Britney: Inside the Dream

Introduction The Search for Brit-Brit

‘It is so weird how stories are told. There is your side, my side, and the truth. Somebody has to figure it out. I guess we will never really understand or figure out life completely. That’s God’s job. I can’t wait to meet him—or her.’

–Britney, 2007

LOCATION: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

‘You’re wanting to do what?’

‘Understand the real Britney…the human behind the brand,’ I repeated.

The music-industry man seated opposite eyed me curiously, and his cynical smile suggested he’d already viewed some greenness behind my intentions.

‘Like pulling back the curtain to reveal the true Wizard of Oz?’ he said, ‘As easy as that, right?’

He’s among the few who truly know Britney Spears, and was an integral part of her set-up long before the conservatorship became an issue, and long before Sam Lutfi, Adnan Ghalib et al. arrived on the scene. That, perhaps, also explains why he viewed me with suspicion as I fished for co-operation, and he fished for motive.

We’re at the Mondrian, an all-white boutique hotel where, apparently, it’s hip to be seen off the Sunset Strip in LA. And the sun is indeed setting, dunked by the sky into the Pacific Ocean, 17 miles away, tinting the skyline orange. This used to be a favourite haunt of Britney, with the glass-backed patio of the ‘Sky Bar’ providing a commanding view from the foot of the Hollywood Hills, overlooking a metropolis fading into night; a darkness that helps mask the ordinariness of the concrete basin which falls away down the hill and stretches to the 10 Freeway and beyond. That same view provided a distraction during an awkward silence, which I broke by saying: ‘I want to know her reality.’

Now, he really did scoff.

‘Reality as defined by you is incomprehensible to Britney. An artificial world is her normal. Outside of that, she is lost—completely and totally lost. Great kid, great girl—but lost.’

This meeting has taken weeks to set up and the door into Britney’s world is merely ajar, with the chain still on. And this is just the outer-ring to an understandably cagey group of people who guard Britney Corporation Inc as if it were the one bank that can never be allowed to fail. But I’m determined to keep my foot in the door in this attempt to get closer to understanding a fragile colossus within the music industry. Her image might well be a parade of many revitalised masks, and the headlines may have echoed the management’s talk of ‘comebacks’, but the smoke and mirrors of show business shouldn’t lull anyone into a false sense of believing everything is suddenly okay again. The act may be back, the persona rescued, but the human being inside remains as brittle and vulnerable as ever. Behind the hype is a woman who is searching for direction, screaming to be understood, listened to and allowed to breathe as someone other than Britney Spears the Performer.

There is a barely concealed fragility to this free spirit, who finds herself encased within a micro-managed structure built by her own dreams. To all intents and purposes, she is a robotic brand functioning on remote control; steered by managers Larry Rudolph and Adam Leber in consultation with Jive Records, controlled as a person—and by order of the courts—by her father, Jamie Spears.

This is her recent reality, cocooned within a legal ‘conservatorship’—a guardianship where responsibility for all corners of her life and decision-making rest with her father, in consultation with others. It is, of course, the consequence of a very public meltdown, effectively being made a ward of court under the guardianship of adults who ‘know best’ because Britney was not deemed to have the mental capacity to make compos mentis choices in life, according to a judge. In her 28th year, she seems to enjoy all the rights and freedoms of a twelve-year-old; an adult woman forced into a child-like situation, policed by her own father. In 2008, she was granted ‘pocket-money’ and ‘allowed’ a credit card of her own. Dad Jamie was even permitted to comb her mobile telephone bills, checking who she’s called or texted. He still does.

In any other life, these would be the traits of a possessive controller. But under a court-appointed conservatorship, this is the permitted interventionist control exercised to ensure the life of an iconic figure remains on track. Its juxtaposition is hard to fathom alongside the pop superstar who has sold 84 million records worldwide, and has been crying ‘freedom’ since 2004.

In early 2009, the terms of her conservatorship were made indefinite, as her dad was made permanent guardian. Britney has struggled with this set-up as it further reinforces her belief that fame has become her prison. We are told conservatorship is a price she must pay for her own welfare and to redeem a career that was spectacularly imploding throughout 2007-8. Hers was an infamous ‘meltdown’, played out in agonising slow motion on the public stage before being dissected, shaken and tipped upside down by the world’s media. Britney Spears seems to perform, live and self-destruct within a commercial snow globe for the entertainment, prurience and profit of others. But what cost to her soul? What about the human being inside?

The man I’m speaking with at the Mondrian leans forward, seeking to educate me.

