A Beautiful Song: A Musical Soul Story

by Michael Cantwell

  Lorenza got married and moved to the Venice area. Her brother asked that I not contact her. She knew we were coming to Rome. Lorenza had called and asked her brother not to tell me where she was living. She was trying to forget and move on with her life. Her brother handed me a small brown envelope with my named marked on the outside. When I opened it, there was no note just a small charcoal sketch of the two of us that was made a few years earlier in the plaza. I was not only deeply saddened but no doubt I cried all the way back to the hotel. I had never felt loss quite like that one. When I lost my grandmother, it was a far different pain. It was starting to hit me about how much I had lost out on while being so driven to achieve musical stardom.

  I wandered aimlessly for hours before heading back to the hotel. For the first time ever, I started to struggle with what was the cost of stardom. Did I only seek stardom? No, I don’t think it was ever about all that. It was about being true to who I was like my grandmother had always told me. It was about doing what made me a better person, or so I thought. I was doing what I had always meant to do.

  Yes, the money was now pouring in, it was easy to have things I never imagined in a materialistic sense. I had several guitars and a nice sports car back home. In the end, I came to the conclusion, I didn’t want for much but my own personal peace and happiness. Being a rock and roll star was my personal peace and happiness.

  But there are always choices. With choices, come consequences. I really didn’t have to suffer a loss in being emotionally connected with Elise and not Debby. I had both close at hand, and in some respects I was still as close with Debby as I was with Elise, despite Debby’s marriage to her ever increasingly boorish husband. Ever since the day my dad paid Gordy to teach me that first scale, I was doing what I wanted to do. Yes at times it was not easy, like my summer at the beach, or playing for little pay to drunken Wall Street Execs, or playing endless tours. But that was the life I had chosen for myself. I never regretted any of it, until that very moment. I left four tickets for Lorenza and her family at the ticket office in front of the arena, but they were never used.

  Our management had left several free days in and around near the end of the tour in Italy and Greece so that Elise could visit the historic places. It was my way of thanking her for sticking with me through all the years. It also made me open my eyes to what a loyal partner she had been for over a decade now. Here was a woman who had given up her strongest desires to play in an orchestra, and I had never really given it much thought as to how much she sacrificed to stay near me. I needed to be more aware of the people around me.

  After getting the news about Lorenza in Italy my body, was not feeling right. Something was wrong, maybe nerves, stress, maybe I was just exhausted, but something was not right. Elise and I were visiting the Acropolis in Athens when I fell to the ground. Maybe it was the heat and I was too tired, I don’t know, but I needed medical attention. They put me in a small waiting room at the local hospital in Athens. My blood pressure was much higher than it had ever been. I had regular checkups before each tour, because when touring certain countries, you have to have shots for diseases that maybe you don’t have back in the States. So I knew what my blood pressure should be, this was dangerously high. The doctor agreed. He wanted to put a monitor on my heart to make sure I either had not had a heart attack or was not a candidate for one shortly.

  Doc left me in the hands of a nurse who was trying to hook me up to all these crazy wires across my chest. I was starting to feel worse and worse. My head felt like it was about to explode. The nurse kept fighting to get the tape to stick to my chest and kept pulling the chest hairs off every time she tried it. This was only adding to my misery. Finally she got it all hooked up correctly, turned on the machine as I lay there with a pulsating brain. Eventually I hear the machine clicking away. As I do, I hear her muttering, oh no, oh no, this is not good in very bad English. Now I am wondering if I am going to die right there, or she can’t speak English well enough to let me know what is really going on. She starts getting all excited. I try to turn so that I can see her facial expressions. She has now rushed to the hallway screaming what sounds like Yiatpoc, bonoeia, though it was very hard to tell at that point the exact words. But she was screaming it over and over and over till finally the doctor came back in to the examining room. At this point I was certain death was going to occur any moment. I was ready to jump out of my current earthy state. The doctor reads what the machine had spit out and proceeds to yell at the nurse in his best pissed off Greek doctor tone.

