These lingering questions were less important than his escalating drug use. What had started out as a mild fondness for smoking grass, which I also enjoyed for the way it put me in a more open and creative space, had escalated to Midnight Express in my living room. Andrew and his friends would sit for hours with a strainer, a scale, and a brown paper bag filled with pot, measuring it and placing it in one-ounce Baggies. I was not amused. “Drug dealer” was not part of Andrew’s résumé when we married.
The biggest trustbuster in my marriage came the day Andrew decided to take some mescaline and asked me if I’d like to join him.
“No, thank you,” I said, having a strong feeling that hallucinogens might not be the best way for me to go.
Andrew and his brother Ricky wanted to see the movie Patton, which none of us had seen when it came out, despite President Richard Nixon’s enthusiasm for it. We stopped on the way to get pizza and Cokes, then took a taxi to the theater. About an hour into the movie—which, not being a fan of the ravages of war, I can’t say I was loving—I noticed the American flag was now waving in 3-D. The bomb blasts were deafening, the flames and explosions felt alarmingly close to my seat, and George C. Scott, in some uniform, was screaming at me. It was everything I never wanted in a movie.
With my eyes and my ears under assault, my single working brain cell wondered, Am I having a normal experience with this film, or am I perhaps tripping? I tapped Andrew on the shoulder. He seemed very caught up in the movie.
“Something’s wrong,” I whispered. “Did you give me that mescaline?”
He grinned. “I knew you’d like it once you took it.”
“Like it? I feel like I’m going crazy. I have to get out of here.”
I got up and walked out and Andrew followed me. I guess Ricky stayed.
Andrew said everything any person begging for forgiveness would come up with. I didn’t want to be alone with him, so I told him I wanted to go to my friend’s house. He insisted on coming with me.
I knew Carole Pincus from high school. She was fun to be with and loved my songwriting. I called and apprised her of the situation, and she urged me to come over. Carole was a single mom, and somehow Andrew and I found ourselves making love in her five-year-old son Craig’s room, surrounded by lots of happy red-mouthed clowns all over his wallpaper. Right in the middle of what was feeling like unusually more-than-okay sex, I heard Carole calling.
“Caaa? Where are you, Caaa? Carole? Carole!” Now she was knocking on the door. “Your mother’s on the phone.”
News flash! Mescaline can really mess with your reality, because my mind immediately went to My mother is here in the apartment with us. Right outside this bedroom door. I couldn’t get dressed fast enough. My mother! Oh my God. She caught me having sex. The wallpaper clowns all looked miserable now and were flying around me, and at that moment I felt like I was five years old and my mother was about to get angry at me. I felt myself beginning to cry.
“Carole! Pick up the phone!” Oh, right, she was only on the phone. I opened the door and took the phone, pissed off that Carole couldn’t have saved me from this. Ever hear of “She’s not here”?
My mother was a tracker. Within a few calls to whomever, she could find me. I imagined she knew everything by my voice, when in fact she knew nothing. And what was everything anyway? I was having sex with my husband?
I don’t remember how I got off the phone but moments later I was in Carole’s kitchen looking for the Ajax, Brillo, and rags. With all of them in hand, I locked myself in the bathroom, bent to my knees, and frantically cleaned the bathroom floor, compulsively scrubbing those small black and white tiles like Lady Macbeth trying to clean myself of my sins. And for the next hour I refused to come out of the bathroom. Four small walls were holding me together.
I took a Valium as soon as we got home. Andrew was still apologizing, but I wasn’t feeling forgiving. My husband did this to me. He asked me if I wanted to trip with him, I responded with a polite sentence that prominently featured the word no, and then he spiked my Coke with mescaline.
I knew two things. One, I would never ever take that drug again, and two, I had to find a way out of this marriage. I didn’t know how long it would take me, because it wasn’t like I did Alone so well. In fact, I didn’t do Alone at all. Not even in my own bedroom as a kid. All of my fears multiplied at bedtime and somehow leaving Andrew at that moment wasn’t even an option. Being on my own seemed too frightening. But I did know I had made a mistake.
