His Achy Breaky Road to Success

“Shot Full of Love” (Mercury Records) is the latest album from country singer Billy Ray Cyrus. The “Achy Breaky Heart” kid talked about one of the tracks on his new album, “Busy Man,” during a phone interview from his 500-acre ranch outside Nashville. (Actually, he was on his cell phone driving around his property in his “great big GMC four-wheel-drive truck looking for deer and turkey and at the beautiful snow on the mountaintops.”)

“ ‘Busy Man’ ties in with your story,” he says, “because it’s about working. It’s about this daddy who is out busting his butt makin’ a livin’ and chasin’ his dream, but he’s ignoring his family. When I heard the demo, it hit me like the song ‘Cat’s in the Cradle.’ ”

Cyrus, 37, originally from Flatwoods, Ky., is married and the father of three.

Question: How come “Cat’s in the Cradle” had such an effect on you?

Answer: My mom and dad got divorced when I was 5. When I used to hear that song as a little boy, sometimes it would make me cry because I would think about missing my dad, my life and how messed up and different it was from all the other kids’. And when I heard the song “Busy Man,” it hit me kinda like “Cat’s in the Cradle,” only it has a real positive ending.

Q: Tell me about the first time you played the guitar for a living.

A: Never missed a week’s work from 1981 until August 1984 at Changes, a bar in Ohio. It burnt to the ground. I put a Bible I’d found inside my guitar amp--this little, teeny 2-inch-by-2-inch red Bible. When that club burnt up, the only thing that was left on that stage was that Bible. . . . And I thought of somethin’ that my Papaw Cyrus, who was the Pentecostal preacher, used to say: “With every adversity lies the seed to something better.”

Q: Is that when you moved to L.A.?

A: I’d been knockin’ on Nashville’s doors for three years, and I couldn’t get inside none of ‘em. My intuition told me to move to California. Well, six months later I realized that they don’t pay people in Southern California to play at bars and make music. There’s so many hungry and desperate people out there tryin’ to get a break, everybody plays for free. So, my God, there I was broke in Los Angeles, Calif., by the end of ’84.

Q: Is it true you lived out of your car?

A: I was in my car, and I also had some cousins down in Seal Beach and Long Beach, down in there. I’d stay all night at their houses, but basically my car was my central location.

Q: Weren’t you selling baby clothes at some point?

A: I was walkin’ down Van Nuys Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley and standin’ across from a store called Baby Toy Town. It said “Help Wanted” in the window. And my Papaw had taught me when I was a little boy, desperate men do desperate things. I lowered my head, went in there and filled out the application.

Q: They gave you the job?

A: Yeah. I guess desperate stores do desperate things, too. They hired a hillbilly from Kentucky. And I was terrible. I didn’t know nothin’ about baby beds and baby strollers, and all this stuff. But listen, the good Lord felt sorry for me and gave me a break. He sent in this lady who was very pregnant, and she bought one of everything that was in the store. When we got done and they rung up her total, she looked at me and said, “You are the best salesman I have ever met.” And I was sittin’ there thinkin’, “I didn’t sell this lady a thing.” So this lady said, “You ought to come to work for my husband. He runs a car lot down in Woodland Hills, California.” There was only one thing in the world that I knew less about than baby strollers, and that was cars.

Q: So you went and sold cars.

A: I quit Baby Toy Town and went over to Guy Martin Oldsmobile. This was in the spring of ’85. They paid me to go do some training. Then I started sellin’ and guess what? For two months I didn’t sell a single thing. I run people off the lot. All the other salesmen, man, were gettin’ so mad, and they hated me. They wanted the boss to fire me immediately because soon as somebody would come walkin’ on the lot, I’d head out there and run ‘em off.

Keep in mind all during this time I had this band called the Breeze, and we would go to [clubs] and play for free late at night. So every day I’d come back into that car lot with my dirty suit on smellin’ like cigarette smoke . . . The manager said to me, in tears he said, “Man, anybody else in the whole wide world I would have to fire right now because even the owner said, ‘You gotta let that hillbilly go,’ but I kinda like hearin’ you talk ‘cause it makes me not as homesick. I’m gonna give you one more chance.” And do you know the next day I went out and sold seven cars in one day?

Q: In 1986, you got out of L.A. and did what?

A: Every time you fail you’ve eliminated one way that won’t work, therefore bein’ one way closer to the one way that will. And I knew that California had been a failure for me, but at the same time it had been an invaluable learning experience. . . . My intuition said, “Put your feet back on the ground. Come back here to your roots, to your home area. Start workin’ five, six nights a week. When you get a day off, drive down to Nashville and pitch your songs, your demos.” And I came back down to Nashville and started knockin’ on doors again.

Q: How long did you have to do that?

A: From ’86 to ’87 to ’88. In 1989, I finally got a door to open up. Mercury Records, they came to see me at a show and began a relationship with me, but it wasn’t until June of 1991 I called the president of Mercury Records and begged for five minutes to come in and play my very best. I said, “Sir, I’m gonna play you one song, and if this ain’t good enough, then I need to quit because my best just ain’t good enough and I’m gonna have to do somethin’ else.” And he gave me that five minutes. . . . He stood up at the end of my song and he said, “I’m gonna structure you a little deal.” He had another guy from the label with him, and they shook my hand and said, “Welcome to Mercury Records.”

Whatever Works runs every Monday.