They're Playing Our Song

by Carole Bayer Sager

  He pulled out another card. “This is my schedule for each day of this weekend. I have a card for every single day. When I finish the day I rip it up. But this restaurant wasn’t on my card because we just came upon it.”

  I laughed. “I’ve never met anybody as organized as you.” His voice was nothing like Burt’s. He spoke crisply and concisely. What Burt took at least ten sentences to say, Bob said in less than one. He didn’t give you any time to get bored.

  “I don’t carry a wallet. I figure it’s too easy for pickpockets. So I keep my cash folded with a rubber band around it in my right pocket. I keep my credit cards and driver’s license with another rubber band around them in the other pocket. I put the cards in one pocket and the cash in the other. That way, if I were to be robbed I could give them my cash and still have my cards.” Who was this man? Who could ever think all of this through?

  He had solved a problem most people didn’t even know existed, as effectively as possible. I can’t imagine even the thinnest wisp of such a thought ever going through Burt’s head, let alone his honing in on it with such precision. I could see how Bob could run a studio.

  “Easy,” he said, finishing up with a quick clap. “Very easy. I like to think I make complicated problems less complicated, and when something is easy, I try not to complicate it.”

  “Are you always so sensible?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I’m a pretty sensible guy,” he said with a smile, “and I think people know it. I’m not a Hollywood kind of guy. All these years I’ve never gone anyplace where I’ve seen anyone doing drugs. My kids would say, ‘Dad, didn’t you smell the grass at the Eisners’ clambake?’ And I told them I didn’t smell a thing. I didn’t even know the smell of marijuana.”

  “Well, you do give off a kind of ethical vibe. I think people think of you as principled and would not look to include you in any activity you might feel uncomfortable in.”

  “When I tried it with Nancy,” he said matter-of-factly, “I didn’t feel a thing.”

  “Well, maybe we’ll do it together sometime,” I said, not expecting it to be anytime soon.

  Thirty-Eight

  TOWARD THE END OF February 1992, Peter Allen called me from New York City.

  “Hey, honey, it’s Peter.”

  “Peter! I haven’t spoken to you in so long,” I said, feeling a little guilty.

  “Yeah, well, I’ve been everywhere, as you can imagine. I just did a huge concert in Australia at the Sydney Opera House, sold out, got rave reviews. Hey, I was wondering, darlin’, if that fabulous Bob of yours, who just happens to own Warner Bros., I wouldn’t expect less of you—”

  “He doesn’t own it,” I interrupted. “He’s the cochairman.”

  “All right, whatever. Do you think he could get me two passes to the Mambo Kings screening? And the party following?”

  “Of course he will, Peter. And we’ll be in New York for it, too, so I’ll finally get to see you. I’ve missed you so much.”

  On our first night in New York, Bob, who had not yet met my family, invited my mother, my cousin Joan, and her husband, Joel, to dinner at Jean-Georges, the new restaurant that opened at the Mark Hotel.

  Once seated, my mother turned to Bob and asked, “Are you divorced?”

  “Not yet,” Bob answered, “but we have filed.”

  Anita perked up and then barraged Bob with a rapid round of questions. “Where are you living now?” “How many children do you have?” “Is Nancy seeing anyone?” “How long have you run Warner Bros.?” “And how often do you come to New York?” And finally, easily her most important question: “How did you get along with Nancy’s mother?”

  “I not only got along with her, I still get along with her very well,” Bob said. “I took Nancy and her mother to Paris for her eightieth birthday.”

  “Oohhhh!” Anita said, duly impressed. You could hear the wheels of her mind spinning. “Would you ever take me to Paris?” she asked as coquettishly as she could manage, trying to temper her usually brassy timbre to sound more like my soft one.

  My cousin Joan jumped in, appalled. “Anita, listen to you. You just met the man, how could you ask him such a question?”

  Bob said to her, “Anita, if Carole and I are together when you turn eighty, I’ll take you to Paris.”

