Finally, since these reunions weren’t gonna happen very often, if ever again, I wanted a song that told our story, like John and Michelle Phillips’s “Creeque Alley” did for the Mamas and the Papas. I caught a good one with “It’s Been a Long Time.”
The album turned out good.
We called it Better Days, a title Bruce would unconsciously steal for a song title about a year later.
That’s OK. Careful as I’ve been, I must have stolen dozens of riffs, melodies, and ideas from him over the years. Plus, our songs had opposite messages. His was optimistic: “These are better days.” Mine? “Better days are on the way / ’Cause you know and I know / it can’t get much worse!”
I was wrong, by the way.
Allen Kovac’s record label, Impact, went under, I don’t know, five or ten minutes after the record was released.
Nobody heard it.
Aside from the work, which really is its own reward, one other good thing came out of the project. I found a new lifelong friend.
Lance Freed, the son of the legendary DJ Alan Freed, had become one of the last of the great music publishers. He ran Rondor for Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, the A and M in A&M Records.
He heard the Jukes’ album and called me. “Let’s talk,” he said.
We met at Elio’s restaurant on the Upper East Side.
“This is some of the greatest songwriting I’ve heard in twenty years,” he started off.
Oh, I’m gonna like this dinner.
For those of you wondering what the fuck publishing is, let me explain real quick.
Each time a song is sold or reproduced, it’s worth nine cents, half of which goes to the writer and half of which goes to the publisher. The publisher also controls the composition, which in the old days meant literally publishing songs as sheet music. It was the publisher’s job to get the music into all those player-piano scrolls and to get them to record companies and singers.
Since the ’70s, most songwriters have had their own publishing companies and use publishers to administer songs—to find and collect the money worldwide; they keep a piece of whatever they find. They get a bigger piece if they place a song in a movie, TV show, or commercial. But that’s rare.
Back to Elio’s.
So there I was, walking my dog and doing favors, no real work in sight, and an hour later a complete stranger gives me a $500,000 advance to administer my music and saves my life.
God bless America.
One of the nice things about this world of showbiz is that no matter how low you go, you’re always only one hit away. Or in this case, one heavy executive fan away. Your whole life changes just like that. So there’s always an element of hope as we punch and punch and punch the wall, trying to make a crack to let the light in, to quote Leonard Cohen.
Or make a hole big enough to escape from. To quote me.
Bruce had decided to let the rest of the E Street Band go in the late ’80s, and by 1992 or so he was putting a band together to tour his new records, Lucky Town and Human Touch. Human Touch had a song called “57 Channels (and Nothin’ On)” that Bruce asked me to remix. I added some political content, which gave Reverend Al Sharpton a chance to brag that he had worked with both James Brown and Bruce Springsteen.
Bruce invited me to a rehearsal at A&M Studios.
This was his first post–E Street tour, and he was a little bit anxious.
The new band sounded good, and I told Bruce so. He had kept Roy Bittan, and I knew a few of the horn players and Shane Fontayne, who had been Lone Justice’s guitarist. Seeing Shane there could only mean one thing—Maria McKee had gone solo.
That was a shame.
I knew Iovine was heading that way. Jimmy was just coming out of his affair with Stevie Nicks and saw Maria as a similar solo star. Usually he was way ahead of me, but this time I disagreed.
Nobody should ever take a band for granted. Bands are miracles. They’re rarely perfect, but if a band has that magical chemistry, it should not be fucked with. If you need to do a solo record, do it between band records.
Chris Columbus—no, the other one—called and said he needed a song for Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. We agreed that it was the perfect opportunity to finally work with Darlene Love.
I had met her back in 1980, when we were in LA for the River Tour. I ran into Lou Adler, the great record and movie Producer who also co-owned the Roxy. “I’ve got something on tonight I know you’ll like,” he said.
“What’s up?”
“How about the return of Darlene Love?”
Holy Shit! The greatest and most mysterious of all the Girl Group singers! And we happened to be there at this historic moment? Destiny.
