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2016 WAS A YEAR THAT WE ALL LOST SOME LEGENDARY TALENTS. I'M REFERRING TO LEONARD COHEN, LEON RUSSELL, PRINCE, GARRY MARSHALL (A FRIEND) AND TWO OTHER TALENTS I ALSO HAD A PERSONAL CONNECTION WITH.
HERE'S TWO SHORT STORIES ABOUT MY BROTHER-IN-LAW, MENTOR WILLIAMS AND MY CELEBRITY CRUSH- GARRY SHANDLING. The Eleventh-Hour Cowboy My husband Paul Williams is a successful songwriter, and during the 70s his career was based in Hollywood. Like for many people, as soon as there’s success—there’s a relative who shows up and wants some of that too. Back in Albquerque, Paul’s little brother Mentor played guitar, was a cowboy working the rodeo, writing songs and playing in a country rock band. Interestingly, neither of the brothers had any musical training. After a brief time spent acting, Paul hit his stride in songwriting. That was Mentor’s connection, and he came to Hollywood to try his hand at songwriting, too. Paul had a contract at A & M records, co-writing hits for the Carpenters, such as, “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “Rainbow Connections,” and for Three Dog Night, “Old Fashioned Love Song,” and “Out in the Country.” Paul made the introductions and landed his little brother a provisional contract for six months at A&M records. Mentor worked hard, putting together good songs, good players and making demos, but nothing stuck. Sadly, the six months were soon over. In fact, it was the last weekend before his contract ended. That Saturday when he drove to the studio, it was raining. At the entrance of the empty parking lot, he said, “Howdy,” to the gate guard for the last time. “Hey, what are you doing here on a Saturday?” the guard asked. And as Mentor tells it, he went into his office thinking it was the saddest day of his life; time to pack up his office at A&M Records. He says he looked out the window and saw the rain. “DAY AFTER DAY I’M MORE CONFUSED, YET, I LOOK FOR THE LIGHT IN THE POURING RAIN.” On his desk he saw guitar pics and business cards and packages of guitar strings, with phone numbers scattered about—all hope had faded. “YOU KNOW, THAT’S A GAME THAT I HATE TO LOSE. I’M FEELIN’ THE STRAIN, AINT IT A SHAME?” Being a man of God, he looked up at the ceiling and said, “I’M COUNTIN’ ON YOU TO CARRY ME THROUGH—AND GIVE ME THE BEAT, BOYS, TO FREE MY SOUL—I WANNA GET LOST IN YOUR ROCK AND ROLL AND DRIFT AWAY…” That’s the day he wrote one of the top classic rock songs of all time. It was the 11th hour, and A&M Records renewed his deal. He stayed there for years writing hits for the group Alabama and many others. Wanting more control over his music, he sought to produce his own songs. He felt a kinship with the singer/one-hit-wonder, Doby Gray, who, after “I’m In With The In Crowd,” was treated by the industry, as “yesterday’s news.” Mentor took a black man in the 70s to the South and the result was the chart-topping song, Drift Away. Today DRIFT AWAY has been covered by Ike and Tina Turner, Rod Stewart, Bruce Springstein, Michael Bolton, Ray Charles, Garth Brooks and even the Rolling Stones. But that was in 1973. When I met my brother-in-law in 2003, Mentor was back to being a cowboy, taking tourists up a horse trail for five days at a time, teaching folks to fly fish. At night, he and his partner would fry up the fish around the campfire and play guitar. After a few days, they’d pack up the burros and lead the group on horseback down the mountain. Although Mentor enjoyed those days spent in the Sierra Madre Mountains, I remember him telling us, “I love the hell outta the horses and the dogs and the fishin’, but I don’t know how long I can keep doing this. It’s hard on the body.” As if the heavens heard, in 2003 Uncle Cracker re-recorded Drift Away and it topped the charts for 28 weeks. It can be said that Drift Away helped Mentor build a rustic southwest home in Taos, New Mexico. And perhaps thinking about those lyrics, “I’m countin’ on you—to carry me through,” he built a lovely chapel on his property. “Thanks for the joy that you’ve given me.” Rest in peace. Mentor Williams, June 11, 1946-November 16, 2016. A small Memorial service will be held in Taos, NM, January 15, 2017. |
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WRITTEN MARCH 24, 16
FRIENDS, and strangers, I need to take a break from promoting to say a few words about the passing of my comedy hero and, okay, celebrity crush, GARRY SHANDLING. I booked Comedy Nights in the late 80's and throughout the 90's. I'd met GARRY a few times. The last time was four days before he died. I came home and wrote this with one hand--left arm broken. It still stays with me. Here's what happened.
