But I’ve been hopin’, Darlin’, you’re the one
Lyrics by David Clayton-Thomas. Copyright © Lady Casey Music, 1974.
18
BS&T PART TWO
On a trip to Mexico City in 1973 I met a group of young Canadian tourists on vacation. They were from Toronto and we hit it off right away. They were heading for Acapulco, and when my gig in Mexico City was over I joined them. Among them was a twenty-two-year-old York University film student named Terry Nusyna. Coincidentally, she was from Willowdale. Beautiful, intelligent, talented, and in a bikini on the beach in Mexico, she turned heads everywhere she went. She had a body to die for … tall and lean, with long legs, full breasts and long, straight, sun-streaked hair down to the middle of her beautifully tanned back. Terry Nusyna was a knockout! She was vacationing with her boyfriend in Mexico, so nothing happened at the time, but we both knew that something was going on. The air crackled with electricity every time our eyes met.
After a few days in Acapulco, Terry and her friends returned to Toronto and I went back to my rock-star pad in Brentwood. A few more tequila-soaked nights at the Rainbow Bar and Grill and a few more mornings of waking up with self-absorbed, emptyheaded starlets and I knew I had to get out of Los Angeles. I got up one morning, made arrangements to board my setters with the breeder until I could send for them, threw a bag in the Camaro and started driving east. When I got to Las Vegas I called my lawyer in LA and told him, “Sell the house, sell my cars, pack up my belongings and put them in storage. I’m heading for Toronto. I’ll call you when I get there.”
My life had come full circle in a few short years. Toronto seemed a safe refuge for me. I needed to be with my friends, Bill and Doc and the people I had known all my life. Within a few weeks I had rented a house in Willowdale, just a few miles from McKee Avenue, where Bill and I had grown up. My parents had long since left Willowdale and were living in Schomberg, about thirty miles to the north, so I didn’t have to deal with my father on a daily basis and could still see my mum whenever I wanted to. Willowdale felt like a good idea. I was trying to find the person I had lost in Hollywood in the tornado of fame and flattery that had swept me up in the past few years, and back where it all started seemed like a good place to begin. Besides, Terry Nusyna, the beautiful film student I had met in Mexico City, was a Willowdale girl.
Willowdale as a town no longer exists—don’t look for it on a map, you won’t find it. It exists only in the memories of the people who grew up there in the fifties and as a general reference point. The little outlying towns have been swallowed up by the sprawling metropolis known as the City of Toronto. The rolling farmland has been chopped into half-acre lots. The postwar subdivisions have been plowed under to make way for high-rise office buildings and luxury condos. The houses Bill and I grew up in are gone. The family-owned stores, restaurants and service stations have given way to modern malls and department stores. Busy superhighways slash through the once-tranquil farmland.
I sent for my furniture, my guitars and my dogs and settled into the house in Willowdale with absolutely no idea of what I was going to do next. That winter I lost one of my beloved setters. Lady, unfamiliar with her new territory after being raised in the completely fenced Brentwood property, ran across the highway and was hit by a car. The elegant show dog from California just couldn’t adjust to the congested suburbs and roaring highways of southern Ontario. I drove around for hours that night looking for her. I finally found her around 3:00 a.m., by the side of the highway several miles from the house. I was heartbroken. I buried her in the yard behind the house, and now there was just Casey and me.
I had the phone number of one of the tourists I had met in Mexico, Terry Nusyna’s boyfriend. So one day I called him up and said, “Hey, let’s get together.” I’ll be the first to admit that I had an ulterior motive. The vision of Terry in that awesome bikini was never far from my mind. On my drive across country from California to Toronto, I had thought of little else. It wasn’t long before I connected with Terry and the sparks flew. Within a few weeks she had moved into the house in Willowdale and we were crazy in love. It was intense, it was sexy and it was great!
