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Author Cohen: 'The Sun & The Moon & The Rolling Stones' (Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: I'm Charlie Pellett, and that's Bloomberg Business Flash. You're listening
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  Speaker 1: to Taking Stock with Bim Box and Kathleen Hayes on
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  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio, The Sun and The Moon and the Rolling Stones.
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  Speaker 1: What can we learn from a new book by author
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  Speaker 1: Richard Cohen called The Sun and the Moon and the
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  Speaker 1: Rolling Stones? What can we learn about Business? For Everyone?
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  Speaker 1: Here to tell us more is the author Rich Cohen.
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  Speaker 1: Thanks for being with us. Rich Hey, thanks for having me. Um,
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  Speaker 1: You've got to tell people a little bit of your
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  Speaker 1: background so that they understand how you came to be
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  Speaker 1: so informed about the writing of this book. You are
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  Speaker 1: not just some guy who was interested in the Stones
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  Speaker 1: and wanted to write a book that combined their history
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  Speaker 1: plus your own journey. Tell us about your relationship. Well,
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  Speaker 1: I was, you know, a Stone fanatic as a kid,
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  Speaker 1: and usually that was the music of my big brother
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  Speaker 1: who locked me out of his room. So it had
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  Speaker 1: a great value to me because it wasn't allowed near it.
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  Speaker 1: And Um, right after college, I got a job at
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  Speaker 1: Rolling Stone Magazine, and I got this crazy assignment to
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  Speaker 1: go up to Toronto where the Rolling Stones were putting
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  Speaker 1: together a show and just basically hang out with them
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  Speaker 1: for two weeks and watched them assemble this show where
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  Speaker 1: they were in an old elementary school, Jim School. At night,
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  Speaker 1: you always know what's happening the Rolling Stones are putting
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  Speaker 1: together the show and just sort of watched just me
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  Speaker 1: and them as they put together this this show. And
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  Speaker 1: then I went on the road with them and they
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  Speaker 1: wrote a bunch of stories about them, and then after
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  Speaker 1: that finished, I then got hired by Mick Jagger and
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  Speaker 1: Martin Scorsese to work on a movie about the rock
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  Speaker 1: and roll business, which eventually became Vinyl on HBO, and um,
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  Speaker 1: so I had this long you know, we worked on
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  Speaker 1: that screenplay for like six or seven years, and I
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  Speaker 1: had this realization about a year ago, driving around in
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  Speaker 1: the car with my son listening to his terrible music,
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  Speaker 1: that rock and roll, which had been so important to us,
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  Speaker 1: kind of died in the mid nineties, and the Rolling
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  Speaker 1: Stones were the great band that survived. And if you
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  Speaker 1: could figure out the secret of them, you could figure
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  Speaker 1: out the secret of everything. I just think it's interesting today.
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  Speaker 1: You know, it's Bob Dylan's seventy fifth birthday, and of course, um,
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  Speaker 1: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards not far behind at age seventy two. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: One of the things that's interesting to me is what
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  Speaker 1: a phenomenally successful business the Stones have been. Of Course,
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  Speaker 1: a lot of bands go on tours now, because that's
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  Speaker 1: how you really make the money, not selling any kind
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  Speaker 1: of vinyl or anything like that. Mick Jagger course attended
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  Speaker 1: the London School of Economics for a while. Tell us
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  Speaker 1: about that part of the Stones story, Well, actually, the
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  Speaker 1: Rolling Stones were you know when I even covered them.
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  Speaker 1: They're kind of one way to think of them as
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  Speaker 1: a giant corporation that rolls around the world and makes
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  Speaker 1: billions and billions of dollars. And the story really comes
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  Speaker 1: out of trauma, which is early on. The Stones worshiped
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  Speaker 1: these sort of um African American blues musicians like Mighty Waters,
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  Speaker 1: and the story with them as they always got ripped
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  Speaker 1: off by the record company, and the Stones, of course
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  Speaker 1: winds with every part of their experience got ripped off
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  Speaker 1: by their record company, specifically by their manager, Alan Klein,
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  Speaker 1: and it really it's acted their music um the Alan
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  Speaker 1: Klein also represented the Beatles and a lot of other people,
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  Speaker 1: and as a result of what he did, the Rolling
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  Speaker 1: Stones were broke in the early seventies and they didn't
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  Speaker 1: even own the rights to their own songs and they
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  Speaker 1: still don't, so a lot of the great Rolling Stone
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  Speaker 1: songs they don't own the rights to it. Was sort
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  Speaker 1: of taken from them by Alan Klein, and they had
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  Speaker 1: they were living in England, where the marginal tax rate was,
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  Speaker 1: I think, and they realized that they could never pay
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  Speaker 1: that tax back and stay in the country, so they
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  Speaker 1: went into tax exile. They went into this old mansion
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  Speaker 1: in the south of France and they made this record
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  Speaker 1: Exile on Main Street, which is like the greatest rock
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  Speaker 1: and roll record ever made, and exile because they were
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  Speaker 1: these tax exiles. And at that point Mick Jagger, I think,
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  Speaker 1: because he had gone to London School of Economics and
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  Speaker 1: he was very smart, was embarrassed by what had happened,
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  Speaker 1: that he had been taken, and he started to really
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  Speaker 1: assert control and turned it into this kind of business
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  Speaker 1: that's a model for all rock and roll on the road.
