They're Playing Our Song

by Carole Bayer Sager

  I didn’t say anything to Melissa at the time. I was never very good at confrontation.

  By now we were well into the era of the singer-songwriter: Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Carole King, Phoebe Snow, Paul Simon, and so many others. I know Melissa wanted to be a part of that group, and I tried to rationalize it by thinking that was why she couldn’t afford to acknowledge needing a writing partner.

  Neither Melissa nor I could have written the songs we wrote together with anyone else. The two of us tapped into issues women were facing, and because of that our songs touched many women going through their own struggles. It’s obviously gratifying when someone tells you, “Your songs helped me through the most difficult time of my life,” and I heard that more often about the songs Melissa and I wrote than about those that came from any other of my many collaborations. Those songs are part of my really becoming a songwriter and will always remain special to me. And while I still continued to write with Melissa, that night changed the course of my career. I decided that I was never going to be so dependent on any one collaborator again.

  I did eventually ask her why she hadn’t included me among the cast of thousands she’d thanked that night. “I’m so sorry, Carole,” she said earnestly. “I just forgot.”

  Ten

  I STARTED WRITING WITH Peter again. I was always happy sitting next to him at a piano. He was so clever, so edgy, and he made me feel that way, too. I imagined that if we lived in the Twenties we might have been guests at the Algonquin Round Table, listening to Dorothy Parker holding court. Looking back, one of the best songs I ever wrote with him was called “You and Me (We Wanted It All).”

  You and me we wanted it all

  Passion without pain

  Sunshine without rainy days

  We wanted it all ways

  You and me

  We reached for the sky

  The limit was high

  Never giving in

  Certain we could win that prize

  I should have seen it in your eyes

  Frank Military, then at Chappell Music, played the song for Frank Sinatra (they had a friendship that went far back), and he said he would hold it for his next album.

  Frank Sinatra wanted to record our song! To a songwriter, Sinatra was one rung under God. He was a legend. (I can hear Peter saying, “Thank you, Carole, for pointing that out to us.”) I’m sure every writer has their own list of who, in a perfect world, would record their songs. Mine had Sinatra right at the top, along with Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Michael Jackson, Steve Perry, Michael McDonald, Phil Collins, and Ray Charles, to name some of the greatest talents.

  I remember the day—many years later—when I realized every one of the top ten names on my list had actually recorded at least one of my songs. That was a really good day.

  But back to Frank. One year passed. Two years, and still no album. How do you take back a song from Frank Sinatra? It sounds like a very bad idea. We waited. And waited. Since he cowrote it, Peter felt entitled to do a version on his own record, but we continued to wait for Frank before offering it to anyone else. Finally, Frank kept his word and recorded it. The crazy thing is, as proud as I was that Frank Sinatra had recorded a song of mine, I liked Peter’s version better. It felt more honest.

  One day he told me he had played our song “More Than I Like You” for Liza. She liked it and wanted us to be there while she recorded it. I met Peter a few days later at the Columbia Records studio, where Liza, who was already in the booth, came out to say hi to both of us. She was so friendly to me I had to remind myself that we hadn’t met before.

  She spoke in her breathy broken sentences. “Petey, I’m so glad you and Carole are here. You can both help me make this a big hit.” Did Liza Minnelli have hits, like on the charts? I wondered. Well, she did make standards, but with great songs like “New York, New York” and “Cabaret.” I might point out even I knew “More Than I Like You” wasn’t close to a great song.

  Standing in the rain

  Waiting for a train

  There’s got to be someplace it’s going to

  I really don’t like trains

  But I think I like them

  More than I like you

  At this point in the writing process, I started laughing. Funny song, yes. Hit song, no. But here we were. Liza went back into the booth to do another take. I watched and listened and was thoroughly enjoying myself. Liza was emoting in typical Liza style—big gestures, hands flying. I couldn’t imagine what she could do on stage that she wasn’t doing in that booth. When she finished her take, I applauded. “Great,” I said. I was a fan.

  “Should I do another, or was that it?”

  Before I could say anything, Peter said, “I’d do another if I were you. Watch your pitch.” And to me he said, “Close your eyes on this one. Performing is her genius. Don’t look at her, just listen.”

  Obediently I kept my eyes closed like I was playing hide-and-seek. She began to sing. Uh-oh. Oh my, I thought. Peter had a point.

  “I better get in that booth,” he said. Eventually he pieced together a performance.

  PETER AND I WERE writing a lot together. I knew that if the songs were good, he would record them and they would serve as excellent demos for other artists who would mine his albums for material.

  Without making any particular effort to target her, we wrote Melissa’s second big hit, “Don’t Cry Out Loud.”

  Don’t cry out loud

  Just keep it inside

  Learn how to hide your feelings

  Fly high and proud

  And if you should fall

  Remember you almost had it all

  A note about this song. It was Peter who had the title, and I, who had the ability to shift into whatever the song required, wrote the lyric around his title. For years after, when I would hear it, I would question if that was how I really felt. I mean, didn’t I really believe in sharing my feelings? Letting people know how I really feel? Why else would I be writing this book? The lyric is the antithesis of a memoir, and yet I wrote it. With Peter.

