As I approached my girls, I could hear them shouting “Oooooooh, hel-lo!” They claimed I was strutting down the tarmac like a cowboy in pointe shoes. We sipped champagne and toasted to acquiring freedom papers and finally getting a shot of good vitamin D. We giggled the entire flight back.
Derek was only the second person I had slept with ever (coincidentally, his number was 2 on the Yankees). Just like his position on the team, our relationship was a short stop in my life. It was a very critical transition for me, and maybe a dream come true, or maybe an accomplishment, for him. I don’t know. Very soon it became clear we weren’t meant for the long run. For one, there’s a great gulf between athletes and artists, and honestly it’s hard for two stars from any industry to make it work.
My time with Derek was a sweet and short dream, yet its impact lingered. I thought about it from time to time for years after. Once, I was feeling intensely melancholy while recalling our short love affair to a friend. In my best Joan Crawford voice, I lamented, “The mother loved me! The sister loved me! The father loved me! It could have been perfect!” There was so much energy surging through my body that the champagne glass I was holding completely shattered. I took that intensity and put it in “Crybaby.”
Late at night like a little child
Wanderin’ round alone in my new friend’s home
On my tippy toes, so that he won’t know
I still cry baby over you and me
I don’t get no sleep
I’m up all week
Can’t stop thinking of you and me
And everything we used to be
It could have been so perfect
See, I cry. I cry. I cry.
Oh I gotta get me some sleep
—“Crybaby”
Let’s be honest, as an artist, I am the Queen of taking one morsel and making many meals from it. I milked and mined my limited time with DJ for much more than it was worth. My sixth studio album, Butterfly, was released into the world and has since sold more than ten million copies.
Though our relationship was just a moment in my time line, Derek served a very high purpose in my life. He was the catalyst I needed to get out from under Tommy’s crippling control and get in touch with my sensuality. And the intimacy of our shared racial experience was major—to connect with a healthy family who looked like mine was very inspiring. He was in the right place at the right time, and he was there for the right purpose.
DJ was a love in my life, not of my life. It was the idea of him, rather than the reality of him, that was so magnetic. In the end, I’ll chalk up our ending to the fact that we couldn’t live up to each other’s fantasies. One can never compete with the fantasy. You just can’t. It’s like Marilyn used to say: “They go to bed with Marilyn Monroe, and they wake up with Norma Jeane.”
The hard way is the way I have learned the most. There is no “Dreamlover” coming to rescue me and no Prince Charming or Joe DiMaggio to sweep me off my feet. I got swept away by a shortstop, but only God Almighty is my All.
A VISIT TO THE PRESIDENT
I had to go get what I wanted, and I wanted freedom. I needed not just freedom from my marriage to Tommy, but freedom from Sony, as they were inextricably linked.
The executives at Sony used to call me “the Franchise” (crazy, right?), so when I was ready to get off the label, they made it difficult for me. We went back and forth with the lawyers about what obligations I would be expected to fulfill. We agreed to an unnamed studio album (which would eventually become Rainbow).
They wanted a greatest-hits album too. I was resistant to this because it felt so premature, as if they were trying to sew me up with the nineties.
No matter who I was talking to at the label, Tommy was still in control. There was no one above him at Sony Music—everything had to go through him. When I began to have conversations about getting off the label, I was blocked at every turn. Tommy had a vendetta against me, and he used his power to hold me hostage. When things still weren’t moving along, I felt I had no more options, so I decided it was time to pay a visit to Norio Ohga, the president and chairman of Sony Corporation. I had never done anything like this. Tommy was the biggest boss I’d ever faced until then. Going above his head seemed like a wild, dangerous idea and was certainly a last resort. But I had no choice: this was my freedom, my career, my life.
I knew I was the most successful artist in Japan that Sony had at the time, so I figured I could at least get a sit-down. My executive assistant made the travel arrangements for the two of us—nobody else, not even my lawyer.
I called ahead and said, “I’m going to be in Japan. I’d like to come see Mr. Ohga.” Meanwhile, the people at Sony were probably busy working on the next big global technology or whatever. At the time, I wasn’t thinking that what they made
