by Paul Shaffer
Mackenzie whispers to me, “Everywhere I go in this town, someone has another horror story about my father. I can’t take it.”
So we’re at the bar. Mackenzie wants to get away—and I want to help her—but Roy’s already deep into his next story.
“Funny story about your dad,” he says. “We’re in San Francisco. It’s me, John, Scott Mackenzie, and Mama Cass. We’re at the Fairmont, about to be served lunch, when the hotel manager comes up to us and says, ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave.’
“‘What are you talking about!’ I say. ‘Who has to leave?’ “‘Your entire party.’
“‘Why?’ I ask.
“‘Because we have discovered an inordinately large accumulation of chicken bones in Miss Cass’s room. The bones are everywhere—in the bed, under the bed, on the couch, under the couch. The walls are smeared with mayonnaise and mustard. The sheets and towels are covered with ketchup. I’m asking your party to leave right now.
“I turn to John and say, ‘John…where am I going to go with this?’”
Where am I going to go with this? I repeat to myself, thinking, What a punch line!
“Isn’t that funny, Mackenzie,” Roy now asks. “Isn’t your father a scream?”
Mackenzie tries to smile but can’t. Mercifully, Roy leaves us alone to enjoy our drinks, but ten minutes don’t pass before he’s back.
“This just happened last week,” he says. “You know Giorgio Moroder, of course.”
I nod. I don’t know him, but I know of him. He’s the Italian arranger who produced, among other smashes, Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby,” complete with the sounds of confected orgasm.
Roy goes on: “So Giorgio’s in here munching on barbecue spareribs—my recipe—and he waves me over and says, ‘Roy. I have track. Hit track. But I need singer. You know singer?’
“‘Giorgio, baby,’ I say, ‘this is Hollywood. Every waitress in this place is an ASW (actress/singer/whatever).’
“So I wave the nearest waitress over to our table and say, ‘Giorgio, meet Dora. Dora’s a dynamite singer.’
“‘You be at studio tomorrow at 10 a.m.,’ says Giorgio, ‘we cut hit record.’
“Natch, Dora’s smiling from ear to ear. The more I think about it, though, the more I can see Dora having a Donna Summer—sized hit, and all because of me. So before she quits for the night, I call Dora over and say, ‘Look, honey, I put this deal together for you. I got you Giorgio. I gotta have ten percent.’
“Dora looks me in the eye, and immediately says, ‘Five.’ Even the waitresses are cutting my nuts off here in Hollywood, Paul, even the fuckin’ waitresses.”
Hollywood is always merging the old and the new. It honors both, sometimes worships both, even as it simultaneously destroys both. By that I mean the old guys can come back when you least expect it, like Mickey Rooney coming back to appear on A Year at the Top. Mickey loved telling jokes: “Guy says, ‘When I die, bury me in a copper coffin.’ ‘How come?’ ‘It’ll help my arthritis.’” First time I heard it, I fell over. Eighth time it wasn’t so funny. Mickey had big ideas. The Mickey Rooney Starbecue, for example, featuring the Judy Chili Burger and the Andy Hardy Sloppy Joe. Corny jokes and Starbecues aside, when Mickey appeared, everyone on the set was in awe: We’re working with the great Mickey Rooney. When he didn’t work out—hardly anyone did on that show—no one remembered that he had been there only the day before. Same thing with the new guys—me and Scardino and Greg Evigan, the three musicians who sold our souls to the devil/agent. Here one day, gone the next.
As you will soon see, the devil got his due; the show didn’t last. Before my sitcom career was over, though, I had accumulated enough Hollywood stories to last me the rest of my life. That alone made the trip worthwhile.
My favorite Tinseltown story has a poignancy that touched my heart. I was there when it happened. A. J. Antoon, a Tony-winning Broadway director who had done a TV version of Much Ado About Nothing, was brought in by Norman Lear to direct the Hereafter pilot. A.J. wanted all of us, especially Norman, to see his Shakespeare. A screening was arranged.
When I arrived, I saw that the only others in attendance were two secretaries from the office and Woody Kling, an old-school writer for Milton Berle who had written our pilot. It was clear that Lear wasn’t going to show.
