On the Road Again
The fallout from the mismanagement of my career had resulted in scarcely any concert bookings. How depressing to flip through all those blank pages in my 1987 calendar. Soaking in my bathtub, trying to dispel the winter blues, I could not help daydreaming; I had travelled solo around Europe, why not try this continent? It would be fun to challenge my new driving skills without a concert at the end of the road, and what more spectacular route than the Pacific Coast Highway between San Francisco and Los Angeles? Joel, brooding over various business deals, put up no opposition to my impulsive decision, so in November, beckoned by memories of family holidays and my days with Cal, I escaped the gunmetal grey skies of Toronto to land in the sparkling City by the Bay.
Half Moon Bay was the starting point of my week-long odyssey. At a beach-side café, my eyes feasted on the nacreous blue ocean and sculpted cliffs. Inhaling the salt air, which was seasoned by heaps of kelp drying in the sunshine, I gingerly dipped my toes into the edges of the spreading waves. How wonderful to be twenty-five hundred miles from those grey waters of Lake Ontario. I steered past the primeval majesty of the giant redwoods and the flat fields of artichokes, into the college town of Santa Cruz to sit, feeling wonderfully anonymous, listening to folk music in a student coffee house. Frequent roadside stops let me explore the sandy coves, tidal pools, and rocky promontories, browse through gift shops, and refuel myself and the car. Carmel, with its sand as soft as whole wheat flour, quaint boutiques, cafés, and art galleries, glowed picture-perfect in that dazzling Californian light; vivid greens, golds, sapphires, pinks, and turquoises blended into a tapestry of iridescent colour.
I began to approach the landscapes so beloved by Henry Miller and Robert Louis Stevenson — Big Sur’s wild romantic coastline, where honeysuckle and eucalyptus scents blend with tangy ocean air to caress the most rugged and glorious countryside of the continent. Passing the mecca of “me” generation therapies, Esalen, I stopped at Nepenthe, where, as I had done twelve years earlier with Cal, I sipped café au lait to the peaceful sounds of wind chimes. At the Ventana Inn, log fires warmed the night and hot tubs bubbled and frothed under a canopy of stars. In the dining room, I struck up a conversation with a screenwriter, Chris Beaumont, who took me for a late-night stroll around the hotel grounds while we discussed films, music, and the pros and cons of Californian life. A week later, looking him up in Los Angeles, I introduced him to my actress friend Gloria Loring, the former wife of Alan Thicke, whom he married soon after.
Alone behind the wheel, I turned up the volume on Jennifer Warnes’s tribute to Leonard Cohen, Famous Blue Raincoat, and continued southward around vertiginous cliffs. While the road snaked and switchbacked along precipices dropping thousands of feet to pounding surf below, I fell once again under the spell of the Pacific Coast. Here fog banks often sweep in from the sea, but I was lucky: a perfect Californian sun guided me toward the legendary San Simeon, built by publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst. As I climbed the imposing staircases, I wondered what it must have been like during its glory days, when Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chaplin, and Cary Grant were wined and dined by the man who supposedly inspired Citizen Kane.
The curves of Route 1 became more elongated as it swept me past Morro Bay and San Luis Obispo to the pastel pinks of Santa Barbara, where two Paraguayan harpists enchanted me at the Biltmore Hotel’s Sunday brunch. Resuming a southerly course, I passed Montecito, in the foothills of the gentle Santa Ynez Mountains. Who would have thought that six years later I would be honeymooning in this flower-festooned paradise, or that eight years into my future I would be living in Malibu, my final rest stop along the highway? Six days and three hundred miles of asphalt later, all that remained was to wind along Sunset Boulevard into Beverly Hills, where I had arranged to stay. The hours behind the wheel had given me ample time for reflection on both my personal life and my career. Although both appeared to have ebbed to low tide, my inner creative life was coming to the rescue; plans for a new record were formulating, and I had been jotting down thematic ideas for future compositions. A love affair with nature had nourished my spirit.
The very sound of the names Rangoon, Bagan, and Mandalay conjured up images from the yellowed pages of my grandfather’s Rudyard Kipling and W. Somerset Maugham books. They evoked a bygone era when the British Raj was in its heyday: a starchy gathering of British colonels with waxed moustaches sipping sherry at the Rangoon country club while ladies in flowery Edwardian gowns balanced tea and shortbread.
“I strongly advise you not to go into Burma at this time,” exhorted Canada’s ambassador to Thailand. In October 1989, the political situation was highly unstable due to recent student uprisings; the repressive military government had imposed a nightly curfew to control the restless population after a series of violent demonstrations.
