The Soul of It All

by Michael Bolton

  I made it into two scenes because I brought a change of clothes, hoping they wouldn’t realize I’d already been in one scene. I was hoping to double my money. Our big scene in the movie takes place, fittingly, in an unemployment line. The scene was shot at the public welfare office in West Los Angeles. I’m shown sitting and reading a book and the others are standing in the line. My role was more of a stretch than theirs, but I thought we all gave masterful performances thanks to our many years of perfecting our unemployed postures and expressions.

  Tom and I filmed another scene that didn’t make it into the movie, probably because they would have had to pay us more and give us screen credits. I’d brought along my guitar to practice and write some material during breaks in filming. Tom, who had a beautiful voice, was singing and harmonizing with me and the director decided to shoot us. Though the scene was lost on the cutting-room floor, I did get one good review. While we were practicing a song Tom wrote, Kris Kristofferson walked by, listened for a second or two, and, walking away, he said: “I wish I had a voice like that.”

  I was surprised and grateful for the compliment from the great singer and songwriter, and oddly enough, this was the first in a series of similar brief encounters I would have with Kris over the years. Though we never became friends or even had an extended conversation, he has cropped up at interesting times in my life, almost like some sort of herald of things to come. In this first instance, it was as if Kris Kristofferson were sent by the music gods to give me enough hope to keep striving.

  My next Kris encounter of a strange kind was only about ten months later. I was working again as a waiter, this time at H.E.L.P. (Health through Education, Learning & Peace), which owner Warren Stagg, a holistic healer and spiritualist, claimed was the first organic vegetarian restaurant and spiritual center in the U.S. The restaurant, which also served as the setting for a scene in Blume in Love (with Warren playing a waiter), was more like a hippie dinner club.

  Marc Friedland had worked in the kitchen and the adjoining grocery from time to time. I was living in North Hollywood and commuting to and from work on a sorry-as-shit red Vespa with a broken accelerator cable that I had to operate by tying a shoestring to it that I pulled to go faster and let go of to slow down. The brakes had surrendered after I lost control on an oil patch and nearly went ass over elbows to the bottom of a canyon.

  Kristofferson, who’d been in H.E.L.P.’s scene in Blume, walked into the restaurant one day as a civilian with his beautiful wife, the singer Rita Coolidge. I served them and reminded Kris that we’d met on the Blume set. He said they were back in town working on a record and I told him I was working on a demo. He was very genuine and kind, wishing me good luck, and he gave me a five-dollar tip, which was a lot of money back then for a starving hippie musician. Still, I appreciated his encouragement much more than I appreciated the money.

  Credit: Richard “Ribs” Friedland

  Chapter Six

  Mad Dogs & Mites

  Maureen left California and returned to Connecticut to find a job, so I moved in with the Friedlands and a small pack of other vegetarian hippies in a commune. Calling it that might be a stretch. The roadside dump more closely resembled a hobo camp for the homeless. Known as the “People Farm,” it was not at all as idyllic as that name may imply. Most pigs had better living quarters. I’m just glad we didn’t realize at the time that Charles Manson and his murderous harem lived nearby.

  Seventeen humans and an equal number of domesticated animals and wild beasts lived on the forested small parcel of land just off Grandview Drive along Topanga Canyon. Marc and I shared an old metal trailer. The others lived in a motley mix of makeshift shelters; everything from tepee tents to plywood shacks, ramshackle old cabins, and crudely constructed tree houses.

  Ribs had somehow claimed a lower-level apartment in the only true house with electricity and plumbing. The main house had the only refrigerator and bathroom on the premises. Ribs was very strict in guarding both, but especially the bathroom. The plumbing for it ran through his apartment’s walls, and if someone flushed it sounded like a tsunami or Niagara Falls descending upon him. At one time, Ribs limited use of the bathroom to pregnant women, but even they could use it only during rainstorms. Otherwise, all residents were expected to use the great outdoors. After all, there were many strange characters living on the People Farm.

