We'll Be Here For the Rest of Our Lives (8 page)

“Boy, am I happy,” I said. “I’ve never been happier.”

There were other happy out-of-town moments with my parents. If Vegas was one temple of entertainment for show-biz-loving Jews, the other was surely Miami Beach. It was there, in the splendor of the Eden Roc Hotel (close to the famed Fontainebleau), where we caught Billy Daniels, the over-the-top song stylist with the big-bottomed black voice. Don’t let anyone tell you that Billy Daniels didn’t know his audience. He closed with “My Yiddishe Mama.” The Jews
plotzed
. His opening act: Myron Cohen. Cohen was king of the Jewish joke. But as my parents pointed out to me, the more Yiddish his punch lines, the more British-sounding his setups. Man, Mom and Dad were hip! And perhaps the greatest manifestation of their hipness came in the form of recreation and libation. They knew how to throw a party. Let’s go …

Cocktail parties were essential. In fact, social drinking and its ensuing merriment were Mom and Dad’s way of coping with the Canadian climate. They lived their lives as they imagined Sinatra lived his. He had his clan; they had theirs. They had a party culture that involved a great deal of creativity. It also involved me.

There was, for instance, the beatnik party where Mom dressed in a leotard and Dad wore a beret. A hip singer and comic named Don Francks came all the way from Toronto to entertain. He covered songs by the jazz duo Jackie and Roy, in that cool vibrato-less style of crooning. Dad informed me that I was to learn bongos. “What’s a beatnik party without bongos?” asked Dad.

I liked beating the bongos. In fact, I beat them night and day until Mom cut me off. “Stop beating the bongos and beat it down to the corner to get me a pack of du Mauriers.”

When Dad got home, it was “Get back on the bongos. This beatnik party has got to swing wild.”

To see my parents, respectable citizens by day, turn into make-believe beatniks by night was strange, especially when their behavior was fueled by my bongo grooves and Johnnie Walker Red. And especially when my father, before reciting the poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, decided to break into his famous Al Jolson impression, falling on one knee and cryin’ “Mammy” and “Swanee.” Now I was accompanying him on piano. I did so with a degree of trepidation because, depending upon how many precisely proportioned martinis Dad had downed, my playing could throw him off. Other times, when he’d ask me to play a classical piece before, say, an important circuit court judge, I might not be completely prepared. This would incense Dad. He didn’t hesitate to criticize me right then and there, as if he were cross-examining a witness in a court of law. I hated these public humiliations but dared not complain.

Don’t misunderstand. In most ways my father was a sweetheart. He was also a hoot. While at the University of Toronto, he was a star in the collegiate follies and had worked with Wayne and Shuster, the great Canadian comedy team. He had dreamed of a career in show business, but the Depression hit and caution kept him home. Subsequently he called the courtroom his stage. I understood why he liked to ape Al Jolson and consort with Don Francks, whom he considered the Lenny Bruce of the Frozen Frontier. He wanted to entertain, to be noticed, to host his friends and peers with originality and humor. But Dad also struggled with a hidden rage whose source I could never trace. The cocktail party was a time when his complexities and contradictions might unexpectedly surface.

Mom anticipated such celebrations as eagerly as Dad. When she imbibed, her normally low-volume voice got loud and her laughter got raucous. Her transformation made me a touch
uncomfortable. I preferred Mom to be plain ol’ Mom, not the Mom who said to me, “Paul, your father and I are having a twist party. Can you find us a go-go dancer for Saturday night? We’ll bring in a stage and it’ll be absolutely marvelous.”

It was a challenge. My folks had seen Chubby Checker on the
Ed Sullivan Show
. They knew about the Peppermint Lounge in New York City. But their real aim was to re-create Arthur, the trendy disco owned by Richard Burton’s former wife, Sybil. That’s where all the stars twisted the night away. My folks wanted to do the same and they reasoned—quite correctly—that a go-go dancer would spirit the party.

After some research, I managed to find a girl who, at eighteen, was a year older than I. She had appeared on a local TV dance show, and her name was Bonnie Carniato. Her costume consisted of a flimsy fringy skirt, a sparkly top, and the requisite white go-go boots. Her best attribute was her long legs. And, take it from me, the girl could twist. “Twistin’ the Night Away” became the recurrent motif. I must have played the goddamn thing a hundred times.

“Fabulous party!” Mom exclaimed at 2:30 a.m.

I was exhausted. My fingers ached from banging out all those twist numbers. But Bonnie’s appreciative fans wanted to keep on twistin’. How long, though, could I watch these middle-aged, overweight Canadians get down with their bad selves?
Get me out of here
.

“I got to get some sleep, Mom,” I said.

“Just one more set, son.”

Mom’s dutiful son capitulated.

Finally, an hour later, the party pooped out. Dad handed Bonnie a fistful of Canadian dollars.

Bonnie thanked him. I walked her to the door and thanked her as well.

“Your parents are great, Paul,” she said. “They throw a helluva party. And you could almost do this for a living.”

Bonnie, bless her heart, saw my future.

