Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: All Right, ladies and gentlemen, this is a Quest Love,
Speaker 2: Quest Love Supreme back on zoom.
Speaker 1: Is that a dream that we were actually out in
Speaker 1: the open and uh.
Speaker 2: We saw the world and we saw each other and
Speaker 2: we were doing these shows.
Speaker 1: In person and everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, it was so amazing, like you were there
Speaker 2: and you were there and you were there.
Speaker 1: It was amazing. I dreamed that Bill was there, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was amazing. No, it was.
Speaker 2: It's good to be back. We're here with the fam.
Speaker 2: It's uh, Bill, Steve and my ea. Uh Fonte went
Speaker 2: out to get some cigarettes, but.
Speaker 3: It's coming back faster this time.
Speaker 1: He gives us regards. Let me go a little bit
Speaker 1: off the rails.
Speaker 2: This might be quasi lengthy, but I'll say this my
Speaker 2: as a preference to this particular episode. I'm gonna start
Speaker 2: with a quickly personal story, and that story is basically so,
Speaker 2: there's a gentleman that's been in my organization. His name
Speaker 2: is Silbert MANI and Silbert like the thing about the
Speaker 2: Roots organization is, you know, we work with literally the
Speaker 2: best people and I've had very few terminations. You know,
Speaker 2: thirty years at the helm of this organization. I mean,
Speaker 2: some people like move on to do other projects. And
Speaker 2: for the most part, I'll say that everyone in my
Speaker 2: organization has done superb work and has been you know,
Speaker 2: with us anywhere from ten to thirty years. So when
Speaker 2: I say we get the best of the best, we
Speaker 2: get the best. Now, in the case of mister Amani Silbert,
Speaker 2: he came to meet with us about potentially being the
Speaker 2: new Roots tour manager, and that being a tour manager
Speaker 2: sort of like being the group's father, like what Dave
Speaker 2: Seville is to the chipmunks. That's what a tour manager is,
Speaker 2: to make sure that everything runs smoothly.
Speaker 1: And that was the role he was filling in.
Speaker 2: And you know, we are a professional organization, and you know,
Speaker 2: job interviews are a thing where you know, it's not
Speaker 2: like I'm in an office with a receptionist and a
Speaker 2: coffeemaker or any of those things. But I am very
Speaker 2: serious about the tour manager position. And it's also been
Speaker 2: a very long time since we've had a male in
Speaker 2: this particular position.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll say over.
Speaker 2: These thirty years that eighty percent of our organization has
Speaker 2: been run by women. So when sel kind of came
Speaker 2: in this organization, I wanted to come with the hard
Speaker 2: questions and I simply asked him one question. I said,
Speaker 2: what do you think you have that qualifies you to
Speaker 2: work in the capacity as tour manager for the Roots
Speaker 2: And he said, I've been Public Enemies tour manager for
Speaker 2: fifteen years, one hundred plus shows a year, theaters, clubs,
Speaker 2: stadiums worldwide, opening for the biggest rock acts in the world,
Speaker 2: like solo dates, all stops in between, he said, and
Speaker 2: never once has Flavor Flav been late or ever missed
Speaker 2: a And before you said the last word, I was like,
Speaker 2: you're hired.
Speaker 1: That's all I needed to hear.
Speaker 2: And you know, when you, as the patron, you go
Speaker 2: to Massive Square Garden to see, you know, a Kendrick
Speaker 2: show or whatever. You know, we praise artists and all
Speaker 2: the time, but we never ever get to see how
Speaker 2: the sausage is made. We never, you know, give praise
Speaker 2: to the tour bus driver for getting them there, or
Speaker 2: the manager for negotiating the right contract, or even the
Speaker 2: tour manager for getting the act there on time.
Speaker 1: To give you your money's worth.
Speaker 2: So there's a new book has been written by our
Speaker 2: guest today called The Fame Game, an insider's playbook for
Speaker 2: earning your fifteen minutes of And for some reason, I
Speaker 2: know that the you're in the title is sort of
Speaker 2: implied to the artist, but I actually think that this
Speaker 2: book is meant for anyone who's currently an intern or
Speaker 2: an assistant, future manager's, future publicists. This book is almost
Speaker 2: it's an important like I was reading it thinking like, oh,
Speaker 2: maybe I could use this when I get job twenty
Speaker 2: to be a manager.
Speaker 1: Because you guys know I like.
Speaker 2: Okay, So before the rest of Quest of Supreme gets
Speaker 2: bored to death with this long ass intro, I will
Speaker 2: just say that our guest today has simply worked with
Speaker 2: the best, and his job is to be the person
Speaker 2: who is behind the scenes that makes sure everything is
Speaker 2: running smoothly. And he's also the person that gets that
Speaker 2: three am phone call when shit hits the fan. Name
Speaker 2: them Quincy Jones, Don Cornelius, her Albert Andre Krauts, Luther Vandros,
Speaker 2: Paul McCartney, Peter Frampton, Nick Nolty, Muhammad Ali, Richard pryor
Speaker 2: Bet Mintler.
Speaker 1: Like literally, there is no one, Vanessa one I can
Speaker 1: name it.
Speaker 2: I apologize for this long ass intro, but I think
Speaker 2: it's really important that I set this up. Please welcome
Speaker 2: to Quest Love Supreme, the one and the Only Supermanager
Speaker 2: and Doctor fix It, the one and only Ramone Harvey
Speaker 2: the second on Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 4: Thank you, And that was really well crafted and it
Speaker 4: makes a lot of sense. Well, and I just asked, like,
Speaker 4: let me ask the final question first, Yes, what's your secret?
Speaker 1: Ramon?
Speaker 4: To your to being successful at what you what you chose.
Speaker 1: To do all these years?
Speaker 2: You add to that, it's more why why would you
Speaker 2: want to stress yourself out with this job? You have
Speaker 2: the most dangerous in entertainment.
Speaker 1: That's all that.
Speaker 2: My take after finishing the book was why would you
Speaker 2: want to do that? What's your answer?
Speaker 5: You know? I think that over the you know, I
Speaker 5: kind of fell into it by accident. First of all,
Speaker 5: I never really wanted to. I didn't grow up to
Speaker 5: be a manager or a publicist. I just I was.
