“When I’m With You” by Toronto band Sheriff took about six years to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in winter 1989. And, that was quick relative to the subsequent experiences of vocalist Freddy Curci and guitarist Steve DeMarchi, who returned for an encore the following year in a group called Alias. Their lawsuit over Sheriff royalties, filed in December 1989, dragged on until a favourable ruling by the Ontario Court of Appeal in March 2001 — even though the bulk of the judgment remains unpaid. Longer still has been the lag between the release of the first and second Alias albums. Never Say Never, recorded in 1992, was left on the shelf by label EMI until this month.
But all this seems appropriate for the story of the Guinness Book of Records entry for the longest note ever sustained in a song.
Things started off moving faster for DeMarchi when playing the Ontario roadhouse circuit in the late-’70s, doing a few originals along with covers of the corporate rock staples of the day by Boston, Foreigner and Styx. The keyboard player, Arnold Lanni, had a cousin in the business of Italian banquet halls — and recommended the perfect wedding singer to put his stamp on this style. Curci was an instant fit for Sheriff, who put their hopes in the hands of a married couple who ran a local company called Reel Records, which quickly led a US contract with Capitol.
Released in July 1982, the debut single “You Remind Me” was fairly standard fare for the waning days of a music industry recession, with a snug spot on the Canadian airwaves alongside acts like Chilliwack, the Headpins and Toronto — who weren’t even getting the same big-label boost stateside. Yet the first real sign that the Sheriff album had a bit of momentum around the industry came when DeMarchi got a call wondering if he wanted to join another band.
“Paul Stanley noticed the cover sitting on a desk in the KISS management office,” recalls DeMarchi. “He pointed right at me: ‘This guy with the long hair — what does he play?’ And it just so happened they were looking for a new guitarist to replace Ace Frehley. But I’d put so much work into Sheriff by that point — or at least what felt like a lot of work — the last thing I was going to do was drop everything to play for someone else.”
Waiting in the grooves of the album was the blockbuster ballad capable of breaking them — only not before a radio remix. Curci was corralled into the studio to re-record his vocal on “When I’m With You” and, uncertain of where exactly songwriter Lanni’s tinkling trailed off at the end, hit — and held — the longest note of his young life.
The single did decently as a CanCon hit in early 1983, and crept to No. 61 on Billboard. Sheriff opened some North American arena concerts for The Kinks — only to be bumped off the bill in their hometown in favour of INXS — and ultimately did their biggest show at Busch Stadium in St. Louis: a Fourth of July spectacle with the Beach Boys, the Charlie Daniels Band and Foghat. Not quite the demographic they were hoping for in the emerging shadow of MTV.
So, with a modicum of name recognition, Sheriff basically went back to the provincial circuit where they started — sort of like Anvil except with better-looking women in the audience — because there were bills to be paid. Capitol weren’t into the songs sketched for a follow-up album and the five band members started fizzling apart from the frustration by 1985.
DeMarchi then did what any dude in his mid-20s who gained and lost a major label contract would likely do. He moved back in with his parents in Etobicoke. And became a courier.
“Yet our songs were still being played on the radio,” he says. “I’d hear them when I was making a delivery and wanted to impress the receptionists by pointing out that it was me playing guitar. Their reaction would be, ‘Where should I sign that bill?’”
Curci got a job as a cable TV installer until winter struck and DeMarchi sold him on delivering parcels around the city from the warmth of an automobile. Months later came a call from Arnold Lanni, who wanted to put the band back together, with one not-insignificant difference — he was also going to be the singer.
“I couldn’t do this to my friend,” says DeMarchi. “We set up a 16-track recorder in my parents’ basement and, every night after work, we’d get together and write songs.”
Fuelling their fire was the fact that the Lanni-fronted act, Frozen Ghost — packaged as a duo with Sheriff bassist Wolf Hassel — quickly scored a record deal, with a slice of anti-censorship pomposity called “Should I See” getting the American rock-radio buzz that eluded Sheriff. Curci and DeMarchi circulated their demos, readying a rivalry, when the most improbable thing that could happen actually happened.
Dusted off by a Top 40 radio disc jockey in Las Vegas looking for a catchy love song — which record labels had all but given up on producing by 1988 in favour of more bombastic power ballads — “When I’m With You” built a resurgence similar to what later happened with Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” However, since the Sheriff single never gained national traction the first time around, it widely registered as a new tune. And by February 1989 it was the biggest single in America.
