Let’s Hear it for Tom Snow

Third-grader Tom Snow came home from school one day with the devastating news that most parents regard as the sum of their deepest fears. “I told my mom that I wanted to play the trumpet.” When the poor woman had regained her composure, she gently but firmly took Tom by the shoulders and aimed him at the family piano. Some years later the discouraged trumpet enthusiast would team up with Melissa Manchester to compose a song for Barbra Streisand to sing at her wedding to James Brolin. Seriously. Yes, Mrs. Snow had unknowingly started something. Like most momentous forks in the road, this one came with a delicately poetic benediction. Snow remembers it well. “I think her exact words were ‘…you’re not playing trumpet in this house!’ I mean, can you blame her?”

Recalibration in E-flat

Tom Snow is one of those guys. Long known to friends and music biz insiders as a sought-after and prolific songwriter, to the uninitiated (that’s you and me, dear reader) he is a soft-spoken guy with a quiet wit and the sort of “who, me?” facial expression that suggests ongoing mischief. Born and raised in Princeton, New Jersey, Snow finished high school and looked at his options. A self-described “terrible student,” Snow once said in a TED Talk that he was always surrounded by successful academic types with letters after their names. “I have letters after my name, too,” he’d said in his own defense. “A.D.D.” By the end of high school Snow was a gifted pianist and petitioned his parents to let him apply to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. He was readily accepted. 

A feverish fan of pioneering jazz pianist Bill Evans, Snow envisioned exiting Berklee with the chops to take him to the highest echelons of professional musicianship. When he got to the school he found himself surrounded by an intimidating student cohort of annoyingly masterful musicians. It rattled him. “In your first week at Berklee, every student is required to take a proficiency exam in front of the faculty,” Snow says. “So I went in and they asked me to play the e-flat arpeggio, two octaves up and back. I was so nervous my finger got stuck on the headboard of the piano.” 

Snow would soldier on, ultimately adopting Composition as his Berklee major. At graduation a small combo performed an intricate sonata for flugelhorn and piano Snow had composed. That this flugelhorn sonata guy would one day write a song recorded by Tom Jones likely didn’t occur to those present. Life’s funny that way – to characterize the madness as amiably as possible. Throw Art into the mix and the kaleidoscope goes truly haywire. At any rate, shortly after graduation the Berklee grad hopped a plane to – wait for it – Los Angeles. Here comes Pandora’s Box. 

Venice in the Springtime

Once in La La Land, Snow took a job at Viscount records and almost immediately met his catalyst. “One of the other guys working the floor was a songwriter. He had actually made a demo and I was very impressed. This would be August of ‘69.” Co-worker Michael Fondiler – later of the Red Roosters, Western Union, and Spirit – was an aspiring songwriter, too. Snow and he would share an apartment in Venice Beach and start writing together. “In those days,” Snow says, “you could walk around on Venice Boulevard and knock on café doors and say, ‘you mind if we come in and play for you?’ And so we started performing, and then Michael added his younger brother as bass player…” Still later the songwriters would add drums, lead guitar, and dobro. Calling themselves Country, the band would come to the attention of Ahmet Ertegun, legendary founder of Atlantic Records, and record a thoughtful, melodic, beautifully produced album for an Atlantic subsidiary. Like many a gilded effort launched in the tornado in a candy store whirlwind of the early seventies, the album was gorgeous,
self-assured, and invisible. 

Snow quit the band, pivoting to solo artist. The band’s manager followed him, to the chagrin of the label. It should be noted that chagrin has an outsized role in the music business. “Peter Asher took me on, and I made a solo album which no one has ever heard of.” Asher was the tactically adorable, heavily bespectacled redhead in UK’s strumming pop duo Peter and Gordon, whose lovely ‘64 hit “A World Without Love” (a McCartney tune Lennon had churlishly waved away) was a breakout. A few years later the Beatles would anoint Asher A&R man for their startup Apple Records label, in which role he would sign James Taylor as Apple’s first contracted artist, launching the songwriting legend’s career. Which is all to say, by the time he was managing Tom Snow, Peter Asher was a power producer who knew from songwriting. Getting the chronically distracted record-buying public to know from songwriting? That is the hellish game called the music biz. 

