Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Dan Beck

Transcript

Dan Beck · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Set podcast.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Dan Beck, who's got a new book.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: You've got Michael, Dan, explain the title please.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: It came from my days at Epic Records. I was
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: a senior product manager there and one day Dave Glue,
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: who was chairman of Epic, walked in my doorway and
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: I was on the phone. I put the phone down
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: and Dave said, You've got Michael and walked away. And
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: that meant I was now Michael's product manager. And it
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: was about eight weeks in front of the Dangerous album
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: and I had nothing. I had no files, no background,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: and it was a time to scramble.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, who had Michael Jackson before you?
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Larry Stecil had been Mike product manager from the days
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: of Off the Wall, and he had moved to International
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: and then subsequently got an offer from another company and
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: left after that.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: O case, from a distance, it would seem that being
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: the product manager from Michael Jackson would be an honor,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: but it doesn't quite come across that way in the book.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: So give us an explanation.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Well, it was a double edged sword from the beginning.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Number one, when had happened. My first thought was, well,
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: I've earned this. You know, I had been a product
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: manager at that point for about twelve years. It had
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: handled a lot of hit acts, so this was the ultimate.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: So what was the first thing you had to do?
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Number One, just immediately did the check around. You know,
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: it's a checked with each department what was going on,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: where they were with the campaign. And also to reach
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: out to Michael's management, which was Sandy Gallon and Jim
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Morey and so which concerned me a little bit because
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: I didn't have a relationship with either Jim or Sandy,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: and you know, I knew Sandy had a very high
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: profile and my initial thought was, does he want to
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: speak to a product manager? You know, he wants to
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: deal with Walter Yetnikov and Dave Blue, you know. And
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: so I was concerned because a lot of times, and
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: particularly in those days, you know, getting things done took
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: extra time. You know, it's the manufacturing process, you know,
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: everything took time. And one of the first things I
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: discovered speaking to Nancy Donald who Nancy had done all
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: of Michael's design work for her for his packaging. And
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: when I spoke to Nancy, she said, I really don't
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: have any photos. And I have to say that probably
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: was kind of visionary on Michael's part, kind of leading
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: up to that time. You know, an artist would come
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: in and we'd take them to the art department, to
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: the album design department, and they would say, Okay, we're
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: going to line up a photographer, blah blah blah. They
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: just kind of took over. But in Michael's case, he
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: really started acquiring photos, and he had photographers on staff
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: at times or on retainer, and so he had all
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: the photos. And so my concern was am I going
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: to be able to get photos for the second single?
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: You know? Because what would happen is you go into
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: the label meeting on Wednesday, and you know, Tuesday night
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: was the promotion departments. You know the weekly report card. Yeah,
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: the report card happened every Tuesday night, So if things
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: were going south, all of a sudden, there was a
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: scramble let's get the next single, you know, and that
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: meant you better have the photos, you better, you know.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: And in Michael's case also there was a lot of
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: promise to tip sheets and magazines to get covers, you know,
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: and magazine covers and tip sheet covers and the tip
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: sheets and magazines were all, yeah, yeah, we'll give Michael
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: the cover until you didn't have an exclusive shot for them. So,
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: you know, we were kind of in this catch twenty two.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: So fortunately Sandy turned me over to Evvy, who was
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Michael's assistant, and I explained by circumstance to Evvy and
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: why the reasons why, you know, and she totally got it,
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: and you know, I knew I had somebody in house
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: who could could explain it to Michael, you know, and
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: then we started on a role. You know, it's every
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: other artist I'd worked with, there were either photos available
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: in the Sony archives or an art director would put
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: together a shoot, you know. But putting together shoots was
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: a challenge with all the superstars because you were You're
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: trying to get high end photographers involved, and they had
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: a schedule as demanding as the artists.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, you're a product manager in this particular case. Larry
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Stecil was the product manager before. Just in general, do
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: you ever take over an act and the management team
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: whoever you're dealing with, says, either that's not the way
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: we've done it, or this is new, or is it?
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Pretty much everybody does it the same way.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Now, you know, I think there's a lot of feelings
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: that way, Bob. In this case, Michael's management had changed also,
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: and Frank de Leo had been the manager up till
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: this point. So Sandy and Jim were new to Michael
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: and I was new. So you know, I'm trying to understand.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: You know, I knew Frank very very well. We had
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: been friends. We were both from the Pittsburgh area. You know,
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: we both said Crick and Creek instead of Creek, and
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: we both had worked in Nashville at the same time.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: He was at Monument and I was at Columbia Epic,
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: and we were friends down there. I'd go over to
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: his apartment and so. And Frank, of course had delivered
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: all the singles on Thriller, and that's why Michael had
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: chosen him as the wanted him to be his manager.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: And you know, for Larry, Larry had a very close
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: relationship with Frank, and you know, all of us at
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: the label felt like, wow, we're in great hands. We're
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: one voice away from Michael and we're with Took. He
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: could you know, Frank was called Tookie it and Took.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: He knew our situation. So he he understood our challenges,
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: so we knew we had somebody who can help us
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: get through that. I didn't know that with Sandy, you know,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: and so it was all kind of new and tried
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: to figure it out from the get go.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, you lawed Frank in the book. You know, Michael
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: predicted one hundred million sales on Dangerous. Do you think
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: if Frank had still been the manager, A there would
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: have been more sales? Or B was his relationship with
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Michael such that he might have managed him to a
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: better result?
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: How would have affected sales? You know, I'm not sure
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: I have that crystal ball, but I do believe that
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: there were probably some early decisions made that I think
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: Frank could have started the conversation sooner with Michael. Sandy
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: was more hands off, let Michael do what Michael wants
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: to do. Frank was a big brother, you know, Frank. Frank,
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Frank would tell my Michael, I don't like that idea,
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: you know, And Michael liked that. I mean, you know,
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: he really he really responded to that. And you know,
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: he liked that street sense that Frank brought to the table,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: you know. And uh, and of course Frank, you know
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: had dealt with all the indies and had that relationship,
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: but I think there might have been some maybe not
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: so much on Dangerous, but later on with history, I
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: think Frank might have been able to hold off some
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: of Michael's impulses that I felt were where Michael maybe
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: didn't understand how the marketplace was going to react, how
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: the media was going to react.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, you've worked with many acts in your career. The
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: bigger you are, the more you're in the bubble. Having
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: said that, there's some acts that are students of the game.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Ultimately you create or he starts a personal relationship with you,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: he's calling you at home, etc. To what degree was Michael,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: let's not talk about his personal life, we're talking about business.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: To what degree was he isolated from the game being
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: so successful, or to what degree did he have his
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: finger on the pulse? And to what degree could he
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: be swayed if he was wrong.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: That's a great question at a great area here, Bob,
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: that I've thought about so often over the time. One
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: of the things that I found with Michael is that,
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: you know, number one, he was competitive, He's enthusiastic, he
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: was you know, he wanted to jump in with big ideas,
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: and sometimes he didn't understand the nuances, you know, and
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: you know, because he was a big thinker, and so
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: he if he got an idea, you know, if he
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: had to be at his bonnet. It was very hard
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: to convince him, you know, because he was so excited
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: about the idea. And if you could get to him
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: in front and discuss an idea as it came up,
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: you could sway him, you know, you could. He would
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: understand your logic, you know, and but you know, he
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: would get excited about something and then really, you know,
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: get stubborn about it. You know.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, but you come on late with Dangerous. The book
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: focuses to a great degree on history. Let's start with Dangerous.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: So were you always playing catch up ball? But did
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: you think that you ultimately got a handle on it?
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: There was enough time.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: H Yeah, you know we did get a handle on it,
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: at least, you know, in my look at it. You know,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: the first video was Larry had already set that up
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: and I was it Singleton shot the really up and
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: coming black director and you know they had Magic Johnson
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: did it and I'm on and it was you know,
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: it was just the star studded and which I was
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: so thankful that it was locked in, and you know,
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: from there, obviously the single really happened, and that was
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Remember the Time, and of course Black or White was
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: actually before that. They were it was bang bang with those.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: So we had these two tremendous videos out there. I
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: got involved with Remember the Time, just really basically buttoning
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: it up, you know, making sure the payments were made.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: We had the master blah blah blah. And there was
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: a question at the end about there was a kiss
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: at the end with them on and so I brought
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: the video into the company and you know, we get
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: the promotion department in, and my joke with the promotion
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: department is is, you know, did you bring your wig
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: and black rogues because they came in, you know, and
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: we're judging everything, and it's basically their own protection. You know.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: It's like, hey, if we don't have a great video,
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: we're going to have trouble with radio. You know. So anyway,
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: everybody started nitpicking this kiss at the end. So I
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: went back to the production company and I said, you know,
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: I just don't feel like it, you know, connects solidly.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: So they played around with it state back and then
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: I played it again for you know that half dozen
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: people in the company, you know that, and you know,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: mostly promotion people, and everybody's still kind of whining about it.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: So then I took it. I knew the production company
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: was like over it. It's like, you know, they're to
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: say to me, what are you crazy, It's like, And
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: so I took it into an edit bay and I
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: was like shaving, you know, one thirtieth of a second
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: off to try to make it, give it more energy
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: or whatever. And you know, finally the promotion department just
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: I guess we wore them out and the clock was ticking.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: We needed to get this out there. And of course
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: it was never an issue. You know, but what do
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: we do at record companies. We overthink these things, you.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Know, well, needless to say, it's hard to get any
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: attention today, never mind these micro decisions. You look back
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: at this era in the nineties, do you say that
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: that's what it took or we took ourselves way too seriously?
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think And again moving forward, because dangerous, we
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: had lots of radio success, we had lots of video success,
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: and you know, as you mentioned before, you know, did
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: we get a handle on it, and I think we did,
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: you know, it was we did in the Closet, which
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: that video was just awesome. Michael looked so virile, you know,
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: it was just a great, great video. And then we
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: did Jam with Michael Jordan, and you know, some of
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: the people of the company actually came to me. It
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: was my idea to try to get Michael Jordan. And
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: you know, it didn't take a genius to think of
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: that idea. The song was called Jam and Michael Jordan's
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: the biggest star on the planet at the time, and
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: so but some of the people were concerned to say, oh,
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: you know, Mychael Jackson could never stand up to Michael
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Jordan and a video. And you know, my thought was,
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: you know, Michael Jackson's he's an athlete too, it's just
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: his sport is dance and choreography. And I thought, by
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: the nature of the two of them having fun with
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: each other about teaching each other there there's super talent,
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: that it would be fun. And as it turned out,
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: it was so you know, we were coming into a
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: year on in that marketing campaign and then we hit
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: the super Bowl, and we hit Oprah, and we hit
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: the Grammys, and the American Music Awards and that nineteen
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: ninety three, in that January February, we were just rocking,
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: you know. And to me, the great thing was one
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: of the first things that I really started to connect
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: with Michael was to say, you know, focus on the music.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: Don't pay any attention to the rest of this stuff,
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: you know, because he was beginning to respond to the
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: you know, the skin color issues and the plastic surgery
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: and the elephant man and all the you know, all
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: the circus stuff, and I said, you know, we got
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: to get back to the music. And and you know,
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: I think essentially everybody felt that way. We'd also remixed
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: everything to bring it into like the dance world. We
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: went back to the previous albums and we did all
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: these remixes on everything basically for the dance floor, and
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: it re established Michael and the clubs, and so we
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: were we were flying at you know, after the super
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Bowl and after the award shows and after Oprah, and
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: you know, I thought, wow, you know, we've come a
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: long way. And it got harder with history.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's back up. How did you become a product manager?
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Well, kind of a long story, like so many people
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: of that time, I played in local bands and I
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: really got really leaning toward songwriting. And this is in
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: the late sixties and nineteen seventy seventy one, and I
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: came to New York a couple of times pitching songs,
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: you know, re building and sixteen fifteen.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Whoh whoa, wha, wha, whoah, You're you're in Pittsburgh in
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seventy one where you living?
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: And nineteen well. I graduated from college in seventy two
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: at Pittsburgh Robert Morris College, and I had been to
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Nashville this summer before Chris Christopher said I'd started suddenly
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: having this success, and I thought, wow, I can't stain
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: myself going to New York. I could last about two
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: days on my budget. And I went down to Nashville
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: for the summer between my junior and senior year, and
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: I've met a bunch of people that had kind of
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: the same idea as me, and I went back after
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: I graduated in seventy two, and then ended up at
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Record World Magazine writing a country special puff pieces you
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: know for the annual you know advertorial, and the editor
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: left the regional editor, Southeastern editor and I got the job.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: And then a year later, Columbia Epic decided to start
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: a publicity department in Nashville and they hired me and
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: we did that.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, I want to go back. Okay, you're
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: playing in bands? Was the inspiration seeing the Beatles on?
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Ed Sullivan?
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, just like so many other people, you know,
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: the Bob Really interesting thing here. My brother was seven
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: and a half years older than me, and he was
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: kind of, you know, a western Pennsylvania fonds and he
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: was an Elvis guy and people called him Elvis, and
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: you know, it's your big brother. You look up to him,
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: and you know, he had all the moves. He was
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: into James Dean and Dion and all, you know, all
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: the street guys. You know. So I grew up from
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: probably the age of six. I knew all the Elvis
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: lyrics and all that stuff. And when the Beatles came on,
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: Ed Sullivan, it was like, there's my Elvis. You know,
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: I had my own, you know, and uh, you know,
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: my brother was bigger than life in our town, and
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: you know, it was like, well what do I have?
