The Soul of It All

by Michael Bolton

  This time the loss of a potential record deal didn’t burn quite so badly. I felt good about my experience with Leon Russell and the Shelter team. They told me to keep working on my own songs and refining my singing so I’d be ready when the next opportunity came. Joe Cy, in particular, assured me that it was only a matter of time before we were working together on a record. I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever actually have a record released, but in this case, Joe was on the mark—if not on the money. He and I would reunite for another album, but it would not be with Shelter.

  By the summer of 1974, my loyal road buddies Marc and Ribs Friedland decided to go their own ways. They’d hung in with me through all of my teenage years as one record deal—or potential deal—after another came and went. They were both older than me, and they had other responsibilities to look after. Marc married and moved to Fallbrook, California, to teach guitar and sell instruments while performing now and then. Ribs, who had dedicated about ten years of his life to promoting my career, threw in the towel. I could hardly blame him.

  My fires were still burning, stoked by encouragement from people like Leon Russell, Denny Cordell, and Joe Cy, but at twenty-one years of age, I’d already been fighting this battle for six years. I had the Tulsa demo to market myself to record companies, but I don’t know what I would have done at that point if my brother, Orrin, the man of many hats, hadn’t appeared out of nowhere and offered to serve as my co-manager along with Alan Klatzkin. Known as “Klatty,” or “GMK” (Good Man, Klatzkin), he had worked alongside my girlfriend, Maureen, at Cutler’s Record Shop in downtown New Haven, where his family owned Charm’s Locksmiths. I’ve always appreciated how his fantastic parents and entire family embraced me.

  Klatty was friends with the Friedlands as well as with my brother, who had just returned from one of his longest global adventures. Orrin had gone to India, but somehow he’d ended up in Afghanistan, which was enjoying a peaceful monarchy until my brother showed up. Orrin said he and a business partner were preparing to open a café in Kabul when a disgruntled cousin of the king staged a coup, spoiling the business environment. Orrin’s café partner was thrown in jail for some reason, but my brother escaped back to India, where he fended for himself on the streets for nearly a year before making it home.

  Orrin is more than six feet tall, but he weighed only about 120 pounds upon his return. Half of that weight may have come from his heavy Afghan-esque beard and shoulder-length hair, but even after cleaning up he seemed like my brother from another planet. Gone was the mellow fellow who preferred lounging with the ladies while pulling the sweet smoke of the finest weed from a hookah pipe. Orrin had discovered a guru and embraced meditation in India, and once he recovered from nearly starving to death, he set about promoting my demo with messianic intensity and focus.

  Orrin’s middle name should have been “Resourceful.” He has many talents and a wealth of knowledge. He had worked as a door-to-door salesman selling tear gas canisters, and he had once published his own magazine. Orrin has great taste, too. He was the best-dressed hippie in the Village, and I marveled at his ability to transform every apartment he’d ever had into a chic bachelor pad. He once lived above a car repair garage, but his loft was decorated with rich imported carpets from around the world, so it looked more like Lawrence of Arabia’s crib.

  Orrin felt that my singing voice was a blend of Joe Cocker and Ray Charles, and he took it as an outrageous insult to the Bolotin family name that no record company had successfully marketed my music. He made it his mission to change that.

  RECORD DEAL NO. 3

  Orrin also inherited our father’s competitive drive, and he saw the emergence of disco music in the mid-’70s as an affront to his beloved blues-rock and R & B music. My music, he said, was his weapon against the disco onslaught. Orrin put together a management and publishing agreement to promote my singing and my songwriting, and then he and Klatty took the Tulsa demo around to every record company he could find. At each stop, he introduced himself as “Orrin Mitchell” to hide our family ties, though even with his beard we looked and sounded very much alike. I’m not sure he fooled anyone, but he did succeed in landing me a sweet recording contract at RCA.

  Orrin played my Tulsa demo for RCA representative Stephen Holden (who later became a rock and then film critic for the New York Times), and he said he loved “Dream While You Can,” the song I’d written in that Tulsa park. Stephen then convinced his boss, Mike Berniker, a senior vice president at RCA who had produced Barbra Streisand’s first three albums, to sign me to a solo deal.

  I’d hardly had time to digest that amazing development when I received an invitation to meet with the most respected record company executive in the business, Clive Davis. A Harvard Law School graduate turned music impresario, Clive had been a talent magnet during his six years as president of Columbia Records. His roster included Janis Joplin; Carlos Santana; Chicago; Bruce Springsteen; Billy Joel; Blood, Sweat & Tears; Pink Floyd; Simon & Garfunkel; the Byrds; Earth, Wind & Fire; and Aerosmith, among other top acts.

  Clive called me about a year after leaving Columbia and told me he was in the process of rounding up talent for a new record label he’d created, which would later become Arista Records. I’ve always considered him to be the master of both the business aspects of the music industry and the artist development side. Clive could identify talent, and he knew how to nurture and develop it so that the artist could mature and achieve longevity. He has always been especially wonderful working with young artists because he loves music and listens to it constantly. There’ve been several times over the years when I’ve witnessed this. Clive and I often stay at the same hotel in Los Angeles, and more than once I’ve heard music blaring from a room and discovered Clive is the occupant. I’ve been known to pound on the door and demand he turn down the music. He always invites me in to hear “this amazing new artist.” I know how musicians must feel to have Clive’s support. After so much struggling and disappointment—two failed record deals, two failed production deals, and the fresh rejection by Shelter Records—I was beyond ecstatic back in late 1974, when both RCA and Clive Davis had me on their radar.