Snowstorm in L.A.

Snow’s several solo records garnered little notice and the label dropped him. They’d never been happy with his decision to quit the band and were not necessarily in his corner. It was then he decided to be a songwriter for recording artists. It began as a something of a slog. “I started doing hootenannies at the Troubadour,” Snow says, the club’s Monday night roster a crowded, jostling showcase for the up-and-coming. “I was just kind of going nowhere.” As Snow morosely chiseled away at the goldmine with a teaspoon, immense, unannounced riches befell him anyway – a flood tide of treasure whose dividends continue to pour in. “I became good friends with Richie Hayward, the drummer for Little Feat, and he brought Mary Belle down to a gig. We fell in love right away and got married six months later. That was in ‘72.” 

Around this time, Snow also began gigging at L.A.’s Bla-Bla Café, a club whose name belied its reputation as a thrumming entertainment industry showcase for every species of talent, from Jimmy Webb to David Letterman to The Motels. Between his Troubadour and Bla-Bla gigs (so to speak), Snow came to the attention of Capitol Records’ Al Coury, who signed him to the storied label. It is worth mentioning here that the cover of Snow’s lost ‘72 solo album Uptown Hopeful features the long-haired tunesmith glaring with what looks like open suspicion at the famous “stack of platters” Capitol Records building. At any rate, gears began turning in earnest. 

“Rita Coolidge was hot at that time and Booker T. was producing her. They somehow heard a song called ‘You’ off my first Capitol album. I wasn’t even aware, but she cut it and they put it out as a single.” Coolidge’s “You”has a frank dance arrangement, but the verses skip lithely over the sort of uplifting chord progression that inexplicably soars. When in the second verse a string section whisperingly arrives to throw lamplight on the backbeat, you’re screwed – your previously haughty opinion of “The Seventies” notwithstanding. The song took off. 

“I was invited to the BMI Most Played Songs of the Year gala,” Snow says. “I took advantage of the dinner to introduce myself to Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.” That’s the legendary husband/wife songwriting team that gave us “One Fine Day,” “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” “On Broadway,” and scores of other American pop classics. “I said to Cynthia, ‘I would love to write a song with you.’ She and Barry were signed to ATV Music at the time.” To his amazement, the great Cynthia Weil replied in the affirmative – with a caveat. “She said, ‘Okay; write something with one of the ATV writers and let me hear it.” She liked what she heard. A door opened, and Snow would find himself writing with the day’s most acclaimed lyricists and fellow songwriters. And from here we can go straight to the crazy denouement.

Crazy Denouement

Tom Snow has co-written 15 Top 40 hit singles. Eight of those made it into the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, including the #1 hit “Let’s Hear It for the Boy,” recorded by Deniece Williams for the movie Footloose, and the film’s multi-platinum soundtrack. Snow co-wrote “He’s So Shy” (the Pointer Sisters and, yes, Tom Jones), “Make a Move on Me”(Olivia Newton-John), “After All” (Cher and Peter Cetera), “You Should Hear How He Talks About You” (Melissa Manchester), and many many (many) others. Snow has also co-written songs for Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Randy Crawford, Johnny Mathis, Dionne Warwick, Joe Cocker, Sheena Easton, Diana Ross, Dusty Springfield, and of course Sting. 

Snow was twice nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Song category, for “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” (from Footloose) and “After All” (from Chances Are). Nominated for Grammy and Tony awards, Snow won the Outstanding Main Title Theme Music Emmy for Fame L.A. He also composed for the Broadway musical production of Footloose. This is an extremely partial description of an immense songwriting career and canon, all of which burst from the imagination of a would-be 9-year-old threatening to play the trumpet. 

 “You mentioned awe a little while ago,” Snow says. “The only time I was ever truly awestruck was when a melody would start pouring through me and I couldn’t stop it. And I’d be going, Holy sh*t, hold on! Just…stay on this horse!”