Barry Manilow Read online

  From the time the manager at Charlie Baits’ had opened her eyes to the reality of the situation, Jeanne began to really observe what was going on with her partner. And, as they continued to spend the majority of their time together, Barry eventually felt comfortable enough to trust Jeanne with this aspect of his life and simply be himself when they were together.

  “Wherever we would perform,” says Lucas, “when we were in Detroit or wherever, I used to drop him off at these places, where they were just storefronts and you didn’t know what was behind there. We went into one gay club, and in that parking lot was every Cadillac and every high-end car you ever wanted to see. And if anybody would walk in, all heads would turn because everybody was scared.” At that time, every state but Illinois (which had repealed its sodomy law in 1961) had a law on its books prohibiting homosexual acts between consenting adults. With its “crime against nature” law, carrying a penalty of 15 years in prison, Michigan was – and still is – among these.2

  “There were a lot of very wealthy and successful people in there,” Jeanne continues, “and Barry and I went in there, and the guy who sang a song called ‘Hot Nuts’ was singing.” Doug Clark and his Combo had had an instant success with the silly and mildly raunchy song when they were playing at fraternity parties around their home state of North Carolina. Once the song became a hit, the group changed its name to Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts and had built a career on playing somewhat racy venues around the country, where their style of telling dirty jokes and singling out audience members had proven extremely successful. While John Clark, who has been with the group since 1955, doesn’t remember the band playing any gay clubs in Detroit, he acknowledges that lots of bands playing such venues as a secret gay club in Detroit at the time would have been very likely to appropriate their songs.

  “The singer came over to the table where Barry and I were,” says Jeanne, “and I was wearing some pearls. And there’s this verse, I just remember this so well, he sang, ‘There’s a girl, with a string of pearls, she ain’t got hot nuts, cause she’s a girl.’ It was unbelievable! But that was one of the clubs.”

  Once Jeanne understood what Barry was going through, it wasn’t difficult for her to accept the fact that the friendship they shared would be just that – a friendship. They already shared so much. Keeping Barry’s secret became just another facet of their partnership. “I was very sensitive to his needs,” she says, “and wherever we were – whether it was Chicago or wherever – I would help him find that community, and that’s what was going on.”

  Sometimes this became a problem when the “community” in question was a little too close for comfort. “When we were working Upstairs at the Downstairs, we were supposed to be America’s Sweethearts there. And there was a gay bar across the street, and in between our sets he would run across to the gay bar. And I would go in there and grab him out and say, ‘Are you crazy? Don’t be doing this now! We’re America’s Sweethearts! Irving’s got us billed as the little love bugs. Do whatever you want, but don’t do it right across the street from where we’re working!’”

  Even as Jeanne became comfortable with her new knowledge about Barry’s life, she could sometimes catch glimpses of what seemed to be his own unease with the situation. “I remember one day,” she recalls, “he said to me, ‘You know, I really am not sure I want to go that route. But when I visit people that are in that world, they know how to live, and they’re very sophisticated, and they understand the arts, and they’ve got money, and they know how to dress. I love that world. I want to live like that.’” Adds Jeanne, “Besides being gay, he loved the trappings.”

  Though he seemed supportive of her plans, when Jeanne announced that she and Howard Honig were to be married, Barry saw himself losing a valuable and trusted playmate, as well as a musical partner. “If he decided to call me up at 11 o’clock, 12 o’clock at night and say, ‘Ethel, come on down to the Improv’ – because we used to perform there a lot – I would just run,” says Jeanne, “wherever he wanted me to come and sing, above and beyond the job, without hesitation.” But with Howard in the picture, what little free time Jeanne had was usually spent with him. Barry treated Howard with his usual friendly charm, but the two had little to do with each other. When Jeanne asked Barry to play the music at their wedding, he declined. “What he did do, though,” says Jeanne, “was write a song for me and get me a piano for my wedding, which was very lovely.”

  The owner of the 13th Street Theater, Bro Harrod, gave Jeanne away, and Bro’s wife, Diane, acted as maid of honour. Among all their friends and Howard’s family, Barry was in attendance, as was his mother.