Seven
TOMMY VALANDO, WHO RAN Metromedia Music, believed in my talent and asked me if I wanted to sign with them. I was so relieved that anyone wanted me after Georgy that I happily signed a three-year contract to be a staff writer, almost immediately after being let go by Screen Gems. At Metromedia I met Frank Military, head of their publishing department, and instantly felt I was in good hands.
Frank suggested I try writing some songs with Peter Allen. I knew who he was. He’d been discovered by Judy Garland, who fixed him up with her daughter Liza Minnelli while she was working in London. They married and moved to New York. I had seen him perform on The Tonight Show, as one half of the Allen Brothers. They sang a song he had written and I remember thinking it was really good. It turned out they weren’t actually brothers—it was just a gimmick to help break them as performers. As soon as Peter found his way to the epicenter of fabulous New York, he parted company with his fake sibling (who went on to become an airline pilot in Oregon).
Andrew and I were now living in a two-bedroom on East Sixty-Fourth Street. The first time Peter came over to write at my apartment, he glided in with a big olive-green satchel draped over his shoulder. Ignoring my piano, a Yamaha upright tucked modestly away on the right-hand wall, he modeled his bag with flair.
“A gift!” he said joyfully, feeling the soft leather of his newest accessory. “From Halston! Can you believe that?” In his strong Australian accent, he recounted, “Saturday night we all went back to Halston’s house after Studio 54, and we were talkin’ all night with the help of a little you-know-what, and I admired his bag, and Halston said, ‘Here, it’s yours.’ Isn’t it just divine, Carole?” he said, taking what seemed like his first breath.
“It sure is. Bring me some of his signature dresses next time he’s feeling so generous.”
“I originally met him when I first got to New York with Liza, but we’re still friends even though Liza and I are getting divorced. When we got married I forgot to tell her I was gay, so it didn’t help my marriage when she walked in on me one afternoon in bed with this beautiful boy I’d happened to meet leaving Arthur the night before.” He smiled wryly.
“I guess she should have called first,” I said.
“Really? When it was her apartment?”
I was loving his cheekiness, his sweet but slightly wicked smile, and his limitless energy. He’d already been around the room twice while talking to me.
“Nice apartment. I’m downtown, in the Village.” He spoke quickly. “Well, I’m stayin’ with friends downtown, but now I’m thinking of getting my own place. Saw this fabulous little loft. All brick, wood-burning fireplace. I mean, I’ve been here four years, it’s time, don’t you think?” He was still moving. “Who’s that a picture of?” he asked, picking up a silver frame from the piano and examining it.
“Oh, that’s me and Andrew. Our wedding.”
“Ohhh,” he said playfully. “He’s a handsome one, isn’t he?” His accent made everything sound just a little more fun. “Do you share?” He looked at me, his eyes playfully flirtatious, and laughed. “You’ll get used to me. I love to joke.”
Cutting to the chase I said, “Should we try to write a song?”
“Darlin’, that’s why I’m here.”
“Jennifer,” the song we finished that afternoon, became a hit for Bobby Sherman. It was the first of so many songs Peter and I would go on to write.
After he left I called Frank Military to let him know how well I thought
it had gone with Peter. “I had a feeling about the two of you,” he said.
Peter was a complete original: sophisticated, witty, facile, and complicated at the same time. He moved dizzyingly in the fast lane, yet there was nothing he didn’t catch. He had his own take on everything. Perhaps he moved so fast in order not to dwell too long on his own past, which was filled with some very dark memories, not the least being finding his father’s body after he’d shot himself. He had a wisdom beyond his years, and that helped him see through façades to who people really were. Lean, muscular, and agile, he was so attractive—charming and instantly likeable.
