Watching David fly through those early years from baby to toddler to playschool both thrilled and alarmed me. He was already in kindergarten, inhaling life, changing by the second, and I was standing still. Caught between two generations—David growing older and stronger, Dad growing older and weaker—I felt as though I was treading water. I was retired, kind of. I was a singer—wait. No, I was a songwriter. A little of both, a lot of neither. So what did that make me? Restless, for one.
By the mid-nineties I’d been in and out of so many record deals that I was beginning to feel like the musical equivalent of a journeyman NFL player. But rather than admit that I might well be singing on borrowed time, I set up my own record label in the States and continued to shovel my songwriting royalties back into my singing career. If I can score with one more hit record, I kept telling myself, the hundreds of thousands of dollars I’m investing will roll back into my life in the form of several million.
An independent label such as mine, however, was in no position to compete with the major U.S. labels for radio airplay. A typical radio station may have only one or two slots open each week for adding a new song to its playlist. If WXYZ in Kentucky was promised backstage passes and comped tickets to a Billy Joel concert provided it added his latest single to its playlist instead of mine, it didn’t take a Vegas odds-maker to figure out which record the station was going to choose. The only favour I could offer radio stations for choosing my new single over someone else’s was to perform, gratis, for a community event sponsored by the station. Soon I found myself spending every weekend performing free concerts for radio stations across small-town America. My duet remake (with Rique Franks) of “In Your Eyes” made it to number ten on the U.S. Radio and Records adult contemporary charts. Compared to my top-three single of just two years before, “Fall All Over Again,” it was a troublesome sign that I was working harder for less gain. In fact, I was committing the cardinal sin of all labels that end up bankrupt: spending two dollars in order to earn one. But rather than fold up my fledgling company, the rational choice, I started taking on more and more quick-money gigs to offset my expenses.
The general rule with fast cash performances is that the greater the sum of money involved, the weirder the gig. If nothing else, my 1992 Grey Cup halftime performance taught me, once and for all, that there was no such thing as easy money. I must have been delusional, agreeing to lip-synch the words to my latest single while floating high over a Toronto stadium in a hot-air balloon.
“Have you forgotten that you’re scared of heights?” Bev asked. “You won’t even climb a stepladder for fear of fainting.”
She had a point. Never great at lip-synching to begin with, as I mouthed along to my record on live TV my nervousness gave way to terror. I lurched about in the very small and jiggly hot-air balloon, staring down at the football field one hundred feet below, fighting nausea as the heat from the gas fire lofting the balloon curled down over my shoulders.
“You’re a real pro, son, I can’t believe how you pulled it off,” Dad told me the next day. Then he added, “You’ve got a mighty fine grip.”
“For God sakes alive, you were holding on to the handles of that hot-air balloon so tight that I could see the splotchy white of your knuckles glaring through my little TV screen.”
I assumed that singing the national anthem at a Toronto Blue Jays playoff game would be less stressful; for one thing, I’d be standing on solid ground. Dad, ecstatic that my pre-game anthem would be televised across North America, had called all his relatives in the States, demanding that they watch his son sing “O Canada.”
“In the interest of Hill family history,” he’d stressed, as if any relative who had more important things to do than watch me sing at a baseball game was turning his back on a critical world event.
But as I looked out onto the pitcher’s mound I wasn’t thinking about family history. My thoughts were on the lyrics to “O Canada,” which I’d pre-recorded. (The arrhythmic, ricochet acoustics at Toronto’s SkyDome make it impossible to sing the anthem live.) Because I so infrequently sang other people’s songs, I’d developed a mental block when it came to memorizing anyone else’s lyrics. If I was spotted lip-synching the wrong words to “O Canada,” I was going to be crucified.
“You want me to walk out there all alone?” I asked the head of media relations for the Toronto Blue Jays, who’d informed me that it was time to go out to the pitcher’s mound for my performance.
“Well, you are the only one singing,” Mr. Media Man answered.
“Aren’t they gonna think I’m some wacko who’s just waltzed onto the field?”
“Everyone knows you’re Dan Hill.”
