Streisand: Her Life (25 page)

And so, after more than a year of struggle, of auditions, of campaigning and cajoling, the most prestigious record company in the world asked Barbra Streisand to join its roster of artists. Any other young hopeful would have jumped for joy and exclaimed, “Where do I sign?” Not Barbra. To her and Marty, Lieberson’s green light only signaled the beginning of negotiations. Several more months would pass before the details could be hammered out, because an issue of paramount importance to Barbra, of course, was the little matter of creative control.

B
arbra sat at the huge oak table in the Columbia Records conference room. It was Monday, October 1, 1962, and as a photographer’s flashbulbs popped, she and Goddard Lieberson scrawled their names at the bottom of her contract. She was wearing a simple black wool dress set off by a string of pearls, her hair perfectly bouffant. She had been groomed by Columbia’s hair and makeup specialists, and she looked precisely the way so many people had told her she needed to look in order to succeed in show business.

It was one of the few concessions she had been willing to make to Columbia. The document she signed that day would have been the envy of many an established star, much less a newcomer with questionable commercial potential, for Barbra’s contract granted her full creative control. The label could not dictate what she would record or could not record, and it guaranteed that anything she recorded would be released. Further, the company had to release at least two Streisand albums in the first year.

How did Marty Erlichman win such concessions from a label that not much earlier hadn’t wanted to sign Barbra to any contract at all? “You give up something for that,” he explained in 1983. “You give up the front money. We were offered a lot more of a guarantee from several of the other companies. But they weren’t willing to give us creative control. When you break the mold, you have to make sure you have creative control because they’ll try to make you into what they think you should be. That’s how you show whether you believe in yourself or not. Only if her records
sold
would she make any money, and she had the final say about what went on her albums, so she was taking all the responsibility for that.”

Dave Kapralik recalled that once the label agreed to sign Barbra, Columbia decided to sink or swim with what it had. “We realized she had created a very successful nightclub career with material of her own.” The one-year contract (with four annual renewal options at Columbia’s discretion) gave Barbra a $20,000 advance per album (small by industry standards but a fortune to her) and a 5 percent royalty against 98 percent of records sold after all recording expenses were earned back.

Although few expected Barbra to be a strong singles seller, such success could be so important to album sales that the label rushed her into the recording studio to cut two sides for release as a single. Two weeks after she signed her contract, Barbra stood in front of thirty musicians in Columbia’s Thirtieth Street studio, shaking with nervousness, and performed “Happy Days Are Here Again” and “When the Sun Comes Out.”

“Happy Days Are Here Again” would become one of Barbra’s signature songs, but the Columbia sales department so lacked faith in its sales potential that they ordered only a minuscule five hundred discs be pressed. They distributed the record only in New York and didn’t even send any demo copies to disc jockeys.

To some observers it seemed that certain people within the Columbia hierarchy actually wanted the record to fail, as certification of their lack of faith in Barbra’s commercial appeal. The head of the label’s sales department, Bill Gallagher, preferred Anita Bryant’s bland white-bread warbling to Streisand’s hyperemotionalism, and most of his staff agreed. To many of them, Barbra and Bob Dylan were “the two the fags and radicals brought in.” Whenever Barbra’s name came up, they most often asked, “Why doesn’t someone give her a bath, wash her hair, and buy her a new dress?”

With no demos mailed to radio stations, rhythm-and-blues DJs across the country—including Sly Stone, who was then a disc jockey in San Francisco—had to discover “Happy Days” on their own. When they did, they played it. “Barbra’s singing really reached the black DJs,” Dave Kapralik said, “because it was real. Her emotion came from an authentic place within her, which is where the most soulful music always comes from.” But when
l
isteners went out to their local stores to buy the record, there were no copies available. “Happy Days” bombed.

Barbra and Marty fumed, and Erlichman put pressure on Columbia to release another Streisand single as soon as possible. A month later they did—“My Coloring Book,” Fred Ebb and John Kander’s downbeat torch ballad. This time the company put more resources behind the record, mainly because of widespread positive reaction to the song. They pressed twenty thousand first-run copies and mailed demos to DJs across the country.

Still, Marty was livid that the label did not advertise or promote the record, especially when he saw a full-page ad in
Billboard
for another Columbia single, “Shake Me I Rattle, Squeeze Me I Cry.” He stormed into the Chinese restaurant off Columbia’s lobby and threw the magazine down in front of Bill Gallagher. “You take out an ad for
this
cockamamie song and not for Barbra!” he thundered. “I’ll match her career against anybody’s. I’d bet my year’s commission that she’ll outsell, outlast, any of the people you’re pushing.” He stopped, red-faced, to catch his breath.