Back at my apartment the next day, we were sitting at the piano—well, Peter was sitting at the piano, I was sitting in a chair next to him, with a yellow pad, fresh pencil, and my usual amount of fear about whether I would ever think of anything to fill that blank page looming on my lap—when Peter said, “You know what I’d really like to do?”
“No, what?”
“How about we try and write a song about all those early days, you know, all those early days at Arthur? You were there, right, when we were stayin’ out all night and havin’ those crazy great times—”
“Oh, yes!” I said. “I was there.” We weren’t close enough yet for me to feel free enough to tell him I was there but I wasn’t there. Andrew enjoyed himself at Arthur, the Studio 54 of its time, but I never did. For me it required dancing in shoes that hurt my feet because I wanted to be taller, and one upbeat song was all I could manage before I wanted to sit down. The same part of me that made me a good collaborator was at work in my social life as well. I knew how to pretend I was like the others, to attempt to move like all the girls around me, but the truth was Arthur only reinforced what I already knew: I wasn’t very good at having fun. And for being as completely musical as I was, I was not a good dancer.
Peter began to play some chords and sang the first line. “Once there was a time when this town was so high that we’d never come down.” I liked it and offered back, “What about ‘Rules did not apply.’ ”
“That’s good,” he said.
“We would drink fountains dry,” I mumbled quietly, then louder, “How about, ‘We would drink fountains dry’?”
He played it. “Love that, darlin’. I think this is gonna be a good one.”
That’s all it took. Now I was part of his song. Even though I had never really lived the life I was starting to write about, part of me was becoming Peter. In Woody Allen’s movie Zelig, the character took on the identity of any strong personality around him. If he stood next to Freud, he became a psychoanalyst. If he stood next to Hitler, he became a Nazi. I seemed to have a similar ability. I mean, I kind of knew Peter’s life. I would have liked to have been living it, actually. I loved how he traveled all over the world . . . At this point I began thinking more about Peter than the song we were writing. I broke our musical spell and asked him, “Where’d you say you were going next weekend?”
“Is that a lyric?” he asked, eyes twinkling mischievously. Then, “Paris, darling. You know my friend Stefan.”
“No, I don’t believe I’ve met him.”
“Honey, you know who he is. He owns that famous club in Paris that’s all the rage now.” He raised his arm dramatically with a dancer’s flair as he dragged out the word ra-a-a-a-age. “So I’m goin’. All they had to do was ask me. Come on, let’s get back to the song. I have to go see my friend who’s holding five Hawaiian shirts for me . . . vintage.” I was impressed.
Peter had his own style. A scarf around his waist instead of a belt.
He started playing again. I loved the way he played, and the way his Hawaiian shirt hung open on his willowy body. Sometimes I’d look at him relaxing on the couch and he’d look like a model. Not his face so much, it was way too unique, and he wasn’t tall but he was long, and graceful, and everything about him told me he liked his body. He just moved that way.
I was not a mover. I barely moved, and when I did, I hoped no one was watching me. I was kind of a stealth mover.
Peter kept playing. I got up from my seat to join him on the piano bench. He slid over to make room for me. I pushed my fingers over his right hand and asked him, “Don’t you think the melody would be better if it went here?” I played a few notes. He might have been surprised, though he said, “Yeahhh, that is better.” That was one of the things that would turn out to be so great about writing with Peter. We both did everything. Sometimes he’d give me a lyric, and sometimes he’d change a melody because he liked what I was hearing more.
We got to the chorus, and I suggested it start with “Nights would end at six a.m. / Sleep all day and then start dancin’ again.”
“Fa-a-a-abulous!” He started to sing it. Just like that, he created a melody that sounded like the words were written to it. I loved it when songwriting felt seamless.
It took a little while for us to finish the chorus. I had the line “We were much younger then,” but it seemed like forever until Peter was able to come up with “We did the Continental American.” I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but I told him I loved it because I did love the way it sang, and my brain was starting to go on overload. And Peter, too, was getting antsy.
“You know, darlin’, I keep thinkin’ about those shirts, and how I’d like to just look at ’em and make sure I still love ’em.”
