“You don’t need a wife, you need a harem.”
That was Dad’s only comment when I told him, in the summer of 1982, of my plans to marry Beverly Chapin. Why all the skepticism? If Dad could transition successfully into married life, why wouldn’t he expect the same from me?
Throughout my childhood, women never stopped oohing and aahing over Dad: “He’s sooo handsome, like Sidney Poitier,” “Donna, your husband is sooo strong, is there anything he can’t do?” “Would you mind if I borrowed him for some household chores?” Even as a little boy, I understood that race played a factor in all this gushing. A Negro in sexually repressed Newmarket or Don Mills in the fifties and early sixties—even without Dad’s good looks and coyly underplayed intellect—would have easily fed into many people’s goofy fantasies.
Despite all this female fawning, however, nothing indicated to me that Dad was interested in other women. Besides, there was enough sexual energy crackling between my parents to power Las Vegas.
Dad had married Mom when he was twenty-nine. I married Bev when I was twenty-eight. By the time Dad and I had reached our late twenties, we’d both been exposed to all the delights, and drudgery, of single life. What irked me most about Dad’s “harem” crack was that I’d always been inspired by my parents’ marriage and, despite—or perhaps because of—my copious (and from Dad’s viewpoint, endlessly amusing) romantic capers, I knew that I longed for a relationship as sustainable and loving as theirs.
When my career had gone crazy in the mid-seventies and women started to take notice of me, I had flattered myself into thinking that their sudden interest had little to do with my rising fame and everything to do with my personality. But when my voice vanished from radio, the women, for the most part, vanished as well.
“Lucky for you, or you’d be dead now.” It was Larry’s tone, so matter of fact and without judgment, that gave his words such grave impact. And there was another positive consequence of having my celebrity wings clipped: when a woman appeared interested in me, it was easier for me to trust that her interest was genuine.
When I first I met Bev in the summer of 1980, I could hardly be considered a catch. Not only was I running short on cash, but my once infamously wild hair was falling out in clumps, leaving Dad to chortle that I was going bald faster than any Hill in history.
Bev and I met at a cottage weekend in northern Ontario. Due to lack of sleeping space, she and I, along with two other friends, shared the same bedroom. Finding that my chances of attracting a woman were better if she wasn’t aware of my past life as a famous singer—”Oh no, you’re that guy! I liked you a whole lot better before”—I cringed when Bev mentioned that she’d seen me perform a year earlier at a concert. Fortunately, Bev did not hold my iffy status against me. The attraction between us was as instant as it was powerful. But beyond the “hmmm, we’re up north, sharing the same bedroom, and I’ve got to have her” reflex, I felt something deeper, something strange and discomfiting. Yes, she was gorgeous, while at the same time acting as though her appearance were nothing special. But I’d met other women who came across as unaware of their looks, only to find out later that this was part of their pose. Bev’s sense of humour, however, enlivened by her quick, unaffected mannerisms, recalled the zaniness of Lucille Ball, only sexier. Beauty and madcap wit—I hadn’t come across anything like that before. Bev’s rolling laughter could take over the room, causing everyone else to laugh so hard that by the time the room finally quieted down, no one could remember what had sparked the laughter in the first place. If someone (invariably me) said something wickedly unsuitable, Bev would howl, her shock and disapproval (and, based on her flushed red face, glee) registering throughout her body.
Everything about Bev seemed honest to the point of being raw; her opinions, her reactions, her forthright body language left no doubt as to how she felt about whatever was being discussed. So why, then, did she seem so hard to categorize? This was supposed to be a specialty of mine: sizing someone up so that I could better manipulate, or at least influence, them.
That night, she lay sleeping in the bunk across from mine, wearing an oversized Toronto Maple Leafs hockey jersey and white tennis shorts. Alone in my wakefulness, I found myself replaying the last few hours, wishing that I’d cut back on my grandiose storytelling and asked more questions. Had I confused Bev’s natural enthusiasm for life with an enthusiasm for me? Would she return to Toronto lumping me in with the cottage experience: a fun way to spend the weekend but nothing memorable? Hearing Bev shift onto her back, I snuck another look. Even fast asleep she appeared scary-smart, and yet there was something so heartbreakingly innocent about her. And here I was as jaded as I was uneducated.
Raised in the blue-collar village of Long Branch, the middle of three children of a socially conservative family, Bev was studying law at the University of Windsor. Her visible embarrassment at having to share a small bedroom with another woman and two men didn’t mean she wasn’t also tickled pink at the idea. Even at her shyest she sparked with sexual energy.
