Hitmaker Page 3

  Chest out!

  Stomach in!

  No matter how rigid I was standing at brace position, the guy would always have a frown or a comment. The worst part was I always seemed to give him an opening. In those first few weeks, I could never figure out how to spit-shine my shoes to a high gloss.

  Get back and shine those shoes!

  Forget fun and fries after school at the diner. Now, there were hours of marching drills.

  I had only a few fleeting moments of comfort at Farragut Academy. There was a music class where I learned to play the upright bass. There was the sight of my name on envelopes in the handwriting of my girlfriend—and the reading and rereading of the aching love letters inside. And there was the sound of seagulls coming through the little transistor radio hidden under my pillow at night, telling me the Tymes were about to sing “So Much in Love,” one of the great love songs of all time—but more than that, those seagulls meant freedom. No matter where on earth you were, that song could magically put you and your sweetheart barefoot on the beach. As the last notes faded away there’d be tears in my eyes—and cold reality in front of me. I was miles from my girlfriend, and marching drills were only a few hours away.

  After only a month at Farragut, I couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m getting out of here,” I told another student. “You wanna come with me?” He said he was in. It wasn’t like the campus was barbed-wired, but the escape took on big-time proportions. It felt a little like The Shawshank Redemption. We left with the lights out. But the other guy got scared along the way and turned back. “See you later, man,” I said, and just kept running. I didn’t stop for miles until I was in town.

  I went to the Greyhound Station and got on a bus to New York City, then I called Mary Ann and took a train to Westchester. She and Joe picked me up, spent hours convincing me to return, then drove me to the academy in the middle of the night. I was back by six in the morning. I don’t remember being caught or getting in any trouble. Didn’t matter, when the bugle sounded that morning the upperclassman from Staten Island woke up smiling with the thought that the sun had come up shining on another day to bust my balls.

  Some of the more experienced guys taught me the secret to making my shoes shine like they were patent leather, so after a while the upperclassman could no longer complain about that. Didn’t matter. When he didn’t have a reason to torment me, he invented one.

  One day he ordered all the underclassmen at my cafeteria table to cross their arms six inches apart. After a while, he said: “Everybody put his arms down except Mottola.”

  I kept my arms up for about five more minutes and then one of them got tired and sagged just a little. The son of a bitch took a spoon and smashed it into my elbow—right into my funny bone. The force went through me like a shock and I totally snapped. I leaped out of my seat, got behind him, grabbed him by the throat, and pulled him back so hard that his chair flipped out from under him and over as he went down. I jumped on him and whaled away, just beat the shit out of him until the other cadets stepped in and pulled me off.

  I’ll bet nobody in the history of Farragut Academy was ever so happy to do hours of extra marching drills. My punishment was totally worth it. That guy never stopped hating and resenting me. But he never bothered me again.

  It was time to get the hell out of there. I escaped again at the beginning of December. I got to Mary Ann’s house and my parents came over.

  “I don’t care what you do,” I told them. “I’m not going back. I will not go back there.”

  That was how I learned to make a deal. Basically, I just said no. If you can say no, you control the negotiation.

  Okay, my parents said, we’ll let you come home. But you have to finish high school at Iona Prep. No more talk about going to New Rochelle High.

  Oh, man, I felt like I had just parted the waters. “Fine,” I said, “just take me back home.” I didn’t get everything I wanted, but it was a good deal. It taught me that both parties have to walk away feeling like they got something.

  I came home to another great Christmas. Not long after that my parents gave me my guitars back.

  VOICES

  RONNY PARLATO

  Longtime friend and builder

  There I was, five years old, maybe five and a half. And Tommy is three, maybe three and a half. And he told me to climb over the fence because he was going to show me how to start up that bulldozer.

  We went over there, and he knew where the key was and everything. He started it up and began to drive. I got so scared, I jumped off and ran home. That was the start of our relationship—the younger guy being in charge of the older guy.

