I bet you never thought you’d read a book with Debbie Gibson and Zakk Wylde! Thankfully, you know me. As you’ll read, Debbie was kinda punk rock, sneaking into twenty-one-plus venues when she was only sixteen, while winning over drag queens and LA’s seedier underbelly.
I’m really lucky because I haven’t had too many “Oh my God, I’m quitting showbiz” moments in my long career. I grew up in theater and learned very early that something going wrong onstage is an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to use humor and to give the audience a once-in-a-lifetime experience because that’s what live shows are meant to be anyway. The first nine months of club gigs prepared me for the rest of my career. I’ve had piano lids get stuck on stage. My dancers lifted my head right through a stucco ceiling during “Fallen Angel.” Ashlee Simpson didn’t have those nine months, and that awkward jig on Saturday Night Live is an example of how not to react.
I started as a “track” artist at the age of sixteen because my first single, “Only In My Dreams,” was a dance song. I always hated that there was no flexibility with that term, as I was always locked into the same twenty-five-minute show, three times a night, four nights a week. That’s what I did for nine months to get that single off the ground. I was sixteen, and my mom was managing me. I was never the type to sneak into clubs or steal my sister’s ID because I was super focused on my work. I wasn’t a high school party girl, so it was very funny and ironic that I ended up promoting my single in twenty-one-and-over clubs.
In one night, I would play teen, straight, and gay clubs. It was clubs in East LA with armed men escorting us in. Nobody could peg my age, and it was before Tiffany and I could use our age as a gimmick or advantage. My label had no idea what to do with a sixteen-year-old, so we had to really work it on the club circuit. After the show, my mom would say, “Kids, wait in the car. I’m gonna go collect the money from the promoter. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, someone come get me.” It was really gritty, as she was collecting money from drag queens and mafioso club owners. Sometimes a shooting had just occurred, and we were the last act before they were shutting the club down. It was nuts, but where I developed my love for the LGBTQ community. I remember playing a lesbian club in Brooklyn when I was sixteen and a bunch of sweaty lesbians hugging and kissing me. I thought they were so cool.
My night would start around 9:00 p.m. and end around 6:00 a.m. I would do my twenty-five-minute set, change in the car, and move on to the next club, with my mom driving. I had my two young, gay, male backup dancers with me, and we were a very naive, innocent group. Buddy Casimano is still one of my dancers. We went to high school together, and he’s danced with me at my first track show at Joey’s Place in Clifton, New Jersey, all the way to Rock in Rio for 150,000 people, and everything in-between. So, it was my two boys, my mom, and my twenty-one-year-old sister Karen, who was on sound and lights, all packed into a car.
Back then, I always sang live, but my backing tracks were on reel-to-reel tape. Karen was always met with a lot of resistance from the DJs at the time, as it was such a male world. She would crawl into these little DJ booths and mix my sound. One night, Karen climbed a ladder up to this DJ booth, and the DJ said, “Listen, Little Miss Sound Engineer, you’re not touching my equipment.” She tried to explain that she needed to set up the reel-to-reel, but he just grabbed the tape from her and proceeded to put them on backwards.
The show started, and I came out to this garbled, backward-sounding mess. I looked at Karen, who just shrugged. I thought to myself that this crowd is so drunk, and they don’t give a shit about me, so why not perform anyway? I sang the whole twenty-five-minute show over horrendous, backward tape. It sounded like a record playing backward, but there was still a groove. I cued my voice and eventually got the crowd clapping. I’ll never forget that night because, right after, I went to my junior prom. But, that’s a whole other story.
When grunge hit like a wrecking ball in the ’90s, I credit theater for not sending me into depression. I had always wanted to do Broadway, so the minute grunge hit, I was pretty rational and realistic, even though there was a tremendous backlash against me and my kind of pop music. I remember MTV telling me that they were not going to air the “Electric Youth” video anymore because there was so much backlash. The people I thought were my friends were easy come, easy go. So, I went right into Les Misérables on Broadway and always kept in mind that things are cyclical. I did have to work the carnival/pig wrestling events for years. I ran into Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray a few years ago, and we joked about that time. We call it the “funnel cake years.” I really enjoyed that time, and since I’ve been doing this for so long, I enjoy the whole weird, rollercoaster of it all.
For the last five years, I’ve been dealing with Lyme Disease, which has brought on so many changes to my body and voice. I used to feel like Superwoman when I was performing, and I can’t do that anymore. The options have been to cancel or to get out there and say to the audience, “This is what I’m dealing with. It might not be the most flawless vocal you’ve heard in your life, but I want to be here.” I’m welling up with tears talking about it because this is my life now. I don’t feel like I explain that to the audience as an excuse, but rather a means to draw us closer. I don’t want to curl up in a ball and disappear. The whole idea of perfection is overrated anyway. The audience wants to have an experience. They want to commune. Hitting a perfect high note isn’t what moves people. My fans are affectionately called “The Debheads,” and they’ve been with me through everything. I’ve got a pretty good life!