“Mr. Disorderly Conduct.” That’s what Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler dubbed the lovably verbose lyricist who made up half of the legendary songwriting team of Leiber and Stoller.
Jerry Leiber passed away on August 22, 2011 after suffering cardiopulmonary failure at the age of 78, but left us with a cache of classics penned with his writing partner of 61 years, Mike Stoller. It’s a songbook that includes “Hound Dog,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “Stand By Me,” “Yakety Yak,” “Charlie Brown” and hundreds more that are so enduring they feel like they simply sprouted from the musical landscape.
I was lucky enough to spend a little time with Leiber and Stoller when I was asked to moderate a panel on collaboration at the ASCAP Expo in 2006 with the two of them, Marilyn and Alan Bergman (“The Way We Were,” “Windmills of Your Mind”) and Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly (“True Colors,” “Like a Virgin”). I remember that I feverishly worked on the panel’s outline and questions that centered around a serious discussion about what happens when two people are in a room together trying to write a song. But it didn’t take long for me to realize there was no way that panel was going to be a serious discussion on anything when, much to everyone’s delight, it turned into the Leiber and Stoller comedy hour. And as much as I feebly tried to get things back on track, the train had already left the station.
With Stoller playing straight man to Leiber’s rat-a-tat delivery, the hour turned into a wild ride of side-splitting stories that was, in reality, the history of rock ‘n’ roll. We heard about their first meeting in 1950:
Stoller: Jerry Leiber called me up and said, “Hey, let’s get together and write songs.”
Leiber: And he said, “No.”
Stoller: That’s true, but he said, “Well, why not meet and talk about it?”
Leiber: And he said, “No.”
Stoller: But he came over anyhow.
They told us about writing “Hound Dog” for Big Mama Thornton and then Elvis Presley covering it, adding the lyrics: “You ain’t never caught a rabbit, and you ain’t no friend of mine.” (Leiber: “I would never write such a dumb line.”). When the song became a hit, Stoller happened to be on the Andrea Doria when it collided with another ship off Nantucket. Leiber met him at the NYC dock after he was rescued and yelled up to him that “Hound Dog” was all over the radio.
Stoller: By Big Mama?
Leiber: No. By some white guy.
And then there was the story of being hired to write songs for Elvis Presley’s movie Jailhouse Kid which was renamed Jailhouse Rock:
Leiber: Stoller and I were in the Gorham Hotel in L.A., and we were supposed to have finished the score to the movie, but we hadn’t. We were running around, going to all the clubs. One afternoon the guy from the studio came over and pushed the couch up against the door of our room and said, “You guys are not getting out of here unless I get my score.” So we wrote four out of the six songs in one afternoon. One of them was “Jailhouse Rock.” They liked it so much they changed the title of the film.
This is pretty much the way the hour went, with the entire room in hysterics and Leiber and Stoller high-fiving each other after particularly good lines. Then, with only a few minutes left, I drove the train completely off the rails when I decided it would be fun to play my version of The Newlywed Game with these collaborators. I asked each of them to write down how their partner would answer a question, and then after their partner had answered they would have to hold up their board to show what they had written.
The question to Jerry was, “What would Mike say was the hardest song you had to write.” Jerry got it wrong, and waved it off by leaning in and saying, “Do we have time for a story?” Since I had, yet again, lost complete control as a moderator, he launched into a long, meandering and hilarious story with a buildup and punchline that had everyone giddy with laughter. It was, to say the least, a day I’ll never forget.
I ran into Leiber and Stoller several times after that at different events, and my face always broke into a huge smile. One time, after saying hello and giving them a big hug, I said “You know, that panel I moderated with the two of you is one of the highlights of my life.” Leiber looked at me with his mismatched pair of brown and blue eyes, grinned and said, “So, you don’t get out much, do you.”
Thank you, Jerry Leiber, for a lifetime of lyrics and laughter. And our thoughts and hearts are with Mike Stoller who shared these words: “He was my friend, my buddy, my writing partner for 61 years. He had a way with words. There was nobody better.”
—By Lydia Hutchinson
Note: Please do yourself a favor and watch this wonderful 45-minute Word & Music episode on Leiber & Stoller—their whole story is beautifully presented, with appearances by colleagues like Carole King & Gerry Goffin, Mann & Weill, Burt Bacharach, Ben E. King and more. And the interviews with Jerry and Mike are not to be missed … they even throw in another high-five.
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