Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 159. Rupert Holmes

Episode Date: June 12, 2017

Man of a thousand talents -- singer, songwriter, record producer, playwright and novelist Rupert Holmes joins Gilbert and Frank to discuss the lost art of "story songs," the visual allure of Hammer films, the mimicry gifts of Peter Bogdanovich and the unsung musicianship of the Wrecking Crew. Also, Rupert lunches with Groucho (and Frank Capra!), pens tunes for Barbra Streisand, joins forces with Jerry Lewis and reveals the origin of "The Pina Colada Song." PLUS: "The Indestructible Man"! The magic of Orson Welles! Gene Pitney makes a note! Darren McGavin takes a steam! And Rupert hangs with the Jackson 5!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That's the sound of unaged whiskey transforming into Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around 1860, Nearest Green taught Jack Daniel how to filter whiskey through charcoal for a smoother taste, one drop at a time. This is one of many sounds in Tennessee with a story to tell. To hear them in person, plan your trip at tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and we're once again recording at Nutmeg with our engineer, Frank Verderosa. We talk a lot about renaissance men on this show but our guest today truly fits the bill he's a musician songwriter record producer pop singer novelist

screenwriter and tony winning dramatist and composer of numerous Broadway productions, including Curtain's Accomplice, Say Goodnight Gracie, A Time to Kill, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He's a two-time winner of the prestigious Edgar Award for Best Mystery Writing, and his 2003 novel, Where the Truth Lies, was adopted into a major motion picture starring Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon.

You want more? Okay. He also created, wrote, scored the most loved and critically acclaimed AMC comedy drama series Remember When. His original songs have been performed by and recorded by artists such as Betty Buckley, Blake Shelton, Dolly Parton, Judy Collins, Dionne Warwick, Britney Spears, Barry Manilow, Barbara Streisand. Barry Manilow, Barbara Streisand. He also arranged and conducted songs for Streisand's classic 1975 album, Lazy Afternoon, as well as five other albums and contributed songs to the hit 1976 film, A Star is Born. Yet, despite his many achievements, he's probably still best known as the singer-songwriter of several Billboard Top Ten singles, including him and the number one platinum hit, Escape, also known as the Pina Colada song.

Please welcome an artist the LA Times called an American treasure, the first person in theater history to win Tony Awards as an author, composer, and lyricist, and, as far as we know, the only man to ever write a hit song about cannibalism. Rupert Holmes. After that intro, I just keep thinking of people listening and saying, wow, this is going to be amazing. I wonder who it is. I wonder who it is. And now you say Rupert Holmes and they're saying, I still don't know.

I still don't know. People know. Our fans are hardcore. Now, we've got to get to the most important part of the interview first. I'm sure we know where this is. Now, Rupert Holmes, that sounds like it's not your real name. Yeah, doesn't it? It doesn't.

Yeah, we changed my name because of all the—my father's name was Leonard Goldstein, and he changed his name because of all the anti-Christian fervor in the United States in the 50s. A lot of that. There was so much of that going on. No, actually, you know, it's kind of an odd story. My mother was British. My father was an atheist Jew. I was raised as an Episcopalian altar boy,

and they used to say assisting at the baptismal ceremony is David Goldstein. And people would say they're getting in everywhere. They're getting in everywhere. There's just no keeping them out. And when I was – I got into the record business, which is where how I – that was my first door that I entered the entertainment business. When I got in, if your name was Dave Goldstein, they would say, hi, Dave, how are you? What's your name going to be?

What were you going to write? You know, I worked with Danny Jordan. It was Jerry Florio. I worked with, you know, just everyone just automatically. Bob Dylan was Bob Zimmerman, as you know. Carole King was Carole Klein. That's right. You just change your name.

And also, I was born in England, and it was still pretty cool in the 60s to be sort of British. I didn't have a British accent, but I thought, I want to graft myself onto something British. And that wasn't actually the first. I was in the business for an entire year. The business didn't know I was in the business, but I was in the business. As David Goldstein? No, I was in the business as Julian Gill, which really has some connection to me. Julian is my middle name and Gill was my aunt's name. So I tried to do legitimate. And then a publisher I worked for who paid me $50 a week for every song I would ever write, I left him and he took out ads in the trades,

Record World and Billboard and Cashbox, saying, do not take the songs by David Goldstein, a.k.a. Julian Gill. And I was screwed. So I had to come up with yet another name. And I thought, OK, well, let's see. I've got to get something British like Julian Rupert. I don't think there are any Ruperts at that time. And then I thought, well, last name, Holmes. I love Sherlock Holmes. I thought so. So I thought I'll graft myself onto his family tree, and that was it. Could have been Mycroft. Mycroft would have been good. And before we walked into the recording area, both of us got into a conversation about Son of Dracula.

Yes, indeed. I thought I heard John Carradine's name mentioned when the door opened. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. I thought I heard John Carradine's name mentioned when the door opened. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. You were mentioning that, can I, am I allowed to say the context? Go right ahead. About, you were, well, you know, I heard this story six minutes ago. You know it.

Why don't you tell the story? My wife wanted to give our son a middle name with an A in it. Oh, no. And so my idea was it should be Alucard. And it took me just a moment to remember that that is actually the name. I love this premise, by the way. It was in a movie called Son of Dracula, made in the 40s, with Lon Chaney Jr. as a rather kind of overweight vampire.

That's his favorite actor, Rupert. Be careful. Lon Chaney Jr.? Those fighting his favorite actor, Rupert. Be careful. Rod Cheney Jr.? Those fighting words. Oh, he loves them. The Indestructible Man. Oh, yes. The Indestructible Man.

That's a great film. Oh, yes. I think that The Indestructible Man is the earliest horror movie I remember seeing. Yeah. And it has an actor who goes by two names. Oh, I know it. I know it. I know it. I know one name is Max, oh, Showalter.

Max Showalter. Max Showalter, right. Also known as Casey- Adams. Adams, yes. We've talked about him on this show. I think with his real name, Max Showalter sounded too German. Yeah.

So he changed it. He became Casey Adams. And he wound up, one of the last things he did was 16 Candles with Molly Ringwald. Did he really? Yeah. He was in Niagara. He was in the movie Niagara with Marilyn Monroe. And the funny thing is, later on he developed, like, to be a funny comic actor.

Yeah, he was really good at that. But in that, he looks like such a great dramatic actor. Yeah. Yeah. He was he. By the way, we're not talking at all about me. I know how. How is this happening? We're talking about Munchini Jr. Let me finish the Alucard. What I love about Alucard is that in the movie, Dracula decides to go to, you know, the logical place he would go to, which is New Orleans. Sure. You know, because it's for the Mardi Gras.

He's a Mardi Gras fan. And he decides to disguise his name in a way that no one will ever be able to figure out. So he calls himself Count Alucard as if no one would ever, like, hold his name up to a mirror and see it's Dracula backwards, right? See, but at least, like, John Carradine— Well, he was lean and hungry in all his movies. Yeah, but he was Baron Latos in House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula. Gilbert, you're good.

He was Baron Latos. J. Carol Nash was in that as well. Ah, yes, he was the hunchback Daniel. Right, yeah. Sad. And then, you know, those were interesting. Those last two films, House of Dracula and House of Frankenstein, are really kind of fun.

They try to get every monster in. Oh, yeah. And then they didn't know what to do, so they brought Avid and Costello in as well. And Avid and Costello did it much better. Much better. It was actually kind of scary. Yeah.

Yeah. We had a lady named Janet Ann Gallo on this podcast. Does that mean anything to you? It probably will when you, it sounds familiar. I don't, I can't place it. I was the one screaming. He wanted her on this show desperately. We tracked her down.

She was a child star. She hasn't acted, what, in 60 years? Yeah. Something like that? She was in Ghost of Frankenstein with Ron Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi. And Glenn Strange is the monster? No, no. That's the wolfman.

Yeah. Lon Chaney is the monster. Chaney was the monster. Oh, Lon Chaney was the monster. That's right. Ghost of. Yeah. Right.

And she's the little girl who befriends the monster. Wow. And you tracked her down. We did. Yes. No other podcast in the world would have Janet Ann Gallo on the show and a lengthy discussion about Max Showalter. This is the one. And this is quality broadcasting, you know.

This is the one, buddy. And not to ruin the surprise, but we've been talking to Donnie Donegan. You know him? You're going to tell me and I'm going to know. He was the voice of Bambi, for one thing. Yes, and he was Basil Rathbone's son in Son of Frankenstein. Atkinson in Son of Frankenstein. Right.

Lionel Atwill. That's it. Lionel Atwill. Very good. Young Frankenstein is really, I think, a particular homage to Son of Frankenstein, more than to any other Frankenstein film. Yeah, well, the Kenneth Mars character is just Lionel Atwell. That's all right. Lionel Atwell personified.