The next morning Bev and I swam out to the raft on the lake, where we spent most of the day diving into the sun-speckled water and lying on the gently swaying platform, gazing up at the sky. Once more I talked way too much while Bev listened. I’m not sure why I felt the need to let her in on all my varied catastrophes. Maybe I thought I was giving her fair warning. If, despite my checkered past, Bev still agreed to go out with me, at least she’d be proceeding with open eyes.
But it was how Bev listened, so intently and with such empathy—showing equal concern for both Matt and me when I talked about our stormy past, expressing sympathy for Cynthia without condemning me for sleeping around on her—that really affected me. Here I’d assumed, in my world-weary way, that I’d be shocking Bev. And the reverse had happened. What shocked me most about Bev was her kindness.
That fall, Bev returned to Windsor, Ontario, for her last year of law school. Our relationship built cautiously over the next two years. It took me a long time to shed my ghosts, my many shadowed selves, my fears of hurting someone and being hurt. Surely Bev would ultimately come to her senses and find a man with a more suitable background, a more stable career and a more grounded personality. Because I’d resigned myself to being the “fling guy,” I frequently did everything in my power to drive Bev away—my skewed version of a pre-emptive strike. But rather than being scared off, Bev would fight back, challenging my behaviour, picking my thoughtless actions apart with the thoroughness of a cross-examination. That I could be a slippery witness, ducking and weaving behind my creative and convoluted rationalizations, meant that we fought incessantly during those first two years. But rather than drive each other away, we always emerged from these battles a little bit closer.
This kind of relationship was completely new for me. I’d never been involved with a woman who would announce her unhappiness or disapproval over something I did immediately following (if not during) my transgression. Bev taught me that two people could fight without it signalling the end. Through fighting we came to understand that we shared something worth fighting for—a potent and uncontrollable connection we weren’t likely to find anywhere else.
I imagine that Bev saw in me what I saw in her: a compelling, seductive opposite. I simply had to look at my parents to understand this phenomenon. Beyond Bev’s and my chemistry, and the invisible pull of our temperamental differences, it was a litany of unexpected and unrehearsed little things that caused me, one small surprise after another, to fall in love with her.
Bev’s quick, ribald jokes would be followed by an unconscious sidewise glance, as if she felt concerned that I might disapprove. For an exceptionally attractive woman pulling down As in law school, with a coruscating wit that could as easily maim as delight (“Here’s a prick for your prick, prick!” Bev once scowled, handing her girlfriend’s philandering husband a sewing needle), she betrayed moments of insecurity that rivalled my own. But her occasional lack of confidence was offset by her courage, her fearlessness when jumping into unfamiliar, possibly dangerous territory. Thanks to me she’d already been exposed to lunatic L.A. songwriters, the nuttiest of whom had showed up unannounced at my door one Saturday afternoon, suggesting group sex almost before he extended his hand to Bev in greeting.
Hate mail to Bev from deranged fans who—yikes—had somehow clued into the news that I finally had a steady female partner, the odd songwriter who alternately made passes at and felt threatened by Bev, my fading pop star status currently overshadowed by two enormous lawsuits: all this baggage made me look down at my feet when I finally asked Bev, in an apologetic tone, “Will you marry me?”
“How about this August, before I start bar ads?”
My first thought was Damn, this woman does not scare easily. My second thought was This woman’s almost as crazy as I am. And my third: Danny, whatever you do, don’t blow it this time.
Before marrying Bev, I’d always believed that a couple’s relationship was conducted in a vacuum, irrespective of anyone else. My attitude came out of growing up in a household where the in-laws lived in another country, at a time when airline travel was as costly as it was rare. Bev grudgingly went along with my request that our wedding be short and civic, with only family in attendance. But soon after Bev and I announced our wedding plans (springing it on our dumbfounded families only two weeks before our date at City Hall), I discovered that I still had a lot to learn about family relationships. And about Bev. A lifetime of attuning myself to the slightest sign of female fragility had left me exaggerating Bev’s vulnerabilities. When the situation called for it, Bev was wilful, driven and—if someone crossed her—brutal. She gave to her friends and family completely. If they, in turn, disappointed her, they would be sure to hear about it in the bluntest manner. So it was only a matter of time before Bev and my father clashed.
Much as I wanted out of my former life, replete with fierce ambition, fractured friendships and instability, some people preferred my life to remain dramatic and entertaining. Frequently the people who love you the most are the ones most likely to confuse your needs with their own voyeuristic tendencies. The idea that I might be willing to put my gallivanting behind me and catapult myself, body, heart and soul, into married life, didn’t sit well with Dad.