The media guy nudged me towards the diamond. The players, their backs to me in a tight circle, had blocked the way. Tiptoeing up to where they were huddled, I tapped on the back of one of the players. He turned around, gave me a slow once-over and then stepped slightly to his left. I squeezed between him and another uniformed monolith and made my way to the mound. When I grabbed hold of the mic stand and looked up at the crowd of fifty thousand people staring down at me, I felt this blip, then a few blips, turning over, deep in my stomach. I hadn’t eaten a thing all day. Not a good thing to do if you’re unknowingly diabetic. The mound started moving, imperceptibly at first, then swaying beneath my feet, as if I were balancing on a swimming platform during a storm. A weird sensation of breathing but not getting any oxygen into my lungs came over me. I was on the verge of fainting. I imagined myself out cold, splayed face down on the pitcher’s mound, as my voice continued to serenade the SkyDome and the entire TV-watching world, including my horrified Dad and all our relatives. I was about to become Canada’s answer to Milli Vanilli.
Just then my pre-recorded voice clicked on like a rescue siren. I sang along, lips carefully obscured by the microphone, and made it through the song without bringing shame to myself or, more importantly, Dad.
After singing one more national anthem (in Philadelphia, during the Jays-Phillies World Series in ‘93), just to prove to myself that I wasn’t a total wuss, I vowed never to perform at sporting events again. Happily, there were private corporate events and weddings that paid well, and if I died a slow death during a performance, there was no risk of the media feeding on my carcass. I rationalized that my experiences as a B-league celebrity-for-hire made for killer stories.
Then there was the time when a wealthy stockbroker wired crazy cash into my bank account and flew me on a private plane into Manhattan where I was to appear beside his horse and buggy in Central Park and serenade his fiancée with that song while he proposed. But as I started singing she thought I was a busker and told me to get lost. Her fiancé had to convince her that I was the “real Dan Hill” and not some impersonator. I even had to show my driver’s licence.
The fact that all singers do these kind of gigs didn’t make the realization that I was whorishly cashing in on the old “famous for being famous” syndrome any easier. I was running faster and faster while sliding backwards. Using work as my drug instead of facing the real issues: that my father, the most powerful and influential figure in my life, was on the road to becoming as weak and helpless as toddler; that due to my steady weight gain and frenzied work pace, I could easily end up just like him within ten years; and that my singing career had devolved into a series of hollow after-dinner stories. I’d make more money if I just hung it up, stopped playing at being the pop star, sat back and let my two decades worth of royalties stream into my bank account. I could spend my time with the human being who needed me more than anyone. My son.
But then I wrote a song that would, once again, change my life.
“Seduces Me” (co-written with John Sheard) was intended for a new album on my own money pit of a U.S. label. On a hunch I played this track to my former Canadian product manager at Columbia Records (now Sony), Dave Platel, who had become part of Celine Dion’s management team. Dave loved the song and said he’d like to play it to Celine. “Seduces Me,” with its European-style 6/8 waltz tempo, combined with its foreboding, classical minor chord progression and its ultra-suggestive lyric, was a perfect “cast” for Celine. But knowing that a lot of politics and relationship building went into landing a song on a major international artist’s record, I didn’t hold my breath. Two weeks later, Dave woke me up in the middle of the night with a transatlantic phone call.
“Grab your guitar, Dan,” he said.
Even half-asleep, I knew not to ask questions.
“I love your song,” was the next thing I heard.
“Who is this?” I yawned.
“Sorry, my voice is hoarse. I’ve just finished a long night at Hammersmith, here in London.” Before I could reply, Celine started singing “Seduces Me” like she’d been singing it all her life. Within seconds, over the static hum of a buzzing long-distance line, we were trying to figure out what key she could record “Seduces Me” in.
“What on earth?” Bev groaned, raising her head from her pillow.
“Shh.”
I slid the capo up and down my guitar, making the song higher, then lower, keeping in mind that Celine’s voice would have greater range and suppleness once she’d taken a break from the road and was rested and ready for the studio. I convinced Dave, who then convinced Sony, to allow me to produce “Seduces Me” for Celine’s new album, on spec. I would pick up all the recording costs, knowing that if she included the song on her album, I’d be reimbursed and then some.