Yeah. And now, while Gilbert heads into the nutmeg kitchen to steal more Perrier, a word from our sponsor. When past ill and scent, darkness and destruction fill the air. The only hope of rescue is that two men will be there. Gil and Frank. Gil and Frank. Frank and Gilbert.

And now back to the show. So, Gilbert's thrilled that you're Jewish. I've never been bar mitzvahed. I'm sorry. Neither was he? No, I wasn't either. Really? But my feeling is, I don't know when the holidays are. I eat pork, blah, blah, blah.

But I know if the Nazis come back. You're a guy. Yeah. I'll be in the train car with everyone else. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So you're in the UK.

You come from a musical family, too, we should point out. Your brother's an opera singer. My brother is an opera singer. We've been at the Met for some 55 years now. Yeah. And I find it interesting. Not 55, 50. Doing research. And your dad, obviously.

My dad was amazing. He was a, he was a, I'm trying to imagine this. At 19, he was lead alto in the big band era for a wonderful big band led by Red Norvo. And my second novel, Swing, taps a lot of that period. Then he was also a Juilliard graduate and taught at the Juilliard. So he was a jazz musician, classical conductor and musician, led his own infantry division band during World War II, and then came back here with family in tow when I was three and became head of auditions for NBC Radio. And I have early memories of walking around the RCA building at that time. Oh, that's cool. And didn't he have some kind of a city job or something?

City job? You mean in the city? That would have been a city job. No, no. Like some kind of job like, oh, I forget what they said he was. He was a teacher for the rest of his life. And he became superintendent of music for the Nyack Public School System up the river, which is sort of where I grew up. And of all the things he did, that ended up being for

him the most rewarding. It meant the most to him. So originally you thought about becoming a classical musician. I went to Manhattan School of Music. Right. That's where you were headed. I was, I went to, first I went to Syracuse for a year and I went into the town and said, can you direct me to the city proper? And they said, you're standing on it, because my idea of a city was New York City. I missed New York a lot. So I transferred after my first year at Syracuse back to Manhattan School of Music, where I changed my major from clarinet. I was a pretty good clarinetist.

I got into colleges on that and changed it to music theory. But I wanted very badly to be in the pop music business. You also wanted to be a storyteller. Well, the only way I could do both, I figured, because I knew no one in theater at that time, but I had long hair and I could play a guitar and could play a piano and I could write music, which most people at that time couldn't do. And I figured if I write story songs, I can be a storyteller in three minutes and make the records into little mini movies. And so I thought the way to be able to have my cake and eat it too, which is not actually

a bad goal if you're in the cake market. No, we don't want to eat that. Would be to be a pop storyteller in song. And that's sort of what I've worked my way for years to get to. Speaking of pop songs and cake. Yes. Jimmy Webb. Yes. No, I left it out.

Left it out there Left it out. Yeah. He totally revealed to us. Because all this time I thought he's such a poet. Right. It's so symbolic of something. And he said he actually was in the park once. It was raining and there was some piece of cake lying on the ground.

And that was the whole thing. I thought he was such a brilliant song. Are you disillusioned? Yes, yes. He took the mystery out of it? Yeah. It's funny that you bring up story songs, too, because it's kind of a dying art, storytelling in song, or story songs.

I mean, we talked about things like the night the lights went out in Georgia. We were talking about pop songs on this show. Two singers. One, you know, Taxi. Oh, Harry Chapin. Harry Chapin. Sure, sure. And the other one, Badly Roy Brown. Oh, Jim Croce.

Both of those guys, they were always song. I mean, always stories. Right, yeah. Ode to Billy Joe. That's another one. Well, even something like Piano Man. Yeah, absolutely. The story song, I think, has sought refuge in country music.

If you look at the charts, you will still see situational songs. Right. Some of them are really well thought out with interest. You know, He Stopped Loving Her Today. Okay. Which the payoff is he stopped loving her today because he died, and that was the only thing that was ever going to. But you don't learn that right away.

So I've flown it for a lot of people. It's been around. Now you've ruined the song. I've ruined the song for everyone. Yeah. But it's a wonderful form. It's a wonderful. It's a lot of pressure.

When Joe Papp said to me when I presented the idea for my first musical The Mystery of Edwin Drew to him, he said he knew my songs. And he was the one who sort of encouraged me to try and write a musical. And he said, but who's going to write the book? And I said, meaning the script other than the tunes. And I said, well, I thought I would. And he said, can you do that? I said, I've been having

to tell stories for 10 years now in three minutes that rhyme, have a twist ending, and a fade out. I said, writing where I don't have to rhyme, that should be a nice break from that. So it's a fun craft. It's a lot of pressure, though, because a lot of my songs, you have to do the whole song in two verses, a chorus, and another verse. Like Terminal was a story terminal absolutely yeah at nine o'clock right Oh, my heart was screaming

as you left your seat Following your movements I was at your feet And oh, down into the terminal both of us filed So, we entered the terminal just as you smile And now this is very important. You wrote a song that was later made into a movie

where you claim that Martin and Lewis... Oh, a book. A book that was turned into a movie. Yeah, you claim that Martin and Lewis used to fuck each other up the ass. You know, it's not exactly that. Not by a long shot. Not by a long shot. And if it were, I would find the fact that I worked with Jerry Lewis. One of the great thrills of my career is that I got to—

Absolutely. And I got to work. Absolutely. And I got to do a musical with Marvin Hamlisch. It was the last musical Marvin wrote. I did the book and the lyrics. Marvin did the music. And we did a musical of The Nutty Professor with Jerry overseeing the entire production. And I got to be buddies with my boyhood hero. Because when I was growing up, when I was growing up, pre-Beatles, the two coolest people in the world to be were Martin and Lewis. There was no one cooler.

And they said they were as big if not bigger than the Beatles. Well, they had the playground field on the blacktop and said, Dean and Jerry are breaking up. And that was like, until the Kennedy assassination, that was the hardest news I had heard. It was devastating to us. We just thought, because it was, again, what you loved about the Beatles was this sense, an illusion, but a sense that there are these four guys. There's no one leader of the group. There's no front man. And they're buddies.

And when they're not making this great music, they hang out together. And that just is so appealing. And you just had the feeling that Martin and Lewis would just always be hanging out. And suddenly to find out that this Damon and Pythias relationship was splintered, it just felt really weird. We should fill in for our listeners, too. The book, the movie was made with Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth. People know the movie. It was based on your book.

But you've said it's purely fictional. Oh, absolutely. You basically just – you were intrigued with the idea of a comedy team. comedy team and what i what i tried to base it on was the idea that no one really ever gave a proper account to the public back in that time as to why these two people who own the world and were seemingly inseparable suddenly wanted to have nothing to do with each other so i concocted a story about a similar duo vince collins and lanny morris who inexplicably split up. And there's a woman who was found in a hotel in New Jersey. And that's the center. It's something to do with this woman that's found dead in a bathtub in a New Jersey hotel. And it's about a female reporter in the

70s who tries to unravel this mystery. And what you alluded to earlier, the really savory part of it is not exactly, there's no implication that the two of the, even my two characters were, there's an episode that happens in their lives and you'd have to read. I'd give away too much otherwise. And now, I mean, I, too, grew up as a Jerry Lewis fan. Sure. But the stories that I always hear is that Jerry Lewis, when you get to know him, much like the Nutty Professor, is a Jekyll and Hyde character. I haven't seen Mr. Hyde in action. I see things on the news. I see interviews he does where he seems strangely bitter at times. We liked each other. And I think also he feels

very safe because he knows I adore him. And I can cite every single thing he's ever done in a movie. And not just the movies. I'm much older than you are, Gilbert. But I mean, I grew up on the Colgate Comedy Hour and they did some of the most amazing sketches. And I pay, even within the novel, I mentioned that if you ever took what they were doing as an act and analyzed it on a piece of paper, there's nothing there. It's just these two guys winging back and forth and taking heroic pratfalls, which left him very injured. Yeah. But he was a joy to work with from my point of view

and everything I would want the Jerry Lewis I grew up with to be. I'm glad it worked out because they say don't meet your heroes because sometimes it backfires. But in this case— I had a chance to meet John Lennon, and I didn i didn't want to do it wow tell us no i just i had an opportunity i met paul mccartney i did not meet john lennon i just thought so highly of him that i knew that if he said something or didn't have time or brushed me off or said something snide i would think on there goes all that work that i love and it's going to be i'm always going

to have that little dark. So you purposely avoided meeting him. It was too perfect. I also had the chance to meet Cary Grant, and I didn't. Wow. Who was it who was on the show, had a horrible story about John? It was Howard Kalin of the Turtles. Yeah.

Had a story about John. Oh, just about John mistreating somebody in his band. Yeah. Yeah. But he was a flawed man. And you had a chance to meet Cary Grant? Just for an afternoon when I was out in L.A. And someone, the PR person who was promoting my first album, her friend was actually living with him and wanting to marry him.

