Ah, I Remember It Well

For forty years I've been a witness (and sometime participant) to pop history. Here are the some of about 300 of my favorite stories I like to call:
Brief Encounters
The first time I met Bert Berns ("Twist & Shout" "Piece Of My Heart") was at a little bachelor party Artie Resnick, Kenny Young and I had for Jeff Barry when he married Ellie Greenwich. From that time....until he passed....he always had an open door for me. Although I'm bi-racial, up until the time I met him, my musical tastes ranged from pop to country. Bert helped me get more in touch with my African-American roots through the R+B music he loved so much. I remember the day he wrote "Hang On Sloopy".....he grabbed me in the hall at 1650 Broadway (where we both had offices) and played it for me on his funky, old stand up piano. I was so blown away I couldn't write for a week!!! "Hang On Sloopy" - Part of Artie's Glizard collection We both had another connection......a serious one. We both had congenital heart problems. I was lucky..... in 1965 I was one of the first people in the U.S. to have open heart surgery .....making medical history by walking around 36 hours after the procedure. Bert and I would sit and talk.....sometimes for hours.....about the operation. How I felt?.....Did it make a difference? He knew it was still a big risk and he had a family to consider. Now every time I hear one of his songs.... or feel a little of his soul in my own music.....I thank God I was privileged to know him.
In 1975, my late partner Lou Reizner [who discovered Rod Stewart and produced his early hits, as well as the legendary all-star version of “Tommy”] and I had just cleared customs at London's Heathrow airport, when Dick James, publisher of the Beatles and Elton John, offered us a ride back to town in his 'limo'. [Actually it was a Volvo with a chauffer.] My 6’4” partner, a rotund Dick James and I squeezed into the back seat. Never letting an opportunity slip by, I asked Dick if would mind singing accapella the title song he performed on the TV series “The Adventures of Robin Hood”, one of my favorite shows as a kid. He laughed.......as we sang all the way back to London “Robin Hood , Robin Hood Riding through the glen.......Robin Hood, Robin Hood with his band of men. Feared by the bad ......loved by the good.......Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood.”
I met Janis Joplin through my friends at Columbia, Allan Rinde and Michael Ochs. The four of us were sitting in a booth at the Whiskey opening night for Pollution ,a new group that featured Dobie Gray, Tata Vega and my long time friend, guitarist James “Smitty” Smith. It was a great night....Janis turned me on to Southern Comfort for the first time....and I tried to pitch her an old Ashford /Simpson song "Let’s Go Get Stoned” that had been a hit for Ray Charles. She laughed and said, "I don’t do that anymore”....Ironically four days later she died of an overdose.
	Once I let my friend, Mercury Records A + R director Ann Tansey, and her sometime boyfriend, Jimi Hendrix, stay in my N.Y. apartment while I was on the west coast. When I got back, I found a nasty note from some angry neighbors about my loud guitar playing into the early morning hours....with people going in and out of my apartment by the fire escape !!!! To this day I don’t know what really happened but I do admit I was flattered they thought it was me playing guitar.
In the mid-sixties, Jerry Ross was one of my favorite songwriting partners. We wrote "Lovin' For Money" for Jay and the Techniques and "The Teenybopper Song," "I Can't Go Wrong" and "Candy, Candy for Keith. On the "Apple, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie" album, Jerry hired my then wife and myself to act as 'Dance Consultants'....for lack of a better expression. We'd go to a tracking session....and when the track was in the groove....we'd start dancing to it. He would use this as a barometer....until we disagreed on the take to use on "Keep The Ball Rolling." He won out and the record went top ten....and we took our 'Dance Consultants' sign down.