We are all works in progress. Guides to self-improvement often advise you to think of what you want people to say about you at your funeral and live accordingly. In 2012, I joined the hundreds who attended a memorial service for a beloved music industry leader, Frances Preston, whom Kris Kristofferson called “the songwriter’s guardian angel” during her long tenure (1986–2004) as the president of BMI, the song-licensing powerhouse. Frances was one of the many people who encouraged me and kept me going. She was always an inspiration to me. Frances was renowned, and often honored, for her tireless humanitarian work and dedication to charitable organizations, the arts and culture, and public service on government commissions. Her causes included leukemia, cancer, AIDS, and retinitis pigmentosa (blindness) research. Even though she had her own significant health problems over the years, she never said no to a fund-raiser. Time after time she displayed incredible strength and willpower just to reach the podium at an event—and she always electrified her audience with her intelligence and passion. I’m writing from the heart when I say that it was a deep personal honor, in 2010, to be chosen as the first person to receive a prestigious award named for my longtime friend—the Frances Williams Preston Lifetime Music Industry Award, given by the music industry’s largest charity, the T. J. Martell Foundation, which supports cancer, leukemia, and AIDS research.
The phenomenal country star Vince Gill said at her memorial service that Frances blended “power with kindness, success with compassion.” He said, “Some have called her the most powerful woman in the music business. Power doesn’t look good on a lot of people, but Frances was kind.” His description was so accurate and so touching that it prompted tears from nearly everyone in attendance, including Vince and me. I don’t know how he made it through the song he sang to honor our friend, but Vince, like Frances, rose to the occasion and did Frances proud.
RECORD DEAL NO. 6: CLOSE BUT NO SEGER
I released two solo rock albums with Columbia. The first was recorded in 1982 and released in 1983. It featured my new and improved name as the album title, Michael Bolton. We recruited some serious musicians on that record, including Bruce Kulick, later of KISS, and on the synthesizer we had a master of funk by the name of George Clinton, who also sang some backing vocals. Columbia put serious marketing behind the album and its first single, “Fool’s Game.” The record company financed an accompanying music video for that song, and then sent me on a short tour, playing mostly rock clubs. Then we were invited to become the opening act for Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, touring behind their hit album The Distance and the single “Shame on the Moon.”
The Columbia marketing plan was bigger than any I’d ever had for a record release, and it came with a secret weapon—my wily hippie hustler of a brother. Orrin was a guerrilla marketer before the term was widely known. We had both worked at young ages on voter registration campaigns for our father and his Democratic Party team in New Haven, and Orrin seemed to have a streetwise genius for finding low-cost, stealthy ways to promote products. When I told him about my first Columbia record, the music video, and the Bob Seger tour, Orrin crafted a plan for pumping the album and the single to get more airplay on the radio. He presented the plan to Columbia and they bought into it, sending Orrin on the road with me for the tour. In each town on the tour, he would recruit attractive local girls to distribute flyers between my set and the Silver Bullet Band’s set. The flyers invited fans to come to my hotel to meet me after the show.
They came in droves, much to my amazement. My savvy brother had refreshments ready for them, and while they waited for me to get there, he had each of them fill out cards with their names, addresses, schools, and phone numbers. Once I showed up, usually clad in rocker leather, I made a big entrance for the fans worked into a frenzy by Orrin. He cranked up the speakers and played a loop of my songs on a tape recorder. There was nothing subliminal about his approach. Only a lack of technology prevented him from stamping my recordings into their shiny foreheads.
By the end of the tour, Orrin had collected more than five thousand names from around the country, and he built that into my fan club and his guerrilla marketing team. (If I ever run for public office, and I won’t, Orrin will definitely be working on the campaign strategy.) Later, Orrin used those names and addresses to promote my records around the country. He would contact the fans in our file in each town and have them swamp local radio stations with phone calls asking them to play my records.
The Michael Bolton album sales were boosted by the “Fool’s Game” music video. It made the rotation on a new music video cable channel launched the previous August. MTV was playing three hundred songs a day. “Fool’s Game” made the playlist against some heavy competition, including songs by Duran Duran, who had four videos in the mix. The monster was Michael Jackson’s Thriller album, including the video for the title song, released in November 1983, which set a new standard for music videos. I quickly learned the power of MTV and the rotation of music videos played over and over again. I also realized that MTV was having a definite impact on my life as well as my career.
Suddenly, I was on television singing in the midst of some very successful company, and, if it was mind-blowing for me, you can imagine what my little girls felt like. My middle daughter, Holly, who was only about six years old, freaked out at seeing her father decked out in leather and rocking on MTV. She couldn’t reconcile the fact that her dad was the same guy as the singer sharing screen time with Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Billy Joel, Cyndi Lauper, and Marvin Gaye. Holly wouldn’t speak to me for a couple of days because it was so strange for her.
It was strange for her daddy, too. Shortly after the MTV play began, I took the girls to the movie theater multiplex in West Haven. We were in the popcorn line and noticed people staring our way. Some came up to me and asked for autographs. The girls were all traumatized by the sudden attention.