And he's saying, no, you don't want to get married. And this is towards the end of his life. And she was going to drive us over and say hi to Cary Grant. And I thought, I can't do that. I can't go there. I just, I want my, the greatest role Cary Grant ever played was Cary Grant. Inventing who he was and what he was. And I just didn't want to ever see him drop character.

Oh, yeah. You want to see, you want to know that in real life he's in black and white. Absolutely. Exactly. Exactly. What's that thing you say that you belong in the room, but still there's that, you know, you belong there, you have the right to be there, but still there's that kid inside you when you meet these people?

Yes. you when you meet these people? Yes, I always, I was once at a Columbia 30th anniversary party and I went with Barbra Streisand and at the table was Barbra Streisand, Frank Capra, wow, John Houston, Charles Bronson, George Siegel, Groucho Marx, and me. George Siegel Groucho Marx and me holy shit and I thought that's great

the caption for this is circle who does not belong at this table I've been at some of those tables that is absolutely doesn't seem like

it could exist the only sad thing was that it was Groucho was really not there oh yeah he showed up what year are we talking about

we're talking about 75 you were working with Barbara. I was working with Barbara Streisand. I was recording an album called Lazy Afternoon, which I wrote and arranged and conducted. And we were working, moving towards working on A Star is Born. And I

got to go with her to this dinner, and I just looked around and thought, what do I do? How do I... Oh, I'm in the business too, Mr. Capra. Yeah. You know how it is for wordsmiths. So we have to ask, did you engage with Capra and John Houston? I did. You know, I've actually found people to be, yeah, as long as you don't try to presume too much, like say, it's kind of like when a chiropractor will say to me, you know, we're both really in the same business.

And I'll say, no. Dentist, dentist, dentist will say, I'd love to, dentist will say, I'd love to write a novel too. I just don't have the time. I don't have the time. I think, yeah, that's all that's preventing. Orson Welles, I got to like chat.

I was going to bring that one up. With Orson Welles, yeah. How did that come about? Well, I actually saw him a number of times and got to lunch with him. But the first time was so silly. So I was on the Merv Griffin show. I did a lot of those shows in the 70s. And he had preceded me.

And by the way, if you want to know the scariest words to ever hear in your life, it's to hear Merv Griffin say, well, we'd love to chat more with Orson Welles, but now let's meet Rupert Holmes. Maybe the most blood chilling words I've ever heard. Anyway, I'm so Merv's at the desk. I'm next to him. And Orson has moved over to make way for me to my right. And so I'm sitting between Merv and Orson Welles. It's sort of like being between a rock and a soft place, you know, and the soft place being, you know, Merv. And I start to do an interview with Merv.

And the answers to the questions that I'm giving, I can hear televisions turning off all over America. You know? Everything I'm saying is only to try in some way to impress Orson Welles. Right. Sure. Somehow, I don't know, we're talking about the Pina Colada song and the Magnificent Ambersons comes into the conversation, you know, and my bringing it in there. And finally, I'm talking about authors, and I say,

well, as G.K. Chesterton said, and I'm quoting people, and we go to commercial, and Orson Welles leans over and he says, you know, it does my heart good, dear young man like yourself, quoting G.K. Chesterton. You know, H.G. Welles once told me that G.K. Chesterton said, and I'm thinking, so I'm hearing Orson Welles tell me what H.G. Welles told the writer about you. And so we were fast friends. He did a magic trick on the show, and it involved lighting flash paper. And he lit it with a match from a box of matches that said Rosebud on it. Oh, man.

Oh, my God. And I took it. And on the next commercial break, I said, I've never done this. Could you autograph this matchbook for me? So he drew a little drawing for me and wrote congratulations and all that. And we ended up, for some reason, getting booked on that show a lot and got to talk about things. I once asked him. He was always in black in those days.

And I said, do you design your own suits? And he said, that would be like having an architect for a tent. And I thought, well, that's pretty good. Anyway, they would be like having an architect for a tent. And I thought, well, that's pretty good. Anyway, they were very voluminous. Yeah, sure. We had Bogdanovich on the show telling us some Morrison stories. He's not only, I was going to write a play. I met with him a lot to, we were going to do a play about his life. And then there were certain parts of his life he simply didn't want to get into, which was fine with me, but not fine with the producers who were funding it. But he is a remarkable impressionist of— Oh, he is.

He can go in and out of Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant. He surprised us. Did he do it here on the show? Yeah, he did a killer Walter Brennan. Yes. He surprised us. We also learned that one of Orson Welles' favorite shows was Kojak. For real?

Yes. Wow. Yeah, that made me happy. Wow. Because it's just completely random. Wow. The Night Stalker, he... Oh, Kojak, not Kolchak.

Not Kolchak. Kolchak. Oh, yes. Yeah, that would have been cool. Even better, right? Kojak. Darren McGavin's always been my favorite actor. You like Darren McGavin?

Well, I actually do. Yeah. I actually do. He was Mike Hammer on TV in the early 50s. I remember one time seeing Darren McGavin at the Friars Club in New York in a bathroom asking me if I knew how to turn on the TV with a remote. He probably came from the steam room. Yes, yes. That may explain some aspect of that so we don't picture him quite as much of a bag man as we— Yeah, it depressed me.

It is? Yeah. I used to chat up Dennis Farina in the steam room at the Friars Club. Really? Also a lovely guy. A raconteur. I've heard people tell me about him and say he was really nice. A sweet fella.

So I'm going all the way back since I told you we jump around. Yes, indeed. And there's no rhyme or reason to this. That's right. You come from— That Martin Luther Lewis used to like to fucking travel. No, you've got to read the book.

It's all explained three chapters from the end. I saw the movie, and when I think of a crazy Jew comic, I think Kevin Bacon. I know. Listen, can I tell you I just want to say something about that movie.

He's incorrigible. No, but let me say about those two guys in particular. Yes. That, I, this is not one,

this is one of those glib disclaimers. I had nothing to do with the film. I didn't get to, when I met with the fellow who had optioned it who was an award winning

director, wonderful director named Adam Agoyan and he said to me we had a dinner at the some, someplace. And he said, now, you know, I, um, I do write all my own screenplays. And I said, well, it's my first novel. And I thought in my mind, the good thing is that when you, when your novel is made into a movie, what you can always kind of figure out is the

rationale, the cover story on that is if they do it good, then they captured your brilliant novel. And if they do it lousy, then they screwed your beautiful novel, you know. So I went along with that and I had nothing to do with the film. The film was made under a tax deal where the entire cast had to be either British or Canadian except for one actor. Kevin Bacon, who's such a great guy, wonderful, great guy. And he does a great job, but he's not trying to be Jerry Lewis in the movie. He was the sole American. Colin Firth was is suave and and again, couldn't have been nicer to me. And he actually autographed my novel saying, I think this is a case where I am going to have novel envy as the actor in the movie.

That's very nice. Wishing I could. And he was wonderful. But he's not Dean Martin. And then Alison Lohman, who played the girl in it, is as American as can be. But she happened to be born in Canada. And everyone else is from Canada or England. be, but she happened to be born in Canada and everyone else is from Canada or England.

So it was not maybe it isn't as if someone said we want two actors, any two actors in the world to play these characters. It was kind of from a limited pool of people who were either British or could be the one American to be in the film. Wow. Yeah. It's a hilarious story and I have many more like it. And this this story was that Martin and Lewis used to blow each other. Yeah, exactly.

No. Yeah. No, that was never it. Never it. You should read the book. Yeah. You were going back somewhere. You were saying going back.

I'm going back. Yeah, because I want to talk about things like you working with the Jackson 5 and also writing a song for the Partridge family and all of that cool stuff. Part of the fun thing I found in the research is you saying that you would have done anything to get into the music business. And you did. I did almost everything. I didn't do what Martin did to Louis. Very good. See how he put that together, Gil? Circular, a little circular there. Jack Benny running gag number three. That was nice. But you wrote jingles and you did. I said yes to everything. And you know what?

I had no way into the music business. And so I was 18. And my philosophy was just say yes to everything. Be exploited. Let people take advantage of you. Somewhere you will find a niche, some opening that you can get through and get one toe in. Much like Martin and Lewis. Yes.

Sorry. So, like in the first year of my career, I did the marching band arrangement of Oya Komová. I did the high school band arrangement.ya Komová. I did the high school band arrangement, the most thankless job in the world. You got to write like 48 parts, do all your own copying, and you get $300. Did the concert band arrangement of selections from Hair. I did the piano vocal folio for the Charlie Pryde songbook, Did You Think to Pray? Wasn't there a Frosty the Snowman job? I did a marching band arrangement of Frosty the Snowman. You try to

think, how many people are marching in... Does it come up a lot? I also did Jingle Bells Rock. Well, if you're going to find yourself in the snow, I guess the Lane Parade or whatever it is in LA or something, you could do it. But I did every job, and

people found that I was willing to arrange songs for $15 or things. So I did everything. And my first job in the business, it was an actual job and not just me doing things for people. About a year in, I got a job at Lou Levy Music, a guy who would run Leeds Music, sold and then opened a new company. And I was a combination errand boy and songwriter. And I got $50 a week. And I later learned that if I had only been the errand boy, I would have gotten $70 a week.