A Couple Hours at Kathy Griffin’s Mansion
As my husband and I wind up Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills, per usual we are reflecting on all the reasons why we are late for the 1:00 to 3:00 affair, and my mate is going on about, “If we are an hour late, let’s just turn around.”
This is unthinkable for a couple reasons: My arm is in a sling due to a bad break and it took a LOT to be dressed and look this good. My hair is done, I wore a new top with the sexy bionic-plastic shoulder-clamshell cast revealed, and the piece de resistance was a random black sock wound around the dingy (was it ever white?) strap that holds the damn thing across my back.
“We ARE going,” I say, in a low growl.
Suddenly the hillside, three story, edifice is on our immediate left, with valet parkers wiping their collective brows in the street below.
We hike up the steep driveway and I mutter something about being a mean girl has paid-off like a broken slot machine.
We are greeted at the reception table and given name tags for Al Franken’s political fundraiser; I smacked mine on the black sling—ha ha! The other invitees had smack their cheesy labels on fashionable clothes, but not I!
We went up even more stairs and at the summit were graciously met by our hostess, Kathy, who is even tinier than ‘As Seen on TV’. Wearing black, she is colorful enough with her vibrant red hair and green eyes. Did she really need to add more primary colors? We exchanged a few words about when we had met briefly at a party in N Y. She said she remembered. I, of course remembered, but did she? Remembering someone is actually the reason I am even writing this story. Moments later I was face-to-face with my HUGE celebrity crush and it was a disaster!
At the beginning of the buffet line, a very handsome friend, in a GQ-looking, male model-but-not-gay way, offered to hold my plate so I could eat. My husband was chatting it up elsewhere, and had he been there at least GARRY SHANDLING and Paul might have exchanged a few words, which would have given me a moment to enjoy the “chance meeting.”
Here’s exactly how it went. He turns around, “Oh, hi, Garry.”
He looks at me, realizes he doesn’t recall…
“I’m Mariana,” smiling broadly, “We’ve actually, uh, met before.”
He leans in with interest.
“We met at Robert Aguayo’s wedding.”
He looks forlorn and perplexed. It gets worse. He is mute.
At this unexpected surprise, I recall fondly, with a dazzling smile, “We sat near each other and there was tension because it took so long for the bride to appear?”
He winces and looks perplexed.
“…the runaway bride jokes...?”
He is squinting and shifting and stammering, “Uh, um…”
“It was kinda funny, we were all speculating in hushed tones… sitting outside…?”
Jarred back into the present, Garry frowns, “I lost contact with him.”
“Me too…”
After a long, long silent pause, it was his turn to talk. As he stares off into middle earth he stammers, “He is…he was…he, well…?” This goes on for at least a minute as GQ plate-holder and I witness this dreadful blank, unending gap in communication. My breezy patter has slammed Garry over a memory gulf at the buffet; he is clearly high, and cannot finish the sentence, He wanted to say, “I gotta go—you are a buzz kill, and why didn’t you just ask me to spell Madagascar backwards? Then have a couple people just stare at me. All I wanted was a bagel and because of you and your F’n time-travel questions, I look like a mental case on a day pass.”
During those same two minutes, I wanted to say, “You are a genius! I loved the Larry Sanders Show, and your stand-up, and everything you said sounded like what I would have said if I was 84 % more clever. If we hung out even for an hour, you’d know we are sharing a brain and we would be confidants and collaborators and spend Christmas—okay Hanukah--together. How about when you opened for Joan Rivers in Vegas and she couldn’t follow you—yeah, I was there, and that time when…”
Instead, I jumped in to save my hero from the stormy sea of being too high—a sea that had thrown me up against the rocks of social humiliation other times.
