Waiting on the Moon, page 28
Years later, in an effort to satisfy the unwavering loyalty of our fans—and, in some sense, in a misguided attempt to overlook the past—I agreed to take part in the Geils band’s ill-advised reunion concerts. Time had not papered over the cracks and only further exposed the band’s deep fractures, futile grudges, and petty jealousies.
Bruce’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame speech indeed spoke the truth, for in the end, what got me back out there was will and intent, with one additional necessity, friendship. I may have been burned in the past, but I rediscovered a fire within me that nobody would ever put out again.
Long Line
“DESIRE HAS NO REST”
31
PINK ’EM
Don Covay
THE TELEPHONE RANG in my hotel room. “Mr. Wolf, there’s a Mr. Covay downstairs who claims he’s a guest of yours.” It was the way the caller said “who claims” that made me immediately head down to the lobby.
This was the exclusive Carlyle hotel, the last of the grand white-glove five-star establishments left in the city. For at least six months I had been occasionally living in a small suite where the weekly bill was next to nothing at the discretion of the Carlyle’s owner, Peter Sharp.
As I stood waiting for the elevator, I thought back to the time when I first met Don, in 1970, right after the recording of the first Geils album in New York. Our producers had worked with many of Atlantic’s important soul artists and asked me whom I would like to meet. Without hesitation, I replied, “Don Covay.” They were bemused by my choice. “Peter, you could meet Wilson Pickett, Joe Tex, Ben E. King—even Aretha—and instead of all these great artists you pick Don Covay?”
I could understand their bafflement. Don was basically known as a songwriter, but his first two albums for Atlantic were pure classics that had made a deep impression on me. His voice didn’t have the polish of many of his contemporaries, but he projected a depth of personality. The images in his lyrics had charm and character and possessed a real street sensibility. They made me believe that his songs came right from his own life experiences.
The producers set up a meeting with Don and the Geils band in a room at the Americana hotel. When I met Don that evening, he certainly didn’t disappoint. He was as I imagined—even a whole lot more.
I asked if it would be possible to take a picture with him and, surprisingly, he said no. I was somewhat taken aback, but he explained, “No pictures in the hotel room. You see, someone could take that very photo, block you out of it, and add a woman to it. Maybe she might be naked or something and try to cause lotsa problems, so no photos in the hotel room!” This paranoia could have come right out of one of Don’s songs. It became the band’s inside joke before we gave press interviews: “No photos in the hotel room!”
With Don Covay
When I was living at the Carlyle, in the summer of 1983, I was at loose ends, looking for a new songwriting partner after my longtime collaborator ended our working relationship. Don’s wife had recently passed, and it was hitting him hard. At the suggestion of Atlantic’s promotion man, the Big M, I had called Don to see if he wanted to get together and collaborate on some new songs. This would be a boost for me as well as for Don, whose grief over the loss of his wife had turned him into a virtual recluse.
Upon entering the lobby, I saw Don at the front desk. He was hard to miss, wearing a light brown suede leisure suit with lacing down the sides of the pants, a brown leather vest, a Day-Glo red shirt, shiny blue snakeskin boots, mirrored sunglasses, and a large-brimmed white cowboy hat. He was chatting to several expensively dressed Italian ladies who were checking into the hotel, surrounded by several assistant managers and a cluster of bellmen piloting carts stacked with their Louis Vuitton luggage.
“Been to Italy several times,” I overheard Don saying to one of the ladies. “Yeah, one time I performed at the Sanremo Festival—you ever hear of that? Man, it was wild. All them Italians not speaking a word of English, and yet they still understood all the songs.”
As I approached Don, he yelled out my name, then gave me a tight bear hug that lifted me off the floor. He proudly introduced me to the ladies, as if they should know exactly who I was.
I suggested we grab a cab and head across town to a friend’s home studio to do some songwriting. “We don’t need a cab,” he replied. “I got my chauffeur waiting for us outside.” Don kissed each of the ladies’ hands and wished them a pleasant stay.
