They're Playing Our Song

by Carole Bayer Sager

  “Yes. Well, Marty wants me to write something for his movie Middle Age Crazy, starring Ann-Margret. He needs a song about a marriage growing stale for a husband turning forty, in the throes of a midlife crisis. Do you want to try?”

  “Sure, let’s try.”

  Burt started to play piano with his signature odd rhythms, and I struggled to understand his unusual musical phrasing. He played something he liked. I couldn’t quite keep hold of it in my head. “Could you play that again?” I said. “I need to hear it a few more times to find some words that fit.”

  He played it again. As he liked his melody more and more, he played it louder and seemed to get lost in it. He was playing it for about ten minutes while I sat with my yellow legal pad and pencil trying different words—just writing them down, not saying any of them out loud yet. Burt’s melodies were more complicated than I was used to. I felt like they gave me very little room to fit enough words in to say something.

  I think he might have been startled when I finally said, “What about . . .”

  Hey you, Where did the time go?

  Never saw it passing by me

  You knew how to occupy me.

  It was like doing a New York Times crossword puzzle, and not just any one but the Saturday one, the hardest of the week. My words had to fit exactly into the melody Burt kept playing.

  I shyly put my few sentences on the music rack so he could see them. He read them, and then tried singing my words to his melody.

  “Hey, uh . . . This is great. Wow,” he said, nodding his head up and down like he’d just made a discovery. “You are really good . . . really good. I like that. Very good!” He was smiling at me, and I was glad I was pleasing him, and so very relieved that I had found a way to squeeze my lyrics into the small windows of his staccato beats. It was like playing jump rope as a kid. The beat of the rope does not change as it hits the pavement; you just have to find a way in. Burt’s melodies were locked. Unchangeable. My lyrics had to adapt themselves to unusual rhythmic phrasings.

  After working for two hours straight, Burt said, “Hey, I’m, uh, kind of hungry. Do you think your guy could make us some lunch?”

  “Oh, sure,” I said, calling Digby into the room. “What would you like to eat?”

  “Oh, I like hummus, do you have, um, hummus, and a few carrots you could cut up with it?” Digby wasn’t going to write it down, but when he saw Burt was still talking, he pulled out his little pad. “And, uh, do you have any fresh turkey?” That sexy voice could make ordering food sound exciting.

  “Yes, I do, Mr. Bacharach.”

  “Um, and do you have any multigrained bread that you could lightly toast for me?” Digby nodded.

  “And . . . and if you could put a little mustard, and a little mayo on the toast and some nice lettuce and tomato, I could have a sandwich. [Beat] And do you have any almonds?”

  Digby nodded again.

  “Can I get twelve of those, please, Digby?”

  He looked at me. “A dozen almonds every day,” he said. “Very important, very good for you . . .”

  He trailed off without ever explaining the benefits of daily almond intake. Wondering about their caloric content and having no idea what good they might do me, but feeling the need to catch up to Burt’s level of health, I told Digby, “Okay, I’ll take six with my rice cake. And you can put a little tuna on it. Without mayonnaise. And a Diet Coke.” I noticed Digby put away his pad before I ordered. This same boring lunch order was now on its third month. Occasionally, if I was feeling crazy, it switched to lean turkey with tomato. But Burt hadn’t quite finished yet.

  “And some bottled water, Digby. Room temperature, please.” And to me, “Have to hydrate. You don’t want to surprise it that way. And you should get rid of those Diet Cokes. Nothing fake.”

  I was starting to feel like Marvin and I, or Peter and I, or even Melissa and I once she finished her tea, could have written a whole song in the time that it took Burt to order his lunch. And that was just the beginning. Next came the eating. He sat down and very slowly savored his late-afternoon meal. I would come to learn this was a quickie compared to his complex breakfasts. Not one to linger over crumbs from a tasteless rice cake, my lunch was finished in six minutes and that was stretching it.