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  Speaker 1: And that really is where they got their savvy was
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  Speaker 1: through terrible experience. Rich Let's just focus on some of
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  Speaker 1: the lessons that people in business may be able to
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  Speaker 1: learn from the book. I want you to talk about
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  Speaker 1: cutting the anchor before it drags you down, right, Okay.
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  Speaker 1: So the Rolling Stones were actually founded by this guy,
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  Speaker 1: Brian Jones. He founded the band. He had the vision.
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  Speaker 1: He was the best music musician in the band. But
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  Speaker 1: at a certain point he became a problem. He became
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  Speaker 1: a drug addict, he became an LSD problem, and he
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  Speaker 1: actually started getting busted to the point where he couldn't
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  Speaker 1: go on tour. And that's how a lot of bands ended,
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  Speaker 1: you know, some member of Theirs ended up where he
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  Speaker 1: couldn't leave the country, couldn't play. What Mick Jagger and
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  Speaker 1: Keith Richards did is they actually, after a year of
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  Speaker 1: trying to get it right, when inspired their founder and
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  Speaker 1: I always thought it was a situation where they had
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  Speaker 1: to cut the anchor to set themselves free. And it's
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  Speaker 1: I always thought that the really sentimental people, the really
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  Speaker 1: kind people, don't make it. One lessons of the Stones
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  Speaker 1: has always been the ruthless. I mean, if you want
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  Speaker 1: to survive, you have to be ruthless about your decision making.
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  Speaker 1: And they were the most most ruthless about getting away
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  Speaker 1: from people that were hurting them or not helping them.
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  Speaker 1: You also talk about never stop reinventing, Well, that's to
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  Speaker 1: me fascinating. Which is their first manager who really figured
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  Speaker 1: out what they were, which was kind of the anti Beatles,
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  Speaker 1: said to them every five years, you have to reinvent yourself,
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  Speaker 1: if you're if you're a band, because the five years
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  Speaker 1: is how long it takes a kid to go from
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  Speaker 1: being a sophomore in high school in the workforce, and
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  Speaker 1: now you have a new sophomore in high school who
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  Speaker 1: wants his own music, So you have to become that
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  Speaker 1: new music for that new kid. You have to kind
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  Speaker 1: of change to stay the same. And that's what the
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  Speaker 1: Stones were better at than anybody, even the Beatles is
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  Speaker 1: constantly reinventing themselves. So in every new era, they're a
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  Speaker 1: new band, which is why they can still go on
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  Speaker 1: the road now because for so many different generations they
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  Speaker 1: were the band of high school. Okay, it's a tough
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  Speaker 1: question your favorite Stones song or maybe album. I think
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  Speaker 1: my favorite Stone song is um Wild Horses Um, and
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  Speaker 1: I think that's just because there's a there's actually footage
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  Speaker 1: of them having making it in muscle shows Alabama and
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  Speaker 1: then listening to it, and the look on their faces
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  Speaker 1: when they're listening to their own music is this look
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  Speaker 1: of we had this sound in our head and somehow
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  Speaker 1: we got that sound into a record, and it was
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  Speaker 1: a look of complete artistic contentment and success. Rich Cohen,
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  Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us. I think mine
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  Speaker 1: might be time is on my side, but I don't know.
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  Speaker 1: There's so many great songs from the Stones, The Sun
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  Speaker 1: and the Moon and the Rolling Stones by Rich Cohen.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for joining me.
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  Speaker 1: Kathleen Hays and Pimpbox right here on taking stock on
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  Speaker 1: antitrust lawsuits against sixteen of the world's largest banks. Could
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