ASK ROD: PHIL’s LETTER Part 2

Can you tell me anything about the disco album with the fist-in-Crisco cover art?

Some of the tracks in the album are slightly embarrassing now, but certainly none of the satirical ones, nor the concept itself which was to send up the disco {put a disco beat behind it and it will sell) movement. The album and the single from it "Amor" made the charts all over Europe and in France, Holland and Germany "Amor" stayed number one for many weeks. The Europeans paid no attention to the satire, they went for it in a big way because of its disco danceability. That’s more a tribute to engineer Bob Kovack and co-producer Wade Alexander than to my disco crooning.

In the US the send up of the disco divas and devos certainly wasn’t lost on the Gay community. It didn’t hurt that it contained "Don’t Drink The Orange Juice", a paean I directed to Anita Bryant who was carrying on a heated campaign against Gay Rights in Florida while being that state’s Orange Juice spokesperson. "Full Moon Over The Ansonia Hotel" was pretty outrageous too, as was "Easy In." But the initial attraction had to be the cover shot of iron icon Bruno's mighty fist full of Crisco coming out of a renamed Disco can. That was my idea and it worked.

"Slide . . . Easy In" found its way to Europe in the first place courtesy of a DJ who visited Fire island & took the album home to Paris. Oddly enough the original cover was considered too outrageous for Europe ‘s audiences and a shapely blonde models derriere clad in silver lame hot pants with a stars and stripes belt, was substituted for a ‘fist full of Bruno.’ And it was retitled "Amor, Amor" after the hit single. In the US the album is a major collectors item and is known as "The Crisco Disco Album". Don’t look for it to make its way to CD anytime soon, I have fatter fish to fry.

HEINZ HOFFMAN RICHTER

Can you tell me anything about Heinz Hoffman Richter: Music To Freak Your Friends & Break Your Lease? (I've never heard this one myself; this question is on behalf of a fellow McKuen freak.)

Good news for your friend; the genial genius of one of the pioneers of futuristic music, Heinz Hoffman Richter continues to get the deserved recognition. He is featured on a new P22 CD #005 "FUTURISMO, The Soundtrack to a font." No description I could offer at this point would be apt enough, so let me quote from the CD liner notes.

"Heinz Hoffman Richter • Symphony for Tape Delay, IBM Instruction Manuel & Ohm Septet, Third Movement: To the general public, little is known of the composer, conductor & musicologist. He defied categorization in his music by using several aliases throughout his career. His explorations into electronic music were sadly thought to have been cut short to an ear lobe tumor, which ironically left him unable to appreciate his own compositions. He persevered however and like Beethoven, some of his later hearing impaired works were judged among his best. In 1975, his Cantata for reverb-a-phone, kitchen utensils and 21 male vices, "My Love Lies Sleeping With A Male Chorus", won the Gibraltar Festival of Light Bevans Jay award and the French Grande Prix du Disc. This selection explores sound composition as dictated by schematics for various electronic devices, such as delayed analog warp."

As a producer I’ve recorded many of Richter’s compositions and hope to do more. We’ve gotten reacquainted recently when I tracked him from a brief stay at a Rochester sanitarium to his new home in Arizona. I’ve commissioned him to write a new work, "Machinations for imac and Hewlett Packard (Think Different, Or Else.)" I’m hoping to find a record company with the vision to take on this effort which will be a multi-media DVD. Meanwhile latch on to the P22 anthology.

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE

Your bio always refers to a stint as a psychological warfare scriptwriter, but I've never seen any details about this facet of your life. Care to elaborate a bit on that (if you're allowed!)?

In 1953 I finished 16 weeks of basic training as in infantryman at Fort Ord, a camp outside of Monterey, California. Afterward I was assigned for another month of special training outside of New York City. The Special Training turned out to be for a Psychological Warfare Unit stationed in Tokyo. My job, along with several other writers was to write propaganda scripts to be translated into Korean. The object was to get North Korean troops to defect to the South.

I invented a Tokyo Rose clone called "Moran," Every night she opened her radio show with the tagline "Hello. my Midnight Companion. . . ." From there she went on to describe the wonders of life in the South as compared to the famine and horrors of the North. In addition I wrote copy for radio drama series and leaflets all translated by someone else into Korean then beamed or dropped behind enemy lines. I have no idea how effective we were, but all of us did wind up on the North’s war criminals list.

An indelible memory from those day is sitting behind a typewriter trying to dream up a script and having a monitoring top sergeant come by and yell "Why aren’t you creating?" I was busted from that cushy but dull job, demoted from PFC to plain old private and sent to a unit in Korea. All because I was caught singing after hours in a Tokyo night club.

SERGE GAINSBOURG

Any thoughts about Serge Gainsbourg?

Lots. Some printable and some none of your business. Serge was a sweetheart and one of Frances most eclectic writer/composers. His three pack a day voice (it contributed to his untimely death) was a growling wonder. His early mainstay was Jazz but he was capable of writing superb songs in nearly every genre. If there was a trend in music he was on top of it before anyone else in France. More often, he created his own trends which were impossible for any French artist to follow. His compositions number in the hundred.

