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-You say you don't read the newspaper articles,

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

magazine articles that are written about you.

You don't read your own press.

I want to read you something that "Rolling Stone" wrote...

-Watermelon, watermelon, peanut butter, peanut butter.

Okay, fire away.

-"You can cast a pretty wide net

among Sheryl Crow's acquaintances

without finding anyone ready to describe her beyond

that familiar backhanded compliment of driven."

-Ew. Way to kick it up a notch, Steve.

-You are driven, though.

-I think the negative connotations that have been

associated with driven and perfectionist

usually get put into that category of bitch.

I think that's just by nature of the fact

that you have a woman who's at the head of a company

telling a bunch of men and women

how things have to be done.

I've been long

A long way from here

I put on a poncho, played for mosquitoes

And drank till I was thirsty again

-You have seemed to chart your own course.

-Multi-Grammy-winning artist

who has sold over 50 million albums worldwide.

- Found Geronimo's rifle, Marilyn's shampoo

And Benny Goodman's corset and pen

My definition of driven,

it's been the pressure I've put on myself.

You don't get there by just, you know, having a great time.

You get there by, like, digging deep.

If it makes you happy

It can't be that ba-a-a-ad

If it makes you happy

Then why the hell are you so sad?

If it makes you happy, yeah

It can't be that ba-a-a-ad

If it makes you happy

Then why the hell are you so sad?

Whoo!

I think from an early age, I knew music

was this joyful thing, this nerve-racking thing,

and then ultimately this rewarding thing.

I've always had real high highs and real low lows,

and that is a part of... who I am.

And I shall believe

Can we sing three-part on that?

And I shall believe

Are you singing it -- what are you singing?

- I shall believe

-What are you singing?

- I shall believe

-Sheryl is the voice of a generation

in the area of acknowledging flaw and heartbreak.

- Ah, ah, ah, ah

-We fell in love with her writing

because that was us, all of us.

- Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

Ah-ah-ah-ah

Music gave me a sense of self.

It gave me permission to talk about my feelings.

It's something that also can be a curse

when it comes to needing to produce,

needing for it not to just be good,

for it to be great.

-Sheryl has fierce work ethic.

It says a lot about her drive

with which she attacks

something that she's into artistically.

-It's complicated to be a woman in the music industry

because you have to work twice as hard.

You have to be twice as loud to make your voice heard.

- Never gonna give up, no

-Everything was gonna cost Sheryl.

What are you gonna sacrifice as a woman

to be allowed this?

-It's always hard to look back and talk about who you were,

'cause it's only who you think you were.

-Settle a bet for me now.

Did you ever do a McDonald's commercial?

-Oh, yeah, yeah. It's a good time...

For the great taste of McDonald's

-That was you. Oh, that was you.

-My hometown is in the boot heel of Missouri.

I was a music geek at a really young age.

I wanted to know who played on everything,

and I wanted to know what all the words were.

I can remember going into the living room

and turning the lights off and playing the piano.

And that was where I felt like I had found myself.

I went to the University of Missouri

just like my older sister did.

I majored in music -- piano performance

with a secondary in education.

When I got out of school, I got into a cover band.

I interviewed for several teaching jobs

and wound up in Rockwood School District,

which is public school system.

I was engaged.

I was engaged to the guitar player in the band

who is a born-again Christian, and so he's like,

"If you're not gonna sing for the Lord,

we can't be together."

It did not feel like

I was breaking any of the Commandments,

and I was just like, "I like singing in bands.

I like playing keyboards. I like pop music.

I like getting better at my instrument."

Anyway, that was the beginning of the end

of that relationship,

the first of three engagements.

There are certain things that you look at

in the story of your life.

Like, not everything in your life

is gonna be mapped out for you.

They are gonna be things that happen

that you wouldn't have been able to dream about.

It's a good time for the great taste of McDonald's

I wound up making in that 45 minutes of work

well over what I'd made in two years of teaching.

And when I got that commercial, I felt like,

you know, if I'm ever gonna go

and try to make a living as an artist,

I need to do it now while I'm not married

and have my life in front of me.

I went home on a Tuesday and told my parents,

"I'm moving to L.A."

And they said, "When?"

I said, "I'm leaving on Sunday."

So...

I mean, it's kind of psycho.

I think pulling into L.A. when the only city you've ever seen

is St. Louis is kind of inexplicable.

So I got a book of studios, working studios in L.A.,

and then I got a Thomas Guide

and I wrote out all the addresses

and just drove around all day

and took my cassette tape in the door

and I'd say, "I am Sheryl Crow.

I'm brand-new in town. I have this demo tape.

Can you please make sure that

somebody hears it or whatever?"

I mean, totally naive.

I took my music around, and people didn't want to know

about a female.

And this is -- this is pre-Tracy Chapman, right?

And I came out one day and there was a boot on my car,

and I couldn't afford to get the boot off,

so I lost my car.

And I was just like, "Oh, my God. Why am I here?

What have I done? How do I get back home?"

I got a waitress job in the Valley

at a place called Le Cafe,

and lots of musicians came through there.

One night I was working and this man, Les Hooper, was in,

and I was told that he was a commercial producer.

Snuck him a tape.

I knew there was a chance I'd get fired.

The next morning, I was let go.

But he listened to my tape.

He called and said, "I don't usually

listen to people's tapes

if they give them to me in a restaurant or something."

He's like, "It's really good. Would you come in?

And I've got a spot I'm gonna have you try on."

So then I started getting, like, little pieces

of work here and there.

I remember calling my parents and saying,

"I'm doing a Johnny Mathis recording session today."

And they're like, "That's great!

You can come home now.

You've made it."

I think I was on the last episode of "Cop Rock."

It was a detective show that was a musical,

if you can imagine.

He's just a squirrel waiting for a pretty girl

He'd like to have his way

There was, like, a dance routine and a song.

In fact, I think it might have already been canceled,

and this was the last one.

- Come and get it, hey

I got something for you

Come on, come and get it

-I had a four-track recorder.

I would come home from work,

and I would sit at that four-track,

and I would sing with Chaka Khan

and then I would sing with Ann Wilson.

I was just always trying to get my voice

to where I could sort of mimic

and also where I could kind of control it.

I would practice, and I would try to write

on my keyboard, I had a drum program.

I didn't have any air conditioning,

and people all night, like 00 in the morning --

"Can you shut the fuck up?"

But I just was driven, you know,

and then I would sleep till noon and I would go to work.

And then it just was a cycle

until the Michael Jackson tour.

I found out about the Michael Jackson audition,

snuck in, and auditioned.

I basically just looked into the camera and said,

"Hi, Michael, my name is Sheryl Crow.

I'm from Missouri.

I was a schoolteacher and I'm a singer."

-I remember auditioning Sheryl.

She was just a little perky kid

and with a high voice, you know,

and she was cool. She had a cool sound.

And I thought, okay, let's go with this.

-We got on an airplane, a 747,

which I'd never seen.

I'd never been out of the country.

We were fitted for costumes.

We were given a look.

Like, I had this great, big blond hair.

It's just one of those things that really doesn't hit you

until you begin rehearsing, again, getting your passport.

You sell your car. You get rid of your apartment.

And then all of a sudden, you find yourself

in front of 60,000 people.

I came up the Michael Jackson tour

with some of the most important...

relationships in my life.

-The first time I met Sheryl was in Japan.

I was working on the "Bad" tour in a funny capacity

as sort of a marketing liaison

between Pepsi and Michael's camp.

I think most people assumed I worked for Pepsi,

which I didn't,

I knew they would never hire a person like me.

