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  I sort of stammered a “Yeah, sometimes… I guess.” (So fucking suave.)

  “I’m mixing next door and Barry Gibb forgot to sing a line on our duet ‘Guilty’ when we sang it live. Do you think you could sound like Barry on one line?”

  I followed her down the hall into the studio where she was working and took my place at the microphone. Palms a bit damp with nervousness, I heard the track to “Guilty” begin. I had heard the song on the radio countless times, so I knew when to sing my line. Doing my very best Barry Gibb impression, I sang, “It oughta be illeeee–gaa-aa-l,” and then heard the track stop. I looked up through the glass to see Barbra smile and say, “Wow. That… that was great! Thank you!” My line ended up on the album. No one was any the wiser.

  * * *

  I could blend my voice with many different types of singers in pretty much any genre. So I was getting hired to sing on pop records, rock records, R&B records, and country records. I was even hired to sing on the first English album by Julio Iglesias.

  It was 1984, and Julio was already a massive superstar internationally, particularly in Latin America, but was still trying to break through the US music scene. When I arrived at the studio that day, I was surprised to find Julio himself in the control room. I was very briefly introduced to him by his producer, Albert Hammond, before they played me the track I’d be singing on called “Moonlight Lady.” Albert then explained what he wanted me to sing and I headed out into the main studio behind the microphone facing the control room window, and within a few takes, Albert pushed the talk-back and said, “I think you nailed it! Come on in and we’ll have a listen.” By this time, there were at least ten people in the control room in addition to Julio and Albert. Julio always seemed to have a group around him, and these friends/associates/family members/whatever had gathered to hang out and listen to what we were recording. I stood in the doorway looking into the room as the track was played back. Julio sat directly in the middle of the mixing console facing the speakers, occasionally moving volume faders with his fingers to change the balance of the mix.

  Within a few seconds of the three-minute song, I noticed that Julio, while listening, was staring at me. Like, really staring. I looked away for a second, but when I looked back, he was still staring directly at me as the music played. I looked away again. It was uncomfortable. I didn’t know where to look. As the playback ended, Albert and the rest of the people stood silently looking at Julio for his reaction, as if to say, “All good? Happy? We’re done here?” But Julio kept staring at me, expressionless.

  Finally, after another ten seconds or so, Julio pointed at me and said, “You. You fuck a lot, don’t you?”

  I was really not expecting that question. Flummoxed, I said, “Ummmm… excuse me?”

  Julio said, “Yes, you young people… you fuck a lot, but you don’t know how to fuck.”

  Everyone cracked up laughing and from that moment, every time I’d run into Julio he would greet me with a huge hug and whisper in my ear, “How many times you fuck today?”

  The sad part is, at that time, Julio was in his early forties and I was barely twenty, and I can guarantee Julio was getting laid more often than I was.

  * * *

  I didn’t have much time for romance given how crazy my schedule was. I remember during one particular week, I was working at Sunset Sound in Hollywood as a background singer on Lionel’s Can’t Slow Down album in Studio A, on Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton’s Christmas album in Studio B, and on Tubes lead singer Fee Waybill’s solo album in Studio C. It was an extremely prolific and lucrative time in the record business. MTV and the invention of CDs had revitalized the industry. The public was devouring new music, and artists were pushing into new territory creatively. I’ll always remember the artists I’d pass in the hallway of recording studios. Like David Lee Roth (as his solo career was exploding and he was on MTV every nine seconds) sticking his head in the door of one of Lionel Richie’s sessions and saying, “Oooohh… some beautiful sounds comin’ outta this room, ladies and gentlemen!!!”

  Or the evening I had just finished singing on a track for Fee Waybill’s solo album at Sunset Sound and was walking to my car to head home. Sunset Sound was, and is, a great recording facility, but it is just as famous for hosting some amazing basketball games in its courtyard. Someone many years ago had the good sense to put up a hoop at one end of the outdoor space, and it became a great place to step outside, get some air, and shoot some baskets between recording. This particular night, as I exited the door to Studio C, I saw a small lone figure bouncing a basketball in the shadows of the corner opposite the hoop. At first I thought it was a child. He crouched, raised the ball above his head, and launched it with perfect form at least twenty-five feet right into the basket. All net. As he walked from the shadows to grab the ball, I realized it was Prince.

