THE TIME OF MY LIFE

Copyright © 2014 by Bill Medley

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Foreword

I still remember the first time I heard Bill Medley’s deep, soulful baritone booming through my little Zenith 500 transistor radio.

It was the summer of 1964 and I was fifteen years old, checking out the girls with my friends on Jones Beach, Long Island.

“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” was about to explode into the sonic boom heard around the world.

“You never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips” hit me—and every other guy who heard it—right in the gut.

His voice personified the sound of a man wounded by love. It was a righteous epiphany.

And it would forever herald the opening theme to the opera of our adolescence.

It still hits me in the gut every time I hear it—like the four-note entry motif of Beethoven’s Fifth.

Bill Medley’s voice resonates to this day—and his journey through life explains the depth and soul inherent in that voice.

–Billy Joel

Preface

I’ve had a life . . . and then some. Through some really great highs and some amazing lows my life has gone far deeper than I ever imagined it would. My ex-wife was brutally murdered; I lost my voice completely and was told I’d never sing again; I had hit records in four different decades, performed in dive bars and for the president of the United States.

When I do concerts I’m asked tons of questions. “How did the Righteous Brothers get their name? Did you and Bobby Hatfield get along? What was Phil Spector really like? Why did the Beatles and the Rolling Stones pick you guys to perform on their first American tours?”

So, I started doing a storytelling portion in my show. Now people come up to me afterwards and say, “Man, I love the show but in the second half, where you did that story-telling thing, that was unbelievably cool.” I know if I had the chance to sit down with Ray Charles or Little Richard or any of those guys and ask them what they were thinking when they did this or that, I would love it. Hearing the song is great—but why you did it and how you felt when you did it is almost as important as the song itself, because you can hear the song at home.

Of course there are some things I’d like to clear up. All through our career, for some reason, people thought that Bobby and I disliked each other. That’s not true, our relationship was very complicated, we were like brothers—and brothers don’t always see eye to eye. Bobby and I were very different, as you’ll discover in the pages that follow. We were really young when we became successful and it affected us both in very different ways.

I learned that success includes great responsibility—like it or not. A lot of artists have an “I don’t give a shit” attitude, which I understand, but that’s not me. When you have success people look at you with a magnifying glass and I’ve always felt something of an obligation, as corny as it sounds, to be a role model. I didn’t sign up for that, but it’s part of the gig. God knows, as you’ll discover in this book, I haven’t always hit the bull’s-eye in that regard, but that’s how I feel. Ever since we had our first big hits I knew every time I walked out of the house people were going to want to talk to me, get an autograph, or take a picture. For me, it’s either screw my head onto that or stay home, period.

I’m actually honored that people still care about the stories and the music. Writing this book has shown me how blessed I’ve been in many ways. People often comment about how the Righteous Brothers changed the face of American music and helped usher in the “blue-eyed soul” era, which I take as a wonderful compliment. Ironically, there was nothing about the Righteous Brothers that should have worked—but it did. Let me tell you how and why in this book. I hope along the way I’ll make you smile, maybe cry a bit, and at the end of the story feel like you know who Bill Medley is.

My last hit record was “(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life.” I chose that for the title of this book because I really have had an incredible life filled with a lot of joy, deep friendships, and some big-time, lesson-learning pain. Thankfully, it’s not over, I still learn every day. One lesson I’ve learned is to appreciate it when people take time to be interested in you. Thanks for investing a piece of your life in learning about mine.

1

Orange County Graffiti

If you’ve ever watched the movie American Graffiti or seen the TV show Happy Days you have a good picture of what it was like growing up in Orange County, California, in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Our hangout was Fiduccia’s Gas Station. Frank Fiduccia’s sons were part of our crowd and their dad let us use his business for our headquarters. Why he let us hang around there I’ll never know—we must have driven away customers. This was long before I met Bobby Hatfield, but even then we couldn’t have been more different. He was the button-down president of his high-school class and I was the Levi’s and T-shirt, greaser, motorcycle racing guy who absolutely hated school.

              Boyhood friend Johnny Mohler    Bill was Fonzie. The duck-tail haircut, the leather jacket, everything. He didn’t do well in school except for choir, he loved that. In those days when you started going out with a girl you gave her your jacket to wear, instead of a ring. Bill had at least three different jackets for three different girls. They liked him so much because he was a real sweetheart, just a wonderful person and he hasn’t changed a bit. The fame and fortune never changed him. Both Bill and my brother hated school so much they quit (or got kicked out depending on who tells the story) and both of them were millionaires before I even graduated.

I think a little bit of my Texas roots contributed to my boyhood rebellion and my feeling “different” from many of the other Orange County kids. My grandpa W.T. Medley, whom I’m named after, was born and raised in Texas. He had a cattle ranch in Van Horn, Texas, just west of El Paso. Eventually he lost it, came out West and acted in cowboy movies. My family wasn’t great about keeping records so I don’t know a lot about him, but I know he did well enough in the movies to return to Texas and buy his ranch back.

