The Soul of It All

by Michael Bolton

  I thought the entire concert was a huge success. We performed more encores than usual, which is a good measure of audience appreciation. But on the flight home the next day, I opened the local newspaper and came upon a review of our show. The critic was harsh, particularly in his appraisal of the song I’d sung for my girls.

  He mentioned that they were there and that I’d sung it to them. He then noted that it was his least favorite song of the evening, adding that he thought my kids forgave me for singing it. That throwaway comment might have stung, but the critic had not seen what I saw from the stage as I performed that song. All three of my girls were crying, with heartfelt tears running down their faces. As long as I had that memory, the critic’s words didn’t mean a thing.

  When the critics bared their fangs, I didn’t know how to respond at first. Diane Warren wasn’t so hesitant. “When a man is that vulnerable and sings something that tender, women love that. They melt,” Diane told an interviewer in assessing my audience.

  I’d never expected to become such a divisive force. Some critics watching a television feed backstage at the ceremony even booed me as I accepted my Grammy award that year. I was on cloud nine when I walked backstage, but I came down to earth when someone told me about the boos from the critics. My indelicate response was to tell them to “kiss my ass.”

  They seemed shocked at that response. Were they really expecting me to say, “Please, sir, may I have another?”

  I had no intention of slowing down after all those years of nothing. I had ventured too far into the desert to turn back. But even when success started to come, my extreme focus didn’t allow me to celebrate. It was like being at an enormous feast where you can’t taste a thing. While all the people around me were celebrating, I was already focused on the next song, the next album, the next round of promotion.

  The day after I won my first Grammy, I was in a suite at the Sunset Marquis, and my entire room was full of flowers and cards. I was getting congratulatory telegrams all day long. But I had a writing session booked and I was more concerned with working than experiencing the celebration. What I did experience was a second wind, because while all this excitement was going on, my energy level was increasing. Success is a type of fuel, which frees you to continue creating on your own terms. I was on to making sure my next song would be a success.

  With the release of Time, Love & Tenderness came my Forrest Gump moment.

  DATING GAME

  The joy of my success with Time, Love & Tenderness was dampened by the failure of my marriage, which would end amicably but sadly in 1991. Those were lonely days, mostly. I went on a few dates, but it was hard to spend time with any one person because of my crazy schedule (a recurring theme). They say a high percentage of romances begin at work and, at that point, I didn’t have many other opportunities to get to know women. Often, the women who came to my concerts were on dates, which was the case when I first met Marla Maples. Her date was Donald Trump, who owned the Taj Mahal casino, where I was performing. They came backstage after the show. Donald introduced Marla as “my girlfriend, who is a huge fan of yours.” I didn’t quite know what to say when she stepped forward and said, “My dream man.”

  Donald didn’t seem to notice. He said he was very happy with the turnout for my concert. That night Marla asked to interview me for a book she was doing on successful people in diverse arenas, so we met the next afternoon. Our talk wandered into the spiritual aspects of life and I found that intriguing, along with the fact that she was beautiful, but I thought of her as Donald’s girlfriend.

  I did see her not long after that, when she and Donald came to another concert at Jones Beach on Long Island. When we spoke, Donald and I talked mostly about our daughters. I didn’t know anything about the nature of his relationship with Marla. So I was surprised to hear later on that she had broken off the engagement, which was highly publicized in the media.

  After their breakup, she came without Donald to another concert and she stayed on the road a while longer with our tour, but my next stop was Europe, and we said good-bye. Then Marla and Donald got back together.

  I learned some interesting lessons about being in the media spotlight during all of this. Donald is such a huge celebrity that the print and television reporters were tracking Marla’s every move, and I was caught in the spotlight. That was the first situation in which I went through airports and saw stories involving me in the tabloids outside of a musical event, which triggered my awareness that my private life was no longer my own.

  It never occurred to me that one day anything I said or did as part of common daily life would become tabloid fodder. Suddenly, I had to become vigilant when walking down the street or having dinner with a friend. I found myself either shying away from public life or being very selective about which restaurants I could choose. Some of my favorites were those that weren’t surrounded by paparazzi.

  Donald and Marla eventually divorced and I’ve remained friends with Marla and also friendly with Donald. Marla is always optimistic and full of light, and I’m inspired by the depth of her loving relationship with her beautiful daughter, Tiffany.

  After that story faded in the media, another work-related dating opportunity arose during the production of the music video for “Missing You Now,” the fourth song on TL&T released as a single, which reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart. I know some singers are attracted to girls in their music videos, but how many of those guys would fall for a woman wearing a mechanic’s coveralls, long johns, and a wool sweater?