  Tommy knows how to draw people in. He knows whom to hire. He knows how to delegate what he wants them to do. And that was his masterful dynamic at Sony that turned a company that was purchased for $2 billion into a company that at one point was worth $14 billion.

  JOE PESCI

  In the case of Tommy, and even somebody like myself, growing up in the neighborhood you get a great street sense and you learn how to manipulate. You know how to talk to people. And you know where people are coming from when they talk to you. You know what’s on the guy’s mind right away. You know where to go, how to approach them, things like that.

  Tommy knows how to treat people really well. I mean, he moved into a whole area of Spanish-speaking people. How do you account for that? You have to be some kind of smooth talker and operator to get in there.

  Nobody likes looking at scars. I have one that I couldn’t bear to look at for years. But when I look at it now I realize it changed my life.

  During my senior year of high school, I felt a pain in my stomach. My life could’ve been very different if I’d never felt that pain. You know how it goes. Change one day, and there’s a chance it’ll change the dynamic of every day that follows.

  If not for that pain, my career might’ve been delayed by a few years. Change the sequence of events, and maybe I’m not in an office at Chappell Music a few years later when Daryl Hall and John Oates first walk in. I was always driven to succeed. So maybe I would’ve gone on to run Sony Music in any case. We’ll never know. All I know is what did happen.

  The pain in my stomach was one of those turning points that lead to other turning points. It came in 1966, at a time when my life at home was balanced and beautiful. I was putting on my jacket and tie in the morning, going to Iona Prep, and getting good grades. I was making plans to go to college at Hofstra University on Long Island. My parents were happy about that. I no longer had to sneak out in their Caddy. On my sixteenth birthday, they bought me a 1966 turquoise GTO with 389 cubes, triple carburetors, and a four-on-the-floor Hurst shifter. We’re talking right out of American Graffiti. The only thing that car didn’t have was air-conditioning. I specifically ordered the car without it, because air-conditioning makes the engine overheat more quickly, and I wanted all the heat in that engine focused on going fast. No matter how much I drove that GTO, the white leather interior stayed showroom clean.

  As soon as my day at Iona ended, I headed home, took off the jacket and tie, changed into jeans, got behind the wheel of that GTO, and left skid marks for the College Diner. You’d find me at a booth by the window—in the spot closest to the miniature jukebox on the wall at the end of the table. Always. That seat wasn’t even up for discussion. I was in control of that jukebox. My buddies would crowd in, we’d order our french fries and cherry Cokes, and check out the parking lot for the hot cars coming in and the girls that might be stepping out of them. There was a whole strategy to timing the mood in the diner to just the right song on the jukebox. My hands would flip through the metal-backed menu of selections and I’d make the call. Might be “Under the Boardwalk” by the Drifters. Or “Stand By Me” by Ben E. King. If I wanted to get the attention of a particular girl coming by the table, I could always reach for the Duprees’ “You Belong to Me.” Sometimes I and my buddies would join in on “Hold On, I’m Comin’ ” as if we were Sam & Dave. Our joy in t
hat jukebox was boundless and infectious. The guys sitting in the booths around us would join in, and the next thing you knew half the diner would be throwing their heads back and wailing “When a Man Loves a Woman” from the depths of their souls. Percy Sledge, man. Those were the days.

  The nights were even better. Sometimes my buddies and I would start out at the Riviera Lounge in Yonkers just to hear Larry Chance and the Earls sing “I Believe” and “Remember Then.” From there, we’d drive over to Mamaroneck to see one of the greatest guitar players of all time at the Canada Lounge. His name was Linc Chamberland and he was the leader of an R & B horn band called the Orchids. You won’t find any mention of Linc when Rolling Stone magazine does a cover story listing their top hundred guitarists. Take it from me. In 1966, you never heard anything like Linc Chamberland.

  Not many people knew of Linc outside the Northeast. The Orchids put out only one album, entitled Twistin’ at the Roundtable with the Orchids, on a small label called Roulette Records. But if you pulled up to the Canada Lounge on a Friday or Saturday night, there was no disputing the uniqueness of his sound.

