Billy Vera has Michael J. Fox and wife Tracy Pollan to thank for the biggest hit of his career. Fox and Pollan, though, may have a different view of that.
"Tracy and I couldn't get on the dance floor anywhere in the world for like 10 years without them playing 'What would you think...'" Fox sheepishly told Rachael Ray on her television talk show in 2007.
Thanks to the producers of the show Fox was a star on, Family Ties, Vera got a second chance at a hit song in late 1986. "At This Moment" was recorded during a live show at the Roxy in Los Angeles on January 16, 1981. That song and others was featured on a live album by Vera and his band, The Beaters, called "Billy And The Beaters."
Vera, born William Patrick McCord on May 28, 1944, in Riverside, Calif., was a blue-eyed soul singer dating back to the 1960s, scoring a No. 36 hit with duet partner and gospel singer Judy Clay on "Country Girl, City Man" in 1968.But when the 1970s came along, Vera's career cooled down considerably. He'd continue to tour, but would have no luck in chart singles. He tried his luck with songwriting and one of his songs, "I Really Got The Feeling," would be on the "B" side of a No. 1 country hit called "Baby I'm Burnin'" by Dolly Parton in 1979. That gave him encouragement to leave New York and head back to Los Angeles and make it as a singer-songwriter there. And it was in L.A. that Vera reconnected with good friend and bass player Chuck Fiore to put a band together that had all the elements of Ray Charles' stage act of the 1950s and '60s, filled completely with backing vocalists and a horn section, pedal steel guitar, piano, drums, Fiore's bass and Vera on guitar and vocals.
Thus, the Beaters were born. The group made a name for themselves with Monday midnight shows at L.A.'s Troubadour. One record label that was listening to their sound was Alfa Records based in Japan, which had already opened an office in Los Angeles. The band signed with Alfa and the first project they got themselves involved with was a live album of what Alfa representatives saw in person at that club.
The album didn't garner enough buzz, peaking at No. 118 on the Top 200 album chart in the spring of 1981, but one of the songs from that live album caught on: The raucous "I Can Take Care Of Myself" offered Vera his second Top 40 hit and first in 13 years when it got to No. 39 before fizzling out.
Then came the second single from it, a beautiful song called "At This Moment," which incorporated the music Vera loved as a young man in the 1960s -- blues filled with powerful horns and an emotional vocal. Vera said he wrote the song when he was 33 years old and just started dating a 20-year-old, who told him about the guy whose heart she broke and how he felt about it when he dumped him for Vera. Vera was struck by the story and wrote two-thirds of the song that night, but could never finish the song until he found the heartache himself after she broke up with him. He said that's where he added the line, "I'd subtract 20 years of my life."
However, as positive as he felt about the song which was first rejected by Dionne Warwick and Olivia Newton-John in 1977 before he and the band performed it, the public didn't buy the single and radio stations didn't play the song. It got as high as No. 79 that summer. And Vera said he thought he knew why "At This Moment" didn't catch on the first time.
He said in an interview, "They (Alfa Records) had a very good promotion man ... Bernie was his name. And he wasn't getting along with the boss. So he quit just as 'At This Moment' came out. The guy they hired to take his place, he couldn't have promoted the Beatles. He was this terrible promotion man. So that's why 'At This Moment' didn't do what it should have done."
In 1982, Billy Vera did a self-titled solo album, but nothing came of it. And as fast as it was for him to have a Top 40 hit record with a band, it disintegrated just as quickly. Alfa Records closed its Los Angeles office in 1982, reportedly disgruntled with how Americans were running their L.A.-based office, and suddenly, Vera and the band had no record label and no possible record deal in the works
Meanwhile, in 1985, Vera and the Beaters were performing their regular show at a club in Southern California, still struggling to make it back into the spotlight. At the show, he and the band did all their well-known songs, including "At This Moment." In the audience, though, that night was a television producer that was about to turn things around for the band.
He was the producer of an NBC sitcom that just finished its third season on the air, Family Ties, starring Michael J. Fox as Alex Keaton, Meredith Baxter-Birney and Steven Gross as his parents and Justine Bateman and Tina Yothers as his sisters. The show finished fifth in the final Nielsen ratings for the 1984-85 year and it was during the show's down time that the producer was there to take in Vera and his band. It was in that show he heard the song that would be perfect for the burgeoning romance to start the new season between Fox's character and Ellen Reed, a new role for the fourth season played by Pollen.
That was "At This Moment." So one day, Vera, who had kept his music career going on weekends by taking on day jobs as an actor doing bit parts in the movies and television, got a phone call from the producer who inquired about using the song. Vera said he had his publisher make a deal with the producer and the show to use the song. To help aid the cause, Vera went back into a studio with the band to record "snippets" of the song since they were only going to be used in 15-20 second intervals and the fact the original version of "At This Moment" was done in front of a live audience and would have ruined the flow of the scene with the sound of the crowd cheering the band on.
