by Paul Shaffer
The show itself had been a nightmare. In attempting to update South Pacific, the creators of More Than You Deserve did it in the grossest way possible. The production was replete with graphic gore and bloody decapitations. One song asked, “How’d You Like to Marry a Man Without a Face?” Bloody Mary was raped in her wheelchair by a soldier using a bayonet. (Years later when I met Papp, I told him, “I was once musical director of More Than You Deserve, and every night when I left the theater I was…” “Sick,” Papp completed the sentence for me. “Yes,” I said. “Me too,” he confessed.)
In spite of its unredeemable flaws, the show had an interesting cast. Fred Gwynne, famous for The Munsters, was the star. Mary Beth Hurt, then married to William Hurt, was the muchabused Bloody Mary. A young Meat Loaf sang his ass off. After four months of previews, though, even Meat Loaf’s rare vocal talents couldn’t save the show. The damn thing opened and closed in one week. I had no regrets. I was proud of the fact that, after an initial struggle, I had learned the highly complex classical-style rock score. I was glad that the one-week run gave me a union card. I was happy not to have to see Bloody Mary get raped again. But it didn’t feel great having to schlep back to Toronto. I wanted to linger a while longer in New York. Hell, I wanted to live in New York.
I went back to Mary Ann, who had waited patiently for me. I helped put together an experimental theatrical piece in which she starred—Hey, Justine, a musical about being open sexually. Later, Mary Ann wrote an article that included details of our sex life for Maclean’s, the most popular magazine in Canada. Talk about being open! I didn’t know I’d been sleeping with an investigative journalist. Mary Ann’s description of my lovemaking was, well, a mixed review at best. Hey, she was more open than I.
Mary Ann’s openness was the downside of Hey, Justine. The upside was the fact that the producer slipped a saxophone player into my band named Howard Shore. Howard would change my life. More on that later.
More good news came out of the blue.
Stephen Schwartz called.
“Paul,” he said, “do you believe in magic?”
I didn’t hesitate for a second. “Who doesn’t?” I said.
“Good. Because something magical is about to happen. I’ve found a fellow Canadian of yours, Doug Henning. He’s a hippie-looking kid with long hair. He’s cute and he’s charismatic and he does a more casual kicked-back kind of magic. I’ve written a whole show around him, a full-blown musical called The Magic Show and I need you on piano.”
“Will this happen in Canada?”
“I know how much you don’t want to leave Canada,” said Stephen with sarcastic glee, “but I’m afraid we’re opening the show at the Cort Theatre on Broadway. It’ll be hard on you, Paul, but you’ll have to move to New York.”
“That’s a helluva sacrifice,” I said, “but one I’m willing to make. I’ll be there tomorrow.”
Chapter 18
“Love’s Theme”
It starts with soaring violins. They sail around the isle of Manhattan; they chase the stars over the Bronx and Brooklyn; they anchor on the docks of the West Side, where the bass and drums and guitars find a funky groove that grounds us.
“Love’s Theme” is pure elegance. For me, the Barry White instrumental ushered in the era of my New York, where I would finally find everything I was looking for—music, glamour, and comedy, all squeezed into this overcrowded crime-ridden city. Remember, this was presanitization and pre-Disneyization. This was down-and-dirty get-mugged-in-Central-Park New York. And I loved it.
By the way, I did get mugged. I made this critical mistake: I went out at eleven at night with the pure motive of windowshopping. True New Yorkers only go out with a specific destination and walk purposefully toward it. On this night, I had no purpose other than to take a break and stroll down Upper Broadway. A man approached me. “Got a quarter?” he asked. “Sure,” I said, reaching into my pocket. “Keep your quarter, buddy,” he barked. “Give me all your fuckin’ money. I got a gun in my pocket.” I looked perplexed. He went on, “I don’t wanna do this, but I got to. I’m a junkie. Gimme the money.” “Oh man,” I said, more disappointed in him than anything else. I didn’t really think he had a gun but didn’t want to chance being wrong. I gave him three hundred bucks—another critical mistake, walking around with so much cash—and he ran. I felt violated but also knew that I had endured a rite of passage. From then on, I walked with purpose and destination; I was a real New Yorker.