  I was told that Melissa was reluctant to record it. Maybe she thought as I did, or maybe it was because she didn’t write it with me. I know she didn’t like that Clive Davis was adamant about having her sing it. Clive was an executive who was passionate about his artists, and he thought he knew exactly how their careers should progress and what songs they should record. (His greatest pride while at Arista would come a number of years later when he discovered and signed Whitney Houston as a teenager and helped mold her stratospheric career.)

  Meanwhile, I wasn’t fully grasping what a performer Peter was becoming. He honed his craft at Reno Sweeney, a small Village club in the Seventies that had a cool and eclectic following. His outfits were becoming more and more outrageous: red sequined jumpsuits replaced jeans and a tee. His gestures were getting bigger—he jumped up and draped his body across the piano while he sang—and so were his venues. He could never come on stage on a camel (and later an elephant) at Reno Sweeney, but he could and did, flamboyantly, at Radio City Music Hall, where he also did high kicks with the Rockettes (he was a really wonderful dancer, very smooth), and he bantered with the audience as though they were old friends dishing the dirt.

  But watching his bigger-than-life performance, I still saw him as the intimate songwriter who, with only a piano, would let us in on his deepest secrets, reminding us what a really good storyteller he was.

  I lived through his stories, but I didn’t live his stories. Unlike Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, we never shared the same experiences. I was the one he told his experiences to. He would regale me with his dangerous nights at Studio 54, so high on Quaaludes yet still dancing till dawn with the gorgeous guy he found that night, the guy who was gone in the bright morning sun.

  I soaked in these stories, but I had none of my own to share in turn. Except for loving taking a Quaalude, not to dance on but before bedtime to fall asleep. I was prob
ably the only person in New York City in the Seventies using this pill as prescribed by my doctor, to induce sleep.

  Peter loved champagne. I could only toast him with a Tab because I was too frightened to drink alcohol knowing my bedtime sleeping pill awaited me each night. He was trying to inhale every sensual, sexual moment of the decadent Seventies, and I watched lovingly from a ringside table at the intimate club, glad to hear our songs sung by him night after night. He never failed to introduce me, and while remaining seated, I took in the applause of the packed room. And that, for me—especially if I’d taken a Valium—was as close to being part of the Swinging Seventies as I got.

  One night after Reno’s, Peter and I went uptown to grab a burger at P.J. Clarke’s. Leaning over their famous red-checkered tablecloths, we got a chance to talk.

  “Honey, I’ve met someone. I can’t believe it!” he said. “I’m crazy about him. I can’t wait for you to meet him. You’ll love him. He’s gorgeous, and he’s so sweet, with such a good heart. Not at all the kind I’m used to. I think I might actually be in love.”

  “Oh, Peter, I’m so happy for you,” I said, sounding a bit like Wendy in Peter Pan.

  “So how’s your love life going?”

  “Oh, Peter,” I said, sounding now so much less like Wendy. “I think we hit a wall. This is not what I want. When I’m not writing I’m bored. I can’t talk to him and feel like we’re having a real conversation.”

  “Well, I told you he was handsome. I never told you he was the brightest bulb in the box. Honey, you’re smart. You need to be with people who get you.”

  “And he gets angry. And he hit me. Only once, and not hard, but still . . .”

  “That’s crossing a line,” Peter said. “Honey, why are you still in this marriage?”

  “ ’Cause unlike you, I hate to be alone. I mean, I like to be alone sometimes, but that’s when I’m with somebody. And I need to be with somebody.”

  My close friendship with Peter was one of the mainstays that got me through some difficult years. I was spending time in therapy trying to find the strength within me to leave my marriage but I would continue treading water until I could.

  MY MOTHER WAS NOT a big fan of Andrew’s, I think she thought him immature, but she loved Peter. She too went downtown to watch him perform. She was of the belief that whomever she loved felt the same way about her. My mom’s drinking, which could once have been described as social, had escalated into full-blown alcoholism. She spent many a day writing apology notes for her inexcusable behavior the night before, where she would hurl insults and fire cruel jokes at her diminishing number of friends.

  She decided to move to Florida for the winter. She called and invited Peter and me to come over while she was packing because she had a few items she thought he might like. Peter said, “Let’s go see what she has for me.” On entering her apartment, Peter saw my mother in her full alcoholic state for the first time.

  “Here,” she said to Peter, while carrying three purses out of her bedroom. “You want any of these?” They were three big satchel-like bags. He dismissed two of them but liked the Gucci one she was offering. “Oh, thank you, Anita, this one is lovely.”

  “Don’t try and return it,” she said. “It’s fake. But no one’s ever guessed it.” She was now flying through the apartment, singing off-key to Judy at Carnegie Hall, and reentered with a bunch of scarves.

  “Oh, those are beautiful, Anita. Why would you want to give them away?”

  “I’m not, and don’t put your hands on them. They’re coming with me.” She launched into an alcoholic rant about how I never had time for her and so she was getting the hell out of New York. She was completely out of control, slurring her insults as she was forcing more and more things into her already overstuffed suitcase. Months later, Peter told me he wrote in his journal that night, “The miracle is not that Carole Bayer Sager is a really good songwriter. The miracle is she can put one foot in front of the other.”

