DISCoveries January, 1990

 

PREMATURELY

BLONDE

 

By Jon E. Johnson

"If I had my dream I would fill a hall, tell all the people tear down the wall

that keeps them from being a part of it all cause they gotta be close to it all..."

-Melanie, Close To It All, 1970

Within forty-eight hours of the news that East German officials opened the Berlin wall, singer/songwriter Melanie Safka was on her way to Europe to be close to it all. As a younger, more wistful troubador, her songs of peace and love were anthems for the times and now suddenly, twenty years later, it was indeed ringing true. Just as her 1970 hit, Lay Down(Candles in the Rain), written in the spirit of Woodstock, is fitting today as a soliloquy on AIDS, her song Close to It All has taken on a whole new meaning.
Yet two decades and some twenty-five million records later, people still remember Melanie as the prototypical flower child of the Woodstock era. "I've been all over the world and people ask me all the time, '
What was it like playing at Woodstock?' Not only this (past) year, because of the twentieth anniversary. But people have said, 'Yeah, 1 went there and no one knew where it was!'
One guy, who was from Norway, said that he had gone to the town of Woodstock and asked where the festival was and of course nobody knew because it wasn't (held) there.
But people around the world don't know that. They think Woodstock was at Woodstock.
So a lot of times people try to go back and they don't even know where it is. It's really an amazing thing. People make pilgrimages there, just to go to that spot.
I had never gone back. I performed there that time and left and it was still just a memory to me."
Melanie made her way back to Woodstock at first in spirit only, as part of a reunion tour staged last summer, along with Richie Havens, John Sebastian, Country Joe McDonald, Sha Na Na, Canned Heat, and a tribute to Jimi Hendrix.

