For any individual, they always have that defining moment
that will determine how their life or career will be shaped. For singer Toni
Tennille, that moment came when she was six years old in her hometown of
Montgomery, Alabama, when a freak accident that involved a wheelbarrow severely
crushed her finger.
“Believe it or not, that injury was one of the most
important things that happened in my life. I kept on hiding my damaged finger,
and tried to keep people from looking at it,” said Tennille during a recent
phone interview. “I went through a lot of surgeries on that finger, but there
are limits to what a plastic surgeon in New Orleans could do back in 1946. And
no matter how my finger healed, my parents made sure that I had the opportunity
to learn how to play the piano and play it well.”
Her abilities and skills as a piano player (and later
keyboards), regardless of the damage that her finger sustained from that
injury, gave Tennille a career in music as one half of the Grammy Award-winning
duo The Captain and Tennille, in which they had a string of top 10 hits during
the mid and late 70s such as “Muskrat Love”, “The Way I Want To Touch You”, “Do
That To Me One More Time” and their first – and best-known -- hit song “Love
Will Keep Us Together”.
Tennille chronicles her life and career in her recently
published book Toni Tennille: A Memoir
(Taylor Trade Publishing). A great deal of the book focuses on her 40-year
marriage to Daryl Dragon (aka “The Captain”), and the fact that although
onstage they appeared to be a happy couple that exemplified the bubbly, upbeat
love songs that gained them tremendous success, it was a totally different
story behind the music.
“I have spent most of the book trying to explain my
relationship with Daryl. I was always a romantic type of girl who was looking
for her soul mate, and I thought I found it with Daryl. In fact, Daryl was a
little bit of a mystery to me, but that was the way he was,” she said. “There
was always a lot of love in my family when I grew up, and I knew my family
loved me. And I always tried to draw Daryl in and teach him what love was all
about, but I wasn’t able to get through to him, and it was quite frustrating.”
Tennille believes that Daryl’s difficult upbringing was a
key factor to his eventual eccentric, detached nature, in which many of the
Captain and Tennille’s fans felt it made him an attractive, yet rather
enigmatic, personality. “Daryl’s mother suffered from mental illness. And
although she loved him so much, she never gave him the love and understanding
that he needed. And his father, who was a brilliant composer and musical
arranger, was jealous of Daryl’s success; in fact, during the height of our
popularity, he used to joke that he was ‘the Admiral’, and that was quite hard
for Daryl to accept,” she said.
However, aside from then tensions and the personal and
psychological battle that the couple endured, Tennille admitted that
professionally speaking, the duo worked their magic when it came to producing
their music, which she credited to Daryl’s perfectionism and attention to
detail (which earned him the title “the captain of the keyboards” when he was
touring with the Beach Boys during the early 70s).
“The music was great. The lyrics for our songs expressed how
I felt about Daryl and how much I loved him. And although Daryl never paid
attention to the lyrics, he was great at making the music, in which he
fulfilled the part of writing the songs and bringing them to life, especially
the musical arrangements,” she said.
As well, like any showbiz memoir, Tennille’s book has its
share of interesting anecdotes, especially during a 1976 performance in the
East Room of the White House in the presence of President Gerald Ford and First
Lady Betty Ford, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip … and a rather displeased
Henry Kissinger (especially when they performed “Muskrat Love”).
“Basically, Kissinger didn’t like what he heard; in fact, he
sat directly opposite me during our performance and hated what we were playing.
But President and Mrs. Ford, and the Queen and Prince Phillip loved it,” she
said. “It was an infamous episode during that stage of our careers, but we got
a big kick out of it. We always had a lot of fun doing ‘Muskrat Love’ after
that, and we always dedicated it to Dr. Kissinger.”
Although she and Daryl divorced two years ago, Tennille
found ways to heal her wounds from this difficult marriage, whether it be her
fascination with dogs, having her own TV talk show in the early 80s, performing
in a touring production of “Victor Victoria”, doing concert tours where she
performed a great American songbook-type repertoire, and even writing her book
(which she credits her niece Caroline for the motivation and help in spending
the two years it took to tell her story on paper).
However, Tennille is looking for some new career paths, and
might have found it, thanks mainly to her recording of the audio version of the
book. “I am 75 years old, and all of a sudden, you’re old; it happens so fast.
I never wanted to be out there singing when I am not at my best. I don’t want
to be compared to the way I was during my prime,” she said. “I loved recording
the audio version of my book, because people get some sense of the nuances of
my story when they hear me narrating it and it adds some dimension to it. I
would love to do more audio book recordings for other authors’ works; at least
they would be books that I wouldn’t be emotionally invested in.”
* * *
Stuart Nulman’s “Book
Banter” segment is a twice-a-month feature on “The Stuph File Program” with
Peter Anthony Holder, which now has almost 150,000 listeners per week. You can either listen or download it at
www.peteranthonyholder.com, Stitcher.com or subscribe to it on iTunes. Plus you can find it
at www.CyberStationUSA.com, www.KDXradio.com, True Talk Radio, streaming on www.PCJMedia.com, and over the air at World
FM 88.2fm in New Zealand, Media Corp in Singapore and WSTJ,
St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Stuart can be reached at bookbanter@hotmail.com.
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