  By the time we finished “Where Did the Time Go” two days later, I felt like I had run a marathon. I had a renewed respect for Hal David, Burt’s lyricist for many years, for his remarkable ability to find words that fit Burt’s syncopated melodies and make them seem so effortless when in fact they were anything but. I barely knew him, but I so enjoyed studying his face and listening to his sexy voice that I didn’t care that this song took about fifteen times longer to complete than any song I’d ever written. Marty Kroft was happy with it, so I called Richard Perry. He was producing the Pointer Sisters and told us to come down and play it for him.

  Burt’s name, even in his hit-free period, still commanded extraordinary respect, even awe. This was a man who’d had more than fifty Top Forty hits in the Sixties. He was an iconic songwriter. “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” “This Guy’s in Love with You,” and for Dionne Warwick, “Always Something There to Remind Me,” “The Look of Love,” “Alfie,” “A House Is Not a Home,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” “Walk On By,” and so many others had made Burt a household name. So much so that CBS gave him his own television specials in the early Seventies. Burt was movie-star handsome in a laid-back California way, with a lazy, ready smile, and audiences loved seeing him on their TV screens.

  Richard listened to the song and said he would produce it with the Pointers and put it on their record and in the movie. Professionally, at least, we were off to a very good start.

  Burt and I continued to see each other. One Friday night I was invited to dinner at my friends Joyce and Neil Bogart’s home. Neil had founded Casablanca Records and his roster included Donna Summer and the Village People. Burt joined me, and at the party, we sat down and sang a few songs together. Neil loved what he heard and was excited by the picture of the two of us together.

  Polygram had just bought up Casablanca Records, and Neil got the idea that Burt and I should make a record together for the new label he was forming, Boardwalk Records. We would write all the songs, I would sing, and Burt would do all the orchestrations and the production. Neil had the concept of one song flowing into the next without ever stopping musically. He fell in love with his own idea and believed we would have a huge hit if we could deliver the romantically themed, intimate record that he envisioned. At his urging, we agreed to try.

  Twenty

  I THINK ONE OF the reasons Burt stopped having hits was because he was spending so much of his time performing instead of writing. He called me from the Diplomat Hotel in Miami Beach, where he was wrapping up a weeklong stand, to ask if I wanted to come down to his beach house in Del Mar for the weekend. By Friday I was a bag of nerves. We hadn’t yet slept together and we’d be together all weekend long. What would I wear to sleep in? Would I take off all of my makeup at bedtime or just some? How would I fare compared to Angie? The answer was, I wouldn’t. When he chose me, he was definitely going another way.

  I drove down to Del Mar, and Burt greeted me warmly. Showing me around his small, simply furnished home and the wide sandy beach outside its door, he seemed genuinely happy to see me. He said, “Come here, babe,” embraced me and deftly guided me to his piano bench. Oh, I thought, maybe he likes to make love at the piano. That could be really sexy.

  He sat down and pulled me down next to him.

  “Sit right here.” He kissed me. “I’ve been waiting for this all day.”

  “Oh,” I cooed, “that makes me so happy.”

  “I’ve been waiting all day,” he said again, “to play you this.” He turned to his piano and dove into a melody.

  I felt a pang of disappointment. I listened and wasn’t impressed, but clearly he
was. He was radiant when he turned toward me, put his arm around me, and whispered in my ear, “What do you think, baby?”

  At this moment pleasing him meant more to me than making the song better. “I think it’s good,” I said, “but I need to hear it again.”

  I could feel his excitement. Maybe not about me but about this melody he thought was so great. The closer he sat next to me on the bench and the more I could smell his aftershave, the more the melody was growing on me.

  “I do like this, Burt. It’s actually . . . really good.”

  “So now let’s put some great Carole Bayer Sager lyrics on this great melody.”

  “Now, Burt? You want me to do this now? I haven’t even unpacked yet.”

  “Oh, that can wait. We’re on a roll.”

  Three hours later, with the sun having gone down unobserved behind us, I had finished three-quarters of the lyrics to “I Won’t Break,” though I was still struggling for the verse. I had a few false starts because he refused to alter his melody to accommodate a few extra words. He was very clear. His way was better.

