by Richard Marx
“So, you don’t know what’s happening?”
“No. What the hell?”
“They just cut into the broadcast. O. J. Simpson is in a white Bronco leading police on a high-speed chase!”
So, it turned out that literally as Oprah was saying my name, televisions everywhere were hit with “We interrupt this program to bring you this special news bulletin.” And they stayed with the infamous Bronco chase until it was over, hours later. Hardly anyone in the country saw the soccer game, let alone me singing the anthem.
Maybe that’s what I get for laughing at Oprah falling.
32 “THROUGH MY VEINS”
It was barely past four in the morning in Osaka when the hotel room phone rang. This better be important, I thought as I wrestled with my sleepy disorientation. I was on tour in Japan in July 1997, playing several cities there over two weeks. Finally, I cleared my throat and picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
It was Cynthia. She gave me news that no one ever wants to hear. My father had been in a car accident. Immediately, my heart started pounding and I felt a little dizzy.
“What? What happened? Where is he now?”
“They didn’t tell me much, babe. Only that it was a bad accident and he’s been injured. I have the phone number of the trauma center in Las Vegas where he’s been taken.”
He had been driving cross-country from Los Angeles to our family vacation cabin in Minocqua, Wisconsin. This place was his favorite spot on earth, and when he bought it in 1974, it became his refuge from the pressures and pace of the jingle business, which he had dominated since the mid-1960s. The sheer volume of music he composed over twenty-plus years is impossible to wrap your head around. But he also arranged and produced these compositions for every product and company from Kellogg’s Raisin Bran and Dial soap to Oldsmobile and AT&T. Most days, he would record two or three separate sessions in a day. Sometimes more. It was a high-pressure business, but he thrived on the thrill of it. He did, however, realize a few years into it that he needed to step away from it occasionally to remain sane. And that cabin in Minocqua recharged his batteries.
In the late ’80s, he and I shared the costs of updating the property and building a year-round house there. It sits by a small, private lake. He hadn’t been to the house in a few years and was excited to go that summer. Knowing he was not the most focused driver, and that my mother would not be accompanying him, I asked him several times to consider flying to Milwaukee and making a shorter drive, but he was actually looking forward to the long drive from California and back.
A few miles outside of Vegas, he was changing lanes on the highway and somehow clipped the back of a truck. In trying to control the SUV he was driving, he overcorrected, causing the vehicle to flip several times. He was airlifted to the trauma center and was about to go into surgery when I finally reached the surgeon on the phone.
Before he could really start talking to me, he said, “Mr. Marx, please hold the line. Your father wants to speak to you.”
My dad’s voice came on the phone with the opening line, “I know. I’ve always gotta be the center of attention!” He sounded okay, which was a tremendous relief. He then said, “Pal, I’m pretty badly hurt, but this isn’t life or death, I don’t think, and I want you to promise me you won’t cancel any gigs. Just stay in Japan and finish the tour, and I’ll see you in a few days.”
I had two more shows scheduled in Tokyo, but I was freaking out and wanted to come home. My dad knew this and made me promise not to cancel anything, at least not yet. We spoke for another minute and said our “I love you”s, and he handed me back to the surgeon, who said, “Look, he’s got a lot of broken bones, and we have to make sure there’s no internal damage, but sit tight and we can speak in several hours after the surgery.”
I hung up feeling scared and very helpless but optimistic. I let my band and crew know what was happening and said for now it looked like we could go to Tokyo and finish the shows.
About six hours later, the surgeon called and said that while my father was stable, he was in worse shape than they thought. His heart was now in a very unstable rhythm. Battling obesity his whole life, my dad had had heart issues since age fifty, He had undergone a procedure mere months before this accident to shock his heart into a normal sinus rhythm. Ironically, it was the best he’d felt in years. Then this accident happened.
The surgeon urged me to come home as quickly as possible. I was on a plane within hours, flying twelve hours with no way of contact, and being as frightened as I’ve ever been all that time not knowing if my father was still alive. I couldn’t sleep or eat, I couldn’t read or watch a movie. I couldn’t concentrate on anything but my fear. I don’t think I moved in my seat the entire flight.
I landed around noon Vegas time, and ran off the plane dragging my bag behind me. I found the first cab outside and burst into the emergency room, clearly distraught until I found a nurse who had my father’s chart information. I was told he was critical but stable. I remember the trepidation of walking into his room and fearing what I was about to see. He was asleep when I entered his room, and I just stood there, in shock. It was still my dad, but he was bandaged everywhere and had tubes coming out of multiple spots connected to the machines we see in every hospital TV drama. He was a very large man. Just over six feet tall but always somewhere between 215 and 250 pounds, depending on the success of the diet he was on. In this bed he looked so small. And broken.
My mother arrived later that day, and we spent just over three weeks there at his bedside, only occasionally leaving the hospital to get a quick coffee or bite, or sleep in an actual bed at a nearby hotel. While he remained stable, his condition never seemed to improve. He was intubated the entire time, unable to breathe on his own and unable to move in his bed, let alone walk.