A little earlier, when I first moved down from Toronto, Stephen Schwartz had invited me to stay with him in the vanilla suburbs of Connecticut. He had a comfortable guest room and could not have been more hospitable. He thought staying in the country and traveling into the city each day would ease my transition.
What Stephen didn’t know, and what good manners kept me from saying, is that I loathe the country. Nature is not my friend. As Marlon Brando told Eva Marie Saint in On the Waterfront, the crickets make me nervous. I want the city. I need the city. Get me to the city. Each morning, then, when Stephen drove us in, I waited for that moment when we crossed over the river and entered the island of Manhattan. The second we were on the West Side Highway, I relaxed. I breathed in the putrid air and felt good about myself and the world. I felt ten million people moving in ten million different directions and could feel that finally I had a direction of my own. I loved the stop-and-start traffic. I loved the great wash of yellow taxis. I didn’t mind dogs relieving themselves on fire hydrants and sirens screaming from ambulances. The city made me feel safe. The city made me feel good.
How in the world could anyone live in the burbs? I asked myself.
Why in the world would anyone live in the burbs? I’ll never live in the burbs, I vowed.
The Magic Show was a hit. Doug Henning was an avatar of a new style. Schwartz’s rockish score was lively. I played in the pit band, which, in fact, wasn’t in a pit at all; we sat some fifteen feet above the stage. And it was a kick.
The guitarist, Gerry Weiner, shared my love for R&B and Maestro White’s orchestral approach to deep soul. He and I would get together and play “Love’s Theme” with such crazed enthusiasm that we’d jam on that one song for well over an hour. We’d get to grooving so hard that we’d start screaming like idiots.
Then we learned Barry White himself was coming to town. That’s all we needed to hear. “Love’s Theme” became an even greater obsession. Just as Orpheus’s guitar summons the rising of the morning sun, in the mythopoetic Brazilian movie Black Orpheus, so were we summoning Barry White by playing “Love’s Theme.”
During the heady weekend of Barry White anticipation, we used our high energy to write a Maestro-motivated song, “I Never Want to Lose Your Love,” that actually got recorded by Paul Davis a few years later on his I Go Crazy album. That happy occurrence, however, was incidental to the great event itself: The Maestro live and in person. Barry was magnificent. And so was his conductor, who wielded a dramatically long glitter-encrusted baton while wearing a short kimono with a fierce dragon on the back.
I spent a year working The Magic Show.
Doug was as cautious as he was brilliant. Everyone in the production was required to sign a pledge that said we’d never reveal the secrets to his tricks. Because we had a behind-the-scenes look at his act, we saw how he worked his magic. After a couple of shows, I was hip to all his tricks except the one called “Houdini’s Metamorphosis.” That was one I could never figure out.
Meanwhile, the hotter the show became, the more women went wild for Doug. He became a chick magnet. Even my dear friend Gilda fell for him. One day she invited me to lunch. We met at an Upper West Side café. I could see she was despondent.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Doug didn’t call,” she said.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I had a date with Doug.”
“Come on, Gilda,” I said, “you didn’t fall prey to the magic of illusion, did you?”
“Actually, I did. We slept together.”
“And…was it magical?” I asked.
“It was nice,” said Gilda, “but it was a week ago and he hasn’t called. I guess I’m just part of his disappearing act.”
Even though I had genuine brotherly feelings for Gilda, like almost all the guys in her circle I had a little crush on her. I was protective and, hey, a little jealous. As a result, I was pissed, so pissed that I carefully told her the secrets behind every one of Doug’s tricks. Except, of course, for Houdini’s Metamorphosis. I still didn’t know how the hell he did that one.
The truth is that I always liked Doug. He was really a sweetheart. Turned out he also had a deeply mystical side. He fell head over heels in love with Transcendental Meditation and became tight with the Beatles’ guru, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He went back to Canada, where he ran for public office on some sort of yogic platform. A friend of mine told me what ultimately happened to him. “Doug got cancer and knew he could heal himself through TM. And he didn’t go to a doctor. So he died.” Poor Doug.
