I Wrote That One, Too . . .
Praise for Steve Dorff
“Heart, humor, and, above all, authenticity are part of the audible art created by Steve Dorff. His iconic songs are born in the center of his chest, where ‘clever’ never gets in the way of ‘touching’ . . . or ‘honest.’ From Kenny Rogers’s ‘Through the Years’ to Eddie Rabbitt’s ‘Every Which Way but Loose,’ Steve’s Grammy- and Emmy-winning work is an American treasure. I’m proud to call him friend. Enjoy his story.”
—PAUL WILLIAMS
“As many people are, I have always been a sucker for a good love song. Steve Dorff is a master of writing them, so it was a natural fit. I have recorded seven of his songs, one of which was ‘I Just Fall in Love Again,’ which was one of the biggest records of my career. I shall be forever grateful to Steve for sharing his talent with me.”
—ANNE MURRAY
“Whether it’s a movie score, a television theme song, or a hit song on the radio, Steve Dorff crafts music that is the background of our lives. I have been lucky enough to be one of the artists that Steve has chosen to sing his songs. From the upbeat ‘As Long as We Got Each Other’ from the hit television theme ‘Growing Pains’ to ‘We Almost Had It All,’ a song that describes a once-in-a-lifetime love that slips away, Steve Dorff remains one of the top musical influences of our day. I am so proud to have been able to work with such a creative writer and good friend.”
—B. J. THOMAS
Copyright © 2017 by Steve Dorff and Colette Freedman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.
Published in 2017 by Backbeat Books
An Imprint of Hal Leonard LLC
7777 West Bluemound Road
Milwaukee, WI 53213
Trade Book Division Editorial Offices
33 Plymouth St., Montclair, NJ 07042
Printed in the United States of America
Book design by Michael Kellner
All photos are from the author’s collection.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dorff, Steve. | Freedman, Colette.
Title: I wrote that one, too : a life in songwriting from Willie to Whitney /
Steve Dorff with Colette Freedman.
Description: Montclair, NJ : Backbeat Books, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017017452 | ISBN 9781495077296
Subjects: LCSH: Dorff, Steve. | Composers--United States--Biography.
Classification: LCC ML410.D79 A3 2017 | DDC 782.42164092 [B] --dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017017452
www.backbeatbooks.com
Andrew, your bright light will shine in my heart for all my days . . . I love you!
—STEVE DORFF
Devon, the world is yours to conquer.
—COLETTE FREEDMAN
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
1. Barbra Made Me Cry
2. What’s Wrong with Our Son?
3. Kicked Out of Music Class
4. Melissa Manchester Sang My First Demo
5. Heroes, Collaborators, and Advice
6. Knocking on Doors 1: Herb Bernstein
7. Pains Growing
8. Knocking on Doors 2: Bill Lowery
9. Knocking on Doors 3: Snuff Garrett
10. Burt and Burt
11. Whitney Houston
12. Dusty Springfield
13. Kenny Rogers Through the Years
14. From Snuff to Warners
15. Ringo Starr
16. Growing Pains
17. Reba
18. The Eighties Were a Good Decade
19. Céline Dion’s Miracle
20. Lunch
21. The Assistants
22. Damn Near Righteous
23. Pure Country
24. End Zone Suicide
25. Everyone Should Have a Larry
26. Nashville
27. I Just Fall in Love Again . . . and Again . . . and Again
28. Elvis
29. Michael Landon, Murphy Brown, and Dolly Parton
30. From Charles Manson to Fats Domino
31. Hold
32. My Own Best Publisher
33. Sherry, Nancy, and Mom
34. Broadway, Here I Come: The Josephine Baker Story
35. Evenings with Steve Dorff
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Andrew Marshall Dorff
Discography and Accolades
Photographs
Foreword
Do you like good music? Do you like good stories, and rare facts that you find nowhere else? Do you like love? Do you love life? Family and friends, heart and soul, treble clefs and bass clefs, piano, guitars and drums, horns and strings, Broadway, television, film, and radio? If you do, then we’re on the same page. Pun intended.
You don’t usually come across many people who offer all of those things and touch people’s lives on a daily basis. Be it through the speakers in your car, in your living room, on your television, or in a cinema on a Friday night, I’m quite sure you will be familiar with the music of Steve Dorff.
It’s all too often you hear the phrase, “You never want to meet your heroes,” because invariably, when you do, you’re disappointed. In this case, I did get to meet my hero at a very young age. He rocked me to sleep as a newborn. He taught me to catch and hit off a tee, and he coached my Little League teams. He helped me with my homework. As an adult, I don’t talk to anyone every single day but him. It’s music. It’s life. It’s love. It’s friends. It’s family.
Are you excited to skip this foreword and get started reading about this man yet? I would be if I were you . . . I can promise this: there is no “Backword” at the end of the book. Undoubtedly, I believe you will want to read these stories over and over again. To laugh again, to cry again, to feel that burst of inspiration again. My feelings won’t be hurt if you skip my foreword before the second read. I probably would as well.
