The Soul of It All

by Michael Bolton

  This was the summer after the Summer of Love, a historic period of creativity in rock and hippie history, but the Bay Area, and in particular the San Francisco neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury, was still very much a happenin’ place. Janis Joplin of Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Sly & the Family Stone, and other psychedelic rock acts were based there. I can’t fully explain why we had to leave Connecticut to refine our music, but then I can’t explain, or remember, most of my teenage years.

  I reasoned that if we wanted to “make it” in the music business, there was a lot more going on in the Bay Area than in New Haven. The other members of Joy weren’t all that hard to convince. Our parents were another matter.

  Somehow, I conned my mother into signing a letter making Ribs my temporary guardian, since I was still too young to travel without adult supervision. Marc was seeing a therapist who decided this trip would be good for him. His parents followed the doctor’s orders and let both brothers go. Given that their family was in the plumbing supply business, I’m sure it was a wrenching experience (sorry). However we wrangled our freedom, we were soon on the road again, returning to California. This time instead of risking our lives as hitchhikers, we took our chances aboard our own hippie hallucin-o-van with a funky stick shift and a hit-or-miss clutch, which made driving it a trip unto itself. That constant grinding you heard along Route 66 many years ago was Joy in transit. We’d travel by day, clutch willing, and smoke up the interior at night, often parked in cow pastures or vacant lots.

  Once again, I’m not sure how we made it. I can remember waking up in the back and discovering our designated driver asleep at the wheel on more than one occasion. Hell, they even let me drive, and I was only fourteen years old. Somewhere in Nebraska, Ribs checked us into a motel. Bob and I drove in search of some burgers (I was still in my pre-veggie days) and pulled over at what appeared to be the local version of a fast-food joint. As soon as we walked in, I felt like an alien being. We were obviously the first long-haired hippies to have ever dared enter this establishment. Before Bob and I could say, “We come in peace, brothers,” the Nebraskans were all over our hippie faggot commie asses. They chased us into the parking lot, apparently fearful that we would infest their community or kidnap their women in the otherworldly Wonder Bread truck.

  The local police stopped by not so much to enforce peace but to “confirm that you are not considering stopping anywhere near here ever again. We don’t want your kind around here.”

  We fled the Cornhusker State for the much friendlier brotherly love of the Bay Area, and searched for an affordable space with room to live, write music, and practice for eight hours a day. Our lack of funds ruled out anything in San Francisco, so we ended up in a sketchy neighborhood in Oakland. The only thing we could find in our price range and with enough room to serve as a rehearsal hall was a loft space above a Laundromat in East Oakland. When we moved in, we had no idea that we were just a short distance from the headquarters of the Black Panther Party. Nonviolent protest was not the Panthers’ thing. They seemed to be perpetually fighting gun battles with lawmen in the streets. We arrived just a few months after the Panthers clashed with local cops and lost one of their own. It was around this time that the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover denounced our hometown revolutionaries as “the greatest threat to the internal security of this country.”

  Despite the urban warfare in our community, we had no shortage of visitors to our Oakland crash pad. Along with four band members, our manager, Ribs, and his girlfriend, Denise, we were joined by a steady stream of drop-ins and long-term guests, some of whom ended up sleeping in the building’s boiler room. We called our Oakland dive “a seventeenth-century loony bin,” which was appropriate given the fact that it was occupied by a horde of pot-smoking teenage rockers and an ever-changing cast of friends.

  We paid the rent and fed ourselves on the Bolotin beggar plan. Nearly every day Ribs or Marc would panhandle for cash to buy gas so they could drive me to the Berkeley campus in the Wonder Bread truck. The first challenge was to get our not-so-magic bus started, because its battery was roached. Once they had gas money, the Friedlands would use their mother’s AAA card, call out their road rangers, and have them fire up our ride. Every now and then we’d just push-start it down a hill, but there were obvious hazards to doing that.