The waiting car was a run-down black 1960s Cadillac Coupe de Ville. The rear fender was tied on, and one of the brake lights was missing. Don’s driver, Clarence, jumped out to open the back door for us. In the driver’s seat, it seemed Clarence was having trouble getting the car to start, but then it finally jerked forward. Not missing a beat, Don began philosophizing about the art of songwriting.
He was in the middle of explaining how he wrote and recorded “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got But It’s Got Me” for Little Richard, with Jimi Hendrix on guitar, when a loud noise erupted from the front of the car. Don casually mentioned that his other, newer car was “in the shop” and questioned Clarence as to why it wasn’t ready yet. Clarence didn’t reply as he focused on the rush-hour cabs weaving in and out of traffic.
A slight smell of oil began to fill the car as Don kept talking. “Little Richard called me Pretty Boy, and coming from Richard, that was quite a compliment, man. He taught me so much about the business. He, Chuck, Fats, Bo, Jackie Wilson—they all got screwed outta the money they rightfully earned. Richard could tell ya stories about some of the things that went on, and are still going on, that you wouldn’t believe!”
Black smoke began billowing out from under the hood. Don took no notice, continuing, “Sam Cooke was not only one of the greatest singers and songwriters, he was an inspiring businessman who wanted to do things the way he envisioned, and damn, he was succeeding until he was shot!”
By now the smoke was so thick that I didn’t know if Clarence could see the road in front of him. Another loud bang came from the motor as the vehicle jerked to a sudden and abrupt halt. Clarence quickly jumped out and tried to open the hood while cars honked behind us. Don, unfazed, continued the conversation. I suggested to Don that it might be best if we tried to grab a cab—so we did, leaving poor Clarence stranded during rush hour in the middle of Madison Avenue while large clouds of black smoke poured out from the open hood.
Eventually we climbed the stairs to the third-floor studio owned by my friend Peter Bliss, a talented songwriter and musician. It was one of the hottest days of summer, and the place had no air-conditioning. Don carried on, recounting his many adventures with the unpredictable Wilson Pickett and his brotherly love for Solomon Burke and Aretha Franklin, for whom he had written the number one hit “Chain of Fools.” He grabbed a guitar and began singing it until he started uncontrollably laughing.
With Little Richard, 1965
“Pete, this is the shit I learnt from Little Richard. I gotta tell ya! I had just written a number one song for Aretha. So I called up one of the heads of her record company, Jerry Wexler, and told him, ‘Jerry, I’m at the Americana hotel, and I got a song for Aretha that’s gonna be a bigger smash than “Chain of Fools.”’ Jerry gets so excited he asks me to sing it right there on the phone, but I tell him, ‘Jerry, it’s still just in my head. I need to get all the parts down. I need a good reel-to-reel tape machine and an electric piano and an amp to record it before I forget it.’ I can tell Jerry was really excited. He says he’s going to call Manny’s music shop and have them quickly send me the stuff I need.
“Now, as soon as it arrives, I call Jerry back and tell him I need a bass. I got a kickin’ bass line that I can’t lose, so he sends up a brand-new Fender Precision bass. I wait a while to call him again and tell him it’s almost finished and even better than I first thought, but I just need a Les Paul guitar to put on the final touches. Well, now I have a room full of top-notch brand-new equipment, and you know what I did with it, Peter? You know what I did? Ha! I sold it all! Sold it all for really good money! I knew I wasn’t going to get paid all the royalties I earned on that record, so at least I could get some satisfaction in giving him a taste of his own medicine. Ha! Richard sure got a good laugh out of me getting away with that. Now, there’s an idea for a song… Baby, I’m gonna give ya a taste of your own medicine… See, now if I write that one and it becomes a hit, then I’ll get ’em back twice! Yeah, man, I tell ya, they sure do treat ya different when you’re makin’ ’em what they really want the most—m-o-n-e-y! Have mercy!”
We kicked around some ideas and agreed we wanted something up-tempo, with a danceable beat. I told Don of an incident when the Geils band was playing in Berlin. We found an after-hours club located in the basement of a fancy well-known restaurant. Alone, on the dark, empty dance floor, was a girl so intriguing that I got up and joined her. We danced till the club was about to close. The music stopped, the lights went out, but still we held each other close, dancing.
