Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Brett Gurewitz

Transcript

Brett Gurewitz · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome, welcome, welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Brett Gerwitz of Bad Religion and
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Epitaph Records fame. Brett, what's the status of punk music
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: in the world today?
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: I would say it's still alive and flourishing, but there's
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: young bands who call themselves punk because they come from
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: the lineage of punk. And You know, and there's a
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: lot of legacy bands that are still going strong.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Okay. You know, we live in this world where, you know,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: there's no monoculture. We had Green Day breakthrough in the 90s,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Nevermind Nirvana before that. Will we see that again? Is
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: there a band on the horizon that might have broad appeal? Yes,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: there is.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: But I'm not at liberty to say who they are
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: except trying to sign them.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Okay. Let's just stay there. Don't reveal anything you shouldn't.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: How'd you find them?
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: I found them because one of my bands, an Epitaph band,
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: told me about them. Said, have you heard this band?
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: They're really great. They're blowing up right now. A lot
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: of my discovery comes from artists who I'm very close
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: to recommending them to me. And of course, I have
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: my A & R team at Epitaph. We have about
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: four people who work on that.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, the internet has changed scouting talent completely. Used to
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: be you had to move to LA, you played in
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: clubs or whatever. How does your A & R staff
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: do their job of discovery?
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's a lot of data analysis. You know,
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: it's totally different than it used to be. It used
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: to be that you'd, you know, you'd go to a
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: lot of clubs and you'd see shows, you'd get recommended,
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: you'd go see artists and see the opening bands. But
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: mainly you wanted to see bands that were not the
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: opening bands. You wanted to see bands that were just
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: doing it and building the following in their community. And,
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: you know, if a band could attract, you know, 250
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: people in their local town and get the kids going
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: and singing the songs back at them, then that was
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: your focus group. And you figured, okay, if they can
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: do it locally... You know, people are people. It's going
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: to work elsewhere, you know. But you don't do it
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: that way anymore. Now it's really about, you know, you can,
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: you have so much information at your fingertips all the time.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: And you sort of, you need a, you need some,
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: you need people who are experts in two things. They
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: need to be, they need to really have great taste
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: in music. And they need to sort of be able
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: to get it, like be open-minded about like, well, if
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: this isn't my taste, but it's happening, what's there to
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: like about it? Right? So you need people who can
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: do that. And then you need people who are sort
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: of extremely savvy about identifying signal in the noise with
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: all of the data that's out there.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Go a little bit deeper about the signal and the noise. Well,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: there's a.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Lot of noise. You know, there's... Uh, you know, there's, uh,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: there's a views, uh, there's, uh, engagement, uh, there's, um, uh,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: ticket sales. There's, um, uh, um, you know, there's, there's
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: streams there. There's, uh, uh, you know, in the, in
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: the world of TikTok, there's things like views versus creates, uh,
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: on Spotify, there are things like, uh, listeners versus followers.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: And obviously, you know, you've got your ticket sales numbers. And,
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: you know, and then there's things like, okay, well, if
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: somebody has a high signal across their streams, what does
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: it mean? Well, is it all coming from one song?
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Is it evenly distributed across 75 songs? Well, just right there,
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: it tells you maybe they've been slogging away at it
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: too long. They're not a new band. Right. They have
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: 75 songs up there. If you have something that's, you know,
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: relatively strong signal across 10 songs, fairly evenly distributed, it
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: tells you the kids know who these guys are. You know,
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: so it's there's a lot of nuance and it's sort
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: of like, you know, almost reading the numbers turns into
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: like being able to to, you know, hear a good hook. Like,
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: you can just, you can sort of, you can see
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: those numbers and interpret what they mean. You can start
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: to read what they're telling you, you know.
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  Speaker 1: Okay. Let's say I'm, you know, 21 years old and
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: I'm working in, I'm an electronics whiz. Not that you
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: have to be that sharp these days. And I create
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: some great tracks. They're not on YouTube. They're not on Spotify, whatever.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: And for whatever reason, they get to you.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 1: Are you going to say, hey, assuming the tracks are good,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: of course, you're going to say interested or I really
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: can't do anything until you've built an audience.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Right. So first I'd say, you know, who is the artist?
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: Is it is it a bedroom creator? Is it just
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: a person? Is it a high school kid in his bedroom?
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Is it a band where there's four guys and four
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: people and they're amazing together, you know, because it's a
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: totally different thing. Um, if, if what's amazing about it
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: is the song, right. Um, I might encourage that person
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: to keep writing, uh, but I don't know if that
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: person is a writer or a performer, you know? So, um,
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: I don't think that, that, uh, if, if you simply
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: get a demo and it's really well produced and it's
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: a great track, it's not enough. It's not enough to know. Right.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: And if you can't see them live, because many of
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: these things you get today that that sound really pretty impressive,
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: even though it's an unheard of artist, they've never played
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: a show, you know. And so really now that's not
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: to say that I would never sign somebody before they
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: played a show. I absolutely would. But it depends on
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: what kind of an artist it is. You know, if
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: it's if it's guitar rock. No. You know, if it's
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: bedroom pop, yeah, maybe, you know. So, yeah, there's a lot,
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: you know, there's a lot of different questions there, you know. But,
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: you know, if it's, you know, if it's rap music,
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: some form of alternative rap, Epitaph doesn't do mainstream rap
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: or mainstream pop. But pretty much anything that's left of
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: center right now, we're interested in it. That's sort of
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: our lane. We're not a punk label anymore, but we
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: still have a great punk catalog and everything. And we're
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: still looking for the next cool punk thing, but it
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: might not be identifiable as punk. You know what I mean?
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: But you could get some really aggressive alternative rap. And
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: to me, that's today's version of punk, you know. But
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: if I got that demo, I'd say, OK, you know,
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: who's involved with this? You know, did you write the song?
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Did you write the beat? Did you do the production?
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Because you want to see if that artist can reproduce
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: that thing that they just sent you. You know what
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: I mean? And a lot of times there's a team
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: behind them. Even with a rock band today, you get
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: a demo and maybe the producer was a co-writer. And
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: maybe it was a 45-year-old guy who's been writing for
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: 20 years. So not to say I'm not interested in
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: that artist, but are they a team and are they
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: going to continue to work together? Okay.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: So traditionally, I know that Epitaphs broadened its mission, but traditionally,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: punk was something that really lived on the road. To
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: what degree is it important for you to work with
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: an act that they, A, either already have a live
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: presence or they're willing to work?
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: They have to be willing to work. And I have to.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: And you're right.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: For the most part.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: The things that the artist at Epitaph is involved with
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: have a live act. We're not like Ninja Tunes or
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: something where we sign a lot of electronic artists or
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: bedroom producers. Although, you know, some of them do, you know,
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: and some of them, like many of today's biggest artists,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: started that way. And then they figured out their live thing.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: But it really, really helps if I feel like the
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: artist has charisma. You know, and it's something that everybody
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: can recognize instantly when they see a kid with charisma,
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: you know. And, you know, if they're really lacking it,
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: that's a bummer. It's not as exciting. Although if you
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: get an artist and they're an unsigned artist and they're
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: totally lacking charisma, but they have a phenomenal song or
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: maybe an amazing six songs. then you just roll the
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: dice and you hope they can develop it, you know,
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: because sometimes, sometimes you're not born with it.
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  Speaker 1: Okay. Does anybody ever surface being able to sell tickets
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: who doesn't have charisma? Okay.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to think of an outlier here. Um, yeah
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  Speaker 2: maybe i don't know did the grateful dead have charisma.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Well, they've established a lane, okay? And it took them
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: a long time to reach critical mass.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: And I think they did. I think when they were,
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: you know, I think in their early days, you know,
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: I saw the electric Kool-Aid acid test. You know, they
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: looked pretty cool back in the day. So they did
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: have charisma.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Well, certainly by hanging with that crowd.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, I think... I think not. I think
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: rock and roll is all about rebellion and teenage sexuality.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: And I think kids have to be attracted to that
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: artist on stage. And I think that's what I call charisma.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Okay. You talked about this artist you're trying to sign
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: who's unnamed. When you say trying to sign, are you
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: competing with other people for this artist?
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: I hope not. Hopefully not. And The goal is to
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: discover that talent early and before others. Because, as you know,
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: once a bunch of labels are interested in an artist,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: everything gets wound up and everything gets sort of starts
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: to miss the plot, you know. And what we've always
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: been about is artist development. You know, many of our artists,
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: you know, have their biggest record on their third record.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: And that's actually a really great trajectory, you know, because
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: it gives them time to tour, it gives them time
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: to develop their show, to even develop songs on the road,
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: figure out what it's like to be a band, the
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: chemistry with each other, uh, develop their writing. Um, and, um, but, uh,
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: You know, if you have to overpay for a first
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: record because it's very competitive, then it's a lot tougher
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: to just keep doing the things a label needs to
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: do over the course of three records, which is tour support,
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: investing in, you know, in rehearsal space, lockouts, helping put
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: the group together with other people who might inspire them,
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: giving them time to develop, so forth, you know.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Let's say you find an act and you want to
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: go into business with them. A, from the decision you
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: want to work with them to signed paper, how long
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: does that tend to take? And what kind of deal
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: with a new act get?
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: So it's all over the map for me right now.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: You know, a couple of years ago, I signed a
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: seven figure deal and it took us seven days. And and. Typically,
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: a new artist deal at Epitaph or Anti for a
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: developing artist. They're not really known, but they're getting a
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: little bit of... Their first few songs and shows are
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: doing pretty well organically. It would be about... A first
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: album could be in the range of $ 75, 000 recording fund,
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: something like that, and $ 5, 000 legal fee and... And a
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: few thousand dollars for album art. And that's on the
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: recording side. And then I would usually put about $ 75, 000
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: into the marketing and artist development side of that that
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: I would spend. So it's a significant investment. Oh, yeah.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: It's not. And there are smaller ones. It could be
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: 50 on one side and 50 on the other. It's
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: never less than $ 100, 000 just to start and get involved.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: So I have to really believe in the artist, you know.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: But I will tell you something. So my head of
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: business affairs, Eric Morris, and I are starting a book.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: And it's going to be the opposite of the Passman book.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: It's going to be a primer on the record industry.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: It's not going to be an in-depth. And we're just
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: putting rules in there. So we've coined a rule which
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: is called the Gerwitz-Morris law of inverse value. And that
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: is that the less important the contract is, the longer
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: it takes. And the bigger and more important it is,
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: the faster it goes. So for example, I could be
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: licensing 1,500 vinyl LPs to a tattoo shop in Montreal
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: who wanted to reissue a record that's too small for
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: me to do. And we'll have to talk to that
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: guy for five months. But there could be a big
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: legacy act who wants to put their record out. It's done.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: I know what they're worth. And their attorney calls me
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: up and it's going to be a million dollars. And
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: we can literally do that in seven days. And it's just,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: it happens every time. But the truth is, you know,
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: discovering a baby band and then getting the contract signed
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: usually could happen in 45 days.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Okay. You talk about the first album. I'm on the
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: other side of the fence. I'm the act. what are
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: you going to guarantee? Are you going to guarantee one
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: album with four options? What is it going to look like?
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: You're getting me, you're asking me to, to reveal all
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: my trade secrets to the competition. I don't mind saying,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: cause Epitaph.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Wait, whatever you don't want to say, don't say.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Believe me, I won't. Right. Um, yeah, typically Epitaph, uh, uh,
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: does three record deals. Uh, however, um, And I've never
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: done a major label style seven record deal or five
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: record deal in my life. I'm not a single one
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: going back to the early days. Um, have I done
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: one record deals? Uh, yes, but I don't like to,
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: because it takes more than one record. You can't, you
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: can't be positive. It's going to happen.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: But if it's a legacy act, you might do one record. Oh,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, Yeah. And I do that routinely because they're,
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: they're already established and that was on someone else's dime
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: capital records.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: Um, but so, so for me, the sweet spot is,
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: is a three record deal. And I, but, but if
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: I love the band and they want to do, uh,
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: two records, then, uh, I'm happy to do it because I,
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: what's important to me is making great records, uh, not
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: the deal. And, um, But I will say one thing
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: is I don't do something that the majors do and
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: that a lot of my indie competitors do. And I
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: don't do license deals. I do very artist-friendly short-term record contracts.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: So I'll do three and I'll even do two. And
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: the thing is that we treat our artists with respect.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: We pay timely. We respect the art. We provide them
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: with support. And we take the risk. And I think
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: because of that, it's fair that we're not just renting,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: that we get to be partners on that recording. And
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: in terms of not needing to ask for more than
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: three records, if things are going well, artists stay. I've
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: done three record deals with so many artists, and then
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: they've stayed with me for seven, eight, nine records, one
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: record at a time after, because then we have a relationship.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: And if the relationship is bad, I don't want them
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: to record with me. But if it's good, they don't
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: want to go anywhere else because our terms are already
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: the fairest.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: So what are those terms if they're the fairest?
