9

EVERYTHING I’D DONE FOR ALICE I HAD INVENTED. Was it just luck that it worked? Or did I really have a knack for this that I could apply to other kinds of artists? I had to know. I had to challenge myself.

I got an opportunity to do that while we were touring Canada in 1973 and I met up with the Canadian record producer Brian Ahearn. We’d met back in 1969 when I helped organize the Toronto festival. He wanted to talk to me about the singer Anne Murray. She’d had a big hit single in 1970 with “Snowbird.” She was huge at home in Canada, but that’s a limited market. Outside Canada, where a longtime friend named Leonard Rambeau was her manager, she needed the help of somebody who could take her to the next level.

I agreed to meet with her. Partly that was because I liked her music. I thought she had a beautiful, pure voice. Most everyone in the rock world thought her stuff was corny, but the truth is that rock was never my favorite music. I liked music that emphasized good singing—soul, rhythm and blues, and yes, Anne Murray. I encouraged all the theatrics of Alice’s show partly because, at least in the early days, I didn’t think the music alone was strong or distinctive enough to carry them to where we all wanted to get. Alice knew that and it never bothered him; when he was offstage, he didn’t listen to much rock, either.

But I had a bigger reason for seeing Anne Murray. The success I had with Groucho was nice, but it was a limited demonstration of my skills. He was a giant in the industry who only needed some help getting his affairs in order. No one was farther from Alice Cooper than Anne Murray, or would present more of a challenge. She was squeaky-clean, straight as a pin, middle of the middle of the road, and as white as white bread gets. She was the girl next door who happened to have a few hit records. She appealed to a totally different market than Alice did. If I could successfully apply what I’d learned with Alice to an artist like her, then I’d know that it wasn’t just luck, but a set of operating principles I could use for any client. If I failed, that would be an important lesson, too. I didn’t want to spend my life doing something I wasn’t really good at, just lucky at.

So we met. She said she had talked to other managers but liked what I had done with Alice. She’d had those hit singles but almost no name recognition. She wanted to be a star. She wanted to headline in Vegas and be on Midnight Special, the new late-night rock concert show. Did I think I could do something like that for her?

I said I’d try. Everybody thought I was crazy. What could the guy who managed Alice Cooper do for an artist like Anne Murray?

Exactly.

As talented as she was, Anne didn’t have much of what you could call star quality, and she was pretty much the antithesis of cool. But I’d learned two things with Alice: stars aren’t born, they’re made; and if you put someone with people who are acknowledged to be cool, they become cool by association. One of the coolest clubs anywhere in 1973 was the Troubadour in Los Angeles. All the female folksingers who people thought were hip and cool played there—Linda Ronstadt, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell. I wanted Anne Murray to be seen as one of them.

When Alice moved to L.A., he and some friends had formed a drinking club that met upstairs at the Rainbow Bar & Grill on Sunset. They called themselves the Hollywood Vampires. Alice was the club president; Keith Moon of the Who was vice president; other founding members included Harry Nilsson, Elton John’s lyricist, Bernie Taupin, and Alice’s neighbor Micky Dolenz of the Monkees. Harry’s friend John Lennon frequently joined them. He was going through a dark period when he’d left Yoko back in New York and moved to L.A., and was doing an awful lot of drinking and carousing with Harry, who was one of the biggest drinkers and carousers on the planet. Photographers were dying to get shots of Lennon, but he was doing a good job of evading them. I knew that if I could get a photo of John and the Vampires that just happened to include Anne Murray, heads would spin at every newspaper and magazine in the world. The elusive John Lennon seen out on the town with . . . Anne Murray? The what-the-hell factor would get the photo everywhere, and her coolness would increase a thousandfold.

I went to the Rainbow and upstairs to their hangout, called the Lair of the Hollywood Vampires. I actually got down on my knees and said, “Guys, you gotta help me. I need a very big favor. I booked Anne Murray in the Troubadour. If I can get you guys to go and get your picture taken with her, I swear to God I’ll come to the Rainbow every time the Vampires meet, and I’ll drive you all home at the end of the night for the rest of my life.”

