by Paul Shaffer
Room service was superb. The hamburger was excellent, the fries crispy and salted to my exact taste. When I caught cold, the house doctor was there in a flash, happy to prescribe whatever antibiotics were needed. The doorman would fetch my medicine from the drugstore. I looked forward to getting sick.
Riding the elevator was always an adventure. One evening the door opened and there was Debbie Harry. She told me that she’d decided to live in the hotel. Passing through the lobby, I saw Paul Butterfield at the bar. I stopped to say hello. We struck up a friendship that resulted in my playing on his last album.
“Paul,” he said to me, “I finally understand the blues. The blues puts a hurtin’ on your heart. Man, I have an ulcer, so I eat nothing but sausage and peppers. I need eight hours of sleep a night, so I never get more than two. I should avoid stimulants of all kinds, so I seek out every stimulant I can find. Paul, I’ve got the blues.”
No doubt, the Gramercy had a strong dose of the blues. But those blues could be chased away by the merriest and most unexpected circumstances. There was, for instance, the time that my queen Ronnie Spector and her husband Jonathan came to visit me in my room. We got happy on more than a few drinks and, on a mere whim, rushed down to the bar, where I sat at the out-of-tune upright piano and accompanied Ronnie as she sang every last one of her Spector-style hits. It was magic. People rushed into the bar, gathered around us, and, singing “Be My Baby” and “Baby, I Love You” with Ronnie, had the time of their lives.
My New York life would take strange turns. There would be ups and downs, changes I could never have anticipated, hits and flops, anxieties and ecstasies, but no matter the emotional weather, I could always find a modicum of peace in my little two-room suite in the back of the seedy Gramercy Park Hotel at the foot of Lexington Avenue in New York City.
Chapter 24
Catherine Vasapoli
At this juncture in my narrative, I’d like to introduce the love of my life, my wife-to-be. Our romance, which continues to this day, has been a circuitous but blessed journey. I must accept blame for those obstacles that blocked our path to the altar. You see, I was defiantly and passionately committed to the status of bachelorhood for at least another dozen years. Why would anyone marry before age forty? That was my point of view. Cathy saw it differently.
The Cathy/Paul saga starts in 1977 with a simple letter. Cathy, who was working as a receptionist at Good Morning America, wrote me a fan letter, saying that she’d seen me on SNL and thought I seemed like a nice guy and that she appreciated my talent. She didn’t enclose a phone number, so there was no way to get in touch with her. Later, she pointed out that I could have called GMA. Perhaps.
Then Hugh Hefner came to New York. Inadvertently, Hef got me and Cathy together. Here’s how it happened:
When Hef hosted SNL, he wanted to sing. I taught him “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.” Cute idea. During rehearsal, his assistant came running in every two minutes. “Have enough Pepsi, Hef? Is your Pepsi cold?” After downing a half dozen frosty Pepsis, Hef managed to learn the song and we were ready to go. But when he sang during the actual performance, he got two bars ahead of the band. No one seemed to mind. We were too busy thinking about the after-party, to be hosted by Hef at his New York Playboy Club.
It was at that very party that a gorgeous brunette walked up to me and said, “I’m Cathy Vasapoli. I’m the one who wrote you that letter.”
“That was so sweet of you,” I said.
We spoke briefly, but because I had been working nonstop for the past fourteen hours, my eyes were half closed. I wanted to talk to her more, but my concentration was waning. Someone else came up to me to say hello, and when I turned back to look for Cathy, she was gone.
Happily, she reappeared a few weeks later after an SNL show. She came with her friend Hal Wilner, who had been her classmate at NYU. Hal would later be hired by SNL to pick out the prerecorded music for the sketches. He turned it into an art form. I knew him from my work as a studio musician with his mentor, producer Joel Dorn.
After we all chatted, Hal went off, leaving me and Cathy alone. She invited me to her tiny studio apartment on Gay Street in the Village (“Gay Street that Fey Street,” in the words of Tom Leopold). We spoke long into the night, but that was it. I was still a shy kinda guy. A week later I invited her to lunch. I was drawn to her upbeat personality and positive energy.
