Everybody Loves You

But You Can't Find Your Way Home (Stevie's Story)

Malibu, California
Monday, January 9, 2023
(6:15 pm)
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When I became friends with Miley Cyrus during the pandemic, I went back through her discography one night with Lily in my lap on the living room floor and listened to "Hannah Montana" morph into Miley - everything from "The Climb" and "Party In The U.S.A." to "Wrecking Ball" to "Mother's Daughter". I remember thinking my mother would have loved that last song - Barbara Nicks was the coolest old lady you'd ever meet, and she would love the whole premise of that song because it was us.

The song I loved most by Miley, however, was "Malibu".

I remember listening to it when it was released. I was home on break from my 24-Karat Gold tour and rehearsing with  Fleetwood Mac for the Classics East and West. I watched the "Malibu" video in the green room of a rehearsal studio in Century City on Karen's iPad and there were tears streaming down my face by the end of it. The lyrics, which I knew were about her getting married to a man she'd loved off and on for a decade, since she was just a kid, and starting a brand new life in Malibu she'd never expected to live...well, it was too autobiographical for me not to cry.

"We watched the sun go down as we were walking...I'd spend the rest of my life just standing here talking...You would explain the current, as I just smile...hoping I just stay the same and nothing will change and it'll be us, just for a while."

It made me think of my trip downstate to L.A. with Lindsey in 1971, when we packed up the car and played Three Dog Night and The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin all the way down the Pacific Coast Highway in the sunshine, Ginny in the backseat and our twelve demos in the trunk, heading towards our life together. I remembered us stopping so I could take pictures of the coastline, spending the night in a terrible inexpensive motel room into which we had to sneak Ginny by wrapping her up in a baby blanket because "pet-friendly" wasn't a thing in 1971, sharing a banquet of Lays potato chips and Twinkies and Coke for a late-night dinner as we watched Love, American Style because I never missed an episode and then making love and giggling like kids at a slumber party in the blue glow of the television at the squeakiness of the bed.

Fifty-two years later, in Malibu, Lindsey and I ducked out of the way of a few paparazzi and he opened the door to his Mercedes and I climbed into the passenger's seat, so bewildered by the turn of events that evening that I felt like I was watching it unfold on television - an old rock singer with blonde hair climbing into a car after a funeral and riding off into the Malibu evening with another old rock singer in a leather jacket, who looked all around to see if we were being photographed. It was surreal. How was it possible that we were the same two kids from that motel room in 1971? It was us, Stevie and Lindsey, the same two people who'd rolled down PCH with the wind blowing through the open car windows as "Sympathy For The Devil" blasted through the speakers and we sang like fools together in high, screeching falsetto at the end, "Tell me, baaaaaby...what's my name?" and laughed and drummed on the dashboard as my poor little dog looked at us like we were crazy.

We were. In 1971, Lindsey and I were both crazy. Crazy in love.

Back in real time, Lindsey turned on the car and strapped himself in, as did I, and I watched the dashboard light up blue and heard the end of Under My Thumb" begin playing when the engine turned on. Lindsey looked visibly nervous. I'm sure I did too.

"It's down to me..." Mick Jagger sang. "The way she talks when she's spoken to down to me, the change has come, she's under my thumb..."

"Don't worry," Lindsey said as we pulled out of the parking lot. "That's just what song the compilation was up to when I got here...not your orders or anything."

He looked at me with the same goofy grin I'd fallen in love with a million years ago in his parents' garage, and we both laughed. After the sadness and the somber mood of the day we'd had, the laughter was much needed. I looked into his eyes for a moment - admittedly a little too long - and "Gimme Shelter" began to play next. I can't explain it, but I was looking into the eyes of Old Lindsey...and by that I mean Young Lindsey, the man I'd fallen in love with decades ago. I smiled, and somehow I managed to hear him ask, "Are you hungry?"

"I could eat," I said, and with a little nod, he turned his attention back to the wheel and we rode off into the darkness towards...whatever this was.

"Ooh, a storm is threatening my very life today," Mick Jagger began to sing. "If I don't get some shelter, ooh yeah, I'm gonna fade away..."

I think that we were both feeling that way, the storm of emotions of the day getting to us both. Saying goodbye to Christine had been hard enough without adding to it the stress of a sudden reunion with someone you hadn't spoken to in five years who, for your entire adult life, you'd spent loving or hating or both at the same time. We'd been driving for a few minutes before Lindsey turned to me and said, "Hey...where are we going, anyway?"

"Oh...actually, I haven't thought that far," I said, turning towards him and wondering why this car ride was the least awkward thing in the world. "Do you want to go fancy or just go find an In & Out and shove it in?"

Lindsey laughed and said, "Stevie, we're in Malibu...not sure if In & Out fits the aesthetic around here."

His laughter made me laugh. I sort of threw up my hands in mock defeat and said, "Sorry...Santa Monica girl here...I forgot we're in the rich Californian equivalent of the boonies...Are you up for fancy? I don't mean to drag you out to the cloth napkins and wine lists if you'd prefer to go casual."

"Hey..." He turned his eyes off the road and looked at me again, and with all the sincerity in the world, he said, "It's not about the food; it's about the company." He smiled at me, and I swear, I had to look away. I looked down into my lap before I heard him say, "Honestly, after the time we've had...nothing would make me happier than a trip to In & Out so I could drown my sorrows in good bad food."

I dared myself to look back up at him. "Actually, me too," I confessed, and we both laughed. "Do you mind driving to Santa Monica? As it is, I've left the dogs for too long already today so it'll be a faster trip home."

"My pleasure," he said with a smile that made me blush, and before I knew it we were heading out further on PCH in the Monday evening traffic, The Rolling Stones singing to us about how "you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need."

I don't think the knowledge was lost on either of us that In & Out Burger was the meal we'd eaten together fifty-two years ago in a motel room in Los Angeles the night we'd confessed our love for each other...and a lot of other things.

Maybe that's why the least awkward car ride in the world had suddenly turned into one fraught with decades of sexual tension and unspoken heartache and feelings for each other that, if you'll pardon my lyric here, never really dies.

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