Episode 762 - Scott Fagan
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fuck, Nicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:Look, I know it's Thanksgiving.
Marc:I know, I know.
Marc:Some of you might be at home.
Marc:You might be back home where you come from, back with your family, holed up in your old room.
Marc:We do this every year, and...
Marc:It's always a little difficult for some people, but I think for some people it's going to be a lot more difficult if they even made the trip because, well, we had a major election a few years back, but this is another big one.
Marc:It's very divided and it's going to be hard for some families to survive it.
Marc:I mean, obviously not, you know, living, but that God forbid, you know, things could get that ugly.
Marc:But I mean, to survive the emotional bonds of family, no matter how troubled they may be without this stuff.
Marc:If there's political divisiveness within the family, man, it's going to be rough out there for some people.
Marc:I know it.
Marc:I'll speak to it as best I can.
Marc:I'm not going back.
Marc:I couldn't go back.
Marc:I couldn't go to Florida because of work.
Marc:But there's a couple of people within the unit, within the extended family that comes to Thanksgiving that I've always been at odds with.
Marc:And now there's two sides to this thing.
Marc:There's actually more.
Marc:It's a lot more nuanced than that.
Marc:But when it comes right down to it, one side won, the other side didn't.
Marc:There's a lot of vulnerable, sensitive, thoughtful, progressive people out there that are now just in shock and stunned and more vulnerable because now they have to deal with the aggressive gloating situation.
Marc:of the other side.
Marc:And that's hard.
Marc:It's horrible.
Marc:If I can speak to the nine conservatives who listen to my show, if you have people in your family,
Marc:who are wounded by this situation and are looking down the barrel at four years to them, the best it can be is horrible.
Marc:And that's not even being cynical for people who believe a certain way.
Marc:Could I just say to you few conservatives who listen to this,
Marc:who have members of your family that you're going to be seeing today, ease up on the aggressive gloating, the condescension, the infantilizing.
Marc:Just ease up.
Marc:All right?
Marc:Help out here in this particular situation.
Marc:Before I get into this too much, and I don't even know how much to get into it, but to speak from where I'm sitting and just to project the possible horrors in terms of arguments and crying and yelling and discomfort that some homes are going to be feeling, I can only speculate that
Marc:But I would like to read, because sometimes I wonder what my place is.
Marc:As a broadcaster and as a student of the human heart and spirit, when the chips are down and things get shitty, I sometimes wonder, what do I do here?
Marc:I know what I do.
Marc:I talk about myself.
Marc:I talk to other people about things that interest me and about their life.
Marc:But I get this email, and this is what keeps me going sometimes.
Marc:It's from a guy named Robert.
Marc:Just says, thank you.
Marc:Hi, Mark.
Marc:I love your podcast, but that's not why I'm emailing you.
Marc:I wanted to email you to tell you thank you.
Marc:Before I go into it, I want to say I'm not doing this to get attention or even to have you read this on the podcast or anything like that.
Marc:I'm emailing you because you made a difference in my life.
Marc:I listen to your podcast every week while I work, and I hear about the people who email you to tell you thanks for various things, and I finally worked up the courage to email you.
Marc:I was going through a rough time in my life when I was introduced to your podcast.
Marc:I couldn't accept who I was as a person, and it felt like there was a giant hole that couldn't be filled inside.
Marc:I lost who I was for a long time, and that culminated in a suicide attempt, which led me to being put in a mental hospital for a short time.
Marc:When I got out, my girlfriend, who I'm still with today, surprised me with your book, Attempting Normal, because she knew I was a fan of the podcast and your standup.
Marc:I love the book so much.
Marc:Your book and especially the time you take on each episode to delve into your mind and your honesty about yourself and learning to live with who you are as a person helped me feel okay with who I am.
Marc:It helped me feel like I wasn't alone when I truly felt so isolated and alone that I didn't want to live anymore.
Marc:I can't describe how much relief and hope I felt because someone else, someone who had a real voice, talked about many of the things I was feeling.
Marc:Sometimes the things you said and the things I've read in your book are actual thoughts I've had.
Marc:It made a world of difference.
Marc:And I soon sought help after that, realizing that I couldn't do it alone and I'm a much happier person now because of it.
Marc:But most of all, you helped me feel like a real person.
Marc:I truly think you are a special person.
Marc:And as many people have said, you have a...
Marc:Real way of humanizing and getting to the heart and soul of your guests.
Marc:And something truly special and amazing happens every time you sit down in the garage for an interview.
Marc:I was born in New Mexico, and I've never really been proud of my home state, but you make me proud to be a New Mexican.
Marc:I hope this email finds you well.
Marc:Hope all is well with the cats, and please keep up the great work.
Marc:Much love, respect, and admiration being sent your way.
Marc:Robert, Boomer Lives.
Marc:So, I guess the thing that strikes me is that, you know, there's a lot of people...
Marc:Feeling isolated, but, you know, and feeling alone or at odds or on the wrong end of the thing.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:But you're not.
Marc:Okay, you're not.
Marc:And I know going into Thanksgiving, you're going to get beat up.
Marc:And you already were beat up.
Marc:If you have people with different political views than you, you know who I'm talking to.
Marc:Let me just get a little business done here.
Marc:I'm going to be in Chicago on December 3rd.
Marc:Two shows at the Vic.
Marc:You can go to wtfpod.com, tour slash tour.
Marc:I think the first show is kind of sold out.
Marc:The second show, there's still seats.
Marc:But it's looking good there, and I'd love to see.
Marc:I'm excited to go to Chicago.
Marc:I like going to Chicago.
Marc:I like performing.
Marc:Something's happened.
Marc:Well, I mean, I've always liked it.
Marc:But now it's like, I've got to do it.
Marc:I've got to show up for the people that are showing up.
Marc:For deeper reasons than just comedy.
Marc:It's just the way I feel.
Marc:Also, new WTF cap mugs are available tomorrow, Black Friday, from Brian Jones up in Portland.
Marc:These are the same mugs I give to my guests.
Marc:They go on sale at 12 noon Eastern, 9 a.m.
Marc:Pacific tomorrow, November 25th.
Marc:Go to BrianRJones.com to get yours.
Marc:People love these.
Marc:These are good gifts as well.
Marc:What else?
Marc:Well, look.
Marc:You know...
Marc:A lot of families are going to be tested.
Marc:The relationships are going to be tested.
Marc:It's going to be difficult.
Marc:Christ, before this election, even football could test relationships and families.
Marc:And just seeing the people once or twice a year can test it.
Marc:I mean, it's just, it is.
Marc:It's difficult.
Marc:And I know some people are entering family situations where they're like, why?
Marc:Why did you vote the way you did?
Marc:Why?
Marc:Why would you vote for that guy?
Marc:Or why?
Marc:Why?
Marc:I thought, you know, I mean, I thought we had some basic understanding.
Marc:This is going to be a real test of the love that holds families together.
Marc:It is.
Marc:The country is divided, so this is going to show up around the turkey.
Marc:Like, let's say you have a father or a brother, and you're like, why the fuck would you vote the way you did?
Marc:And just ask yourself, make a checklist for yourself.
Marc:Are they needy?
Marc:Are they volatile?
Marc:Are they self-absorbed?
Marc:Are they impulsive?
Marc:Are they thin-skinned?
Marc:Are they defensive?
Marc:Are they manipulative?
Marc:Are they scared of change?
Marc:And instead of changing, would they make life miserable for other people?
Marc:to fight that change?
Marc:Are they set in their ways?
Marc:Are they horrendously terrified and angry about the possibility of losing?
Marc:Are they stubborn?
Marc:Now, that's a profile that could go either way.
Marc:But if you have a hard time understanding why someone would vote the way they did, maybe maybe look at that checklist and maybe ask yourself where the where they always like that.
Marc:Does it make sense?
Marc:Even if you don't agree with it, even if it was a wrong decision, does it make sense for that person?
Marc:Has that person always been like that?
Marc:Maybe that'll give you a little wiggle room to hold on to some love for some people that you may hate right now.
Marc:And like mothers, sisters, are they the type of person that covers up and apologizes for the guy that I just described?
Marc:All right, well, maybe.
Marc:Have they always been that way?
