Truth Be Told Read online

  A group of nuns is walking by, and he asks if any of them speaks English.

  One says, “I do.”

  “Can you do me a favor?” the golfer says.

  “Sure.”

  “Can you tell me, is that the pope?”

  The nun squints. “The sun is right in my eyes,” she says. “I can’t tell. But the guy with him is Sid Young.”

  The moral of the story is, don’t ever bet Mariah Carey that she doesn’t know Sid Young.

  Poker Face

  Lady Gaga reminds you that there’s always going to be something new. Gaga told me she’s constantly thinking of unique ways to shock and annoy people.

  I wonder what she thought when she heard Ryan Seacrest and me doing a duet of “Poker Face.”

  Coca-Cola Cowboy

  Mel Tillis is the only singer I know who stutters—except when he’s singing. Hearing Mel sing always reminds me of that old joke about the comic and the stuttering singer living together in a hotel room. The comic comes in, and the singer says: “W-w-w-w ... w-w-w-w-w . . .”

  The comic says, “Sing!”

  The singer sings, “We’ve been robbed!”

  Gone Too Soon

  Anybody who was at Michael Jackson’s memorial service will never forget Usher singing “Gone Too Soon.”

  The thing most people don’t know about Usher is that this guy really knows his politics.

  Melancholy Baby

  Bing Crosby’s at the racetrack. He runs into Joe Frisco. Joe was a comedian who used a violin and his stutter as part of his act.

  Joe tells Bing, “I g-g-g-got no money. C-c-can you loan me a hundred?”

  Bing loans him a hundred.

  Later that day, Bing is on his way to the restroom and he sees Joe Frisco sitting at a table with four women and a tub of champagne. They’re eating a lavish meal and Joe Frisco is having the time of his life.

  Bing can’t believe it. A guy notices the look of incredulity on Bing’s face and tells Bing what happened: “Joe Frisco hit the big daily double. Made a fortune.”

  Crosby says, “I’m going to embarrass him. I’m going to go over and ask for my money.”

  Bing approaches the table and says, “You got my hundred?”

  Frisco pulls a hundred out of his pocket and says, “S-s-s-s-sing ‘Melancholy Baby.’”

  Candle in the Wind

  Elton John sang it at Princess Diana’s funeral service. He told me it was the hardest thing he ever had to do in music.

  He’d sung the song about Marilyn Monroe many times, and had just rewritten the lyric for Di. He was terrified that he’d forget the new words and sing “Goodbye Norma Jean,” in front of billions of people, so he had a teleprompter set in front of him to remind him.

  Long Day’s Journey

  Nobody could play like Buddy Rich. Mel Tormé told me he wanted to play the drums until he heard Buddy. Then he threw away the sticks. Sinatra loved Buddy too. There is a wonderful story about Buddy and Frank that Al Pacino likes to tell.

  Al goes to a Sinatra concert. Buddy Rich is the opening act. Al knows Buddy is a good drummer, but Buddy’s in his sixties at that point and Al’s thinking: I’ll listen for a little while, twiddle my thumbs, and wait for Frank.

  Buddy comes on, gets going and keeps going . . . and going ... and going. He goes way beyond anything Al thought he was going to do and he keeps going after that. And it becomes this experience. Al can feel it, and everyone else can, too. Because the entire audience jumps to its feet simultaneously and starts screaming. And Buddy just keeps on going. It was as if he was saying, I went this far, lemme see if I can take it further. And then suddenly it takes itself.

  When it was over, Sinatra came out and said, “You see this guy drumming? You know, sometimes it’s a good idea to stay at a thing.”

  Don’t Be Cruel

  I never met Elvis. Never saw him in concert. But there are at least three times I wish I could have been around him.

  The first is when he came to Miami Beach to do a concert at the convention center. He was helicoptered in and then driven over in a limo. At the end of his stay, he asked the driver, “Is this your car?”

  The driver says, “No, I just drive it.”

