Written by:
Samiya A. Bashir
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this Issue of Curve:
Vol 11. #5
Melissa Etheridge has been mesmerizing lesbians ever since she came out to her father, left her Leavenworth, Kansas, hometown and headed West to make a name for herself. And make a name for herself she did. This year marks the 15th anniversary of Melissa’s first record contract, which she signed with Island Records CEO Chris Blackwell.
Blackwell spotted her performing before the rowdy, screaming fans crowded into a Long Beach, Calif., lesbian bar and inked the deal on the spot, spawning a new era in rock ’n’ roll history. Etheridge is celebrating the anniversary in true rock ’n’ roll superstar style with a strikingly personal new album, “Skin,” due out July 10, and a new autobiographical book, “The Truth Is” …, also set for release by Villard Books this summer.
Now entering her fourth decade, the Grammy-winning lesbian icon is living single and relaxing into her ride as rock ’n’ roll’s “All-American Girl”, showing off a calm maturity throughout one of the most publicized breakups of the decade.
Amidst all the hoopla, she retreated to the interior not only of her pain, but of the lessons learned. Her music is her medicine, and both the book and the album are healing experiences for her. She calls “Skin” “a journey” that she recorded LP-style, meant to be heard from beginning to end as one piece.
Etheridge, with a regular gig hosting Lifetime Television’s “Beyond Chance,” has shown an affinity for women’s television. Now she’s setting off the release of her seventh album with two intimate television performance specials. VH1 will air a special concert event on July 14. And Etheridge’s “custom concert,” set to air July 17 on the Oxygen women’s television network, takes the viewer one step beyond, with a simultaneous webcast at Oxygen.com. (Not only that, but, beginning weeks before the taping, Oxygen.com offered fans the opportunity to vote on every aspect of the show, from the setting to the songs performed and even the outfit Etheridge would wear.)
The day of the Oxygen taping was one of the first blindingly bright, no-jacket-required days of spring and a throng of women had lined up around the block — in both directions — at the West Village location of Oxygen’s NYC Studio 8 East, all of them hoping to get a seat for one of the most intimate shows Etheridge has performed in years. Upstairs in the studio, preparations were being hastily double-checked as special guest Tipper Gore, official first lady of the event, walked in, shyly took a seat in the audience, and waited for the show to begin.
Off the set just a bit sat another Oxygen newcomer, Lucy Lawless, whose show “Xena: Warrior Princess” found a home in syndication on the multi-culti women’s network. Watching from the sidelines, Lawless looked comfortable, casual and without a care in the world, her wild, electrified hair set off by piercing blue eyes and everything else set off by a skintight outfit.
Chatting before her cue to go onstage and introduce Etheridge, Lawless admitted she’s still struggling to relax into her new free time-filled schedule. “I feel drunk all the time,” she laughs. “I’ve been basically institutionalized for six years. It has been great fun being in the institution, but now I’m [released] and I’m freakin’ out!” Lawless confesses that she’s not even looking for a new gig yet: “I’ve had a wonderful opportunity. What character can I love as much? What character is going to give me that depth and that scope and that breadth? That was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Part of her free-agent fun is taking advantage of opportunities like the one that brought her here, leg casually swung over her chair, relatively oblivious to the buzz around her while waiting to guest-host for her favorite rocker.
Lawless, an Etheridge fan from way back, leans forward to rave, “She rocks out!” in a teenage-girl-in-the-cornfields version of her sultry, down-under accent. She recalls sharing a tiny, one-bedroom flat years ago in Auckland, New Zealand, when she first heard Etheridge’s sultry, gritty, down-home sound on television. “Melissa just exploded on my screen,” says Lawless, erupting into an infectious giggle. “I went right out and bought the album.”
Lawless’ excitement is mirrored by the mostly-female crowd that begins to flow into the studio. The set is deceptively small, lending to the atmosphere of a family gathering. Etheridge’s lesbian fan base is well-represented, especially in the choice front-row seats, close enough to the stage to tempt a fan to reach out and finger Etheridge’s 12-string Ovation. This is Melissa’s show: no band, no tempestuous lighting, no mixing boards; just a keyboard, two of her favorite guitars and the gravelly, libidinous voice that has helped cement many a lesbian love affair.
