Manic In Manhattan

While going through an old box of stuff, I came across a program I had saved from the Fillmore East dated Dec. 19, 1969. The Byrds were headlining that night, supported by Keith Emerson and the Nice, and the San Francisco horn band, the Sons of Champlin. As an added attraction, the immortal Dion DiMucci appeared to perform his latest hit, "Abraham, Martin, and John." That collectible brought back a lot of memories, mostly bad. When I was twenty, I dropped out of college and moved to New York City. I was chasing the flimsiest of music offers from someone I barely knew. A high school acquaintance had graduated Yale as a poetry major and gotten a job in an apprentice program for Columbia Records. He had shown some of his work to the legendary talent scout and record producer John Hammond, Sr., who encouraged him to find a collaborator to help transform his poetry into songs. I suppose I was the only musician he knew. When "Tom" called, he mentioned the names of several friends we shared in common and asked me to come to New York with the understanding that I would eventually have a chance to audition for CBS. He said I could live rent-free in his apartment and only needed to contribute my share of grocery money. After calling a few people and asking if this guy was for real, I packed my guitar and a suitcase and flew to Manhattan.

As soon as I arrived, the problems began. I took a cab to the address I was given only to find a short-order grill there. The cabbie had to inform me that my friend lived above the restaurant. When I lugged my gear up four flights and found the apartment, the couch I was promised was already occupied by one of Tom's college buddies who was waiting for renovations to be completed on his own place. I was asked if I minded sleeping on the floor for a little while. No sooner had I caught my breath than Tom sat cross-legged on the floor with a stack of papers in front of him and asked if he could play my guitar. Nobody played my guitar. After I had reluctantly handed it over, it took no longer than two minutes for me to realize that he had no musical ability whatsoever. He was the kind of guy who had to look at his left hand when he changed chords, and his poetry consisted mainly of abstractions that only he understood. I thought briefly of returning to the airport and booking the first flight out, but I'd already told my friends I was going and didn't want it to appear that I had turned tail and run. I knew that if anything was to be accomplished, we would have to start from scratch, and while I was lying on the floor using my leather jacket as a pillow, I wondered what in the world I had  gotten myself into now.

The two former Yalies awoke at 7am and were off to pursue their careers. They were razor-cut preppies in a hippie age and looked at me as if I were some scraggly-haired curiosity from the hinterlands. The movie "Midnight Cowboy" had only been recently released and I hit 72nd Street feeling like Joe Buck come to the big city. Look out New York, here I am! But while I was eating breakfast in the downstairs grill, people began running down the street away from what was known as Needle Park. There had been a shooting that sent the residents into a panic. Within three weeks, I felt more like Ratso Rizzo, wandering the streets aimlessly and mumbling to myself, just to have the chance to speak. Tom and I had grown to dislike each other so much that I would deliver a melody to his cubicle in the morning, and he would write poems to fit during the workday. The problem was, his lyrics were mainly about some phantom girlfriend that I never saw and nothing else in the known world to which I could relate. Our hostility grew so bitter that he asked me to leave. I had never been kicked out of anywhere. I found a single room in a decaying brownstone on W. 82nd St. with a single sink that looked like it had been clogged since Prohibition and a bathroom down the hall shared by ten tenants. My rent was eleven dollars a week and I still had to call home for financial help. The street was a magnet for hookers, junkies, and transients, but since I wore a frayed P-coat from Navy surplus, and a battered wide-brimmed fedora, I blended right in. After several tortuous months, we finally came up with a number of songs sufficient for an audition.

I stood with my guitar beside the desk of John Hammond and he was all shining teeth and silver hair, cut into a tall flattop. Just the knowledge that he had discovered Bob Dylan would have been intimidating enough, but since my Dad was a fan of swing music, I also knew that Hammond had discovered Billie Holiday and put together the Benny Goodman Band. Now he was sitting a foot away, staring up at me. I began to play an up-tempo song featuring some of Tom's metaphorical lyrics, but I couldn't look him in the eye. When I had finished, Hammond proclaimed with a big smile on his face, "My, we have a singer here." He was impressed that I had once recorded for Sun Records and arranged for a full demo session in the CBS Studios. I arrived early on the appointed day only to find a Vegas-like lounge singer in the studio while his slick manager was addressing Hammond as "baby" in the control room. After apologizing for the delay, Hammond told me to go ahead and set up. I put my chord charts and lyric sheets on a music stand and went down the hallway to ease my severe cottonmouth with a drink of water. When I returned, the lounge singer was gone, but so was all my music. Hammond sent the engineer racing after the pair while assuring me that he was certain this was some mistake. But when the out-of-breath engineer reappeared and told us he had shouted at the pair from the street but they jumped into a cab and sped off, it was obvious they had stolen all of my notes. Frozen with dread, I somehow managed to record the songs from memory. Ultimately, nothing came of the entire eight-month-long project. Hammond told me that because of a shakeup in the top brass at Columbia, "I no longer know where I'm at in this company." After I had quietly returned to Tennessee, my former host informed me that Hammond had said, "A lot of people have stuck around a lot longer than he did." Two years later, John Hammond signed Bruce Springsteen to Columbia Records. Still and all, I'm the only artist in recorded history to have been produced by both Sam Phillips and John Hammond. It ain't bragging if it's true.