At home, Nicollette and I were getting closer. We were still feeling out the relationship, but we knew we were dealing with something very passionate and intense. But I still was not there in terms of committing fully to her. That would happen later. In the back of my mind, I still thought she was the one, but given the amount of things thrown at me then—especially ready, willing, and available beautiful women—I wasn’t quite ready to stop that yet. Then it was time to head off to record my next album, and this time it would not be done in Los Angeles with Michael Lloyd. I was going to Florida to work with someone new.
I got off the plane in Miami and made my way down to the baggage claim.
You couldn’t miss him.
He looked excited to see me, with a leering ear-to-ear grin. He was in his mid-twenties, kind of scrawny, with stringy hair and a face that looked vaguely Asian…and who could forget those sweatpants, which left nothing to the imagination? My first thought was, Dude, next time you might want to think about underwear before wearing those things again. But hey, this was Rick Finch who had come out to pick me up, so I didn’t want to judge too quickly or too harshly. This guy, the cofounder, bassist, and co-producer of KC and the Sunshine Band, had sold literally millions of records. And now, much to his seeming delight, I was in his hands.
He had recently approached the Scotti brothers to make an offer to produce my next record. I’m sure, to the Scottis, this was like manna from heaven. They could send me down to Florida for two months, which would keep me out of their hair. Yet they would know exactly where I was, so they could always keep tabs on me. But more than that, as I said, this guy knew how to make hit records. He had the goods and the pedigree, which I gathered meant he could make the Scottis money.
Ever since he was a teenager in the early ’70s, working at TK Records down in Hialeah, Florida, he had made a name for himself as a skilled recording engineer, all while he was skipping high school. Then he met Harry Wayne Casey, who was working in the shipping department at the record label/recording studio. The two of them came up with a song called “Rock Your Baby” in 1974 that George McCrae recorded, and the rest was history. It became the first true disco hit, selling more than twenty million copies while helping to launch an entire new genre.
Soon after that, the two of them formed KC and the Sunshine Band (Harry Wayne Casey had become “KC”), and together they wrote and produced all of those hit records, from “Get Down Tonight” to “I’m Your Boogie Man.” I was a fan. I thought those records had great grooves; they were funky in that white boy sort of way, and the hooks where undeniable. Those were killer records, and that’s why I found myself, in the humid Miami spring of 1980, meeting Rick Finch.
I think I may have met him one time earlier during one of our whirlwind PR blitzes through Florida, a state where I always did good business. But nothing prepared me for the weird games of cat and mouse that were about to ensue while we “worked on my album.” It started the moment he greeted me at the airport, and continued as we climbed into his souped-up muscle car. Today, looking back, I wonder if he had done his homework and learned that I was a car freak. The first thing I said as I hopped in was, “Great car, man.” I was impressed, and with that, Rick floored it down the bleached Florida highway to show off the car’s power, glancing over at me repeatedly as we raced toward Hollywood, a hungry glint in his eyes.
We soon arrived at his home, where, as it turned out, I stayed for two months. No hotel? Nope. This had been arranged perhaps on the one hand to save the Scottis money, but I’m guessing this also was something Rick had pushed to the Scotti brothers to agree to for his own more private, lascivious purposes.
The first thing I saw was the massive car collection, featuring mint-condition, beefed-up American muscle cars, roadsters, and more, classics one and all. It was like a museum, and my jaw must have dropped. “Wanna drive these while you’re down here, Leif? All yours.”
Okay, I thought. Maybe this could work out after all.
The property felt like something out of a Busch Gardens brochure by way of Siegfried and Roy, with a stunning aviary featuring many multicolored tropical birds. There was also a large lake, a river that ran behind the house, and lush, impeccably landscaped grounds. The moment we walked into the house, I noticed a sweet, flowery scent; it turns out it was wafting through every room. Jasmine? Gardenia? It was hard to tell, but it was everywhere. What struck me most, however, upon entering the compound (which Rick told me he shared with KC, who was nowhere to be seen) was how immaculate it was. I’m not talking just neat. His home was spotless. Modern, sharp, and angular, it was laboratory pristine. The kitchen was spick-and-span in a futuristic way, almost as if it had been air-locked in a space station. You could have eaten off the floor, had there been a visible speck of food anywhere (which there wasn’t). I instantly got the impression that if I so much as nudged any one of the expensive-looking knickknacks strategically placed on several coffee tables, Rick would’ve instantly nudged it right back into its perfect place. Nothing was left to chance, it seemed, in this sterile environment—except maybe what he imagined happening in the bedroom.
Grandly opening the door to the room where I would be staying, as if to say, “Your suite, sir,” Rick lugged my bags in for me and wasted no time in dramatically diving onto the bed, landing in a perfectly prone, suggestive pose. With one raised eyebrow he purred, “So whaddya think?”
“Umm…nice room!”
