I am a New York born-and-bred musician. I arrived in upper
Manhattan during a blizzard in January of 1957. My Dad was a
working, traveling musician in those days, playing sax, clarinet, and
flute with different post-big-band-era outfits, most notably Louis
Prima, and his partner Keeley Smith.
Louis was a real forerunner to rock-and-roll, though that wasn't my
Dad's thing at all. My Dad was more about the harmony and
sophistication of vocal groups like The Four Freshmen, and
especially The Hi-Los, who I also love to this day. My Dad had his own
vocal group as well, named The We Four, and they cut a couple of cool
discs while he was working on the west coast. But he had to retire
from music professionally by 1965, and quit 'the road' to come back to
full-time life with my Mom, bro Bill and me in New York.
My Mom grew up in the Bronx, in the same neighborhood as seen in
Scorcese's Raging Bull, where she remembers boxer Jake La Motta as
a neighborhood fixture. My Dad had gone to music school at Berkeley in
Boston, studying alongside Quincy Jones, as well as my mom's brother, Joe, another great family musician who hooked these two up.
In The Heights
I grew up in a small one-bedroom apartment in the Washington Heights
section of upper Manhattan — a tiny place, but it had a spectacular
view of the northern portion of New York City. I'd hang out those
windows with Bill and gaze at The Cloisters in Fort Tyron Park, the
Hudson River, complete with the 'Circle Line' floating by every few
hours; behind the river were the New Jersey Palisades, the light tower
in Alpine, NJ.
Directly north was the Riverdale section of the Bronx
with its luxury buildings replete with giant swimming pools, while
off to the east was visible the Fordham Road section of the Bronx,
and below us from atop this hillside was the entire Inwood section of
Manhattan. From this majestic vantage point Bill and I would hurl wet
toilet paper bombs and spit on the unfortunate passers-by below our
third floor window.
That neighborhood was typical of any of the New York borough
neighborhoods for a city kid: games of stickball, hanging out on
the 'stoop,' breaking windows, etc. Bill and I attended St.
Elizabeth's parochial school on 187th Street and had good old-fashioned brainwashing at the hands of the nuns. 'Nun vs. boy' violence was waged daily under the guise of corporal punishment, and, almost surprisingly, there were never any fatalities.
The First Next Big Thing
I was seven years old in February of '64 when, thankfully, my
grandmother announced to Mom, Bill and I, "The Beatles are coming … you
have to watch The Beatles!" I don't know what made her so
adamant, but clearly she was in sync with the moment, and she knew
what we all had to do: 'watch The Beatles!"
Within a matter of weeks, I, like a lot of other kids, had a guitar
and was getting blisters and calluses on my novice fingers, and was
playing along to those records as I began to teach myself by trial
and error how to play the guitar. A couple of years into it, I sent
away for a classical guitar book that went along with a PBS TV show
hosted by Fredrick Noad, and got pretty good at that style as well …
good enough to play a mean version of Classical Gas by the time I was
eleven.
The Mothers of Detention
Nobody in the hierarchy of the Catholic school system would ever
tell a kid like me about a place like New York's High School of the
Performing Arts, which is where I would have gone in my alternate
reality. Instead, I went to another Catholic school, this one in the Bronx. I went to Cardinal
Spellman HS simply because there were girls there … none of this all-boys school bullshit which I was hearing about! My first high school
band was called BMT [for our initials … sort of like ELP, we
thought.] My longtime collaborator, Russ Velasquez, came in the band
later, but never got his own letter. I learned piano in the practice
rooms of the school which had a tiny music department which was headed
by Victor Tallarico, who also happened to be the Dad of fledgling
rocker Steven Tyler. 'Uncle Vic' was a fantastic musician who
encouraged me and Velazquez in our Zappa-inspired troupe,
Chalice. Tallarico brought in his son's first LP to show to the
class … and I remember that she had crossed-out with a marker a section of
the liner notes which mentioned Steven's first drug bust!
I was accepted to Mannes School of Music in 1975 based on my piano
compositions (see "Three Pieces for Piano" in the ARCHIVES), but after the inevitable crossing of paths with the
High School of Performing Arts musician crowd, a new band evolved out
of it and I chose not to attend Mannes in favor of pushing ahead
with the resulting prog-rock outfit, Jester (check out Love In My Dreams in the ARCHIVES).
Have a Good Day Job to Fall Back On
That's what my mother would say to me, but I never believed in it. My
thought was that, without something to fall back on, it would force me to
succeed to some degree in music.
The band Jester never performed except one showcase performance for
Sid Bernstein or somebody like that, and the group disbanded by
1977, at which point I got married to Gigi Hageman, the keyboard
player and singer in the band — admittedly not so genius a
decision at 20 years old, and, predictably, it lasted barely two
years [we got remarried in 1984].
During that time we were both
hired to the cast of the Broadway show Beatlemania. Gigi was the
backstage keyboardist, and I would portray 'George' on the stage of
the Winter Garden, and subsequently the Lunt Fontaine, and Palace
theaters. I looked at this as my day job, that would give me the
opportunity to put away a few dollars, which I didn't do, and think
about my next music project.
New Wave Haircuts
At the end of its run, Beatlemania fizzled out dramatically, almost
comically and by October of 1979 it shut its doors. Inspired by acts
like Elvis Costello, The Police and Joe Jackson, I quickly put
together a 'New Wave' band, really just a short haircut band, with
old pal from Chalice, Russ Velazquez, Spellman alumn Robert Miller
and brother Bill. The band The Metromen were a great power-pop
quartet (see YouTube videos in the ARCHIVES). We recorded an album for Genya Ravan's indie label, but it
never had a commercial release, and we managed to develop a strong
New York club following by the time we broke up in 1982. Too
bad … for I believe we would have broken through given another year
together.
