by Steve Dorff
Debbie quit her job as receptionist and started to work for me full-time.
At first, Debbie would work out of my office at Warners, but since she lived near me in Studio City, it became easier for her to just be based out of the house. Basically, she would follow me to sessions, do a lot of the necessary paperwork, help Nancy and me driving the boys to various after-school activities, make calls, return calls, and run all kinds of errands. Debbie became a member of our family. She was single, didn’t know too many people in L.A., and was eager to learn the music business.
Eventually, since Debbie was familiar with all of the musicians and studios that I used, I began to have her help do my session contracting for me. I had been using Patti Fidelibus Zimitti to do all of my television and film dates, and Debbie and Patti had become friends. I was averaging about five sessions per week, and together they would coordinate who was playing on which session at what studio.
As time passed, I sensed that Debbie didn’t want to do all of the other “stuff” that I needed her to do. Her passion had become music contracting, and she wanted to do it full-time. After four years of working for me, we parted ways, and she and Patti went into business together. They were successful for many years as maybe the busiest contractors in town.
I had gotten to know Debbie’s family well over the years, and her brother Glen is still a great friend to our family. After Debbie left to go to work with Patti, I went without an assistant for a while. It was a difficult transition for me to make. I’d been spoiled by having someone there to help me deal with unexpected things as they came up.
John Bettis had an assistant, Steve Cassling, whom Debbie and I had become close with through our working relationship with John. Steve had recently left John to pursue his acting career, and in talking with him one day, he said he wouldn’t mind having a part-time job as my assistant if I was interested.
Boy, was I ever.
There was a natural camaraderie between Steve and me that made my life a lot easier. Steve was also amazingly smart, talented, and incredibly thorough. We had a shorthand: he was one step ahead of me in knowing what needed to be done, and, much like me, he was a stickler for detail.
What started as a part-time “let’s see where this goes” job became a valued four years together. Steve helped me get through the tough period of my divorce to Nancy. He was a good friend to all of us.
After Steve left, first to pursue his acting and then to move to Big Bear with his family, I went through several male assistants in the hope that I could find another Steve. I was totally spoiled. Nobody worked out. I was now remarried and had my two daughters and was living out in Hidden Hills, balancing home life and career pretty evenhandedly. But you eventually miss what you don’t have, and when Amy Handelman serendipitously came into my life, I was thrilled to have an assistant again.
The great thing about Amy was that she possessed all of the best qualities of Debbie and Steve rolled into one. I could talk to her about anything, anytime . . . except maybe politics: girl stuff, guy stuff, kid stuff. It was all on the table.
Amy did everything for me, from making trip reservations to banking, taking my clothes to the cleaners, phone calls, girl advice, dog care, even making me hard-boiled eggs in the morning when she got to the house. It was a different time in my life as I was single for the first time in thirty years, and my schedule and lifestyle had adjusted to that.
Amy was a godsend . . . but we had some pretty crazy episodes along the way.
We had just recently moved back from Malibu and into my new house in Bell Canyon. One morning I was showing Amy around the house, explaining a few things that she would need to get done for me that day. I had to leave for an appointment. I gave her the list of things to do and went out to get into my car, which was parked right by the front door. As I shut the door to the house, I noticed something move behind my car. It freaked me out a little as I thought it might have been a coyote. I approached the car slowly, and then all of a sudden a giant peacock with full colored feathers was standing by my car door.
“What the fuck?” was all I could say. I had only seen one of these before at the zoo. I ran back into the house and screamed, “Amy, you’ve gotta see this, come quick!”
Amy came running down the stairs, alarmed that something bad had happened.
“There’s a peacock standing next to my car!”
She looked at me, unsure how to respond. I certainly hadn’t put “peacock wrangler” in the job description. Still, she followed me outside as I gingerly walked back toward my car . . . where there was no peacock.
Amy looked at me like I was either insane or hallucinating.
“Trust me, I’m not crazy, there was a fucking peacock the size of my Golden Retriever Maggie, right here!”
“I’m sure there was,” she said, rolling her eyes, and then added, “I’m going to get started now, okay?” She went back into the house.
Now I was wondering if I was indeed crazy and hallucinating. I looked all around and there, up on the driveway hill about thirty feet away, I saw the peacock behind a tree.
I barged back into the house, screaming, “There he is.”
Amy came outside again and looked to where I had been pointing. No peacock.
“Shit, he must’ve gone over that hill, get in the car.”
Now, even writing this, I realize how deranged I must have sounded. Frankly, I’m surprised she even got into the car with me. But she did.
“I’m going to find that damn thing!” I said, speeding down my driveway. I was acting like a madman, and Amy just buckled her seatbelt and hung on.
We drove around the neighborhood until he finally decided to show himself to Amy.
She saw him first and screamed, “Holy shit, there it is.”
We watched the peacock walk around for a minute and then it disappeared over a hill and out of sight.
I wondered if we should call someone or get my dog to try to catch it.
