We'll Be Here For the Rest of Our Lives (22 page)

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Doug didn’t call,” she said.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I had a date with Doug.”

“Come on, Gilda,” I said, “you didn’t fall prey to the magic of illusion, did you?”

“Actually, I did. We slept together.”

“And…was it magical?” I asked.

“It was nice,” said Gilda, “but it was a week ago and he hasn’t called. I guess I’m just part of his disappearing act.”

Even though I had genuine brotherly feelings for Gilda, like almost all the guys in her circle I had a little crush on her. I was protective and, hey, a little jealous. As a result, I was pissed, so pissed that I carefully told her the secrets behind every one of Doug’s tricks. Except, of course, for Houdini’s Metamorphosis. I still didn’t know how the hell he did that one.

The truth is that I always liked Doug. He was really a sweetheart. Turned out he also had a deeply mystical side. He fell head over heels in love with Transcendental Meditation and
became tight with the Beatles’ guru, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He went back to Canada, where he ran for public office on some sort of yogic platform. A friend of mine told me what ultimately happened to him. “Doug got cancer and knew he could heal himself through TM. And he didn’t go to a doctor. So he died.” Poor Doug.

My New York turn-ons were two: the music scene and the comedy scene. They both came together when Christopher Guest and Brian Doyle-Murray asked me to write and perform with them on the fifth National Lampoon album,
Goodbye Pop
, a suite of musical parodies. I was stoked because back in college when I heard the first National Lampoon record, I was convinced it was the hippest thing since Nichols and May. Who else would do a bit with Bob Dylan as a TV huckster hawking
The Greatest Protest Hits of the Sixties’?

On
Goodbye Pop
, David Hurdon, Chris, and Gilda performed a song I co-composed called “Kung-Fu Christmas.” It became a classic, at least among the three people who bought the album. Musically, the song mirrored the silky-smooth soul sounds of the Stylistics, the Dells, and the Dramatics:

CHRIS:
Hey baby, I’d like to do something extra special for you this Christmas …I thought maybe I’d buy you a big house in the south of France
.

GILDA:
Oh, I don’t want to live in France
.

CHRIS:
Well, why don’t I buy you a big glass-bottom boat then, honey?

GILDA:
Oh darlin’, I don’t want no fish lookin’ up my skirt
.

CHRIS:
Well, baby, let me ask you, what do you want for Christmas?

GILDA:
Oh baby, I just want a Kung Fu Christmas!

Some days later, the phone rang.

It was Howard Shore, the saxophonist from
Hey, Justine
, the Toronto musical I had conducted.

“I’m musical director of this new comedy show,” said Howard, “and I’d love to use you on piano.”

“What’s it called?”

“NBC’s Saturday Night.”

Much mythology surrounds
NBC’s Saturday Night
, or, as it was rechristened in 1977,
Saturday Night Live
. In the history of American comedy,
SNL
has its place. You could even argue that it looms large in the history of American youth culture. It certainly reflected the age from which it emerged. In the mid-seventies, we were transitioning from the Age of Aquarius to the Age of Indulgence. Our hippie styles hadn’t disappeared as much as they had morphed into something more materialistic. We realized we needed to work, and yet we hadn’t lost our antipathy to the establishment and its old ways. Thus came a new kind of comedy concoction. I was privileged to watch it happen.

I must say, though, that my primary role was the same as the one I assume today on Letterman. It is, after all, who I am. I’m the piano player. In Canada I accompanied topless dancers. On
SNL
I accompanied a new generation of crazy comics. Howard hired me because I knew many of those comics. He understood that I could rehearse them and help them develop musical material. Like Howard and Lorne Michaels, the show’s producer,
I had been rigorously trained in the hard-knocks school of Canadian comedy.

Howard had gone to summer camp with Lorne near Toronto, where they’d produced amateur musicals. After much success in Hollywood, Lorne was about to make his big move.

I cherish my years with Lorne. I saw him as a visionary. He understood irony—and ironic people—as well as anyone. Early on, he told me, “Paul, when you say one thing, you mean two.” He had me pegged.

I felt that I had him pegged simply by observing this scene:

It was late one night early in the first season. Gilda and I were taking a short break from rehearsing a number. Gilda, always the most helpful of friends, noticed me at loose ends trying to complete my immigration form. She took it upon herself to sit down and type out the five-page application. I felt much better.

That’s when Lorne appeared, oblivious in his imperious manner. Two pots were sitting on burners, each filled with coffee. Lorne looked at the pots and, musing to himself, asked, “Which of these coffees
is
the fresher?”

I thought to myself,
This guy speaks in some sort of comedic pentameter. Interesting cat
.

I found myself doing two gigs at once: Lorne’s and
The Magic Show
. But even before that double duty, a third opportunity came along that took me to L.A. in the mid-seventies. I was chosen to costar in a sitcom.

Don Scardino, a former Jesus Christ in
Godspell
and a good friend, hooked me up. He recommended me for a show called
Hereafter
. I liked the premise: three old vaudeville guys sell their soul to an agent, who is the devil. In return, they get to be young again and form a rock and roll band. Don and I were in
the band along with Greg Evigan. There were plans, independent of the show, to actually record and tour the band, also called Hereafter.

What differentiated this pilot from the usual pie-in-the-sky Hollywood project was its two producers—Norman Lear and Don Kirshner. Lear was king of television comedy and Kirshner was the famous music mogul of Brill Building fame. He was currently hot, with a national TV show called
Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert
.