And he and Lou said to me, got this act that somebody's pushing and go to the Apollo Theater and check them out and see if they're any good. Because you're the only you're the you're the future of this country, which is bad news for this country. I was the only person under 50 in the in the company because he used to hire writers who wrote lyrics like Yass Fenske Flicka. You affect my ticker. Me with a geisha playing pisha-pesha. That's for you, Gil. Nymphet or matron, let me be your patron, Miss Yugoslavia, how I'd love to love you. That wasn't me.

Those aren't my lyrics. Those were lyrics written by one of the great lyricists of all time who wrote the song tenderly. But anyway, he said to me, go to the Apollo Theater because you're the only one who would even dare go up there. And I went to the Apollo Theater and saw the opening act on a 15-act bill. When you're the opening act at the Apollo Theater, you are only that much above being the person who sells popcorn in the lobby. It's the lowest, you know, that's it. And it was this family called the Jackson family. And there was this boy who was five and a half or six,

and it was Michael Jackson. And I came back and said, this is... Didn't he stand on your shoes? He did later. He said, I said, I think they have incredible potential. He said, you go out there, I'll pay. You go to Gary, Indiana and visit them. It's all set up with their manager who had them. They had a record on a label called Steel Town, not Motown, Steel Town.

And so I flew out to Gary, Indiana, checked into a Holiday Inn there, went to their home. They weren't home. Asked around. I went to the south side of Chicago where they were performing. I saw Joe Jackson. We made an appointment. I came back the south side of Chicago where they were performing. I saw Joe Jackson. We made an appointment. I came back the next day, came to their home, and I spent three days in the home of the Jackson family. And Michael Jackson was doing that thing that kids do, as you mentioned, where they put their feet on your feet and then you have to walk around the

room with them walking on your feet. And they were terrific. And I taught, I think, Jermaine, I taught him how to play bar chords. And my thought was that they could maybe do some contemporary versions of some young standards. And I got back to New York. Most of your listeners won't know what I'm referring to here. But I said, Mr. Levy, I think they're willing to sign a recording contract if you'll pay for it. And he said, we're going to have them redo all the Ink Spots hits, which was, you know, kind of even then as Uncle Tom as it could get. And so that never happened. But I did get to meet Michael Jackson and work with him. And I even then thought, I wonder what kind of childhood he's going to have because he was already just he was an incredible performer even at that age

wow and that was when i was like i don't know 19 you were also as a teenager you were you were conducting you were working with people like the platters and gene pitney yeah you were conducting and arranging it yeah at that tender age yeah i was um um uh the the good gigs like gene pitney that didn't come till i was about 19. And I was attending Manhattan School of Music and my teachers would sometimes be on my sessions. And they would, at the end of the session, say, well, sure, hope you'll think of me again. Sometimes I'm thinking, you gave me a D yesterday and you're on my session. Gene Pitney was a terrific... I remember in 1969, everything was going right with the world. The Mets looked like they might win the pennant.

And I was doing Gene Pitney recording sessions and sessions with the drifters and the platters and strings. And I even started getting paid for some of this. And Gene Pitney. One of your favorites. Yes. And maybe we can sing this together if we both know the words. Which one? Town Without Pity.

If I could do the keyboard part for you, you'll have to do it alone. We don't have a fucking keyboard here. Sing an acapella. Okay. Come on. When we stop to gaze upon a star, people talk about how bad we are. How can anything survive? How can we keep love alive when these little minds break us in two?

No, it isn't very pretty. What a town without pity can do. What's your verdict, Rupert? It's wonderful. I noticed you were crying. I'm just fumbling for my handkerchief. There's a tear. He's got a tear.

And you know, if only he could have been here to hear you sing. It would have meant so much to him, Gilbert. And you know, I'm not saying you sounded exactly like him. And yet, in your own way, you captured him. He gets the range of the song. Yeah, yeah. And he was a cool guy. God bless him.

Did I just? That's a showbiz thing. God bless him. He should only have. So he invested his money on like any other like rock star of that period, not rock, a pop star. In I think I talked with him at the time that he had put a lot of his money into apartment buildings in Europe and he was doing just fine. And he didn't need the gig to be recording. And what I loved, he the only guy would have done this in the late 60s. He showed up for his recording session in a three-piece suit, you know, with a vest, nice snug vest, and a tie,

a knotted tie, and when he did the session and sang, he never loosened the tie, he never took off the jacket, he never took off the vest, he was just and that was, he was a class act. He was a real class act.

The song, one of the songs on the session he was recording was a clear all hair – Was it She Lets Her Hair Down? She Lets Her Hair Down. She walks barefoot through the meadows early in the morning. Early in the morning. And we did another one called All the Young Women, which was kind of a poor man's Where Have All the Flowers Gone. And he sang the first line and he went, All the young women, where were they going?

Where were they going? And the producer, who was thick, said, Gene, you're saying where were they going? It's where are they going? And Gene said, oh, okay. He sang it again. He went, all the young women, where were they going? He said, Gene, Gene, you keep saying, where were they going?

It's where are they going? You sing in a silly way. And Gene goes, oh, okay. And he takes a pencil and he makes a note on the lyric sheet that he's holding. And he goes, all the young women, where were they going? Never changed. It came out that way. But I like that he made the note with the pencil.

He took direction. I think if we ever get Paul Schaefer back on the show, and we should, he's got a Gene Pitney story. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So what did you write for Barry Manilow? I wrote a song that I think Barry— One of my favorites. Well, yeah.

He's actually done it on two live albums. It's on the first live album. And it's on the one in London as well. It's kind of interesting because I don't know if he knew its derivation. It's a song called Studio Musician, and it's about all the brilliant musicians that we heard on records back in the 60s and 70s. These were people who were masters of their craft, and they would show up for a three-hour session, sometimes 60 within a half hour, and they would show up for a three-hour session, sometimes 60 within a half hour,

and they would be geniuses on a record, and you would never know their name. So like on You Keep Me Hanging On, not by Vanilla Fudge, but the original record. Some guy came in and went da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And we don't know who that is. Or there's a guy, Sal DeTroia. Who knows his name? And he played, everybody's talking at me. He's the guy who came in, saw C major written on the chord.

He could have played anything he wanted. And he went, which became a lick that suddenly showed up in gasoline commercials. And he was the one who played it. Almost every hit record had somebody doing something that was amazing, and it was just a guy who was showing, or a woman, who was showing up and getting $60 for the gig, and the record would be a hit, and that was an integral part of it, and you would never know who they were. Two documentaries come to mind, Standing in the Shadows of Motown.

You get to see who some of those people are, and also the Wrecking Crew documentary. Oh, yeah. The recent one, which is great. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people know who Carol Kay and Hal Blaine are. They don't know all of them. Tedesco, they know the bigger names.

And these people, guys like that, you know, they thought, that's a job. Yeah. They weren't geniuses. They didn't think of themselves as geniuses. They were pretty amazing. Yeah. And I got to work with Carol geniuses. They were pretty amazing. Yeah. And I got to work with Carol and Hal Blaine out on the West Coast in my very first professional recording session. I was doing an album with Dr. Ben Casey, with Vince Edwards.

Vince Edwards. Oh, wow. Vince Edwards grew up with my dad. Did he really? He did, yeah. Wow. Here in New York? Now, you know the story of Ben Casey, don't you?

No Uh-oh Can you clean it up? Was it him and Martin and Lewis? Oh no, but he did walk out on an episode of Ben Casey that Jerry Lewis was directing Really? I never knew that story, that's good stuff He got pissed off that Jerry Lewis was directing. Really? I never knew that story. That's good stuff. He got pissed off

at Jerry Lewis. Wow. Vinnie Edwards drove to California with my dad. Really? Wow. For a future show. Yeah. Wow. Played the title role in a film called Mr. Universe. Yes, indeed. Years later, Jerry Lewis said in some article that he really understood

why Vince Edwards got pissed off. And he said that Vince Edwards was a fine actor. And so he was actually nice about it. I got to do an album with him. Just after I left Lou Levy, I got a job at a record company on the Sunset Strip. And he was the first artist where I went into a studio and recorded 10 songs with union musicians and my arrangements on the stand. And it was great. And I got back to New York thinking this was the beginning of my future. And the union in L.A. said, we've got your checks for the Vince Edwards sessions, you as the arranger, but we can't send them to you because you owe dues on them. And I said, well, just take the dues out. They said, we can't take the dues out. They're checks. They've got to

be deposited. So you sent us a check for the dues on the checks. And, you know, I lived in a studio apartment for like $95 a month. And they said, send us the dues, 10%, and we'll send you the checks. So I sent them the dues and couldn't wait for the checks to come in. And all the checks bounced. And the record company that I was working for went out of business. And I was not only out the money that I had earned on the West Coast, but out the dues that I had mailed them as well. So I had to kind of restart my career. Then when I think of Vince Edwards, actually, I think about that. You think of that. Ben Casey and Dr. Zorba.