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe someone gets fairer. I can't say what everybody
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: else does. But from the advent of streaming, when streaming
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: was invented, I scratched my head and I said, okay,
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure I understand this, but we don't have–
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: streaming rights in any of our contracts so far, but
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: we do have the right to license to a third party.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: And when you license, it's 50-50 on the revenue. So
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to skip the whole thing the majors
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: went through. Right. And I'm going to look at this
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: as if I'm licensing to Spotify. And so when a
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: dollar comes in, I'm giving 50 cents to the artist
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: on streaming. And that's going to Starting from day one
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: for all of my pre-existing contracts, and that's what I've
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: always done since streaming was invented, is 50-50 on streams.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: So how do you recoup costs? Just actual third-party costs.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: So we have an in-house radio department, a sales and
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: stream team, a digital marketing team, a publicity team, and
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: all that's on my dime. But, you know, if I
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: buy them a plane ticket or if I pay for,
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: you know, a plugger, something like that, and it costs $ 10,
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: then it's $ 5 and $ 5. It's a cost, and we
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: split what's left afterwards.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Just to make the numbers easy, let's say you've invested
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: $ 100, 000 in the act, and it streams in good numbers.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: I'm the act. I'm going to have to pay you
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: back in royalties the 100 grand before I'm going to
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: get paid, right?
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: Well, no, we both pay for the 100 grand, right?
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: So the 100 grand is split 50-50.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Well, the 100 grand is off the top, so that
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: makes it split 50 50 right we're 50 50 partners
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: in the whole thing in streams yeah yeah and actually
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: we just do 50 50 profit deals you know but
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: the difference is that on the vinyl there's a distribution
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: fee yeah.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Okay let's just assume also to make it easy I've
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: done three albums with you Can I ever get the
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: albums back?
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: No.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: However, after the three, if you want to continue with me,
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: we can negotiate a new deal. And if you are
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: a medium-sized artist by that time, and we're going to
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: continue together, then probably the next record is not a
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: licensed deal. But if you're a star by that time,
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: then yeah, you're going to get a license deal on
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: that time and probably be able to improve your rates
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: on your earlier records too. So that's why the short-term
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: deal gives the power to the artist, and I think
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: it's very artist-friendly.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, you mentioned Passman in his book. When you find
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: these acts, do they tend to have knowledgeable experience, representation?
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Or do you have to steer them to someone? Because
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: obviously it's sophisticated even though everybody thinks it's not.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really complicated. I would say three out of
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: four times they do. And in fact, that's another way
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: of finding artists that I didn't mention. There's a network
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: of music attorneys, as you know, and very often they'll
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: just send us– recommendations. So, um, and then they're already
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: representing the artists. So, um, so a lot of times we, uh,
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: find out about new talent from attorneys, but, um, but
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: if they don't have one and if they're very inexperienced,
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: they'll usually, usually have a manager. If their, their manager
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: isn't really a manager, if it's like a dadager or
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: a fanager, um, we'll give them a list of names,
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: you know, and then say, call these people. We can't
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: send you a contract unless you, have an attorney looking
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: at it.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: You know, traditionally, no act becomes very successful without a
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: reasonable manager. Let's say you're involved with an act. Do
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: you ever take the act aside and say, hey, you
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: got to work with better people?
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Not really. That's, you know, that's sort of frowned upon.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: And I'm not trying to get people fired. But yeah,
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: there are Really, what would end up happening is there's
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: just a lot of complaining on the label side amongst ourselves. Like, oh, God,
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: this manager, you know. We might try to influence it
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: in ways that are a little more subtle, you know. But,
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: you know, you can't really tell a band to fire
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: their manager. I mean, that's a good way to start
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: a war, you know.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Okay. I've made a deal with you. You know, I
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: got a 75 grand recording budget. Mm-hmm. To what degree
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: are you going to be overlooking imparting your knowledge?
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so as much or as little as you want.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: And that's what's fun about my role is that I've
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: made lots of records as a recording artist. I've worked
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: as a writer. I've worked as a mixer. I've worked
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: as a producer. I used to have my own studio
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: for many years. I was working in there 90 hours
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: a week just learning the craft. so I can talk
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: the talk. I know how to make records. I'm available
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: to the, the everybody, but I let them know that,
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm here for you, but I, and are
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: with a very light touch. Uh, you know, we're might
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: not be a punk label anymore, but that's, what's in
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: our DNA. So you want to make your record and
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: then turn it in. You can do that. So, you know,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: basically take what you want, leave the rest. And, and
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: that's what I, that's what I do. Uh, But, you know,
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: for artists, a lot of artists welcome it, you know,
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: and they want to talk to me about, hey, should this,
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: you know, what do you think of this song? And
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: I might say, hey, the bridge doesn't need to be
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: 16 bars. You know, it'd be better if it was
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: eight bars. And the second chorus doesn't need a double chorus.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Save that for the third chorus. You know, I have
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: very good instincts with those things. And that's really, really
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: fun for me. And, you know, I mean. I'm a
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: 64-year-old owner of, at this point, a legacy indie, pretty
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: good-sized international record company. And I've got bands putting me
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: on the CC list for the mix notes. They want
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: me to give the mix notes because their engineers appreciate it.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: Because I don't give a 10-inch list of notes. I'll
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: tell them what I think about the mix in a
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: few sentences. And usually they, you know, usually I cut
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: to the chase and just appreciate it. So that's really, really,
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: and actually mixers appreciate me too, because I don't, my
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: comments aren't nonsensical. So.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Okay. Band, you sign, you know, these tend to be
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: unique individuals, especially the more talented ones. They say, oh yeah,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: you know, I got a buzz in my neighborhood, put
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: a few tracks up on YouTube. I want to produce
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: the record myself.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So. It's always exciting to me when I find
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: an artist who can produce. Because when I was doing
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: Bad Religion, I was a recording engineer writing songs for
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: my band, and I was producing it. And our records
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: sounded pretty good, because I'd been recording every band in
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: town for the last five years. And so sometimes I'll
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: get a demo, and I'll say, who produced this? And
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: they'll say, oh, three of us produce, and we sit
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: around in rehearsal with our laptops and throw production ideas
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: at each other. And I think of that as a resource.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: You know, it's really, that's something today that is not
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: uncommon that we simply didn't have back then. You know,
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: back in the day, demos almost universally sounded pretty terrible.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: We get demos now that sound like records. And if
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: the group produced it themselves and I think the production
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: is great, then that's a plus for me. But if
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: they they send me a crappy sounding demo and they
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: want to produce themselves and they produced it, then no,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: I'm going to strongly, you know, recommend that they, but
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: usually they know, like usually an artist will know that
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: they don't have production chops and they want me to
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: help introduce them to some producers because they listen to
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: the records that sound good and they want to sound
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: like that, you know?
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: So what kind of deals do you make with producers?
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: It's all over the place now. It's really changed. It's
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: another big change. It used to be, As you know,
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: you know, a producer would get three or four points
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: and a mixer would get one point. And now, you know,
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: with pop and hip hop, sometimes a producer will get
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: 25 points, you know. Yeah, I don't really care. Like,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: you know, I think it's really up to the artist
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: because those producer points come out of their share anyway. So,
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: but I don't want the artist to get ripped off.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: So I don't, you know, I think that I'll help
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: advise them on, hey, did this guy... really contribute or,
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: you know, sometimes a producer will actually help write songs. Uh,
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: and rather than fighting it out over the, with a
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: publisher over the writing splits, they'll just say, give me,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: you know, give me 15 points. So, yeah, so it's
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: not uncommon, but generally it's like the old days, like
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: I'll pre-approve four points no matter what for anybody who
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: comes along. And then if there's a producer who deserves more,
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: ask for more, um, then I'm always open-minded to that.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: I'm mostly doing rock records. And so this thing of
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: like everybody gets a lot of producer points across the
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: song is more of a pop and hip hop thing.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: So I don't encounter it that much, but I do
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: have it pop up sometimes.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Okay. In the pre-internet era, there were legendary producers and
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: then there were a lot of people who were engineers
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: who became producers. In the computer internet era, on one hand,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: everybody's a producer. On another hand, there are fewer, let's
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: just call it famous producers. What is the talent pool
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: of producers? What is the quality in terms of finding someone?
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: How many people are there? Are they available? What's it like?
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's very interesting. I think that the balance of
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: power has moved to the mixer away from the producer now.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: And I think that it might be that mixers were
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: always more influential than we realized. Because the producer goes
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: in there and does the fun part. They hang out
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: with the band. They have drinks. They spend all those
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: hours in the studio. They put down every idea in
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: the world. And then they give it to the mixer.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Make this sound great. And the best mixers.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: Are really unglorified producers. That's what I think. I really
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: have immense respect for talented mixers. And there are a
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: lot of great mixers today. But you're right, they're not
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: famous like they used to be. Um, and whereas you,
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: it used to be that you, you couldn't really become
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: an elite mixer or producer, uh, without taking some really arduous, uh,
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: path of dues paying and, and hanging around because you
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: had to get into a studio like the, the record
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: plant or Conway or, uh, you know, the village.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: And that, They're the only places that have the tools,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: you know, but but today with digital audio workstations, it's
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: mind blowing what you can do with a laptop. It
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: really is. And so really the only limitations today aren't
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: your pocketbook. They're your your talent. You know, like, do
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: you know what you're you want this thing to sound like?
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: And are you proficient in technology? Because you don't have
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: to afford $ 3, 000 a day at the record plant anymore.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? $ 3, 000 can be what you
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: paid all year for the plugins and your Pro Tools setup. Well,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: maybe not. Maybe $ 30, 000. Okay.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Just to go in the recording process. Mastering is very
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: easy to spend $ 10, 000 or $ 20, 000 or more. Then Lander
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: came along. completely automated it, record is done. How important
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: do you consider mastering? What is a reasonable budget for that?
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is my hot take. Mastering is not even
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: a thing anymore. I mean, you know, because the mastering
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: tools now are slapped right onto Pro Tools. And when
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: your mixers is making a mix for you, he's sending
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: you a, here's air quotes here for your listeners, a
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: pre-mastered version. In other words, aversion with limiting and volume
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: and EQ and everything. And, and so it's, there's very,
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: very little for the mastering guy to do anymore. I mean,
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: we still do it. We still go through the process,
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: but sometimes, but sometimes I'll get a mix and, you know,
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, I can, I can see how loud it is,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: you know, and I'm an engineer and my production department
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: have the tools and we say, all right, that's, that's
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: loud enough. It's not going to sound any better than that.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: We just completely skip mastering. It's just not needed sometimes.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: You know, if a mixer needs a little something and
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: the mixer can't get it there, then of course you
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: always will master. And also, you know, mixing engineers sometimes
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: like having, it's almost like having a second opinion. You know,
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: you go to the doctor and he says, yeah, I
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: recommend this. And you get a second opinion, right? And
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: so like, that's kind of what mastering is now. But
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: I would say 50% of the time, it sounds worse,
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: not better after mastering, you know, whereas it used to be,
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: you know, you go to Doug Sacks at Mastering Lab
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: and it's like, oh my God, this guy's a, he's
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: a wizard. I love going in there and listening to
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: it and, you know, going through the better or worse thing,
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: you know, it's like, like going to the optometrist, you know? So, yeah,
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, I used to absolutely love mastering, especially as a,
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: as a, as a recording engineer myself, sometimes I'd make
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: records and I'd go into mastering and, Mastering guy would
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: put the tape up and he'd hear it and go like, Oh,
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: this sounds good. And then, you know, you'd be validated.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, great.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: You know, cause you're hearing it on their amazing speakers.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: And then it's all right, let's see. I can use
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: a little of this and then pretty, it's, you know,
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: like they're, they're zhuzhing it up, you know, and it,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: it always sounded 20% better, you know, after mastering. And
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, today you're lucky if it sounds 3% better, honestly. Um,
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: so yeah, it's, uh, It's sort of a weird thing.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: That piece of it has really changed. Although I will say,
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: mastering engineer is probably the best gig in the music business.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: Somebody gives you a great record, you put some compression
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: EQ on it, and you charge $ 5, 000. I do that
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: on my car stereo every day. Okay, you mentioned $ 3, 000
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: a day for a lockout. These records....
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: You know, more pop records, they'll, you know, they'll get
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: a big room for the basics. Then they'll go elsewhere.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: A lot of these producers have pretty extensive home studios.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: You just wouldn't want to cut certain things there.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Where do these records tend to be cut these days?
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, you know, there's still some big rooms in L.A. where, like,
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: where big records are cut, where you want, like, a
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: big drum room or if you wanted to have... You know,
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: it's sort of a luxury, you know, if you want
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: to have a string section instead of doing it with MIDI,
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: you know. So, you know, there's the big rooms on
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: Sunset Boulevard and around town where big records are made sometimes.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: But I think for the most part what's happening is
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: that people are going and cutting drums online. in their
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: favorite room that they might be able to find. It
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: could be Sunset Sound because it's a classic room and
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: Prince worked there, you know, and Ben Halen tracked their
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: drums there. And the room is still exactly the same,
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: you know, and then they'll, they'll, they'll take it into,
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: you know, the producer will have a place, you know,
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: they'll have their own setup at home. It's just a
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: little bigger than this room, not much. And they'll, you know,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: they'll do everything else. You know, they might go somewhere
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: for guitars if they want to have an amplifier, but Um,
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: you know, pop and hip hop records don't have to
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: have real drums. I think some people will add them
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: to that for some flavor, you know, but is it,
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: like I said, it's a luxury, you know, they do
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: it for a luxury for vibe to have a place
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: to hang out. Uh, that's what the big studios are
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: for now, you know?
