Teddy Wayne - The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

I was so amped up for the Garden show that I woke up way early, even before Jane. I grabbed the USA Today outside my door to kill time and to see if they mentioned anything about us or my show.

I had zero real estate, but there was an interview with Zack. The intro explained how he’d been kicked off our tour and out of the label after the Memphis incident:

Q: What are the Latchkeys’ plans now?

A: We are in the process of inking a deal with a small label, and believe we will be well taken care of in our new home, which respects our independence and provides artistic, not merely financial, support. And lower-back support.

Do you regret signing with a major label?

Well, they did help put us on the map, which resulted in interviews in august publications like your own, but on their terms, both musically and presentation-wise. Complete control.

If you could do it again, would you have toured with Jonny Valentine?

That was a decision made for us, so we went along with it. But you can’t regret your actions, even when they’re regrettable. Hey, how about that: the world’s worst needlepoint sampler.

What’s Jonny like offstage?

He’s a good kid.

And his mother, Jane Valentine?

I would prefer to talk about the Latchkeys and our exciting musical future.

You have nothing to say about the situation?

This is my final statement on the matter: It’s an environment I wouldn’t subject my own child to. Not that I have a child born out of wedlock I’ve been keeping in hiding in Raleigh, North Carolina, for seven years, whom I see only on layovers. Wait a minute, is this why you interviewed me, simply to ask about these items of lurid interest to the entire nation, and not because you like my limited body of work beloved by a small coterie of music consumers? God, I feel so used.

If Zack liked me so much, and if it was an environment he wouldn’t raise his own child in, how come he hung up so quickly and didn’t ask if I wanted to hang out in L.A.? He pretended to be so concerned about me, but he just rode me and my fan base to develop the Latchkeys’ brand. He could say it was a decision made by the label, but I’m sure the band loved it. They’d never sell that many seats on their own. And Dana was right. He tried so hard to be clever.

I bet the interviewer didn’t get the reference to “Complete Control,” though. I’d have to find a way to listen to that song again sometime.

The phone rang as I read a preview of the baseball season and their fantasy-baseball picks. If there was a fantasy-pop-star draft, Tyler would go first overall, and I’d probably drop to the third round now.

I picked up the phone and said, “Hi, Jane.”

“Hi, Jonny. This is Stacy Palter, from creative.”

“Oh, hi,” I said. This was the first time anyone from the label had ever called me on tour without going through Jane.

“I hope I didn’t wake you? It’s five-thirty here, so I figured you’d be up by now.”

“I’m up. Did you want to talk to Jane? She’s in room 1812.”

I was hoping she’d say, “Eighteen twelve, good year,” because even I knew there was a war then, but she said, “No, I actually wanted to talk to you.” She paused like she was about to drop bad news. “I saw the show last night. Your performance was great. And your interview was fine until that part at the end.”

“Uh-huh.” I was glad she didn’t mention my fuckup on “Guys vs. Girls.” Even professional talent evaluators don’t know what’s going on a lot of times.

“We don’t want to tell you how to conduct yourself in interviews,” she said. That’s how they talked at the label about business decisions no one wanted to take responsibility for. They always said we, even if it was only one person in the room or on the phone. “But we’d love for you to be more professional in the future. This has been a rocky tour, and we’ve had to devote a lot of PR resources to deflection. We want to be promoting you, not defending you from gaffes.”

“Uh-huh,” I said again, but I was thinking, How about you go onstage four nights a week for a month and a half, and on top of that do a bunch of interviews including with a TV host who’s making fun of you in front of a national audience, and everyone’s attacking your mother, and your best friends keep disappearing, and see if you can avoid any gaffes.

“And if this continues, it’s something we’ll have to take into account when your contract sunsets.”

Oh. All the times Jane said our career really was in jeopardy, I didn’t totally believe her. But if Stacy was calling me at 5:30 in the morning L.A. time, this was serious. Now I had to do really good tonight, to rack up a ton of live-stream sales, first so that my career trajectory pointed up again, and also so that Stacy would apologize, and when they wanted to re-up my contract, I could say, “Sorry, I didn’t feel you respected my independence, I want to go with a label that provides artistic, not merely financial, support.” Or even that I was through with this cutthroat industry and going back to school, or going to Australia where I could really have an adventure, and it was too bad they threw away millions in future revenue. Except they’d just find someone else. Besides freaks like MJ and Tyler Beats, even top-shelf talent can be replaced.

“I understand,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”

“Great!” she said. “I’m so happy we could have this dialogue. And there’s no need to talk to your mom about this. We just wanted to reach out to you.”

Right, I thought after we hung up. You know Jane would be seriously pissed you didn’t consult with her, and you went over her head to put a real scare into me. Still, though, I wanted to handle it on my own. And I guess Jane agreed with Stacy on this. Maybe she really would have been promoted at her marketing firm if she hadn’t had me.

If I kept this up, it wouldn’t be long before they’d have me and Lisa Pinto do a fake breakup, and since she’d be higher up the label’s food chain, they’d make it seem like she ended it. Her statement to the press would be like, “While I have decided that I will no longer ‘be his girl today,’ I remain dear friends with Jonathan and wish him the best in his professional and social lives.” Only they wouldn’t do it just yet, not with her album dropping and me getting tons of publicity lately, even if it was all negative.

Now I was even more wound up about my concert, but I was afraid to use the glossy again because Jane had access to my hotel room and she’d sit me down like they do on sitcoms and say, “We need to have a talk about the birds and bees,” and I’d have to say something like, “Jane, I have a song called ‘This Bird Will Always Bee There for You,’ I get it.” She wouldn’t be the one to have the dialogue with me, though. She’d ask Nadine to do it. Or maybe Walter.

Jane gave me a personal wake-up call at nine. “Make hay while the sun shines,” she said. “You have an estimated twenty-three thousand, three hundred and thirty-five days left on earth. Make this one worth it.”

The way she said it, I could tell she was thinking, This is the biggest day of your career, you’re about to be watched by tens of thousands of paying customers worldwide, but she was trying to sound like, Hey, time to get up, it’s just a regular morning.

She gave me the itinerary for the day. She was going to Madison Square Garden early to run through some logistical issues, but she wanted me to get a workout in with Walter without pushing myself too much, and to play Zenon and do whatever I wanted to help me rest and relax before sound check. I didn’t tell her that there was no way I could have relaxed normally, but especially not after Stacy’s call, plus I didn’t know if my father was showing up and how I’d even meet him if he did.