Griffith Park, and the number of stars in the sky seemed to match the number of stars in the audience. One night I looked out and saw Steve Martin in the front row. The next I saw Al Pacino. Midway through that second show I also spotted Rod Stewart and between songs I turned to Jane, made sure she saw the celebrities, and said, "This is really freaking me out."

As cool as I tried to look in the spotlight, I couldn't get over the fact that these people, these stars, were coming out to see anything I was part of. I couldn't reconcile the larger picture that people were interested in me. But they were; interview requests streamed in. I put on a funny face for People magazine, which photographed me goofing around with Buster for a profile on the band in October. The next month, I mused more seriously to the Boston Globe, saying that while success hadn't changed me, I was "afraid of [others'] perspectives of me changing. I can't exactly go out of my head and go dance and have a great time because I'm constantly being judged."

True, but it didn't really inhibit my behavior. In November, we guested on Sat.u.r.day Night Live, along with Bernadette Peters and Billy Joel. The appearance was a significant moment for us. Beauty and the Beat was number 20 on the Billboard 200 chart and climbing; the exposure on a show that defined hot to America's youth was going to keep that momentum going. And in terms of pop culture, playing on SNL was huge; in fact, it blew my mind to think that we were big enough to be on the show.

But Kathy, Charlotte, and I got ripped. We had sat around the studio all day, drinking the free booze, and when it was finally time to go on, we gave one of our worst performances ever. We played "We Got the Beat," and we destroyed it. It didn't even sound like a song. I knew it was bad, but excused myself from embarra.s.sment by telling myself, Hey, we're rock stars. We're supposed to party. Wasn't that the way it was done?

As far as I was concerned, it was. A couple of drinks and sometimes a hit of c.o.ke was the way I got ready. What was the big deal? A dancer stretched, a rock star partied. That's the way I rationalized my behavior. More than twenty years pa.s.sed before I faced the fact that I never went onstage sober not because I was a rock star but because deep down I was scared s.h.i.+tless--scared that I wasn't any good and the audience would see me as the fake I feared I might be.

The rock-and-roll lifestyle was lenient. By the time we returned from a brief end-of-November swing through the East Coast and played a small show at Palos Verdes High (which was videotaped and released as Totally Go-Go's), I was doing c.o.ke regularly and not thinking twice about it.

Well, that's not exactly true. I thought a lot about it--how much I loved it. From the first time I did c.o.ke at the Canterbury, when a friend of Margot's gave me a little bit to try, I couldn't wait to do more. It sent me into happyland, far away from whatever else was on my mind. It always made me feel better no matter what else was bothering me.

I relied on it to keep me up and going despite our demanding schedule. In January, we hit Sweden and London, where we stayed at Miles's stately manor in St. John's Wood. It was a formal home, and Miles made us swear to following one unbreakable rule--no boys. His booming voice had barely ceased echoing through the estate before Kathy and I went out and brought two guys back to our rooms in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

We didn't do anything with them. We just wanted to disobey Miles. It was like a sport.

We also brought Lords of the New Church lead singer, Stiv Bators, back to Miles's place after we played a few dates with his band. Years later, we found out Stiv had gone from bedroom to bedroom, smelling our underwear in a self-styled game of Guess-which-Go-Go stays in this room.

I can't say we were much better. In January 1982, we were in Atlanta and I was at dinner with one of our roadies at the local Holiday Inn, listening to him tell me in Penthouse Forum-type detail about his and our other roadies' adventures from the previous night. They had gone to a couple bars and each of them had brought women back to the hotel and, according to him, engaged in various s.e.xual activities that sounded too wild to believe.

When I refused to believe what they said happened, the roadie with whom I was having dinner called another crew guy over to the table and had the tale corroborated.

I wasn't a prude, but whoa, I was shocked by what he said they had done. I wanted to know how these guys were able to convince women to do such things. What I really wanted to know was who these young women were; they met strangers in a bar and a few hours later were in a hotel room doing things that p.o.r.n stars might have found hard-core.