They all said yes, and I recruited a group of paparazzi, TV, radio, and press people to ensure maximum coverage.

Anne debuted on Wednesday, November 21. Thanksgiving was the next day, so we organized it as a Thanksgiving party. Staff dressed as pilgrims and Indians served turkey and all the trimmings to the three hundred handpicked guests. We handed out little old-fashioned snuff boxes and copies of Anne’s records. To start her show, Anne stepped out of a big wooden turkey. She did a great set, and the audience, who were already having a good time, applauded enthusiastically. Then I herded the Vampires around her for the all-important photo. Anne Murray smiling, looking pretty, with John Lennon, Harry Nilsson, Alice Cooper, and Micky Dolenz all standing behind her, looking drunk as skunks.

Of course, that picture went everywhere, and had a fantastic impact. Rolling Stone called for an interview. So did People and Time. Several music magazines put her on the cover. Overnight she was the coolest woman in music.

NBC’s Midnight Special came on Friday nights after Johnny Carson at 1 A.M., and right out of the gate it was a big hit with rock fans. There was no MTV in 1973, no Internet where young fans could easily check out new music and bands. A show like Midnight Special was a godsend to fans, and everybody in the business wanted to be on it. As Alice’s manager, it wasn’t hard for me to swing a deal: I not only got Anne Murray on the sixth week of the show, March 2, 1973, but I got her the host position. We gave her a hipper look—not radically different, still squeaky-clean and innocent, just bell bottoms, a velvet vest, and a softer hairdo instead of the knit sweaters and curly Raggedy Ann hair she’d had. She sat on a stool in a spotlight and sang her cover of Kenny Loggins’s “Danny’s Song” (“Even though we ain’t got money . . .”). It was slated as the title track and first single from her next album. When the single came out the following month, it went straight to the top ten in the United States, and I high-fived myself in the mirror.

The experiment had worked. The same principles of management I had used for Alice worked for Anne Murray. Let the games begin! After this I went on to manage dozens of great artists in a wide array of musical genres—from George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic to the Manhattan Transfer, to King Sunny Adé, to Rick James, and on and on. Lucky me!

So many times in my life, I wake up and things happen. The important thing is to be open to whatever comes and remember to say yes. One morning in 1973 I got a call in my L.A. office.

“Shep Gordon?” a woman said.

“Yes.”

“Are you the young man who made that freak Alice Cooper famous?”

“Well, I helped.”

“This is Raquel Welch,” she said. “And you could help me. If you’ll take me to the Academy Awards next week, I’d like to talk to you.”

Raquel Welch was inviting me to the Academy Awards? Little Shep from Oceanside? How could I say no?

The following week she appeared at my house in a limo. She looked absolutely stunning in a pink chiffon, low-cut, no-bra evening dress. She was maybe thirty-three, and stunningly gorgeous. I was twenty-eight and feeling like the kid back in Oceanside who didn’t know how to act around girls. I’m sitting in a limo beside Raquel Welch, heading to the Academy Awards show. I had no idea what to say. But she was very nice, easygoing, and kept the conversation rolling. She told me that she was getting a little old for a “sex star” (her words), and roles for women her age were hard to find in Hollywood. She had recently been divorced for the second time, had two children to support, and was worried about her income. She’d seen other former sex stars like Ann-Margret doing song-and-dance shows in Vegas and thought that was something she could do, too. Then she went to see one of Alice’s shows, and that led her to me.

At that point the limo rolled up to the red carpet. In those days, the radio host Johnny Grant, the “honorary mayor of Hollywood,” stood there with his microphone to greet the stars. It wasn’t like today with hundreds of reporters and television cameras and photographers. He was the only one. He actually got in the car with you. He was saying, “Miss Raquel Welch, ladies and gentlemen!”—forget me, he had no idea who I was—when Raquel turned to me and whispered through her dazzling movie-star smile, “Could you grab the back of my dress? The clasp just broke. It’s going to fall off.”

