B005S8O7YE EBOK (45 page)

Fifteen minutes later I was drinking champagne in a cast member’s apartment near the theater with John, the cast of
Blood Brothers
, and their significant others. I heard the crowd counting down, loud and live, on the street below while I watched the ball drop on television. And then it was 1995.

I
spent most of January 1995 on an island in the Caribbean with John. I was thankful that my list of activities—sunning, snorkeling, swimming, sailing, and sleeping—did not include suffering. Renewed and refreshed, I went back to the mainland with absolutely nothing on my schedule. When John asked if I wanted to go back to Ireland for a few months while he explored prospects for work in the Irish film industry, I was all for it, and not only for his benefit. Ireland had some terrific songwriters, and I was more than ready to go back to music.

We flew to Dublin, rented a house on Heytesbury Lane, and drove north to visit Dierdre and her family in Belfast. We were delighted to find them in much happier circumstances. The IRA and Ulster Protestants had laid down their arms the previous year. There was no longer a need for barricades, vehicle inspections, or armed soldiers patrolling the streets. I dressed warmly against the February chill and strolled openly with John and Dierdre among the residents and tourists in the shops on Donegall Place and Royal Avenue. If
I
found the effects of the truce uplifting, it must
have been a remarkably liberating experience for the residents of Belfast to walk around their city without fear.

The truce and the economic expansion of the mid-nineties had brought positive changes to Dublin as well. In 1992, while walking at night in Temple Bar (a neighborhood along the River Liffey), I had seen a disproportionate number of men and women in various stages of intoxication sprawled on the streets outside the Temple Bar (a pub named after the neighborhood—or was it the other way around?). My inference was based on the nearby array of empty discarded plastic cups, each of which had likely contained a pint of draft Guinness, Harp, or Smithwick’s (pronounced Smiddicks).

In 1995, the neighborhood was a lot cleaner. Customers still became intoxicated, but most did so indoors. Dubliners’ optimism was reflected in the new office buildings and elegant residences either under construction or already completed. In contrast to 1992, Ireland in 1995 seemed a place of peace, growth, and opportunity.

The Irish songwriter Paul Brady and I wrote frequently at his home in Dublin. Though I wouldn’t write with Elvis Costello until a few years later, we spent some enjoyable time together. Paul McGuinness, U2’s manager, arranged for me to meet Bono, The Edge, Adam, and Larry, and then he set up time for me to write with The Edge and Bono at Hanover Quay, U2’s state-of-the-art studio on the Liffey. When the day came, I was so engrossed in trying to figure out how to integrate my style of songwriting with that of these two men with their unique approach to writing, singing, and playing that I remember little about the session. What I do remember is how fearless Bono was in improvising ideas. I had experienced times of being an instrument, but Bono seemed to be one all the time. Music and lyrics poured out of him, for better or worse, with a preponderance of the former. Unfortunately, our
song then in progress lies buried beneath my conscious memory. If a tape of our writing session is ever disinterred from U2’s studio archives, I would love to hear it.

As a visiting American celebrity I was invited on several occasions to the Phoenix Park residence of my country’s then ambassador to Ireland, Jean Kennedy Smith. There John and I mingled with Irish and American luminaries, including Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan; Jim’s brother, the writer and theater director Peter Sheridan, and his wife, Sheila; and actors Sean Penn, Gabriel Byrne, and Lauren Bacall. After dinner the ambassador led us to the salon, where anyone who wished could get up and perform what the Irish call a “party piece.” If you guessed that my party piece was “You’ve Got a Friend,” you win the chance to read on.

The morning of March 31, 1995, I received a call from Lorna asking if I wanted to go to London to write with Bob Dylan. I caught the next flight out of Dublin and proceeded to Bob’s hotel. Though Bob and I had met previously, this was the first time we had come together with the specific intention of writing a song. In between Bob’s random improvisations on guitar and the few chords I essayed on a keyboard in his elegant suite, we spoke about mutual friends, the state of the world, our respective children, and Gerry Goffin, with whom Bob had written several songs. After a couple of hours of more talking than writing, we concluded that no song was likely to emerge that day. I didn’t mind. I had thoroughly enjoyed my visit with this intelligent man who’d made musical and political history in a decade in which the answer was blowin’ in the wind.