Speaker 5: I was a flight attendant for PanAm Airlines and I
Speaker 5: ended up, you know, flying to London and I lived
Speaker 5: there for four years and that's where I got my
Speaker 5: break in the music industry. And it was quite by accident.
Speaker 5: You know, I was dating a singer and her agency
Speaker 5: I got laid off from pan AM and I was
Speaker 5: actually the only black was reporent. You know at that
Speaker 5: time PanAm, this was in the mid seventies and PanAm
Speaker 5: didn't have any black people right for the most part,
Speaker 5: they had very few and they had no mails. All
Speaker 5: the international airlines like of Tonza of France, British Airways,
Speaker 5: they all had men, but there was no men in
Speaker 5: any of the American airlines. So I killed two birds
Speaker 5: with one stone, being black and being a male, and
Speaker 5: that's why I got hired. And in fact, I always
Speaker 5: tell a funny story that we had. I had a
Speaker 5: huge afro and I used to have to pad it
Speaker 5: down because we had a three inch maximum from the
Speaker 5: from the top of your head to the to the
Speaker 5: outskirts of your wherever your opera reached. So I used
Speaker 5: to pad it down, put water on, you know.
Speaker 1: If you want eighties dippity do was like your best.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, right right, well afro sein, whatever the whatever
Speaker 5: you could do. When I got over there and this
Speaker 5: this opportunity to work at this talent agency came up,
Speaker 5: I just found that I had a certain understanding of
Speaker 5: I interacted well with the artist I worked with Bay
Speaker 5: City Rollers over there with this agency called Starlight Artist
Speaker 5: and I work with a group called Marmalade. Bay City
Speaker 5: Rollers were supposed to be like the next Beatles at
Speaker 5: the time, but a lot of people don't realize they
Speaker 5: actually didn't sing on their records. There was two guys
Speaker 5: named Bill Coulter and Bill uh Bill Martin and Phil
Speaker 5: Culture who produced and wrote two records for the Bay
Speaker 5: Rollers and they got him on top of the Pops whatever.
Speaker 5: But they in those days you could you could lip sync,
Speaker 5: so they never had to sing and they actually got
Speaker 5: you know, the first album was huge and they never
Speaker 5: really performed. Almost everything they did was lip sync.
Speaker 1: Are you are you disappointed? Steve?
Speaker 4: I'm literally about to jump out the window right now.
Speaker 4: I'm a big Bay City Rollers fan.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I'm sorry to bust your bubble. But no,
Speaker 5: they didn't. They didn't. It was all done by session singers, Steve. Yeah,
Speaker 5: they were before Milli Villin did the whole thing. So well.
Speaker 5: The second record was actually done after they got successful
Speaker 5: in the first record, they got kind of full of
Speaker 5: themselves and they said, hey, we don't want to do
Speaker 5: a we don't want to use these guys, so they
Speaker 5: fired them and they those guys went and got five
Speaker 5: new faces, some English guys named Kenny, and that was
Speaker 5: one of the groups that I worked with over there.
Speaker 5: And then also I got to work as an editor
Speaker 5: for a couple of music magazines. So I just had
Speaker 5: a sense of that music was maybe in my destiny,
Speaker 5: you know, of relating to artists.
Speaker 3: And but win Ramon because you were a flight attendant first,
Speaker 3: but before attend and then I.
Speaker 5: Got laid off.
Speaker 1: What year was it that you did your time in London.
Speaker 5: From nineteen seventy three to nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, so.
Speaker 5: You know the music scene was really vibrant then Bowie
Speaker 5: and uh you know Alvin Stardust and Gary Glitter and
Speaker 5: I mean, you know the Rolling Stones. I remember seeing
Speaker 5: the first time I saw Billy Preston. He opened for
Speaker 5: the Rolling Stones at Wimbley. That was in the seventies
Speaker 5: and he was just incredible. I thought he blew him
Speaker 5: off the stage, to be honest. But there was just
Speaker 5: it was just a hotbed of music. I mean I
Speaker 5: got to see some of the best, you know. I
Speaker 5: saw Elton John at the peak of his career back
Speaker 5: then at the was the Rain it's one of the
Speaker 5: most famous concert halls in London. I forget the name.
Speaker 5: It begins with a R.
Speaker 1: Royal Albert Hall, Royal Albert Hall.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Royal Oberoll. And he was just he was amazing.
Speaker 1: Well, first, I'm fascinated.
Speaker 2: I know that because of your pan Am experience, Like
Speaker 2: you go back and forth to London a lot.
Speaker 1: But it's just so.
Speaker 5: No, I was based there.
Speaker 3: I lived there for that whole time, right, But you
Speaker 3: didn't get to pick it. He didn't even get to
Speaker 3: picket it. You didn't even know you were going to
Speaker 3: be there. Because people don't know that part about me
Speaker 3: to fight. It's in there, right, They just said go.
Speaker 5: Well, we had three bases to choose from. It was Washington,
Speaker 5: d C, Boston or London, and I was one. I
Speaker 5: was the only guy and four women who got picked
Speaker 5: to go to London.
Speaker 1: Where were you born? First of all, I.
Speaker 5: Was born in Chicago, Illinois, and I was My dad
Speaker 5: was in the service, so we moved around a lot.
Speaker 5: I went to elementary school in Springfield, mass and then
Speaker 5: he got transferred to VanderBurg Air Force Base. I went
Speaker 5: to junior high school up in Lompo, California, which is
Speaker 5: about sixty miles inland from Santa Barbara, and I went
Speaker 5: to junior high school and high school there. Then I
Speaker 5: went to Vidio College and you know, just a little
Speaker 5: bit east of northeast of LA and got my undergraduate there.
Speaker 5: Really went to school to be a lawyer. And then
Speaker 5: a friend of mine, actually Sheryl Boone Isaacs, who used
Speaker 5: to be president president of the Academy Motion Picture of
Speaker 5: Arts and Sciences. Yeah, she was the first black woman
Speaker 5: to do that. We we actually I met her in
Speaker 5: college and she was from Springfield as well, and she
Speaker 5: got a job with pan AM and that's how I
Speaker 5: ended up. She said, hey, you know you should you
Speaker 5: should apply for pan and they're looking for black men.