They were performing in the area when she was drawn by circumstance back to the Woodstock site. "We were doing a concert down the road at a place called Swan Lake, and it was a very small crowd from what they had expected. But what was really happening, to the promoter's disgust, was people were just gathering at the original site.
They wouldn't give anybody a permit to do a concert there. The people who own the farm now would've allowed it, but the city itself just didn't want to have anything to do with it," she explains. "And after the concert people came over to me and said, 'Did you hear what is going on at the site?' -they all call it the site-and I said no. '
Well, Friday night there were 2,000 people there. Saturday it grew to 10,000, and,' they said, 'tonight there's supposed to be anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 people there. They've lost count!'" "I said, 'You're kidding me!'," she continues. "They said there was a stage set up and so far only local people had been up there.
Everybody was asked to go and I think they were afraid they'd breach con tract because they had promised to do this one show. I said, 'Look, if the guy doesn't want to pay me if I do this, I have to go on. I just have to see it.' So I went down and as I got near it I knew I was going to play.
The whole hillside was full of people who had come just to be in that spot. They didn't get promised a show. They didn't get promised anything." "I didn't believe it," she laughs. "I said, 'Come on, the real concert is down the road and nobody's there?'
So I went over and everybody was excited because I was one of the original people from Woodstock. All these people believed that someone from Woodstock was going to come...and I appeared. It felt great and I sang for hours. It was incredible. I got to do Woodstock twice in one lifetime-and it was better the second time!"
"The first time I performed there I had an out of body experience," she says, deadpan. "So I really wasn't all there, literally. I really felt like I was waiting to be executed, as the time got closer and closer - I waited for so long, which is a terrible thing for a performer. If I have to hang around too long before a performance I get more and more nervous. You start building up anxieties. I was terrified by the time I actually got to go on. So I walked out on the plank way, you know, and I left. I just watched myself go on stage and felt totally free of any fear. I watched this other person-myself-go on and then I joined myself, I guess, when I felt it was okay."
But however mystical the experience may have been, even Melanie's own children have misconceptions about Woodstock.
"They're curious about that time," she says. However, their frame of reference is the proverbial old hippie. "They think it kind of infers that these people are less than all there, you know. Like some sort of veteran of a war that didn't quite ever return to normal," she comments. "I told my kids that it wasn't all about drugs.
I mean, a lot of emphasis has been put on drugs. Some people did pill-pop themselves into paradise somewhere along the line. A lot of them didn't. It certainly was there, but that wasn't what it was about "
"What it was really about was a generation that saw the light, for a minute and a half. If this planet wasn't so insane it could have been a renaissance on earth." But, she says, "it got misdirected and people figured out how to use it for their own purposes and it [was] misused.
It became a group to be reckoned with, politically, and we became pawns. And unfortunately the drug thing became [a symbol of J the degeneration of things. "Somehow, though, Melanie was born to be there and take part in chronicling the hopes, dreams, and fears of her generation.
With the influence of her mother Polly Safka, herself a singer, she began her professional pursuits at a very tender age. Her first gig was at age four on a radio show called "Live Like a Millionaire."
By her late teens she had developed an interest in acting and song-writing. "When I first started writing it was an outlet for my difficulty in communicating, conversationally, with people," she remarks.
"I was really a bizarrely alone person when I was growing up, and that was my outlet. That was my conversation. I guess I decided to talk to humanity."
While she was enrolled at the New York Academy of Dramatic Art she began performing at various Greenwich Village coffee houses and was able to catch the last wave of '60s folk. She then came to the attention of her future husband, Peter Schekeryk. He was immediately struck by her voice. "When I heard her I had the feeling that I was hearing something I had never heard before," he offers.
"Her sound was very unique and it just gave me chills. And I knew I was onto something good. The aura in the room, everything felt right. Things like that come only once in a lifetime. I was lucky to be there. I was just the person who grabbed it."
"I think I was doing an imitation of Billie Holiday, in my head, and it came out this way," Melanie recalls. "My influences were Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, and Bessie Smith even, but I didn't take on the whole thing of a blues singer in any way. I loved the playfulness of Edith Piaf's voice when she did all those three penny opera plays. She has that little twist in her voice that gives her that edge, and I was zeroing in on those colors."
Together, Peter and Melanie attracted the interest of Columbia Records. "Peter had a budget to do an audition session. But he didn't tell me it was an audition session and he didn't tell the musicians. He went ahead and shot the wad and did the whole production with a real, legitimate string section, and paying full scale. So his head was absolutely on the line," she laughs. "He got all these famous players and we did a real recording session and let Columbia worry about it later."
Fortunately, the label bought the record, the classic Beautiful People, as well as one more single. But they seemed in a quandary over what to do with her next.
Melanie finally tired of waiting for them to act and bravely forced a confrontation with the boss himself. "I walked into Clive Davis' office, because I wanted to do an album, and I did my usual thing. I started crying. I said, 'What do you mean I can't make an album?' and went on and on. And he said, 'Do you know who you're speaking to? You're speaking to Clive Davis, the president of CBS!,"' she mimics.

"It was like I was at the principal's office again and that made me cry even more. He said he wanted me to have a producer who was going to do me more like Aretha Franklin. Since my voice was odd they had to market me more black than white. Some of the songs I wrote lent themselves to R&B production, but at that point I didn't see myself in that way."

"Then he started talking about Michele Lee. Michele Lee, then, was doing toothpaste ads. She had a Gleem commercial on TV and when she sang she had a lot of teeth. Sort of like a Marie Osmond person.

He was telling me that she was 'being groomed for stardom'

But I felt like I was fighting for my essence. I said, 'I don't think I can work with you' and he said, 'Fine...the legal department is down there.'"

Melanie returned to the coffee houses for a time, until Peter was able to convince her that her voice was an asset rather than a liability. The two then went across town, so to speak, to the man purported to be Davis' archenemy, Neil Bogart, at Buddah Records.

"He just loved my image...the way he saw it. He did great things for my career, but what he did to focus on my image, I think, was devastating to my life," she charges.

"He saw me as the epitome of the flower child - I had long hair and I wore these long velvet dresses-and that's what he put out in all of the press releases. Before my record even came out, Rolling Stone had this big article about the girl they were doing this big campaign on from Buddah Records. They panned it before it was even out. They never even heard me."

