by Al Kooper
The twins were uncontrollable, and I lost my control over them the second week in Aspen. I give credit to their manager Leslie Leaney (who had sank his life savings into the lads) for discreetly keeping all the ugliness away from the ears and eyes of PolyGram. Now I was aware that many of my contemporaries spent sometimes up to a year or more making a record, but that was just not my style. Prior to this album, the longest I had taken was two months on the extremely-complex first Tubes album.
As the record approached completion in its seventh month, the boys went particularly bonkers. They fought tooth and nail with me over the mixes, which were quite good without their histrionics. I finished the album under protest from the band. The brothers were so fanatical in their quest for power, they got their parents to bankroll a completely new mix of the album done by themselves. Then they made their fatal mistake. They fired Leaney, the only really likable thing about the band besides their music. I decided it was time to step down and cease standing between them and PolyGram. As much as I loved my version of the finished album for its musical content, I didn’t feel the band would survive the day-to-day direct contact with the record company. That was a fate I felt the brothers deserved. And after they actually phoned their married-with-children PolyGram product manager at home at 3 a.m. on a weekday night, they were quickly dropped. Between recording, artwork, and grooming, a quarter of a million dollars had been spent on the band. No one cared. PolyGram now just wanted to be rid of this pack of pests I had unleashed on everyone—and wanted it done ASAP.
This ultimately cost me my job, which I wasn’t very happy performing anyway. I had been with PolyGram for eighteen months, approximately half of which were spent producing St. Regis. Over the course of my tenure, I had been helpful in getting Richard Thompson signed (he was subsequently dropped). I had alienated many lawyers and managers by not returning their calls. I was able to afford a better apartment and meet Vivien, the woman who would soon become my third wife. I was also able to upgrade my standard of living so that I could afford Stouffer’s frozen foods, not the cheap brands. That was all fine with me. So when Jaffe flew out to L.A., and we had breakfast the next morning, I said to him as we were seated: “Can you please fire me now so we can enjoy our breakfast?”
He looked at me incredulously and asked: “How did you know?”
“I didn’t,” I said sheepishly, realizing I would not be enjoying this breakfast too much at all. Fortunately, Jaffe and I remained friends. And, as we have seen repeatedly in this convoluted story, things have a way of happening for a reason that is not always apparent at first.
Patti Heid, whom I had lived with in England and Texas, was now happily married to Cheech of Cheech and Chong fame. She called one day and set up a meeting for me with a friend of hers who had just taken a job at a firm that represented composers for scoring work. The friend’s name was Linda Livingston, and she signed me to a one-year representation deal with the Robert Light Agency.
For the next six months, the agency delivered me no nibbles or actual work. Then, Stan Polley, my manager of fifteen years, abruptly dropped me. He seemed to sense that it was over for me, and not smelling any more money, departed for greener pastures. He still continued to participate in my royalty-earning revenues, as—explained earlier in this tale—he had set it up so that all monies came directly to him. More than participate, in fact, he kept all my royalties, never sending me a check after he departed. It is an expensive, protracted, legal road one must travel to win back one’s rightful royalties. As of this writing, I have finally settled with Polley and will begin receiving eighty-five percent of my current royalties from Lynyrd Skynyrd. However, all the royalties from the years that Skynyrd was really selling product are sitting safely in Polley’s bank accounts, thanks to the statute of limitations. Please, guys and gals just starting out, learn something from my mistakes!
Prior to my landing the PolyGram position, an acquaintance named Debbie Gold offered to represent me and secure me an A&R job. She was a mover and shaker on the West Coast and had done publicity on the Shot of Love tour I’d done with Dylan, which is where we met. I thought this was a good idea, till I found out she was putting herself up for some of the same jobs. This infuriated me so I told her to back off representing me, and stopped speaking to her altogether. That’s when I went to New York and got the PolyGram gig on my own. So, in my new phase of unemployment, I was frankly surprised to hear from her on the phone.
The infamous Stan Polley always knew how to get my attention. (Photo: Al Kooper Collection.)
“I have an incredible job for you to make up for my bad behavior in the past,” she said.
“And what is this great job?” I asked her hesitantly.
“I can’t tell you yet but it involves scoring a major TV series,” she said.
“I’m very interested, Debbie,” I replied, taking a chance, but feeling secure at least that she wouldn’t put herself up for this job.
In a few weeks, she called me, all out of breath. I was in New York playing a gig, and she had found me at my hotel.
“You gotta be at NBC at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning to watch a screening of this show,” she blurted out excitedly. “If you like it, we can move to step two. It’s called Crime Story, and it’s being produced by Michael Mann, who did Miami Vice.”
“I’ll be there, Deb. Don’t worry,” I assured her.
(Left to right) Kooper, Howard Hesseman, Debbie Gold, and Michael Mann discussing the hidden meanings of Franz Kafka backstage in Hollywood at the Roxy, 1987. (Photo: Gary Nichamin/BOOM! Graphics.)