  Once I was dropped off on campus, I’d find a shady spot, pull out my guitar, put out a tip box, and perform for whatever pocket change came my way. Long before I made hit recordings of “Dock of the Bay” and “Georgia,” I sang those same songs for nickels, dimes, and quarters to pay for our meals. Since Marc and I weren’t yet vegetarians, those meals consisted of grilled hamburgers, Hostess Zingers, and soft custard. Ribs, however, was already eating what appeared to be bark and grass.

  When we weren’t grubbing for meal money, we were rehearsing and writing new material. Ribs was convinced that we were on the path to greatness. He often told us we had it all—the look, the sound, and the music—and that we were “ahead of our time.” I was harder to convince. My perfectionist’s drive had kicked in, and I was constantly pushing the band to practice and refine its performances. I refused to take gigs because I didn’t think we were where we needed to be.

  I was so relentless that our drummer, Bob Brockway, practiced until his hands and feet bled. He was intense, too, ripping off such a fast, tight roll of rim shots that he’d break the wires that held the snares on his snare drum. That happened so often he had to buy heavy-duty deep-sea fishing line to hold them in place. Fred Bova, the guitar player, worked almost continuously inventing new and strange sounds by rewiring the guitar and the amp. Marc was already a flawless bass player, but he practiced so hard his fingers went numb. My throat grew raw from all the singing, but I was my own harshest critic.

  It was my perfectionism, and maybe my fear as well, that drove me. Whenever Ribs or the others in the band pushed to take a gig somewhere, I dragged my feet, driving them to near revolt. The only live performance we did was opening for the talented blues singer Tracy Nelson and her Mother Earth band at a Sausalito club called the Ark. Tracy went on to win Grammy nominations for performances with Willie Nelson in 1974 and with Marcia Ball and Irma Thomas in 1998, but our concert with her band drew less than a hundred people.

  I kept pushing everyone, including myself, to get better. I was the youngest member, but as the lead singer and songwriter, I had clout and I used it. When I decided that we needed to leave Oakland and return to New Haven to make our first demo record and to try to get a recording contract, the others in Joy followed, muttering mutiny and cursing my name under their breaths.

  BACK HOME TO NEW HAVEN

  We loaded up the van and returned to Connecticut in December 1968. There, we rented a big house at 555 Amity Road in Woodbridge that became known as the “Joy House.” We probably should have called it the “Bubby Ida House,” because the rent was paid for with money given to the Friedlands by their grandmother. Actually, Bubby Ida subsidized a lot of what the brothers and I did in those days. Mostly she gave money to Marc, not because he was her favorite grandson but because of guilt.

  When Marc was six years old, he was running around the house like a typical crazed kid waiting for his favorite cartoon, Heckle and Jeckle, to come on. Bubby Ida was washing a window in the living room and somehow, just as Marc ran beneath that same window outside, the glass broke. Marc looked up at the sound of the crash and a big shard of glass hit him and sliced his forehead with a deep gash that required seventy-two stitches.

  Marc eventually recovered, but Bubby Ida never did. She was forever saddled with guilt and remorse, blaming herself for the scar every time she saw her grandson.

  “From that point on, Bubby Ida felt that she had to give me every spare penny that came her way,” Marc said. “It was her way to make things right with the world.”

  Bubby Ida, like my own grandmothers, was a very loving, warm woman who even signed over her welfare checks to
Marc, and I think gave us food stamps, too. She was in many ways a typical grandmother. Jewish, black, Irish, or otherwise, grandmothers always want to make sure everyone has a warm bed and enough to eat.

  With her help, the Joy House provided all that and more. We worked hard on our music, and our weekend parties drew friends and strangers from up and down the East Coast. People I swear I’ve never met still tell me they “lived” with us on weekends at that house. I’m sure they did. The Joy House was so big, so crowded with visitors, and so fogged with the residue of reefer madness, I probably never saw them.