Her subsequent records sold well, how ever, despite negative critical reaction to Buddah's marketing strategy, and in 1969 she performed at both Carnegie Hall and the infamous Woodstock festival, where she was inspired to pen her first million seller, Candles in the Rain. "Just as I got on stage they were given the announcement to light candles and it would stop the rain," Melanie remembers. "I was sitting there, terrified, in front of all those people. All these candles were being lit and I saw the hillsides light up. I thought of the idea of Candles in the Rain at that moment" Then, during various demonstrations and marches she got the passive-resistance idea for the Lay Down portion of the song, which she heard as a gospel chorus.

Her label-mates, the Edwin Hawkins Singers, were coming off their own hit, Oh Happy Day, and she approached them with her proposition. "I called up Edwin Hawkins and I said, 'I've got this song that I really hear you guys singing on.' And he said, 'Well, does it have the name of Jesus or God in it?' I told him no, and he said, 'We don't do anything without the name of Jesus in it ' I said, 'Well, it doesn't actually say God, but he's really there! ' I convinced him to at least listen to the song, so I flew from New York to Oakland, California, on my own, and went to this high school gymnasium and in front of 48 gospel singers I sang this solo rendition of Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)."

They ultimately agreed and Melanie quickly seized the opportunity. "We did it three days later because I had to catch them while they were on tour," she says. "I got them in the studio in San Francisco, me and Peter and Freddie Catero and the Edwin Hawkins Singers, and we made an eight minute and some odd second record, which is available somewhere out there on one of the records." (It clocks in at exactly 7:50 on Buddah's THE FOUR SIDES OF MELANIE).

"It was a fabulous experience," she says.

"It still holds up. That's why I'd say it's probably my favorite of the old albums." It also sent her career soaring. The CANDLES IN THE RAIN album went platinum, selling one million copies in six months and helping her garner Top Female-Vocalist spots in such trade journals as Billboard, Cashbox, and Record World.

In 1971, Peter and Melanie formed their own label, Neighborhood Records. But she left Buddah with enough material to earn them a few more hit records, most notably The Nickel Song and the LPs, GARDEN IN THE CITY and PLEASE LOVE ME. Her Neighborhood hits included Brand New Key, Ring the Living Bell, Bitter Bad, and Love to Lose Again.

Though she had the artistic independence she'd sought from Buddah, she found the 'Melanie' image a tough one to shake. "I was very unhappy that I was being categorized the way that I was. I was the Brand New Key girl. I was cute and adorable. And that's very limiting to an artist," she states. "Most people didn't realize that I wrote my own songs. I was 'too cute' to write, and I wanted to break out of that.

"There have been albums I've made, that now looking back, I can see were self-indulgent in a way that wasn't exactly positive," she admits.

'The underground press absolutely threw mud at me and anything else they could do to say things about me that made me feel like I wanted to die.

They would put me together with Bobby Sherman in the same article. It was insulting.

It just wasn't the time to be who I was. Even though everybody thinks of me as the perfect Woodstock child it just wasn't my time.'

"In albums like STONEGROUND WORDS, which came right after Brand New Key, there was a backlash; a real reaction against myself. I wasn't having fun. I was doing things for spite. I was just so punished for being a girl with hit records. The underground press absolutely threw mud at me and anything else they could do to say things about me that made me feel like I wanted to die. They would put me together with Bobby Sherman in the same article. It was insulting. It just wasn't the time to be who I was. Even though everybody thinks of me as the perfect Woodstock child it just wasn't my time."

The business of running a record label wasn't without its problems, either, she says. "As a matter of fact it was a financial disaster. It was distributed by Paramount, which was a Gulf Western company, and one day we were phoned and told, 'Your company has been sold to ABC. 'It was one of those horrible things that happens in the conglomerate world, and we were victims," Melanie complains. "They let me die. I had obligations that I still had to fulfil before I could proceed with my career. So rather than deal with it I went and had babies."

The Schekeryks' personal lives reflected the ups and downs of the music business as well. "Melanie went through a very bad time, as I did. I had an alcohol problem and she stayed with me through that and supported me," admits Peter. "That's why we have been married for twenty-one years."