I hadn’t toured much in the past year and I missed the rush of performing live. The royalties from all those songs I had written for BS&T meant that I really didn’t need to tour, but I was still a performer at heart, and staying at home writing was just not enough. Even so, one of my best compositions was written during this period. It was a love song for Terry entitled “You’re the One.” My old friend Smitty was in town for a couple of days and we wrote the song on a Fender Rhodes in the living room of the house in Willowdale, with Terry curled up on the sofa. With Terry’s help the emotional wounds from the past few years began to heal and I realized that leaving Blood Sweat & Tears had been an enormous mistake but perhaps it wasn’t too late to put it right. In 1973, David Clayton-Thomas without the BS&T name was really hard to sell. The songs and the voice may have been mine but the name on the records said “Blood Sweat & Tears.” That’s what the concert promoters were buying, and that was owned by Bobby Colomby. Bobby had the opposite problem. He could sell the name to the promoters, but come showtime the fans expected to see David Clayton-Thomas. Like it or not, we still needed each other.
I called New York and got in touch with a guy named Fred Heller. He had been a tour manager in the Larry Goldblatt years and was now managing Blood Sweat & Tears. He told me Bobby had a whole new band but confessed that they were in trouble. By 1974, three consecutive albums for Columbia had tanked, and what bookings he could get with the weight of the stillpowerful BS&T name weren’t going well. He asked me if I’d be interested in coming back to the band. I told Fred things weren’t going that well for me either but that there was no way I was coming back if Steve Katz was still involved. Heller assured me that Katz was gone. He’d been replaced by a superb guitar player from Sweden named Georg Wadenius. Larry Willis was now on keyboards. I knew Larry from the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. He was an outstanding musician. Bill Tillman was on sax and flute—another great player. Tony Klatka was writing the charts and playing second trumpet. Tony had been with Wayne Cochran’s C.C. Riders, one of the best R&B bands in the world. Forrest Buchtel had joined the band. He’d played first trumpet with Count Basie. Percussionist Don Alias was now in the band, a giant of a player. Bobby Colomby and Dave Bargeron were the only ones left from the original band. It was an impressive lineup and I knew most of the players, but I still had serious misgivings about stepping back into the political cauldron that had been BS&T. Fred Heller assured me that this was Bobby’s band now and he would love to have me back. Bargeron called me and asked me to at least consider it. Heller offered to fly me to Milwaukee that weekend to make a guest appearance at one of their concerts. They were touring with three lead singers at the time—Jerry Fisher, Jerry LaCroix and Luther Kent, all fine singers—but they were singing their hearts out every night to audiences that kept demanding David Clayton-Thomas. It wasn’t their fault. I respected every one of them as vocalists, but the audience expected to hear the voice that was on the records. Making it extra hard for the singers was the fact that they were mostly singing songs that I had written.
I flew into Milwaukee and caught up with the band at the concert hall. They were already onstage when I arrived and Heller met me backstage. Damn, they sounded good, in some ways maybe even better than the old band. Wadenius on guitar was everything I had wished Katz could have been and more. He was a guitar hero in Europe and now I knew why. He had it all. He played the blues like Stevie Ray Vaughan and jazz like Larry Carlton. I was blown away. Big Texas Billy Tillman was awesome! Six foot three, 250 pounds of screaming alto sax player. The horn looked like a toy in his huge hands, and goddamn he could play. Larry Willis, Don Alias, Tony Klatka, Colomby, Bargeron … It was an incredible band.
The show was about two-thirds over and no one in the audience expected me to be there, so when they announced “Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Dav
id Clayton-Thomas,” there were a few seconds of stunned silence and then, as I walked onstage, the place erupted. The entire audience was on its feet before I had sung a note. We launched into “Spinning Wheel” and the place went wild. Their three lead singers knew this was the real thing and graciously left the stage. I think they were relieved to see me. They were tired of battling public opinion and answering the question “Where’s David?” every night. They watched from the wings as we tore the place up. We played all the hits. “And When I Die”—Dave Bargeron brought the house down with a tuba solo. “Lucretia MacEvil”—Bill Tillman and I ripped into a scat trade that had the whole place on its feet. We did one encore, “You Made Me So Very Happy.” The audience stood and cheered and applauded until we came back onstage. We did a second encore but it wasn’t enough for the crowd that night. They wanted more. We had run out of tunes to play so we jammed a twenty-minute blues, improvised on the spot. The band was grinning from ear to ear. It just felt so good. As we finally left the stage, I caught Colomby’s eye and he grinned. No doubt about it: we were back.
