Bette Midler

by Mark Bego

  To make her entrance even more dramatic, Bette had staged a whole bit of business that found her dressed as the Statue of Liberty, swathed in chains and shackles, and dragged on stage by the Harlettes, who were dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes. After Pryor’s racist remarks, Bette’s humor was seriously out of line. Not even her Anita Bryant jokes were coming out funny. After a quick medley of her hits and two additional songs, she realized she had gotten in over her head. “I think I really need a few friends,” she announced and was joined by Tomlin, Steinberg, Waits, Kirkland, and Clifford for a finale of the song “Friends.” Unfortunately, the “Star Spangled Night for Rights” left a sour taste in several people’s mouths.

  “That sorry business brought me so far down,” Bette later admitted. “I’ve thought and thought about it, and I’m still not sure what happened that night.” Her harshest comments were reserved for Pryor’s hypocrisy” (67).

  “Well, Christ . . . what was Richard trying to do?” she wondered. “I couldn’t tell you because I haven’t talked to him since. Some said that he showed up without enough material, and when he ran out of stuff to say, he simply went on the attack. Others claimed he was right in introducing a serious political issue into the program. Whatever it was, was very dangerous. I mean, ranting and raving about ‘where were the faggots during the burning of Watts?’ That’s serious? That’s political? I don’t know Pryor very well—he’s always kept his distance from me—but I’ve always thought of him as much more Jewish than black, and as I recall, the first few years of his career he was exceedingly like a cop—VERY much like a cop. And as to where all the heavies were during Watts: Pryor’s manager was backstage that night and he said, ‘I can tell you where Richard Pryor was during the Watts riots. He was at my house watching them on television!’ ” (67).

  One of the performers on the bill was someone who was becoming one of Bette’s best friends: Tom Waits. “I first ran into him at the Bottom Line in New York,” she explained. “He was singing ‘The Heart of Saturday Night,’ and I just fell in love with him on the spot. We got passingly acquainted that first night, and then I ran into him out here [L. A.] someplace, and I suggested we get together for a visit. Tom lives . . . well, sort of knee-deep in grunge, so he was reluctant for me to see his apartment. I grew up in lots of clutter myself, and delicate I ain’t so I kept after him till he finally invited me over. He acted ultra-shy at first, but he finally ushered me around, and he’s got his piano in the kitchen, and he only uses the kitchen range to light his cigarettes, and then there’s this refrigerator where he keeps his hammers and wrenches and nuts and bolts and stuff like that. He opened the fridge door, and with an absolute poker face he said, ‘I got some cool tools in here.’ I howled for an hour, and we’ve been buddies ever since. Tom can always get me tickled, and he really helped jack up my spirits after the disaster of that gay rights benefit in Hollywood” (67).

  During this same period, Bette was preoccupied with the recording of her fifth album, which was to be titled Broken Blossom. It was being produced by Brooks Arthur, and she used several singers on the background vocals, but she did not employ the Harlettes. Ula, Sharon, and Charlotte performed with Bette in the Hollywood Bowl gay rights show and on the TV special Rolling Stone: The Tenth Anniversary, but for most of the year, the Harlettes were unemployed. Between Bette Midler tours, there was no source of income for them. It was in the spring of 1977 that the trio began to pursue projects away from Bette.

  According to Charlotte Crossley, “After Bette recorded her albums, when we sang background, she would go on promotional tours, and when they ended, Bette would say that she was going to take a couple of months off to prepare the next album. We each went off into our own thing—studio singing, straight acting, things like that. A club owner, who knew us with Bette, called Sharon and asked if we ever appeared as a group when Bette was not working. She told him that we had not worked up a solo act. He suggested that we do this and appear at his club, since he felt we were strong enough to draw an audience” (76).

  “We got together and began to play with songs and material to see whether it might work,” explains Ula Hedwig. “My neighbor, Marc Shaiman, a professional musical coach, agreed to work out the musical harmonies. Sharon’s friend, Andre De Shield, who played the role of the Wizard in the Broadway musical The Wiz, gave the act some direction” (76).

  This is the year of Marc Shaiman’s introduction to the whole Midler camp. Bette liked Shaiman, and in time he became Midler’s piano player, musical collaborator, and sometime producer. (On Midler’s ill-fated 2000–2001 TV sitcom, the character of “Oscar” was based on Marc Shaiman.)