Dr. Zorba, yeah. Oh, yeah. Sam Jaffe. Sam Jaffe. Gunga Din. Yeah. We had Ron Dante on the show a couple of weeks ago. Your old colleagues.

Absolutely. Tell us how that came about. Tell us about how you came to work for the Cufflinks and Vance and Pocris. Yeah. Tell us about how you came to work for the Cufflinks and Vance and Pocris. Yeah. One of the first people to really exploit me to the hill. I think Ron, too.

Yeah. Safe to say. No, Ron was good. Ron was a good guy. No, I mean them exploiting him as well. Oh, yes. Yeah. Except Ron got, like, beat up once or had a fight.

Well, all I know is we brought the name up and then the show went silent for a minute. Well, I don't have to edit that out. I worked for a man named Paul Vance, who to his credit wrote Catch a Falling Star and Put It in Your Pocket. Still with us. Right. And yes, he is still with us. And on the other side, on the not so to his credit, he wrote Leader of the Laundromat by The Detergents, which is a parody of Leader of the Pallet.

Well, that was Ron. And that was Ron. And Tommy Wynn and Danny Jordan, who I mentioned earlier, who actually got me into the business. That's how I met Paul. And he wrote Playground in My Mind by another artist. Oh, sure, sure. Anyway, in these days, I once overheard Paul talking on the phone to somebody. And he says, I got this kid working for me right now.

He says, I pay him 30 bucks a song. He writes the song with me. He puts down the chords. And he sometimes works on the melody. He says he writes the lead sheet for copyright purposes. He does the arrangement and he does all his own copying. He doesn't, I don't pay for copying. He writes out the parts.

Then if I want him to sing the lead and be a mythical group, a non-existent group, he sings the lead. If I don't have him singing the lead or if I do, he sings all the backup vocals. And then if need be, we have a milk crate at Mercury Studios and he stomps his feet on the milk crate four to a bar to make it sound like a Four Seasons record. And I pay him 30 bucks a song. And in the hallway hearing this, I thought, he's paying me $30 a song, and I don't know what I'm doing. Wow. I'm getting the greatest education in the world. That's great.

I finally, along these lines, and it was Paul who did the Gene Pitney session I was referring to. Ron Dante is the only guy, I'm sure this came up, who had two records. Of course. In the top five in the same week, and no one in America knew who he was. Tracy and Sugar. It was Tracy as the Cufflinks, number four, and Sugar Sugar by the Archies. You bet. Right.

And I arranged, I didn't have, I had nothing to do, I wish I had something to do with Tracy, but I arranged, I did the orchestral arrangements on the rest of the first Cufflinks album. And I worked on that whole album with Ron. And Ron was magic. He would come in, couldn't really read music. And one time he sang a lyric. He was singing, put a little love in your heart. And he sang, we want the world to know we won't let hat red glow.

I said, what? What did he sing? He says, we want the world to know we won't let hat red glow. And I looked at my lead sheet that I'd written. I said, what? What did he say? He says, we want the world to know we won't let hat red glow. And I looked at my lead sheet that I'd written. I said, hat red glow? I said, Ron, we won't let hatred grow. Hat hyphen red. It's not hatred.

It's hat hatred, not hat red. Anyway, when Ron came to a pumped heads with Paul, who was a tough guy, when he came to Bumped Heads with Paul, who was a tough guy when he needed to be, and he seemed to always want to be, when they bumped heads, Ron wouldn't do any more Cufflinks records. So as had happened a couple of other times, I had to become the Cufflinks at that point. So I then did the second second cufflinks album doing all the vocals for now getting maybe 40 bucks a song and uh and all the string charts and playing piano on the dates and conducting the session the the one thing i want to share with you is that a couple blocks from here there used to be a place called the 69 cent store and oh god gil, you would have been in your glory. Oh, God, I remember. I remember when they were the 69-cent stores.

Yeah, they're looking to the future. Yes. Oh, my God. When I was growing up, the 69-cent stores. It was amazing. Yeah, and I used to go there to buy classical albums on labels you've never heard of, recorded in Budapest. And so I could get all the classical music I liked for 69 cents a shot. But they never had cassettes or 8-tracks there. One day, I see a bin, and they're selling cassettes at the 69-cent store.

I think this is fantastic. And I go over to the bin, and I look down, and it's that second Cufflinks album that I'm the lead singer on, full of that thing. And the payoff is that there's a sign above the bin, and it says, two for 69. See, if I found that album in a store, not even a 69 cent store, any store, I'd be very excited. Yeah, well, I was thrilled. And we got onto, oh, yeah, Ron Dante. And that's how I became the Cufflinks for a while. Right, the Cufflinks.

And I became a lot of other groups. And what really turned things around for me was that Epic Records, seeing that I was doing all these records as groups that didn't exist. What you did is you recorded a song that someone thought would be a hit. You put a name on the record saying it was a group, the Moccasins. Well, Tony Burroughs was the king of that. Yeah. With White Plains and what was it? Great records.

Edison Lighthouse. Edison Lighthouse and Foundations. Yeah. All that stuff. The one that did, what was that novelty song they did too? I'm trying to think of it. Anyway. Gimme Dat Ding. Gimme Dat Anyway. Gimme Dat Ding.

Gimme Dat Ding. Gimme Dat Ding. Oh, gee. All the same people. And it was all the same. And sometimes we'd do five songs, and Paul would make a deal to sell five different groups to five labels. And if the record didn't do anything, so goodbye to that group. But if it became a hit, then it was—they had to actually form a real cufflinks at one point because they were doing well enough to be on TV, but it didn't have Ron

Dante or me in it. And they showed up to do a show called Music Scene, which was on Against Laughing. And they said the record doesn't sound like the record. Oh, well, the lead singers quit and all like that. But Epic Records wanted me to be one of those, to do a group, a non-existent group for them, writing my own stuff. Not with Paul Vance, just on my own and with a fellow named Jeffrey Lesser. So I had this deal to do four non-existent groups. And it was going to be for a group that was going to be called Rosebud. And I made this one song called Terminal. And I thought when I went in went into the session, you better record

something you actually care about soon, because it's wonderful that you're getting into the business and making connections, but you haven't made a record that you actually believe in. It's always been someone else's idea of what would be a hit. And so I wrote this song called Terminal, which was a good song. One of my favorites of yours. And it's on the first record, widescreen. Thank you. On widescreen, right. You brought it back.

Well, thanks. And the label heard it. And they said, we don't want to put this out as a mythical group. We want to put this out as you. And I said, great. But I've always promised myself that if I was going to use my own name, put my name on the record, and it's me, and I live or die by that, it would have to be on an album. It couldn't be just a 45. And they said, we don't know about that. We're not ready to make that kind of commitment. And I just said, I got to play

tough on this. And about a week later, they called and they said, all right, all right, all right. We'll put out an album that you can do and we'll give you $45,000 to make the album. And it'll be you on our label. And I made this album called Widescreen. And I put everything I'd ever wanted to say in a song on it. And each cut had a different orchestra. It was very ambitious and we spent every penny and then some of the budget.

And the people who said, okay, you can make the album had left Epic by the time that the album was ready to be released. So it was on a label that had no idea why I was on it. And it was a critical success. It got some amazing reviews and top ten of the year and stuff

but no one heard it. And if they only print 10,000 copies, you're not even in the running for failure. Somebody important heard it. Yeah. And somehow, and there's a story in that too, but somehow a copy of it got to Barbara Streisand. And I had this amazing day in my life where Barbara Streisand got on the phone with me and said, hi, I've listened to your album and I like these songs and I see you do your own arrangements. I'd like to record some and maybe you should fly out and do the arrangements with me and said, hi, I've listened to your album and I like these songs and I see you do your own arrangements. I'd like to record some and maybe you should fly out and do the arrangements for me. And I thought it was the worst Barbra Streisand impression I'd ever heard.

It didn't sound anything like her, not even funny at all, you know. And it wasn't really until I got a first class airplane ticket to fly to L.A. that I actually began to let myself buy into the fact that it wasn't one of the most elaborate pranks of all time. There's a great line where you say – go ahead, Gil. Oh, no. I was just going to say because you hear – another person you hear bad stories about. What was Barbara Streisand like to work with? Well, again, she was – she went out on a limb to pick me.

I wasn't the choice of the label. The label didn't say we've got this new wunderkind for you to work with. She said to the label, to Columbia, I'm going to work. My next album is going to be done by this guy. And he's going to. And and she sort of went made a commitment to that. She couldn't have been more gracious to me. The first session we did together at, it happened to be at Capitol Recording Studios because that was the only studio we could book.