  Later in Barry’s career, when he had become an object of interest to fans and the press, Edna used to tell people who inquired about her son’s love life, “He just hasn’t found the right girl yet.” But while Jeanne was a naive young woman from Michigan when she learned the truth about Barry’s lifestyle, Edna was Brooklyn born and raised, and undoubtedly knew that her son was not looking for the right girl, or any girl for that matter. Still, a mother can hope. Edna always liked Jeanne. In fact, Edna and Willie had even made a trip to visit when Jeanne and Barry were staying at Jeanne’s mother’s house in Detroit.

  Because Jeanne had been estranged from her own mother for so long by the time she met Barry, Edna Manilow had become a sort of surrogate mother for her. “She was as much a part of my life as he was in many ways,” remembers Jeanne fondly. “She was just very involved and cared a lot.” At the time she was married, Jeanne was once again estranged from her mother who, as Jeanne puts it, “boycotted my wedding”. That left Jeanne with no family in attendance, save for one “rebel” aunt, and Jeanne’s surrogate mom, Edna. After the ceremony, in the cab they were sharing on the way to the reception, Edna, seeming quite upset, turned to Jeanne’s aunt and said, “There goes my last chance of grandchildren.

  2 Currently in the United States only eight states, the District of Columbia and some cities have enacted laws prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals in employment, housing and other areas.

  PART III

  The Divine Mr M

  “More Hebrews worked on this act than

  built the pyramids.”

  –Bette Midler, Mud Will be Flung Tonight

  Chapter Twelve

  As a decade, the Seventies was, as one observer once put it, “the last good time.” The seeds of unrest sown in the Sixties had only just started to take root by the beginning of the next decade. Many old mores had been destroyed, and new paradigms were being created from the fragments. There was a new freedom, a sense of abandon that seemed to bear no ill consequences. Hair was longer, music louder, sex freer. No one could yet foresee the heavy price that would one day be paid for all this freedom, but its time would come.

  When Barry left his Flatbush apartment after his mother’s last suicide attempt, he did all he could to close the door on Brooklyn forever, or at least as close as he could come with his grandparents, his mother and Willie still living there. When he did have to go back it was, says a friend, “a painful experience for him”. While most of us harbour fond memories of childhood homes, Brooklyn held little nostalgia for Barry. Certainly he had been loved there more wholly and unconditionally than he would ever be loved again, but still Brooklyn represented hard times and bad memories.

  “He didn’t want to go back to Brooklyn – ever,” says Pamela Pentony, who would become Barry’s neighbour on West 27th Street.

  Pamela and her boyfriend, Bob Danz, lived in one of three apartments connected by a backyard “garden”, which had been created on top of a parking garage. Pamela was a singer and actress. Her boyfriend, Bob, was also a musician who, between gigs, was studying to be a dentist. Another neighbour was an elderly gentleman named Fred Norring, an Austrian by birth and a mathematician by trade. Norring shared his neighbours’ love of music, preferring classical to jazz. In his younger days, he’d sung in the collegiate chorale.

  The last neighbour in the tr
iumvirate of apartments was a woman named Jean Ross. Ross was a hard drinking woman who owned an ever-present little poodle she would refer to, in her low, raspy voice, as “poor little shit”.

  “I wasn’t a wide-eyed innocent,” says Pentony, “but Jean really was very colourful. She loved music and she used to tell me about going to see Billie Holiday and stuff like that.”

  When Ross decided to move out of her studio apartment, she promised Pamela and Bob that she wouldn’t let anyone move in unless Pamela and Bob approved of them first. Pamela’s worry was that Jean’s spot might be filled by someone who was, as she puts it, “a jerk who didn’t like music”. They needn’t have worried. The first applicant they interviewed was Barry Manilow.

  “He had to sit and talk to Jean, but he also had to sit and talk to me,” Pentony recalls. The interview took place just after Barry had done a series of appearances on the local WCBS daytime show Callback!, which Jeanne had hosted. The idea of Callback! was for unknown talent, like Jeanne, to introduce other unknown talent, like Barry, to the viewing audience. Pamela happened to have caught the show when Barry and Jeanne sang the Laura Nyro song ‘Eli’s Coming’.