I do recall a moment at soundcheck.

Sheryl took the mic, and I definitely did

a turnaround double take, and I was like, "Wow."

- Then tell me just what did I do?

-Somebody introduced me to Sheryl.

We became comfortable as friends, really.

-He and I just became very, very, very close.

And one of the reasons we were so close

was he just knew so much about every genre of music.

So he and I just became really great friends.

We continued that friendship after the Jackson tour,

and then he ultimately became my manager.

-Sheryl, Scooter, and myself, we hung out a lot.

We spent a lot of time together,

you know, away from the band

and everything, and she was always so curious,

wanted to learn everything,

wanted to learn guitar, keyboards.

-Greg would come over, and he would give me

his philosophies on building musical hooks,

and we did a bunch of writing together.

-Sheryl was focused on songwriting

and developing her palette

and where she wanted to go from the get-go.

She was always making music.

- Hurry, operator, get redemption on the line

I was invited to hang out in the "A" camp.

While we were in Tokyo, I got a phone call

from one of Michael's security guys saying,

"Hey, Mike wants you to come over

and watch a couple of movies."

I go over to Michael's hotel room.

We watch "Amos 'n' Andy," and then we watched "Shane,"

and he's giggling, and Bubbles is around.

When Bubbles wouldn't behave, he would take a ballpoint pen

and he'd, like, poke him in the chest

to get his attention and stuff.

I mean, it was like...

It was crazy.

-He did poke him with a BIC.

He just would do like, "Quit it."

You know, you read about chimps,

what they can do to a person.

-Yeah, I mean, even when I'm telling it,

I'm thinking this is the weirdest thing ever.

But I didn't ever really get to know him.

I was pretty naive,

but I still thought it was so weird that Michael had,

you know, a couple little boys

on the road with him at different times.

Now, knowing what is alleged,

it makes me sad for the life he had.

Obviously, it makes us all sad for the children.

It's just -- it's devastating to even think about.

-"I Just Can't Stop Loving You" was a big

duet moment in the tour.

Sheryl was put in that spotlight,

and she commanded it.

She belted it out nose-to-nose with Michael.

-She couldn't believe she had to walk out

in this tight miniskirt and wear these wigs

that were almost as big as she was.

You know, massive wig, you know, and all made up

and all dolled up in the heels and everything.

- When morning awakes me

Sometimes he'd really want it to look sexual,

you know, like, he'd grab my hip.

And by the end of that tour,

everywhere in all the tabloids,

I was gonna marry him, I was gonna have his baby.

-The tabloid aspect of the Jackson tour

was super extreme.

The press was saying that

Sheryl and Michael were a couple.

-I mean, please, you know?

You sing the duet, so obviously,

"Oh, then you must be seeing each other."

"No, we're singing a duet."

-Every article would be

so completely outlandish about me.

In hindsight, it probably was

planted with publicists and things.

- And if I stop

-I think the first time I spoke my mind, lyrically,

it was a song called "What I Can Do for You."

The song is really from the standpoint

of the sexual harasser, particularly in our business.

It was about my own experience with sexual harassment.

What I can do for you

There's no one else on God's green earth can do

There was a lot of interest

from Michael Jackson's manager to manage me.

This manager was signed to manage Michael specifically,

and only, so for him to manage me,

he would have been fired.

Now, I don't know anything

about how the music business works.

I know you get your songs to somebody

who either is a producer or is inside the record label,

or they come see you,

and then you worked really hard

and you were a really nice person

and you wrote good songs,

and then you made it or you didn't make it.

I have so much to offer

If you just be nice

If you do what I say and don't make me say it twice

He said, "This is what we're gonna be able to do.

We will guarantee

that the album will come out in the top 10

and the single will come out as well in the top 10."

Within a matter of a couple weeks,

any kind of event that was held,

I always had to go with Michael's manager,

and then the sexual harassment started

with his manager being, like, all over me,

and it was a constant battle of keeping him off of me.

-Frank was a gangster.

You know, let's not sugarcoat that.

I mean, he wasn't cast in the movie "Goodfellas"

by accident.

-She confided in me that there was pressure on her

to become more familiar with Frank

on levels that she was uncomfortable.

-I told the three backup singers

that I was working with what had happened,

and I was really terrified.

So I finally contacted a very high-powered music attorney,

and I said, "Look, I'm frightened.

I've already been told if I ever blow this cover

that I will never work again

and that I need to watch my back."

And then he ultimately, at the end of the meeting, said,

"Look, you will come out ahead if you can just stick it out."

And the last thing he said was that, "There are people

that would die to be in this situation."

And I just sunk into the darkest, most depressed place,

just the disappointment of the way the real world works.

And I was really destroyed.

What I can do for you

There's no one else, no one else

No one else gonna do for you

Just ask anybody

And they'll tell you that it's true

There's no one else on earth

Can do the things that I can do for you

Yeah, for you

-One day I was sitting in my office,

I got a call from Frank.

He said to me that he didn't like what she had to say

in one of her songs, and he said,

"Well, we're gonna sue you." And I said, "Go for it."

And I never heard from him again.

-When I got home from the Jackson tour

and after I kind of pulled myself together,

I auditioned for this band called Toy Matinee

that Kevin Gilbert was in,

and I got the part of keyboard player

and started dating Kevin, which is such a cliché.

But this guy was so talented.

So he invited me to this thing called

the Tuesday Night Music Club.

-What in the world is the Tuesday Night Music Club?

-A club of wild partiers

who all happen to be artists in L.A.

It was a pretty heady crowd.

I mean, it was a lot of drinking

and some guys dropping acid.

I mean, it was like freethinkers.

-Kevin Gilbert brought her in

to our Tuesday Night session very early on.

It was unbelievable.

Something of a higher order came together.

-I think the first session we did,

we wrote and recorded "Leaving Las Vegas."

-Sheryl took the lyric sheet and started singing.

She sat over on a chair over in the corner and sang it,

and she sang the shit out of it.

-I remember Bill saying to me, "I love your singing

when you're not trying to sing great."

-The diversity of her vocals, I mean, it's unbelievable.

She owns every song, owns every character.

When she sings and also when we write,

everything came to life.

-I think up until that point, there was not, like, a,

"We're making a record for this girl."

And then Bill started really managing the situation,

only letting people come in when needed.

And Kevin didn't like not being invited,

so that started to cause real friction,

and our relationship started deteriorating.

-I was in charge of getting it made

and curating it, if that's the word.

It's like a stew.

The other band guys -- they weren't there for that.

-We would drink a bunch,

we'd go to the bookstore down the road,

and we bought a poetry book by this man named Wyn Cooper.

And there was a poem in it first thing called "Fun."

It started off with, "All I want to do

is have a little fun before I die."

And so we had this groove going

that was somewhere between Stealers Wheel

and a Marvin Gaye track,

and I picked up the poetry book

and started just kind of free form,

All I wanna do is have a little fun before I die

Says a man next to me out of nowhere

And I just kind of acted out the poem.

And then we put this hook in --

All I wanna do

And that became the song.

All I wanna do is have some fun

I got a feeling I'm not the only one

Well, all I wanna do

By the end of the record, I was thinking, you know,

that song is really cool, but it's -- it's such a B-side

and it's so esoteric and so quirky.

We should just leave it off.

And Bill's like, "We can't leave it off."

And I was like, "Well, I got to contact this guy

and tell him we've used his poem."

So we looked for him. I called him.

I was like, "I know you don't know me.

We've used your poem.

We want to give you, you know, half the songwriting,

should the thing ever see the light of day."

