Latest / The Letterbox Podcast / Dear Listener | Ira Blacker: A Letter About Family, Survival & Rock & Roll

Transcript

Dear Listener | Ira Blacker: A Letter About Family, Survival & Rock & Roll · The Letterbox Podcast

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Hello, and welcome back to the Letterbox Podcast.
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I'm Lucy. And this is the place where real
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people share the real letters they've written about things
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that mean the most to them. Today's letter comes from Ira
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Blacker, whose life has taken him from a difficult childhood
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in Brooklyn to a long and extraordinary career in the
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music business. Following university, Ira went
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on to work as a music agent and founded the American Talent
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International, working with names like Rod Stewart, Deep
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Purple, Rush Craftwork, ZZ Top and many, many more.
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He was working in the background to shape the classic rock era by
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importing and managing some of the biggest names in rock'n'roll
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history. But the letter that he has
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written for us today isn't really about the music business,
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it's about his reflections on life now that he's had the
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chance to sit down and talk truthfully about his
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experiences. Now, I'm not going to give too
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much more away right now because there is so much to learn and
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hear about in IRA's letter. But before I share with you that
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letter, I've got one small favour to ask and that is if you
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are not already following the podcast, if you could press
1:23
follow or subscribe, it would mean the absolute world to me.
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It really is the very best way to support the podcast and helps
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these letters get heard by people who might not have
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otherwise come across them. But for now, let's hear from Ira
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Blacka and his letter. Dear listener.
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Dear listener, I never set out to write a book.
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That may sound strange coming from somebody who eventually
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spent almost 15 years writing one, but it's the truth.
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Once a King, Now a Prince started as a journal.
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Nothing more ambitious than that.
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I was not sitting there thinking about publishers, readers,
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reviews, podcasts, or whether anybody in the world would give
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a damn about what I had to say. I was writing for myself.
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Maybe even writing to myself. There were things I had carried
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around for most of my life that simply needed someplace else to
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live. Memories, anger, questions,
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people I loved, people I hated, things that happened to me and
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things I did to other people. There were successes I was proud
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of and mistakes I would have preferred to leave buried.
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Unfortunately, memories do not always cooperate.
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Some of them keep knocking on the door until you finally
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answer. My story did not begin with
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Rock'n'roll. It did not begin with Rod
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Stewart in the Faces, Deep Purple, Rush and Kraftwerk,
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Nazareth, Uriah Heep, ZZ Top, or any of the other people I would
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have eventually encountered during my years in the music
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business. It began much earlier with a
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little boy growing up in what I can only describe as a war zone.
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My mother loved me. My father did not want me.
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That's a hell of a sentence to write and it is even harder
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sentence to live. When you're a child.
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You do not have the ability to sit back and analyse your
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parents. You do not say Dad seems to be
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having an emotional difficulty today.
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You think it's you. You think somehow you caused it.
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My father's anger filled our home.
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My mother's love was real, but it could not protect me from
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everything that was happening around us.
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Eventually, I was sent away. The adults may have thought that
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they were solving the problem, but the six year old boy did not
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see it that way. He saw abandonment.
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He saw himself being removed from his own home while the
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adults stayed behind. Somewhere inside that child, the
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message began taking shape. Maybe I really am the problem.
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That message can follow you for a very long time.
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It followed me into friendships, relationships, business,
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ambition, and my need to succeed, probably into more
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arguments than I can to admit. I spent a good portion of my
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life proving that I mattered, without ever completely
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understanding who I was trying to prove it to.
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Then, at 15, I found Rock'n'roll.
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Or maybe Rock'n'roll found me. I used to go up on the roof by
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building in Brooklyn, spread out a blanket as if I was at the
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beach, run an extension cord down to my bedroom, plug in the
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radio and listen there. I could escape for a while.
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The music did something for me that very few things could do at
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that point in my life. It gave me another world.
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Years later, that world became my business.
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I went from managing a local group to becoming an agent, and
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from there into a life I never could have imagined.
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While I was lying on that rooftop in Brooklyn, suddenly I
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was dealing with artists, managers, promoters, record
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companies, tours, contracts, egos, money, arguments,
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triumphs, betrayals, aeroplanes, hotel rooms, Had enough insanity
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to keep a psychiatrist employed for several lifetimes.
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And yes, it was exciting. There were incredible times and
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some very funny times. There were also times when I
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acted like an asshole. Anybody who writes A memoir and
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someone manages to make himself a hero of every chapter has
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either lived a very unusual life or has a very convenient memory.
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I was not interested in doing that.
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Remember, I did not stop this as a book.
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I started it as a journal. And when you're writing
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something you believe nobody else is ever going to read,
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there is very little reason to bullshit yourself.
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That became important later. Friends eventually read some of
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what I had written and told me there was a book there.
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I was not convinced. I have never claimed to be an
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author, but I can tell a damn good story.
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So I kept writing. But it started as a journal
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about my childhood, slowly became much larger.