  Andre De Shield had worked with Bette as a choreographer on Clams on the Half-Shell, and in addition, the Harlettes found that several former Midler employees were thrilled to lend a hand. Bette’s former publicist, Candy Leigh, became the trio’s manager, and it wasn’t long before they landed a record deal. The producer was David Rubinson, who had produced the first Pointer Sisters’ albums, and he got the girls a deal with Columbia Records. Sharon, Ula, and Charlotte billed themselves as “Formerly of the Harlettes,” and away they went on their own career—sans Midler.

  Naturally, it wasn’t long before the trouble started. The name of Bette’s background group, “The Harlettes,” was never copyrighted, and although Aaron Russo attempted to sue the trio, he didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. As a sort of compromise, the album and the group were billed as “Sharon Redd, Ula Hedwig, Charlotte Crossley: Formerly of the Harlettes.” Long, but to the point. The cover of the album, which was released in early 1978, was done by artist Richard Amsel, who had painted the covers of Bette’s first two albums.

  November 1977 to January 1978 were three months of high visibility for Bette Midler. First came the release of her Broken Blossom album, followed by her first “network” television special, which overlapped with her first tour of small nightclubs since 1973. The album got great reviews but sold poorly, the TV show was a hit, and the tour was a sellout. Two out of three wasn’t bad.

  In an effort to come up with an album that was fresh, sparking, contemporary, and harmonic, Bette teamed up with producer Brooks Arthur. Brooks is known in the music business as a vocalist’s producer. A singer himself, he knows how to get the best out of a vocal artist. This was just the kind of producer Midler wanted at this time. Among Arthur’s biggest hits as a producer are Janis Ian’s 1975 Top 3 hit “At Seventeen” and the studio version of “I Go to Rio” by Peter Allen.

  “I have many thoughts on Broken Blossom, the album,” says Brooks. “First of all, it was Carole Bayer Sager who introduced me, or reintroduced me to Bette, and recommended that I produce Bette’s album. I loved working with her” (77).

  Broken Blossom is known as something of a “lost” Bette Midler album. It was one that drew great reviews, and in fact some reviewers praised it as being the best singing of her career. However, it didn’t succeed in producing a huge hit for her. According to Brooks Arthur, “Broken Blossom has sort of like peaks and valleys for me, it was kinda like an electrocardiographic kind of an experience for me. The highs were songs like ‘Yellow Beach Umbrella,’ which to this day, I thought should have been a hit record. And then Ahmet Ertegun loved the song and wanted to recut it, thinking there’s maybe a more commercial way we could go. And we tried another version, and even with the great Ahmet Ertegun by my side, it didn’t pan out quite as well as the record we released. We were trying for something, but we just couldn’t catch it. But we thought we caught it with the record that did come out. I thought it should have been at least—not a Top 10 record—but a Top 15, Top 20 kind of a record” (77).

  Brooks reconfirms Bette’s strong work ethic by stating, “She’s a great artist. In terms of dedication, she needs to put in a minimum of an eight- or nine-hour day. And if, somehow, you got through in three or four hours, she would still want to try things and keep on working, just to know that she put in—what she calls—a ‘full day.’ She’
ll want to do some vocal work, or trying things, or background work” (77).

  He has several fond memories of working with Bette on Broken Blossom: “I do remember cutting ‘You Don’t Know Me.’ And, I remember Cher standing by the door at the Record Plant, just glued, watching her do the vocal. And I looked to the door, and there was Cher, with her ear pressed up against the door, and I said, ‘You can come in.’ She came and hung out for a while, and then I said, ‘Cher, you must sign a photo to me.’ About an hour later, a photo comes in, signed to me, and it says, ‘I hope we can work together some day.’ Of course we never did, but I love the photo” (77).