And he's like, "Oh, that's great, that's great.

I like a good beer buzz early in the morning

And Billy likes to peel the labels

Off those bottles of Bud

The anniversary Woodstock in '94 was a game changer.

We came out and we played our hearts out,

and then suddenly we were being noticed.

-It's really quite a thing to witness.

It's like a match striking

and then somebody throwing oil on it.

It moves so fast you don't even know

what your next move is.

- Until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard

-All of a sudden you're hearing it, like,

in drugstores and grocery stores

and then magazines are talking about it.

Hairdressers are giving people the Sheryl Crow curls.

The song was everywhere.

- All I wanna do is have some fun

-Oh!

-There's a moment when a hit song

takes on its own life.

It becomes bigger than the song

and sometimes bigger than the artist.

And that's definitely something to watch out for,

especially on your first album.

-They put "Leaving Las Vegas" out

and it started to have traction.

We started to get some TV, and I got David Letterman.

-Now, this right here, kids, is her debut CD entitled

"Tuesday Night Music Club."

Making her first appearance with us,

here's Sheryl Crow.

Sheryl, come on out.

Life springs eternal

On a gaudy neon street

Not that I care at all

Now I'm...

You know, you grow up and you watch TV,

and you see Ed Sullivan and you see Dick Clark

and he's interviewing people and stuff.

And that's TV, you know,

and then all of a sudden you're on TV.

I'm leaving Las Vegas

David Letterman, who was really the first person

to have me on national TV,

who had kind of discovered the record on his own

driving back and forth to his house in Connecticut,

said, you know, "Come over and talk to me,"

and, you know, it was Dave Letterman.

-Nice to see you. Thanks for being here.

-Thank you. -Have a seat there.

The crowd goes crazy. -Whaa!

He said, "So what is this song?

Is this thing autobiographical?"

And I'm so nervous, I'm like, "Well, I mean, kind of."

-I'm guessing -- and I think I know the answer to this --

that song in some way must be autobiographical.

Is that correct? -Uh, yes.

-Which is a stupid question for a guy like him.

It's like, it's a character sung by Sheryl Crow.

This is a little complicated to describe, right?

So she said, "Yeah."

Well, you know...

-I've never lived there. -You never lived in Las Vegas.

-No, I haven't. -You worked there?

-Haven't really worked there either.

-Have you ever been there?

-Yes, I've lost a lot of money there.

-Could you find it on a map? -Yes.

I wasn't prepared for how overwhelming

it would feel to have somebody that I had watched on TV

ask me questions.

Originally, the song was very metaphorical for Los Angeles,

that people move there with these great dreams

and they wind up being very disillusioned.

And so that's what Las Vegas seems to exemplify.

-Then why didn't you call the song

"I'm Leaving Los Angeles"?

In fact, every major American city --

"I'm Leaving Minneapolis."

"I'm Leaving Milwaukee."

-Milwaukee's a good one, yeah.

"I'm Leaving New York"... shortly.

-No.

-Yes, if I could go back and do it again,

certainly I would feel my feet

and I would try to put myself in my body and I would say,

"You know, what a great experience being in a room

with all these incredible, intellectual people

and being able to jam a song out

and put together lyrics together."

And, you know, I could have told that story, you know,

but I couldn't think.

-The drama that followed -- it was a shit show.

-And I came home the next day to just a massive blow-up

of the guys in the group saying,

"She's taken totally credit for it."

And then come to find out that there had been a book

called "Leaving Las Vegas."

And the title was brought in to us

by one of the guys in the Tuesday Night Music Club.

And he had said we had promised the writer,

John O'Brien, publishing,

and that I was fully aware of it.

And after David Letterman, the author committed suicide.

And...

I just...

I mean, I just went into a hole.

I -- I just went into a hole.

-The press unfairly cast her as the bad guy,

and she carried that weight for a long time.

-It's that good-girl thing where you're just like,

"I would never hurt anybody.

I would never want anybody to be hurt."

And then it's all of that, you know.

It all ties into...

you know, work hard, be a good person.

And then you just -- all of a sudden,

you just wake up and you're --

wake up and you realize, wow.

What happened? So...

Can we just take a break for a second?

Picking up an "L.A. Weekly" and seeing an interview

with the person that was in Tuesday Night Music Club,

and to read it in print and to see the lies --

it changed me.

-I never supported that narrative.

The press wants a drama.

-It took that little, innocent, young person

that was on David Letterman

and made me not want to be accessible anymore.

-And the Best New Artist is...

-Sheryl Crow.

-At that point, there was quite a lot of friction

with the Tuesday Night Music Club.

And I remember looking out and seeing them

and not feeling the happiness or the pride.

But nonetheless, they were there,

and just how self-conscious I felt.

Most importantly, I want to thank Bill Bottrell,

who helped me make this record,

and all the artists I've been very inspired by --

David Baerwald, David Ricketts, Kevin Gilbert.

Wyn Cooper, who actually came up with

"All I wanna do is have some fun."

Most importantly, though, I want to thank my manager,

who's a first-time manager who's been working for

no money up until now for me.

He's my best friend. His name's Scooter.

And he really deserves this.

By the end of the night,

the last award -- it's the biggest award.

You're up against Bruce Springsteen.

I was not thinking that I was gonna win.

-And the Record of the Year is...

..."All I Wanna Do," Sheryl Crow.

- All I wanna do

Bill was very consistent with who he was

when we made the record.

We accepted the Grammys together

and it was a celebration.

I mean, it really was. And that changed everything.

As soon as that record won Record of the Year,

Best New Artist, Song of the Year,

our record sales doubled.

-Sheryl was working 24/7 --

videos, interviews, concerts.

It was just never-ending.

-The irony of it was, though,

we hadn't seen any money from it.

My manager was still working out of his closet

across the hall from his apartment,

and I was still driving an old Volkswagen.

Volkswagen.

-Sheryl and I would share a hotel room.

I would get up at 00 in the morning,

go down to the lobby,

and have my calling card in the phone booth.

And that was that.

And then if, like, I had a girlfriend and she'd call

or Sheryl was dating somebody and they'd call,

we would kind of make believe, like,

"Oh, let me see if she's here,"

and then count 10 seconds and hand the phone over.

-Those were awesome days.

I mean, you know, you got off stage,

you hung out with your band,

played music, drank some beers,

crawled into bed, and woke up the next morning,

did press all day, soundcheck, gig,

drink some beers, watch a movie, go back to bed.

It was like the same thing on repeat.

We finally got a tour bus,

and that was, like, the biggest day ever.

Come back, come back. This one down here is mine.

So you can see you have the necessary tools --

leather hat, Pumas,

and a curling iron, of course, and other things

that we don't have to really get into, do we?

Ha, ha!

It was a pink bus and it had a tilted champagne glass

with little droplets, and whenever people would yell,

"Who's in the tour bus?" we'd always yell,

"Dolly Parton!"

I got a dog named Scout.

I adopted him.

It's Scout!

And he went on every tour,

with the exception of overseas, for 13 years.

Ah, happiness.

-I remember driving down Sunset and seeing her name

on the marquee of the Whiskey.

Like, "Oh, man, she did it!

She did it! Wow, this is crazy."

- Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, run

Run baby, run baby, run baby, run

Run baby, run baby, run baby, run baby

Run

Run baby, run baby, run baby, run baby

Run

Gotta keep on running, run

Run baby

We were in France,

which was where my record was doing really well.

00 in the morning, I get a call from Mick Jagger

asking me if I would come

and do their pay-per-view with them in Miami.