“I’m doing a studio session with Barry Manilow in an hour,” I said. “Wanna come along?”
“I really can’t,” she said.
Later she told me that she adored Manilow and was dying to come to the session but didn’t want to seem like a hanger-on.
Slowly but surely she became my girl. When she saw my two-room setup at the Gramercy Park Hotel, she exclaimed, “My God, I didn’t think there was anyone in New York who had this kind of space! And it’s all for you?”
My idea of a romantic weekend was to take Cathy up to the Concord Hotel to see Buddy Hackett, the bluest comic in the Catskills. His jokes were covered in excrement. Before checking out, I met the hotel’s in-house rabbi.
“You’ll come back next weekend,” he said. “It’s singles night. I guarantee, you’ll get laid.”
“Rabbi,” I said, “I’m involved.”
“Boychik” he said, “I’ve been involved with my wife for forty years, but that doesn’t mean I’m getting laid.”
Back at SNL, I was busy collaborating with the writers on special musical material. But I also had a comedic ace up my sleeve that I was ready to play.
While I was still in Hollywood, I had taken a call from Don Kirshner. “Paul,” he said, “I’ve decided to go on camera on Rock Concert. The show needs an ID man. Maybe I’m stiff, I’m not stiff, whatever—Sullivan was stiff, but it was his show, he had the gig. I’m taping my first intros today, and you just gotta be there.”
Next thing I knew, I was on the soundstage to witness an amazing transformation: This fast-talking Brooklyn record man went from his usual rat-a-tat machine-gun pitch—“forget-about-track-record-with-the-Sedakas-and-the-Carole Kings-we-never-looked-at-a-contract”—to a scared-stiff discourse slowed down from 45 rpm to 33⅓ and delivered in a trembling voice, eyes wide open.
“I’m Don Kirshner and welcome to Rock Concert. It was only two years ago, in 1975, when Dee Anthony called me on a kid named Peter Frampton. This kid has the potential to be another Bobby Darin, another Bobby Rydell, another Bobby Vee. Today, thanks to the wonderful guidance of Abe Lastfogel and the fabulous William Morris Agency, Frampton has the biggest-selling album in rock history with a Frampton Comes Alive. I now present to you—and my wife Sheila loves him too—the fabulous Peter Frampton.”
I was transfixed. This metamorphosis from slick to sludge was seared into my memory. So when I returned to SNL, I knew I was carrying a killer impersonation in my back pocket. But how to use it? One day it became clear.
Michael O’Donoghue had created his own on-camera persona named Mr. Mike, a morbid creep who told demented bedtime stories. Brian Doyle-Murray came up with an idea: The Mr. Mike and Tina Turner Revue, in which Mr. Mike, holding a guitar like Ike and echoing Tina’s spoken introduction to “Proud Mary,” starts telling his twisted tale, nice …and slow. Then Garrett Morris, in drag as Tina, picks up the tempo and sings “Proud Mary” at a ferocious pace.
The premise was great, but we needed a way to set it up and explain it to the audience.
“Kirshner!” I said. “I can do him. I can introduce the whole thing as Don Kirshner.”
“Give me a taste,” said Brian.
I froze appropriately, and with eyes wide open began to recite, “Mr. Mike and Tina Turner have been an exciting musical entity since they first appeared at the Crossroads Café in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Today, after having signed with Morty Shaffner and his fabulous staff at the IGF race-oriented agency, they continue to entertain audiences all over this great land of ours. Please welcome, and Sheila loves them too, the Mr. Mike and Tina Turner Revue.
”
“Paul,” said Brian, “you’re on.”
My Kirshner on network television became bigger than his syndicated version of himself.
Meanwhile, Belushi was complaining about his bee costume. Belushi hated putting on the bee costume. It weighed a ton and made him sweat like a hornet in heat.
“I hate these bee sketches,” said Belushi.
“Lorne loves them,” said Aykroyd.
“Fuck Lorne,” John exclaimed. “This is my last one.”
“Wait a minute,” Danny interjected. “I’ve got an idea. What if we get the band to put on bee costumes, and we all play Slim Harpo’s ‘I’m a King Bee.’ I’ll play harp and you’ll sing the shit out of it.”