“What’s going on, Dad? What do they want?”
We developed a plan after that of sending someone in to buy the tickets and the popcorn and secure the seats with the girls. I came in only once the lights were dimmed.
Things were even a little crazier when I visited Taryn’s school for “What Does Your Daddy Do? Day.” I arrived at the school and was walking down the hallway when the bell ending the class period rang and suddenly I was mobbed by grade-schoolers and a few teachers, too. Finally Taryn’s teacher pulled me into the safety of the classroom. I was always glad to give these talks for my daughters, who seemed to enjoy having me there. During one of these visits, I gave a little talk and had the teacher play my “Fool’s Game” video for the class. The father who came on after me shot me a look as if to say, “Thanks for that. Now I’m left here to talk to them about aluminum siding installation!”
THE MAGIC WINDOW
“Fool’s Game” did so well on its release that I thought it would be my first smash hit, but it was more like a comet. The single burned brightly on launch, but flared out at No. 82 on Billboard’s Hot 100 list, and fell to earth after three weeks on the charts. This was the first time one of my songs had climbed so high, and I learned there is a magic window on airplay. Record companies are willing to pump a new single only as long as there is upward momentum. If a song has been playing for ten or twelve weeks and the radio airplay doesn’t continue to grow, they shut off the marketing money, pack up, and go home. That’s the cold, cruel reality of the business.
The record company president, Al Teller, called to say he was sorry that was all they could do for “Fool’s Game,” but the company was still behind me and Al pledged to keep supporting us financially on the Seger tour. But for the first time in my life, I felt like my solo career had some real momentum.
The Michael Bolton album had performed better than any of my previous attempts. “Fool’s Game” was my biggest charting single. There were rumors that I might actually earn some residual income from those recordings—another first! Having money in the bank can put a long-struggling artist in a m
uch more optimistic frame of mind. Still, the reason I was feeling more confident about the future wasn’t only that my singing career was faring better.
The stream of paychecks from my radio and television commercials had helped change our lives. I also was thrilled to have “Fool’s Game” in the Hot 100, and seeing the video for that record on MTV was an experience beyond belief. But actually, the greatest thing happening in my career at this time was a song that I’d written for another artist.
That one song was about to change everything.
SONGWRITER
Songs have come to me from the time I learned my first chords. The lyrics and music didn’t bond into a coherent melody until my guitar playing reached a certain level of proficiency, but once my fingers were skilled enough on the strings, the songs came tumbling out. The first songs were often efforts to express my feelings about the breaking apart of our family, and about girls, of course. I was thirteen years old when my first love song was fully formed, a sentimental, folksy composition called “Dreaming Dreams.” You will never guess my source of inspiration. Cory Morrison was the muse, naturally! The first “older woman” of my dreams, Cory had dated Orrin (who charmed every attractive woman within a thousand-mile radius of New Haven), but she only regarded me fondly, as her zany sidekick.
My first songs were very personal. My approach to songwriting had always been as a form of self-expression, not a product to be sold to another performer. I’ve often said it was a talent I didn’t know I had. I couldn’t imagine anybody else would be interested in my songs. Since I had no formal training and couldn’t read music, I considered myself a raw amateur. Patrick Henderson, a terrific pianist and songwriter with Leon Russell’s band, was one of the first to encourage me to market my songs. While Marc and I were recording at Leon’s studio, Patrick suggested that I team up with him to write for other performers as a way to generate income while working on my solo career. I respected Patrick, whose songs were recorded by artists such as Michael McDonald and the Pointer Sisters, and eventually we would write a number of successful songs together.
Other friends and fellow musicians had long urged me to try to sell the songs I’d written instead of filing them away for myself. The success of “Fool’s Game,” which I co-wrote with Mark Mangold, had also stirred interest in my songwriting skills and boosted my confidence in writing for others. At that time, Patrick Henderson was on staff at CBS Songs, and he suggested I write with him while working on my solo singing career. I had never co-written for other artists, and Patrick helped me. He knew CBS liked songwriters who could sing and sell their songs.
The next thing I knew, CBS Songs asked me to come to their office in Los Angeles to crank out more songs with Patrick and other writers. They sent me first-class plane tickets. They had a rental car waiting for me, which I drove to the very upscale Le Park Hotel. This was a new and strange development, and, like the whole jingle experience, I found it both exciting and a little scary. I felt the weight of the reality of what I was doing there in that hotel.
I’d always thought of myself as a rock singer, not a commercial songwriter. Yet now, a very serious music industry player was putting me on a plane and bringing me in to write commercial songs for its very serious clients.
Was I ready for this? Could I produce songs on demand? Would I be able to deliver?
They treated me like a king, or at least a prince. CBS Songs put me up in the grandest hotel room I’d ever seen. Seriously, I was like one of the Beverly Hillbillies who moved to California and discovered “a cee-ment pond” in the backyard. I called Maureen because I was so excited after walking into my room and discovering it was a suite, with another room in which I could just hang out and watch television.
