They're Playing Our Song

by Carole Bayer Sager

  Jackpot, I thought. A songwriter who wants to and should record. If she can write melodies, this might be a very good thing.

  “Well, let’s try to write a song together,” I said. “It could be fun.”

  She took out her date book and flipped through the pages. “I have a commercial to do on Tuesday, but are you free Wednesday?”

  If I had something, I’d have canceled it. “Wednesday’s great. Why don’t you come to me?” I said. “I’ve got a good piano and if you want something to eat—”

  “No, I’ll be coming from a lunch meeting, but we can have some tea.” A coffee drinker all my life, I instantly agreed.

  SHE WAS RIGHT ON time. Two fifteen and she was at the door. “Hi,” I said, “come on in.”

  “Hi-i-i-i.” She looked around. “Well, this is a beautiful apartment. It’s so . . . grown-up.”

  I laughed, wishing I had some idea what being an adult felt like. “I’m excited to try to write something,” I said. I motioned for her to sit down at the piano, but instead she sat herself on the sofa. “Why don’t we have that tea we talked about first?”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “What kind do you like? I think I have Lipton or chamomile.”

  “Chamomile, please. I try and stay away from caffeine. It makes me feel exiled from myself.”

  I got up, hoping I knew where Andrew had put the tea bags in the kitchen cabinet. I wasn’t sure if I ever drank tea in this apartment. Happily, I found them, right next to what was either loose green tea or some of Andrew’s grass.

  I called from the kitchen, “Do you want milk? Or sugar?”

  “Do you have any agave?”

  Agave? “No, I don’t think I do.”

  “It’s really the best one, especially for singers, because the nectar coats your throat and soothes the vocal cords.”

  “I’ll get some tomorrow,” I said. “Meanwhile, I do see some honey.”

  “Okay. Just no sugar.”

  I brought us each a cup of chamomile tea and sat down on the other end of the sofa so I could see her better. She looked like a flower child, pensive, with a semi-smile on her face. “Life is so mysterious,” she said. “Don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Of course it is.”

  “I mean, is it coincidence that we’re here together, when a week ago we were strangers, dancing through the universe without the consciousness that we would even meet. That’s what I mean by mysterious.”

  I noticed that she had an odd way of expressing herself. I tried to steer the conversation toward what we were both there for. “What kinds of things do you like to write about?”

  “Well, love, of course,” she said. “All sorts of love. Unrequited love, fated . . . The heavens, the struggle . . .”

  “I can relate to that,” I said with a sort of laugh. “You have no idea how hard I work on myself. I’m in therapy, learning a lot.”

  “So am I,” she said. “Not in therapy—I don’t think I need therapy—but I do go inward a lot on my own, searching for each invisible dot that connects me to myself.”

  Very different from Peter, I thought.

  “I know what you mean about finding yourself,” she said. “It’s harder for a woman, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I do. But I’ve never felt it on a personal level in music.”

  “I get a lot of answers through meditating. And a lot of visuals for songs. Close your eyes,” she said. “Can’t you feel the sadness and the loneliness, the subtleties of silence as a source of our wholeness?”

  I now had no idea what she was talking about. “I’m not sure I’m following you,” I said.

  “You know, in silence we can feel the disappointment in our own hearts. It’s always within the darkness that we can taste the loneliness. And then we emerge, acknowledging ourselves as women. I love when I feel the empowerment of becoming whole.”

  “Maybe we could write a song about that,” I said. “You know, finding ourselves as women.”

  “Good idea,” she agreed, then smiled. “This tea is just lovely.”

  I wondered if I should have put a little Dexedrine in it to get her moving. I was very goal oriented, while Melissa was now sinking deeper into the sofa, wallowing in getting to know each other. “Let’s talk about marriage,” she said. “Are you married? I am.”

  “Yes, I got married about a year ago. But I’ve known him for a long time. Do you think we should go to the piano now?”

