In early 1995, we lose our champion. Danny Goldberg, our guy at the record label, the man who stuck his neck out for us, leaves Atlantic Records to become president of Warner Bros. Records. He leaves quietly, without fanfare, but to me, his departure feels seismic. Danny pushed cracked rear view past the naysayers at the record label. I also wonder how his leaving will impact Tim Sommer, the A&R guy who signed us, our day-to-day contact, and our other champion. I know this: I don’t like change. I like stability. I detest uncertainty.
We don’t hear from Danny at all until a couple of months later. He wants a favor. He asks if we’d be willing to include a Hootie & The Blowfish song on an album he’s putting together for the Friends sitcom. “Anything for Danny,” I say, and the guys agree. We choose “I Go Blind,” which we’d left off cracked rear view. Later, during the Friends second season, attending a Hootie concert becomes a plot point for an episode and the song is featured. “I Go Blind” becomes a huge hit, with radio stations playing it for weeks, into the spring of 1996. I shake my head. Even though he’s at a different record company, Danny remains our champion.
* * *
In March 1996, we’re everywhere on the radio—AM, FM—and appearing, incredibly, on two record labels. On Atlantic, after being named the bestselling album of 1995, cracked rear view continues to sell, with “Time,” our current single from that album, still going strong, and “I Go Blind,” after playing on Friends, is a hit single on Warner Bros. In the middle of all this attention, feeling a surge of momentum, the four of us leave South Carolina and head to San Rafael in Marin County, just north of San Francisco, where we will meet Don Gehman in a large and luxurious studio and begin recording our second album. We arrive with a new batch of songs we’ve written over the past several months and a title we like, Fairweather Johnson. We all agree: Let’s put out a second album now, only ten months after cracked rear view. Let’s take advantage of our heat. Ride the wave. Keep it going. That’s how we all feel.
Publicly.
Privately, the four of us have had intense conversations about the timing of the second album’s release. That’s not accurate. We’ve had heated arguments that have escalated into shouting matches.
Before the trip, I expressed my opinion, strongly and repeatedly.
I don’t think we should put out a second album yet. I believe we should wait. I’m not gloating about our success, publicly or privately, but our first album—cracked rear view—has become one of the biggest-selling albums of all time. As in ALL time. We have passed ten million copies in sales and the album has generated four hit singles. The record company believes that we can release two or three more singles—maybe even four or five singles—which could propel cracked rear view into the stratosphere of album sales. The album would be our Thriller. The company projects that we could pass twenty-five million in sales, which would make cracked rear view the bestselling album ever. All we have to do is wait. Don’t split the focus. Don’t give the public two choices. They will keep buying cracked rear view because they will have no other choice. Record Fairweather Johnson, fine, but sit on it, keep it in the vault. Wait until later in the year or even next year when our first album’s sales may finally start to lag.
I feel very strongly about this. Dean agrees with me. The suits at Atlantic are in this camp, too. They want to hold back Fairweather Johnson. But Mark, Soni, and Rusty, our manager, disagree. They think we should strike now and put out our second album as soon as possible. Saturate the marketplace, they argue.
Oversaturate, I think.
I see a fissure beginning in the band. Mark is adamant. He wants to release the second album yesterday. Dean and I vehemently disagree. Finally, we have to fight to get Mark to agree to hold off even this long. After we arrive in San Rafael, before we start recording, Tim Sommer, representing the label, flies out to try to talk us into delaying the release. He calls a meeting of the band. I am so not into having this conversation that I refuse to attend. I give Dean my vote. But Tim insists that he sit down with all four of us. I show up late and reluctantly. I’m in a mood. I’m argued out. I feel stressed and burned out at the same time. But I put a cap on my feelings and I go quiet. Because we want to show a united front and we don’t want to give off any negative vibes or reveal even an inkling of disagreement within the band, Dean and I agree with Mark’s position. We present solidarity. We say that we want to release Fairweather Johnson as scheduled, in April 1996, a month from now. I think Tim buys our unification act because he leaves the next day to pass on the word to the suits in New York. He returns with the band’s insistence and this message—Hootie & The Blowfish want their new album out now. He has no idea that behind closed doors we’ve had dissension and shouting, resulting in a split decision, which was really no decision. For the first time, I feel a shift, a drifting away from all of us united in all things. I feel a splintering among us, a crack forming in the middle of the band. It feels strange. It feels sad.