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: You know, well, I got the Beatles like everybody else,
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, when the Beatles hit, were you already taking music
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: lessons or do they start with the Beatles.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: I had taken piano lessons a couple of years earlier,
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: you know, more straight standard piano lessons, and after the
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Beatles when I was in tenth grade, of us have
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: been fourteen, so it's probably sixty four, you know. And
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: there was a band that called me up and said, hey,
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: we hear you played the piano. You know, want to
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: be in our band? And I was really excited. I
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: went to my parents and you know, I bought this
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: little keyboard. I begged my parents to buy it and
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: went to practice and you know, a few practices, and
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: then I went to a skating rink with them to
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: play a gig and they stopped calling me. And believe me, Bob,
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: I thought my life was over. You know. It's the
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: number one I was doing. I wasn't doing well in
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: ninth grade with academics. And I went to the guidance
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: counselor and called me in and said, Dan, you're coasting
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: and the only way to coast is downhill. And I thought,
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: I'm not. I didn't answer them, I'm just stunned, and
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: I walked out of there thinking I'm not coasting, I'm floundering.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: You know, I don't know where I'm at, you know.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: So that summer I just started playing pool all the time,
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: and up with this dirty old pool haul upstairs over
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: a restaurant in my hometown, and there was another band
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: had started and I saw a picture of the paper
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: of that They're called the Invaders, and it just brought
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: the knife back to my chest. You know, Oh my god,
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: I wish this would have worked out. So I'm up
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: there playing pool one Saturday afternoon. I'm just shooting around
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: by myself, and two of the guys whom the band
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: walked in and they just stood around and watched me
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: play for like fifteen minutes, didn't say anything, and finally
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: they said, hey, you know, would you like to be
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: in a band again? And I gave him a long
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: silence and I said I'm not very good and they
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: laughed and they said, yeah, we know that. But the
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: leader of the group, who was in his twenties and
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: married his wife, played the piano and they said, hey,
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: burnus can help you. So anyway, we practiced all week
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: and then we went to.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Wait, what was the name you can use Burnus Burness, Yes, yes,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: oh Burnus being the wife.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's the waste stage. Yeah. So we practiced that week,
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: you know, every night, and I played with them that
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Friday night in at the tin nest of Volunteer Fire
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Department and we just it just worked and we ended
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: up playing together for three years. We just had a
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: ball jack who was the leader of the group, who
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: was older. You know, we wanted to play high school,
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: you know, after the football game, he had his booked
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: at bars and we were all like fifteen, sixteen years
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: old and we're playing at all these bars, but we
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: were making money. And then at that time, Bob, the
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: drinking age at Pennsylvania was twenty one, but it was
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: eighteen in New York State, and we lived about forty
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: miles from the New York border. So we started playing
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: this club called Melody in in Bustin, New York, just
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: near Jamestown. And it was like, you know, thirty feet
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: across the New York state line in the middle of nowhere,
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: and the Pennsylvania crowds would come up there. And we
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: started playing on Sunday nights. Then we added Tuesday nights,
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: and then we were playing Thursday nights and then it
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: was so we just played all these bars for like
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: three years. And then us three young guys, none of
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: us actually drank at that time or anything, but we
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: had a ball playing and you know, we had a
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: great crowds and you know, we were playing vfw's and
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: you know, Legion halls and things like that, and it
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: was great. And then when I went to college, Bill Thomas,
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: who was the drummer who had become a dear friend,
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: he thought it was over, so he joined the army
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: and I was like, oh, it's going to come home
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: every weekend. And but that ended it. And then Gary Deemer,
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: who was the guitar player, and I started writing songs
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: together and then we put together various formats of bands
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: for a couple of years. And when I went to Nashville,
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: I wanted the last band to come with me, and
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: but you know, they all had other commitments college. Gary
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: worked in the steel mills, and you know, it was
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: like he had a great job. He had a brand
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: new car, and leaving that, you know, his dad had
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: worked in the steel mills for forty years or thirty years,
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: and it was a tough thing to leave. But you know,
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: of course, my hair brained idea of getting in the
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: music business didn't sound too good.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, you go to Nashville and the goal is to
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: sell your songs.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: Actually, and initially the number one I had a business
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: background in college and business management. So I thought, you know,
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: I thought I didn't have a lot of confidence in
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: my musical ability. I had a lot of confidence in
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: my lyric writing. And that's what I really wanted to do,
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: was to co write. And so but I thought, the
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: only way I'm going to be become a writer is
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: if I use my business background. I get in the business,
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: you know, and can establish myself and then find some partners,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: you know. And so that's what I went down to do.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: And that first summer I met a couple of guys
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: that had this similar ideas as me, and then they
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: were calling me my senior year, say you got to
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: go back here when you graduate.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: So I went back the way before you go back, ye,
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: go to Nashville. Do you have any money in your pocket?
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: Do you know anybody? I mean, what do you do?
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: You show up?
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: And what I did not know one soul I bought
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: a one way ticket on Eastern Airline and it was
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: thirty four dollars. I had one hundred dollars. I sold
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: my keyboard and I had one hundred dollars and I
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: sold one of my keyboards. I had two at the time,
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: and so I had sixty six dollars when I got there,
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: and I was going to take the bus into Nashville,
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: but I was so excited I jumped in a cab.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: I spent like ten bucks that I shouldn't have spent
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: to get in the city, and then I just walked
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: around and I went up by Vanderbilt University and there
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: were a lot of kids packing up. They just finished
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: the semester, and I said, you know, where did like
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: college people and music people hang out? You know. They
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: were all kind of looking at me like, I don't think.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: I don't think those two meet anywhere, you know. But actually,
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: right between Vanderbilt and Music Row was this kind of
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: west end area that actually was kind of a young
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: songwriter hippie place, you know. So one kid's told me
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: about this bar, which I forget the name of right now.
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: But I went over there and it was like an
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: old house or something that there were like little shops, headshops,
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: and then you got to the back and there were
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: pictic tables at a dirt.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Floor and David allen Coe was playing, and so I
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: sat down across from this Asian guy and it was
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: very loud in there, and I got the idea that
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: he was a songwriter, and he got the idea I was.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: So we said, hey, let's go across the street and
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: get a cup of coffee. We went over and met
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: and he, you know, and I he said, hey, you know,
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: you want to hear some of my songs. And so
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: so I went back to his place. In the meantime,
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking, am I going to get staffed right right?
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: You know? And as it turned out, this guy, Willie
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: Fong Young was just an amazing songwriter. I was just
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: blown away listening to his stuff. And so after after listening,
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: he said, hey, you know, I know you're new in town.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: He had a writer's draw deal with Shelby Singleton, which
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Shelby owned Sun Records at that time and had genc
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: Riley Harper Velipta and so anyway, so you know, Willy said, hey,
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: look I just got this apartment. You've got the couch
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: for fifty bucks a month, and so and we agreed
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: we were not gonna bother each other about our own
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: passion pursuits as songwriters, you know. And but within a
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: couple of weeks, Wait, we're best buddies. We just had
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: a great todd together. We met a couple of other
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: guys and you know, floated around that West End area
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: and we had a great time. And so I came.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Back that wait, wait, what were you doing for money?
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Well? I got a job at a place called the House,
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: which was like this old I would say, uh, aaliana building,
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: like brick building. It was like an old you know,
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: probably kind of a well to do house at one time.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: And they they had high end Hamburgers, you know. And
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: I got a job washing dishes there and then uh
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: then they they ended up liking man. They sent me
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: down to be the bus boy in the basement where
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: there was a piano bar, and people like Bobby had
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: with you know, Sonny would come in, and Sid and
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: he was from Nashville and the Ragent Cage and what
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: was his name? He would come in, all these characters.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: And so anyway, Willie and I had a great summer
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: hanging out together.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, what did your parents say about all this?
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: My father didn't say anything. My father was like, you know,
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: got to do what you got to do. You know,
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: it's a he did probably didn't think much of the
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: idea of the music business being the right way to go.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: I know, my mother was worried about me. Basically, she said, oh,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: you know, you're going to get taken advantage of. You know,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: it's you know, that's a you know, scary business. And
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: and but it's interesting because my mother, when I was
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: young younger, would always say, you know, she was talking
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: to me or friends of hers or an aunt or whatever,
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: and she said and she turned to me and say, well,
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: when you leave. And I was like, why am I leaving?
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: But I think my mother knew that I was destined
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: to go someplace. You know that our small town, you know,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: seventy five percent of the people there worked in the
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: steel mills, and you know, and so you know, if
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: you weren't a steel worker, which they made great money,
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: and you know, everybody had two cars and you know,
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: only one person worked and the quality of life in
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: our town was fantastic. But you know, there really kind
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: of wasn't anything there for me, you know, And ultimately
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: that's I went to Nashville, you know.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, a couple questions. What did your father do for
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: a living?
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: My father ran a mail order house and Bob they
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: sold wallpaper and they had it's called Robinson's wall covering.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: Actually their catalogs are collector's items down. But my father
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: started working there when he was like twenty years old,
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: before World War Two, and he ended up to be
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: the foreman of the warehouse, you know, where all the
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: stock was stored, where they actually put the orders out,
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: you know. And so he did that and then he
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: did roofing on the side. He takes some of his
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: guys and say, hey, I got a job for us
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: this weekend, you know, And that was where he made
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: some extra money, you know, for the family.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're in this period around nineteen seventy. Although Dylan
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: people can't see my ear quotes Win Country in nineteen
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: sixty nine with Nashville Skyline. There was a pretty big
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: division between rock and country at that point. Absolutely, And
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: were you a country fan? Could you understand that?
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: Well? You know, actually no, you know, I mean I
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: listened to you know, and I know some of some
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: of the people you've spoken to had this similar experience.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: You know, at night, I had transistor radio on and
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: in western Pennsylvania, and I could hear, you know, I
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: could hear WBC in Boston, and I could hear c
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: KLW in Chicago and Detroit and all these great DJs
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: and you know who told stories that's made songs just
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: sound like so romantic. And but you know what was
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: going on then at radio, at Top forty radio, you know,
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: was you know, you would hear Johnny Cash boy named
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: Sue played next to cream and then there'd be a
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: motown song, you know, And so so I had to
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: kind of an eclectic understanding. When I went to college
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: at Pittsburgh, Whammo was Big Porky Chadwick, the Daddyo on
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: the radio who was a white guy who played black music.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: And so I kind of got a, you know, a
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: vibe for that. But I really wasn't in the country
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: until the summer of seventy two when I went back
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: to Nashville. I went back there and I got a
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: job at opry Land parking cars.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: After wait, just so I understand we're in this story
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: to go to New York to try to sell your songs.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: That I was like nineteen nineteen twenty. I was probably
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: in my freshman sophomore year of college.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, so how'd you get to New York?
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: We drove Gary, my writing partner, bandmate, He and I
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: would drive up there. And it was my first second
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: year of college, and I was in a fraternity and
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: two of the guys were from Ridgewood, New Jersey, and
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: so we stayed in their parents' basement when we've been out.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: And but we you.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Know, you went up once for more than once.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: We went up twice.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: And okay, so you go there, you don't know anybody, right,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: So you say you went to the real building and
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: knocked on doors.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Well, essentially we did, but I wrote letters. I wrote
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: letters in front to Kamasutra and you know all these
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: little labels of their publishing companies, you know. And so
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: we had some meetings set up and then once we
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: were in the building, we'd see another publishing company. We
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: knock on the door, and usually it was pretty casual.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Is generally a couple of songwriters said there, who were
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: you know manning the office too, and so the yeah,
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: come on in, you know, And basically what we got was, ah, hey,
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: these songs are pretty good. You know why don't you
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: come back when you have some more? And when we
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: went back the next time, we heard the same thing,
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: and it was like, you know, we're dead in the
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: water here, you know. So so that's when Nashville struck
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: me because of Christofferson, and I thought, wait a minute.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: Number one. He was such a poet, and you know,
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: this guy was flying helicopters for the military and he
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: was a Rhodes scholar, and I thought, God, there must
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: be something different going on down to Nashville. We could
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: be different going down there. So that was my whole fantasy.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: We you know, take the rock band down there, and
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: you know, and I went by myself.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you graduate now of parking cars at over Land.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, So you know, music Row was pretty small at
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: the time. You know. I met a bunch of children
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: of country stars, Charlie Walker's two daughters and Webb Pearce's
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: daughter Debbie, and Felice and Boodlo' Bryant who wrote all
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: the Everly Brothers' hits, their two sons, Del and Dane Bryant,
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: and you know, they're just hanging out and very friendly
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: and so got to know some people that way, you know.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: But when I went back. Willie had another roommate, so
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: I moved in and the three of us were splitting.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: It was a one bedroom with a fold out couch
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: in the living room and another just regular couch, and
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: we rotated. You've got the bedroom every three weeks. And anyway,
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: our other roommate was Kinky Friedman.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: You're a kidding wow.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: And Kinky had just come back from the Peace Corps.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: He was at Borneo in the Peace Corps and just
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: had come back. And you know, his his parents ran
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: a Jewish kids camp in Kerrville, Texas. And Kinky the
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: way he started writing songs was for the kids. He
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: was a counselor, so he started writing silly songs for
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: the kids, and then he got more devious and started
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: to write you know. Basically, Kinky's thing was he was
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: an equal up employer of ways to insult you. And
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: so we had a absolute ball three of us, and
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: Kinky got signed. At that time, David Wilkes was at
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: vander Our Records signed him to the Solomon Brothers who
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: owned Vanguard, and Jim Glazer at the Glazier Brothers Studios
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: was producing. So we were hanging out at Glazier brothers,
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: you know, for the next couple of years. So we
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: were all all of a sudden we were the cool
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: street people, mostly thanks to Kinky, you know, but they
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: were all these characters down there. It was a guy
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: jumping Jack Michaels, who was like did Shakespearean readings of
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Jerry Lee Lewis songs. You know, It's like he douced
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: soliloquies of the lyrics, and a lot of a lot
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: of crazy street people, some of them who were actually
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: they called themselves songwriters, but they were basically were homeless.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: And you know, everybody in nash was it was like
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: La with actors. You know, everybody in La was supposedly
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: an actor. Well, in Nashville, everybody was a songwriter.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: So whatever happened to the third roommate.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: To Willie, Willie had this writing deal and then he
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: had he had a mentor who brought him up. Willie
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: was from Arkansas and he was playing in a soul
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: band in Memphis. He's playing horn in a soul band,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: and this guy, Fred Birch, brought him up to Nashville.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: Fred wrote, he made a was it he made a
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: woman out of me? Which was a Bobby Jetry hit.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: He wrote Tragedy for Thomas Wayne, which is like a
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: nineteen fifty nine like you know, death pop song. You know,
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: there was an arrow where there were a whole bunch
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: of those songs where people were dieded carbrecks and things.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: And then he wrote the John Kennedy It was kind
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: of an informal campaign song that I think it was
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: called the Ballad of the of p T one O nine.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: But let's get back to Willie. What happened to Willie?
