Here's Jane about a block from our hotel just off the northern edge of Times Square. In the background is a building we'd often walk on by: The Brill Building, a legendary place populated by songwriters during the 1960s such as Neil Sedaka, James Taylor, Carole King, Hal David and Burt Bacharach. Since Jane has been stuck in the 60s (at least music wise), she was in Hog's Heaven, as we say in Texas despite the fact that no one ever puts that expression in a song. At its peak in 1962, the place held 165 music business and 70 record labels have called this home, if only briefly. Musicians brokered gigs in the lobby. Over one third of the songs to make the hit parade at that time had some connection to this place. After a while, the composers realized they were not just writing songs, but instead creating records and so they got into the recording studio part of the business.
Music was what the Brill Building settled for. It had hoped for financial types, but they were lured to the upscale Rockefeller Center a block to the east. This turned out to be the place where a songwriter with a mediocre song, would start at the top offices and sell the recording rights several times on the way down. As long as no one ever recorded it, no one would know the difference. (Nowadays, we give such songs to Madonna and Britney). Its restaurant held twenty phone booths that served as offices for those who needed an address here but couldn't afford the rent.
Below is the calendar girl, slightly past sweet sixteen, in front of her shrine (ignore the bus and billboard).
In the following picture, we're not sure whose bust that is on high (the one below has been identified). Perhaps it's one of the Brill Brothers -- clothiers who, unfortunately, owned the building but not the lease for the land. Eventually the lease got sold to the Queen of England whose managers raised prices so much that the Brills and other tenants fled during the 1970s to more affordable quarters. (Was breaking up hard to do or had the place lost that lovin' feeling?) What the priggish Queen started, more rowdy Brits such as John, Paul, George, Ringo, Mick, et. al. finished with their ragged mops, raucous lyrics, relentless rhythms -- and most of all, they wrote their own stuff. Was that the day the music died?
In homage to this iconic place, we spent too much time in the great sheet music store that occupies the southeast corner of the Brill Building. Then we da doo ron ran to get enough to eat on Broadway where there's always magic in the air. Luckily we still had lots of thin dimes as this places eats them up. Make your own kind of music!