Frank & Charli

by Frank Yandolino

  Kidnapped

  At that time, when I was entrenched in the magazine, word on the street was the French security company from the Riviera festival believed they had still not been paid. Someone must have told someone that a Yandolino had made reservations to leave France, and, thinking it was me and not Charli who was leaving, they took action.

  Throughout France, especially in Paris, underground gangs were prevalent. Groups of unemployed men who banded together formed different factions of terrorism, with ideologies based on fear and power. One evening shortly before Charli was scheduled to leave, at about five, several men in leather jackets broke into my office at Mode on Rue St Anne. They kicked everyone out and held my secretary out the window, threatening to throw her out of the building. They were serious. One guy, Claude, put a gun to my back, demanding $7,000 cash. They forced me into a car and took me to our apartment. When we arrived there were more of them guarding the lobby, elevator, and roof.

  The guy holding on to me kept jabbing me in the head with his gun as we headed up to our floor. I was on edge but knew I had to stay cool, especially after I called Ray Paret and Michael in New York, my partners in the festival, who didn’t believe that the French mafia was holding us hostage for ransom. I made an arrangement with Claude that they would go away if I paid them $5,000 dollars, and then called Michael and Ray again. They still didn’t believe me. I was worried about the girls and so enraged inside I could kill. I was losing it. They put Ann Partiss, who was with us at the time, in one bedroom and forced Charli into a small maid’s room bathroom. We were still negotiating when the doorbell rang. I opened the door a little and saw more men in leather jackets with guns drawn.

  “We are looking for Frank Yandolino.”

  I freaked, saying, “That’s not my name. You have the wrong apartment. He lives across the hall.” I slammed the door, furious, then turned to the guys in the room.

  “I thought you said if I paid you, you would protect me and guarantee that no one else would bother us.” They looked around the room, seemingly more confused than me.

  Suddenly the door was pushed open and about ten guys rushed in. “I’m inspector so-and-so of the French Shandon,” one of them said. It was all a blank to me at that point. Charli, it turns out, had crept under the vanity in the bathroom and telephoned Leon Albert Gertner, the producer of the festival film and a very powerful man in Paris. During World War II, he was a leader in the underground French Jewish resistance. Charli had explained to him what was going on. Gertner wanted to know who the men were in order to determine what political faction they belonged to before he reached out for help, not wanting to call the wrong group, thereby avoiding the possibility that they may be in cahoots with our captors. Everyone was speaking French and very confused, when in walked Gertner and his two German Shepherds. The kidnappers were arrested and we were freed. Gertner took us to his Greek friend’s restaurant to celebrate a very terrifying experience that could have gotten much worse.

  Several days later back in the Mode office something else happened I will never forget. After witnessing what I do best and knowing how much I enjoy creating, Charli again let this bird be free in spite of the fact I was surrounded by beautiful women, she looked around, then looked in my eyes, and simply said something not many women could say.

  “I don’t blame you.” I was speechless.

  Two days later Charli went back to New York. I stayed a few weeks more. Her words continued to resonate in my head. “I don’t blame you.” “I don’t blame you.” How stupid could I be? After finding Charli, my Afghan woman, I couldn’t jeopardize this. I was out there like a rocket ship exploring galaxies far away from her, and I needed to come back down to earth.

  Charli knows what and who I am, and how I do things. She goes with the flow and more importantly knows I am there for her despite my little escapades, always protecting her. She truly is the gatekeeper. In Paris I was a free bird, but after Charli left and I couldn’t forget what she said, I realized my time was up. I knew it was time to come back to my cage. So I flew back to her and to New York where I belong.