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: So what was the thought process in closing your own studio?
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Well, so my studio was called West beach recorders and, um, uh,
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: You know, I worked there from 1985 till about 1991
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: or 92, pretty much full time. And we were in
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: a couple of different locations, but it was small. I
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: did a lot of recording. It was $ 15 an hour.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: That included me as an engineer. Okay. And I was
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: barely living, but I was recording like crazy. I must
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: have done 10,000 hours of recording, honestly. Um, if, if you,
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: you know, if you had 150 bucks a day, you'd
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: come to me for three days and we'd make the
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: record and, you know, sometimes, uh, you, you know, we'd
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: leave when the sun was coming up. It didn't matter
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: to me. I just, you know, so into it. Um, and, um,
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: but I was not able to get ahead, you know, um,
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: you'll be interested in this. The funny thing about this
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: is if I was just working for some noise band
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: from downtown LA, they would pay me. But if I
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: ever got lucky enough to get like a real record
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: project from a major label, they wouldn't pay me for
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: nine months. Sometimes it was unbelievable. I learned a valuable
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: lesson then, you know, to never be like that. But
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: I would have to call them up by chasing that money,
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: six months, nine months. And, you know, we're talking like
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: a thousand dollars, you know? So it's, I don't understand that, but, um,
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: but anyway, so I wasn't able to get ahead. I
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: wasn't able to have any, you know, have any, uh, security. Um,
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: and so I, I started, uh, putting out records from
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: the back of my recording studio. Um, and the records
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: that time is sort of, uh, you know, I started
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: doing that in around 88 and a few of them
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: sold very well. Uh, um, in the US and abroad.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: And I was making more money from selling the records
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: than from doing the recordings. And so pretty soon my
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: partner started doing all the recording sessions and I was
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: doing the label more. And one thing led to another.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: I couldn't, I was keeping my boxes of vinyl and
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: CDs in a storage space under the 101 freeway where
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: I think it's Argyle or Gower goes under the freeway there.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: And that, that storage space got too small and I
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: had to get a little, a little, uh, garage warehouse thing.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: And anyway, one thing led to another and I, I couldn't,
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: I couldn't keep doing sessions. I had to, uh, my
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: band was getting popular too. I was in a band
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: at that time. So, um, so yeah, I had to, uh, uh,
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: I had just pretty much stopped going into the studio
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: and I was just doing the record company. Um, and then, uh, Yeah,
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: and that sort of led to me and my partner,
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: sort of me selling my half of the studio to him.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: That was it. Studio business is a bad business because
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: it's like having a barbershop. You can only do so
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: many haircuts in a day. Right. Whereas a record business,
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: you could sell a bad religion record, but then you
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: could have an offspring record, which is what happened.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: And you could also get paid while you're asleep.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: That's right. Right. But there's no ceiling, right? It's, you know, so.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Okay. You're interested in a band. You know, the big
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: constraint really was distribution. Yes. But a record company could
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: do other things for you. Today, you can get distribution
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: for almost nothing through, you know, CD, maybe there's a
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: million of them. Do you ever encounter someone who says, no,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: I don't want to make a deal?
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I'm talking to one of those right now.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to talk to them into why it's good
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: to have a label.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: So tell me and my audience why it's good to
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: have a label.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: So if you're ambitious and you want to have success
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: and you're really great at something, then First of all,
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: you already won the lottery, right? Because you've got the
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: talent and you've got the ambition, right? But nobody becomes
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: the best at anything alone, right? Everybody needs a team
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: behind them. I don't care if you're a ballerina, if
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: you're an Olympic ice skater, if you're a comedian, you
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: got to have a team behind you. And that's what
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: we are. So a label provides a lot of things.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: First of all, we have a lot of depth of expertise.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: We've seen a lot of different types of successes and
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: a lot of different types of failures. And so what's
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: available to that artist is to learn from us the
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: best of what we've already figured out. And that's something
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: we've been at, in my case, for almost 40 years. Okay,
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: so I think that's very valuable. The other thing is, yes,
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: you're inevitably going to have a team. You're going to
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: have an agent, right, helping you book shows. And you're
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: going to have a manager, right? But those guys don't
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: invest in you. Those guys have no skin in the game.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: And skin in the game is what it's all about.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: And I'm going to invest and I'm going to take risk.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: And what that means is I'm going to put my
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: money where my mouth is and invest in you guys.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: And I'll be the only member of the team doing that.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: And if you look at my reputation, you know, I'm
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: all about it. I'm not going to complain about it
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: either because I believe in you. But there is the
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: proof that I believe in you, you know, is that
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: I'm going all in with you by putting my money
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: on the table. And, you know, so I've done that
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: over and over, over the years. But, yeah, that's basically
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: what it comes down to is, you know.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, but, you know, you give them money, you give
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: them expertise. In the old days— The music epitaph was
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: traditionally in was a little bit different. But conceptually, you
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: want to get it on the appropriate radio format. You
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: want to get as many listens as possible. You want
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: traditional press publicity. You want to be on television. To
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: the degree those things exist today, they're a lot less powerful.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: So what does the label bring to that in terms
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: of spreading the word? Yeah.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, you talk about it in your newsletter a lot.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: It's the new most important space, and that is the
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: digital space. And that is actually a great benefit to
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: an indie label like myself, right? Because something like print
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: or something like television lends itself– far more easily to gatekeepers, right? Um, uh, uh,
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: the digital space is available to everybody, but it's hard
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: as hell to figure out. There's no, there's no operator's manual, right? Uh, but, uh,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: but if, if you're knowledgeable and skillful, uh, you can really, uh,
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: help spread the word about an artist, uh, in an
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: authentic way, you know, and you have to always, you know,
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: have to always do it, you know, at the behest
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: of the artist. It can't be coming from you. It
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: can't be your view of who they are, you know?
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: So it, it does require, uh, uh, trust and, uh,
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: and care, uh, uh, on part of both, on both sides,
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: the artist and the label, but, But digital media is
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: the most important strategic part of artist development today. No
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: question about it. And that is across social media and
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: across the DSPs. 100%. Yeah.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Let's start with social media. Leave the DSPs aside. And
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: that comes to you, which is probably rare, but let's
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: just hypothetical example here. They have no digital social media presence.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: What do you tell them to do?
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I don't ever tell anybody to
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: do anything. I would first have to get to know
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: them and figure them out a little bit. Sometimes... uh, today,
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: if you, if you meet a young creator, in this case,
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: a music creator with zero social media presence, then you
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: got to ask like, what's, what's wrong? Is it, is
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: that part of your, is that part of your mystique?
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: Are we doing an anti-marketing thing? You know what I mean? Right. Um, so, but, um,
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: not everybody's an influencer. You know, some of my artists
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: truly are influencers and like, you know, if they, they,
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: when they drop music, it's, it's, there's very little that
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: we need to do. Right. Um, uh, some artists, uh,
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: aren't influencers, but they want to increase their reach. You know,
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: they want to connect with their fans in a meaningful way. Uh,
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: and so then it's a conversation, you know, like, um,
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: you know, what are your interests? What's your, what's your image? What's,
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: what are your causes? What do you care about? Um, and, uh,
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: And we'll figure it out. And there are all sorts of,
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: you know, there's, I think, eight or nine different types
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: of digital, you know, of social media campaigns that we
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: have sort of delineated at Epitaph, different ways of, you know,
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: slicing things. And different ones will apply to different people. So,
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: you know, not every artist wants to be on camera.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: Not every artist wants to live blog their life. and say,
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: you know, but that's okay. You know, there's, you can
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: find other approaches to it, right? So, but some maybe
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: do want to, but they don't have the bandwidth while
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: also writing songs, you know, so we can provide them support.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: We can get them a team, you know, and, you know,
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: some artists want to be seen as not liking social media,
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: but want to be But some artists want to be
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: seen as not caring about social media, but want to
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: be ever present on social media, right? So then you
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: do sort of what they call a psy-op campaign, right?
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: Where you create this feeling that there's a lot of
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: buzz around them, about them, but not coming from them.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: And they're not interested in it. But that's not true,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: but you're helping them create that, right?
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: So.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: all of that can be done and everyone has different
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: feelings about that. I know there's a lot of backlash
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: recently about a well-known band that blew up last year that, uh,
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: had hired one of these firms to do a PSYOP
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: campaign for them. Um, I don't think there's anything wrong
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: with it. You know, uh, um, they didn't want to
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: go out there and hawk their music. You know, they
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: wanted to be, they wanted to just do their own
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: thing that other people talk about it for them. Um,
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's some ethical issues in there like, uh, um,
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: With social media, people don't really understand that everything's an advertisement.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: But that's sort of on them. Consumer beware. Everything's an advertisement. Okay.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: The company that provided the service in that instance was
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: Chaotic Good. Do you work with Chaotic Good? Oh, yeah.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And four or five of their competitors, too. I mean,
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of companies in that space. And they're
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: good at it. But I don't want... to give the
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: impression that the reason the record in question blew up
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: is because of chaotic goods, superpower. Uh, the record was
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: also great and it captured a moment in time and, and, and, uh,
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: listeners identified with it and everything worked together. Um, there
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: are plenty of campaigns chaotic good do and all the
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: other ones do, uh, that don't have that result. You know,
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: virality is not something that you can just summon. Uh,
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: if you could, that that's all anybody would ever do.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: Do you know?
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's not that simple, but so, but that's
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: just one flavor of campaign. You know, there's, there's clipping campaigns,
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: there's tastemaker campaigns, there's UGC campaigns, there's.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: Uh, It's just UGC meaning?
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: User-generated content. Maybe you get people who are perfume influencers
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: or video gaming influencers or fitness influencers who use music
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: in their– and they're big influencers, but they use music
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: in their channels. So you know, you get them to
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: use it. So there's all sorts of things, but the
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: job of a record company is to help. You know,
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: I've said this for years. This is one of the
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: things I say to artists. Why, what makes Epitaph different
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: is that Epitaph doesn't, Epitaph understands that we don't make records.
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: The artists make records. And the listener is not our customer.
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: The artist is our customer. Our product is how much
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: help we give the artist. That's what we're selling them,
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: you know. And yes, we can help them reach listeners
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: for sure. But the listeners are the customer of the artist.
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: And the artist is my customer. You know, and I
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: want to super serve my customer. And that's kept us,
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: that's been our North Star. And that has served us
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: the whole time. And that's the spiel I give every
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: one of my employees when I first hire them. And
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: always have.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: Okay. Just to stay on the internet tip for a second.
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: Okay. You don't want me to sell Epitaph? This is
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: a plug for Epitaph Records, you guys.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: The whole thing is a plug. You're doing a great job.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: I don't have to slam the hammer and just let
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: it lie. What is the most powerful platform to promote
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: an artist online?
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: So you're not talking about DSPs, outside of DSPs?
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: Well, the one with the most power and influence is TikTok.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: But it's the one where it's sort of the most
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: unruly for labels to get a handle on or companies
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: to use. But if you can be effective there, that
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: moves the needle the most.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: And it's unruly because?
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: I think because it's so decentralized, you know. But it's
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: basically TikTok, Meta, Google. In that order. And so what
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: that means is TikTok, Reels, Instagram, YouTube. But if any
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: one of those, you know, you have to work all
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: of them. Twitter doesn't matter at all anymore. Or X.
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: But you never know where something's going to catch a spark.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: So you just, you know, you have to cover all
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: your bases.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: Let's say you sign an act. They put out an album.
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: The album comes out March 1st, okay? How long will
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: you work that record? So I.
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: Will work that record forever. No, I'm just kidding. I
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: will work that record forever. It depends what you mean
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: by work.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, let's talk traditional. Atlantic Records with Doug Morris. Yeah.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: He'd put the record, say, you know, find a station
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: in a secondary tertiary market, get it on the radio,
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: see if it sells.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: And if it doesn't sell, we're done.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. So I'll tell you what I do. We
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: were discussing earlier, you know, what do you invest in
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: a developing artist in a baby band? And, you know,
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: it's like $ 50, 000 to $ 75, 000 usually. And, you know, in
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: the old days, I would try, you know, when it
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: was a record, right, I would look at that and
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: I would work it for a whole year. I'd work
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: it for 12 months. And I would want to hope
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: to break even in 12 months. And don't forget, to
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: make a record back then, you had to start spending
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: money maybe seven months before it came out. Right. Right.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: So then if and then then it comes out and
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: most of your sales are in the first week. Right.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: Because the record stores do their initial order. Right. If
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: they don't sell through, there's not another order. They're all
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: coming back. That was the old model. Right. Consignment. I mean,
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: it goes it's worth saying that the record business went
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: from being the shittiest business in the world. to being
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: a pretty great business now, in my opinion.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: Well, the funniest thing is, you know, and we're going
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: to get there a little bit further, is conventional wisdom
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: is just the opposite, illustrating ignorance.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: No, I agree. I read your newsletter, and you're one
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: of the few people, you're one of the one percenters
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: who get it. The music business is so much better
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: than it ever was. And people have completely missed the plot.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: So we can talk about that later. But anyway, it
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: used to be, you know, my first week sales... I
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: could multiply that time, you know, the sound scan, the
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: actual customer sales, you know, multiply that by 10. That's
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: probably what I'm going to sell in the first year.