  Now I’m really freaking out I start rattling off my prayers in machine gun fashion. I’m praying to anyone who I think would listen to me, including Zeus, since I figured I was that close to the foot of the Acropolis. The doctor finally tries to explain to me that they are having an issue with the heart machine. They are doing construction on the floor above and that is affecting the results on the machine. The nurse was not aware of this and the print out essentially stated that I had died. I assured him that I thought I was still alive, but he was the doctor. He did not appreciate my humor either. He insisted I wait until the machine was working properly. All the readings came out fine. The Doc diagnosed me with heat exhaustion and stress. He gave me a few pills to lower my blood pressure till I could get back home and have a more thorough exam. I guess Asclepios the Greek God of medicine looked favorably on me that day. We finished the tour the next night and flew back home to the States for a long vacation, or so I thought.

  On the flight home, I didn’t sleep much at all. I had to reflect on who I was as a person, who was in my life, and what plans did I have for my future. I think God had sent me a wakeup call to reflect where my next journey would take me. I was nowhere near ready to quit the music business, stop playing music or creating music. It was still the driving force behind who I was, and how I believed I could best serve my God. But there was a void in my life. I had never felt that until I had lost Lorenza. What would happen if I lost Elise? Would I feel the same loss? What if I lost the ability to play music or lose Debby to a family? I had always been so sure of my life. On that long flight home and for several days after, I sat in my new Manhattan apartment and questioned it all.

  Carl Peterson had become a successful agent and upper manager within his law firm. He was making them so much money, they made him a partner. Not only did he represent me personally, the other band members as well as the band as a whole, but also professional athletes, television and movie stars. He also represented my old roomies mouthy soap opera drama queen. He had a holiday party and invited all his clients. I decided to attend with Elise. The drama queen was there hoping to meet a movie producer and being as arrogant and divisive as I had remembered her in school. I called Scott to let him know just how lucky he was later in life with his lovely bride. He still defended her, despite not seeing her for a decade now. Once again proving love truly is blind or deaf.

  Carl had taken care of all my money. His firm had a financial management division that did investments for me. They had invested in Disney, Coca Cola, IBM, Apple computers, and several other stocks that did very well. He also had me invest in real estate by purchasing a Manhattan apartment overlooking the sky line of the city a few months earlier.

  I had my family over for Christmas dinner and asked my dad if he thought that maybe I could pay my own bills yet. “Money does not make the man, son” and he walked out of the kitchen. I still didn’t know what I had to do to prove to him that I could be successful as a musician. Both my siblings were doing well and had families now, yet somehow I was still frowned upon despite being on magazine covers and had a secure footing with my investments. At least my brother was happy with his gift and my contacts with fame. Carl arranged for me to get a signed Oakland Raiders football helmet from the era of when they had beaten my Miami Dolphins. I had gotten my mom and dad front row seats to see Frank Sinatra and his only comment was that “Maybe that was too close to really see the stage.” “Really dad?”

  Elise
left for North Carolina to spend some time over the holidays with her family. I had promised to join them in a few days. For now I had some more shopping to do before I left for the Carolinas. It was time to step up and ask her to marry me. I also needed to tell her it was fine with me if she went back to her orchestra days. I searched high and low across New York City to find the perfect diamond ring and headed on down to Carolina.

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  Chapter 13

  When I arrived at the family farm, Elise said she had a surprise for me. She said it needed to wait till we were in private but it was important. I still was not sure that ruled out that the prized pig won the county fair, but I was anxious to know what was going on. I told her I had something important as well. We decided to leave the farm and find a place to sit, overlooking the Smokey Mountains. I wanted to go first, but she said she was not sure about her news, so she wanted to get it out of the way. “I am three months pregnant. I went to see the doctor just before I left New York because I was having what I thought was morning sickness.”

