Bette Midler Read online

“She was overwhelming. I couldn’t believe that a young person like her could not only understand those old musical styles so well but capture the flavor of the periods and make them a part of herself. It was the wittiest musical performance I’d ever seen. It was striking to see such innate elegance and good taste in someone who superficially appeared not to have elegance or good taste. You know, she never EMBARRASSED onstage” (4).

  So much for taste and elegance—Ertegun was blown away by what he saw on the stage at Downstairs at the Upstairs that night. “I went to her dressing room after her show and said, ‘Listen, I’m Ahmet Ertegun from Atlantic Records, and I would like to sign you.’ She said, ‘That’s it! That’s what I’ve been waiting for.’ I signed her the next day” (40). It wasn’t long afterward that she went into the studio to begin to record the album that would let the whole world know about the outrageous redhead who began in the Baths.

  The gig at Downstairs at the Upstairs was truly the one that was the charm. In the October 3, 1971, issue of the New York Times, Bette received her first major review. Written by John S. Wilson, it really captured her strengths and her weak points at that time. Wilson admitted, “She has presence, she has a fine voice, she has wit and total mobility, including an unusually expressive face.” However, with all of her divergent musical styles, he felt “she never clarifies what she is trying to do.” In spite of that, he pointed out that, his opinion notwithstanding, “The night I saw her, the audience had no doubts; they thought she was absolutely wonderful” (41).

  Ahmet Ertegun couldn’t wait to get her into the recording studio, but what was he going to do with her when he got her there? Ballads? Boogie-woogie? Rock & roll? Early sixties girl-group pop? “She posed a great problem,” he admitted, “because she didn’t fit into any categories; it’s very hard to make a record that doesn’t fit into any categories, it’s very hard to make a record that doesn’t fit into any category and then find an audience. Also, it was obvious that a lot of her appeal was her onstage magic. So there were lots of different theories as to what to do with her, and her first album was a compromise between people tearing her in different directions” (4).

  Atlantic Records was not only the label that Bette’s idol Aretha Franklin currently recorded for; it was also the home of one of the music industry’s newest success stories: Roberta Flack. Roberta had been singing in a Washington, D.C., jazz club and had become a local sensation. She was signed to Atlantic and put into the recording studio with a producer who was working for the label: Joel Dorn. Dorn’s success with Roberta’s first albums, and his ability to recapture the intimate magic that existed between Flack and her audience at the Bohemian Caverns in D.C., made him seem the ideal person to turn the diva of the Continental Baths into a recording star.

  Joel Dorn was the perfect producer for Roberta Flack. The song “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” brilliantly illustrates this fact. At the time Roberta was projecting the image of a very focused jazz and ballad singer who accompanied herself on the piano. Dorn was great at showing off Flack and her music and its delicate and intricate sound. While several songs in Bette’s repertoire were heartfelt ballads, there was nothing intricate or delicate about her sound, her music, or her appeal.

  Barry Manilow felt that since it was he who had polished Bette’s stage act and done all of her arrangements, he should also be given a chance at producing her in the studio. He was quite disappointed when he learned that Dorn had been selected as Bette’s producer.

  “Bette’s first album was the most painful experience of my life,” remembers Manilow. “They never wanted me to produce it. They got Joel Dorn, a fantastic producer who unfortunately did not know her well enough. I was called in at the very beginning, to lay down the basic arrangements, and they said, ‘Thank you very much. Good-bye.’ So I left. I was very mad, but I left. It was Bette’s first time out, so she didn’t know what to do. I said, ‘Bette, how could you let me leave?’ But she was scared” (38).

  After that, Barry was always looking out for his opportunity to make his own mark in the music business. He wanted to write and to produce his own material, and he was going to find a way to market himself. “It was a case of two strong egos clashing,” he recalls (38). And so, in the fall of 1971, Bette began recording her debut album with Joel Dorn at the helm.

  In February of 1972 Bette returned to the Continental Baths for what she thought would be her final engagement there. Rex Reed joked in the Sunday New York Daily News that Bette at the Baths had given “more farewell appearances . . . than soprano Kirsten Flagstad ever made at the old Metropolitan Opera House” (33).

