Benny Mardones
I wanted to watch the Peter Himmelman documentary.
You’ve got to know. Everybody’s selling SOMETHING! Everybody’s looking for notice. And they seem to find me. Hell, they find anybody who can reach thousands of people, people they can’t reach.
I wanted to watch this Himmelman movie because the trailer was funny. Seemed to be made with a sense of irreverence. Maybe that’s why it appealed to me, we Jews are irreverent.
(Check it out at: http://www.peterhimmelman.com/PHMD/PHMDTr_v3.mov.) Before I left the house I put it in a plastic bag, along with a bunch of other DVDs people have sent me that I’ve never gotten around to watching. But when I went to retrieve the disc at Felice’s house, I found out I’d pulled the WRONG DVD! I’d taken the documentary on BENNY MARDONES!
Like I give a fuck. All I know is Tommy Nast always foams at the mouth about him. I was frustrated. We’d just gotten through watching the end of the Jean Harris story on HBO, which had more stars than a THEATRICAL movie, and I was in the mood to sit back and be entertained and I had the WRONG DISC! I explained the situation to Felice. I asked her if we could take a chance. Hearing yes, I inserted the disc into the DVD player.
She had no fucking idea who Benny Mardones was. But, just a few minutes in, I heard this vocal…she was singing along to his big hit, "Into The Night". You KNOW this? I mean I don’t see this as being up her alley, shit even I hardly know it. But Felice smiled and said OF COURSE!
The sound was terrible. We were laughing at the documentary. And then we got hooked.
We’re used to the stories told by VH1. You know, band rises to the top, does drugs, gets ripped off, and is now happy and back together. Well, this documentary didn’t have quite the same FLAVOR!
Benny had the character of someone you didn’t want to run into in a blind alley. He didn’t grow up solidly middle class, rather LOWER class. His father went out for a pack of cigarettes not long after he was born, and then…well, eventually, an abusive stepfather came into the picture.
Yet I still wasn’t interested at this point. What hooked me was Bill McGathy.
I mean here’s the king of AOR promotion, right on Felice’s LG. And then Tommy Mottola. And the aforementioned Tommy Nast. And Doc McGhee. You could tell they were doing it as a favor. Because once upon a time, they BELIEVED in Benny Mardones. It was like old home week. The TRUE inside music business.
And Benny turned out to be an uneducated hothead. Who eventually got hooked on drugs. But boy could Benny SING! Even a disbeliever like me was convinced as the footage rolled on.
Today’s America is one of winners and losers. You’re either on the top or the bottom. What about someone in the MIDDLE! In BETWEEN! Getting BY!
Benny Mardones had one gigantic hit on one of the worst labels of all time, Polydor Records. He made a million dollars. Instantly blew it. And when his second record was released, there was a regime change, and all his supporters at the label were gone, PFFFT, just like that.
God, how many labels has Benny been on? SEVEN? And not all secondary. He was even signed to Mariah Carey’s CRAVE not even a decade ago.
But Benny has never come back.
Why, you ask?
Was it because his labels kept folding? Was it the luck of the draw? Or was Benny Mardones just too uncontrollable, too much of an ASSHOLE?
There’s the story of him kicking in the computer screen of the bigwig at Polydor, and then flipping over his desk when said exec wouldn’t give any cash to another artist on the label whose million selling albums were behind him. The company had made their money, they didn’t TECHNICALLY owe the artist any more dough, but it was the RIGHT THING TO DO! Labels don’t do the right thing. Never have, still don’t.
So, Benny descends into drugs. Until Tommy Nast reaches out from Syracuse, where he’s playing every track on his album, and believes he can SELL OUT!
And that’s how Benny Mardones becomes a star in upstate New York.
That’s what this business is built upon. Fans. Believers. The people running the labels don’t acknowledge this. They think it’s THEM! Self-anointed legends like Clive Davis massage the tracks and deliver them to bought and paid for people from on high. They sell today, but the artist can’t be arrested in a year or two. Because one key element is missing. The FAN!
It starts with the artist. The label is just the midwife. And then it goes to the deejay, the connector, the person who sifts through the pile of releases to anoint ONE for a push, to become a hit. Today deejays have no power, and tracks are not picked for their merit, but for their marketing campaigns. The soul is gone. Which is why the audience is gone. Because when the deejay believes, when HE picks out the good stuff, you listen. The relationship is based on trust! Now there’s no trust. How can there be? When every step in the food chain someone is PAID OFF!
Benny Mardones ends up becoming a star in Syracuse. He plays to over 10,000 people a gig. He does about ten shows a year. And he’s NEVER HEARD OF OUTSIDE THE METRO AREA!
Records need to get started somewhere. Based on reaction. And then you spread the word. It’s a GRASS ROOTS EFFORT! Now it’s all top down marketing. There’s no discovery. It’s not about reaction, but DICTATION!
Watching this documentary, you’ve got no doubt that Benny could have been a national star. If only someone had gotten behind him.
Then again, even he admits he was a prick.
But not a prick with NO success. He was good friends with Roy Orbison. He’s STILL living off his one hit. Which he believes, rightly, will outlive him. If this isn’t the American dream, I don’t know what is.
I’d like to tell you this is a great movie. But, like I said, the sound is bad. And there’s a feel good ending, which is superfluous. But inside this documentary beats the heart of rock and roll. From the underprivileged musicians who see this as their only way out to the fans who see their music as a reason to live. Everybody who wants to get into this business should see this movie. Because this is what it’s about. You’ll laugh, but you’ll be touched. Benny’s trying. And we care, because he’s got that great voice. No autotune or tapes are necessary, you can hear it in the live performances.
This is why I love rock and roll. The root honesty.
TV and movies are made for the man. They’re homogenized. Filtered. Whereas the records USED TO BE straight from the musician’s heart to yours. Expect more honest flicks, now that the public has the means of production in its hands. And, expect better music now that you can make a record on your computer. We’ve got to cut out the middle man. It’s got to be just artists and fans.
If Benny Mardones had been on Columbia or Warner Brothers instead of two bit Polydor, he’d be a household name today. Let’s not let the system prevent the next talent, the NEXT Benny Mardones, from reaching desirous fans.
