Time Is Tight

by Booker T. Jones

  I was as cold inside as the coming fire was hot outside.

  The huge fire destroyed every single home except mine and my next-door neighbor’s, a Malibu fire department captain. He had to save my house to save his own. This fire was fiercer than the 1971 Malibu fire that destroyed part of my ranch on Winding Way. In the ’71 fire, I lost thirty tons of hay, my barn burned down, and I lost all my fencing. This new fire appeared in the early-morning hours, and I walked outside and saw the flames at the crest of the mountain on the east. The fire devoured the hill with speed and force. The flames raced down the slope and hopped over the highway, replacing daylight with blackness. People were running everywhere. I went into the bathroom and wet a bath towel to put over my face. The roar was so loud it sounded like the boiler room I accidentally wandered into in the basement at Porter school when I was seven. We threw a few things into two cars and made it to a hotel in Oxnard after sitting in a long line of cars on the PCH, nearly the last ones out of town.

  I was never able to get over that fire. We only escaped because we lived so far north. When we returned, I walked down the street among the hot timbers; I couldn’t take my eyes off the house across the street. I had just sat in front of their fireplace—which had disappeared.

  After the inferno, our house was not the same. Black soot was everywhere. The lease was up anyway, so I rented an undamaged house in Trancas Canyon on Manzano Drive, where I began to recover from all the disruption and trauma by listening to the Eagles’ new album, Hotel California.

  “Try and Love Again” was an attempt to put my life and career back together. Deep down, I dreamed I would find love. At this point I was caught in a sorrowful relationship with Priscilla.

  HOLLYWOOD—1978—7

  Then Earl Klugh came into my life, and it couldn’t have happened at a better time. Kris Kristofferson’s manager, Bert Block, called and asked if he could give Earl my number. I said sure. And Earl came with his buddy Scottie Edwards, a bass player if I ever saw one. Earl had the tunes too, along with as much energy and freshness a young jazz player could be endowed with. He was one of the nicest, most respectful young men I’ve ever worked with, as well as being one of the most accomplished musicians I’ve recorded. Earl’s style was rooted in the Spanish guitar influence that I loved so much. At a time when synthesizers were threatening to take over, Earl held true to his nylon-string acoustic. His fingers were strong enough to make that box sing.

  In the studio, he gave himself to me, submitting most creative decisions to my discretion. The album, entitled Magic in Your Eyes, was Earl’s fourth studio project and featured his hero, Chet Atkins, on one song, “Goodtime Charlie’s Got the Blues.”

  For the recording, we went to my familiar haunt. Hollywood Sound on Selma, right behind Wally Heider’s Studio, had always been a good room for me. I hired Greg Phillinganes for the keyboard chores. Those sessions were a joy. After organizing the project and doing the string charts, I sat back in the control room next to engineer Jim Nipar and let the music take me. My only real chore was selecting the takes and deciding whether to do another one or not. It was the first time I was a control-room producer. Magic in Your Eyes surged to number four on the Billboard jazz chart.

  MALIBU—1978—4

  I tried to lose myself in my work, which was becoming increasingly difficult. I got no encouragement from looking at my past and was reluctant to ponder my future.

  Priscilla’s late nights out turned into no-shows. She was spending nights out away from home. I assumed she was staying at a hotel with Phil Walden, her label exec, working on her new album, Flying. I was wrong. She called from New York.

  “Let me talk to Lonnie.”

  Our two-year-old was beside herself with tears and missing her mother.

  “I’ll be home in a few days.”

  When Priscilla came back to “La-La Land,” as she called it, three of her friends and her sister, Rita, staged an intervention with her at a posh restaurant in Malibu. She couldn’t, just couldn’t, keep leaving Lonnie the way she did, one of her friends reported to me after the lunch. Priscilla ignored her friends and her sister.

  That day, Priscilla described an unnamed New York man, a meticulous dresser, a man about town, as someone she was seeing. Everyone in the house knew. She pulled some suitcases out of the closet and flew back.

