Dear Lilith Fair,
In a bizarre chain of events I ended up playing on stage last night with Monte Pittman, Madonna’s actual guitar player. He sat in on “Glitz and Glamour,” the song I wrote about working as part of Madonna’s entourage! Strange world! Pete List also sits in on the human beat box!
Dear Lilith Fair,
I was sorting through some papers and I found one that was dated almost exactly a year ago from now with this written on it:
Sometimes I have horrible dreams that I’m back in Madonna Land. Except in my dreams Madonna and I are always in a room together with a piano or white furniture. And she is very nice and we talk. Last night I had a dream I had to go see Tracy, and to see her I had to walk through the room where Gwenyth Paltrow was giving birth. She was laid out on a table, but being her nice self, she stuck her head up and asked how I was. I talked to her, but felt weird because she was giving birth and I thought she should go back to that.
It is these kinds of things that pervade my subconscious. These people whose lives I threaded through when they didn’t know I was there playing their pianos, eating their cupboard munchies, or trying to get my paychecks from their employee…
Dear Lilith Fair,
After being pushed this way and that, feeling like someone stuck me in a snow globe and shook it around a few times, and being told there “suddenly” wasn’t enough money to pay me– I quit my job working for Madonna’s personal trainer and returned to New York.
New York was where I needed to be. But I was plenty discombobulated. I was starting the apartment search all over again. I went to apartment after apartment looking for a room, but absolutely nothing felt right or comfortable. My friend, with whom I was staying while searching for a new residence, had just given me her rainbow glockenspiel she had since she was a little girl. One day I sat in an empty room (she was actually moving out at the time) and composed my first song on the glockenspiel, called “Place to Live.” I have found that using the glockenspeil as a main instrument, as one might use a piano or a guitar, is incredibly exhilarating!
Dear Lilith Fair, Here are the lyrics to:
“GLITZ AND GLAMOUR”
All I need is friends, but I don’t really have them. Okay, I mean I really have them. I just don’t have them where I am. It’s because of my job. I travel around a lot. And I don’t exactly get to call the shots.
But I thought it was going to be glitz and glamour. I was gonna meet Madonna, maybe do an opening set for her. She’d say, “Hey! You’re off the charts!” She’d say, “Hey baby, baby, play that music. You’re the one I like now. You’re the one I choose, yeah! I’m a lucky star. Hey, you’re a luck star too! Let’s be lucky stars and shoot through the roof. Shoot through the roof.”
But the truth is, I’m all alone here. With a family that I don’t want to see this much of. The truth is I’m all alone here. And I really, I really, ain’t got no glitz and glamour. I ain’t got no glitz and glamour.
Dear Lilith Fair,
Shortly after moving to New York, I was swept off my feet by Madonna and her Sweet and Sticky Tour. I landed a position being the home school teacher for her personal trainer’s son. You know the woman with the elastic bands who also trained Gwenyth Paltrow? Well, that was who I worked for.
As well as teaching a 4th grade curriculum, packing Madonna’s ice packs, jumping on her mini trampoline before she warmed up for the show, and staying at Gwenyth Paltrow and Chris Martin’s house in the Hamptons, I saw the most unglamourous parts of the glamourous life. No one seemed happy. Everyone ate expensive food at fancy hotels. Everyone had work to do and no fun to be had. Everyone had to buy more things. Everyone had to inspect themselves in mirrors. Being part of the entourage’s entourage, I was always on my own at hotels no one else stayed at, stuck in a basement in Illinois, or a house in the middle of Indiana.
The only thing that saved me was my guitar. Luckily, because music was part of the home school curriculum, I was allowed to bring it with me. In a hotel room in Los Angeles I wrote “Glitz and Glamour.”
