Never Say No To A Rock Star

by Berger, Glenn

  The city was bankrupt, dogshit was all over the streets, the sky was always a putrid grayish-green, and any minute some freak could step out of the shadows and plant an axe in your skull.

  The route from 799 7th Avenue to 322 West 48th Street took me through the classic Broadway theater district, the fabled land of song and dance, immortalized in such tunes as “On Broadway” and “New York.” If I can make it here, I’ll make it anywhere, and all that jazz.

  I edged the hand-truck into the gutter, and yanked it up 52nd to Broadway. I parked my load of tapes in the corner at the Playland arcade on Broadway and 52nd and, with the few dimes in my pocket, played some pinball along with the other game-freaks who hung out there 24 hours a day.

  I turned south heading to 48th. One of the city’s fabulous nut-jobs hung on the corner of 50th and Broadway, standing next to an overflowing trashcan. This shaggy fellow with a patchy white beard and few teeth lived for Wednesday afternoons. When some little old ladies would pass by on their way to a matinee theatre performance, he’d say, just loud enough for them to hear, “Shit.”

  There were a lot of great nut-jobs in New York then. One of them appeared in the Martin Scorsese film that captured this era best, Taxi Driver. He was a little guy named Gene Palma who looked like a bullet with tarred, shiny black hair. He was an ersatz drummer who loved the age of hard swing. He’d say in his nasal bark, “1941, ‘Drum Boogie,’ Gene Krupa at the Philharmonic.” Then he’d twirl the sticks and play his concept of the original solo on the top of a garbage can. For years after, he kept the hope alive that his one film appearance would be the beginning of a major movie career. He’d advertise himself available for hire, his ad written with magic marker on a piece of cardboard box. He actually got in one more movie, but then disappeared.

  Then there was the blind composer Moondog, who stood in front of the CBS building on 6th Avenue holding a spear and dressed in a cloak and horned Viking helmet. That was one way of getting a recording contract. He actually put out a few albums of bizarre stuff on the grande dame of record labels, Columbia.

  Continuing on my way to the other side, I passed the Brill Building between 50th and 49th Street and said a prayer. This was the center of the musical universe, where more hit songs were written in the 60s than anywhere in the world.

  Finally, I stopped in at the historic Colony Records on the corner of 49th— where aspiring stars bought their sheet music and recordings— to peruse the bins in search of some obscure King Crimson album imported from England. I’d do anything to waste a few more minutes before my daily dose of humiliations would commence.

  The turn up 48th toward 8th then brought me to an even sleazier part of town. Cheap, black, junkie hookers would be leaving their corner posts, gray and pasty from a night of fucking tourists (unprotected in those pre-AIDS days). Low-life porno joints lined 8th Avenue along with down-on-your-luck Blarney Stones, where you could get a Salisbury steak for $2.99.

  “322,” as we called it, was halfway between 8th and 9th Avenues. The decor was much sleeker than the shabby vibe of “799”; it was ‘70s modern with shiny red tiles on the wall.

  On my way in, I said hi to the cool, eccentric babe who sat at the receptionist’s desk behind an old-fashioned switchboard with holes to plug in cords for directing the calls. A few of the receptionists through the years doubled as drug dealers, but, if not, by plugging in the right cord, they could certainly service any star or staff member with any substance required. Another couple of the hot young things behind the desk were also generally not even the least bit above giving a blowjob to just about anyone who asked nicely enough. She could be an aspiring show biz something, and if she played it right, she could get a rich studio singer to “sponsor” her up-and-coming career.

  I left my hand-truck for a minute and went downstairs to take a leak. Along with the tech shop and the guy’s john, it was also the home of the women’s bathroom, a popular place to snort cocaine. At night, the boys of the studio would line up on the sink counter waiting with their glass bottles and tiny spoons to offer their sacrifice of Peruvian Flake to the punky girls who yanked their skin-tight Fiorucci jeans down around their ankles and splashed into the pot while absent-mindedly picking the numbing rocks out of their noses with their blood red fingernails, then sucking them into their mouths for a little extra blast.

