Deep in the San Fernando valley, in a non-descript green warehouse, past a talent office hosting auditions for Rent, flanked by 100 Hollywood hopefuls, she swings back and forth on an enormous bed suspended from the ceiling. Surrounded by seven gorgeous men sporting Calvin Klein briefs, early five o'clock shadows, and devious grins, dance diva Pepper MaShay is pinned in the middle of every gay man's wildest fantasy. For her, it's called Monday. This is work, and she's working, hard, on a music video for her latest single, 'I Can't Stop,' directed by top tier, auteur-of-the-flesh ChiChi LaRue.
MaShay returned just this morning from a month-long tour of the Far East backing jazz singer Bobby Caldwell, her usual gig in between dance singles. She is jetlagged to a degree that makes my two-hour shift from Chicago seem like nothing. She is grace under pressure, and humble to a degree that belies the 30 years of struggle it took to achieve grand-dame diva status. She looks like a star. She looks like a buxom beauty, the lovechild of Celia Cruz and Josephine Baker, with the accessories to back it up. She looks like anything but a 49-year-old grandmother of a one-year-old child. In this light, flanked by runway-worthy gay boys half her age in a tightie-whitie wonderland, Pepper looks as comfortable as if she were sipping a latté in a West Hollywood café.
Perhaps nobody is as more surprised by MaShay's esteemed status among the gay masses than the humble Ms. Jean McClain, the real person living within Pepper's persona. With three Billboard chart-topping dance anthems in the past two years, her voice has continually connected with the audience that seems to admire her strength, her fierce presence, her ability to feel real.
'At first when I started playing to gay clubs and events, it seemed so strange that they all these young gay men wanted to reach out and touch me,' she admits. 'But, at the time it was all starting to move for me, I was going through a divorce, so that was not so bad. I was so alone in my personal life and it felt like having an extended family on the road that gave me support, and a sense of belonging, and to be touched physically. It couldn't have happened at a better time in my life.'
Fame was a long time coming for McClain. The Muncie, Indiana-born army brat moved to L.A. and spent decades as a studio singer, eventually backing the biggest voices in the business: Cher, Tina Turner, and Whitney Houston; Mick Jagger, Michael Bolton, and Lenny Kravitz. Countless others. Wife, mother and part-time breadwinner, she paid her dues singing mostly rock, and R&B, until the mid-90s when a short European tour with a female vocal trio landed her in the middle of one of Europe's largest dance clubs.
'I was in this club in Sweden, with five levels, and all this incredible dance music,' she recalls. 'I had never experienced anything like this in my life, all these people vibing this powerful house music. The owner asked me why I wasn't recording dance records after hearing us sing. I didn't have an answer. That was a turning point. I knew there was no fast and easy route to fame, but I had found a new niche that let me explore things vocally.' After returning stateside, McClain joined ranks with various dance producers, one of whom pitched a stage name 'Pepper,' because of her freckles, and 'MaShay,' to riff off 'papier maché.'
Then came Thunderpuss. In the late '90s, the remixing team of Chris Cox and Barry Harris used MaShay's talent as the backing chorus behind the Whitney Houston smash 'My Love is Your Love,' Taylor Dayne's 'Naked Without You,' and, finally, 1999's club hit 'If It Don't Fit, Don't Force It' by Abigail. When the Abigail remix hit dancefloors, it was Pepper's powerhouse backing vocal that earned the most attention, and the boys decided they owed her a starring spot to repay her (undercredited) contribution to their success.
That debt was repaid with interest when Harris delivered 'Dive in the Pool,' a spoken-word, diva-driven party anthem that would explode MaShay's star into the stratosphere. The song soared to No. 1 on the Billboard Dance single charts in the fall of 2000, and was the No. 2 Club Play single for the year. The song was re-energized, and a second set of remixes recharged its chart position later that winter after the song was featured prominently in the Showtime series, Queer as Folk. In 2001, it was included as the lead single on the show's soundtrack CD.
