We'll Be Here For the Rest of Our Lives (34 page)

“Oh no,” said Phil. “It’s early. We’re all heading over to P. J. Clarke’s for drinks. The fun’s just begun. You can’t leave.”

I was insistent, but Phil was even more insistent.

“Look,” I finally said, winning the argument with humor, “you’re Phil Spector. You can wake up tomorrow at noon, pick up the phone, learn you’ve made a million dollars on a Crystals’ reissue in England and go back to sleep. That’s your day’s work, Phil. I’ve gotta get up and play the piano.”

He smiled and relented.

Of all the fresh kicks I’ve enjoyed as a musician, the highlight has got to be playing on a Spector session. It happened
when Phil wanted to test the waters to see if he could once again make his mark on popular music. He had left his suite at the Waldorf Towers and flown back to his L.A. home. He was ready to record and even recruited his original engineer from the glory days, Larry Levine, and as many of his original wrecking crew of musicians as he could find.

“Paul,” said Phil, “the Wall is going up again. I want you on the session.”

My manager said he was paying everyone triple scale and, except for me, they were all L.A.—based musicians.

“I’ll try and get you travel expenses,” my manager said.

The next day I learned Phil had refused.

“Fuck it. I’ll be there anyway,” I told my manager. “I’d pay
him.”

When I got to L.A., I went directly to the studio.

Phil had a plan: he had written a song and was going to fine-tune an arrangement, cut a master, and hire a singer like Linda Ronstadt to put her voice on it. It was Old School thinking: own everything. But the music world had changed radically since the days when Phil, in the role of a Roman emperor, looked over his stable of singers and declared, “You, Darlene Love, sing this one,” or “You, Bob B. Soxx, sing that one.” I’m not sure whether Phil understood that singers had been liberated. I had heard, however, that there had been a time when every Spector session began with the singing of “We Shall Overcome.”

The notion of getting a Linda Ronstadt or a Bette Midler to turn over all power to Phil was a pipe dream, but I didn’t care. The Wall was all.

There were no fewer than thirty musicians in the studio, including six guitarists and six keyboardists. I was one of two synthesizer players; the other was Alan Pasqua, a great jazz
pianist. Phil was renowned for including jazz masters on his sessions. In fact, he had vibist Terry Gibbs playing shaker.

His overall strategy was this: to achieve the perfect balance, to create the perfect sound. Then and only then would he go for a live take.

Because I was Phil’s pal, I had an all-access pass to this heavy-duty sonic construction project. I could pass freely from the studio to the booth and watch him work. Phil wanted leakage. He said leakage was the mortar that joined the bricks that built the Wall.

“Leakage,” he explained, “is what creates the room sound. I want that sound to wash over everything.”

Leakage meant that the sound of the drum could leak into the guitar mic, and the sound of the guitar could leak into the drum mic. Getting maximum leakage meant taking down the sound booth walls separating the musicians. Leakage meant opening up the sonic floodgates and letting go of traditional engineering restraints. Larry Levine knew about leakage.

But in this modern studio, Larry Levine couldn’t duplicate Phil’s original methodology. The Back to Mono Rail was a little off track. The arrangement, hastily crafted by Jack Nitzsche, had several empty bars. Everything needed fixing and everything took time.

The Wall went up slowly. Phil mixed down the acoustic guitars to an infectious chug-a-chug-chug shaker beat. Then he folded in four acoustic pianos, then three percussionists. Next he had me and Pasqua looking for synth sounds. I didn’t really know the instrument, so Alan helped me find a classical guitar patch that Phil liked. Phil put a deep reverb on the sound and mixed it in with everything else. The next thing I knew, I was
standing in the control booth, listening to myself as part of the Spector sound. Holy shit!

The horns came next. Everything was being layered and relayered. Everything was getting bigger and bigger. The Wall was getting higher and higher.

But unfortunately the Wall had cracks, and Phil couldn’t get what he wanted. He kept running from the control room, where he was entertaining celebrity friends like O.J. attorney Robert Shapiro, to the floor of the studio, trying to make it all happen. By midnight, the Wall was up, but wobbly. The drummers had yet to play.

“Guys, we’re not going to get it tonight,” Phil finally said.

We hadn’t even played the whole thing through. There was never a live take.

The musicians were crestfallen. They would have played all night for Phil. One by one, though, they packed up and filed out. I stayed for the postmortem.

“Too bad about those missing bars,” Phil said.

“I wish they’d had the right tape delay,” I added.

“But I’ll tell you something, Paul. Thirty guys sure sounded warm in there.”

At that point it hit me: Warmth. That’s what I loved about the Spector sound.
Warmth
.

We went out for drinks afterward.

“The nerve of you, asking for expense money,” Phil said over a Cointreau straight up. I blamed it on my manager.

“You know, Paul,” Phil started to needle me, “some of the cats thought you were just here for comic relief.”

“Which ones?” I asked, panicking.

“Never mind,” he said.

With that, we toasted the memory of Richie Valens.

The project was abandoned, but many months later I received a beautifully written letter from Phil saying that I had played skillfully on the session and had earned the right to consider myself a brick in the Wall of Sound.

On another occasion in L.A., Phil presented me with my very own “Back to Mono” button. That night we went to the Vine Street Bar and Grill, a jazz club where Anita O’Day was appearing. I told Phil how my dad loved Anita and considered her, along with Sarah, Ella, and Billie, one of the greats. “Your dad has good taste,” Phil told me. Anita had survived a long and difficult life, which she had documented in
Hard Times High Times
, her candid autobiography.

