Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / John Boyle

Transcript

John Boyle · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the inaugural Bob Left Sets podcast. Used to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: podcast about ten years ago with Rhino, I was ahead
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: of the curve. We'll find out if I'm behind the
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: curve now. I'm now working with tune In. I'm in
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: the tune In office and studio in Santa Monica, and
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: I felt for the initial podcast would be best if
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: someone interviews me so you can learn a lot about me.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: So I have my old friend who's the chief growth
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: officer of Insomniac, John Boyle. John, Hi, Bob, thank you
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: so much for having me. Yes, so we've done this before.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: We've done it to E d M Biz. We did
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: it on the Summit series Ship. But going back, okay,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: you went to u c l A. Was your first
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: gig doing snow Core and those other concert promotions. None
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: of the first gig was booking shows at u c
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: l A. And then I was in a band. You
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: were in a band. I didn't know that. Um it
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: was Leonard Skettern meets Guns and Roses. No wonder you
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: love those? Of course I do. And what did you do?
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: You were the singer, know I was the drummer. You
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: were the drummer, really and as the manager. Okay, although
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: they always say the drummer is the business guy, so
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: it makes sense yourself. So we did. We did quite
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: well actually, and and then during college I started booking.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: We did quite well. How far did you get? Well?
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I mean we like tore it up and down. We
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: toward the west, we toward the Western US and colleges.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: We were a college party band, really, so what was
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: a gig worth? Um? Not? It was worth a really
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: good time on some parties. And that's kind of what
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: it was about. I mean, what was it a grand fifte? No? No,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: we were getting up to like five grand shows. Okay,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: that's pretty good in case this uh business thing doesn't
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: work out. Okay, so you did that and then you
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: did shows it U c l A yeah, no, no.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: And then then that led to uh, ESPN launched the
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: X Games and I got to book that initially, and
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: then there was the US Open, a surfing, and then
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: there was just all these lifestyle events. I as you know,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: I'm from Lake Tahoe. Um, I grew up on skis.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: I was a competitive ski racer, as you know. We'll
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: talk about this, I'm sure, and uh, and I fell
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: into the surf skate snow scene at U c l A.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I didn't really know. I grew up in Tahoe. I
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: really didn't know what anything was anything as a blue
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: collar kid. And then um, and then all of a sudden,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the surf skate snow thing blows up. I find myself
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: working with offspring and this is what this is like?
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Um and uh and uh and yes nine two and
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: then and then Kevin Lyman, you know, shortly thereafter launches
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: the Warp Tour and so how were you involved with
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the Warp Tour? Well, well, as I was doing my shows, UM,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I needed a real producer to produce them because I
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: was just a kid, and Kevin came in and produced them. Um.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: And then when Kevin started the Warp Tour, he invited
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: me to be his sponsorship and marketing guy, which I did.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Simultaneous to that, I got a phone call from Irving
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: as Often and Steve Backer a Giant Record saying whatever
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: it is you do, can you do for us? And
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: you can do your side hustle, you do your other
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: hustle on the side, um, which was at the time
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Warp Tour. And then and then um and then I
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: moved from Giant Records to Virgin Records and launched Snow Corps.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: And then it's kind of been a you know, okay,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: but then you then you turned into a manager and
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: you managed Exhibit. Yes I did. I managed Exhibit. I
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: managed Alien amp Farm, I managed quite a few rock bands.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: I spent a couple of years of sanctuary. I was
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: there law before it was what you were at, the
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: same guys running it, but you're doing that, and then
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: it all came to a stop and you went for
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: an m b A. It did everything kind of slowed down. Um.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: I was immune to the napster um wall that everybody
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: hit UM until a couple of years later. And then yeah,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: and then I stopped and I went back and got
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: a a dual MBA from Colombia and the Hospital of
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Business at Berkeley. Um. Okay. So when you got that NBA,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: did you think you were going to come back to
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: the music business. I kind of thought I wouldn't come
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: back to the music business. But as um al Pacino
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: or Marco Corleone says in The Godfather three, the more
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: you try to get out, they pull you right back in.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: And I got pulled right back in by another Italian
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: named Pasquale Rotella. Right, so you helped pasqual with his
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: deal with Live Nation. I was. I was very fortunate
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: to help Pascal off this deal. Okay, So without making
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: this whole podcast about you, that this is about you,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know what we're talking about. What is the
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: status of the electronic music world today? Well, I think
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: the status UM is for Insomniac is incredibly healthy. UM.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: You know, I think their saturation in the festival business
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: at large in North America and in Europe. UM. But
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the Juggernauts thrive and survive, right, UM, Why don't you
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: just for our audience in case they're not including, just
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: say what Insomniac does. UM. Insomniac runs the largest dance
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: music festivals in the world around the world, and they
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: are UM well Electric Daisy Carnival E d C in Vegas,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: the flagship version in Vegas does forty thousand people a day.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: It's the largest single weekend festival and certainly in North America,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: maybe the world, I'm not quite sure. UM. And we've
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: we've launched it UM in Brazil, Mexico, India, the UK, Japan.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: There's a big another Asian announcement coming. UM it's you know,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: it's it's been, it's it's been incredible being a part
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: of this and so and I'm a rock guy. You
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: know that. I know that. I know that. But we
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: all you know our hip to what's coming down the pike,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: did you? Um? Although Pasqual I ran it him the
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: other day and he told me you're getting into hip
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: hop too. Now yeah, no, no, so Insomniac is getting
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: into hip hop. I mean, look, Pasqual is a genius.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: He's an absolute genius. He's a visionary. He is the
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: number one, like he's the authority and dance music on
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: the entire planet. And when he pulled me back in
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: so to speak, five and a half years ago, I
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: really didn't know what I was in for. Um and
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I couldn't be more grateful. Now you give good answers, um.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: But you know, if you Pasqual has been in the
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: business since like the early nineties for people, don't you
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: know it's like the ten thousand hours thing, Wide Awake,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: since that's the company logo, Wide Awake since ninety three, right,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: And it's funny you sit with all those guys, you
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: have stories, but you know, when it was the rave
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: culture et cetera. But obviously there's been a peak, let's
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: call it five four or five years ago, we still
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: have that same peak. No, I I don't. I don't
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: think there was a peak. I think there was a
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: plateau about two years ago. UM. And so where I
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: really think the opportunity is now as in Asia. UM.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: I've been spending a lot of my time in Asia,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: South America, a lot of opportunity. But you got political instability,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: you've got currency challenges, you've got all it's still third world.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: That's why you need an NBA or ASIA. UM. Asia
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: is where, by the way, we can talk about this,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: like the music business across the board. Asia's the opportunity. Okay,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: but can we stop talking about me and talking about
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: just a couple more questions. What is driving attendees at
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: this point to electronic music festivals. Well, I think it's
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: I don't think. I know it's it's the element of community, um.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: And it's also the element of being accepted. Um. You know,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: other music festivals, UM, you kind of have to fit
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: into a certain you know, just a certain style or
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: certain niche right at at at dance music festivals and
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: insomniac festivals in particular, you can be you and you
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: are accepted and welcomed and that's it's it's it's really
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: a beautiful thing. I mean like I feel like i've
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: I've been a part of making the world a better
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: place for the last few years. And that's the hard
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: thing to say, coming from dance music with all the
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: negative press that it gets, but it's true. You let
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: me ask you, what was your experience when you came
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: to E d C. Well, they have to go back.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: I went to Hard Halloween the first time. Eric Kurtz,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: wh's a guy with Bill Silva now part of the
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Live Nation Empire. He says, you have to come, you
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: have to come, And it was USC where the now
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: there's a big dorm, but there was a big open
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: space and the funniest thing was running Two people said,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: we were at the football game at USC. You're not
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: gonna believe what's going on and go. I was there, Okay.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: So it was a separate culture and it was fascinating
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: going to E d C. I was just talking about
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: it last night. The single thing that made the biggest