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: And I hope that's going to get me to my
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: break even so that my 100 grand I'm going to spend,
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: I'll at least make 100 grand back. And probably one
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: out of seven times that happened, right? You know, there's
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: a lot of.
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: Just to stay there and everything is different because the
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: records live forever, unlike in the physical world. Historically... What
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: percentage of your releases break even?
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: Right. So in the old days, I would say one
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: out of six. Okay. Today, it's, I would say, one
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: out of four, two out of six. It's like, it's much,
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: much better. It's so much better today. But it takes longer. Okay,
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: so that's what I was getting at.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: Continue, did I interrupt you?
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: No, no, it's good. It gives some context to it.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: So when I am working with a new band and
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: I want to develop them, I'm looking at it as
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: I want to make my money back in three years.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: I want to make an investment and spend, and most
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: of the spending will be in the first six months.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: And then it'll continue spending in months seven through 12.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: And if things are going, are still going well after
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: a year, then I keep it going. We'll keep spending.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: We'll keep, you know, it's, it's my favorite metaphor for
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: it is, is it comes from chemistry. It's called, I'm
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: going to bore you with nerdiness, but it's called activation energy, right?
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: If you're making a campfire and you want to get
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: a log to start burning, You don't hold a match
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: up to it. It's just never going to catch fire, right?
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: You have to, you know, you have to start with
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: pine needles and tiny twigs. And then you can light
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: that with a match. And then you put a slightly
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: bigger twig on that. But you don't, not too big
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: because it'll put it out. And then the fire gets
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: a little bigger. And then you can put a stick
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: on it. And then another stick. And then that's, you
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: start getting enough heat to Eventually you put the log
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: on there, right? So I guess what I'm saying is
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: I will work a record and really spend money for
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: a year. But if nothing's happening after a year, we
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: have to start thinking about the second record and want
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: the group to be writing and working. And we want
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: to start thinking about our next investment, you know, because
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: I'm not signing artists that make bad records. I'm not
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: putting out bad records. Someone might think it's bad, but
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: someone thinks it's good. It's good for somebody.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: Well, would anybody ever turn in a record? You know,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: what the acts fought for in the late 60s, early
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: 70s was, you got to release what I deliver. Then
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: starting in the 90s, the labels, you know, that was
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: out of contracts. I deliver you a record. And for what,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: let's just make it simple. You don't like it. Not
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: because the way it's made, whatever. Will you say under
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: the contract, you got to put it out anyway? Or
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: will you say, I'm not putting it out unless you
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: work more? Or is it more amorphous? Like, you know,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: do you really want to put this out?
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. When that happens and it's exceedingly rare, it's really
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: a heart to heart conversation. And then what it would
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: be like is I'd say to the artist, you know, I, I,
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: I love your work. I know you're capable of doing
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: something better than this. I think it might be a
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: mistake to put this out. I think you can, maybe
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: you should keep writing. Usually it's to do with the writing,
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: you know, it's, it's, it's rarely nowadays production is so easy.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: You know, it's easy to make a, a good sounding record.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: It's never easy to make a great sounding record, but, um,
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I never say to them, I don't hear
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: a single. This doesn't have hits. It's not about that.
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: But if they've really made a record that's not happening,
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: I will try to talk them out of putting it out.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: And usually what it means is they just need to
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: keep writing and come up with some better stuff to
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: anchor the record. Every song on the record doesn't have
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: to be fantastic. But if you're giving somebody 30 minutes
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: worth of music, there's got to be 10 minutes worth
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: of magic on there. You know, so 10 minutes of greatness,
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: it says who they are. Otherwise, I think they're. not
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: helping themselves, you know, because listeners have so much choice
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: now that if, you know, if they take a chance
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: on you and they've never heard of you before and
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: they try it out and they don't like it, they're
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: probably never coming back, you know? So, but I, you know,
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: I have those conversations and maybe, you know, like, two
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: times in five years. It's very rare.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. You did mention earlier that Epitaph
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: has a publicity person. What does that person do?
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we have a couple. So today, they still do
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: what they used to do. It's just not as important
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: of a part of the strategy anymore because you can
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: get some fantastic press It could be in, you know,
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: it could be in New Yorker magazine or it could
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: be in Rolling Stone or it could be in Pitchfork. And,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: you know, it's it used to be that that really
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: could affect record sales. But, you know, today it's like
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: getting on late night TV. You know, it just doesn't
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: even it doesn't have an impact, you know, so. But
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: you need it. Everything combines. Everything contributes to visibility, awareness, impressions.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: That's where your job is, is to get the word
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: out to as many people. So if somebody sees it,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: sees a review in Mojo and then in The Guardian,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: and then they see a banner on Spotify, and then
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: they see a tastemaker on Instagram and TikTok, Then they've
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: had six impressions. Then they're going to go listen to
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: the thing wherever they listen to music. So you have
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: to do everything. So they're still doing the same, what
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: they used to do, pitching press, right? Pitching national press,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: regional press, late night TV. I guess the difference is
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: that today there's a type of music reviewer We call
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: them tastemakers and they do their music reviews on TikTok
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: and Instagram, right? But you still need to pitch to them.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: So that's press because it's a pitching type relationship, right?
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: So a publicist today needs to be comfortable pitching a
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: tastemaker who doesn't write for Mojo, you know, who just
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: says their opinion about music on TikTok or Instagram, you know?
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: So that's the difference. And I think, you know, unfortunately,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: you know, it's just far less prestigious to have, uh, uh,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: a social media personality talk about your record than it
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: is to have the, the New York times do it,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: but it's going to, it's going to have a greater effect. Uh,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: so that, you know, like always, some things are more
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: vanity stuff. Like late night TV is a vanity thing
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: and everyone wants it. Right. And, uh, uh, An important
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: influencer on TikTok is maybe a little more cringe, but
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: it's going to tell more people about you.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: And do you have a radio department?
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: We do, yeah.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: And how many people and how important is radio today?
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: So my radio department is three people. I know that's small,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: but we can expand and contract because we hire regionals.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: We hire regional indies for our big national campaigns. And so,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: you know, at any given time, we might have, you know,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: 15 people working a record, but it's quarterbacked from Silver
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: Lake in my office. And how important is it? I
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: would say that whereas radio used to be everything, at least,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: you know, in my, when I was first tasting some success,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: you know, you had, you know, MTV was just becoming ascendant.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: And then you had radio. And sort of, you know,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: if you could get something on K-Rock in L.A., the
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: MTV playlist was almost identical to K-Rock's playlist.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: Same people.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So you get on K-Rock. That would get you
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: on MTV. That would get you an international hit. That's
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: how important K-Rock was, you know. Hi, Kevin. I don't
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: know if Kevin misses this. But, I mean, those days
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: were crazy, right? And I was lucky enough to get
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: a couple songs on K-pop.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: Well, let's just stop there for a second. Did you
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: have any idea what you had with the Offspring record
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: come out and play and how big it would become?
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: So I know it sounds like bragging in hindsight, but yes,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: I did. And I never do. I never have that feeling.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: And I'd never had a hit before then even. But
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: I can tell you I got that record from their producer,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: Tom Wilson. I had the cassette in my Volvo station wagon,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: my 1984 tan Volvo station wagon. I'm driving home from
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: work and I listened to that record and I couldn't
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: stop listening to it. I, I circled around the block
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: of my, of my house for like 10 times, listening
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: to it over and over. And, and I, and I,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: walked in the house and I said to my wife, honey,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: we are going to be rich. I remember it like
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: it was yesterday. Like it just, I had, I had
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: goose flesh from, you know, the entire time. I just,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: those songs sounded like hits to me. Two of them
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: in particular. And I don't know why I thought that,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: you know, it's just, you know, but I've always loved hits,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: even though I'm a punk rocker and I'm not known
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: for having hits, but I've always loved them. And I've always,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: you know, I've always listened to them.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: Okay. The audience reacted immediately to that record. Did the
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: gatekeepers react immediately? Yeah.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: Everybody, every, it just, everything opened up with that song,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: you know, We sent it to KROQ. KROQ played it.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: Their phones lit up. MTV started playing it. Every station
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: started adding it. The orders started rolling in. You know,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: it was mayhem. It was the craziest thing.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they have this incredible success and they leave you.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: This is not the usual story because it used to
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: be that independents were wannabe majors. Whereas Epitaph had a
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: very specific niche. So tell us about that process of
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: them moving on.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: You know, it was it was heartbreaking for me. And
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: we had a sort of a bitter exchange in the
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: press that I regret because I think that I think
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: that at the end of the day, we both benefited
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: immensely from from having met each other, you know. But,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: you know, I signed them to my. typical three record deal.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: This is before the days of streaming, but so it
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: was probably like a 16 point record deal or something
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: like a normal record deal. Um, I was always conscientious
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: about paying my royalties and doing, you know, keeping my
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: nose clean. Cause I learned my lessons early about, uh,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: about that stuff. And, um, uh, it was a three
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: record deal. And, uh, that, uh, Their smash LP was
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: the second record. And, uh, you know, they, they notified
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: me that they just signed with, you know, I was
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: trying to sign them for more records. Not, I knew
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: I had a third record coming. So I was talking
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: to them about how can we improve everything to do
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: more records together? And so we were, we were negotiating
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: and they weren't, you know, and I thought that was
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: all that was happening. And then they let me know
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: that they're, They just signed with Sony. And I said, well,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: how can you do that? So it was heartbreaking.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: So what did they do about your third album?
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: What did Sony do?
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: They settled with me.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: Okay. Now, your own band ended up going to Atlantic.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: Now, you severed the relationship soon thereafter.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: It's also a different era, because Offspring did get a
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: lot of video play.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: But since you were hands-on with Bad Religion, but also Offspring,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: could they do anything that you couldn't do, or you
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: could have done it just as well?
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: I think I could have done it just as well,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: but I didn't know that at the time. And this is,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: you know, they say timing is everything, but But Bad
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: Religion signed to Atlantic, you know, I don't know the
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: exact amount of time, but very short amount of time
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: before the Offspring record blew up. And I think if
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: the Offspring record had blown up three months earlier, then
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: the band and I would have said, oh, awesome. Now
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: let's just do it here. But at the time when
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: we decided to sign to Atlantic, our old friend Mike Gitter,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: who's an A & R guy there, came to us
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: and said, hey, what do you think about being on Atlantic?
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: And I didn't know if an indie label could have
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: a big record like that. I didn't have examples of
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: it in my experience as of that time. And there
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: were a lot of gatekeepers back then. Epitaph used to
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: have to fight tooth and nail just to get our
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: records in chains. which we did a very good job of.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: And we had a lot of little tricks that we did.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: And I think we were really innovative. And we were doing,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: you know, we were a really good small company. We
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: were selling about a million records a year at that time,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: but across all of our bands. But we had a
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: few bands that were selling 100,000 records. You know, it
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: was a successful young indie. But we hadn't had a
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: hit ever. And So I thought, you know, maybe we
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: can't have a hit. Maybe the majors do have the,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: you know, the key to the executive bathroom, you know,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: that we don't have, you know. And so I didn't
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: want to hold my band back. And so I went along,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: you know, and we did it. And then the offspring
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: record became huge. And it was sort of like, you know,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: and in good faith, I made the best record I could,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: you know, for Atlantic. I think it's one of our
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: best records. It's called Stranger Than Fiction. I wrote a
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: single on there that got some pretty good airplay on Atlantic.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: But that record, I think, went on to be a
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: gold record. But Epitaph had a gold record with Rancid
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: that year. So I think we could have... What I
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: found over the years is that when artists leave Epitaph
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: to go to a major... because the grass is always
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: greener and majors have a mystique. Um, it hasn't worked out.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: They haven't had bigger records on the majors. And in
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: most cases they've come back to epitaph after, you know,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: and I have other experiences like with Tom waits, who
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: was on a Warner and then Island. And he came
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: to my other label anti and had his first gold record.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: He'd never had a gold record on Island or, uh, Warner. Um,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: And his first record with us in 98, Mule Variations,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: was gold. So I think labels are labels. I think it,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: you know, I think majors, they definitely have more resources,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: you know. But they also have 1,500 employees, too. And
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: so they... They definitely have big artists that they can
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: leverage on behalf of the other artists, but you can't
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: call in too many of those favors. You can't abuse that.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: So it's rarely used.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: Okay. How many employees do you have now?
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: I have about 60 employees.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: Okay. Ownership. You own it all?
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: And anti, what's your ownership position?
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: It's the same company. It's just a different editorial.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: But you own 100% of Anti, too. Okay. So, the
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: numbers you're throwing out are not insignificant in terms of
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: the advances. Did you ever borrow money? Was it always self-funded?