I can promise you this . . . you will be on iTunes or YouTube by Chapter 3, discovering some rare musical gems that you will listen to for the rest of your life. You will be in awe of a New York–bred UGA alumni, a dog-loving, (recently-allergic-to) oyster-loving, dreamer and believer, people’s mentor, people’s friend. What you will learn, reading this book, is that it’s not just about music and songs; it’s about the underlying theme of everything that makes up the difficulties of life, and the challenges that arise from them. Learning to pick yourself up and dust yourself off, and learning to keep going strong.
It’s music. It’s life. It’s love. It’s friends. It’s family. It’s highs. It’s lows. It’s heart. It’s soul. It’s a rare genius of a man.
If you’re into inspiration and creativity, turn the pages, and read about the man I like to call my friend, and my dad . . . Steve Dorff.
Andrew Dorff
Nashville, Tennessee
November 10, 2016
Introduction
The story of my life can be summed up in one extraordinarily ordinary evening at the Sheraton Universal’s happy hour.
My friend Steve “Buck” Buckingham was in town, and he asked me if I could pop by the hotel, have a drink, and meet some people. That is always code for “please don’t make me entertain by myself. I need backup.”
Buck was my lifelong buddy, and the hotel was close to my house, so I drove
over to meet him. The place was packed. Buck and his group had commandeered a front table close to the band. It was a decent little three-piece combo with a female singer; they were playing covers for the happy-hour crowd.
Buck introduced me to three of his friends who weren’t in the music business, and about five minutes into our conversation, the band began to play a version of “I Just Fall in Love Again,” one of my songs, which had been recorded by the Carpenters, Dusty Springfield, and Anne Murray.
After they finished, Buck leaned over to the singer and said, “My buddy Steve here wrote that song you guys just did.”
Intrigued, she smiled and graciously told me how much she loved the song. People never know the guy behind the curtain, and it felt good to be called out. I thanked her for her kind words and went back to my drink and conversation.
The band immediately jumped into their next song. It was “I Cross My Heart,” one of my songs, which had been recorded by George Strait. As soon as the song was finished, Buck smiled and told the band, “Steve wrote that song as well.”
This time they nodded politely and exchanged a few awkward looks between them. They obviously thought we were fucking with them. Any hint of admiration or chance of me getting the singer’s phone number was gone.
As the band started to play the first few notes of their next song, I groaned. By sheer coincidence, it was “Through the Years.” When they finished the song, Buck was grinning ear to ear.
“He wrote that one, too!” he shouted.
It was true. It was one of my most successful songs, as recorded by Kenny Rogers.
At this point, I’m completely embarrassed; the band is convinced we are lying to them, and I am ready to get the hell out of there.
When they started to play the Beatles’ “Michelle” next, Buck yelled out, “Hey, this is amazing, he wrote that one, too.” Of course I hadn’t, but it was too funny for Buck to pass that one up. The band then took a short ten-minute break and the singer came by our table, leaned in and said, “You guys are so full of shit.”
She gave us a dirty look and walked off.
Driving home, I was chuckling to myself about the scenario, and then it hit me. Songwriters like me—who aren’t the performers who make these songs famous on the radio—are relatively unknown. I sometimes think the famed quote from The Wizard of Oz, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” was meant for songwriters like me. We are the invisibles, the men and women who write the soundtracks of people’s lives while often remaining completely anonymous to the public. Sure, the band knew that Lennon and McCartney wrote all of the Beatles’ songs, but they had no idea who wrote the Anne Murray, George Strait, or Kenny Rogers hits that they were playing.
If there’s a single word to describe my career’s journey, I suppose it would be “versatility.” This has been both a blessing and a curse: I have not been pigeonholed, but I also don’t fit neatly into any boxes, like most songwriters or composers. Writing music for songs, records, television, feature films, and theater, as well as arranging and producing for countless recording artists, has all added up to the reason why I was asked to write this book in the first place. Because why settle on just one thing, when you want to do many?
As a teenager who locked himself in his room for hours listening to records over and over, I always gravitated to composers and songwriters like Henry Mancini, Burt Bacharach, Dave Grusin, and John Barry. They were my musical heroes, and they were all extremely melodic composers who could do both orchestral scoring and write contemporary hit songs. I suppose it’s not any wonder that I ended up going in that direction as I set out to follow my dream.
What I hadn’t counted on in that dream was the occasional nightmare of discovering the discipline of picking myself up and dusting myself off from the weekly rejections and bitter disappointments that go hand in hand with the journey. It’s not an easy business, but if you love it and are good at it, if you are persistent and have a bit of luck, then it can be unbelievably rewarding.