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so Willy ended up he had he and Fred
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: started writing a musical and they ended up doing the
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: show at Lemma and Experimental Theater in New York, and
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: then that show got picked up and they did it
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: at the Kennedy Center, and Willie was on his way.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's just a great, great writer. And Willie
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: never pitched his songs. I it used to kill me
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: that he'd have these these great pop songs you know
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: that that I thought, oh my god, will you gotta
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: you gotta pitch that, and he just couldn't do it.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: You know, they were his chill. He just he just
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: didn't want to hear him criticized. I guess, you know,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: then he and Fred wrote another show that ended up
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: at Radcliffe in Workshop, and Norman Lear backed that show
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: and they opened it off Broadway in New York and
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: it closed opening night, and it just Fred and Willie
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: were just so negatively floored by that. It took Willie
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: at least a year to get over that. You know.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, So let's get back to you. How do you
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: get from Oprily into Record World?
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: So this woman at ASCAP. I was getting my male
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: at ASCAP because I was I was an associate member.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: I never had a song out, but they were. You know. Again,
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: it was such a small town then, and I would
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: get my mail at ASCAP and there's this Weben I
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: forget her maiden name, Karen Conrad. Her husband actually ended
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: up to be a very very big publisher in Nashville.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: And Karen I would stop in and you know, and
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: I'd asked her if she'd heard of anything, any jobs
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: or whatever, and she said, Hey, I think Record World
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: is looking for somebody to write the Country advertorial that
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: will come out in October. This is like July. And
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: she said, I don't think they're paying anything. Well, I
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: went down. I met Chuck Nice, who was the Southeastern
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: editor he said, I could buy you cigarettes and hamburgers,
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: but I can't pay you. And he said, what, I
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: need somebody to help me write puff pieces on all
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: the companies in Nashville and then we do this big advertorial.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: Then they would sell them ads. You know. Oh, we
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: got a nice story about you buy an ad, you know,
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: and that was to come out Country Music Week CMA
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: Week in October. So I quit my job and took
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: the free job and started writing. And over the course
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: of the next three months, I met every office general
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: manager in Nashville, record labels, publishers, everybody, and I was
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: writing positive pieces about them, you know. And that's how
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: I really started learning about country music and then listening
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: to it. And Chuck Nice, who was the Southeastern editor,
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: he reviewed all the country records every week, so I
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: would sit in and listen while he reviewed all the records.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: So one little side story, as about two weeks before
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: I went to Record World, I got an interview with
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: the general manager of RCA. He was he was chet
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: Atkins business guy ran the office. So I got a
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: meeting with him and I went in to meet him
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: and got in his office. At his office was like
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: sixty foot long. You know, he had a putting green
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: and he was you know, he was decked out in
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: the white shoes and you know, three different types of plaid,
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: you know, his shirt and his jacket, his pants and
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: the whole thing. And so I gave him my elevator pitch.
• 46:37
  Speaker 5: And he listened and he sat there and he said, well,
• 46:42
  Speaker 5: the best advice I could give you is you should
• 46:44
  Speaker 5: go back to Pennsylvania.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: That's fantastic.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: Oh I love it, So Bob, listen to this. So
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: what happened was, now I'm at Record World writing these stories,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: you know, and I've been doing it for you know,
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: six weeks or eight weeks or whatever, and check us now,
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: trusting me with bigger and bigger stories. You know, it's like, oh, okay, hey,
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: you're doing good. So I walk in one day and
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: he said, hey, I have an appointment for you at
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: eleven o'clock with this guy at RCA. And that's the guy.
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: So I go over. When I walked in his office,
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: he almost died. It's like he knew he and told
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: me to go back to Pennsylvania and here I am
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: to write the Record World story about their year. So
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: I never said a word. He never mentioned it. It was,
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: you know that the air was thick, and I took
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: down all the information and wrote a nice story. But
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: it was like, yes, I'm in I'm in this business.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: You know. It's except when the addition came out that
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: that week in October, that was it for me. There
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: was nothing for me to do a record world after that.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: So that Monday, I went over to Monday morning, I
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: went over to the office. They had given me tickets,
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: they gave me. They got me a tuxedo to go
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: to some of the shows, you know, they rented it
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: for me. And so that Monday morning I went over
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: to the office and I'm just going to pick up
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: my stuff, and I wanted to say thank you to
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: There were two women in the office. One was handled
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: the art for the ads and the other one ran
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: the country charts and Chuck. But Chuck was gone. Chuck
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: had taken a job with Jack Clement and to run
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: his publishing company. So anyway, I went. John started it
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: was the vice president of charge of the office. He
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: sold the ads in the whole thing. So I waited
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: around for John to committee didn't commit toil like noon
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: that day and I went in and said, you know, John,
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: I just want to thank you for the opportunity. And
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: you know, I said, I just came in to get
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: my stuff and the whole thing, and he said, what
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: are you talking about? And I said, what do you mean?
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: He said, you're the Southeastern editor. And that's how I
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: found out I had a job, you know. So I
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: went back. I called Chuck and I said, Chuck you know,
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: and Chuck told me, he said, ask him for one
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifteen dollars a week. He said, that way,
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: you'll walk away after taxes with a hundred and I
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: the next week, I'm doing the country record review, said
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: all the promotion guys, So the labels are coming in
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: to see me.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: So how long do you do that before you get
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: a label? Gig?
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: I was there like fourteen months. I went down to
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: the Grand Old Operay down to the Rhymen every Saturday
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: night and just I had backstage pass. I just went
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: back there and hung out and just took it all in.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: Never talk to anybody, just took it all in for
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: every week, and you know, and of course over the
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: course of that year, I met all the promotion people.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: They were all, you know, trying to get me drunk
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: or do whatever there. You know, the promotion people back then,
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: no one had a fact. No one could tell you
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: a sales figure that they didn't make up. You know,
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: they they tell you, oh, it's playing on five hundred
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: radio stations. There was no facts, and I thought, I
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: at the time, I thought, oh my god, I wish
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: there was one fact in this business. You know. Now
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: go forward to Sound Scared and BDS and all that,
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: you know, in nineteen ninety five, and it's like there's
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: no theater anymore. Now, it's all fact. You know. Those
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: guys were as entertaining as the artists, you know, they
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: they were characters, and uh you know that's how they
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: got the records played along with you know, maybe a
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: bag full of money. I don't know, but uh so
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: I had that job and then people were coming in,
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: you know. Burt Reynolds would come in because he was
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: doing those those country movies, and Olivia Newton John would
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: stop by. And the dear friend I made was Shel Silverstein.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: And Shell would come down from New York like every
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: three months and he would stop by the office and
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: just hang out. We'd hang out for three four hours,
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: you know, and uh, he'd tell me stories about pitching
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: songs and you know, and uh he he telled me
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: every he said, every time I go to these see
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: these producers, the first thing they say is you got
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: another boy named Sue and and he said, yeah, I
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: got you know, you know, he I got this song
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: you know, on the cover of Rolling Stone or whatever,
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: you know, all the other hits that and he said.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: They said, no, no, I'm lucky for something like boy
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: named Sue and Shelle. Tony said no, what they wanted
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: was the success of boy name Sue. They didn't know
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: whether they he said, they probably couldn't hear it if
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: it hit him. But I love Shelle. He was such
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: a warm, wonderful guy at such a brilliant, brilliant talent
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: on so many levels.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: So how'd you get your label gig?
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: At that time? So this was end of seventy two,
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: all of seventy three. Something was happening in the South.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: That one, Southern rock was evolving out of Georgia and
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: the Carolinas and Charlie Daniels and Nashville, and the outlaw
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: movement was happening in Texas. So I was covering those things.
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: I was down in Macon all the time, and down
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: in Atlanta and Muscle Shoals, Memphis, you know, Austin writing
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: for the magazine. So I got to know a bunch
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: of the publicists from LA and New York, and Charlie
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: Rich had exploded in Nashville and Tammy Whinett and George
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: Stones were doing great, and of course Johnny Cash was
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: there at Columbia and CBS Records decided to start a
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: publicity department in Nashville, and really there weren't very many people,
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: you know, to interview, really, and so I got the job. Actually,
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: they wanted me to start the beginning of would have
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: been seventy four, and the Clive thing happened and they
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: put everything on hold, and then they came back to
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: me like in May, and I guess the dust settled
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: and they hired me. They were starting to expand again
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: and they hired me to start the publicity department. And
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: one of the guys that was a real supporter, somebody
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: who would stop by the Record World office was Steve Popovich.
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: And Steve was, you know, a Pittsburgh, Cleveland guy. So
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: he and Frank and I were kind of, you know,
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: we all kind of had that same Pittsburgh ease thing,
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: you know. And so Steve and I kind of hit
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: it off. And I set Steve some some a couple
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: of my songs and told him it was somebody I
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: had heard. I didn't say it was me. And he
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: figured it out and he he liked it. He thought
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: it was funny, and so so he was maybe calling
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: me all the time, and he was a big supporter
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: of me getting that gig. And I had done a
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: recor rolled at the time, like once a month, would
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: do these what was called dialogues, and it was a
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: big interview in the middle of the magazine with a
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: major figure, you know, it might be Clive Davis or
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: you know Mo Austin or you know, big people in
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: the industry. And I did. I did a dialogue with
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: Billy Ryl who was producing Charlie Rich and Tammy and
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: George and Billy and I hit it off, you know,
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: And so when the job came up, I got the job.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: And so there was no other publicist in Nashville at
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: a label. There were a couple of Indian.
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: No label had a publicist.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: No label had a publicist. Every label had an A
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: and R guy or two in house producer whatever, and
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: they would have a promotion person with a secretary and
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: that was it. I was just put it on the
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: radio that it. So when I got over there, I mean,
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: there were no bios there or no pictures. The pictures
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: were just awful, and I probably spent the first three
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: four months just either hiring somebody to write a bio
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: or writing it myself and then having pictures taken or
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: finding better pictures. So all the artists, I mean, you
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: know these are like Barbara Fairchild, Joe Stapley, and you know,
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: Bob Luman, and they were like, wow, I got a
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: guy he's writing eyes and then you know, they thought
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: it was great. Tammy absolutely. I think this came from
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: her being what she called the beauty operator, you know
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: she was she had worked in the beauty salon in Alabama,
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: and she read all those romance magazines you know that
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: they have in the beauty shops, you know, and so
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: to have assist was like to her, it was like
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: the greatest thing. You know, here I am. I'm a
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: twenty four year old kid, you know, I've never gotten
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: anybody in the newspaper ever, and she just took to
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: me and then she was always plotting and planning, how
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: can we get George involved in some press, you know.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: So she and Billy and I would plot and plan
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: how to get George to do an interview or do
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: a photo shoot, you know. And so I had this
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: great roster, you know, I had Tammy, George, Johnny Cash,
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: you know, we just and we had some pop stuff
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: starting to happen. Dave Loggins please come to Boston, and
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: Dan Fogelberg, and so there were other things starting to
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: go on. And when the acts would come through from
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: New York, you know, there was a great club circle
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: it back then, you know, the you know, the bottom
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: lines of the world. But at Great Southeast and nash
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: in Atlanta, they exited in Nashville, Lafayette's in Memphis, and
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: I would do I was writing reviews from those clubs
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: at Record World, and then when I started to become
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: when I became the publicist, when the rock acts would
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: come through, I'd try to get them suppressed. So New
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: York really, you know, really liked what I was doing,
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: and we had no competition, you know. So so this
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: guy came down. His name was Patrick Anderson, and he
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: had been a speech writer for John Kennedy, and he
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: knew Fred Birch, who was Willie's mentor, right and Fred
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: called me up and said, Hey, my friend Patrick is
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: coming down here. He works for the for the Washington Post,
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: but he's doing an article for the New York Times
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: Sunday magazine on Nashville country music. Could you help him out?
