HAPPY NEW YEAR FLASHBACK

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

I was planning on telling this story on New Year’s Eve, but things get in the way. Anyway, I’ve discussed in recent years some of the best and worst NYE gigs I’ve been involved in, but somehow I neglected to talk about NYE 1979, which was one of my biggest money gigs ever, but the big payday may have been the highlight. A little background is necessary.

1979 was a pivotal year for The Rick and Ruby Show. We had done a national tour opening for Robin Williams, we had done two TV pilots, and appeared on the HBO Young Comedians special. We were being pursued by an agency called Monterey Peninsula Artists, or at least one of their agents, who followed us from gig to gig, becoming such a pain in the butt that we had to eventually tell him to piss off. We must have made his agency’s decision easier, because there were two acts they were pursuing at the time, one was us, the other was an up and coming musical virtuoso named Prince. I wonder who they went with.

Still, in spite of that disappointment that we really didn’t know about at the time, there was plenty to be excited about as we headed into 1980. This NYE gig was a special one, in that we were doing a major collaboration with another Bay Area entity, the eccentric musician Dick Bright and his partner Roger Clark. As Little Roger and the Goosebumps, they had developed a cult following with their single “Stairway To Gilligan’s Island,” which combined Led Zeppelin’s classic with the celebrated TV show theme. Unfortunately, they hadn’t gotten clearance from Led Zeppelin, who had no sense of humour, thus all copies were suppressed, radio play was outlawed, and whoever had a copy had an immediate collectors’ item. Of course, I still have mine.

The gig itself, at a San Francisco venue off Broadway called The City (which we had played a few months earlier), got lots of advance publicity, because Dick had hired a full orchestra for the evening, and enlisted several major Bay Area singers to come by and do guest spots, including Dan Hicks and Eddie Money. In contrast, all Rick and Ruby contributed was a new performance art-y piece entitled “Eaglemania,” that was a slam at all those 60’s tributes featuring Beatles’ music. It was an ambitious piece on our part, as we incorporated audio, video, makeup and costuming to do a complete send-up of the 1970’s, and how The Eagles seemed to signify the best of the decade, which from our standpoint was sort of a yawner. Some things worked, other things not so much. The problem was we were trying to do this piece at 11:30 in front of a raucous crowd of about 1000, many of whom decided to test out their noise makers to make sure they’d work 30 minutes later.

This gig also essentially began on the afternoon of December 30. The tickets for NYE sold out so quickly because of the hype from the San Francisco Chronicle that it was decided we would have a dress rehearsal the day before and sell tickets to that. It was a total rush to show up at the venue in the early afternoon and see a line around the block of people waiting to get in. Some of those people were shouting out our names, so we had to say hello and sign autographs. My god, I was thinking, so this is what fame is like. Not that I was complaining, mind you.

In addition to our “Eaglemania” segment, both Ruby and I would do individual songs with the orchestra. I sang Cliff Richard’s “We Don’t Talk Anymore,” which was a current hit then, and Cliff’s biggest US hit, while Ruby soloed on the 40’s ballad, “That’s All,” and together with our keyboardist Raoul, we sang our “West Side Story” medley, which was pretty amazing when the three of us did it in our regular act with just guitar and keyboard, but with a full orchestra, it was mind blowing.

Dick Bright was also hoping we could get involved in some of his set list, which included an abundance of songs by ABBA. He was planning a big finale with the whole cast singing “Thank You For The Music,” but we weren’t much into ABBA at the time, and we didn’t know the song, so we passed on it. That was probably a mistake in that it wasn’t the best of attitudes. Especially since Dick had worked so much harder than we had for this gig, and yet we were doing an even split of the door. This meant he was paying a cast of perhaps 40 out of the several thousand dollars he made that night, whereas for us the same amount was split among a mere four!

For me the biggest harbinger of whether or not fame was gonna work for me came during that dress rehearsal. TV news crews were there, wanting to get insights on what the gig was about, and how very San Francisco this show was. Ruby and I were cornered by a local news team, where they interviewed us briefly off camera, and we thought we had our bases covered. But reality came crashing down as the reporter said, “What do you wish for the Bay Area in 1980?” Big lights came on without warning, and the reporter was expecting a witty and insightful answer, to which I could only hem and haw until Ruby finally made a comment about a soap opera character’s comeuppance. Not surprisingly, none of the footage of us made it to the actual broadcast.

One of the pictures on my celebrity memory montage is of us with Joe Walsh of The Eagles, who had a successful career before joining them in time for the “Hotel California” album. He saw us opening for Robin Williams in Santa Barbara in August 1979, and at the time, we had a bit in our act where we did a teaser for a fictitious tribute show called “Eaglemania: A Tribute to the 70’s.” Walsh was in the audience that night and came back after the show to say how he slunk down in his seat as we were doing the bit. Ruby pacified him by saying, “Hey we liked The Eagles, we just didn’t like the 70s!” I wish he could have seen the bit in its full realisation.

Happy New Year to all of you, Things Can only Get Better (Howard Jones, 1985; D-Ream, 1993)

January 2nd, 2022



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