Looking back, it's easy to understand why Cyndi Lauper's breakout album, She's So Unusual (Portrait/CBS Records)—which came out 29 years ago—meant so much to so many different people. The year 1984 was a time when underground favorites (Prince with his Purple Rain soundtrack and Bruce Springsteen with Born in the U.S.A.) and unlikely heroes (Tina Turner with Private Dancer) took over the mainstream by addressing topics and voices that everyone could relate to.
Lauper addressed the obvious (well, duh ... girls do wanna have fun and they sure will "she bop" by themselves until they find a man or woman who will do it for them), but by presenting herself musically and sartorially as a DIY spirit she simultaneously empowered and entertained everyone who heard her. Where Turner may have endeared herself to the LGBT community by empowering herself both privately (her triumph over her tortured marriage) and publically (by pissing all over corporate record executives, smashing the rock color and gender lines further, and rocking harder then men half her age), Lauper's appeal was far more unexpected, surreal and queer-friendly. It was as if this woman was born wrapped in a rainbow flag.
It's a bit of a shame that last year's hoo-ha over Lauper's Broadway debut, Kinky Boots, obscured the release of her autobiography, A Memoir (with Jaycee Dunn, Atria Books) because the book fleshes her out in a way that no song or show ever could.
Less a memoir and more a giggly, rambling, completely engaging free-flowing dialogue, it's damn near impossible not to get swept into A Memoir; it's Lauper in three flaming dimensions. Still, there's no better way to hear her story than through her own words and unusual trains of thought. Obviously, fans will devour it but even the cynics and haters will have to bite their lips and give the woman her due.
The book gets into her lower middle-class New York childhood, her lack of scholastic success, her troubled family life and the self-realization early on that she didn't fit in anywhere. (As Rosie O'Donnell tells her later in life, "We are from the island of misfit toys.") The two things she could do were sing and shop, so she surrounded herself with a surrogate family of rockers and gay men. What's so engaging about the book is how Lauper unknowingly invented herself; it's a template that many LGBT people had to create for themselves then as well as now.
A Memoir goes into detail about her many recordings and videos as well as her career shifts, and ups and downs. But the most telling sections deal with the intimate relationships: watching her older sister, Elen, blossom and eventually come out of the closet; collaborating with Lady Gaga, B.B. King and Allen Toussaint; watching one of her best friends develop AIDS and die from it as her career took off; and spending her two tours with Cher, which she likens to a manic cyclone ride.
What makes A Memoir so addictive is Lauper's wording. Where cynics would peg her as ditsy or dumb in person, on the page her jolly carbonation reads as genuine sincerity. There are sections of the book that are so moving that you can easily forget it's Lauper's story. (One of the closing chapters, which details her efforts for the tsunami-earthquake victims of the recent Japanese disaster, is a prime example.)
More tellingly, the book has the comparable effect of a Lauper album. The highs are giddy and intoxicating, and the lows have the impact of high drama and tragedy. Her remembrance and celebration of her friend Gregory hauntingly threads itself throughout the entirety of the book. Knowing that he was dying in 1984 and that there was nothing that could be done, he begged Lauper to write a song for him. Not only did the songs "Boy Blue" and "True Colors" become hits but Lauper used them to catapult her "True Colors Tours" years later and instigate a change in the zeitgeist for LGBT acceptance. How's that for genuine sincerity?
All through the book it's impossible to come away without appreciating her individuality, drive, faults and attitude. And as someone who vowed at a young age to never say "I shoulda, woulda, coulda...," A Memoir is a great lesson for every man, woman and child on the planet.