Marc:Maybe that'll find you a little wiggle room for acceptance.
Marc:I mean, a lot of us are just in the process of accepting the reality of what's happened.
Marc:We've gone through a few stages, and this is like you're walking into something that's going to rip open the wound again.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The wound of losing and the wound of being terrified for the future.
Marc:And believe me, the people in your family, if they aren't horrible, evil people, they don't know what's going to happen.
Marc:No one knows what's going to happen.
Marc:And they might be glib about it.
Marc:And as I said before, aggressive gloating, condescension, infantilizing, i.e., all those add up in certain instances to just bullying.
Marc:Hard to deal with.
Marc:It's going to be a rough go.
Marc:But take some time.
Marc:If you need to step away, step away.
Marc:And I say this outside of politics.
Marc:I've said it before on Thanksgiving.
Marc:Step away.
Marc:Take a walk.
Marc:Go look at your old hangouts.
Marc:Drive around.
Marc:Remember what it was like to be a teenager when you had it all in front of you.
Marc:Listen to some music.
Marc:Try to hit a reset.
Marc:Try to get through it.
Marc:Try to love despite the anger if you can.
Marc:Scott Fagan is on the show.
Marc:It's a very interesting story.
Marc:Scott Fagan did a sort of masterful album in 1968 called South Atlantic Blues.
Marc:And it's been dug up and remastered and reissued by St.
Marc:Cecilia Knows and Light in the Attic Records.
Marc:And it's a beautiful record, but it's an insane story.
Marc:That, you know, everything was moving in the right direction.
Marc:And shit just didn't go the way it was supposed to.
Marc:And he was set to wandering after the record tanked.
Marc:And then it was resurrected in a very odd way.
Marc:It's an amazing story from a very gifted artist with a very unique past.
Marc:And he was reunited with his son who he didn't know.
Marc:He never met.
Marc:But years and years later.
Marc:who is Stephen Merritt from Magnetic Fields.
Marc:And it's so weird because I talked to Scott about it.
Marc:Like Stephen knew his father a musician, but he didn't know who he was.
Marc:Until much, he met him much later in life.
Marc:And Scott had mentioned, you'll hear it, he mentioned that when he heard the music that his son made, he could hear himself in it.
Marc:And I listened to The Magnetic Fields sort of for the first time just the other night because Merge Records sent me their first two albums that they reissued.
Marc:And I can hear it too.
Marc:It was like genetic.
Marc:It's fucking trippy, man.
Marc:But so Scott's going to be on the show in a minute.
Marc:And it was a pretty beautiful interview.
Marc:because I'd read an article about this record, and I met the guy that found the record and got behind it, and he told me about the guy, and it just was a fascinating thing.
Marc:I'm fascinated with people that put one thing out there that is beautiful and monumental and then disappear for whatever reason, and to have something kind of be reintroduced.
Marc:I talked to Terry Reid, also a Light in the Attic artist, but Light in the Attic is a very good label for this stuff, but this Scott Fagan thing was just...
Marc:It was fascinating.
Marc:It was fascinating to talk to him.
Marc:And the album is beautiful.
Marc:It really is.
Marc:But that said, you can get the album, South Atlantic Blues, over at Light in the Attic Records.
Marc:And this is me talking to the very wise and slightly beat up but beautiful Scott Fagan.
Scott Fagan.
Guest:How many days have you been in L.A.?
Guest:This time, two.
Guest:Two days?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How long are you staying?
Guest:Until Thursday.
Guest:Do you like coming out here?
Guest:I lived here for a while.
Guest:I've been through L.A.
Guest:many, many times.
Marc:Many lifetimes.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:What were the years?
Guest:I first came out in 1972 with my rock opera, Soon.
Guest:We did it at the pilgrimage.
Guest:I came up in 87, and I came up to go to UCLA to learn program design.
Guest:I designed a recovery program for the music business.
Guest:And did it take?
Guest:It did.
Guest:Really?
Guest:What's it called?
Guest:Now it's called Music Ears.
Guest:And what's the angle?
Guest:How does it work?
Guest:Well, originally, you may know that, I'm guessing that it's true of comedians as well, but most musicians are independent contractors.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:No coverage for treatment.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The reality, or my reality, is that musicians have a tremendous impact on
Guest:the society yes if um if we're trying to support recovery for the society yeah supporting recovery for musicians i got sober in new york what year uh 1978 oh you're old timer may 24 you know 1978 that was the day chock full of nuts over on the upper west side having that sitting there with that coffee at the counter
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:Chock full of real nuts, not the coffee.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Name of the group was Chelsea Riverside, but it was better known as chock full of nuts.
Guest:Got it.
Guest:And I was elected chairperson within the first year because...
Guest:They could see that I needed it more than most.
Guest:Anyway, so then I went back to St.
Guest:Thomas, which is where I'm from.
Guest:The incidence of alcohol-related deaths in St.
Guest:Thomas is impressive.
Guest:In the States, Texas is the highest.
Guest:Alaska is double that.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And the Virgin Islands are double Alaska.
Marc:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So when I was a boy, there was no minimum drinking age.
Guest:We just drank.
Guest:from the very beginning.
Guest:And alcoholism is all over the place there.
Guest:But you weren't born there.
Guest:We went when I was five in 1951.
Marc:So when you were... We'll come back around to the... Because I'm sober 17 years myself.
Marc:Well, good for you, man.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Marc:I just had August 9th.
Marc:17 years.
Guest:Good for you.
Guest:Good, good, good for you.
Marc:Fucking miracle.
Marc:Nothing but...
Marc:But the fascinating thing about your story to me is that we're in this time where people are finding new music that's really old music.
Marc:I was brought up with a certain mindset about what music was and at a certain point in your life you realize that it's much broader than you ever imagined.
Marc:So when Chris Campion, the man that reissued your record, South Atlantic Blues, told me about you, I was like, all right, that sounds interesting.
Marc:And then I played this record and I'm like, holy shit.
Marc:This magical music from another time.
Marc:and uh these are nice things to be hearing mark i appreciate it well i mean you know it's it's sort of it's it's fascinating to me as somebody who is who has struggled in show business as well uh for many years how to discuss or handle the story and what you went through is uh it's it's a hell of a tale man and and and you look pretty good well 38 years clean and sober that helped please i've been gone and
Guest:In 1979, I would have been caffoodled.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:So, let's talk about New York.
Marc:So, you were born in New York, but you don't have any real recollection of it.
Marc:Oh, yeah, sure.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, I was born at Bellevue Hospital, appropriately.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My pop was a tenor man.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Sex?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Like the real deal bebop guy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:We lived on 52nd Street.
Guest:It was 1945, 46, 47, 52nd Street, which was jazz heaven.
Marc:That's where all the musicians were and the songwriters and everything, right?
Guest:Yep.
Guest:So he came up with Prez.
Marc:No shit.
Guest:Lester Young?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And Eleonora Fagan.
Guest:You know who that is?
Guest:I don't know who that is.
Guest:I know- That's Billy Holiday.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So was he playing with them?
Guest:Well, he played with them.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:He was younger than them and-
Guest:you know they all had people coming up under them so he he was coming up under Lester and and you know just the influence yeah Lester's influence on his horn playing Lester was like heavy influence on uh Art Pepper too Art Pepper can't shut up about Lester Young
Guest:Well, he was great.
Guest:And anytime you want to hear something absolutely magical, just find some Leslie Young.
Marc:So you grew up at that time hearing your dad practice, being part of that, people over at the house?
Guest:And sitting in rehearsal halls, my sister and I, on the little folding chairs while they did bebop for hours and hours.
Guest:If we weren't at the rehearsal hall, we were at the dance studio.
Guest:Where my mother and her twin sister were doing modern Afro-Congolese.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Outreach.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:So you grew up right in the middle of Bohemia, New York, in a way.
Marc:Well, we were very bored, my sister.
Marc:You couldn't appreciate it then.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:What are they doing?
Guest:But, I mean, it was a natural for us.
Guest:We took very naturally to it.
Guest:And then my pop couldn't resist what were called chippies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Familiar with the term?
Guest:Yeah, well, I think that evolved into groupies.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So my mother, when I asked my mother, Mud, why'd you divorce Frankie?
