And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records (31 page)

The Merv Griffin Show
helped us to showcase Donna Summer, the Village People, and the movie
Thank God It’s Friday.
Merv bent over backwards for us, devoting entire shows to stuff we wanted to promote and market. Despite Neil’s ease with people and his natural confidence within the music industry, he was always uncomfortable delivering a major speech, and he was truly scared to appear before millions on TV. But, regardless of his stage fright, he knew that Merv’s show, which drew solid ratings, was an important means to expose our artists and projects. So Neil and Merv became friends, to a degree (with Merv, it was always to a degree). Although Merv appeared warm and caring on television, in person I didn’t find him quite so friendly. He had a tough-guy shark for a business manager and would always blame him for any difficulty that arose in negotiations—as if Merv himself wasn’t the real shark. The Merv Griffin-Casablanca love fest came to an abrupt end when we realized that Merv had taken an idea we’d developed and paid for and turned it into a TV show himself, cutting us out completely.

It began in May 1978, when we had the idea of doing two ninety-minute
Thank God It’s Friday
-themed episodes of Merv’s show featuring several of our acts and a big dance contest. To do this, we would need a custom-built set with a state-of-the-art lighted dance floor and other discotheque touches. We would have to pay for it ourselves, since Merv was very—oh, let’s say—thrifty (in fact, every time we had an artist on his show we would later get a bill from his company for union fees). But we had no problem spending thousands of dollars for the set, because we planned to use it later for a TV pilot centered on a dance contest. And the episodes were a huge success, scoring for Merv the highest ratings of his career to that point.

Four or five months later, Merv’s people contacted us about doing a new show of his called
Dance Fever
. We arranged for several of our acts, including the Village People and Pattie Brooks, to appear. Then Steve Keator told us that Merv had stolen the idea for
Dance Fever
from us—it was our TV pilot concept, and he was shooting it on the set we’d paid for in May. Neil hit the roof; he was probably angrier than I had ever seen him. He called Merv to work it out, but either Merv would not take his call or he just blew him off. This only compounded the problem. Neil started screaming about suing and going to the press to expose Merv as the slime he was. He finally calmed down when he spoke to one of our lawyers about legal remedies. The lawyer told him that if we didn’t drop the whole thing and pretend it had never happened, then we’d never get another act on Merv’s show. Furthermore, certain old-line Hollywood types would not want to see Merv’s dirty laundry exposed for their own reasons, and if Neil decided to pursue this, he could kiss many of his TV and film aspirations goodbye.

Neil took the legal advice and never brought it up again. As it happened, we never did have another act on
The Merv Griffin Show
. In retrospect, I can see that it would have been better to go to court and get the rights for the show, as
Dance Fever
was an instant hit and stayed on the air in syndication for over eight years. Merv made very good money on it. Years later, I read a piece about
Dance Fever
and learned that Denny Terrio, the show’s host, had been mistreated by Merv and had threatened Merv with a workplace harassment suit. What a surprise. I often wondered whether the little old ladies who loved Merv so much would have been such fans of his show if they’d known that Merv had used his friendship with Eva Gabor as a cover for his alternative lifestyle. Before Steve Keator fell victim to AIDS, he told me about Merv’s bisexuality, and about his preference for younger men; he also said that the Eva Gabor relationship was completely transparent to those who knew Merv well.

Merv was a rich guy and a legit TV industry player, but he was small potatoes compared to some of the people who ran in the circles Neil was now a part of. On February 21, 1979, Neil and Joyce hosted a dinner party for former president Gerald Ford at their home. I asked myself why they would want to do this for the only man ever to hold the office of president without having been elected to it. Ford had ascended to the presidency after Richard Nixon resigned, in August 1974; he had become vice president when Nixon’s original VP, Spiro Agnew, resigned over a tax fraud scandal in 1973. I could have understood wanting to throw a party for Nixon, despite his damaged reputation, but Ford? At least this time (unlike the time he’d hosted Jerry Brown) Neil shared the political views of his guest of honor, but we all knew that the party had nothing to do with politics. Art Kassel had helped organize the affair, which was a see-and-be-seen event, nothing more. These political gatherings, as well as the one-hundred-thousand-dollar contribution to Cedars-Sinai Hospital, were strategic attempts on Neil’s part to become a major force in Hollywood. He believed that if he had name recognition in Hollywood as a player in philanthropic and political circles it would help Casablanca get artists, TV shows, and motion picture deals. He really wanted to become a major power broker in the entertainment industry, and he almost made it.