So in the fourth season opener, a two-parter aired on September 25 and October 2, 1985, as the fledgling romance takes off with Alex falling for Ellen with the complication that Ellen is engaged to another guy. And in the backdrop during the shows was Vera's song, "At This Moment." It would be played throughout the season in different episodes.
And with the song's continual play on the show, people began to mail NBC's headquarters asking who the singer of the song was and where they could get a copy of the song. The mail got shipped to Vera, and he was more than overjoyed that the song got this kind of popularity. But there was a problem.
"It was no longer out, so you couldn't buy it," Vera said. "So I got the idea, 'Well, maybe somebody will let me record it again.' I went to all the record companies where I still had some contacts, and nobody was interested at all. And then I was talking to a fellow by the name of Richard Foos, who owned a company called Rhino Records, which was in the business of re-issuing oldies, and I told him what had happened. I said, 'Hey Richard, how many records do you need to sell to break even?' He had low overhead at the time, because it was a small company. He said, 'Oh, about 2,000 copies.' I said, 'Well, I'll tell you what: I'll guarantee 2,000 albums! I can sell them in the clubs if need be. Will you put it out?' He said, 'Sure.'"
So Foos and Rhino made a deal to gain ownership of the two Billy Vera & The Beaters albums made by Alfa Records. All seemed dandy, right? Well, by the time Foos and Rhino had made the acquisition, a bad thing happened, according to Vera.
"We missed the re-runs (of the shows featuring the song)," he said. "That was bad, but at least I had records to sell in the clubs."
Then, as if someone handed Vera another rope to pull himself up from disaster, the producers of Family Ties played the song again in the second episode of the fifth season on October 2, 1986, in which Ellen, ironically, was breaking up with Alex. But this time, it wasn't the re-recorded portions that Vera sang for the show in 1985. This time, Fox went up to a jukebox that had the song in it and played the original live version of the record from 1981 -- and America cried along with Fox as he began to weep openly as the song played.
The phones lit up the NBC switchboard like a Christmas tree after the episode ended. Vera said he had 20 phone messages waiting for him when he got home from a show that night. And NBC called him.
"NBC called us up, and they said, 'My God, we've never had any response like this in the history of the network for a song. The switchboards are lighting up, we're getting letters, telegrams, where can we find this record?'" Vera recounted.
Rhino had the rights to the song, but because they were not your average, run-of-the-mill record label that puts out new songs by new artists, there was no single for "At This Moment." Things changed, though, when local radio stations began asking for "At This Moment" to be played and Rhino, which had done some pressing of the song after acquiring the rights to it, did more work in pressing the 45 single for radio airplay and record buying.
And on the week of November 8, 1986, "At This Moment" made its Hot 100 return at a low No. 96. But in the next three weeks, the song went up the chart like a rocket launcher, going from No. 96 to No. 80 to No. 69 to No. 50. And on the week of December 6, 1986, "At This Moment" became the second Top 40 hit for Billy Vera & The Beaters at No. 38.
Two weeks later, "At This Moment" leaped 10 places to No. 22. And on December 27, 1986, it was camped in the Top 15 at No. 15.
With the holiday week taken off, "At This Moment" continued its climb, moving from No. 15 to No. 9, the band's first Top 10 hit. The next week, it jumped four places to No. 5.
Then on the week of January 24, 1987, 10 years after first writing the song and six years and eight days after recording the song live at the Roxy in L.A., Vera and his band found themselves in the odd situation of being at No. 1 with "At This Moment" as it leaped four notches from No. 5. It would spend two weeks at the top.
Vera would eventually sign at little Macola Records in 1987, recording the album, "The Billy Vera Album." As he set out to record the album, Rhino Records put out the original live album from 1981 with other material on it that Vera and the band recorded that they now owned called "By Request: Billy Vera & The Beaters." The album would peak at No. 17 on the Top 200 chart, easily the group's most successful album.
Vera continued to work with the Beaters into the 21st century even as the possibility of another hit was all but gone. Both he and the band still work and Vera has taken up another aspect of the music business -- historian, writing the liner notes for over 200 re-issued albums by artists ranging from Little Richard to Louis Prima to Sam Cooke to Ray Charles. In 2013, Vera won a Grammy Award for Best Album Notes for the Charles box set "Singular Notes: The Complete ABC Singles."
There's no doubt that Vera has spread his wings, working as a historian, a songwriter and still recording to this day. Still, his biggest musical feat was getting a 10-year-old song he had recorded live four years later and recorded in bit parts four years after that to No. 1 two years later.
It's probably also certain that real-life husband and wife Fox and Pollan can safely go back onto the dance floor again with smiles on their faces.
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