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: impression was the helicopter ride there. I know, I knew
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: we were gonna get to the helicopter is for those
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: who don't know, you know, because it's electronic music festival.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: You go, they got the pulsing lights and everything at
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the helicopter station. Then they weigh you, which is not
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: encourage you. And it's an inherently frightening experience because not
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: the company we used, but the other company that flies
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: out of Vegas are the ones who crashed at the
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Grand Canyon. So they walked the you know, helicopter to
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: the takeoffs face and they go and on the way there,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: you were talking over the headphones and it was totally calm.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: When I left at like four thirty in the morning,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: I was with the guy from Live Nation Mexico and
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: a guy from Brazil, and you're with the George from
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Ossessa in Mexico and Fernando from from Brazil. First of all,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: in Brazil, he was talking about how many bodyguards he
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: had and height. They passed out because it was so
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: you know, early in the morning and late at night,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: depending on how you want to see it. They passed
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: out within like fifteen minutes. It was just me and
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: the pilot and what happened was nothing happens fast in
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: the music business, or does it happen fast and for
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: or thirty in the morning. So I'm bs and with
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: a pilot while we're waiting to get who's gonna go
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: on the ride with us? And he says he was
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: in the military. I'm feeling incredibly calm. The guy flew
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: helicopters in the military. What could be better? But we
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: talked long enough. He didn't fly helicopters in the military.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Wasn't until he got out. He only been flying for
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: two years. What I know about helicopters is if the
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: rotator stops going, if the rotor stuff going, it just plunges.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: People tell me otherwise, whatever, So if there's a funk up,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: you die, whereas with a plane there's a good fighting chance.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: So inherently there's some anxiety. Well, and I mean Bill
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Graham died exactly, and the uh Stevie Ray Vaughan died,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: and the CIA um the CIA exact died. I forget
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: his name, but right, there's so many people, you know,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: the helicopter accidents. But going to the e d C itself,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: one thing they do not gonna you know, stroke you
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: on insomniac. Once you get in, you don't have to
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: pay anything else. Every other festival is nickel and dime
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: me you. And then they had a spot where you
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: could get your phones charged. And it's almost like that
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: old song too many Fish in the seat, Short ones,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: tall ones, big ones, small ones. All kinds of people
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: were out and it was accepted and there was a
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: lot of money spent that was unnecessary. What I mean
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: by that. There were timed explosions at certain hours and
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: fireworks and it made you feel like you were at
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: something special. Of course, it's it's like, you know, the
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: funny thing is, we live in a society where everything
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: gets pressed. So theoretically, if you want to Google, you
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: can find out about anything. But because there's so much information,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: their secret worlds, and when you're at when you're out
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: in the desert at this racetrack outside of Vegas, you
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: really feel like everybody should come once just to see
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: what the funk is going on here, because they really
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: don't have any idea, and especially that all Coachella Lollapalooza,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: they always cover them. Although The New York Times didn't
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: send somebody to coach Hell at this point because they
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: felt they weren't last year, they felt they weren't breaking
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: any new ground musically, So there's a there's not as
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: much news about these things. They used to with their experiences,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: and the millennials are about experiences. You have to go
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: just see what's going on. Well, no, and uh, thank
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: you for coming. When you did come, it was I mean,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: like a d C is the biggest production on the planet.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: You saw it firsthand. There is, I've seen them all.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: There is no bigger production. And by the way, I
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: see the cost structure that goes behind it, like it's
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: the biggest production on the planet. Well, the funny thing is,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: you know you're at the race track and you see
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: that many trailers. You know, you know it's a really
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: big operation. Not to mention the fact I've been to
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but I've never been to like a
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: NASCAR track. Whenever you see the banks and it was
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: there who talking we were hanging I was talking to
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: afro Jack because everybody's hanging out is an interesting situation, right,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: everybody's there. No bit to your point, it's a two
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: mile track, right, So the NASCAR tracks run between one
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: and two miles. It's a two mile track. I mean
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: it's a huge footprint. Um and you know what, it's
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: really a beautiful show. Hey, it's left stets. I thank
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: you for your time. Thanks for listening to my inaugural podcast.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Remember to subscribe on tune in, iTunes or wherever you
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Okay, but now it's time to switch gears,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: as promise. Thank god, let's stop talking about me. That's
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: time for you to quiz me. All right. You know,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna get a little crazy. The key is
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: not to leave anything in the green room, so we
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: do no preparation. I don't know what it sounds like.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: I'm doing a TV show now. I don't know I'm
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: gonna be hit with, but go for it. So let's
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: be clear. I begged Bob. So. Bob and I first
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: met in n at the what was then known as
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: the Aspen Artist Development con Correct it's now known as
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Aspen Live, and Bob writes about this every single fucking year.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: It's a big part of your life, right, you know,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: so much of my social life is based on that,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: you know people. For those who don't know, you can
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: google it Aspen Live. It's the antithesis of usual music festival.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: There's no bands and it is an Aspen and to
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: go skiing. And some people think it's a circle jerk,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: but the converse happens. Because there's no bands. You go skiing,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: you really get to know people. That's how I know John.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: And the key point we were in the Buffalo Club
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: and he asked for John is like the Tumbler and
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: the cat Skills and he's asking for predictions. I don't
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: even know what that means, but whatever, he's the guy
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: who makes every who makes everything happen. I mean the
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: straw that stirs the drink. That's that's something. In addition,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: that's what Reggie Jackson said when he was at the Yankees.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: But I don't want to mix the metaphors here. At
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: the Cats Skills and most of those hotels are closed,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: they had a guy who ran around called the Tumbler,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: who always made activities spontaneously. So you set up an
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: asked for predictions, and you had given me ship before that,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: and I said, and I said, within twelve minutes Geffen Record,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: twelve minutes, twelve months Geffen Records would close, which it did.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: But that was one thing. But that's how we met well.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: And I didn't know you at the time, and and um,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I look at I look at Bob as like my
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: older brother from another mother. He's not enough to be
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: my dad. Um, he would be my older brother. And
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: I don't have an older brothers or any brothers at all.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Um um and uh and And we were both part
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: of that first Aspen conference, right, very involved, absolutely right.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: And I think I hosted, I was the MC of
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: the dinner or something. And and I think I called you,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: and I've I've admitted to this. Um. I think I
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: called you the annoying bald guy. It was that or worse.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: It was definitely a put out. I've blocked it from
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: my memory, but I remember the insult. So I apologize
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: to you for probably the hundredth time here. Well, you know,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I've had a lot of psychotherapy at this point. You know,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: people think that I'm a guy who's very honest, and
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: when you were in the music business, you are very honest.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: You're in the music business long enough, you know there's
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: the surface and the layer beneath the surface, and people
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: think if you're intense on the surface, you ust to
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: be a real motherfucker underneath. But I am who I am,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: So therefore people may be thrown off guarded first, but
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: then they realized, you know, there's no artifice underneath it.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: So ultimately you know this is me. Yeah, and you know, um,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: I think so. So Bob and I have have um
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: we've we've done some interviews together a couple of times,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: a few different things. And what I usually tell everybody
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: out of the gate is this guy has one badass
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: motherfucking skier, like he fucking rips. And by the way,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: this is coming from a guy who grew up in
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Tahoe and was the Junior olympiad. So Bob is a
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: really um not that you I did win all the
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: ski races in the first few years, but you are
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: really really good. And I think that was something that
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: brought us together. Absolutely our roots in the mountains. Our
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: roots are in the mountains. So all right, so let's
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: let's talk about you. Connecticut, right right. I grew up
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: a Connecticut in the suburbs Afield, Connecticut. That's fifty miles
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: from New York City. Why that's important is that's New
