Sudden Nashville sensation Billy Ray Cyrus recalls getting home from his regular nightclub job in Ironton, Ohio, three years ago to find his belongings boxed up and sitting outside his house.
True to his habit of ”documenting” his life via tape-recorder, the shaken young Kentucky native started documenting.
”I was documenting that my stuff had been set outside and where was I gonna live?” he recalls in straight-ahead dead-seriousness. ”I just kept saying, `where`m I gonna live, where`m I gonna live?` And then I said,
`Where`m I gonna live when I get home?` That`s a song!`
”So I started singing into the tape recorder, `Where`m I gonna live when I get home/My old lady`s throwed out everything I own/She meant what she said when she wished I was dead. . .` I ran into the house, didn`t stop to pick up nothing, got my guitar and wrote that chorus down.
”These things come fast to me, and I thought, `I gotta keep going.` So I sang: `I knew our road was getting kinda rocky.` My wife, Cindy-now my ex-wife, Cindy-was lying there sound asleep, exhausted from packing up all my stuff, and she raised up out of a stone sleep. `She said I was getting way too cocky.` Then she went right back to sleep while I finished the song.”
If you`re thinking Cyrus sounds a bit different from Nashville`s average new country neo-traditionalist, bingo. While hailing from the traditionalist hotbed of eastern Kentucky, spawning ground of country stalwarts ranging from Loretta Lynn to Ricky Skaggs, he is something else.
As proof, listen to ”Wher`m (pronounced Whirm) I Gonna Live,” the wacky country ditty he fashioned from the above occasion. Better still, tune in his unlikely smash single, ”Achy Breaky Heart,” whose pre-pubescent-sounding title adorns a song Cyrus` smoky vocals and bluesily electric presence render unforgettable.
While you`re at it, note that:
– Mercury Records executives were so impressed with Cyrus` promise that they hired a choreographer to design an ”Achy Breaky” dance, then shot a stunning video of Cyrus performing the song to dancing and screaming fans in the ornate old Paramount Theater in Ashland, Ky., then launched his career with ”Achy Breaky” dance contests across America.
– Even though it was Cyrus` first record ever to be released by a major company, ”Achy Breaky”-the first single from a forthcoming album titled
”Some Gave All”-hit the country charts before Mercury promotion people made their first call to radio stations to ask for airplay for it.
– In Cincinnati, it was played for the first time on a primary country station early one afternoon and became the hottest record on the station`s evening request show just a few hours later.
The beneficiary of these unusual events is a quirky original who is in some ways remindful of another Eastern Kentucky act that also hit it big: The Judds.
Like them, Cyrus endured Eastern Kentucky unprosperousness and spent some consciousness-raising time in glitzy California. While his music`s sole resemblance to The Judds` is a gutsy sexiness, he exhibits much of The Judds` visionary talent, their mountain spirituality, their zany sense of humor and their determination.
”One thing I`ve studied hard is successful people-Norman Vincent Peale, Thomas Edison,” Cyrus says.
”I hope that if my career goes the way I want it to, I can do something positive to show kids that it doesn`t matter where you`re born and what handicaps you`re born with; you can be whatever you want to be.”
Cyrus` own handicaps were several. Born in the little town of Flatwoods, 30 miles from Ashland, he endured the traumatic divorce of his parents when he was 6. After that, his mother worked as a housemaid to support them.
Reared in the Pentecostal Church, her son spent a boyhood brooding about those things and also-incredibly, it seems now-about the fact that he was not good-looking.
”I was a real ugly kid,” he says. ”A lot of the other kids would make fun of me because my eyes were real big and my ears stuck out and I always had this burr haircut and two front teeth out and stuff. For years, from about the 1st grade to the 5th, I prayed every night: `Dear God, I know I`m ugly, but please just let people think I`m funny.` ”
He didn`t spend all his time brooding. He became a rugged athlete, playing catcher in baseball and offensive and defensive end in football. He also indulged a large boyish aptitude for mischief.
He recalls being brought home three times by local policemen-once for recklessly speeding a motorbike with no license or helmet when he was 12; once for nocturnally ”jumping out in front of cars naked” when he 15; and once for ”accidentally” throwing a dozen eggs at his high school principal`s house when he was a senior in high school. Asked how it is possible to accidentally throw an entire dozen eggs at anything, he grins.
”I don`t know,” he says. ”I plead insanity.”
He spent some college time on athletic scholarships at Morehead and Georgetown, but well before graduating he quit college and drifted to California for six months, then back to his home region.
He was 20 years old and working in a cigarette warehouse in nearby Huntington, W. Va., in the early 1980s when a voice inside began telling him to buy a guitar. He says he thought he was losing his mind.
”Growing up I never even sang in the choir or anything like that. I never danced at a high school dance unless it was a slow song over in a dark corner. I was always too embarrassed to be out there moving around in front of people.”
When a West Virginia radio station announced it was giving certain lucky callers tickets to a Neil Diamond concert in Charleston, Cyrus told himself he would take it as confirmation that he was supposed to buy a guitar if he won tickets to the show; if he didn`t, he would get on with his life. He won the last pair of tickets given away, and seeing Diamond, for whom he had cared little before, inspired him to follow his dream.
He bought a guitar the next day and started a band called Sly Dog. Despite a lack of experience, within four months they had a steady job.
”We probably sounded as bad as anybody could,” he said, ”but we had so much enthusiasm that people came from everywhere to see us. We got real popular real fast.”
Before Mercury Records signed him to a contract in mid-1990, he had drifted back to California and sold cars, then went home to Eastern Kentucky yet again. He began making trips to Nashville on his days off and soon made a recording produced by Grand Ole Opry star Del Reeves.
Persistently seeking and finally winning a management agreement with Jack McFadden, longtime manager of Buck Owens (and also of Cyrus` fellow Eastern Kentuckian, Keith Whitley), he was opening at Freedom Hall in Louisville for Reba McEntire and Highway 101 when Mercury executive Buddy Cannon came to watch. Mercury signed him to a recording contract a month or two later.
Now looking forward to a rapidly filling national itinerary as well as to performing the Vietnam-inspired ”Some Gave All” at a May 24 POW-MIA Rolling Thunder Ride For Freedom rally in Washington, D.C., Cyrus says he is happy he had to wait almost a year for his shot at the limelight while Mercury designed and carried out its ”Achy Breaky” campaign.
Surprisingly, he also seems happy that he gave half the writing credits on ”Wher`m I Gonna Live” and ”Some Gave All” to his ex-wife.
”Cindy and I are best friends now,” he says.
”I lost my home, and the first time in my life I ever had any money-when I got a record advance after the album was done-I didn`t have it 24 hours before I had to go and pay it to her attorney. But I put her name on those songs because I wanted her to have something nobody could ever take away from her.
”The great thing is, I don`t do this for money. One of the biggest philosophies of my life is, `As ye sow, so shall ye reap.` Everything is a boomerang, and I`m sure I probably have some bad boomerangs coming back at me someday. But as often as I can intentionally throw out a good boomerang, I try to do it.”