Speaker 5: And I said really, and I said, and she had
Speaker 5: already been doing it for a year. So I said,
Speaker 5: all right, I'll applay. What the heck, you know, I
Speaker 5: wanted to travel anyway, sure if I wanted to continue
Speaker 5: my education. And so it was really from her that
Speaker 5: I got the tip that they were even hiring. And
Speaker 5: then I finally got you know, I got hired. And
Speaker 5: that's that's It took six months process reinterviews or some
Speaker 5: screening process and and they want to know. At that time,
Speaker 5: my offer was even bigger. They said, you know, would
Speaker 5: you be willing to cut your appro and I said, well, no,
Speaker 5: not for you just to see it, but if you
Speaker 5: hire me. Yeah. But yeah, So that's how that's how
Speaker 5: I ended up going over there.
Speaker 2: To make a move that bold, especially that early. I mean, okay,
Speaker 2: it's five years after what I consider the the civil
Speaker 2: rights period of the sixties, which you know, most people
Speaker 2: look at nineteen sixty eight is sort of like a
Speaker 2: seminal year where a lot of revolutionary changes happened. But
Speaker 2: what I mean the difference between what you did and
Speaker 2: the difference between a lot of the artists that you represent.
Speaker 2: Like as an artist, the first thing that entered my
Speaker 2: head was like, oh, fear, like I'm going to be
Speaker 2: safe and da da da da, this is too risky.
Speaker 1: Why would I do that?
Speaker 2: Like that's it's very unusual, like for at least I
Speaker 2: don't know many black men are thinking international, or that
Speaker 2: they could have a space in someplace that's not the
Speaker 2: United States, you know, But what was it generally about
Speaker 2: you that thought bigger, more international, thought that you could
Speaker 2: handle this Because for me, like this is something that
Speaker 2: only white people would do and not.
Speaker 5: I always had a feeling of wanting to be adventurous
Speaker 5: and try try new things, try something you know, different
Speaker 5: that hadn't been done before. You know, nobody in my
Speaker 5: family had really traveled. I'd only been on an airplane,
Speaker 5: like from from LA to San Francisco. I'd never even
Speaker 5: traveled from one coast to the other, you know, because
Speaker 5: when we came cross country over in a car and
Speaker 5: one of those little tent things that you you prop up,
Speaker 5: it looks like a trailer. It's like on the top
Speaker 5: of a car. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a tent that
Speaker 5: you build up. And that's how you know, that's how
Speaker 5: we ended up coming Springfield to east to west.
Speaker 3: So that was your first time flying, you doing the
Speaker 3: pan Am.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it was my first time flying. When I
Speaker 5: went and training and I was nervous. I wasn't nervous
Speaker 5: about from inside in terms of like I felt I
Speaker 5: could I could figure out whatever, you know. I just
Speaker 5: thought I'd always wanted to travel, see the world and
Speaker 5: just get out of the context of just being a
Speaker 5: black man in the US. That I felt like in
Speaker 5: those times, everyone that that's all they ever talked to
Speaker 5: you about was you know, it was a black, white thing,
Speaker 5: and I wanted to see what the if I would
Speaker 5: be perceived differently in another part of the world, or
Speaker 5: you know what, I would maybe would anyone even look
Speaker 5: at me as being an American?
Speaker 2: Could you just talk about just generally, well, now that
Speaker 2: you are a professional and you are renown like a
Speaker 2: world traveler, whatnot? What are the basic differences that you
Speaker 2: could say were in London at the time when you
Speaker 2: first lived there, as opposed to now where it's kind
Speaker 2: of like, you know, the Internet has sort of colonized
Speaker 2: the world, where there's Starbucks everywhere, a seven to eleven everywhere,
Speaker 2: a KFC Donald's every you know, you get the same
Speaker 2: J cole record around the world at the same time.
Speaker 2: But for you, in general, what were the most What's
Speaker 2: what's the difference in how your life was first living
Speaker 2: there as opposed to how it is now.
Speaker 5: I think the biggest difference was, well, two things that
Speaker 5: I noticed right off the bat. One is that, for
Speaker 5: the very first time in my whole life that I
Speaker 5: could recall, I was in a pub and somebody asked
Speaker 5: me what it was like to be in American and
Speaker 5: I went, geez, no one's ever asked me that question.
Speaker 5: They only ever asked me what it's like to be black.
Speaker 5: I need to really think about that for a second,
Speaker 5: because I don't I've never really thought of myself as
Speaker 5: an American, to be honest, you know, that was like
Speaker 5: a big question, and that that was you know, that
Speaker 5: was part of the process of wanting to go there
Speaker 5: in the first place, is to see how I would
Speaker 5: be viewed. And so there was that part. But then
Speaker 5: on the black side, they they were a little bit
Speaker 5: behind our civil rights movement at the time, so they
Speaker 5: they didn't really see themselves. They just saw themselves as
Speaker 5: being English. And I remember asking a guy what's it
Speaker 5: like to be what's it like to be black? And
Speaker 5: this in the you know, in England, because the voices
Speaker 5: are different, the inflection they speak English like English people,
Speaker 5: you know, it's a little bit different than us, you know,
Speaker 5: and you have colloquialism and throughout different parts of you know,
Speaker 5: depending if you're on the East coast, west coast, you know,
Speaker 5: but we're basically speaking a little bit different vibe than
Speaker 5: the way the English spoke. And so but they kind
Speaker 5: of resented the idea that I was looking at them
Speaker 5: as being anything other than English, and I thought, weird.
Speaker 5: I just wow, So you just you just consider yourself
Speaker 5: to be English equal. I mean, it doesn't really work
Speaker 5: that way in the States, but but you know, more
Speaker 5: power to you if that's the way it works, you know.
Speaker 5: And this was very early on in the Inbratic days
Speaker 5: of me being there and just getting adjusted to, you know,
Speaker 5: being in a place where it's the majority. You know.
Speaker 5: The one thing about England that's that makes it easier
Speaker 5: and more accessible for black people or American people is
Speaker 5: it is English. You are speaking English. It is their language,
Speaker 5: although it is totally different. Like when I was an editor,
Speaker 5: I had to learn to spell every everything different because
Speaker 5: they don't pronounce everything the same as we do. You know,
Speaker 5: Like there's a I remember that one of the silliest
Speaker 5: things I was going to in a movie theater. They
Speaker 5: call it the cinema over there. And one of the
Speaker 5: most famous squares in England is Less Square. That's that's
Speaker 5: where they have all the big theaters. But it's spelled
Speaker 5: l E I C E S t R. So I
Speaker 5: get into cab and the guy goes, well, where are
Speaker 5: you going? I said, I'm going to Leicester Square? I
Speaker 5: never heard of Leicester Square. That's what do you mean?