‘People get it so wrong. Look, she has a huge heart and is so sweet. But there’s also a dark side, and it’s not of her making. The girl’s got shit going on and everyone’s dealing with it the best they can. Tough love harms no one when all they can do is harm themselves. So you want to find the real Britney? Good luck, bro’! Even the woman herself ain’t found that one out yet.’

To be fair, he didn’t say much more, but his impassioned testimony was typical of the consensus encountered over the past eight months traversing the show-business landscape of Hollywood, the southern terrains of Louisiana, then Florida, and the roads of a chaotic childhood.

People were keen to assist with the depiction of a ‘true soul’.

‘No one’s troubles should reflect on who they really are,’ said one backstage ally from the MTV Video Music Awards, ‘but the problem with Brit is that her troubles went public, and that projected an image that was a travesty to the essence of who she is.’

Wherever I go, she is talked about as someone who is immensely likeable and great fun. It seems the harsher judgements passed down on Britney were, in the main, generated by media commentators and faceless bloggers. Such is the consequence of the human spirit when constructed into a brand that people view as faulty product. But the one thing I’ve learned is that no one is tougher on Britney than Britney herself. Within the privacy of her own counsel, she sits with self-berating judgement, keen to learn lessons and remind herself to ‘keep thinking positive’. Positive thinking is her shield from the dark moods that can consume her.

There is also an emotional depth to Britney that few appreciate. She might not be someone who can easily articulate herself, and she may just be a simple girl from a small town, but in her own mind she finds a simple connection with words, lyrics and poetry, which she expresses on paper. It is her way of making sense of the madness. In moments of quiet, she’ll analyse everything, then toy with words, which she scribbles in her journals in looping handwriting, attempting to reflect her mood of the moment. She is passionate about maintaining a journal—it’s her one true confidante.

Britney is today a young woman and mother-of-two searching for an identity away from her music and fame. And yet she’s searching for her own sense of self, while simultaneously fighting back to redeem the brand.

Hollywood celebrates ‘comeback kids’ who once stared into the abyss, like actors Robert Downey Jr. and Mickey Rourke but few redemptive stories are as compelling as the rise, fall and fight back of Britney Spears. Her life has commanded a level of curiosity that refuses to loosen its grip or avert its gaze. In 2008, Yahoo announced she was the most popular name entered into its search engine—in a year that saw the momentous election of Barack Obama. It is evidence, if such were needed, of a fascination of Princess Diana and Marilyn Monroe proportions.

‘She is by far the most powerful celebrity on this planet,’ was how she was once described by ABC’s chat show host and American Music Awards compere Jimmy Kimmel.

Anyone with an ounce of compassion cannot help but wish Britney all the best in her current resurrection. She has clawed her way back from the edge, pulled by the rope of people’s good wishes. No doubt such public empathy is drawn because an entire generation has grown up alongside her music from 1999 onwards. In America, the pre-teen set of the nineties shared its pubescent years with her as she broadcast daily into their front rooms via The All New Mickey Mouse Club.

Most likely, her ardent following is because Britney embodies the dreams within every girl who has ever posed with a hairbrush for a microphone in front of the mirror that becomes a TV camera. She represents a billion dreams with which those dreamers identify. And then, of course, there are the boys who became men, entranced by the girl in school uniform whose provocative image enticed their equal adulation.

Within the enduring brand that is Britney Spears, the canny marketing that mixes innocence with seduction has ensured that here is an artiste who has been shaped, sold and viewed as all things to all people. She has seemingly transported everyone on a journey into a collective fantasy about her dance with the devil called fame.

But it’s also the tale of that old adage, ‘Be Careful What You Wish For…’ because no one, let alone a teenage girl, is sufficiently wired to cope with such impossible expectations, not to mention the rabid attention of the paparazzi. Few families would be strong enough to sustain without injury the ‘tornado’ that leaves ‘debris scattered all over’ as mum Lynne Spears described it in her memoir, Through The Storm.

As Vanessa Gregoriadis wrote in the February 2008 edition of Rolling Stone magazine: ‘More than any other star today, Britney epitomizes the crucible of fame for the famous: loving it, hating it and never quite being able to stop it from destroying you.’ Such nightmares seemed impossible at the start of a story where the précis is simple enough: an angelic teenager from Kentwood, Louisiana, bursts onto the pop scene with ‘…Baby, One More Time’ in 1998. A fledgling career goes meteoric and she is crowned the world’s princess of pop. Fame and fortune take their toll and the wheels fall off a once unstoppable juggernaut after Britney marries and soon divorces an ex-dancer called Kevin Federline, mothering two sons, Sean Preston and Jayden James.

