by Steve Dorff
I was asked to put an orchestra on the track in Los Angeles. Engineered by the incomparable Al Schmidt, this track was simply an amazing work of art. For the animated film Annabelle’s Wish, Dolly performed a beautiful version of “Silent Night” and a song that Marty Panzer and I wrote called “Something Bigger Than Me.” Dolly’s immense talent is as stunning as that of anyone I’ve had the pleasure of working with.
30
From Charles Manson to Fats Domino
In sixty-odd years, I have collected a lot of songs, a lot of friends, and a lot of stories. Some of which makes sense to put in this bag of my life; others are simply part of the grab bag of my cumulative experiences.
Here are a few stories, beginning with Charles Manson. Because who wouldn’t want to start with Charles Manson?
The FBI Crashes My Session
From time to time, I would have friends drop in on sessions I was doing, sometimes invited and sometimes not. Usually, these were people I knew, or were friends of the artists I was working with.
I will never forget the time I was doing a Fender Rhodes overdub on a track at Criterion Studios in Hollywood. The engineer interrupted what I was playing by pushing the talkback button down and asking me through my headphones if I could come into the control room. I asked him if there was something wrong.
“There are two men here who need to speak with you for a moment,” he said.
I walked back into the control room to see two rather large guys dressed in identical navy-blue suits. At first I thought they were some dudes trying to impersonate the Blues Brothers, but other than that I had no idea who they were.
One of them politely apologized for interrupting what I was doing as he pulled a badge out of his jacket pocket. This made me a bit nervous, and I started going through a list of things in my head I might possibly have done wrong. He introduced himself and his partner as FBI agents and asked me for my ID.
Now I was getting really nervous and immediately felt guilty, my mind racing with possibilities of what I had absolutely done wrong. Upon proof that they were talking to Steve Dorff, they asked if there was a place where we could speak in private for a few minutes. I thought I was hosed.
As we walked toward the piano in the studio, I was picturing myself in a prison for doing God knows what.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. “Did I do something wrong?”
They asked me if I knew, or had any contact with, a Charles Manson.
“The Charles Manson?” I gulped. “Absolutely not. Why?”
They went on to explain that my name was included on a list of twenty-five or so names recovered at the ranch where Manson was holed up during his murder spree.
I was now completely freaked out.
In fact, the house that was targeted by the murderers belonged to record producer Terry Melcher. Sharon Tate and the other victims had been renting the house from Terry, and they just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Manson’s clan was simply told to murder everyone in that house. Chances are that Terry Melcher was on that same list and was the target to be murdered.
The agents went on to explain that they had found threatening letters to people on this list, and wanted to know if I had received one. Apparently, old Charlie, in his relatively spare time from being a full-time psychopath, considered himself a great songwriter. He had sent cassettes of his songs to various record producers and publishers. I had absolutely no knowledge of ever receiving such a tape, as we had a strict “no unsolicited material” rule at our office. Any tapes of songs that came in the mail from unidentified sources were never opened. They were simply tossed into a big box for recycling in the mailroom.
The two agents thanked me for my time and gave me their cards in case I had any more information to share. They apologized again for interrupting my session, shook my hand, and left.
I had to sit down and digest. I could have been on Charles Manson’s hit list. It was pretty scary that I might have been associated in the slightest way with this horrific madman.
I was shaken up for days.
Luis Miguel: Un Te Amo
Luis Miguel was arguably one of the biggest recording stars on the planet.
The Mexican star had sold over one hundred million records around the world, mostly to Latin-speaking audiences. I must confess, however, that before Shari Sutcliffe called me to ask if I’d like to write a string arrangement for him, I had never heard of him. Shari had been contracting a new album project that Luis was recording in Los Angeles, and had suggested me to his producer as someone new to possibly work with on the album.
Luis listened to some string charts I had done and said he had a particular song in mind for me to work on with him. He asked Shari to set up a meeting so we could get acquainted. It would just be a meet-and-greet—something simple, to see if we were compatible. To prepare for the meeting, I picked up a few Luis Miguel CDs and listened to a whole lot of songs in Spanish over the next two days.
The meeting was set for 7 p.m. at a bungalow Luis was staying in at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I didn’t expect the meeting to last longer than half an hour, so I had made dinner plans afterward at 8:30. As I prepared for the quick meet-and-greet, I threw a pad of staff paper in my bag, just in case I would need to take some notes.
Thank God I did.
When I got to the hotel, I used the valet parking, telling the valet I wouldn’t be terribly long. I found the reception desk and asked for Luis’s bungalow number. The concierge informed me that “one of Luis’s people” would be out shortly to escort me to his place.
A few minutes later, one of his entourage came out to meet me, shook my hand, and said, “Follow me, please.”
I trailed him to a posh bungalow hidden in the back of the hotel’s lush grounds. As we approached, I could hear music blasting and the voices of several people emanating through the door.
As soon as I entered, I felt like I was in a James Bond film. I was greeted by a dozen of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in my life. Behind them were a few guys and, of course, Luis Miguel himself.