“But what if Celine doesn’t include your song on her record?” Bev asked.
“Then I’m out at least fifty grand.”
“After all the money you’ve wasted on your U.S. label, do you really think that’s wise?”
Fair question. After all, there were few purely vocal-driven artists left to pitch songs to. Radio had turned edgy with groups like Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis and U2, who wrote their own material, which left everyone from Jon Bon Jovi to Stevie Wonder to Elton John vying to get a cut on Celine’s new record. And that wasn’t including the hundred hit songwriters scattered across the world, all of whom had banged out more number ones than I had.
To Bev’s credit, she listened while I explained why, despite the steep competition, I had a good feeling about “Seduces Me”: Celine already loved the song; René Angélil (Celine’s husband and head manager) and Dave Platel loved the song, so I was in the door. All that was left for me to do was nail the arrangement and recording of “Seduces Me.”
Bev, who had stood loyally by my career choices, did so again. But I couldn’t afford any more blunders. And in the mid-nineties, unlike the sixties and seventies, it wasn’t enough to have a great song. Production, instrumentation and the ever-vexing “hip factor” were equally important. I knew plenty about singing and could back up my ideas simply by dashing into the singer’s booth and laying down a few sample tracks. But I was no technician. When it came to recording great drum sounds or conducting a horn section, I faltered. So I delegated, hiring John Jones, an old Toronto friend and excellent musician (who’d worked extensively with George Martin, the Beatles’ producer), and Rick Hahn, a classically trained musician, to assist me in turning a great song into a great Celine Dion record.
In every business there’s politics. This is especially true in the music business, where a song can earn millions of dollars, and a hit album many times more, in a remarkably short time. Vito Luprano, Celine’s A&R rep at Sony who’d been with her from the beginning, expressed doubts about “Seduces Me” (Dave had played it to him after Celine had jumped on it), angry that I hadn’t sent him the song first.
“I want you to send me your new version of ‘Seduces Me’ now!” barked Vito, when news got back to him that I’d almost completed the recording for Celine and Sony.
To play it safe, I didn’t send my recording in progress anywhere, waiting until my two co-producers and I arrived at the Hit Factory in Manhattan to present the new arrangement to Celine.
If I were the type to feel intimidated, I would have folded up my tent the moment I walked into the legendary studio. One room was block-booked for the entire month by Jim Steinman, Meatloaf’s producer, another room taken over by David Foster. As I walked into my assigned studio I spotted Aldo Nova (a former platinum-selling rock artist out of Montreal who’d been writing and producing hits for Celine, as well as many other international artists, for years) leaving yet another studio. He looked pale and beaten up. Sheesh, I thought, if Aldo’s freaked out by the competition, I should be petrified.
But I wasn’t. Perhaps because Celine, her body clock turned upside down from international travel, had insisted that she cut her vocals to “Seduces Me” at 2:30 a.m. I could night owl with the best of them and after flying back and forth between Toronto and L.A. a half-dozen times, cutting this track in three different keys to make sure I had the perfect key for Celine’s voice, I was prepared to do anything that helped Celine sing better. Because above all, it was her performance that would determine the song’s fate.
Celine arrived an hour late, along with a film crew that would be shooting our session, and an entourage of relatives, friends and Sony reps.
God help me, if she’s gone Hollywood, I’m in serious trouble, I said to myself, smiling nervously in Celine’s direction as she walked into the studio, confident and focused, oblivious to the small nation of people trailing behind her. Am I even allowed to look at her? Some stars I’d recently written with forbade eye contact from anyone considered not to be of equal standing.
“I’m so glad we have a chance to work together again,” Celine said, grasping my hand affectionately, as she used to do when we’d meet to perform on various TV shows. “We had so much fun back then.”