“You’re different, son,” he would often tell me with a perfidious smile, refusing to elaborate. There was no doubt that Dad wanted to believe that I was “different.” It was easier than admitting that my relationship with Bev could possibly compromise my relationship with him. Throughout the five years following my 1977 breakup, Dad and I had enjoyed a closeness we’d never experienced before. When Bev and I announced our wedding, Dad realized that our interdependent relationship would once again be shifting.
Furthermore, if I thought getting married would smooth out most of my life’s rough edges, a phone call I received ninety-six hours before our big day suggested otherwise.
“I’m Mario Kassar, co-owner of Carolco Pictures and executive producer of a movie called First Blood, starring Sylvester Stallone. We’d like to hire you to sing the movie’s title song. This is a big-budget film and we’re willing to pay you a lot of money. Can you be in London, England, tomorrow, ready to cut your vocal at Abbey Road Studios?”
“What do I have to lose?” I asked Bev.
Bev reminded me, in colourful language, that we were getting married in four days.
“No problem. I’m booked to return home early morning the day of our wedding.”
“Who are you kidding? Since when do you sing songs you didn’t write? Now you’re flying to England to sing a song you haven’t even heard? You could be gone for a week.”
Bev, who had spent the last few days trying to convince her traumatized parents that she wasn’t making the mistake of her life by marrying me, was already at her breaking point. She was convinced that once I set foot in England, I’d reconsider this whole “marriage thing” and promptly disappear into the forests of Europe, never to come home.
I decided it was best not to admit to Bev that I’d promised Mr. Kassar that I’d remain in London for as long as it took for me to nail the title song’s vocal to everyone’s satisfaction—be it a day or a month. I made a big show of packing only a day’s worth of carry-on luggage.
The movie’s title song, “It’s a Long Road,” was, technically speaking, a pop singer’s worst nightmare. Jerry Goldsmith may have been one of the world’s most successful film composers, but judging from this song, he had little understanding of the human vocal range. Singing, beyond coming naturally to me, was something I’d worked hard on, particularly since I’d started making records. Stretching the high and low end of my voice considerably over the last few years, I’d developed a finely tuned understanding of exactly how far I could push the outer limits of my voice. But I could have been blessed with the multi-octave range of an opera singer and still have been unable to hit the top notes of “It’s a Long Road.” Because the track had been cut in England before anyone consulted me as to the right key, the only solution was for the recording engineer to slow down the tape, making the top notes at least a quarter-tone lower.
All the studio tricks in the world, however, couldn’t solve the fact the song’s lyricist, Hal Shaper, believed I should sing his lyrics one way—theatrical, with a big Ethel Merman vibrato and lots of deathbed sighing and gasping—while Jerry Goldsmith demanded the opposite approach—raw and real, something between Wilson Pickett and Tom Jones. On one of the many occasions that Mr. Shaper led me out of the vocal booth to demonstrate how his lyrics should be sung (imagine Ed Sullivan trying to do Mick Jagger), I let it slip that I was getting married in seventy-two hours.
“Your wife-to-be is going to have to learn that show business always comes first. The sooner she accepts that she’s married a famous singer, the better. I hope you told her we spent a bloody fortune to fly you over here.”
“Have you ever been married, Mr. Shaper?”
“Many times. Why do you ask?”
Before I could say something cheeky, Mr. Shaper announced that he was late for a tennis and tea date with Margaret Thatcher’s daughter.
“Great, he’s gone,” laughed Jerry Goldsmith over the studio speakers once Shaper made his exit. “Now give me your best Wilson Pickett!”
A combination of fear of missing my own wedding, and the knowledge that if I had to listen to Mr. Shaper babysit me through my vocals one more time I’d be imprisoned for murder, meant that I managed to record all the vocals and background vocals to “It’s a Long Road” in ninety minutes.
“Great job, Dan,” Mr. Kassar exclaimed as he walked me to the Rolls-Royce that would be taking me to Heathrow Airport. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a stack of U.S. hundred-dollar bills and stuffed them into my shirt pocket. “Just some spending money to top off your fee!” he said, affecting the tone of a gambler tipping his blackjack dealer. The limo driver opened the passenger door and Mr. Kassar disappeared back into the Abbey Road Studios.
The burgundy Rolls-Royce swung into traffic. As several bills fell out of my shirt pocket, I understood that, as much as I was being paid to sing the movie’s title song, I could have easily demanded three times as much. Mr. Kassar had let me know that I’d undersold myself: an unforgivable sin by Hollywood’s standards.
