Toni Tennille shares her private misery with the Captain.
Toni Tennille says love for the Captain wasn’t enough to keep them together
The Top 40 charts are riddled with songs that began life as mistakes, flukes and afterthoughts, but nonetheless went on to become smash successes. Perhaps none became bigger than the bouncy and instant ear-candy ditty named by Billboard as the top tune of the entire year 1975.
Performing (and romantic) duo Daryl Dragon and Toni Tennille were looking for a lastminute filler song to complete their debut LP. A record company guy offhandedly suggested they cover a track from an obscure Neil Sedaka record. The pair agreed, and it was released as their first single. And thus “Love Will Keep Us Together” became a No. 1 hit, the Captain and Tennille’s signature number, and the recessional song for thousands of weddings since.
“We knew when we first heard it from Kip Cohen that it was perfect. And when we heard the playback, we knew it would be a hit,” Tennille said in a phone interview.
More hits would keep coming over the next few years — “Muskrat Love,” a cover of the Motown classic “Shop Around,” “Lonely Nights (Angel Face),” and more, um, adult material such as “You Never Done It Like That” and “Do That To Me One More Time.” And then the Captain and Tennille faded from contemporary music.
Still, it was quite a shock when the news broke in January 2014 that the two were divorcing after nearly 40 years of marriage — and that she was the one who filed. Say what?
How could the duo who epitomized marital bliss split up? Weren’t the upbeat, sensuous girl next door and the silent, hat-wearing guy supposed to be together forever? Could there now be any hope left for romantics anywhere?
Well, as Tennille discusses in “Toni Tennille: A Memoir,” the couple’s public image and private reality were never one in the same. She describes how an emotionally distant, cold and demanding Dragon sleepwalked through the marriage while consistently maintaining a separate bedroom from his wife.
Tennille says Dragon also subjected her to bizarre vegetarian dietary restrictions, which might include a 21-day white grapefruit-only diet, or avoidance of purple foods because they were “negative.” While on the road, their band would enjoy fine food at restaurants. But Dragon and Tennille were feasting (or, actually, fasting) on brown rice and bland steamed vegetables, which Dragon cooked up on hot plates smuggled into luxury hotels.
Tennille tells bluntly of the struggle between keeping up a public “lovebirds” appearance that went on for decades, while keeping the actual realities to herself. She writes that Dragon was “never an emotionally demonstrative man” and that she could say “without exaggeration, he showed no physical affection for me.”
On the phone, Tennille says that it was her decision to in- clude these aspects of their marriage, and that she made Dragon aware of it while she was writing the book with her niece, Caroline Tennille St. Clair.
“But I want people to understand that the fault in this was not Daryl’s,” she said. “I thought I could bring him into the light and show him that there is a lot of joy and happiness in the world, but it was impossible. … I felt myself being dragged down by his negative personality.”
She waited nearly 40 years to leave the marriage because “I didn’t want people to be disappointed,” she said. “And I know that sounds ridiculous.”
As for career highlights, Tennille singles out when the duo were invited to perform a short set at a 1976 White House function for a visiting Queen Elizabeth and family. She was worried that their hit “The Way I Want To Touch You” might be too risqué for the venue — that is, until a buoyant Betty Ford assured her it was one of “her and Jerry’s favorite songs.” Gerald Ford returned the favor by swinging Tennille a few times around the dance floor at the after-show reception.
One powerful dignitary, however, was apparently not a fan of “Muskrat Love.”
“I was standing right in front of Henry Kissinger singing the song, and I could see this just dour look on his face. Then he turned around and started talking to someone behind him, which I thought was rude. Then Daryl started making these muskrat sounds on his keyboard, and I knew it was over!” she laughs. “But every time I sang it in concert afterward, I dedicated it to Henry Kissinger.”
The book’s narrative is bookended by Tennille’s “other” lives, first as a shy, Southern girl from Montgomery, Ala., whose father’s alcoholism destroyed the family. When she moved to California, she was shocked to discover that women could go to restaurants and bars — gasp! — without a male escort.
Tennille’s later efforts included a stint as the star of a touring company in the musical “Victor/ Victoria.” She also recorded and toured her interpretations of the Great American Songbook in front of big bands, which she called the most satisfying chapter of her entire career.
“Lyric writing was an art around the time those songs were written,” she said, noting that she favors the work of Rodger and Hart. “Lyrics were smart, and they were crafted beautifully with a lot of subtext.”
Tennille, who lives in Arizona, says she is glad her story is out. And she has been overwhelmed by the “incredible” posts people have left on her Facebook page, which she checks regularly. She frets that she can’t answer everybody personally.
“But I’m trying!” she laughed. “I really am!”
“I thought I could bring him into the light and show him that there is a lot of joy and happiness in the world, but it was impossible.” Toni Tennille