  In Charli’s Words

  After the Riviera Festival, the security guards who were not totally paid, according to them, were angry and demanding more money. Frank explained to them that his partners who went back to New York, Michael Lang and Ray Paret, would be giving them their money soon and he had no way of paying them at this time. They were very aggressive, watching Frank and following him everywhere. Well I had had enough of the whole thing; first models, now French terrorists. I wanted to go home so I booked a flight, and the security guards somehow found out that a Yandolino was flying to New York. They obviously panicked, thinking they would never get their money, so they went to the Mode office with guns and proceeded to hold Frank’s secretary out the window, upside down by her feet. Frank told them he was not leaving and that they would be paid. He called Michael and Ray, saying the security guards want their money now, that it’s an emergency, but they just started laughing. Later they explained their actions with the excuse they thought Frank was making up the story to get money to stay in Paris. There were several men with guns, seemingly desperate men. They brought Frank to the apartment where I was staying with Ann, and barged in, all of these crazed men with guns yelling threats. They put me in a small room and I was terrified.

  Hiding under the counter, I found a phone under the table and telephoned our producer of the Riviera Festival. “Monsieur Gertner,” I whispered. “You must help us. We are being held in the apartment by these gunmen.” He said, “Don’t worry. I got the Nazis out of France once before and I will come and save you.”

  No one knew I made this phone call, not even Frank, who was in the living room with a gun held to his head. A little later, the doorbell rang and they told Frank to answer the door. He did, and in rushed a dozen men with German Shepherd dogs and more men with guns. Frank did not realize it was Monsieur Gertner and his group of men. There was a fight, the men pushed the mafia security out of the apartment, and it was finally over. A few days later, I went back to New York and Bruno.

  The Real Bert Padell

  After about a year of turmoil over the Riviera and Mode episodes, Just Sunshine Productions broke up and left our office on 61st Street. Ray Paret, Michael, and I divided up our clients and projects and went our separate ways. I was working from home; Michael, his two children, and his wife, Ann, took a place on the other side of our building on 81st Street; and Ray went back to Connecticut and eventually to LA. Before I went on to Atlanta I first met Bert Padell in 1973 at his office on Park Avenue. Bert later became an accountant for Alicia Keys, Puff Daddy, Prince, several New York Yankees, Mike Tyson, and more than one hundred other acts.

  In 1979 I rejoined Michael, working out of an office at Bert Padell’s half-a-city-block-long complex at 1775 Broadway on the seventh floor. Aside from about one hundred of Bert’s employees, half of the space was occupied by some of his choice clients: other companies and managers like Gary Kurfis, Shep Gordon, Sam Lederman, The Talking Heads, Meat Loaf, The J. Geils Band, Luther Vandross, The B52s, Ben Vereen, Alice Cooper, Crush Records, Run DMC, Peter Frampton, Blondie, Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, and others who came and went. The office was the place to be, especially at every Christmas party. Bert would get dressed up as Santa Claus and hand out gifts to everyone and their kids. I am still working with Bert thirty-seven years later. Michael has since moved on. All I had to do on any given day at the office was answer the phone and just sit and wait for a ball to arrive. Being in the center of the entertainment business, eventually something would happen or someone pop in.

  This was true at any one of Bert’s offices, including later at 156 West 56th Street: a sprawling, two-floor complex that had a huge reception area equipped with a piano, pool table, spiral staircase, giant fish tanks, a full-service restaurant on the second floor, and walls filled with hundreds of platinum and gold records. Nothing was more impressive than a New York Yankees and spor
ts museum conference room equipped with a twenty-six-foot conference table, adjacent music room, and projection screen, with every wall and corner filled with signed memorabilia. Other areas of the office were adorned with life-sized mannequins of Madonna, Prince, and Alicia Keys.

  Bert was and still is a terrible closer and follow-upper, and I would tell him all the time that he needed a manager. He is a funny guy and in many ways quite the opposite of me. Bert waits for the ball to come to him and fall in his glove. Rarely will he go after it or grab it on the run. As a professionally trained ballplayer you are taught to charge the ball. With his longtime experience with the Yankees, you would think he would do that in his business as well, but he is an example of someone humble to the point that he feels he doesn’t need contracts with his clients. In fact, he constantly boasts that it allows him to leave if he decides not to represent someone anymore. I tried that, but it doesn’t work for me; my experience tells me that in such an arrangement the client feels they can leave you when they want to, especially if they owe you money. That happens to Bert most of the time, and over the last fifty-plus years, clients have owed him millions.