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: It was always self-funded. When the offspring started blowing up,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: I had to take a loan against my house to
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: press records. Okay. And I also– but the pressing plants
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: and the distributors could see what was happening. So a
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: lot of– I would get a lot of credit too.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: They'd give me credit to do things. But that was
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: many years ago. That was 30 years ago. So since then, yeah,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: no partners, no investors, totally self-funded, personal skin in the game.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: Your distribution was totally independent?
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: Okay. In the old days, if you had one hit record,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: you didn't have any other releases that would put you
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: out of business because you couldn't get paid. Famous story,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: Bobby Womack on Beverly Glen Records had a million platinum record,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: put him out of business. In this case, you're putting
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: out a constant stream of records, which would mean that
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: the retailers would have to pay you. But generally speaking,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: and everything's different now with digital and vinyl is one way.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: But as an indie, was it hard to get paid?
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was hard to get paid. I remember I
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: used to, you know, part of my strategy was this.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: I never wanted to have one distributor. And back in
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: the old days, there were a lot of indie distributors, right?
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: So I had, you know, now they're called Red and
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: they're owned by Sony. But in the old days, there
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: was Important. Then there was important east and important west.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: There was Green World. There was– what was the one
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: in Minneapolis? There was Twin Cities. There was Dutch East India.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: There was– I literally had something like six or seven–
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: rough trade. So I had six or seven distributors.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: So then nobody had an exclusive territory.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: Right. No, they're all selling in the U.S. And that
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: was part of my part of what I wanted to
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: do is not have all my eggs in one basket.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: So I couldn't go out of business. So that's how
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: I handled that back then. But it still wasn't that easy.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: Like I I remember I used to, you know, because
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: back then I it was me and four or five employees.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: And I used to do the collections and I used
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: to I used to know the name of the of
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: the accounts payable. at the distributor. And there's, you know,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: there's a woman in New York named Bebe. And, you know,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: I used to send her flowers to say like, hey,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: this invoice is, you know, 30 days old. But these
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: flowers are from me, you know, just, you know, I
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: realize people, they're just doing a job. They don't love
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: their job. Bookkeeping isn't fun. And if I make friends
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: with her and do nice things for her, she'll put
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: my invoice to the top, right? So I just used
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: to do anything I could, you know. And what about foreign?
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: So foreign, in the old days, this, you know, it
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: was fairly interesting. But in, you know, in 88, 89, 90, 91,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: epitaph sound, the epitaph sound was blowing up in Northern Europe,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: in Netherlands, in Germany, in Scandinavia. They loved it. They
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: couldn't stand it in England, right? Because England had had
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: the punk thing. It happened and it passed and they were,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: in their shoegaze moment, you know? And if, if you
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: said it was punk rock, they'd be like, oh, that's
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: not punk rock, you know? But the California skate punk
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: was a thing in Germany. Like it was going off.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: And so I've, I had this Dutch importer named Semaphore
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: and I was just shipping vinyl to this guy. I
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: have a truck. I used to have a truck that
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: would pull up into the driveway of my recording studio
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: and And I'd have all these boxes of records in
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: my 84 Volvo station wagon that I pulled out of the,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: from under the freeway. And I'd just be loading them
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: into this truck. I'd have to tell my recording session, Hey,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: I've got to go put these boxes in a truck. And,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: and we'd, we'd ship them to Europe. And I was, and, and,
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: and pretty soon the, the, the quantities, it was like,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: you know, first it was 1500, then it was 3000,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: then it was 5000. And finally I, I, I said,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: I've got to, opened an office in Amsterdam. So I
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: opened an office in Amsterdam in 1991. And it was
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: just my friend, I sent him over there and he
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: worked in radio for some major or something, but he
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: used to be in a punk band. He didn't really
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: know the business, but he was adventurous. So he went
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: over there, he leased a little space, he turned on
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: a telephone and And I, I, so I had an
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: office and my European headquarters had been in Amsterdam instead
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: of London where everybody else is ever since. And that's
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: because at that time I couldn't sell records in London, but,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: but now we can now, you know, now we have
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: diverse genres and it was, you know, the UK is
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: actually our number two market. Our number one market is
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: in the European market is still Germany, but, which is
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: a big market, you know, especially for, for heavy rock
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: music and punk, which is what we do a lot of. So,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: And many of our adult alternative stuff, like Tom Waits
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: is huge over there too.
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: Okay. One of the great things about streaming is its
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: worldwide footprint. A, in the old days, was South America
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: and Asia a market? And B, to what degree are
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: they a market today?
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So they were a huge market for English language music. Um,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: but they're not today. You know, today it's, today it's
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: K-pop or Mandarin pop is what, is what you have
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: selling in, in Japan and Korea. Um, the big markets
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: were always Japan and Korea. Um, and, uh, China was
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: never much of a market for us. But yeah, so
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: what we did in the old days is I did
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: a license deal for Asia with Sony back then. And
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: those guys were great. I mean, they really put us
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: on the map over there. And we had big records.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: All of our records that were blowing up on MTV
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: were blowing up there because they were being informed by
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: MTV and they were fascinated with U.S. culture. Um, and
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: those were great days. I used to fly out there and,
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: you know, they, they'd bring me in and, you know,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: they'd have the boardroom of all their, of all their,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: you know, the, um, all their marketing and salespeople. Nobody
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: spoke English and I'd come in and talk to them
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: and they'd honor me and give me gifts. I mean,
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: it was, it was crazy. Like Epitaph was really a
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: thing in Japan and, and many of our bands could
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: tour there and, and do very well. But it's totally changed.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: And I actually have a satellite office there now with
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: a couple of guys. But it's a tenth of what
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: it used to be. You still try. It's an important market.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: But American pop and rock and rap are not as
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: influential there.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: What about South America?
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: So South America, it's huge. Yeah. South America has replaced
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: Japan probably for U.S. music, at least for hard rock, rock,
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: heavy music, punk, metal, hardcore, post-hardcore. They love it in
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: South America. Sao Paulo is Bad Religion's biggest market. They
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: were on the cover of Rolling Stone in Brazil, you know.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: Which I always joke, I'm never going to be on
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: the cover of Rolling Stone. You know that old Dr.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: Hook song? Right. That's like my song. I love that song.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: But yeah, Bad Religion was on the cover of Rolling
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: Stone a few years ago. They play massive stadiums when
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: they go to Brazil. So Brazil, Argentina, Chile is very good.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: It's always been good for tour business. It was always
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: terrible for music because of bootlegging. So DSPs have fixed that.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: And so that's been a great improvement for South America.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: It's real important now.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about Tom Waits. Tom Waits had been
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: on Asylum when Asylum was especially hip. And then for
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: the days, he'll kill me for this, even though he's
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: already dead, Joe Smith took over, made it more pop.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: Then he goes to Island. He was an idiosyncratic guy.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: People know at this point he's much smarter than he appeared.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: But if you knew him in the 70s, he was
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: kind of a, had an image of a street guy,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: always known. A, how did he end up on anti?
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: And that's what made him. That's what turned him in
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: to who he is today. Oh, wow.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: That's, that's, that's, it's really flattering that you'd say that
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: because if I had any, you know, any influence on
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: him becoming, you know, you know, what he is today,
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: I don't think that's true.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: But, I think it's true in terms of the imprint
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: on society and his effect. He's been around. It wasn't
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: like he changed dramatically, but he didn't infect people. He
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: wasn't part of the culture. It wasn't mentioned till he
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: was on anti.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks. Thanks for, thanks for saying that. Um, this
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: is one of my favorite stories, but, uh, you know, uh,
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: because Tom is one of my favorite all time artists. Um, and, uh,
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: Coming up as a punk kid on the streets of Hollywood,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: he was a legend. He was mythological to the punks,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: even though he wasn't punk. But we just saw him
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: as sort of this shadowy, this demigod.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: Well, he lived at the hotel.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: He lived at the Trump Academy.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: And he was around.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: No, he was around. We'd be playing a show or
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: going to a show at the lingerie. And, you know,
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: we'd be in the liquor store buying cigarettes. And we'd say,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: did you see that was Tom Waits? You know, like
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: it was like, okay. So he was a legend to
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: me and he was, you know, a hero. But that
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: was the extent of it. I never thought I'd ever
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: work with him. One day I get a– my receptionist says, Brett,
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: you have a phone call. It's Donald Passman. Do you
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: want to take it? they don't know who Donald Passman is.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: There's some punk.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right, right, right, right.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: Yes, I'll take it.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: So, so, so Donald Passman says, Hey, Hey, Brad, it's
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: Donald Passman.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: It's like, yep.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: I'm a big fan. I've read, I read your book.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: It's how I figured this stuff out. I'm a fan
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: of you. Thanks for your, you know, for telling everybody
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: the secret sauce, you know, and, and, He said, what
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: do you, what would you think about signing Tom Waits?
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: Now this is before anti existed to epitaph. And I,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: you know, I thought it was like a joke. Right.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: You know, I said, I said, are you serious? He said, yeah,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: I'm serious. They asked me to, to call you. And
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: I said, um, put it this way. He's my favorite
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: artist of all time. And if you're being real here, then, uh,
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: I'll send you a blank piece of paper. You write
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: the contract. Just make sure I can make 50 cents
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: a record. That's what I told him. So he said, okay,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: I'll call you back, right? Anyway, how the hell did
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: Tom Waits and Kathleen, his wife, know about me? So
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: this is the story. So many years later, because we
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: went through the whole thing where I got to meet
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: Tom for the first time, which which he chose a spot.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: It was a diner at a truck stop off of
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: the five, right? Like that's where I had to meet him.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: So I didn't hear this story until many years later
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: when we're already family. But he says, Kathleen told me this.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: She says, you know, one day she was at the
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: dentist or the doctor. I couldn't remember. And there was
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: a Forbes magazine on the coffee table. And she's looking
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: in there.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: And in.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: This little sidebar, there's a picture of me. And the
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: caption said that, you know, music industry wunderkind Brett Gerwitz
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: won't do an interview with Forbes magazine because he says
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: that he wouldn't want his customers to see him in there. Right.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: Which was true. Forbes had called me. They said, wow,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: Epitaph did $ 60 million this year out of nowhere, and
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: you're the new blah, blah, blah. Will you talk to us?
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: And I said, no. And he said, why not? And
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: I said, well, what if some kid sees me in
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: his dad's copy of Forbes? That's not punk. They're going
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: to think that's lame, right? Okay. So instead of writing
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: the article, they put a picture of me in there
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: and made it be about that I won't talk to them, right?
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: So Kathleen saw that. And called Don Passman and said,
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: if we can ever get off island, this is the
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: label I want to be on. Because she saw that.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: All right. So that was another valuable life lesson. You know,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: it was sort of like, you know, doors don't always
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: open because you say yes. Sometimes a door can open
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: because of, you know, what you didn't do, you know.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: So that was the genesis of the whole thing. And, but.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: Tom was aware of punk rock culture because he was
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: living at the Tropicana during the punk rock explosion of
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: the late 70s and early 80s. And so he wanted
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: to be on Epitaph because he saw himself as sort
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: of an outsider. And that's what he saw punks as.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: But I recognize that Tom Waits is more than punk rock.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: And I was also ready at that time because this
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: was now 97. And I was feeling the limitations of
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: being in the punk bubble because punks are very reactionary.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: And I don't only like punk rock. I like all
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: kinds of music. I'm a child of the 60s and 70s.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: I was born in 62. And I wanted to do
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: other kinds of music, but we were really sort of
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: painted into a corner. And so I said to Tom,
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: you know, let's put it on its own label. You
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: could be the, and you can be the template, you know,
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: the outsider artist, you know, that what will define this
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: label is artists who are their own genre, you know, who,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: that's what they'll have in common. Not that they'll have
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: a genre in common, but this is a label for
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: artists that think outside the box. And so we called
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: it Anti. And Tom Waits was sort of the foundational
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: artist of that label. And that allowed us to grow
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: that one.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: Okay. There's a lot of success there. Did that draw
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: other artists to you or not?
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what you need to start
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: a label. You need something to get it going. You
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: need the activation energy. So for Epitaph, it was my band.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: For Herb Albert, it was his band. It could be
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: that someone could start a label with an artist, but
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: you have to have something first. You have to have
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: something to get it going. Otherwise, no one pays attention
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: to you. You can't.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's switch back to DSPs. First, let's talk about monetary,
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: not promotion exhibition.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: Give me your take on that.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: Spotify is the best thing to ever happen to the
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: record industry. in my lifetime, which has not been the
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: whole record industry, but you know, I, I, I started
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: doing this when I was in high school. So I've
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: been doing it for, for, uh, uh, is it 40
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: years now? I have, you know, 38 years, um, 37 years. And, um,
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 2: you know, it's, um, I understand.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: I think it's 47 years. Oh, is it 47?