Darlene had quite a history. Back in the early ’60s, Phil Spector was in New York looking for songs. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller ran their labels, Red Bird Records and Spark Records, along with Trio Music publishing, in the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway, where they’d signed Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry. Up the street at 1650, an address often mistakenly included as part of the Brill Building, were Al Nevins and Don Kirshner, whose Aldon Music had the writing teams of Carole King and Gerry Goffin and Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann. (There’s more detail about this in Al Kooper’s great book, Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards.)
As the story goes, Spector was in one building or the other going from room to room, looking for songs. At the time, that’s what half the industry did. He saw Gene Pitney playing “He’s a Rebel” for Vikki Carr, knew a hit when he heard one, got hold of the demo, and raced to get it out first.
Back then, music publishers were sleazy bastards who gave songs to multiple producers, telling each of them they had an exclusive. Carr’s version was slated to come out on Liberty Records. Phil rushed to get his out on his own label, Philles Records (named for Phil and Lester Sill, a major mentor to Leiber and Stoller as well as Phil).
The Crystals, the first successful group on Philles (“There’s No Other,” “Uptown”), happened to be on the road, so he recorded “He’s a Rebel” with a group called the Blossoms, featuring a young singer named Darlene Love—but he credited it to the Crystals.
Historic mistake. The only possible justification was that in those days, independent record companies had trouble collecting from distributors, and Phil felt it was risky to use a new artist’s name so early in the new company’s life.
Whatever the reason, it screwed up Darlene’s life pretty good. She sang on a few more hits (with the Crystals, with Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, and under her own name) and enjoyed a storied backing-vocal career with the Blossoms, but by the ’70s she was out of the business, working as a housekeeper. The greatest singer in the world cleaning toilets! (Check out the movie 20 Feet from Stardom for a full version of her story.)
And then it was 1980, and Lou Adler was talking to me about her Roxy show. I couldn’t wait to tell Bruce.
Not only was Darlene spectacular that night, but she sang “Hungry Heart.” Ha!
Backstage, I told her that I thought she belonged in New York. LA was too trendy. People, especially women, became invisible after the age of twenty-one.
And damn if she didn’t pack up and move to New York just like that!
I immediately got her a few gigs but could not interest a record company in signing her.
She ended up doing pretty well on her own. She got a couple of off-Broadway shows and then a couple on Broadway. Plus a steady movie gig playing Danny Glover’s wife in the Lethal Weapon movie series.
Now, thanks to Chris Columbus, we were finally going to record together.
Only like fifteen years late.
But it was perfect. No worries about a label or radio airplay. All the song had to do was fit in the movie. And all I had to do was write it.
Chris screened the movie for me, and I wrote “All Alone on Christmas.” It’s one of the songs I’m most proud of.
Writing anything great is a challenge, obviously, but it is easier to write something ori
ginal than it is to write a song that is genre specific.
I know that sounds backward. But trust me on this. If you write something original, you’re mostly competing with yourself. If you write a Christmas song, you’re competing with fucking “Jingle Bells”! With frickin’ “Deck the Damn Halls.” “Joy to the Motherjumpin’ World!” Songs that are embedded in the world’s consciousness.
Not to mention that Darlene Love was best known for singing what many regarded as the greatest Christmas rock song ever recorded, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” first on Phil Spector’s Christmas album in 1963 and then every holiday season on the David Letterman show.
Since the E Street Band was no longer with Bruce, I called whoever was around, figuring they’d not only be great but could use the work.
Chris wanted to direct the video, so I wrote a script. Clarence Clemons was Santa, with Macaulay Culkin on his knee. “What do you want for Christmas, little boy?” Santa would ask, and Macaulay would say, “All I want for Christmas is Darlene Love!”
Unfortunately, Macaulay’s father was a nasty dude and nixed it.
But I finally fulfilled part of my promise to Darlene. It would be another twenty years until I delivered the rest.