Neil insisted that any Casablanca employees at the Ford party be on their best parochial school behavior: no one should even think about getting high; those who showed up with fun substances would find themselves polishing their resumes. With an army of Secret Service guys running around, Neil was intent on ensuring that he didn’t become publicly associated with a bunch of glazed-over employees (I don’t know what he did with those bags of Quaaludes he normally kept in the pocket of his suit jacket). All of the guests donned masks just prior to Ford’s arrival, and though I forget the purpose of the stunt, I do recall that Ford did not like it. Candy and I were uncomfortable with the vibe of the event, and we both started looking for an excuse to leave as soon as we got there. Later on, I beat Frankie Crocker in a series of Pong games that we played in the pool house—in fact, the highlight of my night was taking hundreds off Peter Guber and Richard Trugman, who had bet against me.

Neil’s foray into the spotlight was mostly a source of amusement for me. I’d watch him squirm and sweat in front of the cameras, figuring that at least he was getting the Casablanca name out there. Unfortunately, as his public persona grew, his business acumen, which had been so keen, began to waver. Neil had always bravely risked failure to achieve great rewards, and I’d never questioned his judgment when it came to artists, but I was beginning to have my doubts. Seeing something in KISS, a band that none of the major labels would touch, and helping them reach the rock stratosphere, or giving the madcap George Clinton free rein, or predicting Donna Summer’s future, or damned near single-handedly creating disco—this was the Neil Bogart I knew. He was the man who discovered and created tomorrow’s stars. But the person in the office next to mine was now signing yesterday’s sensations: acts like the Captain and Tennille, Tony Orlando, Don McLean, the Sylvers, and Mac Davis. They all had name recognition, but almost all of them had peaked before Neil walked them in the door. This star-signing rampage was disconcerting to me, even when the star was someone like Cher, who would have a Top 10 hit for us with the song “Take Me Home” (the single that caused Neil to set Howie Rosen’s desk on fire to show how hot we were). After she had signed with us, Cher told me what a great guy Neil was. “How gracious of her,” I thought, “to pay a compliment to Neil and share her enthusiasm at being on the Casablanca roster.” Then she added that she found it especially nice of Neil to pay her more per album than she had asked for. I was dumbfounded. Neil always threw money at things, so that was nothing new. But he wasn’t stupid, either. When you have someone sold at ten dollars, you don’t insist that they take fifteen. I nearly choked trying to keep myself from saying “What the fuck?!”

Cher’s manager, Sandy Gallen, was a pretty well-connected person in the Hollywood film, television, and music arenas, which was another advantage of signing Cher. Sandy put Bill Sammeth in charge of Cher. We knew Bill from his work with David Joseph and the Hudson Brothers, and we liked him a lot. Cher was good to work with, too. She was an artist who knew what she wanted, and she made sure that she got it.

She played a big role in pushing “Take Me Home” into the Top 10. It debuted fairly well, but then it stalled at around No. 30. We sent Don Wasley out on the road with her to do a promo tour—it was just the two of them. They went from market to market working whatever they could, wherever they were. When they landed in Atlanta, Wasley called WQXI and told them he was coming in with Cher and wanted to see what he could do to get the record added. Much to the surprise of both Cher and Don, the station was hosting a parade. In short order, Cher was tooling down the street on a float shaped like a giant shoe (which, I was told, looked like something right out of Mother Goose). I’m sure she was thinking “What the hell have I gotten myself into?” As the tour progressed up the East Coast, they stopped in Washington DC, where a local station invited Cher to a roller-skating party. At the rink, it turned out that the regular patrons were more gang members than disco fans, which created an interesting dichotomy: Cher skated along surrounded by thug-like rockers. She did everything we asked, never complaining, and the record did make it into the Top 10.

