: The Making of Tender Loving Abuse – Parts 1 & 2
A historical digression
In 1979 I reached the high point of my erstwhile musical career, playing keyboards on an album by a singer/guitarist named Rick Dufay – the album (Tender Loving Abuse) was produced by Jack Douglas, John Lennon’s producer. The album went nowhere. Dufay later played guitar with Aerosmith for a while. Tico (the drummer) caught the brass ring and ended up playing with Bon Jovi.
Years later, I joined up with a Yahoo User Group dedicated to all things Rick Dufay. The group moderator asked to to write up my recollections about the album. My recollections turned into an 8 part series. It’s quite lengthy, so I’ve broken it up into 4 chunks. Attached is parts 1 & 2.
User warning – These recollections contain some drug and some (very mild) sexual references – also a lot of personal soul baring.
PART 1
I read somewhere that one of the biggest activities going on in the internet is people trying to locate friends/relatives they had lost touch with; and I have to confess that I’ve gotten hooked on it myself. When I first entered “Rick Dufay” into google the other week I wasn’t sure what to expect. A couple of days prior I found out that a singer I worked with in the 70s & 80s had died tragically 5 years ago. So it was a great feeling of relief to me that Rick is alive, well , and still doing his musical thing, (not that I could imagine him doing anything else). And, to top things off, he has a loyal group of followers who have their own Yahoo Group. So I figured, let’s join and see what’s happening. That got me introduced to Terry, who asked if I would relate what things were like back in the old days. So here I am.
So, anyway, who am I? On Tender Loving Abuse you’ll see Eric Holland listed as keyboards. That’s me. My name is Eric Heilner, but for a few years I was using Holland instead of Heilner – mostly because my sister Deborah (who is also in the music biz) was using that name. More on that later.
Before getting into things, let me throw out some caveats. If you’ve ever seen the movie Rashomon, you’ll know that truth is elusive. So I can’t guarantee that anything I say will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; instead this will be an “Eric’s Eye” view of things – filtered through over 20 years of memory. I’ll do my best to be honest and accurate, but I’m sure the other members of our not always-so-merry band would give you a very different story. I’ll also warn you that this will be largely stream of consciousness, so I will digress from time to time and throw in some autobiographical details that are non-Rick related.
How did I get into this? In the mid to late 70s, the New Jersey club scene was booming like it never had before or since. This was mostly due to the fact that NJ had temporarily lowered the drinking age to 18, so thousands of drunken teenagers were careening all over the state going from one club to another. I had been playing in different bands for about 10 years. I was with group called Heavy Trucking which did the college concert scene (we opened up for Springsteen among other things), for a while I played with a guy Bill Chinnock – mostly in Maine, then I hooked up with a club/cover band called Smyle. I was (at least I like to think I was…) the hot shit keyboard player on the circuit. We did Billy Joel, Doors, Beatles, etc. When you’re playing 5-6 days a week, you don’t get the chance to see other bands as much, but I knew there was a band that featured the Seitz brothers – Gary on bass and Jeff on drums. I can’t remember the name of the band (Godspeed?), but I saw them once and was really impressed – especially with Jeff. I seem to recall that they did a lot of Yes and Pink Floyd.
Anyway, in spring 79 (I’m unclear on the year, it could have been 80) I left Smyle cuz they were going nowhere. I was debating whether to try another club band, but hadn’t hooked up with anything – partly I was getting sick and tired of lugging around 1/2 ton of keyboards. One day I saw in the local music rag that Gary Seitz was doing an acoustic gig in a tavern down the road from me. So I went down, introduced myself (he’d heard of me), we chatted a little,exchanged phone numbers, and that was that. I thought nothing of it until a month later when I got a call from Gary asking me if I wanted to do an album with this guy Rick Dufay, him and Jeff – and working with John Lennon’s producer. You can imagine my reaction – this was my big break!