  My only response was, “I am relieved it was not my cooking that had been making you ill.” I don’t think she was every going to appreciate my finely tuned humor. “Is that your only comment” she lets loose with her now patented stare. I know it was maybe not the best way but, I decided to do my very best Sylvester Stallone imitation in the original Rocky movie and say something like “Well if you don’t have nothing better to do, I thought maybe you would not mind marrying me so much, especially now that you are all knocked up and your dad owns guns.” Not quite like Stallone, but it was the best I could do while I was still looking at her glare, though not totally surprised by the news. I did hear her in the bathroom several times a day as did my mother, who had just seen her, and asked if she was pregnant.

  The stare only grows larger and she bellows,” You, Mr. Songwriter you have to do a Rocky imitation to ask me to marry you!”

  I replied, “Well if it will help, we can get married on a hot sweaty beach.” I don’t know if she was happy or wanted to toss me off the side of the mountain but after an endless “grrrr” and stare she grabbed the ring and slammed it on her finger and said, “It’s about time you asked me, my dad was cleaning his best shot gun this morning you know.” We made the announcement about quick wedding plans to her folks but, not the other news. I wanted her to wait until I was out of shot gun range till that bit of news dropped over the town.

  We got married on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands a month later. We remained there for a month long honeymoon. I flew my family down, as did Elise. We rented a couple of cottages for the two families and had a wonderful week with both families in town. The band was all invited as well as Mr. Altos, Linda, our producer Tim and a few friends from the past as well as Scott and his wife. Mr. Altos made the wedding, but left for New York the following day.

  Linda came for the week. Someone from the media spied her. They reported we were writing for a new record because we were sitting by the pool deck with pad and paper. We were writing, but not really for an entire new album. A big reason why she made the long journey to see me was MTV had an idea to do an all acoustic set of videos. They wanted Linda to rework her songs. There was a possibility of a live album being released of the same songs from the videos. She would not promise a full out release but a few reworked songs. Plus she promised at least one new song. She really didn’t like her new song writing partner, so she came to St. Thomas to write a new song with me for the videos. It was a series of videos that would all be done acoustically which was right in my sweet spot. She knew I would have a hard time turning down a chance to go back and rework the old songs acoustically. Linda did however have to talk me into being in the videos, which meant more work while I had planned on getting acquainted with my new furniture in my Manhattan apartment. But I never was one to lie on the sofa for long anyway.

  Older music was now starting to be released on tiny little silver platters called compact disks. All of us in the music business loved that since it meant our older albums would be released in a new format, generating new sales of old music. So I had to go out to Los Angeles to work with Tim to rework the old tapes for the new format. I spent another few weeks there working with Linda reworking the songs and doing the videos scheduled for release later in the summer.

  Our first child, a daughter was born in August of 1984. She was named Diana Anne after Diana Ross of the Supremes. For now Elise and I were staying in New York, but we had planned on buying some land in North Carolina near her folk’s farm as a future home. Carl told me I had to take up residence in another state, though he preferred Florida for tax reasons. I was not going to move away from New York forever, but he was trying to save me money on my tax return by taking up legal residence elsewhere. We chose North Carolina. Elise wanted to raise our daughter out of the big city.

  Linda’s acoustic videos were a huge hit on the network and we in fact did record a few more songs acoustically, which I was told really led to MTV doing a show a few years later called “Unplugged.” The now compact disk version, as well as the album, were released with much success. Linda’s fourth album had been out for some time, and even though it ended up the year number twenty seven on the charts, it was not the commercial success the others had been for her. The new acoustic album sold better than her previous album.

  There was talk of her starting to do live shows again in the California area. This way she did not have to travel much, but I had no time to devote to sporadic concerts with her. I had to get started on the next Overture album. The record company was demanding it from us on a daily basis. Elise was busy with our child, but did say she would record with the band, but was no longer going to go on tour. Even Junior was making noises like he no longer wanted to go out on six month or longer tours. We were a live band, so not going on tour was not an option for me. Debby was now pregnant and wanted to shorten tours if possible.

