#143
by Brian Kushnir
Boz Scaggs
Middle Man
Genre: Sold Soul
Allen’s Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Brian’s Rating: 1.5 out of 5
Allen’s Highlights:
Jojo
Brian’s Highlights:
Do Like You Do In New York
Rating: 1.5
Reviewed by Brian Kushnir
Boz Scagg's got the idea for the record that would become "Middle Man" while sitting on the crapper. "Shit," he thought. "It's 1980. I haven't had a hit since "Lido Shuffle" and that was way back in the mid-70s. I'm in my md-30s, I'm still young, there's so much going on here in the scene around me. I'm going to call up Steve Miller and see if he wants to do some type of drunken bluesy-garage-super-band thing."
Later that day, he went to pitch this idea to his manager, Irving Azoff.
Azoff was not buying it.
"Listen to me you little prick," said Azoff. "You," he paused for effect, leaning in and chomping on a cigar, "...are a ladies man. A ladies man. Ladies. Dig. You. And your whole tight-white pants-wearing blue-eyed smooth-soul heart-breaker falsetto crooner thing. The music don't matter, as long as it sounds slick. The lyrics don't matter, as long as they paint a picture with the word love in it. In fact," he gestured with a sweeping motion at a pile of books on his desk, "you see this stack of Harlequin novels right here? I got these from my wife. You can rip out pages from these books at random, string together the words into rhyming couplets, and mark my word, you will sell."
He raised an eyebrow and continued. "We're going to be straight up front about it too, ladies man. On the cover we're going to have you with your fucking head in some babe's lap, but all we'll see are her legs in black fishnet stockings. You'll be leaning your head back and blowing a self-satisfied post-coital puff of smoke out of your mouth and it will be so fucking smooth and hot. Because you're the man, you don't take no for an answer, maybe you are packing some heat, and no one takes any shit from you."
Azoff was on a roll. "The songs, they will be about pimps. Seedy, shady characters with guns. Hooking up. Breaking up. Running around town. Lovers. Fighters. Hollywood. Night life."
"Listen, Bozzy, I know you have this whole 'drunken garage band' fantasy," he said using the four-fingered gesture with that would years later become known as 'air quotes,' "and one day maybe you can open your own club or something downtown and play rock-and-roll fantasy camp with your 'musician' friends, but this is the 80's. I got David Foster signed on to write the songs with you. He's a fucking hit maker, he's worked with Chicago and fucking Peter etCetera, he knows how to write songs that are just meaningless enough to be meaningful. And he knows how to twirl the knobs on the electrical piano machines to make the sound nice. I also convinced Lukather and the Toto boys to come back and play on it so its all set. You've got the voice, it will sparkle, and this shit will sell. With the ladies."
"And here's the kicker. Don't tell me I never do anything for you Bozzo. You want real musicians? How about this: I got you Carlos Santana, he's signed on to drop a solo into one of the songs. It doesn't really matter which one. And get this, we're going to be using a cutting edge new approach where we record the guitar solo via the telephone. Because you are that cool."
And that's the never before imagined backstory of how Boz Scagg's "Middle Man" was made.
https://open.spotify.com/album/0jifDfcS8SNV1c6e0WducY?si=UPtlZsmkQkS-INfLEz7ySg
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