  Elvis says, “It is now. It’s your tip.”

  I’d have loved to see that driver’s face.

  Then there’s the great story that’s just as much about Jerry Weintraub as it is about Elvis. Jerry is a guy who can talk as well as Elvis could sing. Business is a creative art to Jerry. He takes huge risks—which always makes for the best stories.

  One night back in the midsixties, Jerry wakes up with an idea to take Elvis on tour.

  Problem is, Elvis isn’t touring at that point. He’s making movies. But that doesn’t deter Jerry. Jerry calls up Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Jerry tells the Colonel his idea. Parker tells him no. But the word no doesn’t mean no to Jerry. He keeps calling the Colonel every day—for a year. Still no dice. Then Jerry gets a call from the Colonel. The Colonel tells him if he wants to do the tour he should show up at the Hilton hotel in Las Vegas the next day with a check for a million bucks.

  Of course, Jerry doesn’t have the money. But he has twenty-four hours to get it. He tries everyone he knows with that kind of bankroll. No dice. Finally, at the last minute, he convinces a radio station owner in Seattle who loves Elvis to pony up. Then he goes to the nearest bank and tells the teller that he’s going to need a cashier’s check. It’ll be for a million dollars. I wish I could have seen the teller’s face.

  The radio station owner from Seattle wires the money, and in a couple of hours Jerry’s got this cashier’s check made out to Elvis Presley. He goes to meet the Colonel. The Colonel takes the check, looks at it for a moment and then puts it in the hotel safe. That’s it. The deal’s done. Who needs paperwork? The Colonel takes Jerry into Elvis’s suite. Elvis is easy. He’s only got one request. One request. Please make sure that every seat is filled.

  So Jerry has Elvis open up on the Fourth of July at the convention center. Jerry arrives in Miami Beach to find the show all sold out—all ten thousand seats. Beautiful. That gives him a better idea. How about a matinee? The box office guy eggs him on: You’ll sell 20,000 seats in a single day.

  The day before the show, Jerry goes back to the box office. The box office guy has a chunk of tickets in his hand. The matinee hasn’t sold out. There’s still five thousand empty seats in the back. Now Jerry’s going crazy. What was the one thing Elvis told him? No empty seats.

  Now Jerry’s dream has turned into a nightmare. There’s no time to sell five thousand tickets. What’s he going to do? He goes to the arena. Looks at the seats. They’re bolted to the floor. Then he walks over to the jailhouse. He asks to see the sheriff. He makes a contribution to local law enforcement in the form of a wad of cash and asks if a gang of prisoners is available to unscrew five thousand seats from the back of the arena in the morning, take them out of the building, and then screw them back in before evening.

  The sheriff brings dozens of prisoners in orange jumpsuits to the convention center. The prisoners unscrew the seats, take them away to the parking lot, and cover them with a blue tarp.

  Elvis does the matinee. Not an empty seat in the house. Afterward, the prisoners take all the seats back inside. They screw them in just before the evening show. It goes great. Elvis is on fire. Women are going crazy. Elvis throws his scarf into the crowd. The women are fighting for it. They’re passing out. Elvis is a smash.

  I wish I’d been there when Jerry took Elvis back to the hotel. I wish I’d seen the look on Jerry’s face when Elvis told him, “The afternoon show went well. But it’s always so much better at night.”

  The third moment I’d like to have seen Elvis was when he met the Beatles. It was at Elvis’s hotel suite. For twenty minutes, nobody said anything. Everybody was too shy. Finally, Elvis got out his guitar. It was the Beatles doing the worshipping.

  Imagine

  I was doing
my all-night radio show on the Mutual Broadcasting network when John Lennon was shot and killed. He was pronounced dead around 11 p.m.

  I wasn’t a Beatles fan at the time. I knew the Beatles were popular. But I had no idea how popular until that night. We went on the air at midnight. The phone lines were jammed with people talking about what John meant to them. People were crying. The calls came in from everywhere. From John’s neighbors in New York to people on army bases all over the world. It was an extraordinary night.

