Luck or Something Like It (18 page)

I think we just got each other right then and there. And I think we made each other sing better each time we performed. She was, and still is, one of the sexiest women I’ve ever met, and there was always a tremendous electricity between us. At least for me, every night was a thrill.

Dolly, as the world knows, is a world-class kidder. She often liked to sum me up with a line like this: “Kenny, if Johnny Mathis and Willie Nelson ever had a child, he would sound just like you!”

I’ll leave this next story for Dolly to tell in her own words, because I’ll never do it justice.

One of my most precious and funniest memories was in Arkansas when Kenny and I were doing a big show at a stadium where they had evidently just had a big Razorback ballgame. I found a big Razorback pig mask backstage. I was dressed in my beautiful sequin gown, and the meanness in me took over. It was about time for me to go onstage. At the end of his show, Kenny would introduce me and we would finish the show with duets. I would be at the top of a set of stairs, and the spotlight would hit me. I would go into the Bob Seger song “We’ve Got Tonight.” I thought, “I don’t care, I have to do this just to make Kenny laugh.” So I put on the big ugly hog snout mask, and when the lights hit me, there I was with a big pig head on. I started singing the song. Of course the crowd went wild, because they were Razorback fans. Kenny couldn’t hold his composure, but I refused to take it off until we had finished that whole song. Needless to say, the song wasn’t very good, but the laugh was worth millions to me.

After a hundred stunts like that, I learned something from Dolly. We can joke pretty hard with each other and we never take it personally because she knows as I do, whatever is said between us comes from love. The two of us have a very special friendship, and nobody can explain it better than Dolly can:

We are as close as two people can be without being blood kin or romantically involved, which we are neither. We are what you call soul mates, or kindred spirits might be more accurate. We can’t fool each other in ways that we might pull the wool over someone else’s eyes. And we nail each other to the wall at times, which makes for some very deep emotional and meaningful laughs, almost as if we are looking in a mirror. Often we will say to each other if we forget who we’re talking to, “Hey, it’s me so cut the crap!”

Dolly has been and continues to be a great friend.

After “Islands,” we were asked to do a Kenny-Dolly Christmas album and television special. At this point I told her that I would like to coproduce the album with David Foster. She readily agreed if I allowed her to write the music. I had no idea what a talent she was. Within two weeks she had written five of the six original songs on the album. Each one was individually spectacular. I found that to be one of my better trade-offs.

What I remember most about the television special is the two of us standing in separate windows but side by side, singing Christmas songs. In between takes Dolly was telling me some of the dirtiest jokes I have ever heard. The director, Bob Giraldi, asked us if we would like to take a break. Dolly said, “No, thank you, I’m out of jokes anyway.” That’s the kind of relationship it’s been since day one. We say things to each other that to someone else might sound offensive, but what we both learned is that anything that’s said from love shouldn’t be hurtful.

But if recording and acting with her was special, boy, touring was a whole new world. One of my favorite tours ever was a trip to Australia with Dolly in 1987. We both had previously had successful tours there but wanted to go back together. The concerts were huge and the response greater than either of us anticipated.

Our tour coincided with the America’s Cup sailing competition off the coast of Fremantle, Western Australia, the first time it had ever been held outside of the United States. After our show in Sydney, Dolly and I were both invited by Dennis Conner, the American captain and a four-time winner of the Cup, to go for a sail on the U.S. entry, the
Stars & Stripes.
Dennis had just won the 1987 competition. It was a proud day for America. I can only assume Dennis wanted to meet Dolly and I was invited along for the ride.

I couldn’t wait to go out, but Dolly passed. We all assumed that she might be afraid of the ocean, but that wasn’t going to stop me. The seas can get rough, for sure. At one point Dennis let me take the helm for ten minutes and I felt like it must have felt on the
Titanic.
I was standing there with the wind and salty breeze in my face and for the first time saw how people could get hooked on sailing.

Later that same afternoon, Dolly and I were asked to do an interview on the
Stars & Stripes
with Bryant Gumbel. That’s when I found out the real reason she didn’t want to go sailing. She was afraid the wind would blow away her hairpiece! She did the interview anyway and held on to her hair the whole time.

At sea, it’s every man for himself—hairpieces be damned.

It didn’t matter what I did or where we were, when Dolly walked out onstage, it was always magic. I love Dolly’s spirit and was reminded of it once again as I read over a few more words she wrote reflecting on the times we’ve shared:

I love Kenny Rogers, always have, always will. I always look forward to seeing Kenny or working with him. I never get tired of hearing him sing. I’ve always been a fan, since long before I met him, and I’m an even bigger one now that I know him.