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: So when Patrick came down, he didn't have anybody else
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: to talk to, so we got him to every one
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: of our acts. He ended up asking me, can you
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: do something to help me get to Loretta Lynn on MCA,
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: And literally I was putting together interviews for him with
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: people from other labels. I wanted him to be happy. So,
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: as it turned out, this story came out in the
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: New York Times Sunday magazine and David allan Coe, who
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: had recently been signed but didn't He might have had
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: a single out, but he hadn't finished his album. He
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: used to sit in my office all day long and
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: watch me make calls for other ears, And so they
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: ended up putting David on the cover of the New
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: York Times Sunday magazine. You know, it was the tats
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: because at that time there weren't people like all Tatted
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: up like that. So thew York Times thought, hey, that's
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: a visual, you know, and so I didn't. You know,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: I'm not thinking of it. I'm twenty four years old.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: I'm a kid. I'm just learning how to be a publicist.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: I'm making friends at all the newspapers across the country
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: because they were interested in country artists, you know. And
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: so this New York Times Sunday magazine comes out and
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: all of CBS in New York is going nuts. It's like,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: how did that happen? This huge story, it's all epic
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: and Colombia. Well, before long, I was in New York
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: head Ofgethic Publicity, you know, and which is you know,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: kind of where I peeked out because I had Susan
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: Blonde as the New York publicist. You know, she knew everybody.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: She she was New York, you know. So I ended
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: up being really more of a manager of the department
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: and working internally to get the field staff at CBS
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: to respect the publicity department because the field staff said
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: they just do stories about the dictators or you know,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: you know, all these New York acts. They never sell
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: any records, you know, why don't they get a story
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: on Kansas, you know, or Reo Speedwagon. Well I knew
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: those daily newspapers. So we ended up hiring the first
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: tour publicist to go out with bands and really work
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: the heartland, you know. And that was the only thing
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: I could bring to the table. You know, Susan owned
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: you know, Rolling Stone and you know the all the
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: rock press, you know. But Kinky helped me, you know,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: just meet a lot of people, Lester Bangs. I was
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: staying in the Warwick Hotel and Kinky bring Lester over
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: hang out in my suite. Well I was, you know,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: while I was trying to find an apartment and Nick
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: tashis who you know. Nick and I became dear friends.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: But most of the major media, I was milk toast
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: America to them. You know. I didn't live up to
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: the standard of the rock elite, you know, But anyway,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: I did that for a little over a year, and
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: then I went to liber Krebs Management Company with Aerosmith
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: and Ted Nugent, and I had kind of spearheaded, you know,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: forgive me that Ted Nugent the press campaign that really
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: broke him, and you know that's back when Ted actually
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: thought it was funny what he was saying. He didn't.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: He wasn't, but he wasn't believing himself then. So liber
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: Krebs said, Hey, we need somebody to run our music
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: publishing and troubleshoot pr things with Aerosmith. Aerosmith at that
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: time was a lot of drug problems, and they'd end
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: up setting me out on the road with a briefcase
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: to bring the merch cash back so that it didn't
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: get spent on the road. I'd walk out of Boston
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: Garden with one hundred thousand dollars in my bag, you know,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: and did that for a year, And then I went
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: back to Nashville. I had friends back there say, oh, man,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: you're a manager, now come back here. Well, none of
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: the accident Nashville needed a manager. They'd go out and
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: play the Johnny mac Brown High School for three thousand
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: dollars on Friday night. You don't need a manager for that. Yeah,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: So we went back. We started a band called Riders
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: of the Sky, cowboy band that's still playing today and
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: playing old Western themes. And I went broke and I
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: came back to New York and at the time I
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: had kind of an on off relationship with Gail Sparrow,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: who had worked at Columbia on to the West Coast
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: and then ultimately went to MTV when they started, and
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: I was up at Christmas time, this would have been
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: end of seventy eight, and I ran into Don Dempsey,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: who had become the new head of EPIC and previously
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: I had worked for Ronald Lexeburg was head of EPIC.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: Said Don said, hey, why don't you come back in
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: marketing as a product manager? And I was broke, so
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: I said, yeah, what do you want me? How about Monday?
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: So I came back and moved back to New York
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: and became a product manager. And the first thing that
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: happened was Charlie Daniels was handled out of New York
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: because at that time Charlie was not considered country. He
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: was considered a rock band and a boogie ban, you know, Southern.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: Ron and I knew Charlie from writing an article about
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: him at Record World, and then when I was I
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: knew Joe Sullivan, who was his manager, and Charlie and
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: I kind of continued on a relationship when I when
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: I headed publicity and he was signed. He was so
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: happy that he had a natural guy in New York,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: you know. So and then when I came back, he
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: called Don Dempsey and said, I got to have Dan
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: as my product manager. So I got Charlie and within
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: six months we had Devil went down to Georgia and exploded,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: and we just had a ball marketing that because Charlie
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: was owed favors by everybody. He had always done everything
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: for everybody, and literally when he when that record started
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: to break, my phone exploded with people saying I owe him?
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: What can I do to help? And you know, it
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: just shows you what hard working artists you know that
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: it can't come back to you, you know.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, when did you give up the dream to be
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: a songwriter?
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: I didn't and I didn't have the courage. You know,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: I was writing. Actually I signed with April Blackwood when
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: I was in the publicity department seventy six, and they
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: started putting me with people. I had met Zachlickman and
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: we had become really good friends. He managed d On
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: Democci and I showed him a lyric and he said, oh,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: Dion has to see this, you know, And so he
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: took it to d On and he said, Dion loved
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: it and wants to meet you. Blah blah blah. It
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: took a year, and about a year later I got
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: a call. I was at liber Kreb and I went
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: out to lunch. I came back and the receptionist said,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: some guy named Dion called you like fifteen times at
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: the last hour and bingo. So I called him back
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: and he said, man, I'm so into this lyric. Send
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: me everything you've got. And I said, well, I'm not
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: going to do that that I have a title. I'm
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: going to see if I could finish it tonight, at
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: which I did, and I sent it to him the
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: next day, and those two songs ended up on his
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: Return of the Wanderer album, which unfortunately didn't happen. We
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: got some great reviews, and then later Epic A and
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: R connected me with Felix Cavalieri and we wrote a
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: couple of songs together. And Popovich put me with the
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: Iron City House Rockers and we wrote a couple of songs.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: And Popovich and Lenny Pizzi put me with this group
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: called Gasoline from Denmark, and I had to rewrite the
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: album in a week. What happened was they were decided
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: to put the put the album out and the band
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: got an English writer in Europe to rewrite the lyrics,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: is their English wasn't so good. So when the band
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: showed up in New York with the new lyrics, Lenny
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: and Steve went, oh my god, this doesn't work. And
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: Popovich called me up and said, Dan, I needed to
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: rewrite this album by next Thursday. And I said, I
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: said why next Thursday? And he said, Roy Thomas Baker
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: is exploding because of Bohemian Rhapsody, and he's their producer
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: and he only has one day open on his schedule.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: It's next Thursday, and to redo all the vocals. So
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: in the meantime, the band was in town. I hadn't
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: met them. Popovich said, I'll have them in your office
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: tomorrow morning. So they come over and he's told them,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: by this time, this guy's going to rewrite your lyrics.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: So they're meeting the head of publicity and the guy
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: who's going to rewrite their album. It's like, I thought,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: oh my god, these guys probably are what what the
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: hell is going on? But we did it, and we
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: got some good reviews, and the band went out on
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: tour with Jack Cassidy in Taorma and the audience hated them.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: I mean they were throwing fruits and vegetables at this
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: band within half a song. And the band was so
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: disillusioned they went back to Denmark and said we will
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: never record in English again, and we're never coming back
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: to America. And they were huge over there that, you know.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: They they were selling a couple hundred thousand of Denmark,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: which was like twenty million here. And so anyway, the
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: next album came up, and Roy Baker called me up
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: and said, hey, why don't you come to Denmark. He said,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: I want to convince the guys to put a bonus
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: track on this, the Danish album, you know. So I
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: went to Steven Lenny and that they very graciously said, look,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: we'll pay for you to go over there. We're not
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: going to put the record out, you know, we'll send
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: you over there. So I went over there and for
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: about three weeks we were on a mushroom farm and Odense.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: It was not a it was a commercial mushroom farmer.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: And I wrote a couple of songs to be bonus tracks,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: you know. I wrote the lyrics and we finished the
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: songs and I came home. I never heard anything again.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: And the band broke up like a year later, and
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: Kim Larson, who was the leader of the band, became
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: this like Bob Dylan of Denmark. He had like fifty
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: the albums after that, all in Danish. So he died
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: back in I think twenty eighteen, and a week after
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: he died, U two played Copenhaggen. They had two nights
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: there and after the first night, Bono was talking to
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: the local crew backstage and they were telling him about
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: Kim and how you know this guy was a hero
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: to them and the whole thing. So the next night,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: Bono put a picture of Kim up on the screen
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: in the in the arena they were playing, and then
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: he recited a.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: Lyric come full Circle.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: This is a song. This is like forty years later,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: and I mean, for like, I never even knew the
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: track had been actually on the Danish album. Yeah, so anyway,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: so I didn't know about it. Then about a month later,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: there's this one fan who had always reached out to me, Hey,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: you got any pictures some gasoline when they were in
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: New York and all this, and so we stayed in
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: touch over the years. He sent me a note with
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: a link, a YouTube link, and he said Dan, I
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: think you should watch this, and I went on and
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: it was like bon overciting my lyrics. Well, it blew
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: up on the streaming service. It's we had like eighteen
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: million plays and it was all in Denmark and it's now,
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: you know, which isn't a lot in the big scheme
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: of things, but it's like fifty million now. And the
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: YouTube stuff was like a similar number, you know. But
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: what a strange tale for a song. You know, it's
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: just such a weird thing. You know. I love crazy
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: stories about songs, you know, I think it's great. So anyway,
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: reeling back, I was product managing Mighty Clouds of Joy
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: for zachlickman manage them and we won the Grammy for
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: Best Gospel Record, and I was product managing the Clash,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: and of course we broke the Clash, and you know,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: everybody said, there's no way you could break them in
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: the US, you know, and we just kept pounding away.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: We found those people within the CBS distribution, you know,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: we had hundreds of people out there, and you know,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: you get with the college reps and the account service
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: wrecks who were in doing inventory and record stores and
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: the assistants and the branches, they were twenty one branches
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: back then, and you'd find the people who who favored
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: that music, who were out there talking to store clerk,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: and you know, that's how we would build, you know,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: a little base. And then you know, when you have
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: a band toured those clubs, you know, you could count
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: on the Atlanta branch. We'd have twenty twenty five people there,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: you know, and that's how we would get things started
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: on a band, particularly a band, you know, in those days.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: For most of those days, you know, we'd have a
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: marketing meeting and somebody said, what's the marketing plan, and
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: everybody's head would swivel to the head of promotion, radio promotion.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: It was like, yeah, put it on the radio. We
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: don't need any marketing here, you know. So I think
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: for a product manager, it was trying to find those
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: those other ways of finding some buds, finding some little
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: ways of getting a hook into something, you know.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, so how long were you were product manager before
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: you started to work with Michael Jackson.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: I started product managing in January of seventy nine, and
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: I started with Michael in let's see about September of
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: Now, you also say, in this process, you wake up
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: one day and you realize you're never going to be
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: promoted into the top job. What was that like?
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: You know, you're kind of taught that that's what you're
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: supposed to do. But you know, Bob, what I hated was.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: You know, there were different times where I was a
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: department head or East Coast department head or whatever, you know,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: and they come to you and say, okay, you have
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: a four percent pool, split it up between your people.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: So okay, so I'm going to give this one three
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: point seventy five and piss them off. And then I'm
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: going to give four point twenty five to this one
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: and they're going to say it's not enough for what
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: I did. I just hated all that. You know, I
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: hated it, and I wasn't very good at it. You know.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: It's I was good at getting people excited and interested
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: and you know, going out and explaining why we should
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: break this act, you know, and getting people in the
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: company into it. You know, so much of it was
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: working the assistance. The secretaries knew more was going on
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: than anybody, and they were the ones who could spread
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: the word. You know, this secretary of the Dallas branch
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: was talking to this secretary and promotion and they were
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: both excited about a band.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 5: You know.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: That's that's how things would get started, you know. So
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: that's what I loved. I you know, I didn't like
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: the management stuff. I was better at it later in life,
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: but in that time and finally, what I I just
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: came to the conclusion, screw it. You know, I'm just
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: going to work these acts. That's what I like to do.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: That's what I know what to do. It's the small
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: problem solving. You know. A product manager didn't ever take
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: a record order, didn't ever get a record plate on
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: the radio. But we were in charge of all the
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: screw ups, you know, and you know something was going wrong,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: it's like, go fix that, you know. And I liked
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: that and looking for ways of turning on the field
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: staff because we couldn't get to the consumer. You know,
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: the only way to the consumer was through the record
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: stores or through radio. You know, we didn't have enough
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: money to market you know. I mean we could take
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: three hundred sized ads and college papers for the Indigo girls.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: You know, we just didn't have the money for it.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: You know. I actually a number of years ago through
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: some of my old notes, I wrote down what we
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: did in nineteen ninety five, as far as how many
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: posters we did, how many snipes we did on construction
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: sites to announce shows, and how many TV spots, how
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: many music videos you know. And by the way, that
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: was one of the things that the product managers we
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: started doing back around nineteen eighty and that was it
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: fell to us to contract the video producers and directors.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, you worked with a lot of acts. Leave Michael
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: Jackson aside, he's in his own world. What did you
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: learn about musicians.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: That? I think the ones that sustain fundamentally keep it simple.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: I found the biggest acts that I worked with were
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: the ones who were most grateful, were the easiest to
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: talk to. They were also people that you could have
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 2: a conversation about weaknesses, you know, strengths and weaknesses of
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: their their career. You know that that if they were
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: strong enough to be successful, they were strong enough to
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: be objective about circumstances in their career, you know, and
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: and hey, how do we overcome that?