  However, the recording sessions had their frustrating downside as well, when Bette and Aaron gave the “thumbs down” to a song Brooks was convinced should have been a hit for her. As Arthur explains, “The heartbreak of the album for me was: when we were making the album, I said, ‘Bette, I think we need one more song to really make sure this album is, bare minimum: a Gold album—one more song. Out of the blue, Gerry Goffin, of Goffin & [Carole] King fame, called me with his partner at that time, Michael Masser, comes to the studio—the old Record Plant studios in L.A., on Third Street and Fifth: ‘I gotta play you this song!’ He plays me this song, and I fucking died: ‘Oh God, this is a Top 5 song if I ever heard one in my life!’ And I called Bette, and she comes running to the studio, and she hears the song, and she loves it, and I call my very good friend Artie Butler to come in and do an arrangement on it. And, in a matter of 72 hours, the record was done. We had to rush it, because Masser said if we don’t commit to it right away, he’s going to show it to other people. He didn’t want us to dick around with him and his song, for more than a short amount of time—otherwise he was gonna bail, and get someone else to cover it. We cut the song, and I swear to God, I am sitting in the control room saying to myself, ‘Wow, I think I got myself a smash here!’ And I was feeling very, very good because the way I was connecting the dots, was I was still thinking: ‘At Seventeen’ by Janis Ian, and I am still searching for a follow-up to that kind of success. I had had some modest success between that, it wasn’t a lot of time, but I was in creatively desperate need for a Top 5” (77).

  However, that is not how the story ends. Continues Arthur, “So, I fucking cut the tune, and I get a call a couple of days later, from Bette . . . maybe two, three, four in the morning, and she says, ‘I don’t want to release the song.’ I said, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘Because, my manager, Aaron Russo, felt that the album didn’t need another gushy ballad, it needed more energy.’ So, we wrestled, we wrestled—we talked until four, five, six, seven in the morning, we did this for about two days straight. And, finally, Aaron just says . . . he got Ahmet Ertegun to agree with him on this . . . in this sort of conference call, that ‘we definitely don’t want to release this record, we want Bette to have another ‘Friends’ or ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.’ So, I called the writers and I said, ‘Man, I can’t believe this. I’m dead in the water here.’ This song would have completed my album and put me over the top, and now I’m still one song shy of a hit here. And, I have to give the song back, and lo and behold, Natalie Cole cuts the song, and the song is called ‘Someone That I Used to Love.’ And then Barbara Streisand cuts the tune, and the next thing I know there are two hits on it. Natalie’s record was a huge success, but it was not nearly as important a record as the record I made with Bette. It’s lying ‘in the can’ somewhere at Atlantic Records. I never even kept a cassette of it” (77). Arthur’s instincts proved correct when Natalie Cole’s version of “Someone That I Used to Love” went to Number 21 in Billboard.

  With that song suddenly missing from the album, Brooks knew that it needed another big song to replace it. “So, I said to Bette, ‘What do you want to do now?’ She said, ‘I don’t know. What do you want to do?’ So, I said to her, ‘I’ve always loved the idea of cutting the old [Carla Thomas] song “Gee Whiz,” and do it like “Do You Want to Dance?’ ” She said, ‘How would you cut it?’ I said, ‘Slow and sexy.’ And she said, ‘Brooks, you wouldn’t know sex if it fell on you!’ So, that song goes by the wayside. So, I said, ‘What do you want to do?’ She said, ‘I want to do “Make Yourself Comfortable,” the old Sarah Vaughn record.’ I said, ‘That’s a great idea. I love that idea, except, I’ve got to tell you, it has to be campy and fun. But I don’t know if it’s gonna be the song of doom—the smash that we want it to be.’ She said, ‘No, let’s give it a shot.’ I said, ‘OK.’ So, we cut the song, and it turned out great, not nearly as sexy as I had hoped it would be. For some reason, I didn’t think that it was going to be a hit. [The album] was still missing some ingredient, but time had moved on. Our budget was exhausted. Atlantic was growing impatient for the record. Bette had other commitments, and other crisis in her life—nothing major, but I had to cut her loose. Had it been these days, she wouldn’t have left that studio till I had one more monster hit” (77).