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, thank you. Math isn't my... I'm actually not terrible
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: at math, but yeah.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: Well, it's just funny. You're underselling yourself in a business
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: where everybody lies in the other direction.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But I've been doing it a long time. And,
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: you know, I mean, for the first time in history,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: what Spotify created was a middle class recording artist. you know,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: you still have the aristocrats, you know, you still have
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: the superstars, right. But it used to be, you had
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: the superstars and you had the, the working class who
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: could never get ahead. And that's all you had. Um,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: and there were the majors and they put out records
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: every Tuesday and that's all that came out really. And,
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: you know, there might've been an indie or two here
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: or there, but it was just, it was very inconsequential
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: and it was very hard to break in as an indie. Um, Today,
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: if you're a talented kid with a laptop, you can
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 2: put a song on all of the DSPs. It costs
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 2: you a dollar to do it from DistroKid. And that
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: puts that song into every smartphone on the planet. Do
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: you know what it used to be just to get
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: somebody to hear your record? I mean, you'd have to
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: pay to be in one listening booth in Virgin Records
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: on Sunset. And then someone would have to walk in
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: there and put on headphones and press play. You know,
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: it was just it.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: Was it was impossible.
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: And and now a kid with talent in Bakersfield can
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: be living at home, going to high school, making 100
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: grand a year. And there's thousands of those people, thousands
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: and thousands of them, because I know because I try
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: to sign them sometimes. And sometimes the reason an artist
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: doesn't want to sign with me is because they're already
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: making a living. That never existed. And these are artists
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: no one's ever heard of, right? So, I mean, they're,
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: you know, they're, maybe they're- The.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: People who are listening have heard of them, but not
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: the average person.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 2: 100,000 followers have heard of them, but there's 7 billion
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 2: people on the planet, you know? So they're not household
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: names at all, you know? So, you know, that's the
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: evidence right there. Not only that, so that's a big,
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: big deal, right? Um, and, uh, the other thing you
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 2: have is you have legacy artists who might not ever
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: have been superstars. Uh, you know, I don't, you know,
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: but you know, a band like Little Feet or a
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: band like Bad Religion, you know, like who, you know,
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: they've always been able to sell out a palladium, you know,
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 2: they can get, sell 3000 tickets or something like that.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: You know, a middle level artist. Um, uh, they're just, uh,
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: they're making a steady income. And it will continue forever.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: If not forever, I've seen it happen now where it
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: sustains for decades. So the evidence is there. Groups like,
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean by mid-tier groups.
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, so conventional wisdom... is that Spotify doesn't pay and
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: I'm being streamed X and I'm not making any money.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: What would you say to those people?
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if that's happening to you, then one or two
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 2: things are happening. There's somebody between Spotify and you that's
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 2: taking your share, right? Like you have a bad record
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 2: deal or bad production deal or a bad distribution deal
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 2: or nobody's streaming your record. right? I, you know, I
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: have people telling me all the time, musicians deserve to
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: earn a living. Totally agree, but not all of them.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: If nobody likes your music, you don't deserve anything, you know?
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: And like, if you're a plumber that can't, can't fix
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: a pipe, you don't deserve a living, right? I, I was,
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: a friend of mine called me up the other day
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 2: and he said, you know, My friend has a new
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: business idea for a, and, you know, he, because he
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 2: was in a band and now he's bagging groceries. And
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: so he has this idea, he's going to make a
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: streaming service where the money goes right to the band.
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: And so it's going to help small artists. And I said, okay,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: I'll talk to your friend. Epitaph is with all the
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: startup companies. streaming services because we want our music everywhere
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: but even if all the money goes to the tiny
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: band they're still going to have to be bagging groceries
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: because if you're not popular there's no money it's i
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: don't know why people don't understand this but you know
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 2: There's no way to get unpopular bands a living. And,
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 2: you know, you're not hearing, you know, you're not hearing,
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: you know, all the loud voices that complained about Spotify
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: in the old days, they're not complaining anymore. They're just
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: cashing their checks. And the ones complaining today are the
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: ones who are, you know, streaming very little. I had a,
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: I had a lunch with this guy. He was the
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: founder of DistroKid. Super nice guy. And, you know, DistroKid
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: has more of the music on the internet got on
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 2: there through DistroKid than through anybody else. And he said,
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: he goes, yeah, there's a lot of, you know, we're
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 2: passing through a ton of revenue. He said, but, he said,
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: you know how many, you know what percent of the
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: songs get more.
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: Than 1,000 streams? a year.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: And I said, what? He said, um, less than 1%. So,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: so there's no, there's an extremely low threshold of difficulty
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: to get your music on the internet. And so it
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: creates the illusion that Spotify is a rip off because
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: of course, whoever puts their music on the internet, they,
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: they might see 2000 streams, right? And for that, they'll
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: get $ 8. And they think, which is about what they'll get.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: And they might think, what a rip-off.
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: 2,000 is so many.
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: Look, it's not even a lot to sell 2,000 records.
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: You'd still be bagging groceries, much less 2,000 streams. Do
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean? And the people who buy
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: those records, if they're any good, they can listen to
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: them 1,000 times. But they're not going to if they
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: weren't very good. Yeah. So, yeah, I get so, I mean,
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: it just bums me out that people misunderstand it so
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 2: much because I see so many artists benefiting so immensely.
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: Not just artists, but also this whole ecosystem of indie
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: entrepreneurialism where, you know, you can, you know, indie labels
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: have a shot now that we never had a shot before.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: You know, I'll go out there and... I'll sometimes, when
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: I'm competing for a band today, and like I said,
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: I'd prefer not to be in a competitive situation, but
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: very often it's a couple labels competing for a band. And,
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: you know, today an artist might choose me instead of
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: a major. You know, a major and Epitaph might be
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: looking at the same artist today. And that never used
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: to happen, you know. So it's really had the effect
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: that it's leveled the playing field.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: I think it's just as.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: Hard or maybe a little harder to start an indie
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 2: label today because you have to have something, right? So
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 2: I think if you're an artist.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 2: And you get a song up and it blows up.
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 2: If you're business-minded and entrepreneurial, you could start a label
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: around yourself. And that's what I did with Bad Religion, really.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 2: But if you're just a kid who goes to business school,
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: good luck starting a label. That's not the way to
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: do it. Maybe if you're a manager or a producer
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: or an artist who can be magnetic to bring other
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: artists into their fold, they can start a label today.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: Okay. In terms of net revenue to Epitaph, how much
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: is physical, how much is digital?
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: 17% is physical.
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: And what percentage of that is CDs and what percentage
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: is vinyl?
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 2: Probably 10%, 15% of that is CDs.
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: Okay. At this point in time, you want to produce
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: a vinyl record. Any issue with capacity?
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 2: No. Not today. I mean, during COVID, it was terrible. Like,
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: we were doing everything we could to try to build
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: some capacity. And it was very, very competitive. Turn times
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: are better now. Pressing plants have some bandwidth now. So,
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 2: you know, we can make vinyl now in about 16
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: weeks from the time we have art and recordings.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: Okay. When you have a release... When do you put
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: out vinyl?
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: So we put out vinyl with just about every release.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: If it's an album based artist, we sometimes work with
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: track based artists where they're, you know, and I think
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: that's sometimes smart for emerging and developing artists, because I
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: think an album is for somebody who has enough fans
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: that they'll spend 45 minutes of their time with nothing
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: but you. Does that make sense?
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: Totally.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: Um, I think that there's such a, uh, I think
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 2: attention is, is such a premium today. And if someone
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 2: has 45 minutes, uh, if they don't know your band
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: or your music, if you're a solo artist, they're not
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 2: going to sit down and spend 45 minutes listening to
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: your new LP. You know, they're, they'd rather go on
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: Netflix or something or doom scroll their Instagram. Um, um, So, but, uh,
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 2: but if they're an album based artist, look at, at
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: very least, um, sometimes we won't do vinyl if they're
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: very small and then we'll make, make them some CDs
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 2: cause they want to have something to sell at shows,
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: you know? So we'll, we'll, you know, it's very low, uh,
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 2: threshold to make 500 CDs for somebody. Usually we'll make
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: 500 or a thousand, uh, vinyl LPs and, um, uh,
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: we can get 500 of the artists to sell at
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 2: shows and those sell great even at clubs because it's
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 2: a really nice thing to take home if you enjoy
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 2: the show. And then with the other 500, we'll, uh,
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 2: you know, get them to indie stores. So that that's
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 2: typically almost every release gets.
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: Gets vinyl. And all the vinyl sold one way, right?
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: So how hard is it to get a store to
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: take it?
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: Um, it's not that hard. Um, I think the challenge
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 2: is actually the distributors want you to make more. Even
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: though it's one way, most of the risk is on
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: your part because if it doesn't move. Right. So our
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 2: challenge is always not making too much because you don't
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: want to be sitting on a bunch of slow moving
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: or dead vinyl. Okay. Okay.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: In the history of Epitaph, how many albums do you
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: think you put out?
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: Well, we have about 25,000 recordings in our catalog.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: Is a recording a track or an album?
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: A track. I only know that because I just did
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: the meeting. So I would say... So would we say
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: 2,500 albums? I'd say less because I think that.
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: That a lot of those 25,000 tracks are different versions
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: of the same thing.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's just call it.
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 2: I'd say 1,200.
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's say 1,200 albums. Since you can put all
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: those albums on the DSPs, do all of them stream?
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 2: They do, but if you heard of the Pareto principle, 20%
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: of them comprise 80% of the revenue. Okay. Okay.
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: But the difference is, in the physical era, most of
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: those albums you could not have gotten into a store.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: That's another way that Spotify has improved the business incredibly.
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 2: You know, look, I have groups whose albums recouped 17
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 2: years after they came out because of streaming. And now
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: they're getting checks. That would have never happened in the
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: old days.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: 100%.
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 2: It's a phenomenal.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 2: It's a fantastic thing. Anything that's ever been recorded can
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: now be listened to. And, you know, I benefit from
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: that as a fan. I do these deep dives into like,
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: you know, 50s and 60s jazz records and they're there
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: and I can listen to them. And, you know, vinyl
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: enthusiasts will criticize me because they don't sound as good
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: or whatever. But, you know, I enjoy it. You know,
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 2: I listen to it in my house, you know. So, yeah.
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: What kind of stereo do you have in your house?
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 2: Um, I have, well, I'm a bit of a speaker fanatic.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: So you're into good sound. You were an engineer. You
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: had your own studio. So what do you have?
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: So I have a three-way PMC loudspeakers. They're, they're, uh,
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: mastering engineers use them and they, um, uh, they have
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 2: like hand, handmade mid-range or mid-range drivers and they're very good.
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 2: And then I also have- Those.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: Are very expensive.
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: They come in different models, but it's easy to spend $ 75, 000. Yeah.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: How much did yours cost?
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 2: $ 20, 000. Okay. Yeah. But then I also have in my bookshelf,
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 2: I have acoustic research, two-way eight-inch speakers from the 80s
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 2: that I love. And they're hooked up to a Kenwood receiver,
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: which is the same receiver I had in my teenage bedroom.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: And I've I'm able to find it on eBay. So
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 2: I bought it and then I bought two more of
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: them for replacement parts.
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: What would you pay?
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know. Like, you know, a couple hundred bucks.
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: People don't really like them. It sounds phenomenal. And I
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 2: just like having the analog EQ knobs and the loudness button.
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 2: I don't think stereos sound as good as they used to.
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 2: So it's not tube or anything, but it's just a killer.
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: I had this Sansui integrated amp that I didn't want
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: to buy because But they said, this will sound best
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: with your JBL L100s. And this was $ 750. I paid
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: $ 520 at University Stereo, okay? Last 22 years, I replace
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: it with an NAD, which is good stuff, okay? That
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: Sansui is worth like $ 5, 000. Oh, right. Much more than
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: the NAD. If I had known, I would have fixed it.
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: It's like, who the hell knew?
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 2: But I'm telling you, this Kenwood that I have, it's
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 2: not sought after, but I love the way it sounds.
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 2: In fact, I turned to my producer friend, Joe Barisi,
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: onto it. And I said, dude, if you take this receiver...
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 2: You press in the loudness button. You put the EQ
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 2: to here. Listen to this. And he listened to it.
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 2: He's like, oh, my God. He bought one for his
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: studio so he could check mixes on it. It sounds
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 2: so killer. But yeah.
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: So what's your amplifier preamp set for the big speakers?
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: I have a Bryson amp, Bryson stereo amp. It's my
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: favorite amp. And then for the receiver, I have Yamaha.
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: And what do you have for a turntable?
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: I don't have a good turntable, but I'm setting up
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 2: because I don't have a good final listening space in
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: my house. But I'm redoing my home office, so I'm
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 2: going to get something. But I'll have to do the research.
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 2: I don't know what the good stuff is anymore.
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: Well, it's like anything. You can spend $ 400. You can
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: spend $ 40, 000. Yeah. If you spend somewhere between $ 1, 000, and
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: they've sent me a few of these things.
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: You know, for like 1,500 lists, you get a very
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: good one. The only thing I kept talking about this,
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: you know, the DJ... Definitive statement was the Technics 1200.
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: People forgot that there was also a 1300 and a 1400.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: 1200, totally manual. 1400, you had to put the needle down,
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: but it would come back. 1300 was fully automatic. I
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: had a 1300. It's got a little bit of a
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: speed problem, but I got to tell you, especially with
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: some of these albums that are so short on vinyl,
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: you know, I got a couple of manual turntables. Like,
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: it's a full time effort getting up and, you know,
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: changing the record.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I know. Um, but I, you know, I, I,
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: I love, uh, I love audio. I also have, um,
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 2: I have these, uh, not NHT speakers.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 2: Um, that are now here. This is an American made
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: hi-fi stuff. I have that in my, my little, uh,
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 2: home office studio. Um, at Epitaph, I have, uh, barefoot
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 2: monitors and I have one.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know those.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 2: Check them out. They're called the main man. Uh, one
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 2: set of them is like, they're like six feet tall
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: and they've got, uh, um, two subs on each side.