Debbie Gold called me again, again about Bob Dylan. “He wants you to come to rehearsal and talk about producing his next record,” she said.
“Are you sure this time, Debbie?”
“I was sure last time! I don’t know why he didn’t give you credit!”
I honestly didn’t care. I was just bustin’ her balls.
The rehearsal was in California, which meant I didn’t know the musicians. West Coast guys were a different breed. Bob counted them in, and they started playing what was, to me, a very weird group of songs. “Light My Fire,” by the Doors, “Somebody to Love” by Jefferson Airplane, “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum. It was like a bar-band setlist from 1967. Bob had been hanging out with the Grateful Dead, had recorded a live album with them. Maybe their influence had rubbed off.
When they took a break, Bob came over. “What do you think?”
“Let’s take a walk,” I said. “Bob,” I said, “this might be my last conversation with you, but I’ve got to be honest. You cannot do this. Unless you’re planning on playing somebody’s bar mitzvah, you cannot do these songs. I know you’re always seeking ways to have less celebrity, to be a normal guy. But you can’t be this normal. You’re too important.”
“I’m just not writing right now,” he said.
Every once in a while you find yourself in a situation where you have to do two weeks’ worth of thinking in two minutes.
“How about this?” I said. “How about you go back to your roots? The Carter Family, the Seegers, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, whatever. It’ll have real value. It’s where you come from, and you’ll be keeping that tradition alive.”
He didn’t react. It was a lot to consider. He moved his head around, maybe shaking it, maybe nodding, and said he’d think about it.
I left and never heard back from him, but Debbie said I must have got him thinking because he released two records of Blues and Folk standards, Good As I Been to You and World Gone Wrong. I felt good about that. And she got production credit! Ha-ha! I loved that!
Oddly enough, I had a very similar conversation with Bruce at around the same time. He wanted me to hear a new batch of his songs, so I went down to Rumson.
He played me a few things and said, “I’m not sure I have a single yet.”
Whoa! That’s a strange thing to say, I’m thinking. I’ve got to deal with this right now.
“Listen, man,” I said, “I don’t know what bizarre circumstances have led to you being on the hit single train, but you have to get off it as soon as you can.”
“What do you mean?”
“You had some Pop hits, and they’re nice when they happen, but you ain’t no Pop star and you don’t want to live in that world. If you don’t have an album in mind, I suggest you go back to your solo acoustic Nebraska thing. Where you can own it. Instead of trying to compete with the latest fifteen-year-old refugee from the Mickey Mouse Club!”
He wrote The Ghost of Tom Joad. I felt good about that too. On the way out the door that day, I said, “You know, it doesn’t seem right that we all seemed to disappear around the same time. Us, Bob Seger, Tom Petty, John Mellencamp, Jackson Browne, Dire Straits, all the ’70s Classic Rockers. We asked the audience to make us part of their lives. An essential part. We asked them to fall in love with us. They did. And then we all disappeared. The next time you want to make a Rock record, you should put the band back together. There is nothing you can think of that the E Street Band can’t do.” That suggestion would take a little longer to land.
I had gotten friendly with Bob Guccione Jr., owner and editor of Spin magazine, who invited me to a small gathering. Midway through, I turned around and was suddenly face-to-face with Allen Ginsberg. I told him what an honor it was to meet him, and how he had influenced me, not only in my songwriting but also in my turn to Eastern religion.
Ginsberg stared at me for a minute and then said, “You’ve been to the mountaintop! What was it like?”
Michael Monroe and I finally pulled off an idea we’d been cooking up for years. We missed the classic Punk bands, so we assembled one with Sammy Jaffa from Hanoi Rocks, an amazing twenty-year-old guitarist named Jay Hening, and a really great drummer named Jimmy Clark.
Sammy came up with the name Demolition 23, from a William Burroughs short story, “The Lemon Kid.” The album was the easiest one I’ve ever made. I wrote it all in two weeks—the words poured out of me so fast I had to consciously stop writing so Michael could get some writer credits—and recording and mixing took another two weeks.