Next day I’m in NY meeting people, looking over contracts, and stuff. This was the real deal. I forget who the original label was, but there was a management company, the studio was booked, we’d be flying out the California, … and I would be making the unheard of salary of $350 a week (more than I was making in a month back then). Yeeee hah!!! So I signed on the dotted line.
(To be continued)
PART 2
So how did all this happen in the first place? How did Gary & Jeff hook up with Rick? How did Rick get signed to a record deal and how did Jack get involved? I don’t know. What I do know is that Rick had achieved some sort of notoriety in the rock circuit, he hung out with connected people and knew some important producers. I may not be getting this one right, but someone told me that he had dated Peter Frampton’s ex – I think that’s the source of the lines:
And I can’t go calling you
By your ex-old man’s big name
in BABY NOW I.The guys had played together for a while; they had done at least one concert (as I recall they were double billed with Eddie Money). And most importantly, the guys had recorded a demo tape. Somehow or other they had wrangled some time in a recording studio and in a short time (no more than a week, maybe less) they had put together this tape. They had done all sorts of goofy things – I think they put an amp in a hallway and miked it from a bathroom to get an echo effect.
So about the first thing we did after Rick & I met was that he played the tape in his hotel room on a little cassette player. On the first listen my reaction was … eh, so what. On the second playing things started jumping out at me, and by the third listen through I was hooked. Rick had a real way with words – putting together simple things in a way to convey deep emotion. There was a sort of crazed energy, it was weird, exciting, and dangerous. In fact, the tape sounded very close to a completed product.
The next day or so we all met in the rehearsal studio and I met Jack for the first time. The thing that impressed me most about Jack was his personality. He had a way about him that made everyone feel comfortable, he was funny, smart, plus he knew music. However, he was could also be (or at least claimed to be) very tough. He told us a story that when he started dating his then wife, his wife’s old boyfriend was lurking around. So he found the old boyfriend in a diner, sat down next to him, pulled a gun out of his pocket, and said to stay away or else.
I don’t think that people outside of the music business realize just how important personal skills are for a producer. A large part of a producer’s job is simply to make sure that things go smoothly and that everyone gets along; and Jack was superb at this. I think if you were to parachute Jack down in the middle of the Amazon jungle, in no time at all he’d be getting along with the natives, helping them to arrange their drum and flute music, hobnobbing with the chiefs, etc.However, something was missing, and that was Jeff. Where was Jeff? Well he was touring with Long John Baldry – an English blues guy whose signature song was “Don’t Try To Lay No Boogie Woogie on the King of Rock and Roll”. Now we were on a very tight schedule. The management company Landers/Roberts had every last detail worked out. Plane tickets, motel reservations, studio rental, tape costs, equipment rental, car rental, etc., etc., etc. The whole shebang had all been worked out in great detail. But Jeff had already signed a contract to do this tour before the details had been ironed out. So instead of Jeff, here was this guy Tico; who had also been playing the Jersey club circuit and Gary knew him.
So we started going through the songs. Gary already knew them and I had learned my parts. But Tico was having all sorts of problems. Now I’ve seen some other messages on this group knocking Tico. Let me say for the record that Tico was (and is) a good drummer. He’s very strong and has a powerful presence. However, a) Jeff is a percussion genius, he can play rings around nearly every other drummer I’ve ever played with. However, no one would claim that Ringo was a percussion genius, yet he was right for the Beatles, so b) More importantly, Jeff had a particular feel that Rick was looking for, and Tico couldn’t capture the feel.
So we spent a lot of rehearsal time with Rick playing the tape over and over trying to get Tico to get each drum fill like Jeff had done. It was clear that Rick was frustrated.
Meanwhile, we were getting to know each other a little. You should know that I am the complete opposite of the standard rock and roll personality. I’m very shy and quiet in person, intellectual (my BA was in Physics), and my idea of a fun date is to go the art museum and have dinner at a quiet restaurant (before going back to my place – of course!) There was of course a fair amount of sex, drugs, and rock & roll on the Jersey club circuit, but now I was in the midst of these real wild men! Gary and Rick had this whole shtick going where they’d imitate drag queens – they were very funny. Rick would leap all over the equipment while we were rehearsing, and was constantly doing goofy bits – he must have hung out in some pubs in Britain at one time because he did a great British accent and would break out in obscene British drinking songs.