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 2: And it's, they're, they're, they're like the crowd pleasers.
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: What do you need to drive those?
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 2: Well, they're, they're, uh, they're active. Yeah. They're active. So
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 2: it's very easy. Um, But those ones are, you know,
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: if we have people coming in and I want something
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: that sounds like a concert.
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: It'll shake the walls.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: Okay. Let's go back to DSPs. First, in terms of
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: digital revenue, forgetting physical completely, what percentage of that is
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: from traditional outlets, Spotify, Apple, Deezer, et cetera? And what
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: percentage of it comes from other sources?
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: It's mostly Spotify.
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: Let me restate. In terms of licensing, you know, Roblox
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: or making a deal, et cetera, is that a significant
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: business for... Oh, licensing.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's significant. I wouldn't want to see it go,
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 2: but it's for us... It's something like 5% of our business.
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: Okay. So then the question you were answering, of these
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: major streamers, what percentage is Spotify?
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 2: Spotify is a solid 40%.
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: And how does the rest break down to the green?
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 2: YouTube is next for me, then Apple, then Amazon.
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: Just to be clear- This is overall YouTube revenue as
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: opposed to people- It's revenue. It's not streams. No, but
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: I'm saying as opposed to someone who's literally signing up
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: for whatever they're charging, $ 10 plus for YouTube music.
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just total revenue. Okay. It's free tier and
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: premium tier. Come on.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah. That's revenue. To the degree you're aware, do
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: you know where the most streams are, how that breaks down?
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the most streams are probably TikTok. You get paid
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 2: nothing from TikTok. You know, it's- I'm a little philosophical
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 2: about it because when I see a lot of these TikToks,
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 2: it's not always that there's somebody dancing to your song.
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 2: Sometimes there's a guy talking about his sandals and there's
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 2: some quiet music in the background and you don't even
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: notice it.
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 2: And it still gets flagged as your song.
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 2: But TikTok is basically paying nothing. They're basically just using
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 2: music and saying, we're so big, you can't do anything
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 2: about it. So, and, you know, I think you wrote
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 2: about this, but, you know, Universal went against them and then,
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: you know, and then capitulated. You know, they're like, okay,
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: just kidding. So, I mean, so if they can't do anything,
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 2: I can't do anything.
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: Okay. So you have a new record. How do you
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: deal with the DSPs to promote that record?
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So we, we build relationships with them. We, uh,
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: we pitch to them. We, uh, we, we sometimes, uh,
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: you know, have, uh, have, uh, Zoom meetings with them.
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 2: Sometimes we'll, uh, we'll go down there and have an
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: actual in-person meeting and play them music. Sometimes we'll even, uh,
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: go visit their headquarters with the artist and get to
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 2: know each other and talk about what the record means
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 2: to the artist and what it means culturally. Sometimes we'll
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 2: host the editors or the management level over there at
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: Epitaph and play them music and give them some snacks.
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 2: So it's a lot like The old school radio relationship
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 2: where you're– but not so much because it's not about, hey,
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 2: we want you to give us an ad and give
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 2: us this many spins and our activation date is on
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 2: this day. It's more about this record is coming. Here's
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 2: why it's important culturally. Here's why it's important to the company.
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: This is why we– this is why we think you'll
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 2: like it. This is why we think your listeners will
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 2: like it. This, this is, this is, uh, uh, we
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: think listeners of X, Y, and Z might really dig it.
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 2: If you put it in front of them and, you know,
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 2: maybe they've always been in this lane, but do you
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 2: realize that, that, that there are other, uh, types of
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 2: listeners who would also enjoy, you know, we're always trying to, uh,
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 2: to inform them. And, uh, you know, it's not a
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: hard sell, but we, you know, I think what happens is,
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 2: particularly for Epitaph, it's been around so long, and we
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 2: don't put out a million records. But at the same time,
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 2: we do have a pretty good release schedule, and we
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 2: have a pretty good track record. So when we bring
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 2: a record, I think they trust us. And so we say, hey,
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 2: let us talk to you about this. And the one
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 2: thing you never do is say, hey, this thing is
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 2: a hit. you know, make them a promise that you
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 2: can't keep, you know, because nobody knows, you know, well, sometimes,
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 2: but you almost never want to say that. Right. Um,
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: but you just want to tell them, uh, uh, tell
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 2: them what you've got. And then as you build a
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 2: reputation and as you start, as, as they learn that, that, uh,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: you know what you're doing, then when you bring something,
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 2: they pay attention to you. You know what I mean?
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 2: Whereas if it's just coming from out of the blue, um,
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 2: editors only have so much attention span to spread around.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: And I think that's another thing that a label brings
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 2: to why an artist can use a label. Because it's
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 2: a lot harder and you need a lot more luck
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 2: if you're just putting the song up through DistroKid and praying.
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's assume you have a record you believe
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: in and you did meet with the editors. In a
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: perfect world, what would you want them to do with it?
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 2: So we would want... editorial, right? So we would want,
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: and what that means is, uh, the DSPs have playlists
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 2: and they're all at different levels, right? So the, you know, the,
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: the best one in the world that everyone wants is
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 2: New Music Friday. Uh, because if you can get New
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 2: Music Friday, you're going to get in front of lots
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 2: of listeners, uh, and they have New Music Friday, uh,
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 2: For the world, they have it US, they have New
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 2: Music Friday Finland. You could get in one and not
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 2: in any of the others, right? But sort of the
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 2: gold ring is New Music Friday for the whole world, right?
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 2: That's okay. You're not going to get that usually, almost ever, right?
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 2: If you're Drake, you'll get that. If you're a new
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 2: artist on Epitaph, you're not getting that, right? And nor
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 2: should you ask for it. So at the very bottom,
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 2: there's feeder playlists. And the feeder playlists are like the
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 2: ones for the people who are real active music discovery people.
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 2: And that's where they live because they're trying to find
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: what's the next thing. And the editors of those playlists
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 2: have really good taste and are very on trend. So
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 2: that's what you try to do. And when you go
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 2: into the DSP, you try to say, you know, we'd
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 2: recommend it for this playlist or that one or that one.
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 2: And you try to get it right. You don't try
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 2: to suggest things that would not be fit. And I'll
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 2: give you an example. If you get into a playlist,
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 2: it's a big playlist, but the listeners of that playlist
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 2: don't like that kind of music, then when they hit
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 2: that song, they're going to skip. And if you get
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 2: in a playlist and you get a bunch of skips,
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 2: you're punished for that. It does not help you, right?
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 2: So it's not only about landing into playlists and getting editorial.
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 2: It's getting the right editorial... for the song so that
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 2: it's a fit, so the song flourishes there. And if
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 2: that does, then the feeder playlist will result in getting
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 2: into bigger playlists with more listeners. And then you sort of,
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 2: you know, it grows that way. So those are some
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 2: of the strategies.
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, you want to do the best you can, but
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: pulling the lens back, how important is playlisting as opposed
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: to potential, forgetting New Music Friday, because that's limited and
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: it's focused, whatever.
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: But all these feeder playlists, et cetera. How do they
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: move the needle? And do they move the needle more
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: or less than, let's say, TikTok or YouTube or whatever?
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 2: Well, they move the needle less than everybody thinks. And artists...
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 2: streams typically are somewhere around 15% from playlists. But it's
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 2: one of the areas where you can make a difference.
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 2: So you try.
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But, and again, it's like a vanity thing, right? Like, uh,
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 2: you know, uh, uh, getting some good press probably doesn't
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 2: move the needle 15%. So, you know, so you do
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 2: everything you can and you try to, uh, um, have
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 2: everything reinforce everything else so that the cumulative effect is
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 2: that the artist develops and the artist grows.
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, you're from Woodland Hills?
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: What did your parents do for a living?
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 2: So my dad was a plastic bag salesman.
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: How big a bag?
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 2: Like fertilizer bags.
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 2: Grocery bags, things like that. And this was before the
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 2: days that plastic had a bad reputation.
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: Right, of course.
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 2: He was doing that in the 60s. And he's retired now,
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: and he's still unhappy that plastics have a bad reputation. But... Yeah,
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 2: no show business, no music business in my family, but
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 2: a whole family history of entrepreneurs.
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: So how long did your family.
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 2: My mom's dad had a liquor store in New York.
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: My father had a liquor store, too. How long was
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: your family in California?
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 2: So my family's been in California— I'm the third generation
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 2: of the Gurwitzes. My great-great-grandfather wasn't born here, but he
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 2: moved here from Kiev in Ukraine. First went to Minneapolis
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 2: where he worked in a copper mine and then Came
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 2: out to L.A. and settled.
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: And how many kids in the family?
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 2: In my family, four kids.
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: Where are you in the hierarchy?
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, no. My brothers and sisters. I have one sister.
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: Older or younger?
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 2: Younger.
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: What did her life turn out to be?
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 2: She went to work for my dad. Yeah.
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: So your dad's business was lucrative?
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah. I mean, he, he raised us. We were,
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 2: you know, we weren't wealthy or anything, but.
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: Right. Okay. So you're growing up. You're born in 62.
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: The Beatles hit in 64. Is this something you discover
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: on your own or your parents are playing this music?
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 2: So my parents were, were pretty square. Um, they were,
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 2: they were listening to, uh, Neil Diamond, um, we had
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 2: an eight track tape of bread. Remember the, of course. Yeah. Bread. Um, uh,
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 2: but mostly I was listening to 93 cage J in
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 2: Los Angeles. Um, so I grew up on, you know, Beatles,
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 2: beach boys, uh, uh, um, a lot of, uh, a
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 2: lot of, uh, you know, bubble gum. Uh, okay.
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 1: You're living in LA. We have access. We go to shows.
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 2: So as a little boy, no, um, My first show,
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 2: which I'll never forget, was at Knott's Berry Farm, where
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 2: they used to have bands, I guess.
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: I remember.
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 2: And my parents let me go. They knew I loved music.
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 2: And they let me go see. They were at Knott's
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 2: Berry Farm, but they let me go see the show
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 2: without them. And it was Paul Revere and the Raiders.
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 2: And I thought it was so great, man. I mean,
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 2: you know, they played their hit, you know. And... You know,
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 2: they wore their costumes.
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right.
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 2: In the fourth grade, my parents took me to Jesus
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 2: Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl, which was like a
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 2: rock concert.
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 2: And my first musical love was, you know, was when
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 2: I was probably 12. I discovered Elton John. I heard
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 2: Honky Kat on the radio. And I bought the record.
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 2: and so my first real concert that my mom took
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 2: me to was at the Forum, and I think it
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 2: was 75, and I saw Elton John and the real
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 2: original Elton John band on the Yellow Brick Road tour.
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 2: And our tickets were in the back row of the Forum.
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, and it was the peak of the glam era,
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 2: and I was a little kid, and I actually knew
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 2: enough about it to, like, I made myself a glam outfit.
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 2: I got some white, a white pair of jeans and
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 2: I wrote Elton John on them with white glue and
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 2: I put glitter on them in red, white and blue. Wow.
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 2: But I mean, there were people, you know, it was
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 2: just top hats and bell bottoms and topless girls. And
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 2: it was just, it was mayhem. And I don't know
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 2: if you remember him in that era, but it was
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 2: like Beatlemania.
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, I remember completely.
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 2: Oh my God. Like, you know, the entire audience was
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 2: singing every word to every song. And he had different
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 2: flamboyant costume, like every four songs. And I was just,
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 2: you know, that moment on, I was just destroyed. Like
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 2: rock and roll was, you know, was my life from
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 2: that moment on.
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: Okay. Were you good in school?
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, no.
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: And did you have friends? Did you play sports? What
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: was your life about?
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 2: It was, you know, as a, I think that I
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 2: probably had ADD or something, ADHD as a kid. So
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 2: I was a smart kid who got in trouble a
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 2: lot for talking and interrupting. And in junior high, I
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 2: kind of became a wild kid. I started hanging out
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 2: with the bad kids and doing drugs. But my life
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 2: at that time was about music and skateboarding. It was
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 2: before punk rock, but I was into... you know, Bowie,
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 2: Alice Cooper, uh, uh, uh, Elton John. And I also
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 2: got into very heavily into Prague. I was into ELP
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 2: and Genesis and yes. Um, just all the weirdest avant-garde
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 2: stuff I was into, you know, um, uh, Boston's debut
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 2: album came out when I was in junior high. And
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 2: I remember that it was like a, you know, like
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 2: everyone in the school had this t-shirt, you know, with
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 2: the flying saucer. Um, But I was sort of a
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 2: bad kid, causing my parents a lot of grief, ditching
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 2: school a lot and skateboarding around.
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: When it comes to graduating high school and going to college.
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't.
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: Did your parents want you to?
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. Neither of my parents were college graduates, though.