  I remember driving home that morning, wondering how I could have had no idea how much Lennon and the Beatles meant.

  Hey Jude

  I came to understand the Beatles’ music through the conductor of the Boston Pops.

  Arthur Fiedler said that the Beatles had produced the greatest pop music in centuries. He predicted that their songs would still be listened to in five hundred years. People had no idea of the amazing things they did with chords and arrangements, he said, and to prove it, he’d made an album of their music with the Boston Pops.

  “You mean,” I said, “they’re gonna be Beethoven?”

  “Yes,” he said. Then he did a bit of “Hey Jude”: Dum, dum, dum, da-ta-da-dum. Da-ta-da-dummm. Hey Jude. He made it classical.

  She’s So Fine

  The first time I heard the song “My Sweet Lord,” I knew. The melody had been taken from “She’s So Fine.” George Harrison had no idea he’d taken it. All you need to do is hit the same four notes and you’ve copied a song.

  Something in the Way She Moves

  Paul McCartney came over to my house to listen to Shawn’s album. He gave her a nice critique. He played the piano. He also did a surprise performance for my producer, Wendy, at her birthday party.

  When we were at the Mirage for the “Love” show, he stayed in the next suite and Ringo stayed in the suite across the way. So I ran into them in the hall a lot. We became very friendly over time.

  When I was interviewing Garth Brooks, he talked about being surprised when the Beatles decided to go digital on iTunes. They’d held out for a long time, as had Garth. Garth liked the warmth of tape—and he refused to go digital. It seemed to him that the Beatles had his back. But when they went to iTunes, he felt like the only guy out there standing for what he believed. But he wasn’t critical of the Beatles. He said he’d really love to talk to Paul McCartney about it.

  I said, “Why not give him a call?”

  Garth said he didn’t feel comfortable picking up the phone to call a musical god just like that.

  “Hey,” I said, “I can. He played the piano in my living room.”

  On days like that, I go home and say to myself, Did that really happen?

  Thriller

  I met Michael Jackson a few times. But he was a very hard guy to know.

  There’s a story Celine Dion told me about him that painted a picture of who he was: two people.

  He was in the audience one night to watch her perform. She pointed out at him and told the crowd, “Michael Jackson’s here!”

  He wouldn’t stand up. “Michael,” she said, “C’mon up onstage and take a bow.” He walked onstage all meek. The music started to play and—wow!—he starts to sing with her and he’s phenomenal.

  The music ends and he sits down, shy again.

  The first time I met him he was about twelve years old. I interviewed the Jackson 5 in Miami on the radio. I don’t remember much—just that he was a shy, cute kid. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was already reading everything he could about Walt Disney and telling his brothers that one day he was going to have a Disneyland in his backyard.

  We didn’t have any idea what was going on behind the scenes, how much pressure his father put on all the kids. Janet Jackson later told me how her breasts were bound when she was ten years old so she would still look like a child.

  From the outside looking in, it’s hard to understand what Michael was going through. We only see what we see.

  I was once honored at a banquet by the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Michael was seated at my table. He was very nice, said that he watched my show. I wanted him to come on the show, so a meeting was set up to talk about it.

  My friend Sid and I went to the hotel where he said he’d meet us. We waited and waited. Finally, we went into his suite and walked into a huge Batman statue. We looked around, and Michael was hiding behind the door. The same guy who was hiding behind the door was also a brilliant businessman who bought the Beatles library, cowrote “We Are the World,” gave millions to charity and was charged with sexually molesting children.

  I was at his memorial service. I’ve been to his home. I’ve met many members of his family. I don’t think I’ll ever understand all there was to Michael Jackson.

  Satisfaction

  I liked talking about fame with Mick Jagger. Mick told me something I never knew. He’d had some trouble over a marijuana charge about forty years before, and because of it, every time he arrives at an airport in the United States he has to go to a special room at customs in order to enter the country.