Though we never discussed our common status as celebrities, I came away with the feeling that Bob wasn’t comfortable with the fame that followed him everywhere. He had learned to wear it as if it were a coat that hadn’t been a good fit in the first place—old, familiar, but never quite right. Exception: when Bob was writing
or playing, he didn’t seem to notice or need the coat. His music fit him perfectly.

When I stood up and started to walk over to the door to collect my purse and my actual coat, Bob stood up, walked with me, and asked if I’d like to join him onstage that night at Brixton Academy. As if I needed extra persuasion, he said, “Elvis and Chrissie are gonna do it.”

“Sure,” I said, trying to be matter-of-fact even though I could barely contain my excitement about playing simultaneously with Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, and Chrissie Hynde. I started to put my coat on but had trouble finding my second sleeve. I busied myself with that while trying to regain my composure and then found both simultaneously. I said, “See you then!” stepped into the hallway, and made my way to the lift.

Bob’s set that night included “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” and “I Shall Be Released.” Chrissie Hynde, Elvis Costello, and I sang backup on both songs.

Bob must have had as much fun as we did, because he invited us to sit in with him again for the final performance of his tour at the Point in Dublin on April 11. Chrissie couldn’t make it, but Elvis would be there.

Wait, I thought. Let me check my imaginary schedule. Between sitting in with Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello or attending a state dinner with Prime Minister John Major, President Bill Clinton, Queen Elizabeth, and Princess Diana to participate in a conversation in which peace in the former Yugoslavia would be discussed, which would I choose?

I would be offered that choice only in my dreams. Of course I would sit in with Bob in Dublin.

T
he difference between an event and reports of that event reminds me of the game Telephone, in which someone whispers a sentence into another person’s ear, who then whispers it into the next person’s ear, and on down the line. By the time it gets to the tenth person, “Joey’s going to visit his father” has become “Alice was arrested for farming Jonah’s goat.” Some of the early news reports after Bob’s April 11 concert were so far from the truth that they could only have been written by reporters playing Telephone.

Here’s what happened.

In Bob’s Dublin concert I played piano on “Highway 61 Revisited,” “In the Garden,” and “Ballad of a Thin Man.” I played and sang on “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Real Real Gone,” and “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.” Then I joined Elvis Costello and Van Morrison in singing backup on “I Shall Be Released.”

As usual with Bob, there were multiple encores, each of which elicited wildly enthusiastic chants of “More! More! More! More!” When the show was over I lined up at the front of the stage with Bob and his band and Van and Elvis to take our final band bow.
When the applause and chanting didn’t abate, the stage manager signaled for the house lights to be turned on. The band members nearest stage left turned and walked down the stairway on our left. Bob, Van, Elvis, and the band members at center stage turned, walked upstage, and exited down a stairway behind the drums. The primary responsibility of Bob’s road crew was to look after Bob, and he was appropriately well attended. Others on the crew were using their flashlights to guide the other artists and band members offstage. The crew must have assumed that I, the only performer in proximity to stage right, was in good hands.

Unfortunately, the only hands around were mine. With John gone to escort Ambassador Smith and her party backstage, and with all the artists, band members, and other responsibilities that Bob’s crew had to look after, I literally slipped through the cracks. The stage right black curtain had seemed a logical point of exit for me. I thought it would lead to a stairway on my side of the stage. But when I stepped through the curtain there was nothing under my feet. I felt something strike my head as I fell off the edge of the platform, and then I blacked out. When I came to, I barely had time to notice that I was lying on a pile of black rubber cables before my head began to hurt. I touched the spot where it hurt and felt warm liquid oozing out of my head. I must have been in a mild state of delirium because I began repeating a mantra to reassure myself:

“It’s oozing. I must be okay. It’s not spurting. That wouldn’t be good. It’s oozing. Oozing is okay. I’m okay.”