Her door swept open, she started to slide out, and I scrambled across the seat right behind her, grabbing the back of her braless pink chiffon dress to keep it from falling off. My knuckles are white. Wow. I’m holding Raquel Welch’s dress together. I’m touching her naked back. Bill Graham later sent me the photo that ran in People, captioned, “Raquel Welch and unnamed escort.”

We marched up the red carpet that way, Raquel sweeping along in front like the great star she was, me trying to look natural coming along right up behind her with my hand on her back. I’m sure people were wondering who the hell that guy was Raquel had brought to the ceremony. We made it backstage. I surrendered her to the costume crew, and they sewed her back together. But what a moment. What an introduction.

We started to work together shortly after that, developing her new stage act. Vegas was our goal, but I thought we should try it out before we took it there. I knew the guy who booked the entertainment at the Concord Hotel in New York’s Catskill Mountains; it was the flagship resort of the Borscht Belt. He asked me why he should book Raquel Welch.

“Are you kidding me?” I scoffed. “What would old Jews rather do than slobber over Raquel Welch?”

He laughed and said, “Okay, you got it.”

I had forgotten one ridiculous tradition at the Concord: the audience didn’t applaud, but banged these big wooden clackers instead. It was loud and obnoxious, and Raquel did not appreciate it.

At John Ascuaga’s Nugget Casino in Reno, Nevada, her second gig, a pair of elephants, Bertha and Angel, always opened the show. They did a whole “showgirl” routine and were a famous draw. Just before Raquel was to go on, she watched from the wings as one of them took a big dump onstage. I don’t need to tell you she was pretty upset at having to follow that act. I never again made the mistake of not knowing in advance everything there was to know about a venue—especially anything that could upset or distract my artist.

After that I helped negotiate a long-term contract at Caesars Palace in Vegas, and things went smoothly. The audiences loved her show. She rehearsed seriously and was very successful.

I knew TV would be key in breaking this new Raquel. People seeing this beautiful, sexy woman singing and dancing on TV would want to come see her live. So how to get her on TV? HBO had been launched in the early 1970s, and Michael Fuchs, who ran it now, was a good friend. I kept trying to get him to do music specials featuring my artists, and he kept saying that the only programming that seemed to work on pay cable was pornography. HBO was a family channel, so he couldn’t do porn, but he didn’t think music was the answer.

One night after a number of drinks I said, “What about a sexy Raquel Welch in concert?” HBO’s broadcast of Raquel live in Vegas, the first music special on HBO, was the result. High five!

When I look back at my life, managing Groucho and Raquel were amazing moments in an incredibly lucky journey. Sometimes I think it was all a dream.

Thank you, thank you.

In 1974 I decided to quit smoking. I had a lot of people working for me or with me who smoked. I made them all an offer: whoever wanted to spend a month with me in Hawaii, we’d all go and quit smoking together. I was friends with Tom Moffatt, the DJ and concert promoter in Honolulu who had been behind Elvis’s concerts there. He knew all these great houses that Colonel Tom Parker had rented. I thought, Oh my God, I can sleep in the same bed as Colonel Tom Parker.

Carolyn Pfeiffer, Joe Gannon, and seven or eight others came to Honolulu with me. I don’t think any one of us actually quit smoking on that trip, but we had a great time. I got in with Steve Rossi, half of the comedy duo Allen & Rossi. He was a great guy but a party animal, and after a few days of hanging with him I realized I needed more seclusion if I was going to seriously try to quit the smokes. Tom Moffatt had a tour going to the outer islands. I asked if I could come along and sell T-shirts for him.

