The Best Years of Our Lives

by Richard Clapton

  Around this time, Chuggie had fielded strong interest from Island Records in the UK; a very strong vibe was developing overseas. Chrysalis Records, United Artists, Arista and a number of other labels also expressed interest in me.

  Festival was getting antsy, because my contract was up for renewal. It had taken them this long to get a substantial album from me, and Chuggie was out to get me the best possible deal. Thus began my first serious negotiation with a record company.

  Alan Hely, the chairman of Festival, was well into his sixties, and was on medication. During one particularly lively Chuggie tantrum in the Festival boardroom, Hely simply nodded off. Chuggie and I were shouting, pacing around the table, and Hely was snoring. Scenes like this convinced me that Australian record companies just didn’t take this game seriously.

  Another time I was walking through the office from the Festival studio and heard the strains of Hawkwind, the radical English hippie-acid band, blasting at full volume from the boardroom. I looked inside and there was Hely, snoozing away again.

  Hely just didn’t seem to have any enthusiasm for my music or me; the negotiations with him and the label were tedious, drawn out. This problem, in my opinion, stalled my career offshore; I genuinely felt I could have become internationally successful.

  In the end, Chuggie squeezed an impractically modest deal out of Festival, with disgracefully low royalties and a budget of $A36,000 to record overseas. The average American recording budget was closer to $A250,000, so we weren’t looking too good.

  However, Chuggie was not one to give up easily, and flew to England to talk to Phil Cooper, the general manager of Island Records. Phil was very excited about Goodbye Tiger. In a matter of days, the impetuous Chugg had Diane and me on a plane for Berlin. He ordered us to sit at Volker’s place until Cooper called me to fly to London and sign the deal.

  Diane and I arrived in Europe, anticipating a short stay. Unfortunately, thanks to Festival’s inept handling of the Island deal, we were kept waiting for an inordinately long time. We decided to rent a little VW Golf and trek around Europe while we were waiting for Chuggie, Festival and Island to get it together. We drove through Germany, France and Holland and finally to Switzerland, before returning to Berlin.

  Chuggie, meanwhile, had touring commitments in Australia, so left me to finalise the Island deal. Time began to drag and I was becoming concerned that something was going wrong, that I was being kept in the dark. Phil Cooper was becoming more and more unreliable at returning my phone calls. I could tell that something wasn’t quite right.

  However, the call finally came and Phil asked me to catch the first possible flight to London, and head straight to the Island office. At Heathrow, I was treated very badly by H.M. Customs. It turned out that a bunch of Aussie surfers had been busted that morning with smack, so it was hardly a great day to be an Australian traveller. They also noticed that I’d had the altercation with the police all those years ago. There I was, standing in the customs office, my hair down to my bum, pleading with them to let me go because I stood to lose a significant record deal if they detained me any longer. I finally convinced them of my story. But a lot of time had passed.

  The taxi pulled up outside the Island building at about 5 p.m. and Phil came running out to greet me. He seemed very excited.

  ‘Chris [Blackwell, Island’s founder] will be here at six o’clock and we’ll sign the deal then,’ he told me. He invited me down to the corner pub for a pint and a sandwich, then we went back and played pool in the office rec room for a couple of hours. I met all the staff and was very elated, having the time of my life. Finally, a real record deal.

  Blackwell phoned Phil a couple of times during the afternoon and everything appeared to be fine. At dusk, Blackwell phoned Phil to say that he would arrive in a few minutes. It was time. We stood outside as Blackwell drove up in his Aston Martin. He parked on the opposite side of the street, beckoning Phil—only Phil—to cross the street. They had a brief but angry exchange, then Blackwell jumped back into his car and drove off. I looked on, stunned.

  ‘What the fuck was that all about?’ I asked indignantly.

  ‘Not now, Richard,’ snorted Phil, just as indignantly.

  ‘What do you mean, “not now’’?’ I insisted. ‘What the fuck is going on?’

  He told me to wait in the rec room until he was free and then we’d go down the pub. Once there, I started rapidly knocking back pints of bitter. I harassed the hell out of Phil and finally, when he was drunk, he spilled.

  ‘Island can only pay a modest advance,’ Phil said, something that was fine by Chuggie and me. ‘But the problem is Festival,’ he revealed. Festival, it turned out, were demanding an advance far outweighing my status. Phil also told me that Festival had been demanding a royalty that even exceeded that paid to superstar Steve Winwood. This was madness.

  ‘Chris thought that Festival were just a bunch of Aussie colonials trying to bluff us,’ Phil told me. ‘He thought they’d back down eventually, there’d be a handshake and all would be fine.’ But clearly that wasn’t the case. Much to Chris Blackwell’s shock, Festival became increasingly arrogant, and in the process derailed my record deal. It was over.

  I was shattered. We returned to Berlin and all went out and got roaring drunk. That night, Diane and I swore that we would never return to Australia, it was just too soul destroying. I spoke to Chuggie, who told me that Chrysalis had also backed out, citing virtually the same reason.

