Eulogy for Foz
Eulogy for Barry Fasman
By Molly-Ann Leikin
During my scuffling days, when I zigged and zagged around Hollywood in a dented red VW with a leaky sunroof, the good people at ASCAP introduced me to lots of possible writing partners. One of them was Barry Fasman.
At his woodsy home in Laurel Canyon, we wrote one song, In Care of the West Wind. It was gorgeous. We both cried because it was so emotional, as only a Fasman melody could be. But then our demo disappeared. Bam. Gone, and Barry got a gig producing Dusty Springfield, who, ironically, had just cut one of my other songs.
I always wondered where our demo went. And why we never wrote song two.
Three decades later, Ellis Sorkin re-introduced me to Barry, now the producer, who arranged all my songs and tracks, making great records for me, for fifteen years. He found my missing chords, but would never accept co-writing credit. That was the Foz.
Nobody knows this, but several years ago, I was stricken with a horrific foot thing, keeping me in bed and unable to walk for two years. When I couldn’t fight anymore, Foz insisted I call him every morning at 5:30 so we could meditate together. I know that’s what healed me.
I wish I could have done the same for you, Foz. All of us do. But your string lines and melodies are always floating around us, like a shining cape. And as long as we’re singing, you’ll never be gone.
I’m sure everybody in Rock ‘n Roll Heaven is happy to have you conduct the band. But during your next ten, could you ask around for our demo of In Care of the West Wind?
Start with the chorus:
I wrote to you in care of the west wind
I wrote it at midnight
Crying out to the sea
And though the wind has been back every night
There’s never an answer for me.
‘Bye, Foz. I miss you more than Snickers.
Love,
Molly
Eulogy for Jaci
March, 2022.
When we were seven or eight, my best friend, Jaci next door, and I, filled her little red wagon with boxes of girl scout cookies. We rang doorbells up and down our street, determined to sell our wares. This was in Ottawa, Canada, where most of the houses on our block were embassies or consulates. The butlers and secretaries who answered their doors had no idea what a girl scout was, and were nervous about doing business with us.
Then, one kind woman in a sari, with a red dot on her forehead, smiled, gave us ten dollars, and asked us to please give the cookies to someone who was hungry.
We did.
Yesterday, a group of adorable, little girl scouts, one with curly red hair like mine, rang the bell. I handed her the cash I hid in my shoe and asked her to give the cookies to someone who was hungry.
I did that, as I do every year, with tears in my eyes, in honor of Jaci and me. And about this time in March, I bet she’s ringing doorbells again, in Heaven.
Eulogy for John Carter, formerly of
Atlantic Records
DJ DAVID DIAMOND, OF THE DIAMOND MINE AT KISS FM, WHO IS RECOVERING FROM A STROKE, ASKED HIS FRIEND, MOLLY-ANN LEIKIN, TO WRITE DOWN A FEW WORDS FROM HIS HEART TO SAY GOOD BYE.
Carter and I were blood. It wasn’t just white cells and red cells with some plasma thrown in. It was rock ‘n roll. We go all the way back to Denver, where I was a DJ in the 60’s and Carter was in The Rainy Days. I managed the group, and when “Acapulco Gold” was a smash, I hooked the band up with a guy I knew in Hollywood, named Phil Spector.
In 1967, Carter and Tim Gilbert wrote “Incense and Peppermints”, which I published. Then Carter became the tour manager for the Stones. By the 70’s, he was the A & R guys’ A & R guy at Capitol and lived in a Frank Lloyd Wright mansion.
While I was a DJ at KFWB, Carter turned me on to all the new music – The Kinks, Cream, Buffalo Springfield and Bobbie Gentry. In the 80’s, he produced four tracks on Tina Turner’s Grammy-winning, Private Dancer CD. But all accomplishments aside, his happiest day, and one I shared with him, was when he brought his beautiful baby girl, Crosby, home from the hospital.
No matter what was playing, Carter and I listened and grew together. Even after I became a professor and moved back to the Midwest, we still spoke every other day.
Our friendship was a gift to me. Proud to know him as a man, a musician and as a party, I’ve established a $5000 ASCAP scholarship for songwriting in his name.
As the orange sun waits a moment longer before setting over my front porch in the Black Hills, seems to me I’ll probably spend the rest of my life dialing Carter’s number. I know, somehow, no matter where he is, he will always call me right back.
Good night, sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest, from an iPhone 4S.
Love,
David Diamond
Eulogy Example - Anything With Words - Molly-Ann Leikin