Speaker 5: You never heard of license Is Square? I mean, like,
Speaker 5: how long you've been driving a cat? So I've been
Speaker 5: driving a cab for like thirty years. And I said, well,
Speaker 5: it's the you know, it's the square, you know, Licenses
Speaker 5: Square where all the theaters are. Really, you know, it's
Speaker 5: all where all your big cinemas are, and you know theaters.
Speaker 5: He goes, oh, oh, you mean Leicester Square. And I said,
Speaker 5: Leicester Square, that's how you say it. And I said, well,
Speaker 5: in the stage we would spell that, you know, l
Speaker 5: E S T E R, So why ain't I spell
Speaker 5: it that way? You know, I just had to learn
Speaker 5: all kinds of different spellings and stuff like that. You know,
Speaker 5: it was also still easier than like, say, you know,
Speaker 5: my second language was French, but it was still easier
Speaker 5: to do that than to go to Paris and try
Speaker 5: to speak French, because they really had a snooty attitude
Speaker 5: about Americans trying to speak French exactly. We immediately thought,
Speaker 5: you were, you know, persecuting their language.
Speaker 3: You know, the only language I ever learned to alon.
Speaker 3: I understand you speak her like on her.
Speaker 1: Like, you know, and that's another comment from Bill.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm an American. I learned a lesson. I
Speaker 3: learned the language in school.
Speaker 5: What do y'all say?
Speaker 1: Time out? Time? Yeah? Steve, yes?
Speaker 2: I do you have twenty copies of the Basity Rollers
Speaker 2: first album?
Speaker 1: Behind You? Oh? That was such a love joke. That's
Speaker 1: been up there for like ten to fifteen minutes. No
Speaker 1: one said ship. Finally, that was a love joke.
Speaker 3: It's been sitting at a hole. I didn't even see
Speaker 3: he did him do that?
Speaker 1: Like dog? Why do you have twenty copies of this record?
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, it's Mark thirty and I've probably
Speaker 4: owned about one hundred copies of this and I give
Speaker 4: them away. It's I buy it every time I see it.
Speaker 4: So is this the the album you're referring to? It's
Speaker 4: like I believe it's like the first America.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the that's the first one. In fact, they
Speaker 5: really because of that problem with the producers. You know,
Speaker 5: the one show that everyone broke on and during those
Speaker 5: days was Top of the Pops, which was one of
Speaker 5: the most influencial music shows ever. Yeah, in any you know,
Speaker 5: in any country that I know of, I mean, you
Speaker 5: could really break and keep sustaining a career just being
Speaker 5: on Top of the Pops. But they changed the ruling
Speaker 5: and you had to start singing live track on the
Speaker 5: show because of that, because they weren't the only ones
Speaker 5: that were doing that, and so the unions and everything
Speaker 5: started complaining. They switched the procedures so that you couldn't
Speaker 5: lip sync on Top of the Pops. But for the
Speaker 5: first ten years I think that the show existed, you could.
Speaker 5: It was always lip syncing.
Speaker 4: Right, well, I understand that they were lip syncing, but
Speaker 4: but you're are you suggesting or did you suggest that
Speaker 4: they had session singers in the making of the albums.
Speaker 5: Them making their first album was completely written recorded by
Speaker 5: session singers.
Speaker 4: You've been had, Steve, Yeah, all right, well you were
Speaker 4: in our life, Thank you, talk to you.
Speaker 5: And again they had they had two records recorded and
Speaker 5: they just put that. They put other guys together and
Speaker 5: they used the exact same you know, they made a
Speaker 5: few tweaks in the record in the second record that
Speaker 5: would have been the Bay City Roller second record. So
Speaker 5: very sorry.
Speaker 2: Ramona's right, that rule is actually what say the roots
Speaker 2: life only because the French version of that show, we
Speaker 2: had a situation and I explained it before where de
Speaker 2: Bratt was a guest on the show and uh, she
Speaker 2: wanted to lip sing her song and they're like, no,
Speaker 2: you have to do it live to track, and she
Speaker 2: called an attitude, walked off the show and we got
Speaker 2: the call that you know, could you fill in her
Speaker 2: eighteen minutes? And this is you know, long story short.
Speaker 2: The next day, like the Roots could suddenly go from
Speaker 2: playing Alicia MoMA over in Paris to play like the Zenith,
Speaker 2: like their version of Madison Square Garden. So you're right,
Speaker 2: like some of those shows are like that where you
Speaker 2: have to sing it. Even if it's too can track,
Speaker 2: you still have to sing live to it.
Speaker 4: And so well, whoever whoever sang on this record, it's
Speaker 4: it's incredible.
Speaker 1: We get them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but but okay.
Speaker 5: I'm pretty old. Now.
Speaker 4: Well let's less mccau less McKowen I think was his name,
Speaker 4: lead singer.
Speaker 1: He passed way recently?
Speaker 5: Oh did he?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I did not know that. Wow. I would like
Speaker 1: to know.
Speaker 2: What do you consider the first step, the first step
Speaker 2: into your career path, Like how do you start inching
Speaker 2: towards the entertainment business.
Speaker 5: I think the first step was that working for that
Speaker 5: talent agency in London, Starlight Artists, and uh so then
Speaker 5: I had I had been there for almost four years.
Speaker 5: I had to make a decision whether to stay there
Speaker 5: and become British more or less or come back to
Speaker 5: the States, and I really didn't want to be Uh
Speaker 5: there was a chance I could get hired back at
Speaker 5: pan Am, but I felt like my time up there
Speaker 5: with PanAm had kind of, uh was over. I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, I used to tell people I'm a I'm
Speaker 5: a waiter in the sky because you know, I had
Speaker 5: a college degree. R all I was doing was I
Speaker 5: was really just a waiter to just do it on
Speaker 5: a plane instead I had in a restaurant, And I
Speaker 5: just felt like I didn't go to college just to
Speaker 5: do that job. Even though it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: I got to see the world, and uh it was
Speaker 5: it was great. So when I came back to the
Speaker 5: States and I decided I wanted to continue to work,
Speaker 5: you know, in the entertain business. But I had been
Speaker 5: an editor of those two magazines. They were both pop
Speaker 5: zine magazines. One was called Poster and one was called Superstar,
Speaker 5: And I was the only I wrote the whole damn magazine.