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: York media, New York Radio, New York television. At the time,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: it was rare for someone to commute to New York
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: from Fairfield. But now it's more common, but my mother
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: was a real cultural vulture. We were constantly going in
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: to see plays, musicals. We would go with school. But
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: staying with what I said earlier, we had the three
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: networks plus three independent stations. The only place that had
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: more independent television stations West Los Angeles with four, and
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: of course we had multiple A M radio stations, certainly
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: seventy seven. We had Cousin Brucy, who's now on the
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: satellite again. I was a big Cousin Brucy fan. And
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: we had Scott Muni number one in the nation, the
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Scott Munich Show, who flipped over to FM Okay and
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: FM Underground radio started in San Francisco in nineteen sixty seven,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: one could say nineteen sixty six with Tom Donahue, and
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: started in New York in nineteen seventy seven WO R
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: F M, and it had all at Scott Muny who
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: eventually went to w n e W. But I was there,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: being in the New York radio market, we could get
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: all those stations, so I heard all those records. So
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: what was the what was the moment? What was the
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: moment you knew that music was your calling or did
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: you not know because you went and got a you
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: you went, you're an attorney. Many people don't know that
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: I am an attorney. But we're getting ahead of the story.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: You know, generations are changing and people are rewriting history. Okay,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: people say that, oh, the Beatles filled a vacuum after
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: JFK got shot like everybody else my age. I certainly
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: remember where I was when JFK got shot. I was
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: at the bowling Alley. Okay, we were watching it on TV.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: But the Beatles were just a revolution in sound. It was.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: They didn't start to play the record so right after
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Christmas because radio stations locked their playlists over Christmas. It
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: was within twenty four hours. Okay, everybody started to grow
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: the here immediately, everybody got a guitar at that time.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Before that was folk music. We haven't had hooting any
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: shows on television. And I had learned to play a
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: nylon string guitar, but it wasn't until after the Beatles
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: that I got an electric guitar. It was you never
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: talked about this, Well, here we have it, and I
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: was a shifty guitar player. Let me be very clear.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: I mean it's funny because you listen to the radio
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: and they play some of these records. Some of these
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: songs are incredibly easy to play, like Gloria It's three uh.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Van Morrison's song made uh popular in America. My Shadows
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: of the Night um and uh um. Dirty Water that
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: was another easy one. But I had my friend Mark
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: and my Mark. My friend Mark, remember he traded his
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: I got an e S three thirty five and we're
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: playing in his bedroom one day and he said, well,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: let's change keys, and that's when I knew I was done.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: I was also embarrassed. I was with a guy who
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: still plays in bands, and they were gonna get gigs,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: and I felt like I was not good enough. But
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: I subsequently got a very I worked for a summer
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: and I bought an expensive acoustic guitar, which my mother
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: put in the crawl space and has some mold on
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: it now Gibbs I still have it. They say they'd
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: fix it at Gibbs Back whatever the gifts, you know,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: they said they would fix it. And it was really good,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: and I played a little bit first year of college,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: but college was so disorienting. After living in the suburbs,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: I went to college in Vermont. I did not play
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: after that university, No, I went to Middlebury College, which
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: is a half hour from so going to college. Um,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: I I could have gone to Middlebury Columbia. I didn't
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: go to Columbia primarily because a guy had been on
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: a summer program with wanted to rule with me, and
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to ruin with them, and I know
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I would get out of it. So if I go
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: to Middlebury, I don't have to worry about it. The
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: middle Berries were really the skiing kicked in right. No, no, um,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: if you want to talk skiing for a minute, I
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: grew up, as I said, connected when you still used
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: to snow in Connecticut. And my friend Bobby Hickey used
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: to ski and he let me try his skis, and
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: I convinced myself convinced my parents to buy me skis.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: It was the skis bindings and polls for ten dollars.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: And we used to ski in Bobby Hicky's backyard with
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: a vertical drop of maybe twenty five Then then you
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: walk back up. Of course, you walk back up and
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: you have the floodlight you see at night whatever. And
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: in the days of flannel line jeans, So in sixth grade,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Mr Conley, he showed a thirty minute promotional video from
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Mount Snow and I could, which is a large ski
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: area in southern Vermont. I've been there. You've been there,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: must have been like for work. It was it say,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: if you can ski in the East, there's no reasons,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: so it certainly isn't. But it's a large skier in Vermont.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: I want to put Mount Snow down. But we went.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: My family got hooked, and then we rented a house
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: in Vermont, and then we bought a house in Manchester, Vermont,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: and I was skiing thirty five to fifty days a
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: year before I went to Middlebury. Yes, I went to
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: It was either both Dartmouth and Middlebury have their own
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: ski areas, but Dartmouth has a lower altitude and is
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: in New Hampshire. And when I applied to college, Dartmouth
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: was not scheduled to go co ed for a number
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: of years. And I went to Middlebury it was it's
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: still very beautiful campus and they have their own ski
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: area and I could go skiing every day, which I did.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: The funny thing is of everything that happened to me
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: in college, okay, the one thing I did in college
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: was ski That's the one thing I still do forget
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: what of courses I took. The people are hong with whatever.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: So I did get something out of college. And then
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: I lived in Utah for a couple of minutes, starving
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: on the free style UH ski circuit. I mean the
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: first year I was in It's funny. I'm talking about
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: skiing as the post to what I might have happened
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: in college. First year I was in Vermont was one
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: of the great years. Ever. By the way, you're where
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: you're you're wearing a veil vest, So you know it's
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: funny because when I lived in Utah, you pooh pooed veil.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: A good friend of mine was this guy who Scott
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: brooks Bank, who was the winner of the UH Freestyle Championship,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: and he had a house in Utah and my friend
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: lived there, so is there all the time. And he
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: come came from veil. I said, veil, it's flat. They
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: actually have one very steep bump run called high Line,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: which he trained on. But I used to pooh pooh veil.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Then I got involved with my girlfriend twelve years ago,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: and since the seventies they have a condo in the
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: closest building to the listed veil and I'm getting Knowlted.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Now I don't poop poo veil so much. But after
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: grad the next three years I was in college, it
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: was very bad snow years before many skier he has
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: had um snow guns. And I went to live in Utah.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: I got a job at the gold Mine. Yes, I
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: got a job right out of college. You moved to Utah.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, let's be very clear. It was a totally
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: different world from today. There was a middle class. Nobody
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: I know went straight after college. If there were recruiters
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: on campus, I certainly didn't meet with them. And I
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: signed up for the l s a T because my
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: father wanted me to take it. And my friends knocked
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: on the door the night before said you're not gonna
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: take that, are you. Let's go to Montreal, so we did.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: I didn't take it. So I went to Yes, of
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: course to do what Ski. No. We it was just
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: to do something for that day, Okay, But I didn't
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: take the l s a T. And going to Middlebury Middlebury.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Now Middlebury has got in subtraction because they had a
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: big protest there last spring. But before that people would
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: say Middlebury is at some place in Connecticut. No one
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: knew Middlebury College except in ski areas. It's because it's
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: the best college with a ski area. Okay, it's a
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: dart miss is a thing unto itself. But everywhere you go,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: every skied the people from Middlebury. And I lined up
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: a job at the gold Miner's daughter. Best job you
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: can get being a waiter. You never have to work
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: when the lifts are open. And I got it because
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: I went to Middlebury. But I came to l A.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: I worked in a sporting goods store. Uh, it no
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: longer exists as Hollywood and Highland and Star sporting goods
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: and all the stars. Just coming out of conversation, this
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: was just with Jack Nicholson, just before he went to
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and he was
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: so cool, and I worked different months. The guy wanted
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: to give me the store. I was waiting to quick
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: to go back to Utah. Then to a freak accident,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: I broke my leg. I went skiing. It's snow summit.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is a ridiculous story. Should snow summits?