  Nobody else could even play Linc’s Fender Telecaster because of the way he tricked it out. I know because I took some guitar lessons with him and tried to emulate him any way I could. One of his techniques was to replace the E string, the bottom string, with a banjo A string that he bent to almost the top of the neck of his Telecaster. There was no way to bend a normal guitar string like that because the tension was too taut. But the banjo string was so thin that it allowed Linc to bend it and create his signature style of rhythm and blues. He pushed that sound out even further by hooking his guitar to an amplifier that was made for a bass, and, in fact, he used a double-stacked Fender Bassman amp. Going to hear Linc play rhythm and blues for the first time was like ordering a dish that you loved, but then having it prepared with an amazing spice that you’d never tasted. Nobody, nobody, nobody in this universe had a sound like Linc Chamberland’s.

  The Canada Lounge had room for about 150 people. But 250 people who understood exactly what was going on packed the place on a Friday night. Linc was not out front. He was behind the Orchids’ lead singer. The only way you can understand how much influence Linc Chamberland would soon have on the undercurrent of music was by knowing who was in the room.

  When you hear Dr. John sing “Right Place Wrong Time” and when you hear Freda Payne’s “Band of Gold,” you’re listening to the guitar of David Spinozza. David was at the Canada Lounge, listening and studying Linc, just like me. When you hear James Taylor’s “Walking Man,” the drums you hear are coming from Rick Marotta. When you hear Orleans’ “Still the One,” that’s Rick’s brother, Jerry, on drums. Listen to John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s album Double Fantasy, and you’re hearing the drums of Andy Newmark. All of us came to this little musical hot bed in Mamaroneck because of Linc and the Orchids. If you were lucky enough to be part of this brotherhood, you were connected and influenced by this music for the rest of your life.

  What a scene it was. I’d be looking like Sal Mineo in Rebel without a Cause and ordering these horribly sweet Sloe Gin Fizzes from the bar with the little umbrella poking out the top of the glass. If I had one of those drinks today, I’d probably vomit. But back then it was part of the religious experience. The drinking age in New York was eighteen back then, and it was always cool to look old enough to drink when you weren’t.

  Linc would be dressed in a sharp suit with an open collar, and he’d have a great rhythm section and big band of horns behind him. The Orchids were all about great musicianship rather than crazy gyrations. Linc stood tall and proud as a master of his craft, and when he started playing I’d be locked into his every lick. I know I’m going on and on, but I just can’t convey how powerful this music was and, like Elvis, the influence it had on me. When Linc Chamberland was playing I didn’t even notice the women around me.

  And if you can believe it, sometimes life got even better. I might drive my GTO over to McDonald’s on Boston Post Road in Mamaroneck, where the parking lot looked like a drive-thru for drag racing instead of hamburgers. All it took was a challenge and everyone would head over to a quarter-mile stretch of Mamaroneck Avenue. One guy would go down the road to the finish line to declare the winner, while another would stand between the two cars in the hole and raise his arms for the start. When the arms came down the tires squealed.

  Nobody could ever beat this guy called Superman in his red 396 Chevelle with a single four-barrel carb. Nobody. So I went to this hot mechanic who bored and stroked my engine and then installed a Crane roller camshaft. I put on headers, which allowed the exhaust to flow more freely, and finished the job off with cheater slicks, racing tires that were modified to make them street legal. Took two weeks to get the job done. And when it was I pulled into McDonald’s looking for Superman.

  Superman had this big, confident smile on his face. You know, that look that said, How many lessons do I have to teach you guys? But everyone in the parking lot came to Mamaroneck Avenue to watch. In the hole, I could see Superman listening to my engine, and his face had a very different expression. This time it was Something’s going on here.

  The arms dropped. I popped the clutch, my slicks dug in, and there was so much power in my engine that the front tires actually came off the ground a few inches and I popped a wheelie. Superman was ahead of me by second gear, but when I threw it into third I pulled two car lengths in front of him, and by fourth gear he was eating my dust.

  Superman got out of his car. “Yo, man! What you got in there? What you got in there?”

