This time, Mardones moves into the light

By DEBORA SHAULIS
ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
INGER BENNY MAR-dones may have lost his fame and friends because of some bad habits, but he hasn't lost his passion for music.
Mardones was talking on his cell phone as he drove from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, Calif., to meet with Nobody's X, the band he co-manages. Mardones described the young rock quartet as "David Bowie meets The Cult meets the Psychedelic Furs." He raved about the songwriting skills of the band's 25-year-old lead singer, who performs with two younger brothers and a female lead guitarist.
Then Mardones began to rant.
"I'm going down there to kick their a--," he said, his voice rising. Seems Mardones took a friend in music publishing with him to a rehearsal last week, at which the band's playing was "a little sloppy. ... I've always been like a father figure, a big brother to them. Today they're going to see the side of me that only my band sees."
The tough talk comes with the best of intentions. Mardones has experienced the highs and lows of the music business. He didn't have someone looking out for him the way he's trying to look out for Nobody's X.
"If I had a figure like me in my life, things would have turned out a lot different," Mardones said. "I wouldn't have lost all my money and fans and credibility."
The dark side
Mardones -- whose fame shot sky-high with the success of his 1980 ballad "Into the Night" -- "fell victim to excesses of rock," he said. He started to use cocaine. He was surrounded by enablers.
"I needed one friend who had the [nerve] to stand up and smack me on the head and say 'What the hell are you doing with your life?'" By the time he "woke up," he added, he'd developed an expensive habit and lost many friends and his self-respect. He cleaned up his act because of his son, then 4 weeks old.
That baby is now an 18-year-old man. "He's 6 feet tall, and he's coming to Youngstown with me," Mardones said.
Mardones is fond of Ohio. He was born in Cleveland but grew up in Savage, Md. He and his sister spent every summer and Christmas with their grandparents, who lived in Canton. They always welcomed those trips, because it meant escaping their abusive home life for a while. "Ohio was my safe harbor," he said.
Mardones came to the Mahoning Valley last year to play golf with Money. He sang a few songs one night in Bull & amp; Bear Tavern, the bar that's affiliated with B & amp;B Backstage. Owner Dave Roberts invited Mardones to perform again this year.
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Mardones promises an intense show. "I come from a school of rock 'em until they drop," said the man who was lead singer with The Upsetters after Otis Redding died.
Of course, "Into the Night" will be on the set list. That song "became such a phenomenon because it hit a universal chord," Mardones said. "Everybody has been 16. ... Girls know what it's like to date an 18-, 19-year-old guy and their parents freak out."
And yet, it's a song many people have misunderstood, Mardones noted. He wrote it about his neighbor in Spanish Harlem, a 16-year-old girl whose father was a theater set designer. The man landed a big job on Broadway, fell in love with a chorus girl and left his family. The girl was crushed by her father's departure, Mardones said.
Thus, the theme of the song is abandonment. When Mardones sings "Separated by fools who don't know what love is yet" and "It's like having it all and watching it all fall apart," those are references to the girl's father. The chorus was his way of saying she was too young for him. "Otherwise, I'd show you what real love is cause your father didn't," Mardones says today.
Her life turned out well. She married the son of a hotel builder and lives a very comfortable life, Mardones said.
Diagnosis: rocker
Mardones, on the other hand, still has his ups and downs. Last year, he released a new CD, "A Journey Through Time," that includes a new acoustic version of "Into the Night." He'll sing two songs from that recording -- "Unfinished Symphony" and "Someone to Love" -- here. He hopes the audience will help me him to decide which one to release as his next single.
He was the subject of "Into the Night: The Benny Mardones Story," a 90-minute documentary that also was released in 2002 and has been shown at many film festivals. It's about his rise and fall as a rock star.
Mardones also has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, just like actor Michael J. Fox. His doctor is "going to let me have as much time as I can," he said, but there are no promises on how long his voice will last. To have a new record and tour dates is "such a blessing," Mardones said.
"On stage is the only time I'm 100 percent happy. It's been like that all my life. It's just a two-hour love affair between me and the audience."
shaulis@vindy.com