I was on top of the world again. I had one of the best bands in the world and I liked these guys. This was Bobby Colomby’s band. Everyone was on salary and I didn’t want to know what they were being paid. Heller and Colomby offered me a deal that worked for me. I got a straight percentage of the gross off the top every night. The expenses and politics of running the band were their business. My money was sent directly to Canada, where I had a lawyer and an accountant to keep track of everything. I still had no ownership in the name, but this was a sweet deal. It provided me with a handsome income without having to deal with all the petty politics that had plagued the original band, and I could live in Canada with Terry, away from the pressures of New York.
Fred Heller was a Larry Goldblatt protégé and had learned from past experience. The band couldn’t be allowed to dictate the tour schedule. He knew the name was of no use to anyone if they burned my voice out. He was much more selective about our bookings and allowed time for writing and recording new music. Colomby had built a recording art studio at his home in New City, New York, and in the next three years we recorded two fine albums there, produced by Bobby, New City and More Than Ever. They sold well but the emphasis was no longer strictly on recording. Columbia Records was putting out so many BS&T reissues and greatest-hits compilations that the new records were in competition with our own multi-million-selling catalogue. Besides, the trail that we had blazed in 1969 was now full of great horn bands like Tower of Power, Chicago, and Earth, Wind & Fire. As a recording band we were submerged in a wave of our own creation, but it didn’t matter. We had a sensational concert band and were touring the world playing the most prestigious venues and leaving audiences wildly happy. I was writing new music for the band and making a ton of money.
Georg Wadenius eventually married and returned to Sweden. He was replaced by Mike Stern. Jaco Pastorius had just completed his first solo album, produced by Bobby at the studio in New City, and he joined the band. The rhythm section now consisted of Larry Willis on piano, Mike Stern on guitar, Jaco on bass, Colomby on drums and Don Alias playing percussion. What a band! Jaco would go on to make music history with Weather Report. Mike Stern is now recognized as one of the world’s great jazz guitarists. Larry Willis is a jazz giant. A young saxophone genius named Gregory Herbert had joined us from the Ellington band. He was a young Coltrane, a brilliant soloist. Tony Klatka was a talented arranger and one of the best bebop trumpet soloists in the world. This was without a doubt our finest lineup ever. It was awesome!
These were years of tremendous upheaval in the record business. Most of the big New York–based companies were moving out to LA. There was a huge power shakeup at Columbia Records. Clive Davis had left in 1972 amid accusations of financial malfeasance and we’d lost our champion at the record company. There was a whole new regime at Columbia. Most of Clive’s people were gone. Many of them moved to LA to launch Clive’s new company, Arista Records. So with all their political clout gone at Columbia, Fred Heller and Bobby Colomby negotiated a new deal with ABC Records. Our first album for ABC was recorded in 1976 in Los Angeles. Brand New Day was a great record, produced by Bobby with arrangements by Tony Klatka and featuring our new all-star lineup. I got to sing a beautiful duet with Chaka Khan. Every song was a thing of beauty. A month after it was released ABC Records also collapsed in a storm of financial scandals, and the album went down with them. It was a big disappointment. We had worked hard on that record, but we had one of the best concert bands in the world, so we shook it off and went back to life on the road.
There were many memorable concerts in those years, but our concert for the athletes at the 1976 Montreal Olympics was a real highlight. We were to play for the assembled athletes inside the Olympic Village. After going through the intense security clearances necessary to get inside the heavily guarded Village, we took the stage in front of maybe five hundred athletes who weren’t competing that day. As luck would have it, during our show Nadia Comaneci scored the only perfect ten in Olympic gymnastics history. Every event in the Olympic stadium was halted as the news of this milestone was flashed on closed-circuit TV throughout the facility. It took some time to get everything up and running again and the satellite feed was left with perhaps thirty minutes of dead airtime, so the director said, “Cut to the concert in the Village,” and there we were, singing “Hi De Ho” by satellite to the entire world. After the set our publicist rushed up to me and said, “Congratulations, you just sang to one-third of the planet.” I was mystified. I asked him what he meant. He said, “That satellite feed was seen by approximately one billion people around the world.” I’m glad he waited until after the show to tell me. I would have probably blown a lyric had I known.