  The darkest point came in the fall of 1978 when I realized I’d spent a decade of my life with Priscilla. On her last stay in our Malibu house, the days and nights were filled with contempt and anger. I would never be able to make up for having made her sister, Rita, a star while those same efforts had not paid off for Priscilla. On the other side, Priscilla would never be the woman I dreamed of. It was very late one night after she loaded her bags into a limo headed for a flight to New York to continue her affair with Ed Bradley.

  “You won’t fight for me,” Priscilla protested. Then she was gone. I silently allowed the limo to back out of the driveway and watched the taillights disappear into the black Malibu night. I stood out in the driveway for quite a while—conflicted between feelings of disgust that I had let myself remain in a toxic, destructive relationship for so long and a sense of relief that I might finally begin a new, realistic, maybe even happy life.

  Inside the house slept our two-year-old, Lonnie; Priscilla’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Laura; and her seventeen-year-old son, Paul, with his girlfriend, Alex. Paul was home from his freshman year at college, an expense I couldn’t afford. Did I still like myself? Why hadn’t I had the courage to end the relationship earlier? Breathing deep in the night air, I stood alone in the dark, exhilarated that I might now begin to really live but dubious about my treatment of my own self.

  At long last, I went inside, sat at the kitchen table, and decided to learn to cook Japanese food. Finding myself alone, I gradually set out on a self-improvement regimen, starting with eating lighter food. I drove with Lonnie all the way into West LA at least three nights a week to Aki, the closest Japanese restaurant. The entire staff called us by name.

  After a few weeks, I started to get late-night phone calls. Priscilla was in bed with Ed, while he slept next to her, talking in her soft, breathy voice. She wasn’t sure. She wanted to see me. Maybe spend some time in the house. She wanted to hear my voice.

  She did, in fact, come back, staying with a friend of hers in Malibu. A change, however, had taken place in me. Her key didn’t work. I’d had the locks changed. I’d had enough. I was done.

  MALIBU—1979—4

  As soon as I became single, people began to set me up with women. Rita slipped me Penny Marshall’s phone number. Another friend arranged a sushi dinner with one of her girlfriends.

  Ironically, the minute Priscilla walked out the door, I began to make serious money. The hit records on Willie Nelson and Rita Coolidge passed into their first royalty payment periods at the same time, and large deposits were made into the joint account I held with Priscilla at Security Pacific Bank in Malibu. The account was accessible by phone. She took large sums and left none for taxes.

  Back in Memphis, everybody paid taxes once a year. I sat in the back seat of my dad’s car while he waited in line on April 14 to drop the return into the post office box before midnight. I didn’t know the government wanted their money quarterly.

  There was a letter from the Internal Revenue Service. I should have been making quarterly income tax payments for my new tax bracket. An IRS agent came to visit. A very kind, personal man who preferred to drive to Malibu rather than have me come to his Westwood office. It was the beginning of a long relationship and friendship whereby I would make him tea, and he would deliver the bad news: taxes were mounting. I was filing annually, and big checks had come in with nothing put away to pay state or federal taxes. At least half of the money Priscilla had drawn from our account should have been placed in a trust account or deposited in a federal tax account.

  I was in serious trouble. I replaced my accountant and hired a new attorney. Too late, still,
but better late than never.

  MALIBU—1980—5

  Raising Lonnie as a single dad was the hardest thing I ever did in my life. For nights on end, she cried until morning for her mother. Futile attempts to get Priscilla on the phone made things worse. I began to lose my connections in Hollywood, unable to make sessions on time, unable to get babysitters. In public, women, strangers, took Lonnie to the bathroom. At Trancas market, I ran into Donna Summer, and her husband, Bruce, who stopped us in the aisle. Donna just went crazy over Lonnie. Thought she was the “most beautiful baby” she’d ever seen!

  Meanwhile, money started disappearing from my checking account. There were all these withdrawals. The bank told me there was nothing I could do since California law regarded Priscilla as half owner of the account. She made the withdrawals long distance by phone. I needed to move, get a new address, and change my accounts, fast.

  I discovered someone was drawing cash at the Trancas market counter, drawing cash from my account and sending it to Priscilla in New York. I closed the account at the market, but how could I move? I had a houseful of people. I needed to get Paul and Laura out and on their own so I could move with Lonnie.

