We'll Be Here For the Rest of Our Lives (11 page)

The lack of enthusiasm that my beloved hometown showed to musicians came at a dear cost. In other cities, pianists, saxists, singers, and guitarists were enjoying their first taste of sex. Because of their ability to rock and roll, certain, shall we say, favors were bestowed upon them. Women were only too willing to allow them entrance into their “hearts and souls.” In Thunder Bay, we froze. There was something of a cruise scene on Saturday nights on our downtown’s main drag, Victoria Avenue. I cruised but never conquered. I was too busy playing music. The truth is, I was a touch naive and shy when it came to the opposite sex. My passion was for music. Don’t get me wrong; I was a
red-blooded adolescent with raging Canadian hormones, but, alas, I had not yet tasted success in the sexual arena.

My senior year in high school 1967, though, God blessed me with a girlfriend, Judy. She had lustrous brown hair, a shapely figure, and an appreciation of my ability to play every Temptations song by heart. By then I had grown my hair long in the front. That may or may not have added to my appeal, but I could sure knock out any love song she mentioned.

Looking back, I see that Judy may well have been willing. She came to all my gigs. She watched me play my Rascals’ covers. After I performed, if there was any applause whatsoever, it was Judy alone doing the clapping. When I took her home after the shows, we would kiss on her porch and, if her folks had gone to sleep, kiss on her living room couch. Kissing led to petting and, though I am not a baseball expert, I believe I may have made it to first base and was on my way to second when we heard her father loudly coughing from his upstairs bedroom. That was it.

“You can stay a little longer,” said Judy.

I considered the offer. I tried to imagine the scenario of making it to third base and heading home. Exactly where would that happen? On the couch? On the floor? In either case, what would we do if Dad suddenly appeared? And besides, perhaps she had no intention of allowing me beyond second base anyway. Perhaps reaching home plate was simply impossible.

So at that moment I uttered words that have come back to haunt me decades later: “I’ve got to go,” I said.

“You sure?” asked Judy.

“I’m sure.”

What prompted my exit, though, even more than my uncertainty about hitting home, was the fact that the radio deejay
who had promoted the dance was hosting an after-party—and I wanted to be there.

I wanted to be there because I realized even then that the good times—indeed the best times—happen after hours. The axiom learned in Vegas—the later the hipper—never left my consciousness, even when courting Judy. My friends like Wayne Tanner got funnier as the hour got later. And even if there was a possibility of a sexual coda at evening’s end, I’d skip the coda in favor of getting back to the laughs. The truth is that I was most in love with the idea of being a late-night musician.

The Fugitives was the band that gave me my first taste of the road. To be sure, the road was abbreviated; it went no farther than nearby Terrace Bay, home of a gigantic Kleenex factory. It was there that our Ricky announced we couldn’t hit the gig until he did what he called his “Triple S”—shower, shave, and shit. Wayne, who was along for the ride, said, “Funky Ricky’s so funky he needs an equipment man to set up his shit.”

Even the term “equipment man” was exotic to me. Everything about music and musicians was exotic. And if the erotic side of this exotic life was slow in coming, I figured there had to be a payoff.

Now before I leave you with the idea that I was a perennial loser in all matters sexual, I want you to meet sweet, sweet Connie.

Everyone knew her. My encounter with Connie came at the dawn of the eighties, at a time when I was unattached. If the seventies was the decade of debauchery, Connie, bless her heart, was determined to extend that happy era by offering her services to all those she deemed worthy. And Connie found many in the music biz worthy.

I am, of course, advancing my story—beyond Thunder Bay, beyond my college days and professional beginnings in Toronto and New York City—to a special moment when a group I helped assemble, the Blues Brothers, was on national tour. The genesis of that band will be dramatized for your reading pleasure at a later time in this narrative, including profiles of its stars. But first, Connie.

I met her in Memphis.

The Blues Brothers were on a tear. Our records were selling
millions. The first Blues Brothers movie was a smash. In their roles as Jake and Elwood, Belushi and Aykroyd had become rock superstars. We played to standing-room-only crowds in arenas across the country. What had begun as a comedy sketch had turned into a musical phenomenon. The fruit of our success was a succession of groupies who greeted us in every city.

Connie was more than a groupie. She was a specialist. When our caravan rolled into Memphis, we were told that she had driven all the way from Little Rock to meet us. What I didn’t know—but quickly learned—was the etiquette governing her services. While the band members, and especially the stars, were her primary object, tradition dictated that she first win the approval of the crew; then she would be given entrée to the band.

Apparently she won that approval because at 2 a.m., after our show, I heard a knock at my hotel door. I was at the minibar, fixing myself a drink.

“Paul,” she said, “it’s Connie.”

“Delighted to see you,” I said. “Please come in.”

A good-looking woman with a warm and friendly demeanor, Connie knew how to kick off a conversation.

“I loved your sitcom
Year at the Top.”

That floored me. I had starred in an unsuccessful situation comedy that ran for only a few episodes. No one knew anything about it. But sweet Connie knew
everything
about it; she knew details from every episode.

“Would you like a drink?” I asked her.

“Sure.”

I walked back to the minibar to fix her drink, and by the time I turned around, she had slipped out of all her clothes except her high heels and stockings and had spread herself
across my bed like a
Playboy
centerfold. “Praise God!” was the one thought that came to mind. I was so surprised, so delighted, that I spilled my vodka tonic.

“Don’t worry about it, Paul,” she said. “Just get in bed.”

I did as I was told. I soon saw that I was dealing with a master craftswoman. Her attention to detail was exceptional, and she handled her task with both confidence and cunning. I had absolutely no complaints.