Since then, she and Peter have made one album deals when the right label - and an opportune time - presents itself. "I could have signed back with a major label," she insists. "There were a lot of labels that wanted me...but they wanted to approve of six songs on any forthcoming album and they wanted to tell you when you'll record another and when you'll tour. All of those things make you sick as an artist. So we made one-album deals and went from one place to another. I just didn't want to be locked into a contract and have to do things that I didn't want to do, which is sort of what happened when we got sold to ABC."

She was signed to Arista by Clive Davis, and one album, SUNSET & OTHER BEGINNINGS came of their association in 1975. She also recorded albums for Atlantic (PHOTOGRAPH-1976) and MCA (PHONOGENIC --NOT JUSTANOTHER PRETTY FACE-1978) and she had a double album on the Tomato label in 1978 called BALLROOM STREETS, where she reprised some of her past hits.

 "Melanie's a very visual writer," says her husband and producer, Peter Schekeryk.

"You see fragments of her daily mirror."

ARABESQUE(Jem/Blanche, 1982) was an otherwise fine effort that suffered from distribution problems.

Her last domestic release was AM I REAL OR WHAT, on the Amherst label in 1985.

The album netted her a dance hit of sorts, Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? a club favorite. The album was literally conceived during a blizzard, when Melanie and company were snowbound in blustery Buffalo, New York, and were able to book time at a local studio. "We started out not with the idea of doing an album, but to put down certain songs that I had written and see what kind of direction they were going to take," she remarks. "The album came later. It just continued, and I had enough material. In fact, that whole project was very reminiscent of my first album because it had been so long since I had been in the recording studio."

Its songs also represented Melanie's Growth and maturity as a writer and as a woman, not the least of which was the fact that her three children sang backing vocals on one of the cuts. In varying degrees the material fit logically into her repertoire of original work; if Lay Down/Candles in the Rain, would be considered the ultimate musical statement on 1970, then Abuse, from that album, might be her topical commentary on the mid-'80s: "An easy mistake to assume I'd stay/you thought I'd look the other way/But abuse is just a game I play in bed . . ."

Her latest release, COWABONGA, issued in Europe on the London-based heavy- metal Music For Nations/Food For Thought label, is a stunning mid-life portrait. She explores the entire spectrum of emotions, from the bittersweet Prematurely Grey and the life-is-sweet Lovin' the Boy Next Door, to the perseverance of Show You, where she observes: "Still here still alive/Lost it all and showed the poor survive/l had money and watched it slide/There go my friends too/But they only go to show you." She also does a cover of a song often erroneously credited to her in so-called encyclopedias of rock, What Have They Done to the Rain, and an up-tempo revision of Ruby Tuesday, which she originally recorded as an acoustic ballad on her classic LAY DOWN album back in 1970.

And just as Melanie has seemingly come full-circle a whole new generation of singer/songwriters have made their way to the forefront; Suzanne Vega, Tracy Chapman and Natalie Merchant of 10,000 Maniacs are to today's music what Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and Melanie were to the '60s and '70s. However, they never really went away. Safka's material, both new and old, transcends time. However, as the baby boomers come of middle age Melanie's songs are being used to sell everything from soap to breakfast cereal - what have they done to my oatmeal? - but until recently Safka herself has resisted joining the commercial bandwagon, and has never condoned the use of her material

"She's had a lot of offers to do commercials, but she's always felt that she didn't want her audiences big or small, to feel that she's giving anything credibility or supporting it," states Peter. But when she was approached by Fisher Price about singing Brand New Key for their new ad campaign she accepted. "They wanted her to sing and Melanie was sort of backing off.

[But] she decided to do it because she respected them. She likes the toys," he says, "and it's one of the top commercials now.