  In the 1992 video, Teri Hatcher played the role of a country girl whose father owned a rural gas station. She was a hottie even in an outfit designed by Exxon. In a later scene, she wore a summer dress as we kissed next to the diesel pump. At that point, she hadn’t yet worked at the Daily Planet in Lois & Clark, but she had been a mermaid in residence on Love Boat, served a three-year hitch on MacGyver, and done regular guest spots on shows including Star Trek and Quantum Leap. Based on her résumé, Teri was way overqualified to be a music video girl, but I understood that she’d signed on because she liked my music. I was grateful to Teri for appearing in the video for “Missing You Now,” which helped the album Time, Love & Tenderness sell more than sixteen million copies worldwide.

  After we met on the set, we dated for ten months, but we were both very busy with our careers, so we didn’t get to see a lot of each other. I was impressed that Teri was a very down-to-earth person who was also working every bit as hard to establish her career as I was to establish mine. When her career took off, I was very happy for her. Of course I would see her again on the set of Desperate Housewives, though by then I was dating a woman who lived a few doors down on the show’s Wisteria Lane.

  TL&T was certified eight times platinum in the United States. This album became the bedrock of a rewarding and fulfilling career. Its songs were the sound track to such wonderful times. Since the release of TL&T, I’ve sold many more albums and songs on CDs, DVDs, and singles. I’ve even had several more multiplatinum albums, but none would be so sweet, or so bitter, as Time, Love & Tenderness.

  You see, there was one song on TL&T that I came to wish had not been on this album after all. It just wasn’t the song Columbia Records had targeted.

  Credit: Bolotin Family Collection

  Chapter Twelve

  Trials, Tribulations & Triumphs

  Before the turbochargers kicked in on my career, I had a serious financial challenge. My problems stemmed from a complex financial condition. The proper economic term, I believe, is broke.

  My financial spreadsheet was all outgo, no income. I couldn’t pay my bills. I couldn’t pay the pizza man. I couldn’t pay attention. We were so poor, in our neighborhood whenever there was a rainbow it showed up in black and white. (Thank you again, Mr. Dangerfield.)

  One of my outstanding bills was owed to my law firm.

  We are about to step into the dark side of the music business. Most performers crack their heads soone
r or later against the hard realities of a business in which far too many lawsuits are brought not to secure justice but to feed the wolves. My particular corner of this hell was a multiheaded monster that would not die, a legal torment that began shortly after the release of my most successful album and continues to haunt me to this day.

  A WONDERFUL SONG SPOILED

  The definition of “cruel irony” may be found in the fact that at the center of this torment is a gloriously uplifting song entitled “Love Is a Wonderful Thing.” This is the story of a song gone wrong—terribly and disastrously wrong. This joyous song was produced in 1991 by the incomparable Walter Afanasieff, and lovingly crafted with one of my favorite collaborators, Andrew Goldmark.

  After our creation spent four weeks at the top of Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart, I received notice that attorneys for the R & B group the Isley Brothers had filed a copyright infringement lawsuit.

  They claimed, to our astonishment, that there were many similarities between my major hit and their song of the same name. Neither Andrew nor I had ever heard their song. A quick check found that it had not appeared on any of the Isley Brothers albums before we wrote our song. After being released as a single in 1966, their song never reached the Top 100 on any Billboard charts.

  Our research found that there were 129 copyrighted songs with the title “Love Is a Wonderful Thing”—and 85 of them were registered before the Isley song was written. Despite our adamant denials, and efforts to have the lawsuit thrown out, the case went to jury trial in 1994. A legal concern in these cases is the level of “access,” which takes into consideration what opportunities—if any—Andrew and I might have had to hear their song and maybe subconsciously remember it. They maintained that we had subconsciously copied it. We maintained that we did not.

  During the trial, our lawyers called three top rhythm and blues experts, including Motown’s Lamont Dozier, who had written and produced for the Isleys and had written songs with me as well. The experts testified that they’d never heard that particular Isley Brothers song. We even brought in the president of the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, Billy Vera, an avowed fan of the Isley Brothers. He testified that he’d never heard of the Isleys’ own “Love Is a Wonderful Thing.”

  The lawsuit and trial struck me as a great injustice and an insult to my integrity and the integrity of my co-writer. Neither Andy nor I would ever take the wrong change from a cashier or a waiter, much less take someone else’s idea. I did not handle it well. I’d sit in the courtroom feeling outraged at the injustice. Worse, I couldn’t leave my feelings in the courtroom at the end of the day. I couldn’t sleep or think creatively. The stress affected every aspect of my life. Nicollette Sheridan, whom I was seeing then, wanted to attend the trial with me whenever possible, but the lawyers felt her presence might be distracting, and that female jurors might resent her. It was too bad, because it would have helped me to have her there.

  Our team searched everywhere on the charts and airplay monitors and could find no proof that the Isley song was ever a hit. In fact, our research showed otherwise.

  Our argument was that the Isleys’ song was barely, much less widely, disseminated. A hit song is always widely disseminated. The appellate court found that the song was not on any album or compact disc before we wrote our song. We were convinced that no intelligent jury would find it likely that my co-writer and I could have heard the Isley composition, subconsciously locked it into our brains for twenty years, and then released it together as our own song. But I came to question the intelligence of the jury involved in this case. I felt like I was somewhere between Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life and Henry Fonda in The Wrong Man. It was like waking into a bad dream instead of awakening out of one.

