Stories to Tell Read online

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  In my sophomore year of high school, I became good friends with a guy a year ahead of me. This is the “Noah” I mentioned earlier, who led me to Lionel Richie. I don’t really recall exactly how we became friends, especially considering that we were in different grades and there wasn’t a tremendous amount of hanging out between juniors and sophomores. Noah and I lived about ten minutes from each other and hung out after school a lot. We played a lot of racquetball and tennis. We sat in my parents’ basement listening to albums by everyone from the Brothers Johnson to Queen. We spent endless hours driving around in his car listening to tapes of our mutual favorite band, Earth, Wind and Fire. We even went together to see them in concert on their tour supporting the album Faces in 1980. And as you would expect, we talked about girls nonstop. I had a huge crush at the time on a girl in Noah’s class, and he would sporadically choose a moment to put in a good word for me. It never materialized into me dating her, but thanks to Noah, I was at least on this girl’s radar. He, meanwhile, had a thing for a girl in my class, so I returned the favor. Neither of us was getting laid, but we were both a bit more of the hopeless romantic type even then, and through the conversations and music, Noah and I became best friends.

  He graduated a year before me, of course, and headed to Boston to attend college while I finished up my senior year of high school. This was also the year I dedicated myself to writing songs nonstop, much to the detriment of my grades at school. I already knew what I wanted to do with my life and was ferociously hungry to get going. Another fucking chemistry class was nothing but time wasted that I could’ve spent writing more songs. As I continued writing, I was also recording demos of them occasionally, and when I had what I thought were my best four songs, I mailed a cassette of them to Noah at his university. He was living in a dorm with a roommate and in addition to the constant stream of REO Speedwagon, the Police, and Blondie that blasted from their speakers was my demo tape. Noah would regularly crank it up, and little by little, students nearby started asking, “Who’s that?” Noah’s roommate was especially impressed. That roommate turned out to be the guy who started a chain reaction that got my songs heard by Lionel Richie, which essentially launched my career, as I’ve mentioned.

  As Noah dug into college life, and I spent every waking moment writing songs, our friendship began to take a hit that could only be expected. We hardly talked and really never saw each other. There was no rift or anything, but our lives were in different motions. A year later I was out in LA, singing background vocals on Lionel Richie’s debut solo album and pursuing my career in any way possible. One day Noah rang me on the phone and said, “I know we’ve kind of lost touch a bit. Would you be into coming up to Boston to hang and catch up? Plus, I really want you to meet Jen.”

  * * *

  Jen isn’t her real name. She and Noah met at school their first year there. She was twenty-one at the time and from Long Island, New York. She was Noah’s first real girlfriend. He’d mentioned her in the smattering of phone calls I’d had with him and seemed to be crazy about her. I remember him highlighting that he found her very bright, and Noah was always a great student and scholastically inclined. He was studying pre-law and planned to become a corporate attorney. Jen was majoring in business but really mostly uncertain as to what career she wanted to pursue. By then, I had abandoned an early thought to study music at Northwestern University in favor of heading to LA and pursuing my music, a decision my parents fully endorsed.

  A few weeks later I flew to Boston for a weekend visit. I was looking forward to seeing Noah and also just to get out of LA for a minute. He picked me up at the airport on an early Friday evening and we headed to a small apartment just off campus he was sharing with his former dorm mate. (Yeah, that guy.) After a quick shower, I jumped into Noah’s car and we headed to a local tavern, where we were to meet up with Jen. A few minutes after Noah and I grabbed a corner booth, Jen walked in, and Noah greeted her with a quick kiss on the cheek. “Finally, you guys meet!” Noah said, as Jen and I warmly hugged hello. For the next three hours, over beers and pizza and the din of student chatter, we hung out and I quickly saw what Noah liked about Jen. She wasn’t a glam/supermodel beauty. She was more like the young, attractive girl you’d expect to see working in a law firm or literary agency. Tall and slender, with shoulder-length hair so dark brown it was nearly black. A thin, longish nose that instead of registering as an imperfection gave her an extra distinct character. And milk-chocolate-colored eyes as big as Bambi’s. She was immediately sweet and girlish. And quick with a genuine laugh. She also looked directly into your eyes when she was both speaking to you, and more impressively, listening to you. Or, I should say, me.