  But Chuggie had better news. He had a new partner in Los Angeles, a tough little dude called Merv Goldstein. There were some developments on the Elektra front; they wanted me in LA, now, to demo some new songs. Elton John’s guitarist and Stevie Wonder’s bassist were in the studio, waiting for me. The label loved Goodbye Tiger; if my new songs were equally good, a deal was on the cards.

  ‘Richard, we’re going to move to LA and live happily ever after.’

  Once again, Chuggie ordered Diane and me onto a plane, heading west to America. I bade a sad goodbye to Volker and Berlin.

  My fear of flying hadn’t abated, so I headed straight for the airport bar. The barman, as luck would have it, was a German who had lived in Australia for a few years. As we talked, I knocked back several vodkas. Next thing I knew, a Lufthansa hostess was shaking me, urging me to fasten my seat belt. We were descending into LAX.

  Merv and Chuggie met us at the airport and swept us off to some swank Beverly Hills hotel. The next day we shifted base to a motel out in the San Fernando Valley. That night, for hours on end, some guy kept walking around the motel swimming pool, yelling gibberish. Around 11 p.m. he suddenly produced a handgun and started shooting up the place. Diane and I hid under the bed, terrified.

  No one complained, no police showed up, and his shooting spree continued until well after midnight. It wasn’t much of an introduction to Los Angeles.

  ‘What’s next?’ I asked Diane, as we peeked out from under the bed.

  The next day we checked into the Valley Hilton. The only problem there was the desk clerk, who wondered why I kept asking for Nadine.

  ‘Who’s Nadine?’

  I was, in fact, asking for the key to room 318. Bloody accent.

  I had a reasonable batch of songs that I’d written in Australia and Euro
pe. Elektra’s demo studio in the Valley was actually the old ranch of Monkee Mike Nesmith. We were booked for a 10 a.m. start. It was a big day. Huge.

  Chuggie didn’t have the hang of the LA freeway system; one wrong turn had us almost an hour late. Richie Zito, a fast-talking and very intense Italian New Yorker, was in charge of the session—and he was really shitty. Chuggie left me to face Zito, who abused the hell out of me for about 10 minutes.

  ‘You’d better be the boy wonder the label says you are!’ he muttered.

  Reggie McBride, a big, round African American bass player from Stevie Wonder’s band, joined the conversation.

  ‘Chill out, Richie! Give the kid a break, man!’ Then he turned to me. ‘Hey, Rich, welcome to LA. Everybody’s sayin’ nice things about ya. I’m really looking forward to tracking some of your songs, man!’

  ‘Thank Christ,’ I thought to myself.

  Richie Zito was still shitty, impatient to get started. I was sweating and shaking and more nervous than I’d ever been. I chose ‘Stepping Across the Line’, which ended up on my first greatest hits collection, and started to play the song for the band.

  Zito interrupted me.

  ‘Okay,’ he snapped. ‘Let’s get started.’

  I nervously insisted that there were a lot of chord changes in the song; perhaps I should play the whole thing.

  No go.

  ‘Fuck that! Roll tape!’ Zito shouted.

  The drummer counted in and we recorded about six songs in very quick succession, barely taking a break. But as soon as Richie heard some stuff back, his mood changed. By the end of the day we were good mates. I spent the next few days fixing and mixing my demos, and brought in back-up singer Rita Jean Bodine (who had sung on ‘Suit Yourself’ back in Sydney). Satisfied, I sent a cassette off to Elektra’s A&R department.

  We agreed to bring Michael Hegerty over to live and work with us in early 1979, and Merv moved us into a sprawling Leave It to Beaver-type house in Van Nuys, in the Valley.

  It was time to finally try and get some order in my life. I decided to give up the booze for a while and cut back smoking. I was deadly serious about my American odyssey—I think it was the first time I’d ever really considered my health. It was actually great to stay sober and observe the circus that was going on around Diane and me.

  Chuggie hosted frequent parties in a big house he shared in Agoura with the New Zealand-born guitarist Kevin Borich. The biggest bash was a lavish affair, with guests who included Owen Sloane, the leading entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles, Olivia Newton-John, Peter Rix, Billy Thorpe and a host of celebrated guests who constituted the so-called ‘Gumleaf Mafia’, the many Aussies based in LA.

  Kevin Borich got pretty sloshed, and burst into an impromptu stand-up routine at Chuggie’s expense. Kevin could have been a great comic if he wasn’t totally besotted with the blues. Chuggie was boasting about our gang having transformed themselves from party animals into responsible health nuts.

  ‘I’m even swimming twenty laps every morning,’ added Chuggie, pointing in the direction of their pool.

  KB interjected, letting everyone know that what Chuggie really meant was that he was turning himself around in the spa pool twenty times. Kevin also delighted in telling everybody how Chuggie and his roadie, Gerry Georgettis, would go jogging covered in garbage bags, convinced that they’d sweat off all the excess flab.

  Kevin’s tour-de-force, however, was the much-whispered ‘race-calling’ story. Chuggie, Kevin told the gathering, was an apprentice race caller from Burnie in Tasmania, who at the age of sixteen was recruited to call a national horse race from Adelaide. He arrived at a swank hotel and was told which horse was going to win—the race was fixed. Chuggie begged, borrowed and stole $2000 and put the lot on this horse, which we’ll call ‘BlahBlah’.