Guest:She said, he wanted sunny side up eggs every morning.
Guest:Oh, that was it.
Guest:But later she confessed it was the chippies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he concurred me.
Guest:Anyway, we went off to the Virgin Islands with a painter.
Marc:Like what kind?
Marc:Abstract realist?
Marc:Abstract painter?
Marc:Anybody of import?
Guest:Well, he eventually came back and made a good living as a commercial artist.
Guest:His name was Justin Fletcher.
Guest:So he married your mom?
Guest:He did not.
Guest:He...
Guest:Came back.
Guest:His mother insisted he come back and marry a nice Jewish girl.
Marc:So he left you guys down there.
Guest:And that's what he did.
Guest:So he took you to the Virgin Islands.
Guest:My mother and her twin sister took him.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Yeah, they'd been on their own since they were 16.
Guest:And, you know, they were artsy chicks.
Guest:And she had a steamer trunk full of 78s.
Guest:And off we went.
Marc:And that's where he went to St.
Marc:Thomas?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:It's been an art colony for a hundred years.
Marc:Yeah, what does that mean?
Guest:It means that... What was it called, the art colony?
Guest:It was...
Guest:Built around Claude Pissarro and abstractionism.
Guest:And poets, all the well-known poets in those days would come and stay at the Hotel 1829.
Guest:So this was the late 50s?
Guest:1951.
Guest:But it had been in place for 100 years.
Marc:That's when you got there in 51?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I wonder, was Derek Walcott around?
Guest:Not St.
Guest:Thomas.
Guest:He's from Trinidad, I think.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:I knew that guy at BU.
Marc:I met that guy.
Guest:Interesting fellow.
Guest:He is.
Guest:And a great poet, really.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But Trinidad, you know, the archipelago stretches from Venezuela to Key West.
Guest:Yeah, I'm not good with islands.
Guest:I've made some pretty embarrassing mistakes.
Marc:About islands.
Guest:Getting the wrong island.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you're a kid.
Marc:You're at the artist colony.
Marc:You've got one sister.
Marc:My sister Gail.
Marc:A year and a half older than that.
Marc:And your mom and her twin sister and this guy who doesn't hang around long.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then what's life like?
Marc:What's your mother doing?
Guest:She's a secretary, a legal secretary.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a dancer.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Immediately we're in the art scene there.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Poets and painters and lots of gay folk.
Guest:It was very attractive for gay people for many, many years also.
Marc:Oh, before they could really be out and having a life.
Marc:Well, no, there everybody was out.
Guest:There they could, right, that's what I mean.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So it was a retreat.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when did you start playing?
Guest:I started singing.
Guest:My pop was a singer also, a beautiful, beautiful singer.
Guest:Did you stay in touch with him all through your life or no?
Guest:No, there were long blank spaces.
Guest:My mother married eight times.
Guest:Eight times?
Yes.
Guest:I'm assuming they're not all great guys.
Guest:Well, they were all alcoholic.
Guest:Is she alcoholic?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Born and bred.
Guest:Look, man, the genetics for alcoholism go back to the first rotten mango on both sides.
Ha, ha, ha.
Guest:You know, that's it.
Guest:You got the bug in your blood.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So things were rough.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We were the only white children in the public school system for many, many years.
Guest:And basically, she was materially challenged.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We were, I don't like the term poor, but we were the poorest white folks I had ever seen anywhere.
Guest:And to this day, that's the fact.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But there was a tremendous amount of love and acceptance by local folks.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:That's the little white boy.
Guest:Man, come, we feed him something.
Guest:Gail, come now.
Guest:So it was an extraordinary life.
Guest:Bereft of any material comfort, but lots of hugs, lots of love, lots of acceptance.
Guest:Kind of pure.
Guest:Very much that.
Guest:And then later on, I was a homeless teenager and...
Guest:So I left high school in the 10th grade.
Guest:Why did you leave home?
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:Home left me.
Guest:My mother was married to a local Jamaican dude who tried to murder me one night.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:But, you know, there's people with addiction.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:She was strung out and...
Guest:and he was the light in her life, and though I don't doubt she loved me very much, I was completely confident in that.
Guest:It's just the way life was in that time.
Guest:Anyway, so quarter to three in the morning, I get up and say, free as egg this, and I hitch out to the East End of the Island, and
Guest:climb in the window of a Puerto Rican family I knew, and landed in the laundry pile, and they embraced me, and I lived there with them, hablando nada más que español day and night.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And so we are fairly multicultural.
Marc:I would say so.
Marc:And the singing publicly, when is that?
Marc:So you started as a singer.
Guest:First public performance...
Guest:was in uh in augusta georgia yeah the uh masters tournament yeah so i was up in the states on the road with my pop who had a the tic-tac-toe trio oh yeah and they gigged all through the south and one of their gigs was the masters um some country club there uh so we're in there i'm sneaked in the joint and how old are you
Guest:16.
Guest:So you got back up to the States?
Guest:Well, I came back and forth to the States.
Guest:Actually, I stowed away, Mark, on two airplanes.
Guest:Can't do that anymore.
Guest:Yeah, it's a little more difficult.
Marc:What do you mean you stowed away?
Marc:You were in an engine or a baggage?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I...
Guest:The first one was Cara Bear was in St.
Guest:Thomas.
Guest:I jumped over the fence, got on the airplane, which was calling for Harvey McDonald to get on the plane, so I'll be Harvey McDonald.
Guest:I sat down next to a beautiful little chick and said,
Guest:If they ask, tell them I'm your husband.
Guest:Of course, we were clearly not old enough.
Guest:But she said, OK, this was a big adventure.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we flew to Puerto Rico and got off the plane.
Guest:And Puerto Rico, because I'd lived in Puerto Rico now for a number of years and lived with the Puerto Rican family.
Guest:It wasn't clear whether I was Irish or Puerto Rican.
Guest:And so I ran into an old borrachong, an old drinking dude with a bottle of rum in a paper bag who was on his way.
Guest:And recognized a kindred spirit.
Guest:So we had some rum together.
Guest:And then I set out to find me next leg of the trip, which went down the stairs out to the tarmac.
Guest:There was an Eastern Airlines being cleaned up and gassed up.
Guest:But I went on there and stashed myself in the bathroom.
Guest:and um rolling down the the the runway this is flight blah blah I think I'm going to New York right or Miami yeah bound for Baltimore Philadelphia was November and late in November yeah um anyway so I came out and sat down next to a dude who was very nervous and
Guest:gay cat who was very nervous that he'd be accused of kidnapping me.
Guest:I was a very pretty kid.
Guest:So he was dead scared that he'd be accused of kidnapping me or molestation if we got to America.
Guest:Down in the island, that was no concern.
Guest:So he ratted you out?
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:He was just...
Guest:Scared?
Guest:He was just very uptight the entire flight.
Guest:And you made it though?
Guest:I did make it.
Guest:So we made it to Baltimore.
Guest:And I'm dressed in dungarees and flipped out pre-psychedelic, psychedelic shirt.
Guest:And I'm brown as a coconut and I have some no socks and some loafers or something on.
Guest:Clearly not a Baltimore boy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the police snagged me thinking that I was a runaway from a juvenile home in Baltimore.
Guest:I had them convinced that I was a Puerto Riqueno.
Guest:who had gotten on the wrong plane was supposed to be going to Miami.
Guest:No, no, no puedo hablar de inglés.
Guest:So I had him about to send me down to Miami, but they called me dear mother, and she loved her bonehead boy.
Guest:And he went back?
Guest:Yeah, they sent me back.
Guest:So how did you eventually make your way to New York?
Guest:On a sailboat.
Guest:I signed on as what we call a bilge rat.
Guest:And you're 16?
Guest:No, at 18 I came.
Guest:When you could legally do it?
Guest:50-foot sloop.
Guest:But I'd get in trouble with the law.
Guest:I was early onset alcoholism.
Guest:And I was a little white boy that had to create a reputation and defend it.
Guest:Or I'd be fish meal.
Guest:So I had a reputation.
Guest:I was singing.
Guest:People knew that I was a gifted singer.
Guest:And you had a band?
Guest:Not yet.
