Cyndi Lauper Still Wants to Have Fun

C
yndi Lauper has never been the type who does things the quiet way. Forty years after she blew up into an Eighties pop icon, she’s still making a great big noise. Lauper just began her Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour, rocking arenas around North America up to December, going out in style with opening acts including Aly and AJ, Amanda Shires, Elle King, Tones and I, Gayle, and Trixie Mattel. It’s a celebration of her eccentric musical journey, going back to her revolutionary feminist new wave manifesto She’s So Unusual, with classics like “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and “She Bop.” She was the New York City gal who took over MTV with her zany trash-vintage fashion, streetwise sass, and neon-pink hair, along with her manic yelp of a voice. The world fell in love with Cyndi whether she was breaking hearts in ballads like “Time After Time,” “True Colors,” and “All Through the Night,” or raging through “Money Changes Everything.”

That was just the beginning. Lauper won a Tony in 2013 for her smash Broadway show Kinky Boots, and she continues her activism with her foundation Girls Just Want To Have Fundamental Rights. Last year, her documentary Let the Canary Sing told the whole story of her career. At 71, she’s got the same fiercely independent streak, but she’s as irrepressible as ever — during this interview, she had a massive coughing fit when she choked on her milk and cookies, which is totally on-brand for her. She spoke to Rolling Stone about her life in music, her farewell tour, fighting to do it her way, dressing up, sneaking into rock shows, finding (and losing) her voice, and her Barbara Streisand obsession.

Congratulations on your massive farewell tour.
Oh gosh, it’s a bucket list. I haven’t done an arena tour since ‘86. I’m excited because I get to have all these fantastic young women on tour with me. So many years, I was told I can’t do a women’s tour because nobody will go see it. “Women don’t sell like men sell.” Then I toured with Cher and we played for a million people. So bullshit.

What advice do you wish you could give your younger self?
I would tell my younger self not to always fight the gatekeepers. It’s just important to look for a path around them. Always look over their shoulders to see what’s happening on the other side, and how you’re going to get there. You don’t have to jump in and fight everybody, because that doesn’t always work.

What did you fight over?
I was told so many fucked-up things. “Why don’t you just sing like this person? Why don’t you just wear jeans and a T-shirt?” I said, “Well, when I get that lobotomy, I’ll get right back to you.”

I had this record-company guy — he said that to me, after eyeing my tits and giving me the snake eyes, “Why don’t you wear jeans and a T-shirt?” But I found allies and other people who believed what I believe in. If you align yourself with like-minded people, then things go more smoothly. That’s how it should be — not stay there and battle it out.

Who were the first heroes who inspired you as a kid?
My mother had all these Broadway shows that she played all the time. Then Funny Girl happened, so I’d hang out with Barbara [Streisand]. I’m Italian, so you learn housekeeping right away. I was downstairs doing laundry in the basement with Barbara, singing my guts out with her. I was so close to her, I was on the other side of her.

Then one Christmas, my cousin gave us Meet the Beatles and Meet the Supremes. So I met them. And I really liked them. Suddenly, there was a difference between my mother’s music and mine. In those days, radio stations played everything all together. You’d have Sly and the Family Stone, then you’d have Sonny and Cher, then Eric Clapton and Joan Baez and Otis Redding — this wonderful palette of songs. I used to watch James Brown on TV — the routine where they put the coat on him, to help him offstage, and he’d get upset and throw the coat off. I never thought that I would actually be able to do that.

How did you start making music yourself?
I became a folk singer and played guitar, all the weird shit. I was kind of a lost soul in high school, lost in music and art. I had to study fashion because my family was from the fashion industry. They were the pattern makers, sewing, cutting, that kind of thing. But I wanted to sing. I flunked out of school and took a lot of jobs. I even worked at the racetrack — I was a hot-walker at Belmont. I hitch-hiked to Vermont and cleaned kennels. I failed at every job. I lived a lot of lifetimes before I even became famous.

I always thought that singing rock & roll was so hard, you could never sing it as a girl, right? Only men, except Janis Joplin, who ripped her voice out and drank whiskey. Janis and Grace Slick were my heroes — they were the women. And Joni Mitchell, who lived her life like a man and wrote about it. And she painted her album cover. So I thought, “Wow, she can paint, she can play, she can write. Isn’t that perfect? Isn’t that the life?”

When did you realize you could be one of those women?
I became fascinated with the groupies and how they dressed and how they looked. The groupies were so rock & roll. At the Fillmore East, if you didn’t have tickets to go to a concert, you could go to the line and hang out with the cool girls outside. Those girls were fantastic. It was just a cool hang. So I went one time after work. The Allmans were playing the Fillmore East, and Johnny Winter was opening with Rick Derringer and Elvin Bishop. I was outside with the girls, stoned, standing there watching. I didn’t have a ticket. But the girls told me, “OK, wanna know how to get in? When the band comes, you just walk in with them.” So here comes Johnny Winter and Rick Derringer, and I slip right behind them and walk in. The road manager sees me — his name was Red Dog — and I think, uh-oh. He goes, “What are you doing? You are late! You should be on stage now!” I was like, my God, what am I doing? He thinks I’m a background singer! But I got to stand by the side of the stage watching, and I see Elvin Bishop and his background singers, and they’re girls, and they’re singing. So I thought, “Wow, I could do that too. It’s not that hard.”

How did you find your voice as a singer? 
I went on an audition, made a mistake, and went with it, because you know, strong and wrong, right? You go wrong, stay strong. You can’t change. You have to just stay there. So I went to sing “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination,” by Gladys Knight. It was a cover band. I was so nervous, I jumped up an octave. Now all of a sudden these sounds come out that I didn’t even know I had. I’m looking at the faces of the people during the audition, thinking, “Oh boy, if you’re surprised, you can’t even imagine how surprised I am.”

That was the beginning of the journey that I took. I lost my voice early on. But you lose it all through your career. The first time I lost it, the doctor told me, “Miss Lauper, you can never sing this rock & roll — it’s bad for you. You cannot do it. You should be singing country and western, like Dinah Shore.” I was like, “Jesus, Dinah Shore? Really?” I walked out of that doctor’s office like Bette Davis in Dark Victory. 

How did you get your voice back? 
I did personal voice training, studied at a jazz school. But I got thrown out because I didn’t want to quit my rock band. They felt I was more of a natural jazz singer — I should stick with jazz because that’s where I belonged, not rock & roll. But I learned a lot there. They had me learn to sing Lester Young’s saxophone solos, note for note. And Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, the Fifties stuff from The Capitol Years. But they threw me out, so I didn’t get too far into the Capitol years with Frank. 

But you didn’t give up.
I never do. I used to walk past the post office, because the band rehearsed nearby, over on Eighth Avenue. Every time I passed the post office, it said, “Neither rain nor snow nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” I kept reading that thinking, “Yep, that’s me.” Snow, rain, sleet — no, they don’t stop me. Eventually, you get there, if you don’t give up. Eventually.

What are the most important rules you live by?
Try and be kind to the people around you. You’ve got to meditate, exercise, try and enjoy your life, because life is short and then you’re dead. It’s important to create with joy.

You always had that independent spirit. How have you kept that all your career?
I’ve always got a low tolerance for bullshit. And you get fed a lot of bullshit through your life. After a while, you have to see through it, step back and go, “I don’t have to jump into that one.” When something’s just wrong, step back, let it go away. You step back, you’ll have a better view. It’s like when you paint a canvas, and the teacher will go, “OK, now step back and look at what you’re doing.” Because then you see the picture a little clearer.