And they were gonna send a private jet,

which I'd never seen a private jet.

And I got over there, and Keith came over

and put his arm around me, and, "Hey, little sister,"

which he has called me ever since.

-I had known something about Sheryl.

I had heard her records.

What a great voice, you know, really, you know, strong.

-We rehearsed it. It went fine.

The next day I got up, I threw up all day long.

I was totally terrified.

I get ready. I go over there.

I'm telling Scooter, "I just don't think I can do this."

-She's flown a long way to get here.

I'm hoping she's got over her jet lag.

-And right before I was walking out,

as Mick was announcing me,

Bobby Keys handed me some tequila and said,

"Take a shot of courage," and pushed me out.

-I wish her luck. Beautiful Miss Sheryl Crow.

I got nasty habits

I take tea at three

With the meat I eat for dinner

I must be hung up for a week

-She would very well handle Mick Jagger, you know.

To me, just standing in the back going...

"Wow, this girl's strong, you know?

She's not putting up with any of his bullshit."

- Don'cha think there's a place for us

Right across the street?

Don'cha think there's a place for you

In between the sheets?

- Yeah -She was very strong girl.

Later on, a very genuine girl.

In a way, very sensitive and very sweet, you know.

But there's a lot of tough in there,

and, you know, which is a good mixture.

-I went home, and Bill and I decided we'd get together

and write, and we drank martinis

and went out for a great dinner and did some writing,

and then we decided we would go to New Orleans

to make our record.

The first record had sold like five or six million copies,

and we headed down to Kingsway with this immense amount

of pressure for the sophomore record

to live up to the first record.

You know, that word "potential,"

how it can be so negative.

Like, "You have such potential."

It's almost like, "Man, you could really blow it."

What potential, you know?

Our first day at Kingsway was kind of quirky.

We get there, and this woman rolls out from under the board

on, like, an automobile caddy on her back

with goggles and a soldering iron.

So we thought, well, that doesn't bode well

for the beautiful new console.

We're kind of just getting,

you know, acclimated to the place.

And as this woman was leaving, she kind of scolded Bill

about putting his drink on the console.

And so immediately it was like,

"Mm. This is a weird way to start."

-I do have a very vague memory

of asking whoever it was

that was on the other side of the console

to remove their beverage from the console

because it's inappropriate, and everybody knows that.

-I think we spent the day in there

kind of messing around,

and more things didn't work than did.

-Daniel Lanois built the studio.

I swear he threw half of it together

before we got there, you know?

-They think the studio sucks. Nothing's working.

The gear won't work if you're mad at it.

-We're trying to work, and it's Sheryl's got this,

"Yeah, but" attitude.

-We broke and went to dinner and once again had some wine.

And the next morning I woke up with a headache

and no producer.

-I'm like, "I don't belong here."

And I got on a plane and came home.

-I was there and had booked the studio and was panicked.

I called Scooter.

-Sheryl said, "Bill has left. He's done.

He's not -- he's not gonna work on the record."

It was a frightening moment for her.

And he said, "Why don't you call Jeff

and see if he's interested in coming down."

The guitar player Jeff Trott,

I didn't really know very well.

He played a little like an '80s take

on Keith Richards, if you will.

-I get this call, like, really super early in the morning,

and it's Sheryl.

She's like, "Well, hey,

what are you -- what are you up to?"

And I said, "Well, you know, exciting news.

I'm going on the road with The Wallflowers."

And there was complete silence.

And then she comes back with...

-I don't think there's probably a chance in the world

you will consider this,

but would you come to New Orleans

and help me make my second record?

-So she sort of put it to me, you know,

"Well, would you prefer

playing cover songs with your friends

or maybe recording songs that you have written with me

for my record?"

So check this out.

-Oh, my gosh.

Look at your cute little shag haircut.

-The shag.

-Why did you have a trombone there?

-I have no idea,

-"Brian the cloud." -The cloud.

We called Brian MacLeod, our favorite drummer.

First thing we did was we named Kingsway

"Dan's Lamps and Things"

because there was, like, all kinds of

beautiful antiques everywhere,

gorgeous lamps and big wooden baronial beds.

And, you know, it was just the most romantic place.

Our engineer was Trina Shoemaker.

She wasn't just good for a girl.

She was just good.

-For me, I have a unusual love of the equipment,

almost indecent.

It's the constant in my life. I go to the gear for comfort.

It replaced, in many cases, personal relationships.

-She's a brilliant engineer.

She also emotionally bonded with Sheryl.

She was a strong female artist in her own right,

and they kind of powered through together.

-That's what Trina looked like to me.

-Yeah. -And she'd be looking up.

-What was it for us two young women trying to duke it out?

And I think, well, of course she kept me near

because I was like her. I was alone.

No husband, no kids, no family nearby.

Bold, willing to fight,

literally willing to, like, punch people.

I wanted to protect her,

and I think that helped a little bit from time to time.

And she liked me for that.

-Kingsway just felt like a safe place.

I could close the door,

and there really wasn't anything left over

from the first album,

the pressure of people thinking, "Okay, well,

let's see what she does, because from what we hear,

a whole set of guys wrote the record

and she was barely there."

I'd stop reading any reviews, anything like that.

I had just quietened everything.

Change

- A change would do you good

- Would do you good

- A change would do you good

- I think a change

- A change would do you good

- Would do you good

- A change would do you good

-That record was magnificent, everything about it.

It then raised her to say,

"You are a producer, you are a record maker.

You are a decision maker. You're a writer.

You're a player."

I was just so happy for her

'cause all I just kept thinking is, "You did it."

-Sheryl set out, wrote the songs,

produced the record, created the next step

of her musical vision completely on her own.

- A change

- A change would do you good

Would do you good

- A change would do you good

-Sheryl! Sheryl! - A change

-Give us some play! -Sheryl, turn your head.

- Would do you good - Do you good

- A change would do you good

-You can point to a lot of women

who've had commercial success

in the pop world as a singer, as an artist.

But, you know, there's not a lot of producers,

not a lot of engineers.

I mean, if she was a man,

people would talk about her like Prince.

I mean, Prince loved her.

- Every day is a winding road

- Road, mm

- I get a little bit closer

- Ah, ah

- Every day is a faded sign

- Yeah

Sheryl Crow, y'all.

- I get a little...

-Take five.

-Hi, everybody in Kennett and everywhere around Kennett,

whoever's seeing this.

Scout and I just want to wish you guys

a Happy Christmas, Happy New Year.

And we'll see you around the holidays.

-There are so many things

that have happened to us in our lives

since Sheryl has become so well-known

that it's kind of hard to separate

the real and the unreal,

and it's just flabbergasting.

I mean, you're -- whew!

-Hey, thanks for bringing your mom and dad.

I love meeting people's parents.

-My mom and dad are here! -There's mom and dad.

There they are, right there.

-I taught piano lessons, and I had students

come into the house all the time.

-We had three pianos and an organ in that house,

and they would practice and she'd be cooking,

and she would scream out to one of them,

"That's not a B! That's a B-flat!"

or something of that nature.

-I was always getting bested, you know?

"That's James Taylor. That is not your lesson."

They were into swing band.

In fact, they had a swing band.

They would come home on the weekends

and bring their friends.

-We had a book, I believe, of 400 songs.

-This is Sheryl.

And this is Sheryl.

Sheryl.

Now, you can tell who's getting the lion's share

of the pictures right now.

Here we go.

Karen, Sheryl, and Kathy.

And our youngest child is Steve.