Disappointed but undaunted, A.J. proudly introduced his version of Shakespeare, telling us to be on the lookout for certain key elements of his direction. The lights were dimmed, the film rolled, and we settled back to watch.
Five minutes into the ninety-minute production, Woody Kling jumped up, grabbed his suitcase, and leaned over to A.J.
“Beautiful, A.J.,” said Woody. “I gotta run.”
When I think of my time in the City of Angels, I think of that line. In that single moment, I saw it; I understood Hollywood and its cold-blooded warmth.
“Beautiful, A.J., I gotta run.”
Hollywood could get you down. When I was especially down, when the smog of the city and the lack of sizzle coming off our show had us all convinced that we were going nowhere fast, I’d take a break. One day I was strolling around the lot, munching on a burrito and thinking to myself, What the hell am I doing here? I could be cutting disco records in New York. Then I saw it. Was it an apparition? Was it real? It couldn’t be. But yes, it was. It passed me by like a parade. Four overweight stagehands were wheeling what I recognized to be the Soul Train mirror ball. They were transporting it to the stage where the show was taped. I chased after the ball like a Hollywood agent chases after his commission. My God, I thought, Soul Train tapes here!
Imagine the joy that washed over my heart when I learned that the guest for today’s show was none other than the Love Man, Mr. Barry White. I was inches away from the Maestro as host Don Cornelius began the interview. Barry had just released a new album, Sheet Music. The interview focused on the pun implicit in the title. Both men spoke so softly that I had to put my ear right up against the speaker to make out their words.
“We’re here with the Man,” said Don in his deep bottom baritone. “The Man, the Maestro.”
“Well, thank you very much, Don,” said Barry in a baritone several octaves deeper than Don’s. Man, it was dueling baritones sotto voce.
“Why call it Sheet Music, BW?” asked Don, his honey-dripped voice plunging even lower.
“Well, Don, let me break it down to you, brother. You see there are two kinds of sheet music. There’s the sheet music we use to write the songs that lead to romance. And then there’s the sheet music we play when we feel love and share love and make love between the sheets. Talkin’ ’bout the silken sheets of love.”
“You’re always talking ’bout love, aren’t you, Maestro?”
“Don, I believe it’s love that makes us and love that breaks us. Love, Don, is the magic we make when we dance and make romance. That’s what Barry White is all about, Don. That’s the thing that Barry White’s heart never stops beating for—another song of love, another night between the sheets makin’ sheet music.”
“Well, no one understands love like Barry White,” Don conceded, “and I’m hoping you can lay a little of that love thing on us later in the show.”
“Don, nothing would make Barry White happier,” said Barry, basso profondo.
And I’m thinking, How low can these cats go?
I was witness to Barry’s preaching that day, and a week later I returned to the Soul Train set to watch another minister of soul, Lamont Dozier of the great Motown songwriting team of Holland-Dozier-Holland. Lamont performed “Going Back to My Roots,” a song he hoped would tie into Alex Haley’s phenomenally successful Roots miniseries, which was currently tearing up the ratings.
The stage manager recognized me and afterward wanted to know if I was interested in going to the Commodores concert at the Forum. “You’ll probably be the only white guy there, so I suggest taking a black woman. I have just the gal. She loves Jewish soul brothers, especially tho
se like you who play funky piano.”
My date was delightful. Together we climbed on our chairs and danced to “Brickhouse.” Together we watched the spectacular show as the group exploded into Commodores hyperspace, where they performed their current hit, “Zoom.”
Afterward we shared hot pastrami sandwiches at Canter’s Deli. Turned out the sister had a thing for potato knishes. Go know.
Chapter 22
The Brady Bunch, The Ohio Players,
and Mr. Chevy Chase
After shooting four episodes of A Year at the Top, everyone saw that the premise wasn’t working. The episodes were so bad they never aired. Thus a major rewrite. The trio of musicians was slimmed down to a duo, me and Greg. We were no longer old guys reincarnated by the devil but simply a couple of young dudes who sell their souls to make it. Five new shows were ordered. The name of the act was changed to Greg and Paul, and every attempt was made to infuse the show with fresh energy. Unfortunately, every attempt failed.