  I went back upstairs and with anticipation entered the room to the left of the receptionist area. This was the location of studio R-2, where Phil Ramone, the revered Alpha silverback of our pack, did most of his work. It was a small room, and, as I was to learn later on, it had its flaws. It had an “RF” or Radio Frequency problem as it was too close to 8th Avenue, so it was hard to plug in any electronic device without getting a nasty buzz. But that didn’t stop the studio from putting out an endless string of hit records.

  The studio had been “block-booked” and had been left set up from the day and night before, in order that the artist, musicians, and engineers could pick up right where they had left off. One wall, covered with the “patch bay,” was crammed with a Medusa-like jumble of quarter-inch cables. On the console in the middle of the room, the big, round, black faders used for setting recording levels were turned this way and that. The sliding red faders to their left, in the “juke box,” used to finesse the blend of instruments called a “mix,” were each in their perfect undulated spot. Underneath it all were strips of masking tape, on which were written the names of the mics or the instruments: bass, kick drum, tom-toms, snare, high-hat, electric guitar, piano, organ, vocals. Out in the studio, all the mics in place, I could almost hear the reverberation of the tight, smoking tracks that had been cut the night before by the best studio musicians alive.

  Standing in this inner sanctum of musical marvels, I felt a combination of exhaustion, thrill, and fear. We were all told way too many times by the CEO that we should be glad we got paid anything at all because anyone would be willing to give his or her right arm to have the chance to work at A&R. And he was right.

  As I looked at the studio all set up and ready to burst into music at the push of a button, with its bright blue console, glowing white switches and red sliding faders, I yearned for that day when I would take the trip up the freight for good, to become a member of the squad on top, an assistant engineer. Something inside me came alive at that moment that I had never felt before: a single-minded, passionate resolve to do whatever it took to make it. I’d spend every minute I could in the studio —that is, when I wasn’t pushing that infernal hand-truck across the city.

  My reverie was interrupted by some internal alarm signal that hit me like a prod to the gonads. Shit! I had a job to do and I knew what would happen if I didn’t get it right.

  I had to make sure the rooms were well stocked: the cup had to be filled with pencils, every one with a sharpened point; there had to be ample take sheets to record the day’s proceedings; track sheets were also essential to indicate what could be found on each track of the multi-track tapes.

  Before I had the chance to tidy up the place, Plotnik, the guy who made the early morning tape copies, blew into the room looking for some master tape and busted me, the schlepper, breathing in the rarefied air of Hitsville. There I was, snooping in the control room, trying to ascertain the hidden code of the universe, intently studying the position of each knob, the placement of a microphone.

  He looked at me suspiciously, and without saying a word, he slowly inspected the control room. If he would have been wearing a white glove, he would have run it along the console for dust. He looked in the pencil jar and paused, smiling with victorious satisfaction like a detective finding the essential clue. He dumped the can of pencils on the floor.

  Then he exploded. “Hey shithole! Get over here! What the fuck is this?”

  He got so close up to my face I could see the spittle on the sides of his mouth and smell his pickled breath. “What are you doin’ just standing there? Writin’ a book?”

  He picked up an unsharpene
d pencil stub from the floor and shoved it in my face.

  “If the ashtray is dirty, how can you trust the pilot to fly the plane? Don’t you know where you are?” He was referring to the A&R way, as passed down by Ramone. We had standards to maintain.

  Then, grabbing me by the waist, he lifted me in the air, swung me up over his head, spun me around, and deposited me roughly on the floor. “And it’s your job to keep the ashtrays clean. Now make this place perfect and get outta here before I give you a nootzle!”

  That was the life of the schlepper, the sub-cretin that everyone was allowed to torment.

  “Suck this!” I muttered, just loud enough for him to hear, as he turned toward the door. He turned, glared, smiled, pointed at me, and nodded, as if to say “you’re dead,” and walked out of the room, master tape under his arm.

