B005S8O7YE EBOK (16 page)

“Ahhhhhhhhhh!”

If you’re unfamiliar with “Good Vibrations,” that moment alone is worth the download, which you will of course be paying for.

Brian and I agreed in 2000 to leave it to our respective fans to resolve the “first use” question. “After all,” he said, “fans know a lot more about our lives than we do.” We did know enough in 2000 to affirm how grateful we were to be alive and reasonably well after all our generation had been through. Just then a production assistant came to bring me onstage with James to perform
“Shower the People,”
after which I inducted James.

Old rock and rollers never die. We just lose track of time.

In 1966 Gerry and I were twenty-seven and twenty-four. As the Vietnam War escalated, so did our involvement with the Myddle Class and their age group. Sometimes we joined our younger friends on peace marches. When we didn’t have a babysitter, we brought our children with us. We continued to write enough hit songs to cover our mortgage, household expenses, and Willa Mae, whose presence in our home gave me the freedom to hang out with younger people and act like the eighteen-year-old I’d never had a chance to be. Gerry was increasingly experimenting with hallucinogenics with Aronowitz and his friends in New York, who justified such experimentation on intellectual grounds. People who expanded their consciousness were celebrated by pop culture, the intelligentsia, and the coastal news media as bold, daring, and on the cutting edge. In reality, such explorations were mostly unscientific with no built-in controls.

Such were the times in the mid-sixties, when Americans were polarized generationally, culturally, and politically. I wasn’t as extreme as Gerry and Aronowitz, but I, too, was finding it difficult to reconcile my association with the corporate music industry with my self-identification with those who were contemptuous of the Establishment. People who made statements against government policies ran the risk of becoming targets of investigation by the FBI, and indeed, the antiwar activist David Harris, then married to Joan Baez, was imprisoned for draft evasion. Others expressed dissent through fashion, music, theater, or art. This made for very colorful times. The
Austin Powers
films would later put a comedic slant on the sixties, but at the time we were dead serious. The generation with which I identified was trying to stop a runaway war in a faraway land that was killing our young men as quickly as they could be impressed into service.

Ending the Vietnam War and the draft was a unifying goal for a lot of young Americans, some of whom served, though many didn’t. Some men served reluctantly because they couldn’t afford the college tuition that would have exempted them from the draft. But a considerable number willingly volunteered. Among those fortunate enough to return home from Vietnam were veterans who were proud of their service, who couldn’t understand why they were being vilified. Extreme antiwar opponents were misdirecting their anger at the very Americans who had sacrificed the most. Gerry and I were united in our understanding of that distinction, and we were united professionally in speaking to and for our generation through our songs. But personally, we were falling apart.

Our family was under a tremendous strain. In addition to taking psychedelics with Aronowitz and hardly ever being home, Gerry was struggling with what we now call bipolar disorder. I sought relief by going to clubs, concerts, and other activities more
appropriate for a younger single woman. Our daughters’ yearnings were much less complicated. All they wanted was a loving, stable family with two caring parents at home. But with all the turmoil within and outside our family, the end of Gerry’s and my marriage was almost inevitable.

I clung desperately to the filament of hope in the word “almost.”

I
n 1967, when Jerry Wexler offered to sign me as a recording artist with Atlantic, my first question was, “Can Gerry produce me?”

“Sure.”

“You know I’m a songwriter, not a performer. And I have kids, so I’m not willing to go out and promo—”

Wexler was chuckling.

“You think I don’t know that? Talk to Gerry and let me know what you want to do.”

As I drove toward the Lincoln Tunnel pondering this incentive for Gerry, I thought, What if we moved to the city? Next thing I knew I was heading down Ninth Avenue to the coolest place I knew: Greenwich Village. First I found a parking space. Then I walked among resident families with young children who appeared to be thriving. Then I began to look for a home. All I could find were cramped apartments and brownstones with concrete yards near crowded schools close to parks inhabited at night by drug dealers. Still I kept looking, hanging on to that filament,
and hoping the combination of a move to the city and a producing deal could save our marriage.

It didn’t.