  Ignoring my suggestion, Melissa went on about her marriage and the challenges of being married to someone who was managing her. I now imagined a giant crane swooping in and lifting her from the sofa and depositing her in her maroon skirt onto the piano bench where I wanted her. I walked over there by myself and sat down.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I just got so comfortable here talking with you. You’re so easy to talk to. It’s good.” She came over and sat down beside me. She started to play chord progressions, and some little figures with her right hand, and then some more chords. She hummed a little, and I liked what I was hearing. She played something else.

  “What did you just play before that? I liked that. Go back. Play that again.” Play that again! How many times in my life have I uttered that phrase? She played it again. “That’s great! I hear words! Maybe like, ‘I wake up and see / the light of the day shining on me.’ ”

  She sang it. Finally, there it was: that voice. That voice I fell in love with and waited for. That voice that made all of this foreplay worthwhile. I was in heaven. I was floating right next to her. We finished the first verse together.

  I wake up and see

  The light of the day

  Shining on me,

  Make my own time; it’s mine to spend

  Think to myself, my own best friend,

  It’s not so bad all alone,

  Coming home to myself again

  I was immediately in love with what we called “Home to Myself.” I certainly didn’t feel the words I wrote at the time, but I hoped I was writing this lyric to my future self who would actually feel this way.

  I was learning something here. In order to be a good lyricist with certain personalities—particularly with singer-songwriters—I would have to sublimate whoever I was. This was the easy part, since I was never certain anyway. I often felt almost chameleonlike in my ability to fit myself into Melissa’s life, or anyone else’s I was writing with—to morph into what they needed me to be. Maybe not the healthiest quality for day-to-day living, but in my collaborations, my adaptability turned out to be a real asset. I realized I could bond with anyone, which allowed them to feel co-ownership of my lyrics. You had to do that with someone like Melissa, who wanted to be Joni Mitchell or Laura Nyro.

  Home to Myself became the title of Melissa’s first album. It meant a lot to both of us. We had cowritten seven out of the ten songs together (that’s a whole lot of tea and agave). I was so invested in its success that it honestly felt like it was our album. We were thrilled when Larry Uttal decided to release it on his label, Bell Records (soon to become Arista Records, helmed by Clive Davis). Though there was no hit off of that album, as for many singer-songwriters of the time who did not crack the Top 40, there was FM radio. And a music press that listeners really took seriously. The right review so mattered in those days in a way it would not today. Plus, record companies let artists have a few albums to “grow on.”

  Home to Myself established Melissa as a new artist to be very aware of. It was well reviewed and set her up for the records that would make her a star.

  Nine

  ONE NIGHT ANDREW TOLD me he wanted me to write under the name Carole Sager.

  “I can’t do that, Andrew. I’m already sort of known in the music business. It would be like starting over.”

  “Well, then add my name. Be Carole Bayer Sager. It’s the least you can do. You wanted my name in marriage. Why wouldn’t you want to use it when you write?” I was already having second thoughts about the viability of this marriag
e, but he was so adamant and I was so passive that I agreed. I find it just a little north of ironic that from the time we divorced in 1977 until today I have dragged around this “Sager” thing, which has had absolutely nothing to do with me for the past forty years and little enough back then. All it’s done is make me, particularly after my subsequent marriages, “The Girl with Too Many Names.” As Neil Simon pointed out while presenting me with an award one evening, “Carole Bayer Sager Bacharach Daly could have been one of the great law firms.” How could I have known that by the addition of that one little e to the end of Carol, I was unleashing what would eventually become a torrent of names that would become the brunt of many a jest over the years?

  Songwriting was the only truly right thing in my life. It was when I was my happiest. I loved my big new dual cassette player with slots for two tapes. I loved the sound of Melissa’s piano—it made me hear lyrics I would never have heard. I loved hearing melodies begin to form and the raw power of Melissa’s voice. I felt so good when I wrote, because all my fears were put on pause, the self-recriminations stopped, and the only sounds in my ear were music.