That’s when I knew for sure that Celine had every intention of putting “Seduces Me” on her album. But even the greatest of singers can have an off performance. Fortunately, Celine brought her best voice to the Hit Factory that night. In the past, Celine had appeared to be encumbered by the magnificence of her engine, like an amateur driver behind the wheel of the world’s most powerful car. Now, however, she’d learned how to harness her explosive talent, when to let up and allow the song to sing itself, when to crescendo and let it rip, when to use her breaths between key lyric lines as a seductive tool, when to remain silent and let the space do the talking. Celine was also tireless, demanding that I roll the tape over and over, never pausing to sip water or stretch. She’d listened very closely to how I’d sung the original version, taken what was best about my performance and made it into her song, her experience. I fed her a bit of advice, steering her clear of the odd “Celine-ism,” where she’d twirl the end of her phrases a little too predictably (imagine a toned-down but still grating Mariah Carey) which she accepted without any “I’m a superstar, who the fuck are you?” attitude. She just looked at me and said, “Okay, got it, hit me with another take.” So I did what a good producer always does: I shut up and let the tape roll. The session was over in three hours.
Afterwards, Vito Luprano approached me. Earlier, he’d scolded me for not presenting Celine with flowers. Apparently I’d breached some kind of studio etiquette. I flinched, wondering how many things I’d said during the session that Vito had taken offence at.
“Great song, Dan,” Vito said, shaking my hand and looking straight into my eyes. I blinked. Weird. Vito wasn’t known to be one of those “look you in the eye” types. “I was wrong. ‘Seduces Me’ is a perfect fit for Celine.”
That impressed me. In the music business, it’s very rare for someone to own up to a mistake.
Two weeks after my session with Celine, I was informed that “Seduces Me” would be included on her new album, to be released three months later, in March 1996. But there was one potentially catastrophic complication. No one at Sony Records knew that an artist in England, Bill Tarmey (a major star in the internationally successful soap opera Coronation Street), had already recorded “Seduces Me” and that it was slated to be released on EMI Records at the same time as Celine’s album. There was no chance Celine would include “Seduces Me” if she didn’t have an exclusive on it.
Should I bluff it and hope that Celine and Sony don’t catch wind of the other recording? Even as the thought occurred to me, I knew this was not the time for games. There was always a consequence that came from playing two sides, and usually it was me who ended up squashed.
Forty-eight hours later, I was sitting in a pub in London, England. My loyal British music publisher, Eddie Levy, was hovering beside me, too nervous to sit, tapping his fingers on his pint of beer.
“How come you’re not drinking, Dan?” Bill Tarmey inquired, politely signing autographs for the people milling around our table.
“Lately I’ve been trying to cut back.” I had an urge for a double martini.
“Grab your Perrier then, Dan, so we can toast ‘Seduces Me.’ Did Eddie tell you that we’re looking at your song as my first single?”
Then a strange thing happened. I told the truth. There was an agonizing pause. Then Bill Tarmey said, in a voice as gracious as it was resigned, “I get the picture, Dan. I’ll have your song removed from my record. What the hell, I’d ask the same thing of you if our positions were reversed.”
When more money flowed in from Celine’s recording within the first year of its release than I had earned from nearly all my recordings over the last ten years combined, I finally got the hint. Why should I bother competing as an artist with the Celines of the world when I could work alongside them, albeit in the background, as a writer-producer? In the past, when my record sales were being whomped by other performers, I’d felt disgraced and untalented. But at forty-two, I was finally mature enough to accept that it was far more complicated and impersonal than that.
Dad’s warning from my childhood was finally sinking in: “Stop your foolish dreaming, boy. It’s time you got that thick head of yours out of the clouds.” It had taken me a mere thirty years to heed his advice.
The first thing I did after I picked up the mastered version of Celine’s “Seduces Me” was play it to Dad over the phone.
“What happened to that woman’s French accent, son? Now she sounds just like any other American singer.”
After I hung up, I realized that David had picked up the phone in our bedroom halfway through my playback, just in time to catch Dad’s twist of the knife.
“Daddy, why was that lady copying you?”
“She’s not copying, David. Celine’s the singer and I’m the writer.”
“Why aren’t you the singer, Daddy?”
“Because I’m not going to be singing anymore.”
“How come?”
“Because I’ve decided to join the international songwriting sweepstakes.”
“Can I join too, Daddy?”
