Chapter Twenty-Three
Whenever I sang on a demo I usually tried to channel the vocal style of the artist for whom the song was intended. That’s what I did on the demo of “It Might as Well Rain Until September,” which Gerry and I had written for Bobby Vee. Even after Bobby recorded it, Donnie liked my demo so much that he released it on Dimension. I was no more interested in promoting the single than I’d been on previous labels, and I was unambiguous in communicating that to Donnie before he released the single. I had two small children at home in New Jersey, and I was unwilling to travel around the country to promote the record. At some point Donnie must have realized that I was more valuable to him at home writing for other artists, because he stopped pushing me to promote the single—with one exception. He wanted me to go to Philadelphia to appear on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.
“Bandstand can make or break a record,” he said. “You gotta do it.”
With Gerry supporting Donnie’s position, I thought, They’re right. I gotta do it.
That all-important appearance on American Bandstand consisted of me lip-synching to the record, shaking Dick Clark’s hand, and hovering anxiously in the background while the Bandstand kids rated my single. One of their most frequently heard assessments of a record was “I give it a 99; I like the beat.” Unfortunately, the Bandstand kids’ evaluation of my record was 42 out of 100 and included comments such as “You can’t dance to it,” “It’s too sad,” and “I like the lyric, but I don’t like the words.”
Dick Clark had bestowed an inordinate amount of power upon this select cadre of Philadelphia high school students. Their opinions influenced a national audience in judging the creative endeavors of recording artists, producers, and songwriters. A thumbs-up or -down from these kids could begin or end a career. Riding the train back from Philadelphia, I felt terrible about the end of a career I didn’t even want. In rhythm with the clackety wheels, I kept thinking, I’m never… gonna do this… again… never… do this… again… never… do this… again…
I was incredulous when, with no further promotion on my part, “It Might as Well Rain Until September” rose to the top 20 in Billboard and Cashbox.
Donnie was on a roll. His next release was our song “Chains,” by the Cookies. He was confident that it would hit #1, and unlike me, the Cookies were able and willing to promote their single. They went on Bandstand and appeared on other radio and television shows with a history of bringing success to a decent song with a good beat that resonated with teenagers. “Chains” was a reasonably decent song with a good beat and a simple lyric. How could it not resonate with teenagers? And how could anyone go wrong with traditional twelve-bar blues? “Chains” featured the Cookies in three-part harmony and the sexy alto voice of Earl-Jean McCree singing solo in the bridge until she was joined by the other Cookies on the last word of the plaintive lyric, “But I can’t break away from all of these chains!” With that they reprised the deceptively simple words of the refrain that brought us all back to that helpless feeling shared by everyone who’s ever been hopelessly in love:
Chains
My baby’s got me locked up in chains
And they ain’t the kind that you can see-ee
Wo-oh, these chains of lo-o-ove got a-hold on me… yeah!
It’s not difficult to understand Gerry’s metaphor if you’ve ever been so deeply in love that all you can think of is the object of your desire, and even as you wish you could stop being obsessed with that person, you spend every sleeping moment dreaming about the one you love and every waking moment praying that he or she feels the same about you.
I just used an entire paragraph to convey an idea that Gerry was able to get across in three words: “chains of love.” Even when his lyrics involved more frivolous subject matter, Gerry had a gift for tapping into what teenage listeners were feeling. If the arrangement, the beat, and the melody of “The Loco-Motion” sparked everyone’s basic human impulse to dance and have fun, the lyric ignited it.
Not only was “Chains” fun to write, it was even more fun to watch it fly up the charts. I can’t speak objectively about the merits of songs we wrote, but we definitely had a run of good luck in the sixties. The music we were writing resonated with young people from New York to Cambodia. This is not a random geographical reference. A woman who grew up in Phnom Penh told me years later that our music kept her from losing her sanity while Pol Pot was committing genocide in her country.
Gerry’s and my level of success remained consistently high for a long time. Whether on Dimension or another label, rarely did a record that we had written or produced fail. When groups from the United Kingdom first began appearing on the American charts, Gerry and I were well represented. The Beatles recorded “Chains,” the Hollies had a big hit with a Gerry Goffin–Russ Titelman collaboration titled “Yes I Will,” and our demo of “I’m Into Something Good,” featuring Earl-Jean McCree’s lead vocal, led to a chart-topping American hit by a British band called Herman’s Hermits.
Each week Gerry eagerly awaited the arrival of Billboard and Cashbox. It was a heady feeling in 1964 to see a new release of ours show up in the top 10 with a bullet. Rational adults a decade older than we were probably would have had trouble keeping so much success in perspective. At twenty-five and twenty-two, Gerry and I never considered the possibility that our success might not last forever.