Stories to Tell Page 2

  I begin the next song, “Hazard.” This song has a very specific rhythmic meter, which means my hands on the guitar are playing a quite syncopated pattern but my voice is singing longer, fluid notes on top of that. It’s a musical juxtaposition I find very satisfying. It required much concentration in the early days of me playing it live, but now, having played it about six hundred times, it’s more muscle memory.

  I start to sing the first verse, which is the story of a young man in a small Nebraska town accused of murder. As I’m singing the lyrics, I realize that although what’s coming out of my mouth is a completely error-free performance, what’s going on in my mind is wondering why my ancestors chose to spell our last name with an x instead of Marks. Did it have to do with Nazis? No, it couldn’t be that because my great grandfather’s birth name was Emanuel Marx, and he was born in 1855. So, who made this decision and why?

  My train of thought is interrupted by wild applause. I’ve just played the last chord of “Hazard” and the audience is cheering my performance, which appears to have been pretty flawless. I just wasn’t mentally present. Two songs later, I started hallucinating mid-song that the sweat dripping from my hair onto the tip of my left ear was actually warm water leaking from the ceiling above me. Again, the song was performed without a single mistake musically or vocally. Never even screwed up a word of the lyrics.

  Somehow I finished the show in this compromised state and took my bows with a most wonderful audience lovingly cheering me as I bid them good night. I staggered my way back to the dressing room and collapsed in a chair, staring at the wall in front of me. Moments later, Sam walked in with a huge smile to congratulate me on another great show, but seeing my colorless, sweaty face and lifeless body, his smile turned to a somber expression. He stood in front of me and said, “Richard, that was yet another incredible performance, but if you don’t let me take you to a hospital right now, I will resign.” I knew he wasn’t kidding, and I knew it was out of sheer concern for my well-being.

  I spent the next three and a half hours in a Montclair ER. They took a chest X-ray. They drew a bunch of my blood. We got a few answers fairly quickly. I was severely dehydrated and was immediately put on an IV for fluids. There was no trace of pneumonia or flu, and my chest X-ray was clear. The test for malaria was negative.

  The doctor on call suggested I see an infectious disease doctor right away to test for everything from Lyme disease to West Nile virus. She said, “I would normally insist on admitting you to the hospital, but what you need most is rest and you won’t get much of that here.” She made me wait for a third bag of fluids to make its way into my bloodstream before releasing me, suggesting that I cycle Advil and Tylenol every six hours to try to control the fever.

  “Multiple days of a fever of 104 is dangerous. It means your body is in a state of extreme inflammation. I strongly suggest you cancel your show tomorrow and fly home to see your doctor instead.”

  I nodded, knowing full well that was not going to happen.

  The fluids made me feel a bit better, and though I generally avoid pain relievers, they kept the high fever at bay. Despite both Sam’s and Daisy’s pleas for me to cancel tomorrow’s Boston concert, the last of the five shows, I told them I was really feeling up to it.

  Truthfully, I am exhausted. I am also both relieved I didn’t have pneumonia or malaria and concerned about what I could have.

  I finally enjoy a decent night’s sleep (beginning at around 4:00 a.m., thanks to the ER visit) and wake up in the best condition I’ve been in for five days. We arrive in Boston in the afternoon, and when I nap in my hotel room, I do not experience any seizures. Just some chills as the fever soon works its way north before being diverted by some Advil. I am spared any hallucinations at this evening’s show and the love from the audience, once again, is like a Z-Pak of vitamins. As I drift off to sleep later in yet another hotel bed, I’m confident that I’m past the worst of whatever this is, but I still need to know what I’m dealing with.

  * * *

  I arrive back home in Malibu, grateful to have survived and ecstatically happy to be back in Daisy’s worried arms, and set up an appointment the next day through my primary physician with an infectious disease expert whose nurse draws enough of my blood to fill a thermos. I consult with him in his office as he goes through with me all the results of the blood taken in the New Jersey ER.

  He says, “They tested you for a whole bunch of things, and I’m going to test you for a bunch more, but so far every test is negative. Your ANA test [antinuclear antibody test, which shows inflammation in the body] was one of the highest numbers I’ve ever seen, so you definitely had or still have an infection or virus. We just can’t determine what it is.”

  A week later the doctor calls me and says, “Every test is negative. I’m afraid you have what we call a ‘fever of unknown origin.’ But the great news is that your new inflammation levels are coming down and you feel much better. I just wish I had an answer for you.”

  I rest at home for a week and begin to get my strength back. I’ve lost an alarming twelve pounds (I’m a fairly thin guy to begin with), and my face is gaunt, but my appetite returns. Within ten days I’m completely back to normal. Working out, running on the beach, hiking in the mountains. Like nothing happened.

  I perform twenty-nine more shows over the next three months, and despite the constant travel, the grind of the road and being fifty-six years old, I have the energy of a man thirty years younger. In the back of my mind, however, I find myself thinking, What the fuck was that all about? And… is that awful thing going to somehow come back?