Fortunately, the journey of my dream has been sprinkled with amazing excitement and successes: happy accidents in the studio, incredible friendships forged, tremendous creative satisfaction, and sometimes just plain being at the right place at the right time with the right song in hand.
It all adds up to fulfilling the dream I’ve had as far back as I can remember:
To write music.
I have intentionally decided not to tell my story in a linear fashion . . . as I believe artists don’t necessarily live from A to Z, and I didn’t want to tell my stories that way. Oftentimes, when there was a lull in my television scoring work, a movie project would pop up . . . and when movies went cold, theater projects or special opportunities would present themselves. The songwriting was always there, sort of the glue that kept the music within me flowing. Life’s ups and downs, twists and turns, joys and sorrows, were the constant inspiration for what I’ve been blessed to have written. My stories and recollections connect the dots in this little thing I call a career.
1
Barbra Made Me Cry
There are stars, there are megastars, and then there are Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, and the Beatles.
I did get a cut on Ringo. Frank Sinatra had put one of my songs on hold, but a hold and $1.95 will barely get you a tall coffee at Starbucks. One of the proudest moments of my life was when I was able to call up my mom and say, “Barbra Streisand is recording one of my songs!”
The first time I met Barbra was when I went to the studio to hear a mix of one of my songs, “Higher Ground.” Her executive producer, Jay Landers, had invited me down to Village Recorders in Santa Monica to have a listen and say hello. He told me that Barbra really cares about the songwriters and has always valued their opinions.
I got to the studio and was both excited and a bit nervous to meet her. I had been such a huge fan from the first moment I heard “People,” from Funny Girl. I am fairly certain I’ve seen that movie one hundred times, possibly more.
Jay and I met outside the control room. He gave me a few ground rules and then brought me in.
Meeting Barbra was like meeting royalty, only better, because she had perfect pitch and a three-plus-octave range.
I walked over to her, looked her directly in the eye, and told her how honored I was to meet her. Barbra couldn’t have been more beautiful and sweet in person. She told me how much she loved the song, and how it had been a bit of an ordeal to “get it just right.”
A little backstory . . . George Green, a talented lyricist from Indiana, and I had met over the phone through a mutual publisher friend. George, who had grown up with and written many hit songs with John Cougar Mellencamp, was looking to expand his catalog by writing with some new composers.
We spoke for about an hour during that first phone call. George was a soft-spoken poetic genius who liked to write lyrics first and have music written to them later. Having done this so many times with two of my longtime collaborators, Milton Brown and Marty Panzer, this was not going to be a problem. As he lived in Bloomington, Indiana, George asked if it would be okay to just fax me over things when he had some good song ideas. I told him I was excited to try to write one with him.
It was about two weeks later that I got a call from George. He had been asked by Tommy Mottola, the longtime manager of John Mellencamp, and now chairman of Sony Music, to write a meaningful song for a new artist on the label, Mariah Carey. George thought he had a “really nice lyric” that he wanted me to take a look at and hopefully want to write the music for.
Five minutes later, my fax machine started to print “Higher Ground.”
As I pulled the paper out of the fax machine and began to read, I got chills—enormous goose bumps that viscerally told me this was going to be a meaningful and great song. From the first line of the song, I was completely hooked, and by the time I had read it all the way through, I was startin
g to hear what the tune would eventually be. I didn’t leave my office until the song was completely written . . . about an hour later.
It is hard to explain, but the really good songs have always come fast for me. Always. The music has always just fallen out of the sky when I needed it most, and this was one of those times.
This song pretty much wrote itself.
I told George how excited I was about this song when I got him on the line. He was elated and a bit surprised that I liked it so much, and said he couldn’t wait to hear it. I booked a basic demo session two days later at my friend Bo Goldsen’s Criterion studio, where I had been doing most of my demos. The demo consisted of three of us: I played a Fender Rhodes, Dean Parks played acoustic guitar, and Susie Benson crushed the vocals. It was one of those rare, spectacular sessions where everything just perfectly flowed.
I sent it to George overnight, and he loved it. George sent it to Tommy for Mariah to hear. We waited a long, excruciating week until we finally heard back from Tommy, who told us that it was a “beautiful, beautiful song,” but not really right for the direction he wanted to take with Mariah. He went on to tell George that “this would be a monumental song for someone like Barbra Streisand,” and that we should get it to her.
It only took seven years, but somehow it eventually landed on Jay Landers’s desk and we had a shot.
Jay is a consummate “song man” and a great A&R person in the classic tradition of that position. He impeccably knows his every artist’s musical taste and how to create an entire album with song choices that flow beautifully together in a meaningful arc and are never disjointed. He’s also a tough customer when it comes to getting a song just right.
Jay called me and explained that he was putting together material for an “inspirational” album for Barbra, and that he thought “Higher Ground” would be a great song for her and the project. He also wanted to know if we would we consider changing a line or two of the lyric. I think George stuck to his guns on the opening line, but we did change another one for Jay.