Unexpected Music History - Tony Orlando
Did you know that Jerry Lee Lewis introduced Tony Orlando to his future wife? Or that that Orlando landed in a psych ward due to the potent combination of cocaine and grief? Read on...
Say what you will about Tony Orlando, the guy can sing like a mofo.
A lot of peeps from my generation remember him with Dawn (Telma Hopkins, Joyce Vincent Wilson) and their fun, catchy, chart toppers, “Knock Three Times,” (which l shamelessly adore), “He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You),” the unfortunately titled “Candida,” and a song I admit I’m long sick of, “Tie A Yellow Ribbon (Round the Old Oak Tree).”
Most folks don’t realize he started as a doo-wop and R&B singer as a teenager and was damn good at it. Orlando hit the charts for the first time when he was just 16.
He also became a songwriter and music executive, hired by Clive Davis to be General Manager of Columbia Records’ April-Blackwood Music Publishing. Later he was VP of CBS Music and signed Barry Manilow.
All this was before the wider public knew him as the handsome centerpiece of Tony Orlando and Dawn, a genial jokester and smooth crooner who had 17 Top 40 hits and a hit TV variety show (back when those were a thing.)
I actually miss TV variety shows. A lot.
Orlando was also crazy good friends with Freddie Prinze when actor/comic Prinze was the hottest ticket in America.
In 1973, at 19 years old, Prinze took off like a rocket ship after an appearance on Johnny Carson where he became the first new comic ever to be invited to sit with (on that night) Carson himself, Ed McMahon, and Sammy Davis Jr.
It was like inviting him to take the throne.
He didn’t get off it for 4 years, until, in a fit of drug-induced despair, a pending divorce, and very likely long-term emotional health issues, Prinze shot himself in the head in front of his manager, Dusty Snyder, who had come over to comfort a distraught Prinze after midnight on Jan. 28, 1977.
When the news broke, America went into shock. I know I did. Prinze was my favorite TV star. I’d lost my brother to the same manner of suicide just three weeks before. It was a weirdly disturbing double blow for a teenage girl.
The talented young Prinze had appeared onstage with Cher and Shirley Maclaine. He performed for President Jimmy Carter 10 days before his death.
His sitcom with Jack Albertson, “Chico and The Man” was hugely popular.
After being crowned on “The Tonight Show” Prinze went on to guest host the show several times, welcoming talent like The Jackson 5 and Richard Pryor.
Orlando was woken from a deep sleep by his wife, Elaine (who previously dated Buddy Holly and was introduced to Tony by Jerry Lee Lewis), and she told him the horrible news.
Orlando and Prinze were firm friends – Puerto Rican “brothers” who both made it out of poverty to stardom. True buddies…and in those days they were also drug buddies.
Orlando had an epiphany in early 1977 that there was no good destination on the cocaine highway, and had been clean for a few weeks when Prinze shot himself.
He rushed to the UCLA Medical Center in a daze, parked illegally, and made his way to the ICU where Prinze’s friends and family were gathering.
In his memoir “Halfway To Paradise” Orlando called it a scene of anguish and confusion.
He went in to see Freddie, who was in a coma, his head wrapped in bandages, and touched his friend’s hand. Orlando suddenly became furious.
“Freddie, you son-of-a-bitch! Why’d you do it? That bullet didn’t just hit you – it hit us all.”
I started sobbing so sorrowfully I felt like I wanted to cry forever. And I was so angry I wanted to keep right on shouting Why’d you do it, man? Why?
Tony was in the room when the doctors, by family agreement, took 22-year-old Prinze off life support.
In addition to the family, friends, and acquaintances hanging out in the hospital hallway, so was Orlando and Prinze’s drug dealer.
Only in Hollywood.
From Prinze’s deathbed, Orlando went to the men’s room to dry his tears and splash water on his face. When he looked up, there was the dealer, who offered him some cocaine.
He took it.
He snorted it, but not before slinging it around the restroom, howling in hurt and anger at the friend he just lost.
About six months after Prinze’s passing Orlando was still in deep grief and spiraling out of control.
What he referred to as “the final blow” happened onstage in Massachusetts.
He found himself unable to get the image out of his head of Prinze in the hospital room, comatose and dying -- his best friend, the only other person in Hollywood he felt he truly had anything in common with.