Neil became so smitten with Cher that he had the company buy her a Jeep for Christmas in 1978. But his grand gestures always seemed to have fallout: when Donna Summer heard about it, the shit began to fly, so Neil had to get Donna an even fancier Jeep. Donna deserved it, as she was selling tons of records, but why he would spend that kind of money on a present for Cher was beyond me. It got worse. He presented Cher with a Gold LP on
The Tonight Show.
That was the type of publicity we’d always done: celebrate your successes in public, as loudly as possible. But the thing was, the album wasn’t Gold, so we went into a mad scramble to ship extra copies of the LP out to keep Neil from looking like a fool, or a liar. The PolyGram distribution guys were none too pleased to be pushing out albums when the demand wasn’t there.

Neil’s excitement was growing beyond my ability to manage its effects. He began to chase all sorts of grand ideas. I didn’t like the role I was playing—I was constantly having to temper his increasingly erratic behavior. Had it always been this way? Had I just failed to notice it in my state of starstruck naivete? We were working on a line of live concert releases for home video; VHS was not yet a household standard, and the retail market for music video product was nonexistent. A demonstration by Philips (PolyGram’s parent) and a subsequent keynote convention speech from Warner exec Stan Cornyn on an emerging technology called the compact disc had us all excited about its enormous possibilities (and left Bruce looking for new speakers when the Philips sample disc blew out the cones in his enormous Altec Lansing cabinets). Neil was also working on a deal with ABC Television to produce five specials—a variety show, two documentaries, and two movies of the week—all with heavy music spinoffs. An opportunity to dispense cassette tapes from vending machines was being investigated. Neil wanted to develop new divisions for classical music and country and western. Mounting Broadway shows in Las Vegas and New York was on the agenda, as was a plan to open offices in London, France, and Holland. Our New York office, still headed by Irv Biegel, was now located in a posh townhouse at 137 West Fifty-fifth Street, and Neil was committed to spending a good third of the year in Manhattan. All of this was in addition to the January opening of our BookWorks division, which had already acquired its initial offering: a hardcover novel by Jackson Rice, called
Flash Point
, about a fire that sweeps through Los Angeles. It was an absolutely dizzying display of ambition. Neil was starting to seem totally manic rather than just enthusiastic.

In the midst of Neil’s constant epiphanies, other things would pop up. We received a call out of the blue from Bob Dylan. He wanted a meeting, and Neil, of course, accepted. A day or two later, Dylan and his manager met with Neil and me at our offices on Sunset. Dylan wanted to arrange a production deal. He was signed to Columbia, but he was interested in producing other bands on the side. The discussions were going along well—they liked us and we liked them—until I decided to open my mouth. The moment stands as a shining example of what bad judgment and an inflated sense of self-importance can lead to; it’s also a good demonstration of why you should never hold a business meeting when you’re stoned (I had a pretty good buzz going). I asked Dylan, “Bob, do you produce your own albums?” “No, I don’t.” “Then why the hell do you think we’d pay you to produce ours?!” End of meeting.

A couple of days after the Ford party, I flew to New York to attend the
Billboard
Disco Forum V at the Hilton. These three- or four-day conventions were Bill Wardlow’s personal parties. There were daytime meetings and panel sessions, followed at night by a live performance and party at a nearby venue, usually the Roseland Ballroom. On the final evening of the forum, there would be an awards ceremony. To lend the event an aura of importance, Bill would arrange to have famous artists in attendance, and no one had more famous disco artists than we did. Bill also needed the record companies to pay for the awards dinner and presentation ceremonies, and we were more than happy to help bankroll the event. The night prior to the forum, Casablanca threw a huge party in Brooklyn at a skating rink called the Empire Rollerdome. Cher hosted the event, but even if she hadn’t, the see-through top she wore would still have made her the center of attention. Wardlow would usually corral me into moderating a forum panel discussion, and this year he’d asked me to moderate one with the wordy title “Disco TV Shows and Their Importance to the Future Growth of Disco.” Most years, we’d turn the awards banquet into our own personal press conference. This year, we did it big-time: Casablanca was named the best disco label for the third time; Donna Summer won six awards; and thirteen awards in all went to the company or our artists.