  Finally, I said, “Please turn the radio up loud / Make it feel like there’s a crowd.”

  “Good,” he said. “Get rid of the ‘please.’ Just: Turn the radio up loud / Make it feel like there’s a crowd . . .”

  “Sure, fine.”

  He played it again, and again. Then he stopped. “What did you just say?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I said apologetically. “That was just my stomach growling.”

  “Oh, babe, are you hungry?”

  “Yeah. I think I am. I forgot to eat lunch.”

  “Well, I’ve got to get you something to eat.”

  How considerate he was, I thought. He got up and came back from the kitchen with a shiny red apple.

  “Here,” he said. “This’ll hold you. Let’s just spend another twenty minutes here. Then I’ll work out, uh, take a shower, and then I’ll take you to my favorite restaurant in Del Mar. You’re going to love it. Great fish. How’s that sound?”

  “Will it still be open?” I asked.

  “You’re funny,” he said. He leaned over and kissed me softly on my lips, then said, “I want to go back and get that verse melody right. It’s still not sounding the way I want.”

  Between the apple and the kiss, I was good for three more hours until he finally made good on his promise for dinner. It was nine when we left for the Fish House. Burt drank a bottle of wine that he thought he shared with me. (Not being a drinker, I nursed my one glass as he went through the rest of the bottle.) Starving as I was, I picked at a salad, trying to not gain one additional ounce before our first sexual encounter.

  “Great food here, huh?” Was he making a joke? He must have noticed that real food was absent from my plate. We ate our dinner slo-o-w-wly—at least Burt did, because he was also telling me a detailed story about the time he conducted for Marlene Dietrich and she got hit on the head with a ball from a juggler who was her opening act. I didn’t follow the next part of his story because I was starting to feel a little “gassy” from the afternoon apple and now the raw salad, and I was getting anxious that the night could turn out to be a total disaster.

  Back at Burt’s house, though he had worked out before dinner, he wanted to go for an after-dinner walk to burn off some of those calories because he was told it’s healthy to take a walk after dinner. When we finally came in for the night, I was feeling tired and bloated as he grabbed me in his arms the way I’d longed for him to when I arrived twelve hours earlier, and finally deposited me on his bed.

  “Listen to those ocean waves, baby. I’m uh, just gonna get myself ready.”

  “Ready? Should I get myself ready, too?” I asked, not knowing exactly what that meant.

  “Uh. Sure, babe.”

  While he was in the bathroom I quickly unpacked my things and put on a pretty cotton nightgown (so it wouldn’t look like I was trying too hard to be someone I wasn’t) and got in bed and waited. And waited. I had no idea what was keeping him in the bathroom so long and felt it would be too invasive for me to ask. All I know is I had more than ample time to position and reposition my body in what I hoped was an alluring pose as I listened to the waves, which were making me a little seasick.

  Finally, he came out of the bathroom in his boxer shorts—showing off muscular legs that matched his former wife’s in beauty—and some much-worn, torn tee shirt covering a chest that might have stored three or four extra pounds.

  He got into bed.

  “Come here,” he said, pulling me close.

  I loved the sound of his voice and the way he smelled as he made love to me. It didn’t last as long as dinner, and not even close to our writing session, but he was kind and affectionate and I felt desired, and grateful that the first time was over and the lights weren’t on.

  He had taken his Dalmane before he even got into bed, so clearly it was not to be a long night of lovemaking. Before I knew it, he was fast asleep and I was left listening to the ocean outside competing with his sleep machine, which emitted a kind of white ambient noise that made its own steady counterpoint to his light snoring. Everything about this man was musical: the syncopated rhythm of the waves against his snores, over the white noise, sounded like a contemporary symphony that he’d written. I looked at him sleeping and admired the beauty of him and the more I did this, the more the illusion of Burt became real.

  At breakfast, which I happily served him after he walked me through the composition of his morning meal, I watched him eat his yogurt, his toast, his mixed fruit, his cereal, his three almonds, and coffee. After finishing my protein drink, I picked up my camera and began taking pictures of him.

