Life After Silverspoon - Chapter 2 - The Ballad of the Two Guys from Van Nuys

Running Around the World didn't become a top five record like the professional song testers had predicted, in fact the Mike Love album, Looking Back with Love, completely tanked. Maybe it was because Neil Bogart, the president of Boardwalk and before that, Casablanca Records dropped dead from a heart attack the week before the release of the record? Although I regret the loss of such a powerful man, like I would regret the loss of any human life except maybe for the Hitler’s, Kaddafi’s and Bernie Madoff’s of the world, it was a typical scenario in my musical career. Just when you think things are starting to come together, they completely fall apart—just like in Silverspoon. Was it me, or was this a something to be expected by any and every individual who attempted to do something other than sell orange juice, annuities or push pencils?

We did pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and continued to keep on keeping on as The Two Guys from Van Nuys. I don’t really remember how we met the person, who would be the next installment of genius in our lives, but one of the most brilliant bass players that ever graced the fret-board of a Fender Jazz bass had a house in the valley with a decent studio—his name was Bobby West. Bobby had done recording with a lot of my heroes: The Buffalo Springfield and its founding members, Neil Young and  Stephen Stills, Al Kooper, James Taylor, Cannonball Adderley and Tommy Roe to name but a few. I would come over to his studio after selling typewriter ribbons and lift off tape and then tried to switch gears from a shifty salesman who had trouble with the truth, to a sincere and heart-felt songwriter/ musician. Larry and I recorded roughly six or seven original tunes there and I thought they sounded brilliant with Bobby’s complex bass line pitted against my simple acoustic guitar strums and Larry’s flowering piano parts. Songs like: False Alarm, a Byrdsy, jangling ditty which would have been right at home on Tom Petty’s 1979 release: Damn the Torpedoes. Then there was Vagabond, Starbright, Old Timer, No Exception to the Rule and a few others that escape my memory at the moment. These tapes sounded like the logical progression for the duo that was in the process of putting a band together to play the Palomino in North Hollywood. I had sworn I would never play there again after having lost a talent contest to a fifteen year old girl in a bikini who sang Rocky Top. But sometimes, especially in the music biz, you have to be flexible and resilient.

After a grueling day at the office in the guise of Jim Phillips, I came to Bobby’s studio ready for action. Bobby was sitting behind the console in his skimpy red underpants and I guess I was getting impatient to start the overdubs on one of our songs. All of a sudden he flew off the handle at me and said things like, “I've been through shit like this before and I ain’t going through it again,” and “why don’t you take your attitude somewhere else, I haven’t got time for this bullshit.” I still to this day don’t know (Larry either, for that matter) what I said or did other than wanting to skip the preliminaries and get right down to work. I guess I didn't give Bobby enough time to chill or come down from whatever he was up on. We left the studio for good. At least we had copies of what we had recorded up until that point.

Out bi-monthly gigs at the Bla Bla Cafe were a mainstay for us and we were starting to attract a decent following. We had a somewhat mixed reviews from The Music Connection which said that it was a shame The Two Guys had chosen the more commercial route and it would have been better if they went with the road less traveled. It’s funny because after that, my music became a lot more avant garde and on the fringe, much to Larry’s displeasure. Now we had a seven piece band behind us which included, a sax player, a pedal steel guitarist, drummer and bass player and three background singers which added up to a total of nine people up on the crowded stage at that cozy nightclub in Studio City. We were confident that the stage at the Palomino would be plenty large enough to facilitate us. I think we were either way behind or way ahead of our time, and I am more inclined to think it was the latter. We were one of the forerunners of what is now called Root’s Rock or Americana music.

After the gig at the Palomino, which went well enough, we thought it would be a good idea to get this configuration of musicians down on tape. We booked time at a studio in the valley by the name of Fat-tracks and recorded five songs: Old Timer, No Exception to the Rule, Believe in Good, Jesus of Nashville and Angel of Love. These were probably the best overall productions we had to date, even thought Bobby West’s were unique, they weren't mixed properly and Bobby still had the masters which he refused to give up. Either that or I was too afraid to face him again in his red g-string panties.

