Dear Fiona:
Last night, my girlfriend and her friend and I paid more than a hundred dollars between us to watch your slow on-stage meltdown at Roseland Ballroom on 52nd Street in Manhattan. We want our money back, at least some of it.
We arrived early, excited—after each having spent the previous couple of days listening to Tidal, your fascinating debut album, and When the Pawn . . . , its brilliant and ravishing follow-up—and staked out a position next to the sound boards with a good line of sight to the stage. We anticipated a real show. We certainly got one, though it wasn't the one we expected.
But maybe that's not a fair thing to say. We did get the show we expected—gorgeous and passionate vocals, piano-playing both percussive and sensitive, stimulating music from a band of crack musicians—even if it was shorter than we hoped. Let me not put too fine a point on this: You nailed it. You were on. You kicked ass. Your amazing voice sounded amazing last night. Clear and confident, right in tune, and achingly beautiful.
Too bad you had to go and ruin it with that other show you put on. Too bad the confidence in your voice is only a show.
I got the first whiff of trouble during the third song, after you had left the piano and gone to the mike at center stage. You kept looking off to the side angrily between lines, with some furious little jabs of your arms. I think most people thought it was part of the passion of the song, but I leaned over to █████ and Liz and said, "She's getting really pissed. I think she's having problems with her monitors. I don't think she can hear herself. She's going to throw a tantrum."
Not that I'm patting myself on the back for being all that perceptive. I have to admit that I was on the lookout for signs of temper. I read all the reports three years ago, when you were touring for Tidal, about the breakdowns, the walking off in the middle of shows, the general bratty, primadonna behavior. I hadn't read anything about such behavior on the current tour—indeed, most every reviewer praised your new maturity—but it's always there in the back of the mind: "Is this 'new maturity' for real? Is this the night Fiona's finally going to lose it again?"
Well, it was.
I've watched plenty of other musicians deal with monitor problems on stage. Most of them deal with it simply through hand signals to the sound crew. Sometimes they'll get to the end of the song and say, "Hey, guys, I need my voice higher in the monitors," and that's that. Billy Corgan, when I saw the Pumpkins at Tramps, even took time to explain calmly, even chattily, to the audience, that it gets pretty damn loud up on stage and if he can't hear his voice in the mix then he doesn't know whether or not he's in tune.
All these examples? That's called "being professional," and it's something you really need to learn.
Things not to do when you can't hear yourself in the monitors?
First of all, don't panic. It happens to everybody, and most musicians have learned to deal with it. It's just one of those things you can't plan for, and that you have to be ready for emotionally. A show can't go perfectly every time.
Next, don't apologize to the audience after every song for how much the show sucks. I know you're a perfectionist, but perfectionism only sets you up for failure. Ask us how the show sounds, because it's our opinion that matters. If you really need some reassurance, just say, "How is it sounding out there. Am I okay?" I've seen plenty of other musicians do just that—there's no reason not to. If you'd stopped beating yourself up and actually listened to the audience, then you would have known that we were with you. You were doing fine. You sounded great. We were your friends (at least until you really started turning into a brat).
Finally, don't threaten to kill the reviewers in the audience if they give you a bad write-up. That's just childish and immature, and by the end of the evening, when the tears were streaming down your face, we were all pretty sick of it. Reviewers could have gone away from the show saying, "Fiona Apple, despite sound problems, put on a powerful show last night, with a voice in fine form." Instead, they're a lot more likely to focus on your tantrums than they are on your music, which is a shame, but that's the way news works. If you're going to threaten reviewers, then you're only creating your own bad press.
I'm curious to know what David Byrne thought of your show. He was in the audience, you know—yes, the genius behind Talking Heads came to Roseland and stood right down there on the floor, in the middle of the crowd, two paces away from me, to listen to you perform. He left about five minutes before you left the stage for your "break" that never ended. I think he was embarrassed for you. I sure was. The embarrassment in the room was palpable.
I know that succeeding in New York was very important to you—you said so enough times during the hour you spent on stage, when you were apologizing for the quality of the show. Apparently it was too important. My opinion is, if it hadn't been the monitors then it would have been something else. You are making things way too hard for yourself, and until you can relax a little you're only going to keep shooting yourself in the foot.
Maybe the problem is that you've had too much success too early. Your first album came out when you were 19. You're only, what, 23 now? You never had to pay your dues, working in small clubs in front of hostile audiences. You never had to learn to deal with the picayune problems other musicians do as they buy their success with sweat, a little at a time, night after night. You never had to learn to be a professional, like David Byrne or anyone else who cut their teeth in holes in the wall like CBGB.
Well, now it's time, before you've undermined your career, to become a professional. You have the talent to do it—that much is blatantly apparent. Get therapy if you have to, but don't let that unhappy little girl inside, who obviously doesn't feel like she's good enough to please anyone, ruin it all for you by throwing tantrums. Whoever poisoned that little girl sure did a good job of it.
Take a page from your own book, honey: "Don't make it a big deal, don't be so sensitive."
Oh, yeah. And give us our money back.
Sincerely,
Bill Shunn
