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Introduction by Jim Liddane
Richard P. Addrisi was born on 4 July 1941 in Winthrop, Massachusetts, and grew up in a theatrical family whose grand-parents once performed across Europe as the travelling acrobatic troupe the Flying Addrisis.
Richard began performing professionally with his older brother Donald (Don) Addrisi as children and adolescents, and eventually the two brothers moved to California in search of opportunity in the entertainment industry. They recorded singles in the late 1950s and early 1960s and gradually shifted emphasis from performing to songwriting and studio work when their early releases produced only modest chart results.
As songwriters however, the Addrisi Brothers achieved enduring success. Their composition “Never My Love,” credited to Don and Dick (Richard) Addrisi, became a defining pop standard after the Association’s 1967 recording reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and thereafter entered the repertory of hundreds of artists; BMI later recognised the song as one of the most-played songs on American radio and television of the 20th century. The brothers’ catalogue also contained songs such as “We’ve Got to Get It On Again” and “Time For Livin’,” and their writing attracted covers and placements across multiple genres.
Alongside their songwriting, the Addrisi Brothers continued to record and perform under their own name. They wrote and recorded for film and television - most notably composing the theme music for the television series "Nanny And The Professor" and scored several chart appearances of their own in the 1970s, including the single “Slow Dancin’ Don’t Turn Me On” and a later recording of “Never My Love” that returned them to public attention in 1977.
Richard Addrisi’s work displays a clear melodic gift and a facility for crafting simple, memorable harmonic structures that lend themselves to rich vocal arrangements and wide reinterpretation. “Never My Love” in particular combined economical lyricism with a yearning melodic line, and that combination produced a song whose emotional directness and structural economy made it readily adoptable by pop, soul, and easy-listening artists for decades.
His contribution belongs less to virtuoso performance than to the creation of material that entered and then sustained itself within the popular songbook. He has written songs that have become part of the soundtrack to late twentieth-century American life; the ubiquity of “Never My Love” and its continued use and reinterpretation testified to a craft that prized clarity, tunefulness, and emotional accessibility.
Enduring public affection and the song’s extraordinary broadcast footprint has gifted Richard Addrisi a secure place in the history of popular songwriting: not as a flamboyant stylist, but as a durable melodist whose work repeatedly proved its capacity to move listeners and to be reshaped by succeeding generations.
Sadly Don died in 1984, but Richard - who now lives in Nashville - continues to receive recognition for the long-running popularity of his compositions.
And he's not done yet!
We asked Larry Wayne Clark to talk to the legend himself for International Songwriters Association.
Prologue
It was a scene that most songwriters can only dream of.
A while back I attended a 55th birthday party for Nashville songwriter Mike Williams. Nothing extraordinary in that
except that Mike is not your regular run-of-the-mill tunesmith. He's also the host of a three-times-monthly “guitar pull”
held in his spacious West Nashville home featuring “unplugged” rounds of original songs from the cream of Nashville's
songwriting crop (not to mention visitors from Texas, California, Canada, and other locales). These nights at Mike's
have become as famous as the songwriters-in-the-round performances at the legendary Bluebird Cafe‚ and they're an
awful lot more intimate.
Generally a scheduled handful of writers appear but tonight was special: the house was full to brimming with Mike's
friends and associates and the format was "as many writers as we can fit in singing one song apiece". With Mike acting
as host and emcee we heard it all: funny ditties, sad ballads, poems, famous songs and songs that may never be heard
again. But somewhere around the midway point something happened that no one who was there is likely to forget.
Mike introduced a compact man in his '50s with a helmet of dark hair that many men half his age would envy. It was
evident that this man was not known to much of the crowd. He uttered a polite comment or two, wished Mike a happy
birthday and nodded to the guitarist who was accompanying him. Then he began to sing, in a youthful, slightly husky
baritone, a song that was as familiar to each of us as the sound of our next breath: You asked me if there'll come a time
when I'll grow tired of you...
Within seconds everyone in the room was singing. Harmonising. Singing counterparts. They were even singing
instrumental parts, recreating the famous hit record by The Association and perhaps reliving a moment of lost youth
besides, as if it was still 1967 and each of us held a 6-transistor pressed to our ear in the schoolyard at recess.