My mother and I began planning his long road of rehabilitation when the doctors in Vegas suggested he be moved closer to my home in Chicago. I arranged an ICU-equipped jet to transport him to the best hospital near my home, a ten-minute drive away.
The second evening there, I was with him in his room until almost midnight, talking about how he would start trying to walk the next morning with a walker. His mood was very subdued, but I knew that could be the strong painkillers he was on. Sitting next to his bed, I was looking at him when he turned to me and mouthed, because of the tube in his throat, the words “I’m finished with music.”
I stood up and leaned closer in to him. “What, Dad?”
He looked me right in the eye and mouthed it again. “I’m finished with music.”
“Dad, you and I both know you’ll never be finished with music. It’s what you’re about. Yes, this is going to be a long fucking road getting you back on your feet, but soon enough you’ll be back writing and conducting. You’ll be back to work.”
He let my words hang in the air a moment before looking at me, and with the slightest smile that was more begrudging than accepting, he said, “Okay.”
I kissed his forehead and said, “I’ll see you in the morning for your rehab. Get some sleep.”
I then went home to get some much needed rest, but for some reason I was totally unable to sleep. A little after six the next morning I got a call from the ICU saying he was having some issues and I should get over there immediately. When I walked in, a nurse told me that he “didn’t make it.”
Everything went black.
I collapsed on the floor as her words swirled in my head, and the brutal and devastating reality attacked me that my father was gone.
My dad and I had, by any estimation, a truly remarkable relationship. We were best friends. We had each other’s backs and trusted each other implicitly. We laughed a lot together, loved each other beyond words, and best of all, as he often reminded me, we had no “unfinished business” with each other.
He’d say, “If one of us gets hit by a bus tomorrow, we’ve shared everything. We’ve told and shown each other how much we love one another thousands of
times, and you know how proud I am of you, and I know what I mean to you. That’s a very rare thing between fathers and sons.”
This immense gift was something that would help to heal me over time, but for most of the year following his death, I was in a severe state of grief. Nearly twenty-four years have passed, and I still miss him terribly, and always will.
* * *
Like my experience with romantic heartbreak, it was not surprising that my mourning worked its way into my songwriting. I released an album in 2000 called Days in Avalon, which contained two songs about my father. “Almost Everything” was a mid-tempo rock song that dealt more with my anguish and anger over losing him.
Hand me the sun, say that I’ve won
The world on a string
And then I will have almost everything.
The other song was a simple chord progression that, in my head, sounded like a traditional country song, almost bluegrass. So rather than contort it into something it wasn’t, I recorded “Straight from My Heart” the way I heard it internally. The lyrics I wrote were appropriately simple: basically a letter to my dad about how deeply I missed him.
I will always try
To hold my head up to the sky
If only just to let you know
That straight from my heart
I still miss you so.
I was fortunate enough to have the brilliant Alison Krauss sing the harmony vocals, and she even flew to LA to perform it with me on The Tonight Show. I felt a sense of relief writing those songs and felt I had purged my sorrow.
Then one middle of the night three years later, I was in my home recording studio, and not even writing or recording. I was organizing the tape vault I’d had built that housed all my recordings over the years. I’m a night owl anyway, and it was not uncommon for me to be in the studio most of the night.
For some reason I still can’t explain, and with no conscious provocation, I stopped what I was doing and walked to the grand piano in the middle of the high-vaulted-ceilinged room where I recorded. I began playing a piece of music that I felt was somehow writing itself. Within moments I had visions of my father’s face in my mind. And about an hour later, I had written a song called “Through My Veins.” It turned out I had a lot more to say to my father, and this song did the job.
But I’ve missed you hanging ’round
And the way we were together,
But I can let go now,
’Cause it’s you running through my veins.
I recorded it not long after, and it remains one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written. While never a single or hit song, it became a fan favorite in my concerts and often receives a standing ovation. It’s my ultimate tribute to my father.
33 “THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY”
In 1979, I was a sixteen-year-old dying to be a successful singer-songwriter, and I was also a musical sponge. It was a great time for music, and one song that I cranked up every time it came on the radio was “This Is It” by Kenny Loggins. I wasn’t that familiar with Kenny’s older stuff, except for maybe “Your Mama Don’t Dance” by Loggins and Messina. But “This Is It” was such a different-sounding pop record, and Kenny’s vocal blew me away. Within a week or so of hearing the single multiple times, I headed to my neighborhood record store and plunked down $8.99 plus tax on the album that contained “This Is It” called Keep the Fire.
The opening track, “Love Has Come of Age” solidified me as a full-on Kenny Loggins fan. Killer rhythm arrangements, great musicianship, and his insanely brilliant vocals. Kenny’s immense vocal range, not only in terms of actual notes over several octaves but his phrasing and use of falsetto, inspired me greatly, and I would spend hours each day after school or in my car (a navy blue and silver two-tone Datsun 280 ZX with a T-top, baby!) singing along with every track from the album, emulating Kenny’s vocals as perfectly as I could. I became aware over a month or so that singing along with Kenny Loggins was its own form of voice training, as I saw a dramatic improvement in my range and power and watched my own already formidable falsetto voice become what felt almost limitless. The following summer of 1980 brought us Kenny’s smash hit “I’m Alright” from the film Caddyshack, and that became my new favorite song and vocal performance.