My New York turn-ons were two: the music scene and the comedy scene. They both came together when Christopher Guest and Brian Doyle-Murray asked me to write and perform with them on the fifth National Lampoon album, Goodbye Pop, a suite of musical parodies. I was stoked because back in college when I heard the first National Lampoon record, I was convinced it was the hippest thing since Nichols and May. Who else would do a bit with Bob Dylan as a TV huckster hawking The Greatest Protest Hits of the Sixties’?
On Goodbye Pop, David Hurdon, Chris, and Gilda performed a song I co-composed called “Kung-Fu Christmas.” It became a classic, at least among the three people who bought the album. Musically, the song mirrored the silky-smooth soul sounds of the Stylistics, the Dells, and the Dramatics:
There’s a man comin’ today with lots of loot
He got a pimp-mo-sleigh, a red and white fur suit
He’s a super-fly guy, and he’s awful cute
He’s about to arrive bringing jingle-bell jive:
Santa Claus makin’ the Soul Train scene
Slickin’ down his beard with Afro Sheen
Christmas Eve comin’ with its last minute bustle
Santa tells the elves, “You gotta ‘Do the Hustle’…”
You better be bad, and that means good
So Santa bring you somethin’ that’s really Hollywood
Diamond in the back trimmed with holly
My girls are workin’ the street and I’m feeling jolly
Pimpin’ bad daddy in Super-Fly clothes
Selling Joy to the world in her panty hose
On the fade, Chris and Gilda improvised:
CHRIS: Hey baby, I’d like to do something extra special for you this Christmas …I thought maybe I’d buy you a big house in the south of France.
GILDA: Oh, I don’t want to live in France.
CHRIS: Well, why don’t I buy you a big glass-bottom boat then, honey?
GILDA: Oh darlin’, I don’t want no fish lookin’ up my skirt.
CHRIS: Well, baby, let me ask you, what do you want for Christmas?
GILDA: Oh baby, I just want a Kung Fu Christmas!
Some days later, the phone rang.
It was Howard Shore, the saxophonist from Hey, Justine, the Toronto musical I had conducted.
“I’m musical director of this new comedy show,” said Howard, “and I’d love to use you on piano.”
“What’s it called?”
“NBC’s Saturday Night.”
Chapter 19
“Which of These Coffees Is the Fresher?”
Much mythology surrounds NBC’s Saturday Night, or, as it was rechristened in 1977, Saturday Night Live. In the history of American comedy, SNL has its place. You could even argue that it looms large in the history of American youth culture. It certainly reflected the age from which it emerged. In the mid-seventies, we were transitioning from the Age of Aquarius to the Age of Indulgence. Our hippie styles hadn’t disappeared as much as they had morphed into something more materialistic. We realized we needed to work, and yet we hadn’t lost our antipathy to the establishment and its old ways. Thus came a new kind of comedy concoction. I was privileged to watch it happen.
I must say, though, that my primary role was the same as the one I assume today on Letterman. It is, after all, who I am. I’m the piano player. In Canada I accompanied topless dancers. On SNL I accompanied a new generation of crazy comics. Howard hired me because I knew many of those comics. He understood that I could rehearse them and help them develop musical material. Like Howard and Lorne Michaels, the show’s producer, I had been rigorously trained in the hard-knocks school of Canadian comedy.
Howard had gone to summer camp with Lorne near Toronto, where they’d produced amateur musicals. After much success in Hollywood, Lorne was about to make his big move.
I cherish my years with Lorne. I saw him as a visionary. He understood irony—and ironic people—as well as anyone. Early on, he told me, “Paul, when you say one thing, you mean two.” He had me pegged.
I felt that I had him pegged simply by observing this scene:
It was late one night early in the first season. Gilda and I were taking a short break from rehearsing a number. Gilda, always the most helpful of friends, noticed me at loose ends trying to complete my immigration form. She took it upon herself to sit down and type out the five-page application. I felt much better.
That’s when Lorne appeared, oblivious in his imperious manner. Two pots were sitting on burners, each filled with coffee. Lorne looked at the pots and, musing to himself, asked, “Which of these coffees is the fresher?”