Her greatest recognition of late came in September when she was awarded an Emmy for her Lyrics for the theme of the popular CBS series "Beauty and the Beast." But it was just per chance, she says, that she even happened upon the opportunity to write it. "I was in the studio in California mixing my album and this guy came in and he said, 'They want Lyrics for "Beauty and the Beast"' and 'it has to be real sensitive.' They said one of the most prestigious writers in L.A. had done the score and asked would I be interested." she

recounts. "I had never seen the show. I don't watch TV. I don't know anything about television, so I listened to the music and it was a very pretty melody. However, I had to hear it a lot of times before I saw it as a song. It wasn't written as a song. It was written as a score, a signature thing. [And] I had never done this before. I had never put my Lyrics to someone else's music. So I listened to it a few times and off the top of my head I just put down this Lyric-the first time l Loved forever-and I fell in love with it. I said, 'This is really nice. I can't believe I did this.' So I said, 'Well, this is it guys. This is what I wrote. I don't know if you'll like it or not'."

"The producer loved that first line," Melanie continues. "He said he wanted to work with me, but he wanted it to reflect Vincent and to reflect her [Linda Hamilton]. I said, 'Oh, my goodness, now what? I did my best trick.' Basically I get inspired and I write something. Dissecting things is not what I like to do best. But I've done it before because I had written a show that was supposed to go to Broadway and never did, Ace of Diamonds [the story of Calamity Jane], so I told them that I would work with them if they wanted."

"I went out and met with the producer and I met Ron Perlman, who plays Vincent, the beast - all of these people - and everybody's giving me their input .. and I'm supposed to make Lyrics out of it 'Do you think, actually, the is the right word to use there?' We had endless meetings. I stayed there two weeks, just sitting in a hotel room, eating lots of sushi, and I'm beginning to think, 'What am I gonna do?' I kept rewriting these words and they'd say, 'What about that word there? Do you think that's actually in character?' I have books of Lyrics that I wrote for this thing and finally, when it came down, they had used almost word for word the original Lyric. But only after they said, again, 'No, no. It's not right. We're going to have to get somebody else to do it' So I went back to New York and I get a call; everybody in L.A. was writing Lyrics for this and they don't like anybody's Lyrics. 'Come back to L.A. They want your lyrics, but maybe we can fix them again.' So again we went through these meetings. Finally they said, 'This is -perfect. We like it'."

"Then we had to go through the singers!' she exclaims. "I was originally going to sing it, but they wanted a Capitol artist. So this other girl comes in, Lisa Angelle. She also writes songs. She said, 'Do you think this line here is right?' and I told her, 'Please, lady. I went through this already!' So pretty well that was the end of the line, there."

Not exactly. She was also approached by producer Michael Mann, known for Miami Vice, who had seen her at Woodstock II and voiced his interest in using her for a forthcoming series, and by the producers of ABC-TV's China Beach, who not only wanted her to do music for their show, but perhaps appear on it as well.

The possibility of acting intrigues Melanie. "That's how I started out. It's something I would like to try," she confesses. "When I was very popular and having hit records, a lot of people approached me to do movies. Unfortunately they always gave me the part of some no-dimensional waif-like character, ingenue person, whose boyfriend ran away to Canada to avoid the draft, you know."

"I was probably just too young to get any good parts," she surmises. "But I think now I could probably read for better parts because I've got more character in my face." Husband Peter is particularly excited about this resurgence in wife Melanie's career. "I think her career is just starting at forty," he remarks. "She knows what she's doing and she's balanced more than ever. That's the great part about it." Certainly, the Emmy Award was a nice bit of recognition for Melanie, who has scored her share of firsts, but has never really received her critical due. "There are hundreds of songs up for it. I didn't realize there were that many," she comments.

"And it came down to four...I mean, just to be nominated is great." It won't go to her blonde head, though, because Melanie has learned that recognition is great just as long as you don't lose sight of exactly who you are. "After I was at Woodstock it was written up in the papers and they interviewed some of the people in the audience and there was a sixteen-year old girl who said, 'The most incredible moment was when Melanie came up and sang. She was one of the original performers at Woodstock. She was with a group called Peter, Paul and Mary'.

I'm sure it had to do with the blonde hair," she laughs. Peter, Paul and Melanie?! "Mary would die!"