I shrugged, saying, “Robert was the emcee at the comedy store and he brought up the acts—and always tied it together, saying something clever. Hey, I’m sorry. I’m a fan of yours and—”
“No, that’s okay,” he mumbles, his mouth a sideways line.
I continue, “You lead a huge, interesting life. I’m sorry to bring up something so far in the past.”
“No, that’s okay.” He drifts away from the buffet empty handed. Then the glib and witty comic genius came up for air, saying, over his shoulder, “He was friends with Danny Mora, right?’
“Yes,” I nodded agreeably.
Garry put on his sun glasses and was gone.
I turned to my friend with a sigh. “That was SO horrible.” My friend shook his head, saying, “Don’t worry. He won’t remember any of it.”
During Al Franken’s pitch for funds, Garry, as well as Kevin Nealon, interrupted with witty observational asides and had the audience of fifty busting up laughing. Yep, he’s still the quippy hero I knew, back on track after the brief de-railment from me:the pest of ancient trivia.
I’ll always remember last Sunday’s chance meeting with Garry, more vividly then Kathy’s well behaved dog stealing food off my plate as I looked away, and Al Franken’s manager trying to convince me I didn’t “need a new plate, the dog just ate off THAT side.,” she explained in earnest. At that juncture, I was the speechless one.
GARRY, RIP. March 24, 16. Of all the people I'd met though out my life on the fringe of show biz...I wanted most to be you next door neighbor.
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"Why did you start singing & playing piano--you weren't a prodigy, got no encouragement..?
A Story from COMING CLEAN
CHICK AT THE PIANO
The Long Beach Pike was a rundown amusement park. It was gritty and crusty, nothing like Disneyland or Knott’s Berry Farm. You know the kind, no entrance fee. You just walked down a wide midway filled with dangerous carnival rides. The best attraction was balanced on a telephone pole…a plastic box that held a live chicken. If you paid a quarter you could see a chicken peck out tunes on a toy piano with her beak. I say her because most working piano players in L.A. are female chicks. The telephone pole with the cage was just outside a trailer offering a glimpse of “Human Oddities” like the bearded lady, the mermaid girl, and Siamese twins.
The midway was noisy; you could hear the carnival barker call out, “Three balls for a quarter! Knock over the milk bottles!” But I wasn’t tempted…not even to throw ping pong balls in the goldfish bowl. No, my heart belonged to the stage show provided by the piano-playing poultry.
The Plexiglas box was about the size of a boot box. It was vertically attached to the pole, like I said, and it had a tiny velvet curtain on the inside so you couldn’t see in—until you dropped the coin in the slot. Then, the curtain goes up, a light bulb goes on, the chicken walks forward to the front and pecks out random notes on a toy piano. This goes on for a moment, then chicken feed drops down a shoot, the chicken turns to the side, and she eats as the curtain goes down and the light bulb goes out. My face remained pressed against the window, peeking under the curtain. The show was over. But that didn’t mean she was gone. She was still inside waiting for the next gig! I hung back in the shadows as someone else paid for the next private performance then stood on tiptoe watching the second show from the back.
After riding the Tilt-a-wheel and running through the fun house, I felt a tad of guilt while licking the paper cone of my cotton candy. Could I possibly get some corn on the cob backstage to the chicken’s dressing room? How could I abandon the talented chicken that might be hungry? After all, how much feed actually dropped down? I had a couple quarters left, so I went back for another concert, knowing if there weren’t enough people who saw the box wired onto the telephone pole, she would starve. My heart took a dip.
PETA would never allow it these days. Obviously trained to respond to the light bulb for her food, this chick did it faithfully without a squawk. It’s horrifying to think she couldn’t exercise at all. However, it could be said she was better off than the egg-laying crowd, all jammed up beak-to-tail-feather crammed into wire cages. Ah, the age-old dilemma: The life of an artist vs. egg-laying security. The biggest plus, she had her own place.