Speaker 5: But I told the guys, I said, you know, if
Speaker 5: you really want to make we have to make it
Speaker 5: look like we're a bigger operation, right, And I don't
Speaker 5: you know, I don't want to have the only name.
Speaker 5: And uh, you know, so what if you don't have
Speaker 5: a problem, I like to make up some names of
Speaker 5: other writers. I'll still write it and I'll try to
Speaker 5: write a little bit different, sort of feel like we
Speaker 5: have a staff.
Speaker 2: So you were basically what Cynthia Horner was to write
Speaker 2: on magazine, Yes.
Speaker 5: Exactly, only she was really the only and she didn't care.
Speaker 5: I cared. I didn't want to be the only person.
Speaker 5: But yeah, Cynthia Horner. Wow, that's a flashback.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my dream interview.
Speaker 2: And you know, she's very shy about coming on on
Speaker 2: this podcast, and I think she just thinks, like, no
Speaker 2: one knows who I am and that's not big of
Speaker 2: a deal.
Speaker 1: But this is this is literally the platform.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, no, she You know, when you start off
Speaker 5: in the entertainment business in black press or whatever, everyone
Speaker 5: who sent your Horner.
Speaker 1: Was right, you got to go through her first.
Speaker 5: Yeah. She was one of the you know, right on
Speaker 5: was one of the top magazines for you to get
Speaker 5: exposure in if you're a black artist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So coming back to the States, how much of
Speaker 2: a culture shock was it for you, because I mean
Speaker 2: you're living in London and a key period of development
Speaker 2: the United States, you know, like the Nixon period.
Speaker 5: You know, went to college, you know Nixon's college. I
Speaker 5: went to Nixon's college. That was far college. That's where
Speaker 5: he was. Yeah, he went to Wilier College and all.
Speaker 5: They also said that he was from Whittier, but he
Speaker 5: wasn't from whitty He was from Laura Belinda. He was
Speaker 5: born there and he went through he went through the
Speaker 5: Widio school system, but he didn't actually, he wasn't a resident.
Speaker 5: So when all the ship hit the fan, they pretty
Speaker 5: much they had a sign saying welcome to right down
Speaker 5: their main street was Greenleaf Avenue, Welcome to President Nixon's hometown.
Speaker 5: And then when when Watergate happened, they made a tour
Speaker 5: the science they said, well they went on the whole
Speaker 5: campaign really to disown him, and they said, no, he's
Speaker 5: not really from here. You know, he's from Ladover, Linda.
Speaker 5: But he was really adopted by videos. That was a funny.
Speaker 1: So it was it was how much of a.
Speaker 5: It was a big culture shock because, for one, you know,
Speaker 5: the music was really different I had. I wasn't really
Speaker 5: in tune with all the music that was going on
Speaker 5: in the States. Then, you know, four years is a big,
Speaker 5: you know, vacuum of time to lose connection with your roots.
Speaker 5: And one of the first groups that I fell in
Speaker 5: love with when I came back was Brothers Johnson and
Speaker 5: the song get the Funk Out the Face Right. And
Speaker 5: but when I listened to it on the radio the
Speaker 5: first time I heard it, and I had a British
Speaker 5: accent that I didn't even try to. I didn't realize
Speaker 5: it until I got back. And you know, some of
Speaker 5: my friend, well, what's up with you, bro? What this
Speaker 5: voice you got? And you know I was calling things
Speaker 5: petro instead of gas. There's just little things that you
Speaker 5: learn just from you know, being in one place for
Speaker 5: four years, you know, and I had to re turn
Speaker 5: that stuff off and readjust it. And also I drove
Speaker 5: on the wrong side of the street and you know,
Speaker 5: one time in LA because I was used to driving,
Speaker 5: and I was in the car with my sister and
Speaker 5: she she says, hey, you know, I don't want to
Speaker 5: scare you, but you drive on the wrong side. It
Speaker 5: is too course, yes, you know, had to turn you know,
Speaker 5: so little things like that. But I thought that the
Speaker 5: song said get the fuck out my face, right, And
Speaker 5: I called her friend. I said, wow, man, music has
Speaker 5: really changed here. Like a lady. You're like, no, you
Speaker 5: can say fuck on the radio station. Go no, man,
Speaker 5: They're not saying that. They're saying funk. And I go, oh,
Speaker 5: get the front. Okay, I got I gotta got it,
Speaker 5: you know. But I mean a lot of things had
Speaker 5: had changed, and uh, I got luck, very lucky. I was.
Speaker 5: I literally was working in a photo mat booth when
Speaker 5: of those little yellow yeah, yeah, one of those little huts.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 5: It was in the hood and on Rodeo uh uh
Speaker 5: and off Crenshaw It's right next to a Pioneer Chicken.
Speaker 5: And I was, you know, I came back. I didn't
Speaker 5: come back with a lot of money or whatever. So
Speaker 5: I just got a part time job. Because that that job,
Speaker 5: I could work from three to eight and I could
Speaker 5: look for a real job during the day. And I
Speaker 5: was trying to be a writer. I was applying to
Speaker 5: Rolling Stone through Benfunctories and trying to you know, but
Speaker 5: everything was on spec. Everybody said, well, you know the
Speaker 5: way we do it here, and I said, well, I
Speaker 5: need some money. So I found this job, and I said,
Speaker 5: you know, I figured I'd only worked there for a
Speaker 5: couple of weeks, which is what happened. I only worked
Speaker 5: there for a couple of weeks. But it was one
Speaker 5: of those crazy jobs where people they were it was
Speaker 5: always getting robbed, and they had women there all before me.
Speaker 5: So they hired me because they thought it would be
Speaker 5: more you know, I'd be more intimidating, and they I
Speaker 5: don't know why people would want to rob the photo
Speaker 5: map booth. There's not a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Wait, CA explain this.