  When Clive called we were still negotiating my contract with RCA. The talks were going well but there were no guarantees at that point, even though the executives at RCA seemed to be excited. Still, I could not pass up the opportunity to audition for Clive. Orrin and I went to his office and after listening to my demo, Clive said he heard something “commercially viable” in my voice. He then asked me to put a band together so we could do a live showcase performance to give him a better idea of my range and stage presence. We promised to do that quickly, though we had not a clue how we could pull it off.

  When we left that day I felt incredible validation and not a little vindication. If Clive had offered me a record deal then and there, I probably would have signed it. But over the next few days, the negotiations with RCA rapidly progressed. My brother continued to push aggressively for a bigger deal and a longer commitment from RCA during contract negotiations. Orrin was a natural-born salesman, sort of a hippie hustler in a gauze shirt and bell-bottom jeans with a peace sign on his pocket. He didn’t seem to be intimidated about playing hardball in negotiations with top executives at RCA. He kept pushing for more than one album and bigger promotional and marketing budgets. Even Klatty warned Orrin to ease up some in the way he argued about the deal with RCA vice president Mike Berniker. Berniker kept telling Orrin there was a fixed budget that he had no control over, but Orrin was tenacious.

  My brother wanted to ensure that RCA was committed to giving me a real shot. Still, I grew nervous when RCA refused to budge and Berniker warned Orrin that he would not be intimidated. Near the end, I was very worried that Orrin had pushed too hard, but RCA shocked us both by proposing a contract for not one but two albums. This deal for an unproven artist was beyond remarkable. Even better, they promised the first album would be produced by Joe Cy, who’d been my champion at Shelter Recor
ds, and my second album would be produced by Jack Richardson, the Canadian music professor turned record man, who created hits for the Guess Who, Bob Seger, Alice Cooper, Badfinger, and Poco, among others.

  Clive Davis and I are friends to this day. I revere him as one of the classiest men in the music business, and I respect his dedication to artists and music. As much as signing with him appealed to me, he hadn’t actually offered a contract, and there was no guarantee he would invite me to join Arista’s fold at all, let alone for a two-album deal like the one we secured with RCA. Orrin; my attorney, Bob Epstein; and other advisers talked it through with me and we decided to go with RCA. We thanked Clive for his precious time and his extraordinary support, and then I signed on the dotted line with the other guys.

  And so, after a couple of swings and misses and more than a few bitter disappointments, I finally recorded an album that was actually released and sold in record stores for public consumption. The album, which featured some great musicians, including saxophonist David Sanborn, was creatively titled Michael Bolotin and featured psychedelic waves of color surrounding a picture of my face with my eyes shut. Despite the cover shot, that album was a huge smash, a total megahit—with all my relatives on both sides and some of the guys who remembered me as the badass in Hebrew school.

  The rest of the world pretty much ignored my blues-rock triumph.

  No, I take that back. Rolling Stone gave me a very kind review: “His soulful songwriting and strong backup provide a striking debut.” Even with that sterling recommendation from the leading rock music magazine in the free world, my album sold like not-so-hotcakes fresh from the Chernobyl bakery. Eventually, this first effort with RCA sold about ten thousand albums, which was barely enough to keep the record company interested in me. The one light of hope was that the songs I wrote for it generated a little praise and interest in the music industry.

  Still, we all had dreamed that this would be my big break, and it wasn’t even close. I felt terrible, not only because a major record company had done all it promised in supporting the project but also because I was no longer flying solo. Maureen and I had been living together off and on for a couple of years. We both returned to New Haven in late 1974 and were married while the album was being completed. Fortunately, I proved better at making a baby than a record that year. Two months after the Michael Bolotin album was released, beautiful Isa was born, on August 3.

  It was no longer just about me and a wife getting by. The pressure to produce a successful album on this second try with RCA was already intense, and Isa’s birth made me all the more determined to succeed. It was a scary time. Maureen worked as many jobs as she could manage, but I felt the need to step up as a provider, which meant stepping up as a recording artist. I also figured RCA would not be inclined to offer me a third chance if this record was not a hit.

  Maureen and Isa rode along when I drove up to Toronto for the recording sessions with Jack Richardson, a successful and strong-willed producer who intimidated me. It was comforting to have my girls to return to after each session because I was very, very insecure in the studio at that stage of my career. He was too big a producer to let an unproven talent take control of the project, and the truth was I didn’t know the first thing about making a great album. To his credit, Jack patiently welcomed the new material I wrote for the album, and we recorded some of those songs as well as some others we agreed upon.

  This album was released in 1976, and again, I was supported by some of the best R & B and blues musicians in the business, including blues fiddle master Papa John Creach, who performed with Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship. This more soulful R & B meets blues-rock album was called Every Day of My Life.