240 of Gainsburoug’s own recordings have recently been collected in an 11 CD Boxed set (Philips 838 386) in France and he is enough of an underground icon in the USA that Mercury records has released 3 CD’s of his work here. Comic Strip (528 951), Du Jazz Dans le Ravin {522 629} and "Couleur Café" (528 949.}

We met under quite unusual circumstances.

As you may know, nearly all foreign films that receive a license to play in France are dubbed into French. When the French distributor for "Joanna" was casting about for a singer to overdub my vocals , Serge found out about it and insisted on the job.

"I am Rod McKuen," he insisted, "If you don’t believe it look at this." He then produced video cassettes of old movies of mine, when I had been an actor, and sure enough, Gainsbourg, who earned extra money back in the 50’s overdubbing films, had done my voice for both "Wild Heritage" and "Rock Pretty Baby." What's more Gainsbourg had been at the Cannes Film Festival screening of "Joanna" where Eddie Barclay had thrown a party for me & I gave him a dub of the music. So by the time he met with the distributor he already had the French lyrics written and his own demo made. This could have been a potential embarrassment to me because I had already promised Brel he could do the French lyric to "I’ll Catch The Sun." To Serge’s credit he got together with Jacques and worked it out.

In addition to "Joanna", Serge wound up doing lyric translations and my vocals in French for "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," "A Boy Named Charlie Brown, "Emily" and "Natalie."

I loved Gainsbourg’s talent, craft and enterprise. His friendship was a constant. He introduced me to the underbelly of Paris that I would never have known without him. We shared a sense of the ridiculous that I haven’t known with anyone else. I have wonderful tales I could tell, but won’t,

So many of the writers, singers and publishers I worked with in France are gone now that my last trip to Paris was filled with great melancholy .

VOICE OF THE SKY AND MORE

I'd be honored if you could give me a quote about Gene Merlino. I'm writing a book about the "set your poems to music" business (aka "song-poem music"), and he's been most cooperative and helpful to my research.

I knew Gene Merlino’s velvet-like tenor voice long before Anita Kerr moved to California and made him part of her West Coast Edition of The Anita Kerr singers. I knew his voice, but not him, and I’m sure he sang on dozens of my recording sessions, particularly for RCA. My producer at RCA, Neely Plum, always used background singers to augment the string section for his artists. Gene was much in demand, because like Lulie Jean Norman, Ginny Mancini, Jackie Ward and a handful of others he was able to blend so seamlessly with other voices that his importance to a session cannot be overestimated.

When Anita and I began to work together on "The San Sebastian Strings" projects, I got to know Gene better. When we needed a voice for "The Sky" Gene was my first choice. Anita seemed somewhat apprehensive at first, frankly I think she might have felt I was choosing Gene in deference to her. We had a great arrangement. I never questioned her choice of instrumentalists for the orchestra and she never interfered in any way with my choices for narrators or my direction of them.

Gene became the voice on "The Sky," and no one I know of ever disputed his suitability for the part. He took direction well, even my getting him to pitch his voice lower for most of the tracks. Not all good singers make good actors, but Gene Merlino excels at both.

SONG-POEM MUSIC INDUSTRY?

I'm also curious if you have any knowledge of the song-poem music industry. If you'd like, I'll be happy to send you one of our "best of" compilation CDs. Thanks very much for your time, and for the vast pleasure I've been given by your work. --Phil Milstein

I’d love to say I’m ‘in the know’ about "The Song-Poem Industry," but I’m not. Somehow, since I must be – like it or not – The Godfather of it, I feel I should be (pardon the expression) versed on it. I’d love becoming more enlightened. It sounds interesting. I’m certainly aware of the excellent job Rhino Records has done with Kerouac, Watts, Ginsberg et all and proud to be part of their Beat Generation collection, though I wish that they had used some of my earlier work with Chet Baker and Stan Getz. I’d love to see and hear some of the collections you’ve done, Phil, But one question. How come I’m not part of it? Regards, Rod.

                                - RM 2/21/99 Previously unpublished

PARIS

I went back to look for you.
            Not understanding the language of hello,
I thought I'd speak it just the same.

I bathed,
left the window open
and one light on.
The heat was off
and as we warmed each other
I knew that you’d make up
for all those dark indifferent backs
that turned from me these many months.

The room sat waiting,
premeditated as a concierge’s smile.

In the lobby
there were some roses on a table.
I looked at them so long
I thought the buds had drained
the color from my face.
Finally I went up the stairs
to bed alone.
.
3.

I’ve drawn your face
on tablecloths across the country,
tracing your smile
with my index finger,
making your hair just so,
till now you’re more
what I want you to be
than what you are.

I can paint your eyes and say
this is where I lived
for twenty minutes and more.

I order grapefruit
and pay for ruined napkins.
And between the morning and the evening
I draw your face a little fainter every day.

                                - from "Lonesome Cities," 1967