The song, of course, was "Never My Love" and the man singing it was recent LA-to-Nashville transplant Richard
Addrisi, one of its writers and a man who has clearly accomplished something every songwriter aspires to: he has
added a song to The Great American Songbook. He has written a true standard, to date BMI's second most-played
song of all time (next only to "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin" and the gap is closing) with over seven million plays!
In the beginning there were two singing Addrisis - brothers Donald (older by two years) and Richard, known then as
Don and Dick (not unlike Don and Phil Everly whose ultra-close brotherly harmony the Addrisis vaguely echoed at
times). They were born in Boston to an Italian father and a Swedish mother, neither of them musicians but who
encouraged their talented sons with lessons and praise. Their father (who made a comfortable living as a structural
engineer) came from a family of European acrobats and trapeze artists known as The Flying Addrisis, which also
became the name of Richard and Donald's publishing company.
The boys started performing young, first at family
gatherings, then on whatever stage would have them. Don, on ukulele and guitar, was the more natural instrumentalist
of the two, Richard the bolder singer. Starting in the mid-'50s, the family began to visit California in the summers, in
search of greater opportunities for young talent. At an audition in Hollywood they caught the attention of a young comic
who became their first manager. His name was Lenny Bruce ("this was just before his act turned dirty") and he was the
first of many famous people to play a role in the lives of the Addrisis. In 1956 they auditioned for a new show called The
Mickey Mouse Club. They weren't accepted but they did end up with minor acting roles on other Disney productions
like the Spin And Marty series.
Eventually the family moved to California and it was there that The Addrisi Brothers began to blossom. While still
teenagers they became an opening act for the likes of Nat "King" Cole. Los Angeles bandleader and producer Bob
Keene, still mourning the death of his prodigy Ritchie Valens, noticed them and signed them to his Del-fi label. Their
first record release was a Don Addrisi original, "Cherrystone". It only went to #62 in Billboard but was a big regional
hit. This was soon followed by many other singles. Eventually the two young men (who soon discovered that they
enjoyed writing songs more than touring, and that the two did not mix productively) were spending much of their time
songwriting and were even beginning to have their songs covered.
Another important person entered their lives. Barry DeVorzon was a gifted songwriter and performer who owned a
publishing company (Tamerlane Music) and a record label (Valiant Records). Now the Addrisis had a songwriting
mentor, a place to do demos to their hearts' content and a target (Valiant's roster of artists) for the fruit of their
songwriting labours. In the years that followed they would write countless songs, continue to make records, and appear
on episodic television (My Three Sons) as well as variety shows like American Bandstand. They were young, they were
working at a craft they loved, they were learning, and they were no strangers to the sound of applause. Life was almost
impossibly good.
At a talent audition in the mid-'60s the Addrisis heard the group that would have the biggest impact on their lives and
careers. Starting as a 13-man unit called The Men, they would soon be reduced to seven members and become known as
The Association. They began to record for Valiant Records and had Number One hits with "Cherish" and "Windy". But
their most enduring release was still a gleam in the creative eye of the Addrisis.
The oft-told story goes something like this: One night (actually it was more like three in the morning) an excited
Donald Addrisi shook his sleeping brother awake and announced that he had earlier proposed to his girlfriend Jackie,
who had accepted. More important: during the course of their romantic interchange an idea had been sparked. A
three-word title. Richard, awake now and beginning to catch the wave of excitement, joined his brother at the piano and
as the sun rose on that April, 1967 morning, "Never My Love" was born.
Released as a single by The Association, the song went to Number Two in Billboard, Number One in Cashbox, and
established the Addrisi brothers as a "serious" songwriting duo. They worked constantly, writing songs for themselves
and for other people, as well as television themes for '60s fare like Nanny &The Professor. They recorded for a variety
of record labels...Del-fi, Valiant, Columbia (Clive Davis was an Addrisi Brothers fan and was responsible for their first
Nashville-recorded sessions with producer Norman Putnam), Buddha, Imperial, Bell, Scotti Brothers...some of them
now minor footnotes in the annals of rock and roll history. As late as 1983 (a year before Don Addrisi succumbed to
pancreatic cancer) the Addrisis were active in the studio.