  Woodstock ’79

  Bert Padell was hired to be our accountant and bookkeeper for a tour we were planning, billed as the Woodstock in Europe ’79 Tour. No Artie at this one. After Linda’s death he was gone emotionally and physically. Michael booked Woodstock ’69 artists and their bands, including Joe Cocker, Richie Havens, Country Joe McDonald, and Arlo Guthrie. The traveling show was presented throughout Europe. Michael just knows how to do it. He booked rooms in The Haag, Netherlands, at the Kurhaus Hotel, a magnificent complex on the beach right on the North Sea. In the early 1900s the hotel was considered a getaway destination for the rich and famous, the Coney Island playground of Europe. The sprawling, just-renovated building had a round lobby surrounded by a five-star restaurant with three-story-high domed ceilings and stained-glass windows that reflected multi-colored rays of light. The waiters were dressed in gold-buttoned epaulet uniforms and white gloves. The whole thing was dazzling.

  Whenever I travel I don’t go to the bathroom for days, sometimes many days, and it became a standing joke on the tour. Someone would always say “Did you go yet?” One morning standing in the lobby, a guy dressed in a black trench coat and hat right out of an espionage movie approached me. He very cautiously looked all around, seemingly embarrassed. Then in a thick Nordic accent, “Mr. Yandolino, I have something for you.” He reached into his coat and took out a plastic bag filled with white powder. Thinking it was coke, I grabbed the bag and ran off to my room, stuck a tablespoon in the bag and shoved it up my nose. I immediately shit my brains out. It turned out to be baby laxative. Someone thought I needed it.

  On another occasion, while waiting to be seated in the restaurant, Charli and I noticed Joe and BJ Wilson, who was the drummer for the group Procol Harum, sitting and talking across the dining room against the far window. Then out of nowhere, BJ sank in his seat, head back and cigarette in hand, while Joe, across from him, fell over face forward with his head now gurgling and drowning in his soup. Immediately six or seven waiters picked them up in their chairs and table, moving them out of the room, never skipping a beat. I will never forget that sight.

  Backstage at an open-air amphitheater somewhere in the boondocks of Germany, during rehearsal, the producer of the show approached Joe and took out a folded piece of aluminum foil. He asked Joe if he wanted a hit, who looked at me and Michael and said, “What do you say, Franco?” I answered “I don’t think so.” BJ joined in with a “What about me? Just a little hit,” so I agreed they could take just a little hit. Back in the car, heading to our hotel, Joe looked at me with a funny look in his eye. “It’s getting a little bricky in here,” he said. I thought it was some sort of English slang for something. The only bricks I saw were the bricks on the old buildings lining the streets. Then I realized it wasn’t coke he took a hit of, but LSD. He and BJ were tripping their brains out, and that trip carried on into the show while on stage with his band. He began to mix and sing all his songs together as one. The band walked off, the kids threw bottles on the stage, and we ran for our lives.

  The next day Michael Lang, Joe Cocker, Charli, and I were flying over Belgravia in a small plane on our way to do a radio interview for our shows in West and East Berlin. While looking out the window of the small plane, I couldn’t help but notice the sense of nothing down there. We were flying so low, barely above the trees, but there were no people in sight. Everything was all brown, just a lot of dirt with nothing on it.

  I asked one of the people who were guiding us through this interview, “Where are all the people?”

  “Inside,” he answered.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Waiting.”

  “What do they do?” I asked.

  “They grow potatoes,” he answered. “Except this year, because of the bad weather there are no potatoes, so they stay inside and wait.”

  “For potatoes?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and looked at me as if to say, “So what’s wrong with that?”

  Some cultures go out of their way to not grab the ball, like those in the world who are starving, who live by the sea but don’t fish. Or others who cut down all the trees to use as fuel and never plant new ones.

  This reminds me of a story. Peter Saile and I were having lunch with our attorney, Andreas Khoelar, in Berlin, when the subject of him leaving for a month to go to his farm came up. “The farm? Where’s the farm? I asked.

