Chairman at the Board by Bill Schnee

Author:Bill Schnee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Backbeat
Published: 2020-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

You Don’t Bring Me Flowers

Not Once, But Twice

I met Bob Gaudio in 1976 when he called me to mix some singles he had written and produced for Frankie Valli. Frankie is another falsetto singer I had always admired. Frankie was very ebullient and animated but left all the decision making to Bob. The reason for this was because Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe were the main writers and producers for the Four Seasons’ highly successful string of hits in the 1960s and 1970s. Bob Gaudio knows what’s important in making a hit record and he knows how to get it. Not only is he a great songwriter and producer, but, more importantly, Bob is one of the nicest people I’ve met in the music business.

I had briefly met Neil Diamond at Sound Labs in 1972 when he was mixing the live concert recordings for his celebrated Hot August Night album. In 1976, Bob and Neil decided to make an album together, and Bob asked me to work with them on it. I was about to produce Pablo Cruise, but told Bob I would love to do as much of the album as I could. I ended up recording about 80 percent of it, but I couldn’t do the mixing because of my schedule.

We started I’m Glad You’re Here with Me Tonight in Hollywood at Western Studio 1, where we did several songs with a live orchestra and Neil singing. The first time he stepped up to the mic and spoke, I was blown away. Neil has one of the greatest speaking (and singing) voices ever. His speaking voice is very rich and deep, and he would have made a great disc jockey. The sessions at Western were both complicated and frustrating for me by having a film crew there documenting the album that I couldn’t keep quiet.

I was especially annoyed while we tracked the song “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.” Neil and Alan and Marilyn Bergman originally wrote the song as the theme for a TV show. When it wasn’t used for the show, the three of them rewrote it into a complete song. Since the song was a soft ballad, every little noise the cameramen made could be heard. There are actually a few little ticks you can still hear in the final take on the record. There was a television special the following year where they used the footage from those sessions.

Neil put together his own band in the early 1970s and remained very loyal to them. In fact, with only a few exceptions, they were still his band forty years later. We would later go to London with his band and do eight days of recording for the album at Scorpio Sound. This was my first time working at Scorpio, and I was quite happy with the results I got there. But Bob wasn’t so happy with the food in London, so he called Frankie Valli and asked for some restaurant recommendations. Bob and Frankie are huge Italian food fans, and Frankie told him about a small Italian restaurant close to Harrods.

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