When Gerry told me he was going to move to California without me, I didn’t break down until he walked out the door. I didn’t know I had that many tears. Since the disintegration of my family of origin I had dreamed of that mythical man with whom I would have four beautiful, healthy children, live in a big cheery house, and spend the rest of our lives as a happily-ever-after family. I had invested Gerry, our children, and the house on Waddington Avenue with storybook dreams and a fairy-tale ending. Waves of despair crashed around me as all those hopes and dreams were dashed on the rocks of our failed marriage. But I had no time to dwell on dashed hopes and tears. For both emotional and financial reasons, I couldn’t stay in the house in West Orange. I would rent a place, if not in the Village, then somewhere in the city. I wasn’t going to be any less cool than Gerry.

I found a brownstone I liked on East 10th Street near University Place at the edge of Greenwich Village and was wondering if I could afford it when we got an offer on our house. Because the buyers wanted to move in as soon as possible, I rented a garden apartment near Waddington Avenue so the girls wouldn’t have to change schools. There was so much to do. I had furniture to dispose of and personal effects to pack. With the children at my mother’s, somehow I got through those heartbreaking tasks.

I stood in the foyer and faced my last moments alone in what used to be our home. My sadness deepened as I walked through the empty rooms and saw the bare carpets with depressions where the furniture had been and faded rectangular areas on the walls where photographs and paintings had hung. The mural on the landing upstairs was a scene of his native Italy painted by a local artist we knew only as Mr. Cellini. The mural would remain with
the house, and so would the wall of built-in closets in the master bedroom and the drawers on both sides of the bed that had contained the state-of-the-art hi-fi components on which Gerry listened at earsplitting volume to the rough mixes he brought home from the studio.

As I stood on the Yves Klein Blue carpet in the master bedroom I recalled the disbelief and grief I’d felt watching reports of President Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963. I remembered seeing Walter Cronkite lose control of his emotions when he delivered the news that the president had died; the shock of watching Jack Ruby shoot Kennedy’s alleged killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, live on television before millions of equally stunned viewers; and the poignancy of three-year-old John Kennedy Jr. saluting his father’s flag-draped coffin as it passed slowly before him. I had been informed and entertained through the black-and-white television in its carefully measured space in the wall of closets that now held nothing belonging to my family except the history we were leaving behind. That bedroom would be my answer to the question members of my generation would ask each other for years afterwards:

“Where were
you
when Kennedy was shot?”

I wouldn’t miss the living room that we’d never used because the furniture was too posh to sit on, or the costly curtains and drapes that had been custom-made for the windows of that particular house. But I would miss the Thanksgiving dinners I had cooked in the kitchen and served in the dining room in an uncharacteristic annual display of culinary domesticity. I’d miss the giggles and whispers of sisterly play emanating from the girls’ rooms. I’d miss the family room, the hideous red room, and the swings and the slide that had delivered Louise, Sherry, and their friends to a safe landing in the railroad-tie sandbox.

And where was my husband, my first grown-up love, my writing
partner, my daughters’ father? Where was my Gerry, who, when he was home, spent more time in the Eames chair in our bedroom than anywhere else in the house, sitting, thinking, absently stroking his beard?

I was about to open the front door to leave when I had the impulse to take one last look at the kitchen. All that remained of the Goffin family in that room were a few empty cartons on the floor where the Saarinen dining table had been. How anticlimactic, I thought with a catch in my throat. I walked through the foyer, opened the front door, stepped outside into the bright, sunny day, and immediately resented the weather for not mirroring my sense of loss. My sense of humor nudged me in the ribs.

You’re resenting the weather? That’s pathetic.

A wry smile came as I closed the door behind me. I turned and rang the doorbell. From inside the foyer came the familiar melody: do do mi mi re re re do.

Still out of rhythm.