  “When I met him in the apartment, I said, ‘Didn’t I see you on …?’ and he went, ‘Oh!’ And then we hit it off, because he liked Laura Nyro, too.” It was just the kind of musical bond Pamela had been hoping to find in a new neighbour. “So he got the apartment,” she says, “and he moved in next door.”

  Barry blended in quickly and harmoniously with his new neighbours. Indeed, music was their bond. “We both had studio apartments, Bob and I, and Barry, and Fred had a one-bedroom, because he was like a grown-up, and had a job and everything. And we used to cook these dinners together. Fred would always pay for the most expensive part because he was actually employed and we’d bring salad or something. And we’d have group dinners out in our garden because they all adjoined, out in back there.” It was an idyllic time. “Fred used to cook and sing classical music while he was cooking. He made a terrific salad dressing; I still have the recipe.”

  After his long-time association with Jeanne came to such an abrupt end, Barry filled the void in his professional life by putting more time and effort into coaching singers and picking up accompanist work. One of his clients was a singer-songwriter named Adrienne Artz. Adrienne was, as Barry would later say, “my first experience with wealth”. She’d been raised by a wealthy aunt and uncle after her mother had died when Adrienne was very young, and her father didn’t think he was up to the challenge of raising a daughter alone. Because of her Park Avenue upbringing, she represented to Barry many of the same sensibilities for which he had earlier expressed to Jeanne an admiration: intelligence, taste, refinement, class. Though Barry had never before held any real regard for popular music, Adrienne began gently nudging him towards an appreciation of some of the better artists and their work. As he put it, “I walked into Adrienne’s apartment with short hair and a button-down suit. Within a year, my hair was shoulder-length and my bottoms were belled.”

  Those around them never observed anything more than a close working relationship between Barry and Adrienne. They did share a genuine fondness and a deep personal empathy for one another that served them well when they began writing songs together, songs they would then make cautious efforts to get published. It was through these efforts that Adrienne met and became romantically involved with Neil Anderson, president of the publishing branch of April-Blackwood Music.

  Anderson was a strong-willed music business professional, used to getting his own way. To illustrate the point, Bob Danz recalls an incident during a trip to Neil’s house on Fire Island when he, Pamela, Barry and Adrienne were Neil’s guests for the weekend. “I remember going to a restaurant with Neil,” says Danz. “There was only one slice of pecan pie left in the whole restaurant. And Neil told the waiter over and over again, every time the waiter came to the table, please make sure the piece of pecan pie is saved for us. And of course by the time the meal ended the piece of pecan pie was gone and the waiter came with tears in his eyes to tell us it was gone. Neil became angry and refused to pay the check.”

  Of course craziness can be an asset in the cut-throat world of entertainment. When Adrienne showed Neil a song called ‘Amy’ that she had written, Anderson decided the song should be recorded, and he chose Tony Orlando to be the record’s producer.

  In 1961 Tony Orlando had worked for seven months as a demo singer for then-unknown composer Carole King. During this time he had had some brief success with two of the demo songs he had recorded, ‘Halfway To Paradise’ and ‘Bless You’. Concert dates resulted from the songs’ success, and he even made an appearance on American Bandstand. But it wasn’t yet Orlando’s time, and he vanished from the public eye as quickly as he had appeared.

  Orlando joined April-Blackwood Music in the fall of 1963 and quickly rose through the ranks to become general professional manager. When he was given a demo for a song called ‘Candida’, Orlando tried placing the song with Bell Records, which rejected the record because the lead vocal was, they felt, too weak. The song’s producers asked Orlando to re-record the song himself, using the style he’d employed to make ‘Halfway To Paradise’ and ‘Bless You’ hits. Though he protested (“Fellows, I don’t do demos any more”) he finally agreed to record the song himself. Background vocals provided by Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent were dubbed in later. The women did their work in Los Angeles, and Tony did his in New York; they never met during the process.

  Orlando had been burned by show business once, and was leery of another try. So instead of presenting the re-recorded demo under his own name, he chose the name “Dawn”, which held no more significance than the fact that it was the name of their production manager’s daughter. Within two months, ‘Candida’ was a smash hit.