  As much as I resented the abuse, I felt a warmth in my belly. I longed for meaning and something to live for, and I could tell that all these people, as over-the-top as they all seemed, had pride. I wanted that. And, being from Brooklyn, I could handle this shit and give it back, too. If that was the game, I’d show these motherfuckers.

  I left the control room “perfect,” and after doing the same to studio R-1, went upstairs to where the business was done. I said hi to the sexy girls in accounting, getting a seductive smile from one (who would later initiate me into the fine art of cunnilingus), and went into Uncle Max’s office to drop off the tapes and envelope.

  Uncle Max, “Broadway Max”, a man of a thousand monikers, officially known as Milton Brooks, was the studio Yoda, the majordomo of the place. Out of all the characters who populated this hip ‘70s studio, Max was the least likely resident. Dressed like a funeral director, he looked and talked like a character from a Damon Runyon story. Day in and day out, he wore the same shiny black suit covered in dandruff, a yellowing white shirt, and stained red tie. He had a white crew cut on a brick of a head, teeth even yellower than his shirt (and more crooked), a wicked smile, and a demonic laugh. He sat behind his desk with a few chewed cigar stubs in his ashtray.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t our very own Sammy Glick,” Brooks said in his best Edward G. Robinson imitation and making one of his typically obscure literary references.

  If for five minutes every day I could feel safe from the random acts of training violence I was subjected to, it was here in the presence of Max. His calm in the face of the studio lunacy was preternatural. It was like he was born to live in this jungle, and nothing made him happier.

  Max’s world was bordered by 42nd and 59th Street on the West Side of New York City. He had been born in Minneapolis, and had fled his family’s haberdashery business as soon as he could get on the Minnesota-to-New York express. He loved theatre and literature, so never wanted to be far from the shows on Broadway. When he landed his job at A&R he knew that he had found home.

  “How’s my boy?” he rasped.

  I plopped down on the chair opposite his desk. “Alright, Brooks. Who is this Sammy Glick?”

  As he had many before, and would for so many after, Brooks decided to take me under his wing and give me a true education. I was hungry to learn.

  “Read this,” he said, pushing an old paperback in my direction.

  “What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg. What’s it about?”

  “Maybe you. We’ll just have to wait and see,” he said with a sly grin.

  Caught in my own solipsistic, adolescent circle, I thought out loud, “Brooks, when am I going to get into the studio?”

  “Patience, my boy. You will.”

  I leaned on his desk, and said “When?”

  He retorted, “Read the book,” and handing me another envelope, added, “And bring this to the other side.”

  I grabbed both, twirled around to leave, looking at Brooks with a fake grimace, and waved the book as if to say thanks.

  I got a new load of tapes, stacked them on the hand-truck, stuck the envelope between a few of them, schlepped those back to “799” and returned to my post in the fetid netherworld of the tape library, fearing I’d be trapped there forever, and dreaming of my means of escape. I couldn’t wait to get the book out of my pocket. I pulled it out and started to read, holding my breath, hoping it would teach me how to make it in this mysterious world, and help me find the path to heaven before the blare of the phone dragged me down to Purgatory again.

  TRACK THREE

  Phil Ramone Plucks Me from Obscurity

  During that summer, before I turned eighteen, I took one small step up from my job as bottom-rung schlepper. I got a $10 raise and was promoted to tape librarian. I didn’t have to push the hand-truck across Midtown as often, but I still had to schlep piles of audio tapes from the Valhalla of the 7th floor studios down to my personal hell, the tape library in the basement of 799 7th Avenue. It was my job to catalogue these newly-created album, film, and jingle recordings and order them in the endless stacks deep in the basement’s innards so they could be easily retrieved.

  I was terrible at the job. I personally knew where every tape was, but my system was chaos. I paid the price for my disorganization early one Saturday morning.