I thought to myself, This guy speaks in some sort of comedic pentameter. Interesting cat.
I found myself doing two gigs at once: Lorne’s and The Magic Show. But even before that double duty, a third opportunity came along that took me to L.A. in the mid-seventies. I was chosen to costar in a sitcom.
Don Scardino, a former Jesus Christ in Godspell and a good friend, hooked me up. He recommended me for a show called Hereafter. I liked the premise: three old vaudeville guys sell their soul to an agent, who is the devil. In return, they get to be young again and form a rock and roll band. Don and I were in the band along with Greg Evigan. There were plans, independent of the show, to actually record and tour the band, also called Hereafter.
What differentiated this pilot from the usual pie-in-the-sky Hollywood project was its two producers—Norman Lear and Don Kirshner. Lear was king of television comedy and Kirshner was the famous music mogul of Brill Building fame. He was currently hot, with a national TV show called Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert.
Kirshner fascinated me. An hour after I landed in Los Angeles, Kirshner had me over to his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He sat in a green floral chair facing a TV playing tapes of his rock concert show. Donny, as everyone called him, spoke a mile a minute. His New York brogue had a nasal edge that could scare young children. He spoke so fast, your head spun. His pitch, a mingling of the past and future, had a way of pumping up the present.
His machine-gun banter went something like this: “Forget about the Monkees. Forget about ten million records sold worldwide. Forget about I made the Monkees. I got them their producers. I got them their writers. With the Carole Kings and a kid named Davey Gates who came back later with a band called Bread and a ‘Baby I’m a Want You,’ but that’s not the point. The point is, you’ll be bigger than the Monkees. Your band Hereafter is gonna make the Monkees look like chimps. I did it before, I’ll do it again, I’m doing it now! You want to talk to Norman Lear? I pick up a phone, you talk to Norman Lear. Norman Lear wants a hit band in a hit show, he picks up a phone and calls me. I call you. You write a hit song, I pick up a phone and call a Jeff Barry. Jeff produces the hits. Jeff Barry with an Ellie Greenwich and a ‘Be My Baby,’ forget about it with the Phil Spector Wall of Sound and the whole symphonic whatever, it’s over. You go off, you write a song, you need a s
ound, give it to me, that’s what I got my Jeffs for. Call me when you got the song.”
Scardino and I went off to write a song tailor-made for the show. We called it “Like a Rising Star.” A few days later we were back at Kirshner’s bungalow. When he heard it, he went into overdrive.
“I got to tell you, Paul, I love the song,” he said. “When a Neil Diamond came in with an ‘I’m a Believer’ for the Monkees, I said, ‘Neil, I love the song.’ In the studio, with my Jeffs and a Micky Dolenz and the shtumies we gave him with a doo-doo-doo, I knew we had a monster. But your song—bigger than the Monkees. I pick up a phone, I call a Norman Lear, I play him the song, he loves it, it’s over. ‘Like a Rising Star’ with a new group, are you kidding? We’re going straight to the top.”
With that, Kirshner picked up a phone and called his wife, Sheila.
“Sheila,” he said, “I forgot to tell you that I ran into Steve and Eydie at the Polo Lounge. They hadn’t seen me in a long time. They said, ‘Kirsh, with the thinness with the tan and the whole California bit, you look terrific.”
When the High Holy Days came around, I wanted to go to services, so I called my new rabbi, Don Kirshner, and asked for suggestions.
“You got two choices,” said Kirsh. “First, there’s Alan Blye, your Canadian landsman. He’s the cantor at the Temple of the Performing Arts. Choice number two is that we go to shul with Steve Lawrence and Eydie’s mom. Eydie’s going to Liza’s wedding at Ciro’s. She’s marrying Jack Haley, Jr.”
“I had no idea you were so close to Stevie and Eydie,” I said.
“Are you kidding? I gave ’em ‘Blame It on the Bossa Nova’ and ‘Go Away, Little Girl.’”
Meanwhile, Kirsh kept assuring us that we would be the Monkees, but bigger. “Norman Lear picks up a phone and you’re the Beatles,” Donny said.