  FROM DEMO TO DOJO TO DEAL

  I’d pushed the band to return to New Haven because I thought we could cut a demo for an affordable price at the same place the Shags had recorded, Syncron Studios in Wallingford, which later became known as Trod Nossel Productions and is still in business. Ribs scraped together the money for producing a demo, so after we’d settled into the Joy House back home in Connecticut, we spent several days at Syncron cutting a demo tape with two songs I’d written in Oakland: “It’s About That Time” and “This Man.” I had not a clue what I was doing in the studio, but everyone seemed to like my crazy songs and we rehearsed them well. The studio’s engineer walked us through the entire process in a few hours, and before we knew it, we’d made a recording.

  Once we had the demos down, Ribs fired up the magical mystical tour bus and set off to lay siege upon every record company in New York City. He refused to leave until they listened, so most gave in just to get Ribs out of the office. By night he slept in the truck and by day he did everything short of offering sexual favors or taking hostages to convince record company executives to listen to our demo and offer us a contract.

  I’m not really sure about the sexual favors part, but Ribs was very determined. I know he camped out in the office at CBS’s Epic Records. The receptionist kept telling him the person he needed to see was busy, but Ribs refused to give up, bless him. That was Ribs. He believed in us and fought for us. After waiting all day and into the night, he finally collared someone and played the demo. We must have impressed the guy. A few weeks later an Epic producer, Ken Cooper, asked where he could hear us perform. We set up a session in our old martial arts studio hangout.

  We’d been rehearsing eight hours a day in Oakland and we were eager to perform for someone, anyone, but it was especially sweet to play for a producer for a major record company. Epic was launched as a jazz, pop, and classical label by CBS the same year I was born. When the rock ’n’ roll wave hit, Epic quickly became home to some of the top acts, including Jeff Beck, the Hollies, the Yardbirds, and the Dave Clark Five. I was a fan of all of those groups, so it was both exciting and intimidating to see their records on the wall.

  RECORD DEAL NO. 1

  Ken Cooper came to the dojo audition with his girlfriend. We played four or five original songs. Ken was very complimentary. He said my voice was “distinctive” and he liked the songs I’d written. He offered the band a recording contract on the spot. I was fifteen years old, and, believe me, I didn’t have to “talk to my people” about making a decision. Well, actually I did have to ask my mom because I was still a minor. A few weeks later, a recording contract for two singles arrived. I didn’t bother to read the pages and pages of legal mumbo jumbo. I signed on the dotted line, and so did my mother as my legal guardian.

  It was 1969. Getting the Epic contract seemed like a sure sign that I was about to fulfill my father’s big, big, BIG! prediction for my musical career. History, Billboard magazine, and Wikipedia will note, however, that my timetable turned out to be off by just a bit.

  Eighteen long and frustrating years would pass before I finally had my first hit.

  Credit: Epic Record Company

  Chapter Five

  The Epic Struggle

  Epic Records’ Ken Cooper promised us a bonus of $2,000 for signing the recording contract. The poverty-stricken members of Joy and our manager, Ribs, were thrilled. Even with a five-way split, this was a windfall.

  Imagine our excitement when the check arrived and with it came an extra “0.”

  Some soon-to-be-terminated clerk in accounting had goofed, making it out for $20,000 instead of $2,000.

  A heated and lengthy ethical discussion ensued. The band members and our manager debated whether we should cash the check or do the right thing: call Ken and tell him about the mistake. Some of the guys argued that it wasn’t a mistake. They felt we should have been paid $20,000. They’d heard that amount was more with the norm for a signing bonus for bands.

  The debate and arguing went on for three or four days. Ribs and Marc asked their parents, and, of course, they told us we should call Ken and report the mistake. In the end, that’s what we did because no one wanted to tick off Epic before the band had a chance to put out a record.

  Naturally, Ken said it was a mistake. Epic canceled the big boy check and sent us its little sister. Each member of the band received $400, which still amounted to a huge payday for each of us, me in particular. Since the Wonder Bread van had finally expired, Marc used his share to buy an old ambulance that he called “the Enterprise.” He transformed the emergency vehicle for accident victims into our band transport, and, as I recall, there was some sexual healing that went on in that ambulance when we were its owners.