I wish someone had given me a heads-up on what to expect with Rick. I mean, someone had to have known what this guy’s intentions were. Had my father been in my life at this point, I probably would have called him up and asked for a bit of advice. But as I often found during my teenage years, I was all by myself when it came to awkward situations. As with everything else, I was just going to have to figure this one out.
I unpacked my things, and then Rick asked me if I wanted to smoke some weed with him. That’s cool, I thought. Maybe this all isn’t as weird as it seems. Then I saw him go over to an economy-size jar filled to the top with Quaaludes. “Want one?” he cooed. “I’ll have a half,” I said, as once again I saw him starting to get that hungry look in his eyes. It was like the old Bugs Bunny cartoon with the guy stranded on the desert island with his friend; he starts looking at him, imagining him as a chicken on a plate. Given that I would be the chicken in this scenario, I made a mental note right there: Do not pass out around this guy.
Tired from the trip that day, I crashed pretty early in the evening because I knew we were going to start working the next morning. Somewhere in the middle of the night, I think about three a.m., I was awakened when, unnervingly, I felt a body curling up next to me under the covers. As Rick started spooning me, I quickly turned over and our eyes met in the dark; his, two confident slits, and mine, two large saucers like I’d seen a ghost.
“Umm, what’s up, Rick?”
“Leif,” he whispered. “I’m just so excited about starting work on the record. I can’t sleep.”
Dreaming of the nearest hotel room, I inched away ever so slightly.
“Rick, I really need some rest before we start work, you know?”
“Okay…just throwing this out there…. Care for a massage?”
“Umm, I’m good, Rick.”
I could almost hear him thinking, Curses! Like some dastardly comic book villain whose wicked plan had been thwarted; still, he slipped calmly out of my bed, eyes locked on me as he quietly padded out of the room. I sighed deeply from relief but still squeezed my pillow from the anxiety of having to dodge this guy’s advances.
For two months.
The next morning, we got into another one of Rick’s incredible cars and blazed off to the studio, which was about a half an hour away. We’d be working at TK Records, the same place where all of the KC and the Sunshine Band hits had been created (along with a bunch of other well-known records). Rick kept making eyes at me on the way there. I wondered if he was thinking about some alternate plans to win me over. Whatever; I wasn’t going to give it too much thought because I was pretty excited to be down there making my fourth album. For once, it was nice to not be in Los Angeles surrounded by everybody connected to the Scotti brothers. And to Rick’s credit, he put together a good band in the studio, and from the moment we entered, it seemed like he had a little game plan (at least a separate game plan from trying to have sex with me). He had brought in some good cover songs to work on, including The Who’s “I Can’t Explain,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Bare Trees,” and blah blah blah. His ever-present sweatpants always included full pockets of cocaine, pot and, not surprisingly, Quaaludes. In 1980, those items were almost as much of the recording process as two-inch tape and the mixing console.
I was dealing with a lot, and the recording was a nice distraction. I was still haunted by the accident, and the work helped me keep my mind occupied.
Once we all got into working and fell into a rhythm, I felt like I was more a part of the creative process than I ever had been before. One day, the band was kicking around a kind of reggae track, and I sat in and helped with the writing; it was the first time I had ever done that. The song, “Love’s So Cruel,” was inspired in part by my frustration at having left Los Angeles without having consummated my relationship with my friend, Tatum O’Neal. I know that sounds weird, but it frustrated me when a woman made me wait. I had met her a couple of years earlier and had already dated two of her friends, Andrea and Carrie, who were there the night we all first got together at a Foreigner concert in LA. I liked Tatum, but it was almost like a game at that point. What would it take? So many women were throwing themselves at me, yet Tatum was keeping me waiting, and that frustration found its way into the song. At this point Nicollette was also in my life, but it hadn’t become an exclusive thing yet, nor anything I was ready to start writing about in a song.
The rest of the sessions went well. It was pretty relaxed at the studio. There was always enough coke, ludes, and whatever else we needed, and outside of the few girls who might be waiting to say hi and ask for autographs outside the studio, nobody knew I was down there, so I could move about with relative freedom. On my days off, I did my best to avoid Rick’s subtle advances, which, at a certain point, seemed to fade once he got the message. He got a little bitchy over that, but he still worked hard in the studio. But it was still a weird scene down there. One night when I got back to the house, I walked through the kitchen, and for the first and only time there I saw KC, his face illuminated by the light coming from the open refrigerator door. “Hey, man,” I said, introducing myself, “I’m—” “I know who you are,” he shot back tersely before slamming the door shut and walking out. Did he think something was happening with me and Rick?
I also connected down there with an old friend of mine, Brenda Swanson, a beautiful, athletic model I had first gotten to know on a trip to Japan. She and I had a great time together. There was a strange night that I spent with the forty-one-year-old wife of one of Rick’s friends. Another friend of mine, the photographer Lynn Goldsmith, also came to the house once to shoot me posing in the pool and at the lake on the property—still some of my favorite photos of me from back then.