I arrived in Toronto hours before our wedding at City Hall. Adrenalin pulled me through the five-minute ceremony, but as the family dinner dragged on, with Bev and I sitting on pins and needles waiting for one of our parents to do something that would upset the other three, I felt myself starting to fade. I wanted to go home, throw a few hundred-dollar bills around the bedroom and celebrate our honeymoon rites. Before I passed out. For a week.
“Emergency phone call for the lucky groom.” Bev’s sharp elbow into my ribs alerted me to the waiter and saved me from dropping my sleeping face into a hot bowl of lobster soup. Relieved that I’d managed to show up in time for our wedding, Bev was willing to overlook my nodding off. Just the same, she walked me to where the maître d’ was holding the phone.
“Who would be calling you now?” Bev demanded.
Thinking there might be safety in numbers, I waited until we were back at the table before I replied, “That was the movie producer. He’s insisting I fly down to L.A. tomorrow and re-record my vocals. Apparently the group Toto is re-cutting the song as we speak.”
“Danny, you’re newly married! You’re not going anywhere. Enough is enough!” my mom yelled.
“Just say no,” Bev advised in her most lawyerly voice, the one she used when she expected no rebuttal. Feeling Bev’s eyes blaze through me with a Nancy Reagan–esque severity, I thought, She’s been married to me all of a few hours and she’s starting to get the look of a woman who’s been trapped in a bad marriage for half a century.
Dad was trying to suppress an “I told you so” smile. Bev’s parents looked at me with incomprehension, as if it were finally sinking in that they’d acquired an alien for a son-in-law. I did a quick juggling act in my head: Bev’s fury versus the wrath of the IRS (which, while several motions away from possessing my house, was likely to do so if I lost my case), Mom’s “time to grow the fuck up” stare versus the expensive McCauley lawsuit. Deciding that love, unlike the IRS, ultimately forgives, I flew to L.A. the next day, arriving back home the day after, my vocal chords feeling scraped raw from twelve hours of singing, but with fistfuls of hundred-dollar bills filling out my jean pockets.
The movie, better known these days as the first Rambo, went on to become the second-biggest movie of 1983, after E.T. The title song became a hit in faraway markets like Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia and England.
Due to this overlapping of the Rambo song and our wedding, for the longest time Dad tended to view the two events as one and the same, expressing considerably more enthusiasm for the movie than my marriage. I didn’t share Dad’s view. Bev and I weren’t only marrying each other, we were marrying into each other’s worlds. Marriage did not mean the end of excitement in my life. No more than it meant that Bev would be tossing aside her core values or her future as a lawyer to live a debauched rock ‘n’ roll life. She would still practise Christianity, start up, in a few years, a law firm called Chapin and Chapin with her father and, eventually, raise a family with me. The fusing of two lives and personalities as disparate as ours would prove to be fraught with conflict and passion, compromise and monumental stubbornness. But we soldiered on because, beyond a million other reasons, we really, really loved each other.
After a few years, realizing that my marriage wasn’t a temporary act of madness, Dad’s perspective mellowed slightly, and he began saying things like, “You surprised me son, you’re really behaving yourself. You’ve always had an unpredictable streak.” Just as Dad had, thirty years earlier, I’d recovered from a relationship gone horribly wrong, learned a thing or two and then, upon spotting the right woman at the right time, done everything I could to hold onto her.
Among the many disappointments throughout the second half of my twenties, my marriage to Bev stood out as a brilliant stroke of luck. It was the one choice I made as a young man that turned out better, much better, than I could have ever hoped.
Bev healed something that was, if not broken, certainly wounded, still bleeding, deep inside me. The results began to show within weeks of our wedding. At Bev’s urging (“Dan, my guess is that Matt wants to settle as badly as you”), I contacted Matthew McCauley, whom I had last seen while I was being cross-examined by his lawyer in a courtroom packed with spectators and journalists.
“Hello, Matt?”
“Danny!” I’d braced myself for Matt’s voice to be brimming with anger and betrayal. But all I could hear was incredulity.
“Look, Matt, I think we should get together for dinner, see if we can figure out a way to settle this thing.”
“When and where?”
“Matt, I’m really, really sorry about your mom.”
“Thanks, Danny. The letter you sent meant a lot to me. It meant a lot to all of us.”
Mrs. McCauley had died recently from a complication during a simple surgery. The last time I’d seen her, we’d found ourselves in the same elevator en route to a music-business function. The McCauleys and I were receiving ASCAP airplay awards (as publisher and writer) for two of my songs. Dr. McCauley managed a polite, if strained, hello, but Mrs. McCauley looked right through me with an icy gaze that I couldn’t shake for months.