In those days you took a hydrofoil from Honolulu to Maui. It landed at Maalaea Harbor, a beautiful, serene place with yachts and pretty sailboats parked all around and palm trees waving and low green mountains behind it rising to blue skies. Hawaii is the youngest landmass on the planet. It has the innocence of a baby. It even smells like a baby. As I was getting off the hydrofoil, I put one foot on the dock—not even both feet—and turned to Joe and said, “I’m living here the rest of my life.” I had never been there before, and it felt like home. I saw the house I wanted on that trip, on Keawakapu Beach in Kihei, and bought it soon afterward.

The following year I moved out of New York. Winona and Mia came with me to Los Angeles. I got us a great little house at the end of a dead-end street in Bel-Air, with a huge rose garden, and a pool with a postcard view of L.A. But Winona and I broke up and gradually lost our connection. Still, I stayed in touch with Mia for about five more years. I’d get a letter or a call every now and again, and I always sent her money. Finally, I realized that the only times I heard from her were when she needed money. I suspected it was going to no good use, so I just stopped. If there are a few things I’d like a redo on, that would be one. I probably should have gone to her, sat down, and had a conversation with her. But I didn’t; I just stopped. I don’t have a lot of regrets, but that’s one.

Breaking up with Winona hurt. That was a new feeling. I had never been in that situation before, where I cared enough about a relationship that it could be painful when it ended. It’s something everybody goes through, but I think most people probably experience it when they’re younger than I was and in far less of a position to self-medicate with drugs and dating more pretty women.

I even bought myself a place where I could do that.

In the mid-1970s the three hottest rock clubs on Sunset Strip were the Roxy Theatre, the Rainbow Bar and Grill, and the Whisky a Go Go. The producer-manager Lou Adler, known for his work with Sam Cooke, the Mamas & the Papas, Carole King, and a long list of others, owned and ran the Roxy. Upstairs was a private club called On the Rocks, which you could only get into if Lou gave you a membership key. Lou gave keys to Alice, Raquel, Groucho—though I doubt he ever used it—but I never got one for myself. I’d go with Alice or Raquel.

One night I went there alone and they wouldn’t let me in. I called Lou and got his secretary instead. She conveyed his reply: “You’re not a member.” I said, “Tell him to make me a member.” Lou refused. That stung. Maintaining an inner sense of self-esteem, even now that I was successful, was always hard for me. Inside I was still Shep, the kid from Oceanside. Lou Adler was basically telling me that my clients were cool enough for his exclusive club, but I wasn’t.

This was another occasion for me to think, Don’t get mad. Accomplish your goal. I could have been really angry at Lou, but that wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere. What was my goal? To have a private club I could get into. So I opened one.

I remembered Carlos’n Charlie’s in Acapulco, one of the most fun places I’d ever been. Since then they had opened franchises all over Mexico. I got Alice to fly to Acapulco with me and see if it was still as fun as I remembered. We were sitting there having dinner when a guy came to our table, whipped out a red bandanna, and started wiping out our ashtray. Since he clearly recognized Alice, I asked him, “You know who we can talk to about opening one of these clubs in L.A.?”

He sat down. “I’m Carlos Anderson. You talk to me.”

In fifteen minutes we had a deal.

Alice and I came back to L.A. and found out that Micky Dolenz’s dad had a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard he wanted out of. We rented the building from him and opened our Carlos’n Charlie’s. Upstairs I put my own private club, El Privado. In L.A., if it’s new and exclusive all the big names flock to it. We had Sugar Ray Leonard, Eddie Murphy, Hugh Hefner, Lakers owner Jerry Buss, Saudi princes, and assorted other millionaires. And they attracted the hottest, wildest, loosest women in Los Angeles.

I felt like I was the king of L.A. I had the hottest club in town, I had the Rolls and the silk suits, I had all the drugs and sex I could handle. My little house in Bel-Air was the site of some of the hardest partying of my life. I loved it all. But I also knew that it was all superficial. Something was missing.