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: And obviously the bigger part of that was leading on strengths,
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: you know. The so I found the access sustain number one.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: They're hard working. You know, they work. If you have
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: if you have a longer career, you've worked a long time.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: You know. It's Charlie Daniels on the nineteen was it
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: seventy nine million mile Reflection album. The tie was based
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: on his buses had traveled to me by nineteen seventy nine,
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: So when you consider the man passed here just a
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: few years ago, you know, the buses had a lot
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: more miles on him. And you know, I saw that
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: with Gloria Estefan. You know, Cyndi lauper Shade in her
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: own way. She she didn't like all the promotion stuff,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: you know, and all that, but she had a sense
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: of humor about it, and as cool and collective as
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: she is, she's very nervous, very you know, It's like
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: she didn't know what to say to salespeople or things
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: like that, you know, and so she and I kind
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: of made a deal on how we were going to
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: do things. And you know, one of the things is
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: is she said, you know, over the course of an album,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: she said, it just never ends. Somebody pops up backstage
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: and you know, all of a sudden, I'm supposed to
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: do something. And I went back to all the people
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: from publicity, sales, promotion, and I said, look, I think
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: it's essential that we try to put everything in a
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: time period that and I told her this, I said,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go back to the label. She told me,
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: she said, it just totally freaks me out. And I said,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: I said, how about if you give us a month
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: just before the release. And of course now we'd had
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: a huge hit, a four million seller, so we had
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: a little more control of the marketplace. But I said,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: give us a month. I said, you're gonna hate it.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: You're going to hate every second of it. But we're
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: going to put everything in that month, and when that
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: month ends, no one is going to bother you. I said,
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go back and try to sell that
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: to the people at the label. I went back, and
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: you know, for all the you know dysfunctioned sometimes of
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: record labels and things like that, everybody came to the
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: party and agreed. And we did that on every subsequent
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: album that I worked on with her. And I would
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: tease her in front, so a month is coming up
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: that you hate, you know, and she'd laugh and said, yes,
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: I could. I hate it. But we crammed everything into
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: that month. You know, we tried to you know, have
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: a vision for what was needed for every single, and
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: you know, and it was easier with her to kind
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: of understand how the flow should happen on single releases.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: You know, I think other artists it wasn't so kind
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: of uniform, you know, maybe Luther Vandros. You know, it's
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: a Luther was great working with Luther. Luther. Luther would
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: say to me, you know, because I'd give him the
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: bad news too, that he would say things like, Dan,
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: don't make me eat donuts, which meant which meant if
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: if I gave him bad news, he was going to
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: go on a bingch. We just had so much fun.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: We were at one video shoot.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 6: And he had his little posse there and it was
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 6: before everybody's just having coffee or wait for the crew
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 6: to set up, and Luther, I'm over on the other
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 6: side of this warehouse where we're shooting.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna a cup of coffee. And Luther said, Hey, Dan,
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: come over here when you get your coffee. So I
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: go over and and he's got his buddy sitting around
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: and he said, uh, Dan, you know this album and
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: tour is going to become be the Picasso. And I said, wow, Luther,
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: it's going to be that great and he said, no, Dan,
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: he said, I'm going to take all the money from
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: the tour and the album. I'm not going to buy it.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: And you know, Luther had an album every year because
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: because he was a big shopper. But I loved working
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: with it. He was he could be a pill, he was.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: He was tough on himself. After he was so tough
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: on himself, he had to share it with you.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: So to what degree were these stars accessible or were
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: there handlers managers in between and kept them from you.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: For the most part, with the managers and artists that
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: I worked with them very sharing. I think partly because
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: the managers who managed those acts on that level had
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: a lot more confidence than themselves. You know, if you
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: we had a young manager, you know sometimes they you know,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: they would get protective, but they're really protecting their own
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: their own situation. You know. I would see a lot
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: of like young English managers come over and basically they
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: were intimidated by the United States. You know, it's too big,
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: you know, it's a mess, merchants, you know, world, it's
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: you know, you go on a chain of radio stations,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: you go in a chain of record stores, you know,
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: and it was scary to some of those those managers,
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: and so they, you know, sometimes they would really kind
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: of put a defense up, you know. But part of
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: our philosophy was to try to get a young manager
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: and educate them and train them about how the company worked,
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: because if they could push our buttons properly, it was
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: going to help us, you know. So if we could
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: get a young manager to know how to work, you know,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: we tell him, hey, here's Jack Chase is the branch
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: manager in Dallas, and here's the music he likes, you know,
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: and this is the bourbon he likes it, you know.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: And he's a guy who will step out on a
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: record and I think he's going to like yours, you know,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: and so we you know, you try to do that
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: to kind of get these people, you know, as a
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: manager and an artist, they've got a booking agent, maybe
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: an outside publicist, the road manager. That's their world, you know,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: and they're coming into a big corporation. So it was
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: like trying to demystify the corporation and get people to
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: realize it's just a bunch of people. If we can
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: work the people, you know, we can maybe get someplace.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, here's the manager basically a traffic cop and just
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: putting the pieces together for other people or what kind
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: of decisions does a product manager.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: Make that that's that's a lot of it, Bob. You know,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: essentially you're a coordinator. You're dealing with every department. As
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: we got into it, we had a one sheet that
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: was a budget sheet for every aspect. You know, how
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: much of the DJ's going to cost? You know, you know,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: what's that inner sleeve cost? What? You know? But the
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: product manager would go to the head of promotion, and
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: the head of promotion would say what that number is
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: for their promotion budget. Hey, this is what I'm going
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: to spend on tip sheets. You know, we're going to
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: work with an indie budget of X. Put that in there,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: you know. And then I was essentially ahead of East
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: Coast product management for almost all that time that I
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: was a product manager, So that would come back to me,
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: and then I would have discussions with the president or
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: vice president you know, of marketing basically talking about, hey,
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: we got this number, you might want to question it,
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: you know. And but a lot of product managers would
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: initially feel kind of helpless. You know. Number one, they
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: usually got artists who were down the priority list, and
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: you know, so they get anxious and want to spend
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: some money, and it's like, this is a business where
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: you hold your cards. You hold your cards until something
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: tells you something that you can leverage with a little
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 2: bit of money, you know, and otherwise it's not going
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: to not going to help. As a senior product manager
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 2: and as the East Coast had and later when I
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: was senior VP of mar Marketing and Sales, you know,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 2: I was designating what our price and positioning budget would
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: be with the accounts, what the what kind of video
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: budget we needed. If we were tour supporting, you know,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: I would be negotiating with a manager about how much
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: money to get, how many dates involved. You know, it's
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: you know, I'd sit down with a manager who come
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: in with, you know, well we're going to stay at
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: the Hilton and blah blah blah, and I'd say, well, look,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: you know you could probably weasel about thirty thousand dollars
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: out of us if you want that the last two
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: weeks or three months. You know, I think you'd make
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: a better decision if you went with the three months,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: you know. And so once again it was educating people
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: to say, you know, we got to hang in there
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: for the long run. Our spending is better down the road.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: We need to get something going without the spend to start.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: Did you ever negotiate with the artist teams over who
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: was going to pay or basically you argue who of
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: a number and it's always charged to the artist's account.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there were. Basically we kind of established some levels.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: Initially it was on music videos. It was if it
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: was a superstar artist, it was like, hey, one hundred
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars and it's it's fifty to fifty and over
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: one hundred thousand indulgence, so that's yours. You know, we'll
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: pay it, but it's going to be charged back, you know.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: And then you know, sometimes I'd be on the phone
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: with an Emilio Estefon or you know, and say, hey,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: you need to call you need to call Dave, you
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: need to you know, if I thought there was some
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: wrangling that a manager could do, I'd tried to let
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: them know. There was one time when an artist came
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: in renegotiating their deal after the first huge album, and
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: I got a deal sheet back that said that the
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: music budget would be completely a marketing cost. And I
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 2: went back to business affairs and said, this is an
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: absolute disaster. You have to have the artist having some
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: skin in the game. Otherwise they're just going to they
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: don't care, They're just going to you know, So we'll
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: have a seventy five thousand dollars video budget that's going
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: to go to four hundred thousand. You know, we have
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: to cap it somewhere, you know. And at times, once again,
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: there would be negotiations on it. You know, it might
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: be you know, Dave Glue might say, hey, look, if
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: we hit this level, I'll make it one hundred percent marketing,
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: you know, that kind of thing. So there was a
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: lot of give and take on those things. You know,
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: as you know, Bob that the labels always had the
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: leverage in those situations. You know, we were essentially given
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: guidelines you have to come into this, you know, and
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 2: if again, if there was a problem with an artist
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: or manager, it was just hey, here's here's how you
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: might be able to deal with it, you know. And
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: you know, different managers might have a different relationship with
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: different people, you know, it's like, oh, hey, talk to
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 2: Richard Griffiths. You know, he's going to get you. Talk
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: to Dave, he's going to get you. You know, talk
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: to Waldert you know. I mean, you know some of
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: the artists you know, had great relationships with Yetnikov. You know,
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 2: it's in his day.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: So okay, you make a point in the book that
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: Dave Glue hipped the company to the economics and the
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: business more than previous major domos. Can tell me about that.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Dave really instituted this one sheet with the costs
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 2: on it, and you know, we would have a one
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: seat every six months, a sit down and Dave would
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: bring in those worksheets with the actuals beside them and said, well, hey,
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: you guys, you know, promotion, product management, you guys were
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 2: talking you needed X amount of DJs and that sort
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: of thing. Why is it four times? You know, and
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: you know some of the just natural aspects of that
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: were the simple things. So just realizing, hey, if it's
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 2: a pop record, you're going to use more DJs than
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 2: you are on a rock dricord, you know, and it's
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: just but people saying oh yeah, let's just uh, let's
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 2: let's order the DJs nobody was looking at those at
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: those fundamental costs. So a lot of it was learning, hey,
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 2: we if we're more efficient, we'll have more money later
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: in the game to invest in it in trying to
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 2: break a band if we don't waste it, you know,
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: and other things like I know on my list from
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, we did sixty three videos that year,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: and I think, what was it how many we had.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: I think we had five that went to number one,
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 2: and we had nine that were top ten, and we
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: charted something like half of them, you know. But what
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: was really interesting was is that and this is one
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: of the areas where it was, well, we couldn't get
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: that first video on the air, why did we do
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 2: the second one?
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or the third one? You know, And it was
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: just hope on hope, you know, and and you know,
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: there were times we needed to make those risks. Living Color,
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 2: the first video we did the company's hair was on
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 2: fire about living color. This is going to be the
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: greatest thing on earth, you know, Mick Jagger's behind it,
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: blah blah blah. And they're so cool. There's such great players,
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: and there's and they were so colorful and great live
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 2: on stage and we made a video on Middleman and
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 2: they brought it, you know, a couple of people. I
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: don't know what there was who was involved in it,
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: but some of the people who got involved and they
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: got like some really arty person to come in to
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: do the video and everybody thought that was cool. Well
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: the video we took it to MTV and they said, yeah,
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: you know, and so what happened was you know, and
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: then Jim Grant and Roger Kramer were the managers who
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: were on the phone to me about nineteen times a day.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: It's Jim still apologizing for that, and I love them
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: for it. It's uh the But anyway, Jim was calling
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 2: me up and said, damn, we got to do another video.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: And I said, you know, Jim, there's no way I'm
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: going to get disapproved. I mean, you know, we just
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: don't have anything, you know, and I said we They
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 2: were out doing some dates, you know, Toads and New
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: Haven and you know, playing the clubs in New York
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: and going down to Philadelphia and says that we just
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: need to expand that in the Northeast. You know, let's
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: see if we could sell some records and then I'll
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: go back in and see if we can get some money. Well,
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: that's what happened that band. The reason the Cult of
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: Personality video blew up that band was because the band
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: went out and work their butts off in clubs and
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: started selling records. That gave us the ability to convince
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: the bosses to let us shoot another video. And you know,
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: we had something going, and then we shot Cult and
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 2: Cult didn't go on MTV, but it went on a
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: video local video program in Denver, and I think it
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: was called the Colorado Music Channel or something, but it was,
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: you know, just an independent music video channel. And the
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: branch manager for that area called me up and said, hey,
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 2: we're seeing some sales here, you know, and there's nothing.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: There's no radio, are player or anything. It's got to come.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: The band hasn't been through here. It's got to be
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: coming from that video. So we watched it a couple
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: of weeks and then I think Harvey leads I took
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: the information to Harvey. Harvey went over to MTV and
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: they didn't believe him at first, and he came back
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: the next week with more information and then they put
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: it into head Banger's Ball and boom. We immediately saw
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 2: you know, ones and twos and threes and fives around
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: the country, and we brought that back to MTV and
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: then they played it some more. You know. We got
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: kind of into weekly rotation at head Banger's Ball, and
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: then it went into regular rotation and boom the record blow,
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: you know, and of course the band was out there touring,
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: you know, doing the clubs, you know, so they could
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: back it up.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, so Dangerous is put to bed. When's the first
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: time you get in inkling there's going to be a
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: new album.