Such was my habit: denial of personal pain.

Suddenly people began to converge. Some were wearing armbands with red crosses. They told me I had fallen fifteen feet to the arena floor. My landing had been cushioned by the piles of thick rubber electrical cables on the concrete. EMTs examined my head, stanched the bleeding, then loaded me carefully into an
ambulance that would take me to the emergency room at Mater Misericordiae Hospital in North Dublin. When I arrived, the ER staff was occupied with several patients with injuries more serious than mine. Even so, they got to me fairly quickly. After examining my head, one of the doctors determined that my head injury was superficial. While he was treating the wound, he asked a question that earned him an A-plus on my “Diagnosing Patients” test.

“Are you feeling pain anywhere else?”

I was. It turned out that my head wound was the least of my injuries. My right wrist was broken, and I had fractured my left thumb. I would not be playing piano for a while. After X-raying my wrist and thumb, the medical attendants built a cast for my arm and put a splint on my thumb. Everything they needed was right there in the emergency room. Thankfully “everything” included an analgesic to relieve my pain.

Having heard me speak, the staff in the emergency room must have known that I wasn’t an Irish citizen. But if they knew that I had been injured in the line of performing with Bob Dylan, they gave no indication. As far as I could tell, they treated all their patients with the same combination of compassion, competence, personal attention, and quality of care. It being Ireland, liberal doses of humor were dispensed along with the health care.

When at last the medical staff informed me that they had done all they could for the time being, I sent John out to ask the head nurse when I could leave the hospital. While I was waiting for an answer someone brought a telephone over to me with a very long cord. It was Bob on the line. He, Van, and Elvis had been whisked out of the venue immediately after the show and hadn’t learned about my fall until they were on their way to the after-party. Bob’s tour manager had been trying to find out how I was doing, but no one would tell him. The news of my fall had cast a pall over the party. Everyone was imagining the worst. Bob said the crew in
particular felt awful. To a man, every crew member blamed himself for not having thought to cover stage right.

Not wanting to ruin Bob’s party, I tried to put the best face on the situation.

“I’m doing well, Bob. The doctors are taking good care of me. Everything’s under control.”

“Are you gonna be okay?”

I assured him that I was. I had suffered no permanent damage, and I wanted him and everyone else to have a good time at the party.

“You know,” I said brightly, “you gave a really good performance at the Point tonight. You have every reason to celebrate.”

“Are you sure you’re okay? Are they givin’ you everything you need?”

“They are. Please don’t be anxious. I’m fine.”

Bob wasn’t buying my attempt at a good face. We had come from the same culture in which Jewish mothers famously say, “I’m fine. I’ll just sit here in the dark.”

Finally, having exhausted all the ways he could tell me how sorry he was, Bob wished me a speedy recovery and put Van on.

Van didn’t have a lot to say that night—not that I minded. His words and music over the years have expressed thoughts and emotions familiar to me and pretty much everyone else on the planet. He expressed his sympathy and well-wishes in a few words and then handed the telephone over to Elvis. In contrast to Van, Elvis uses a profusion of words to express whatever he’s thinking at the moment, a quality appreciated by fans and friends alike. Elvis’s many words that night were as welcome as Van’s few.

As I handed the phone back to the attendant, John came in with the verdict from the head nurse. I would be released that night only in Bob’s song. The doctors wanted to keep me overnight to make sure I didn’t have a concussion. This gave reporters
eight more hours to play the Telephone game. The next morning John told me he had received calls from friends and family in the United States who had heard either that Bob had pushed me or that he had hugged me too enthusiastically. The only fact that all the reports had gotten right was that I had fallen off the stage. John had also heard that there had been a flurry of phone calls among Bob’s managers, the business people at the Point, and an assortment of lawyers to discuss their concern that I might file a lawsuit, but I would never have done that. Still, the people at the Point and Bob’s team went out of their way to make sure I had everything I needed and appropriately offered to reimburse me for medical expenses.