The Latin American idol had star quality. He was magnetic as he stood and introduced himself. He kissed me on both cheeks, greeting me like we had known each other for years. He told me to grab a drink and some food from the enormous buffet and join the party.
I quickly cancelled my dinner reservations. Clearly this was to be more than a little meet and greet.
Luis’s suite of rooms was gorgeous, the wine and champagne was flowing, and there was enough food for a small wedding reception. Over the course of the next hour, Luis introduced me to several people while his gorgeous harem kept my wine glass filled. After the requisite small talk and niceties, he finally put his arm around me and said, “I want you to hear this beautiful song I am going to record, and you are going to do the arrangement for me, yes?”
It was more of a gentle command than an actual question, but I was thrilled. I didn’t know that getting the job was as simple as Luis liking me.
“Great. Do you have a tape or demo of it for me that I can hear?”
He shook his head and pointed to an electronic keyboard in the living room.
“No, I will sing it for you.”
There were at least a dozen people still milling about, and the only thing they all had in common, other than being ridiculously good-looking, was that they were exceedingly loud. And the stereo was blasting.
“Uhh, do you think we can turn the stereo down just a bit so I can hear the song clearly without any other music getting in the way?” I wondered.
Luis was charmed that I would even ask and did not turn down the stereo. Instead, he started to sing in my ear, a capella. It was a Spanish song called “Un Te Amo.”
Unable to understand Spanish, I had absolutely no idea what the song was about and, more importantly, I didn’t know the chord changes, te
mpo, or structure of the song.
Luis seemed to think I could easily jump in. “Come, play it along with me at the keyboard.”
“Sure . . . uh . . . okay.” I stalled and I grabbed my music paper. I tried to feel what the changes should be under the melody he was singing, as best as I could . . . especially considering that I had never heard the song before, and still had no idea what it meant. He sang it for me a few more times, and I recorded him on a little handheld tape recorder I also happened to have in my bag.
All in all, it was a fascinating first-time meeting with a true superstar who wanted me to write an arrangement for a sixty-piece orchestra of a song I had never heard before in a foreign language I didn’t understand, from a handheld tape recorder with people screaming, laughing, and partying in the background.
No problem.
I woke up the next morning, called Shari, and told her about our “meeting.”
“Welcome to my world,” she chuckled.
The tracking session was set a few days later, with an incredible band that included Robbie Buchanan on keys, J.R. on drums, Nathan East on bass, and Dean Parks on guitar. Robbie was great at straightening out some of the changes I had missed because of the tape with some wonderful substitution chords. Luis’s scratch vocal was incredible, and for the first time I was hearing this beautiful song the way it was intended to be heard.
I went home and wrote the orchestra arrangement, which we did at Ocean Way in Hollywood the following week. The record turned out beautifully.
There was no doubt why Luis is one of the greats. The album was called 33, and like all of his albums it was a huge worldwide success. And, yes, it was one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever gotten to arrange.
Blast from the Past
Sometimes it really is a matter of simply being at the right place at the right time.
One early evening I was meeting a friend at the bar in Shutters on the Beach, a nice hotel in Santa Monica. While sitting at a table in the rather plush lobby, having a glass of wine, I noticed a familiar face walk right past me. He happened to look over, and as he did we both yelled at each other at the same time. It was the director Hugh Wilson, whom I had worked with some fourteen years before on Rustler’s Rhapsody. Hugh had moved to a beautiful farm in Virginia, and it had been at least ten years since we had seen each other.
We made a bit of small talk, catching up with what we were both up to, and he told me he was getting ready to shoot a new movie called Blast from the Past that he thought I’d be perfect to do the music for. He told me to call him the next day to get a script, and we would chat more about the project.
To this day, I still wonder if I really would have gotten to do the film if I hadn’t been sitting there, but some things in this business often do come down to just plain fate.
I called Hugh the next day and he had a script delivered to me. It was a charming, funny, and somewhat zany story starring Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, and Sissy Spacek—a phenomenal cast. I was thrilled to have the chance to be a part of this project, and to get to work with Hugh again. There was one small problem: the studio, New Line Entertainment, wanted another composer.
I’ve heard the story a few different times from several different people who were involved in the project. Apparently, when Hugh was told that the studio had chosen another composer for the film without his approval, he sat in his production trailer on set and vowed not to come out and direct the film until a deal was made for me to compose the music for his movie. Needless to say, the studio caved.
Loyalty in this business is special, and Hugh Wilson more than stepped up for me. I had a wonderful experience scoring this movie, and getting to work with my friend Steve Tyrell, a great artist himself, who did the song supervision.
We went then almost immediately into production on Hugh’s next film, Dudley Do-Right, at Universal, also starring Brendan Fraser.
Hugh had a way of making everybody who worked on his films feel special. He’s a comedic genius whom I feel privileged to have worked with.
Jack Gold and Andy Williams
One of the most memorable stories of my career came from a pitch meeting that I had the first year I was in Los Angeles. Jack Gold was a staff producer at Columbia Records. He produced Johnny Mathis, Andy Williams, Barbra Streisand, Vicki Carr, and countless other major artists at Columbia. The acts that he produced were not songwriters, however, so he was always looking for great songs to record.