Devastated, Britney numbs the pain by keeping occupied, transforming herself into a party girl. She starts to court the paparazzi and rebels against her family, which leads to an infamous head-shaving incident, a mean-looking umbrella attack on photographers and a custody battle with her ex-husband. She then loses her custodial rights until the rock bottom moment plays out on our television screens: Britney being strapped to a gurney and loaded into the back of an ambulance, looking lost and bewildered as TV-news helicopters beamed spotlights from above and paparazzi trailed in pursuit. Cornered by her own demons, she had nowhere to turn but the psychiatric ward of an American hospital. It was a physical and mental breakdown not afforded the usual rights of dignity like a bad episode of the Jerry Springer Show.

But it is the underlying causes, the elements not readily visible, which drive this story and provide an insight, which in turn helps us understand much of what has been played out. It is these hidden factors which this book attempts to explore within the unravelling story: where Britney came from, what drives her, what makes her tick, what has rendered her so fragile and what circumstances ultimately conspired to de-rail her. It is a raw story so no one should expect the saccharine taste of brand-driven publications. There are no villains in this story—and there are no heroes either. But I sincerely believe there’s a huge amount of people wishing for a happy outcome to this endless saga and it is within this collective hope that the redemption of Britney Spears is rooted—and this book was born.

LOCATION: KENTWOOD, LOUISIANA

The hit song is in full-stride: ‘I’m runnin’ this like-like-like a circus…’ Six men sit at a bar, barely noticing Britney’s lyrics. Two somewhat inebriated women close their eyes and sway on the empty dance floor, paying homage.

The song continues: ‘Yeah, like a what? Like-like-like a circus…’

I’m inside The Dub bar room in the Louisiana backwater of Kentwood, Britney’s hometown, where there are no hip places to be seen. Outside, there’s just pitch darkness. Inside, Billy and Sue from Starlight Entertainment are giving ‘Circus’ their best shot.

‘Y’all wanna know Britney?’ shouts the man at the bar, ‘The sweetest kid, sweet as pie. She’s alright, she’s alright. She knows where home is.’

If anywhere is rooting for her, it is Kentwood. It is here that she relaxed ahead of the launch of her 2009 ‘Circus’ tour in New Orleans, and it is here that she’ll head once an expanding worldwide tour wraps. Then, somewhere between here and Los Angeles, Britney will retreat to consider writing an autobiography first teased in the MTV documentary, Britney: For The Record, in December 2008: ‘I’ll have a good book one day…a good, mysterious book.’

Discussions have already taken place with publishers but plans remain on hold. Whether it happens sooner or later, one can only wonder how truly candid such a memoir can be under the control of the brand and the policing circumstances that come attached to her conservatorship. If her expressed attitudes of the past are any measure, Britney might feel like a prisoner writing a letter to the outside world, only for the guards to first check its content.

A true life story is always measured but the written word must be allowed to breathe with honest self-expression. I have some knowledge of the autobiographical market because, ordinarily, I’m a ghost-writer—that person who collaborates with a subject to translate their life into words. In that part-symbiotic, part-parasitic professional relationship between ‘ghost’ and ‘subject’, I’m granted an all-access pass to get under their skin, look through their eyes, get into their heads and capture their voice. It’s been my job for six years now, and has transported me into the world of royalty, sport and music as a detached observer who has vicariously witnessed life and media storms from within the ‘fame bubble’, always able to walk away yet often stunned by its intensity and ferocity. It is a perspective which has taught me the vast difference between the sold or reported ‘image’ of a celebrity, and the truth of the actual person; the distinction between reputation and true character.

There is, of course, a sliding scale of ‘celebrity’ from A through to Z-list. But Britney’s profile belongs in another stratosphere entirely, entering the realm of the iconic, where very few names reside. As much as many high-profile individuals talk about fame, few know what this level entails. It attaches twenty or thirty paparazzi lenses to your coat-tails, every day of the week, following and scrutinising your every move; a Home Office curfew-tag that diminishes personal freedom to such an extent that the only place to find true sanctuary is corralled by the four walls of your home or hotel suite.

Fame zooms in and magnifies every expression, foible, flaw or mistake and holds it against you for life. It clocks every bad skin day, every dimple of cellulite or extra pound on the hip or thigh. If you beg, scream or cry to be left alone for just one moment, it captures this and turns it into a headline of weeping, crisis, heartache or woe. Victoria Beckham once summed up this reality during a conversation at the World Cup in Germany 2006 when she said: ‘It is like a jacket that’s stitched to your back forever. Once you’ve put it on, there’s no taking it off.’