Don jumped up from the couch. “Man, that’s it! Dancing in the dark. I can see the whole thing playing out in my head… You’re both in a disco, and ya wanna keep on dancing even though they might be wanting to close the joint. Maybe she’s there with another guy and you don’t know it and things get kinda messy… Gimme that guitar. Let’s write it and call it ‘Dancing in the Dark.’”
Don was all about the story, and slowly it came together. Somewhere along the way, one of us came up with what Don called an insurance hook—the song lyric “Lights out, blast blast blast.” Don exclaimed, “Man! That’s how we’ll start it. Let them DJs know right away we mean business. Damn—being in a club and ya hear that, it’s like, dance time, everybody!”
Don was excited and covered in sweat, feeling the oppressive August heat. He removed his vest, saying, “We gotta get some wine into this mix!” I rushed downstairs, found a liquor store, and brought back a bottle of good French wine. Don looked at the bottle and said, “That might be good for a verse, but we got a whole song to write!” We hurried back down to the liquor store, and he picked out a big jug of generic red table wine. As we climbed back up the stairs, Don said, “Gotta bring this baby home before it just runs away!”
Don sat back on the couch and opened the jug, saying, “You know, Peter, almost everything I learnt was from Sam Cooke. What Elvis is to you rockers, Sam is to me, Pickett, Solomon, and Otis. We all started singing in church. Sam was one of the first gospel stars to write and record nonreligious songs, and he got a lot of flack for it, too, but he led the way for us younger cats.”
Don put down the jug, picked up the guitar, and started singing Sam’s “Having a Party.” He reached the line “Dancing to the music / on the radio,” and from there, we came up with the phrase “radio of love,” which Don declared was “the real double-down insurance hook.” He said, “DJs never feel they get the credit they deserve, so by adding ‘radio of love,’ we’ll make ’em feel real important.”
After a few more good swigs from the jug, Don jumped to his feet and declared, “We got it, man, we got it—the story, the hooks, lights out blast blast blast, radio of love, and then dancing in the dark. Man, it’s a smash! Good God, have mercy!” He started jumping up and down like a prospector who realizes he’s just discovered gold.
Don was on a roll, still elaborating on the importance of gospel music for any soul singer, and I was taking in every word. “The one gospel group that had the greatest impact on me was the Swan Silvertones. Just listen to their records, with Claude Jeter singing. Man, that cat inspired me to do all those high falsetto parts on my records.” He took several more swigs from the jug. “Now, Peter, if you go to the Apollo Theater, I don’t care what performer you see, if it’s Pickett, Aretha, Jackie Wilson, or Joe Tex, man, they got to move that crowd. The audience at the Apollo is like a congregation in a church, and any performer that can’t move them ain’t doing their job!
“I was booked at the Apollo, top of the bill, with my hits ‘Mercy Mercy’ and ‘See-Saw’ riding high on the charts. My valet rushed into the dressing room telling me there’s this young, big, pudgy guy out there onstage, hardly moving a muscle, singing one ballad after another, driving the ladies screamin’ crazy. So I go to the side of the stage to check this dude out. Man, my valet was right. He had that crowd in the palm of his hand, and I thought, We gotta pink ’em!”
I was confused by this and asked, “What do you mean by ‘pink ’em’?”
Don looked at me as if I were asking him the most rudimentary question, like how many cans of beer there are in a six-pack.
“Peter, how long have you been performing? Man! You never heard of pink ’em? Damn, every good performer knows about pink ’em. Little Richard taught it to me way back, and now I’m gonna teach it to you! Pink ’em is something ya just gotta use in special situations. You see, this young pudgy cat is killing them ladies with his ballads, right? I ain’t gonna follow this cat, and I can’t start my show off with any ballad, so I know I need to take action. I HAD TO PINK ’EM!!! I yelled to my valet, ‘Start moving quick—we gotta pink ’em!’ When this cat finishes his set and the curtain closes, all my staff, they start rolling out a big bright plush pink rug. I change into my finely tailored pink suit, my pink handkerchief, pink cufflinks, pink patent-leather shoes, a wide-brim pink hat with a pink feather to top it off, and a pink cane. This is a proven fact: women just love pink! Many of ’em don’t even know they love it, but they do! When they see pink, it starts working up something deep inside ’em. Now just imagine this, all them ladies sitting at the Apollo. The curtain reopens, and when them women see my big plush pink rug spread out beautifully across the stage and I come walking out real slow in my full regal pink attire, let me tell you, the women, they just go wild—I mean wild! They can’t control themselves!