He was a real cowboy; he could ride, rope, and shoot. By all accounts he was a genuine Christian man nicknamed “the sweet man”—but he was not a guy to cross. There’s a picture of him riding into town dragging the dead body of a horse thief he’d caught. Frontier justice. He died at age ninety-six walking to church.

It was at Grandpa’s church that my dad Arnol met my mom Irma. Dad moved back to Texas, mom followed him there and they were married. In the late 1930s mom convinced dad to move back to California where they had a band, The Rhythm Hounds—she played piano and sang, and he played sax. Mom was also a hairdresser, which would later open the door for my brief and comical career in that field—details to follow.

Soon my sister Barbara and brother Leon came along, and I think my parents were mentally done with having kids. I was “the surprise” of 1940. Over the years I learned that I was not a happy surprise for my dad. I represented unwanted extra responsibility. I was a frustration for him and it showed all through my young years.

My brother and sister were angels, they really were. They never got in trouble, they never got spanked, and rightfully so—they never did anything wrong. My dad and I just collided. That’s why, even today, I don’t like to eat dinner, because every night at dinner my dad and I would get into it and he’d drag me away to spank me with a belt. He was a Texas guy and that’s what they did. I was very defiant and I would fight him, I wouldn’t let it go down easily. We would literally get in fistfights. If I had just taken a few whacks on the behind it would have been over, but I was a rebel and I fought back as hard as I could. One time in junior high, when I was taking a shower after PE class, one of the coaches asked me, “What’s wrong with your back?” I had welts all over my back from my dad’s beatings. I’m sure most teachers today would have told someone and my dad would have been in big trouble.

              Bill’s sister Barbara    Actually, our mom would get Bill into trouble with dad. It was one of those “wait until your father gets home” things, and then dad would have to discipline him. That always bothered me, the poor kid never got to sit at the dinner table through a whole meal. Mother would come up with something and dad would get irritated and poor Bill would get in trouble; it was sad. He wasn’t really bad; he’d just do little things and all of a sudden dad was taking him away to spank him. It not only interrupted Bill’s dinner, it interrupted Leon’s and mine too. The funny thing is, my dad thought the world of Bill; for the most part he was a very good dad. But, the dinner table was very hard on all of us.

In grammar school I developed these nervous head and stomach twitches. My aunt had similar twitches, and my mom always blamed my dad for bringing them out in me. They made me very self-conscious and embarrassed.

Maybe I’m just protecting my dad, but I never blamed him for the twitches. I still loved him, and as adults our relationship was much better. Once I was out of the house and successful as a Righteous Brother I think the pressure was off for him. He was a sheriff in charge of police communications. When he retired I flew in from Lake Tahoe for his retirement party. Some of the girls who worked with him took me aside to tell me how wonderful my dad was.

“He was so funny, always in a good mood. The sweetest, most gentle man we ever worked with.”

I said, “Point him out to me.”

That’s when I learned that the dad who felt all this pressure at home, the dad who made both me and my mom nervous wrecks; the dad who only told me he loved me once and never hugged—that wasn’t the man the world knew. In his later years I said “screw it” and started hugging him anyway. I know he wasn’t comfortable with it, but he got used to it.

Still, the drama at home and my struggle with the nervous twitches made me an angry young man. I learned that the best way to keep people from making fun of me was to hit them. I fought a lot. I wasn’t a big guy in those days; I was 5’3” until I was fifteen, and sang first tenor. Then I grew seven inches in one year and became a baritone, which made things a little easier.

Even though I had great friends, I became withdrawn and developed social anxiety, which I’ve struggled with my whole life. I think I used my rebel image and behavior as a defense. The leather jacket, greased-back hair, tough-guy crowd, the motorcycles—all just part of the Bill Medley protective mask.

Finally, the school sent me to a “shrink” and he told my mom, “This is a very lonely boy.”

“What are you talking about, he has tons of friends,” she said.

He repeated, “He’s a very lonely boy.”

Mom didn’t get it, but I did. I was a very lonely, sad kid. I felt abandoned, my mom was always sick and my dad wasn’t there for me emotionally. I still fight feelings of loneliness to this day. When I’m on the road I’m always on the phone, I don’t like being alone.

The happier ending to the story is that through the years I felt I finally earned my dad’s love, approval, and respect. I was able to take it in and that was healing in many ways. Getting to know the “other” Arnol Medley helped me understand who he really was, good and bad, as well as understand a little more about who I am.

The more I understood about who I really was, the less interested I was in school. I just hated it, except for choir class. My choir teacher was Jack Coleman. He turned out to be one of the most important men in my life. Not only did he encourage my musical ambitions, Jack literally saved my career and probably my life—much more about that later.