  With my vast financial windfall, I bought my first serious guitar, a red Rickenbacker just like the one George Harrison played. It was mere coincidence that our first single featured a “B” side track written by a couple of other Beatles. Ken Cooper had the final say on the songs on the record. He decided the “A” side should feature a song I’d written back in the Oakland Laundromat loft. It was called “Bop Bah,” and it was a breakup song with the lyrics: “Help me to understand exactly where you’re goin’. / Help me to understand just what it’s like to be knowin’….”

  Ken apparently selected that track because it was our only original up-tempo song and the closest thing to mainstream pop rock in our repertoire.

  While “Bop Bah” was a decent song and people were responding well to it, some of the guys in the band argued that it wasn’t our strongest. They thought this particular song did not fit our desired image as a soulful blues rock and pop band. Our contract also called for each single to have a “B” side, and Ken Cooper chose that song for us, too. We weren’t happy about this choice, either, since it wasn’t our original song. That’s not to say Lennon and McCartney weren’t great songwriters, but “It’s for You” wasn’t really our kind of sound. They’d written it for their friend British pop singer Cilla Black, who released her version in 1964. The Beatles never did their own recording of the song, but Three Dog Night recorded an a cappella version for their 1969 debut album.

  Again, we didn’t want to tick off our record company during our first dance with them, so we went with the flow. We worked hard in the studio to give them a couple of different versions of “Bop Bah” with varied lengths and drum effects. Of course they put our least favorite version on the record. They also printed the wrong name on the label, calling it “Bah Bah Bah,” which sounded like either a lamb’s lament or a solo from Scrooge the Musical.

  The regrets and embarrassments did not end there. I was still using my true family name then, but Epic managed to spell it wrong, as “Bolotkin,” in the songwriting credit on the label. In fact, the only things right on the label of our first single were “Epic” and “produced by Ken Cooper.” Still, our friends and family were excited when the record came out, so we didn’t want to be “kill-Joys” and tell them that it was the wrong name on the wrong version of the wrong song.

  This did seem like a bad omen for our first record, but we felt better when our local rock radio station, WNHC, jumped on the song and gave us a lot of airplay. Our first single premiered at No. 60 on the New Haven station’s hit chart. Members of the Joy fan base suspected that our hometown sales may have been boosted by a certain Cutler’s Music Shop salesperson named Kathy, who happened to be dating a
certain lead singer of a certain band at that time. She was a very sweet and supportive young lady, but despite her efforts, “Bah Bah Bah” went bust after a couple of weeks and dropped off the charts with little fanfare beyond our hometown’s city limits.

  Ken Cooper did set us up with a good gig after our record came out. In November of 1969, we played the Electric Circus in the East Village. This was a very happening place, one of the wildest in New York City. Billed as “hallucinogenic and hedonistic,” it had featured performances by the Allman Brothers, Sly & the Family Stone, the Velvet Underground, and the Doors, among other groups somewhat more renowned than Joy. I stood on that hallowed stage that night and felt both thrilled and panicked because we were there, but I didn’t feel we were ready to be playing where the greatest had gone before.

  The other positive memory I’ve had over the years to help counter the otherwise “Bah Bah Bah” bad experience is that while we were recording the song, a veteran sound engineer at Epic pulled me aside and said, “You have that thing in your voice, that thing that it takes to make it big as a singer.” His words of encouragement meant a great deal to me, because he was a professional who’d heard many singers and bands. I put his comment in my confidence bank. I would need it.

  Our contract with Epic called for us to record and release two singles, each with “A” and “B” sides, but after the quick death of our first effort, our record company seemed to lose interest. Epic also lost Ken Cooper, who suddenly was “no longer with us.” We soldiered on and recorded another two songs with our new producer, Sandy Linzer, who also was a very successful songwriter.

  For this record we put down two original songs. The “A” side featured “Going Back to New Haven,” written by Tom Pollard; and the “B” side had “Cookie Man,” contributed by Sandy. The record was never released, so the world was robbed of the chance to hear me singing some sweet harmonies with brother Orrin, who joined us for that session.