Melanie with the Edwin Hawkins Singers

 

 

 BITTER BAD
It's bitter bad, heartsick sad
When the one that you love has lost the feel for you
If you do me wrong
I'll put your first and last name in my rock'n'roll song
It's bitter bad, he's got the nerve to get mad
When it's he who lost the feel for you
Oh what a life, what a mean low down world
You've been doing my stuff with another girl
You've been smoking my stuff with another girl
It's bitter bad, he's got the nerve to get mad
When it's he who lost the feel for you
Oh what a life, what a mean low down world
You've been doing my stuff with another girl
You've been doing my stuff with another girl
If you do me wrong
I'll put your first and last name in my rock'n'roll song
It's bitter bad, heartsick sad
When the one that you love has lost the feel for you
When the one that you love has lost the feel for you
When the one that you love don't love you anymore
When the one that you love has lost the feel for you

SINGLES

Columbia

 

44349 God's Only Daughter/My Beautiful People

1969

45524 Garden in the City/Why Didn't My Mother Tell Me

1969

Buddah

 

113 Bobo's Party/I'm Back in Town

1970

135 Beautiful People/Any Guy

1970

135 Baby Guitar/Any Guy

1970

167 Lay Down/Candles in the Rain

1970

186 Peace Will Come (According to Plan)/Close to It All

1970

186 Peace Will Come (According to Plan)/Stop! I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore

1970

202 Ruby Tuesday/Merry Christmas

1970

224 The Good Book/We Don't Know Where We're Going

1971

268 The Nickel Song/Look What They Done to My Song Ma

1971

304 I'm Back in Town/Johnny Boy

1972

Neighborhood

 

4201 Brand New Key/Say Some (I Got Devil)

1971

4202 Ring the Living Bell/Railroad

1972

4204 Some Day I'll be a Farmer/Steppin'

1972

4207 Together Alone/Center of the Circle

1972

4209 Do You Believe/Stone Ground Words

1972

s Bitter Bad/Do You Believe

1973

4212 Seeds/Some Day

1973

4213 Will You Love Me Tomorrow?/Here l Am

1973

4214 Love to Lose Again/Pine and Faster

1974

4215 Lover's Cross/Holding Out

1974

10000 You're Not a Bad Ghost, Just An Old Song/Eyes of Man

1975

10001 Record Machine/Sweet Misery

1975

Atlantic

 

3380 Cyclone/If l Needed You

1977

Midsong

 

40858 I'd Rather Leave While I'm in Love/Record People

1978

40903 Knock on Wood/Record People

1979

World United

 

1947 Oh Boy/Brand New Key

1978

Tomato

 

10007 Running After Love/Holding Out

1978

Portrait

 

51001 One More Try/Apathy

1975

Blanche

 

1 Detroit or Buffalo/Imaginary Heroes

1982

110 Detroit or Buffalo/When You're Dead and Gone

1982

Amherst

 

AM 300-7 Maybe I'm Lonely/Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed

1985

 

ALBUMS

 

Buddah

 

BDS/5041 Melanie

1970

BDS/5060 Candles in the Rain

1970

BDS/5066 Leftover Wine

1970

BDS/5074 Born to Be

1971

BDS/95000 The Good Book

1971

BDS/5095 Garden in the City

1971

J89505? The Four Sides of Melanie (2 record set)

1972

BDS 5132 Please Love Me

1973

BDS5664 The Best - Melanie

1976

Pickwick/Buddah

 

SPC/3317 Melanie/Edwin Hawkins Singers-Try The Real Thing

1974

Neighborhood

 

NRS/47001 Gather Me

1971

NRS/47005 Stoneground Words

1972

NRS/49001 Melanie at Carnegie Hall (2 record set)

1973

NB/48001 Madrugada

1974

NB/3OOO As l See It Now

1974

ABC

 

ABND/879 From the Beginning/Twelve Great Performances

1974

Arista

 

NL 3001 Sunset & Other Beginnings

1975

Atlantic

 

SD 18190 Photograph

1976

MCA

 

MCA/3033 Phonogenic - Not Just Another Pretty Face

1978

Tomato

 

TOM/2-9033 Ballroom Streets

1978

Blanche/Jem

 

Arabesque

1982

Amherst

 

AMH/3302 Am I Real or What

1985

Food For Thought

 

23 Cowabonga

1989

 


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