Now I had some big decisions to make. Assuming I could afford it, the house on East 10th Street would definitely work for the girls and Willa Mae, our dog, Lika, Telemachus the cat, and me. And with Jerry Wexler’s assurance that his offer didn’t depend on Gerry producing me, all the elements seemed to be lining up in favor of my moving to Greenwich Village. But something kept holding me back from making an offer on that house. It might have been the pull of all the music and media celebrating California. It might have been because I didn’t want to be left behind. But one thing above all compelled me to turn west. With Gerry moving to Los Angeles, there was no way I would deny my daughters proximity to their father.

In March 1968, Sherry, Louise, Lika, Telemachus, and I moved to California.

I
was on the East Coast in 1967 when the Monterey Pop Festival took place in Monterey, California. By the time Woodstock happened two years later in upstate New York, I had already moved to the West Coast. In the ensuing years, every time someone asked me where I had been for both events I was obliged to confess, yet again, that I had been on the wrong coast each time.

“Holy shit! You missed Monterey Pop
and
Woodstock??”

“Yes.”

Inevitably the response was, “Wow. Bummer!”

No kidding. But the real bummer was getting divorced from Gerry. When we separated he was twenty-nine and I was twenty-six. We’d been married for nine years. Though I was too upset to write with him, our conversations were civil enough that we could agree on some basic principles. We didn’t want our divorce to be ugly or bitter; we would divide our financial assets equally; and the girls would live with me under joint custody.

In practice, Gerry was free to see Sherry and Louise whenever he wanted, and vice versa, so our girls didn’t have to deal with the
additional hardship of their parents’ bickering over who got them when. But divorce at best is never without difficulty, especially for the children. On the other hand, if my daughters had been asked to compose a list entitled “What I Like About Living in California,” proximity to the beach, not having to wear multiple layers of clothing, and running around barefoot in March would have competed for first position.

The day after we took up residence on Wonderland Avenue I waited at the end of our driveway with the girls for the big yellow school bus that would take them to the Wonderland Avenue Elementary School. After they scampered on board, I watched the bus make its way down the street until it passed out of view. Involuntarily, I sighed deeply, inhaling my daughters’ trepidation and exhaling my own along with theirs. Then I turned, walked up the driveway, climbed into my newly leased black 1968 Mustang convertible, started the ignition, pushed the button that slowly lowered the top, and backed out of the driveway. As I drove down Wonderland, I was elated to see the tops of trees that would have been hidden by the fixed roof of a sedan. I turned right on Lookout Mountain, then waited at the light until I could fly down the canyon the way other drivers did. Released by the green, I turned right onto Laurel Canyon and reveled in the rush of wind blowing through my hair. Other drivers were cruising up and down the canyon without a specific destination, but I was going to the West Coast office of Screen Gems–Columbia Music, Inc.

Donnie had chosen Lester Sill to run Screen Gems–Columbia’s West Coast office. In 1952, when Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were starting to attract some notice in L.A., Lester had run their publishing office. More recently he had been the “Les” of Philles Records (Spector being the “Phil”) and the music supervisor of the Monkees’ movie,
Head
. Screen Gems–Columbia Music was a thriving publishing operation located—where else?—in Hollywood.
The building that housed it in no way resembled the corporate office building at 711 Fifth Avenue that I had come to know and loathe. The structure on the north side of Sunset Boulevard east of La Brea Avenue was three stories high with pink walls made of concrete blocks. Palm trees grew in front of a façade that resembled a car grille. After dealing for years with the expense and difficulty of parking a car in Manhattan, it was an unexpected gift to be able to drive into a free parking area where I had no trouble finding an unoccupied space. From the parking lot it was less than fifty steps to the lobby, where an elevator was waiting to transport me to the second floor.

When the elevator door opened, Lester was there to greet me. I felt comfortable with Lester partly because I had met him on previous trips and partly because he had the
haimishe
demeanor of a warm Jewish uncle. After proudly showing me around and introducing me to his staff, Lester brought me into his office and told me who was looking for material and what kind of song each artist was looking for. It was a detailed briefing by a capable, knowledgeable publisher, and it made me hopeful about my ability to continue to earn a living as a songwriter without Gerry. When it was time for me to leave, Lester walked me to the elevator and invited me to bring Louise and Sherry to his home for dinner that night.