  Laura reluctantly moved in with Rita, then spent some time with her grandparents in Mendocino. Paul started spending more time in Walla Walla, Washington, where he went to school. Paul’s girlfriend, Alex, didn’t want to leave. She was driving Priscilla’s Audi, all expenses paid, living the life. I felt like I was untangling the arms of an octopus all around me. I’d get one off, another would wrap around.

  When Alex finally gave me the keys and moved out, I found myself with two new Audis and a Volvo. I kept the Volvo and one Audi and traded the other Audi in on a new truck for my son T. I found a nice house up on Skyline View Drive in Malibu, headed for a new life. The day before I moved, there was a knock on the door.

  A pitiful-looking man identified himself as the owner of Malibu Jewelry, in the shopping center downtown. He said that for years they’d had a policy of lending jewelry to stars for parties and TV shows and never had a problem until now. I let him in.

  In the living room, he broke down. There was a grown man crying in my living room.

  Priscilla had accumulated so much of his stuff that he was now in trouble, worried about making his payments this month. Was she there?

  “God, Tim, she’s in New York, man. I had no idea.”

  “You have no idea,” he repeated. “Is there any chance of getting anything back?” His voice trailed off.

  “How much stuff does she have?”

  “You don’t want to know. I trusted her for years. She’s your wife. Nobody in Malibu does this, Booker.”

  Within two weeks of our meeting, everything I owned went into receivership, including the royalties from Willie’s Stardust album and Rita’s Anytime, Anywhere album. Even Epic Records garnished my wages, and suddenly there was not enough to pay the third month’s rent on my new house or my car payments.

  I called Mark Rothbaum, Willie’s manager.

  “I’m in trouble, Mark.”

  “Are you kidding me? We’ve paid you a small fortune.”

  My lawyer told me to get an accountant and tax lawyer, fast.

  “You know, you’re never going to get out from under all this,” Phil Frucht, my new CPA, said, looking over his glasses at me after assessing my situation.

  Security Pacific Bank in Malibu saved my life. Saved my life. The accounts had been drained, and Priscilla wanted $3,500 to go to London to persuade Ed to marry her. They gave me the money on my signature alone. In return for the cash, Priscilla signed off on her half of my future royalties. Security Pacific cut a check. I forwarded it to New York. My brother-in-law drew the contract. Priscilla signed it and flew to London. When she came back, she was Mrs. Ed Bradley, and I was a free man. Broke. And free.

  MARIN COUNTY, CA—1981—2

  After a gig in Marin County, I stayed over a few days and visited with Carlos Santana.

  Carlos was unhappy with me. Again. Often, in the early days of our friendship, he was moody and dissatisfied. We had a solid relationship, or so I thought. He picked me up at my hotel in his tennis whites and talked of my moving to Marin. “See those houses over there, Booker? Nice, huh?” And he let me win some games. Mostly we just milled around tennis shops and restaurants in Marin.

  Their home was in Stinson Beach, and Carlos took the curves gently in his BMW so as not to scare his friend from the Tennessee flatlands. Debbie, Carlos’s wife, was beautiful and gracious, and the home was warm and happy. The eminent arrival of Carlos’s son, Salvador, was not too far away, sure to displace one of the rooms full of musical equipment.

  After a few dates with Kitsuan King, Carlos’s sister-in-law, didn’t work out, my tennis buddy disappeared. A beautiful Sunday dinner with his in-laws at Kitsaun’s home in San Francisco was the last we saw of each other for years.

  I returned to Malibu with the Bay Area on my mind—specifically Marin County. I envisioned myself living on an eastward-facing hill in the small town of Sausalito. I felt I could make a new life there. Shortly, a strong new musical and spiritual force would come into my life. His name was Narada Michael Walden.

  In 1979, living in Malibu, I heard Narada’s solo album, Awakenings. Although I had been meditating for some years, the music on this album spoke to me in a spiritual way. I was moved to contact Narada to thank him for the music, and he responded with a huge shipment of flowers. We have been friends ever since.

