Finally, at long last, a real music tour was being put together. Not some weird group of lip-synch promo stops, but an honest-to-goodness tour with a real live band. True, the band was composed of musicians who had been handpicked by the Scotti brothers and Michael Lloyd, but there were some seasoned players, and even though I think they were kind of cynical about me when they first signed on, over time we would grow close. I was excited. We began rehearsals, and it started to feel real. Originally, the Scottis wanted to hire a choreographer to come in and create moves for all of the songs, but that idea fell apart quickly. It was bad enough that I was singing what they wanted me to. I told them I wanted to move the way I wanted to move, and thankfully, they backed off. This set was going to be made up of all of my singles and then some songs that I was going to pick, like Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times Bad Times.” The tour covered about twenty cities, and part of the proceeds were donated to the March of Dimes. Jim Haas joined us on the road, and I had no doubt that his microphone would be much “hotter” than mine at all times. But I bit the bullet. This was still my chance to get out there and perform.
But then something weird happened. A couple of weeks before we were supposed to hit the road, my manager sat me down in the Scotti brothers’ office and told me the shows were not selling out. That it was not going to look good if we went out there with any empty seats. Why weren’t the tickets selling out? Had the shows not been promoted well enough? Did they need to be advertised more? I didn’t know. Nobody had any answers for me when it came to those questions; the bottom line was simply, “You’re not going on tour.” Oh, and there was one other thing as well. My manager looked me in the eye and said, “We need to put you in the hospital.” Put me in the hospital? Evidently, that was going to be the cover story. I’m not sure why. Did it keep them from losing money? Did they need to give the promoters an excuse to get them off the hook? I had no idea. But I do know that the press was informed that I had come down with a grave case of pneumonia and that I was now tucked away in a Los Angeles hospital.
So I packed a bag with enough clothes for a couple of weeks, and I went to the hospital. They had a basic room all set up for me, and it was honestly like staying in a very sterilized hotel room. Nurses stopped and asked how I was feeling, and I told them I was perfectly fine. They took my temperature and my blood pressure and listened to my lungs and heart with a stethoscope, but it was all a joke. They knew I wasn’t sick, and I knew they were in on the deal. I remember thinking, I guess if you have enough money, you can do anything. What if somebody who was really sick needed that room? I read lots of magazines, and I did not accept any phone calls from people who had read the news that I was sick. They were simply told that I was resting and that their good thoughts would be passed along to me. It was so weird. My mom sat with me on certain days, and we looked at each other and said, “Well, I guess this is how the music business works.”
The papers all over the country picked up the story. New sacks of mail arrived with letters worrying about my condition. What did I need? Was I going to live? I was 100 percent fine! It gets me angry today thinking about the fact that this whole charade of me being sick was perhaps an excuse to not have to eat the cost of canceling shows. But that’s just how it was. This is a secret I’ve carried around for so long, and it’s a bit surreal to share it today. I was laid up in bed, and the world was told a fantastic story about how sick I was, and how tragic it was that so many fans would be disappointed to not be able to see me live and in person at last.
In the November 26, 1978 Tampa Bay Times, this was published:
And were it not for an attack of pneumonitis on Leif Garrett, the Bayfront would be host to four stars in five days. [The others playing the venue were Billy Joel, Donna Summer, and Ray Charles.] But tonight’s Garrett date had to be broken because the 17-year-old hit maker took ill eight days ago. “He was rushed to a hospital with a fever of 104,” said publicist Neil Friedman from New York. “The doctors said he has pneumonitis which is not quite as severe as pneumonia.” Garrett’s Suncoast debut has not been rescheduled but whirlwind box-office action before the cancellation indicates the young rocker will be welcome whenever he can make it.
I thought I hadn’t been selling tickets. See why I was becoming suspicious of management?
The weirdest day was probably when David MacLeod showed up. He came by, a friend visiting a friend in the hospital (probably trying to get some alone time with me). He found it kind of weird but didn’t make much of a fuss over the fact that I was okay. It’s almost like he understood how show business worked. But on that same day when David was there, there was a knock at the door and my father entered. For a minute I thought I was hallucinating, but trust me, I was not doing drugs in the hospital. At least not the kind I wanted to be doing. It was really my dad. I was speechless. He came in quietly, and David looked at me. “This is my father,” I said. My dad introduced himself and said that he had read about my sickness in the paper and that he wanted to stop by and see me. I had not seen him since I was a little boy—maybe ten years or so. “You’ve been doing pretty well for yourself,” he said to me. I told him that I was staying busy, and we made some more small talk. “I saw you one day,” he said. “I was working on set over at CBS, and I think you were doing your show Three for the Road. You were off in the distance, and there were lots of people tending to you. You were in the middle of a scene. I didn’t want to bother you, but I was proud of you over there.” I wish I could have responded but I was emotionally dead at that point. Numb. Here was the guy I was describing in the press as being dead. In many ways he was dead to me. Then, as quickly as he had arrived, he was gone, excusing himself and saying he didn’t have a lot of time. I would not see my dad for a long time after that.
Despite the fact that the tour had been cancelled, evidently there was one show that I couldn’t miss because it was too tied in to a powerful Florida radio station. So, mysteriously, I was flown to Florida to perform for four thousand crazed teenage girls.