Guest:A little later, we were called the Urchins.
Guest:And that was in St.
Guest:Thomas?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, so I was up in the States in Augusta, and Pop was playing the thing, and he told somebody, his son Fidel, can we speak Germanic?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:He called me Fidel the fucking Bambto from the islands, because I was...
Guest:An advocate for Fidel and revolution.
Guest:Oh, were you?
Guest:Yeah, your early radical, radical commie.
Guest:Well, you know, he didn't play this commie card until a little later.
Guest:He overthrew Bautista, who was...
Guest:a bad guy yeah and and the whole exploitive society man it was terrible yeah and and lots of those folks wound up in miami and are the right wing sure down in miami yeah so in the early times young dudes were thinking oh yeah this is this is a great change for cuba and the people there anyway so we're we're there in augusta and georgia
Guest:Georgia.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, at the Masters tournament.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so me, Pop told this guy, oh, yeah, Fidel's a great singer.
Guest:He says, yeah, let me hear him sing something.
Guest:I'll give him $20 if he'll sing.
Guest:So I pretended to be able to play the stand-up bass, and I could fake it fairly well.
Guest:and uh so i sang uh i left my heart in san francisco really yeah playing the bass with the with the trio and the guy gave me twenty dollars uh-huh that was it yeah you were in easiest money i ever made in my life and uh the waitresses were winking uh-huh you're like this is it music's the ticket this is it so you go back you start a band
Guest:Yeah, a trio called the Urchins.
Guest:And what was the music?
Guest:Well, my favorite group was the Drifters.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Benny King.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:And there was an awful lot of Chalipso and Latin influence in that.
Guest:There was, yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:Like Under the Boardwalk?
Guest:Under the Boardwalk is one of theirs, but it's at the way end after Benny King had left.
Guest:Oh, it is.
Marc:So was Stand By Me Benny King?
Guest:Stand By Me was Benny King, Spanish Harlem.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:This Magic Moment.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Save the Last Dance for Me.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Young Boy Blues.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:fabulous stuff on broadway oh i'm getting choked up on the roof oh my god so many yeah yeah yeah so um so the little but in the islands mark yeah we had one radio station sure it had to play music for everyone so our our station played hillbilly music mm-hmm
Guest:um voice of america army brass bands so it was a big expat expat community down there that a fairly large one but not just american i mean yeah there were europeans right and the vi saint thomas in particular been a crossroads because of the harbor forever right so all of that all of those are my musical influences and you'll hear it in
Guest:in the work I do.
Marc:Oh, yeah, on South Atlantic Blues, like every, the horn section, you got Calypso, and then you got the R&B horns, and then you got the sort of trippy, kind of lyrical way you sing.
Marc:Like, it's all infused in that.
Marc:Like, what's really amazing on the record is that
Marc:You can hear Benny King in you, right?
Marc:Those spaces.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So Benny King was just a master fraser.
Guest:My pop was a master fraser, and I've tried to make it a sort of specialty.
Guest:So you're playing that kind of stuff with the urchins.
Guest:With that and folk.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Where have all the flowers gone?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:There's an R&B thing.
Guest:Sort of... Rocking it up a little?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I caught the eye of a sort of wonton wench at a place called Duffy's.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Down there.
Guest:So she...
Guest:We bumped lips and hips and resulted in a child, Stephen, who I had no idea existed.
Guest:Until recently.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:From the magnetic field.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So that was a one night that you were how old?
Marc:18?
Guest:19?
Guest:17.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:and you but yeah it wasn't a one night no no uh um we we were together for a few months maybe okay not long enough to know you had a kid coming oh no uh-huh no no um anyway so she went back to states the other people from the merchants went back and
Guest:And I signed on as a deckhand on the success.
Guest:To get up there, primarily.
Guest:Heading for the state, yeah.
Marc:You couldn't just go because your dad couldn't get you in?
Marc:You had to figure out how to work to get up there?
Marc:What was the idea?
Guest:Well, I'd gone back and forth so many times, either on his dime or my mother's dime.
Yeah.
Guest:or stowing away, like I told you, that it was sort of tired of me coming and going.
Guest:I mean, every time I came up, he thought, well, Fidel's going to go to school and get real.
Guest:But I was real, and we were just in an entirely different reality.
Guest:In the islands.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I came up on the success and got a gig singing in Fort Lauderdale, House of Pegasus.
Guest:A small group of girls formed a Scott Fagan fan club and scribbled up $50 and bought me a bus ticket to New York.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You were a charmer.
Guest:I was very pretty, and I sang really sweetly.
Guest:Yeah, and that'll do it.
Guest:And I liked them, and they liked me, and that was the whole story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And maybe there was some jealousy in the fan club, and maybe the best thing to do is get rid of this guy.
Guest:Get him the money.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Anyway, so...
Guest:They did that, and my mother had a friend who had a friend of a friend of the ex-wife of a cousin-in-law or something, whose friend wrote songs sometimes with a guy named Doc Pompas or something.
Guest:Doc Pompas, yeah.
Guest:And she said, take this phone number and call when you get to New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I wasn't inclined to do anything that an adult suggested, but I took the number with me.
Guest:Not knowing who Doc Pumice was?
Guest:No.
Guest:Although I had a Benny King album sitting there.
Guest:I never looked at who wrote anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I get there and I call this number.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he says, oh, okay, come on over.
Guest:Let me see what you got.
Guest:This is the guy, not Doc.
Guest:No, this is Doc.
Guest:Oh, you got Doc's number and you call him up.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Yeah, that's the number my mother gave me was Doc Pompas.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Doc Pompas.
Guest:That's what you called him?
Guest:Well, I...
Guest:Three times before I really got the correction.
Guest:Now, where was he when you went to see him?
Guest:At the Forest Hotel on 49th Street, just across the street from the Brill Building.
Marc:And he was a big presence, that guy, right?
Guest:He was a big presence.
Guest:Yeah, see.
Guest:Literally, also.
Marc:Right, yeah.
Guest:He was sitting naked in the middle of a huge double bed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wrapped up in a toga.
Guest:I mean, a sheet that looked... Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.
Guest:Smoking a cigar?
Yeah.
Guest:Probably.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he says, come on, let me see what you got.
Guest:Let me see what you got.
Guest:So there's a piano bench at the end of the bed where Mark Truman had written all these melodies and blah, blah.
Guest:His writing partner, right.
Guest:Wurlitzer right behind him there.
Guest:The hits.
Guest:They wrote this magic moment, right?
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:They wrote Teenager in Love, Viva Las Vegas, Little Sister, all kinds of stuff.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:Let me see what you got.
Guest:So I sit there, and I have my little guitar, and I sing him three songs.
Guest:And at the end, he says, takes a beat.
Guest:Tell you what I'm going to do.
Guest:I'm going to sign you to personal management.
Guest:I'm going to sign you to the production company.
Guest:Go downstairs and tell them to give you room.
Guest:Come on back here.
Guest:Let's get started.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Just like that.
Marc:And you were, what, 19?
Guest:uh a few days into 19 yeah and you had no at that moment you still didn't know who you were reckoning with well um not really uh-huh i i understood now that doc um was an important songwriter
Guest:But I had no idea of the depth of the catalog.
Guest:And I didn't know anything about his partner, Mort Schumann.
Guest:And Mort and I became very close, and Doc and I were very close.
Guest:No, I lived in a magical parallel universe.
Guest:down in the islands, on the sailboat, with chicks, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Right, you were like pre-hippie free liver.
Guest:Well, we were definitely free spirits.
Guest:And these were maybe the earliest days of hippie-dom, and Duffy's was...
Guest:Hippie Central for the Caribbean.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Just a fantastic place.
Marc:So as the relationship evolves, so you get to work, you get your room, you get your management, you get to your whatever.
Guest:I thought, of course, this is the way it's supposed to happen.
Guest:Of course it happened like this.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah, I got a little lucky, but...
Guest:Anyway, I had no idea what a score.
Marc:So how did the relationship evolve between you and Doc and Mort?
Marc:I mean, you go up there, and when did it start to become apparent to you?
Marc:What did you learn?
Guest:Well, he said, go get the room and come back here.
Guest:Let's get started.
Guest:So that's what I did.