  1 WHERE DO I BEGIN?

  To say I had a pretty idyllic childhood would be to say Pavarotti could carry a tune. I had no particular trauma. I had two parents who were loving and affectionate with me and who gave me consistent structure but also always let my voice be heard, as long as it was voiced respectfully. I didn’t grow up “rich,” but we lived in a beautiful home and I wanted for nothing. The word I’d use for the relationship I had with both my mother and father is extraordinary. My wonderful upbringing alone disqualified me from ever being on an episode of the tragedy-centric Behind the Music. I’m okay with that.

  I was born on September 16, 1963, in Chicago. My mother, Ruth, had been a singer with a traveling big band when she journeyed to the Windy City from her very small hometown of East Liverpool, Ohio, seven years earlier to take vocal lessons from a man there who’d been recommended to her as the best in the country. His name was Dick Marx and, great as he was at it, vocal lessons were actually only his side gig. From the late 1950s, Dick had garnered worldwide praise as one of its finest jazz pianists and certainly the most respected in the city. He juggled dates between the top three jazz clubs in Chicago: the Palmer House, the Lei Aloha, and the darling of the scene, Mr. Kelly’s.

  When they met, Dick was several years into his first marriage and had three children. After coaching my mother for a few weeks, he took an initial liking to her as a friend. Knowing she was an innocent, small-town girl in a big city where she knew no one, he invited her to his home to spend Thanksgiving 1958 with his family. His marriage had been crumbling for years, and he wanted out but was torn about leaving his young kids. Eventually, though he had lifelong love and concern for his children, his relationship with his wife became toxic and bitter, and he left it.

  In the years he’d known my mother, he had developed romantic feelings for her and now he was free to pursue her. He married Ruth in 1961, and I, their only child, came along two years later. That same year, my father also resigned from the jingle company where he’d been writing and producing music for TV and radio commercials and opened up his own operation, Dick Marx & Associates. Within a year, he was getting the lion’s share of work at a time when the jingle business was exploding.

  In addition to his business booming, this was work my father adored. No matter how crazy the schedule was, he would wake up every morning excited to go to the city and write and record
what would become these thirty- and sixty-second hits, selling everything from peanut butter to automobiles. He had an incredible knack for creating a musical hook, a term that over the years has transformed into the word earworm, and soon not only was he dominating the field in Chicago, he was also getting work from New York, LA, and San Francisco. The majority of these jingles required studio singers, and my mother became one of several local vocalists who did practically every session.

  My most indelible memories of my childhood are of both my parents in the studio my dad had built to accommodate the huge volume of work he was getting. Located on the top floor of a building in the middle of the Magnificent Mile, he named it Sound Market, and it was in a constant state of activity. Sometimes it would be just a rhythm section of a drummer, bassist, guitarist, and keyboard player. Other times, sessions would require a full orchestra, and my dad would hire members of the Chicago Symphony. Later, the singers would arrive to record vocals to the just-recorded music tracks, followed by voiceover talents narrating the advertising slogans.

  A “normal” day for my father would be one session beginning at 8:00 a.m., another at noon, and another at 4:00 p.m. He rarely went out to lunch but preferred having a quick bite in his nearby office balancing a plate on his Wurlitzer electric piano, composing between bites. Despite the often grueling pace and pressure to keep creating, he never seemed not to enjoy his job. Possibly his most overused phrase was, “It sure beats working for a living!” I vividly remember being aware of his joy from making music and having this vague sense that whatever I ended up doing, I wanted to feel that way about it.

  My father’s attention was mostly on his work. He’d come home every evening around six, and we’d have dinner as a family, the three of us, and he’d then head to his home office where a second Wurlitzer took up residence, and he would compose the music for the following day’s sessions. It was like this every day. I never once heard him complain or even express fatigue.

  This meant that his time with me was pretty limited. On the weekends, he would occasionally take me to a park down the street from our house and play catch with me for a while, and when I learned to ride a bike, we would cruise our neighborhood now and then. But mostly, my father was someone I was aware was dedicated to his career, and though it would have been nice to have more fun time with him, I never felt deprived of his attention. Whenever I needed to talk to him or had a problem, even if he was at his desk intently writing notes of music on staff paper, he would look up and see me and down went that pencil.

  Though my mother also had a busy career singing on the jingles, she was a very hands-on mom and a consistent, loving, and attentive caregiver. She was a bit overly protective of me, but I think that had as much to do with me being an only child as it did us having a close relationship. We spent far more time together than I did with my dad, and I developed a wonderful friendship with my mom that remains to this day.

  I grew up knowing that I could talk to my parents about anything. No topic was uncomfortable for them, and I felt free to ask them any questions on my young mind. Sex, drugs, religion, you name it. It was all open for discussion and, therefore, was never stigmatized. One of the greatest gifts my parents gave me was not treating me like a child. Subsequently, I became very independent very quickly, and leaving home at barely eighteen to seek my career and fortunes was much more exciting than it was frightening.

  2 “I WANNA BE FREE”

  It is the fall of 1968 and my first day at my new school. I’d love to now regale you with tales of wreaking havoc at my prior school and being the unmanageable hooligan forced to leave, but we’re talking kindergarten here. The real story is that after three weeks of their only child being bullied daily at the local public grammar school, my parents had had enough and coughed up the dough to send me to a private school their friend recommended.