A few months later Cary Hamilton, Joey and Jeff’s younger sister and Carol Burnett’s oldest daughter had secured a gig at Pepperdine University in Malibu. It was more of a college assignment than a gig, and she asked us if she could perform Believe in Good and have us back her up, me on guitar and Larry on piano. We said, “Sure, why not,” and we did. I thought Cary did a great job although she faltered on one and only one note when she did the high crescendo just before the bridge. It wasn't terrible by any means but to Cary it was intolerable. She was in tears. Larry and I tried to console her and told her that it was fine; nobody other than somebody with the finely tuned ears of a Bocelli would have noticed anything wrong. It didn't matter to Cary; she was a perfectionist and thought she had completely blown it. She hadn't, that’s all there is to it.

It was now 1982 and the music was changing again and we felt we had to stay ahead of the curve of be swallowed up by the new wave of new wave music that was taking over the scene. The top song of the year was Physical by Olivia Newton John, Eye of the Tiger by Survivor and I Love Rock N’ Roll by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. We weren't about to go any of those routes by any means so we asked Curt Boettcher to produce a couple tracks for us. The first was a song called, Here in the Twilight and the second was entitled Incommunicado written with Curt and a fellow West Hollywoodian, Bill Bowersocks. These sessions lasted until the wee hours of the night and I supplied the white powdery substance for motivation. It turned out, in my opinion to be a total disaster. I hated every second of it except for the amazing vocals Curt had overdubbed. He was a magician when it came to layering parts and when I looked out into the studio while he was singing I could have sworn I saw an aura of purple and silver spinning over his head like a cyclone. It was one of the most brilliant feats of vocal ability I had ever witnessed in my life. These two songs turned out to be the last ones the Two Guys from Van Nuys ever recorded.

On November 2, 1982, The Two Guys performed live on a TV show a song we had written for the main character that was a puppet. The show was called Madame’s Place and it was the first TV series my father had ever gotten. Sure he was a semi-regular on M*A*S*H playing the part of the gruff Sgt. Zelmo Zale, the guy who smoked the cigar and was always fighting with Klinger, but this was his first full time lead role as the butler, Pinkerton. It might have nepotism or something along those lines but we still had to audition. We borrowed the music from Jesus of Nashville and wrote some zany lyrics about Madame. That day was also my 30^th birthday and it was the second best day of my life up until that point. The very best day was when I went with my Dad up to Wallingford, Connecticut when he was playing the part of Applegate in the musical Damn Yankees. It was just the two of us and was around ten or eleven. We stayed in a motel with the rest of the cast and in the morning I noticed there was a baseball field in the back. Since the cast all had baseball gloves, they were Spalding Whitey Ford models, a pickup game of hardball ensued. I loved every minute of it. That night I accompanied my dad to the show and got to hang out backstage. I was wearing my sunglasses and a sports jacket trying to look older so I could flirt with the showgirls. They would say things like, “Oh what a cute little man you are,” and “if only you were a few years older I would love to go out with you.” I smiled the smile of a boy who knew what he wanted from life and hoped he didn't have to wait too long to get it.

Anyway, back to Madame’s Place. We did a pretty good job except I thought I could have smiled a little more, but the sound was good, I sang in tune, and we didn’t make any mistakes. That afternoon I had lunch with my mom and Patricia at Musso and Franks on Hollywood Blvd. and afterwards I went back to Patricia’s apartment and we made athletic and friendly love. Later that night, after cleaning myself up with a long cool shower, I visited with Marly, my ex-girlfriend and, if the truth be told and not to sound too sleazy, we also made love—happy birthday to me. In all honesty I don’t think it was sleazy in the least because I truly loved both of these women in completely different ways. One was out of deep friendship and the other was goodbye lovemaking. Actually they were both goodbye romances since I never slept with either woman again. Marly had moved on in a physical and spiritual sense and Patricia had really moved on in every possible sense. By the way, my wife hates this story and I, much to her relief (except for this final exposé), have stopped telling it.

 It wasn't long after that Larry had decided to take his series 7 examination and become a stockbroker. I had given him the name of someone who knew about such things, a woman I was seeing from time to time named Juliella Parsons from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I had met Juliella through the infamous BJ Taylor. Larry picked every brain cell in her head and went on to pass his exam. I was a little heartbroken, thinking he was going to desert his craft and leave me in the musical lurch. It was a moot point when I look back on it since I didn't really like the direction he was trying to take our music and I need to dig deep into my heart and soul to come up with the kind of songs I wanted to produce. I knew it was going to be a long arduous process, but I was on my way—I knew I was going to do something great and it would express what I wanted to express. I had no idea it was going to take as long as it did because, as usual, life gets in the way and throws you in directions you never could predict with even the greatest of mystics or Ouija boards at your disposal.