  I spent a lot of time at Narada Michael Walden’s home in Tiburon, which is in the Richardson Bay region and an area I fell in love with. Narada was generous with his home, his recording studio, and his resources. A small community developed around him that included Clarence Clemmons, Randy Jackson, and the disciples of Sri Chinmoy.

  Narada’s musical family grew to include Jeff Beck, Jaco Pastorius, Aretha Franklin, and eventually Whitney Houston.

  Although I wasn’t inclined to the spiritual leanings of Sri Chinmoy like Carlos and Narada, I was on my own spiritual journey, led by my private daily meditations. I was comfortable in the Marin environment.

  LOS ANGELES—1981—12

  As much as I was enamored of Marin, there was not enough musical activity there to support me. Hollywood and LA were still the center, still in charge of the music business. However, my brief time in Woodstock, New York, at Albert Grossman’s and Levon Helm’s places reconfirmed the hippy in me. I gravitated toward Richie Havens when he came to Malibu, and we went shirt shopping together. Albert managed him and Bob Dylan as well. We seemed to have so much in common, Richie and I, and the studio recording of his “I Was Educated by Myself” only confirmed to me his spiritual awareness as I accompanied him on piano. While sinking to the depths emotionally, I had surrounded myself with great people.

  By the time I was ready to record my third album for A&M, people like John Robinson (drums) and Freddy Washington (bass) were in my phone book. I had started to write with Jean Hancock (Herbie’s sister) and Leon Ware. Leon was a writer and producer who coached Marvin Gaye. I had heard Chic perform “Good Times” and followed their lead. I was off to the disco, with strings and horns by Benjamin Wright. I never knew I was so drawn to dance music. Looking back, most of the MGs’ music and a lot of Stax’s releases were heavy precursors to the disco sound. Big drums, heavy bass line, lilting melody on top. Still, it was a left turn for me in terms of genre.

  A&M began to revamp their R & B department soon after the I Want You album’s release. The single “Don’t Stop Your Love” was released in New York and surged to number one on disco radio; however, the label declined to put nationwide promotion behind it. Soon after, promotion head Harold Childs and A&R director Michael Stokes, both African American execs, left the label. The final stroke came when Quincy Jones moved his office off the A&M lot. A&M had started as a pop company with Herb Alpert, and with the enormous successes of Supertramp, the Carpenters, Peter Frampton, the Police, Rita Coolidge, Styx,
Cat Stevens, Sheryl Crow, on and on, the company was destined to finish as a pop label. I was so happy for Herb and Jerry. However, an R & B company they were not meant to be. The record business has always been fickle by nature. All the pieces have to be in place. If you get signed by an executive and that exec gets fired, you’re out of luck. A fish out of water. I had to start all over again.

  Chapter 16

  The Cool Dude

  GLENDALE—August 1983—1

  At around 8:00 p.m., the phone rang. It was Bill Leopold, my manager, whose house was situated halfway up a winding canyon road in Glendale. The woman Bill and Carla had been trying to set me up with had agreed to meet.

  For some reason, the date had taken so long to materialize that I thought it was some kind of hoax. At that point, Bill had been telling me about her for about a year. In fact, enough time went by that I began to think the woman was simply nonexistent. So when it turned out the delay was because she was dating someone else and that she was, at long last, ready to get acquainted, my excitement was palpable.

  It was to be a tennis date, a foursome. Wanting to look my best, I went to the Topanga Mall and picked out a trendy, all-white tennis ensemble. I tried on a shirt, pants, and new shoes—everything was perfect. A smart-looking all-white tennis suit that fit me well. I wore regular clothes to the midday meeting and took a small bag up to Bill and Carla’s guest room to change before the blind date came. I changed into the outfit upstairs and timed it so I just happened to be heading to the door when the bell rang.

  Halfway down the staircase, I caught sight of her. My right foot refused to go down to the next step, and I stood frozen a moment, looking at her. At the bottom of the staircase, I saw her face, and she reached out her hand. I’m sure there were introductions by our hosts. I didn’t hear them and only caught her name, Nan.