Hitmaker

by Tommy Mottola

  Being in Miami Beach was like vacationing in a live jukebox. Just walking down the street you’d stop to hear music pouring out of the hotels. I’d pass the Newport and know: they’ve got Steve Alaimo tonight. But some of the really amazing sounds came out of a place on the 79th Street Causeway called the Barn—especially when Wayne Cochran and the C.C. Riders were in town.

  People called Wayne Cochran the white James Brown. He was this big redneck guy from Georgia with a two-foot-tall blond pompadour. That’s no lie. If Madame de Pompadour—the mistress of Louis XV whom the hairdo is named after—ever saw Wayne Cochran, she’d have fucking fainted. And that’s not all. Wayne came onstage wearing a cape and jumpsuit that would’ve made Elvis jealous. He looked like a perfectly coiffed villain out of professional wrestling, and he sang with the fervor of a Baptist minister. His white patent-leather dance shoes almost levitated off the floor as he blended rhythm and blues and gospel while beer bottles went flying. Let me tell you, when Wayne Cochran sang “Goin’ Back to Miami” at the Barn, you didn’t want to be anywhere else on earth.

  I didn’t even realize everything I was taking in at these performances. But I was making subconscious connections. Even though Linc Chamberland played behind a lead singer and was all about the craft and musicianship, and Wayne Cochran was out front and trying to tear the beams down from the roof, there was something very similar about them. They were both local superstars—almost gods. But neither had singles that made it to Top 40 radio. Both recorded on small independent labels that didn’t have major distribution. A seed was being planted in my mind, an awareness of what separated a local superstar, a regional superstar, a national superstar, and a global superstar. I had no idea that it was even in my mind. All I knew was, I was having the time of my life.

  And you know what made that trip even better? My parents finally got it; finally, they looked at me and understood. I could see the change in their eyes: Life is short. You know what? We’re not gonna fight him on this anymore. We’re going to let him follow his dreams. Our dinner conversations were no longer about what courses I should take in college. They were about what I’d like to do in music. I’ll never know if my mother was thinking back on the slap in the face she took from her father when she mentioned “show business.” The fear of what might have happened if my appendix had burst was overwhelming enough.

  By the time we headed back up north I was ready to follow in the footsteps of Dion and Elvis. The scar and everything it stood for had left an indelible mark on me, a mark that nobody saw more clearly than my parents. They were now behind me 100 percent.

  I’ll give it to you straight. If a demo from an eighteen-year-old kid named Tommy Mottola had come across my desk when I was running Sony Music, I never would’ve signed him. I would’ve known immediately that on a scale of 1 to 10, his voice was only a 5 or 6—even though his singing interpretation and intention were there.

  Deep down inside, I’ll bet I knew that it was a 5 or a 6, even when I was eighteen years old. I knew it because, thank God, I was blessed with a great set of ears. Those ears have always known what’s good—even more than that, they’ve allowed me to hear the potential in unknown talent. That blessing, that gift, worked both ways because when I listened to myself playing the guitar I understood that my hands couldn’t do what my ears wanted to hear.

  But, hey, you’re only eighteen once in life. Not only did I have ambition in overdrive, but I was rolling on an indestructible set of wheels because I was innocent and naïve. I didn’t know what I didn’t know about the music business. So it felt like there wasn’t any obstacle I couldn’t run over. I’d seen Dion make it out of Belmont Avenue and Sal Mineo make it onto the big screen opposite James Dean in Rebel without a Cause. So it was the most natural feeling in the world for another Bronx guy with a pair of balls like mine to think: Hey, if they can do it, why can’t I?

  The quickest way to the top, I figured, would be to have a singing and acting career at the same time. My father helped pay for my acting lessons in the city at the Wynn Handman Studio. That was big-time. Wynn is the artistic director of the American Place Theatre. If you’ve never heard of Wynn before, you’ve probably heard of some of the people who worked with him. To name a few: Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, Lee Marvin, and Denzel Washington.

