by Steve Dorff
At the end of the session, Jimmy and I were talking, and he told me he was heading over to the A&M Studios soundstage to rehearse with Burt Bacharach for a television special he was hosting. I told Jimmy what a huge influence Burt was on my music, and Jimmy invited me to come over as his guest, sit in on some of the rehearsal, and he would introduce me to Burt.
The soundstage was packed with people, Burt was conducting while playing, the music was incredible, and I was like a kid in a candy store, trying to soak up every second of what was happening in there. Finally, somebody called for the band to “take a ten,” and Jimmy motioned for me to come over and say hi to Burt.
Burt was speaking with several people at the same time, obviously multitasking in many directions, so it wasn’t much of an introduction. Jimmy told Burt who I was, and basically Burt looked at me, shook my hand quickly, said, “Nice meeting you, kid,” and walked off talking to someone else.
I wasn’t about to tell Burt that story, so I simply said, “Not really.”
I did tell him that I was a huge fan, and what a huge influence he had been to my career. When I told him my name, I was shocked that he not only knew of me but also loved some of my songs, which he knew by name. I was truly blown away. I felt honored that Burt Bacharach actually knew who I was.
We went on to talk about all kinds of music stuff: players and demo singers we liked and had in common, lyricists we had both worked with. He asked me almost as many questions about my processes of writing and working in the studio as I asked him.
He told me he was thinking about adding a guy or two to his concert shows. He had always used three girls and asked me if I knew anybody who he might audition. I did. I had been working with a great, soulful singer named John Pagano. I told Burt about him, and he asked me to have John get in touch with him the following week.
I hated for that flight to end, as we talked nonstop for nearly four hours.
I’m happy to say that John Pagano has been working with Burt for some twenty years, and I’m glad that I had something to do with putting them together.
11
Whitney Houston
Jermaine Jackson and I met through a music contractor named Ben Barrett.
Ben was an all-powerful studio contractor who controlled most of the major recording sessions in Los Angeles. If you were a studio musician, you definitely wanted to be on Ben’s good side—and on his “call list.”
Ben had heard a song of mine on a Julio Iglesias session that he was contracting, and he called me one day out of the blue to see if I had any more songs like the one he loved on Julio’s session. I happily put together a few songs on a tape and sent them over to his office.
He called me after receiving the tape and went on and on about how great he thought the songs were, and . . . did I have a publisher? I imagine he looked to get a piece of the publishing pie whenever he could from new writers. He would do this in exchange for promoting those songs to the artists for whom he was contracting sessions.
No harm. No foul. Many people were doing that.
I told him that I was signed exclusively to Snuff Garrett as a writer, but that I was flattered. I heard the slight disappointment in his voice, but he said he’d still love to introduce me to Jermaine Jackson, and that he’d send along one of the songs I had sent him for Jermaine’s consideration.
A week or two went by, and then I got a call from Jermaine himself. He loved one of the songs Ben had sent called “Why Can’t I Believe You Love Me,” a song I had written with Marty Panzer. He asked me who was playing piano on the demo, and I told him it was me. He asked me if I would record it with him, and a few days later we were in the studio doing a piano/vocal version of the song. He was making his last album for Motown, and I was thrilled to be a part of it.
To this day, I’m not quite sure whatever happened to that track, as it never was commercially released, but Jermaine thankfully never forgot the song, or me.
It was several years later when I heard from him again. After catching up for a few minutes, he asked me if I had a song that could work as a great duet. He was recording his first solo album for Clive Davis and Arista Records, and he was calling some of his favorite writers in hopes of finding that magic song. He wanted something with a similar tone to the song we had worked on together before, but for a duet. I asked him when he needed it by.
“Today. I’m tracking this afternoon.”
I hung up the phone and immediately panicked. I started ransacking my office, looking for a song that could be a good duet. I didn’t have a duet version of any of my songs, so he would have to imagine how the female part might go. I stuck four cassettes into my jacket pockets and headed over to the studio in Silverlake where he was recording.
Yes. Cassettes. My kids don’t even know what cassettes are.
I arrived at the gate where the guard told me Jermaine would be right out, and to just park. After a few minutes, Jermaine jumped into the passenger front seat of my car and said, “Whataya got?”
The first song I indiscriminately pulled out of my pocket and shoved into the cassette player was one I wrote with Pete McCann called “Take Good Care of My Heart.”
Jermaine listened intently, and after the second chorus, before the song was over, he started singing along with the demo and yelled, “This is it!”
For a second, I was wishing I was at a craps table in Vegas—my luck had never been this good.
“Great,” I said. “When are you planning on cutting it?”
“We’re going to cut the track tonight, because my duet partner is in town.”
I was over the moon. I knew both Dionne Warwick and Aretha were both signed to Arista, and I was starting to get very excited by the possibilities. I would have been thrilled to have either one of them.
“Is it Dionne or Aretha?” I blurted out in excitement.
“Neither . . . I’m doing it with this new artist from New Jersey. She’s done some modeling, she’s beautiful, and she sings good, too.”