“How’s it go?” asked John.
Danny started singing the lyrics.
“Let’s do it,” said John.
Next thing I know I’m running around the SNL set in a bee costume. I understand why Belushi rails against this thing. It stings. It disorients me to the point that during rehearsal I wander into a Gilda/Garrett Morris sketch in my bee getup.
“What are you doing here?” asks Gilda.
“I don’t know,” I say.
When we do “I’m a King Bee” on the air, everyone loves it. Belushi is sensational as a buzzed-up blues singer. In the middle of the song, he does a full flip and lands flat on his back. The audience licks it up like honey.
Now Danny and John are warming up the SNL audience as two blues singers, not bees but two guys dressed in dark hats, dark ties, dark suits, and dark glasses.
“Why the dark suits and dark glasses?” I ask.
“I was hipped to the look by Fred Kaz,” says John, “the beatnik musical director at Second City in Chicago. He’s the cat who told me that junkies always wore straight-looking outfits so they could pass. Check out William Burroughs.”
Shortly thereafter, Lorne is featuring the singing duo, not as a warmup act, but as on-air performers. Not only that, I get to introduce them on camera in the guise of Don Kirshner. I give it the slowed-down, frozen-stiff, tanned, gold-chained, full-nasal Brooklyn brogue treatment of my show-biz friend and say…
“Today, thanks to the brilliant management of Myron S. Katz and the Katz Talent Agency, these two talented performers are no longer just a legitimate blues act. But with careful shaping and the fabulous production of Lee Solomon, who’s a gentleman, and his wonderful organization, they have managed to become a viable commercial product. So now, let’s hear it for these two brothers from Joliet, Illinois. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you …”
Chapter 25
The Blues Brothers!
The thing caught on.
Belushi and Aykroyd started showing up at local clubs to try out their act. They were a hit everywhere they appeared, especially at the Lone Star Café, where blues stars like Dr. John and Charles Brown often played. Before I knew it, they had a record deal. I figured they’d use a group like Roomful of Blues or Duke Robillard to back them.
“We want you,” Belushi said to me one day at SNL rehearsals.
“To play piano on the record?” I asked.
“No, to be our band’s musical director.”
I was stunned. I was delighted. There was only one problem: we didn’t have a band.
“We’ll put one together,” said John. “You and me.”
A word on the great Belushi: I loved him. We called him “Bear Man” because he was big, hairy, and cuddly. John had a heart of gold. He grew up in Wheaton, Illinois, just outside Chicago, and had played drums in a rock band. His first love was rock. One of his favorite songs was “Kind of a Drag” by the Buckinghams.
Of course he could do Cocker, and his version of Ray Charles, channeled through Ludwig von Beethoven, wearing dark glasses and sniffing snuff, ranks with the greatest skits of Jackie Gleason and Sid Caesar. But John wasn’t yet a blues fan. Danny was the blues maven and had a tremendous influence on John in that regard. He played records for Belushi and schooled him on the greats like Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters, and Howlin’ Wolf.
When John went off to do Animal House in Eugene, Oregon, he met Curtis Salgado, a great harmonica player and blues singer who was the vocalist for Robert Cray’s brilliant band. Curtis befriended John and became his next major blues mentor. They spent weeks together digging deep into the treasure chest of twelve-bar beauties.
Back in New York, John and I began discussing the personnel of the band. Steve Jordan, the SNL drummer, was an easy choice. Belushi and I both loved him. The big decision was the lead guitarist. If John was to be Mick, he needed a Keith. Belushi needed a killer guitarist to punctuate his vocals. Through John’s rock-and-roll connections he learned about Mike Landau, a brilliant young musician. When we jammed with him, I was impressed but felt we needed someone absolutely drenched in the blues.
“Oh man,” said John, “let’s hire him. We need someone now.”
“I’m hip, John,” I said. “Mike’s great, but I just don’t think we can compromise when it comes to an authentic balls-out blues guitarist.”
John thought long and hard. “Okay,” he said, “we gotta go see Doc.”