Then, a little over a year ago, Richard Addrisi, half of a brother act who had lost his brother and with both parents now
also deceased, decided to move to Nashville to make a new beginning. Now in his late '50s, his enthusiasm seems to
belong to a man decades younger. He is slim, tanned, energetic. Unmarried (his one trip to the altar resulted in a
five-year union that ended in the '70s) he has an eye for the ladies and an uncompromised thirst for that sweetest of
nectars to any songwriter: a brand-new hit.
Richard and I spoke one recent Saturday, first over brunch at Nashville's trendy delicatessen Noshville, then at his
Spence Manor apartment. Some of that conversation follows.
Shall we start by talking about The Song?
Let's go back before that. As songwriters, it started way before that, in 1959 when my brother started writing. We got
distracted when we went on the road with Nat "King" Cole as his opening act at state fairs during the summertime as
kids. And you don't write on the road; you find yourself doing other things. We became creative as songwriters when we
stopped doing the road and started working with a man named Barry DeVorzon, who later went on to write "Bless The
Beasts And The Children," "Nadia's Theme," "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight." In fact [De Vorzon's publishing
company] Tamerlane Music is from Barry & The Tamerlanes, that group that had "I Wonder what She's Doing Tonight."
That's why there's Warner-Tamerlane; Warner Brothers bought Tamerlane Music.
So we started with a man who taught the difference between right and wrong in a song. He taught us that when we
sang the song to him, the chorus had to be terrific...it had to be something that when it came it hit you and you went "oh
wow!" He was a big believer that the chorus had to hit you right over the head.
So you're saying that you had the benefit of a mentor-student relationship, rather than actually being "taught"
which, many will argue, can't really be done when it comes to songwriting?
I don't think you can teach it. You can teach the structure of a song but you can't teach that inner thing that turns the
whole world on to your song - that's something that has to come from the heart.
You can teach somebody the right and wrong of turning a piece of wood into a bedpost so you see it when it's finished
and say "that's right" or "it's wrong." You can't do that with a song. Barry De Vorzon taught us structure and good
values, to not let a verse lyric go by that isn't right. We talked about false rhyme earlier...if a false rhyme is really out
there and just isn't a rhyme, don't let it sit! As a songwriter - "naughty, naughty shame on you!" I see people try to pull
that all the time.
My brother and I...he'd be wearing his glasses, playing the electric piano, and we'd work on lyrics. But we did our
lyrics along with the music. We'd sing a melody, and next would be when I was singing the melody I'd sing a dummy
lyric to it. All of a sudden bits and pieces of this dummy lyric would become an idea. And we'd keep going over and
over...I miss that with songwriters here in Nashville. I miss sitting there and going over an idea singing and playing and
singing and playing until the song is done. My poor brother probably had to go through a song fifty times - more - a
hundred times while we wrote it. We very rarely ever sat down and wrote a lyric.
So you started with melody?
Always. Always melody and kept the melody going while the words came. I find it very hard to sit down and write a
lyric. To sing that lyric as I go along is easier.
How old were you in these days?
Twenty-two, twenty-three. So we did learn from a very good craftsman. He also had something that LA doesn't have
anymore and one of the reasons Nashville is wonderful: a writers' room where writers get together. And all of a sudden
through the wall you're hearing somebody else's melody. There's a wonderful story about my brother and I and Harry
Nilsson working in two separate rooms - he's writing the theme to ['60s sitcom] The Courtship Of Eddie's Father and
we're writing the theme to Nanny &The Professor. Through the thin walls of this building on Gower Street we heard
Harry's tune and he heard ours. Later we played the songs for each other and he said "oh-oh, I'll tell you what, my song
sounds like yours and your song sounds like mine." But then Harry said "aw, they'll never run back to back anyway."
Well they did! They ran Nanny and The Professor back to back with Eddie's Father. So that'll teach us!
Cool story. So your first recorded songs were your own single releases?