Anita’s set was stunning: “Wave,” “Tenderly,” “Tea for Two,” “I Cover the Waterfront,” “Sweet Georgia Brown.” Despite her advanced age—or perhaps because of it—she swung with percussive ease. At seventy-five, she was free as a bird.

We went to meet her in her dressing room. She was polite to Phil, though it wasn’t clear whether she knew who he was. When she saw me, though, she greeted me with a hug. “I love the Letterman show,” she said. “I watch it every night. I dig the band.” And with that, she reached into a Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag, fished out a copy of her autobiography, and said, “Paul, this is for thou.”

Hip
, I thought. Phil forced a smile.

Later that night we went to the Polo Lounge where, lo and behold, we encountered our idol, Ahmet Ertegun. Ahmet was at a table with a young couple from the Midwest who were honeymooning in Beverly Hills. Ahmet had given them a bottle of Dom Perignon and, if I read the situation correctly, was also
angling to give the bride a private toast in his suite. In his ultrasuave manner, he was arguing that, beginning with the honeymoon, an open attitude toward marriage is the only way to ensure a long-term relationship between a man and woman.

Phil and I were intrigued by Ahmet’s romantic maneuvers. Who else but the great Ertegun would hit on a newlywed in the presence of her husband?

The couple recognized me from Letterman, but they hadn’t heard of Phil.

“Phil Spector is a genius,” said Ahmet. “In the dark and dreary music business, he is one of our bright lights. I respect him tremendously. There is, however, a major and irreconcilable difference between Phil and myself.”

“What is that difference?” asked the extremely impressionable young bride.

“Well, I am a proponent,” Ahmet said drolly, “of stereo.”

Years later, Phil was in New York and asked that I join him on another jazz jaunt. Richard Belzer was also along for the ride. Phil explained that a reporter profiling him for a national magazine would be part of the entourage, but not to worry, the journalist would be without his pad. I assumed that meant that the evening would be “off the record.”

We started out at the Plaza. Then it was on to Elaine’s for dinner. The reporter was silent and, as Phil had promised, was not taking notes. No one took pictures. The second stop was Fez, a downtown downstairs jazz club where Phil wanted to hear the Mingus Big Band, an edgy orchestra dedicated to the music of the immortal Charles Mingus. The band was a groove, and before long I was asked to join them onstage.

“You can’t play this stuff,” said Phil. “It’s too far out.”

Nevertheless, I got onstage, sat at the piano, and had a ball. Calling upon the illuminating spirit of my mentor Tisziji Munoz, I managed to dance my way through the avant-garde arrangement and add some improvisational touches of my own. The band was pleased and so was the audience.

Phil wasn’t.

“You cheated,” said Phil. “You rehearsed it. I’d bet a million bucks you rehearsed the fuckin’ thing before we got here.”

“Make the check out to cash, Phil. I don’t cheat. I just play.”

Several months later, the profile of Phil appeared. Off the record indeed! The evening was recounted in detail!

Belzer and I were described derisively as friends of Phil who were not on the A-list. In the words of the reporter, we were on the “J-list …Jews of middle vintage whose show-biz lives let them hang out and on for eons without having to smile in the middle box of ‘Hollywood Squares.’” I thought the remarks had a somewhat anti-Semitic tinge. Besides, the characterization was inaccurate. Both Belzer and I had proudly appeared on that classic game show loved by millions. So there.

When Gilda went off to marry Gene Wilder in 1984, it left a hole in the soul of the
SNL
crowd. We thought of her as
our
Gilda. We were convinced that we loved and understood her more deeply than anyone in the world. So when, five years later, we heard she had contracted ovarian cancer, we were devastated. It couldn’t be happening, not to someone with the life force and love-giving spirit of Gilda Radner.

By then she and Gene were living in Connecticut and, understandably, not answering anyone’s calls. They were contending with Gilda’s debilitating condition.

When I heard, though, that her days were few, I had to call. Miraculously, Gene answered.

“It’s Paul Shaffer,” I said.

“Oh, Paul,” said Gene. “Gilda’s right here. I know she’d love to talk to you.”

“Paul?” It was Gilda’s distinctly sweet voice, but a voice that had grown terribly weak.

I quoted the Stevie Wonder song from
The Woman in Red
, the film she did with Gene. “I just called to say I love you.”

“I love you too, Paul.”

“You know, Gilda, I still feel awful that your record didn’t turn out better. I really messed that one up.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Paul, forget about it. That’s old news. Let yourself off the hook.”

“Thanks, Gilda. I will. Hey, I’m thinking about that moment I played piano while you auditioned for
Godspell
with ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.’ I fell hopelessly in love with you. We all did.”

“And Paul, how ’bout back in Toronto when I walked into one of our little parties with Peter Boyle on my arm and your jaw dropped to the floor.”

“You told us you’d picked him up on a plane trip. We were so in love with show business back then, any star would have knocked us out.”

“Paul, you’re the most show business person I know,” said Gilda with that laugh we all cherished.

“Baby, you’re a star,” I said. “Your light will never dim.”

Gilda passed on May 20, 1989. Her light shines even brighter today.

When Lorne Michaels decided to “produce” a private memorial for Gilda, he did so in typical Lorne style. He decided it would be held in Studio 8H, the
SNL
home, the most appropriate stage imaginable. In our world, when someone dies, all we know how to do is put on a show. So we put on a show for Gilda.