  Music saved my life and gave me life. It was where I allowed myself to feel fully alive, where it was safe to feel passion. As long as I stayed in that lane, I was protected from the frightening stories I would otherwise tell myself. And some very strong part of me whispered at every step of my musical career, Don’t fuck this up! This is where you live.

  THE FOLLOWING YEAR, MELISSA and I wrote “Midnight Blue.” My marriage was still in trouble, and I hoped Andrew would listen to it and make an effort to help us get whatever it was we had back on track. I guess, like my dummy in a ventriloquist act I had as a kid, I was letting my lyrics do the talking for me.

  And I think we can make it

  One more time

  If we try

  One more time for all the old times

  Midnight Blue

  Richard Perry was one of the hottest young music producers of the day, with Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” as his biggest credit, and I pretty much stalked him to get him to listen to our song. Finally, after I cornered him at an industry party, he agreed to listen to our demo.

  He summoned me to his suite at the Warwick Hotel on Fifty-Fourth Street. I was a nervous wreck as I knocked.

  “Uuuhh, hello,” Richard said with a slight stutter left over from his childhood, when it had been a true impediment for him.

  “Thank you so much for seeing me,” I said, starting to pull the demo out of the huge, soft, brown suede bag I carried at the time that opened like a hippo’s mouth. (I always kept a half dozen demos with me, just in case.) “I really appreciate your taking the time to listen.”

  Richard had a very long face, and his mouth was large even in proportion to the rest of it, with very big teeth crammed into it. But the same could sort of be said for Mick Jagger and Carly Simon, both sexy and great-looking in their own ways. He was also tall, which is something a short person always notices. He motioned to me to leave the demo in my bag.

  “Uuuhh,” he said in the deepest baritone, “before I listen”—he spoke very slowly and deliberately—“could you just come with me for a few moments while I resolve a problem? I just need to check out a couple of other suites.”

  “Haven’t you been here for a while?” I said. “I know I’ve been calling you for a week, which I apologize for, but I just so want you to hear—”

  “That’s all true,” he interrupted me, “but I don’t feel like I’m in the right room yet. I just want to have a few more choices.”

  Accompanied by a junior manager, we rode the elevator up and down and up again, looking at several suites, none very different from the one he was currently in. Finally, something about one of them inspired Richard to declare, “I think this one is perfect. Could someone have my things moved up here?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Perry, just give us a few minutes,” the manager said. “How much longer will you be staying with us?”

  “I go back to LA tomorrow,” he replied, then turned to me and said, “We’ll go back down and listen to your demo while they pull all this together.”

  Back in his soon-to-be ex-living room, I pulled out my demo once again. “Melissa Manchester, the girl I wrote the song with, is singing here,” I said, “and she wants to record it. She’s had two albums on Bell Records but hasn’t had a hit yet. And I was hoping if you liked it maybe you’d produce it.”

  “Let me listen.” He had almost a whole studio set up in his living room, which was a lot of stuff to move for just one more day. He took my tape but instead of putting it in his cassette player, he went into his bedroom and returned with a joint. He found the hotel matches, lit it, and took a really big toke. A quarter of the joint was missing by the time he exhaled and offered it to me. “Would you like some?”

  “No, thank you,” I said. I didn’t know what his rejection might feel like, and I preferred not to find out stoned.

  Once again, he picked up the demo and this time actually put it into his player, which was attached to two big speakers, on either end of the sofa, that he’d rented for his stay in New York. Wow, I thought, it sounds better than I ever heard it at home.

  When Richard finally listened, he really listened. It finished, he said, “Uuuhh,” and then started it again. I was a nervous wreck but thought the fact that he was playing it twice was encouraging. I was staring mesmerized at the little white cogs of the cassette as it played when he suddenly stopped it in the middle. Slowly and deliberately, with the slight stutter that was good-naturedly imitated throughout the industry, he said, “I . . . I . . . like it,” adding, “This song could be a big hit.”

