We sat opposite each other, with the artichoke she had ordered between us. I had never seen such a strange fruit. How was one meant to approach such a cactus? I watched her pull out a leaf, dip it in some sauce and suck the veggie meat off the end. OK. Pull, dip, and suck. Artichoke. Got it.
After slurping through the cheesy fettuccine Alfredo — a cholesterol-laden white sauce of cheese, butter, and more cheese— drinking some blush wine, and indulging in some rum-soaked tiramisu, I was feeling loose. I had survived dinner. When I wasn’t looking like a spaz, we made a charming couple. I picked up the check.
We walked back to her pad, arm in arm, in the warm spring night. My feet were off the ground, something else was in the air.
Back at her pad, she poured us some more wine, and we danced to some slow, funky Marvin Gaye. Her curvy body against mine left me dizzy.
She asked, “Do you want to watch some TV?”
Of course, I said, “Yes.”
The small black-and-white was in her bedroom. This being a New York apartment, the room was just big enough for a queen-size bed. She plopped on the mattress, and I laid down next to her. She turned on the set to Channel 13. I knew I had a buzz on, but I wasn’t on acid or anything; yet what I saw appeared like a hallucination. The show started with some freaky animation, and a twisted martial tune. A bunch of wacky English guys were doing the strangest bits. A blancmange, a large, white pudding, was playing tennis. In a high voice, someone screamed, “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!” It was “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” a breakthrough British TV comedy that captured the psychedelic, erudite, Beatles-influenced zeitgeist in the funniest way. Bette and I laughed together.
Chablis, artichokes, Alfredo, tiramisu, Gaye, Python, it all started to inflate my head like a helium balloon. Then, I looked down, and saw those fabulous, famous, large breasts. I looked into Bette’s eyes, and saw that mischievous smile of hers. What had I been thinking when I asked her for dinner? Did I really think I’d end up inches away from her supine body? What, I wondered, do I do now? A vague confusion started to cloud my consciousness, but I pushed it away.
Well, if I had practiced anything during my wasted youth, it was kissing. I got the vibe that she just might let me do that. I lowered my face and my lips touched hers. She didn’t stop me. She yielded, and even made some approving little sounds. Our tongues touched. Hm. Really? I tried it again, and again. She seemed to be ok with it. It felt good. She’d apparently had some practice with this herself.
After a spate of kisses, the obvious next thought came into my head: I could touch, fondle, grope, caress, maybe even lick, suckle, the breasts of the Divine Miss M, the queen of booblemania. I reached down. There they were, now in my hands! Now, under my lips!
Wait. That confusion had now solidified into conflict. My excitement was met head-on with trepidation. What was the right thing to do? Oh, how foolish we can be at nineteen! We allow morality to enter at all the wrong moments. Was this a first date? If so, I wondered, what would the gentlemanly thing be to do? Do you screw on the first date, or don’t you? Could I ruin a potentially great relationship by going too far? I could fake knowing how to eat an artichoke, but I couldn’t let on that I had no idea what I was doing here, at this moment. And what of Tony’s lessons? I was always supposed to say yes, but I was never, ever supposed to mess with the artists. And then there was Phil. Shit, oh yeah, him. Phil Ramone. My boss’s ugly puss flashed through my mind. He might not take too kindly to this…I had to make a decision.
That luscious, famous body pulled me in one direction, and some inhibiting force pulled me in another. I, I — would be gallant, I thought. That couldn’t be wrong!
Before I knew what I was doing, I got up, started putting on my bad shoes, and said that I’d be going. Bette looked at me with shocked incredulity, but her unlikely reaction didn’t register in my still-maturing neo-cortex. As I watched myself from outside my body, as I reached the door, with me mumbling goodnight, it suddenly dawned on me. That look on her face — she was angry! Her willing smile had turned into a curl of wrath. Hell hath no fury.
