Hillary! Fire Your "Oldie But Goodie" Back-Up Band. Get Your Own Band!

David Zephyr

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Wed Mar-21-07 10:28 PM
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Hillary! Fire Your "Oldie But Goodie" Back-Up Band. Get Your Own Band!

Edited on Wed Mar-21-07 11:24 PM by David Zephyr

David Geffen, perhaps the greatest impresario in the history of popular music, and one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood recently commented that he was sick and tired of turning on the television and seeing James Carville always talking. Geffen is not the only one. And Hillary should pay attention.

Good Golly, Miss Molly! Who will be the one to tell Hillary that she needs her very own band now? She's the Diva up front at the microphone and when she's on stage, she should not have the haggard, old faces of Carville, Paul Begala and Terry McAuliffe behind her strumming "Bill's Oldies, But Goodies".

Seriously, it's like Hillary's participating in one of those excruciating PBS telethons of late where washed-up acts like Herman's Hermits, Frankie Avalon and Fabian are temporarily rescued from oblivion to perform from their walkers at a theater filled with a few hundred geezers like myself who drool all over themselves as they wax nostalgic about "the good old days".

Is there any wonder why Hillary's chart numbers keep slipping weekly now on Billboard while that newcomer is shooting up faster than Marvin Gaye once did with his own fresh and original material and groove? It's the Obamarama, baby! He's fresh! He's sexy! He's new! And he's not stupid enough to be seen continually playing "the oldies" to a dated beat and with a bunch of has-beens. He's a star in his on right. And, if you haven't noticed, his concerts are packing them in record-breaking numbers! He is the American Idol.

Hillary needs to release her own CD with her own new music and lyrics, her own rhythm, her own vocals, and for God's sake, with a brand-spanking new back-up band that rocks. Even the Beatles knew to let Pete Best go and to replace him with Ringo.

Out here in Hollywood, there's a saying that 'politics is show business for ugly people". It's true. And, no one was every uglier in the publics eye in the 1960's than Richard Nixon was. Yet, in 1968, he was completely repackaged by the conservative, yet talented television producer, Roger Ailes. And when Ailes was done with Nixon's "extreme makeover", he no longer crooned from the old 1950's Eisenhower play-list. As people said back then: "He's rested. He's tanned. It's the new Nixon."

Image-maker and producer, Ailes, then went on to repackage a second-rate movie star, Ronald Reagan, in the 1980's, helping him write classic one-liners that Americans still remember today, and, to my great despair, Ailes generated two of the largest landslide victories in American history. Ailes later worked his magic with the wimpy and whiny George Herbert Walker Bush in 1992. Later, Ailes plagiarized Paddy Chayefsky's "Network" and launched his "Fox News" for Rupert Murdoch, even creating his own anchor stars from what he himself called "raccoons".

Like him or hate him, Roger Ailes redirected his keen show business skills away from his clients, his "beautiful people" in Beverly Hills and onto the aesthetically-challenged in Washington, D.C. Indeed, I submit that it was Roger Ailes, not Ronald Reagan, who took the Republican Party to a majority party at the end of the 20th Century. Ailes was the 20th Century Fox. There's no business like show business!

And this brings me back to what the reigning king of show business today, David Geffen, had said about Mrs. Clinton to Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. Far more than Ailes, Mr. Geffen knows what sizzles and what doesn't with the public in today's hip-hop market. Geffen is legend at creating generational icons. He is the man who, in the 1960's behind the scenes, nurtured the raw talent of Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne with what she called his "star making machine". This is the wizard who made Crosby, Stills and Nash possible. And this is the show biz genius who in the 1970's stole a hot back-up band from a has-been diva and created The Eagles----and all while soaking in a hot tub in the Hollywood Hills! Of course, I still love Linda Ronstadt, but she lost her back-up band for "running on empty".

However, in this case, it's the Diva that needs to lose the back-up band. So perhaps, the man who helped dream up a company called DreamWorks inadvertently was giving Hillary Rodham Clinton some accidental advice on how to re-fire her career, and yes, to excite her old fans, but more importantly to draw in the new ones she will need if she's ever to hit the top of the charts on her own.

Where is the hot radical chick named Hillary Rodham that once rocked Wellesley College? Where is that upstart early feminist who starred in the Watergate Hearings when she was just out of college? Where is the very original thinker that helped found the Children's Defense Fund and changed the way that women and children are regarded in this nation? Hillary Rodham didn't have those eternal bores, Carville, Begala or McAuliffe, backing up her back then. And she shouldn't now.

The Beatles called one of their early albums "Something New". Americans are searching their satellite and radio dials today hunting and hoping for something new again. Something fresh. The Bush music is stale and now represents a past most of us would like to forget. But, so is the music of Bill Clinton's old band. There were some great tunes, but they are O-L-D.

Hillary's guy practically owns the record label at the Democratic Party. He can provide the payola, but the rest is up to her.

Can Hillary break away from covering the old songs? Can HRC give us all "Something New" to download to our iPods? Can she stir us with excitement with a new sound, a new vision for our future? Can she do it with her very own band? Even I would like to believe she can. Hillary, the venue is packed, the lights are dimming, the audience is stirring...