-I remember all three of us girls sleeping on the stairs

so we could hear them playing music

and dancing and smoking and drinking,

and we just wanted to be, you know, a part of it.

-That must have had a big influence on you,

all those things that, like -- -Yeah, definitely.

In fact, they started me on piano about the age of five,

and they were the kind of parents that said,

"Oh, play that little thing for all of our friends."

So that's how I wound up where it am.

-It worked. It worked, you see.

- Back on gold dust...

-And so I dug more into music.

- Take yourself...

-I started getting into records

that started to give me a vision of me as a person,

and that was the James Taylor stuff

and the Carole King,

Stevie Wonder and Fleetwood Mac.

I wanted to be in the room with those people,

and that was what was interesting to me

was why things would sound the way they would sound.

And it was then that I started to feel like,

okay, these are my people

and I'm supposed to be on that train.

"Love is a Good Thing" was a song that I wrote

that was, you know, taken from the headlines.

-Now, Walmart says it won't sell her newest album,

and fans like Lane Benson don't like it.

-I really don't like it. I don't --

I don't like Walmart telling me what to do.

-It is the nation's largest retailer.

One record industry executive estimates

Crow stands to lose at least 400,000 album sales.

-Well, they'll probably have to go out of town for it.

Mm-hmm. -What do you think about that?

-Well, I hate for our people here

to be inconvenienced that way,

but I feel sure they'll get it.

-For somebody like me who grew up in a small town,

that's the only place you can buy a record.

And so to be given the choice, "We will not carry it,

or you can change it to Kmart and we'll carry it" --

that, I think, actually fueled my conviction even more.

I was like, "Well, wait a minute.

You can't have it both ways."

-We are not telling Sheryl Crow

she cannot sell the song

and make it available to others.

We're just saying that Walmart itself

will not sell the product."

-May have to come all the way to Memphis to get that CD.

-All they wanted to do was just have some fun.

-It was the first time I ever experienced

anything like that and realized,

Oh, there is importance to music.

There's importance to speaking the truth.

And some people are not gonna like that.

And that's something you just have to get used to.

-At any chance that we feel

we can use our music to give back,

we are not only happy to do it,

we actually almost hunger to do it

so that you can feel that your music

is not just for your own pleasure

and hopefully that your words, your songs,

will also touch a chord into people

to increase their empathy and their humanity.

The Lilith Fair tour was really eye-opening

for so many of us women out there making music

'cause I think we'd been out there in our tour busses

with our bands traveling around, you know,

like, in space, in outer space,

in our own little rocket ships.

And all of a sudden we all landed in this one place

and we came off our busses

and we were actually finally able to meet,

and you realized that there was a sisterhood out there.

-By 1996, there were quite a few more females

that were getting played at radio.

One of them was Alanis Morissette,

Aimee Mann, and another was Sarah McLachlan.

- I'd no longer be in your mind

The difficult kind but you won't see

-I remember vividly Sarah McLachlan

calling me and saying,

"Have you ever tried to have someone open up for you

that's a woman? The promoters are saying

you can't have more than one woman on a bill,

and I'm going to disprove them."

-Now, some business types said, "Oh, that'll never work.

Nobody will buy tickets to all women all summer long."

Well, 20,000 people showed up today,

and the Lilith Fair will visit 35 cities.

-It was just women who commercially do well.

We run our businesses. We make money.

So why are you men deciding what can and can't be?

But what you don't think about is the kid that's out there

in the audience looking at that and going,

"I can do that.

I can get up and play guitar

and have a band behind me and be the boss."

-Tell you what.

I was out there all the way up there on that hill

in Lilith Fair when I saw Sheryl Crow play here

two nights in a row.

It honestly changed my life,

and I would not be the artist that I am without Sheryl Crow

and the influence that she's had on me.

And then to get to a place where she's kind enough

to be my friend and give me advice

and teach me things and sing with me --

I can't even get my head around it.

-I just was astounded that she was so rock and roll.

And you never questioned

whether or not Sheryl was the boss,

and I was so drawn to that --

you know, as a young woman, so influenced by it.

Seeing her play the bass, you know, I'll never forget,

like, picking up that bass guitar and, like,

telling the guy I was in a band with,

"Yeah, I played bass" --

Because I had to learn the "Leaving Las Vegas"

bass line,

and just thinking, like,

"Yeah, this is it, this is what I want to do,

I want to front a band like this

and I want to have an electric guitar

and I want to play bass and I want to be a rock star

like Sheryl Crow."

-I think we should give it up to Sarah

for putting this whole thing together.

Anywhere where people are comfortable with who they are,

even on the Lilith Fair, you could look out

and you would see families out there,

and you would see girls and their moms,

and you would see a lot of lesbians.

-I like that about Sheryl so much,

that she holds her space.

She's straight as an arrow, but God,

the lesbians love Sheryl.

She's important to queer people,

and when you're important to queer people,

it means you're on the cutting edge of the real shit

of what's really going on.

-After that tour, which had been really successful

and really fun, I came home to L.A.

and I was engaged with a casting director,

somebody I met on the "Leaving Las Vegas" video.

-This is the young man that Sheryl was engaged to.

-That was back in, uh...

-That was in 1995.

Can you maybe turn that off?

-I was just starting my career,

and it was starting to take off,

and it's really difficult for someone to sort of be

swept up in that and still keep their sense of self.

We were just better as friends; in fact,

by the time we got engaged, I feel like we probably

were pulling apart.

I'd been gone for so long.

I did have a couple of songs on the "Sheryl Crow" record

that were inspired by our relationship

becoming more platonic.

I woke this morning, now I understand

What it means to give your life to just one man

Afraid of feeling nothing, no bees or butterflies

My head is full of questions and my house is full of lies

And this is home

Home

This is home

I think part of my pull is always that

I really like the... the hang,

I like the camaraderie with the guys,

and part of me is like,

I don't want to miss out on that.

So I decided I would just...

pick up and move to New York and change my scenery.

And you can probably see a pattern here.

Somebody said you gotta get away

Don't wanna go back home again

I set up a studio in the Meatpacking District.

I mean, it was just a very colorful neighborhood.

-It was warehouses and butchers

and carcasses hanging.

You could smell the blood on the streets.

-Jeff and I started working with Trina

in a studio that we set up

in this building called The Globe.

-She had bought all this equipment.

It hadn't seasoned into the room yet.

It takes a little while for gear to get comfortable

and bugs to get worked out,

yet we were going forward and cutting a record there.

Antigone laid across the road

-Now the celebrity is locked in,

I mean, the celebrity machine, not the human being,

so now she's really got to deliver.

It's laughter that comes up when I cry for you

And this heart may love again before it learns

"Globe Sessions," of all the records,

was the most kind of pure,

I don't want to say, like, barfing out,

but I mean, everything was so close to the surface,

so immediate.

I've gotten used to crash and burn

Yes, I've gotten used to the crash and burn

A lot of that came out,

particularly in "Difficult Kind"

and definitely in "Crash and Burn" --

I mean, both of those songs, which I feel like

are kind of sister songs,

talk about somebody who's not that easy

to have a relationship with,

who is highly sensitive and highly emotional

and super tough and strong;

and the other aspect of being with someone

who has the job that I have is I'm just not around very much.

-There is a price to be paid for being gone all the time.

Obviously, I felt like it was worth it

because I'm still out here, but, you know,

it is difficult to stay away from home

so many times and so long.

-All I can say is I'm single

and I've been single a long time,

and that has got to be, you know,

the tour bus -- my relationship with the road,

you know, it -- it is difficult,

it's a lot to ask for,

you know, to ask somebody to stay home and wait.