  Gordy called me and asked me to come back to Jersey to see him if possible. Since I had not seen my family for a while, we made the trip down to Jersey to take the grandchild over to see my parents. I went over to see Gordy at the shop. He did his best to remind me of a time when he was getting me good quality guitars when I was starting out, that one day he would ask me for a favor. At first I really didn’t remember, but after a while he convinced me that I had made him the promise.

  He wanted to know if I would play a concert with the entire band or in the least with myself and Debby and donate the proceeds to a veteran’s group of his choosing, but without his name being associated at all. I agreed in an instant. He was thrilled. I called the management team to set up shows in New York and San Diego. I talked it over with the band members, and they all agreed including Elise, to do the shows. Billy made some crude comment that had to do with a female soldier, but I ignored it and thanked him for his support. It was good to know he was back to his old self after being back in the States for a few months.

  Dylan James and The Overture “Back in Town”, was now being recorded back at Lady Land Studios. Tim our producer wanted to expand the string sounds and make even more of a Sgt. Peppers sounding album, much to the delight of Elise. I was a bit unsure of it all, but agreed to go along with it. For the first time I had not written all the songs in advance of going into the studio. I was writing some with Duke and Elise, though I had about half done before arriving for the first day. It was not going well at all.

  Maybe the time away had lessened my desire to succeed, or maybe I had run out of things to write about now. But for the first time the songs were slow to come and I was not always pleased with what I had finished. There was a parade of string and wind musicians coming in and out of the sessions and I was not always on the same page with Tim. I think being a new dad had changed me some as well. My attentions were somewhat divided with my new family and trying to work on my music. Then it struck me, write about my new daughter. Write her a love song and make that the track on the album. What better way to
have strings and wind instruments, than a love song to your own child.

  Within moments the words were flowing again, “She cried a little and smiled a lot my emotions I’d never fix, I told her I loved her but she didn’t care she was so young and so unaware.” “August Morn” was written and recorded within two days.

  I was still struggling with Tim. He wanted the entire album to have an orchestral sound. I wanted a few songs that just hit you in the face with raw power. I had Duke on my side as well as Billy, since he was always wondering where his thirty minute drum solo was going to be on the records. Debby who was very soon to be a mother, and Elise who was now a mother, loved the softer sound for this album.

  It took over four months and some scolding from Mr. Altos to finally wrap up the album. We had ten tracks of which I was pleased with maybe seven of them. I was not happy with the final product, but the record company was screaming for it to be released. We wrapped it up and released it in the spring of 1985. We had to delay any tour since Debby was now a mother and had to rest and care for her child for a few months. We had a tour planned for the summer of 1985, but it was one where we would play two or three weeks, then take two weeks off for Debby and her newborn. Junior also got worn down on the road now and needed some time in between a number of cities as well. Junior had bought a place back in Mississippi and would get back home as much as possible.

  A few days before we were to start the tour, Debby’s husband called me and wanted to know “Why does your band have to record and go on tour?” At first I was looking for Alan Funt and the “Candid Camera” show around the corner. I didn’t think this could actually be a real question. I mean I never liked or understood the guy but he repeated again, “Can you all just put out old material and stop recording now?” I banged the phone on the desk and shook my head for a moment and asked him “Is this a serious question, why does a band have to make music?” He replies “Well yes, let’s face it, the Beatles have not recorded or toured for years and they still sell records.” I asked him do you know any differences between us and The Beatles?” “What do you mean?” “Well for one” I replied, “We are all still alive and we have yet to go our separate ways.” He goes on to tell me that “It’s very hard when Debby is away.” So I reply “For you or her? Does Debby know you are making this call?” “No of course not” he responds. I suggested he talk to her and get off my phone. I really did not care for this guy.