  “Gawd, I don’t know how long I’ve been there. It seems like forever,” commented Bette during that run at the Continental. “But they are loyal. Loy-a-al! I played more glamorous places than a steam bath. I had a two-week booking at the Downstairs at the Upstairs, and the guy who owned the joint was in love with me. What he really loved was my fans. They came in droves and practically stood on tables cheering. My two-week gig turned into ten weeks. Listen, you think the Baths is the pits? Next week I’m playing Raleigh, North Carolina, in a place called the Frog and the Nightgown. Who do you think lives there?” (33).

  After having her as a guest on The Tonight Show on several different occasions, Johnny Carson asked Bette to be his opening act during his upcoming engagement at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas. The Divine Miss M, in the town where even the sunshine is artificial? Naturally, she accepted.

  As she explained it, “He asked me to open his show in Vegas for him and I was pleased to do it for him because he had been very good to me. Really good. The more consistent I became, the more he warmed up to me. I like working for him. He’s a professional with an astonishing kind of professionalism. He’s ‘up’ every night. He gives the same-caliber performance every night” (25).

  So, in April of 1972, Bette opened for Johnny at the Sahara Hotel in the Congo Room, which she kept referring to as the “Congoleum” Room. According to her, “Vegas was amazing. You have to see it once before you die. It’s culture shock. Not my style. Everyone wears wigs. It’s a heavy wig town. I got real good reviews, but I had lots of trouble dealing with the audience. I have to have love from an audience. When I feel warmth, then I’m warm. They just didn’t know what to make of me. They didn’t understand why they had left the gambling tables. Las Vegas—puh-leeze! Honey, I hated it, but it was an experience, you know” (25). In her put-downs, she snidely referred to Las Vegas as “Lost Wages.”

  In May of 1972 she played the Bitter End on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, and she returned to Chicago for a third engagement at Mr. Kelly’s. Her next gig in New York City was the big enchilada: Carnegie Hall. “Another first,” she said in anticipation of the date. “The first time anyone has ever played the revered Halls of Carnegie without having made it big on records. From the steam baths, straight to Carnegie Hall. Can you dig it?” (33).

  This really had to be special. Miss M had to pull out all the stops this time. At this point she was commanding $1,500 a night in clubs across the country, but she had to pay the band as well. Nevertheless, she felt that she needed to scrape together enough money for her own background singers. She had once announced on The Tonight Show that she always dreamed of having backup girls, and she wanted to call her act “Bette & the Bang-Bangs.” Instead, she hired three girls and dubbed them the Harlettes.

  As she explained the selection process: “I called up my friends who sing and I had them all down and we sang together. I wanted to pick up people who I could really get along with” (25).

  The first girl Bette asked about possibly singing backup in her Carnegie Hall debut was a singer she knew from the showcase club scene: Melissa Manchester. Melissa was interested in discussing the opportunity and suggested a friend of hers named Gail Kantor. Bette, Melissa, and Gail finalized the deal over lunch at Wolf’s Delicatessen on Sixth Avenue and Fifty-Seventh Street, on the block north of Carnegie Hall. A third girl, Merle Miller, w
as suggested by Barry Manilow. Although they all had aspirations of becoming lead singers on their own, a Carnegie Hall gig was a Carnegie Hall gig and quite prestigious. Naturally, they accepted, and so were born the first in what is now a long series of Harlettes.

  Carnegie Hall is the type of place that can be booked without the aid of a booking agent, and that’s exactly what Bette and Barry did. Never in their wildest dreams did they think that they could sell it out, but they did. Bette’s devoted fans from the Continental Baths came out in droves, and the evening was a smash, even though Bette later admitted that she was “terrified” of failure. The concert date was June 23, 1972.

  Because of stipulations with the musicians’ union contracts at Carnegie Hall, the use of personal tape recorders was strictly forbidden. However, since Barry was Bette’s musical director, he figured that he would simply make his own cassette tape from the stage. He was very surprised to be told that he was forbidden to tape any part of it. Later that day the hall’s soundman—who had a little sideline going for himself—offered to run a “bootleg” tape off the master soundboard, on the sly. Manilow agreed and paid the man $275 for a reel-to-reel copy of the show.