  As he had done with ‘Candida’, Orlando was thinking of recording Adrienne’s ‘Amy’ using a studio singer and releasing the song under a fictitious group name. According to Manilow, though, the night of the recording session, while the background tracks had been completed, Orlando still hadn’t decided on a singer. Tony, according to Barry, was having trouble with his own voice that night, but everyone was anxious to hear how the song would sound with vocals. “So,” Manilow said, “I was elected to go into the little vocal booth and sing the lead.”

  It took a little work, but by the end of the session everyone agreed that Barry’s voice had a natural warmth and vulnerability that perfectly suited the song. Everyone agreed, that is, but Barry. To Barry, his own voice on the playback sounded odd, nasal, and all Brooklyn. To his surprise, though, Tony took the song to Bell Records executives who agreed with the majority – the song was good, and so was Barry. They okayed the record’s release.

  On Tony’s recommendation, Barry hired attorney Miles Lourie to negotiate the record deal. Lourie was, as one associate put it, “a very hard person, a tough businessman”. At the time, that’s just what Barry needed. Tony still thought it was a good idea to put the record out under a fictitious group name, so Tony, Miles, Adrienne and Barry brainstormed and came up with the random word “Featherbed”. The deal was negotiated, and Barry’s rendering of Adrienne’s song, ‘Amy’, was released under this fictitious name.

  The song met with enough success that Miles was able to negotiate a new record deal for Featherbed, this time to be credited as “Featherbead, featuring Barry Manilow”. Barry wasn’t so sure that any deal presenting himself as a singer was such a great idea, but at least it would give him the opportunity to write and arrange new songs for the album. Unfortunately, Barry’s favourite collaborator was no longer just a cab ride away. Shortly before ‘Amy’ was released, Adrienne married Neil Anderson and the couple moved to California. Undaunted, Barry and Adrienne simply continued their friendship and their collaboration, long-distance.

  Barry would spend many evenings sitting in his studio apartment on 27th Street, trying out new songs, experimenting with old ones. Pam and Bob would oft
en stop by, as would Fred Norring. For relaxation, Barry and Bob and Pam would go swimming at the pool on 23rd Street and FDR Drive. The group would host parties in their shared gardens that would be attended by more people than could ever fit in any one of the small apartments alone. Since all were musicians – Barry and Pamela full-time, professional musicians, Bob more of a part-time hobbyist between his dental studies, and Fred an informed amateur – there was always something interesting happening musically, as well as interesting guests, other performers Barry and Pamela might be working with at any given time. It was a constant and free-flowing exchange of music and ideas and life that was invigorating for all who passed through the small musical enclave.

  One gathering that brought all of their friends to the rooftop garden was Pamela and Bob’s wedding. “It kind of spilled over into all three gardens,” Pam remembers. “Fred had this old kind of Venetian fountain that he’d gotten somewhere and we put champagne in that. It was just kind of a hippie wedding.” Barry played the music for the wedding, and 16-year-old Vicki Sue Robinson sang, as did Peter Allen. Pamela, Peter, and Vicki Sue were appearing together in a Broadway play called Soon, the cast of which also included other little-known performers Nell Carter, Barry Bostwick, and Richard Gere.

  It was this constant input of creativity that Barry had been longing for. He had successfully made the transition from a nine-to-five office job to making his living solely from music. He was out of Brooklyn, living on his own, in the kind of idyllic setting usually reserved for movie scripts. He had only to walk into his own backyard to encounter others who felt just as passionately about music as he did. If he needed creative input, it was there, just for the asking.

  As he sat in the garden one night, sharing a glass of wine with Bob and Pamela, the thread of a melody kept winding its way in and out of Barry’s consciousness. He’d been spending time playing a bit of Chopin on the piano that afternoon, and the notes that were writing themselves in his head now seemed to be paying tribute to that composer. When he went back to his piano, Barry turned on his cassette recorder and let the song present itself to him. After spending a little time fine tuning this new creation, he called Bob and Pam back to ask for their opinion. Both agreed that it was something special, though they didn’t envision just how special. “I thought it was good,” says Bob Danz, “but I didn’t think it was going to be a tremendously big hit. I mean, what’s the chance of that happening?” Barry decided to call the song, ‘Could It Be Magic’.