We'll Be Here For the Rest of Our Lives (31 page)

My mother could also zing. When I got on Letterman and started kibitzing with the boss, I once asked Dave on camera, “Have you ever had one of those Freudian slips when you mean to say one thing and something else comes out?”

“What do you mean by that, Paul?”

“Well, at dinner with Mom last night I meant to say, ‘Pass the salt,’ but what came out was ‘You bitch, you ruined my fuckin’ life.’”

Big reaction from the audience.

Dave picked up the phone and called my mother in Canada.

“Mrs. Shaffer,” he said, “this is Dave Letterman, and we’re doing the show right now. I just want you to be sure and watch us later tonight. You’ll be especially proud of a certain conversation between Paul and I.”

“Paul and
me,”
she said, correcting his grammar.

Dave put his hand over the receiver, looked over at me, and said, “I see what you mean now, Paul.”

But of course he was only kidding.

I could never convince Mom of that, though. She was convinced that Dave never had her on the show again because of one thing alone: she had pointed up his grammatical mistake on national television.

And while I’m on zingers, allow me to document the recent roast of Richard Belzer. It was my debut as an official roastmaster. I took the role seriously. I was also heartened by the fact that it was not televised but was the first roast in history open to the general public at the prestigious Town Hall. It is my strong conviction that these roasts should not be televised. The presence
of cameras diminishes the intimacy of the insults; and intimate insults are what roasts are all about. This is how I opened:

“Town Hall—last time I was here I was eating Odetta. Seriously, though, my question tonight is ‘What makes a man the Belz?’ I begin with the notion of courage. When I approached Richard about this evening, he said, ‘Paul, nothing is off limits. Do what you have to do. Say what you have to say.’ So Belzer has no problem with my joking about the fact that his lovely wife, Harlee, is a former softcore porn actress. And the reason he has no problem is because there’s such a big difference between softcore and hardcore pornography. In softcore, it just looks like she’s rimming out the black guy’s anus.

“But, I ask you again, what makes a man the Belz? We who are privileged to call ourselves Richard’s close friends know that he endured a tough childhood. His own rabbi sucked his cock. This was right around the time of Richard’s bar mitzvah. But that doesn’t make him the Belz. It makes him a man who’s gotta jerk off into a tallis, but it doesn’t make him the Belz.”

A tallis, of course, is the prayer shawl of the Jewish faith.

The Belz, Jewish to the bone, loved every minute.

I loved John Belushi. Everyone who knew him loved him. You had to. John’s craziness only made you love him more. That’s because no matter what he was doing—even dancing on the graves of his fellow performers in that classic
SNL
film piece—you knew that he had a heart of gold. His energy was not normal. Neither was his love of life, on or off the stage. You wanted to be in his company. He wanted to make you laugh, and he did. He wanted to make you happy, and he did that too. His spirit was something to behold: Those close to him—coworkers, friends, and family alike—are fortunate to have known him.

When the news came of John’s death, my reaction was disbelief, then shock, then unrelenting sadness. The magnitude of the tragedy took a long, long time to sink in. Cathy and I went to John and his wife Judy’s house on Morton Street in the Village. Judy stayed downstairs, where she mourned alone. At one point I was asked to join her. “Paul,” she said, “the memorial service is going to be held at St. John the Divine. John loved Jackson Browne’s ‘For a Dancer.’ Please play it in his honor.”
She also requested that saxophonist Tom Scott play a solo on the song. Tom had been in the Blues Brothers band, but he and John had had a falling out during the making of the movie
Neighbors
. It was important to Judy that this song serve as their reconciliation.

The service itself was quite amazing. I know John would have found it amusing, if only because it was the first church service I’d seen with a velvet rope and a bouncer with a list. It was like trying to get into Studio 54. I barely made it past the rope myself. Afterward, during the limo ride to the after-funeral, I heard a woman say, “I was thinking about how John’s brother Jim said in his eulogy that so many people here had probably taken their first limo ride with John. I had my first Lear ride with John.” For whatever reason, that struck me as so funny, I had to repeat the line. “Had my first Lear ride with John.” My companion and former Blues Brother drummer Steve Jordan fell out laughing.