Guest:I mean, I put my little suitcase down in there, basically sand and rocks in it.
Guest:And came back.
Guest:And Doc was the central attraction in the Forest Hotel.
Guest:He sent me over to… He lived there.
Guest:Yeah, he did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is the hotel that Damon Runyon lived in.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You know Damon Runyon?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's right across from the Brill Building.
Guest:Let's go over there.
Guest:So I went over up to the Hill and Range.
Guest:Paul Case was the professional manager there.
Guest:Go introduce yourself to Paul Case, blah, blah.
Guest:Let him show you around.
Guest:Come back over.
Guest:If Doc was at a writing session, I was to participate in that.
Guest:If there was a song to be demoed, I was the guy that sang it.
Guest:They wanted me to get accustomed to working in the studio right away.
Guest:You know, studios can be fairly stressful.
Guest:That clock is on the wall.
Guest:They got an hour.
Guest:You better come out of here with three tunes.
Marc:Is the studio in the Brill Building?
Guest:No, at Associated, above the Metropole.
Guest:Metropole was an interesting jazz bar on 7th Avenue.
Guest:Upstairs was Associated Sound.
Guest:Lots of those hits were originally done there.
Marc:Most of the Pumice and Schumann hits were done there, and what, Lieber and Stoller and stuff?
Marc:All of them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what was actually going on in the Brill Building when you went over there?
Marc:I mean, what year is this?
Marc:1964.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:October.
Guest:Late September.
Marc:And when you went over there, did you feel the juice?
Marc:I mean, was there a lot going on?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:And Lieber and Stoller wrote every tune that Doc and Morty didn't write.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Carole King, Goffin and King.
Guest:That Goffin and King didn't write.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So they were all over there.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Neil Diamond.
Guest:Well, Neil came a little later.
Guest:Okay, okay.
Guest:And it wasn't with Goffin and King.
Guest:It had a different producer, another male-female songwriting team.
Guest:I'm not...
Guest:Can't remember.
Guest:Recollecting right now.
Guest:So those are the power players, certainly of the late 50s, right?
Guest:And Jerry Ragavoy.
Guest:Jerry wrote Cry Cry Baby.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Wrote Peace of My Heart.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:Boy, Janis Joplin just tore that one up, huh?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Holy shit.
Guest:So very quickly, I came in with the title, Cry Till My Tears Run Dry.
Guest:And Doc said, okay, come on, let's write it.
Guest:So Doc and Mort and I wrote this, Cry Till My Tears Run Dry.
Guest:Jerry Ragavoy arranged and produced it with Irma Thomas.
Guest:Right off the bat.
Marc:And you were part of the writing crew.
Guest:It was you and Doc and Mort.
Guest:Well, it was my title and my contributions.
Guest:Yeah, God bless them, man.
Guest:They got me right into it.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And it's a wonderful, wonderful record.
Guest:You'll hear it sometime.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Linda Ronstadt did it not long ago.
Guest:Beautiful recording.
Marc:And this is you at, what, 20 years old?
Marc:19.
Marc:19 years old.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:You penned a tune with Doc Pumas and Mort Schumann.
Guest:Well, I was living in the bushes before I got on that sailboat.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Just months ago.
Marc:Yeah, because if you listen to the album, if you listen to South Atlantic Blues, I mean, the current of that style of songwriting alongside the Calypso stuff and some of the other beats that you pulled up from the Caribbean, I mean, there is a structure there.
Marc:That you must have learned from them.
Guest:That's what I did.
Guest:I learned that structure from Doc and Mort.
Guest:You know, when you're a young songwriter, you get a little idea for a song, and you try to follow it, and you're following the song.
Guest:You're not clear about the beginning.
Guest:You don't know anything about a middle.
Guest:And God knows where it's going to end.
Guest:And so they taught me very quickly.
Marc:Well, when did those songs start coming together, South Atlantic Blues?
Marc:Because that's the album I know.
Guest:I started writing it right there at the Forest Hotel.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:The first song that I worked on there was the song South Atlantic Blues.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And those were songs that you were getting feedback from Doc and working a little bit with Mort?
Guest:Mort and I wrote a tune on the album Crystal Bowl.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:The others of mine, I co-wrote a couple with,
Guest:a young melody man that had been sent over to work with Doc.
Guest:Mort spent half of his year in England with Andrew Oldham and those folks.
Marc:And the Stones?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And all kinds of other folks.
Guest:There's a whole English music business then that Mort was part of.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:And he'd come back.
Guest:And so Mort and I were much closer together in age.
Guest:And when the split came, Doc and his wife were having trouble, and Doc's personal life took his attention for quite a while.
Guest:And my mother was homeless in Miami, my younger brother's.
Guest:were in foster care and and I was there to do good work and change the world but by God rescue them yeah so I couldn't friggle around I you know so that was your drive I gotta make some money to save my family yeah yeah
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Mort and I were writing together, and Joe Kakoulis, a really wonderful kid from New Haven.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Actually, his name was Silvio Martinez.
Guest:His mother was a Native American from Venezuela, illiterate.
Guest:who'd found her way to the States and married a Greek dude named Kakoulis.
Guest:I like the name Kakoulis.
Guest:So they had changed Jose Silvio Martinez to Joe Kakoulis.
Guest:So Joe and I were writing partners, and we were up and down the street.
Guest:You'd hustle a tune here, there, the next place, get a $50 advance on it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hope they did something with it.
Guest:And get immediately to work writing another one.
Guest:And there were seven or eight publishing companies we could hustle tunes to.
Marc:And you didn't get credit?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, you did?
Guest:No, we knew that.
Guest:You do not sell your songs.
Guest:You take an advance against royalties.
Guest:So you're making money doing that?
Guest:$50 a tune.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're living on the floor of a publishing company on 57th Street.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm not allowed in there because clearly I'm a rascal.
Guest:So when Bob Hilliard Company, Bob is the guy that wrote this fantastic song, Any Day Now, by Chuck Jackson.
Guest:Anyway, when Bob came, I had to hide in the closet.
Guest:And at night, we'd come out and sleep.
Guest:All we had to eat was a bottle of tequila.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:Fortunately.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So it was good.
Guest:So we wrote a bunch of really good tunes for South Atlantic Blues for the album.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So now once you got all the songs for the record, what was the life of the record?
Guest:Well, we had all these songs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm living at the Earl Hotel down in the village, which is where people that make very little money live.
Guest:Well, you got off the floor at the publishing house.
Guest:Yeah, moved up.
Marc:Yeah, moved up to an SRO.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And gigging at a place called the Café Gogo.
Guest:Oh, sure, yeah.
Guest:Anyway, there were three of us regulars at the Cafe Go-Go.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was Richie.
Guest:There was Jimmy James and the Blue Flames.
Guest:That's Jimi Hendrix.
Guest:Before Chaz Chandler grabbed him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we're all working at the Cafe Go-Go.
Guest:You get $5 a night.
Guest:One night, Howling Wolf comes through, and I told you I'm not a fanboy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'm just not.
Guest:I mean, I'll be a fan for Frankie Lyman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'll be a fan for Billie Holiday.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But generally...
Guest:Sure.
Guest:That's not my orientation.
Guest:Yeah, I relate.
Guest:So Howlin' Wolf comes through and does Smoke Stack Lightning.
Guest:You know that tune?
Guest:Sure, man.
Guest:So after, I actually decide I'm going to go thank him and congratulate him.
Guest:So I go, Mr. Wolf, and he's a giant, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like nine feet tall or something.
Guest:Yeah, I think so, yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And he sticks his pinky out, which is the size of my wrist.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's what you're supposed to grab and shake, that shaking hand.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I did that.
Guest:And, of course, that cured me for being a fanboy for another 10 years.
Marc:That shaking, howling wolf's pinky.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:With gratitude.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we're at Cafe Go-Go, and Herb Gart, a manager, folk rock, folk comedy, comes in, and after my set, he comes over to me and says, Scott, I've got this guy, that guy, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if you sign with me, you'll be bigger than Presley in six months.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I managed Buffy St.
Guest:Marie, so Bigger Than Presley was interesting to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I was a little skeptical about it.
Guest:But when he said he had Buffy St.