But it’s not new.
* * *
A few months before.
We receive an offer we can’t refuse. Shit, it’s more than an offer. It’s a fucking gift.
Bon Jovi is playing Wembley Stadium in London, five nights in a row, fifty thousand people, already sold out. Bon Jovi’s reps call us to open for them and play with them. A major get. No. The major get. It has happened. Bon Jovi can choose any band in the world to share the bill and the stage with them but they choose us. Playing this gig will propel us to a whole new level, something beyond superstardom. Game changer. Career changer. Done. Drop the mic.
Except we turn it down.
We don’t go.
Soni has a conflict. He says he’s sorry, but he can’t make it. He has to attend a family reunion.
A what?
I ask because I’m not sure I’ve heard correctly.
He’s turning down playing with Bon Jovi in England, at Wembley Stadium, because of a family reunion.
When I hear this, I think I go into shock. I feel as if my whole body goes numb.
A no-brainer has become a—brainer.
I seriously don’t believe it.
I’m twenty-nine years old, and I search my mind to think of an event that would cause me to turn down playing five sold-out shows at Wembley Stadium with Bon Jovi.
Birth of a child?
No.
One of my sister’s funerals?
Nope.
My mother’s wedding?
I would ask her. I know what she would say.
Miss my wedding? Are you serious? Boy, get your butt to England. Go play Wembley Stadium.
But a family reunion?
Never. Ever.
We all have priorities and Soni puts his family reunion above the band and his career. Our career. Our future.
So, that’s it. It’s all of us or none of us. That’s how we go. Who we are. We have given so much of ourselves to our work, to our music, to each other, we have sacrificed so much, put it all on the line, so many nights on the road, months, years traveling in that smelly van, playing our hearts out, killing ourselves, and now we see the culmination to all that, the payoff, the frosting on the cake—
Forget it. No use talking about it.
So we don’t.
Looking back, that may be the most shocking part of all.
We do not talk about it. We simply accept it. All for one, one for all, all that shit.
Dean and I talk about it, of course. We don’t say much. Not much to say, really. Neither of us can believe it. I do point out, quietly, that the week my mom died, I played three shows. I wouldn’t allow the band to cancel our commitments. In this case, we let this opportunity go because we have to. If Soni won’t play Wembley, then none of us will play Wembley. That’s the way it has always been and always will be. That’s the Hootie way.
I have learned that it’s better to give in than to fight. Especially when I don’t see a reason to fight. What would be the point? Nothing I say or do will change Soni’s mind. I’ve learned that it’s better for me to say, “Whatever you guys decide, I will do.” Solidarity. In all things. It’s worked for us. Well, until now.
I try to get in touch with how I really feel. I suppose I’m angry with Soni, but I honestly don’t know if I am. I’m not really mad at him. I mainly feel—hurt. I wonder after all these years, are we still all on the same page? After Soni’s decision not to play Wembley, I’m not sure anymore. I do know that something has changed within me. Shaken me. Become undone. As a result, the dynamic of the whole band changes. It’s unspoken, subliminal, but I feel it. We all feel it. And I know that we can never go back to the way it was.
* * *
Something else happens during the eleven months between mid-April 1995 and mid-March 1996, before we head out to San Francisco to record Fairweather Johnson.
Well, two events occur, one that I love talking about, the other that I hate talking about because it guts me.
