shot a cap gun in my eye and I was rushed to the hospital, blinded for hours. Doctors thought I would never see again. Overnight, my mom became uber-overprotective. In response to her panic, I built an emotional wall around myself, reinforced with tons of stuffed animals sitting by my side in fantasy. Then, at the age of eight, I had an ear abscess so “dire” that a doctor told my parents I should live my entire life in a plastic bubble to avoid more infections. Michael Jackson had nothing on me, trust me. (Happily, my parents didn’t follow that wacky doc’s recommendation—but then again, it was the 1960s and there were a lot of those wack-a-doodles out there, trust me.)
Before long, my emotional wall morphed into a “wall of weight.” I was the first person in third grade to break one hundred pounds. When I made a mistake in class at South Mountain Elementary School in South Orange, New Jersey, one teacher, Mrs. Ernst, put a dunce cap on my head and paraded me around to every classroom in the building, telling everyone that I was stupid and a dummy. So, you can imagine why I carried around a lot of baggage and became chronically shy and obese. Here I was at nine years old, unlike everyone else, and at times I felt obsolete. (I was in my twenties when my mom told me she threatened to poke Mrs. Ernst’s eyes out if she ever put a dunce cap on me again—I wondered why Mrs. Ernst was suddenly being nice to me!)
In fourth grade, still waddling down the hallways like a roly-poly, the other kids would scream in between classes, “Fat Larry wants to marry Miss Vancarry!” Yes, my first name is Larry—Lawrence, actually. My full name is Lawrence Justin Loeber. My mom had visions of me going to Lawrenceville, a college preparatory boarding school in New Jersey, but I wanted to be comfy-cozy, chubby Larry who was born in NYC and grew up in Jersey, thank you very much! (And no, I wasn’t named after the prep school. )
#My mom wanted me to go to boarding school—
all I wanted was to go to a diner.
I fell further into the “lack of confidence” category—until high school. Hit with the performance bug and armed with potent fantasies—picturing myself singing with Louie Armstrong (while he sang “Hello Dolly”), James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Average White Band, Earth, Wind & Fire, Melba Moore, Rufus & Chaka Khan (my dog Rufus is named after the band), Marvin Gaye, The Brothers Johnson, Ohio Players, Aretha Franklin, The Isley Brothers, Bette Midler, and Barbra Streisand (a huge inspiration for me!), among others—I convinced my parents to allow me to take the bus (from the Jersey suburbs to Manhattan!) three times a week for lessons in singing, dancing and acting.
#When the chips are down,
start tap-dancing and sing pop music!
I’d finally found something that fit me. Once I stepped on the stage, I owned it—without analyzing the fear that supposedly came with performing. As soon as I hit puberty, I morphed into this kid who could sing the shit out of anything. I was absorbing the creative spirit inside me, as if I were a Scrub Daddy “happy” sponge sopping up water on a kitchen counter. Because I had these pipes that could belt out a tune all the way from Jersey to Times Square (really!) I had the honor of being accepted to and attending the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory School for voice and the HB Studio for drama—not to mention the Alvin Ailey School for modern dance, Henry LeTang for tap, and Jo-Jo Smith and Phil Black for jazz (where I learned my moves with the other JLo—Jennifer Lopez—who also studied at Phil’s). In those days, the doors of the greats were wide open, and for about $2.50 a class, one could walk in and learn from them. My parents also let me apply for the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan; not only was I accepted, but I stayed and “starred” in shows for three summers. At camp, I was a ballsy and competitive SOB. One year, I was the first person in the state of Michigan to come down with chicken pox (as a teenager—not attractive), right at the time when campers were auditioning to be in the big productions of the summer. Unhappy with being quarantined for the pox and sitting on the sidelines, I “demanded” that the directors come to the infirmary to audition me behind a window (because I was still infectious). I’d be damned if I was going to watch others on a stage that should be starring me!
#Don’t let a little infection
stand in the way of your spotlight.
After those great summers at NMC in Interlochen, I studied more and more drama, dance and voice in NYC. During one summer, I dropped sixty pounds eating cottage cheese and lettuce while I was learning how to tap, getting my vocal chords in shape, and learning how to act. Talk about coming of age! What I lost in fat, I gained in confidence, shedding a bit of that pompous asshole-ness and becoming a nicer person to be around. Adios, squeaky little girl! (And a big adios to my biological father, who met a waitress and her older daughter on the highway, divorced my mom, and apparently moved to Florida with this brood.) Incidentally, I learned my dad moved to Florida when I dialed his number and the auto-attendant said, “The number you have reached has been changed....” Really classy, dad.
#When you lose weight, you celebrate.
#When an uninterested parent leaves you, you celebrate.
Everything didn’t go my way, though. Fast forward to my first year at NYU Undergraduate Drama. I was accepted to the school after my audition, but then rejected because my SAT scores were abysmal: 390 (Math) and 420 (English). (OK, so I’m tremendously flawed when it comes to taking standardized tests.) I got some help from a family friend who knew someone in Admissions, and simultaneously I pitched many of my teachers, from first grade through high school (except for Mrs. Ernst), to write me a character reference. Voila! I guess this was the first time I became my own publicist. I was re-accepted to the university. Through the school’s undergraduate drama program, I was lucky to study acting under the great Stella Adler; but the academic curriculum I chose to earn some sort of degree (which, BTW, I didn’t get) sucked for me. I wanted out. I didn’t have the patience to go through four years of the “I’m not sure why I’m here” mode that many college students seem to go through.
So I dropped out of NYU and shifted gears again, both professionally and geographically. My focus turned from acting to recording pop music...but not in New York! After seeing an MTV interview with the Stray Cats—an 80s rockabilly band whose members kept yowling about how they “couldn’t get arrested” in the States, but were all the rage in the UK—I set my sights on becoming a pop recording artist in England. Sadly, my dad (the one who exited stage left for an “ultra-fabulous life” in The Sunshine State), refused to help support my leaving NYU in favor of “career” in show business. That was fine by me (no hard feelings!) because my will to be a pop recording artist superseded my biological father’s approval.
#If your dream doesn’t fit into someone else’s, screw them.
When the plane landed in the UK, I put my gut life strategy in motion. I said to myself that I was going to get a recording contract before my visa expired. I was going to pretend that I was Mickey Rooney with Judy Garland, put on a show out of my garage, and never take the word “no” for an answer. I decided I was going to use my “Americanisms” as a plus—to be a bit odd to the Brits and become a character in my own real-life performance.
So, here’s the wrap-up: one day I was Fat Larry, the next I was a college dropout, and the next I left for England and morphed into “Larry Loeber,” the first signed solo artist on Gary “Cars” Numan’s record label, Numa, debuting with a single called “Shivers Up My Spine,” which was starting to get airplay on BBC’s Radio 1 in London. Friends asked me why I didn’t call it “Shivers Down My Spine.” Yup, even back in the 80s, I always thought up, not down—and my visualization of having a recording contract in hand before my Virgin Atlantic flight took off from Heathrow to JFK really paid off.
My dreams continued to grow: while I was recording the demos that eventually turned into singles, I almost passed out when I saw the sign “Sting” in the next room at Shepperton Recording Studios