The door closed. I saw a cab in front of her building, hailed it, and got inside. The minute I sat down, I felt the yanking pain of my post-pubescent tumescence. I saw, like an after-image, Bette’s face with her wide eyes, flared nostrils, and narrowed, scornful lips as she closed the door. Then, just five minutes too late, it hit me. I had just made one of the worst mistakes of my young life. I could have, no, I should have, done it with Bette Midler, and I blew it! Then, like fragments coming together into a recognizable whole, I could perceive the next layer of truth: this had probably been my one and only chance to ever do anything like that in my entire life. As the cab went up Sixth Avenue, every few blocks I leaned toward the cab driver to tell him to turn around, and each time I told myself I couldn’t, kicking myself.
The truth was, I wasn’t gallant. I was scared. I chickened out. I hadn’t thought when I made the ballsy move of asking her out to dinner that anything like what happened was in my future.
If that wasn’t bad enough, now I had to deal with the next consequence of that ill-fated non-act. The next Monday, I was back in the control room with Ramone. It was just the two of us, working on some mix, without an artist or producer present. Since Bette was sure to come in again to record, I knew there was a chance that Ramone would find out about this date, and I couldn’t let him hear the story from anyone but me.
“Phil,” I started gingerly, “there’s something I gotta tell ya.”
“What,” he said impatiently. “Come on, 30 IPS,” which was his code for get on with it.
“Nothing happened (unfortunately, I thought to myself), I was just delivering the cassette to Bette and we decided to go out for dinner, and we just ate some pasta and hung out for a while and that was all that happened. I just wanted you to know.”
Ramone said nothing. That made me nervous. Well, maybe it shouldn’t, I thought. Maybe he’ll just let it pass. Maybe we got through that moment. I started to breathe again. We went on with our work, for a half hour, or so. Few words passed between us. Was there tension in the air, or was I making it up?
I was over by the half-inch machine, rewinding a mix, when Ramone suddenly twisted around in his brown, leather chair. Reflexively, I turned, and saw his massive belly pulling him forward with a mass of momentum, making him look like a sumo wrestler on the attack, his eyes twirling with crazed rage. I jerked back, banging into the tape machine, and held on.
“You talk to me about integrity,” he growled disdainfully. “You don’t have any integrity. When Bette drives up here in her limo you’re going to crawl out to her on your belly!”
I tried to reason with him. “But Phil, I’m telling you …”
Now the volume was getting to an ear-damaging decibel level. “And let me tell you something else, Berger, when you produce her next album, I won’t be engineering it!”
If only I had that kind of moxie and narcissistic confidence! I just thought, in the moment, when the opening presented itself, that maybe I’d be lucky enough to get a kiss, cop a feel — I hadn’t strategized quite so far as to see this as some brilliant career move.
“But Phil, I was just her roadie of the night. I’m ten years younger than her, she’ll never have anything to do with me again!” I wished that wasn’t true, but deep down I knew. I knew.
“Now I know who you really are! You’ll fuck anybody to get ahead. You don’t care about me, or the work! You gigolo! So what, now you’re Bette Midler’s little boy? Is she driving up here right now to pick you up? And if she comes, will you go?”
He was out of control. Now I made my next big mistake. “Phil, you’re just jealous.”
“GET OUT! GET OUT! I’VE TAKEN ABOUT AS MUCH SHIT AS I’M GONNA TAKE FROM YOU, YOU …”
Before I heard anymore, I ran out of the control room, and zoomed up to the second floor, heading straight for Broadway Max’s office for refuge. Max was on the phone
, trying to collect money. He gripped a pencil stub, scribbling something down, and chewed an unlit cigar. His shiny black suit was covered in dandruff, as always. He rolled his pale, blue eyes, while pointing at the black phone with the coiled cable, and motioned for me to take a seat.
He hung up the phone, and said in his Edward G. Robinson voice, “What’s up buddy boy?”
I told him the story. He laughed demonically, exposing his big, yellow teeth. He relished this tale, as he loved everything about the biz.
“So you are Midler’s boy-toy of the night, you don’t even follow through, and Ramone thinks you are going to steal his gig! That is hilarious!”
“I’m glad you think it’s funny. If I wasn’t idiot enough last night, now I go and tell Ramone he’s jealous. I’m in deep shit.”