The second I turned sixteen I dropped out of school. “OK,” I thought, “what am I going to do with my life?” I could sing like Little Richard, but what’s a white kid from Orange County going to do with that? Because my mom was a hairdresser I thought I’d try hairdressing school. I enrolled at the Bartmore Beauty College on Broadway Street in Santa Ana. The problem was I was still a greaser, and I was always cutting up and never studied.

Bartmore was a training school and little old ladies would come in to get their hair done because it was free. My first patron was a little old lady who had blue hair with pin curls. It looked like a little blue afro. I took the sweet lady to the sink and started shampooing her hair. Suddenly I looked down and her hair was gone. I picked up her head to see if it was in the sink and there was nothing, it scared the crap out of me. Great. My first client and I made them bald. I went to my teacher, Mrs. Woo, and said, “Her hair’s gone!”

She shrieked, “What!” and ran over to the sink only to come back laughing hysterically. Because the lady’s skin was so white, when I shampooed the blue out of her thin hair it blended into her white skin and you couldn’t see it.

I flunked my state board exam, failing hair coloring and manicuring. I wouldn’t learn manicures because you had to practice them near Bartmore’s front window and I didn’t want the kids walking home from school to see me doing a manicure. When I went to take the exam I copied everything the lady sitting next to me did. She must have failed manicuring too! Bartmore Beauty College was a great learning experience, but now I thank God I failed.

My Bartmore failure led me to my first (and thankfully only) giant musical failure. My friend Johnny Mohler said, “I know you can sing and I’m going to take you up to the Al Jarvis Talent Show.” Al Jarvis was a popular Los Angeles radio and TV personality, sometimes called America’s first radio “DJ.” We went to the Paramount Theater in Los Angeles and there was this huge line to get in, and they only took about thirty people to perform. Mohler walked up and down the line saying, “Wait until you hear my friend sing, he can sing like Elvis, and he can sing anything!”

So, we finally go in and Al Jarvis asked, “Do you want any accompaniment?” I shook my head no. “OK, go ahead.” You have to remember, this was my very first time singing in front of an audience of strangers.

              Johnny Mohler    So Bill’s up there and he started to sing. Nothing came out. I mean nothing, he froze. The piano player tried to jump in to help, but as hard as Bill tried nothing came out. I hauled ass out of there. I got through the back door and I’m running through the parking lot and here comes Medley right behind me, cussing me out all the way. But we got in the car and on the way home Bill told me, “Mohler, I am gonna be a singer. I know I got scared and nothing came out and I froze, but I am gonna be a singer.” That was the start, that’s what really got him going.

That left me back at Fiduccia’s Gas Station with my buddies. That’s where we hung out and made our plans for the night. We’d all pitch in twenty-five cents for gas and decide whose car to take cruisin’ for chicks. A block away was where the bus would pick up Marines to take them to the El Toro Marine base in Orange County. We had a lot of fights with the Marines, and we lost most of them. It’s a good thing I pursued music instead of boxing.

Don Fiduccia played a little rhythm guitar and asked me if I’d sing a song he wrote. He said, “I know you can sing and I want to hear somebody sing this song.” That changed my life. Pretty soon I was sitting at my mom’s piano at home for twelve hours at a time. I taught myself to play Little Richard and Fats Domino songs, stuff like that. People would ask my mom if that drove her nuts, and she’d say, “At least I know where he is.” Don and I started driving around picking up chicks by telling them we were the Everly Brothers. Music had gotten hold of me and it’s never let go.

Don and I started a group called the Romancers. We’d sing harmony and I began to write songs. Now, I know Les Paul is credited for inventing multi-track recording, but I think I invented it in my Orange County living room. I had two cheap little tape recorders and I’d record with one and then play it back while playing and singing harmony parts and record all that with the other. I’d go back and forth until I had a full group of vocals and piano parts. I had never heard of multi-track recording or Les Paul, I just figured it out. When I produced many of the Righteous Brothers hits I thought back to those days of “producing” multi-track recordings in my living room. What a trip!

My grandpa on my mom’s side would watch me doing all this and once told me, “Whatever it is that you’re doing there, you’re going to make millions someday with this.” Whether he was a prophet or just a good guesser, the encouragement sure felt great.

I started knocking on doors trying to sell my songs to established groups. With a mix of youthful bravado and naivety I walked into the office of the fifties hit-making group the Diamonds at 6425 Hollywood Boulevard—I was just nineteen. Their leader Dave Somerville liked my songs enough to actually record two of them.

              Dave Somerville    I remember Bill as a nice kid, real skinny and kind of shy. We did two of Bill’s songs; one was called “Womaling” and the other “Chimes of My Heart.” We released “Womaling,” but it didn’t chart and then “Chimes of My Heart” came out as part of our Best of the Diamonds—The Mercury Years collection. In those days you could just show up and walk into a radio station or recording studio, and if you had something good they’d listen.

Soon I wanted to expand beyond what Don and I could do with just the two of us as the Romancers, so I asked him what he thought about forming a quartet. That’s when the Paramours were born.