WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STAR

Maria McKee is a striking talent who combines the artistry and electricity of Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Janis Joplin. Geffen Records and superproducer Jimmy Iovine have spent two years grooming and nurturing her. Now, at 20, she and Lone Justice are ready.

Maria McKee is just 20--and seems even younger when she introduces her songs on stage in her Betty Boop voice. During these moments, there’s an innocence about her that’s reminiscent of a wide-eyed entrant in the annual high school musical.

But the image is misleading. This “little girl” is a captivating singer whose talent is prodigious.

Until I saw her with the rock group Lone Justice, I couldn’t imagine a female country singer as enthralling as Emmylou Harris or a female rock singer with the snappy command of a Chrissie Hynde. But here is a singular talent who exhibits both of those qualities.

On Lone Justice’s country-flavored material, McKee offers an amazing mix of the rural innocence of early Dolly Parton and the passion of Harris’ most evocative vocals.

And then on harder, rock-oriented tunes, she unleashes the energy and abandon of one of her inspirations: blues-rocker Janis Joplin. On the tags of several songs, McKee is so caught up emotionally that she leaps up and down on stage.

There’s none of the tortured Joplin persona about McKee, but she sings with a purity and character that usually takes our most gifted performers years to acquire. Almost everyone who has seen her with this L.A. band has come away feeling that they’ve seen a S-T-A-R.

Such expectations worry Carlyne Majer, the Austin-based manager of Lone Justice.

“I don’t want anyone to think that this was a prepackaged band,” she said. “I don’t want it to sound like hype. The story here is the music. This is a very young band and I don’t want to see them overwhelmed.”

Whatever its fate, Lone Justice stands as a case study of all the exhausting evolutionary twists that a young band goes through--and how the record industry responds to talent.

In a field where crass decisions often end up diluting talent, this is an example of where everyone involved--from company to producer--seems to be playing their roles right. It’s as if a core of true believers senses a great natural talent here and wants to protect it and nurture it.

Geffen Records thought enough of Lone Justice to pay the band a living allowance for almost a year before sending it into the studio to cut its debut album. Jimmy Iovine, one of rock’s most in-demand producers--he’s worked with John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks--surprised the industry when he asked to oversee the LP.

What’s he doing with a bunch of beginners?

He raised more eyebrows when he devoted months to the project, unheard of for a producer of his stature. Before going into the studio, he spent weeks critiquing the band’s rehearsals and live shows, helping the group toughen its sound. He also pushed McKee hard to develop as a writer.

“I knew from the beginning that it would take time,” Iovine said. “I wanted to see the growth it’d normally take two albums to achieve. I didn’t try to force the band in any direction. All I tried to do was help them grow and let their talent take it wherever it took them. The only goal I had in mind was to make a great record.”

That debut album will be released April 15 and it’s a jewel (see review on page 56). Premier Talent, the agency whose clients include Springsteen and U2, represents the band and has just put Lone Justice into the opening slot on the prestigious U2 tour.

Still, none of this guarantees stardom. Great talent isn’t what makes the record business go round. All you need to keep stockholders happy is a healthy supply of hits. And it doesn’t matter if the source of the appeal is singing chipmunks.

Every band starts off with the odds against it--and there are potential problems with Lone Justice.

The country component in its music may strike rock fans and radio programmers as too rural. Also: Will the somewhat mainstream sound be too soft for hard-rock stations and too traditional for new wave?

Two years ago, when the group was hard-core country, observers would have agreed that Lone Justice wouldn’t have had a chance commercially. But two things have happened: The group moved into rock and now appears aligned with the roots-conscious American rock movement highlighted in recent months by the success of Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” and Fogerty’s “Centerfield.”

Plus: There’s Maria McKee’s talent.

Peter Philbin was probably the first record industry executive to hear McKee. He joined Columbia Records’ artists and repertoire department in the mid-’70s where he was a big champion of Bruce Springsteen, and eventually signed such acts as Karla Bonoff and the Bangles. He has recently switched to Elektra Records, where he is vice president in charge of the label’s West Coast talent acquisition program.

At Columbia, Philbin was accustomed to checking out a dozen or more new bands a week, most of them forgetable.

But he remembers the July night four years ago that he drove down to a hole-in-the wall club in Norwalk to see the Bryan MacLean Band. MacLean had been in Love, a ‘60s L.A. rock group that Philbin had admired. At the end of the set, he brought his kid sister on stage.

“She sang two songs . . . both R&B; standards and I was mesmerized,” Philbin recalled, his eyes brightening. “She was only 16, but she had one of those rare voices that does not lay down on a record but jumps right out of the speakers at you.”