Real Ramones / Sex Pistols–type stuff. Nothing but hits!
I took it around and was told Punk was dead. A year or two later Green Day and Offspring broke big, and Punk wasn’t so dead.
Nobody heard it.
We did a residency at the Cat Club, hoping to start a scene. We had a different guest every week—Joey Ramone, Ian Hunter, Andy Shernoff, the occasional Monk or Bad Brain. Adam Clayton from U2 came down one night, and in the course of shooting the shit he asked me what I was doing. I told him I had two solo albums, half a Broadway show, and a Punk album on the shelf. “And I ain’t writing anything else until some of this shit gets released!”
I described the most important project, Born Again Savage.
“I’ve got some time,” he said. “Let’s do it!” You don’t see that kind of enthusiasm every day.
We had to fill out the band. Since it was a ’60s-style Hard Rock album, how about Jason Bonham on drums? He’ll get it!
We found him somehow, and he was into it.
The album, written in ’89, recorded in ’94, and released in ’99, would never have seen the light of day if not for Adam Clayton, and I am forever grateful to him. You too, Jason! It’s one of my favorites.
At around the same time, Jean Beauvoir, who had been in the Plasmatics and then the first version of the Disciples, put out a solo album. During Jean’s time with me, he had filled the role that I had once filled for Bruce, the right-hand man, the consigliere. But he had ambition. What he wanted most was the thing I wanted least, to be a front man and a star. When he left after Voice of America in 1984, the fun kind of went out of it for me, and it was never quite the same again.
By the ’90s, we’d gotten past it, and with his new solo album coming out, he wanted a favor. Would I ask Johnny Bongiovi if Crown of Thorns, Jean’s band, could open for him in Europe? I talked to Johnny and Richie Sambora, who said Jean could have the gig, but only if I came out and did a few songs with them. They were getting worried about me turning into a hermit. It was touching, actually. So I agreed. One of the three songs I played, “Salvation,” was from Born Again Savage, the album’s only public performance until the rebirth of the Disciples in 2016, twenty years later.
Whil
e I was out with Bon Jovi, Chris Columbus called. He had a new movie, Nine Months, that needed a song.
I don’t know what it is about Chris, but he brings the best out in me. As you travel through life, you meet very few people with blind faith in you. It makes you really want to deliver for them.
In that case, what he brought out of me was what might be my most important song. “This Is the Time of Your Life” is a Stonesy ballad about living completely in the moment, which is the core of my life’s philosophy. I wrote it in Milan, in my hotel room, staring out the window at the great Duomo.
The song was supposed to play over the end credits. But when I saw the movie, there was a Van Morrison song there instead. Maybe Chris had gone out to multiple artists, and Van had turned in his song at the last minute?
Who knows. It was… awkward. I never asked.
Van’s played, and then mine played.
I probably inspired a lot of cleanup crews.
Needless to say…
Nobody heard it.
Let’s see… the ’90s… the ’90s…
We had a big victory with our Solidarity Foundation, unifying the Indians and the unions and pressuring the Quebec government to cancel the Grande-Baleine hydroelectric dam project.
I started a couple of books that I didn’t get very far on. I had titles, though.
The American Identity: Who Are We? Who Do We Want to Be?
That one would have come in handy in 2020.
The Top Ten Coolest Events in Rock History.
And…
Frank Barsalona: Godfather of Rock and Roll
I videotaped everybody Frank knew and Frank himself. The tapes tragically disappeared, probably stolen by an insider, and I was so pissed off I couldn’t continue. That one still needs to be written by somebody.
Bruce and I inducted Gary US Bonds into the Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame. That was fun.
Did some liner notes for Dion.
And did some liner notes for Dino.
Dion released an amazing album in 2020, at the age of eighty!
Unrequited Infatuations Page 25