  It would be another year before my mother returned from Florida and found her way to an AA meeting in New York. I am proud to say that through her many illnesses that were to follow, she never picked up another drink for the rest of her life. I still have her thirty-five-year sobriety chip in my drawer.

  Eleven

  DURING THIS TIME I got a call from Albert Hammond, a young Englishman from Gibraltar who’d had a huge hit a few years earlier with his song “It Never Rains in Southern California.” He had a melody that he needed a lyric for, but the guy he usually worked with was nowhere to be found and he needed the song immediately for a record he was making. Chappell had sent him my way.

  “Why don’t you come over and play it for me?” I told him. “If I feel I can do something with it, I’ll write it with you.” Within a few hours Albert was standing at my door. He was a nice-looking, curly-haired young man who spoke with a Spanish accent, and he cut right to the chase. He took out his guitar and, with the enthusiasm of a child, began singing nonsense syllables to his untitled melody.

  I had to admit it was very catchy. I had never written with anyone who played the guitar before, and I felt it brought out a whole different kind of lyric in me. There was something about a guitar that suggested “country” to my ear rather than “pop.” I always associated country songs with stories, so without trying to, I immediately began to hear words that told a story rather than concentrated on feelings. It wasn’t my story, but it felt kind of right.

  I wrote the lyric so quickly that I dismissed it as unimportant. Less than two hours after arriving, Albert packed up his guitar and left with this song:

  When I need you

  I just close my eyes and I’m with you

  And all that I so want to give you

  Is only a heartbeat away

  That was it. Thanks, let’s do it again. Great, see you around. Done.

  “When I Need You” was the title track of Albert’s 1976 album, but it wasn’t released as a single. Richard Perry loved the song and produced it with Leo Sayer, a new, clear-voiced artist out of England who had just had a big hit with “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing.” His version of “When I Need You” went to Number One on the UK singles chart in February 1977, after three of his earlier singles had stalled at number 2. It shot to Number One on the Billboard Hot 100 in May 1977 and became a worldwide hit, topping the charts all over Europe and in Australia. It was my second Number One record and my biggest copyright to date, despite my dismissiveness of it when we wrote it.

  Unfortunately, a piece of that melody Albert had come to me needing lyrics for was very similar to a melody written by Leonard Cohen, for his song “Famous Blue Raincoat,” and he sued us. When the song was published, instead of “music by Albert Hammond, lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager,” the credit attributed music and lyrics to the both of us, so we were both legally party to the claim.

  I wasn’t going to get into a thing with Albert. Maybe he wrote a line here or there in the lyric and maybe I sang a little phrase in the melody, so I just asked Harold to settle it and split with Albert whatever percentage he worked out with Leonard Cohen. I was too embarrassed to admit that not only had I never heard his record but I had no idea who Leonard Cohen was. I was not, as you might have surmised by now, an “underground” type.

  BY 1976 PETER ALLEN was spending more and more time in LA, getting ready to record his first album for A&M Records. He asked me to come out and do some writing with him. The New York music scene had turned very punk, and a number of New York writers were migrating to Los Angeles, where there seemed to be more opportunities, and I wanted to be part of it all. The question was, how was I going to get there?

  If you’re a generally fearful person, being afraid of flying is pretty much a given. Whatever plane I was on was surely the one that wasn’t going to make it.

  This fear began, as did so many others, when I was quite young. When I was eleven, my family flew to California for my cousin Trina’s wedding. Back in the Fifties, nonstop cross-coun
try flights were rare, and the trip could take as long as ten hours, instead of today’s five or six. I was seated next to my mother when the plane hit turbulence. I looked to her for reassurance, maybe even for a comforting touch. Instead I detected a distinct look of terror in her eyes as she gave me a little push away, said loudly, “Okay, everybody’s on their own now,” and proceeded to sink deeper into her own fear. The next moment the turbulence stopped and my mother was laughing with the stewardess (yes, that’s what they were called back then) about something or other, but she’d left her terror safely with me. I would hold it close for a long time to come.

  I had once driven to California with Toni Wine, and it took forever. There’s a point where you just want to be there, and you’re not, and here’s the news flash: you won’t be there tomorrow, either. Or the next day. But no, don’t take a five-hour flight.

  So driving was out of the question. The railroad! There’s an idea. Not in the sky but faster than a car. When I told my mother I was thinking of taking the train, she said, “I’d rather die in a plane crash than with a hot piece of steel up my ass.” I couldn’t agree. Even if there was, God forbid, a train wreck, there is a chance you could walk, or more likely limp, away, even with that hot piece of steel. Falling 38,000 feet, not a prayer. The train it would be!

  You could get from New York to California, as long as you didn’t mind changing trains in Chicago with a six-hour stopover. I certainly didn’t want to spend three and a half days alone. What would I do with just me? I knew my old friend Carole Pincus (now Carole Childs) was desperate to be in the music business. She did have a very good ear for what was a hit, and she was much more passionate about a possible job in pop music than remaining in her uninspiring job in New York’s Garment District. I called her.