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Just for those people don't know, these are ski areas
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: in a very high altitude within two hours of l
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: A the car I went in literally burned up, and
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: and the only skis I had were very long skis
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: and short skis, and I took the short skis, feeling
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: that no one would have a ski rack, but the
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: bindings would not get tight enough. The bindings came off
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: at ten ft in mid air and I landed and
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: my leg was broken, and so I missed my job
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: in Utah. I took the l s A t and
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: I end up getting a job at Snowburg. To the
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: place still exists. Alton Snowburg are now connected the right
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: next to each other, little Cotwood Canyon, and at some
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: place called the bird Feeder, which is right by the tram,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: where you sell hot talks, and I would curry favor
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: with people by giving them large ice cream cones. I
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: did not know that at the time Snowbourg was the
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: epicenter of freestyle skiing. Everybody would come and then I mean,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: what happened was I was waiting for the tram very
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: late in the season and I missed then ski till
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the end of January because I broke my leg in
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: the beginning of November. And these guys, this guy ran
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: into said, oh, all the freestyles were going to Mammoth
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: and they came in for ice cream cones, which they
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: would every day, and you get big scoops, big scoops
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: huge and they said, yes, we're going to uh Mammoth
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: for a month. And they said, come to this frat house.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: We're gonna have a meeting on the University of Utah campus.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: And I went there on a snowy night where they
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: were playing physical graffiti, and uh, I gave him my
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: fifty bucks. They went to bang the bumps at Heavenly Valley.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: If you really know, skiing the barrel in Heavenly Valley
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: is a big thing. Nobody had any money, said. They
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: used acetone to peel off the tickets for people's wickets
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: and then use those tickets, and um, I got. I
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: stayed up all night the night before I went to Reno,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: where I had to go to the Hard Ski Factory,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: exchanged some skis and listening to physical Graffiti, and I
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: got stopped for speeding because that was after they lowered
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: the speed limit. There didn't used to be a speed
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: limit in Nevada. That was fifteen dollars. I was really
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: really scrape and I went to the Heart Ski Factory
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: and got some new skis and then drove to Mammoth.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: It's a really beautiful drive. People have no idea that
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: you think of mountains as being condo in Utah, as
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: they say, But if you drive from Reno the back road,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: uh the tackside of Yosemite, it's beautiful. And I got
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: to Mammoth a little early. The gig was we were
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: gonna meet at the stop side a nude. I didn't
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: even really know these people, and I drove up the
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: access road and that was the first time I heard
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: tangled up in Blue by uh Bob Dylan, and I
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: met these guys at the stop side. I didn't think
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: I could stay, didn't have enough money, and I called
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: my parents deciding whether I could stay, and I got
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: the thirty five dollar so I could stay on two
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: dollars and thirty cents a day. There was a spring
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: pass and thirty cents a day. Okay, it was a
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: spring pass you could buy for fifty bucks and everybody.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: I still have contact with those people. That was the
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: best month of our lives. Literally in the right about
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: still regular. That's how I really I got back into
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: led Up and listen to the physical graffiti every day.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: I was really into them in the beginning, but ten
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: years gone, which I loved, and then I decided I
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: would compete on the freestyle circuit. So we can go back.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: We can go back to to your history because I
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: want to go back there. But can we not agree
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: that led Zeppelin is the greatest band that ever walked
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: the face of the earth. I'm would as you say
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: something different than we used saying college. Somebody said to
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: be in college, name a better record than Who's Next?
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Now you might be able to namber led Zeppelin is
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: a unique thing. What I say, people say, when you
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: go to a desert island, what would you take? I said,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: I take Joni Mitchell, Blue and a C d C
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: Back in Black, So certainly leads up. One is great,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: although I pretty much stop. Although I certainly have all
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: the records I thought presence was. You know, the records
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: after physical Graffiti were a disappointment. But those records are great.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: I mean one too, or well one see like right
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: when I see you know your time is gonna come?