She handed me a little note that said, Rupert, don't be frightened. You're the best. That's nice. And she was really amazing. She is also, demands a lot from herself and expects everybody to be on that level. Like you, Gil. I felt so bad. I didn't know that we were going to all be in tux and Gilbert's in tux. Yeah, he's got a cover bond on. And I just wore a casual outfit. There's a great line where you were sitting, I guess you were sitting in her house and she was putting on your record and you said to yourself, so this is what it's like when your life changes.

Yeah, absolutely. The first day I actually met her in person, she picked me up. She was driving a Mercedes where you could smell the leather from two blocks away. It was so new. Great. And she picked me up because like Gilbert, I do not drive. So it's like, I'd love to meet you, Barbara, but can you pick me up because I don't drive? Right?

It's a great way to start a relationship, right? And she picked me up and she said, before we go to start rehearsing some songs, I've got to see a rough cut of Funny Lady over at the 20th Century Fox lot because it's not a Fox film, but Ray Stark has his office on the Fox lot. So she drives there and to get to this particular screening room where she's going to see the rough cut of the sequel to Funny Girl, we have to drive under the New York elevated subway set from Hello Dolly. Wow. So I say, okay, so let's see. Let's take inventory here. I'm being chauffeured by

Barbra Streisand in a convertible driving under the set of Hello Dolly to go see a screening. And, you know, like two nights ago, it was, should I supersize that? Things change fast in a business. Very fast. So I want to recommend to our listeners is the songs you wrote on that album. My Father's Song is beautiful. Thank you. And also Letters that Cross in the Mail. Story song. Very, very. A story song. Yeah. There you go. Very much so. Yeah. Beautiful. And you wrote one for her, for A Star is Born with our friend Mr. Williams? Paul has done this show? Yes. I've often, I've turned to Paul. I don't think he'll mind me repeating this, but I said to him, do you remember that great night back when we were over at Patty Farrell's house and

we were having dinner and you said to me, and he said, did this happen in the 70s? He doesn't remember. He says, because I don't remember anything of the 70s and this was the 70s um what happened actually uh how can i tell this very quickly um i had written a number of songs for the movie and one of the stars for stars right this is after i finished lazy afternoon which had four of my tunes on it and then i'm writing some more And I wrote the first two songs she actually sings in the movie, a song called Queen Bee. That's right. And another song called Everything.

And I had a fight with John Peters. It's the only fight I've ever had in show business. I, it was chemically, we just, John Peters was the hairdresser who became, sort of the role model for Shampoo, the movie Shampoo, who became sort of the role model for Shampoo, the movie Shampoo, who became a producer. And they're just we it was hello, glycerin meet nitro. You know, it was like and we had a kind of fight, which is not anything that I ever do. And at one point he was chasing after me around

a desk. And luckily the desk was circular. I'd be dead. We were able to do that. And he was chasing after me around a desk and luckily the desk was circular i'd be dead we were able to do that he was chasing and the executive uh producer for first artist said to him john you're the producer of a six million dollar musical you can't kill him and i and i thought thank god it wasn't a three million dollar musical then it would have been loss of one arm and an eye, you know. And I ran around that table and I left the building and I went to the airport and I flew home. And I never came back. And this song that I had written called Everything, they decided it needed another verse. And Paul at that time was now writing the songs.

And so he wrote an additional verse for the song. Oh, okay. And you're credited as co-writers on the song. Yeah, the split is I get 80 and he gets 20 and the split was based entirely on height. That's a great line.

I want to learn what life is for. I don't want much. I just want more. Ask what I want and I will see. I want everything, everything. I'd cure the cold and the traffic jam. If there were floods, I'd give a damn. I'd never sleep. I'd only sing.

Let me do everything, everything. I remember Paul Williams told a story around that time period. He has great stories. Oh, he does. And he said he was doing a TV show and Michael Caine was there. And he went over to Michael Caine and said, you know, I just want you to know what an honor it is. You're just such a great man. And I look forward my whole life to meeting you. And Michael Kane said, are you out of your fucking mind?

You stayed at my house for a month. Oh, I can believe that. Oh, I can believe that. Oh, I can believe that. Paul's been on this show, and then we've had other guests come on with their Paul Williams stories. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Jimmy Webb had a few choice ones, too.

Sure. I'm sure. Yeah. We put it in the intro about Timothy. Yeah. And you have to tell, Gilbert is fascinated. And I'm surprised you don't know this song, because we've about cannibal well yes we we did we do a we do a one hit wonders little mini show and we we yeah we mentioned timothy and he wasn't familiar with the pop song about cannibal can

you sing some of this sure i i will sing it to you if i do i have time to tell you the story of course okay so uh and i will sing it to you in the course of telling you this story. And by the way, it's something to really look forward to. So, I'm, it's funny. I get a lot of heat about the song Timothy, which I, again, wrote like in 1968 when I knew no one in the business. And, um, uh, and actually as time has gone by, um, I'm very proud of that 19 year old guy that I was. Um, and I have to give him credit, um, for being a tail that somehow managed to wag a dog. And, um, here's the story. Um, I, I made a friend in one of my early demo sessions of a nice guy named Michael Wright, who was an engineer, junior engineer at Scepter Recording Studios at 254 West 54th Street on the fourth floor,

where Dionne Warwick recorded a lot of her hits. And he was like the junior engineer. And as a kind of reward for the kind of terrible salary they paid people like that, they let him have the keys to the studio for the weekend. Anytime he wanted to come in and make a record, as long as he didn't damage anything, if he wanted to bring in a group and he would be the engineer so no one else had to be hired, he would do that. And he asked me if I'd like to work with him on the weekend. So every weekend of my life for about a year, I was at Scepter Studios recording all kinds of things, most of it unlistenable, but just learning how – what is this? It gets louder when you do that.

I see when you move it forward. And he finally found a band called The Buoys, B-U-O-Y-S, out of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. And they were actually talented kids, especially the lead singer had a great voice named Bill Kelly. And they recorded a tune of mine called These Days. And he took it to Scepter and they said, we love you, Michael, and God bless you with what you're doing. And tell you what, we'll give you a two single deal. You can make 240. We'll put out two 45s of the group. No money exchanged hands. It was just that they were going to manufacture these 45s and send it out as Scepter Records. So the first

record did nothing. And Michael came to me and said, I don't know what to do. He said, I don't think the label has any idea that the group is on the label. The promo men don't know of the group. He said, I have one more shot to make a single. What do I do? And I said to him, well, I would record a song that gets banned. And he said, why would that be a good idea? I said, oh, well, if it gets banned, there will be controversy. And you can go to another label, not Scepter, and say, this is that group that would have had a hit, but it was banned. They're all talking about this. And maybe

you'll make a real deal with a real label. It's the only way to get anyone to notice it. He said, will you write a song that gets banned? And I said, yeah, I'll try. So there was nothing you could say at that time about sex that went beyond a certain limit. So it couldn't be that. Drugs, I wasn't going to be either an advocate or write something, you know, encouraging anyone to use them. So I couldn't think of what this subject would be. And it had to be, by the way, just tolerable enough to get played enough that it could then be banned. If I wrote a song which had the title that Gilbert gave to the actions of my heroes. He's going to release that as a single.

That's not going to come up. If you wrote a song called Martin and Lois used to fuck each other up the ass. You're kidding. You know, you pick up on these things so quickly. So I'm sitting down. And at that time, I was doing an arrangement of the Tennessee Ernie Ford classic 16 Tons for an artist named Andy Kim with the producer being Jeff Barry. You know Andy Kim. Rock me gently.

There you go, right? Sure. So I'm getting to do some arrangements and I'm sitting with my guitar. Now, I've seen the movie suddenly last summer about a week earlier on TV and that has a certain nuance to it at the end. I don't want to give away anything, but that's sort of in the back of my head.

Now I'm working on an arrangement of 16 tons. In the next room, in the kitchen, the TV is on and the TV is playing The Galloping Gourmet starring Graham Care. Sort of like the Liberace of cooking shows. Remember The Galloping Gourmet? Yes.

That was a big thing. So he's in the next room spouting off ingredients. And I'm doing 16 tons and I go, some people say a man is made out of mud. A coal man's made out of muscle and blood. Muscle and blood and skin and bones. I said, it sounds like a recipe. Muscle and blood and skin and bones baked in a moderate oven for three hours and topped with Miracle Whip.

You know, or something like that. So I thought, wait a second. Cannibalism in a mining situation. Of course! That might do it. That's hilarious hilarious so i write a song about three boys who are trapped in a mine and it goes and i'm using i use the exact same feel i was using for 16 tons not the same chords but the same feel and i go trapped in a mine what had caved in

and everyone knows the only ones left was Joe and me and Tim. When they broke through to pull us free, the only ones left to tell the tale was Joe. Significant pause. And me. Timothy, Timothy, where on earth did you go? Timothy. So in the story, it's the classic thing of, in Spellbound, as in the movie Mirage,

where the narrator knows they've done something terrible, but they don't know what. Hungry as hell, no food to eat. And Joe said that he would sell his soul for just one piece of meat. Water enough to drink for two. And Joe said to me, I'll take a sip and then there's some for you. Timothy, Timothy, Joe was looking at you. Timothy, Timothy, God, what did we do? I must have blacked out just around then because the very next thing that I could see was the light of day again.