As a ghost-writer I hope to bring about an empathy that belongs more on the celebrity side of the fence, informed by the books I have written, the environments in which I have found myself, and the trusted circles into which I’ve been invited. As I’ve discovered, Britney’s circle is harder to get invited into but I have met her once, for about ten seconds, back in October 2003.

She was a guest on Channel 4’s Richard Se Judy show. A client had just finished recording that afternoon’s programme and we were in the Green Room for after-show drinks. Both Richard and Judy, and executive producer Amanda Ross, were on their toes, awaiting the arrival of the pop princess herself, ready to present her with a pink designer handbag and matching bracelet. I found myself waiting, both fascinated and curious, with a small group of pre-teens at the window overlooking the car park. I knew she’d arrived when a presidential-like cavalcade swept in, and this 22-year-old stepped out of an SUV with what can only be described as a ‘Ready Brek glow’. Her star-like radiance was somewhat obscured by the rolling bubble of hefty bodyguards in which she was cocooned. I moved into the corridor near the front entrance and she couldn’t have been more gracious with everyone. I said ‘Hello’, she said ‘Hi’ and that was the full extent of our memorable chat, which in my world has gone down as The Day I Met Britney.

I wasn’t the only one rendered giddily star-struck that day. Just ask former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. She, too, had been a guest, promoting her memoir. But when she saw her dressing room was adjacent to Britney, Bill Clinton’s hardened chief diplomat suddenly came over all soft. She asked that a photo be taken of her door nameplate next to that of ‘Britney Spears’ to impress her grandchildren. Such was the power of Britney’s fame.

With this book, it is my intention to reach behind the curtain and into that dressing room: to peel off the mask and discover the person inside. But a true understanding of character requires an expert analysis of both Britney’s childhood and life, and I’m no expert in such psychological matters. With this in mind, I have consulted a psychotherapist known for her spiritual and compassionate approach in dealing with clients in Hollywood. Like actors, psychotherapists are ten a penny in this town. But within the quantity, I’ve found quality via informed recommendation. This lady, who has clients in the entertainment industry, cannot provide an in-depth and 100 per cent accurate analysis that would ordinarily be derived from one-on-one sessions. However, within the discoveries embedded in Britney’s life story and the information gleaned from discreet sources, the insights that emerge will, I hope, encourage a compassion that gets people thinking about this story in terms of Britney the person, not Britney the act.

For four hours a week, for three months, I sat on the psychotherapist’s couch ‘as Britney’ in an attempt to get inside her head, and look through her eyes, based on all the information that was collated. Therapy, by its nature, is challenging because it often faces a wall of denial in the truth that it asks individuals to face. One thing I can state categorically: therapy—and the insights it stirs—provides more hope for Britney than returning her to the stage.

Of course, in Hollywood, it is the entertainment value that counts. Publicists and promoters are retained to prop up the facades. These are the ‘The PR Generals’ employed to defend, mitigate, deny and obfuscate when human frailty starts to unstitch a carefully woven celebrity image. Britney’s cry for help in 2007-8 meant her image fell apart at the seams. No longer could she maintain the act, leaving behind elements of truth that only a psychotherapist can properly discern.

For obvious professional reasons, the psychotherapist has asked not to be identified. It is, she says, the insights that matter, not the messenger. As you read on, you’ll notice her guidance and opinion throughout, marked by indented paragraphs, and in italics. This differentiation is deliberately designed to set apart my voice and that of the expert.

Aside from her couch, I have also sat with and interviewed the people who best know Britney, having worked with or shared friendship with her, witnessing the person at close quarters backstage. You’ll note, too, that many discreet sources have asked not to be identified. Such is the level of paranoia within Britney’s controlled world. But through their eyes and unique accounts, I hope a better picture emerges of the girl still struggling to be a woman as she continues to hold our fascination.

Britney wants to be loved and is desperate to be happy. If she can’t say it out loud, she expresses it in the big heart shapes that she doodles on paper and the large smileys she draws. That’s her one aim in life: big hearts, permanent smiles. In her 2002 publication, Stages, she said that if anyone really wants to understand who she is, they should go talk to the people who know her best.

With this in mind, I set off for America to explore the life of the idol that friends simply refer to as ‘Brit-Brit’.

Steve Dennis