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: Well, so we finished that campaign basically in March of
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three. That's when we had finished Oprah in
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: the Super Bowl, and then Michael was off on tour,
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: the Dangerous Tour internationally that summer, so we didn't see him,
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: you know, he was in the hands of the International company,
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 2: you know, and other territories, and we were fundamentally wrapped
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 2: up with our campaign. We were probably sixteen months seventeen
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: months into it, and so we were kind of quiet.
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 2: The only thing I was trying to do was finish
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: the Dangerous home video, which I thought I was going
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 2: to finish in three weeks, and it was fourteen months later.
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: Michael was still making changes, and so that summer, you know,
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 2: I didn't see him or hear from him or anything.
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: And then that August is when the initial charges came out.
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 2: And that went on until the end of January of
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: ninety four, and at that point we heard on the
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 2: news Michael had settled. And as I've heard later, you know,
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: as I heard shortly after that, it was that his
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: attorneys told him, settle, get it over with, get it,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: get it out of the way. It's if you could
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: try to beat this, but you're just going to linger it.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: It's just going to get muddier and mundier. Just settle.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: So that was kind of the word. And later it
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: was actually years later that I had heard that it
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: wasn't the attorneys, it was the insurance company. And the
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 2: insurance company didn't even consult the attorneys or Michael. They
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: said we're settling, and so Michael really didn't have a
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: chance to do that. But anyway, so in January, so
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: now it's on the news, Michael settled, you know, And
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 2: through that those dark months before that, I thought I'm
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 2: never going to see him again. It's ober, you know,
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 2: it's just I mean, who could come back from something
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 2: like that. I just didn't seem possible to me. So
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 2: I go into a marketing meeting end of January nineteen
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: ninety four. Dave turned to me and said, crank it
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 2: up there, We're going to do the greatest hits. And
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: Michael had actually been in recording stuff previously, probably for
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 2: the the last year whenever he was, you know, on
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: the West coast, and you know, the formula back then
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: was record two new songs, we'll put them on the radio,
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: and we'll put ten hits on there. And we've got
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: the formula for the greatest hits, you know. So anyway,
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: then Dave and I went out to LA and went
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: to the studio and Michael played us some tracks, no
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 2: vocals on or anything. Played this a few tracks. He
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: was very upbeat and turned to Dave and said, Dave,
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: I've got five new songs and number one. I'm thinking,
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: how do we get his greatest hits on a single
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 2: album to begin with? You know, I mean, you know
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: Thriller was the greatest hits out, you know, and you
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: know there are five hit singles off of Off the
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: Wall or whatever. And so then Dave and I are like, okay,
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: if we get into a double album. What you know,
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: you know, and I think you know, for Dave, there's
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 2: a lot of pressure from Matola and uh, you know,
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: the the leadership camp that wait a minute, how much
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: is this going to cost? And we just had a
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: scandal and you know, wait a minute, you know, what
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: are we what are we doing here? But but Dave
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 2: sold Michael's idea of the double album to Tommy and
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: mel Oberman and and off we went. So that end
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 2: of that January, then we started scrambling to put it together.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: And then it was like trying to get Michael to
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 2: visualize the album out because he was in the studio
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 2: where he has lots lots of fun, there's no judgment.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: He's with people he loves, he's doing stuff he loves
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 2: the most. It's such a protected environment. We had to
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: convince him it was just as nice going up the charts,
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: you know, so and of course, you know, you had
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: to know that in the back of Michael's mind is
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: you know, as optimistic of a person as he was.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: He had to have a sense of am I still
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: valid out there? So trying to convince him and then
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: that's where we came up with a title to work with,
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: and then visual ideas to get him to start living
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: with the idea of it released.
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: You know, Okay, you came up with the name of
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: the album. Tell us about that.
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: Dave and Polly Anthony and I would meet often in
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 2: Dave's office kind at the end of the day, you know,
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: six forty five, seven o'clock, and I'd come up with
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: kind of the issues of the day, you know, oh,
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 2: we're having trouble finishing this video or you know what
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 2: this is going on with It was always a Michael
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: tale to it, you know. And we were up there
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 2: basically talking about, you know, getting Michael to visualize the
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 2: album out, and uh, you know, I said, we don't
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 2: have a title. We don't have any visuals or anything,
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 2: you know, And you know, Dave said, you know, call
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 2: Sandy and see if we can get a title out
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 2: of Michael. You know. So I called. I called Sandy
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 2: and I said, you know, does Michael have any ideas
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: for the title for the album? And Sandy said, well, no,
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: why don't you come up with Why don't you guys
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: come up with something? And I said, geez, Sady, it's
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 2: a little personal. You know, this is his greatest hits.
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 2: You know, I think maybe we should ask him. So
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 2: Sandy said, okay, I'll ask it. So anyway, I took
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 2: that story back to Dave and Polly. We all laughed
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 2: to check her head. And so the next Sandy called
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 2: me and said, well, I spoke to Michael and he
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: doesn't have any ideas and he wants you guys to
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: think about it. So okay, all right. So I go
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 2: back that night to Polly and Dave, and Polly said
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 2: the perfect thing. She said, just kind of wistfully, said,
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 2: you know, I just wish Michael could come up with
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 2: an idea like the Immaculate Collection by Madonna. It was
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: such a cool title for a greatst dance and you know,
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 2: and I walked away from that meeting and I thought, wow,
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 2: she's right, you know, that's what we need. So on
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: the train going home to Long Island that night, I
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 2: got to thinking about what Michael had said in the studio,
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: and that was and what was being talked about is
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 2: that there'd be one album that was the greatest hits
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 2: and the other album that would be the new songs.
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 2: And by that time we kind of knew that Michael
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: was writing some songs about what was happening to him.
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 2: The new songs were going to be edgy. So I
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 2: got to thinking, well, the old songs are his history,
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 2: and these new songs are his story. And so that
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 2: I wrote it down on a piece of paper capital
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 2: H capital I capital S small t r Y, and
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 2: the next day I sent it to Sandy and Just
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 2: I faxed it to them. You know, we were dealing
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 2: with factses and the trap like that. We didn't really
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 2: Email wasn't even functional at the time anyway, so then
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 2: we don't hear anything, and I ran the the idea
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: by Polly and Dave and everybody kind of said, man,
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 2: you know. And so about two weeks later, Dave is
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 2: getting antsy and he said, we got to come up
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 2: with some packaging, you know. He said, go out, go
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 2: to Arnold Levine, who runs creative services for Sony, and
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: he said, let's offer bounties fifteen hundred dollars twenty five
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 2: hundred dollars for concepts for the album, and that Nancy
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 2: Donald and Arnold would go out to ad agencies. They
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 2: talked to their own creative services staff, designers, photographers to
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 2: offer concepts for the album. So we ended up and
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 2: they were all sent to Nancy Donald's office in LA
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 2: and then Dave and Polly and I flew out and
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 2: we went went to Sandy's office. I went with Arnold
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: and Nancy and we rented a van and hauled all
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: this stuff over to Sandy's office. There were concepts that
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: were like books and big frame pictures and this all
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 2: this concept stuff, and we're holing it up from the
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 2: basement garage up to Sandy's office and into the his
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 2: conference room. And as we're coming in with the first load,
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 2: Sandy's assistant leaned around the corner and said, Hey, Dan,
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 2: isn't it great. Michael's going to use your history concept.
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 2: We're sitting there with about one hundred thousand dollars worth
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 2: of concepts, and I thought Nancy and Arnold were going
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 2: to kill me. It's like, oh my god, I felt
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 2: about this big and I had no idea. So anyway,
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 2: we haul all this stuff in and we win the conference.
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: So Sandy comes in and Michael comes bouncing in and
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: he loved the presentation, and he kind of giggled through
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 2: the whole thing, and I guess he was thinking, yeah,
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 2: I've already got this, but he wasn't telling. And we
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 2: finished all the presentation and he and Sandy said, oh,
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 2: thank you guys, this is great, wonderful. Thanks, no conclusion
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 2: and we left. So we fly back to New York
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: and we had something going on. I couldn't go right
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 2: back out. I said, hey, Dave, I can go out.
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 2: Week after next. I'll go back out and see if
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 2: I can get this thing moving, you know, and you know,
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 2: Nancy's got all those ideas there, and we'll see what
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 2: we can do, and I'll find out what he's thinking
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 2: on this history thing. So I fly out a week
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 2: and a half later. Now we've been trying to get
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 2: something going from months on this. Now it's like ten
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 2: days from us hearing that he likes this history idea.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 2: We get out there, Nan I go to Nancy's office
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 2: and she said, Michael's already got a vendor. Who are
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: sculptors and computer animation people working on an idea and
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 2: it's a statue. And it was like, uh oh, I
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 2: knew there was no stopping him, you know, it was
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 2: and we felt that, you know, Michael, I think really
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: just took it as kind of sixth graders idea of history. Well,
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: it's statues and it's you know, it's it's everything he
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 2: you know, he learned in social studies class, you know.
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 2: And in the meantime, we're going, oh my god, people
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 2: are going to think he's a meglomaniac, you know, and
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 2: and of course we faced that later, you know, but
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: we couldn't we couldn't get him off the idea.
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: Well, tell us about making the promotional teaser video.
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: So Michael had ideas that he shared a little bit
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: of it, but he wanted to get a director involved.
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 2: And Scott Spanchik, who worked for me, who we brought
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 2: in to kind of elevate our production abilities, and Scott
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 2: was just amazing, and so Scott sent reels out to
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 2: Sandy's office for Michael, and Michael honed in on, gosh,
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: I'm forgetting his name now the director anyway, So we
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 2: were just happy that there was something happening there. The
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 2: kind of internal feeling was is that unless we go
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 2: along with Michael's plan for the statue being in this
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 2: teaser spot, he's not going to deliver the record. And
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 2: so it just seemed like the statue video now, Michael said, oh,
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: I want to do this as a teaser and I
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: said to Michael at the time, I said, you know,
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 2: but Michael's you have classical music on this, you know,
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 2: in the plan, and I said, that's really not teasing
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 2: the music for the album, and it just, you know,
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 2: it didn't connect. He was so excited about his idea
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: once again, once he got a B in his bonnet,
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 2: you weren't going to change it, you know, And so
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: we braced ourselves and we thought, you know, we'll just
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: try to limit the use of this thing boom. We'll
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: put it up there, well one weekend on MTV, and
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 2: we'll shelve this thing, you know, and so that it,
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 2: you know, doesn't create huge negatives. And so then they
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 2: product company they came back to us and said, Michael
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 2: wants to shoot in Hungary. And so anyway, we got
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 2: the storyboards. We knew what was coming. You know, we
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 2: didn't like it, but we knew what was coming. And
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 2: all I was trying to do at that point was
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 2: damage control things like you know, they had all these
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 2: flags in it with symbols on them, and I said,
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: you know, to the production company, I said, you have
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 2: to understand, this is a global artist. You know, if
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 2: one of those symbols means something in a country that
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 2: we don't know what that means. We could have a
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 2: terrible situation on our hands, you know. So there were
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: things like that that we were trying to limit the
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 2: possibilities of problems, you know. I mean, here we were,
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 2: we're working on this, and this is after the scandal situation,
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 2: so you know. And and in nineteen ninety four, and
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: we brought Sandy and Michael in for this big marketing meeting.
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 2: They're trying to get him out of the studio, and
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 2: we brought everybody in from all different departments to talk
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 2: about what they would do if he would deliver the
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 2: greatest hits for the nineteen ninety four Christmas season. And
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 2: at the end of that, I mean, we just threw
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: every pots and pans, everything in the kitchen sink at it.
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 2: And at the end of the meeting Sandy said, you know,
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 2: Michael and I would like to sell one hundred million albums.
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 2: That it just sucked the air out of the room.
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: It's like our salespeople were like, we were just stunned.
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 2: And so here we were facing this kind of unrealistic
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 2: optimism versus the real roll up the sleeve issues that
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 2: we had that we were trying to minimize how he
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 2: might be portrayed by the media, and you know, we
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 2: may have overreacted to that, but you know, Polly was
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 2: definitely afraid of At one point, Sandy said, we want
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 2: to have every radio station call Michael King of Pop
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 2: and Polly said, you know, we got more of a
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 2: fight at radio than you think, and if we do that,
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 2: we're going to turn off some program directors. And so
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 2: we fought that one off. But a lot of what
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 2: we were trying to do at the time was just
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 2: limit the damage. And you know, I think some of
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 2: it we might have overreacted or we were trying to,
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 2: you know, save two pebbles of sand on a big beach,
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 2: But that's kind of what we were dealing with.
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: So tell us about when he delivers the video and
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: the promise made by the company relative to movie theaters.
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's We had this big marketing meeting on the
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 2: West Coast and all the marketing had from around the world,
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: New Zealand, Australia, Japan, you know, Israel, Germany, France, everybody,
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 2: South America there all came. We were at the Peninsula
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 2: Hotel and the I guess it's kind of a small
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 2: ballroom there for a dinner. And that day there had
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 2: been an international marketing meeting, and you know, and basically
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 2: I had fed into Lisa Kramer, who was my counterpart internationally,
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 2: and she made a presentation of all the tools we
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 2: were making available, timetable, et cetera. And they had a
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 2: very very successful meeting. Wasn't there, but they everybody came
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 2: out of there just very very pumped. And you know,
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 2: Michael's marketplace internationally was I kind of gauged it at
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 2: we were thirty percent of the market in the US
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 2: and North America and seventy percent was outside the US.