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: You know, lion cheating hurting. I say that to myself
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: when I ski that and and uh little feats easy
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: to slip, but Just to go back to your earlier question,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: my mother was a culture vulture in our family. My
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: father used to always say, well, we don't have the
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: big house because it's the house that we moved into
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: six months after I was born, and my mother only
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: sold it ten years ago. And uh, but there was
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: an unlimited amount of money for cultural expeditions. If I
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: want to go to the movies, my mother really she
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: would go to these jew uh Judith Chris movie weekends.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: There was always money for movies. There was always money
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: for concerts. She would hit me to something. She said,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: oh Country Joe in the Fish, I see their new haven,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: and I would get tickets. So yes, I was very
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: into it before you know. Uh, he knew very early
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: on this was part of you, right. And as I say,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: you know, if I go on about this, we don't
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: have time to go on. You know, there's a lot
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: of important history elements. Okay. Certainly, when I got to college,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: I had more records than anybody else, and therefore I
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: curried favor with all the upper classmen, and I had
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: two radio shows. But then when my generation took over,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: they were jealous and I got demoted. I could be
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: on once every other week, and I said, forget it.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: So then I taught right. And then I taught a
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: course about you know, in Middlebury they have the four
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: one four system. You take one course intensively in the winter,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: and I convince the administration to let me teach a
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: story about rock music, and um, there's a lot of
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: elements that come together here. I was in You had
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: to take an English course that was the one required
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: course other than your major, and I never did this again.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: I called the professor and asked him whether I could
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: do something creative. I did, and I got an A.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: In Middlebury, nobody got an A. And I called my
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: mother from the pay phone and I said, I'm gonna
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: be a writer, and she laughed, okay. So I felt like, okay,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: I graduate from college either I'm gonna move to school. Absolutely,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: I graduated from college. That's the first first couple of
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: weeks of college. But then, just to be very clear,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I took the creative writing course.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: This is two and the guy wrote c stories unsuccessfully
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: and you go to Middlebury's small school. There was only
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: one creative writing teacher, and he said my stories needed
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: a twist. I said, a twist do you ever hear
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: the new journalism, which is already old? At Twist, I
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: would read in class it was like spring time for
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Hitler because he had all of these people who were
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: you know, prep school kids whatever. So I felt when
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: I was in college. When I graduated, I would either, um,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: go try to get a job with Rolling Stone in
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: San Francisco, or try to pursue the ski thing. But
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: I was so burned out on writing that I pursued
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: the ski thing. Yeah, but it serves you well because
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, you've got this passion right, and it's part
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: of your life. And by the way, how important has
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: skiing been in your career? I mean, Okay, there's a
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: song on the Run with the Pack album called simple
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Man by Bad Company, and it's an incredible record. He goes,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: freedom is the only thing meads and damn to me.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: And when you are out skiing, it's one of the
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: few things you can do with total freedom. You get
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: out in your car, you drive a hundred miles an hour,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: You're gonna get stopped. Okay, ski slope you can do
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: whatever you want. You can kill yourself, hopefully you won't, okay.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: And the other great thing about skiing is when you ski,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: you can't think about anything else you'll fall. You can
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: think about something on the lift, but once you ski
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: requires totally being in the moment the sensation. The only
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: sensation I found better than the skiing is sex. And
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: you can ski whenever you want. It can't necessarily get
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: laid whatever you want, so I don't want, you know.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: It's one of these things skis and skis like music now,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: which is unfortunate when I they're both mature. When I
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: started skiing in the sixties, they were still developing new
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: ski resources. There were all these great technological revolutions. The
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: big revolution in skiing years ago was the high speed lift.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Now it's about it's a more of a middle to
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: upper class sport, and the same ski areas exist. It's
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: the same thing. In music. It used to be a
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: renegade business. You would go to concerts in the sixties.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: The sound was terrible and people couldn't play. Wasn't until
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: the mid seventies of the sound was good. Now most
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: of the concerts are done by either Live Nation or
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: a g there's three major labels. There's not the renegade
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: spirit what we saw in the last twenty years in
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: the internet sphere was that renegade. There was always something
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: new that's been consolidated too, So that's unfortunate, but it's
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: it's exciting to be at something when it's being developed,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: just like snowboarding, although snowboarding is now going downhill because
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: it's reached the peak. I agree, I agree. I think
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: we're gonna I think skiing will come back in a
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: in a little bit in the conversation, but where we
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: need to get to is, Okay, you go to Mammoth,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: you've done Park City. You go to Mammoth to get
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: your law degree, and then you end up in the
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: music business. No. No, let's be very clear. I always
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: wanted to be in the music business, and I knew
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: at the time it's changed. At this point, there were
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: six major labels. Three of them were run by lawyers.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: My father is a real estate appraiser. I have no connections.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: I figure, if I go to law school, it will
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: help me get a start in the music business. I
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: went to law school. It was so boring and terrible.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: Is this after Mammoth? Yes, because I got the world's
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: worst Okay, just to go back the first year I'm
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: in Utah. Let's be very clear, this is it's Snowbird.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: And the second year I go back to Snowbird and
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: I choke on the freestyle circuit. Okay, Then there's a
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: new rival one that I'm competing in. Then I get
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: the world's worst case of my the nucleosis. And I
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: applied to law school and I didn't think I would go,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: and then I was so down on and I went
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: and it was terrible. I was going to drop out.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: But it was literally the world's where. You know, people
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: are one thing that bothers me about society in general,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: and certainly the music business people are always rewriting history.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: But I say, it was the worst year in the
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: history of snow in the West Coast. And it was
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: seventy seventy. There was no snow, and so I called
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: to telling people, hey, you know, should I come to Utah?
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Said don't come, we're leaving. There's no snow. But then
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: it happened again two thousand and eleven, two thousand and twelve,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: and they started writing about seventy seven. So I went
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: to law school in l A. And I fell in
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: with someone moment. It was my first big romance that
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: carried me through law school. You've written about this too, right,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: So since you go to law school, I'm gonna pass
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: the bar. I mean, I'm not someone to go three
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: years for law school and not take the bar. So
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: one of the reason you want to live in l A.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: Because that's the epicenter of the music business. So I
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: used to go to the wreck store. I would do
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: all my studying, Like the first three days of Sunset
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: no no, I certainly went to Tower on Sunset. I
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: went to a place which was called Grammy and Granny
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: on Gaily Avenue, and there was also in Westwood, Okay.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: They had all the promo records, expensive promo records to
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: forty nine. You get other things for dollar ninety nine.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: There's so many records I bought that I took a
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: chance on Carlabanas debut album to this day, one of
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: my favorite albums. I bought as a promo. The first
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: Alan Parsons project record brought us a promo. So many
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: things so I bought. I mean, I was a regular customer.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: They would save records like you know the Eagles long
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: run comes out, They'd save a they had the promo.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: So I was heavily invested in going two shows. That
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: was my passion. Living in l A. Law school was secondary.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: So when I graduated from law school, you take the
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: bar in July, but you don't find the results till
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: the week before Thanksgiving. And certainly if I didn't pass
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: the bar, I was going to take it again. But
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: in the interim I got a job because I wasn't
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: gonna try to get my real my dream job in
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: the music business. I got a job with an entertainment
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: lawyer whose work was primarily in the movie business. Yes,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Sam Pearl Motter. He is famous for one thing. If
