Cole Is Making the ‘Cadillac’ of Comebacks

What chance do you think a recording artist would have of landing a new contract when everybody in the industry knew she had gone through a seven-year cocaine dependency and had turned out back-to-back flop albums?

That was the challenge faced last year by Natalie Cole: the need to re-establish personal and commercial credibility in the image-conscious music industry.

Comeback stories are common in pop music, but few artists have managed to come back from as far back as the daughter of singing legend Nat (King) Cole.

Though Cole was one of the brightest stars of the mid- to late ‘70s, she was ice-cold by the early ‘80s. The singer was dropped by Epic Records after one unsuccessful album in 1983 and had another flop on Modern Records in 1985.

By last year, her stock had fallen so low that Atlantic Records--which distributes and finances Modern--pulled the plug on her nearly completed second album for the label. The thinking: Let’s cut our losses.

But Cole, who headlines the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim on Saturday, is back in peak form. Her latest album, “Everlasting,” is nearing the 1-million sales mark and has generated three hit singles, including “Jump Start” and the current Top-10 smash, “Pink Cadillac.”

What was the key to Cole’s comeback? Sheer hustle.

The singer visited or phoned 250 radio stations around the country--sometimes hitting as many as seven stations a day--in addition to making many in-store appearances. Cole said that she wasn’t thrilled with the regimen--which often entailed getting up at 4 or 5 to do morning drive with top deejays--but knew she had little choice.

“If you disappear for a while, you can’t just come back and expect your seat to have been saved,” she said over lunch in a Sherman Oaks restaurant. “As much as I hated to do it, I know what it takes. When you want to get back in the mainstream, you can’t afford to have a bad attitude.”

But Cole, 38, said that the experience was at times degrading.

“I had to do a lot of--I don’t like to use the term ‘kissing (up)’--but I certainly had to be very flexible this time around,” Cole said. “I had to go to places that I didn’t feel like going, and schmooze with people I didn’t feel like schmoozing with. And they loved it. They loved being able to jerk me around because they knew that I knew that I had to do it.”

Dan Cleary, who has managed Cole for five years, agreed that the campaign was necessary to rebuild Cole’s relationships in the industry and to re-establish her credibility.

“I believe very firmly that if you give radio stations that kind of attention, they’re going to respond that much more to your needs.”

Cleary, a 28-year industry veteran, said that the campaign was especially important in Cole’s case, because she had failed to live up to her early promise. Her widespread early acclaim included winning the 1975 Grammy Award for best new artist.

“Radio really took her to their hearts in the early years of her career, and I think they probably felt a little jilted,” he said. “I think they were entitled to feel a little disappointed, because they had given her a lot of support. So either consciously or otherwise, they wanted her to come and see them and shake hands and look into their eyes and have an opportunity to talk to them.”

In large part, Cleary said, that was so they could see that Cole had truly put the drug problems behind her. “They wanted to make sure that when they started playing her product again, she was going to stick around,” he said.

Cole said she could sense that people were checking her out when she visited radio stations. “They wondered if I was as together as the record sounded,” she said.

The fact that more than 10 years had passed since Cole landed her biggest hits, “This Will Be” and “I’ve Got Love on My Mind,” was another reason she needed to meet with radio programmers and retailers, Cleary said.

“There are a lot of people in the industry today who weren’t in it in any significant way back when she was hot,” he said. “So there were a lot of people who weren’t that familiar with her.”

Cleary, a soft-spoken man in his mid-50s, believes that the strong promotional effort made the difference for Cole. “I’m convinced that all of the work she did is directly related to the payoff she is now experiencing,” he said. “She decided that she was going to do whatever was necessary to get it back.”

Both Cole and Cleary said fans tend to be more forgiving than the industry does. “There are those (in the industry) who can’t wait to remind you of where you were,” Cole said.

Cleary added: “Fans are less jaded and less cynical and more loyal. Radio stations get an awful lot of records every week, so they tend to move on (to other artists) much quicker than audiences do. That old saying that you’re only as strong as your last hit doesn’t refer as much to audiences as to the industry.”

