heaven can wait
before there was a ‘bat out of hell’ there was ‘neverland’ a rock opera by jim steinman, directed by barry keating and staged at amherst college. i never saw it. i was at the yale drama school being a weak revolutionary hippie (i quit after a few months a) because i thought they were giving the short end of the stick to the black kids in my class, b) because this was my early adventure as a song writer and c) because one of the dudes at amherst, a serious dope dealer, has scripted a movie and wanted me to be in it. this was not a hard decision. the shoot was to take place in grenada, west indies, on a giant 135 foot schooner, and we would be given free rooms to live in, free scooters to shoot around the island on, and all the food and drugs we could swallow — a paradise, but another story. anyhow, grenada is where i met barry and after the movie flamed out (busted for nudity) and we returned home. barry got in touch we me to audition for ‘neverland’ in the big city. sure. why not? see where this goes. i was an extremist performer, hauling up at least in my mind, acid references. i remember one improv where i was both bowling ball and pins, knocking myself over with my own rolling self. richard gere, at that time a 19 year old rock singer, was cast as the lead. we actually wrestled in one of the developmental rehearsals and he wasted me, flat. in seconds. but the show fell apart. i moved to boston, started orchestra luna. lost the epic deal. started a 2nd OL and it was then that we were asked to be the pit band for yet another attempt at ‘neverland’. as i was not really a proper piano player, i was assigned the part of a killer nun. in rehearsal i jumped off the stage and broke my foot. i lost the part, the show never went up, but steinman signed karla devito to be ‘the girl’ for the soon to be touring meatloaf ‘bat out of hell’ gig and tried also for steven paul perry to play guitar. i was elbowed aside and developed strong distrust for what had initially been an innocent career in the biz. my foot still hurts.
This is an excerpt from my book, The Paragraphs — Cutlass Press
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