Chapter Twenty-Five
Having achieved supremacy in New York, Donnie looked for new worlds to conquer. The next logical place was the West Coast. Hits by Hollywood artists such as Bobby Vee, the Everly Brothers, and Gene McDaniels were receiving quite a bit of airplay. Donnie’s relationship with Liberty Records producer Snuff Garrett had already led to a string of top 10 hits for Aldon writers, including Bobby Vee’s “Take Good Care of My Baby,” by Gerry and me, and “Run to Him,” by Gerry and Jack Keller.
Donnie’s decision to open a West Coast office was astute and timely. His choice of Lou Adler to run it was equally shrewd. Lou’s longtime relationships with West Coast artists and producers led to hits for Aldon writers with a diverse group of artists. Lou went to Nashville with the Everly Brothers to produce “Crying in the Rain,” which I had written with Howie Greenfield.
The first time I heard “Crying in the Rain” on the radio I was driving home on Northfield Avenue. I was immediately transported back in time to relive my excitement at seeing the Everly Brothers at an Alan Freed show. I recalled the hours spent in my room singing the third part to the Everlys’ distinctive dual harmonies on songs such as “Bye Bye Love” and “Wake Up Little Susie.” Later I learned that I wasn’t unique in this regard. Other fans were doing the same thing. People who couldn’t carry a tune sang along with the duo and imagined themselves as the third Everly Brother. The Everlys’ records were arguably an early form of karaoke; all the singer had to do was fill in the missing vocal. Suddenly I was crying. There I was, a housewife running errands in West Orange, New Jersey, hearing the Everly Brothers’ recording of my song on the radio for the first time contemporaneously with millions of other people in the greater New York listening area.
With other producers and artists in L.A. clamoring for our demos and trying to recapture our sound and arrangements note for note on their masters, Donnie decided it was time to send Goffin and King to California.
In 1963 air travel was a lot less commonplace than it is today. Gerry was twenty-four and I twenty-one when we embarked on our first airplane trip, nonstop from New York to Los Angeles, out of what was then called Idlewild Airport.* With the prevailing westerly winds pushing hard against the plane, the flight took over six hours. I should have been more nervous about the idea of spending six hours in a heavier-than-air metal tube hurtling thousands of feet above the ground in the general direction of the Pacific Ocean, but I was too excited. Gerry, initially more nervous than I, quickly attained a more relaxed state of mind by imbibing the mixed drinks made with tiny bottles of liquor served by the attractive female flight attendant, then known as a stewardess. As we flew across the continent I watched cities turn to suburbs, then to farms and open spaces. Occasionally, spidery patterns of houses, streets, and roads indicated the presence of a town.
I had viewed images of the Rocky Mountains and the Grand Canyon in magazines, but seeing them in three dimensions from the perspective of an eagle I felt the power of nature on a grand scale. As the vast, diverse North American landscape unfolded below me, the beginning of my lifelong love for our home planet unfolded inside me. I’ve traveled across the country many times since then, both by air and on the ground, but I’ve never forgotten my first eagle’s-eye view of America’s magnificent natural landscape. That perspective would inform my later work to ensure that the remaining wild land in the Northern Rockies ecosystem is legally protected. Back then I saw vast empty landscapes. Since then so much more land has been developed, and so much less of it remains wild. When I tell members of the United States Congress that their grandchildren and great-grandchildren deserve to experience the remaining unspoiled land and wildlife on this earth as close as possible to the way it was thousands of years ago, I’m honoring a commitment I made on that first flight to Los Angeles.
Today when I step out of a terminal at Los Angeles International Airport I’m struck by the smell of exhaust fumes and the absence of sunlight under an overpass that wasn’t there forty-odd years ago. Stepping out of the terminal in 1963, I was struck by how warm and bright the sun was. We had left New York in January and been miraculously transported into July. As I reached for my sunglasses I thought, Now I understand. Sunglasses aren’t an affectation here; they’re a necessity.
Climbing into the back seat of the stretch limo Lou had sent for us, I had the sensation of time moving more slowly than it did back east. This shouldn’t have been surprising. Though we’d been flying for most of the day, it was barely past the crack of noon. We had the whole afternoon ahead of us. The limo glided out of the airport and headed east on Century Boulevard. When the driver told us we were only a half hour away from the Pacific Ocean I thought, Wow! It took us only six hours to be a continent away from the Atlantic Ocean. My grandparents’ journey from Eastern Europe had taken six months!
The driver eased the limo into the unending stream of cars that filled every lane of the freeway. The northbound traffic looked like something out of a science-fiction movie, a creature composed of parallel streams of individual cars, each contributing mindlessly to the forward movement of the larger organism. Toward what goal? Fame? Money? Power? Sex? All of the above? At the time I didn’t even know the questions, let alone the answers. In Beverly Hills rows of palm trees lining Sunset Boulevard reminded me of leggy starlets at a dance audition. Most houses were hidden, but some of the large estates displayed the owner’s value of opulence over privacy. It wasn’t until much later that I realized I hadn’t seen even one person walking on the street.
Some things are trite because they’re true. Sitting in the back of a chauffeured limousine being driven through Beverly Hills, I felt like the proverbial star of a Hollywood movie. By the time we reached West Hollywood I was certain that every house in the city had a pool, every man was as rich as Howard Hughes, and every woman as sexy as Marilyn Monroe. All I had to do was close my eyes and my heart’s desire would be granted. When the limo pulled up to the apartment building where we would be staying, I had no idea how much my family’s future would be determined by the City of Angels.