At seven, David would have happily joined any club that gave him a chance to spend time with his globe-trotting father. David hung up the phone and ran downstairs to me. Does he think we’ll be part of some circus? I wondered.
“Answer me, Daddy!”
The more I hemmed and hawed, the more David’s wiry body stiffened, preparing for, and then resigning himself to, the one word he hated more than any other. Especially coming from me. “No, David.” Regardless of how I softened that no, despite whatever qualifying words I tacked on afterwards—”maybe next time”—David always saw it for what it was: rejection.
In 1997, Celine Dion’s Falling into You won a Grammy for album of the year. This meant that the various producers of this album, myself included, won a Grammy as well. International sales of this CD would ultimately climb to thirty million. Never one to take awards seriously, I felt even less deserving in the case of my ‘97 Grammy, believing that I was a freeloader, piggybacking on the Celine Dion gravy train. That’s not how the music business saw it. Out of nowhere I was fielding calls from A&R men, producers, recording artists and songwriters wanting to work with me. In a business where it’s almost impossible to get that one huge break, I’d been given a second chance. Twenty years earlier, the trappings and temptations of pop stardom had caused me to lose my focus. Older and wiser, I would not make the same mistake again. Sure, the public didn’t care about songwriters and neither did the media. But my bank account cared. And the behind-the-scenes movers and shakers, the powers that create the future Madonnas and Britneys, sure as hell cared.
My wife and son cared too. For different reasons.
“David’s in grade one now,” I rationalized. “That means a lot of his time will be taken up with school, with homework, with new friends.” I chose not to remember how, when I’d started grade one, I’d turned even more insecure, even more dependent on Dad’s strength to get me through the tumble of rowdy boys, snobby girls and critical teachers.
So when Nashville came calling I conveniently viewed it as the perfect compromise between staying at home and travelling for long stretches at a time. Whereas a trip to L.A. consumed an entire day, it was just a ninety-minute plane ride into the heart of what music-biz insiders called Music Row. This also made it easier for Nashville-based writers and singers to fly to Toronto, where we could record whatever we wrote in my basement studio. Besides, according to Keith Stegall, one of Nashville’s most successful songwriters and producers, my total ignorance of country music would work to my advantage.
“Just be you, Dan,” Keith drawled laconically, when he picked me up in his blazing-red pickup truck. “I bought your first two albums when I was studying theology at Centenary College in Shreveport. I used to perform ‘Hold On’ and ‘You Make Me Wanna Be’ while playing bars to pay my way through school.”
“Jesus, am I that old?”
“Country music likes old. Experience makes for better storytelling.”
Had I glanced over Keith’s songwriting resumé, I would have known that he was as ancient as I, despite looking like one of those perfect Marlboro men. Before discovering, producing and writing hits for Alan Jackson, Randy Travis and Terri Clark, Keith had made his name as a pop writer, penning Al Jarreau’s “We’re in This Love Together” and Dr. Hook’s “Sexy Eyes.” Very few songwriters possessed his musical range and flexibility. And he came by it honestly. His father had supported his family playing guitar for Hank Williams and Johnny Horton.
Still, predicting how Keith and I would fare as collaborators based on our past hits was about as scientific as sizing up a potential mate on the Internet based on their hobbies. To my amazement, our first two co-writes became number-one country hits. Our third, “I Do (Cherish You),” yet another country number one, enjoyed a second life as a pop hit for the Motown boy group 98 Degrees.
As country music continued to turn more pop-sounding, and L.A.-based songwriters, finding themselves shut out of the pop world by rap, moved to Nashville, the inevitable backlash occurred. But if the price of admission was earning the scorn of country music purists, I could afford to pay. Especially since the songs that Keith and I wrote continued to be recorded by dozens of country stars: everyone from Reba McEntire to Sammy Kershaw to Alan Jackson. Typically, the criticism that hurt most came from the old familiar place.
“That’s racist music, son,” Dad would chide. “Name one successful Black country singer—and don’t start with Charley Pride. He’s older than I am. That hillbilly music appeals to southern bigots and backwater Republicans.”
