Homeward Bound (38 page)

What had happened?

*   *   *

Woody Allen called. The writer-director-actor, New York City's most essential movie auteur, was making a movie and was hoping Paul might consider playing a small role: as a music producer type of guy. Big-time. Oleaginous. He could send over some lines. Was Paul interested? He was indeed, but after looking at the script, he went back to Woody. I think I know this character a little better than you do, he said. Can I write my own lines? Well, of course.

The movie Allen was working on turned out to be
Annie Hall
, the first great synthesis of his comedic and filmic sensibilities. Paul's character was named Tony Lacey, his shirt open to reveal the silver coke spoon dangling in his chest hair, his hazy grooviness a pox on the pulsing nerves of Allen's successful but deeply neurotic writer Alvy Singer. Paul's role ran for exactly two scenes, but both were pivotal to the film, and when it was over, his face was as prominent in the film's promotion as those of any of the supporting players. Released in the spring of 1977,
Annie Hall
made the critics spin pirouettes. Audiences cheered, then ran back to the box office to buy more tickets and see it again.
Annie Hall
would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, and launch or expand the reputations of virtually everyone attached to the film, from the young actor Christopher Walken, female lead Diane Keaton, the Broadway actor Tony Roberts, and of course Allen himself.

It was pivotal for Paul, too. He'd evened at least one score with Artie, and found a girlfriend in the actress Shelley Duvall, who also had a small part in the film. Soon they were living together, their relationship pulling him that much closer to the movie crowd he'd encountered through Mike Nichols and Lorne Michaels. He liked them, and he liked their world—the vastness of the productions, the respect accorded to the auteurs. If you had a strong vision, you could follow it as far as you wanted to go, assuming you had enough juice behind you. And given Paul's decade-plus record of nearly nonstop success, plus his surprisingly nimble comic performances on television and in one of the most celebrated movies of the decade, there was no reason for him to think he couldn't conquer this genre, too. He already had a couple of ideas for scripts. In fact, he'd already been writing; the Connie Hawkins sketch had been his idea, and he'd scripted the action and interview segments. Paul also wrote the opening sketch for his next hosting shot on
SNL
in the fall of 1976, an uproarious bit that began with him singing “Still Crazy After All These Years” in a large turkey suit, until stopping it short to say he'd been happy to play along and not be “
soooo
serious all the time,” but this was just too much for him to bear.

The turkey suit opening became one of the most talked-about sketches of the season, and when Michaels suggested they collaborate on a prime-time special for NBC's Christmas schedule, Paul signed on to cowrite and star. Michaels brought along
SNL
director Dave Wilson, a clutch of writers, recently departed cast member Chevy Chase, and the widely admired comedian and writer Lily Tomlin. Written almost entirely by Paul and Michaels, the show was set backstage during the making of a completely different Paul Simon special, produced by Grodin's cluelessly assertive character. Paul, looking fit and surprisingly thick on the top of his head, is more comfortable on camera than during his
SNL
turns, playing himself as musically authoritative but vulnerable to anyone with a compliment or dour warning. Friends and colleagues pop in and out. Chase and Tomlin portray themselves. The Jessy Dixon Singers, harmonica expert Toots Thielemans, and sax player David Sanborn reprise earlier performances. Artie shows up to rehearse “Old Friends” and read through a moronic dialogue that Grodin's character has had typed onto cue cards.
The Paul Simon Special
aired on December 8, 1977, scoring reviews that ranged from “a big thumb down” from the
New York Times
's John J. O'Connor to the enthusiastic write-up from Tom Shales of the
Washington Post
, who thought the sketches weren't bad and found the music sequences, as artfully directed by Dave Wilson, exquisite. The special's ratings didn't add up to much, but by then Paul had other problems to think about.