“It’s gone, Steve,” Amy said dryly. “Now take me back to the house and go on your appointment, which you are now late for, by the way.”
I heard somewhere that the usual burnout time for a personal assistant job in this town is between two and four years. Amy was my indispensable right arm for seven years.
Most artists don’t give their assistants enough credit, but it would be nearly impossible to do our work without them. Whether they are full-time or part-time, assistants are indispensable. Usually they are on their own journeys toward fulfilling their personal goals, but while they work in an assistant capacity, they are confidantes, soundboards, girl Fridays, wizards, helpers, and gatekeepers. Because sometimes it is hard to suss out the crazies from the legitimate artists . . . and they all come a-calling.
22
Damn Near Righteous
Every few months, I get a cold call from a writer I’m not familiar with who is interested in writing a song with me.
Usually, I can tell in a few minutes whether this is a person I might want to work with or not. I know how important chemistry is for me, and getting in a room with someone I don’t know, just to try and churn out a song, usually has not worked for me. However, there was something different about this caller. This guy had a deep baritone voice that drew me in immediately.
“Steve Dorff? My name’s Bobby Tomberlin, and I’m a songwriter with Curb Publishing company in Nashville. I’ve been a longtime admirer of your work and I’m coming to L.A. and thought what have I got to lose, I’m gonna call Steve Dorff and possibly see if I could write a song with you . . . or at least meet you.”
He spoke without stopping and then paused, waiting for my response.
Normally, I’d make excuses. My standard line is “I tend to write with the same people.” But there was something about this guy I liked that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I suppose I appreciated his sincerity, so we ma
de a plan for when he got out here.
My instinct was right. Bobby was a joy to work with. We initially wrote two songs and enjoyed the whole experience. Since then, we’ve gone on to write many songs together, including the Barbra Streisand/Blake Shelton duet “I’d Want It to Be You” on her Partners duets album and “Dream Big” for Pure Country II.
Bobby’s become one of my best and most trusted friends over the years. To my sons and daughters, he’s a member of the family. Even though our backgrounds and upbringings were vastly different, we have always had this commonality to the way we look at life, love, and music. We’ve both shared sorrow and disappointment, and have always been there to support each other during those times.
Bobby was also the key catalyst for me getting back behind the piano and doing shows again.
“Steve, man, you play so great and sing so well, why don’t you perform?”
With a little bit of encouragement, I did, and he’s often joined me in my shows, doing duets, kibitzing, and singing his own songs. When I was the music director of The Singing Bee, Bobby helped me to get to the point where I could own that and not be self-conscious. I made him one of the singers on the show, and he did all fifty episodes with me.
From time to time, Bobby would do a live radio broadcast with guest writers and performers. On one occasion, he invited me to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to go on his Writers in the Round show along with Bill LaBounty. Bill and I had known each other from years before in Los Angeles, and after he moved to Nashville, we had an opportunity to write a few songs together.
I hadn’t done a whole lot of these Writers in the Round events, and it was somewhere in the middle of the show when Bill played one of his newer unrecorded songs called “Sit Down and Hurt.” The song absolutely blew me away. After the show, I asked Bill if I could have a copy of it. I told him I would love to send it to an artist I had been working with.
I knew the song would be absolutely perfect for Bill Medley.
Bill Medley and I had first worked together in 1988 on a TV theme song John Bettis and I wrote for Just the 10 Of Us, a spinoff comedy from the hit series Growing Pains. The show starred standup comedian Bill Kirchenbauer, who played Coach Lubbock, a regular on Growing Pains, as the father of eight kids.
Medley sang the theme song, “Doin’ It the Best I Can.” I was always such a fan of the Righteous Brothers, going back to when I first saw them on Shindig!, so when we were thinking of someone great to sing the theme, Bill was our first choice.
A few years later, we would work together again on the main title song for the Bruce Willis film The Last Boy Scout. Bill did such a great job singing our song “Friday Night’s a Great Night for Football” that the director, Tony Scott, decided to film Bill doing the song and use it over the opening credits as well as the closing credits.
Bill and I kept in touch here and there after that. Although he had done some solo work, he and Bobby Hatfield continued to tour as the famed Righteous Brothers. Tragically, Bobby passed away while out on the road.
It had been a good while since I had been in touch with Bill, but he was always accessible to me, and because we had had such a friendly and successful working relationship in the past, he was always open to hearing anything I might send him.
An opportunity came up when a close friend of mine since college, Shayne Fair, sent some lyrics for me to look at called “The California Goodbye.” I fell in love with the words and knew I just had to write the music, and that it was a song that I just had to get Bill Medley to sing.
The underlying theme of the song was that it was a tribute to Bobby, and Bill agreed to record it. It was an absolutely stunning and emotional vocal that Bill did. I was hoping that we could find more songs and record an entire Bill Medley album, but the timing just didn’t feel right—and, besides, we didn’t have the material that would define him as the great solo artist that he is in his own right. Yet as soon as I heard Bill LaBounty’s “Sit Down and Hurt,” I felt like that song could be the catalyst for getting Bill Medley back in the studio.