  As was typical, my friends and I had spent the preceding Friday night watching a quadruple feature at a ratty old repertory cinema on Manhattan’s Upper West Side called The Thalia, where the seats were higher in the front row than in the back. The first film we watched this particular night was Even Dwarfs Started Small, a weird, incomprehensible movie by the then up-and-coming German director, Werner Herzog. Next came the satirical sci-fi flick Barbarella, starring the then-super-sexy Jane Fonda, directed by her then-husband Roger Vadim. Third was Fellini Satyricon. By the time this rude, psychedelic favorite came on at about two in the morning, I was so high and tired that I didn’t know whether what I saw was in my mind or on the screen. Finally, at around 3:30 a.m., the film we had all been waiting for came on: Performance, starring the Stones’ lithe frontman Mick Jagger. We had seen this rocker-meets-gangster film so many times we could quote every line of dialogue, even the ones in incomprehensible cockney slang.

  After the all-night show we slept on the subway back to Brooklyn, finally getting off at the Avenue U stop at about 6 a.m.. I crashed in my friend Duke’s basement so I wouldn’t get busted by my mom for being out all night long.

  I was a bit groggy when Duke’s mother shook my shoulder about three hours after I’d fallen out to tell me I had a phone call.

  I put the receiver by my ear. “Huh?”

  “Hey, buddy boy. We need ya.” It was Broadway Max, the studio’s all-purpose consigliere.

  “Max, what time is it? Isn’t today Saturday? What the fuck?”

  “Mr. Ramone is here with Mr. Bacharach, and he needs a tape. Call a cab. How soon can you be here?”

  Phil Ramone. The studio’s fearsome leader. Through my time at A&R, I had learned more about him. He was brilliant and a baby, an inspiring hitmaker and a world-class psycho. Following the instruction I had received on my first day from Phil’s sensei, Rich Blakin, I steered clear.

  Mr. Bacharach. That would be Burt Bacharach. For those of you who don’t know, he is one of the finest pop songwriters of all time, charting 73 top-forty hits. In collaboration with lyricist Hal David, he penned some of the greatest records of the ‘60s, including “Walk on By,” “The Look of Love,” “What the World Needs Now,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” “Close to You,” “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” and the one I consider to be their best, “Alfie.” He was an anomaly for the times. He wasn’t a rocker — his tunes had sophisticated harmonies and rhythms — but even in that time of hardness and hipness, he honed his pop chops to such perfection that he was able to knock hit after hit into the Billboard stratosphere.

  “Brooks, can’t somebody just go in the basement and get the tape?” I pleaded. Brooks pretended not to hear. “Thirty minutes? Perfect. We’ll see you when you get here.”

  Here’s what I guess had happened.

&nb
sp; Phil probably hadn’t prepared for the session and didn’t request the necessary tapes in advance. On impulse, he turned to his assistant and said, “Where the hell is the multi-track?”

  The assistant couldn’t find the tape because he didn’t know he’d need it and it wasn’t there.

  Normally, at that point, they’d call me in the library, and I’d scurry over with the tape. But it was Saturday.

  “Get your ass over to the basement and get that tape now!” Ramone was sure to have hollered.

  The assistant went but, in my mess, couldn’t find the tape.

  “Max!” Phil was certain to have yelled.

  “Yes?”

  “Get that goddamn schlepper down here NOW! I want that tape NOW!” Phil most definitely demanded.

  Brooks was sure to have answered, “Yes, sir, right away!” and went on his detective hunt to find me.

  No doubt, Milton ignored my whining because he was standing right in front of Ramone and wanted to make sure I didn’t come off as an uncooperative complainer in earshot of our fearless leader who demanded unquestioning obeisance.

  “I can’t possibly get there in less than an hour,” I said.

  Again, ignoring me, “See you in thirty minutes.”

  “Brooks! That’s impossible …”

  “Bring the tape over to ‘322’ the minute you get here.”

  That Saturday morning was my first personal encounter with The Great Ramone and his mercurial demands.

  Following the A&R ethos, I acceded. I bounced back easy in those days. I threw on some clothes and headed back to the subway I’d just barely exited. I’d get to midtown Manhattan faster that way, and I’d pocket the cab fare. Between that, and the double-golden overtime I’d be making ($5.00 an hour), this would at least make financial sense.