In fact, Cleary believes that Cole’s poor-selling albums in 1983 and 1985 proved to be more of a stumbling block in landing a new record deal than her drug history.

“I think the fact that she had had a string of unsuccessful product was the primary (obstacle),” he said. “Had she not gotten healthy again but still delivered the hits, I’m sure that radio would have played her. But of course the two things were connected: The fact that she had the less-than-successful product was due to (her personal problems).”

Cole’s comeback was almost aborted before it started when Atlantic decided to pull the plug on what would have been the second Modern album.

Paul Fishkin, president of Modern, remembered that moment. “We were three-quarters finished when we ran out of money. I went back to Atlantic for more money, but they felt they had already spent a lot and lost a lot, and they weren’t willing to put up the rest.”

Cleary, a former booking agent who represented such acts as Olivia Newton-John and the Carpenters, said it wasn’t easy getting a new deal. “Some of the companies felt that she had already had her opportunity (for a comeback) and that her time had passed,” he said.

One of the few executives interested in giving Cole another chance was Bruce Lundvall, then president of Manhattan Records, a small, New York-based label owned by Capitol-EMI.

Lundvall, who recently moved over to Capitol Records as general manager, East Coast, always liked Cole and wanted her on Manhattan. “My feeling was that this is an artist who had had great success on Capitol and is still relatively young. She had a signature voice, and she’s singing better than ever.”

But Lundvall had a hard time persuading Gerry Griffith, Manhattan’s senior vice president of A&R;, to sign her.

“There was a bit of reluctance in A&R; because she had had several albums that didn’t sell,” Lundvall said. “The thinking was that she’d had her chance, and that there are younger artists out there that maybe we should go after.”

Griffith acknowledged having initial concerns but said they were resolved when he saw Cole perform live. “I saw that her talent was as fresh and vital as ever. That removed all my doubts.”

Cole was signed last fall to Manhattan, which is also the home of hit makers Richard Marx and the Pet Shop Boys.

Then came the really tough part: getting top-notch songs.

Said Cleary: “The toughest part of this whole reconstruction was getting credible writers and producers to believe that Natalie was once again capable of selling records and thereby to submit their best material. I got a lot of hesitancy.”

Cleary was, however, able to enlist such top writers and producers as Reggie Calloway, Dennis Lambert and Burt Bacharach & Carole Bayer Sager. He also incorporated three tracks from what would have been the second Modern album. Among them, ironically, are the hits “Pink Cadillac” and “I Live for Your Love.”

Now, writers and producers are contacting him. “I’m hearing from everybody,” Cleary said. “We’ve got people wanting to produce her who were in some instances not even kind last time.

“The industry loves to be with a winner. When an artist who might have lost center stage for a period of time comes back and starts getting his or her momentum going again, everyone wants to be a part of it.”

The long road back began in 1983 when Cole’s mother persuaded her to put all business and legal affairs under her mother’s control until Cole kicked the drug habit.

“I did that in a haze,” said Cole. “By the time I realized what I had done, it was too late (to regain control). My mother said, ‘Now, you’re not going to get anything back until you get yourself together.’ ”

On Nov. 29, 1983--which she refers to as her “sobriety date”--Cole began a six-month stay at Hazeldenok Foundation, a recovery center in a small town in Minnesota. She also signed that year with Cleary.

Cole said that she has one major regret. She said that her cocaine dependency contributed to the breakup of her marriage to Marvin Yancy, who co-produced her early albums with Chuck Jackson. She said Yancy never really recovered from the divorce and died two years ago of a stroke at 34.

Still, Cole sees some value in what she’s been through.

“When you’ve been through something like that, you’ve really got an edge over a lot of people,” she said. “You can deal with pressure. Now, no matter what happens--no matter how great things get or how bad things get--I have a foundation.

“The quality of my life is much better now than it ever was. Before, even when I was hot, I didn’t know what I had, because success runs in my family.”