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: he's famous, primarily he broke here the deal for the
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: George Foreman grill. But he represented a lot of people,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: and I was the only guy wanted. He made more
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: money from the George Foreman of course, of course, and
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: he uh um. At the time. He represented people who
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: had had songs on the Bad Girls album from Donna
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Summer because of a legal issue, she'd left her management,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: her publishing, everything, and I worked on those royalties. In addition,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: they had songs in major movies, and I negotiated those deals.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Then I hated, I passed the ball are and I quit,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: and I said I'm going out to be a manager,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: and then I starved and he called me back in
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: because he'd gotten a really big client at the time,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Cannon Films and were the biggest independent film company of
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: the early eighties, and uh work with that, And then
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: I got a job working with this guy, Charles Band.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Charles is still around. He's basically in the horror genre
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: and at the time we had multiple divisions. He started
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: the first independent video cassette company, which were horror movies.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: He made movies, we had video games, the Halloween and
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Texas Chainsaword video games. We also made records. He put
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: to me more in her first movie, Parasite in three D,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: and we made a deal with her husband, Freddie Moore,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: who had one of the hip bands. It was a
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: big scene in the late seventies. Do Wa've seen in
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: l A. He had a band called the Cats. They
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: were then called the New Cats Ultimate they were called
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Boy Boy next Door and we made a record with them,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: produced by Mark Goldenberg from the Cree Tones, and I
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: hung with Freddie into me every day for a year.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: The funny thing I was driving my girlfriend coming home
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: from Hamilton's two weeks ago. We were going on Sam
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Santa Monica Boulevard, and I said, oh, that's where I
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: used to work on Fairfax. And then the next block
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: is this Mexican place, Los Tacos. We used to go
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: there every day and Freddy would put a quarter of
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: the jukebox and it would be he's so shy physical
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: and I forget the third track because he was a
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: rocker who had a thing for the pop stuff. And
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: then to me went to make Blame It in Rio,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: and a lot of things happened. Let me let me
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: tell this story. Though we made the record, the record
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: came out, and then Freddie did not tell me that
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: he was invited Clive Davis to the gig, and I
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: felt squeezed out, which I was what do you have
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: to know about musicians is they're desperate. They only have
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: one chance. They will fuck over anybody to get where
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: they want. And you have to understand it's rational because
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: if you're a manager, you can always get another act.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: If you're a musician, you have one shot. So I
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: felt fucked over by the band and Freddie. He ultimately
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: made it go. It's by one chance, but then Clive
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: passed anyway, and then Charles called me out karma, big
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: believer in that not necessarily instant, although it's instant in
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: this case. So uh. Then Charlie called me up and said,
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: did you see this article in the newspaper about this
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: band that throws meat into the audience? And I said, yeah,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: band called Wasp. This is says I want to put
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: that band in one of our movies. We've made a
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: previous movie, Metal Storm in three D, which followed Jaws
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: three D into the movie theater. So we're making I
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: knew how to make a movie back when the for
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: you know, uh, video cams, etcetera. I literally know how
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: to do it, particularly in three D, whichuse me. I said,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: it's specifically in three D. Well, we knew how to
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: do that too. But this movie we're making called Rage War.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: It started the guy who ended up being bull at
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: night Court and I became very tight with the band
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: band Wasp, and they said, we sell out the country Club.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: At the time, the country Club was the big club
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: out in Recita, held about a thousand people. I think
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: it's still there, but if they don't, I don't don't
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: book gigs anymore, though well they don't. They definitely don't
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: do a thousand people, right, But in any of that,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: I went on a Sunday night, they were like nine
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: people there. So I maintained my relationship with Blackie, who
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: is wasp and he's kept saying, oh, and I had
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: this relationship with guy Rod Smallwood. It goes in one ear,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: went out out another, and then he calls me one day.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: There's like three months later, he goes king Rod small
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: would come in and meet you. To this day, Rod
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Smallwood is manager of Iron Maiden, and I said sure,
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: because a fucking idiot, there's so many layers in the
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: music business. You learned. I thought Rod Smallwood wanted to
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: meet me. He didn't want to meet me. I had
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: thirty five millimeter film of an unsigned band that didn't
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: exist in so what he ultimately after he listened to
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: my horse ship for thirty minutes, he said he wanted
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: to borrow one of the video cassettes. At the time,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: the standard was three quarter inch video. He said, I
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: was number two at the company. There were two of these,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: only one in the building. It just couldn't disappear. So
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: I basically said, finally, I say, okay, okay, you can
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: take it. It just has to come back today even
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: doesn't come back to there and lose my job did
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: come back. He went and made a five hundred grand
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: cash deal for WASP because Iron Maiden was the biggest
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: worldwide band on the capital. And then the next day
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: black It calls me, goes, are you a lawyer? Yeah,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: I'm a lawyer, went like five or six times because
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: I really need to know. So you know, was I
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: have a bar card? Okay, And I showed him the
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: bar card. When he came in, he goes, I need
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: you to represent me, and my deal was saying it
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: was the management company. So I negotiate that deal. Going
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: back a step, when we mastered the Freddie Moore record,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: there was a funk up. In addition, my boss wrote
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: a bad check. I ended up becoming very close with
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: the mastering company, and to this day, this guy, Stephen Markinson,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: is one of the top castering engineers in the world.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: So in any event twenty or thirty years now exactly
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: so at the time you would have to book mastering
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: weeks in advance. But Stephen was a good friend of mine,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: and at the time this guy at um Sterling Sound
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: was the guy who meant it, who mastered all the
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: metal and they sent it to him and it came
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: back fucked up, and I asked Stephen for a favor
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: and he cut it. But then you have to cut
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: refs and it takes you can only cut. They had
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: two lazy get two at a time. They're doing because
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: that's and the band is now Antsie. So they go
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: to the Rainbow where you went every night, and I
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: said I would bring the rest. I bring the rest,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: and Rod Smallwood is there and he's all pushed out
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: of shape. He can be an intense guy. What are
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: you doing with the rest? Bla blah blah blah blah,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: and explained the story and he goes, you shouldn't be
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: a lawyer, you should be a manager. When my partner
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: comes back to town, I'm gonna make a deal. These
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: are still the guys who manage Iron Maiden. Just just
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: to be clear. It was Sanctuary Music and then they
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: ran out of money. They were kept alive by Ralph
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: Simon at Zomba. Then they came back and then they
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: went public. Everybody invested. They took all their money out.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: They did well, then it crashed. The assets were sold
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: to Universal, but that was all after my too. By
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: the way, I was there for a few years. Right
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: before they went. I was part of the crash. It
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: was like, is that's a whole another podcast? Um? So
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: they did. About two months later, Andy Taylor did come.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: We did make a deal. They bought this house that
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: um Chauncey Gardner you know I'm talking about. But who
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: was the actor Peter Sellers. He had bought it and
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: just gotten married, but he died before we could move
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: in there. It was just above the rainbow. They put
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: me so um they put You know, they had a
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: lot of cash. This is not the way the music
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: business normally runs. But forty grand in one bank account,
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: anty granted another bank account. And I remember them leaving there,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: go to the airport and they could only be in
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: American ninety days at the time without paying taxes. They go,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: you have any cash this? And I said, sure, how much?
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: He thinks if we even going to the airport, do
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: you have any company cash? Well, you know, I got
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: all this money in the bank. You know what, because
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: you're gonna need cash. And they whipped out d dollars
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: cash and I said, what am I going to do?