  Mick said it didn’t take him long to learn that drugs didn’t help him as a performer. Being onstage was not a place where he wanted to feel out of control.

  So many great artists have had tragic endings because of drugs: Janis Joplin. Jimmy Hendrix. Jim Morrison. Others, like Eric Clapton, managed to beat their addiction and help others through it. One thing I’ve never found out, in all my years of asking questions, is Why did you start when you knew what could happen?

  Nobody has an answer. They were lonely. They were on the road. They were living a crazy lifestyle. The truth is, nobody knows.

  Lenny Bruce used to say: There’s got to be something good about drugs. Your life is going to be ruined and you’re going to die. Let’s get in line.

  I was addicted to cigarettes, so I understand addiction. Even when I learned how bad it was, I didn’t stop. I always felt: It isn’t going to be me. I was like the guy who says he’ll never get cancer from smoking because he only buys packs that say May affect pregnancy.

  I told Mick something that Sinatra once told me: There’s a lot to be said for longevity.

  Mick said, Well, you’ve got no options really. Either you have longevity or you’re dead.

  Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

  I can see my son Chance when he was younger singing it with Sting. It doesn’t get better than that. Well, maybe it’s a tie with seeing Chance dance with James Brown at my cardiac foundation gala.

  Respect

  You’re talking about a legend beyond a legend when you talk about Aretha Franklin. She’s won thirty-two Grammys.

  When she came to sing at our cardiac foundation gala, she confirmed something I’ve always heard about performers. When they’re doing a charity, they work harder than when they’re getting paid.

  But she remained the diva. She won’t stay above the ninth floor in any hotel.

  Cardiac Foundation Gala

  Michael Bolton, Celine Dion, Rod Stewart, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Tim McGraw, Colbie Caillat, and all the other performers who’ve come to my cardiac foundation gala to help raise money have given me some of the greatest moments of my life. That is, they’ve given me the ability to call up people who don’t have the money for heart surgery and tell them that they’re going to get it.

  Shameless

  Garth Brooks is the most genuine man I’ve ever met. He tells people when his T-shirts are available cheaper across the street than they are at the hotel.

  When my wife was putting out an album and looking for a duet partner, I asked Garth if he would like to do a tune with Shawn.

  Garth said, “I would do anything for you, but I will never, ever sing a love song with anyone but my wife.”

  I Dreamed a Dream

  When Susan Boyle walked out on the stage of Britain’s Got Talent, nobody expected her to sing the way she did. We never had Susan Boyles when I was young. I’ve never seen someone with that kind of talent come ou
t of nowhere. It was one of the most surprising moments in television.

  Volare

  When I was a disc jockey I used to introduce this song as Vo-Larry. They finally wrote a song about me.

  It was a huge hit for Dean Martin. I always wanted to interview Dean. But by the time the show moved out to L.A., he was really down. He’d lost his son, his firstborn. His son was a great-looking guy and an Air Force captain. On a clear day, he crashed into the same mountain near Palm Springs where Sinatra’s mother’s plane crashed. Dean never got over his son’s death.

  He used to sit alone at a restaurant on Little Santa Monica Boulevard every night. He’d order an extra plate of food and have it set at the place across from him so people wouldn’t take the empty seat. He’d want to be around people, but he didn’t want to talk. He’d have a bite. People would pass by, say hello, and he’d nod. Then he’d go home.

  Sinatra got the idea to re-create the old days, bring the old Rat Pack out on tour. He convinced Dean to come along. They opened in Oakland and sold out. Dean was the first one onstage. He had a great line. He walked out kind of boozy with a glass in his hand and said, “How’d I do?”

  But his heart wasn’t in it. Two days later, he said, “Frank, I don’t want to go onstage. I don’t want to sing. I don’t want to make people laugh.”

  Frank got mad at him, and Dean took Frank’s private plane home. They had to bring Liza Minnelli in on short notice.

  I wish I could have met Dean during the “Volare” days.