-We were both at this,

like, massive transition in our lives,

figuring out who we were,

what we wanted in life, and Sheryl's like,

"Oh, well, you should just move in!"

Like, "Why -- why are we spending so little time

together by going to dinner four nights a week?"

So I lived with Sheryl.

She might be the friend

that I've spent the most time watching her work.

We went on the ride together.

- Ooh

-And the best rock album is...

"The Globe Sessions," Sheryl Crow.

- Ooh

Ooh

Did you know when you go it's the perfect ending

To the bad day I've gotten used to spending

When you go all I know is

You're my favorite mistake

You're my favorite mistake

-A person is not a celebrity, a person is a person,

celebrity' a machine that gets hungry and it has to feed.

-Sorry, let me get .

-Yes! Oh, wow.

-Yeah, you're going to get hit up quite a bit on the way out.

-Here you go. -Thanks so much.

-Who's this for?

-It's, uh, for Julie.

-I was born into this industry,

and you would think I'd seen so much of it.

But being an iconic rock star?

It's a whole other thing.

-Fame is not natural,

and it is also a very energetic experience

where people are projecting their energy at you.

-There's hero worship,

and there's, you know...

idolizing.

But, you know, also projecting trauma

and all kinds of stuff.

-Her music is so powerful.

It just touches you.

It helped me get through a lot of things in my life:

coming out, getting off drugs.

You know, it's -- it's just incredible.

-Imagine every time you step out of your house,

people stop to look at you --

every time.

And people smile at you and they want to be with you,

and they tell you how great you are --

every time!

It does something to you, messes with you!

-And then you're going to have this thing where,

okay, you're in magazines,

and you're invited to perform on that,

and you're nominated for that,

and then you're not nominated anymore,

and then you're not in magazines,

and you're not at that party.

And who am I?

And, well, what do I need to do to get back to that?

-A lot of non-musical things come along with success

that you didn't know was part of the package.

And it knocks you off what you were doing in the first place.

And it can take years to navigate through that.

And some people never get it figured out.

They crash and burn.

-It's not natural,

and it doesn't have anything to do

with being good or being bad,

and it doesn't anything to do with the quality of your work.

I-it's just a giant mind-fuck.

Steve McQueen

Underneath your radar screen

You'll never catch me today

No

But I think people come to see you for a lot of reasons.

They want to feel some kind of emotion.

They want to forget about what's going on

in their immediate life

for just a couple of hours,

and there's a gift and a responsibility in that for me.

-With Sheryl, there's always two sides to it.

The struggle to make something great and the pressure

and her own perfectionism

or strive for that thing she wants is always in there.

-This is what I want to do.

Okay, this is what I want to do.

I want to cancel a week of shows.

Okay, you got to hear me out.

We're in a situation here

where I don't want to do any more bad shows.

We need to get another lighting system in here.

On stage the screen is overpowering us.

I'm out front. It looks ridiculous.

I don't want to do any more half-assed touring.

I worked my ass off,

and the band is great and I have a great crew.

The only thing holding us back is the production.

And I want it to stop.

Crazy hollow frequency .

I'm getting --

-Music for Sheryl,

I'm not always sure that she enjoyed it.

I think that she had, like, a possession with it

that dominated her entire life,

put the celebrity on her shoulders,

and nearly crushed her.

-I-I -- I'm not -- I'm not discounting the stuff

that made it all happen and all that.

But you're killing yourself here.

I -- you're right about why it fucked you up and all that.

-But you work --

-I know that.

But -- but draw the line, is what I'm saying.

It was fucked up; the lights, it fucked your head up

and all that, but you were pretty brilliant.

Around the turn of the century, Interscope Records,

which was run by Jimmy Iovine and Tom Whalley,

took over A&M Records.

They absorbed them.

-At Interscope,

I was working with Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg; we had Tupac,

we had No Doubt; also 4 Non Blondes,

Primus and Helmet.

-I suddenly went from

having a relationship with a record label

to being one of a bunch of artists,

and I have a new record.

-The trick is not just having a hit record,

the trick is not having a really credible record;

the trick is both.

-As I look back and I think about making records

where you go in empty-handed

and you write and record as you go,

it was really, really successful

for the first, like, three records,

and then the wear and tear of coming off the road,

being tired, not really having had many life experiences,

and then going into the studio and just sitting there

and going, "Okay, what am I going to write about?"

The boat ran aground.

And then it was just a source of glaring frustration.

-One summer, we wrote 40 or 50 song ideas,

and she was just having a really --

a rough patch of, you know,

"Hey, I don't have anything important to say,

I don't know what to say."

-Tonight you go where?

You open up for a young new guy?

-I open up for a beginning up-and-comer, Bob Dylan.

-Bob Dylan. -Bob Dylan offered

his friendship, just said, "You know, I think you're

going to be around for a long time,

if you ever need anything, give me a shout."

So I call him and I say,

"I'm really having trouble finishing anything.

I-I can't seem to finish a song, I mean,

I feel like I've been doing this for like eight months

and not finishing anything,"

and he's like, "Ooh, that's bad."

And I'm thinking, Oh, gosh. And then I said,

"Well, I heard that you had had writer's block.

So I wanted to call you and pick your brains."

"No, I never have," and I'm thinking, Oh, no!

-You have a certain instinct

and a certain amount of training

and a certain type of impact of the song

you're looking for; you have to hope the person

you're standing next to writes it.

-He came in and out, which I really wasn't used to.

I wasn't used to having anybody

coming in and out of the studio

while I was producing and working.

-I lived in a recording studio my whole life,

so I can go down to the studio,

and that was an advantage that I had

because I understand the language really well.

-He had suggestions, some of which I used

and some of which I didn't.

-Sheryl I was in New York and she said,

"Well, like, you know, can you just jump on a plane

and come out here and let's just -- let's just do this."

And I was playing around with this idea of being...

uh, soaking wet

and wanting -- wanting sun, you know,

"hey, I'm going to go to New York

and soak up some sun."

I thought, "'Soak up the sun' sounds like a good."

- Wanna tell them that I

Got no one to blame

Every time I feel lame

I'm looking up

-So I had five hours from Portland to New York.

I carried the chorus in my head

for the duration -- for that five hours.

Go to Sheryl's house,

I said, "Well, I have an idea. I don't know if it's really...

It might be too poppy for you."

She's like, "Okay, well, yeah, let's write it."

- I'm gonna soak up the sun

I'm gonna tell everyone to lighten up

Jimmy would sit at the desk

and he'd keep his BlackBerry under the desk

while he was listening, and I just was like,

"Okay, you can't -- you can't really get into it

when you're like, "Mm, what's, uh,

what's going on with Dre, and..." you know?!

So I sit at the door

and I texted him from my BlackBerry,

and said, "Would you put that damn thing down!"

And he -- he looked up and he was like...

-I'm sure we had some up-downs, some down days.

The bottom line is,

all you have left in the end is the record,

and that's a great record.

- So I can rock on

-A record would be finished, and we'd hand it in,

and Jimmy would say,

"It's great, I need another one."

-I'm the kind of person that just says,

"Let's keep going till it's right and don't stop."

When I was making "C'mon, C'mon,"

I was having real bouts of depression,

just real low lows, and I..

I didn't really know why.

-Are you going to stop touring anytime soon

and just kind of relax?

-When I die. -No?

I...

Gonna soak up the sun --

-I'm not getting weird, I just want one autograph.

