Right Here Waiting For This Book

Wednesday is about books. And writing. Today, one of the best music books I've read in years.

As a reader, and someone obsessed with music, one of the great pleasures in life is to find a music bio and consume it in a couple of days. But it’s a hard road finding the perfect music book these days, I’ve read so many mediocre memoirs and I’m bored and jaded by the same events unfolding in the same ways, the obvious ghost-writing, the insincerity of it all…

But over the weekend I read one of the best music books in an age.

Don’t laugh!

I read – and loved – Stories To Tell: A Memoir by Richard Marx.

Actually, you can laugh. That’s fine.

I’m no huge Richard Marx fan – in fact, I was mildly traumatised by a high school music teacher that was obsessed with “the perfect structure” of Right Here Waiting For You.

And that song, a guilty pleasure, has had some strange impact on my life. I owned the album, an easy thrift-store find, for about 20 years. Parting with it recently in the great record cull, but yeah, something made me carry that album across several flats and through two houses I’ve owned…

But that’s really all I knew of Marx. I knew he must have had a story before that mega-success. And I knew he’d co-written the weepie modern funeral standard, Dance With My Father – the last huge hit for Luther Vandross. I only knew that because I worked in music retail at the time, and people wanted that song. For funerals. Or they came in wanting to buy the album because they’d heard the song at a funeral. It was enormous. And probably still is. And I don’t know if it’s a ‘good’ song at all, but I can see why it was effective.

So that’s it. That’s really all I knew about Marx.

Now, why did I read his memoir?

I’ve always been a fan of reading music books by musicians that I don’t already know lots about – I mean, I don’t need to read a book about Randy Newman or Jeff Beck, and I find when I do I’m usually pretty underwhelmed. Okay, I’ll always read a book about Bob Dylan or Prince, but in those cases you are reading more for the ‘take’; each author convinced they are saying something new. And sometimes they are. Same with Beatles books.

Memoirs, though. Different again.

I’ll always maintain that Keith Richards’ book was absolutely hideous. And just a cynical grab of Keef playing up and playing to his own myth.

Do I care more about the music that Keith Richards has put into this world than the music Richard Marx has made? I shouldn’t even need to answer that.

But Marx is the better writer, and he has an amazing story.

I took a punt on this book. And if you’re a music fan – someone that loves finding out great stories – then you might like to too.

Marx has a charmed life, is born into a musical family and wants for nothing. He is white and wealthy/ish and aware of such privilege. More importantly, his mother was a big band singer and his father was a legend of the advertising jingle world, composing song-snippets and making bank with TV and radio work. An absolute guru.

At five years old, young Richard knows he wants to be a singer, is obsessed with The Monkees and starts working on learning instruments and the craft of songwriting.

As a teenager he moves out to Los Angeles, is befriended by Lionel Richie – one of his absolute heroes. He sings backing vocals on Running With The Night and All Night Long and gets an inside look at how records are made. He work with Kenny Rogers too, seizing the opportunity to demonstrate his songwriting prowess by literally standing in front of the country great and playing him half of a song on the guitar. Kenny likes it, suggests one of two lyrical changes and agrees to record it.

Teenaged Richard Marx has a co-writing credit with Kenny Rogers.

From there we are hurtled through Marx’ time in the early 1980s as a background singer for hire. It wasn’t what he wanted. But he knew it was what he needed.

He sings on records you’ve heard and owned. Even if you too were traumatised by Right Here Waiting For You or didn’t recognise that that song, Surrender To Me from the movie Tequila Sunrise was a Richard Marx composition.

Marx meets Madonna, works on her True Blue record and is charmed by the star, worried about her ego from advance stories, but he finds her mesmerising, funny, talented and just a hoot. His friendship with Lionel Richie continues – and continues to open doors. Soon he is working with Barbra Streisand, pinching himself because she is another of his childhood heroes; a (musical) crush in fact. He also develops a reputation for being a gifted mimic – someone who can sing in the style of others. So he’s hired in a panic to sing a single line as Barry Gibb.

And you know the song.

Barry skipped town before his famous duet with Babs was completed. So somewhere in the recorded version of Guilty there’s a single line that is actually Richard Marx subbing for the Bee Gee. But I bet you can’t spot it. Because nobody can.

People, these are the stories!

And there are many, many more.

A charmed start to a musical career.

And yet, like me, you probably – if anything – though: Richard Marx – One Hit Wonder. Or even if you remember his big-selling debut and a small handful of songs from 1980s movies, you still figured that that was that.

In the 1990s he starts to write with more of his heroes, an interesting dynamic is explored between him and Kenny Loggins, egos and depression make it a tricky friendship at first, but they break through. He championed John Farnham in America, co-wrote the aforementioned mega-selling ballad for Luther Vandross and continued to do the work, including touring prolifically.

I in no way want to dive into more of Marx’ recorded work.

But I just loved reading this book. Finding out more about someone I didn’t think I needed to know about. And, yeah, I gave those first two records a listen again. Pretty good. Better than I remembered.

You can certainly see and feel and hear the craft of him as a writer.

And that was enough of a win for me. I was of the age that Richard Marx was just a pretty-boy one-hit-wonder pop singer in my world. I was listening to classic rock and the rapping of Public Enemy and The Beastie Boys. I had no time for any of this.

But thinking of him as a protégé of Lionel Richie made a lot of sense. And the book is a fascinating glimpse into an amazing musical life.