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 2: But they wanted me to. But I dropped out of
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 2: high school in 11th grade.
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: Period, never went back, never got GED?
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 2: No, I got the GED. I got the GED. Basically,
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 2: in high school, I think at the end of junior
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 2: high or the beginning of high school, I started playing
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 2: in a cover band. I think it was junior high
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 2: I was doing the cover band. And then in high school,
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 2: I met the guys who would be Bad Religion. That's
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 2: where we met. And I think... I discovered the Ramones
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 2: and went punk, you know.
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: Okay. When and how did you discover the Ramones?
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 2: I went into Moby Disc in the Valley.
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Bob Say.
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It was Bob Say.
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 2: And, you know, they had a big painting of the
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 2: record of the Ramones debut album in the parking lot.
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 2: They used to have those big like six foot paintings
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 2: of the albums. And the guy said, you know, you
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 2: should try this. And I bought the record and I
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 2: loved it. And, you know, I remember I was jumping
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 2: up and down on my bed in my room to it.
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 2: I couldn't, you know, I couldn't stop. And so I
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 2: basically kind of like me and my best friend discovered
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 2: this and we went punk, you know, which was a
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 2: high risk activity back then because it wasn't, you know,
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 2: like my high school was all All the kids were
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 2: listening to Peter Frampton and Led Zeppelin. It was very
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 2: like surfers, surfer culture in Woodland Hills. So we became pariahs.
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 2: And then we met, there were only two other punks
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 2: in the whole school. And so we got together and
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 2: my friend Tom said, you guys should be, we should
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 2: do a band. So we did. And I had been
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 2: in a cover band, so I could play a little guitar.
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 2: Greg said, I can sing. And Jay said, I play guitar.
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 2: I said, I already play guitar. He said, okay, I'll
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 2: play bass, you know? So, and so yeah that's that's
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 2: how I discovered the Ramones but you know once I
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 2: had the Ramones record then I discovered the Buzzcocks then
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 2: I discovered the Sex Pistols and the Clash and everything
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 2: else and it was also a revelation to me because
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 2: I was not I started playing guitar at 16 so
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 2: I hadn't been playing very long But I could play
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 2: that stuff. And so, and I didn't know writing a
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 2: song was a thing. So we said, let's do a
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 2: punk band. And, oh, our first punk, well, my first
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 2: punk show was the Ramones.
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: Really? Yeah. On which tour? Because the first album, no
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: one bought outside of New York other than you. Second album,
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: not much. Third album with Rockaway Beach was when they
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: started at least having some general impact.
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 2: No, but I didn't know about them on the first album.
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 2: I bought the first. I discovered them through the first album.
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 2: I wasn't like... Okay.
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, I was... When the first album came out,
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 2: I must have been 15. So I discovered them probably
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 2: a little late. Right. Right. My first show was them
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 2: at the Palladium. Right. But anyway, Greg and I said, okay,
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 2: let's have a rehearsal. Can you write songs? I said, yeah.
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 2: I think I'd written two songs. And he said, okay,
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 2: we'll both bring some songs. And so we both brought
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 2: a song, and we started playing songs. Okay.
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 1: Okay. Before this, you talk about there's an entrepreneurial heritage
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 1: in your family. Were you the type of guy who
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: had a paper route or had a Kool-Aid stand or
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: any of that shit?
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I used to do that stuff, you know, like,
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 2: you know, but yes, I did.
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, so now I'm a little older than you. We all,
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: you know, the Beatles came out, we all had electric
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: guitars and you go for rehearsal at somebody's house and
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: there's always somebody... historically it's the drummer was a drummer
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: in this case is okay. Now we're going to get
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: some gigs. That was when I was out because I
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 1: didn't have confidence. It's not about me.
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: Who in the band you're rehearsing and saying, okay, we're
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: in the garage now. Now let's play in public.
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, I, you know, um, I don't know. I,
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 2: I think, In the punk scene back then, there was
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 2: a culture of backyard parties and punk parties. And I
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 2: don't think we thought that we could play in a club.
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 2: But someone told us that there was going to be
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 2: a party in some kid's dad's warehouse. And Social Distortion
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 2: were going to play it. And did we want to
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 2: play it, too? And at that time, I think we
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 2: had six songs or seven songs. And we said, yeah,
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 2: we want to play it. You know, so we played that.
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 2: And I think we were pretty good, you know. And
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 2: people liked it. Everyone had fun. And so... It was
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 2: very much sort of like the organic word of mouth
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 2: punk rock scene in LA. It was so small and
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 2: close knit. This is like 1980, you know, that it
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 2: wasn't that we were playing shows, but we were, we were,
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 2: we first played a party and then we made, we
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 2: were friends with other bands. And then I think what
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 2: would happen, it wasn't a conventional like agents and talent buyers.
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 2: It was, other bands that had a show asked us
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 2: to open for the show. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, sure.
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 2: So we were, you know, like we were friends with, uh,
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 2: we made friends with other punks by going to show.
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 2: So an established band at that time was a circle jerks.
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 2: And we were very good friends with Greg Hedson at
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 2: the circle jerks. Um, and, uh, he introduced us to
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 2: a lot of people and we became good friends with
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 2: a band called the adolescent. So that thing, uh, That's
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 2: sort of how we started playing shows. And then, you know,
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 2: somebody who's really a catalyst for the scene was Golden Voice,
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 2: the promoter Golden Voice. Because at that time, I'm pretty
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 2: sure Golden Voice was a money laundering scheme for Gary Tovar.
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 2: Gary was importing marijuana and needed to have a legitimate
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 2: money source. So they were booking punk shows. But the
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 2: thing is, kids were showing up. to the punk shows,
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 2: you know, they were getting a thousand kids, 1500 kids
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 2: and booking them in these weird places. Like, you know, some, some,
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 2: you know, uh, some kind of a big, uh, you know,
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 2: barn in Goleta is one of the places we used
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 2: to play, you know, north of Santa Barbara, you know, so,
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 2: so golden voice discovered that bad religion were actually real popular.
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 2: And so whenever they had a show, that was struggling,
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 2: they put us on as support. So that was a
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 2: big help to us. So we started getting a lot
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 2: of shows that way. It wasn't, you know, we didn't
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 2: have a manager or an agent. Like someone from Golden Voice,
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 2: you know, Gary Tovar would call us up. And I
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 2: see Gary, I run into Gary Tovar to this day
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 2: at shows, you know, at Coachella or one of Golden
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 2: Voice's shows or festivals. And, you know, he comes up
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 2: to me and he always says, never underestimate bad religion.
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 2: That's what he used to say, you know.
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: Okay. The whole scene in Hollywood, which was both punk
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: and new wave, the mask, et cetera, were you in
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: that at all or was this a separate world?
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 2: So the mask was just before my generation. Okay. Yes.
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 2: And the mask had just closed and it was sort of,
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 2: there was the early punk scene, which were sort of like,
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 2: you know, and this is, we're really, we're really splitting
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 2: hairs here because when you look back on it, they
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 2: look like different eras. Right. But they're three years apart,
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 2: you know, like, like we were, you know, we were
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 2: 17 and they were 20, you know, 21 year olds. But,
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 2: but yeah, so the, the groups like the weirdos, the screamers, uh, um, uh,
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 2: they were the, the first generation of, of punks. Then
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 2: they corresponded to like Ramones and, uh, and the Sex Pistols,
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 2: you know? Um, Which was the big major label experiment.
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 2: And then the major labels quickly went off of punk
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 2: rock and said, yeah, forget that. Right. But then there
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 2: were all these kids who were punk who liked it.
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 2: And suddenly there's a vacuum, right? And then came in
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 2: the next generation, at least in L.A., which was like,
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 2: you know, sort of the vanguard of it. sort of
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 2: had a foot in the very first generation, which was
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 2: the Germs and Black Flag. And then the hardcore kids
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 2: started coming up in L.A. So that was, you know,
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 2: Bad Religion, TSOL, The Adolescents, and all those early L.A.
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 2: hardcore bands. And we were part of that scene. So
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 2: we were like the youngsters from the suburbs, right? And
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 2: those other bands were very much like like in the city,
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 2: like the mask was Hollywood. And we were from like
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 2: Huntington Beach and Woodland Hills and, you know, like the suburbs.
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 2: And our kind of sound, it was faster and more
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 2: aggressive and their shows were more violent. It's like we're,
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 2: we introduced this sort of the, the, the concept of
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 2: the pit where the dancing got a little bit more,
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 2: it wasn't pogoing anymore. You know, we called it slamming
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 2: and it later became, started to be called moshing.
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: So, At what point do you see this as a
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: career as opposed to a hobby?
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 2: That's a great question. It was never a hobby. I
• 2:16:18
  Speaker 2: would say it was always my, it was always me
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 2: trying to avoid getting a straight job. But I never
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 2: really believed it would work. I thought, okay, I love
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 2: music more than anything. This is where I want to be.
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's going to work out for my band.
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 2: I don't think I'm going to make it as a
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 2: mixer or a producer or an engineer. I had a
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 2: job as a salesman at Sounds Good Imports selling records.
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 2: The same time I was going to vocational school at
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 2: the University of Sound Arts to learn to record. Then
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 2: I started recording. Then at the same time as all
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 2: of that, I was doing my band. I was just
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 2: trying to do everything and anything in music, hoping against
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 2: hope that I could land doing music.
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: And how do you start Epitaph?
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 2: So I was a salesman at Sounds Good Music Imports. Oh, no.
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 2: How did I start doing Epitaph? I had put out
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 2: a 7-inch when I was living with my parents because
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 2: my dad lent me $ 1, 500. And I sold, you know, $ 2, 000.
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 2: And I put out, how could hell be any worse?
• 2:17:35
  Speaker 2: Same thing. When I was in high school, just doing
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 2: something entrepreneurial. My dad loaned me a few bucks. I
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 2: paid him back. Okay. But then my parents made me
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 2: move out of the house because I wasn't going to
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 2: school and I wasn't working. And so I got a
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 2: job and I'm selling 12-inch singles and imported vinyl for
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 2: this company. And I'm doing, you know, various things. And
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 2: they gave me a P & D deal because they
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 2: knew I'd put out How Could Hell Be Any Worse,
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 2: you know. And by that time, How Could Hell Be
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 2: Any Worse was sort of a cult success, underground, like
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 2: a cult record. And so anyway, I guess what happened
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 2: was that How Could Hell Be Any Worse came out
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 2: in 82. By 1987, when Bad Religion got back together
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 2: to do Suffer, the record had grown in infamy. It
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 2: had like, you know, people cared about it. And so
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 2: I could, I could repress that and put out our
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 2: new record. And those bad religion were bigger from having
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 2: been dormant for, for about five years. And so I
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 2: use that as a moment to, to say, I'm going
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 2: to try to do epitaph for real this time. I
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 2: will say that in 1987, it's also the moment that
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 2: it was the first time I got clean and sober.
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 2: I had been clean and sober, uh, for about a
• 2:19:15
  Speaker 2: month at that time. And I decided, I mean, you know,
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 2: I'm going to get my life together. I can't just
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 2: be recording a hundred hours a week and working two
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 2: jobs and, you know, and so, um, so I would
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 2: say it was, you know, 87 or 88. I decided
• 2:19:31
  Speaker 2: I'm going to really try and do this. And luckily
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 2: for me, the, the, the bad religion suffer LP was very,
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 2: very warmly received, uh, as was How Could Hell Be
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 2: Any Worse. Everyone from the LA Times to the fanzines
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 2: and the culture loved it. And it was the springboard
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 2: for Epitaph. And I made it in my studio and
• 2:19:55
  Speaker 2: it had a good sound for that time. And so
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 2: that attracted other bands to come to me. They wanted
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 2: the sound that I had gotten on Suffer. And the
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 2: bands would come to me and say, oh, can you
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 2: do that for us? And I'd say, oh, yeah, you
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 2: want me to put it out? And they'd say, yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 2: And so... I signed, you know, I put out Bad Religion, Suffer.
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 2: And then shortly after that, I signed Rancid. And shortly
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 2: after that, I signed No Effects. And shortly after that,
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 2: I signed The Offspring. And it was almost everything I
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 2: signed did very well. And that gave my company a
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 2: real chance, you know. So it was in those late 80s,
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 2: I said, okay, this is, you know, I'm going to
• 2:20:38
  Speaker 2: do this. And... You know, I've been very, I mean,
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 2: you know, it was a really, you know, sort of
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 2: lucky sequence of events combined with my true love and
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 2: passion for music and also working my ass off and
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 2: a fair dose of luck, you know.
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 1: Well, as I say, luck is always a component. But
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 1: it's not as big as people now say. It's like
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 1: you got to have the goods, the hard work. People
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 1: have no idea how hard it is, even though they see, oh,
• 2:21:13
  Speaker 1: it's all glamorous. It's not. Brett, I want to thank
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 1: you so much for telling us the story of Epitaph
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 1: and a little bit of your life. Thanks for doing this.
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Bob. It's been a real thrill.
• 2:21:24
  Speaker 2: And it's an honor being on here.
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 1: You bet. You were fantastic. Till next time, this is
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 1: Bob Left Sets.