I loved touring with Kenny. We had a lot of fun and a lot of laughs. Kenny has a wonderful crew and a wonderful band. I made lifetime friends with many of them. We are alike in that way also. We are very loyal and devoted to the people we work with.

Kenny has always been very generous with his time and talent with me. He even appeared on my very first
Dolly
TV show back in the ’70s. He was also on my
Dolly
variety show in the ’80s. Then we toured in the ’90s. And we’re still doing things together. I’d do anything for Kenny. Any time he says “jump,” I say, “at what?” We both jump at any chance to be together, and I’m sure it will be that way forever.

Kenny Rogers, I will always love you.

And I will always love her. There is always the danger of being so closely associated with someone that you lose your own identity. If I’m going to lose it, I want to lose it with Dolly. I don’t care how many people ask me “Where’s Dolly?” I can only say “Well, I don’t know, but like you, I wish she was here!”

Chapter Thirteen

The Good Life

With the success of
those records, and movies, and concerts, and all the rest of it, I was making more money than I had ever dreamed of, and I couldn’t wait to enjoy it. Very early on, as I mentioned, my mentor, Kirby Stone, gave me some very valuable advice about how to survive as a professional musician: find other interests and creative outlets as a respite from the constant pressure, travel, and exhaustion of a music career. Even though I was as busy as I’d ever been during this period, I still carved out the time to take Kirby’s cue and pursue some private passions. These included a passion for tennis, a passion for photography, and a passion for buying houses and driving myself crazy remodeling them.

My love of tennis began long before I hit it big in Nashville. One thing you can be sure of: when I was growing up in the projects of Houston, tennis was nonexistent. For most of my childhood, I had never even seen the sport played. Tennis balls were for hitting with a broomstick in a baseball game.

I didn’t even know what to wear on the court. Early on, I remember prepping for a match with Marianne and some lady friends of hers. I showed up in a brand-new all-white outfit: white shorts, white shirt, a white headband, white shoes, and long white socks that came up to my knees. I thought that was the required attire. Needless to say, I looked like a complete dork, instantly recognized as “the idiot who looks like he was dressed by his mother.”

In any case, I had a desire to learn the game, with or without the kneesocks. About a year before Marianne and I were married, we took a trip to Florida, staying at the Amelia Island Plantation. Marianne was a great tennis player, having played in college at the University of Georgia, and since I was still a novice, I looked around for a teaching pro. The guy everyone seemed to fight over was Kelly Junkermann, a seasoned player who had been on the ATP tour for three years and worked with a lot of great players, not the least of which was tennis legend Chris Evert. Kelly and I hit it off, and in a week, I learned a hell of a lot of tennis from him. By the way, this was before the success of “Lucille,” so I was no star in his eyes. He knew a couple of the songs from the First Edition, but that was about it.

I left him with these words: “Listen, if you ever get out to L.A., give me a call and we can play a little.”

Two years later, after “Lucille,” I got a call one day from Kelly in L.A. He said he was in Manhattan Beach, and I invited him to our house in Westwood. Dropped off by a friend, Kelly first noticed twin Rolls-Royce cars in the driveway. Not one, but two. He was impressed.

Once we got past that, we headed for the home of one of my friends, Ron Samuels. He was managing some of the most beautiful actresses in the world and was married to Lynda Carter. He also had a great tennis court and was an excellent player.

“You mean,” Kelly asked, “we’re going to play tennis at Wonder Woman’s house?”

We played and he could see that I had taken his lessons to heart and was much improved. By then I was playing almost every day and quickly realized how much fun it would be to have Kelly as my full-time coach. He was itching to get back on the pro tour, and I said I’d sponsor him. Before the day was done, he had agreed to relocate in L.A.

I then asked him how he was going to get back to Manhattan Beach, and he said he would have to call his friend.

“Just take one of the cars in the driveway,” I said. He looked at me like I was crazy.

“One of those Rolls? I can’t take one of your Rolls!”

To this day, Kelly still laughs at my answer.

“You know what? It’s just a car.”

What Kelly would soon learn about me was that I preferred driving a Chrysler minivan anyway. I could get in and out of it easily, there was room for my friends, and no one ever paid the slightest attention to me when I was driving around town.