- I wanna soak up the sun

Got my 45 on so I

I can rock on

-This record is filled with big choruses

and hit-oriented rock songs like "Steve McQueen,"

and "You're an Original," and "Soak Up the Sun,"

and there is this little short piece

called "Weather Channel."

It's sort of a focal point of the record for me.

-I remember my dad tellin' me about Winston Churchill

and how he really suffered

from really bad bouts of depression

and how he called it "the black dog."

And this is the song that I don't really remember

recording or... or writing,

but the black dog makes his appearance,

so I'm assuming I was in a pretty dark state.

I had a gig in Boston and got to Boston,

and I called my manager, and I said, "I can't move,

I can't leave the room, I just can't."

I just couldn't -- I couldn't find my way out.

Sunny mornin'

You can hear it

Sirens warning

There is weather on

Both sides

I hear it coming

I remember saying to Scooter,

"I feel like I need to go somewhere,

but I can't face the press."

He said, "Stay where you are, I'm coming to get you."

Just like before

There's a black dog that

Scratches my door

He's been growling my name

Sayin'

You better get to running

-She called me and said, "I can't do this."

She was really depressed; it was overwhelming.

I think the highs and lows of being an artist

that's been riding this level of success

for a while can be very, um...

suffocating.

- Can you make it

Better for me?

Can you maybe see the light of day?

'Cause I got no one

Who will bring me a big umbrella

While I'm watching The Weather Channel and

I'm waiting for the storm

I can remember talking to Scooter on the phone

and saying, "If I had the energy

to get up and run across my loft

and throw myself out the window, I would,

but I don't even --

I don't know that I even care that much."

You know, stuff that didn't feel characteristic

of my outlook on life.

That was when it got kind of worrisome.

But I don't feel so human

-Levon Helm used to say,

"Girl, I'll guard your gun side."

That's what I have in my manager.

He completely guarded my gun side.

However he did it, I could walk into Mount Sinai

with an appointment with someone

and get it together over a period of,

you know, quite a few months.

-The handful of times I've gotten those phone calls

when she's having a rough time,

it caused a lot of anxiety in me.

But I know my position here is to help her through it

and to be kind of foundational.

It's more than just a business with her and I,

way more, so I try to make her understand

she's heard and safe and it will pass.

- You won't want me

Standing around the birthday pony

Even though it's just a game

You know we are the same

But you're the better faker

Just a little happy song about...

suicidal tendencies.

-I first heard the song,

"Are you strong enough to be my man,"

I didn't hear it on the radio, I saw it on a video.

Sheryl came on and she sings this song

and I thought, for women like Sheryl and I,

who have this extreme kind of career,

every time we meet a new nice man,

it crosses our mind: Are you strong enough

to possibly deal with our incredibly odd life, right?

-So true.

-And so from that moment onward,

I thought, you know, this is a great song

for any women that have, like, extreme careers.

-Yeah -- and I couldn't have said that better.

God, I feel like hell tonight

Tears of rage I cannot lie

Be the last to help you understand

Are you strong enough to be my man?

My man

I was in the middle of being on the road

and making records and decided that this was

a relationship I really wanted to give my time to.

And the first year it was fantastic

and I was ready to get married.

I was ready to have a life!

It does get complicated, though,

when you have to dim your light

to be in somebody else's life.

Nothing's true and nothing's right

So let me be alone tonight

-You know, you have a super sensitive artist

and a super alpha powerful athlete.

Lance's view is, "I'm going to win at all costs,"

which he did.

And Sheryl's

not like that in the same way.

-To put everything in my life aside

in order to nurture that,

it wasn't a healthy situation for me.

And then there was what all was going on

in his racing life,

and that was hard for me.

It was hard for everyone around.

-French investigators are still looking

at the team's blood samples.

-A guy who comes back from arguably,

you know, a death sentence.

Why would I then enter into a sport and dope myself up

and risk my life again? That's crazy!

I would never do that! That's -- no.

No way.

- Lie to me

I promise I'll believe

The urine samples were all coming out.

It was a nightmare,

and I think we'd had a giant blow up

and then within a couple of days,

this five- or six-carat diamond showed up.

And you know, sadly, that's what I wanted,

but I didn't want it like that.

You know, I didn't -- I didn't want it like that.

We split up and then, "Oh, for God's sakes,

have a mammogram scheduled, last thing I want to do,"

but I go and do it,

and they find some suspect calcifications

and say, "Come back in six months

and we'll look at it again."

And my gynecologist called and said,

"You may as well find out what this is

because waiting six months could be the difference

in Stage I or Stage II."

And I went in and had a needle biopsy,

was not really thinking about it --

I was thinking about a lot of other things.

-Well, it was the worst thing

that's ever happened in our family.

Now you talk about something that was just

incredible, unreal.

That was it -- a phone call around dinnertime at night,

that she's been diagnosed with cancer.

And you don't have any idea of...

what the outcome is,

what the degree of it is.

You have this horrible feeling everything's going to

come crashing down.

-When I was diagnosed with breast cancer,

there was just stuff swirling around everywhere in the news,

and the press, and having been a "likable" artist,

people were rooting for me and then there were also --

there was a lot of fear being projected at me like,

"Oh, my God, if it can happen to her and she's so healthy,

it could happen to me," and people praying,

and then people that didn't like me like,

"Well, that's what she gets," and even my relationship

with what I felt like was humanity at large,

the craving to see pictures of me at my worst --

I was pissed.

I mean, I get -- I feel how pissed I was

when I even talk about it.

I just was like, "What the eff

just happened to my life?"

And I felt like I didn't deserve it.

-You know, we were so involved in it together with her.

It just looked like the end of something.

-I went with her parents and sister

to a couple of the first meetings with the oncologist

and the whole team.

And then I had to go do the business part of it --

cancel the tours and take everything off the calendar

and just start to pray and support.

-When you are diagnosed,

all your dreams and everything is over.

It's the end.

That's what you're faced with.

My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.

It's beyond traumatic.

It's such a terrifying situation.

-It sort of dictates that everybody figure out

where they are with that person,

like how do I help you, how do I fix this?

And it's just not fixable.

-I always didn't look over there --

at cancer -- because...

it was too much of a big, scary monster.

But what Sheryl taught my wife

was that you have to get educated.

You have to learn about it.

And then you can deal with it.

-I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today

on the Breast Cancer Environmental Research Act.

As a breast cancer survivor and advocate,

I am very passionate about getting

this bill enacted this year.

-Sheryl gave my wife so much guidance.

Up here.

Sheryl is a survivor.

-I have no idea why I got breast cancer,

but what I do know is we need more resources

into figuring out what the environment has to

do with breast cancer.

-The first thing she did

was let a group of us in,

in a really deep and intimate way.

I've had very few friends

who've let me in when they needed me most.

She really did.

She gave me the opportunity to love her.

-I had this incredible tribe of women around me

that swept in

and carried me on their shoulders.

And when I was done,

they were there to get me back on my feet

and to get me back to who I wanted to be.

And I think women do that.

What do I do with this sweet love of mine?

Do I give it away

And hope some day I'll find

Someone half as awake

As the moon and the stars

Mother, teach me to love

With a paper-thin heart

When I came out of radiation,

I was sitting with my mom and I was saying, you know,

there -- there are things that I really had hoped

in my life I would have,

and I wanted to be a mom.

I wanted to be a mom like my mom was.

-She was lamenting about her life going on

and not ever having a family and not having any children,

and that was one of the worst things

about the predicament she was in.

-I had this story in my head about what that looked like,

you know, that looked like, you fall in love with someone,

you get married, you know, you buy a house,

you save your money, you have children,

blah-blah-blah -- like what I was raised with.