Sheriff reunited, but only for one meeting — with two members of Frozen Ghost on one side, and two full-time couriers on the other.
“Lanni wanted no part of it,” says DeMarchi. “For some reason, he seemed angry about the success. When I asked him why, he looked me straight in the eyes and told me to call his lawyer who would explain everything. I thought, uh-oh, that doesn’t sound too good.”
What happened was the rights to the one-album Sheriff catalogue changed hands from the married couple behind Reel Records — sold off in late 1986 for a few thousand dollars to help settle their divorce — to a company controlled by Arnold Lanni’s cousin, Tony Varone, who initially recommended Freddy Curci.
While the big hit was credited to Lanni alone, their dispute over mechanical royalties hinged on the claim that Curci, DeMarchi and drummer Rob Elliott voluntarily turned down a share of Sheriff from the start. Getting vindication to the contrary took almost a dozen years.
The public perception amidst litigation, though, was that the frontline of Sheriff was soldiering on without complaints as two-fifths of a new act. Backup came from the three original male members of Heart and eager record label EMI spared no expense on establishing the shotgun arrangement: “We took the first band photos literally a few minutes after we first met,” says DeMarchi. “They started calling it alias Sheriff, or alias Heart, so ended up settling on Alias.”
Such unabashed corporate rock was unveiled in a typical fashion for 1990: “Haunted Heart” established credibility with the Nerf-metal crowd, with a ballad on deck for the masses. “More Than Words Can Say” peaked at No. 2 that November, but only because the record company employee charged with calling in tabulations to Billboard in those months before digital monitoring figured the song was such a lock on the top spot that he went home early for the weekend before gathering all the data. (“Three weeks later,” recalls DeMarchi, “they fired him.”)
Still, not bad for songs composed by guys just recently liberated from their day jobs. The owner of the courier company also passed away, but not before expressing his hope that Curci and DeMarchi weren’t done making money from music — in turn, his son became Alias’s tour manager.
Yet around the time Alias squeaked out a third single, “Waiting For Love” — the best made-to-order track of its vintage — their sound was on the verge of another twilight. There was one more high-gloss single, “Perfect World” from the Christina Applegate vehicle Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead. The follow-up album was recorded with aspirations of release by late 1992 — only to gather dust until March 2009.
“Grunge had taken over everything,” says DeMarchi, “and EMI told us straight out that they didn’t think they could do anything with the record.”
Salvaging what familiarity they could wasn’t out of the question, though — with the ex-Heart guys out of the picture, a mellower acoustic album was released in 1994 under Curci’s name, Dreamer’s Road, to middling response. “We slowly stopped calling one another,” says DeMarchi. “There really wasn’t much we could do.” So, while Curci had relocated to Los Angeles — eventually starting another band, Zion, while writing songs for television shows — DeMarchi had no immediate intention of leaving his Mississauga home.
But then Don Burton, the Alias tour manager whose dad owned the courier company, traded up the ranks of tour management to end up with Duran Duran. Then he married the lead singer of their Irish opening act, Dolores O’Riordan. And in 1996, when The Cranberries graduated to headlining ampitheatres and needed a beefier sound onstage, Burton had a guitarist in mind for the task: DeMarchi kept the gig right through O’Riordan’s 2007 debut solo album, whose backing band was more or less the second incarnation of Alias. Being a branch on the family tree of a group that sold 40 million albums was apparently enough to stir online interest in an unfashionable early-’90s Canadian band. A recent acoustic take of “When I’m With You,” is tacked on to the Never Say Never CD as a reminder of why it happened.
Who gets paid for the use of the original hit version — like last year in the Canadian flick Young People Fucking — remains a bit of a mystery. The court ruled that DeMarci and Curci were entitled to over $250,000 each. Most of the fraction they were able to get their hands on had to pay for legal fees, though. Meanwhile, their relationship with Arnold Lanni — best-known in the post-Frozen Ghost decade as a producer for the likes of Our Lady Peace — was never mended, although the Alias guitarist crossed paths with his cousin not long ago.
“I was walking through Yorkville and I’m a bit of a car nut,” recalls DeMarchi. “There was a Ferrari Challenge 360 parked at the side of the road, so I looked inside, and sitting behind the wheel was Tony Varone, who gave me a smirk. It wasn’t like I was going to reach in and grab him. But the buddy I was walking with wondered why he didn’t jump out to thank me instead.”
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