Speaker 2: To me because I was way too young. But like
Speaker 2: photo mat is, those booths were literally like the size
Speaker 2: of telephone booths, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: I could barely fit in it. I mean every time
Speaker 5: I moved, I knocked something over my knees or something.
Speaker 5: You know there was but it was like just an
Speaker 5: easy job.
Speaker 2: You know, you would just take the photos or like,
Speaker 2: would you have to process the photos too? No?
Speaker 5: What It's basically drop off the driveway. So people would
Speaker 5: come in, they would bring their film and then I'd
Speaker 5: give them a receipt and put it in and then
Speaker 5: when the film came, delivery truck would come by and
Speaker 5: drop off the process films. So all I was was
Speaker 5: a cashier and you know, exchanging film, collecting film, and
Speaker 5: then giving people their photos.
Speaker 1: After Back to the Future stopped seeing those photo Yeah, they.
Speaker 5: Were around for a while, you know. And so and
Speaker 5: I remember one time guy calls me up and says, hey,
Speaker 5: we're gonna come down and rob rob the place. Go okay,
Speaker 5: well thanks for the head up. What's up, you know?
Speaker 5: And I went to I went and sat in Pioneered Chicken.
Speaker 5: I called the manager. I said, hey, man, uh, these
Speaker 5: guys I got to calls they're going to rob the place.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna sit in here for a few minutes and
Speaker 5: see if anyone comes by. If they don't, I'll go
Speaker 5: back in the head.
Speaker 1: You know, Oh my god, this it was this crazy.
Speaker 5: Now, that was really culture shock, you know, coming from
Speaker 5: because I had I had not really lived, uh in
Speaker 5: a black area like that. I wasn't raised in that
Speaker 5: area and that was an all black ghetto areas, so
Speaker 5: that was a difference from living in London. So it
Speaker 5: was a cultural shock on many levels. But it was
Speaker 5: while I was working in there a photographer named Bruce Tolloman.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you've heard. Yeah, so Bruce Jackson's.
Speaker 1: And yeah, Parliament you know Bruce Tolloman.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Bruce. Bruce also went to Whittier College.
Speaker 1: So legend legendary photographer, like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, legendary, you know. And he worked for He's got
Speaker 5: a great book out too, a great cop the table
Speaker 5: Book at if you haven't seen it.
Speaker 2: I got that for someone gave it to me for
Speaker 2: my fiftieth birthday, and he was kind of up to
Speaker 2: sign it for me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and he's, uh, you know, he's been he's had
Speaker 5: a really stellar career and he heard that. I saw
Speaker 5: his name in the staff for Soul Magazine with Gennys
Speaker 5: Jones Soul Magazine because I was going to try to
Speaker 5: write for that, and then I saw Bruce and I
Speaker 5: so I called him up and said, hey, Bruce Man,
Speaker 5: how are you doing. I see you're like a photographer,
Speaker 5: blah blah blah. I'm trying to get into business here.
Speaker 5: And so he said, well, you know, I know, I
Speaker 5: think somebody at this guy Bob Jones at Motown, who
Speaker 5: is the black publicist there at the time. He's looking
Speaker 5: for I think he's looking for an assistant. Would you
Speaker 5: be interested? I said, yeah, sure, you know, have him
Speaker 5: call me, you know, or I'll call him whatever. And
Speaker 5: Bob Jones called called me while I was working at
Speaker 5: PHOTOO Photo my boot and he said, Hey, would you
Speaker 5: like to come in and interview for a junior publicist
Speaker 5: position at Motown? And Motown had just moved from Detroit
Speaker 5: and they were based. They moved into the CNN building
Speaker 5: on Sunset.
Speaker 1: That's where their first This was seventy seven.
Speaker 5: Uh yeah, this was seventy seven, and they moved to
Speaker 5: they moved out of Detroit to Hollywood for the first time.
Speaker 2: You got to explain something to me, what is the
Speaker 2: What was the role of Iris Gordy, because you know,
Speaker 2: coming of age and being a fan of like High
Speaker 2: Energy Switch, just a lot of those Lovesmith, like a
Speaker 2: lot of those seventies Motown groups and even Apollo. You know,
Speaker 2: they would often go on soul training. I would hear
Speaker 2: Don talk about Iris Gordy. What was Iris's role in
Speaker 2: the mid seventies period of Motel.
Speaker 5: I think she's more or less in A and R
Speaker 5: artist development.
Speaker 1: I'm still wrestling with the fact that you have thirty.
Speaker 4: Dude, you know I got I got the I got
Speaker 4: like the Spanish forty five of you got a whole Saturday,
Speaker 4: Like you don't understand what's going on over here.
Speaker 2: Your back all of all, we've been we've been doing
Speaker 2: this for just six years now, Steve, You've totally outdone yourself.
Speaker 6: But it looks like a it looks like a filter,
Speaker 6: but it's not. It's actually Steve forty copies of the
Speaker 6: Basic Roller. I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: I mean, people got to check out this record for
Speaker 4: even my dream interview.
Speaker 2: I'm still like I'm right now. It's it's taking a
Speaker 2: lot of rint space in my head.
Speaker 1: This. I bring you a copy. I'm going to bring
Speaker 1: you a copy tomorrow. Thank you, Steve.
Speaker 6: Steve is at your Shawshank record, like you have to
Speaker 6: buy it if you're in the thing, like you have
Speaker 6: to watch Shawshank if it's on.
Speaker 4: This is absolutely this is the record. I own the
Speaker 4: most copies of it so much. It started with it
Speaker 4: started with the A track. I had the A track
Speaker 4: of this back in the day. It was like the
Speaker 4: first cool music I ever heard. Okay, let's let's not
Speaker 4: it's my first musical memory quest.
Speaker 2: All right, let's might get into the rabbit hole, all right.
Speaker 2: So I was asking what was Iris Gordy's role?
Speaker 5: I think so, I mean it was you know, you
Speaker 5: got to remember too, you know, this is in uh
Speaker 5: I'm I'm not from Detroit. You know, it's a familyiness
Speaker 5: and there was a lot of Gordy's involved with it.
Speaker 5: And when you come in in my role as sort
Speaker 5: of a I was just a burgeoning publicist. So I
Speaker 5: didn't even deal with I knew who Iris was, and
Speaker 5: I dealt with her very minimally. I mean I was
Speaker 5: They had a very structured class system at Motown.