At the time, however, McKee appeared to just be sitting in with her half-brother’s band--not someone who was seriously pursuing a music career. Philbin told her that if she ever formed her own band, he’d be very interested.

It was two years before he heard of her again.

“I remember the night Peter came to see us,” McKee said, sitting backstage the other night at the Palomino Club in North Hollywood--the group’s last date before hooking up with the U2 tour. “I was thrilled because he was Bruce Springsteen’s guy at Columbia and I was really into Springsteen. I saw Bruce at the Sports Arena--my first rock concert--and I was in shock.

“Up until then, I thought maybe I’d like to be an actress or try to do musical theater on Broadway. I was really involved in the theater department at (Beverly Hills) high school, but Bruce changed all that. I just loved his energy on stage and the fact that he just seemed so happy with his job . . . and he made us all feel so happy.

“I knew I could sing--I had been in the school musicals and I had sung in church. So I began thinking, ‘Maybe I could write songs some day and play the guitar.’ ”

McKee, who was sitting with Lone Justice co-founder Ryan Hedgecock, had a strong Christian upbringing and listened a lot to Judy Garland and Broadway shows as a child because her parents went through a period in which they considered rock ‘n’ roll taboo. But by the time she was junior-high age things loosened up around the house and she listened to all the pop-rock hits.

Her main interest, however, was acting: “When I was real small, me and friends used to put on little plays and shows for my mom and dad,” she said. “We used to dress up in these old gowns and stuff that my grandmother left when she died.

“I was always into the 1930s and earlier eras,” she said. “I loved the glamour of those days. . . . Me and my friend used to pretend we were bank tellers and all our clients were people like Clark Gable and Carole Lombard.”

McKee laughs at her own story, then talked about the movement toward music. She was about 15 when her brother, Bryan, began encouraging her to sing. Shortly afterwards, she started going to local clubs and seeing groups like the roots-conscious Blasters. That led her to check out records by early, raw rock artists like Little Richard and Joplin. Aside from school plays, her public debut was in her brother’s band.

After that band dissolved, McKee began hanging out in local clubs like the Cathay de Grande, where she’d often get up and sing informally with different bands. During that period, she got involved in L.A.’s burgeoning rockabilly scene. That’s how she met Hedgecock.

Hedgecock, 24, grew up in Torrance, where he listened the usual rock radio and toyed around with the guitar for years before getting serious about music. Then a pal played some Grateful Dead albums and he responded to the country and blues songs. He formed a rockabilly band that, as luck would have it, opened one night for the Bryan MacLean band.

“The funny thing is I remember seeing her and thinking she was a great singer,” the guitarist said backstage at the Palomino. “But I thought she was a lot older than me. . . . I thought she was a woman--anyone who could sing the blues that convincingly. You would never have believed she was 16.”

After his first band broke up, he started hanging out at rockabilly jams, forming another short-lived group. At one of these sessions in the summer of 1982, he met McKee--not realizing for months that it was the same singer he had seen. They got together and started singing old George Jones and Rose Maddox country tunes, backing themselves on acoustic guitars.

These shows in December of 1982 were too underground for the record industry to take note of, but another musician did see some potential in what had evolved into a four-piece band: Marvin Etzioni.

Etzioni is a Brooklyn native who grew up here and fronted a group, the Model, that attracted some attention on the local scene in the late ‘70s. While interested at the time in forming his own band, he tends to look at pop music as a puzzle. He likes to analyze records to see why one is a hit and another isn’t--and he saw a potential hit in this pair.

“They were into this real country groove,” he recalls. “It was very rough, but there was so much potential. There was this innocence about the whole thing. When I went to their rehearsal, it was just like it must have been walking in on Buddy Holly and the Crickets when they were just getting started. I thought I could help them in terms of song structure and by broadening the focus of their sound.”

McKee was simply so happy to finally be in a band that she was reluctant to listen to outsiders until a “pathetic” show one night at Madame Wong’s West convinced her that they needed some outside guidance. They called Etzioni who put them on a strict rehearsal schedule.

Things began moving fast after that. One reason there wasn’t a bidding war among record companies over Lone Justice is that many were frightened away by the country flavor in the group’s sound. Another reason: Carole Childs beat them to the punch.

Childs is a former New Yorker who worked in A&R; for Arista Records here before moving five years ago to Geffen Records. Her test for a new band: “I get this little pounding in my heart when I get turned on to a band live,” she said, sitting in her office at Geffen Records in West Hollywood. “I’ll wade through 100, 200, 400 acts until I find the one that does it to me.”

