An Invasion Of Privacy

He started playing guitar at age 20. His hero was another lefty, Jimi Hendrix. Before matches McEnroe would sit around his hotel room mutilating Purple Haze and Foxy Lady. One day during Wimbledon, he says, he was in his hotel room administering last rites to David Bowie's Suffragette City when he heard a gentle rapping at the door. The knocker was Bowie himself. "I'll buy you a drink upstairs," he told McEnroe. "Just don't bring the guitar."

Rock musicians have been only slightly more accepting of McEnroe than art dealers. "They view me as a tennis player," he says. "But I'd view them as rock musicians if they wanted to play tennis." Rock critics and fans have been an even tougher sell. Some listeners have pelted him with tennis balls. McEnroe smiles shyly. "They may have been right," he says. "It's not like I ace every tune. But then you have to be bad before you're good."

Smyth says McEnroe doesn't so much play the guitar as "wrestle it into submission." Her assessment of his voice is more generous: "It's big and loud and distinct." The Johnny Smyth Band—McEnroe and three other musicians—will soon make its recording debut on the 21 West label. McEnroe wrote all the lyrics and music for the group, whose surly, sinewy sound owes a debt to Sound-garden. "A lot of it is what I'd be telling myself if I were looking in the mirror," he says. "Sort of reiterating experiences I've had."

One ballad is a tribute to Gerulaitis, who died two Septembers ago: "I remember you when I was just a kid/I looked up to you and the things you did/You showed me places I'd never ever seen/The world took notice of two kids from Queens." Well, even Sid Vicious must have had moments of quiet introspection. More up-tempo is a head banger McEnroe calls a "standard tennis tune." The chorus is a medley of his greatest comebacks to umpires: "You cannot be serious!" "Answer the question!" "You guys are incompetent fools!" Alas, the song won't make the CD's final cut.

None of his kids seem drawn to rock or rackets. Kevin and Sean dream of playing pro basketball. "I tell them, 'You've gotta practice,' " McEnroe says. "I want to instill the intensity of wanting to work for something."

McEnroe doesn't think kids need athlete role models. Not that he feels he was a bad one. "Kids aren't morons," he says. "They don't sit there and say, 'I'm gonna copy McEnroe yelling at an umpire.' They like me because they see a personality, some emotion, someone who cares and, beyond anything else, someone with ability."

McEnroe speaks of his children with great tenderness. His sensitivity toward the innocence of youth may derive from having had his innocence stamped out by the ridiculous demands of junior tennis. "By having kids, I got my humanity back," he says. "I'd been like some tennis dude, Number 1 in the world and not happy with it."

His father and mother, John Sr. and Kay, still exert subtle pressure. "I'll be thinking of pulling out of a seniors event, and my mom will say, 'You might as well play. You've got to buy diapers,' " McEnroe says. "And I'm like, 'When is it enough?' "

Recently McEnroe took his sons to a barbershop for $5 haircuts. Ruby wanted .to go, too. Smyth tried to dissuade her. "I told Ruby there are two things a woman can't be cheap about," she says. "Your hair and your shoes." Ruby went anyway. "She came back with her hair absolutely butchered," says Smyth. "I was about to freak when I noticed John standing behind her. He was frantically waving his arms and silently mouthing, 'Be positive.' "