  7 “SHE’S A BEAUTY”

  After reading that last chapter, you might be wondering, “Who or what is Fee Waybill?” Fee is best known as the lead singer for the ’70s/’80s punk-pop band the Tubes. His given name his John. He got his nickname in his late teens when a band he was in noticed, while leafing through a National Geographic, that John looked amazingly like the then king of Fiji. The band started calling him Fee, and it stuck. He is not John. He’s Fee. Or as I usually call him, “Fee-man.” (I am “Ricky” or “Ricky Boy” to him.)

  The Tubes only had one Top Ten hit, 1983’s “She’s a Beauty,” but they enjoyed a passionate cult following since the mid-’70s that continues to this day. They were, at their core, a fusion of new wave and punk rock, but their live show was unlike anything else out there, and “out there” is also an apt description of a lot of their songs and shows. They had elaborate production numbers with girl dancers and backup singers; Fee would dress up in wild costumes and play characters while doing various songs. The music was more sophisticated than most punk stuff because the guys in the band were accomplished players, so while they could rage like the Clash, they could also interject cool chord progressions not unlike Steely Dan, and the hybrid made them unique. Add Fee’s always biting, sarcastic, hilarious, irreverent, and poetically brilliant lyrics to his showmanship, and you had a classic case of a band that should have been hugely famous and successful, but instead never sold many records, sank all their money into their stage shows, and ended up barely getting by. The band put out more than a dozen albums over the years, and none of them sold more than a few hundred thousand copies. Today, that would be considered decent sales, but in the ’70s and ’80s, it got you dropped by your label.

  I met Fee in 1983 when the Tubes were in the studio recording “She’s a Beauty.” I had dropped by the studio that day to meet record producer David Foster in hopes I might work with him on something. This was still fairly early in his career, but I’d been familiar with all the work he’d done at that point.

  It just so happened that he was producing the Tubes that day, and I was a fan of theirs, too. David greeted me as I walked into the control room and introduced me to the members of the band. Fee Waybill stands six foot three and though very lean and wiry, he’s an imposing figure. As I shook his hand I noticed his was so huge it literally swallowed mine, which is quite normal sized.

  He said, “Yeah? You’re new to LA from Chicago? Cool. I like Chicago. Good town. But God, it’s so fuckin’ cold all the time. You must be so fuckin’ glad to be out here now and not in that fuckin’ Arctic Circle.”

  First thing anyone realizes about Fee is his fondness for the F word. He also has an extra-large-sized head, which was probably a factor in our early kinship, as my noggin is huge as well. Full of big ideas, I always say.

  I told him I was a big fan and then, at David’s invitation, sat back down to silently observe. The band went out into the large studio to their instruments and began to work on the basic track of “She’s a Beauty” which Fee cowrote with David and Toto guitarist Steve Lukather. Everything was coming together nicely except the main guitar part. The Tubes gu
itarist at that time, Bill Spooner, had had a pretty rough night of partying and was really struggling with the rhythmic guitar riff that plays throughout the song. Time and time again, David would stop the band mid-recording and say, “Bill, it’s just not happening, man. Try again.”

  Bill, steadily getting more agitated by his inability to get the part right, stood silently with a scowl on his face. Through his black hair hanging down in his face, his eyes peeked through and scanned the room until they fell on me. He’d shaken my hand upon meeting me minutes before, but now, even though I was sitting in the back of a separate room, he looked at me through the soundproof glass as if I were the ultimate interloper.

  “You know what? It’s already fucking bad enough that I can’t hear what I need to hear in my goddamned headphones, but now I also gotta have this fucking stupid kid staring at me while I try to work? Get him the fuck out of the studio!”