  “It’s in Namibia, South Africa,” Andreas answered. “Near the coast. Several hundred acres of prime jungle and grazing land on which we have a small modest farmhouse made out of an adobe-type brick and mortar. The house is surrounded by a two-foot fence to help deter the animals; it’s full of animals of all sorts, and trees and vegetation.” As he explained, it sounded like a truly beautiful place. He continued to say that he employs local natives who patrol and protect this property from poachers and thieves. He told us he goes down there with his wife and his son, and mentioned that his farm and his neighbor’s farms are miles apart. Then came the mind blower. When I asked what’s in between the farms, I assumed he would say barren wasteland, which he affirmed. But when I asked why that was, his answer didn’t exactly match my expectations.

  “Because the natives ate all the animals,” he said, “and cut down all the trees to cook them. Now they try to get to my animals on my land, so I hire the armed patrol guards to protect my property.” He then concluded that in most cases people are paid with meat. It’s like a trust barter system. In extreme cases you will see natives missing limbs; you may think How sad. A lion must have eaten it. Wrong. I was informed most of those people sold whatever body part was missing.

  The next day we did our show in West Berlin and afterward we were invited to go over to East Berlin. Michael had put out the idea to East Berlin officials to do a show there. I will never forget the site, arriving at Check Point Charlie, crossing over. It was a scary feeling. You got the sense that you were surrounded by the enemy and we were.

  We left Berlin and flew to Milan, Italy, where I felt much better being around my ancestors. Then we all traveled in buses to Bologna and did a show. Several days later we arrived in Florence, staying at the classically decorated Hotel Cavour, the oldest hotel in the city. Whatever hotel we stayed at didn’t matter. It was always the same: meetings all night, discussing the show with the production people, the promoters, members of the band. Sometimes Charli would be off with Joe, keeping him out of trouble. Other restaurant guests would send over several bottles of wine and booze to Joe’s table even when he was just eating dinner. Every night he, BJ, and Charli would drink two or three bottles and there’d be three or four more left at his hotel room door. I was always at some production meeting putting out the next fire.

  One particular night, I left Charli, Joe, and BJ having dinner in the restaurant. They were already gone dead drunk, laughing, singing
, and eating. After my production meeting ended at about four in the morning, I went looking for Joe, who was nowhere to be found. I gave up and went to my room to crash. Wouldn’t you know, Charli had double-locked the inside double door. This European safety device sucks; you cannot get in unless the person in the room who locked it opens it. I had exposed one major problem here: you can’t unlock it if you’re sleeping.

  So I rang the bell a lot, called her on the room phone and delivered many long loud knocks on the door. After several more bangs on the door, the hotel manager and several security and other help butted in, telling me to stop causing a scene and demanding my identification as I tried to explain the situation. They insisted I stop; other guests were sleeping, they said. I was getting scared and paranoid, beginning to wonder whether Charli was even in there, and if she was all right. Then I kicked and banged and yelled.

  “Charli! Charli, unlock … open the door! Let me in Charli! Open the fucking door!” I kicked the door down. By now the police were on the scene and as I entered the room there was Charli, out cold, sprawled across the bed. She never even woke up.

  In Charli’s Words

  Frank, Michael, Ann, and myself, along with a busload of rock stars from the original Woodstock festival, were traveling through Europe.

  When we were in Florence, Italy, we were staying at the oldest hotel in the city. Frank was busy and he asked me to stay with Joe Cocker until he got back from this meeting. I guess you could say one of my jobs was in a sense to babysit Joe. So, one night Joe and I went to a pizza place and had some pizza. The owner came over, offering us some wine that had just been made in the vineyards of Florence. Joe said no, he only wanted a beer, but I said, “Okay, thank you” and I must say it was warm, delicious wine. I must have been really thirsty, and I really enjoyed it so I drank and drank. Well, who would believe that Joe Cocker, who we were always worried about, always having to make sure he was safe and didn’t get drunk or anything, even though producers and promoters were always trying to get him crazy so he would behave like the original Woodstock festival Joe, would switch roles with me. What people don’t realize is that Joe’s seemingly drunk motions and actions at Woodstock during his performance had nothing to do with the effects of alcohol.