Guest:Marie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was it?
Guest:Just where to sign.
Guest:You loved her.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Are you familiar with it?
Marc:I'm familiar with it, but not in that way.
Marc:I mean, it was before my time, and maybe I didn't know what the magic was.
Marc:So I don't have an experience with it.
Guest:Well, she was a really interesting singer.
Guest:She's a person that wrote Universal Soldier and Codeine and a bunch of stuff.
Guest:But it wasn't her singing.
Guest:She's a Native American, I think, at Cree.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:The girl is fantastic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Completely magical looking.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The sexiest looking chick to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, my.
Guest:With a wonderful shapely bottom.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So it wasn't all about the singing.
Guest:Oh, Lord.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:so she was a great singer too but i'm confessing yeah i hear you that uh it was way more primitive for me than that so her manager approaches you and says in six months i'll be bigger than elvis presley and you said where do i sign and i and i well when he said i got i managed buffy yeah marie right the idea that i might be in the office with her yeah
Guest:That's what drove you.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It drove me a lot.
Guest:I have to confess, an awful lot of my work has been driven by affection for wenches and vice versa.
Guest:Do you call them wenches to their faces?
Guest:Well, with love.
Guest:I call them everything.
Guest:They can call me anything.
Guest:How many times have you been married?
Guest:Well, I have five children with four women, four different women.
Guest:I've been married once.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But this is how we do it in the islands.
Guest:That is how you do it.
Guest:So you signed with him.
Guest:I signed with him, and we got...
Guest:to work on South Atlantic Blues.
Guest:So Herb was the executive producer for South Atlantic Blues.
Guest:He brought in Elmer Gordon to produce it.
Guest:So we're in there and Elmer
Guest:has this beautiful red-headed girl that's coming to rehearsals.
Guest:I'm going down to Waverly Place, meeting Elmer.
Guest:We're working out vocal stuff.
Guest:And I ran off with Elmer's girlfriend.
Guest:Good move.
Guest:Just for the night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just for the night, Elmer.
Guest:Okay, okay.
Guest:Anyway, so.
Guest:That was the redhead?
Guest:Oh, God, yeah, beautiful, beautiful New York girl.
Guest:The producer's girlfriend.
Guest:Yeah, man, look, Mark.
Guest:Music's music, buddy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I hear you.
Guest:And you're not going to say, boy, I spoke to the smartest guy in the world the other day, Scott Fagan.
Guest:You're not alone, and I'm not sure it's dumb.
Guest:It just is what it is.
Guest:Man, in those days, just the slightest hint of passion would take over.
Guest:Yeah, it's not happening anymore?
Guest:Well, it takes a little more passion for me to lose my mind now.
Guest:Anyway, so I...
Guest:humble myself with elmer and lord almighty we get back to a working relationship no shit yeah um elmer's committed to the music and committed to doing the job that's some dude yeah yeah he was really something
Guest:And then another chick comes into the picture.
Guest:Whose wife was this?
Guest:A beautiful blonde woman from Ohio who was Elmer's real crush.
Guest:She'd run off from her husband to come see Elmer and we wound up together.
Guest:Elmer takes another shot.
Guest:So...
Guest:happened after that one oh god so she decides she's going back to ohio and does and so i have to try and reconcile with elmer again how many how many weeks were between these two uh just a couple weeks because there was the imperative of finishing the record you're not making it easy
Guest:No.
Guest:Anyway, so I say to Elmer, don't bring any more women around.
Guest:And I say, Elmer, well, what can I do to make it up to you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We went to see Janis Joplin together at the Anderson Theater.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Maybe it's 1967.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:So what can I do to make it up to you, Elmer?
Guest:And he looks at me in this dark, scary...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, what can I do?
Guest:He said, kill your fucking self.
Guest:I said, well, I'm not going to do that, but I really am sorry.
Guest:Anyway, so we have to give Elmer a special consideration.
Guest:Thanks for...
Guest:for overcoming his outrage and broken heart and doing such a good job with South Atlantic Blues.
Guest:He continued on.
Guest:He did.
Guest:Is he still around?
Guest:No.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:No, and, you know, we became great friends, and we were great friends.
Guest:I mean, I guess he knew.
Guest:Look, you know, I can't explain it other than realistically.
Guest:I would follow a chick anywhere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean.
Guest:Period.
Guest:Yeah, it happens.
Guest:So you finish the record.
Guest:We finish the record.
Guest:Beautiful record.
Guest:And you both know it's special.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Most folks around are thinking this is really good.
Guest:So Apple Records is holding it.
Guest:So they're trying to decide between South Atlantic Blues and James Taylor's first album.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:And it's going on and on and on and on.
Guest:And there's another very hot label at the time, Verve Forecast, which is the folk rock label.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Jerry Schoenbaum is the president of that label.
Guest:Who's on that label?
Guest:All of them.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:All of them.
Guest:Tim Harden.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:All of them.
Guest:The Blues Project, everybody.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So Jerry Schoenbaum is the head of the label.
Guest:He says, I want the record.
Guest:I'm going to be the new president at ATCO, and I want to take the record with me.
Guest:It'll be my first release at ATCO.
Guest:They did the Stones records?
Guest:And the Drifters were on ATCO, Benny King, so I'll sign with them.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Fuck Apple.
Guest:We've got to move, you know.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, sure.
Guest:And God bless the Beatles, but brother, I'm not a fanboy.
Guest:I'm not that impressed.
Marc:No pinky shaking with John Paul, George, and Ringo.
Guest:Well...
Guest:We'll shake hands.
Guest:I'm not shaking pinkies with them.
Guest:And I'm not waiting.
Guest:I mean, I can't wait.
Guest:My brothers are in foster care.
Guest:My mother's a homeless woman in Key West or Dinner Key or wherever.
Guest:So we signed with Atko.
Guest:And it's a thrill.
Guest:I mean, this is really going to be something.
Guest:And he loves the record.
Guest:And bang.
Guest:Jerry never comes to term on his own contract.
Guest:After you signed.
Guest:With ATCO.
Guest:So, boof, he's gone.
Guest:Off to California to land where I don't know.
Guest:Did he apologize?
Guest:Well, I've never seen him again.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:I mean, he probably felt bad about it.
Guest:So Jerry's gone.
Guest:So our album is now stuck with Atko.
Guest:And no support.
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:I mean, the last thing anyone's going to do is promote the previous, the other guys.
Guest:The guy that wasn't ever there.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And plus they have their own favorite projects.
Guest:So...
Guest:You get lost in the mix.
Guest:Well, it was released, but there was no promotion, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Anyway, that happens.
Marc:No, sure.
Marc:I've heard it.
Guest:I've heard it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I felt, of course, deeply upset about it.
Guest:You think, gee, am I ever going to be able to write this many good songs again?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Am I ever going to get another deal?
Guest:And I can't re-record any of these songs for seven years and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:And our advance against royalties stopped and blah, blah.
Marc:So no money, no tour, no movement.
Guest:And a baby.
Marc:And a baby, no moving on the record.
Marc:Two siblings in foster care.
Marc:Mother is homeless and a baby.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Holy shit.
Guest:So fortunately, we'd interested Bill Krasilowski, who was the lawyer that wrote this business of music, one and two and three, a great, great lawyer.
Guest:Aretha's lawyer also.
Guest:And he got a deal for us at Tommy Volando Music.
Guest:Tommy Volando was
Guest:a big musical show publisher.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So we're signed as writers there, Joe and I. Musicals.
Guest:Well, we're going to write songs.
Guest:Within the first week or so, the professional managers, that's Jay Morgenstern and Frank Military.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Want to hear our material.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Get familiar with it.
Guest:So I'm there with the guitar singing.
Guest:Joe, I've just written this song called Hideaway.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A really nice, powerful tune.
Guest:Not the instrumental.
Guest:No.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so Joe says to them, I want you to hear this.
Guest:I want you to hear this.
Guest:We're working on a rock opera.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Play the song for them.
Guest:So Joe convinces them that this song Hideaway.
Guest:is a piece of a rock opera that we're writing.
Guest:Got a good hustle, that dude.
Guest:Yeah, he was a beauty.
Guest:So, you know, they hear Hideaway, and it's terrific, and, you know.