Rick also had a real sense of style and how the band should look, clothes, staging, what not. We had some cameras, and I remember Rick took a great shot of me from the overhead with my arms draped out over the keyboards. He was very proud of that shot, and rightly so.
Speaking of keyboards, there were keyboards on the original tape, but for some reason the original keyboard player was not part of the picture. Not sure why, his bad luck, my good. The music was basically guitar oriented, the keyboards were more for accents, flavor, and fill – but that was cool. I’d much rather play a smaller role in something good than a big role in something lousy. However one day the original keyboard player showed up. Unconsciously I turned up my volume much louder than normal – and all the guys were laughing at me – trying to show off!
Another day I was sick and missed a rehearsal. When I came back, Rick, Gary, and Tico had taken pictures of each other running around in their underwear – and Rick was in his birthday suit. As it turns out, Rick enjoyed doing this. Rick is the original “tripod man” (if you get my drift) and he was quite proud of it. On more than one occasion he recorded his guitar parts buck-naked.
Meanwhile what else was going on? One strong memory is that there was a young guy Jay from the management company – I think he was the son of Landers – and he was keeping an eye on things for Landers/Roberts. In retrospect, he was probably a decent guy, but at the time we all hated him on general principal. After all, he was born into wealth while we were all struggling. Someone asked him if he’d ever gone through any rough times and he said something like “Well once when I was crossing the English Channel I went hungry for a night”. Anyway, I think we rehearsed for about 2 weeks, then it was off to sunny California to do the album. I think this was either late May or early June, 79.
(To be continued)
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A quick reminder – last month I had two cancellations due to factors out of my control. If you’re traveling any distance to get to one of these shows? Call ahead.
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Feb 1, Friday, 9:00 PM -1:00 AM – Arne Englund at Robin’s Nest Rhythm and Blues, 3103 Tremley Point Road, Linden, NJ, 07036 (908) 290-3090
It’s been quite a while since I last made the trip down to Linden. Robin’s Next is one of the best places to hear blues in NJ – it’s clean, comfortable, and the audiences are knowledgeable blues aficionados (good thing I’ve got speel chek there). Arne & I will be teaming up with the all star rhythm section of Phil Butler on bass and Matt Patuto on drums. I am told that there will be some special guests sitting in later in the evening.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Linden-NJ/Robins-Nest-Rhythm-and-Blues-RNRB/178750518562
http://www.robinsnestrhythmandblues.com/
Feb 9, Saturday, 8-9:30 PM – Lunatic Fringe, Glen Ridge Community Center @ The Glen Ridge Train Station, 228 Ridgewood Avenue (corner of Bloomfield Avenue), Glen Ridge, NJ Reservations: (973) 429-1527
Last month’s show was cancelled, so you can still catch the first show of 2013. Come laugh the night away.
http://www.lunaticfringeimprov.com
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=53938723078&ref=ts
Feb 15, Friday, 7:00-9:00ish PM – Arne Englund, Ruthie’s BBQ, 64 1/2 Chestnut Ave, Montclair (973) 509-1134
It’s a double header this month with Arne. This time it’s just the two of us laying down some mouth watering blues – perfect for the crab cakes that chef Eric Kaplan has added to the menu.
http://www.ruthiesbbq.com/
Feb 16, Saturday, 9:00 PM-1:00ish – Better Off Dead at The Great Notch Inn, Route 46, Little Falls (973) 256-7742
It’s post Valentine’s Day, but if you ask nicely I’m sure that VD King will warble a love song or two for you.
http://www.betteroffdead.com/home.htm/
http://www.agreatertown.com/little_falls_nj/great_notch_inn_new_jerseys_rockin_roadhouse_00089580