I wonder how the promoter found the star of the chicken coop, how he spotted the talent, the charisma necessary to keep carnival-goers coming back? Was it the shapely beak, something in her strut? Feathers are always an important element in costuming. The audition must have gone well; she didn’t squawk, just played the tune here at the pike. I left after the light went out and the curtain fell.
About twelve years later, I was playing solo piano at the Los Angeles Hilton. A customer asked me, “What made you want to be a piano player?” I don’t know if it was what made you think you could play piano, or just idle chit-chat, but for some reason the chicken at the pike came to mind.
I said, “I saw a chick playing piano once; when the lights went on, she entertained and I was amazed.”
I realized then that I was playing for food, too. That my life was a delicate balance, of trying to survive as an artist, and, like the chicken, I was often left in the dark, waiting for my next gig.
And, like the chicken, I never exercised, and tried not to squawk. Best of all, like the chicken, because of the gig, I had my own place.
CHICK AT THE PIANO
The Long Beach Pike was a rundown amusement park. It was gritty and crusty, nothing like Disneyland or Knott’s Berry Farm. You know the kind, no entrance fee. You just walked down a wide midway filled with dangerous carnival rides. The best attraction was balanced on a telephone pole…a plastic box that held a live chicken. If you paid a quarter you could see a chicken peck out tunes on a toy piano with her beak. I say her because most working piano players in L.A. are female chicks. The telephone pole with the cage was just outside a trailer offering a glimpse of “Human Oddities” like the bearded lady, the mermaid girl, and Siamese twins.
The midway was noisy; you could hear the carnival barker call out, “Three balls for a quarter! Knock over the milk bottles!” But I wasn’t tempted…not even to throw ping pong balls in the goldfish bowl. No, my heart belonged to the stage show provided by the piano-playing poultry.
The Plexiglas box was about the size of a boot box. It was vertically attached to the pole, like I said, and it had a tiny velvet curtain on the inside so you couldn’t see in—until you dropped the coin in the slot. Then, the curtain goes up, a light bulb goes on, the chicken walks forward to the front and pecks out random notes on a toy piano. This goes on for a moment, then chicken feed drops down a shoot, the chicken turns to the side, and she eats as the curtain goes down and the light bulb goes out. My face remained pressed against the window, peeking under the curtain. The show was over. But that didn’t mean she was gone. She was still inside waiting for the next gig! I hung back in the shadows as someone else paid for the next private performance then stood on tiptoe watching the second show from the back.
After riding the Tilt-a-wheel and running through the fun house, I felt a tad of guilt while licking the paper cone of my cotton candy. Could I possibly get some corn on the cob backstage to the chicken’s dressing room? How could I abandon the talented chicken that might be hungry? After all, how much feed actually dropped down? I had a couple quarters left, so I went back for another concert, knowing if there weren’t enough people who saw the box wired onto the telephone pole, she would starve. My heart took a dip.
PETA would never allow it these days. Obviously trained to respond to the light bulb for her food, this chick did it faithfully without a squawk. It’s horrifying to think she couldn’t exercise at all. However, it could be said she was better off than the egg-laying crowd, all jammed up beak-to-tail-feather crammed into wire cages. Ah, the age-old dilemma: The life of an artist vs. egg-laying security. The biggest plus, she had her own place.
I wonder how the promoter found the star of the chicken coop, how he spotted the talent, the charisma necessary to keep carnival-goers coming back? Was it the shapely beak, something in her strut? Feathers are always an important element in costuming. The audition must have gone well; she didn’t squawk, just played the tune here at the pike. I left after the light went out and the curtain fell.
About twelve years later, I was playing solo piano at the Los Angeles Hilton. A customer asked me, “What made you want to be a piano player?” I don’t know if it was what made you think you could play piano, or just idle chit-chat, but for some reason the chicken at the pike came to mind.
I said, “I saw a chick playing piano once; when the lights went on, she entertained and I was amazed.”
I realized then that I was playing for food, too. That my life was a delicate balance, of trying to survive as an artist, and, like the chicken, I was often left in the dark, waiting for my next gig.
And, like the chicken, I never exercised, and tried not to squawk. Best of all, like the chicken, because of the gig, I had my own place.