That began both a friendship and a working relationship that has lasted right up to today. Kelly was certainly a tennis pro, but also much more. He clearly had both creative instincts and organizational skills that I sorely needed. Half the projects I would do over the next thirty years—everything from movies and TV specials to videos and custom-made stage shows—simply wouldn’t have gotten done without Kelly. He was, and continues to be, the best friend a guy could have.

And did we ever play tennis! Sometimes eight or ten hours a day when time allowed. My tennis game continued to improve under his tutelage. When Kelly wasn’t on his tennis tour, he started going with me when I was on tour with “Lucille.” He would get all of us, band and all, out playing tennis. It was great because it helped everyone stay in shape and gave us some downtime away from the stage.

Kelly and I got pretty obsessive about tennis. We’d pull into a city for a concert and before you knew it, Kelly had lined up a match with a local pro and his assistant, and nine times out of ten, we would beat them. We made a good doubles team. We each knew what shots the other would take before he took them. It was actually during one of those weekend tennis tournaments in Reno that Steve Glassmeyer, my keyboard player, and I wrote the song, “Love or Something Like It,” another No. 1 song for me.

Kelly loved the fact that our opponents always underestimated me because I was a singer and didn’t exactly
look
like a tennis player.

“They see you comin’, Kenny, and they think you won’t be much of a challenge. If they knew how strong your legs and lungs were, they might not be so complacent.”

As Kelly would later explain, “Kenny is a student of the game. That is just his nature. Whatever he gets interested in, he goes at it full bore. His stamina is amazing.”

I think Kelly is right about this. My stamina is, I think, beyond the norm. I don’t know if it is just good genes or the fact that I have led a pretty clean life. I don’t smoke or drink, and with the exception of three or four times in my younger days, have never done drugs. Furthermore, I am active. I always have to be doing something—keeping busy.

My stamina has a lot to do with my general outlook. I do the best I can in any situation, and then don’t worry about it—a lesson from my mother. I think worry adds a lot of stress to a person’s body and doesn’t have one redeeming feature. Worry won’t solve anything.

Tennis soon became an even larger part of my life. When Marianne and I learned that there was no collegiate tennis hall of fame, we donated the money to build one at her alma mater, the University of Georgia. Tennis also became a way for me to get involved in all kinds of charities. I have played in hundreds of charity tennis matches over the years.

Some of my celebrity matches were so intense that I do remember the outcome. Another tennis pro friend of mine, Doug Dean, traveled with me when Kelly was on tour. He had been playing a lot with Robert Duvall. Robert lived in Malibu at the time and had just won the Academy Award for
Tender Mercies.
He was nice enough to come to my house to play Kelly and me. Now in all fairness they had beaten us once before, but on this day we beat them 6–0, 6–0. All I remember about the end of the match was Robert slamming his racket to the ground and screaming at Doug, “I drove all the way from the beach for this shit?” I don’t think we ever played him again.

Berry Gordy, the Motown president, was a favorite competitor of mine and one of the few singles players I played regularly. I have never known anyone so driven in my life. To Berry, winning was everything. We must have played fifty singles matches and truthfully, he beat me like a drum for two years. He knew he could beat me, so he never shied away from the chance to put another notch in his belt.

Just before I moved from Beverly Hills to Athens, Georgia, Berry and I had a match scheduled. I realized he would have never let me leave that city without one more shot at humiliating me. Unfortunately, I won. He was shocked. He hadn’t counted on that, and he wanted to play a second match immediately afterward. He continued to tell me how lucky I was and how I would never beat him again. All this time I was packing my rackets and explaining how I would never play him again. He kept asking, “Why? Why?” I explained, in the future, if anyone asked me how well he played, I would simply say, “I don’t really know. All I know is I beat him the last time we played.” He insisted our mutual friend Doug Dean arrange another match before I left. It never happened. So if you ask me how well Berry Gordy plays, you know my answer.

Doug had been a roommate of Bobby Riggs for a while. Bobby was the number one player in the world in his younger days and was then known as a tennis hustler. As an exhibition in 1984, Doug arranged for me to play Bobby one set of singles for ten thousand dollars. They called it, “War of the Stars: The Gambler vs. The Hustler.” This was televised and it was big. The money would go to the charity of our choice. I must admit I was extremely flattered, and really scared at the same time.

Bobby is the only person to ever win the men’s singles, doubles, and mixed doubles at Wimbledon all in the same year. Okay, so when we played our match he was probably sixty-five and I was maybe forty-five, but this was still Bobby Riggs. I felt a little of what Kelly must have felt when he realized he was playing against Wonder Woman.

