Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'N' Roll Starring the Fabulous Allan Carr (36 page)

Allan made his pilgrimage to hear the great Domingo sing at Madison Square Garden, and backstage the tenor kept his promise. He presented his list of famous Spanish personages, any one of whom he wanted to portray on stage.

Allan looked over the list. “Goya?” he asked. “What do you know about Goya?”

Domingo knew everything about the Aragonese Spanish painter, including his full name, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, and the fact that he went mad due to the lead powder he mixed into his paints to give his portraits their trademark luminescence.

Allan loved the idea, and he didn’t fall out of love with it when Domingo later informed him that the American composer Gian Carlo Menotti had already written an opera titled
Goya,
commissioned by the tenor and performed on public television the year before. It didn’t matter. Opera and Broadway were two different audiences, as Allan kept repeating. All that mattered was that he would follow his
La Cage aux folles
success with an even greater triumph by bringing Placido Domingo to Broadway. He wallowed in that thought as he contemplated who should write this opus. “This Goya musical will be my
Gandhi,
” he told people.

The phone call surprised Maury Yeston. He hadn’t heard from Allan since 1981 when he went off to make
Grease 2
and left the composer-lyricist with a batch of songs for an unproduced musical called
The Queen of Basin Street
. Since then, Yeston had written a Tony-winning musical,
Nine,
based on Federico Fellini’s movie
8 ½
. That major accomplishment aside, it was as if the last half dozen years were but a weekend. Then again, Yeston couldn’t be too angry at Allan: For his efforts on
The Queen of Basin Street,
the composer received 0.25 percent of the weekly box-office take from
La Cage aux folles
.

Allan started the phone conversation with Yeston on an upbeat note, retelling his opera faux pas in which he asked Domingo “Who does the sound system?” at the Met Opera. Then, as often was the case when Allan wanted to make things happen, he presented his business plan without delay: Domingo wanted to perform in an original musical on Broadway, and would Yeston like to write a show for him based on the life of Goya. “I mentioned your name to Domingo and he loves your score for
Nine,
” Allan added.

The phone call “came out of the blue,” says Yeston, and despite their
Queen of Basin Street
misfire, the composer couldn’t refuse such an offer. “Anyone
would jump at the chance to write for Domingo,” says Yeston. He did a little research on Goya, and soon discovered why Domingo found the painter to be an ideal subject for the musical theater: Goya was the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. He indulged in several great love affairs, passionately espoused pacifism, went deaf like Beethoven, and effected no fewer than three revolutions in art. Yeston knew precisely how to deliver this great portrait to the Broadway stage. As he pitched it to Allan, “What if this show reflected those style changes of traditional musical theater and gradually more and more got to be acid rock at the end?”

“Perfect,” said Allan. “I love it.”

Although Allan knew about the Menotti
Goya,
he didn’t mention it to Yeston. “I just naturally assumed that Placido envisioned a musical theater role as tailored to him as the King of Siam was to Yul Brynner or Tevye was to Zero Mostel. And I thought that was a very smart idea,” says the composer.

Yeston set to work, and a few months later, he was ready to play some of the score for Domingo, Freddie Gershon, and Allan. The four men met backstage at the Metropolitan Opera, where Domingo had just finished a performance of Verdi’s
Otello
. Everyone wanted Domingo’s feedback on Yeston’s score, but Allan and Gershon also needed to lock in dates for
Goya
’s Broadway production. Opera singers commit to the Met, La Scala, and Covent Garden years in advance, so Allan and Gershon braced themselves. They both realized that this project could take awhile.

Having just performed Otello, his most arduous role, Domingo felt ebullient that night as he wiped away the Moor’s makeup and listened to Yeston play a few
Goya
songs on the dressing-room piano. “Allan Carr delivered good to me,” he kept saying. He was especially enthusiastic about a love ballad that Yeston had written for him, “’Till I Loved You.”

“I love this so much! This is so pleasing to me,” Domingo continued.

But as for the dates he could perform on Broadway . . .

