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Growing up in Plainview, NY, I started playing music the way so many others have over the years: I signed up for band. It was 4th grade, and I wanted to learn the cello but — to my great disappointment — was assigned the flute instead. My parents rented one, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. After a month of frustration, the band director sent me home with a note to my parents: “Please return the flute to the music store. I am dropping Stacy from the band program, as he exhibits no musical ability whatsoever.”
A few months later, my father picked up an old upright piano which he put in the basement. When my 14-year-old cousin, a classical piano prodigy, came to visit, he sat down and started playing Chopin. I was enthralled. Seeing my interest, he said, “Let’s see if I can teach you something.” Using a Schaum method book, we went through the first ten weeks of lessons in an hour, and I was hooked. So began a much more productive relationship than the one I had with the flute (not to mention a deep mistrust of academic music programs).
By 15, I was in Local 802 of the AF of M, playing clubs on Long Island. At 19, I started writing music for a small studio in Stamford, CT, quitting college soon after to focus on composing. I landed my first national TV theme at 24, for The Richard Simmons Show. The show became a hit, and it was time for me to switch coasts and make the big move to Los Angeles.
In LA, I scored more daytime TV themes and eventually some prime-time shows. But I couldn’t get an agent. Finally, I scored a UCLA graduate film called Chicken Thing. It was a huge success, winning 30 awards around the world. The director got picked up by CAA, and I signed with Triad Artists.
Along the way, I met this actor named Patrick Swayze. It turned out we lived around the block from each other, and we became friends. He had an idea for a song and asked if I would work on it with him. That idea became “She’s Like The Wind,” which ended up being licensed for a little low-budget film called Dirty Dancing. ....