“Great,” I said, forcing a smile to mask a bit of disappointment. “What’s her name?”
“Whitney Houston.”
I had never heard of this model, but as I drove home I figured, hey, I’m getting a Jermaine Jackson cut, how bad can that be? The great Michael Omartian, Paul Jackson Jr., and Nathan East are on the session. It’s gotta be a monster track, and hopefully the “beautiful model” from New Jersey could really sing. Well, the world soon found out just how incredible that girl could sing!
After Jermaine sold two million copies of his album, Clive put our track on Whitney’s debut album, too, which sold close to twenty-five million more copies.
Every once in a while you get a song that gets recorded by several artists at the same time. This was true of “Take Good Care of My Heart.” Within six weeks of each other, Anne Murray, Roy Head, and Whitney had all recorded it. Fun when that happens!
Lesson learned: within reason, let anyone cut your song. You never know who the next Whitney Houston is going to be.
About a year after Whitney’s debut album came out, and maybe five years since I had heard from Ben Barrett, I received a call out of the blue from Ben’s wife, asking me when they could expect the 10 percent fee that was due them on all records sold for introducing me to Jermaine.
Um . . . nice try.
While Whitney Houston surprised me more than any other artist, Tony Newley inspired me more than any other artist. I distinctly remember the day Snuff came into my office and told me he wanted me to write an arrangement for a session he was going to produce on Anthony Newley. I froze and could not believe what I was hearing. In the 1960s, when most of my friends were standing in front of the mirror pretending to be Paul McCartney, I was standing in front of the mirror pretending to be Tony Newley singing “What Kind of Fool Am I,” “Who Can I Turn To,” or “Once in a Lifetime.”
He was a profound influence on my love for theatricality in songs and melody.
Snuff asked me to arrange a meeting with Mr. Newley so that I could hear a song that he wanted to record but hadn’t really found the right arrangement for. We met at his home in Beverly Hills, and I was immediately and completely awestruck in his presence. After a few minutes he played me a version of a song he wrote and performed called “The Man Who Makes You Laugh.” Needless to say, I was blown away. We chatted about what his ideas were for the arrangement, and he couldn’t have been nicer or more open to listening to several ideas I wanted to try to incorporate into the arrangement.
We recorded the song the following week. I had begged Snuff to let me record the rhythm section first and then overdub the orchestra, but Snuff was old school and wanted to record everything live, including Tony’s vocal. Sad to say, I was not happy with the way it turned out. The mix was not good, the clarity of the individual instruments was all over the place, and it was pretty much a disappointment that could have been so much better.
Snuff was stuck in his obstinate ways, and this was the first clear signal that I needed to start branching out on my own. Regardless, getting to know Tony personally for that brief time, and being so honored to have the chance to actually work with him, was a “Once in a Lifetime” experience for me that I will always cherish.
12
Dusty Springfield
I had just finished doing some arrangements for several artists on UA Records when I got a call to have a meeting with the head of the label, Artie Mogull.
Artie and I had known each other for quite a while, as he was close friends with Snuff. I had also coincidentally dated his daughter, Andrea, once in college, long before I knew who Artie Mogull was. He would kid me about that almost every time I saw him.
Artie asked if I would be interested in possibly writing and producing a legacy artist they had just signed, in the hope of resurrecting her career . . . Dusty Springfield.
I nearly jumped out of my pants.
Dusty was my favorite female artist. Like most people, I wore out three copies of Dusty in Memphis, one of the greatest albums ever made, as far as I was concerned. Dusty had been through some pretty rough patches. She was gay before it was socially accepted, often suffered from bouts of severe depression, and had attempted suicide. I knew that it would be a challenge for me, but I worshipped her as an artist, and I told Artie I would kill for the opportunity to work with her.
Artie scheduled a meeting for the three of us the following day. I brought along some songs that I thought would be great for her. Dusty was hungry for a comeback. She had recently moved to L.A. and was surrounding herself with good, supportive people who were on her team. In the meeting, I played two songs that I had written with Molly-Ann Leikin. Dusty loved them both and had some creative ideas as to how they should be recorded. I really wanted this to be a special session, and I was able to get some of the guys from Toto (before there was a Toto) to do the tracking date: David Paich on piano, Jeff Porcaro on drums, Steve Lukather on guitar, and Colin Cameron on bass. We recorded at Kendun Recorders in Burbank. It was a great tracking room, with Lenny Roberts engineering.
Everything was perfect . . . until it wasn’t.
We were going for a traditional, almost “British Motown” kind of sound with the arrangements. We recorded two songs that first day, “Let Me Love You Once Before You Go” and “You Set My Dreams to Music.” Both tracks were epic. Dusty sang and sang, and sang some more, doing both leads and stellar background parts that she came up with. She was a master at that. I then brought in the legendary Waters family to beef up the backing vocals and copy Dusty’s parts. Maxine, Julia, and Oren Waters are arguably the greatest background vocalists of all time, having sung on countless thousands of recordings in their illustrious careers.