With Joel and Sheldon tagging along, I had just played a concert at the Thai-Canadian Association’s Thanksgiving banquet and a children’s concert at the international school. Now that the performances were behind me, Burma was going to provide the backdrop for an unusual holiday. After surviving the flight on one of Burma Airways’ decrepit Second World War Fokker planes, we landed in Rangoon, where entering the once elegant Strand Hotel felt like stepping back into the last century; a musty aroma hung in the air and oozed from long, dingy corridors; teak ceiling fans creaked as they circled at the pull of a string. In the bare-walled dining room, with its strong smell of disinfectant and its harsh lighting, grim-faced waiters served chicken bone curry and strong tea with diluted Carnation milk in a tiny, well-worn cup that had been made in my mother’s hometown in the Midlands. How many thousands of cups of tea must it have served over the years? There dwelt such an appealing sense of history in that old tea cup, with its faded green design that read Strand Hotel Rangoon. A clandestine deal ensued, with the waiter surreptitiously secreting the prized cup into my handbag in exchange for three green bills slipped into his dollar-hungry hand. “Very, very dangerous, madame,” he whispered, his eyes furtively skimming the length of the room, checking that nobody noticed our hasty transaction. On the black market, he would be guaranteed a generous supply of local kyats for his illicit sale of hotel property.
Going through Burmese customs a week later, I tucked the nostalgic trophy for my mother into a well-used sock and hid it inside my running shoe; luckily, the official passed right over my contraband. A few nights in a Burmese jail for grand larceny was definitely not on my agenda! Everywhere in Burma, street hawkers and tour guides produced secret stashes of grubby American bills concealed in bamboo cases, frayed tapestry bags, and lacquered owl-shaped jewellery boxes. In the Bangkok airport, as I was about to board our flight to Rangoon, I had been approached by a travel guide who asked if I would take his wad of twenty-seven hundred dollars in hundred-dollar bills into the country for him. It was legal for foreigners to have large sums of currency, but to be safe I concealed the money inside my bra, which expanded from a C to a D cup in a matter of seconds. Too afraid of watchful eyes in the airport, our contact waited until nightfall to show up at the Strand. Even there, he insisted that Sheldon take the money from me and rendezvous with him later, when the coast was clear, in the men’s toilet!
When we returned from Burma, a woman we had befriended asked if I would transport a package of rubies in my purse and hand them over to an uncle of hers. Smuggling jewels and money had never been my practice, and only after considering the oppressive regime did I reluctantly agree. She assured me that Burmese officials never searched tourists. As a precaution, I unwrapped her small parcel to check its contents. A tea cup was one thing, but an unexamined package could have spelled trouble! It was the closest I ever felt to being an international smuggler. For the Burmese people, trusting their savings to total strangers seemed to be the only way to get funds in and out of the country to overseas relatives. On both occasions, my willingness to co-operate brought forth a torrent of gratitude.
Rangoon must have been a truly grand city in her glory days in the late nineteenth century, when ornate colonial buildings and spacious avenues reflected the skilful civil planning of the British; but now peeling paint, cracked wooden balconies, and rotting doorways revealed neglect. The gritty streets were teeming with vendors selling their wares from rickety stalls: freshly cut pineapples and papayas, rice sweetmeats, spicy fried vegetable patties, framed photos of the Buddha, cotton and silk sarongs, and displays of imported cosmetics. Almost on par with the Burmese desire for U.S. dollars was their craving for imported makeup. Swarms of little girls trailed behind me making finger gestures to their lips and uttered squeals of delight when I allowed them to paint their eyelids. They smeared my cheeks with a concoction of powdered wood paste and giggled as they handed me some wildflowers. “Beautiful yellow hair,” a five-year-old whispered, then scampered off to hide behind her sister’s skirts. Their smattering of English words and V for Victory hand signs astonished us: a legacy from the Second World War still being handed down to future generations.
From Bagan to Mandalay, the country seemed devoid of tourists. To prevent a terrorist hijacking, two armed guards accompanied us on one flight, even though we were the only passengers. Bagan, once the capital of Burma, is still revered for its thousands of temples and stupas, which are monuments containing relics of Lord Buddha; its religious architecture is unequalled anywhere in Asia. Pierre Trudeau, who had spent time there with his sons, had urged us to do likewise. Under the hot sun, we struggled up and down eroded stone steps to view countless images of the Buddha. (Being a tourist can be exhausting; one temple alone contained fourteen thousand statues!) Pilgrims who had travelled from other regions of the country to pay homage lit candles, burned incense, and knelt in supplication before the immense holy carvings while saffron-robed monks chanted ancient incantations. In the main gold-domed temple of Rangoon, Shwedagon, an elderly monk with a toothless grin offered me a pinch of orange herbal powder to sample and invited us to join a throng of chanting worshippers kneeling on prayer mats. Our devout hosts, excited that we came from Canada, insisted we partake of their spicy soup; my prayers that evening were that our reckless dinner would not lead to a bout of “Burmese revenge”! These amazing shrines dated to the time of Buddha and even outshone those in Bangkok. Precious jewels were encrusted in solid-gold statues that were housed inside gilded temples of unbelievable proportions and intricate design.