  Okay. I know what you’re already thinking. Yes, I was impressed with Jen. But I was also not attracted to her sexually. There was no particular reason for this, other than she just didn’t stoke those feelings in me. It also might have had something to do with the fact that she was Noah’s fucking girlfriend.

  The next day, Noah and I drove around Boston, listening to music in his car loud enough to be heard in Tennessee, and singing along with every song. I had also brought along a cassette of a couple of my own new song demos, which Noah proclaimed would be huge hits in no time. It was a bit like old times. But there was a distance and an unnamed awkwardness between us that wasn’t there before. Our lives had changed a lot since high school, and we hadn’t really kept up with each other. He did tell me about the current state of his relationship with Jen, which I found surprising. He said that he definitely loved her, but he had grown a bit bored after a year and a half of dating and wasn’t all that riveted by their conversations. He was nearly twenty-two, and this was his first real relationship. It made sense to me that he felt all these things, and while I didn’t come right out and encourage him to experience other girls, I was a very understanding ear. That evening, Jen came by the apartment along with a few mutual friends of theirs and we all played music and drank into the wee hours.

  The next day was a Sunday and Noah had a pretty big exam the following morning, when I’d be flying back to LA. He needed to spend a few hours studying and suggested I go with Jen to her tennis lesson that afternoon, if only to get outside on a beautiful Boston day. Jen picked me up and we headed to the courts, talking nonstop along the way. During her hourlong lesson, I sat in a row of metal bleachers and dove into the paperback novel I’d brought along for the trip to kill time on the plane rides. We stopped at a café on the way back to the apartment and had an iced tea at a table by the street. Conversation with Jen was easy. I liked her. And I particularly remember feeling happy that I liked her, because I wanted to genuinely like my friend’s girlfriend and not have to fake it if I found her lame or boring. Noah, Jen, and I went out for dinner that night, and it felt a bit like a Three Musketeers kind of thing. We all laughed a lot together, and I could see Noah was happy that his old pal from high school and his girl had really hit it off.

  I flew home the next morning and threw myself immediately back into the pursuit of musical stardom. A few days later, as I was working on a lyric at my apartment, my phone rang.

  “Hi, Richard! It’s Jen!”

  I was happy to hear her voice, if not a little surprised.

  “Noah gave me your number. Hope that’s okay. It’s kinda weird, but I miss you! I loved how much fun we all had together when you were here.”

  I agreed, and we chatted like the new friends we had now become. From that point on, over the next several weeks, we spoke a few times. Sometimes it would be that Noah called to talk and Jen would be there with him and would jump on the phone and say hi. Through these conversations, the friendship between Jen and me actually blossomed while at the same time the one between Noah and me continued to wane.

  * * *

  It was mid-December when Jen called one night to chat. After several minutes of small talk, she said, “So, Noah has decided instead of coming to New York to spend New Year’s with me, he’s goi
ng skiing with his buddies in Vail. And apparently I’m not invited.”

  Caught off guard by this, I began to stammer a “Really? Uhh… I didn’t know…” when she said, “Are you free New Year’s? Do you want to come to New York? We’d have so much fun. And Noah’s totally fine with it.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond. I really liked talking to Jen and hanging out with her, so the idea appealed to me. But I had hesitations and wanted to talk to Noah. I told Jen I’d have to see what my parents were up to and that I might be going to Chicago to see them. Later that day, I rang Noah, and just as Jen had said, he was on board with me hanging out with her in New York. I asked why he would want to spend New Year’s with his pals rather than with his girlfriend. “It’s not a big deal. I see her every day. Constantly. I just want to go skiing with my friends. Go to New York and have fun. I think she has a couple hot friends you’d probably meet.”