  “Oh! What a wonderful event to look forward to,” she said, turning to me and giving me a look that I easily interpreted as “Let’s not screw this one up.” As if I was the one who’d screwed up with Burt.

  Joan, who dragged me to every movie she’d ever loved when we were kids—and she loved most of them—was thrilled that Bob ran Warner Bros. Her questions were more appropriate and I could tell she too was happy with my new boyfriend. Joel, who was never a big talker, stayed true to his reputation and barely said a word.

  After the meal, when we were all standing in the lobby, my mother, in a failed attempt at a stage whisper, instructed me to “wrap him in cotton.” In case I was deaf, she repeated herself, this time even louder, “Do you hear me, Carole? Wrap him in cotton. This one’s a keeper.” (FYI, Bob kept his word and took Anita to Paris for her eightieth birthday.)

  NOT HAVING SEEN PETER in a while, I was taken aback by his appearance. He was painfully thin, and at the after-party, he took me aside and told me he had AIDS. He hadn’t told anyone outside of his very closest friends because he wanted to keep working as long as he could.

  I started to get teary. He put his arm around me reassuringly. He was comforting me. “I’ll be fine, love. You know me.”

  “Is someone taking care of you?”

  “Well, Liza’s been amazing,” he said. “Honestly. She doesn’t let me be, she just wants to take care of me. And you know all my New York charity ladies—you met Judy Peabody, right? Well, she takes such care of me. I have so much food in my apartment, I could open a restaurant.”

  We hugged again, and I returned home determined to stay in close touch. I hadn’t realized, nor had Peter wanted me to know, how sick he already was.

  Two months later, he decided to drive up from Leucadia, just north of San Diego where he had a house, to try to write a song with me. He looked even worse than he had in New York, but he was still upbeat. We started a song called “Our Last Song Together,” both of us knowing it probably was. It felt a little ghoulish.

  We didn’t finish it, as I kind of knew we wouldn’t. When he left, I walked him to his car. I kissed him and hugged him and told him I loved him. He told me he loved me, too, and said, “Take care of yourself,” adding, “not that I have to tell you that!” I smiled because he knew me so well.

  Just before he pulled out I, ever the songwriter, said, “Hey, Peter, if I’m ever going through one of our unpublished songs and I find one that I think could be even better and maybe a hit, is it okay if I bring a third writer in?”

  “Honey, after I’m gone, you can do whatever you want with them.” He laughed.

  Peter called me two weeks later, the day before he died. I was told I was one of only three people he called to say good-bye to. But I didn’t say goodbye. I couldn’t. I said “I love you” instead.

  HOW DO YOU WRITE a song about two Saint Bernards who are in love? Of course, you don’t if you are busy with other work, but my phone wasn’t ringing off the hook. So when my friend Ivan Reitman, the director of Ghostbusters, among many others, called and asked me if I wanted to write a title song for the movie Beethoven’s 2nd—not even the original—I said yes. It wasn’t an important motion picture, but a movie is always a good platform from which to launch a new song.

  I called my friends James Ingram and Clif Magness and asked them to write it with me. I hoped we would write something for James’s big soulful voice.

  Needless to say, I’d never written a love song for two dogs before, but all my life I’ve lived with and loved dogs.

  The great dog whisperer Cesar Millan once observed me with my dogs and said, “Carole, a dog needs three things equally. Exercise, discipline, and love. You g
ive them three things: love, love, and love. Then you wonder why they don’t respect you.” The story of my life.

  I think I love dogs as much as I love people, with a few exceptions. I love that I can ascribe my feelings to my dogs. When I’m feeling a little sad, Daisy, my little Bolognese, looks forlorn, and when I’m happy I can see a big smile on my Maltese Dylan’s face. As for Benny, my baby Yorkie, wherever I am, he is within two feet of me. These little beings adore me unconditionally, and they literally look up to me. Whatever I say to them, they always look at me as if to say, “Wow, you’re so smart.” So it was with a smile that I sat down to write the song that became “The Day I Fall in Love,” which did turn out to be a duet for James Ingram and Dolly Parton.

