18 CARTER
C ARTER
We had rented this beach house where we were supposed to be working on new songs for a few days, but really, we just needed a break.
Our record label was on us hard about promoting the new album, and we’d been uncooperative, unsurprisingly.
We were exhausted. We were just kids, really, in our midtwenties, and so turned around from going from one town to the next, we barely knew up from down.
I had been completely stalled, creatively, and couldn’t take being in some generic hotel room.
Something about that beach house turned out to be perfect.
An energy about it. It reminded us of the ocean back home as kids, being near to the sea, and gave us space to breathe and just exist for a bit, having fun.
She never knew this part, but the label had been planning to send out another writer to go on the road with us at first. The original idea was for it to be a series of interviews that would take place throughout multiple cities on the tour and in the studio as we were writing, all filmed.
Obviously, this was pretty much our worst nightmare.
This horrid woman, Sylvia I think was her name, was one of the top music writers at the time, and she had been at the show at Jones Beach.
My guess is that maybe she caught wind of it and nabbed the idea, though I’m not sure.
Anyway, we refused, but the label wouldn’t hear a word of it.
They’d begun making threats of dropping us if we didn’t start cooperating and doing more to promote the album.
Of course, they would’ve never in a million years dropped us, not with things going the way they were.
But we didn’t know that at the time. Our manager, John, told us we needed to do it.
That we would have to agree to let one of the writers come out and spend time with us—we had no idea what that meant.
What were they going to write about—what we ate for breakfast?
We didn’t understand how the whole thing worked.
Finally, we agreed to potentially move forward, but we told them they had to look into another writer.
John had managed to get an early copy of the story she had turned in, and when I told him about her film background, it caught his attention.
She could write, film, and direct. There was some back-and-forth, I guess.
I don’t know the details. But finally, everyone agreed. Mostly, anyway.
She asked me later if it was me. If I’d arranged it all just as an excuse to be with her.
I think she needed to know that she had gotten the project on her own merit and not because of something I had done.
I told her the truth and that we’d agreed to let her—and only her—do the film.
But that didn’t really answer her question, did it?
“So was it all orchestrated by you? An excuse to be with her?” Michael asks.
“No. But I certainly made it work to my advantage, which makes me sound a bit manipulative, though I don’t mean it that way.
I was just a guy who had met the girl he was meant to be with, and as sometimes happens, things began to align for us.
Divine opportunities and connections. When they insisted on the film, I saw my chance.
But it only worked because she was so good at what she did. We trusted her.”
She was concerned about objectivity at first. She knew that her reputation was on the line and that to get involved with any one of us could have damaged her credibility.
I completely respected this. It was hard enough for women at the time to get into that sort of filmmaking.
And to have people say she got it for reasons other than her skills would have been insulting, to say the least. So I was fully aware of her reservations.
But it was more than that. There was this delicate sort of fragility about her beneath all of her strength, and something inside me felt protective of her. People have always said that I’m guarded, but if the walls around me were ten feet tall, hers were ten feet thick.
That day at the beach, I gave her the space she needed to feel safe and in control of things.
I sensed she needed this. I was careful about encouraging her to spend time with us at the house.
She was originally going to just be there for dinner and then come back the next day.
I think she was planning to stay at a local hotel, or maybe we were going to drive back.
I can’t remember now. But once she was there, it just felt natural.
I’m sure she thought my idea about her being with us there was all some play at seduction on my part at first, but our goals were more aligned than she realized.
You see, the film was nearly entirely a go, and Tommy and I felt confident that she was the right person for it, maybe because we’d had a little more interaction with her at the show.
Knew her tastes and sensibilities and felt she’d fit in well.
But the others—especially Alex—weren’t on board at all.
And from the earliest beginning, all decisions had to be unanimous, so if he didn’t agree, that would be it.
I knew that if we all met in some cold and sterile conference room at the record label, with her walking in completely professional, notebooks and recorders and such, Alex would never in a million years go for it.
He wouldn’t have trusted her. It was Tommy’s idea to have her spend time at the beach house instead.
(I don’t think she ever knew that.) To see if the fit would evolve more organically.
I was completely on board, for obvious reasons.
They didn’t make it easy on her at first, though.
“You were such a colossal asshole to her,” Tommy tells Alex, who has been sitting quietly with his eyes closed as we talk.
“I truly was.” Alex laughs somewhat regretfully, and I shake my head, recalling the way it unfolded.
“You have to give her credit, though; she held her own,” I remind them.
“That she did,” Tommy agrees.
Of course, she got the green light to move forward with the film. But I didn’t realize how complicated it would become, how intertwined. To be fair, it wasn’t convenient that we were falling for each other. But we were an inevitability.
And I suppose that’s the theme here. From the moment I met her, it was too late to go back. She became part of us, from the moment she walked into our lives.
“I think we all fell a little bit in love with her, in one way or another,” Tommy muses.
I glance over at Alex, and our eyes lock for a millisecond before he looks away.
“Some more than others, of course,” Tommy adds after clearing his throat. “She was the yin to our yang. This calming presence in those early days. We were always a family, but then she became the fifth member of that family. For a while, anyway,” he adds with a doleful smile.
“So she was around for the tour and for the year you were making the Sigma Five album, but what happened? I mean, there is no evidence of her in your career or personal life. No sign of her anywhere.”
Even Alex has to laugh a bit at that, and I see the corners of his mouth turn upward beneath closed eyes.
“What?” Michael asks, noticing the apparent humor we found in his comment.
Alex replies. “You’re not looking close enough.”