It’s time for me to admit something: I have a terrible memory. I’m not sure if I’ve always had a terrible memory—because I just can’t remember—but I do know that I have a bad one now. Whether it is just my nature or my lifestyle—or both—here I am, and a lot of days I don’t recall the fine print. So I’m dialing in Pamela for some assistance in this chapter. Do you guys know Pamela? My ex-wife Pamela Anderson? You’ve definitely seen her—she was on Baywatch and V.I.P., and she’s been on the cover of Playboy quite a few times. She’s hot, dude, and she’s going to interrupt me when things get blurry.

Pamela and I met on New Year’s Eve, 1994. I was chilling, just having a good time with my friends at this club called Sanctuary that she partly owned. I was not at all in meeting-you mode. I was single and recently divorced from Heather Locklear, so I wanted nothing to do with getting involved with a new girl at all. Then here comes a shot of Goldschläger, that crazy cinnamon schnapps with the gold flakes in it. The people who make that shit should sponsor both of us and keep our freezers packed for life. The shot was from Pamela. I was like, “Whoa, right on!” I asked the waitress if Pamela was at the club and she pointed out where she was sitting across the room, drinking it up with a bunch of her girlfriends—and no dudes at the table. I grab my bottle of Cristal, slam the shot, and go over and sit right next to her. I don’t say hello. I don’t say a word. I just lick the side of her face like a fucking big dog. She’s like, “Oh my God! ” and her friends start freaking out, just shaking their heads and saying to her, “No, no, no, no, NO!” They are not happy at all when I bite an E in two and put half in her mouth.

 

Whatever, Pamela. You swallowed some—you know you did. But that’s cool.

 

I hung with her all night. At around two in the morning she’s ready to bail and I’m not having that at all. I walk her to the car and plant a kiss on her. She’s like, “I think I’d better go.” I’m like, “Oh my God, no. No way. Please don’t go.” She was flying to Cancún to work the next day. I wasn’t having that either.

 

Pamela’s friends, by the way, were not having me—at all. That whole night they were just trying to make whatever was happening between us stop. Her best friend, Melanie, hated me from the beginning and kept hating me for a long time. She is one of those controlling personalities and it was obvious to me right away. Pamela told me later that that night Melanie kept shaking her head and telling her, “Pamela, he is fucking trouble. You are not going anywhere with him.” I didn’t give a fuck. I asked Pamela for her number. And after I got it, I started calling it right away. It wasn’t even an hour later and I was like, “Hey, what are you doing?” She’s packing, getting ready to bounce to Cancún, and I’m like, “Without me?” She just kept saying, “I have to work. I can’t hang out with you, I have to work. Do not come to Cancún.”

 

 

Actually that was the message that got me interested. I call him back as Melanie sits there shaking her head and I tell him, “I’ll spend twenty-four hours with you and that’s it. Then I never want to see you again.” Tommy said, “Okay, fine. I’ll pick you up tomorrow.” He promised to make me chicken cacciatore or some other famous dish of his that he cooks up in a Crock-Pot. Melanie and I have been best friends for twenty-five years and that night is the only time we’ve ever fought. I still had a few drinks in me, so when she told me I was crazy for even talking to him, we got into a full-on screaming argument.

I woke up the next day and thought, “Oh, shit, what did I do?” The phone started ringing soon afterwards, and it was Tommy calling over and over. He was saying things like, “Where are you? I’m gonna find you. I’m coming over there to pick you up.” He was being psychotic, and it was a little scary. I tell my girlfriend to tell him that I’m not there. She takes the next call and tells Tommy that I’m getting my nails done. He says, “Where?” Melanie is caught off guard, so she says I’m at the salon in the hotel. He hangs up and calls back a minute later. “Put her on,” he says. “There’s no salon in the hotel.” We bolt right away because he’s coming to get me for his twenty-four hours. I heard later that he’d made a few pit stops—one of them was at a sex shop called the Pleasure Chest, where he bought chains and stuff. I’m sure they went to good use, but he didn’t use them on me, not the next time we saw each other at least.

 

 

 

What are you talking about, baby? You gave me your home number the first night I met you. Maybe you need some ginkgo biloba. Whatever.

