OH, MOM LOST HER CHERRY -- HA-HA-HA-HA.
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DION McGREGOR DREAMS AGAIN
S 1975 ROLLED into '76 events conspired to scatter the principals of our story across the United States. To begin with, Barr's father died. Barr returned to Indiana for the funeral, and from there drove his father's car out to Los Angeles, never looking back New Yorkward. McGregor remained in New York and hooked up with, in his words, "an Australian hothead" named Lancelot Mulcahy, another composer. McGregor and Mulcahy wrote a musical based on the tempestuous romance between silent film producer Mack Sennet and doomed actress Mabel Normand but, to pick up McGregor's narrative, "our agent was a blabbermouth, and before Lance and I knew it [Jerry Herman's] Mack And Mabel was on Broadway and ours ended up in dinner theater." Mulcahy and McGregor, with John McKellar joining in on the lyrics, wrote a musical called Keystone, a version of which was broadcast on the New Jersey public TV network.In 1977 the remaining tenants of 961 1st Avenue (with only de Rome, among the principals of this story, still resident there) were evicted and the building shuttered. It remains unoccupied to the present day, in spite of being in the midst of a thriving district of Manhattan. In recent years the very address of 961 1st Avenue has been made extinct, its doorway covered over by a ground-floor restaurant. As if to isolate the ghosts of Dion McGregor's somniloquies by shutting them off from living society, there is no longer even an access route to the residential floors of the building.
With his songwriting partner gone west and their career at a standstill, McGregor's time in New York was winding to a close. Barr was repeatedly beckoning him to move to L.A., and in '77 or '78, despite his long-held vow, he finally relented. In Los Angeles he and Barr briefly lived together again, and even recorded a few more dream-tapes for old time's sake. They also tried to revive their songwriting career. In 1978, with Carleton Carpenter doing the book, they wrote a backstage musical called Twofer. A backer's audition was staged, directed by actress Lurene Tuttle, but no investors came aboard. Shirley MacLaine then showed some interest and had Barr out to her house to demo the score, but she never followed up on it and the project was dropped. McGregor and Barr worked again with Carpenter on another musical, SRO, but it was never completed. In 1982, McGregor and Barr wrote some songs for Circles, a screenplay by Sarah Hardy about a character that talks in his sleep (of all crazy things!), but that too never got off the ground.
It was hearing the work of Stephen Sondheim that ended McGregor's songwriting ambitions, such as they were, once and for all. Sondheim, he wrote, "fixed me for lyric-writing -- I knew that no way could I ever be his equal," and that was it for that.
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DION McGREGOR DREAMS AGAIN