  The song needed to be happy, leave a smile on your face, and work if you imagined people as well as dogs. It was not a hard song to write. The image of two happy dogs stayed in my head as we wrote it.

  I wonder where’s that great big symphony?

  Roll over, Beethoven

  Won’t you play with me?

  I was not completely surprised when it was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1993. Well, let’s just say I helped some of the small group that constituted the Globe voters become familiar with our song. Unlike with the Oscars, you’re allowed to throw press events for the Globe members. I opened my home to them, throwing a beautiful luncheon with four surprise guests: the two giant Saint Bernards from the movie, James Ingram, and an unmistakable life-size cutout of Dolly Parton, who could not be there—okay, three surprise guests and some cardboard.

  At each seat lay giant chocolate bones engraved with the movie’s logo. (Hopefully the members knew it was for them and not their dogs, as chocolate is known to kill dogs.) The curvaceous cardboard Dolly was placed strategically next to a piano where James performed his side of the duet live over Dolly’s recorded vocal, embellishing the track with flourishes of chords.

  Each guest had his or her picture taken standing next to James and “Fake Dolly” along with the two very real dogs—so real that they were urinating anywhere they saw fit. Three days later, each guest received their individual photos and the sheet music, all autographed by the three of us.

  After the Golden Globe nomination, we received an Oscar nomination as well.

  The thing for me about being nominated for an Oscar is even when I know in my heart that I have no chance of winning, on the day of the Oscars, I start to imagine that just maybe through a series of impossible circumstances, I might end up holding that golden trophy in my hands.

  David Geffen called me while I was getting dressed.

  “What are you doing?” he asked chattily, forgetting that Bob and I were going to the Academy Awards.

  “I’m getting ready to leave for the Oscars,” I said while finishing up my evening makeup at two thirty in the afternoon, and expecting to feel very overdone, to say the least, in the bright sunlight awaiting me.

  “Please,” he said. “Why even go? You realize you have absolutely no chance of winning.”

  “You’re right,” I said, “but you never know for sure.”

  Well, that was it for him. “Are you out of your mind?” he said, raising his voice. “Bruce Springsteen, who has never written a song for a motion picture, is nominated for the Tom Hanks movie Philadelphia, about a man who has AIDS, and you think you are going to win with a song about two Saint Bernards in a totally forgettable movie? Are you completely crazy, Carole?”

  “You’re absolutely right,” I said, as whatever small balloon of hope I had popped above my head. “I think it was more of a fantasy.”

  “Well, don’t tell it to another soul. Have a good time,” he said, hanging up.

  It’s just nice to be nominated, I thought a few hours later, watching and applauding from my seat as Bruce Springsteen walked up to the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to accept his Oscar for “Streets of Philadelphia.”

  Thirty-Nine

  ON THE EARLY MORNING of January 17, 1994, with Cristopher away for the weekend with a friend, Bob was sleeping at my house on Nimes. At 4:31 a.m., we were jolted awake, my heart pounding instantly. The house was shaking violently. Bob, instantly clear-headed, said, “This is a big one. Get under a doorway.” Finally, the rumble subsided.

  We both walked into my bathroom. It looked like the epicenter was right there at my vanity. All my mirrored walls had cracked and some of the mirrors had fallen down. Was there a message here for me? My toilet had separated from the wall and was hanging on lopsidedly in its stall.

  “I don’t want to sleep here ever again,” I said, knowing Cristopher was coming back from Aspen in a few hours.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll send Tony” (a lovely, loyal man who had worked for Bob for years) “over today to help all of you move into my house on Carolwood. It’s on flat ground. It’ll be safer.”

  The universe was conspiring to move us closer together sooner than we had planned. Stacey and Henry Winkler, who sustained a lot of damage, too, were also coming over to spend the night with their children, Max and Zoe. It was so funny that all of us inherently believed that Bob’s was the safe place to be.