I would counter with something about country music no longer being racist, unlike Dad’s stereotypes about country music and its audience. After enduring a brief lecture from Dad about the difference between “classist” and “racist,” I’d point out that, as in any musical substructure, there were different types of country music—ranging from old-style Merle Haggard to contemporary singer-songwriter, à la Gordon Lightfoot. There I was, prattling on like some didactic musicologist, trying to convince him of my worthiness. As I’d get up to leave, Dad would inadvertently reveal the real reason he was so upset about my constant commuting to Nashville.
“You’ve made enough money now, son. Stay home with your family before something bad happens to you. America’s a dangerous place.”
Now that Dad was seeing calamity around every corner, he always felt safer and calmer when I was in town, only a phone call and a twenty-minute drive away. But on my next Nashville trip, something happened that made me wonder if I hadn’t been a little too quick in dismissing Dad’s criticisms of country music. And of the small part I was now playing in it.
“Do you mind telling me what your background is?” a famous country singer asked me, after we’d been introduced at a popular bar in Nashville.
“Canadian.”
“I mean, what race are you?”
“My dad’s Black and my mom’s white,” I said. Two things stopped me from dumping a beer over Mr. Country Star’s head. One: Keith was producing his new record. Two: I had a feeling he, like many people in Nashville, packed a gun. As I seethed, Mr. Country Star, who’d had a few too many Budweisers, continued to stare. Not this again. It was shortly after 9/11 and lately I’d noticed a lot of people giving me the evil eye. Meanwhile, a dozen musicians, songwriters and producers fell silent to take in this exchange.
“Well let me tell ya something, Mr. Dan Hill. You may look like a Black man but you sure as hell sing like a white man.”
“Oh yeah, well let me tell you something,” one of the posse watching cracked. “He may sing like a white man but he sure as hell’s hung like a Black man.”
As everyone around me belly-flopped with laughter, I felt like I’d been hit with the perfect one-two knockout of stereotypes.
“Come home, Danny. Your family needs you.”
That was all Mom had said on my hotel voicemail. What she meant was that Dad needed me. I started to get that boxed-in feeling again. I skipped to the next message.
“Dad, it’s David. Stop leaving home. Stop leaving Canada to always go to America. Choose a country.”
Ouch. Like so many Hills, my eleven-year-old son had a scary way with words. “Choose your love,” David was saying. “Is it music or family?” It brought back the image of him, at four or so, looking balefully out our living room window, searching, as he did every day when I was gone, for his jet-setting father. Bev had described this wrenching scene many times to me over the phone, but until I saw him there, as I pulled up our driveway from yet another songwriting journey, I hadn’t understood. There he was, his small face squished up against that big bay window, waving excitedly in my direction.
On my flight back to Toronto the day after David’s message, I couldn’t get one particular song of mine out of my head.
Memories of when I was a little boy, four years old,
Waiting for my daddy to come home
Now I look into the eyes of my own son
Wondering what he’s thinking of
Waiting at the window, when I come home
Watch his eyes fill up with joy and wonder
He reaches out his tiny hands, I feel the bond between boy
and man
Memories of my mom crying, my daddy gone for weeks
at a time
Not knowing how to comfort her
Face in my pillow, pretending not to hear
Now I write this letter to my little boy, I’m far away
Not knowing really what to say, except I’m sorry, oh so sorry
I don’t wanna make the same mistakes my daddy made with me
Still his voice rolls off my tongue when I say boy, protect your mom Memories of my wife crying on the phone
Wondering when I’m coming home
My voice sounds detached and cold
Reminds me of someone that I knew
He had a funny attitude, when I needed him to be
All the things only a daddy could be to me
I don’t wanna make the same mistakes my daddy made with me
Still his voice rolls off my tongue when I say not now, I’m busy son
Memories of lying in bed with my wife and son
Overwhelmed by so much love, trying to explain how a man
can cry Yet still be happy
Thinking of all the dumb mistakes I’ve made
Now I understand my father’s pain
He did the best with what he knew, I love you daddy
I watch my son fall asleep, and wonder what he’ll think of me
When years from now, he sees his son
Reaching out his tiny hands, for love