“And that’s how ya pink ’em!”
Don paused, smiling, as if he was reliving that very moment. “Hey, guess who that tall pudgy guy was? None other than the Big O himself—that’s right, Otis Redding. Otis was it! Man, I loved the guy. We became real tight and wrote a bunch of songs together. I remember one of the last times I saw him, he was messin’ around on a guitar. He’d been working on some verses that eventually became ‘Dock of the Bay,’ and he was searching for a line, so I threw him “loneliness won’t leave me alone.” Now, people always think I’m jiving and making that story up, but I don’t care. If Otis was here, he’d tell ya. Like Sam’s, Otis’s death cost us all a lot. They both left big holes in our world that will never, ever be filled.”
In the summer of 1984, Bruce Springsteen was about to release his album Born in the USA, and I heard through the grapevine that the title of his first single was “Dancing in the Dark.” You can’t copyright song titles. Back in the early 1930s, there had been a popular song also called “Dancing in the Dark.” I immediately called Don with this news.
“We have a big problem. Bruce Springsteen is about to release his first new single, and it’s called ‘Dancing in the Dark.’”
“Well, Pete, there’s a lot of songs with the same title,” Don replied.
But I said, “Don, this is Bruce Springsteen, with the Columbia Records machine behind him. They’re gonna make damn sure it gets played on every radio station in the country.”
Don didn’t say anything, and I could almost hear his brain thinking when he yelled, “Man, I got it! Bruce Springsteen might have done us a huge favor. ‘Lights Out’! We gotta change it to ‘Lights Out.’ It’s got energy; it’s mysterious, man. Who knows what happens when the lights go out? ‘Lights Out’ along with the ‘blast blast blast,’ brother, you can’t go wrong. Peter, it’s a double-down guaranteed smash!”
Don proved to be right: it was the title of my first solo album, and the single “Lights Out” shot up to the top ten like a bullet.
In 1992, the Big M called to let me know that Don had had a serious stroke and it would be a good idea to call him. It was rough, hearing him try to speak. He kept repeating “Lights Out,” which made it even sadder. He remained partially paralyzed and in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. In gratitude, the Rolling Stones, who were huge fans, bought him a special wheelchair van. I regularly stayed in touch. One of the last times we spoke, he mentioned he had one more hit for Aretha, and this time he was serious. As debilitated as his speech was, he still tried hard to sing it. When he finished, I told him, “Don, it’s a double-down guaranteed smash, and with a song like that, you’ll never need to pink ’em.”
With the Soul Clan: L-R, Joe Tex, Ben E. King, Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke, Don Covay
32
THE LAST TEMPTATION
Martin Scorsese
THE PHONE RANG, and I answered to a woman’s voice on the other end.
“Mr. Peter Wolf?”
“Who’s calling?”
“I’m from the production office for a new Martin Scorsese film being cast in New York.”
A joke was certainly being played on me, so I answered, “Mr. Wolf is out at the moment. Could I have your number, and he’ll be in touch?”
My assistant returned the call, and to my shock, it seemed legit. Scorsese was filming an adaptation of the Nikos Kazantzakis book The Last Temptation of Christ, and he actually wanted me to audition for the role of Pontius Pilate. I thought this was downright crazy. A beggar, perhaps one of the two thieves, or even Doubting Thomas—but me as Pontius Pilate?
In the 1960s, I had read most of this noted Greek author’s books, including The Last Temptation of Christ. As a kid, I saw the Jules Dassin film He Who Must Die, based on Kazantzakis’s The Greek Passion.
The script arrived later that week with a note requesting that I choose a date and time for my audition in New York.