 

To me, that meant get your ass to Cancún immediately. I hang up, turn to my buddy Bobby, who’s hanging with me, and tell him to go home, pack a bag, and call our friend Doug because the three of us are going to Mexico—now. I keep calling Pamela all the way down there—in the car, in the airport, on the plane. I’m calling about every twenty minutes. I keep leaving messages saying things like, “I’m on my way,” “I’m on the plane now,” “I’m here,” “Where are you?” We check into a hotel and I call every hotel in Cancún until I find hers. I’ve left so many messages that she is either too scared to answer her phone or pretty fucking confident that I’m so insane that I will find her no matter where she is. I do find her hotel, of course, and I leave a message and start waiting.

 

I’m out of my mind and I really don’t know what to do. My buds and I are chillin’ poolside, eating, swimming, and getting stupid. Every twenty minutes I go back to my room, hoping to see that little red light blinking on the phone. I think about going to her hotel, but I don’t want to totally be Mr. Stalker Guy. But fuck, I want to see her. I have to see her.

I run back and forth to my room like a jackass for a few hours until, finally, the red light is blinking. I’m like, “Yes! That’s awesome! ” It’s Pamela, she’s in her room, and she says that I should call her back. Yes!

 

After I get her message, I don’t call her back right away. I just chill for two hours. I take a bath, I read for a while. I call my mom, I meditate, and do some yoga. I pull a horseshoe out of my ass. And if you believe that crap, I’ve got some swampland in Florida to sell ya.

I call her back so fuckin’ quick. I don’t need a pen, paper, nothing. Her number is so important that for once, my short-term memory works. Waiting for her to answer, I’m pacing back and forth so crazy that I rip the phone right off the nightstand. She answers and I just say, “Dude, I’m here.” She pauses for a long minute and then she says, “You are fucking out of your mind.” I go, “I know. Are you done working yet?”

 

She was there with three of her girlfriends and she told them to get ready because they were all going out for just one drink with Tommy. It would be fine, what could it hurt? We met at the Ritz-Carlton and I was wearing a tank top, of course, so they kicked us out.

 

We ended up somewhere ridiculous like Señor Frogs or something stupid like that. That one drink turns into many drinks, and we move on to this massive club called La Boom, which is a loud as fuck dance club. We ran into someone with some E and all I remember about that night is Pamela and I staring into each other’s eyes for hours, only taking breaks to blink and drink. I had to marry her. Right now, in Mexico, as soon as fucking possible. I’m definitely my father’s son—he knew he wanted to marry my mom the first time he laid eyes on her.

 

I turn to my friend Bobby and ask him to give me the ring off his pinky. I put it on her and ask her if she’ll marry me. She says yes, and four days later we did it. But first, we went back to her hotel and it was fucking insane. She was in the penthouse suite and the elevator went right into the room. It had a swimming pool in there and a huge sound system. It was fucking sick! That suite had everything you would ever need. That night we made love, and I couldn’t believe I was fucking Pamela Anderson. Neither could my friends.

 

 

I’m with you on that, my man. We were totally in. The next morning after that first night, I watched Pamela go into the room connected to her suite where her girlfriends were staying and show them how big you are, using her hands like she’d just caught a huge trout. (She had.)

That morning her girlfriends were like “Woah, hey! ” They were all the people who didn’t want us to be together. Whatever. When all our friends were together having breakfast, Pamela and I told everyone we were getting married. They freaked.

 

There were things to take care of before our nuptials. We had to get blood tests—and we did, at like two in the morning in some scary, shady Mexican hospital.

 

Then we had to find a priest. It was now the weekend and also some Mexican holiday so all of the priests were busy. We called everywhere and finally found one. He came to the hotel, met with us, did the paperwork, and set a time. Pamela wanted to get married on the beach in bathing suits with cocktails. It was crazy. Neither one of us called our parents or any of our friends—we just did it. Everyone found out about it through the tabloids. Who knows how they got the pictures—we never saw anyone taking them. Sneaky bastards.

 

What? No I didn’t. Are you just puffin’ your chest up, baby? Isn’t it already puffed up enough?