Now Max looked mock-serious. “You said that? Uh-oh.” He scratched his white crew-cut. “That is bad. I better go down there and see if I can patch things up.”
“Thanks, Max.”
It was good to have an ally I could depend on.
Max called me back down to the control room after a suitable interval during which he had poured Phil a stiff cognac. When I came back in, Phil looked at me out of the corner of his narrowed eyes. I promised not to go out with any more stars. We went back to work as if nothing had happened. But he never looked at this schlepper the same way again. Along with a degree of suspiciousness, he had to admit a begrudging admiration.
Still, I couldn’t let go of this nagging sense of guilt and shame about the Midler debacle. I thought I’d send her some flowers, just to say thanks — and I’m sorry— and maybe there’d be an opening … We did a few more sessions, but she acknowledged nothing. I sat quiet and cowed, back in my assistant’s chair. Though I slowly grew to accept that my romance was over, I couldn’t forgive myself.
Even now, I still cringe with regret over my missed dalliance. Was there any way to reconcile this blunder? You’d think the lesson here would be the old carpe diem bullshit. To a fault, for years, I rarely turned down such opportunities again, which got me into all kinds of other trouble. So maybe that wasn’t the moral.
Here’s another possible message. With opportunity, you’ve got to recognize it when it is there. You’ve got to take advantage of it when it makes itself apparent. But you’ve also got to be ready for it. Timing is a matter of luck.
You see, what would have happened if I had shtupped Bette Midler? I would have done a poor job of it, for sure. I still would have been just a boy-toy for the night, and my less-than-studly, nineteen-year-old performance would have sealed that deal. Having made love, I would have fallen in love, and if the bad sex wouldn’t have been bad enough, my uncontrollable pursuit afterwards would have led to even grosser humiliations. Phil would have had something to really be angry about, and who knows how that would have ended. Certainly, if we had consummated, that would have been the extent of the story. But not having done it makes a much better tale. Perhaps it was the best mistake I ever made.
That leaves me with one last regret. It’s just too bad we couldn’t have been friends. She was cool. Now, that makes me sad.
There was a coda to this concerto. At that time, I was also assisting on Steely Dan’s The Royal Scam album. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, the two guys who made up the band, were an unusual combination for the studio. They were brilliant oddballs and regular guys; that is, unlike the typical superstars, they were not over-the-top narcissists. Most other artists weren’t as eccentric, but were far less friendly.
Steely Dan epitomized the New York studio scene of that time. They had made some great hits in California, but deep-down they were New Yorkers in their souls, and they wanted the funk influence that only the top players in the City could bring. They came to A&R to cut the tracks for their new record and had hired engineer Elliot Scheiner to man the controls. Gary Katz was their producer, who translated the cryptic Martian commands of the bizarre duo to the musicians. The team went on to make the Dan’s greatest record, Aja, as well as The Royal Scam and Gaucho. After that, they really had very little left to say.
The greatness of those records came from the combination of Steely Dan’s arch, white college-boy wit, angular rhythmic changes, sophisticated jazz harmonies, and post-modern melodic references, with the groove and funk sensibility of the studio cats who played the music.
Donald and Walter were the most exacting artists I’d ever encountered, relentless in their pursuit for attaining the perfect realization of the sound in their heads. We would regularly take all night and about twelve reels of two-inch tape just to cut a basic track. They might have the drummer tune the snare drum for hours, or recut a track because a single cymbal crash was in the wrong place. Along with Scheiner’s great ears for sounds, there was good reason why their records won Grammy awards, including for best engineering.
One afternoon, we were listening back to those freshly recorded basic tracks. They were so hot, it felt like sparks flew out of the speakers, and we were all lifted to a higher realm. While Becker and Fagen were goofing around in the control room, taking a break from our work, Midler came in to hang with the guys.
She saw me and brightened. With just a soupçon of irony in her voice, she said, “Buns! How are you?” She sashayed over and gave me a tantalizing, but kitschy, hug.
Well, Becker, Fagan, Katz, and Scheiner loved this. “Buns?” they said in virtual unison, when Bette left.
“Yes,” I said, with a mixture of pride, showing off my tight Fiorucci jeans, and excruciating embarrassment. “That’s what she calls me.”