Now, Matt and I were having dinner at Noodles, an overpriced, well-known music-business restaurant where artists and A&R men went to advertise how much money they were hauling in. From the moment “You Make Me Want to Be” had landed on radio, five-star restaurants had become a regular part of Matt’s and my lives, one of the many extras that came with being toasted by the so-called movers and shakers.
As Matt and I looked at the filet mignon and lobster on the menu, I felt a longing for a cheeseburger and a chocolate milkshake. I wanted to be swivelling on the creaky stools at the Donwood Plaza’s greasy spoon, stealing Matt’s fries and threatening to stab his fingers with my fork if he tried to steal them back.
“Remember when the Greek restaurant owner with that uneven moustache used to demand to see if we had enough money before he agreed to serve us?” I asked Matt.
“No,” answered Matt, “but I do remember when you asked me if my girlfriend would help you out with your sperm sample problem.”
“It was very gallant of you to grant me permission to ask her. Even though you had broken up with her during my time of need.”
“Well, Danny, I knew she’d reject you.”
“I still remember how she answered me, hands on her hips, smacking her gum like some moll: ‘I don’t think so, Danny … ‘”
“Should I come back to take your order, gentlemen?”
Once again I’d been talking way too loud. Matt and I began laughing so hard that little bits of half-chewed bread roll sprayed out of my mouth and the poor waiter did an about-turn, scurrying over to a table of executives from Capitol Records. It felt good to laugh. It took a bit of the pressure off being alone together for the first time in three years, without litigation lawyers in black gowns, a judge and a packed-to-the-rafters courtroom between us.
Even though it felt strange, really strange, to be seated across from each other, talking like geezers about the good old days, strange sure beat the hell out of surreal and costly. If our courtroom proceedings continued to stretch out for several more weeks, we’d be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyers, court costs, witnesses and unwelcome publicity, since the media was claiming the case was the first of its kind in Canada.
As Matt talked to me about life in L.A., his new marriage, his new baby, I was struck by how happy I was to see him. With little effort, I could pretend that we were still a couple of Don Mills kids, lost inside his basement studio, the world ours for the taking.
Before we’d finished our appetizers, we’d settled our legal differences. McCauley Music would own the record and publishing royalties on my next album, which meant, from a business standpoint, we were back to square one. What a waste of time and money. And those were just the tangible losses. What had it achieved to walk away from a contract and turn my back on a family who’d believed so totally in my talents?
“My litigation lawyer’s gonna be crestfallen,” I joked. “He was counting on squeezing another six figures of legal fees out of me.”
Matt smiled wanly. Since parting ways in 1979, we’d both gone on to make more records. Neither of us had come close to the success we’d had back in that swell season of the seventies when we were working together, when everything seemed to jell.
“When was the last time you ate here?” Matt asked, once we’d split the lobster and steak evenly between us. I told Matt the story of how, in 1978, I’d brought a British pop star here after three consecutive days of shooting what was turning out to be a horrendous TV special. I’d slept with her the night before and immediately regretted it. Towards the conclusion of our dinner at Noodles, she’d demanded I sleep with her again that night. When I said no (a word pop stars don’t hear all that often), she’d passed out. Since she was given to throwing hugely dramatic scenes on set, I assumed she was faking it and half carried, half dragged her out of the restaurant as patrons looked on.
“No wonder you haven’t been back here since,” Matt said, sounding more concerned than entertained. “So what happened next?”
“I managed to get her back to her hotel. Once I tucked her into bed she seemed to wake up. Thinking she was fine, I got the hell out of there. But when I arrived at the TV studio the next morning I found out she’d been rushed to the hospital, due to a near-lethal combination of booze and pain-killers.”
Matt had stopped eating. I’d forgotten how his face turned dismissive when he heard something, usually an out-of-tune vocal or a lazy lyric, that he didn’t like.
“Why are you telling me this, Danny?”
“You mean, other than the fact that you asked me about the last time I ate here?”
“You know what I mean.”
When was I going to learn that not every experience could be reshaped into a rollicking anecdote? That a funny story could not excuse callous behaviour?
When Matt and I agreed to split the cheque, we both laughed awkwardly. We knew why we were laughing again. But really, the symbolism felt more poignant than amusing.
“How did it go?” Bev asked, when I came home that night. She’d been sleeping when I walked into the bedroom. She rubbed her half-open eyes in a way that filled me with tenderness.
“Thank you,” I answered.
“For what?”
“I don’t even know. It’s too much for me to think about right now. Just thank you.”