Fortunately, I had lots of time on my hands. The producers paid me to stick around L.A. while these new scripts were being written. Meanwhile, Chevy Chase, who had also left SNL in its second season, had come to Hollywood to do an NBC special. When Chevy asked me to be his musical consultant, I was delighted. Two of his writers were Tom Leopold and Brian Doyle-Murray, two of my favorite people. Making matters even more enticing was the fact that we were working on the same soundstage as The Brady Bunch Variety Hour. This was the year that the Brady producers, Sid and Marty Kroft, were doing a series of shows with Donny and Marie Osmond. For those shows, the Krofts had built an ice-skating rink. For the Bradys, they had built a swimming pool in the middle of the set. The original Brady cast had been reassembled, including luminaries Ann B. Davis, Florence Henderson, Robert Reed, and Maureen McCormick. Brian and I were fixated on the show, largely because the above-ground swimming pool had windows beneath the water that allowed the cameras to shoot. We had access to those windows, allowing us to confirm the fact that swimming was indeed the ideal exercise for young women interested in getting in shape.
When Chevy called a staff meeting, he began by saying, “We need to make this short because Brian and Paul have to get back over to the Brady Bunch set as soon as possible.”
Chevy was right. Who could resist the sight of Ann B. Davis singing and dancing poolside with a school of nubile young swimmers? As if that weren’t enough, imagine my joy when musical guests the Ohio Players broke into their hit song “Fire” while the synchronized swimmers jumped into the pool with flaming torches.
I became so emotionally invested in the Brady Bunch production that I found myself crestfallen the day I saw that the show had been shut down.
“Why?” I asked.
“Maureen McCormick has contract issues. She won’t leave her apartment in Westwood.”
“I’ll go see her,” I said, volunteering my services. “I’ll get her to be reasonable. On behalf of television fans everywhere, I’ll do anything to keep this show going.”
My valiant request was ignored, and I was sent back to the set of Chevy’s show, sadder but wiser in the ways of small-screen politics.
Another show, The Liar’s Club, was also taping on this same lot. It was a panel/quiz show of small consequence where upcoming comics made appearances. Later I would learn that Letterman was one such comic. At the time, just to see the reaction it would elicit from the Liar’s Club producers, Tom Leopold and I would tell them that Chevy loved their show and ask if they would consider having him on. The producers salivated. For weeks, we kept telling them that we were on the verge of delivering Chevy, and for weeks the producers treated us as though we were the Second Coming. Of course Chevy never came.
Tom had other schemes up his sleeve. At 5 p.m. sharp, the audience for The Liar’s Club would line up, and at precisely 5:30 they would file onto the lot, marching past the closed door of the office where Chevy worked.
One day at 4:55 p.m., Tom, with nothing better to do, asked me, “Want to upset Chevy?”
“Of course,” I answered.
“Watch this.”
Tom approached the long line of audience members waiting to enter the studio and, in a booming voice, asked, “Who’d like to meet Chevy Chase?”
Everyone screamed, “Me!”
“Right this way,” said Tom, leading the line right through the private office where Chevy sat behind his desk, looking over a script and smoking a cigar. The sight of these tourists traipsing through—in one door and out the other—was priceless. Chevy thought so too. He wasn’t thrilled about shaking hands with a hundred and fifty people, but, ever the pro, he turned on the charm.
I was still in L.A. during the summer of 1977, when the first episode of A Year at the Top finally aired. By then Chevy had gone back east, where he and the other SNL kids were summering in the Hamptons.
A few seconds after that first episode had reached its painful conclusion, the phone rang. It was Chevy.
“I’m here with Gilda and Dan and John,” he said. “We just watched your show and we want to say that we still love and respect you—hold on, Paul…What was that, guys? We don’t? …
“Well, we still love you …What was that, guys? We don’t? …
“Oh well, here, talk to Belushi.”
“Paul,” said John, “stop acting with your mouth open. Use your eyes.”
I took his note and tried to follow his advice—advice from a man who went on to do the Blues Brothers movie with his eyes covered by shades.