That became my name for the rest of the Dan project. In case you might be skeptical about all this, take a look at the credits on The Royal Scam album. The last credit, under “Techno” is, yeah, that’s right: Buns.
TRACK ELEVEN
Fifty Ways to Leave Your Mentor
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to work on all of Still Crazy.
At some point while trying to make something of the first arrangement for the song “Gone at Last,” Paul wanted to overdub horns and extend the ending so we’d have a longer fadeout. This meant making exact copies of the multi-track tape and editing on repeated replicates of the final chorus.
The technicians made the copy in preparation for the overdub session with a whole bunch of players, which was slated to happen first thing Monday morning.
I’d asked Phil if he’d wanted me to do the cut, but now we were talking about the big two-inch multi-track master. He looked at me with condescension as if to say, let a man do a man’s work. He’d handle it. He told me that he’d come into the studio over the weekend and do the edit.
When I got to the studio first thing Monday to set up, I assumed it had all been done. The players were wandering in, I had all the mics and headphones checked, and I was looking for the edited tapes to put up. Then I realized Ramone had never done the cuts. I had the original masters, and the copies that were made, but they hadn’t been spliced together, and there was no Ramone.
He finally blew in at the last minute, and in his usual dramatic panic was going to do the edit in the few seconds before we were to hit the downbeat. We were quite familiar with “Murphy’s Law” in the studio, because it was always proving true. If anything could go wrong, it would, at the worst possible time. As usual, the techies hadn’t checked their work. They’d made a crappy copy that didn’t match the original, so when Ramone tried to chop them together, it sounded like shit. So what did Ramone do? He screamed at the top of his lungs.
“As usual, if anything is going to get done right around here, I’ll have to do it myself!”
I couldn’t hold back. “Well Phil, you were supposed to do this, and you didn’t.”
“Are you some kind of incompetent, lousy … and you just stood around here and let this go down? Now what am I supposed to do? Where were you, loser? I can’t depend on anyone! I don’t know why I put up with your sorry ass! How could you do this to me?”
He was right. It di
dn’t matter that everyone else had fucked up. I knew better by now, and I should’ve left nothing to chance. I should’ve assumed that Ramone would screw the pooch, and I should’ve covered his behind in advance.
Now things were really in the shitter. We had a dozen horn players, an arranger, and a big artist waiting to record this thing, and all Ramone could think of doing was scream at the top of his lungs, telling me I was a total fuck up. Then he turned to Simon and kissed his tuchus so he wouldn’t notice what was happening two inches away to this little schlepper.
I had become as irascible and as much of a fuck as Phil, and we were fighting way too much. The rain-barrel spilled over. I was done.
I turned to Ramone and said, “If I suck that bad, find yourself someone else to save your fucking ass every day!” and I walked out of the studio.
Once on 48th St., I stormed down 8th Avenue, thinking, “Let Ramone see how he survives without me, then let’s see if he treats me that way …”
As I angrily bobbed up and down, walking farther away from the studio, I remembered a time in my earliest days when I had been the actual schlepper.
One morning in bad weather I was pushing a hand-truck up the block with a double load of tapes wrapped in sheets of plastic to keep the masters dry from the pouring rain. Along the way I had to make a stop at the copyist’s office to drop off some lead sheets. I couldn’t leave the golden masters on the street, so I tried to pull the heavy hand truck of tapes up the stairs into a narrow vestibule that bordered the sidewalk. The hand truck pitched to the left and didn’t hold, and the tapes fell all over 49th Street.
Take sheets started blowing through the street with names on them like Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach, and James Brown. I started to chase the papers into traffic with taxis blaring, getting soaked, and for a second I thought, what the fuck. I’ll just walk away.
But then something clicked. I realized I was in the first five seconds of my career. Somehow I dug deep into my seventeeen year-old soul and gathered it all back. I calmly got every piece of paper, closed the tape boxes, stacked them all back up, secured them, and got the hand truck up the stairs, dropped off the music, and brought the tapes to their final destination.
Never Say No To A Rock Star Page 16