Kirshner fascinated me. An hour after I landed in Los Angeles, Kirshner had me over to his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He sat in a green floral chair facing a TV playing tapes of his rock concert show. Donny, as everyone called him, spoke a mile a minute. His New York brogue had a nasal edge that could scare young children. He spoke so fast, your head spun. His pitch, a mingling of the past and future, had a way of pumping up the present.

His machine-gun banter went something like this: “Forget about the Monkees. Forget about ten million records sold worldwide. Forget about I made the Monkees. I got them their producers. I got them their writers. With the Carole Kings and a kid named Davey Gates who came back later with a band called Bread and a ‘Baby I’m a Want You,’ but that’s not the point. The point is, you’ll be bigger than the Monkees. Your band Hereafter is gonna make the Monkees look like chimps. I did it before, I’ll do it again, I’m doing it now! You want to talk to Norman Lear? I pick up a phone, you talk to Norman Lear. Norman Lear wants a hit band in a hit show, he picks up a phone and calls me. I call you. You write a hit song, I pick up a phone and call a Jeff Barry. Jeff produces the hits. Jeff Barry with an Ellie Greenwich and a ‘Be My Baby,’ forget about it
with the Phil Spector Wall of Sound and the whole symphonic whatever, it’s over. You go off, you write a song, you need a sound, give it to me, that’s what I got my Jeffs for. Call me when you got the song.”

Scardino and I went off to write a song tailor-made for the show. We called it “Like a Rising Star.” A few days later we were back at Kirshner’s bungalow. When he heard it, he went into overdrive.

“I got to tell you, Paul, I love the song,” he said. “When a Neil Diamond came in with an ‘I’m a Believer’ for the Monkees, I said, ‘Neil, I love the song.’ In the studio, with my Jeffs and a Micky Dolenz and the
shtumies
we gave him with a doo-doo-doo, I knew we had a monster. But your song—bigger than the Monkees. I pick up a phone, I call a Norman Lear, I play him the song, he loves it, it’s over. ‘Like a Rising Star’ with a new group, are you kidding? We’re going straight to the top.”

With that, Kirshner picked up a phone and called his wife, Sheila.

“Sheila,” he said, “I forgot to tell you that I ran into Steve and Eydie at the Polo Lounge. They hadn’t seen me in a long time. They said, ‘Kirsh, with the thinness with the tan and the whole California bit, you look terrific.”

When the High Holy Days came around, I wanted to go to services, so I called my new rabbi, Don Kirshner, and asked for suggestions.

“You got two choices,” said Kirsh. “First, there’s Alan Blye, your Canadian
landsman
. He’s the cantor at the Temple of the Performing Arts. Choice number two is that we go to
shul
with Steve Lawrence and Eydie’s mom. Eydie’s going to Liza’s wedding at Ciro’s. She’s marrying Jack Haley, Jr.”

“I had no idea you were so close to Stevie and Eydie,” I said.

“Are you kidding? I gave ’em ‘Blame It on the Bossa Nova’ and ‘Go Away, Little Girl.’”

Meanwhile, Kirsh kept assuring us that we would be the Monkees, but bigger. “Norman Lear picks up a phone and you’re the Beatles,” Donny said.

Then a problem: Don Scardino didn’t want to sign the contract. Don had done some serious acting, starting in childhood, and didn’t want to give Kirshner and Lear first call on his services. In Scardino’s view, that would hinder his acting career. Meanwhile, I hadn’t signed the contract either because I didn’t have a lawyer. When Kirshner heard about the hang-up, we were back in the bungalow.

“Today’s Friday,” he said. “Monday we start shooting the pilot. But we got a problem. The problem is that we can’t shoot the pilot till the contracts are signed, and they’re telling me, Scardino, that you won’t sign because you’re a serious actor. This I can understand. This I can respect. You wanna be Redford. It’s good to wanna be Redford. You wanna be Redford, I pick up a phone, Norman picks up a phone, you’re Redford. You wanna be Redford, you’re Redford. We don’t got a problem, Scardino. But how about you, Paul? Why haven’t you signed?”

“I don’t have a lawyer,” I said.

“That’s not a problem. I pick up a phone, I get ten lawyers on the phone. Who do they represent? You heard of Paul McCartney? You heard of Sammy Davis? And how ’bout an Olivia Newton John? You wanna talk big? I’ll give you big lawyers. Choose one of them. Choose four. Choose ten. I don’t care. It’s not a problem. The only problem is if we don’t get this contract signed we got a problem. We’re friends, but if you don’t sign, we got a problem. We’re friends, but Norman says, ‘Blow him off the deal,’ we gotta blow you off the deal.”

I picked a lawyer. He said a bunch of things that got me confused. I told him to call my father in Canada. Dad said, “I think it’s all right, son. I made certain that the contract does not prohibit you from doing studio work. You’ll be able to do as much extra work as you like.”

Dad saved the day.

Meanwhile, Scardino struck the clause that gave Kirshner first call on his services. Kirshner caved. Scardino was Redford.

All was set.

Back to the bungalow to sign.

“Now we’re friends,” said Don. “Friends for life. I’m picking up a phone and calling Norman. Here’s Norman Lear on the phone.”

“Congratulations,” Norman told us, not really knowing our names.

“Now Norman Lear is your friend,” said Don. “Anytime you want, you pick up a phone and call Norman. It’s a done deal.”

But was it?

After the
Hereafter
pilot was shot, there was nothing to do in L.A. It would be months before we’d learn whether the show was picked up.

So back to New York.

Back to
The Magic Show
.

And, simultaneously, back to the beginnings of
SNL
. This was when Howard Shore was putting the band together and using me to rehearse the musical numbers.