Guest:So, yeah, they have the hot new team here.
Guest:All the rest of the guys were much older and established.
Marc:You getting paid?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So the kids eating?
Guest:You getting money to your siblings?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:When I got the advance for signing with ATCO, I bought them each a bike.
Guest:My sweetie and I went home.
Guest:I took my sister back.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we made a triumphant tour of the bars in Charlotte, Amalia, and bought the boys a bicycle each and really did it up.
Guest:What about your mother?
Guest:mud somewhere yeah don't know where okay somewhere yeah um so you're writing a rock opera well so now we're writing a rock opera there's never been a rock opera at this point
Guest:There's been no rock opera.
Guest:There's been no thought about writing a rock opera.
Guest:I've never even seen a musical except I saw West Side Story in the theater.
Marc:No Godspell, no Jesus Christ, no Tommy.
Marc:No, no, no.
Guest:Yeah, nothing.
Guest:Anyway, so...
Guest:So we're discussing what we're going to write and blah, blah.
Guest:You know, this is anti-war time.
Guest:People, we are out on the street protesting, my partner and I.
Guest:trying to make change in the world.
Guest:So what we decide we're going to do is tell the story of the music business, what it's really like, what it really does to artists, the impact it has on the society, what kind of characters...
Guest:are shaping everyone's destiny.
Guest:And you've got a lot of fresh bile.
Guest:Yeah, we're going to write this, and it's going to be the follow-up to South Atlantic Blues.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's going to change the music business.
Guest:Yeah, you got a little bit of fuck you in you?
Guest:A whole lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A whole lot of that soon also.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really.
Guest:Anyway, so we write this fabulous piece of work.
Guest:This is not an entertainment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is an expose of the dishonesty that
Guest:and the ridiculous characters that run the ship.
Guest:So we have pretty much the score, and Vicki Sue Robinson and I are doing the vocals, singing the tunes.
Guest:Vicki is our dear, dear friend.
Guest:And so we interest Edgar Bronfman.
Guest:yeah the owner of seagram's yeah and uh so we've got them on board and blah blah blah and before we know we're in the anderson theater where we'd seen jazz drop one yeah um doing rehearsals and we're on our way to the ritz theater on uh 48th between broadway and 8th avenue uh-huh um
Guest:And this piece is going to change the music business.
Guest:And it's going to be the follow-up to South Atlantic Blues.
Guest:And if they didn't get South Atlantic Blues, they're going to get this.
Guest:And so the producers want certain changes.
Guest:So they can pre-sell tickets to the ladies that come in on Wednesdays and Tuesdays and Sundays.
Guest:The nice ladies with blue hair.
Guest:The theater ladies.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And that's a fine thing.
Guest:I know.
Guest:But it wasn't fine in that time, in that moment.
Guest:No, you guys had something to say.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:We're serious dudes.
Guest:And so we wouldn't make the changes they want.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Good for you.
Guest:So I was doing the lead.
Guest:And so we were fired and barred from the theater.
Guest:The director, who was our co-writer, Robert Greenwald, who has gone on to do wonderful things with...
Guest:With Brave New Films, he's the guy that did Burning Bed and The Love Canal and all this stuff.
Guest:And so we're barred from the theater.
Guest:They bring Gerald Friedman in.
Guest:was an early director of hair to make it an entertainment.
Guest:And they fire me and bring Barry Bostwick in, who's a theater guy.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Guest:And so they go back into rehearsal.
Guest:And the score, it really, really is very good.
Guest:We had the best cast imaginable.
Guest:My understudy was Richard Gere.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Peter Allen played the manager.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Vicki Sue Robinson, Nell Carter.
Guest:These are great, great vocalists.
Marc:Great.
Marc:So you couldn't go in the theater, but you still wrote the thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Robert is flaming angry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Robert's father is a psychiatrist.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:His mother is a psychologist.
Guest:Robert is livid.
Guest:So Kekulis and I are trying to talk our friend down a little bit.
Guest:Come on, man, we'll figure it out.
Guest:Peace and love and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Robert says, fuck that shit.
Guest:I'm getting even.
Guest:So he said, well, you can't be angry like that.
Guest:He said, fuck that shit.
Guest:I'm using my anger.
Guest:His father, the psychiatrist, had told him, oh, you got to direct that anger.
Guest:That anger will really move you along.
Guest:His mother concurred with that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:used that, directed, subliminated that anger towards becoming successful.
Guest:He said, fuck them, I'm going to get even.
Guest:I'm going to get successful.
Guest:Robert won a Tony with Ain't Misbehavin' years later.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:With Nell Carter.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Anyway, so he wound up at the Center Theater Group here and Gordon Davidson was in New York and
Guest:And I was invited up to his hotel room to sing the score for him.
Guest:What was the name of the show?
Guest:Soon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we came out here and did it at the Pilgrimage Theater.
Guest:Right, 72.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How'd it go over?
Guest:Oh, really well.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:But we didn't get it recorded.
Guest:Joe and I were immediately fired.
Guest:from our writing gig and dropped from my deal with Epic.
Marc:That was after ATCO?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And no recording exists of it?
Guest:Well, we did a little...
Guest:live recording on a woolen sack and a cassette.
Guest:A very rough thing which I tried to clean up not long ago in New York.
Guest:We were in the studio a long time trying to get it cleaned up.
Guest:I get a call one day or an email from a, you know, there's a parallel universe of Broadway collectors.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's all that exists in that universe is people that collect Broadway stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So one of them called me.
Guest:He says, well, don't you have any recordings of Soon?
Guest:Can I have what you got?
Guest:I said, no, there's no recordings.
Guest:He said, oh, yeah, well, a guy just donated his collection to the Library of Congress, and there's a recording of Soon in there.
Guest:It turned out that a dude had stuffed a cassette in his inside overcoat pocket and recorded it in the theater there, and it's full of snuffles and burps and stuff.
Guest:It's there.
Guest:I don't want that to be my legacy in the Library of Congress because our piece is sung through.
Guest:There's no dialogue.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they brought this dude in, and he's stuck in all this square dialogue and blah, blah, blah, and stuff that is to be amusing to the Tuesday afternoon ladies.
Guest:Which is another reason I absolutely have to get soon recorded, and I will.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, so I called the Library of Congress, and they sent it on to me, and I have it there next to the California recording.
Guest:And I think that Chris Campion... He's going to put it out?
Guest:I think that we're going to get it re-released.
Guest:So you do the soon, and that doesn't go.
Guest:Well, not only did it not go, it sunk my career.
Guest:We were fired and barred and...
Guest:And bang.
Guest:So we were back to hustling tunes.
Guest:And after the experience of Soon, Kakulis never wrote another song.
Guest:And what did you do?
Guest:Well, I hustled songs.
Guest:And I sang.
Guest:And Mark, fuck them.
Guest:They're not going to turn me around.
Guest:They're not going to turn me around.
Guest:So I've been at it.
Guest:All the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All the time.
Guest:Out there singing.
Guest:Singing, writing, some of every scryffle in the world.
Guest:I have five children.
Guest:I had to take care of them.
Guest:There's nothing I haven't done except sell weed and dope.
Guest:I just don't do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But some of everything.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:What was your moment of clarity?
Guest:You know, I am a child and grandchild of alcoholics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I threw my life in these eight marriages and my mother swore.
Guest:swore I would never be like that.
Guest:I will never be like that.
Guest:I won't be like them.
Guest:And when I discovered, look, I had juice next to the bed.
Guest:I couldn't wake up in the morning without juice.
Guest:Are there cigarette butts in there?
Guest:Too bad for them.
Guest:Are there cockroaches?
Guest:Too bad for them.
Guest:I mean, my mother died and I couldn't
Guest:Get sober.
Guest:I mean, I could not catch myself.
Guest:After you moved her to New York.
Guest:Yeah, I was in the islands doing a gig.
Guest:We came back the second day we were back.
Guest:Annie comes running up.
Guest:I have my twins, Lily and Archie, their mother's name is Annie, comes running up and said, something happened in the mud.
Guest:So we go down there, and she has gone kaput.
Guest:Um, and so I love me mother as much or more as anyone else.