  My morning ritual was the first thing to change. Instead of walking out my front door and the thirty yards to the corner of my street to await the school bus (where three third-grade boys had immediately singled me out as their target for torment), I waited inside my Highland Park, Illinois, house until I saw the yellow equivalent of an airport shuttle pull up in our driveway and hear the driver beep twice. On the forty-five-minute ride to the North Shore Country Day School in the affluent suburb of Winnetka, the bus, which initially carries only me and a female classmate who lived about five further minutes away, picked up another twenty-three or so kids ranging in age from five to fifteen. Physical and verbal bullying is replaced by sleepy kids reading their assignments from the day before or leaning their heads against the window for a last-minute snooze.

  On this first day at my new school we are seated on the floor to start the day with Show and Tell. My teacher, Mrs. Goldsmith, is an attractive brunette in her late twenties with thin wire-rimmed glasses, alabaster skin, and her hair tied in a bun. She is soft-spoken and seems to actually like children. At the end of this particular session of Show and Tell, Mrs. Goldsmith rises in front of the group. “Boys and girls, we have a new student joining our class today. His name is Richard Marx. Richard, will you stand up, please?”

  I stand and immediately feel all eyes on me. I am met with a conflicting sensation of “specialness” and terror. I like the attention of the immediate moment but fear what will happen in the one that will follow.

  “Welcome, Richard. Where do you live?”

  “Highland Park.”

  “Really? That’s pretty far. When is your birthday?”

  “September sixteenth.”

  “Ah, so you just had your birthday a few weeks ago.”

  “Yeah.”

  Riveting so far, right?

  “So tell us, Richard. What kinds of things do you like to do?”

  “Umm. I like… ummm… I like to play with my Matchbox cars. And I like to play baseball. And I’m a singer.” (I do not say that I “like to sing” but rather identify myself as a “singer” in a completely matter-of-fact way.)

  “Really? Well, would you come up here and sing a song for all of us?”

  “Oh… SHIT!” I say.

  I say this to myself.

  I immediately notice a shaking in my legs that’s a brand-new sensation, and for some reason all the saliva in my mouth has been replaced with something that feels like sand. But I manage to walk in front of the group of boys and girls sitting cross-legged on the classroom floor, and the first song that comes to my mind is “I Wanna Be Free” by the Monkees.

  They were my favorite group, and I loved that song and also had zero doubt about remembering the lyrics, so I figured that was the right call on my part. It’s also a pretty short song. Had I tanked it, the kids wouldn’t have had to endure as lengthy a shitting of the bed than if I’d chosen “MacArthur Park,” a seven-plus-minute opus that was popular at that time.

  I began the song and realized that with each next note, my nervousness slightly diminished. I also noticed that all the kids were paying full attention to me, and more important, that within that group, Lynne Harwich, the really pretty little blonde I’d stared at all morning, was looking at me and not looking away.

  I guess somewhere in that brief two and a half minutes something inside me clicked because I never lived another single second wondering what I wanted to do with my life. Was it simply being the center of attention? Maybe that was part of it, but even as a little kid I knew the world of music was way more complex than just standing in front of a group of people and singing someone else’s song. And I wanted to learn all of it.

  * * *

  It was a matter of months after my classroom debut singing that Monkees song when I was given the opportunity to meet Davy Jones. I was still a mere five years old. My father was friends with a radio promotion man in Chicago who knew I was a massive fan and said he could arrange a private meeting for me with the group when they came through Chicago on tour. My parents even pulled me out of school to make it happen.

  The truth is that, yes… I was a huge Mon
kees fan. But I was an even bigger fan of Davy. He was the group’s star. He was handsome, and cool, and every boy I knew between five and twenty-five wanted to be him. I was no exception. Hearing that I was to meet my favorite group, and my then idol, Davy, I could barely sleep the night before. I was brought to a local Chicago radio station office and led down a few hallways when I looked up and saw Micky Dolenz. I was introduced to him, and I remember him smiling and being nice to me, talking to me for a few minutes despite clearly having little to say to a five-year-old. I was led down another hallway where I briefly passed Mike Nesmith, who smiled and waved in my direction. Peter Tork had recently left the group, so the only one left to see was the only one I truly cared about meeting in the first place: Davy.

  The people who brought me to the station walked me into a room that had microphones set up for radio interviews, a small table, and chairs. Within a few minutes I turned around to see Davy enter the room. I think someone had primed him in advance that I was a huge fan. He shook my hand and smiled and asked how old I was. I told him. I clearly recall he said, “No! You’re more than five!” The rest of what he said is a blur, but I remember he took time to talk to me and ask about what subjects I liked at school and what my favorite songs were. He also drew a picture for me on a piece of white paper and signed it. Where it is now, God only knows. He was incredibly kind and patient with me, acting as if he had nothing else to do but hang with me. After a few mind-blowing moments for me, Davy gave me a pat on my back as he said good-bye. I couldn’t have been happier. There’s no way to prove this, but I can’t imagine that this encounter didn’t further spur my desire to become a musician and songwriter.