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: And he goes, I put it in my front pocket.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: The irony being is you need that cash because when
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: you're working with the rock band, it's got all these
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: hangars on believers who do work. None of them have
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: a dollar, none of them have a credit card, and
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: they would have to Like I remember we had a
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: rent a skeleton. You need a thousand dollar deposits and
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: you'd whip off a thousand dollars. So I ran the
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: US office and I had to be the heavy first
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: and foremost. They could only be in American ninety days
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: a piece. And there were things like we had a
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: rich deal and they had to fund the videos, and
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: we were making a video and the video this the
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: first video was for forty five grand, the second was
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: for seventy grand. And I had a lot of cash.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: I was about seventeen grand in and I called up
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: to get a check from Capital for twenty grand. They say,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: we only write checks on Thursday. This is Monday, and
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: I said, I need to check this week, too bad,
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: We gotta write We only write checks on Thursday. And
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: I called Rod, who was in the Bahamas. He goes,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: that's why I hired you. You have to do the work.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: So I had to call Capital. I said, either you
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: write me the check or I'll billy you for the money.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: I'm already in needless just say I got the check.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: But this comes up later. Then when you deal with
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: any band, forget this pop thing where everybody's moldible. But
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: back when they used to have real bands, you know
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: when that ended basically the early nineties. Um, they have
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: like a ten year plan even though they're nobody's they
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: know what song is gonna be, a single, etcetera. So
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: Blackie wanted to produce the album himself. Capital wouldn't let them,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: so they had this guy, Mike Varney, who was famous
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: for finding all the hot new rock guitars produce it.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: The mix was terrible, okay, so I told Blackie it
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: needed to be remixed. He said he would only remix
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: it if Carter said otherwise. Carter was the A and
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: R guy is now deceased at Capital. He's famous for
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: two things. He wrote the lyrics to Incense and Peppermints,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: and he engineered. He was the executive producer on Tina
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: Turner's Comeback. He deserves all the credit. So I bring
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: the cassette into Carter. I play it for him. It's
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: over and he says, uh, I passed on this band
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: three times, do whatever you want. It's like it was
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: signed above me, so I'm freaked out. But in the
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: interim Black he played it for some other people and
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: he realized it needs to be remixed. I got this
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: guy Dwayne Baron, who had a huge hit with Quiet Ryan.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: He rescued the record. But if you remember MTV, they
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: would go through these phases of what they played and
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: they swift to shifted to a non metal phase and
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: Dwayne rescued another track. We had a great video too.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: I said this should be the single because I cared
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: about the music. To make a long story very short,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: as you have, I got fired for standing up to
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: the band. Rod Smallwood's famously said, which if you put
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: it in today's context, your head will spin like Reagan
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: in the Exorcist. What difference does it make it the
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: first album is unsuccessful and right, and then I got fired.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: I you know I had I had a ton of
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: money because you can't spend a dollar when you have
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: a job like that, and just to get to the
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: key point we're actually at. Then I couldn't get another
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: job because everybody told me this this big heavy guy
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: wielding bower. Okay, but this. I worked on a couple
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: of movies because people I had hired they you know,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: some music, super right. And then I went to see
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: a job counselor and my shrink said to do it,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: and she gave me this workbook from What Color Is
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: Your Parachute? The famous job seeking book. Yeah, like one
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: of the greatest books ever written. Right and still right.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: The guy recently died Bowls and uh I wrote essays
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: and I got back in touch with the fact I
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: love to write, Okay, And I wrote and I said
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: something to magazines when the rejections came back, and said,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: wait a second, Wait a second, this is just like
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: the music business. You have to know these people. Then
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: I was eating in a hamburger at Flaky Jake's doesn't
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: exist anymore. It was the corner of Pico in Sepulvidame. Okay,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: and I'm reading Billboard. It was one of its terrible phases.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: It got better with this guy, Timothy White, than he died.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: It got worse again, and I'm reading to go this
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: is terrible. I could do a better job than this.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: And I knew, because I was constantly rewriting the UH
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: bios that the publicity people had that. I said, I
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: could actually do this. So I went on and woke up.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: My girlfriend said you should do this, you should do this,
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: and I knew there was a computer. I didn't have
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: a computer at the time, and I thought about it
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: for a week, and then I went out and charged
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: up five end worth the computer equipment on a credit
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: card I had gotten from being a lawyer, and I
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: started this newsletter in the fall of eighty six. I said,
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: three thousand copies to three times from a directory I got,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: got the addresses from the Yellow Pages of rock Uh,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: this from the album network, which also no longer exists.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's important to add this
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: is the beginning of the right here and right now exactly.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: This is it. And I was really doing it. I
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: was really doing it just to get into the job
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: in the music business. I didn't think it would be successful.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: The irony was at the time. It came out every
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: two weeks religiously. It was all analysis and business tips.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: I'm writing so much now, covering a lot of ground,
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: but every it was not like radio tips. It would
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: be like here's the situation, here's how we analyze it.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: The head of every label subscribed. They all wanted to
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: meet me. I thought people on the way up would subscribe.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: Fewer of those people because they were drinking the kool aid.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: The top guy can have a different perspective. So I
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: did that for four years, always looking for other opportunity.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: This was via facts, no, no, no, it was via
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: regular mail. I occasionally said a post stamp, you got it,
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: and it was a lot of effort. I didn't get
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: it until right so. UM. What happened was I ran
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: on the money. My ex wife moved out. It was
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: really bad. I crashed really hard. I have a theory
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: that everybody loses like ten years of their lives, and
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: that was my ten years. And in the interim, the
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: Internet happened and I had a free subscription to a
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: O L. It's funny. I saw this guy just last night,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: Jeff Gold, who was the big end up in general
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: manager of Warner Brothers UM and he gave it to
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: me when uh, people weren't really I got a job
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: writing for the Pulse mag is Zene, which was the
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: arm of Tower Records. It was like Rolling Stone came
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: out once a month and they paid me three times
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: when anybody else paid And they printed my address. Once
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: all these people were calling me and email and sending
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: me letters, and then some woman in college said can
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: I email you? And I knew I had this a
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: O L subscription, so I fired that up. Then there
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: was a famous board on a O L called the
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Velvet Rope about the music business and early right Julie Gordon. Okay.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: I started to participate on that, and then I started
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: my own because they kept moving that whatever. But I
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: got very heavily into the Internet. From thousand, I was
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: in every nook and creative became a big expert. Just
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: to go two steps further, we were going to the
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: Aspen conference and in it was the first time the
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: contact list had email addresses. Friends of mine worked in
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: the book business for in the house. There's a famous
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: book about David Geffen called The Operator, and I had
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: it a weekend before anybody else. I wrote about it,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: sent it to all to my Aspen list. Response was great.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: I had a little directory. The album network all suddenly
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: was having a directory with email addresses from some of
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: their subscribers, and I could cross reference some of my subscribers,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: and I sent it and as my first experience with virality, okay.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: As I remember hearing from all these people like uh,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: Jefferson Holt, who used to be the manager of rari
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: um okay, and he said he got And I said,
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: you're not a subscriber, how do you got? I got
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: it from Mark Williams, famous an our god. And I
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: think this is where I got in on it too.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: I think it's it just it went viral. Mark Williams
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: wasn't a subscribe either, So then I stopped charging for subscriptions.