Of course my gig was the night before, and I got to the screening at 8:59 the next morning. A secretary showed me to a room, plopped a tape into a VCR, cut the lights, and left me on my own, thankfully. The tape began, and in about fifteen minutes, I was fast asleep. This was caused by my getting to bed at about 5 a.m. after playing two sets the night before, as opposed to there being anything wrong with the program material itself as it unspooled in front of my closed eyes. I quite enjoyed what I saw as I woke up fitfully every few minutes to the sound of gunfire and watched a few minutes more before dozing off again. It was a two-hour pilot episode, so I think I saw half of it. But I knew I could score the show. I really thought I could bring this kind of genre to life with my music.
I flew back to L.A. and had a meeting with Michael Mann. He seemed like a really nice guy, and we talked music, mostly Chicago (where he was from) blues, for about forty-five minutes. Then he turned to me and said, “I want you to score episodes 1 and 2. Can you do a four-day turnaround on each episode?” I was so excited, I blurted out: “Of course I can! Thanks a million. I won’t let you down!”
I walked out of his office and my brain was screaming. This was fantastic! I got in the car, got on the freeway, and immediately drove off the exit ramp of the entrance I had just gotten onto it from! This convulsed me. Boy, was I happy. One question kept burning in my mind the whole time though:
What in the hell was a four-day turnaround?6
1986-1990
CRIME STORY,
MICHAEL MANN,
JOHN WATERS,
B. B. KING,
CONVENTION NOPPING.
AND FINALLY
LEAVINC LOS ANGELES
Having only scored one film and zero television shows, I decided to enlist the help of trusty Charlie Calello again. Charlie was already conversant with composing music on computers. At that time, a computer was the “enemy” to me, but I knew that a computer was exactly what this project needed—and if not for my work on the Crime Story series, Lord knows what I’d be doing today. So Charlie came in, and we split everything fifty-fifty. All the money and all the work. For the first episode, we spent two thousand dollars out of our own pockets because:a. We got carried away and
b. We wanted to impress Michael Mann and
c. We only had a four-day turnaround and
d. We didn’t have a computer yet!
It must have worked because, after we fin
ished episode 2, Michael gave us episodes 5 and 6 to do. Now what of episodes 3 and 4, you say? Well, that’s an interesting question.
When the series first was conceived, Todd Rundgren was hired on a contingency to do all the music. Todd did the two-hour pilot I saw half of, but Michael and Todd did not get along very well. Now Todd and I have always been friends and this presented a true test of our friendship. During this time period, we had lunch and I told him I hoped this whole situation wouldn’t affect our friendship. He concurred and deferred to his problems with Michael. To fulfill his initial contract, Todd scored episodes 3 and 4, and then went back to work being the genius that he is, releasing the brilliant Acapella album. We are still friends today and no harm was done.
Debbie Gold was to receive a commission on every show we scored, as well she should have. I told her to call the Robert Light Agency, with whom I still had three months to go on my contract, and split her commision with them. Although they had gotten me no work in the nine months I’d been with them, and Debbie got me this veritable jewel alone, I was still under contract to them and they had to be dealt with. Things were working out brilliantly in general when the other shoe dropped rather abruptly. Robert Light decided, after first agreeing to split the commissions, that he wanted it all, and he sued Debbie and me. In a fair and just world, in my opinion, he should have walked away like a gentleman after not being able to secure one percent of work for me up to this point. As a matter of fact, he should have been embarrassed about it. But there rarely is a fair and just world in Hollywood Reality. And so off we went to court. Charlie went into a corner with Robert Light himself and negotiated successfully to pay him nine thousand dollars to go away. So this company that had gotten me no work got a nine thousand commission for doing nada. If that wasn’t bad enough, Linda Livingston had the nerve to tell people—whom Debbie and I knew—at this time that she and her agency had initially secured the Crime Story job for me. Linda is currently the head of the film and television division of BMI. I don’t really hear from her, as you can well imagine.
Michael Mann reminded me of Bob Dylan: They were both masters of intimidation, but both were sweethearts underneath it all. I decided to play a hunch and act toward Michael the same way I did toward Bob—as an equal who did not feel intimidated by him. It was risky, but it worked. It didn’t hurt that we were born on the same day, either—Michael’s exactly one year older than I am. When he would come in and bully me, I’d give him good-natured shit right back, and he enjoyed the banter. The work was deathly serious, though, and I learned many life lessons in short order.
To score a weekly TV series effectively, you must first adopt a “method.” You have to zen out the most time- and cost-effective way of working that doesn’t compromise your creativity. This can take anywhere from two weeks to two years, but it is the key to great work. Because Charlie and I had worked together seamlessly on many other occasions, we didn’t trifle with any ego aspect of it. We simply divided up the work and got on with it.