  So I flew to Chicago to see my parents for Christmas and went on to New York on December 29. I made my way by train out to the Long Island suburb where Jen’s parents lived and was welcomed as if I were part of the family. The next day Jen showed me around her hometown. We walked through the snow-covered streets, stopping for hot chocolate and talking effortlessly. That night after another dinner with her parents at their home, Jen and I drove to a nearby bar for drinks. Almost as soon as we sat down, she started telling me of her unhappiness in her relationship with Noah. By the next evening, New Year’s Eve, we were sleeping together.

  I knew, of course, that this was the biggest douchebag move anyone could make. No matter what the circumstances, you do not have sex with your friend’s girlfriend. And yet I did. Repeatedly. Even worse, I also now found myself with an emotional investment in her, which she claimed was returned. She said she would be going back to school and breaking it off with Noah but assured me that it wasn’t because of me. She had just fallen out of love with him. I was already feeling like shit about my own betrayal of him, despite the fact that our current friendship was a shadow of its former self. I decided that if she was breaking up with him, there was no need to come clean to him about what had happened. But I was pretty crazy about Jen by now, and it was all a bit complicated in my twenty-year-old mind and heart.

  * * *

  Two occurrences followed: The first being that Jen went back to school. The second being that she did not break up with Noah.

  This is not to say she cut things off with me. She and I would speak on the phone nearly every day when Noah was in class or somewhere studying. She would only explain that he was in a stressful state and she was worried how the breakup would affect him, but that she was falling in love with me and couldn’t wait to be with me again. The more I questioned what was really going on, the more her reasons for staying in their relationship varied. And yet somehow I allowed myself to accept it. And over the next ten months, Jen and I carried on a full-fledged affair behind Noah’s back. She came to LA to see me under the guise of visiting her family. I met her in New York at least twice. And in the absence of physical contact, there were constant late-night phone calls.

  Finally, one morning I woke up in my apartment, went into the bathroom, and began to brush my teeth when I found myself staring into the mirror. Who the fuck are you? I thought. I immediately spit out the toothpaste, picked up my phone, and dialed Noah’s number. He answered. And I cut right to it. “I’ve been seeing Jen for almost a year behind your back, and it’s time you knew it. I’m sorry.” Needless to say, this announcement was anything but well received. He hung up on me. About an hour later, Jen called. Instead of calling to tell me she was relieved and we could now finally see each other openly, she said, “I’m staying with Noah.” So by lunchtime, I had been dumped and lost a good friend forever. Rightfully so. Jen’s complicity notwithstanding, every choice I’d made in regard to both of them was a bad one, and I knew it.

  Still, I was pretty heartbroken about her. That night, I went out with two friends and got as drunk as I ever have. There was a lot of “never again” and “she’s such a [fill in the blank].” After my friends dropped me at home, I stumbled into bed where I remained for about thirteen straight hours.

  * * *

  A few days later, driving through Hollywood to a background vocal session where I sang harmonies on Lionel Richie’s soon-to-be smash “Running with the Night,” I started humming a melody to myself. It was an up-tempo pop-rock vibe in my head, and the melody began with a staccato five-syllable phrase. It began, as my lyrics usually do, as total gibberish. But by the third time repeating it, the words “should’ve known better” landed perfectly upon those five syllables. Still reeling from the breakup with Jen and feeling like the biggest asshole on earth for my betrayal of Noah’s friendship, the song practically wrote itself. I arrived at the studio where Lionel was recording and hurriedly asked the woman at the front desk for a pen and notepad and wrote down:

  Shoulda known better

  Than to fall in love with you

  Now love is just a faded memory

  Shoulda known better

  Something-something-something

  And my heart still aches for you.