  I played it smug. “Just running some slicks, that’s about it.”

  “Nobody beats me. Nobody!”

  The word traveled faster than the GTO. “Mottola blew Superman’s doors in!” People wanted to see the GTO; they’d come by just to listen to the engine and try to figure out what I’d done to it. I eventually told everyone… eventually.

  Beautiful, beautiful days. The future seemed like a cloudless blue sky. Sometimes I’d get in that car and drive through Westchester’s most exclusive neighborhoods and dream. There was this one beautiful brick mansion in Rye on the Westchester Country Club grounds that just kept tugging at me, just kept pulling me back. One day, I swore to myself, One day I’m gonna own that house. It was a dream, yeah, but it was as real to me as my seat next to the jukebox at the College Diner. Which meant that it, too, was not up for discussion.

  When the world seems sweeter than a Sloe Gin Fizz, you’d better be careful. A sucker punch may be coming your way. I was completely blindsided by this strange pain that showed up in my stomach one afternoon during my senior year.

  I figured I’d eaten something bad at lunch and paid no attention to it. But as time passed, there was no avoiding it. The pain became sharper and sharper. By six o’clock, it doubled me over.

  My father drove me straight to New Rochelle Hospital. The next thing I knew I was on my back getting rushed through the corridors on a gurney to X-ray. The doctors’ and nurses’ expressions only made it worse. They looked like they didn’t have a clue what was wrong. Then, all of a sudden, a doctor was talking to me. His words were all white noise blurred by pain. But I got the message: they were going to put me out, and then cut me open to figure out what the hell was going on.

  I’m not sure if I replied. If I did, it must’ve been something like: “Hey, whatever you gotta do. Just get rid of this pain.”

  The next thing I remember is my mother standing over me with happy tears in her eyes. My whole family was hovering over my bed in the recovery room. They’d all been waiting for me to wake up. The surgeons had made a huge exploratory gash in my stomach. They figured out it was my appendix that had to go, and they cut it out just before it was about to explode.

  The scar that it left behind freaked me out, and my parents were far more affected by it than I was. It wasn’t hard to see what was rolling around in their minds. If my father hadn’t gotten me to the hospital in time, th
ey’d have been looking at me in a coffin.

  After the operation, I remained in the hospital for a few days, and about a month later, once the doctors had gotten me stabilized and I was feeling okay, my parents took me to South Florida to fully recuperate.

  Better medicine could not have been prescribed. We stayed at our old favorite, The Castaways, once the hottest place in North Miami Beach. It was built by Teamsters’ pension funds, if you know what I mean, for the type of guys who wanted a taste of the exotic but would never think of making a trip to Tahiti. There were waterfalls, tiki-style houses, lamps with flames. Just waking up and heading to the pool on the ocean was intoxicating. The air was filled with a blend of rum from the tiki bar, Coppertone suntan lotion, and salt air. Beautiful girls were all around in Capri pants, high heels, and Cross Your Heart bras. They were coming out of the pool in their bikinis on those little metal ladders—headlights first. A jukebox by the outdoor bar between the pool and the beach was loaded with incredible music. But everybody who put a quarter in seemed to punch in the same song: “Summer Wind” by Frank Sinatra.

  I remember closing my eyes and seeing an image of Frank performing live just a few years before in the Boom Boom Room at the Fontainebleau Hotel. I saw him give a nod to the orchestra, and that command brought them in with a downbeat.

  I opened my eyes, and to my right at the tiki bar was this stunning girl with dark hair, and I knew I was no longer in a trance. She was real. She was not a 10. She was a 20. Every guy was trying to catch her attention. I got up, walked over to her, and asked her out to dinner. She said yes. It was like a fantasy. At dinner, I leaned over and whispered in her ear: “Hey, it’s so beautiful out. Why don’t we get a blanket and sleep on the beach?” She smiled and nodded yes. The next morning I woke up completely bitten by sand fleas. Every single bite was worth it. I’d say it was a dream come true, but I couldn’t have dreamed it up.