Years later, I was in Los Angeles. I had just flown in from New York and was at the car rental office near the airport. The clerk recognized me and said, “I know you played with John Belushi. He was a great star. You know, he was in one of our cars when he had his little thing.”

Dear God
, I thought to myself,
the man is describing John’s death as “his little thing.”
Then I asked myself,
Was he really in the car when he died? Well, no, not literally. Contractually
.

The more I considered the “had his little thing” phrase and the unapologetic pride with which it was uttered, the more I was convinced that John would have appreciated such a description of his demise. Irony—deep, rich, and always a little twisted—was at the heart of John’s comedy.

Even after I was hired by Letterman, I continued to play recording sessions. I did so because I liked the work, the challenge, and the camaraderie. When the phone rang in the morning, the caller might be anyone from Yoko Ono to the ad man/mad man in charge of the new Speed Stick campaign. I was always ready to run out to a studio gig.

Enter my good friend Ron Dante. Ron was an early supporter of mine, a lovely guy and Barry Manilow’s producing partner. Barry was on top of the world and Ron was right there with him. I’d played on some of Barry’s early hits, such as “Somewhere in the Night,” “Jump, Shout, Boogie” and “Ready to Take a Chance Again.” Ron was ready to take a chance on me again when he came looking for an arranger for his new artist Paul Jabara.

Paul would win an Oscar for writing the disco hit “Last Dance” by Donna Summer. But back in the seventies, he was just a new artist with a few hot ideas. Would I write arrangements for him? Sure.

By the way, to say that Paul was gay would be like saying
Ben-Hur
was a movie with a small chariot race. Paul had a strong sense of how to speak to the gay club audience.

I arranged a few early disco tracks for Paul, including a song called “One Man Ain’t Enough.” Apparently it wasn’t, because the song never went anywhere. But Paul was definitely working toward a groovy thing.

A few years later he called me, very excited. “Donna Summer’s been cold for a little while, and I got the title that’s gonna bring her back. You were so great arranging ‘One Man Ain’t Enough,’ I want you to help me compose this one.”

“What’s the title?” I asked.

“‘It’s Raining Men.’”

“I’ll be right over.”

When I got to Paul’s place, he elaborated. “The boys will love it. They’re the ones who are gonna bring Donna back, but we gotta hit ’em where they live.”

He had the whole lyric concept; he really just needed someone to put music to it. I hammered out a tune and cut a demo. By the time we were done, I thought,
Gee, this is pretty good
.

But fate moved against us. Between the conception and execution of this song, Miss Summer had been born again. Needless to say, she wasn’t keen on recording a ditty that had her howling “Rip off the roof and stay in bed.” That was bad enough. But she really took exception to the chorus with its “Hallelujah, it’s raining men, amen!” Thus she passed on the song, calling it blasphemous, condemning Paul to eternal hell-fire, and sending him a Gideon Bible. True story.

Paul knew he had a hit and recorded it anyway. He even planned to debut the song live in Central Park on Gay Pride
Day. Now usually I wouldn’t play any of my work for my girlfriend Cathy, who was my toughest critic. She was also unaware that the ego of the artiste is extremely fragile. But this song was different. Maybe it was because Paul was an Oscar winner, maybe it was because the demo was great, but I decided to take a chance and play it for her anyway.

As soon as Cathy heard the chorus, she rolled her eyes and said, “Eccch! What were you guys thinking? This sucks!”

I was crushed, but Paul Jabara was indomitable. He called me up and exclaimed, “You simply
must
come hear ‘It’s Raining Men!’ in the park. He went on to explain the scenario. “I’ve got this killer gal named Zenobia to sing lead and a bunch of girls from Studio 54 who will be wearing yellow rain slickers with red bathing suits underneath. I got a whole stage production. Gay Pride Day won’t know what hit it.”