  I couldn’t believe it. I let five seconds of silence pass before I stood up to leave. I knew Bill was just being a prick and that his struggle to get the part right had more to do with a hangover than with me, but I also knew I should take off. I took one step toward the door when Fee said, “Hang on, kid” and walked up to Bill.

  “What’s your fucking problem?” he said, towering over him.

  “Man, we don’t need random people in the studio when we’re trying to work. He needs to get the fuck out of here.”

  Fee said, “He’s a fucking kid! He’s here to meet Foster and to learn. He’s just sitting there quietly. It’s not his fault you can’t fucking play your part! Leave him alone.” And with that Fee turned to me and said, “Sit down, man. It’s cool.”

  You can imagine what that impression of Fee Waybill made on me.

  * * *

  About a year later, Fee decided to make his first solo album for Capitol Records, and David Foster was producing it. Fee said to David, “I love the songs we’ve got, but we need a few more, and I’d love to write with someone new.” Since meeting him that fateful day with the Tubes, I’d been working as a background singer for some of David’s productions, so David said, “Remember that kid you let stay in the studio that day? He’s a really good writer. You should try writing a tune with him.”

  Fee called me the next day. The next evening, he came to my apartment in Westwood Village (where it turned out he also lived, a few blocks away) and filled me in on what he felt was missing from his album. It was a pretty straight-out rock record, but Fee said, “I’m a huge Peter Gabriel fan. It’d be cool if we could come up with something that’s rock but that also has a cool dance groove.” As Fee lit a joint, I sat at my keyboard and started jamming a riff that would become the bass line of our song. It was slightly reminiscent of the line from the Jacksons’ “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)” but just different enough that we wouldn’t get sued. Over that bass line I started singing a melody with what I thought was simply gibberish when Fee said, “Oh, nice!! ‘Who loves you, baby!!!’ I love that!!!” I stopped and looked at him.

  “Huh?”

  “That’s what you sang.”

  “I did?”

  Listening back to the cassette of us writing the song it sounds like I sang, “Woo… muz-doo maybe.” But luckily, Fee heard it wrong.

  We finished the song in about thirty-five minutes. In addition to recording it on his record, he and David invited me to sing background vocals on nearly the entire album. It was one of the most fun projects I’ve ever been a part of, and though the album never became a hit, it forged the friendship with Fee that I enjoy to this day. He’s the godfather to my sons. And he’s still a badass talent.

  On paper, we’re an odd friendship. The guy who wore platform shoes and Spandex pants with a huge zucchini shoved into the crotch and sang “White Punks on Dope” hanging out with the “Right Here Waiting” dude. Weird, but true. He knows me better than any other guy on earth. He’s the big brother I never had, but without any of the meanness, jealousy, pants-ing, or beatings. In fact, I was saying to him very recently, “We’ve been friends for nearly forty years, and I have never been pissed off at you.” He says it’s the same for him. But I can tell you that aside from our mutual love of old Westerns, great pasta, George Carlin, Foo Fighters, and the F word, it’s Fee’s brutal frankness that is my favorite part of having him as my best friend. Here’s one of a bazillion examples.

  It’s 1989 and I’m in the studio recording my second album, Repeat Offender. My coproducer David Cole and I are finishing the mix of a track called “Angelia,” which went on to be a pretty big hit for me. I had worked especially hard on this track, layering tons of guitar parts, synth parts, and background vocals, and I was so proud of this thing. Nearly six minutes long, the track was, I felt, the closest thing to a perfect representation of my vision of a song. When Fee came by the studio to hang out, I couldn’t wait to play it for him.

  I sat him front and center in front of the mixing console. The sweet spot for playback. Fee sat listening, eyes closed the entire time, until the last notes of the song slowly faded. He opened his eyes and said, “Wow, Ricky. That… was… really… really… fuckin’ long!”