  “You are so handsome,” I said, looking at him through my viewfinder.

  “Hey, baby, you should have seen me ten years ago.” He smiled that lazy smile and I clicked the shutter.

  I WANTED TO MEET Burt’s daughter because I knew he wanted me to. Angie agreed that Nikki could spend Saturday at my home on Donhill Drive.

  Thirteen years old when I met her in late 1980, Nikki had been born more than three months premature and as a result, her eyes had not developed properly. She had strabismus, a condition where the eyes turn inward, and she could only use one eye at a time. She had to endure three surgeries on them and spent the first three months of her life in an incubator, back when parents and nurses weren’t even allowed to hold their preemies in their arms. Burt told me she was “never normal—how could she be with a start like that?” She was so attached to Angie that when Burt would return home after even a short concert tour, Nikki would scream and cry because she didn’t want to be kicked out of her mother’s bed.

  On our first afternoon together, Nikki immediately asked where she could put on her full-length black wetsuit to swim in our pool. I told her my heated pool was very warm and just a bathing suit would do, but she refused to get in the water without her wetsuit. I knew the moment I met her something was off. Angie had insisted that I sit at the pool and watch her swim. I didn’t fully understand her demand, since Nikki was taller and larger than me. Not knowing nearly enough, I felt as Burt did: Angie was enabling her to the point of keeping her infantile.

  Nikki was pretty in a boyish way. She had beautiful blondish hair, blue eyes, and a lovely smile. I felt sad when I noticed her eyes struggling to focus. When we had lunch, she dominated the meal with one subject: Steve Perry, the lead singer of the group Journey, and his “extraordinarily beautiful” voice. Just as Burt’s every utterance was musical, Nikki’s was flat, lacking affect. She told me that Angie was going to take her to Tahiti so she could sit on the beach, watch the waves with her Walkman on, and listen all day to Perry’s magnificent voice coming into her headphones as the waves danced. This was not conversation, even as a teenager would define it. It was more like a soliloquy from someone who needed to shut out the world that wanted to come in.

  I was exhausted by her monomania, and after she went home Burt asked me how we c
ould help her become more socialized. I said I thought we could start by meeting her doctor in LA and possibly increasing her therapy sessions to three times a week. After less than a month, the doctor told us she needed more help than he could provide.

  Nikki loved her pet rat, and she brought it with her on a visit to the beach house. In the morning we found the rat dead, having been thrown against the living room wall. I was shocked and bewildered. There was no explanation for it, just as there was none for Nikki. It has been said that parents are as happy as their least happy child, and I felt the sadness that lay beneath the surface when Burt, whose mother had burdened him at a young age with the nickname “Happy,” thought of Nikki.

  BURT AND I WERE spending almost all of our time together, enjoying each other more with every week that went by. The next few months were a whirlwind of good work, good food (for him), and good wine (also for him). I was falling more and more in love with the fantasy I was creating of him.

  So I was thrilled when he suggested he move in with me. I didn’t mind that he wanted to keep his one-bedroom apartment at the Wilshire Comstock because both of us needed to see how this was going to work. A few days later, we were having lunch in Malibu and on the way back home Burt asked if I minded if we stopped at his apartment to pick up some sheet music. I was happy for the opportunity to see where he had been living.

  The first thing I saw on walking in was his upright piano against the wall, with lots of sheet music sprawled on the floor and a small, ugly gold sofa against the other wall. That was it. It looked like a space used to store some stuff by someone who didn’t live there. Burt went into the bedroom to pack a few things. I peeked in and saw a bed and a small dresser that looked like it had been assembled upon its arrival from a mail-order catalog. Could this really be his apartment? It had to be temporary, I thought, although at three years, it was giving off a disquieting aura of permanence.

  While I was browsing through his sheet music, I was surprised to find a series of slides scattered around and beneath the piano. I held a few up to the light and was surprised by the sight of various alluring poses of a naked, full-breasted woman, with a phone number on the slides. Oh, no, I thought, there’s someone else.