It was distressing to see so many flea-bitten stray dogs and puppies hungrily roaming the streets, and the hundreds of little girls who patiently threaded coloured silk onto huge looms. They worked in silence, sitting on long wooden benches, nimble fingers dancing along the length of the weft. Their innocent faces offered shy smiles as we passed by admiring the complex patterns. What daydreams filled their minds during the long and tedious shifts? What would happen, I wondered, if those agile fingers were trained to pluck the strings of a guitar?
My travel companions were highly amused to learn what was causing such a flurry of excitement among the hotel staff. Word had raced around the corridors that the North American blonde with the guitar was none other than Madonna! Later that evening, a lobby full of teenagers had to settle for “La Gitane” and “Carnival.” In exchange, we were offered a ride into the village before curfew. Swaying along deserted lanes in a horse-drawn carriage with only the horses’ plodding to break the silence, we passed tenth-century pagodas brushed by the rays of a full moon. Time had spun me back to ancient Burma, before the invention of cars, planes, and tourists. That magical night lies embalmed in a special repository of memories that holds those peak experiences I hope will never fade.
Back from Burma for only three days, I luxuriated in being able to spend some quiet time at home. Finally, I could catch up with the mail, the laundry, telephone messages, and new repertoire. The lake waters lapped peacefully against my beach as two mallard ducks paddled along the shoreline enjoying the fading warmth of an Indian summer. A sharp telephone ring disturbed my happy reverie. Elliot Roberts, Tracy Chapman’s manager, was on the phone from Los Angeles. “Liona, can you come to Europe this weekend for a three-week tour? Every concert is sold out and we’re playing all the major cities. Sorry it’s such short notice.”
In a daze, I sat down to digest this unexpected offer, my weary body still somewhere on the road to Mandalay. Tracy Chapman was one of the hottest American singers, with “Fast Car” moving into the number-one position on the international charts. The opportunity to perform for new audiences in all the opera houses and symphony halls of Europe was tempting, as it might lead to future solo tours. Elliot faxed me the itinerary. It looked a killer. The last time I had participated in a pop tour was with Gordon Lightfoot ten years earlier, and I wondered if Tracy’s audiences would be as receptive to my classical style. Did she have a hip young following that would delight in booing me offstage? My mind flashed back to a similar decision made in San Francisco regarding Lightfoot’s Minneapolis offer. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained” had always been my modus operandi. A few hours later I called back to accept, then began throwing various items of clothing and music into my suitcase, which was still impregnated with the dust of Rangoon. When she learned that I was leaving so soon, my mother thought I was out of my mind. “But darling, you’ve only just arrived home!” she cried in disbelief. Joel, thankfully, supported my rash decision, content to spend some undisturbed weeks with the house to himself, preparing for his upcoming CDIC trial.
Two days later, I was on a plane to Amsterdam with John Telfer, a new manager whom A&M had suggested. The tour kicked off with a concert at the Muziektheater, where, to my relief, the Dutch audience was generous with its applause, even calling me back for an encore. Scarlet Rivera, the red-maned electric violinist, and the percussionist Bobbye Hall played subtle accompaniments to Tracy’s songs about loneliness, racism, and class struggle. Hers were not the lyrics of a happy woman. She refused to have anything to do with anyone in her entourage, and my attempts at conversation ended in stony silence. Her only remarks to the band were ones of criticism, and I heard them vowing it would be the last time they worked with her. Our prima donna took an inordinate amount of time doing her own sound check, barely leaving me five minutes to test my microphones. In contrast, I remembered how considerate Gordon Lightfoot had been to his fellow musicians. Life on the road held enough stress without added tensions.
We played venues that included the Teatro Brancaccio in Rome, Teatro Monumental in Madrid, Austria Centre in Vienna, and Royal Albert Hall in London. Walking onstage in the Coliseum of Lisbon, I received such a tumultuous welcome from ten thousand fans that I suddenly knew the rush rock stars must experience. The crowd, berserk with enthusiasm, insisted on clapping in time to my Spanish pieces. Lightfoot’s audiences had been great, but this one was wild! The Parisians, on the other hand, were in a foul mood due to a two-hour delay; the noisy French audience was inattentive and rude to both of us. My former manager, Bernie Fiedler, surfaced in Hamburg, amazed at the response my playing drew from his native country. Frankfurt’s Alte Oper and Munich’s Deutsches Museum welcomed us during the electrifying week the Berlin Wall came down. When Boris Becker slipped backstage to say hello, Bernie made sure we were photographed together for the press. I was beginning to realize that, much as I liked him as a person, Telfer was not the ideal manager. His understated British personality lacked the chutzpah my career required, and his defeatist approach was summed up in the downbeat name of his company, Basement Music! A few months later, I was relieved when Fiedler offered to direct my career again. Finding the right manager can be as difficult as choosing the right husband.