Second Time Around
Dick Clark was producing a Beatlemania-style Broadway show called
'Rock and Roll, the First 5000 Years,' and in the summer of 1982 I
auditioned and was cast in the show as various rock luminaries like Lennon, Harrison, Hendrix, Jerry Lee Lewis, and a bunch of others. Madonna was one one the unknowns who auditioned and got hired, but at role-call on the first day of rehearsals she was a no-show: she had bailed out
in favor of starting her first record … good choice, I'd say. I
walked down Eighth Avenue after a performance, with Dick Clark, and
as I remember, he was very short — and so was the run of the show: less
than a couple of weeks.
The Big Deal
I wrote and recorded some lo-fi four-track demos for a couple of dozen
songs in 1982-83 (a couple are available in the ARCHIVES) that ended up getting me signed to the A&M label.
Without a band to surround me for the project, I recorded the album as
a one-man band, which, though typical today, was not how most records
were done back then. More unorthodox was the idea with my
co-producer Neil Kernon, to record the album out of a mobile
recording truck parked outside of the Irving Plaza rock venue
[currently the Fillmore] using various parts of the building for
ambient recording and effect. The album was mixed in the Double
Fantasy room at Hit Factory, and Tales of Glamour and Distress was
released in the spring of '84, to favorable reviews. I never toured or
promoted the album, with the exception of doing the standard promo
video for MTV, for the song 'A Rocket and a Roman Candle:'
I was back
to writing and recording for a second album by the end of 1984, but
the record was not completed and never released due to a botched
production job at the hands of a spurious producer whom I was paired
with by the execs.
Square One
I parted ways with the record company in spring of '85 and started
working with other artists and friends as a 'hired gun' for sessions
and tours, which took the sting out of not being on a label. My old
Beatlemania alumn pal Marshall Crenshaw was the first to knock on my
door with a tour and even a movie cameo for his band in a Coppola
film "Peggy Sue got Married." Coppola singled me out from the band to
play the 'boyfriend ' of Helen Hunt for an improv scene which not
surprisingly ended up on the cutting room floor. I should mention here
that this was my second movie experience, as there was a movie version
in 1981 of 'Beatlemania' — that one proved to be a real schlocky piece
of junk and I don't even own a copy of it.
After touring with Marshall, I started working with Joe Jackson, and
I came in midway through his 'Big World' tour in 1986, as guitarist
Vinnie Zummo was having ear-related difficulties, and had to leave.
After a two-week crash course rehearsal, we flew to Tokyo where his
'Live in Tokyo' vid was filmed. Watching it now, I can still see my
jet-lag and stress about filming this show that I barely knew and
thinking I would faint a couple of times, but all in all, it really
rocked.
I continued working with Joe on into the early 90's on records and
tours fort the 'Blaze of Glory' and 'Laughter and Lust' albums.
Jingle Jangle
Collaborating with other writers always seemed to me a better way
to get a cover-able song that someone else might want to record.
In 1985 I began to write frequently with Tommy James, and we ended
up having The Monkees do one of our tunes. I had an Alice Cooper
cover with 'This Maniac's in Love With You,' a collaboration as
well … and Marshall Crenshaw and I finally sat down at a point when
we were both living in Woodstock NY, and knocked out a couple of
tunes for his 'Life's Too Short' record in 1991.
Most of my focus and energy in the early 90's went into my two young
children, Caitlin and Jackson, but I was really interested in getting
more session work particularly in jingles which is where a lot of my
peers were raking in big dollars. I had a couple of good long-running ads that helped pay the bills through those years, but it
clearly was not my destiny to get rich in that biz as some of my
friends had, so I continued to try to conjure my latest musical
version of myself.
Wormboy
I tried a number of different style mutations during those years for
my own solo artist project, but nothing really gelled as unique or
different for me until 1996 when I began working on the WORM
music. I went back to some old idea tapes from 20+ years earlier, and
decided to build a whole group of new songs around these old
jazz-fusion era themes. I envisioned it as as band called WORM, and
the album title was 'Pagan Holiday Favorites.' The project was done by
2000, and I had preliminary discussions with Steve Vai about it
being released on his new indie label. While busy relocating myself
and family to the more bucolic and affordable hills of
Massachusetts, the climate at the label changed and the deal never
happened. I shelved the project, and focused on performing and
bill-paying, and spent the remainder of the zeroes traveling the
world with the top touring Beatle-trib shows. I also did some
scripting and directing of TV ads during this period as part of
The Insanity Corporation. Some of the spots were pretty freakin'
funny, but the world of ad execs was not for me.
These Days I Don't Worry about Tomorrow
Feeling somewhat disgruntled by the business of music, at the point
which I shelved WORM, I stopped producing music actively, although
I continued, as ever, cataloging themes and ideas for future songs
and pieces.
I did however resume producing and experimenting with new music
through 2009 and 2010, and made the decision that before any new
music be completed and made available, I would finally remaster
the WORM album and put that out first, so that it could hopefully
have its day. I'm happy to say that day has come and it feels good to
finally release it and look ahead to producing something fresh and
different.
As I write this, I find myself playing on Broadway again in the
production of 'Rain [a tribute to the Beatles]' at the Neil Simon
Theater. New York has changed a lot since my early days here, but
in many ways it's also exactly the same … just like me, I guess: very
much the same, but just with a few more aches and wrinkles.