  Chuggie was beside himself and extremely nervous; not only was this his big break as a caller, but he also had someone else’s $2000 riding on this horse.

  Chuggie began his call: ‘They’re out of the gates, DooDah’s in front, DooDah’s a nose in front, BlahBlah’s coming up on the outside, BlahBlah’s a nose in front. BlahBlah’s half a length in front. BlahBlah’s a length in front. BlahBlah’s a length and a half in front—FUCK! THE CUNT FELL OVER!’

  Chuggie dragged KB out of the room before he totally trashed his reputation.

  I met a Californian music publisher, Peter Burke, who’d just had some big hits and was flavour of the month in Hollywood. Peter was a handy ally—he was a good friend of Carol, the A&R exec at Elektra, who was not only the go-to person for my demos, but had also worked with The Byrds, musical heroes of mine.

  A couple of weeks later, Carol finally called me at home and asked if I could spare an afternoon to come in and throw some ideas around. It was one of the greatest afternoons of my life—being treated like a star by a big US label, the home of Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon, even Bob Dylan for a time.

  ‘You,’ Carol told me as we got comfortable, ‘are the most exciting songwriter to emerge since Jackson Browne.’

  As I tried to stay cool, she told me that it was her intention to use me as the main competitor in their battle against CBS and Bruce Springsteen. She spoke of a million-dollar promotional campaign, and—more importantly to me—putting me in the studio with Russ Titelman, who’d worked with Paul Simon and James Taylor, or maybe Charlie (Chuck) Plotkin, her old boss, who’d worked with Springsteen and Harry Chapin. These were names I’d only dreamt about in Australia.

  I hung out a little with Carol, a strawberry blonde who drove a fire-red Thunderbird convertible—real LA style. Then things seemed to drag; I sensed that the vibe was fading.

  I called Peter Burke and asked him to investigate. What he came back with shattered all my dreams. It transpired that Carol had been caught up in a corporate power struggle against a weird misogynist named George. It was persecution, pure and simple.

  But Carol was determined not to let me down; we’d just begun a wonderful friendship that had the potential to change our lives forever. She left Elektra and landed a job working for Chuck Plotkin in Nashville. But she planned one last meeting at which she’d play my demos and leave me with a deal at Elektra/Asylum.

  She took the cassette into her antagonist’s office and a normal A&R meeting degenerated into a psychodrama that ended with her enemy grabbing my cassette, ripping all the tape from its casing and smashing the case to pieces on the office floor. Carol ran from the building, sobbing. Rumour has it that a few months later George was committed to a mental institution.

  I was totally devastated. Another big chance blown because of record label politics.

  I turned to Chuggie for help.

  ‘Get Alan Hely to sort out this mess, will ya?’ I asked him in desperation.

  Hely had recently boasted that he was a close chum of Joe Smith, the president of Elektra/Asylum. But Hely spent days avoiding us and Chuggie finally ran out of steam. My Elektra dream faded into thin air.

  My royalties from Goodbye Tiger were starting to run dry. Chuggie, despite his best efforts, just didn’t have the clout Stateside to get past first base, and he had other bands, other commitments, back in Australia.

  In t
he late 1970s there were 15,000 professional lead guitarists in Los Angeles alone; the city was top-heavy with its own acts, let alone some long-haired dude from a little country seventeen flying hours away. But I was determined to stick around and see if I could make any headway.

  Peter Burke, the American publisher, was also at the receiving end of some shabby treatment from Festival. Peter tried his darnedest to open some doors for me. He placed about six of my songs with various top line American artists, like the Pure Prairie League and Juice Newton. Newton was one of the top female artists in the world, and she actually recorded ‘Capricorn Dancer’ for a forthcoming album. But despite Peter’s efforts to get Festival to negotiate a deal, they refused to respond. Peter eventually gave up on Festival and another big opportunity slipped away.

  Back in Van Nuys, Michael Hegerty had arrived, along with Rick, our drummer from Melbourne. We didn’t have green cards, so, with Diane, the four of us just sat around LA doing very little, and living off my royalties. When they dried up, Chuggie ‘found’ survival money. (Merv Goldstein insists that it was his money. Maybe so.)

  I brought the band over because the plan was to find the best possible American producer and my guys would form the core players for the album. It didn’t turn out that way, sadly. Michael and Rick managed to find work off the books and Michael ultimately forged a reasonable career for himself in America. I sat in the garage and tried to write songs.

  Merv sent me for meetings with an interesting variety of record producers. I met with big timers who’d worked with Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles, as well as fledgling producers like Don Preston, a Southern guitar player who had been a long time hero of mine. He had worked with Leon Russell and was the guitarist on Joe Cocker’s legendary ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’ tour. But most of the people I encountered had an alarming propensity for cocaine and bourbon and ‘life in the fast lane’. That Eagles song perfectly summed up LA in the late 1970s.