The ubiquitous theme song for 2001 Gay Pride celebrations came with MaShay's next single produced by Harris, 'I Got My Pride,' which topped the Billboard dance chart in July and was featured on the HBO show Sex and the City and in the indie film Punks. 2002 proved Pepper was unstoppable with yet a third smash single, 'You and Me (Feels So Good)' which peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard charts. Pepper honored the one-year anniversary of Sept. 11 with a mix of patriotism and powerhouse vocals titled, 'I Pledge,' a spoken-word 'Pledge of Allegiance' delivered in the 'Dive in the Pool' spoken cantor. That she could make even the Pledge rock a dancefloor is a testament to her persuasive vocal prowess.
Pepper reclines in a Mae West boudoir pose in a powder-pink satin bustier with a teased-out fuchsia wig and matching glamour face. The hanging Bobby Trendy bed sports a pink puffball comforter accented by silky dark pink sheets, matching super-stuffed silk duvet and appliqué-accented, feather-trimmed puffy pink pillows. There is no mistaking the target audience for this single as you walk into this set. Further assuring the single will have that certain gay je ne sais quoi, MaShay's label Cetacean Records secured LaRue to lens the affair. Circuit boys love their porn almost as much as their dancefloor divas, and MaShay's management hope to cash in on that cross-cultural synergy.
Though Pepper generates her own thunder in any song she touches.
As the playback starts, her energy reserves kick in and she comes alive. Her face focuses in fierce intensity as she gives the lyric big diva annunciation—the controlled wiggle of the lower jaw slightly coupled with a pursing of the lips—skills only mastered by the most seasoned of drag queens. Watching her lip synch in a bed full of boys, she does not miss a beat or underutilize a movement of her eyes, or an uplifting gesture with hands to the air. She is feeling the lyric:
'I can't stop this loving that you're giving.
You hold the key that's got me under control. I cant stop this feeling that I'm needin'. You got me hypnotized like a spider in your web. I can't stop. No. I can't, I can't stop!'
The boys move in on Pepper, closer on the bed, as an object of desire as cameras roll. That these boys are primarily part-time porn talent, or that she's old enough to be their mom does not matter. There is a tangible tension in the air, like at any moment they might get carried away in her spell and move the puffy pink comforter over to the middle of the outdoor camping set in the next studio and have a wilderness orgy. Two of these guys just wrapped shooting LaRue's latest porn-opus, Roughin' It, after all.
'It's really, really hot right now, I'm kinda being cooked by this light, but that's OK,' Pepper softly relents between takes as an assistant dabs a bead of sweat and eyeliner that threatens to ruin the shot on the director's monitor.
'Glamour is pain, sweetie!' director LaRue proclaims with authority to all in the room, dressed casually in an orange T-shirt and jeans, answering to both drag-name and his birth-name, Larry. 'OK, Matt Summers, squeeze in behind Pepper,' he orders, filing through bodies. 'Little boy in the back, I forgot your name, move your ass toward the camera, and show what your mother gave ya. Umm ... somebody get me an apple box so these goddamned boys can look taller!'
Each of the seven uber-studs is posed at just the right angle to accent their greatest gifts.
'OK, this take begins with you all posed looking toward the ground, and then at my signal you all crawl toward Pepper like you're going to kiss her,' LaRue explains, almost walking back to his monitor before turning back. 'Let me clarify, today is about Pepper! So I don't want you all touching all over each other, just in case they want to show this somewhere mainstream. That's what happened to my last music video.'
As one boy tickles Pepper's arm with a feather, she loses her cool for the first time of the day and flubs her line, laughing. 'Aaah, I screwed up, but damn, that tickled!' The group breaks up laughing and dismounts from the bed as a production assistant gathers take-out menus.
The boys break off into pairs in conversation as Pepper connects with the 'little boy' on her left, the one LaRue could not name. 'Robbie, honey, someday you are going to be a big star, a model and then I am going to tell people 'he got his start on my video!'' They laugh as she hugs him gently.
In some ways, the guys on the shoot connect the way MaShay does with her fans in live performance and for many of the same reasons. They praise her confidence, she is real to them, and real accepting, unconditional even, and they give that love back to her. As the shoot wraps, Pepper takes out a few minutes to thank, hug and take pictures with each of the seven boys involved in her shoot, something she appreciated stars like Tina Turner taking out time to do with her when she was just a back-up singer. She is tired and jetlagged, smiling and happy to be so exhausted and so adored by so many. MaShay's brand of house is mighty, maternal, and materially gay. Perhaps her star's on the rise, but she is firmly grounded, earthy and unstoppable.
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