It wasn’t anything I could say out loud. But I did say it silently in the secret chambers of my heart. As I kept playing songs like the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” written by Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, and producer Phil Spector, I saw myself flying on the wings of the music, flying over Lake Superior, over Lake Michigan, over the Motown studio in Detroit where the Sound of Young America rose up like a “Heat Wave” burning in my heart, flying over Alan Freed in Cleveland and Dick Clark in Philly, where the kids were lining up for
American Bandstand
, flying straight into New York City and landing at the feet of Ronnie Ronette herself. I’d try to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. I was too timid, too unsure of myself. No Canadian man-child could hope to win the love of a lady who unabashedly demands, “Be My Baby.” My flight would end. My dream would dissolve.

But the next morning I’d wake up and rush over to the piano and play the song. I’d play so loudly that the sound got all up in my ears. I’d close my eyes and, in the haze of my foggy morning mind, I could almost hear Ronnie saying, “Paul, come down to the States. Come down to Spanish Harlem, Knock three times to see if I’m home. Come down to where it’s hot and sweaty and gritty. I’m waiting for you down here, Paul. I may not be of your faith…but we’ll work something out.”

One morning my reverie was broken by my mother shouting. “Start packing, Paul, we’re leaving for the weekend.”

“We can’t leave,” I said. “The Four Seasons are on Sullivan again Sunday night.”

“Seasons come and go, son,” said Dad, “but it’s summertime. We’re going to our cottage on the lake.”

We often spent summer weekends lakeside. That was fine, except our cottage had no TV.

“I don’t want to go to the lake,” I said. “I want to watch Sullivan. The Four Seasons are going to do their new song, ‘Rag Doll.’”

“You’re already playing that ‘Rag Doll’ song. Isn’t that the one where you bash the bongos on top of the piano?”

“Yes, that’s how I duplicate the intro that’s on the record.”

“Well, so you have it down.”

“I need to see them do it on TV,” I said. “I’ve never seen the song performed and can’t afford to miss it. I can stay home by myself.”

“It’s a family outing,” said Dad. “You’re coming.”

I pleaded to stay with relatives; I pleaded for a plan that would have us home in time for Sullivan; I pleaded for a postponement of the trip. But all pleas fell on deaf ears.

Watching Canadian geese flying through summer rainstorms, I was miserable all weekend.

The storm in my heart, the one that stirred my soul as it had never been stirred before, had come earlier from watching the Seasons on Sullivan singing “Big Girls Don’t Cry.” My parents had no idea how riveting that moment had been to me.

Naturally it was in black and white. As the music started, singer Frankie Valli, guitarist Tommy DeVito, and bassist Nick Massi slowly began walking downstage in triangle formation.
Valli, who considered Sinatra the performer’s performer, was almost conducting in a Frank-ish manner. The opening chords were chilling. The vocals were astounding, but my eye went to Valli’s right, to the fourth Season, the group member who interested me most. This was the great Bob Gaudio, the co-composer, along with Bob Crewe, of their greatest hits. He stood behind a keyboard. I practically pressed my nose against the TV screen to catch every nuance of their presentation.

Later in life, I actually met Gaudio and pumped him for information. That’s when he told a story that blew my mind: After writing “Who Wears Short Shorts” as a member of the Royal Teens, he had an offer to go on tour. But he was only fifteen and Dad said no, not until he graduated. Bob was crafty enough even then to arrange a meeting with his dad and the principal of his high school. After Bob eloquently pleaded his case, the principal made his pronouncement: “Mr. Gaudio, your son can finish high school anytime. An opportunity like this comes once in a lifetime. Let him go.” Bob prevailed.

I didn’t.

He wrote “Sherry.” I only learned it. And back in the hot summer of my discontent, I couldn’t even talk my parents into taking me home in time to watch the Four Seasons do “Rag Doll” on Sullivan.

“You’ll get over it,” my dad said. “It’s no big deal.”

“Yeah, no big deal,” I said, but I never got over it. For me, the Four Seasons style was life changing. For my folks, it was just little Paul obsessed.

Meanwhile, the summer cottage party scene was in full swing, and my parents weren’t about to cut it short. That Saturday night my folks were invited up to Bill Maloney’s place. Bill, who became a Superior Court Justice, had an outdoor sauna.
Because Thunder Bay had a large Finnish population, saunas were a staple of the party scene. In fact, I was awakened at midnight by Bill himself, who insisted I join the party and bring my ukulele. Bill knew I could strum in the style of George Formby, the English music hall star whom George Harrison claimed as an influence. When I cleared the cobwebs from my head and got to the sauna, the liquor was flowing and, in no time flat, my parents were going pretty good to “Mr. Wu’s a Window Cleaner Now.” Bill and I had written special lyrics to “I’m Henry the Eighth I Am.” Our parody was about Sulo the Steam Bath Man and included the line “every sauna was a Satana.” I was especially proud of that line because “Satana” was a Finnish word that meant devil, as in “a devil of a good sauna.”

Well, it was a devil of a good party—so good that our host, the Honorable Justice William Maloney, scooped up a dipper of boiling hot water and instead of pouring it on the hot rocks, poured it down his bathing trunks, scalding, if you will,
his
rocks. He was immediately rushed to the hospital. The next night, though, while the Seasons were singing “Rag Doll” on Sullivan, Maloney was back partying at his outdoor sauna—and so were the Shaffers.