  Among the songs that Bette performed in Carnegie Hall were her at-this-point traditional opening number, “Friends”; Bessie Smith’s raunchy “Empty Bed Blues”; Helen Morgan’s “Something to Remember You By”; and Dorothy Lamour’s “Moon of Manakoora.” The Dixie Cups’ hit “Chapel of Love” closed the show, and as the encore she sang Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released.” The concert was a roaring success, and everyone who saw it knew that Bette Midler was something more than a flash in the pan—or rather . . . a flash in the tubs.

  In the 1970s, Schaffer Beer Company sponsored an annual summer music festival in Central Park in the Wollman Skating Rink. And the opening act that night was her friend Moogy Klingman. As he explains it, “She did the Carson show, and she became really big really fast. It was like mostly a gay following in New York City. The thing that happened was that I had my first album come out, I guess around the same time as hers. It was called Mark “Moogy” Klingman, I was on Capitol Records, she was on Atlantic. Anyway, somehow I got to open for her, at the Schaffer Music Festival. No one really knew that I was the guy that wrote songs. I was playing with my band, and we were playing some heavy instrumental stuff, some jazz, some blues, some rock. It was like almost like a cross between Chick Corea and the Meters. I was singing like bluesy songs, and everyone was there to hear the biggest phenomenon in America—Bette Midler. They couldn’t have cared less: we were totally bombing with this audience! This was like the climax of our tour to play with Bette Midler at the Schaffer Music Festival. People wouldn’t even applaud after the end of our songs. Then during one of our climactic songs, a guy in like a jockstrap with clothespins on his nipples, and stuff in his hair—ran down the aisles. He started at the front row, and he ran down the aisle to the back and it was still light out. So he was really weird looking, and everybody in the audience got up and turned around to look at the guy. So we’re doing the climax to our song, and the whole audience stands up and turns their backs to us” (36).

  “We went backstage, and it was the end of the tour, and the album hadn’t sold and Bette Midler went on stage and it was like the biggest celebration of a superstar. People were just going insane. That was the end of my band right there. I couldn’t hold it together. I said, ‘Look at how great she is doing, and how lousy we went over, let’s break this thing up.’ It was a bad circumstance. Like, my manager shouldn’t have booked us with her. We had nothing to do with her music, even though I co-wrote her theme song. I mean, she went out and she opened with ‘Friends,’ and they went insane. Now here I was, the co-writer of ‘Friends,’ and they didn’t even know who the fuck I was, and didn’t even applaud for me” (36). With that, Klingman decided to disband his group and go back to the drawing board.

  However, for Midler, it was a night of total triumph. According to Bette, the Schaffer Music Festival outdoor concert that night—August 16, 1972—was one of her finest hours. “I thought I was in a newsreel. It was like the Marilyn Monroe newsreel, you know, when she was in Korea; it was just exactly what I thought I was. It was the happiest I’ve ever been in my whole life. I was wonderful!” she added modestly (11).

  With her first set of Harlettes, Bette began her tradition of making them the butt of her bitingly sarcastic onstage humor. “I guess you’re wondering, ‘Who are those cocktail waitresses up there with Miss M anyway?’ ” she would ask. “They’re my girl singing group, the Harlettes . . . they’re real sluts!” (25).

  In September, Bette played at Mr. Kelly’s in Chicago for the fourth time. This was a two-week engagement. For the first week it was her and the band, but for the second week she brought in Melissa, Gail, and Merle—who were also fondly referred to as “MGM.”

  At this point in her career, Bette was being “managed” and booked by a company called Artists Entertainment Complex (AEC). She had signed with AEC after her one-year contract with Bud Friedman lapsed and Friedman had exhausted all of his big contacts to assist her career. However, by the summer of 1972 AEC was trying to talk her into signing a deal as a lounge act at one of the big Las Vegas hotels for a large amount of money. With that plan afoot, Bette realized that AEC had no concept of what she was all about. Unbeknownst to her—at first—one of her biggest followers over the past years was a very aggressive promoter/manager named Aaron Russo. Russo was madly infatuated with Bette, and he approached her and told her that he could turn her into a hot property. Bette toyed with the idea, but informed him that she didn’t want to be just another singing star. She looked him squarely in the eyes and told him that he could manage her if he accomplished the task she most desired: “Make me a legend!” (42).