  8 “WHITE HEAT”

  In 1985, I got a call from a producer I knew named Patrick Leonard. Pat was a keyboard player from Chicago whom my father had been hiring regularly to play on the jingle sessions he was doing in the early 1980s. Around the time I left Chicago, Pat was offered the job as touring keyboard player with Madonna, who was already the biggest female artist in the world. I hadn’t seen Pat in a few years and was happily surprised that he was calling to hire me to sing background vocals on a new Madonna song. He had begun writing songs with her on the road and named producer of her new album, True Blue. Pat rang and said, “Madonna and I wrote a song called ‘White Heat’ that needs male background vocals in the chorus. It needs to have some grit. It’ll just be you and Jackie Jackson [of the Jackson 5], but we’ll record several tracks and it’ll sound huge.”

  A few mornings later, as I drove to the studio in the San Fernando Valley, I found myself thinking a fairly random thought: I sure hope Madonna isn’t at the session. I had never met Madonna, and I realize that was a pretty negative thing to think about a total stranger. But by 1985, Madonna’s reputation preceded her. I’d seen several interviews with her on TV and read about her, and she came off as a difficult egomaniac. I just wanted to walk into the studio, learn my part, sing it down, and collect my check. I did not want to have to deal with a temperamental artist who likely fancied herself a “producer” telling me what to do. But artists of her stature are often not present in the studio for sessions like this, so I assumed she’d be absent.

  I assumed wrong.

  Pat Leonard greeted me as I entered the front door and led me down the hall to the studio where we’d be working. I turned the corner into the small control room and saw Jackie Jackson talking to a woman whose back was to me. When Jackie saw me and stopped his conversation to say hello, the woman turned around to face me. It was Madonna, who smiled and introduced herself, as if she needed to. The first thing I noticed, aside from her warm greeting, was that she was stunningly beautiful. I’d seen Madonna on TV and in magazines hundreds of times, and though I certainly never considered her unattractive, she really wasn’t physically my type. But here she was, this tiny young woman, wearing a black velour running suit with a white tee-shirt underneath, no makeup, and her short hair tousled and messy. And she was just gorgeous. Between her beauty and her friendly demeanor, I was immediately disarmed.

  Jackie and I sat in the control room and listened to the track as Pat demonstrated the background vocal part he and Madonna had in mind (a unison chant-like phrase that went “Get up! Stand tall!”) as she sat and watched. But the moment Jackie and I were behind the mic out in the large recording room facing the window into the control room, it was clearly Madonna who was in charge. She would press the talk-back and say things like, “Sounding good, guys. But can you lay back on the ‘stand tall’ l
ine a bit more? It feels slightly ahead of the beat.” She would zero in on every nuance of our performances and make suggestions to make it the best it could be, despite the fact that it was a relatively unimportant part of the song. She was very smart and very professional, and the more we worked on the song, the more relaxed and playful we all became. On one take, she pressed the talk-back and said, “Richard, are you always this pale? I feel as soon as we’re done we need to get you to the beach.”

  To which I replied, “Have you looked in a mirror lately? Hello, Pot? This is Kettle.”

  When the session was over, we hugged each other good-bye, and I went home and called several of my friends just to say, “I worked with Madonna today, and she’s fucking awesome.”

  9 “SHOULD’VE KNOWN BETTER”

  We’ve all heard the legendary stories of heartbreaks becoming the basis for hit songs. Clapton’s “Layla” was really about Pattie Boyd Harrison. Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” was about the dude on Full House who was neither John Stamos nor Bob Saget. And nearly every Taylor Swift song seems to be about someone she broke up with or someone who broke up with her.

  I’ve written many songs about several women in my lifetime. But it’s never been my way to tell those backstories, especially the ones based in heartache. For one thing, it’s not my place, even as the writer, to tell the listener what my songs are about. However people interpret a lyric of mine is fine with me, even if it’s nowhere near the meaning I had in mind. The other thing is that I find it extremely distasteful to name names. It’s crass and not remotely elegant, and not what I believe a man should do. So, I’m going to tell you the story behind “Should’ve Known Better,” but I certainly won’t divulge who it’s specifically about. It’s a story from my days turning from boy to man, and it’s a time in my life that taught me a great lesson about my own integrity.