  My parents were not only behind me financially. They were behind me emotionally. That meant I also had the benefit of all my father’s connections. He asked a cousin who knew Sinatra about a singing coach. This led to lessons in Carnegie Hall with a big-time voice coach named Carlo Menotti.

  I felt like a made man. I’d drive my GTO from my dorm room at Hofstra into the city for my lessons, have a bite at the Carnegie Deli, and stroll through the lobby of the Americana Hotel at night to see if I could run into any famous celebrities. Then I’d walk down Broadway past the Brill Building—which housed the offices of the big music companies—in the hope that some of the magic dust in the air would sprinkle down on me. Dreamer… dreamer… dreamer… I actually believed I was on my way.

  I got a part in No Way to Treat a Lady with Rod Steiger. Didn’t matter that it was a bit part walking by Rod on the street. Didn’t matter that I was a $75-a-day extra. I was acting with Charley from On the Waterfront. I was going to be seen on the same big screens around America as Sal Mineo and Elvis. I did work as an extra on about eight films. I was like a sponge soaking up every detail—studying the moves of the directors, the actors, and the lighting crews. There was no better student on those sets. I was where I wanted to be. I dropped out of Hofstra with my parents’ blessing.

  My father had a childhood friend from the Bronx who knew people in the nightclub business. That friend introduced me to Pete Bennett. This was huge, the next big step. Pete Bennett was the number one radio promotion man in the country. When it came to getting a record played on the radio, there was nobody more powerful in 1968. I’m telling you, Pete Bennett was wired like Con Edison. At one point, he was working simultaneously with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and Sinatra. I may have been unknown, but it was said that Pete made “unknowns into stars and stars into superstars.” And it was said in Billboard.

  Pete was a short, chubby guy with a cherubic face, but he spoke and acted like he was connected to the mob. While he may have come off as a “dem, dese, and dose” guy, he was a street fox. He could take the money out of your pocket without you even knowing, then smile at you and walk away. He could also give off the aura that he’d shoot you if he needed to. Nobody crosses a baby-faced killer. Moral of the Pete Bennett story is, if he walked into the offices of WMCA in New York with a record, it got played—period. End of story. And WMCA was the breakout radio station at that time.

  Pete listened to some demos I’d created with my buddy David Spinozza and talked it over with my father. I don’t know the details of the deal they made. But it wasn’t long before I was walking behind Pete into the offices at Epic Records. There I was, nineteen years old, being ushered in to see the vice president. The vice president was David Kapralik. David Kapralik had good ears, too. He’d signed Sly & the Family Stone.

  “Dis,” Pete Bennett said, nodding to me, “is my nex protégé.”

  “Okay,” Kapralik said. “No problem.”

  Yes, it was the Bronx School of Business. There were no papers to sign. When Pete Bennett said, “Dis is my nex protégé,” the papers came later.

  First, we needed a producer. Kapralik picked up his phone, and soon Ted Cooper came through the door. Cooper was the guiding hand behind hits for Bobby Goldsboro and B. J. Thomas. You wanna talk about a contrast in extremes. Cooper had produced records that sold millions of copies. I had never done a single original song in my life.

  “You’re producing this kid’s single,” Kapralik said. There was no Do you want to? There was no What do you think? There was only “You’re producing this kid’s single.”

  Cooper clearly understood the rules. Pete’s new protégé needed a couple of songs to rec
ord. So Ted went looking for a couple of songs to record.

  The songs he chose were country and blues. “Women without Love” and “Evil Woman.” I wasn’t too thrilled with these choices at first, because I wasn’t a big fan of country music at the time. But I didn’t write my own songs, and I had nothing in hand. So this wasn’t the time and place to argue. Hey, man, I was on Epic Records. I’d hit the big time.

  Cooper’s strategy for me was very common at the time. Make an old song sound new by crossing it over to a different genre. He hired an arranger to make these songs contemporary. Not just any arranger. He hired the hottest arranger in the business. He hired Charlie Calello. For a short time, Charlie filled in as a member of the 4 Seasons. But his true talent was in putting together the entire musical package. Charlie would arrange for Sinatra, for Ray Charles, for Barry Manilow, for Neil Diamond and, because of Pete Bennett, for a kid named Tommy Mottola.