 

It was an amazing ceremony, right there on the beach in the late afternoon, just before sunset. I remember when the priest said, “You can now kiss the bride.” I picked her up and carried her straight into the waves. We kissed, swam, and played in the water forever. Our friends were up on the sand, standing there waiting, like, “Are you guys done yet?”

 

Hey, Ms. Not Always Right, you didn’t talk to your brother until we got home. Don’t you remember sitting on the floor at my beach house while he yelled at you and you cried? It was gnarly. You called your parents from Cancún and I called mine. My parents said they were happy as long as I was happy. They were just bummed that they weren’t there to see the ceremony.

While we’re flying back home, Pamela is asking me where I live and what I like for breakfast. It was so bizarre—we clearly don’t know each other at all. She asks me if we’re going back to her place or to mine. I say, “Back to my place. I live on the beach in Malibu, right on the sand.”

 

When we land, there is a paparazzi feeding frenzy waiting for us in the airport. They follow us back to my house and camp out, and it is the beginning of all that fucking bullshit. We have to hire twenty-four-hour security guards to keep the photographers off the hills and the beach. I had to deal with that shit in my other marriage, but this was much, much worse. We are being stalked like you would not believe—and it’s never let up to this day.

Just before I met Pamela, I had found the place where I wanted to live and love. I put the place in escrow. I knew when I saw it that it would be my castle—and now I had found my queen. It was a house with no neighbors, on the top of a hill in Malibu. When I walked in, I noticed that every room was different—it wasn’t your normal setup at all. Some rooms were round, some were angular, it had an elevator, there were different levels in the main rooms, and there was a lot of land ripe for whatever type of landscaping I could dream up. I’ve always loved designing my environment, whether it’s my bedroom, my house, or just dimming the lighting in my hotel room by putting towels over the tops of lamps. This place had the potential I had been waiting for. You’d never guess it by looking at me, but I’m a closet horticulturalist. I love trees (don’t tell anybody). When I saw the bald yard behind the house, all I could think about was going to a nursery and creating something you’d see in a postcard or at some fourstar resort. I’d traveled constantly for so long that I wanted my home to feel like I was on vacation. And I knew what I wanted. I’d seen some of the most exotic places in the world on vacations over the years and had taken notes and shot pictures of the plants, trees, and architecture that I loved. I couldn’t wait to show Pamela our future Love Palace.

 

Woah, hey! Slow down, Ms. Jumping Ahead! That’s how you feel now, but I don’t remember you being spooked when we planned to start our life and family there.

 

After we moved in, the two of us started redoing everything. All the walls were white, and when we walked through the house with our interior designer, I took a can of spray paint and wrote, “White walls are for hospitals” on them. The original doors were verde green—some Mexican or Mediterranean color of the month. It’s like teal—and I hate teal.

 

We redesigned our house from the ground up and we renamed it the Love Palace—because we made it that way. If you’ve seen MTV Cribs —and I know for a fact that those fuckers released my episode on DVD without breaking me off any extra change—you already know how fat this pad is. We did it right. We’ve got a movie room made of purple velvet where the couch is sunk in the floor and the subwoofers are under your ass. We tore out the original bedroom because it was all his-and-hers (What the fuck is that?) and made it one big Love Space. It has an open shower that you can see from anywhere in the room,

 

a terrace, a fireplace, a mirror above the bed, and another one that slides across the window, triggered by remote control, by the massive round bathtub. We’ve got heart-shaped front doors made of glass and iron, a pillow room with a fireplace out of I Dream of Jeannie, and a thirty-foot swing in the round living room that hangs over my grand piano. Basically, we made it into a huge adult playground.

Everything was perfect in my mind. I was building my dream house with my dream girl—and I’d made sure she was that. There’s one way to separate the beautiful women from the truly beautiful women and that is by their toes. If a girl’s toes aren’t lovely little piggies, she is completely off my radar no matter what she looks like. She can be Miss America, but if I look down and her feet are busted, it’s off. Let me give you an example of the worst kind of toe jam: Picture clear plastic, high-ass, come-fuck-me stripper pumps with a set of crooked toes hangin’ ten over the front. For God’s sake, ladies, do what you have to do, because there has to be a solution. Is the shoe too big? I haven’t worn pumps, but it seems to me that if they fit right, them thangs wouldn’t slide out there on their own like that. When they do, it’s like a fender bender: Everyone slows down to check it out then speeds up and moves on real quick, knowing that no one is hurt but the shit is mangled and in desperate need of a toe truck.* Pamela, my ex-wife, the mother of my kids, one of the most gorgeous women I have ever laid eyes on, has the most amazing toes. When we were together I had to keep myself from eating them right off her feet every fucking day. Dude, it was hard. Her toes are perfect. Fuck, her whole set of feet is rad. But I knew that before I met her. I’d seen nude pictures of her before we met and the first thing I did was clock her toes.