Yes, as Don & Dick Addrisi, from 1959 when "Cherrystone" was released, written by my brother. So my brother was
actually the one that started writing songs, then we ended up writing together when we started working with Barry
DeVorzon. The wonderful thing was that we were able to go into the studio with Barry 'cause he owned Valiant
Records. So we had some artists to write for; they weren't big artists but they were well respected in the business. We
had a reason for writing - it's important that you have a reason for writing. A group would come by and Barry would say
"write a song for this group." One of those groups was Barry & The Tamerlanes, with Barry himself.
Then we held an open talent audition after Barry DeVorzon's company was bought by Four Star Television. Barry
DeVorzon came to us with his partner Billy Sherman and said "we haven't had a hit in a year, we'd better do something
quick." So Barry and [songwriter] Bodie Chandler and us started writing and we decided we needed to find some new
talent for the record company. So we went out and held an open audition at The Troubadour in Los Angeles about 1965.
I think we put an ad in The Hollywood Reporter. And in walked The Men, which was the original group that became
The Association. “Along Comes Mary” came out, "Cherish" came out. "Windy" came out.
And then we wrote "Never My Love." That morning we sang it for Barry at his house after a year of going to his house
and singing songs for him every morning--that's what we did--and having heard all sorts of comments come back, he
said to us at about ten o'clock that morning "you have just written one of the major songs of the 20th century!" He knew
it.
Did you realise you had penned a hit?
We thought we had written a damn good song. It's a wonderful feeling. But we were young kids, what did we know?
But he knew. His partner knew.
We were still recording artists on Valiant Records and we wanted to do the song. We
went in and tried it and unfortunately it came out sounding like "Tiny Bubbles!" It was wrong the way we did it. But yet
in that demo of "Never My Love" that we did for The Association we had bom-bom-bom-bom-BOM [sings opening
riff]. It was buried but [producer] Bones Howe, when he heard the song, said "that's the signature."
So now it's funny 'cause when people say "what have you written?" sometimes all I have to say is bom-bom-bom-bom-
BOM and not even hum the song.
So that's where we became "serious songwriters," with that hit. But we had written many songs before that...we wrote
a wonderful song called "Where Does Love Go" - my brother wrote it actually - for Charles Boyer as a spoken-word
record. And it started to become, within the business, a very well-acclaimed song. People like Burt Bacharach came to
us and said "oh, what a wonderful song." That was nice. we had the cream-of-the-crop serious writers saying to two
young guys "that's a wonderful song." That was before "Never My Love."
What year was "Never My Love?"
Nineteen sixty-seven. It became a hit, I think, just around Christmas because I sent my brother a telegram - he was in
Hawaii with his new wife - and I said "how does it feel to have the Number One record in the country while you're lying
in the sand?"
And this song has gone on to become one of the most-played songs of all time?
It's the second most-played song. We were always in a battle with McCartney's "Yesterday" for years; we were always
straggling by about 200,000 performances. But now that's been taken over by "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin.'" But
that was spurred on by the movie Top Gun, that's why "Lovin' Feelin'" came up so fast and surpassed "Yesterday" and
Don and I.
These are BMI statistics?
BMI statistics, nothing to do with ASCAP. So seven million performances boils down to - if you played "Never My
Love" on your own radio station 24 hours a day seven days a week all year round - it would take 31 years.
Boils down to a helluva lot of money, Richard! (Laughing.)
Yeah...you don't think about the bucks...well, I think of the bucks, of course, but I think more of the pride. They say
it's played a thousand times a day worldwide.
How many people covered "Never My Love?"
They say in the first year it was covered a hundred times. So now it's about 300 different covers. But those go from the
Boston Pops Orchestra to Johnny Mathis. Tony Bennett. Streisand never covered it, but who cares! Barry Manilow most
recently covered it, Christmas before last.
Country covers?
Yes. Vern Gosdin had a Number One record with it. Ver-r-ry Country! There's some funny stories about the different
versions. There was a group called Blue Swede, the guys that had the record [sings] Hooked on a feelin'/Oog-a-chunka-
oog-a-chunka and had a hit with that. Their follow-up hit was Oog-a-chunka/Never-never my love...
It actually had Oog-a-chunka?