-She was miserably unhappy, she's been treated for cancer,

and now she faces that she'll never have any children.

And my instinct immediately was,

that's not necessarily true.

I mean, you can adopt beautiful children.

You can have your own family.

-My mom said, "You could get a sperm donor."

I'm like, "What?!"

-She thought at first I'd lost my mind.

You know, "You're trying to tell me to go out

and find some children?"

Well, yes.

-I remember having a conversation with my brother

when I was adopting my boys, I said,

"You know, it's so interesting because you --

when you adopt, you really don't know

exactly what you're getting," and he said,

"You know, when you have your own kids biologically,

you really don't know exactly what you're getting, either."

And that -- that made sense to me,

that resonated with me, because I feel like,

no matter if you have them biologically

or if you adopt them, you don't get the wrong kids.

-Hey, Mom, love you. There's Levi.

-Hi! -Here's me.

-We love you!

-No!

-I think Sheryl wanted to raise her kids

in an environment that was more akin

to where she grew up, but still she could be

in the mix of the music world.

- If I can't be someone else

If I can't be someone else

Oh, if I can't be someone else

I might as well be myself, myself

Ooh

We built a barn where the horses could live,

and I thought, I'm just going to put a writing room up here,

so it needs to be a little bit sound-proofed,

I moved all my vintage gear up here,

hung up my guitars, and I can come to work here.

-It's really pretty amazing, actually.

The studio itself is over a stable

with these fantastic horses,

and you would think that the horses would be spooked

by sound, but they're not --

they're just grooving.

-I love vintage amps, got to be vintage,

got to be a vintage box or vintage tweed; old snares.

Got to have a Black Beauty.

And then of course, I have to have a certain...

amount of just junk.

-Sheryl is a gear freak,

so you're going to work every day,

you're going, "I want that sound,

looking for that guitar sound,"

"Oh, that guitar right there," pull it off the wall, boom,

it's all set up and ready to go.

So if you have an idea,

you can jump right on it and play.

-I called Steve Jordan and said,

Will you make this record?

I don't know what it is,

but I know I want to bring Kris Kristofferson in

and I want to record with other people

that I've shared music with and I've shared life with.

And so that's what we did.

-"Threads" is the definition of what all those people

mean to her musically.

-I always felt like I was sort of born out of time.

All the artists that I had loved, I missed that boat.

I didn't get to be around with them when they were,

you know, really happening

and when they were all hanging out.

And that made such an impact

on this girl from Missouri

who had these dreams of hanging out

with Stevie Nicks and James Taylor

and, I mean, all these incredible artists

that have inspired me to write stories.

Endless, endless connections.

Who put the blame on me

You oughta pass you see

-What I do love about Sheryl is her love of music,

and I always feel happy around Sheryl, you know?

-She had that producer knowledge of the studio

and we recorded all the ideas and sorted through those

and then we cut a track.

-Sheryl's been able to do all those things

because she's that gifted and that talented

and that hard-working,

and also because she's a cool person to be around.

She's a big influence on me in that way.

-There's a weird thing that happens

when you become a legacy artist,

it's sort of a sideways compliment.

It's like, okay, you have stood the test of time,

but also you're old and you just haven't gone away.

You know what I mean? It's like, I don't know

how to hold the legacy thing.

-You think there's a secret?

No, there is no hidden...

potion or formula.

You just get stuck here

and you're still doing it and you still love it.

And in a way you're filled with amazement

that you are still here doing it.

But there ain't no secrets sticking around.

Just luck of the draw.

-When we got asked to do Bonnaroo, I was like,

"That is going to be amazing or absolutely awful."

I think we played at like four or five in the afternoon

and like, literally maybe 30 minutes before we played

nobody was out there, and I'm thinking,

"Well, okay,

I'm a legacy artist and I'm too old for this crowd."

And I don't know how, but when we walked out,

the place was just all the way back filled with people.

It was euphoric!

Because I didn't know if the audience --

and they're super young -- had been exposed to my music

because of their parents,

but they knew everything.

I been long, a long way from here

Put on a poncho and played for mosquitoes

And drank 'til I was thirsty again

I was literally looking at my band

who is, you know, for the most part my age,

maybe a couple of years younger

and maybe a couple of years older,

and we're all up there looking at each other going,

"What is happening?"

These young people, who are younger than these songs are,

they're the people that are out in the audience

that are, like, totally going for it

on "If It Makes You Happy."

I made this up

There is something liberating about lifting your voice.

If it makes you happy

It can't be that bad

-It has, I think, probably one of the best cut-loose choruses

of any modern rock song.

You know, the whole thing is kept really subdued

and it's cool and it's kind of stoned

and you're describing this day.

But then when she says, "if it makes you happy,"

it's like -- - If it makes you happy

-It all comes open.

- Let me hear you sing

It can't be that bad

If it makes you happy...

People feel themselves in that, they feel their power.

And when I get to sing it, I feel that power too.

I feel it in my gut and in my chest.

-When Sheryl shouts on that song,

she does have a whole kind of

"givin' it to the gods" vibe,

and it just cuts loose, it gives everyone else

permission to cut loose, all the heads go back,

and you can see it.

- Why the hell are you so sad?

It gets in there and it makes you express.

It's joy, man, it's just joy.

Come to me now

Lay your hands over me

Even if it's a lie

Say it will be all right

And I shall believe

-She is holding the torch

in a line of very rare iconic voices.

- And I do believe

-You know, she comes from a long line of strong women.

Tina Turner, Bonnie Raitt, Aretha.

Fantastic women who have made their place in this business

without compromising.

- Please say honestly you won't give up on me

I shall believe

-Sheryl figured out a way

to tell the truth through her talent,

and whether it's about our brokenness

or our longing or our grief,

she's not going to shy away from the truth.

-For Sheryl, it's always about the music

and being true to herself.

-It's called "the feel," you know,

and either you feel it or you're don't.

What you're trying to do is to pass that feeling on.

And Sheryl can do that.

-The life I have is

completely informed by her and vice versa.

It's bigger than a statement that I could make.

You can't put a label on that.

You know, it's -- it's kind of just a miracle.

It's a miracle, really.

- I shall believe

I shall believe

I shall believe

Oh

I'm just open, I'm just trying to learn.

I'm going to fall, I'm going to make mistakes,

but I'm also going to do some things I'm really proud of,

and things that really speak to who I am

and my character and my desires.

If I'm honest with myself, what art is, is a picture

of who you are at any given moment.

And looking back on my career, my body of work,

I could safely say it is pretty honest.

Oh

Please say honestly

You won't give up on me

I'm gonna keep on keepin' on

Keepin' on, keepin' on

What the world needs now

Is love, sweet love

Sing it with me now.

Here we go!

What the world needs now

- ...love, sweet love

- Oh

What the world

- Needs now

- Love, sweet love

Ooh

One, two, three, four...

Lay your head down, don't you worry tonight

Can't fix the world no matter how you try

Give it some time, you will find everything is all right

There's no such thing as forever

But you and me, we got today

And every moment we're together

I know there is a heaven

'Cause you make me feel that way

When I get down, you're the one that I call

You picked me up every time that I fall

And when you left, nothing else matters to me

At all

There's no such thing as forever

But you and me, we got today

Every moment we're together

I know there is a heaven

'Cause you make me feel that way

Garbage out in space, garbage in the lake

Baby, what a waste

Everybody's mad, everybody's sad

See it in their face

I gotta have the latest, gotta have the best

The most, if you wanna be happy, light a match

And watch it all go up in smoke