  However, that is not the end of the story. Continues Brooks Arthur, “During the time between Bette and whatever [1980], I get a call from Bernadette Peters, who I knew as a child. And Bernadette says, ‘Hey, I’m getting a deal with MCA, would you produce my album for old time’s sake?’ I said, “I would love to.’ Bernadette said to me, ‘What was that tune you and your sister used to sing to me in the subway all the time?’—my sister Donna. I said, ‘Oh, it’s called “Gee Whiz,” let’s cut it!’ She said, ‘Really?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that song.’ So, we cut the song, and it goes about Top 12 or Top 15—with Bernadette singing it [Number 31 in Billboard in 1980], It was a big success for her on MCA. Here’s how the story continues: you know I can’t make this story up. Here it comes. . . . I’m sitting at the sushi bar on LaCienega Boulevard in Los Angeles. I ran into—coincidentally, a couple friends of mine who were with Manhattan Transfer—specifically, Tim Hauser and one of the other guys, and I’m sitting there having sushi. And, the place had tile floors. And, I hear these heels going across the tile, and I said to Tim Hauser, ‘It sounds to me like Bette is in the room.’ And, he picks his head up and says, ‘My God—you’re right, it’s Bette!’

  “She comes walking over and she says to me, ‘Eat shit, you son-of-a-bitch, you stole my song!’ And I said, ‘What the hell are you talking about? I stole your song? What do you mean?’ She said, ‘I wanted to cut “Gee Whiz,” and Bernadette Peters has a hit with it!’ I said, ‘You know what? Do me a favor, Bette: get off my back, because I just got the news from Billboard, the record has lost its bullet, and it’s now sliding down the charts, and in two weeks it’s not going to be a big record anymore. But, you didn’t want to cut that song.’ She said, ‘I did, too.’ I said, ‘No, no, you didn’t. When I told you I wanted to cut it “slow and sexy,” you told me, “I wouldn’t know sex if it fell on me.” I said, ‘But you’ve got “The Rose,” and you are at the top of the charts and the top of your game, so get off my back.’ She said, ‘Really, it’s dead?’ I said, ‘Yes, it is.’ She said, ‘Move over, I’m having sushi with you’ ” (77).

  Meanwhile, the 1977 Broken Blossom album that Brooks Arthur did produce for Bette Midler nonetheless had several strong highlights. Without a doubt, the most bawdy cut on the album was the very sexual old Bessie Smith song “Empty Bed Blues.” In the 1920s, Bessie was known for her very blue double entendre songs, like “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl (Need a Little Hot Dog in My Roll).” “Empty Bed Blues” was a song that Bette used to sing in her act back at the Continental Baths. At one point in this song, Midler sings in kitchen metaphors—“when he slipped the bacon in, he over-flowed the pot.” In another part of the song she sings of oral sex, referring to her lover as a “deep sea diver” who really knew how to hold his breath while going down.

  After doing so many New York City songs on her first two albums, here Midler sings her first song about the West Coast: her pumping and snappy upbeat version of Billy Joel’s “Say Goodbye to Hollywood.” She got seductive on her version of “Make Yourself Comfortable,” an
d even went a little bit country on Eddie Arnold’s “You Don’t Know Me.”

  She attempted to stretch out by recording a duet with her new singing/songwriting buddy Tom Waits. Her melodic voice and his gruff and raspy tones didn’t necessarily mix very well together on the song “I Never Talk to Strangers.” However, the song is a fun little vignette set to music, which features the two singers as people who meet at a smoky bar—and try to pick each other up.

  Midler sings of her own favorite color on Sammy Hagar’s raucous rocker “Red.” But Bette’s best rock & roll performance on the album is her rendition of Harry Nilsson’s “Paradise,” a dramatic and sweeping ballad with an ethereal chorus behind her—including famed Brill Building songwriter Ellie Greenwich. The song is very Phil Spector “Wall of Sound”–sounding, with a dramatic instrumental accompaniment and a huge chorus behind her.

  The optimistic pop song “Yellow Beach Umbrella” is a lighthearted summer-on-the-beach type of tune. Bette also sings a beautiful version of David Pomerantz’s “Storybook Children (Daybreak),” which is a nice love ballad with—of all things—the sounds of a banjo. Yet, somehow, it works here. Pomerantz wrote several notable songs in the 1970s and had previously written “Tryin’ to Get the Feeling Again” for Barry Manilow.

  One of the most effective performances on the album was Bette’s slow and serious English-language version of Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose.” That same year, Grace Jones recorded a disco-ized version of the song, which had been a huge hit in the gay dance clubs the previous year. So this was a song that had suddenly resurfaced. Miss M’s version was more faithful to Piaf’s original—which naturally had been in French. It is also worth noting that this was the first “rose” song that Midler recorded. Roses became Midler’s signature blossom, and in reality, it all started here.