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: I stopped sending it by email, and if you were
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: from an Aspen person who were already a subscriber, you
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: got it. If you're in the circle. If you're in
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: the circle, you email me to get it. I did
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: not automate it until two thousand and five. The advantage
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: to that was I was on the bleeding edge of
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: all this stuff that people take for granted. And I'm
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: not saying this is necessarily good stuff, but I'm talking
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: about the hate and all this other But what he
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: also did is you you built incredible credibility process, like
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: you became authentic and credible as a voice, and and
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: and and no disrespect to Julie, but that velvet rope
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: thing was not right. I mean, well, let's just to
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: go back there. The velvet rope was, you know, really
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: a vicious thing. She left, oh a O. L went
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: somewhere else. And the guy who hosted this, this guy
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: Craig Anderton, electronic musician, worked at Gibson until about a
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: month ago, and a very nice guy. He said, I'll
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: host one for you, right, and we did it. What
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize at the time was this is sound
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: kind of pompous. I would write definitively. People would be
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: too intimidated to respond. So I did that. It became
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: really important, really fast. Right. So I did that for
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: like two years and was also burned out. But once
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: what happened was when I went online in the year
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: two thousand. That's when the whole Napster thing happened. And
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: since I was a lawyer, I understood the legal stuff
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: on naster. I was the expert on Napster. They would
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: call me everybody from Hillary Rose and who was head
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: of the uh R, I double a everybody. I got
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: right in the thick of exactly about political stuff. You know,
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: she was everybody hated her in real life. She was
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: basically uh an okay person but um that that that's
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: what happened, and there are many details because I thought
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: that it was copyright infringement, but I thought that the
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: labels would establish that and then that have naptrical legal
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: which was not the case. So certainly by the fall
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: of two thous they went to shut it down. I
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: became the expert on the other side all of what
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: was going on with the Internet that they could not battle.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: I guess there's one last question maybe here, Why the
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: funk are you doing this? Lot's an interesting question. Now
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: there's this guy, David Dorn who's a big, big wigged
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: Apple Music. Now it was two thousand five. He tracked
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: me down about doing this podcast for Rhino and I
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: did it all the way to remember this, all the
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: way to the end of two thousand nine. That podcast
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: was about talking about records and I could use any label, etcetera.
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: And there was a very it's like anything else. You know,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: I got email for years after it stopped people would
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: want to hear that again. Okay, so I'm gonna give
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: you the real, real, real, real story. Yeah yeah. So
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: in any event, David moved on and that ended. Okay,
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: podcast went down, and then then what came back up,
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: and everybody has a podcast and Howard Stern is giving
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: them ship. Everybody can broadcast, etcetera. And it's like, I
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: don't want to write a novel. That's not what I do.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: My thing is immediate. People say write a book, Say
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna take a year or two to write a book.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: It's gonna reach a tenth of the people that I
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: normally reach. That's not what I'm gonna do. And the podcast,
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like Peter Teel says, you know, you
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: go where everybody else isn't. But in the full two
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: years ago, I lost my two big paying gigs you know,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: nothing lasts forever, and one the company you know, literally went.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: Both companies went in a different direction. But both stories
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: are a little complicated. But I lost them both in
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: a week and I'd saved a lot of money. But
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: it's through me. Okay, It's just like two years ago,
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: it was, you know, so um this is I had
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: a column in Variety and I had the uh these
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: potu these uh Spotify playlists I was doing for Rhino,
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: and I know totally redid their thing. And Variety is
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: a much deeper story, but it came to a close
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: and uh, I hate to admit it. It's like, you know,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: a breakup for me. It takes a long time for
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: me to recover from these. It's hard to get over.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: And also I'll also admit, since I turned sixty really
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: fucked me up. You know everybody's saying, you know, no,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: just they say sixties to do fifty or new forty.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: That's worship sixty and sixty. Okay, it might live a
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: little bit longer. The problem with turning sixty is a
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: lot of it's a it's a visceral thing. It's not
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: something you contemplate until it comes up in your brain.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: Um is that? A lot of it's bullshit, like when
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: I see hype, like I'm reading the newspaper now and
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: they have they talk about acts, and they talk about
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: what was just said. They're just hyping it. Okay, we
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: don't know. I'll find out. I'll go on Rotten Tomatoes
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: a day it comes out and find out whether it's
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: worth seeing. I don't have to follow the promotion for
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: a year in advance, so what is really important? And
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: then you get to a spot where it goes It
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: doesn't make any difference because at first you want to
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: be remembered. Then you realize nobody's gonna be remembered. Young
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: people today have no idea how big Johnny Carson was,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: and the Beatles continue to be big, but there are
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of bands from the seventies who were huge
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: already been forgotten. So it frees you up to do
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: different things. Okay. Then I got an email from I was, okay,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: I do a certain number of personal appearances, certain number
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: of podcasts myself. And I was on the Recode podcast
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: and I knew I killed and I killed, and uh,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: some guy tracked me down. This craziest Railey guy had
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: the fourth big third biggest YouTube channel if you discount Vivo,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: and he wanted to do a podcast, and I liked
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: that he was young. Okay, and I said, well, maybe
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: I'll take a flyer. Then Irving as Off said, well,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: a big radio chain was interested, so a big radio chain.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: We were at paper was gonna do with the big
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: radio chain, okay. And then the guy who is head
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: of tune In track me down and he said well,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: and I said, you literally have to get on it
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: right away. I mean, I'm literally the contracts are going
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: back and forth. So I liked once again that he
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: was from the New World, and part of me believes
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: I'm too late. But I listened to a lot of podcasts,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: and many people are bad. It's astounding how many people
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: are truly bad. And then there are people who followings
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: are bad. Because I was brought up in a family
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: where they told me I was a ship hit. My
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: mother would literally say, well, who are you? Why would
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: why would? Why did they listen to you? So I realized, well,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: if I'm good on these other things, I need to
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: give it a shot. And also I realized there are
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of people I do want to talk to,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: which has a different flavor from writing right, and as
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: you have access to exactly like I'm gonna talk to
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: Nathan Hubbard who ran ticket Master and is in the
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: ticketing sphere that is not known how much you write,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: it's not something that you can converse. And there are
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of other people. I mean, I haven't locked
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: these people in, not that they won't lock him. So
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: I don't want to drop the names. There are a
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: lot of creative people. You're gonna get them all, dude.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: But as I say, I like to get someone's story,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: I don't want to just hear the hype, and I
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: don't think there's anybody better. That's my skill. To my detriment,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: I know everybody's story that you've heard about me. Most
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: people you never hear about me. It's like it's just
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: a newsletter, that's it. So I love to get people's stories.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: So I look forward to that the podcast. Well, I
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: just want to share one story with you two thousand
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: and two as your uh as your letter is blowing up.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm still a relatively young man at that time.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: I was so inspired that I thought I would try
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: to do the same thing, and I never really was
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: able to pull it off. I didn't know this, soho
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: did you send stuff? No? I didn't send stuff. You
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: know what I did is I would go out. I
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: was on Sunset Strip every night, as you know. I'd
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: go out to come home after many drinks and partying,
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: and I would try to write something and I could
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: never do it in the way that you did it.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: So you were such an inspiration to me, and to
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: this day I wish that I had tried to follow
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: through with this. But Bob, thank you for letting me
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: help tell your story. My goal is to make your
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: life more interesting. That's what I'm trying to do here
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: on my new podcast on tune in. I want to
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: give you information and entertain you simultaneously. In a world
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: full of clutter, I hope to rise above. We love insight.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: You can email me at Bob at left sets dot
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: com and let us know what you think and suggestions.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: We're open to all ideas. I hope you enjoyed this
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: inaugural podcast. Be sure to subscribe at tune in, iTunes
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: or your podcast player of choice. Don't know so Dolphas
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: Drum