Bobby agreed to give me one game and five points to use anywhere in the set when I needed them. All I wanted was to get out alive and not embarrass myself. Believe it or not, there was a moment when I checked the score and it hit me,
Oh my God, I could win this!
If I remember correctly, we were at four games all. I started doing the math and realized, I was serving at 30–15. All I had to do was win the next two points, then I could use my “gift” game and win this match and a $100 side bet Bobby had made me just before the game started. I was two points from the biggest win of my tennis life.

First of all, I was never a singles player; I specialized in doubles. I didn’t start playing tennis until I was thirty-five years old. So here I am, now forty-five and playing singles against one of the best players who ever played the game. And about to beat him [in my mind]. It would be a daunting task, but if I could pull it off, this would make history. This was something I could tell my grandkids about. I think it was about here that Bobby did some math of his own and decided that wasn’t going to happen. He had no concern for my grandkids.

We made it to a tiebreaker, and once there, to everyone’s surprise, Bobby changed the rules. He claimed the five points he had given me were for the set only, not a tiebreaker. Once we got there it was every man for himself.

Bobby won the tiebreaker 9–7, as he should have. It was a great event. The crowd had been thoroughly entertained, the charity had gotten its money, I hadn’t embarrassed myself, and Bobby had won. I thought it was really classy of him to play me in the first place.

In most of the indoor tennis courts in Las Vegas, there are what they called “walk bridges” that surround every court, so spectators can watch their friends play, and can walk or run laps.

Kelly and I were hitting on one of those courts one day when we noticed a young boy and an older man watching us. I was flattered that they would want to watch me play.

They seemed very impressed and walked from side to side looking from every angle, watching us play and commenting on our skills. It was exciting for me. I immediately stepped up my game.

After our match, as we packed up our rackets and started from the court, they came out of nowhere and approached us. The man said, “Hey, buddy. You’re pretty good. How long have you been playing? You’ve got a great game.”

I looked at Kelly, then back to the man, and said, “Thanks, I haven’t been playing long, but I love the game.” I just assumed he was a fan.

“Not you,” he said. “The blond guy.”

So now I’m slightly embarrassed and really pissed off. Kelly said, “I wouldn’t say I’m great. Why do you ask?” The man said, with a great deal of sarcasm, “I have a fourteen-year-old son here who I think can kick your ass. In fact, I’ll bet you $100 you can’t get a set.”

I said to Kelly, “Go ahead, I’ll back you. Teach this guy a lesson. Don’t let him talk to me like that.”

So Kelly played the kid. It went back and forth for the first couple of games, a couple of ads, and couple of deuces, back and forth. This kid was really good, but once Kelly decided to play, he beat the kid, 6–3. While the two of them were in the middle of their match, the older man turned to me and asked, “Who is this guy?” I told him he was a touring pro who traveled and hit with me. He looked at me and said, “And . . . who are you?” I told him “Kenny Rogers.” There was nothing. It didn’t even register with him. It was like the old comedy bit.

He looked at me and said, “Nope . . . never heard of you.”

When it came time to pay, the man refused, saying Kelly hadn’t told him he was a pro. Kelly reminded him he hadn’t asked. He still never paid.

The man’s son was Andre Agassi. At fourteen, Andre was already being hustled around Vegas for money. Maybe that kind of pressure is what made him such a fierce competitor. That’s also probably why Andre ended up hating the game so much.

Kelly swears every time I tell this story, Andre gets younger and younger. One time I told it and Andre was nine.

Kelly and I actually had a ranking on the ATP tour. We had played two pro tournaments in 1979. We lost to Wimbledon finalist Chris Lewis and U.S. Open finalist Van Winitsky. Later that year in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in another ATP tournament, we lost to NCAA champ Bruce Nichols and Wimbledon mixed doubles winner John Austin, Tracy’s brother. The singles winner of that tournament was Vince Van Patten. It was his first pro title, and later that year he went on to beat John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors. Believe it or not, I was actually ranked ahead of Björn Borg in doubles when he was number one in the world singles rankings. (He had played only one tournament.) Kelly showed me the ATP ranking list and there it was, Kenny Rogers, and a few spots down—Björn Borg.

There comes a time
in the life of every “superstar” when they need “people.” Thinkers need doers, just like doers need thinkers. I was a thinker, so I needed doers. I can’t “do” anything but sing, as my mom used to say.