He had a public meltdown.
Orlando said in retrospect he thought he was doing a show, but what he was actually doing was babbling incoherently about Prinze’s suicide.
Finally, a woman in the audience yelled, “We didn’t come to hear about Freddie Prinze!”
“Fuck you lady,” Orlando replied, “Fuck you!”
His wife finally led him offstage, promising to get him some help.
Orlando ended up in a psych ward.
The combination of grief, exhaustion, unresolved family trauma, and drugs was too poisonous a cocktail to put down. He needed treatment. He needed care.
Whatever mental illness he had (likely depression, or bipolar, what we called “manic depression” in those days) had turned into psychosis via cocaine use.
He spent three days in a psychiatric institution that was not equipped to treat and protect a star who had a highly-rated TV show and chart-topping career.
He got his ass beat in the men’s room.
Orlando was riled, and afraid, and called his wife, begging her to get her to get him out (she couldn’t, he was under a mandatory 3-day stay). Then the ward nurse wrote in her notes that he was “involved in a fight.”
Orlando started insisting to her that he had just gotten the shizzat beaten out of him and it wasn’t his doing.
She called two orderlies who threw him in a straitjacket for most of the day.
The guy who roughed him up also stole a ring Orlando’s father had given him, upsetting him further.
Then a man he didn’t know walked up and asked him if he wanted the ring back. Orlando allowed that yes, he did, but hastened to add he wasn’t going to fight the Psych Ward Bully who had taken it.
The guy introduced himself as Shaun Cassidy and said Tony had been very good to his father (actor Jack Cassidy) and he’d get the ring back.
Now, this dude wasn’t Shaun Cassidy.
In no way was he Shaun Cassidy. But no mind. He got the ring back.
Apparently “Shaun” was one of the most disturbed folks in the unit and everyone was afraid of him.
But he protected Orlando.
Orlando was in shaky shape when he was released and Frank Sinatra put him up at his place in NYC to rest and recuperate.
Taking his first sane walk in a while in August 1977, Tony picked up a paper that headlined the news about a new book “Elvis: What Happened?” written by two former bodyguards who spilled the secret of Presley’s deep drug problem.
Believe it or not, this was the first inkling the public at large had that the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll was on drugs.
And that was if you believed the book’s claims.
When the sordid story broke, many refused to believe it.
No, not Elvis.
Not the poor boy from Mississippi who changed the world. Not the sweet sex symbol who had been so good to his mama and hired all his friends to work for him. Not the all-American idol who was true to his Southern roots and lived in Memphis, where he might wave at you as he drove out of the long driveway of Graceland in a fancy car.
No, not Elvis.
People didn’t want to know that. It was too hard.
As we realize now, the material in the book turned out to be largely true, with subtle details incorrect, depending on who you talk to.
The book was released just a few weeks before Elvis passed from this earth at 42 years old. Some say the tell-all was a very public (and too late) wake-up call to the King, some say a money grab, while others insist it was pure revenge from disgruntled former employees.
But Orlando knew enough that he did believe it. When he read the article, he was dumbfounded. He immediately saw the thread between Presley, Prinze, and himself and the dead-end (or just plain dead) destination of drug addiction.
He rang his agent and got Elvis’ home phone number. He called Graceland on and off but there was no answer.
Orlando was raised Catholic and went to a cathedral the next day and lit a candle for Presley. He prayed for him. He also prayed for Priscilla and Lisa Marie.
When he got home his wife said “You’d better sit down.”
She told him Elvis was found dead that morning.
That was a tough year, 1977.
We lost Freddie Prinze, we lost Lynryd Skynyrd, we lost Groucho Marx, and we lost Elvis. That year simply battered fan’s hearts every which way.
But we didn’t lose Tony Orlando.
Muhammad Ali came to his side, and Johnny Cash and other friends helped steady him. He not only got off drugs, but got therapy and treatment, and got back onstage, first on Broadway, then a TV special, and then on the road.
He embraced Christianity, opened a venue in Branson, Missouri, tirelessly raised money for veterans, and played multitudes of concerts — entertaining crowds who wanted to hear “Yellow Ribbon” and the many hits, remembering a time when pop was pure, platform shoes were everyday wear, and the sexy 1970s were in full swing.
Orlando, 79, retired from touring after 64 years, on March 22 of this year.