  I was ecstatic.

  “I have a young producer who works for me, Vini Poncia, and I think he could make a really good record with Melissa as the artist. I’d executive produce it.”

  Basically all Vini and Melissa did was make a better-produced version of our original demo, but listing Richard Perry as executive producer gave the record much more credibility. He played it himself for Clive Davis, the head of Arista Records, who released it as a single.

  Clive, formerly the head of Columbia Records, was responsible for signing a breathtaking roster of talent: Laura Nyro, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Santana, Chicago, and Earth, Wind and Fire. Despite his huge success, he was asked to leave Columbia after being accused of using the company to bankroll his son’s bar mitzvah.

  After taking some time off to write his first autobiography, he then dissolved Bell Records and started Arista Records. Clive cleaned house of almost all of the Bell artists but decided to keep Melissa and Barry Manilow, and then went on to sign acts such as Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Eric Carmen, Air Supply, and Alicia Keys.

  It was the 1975 record simply titled Melissa that contained our first hit together and established Melissa as a real artist. “Midnight Blue” went to number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped its Easy Listening chart for weeks. We were both in heaven. I heard it on the radio all the time. It had been nine years since “A Groovy Kind of Love.” I had never considered quitting songwriting, but now I felt vindicated in my belief that I could write more than one hit.

  There was another song on the record, much lesser known, that meant just as much to me and contained one of my favorite lyrics written with Melissa. “This Lady’s Not Home Today” captured how trapped I felt by the demands of catering to Andrew’s large family and the odd assortment of friends he smoked and dealt grass with.

  Got a house on the hill

  And it’s constantly filled

  With a number of passing acquaintances

  But I’m tired and spent

  From all the friendships well meant

  And the rent’s getting high on my maintenance

  Now, that was a lyric I could connect with.

  IN 1976 MY DEAL with Metromedia was up, and my attorney Harold Orenstein made my first major publishing deal with Chappell Music, where Melissa was
signed. This allowed me to own 50 percent of the proceeds from my own songs, with the other half reverting back to me after ten years. Finally, after eleven years in the business, I was going to start receiving publishing income. Chappell paid me an advance for the right to publish all songs I wrote under the agreement, and I was thrilled to have half ownership of my own copyrights and to know eventually I would own them completely.

  Many of them could be found on Melissa’s fourth album, Better Days and Happy Endings, which included what I believe is the best song she and I wrote together, “Come In from the Rain.” We had developed a real flow in our working process. While we still had our obligatory warm-up conversations, either I’d become very used to them or Melissa simplified her language enough for me to have enjoyed them. I just accepted that this was the way we found the subjects for each of our songs. And while “Come In from the Rain” is written as though it is being sung to a close friend, I felt I could have been writing it to part of myself. Though never a huge hit, it was to become one of my most recorded songs: Liza Minnelli, Shirley Bassey, Barbara Cook, the Captain & Tennille, Rosemary Clooney, Diana Ross, and others all found something in it.

  Well, hello there, good old friend of mine

  You’ve been reaching for yourself for such a long time

  There’s so much to say, no need to explain

  Just an open door for you to come in from the rain

  Melissa was enjoying being a recording star, and I was enjoying being a key part of that success. She was booked at Carnegie Hall in December 1975 to do her first really big venue.

  I remember being there, excited, proud, and happy: her own concert, her own fans, in the exact place I’d first noticed her singing. It was what we’d worked so hard for. The legendary hall was packed, she sang beautifully, and she received a number of standing ovations, all on the songs we’d written together.

  Before her closing number, she introduced and thanked her band members, then went on to acknowledge all of the people who’d helped her achieve her success: her producers, her manager, her label head, her mother, her voice teacher . . . She was practically up to thanking the janitor when I realized she was not going to mention my name. I was shocked—more hurt than angry. I couldn’t believe that after all the time and the songs and my having championed her to anyone who would listen, and finally connecting her with Richard Perry, she never uttered a syllable of my name.