Mutt, Twain derail
Couple separates after 14 years
By JOE WARMINGTON |
 Shania Twain and her producer hubby, Mutt Lange are splitsville, but few details have been revealed about the power duo's breakup. (Jae C. Hong, AP File) |
Whose bed has Mutt Lange's boots been under?
Not under Shania Twain's anymore!
Yes, the news broke yesterday that the 42-year-old Canadian songbird and her superstar producer husband of 14 years, Robert John "Mutt" Lange, 59, are splitsville.
As the pride of Timmins once warned: "if you're not in it for love, I'm out of here!" and also sang "any man of mine better be proud of me, even when I'm ugly he still better love me, and I can be late for a date that's fine, but he better be on time!"
What happened, Mutt? Late for a date? Not in it for love anymore? Don't Impress her Much?
Perhaps No One Needs to Know!
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Yes, details of this breakup are just as secret as details of their marriage, which friends and music insiders have always "scratched their heads about."
Whatever happened, it was very clear yesterday though that Lange was no longer Still the One!
"This is a private matter and there will be no further comment at this time," Tyson Parker of Universal Music told The Canadian Press.
The approach doesn't shock 680 Entertainment editor Gloria Martin who saw a young and aspiring Eilleen Regina Edwards perform on the stage at Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville in the late 1980s.
"Dignity" is the word Martin called the couple's approach to this separation. "This is so huge because they always seemed so solid. They set a high standard for the entertainment industry. There was no gossip. What do you know about them? Nothing."
Or certainly very little. It is known that they had homes in Switzerland and New Zealand and together have a 6-year-old son named Eja -- pronounced Asia.
No matter what happens, her story is stuff of legend -- coming from poverty and singing her way to the top. Throughout the years, her charitable nature has been well documented, along with her concern for the plight of children. This story is the most controversy she has been involved in since news that the aboriginal man who died with her mother in a car crash was in fact not her biological father -- a non-native.
One thing about Shania, whom I have dealt with just a few times, is she is also professional, cordial and classy. Like Wayne Gretzky or Celine Dion, her journey is enjoyed by a lot of her fellow Canadians.
The Sun's John White captured an image of Twain shopping on Bloor St. in Yorkville last September and several autograph hounds told me they have seen Shania in Toronto recently and many believe she may have a penthouse suite in Yorkville, although it has not been confirmed. She also has a sister living in Huntsville -- not far from Deerhurst Resort where she once graced the stage of their popular music show and where she was married to Lange on Dec. 28, 1993.
But rumours of a fractured marriage, complete with separate bedrooms, had surfaced over the years as whispers -- but never with any backup. Some of that stemmed from the fact that Twain and Lange were rarely ever seen together and that it was widely known that Lange had purchased as many pictures of himself as he could.
Ironically, I was actually within feet of them at FanFare in 1993 in Nashville, Tenn., where I believe they met -- either on or just outside of Billy Ray Cyrus' tour bus. "I remember meeting Mutt Lange with Bryan Adams on my bus," Cyrus, then of Mercury Records, once told me. "I remember Mutt saying 'who's that?' " It was Canada's own Shania Twain, a new signee with Mercury who went on to be one of the biggest selling female artists of all time.
The two -- Lange and Twain -- combined for some incredible success and tremendous music, too, with countless album sales, awards and sold-out concert tours to go with Lange's already monumental success of producing such monster acts as Def Leppard, Bryan Adams, AC/DC, Foreigner and The Cars. "Shania was like a raw diamond in the rough and he was like the jeweller," Toronto entertainment producer Gene Mascardelli said. "Together, they created the crown jewel of the country music and pop scene."
But some close to Twain have long cast a dubious eye about Lange's "hyper controlling nature" on her personal life and career and called him a Svengali-like presence in her life. A 2002 Time magazine feature story talked how since "meeting Lange, Twain has become a strict vegetarian and a devotee of Sant Mat, a strain of Sikh mysticism that advocates hours of daily meditation, abstinence from sex and alcohol, and copious journal-keeping as the path to self-realization."
That reality, it said in Time, had some, including Twain's brother Darryl, concluding that she has become, as he put it in a 2000 magazine interview, "a robot."
But that Time piece also addressed the control rumblings by describing the couple talking on the cellphone and appearing to "communicate like husband and wife, not Svengali and subject."
One music industry producer told me last night their relationship in his view was "in many ways not a lot different to what Bobby Brown was at times to Whitney Houston -- part of the solution but also part of the problem."
Of course, there was certainly no problem selling records for Twain and Lange. Together, they have sold more than 65 million. It's unknown where she will go next musically or even if they will still work together. Mascardelli says it won't stop her either way. "All of the great teams break up -- Lennon and McCartney, Martin and Lewis. She'll be fine. And so will he."
But as of last night, no one knew where Twain actually was -- although there are some who believe she could be in Toronto or nearby. If it's true that a single Shania is here in town, Scrawler has just one thing to say.
Come on Over!
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