That was another great thing about us. We had almost equally minimal attention spans. “I could come by tomorrow for an hour or so,” he said, “and I bet we could finish this.”
“What time? Two?”
He pulled out his green leather calendar. “ ’At’ll work for me,” he said, noting it down with an oversized pen someone or other had given him. He snatched up his satchel, threw it over his shoulder, and before leaving, gave me a hug and said, “We’re very good together.” I smiled. I was so glad he said that. I really loved writing with him.
Eight
I HEARD MELISSA MANCHESTER’S unmistakable voice for the first time in June of 1972. Andrew and I were mesmerized in our seats in Carnegie Hall, loving every minute of Bette Midler’s first concert. I had seen her perform before in New York’s gay Continental Baths and knew I was watching a star about to ignite.
Bette was one of a kind. She could tell the bawdiest jokes like Mae West, strut around the stage, her hands flapping like fins, her red hair bopping and her breasts bouncing in sequined dresses, and though she was all of five foot two, she was bigger than life. She would sing and dance to the Andrews Sisters’ “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” with her three backup singers, the Harlettes, behind her, and then stand alone in a pin spot singing the John Prine song “Hello in There” and have you in tears. Johnny Carson had her on The Tonight Show a few times, and after those successes, she had rented out Carnegie Hall in a risky move that paid off in spades. She was a brilliant performer, and after that first night at Carnegie Hall everyone knew it.
Bette’s conductor at the time was Barry Manilow. He was just beginning to have his own following, so before intermission, Bette gave Barry his own fifteen-minute segment to do a few of his songs. That was the first time I heard “I Am Your Child,” which I still think is the best song he ever wrote.
Each Harlette sang alone with Barry, and when I heard the earthiness and honesty that poured out of Melissa—the Harlette in the middle—I fell in love with her voice. It had a great timbre to it, rich and full but not over-the-top sappy. It had a “pop” sound infused with soulfulness, and I wrote her name down when Barry introduced the girls.
I thought she would be perfect to sing on a demo I wanted recorded, so after the concert I called Barry for her number. He said she was out of town for two weeks but one of the other Harlettes would gladly do the demo. I said I’d wait until Melissa got back.
“HEY,” I SAID TO the girl who looked nothing like she had on stage. Her hair was wild and curly, and I thought she must like it that way. A little overweight, sort of shapeless, but she had a pretty face that she wore n
o makeup to enhance. “Hi, I’m Carole.”
We were at the Dick Charles Recording Studios on Fifty-Fourth and Broadway. I had a studio band—some of the best session players in New York—and I was excited to see what we’d come up with for this song I’d written with Peter.
“Yeah, hi. I’m Melissa. Nice to meet you.”
“I waited two weeks for you to come back from wherever you were so that you could do this demo for me,” I said. “I totally fell in love with your voice when I saw you with Bette.”
“Oh, thank you,” she said, sincerely.
“You know, I ran into Barry last week on the street and I asked him if he would consider giving me piano lessons. He said, ‘Carole, I’ve got a career here I’m trying to start. You want me to give you piano lessons?’ ” Melissa and I laughed together.
“Okay, let’s do it,” I said. I was eager to hear what she sounded like. You never know how someone’s voice is going to translate on mike. Some sound great, and others that you thought would don’t.
She went into the recording booth and her voice sounded spectacular coming through the studio’s speakers. She made the song sound better than it was, and she was better than the song. I pushed the button so she could hear me in the booth. “Wow, I’m glad I waited.”
Two takes and we were done. She nailed it. The band was happy they could get out early. Before doing a quick mix with the engineer, I went out to thank Melissa and to say good-bye.
“You’re just so good,” I said. “Really. You should record.”
“Well, I would like that. I’m hoping to.”
“You don’t happen to write, do you?” I asked.
“I do,” she said. “I’m signed to Chappell as a writer.” Chappell Music was one of the best publishers in the business.
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