In the first few years of our marriage, Pamela and I had way too much fun—more fun than humans are allowed to have. That very first year, for my thirtieth birthday, she threw me the raddest birthday party in the history of partying.

 

Pamela had a huge village built and called it Tommyland. That little pleasure carnival was the closest I’ve ever been to seeing the circus that marches through my head actually walking around in real life. There were tents with tons of pillows on the floor, midgets wandering around on stilts, a cage of tigers—one of my favorite animals—and contortionists from Cirque du Soleil performing for us. There was a Ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, and one of those crazy swing rides that has no other purpose but to make you sick and dizzy.

The little people (which is what they like to be called) and dudes on stilts greeted everyone as they arrived. The little guys blew horns, rang bells, rolled out a red carpet, and shouted, “Welcome to Tommyland!” in their little Munchkin voices as we all walked between rows of torches into my kingdom. I thought, “Finally, we’re here. I’ve made it to the Land of Oz!” There were sword swallowers, flame eaters, and most of our friends were in costumes. I had this insane moment in the tiger cage. I sat there with them, just stroking their fur, tripping out on how huge their paws are, how insane their muscles are, and freaked, knowing full well that if they wanted to, they could end my time here real quick. It was the trippiest Fellini movie you’ve ever seen; a living, breathing one, starring me and my friends.

 

The best man at my wedding, Bobby Hewitt, the drummer from Orgy, and his twin brother, Fabio, came dressed up as naughty nurses and that fucking killed me. They did it way too well and they were the backup singers in a fucked-up lounge band that Pamela found. The lounge set closed the night and it totally freaked me out. Those dudes played old Sinatra songs, horrible disco ballads, and except for the dancing nurses, they were all dressed in these white polyester suits looking like some crazy combination of Elvis, John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, and Mel Tormé. I was scared.

There was a full-on rock show before that though. A band named Crown played and when I got my chocolate cake, I was so fucking into it that I went right up onstage and fed the entire band, midsong. It was my party, dude, I could do whatever I wanted, and the band had to have some cake. That cake, by the way, was delivered to me on the shoulders of a dude dressed up as Mighty Mouse—one of my childhood heroes.

After Crown’s set—which was fucking awesome —we had a jam session and after that we made a huge drum circle. Pamela had my drum kit up there and just about every other kind of percussion instrument you can imagine. It was retarded—and so was I. By that time I was so wasted, so happy, and so far gone that when I went onstage to thank my wife, I fell over the monitors. I was That Guy, Mr. Shitty, the one who falls over in slow motion and has no idea he’s even falling.

But when I first got onstage to jam, Pamela led me over to the piano. I tripped out because it was beautiful: It had iron legs, gold leaf all over it, and an intricate, hand-painted design of crosses and pearls. I’m sitting there, taking it in when Pamela tells me it’s my birthday present. She had taken my old white baby grand and had it redone—I didn’t even recognize it. I was so happy and so fucking in love with her. I kept telling her so and I kept thanking her but those words couldn’t express what I was feeling: No one had ever done anything so amazing for me. It was the greatest spectacle I had ever seen—and I would have thought so even if it hadn’t been my party. But it was, and to think she’d done it all for me was paralyzing. It crippled me with love.

There was so much going on and I was so into every bit of it that I’m glad Pamela hired a film crew because I sure as fuck wasn’t able to take it all in. She didn’t go for video either; she made it a film. Watching it back now on 35mm is fucking amazing. It made that night as epic as it really was—it captured all the colors and all the moments I missed. The crew and editors were complete pros. They used slow-motion filter effects in the film and added Radiohead’s “Planet Telex”—I fucking love that song—for the introduction as we all marched into Tommyland.

