Richard Marx likes to gently mess with the minds of whoever comes to see his solo concerts.“If it’s a couple, I’ll see one of them look at the other with this face like, ‘You’re kidding me. He wrote that?’”Right Here Waiting, Should Have Known Better, Don’t Mean Nothing, Hold On To The Nights, Take This Heart, Hazard“And they’ll go, ‘Oh, my God. He did that, too? Like, really? Seriously?’” says Marx. “On my part, there’s a subtle attempt to connect all the dots.
“I have got so many – somewhere between interesting and hilarious – things that have happened in the background of my career, ” he says by phone from the Los Angeles home he shares with his wife, Daisy Fuentes. “It was just about 10 years straight where everything I put out had success. And then I put out a record that I joked went double plywood instead of double platinum, ” he says.
He was still in his 30s and “had a ton of music left” in him. “I’ll make it with other people, ” he concluded. That shift also freed him up to be a very present father to his three sons.He’s written or performed hits on Billboard’s country, adult contemporary, mainstream rock, holiday and pop charts.
Running through the book is Marx’s conviction that he has an almost mystical ability to attract and befriend superstars, something that first happened at age five when he met Davy Jones of The Monkees.Readers get lots of stories about Marx’s collaborators and how he comes up with songs from a man who has steered clear of embarrassing, self-destructive scandal.It’s been pretty even-keeled, ” said Sean Manning, his editor at Simon & Schuster.
It was his humour, fearlessness, authenticity and self-awareness that led Manning to reach out to Marx just as the pandemic was gripping the nation.“He’s the first one that will make fun of himself, ” said Manning. “He doesn’t wait for anyone to do that.
Still alive?