  The next thing I knew I was in the living room of Charlie’s house in Riverdale. I was sitting next to him trying to be cool, but my mouth was probably wide open. The guy who’d worked out the arrangements for Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” was doing the arrangements for my songs!

  Charlie was this short, little Italian guy with big, thick Coke-bottle glasses that covered half his face. He was completely into his work, and he operated with the power of confidence. He’d hit the keys on the piano and listen to the notes, write all the horn parts, the string parts, and the rhythm section parts, and blend it all into one cohesive piece of music. It was unbelievable. Unfathomable. I’d question him, and he would explain everything he did. I felt like an intern watching open-heart surgery for the first time. There is no way to explain the exhilaration, inspiration, and invaluable experience I got from watching and listening to him. I couldn’t have been a better student. Charlie made me love every note of those songs. I was ready to make them my own.

  We went to the studio on Valentine’s Day. Epic was part of CBS Records. Everybody who was anybody had recorded in the CBS studio. Bob Dylan might have sung into the same microphone. I’ve always had a pair of elephant balls. But I really needed them that day. There I was in front of that microphone with twenty-five musicians around me, a rhythm section, bass, drums, horns, strings, and background singers, with the number one arranger in the country conducting. Forget about it! Once we started it was like being in the movie in your mind that you pray you might one day get to live. I can go on and on. But what’s the point? There just aren’t any words.

  I was so happy I didn’t even care when Cooper said to me: “You know, Mottola… Mottola… that’s really not the right name for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s too ethnic. What are your first two initials?”

  “T.D.”

  “Okay. T.D…. T.D…. T.D….” He was quiet for a while. “Look,” he said, “today’s Valentine’s Day. You’re gonna become T. D. Valentine. Yeah. T. D. Valentine. That’s your name.”

  I was so eager to make it, the words Hold on a second never even came to mind. “Okay, great,” I said. If you say so.

  Not long afterward I went to the office of Epic Records and was handed my 45. That’s another feeling that can’t be described. You look at it. You smell the fresh vinyl. You love it so much you almost want to have sex with it. That’s how you feel about your first record. You try to get as many boxes as you can so you can pass them out to your family and friends.

  Things only kept getting better. I got a call from Pete Bennett telling me to make sure my radio was tuned to WMCA at 3:09 that afternoon. I got everyone in my family around the radio—and there it was. My voice was in the air, just like Dion and the Belmonts’.

  When it ended, everyone around me went crazy.

  “And that,” the announcer said, “is ‘Women without Love’ by T. D. Valentine.”

  I remember my whole family turning toward me with squinty eyes, and joking: T.D. T.D.! Is that you?

  “Hey,” I said, “they wanted something cool.”

  I actually began to introduce myself to people as T. D. Valentine.

  Thank God, nobody calls me T. D. Valentine anymore. It’s not hard to see where the next chapter in the story is headed. But here’s the point: if you’re going to hire somebody to dig a ditch, it’s good to know how to dig a ditch yourself.

  Years later, these early experiences separated me from the pack. Most of the other music execs usually came over from the legal department or some other corporate corridor. Many of them had never even played an instrument. But when I had my very first conversations with Daryl Hall and John Oates, or later with Billy Joel, they knew I was coming from a different place than the guys in suits, a fluid, creative place they were very familiar with, a place they could trust musically.

  My singing voice may have been a 5 out of 10. But at least I had that chance to stand in front of an orchestra at CBS Recording Studios like Frank, Tony, and Bob, and sing.

  Everybody’s got a right to dream, right? There are a lot of singers who became stars with voices that are only 5 out of 10. We all know who they are. So do they. All it takes is for someone with just the right smile to be on a surfboard when just the right wave comes in. Pete Bennett knew that. That’s why he was willing to give me a shot… so long as my father was making it worth his while.