At eighteen, in the spring of 1982, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue my career. That fall, Kenny released a new album called High Adventure, which I bought the day it was released. Though Kenny has made some great music since, this album remains not only my favorite by him, but one of my favorite albums ever. Back then, like many music fans on a budget, I would buy an album and then record it on audio cassette so I could play it in my car. This was pre-digital audio and, looking back, it’s amazing we could hear anything but hiss. Still somehow the preexisting hissy sound that comes with analog vinyl combined with the insanely loud white noise of cassettes didn’t dampen my love for the music I was blasting in my car.
The High Adventure album became my new benchmark, not only for singing, but songwriting and versatility of style. Rockers like “Don’t Fight It” and “If It’s Not What You’re Looking For” blissfully cohabitated with R&B-influenced tracks like the hit “Heart to Heart” and gorgeous ballads like “The More We Try.” Again, the musicianship and arrangements were stellar, and Kenny was singing better than ever. I quickly memorized every nuance of every song on that record. And I could still recite it all today.
So when, in the early months of 1983, I was invited by Kenny’s then-manager, Larry Larson, to see Kenny perform, I was psyched, to say the least. I’d met Larry a few months before through my attorney, and Larry had shown some interest in managing me. While that never materialized, he did bring me to see Kenny’s show and I met him briefly afterward.
About a month later, I got a call at home from the producer David Foster. He was working on a demo of a song with Kenny and asked if I’d come down to the studio and sing some background vocals. I always did this kind of thing for David for free, not that he ever offered to pay me. He and I both knew this was great experience for me as a young up-and-coming songwriter, artist, and producer, and I did learn a lot from those sessions. I can’t say I do things the same way in the studio as David or other producers I worked with, but it was like going to Record Production College.
I jumped in my car, drove to a tiny studio in the San Fernando Valley, and parked my Datsun next to the Mercedes and Ferraris in the small driveway. Kenny vaguely recalled meeting me with his manager, Larry, but greeted me warmly all the same. David and Kenny played me the song they were working on. It was called “Never Say Never,” and they were going to try to get it placed as the title song to the upcoming James Bond film of the same name starring Sean Connery. I remember thinking it was a really good song, even with the very sparse demo production featuring David’s keyboards and a drum machine.
Kenny taught me some harmony vocals on certain lines in the song, and he and I stood at the same microphone and recorded them. As I stood there, though concentrating on my vocal job at hand, I couldn’t help but be acutely aware that I was standing next to my singing idol, working with him. It made more sense than I was even conscious of at the time. I’ve always had this ability to will people who’ve made an impact on me into my life. It’s happened more times than I can count. It just took me a few decades to realize that I had been in control of it all along. What you think most about is what you will experience. Good and bad. And I was constantly focused on working with my heroes. And now it was happening. It still does, actually.
The three of us spent a couple hours recording the vocals, and as it was already late in the evening, David and Kenny headed home to their families and I went home to my apartment, incredibly wired by the experience of having sung with one of my vocal heroes. As he got in his car in the studio driveway, Kenny said, “Hey, let me give you my number. Maybe we can hang out sometime. I live in Santa Barbara, but I’m in LA frequently. Do you happen to play racquetball?” I nodded with a smile.
A couple
of weeks later, I rang Kenny to see if he was going to be in LA anytime soon and to just maintain the connection that had begun at the studio that night.
“Oh, hey man,” he said. “No, I’m not in LA soon, but I’m around in Santa Barbara. Would you want to drive up one day this week?”
So we arranged a time to meet at the local racquetball club where Kenny liked to play and spent the afternoon over a few matches followed by lunch at a nearby restaurant. He mentioned that the producers of the Bond film had never even bothered to respond to the song David and he had sent them, which both blew my mind and made me feel a little better about all the corporate bozos who had ignored me. He also asked me about my plans and what I wanted to do in the business. I told him I was happy getting work as a background singer but really wanted to be an artist and songwriter-producer.
The next time we got together a few weeks later, he asked to hear something I’d written. I had just finished a song called “Yours Tonight,” an up-tempo pop-rock song with a techno groove in the stylistic vein of Michael Sembello’s “Maniac,” recently a massive hit. I scraped enough money together to go into Lion Share, one of the studios where I regularly worked as a background singer on big-budget albums. I hired a staff engineer there and arrived around 11:00 p.m. with my own keyboard and drum machine in my trunk. After an hour of setting up, I recorded the demo through the wee hours, finishing around sunrise. This was the only way I could afford pro–studio quality demos on much less than a pro-studio budget.
After an hour of racquetball at a nearby club, we drove back to Kenny’s Santa Barbara home. A sprawling estate, it had a separate building set up as a recording studio. (I would build my own version of this years later.) Kenny put the cassette of my “Yours Tonight” demo into a deck that was built into a large desk that housed his other audio equipment. Remember, this was a few years before CDs were invented, so a cassette was as high quality as a home demo could get at the time. He sat next to me, listening, and as soon as the first chorus passed, he opened his eyes and stopped the cassette, mid-song.