Speaker 1: So how was it?
Speaker 2: What what was the modus operandi at Motown doing that
Speaker 2: period that you were out there. I've heard stories about
Speaker 2: how they operated in Detroit, and you know, they all
Speaker 2: use their IDs and took meticulous notes as far as
Speaker 2: like union scales and all those things. But what was
Speaker 2: your experience there and what was the everyday operations.
Speaker 5: Like, Well, my my primary job was to serve as
Speaker 5: a writer and a publicist for a lot of those
Speaker 5: junior you know, like at that time, Eddie Kendricks had
Speaker 5: had left, you know, and David Ruffin had left, Edwards
Speaker 5: had left so there was like three temptations that were
Speaker 5: all working on solo records, Junior Walker and the All
Speaker 5: Star Dynamic Superiors. THELM. Houston.
Speaker 1: You work with the Dynamic Superiors.
Speaker 5: Yeah, man, I did their publicity and I got all
Speaker 5: those second tier guys. But you know, the same time
Speaker 5: I worked with you know, I got a chance to
Speaker 5: work with Stevie Wonder, and I got a chance to
Speaker 5: see the campaigns for like Dana Ross and the Four
Speaker 5: Tops and Marvin and you know. So it was just,
Speaker 5: I mean to be able to get to have that access,
Speaker 5: not to them, I wasn't out there partying with them
Speaker 5: or whatever, but just to have the access to see
Speaker 5: how they were treated compared to the Dynamic Superiors or
Speaker 5: Junior Walker and the All Stars, and all those guys
Speaker 5: were frustrated. I mean, Eddie Kindricks used to just yell
Speaker 5: at me and just say hey, you know, I'd say, Eddie, look,
Speaker 5: I'm not in charge, bro, Yeah, do you want to
Speaker 5: do the interview or not? If you don't want to
Speaker 5: do it, it's cool, you know, I'll try something else.
Speaker 5: You know. But they were all frustrated because there was
Speaker 5: such a you know, Barry had a really it was
Speaker 5: like a university, but it was also like very competitive
Speaker 5: and he hand selected who's going to be famous. Leon Ware,
Speaker 5: for example, I worked with leon Ware. Leon Ware gave
Speaker 5: Marvin Gay I Want You that whole album, and it
Speaker 5: broke him as an artist. You know. He told me that,
Speaker 5: you know personally that that record, that record was meant
Speaker 5: for him, and Barry told him that, hey, look, I
Speaker 5: can release this record on you and I don't know
Speaker 5: how much is how well it's going to do, but
Speaker 5: if you give this record to Marvin, you're gonna make
Speaker 5: tons of money. And he did, he gave the record. Yeah,
Speaker 5: So he put people in different situations like that. You know.
Speaker 2: Maybe twelve years ago, I saw an ep K for
Speaker 2: Songs in the Key of Life, in which I mean
Speaker 2: they did this thing where they like rented out this
Speaker 2: ranch and invited all these people from the press and whatnot,
Speaker 2: and it's literally like they documented the press hearing songs
Speaker 2: in the Key of Life for the first time, and
Speaker 2: you know, faces on them and everything, and you're literally
Speaker 2: watching them.
Speaker 1: I mean, they edited nicely, but.
Speaker 2: I remember Stevie came in with a weird cowboy hat on.
Speaker 2: Like they were they were like on a ranch or whatever.
Speaker 2: But just in general, how you know, was there much
Speaker 2: strategy behind how Motown operated, at least as on the
Speaker 2: publicity side of things, on how they operated and handled things,
Speaker 2: or was it just generally.
Speaker 5: No, it was very It was very structured and very restraining.
Speaker 5: For example, Bob Jones allowed to pitch any of the
Speaker 5: major white magazines, like, say what Bob Jones, who'd been
Speaker 5: there for like I don't know when I got there,
Speaker 5: he'd already been there for ten years or something. He
Speaker 5: wasn't allowed to speak to Newsweek, Time, Life, all the
Speaker 5: biggest entertainment magazines. There was a guy named Mike Roskin
Speaker 5: who was the vice chairman of the company, and he
Speaker 5: took control of all the major big artists and he
Speaker 5: personally pitched those people. So me, as the lowly publicist
Speaker 5: that just came in, I was assigned to only deal
Speaker 5: with black press, you know. So I dealt with you know,
Speaker 5: Marie Moore from the Answer Damn News, Gertrude Gibson from
Speaker 5: the La Sentinel, you know, all the Earl Callaway from
Speaker 5: Chicago Defender and yeah, yeah, all the local folks. Those
Speaker 5: are my go to guys, the Baltimore Son, Yeah, Baltimore's son,
Speaker 5: all those things. And I used to write what they
Speaker 5: call canned features, and they they would use them verbatim
Speaker 5: and just put their name on it. But I didn't
Speaker 5: care because I wasn't getting paid any extra money, you know.
Speaker 5: So but because a lot of the black newspapers and
Speaker 5: magazines didn't have enough money to first, you know, they're
Speaker 5: very limited in staff. So but I dealt with the
Speaker 5: Regina Jones and Steve Ivory.
Speaker 1: And uh, Steve Legendary Steve.
Speaker 5: I yeah, so all those guys were, you know, my
Speaker 5: go to people. But you know, I thought, like, for
Speaker 5: a young guys, I need to do something more than
Speaker 5: just do black press that really make a name for myself.
Speaker 5: And so I decided without asking anyone. At the time,
Speaker 5: the Commodoores were just starting to break. They had their
Speaker 5: first hit single, I forgot what it was. It was
Speaker 5: before Machine Gun, but it was off their first album, right,
Speaker 5: and they were starting to gain some some traction, And
Speaker 5: so I decided I was going to call a newsweek
Speaker 5: and pitched them to do a story on the Commodores.