Childs, whose other signings have included Ray Parker Jr., Quarterflash and the Plimsouls, heard about Lone Justice through a local attorney, Nick Wechsler, whose taste she trusted because he had already turned her onto a couple of interesting bands. Childs doesn’t even remember at which of the “little clubs” she saw Lone Justice, but she recalls her reaction.

“The first thing I notice is this girl can sing like nobody’s business,” Childs said, leaning over as if confiding a trade secret. “I’m talking: two seconds and you could see that she had something. Plus, she was just fabulous looking.

“The only thing was the band was so country at the time and very young. I didn’t know what to do. I finally gave them money--$1,500 or something--to go into the studio and cut a demo tape so I could see how she sounded on record. Some people will sound good on stage, but they won’t come across on tape. It’s like gorgeous models who photograph like gems, but in real life they look like dogs.”

Etzioni produced the five-song demo, which included two songs that ended up on the debut album, an exquisite country ballad titled “Don’t Toss Her Away,” which remains McKee’s showcase number, and “Workin’ Late,” a frisky Etzioni composition.

Childs loved the tape but still worried about the band being too country, especially for a label that didn’t have any experience in that field. She played the tape for Rosenblatt. A big Emmylou Harris fan, he liked the tape enough to go see Lone Justice live.

“Maria just killed me,” he said the other day. “She was this lovely young girl with this phenomenal voice and these great moves. The thing I kept equating it to was if this was the late ‘60s in Tucson and we walked into a bar, we might be listening to Linda Ronstadt. Still, I was nervous about the country thing. I kept thinking, ‘If only they were rock.’ ”

That reservation caused Geffen Records to pass on Lone Justice--for a while. Rosenblatt told the group that he’d be interested if they moved toward a rock direction, but he insisted that they had to want to make that move.

“I never wanted to pick up a magazine and read that ‘the record company president was forcing the band to do this or that,’ ” he said. “That was the last thing I wanted. It had to be their decision.”

Besides, McKee was only 18; Geffen could afford to wait. If Lone Justice had been in Nashville, several labels might have been after the group. But here they went virtually unnoticed by record scouts--until Carlyne Majer started spreading the word.

“You have to remember there was a great fear among record companies two years ago of American music, especially American music with country roots,” Majer said. “English music was very popular and here was a band completely from left field. But I loved the sound.

“To me, it was a combination of everything that is inherent and traditional to American music, including pop and rock ‘n’ roll. Besides, when you have a voice as pure as Maria’s, you cut through all those categories. I never bought that ‘too country’ argument.”

Majer speaks with the fast, impassioned manner of someone who has been part of the lively music scene in Austin, Tex., for more than a decade. She and husband George Majewski operated the Soap Creek Saloon for nine years, presenting such varied performers as Willie Nelson, Joe Ely, George Thorogood and the Meters. Looking for new challenges, Majer branched out into management in the late ‘70s, working with blues singer Marcia Ball and, later, country-rockers Rank and File.

She first heard McKee the night in April, 1983, when Rank and File opened for country star John Anderson at the Roxy in West Hollywood. Maria dueted with Rank’s Tony Kinman on “Jackson,” the old Johnny Cash/June Carter hit.

“I was just floored by what I heard,” Majer said. “I had been used to working with young talent in Texas for years, but I had never heard anything like her. After the show, I sat down with her upstairs in the Roxy and told her if she ever needed any help, I’d be glad to do whatever I could.”

McKee phoned Majer a few times after that, inviting her to see the band the next time she was in town. After seeing the full band, Majer began talking to the group about management. On July 15, they signed a contract.

Even before that, however, Majer was beginning to contact record companies. One of the companies she called was Columbia Records, where Philbin recognized the name Maria McKee.

“I went out to the Palomino expecting to see her still doing the R&B; material and all of a sudden she’s not only got a country band, but she’s got this country twang in her voice,” Philbin remembered.

The amazing thing, he said, was that there was nothing artificial about the change to country.

Explained Philbin: “That was just her development. She was 18 years old and infatuated with country music, so she put on the clothes and they fit her. I didn’t think it was false. She had found her way into country music and she was living there. She was absolutely authentic.

“We sat down and talked and she was convinced that she wanted to be a country artist, which wasn’t what I wanted to hear because I wasn’t involved with country artists at Columbia. The Nashville office is the only one that signs country acts at the label. So, I called CBS in Nashville and Bonnie Gardner came out to see the band and (eventually) offered them a deal.