  The penultimate line, “now I’m a prisoner to this pain,” came about four hours later on the drive back to my apartment after the session. As did nearly the rest of the lyrics and melody. I rushed to my keyboard and started working out and refining the chords and melody, and when I felt the song itself was complete, I powered up the Linn drum machine I’d bought about six months before. Drum machines, the new rage in the music business, were not only being commonly used on hit records instead of live drummers but had also become helpful tools for writing and demoing songs. Being able to have a computerized machine keep perfect time and process cool sounds opened new inspiration to me and to many other songwriters, and in the years following, the advancement of this technology has been nothing short of astounding. For many years now, I can closely replicate a full symphony orchestra on my laptop. It’s crazy.

  I wasn’t exactly rolling in dough in those days, and that Linn drum machine cost me about $1,100. But I generally invested the money I made from background vocal work and songwriting into my career. A new keyboard or drum machine was much more appealing to me than clothes or a nicer sofa. I believed in spending money to make money, and I still do.

  The actual composition completed, I started imagining in my head what the recording should sound like. I was a fan of Pat Benatar’s “Love Is a Battlefield,” a massive hit at the time. I thought the drum groove on it would lend itself to my new song, and I programmed a similar beat on the Linn, and added a combination of Fender Rhodes and spacey-sounding strings from my keyboard. Now somewhere in the neighborhood of 4:00 a.m., I listened back to the song and knew it was not only the best song I’d written thus far, but it sounded very commercial to me. I cut a proper studio demo of it a few weeks later with the help of guitarist Michael Landau. Mike was the most in-demand session guitarist in town, and we’d become friendly running into each other at various sessions. I asked him to come and play on two songs, knowing that it was all I could afford to pay him for at the time. Mike was getting double scale for his work (around $600 for a two-hour session), and after he’d played on both songs and was packing up his gear, I sat down and wrote him a personal check. As I handed it to him, he said, “You know what? It’s cool, man. I don’t need anything for this. Just promise to hire me if you get a record deal from it.” This act of generosity was incredibly kind and uncommon, and I’m humbled by it to this day.

  * * *

  The demo was engineered by a Chilean guy named Humberto Gatica. I had met Hum a year or two before on various sessions, when he had befriended the then-teenaged me. We became friends in and out of the studio as we were both big into racquetball, which was very popular in the ’80s. Each of us could beat literally anyone else we played, so you can imagine the matches between us were intense. I had youth on my side, but Hum was a great athlete and very competitive. He ki
cked my ass at least as much if not more than I kicked his. We would both walk out of those courts drenched in sweat. He also invited me a few times to dinner at his house with his family. Humberto was a really gifted sound engineer with incredible ears and was very in-demand when I met him. He was working with everyone from Julio Iglesias to Kenny Rogers to Chicago to Michael Jackson. It was Humberto who Quincy Jones got to engineer “We Are the World.” He was also really funny. It wasn’t just his sense of humor but his accent that made the shit he said even funnier. Hum could look at me and say an otherwise innocuous statement, but his facial expression and accent would put me on the fucking floor. In fact, his accidental catchphrases became as talked about around the session community as his talent for recording. Plus, English being his second language, he would mispronounce words, and it was hysterical. Many of us session guys would invoke one of his phrases at any given time, trying to mimic his accent. I remember in the early ’80s when I became aware of the superfood spirulina. I was telling Humberto about it, saying he should start adding it to his protein shakes every morning and he said, “Speedy-Lueena. Okay, compadre.”

  When it came time to start recording the demos I hoped would get me a deal, I asked Humberto if he could suggest anyone I could afford. He said he’d love to do it himself, as he really liked my writing and singing and wanted to help me. He couldn’t do it for free, but if I could throw him half of his usual fee and was okay with him squeezing me into late-night or early-morning sessions here and there, he’d do it. So over the next six weeks or so, Humberto and I would meet at a little studio in North Hollywood called the Lighthouse, where Hum convinced the owner to give me a good deal. We ended up recording the demos to “Should’ve Known Better” and “Endless Summer Nights” there. Along the way, Humberto said, “If you do get a deal, I’d like to produce these songs for real.” Even though I was clearly coproducing with him, I knew what a favor he was doing me and agreed.