Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka, who died last month at age 86, was a hit machine. He wrote songs for, among others, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Connie Francis, Tom Jones and the Carpenters, in addition to hits he wrote for himself.
As seminal a figure as he was in pop music, however, I remember him mainly for an incident that happened the day of his one and only performance in Boise, in 1975.
First, some background about the man himself:
Not familiar with him? If you’re a young reader, that makes sense. His heydays – there were two of them – were in the 1950s and 1970s. But no matter your age, you’ve almost certainly heard some of his songs:
“Where the Boys Are,” “Love Will Keep Us Together,” “Calendar Girl,” “Breaking Up is Hard to Do,” “Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen,” “Laughter in the Rain,” and on and on …He wrote or co-wrote over 500 songs.
When he came to Boise, I was assigned to interview him. I called his agent to request the interview and was told that it could happen but that there were no guarantees. Depending on how tight Sedaka’s schedule was, he may or may not have time.
The concert was on a Sunday night, which was unusual in those days; concerts almost always were on Friday or Saturday nights. This may have explained my forgetting about the concert entirely that Sunday afternoon.
My wife and I had spent the weekend texturing and painting a ceiling in Maintenance Manor, the 90-year old fixer upper we’d purchased a few years earlier. I was standing on a ladder, paint roller in hand, when she suddenly remembered what I’d forgotten:
“Isn’t tonight that Neil Sedaka concert?”
Yikes! It was indeed that night, and it would be starting in a little over an hour. There wouldn’t even be time to change out of our work clothes, which were lavishly splattered with paint and joint compound.
The concert was in the Boise State University gym. Hoping not to see anyone who’d recognize us in our bespattered condition, we climbed to the upper rows of bleachers at the back of the gym, where it was unlikely that anyone would notice us.
Roughly half an hour before the concert was scheduled to begin, a young man began to climb the bleachers, heading in our direction. We assumed that for reasons of his own, he also was seeking anonymity.
He wasn’t. He climbed directly to where we were sitting.
“Are you Tim Woodward?” he asked.
“Uh … yes.”
“Mr. Sedaka would like to see you in his dressing room.”
“Sorry, I don’t think I heard you right. Neil Sedaka wants to see me?”
“Yes. You requested an interview with him, didn’t you?”
“I did, but never heard for sure that it was actually going to happen.”
“Well, it is. It’s happening now.”
With that he led me down the bleachers toward the main floor and certain humiliation. Along the way, we passed a photographer who was covering the concert and, seeing my plight, graciously offered me a pen and notebook.
Try as I might to think of some interview questions on the fly, I could only think of one: What the hell am I going to ask him?
The young man who had led me to slaughter, somehow resisting the urge to laugh or at least snicker, stopped at the dressing room door and knocked.
When the door opened, I was roughly eight or ten feet from Sedaka and his band members. He was dressed in a silver sequin suit. The guys in the band, though sans sequins, all were dressed to the nines.
A long, awkward silence followed. Everyone stared, at yours truly.
It was Sedaka himself who broke the silence.
“I’ve been interviewed a lot of times,” he said, “but never by anyone covered in paint.”
This elicited some polite chuckles from the band, and a general lessening of tension. I relaxed a bit and explained that we’d been painting a ceiling and temporarily forgotten about the concert. Seemingly amused, he couldn’t have been more accommodating. I managed to think of a few questions, which he thoughtfully answered before he went onstage and I slunk back to my seat.
His fans will remember Neil Sedaka as a prolific songwriter and a great singer and performer. I’ll remember him as all of that – and as a genuinely nice man.
(Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday and is potted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@gmail.com.)
Tim Woodward 