“I don’t even know what the deal was. At that point it was out of my hands. But I did keep going to see the band as a fan, and I talked with Maria and Carlyne. If they did sign with Nashville and made one or two country albums, I wanted at some point to bring them out of country. They seemed interested.”

But the deal with CBS never materialized.

Carole Childs and Rosenblatt re-entered the picture.

Recalled Childs, who had kept in touch with the group after the demo, “I went back to see the band at the Music Machine one night and I just loved the show again. I thought, ‘Oh, the hell with this. . . . This girl is the greatest. I don’t care if they’re country. I’m going to sign this damn band.”

By this time, the group had moved considerably towards rock and Rosenblatt agreed that it was time to act. The contract was signed on Oct. 21, 1983. Though none of the parties will reveal the terms, several agreed it was a “medium-level” deal--not huge bucks by industry standards.

With most new bands getting from $100,000 to $300,000 from major labels, the best guess is the contract paid Lone Justice around $200,000--but that doesn’t all go to the band. Recording costs are taken out of it.

One reason Geffen won over CBS Nashville is that the label recognized the band needed time to develop.

“I think the industry is more responsible for the defeat of talent than just about anything,” Majer said. “You’d be amazed at how few people realize the importance of nurturing young artists. Before we signed with Geffen, I went in and asked for at least a year to deliver an album and they were in full agreement. That’s pretty rare.”

About the switch to rock, McKee explained, “We made the move naturally. We still love country music, but we wanted to head for a more rooty sounding rock ‘n’ roll.”

Agreed Hedgecock: “Yeah, I think we were aiming for something like Ernest Tubb meets the Rolling Stones.”

The next challenge: Find a producer for the album and build the group’s image around town. Childs worked on the producer. Majer concentrated on the image. The band worked on its music.

It’s tricky establishing an image on the local club scene, where fans tend to forget about you if you don’t play enough. Which clubs you play and which acts you play with also says a lot to industry observers about an act’s commercial status. Some bands play endlessly and never seem to make any progress.

The most important thing in giving Lone Justice a strong grass-roots following around town was the quality of the music. By the end of ‘83, Lone Justice was putting on some extraordinary performances. In all the fuss over McKee, it was easy to forget that the rest of the band also contributed strongly.

Don Heffington, the best player in the band, added a steady, insistent drumming that gave the group a much needed sense of musical maturity. Besides encouraging the band initially, Etzioni--who had joined the group by now on bass--also contributed some of the group’s most appealing tunes, including the spirited “East of Eden” and the tender “You Are the Light.”

Along with McKee, Hedgecock supplied the group’s original vision and took over on lead vocals on some appealing songs of his own, including a terrific one about trains that is ideal for Johnny Cash.

Still, McKee was the heart of Lone Justice’s lure. Perky and enthusiastic on upbeat numbers, she went through an amazing, though subtle transition on the plaintive “Don’t Toss Us Away” or “Soap, Soup and Salvation,” a striking number about a Skid Row mission.

She’d close her eyes and drift off into delicate emotional terrain, suggesting an understanding of human conflict and pain that goes far beyond her years.

Despite her fondness for Springsteen and country music, McKee points to Joplin as a prime influence: “When she sang, she put everything into the song, every emotion,” she said. “She made every song seem like it was going to be her last.”

The most celebrated Lone Justice engagement at the time was in January of 1984 when the band, which had been accustomed to playing 250-seat clubs, suddenly stepped up to the 6,000-seat Universal Amphitheatre, opening for Willie Nelson.

The natural assumption was that Nelson, who rarely uses opening acts, had seen this highly touted young band and had personally added the group to the show.

Majer blushes when she tells what really happened. Nelson did OK Lone Justice’s being on the bill, but he did it sight-unseen. Majer, a friend of Nelson from the Austin club days, saw the date as a sensational showcase for the band, and tried--through agents, the Amphitheater and other channels--to get Lone Justice on the show.

When all failed, she went straight to Nelson. “I fixed Willie some corn bread, buttermilk and black-eyed peas one evening at one of his gigs in Austin,” she said, laughing. “Right away he’s suspicious, so I tell him what I want. Now, you’ve got to understand Willie is a real teaser, so he doesn’t say anything to me. But he does tell me he’s going into the kitchen and call his manager.

“Well, I wait until Willie talks to everybody else in the room--it must have been three or four hours, and finally he and some friends are leaving themselves. Just as he gets to the door, he looks over his shoulder and says, ‘Oh, by the way, Carlyne, your band is on the show.”

One of the 6,000 people in the Amphitheatre audience the night of the concert was record producer Jimmy Iovine.