On April 21, 1995, my girlfriend, Sherry Ann Phillips, gives birth to our daughter, a beautiful, feisty baby we name Carolyn after my mom. I call her Cary, but every time I look at her, I see my mom and I conjure up her spirit, her intelligence, her strength. I hate being on the road, away from Cary, but I can’t help the life I’ve chosen. The life brings fame, for whatever that’s worth, and financial stability. Thanks to Carney, I honestly don’t even think about money. But this life also comes with the cost of being away, constantly, and missing out on so much. I find myself trying to be a father from a distance. It’s not hard. It’s impossible. I beat myself up about it. I feel guilty and left out. From a distance, it seems that Cary’s life is happening in a blink. She’s about to turn a year old. Impossible. How did that happen? Where did the time go?
I deal with these feelings the only way I know how—by getting high. I’ve probably broken some sort of record for the amount of Jim Beam I’ve swilled over the past few years and I’ve paid for it by acquiring extreme stomach pain that a doctor diagnoses, in medical terminology, as a fucked-up liver. The doctor insists that I stop drinking or I will really fuck up my liver. I take his advice and I stop. For a solid three months.
* * *
The second event blindsides me.
Dean moves out.
I suppose I should have seen this coming. Every member of the band has a serious girlfriend. Mark has even gotten married. Dean has begun spending more and more time with his girlfriend, at one point even mentioning something about moving in with her. I hear that. I just kind of choose to ignore it. And I do get it. Dean wants to spend more time with his girlfriend. D, she’s the one. Soulmate. Want to build a life. Raise a family. Yadda yadda. Okay, okay. Fine. But what about us? Dean and me. We’re a duo. More than that. We’re not even two separate people. We’re extensions of each other. Two guys with one brain. Siamese twins.
He lays his decision on me so casually it’s as if he’s telling me he bought a new T-shirt.
“Yeah, man, you know, think I’m going to move out. Relocate to Charleston. Probably get married—”
I tune out. I don’t hear half of what he’s saying.
I nod and mutter a bunch of crap clichés.
Cool. Yeah. Great. Moving out. Uh huh. Nah. No problem.
Dean talks. I fake smile.
I try to pretend I don’t care. I shrug like it’s no big deal.
Inside, my heart screams.
My head pounds.
I feel obliterated.
Dean.
Every morning I wake up, shamble my way down to the kitchen, and find Dean there, always there, fucking up the coffee, eating some version of breakfast, watching sports, or listening to music, something new, or something we both love, an obsession like Abbey Road, our soundtrack. I hear that whole album in my head now, a mash-up, from the first song, “Come Together”—He say, I know you, you know me—to the sixteenth and last full song, “The End . . .”
The end.
Dean.
My brother.
The two of us. Inseparable. “I agree with Dean.” “Dean has my vote.” “Whatever Dean wants.” Me and Dean against the world.
Dean.
My lifeline.
Dean.
No.
Losing Dean is like losing a part of me, literally. Like ripping off a limb. Worse. Like tearing off a piece of my soul.
He keeps speaking. I look at the floor. I can’t look at him. I nod.
“No, I get it, man, you got to move out. I hear you. It’s time.”
Dean. Moving to Charleston. Two hours away. Feels like two time zones away.
“Charleston’s great,” I say.
“Your hometown,” he says.
“My hometown. Yeah.”
We say nothing else.
I keep nodding like a fool, pretending it’s all good, everything’s fine.
I’m lying.
I can’t let him see that he has crushed me, that something inside me has died.
I just know—and I know he knows—that everything has changed.
Every. Fucking. Thing.
“Okay, yeah, so I wanted you to know,” Dean says.
I am unfamiliar with that tone of voice. That inflection. That register. This guy doesn’t even sound like Dean. He sounds like a bot. The AI version of Dean.
“Yeah, okay,” I say. “Cool.”
Silence drops over us like a shroud. We don’t say anything for the count of ten, but it feels like we’ve gone quiet forever. I know that we’ve said all we will say. We’re done. Got nothing left to say.
“So, I guess,” Dean says, “I’ll see you when we play.”
I’ll see you when we play.
Those six words.
Dean.
Stab my heart with an ice pick.
That’s how I feel.
I can’t say this is the end of the band.
But it’s both the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end.