The women in the crowd are positively giddy by the time Etheridge steps onto the stage, clad in her signature ripped jeans (now stitched together in a metaphor that can’t be missed), cowgirl boots, and a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “American Woman” in bright, sparkling letters. The mischievous, little-girl-tip-toeing-through-the-flower-garden look in her eyes is instantly endearing. Women who have carried a 12-year torch since the release of her first, eponymous album are amazed that this girl next door can possibly be more gorgeous in person than she is in photos. After settling the frenzy and collecting roses from a fan, she lifts her guitar pick and immediately commands the air space with a deft skill that would make Dubya blush. She begins by leaping into the hard-rocking, number-one-requested song on the Oxygen site: “Come to My Window.”
She continues, guiding the audience through the emotional roller-coaster ride of the show by singing classic torch songs like “Ain’t That Enough” with the kind of stabbing heartbreak that rips through your chest. Lawless and Gore sing along with the audience; it seems everyone knows the words to these trademark songs.
Etheridge then wiggles her way into “Skin” and gives her audience a preview of the strikingly intimate, honest and personal songs, which, instead of shying away from the controversy that has dogged her family life over the past two years, storm right into its core.
“It’s about just starting to open up again,” she says as she slides into her first single, “I Want to Be in Love.” “You hear that?” she says. “Open!” And with that trademark flirty twinkle in Etheridge’s eyes, the audience is swept into the pleading, joyous freedom song. Not only is the poster child for lesbian love not giving up, but — despite her pain — she can’t wait to try again.
“You didn’t know I could play piano, did you?” she says with a sly, teasing grin as she strolls the two feet to the keyboard to sit and play “Please Forgive Me,” another song from Skin, which promptly brings the house to its knees. With plaintive lyrics that, as Lawless says, “make you feel,” Etheridge confirms she’s still not afraid to show her vulnerable side. “Please forgive me,” she sings, “if I don’t know what to do/it’s an old fire, this familiar desire/my skin is painfully new/it’s been so long since I touched/so long since I wanted.” There isn’t a dry eye left in the studio.
As she slips backstage to a standing ovation, Etheridge — always the polite charmer — stops short next to Eddie Cohen, a gushing fan in the back row, then takes her hand and presses her guitar pick into it with a squeeze and a demure “Thank you.” Cohen, in a blazing, full-body blush and a concert tee from the Breakdown tour, screams with delight, igniting the excitement of the woman next to her. Together they jump up and down and the studio floor vibrates with the movements of the small crowd cheering like the home team just won the pennant.
That same exhilaration rolls like a cooling fog into the sun outside the studio as the audience — with lazy, satisfied, post-coital smiles on their lips — drifts out into the streets. Tina, Barbara and Donna — floating from the studio to a nearby dyke watering hole — coo excitedly. They flew from Boston to New York just for the show and swear that every second was worth the trip. “It was awesome! She signed the back!” screams Tina, breathlessly pointing to Barbara’s Breakdown T-shirt.
Even so, this high-flying lesbian trinity is no more enthusiastic than the typically jaded record-industry execs who junket these events regularly. “I didn’t know a lot about Melissa Etheridge before the show,” says Elaine, one such junketeer, already opening her new CD. “I thought her songs were beautiful, personal, touching and just right on!”
As Etheridge moves boldly forward into the next phase of her family, her love life and her career, she remains doggedly trailed by those loyal fans who have worshiped her since the Long Beach days of old. But the most remarkable thing about the second coming of this self-professed “gay success story” is that even after taking hit after hit — the kind that should knock even the most talented and determined fighter down for the count — she continues not only to maintain her balance, but to move steadily forward into uncharted territory, gathering new converts with a contagious sweetness and raw sincerity that will not be ignored.
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