  RCA sent me out on a publicity tour to radio stations in Connecticut, Philadelphia, and New York to help deejays put a face with my name, my voice, and the album, which was a very important part of an artist’s role. Even with those promotional efforts, Every Day of My Life faded quickly from sight, and the days that followed became even more difficult.

  TWO & OUT

  After my two albums went nowhere, RCA showed zero interest in allowing me to go for strike three. I was determined to keep moving ahead despite this setback. Stephen Holden, who’d brought me into the fold at RCA, went on to have an outstanding career as a journalist and critic with Rolling Stone, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and other publications. A couple of years after he left RCA, he wrote a fictional book about the music industry called Triple Platinum, in which he described the environment as “cutthroat.”

  “Cutthroat” may be putting it mildly. Dreamers are rudely awakened, and the business is not for the faint of heart, as hearts are broken one after another. Few musicians get the opportunity to make even one record. I’d made four by the age of twenty-five, and they’d gone nowhere. I might not make it as a musician, but then what? I had a wife and a daughter. Those new responsibilities weighed like cargo containers on my back.

  Within four years, Maureen and I had two more beautiful daughters, Holly and Taryn. During most of that period from 1975 to 1979, I struggled to keep them sheltered, fed, and clothed. We’d lived for a couple of years in Bree Belford’s family home, a huge old house that his father rented out after getting a divorce and moving into a commune. Maureen and I were married in the backyard and Isa was born there, but eventually Mr. Belford sold the house. We had to find another apartment, and our new landlord wasn’t as benevolent. After that, eviction was a constant threat. I had rent checks bounce. It tore at me that our kids wore hand-me-downs. Many nights the only thing to eat in the refrigerator was frozen broccoli.

  I managed to keep a roof overhead only by working odd jobs here and there and performing wherever anyone would let me play. Maureen was also working hard to raise our three small daughters while holding down a job when she could to bring in income and help make ends meet. I’m told that it helps to think of difficult times as character-building experiences that will make you stronger and wiser. But man, when I’d wake up in the morning to hear my babies crying and there wasn’t enough money for diapers or baby food, let alone for a decent meal, it took more optimism than I could muster to believe, This will all turn out for the good. I wanted to feel hopeful, but mostly I felt desperate.

  Credit: The Island Def Jam Music Group

  Chapter Seven

  Higher Stakes

  Slowly, it dawned on me in my late teens that drugs were not adding as much to my life as they were taking away. Missing Woodstock was bad enough, but the stakes began to rise when I noticed that smoking pot was affecting the power and tone of my singing voice and endangering my dream. I’ve seen photographs of iconic artists with a glass of booze in one hand and a cigarette in the other. For some a drink or a smoke might help them relax for a performance, but your body has to deal with the effects of the drugs, and sooner or later, the impact is negative.

  Most people who grew up in the Woodstock culture will say, if you can remember it, you weren’t there. Some of the greatest artists we’ve known have been able to perform at an amazing level under the influence, but drugs and alcohol eventually killed them. These magnificent artists—including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison, like Billie Holiday before them and Amy Winehouse after them—were so gifted, yet I can’t help but wonder how much greater their extended careers could have been.

  I don’t pretend to know the burdens and demons any individual wrestles with, and I would never judge. It simply saddens me that their presence on earth with us was cut short. Their lives ended at such young ages, when they were seemingly nowhere near their ultimate potential. There’s no way for us to ever know the depth and breadth that their work could have attained over a lifetime.

  When I started to realize that being high was a threat to everything I loved, everything changed. The gift of song and music is precious to me. I had to honor that gift. It became clear that I could no longer get stoned and expect to perform at the level necessary to succeed. I knew that n
ot only did I want to be great but I also wanted to be around for a long time, and to be at my best I needed to be fully present in every way.

  THE TURNING POINT

  I was a child of the sixties’ experimental culture that we all explored back then. Although I was fiercely independent, it was easy to get swept up in cultural waves. In some cases, there were great benefits to be found in those waves.

  Enter the guru Maharaj Ji, the Indian teenager who led me out of the darkness and into the light, and into a much healthier and saner lifestyle. It was just a few years before I got married and started a family. My cosmic brother, Orrin, once again was among the first of our American generation to embrace the teachings of Indian gurus, whom he discovered in his travels abroad. Maharaj Ji expanded his mission into the United States in the 1970s and, before we married, Maureen and I joined our friends who’d become regular visitors at his ashram on Whitney Avenue in New Haven.

  Maharaj Ji was four years younger than I was, but he’d been attracting followers around the world since childhood. When I first learned of him, he was known as a “Perfect Master,” as was his father. His teachings were called “the Knowledge,” which was a form of meditation that allowed one to become connected to the infinite. I felt confirmation in having the Knowledge revealed to me. It validated everything I’d read or been taught in school or had learned from the Bible. Maharaj Ji’s teachings seemed to be directing people to the same spiritual place as the major faiths. I don’t believe anyone should force spiritual beliefs on others. Khalil Gibran advises us to not say, “I have found the path of the soul,” but instead to say, “I have found the soul walking upon my path.”