My stomach was full as it could be and nobody ever got around to finding Timothy. Well, we put out this record and it starts to go up the charts two digits a week. And what happens is that radio stations start to play it. It has a good groove. The kids like it. And the radio station, the DJs aren't listening to it because they're smoking a cigarette while the record's playing. And they suddenly catch and they say, wait, what is this song about? What?

This is, they ate him. and they pull it off the air and the kids call in and say why did you pull the song off the air and they said because it's disgusting and that if you want to tell a kid not to listen to a song of course so the kids start clamoring for it and it went inched up the chart scepter says we've got we're trying to break the new Dionne Warwick single, but there's this record out there called Timothy. And they're saying, it's on your own label. And it's just rising by its natural. And we got to 17 in Billboard. And the reason you have never heard it, Gilbert, is no station in New York, no reputable station would ever consider playing it. So to hear this song, you would have had to be in the deep south, Midwest.

That was where it was a hit. And we could never. But the wonderful thing was Scepter made up a rumor. Oh, that's great. To try to get those last stations to play the record and get it into the top ten, they said, oh, Timothy's a mule. Right. It's such a cop-out. It's so funny.

It's almost like springtime for Hitler. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. People think, and look, I at no point in the lyric ever suggest that cannibalism is a thing you should try. Maybe just once, but try it. You know, Liv, it was a story song, a macabre story song. And the truth of it is lurking in between the lyrics.

You find it. You puzzle it out. Oh, my God. And it's been done a lot. But I get a lot of heat for writing the worst song ever written. But it wasn't badly written it was well executed it was just that the topic was unacceptable um and yeah so at no point did i really write a love song involving cannibalism but i what i do i have to give that kid credit that i had knew no one in the business and i was just going to say. I tried to think of how can I, from this room, do something that will get this group to get

noticed. It's pretty canny for a guy who was just out of his teens. To figure out what is the niche of what I can say and can't say, and how could it be controversial, and how could it raise an uproar. We did our 1971 hit wonder show. We did a mini episode, we just, we got angry mail from people saying, how could you not include Timothy? So there you go to those people. Here's the story. And you know, I remember now, this is just getting back to something you said before.

I remember the first time on TV that I saw suddenly last summer, Montgomery Cliff and Catherine Hepburn, that freaked me out. Yeah. And I'm someone raised on monster movies. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That totally freaked me out. That was truly horrifying because you're saying that this was not monsters, this was what people do under certain circumstances. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. There's nothing left to tell, to tell or show. Timothy. Timothy. Timothy. Where on earth did you go? Timothy. Timothy. God, why don't I go? Okay, so as we alluded to in the intro, Rupert, in rapping, you know where I'm headed.

There can only be one destination. Here's my favorite quote. Are you going to tell about... Oh, you go ahead. Well, I was just going to say that you're fond of saying things like, for all that you've accomplished in your career, that your tombstone is going to be what? The shape of a giant pineapple. I love the fact that you had to sing the Pina Colada lyrics to get on a plane because you didn't have an ID. I didn't have an ID, and I actually did the song, and they insanely accepted that as ID. I love that.

Yeah. This was before sad events. Sure, sure, sure. Before we get to that, Nate, you're a monster fan. I'm a fan of many things, and monster movies and horror movies is one of them. Okay, so what are some of your favorites? Well, I fell in love with The Hammer, all The Hammer films. Oh, you like that stuff the

christopher lee i love the i love the the set dressing the that one they bought i love the fact that they bought themselves a mansion in every movie it's always that same uh mansion you know uh the the the i love all the universal incarnations of uhstein, Bride of, Son of, Ghost of, Meets the Wolfman. So much fun. House of. They're just. That original mummy is so good, too.

The first one. Karl Freund. Well, yeah. He was on his own plane. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That stuff. He went for a little walk. Yes.

You should have seen his face. Fabulous stuff. And Karl Freund, both the mummy and the original Dracula did this trick where the eyes light up. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know. I mean, back then they didn't have the special effects.

I think they actually just shined two lights in their eyes. I found an interview with you. If I have this right, where you were in some movie theater in Syracuse and you were seeing a Roger Corman double bill of Mask of the Red Death. But I saw a double bill of Mask of the Red Death and Tomb of Lugia. There you go. Written by Robert Towne, by the way. Yeah.

Corman, like many of the people that I got to meet, he exploited very well. Yes, he did. We had both Roger Corman and Bruce Dern on the show. Oh, I would have loved to. And we also had, ah, fuck, watch me forget his name. Joe Dante. No, no, the actor. Oh, we had Dick Miller.

Dick Miller. Oh, wow. Bucket of blood. Yeah, bucket of blood. Yeah. And with Dick Miller in the terror. The terror. With Dick Miller in The Terror.

The Terror. Because nobody, he said, he admits, he and the people who wrote The Terror have no idea what the plot of this movie was. Absolutely. Walk on the beach. Walk on the beach for long periods of time. And then the castle gets a flood and everyone dies. Everyone dies. And Dick Miller, basically, at one point, he's got this totally fucking insane scene where he has to dramatically explain what has been going on in the movie. And it makes less sense. I always feel like he was reading it off like a teletype. It was just coming in.

Here's what your listeners, if they don't know, the terror is this incredible film. I always feel like he was reading it off like a teletype. Yeah. It was just coming in. Yeah. Your listeners, if they don't know, The Terror is this incredible film. If I get this wrong, please correct me. But Roger Corman was making what? Comedy of Terrors, I think? One of them. The Raven, maybe? Raven.

Anyway, he came in early. This never happens in movies. He came in early and slightly under budget, which has never happened in the history of filmmaking. You're always running late and you always run over. He had like three days left. So he said, we'll make another movie. And we have Karloff under contract and we have Jack Nicholson under contract. And so they made a movie in three days called The Terror. Correct?

Which I think it was. Was it The Terror that he only made because it was raining and he couldn't play tennis? He was supposed to play tennis with some of his friends. There was a rainstorm and he said, all right, we'll make a movie. I've got that right, right? I'll send you a link of our interview with Roger. It's a lot of fun. And by the way, if you had Bogdanovich on, when Bogdanovich made Targets, part of the stipulation was that he finish out Karloff's contract, which was still not all – he hadn't earned – worked enough.

And I think he demanded that he also use outtakes, but I don't know if it was – it was the flooding scene, but I don't think that's from the terror. It's the thing where it opens with a Karloff film and then they pull back and Karloff turns to the young filmmaker and says, it was a very bad film. Yes, now I can't remember. Shame on me. So, love that stuff. I'll have you back next time. We'll just talk about, you're the ultimate movie buff. Next time we'll just talk about horror

movies and your love of Bogey and all of that stuff. Wow. Which brings us to. There's your segue. Bogart's one horror film. Dr. X, The Return of Dr. X. Yes, yes.

The Return of Dr. X. Okay, not bad. Where Bogart's in like. He's got that streak. He's got a skunk-like streak in his hair. Yes, yes. He's like, yeah, and he's got like white makeup on and a white streak in his hair like a David Bowie. Wait a minute, The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse was not a horror film?

No, no. Always wondered about that title. Well, you know, Bogey gives us a segue here. Okay. Rupert will know where I'm going. Are you up for being tortured by? Oh, yeah. Oh, okay.

Here we go. I don't have a lyric sheet for you. Talk about the ultimate horror. I think you're good. We queued this up, Frankie. The story of this song has been told many, many places. It had to do with Martin and Lou.

No, it didn't. Rupert's going to tell us how it had something to do with bogey originally. Oh, my God. Very good. For real? You want me to go? Do you have time for me? Yeah, we're going to sing, but going to tell us how it had something to do with bogey originally. Oh, my God. Very good. For real? You want me to go?

Do you have time for me? Yeah, we're going to sing, but you can tell us quickly how the lyric changed. I'll have to tell you very quickly. Okay. What you have to understand is I had a track for which I had no lyric. How that happened is an entire story that we would have to do another time. We'll do it. But it was the night before I had to record the vocal on a track with a preexisting melody, but I had no lyric.

And so I wrote a lyric at 1 a.m. and went to the studio to sing this lyric. And the chorus went, if you like Humphrey Bogart and getting caught in the rain. There you go, Gil. Original lyric. Wow. And you think sometimes about how your life, for better or for worse, can hinge on something you did like that. Yeah.

And we've all, I'm sure, had moments where we said, if I had just gone there, I wouldn't have. Did your life ever change because of a momentary decision you made, Gilbert? Oh, yes. Yes. It was when I was on tour with Martin and Lewis. I was referring to Twitter. Oh, my God, yes.

