The session lasted three days. It was a good one. Larry met Neil Diamond, also
Robbie Robertson, also Richard Perry. He got mention on the album's inner sleeve
and got paid union scale. But "Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?" never made the
album. On the second evening of the session, Diamond had come up with a new tune
of his own and that made the album instead.
Well, the man from Columbia said, that's too bad. It happens. Tell you what-
why don't you cut the demo anyway. I'll see if there's anything I can do. So
Larry cut the demo and then found himself back out on the street. In L.A. times
were hard. There were a few sessions, but not many.
He finally got a job playing guitar in a supper club, crooning things like
"Softly as I Leave You" and "Moon River" while elderly cats talked business and
sucked up Italian food. He wrote the lyrics on scraps of notepaper, because
otherwise he tended to mix them up or forget them altogether, chording the tune
while he went "hmmnmm-hmmmm, ta-da-hmmmm," trying to look suave like Tony
Bennett vamping and feeling like an asshole. In elevators and supermarkets he
had become morbidly aware of the low Muzak that played constantly.
Then, nine weeks ago and out of the blue, the man from Columbia had called.
They wanted to release his demo as a single. Could he come in and back it? Sure,
Larry said. He could do that. So he had gone into Columbia's L.A. studios on a
Sunday afternoon, double-tracked his own voice on "Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?"
in about an hour, and then backed it with a song he had written for the Tattered
Remnants, "Pocket Savior." The man from Columbia presented him with a check for
five hundred dollars and a stinker of a contract that bound Larry to more than
it did the record company. He shook Larry's hand, told him it was good to have
him aboard, offered him a small, pitying smile when Larry asked him how the
single would be promoted, and then took his leave. It was too late to deposit
the check, so Larry ran through his repertoire at Gino's with it in his pocket.
Near the end of his first set, he sang a subdued version of "Baby, Can You Dig
Your Man?" The only person who noticed was Gino's proprietor, who told him to
save the nigger bebop for the cleanup crew.