We'll Be Here For the Rest of Our Lives (21 page)

We stayed in character during dinner, zinging one-liners associated with each of our roles.

Marty kept saying, “Jilly’s is my bistro,” only because it was the caption under Frank’s caricature on the cocktail napkins.

Then when Marty, as Sinatra, ordered Sinatra’s drink, a Jack Daniel’s, the waiter asked, “On the rocks?”

“Yes,” Marty said, “… relaxed.”

The waiter had no idea what Marty meant. In truth, we were completely unfamiliar with New York and its sophisticated ways. We weren’t hipsters after all; we were Canadian squares. But that didn’t stop us.

We rewrote the names of the dishes on the menu to coincide with Sinatra associations. Dave Thomas, in recognition of Frank’s collaboration with Antonio Carlos Jobim, called his dish “Lobster Jobim.”

Like all of us, Gilda was fascinated by how Sinatra had yelled out “Six!” in the middle of one of his live Vegas shows. No one knew why. Nonetheless, we picked it up and mindlessly shouted it out at any opportunity. “Six!” we loved to scream. Therefore, when it came time to write the name of her dish, Gilda, with a watch-this attitude, printed “Oysters (6).”

Another menu story: This time it was Harry Shearer, Tom Leopold, and me heading down from Hollywood to Orange County to see the Righteous Brothers. Here’s the menu we came up with, as we kept in mind the producer of the group’s biggest hits:

Back at Jilly’s in New York City, we kept hoping. So what if Frank hadn’t walked through the front door? He was probably in the back room at a table charming some wild doll. In one way or the other, the Chairman had to be present; we felt his spirit.

When the waiter brought the check and we reached into our pockets for money, Marty’s Canadian change spilled all over the floor. Marty on all fours, picking up his Loonies, was hardly Sinatra suave. But it didn’t matter. By then we were loaded. We walked out humming “The Tender Trap.”

Out on the street, I looked up and there, right there across from me, were the blazing lights of the Roseland Ballroom, a blast from the ten-cents-a-dance swing-band past. New York continued to be a dream.

The show itself had been a nightmare. In attempting to update
South Pacific
, the creators of
More Than You Deserve
did it in the grossest way possible. The production was replete with graphic gore and bloody decapitations. One song asked, “How’d You Like to Marry a Man Without a Face?” Bloody Mary was raped in her wheelchair by a soldier using a bayonet. (Years later when I met Papp, I told him, “I was once musical director of
More Than You Deserve
, and every night when I left the theater I was…” “Sick,” Papp completed the sentence for me. “Yes,” I said. “Me too,” he confessed.)

In spite of its unredeemable flaws, the show had an interesting cast. Fred Gwynne, famous for
The Munsters
, was the star. Mary Beth Hurt, then married to William Hurt, was the muchabused Bloody Mary. A young Meat Loaf sang his ass off. After four months of previews, though, even Meat Loaf’s rare vocal talents couldn’t save the show. The damn thing opened and closed in one week. I had no regrets. I was proud of the fact that, after an initial struggle, I had learned the highly complex classical-style rock score. I was glad that the one-week run gave me a union card. I was happy not to have to see Bloody Mary get raped again. But it didn’t feel great having to schlep back to
Toronto. I wanted to linger a while longer in New York. Hell, I wanted to
live
in New York.

I went back to Mary Ann, who had waited patiently for me. I helped put together an experimental theatrical piece in which she starred—
Hey, Justine
, a musical about being open sexually. Later, Mary Ann wrote an article that included details of our sex life for
Maclean’s
, the most popular magazine in Canada. Talk about being open! I didn’t know I’d been sleeping with an investigative journalist. Mary Ann’s description of my lovemaking was, well, a mixed review at best. Hey, she was more open than I.

Mary Ann’s openness was the downside of
Hey, Justine
. The upside was the fact that the producer slipped a saxophone player into my band named Howard Shore. Howard would change my life. More on that later.

More good news came out of the blue.

Stephen Schwartz called.

“Paul,” he said, “do you believe in magic?”

I didn’t hesitate for a second. “Who doesn’t?” I said.

“Good. Because something magical is about to happen. I’ve found a fellow Canadian of yours, Doug Henning. He’s a hippie-looking kid with long hair. He’s cute and he’s charismatic and he does a more casual kicked-back kind of magic. I’ve written a whole show around him, a full-blown musical called
The Magic Show
and I need you on piano.”

“Will this happen in Canada?”

“I know how much you don’t want to leave Canada,” said Stephen with sarcastic glee, “but I’m afraid we’re opening the show at the Cort Theatre on Broadway. It’ll be hard on you, Paul, but you’ll have to move to New York.”