Did I tell you guys how Pamela dressed me? I was all done up in a royal purple cape with a white fur collar. I had a crown, because, after all, I am the king of Tommyland, and she painted my face in black-and-white makeup. I looked like Marc Bolan from T. Rex starring in The Crow. She was dressed in black with the biggest top hat you’ve ever seen. She was the ringleader.

The crowning touch was Pamela’s choice of transportation home. Picture this: You’re at a huge party in a field, with carnival madness all around. You’re totally faded and then you see lights and hear sirens coming across the grass. You’re not sure what’s happening—it could be the cops, it could be the Fire Department coming to rescue someone. But it’s not, it’s a fleet of ambulances she hired to make sure everyone got home safely. By that time, we definitely needed stretchers, a few needed body bags, and we all welcomed the caring hands of professionals.

Pamela spent a shitload of money on that party and I’m happy to say that it really did surprise me. Nine out of ten times the person you’re throwing a surprise party for finds out, but Pamela had it on lock and I knew nothing. I still don’t know how she did it and to be honest with you, that scares me. The whole time Pamela planned the party, she was so devious and secretive that I was convinced that she was cheating on me.

 

It was the Party, people. Pamela absolutely killed it. We’ve never done anything less. From chartering yachts and houseboats so that we could be naked on the water for weeks at a time to riding up to the front door on a white horse in full knight in shining armor, to getting married four times over, renewing our vows in space suits, we were always on a mission to blow each other away.

 

Pamela and I were so in love, we couldn’t wait to have kids, so after a year of honeymooning, we got right to it. I can’t even explain what making love is like when you want to make a baby. That said, it’s nothing like making love once you know that your child is inside your wife. You’re making love, hoping that you’re not bashing his head in with your penis. It’s the next level of love, dude. I can’t... Hold on, I have to sit down and dissect this a bit. The craziest thing is that Pamela’s body felt at least ten degrees hotter than normal. I wanted to snuggle, but I couldn’t even get next to her in bed because it was like hugging the water heater. Her body was so hot, I wondered if I could cook breakfast in bed on her stomach. We had our first son, Brandon, in June, and I felt bad for her. It was summer, it was hot as fuck, and there was no way she was getting cool; she was a walking incubator. Her body didn’t stop changing after the boys were delivered either—the whole lactating thing was amazing. Pamela’s breasts have never been what you’d call small, but when she was breastfeeding, they were giant and leaking milk everywhere. One day, after our first son was born, Pamela’s mom is over helping out, making some food in the kitchen. The girls are cooking, standing over by the stove, and while her mom is busy stirring something, Pamela turns around, lifts up her shirt, whips out one of those bad boys, and squirts milk at me. It flies ten feet through the air and I’m catching it in my mouth, loving it because it tastes so sweet. It was the cutest, nastiest thing ever—we were both enjoying our two newest toys, the milk cannons. And her mom had no idea. Uh... until now.

While Pamela was pregnant we looked forever through books of names, not really knowing yet if it was a boy or a girl. If we were going to have a girl I wanted to name her China because I love that name. We agreed on Brandon if it was a boy—and he was: Brandon Thomas Lee. A little more than a year later when we did it all over again, we named our second son Dylan Jagger Lee. (And if one more person asks me if we named the two of them after the dudes in Beverly Hills 90210, I’m gonna fuckin’ sock ’em!)

Pamela delivered both our boys at home, in the bathtub. She did not take any drugs throughout her pregnancy, not even aspirin. Her delivery was the same—totally natural. Read that again. Do you understand what I’m talking about? I have more respect for her than words can say. Pamela wanted to experience childbirth the way women did before the days of epidurals. Women were made to give birth naturally—that is what they do.

We did our research and decided that giving birth at home was the best. Here’s why: When babies are born in a hospital, there’s bright lights and surgical steel everywhere, and they’re weighed on a scale right away and given vaccinations. The doctor will usually do circumcisions right away too. That’s their first memory to retain somewhere in the brain. Immediately the nurses wrap the baby in a blanket and no matter how soft it is, to a newborn it’s like sandpaper after living and growing in water. Babies have never even seen light. Pamela and I watched tapes of hospital-style delivery and then watched midwives doing natural childbirth—and it was just beautiful. It made the whole hospital trip look like a scam. Why should so many decisions be made for them the minute they’re born, like cutting the skin off their dicks?