  SHELTER IN A STORM

  My band and I were all struggling to hang on to our dreams in the early ’70s. One by one many of our musician friends were giving up because they couldn’t support themselves or their families. I had my moments of doubt, but I didn’t have a family to support, and without even a high school degree my options were limited. So I was more determined than ever to make it in the music business, but there was a lot less Joy—the band, that is. We’d worked hard to create the album for Pentagram, but the stress and strain and disappointment of another failed record deal resulted in the departure of everyone but Marc and me.

  For a while we tried to recruit some new band members, and one of the drummers we auditioned was this tall, skinny, clean-cut blond guy who looked just like the actor Ed Begley Jr., because he would soon be the actor Ed Begley Jr. He was just twenty-three at the time of his audition and a very good drummer. Ed had been struggling to make it in show business, so he was considering all options. I remember Marc saying, “He’s an excellent drummer, but he looks way too normal.”

  Oddly enough, Ed later served as the drummer for the performance of the “Gimme Some Money” video in This Is Spinal Tap.

  Ed didn’t get the chance to play with Joy. We never really reformed that band again, and shortly after auditioning for us in 1972, he was mugged and stabbed by teenage members of an L.A. street gang. He nearly died, but eventually recovered and went on to a great career without any help from us.

  Our band was all but disbanded, down to two members, but Ribs continued to knock on doors around L.A., trying to secure a record deal. Thanks to his efforts, Marc and I were called in for auditions from time to time. Marc played piano, and I sang and played acoustic guitar. One of those auditions was for Joe Cy, a young producer with Shelter Records, the company founded by songwriter and rock piano genius Leon Russell and his business partner Denny Cordell, who was a successful record producer for the Moody Blues, Procol Harum, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Phoebe Snow, and Joe Cocker, among others.

  We performed in the studio with Joe listening in the control room. He later told us that Denny was working next door in another studio and he’d been impressed. It’s a good thing I didn’t know that, or I would have been even more nervous. After we auditioned that day, Marc and I left with no promises from Joe. Only later did we hear that Denny had been listening in and as soon as we left he asked Joe, “Who was that kid singing for you?” Denny told Joe that he’d like to hear me again, so Joe asked us to come back for a second audition for the boss.

  After the second meeting Denny was very complimentary, and a couple of weeks later Joe called Ribs and asked if I could fill in as Leon’s opening act for three concert dates on a big national tour. This was a huge break on several levels. Leon was a highly respected music industry insider, a songwriting session player turned main act, and a musician’s musician whose circle of friends and admirers ranged from the Beatles, Eric Clapton, and Elton John to Joe Cocker and Willie Nelson.

  I asked Joe Cy if I could have Marc play piano and accompany me on the tour and he agreed. We weren’t exactly prepared for this gig, but how could we turn it down? Once we agreed to do it, Marc and I had to hustle to put together enough songs to play a thirty-minute set for the biggest crowds we’d ever been in front of—nearly ten thousand people—for shows in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit. Did I mention the first concert was, like… the next night?

  Marc and I scrambled, putting together our set list on the flight to the Philly concert at the Spectrum on July 27, 1972. Denny Cordell had not mentioned a word about actually paying us for these three concerts (I
think we both got checks for $150 at the end of our tour), but we were thrilled—and more than a little scared—to be invited. Our flight out to Philly was the first time either of us had flown first class, and that treatment continued throughout the mini-tour. We’d always dreamed of being rock stars, but we’d never actually enjoyed the lifestyle of limos, great hotels, and all expenses paid.

  We also experienced what it’s like to be the opening act for a performer like Leon Russell, whose fans were the rowdiest I’d ever encountered. One critic wrote that “Joy exited joylessly” and I don’t doubt that our nerves got the best of us, at least in the first show. Marc and Ribs’s parents made a recording of that concert, and, when I listen to it now, the crowd sounds more supportive and appreciative than we remember. Back then they seemed downright hostile, but maybe that was my fear screaming “You guys suck!”