"What's going on out there?" I asked. "What's the secret?"

"Alcohol," our roadie said with a shrug.

My curiosity turned into quite a topic of conversation. Later that night, long after our show, I was back in my hotel room when I got a call that the most freakish of the roadies was extremely wasted in his room and with the same girl from the night before, and did I want to join most everybody else on the tour in watching them go at it. Of course I did, and I hurried over there and joined the crowd. Someone videotaped it, too.

Wasted, he had no idea he was being watched or taped, and she didn't care. That tape was pirated and pa.s.sed around among bands for years as an example of extreme rock-and-roll debauchery. For a long time, we thought it was funny. In retrospect, I came to regret it existed and didn't want it to be part of the Go-Go's legend.

In February, we were back on tour with the Police, which was always lovely because of the luxurious way in which they traveled and their generosity to us. They saw us as little sisters. They were at the top of rock's mountain and we were their younger labelmates on the way up. Sting brought a bottle of champagne into our dressing room one night to celebrate our success. It was nice. Those gestures went a long way and helped us forget that we drove from city to city in our white van while they traveled in a private jet.

After a show in Denver, though, they offered us a ride back to L.A. on their jet. The temperature was near zero so we were grateful not to have to make the twenty-four-hour drive back to L.A. Instead we'd get home in a couple hours. As I watched the ground crew deice the wings, I thought about how nice it was going to be to get back home. Then we taxied out on the runway and suddenly one of the engines burst into flames. There was a loud pop, and then I heard someone yell, "Fire!"

To me, it was like a starter's gun when I used to run track. I jumped up, grabbed my thrift-store fur coat and trampled Miles, Andy, and even Sting on my way to the door.

They made fun of me for months. But, as I told the guys, the lesson was clear. You don't want to be near me if I'm in a panic because I'm going to run over you. I don't care if you are the world's biggest rock stars.

We were doing pretty well ourselves. Success was amazing. I loved my bandmates like sisters. We didn't have any of the jealousies or bulls.h.i.+t that came later. The grueling schedule created unusual demands and stresses, but the times were filled with excitement.

The hardest part of our success in those days, at least for me, was going back home. I always wanted to get off the road and sleep in my own bed, but whenever I got there I found myself feeling sad, lonely, and isolated. I didn't fit easily back into our scene. My old haunts and old friends weren't that accepting; no one wanted to have anything to do with me. I didn't feel like I had changed, but everyone else did.

In a sense, they were right. Like the other girls, I was seeing the world, meeting new people, and having incredible experiences that were hard to relate to unless you were there and involved. So yeah, I guess I had changed. My mistake was thinking I could go back home and find things were the same as I had left them. That's not the way it worked.

ten.

EVERYTHING BUT PARTY TIME.

IN 1982, the Go-Go's were nominated for a Grammy as Best New Artist. At the February event, we were up against Adam and the Ants, James Ingram, Luther Vandross, and Sheena Easton. We were thrilled, and I'm pretty sure we wanted to win, though I remember being more concerned about what I was going to wear to the awards show, which I thought of as the world's glitziest prom.

And as with my high school prom, my mom made my dress, a fabulous, princess-style gown with big gold-lame puffed sleeves, a matching skirt, and a hot-pink bodice. I looked like Cinderella at the ball.

But unlike Cinderella, I started doing c.o.ke in the morning and I was out of my head by the time Buster and I stepped out of our limo and hit the red carpet, which was lined with television crews, reporters, and photographers. Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, who was doing interviews for Good Morning America, actually took me aside before talking to me and told me to wipe my nose. That was embarra.s.sing.

Inside, I spotted Dallas actress Charlene Tilton, who was there with her country-singer husband, Johnny Lee. I introduced myself and said that I used to get her mail when I lived at Disgraceland, though I told her the actual address of the building rather than using its nickname. She said she'd never lived there and her husband quickly pulled her away.

"Wow, that was rude," I said to Buster. "I don't care what she says. I still got her mail."