While Majer worked on securing live dates for Lone Justice, Carole Childs sent tapes to dozens of producers and several expressed interest in working with the group. But no one struck Childs as perfect--until she ran into Iovine by accident in Rosenblatt’s office.

Iovine is a glib, hyperactive Brooklyn-born music fanatic who worked as an engineer with John Lennon (on the “Rock ‘n’ Roll” album) and Bruce Springsteen (on “Born to Run”). He had stopped by to talk about a sound-track album he was putting together for the film, “Streets of Fire.”

Childs, who didn’t think someone of Iovine’s status would be interested in a starting band, went in to tell Rosenblatt about all the producers who had been calling about Lone Justice. Iovine was intrigued by the conversation and asked to hear the tape. Impressed, he went to see the band live.

He liked the group, but wasn’t sure about committing the time necessary to school the band. Finally, he suggested they use McKee to sing one of the tracks on the “Streets of Fire” movie sound-track album.

Childs understood immediately that it was Iovine’s way of testing the young singer.

“Now, I don’t give a damn about the sound track, but I figure that it’s a way of getting Maria into the studio with Jimmy. And once he hears her, he won’t be able to resist working with the band,” she said.

“So, what happens? I go to England on business the week she goes into the studio, and I get this call from Jimmy. He’s telling me on the phone, ‘I want to do it.’ I said, ‘You got it.’ ”

You can’t say enough about Iovine’s contribution to the band, says Majer. And Childs. And Rosenblatt. And the members of Lone Justice.

By the time the recording began last summer in New York, the band was honed into a tight, effective unit. But Iovine wanted more songs. He kept after McKee and she responded with new tunes. Iovine also brought in keyboardist Benmont Tench, from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, to give the group a fuller sound. (To reproduce the album sound on stage, Lone Justice added two musicians for the tour: keyboardist Mike Kindred and guitarist Tony Gilkyson. But the band decided to abandon the keyboard sound after a couple of shows, reverting to the guitar-orientation of a five-piece lineup.)

After two weeks, the band took a break and resumed recording in the fall in Los Angeles.

“I believed in this band,” Iovine said. “The first thing that got me was the ‘Soup’ song. When I heard those words and that she was only 19, I thought, ‘My God, if she’s writing these words at 19, I don’t care if it sounds like jazz . . . . There has to be something there.

“The thing missing from nine out of 10 bands on the street or on the radio or in the hall of fame is songs. So few people can write songs that have really good lyrics. Great lyricists are--what?--one in a 100,000. The thing that excited me was that ‘Soup’ song suggested she might be the one.”

The recording sessions were grueling for the band, but they are thrilled with the results.

Suggested McKee: “At the time, I knew what Jimmy was doing was absolutely great, but I felt like a little kid who had to do her homework all the time. I always hated homework. I’d much rather watch TV or listen to records or jump rope or something, but I knew I had to do it.”

One of the charms of the Palomino is that club retains much of its honky-tonk flavor. You could put Wilie and Waylon on stage and half the crowd would be yelling across the room for another beer. But the audience this night for Lone Justice was so caught up with McKee’s singing that the room felt like a recital hall.

The most electric moment was when she sang “Don’t Toss Us Away,”--holding notes for that extra heartbeat and then sliding right into the next word without a break.

Then, she came back with a song of her own--the rocking “After the Flood”--that wowed the audience in a totally different way. McKee wrote the song after seeing a Springsteen concert last year and the tune echoes Springsteen’s blend of idealism and human struggle.

Lone Justice’s advisers are trying to make sure the band keeps its perspective and doesn’t consider itself a failure if the first album doesn’t go gold.

“I’m thrilled with the album and what has happened, but that doesn’t mean it will outsell any other band’s first album,” said Rosenblatt. “That’s an important point that we’ve tried to convey to the band. All we’re aiming for is for the album to make a positive impression on radio and the consumers so that we’ll have everyone waiting for the second record.”

But Geffen Records isn’t being exactly timid about championing the LP. The label ran flashy front-and-back cover ads trumpeting the release of the album in this week’s issue of Billboard magazine, the leading record industry publication.

On the eve of the Madison Square Garden shows, an enthusiastic Majer said: “It’s a big step going from L.A. clubs, where you are playing to fans, to 20,000-seat arenas where you are playing for people who’ve never seen you before, but it’s good for the band and they’re adjusting well.”

The band members are philosophical about it.

“I don’t think like to sit around and worry about what’s going to happen,” McKee said, shortly before the tour started. “There’s no reason to borrow trouble. I know we just have to work really hard. We still have a lot of growing to do as a band.”