When she was through, she said, “You need a Polaroid, Paul.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have a camera, Connie.”

“Next time.”

“I won’t forget,” I said.

Still in bed, she started reminiscing about her past. “I thought the glory days would go on forever,” she said. “I thought Three Dog Night would keep showing up three times a year and the party would rock on forever.”

“As long as we can make it to the show tonight,” I said, quoting Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re an American Band.”

“You know that I’m actually in that song, don’t you?” asked Connie.

“What do you mean?”

She quoted the first verse:

On the road for forty days

Last night in Little Rock put me in a haze

Sweet, sweet Connie, doing her act

She had the whole show and that’s a natural fact

“You’re
that
Connie?” I asked in amazement. “Yes!”

“My God, you’re royalty.”

She was so pleased with my recognition of her status that she went to work again. This time I felt like I was being knighted.

After the second time around, she got up and started to get dressed.

“You don’t have to leave,” I said.

“I don’t? Everyone always kicks me out when it’s over.”

“I wouldn’t dream of kicking you out. You can stay if you want to.”

“You’re kidding,” she said. “I’m serious.”

“Wow. I usually have to spend the rest of the night banging on doors to see who’ll let me in. Sometimes I just sleep in the laundry room.”

“Stay. Take off those nylon hose with the seams running up the back and the tears in all the right places.”

“Most guys don’t want me to take off my hose.”

“I’m not most guys, Connie. I think you should make yourself comfortable. It’s been a long day for you.”

“You can say that again.”

We fell asleep. The next morning I wasn’t sure of the etiquette and wondered if I could offer her some kind of compensation.

“Oh, no,” said Connie. “This is my calling. It’s my pleasure. I have only one thing to ask of you.”

“And what’s that?”

“Take me on the band plane when you fly off today.”

“I wish I could, but I can’t. Seating is limited.”

“I’ll stay in the bathroom.”

“That wouldn’t be pleasant.”

“Every time the boys had to use the bathroom, they’d be pleasantly surprised.”

“I’m sure they would be, but FAA regulations are stringent. I know you understand.”

“Will I see you on the next tour?”

“If there is a next tour.”

There wasn’t a next tour. But I’ve never forgotten sweet, sweet Connie, a rock-and-roll legend who knew that there was far more to pleasing a man than sex.

Back in the land of my coming of age, sexual liberation was nowhere to be found on the Canadian radar. What could be found, though, was another sort of liberation provided by music. I remember, for example, when I was still in high school, a band called the Vendettas—not to be confused, of course, with Martha and her Vandellas—who hailed from Sault Ste. Marie, a river city in Ontario even smaller than Thunder Bay, and had played Toronto but were stranded in TB. We opened for them when they played our hometown hockey rink. Their lead singer, Keith McKie, could pull off a pretty damn decent Ray Charles imitation. In his hotel room, McKie played me Ray’s version of “I Believe to My Soul,” explaining how Ray had sung all the harmony parts himself, thus replicating the Raelettes. I was enraptured by his Ray Charles knowledge, but even more drawn to his stories about Toronto, Ontario.

“Man,” he said, “the R&B scene in T.O. is hot. Detroit pimps bring their girls up on weekends where those long-legged ladies work the bars. In some of those joints the music gets so funky you can smell it.”

I wanted to smell it. I wanted to taste it. I wanted to get out of town.

For a boy of my ethnic and cultural background, there was but one way out: college. Fortunately, my dad’s alma mater was the University of Toronto. That’s where Bernard Shaffer saw me not only matriculating as an undergraduate but, following in his footsteps, going on to attend Osgoode Law School.

Fresh out of high school, I did not resist the plan. A lethal litigator, my father was no one with whom to argue. I knew better. But late at night, dozing off to sleep, I hardly dreamed of being called to the bar—at least not
that
kind of bar. Instead, my ear cupped to the radio, I heard the distant sounds of WLS all the way from Chicago, fifty thousand watts flying over the Great Lakes. I’d wait till 10 p.m. when the deejay announced the top three most requested songs in Chicagoland: the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” the Supremes’ “Love Is Here and Now You’re Gone,” and the Young Rascals’ “Groovin’,” exotic sounds from exciting worlds of which I knew nothing—and yet I prayed they had a place reserved for me.

As eager as I am to dramatize the highlights of my college years, I interrupt our narrative to introduce a passion that began well before my career as an undergraduate. To be sure, the passion continued during my time at the university, even as it continues to this day. It is a passion, but also a fascination and, to be candid, an obsession.

I am, in short—and will always be—obsessed with the marvelous yearly telethons put on by Mr. Jerry Lewis. I am a believer in his cause and a student of his methods. Mr. Lewis is, in short, an idol.

But even before beginning my paean to Jerry, allow me to declare my love of show-biz speak. It was Marty Short who pointed out that on the TV special
A Man and His Music
, Frank Sinatra said, “When a song lingers for many many years, it becomes what we in the business call a standard.” I loved the way that sounded. To a kid like me, Sinatra’s verbal swagger meant almost as much as Chuck Berry’s twanging guitar or Little Richard’s rollicking piano. Show-biz speak, as articulated by
the masters (Frank was one, Sammy another) transported me to those magical kingdoms—Vegas showrooms and Hollywood studios—where over-the-top sincerity created personalities who loved themselves as much as we loved them. These were guys who didn’t have much education but were determined to talk as if they had all gone to Harvard.

Jerry was a particular favorite, and I respected him deeply. I not only appreciated his comedic genius but understood that as a director he was an innovator and pioneer. It was Jerry, after all, who had invented video assist, the method that allowed the moviemaker to watch an instant playback in video rather than have to wait for the printed film.