In the opera world, Domingo is well known as a numbers man, someone who can recite from memory how many times he has performed every opera in his massive repertoire. Domingo also displays total recall of every date he is scheduled to sing in the future. He didn’t have to look at notes when he informed Allan and Gershon of his upcoming schedule. Regarding
Goya,
he was fully prepared to set aside three months next year in the spring and a couple of weeks later in the summer and a few more weeks at the end of 1989. For a busy opera superstar, four or five months equals a small eternity to devote to one project.

Allan may have produced only one Broadway show, but he knew that no musical production could recoup its capitalization in fewer than six months. When Domingo told them of his schedule, “We all just went pale,” Yeston recalls.

Within an instant, Allan segued from glad-hander to seasoned businessman to undertaker. There was no way he could adjust the project’s basic time requirements. “We need a minimum guarantee of six months. Six months at least,” he told Domingo. “Unless you have another great tenor who can substitute for you until you’re able to return. I need a commitment of six consecutive months. Otherwise, I cannot do it. I cannot do it.” Now he knew how the Met impresario Rudolf Bing felt when he fired Maria Callas.

The world’s greatest tenor could only say no to his Broadway debut.

Gershon walked up West 65th Street with a suddenly “bloodless” Allan Carr and Maury Yeston. “Domingo couldn’t understand why we were disappointed,” says Gershon.

The opera singer’s affection for Yeston’s score, however, was genuine, and he didn’t let go of the project. He firmly believed that “’Till I Loved You” would be his signature song, and to show his commitment, the singer convinced CBS Records, where he had cut many opera albums, to make a CD of Yeston’s musical, which was to be called
Goya: A Life in Song
.

“You want to have
My Fair Lady
in your regime?” Domingo told Walter Yetnikoff, head of CBS Records. “Wait until you hear this score.”

Again, Yeston was called upon to return to the piano, this time to audition his score for the powers at Black Rock on Sixth Avenue in New York City. Again, it was a success. Yetnikoff agreed wholeheartedly with Domingo. “If we as a company cannot get behind something with this kind of integrity, why are we in this business?” said Yetnikoff, who wanted to match the tenor’s star power with pop icons like Barbra Streisand and Richie Havens. This was to be a class project, and Yetnikoff demanded no less a producer than Mike Berniker, heir to CBS’s Goddard Lieberson, the man who “invented” the original cast album. Since Yetnikoff felt that Domingo’s talent required something better than a Broadway pickup band, tracks were laid down instead with the London Philharmonic, as well as the New York Philharmonic, and Domingo recorded a couple of the ballads, including his favorite, “’Till I Loved You.” It was this version of his musical that Yeston would refer to as the “classical”
Goya
.

Finally, it was time for the powers at Black Rock to listen to what Berniker had produced before approaching the big pop guns of Streisand and Havens to perform alongside Domingo on the record. What Yetnikoff heard impressed
him but not in a good way. “This sounds like musical theater,” he said. The comment astounded Allan and Yeston, because “Isn’t that what we were doing?” asked the composer.

“No,” said Yetnikoff. “I want this ballad ‘’Till I Loved You’ to be a hit song. I’d like to get a whole other audience. Everybody should know
Goya
. I’d like to get Phil Ramone to produce this album.”

What Allan didn’t know is that Yetnikoff, while considered a genius music executive despite his tone-deafness, had recently suffered yet another nervous breakdown brought on, in part, by his addiction to cocaine and alcohol. Bruce Springsteen called him “the craziest music exec north of E Street,” and the Boss said so with no hyperbole intended.

But who was to argue with the man at the top of CBS Records, then home to not only Springsteen but Michael Jackson, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, and James Taylor?

Allan did what any man in his position would do. He said, “I love the idea!”

And so, crazy or not, Yetnikoff replaced Berniker with Ramone on
Goya
. Ramone was definitely not musical theater. He had produced every Burt Bacharach song and many by Billy Joel, which meant that the budget on the
Goya
LP ballooned from the $250,000 that Berniker had envisioned to the $1 million that Ramone needed to bring on pop stars Gloria Estefan, Dionne Warwick, Richie Havens, and Seiko Matsuda.

Yeston found it all very thrilling. “But it wasn’t musical theater,” he says. “And it wasn’t rock.” This was the version that Yeston would refer to as the “pop”
Goya
.

