Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir by Cyndi Lauper Page A

way out east on Long Island, by exit 60, and we were all piled in with the equipment. There were no seat belts then and the guy driving the van had a blowout, and it turned over, but the skillful way the guy was driving, the way he could maneuver, actually saved our lives. I remember I was pulling at people flying out the window, and then finally I was flying, too, but I wasn’t alone. I was flying with an angel above me, and I passed these dead musicians who were on the side of the road just watching—Duane Allman, Berry Oakley. Then the angel said, “That’s a good place for you to land,” and it was a bush. That’s where I landed. I just ended up with a scar on my leg.
    Singing in Long Island clubs and dives wasn’t easy on my voice. These were places like the Glendale Lounge, where Fat Jack used to walk through our setup with a pizza, because the kitchen was right behind us. A lot of times, the guitar players would have two-hundred-wattMarshall amplifiers, which were very popular then, with Gibson Les Paul Goldtop guitars—those are loud, sustained guitars. So in order to be heard, I had to get a fifty-watt amplifier for my voice and I only had a little fart box to hear what I sounded like. But after a while, I would still be hoarse. I’d start out singing with a full range and end up with nothing when I finished, and then I’d go to sleep and try and regain my voice.
    While we were doing shows, a manager came to see us a couple of times. He said to us, “I’m not going to manage you unless you make the girl in the back who sings good, and falls all the time, sing lead. Let the guy in the front who dances good but sings a little off be a background singer with the other girl—let’s see how that works.” So we did it, but of course the band kind of hated me for that. And the club owners always had a problem with me because they said I looked like a boy and danced like a boy.
    This manager, Phil, was a little screwy. In my opinion, he was a sexist, manipulative asshole. He came in one time at a place we were playing called the Three Ships, which had a huge bar with a stage and served five-cent drinks (so kids would get really plastered and have car accidents on the highway on the way home). I was singing Janis Joplin covers, and after one set, he pulled me aside. I had makeup on, like I usually did, and he made me take it all off and go onstage without a drop of it, because he said Joplin never wore makeup. Which is not fucking true—sometimes she didn’t, sometimes she did. You know how embarrassing it was to go in front of all those people with the bright lights and not a stitch of makeup?
    And there was tension in the band because they were a little mad at me. One night, some of us were at one of the band member’s house. He was a little nutty and very provocative—the sort of guy who talked about sex and what he did with his girlfriend all the time andthought it was funny to pee into his beer. For some reason he and his girlfriend had a whole box of dildos at his house. And they said to me, “Go ahead—pick one up.” I thought it was funny, we were all laughing about it, so I picked one of them up, looked at it, and then put it back down. His girlfriend’s sister was also there and it was all fun and games until all of a sudden it was like the atmosphere in the room changed. He grabbed it, and then two other people grabbed me. I ran away from them, but they caught me and pulled my pants off. And that guy took the dildo, and he used it on me.
    The gay guy in the band was there and he started freaking out. He was yelling, “Oh my God, oh my God, don’t hurt her!” I couldn’t believe it was happening. I tried so hard to break loose and I couldn’t, because I was being held down by his girlfriend and her sister—and she was a big girl. I was stunned, in shock.
    I finally broke away and grabbed the dildo, and I was going to shove it up his ass, and they were like, “Yeah, yeah, go, go!” But I