The hostilities started when Paul released a single-disc collection of his best solo tunes called
Greatest Hits, Etc.
Given that all three of his post-S&G albums had been top sellers with multiple hit singles, the biggest challenge was deciding which tunes to leave out. The CBS brass asked Paul to include a pair of new songs, knowing that hard-core fans would be happy to rebuy old music as long as it came with new stuff, too. Paul did as he was asked, and by the time the album joined the pre-Christmas marketplace, “Slip Slidin' Away,” a melancholy gospel ballad featuring backing vocals by the Oak Ridge Boys, was already in
Billboard
's top five. Knowing that the greatest hits collection Columbia released in 1972 had sold millions without benefit of any new music (apart from a few live renditions), Paul assumed
Greatest Hits, Etc
. would easily find an audience, too. But that's not what happened. The album climbed only to the eighteenth slot on
Billboard
's album chart, and plummeted from there. How was that possible? When he went to the top office to talk it out with CBS's president, Paul had no doubt about what had led to the catastrophe. Other than buying a few ads in a few magazines and the handful of newspapers in the big cities, the company had done nothing to promote the album: no more ads, no publicity, no push of any kind.

In earlier days Paul would have found a sympathetic ear in Clive Davis, whose adoration of him and his music had never dimmed. But a company putsch in 1973, pinned to a few expense account indulgences that were more foolish than criminal, had led to the president's abrupt defenestration.
*
His replacement was Walter Yetnikoff, another outer-borough New Yorker, one who'd worked his way through law school and emerged as a uniquely sharp, if socially awkward, lawyer. Davis hired and groomed the younger executive, eventually giving him control over CBS's international division. Perfectly positioned to take the top spot, Yetnikoff reached for it and became one of the two or three most powerful men in the American music industry. And while Davis certainly left him with a winning hand of artists and executives, Yetnikoff was quick to build it up even higher, snatching James Taylor from archrival label Warner Bros. and Paul McCartney from his lifelong home at EMI/Capitol, while nurturing a few established acts (Billy Joel, Barbra Streisand, the Jacksons) to new heights and also encouraging Michael Jackson to relaunch his solo career.

Yetnikoff's new powers, along with his increasing thirst for whiskey and a certain powdered pharmaceutical, conspired to catapult him from an office wallflower into something else entirely. Bull-chested, bearded, and prone to grand displays of chest hair, Yetnikoff sailed the corporate seas as the Blackbeard of Black Rock, shouting and laughing, and hurling paperweights at subordinates who had disappointed him in some small way. Already prone to anger, Yetnikoff had a particular hard spot for Paul, who could fuel his rage just by walking into his office. That Paul happened to be one of his company's most essential artists only made Yetnikoff despise him more. The arrogant little putz was self-involved and somewhere well beyond pretentious, the executive thought. Paul had, in Yetnikoff's mind, screwed over Artie by breaking up Simon and Garfunkel, and done the same to former lawyer Harold Orenstein when he'd followed Tannen, whom Yetnikoff also hated, out of the Orenstein law firm. To hear Yetnikoff tell it, Paul was a caricature of the self-worshipping celebrity, a clown who spent most of their first meeting lying on the sofa while smoking a joint and bloviating about poetry. And did he offer the CBS president a hit off his reefer? No, he did not, and for Yetnikoff that was all he needed to know. “I didn't like the guy,” Yetnikoff wrote. “And he certainly didn't like me.”

If that weren't combustible enough, Paul's contract with CBS/Columbia was ending and negotiations for a new deal weren't going well. Paul and Mike Tannen had already made clear that they expected Paul's next contract to set new high-water marks for recording deals, and even Yetnikoff could see the logic in it. Paul had been signed to the label for more than a decade. Every album he'd made, including
Wednesday Morning, 3 AM
, once “The Sound of Silence” took off, had made money for Columbia. Most had sold more than a million copies, and several had sold significantly more than that. He was one of the hottest artists in the industry. Still, that didn't mean that Yetnikoff had to let the little twerp dictate his own terms. As Yetnikoff described it, “War clouds were rolling in.”

Dollars, clauses, years, whatever—the terms of the struggle could never approach the malevolence both principals in the deal held for each other. It was as if Paul's genteel chill were an affront to Yetnikoff, whose half-mad attempts at intimidation drilled deep into Paul's rich stores of bile. So it got worse.