All right. Go on. Back to Rupert. So I'm standing on mic. I'm about to sing the song. And I've got the lyric in front of me. And I think, now this couple in the song, they're looking for an escape because the title of the song was Escape. And I said, I've done so many movie references.

Maybe that's getting a little too monochromatic here. you know, a little too monochromatic here. So this couple, what they want is to get away from their normal lives and sort of as if they were on a vacation in the islands. And I thought, well, when you go on the islands and your first day of your vacation, you would never order on the beach a Budweiser. You would never say, I'll have a Budweiser. You always want to have something that demarcates the fact that you are officially on vacation. You're on the beach a Budweiser. You would never say, I'll have a Budweiser. You always want to have something that demarcates the fact that you are officially on vacation. You're in the islands. So I thought, what are the escape drinks? And I thought, Mai Tai, Daiquiri, Pina Colada.

I'd never had a Pina Colada in my life. And I said, let's see, if you like Humphrey Bogart, no, if you like Pina Coladas, it's okay, Pina Coladas. And five seconds later, we rolled tape. And every time I looked at the lyric and it said Humphrey Bogart, I sang Pina coladas it's okay pina coladas and five seconds later we rolled tape and every time i looked at the lyric and it said humphrey bogart i sang pina coladas and which caused me to then later add a kind of tropical instrumental break in it to make you feel like you're in the islands which i would never have added if it had been about humphrey bogart so the song eventually the label came to me said you know you've written song about – people are asking for this song about pina coladas and you call the song Escape.

Can we put – make an escape parenthesis the pina colada song? And I said, compromise my artistic integrity. They said, yeah, well, it won't sell. I said, okay, it's the pina colada song. So just that one switch changed the fate of the song. Changed everything. Yeah, a lot of things. Yeah, yeah. But I want. A lot of things. Yeah.

But I want to hear this sterling rendition. I don't know how far you guys want to go with this, but Frankie? This is a karaoke version. Yeah. This isn't mine. I'm sorry. All right. Here we go. I apologize.

Without shame. I was tired of my lady we'd been together too long like a worn-out recording of a favorite song so while she lay there sleeping, I read the paper in bed. And in the personal columns, I'm laughing because I know what's coming up. There was this letter I read. Take it. If you like being a galada and getting caught in the rain. If you're not into yoga If you have half a brain

If you like making love at midnight In the dunes of the cave Then I'm the love that you look for Write to me and escape Oh lordy I didn't think about my lady I know that sounds kind of mean But me and my old lady Had fallen into the same old dope routine.

So I wrote to the paper. Took out a personal ad. Try not to laugh. Sounds great. And though I'm nobody's poet, I thought it wasn't half bad. I'll tell you what half bad is. Yeah.

I died like Peter Kalanis and getting caught in the rain. wasn't half bad. I'll tell you what half bad is. Yeah. And cut through all this red tape at a bar called O'Malley's where we'll plan our escape. You do the last part together, Gil. But don't drown Rupert out. So I waited with high hopes And she walked in the place I knew her smile in an instant I knew the curve of her face It was my own lovely lady

And she said, oh, it's you Then we laughed for a moment. And I said, I never knew. That you like being a galahadah. And getting caught in the rain. And the feel of the ocean. And the taste of champagne. If you like making love at the end of the night,

in the dunes on the Cape, you're the lady of the war. Come with me and escape. And in the category of song-ending career, the nominees are... Wow. Career-ending songs. Career-ending songs.

Oh, Lord. Well, it's safe to say it's never been that way before. Now you know how Jimmy felt when he did Wichita Linemen. When he did Wichita Linemen, one of the most beautiful songs ever written. It's not anymore. You know, you dream of these things. You dream of these opportunities. I remember when Bud Abbott said, if you ever cared about any of our films, just put a dollar in an envelope and mail it to me.

And you can reach me. Is this that moment? Yeah, this is that moment. Oh, no. It's come to that. Yeah. Gilbert, you know, I've always treasured your voice. And to think that I just put words in your mouth and that you were doing my – it's all been building to this, really.

He sang with Paul. He sang Rainbow Connection with Paul. He sang Richard Tall Lineman with Jimmy. Wow. What else? What did I miss? Oh, Don... Well, oh, what did I sing?

Ron Dante's Sugar Sugar. Oh, yes, yes. Oh, that would have been good. And I crushed a version of the locomotion. Yes. Just crushed it. I usually have something to say, but I have to tell you. I never saw a guest blush this much either.

Really. Gilbert's a hero of mine, and it's kind of like, I don't know, Mickey Mantle saying, let me play basketball with you. You know. Maybe you might have been better off with your chiropractor. In retrospect. That was great, Gilbert. Thank you for doing that. Thank you.

Thank you, Rupert. I believe ASCAP actually gets a, I have to give them money back now. I think I owe them. Tell us what's coming up. I want to donate the royalties of this to a charity that he has just created by virtue of the damage he's done. What are you working on now? What's happening? I have an ice cream truck that I operate.

Is Dorian Gray happening or the Marty musical? Marty musical. We're doing a reading, a very interesting reading of that with some major people. I can't announce them because they're still being negotiated. I'm writing a new musical with Sir Trevor Nunn at the helm, the director, based on the life and work of Andy Warhol. And I'm writing a new musical with Mark Holman, who wrote Urinetown, based on a wonderful book about the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers called The Boys of Summer. Oh, sure. Roger Cohn's book.

That's a great book. And I am finishing, even as we speak, finishing the first volume in a new series of novels I'm writing for Simon & Schuster, which are pretty – if you think cannibalism is bad, these are self-help guides for murderers. It's a hands-on guide to homicide. The first volume is called Murder Your Employer. And my guess is that people will buy it just to leave a copy on their desk at work. Oh, that's fun. It's actually a very fun book. I can't describe it in a short time.

You are busy. You're always busy. It keeps me off the streets. I can't describe it in a short time. You are busy. You're always busy. It keeps me off the streets. I don't have to wear the electronic anklet. And it's what America is. Well, I'm going to tell our listeners to pick up Cast of Characters, your collection. Do we still call it a box set? It is a box set.

These days? Yeah. And also the two albums, Partners in Crime and Widescreen, that I love. And we didn't even get into you working with Will Jordan. We've got to talk about that. Next time we have you back, we'll talk about it. And Ed Herlihy. And Ed Herlihy on Psychodrama. Psychodrama, yeah. That is a wonderful record.

And you are a brave soul. No, no. This was as much fun as I've had in a decade. And that only tells you how absolutely miserable my life has been. Will you tell us about being on the Joe Franklin show when you come back? I will. I will indeed.

We'll have you back and we'll just bullshit about movies. Absolutely. And you wanted to tell us something about Dean Martin and Jerry Lee. Yeah, you know, it's so good, let's save it for another show. Why don't you put that somewhere where Dean Martin would put it, okay? Do you know what they call it, a centenary, the 100th birth of Dino? Next month, June. He's such a class act.

Yeah, 100 years. I've gotten into some big debates with people over who we love more, Sinatra. Oh, and, well, I can't even talk about that. There's another project on the horizon. Okay. That's kind of exciting. And next time, there's plenty we didn't get to. Good. We're going to talk about Frank Jr.

Yep. Yes, I will. And the song Blue Eyes Didn't Do, Never Got To, and all that cool stuff. Thanks, guys. I've had a lot of fun. You were a fun guest to research. I could go for hours. Oh, thank you.

A lot of stuff. I used to say that to people, too. And any of those musicals, is there a small part for Gil? There's a big part for him in a very small musical. No small talents. So, I'm Gilbert

Gottfried and this has been Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre. And we've been talking to David Weinstein. David Weinstein. Goldstein. David Goldstein.

Thank you. I'm sorry. We've been talking to David Goldstein. You forgot to say where we were. Oh, at Nutmeg. Yes. With our engineer, Frank Ferdarosa. And I want to thank our mutual friend, John Murray, for making the introduction to you.

And by the way, a marvelous, marvelous songwriter. A marvelous musician who has done terrific work on this very show. I'm an absolute fan. We love you, John. Rupert, this was a blast. I enjoyed it. Okay, man. Rupert Holmes, ladies and gentlemen.

Jew. Jew. Or three guitars that glitter gold I am a thousand trumpet lines That were an afterthought Intended as a way to get a dying record sold I never ride the road I never play around I play what they set down

I'm a working musician Pulling my five-o-week I'm the voice through which empty men try to speak A studio musician Blowing the chance I see And when the woodwind cushion rises I start to dream With the low brass bed

And I reject the riffs And Hendrix licks They've paid me for That I've played before Instead they want what I hear In my head But I'll wake to horns The drummer calls to me.

We're up to letter D. I'm a man of the moment. Pop is my stocking trade. Singles, jingles, and demos, convenient they may. jingles and demos conveniently made A studio musician whose music will die unplayed Thank you.