Doing It His Way : Former Support Sax Man Moves Into Overdrive as Soloist, Hits Coach House in San Juan Tonight

Richard Elliot was waiting backstage last week at the Arsenio Hall show. The hustle and bustle of television production enveloped him--ambient waves of sound from the audience and the band; a jungle of lights, cameras and technical equipment.

It was an environment he had experienced many times before as a professional musician. But this time it was different.

“I sat there waiting,” he said afterward, “knowing that I was going out there as a solo performer, knowing I wasn’t going to play backup for somebody else. I was going to do my own thing.

“I guess it sounds like a cliche when I say I had to pinch myself, but I did. It was very surreal. When you’re used to being a support musician your whole life, it’s really strange to be out there as you, and not as a sax player for somebody else.”

Elliot, who appears at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano tonight, has done a lot of sax playing for a lot of someone elses. Just turned 30, he already has worked with everyone from the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Beach Boys to Tiffany, Rickie Lee Jones and the Yellowjackets.

But his first real visibility outside the backup crowd came during a five-year gig with the hard-driving Tower of Power horn section. By the time he joined the band, the tenor chair had successfully launched the careers of Lennie Pickett, who became a longtime regular in the “Saturday Night Live” orchestra, and Mark Russo of the Yellowjackets.

“The first time I played with the Tower of Power rhythm section--Wow! To stand in front of those guys and just have that sound and energy kick you in the butt--it was intimidating and exhilarating at the same time; kind of like surfing,” he said. “If you don’t stay right on top of the wave, it just swallows you up.”

By the time Elliot left Tower of Power in 1988, he was in the process of recording his third solo album, “The Power of Suggestion.” A colorful mixture of jazz, Latin, rock and R&B; sounds, it also included vocal tracks by Phillip Ingram and Michael Ruff and did well enough on the sales charts to give a vigorous boost to his solo career.

Elliot’s current recording, “Take to the Skies” (Intima), boosts that career into high-speed overdrive. His cover version of Percy Sledge’s hit “When a Man Loves a Woman” has become Elliot’s most-requested number. Almost as successful is Eliot’s sensual setting--sung by Bobby Caldwell--of “In the Name of Love.”

Both the album’s title and the cover photo (a shot of him in the cockpit of a Navy FA-18 fighter plane) testify to the love of flying that has played almost as large a role as music in Elliot’s life. Earning a license while he was still a teen-ager, he piloted Tower of Power to numerous one-nighters, has built his own airplane and, most recently, added a glider rating to his pilot’s license.

“Yeah,” he said, “flying’s a real release for me. And I love gliding. There’s no engine--it’s just like sailing. I like to call it my metabolic lubricant.”

And do the two loves of his life find a way to come together? “Oh, yes,” Elliot said. “There’s a real direct connection. When I’m playing really good I can feel it--the same kind of open, soaring feeling I get from flying. And I think the audience can feel it, too.”

“Audience” is a word that crops up frequently in Elliot’s conversation. The calculated mixture of styles that characterizes his recordings, as well as his live performances, is no accident. He has managed his career and organized his music with a clear and unabashed focus on listener response.

But despite his solid improvisatory skills, his big robust tenor sound and rhythmic intensity, Elliot expressed little interest in the isolated career of a jazzman. Commercialism holds no terrors for him.

“I think that, deep down inside, almost every musician wants to sell records,” he said. “You do something, you want acknowledgement for it. You want to know that ears are hearing it. Sure, there are people who are in it solely for themselves, people who get their pleasure just from playing their instruments, and not from their listeners. But they’re the exceptions to the rule. For me--I love interacting with my audiences.

“And if listening to my music helps some people get into Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, that’s great. Everything helps everything else. There’s nothing wrong with expanding musical horizons. But there’s nothing wrong with simple musical enjoyment, either. You gotta look at the big picture.”

“If it’s sincere,” he said, “I’m all for it; if it’s contrived, the audience picks up on it, anyhow. They’re really very smart about things like that.”

Richard Elliot plays at 8 tonight at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $15. Information: (714) 496-8930.