  Marc and I had convinced Leon’s road manager to get us a rental car so we wouldn’t be stuck at our hotel all day prior to the concert. We may have been playing rock stars on that tour, but we were still blue-collar hippies, so instead of hanging out by the pool, Marc and I went bowling. We were having so much fun we lost track of time and cut it way too close getting back to the hotel. Our late arrival threw off the entire timetable for the concert and resulted in a late start for Leon, which didn’t earn us any points with the main act.

  Serving as Leon Russell’s opening act put me on the big stage for the first time, and I quickly learned that the warm-up role has unique challenges. Marc and I were performing as many in the audience were still showing up and finding their seats and sometimes yelling out: “Who the hell are these guys?” It was humbling, but somewhat of a rite of passage for any band or artist to try to win over an audience that hadn’t come to see us. I’d think back to that experience twenty-five years later, when I sold out the Spectrum as the headliner, and again at the Pine Knob Music Theater in Clarkston, Michigan—the home turf of Bob Seger, for whom I had opened in 1983. We sold out for six nights with a new name as my opening act: Celine Dion. Even if I wasn’t the main act in 1972, that appearance did give me my first taste of what it’s like to play for a packed house of ten thousand or more. An even better reward was getting to know the great and passionate musicians and Shelter Records people working with Leon. Many of them complimented me after our sets, and that was pretty spectacular because they’d worked with the best of the best.

  Shelter Records picked up on the good vibe, and shortly after our time with the tour ended they offered me a production deal to record some songs with the option for them to give me a contract. It was a production deal that could turn into a record deal in ninety days. Again, this wasn’t a major recording contract, but it was very encouraging to be hooked up with this respected group. The Shelter Records guys weren’t “suits”; they were serious music industry people, but as far as I could see, the emphasis with them was always on the music first and then the business, and that was very gratifying. Even better, as part of the production deal, Shelter producer Joe Cy asked me to put some songs together and then record them on a demo at Leon Russell’s studio inside his Tulsa home.

  Imagine being twenty years old, living hand to mouth, with two pairs of jeans and a couple of T-shirts to your name and hardly enough cash for a taxi to the airport. But when you get on the plane to Tulsa, your seat is in first class. There is a limo waiting for you upon arrival, and it takes you to the biggest mansion you’ve ever seen. And there to greet you are many of the best rock musicians in the world—people who worked in the studio or toured with Leon, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, and the Rolling Stones.

  I was thrilled beyond words at the prospect of just working in the same studio. Once again, my hopes were raised. If Shelter Records thought I was ready to play alongside their studio musicians and artists, then maybe, just maybe, my fortunes were turning.

  I called Marc, who had all but given up on ever making a living in a band. He’d moved back into his parents’ home in New Haven and was teaching guitar lessons to half the teen population. It wasn’t difficult to tear him away from a couple thousand kids eager to learn “Stairway to Heaven” so he could help me work on the new songs for Tulsa.

  Leon Russell’s mansion had once been a synagogue, which seemed perfect for me, the wandering Jew troubadour. The house stood on a grassy hill surrounded by Rolls-Royces and other exotic vehicles driven by Leon and his Mad Dogs & Englishmen friends. (Leon had been the musical director for a raucous 48-city, 30-musician Joe Cocker tour nicknamed that by Denny Cordell. It fostered both a hit live album and a hit concert movie of the same title.)

  Leon had another recording studio in an old Tulsa church, but his home studio was not lacking. The studio’s equipment included the first Mellotron I’d ever seen. This expensive piece of equipment, modeled on the Laff Box used to put prerecorded laughter into TV and radio programs, had a keyboard that played prerecorded strings and other orchestral instruments. The Moody Blues and the Beatles were among the first bands to use Mellotrons, which, despite their heavy weight, became a staple for progressive and hard rock bands.