Yeah, oog-a-chunkas, everything. It was the first uptempo version of the song and I looked at my brother and said "it's
the worst record we have--of all the covers, this is the worst". Then it went up the charts a little bit and I said "you know,
Donald, that's not a bad record". Then when it hit Number One I said "that's the best damn record I've ever heard!"
How many years were you in LA?
Thirty-five.
And now you've been in Nashville a year?
Been here a year but have been coming to this town since '72, coming in and out.
Let's talk about your current technique of writing. Where does it usually start, beyond the point of discussion
with a co-writer? You mention this thing of singing something and having a collaborator who can understand
where you're going...
I have a thing I call "experimental time." I've been working at a place called Big Red Studios with a very talented
young man, Rick Dixon. And all I do is, I have him play certain instruments - one day it may be piano - and he'll just
play. And I'll put a set of earphones on, with the microphone there and a bit of echo so I sound good, and I just sing
melodies. Or I'll sing a guitar lick [sings "twangy" guitar lick] and he'll take a bass and play that thing and then I'll start
working off that. And then maybe something out of nowhere will come to my mind, just a phrase. And that phrase now
becomes maybe the title of my song.
And you're recording all this?
Recording everything I'm doing, we don't shut the tape recorder off.
Jimmy Webb talks about something like that - letting the tape recorder run as he sits at the piano. So these
pieces of melody that you're recording, do you then bring them to your co-writing appointments?
Yes, I do. Because unlike some other writers I basically have to do that to try to explain what [hums a note] means.
And I have found a way to do that, going into the studio. And I'll go into a session with, say, Bill Lloyd and say "Bill,
this is what I had in mind - do you want to write this?" So usually what I'm doing is singing some sort of a dummy lyric
into a chorus of a semblance of an idea of a song. If it turns him on he'll jump on it with me and then we'll go ahead and
write it, as Bill has.
I heard years ago that Nashville is really the Tin Pan Alley of our times, the place where dedicated songwriters go to create real songs, not just flash-in-the-pan hits that come and go...>
Great songs. You can't hide a great song. A song that - somebody came up with a saying - "puts a butterfly in your
heart." Isn't that a wonderful way to describe what turns a human being on? Puts a butterfly in your heart and makes you
say Wow! Whether it's "Louie Louie" or 'Never My Love"...it's still the same feeling in your heart that makes you go "I
wanna buy that record, I wanna hear that again."
The best of the best are here. I'm here with the best of the best and I want to write with the best of the best. It's the most
wonderful thing in the world to sit in the room with an absolute stranger and after an hour of talking about their family
and so on, you say "what do you wanna write about?" And then next thing, you find yourself unzipping your whole soul
and spreading it out on the table and both of you suddenly talking about your inner, inner thoughts of love. I'm talking
about the girl who broke my heart and trying to make Bill Lloyd understand what I felt, and all of a sudden Bill now says
"That happened to me too back in 1972 with Becky Whoever-she-was...she broke my heart." And now two complete
strangers have opened up their hearts and are discussing their inner feelings in a song. That is wonderful to me!
Another thing, coming here to this town with "Never My Love" under my belt has opened a lot of doors for me. I've
gotten a chance to write with a lot of wonderful writers, some of them writers who are having hits right now. I wonder
sometimes when they step into the room if they're expecting too much from me - it's hard living down "Never My Love."
In the back of their minds, I wonder if they're saying to themselves "hey, maybe if I get together with Richard Addrisi
we'll write another 'Never My Love.'" And every time I write a song with a writer I say to myself "I wonder if today I'll
write another 'Never My Love.'"
So it's a blessing and a curse?
A blessing and a curse. I get to write with the best of the best because I have written the best - not bragging but it's on
the record.
But I'm here in the right place at the right time. To tell you the truth I say to myself "hey Richard, now that Donald has
died, Mom and Dad, The Flying Addrisis have died, you're by yourself." This is it. This literally is it. This is either
gonna happen or it's not gonna happen. It'll be a memory that I'll look back on ten years from now, whether I'll be in
Nashville or not I don't know, but this will certainly be a wonderful memory. I've had the most wonderful year of my
life.
Copyright Songwriter Magazine, International Songwriters Association & Larry Wayne Clark: All Rights Reserved
Postscript
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