“Marty, take it easy,” Gallagher said, laughing. “You’ll give yourself a coronary.”

Barbra’s second single went on to sell 60,000 copies, helped along by her performance on Ed Sullivan’s popular Sunday-night television variety show in December. “This was an impressive number for an unknown at that time,” Dave Kapralik said. Still, “My Coloring Book” hadn’t dashed up the pop charts, so Columbia abandoned its halfhearted efforts to build Streisand singles momentum. All thought now focused on how best to present Barbra on an album. Everyone agreed that since her singing success had been in nightclubs, the LP should capture the excitement and spontaneity of a live performance. With Barbra in the middle of a one-month stand at the Bon Soir, the pieces fell neatly into place.

G
OD HIMSELF INTRODUCED
her: Goddard Lieberson stood before a raucous crowd of Streisand fans and Columbia employees at the Bon Soir on November 5 and explained that the evening’s performance, and the next two nights’ as well, would be live recording sessions for Barbra’s first Columbia album. The somewhat boozy throng, sitting at tables specially decorated with flowers and gingham tablecloths, cheered and hooted. “For me and everyone at Columbia, she’s a singular artist. You can’t put her in any category,” Lieberson said, touting as a virtue what he had long considered a Streisand vice.

She rushed down to the Village by taxi as soon as the night’s
Wholesale
performance ended and hopped onstage to cheers and stomps and whistles. She sang Leonard Bernstein’s “My Name Is Barbara,” then “Much More.” A fuse in a microphone blew out. “You’re kidding!” she exclaimed. Lieberson apologized. Barbra asked the photographer to stop snapping pictures of her because “it really distracts me and I can’t concentrate.” The fuse was replaced. “Can you hear now?” Barbra asked the crowd. “We can hear you, babe!” someone called out.

After Harold Arlen’s “Napoleon,” Leonard Bernstein’s “I Hate Music (But I like to Sing
)
,” and “Right as the Rain,” Barbra told the audience she was wearing “my boyfriend’s old suit.” Then “Cry Me a River,” “Value” from
Harry Stoones,
“Lover Come Back to Me,” and an announcement that she wanted to pay tribute to her favorite singer, the spectacularly untalented Florence Foster Jenkins. The session ended with “Soon It’s Gonna Rain,” “Come to the Supermarket in Old Peking,” “When the Sun Comes Out,” and “Happy Days.”

The audience—and the next two nights’ crowds as well—left happy and satisfied, but Barbra, Marty, and Lieberson were far less pleased. When they listened to the tapes, they realized that
Barbra Streisand Live at the Bon Soir!,
while a great idea in theory, wasn’t going to work. The sound quality of the tapes proved far inferior to what could be achieved in the studio. The rowdy audience reactions distracted from rather than augmented the intimacy Barbra wanted to convey. Worst of all, her voice didn’t sound as good as it could under the quality controls of studio recording. Barbra Streisand’s first solo album would have to wait.

On November 18 Barbra completed the Bon Soir gig, her fourth and last. The critic Leonard Harris’s comments in the
New York World Telegram & Sun
echoed the prevailing wisdom now about Streisand: “The star of
I Can Get It for You Wholesale
is the best—no maybes, no ‘young’ or ‘old’ or other qualifiers needed. She’s twenty; by the time she’s thirty she will have rewritten the record books. Her voice has sweetness, range, color, and variety. Pick the best singer of any style, and Barbra can challenge her on her home ground. And Barbra’s own style—elfin, humorous, but packing a real punch—is original and unforgettable.”

Now it was time to crank up the Streisand juggernaut. Marty knew the best way to sell Barbra’s first album would be for her to perform live in as many venues as possible around the country. He immersed himself in plans for a tour that would result in a triumphal Streisand musical march through seventeen cities and make Barbra a nightclub superstar within a year.

The about-to-explode Streisand career had dissipated some very different p
l
ans of Barbra’s that one New York newspaper had published back in August: “Barbra Streisand has applied to all-male Dartmouth College in Hanover, N. H.,” the item said, “to become one of the first women to be admitted in the summer of 1963. Barbra wants to major in economics and languages at the college which, for the first time in its history, will be accepting female students next year.”

A
LSO THAT AUGUST,
Barbra had been desperate to appear on
Tonight.
The show’s casting director, Bob Garland, recalled in 1968 that he didn’t think she was right for it, and had repeatedly turned her down. Finally Barbra telephoned Garland and pleaded with him to see her in his office. “Everybody in the business says you’re so sensitive and understanding,” she cajoled, “and I need your advice. It’s terribly important.”