  I’d follow Pete into the radio stations after my single came out. The idea was to schmooze with the program director, then be interviewed on the air about the music. Afterward came the moment when I’d leave the room and Pete would make some sort of deal. I wasn’t allowed to be part of it, and I didn’t know exactly what was going on. All I knew was that when he came out of that room my record was added to the playlist of that radio station.

  The entire promotional setup was a series of back rubs. After the stations played your records, they’d call for favors of their own. They’d ask Pete to send me to their record hops. These were dances that the radio stations used to promote themselves at places like Palisades Park, Rye Playland, or Coney Island. The station would put its banner up over a stage and use the singers or bands whose hits it was playing as attractions. The artists didn’t get a cent, but they never refused to show. Even today, major artists like Lady Gaga and Beyoncé still show up at Z100’s Jingle Ball. The only difference now is there is no guarantee of airplay with all the new rules and restrictions. But we all know they are certainly friends of the family.

  Though there were no regulations back in the time when I was singing, the rules were very clear. If a radio station wasn’t playing a record that Pete Bennett wanted them to play, Pete just showed up and immediately that record went on the format. And artists who didn’t show up at the record hop were committing career suicide.

  The record hop was magical for an unknown like me. It was like being knighted. DJs like Cousin Brucie, Murray the K, and Dandy Dan Daniel were local royalty. And when one gave you the big sell on the air—“Next, a huge hit from singing sensation T. D. Valentine!”—you were off to the races. From the first moment you walked onstage, the DJ’s teenage fans became all yours. I’d come onstage in a sport jacket and a high-collared, very starched shirt, take my applause, and lip-synch the words to my two songs as they came through the speakers. Anybody paying attention had to know that I wasn’t really singing, but absolutely nobody seemed to care. When the DJ called you a sensation at Rye Playland, for that moment in time, and in your mind, that’s what you were. I learned to make eye contact with one person in the crowd, then sing to her, then fix like a laser on another, then spread my focus around the entire audience. If you moved the wrong way, I learned, the crowd didn’t react. Move another, and it did. I was experiencing a tiny taste of the exhilaration and infatuation a star feels—and what a rush and a high it is. I’d come offstage to applause and a long line of girls waiting for autographs. Believe me, that rush gets to your head pretty quick. You can only hope to have somebody nearby saying: “Be oh, so careful, do not drink the Kool-Aid !”


  You made appearances at the record stores. I opened the magazine section of the Sunday News and saw my picture in the Strictly Youthsville column, and I started to feel intoxicated. You can only begin to imagine what it feels like when the whole world is pumping that kind of jet fuel into you. You’d probably think it could fly you to the moon. But if it ever stopped coming… There’s a lot of evidence that going cold turkey could put you six feet under. These were invaluable experiences to draw from throughout the rest of my career.

  I’d go into the offices of Epic Records on a Monday after the gigs all amped up to push for more promotion. “The people love it,” I’d tell the guys in publicity. For me, that’s the moment when the sugar turned bittersweet. Because the potion Pete Bennett sprinkled on a record could only last so long. “Yeah, that’s great,” the guys in publicity would say. They were as kind as they could possibly be at the start. “Problem is, when we get it on the radio the phones aren’t ringing.”

  The phones. The phones. The phones. For any record company, it all came down to the phones lighting up at the radio stations. The more they lit up, the more the station played the record. The more the station played the record, the more copies flew out of the stores. Every radio station had five or ten key local record store accounts that they’d check every day to monitor the market. “This sold thirty pieces. Looks like it might be a hit.” They’d bang it some more and it would sell eighty pieces. “Hey, I think we’ve got one.” They’d bang it five or six times a day and it would start selling three hundred pieces. Soon, it would be formatted a half-dozen times into the daily playlist. Radio was the “be-all and end-all” tool. Radio was the cause and effect. Radio was everything. But the phones at the radio station were the truth.

  Which meant that when those phones didn’t ring, you had a problem. Pete Bennett could get the airplay. And he could make sure a bunch of teenage girls were lined up for you with autograph books in hand. He could work with a PR firm to get your smiling mug in the paper. But he could not make those phones ring. When my record played on the radio, the phones just didn’t ring.