  When we got there, I saw no damage in his downstairs at all. The kitchen and the family room were perfect. It wasn’t until we went upstairs to what was now going to be our master bedroom that I stopped in my tracks. Nancy had chosen to put a giant chandelier right over their king-size bed. It had come away from the ceiling and shards of glass were in slivers all over the duvet cover.

  “Oh my God, we could have been killed if we slept here,” I said out loud. Despite evidence to the contrary, we still all believed Bob’s house was the safest place to be, and he was the safest person to be with.

  All the newscasters were saying how lucky Los Angeles was that it struck at such an early hour, for although thirty-three people died and eighty-seven hundred people were injured, the numbers would have been infinitely higher if the quake happened during working hours.

  There were aftershocks and more aftershocks, but Bob, Cristopher, and I were now a family living in Carolwood, and it wouldn’t be long at all before my house on Nimes Road was put up for sale.

  The earthquake, defined as “a sudden and violent shaking of the ground,” was for me exactly that—a seismic shift causing me and Cristopher to be thrown together suddenly with Bob under his roof. Life was demanding that I change and that Cristopher change as well. He could no longer talk to me disrespectfully without Bob saying, “Excuse me. That’s no way to talk to your mother. Apologize to her.”

  What? I’d never heard that before. Burt would drift away, hating conflict even more than I did. I was left to handle Cris’s outbursts on my own, and my difficulties stemmed from never wanting to be my mother, the stern disciplinarian, so I overgave and overforgave more times than I should have.

  When Burt left, I thought it important for Cris to see a really good child psychologist to help him process whatever feelings he was having as a result of our impending divorce. We sat in the doctor’s office for the first time. Cris and I were seated together on a couch, and Dr. Wasserman was sitting behind a brown desk. He asked me why we were there. I began to tell him about the split-up and the eight months of trying to keep the relationship together. I felt a hard tap on my head but kept going. He asked me questions and I answered them. How was Cristopher handling the divorce? As I spoke, I felt an even more significant tap from Cris in the center of my head. I looked at him, smiled understandingly, and continued. What, Wasserman asked, was I hoping that Cristopher would gain from seeing him? Did I envision it as a short-term or long-term relationship?

  Cristopher knocked me in the head yet again.

  “Are you aware,” Dr. Wasserman slowly said, “that your son has been hitting you in the head this entire time?”

  “Oh. Yeah,” I said, semi-aware.

  “Three times now,” he added.

  “Well, you know, he’s understandably nervous.”

  “So that gives him permissio
n to hit you in the head?”

  I had no answer.

  “Hitting you in the head, Mrs. Bacharach, is a complete boundary violation. Your son is violating your boundaries.”

  Oh, I thought, realizing that I wasn’t really sure what boundaries were, or if I even had any.

  That night, before it was time to put Cristopher to bed, I wanted to hug him and tell him how much I loved him. I went into his room and started to embrace him. He pushed me away. “Stop,” he said. “That’s a boundary violation.” How was it possible that a six-year-old understood and embraced the doctor’s message so quickly that he was able to use it against me, while I continued to struggle with the very idea of boundaries?

  Here I was, living with a completely functioning adult male who showed up for life on a daily basis. On time. Maybe it was just seeing this and feeling this shift in energy around me, but I found myself waking up earlier in the morning and driving Cristopher to school, picking him up, taking him for a snack, making him my priority instead of leaving it all to a nanny.

  Bob got up every day at a set time, regardless of how late he’d been up the night before, and that was all very new for me.

  Unlike so many other times in my life where my writing and relationships were intertwined, there was no confusing why Bob was with me. He just loved me.

  He certainly didn’t love me for my music, which often amazed me, because every other man in my life had. I don’t even think Bob loves music. In any car I’ve ever been in with him, regardless of what’s playing through the speakers, his first words are “Turn the music off, will you?” To him, it’s extraneous sound that interferes with his thinking. Until he met me, the FM button on Bob’s radio had never been pushed. But being loved by a really good man beats having a music partner. Hands down.