Then there was our triumphant return to the Newport Jazz Festival. Following the debacle in 1969, when thousands of fans trampled down the fences and mobbed the festival, the city fathers of Newport had banned all rock acts. In 1976, faced with dwindling ticket sales, they relented and allowed Blood Sweat & Tears to perform at Newport again. It was a beautiful sold-out concert to a well-behaved crowd of around 5,000 people. The city fathers gave us the keys to the city.
We performed for the prime minister of Canada, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and his wife, Margaret, at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. I met them backstage after the show and was dumbfounded at how beautiful she was. Her photos never fully captured the radiance of this Canadian beauty. I tried to be cool, but when she entered the room and was introduced to me I stuttered and stammered, stood up and spilled my drink all over the floor. She pretended not to notice. Either she was the classiest lady ever or she was accustomed to big dumb Canucks choking in her presence.
I taped my own TV special for CBC in Toronto and Terry was in the audience. I sang “You’re the One” for her, and when she stood up there was an audible gasp from the audience. Like I said, Terry Nusyna was a knockout. There were sold-out concerts and numerous TV appearances in the States—the Mike Douglas Show, the Andy Williams Show, the Sonny & Cher Show. Terry travelled everywhere with me: New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Puerto Rico. We flew first-class. Five-star hotels and limos were a way of life. The band played exciting high-profile gigs. We were hot, the money was rolling in, Terry and I were in love and life was good. I asked Terry to marry me and she said yes.
Our wedding was the social event of the year in Toronto. There were over 500 guests at the Inn on the Park and Bobby Colomby was my best man. Following a blissfully happy honeymoon in the south of France, we bought and renovated a beautiful old three-storey townhouse in downtown Toronto in the shadow of Casa Loma, in one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods in town. Terry was a smart, charming hostess. We had lots of friends, and when we weren’t travelling around the world we entertained frequently.
Doug Riley bought a house on the next block and we spent a lot of time together. Doc and I recorded a solo album in Toronto during this time, called Clayton. It was
produced by Jack Richardson, one of Canada’s finest producers, and we brought up the best players in New York for the sessions—the Brecker brothers, Dave Sanborn and Mike Stern, as well as musicians from the current BS&T lineup. Most of them stayed at our house during the recording. We emptied my wine rack in three weeks and partied all night between sessions. The house was always full of musicians, friends and neighbours. We had a ball recording that album and it comes through in the music. The Clayton album rocks from start to finish. I still love that recording.
Bobby Colomby was offered a vice-presidency at a major record company in LA and gave up actively performing with the band, but he still retained his ownership of the name. He was replaced first by Roy McCurdy from the Cannonball Adderley Quintet and later by a hot young drummer from Miami named Bobby Economou. We never missed a beat. Dave Bargeron had a growing family and just couldn’t handle the year-round commitment required by BS&T, so he left to become one of the top session players in New York. Now I was the only one left from the original group. I was flying in and out of Toronto every week to gigs and commuting back and forth to New York, where Fred had his offices. It was an exciting time. The money and the wine were flowing, Terry and I were in love and it seemed like the good times would last forever. But life has a way of throwing a curveball just when you least expect it.
Fantasy Stage
Well here I am, in rainy Rio de Janeiro
Play it again, Sam, I really got nowhere to go
Puttin’ in time till that early mornin’ flight
The woman looks fine, dance the samba till daylight
And I know it’s just a fantasy stage
And I know I should be actin’ my age
But oh everybody wants to belong
And everybody needs a song
Say habla español, baby, have you been here long
Blood, Sweat and Tears Page 16