I called Bill Medley and asked him to listen to the song. He listened, and he flipped over it as I’d hoped he would. LaBounty had some other great songs that helped create the direction we took with a new studio album that I arranged and produced along with Shayne. Bill Medley was very enthused about the project, and we began recording a bluesy, R&B, rootsy album of some great songs that he wanted to do. One of the songs was the Beach Boys classic “In My Room,” for which Bill was able to get Brian Wilson and Phil Everly to come in and do background vocals.
A Beach Boy, an Everly Brother, and a Righteous Brother, all singing together. It was epic.
We tracked the album at Capitol Studios in Hollywood with a sensational rhythm section of Vinnie Colaiuta on drums, Jimmy Nichols on keys, Dean Parks and George Doering on guitars, and Joe Chemay on bass, plus a full orchestra and the Waters doing backing vocals. The only thing left to do was to think of a title. Bill was pretty adamant that he did not want to reference the Righteous Brothers on this project.
Over lunch one day, we were discussing the album and throwing out various title ideas. Somebody said, “Bill, it’s your album, not a Righteous Brothers–sounding record at all.”
Bill stopped, thought for a minute, and replied, “Well, it’s damn near righteous.”
We had our album title.
I was the house bandleader on The Singing Bee, a hugely popular TV show on the CMT network. Going into it, I was pretty petrified to be on screen and featured as a performer. Thankfully, producer Phil Gurin allowed me to put a band and a group of studio singers together—all people I had previously worked with in some capacity.
Being surrounded by familiar faces made the project a lot of fun. What was initially going to be ten episodes turned into fifty over a period of four years. I made some long-lasting friendships with Melissa Peterman, Roger Cain, Beau Davidson, and the other members of the cast and crew, as well as having some great adventures with Bobby along the way. Being in front of the camera and getting recognition out of the studio went a long way to making it possible for me to gain the confidence to start doing my “Evenings with Steve Dorff.”
23
Pure Country
I truly believe that the marriage between a great song and the right artist is the key to having a hit.
There is no better example of mine than George Strait’s version of “I Cross My Heart.” Eight years before George recorded it and made it a country standard, Bette Midler had recorded it. The legendary producer Arif Mardin heard the demo, loved the song, and told me he was going to make it a huge hit with Bette.
Eric Kaz and I couldn’t have been more excited. Bette was amazing, Arif was a world-class arranger/producer, and the song was strong. How could we miss?
We missed . . . big time.
To her credit, Bette loved the song, but after singing it several times she just didn’t feel like it was the right fit for her at the time. As disappointed as I was, after hearing a rough mix I had to agree.
Losing a Bette Midler cut was pretty devastating. A perfect example of that fine line between glorious success and dismal failure that we songwriters experience all too often. It made me want to invent a career called “songwriter therapy” just so I could attend a few sessions.
I was still passionate about the song, though, and for the next eight years I played “I Cross My Heart” for anyone and everyone who would listen. The universal response was: “Nice song, Steve, but not one of your best.”
I even played it for my mother, who of course unconditionally loved anything I wrote. She also said, “Nice song, Steve, but not one of your best.”
The mediocre responses made me question myself. Perhaps I was hung up on a song that simply wasn’t as good as I thought it was. So I put it on the backburner.
Temporarily.
Cut to me reading the shooti
ng script for Pure Country, a film I was hired to score and write a few songs for. The film was to star George Strait as a huge country star named Dusty Wyatt Chandler. Disillusioned by the fabricated glitz and glamour that his career has become, Dusty yearns to return home to his simple country roots. It was a good screenplay by Rex McGee, to be directed by Christopher Cain.
This was a dream project for me to get. As in most television or film projects, the process of picking the composer is highly competitive, and usually quite political. Each of the principal players or executives has relationships with various composers with whom they have worked previously. Gary Lemel, then president of music for Warner Pictures, had really gone to bat for me with legendary producer Jerry Weintraub and Chris Cain. My having had prior success at Warners, and understanding of the mechanics of both the country music and feature film worlds, made me a top candidate in Gary’s eyes.
Luckily, my initial meeting with director Chris Cain turned out to be the only one I would need to have.
I was a huge admirer of some of Chris’s films. The River Runs Black and Young Guns were among my favorites and his director’s vision and music plan for Pure Country were exciting and at the cutting edge for the time.
We had a great meeting at his office on the Warners lot. I got the gig. In reading through the shooting script, I knew that we needed to have certain songs picked to prerecord, which we would then film to. Therefore, the process of song selection had to happen pretty quickly in order to meet the tight production schedule.
George Strait and his record producer, Tony Brown, were picking most of the songs that would be used in the film. I wrote a few things that I thought might work for the project, but in truth, I was not thoroughly familiar yet with what really worked best musically for George. But Tony and George had already picked several really great songs for the film and soundtrack, and I could already tell this had the chance to be a groundbreaking album.