Whether it ultimately could be categorized as pop, rock, opera, or Broadway, “It was a great project that failed,” says Gershon, who, together with Allan, took producer credits on the project. The classical audience considered the CD a bit déclassé, a step down for the great Domingo. And the pop audience thought, “What the hell are these pop stars singing with this guy who bellows? And they didn’t understand his accent,” says Gershon.

Allan hoped that the concept album might spur a full-scale Broadway production. “Maybe we would cast it with a singer other than Domingo,” Yeston surmised. But there was no money interest.

Not ready to let go of the project, Allan plotted how to revive
Goya
. His answer came in autumn 1988 when the Music Center Opera Company approached him about staging a benefit at the Hollywood Bowl. Domingo had sung with the fledgling company and sat on its board of directors. The idea
struck Allan, “What if we present a concert version of
Goya
with Domingo, Gloria Estefan, and a few others who appear on the album? Who knows? We might even be able to get Barbra Streisand!”

If the Metropolitan Opera is grand at 3,800 seats, the Hollywood Bowl is the true behemoth of performing spaces with its 18,000 outdoor seats. There weren’t 18,000 people in all of Los Angeles who had even heard of Goya, much less
Goya
. To bring in the masses, Allan relegated his new musical to the benefit’s second half, and kicked off with a much more conventional and crowd-pleasing first act.

“The first half of the show was great moments from Broadway,” Gershon recalls. Elaine Stritch reprised her “Ladies Who Lunch” from
Company,
Patti LuPone sang “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” from
Evita,
Tommy Tune performed “It’s Not Where You Start” from
Seesaw,
and Carol Channing did “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” from
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
. But Allan’s coup de théâtre was getting a seventy-five-year-old Mary Martin to cap the benefit’s first half with renditions of “Cockeyed Optimist” from
South Pacific
and “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” which, as she explained to the adoring Bowl audience, was the song she used to audition for Cole Porter in 1938. Best of all, the night marked Martin’s fiftieth anniversary in show business. Few impresarios other than Allan Carr could pull off such a grand star-packed event.

Act I of the opera benefit appeared to be finished, and the audience had yet to see Domingo, when suddenly his inimitable tenor voice could be heard singing “Some Enchanted Evening,” the great Ezio Pinza song from
South Pacific
. He then walked onstage to take Mary Martin in his arms and the two proceeded to make the great American aria into a duet. It was a one-night-only feat, since Martin’s original
South Pacific
contract stipulated that she not be required to sing onstage with the great Pinza. Allan convinced her otherwise for the great Domingo.

“It cost $500 to sit in the boxes, and it was wonderful,” Gershon recalls. The crowd went into ovation overdrive and couldn’t wait to hear Domingo sing more beloved music from the great Broadway repertoire.

Instead, Allan devoted the entire second act to
Goya,
billed that evening as a “work in progress.” After a long intermission, Domingo took the stage with Gloria Estefan. Despite his never having performed any
Goya
song in public, the evening registered as a disappointment for the opera tenor. He had looked forward to making “’Till You Loved Me” his signature song and a crossover hit—that is, until, Barbra Streisand recorded her own version of it earlier that year,
performing it with her current boyfriend, Don Johnson. The single, which quickly went platinum, was produced by . . . Phil Ramone.

The
Hollywood Reporter
review of the gala summed up the schizoid nature of the event. “No discredit to
Goya,
the second half was, understandably, anti-climactic to the time-capsule-worthy first half.”

Some of
Goya
’s participants were a little less forgiving. “There was a large Latino audience there that night to hear Domingo and Gloria Estefan,” says Gershon. “And I don’t think anyone knew what was going on.”

Yeston agrees: “It didn’t land. It wasn’t a show.”

In typical showbiz style, when people mentioned the opera benefit to Allan, they congratulated him on the stupendous first half and diplomatically ignored the second half. He had gambled on giving
Goya
the world’s biggest backers’ audition, and he failed. There was the solace, however, of having raised over $600,000 for the opera, and as Allan himself summed it up, “Who else raises $600,000 for opera in L.A.?”