Nevertheless, Tannen and Yetnikoff, along with top CBS exec Walter Dean, continued negotiating. Sometimes they'd get within a whisker of an agreement, only to have something fly out of whack. For a time in early 1978 it seemed they actually had a deal, until Tannen's written version allegedly came in half a million dollars higher than the CBS team remembered agreeing to. Another time, when Yetnikoff and Tannen happened to be sitting next to each other on an airplane headed to Los Angeles, Tannen proposed that it was time for the two of them to stop the bickering and get to the bottom line, to what was going to work for everyone. It wasn't an unreasonable idea; deals get cut like that all the time. But Yetnikoff went berserk. “How dare you assume what I'm going to do!” he screamed at the stunned lawyer. “There is
no
deal! Paul Simon does
not
have a deal at CBS!”

When he got to LA, a stunned Tannen dialed Mo Ostin, the artist-friendly president of Warner Bros. Records. Ostin, a vocal fan of Paul's work for many years, had never been shy about his eagerness to get Paul on his label. Hearing that his dream artist might actually be available, he invited Tannen over to talk. The deal was finished twenty-four hours later.

Paul owed CBS one more studio album to fulfill his existing contract, but in no mood to give Yetnikoff more than the bare minimum he sent the executive a message telling him that his final record for him would be a collection of cover songs, most of which would be duets or collaborations with other artists. Yetnikoff's response to Tannen, while composed in standard business language and form, still amounted to a resounding
no fucking way!
Paul's contract, he insisted, called for
original
songs, not retreads. Paul and Tannen fired right back: the contract called simply for albums of original recordings—there wasn't a word about who was supposed to
write
them. But neither Paul nor Tannen could find that clause in their copies of the contract. “Tough shit,” Paul figured and got to work, only to find that some of the CBS artists he wanted to work with suddenly didn't have the time to record with him. Yetnikoff had made it clear to everyone at the company that they'd be a lot happier later if they stayed away from Paul Simon. And of course Yetnikoff threatened to sue, promising to keep Paul tangled in litigation for so long his career would be over before he had a chance to start working on his first Warner Bros album.

Rarely shy about doing battle in the civil courts, the prospect of going to court against Columbia/CBS jabbed at Paul's more vulnerable spots. He began to wonder if anyone in the company would stand up for him in court. All those executives who had whispered their stories about how Yetnikoff had sworn to destroy him, the ones who had described the incriminating memos, the artists who had seen and heard so much more—they had been so eager to be his friend when he was riding high on the charts. But while it was easy for them to whisper conspiratorially in Paul's ear, it was something else entirely to testify against Yetnikoff, the man with ultimate control over their careers.

No matter. Paul filed two claims against Yetnikoff and CBS on December 21, 1978, the first accusing the company of breaching his contract for threatening to reject his final album and for not publicizing the greatest hits album (
Greatest Hits, Etc
.) properly, particularly after he'd signed with Warner Bros. in February 1978. The second action demanded financial reparations for all of the above, plus for whatever bad things might happen as a result in the future. The usual threats and recriminations followed, but in the end it didn't take long to reach a settlement: Paul would buy himself out of his deal for (a rumored) $1.5 million. As expected, Yetnikoff played up the settlement as an unalloyed victory, but Paul had already moved on. After two years of work, he was close to finishing his first original movie script. Warner Bros. Pictures had signed him to coproduce and, if he felt like it, play the starring role in a new film. He had entered an entirely new world of creativity, and this time he was in complete control.

 

CHAPTER 17

SWALLOWED BY A SONG

When
The Paul Simon Songbook
was released in England in 1965, Paul's music publisher, Lorna Music, had issued an accompanying booklet of sheet music. Paul fleshed out the package by adding “On Drums and Other Hollow Objects,” an interesting but ham-handed short story about youth and old age. When “The Sound of Silence” broke everything open and he returned to England as a pop star, Paul made a point of telling reporters that prose writing had always been his first love, and that he was already sketching characters and scenes for the novel he'd write once he got the pop music business off his back. Nothing had come of it of course, but working with Mike Nichols on
The Graduate
had turned his head back in the typewriter's direction, this time with movies in his mind.