“Paul,” I said, “I could be wrong, but isn’t Gay Pride Day normally a bunch of militant lesbians standing around shouting that they’re here, they’re queer, and everybody better get used to it? I don’t know if it’s the right crowd.”

“Nonsense,” Paul replied. “It’ll be huge.”

Cathy was incredulous. “Not only did you ignore what I said about that lousy song,” she told me, “but now you wanna go to a gay rally in Central Park? Let me tell you something: if anyone takes a picture of you at Gay Pride Day and it appears in a magazine, you’ll be sorry.”

Now I’m no homophobe. Neither is Cathy. But back then, things weren’t as they are today. Maybe she had a point. So it was with a heavy heart that I told Paul I couldn’t make it. I wished him luck.

Several weeks later, Gay Pride Day rolled around. Cathy and
I had been sore at each other that morning. What else was new? We weren’t speaking, but we had a reservation for bike rentals in Central Park. We went anyway.

There we were. Riding bikes, not talking, and having a miserable time. Toward the end of the day, I looked at my watch and remembered Jabara’s thing. Hey, it was about to start. Begrudgingly, Cathy agreed to ride over to the bluffs, where we could see the festivities taking place on the Great Lawn. We had a panoramic view.

Sure enough, there was a big butch lesbian onstage chanting, “We are everywhere…we will BE everywhere,” all to thundering applause.

I had been right.

“And now ladies and gentlemen,” the lady concluded, “Paul Jabara with a song you’re all going to be loving this summer.” Zenobia came out and started the opening verse:

  
Humidity is rising… barometer’s gettin’ low…

That was the cue for the backup dancers. Except the number hadn’t been rehearsed and the girls were out of step. One of ’em couldn’t wait to get out of her yellow rain slicker to show off her tiny red bikini. Another slipped and fell on her booty. The whole thing was a giant mess.

But Zenobia kept singing:

  
For the first time in history, it’s gonna start raining men…

  Then the big build to the chorus:

  
It’s raining men! Hallelujah! It’s raining men! Amen!

On cue, a giant tanned-and-greased muscleman came out in a black speedo, grinding his pelvis to beat the band.

By then, the crowd had started to boo and hiss. No one was amused.

God bless Paul Jabara; he’d completely misread his own audience.

And there I was, astride my rented bike, next to my angry girlfriend, up on the bluffs, watching the whole sordid affair. This was the only song I’d ever written! People were booing!

I turned to Cathy and said, “This is the most bizarre thing that’s ever happened to me.”

She turned to me and exclaimed, “Well, I TOLD you the song sucked when you wrote it!”

With that, she rode off without another word, leaving me to shout after her:

“Why do you have to hurt me on Gay Pride Day?!”

“It’s Raining Men” went on to be a huge hit, recorded and rerecorded by the likes of the Weather Girls, Geri Halliwell, the London Gay Men’s Chorus, and my main
whatever
, the unambiguously talented RuPaul.

Cathy has since softened her attitude toward the song… especially since it continues to pay our phone bill.

During our dating days back in the eighties, Cathy loved to surprise me. One day she said, “Paul, how’d you like to have dinner with Chas Chandler?”

“Chas Chandler? The bass player for the Animals! This guy discovered Jimi Hendrix! I’m there.”

I don’t know how Cathy did it, but two days later I’m sitting
across from Chas over spaghetti carbonara at La Strada East. This cat had stories to tell. Me, I had nothing but questions.

“How’d you come up with that bass line on ‘We Gotta Get Out of This Place’?” I asked.

“Actually, Paul,” said Chas, a portly Brit from Newcastle, “me bass was out of tune. What sounds intentional was nuthin’ but a bloody accident.”

“Who did you listen to growing up?” I wanted to know.