When each of our boys was born, there were lit candles everywhere and soft music playing—it was Andrea Bocelli and Orbital—and Pamela was in a tub of water at the perfect temperature. It is best to deliver a baby in water because skin has ten percent more elasticity in water, which makes the birth more comfortable. And since newborns have been living in water for nine months, it’s a more natural transition.

Pamela and I are very private people—and by then, we were stalked day and night. The last thing we wanted was thirty or so people watching her give birth, even if they were our friends and family. There was no way we were going to share our most intimate, intense, and beautiful experience as a couple with anyone else.

While Pam was giving birth to Brandon, I was worried about everything. I was constantly running out to the balcony off our bedroom to smoke like a chimney in winter. It’s so crazy being a dad-to-be. You are helpless as your wife does the impossible, delivering this package that is both of you into the world. Watching that is incredible and scary at the same time.

I’ll admit it now—I was afraid that I was going to pass out. You might think you know all about it, but nothing can prepare you for the moment a slimy head pops out of your wife’s baby canal and looks around like some alien midget man that just landed on planet Earth. And believe me, that’s just the beginning, but I’m going to spare us all the rest of my play-by-play.

Pamela and I laid in bed with Brandon, gazing at him, touching him, adoring him, and welcoming him into the world. I felt inspired and while they rested, I ran downstairs to the piano and wrote a song about him. The piano is the first place I go when I want to express myself. It’s not a one-way conversation: I’m not playing the piano, we’re playing each other. I’m feeding those keys my feelings and when the hammers strike the strings, they resonate back to me, echoing my emotions like a mirror.

Heavy songwriters always talk about those times when a song comes through them so effortlessly that it feels like it wrote itself. I’d had moments like that, but the day my first son was born, I really knew what they were talking about. I called the song “Brandon,” and when I was done writing it, I realized again what I’d already known: The best songs come from extreme pain or extreme happiness. Everything else in between is watered down and you can tell. Think about some of the greatest songs you know, whether it’s Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven,” or Eminem’s “Kim.” You know when it’s real. I’m proud to say that one of those came through me that day. I don’t feel right taking credit for it, and I don’t expect everyone to understand because it’s almost impossible to explain, but it’s one of those experiences that makes humans feel that there is a higher power out there. It’s something that happens, and I felt like a vehicle, or like someone else was delivering a message with my voice. Sitting alone at the piano in my living room as my wife and newborn son slept upstairs, I watched my fingers play by themselves—it’s something that doesn’t happen very often.

It was so personal that I couldn’t expect anyone else but Pamela to really understand it. Some people hated it when I played it in concert with Mötley. It was something new for us—fans had seen me get off the drums and play piano before, but they’d never heard me or anyone else in the band sing about something as personal as the birth of a child. I couldn’t fucking believe that people dumped on me for writing it in the first place. To me that was insane. I wasn’t writing a love ballad, I was writing a song about the most amazing thing that’s ever happened in my life. I was writing a song about my son. What, are the dudes in Mötley never supposed to write songs about anything but drugs, chicks, and played-out rock-and-roll bullshit until we die? Guess so. Thanks superfans, that’s tight! You guys really love us.

If you are a musician, a writer, a painter, a poet, or creative in any way, you put your life experiences into your art. Some of our fans dug the song—they told me so—and typically they were parents too.

After I had written the song, I knew what sound would make it complete. Months before, when I went with Pamela to the doctor and heard our son’s heart beating for the first time, I recorded the sound with my portable DAT player. I’m in the doctor’s office, hearing my boy’s heartbeat, tripping because it sounded so cool. I ask the doctor, “Um, do you have a line out on that Ultrasound machine?” He did. Awesome! Brandon’s heart sounded like nothing I’d heard before—his tiny heart thumping inside Pam was something I had to capture. There was a cadence, an echo and a resonance to the sound of his heart coming through that machine. I knew I had to have it and I knew I’d use it because no mike, no studio, and no filter could duplicate it. His heartbeat became the intro and tempo to “Brandon.” I couldn’t think of a better place for it to be immortalized.