I was stammering as I said, “There is a room that connects to the bedroom area, but it’s like another room to itself.” That’s how excited and giddy I was—I didn’t know the word suite. When I hung up I realized these people had flown me out there, rented me a car, and put me in that fancy room, and I had to deliver. I wasn’t there on vacation. They were expecting me to come up with song ideas and finish them. Thankfully, I had Patrick to help me get over myself and into crafting a song. He helped me get comfortable with the process and we had a great start. After we worked together on our first song, I went back to my room to work on lyrics for the last few lines of the bridge to make sure the lyrics lived up to the melody.
As we worked, I learned the value of capturing a voice and the emotions, which later helped me in my own performances. One of the other early compositions I wrote with Patrick for CBS Songs was “I’m Still Thinking of You.” We gave it to them and waited to hear back. Soon, CBS notified me that teen heartthrob Rex Smith had picked up the song, renaming it “Still Thinking of You” for his Everlasting Love album. Within a few weeks, several other artists recorded the same song, and three more of my songs were picked up.
Suddenly, I felt like I had something really valuable to offer as a songwriter, and apparently I wasn’t alone. Within a few months I found myself in the New York offices of CBS Songs. I had already written five songs that were covered by at least one, but often more than one, artist. In New York, I met Deirdre O’Hara, a “songplugger,” who later became a top executive of CBS Songs and then of BMG Rights Management. She paired me with songwriter Doug James, whose creations include “After You” by Dionne Warwick and Odyssey’s “Don’t Tell Me, Tell Her.” We met in Deirdre’s office and after a quick introduction she led us to a room, ushered us in, and closed the door on us, saying, “Get to work.”
Doug and I spent an hour or two joking around and getting to know each other before he sat down at the piano and we started tinkering with ideas for lyrics and music. I loved writing with Doug, who is one of the most decent human beings I’ve ever met. We shared the desire to tell compelling stories through songs, and to take no prisoners on the Top 40.
“I want to make sure it holds water,” he’d say, meaning the song had to be resonant, believable, and real, with a tight composition. Doug is a great pianist who plays with sensitivity, and yet he could bring the song home with strong, aggressive playing as well. We’d usually start from scratch, or begin with a simple idea for a title or theme. We worked some pretty long hours to create songs we’d be proud of. Songs that all types of artists and the world at large could not resist. Our approach worked. Nearly every song we wrote was recorded by an artist, and in some cases by multiple artists.
The very first song we came up with in our initial session was a career changer for both of us; we wrote most of the song “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You” that day. We needed two more sessions to complete it because, as often happens, we had a tougher time with the second verse than the first. Once we felt the song was ready for a test run, we called in a few CBS Songs executives and staff members. I sang and Doug accompanied me. They loved it!
In fact, CBS executives snapped it up and gave the song an unusual debut. I never was told how it all came about, but they wrote our song into the script of a CBS network show, Knots Landing. The actress Lisa Hartman, whose character was a rock singer, performed it in a music video written into the plot. You can still find that segment on YouTube. How strange that my biggest hit—as both a singer and a songwriter—was first performed on a prime-time television soap opera. Stranger still is the fact that I would later have a long relationship with another of the actresses on Knots Landing.
“How Am I” wasn’t performed on the public airwaves again until 1983, but once it was out there, millions upon millions heard it, and I’m told a few of them even sang along. Justin Timberlake’s mother once told me that her son, who was born the year we wrote “How Am I,” won his first local singing competition belting it out when he was about ten years old. I’m thrilled that Justin, a fellow member of the SNL Lonely Island club, chose to perform our song, though at that age he was probably singing about living without a pet that had wandered off.
When Justin was still a member of �
��N Sync, he sang “This I Promise You,” written by Richard Marx. I remember listening to that record, thinking: I don’t know what will happen with that boy band, but this kid will have a long career. Since then, I’ve heard many rave not just about his talent but also about his strong work ethic and dedication. I once saw Justin perform a Saturday Night Live skit in which he did an impression of me and sang “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You,” and he knocked both me and the song out of the park.
After we released that song to the CBS Songs executives, they shipped it off to Air Supply, the artists from Australia. They were looking for songs for a new album. This was a dream scenario for us. We were thrilled when word came that they wanted to record it, because they’d been on a roll, selling millions of records.
In the meantime, Deirdre had shared the song with the managers for Laura Branigan, who was coming off her big hit “Gloria.” Deirdre emphasized that Laura had connected with the song and wanted to make it her own. We knew her record label was committed to her since she’d had such a big hit. Once a backup singer for Leonard Cohen, Laura had a five-octave range. She broke out as a solo artist in 1982 with the platinum single “Gloria”—which became a standard in disco clubs—and another number one hit, “Self Control.” That same year, for her second album, Laura chose to record “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You,” which was released as the second single. Her version climbed to No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary list and spent twenty-two weeks on the charts. (The song “Solitaire” was released as the album’s first single and marked the first major hit for its lyrics writer, Diane Warren, who would later write scores of hit songs—including several with me. Later I teased her that “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You” would have been No. 1 on the Top 40 charts if the record company hadn’t released Diane’s song first.)
The Soul of It All Page 12