Getting a meeting with Jack was not easy. He had his favorite publishers and writers that were his go-to regulars, and new guys like me usually had to just drop songs off with a receptionist in the hope that he might listen. Fortunately, I was good friends with Bo Goldsen, whose dad, Mickey, was a close friend of Jack’s. Bo was able to get me a face-to-face with Jack, and I came prepared. It was my first time getting to see the hallowed halls of Columbia Records, with pictures of all the great artists, past and present, hanging everywhere, and gold records displayed on every other available wall. It was impressive.
A secretary showed me into Jack’s office, where he was seated behind an enormous desk. I nervously reached out my hand to shake and thank him for seeing me. He just looked at me and said, in a quiet voice, “Sit down.” No one had bothered to tell me that Jack suffered from Parkinson’s disease, and on his bad days he would not be in good spirits.
This was one of his bad days.
He asked me how I was liking California, who I was writing songs with, had I gotten any songs placed yet . . . those kinds of questions. He spoke quietly, and because of the trembling he was experiencing it was hard for me to understand a lot of what he was mumbling. I told him I was a big fan of his records and had a few songs that I hoped he would love.
He stared at me, reached out his shaking hand, and motioned to me to hand over the demo to him. I had 45 rpm dubs with me. These were vinyl discs, album-sized, with little holes in the center.
As I started to hand him the first song, Jack started shaking pretty violently. I didn’t know whether to yell for help or put the disc on the player for him. I was freaking out, but I didn’t want to show that to him, so I handed him the disc. He fumbled with it for what seemed like an hour but was most likely thirty seconds, until he finally got the hole to go over the peg on the stereo. He then reached for the needle arm and scratched the shit out of the demo a few times before finally getting it to the beginning of the song.
Holy Jesus. By now I was having a complete panic attack!
He looked at me sternly and told me to relax. The intro of the song started . . . but something was wrong! Five seconds in, I realized his turntable was playing at 33 1/3 rpm and not 45. Jack was now relaxed with his eyes closed, listening to my song at the wrong speed.
“Holy shit,” I thought. “This can’t be happening. Surely he knows that this is playing at the wrong speed?”
The vocalist was now singing, twenty seconds into the first verse, and I was about to either scream, “IT’S THE WRONG FUCKING SPEED!” or climb over his desk to change the speed on his turntable.
A split second before I did both, Jack opened his eyes, smiled at me for the first time, and said, “Yes, something wrong?”
“Mr. Gold, I’m sorry but the demo is playing at the wrong speed,” I said, exasperated.
“If it’s a great song,” he shot back, “it’ll hold up.”
A beat, and then he started laughing.
He totally got me! No one bothered to tell me that he ALSO had this incredibly wicked sense of humor.
He knew how green I was, and he was having fun fucking with me. After that, he asked me to put the remaining two songs on the player for him, and we listened to them at the right speed. He even put one of the songs on hold for an artist he was working with.
In the end, he didn’t cut it, but Jack saw me often, and whenever I felt like I had a grea
t song, his door was always open. He recorded four or five of my songs over the years with Johnny Mathis, Andy Williams, and Susan Anton.
He was a one of a kind!
Speaking of one of a kind: my mom had two musical superheroes that she watched on TV religiously every week. I think she made me watch as well. Perry Como and Andy Williams could do no wrong in her book. When I got a call from Jack Gold to meet with him and Andy, I scrambled to find an Andy Williams album that he might autograph to his biggest fan, Elaine Dorff.
Jack was not doing as much production as he used to and had left Columbia due to his declining health. I had been doing quite a bit of arranging and now production, and Andy was looking to record some new material for his next album. Jack thought we would be a good fit to go into the studio and record a few things.
At the last minute, Jack called and said he couldn’t make the meeting, and for me to just handle it directly with Andy. We met at a nice bistro in Beverly Hills for lunch. Andy was with his brother, Don Williams, who was managing him at the time. Don and I sort of knew each other through Ray Stevens, whom he also managed. Like me, Ray was a former graduate of Lowery Music University.
Coincidentally, Claudine Longet—Andy’s former wife who had been involved in the shooting scandal years before—had recorded a song of mine for her album.
I didn’t bring that up.
There was a lot of incestuous stuff going on here.
I didn’t bring that up, either.
The lunch meeting was great. Andy knew of my work and was anxious to do something “new and contemporary,” as opposed to the covers of other people’s songs that crooners like him were primarily known for. We agreed to meet in a week and go over some songs that I would put together for him to hear.
And, yes, I got the autograph for my mom, and she was thrilled!
Sandy Pinkard and I had been doing some writing at the time, and he had a lyric that I really liked called “Every Time I See Maureen.” I wrote the music for it in a Beach Boys style because I thought Andy’s beautiful bell-tone high voice would sound great with close backing harmonies. I found a few other songs that I loved and we scheduled our song meeting.