  Not only was Russo a man who loved a challenge, many felt he was also one of the most universally disliked people in the business. Ahmet Ertegun was among the most vocal in his opposition to the installment of Russo as Bette’s manager. But she was determined to become “a legend,” and she believed in Russo’s devotion to her. She dumped AEC and hired Aaron.

  According to her during this era, “We met, and it was instant love and devotion. Ours is a long and interesting tale . . . ah, Aaron and Bette. There’s a great deal of love and terrible rows. He’s a lot like my father. He’s a bellower and in that way he intimidates people, but he’s a real softie underneath. But that’s what my mother says about my father, and I don’t believe it” (14).

  One of the most discussed myths about their relationship during their six and a half years together as manager and client was that they were lovers throughout this time period. Aaron repeatedly spoke of their intense personal relationship. In 1979, when she had fired him, Bette reported bitterly in Rolling Stone magazine: “What do you think he’s going to say? That I schtupped him once and threw him out because he wasn’t good enough? That wasn’t the way it was, of course, but he has his pride” (13).

  With regard to the “Make me a legend” statement, Bette admits, “I said exactly that. I was half joking and half desperate. And what I meant was that I didn’t want to be just another chick singer. I don’t want to go to Vegas and wind up singing other people’s stuff. That was like throwing down the gauntlet, dearie. His eyes just lit up!” (13).

  In a very real sense, Russo did make Bette a legend in the business. He also alienated just about all of her friends. Insiders allege that when Aaron Russo came onto the scene, he systematically got rid of everyone who had been with Bette before, because he wanted exclusive control of her career.

  Meanwhile, during all of this activity, and between various other club dates across the country (including two weeks at the Princess Hotel in Bermuda), Bette was recording her first album. By June of 1972 it was clear to several people that the recording sessions with Joel Dorn weren’t going as excitingly as expected. Bette had recorded well over a dozen songs with Dorn, and several of them were totally rejected for rel
ease by Atlantic Records. Everyone was beginning to panic.

  Manilow recalls that the songs that Dorn cut with Bette were stiff and lifeless. Speaking of Dorn’s recordings with Roberta Flack, Barry claimed, “Roberta Flack’s records were sooo tasteful, they really were. Delicate as crystal, cool as a cucumber, controlled, serious—everything Bette wasn’t. It made no sense to me that she’d picked him” (43).

  Manilow was secretly hurt and disappointed that—other than surrendering a couple of musical arrangements to Dorn—he hadn’t been asked to contribute his talents to Bette’s recording career. However, he was about to seize the opportunity to change that. According to Barry, “Just at that time, we did a concert at Carnegie Hall. I managed to get a bootleg tape of it and played it for Bette” (38).

  As Barry later explained, he talked to Bette on the phone, and she was depressed. When he asked what was wrong, she informed him that she was upset over the way her recordings were going. Ahmet Ertegun was especially unhappy with everything that Joel Dorn had recorded with her. And she had to confess that she didn’t like what she heard either. Barry invited her over to his apartment, because he had something that he wanted her to hear. When she arrived, he sat her down in a comfortable recliner chair and handed her a marijuana joint and a glass of wine. Then he put a pair of headphones on her, and let her experience what the audience had heard that magical evening at Carnegie Hall. She had the same reaction: This was the kind of energy that was missing from the tracks that Joel Dorn had recorded with her.

  “She just freaked out,” Manilow claims. Bette instructed Barry to phone Ahmet and to set up a meeting for him to listen to the concert tape. Barry went over to Ertegun’s office in Columbus Circle and played him the tape. According to him, “Then Ahmet Ertegun heard it and said, ‘Yes. That’s what’s missing from the album. Can you fix it?’ And I said I’d try. We went back to the recording studio and ended up redoing nine songs. The album came out: half produced by me and half by Joel Dorn” (38).