  Once we went to work in Leon Russell’s studio, there was no doubt that Marc and I were in the company of giants. Our studio band included the great bass player Carl Radle and guitarist Wayne Perkins, along with other top-level musicians who’d played on Clapton’s “I Shot the Sheriff,” his hit version of Bob Marley’s reggae song. I’d liked it, but reggae was new to me. When the guys in the studio kicked into their Marley riffs during our recording session for “It’s a Hard Life,” Marc and I thought they were messing with us because we’d never heard real reggae. Marc thought it was “some kind of calypso music.”

  We both realized we’d entered a musical universe that extended far beyond the rock, blues, and soul of our world. I have this vivid memory of one morning sitting on a kitchen counter at Leon’s house talking to other musicians and the singer Phoebe Snow, whom Denny Cordell had just signed for Shelter Records after hearing her perform at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village. Within two years, she recorded “Poetry Man” and became a star. Phoebe would become a friend of mine and perform at my Michael Bolton Charities events for many years. She shifted her focus to becoming a fantastic, loving mother and passed away far too young a few years ago. She had a phenomenal, soulful voice. As we drank coffee, Leon strolled in, and it was just surreal to be there with him and the others whom I’d seen in concerts or listened to on records. I was a little worried when he walked in, because I’d picked up his guitar and was playing it without asking permission. He didn’t seem to notice. He and the other amazing musicians roaming around the grand old house and filling every room treated me not like some outsider or amateur but as someone who belonged in their circle. Their praise and acceptance of me were like drops of water to a man wandering the desert.

  I knew I wasn’t there yet, but just being around those great musicians in Leon’s studio helped me hold on to the feeling that their levels of success were within my reach. I was so inspired that one morning I got up early, grabbed my acoustic guitar, and went to a park near our hotel. There, in just a couple of hours, I wrote a song called “Dream While You Can,” which we put on the demo. We decided on four songs altogether, two originals (“Dream While You Can” and “Your Love’s Much Too Strong”) and two selected by Joe Cy (“It’s a Hard Life” and “I’m Riding Home”).

  ITCHIN’ FOR A RECORD DEAL

  There were moments of pure bliss in Leon’s studio, and moments of pure terror, too, especially when Marc confessed to me that he’d brought more into Leon’s house than his duffel bag of clothes and his sheet music. We were in our hotel room alone when I noticed him madly scratching himself like a flea-bitten dog. It looked like he was trying to tear his skin off with his fingernails.

  “What the hell’s itching you, Marc?”

  “I don’t know whether I got into some poison ivy or a mound of fire ants, or some sort of rash,” he said, whipping off his shirt. “But I’ve been taki
ng baths and showers twice a day trying to get rid of this itching, and it only gets worse.”

  His bare shoulders, chest, and back were covered in tiny red spots that looked like the measles—or something worse.

  “Whatever this is, it’s driving me freakin’ crazy, Michael,” he said.

  I was afraid Marc’s nasty-ass mites would crawl from his bed to mine, and we both lived in terror that his scabies would somehow infect Leon and his band of all-stars, since Marc had been playing Leon’s guitar and the studio piano during our sessions. If any of those people are reading this book, please accept this as the reason “Itchy” Friedland and I tended not to mingle much after the first day. We were both intimidated and at least one of us was infectious, too.

  When Marc returned home, his doctor told him he’d have to wait two weeks for an appointment. “By that time, I will have burned off all the skin on my body to stop the itching, so there wouldn’t be any reason to come in,” Marc replied.

  The doctor saw him the next day, confirmed it was scabies, and gave Marc a salve treatment to relieve his agony before he skinned himself alive.

  BROTHERLY INTERVENTION

  Once we had the demo cut, Marc and I left Leon’s Tulsa estate, returned to our lives of relative poverty, and waited to hear if Shelter Records liked the songs enough to exercise their option and sign me to a recording contract. I waited and waited and waited, and then just as the six-month contract was about to expire they notified me that, once again, I was free to pursue other deals.