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Mariah Carey's Svengali Ex Admits To Being "Controlling" And "Obsessive"
By
Jen Chung
Published Jan 6, 2013
Modified Jan 6, 2013
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By
Jen Chung
Published Jan 6, 2013
Modified Jan 6, 2013
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Mariah Carey was just 18 when she was plucked from Long Island and launched as a singing superstar by Sony Music boss Tommy Mottola. Besides making hits, the pair were romantically involved, infamously married in an over-the-top 1993 wedding that had 50 flower girls (ten times more than Princess Diana). But when their union crumbled, Carey revealed that Mottola was "controlling" and restrictive" and made her wary of marriage. Now Mottola is ready to tell his side of the story—which basically backs up Carey's claims.
The NY Post took a look at Mottola's memoir, Hitmaker, and declares that his marriage with Carey was "the most sinister marriage in pop music this side of Ronnie and Phil Spector." He claims that Carey was flirting with him from the start (he was married at the time) and even his therapist told him not to get involved with Carey. From the Post:
“You don’t understand!” he’d tell his shrink, according to the book. “Mariah is going to be the biggest star in the world. She’s going to be as big as Michael Jackson.”
Undeterred, his therapist kept telling Mottola that Carey was still just a teenage girl, one barely out of a rough upbringing, who was in no way his equal — chronologically, mentally, emotionally, professionally...
Mottola felt particularly vindicated when he escorted Carey to her first-ever Grammy ceremony, where she won two awards — and not because she was his biggest project, but because his shrink was probably watching.
“I can only now wonder about the expression on my therapist’s face when . . . she saw Mariah thank God for that first Grammy, and then Tommy Mottola for believing in her,” he writes. “She could no longer call me delusional.”
Mottola, who oversaw all aspects of work, explains why he made Carey, then 21, keep working and not spend time with her friends, "My feeling was that there’d be plenty of time for Mariah to celebrate just a little ways down the road. I’m not talking 10 years, just a few."
Mottola kept Carey in a Bedford, NY estate which she nicknamed "Sing Sing". Carey later said to Interview, "I understand him not wanting me to go out and hang out all night, but going to a spa with friends every now and then, or doing things on my own would have made a world of difference. And I'd probably still be with him if I had," and to CNN, when asked "How trapped did you feel by that relationship?," "We don't have enough time in this interview."
The pair broke up in 1997 and Carey took over her own music (see: "Honey"). And then in 2005, with her album, The Emancipation of Mimi, the video for "We Belong Together" featured Carey wearing the wedding dress she wore when she married Mottola and Eric Roberts as her evil, creepy groom.
Mottola, who was portrayed as a thug in a 1996 Vanity Fair profile, justifies his behavior in his book, "If it seemed like I was controlling. I apologize. Was I obsessive? Yes. But that was also part of the reason for her success.”
Tagged
Mariah Carey
sony music
svengali
Tommy Mottola
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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