Doc was Doc Pomus, the ultimate blues guru. Once a blues singer himself, Doc was one of the great writers of blues and rhythm-and-blues and the reigning authority on all things blue. We caught up with Doc at Kenny’s Castaways, a downtown club where the blues cats crawled. When we explained the situation, Doc had two words for us: “Matt Murphy.”
I didn’t know Murphy, but when the pope gives his blessing, you gotta eat the cracker.
“So Doc,” I asked, “he’s the real deal?”
“Real as rain.”
We hired him on the spot. And Doc was right. Matt wailed. “Now we need another guitarist,” I told John. “A rhythm guitarist.”
That’s when Tom Malone, who had come aboard as trombonist/baritone saxist, mentioned that Steve Cropper, the fabulous guitarist of Stax fame—the guy who had backed Otis Redding and cowritten “Midnight Hour”—was available. What’s more, Duck Dunn was part of the package. Duck was the bassist from that same Stax era and, along with Cropper, a member of Booker T. and the MG’s. With Steve on guitar and Duck on bass, I knew we’d be grooving like mothers.
“We gotta get these guys,” I told Belushi.
Belushi hadn’t heard of them. I quickly filled him in on their pedigrees. Danny, who was a Stax fan, backed me up.
“This is a big break for us,” he told John.
John concurred, and once we rounded out the horns with Lou Marini and Tom Scott on saxes and Alan Rubin on trumpet, we were set.
Atlantic Records had offered us the deal. The first record was to be culled from a nine-night stand we were set to play, opening for Steve Martin, then at the top of his stand-up game, at the Universal Amphitheater in L.A.
The next step was picking tunes: Danny, John, and I spent a week at John’s house on Morton Street in the Village. Our goal was to listen to blues records and find songs that would work for us. But that didn’t quite happen. Animal House had just opened, and John was getting calls and kudos from everywhere. This was, in fact, the week that John became a superstar. He couldn’t be contained.
“We gotta stay here and listen to music,” said Danny, doing his best to keep his pal focused.
“The Allman Brothers are playing Central Park,” said John. “Let’s go.”
And with that, he was gone. Ultimately, though, we got Belushi’s attention long enough for all of us to select killer material like “Hey, Bartender,” “Shotgun Blues,” and “Flip, Flop and Fly.”
Then it was rehearsal time.
From the first second we hit the first groove, we felt the power. The combination of these musicians from disparate backgrounds worked in a way none of us had anticipated. We were stoked.
“The songs are good,” said Steve Cropper, perhaps the greatest rhythm guitar in the history of rhythm, “but shouldn’t we do more than old blues?”
“Yeah,” said D
uck Dunn. “Don’t we want some hits?”
“What would you suggest?” I asked.
“Some straight-up soul,” said Cropper.
“‘Soul Man’ would work great,” they both chimed.
“Soul Man” was the hit song that Isaac Hayes and David Porter had written for Sam and Dave. I agreed that it would be a perfect cover for the Blues Brothers. Steve and Duck, who had played on the original, taught Belushi how to sing it.
Next thing we knew we were winging our way to L.A. for the live recording gig. After our dress rehearsal, John’s manager, the venerable Bernie Brillstein, approached me.
“Look, Paul,” he said, “I hate to tell a client what to do with his act and I’d be the last one to say anything to John, but that intro number is all wrong.”
The opening number was a blues shuffle.
“What do you suggest?” I asked, somewhat defensively.
“Something that won’t put the audience to sleep.”
As a result of the intervention of Bernie, a non-musician if there ever was one, we came up with a killer opening number: a heart-stopping lightning-fast “Can’t Turn You Loose” while, in the wings, Danny made his dramatic announcement:
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Universal Amphitheater. Well, here it is the late 1970s going on 1985. You know, so much of the music we hear today is preprogrammed electronic disco. We never get a chance to hear master bluesmen practicing their craft anymore. By the year 2006 the music known as the blues will exist only in the classical records department of your local public library. So tonight, ladies and gentlemen, while we still can, let us welcome from Rock Island, Illinois, the blues band of Joliet Jake and Elwood Blues—the Blues Brothers!”
