Bill Medley: Still Righteous after all these years

Ask Bill Medley of The Righteous Brothers if he ever envisioned a career now in its seventh decade, and the response is delivered in a tone of voice tinged with disbelief.

“Are you kidding?” he replied during a recent phone chat from his Newport Beach, California, home occasioned by the act’s Aug. 19 booking at Golden Nugget Atlantic City.

“When we first started, (his original partner, Bobby Hatfield) and I used to talk about what we were gonna do when the fad was over – and rock and roll was definitely considered a fad.

“So, the last thing I thought back then was that I’d still be out here at this age – 82 – singing songs that I recorded when I was 22.”

Then again, the songs he and Hatfield, who died of a cocaine-related heart attack in 2003, sung were hardly lightweight, forgettable ditties: Their smash hit, “Unchained Melody,” which was released in 1965, remains a beloved pop ballad, thanks, in large part, to its inclusion in the soundtrack of the blockbuster 1990 film, “Ghost” (it’s actually Hatfield’s solo version that’s heard in the movie, but it’s use led fans and media alike to rediscover the duo’s recording of it).

And then there’s the team’s first smash, 1964’s “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” which was officially clocked by BMI, the music-licensing service, as the song that was most-played on radio and television in the 20th century. Both tunes are also credited with introducing “blue-eyed soul,” the pop sub-genre in which R&B-style songs are performed by white artists.

While they never quite again achieved the success they had with their two mega-hits, Medley and Hatfield continued their partnership until 1968, when Medley decided to go out on his own. They reunited in 1974 and the next year, had a major hit with “Rock and Roll Heaven,” a tribute to many of the musical artists of their generation who had died.

The partnership was silenced again in 1976, when Medley began a five-year hiatus in the wake of his wife’s death. And in 1987, Medley hit the top of the charts, but with another partner: Jennifer Warnes, with whom he recorded the Oscar-winning “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” for the “Dirty Dancing” soundtrack.

From the early ’90s through the time of Hatfield’s death, The Righteous Brothers worked regularly – especially on the nation’s casino circuit, where the act proved especially popular. Not surprisingly, Hatfield’s death was devastating to Medley, who admitted he wasn’t emotionally ready to continue the act when he first attempted it on a 2004 concert tour.

“It was real difficult,” he acknowledged. “I was doing The Righteous Brother  show; I wasn’t doing The Bill Medley show, and it was just way too early for me to do. And too early for the audience to enjoy. There was just too much sadness all around it.

“And now, it’s great,” Medley added. “I sing on ‘Unchained Melody’ and it’s a tribute to Bobby, and we show video of Bob and myself, and it’s a lot easier. But that first year was impossible.”

In 2016, Medley officially teamed with Bucky Heard, whom he knew from his work in Branson, Missouri, portraying John Belushi in a Blues Brothers act, and later fronting a Journey tribute band. Heard was born in 1965, the year The Righteous Brothers hit the big time. But Medley insisted the age difference hasn’t been a factor at all.

“I thought about that,” he said. “As a matter of fact, when we first sat at the piano and sang to see if we could do it, I said, ‘Stand here, let’s take a picture of
you and me.’ And we took a picture and I wanted to see if it looked odd. And it didn’t.

“Nobody’s ever said, ‘Boy, your age difference is really weird,’ Medley maintained. “Maybe it’s because I look a little younger and he looks a little older.”

For tickets, go to www.goldennugget.com/atlantic-city.

Lefty Lucy: A love story

As “cover” bands go, Lefty Lucy, which is scheduled to perform 7 to 11 p.m. on Aug. 9, 15 and 21 at The Lobby Bar inside Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City, is certainly unique.

For starters, the group, which focuses on classic rock and the rockier side of country music, has been on the boards for some 25 years—an unusually long run in the cover-band universe. And unlike most of these types of units, which tend to rely on one-night stands at different venues, they have spent more than two decades as the five-night-a-week, wintertime house band at Colorado’s Copper Mountain Ski Resort (they also play multiple dates at Parrot Patio in their summertime home base, Sarasota, Fla.).

But most significantly, Lefty Lucy is led by Lucy and Nick DiBlasio, who met while in the theater program at Bishop McDevitt High School in suburban Philadelphia, and who have been married for almost 25 years. So what’s the secret to forging a successful joint career while keeping a marriage going?

“I don’t know if there’s a secret,” said Lucy. “We just do what has worked for us. I
think we always had the sort of unwritten rule that anything that we were dealing with relationship-wise, we never took it on stage.

“I think I can attribute that to our theater director in high school, who said, ‘Never let ’em see you sweat.’ We never show anybody that we are dealing with something that wasn’t on a happy level, which makes our shows so much better; when you come to see a show, you don’t wanna see the people onstage having a problem with each other. And we’re both conscious of that.”

But what about sharing professional and personal lives 24/7? Doesn’t that make things a little uncomfortable (at best) at times?

While Nick joked that the couple are usually so geographically close, “I can stick my hands out, spin around and probably hit Lucy,” he insisted. “That’s not a burden. Our relationship started this way and it’s all we’ve ever known. And it’s always been fun.

“I look forward to doing our shows,” Nick added. “I look forward to walking on the beaches. I look forward to scuba diving together. It’s all the fun things in life. I get to do them with my best friend. I just feel very fortunate.”