I was checking out other stars when Moon Unit Zappa, who was famous for contributing to her father's satiric hit "Valley Girl," came up to me and introduced herself. I told her that I was a real-life Valley girl, and we laughed.

"I love your dress," she said.

"My mom made it," I said.

Moon stepped back so I could see her dress. "My mom made mine too."

As for the awards, Kim Carnes won Record of the Year for "Bette Davis Eyes," and John Lennon's alb.u.m Double Fantasy was honored as Alb.u.m of the Year, which provided the night's most emotional moment when Yoko Ono came out to accept with her six-year-old son, Sean, and delivered a poignant speech on behalf of her slain husband, saying they both were proud to have made good music that contributed in a positive way to the planet.

Quincy Jones won five awards that night. Al Jarreau took home three. And the Go-Go's? None. We lost to Sheena Easton as Best New Artist, which didn't b.u.m us out as much as it caused us to lose interest in the rest of the show, and so at the next commercial break we got up and left, which, as we later learned from the network, was a no-no.

But we didn't know any better, and we were eager to join our boyfriends who had been hanging out backstage with Jerry Lee Lewis and other stars, having a grand time. We joined them and then hit the official Grammy ball at the Biltmore Hotel, where we sat at a table for a few hours, drank, and gawked at Ted Nugent, Joe c.o.c.ker, Tina Turner, Rick James, and other stars.

I packed the next day for a trip to j.a.pan, where the Go-Go's were booked for a TV ad for Daihatsu. I had never been to Tokyo, and it was wild. Between the time change and the neon lights I saw from my hotel window, I felt like my senses were overloaded. The city looked like a giant club, and over the next couple of days, we treated the work that brought us there as secondary to exploring Tokyo.

Before leaving L.A., I had returned a piece of furniture that I'd borrowed from a friend and met his neighbor, Jack, a great-looking guy who modeled in j.a.pan. My friend had warned me not to get any ideas; Jack was gay. It turned out he was going to be in Tokyo at the same time I was, and after I got my bearings I looked him up.

Jack knew the city, especially the nighttime scene, and he escorted me to several of the edgiest clubs. At one club, he introduced me to Isao, a makeup artist, who immediately led me onto the dance floor and stayed near me the rest of the trip. Isao had an exotic style, look, and energy unlike that of anyone I had ever met. I couldn't figure out if he was straight or gay, but I was drawn to him without really knowing why, and as he put the moves on me, I let myself be seduced.

I didn't know if I was attracted to him, merely curious, or getting myself in trouble. I had partied so hard over the past few months and crossed so many time zones that I didn't have clear judgment when it came to people or my boundaries. He was like a new drug, a new escape.

Indeed, I couldn't stop thinking about him when I got back home, and as soon as the Go-Go's took a much-needed break in March and April to work on our next alb.u.m, I told Buster that I was going back to j.a.pan to hang out with my new friends, Jack and Isao. We had planned for the break to be our time together, so he got p.i.s.sed off when I left and probably knew that our days as a couple were numbered.

I didn't care--and didn't want to talk about it.

It wasn't one of my finer moments.

During breaks in the Go-Go's writing and recording sessions, I made several trips to j.a.pan. I traveled back and forth as if the long flight was a short commute. It wasn't, and those trips cost a fortune. They were one of many examples that showed I wasn't exercising good judgment. Isao was another example. In Tokyo, I actually spent most of my time with Jack, drinking greyhounds and shopping in Harajuku, but once it was nighttime and the neon lights were flas.h.i.+ng throughout Tokyo, I found myself hitting the clubs with Isao.

My strange friend led me from one club to another. I got the sense he was quite a playboy. Everyone knew him. I followed him around as if I would be lost without him, which was true. When we went out, I had no idea where I was. I was lost, figuratively and literally. That scared me.

Our affair lasted for a while, but it was dependent on me going to j.a.pan. It never matched the intensity of those initial months, and then, as could have been predicted, it devolved into one drama after another as I gradually and painfully found out Isao had numerous model girlfriends from the West that he didn't tell me about.