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, he was much bigger internationally than he was
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 2: in the States. And so anyway, they came out of
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 2: the meeting, everybody's blowing. We have a big dinner. There's
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 2: champagne flowing. Michael's there, and Mickey Schulhoff, who's chairman of
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 2: Sony Entertainment, gets up and Michael had told him all
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 2: about the teaser, and Mickey didn't have any other guy.
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 2: You know, We're thinking, how we're gonna kind of keep
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 2: this thing on the down low as much as we could,
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 2: And so Mickey gets up at dinner and said, you know, Michael,
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 2: I'm really excited about this teaser. I know you're excited
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: about it. I'm going to make sure it goes in
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 2: every Low's theater that Sony elms and Michael is just
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 2: so excited and happy, and we're sitting there going, oh
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 2: my god, no, now this thing's going to be everywhere.
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 2: So anyway, so I go back to New York and
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 2: about a week later, Michael calls and said, have you
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 2: spoken to Mickey about the Low's theaters? And I said no,
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 2: you know, I said, we're still waiting to get the
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 2: video in, and you know we got you know, you know,
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 2: wasn't quite ready to be walking over the Low's to
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 2: make the pitch. So anyway, as it turned out, Michael
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 2: kept calling me about it. That was like the one
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 2: thing on his mind. And I kept holding him off
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 2: for probably a month of easily a dozen calls, you know,
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 2: specifically about where's Mickey on this? You know? So I
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 2: called Mickey's office and a couple of times that I
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 2: didn't get any response. So I went to Dave and
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 2: I said, Dave, you've got to help me. I can't
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 2: get an answer out of Nicky's office. So Dave got
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 2: a meeting and we went up like the next day
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 2: and sat down and we explained to Mickey the situation
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 2: about the promise he made to Michael, and we felt
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 2: that the delivery of the album might be influenced by
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 2: that promise. So anyway, Micky picks up the phone and
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 2: he calls Mickey stein Burg, who was head of Lows Theaters,
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 2: and said explained the situation to him, and Steinberg said,
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 2: can I see it? And we had a rough and
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 2: so anyway, Mickey Schuloff said, well, Michael's product manager, Dan Beck,
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 2: will bring it over to your office in the morning.
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 2: How's that great great eleven o'clock ran over boot? So
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 2: he's in Trump Tower and we're at five point fifty
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 2: Madison right around the block, you know. So the next
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 2: day I go over, go up the Trump Tower and
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 2: I go in. I meet Mickey Steinberg and he puts
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 2: the three quarter deck in his in his player, and
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 2: it was like about an eight minute piece, and he
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 2: watches the thing where just he and I were in
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 2: total silence. He finishes it, he ejected it, handed it
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 2: to me and said that'll never play in a low stare.
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 2: What are we going to do now. So I'm raced
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 2: back to the office. I tell Dave. So we're sitting there,
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 2: just cutted numb, and I said, you know, I said,
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 2: I got it off the wall idea. I said, I
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 2: have a friend to help put some music videos in
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 2: front of movies, in front of the previews, you know.
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 2: And I said, you know, so we pay to do
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 2: that and just market by market, you know. And I said,
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 2: he may be able to help us, you know. So
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 2: Dave said, do whatever, you know, see what you can do.
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 2: I didn't tell him who it was, so anyway, so
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 2: I call my friend, who was Bob Kardashian. And this
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 2: is in the middle of the OJ trial and Bob
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 2: is one of the attorneys on the defense on OJ's fence.
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 2: So I called it uber. I don't even know they
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 2: still had the business since the OJ thing and happened.
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 2: So I get a call back. I leave word on
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 2: the voicemail and it's the company, you know, so it
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 2: sounds like they're still operating. So next night I get
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 2: a call from Bob and he said, you know, hey,
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 2: what's up. You know, I said, hey, what's up with
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 2: you? You know, how are you hanging in there? With this
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 2: this OJ trial, and so we talked about that for
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 2: a minute and he said, tell me what you got.
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 2: So I explained the situation. We had this video, there
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 2: was a promise made to get it in the Loew's theaters,
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 2: and we need to find a solution. And I said,
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 2: I thought of you, and he said, he said, well
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 2: number one, he said, I don't go to the top
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 2: people at low So I go to the individual's theater
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 2: managers and as long as there's no sexual you know,
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 2: content violence kind of thing, you know, over the top.
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 2: He said. You know, if the managers feel good about it,
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 2: you know, they make some extra money from this, and
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 2: I make some money too, you know. So I said, well,
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 2: how do we proceed and he said, well, I need
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 2: to look at it, and he said, can you send it?
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 2: I said, I can't let this out of my hands.
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 2: I said, but I'll fly out to LA with it.
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 2: And I said are you available? You know, and I
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 2: think this was a Thursday or something, and I said, look,
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 2: i'll fly out on Monday and he said great. He said,
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 2: I'll be in court all day. He said, just leave
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 2: a message on my voicemail on Monday night. I'll call
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 2: you back at which he did, and so he said
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 2: where are you staying and I said, I'm at Shutters
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 2: and he said, oh, that's really close to the courthouse.
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 2: And he said, how about I come over on my
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 2: lunch break from the trial and if you can get
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 2: a three quarter deck set up and room and we'll
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 2: look at the video and we'll see if we can
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 2: do anything. So the next morning I have an engineer
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 2: putting a three quarter deck in my room and we're
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 2: the engineer and I are watching the trial that you know,
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 2: it's Bob was right there on the screen. So engineer
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 2: gets it set. Ten minutes after twelve, knock at the door.
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 2: It's Bob. He comes in, looks at the video. He
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 2: said I could put that in theaters. And so we
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 2: started talking money, and of course to do it nationally
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 2: was just out of the question. And I said, look,
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 2: how about I send you a list, And I just
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 2: ran off some markets that, you know, basically where Jimmy
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 2: and Terry were the producers in Minneapolis, you know, southern
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 2: California and New York and you know, any place where
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 2: we felt Michael would get the feedback that wow, I
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 2: saw your video, you know. Anyway, I think it cost
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 2: us one hundred and forty thousand dollars and Bob did it,
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 2: and I was able to call Michael and say, we're
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 2: in the Loews theaters. And I always hoped that I
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 2: would run into Mickey Steinberg in an elevator sometimes and
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 2: have him say, oh, hey, you're that kid from Epic Records. Right,
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 2: it's that piece of shit video. What did you ever
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 2: do with that? I put it in your theaters?
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: So just for my audience, what was wrong with the video?
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 2: Well, it had all these marching troops that it really
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 2: had a kind of propaganda's feel. At the time, everybody
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 2: kind of took it as a fascist video. Also had
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 2: a statue was probably you know, you know, it was
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 2: all computer generated, but probably had the look of being
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 2: a couple of hundred feet high, you know, and there
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 2: were helicopters flying between his legs and little kids yelling Michael,
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 2: I love you, and everybody that we showed it to
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 2: at the label was just had their heads on the
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 2: table groaning. You know. It was just everybody felt, you know,
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 2: he's going to be accused of being a megalomaniac. He's
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 2: going to be you know that these kids, little kids.
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 2: It just brings back all the negatives. And so there
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 2: was all of that and here we were doing literally
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 2: the exchange for the for the master, you know.
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 1: So ultimately there was a problem with the lyric.
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 2: Yes on, they don't care about us, And Michael had
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 2: some very kind of shocking references to Jewish people in
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 2: the song. I kind of you know, knowing Michael, it's
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 2: like he put himself in the victim's position, you know,
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 2: and and he was saying those words like they were
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 2: being said to him. But the fact is is that
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 2: not everybody was going to accept that, you know. And
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 2: what happened was the Sunday or was it the Thursday before?
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 2: Maybe it was the Thursday before. The in store date
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 2: was June twentieth, so it was either the Thursday. I
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 2: think we got a heads up copy of the Sunday
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 2: New York Times story that was going to explode this
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 2: story about the antisemitic lyrics, and so we were scrambling, again,
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 2: what the hell are we going to do about this?
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 2: You know, So I mean literally, Sandy, you know, it
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 2: was one of the best efforts I saw from Sandy,
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 2: because Sandy went out and really got some of the
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 2: scholars and leaders, the theologians from the temples to really
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 2: address it and support Michael Inniz. But the fact was
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 2: it was it was just another inflaming issue, and it
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 2: was happening right on the release. It's just, you know,
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 2: I had raised the issue, you know, when we really
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 2: heard the final version, which is probably five or six
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 2: weeks before the album was hitting, and we played this.
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 2: We played the record for a lot of people at
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 2: Sony Studios. We brought in Diane Sawyer, we brought in
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 2: all kinds of press people, accounts people, and I had
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 2: it was kind of there that it kind of hit me, hey,
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 2: wait a minute, are we listening to this lyric here?
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 2: And I brought it to Dave's attention, and Dave said,
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 2: I need to talk to Tommy about this, you know.
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 2: So he spoke to Tommy. I'd spoken to him in
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 2: the morning, and that evening Dave called me back in
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 2: the office and you know, I said, this is going
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 2: to be a problem. And so Dave said, well, I
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 2: spoke to Tommy about it, and he said, you know,
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 2: you can't dictate what an artist says on the record.
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 2: I said, I'm not dictating what's going on the record.
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 2: I'm saying, we need to have a conversation in front
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 2: with Mike and Sandy to talk about the impact. You know,
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 2: we need to be prepared, and nothing ever happened. And
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 2: I get it, because that album was set on a
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 2: release date. If anything was going to change, it was
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 2: going to push that album back to who knows when,
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 2: and the company was going to lose that Billy and
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 2: I don't think the leadership of the company was going
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 2: to ever go for them. So we put it out
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 2: there and bang, there was a problem. And then then
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 2: the conclusion was that Michael needed What was suggested to
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 2: Michael that he should re record those lyrics, and he
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 2: agreed to do that, and then it was I was
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 2: told to go speak on background to the journalists who
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 2: had the biggest problem with it. So I spoke to
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 2: probably six or seven or eight journalists who were upset
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 2: had written about this, and told him that Michael had
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 2: agreed to re record the lyrics. Well, then Michael had
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 2: second thoughts on it, and it became a real issue,
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 2: and we kind of pushed and pulled, and finally, you know,
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 2: Jim Morey was a big part of getting him back
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 2: in the studio, and Jim and I went over to
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 2: the Sony studios with Michael, went in and Michael did
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 2: re record the lyrics.
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, ultimately you get rewarded with getting a job with
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 1: V two Records with Richard Branson? How was the experience
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: running that company working with Branson?
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 2: Was working with Richard was fantastic. It was a lot
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 2: of fun. Basically, his directive was, if you need me
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 2: for profile, if you need me for fun, got some
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 2: great events or whatever. If you need money, call me
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 2: and otherwise go do what you're going to do. The
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 2: company had been formed, I think in March of ninety six,
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 2: and I came on board in January of ninety seven,
• 2:13:28
  Speaker 2: and they had already set up offices in several of
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 2: the European countries, and they also had started buying up
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 2: small labels. And all those labels had two, three, four employees.
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 2: So we took all those employees and they all did
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 2: the same thing for a small label. So now now
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 2: we had all these people who did the same thing
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 2: for a small label at a bigger label. And I
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 2: think when we opened the doors, the other was they'd
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 2: gotten really pretty crazy about signing acts. I think when
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 2: we opened the doors, we had sixty four artists on
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 2: the roster, and the principle that have been set up
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 2: in the headquarters office in London was to break artists
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 2: globally at the same time, and that was kind of
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 2: totally against the grain of what I knew. You know,
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 2: it's you know, how did Pearl Jam break They build
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 2: a base in Seattle and the Northwest. You know that,
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 2: you know how to Southern rock start in the south.
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 2: You know that you got to form some bases. You
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 2: can't break things globally unless you have some big pop hit.
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 2: So that was going to be a challenge, particularly with
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 2: that big of a roster. And the idea of V
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 2: two was to be artists, really super friendly to artists,
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 2: so we couldn't sit there and just draw thirty acts,
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 2: you know. So we were really hung up on this
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 2: and Pete Jones, who was I made the distribution deal
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 2: for North America with BMG, which Pete Jones ran their
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 2: distribution company, and I begged Pete to set up an
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 2: indie distribution wing that I could put out a lot
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 2: of these records that I knew were going to sell
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 2: fifteen hundred three thousand copies, to do it independently and
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 2: keep it out of their branch system because I knew
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 2: the branch managers they're sitting there, you know, counting their
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 2: bonus based on you know, big numbers. And I thought,
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 2: if we put ten Niche records out through BMG, this
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 2: branch managers are going to totally turn off to the label.
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 2: And then we'd start to get something going with an
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 2: act and then the international company would say, well, let's
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 2: bring them to Algium or France or Germany. And you know,
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 2: I don't think there was an understanding of how long
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 2: it takes to break and act in the US, and
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 2: so that was that was an issue. And then Kate
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 2: Hymen brought the Mobi record play into me, and number one,
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 2: I knew he had scanned like fifty two thousand on
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 2: the previous album, so I knew we could break even
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 2: on it, you know, but I love the fact that
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 2: the record was had so much air in it in
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 2: terms of I thought it was a great, you know,
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 2: trailer soundtrack commercials type of thing, and we signed Mobi
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 2: on that idea. I sat down with Mobi and I said, look,
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 2: I forget who I think MCA was trying to had
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 2: a little better offer than us on the table, and
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 2: I said, if you have a hit single, sign with MCA.
