The Road That Has No End – Mariah Lightening’s Last Interview

The Road That Has No End - Mariah Lightening’s Last Interview

As the curtains close on a life and career, the 54 year old rockstar gives her final statements to her beloved fans and staunch critics.

She’s hardly recognizable. The once powerfully strong build that performed olympic level dives off arena stages is now an amalgamation of flimsy bones on a hospital bed. Her iconic glittery unitard has been replaced by a gown. The only music in Mariah Lightening’s presence these days is the beeping and groaning of her dialysis machine. She’s been released from the hospital and is at home in her Jackson Hole residence, with nurses on standby. Her PR team has done a good job of keeping her condition under wraps, but now everyone realizes what’s next, especially Lightening.

“It’s no secret I didn’t treat my body like a temple,” she wheezes. Anyone familiar with Lightening’s music knows of her tales of ragers and benders. Chugging beers and staggering around the stage was a regular occurrence at a Lightening show. If you were the lucky few in the front row, you might even get soaked with PBR when she spit it out like a fountain while performing her 1992 hit ‘Don’t Tell Me To Swallow.’ Lightening now speaks in a voice barely above a whisper, a far cry from the howling animal she was on stage. “Even after I was diagnosed in 2019, I had to keep the theatrics going.” She says, “The fans loved the debauchery too much.” Critics accused her of being a one-trick-pony, unable to adapt like the greats. Lightening spat figurative beer in their faces, too, in a sassy 2020 retort single called ‘leave me alone i’m a middle aged women.’ Over guitar riffs dirtier than an oil rag, she croaks: you think you’re smart / you think you’re hip / saying this old hag only has one trick / why don’t you try to put on my show? / i’m a middle aged woman / leave me alone!

Lightening was no stranger to criticism. In a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone, she didn’t beat around the bush. “I know people think I’m disgusting. They say, you could be so pretty, why do you do all these manly and gross stage stunts? To that I respond: fuck you, I’ll do whatever the fuck I want, and I’ll do it in my glitter suit. You either love me or you hate me, and I frankly don’t give a shit.” The statement made her haters go crazy and her fans love her even more.

“She’s a force of nature,” says young pop-star and friend of Lightening’s, Tammy Tomlinson, backstage at Coachella. She’s getting her hair done, blond curl after beautiful curl falling down her back while she chomps her bubble gum. “The male gaze has never touched her. She showed all of us coming after her that a woman could be whoever she wanted, on stage and off. All hail Mariah Lightening!”

It wasn’t easy for Lightening to get to that place of influence. At the start of her career, before cementing her place with her 1987 album, Lightening Strikes Three Times, she was booted off stage more times than she could count. “I still get death threats almost daily,” Mariah hisses now. “Not just from men, like you’d think. Plenty of women write me nasty hate mail. And it stings worse coming from them. It’s like my mother is some overlord that created clones of herself who’s sole mission is to try to break my confidence.”

Mariah Lightening’s relationship to her mom is well documented. It’s the topic of a lot of her music. Raised in a prim, clean, religious household, she always felt like “a dirty rug. They were constantly trying to clean me, make me holy or whatever. But they’d use me as a dumping grounds for all their own sins and flaws. I absorbed them all. They’d walk all over me with muddy boots and filthy me up again and again, then get mad at me for being gross. It made no sense. And at a certain point, I just embraced it. I said ‘yeah, you’re right. I’m disgusting, and I don’t fit in here.’” Lightening left home at 16. She hasn’t spoken directly to her family members since then, but their hatred for her still haunts her. Her biggest online hater? Her own mother. At 89, her mother has amassed the most followers across social media out of any other Mariah Lightening opponent.

“People hate a woman that has dimensions,” her long time producer and collaborator Samantha Driscoll reflects. “Her family wanted her to just look pretty and not cause problems. So what did she do? She made herself nasty and caused all the problems in the world.” Driscoll has produced every Lightening album since before Lightening Strikes Three Times. “We’ve produced 23 full length studio albums together,” she says proudly. “We speak a language no one else speaks. I know how Mariah likes it. Her sound is not just dirty. It’s shiny and beautiful too. There’s layers to it. There’s depth. It’s been my life’s work, capturing the sound of this deeply emotional, flawed and gorgeous person.”

It’s true, when people think of Lightening they like to focus on the superficial: the raunch and the provocation. But Lightening has a sweet side too, musically and otherwise. In addition to her philanthropy (Lightening has 3 giant nonprofits, aiding in curbing World Hunger, Climate Change and Eliminating Student Debt in America), she has been a mother to countless young stars navigating the industry. She has single handedly taken sexism in music by the reins and steered it into a more manageable place. It is notable that on every tour she’s ever been on, not one member of her band or crew has been a cis straight man.

“She gave me a chance in an industry that pretty much ignored me,” says her assistant of twelve years, Jaime Mercer. “I feel like because she didn’t have that great of a family growing up, and doesn’t have a family now, she makes a point to treat everyone in her circle like a brother, sister, daughter, son, whatever. We’re all a big family, and Mariah is the matriarch.”

Now, on her death bed, Lightening has no regrets about not starting a family. “My albums are my babies. My collaborators are closer than family to me. My career has given me everything and more than my parents could have. I don’t think for a second my experiences were any less rich because I didn’t settle down with some mediocre guy and pop a few out my hooch.”

She’s chosen to die at home. She demanded her bed be placed next to a south facing window, so she could get direct sun and watch the birds. Get Well Soon balloons and flowers adorn the room around her. She looks like she weighs about 50 pounds. It’s hard to believe this body ever housed such a powerful woman, but it did. Lightening has won Grammy Awards for all but 5 of her 23 albums. She’s a household name, and never stopped touring since her career took off in ’87. She’s broken record after record for her stage stunts, performances, and musical releases. She’s kept up with the times and adapted beautifully. She’s owned her missteps and grown from them.

“When I was younger, I thought I’d get to a point where I could sit back and go, ‘I’ve made it.’ But it’s not like that. It’s always on to the next thing. I sell out a venue, wonderful. Now let’s sell it out every night of the damn week. I tour all seven continents. Great! Now let’s do it again, this time adding even more shows in those random little countries that other artists never go to. I top the charts with an album. I’m happy for like, a day, then I realize I have to obliterate the charts with the next. Like…make those charts non-existent.” She laughs, “the road I’m on, it has no end.” She laughs some more, then fixes her sights on a group of crows in the yard outside her window. She’s been feeding the crows since she moved into her Wyoming mansion in 2014.

With that, Lightening has posed the obvious question. Isn’t this the end? But she doesn’t think so. No one does. Mariah Lightening’s legacy will keep walking down that never ending road for all eternity.