I probably got what I deserved, considering I was doing sort of the same thing to Buster. Even though he was the easiest-going person I knew, we were on different schedules, both of us consumed by the often-conflicting demands of our bands. It took serious commitment to make that kind of relations.h.i.+p work, and while Buster may have been ready, and in fact wanted to get engaged, I wasn't capable of such deep responsibility to another person, let alone myself.

At the beginning of March, I was at SIR with the girls and taking a break from rehearsal when I got a phone call from John Belus.h.i.+'s wife, Judy, asking if I had seen John. She knew our social circles sometimes crossed at night. She said he was in L.A. and had gone AWOL on her, and she was concerned. I hadn't seen him, and none of the other girls had either.

Less than a week later, on March 5, John was wheeled out of the Chateau Marmont hotel on a coroner's gurney. He had died of an overdose of heroin and cocaine at thirty-three years old.

The following day, we were back at SIR and talking about John's death and comparing notes about what we had either heard on the news or from other people, when Ginger walked in with a bottle of champagne. Our alb.u.m, Beauty and the Beat, had hit number one on the Billboard alb.u.m chart. We popped the cork and screamed. It was the first time in rock-and-roll history that an all-girl group who had written and played their own songs had an alb.u.m that went all the way to the top.

We toasted one another and talked about the past few years and everything that we'd gone through since day one. After partying all afternoon, I went back to my apartment and continued to celebrate by myself until the good times unraveled in a frightening breakdown.

Seated at my dining room table, bent over several lines of c.o.ke and puffing on cigarettes, I had no idea I was about to come unhinged. In theory, I was rewarding myself in private for being part of the Go-Go's history-making accomplishment. My face was all over the press, and there were few girls in the world who wouldn't have wanted to trade places with me, and yet at that moment I would've been the first to ask them why.

After doing a couple more lines, I looked at a stack of magazines and newspapers on the table. All of them had stories about the Go-Go's. I sifted through a couple and thought how awful it would be if people only knew the truth about me, the truth as far as I was concerned--namely, that I was a fake and didn't feel like I deserved any of my success. I had no sense of self-worth, and worse, I felt like I was on the verge of being found out.

The combination of being high, fearful, and anxious triggered something in me, and suddenly I felt a surge of panic and then it was as if the floor gave out beneath me. I had a full-on panic attack.

For a while, I thought I might die. Gradually the extreme anxiety subsided, but I was still gripped by a powerful fear that I had walked into a trap, that my newfound notoriety as evidenced in all those magazines and papers was going to backfire on me in a big way. I stayed inside and went out only if I had to. I shuddered anytime someone honked or recognized me. I had the same feeling I got as a kid when I wanted to run away from home. But now, where was I going to go? I couldn't run away from myself.

Or could I?

I pulled the curtains in my apartment and binged on c.o.ke for days. I didn't go outside and refused to answer the phone.

Unbeknownst to me, the town was swept up by rumors that I had died. I don't know who started them. If I had been aware, I would have stopped them. Immediately. Ginger eventually got in touch with me, though, and mentioned that all of the girls had been trying to get ahold of me. Without filling me in, she sent word to the record company that I was okay, and soon IRS released an oblique statement to the press that the Go-Go's were alive and well and working on the band's second alb.u.m.

I didn't need to comment further once I heard what was being said. But many years later I looked back at that moment in time through more sober eyes and saw some truth in the rumor.

With the success of Beauty and the Beat, the Go-Go's turned into more of a serious business than it had initially begun. We lost our anonymity and privacy. We also began to lose the relations.h.i.+ps we had with one another. At photo sessions, I heard one of the girls behind me say, "Does she always have to be in the middle? Can't someone else stand in front?" I saw eyes roll if reporters asked me too many questions.

On top of the jealousies, there was serious pressure. As we worked on our second alb.u.m, we knew Miles wanted another megasmash. While that was understandable, and our hopes for a follow-up also matched his, the reality was such that we'd had more than two years to come up with material for Beauty and the Beat and now we were being given only a couple of months to write songs for the next alb.u.m.