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 2: I said, but if you want somebody to work your
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 2: record for the next year, signed with Thoughts. And I
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 2: told him, I said, I really believe we had had
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 2: a couple of publishing songs that David Steele, who was
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 2: our publishing licensing person, had had some success with some
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 2: publishing copyrights that we had, and we were getting had
• 2:17:35
  Speaker 2: some nice licenses. And I said, I'm going to have David.
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 2: This is all he's going to do is work your record.
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 2: And I said, I think it's a marketing plan. I
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 2: had a circumstance at Sony with a band called The Insiders.
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 2: They're a bar band, like a great bar band. Just
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 2: love them, and we over at rock radio and everything
• 2:18:02
  Speaker 2: on their first album, and we got ourselves at a
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 2: little bit of trouble with the finance people. When we
• 2:18:09
  Speaker 2: had the second album come, everybody wanted to drop them.
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 2: In the meantime, the manager called me and said, hey,
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 2: we've got an offer for this little indie film. And
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 2: of course this is back in like nineteen eighty eight
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 2: or something ninety and indie films weren't that big of
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 2: a deal then, you know. But he said you know,
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 2: they're offering like three thousand dollars. But I talked to
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 2: the Sony licensing department and they had no sense of marketing.
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 2: They were just a dollars and cents. If the song
• 2:18:45
  Speaker 2: was the opening track of a movie, the price is X.
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter if it's Barbara streisand or it's The Insiders,
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 2: and if it's the end track, this is the price.
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 2: And it was all total formula. So I called the
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 2: licensing department. I said, look, this band is totally unearned.
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 2: Our publishing company has has signed them, the record company
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 2: has signed them. This band is never going to see
• 2:19:15
  Speaker 2: the three thousand dollars, you know, but it'll give us
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 2: something to go to the marketplace with. You know. We
• 2:19:23
  Speaker 2: we can we can talk that up, you know we can.
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 2: We can probably get some airplay based on some enthusiasm
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 2: for the c Indie movie. Sorry, can't do it. They
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 2: don't pay the price. That's it. So I swore to
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 2: God if I was ever in a position again, that
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 2: was never going to happen. So with Moby, it was like,
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 2: we're going to go and we're going to use the
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 2: whole damn album as a marketing tool and that's what
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 2: we did, and David Steele just rocked. I mean, he
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 2: and the publisher, I forget who the publisher was, Tom.
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 2: They rocked and they worked together. And by the time
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 2: we had I think forty thousand scans on the play album,
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 2: we had grossed a million dollars un licensing, and of
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 2: course it ended up every track license and it just
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 2: it was, you know, just an absolute unique situation. Probably
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 2: couldn't have happened on any other record. It just it
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 2: just fit the moment. And of course it changed things
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 2: because then everybody started pursuing licensing in a more strategic
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 2: way after that, you know. So that was a great thing.
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 2: And as it turned out, Bob I had hearing problems
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 2: and I started realizing they were getting worse. What you know,
• 2:20:56
  Speaker 2: I would go over. I was in Europe every couple
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 2: of weeks in other of our regional offices, and of
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 2: course everybody's got an accent, and I didn't realize it
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 2: that I was. I was reading lips and you know,
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 2: and when you're in an environment where people aren't speaking
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 2: the way you know, the way the people you're around
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 2: every day, I started realizing, Hey, I'm kind of losing touch. Here,
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 2: you know, but I thought I had a fatigue syndrome.
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 2: And I told my wife, I said, you know, I said,
• 2:21:33
  Speaker 2: you know, here, I am working for the nicest billionaire
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 2: on earth who's given us all this money, and we
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 2: got this great young team, and I'm feeling miserable. She said, yeah,
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 2: you are. You're miserable right now. She said, you need
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 2: to get to the doctor and see what's going on.
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 2: So I went to the doctor, and I think the
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 2: doctor picked up on it right away. He gave me
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 2: all the tests for everything, but ultimately said, I think
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 2: I'm going to send you into an audiologist. And I said,
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 2: oh yeah, I got a I know, if I'm at
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 2: a concert and somebody speaks to me in my left ear,
• 2:22:10
  Speaker 2: I tell him talk to me in my rightear. And
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 2: because with all the noise, I don't quite hear, so
• 2:22:15
  Speaker 2: I probably have a little issue. He came back, said,
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 2: you've lost sixty five percent of your mid range in
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 2: both ears, which is conversational, you know. And by the way,
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 2: all the people that I worked with over the years,
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 2: the upper level people, many of them all had hearing problems.
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 2: And you know, back in the seventies and eighties and
• 2:22:41
  Speaker 2: we used to laugh at them, and you know, oh
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 2: my god, those guys can't hear anything, you know. I
• 2:22:47
  Speaker 2: know one A and R guy, he had the treble
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 2: cranked up so high on his system. It was like,
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 2: you know, it was like aluminum, you know. And one
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 2: thing that I did that then was I swore to
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 2: God I would not change my dials. I kept them
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 2: completely neutral in terms of bass, you know, top end,
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 2: low end, kept everything right in the middle, so that
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 2: if I ever had a hearing issue, I would notice it.
• 2:23:18
  Speaker 2: And so I didn't notice it, you know, and a
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 2: band would come in, you know, and so I lost
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 2: mid range and that's where people speak, you know. So well,
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 2: what happened is a band would come in and they
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 2: play an album and I would say, oh, you know,
• 2:23:35
  Speaker 2: you got to bump the vocals up a little bit,
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 2: and the lead singer would always say, yeah, yeah, bump
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 2: the vocal up. But it was my hearing problem. And
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 2: so anyway, I after I realized I had to get
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 2: hearing aids, and frankly, I didn't know what hearing aids
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 2: would do for me. And this is nineteen ninety nine,
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 2: you know, it wasn't exactly a cool thing. I got
• 2:24:05
  Speaker 2: to step away. I I you know, I don't. I
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 2: can't embarrass this company, you know, I don't want to
• 2:24:10
  Speaker 2: be a joke out there. You know, people are talking about,
• 2:24:13
  Speaker 2: oh yeah, the label with the guy can't hear, you know.
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 2: So I stepped away, and it kind of lost my
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 2: mo for a couple of years. And but you know,
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 2: you got to plow ahead. You gotta, you know, you
• 2:24:24
  Speaker 2: gotta take those things and just put them on the
• 2:24:28
  Speaker 2: side and do what you can do, you know, and
• 2:24:31
  Speaker 2: see if you can if there's something some other way
• 2:24:34
  Speaker 2: you can approach things, you know. So it's all problem solving,
• 2:24:38
  Speaker 2: you know that. I think that's the product management thing
• 2:24:41
  Speaker 2: is we had a bunch of little problems. You're trying
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 2: to fix all this little stuff so it doesn't get
• 2:24:46
  Speaker 2: in the way of promotion or sales, you know. And
• 2:24:49
  Speaker 2: that's kind of the way I saw it, you know.
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 1: So do you know what caused the hearing loss? Yeah?
• 2:24:59
  Speaker 2: I do, And Bob, you know what it is? Hereditary.
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 2: It's it was not based on all the decibels that
• 2:25:10
  Speaker 2: I listened to from Cheap Trick and Aussy and Boston
• 2:25:14
  Speaker 2: and you know, all those bands. Uh, it was none
• 2:25:18
  Speaker 2: of that. It was it was I had it was
• 2:25:23
  Speaker 2: it was my genes. So you know, it's most people
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 2: lose high end with due to sound or due to age,
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 2: and that's that's the typical issue for most people.
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, So when Michael Jackson dies, are you surprised?
• 2:25:42
  Speaker 2: Uh? Yeah, I think a figure that large that you're
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 2: naturally surprised, you know, based on all that he'd been through,
• 2:25:53
  Speaker 2: you know, Number one, when I was working with them
• 2:25:55
  Speaker 2: in the early nineties after the scandal issue, I couldn't
• 2:26:01
  Speaker 2: imagine how he could get through. It had to be
• 2:26:05
  Speaker 2: so painful, you know. I mean he had me bring
• 2:26:08
  Speaker 2: research to him that was you know, he would read
• 2:26:11
  Speaker 2: these surveys I bring in and be like a New
• 2:26:15
  Speaker 2: York phone book stack of surveys people saying really nasty
• 2:26:21
  Speaker 2: things about him, you know, and he would flip through
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 2: a read him and he wanted me to bring them.
• 2:26:26
  Speaker 2: And I think that was part of why Michael and I.
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 2: He knew I would tell him the truth, you know,
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 2: if I knew it, you know, and I also told him,
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 2: well I didn't know it, you know. I would say
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 2: I would say to Michael, Hey, Michael, I'm just a
• 2:26:43
  Speaker 2: guy from the record company. And the first time I
• 2:26:46
  Speaker 2: said it, he burst out laughing and he said, you're
• 2:26:49
  Speaker 2: just the guy from the record company. And he's laughed
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 2: and laughed and laughed. So after that, he every time
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 2: he'd asked me an opinion, he said, damn, what do
• 2:26:58
  Speaker 2: you think of this? You know? And I said, well,
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 2: you know, I don't know. You could do a b C.
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 2: You know, there's different ways. And he'd said, yeah, but Dan,
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 2: you're just a guy from company. And it was our
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 2: little joke all, you know. But when he died, you know,
• 2:27:14
  Speaker 2: obviously extremely sad. You know, I knew Frank de Leo
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 2: raced over to the hospital. It was one of the
• 2:27:23
  Speaker 2: things I was aware of from watching CNN, you know.
• 2:27:27
  Speaker 2: I had told Dave Glue. We had breakfast after he
• 2:27:32
  Speaker 2: told Tommy I was leaving Epic, and we were just
• 2:27:38
  Speaker 2: kind of this is end of nineteen ninety six and
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 2: we were just kind of reminiscing our experience working with Michael,
• 2:27:50
  Speaker 2: and I said, you know, five years he's going to
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 2: be bankrupt, you know, and you know, I don't just
• 2:27:57
  Speaker 2: don't know, you know, his health. We had been through
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 2: the thing with the which was crushing the HBO concert
• 2:28:05
  Speaker 2: that we were doing live from New York back in November,
• 2:28:09
  Speaker 2: I think November thirtieth of ninety six, and that fell
• 2:28:14
  Speaker 2: through because Michael went to the hospital. And I think
• 2:28:18
  Speaker 2: sometimes the only way Michael could get out of something
• 2:28:22
  Speaker 2: was making himself sick. And I just thought, you know,
• 2:28:26
  Speaker 2: he was probably making himself sick. I thought he owed
• 2:28:30
  Speaker 2: so much money at the end that you know, he
• 2:28:37
  Speaker 2: had to promise those shows. And one thing about Michael
• 2:28:41
  Speaker 2: was he was a good answer to the man, you know,
• 2:28:45
  Speaker 2: and I think that the man was going to steal
• 2:28:49
  Speaker 2: the joy that he had on stage with the audience.
• 2:28:53
  Speaker 2: That was his heart and soul, that was his that's
• 2:28:56
  Speaker 2: where his heart beat, with the audience's live shows, and
• 2:29:01
  Speaker 2: to do them because he owed money. I just you know,
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 2: I told everybody that I ever spoke to at the time,
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 2: they said, this won't last three shows. It just won't.
• 2:29:15
  Speaker 2: I said, one, it's too physically demanding. And number two,
• 2:29:21
  Speaker 2: I said, he's not going to play for the man.
• 2:29:24
  Speaker 2: He's just not going to do it. And you know,
• 2:29:27
  Speaker 2: it's so sad, you know, in the end, I mean,
• 2:29:31
  Speaker 2: the last you know, fifteen years of his life were
• 2:29:36
  Speaker 2: terribly sad, you know. I mean, one of the things
• 2:29:38
  Speaker 2: that I felt in writing the book was that my
• 2:29:42
  Speaker 2: kids only knew a really negative side of Michael. They
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 2: didn't know that eighties thriller all you know, all that
• 2:29:51
  Speaker 2: phenomenal stuff that we saw, the Motown twenty five and
• 2:29:55
  Speaker 2: you know the you know, the Moonwalk and Billy Jean
• 2:29:59
  Speaker 2: and and you know all of the amazing stuff that happened.
• 2:30:03
  Speaker 2: You know, you know, something would come up on TV
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 2: with my kids were ten or twelve years old and
• 2:30:11
  Speaker 2: Michael and it's oh yeah, I used to work with him.
• 2:30:13
  Speaker 2: They'd look at me side eyed, like by dad, yeah
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 2: you're cp you know, and and I would think, God,
• 2:30:24
  Speaker 2: they just don't they just don't know that other side
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 2: that you know, they only see the dark side of
• 2:30:30
  Speaker 2: the room.
• 2:30:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, Dan, this is you know. I love getting your
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: history in the early days, especially for people who were
• 2:30:39
  Speaker 1: there and other people wonder how to make it. There's
• 2:30:41
  Speaker 1: a lot more about Michael and the book, and it's
• 2:30:46
  Speaker 1: certainly in depth. He'll give you all the information you want. Dan,
• 2:30:50
  Speaker 1: I want to thank you so much for taking this
• 2:30:52
  Speaker 1: time to speak to my audience.
• 2:30:55
  Speaker 2: Bob, Well, thank you. You know, I I love your
• 2:31:00
  Speaker 2: inquisitive nature and you know your your curiosity and I
• 2:31:05
  Speaker 2: know you love this business, the music and all that
• 2:31:08
  Speaker 2: goes on about it, and that's just your your gift
• 2:31:11
  Speaker 2: to all of us for doing it well.
• 2:31:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, And on that note, till next time,
• 2:31:18
  Speaker 1: it's Bob Left sets