On Mondays, the post-production team would meet in the morning to view the episode we would be completing that week. Foley people, dialogue loopers, sound effects guys, film editors, and yours truly (about eight of us) would sit around a movieola and watch the episode. When anything jumped out as needing fixing, the appropriate team would temporarily stop the film and make a note of it. If a scene wasn’t playing well, and it was determined that music would help, that would constitute one of the usual twenty cues for that week. Cues are another name for the pieces of music that play behind scenes in a film. Pensive moments, action stuff, love scenes, places where music can help, all were identified and catalogued. At the end of the session, which usually took five hours for a one-hour episode, I would have a list of all the music cues for that episode.
By the time Charlie arrived at our little studio in the late afternoon, I had divided up the cues so that whoever was better at a certain mood would write that particular cue. Sometimes, I’d have a lot to do, sometimes not much, but I always chose the best man for each cue.
Charlie would work days—9 a.m. to 6 p.m.—and I’d come in at 6 p.m. to make sure he was doing okay and to start my shift. I’d usually work from 6 p.m. to 3 a.m. As each episode was completed, we took a large portion of our pay and put it aside to lease/purchase equipment we needed. Finally, three-quarters into the season, we had built our own recording studio, the Slammer, on the premises of Amigo Studios, a recording complex in North Hollywood. Now we would only pay a small amount of rent each month and no studio time. If we went to a second season, we knew, our profits would soar. It was a calculated risk we took, but we believed in the show and we believed in ourselves. And finally, the show believed in us: Lo, there came a second season ... and it was good.
I used to say at the time: We were overworked and overpaid! After the spotting session on Monday, Charlie and I would write all the cues between Tuesday and Friday. On Saturday we would record and on Sunday I’d mix. Sunday night our music editor would show up at the mix, and take the recording tape to be transferred to film. He would then represent us at the final mixing sessions for each episode. (Let me add parenthetically that the music editor was an important part of the team. We went through four or five editors until we found Frank Fitzpatrick. Frank did brilliant work and saved our asses on more than one occasion.) Then Monday would roll around and the next spotting session would begin. It was an eight-day-a-week job, but we loved what we were doing. The show was made up of the kind of black humor that I really appreciated. When I would get advance tapes of an episode, it would be like getting a new Beatles album or something like that. I’d rush home and put it on and enjoy the hell out of it.
When I first started, there was a guy who selected the source music (records) played during the show. Now the era of the show was the early sixties, and that is my area of expertise in this world. I called Michael Mann and begged him to let me pick the source music for the show. It wasn’t a greed thing—it was a knowledge thing. Well, he acquiesced and soon NBC television was playing Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, and Howlin’ Wolf records in primetime. It was a blues lover’s coup! I knew I was making someone happy out there, because the source cues generated a lot of mail all on their own.
The person who picks records on a show is called the music supervisor. Often he is selected before someone is chosen to score the film to participate in that decision as well. I didn’t like the credit “Music Supervisor.” I went into Michael Mann’s office one day and said: “If you saw me walkin’ down the street, Michael, would you say ‘There’s the music supervisor?’ No, right? Then can I change my credit at the end of the show?”
When he found out I wanted “Guy That Picks the Music for the Show,” he was amused enough to assent. And so, at the end of every show from about episode 8 on, that credit ran at the end of the show. An amusing “first” for primetime TV.
There was a huge A-bomb detonation in Nevada that ended the first year of the series and was kind of a cliffhanger. I made Michael a tape of ten records I thought were suitable for that sequence and let him choose the one he liked best. He picked the one that I would have chosen myself: “Bad Boy” by Clarence Palmer and the Jive Bombers. We cut it into the sequence and watched it in a screening room together.
“It’s PERFECT!! I really love it,” Michael screamed, as he watched the song play over the bomb blast and the final credits.
About a week later, on a Wednesday night, they were mixing the last reel of the season’s last show. This is where they combine all the dialogue, looping, sound effects, music, and audio, balancing it all on two tracks of stereo for the final version. They were working about five blocks from my apartment in Hollywood, so I took the dog for a walk and ambled over to say my goodbyes for the summer to everyone. When I walked in, Paul Huntsman and Kiki Morris, heads of post-production, rushed over to me yelling: “Oh, we are so glad you’re here! You have got to stop him—he’s in the cutting room changing the last song! We’re never
gonna get out of here tonight!”
These were a nervous bunch of people, let me tell ya. Plus, Mann was pulling “Bad Boy” out, our mutual choice, and a good one. I walked into the cutting room, dog-on-leash. Michael was in there with Dick Wolf, one of the producers of Miami Vice (who later went on to create the series Law and Order on his own). When I walked in, Michael looked up from the editing bay, caught like a child with his hand in the cookie jar.
Kooper and Charles Calello at work once again. The Slammer, North Hollywood, 1987. Note the dichotomy of shirts and wristwatches. (Photo: Al Kooper Collection.)
“Boy, I can’t leave you alone for five minutes without you fucking up the whole show, can I?” I said, laughing with the usual aplomb I reserved for “The Master of Intimidation.”
“Al! ... uh ... just wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing ... ,” he answered, actually red-faced at seeing me appear before him unscheduled in the studio.