Hilton Has Best Pianist in Town, Bar None

Ever see the movie “The Fabulous Baker Boys,” about two piano-playing brothers who made a living playing bars and hotel lounges because their careers never quite got where they wanted?

Because I don’t drink, I don’t get much chance to hang out in hotel bars. So the “Baker Boys” fit my stereotype of the bar piano player: someone who just never quite made it and had to settle for what he could get. The piano player who can turn out “Feelings” on request without much feeling.

I had to drop that notion, however, when I met Ed Holz.

That came about because a reader had a question I was hard pressed to answer. You claim to know Orange County, he said, yet you’ve never seen Ed Holz play the piano? You’ve never even heard of him? He’s been at the Hilton longer than most marriages.

Nobody likes to admit being out of touch. So I headed to the Anaheim Hilton and Towers to hear Ed Holz play the piano in the Avenue Bar. A lesson learned: It pays to listen to readers.

Holz plays everything, from blues to jazz to the Eagles to John Lennon--and plays it all splendidly. Someone asked for “Lady Madonna” and Holz lit into a 30-minute Beatles medley without ever lifting his fingers from the piano keys.

Frankly, Holz is so good I couldn’t help thinking: Why is he wasting his time in a bar with a tip jar on the piano? Why isn’t this guy playing with a symphony orchestra somewhere?

So when he was finished for the evening, I gingerly tried to ask that. And Holz is so nice he patiently explained:

Been there. Done that.

“I couldn’t make a living playing classical music,” he said. “I found it paid more to play for drunks in bars.” He didn’t mean the Hilton convention crowd, of course. Just bars in general.

Holz, 41, was born in Austria but came to America with his family as a child. When he was 15, however, his parents sent him back to Vienna, to study piano at the Vienna Conservatory.

“They wanted me to become a classical pianist,” he said.

So he later played with the Los Angeles Philharmonic when Zubin Mehta was conducting. He also did a stint with the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra.

But pop music and recording studio work paid better. Holz went on the road with people like Linda Ronstadt, Alice Cooper and Jackson Browne. He also worked a few bars and private parties.

It was at a private party performance that he met Baron Hilton, who loved his piano work. When the Anaheim Hilton opened next to the Anaheim Convention Center, Hilton, who heads his family’s vast hotel empire, asked Holz if he would play there.

That was almost 13 years ago. Holz has been there almost nightly all these years.

Holz thinks he can answer why he’s been able to keep the job so long.

“I’m not an entertainer. I’m ambience,” he explained. “People come into the bar for a drink while they discuss business. They just want me as background. A lot of piano players, their egos just won’t permit that.”

But as the night goes on, and the meetings appear to run their course, Holz loosens up. He can run from Sam Cooke to jazz to the Eagles without missing a beat. The night I was there, one hotel guest brought in his harmonica and played great blues with Holz.

“I’ve learned to have a pretty good pulse on the crowd,” Holz said. “If I’ve got a truckers convention, the music is a lot different than if there’s a computer conference in town.”

Holz still does studio work in Los Angeles about three days a week. And because he’s entertainment director at the hotel now, he can find substitute piano players so he can take a night off now and then. He and his wife, Shari, have four children, including 7-year-old triplets. Sundays you can find him playing at Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa.

What’s in his future? Holz smiled. “I hope to be right here. I meet a lot of great people; I’m doing what I like to do. There’s nothing wrong with barroom work. It’s great.”

Three-Rivers Love: New Supervisor Thomas W. Wilson of Laguna Niguel wound up taking the long route--by way of Pittsburgh--to find love in Orange County.

Wilson, 56, a widower, returned to the Pittsburgh area in 1988 for his 30th high school reunion, where he met Nancy J. Miller. They had been friends in junior high and high school together. They started catching up on each other’s lives, and made a surprise discovery--they both lived in Orange County. Miller lived in Santa Ana and was in the process of a divorce.

“It wasn’t love at first sight,” Wilson said. “But a few months later we did get together. We went to Disneyland. We’ve been together since.”

Miller, a drug and alcohol abuse counselor, and Wilson recently announced that they will wed on Sept. 13.

Super Launch: Sunday should be one of the better Super Bowl football games, Green Bay against New England, two cold-weather teams meeting in the warmth of the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans.

If you happen to be in Mile Square Regional Park in Fountain Valley on Sunday, you might come across what is being billed as a “Super Launch.” Greg Kelly, who runs his own hobby shop in Tustin, will launch a model rocket that’s shaped like a small football. Kelly, a model rocket enthusiast, will be in the hobby area of the park about 9:30 a.m., and he’ll give a small prize to the boy or girl who gets to the football first. It goes about 300 feet in the air.

“We’ll have a blast,” Kelly declares.

Note: The park no longer permits open rocket launching. It only allows approved rocket launchers in a controlled area.

Wrap-Up: Near misses are a part of life, and Ed Holz can laugh about his now. Years ago he was part of a young pop group called Mammoth. But he left after realizing he was simply incompatible with the other band members.

“All they wanted to do was party,” Holz said. “They loved chasing girls more than they loved working on the music.”

Some of the others in the group did mature musically. Two of them, who are brothers, stayed together. Mammoth turned into Van Halen.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling The Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823, by fax at (714) 966-7711 or by e-mail at [email protected].