Dusty then wanted to resing all of her tracking vocals, but she would only sing at night . . . late at night. I had two young boys at home, and always liked to be finished working by 6 or 7 p.m. so I could be home with them.
I wasn’t used to starting at 10 p.m.
It was only the three of us at A&M Studio C in Hollywood: Lenny, Dusty, and myself. She didn’t want anyone else around while she was singing. That was not unusual, and fine by me. She sang the first song over and over for at least an hour with every take being better than the previous one. It was mind-blowing how soulful and great she was. After about an hour, I pushed the talkback button down and said enthusiastically, “Dusty, we’ve really got this! Plenty here to comp from.”
“We’re not even close,” she snapped back.
Lenny and I shared a look: this was going to be a long night. Somewhere around 3 a.m., Dusty got upset with some kind of distortion in her headphones. She was frustrated. This was after she absolutely killed the song. It was really perfect, in my opinion. But my opinion was clearly not the one that mattered. I told Dusty that we had it. I really thought we were done. She disagreed, and as actions sometimes speak louder than words, she proceeded to throw a nearby chair at the control-room glass.
Her vocals would be “done” when she said they were “done.”
Other than that, we loved each other.
Some four or five hours later, she completed the two songs. I was anxiety-ridden, Lenny was shaking from being so tired, and my ears were completely fried. I couldn’t hear anything with any clarity. I remember driving home from Hollywood as the sun was eerily coming up, feeling like I was half-dead. It had been one of the longest nights of my life.
After that harrowing evening, things did get better. We put a string section and some French horns on both songs, and Dusty was delighted with the final mixes. “Let Me Love You Once Before You Go” charted nicely in the UK, but it didn’t make a big dent on the Billboard charts here in the States, which was disappointing.
Dusty and I got to work together years later when she did a duet with B. J. Thomas on the Growing Pains theme song, which was a Top 10 Adult Contemporary hit. She would also go on to record a beautiful version of “I Just Fall in Love Again” that later would be used as a duet with Anne Murray after Dusty had passed away.
Dusty Springfield is one of the great female artists of all time. I always say that Adele is this generation’s Dusty Springfield and Sam Smith is this generation’s male version of Dusty Springfield. Still, as far as I’m concerned, there will never be anyone quite like the woman who was a leading inventor of blue-eyed soul.
Looking back on my career, one of the most exciting things for me has been the diversity of all of the many different artists who have recorded my songs. Soulful in an entirely different way was the unmistakable voice of Kenny Rogers.
13
Kenny Rogers Through the Years
Every once in a while you finish a song and just have that undeniable feeling that you’ve written something important or special.
It is one of the world’s best feelings and, unfortunately, it doesn’t happen often enough. It has happened to me on a few memorable occasions, including one night in mid-November, when Marty Panzer and I had what would be a life-changing pasta dinner together.
I first met Marty through Ron Anton, then the vice president of writer relations at BMI. Ron was a great friend who cared about songwriters, and there wasn’t a more perfect person to be both representing and waving the flag for the songwriters at BMI.
One afternoon, Ron called me and asked me if I would be interested in meeting and hopefully writing with one of their New York–based writers who was relocating to Los Angeles.
Up to that point, Marty Panzer had been exclusively writing the lyrics to songs by Barry Manilow. “Even Now,” “It’s a Miracle,” “All the Time,” and “Just Another New Year’s Eve” were just some of the great songs they had written together. Marty was looking for a change of scenery and a chance to expand his writing by branching out a bit and working with different composers. He had as
ked BMI for help in contacting some West Coast–based writers who might be a good fit for his style of writing.
From the outset, Marty and I had a terrific chemistry.
I could tell from our first meeting that we would write some wonderful songs together. Our first three were so much fun for me to write. If it took me an hour to finish a melody, that was backbreaking work for me. His lyrics were so perfectly crafted that the melodies usually just fell out of the sky and wrote themselves. In some cases, I would literally hear the song in my head before my hands ever touched the piano.
Soon we were three for three as collaborators, as we had recordings by Julio Iglesias, Bettye LaVette, and Bruce Murray as fast as I could get the songs demoed.
After writing three love ballads, it was time for us to try something a bit more up-tempo. We were enthusiastic, but artists often mistake exuberance for talent. And we fell way below the bar we had set for ourselves. The only thing I remember about our fourth song together was that it wasn’t good. Afterward, we looked at each other and decided to stick with what we do best.
One night, Nancy and I invited Marty over for dinner. He arrived at seven, said hello to Nancy in the kitchen, and we sat down in the living room to chat while waiting for Nancy to let us know when dinner was ready. She was making stuffed shells.
As I took his coat, I noticed he had one of his brown envelopes with him, so I asked him my favorite Marty Panzer question: “You’ve got something for me?”
He said he had been working on this one for a while and wanted to make sure it was right before he showed it to me. I was curious. I yelled in to Nancy, “How long before dinner’s ready?”
“About fifteen minutes.”
At my impatient urging, Marty pulled out the lyric and began to recite it:
I can’t remember when you weren’t there,