ONE OF THE GREAT MUSIC BIZ ECCENTRICS

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

When we toured as Robin Williams’ opening act in 1979, he was also recording his first album, which would be compiled from shows in New York and LA. The album, entitled Reality-What a Concept, would be on the Casablanca Record Label, home at the time to such acts as KISS, Donna Summer, Parliament, Village People, and newly signed Cher. Co-producing the album was the owner of Casablanca, Neil Bogart (His birth name was Bogatz, but he’d changed his name years before founding the label). At one of the LA shows he came up to me after and said how much he loved our act and wanted to sign us to his label, as well as for TV and film projects.

What was interesting about him was how ebullient he was when talking to us, but would then pivot to cursing out the people recording the album. There were sound problems that were basically negating the use of any of the recording from this particular show. So on one end, he’d say, “Love you guys, you’re so brilliant, can’t wait to work with you,” and on the other end he’d say, “But I’m gonna kill these mother fuckers” and go back and forth, like Jekyll & Hyde. Still, what did come out of all that was an invite to meet him in his office and discuss possible contracts. We would have this meeting a month later.

As we went to the Casablanca Record and FilmWorks office on Sunset Blvd, the first thing that you’d see in the stairway was a life sized painting of Humphrey Bogart, who young Neil Bogatz had always idolised. There were also life sized photos of all his multi-million selling acts. When we got to his office, we had to wait, as another act was showcasing for him. We could hear the song they were playing, a country novelty called “I Love You So Fucking Much I Could Shit.” Not exactly 1979 radio ready, but certainly would have its niche at some point in time. Then it was our turn.

His label was all about hype, and certainly acts like KISS, Village People, and Donna Summer pretty well anticipated the imminent music video age. What Bogart saw in us was an act that could be used to visually parody the acts already with the label. He envisioned Ruby doing her over the top Cher impression, then the real Cher tapping her on the shoulder and basically telling her to take a hike. He envisioned the same thing with us doing Village People. He also showed us a promo video of one act he failed with, which was the characters of Lenny & Squiggy from the Laverne & Shirley show, played by Michael McKean and the late David Lander. They were both gifted comic actors, but the Lenny & The Squigtones album didn’t really do them justice and it failed to chart.

We spent about 30-45 minutes in his office, at one time being interrupted by Cher barging in, then realising he’s in a meeting, says “Oh! Shit!” and that was our one encounter with Cher. He kept in touch with us over the next few months, and came with his wife to see us at the chic West Hollywood venue called the Studio One Backlot. Meanwhile, an actual contract was sent to us and our manager. I still have a copy somewhere in one of my drawers, and like so many contracts of that ilk, pretty much everything favours the label, and it was up to attorneys to negotiate.

One thing we did in hopes of keeping in Neil’s good graces, was to record our own version of the one minor hit he had as a singer. When he was 18, using the name Neil Scott, he recorded a necro-pop tune entitled “Bobby” about a girl dying in a hospital and calling for her boyfriend Bobby, who shows up at the end and all is well. The song peaked at #58 on the pop charts in 1961, but Neil had bigger ambitions obviously. He liked what we did with the song, especially adding a disco beat to it at the end. We were encouraged enough that we started working on a semi-autobiographical Rock Soap Opera, and even wrote a few tunes for it, something we had done only a couple of times in the past.

Then everything became moot in early 1980, when Donna Summer initiated a mismanagement lawsuit against Neil (he was also her manager). It tarnished his reputation enough that shortly after, he resigned as CEO of Casablanca, and the label went through some reorganisation. Bogart let us know, when he and his wife sent us flowers at one of our Backlot gigs, that he was hoping we would join his new label called Boardwalk, that signed veteran acts like Ringo Starr, Curtis Mayfield, and Harry Chapin. Boardwalk lasted about three years, as did Casablanca, but no further record offers came our way.

Neil had other more serious problems, in that within a year, he was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, which put him out of circulation and took his life in May of 1982, at the ripe old age of 39. For us, it was just another could-have-been that wasn’t. I don’t know if we would have made it as recording artists, but it would have been interesting, to say the least.

February 25th, 2026



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