  During the trial, we even produced a “work tape” recording of Andy and me that was made during the studio sessions in which we wrote “Love Is a Wonderful Thing.” On the recording, the jury could hear our back-and-forth discussions during the process of creating the song from the very first note. We submitted that recording as evidence related to the question of “independent creation,” which is one of three critical components in this type of case.

  In the end our defense did not sway the jury, which ruled against us and in favor of the Isley team.

  I felt as though a stranger had claimed one of my daughters as his own and then snatched her from my arms with the court’s approval. When you create a song, word by word, note by note, and you are part of every nuance in the recorded performance, that creation becomes a part of your life. My songs are like my children in many ways. I love them all, each in unique ways, because each of them is a unique creation.

  After nine draining years spent battling the copyright infringement claim, we ran out of legal options. Our side was ordered to pay what the media has reported to be the largest monetary award in the history of the music business for such a case.

  The previous highest award ever given in such a case was $587,000. The late Beatle George Harrison lost that lawsuit after a ten-year court battle. The music company that owned the rights to the Chiffons’ 1962 song “He’s So Fine” filed the lawsuit. The Chiffons’ song was a huge hit record, widely disseminated, so to us the difference between their case and ours seemed clear.

  Much of the music industry was in an uproar over the decision in the Isley lawsuit because of the view that the ruling against us dramatically lowered what had been the legal standard for access in such cases. The Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America submitted “friend of the court” memoranda supporting our case, saying that if the jury verdict were allowed to stand, it would drop the standard for level of access in copyright cases to an unacceptably low level.

  Across the board, people throughout the industry were speaking out.

  But the verdict stood. The legal ramifications reverberate to this day, and so does the emotional impact. Our song should have been one of my most celebrated creations, but I rarely perform it live. Believe me, I never judge anyone by what I hear in the news after the jury ruled that I’d somehow copied a record I’d never heard. The philosopher Seneca said, To reach the wonders in life, we must pass through perils.

  I could certainly relate to that, but I had no idea how enormous the perils in my own life would become even as my career took off beyond my wildest dreams.

  SWEET INSPIRATION

  When I learned of the Isley jury’s decision, I was still reeling in shock on the trip home, yet when I walked into the front hall of my home that day I found a healing gift in the stack of mail. The package was sent by Coretta Scott King, the inspiring widow of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. She’d sent me a signed book of photographs depicting the remarkable life and tragic death of her husband. Her message said simply, “I thought you might like this.”

  Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the rare giants who’ve passed through our time. He delivered the power of truth and then was summoned home as a victorious warrior. I sat on the floor, studying his writings and photographs, in awe of his life. His eloquence and intellect come through, even in his reports of minor events from his travels, including his visit to my hometown. I was reminded that it really was not so long ago that black men and women were barred from most restaurants and hotels. I’m sure that after Reverend King’s assassination in 1968, none of the grieving civil rights freedom fighters could envision that forty years later, an African American man would be elected president of the United States.

  The book sent by Coretta Scott King pulled me away from my tormented thoughts over the lawsuit. It contained compelling photographs of the men and women who risked or even gave their lives to a cause that changed the world, and messages of peace and forgiveness were scattered through the text. These messages calmed me, as did the sense that Mrs. King had me in her thoughts. She would often send me photographs or clippings of things she was involved in, or that she thought might hold interest for me. Sometimes she’d just send me notes
to cheer me up with handwritten greetings like the one on this package.

  I first met Coretta at the 1994 VH1 Honors show, where a group of artists were recognized for their charitable work. Coretta was one of the presenters. We’d never met, so when I saw her backstage I felt compelled to introduce myself. I expressed my admiration for all that she and her late husband had accomplished as well as the ultimate sacrifice they’d made.

  That night, a friendship formed. Coretta invited me to visit the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change whenever I was in Atlanta. I took her up on that invitation a few weeks later, bringing two of my daughters. Coretta gave us a tour and shared personal stories of her husband and their experiences together. Mrs. King was taken by my interest in that history, and later she invited me to speak at the center’s annual march and rally in 1995. (My touchstone acquaintance Kris Kristofferson was there, too, which left me wondering what life-altering event was about to take place.)

  To prepare for my appearance, I listened to a cassette collection of Reverend King’s speeches, and I was delighted to hear him make reference to my hometown in one of them. He talked about visiting New Haven and feeling welcomed there as opposed to his next stop, a Southern city where he felt threatened and unwanted. My parents had been big admirers of Reverend King. I felt proud of them and my hometown for recognizing his heroic cause.

  When I listened to the recording of his powerful speeches given in his booming cadence, it struck me that he was a man of my time. I was a boy in New Haven when he came there, and I was a beneficiary of his efforts. The thought kept running through my mind that these speeches occurred in my lifetime and for my benefit and the benefit of my children and grandchildren.