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My early adulthood came into it. The music business came into it,
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the people I had known came into it.
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The mistakes came into it. Pretty soon I realised that if I
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was going to tell the story, I had to tell the truth.
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Not somebody else's truth, Mine. That does not mean memory is
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perfect. Anybody who tells you who
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remembers every conversation from 50 years ago word for word
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is either blessed with a supernatural brain or full of
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crap. But there is another kind of
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truth. Emotional truth.
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You remember how something felt. You remember the room.
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You remember the fear and the anger.
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You remember who stood beside you and who disappeared when you
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needed them. You remember being betrayed, and
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you remember being loved. The challenge was learning how
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to write all of that without turning the book into revenge.
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Believe me, there were opportunities.
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They were people I could have destroyed on paper if that had
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been the purpose. But revenge makes lousy history.
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What I really wanted was to understand how I got from that
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frightened, angry little boy to a man who eventually sat across
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from some of the biggest names in the music business and made
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decisions that affected careers. Because that boy never really
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disappeared. He came with me.
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The same kid who once wondered why his father did not want him
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became the man with the tremendous need to win, to
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batter, to be respected, and to control the room before the room
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could control him. That could be a very useful
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quality in business. Could also get you into a lot of
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trouble. I imagine both.
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Writing the journal made me see connections I had never seen
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while I was living them. That may have been the biggest
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surprise of all. You live life going forward, but
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when you write about it, you're looking backward.
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Suddenly, things that seemed unrelated sort of connecting.
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The anger connects to the abandonment, the ambitiousness
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connected to rejection. The humour connects to pain.
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And yes, I use humour. I always have.
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Sometimes humour is simply the only civilised response to
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insanity. If I told some of these stories
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without laughing, I would probably have to start throwing
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furniture. So the book became many things.
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It became a record of my family. It became a record of a New York
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that barely exists anymore. It became a record of the music
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business during an extraordinary period when rock'n'roll was
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exploding and nobody really knew where the hell it was going.
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It became a record of people who became famous, people who
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disappeared, people who mattered to me and people I wish I had
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never met. But underneath all of that
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remained what it had been in the beginning, a journal, a man
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trying to understand his own life by putting it on paper.
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I think that is why telling the truth matters so much to me.
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I was not interested in polishing myself for public
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assumption. Life was not polished.
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Mine certainly wasn't. There was abuse, There was
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abandonment. There was sex, drugs and
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rock'n'roll. There was success and failure,
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laughter and betrayal. There were people I loved
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desperately and there were people I would have gladly
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helped. Onto a slow boat to China, but
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preferably without a return ticket.
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That is life, warts and all. And now, after all those years
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of writing something I never planned to write, the journal
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has become a book. And the book is found in metres.
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That still amazes me because somewhere underneath the stories
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about famous musicians, artists, managers, promoters, record
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companies, deals, tours and all of the madness that came with
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them, there is still that little boy wondering what he did wrong.
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The difference is that today I could finally answer him.
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He did not do anything wrong. He survived, and then he had one
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hell of a life. So, dear listener, if there's
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one thing that I learned from Brandy Mine, it is this.
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You do not have to set out to write the story of your life.
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Sometimes you simply start by telling yourself the truth and
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one day you look down at all those pages and realise there
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was a story there all along. Thank you so much, Ira, for
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sharing that with us today. There was something so moving
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about the part of IRA's story that after everything that's
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happened, you can finally look back at the little boy that he
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was and tell him what he needed to hear all along, that he
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didn't do anything wrong, that he survived and had one hell of
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a life afterwards. Ira shares so much more of his
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life, his story, and his experience of the music industry
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in his memoir, Once a King, Now a Prince, which I will link in
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the show notes so that you can go and check it out yourself.
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As he said, he never intended to write a book and what began as
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something private eventually became the retelling of his life
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and in the process helped him understand the connection
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between the little boy he once was and the man that he has
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become. Thank you so much Ira again for
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taking the time to write a letter for the Letterbox Podcast
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and reading it for us to hear today.
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Many big, big thank you to all of you listening all over the
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world. It really means so much to us
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that you are here and that you keep coming back.
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We are getting glimpses into the lives of people from all walks
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of life and it really is something special.
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If you have a letter that you would like to be featured on the
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podcast, then please do get in contact.
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You can find me on Instagram or send me a message.
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The e-mail is in the show notes. Make sure to follow and
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subscribe. Send this to somebody who you
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think might enjoy it today and I'll see you next time.
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Sending all my love, Lucy.