When I left, I did take Rick up on his offer for a bulk deal on the ludes he had; I took about 350 of them in a huge jar that I packed away in my suitcase. It was way easier back then to get away with stuff. As he dropped me off at the airport, he looked me in the eye and said, “I can’t wait to see you again. I’m thinking about coming out to LA later this year.” Okay, so maybe he hadn’t taken the hint.
After I got back to Los Angeles, I brought the tape of the new work to the Scotti brothers’ office so we could all listen to it. Tony had other ideas, though. He couldn’t have cared less about the songs I played. “Here’s what you are going to record tomorrow,” he said gruffly, dropping a lyric sheet in front of me. “This is a song our team came up with.” I couldn’t believe it. I finally had a few songs cut that reflected where I was at musically. I’m not saying they were perfect, but they were a step in the right direction. But for the single, Tony was ordering me to record something called “You Had to Go and Change on Me.” It was the same kind of toothless, forgettable song by committee that was now defining a singing career I had never imagined for myself. I was trying so hard to change the course of things and create music that would appeal to the audience I knew was out there. But the Scotti brothers were not about to walk away from the little girls. And this time, even they missed the boat. The single they wrote tanked. I was at least trying to connect with the audience, and I knew what was out there because I was the one on the road all the time. And their choice of this single proved they didn’t have that same audience connection. All of a sudden, the end of my teen idol career started to become visible on the horizon. All around the country, music was changing. LA had a hard-core punk scene. Interesting music was pulsating in Germany, London, and other places and clubs I frequented. New-wave bands were beginning to sprout up. But you never would’ve known that, listening to the single the Scotti brothers made me release. I was still locked in a world where millions of little girls did nothing but worship teen magazines. But that wasn’t reality anymore. Everything was changing and changing fast.
By the way, once I got back to LA from that trip to Florida, my pal John Belushi called and told me to bring over some of those Quaaludes, pronto. He was over at Universal Studios shooting The Blues Brothers movie. So I headed over there the next day. I knocked on the door of John’s trailer, and he yelled for me to come in. The scene I witnessed was pure early-’80s excess. John, bloated and wired, was sitting at a table with a mirror that had about ten lines of blow on it. Next to that was a tray full of sushi and, next to that, a carafe of sake. He did a few lines, ate a couple of pieces of spicy tuna and yellowtail, and washed it all back with a shot of sake. Something told me he’d been repeating that cycle at that table for a long time. “Where are the Quaaludes?” he barked at me. He didn’t waste a second. “Where are the Quaaludes?” “Take it easy, man,” I said. “I have them right here.” I took out the plastic bag full of Quaaludes I’d brought for him; he took out two and popped them in one gulp. Three whole Rorer 714s. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. The director, John Landis, needed John for his next scene, so off he went. Like it was nothing! “Wait here,” he told me on the way out. So I hung out in his trailer. He returned a short while later and went right back to the mirror for more coke, then sushi and sake, like it was nothing.
Rick Finch did make it to LA later that year. He called me when he arrived and told me, “I got you an early birthday present.” I met up with him, and he gave me a set of state-of-the-art Blaupunkt speakers for my car. To this day, they’re the most kick-ass car speakers I’ve ever had. But that was as far as he got with me.
He was trying so hard to groom me and get to me, and while I was willing to accept his gifts, I certainly wasn’t going to let it go any further than that. How many other young singers has he done this with? I wondered. This was the most destructive layer in show business, in my opinion. The preying upon beautiful young people. As I would learn later in life, my instincts had been right all along.
In March 2010, Rick Finch was arrested in Ohio, accused of having sex with a seventeen-year-old male. The local police stated that during the interview Finch gave them, he admitted to having sex with a number of teenagers from the ages of thirteen to seventeen. He eventually pled no contest to the charges and was sentenced to seven years in jail. He was fifty-six years old at the time and had been running a home recording studio where he worked with young, aspiring musicians. All seven male victims were regulars at the studio and, according to them, Finch told them that they “would need to be prepared for such activity if they sought success in the music industry.”
In court, Finch blamed alcohol for his behavior. I couldn’t believe he received just seven years for that. Of course, it makes me wonder what else was going on when I was down there in Florida back in 1980. I know he was trying to groom me and get me to have sex with him. But sex and drugs were viewed much differently back in 1980. Everything felt more recreational. But there is absolutely no excuse for this kind of sexual predatory behavior. I had just turned eighteen years old, so I guess technically I was of legal age. But that’s not the point. I’ll never know what effect that kind of pressure had on me. I’ll never know how it truly affected me. I managed to escape his clutches, but how many gave in to him under the pressure, thinking that it would help their career? Did he even want to help my career back then? Or was he simply interested in sleeping with me? Once again, nobody was minding the store. There’s no denying I had some fun down in Florida, and I think I did some pretty good work. But that doesn’t outweigh the other issues. I don’t think this man should ever have been working with young guys. I also think I was let down by my management and my family when it came to helping me deal with situations like this. In a way, this episode is the entire story of my life.