I hung around L.A., shooting the remainder of my sitcom episodes. I wasn’t happy. When I was asked to play and sing “The Antler Dance” on SNL’s special Sunday night show being shot at the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, I was eager to oblige. After all, I’d written the song with Marilyn Miller and Michael O’Donoghue. I had to do it. But I couldn’t convince the Year at the Top producers that I’d be back in time for our next taping, so I went straight to the top. I went to Norman Lear, a frustrated performer himself, who said, “You have to go. Those are your compadres.” I flew to the Big Easy and arrived in time to sing…
A man in a mask walked into my room late last Saturday night
I said, “Hey Mr. Mask, what are you doing in here?” He said, “There ain’t no cause for fright. I got a dance that’s gonna beat the bump, The hustle and the hoochie-coo.”
And then he took off his pants and did the Antler Dance. It’s so easy you can do it too.
The camera then tilted up to a balcony in the fictional Antler Alley in the real French Quarter, where Michael O’Donoghue, wearing a black mask, raised his hands over his head and did the Antler Dance with wild abandon.
At this moment, I realized how deeply I yearned to get back to SNL.
Chapter 23
Paul at the Gramercy
“I am Eloise. I am a city child. I live in the Plaza.”
Those words, written by Kay Thompson, were read to me by Mom when I was eight. Mom had the good taste to expose me to books about Eloise as well as Babar and Christopher Robin.
As my fashionable and loving mother—who herself dreamed of Manhattan penthouses and Parisian boulevards—slowly turned the pages, the fantasy drew me in: Imagine living in a sophisticated hotel in the most sophisticated city in the world and having the run of the place—room service; maid service; fascinating people continually checking in and checking out; banquets; weddings; parties on every floor. What could be better?
Nothing, I decided, when, at age twenty-eight, I moved back to New York from Los Angeles. I couldn’t afford the Plaza, of course, but, at $1,500 a month, I could afford the Gramercy Park Hotel on Gramercy Park at 2 Lexington Avenue. These days the Gramercy has been reinvented as a five-star hipper-than-thou Ian Schrager production. But when I moved in—and stayed for eleven glorious years—the place was the essence of shabby gentility. The carpets were musty; the furniture was in disrepair; and a distinct funk hung in the air when you walked down the hallways. I loved it.
Th
e Gramercy’s clientele consisted of a devoted cadre of Europeans who had been coming for years, comforted to be served by the same receptionists and bellmen, many of whom were in their seventies. In addition, there was a noticeable constituency of elderly residents who had moved into the hotel back in the forties and clung to their rent-controlled rates. At about the time of my arrival, the Gramercy had been discovered by new wave and punk bands looking for a suitably disreputable alternative to the Chelsea. On any given day, you might see the Clash at the front desk or the English Beat in the bar.
I lived in two small rooms in the back with a nice view of the park. One room had two double beds, the other a sofa and two chairs covered in tattered velvet upholstery. There was a tiny kitchenette and a gas stove. I had the gas turned off because I had no intention of cooking. My television sat on a rickety metal stand, and my electric piano sat on the coffee table. I would practice while watching American Bandstand.
When I first moved in, I was told that the doorman had a key to nearby Gramercy Park itself, a charming enclosure of manicured greenery that was closed to the general public. Only residents of the immediate area had keys.
“I can open the gate,” said the doorman, “but I can’t leave you the key. I’ll be back in a half hour to let you out. Enjoy yourself.”
I took a quick walk around the park and then felt a wave of panic passing over me. I couldn’t get out. I looked through the wrought-iron gate and saw people walking up and down the street. They were free. I wasn’t. I was trapped inside like a hyena at the zoo. Twenty-five minutes were far too many to be alone with nature. You see one flower, you’ve seen ’em all. Somehow I managed to survive my imprisonment, but in my many years at the Gramercy, I never ventured into the park again.
Who needed to, when there was Ravi Shankar passing through the lobby? At breakfast I might see Taj Mahal eating an omelet. One evening in the dining room I looked up and there was Jaco Pastorius, the genius musician who had begun with Wayne Cochran and moved on to the avant-garde Weather Report. He was strolling around, playing his unplugged electric Fender bass guitar for the pleasure of the patrons. You couldn’t hear what he was playing because the solid-body guitar, without amplification, had no resonance. But when he came to my table, I leaned in and could make out the brilliance of his improvisation. To this day I have no idea why Jaco had decided to serenade the diners with a free and inaudible concert, but that was the charm of life at the Gramercy.