It was a tall order even for writers as talented and prolific as Jane, Charlotte, and Kathy, especially when the vibe among us was much different from how it had been in the beginning.

With Richard Gottehrer producing again, we proceeded as if we were repeating the same formula we had followed with the first alb.u.m. We alternated between different recording studios: Sunset Sound, Studio 55, and Indigo Ranch, which was a beautiful rustic outpost located on the old John Barrymore estate at the top of Malibu's Carbon Canyon.

Richard set us up there, hoping the isolation would let us work without the distractions of the city. It didn't happen. We went into town at all hours of the day and night, depending on what was going on in town. Despite the distractions, we delivered new material that I thought captured the Go-Go's brand of pop punk, including "He's So Strange," which was left over from the first alb.u.m, and "Girl of 100 Lists," which I thought was Jane being typically clever even though some of the other girls thought it was wimpy.

I worked with Charlotte on "I Think It's Me," a song about a crush I once had on the Flyboys' singer John Curry. Charlotte and Jane wrote "Get Up and Go," which ended up having a hideous video with me wearing an off-the-shoulder sweats.h.i.+rt and headband, a look that predated Flashdance--yuck. "The Way You Dance" was about a cute guy we had met on tour in Philadelphia; I wrote the lyrics to "Beatnik Beach," about The Lloyd Thaxton Show, a dance/music TV show from the sixties; and "It's Everything but Partytime," a Jane and Gina collaboration, revealed the pressure we were starting to feel.

We weren't against exposing a good amount of ourselves, as evidenced by the Rolling Stone cover of the five us of wearing white underwear. We looked like five virginal high school girls dancing together at a slumber party. Yet the reader knew better, and if they didn't, they were set straight by the headline, "Go-Go's Put Out."

I laughed at the cover and loved it when the magazine came out. A quarter of a century later, it's still a strong image that captures the spirit and irony of the times, and it's all due to the inspired eye of legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz.

We were excited to be photographed by her, but didn't discuss what she had in mind beforehand. We had put the finis.h.i.+ng touches on Vacation in May, and then spent the next month rehearsing for a new tour and doing gobs of press; we had the energy of a boulder rolling downhill when we encountered Annie, who was her own force of nature.

We walked into the studio, expecting to find a stylist with various wardrobe choices for each of us. But we didn't see any clothing racks packed with the latest designer outfits. Nor did we see a stylist waiting to help us. It was just Annie and her crew.

"I have an idea," Annie said. "And I want you to hear me out before you say anything."

As she explained the concept, I glanced at the other girls, all of whom were busy shooting one another looks, and I thought of Annie's stature and who else she had worked with, and all the famous Rolling Stone covers she had done, including her famous last shoot with John Lennon and Yoko Ono--the one with a naked John curled up against Yoko in bed. That one in particular gave me the chills since John was shot and killed right after that session.

More than an artist, Annie was part of rock history, an iconographer as much as she was a photographer, and I knew what it meant to be photographed by her. However, I still didn't want to get undressed for her. I didn't want to pose in my underwear. I didn't explain why, but if I had, I would've said that I could still hear the boys on the playground calling me Belimpa and fatso. So no thanks.

The other girls also balked. Annie's who she is, in part, because she doesn't take no for an answer, and she chipped away at our resistance. Tall, smart, cool, and confident, she patiently stood her ground and said, "No, no, no, I think it's going to be really great."

Eventually we changed our minds. As Annie understood, we had to go through a process of trusting her. And once we got in the underwear and saw the first Polaroid test shots, we understood what she was going for and we enjoyed ourselves. The result--well, it spoke for itself.

After the photo session, Buster picked me up and we went to Fat-burger. I wolfed down a chili burger with fries.

Unlike Beauty and the Beat, I liked Vacation when I first heard a mastered version of the entire alb.u.m. I thought it was a good, strong, fun effort with one caveat: I hated the way my voice sounded. I could hear where I had difficulty singing and felt guilty that I had spent too much time partying and hadn't given it my all. But there was no time for regret or redos.