Guest:Um, but, um, but I, you know, I, I've been on a long gig in Ireland and, and, uh, drinking hard.
Guest:Um, and, and when she died, um, I just,
Guest:Somehow, you know, our tolerance grows through the years and then suddenly it collapses.
Guest:And there you're left strung out.
Guest:You're left addicted with no ability to tolerate or process it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was a state.
Guest:Of course, I didn't know that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That was a state.
Guest:I had lost my tolerance, but I was addicted to the substance.
Yeah.
Guest:And I couldn't get sober.
Guest:I mean, people were, I couldn't write a song.
Guest:I couldn't concentrate enough to write.
Guest:People were wanting me to do work.
Guest:Come on, Scott, do a vocal here for us, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:And I realized that I'd become that which I despised most.
Guest:And I'm standing in the window.
Guest:We had this beautiful old brownstone windows around the corners.
Guest:I'm standing with my twins in my arms.
Guest:They're a year and a half old or something.
Guest:And I'm thinking I should jump out the window.
Guest:and and i got so disgusted with myself for my grandfather by the way had stopped his car in front of a train and committed suicide when my mother and her twin were nine years old and and they'd never gotten over it
Guest:So I'm thinking this and I'm completely disgusted with my cowardice.
Guest:I'm thinking to kill myself and affect all these children forever rather than confessing that I'd become strung out on the Jews.
Guest:And had to let it go.
Guest:So I decided that whether I never laughed again, whether I never sang again, I was going to be more for these children than my people had been for me.
Guest:And you did it.
Guest:Well, it's a miracle.
Guest:And when did you find out about Stephen Merritt?
Guest:So I... Magnetic fields.
Guest:I'm in Oxford, Mississippi.
Marc:What are you doing there?
Guest:The mother of my youngest.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My youngest little girl, Holiday.
Guest:And she's going to Ole Miss.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So my ex-wife Annie calls...
Guest:I just heard there's a kid on the radio saying you're his father.
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:So apparently Stephen was on Fresh Air.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Terry, yeah.
Guest:Terry Gross.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And had announced that his father was Scott Fagan.
Guest:He never reached out to you?
Guest:No.
Guest:He just heard it.
Guest:I think that was his reach out.
Guest:That was it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So a friend of Annie's had heard this and called Annie, and Annie went ballistic, even though she's my ex-wife, and I'm with a new woman, and
Guest:new child.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Look, people love each other.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And express it in the strangest ways.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And have no animosity towards any of them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the fact is, I failed every one of them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Every one of them thought I was...
Guest:The man who was going to change their lives clearly is going to be successful.
Guest:And I disappointed every one of them.
Guest:And I wish to God that I hadn't disappointed them.
Guest:And I hope to God that I can do something to change everyone's life going forward.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:Who's this kid that's saying you're his father?
Guest:So I called, I tracked down, and they put me in touch with a booking agency in Chicago, Red Ryder or something.
Guest:And they put me in touch with Claudia Gonson, who's Stephen's manager, and the drummer in the band.
Guest:Great, great woman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we began email correspondence.
Guest:You and Stephen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's a great musician.
Guest:He's terrific.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I have to tell you, the music doesn't start with me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:My pop was a great singer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And a great tenor man.
Guest:But you didn't know this son of yours, and so you're emailing, and how's it unfolded?
Guest:I'll tell you in a moment.
Guest:But my father's mother was an orphan girl from Scotland who was a barroom singer.
Guest:or people that died in the Spanish flu.
Guest:So music goes back on that side and the other side.
Guest:And so there's this kid.
Guest:So we start this correspondence, and they're just releasing this album, 69 Love Songs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we're in Oxford, Mississippi, which is an interesting place.
Guest:You been there?
Marc:Yeah, it's where Faulkner's from.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it's a really interesting place.
Guest:And they have the greatest little bookstore in the south is right there on the square.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they have a little ice cream parlor upstairs.
Guest:There's a little dish, a little dish of ice cream.
Guest:I'd take my little girl holiday there, and we'd sit there in the books and eat the ice cream.
Guest:It was wonderful.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, so I went to a little record store there and bought this album, 69 Love Song.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I put it on, and it was the strangest feeling.
Guest:Every one of those tunes, every one of the songs seemed to me like something I'd started and hadn't finished.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Why?
Guest:I wouldn't turn it that way.
Guest:I would have taken it this way, and there's this kid singing in my baritone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I couldn't freaking believe it.
Guest:I couldn't believe it.
Guest:And here's 69 songs, for God's sake.
Guest:And did you like the record?
Guest:Well, I did, because he's a great writer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I, excuse me, but I like that vocal, too.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And do you have a relationship with him now?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So...
Guest:A year or two later, we got his mother involved in the relationship also.
Guest:That was that woman in the islands, right?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:That you had the fling with for four months.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he was actually planted on a houseboat in St.
Guest:Thomas.
Guest:Anyway, so they were doing a movie about Doc Palmas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was invited to be part of that.
Guest:And so I went to New York for some time.
Guest:Did some interviews and did maybe some ten minutes in the film or something.
Guest:And so they're going to do the premiere at Lincoln Center.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I said, well, this might be an interesting time for them because the mom knows Doc Promise.
Guest:And I hear...
Guest:the same structure you were talking about in my songs in his songs so i hear an influence of that whether it's real or not i that i hear that yeah and so i so i invite them to come to the premiere and by god um sitting there and uh
Guest:and up comes this perfectly straight looking woman um in her late 60s who the hell is this yeah this is uh i used to call her lotus blossom down in the island yeah um she uh is actually an english teacher and uh
Guest:and her name is Alex now, and then here comes a kid that looks
Guest:surprisingly like me sure not surprisingly yeah um with a bodyguard he's brought a bodyguard along uh he's very funny i mean he he says look he was avoiding me because god knows when i might need a kidney or something
Guest:Anyway, so we met and had a great time.
Guest:That's sweet.
Guest:And then we met again when it opened in a movie down in a theater down in East Village.
Guest:And a lot of email.
Guest:And we met again a couple more times.
Guest:And I've spent a fair amount of time with Alex and...
Guest:We email back odd comments.
Guest:Huh, that's great.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, we'll do some work someday.
Marc:Well, that's a great story, man, and you survived, and you're sober, and you're doing good things for other sober people, and you're still making music, and this record is rediscovered.
Guest:It's fantastic.
Guest:And I think that most of my success can be traced to the fact that my mother made me promise to always be nice.
Marc:How's your voice?
Marc:Good?
Guest:Holding up?
Guest:Yeah, surprisingly well.
Guest:I mean, I've been singing.
Guest:I vocalize all the time.
Guest:Great.
Guest:I've been singing all through these years.
Guest:Great.
Guest:And I'm really happy to say it's really, I mean, this little gruff stuff I'm doing with you I shouldn't ever do.
Marc:No, no, no, no, no.
Guest:I just was curious.
Guest:It messes with the pipes.
Guest:But, yeah, thank goodness, Mark.
Guest:Singing is good.
Marc:I'll tell you, Scott, it's a hell of a story, and I'm sure there's a lot more, and I'm just happy that this turn happened because you definitely paid your dues, man.
Guest:Well, you know, all I did was do my best and be nice.
Guest:And by God, if I knew that was the key to success, I'd have done that long ago.
Guest:Well, thanks for talking to me.
Guest:Oh, my pleasure.
Guest:Thanks for having me.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I'd go get that record.
Marc:It's beautiful.
Marc:And you can do that today.
Marc:Yeah, it's nice.
Marc:And it'll take you someplace.
Marc:And it'll be sweet on Thanksgiving.
Marc:So, again, go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Go to WTFPodTour.com.
Marc:I've got upcoming dates in the spring.
Marc:But December 3rd in Chicago.
Marc:Also, come back tomorrow and check your podcast feed for something new.
Marc:We got some surprises every Friday for the rest of the year.
Marc:So check it out.
Marc:I think you're going to like it.
Marc:We're going to go into the vault that I didn't even know existed.
Marc:I'm going to play a little guitar because it would be nice.
Marc:Should I make it nice or should I lean in?
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guitar solo
Marc:Screwed up a little.
Marc:Happy Thanksgiving.
Marc:Boomer lives!