“That’s a helluva sacrifice,” I said, “but one I’m willing to make. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

It starts with soaring violins. They sail around the isle of Manhattan; they chase the stars over the Bronx and Brooklyn; they anchor on the docks of the West Side, where the bass and drums and guitars find a funky groove that grounds us.

“Love’s Theme” is pure elegance. For me, the Barry White instrumental ushered in the era of my New York, where I would finally find everything I was looking for—music, glamour, and comedy, all squeezed into this overcrowded crime-ridden city. Remember, this was presanitization and pre-Disneyization. This was down-and-dirty get-mugged-in-Central-Park New York. And I loved it.

By the way, I did get mugged. I made this critical mistake: I went out at eleven at night with the pure motive of windowshopping. True New Yorkers only go out with a specific destination and walk purposefully toward it. On this night, I had no purpose other than to take a break and stroll down Upper Broadway. A man approached me. “Got a quarter?” he asked. “Sure,” I said, reaching into my pocket. “Keep your quarter,
buddy,” he barked. “Give me all your fuckin’ money. I got a gun in my pocket.” I looked perplexed. He went on, “I don’t wanna do this, but I got to. I’m a junkie. Gimme the money.” “Oh man,” I said, more disappointed in him than anything else. I didn’t really think he had a gun but didn’t want to chance being wrong. I gave him three hundred bucks—another critical mistake, walking around with so much cash—and he ran. I felt violated but also knew that I had endured a rite of passage. From then on, I walked with purpose and destination; I was a real New Yorker.

A little earlier, when I first moved down from Toronto, Stephen Schwartz had invited me to stay with him in the vanilla suburbs of Connecticut. He had a comfortable guest room and could not have been more hospitable. He thought staying in the country and traveling into the city each day would ease my transition.

What Stephen didn’t know, and what good manners kept me from saying, is that I loathe the country. Nature is not my friend. As Marlon Brando told Eva Marie Saint in
On the Waterfront
, the crickets make me nervous. I want the city. I need the city. Get me to the city. Each morning, then, when Stephen drove us in, I waited for that moment when we crossed over the river and entered the island of Manhattan. The second we were on the West Side Highway, I relaxed. I breathed in the putrid air and felt good about myself and the world. I felt ten million people moving in ten million different directions and could feel that finally I had a direction of my own. I loved the stop-and-start traffic. I loved the great wash of yellow taxis. I didn’t mind dogs relieving themselves on fire hydrants and sirens screaming from ambulances. The city made me feel safe. The city made me feel good.

How in the world could anyone live in the burbs?
I asked myself.

Why in the world would anyone live in the burbs? I’ll never live in the burbs
, I vowed.

The Magic Show
was a hit. Doug Henning was an avatar of a new style. Schwartz’s rockish score was lively. I played in the pit band, which, in fact, wasn’t in a pit at all; we sat some fifteen feet above the stage. And it was a kick.

The guitarist, Gerry Weiner, shared my love for R&B and Maestro White’s orchestral approach to deep soul. He and I would get together and play “Love’s Theme” with such crazed enthusiasm that we’d jam on that one song for well over an hour. We’d get to grooving so hard that we’d start screaming like idiots.

Then we learned Barry White himself was coming to town. That’s all we needed to hear. “Love’s Theme” became an even greater obsession. Just as Orpheus’s guitar summons the rising of the morning sun, in the mythopoetic Brazilian movie
Black Orpheus
, so were we summoning Barry White by playing “Love’s Theme.”

During the heady weekend of Barry White anticipation, we used our high energy to write a Maestro-motivated song, “I Never Want to Lose Your Love,” that actually got recorded by Paul Davis a few years later on his
I Go Crazy
album. That happy occurrence, however, was incidental to the great event itself: The Maestro live and in person. Barry was magnificent. And so was his conductor, who wielded a dramatically long glitter-encrusted baton while wearing a short kimono with a fierce dragon on the back.

I spent a year working
The Magic Show
.

Doug was as cautious as he was brilliant. Everyone in the production was required to sign a pledge that said we’d never reveal the secrets to his tricks. Because we had a behind-the-scenes look at his act, we saw how he worked his magic. After a couple of shows, I was hip to all his tricks except the one called “Houdini’s Metamorphosis.” That was one I could never figure out.

Meanwhile, the hotter the show became, the more women went wild for Doug. He became a chick magnet. Even my dear friend Gilda fell for him. One day she invited me to lunch. We met at an Upper West Side café. I could see she was despondent.