Speaker 5: And so I called the guy and he says, uh,
Speaker 5: forgot what his name was, And he said, well, who
Speaker 5: are you? And I said, well, my name is Ramon
Speaker 5: Hervey and I'm a publicist at Multi see. Yeah, but
Speaker 5: I don't I don't deal. I don't normally deal with
Speaker 5: anyone Motown except for my Mike Roskin, right, And I said, oh, okay, well,
Speaker 5: you know, well I'm calling you. Are you interested in,
Speaker 5: you know, possibly doing a story or whatever. He goes, well,
Speaker 5: let me, uh, let me get back to you. H
Speaker 5: on it. So he immediately calls Mike and he says, hey,
Speaker 5: some kid calls me today and I thought we had
Speaker 5: a deal, you know, blah blah blah. So then I
Speaker 5: go into Bob Jones calls me in his offices. What
Speaker 5: the hell are you doing?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 5: You called Newsweek. I don't even I can't even call Newsweek.
Speaker 5: You're in trouble. I don't even know if I can
Speaker 5: keep you, if you're going to keep your job. He goes,
Speaker 5: Roskin wants wants to meet with you. So I had
Speaker 5: to go up to Roskin, and you know, I mean,
Speaker 5: he was kind of cool. He says, said, hey, well,
Speaker 5: we have a we have some policies here, some regulations
Speaker 5: that you need to follow if you're going to work here.
Speaker 5: And I said, okay, well, you know, nobody told me
Speaker 5: I wasn't allowed to talk to other media. He goes, well, yeah,
Speaker 5: there are certain things that we do here and you're
Speaker 5: not allowed to talk to these people. That's what I do.
Speaker 5: And I said, okay, well I stand correct. You know,
Speaker 5: thanks for the heads up, and you know they didn't
Speaker 5: fire me. But I realized then I got to get
Speaker 5: out of here because if I can't have that, you know,
Speaker 5: any latitude to grow then and you know Bob Jones
Speaker 5: wasn't going to give up his job, right, So I
Speaker 5: just said, I gotta find another outlet.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that.
Speaker 2: For entry artists at Motown and non A list frontline
Speaker 2: artists ie Diana Stevie, there was a limit to where
Speaker 2: you could go. And I guess for you that the
Speaker 2: limit was maybe Jet or possibly Ebony or I don't
Speaker 2: know if Ebany was considered.
Speaker 5: Jet, but Jet, and I don't think I was allowed
Speaker 5: to pitch Ebane. I was allowed to speak to Jet
Speaker 5: for sure, because I knew Bob Johnson and Silvery planning again,
Speaker 5: and they were always trying to get they were always
Speaker 5: trying to get money. And I said, Bob, I don't
Speaker 5: do advertising, I do put you know, there's other people
Speaker 5: at the company that you need to talk to here
Speaker 5: to get advertising. But he was always saying, well, if
Speaker 5: we do a story, can we get some ads?
Speaker 2: And you know, I was just going to ask, how
Speaker 2: does that work with a group like the Commodores, in
Speaker 2: which you know, there's clearly a point where like in
Speaker 2: seventy five they were a black act, and then come
Speaker 2: seventy seven when that self titled record came out with
Speaker 2: you know, easy and Brickhouse on it, when they suddenly
Speaker 2: became like triple platinum and there and thank god it's
Speaker 2: Friday and Lionel was about to you know, spread his wings.
Speaker 1: Then suddenly they only.
Speaker 2: Deal with the top tier, the guy above Bob Jones,
Speaker 2: which is yeah.
Speaker 5: Pretty much pretty much shifts like that, and you see
Speaker 5: how they the hierarchy like. But you know, one of
Speaker 5: the highlights of my time in Motown was I got
Speaker 5: to work with STEVIEE. Wonder on songs of the Key
Speaker 5: of Life. Okay, And I was in the marketing meeting
Speaker 5: that only someone at his leverage and cloud could even demand.
Speaker 5: So he called a meeting and he wanted everybody from
Speaker 5: all the divisions to come in so that they could
Speaker 5: tell him what they're going to do, or songs of
Speaker 5: the key you know that that only you know, probably him,
Speaker 5: Marvin Diana uh probably did simptations. The four Tops like those,
Speaker 5: the Jackson Five, those groups could probably command that, their
Speaker 5: managers could command that. But all those other guys, they
Speaker 5: would never get an opportunity to meet with the whole
Speaker 5: staff of the label. And one of the first things
Speaker 5: that Stevie said, and I mean I was I was
Speaker 5: so hyped because I hadn't met him yet and just
Speaker 5: meeting with him, and especially that album. I think of
Speaker 5: that album as probably the you know, pinnacle of his career.
Speaker 5: And one of the first things he said is, Okay,
Speaker 5: so just to set the tone for this meeting, I
Speaker 5: want to I would like to request I want a
Speaker 5: billboard in Times Square that's so big and so bright
Speaker 5: that even I can see it. He had that kind
Speaker 5: of charisma and he was but he was dead serious,
Speaker 5: and you know, just the way that he commanded the meeting.
Speaker 5: I was so thrilled. I just I've remembered that line forever.
Speaker 5: I've even asked him a couple of times over the
Speaker 5: years because I've had a great friendship with Stevie since
Speaker 5: that day when I did R and B live and stuff,
Speaker 5: he came and performed, and I just really have so
Speaker 5: much respect for him as an artist. Everything he's done with,
Speaker 5: you know, Martin Luther King Holiday, He's just had such
Speaker 5: an incredible career. But that was a great experience. And
Speaker 5: then one of the problems with that album that a
Speaker 5: lot of people don't realize is it had a twenty
Speaker 5: four page leaflet songbook inside. Yeah, and when you add
Speaker 5: the shrink, when you shrink wrap that with a double album,
Speaker 5: and then you have this twenty four page There were
Speaker 5: stories breaking in the news that there was more returns
Speaker 5: on that album because of the war page. Yeah, And
Speaker 5: so I did some research on it to find out
Speaker 5: what was the percentage of warpage that comes with every album,
Speaker 5: and I found out that the percentage is I was
Speaker 5: like under ten percent, around under ten percent of all
Speaker 5: the albums being released in those days would there would
Speaker 5: be a warpage issue and returns based on warpage. And
Speaker 5: so I talked to this guy in manufacturing to get
Speaker 5: his figures, and then I was able to get a
Speaker 5: story in Billboard to say that the information was misinformed,
Speaker 5: and that the percentage of warpage for Stevie's album was
Speaker 5: not as great. It was on par with the same
Speaker 5: amount of warpage for any album, right, and it was
Speaker 5: So I turned around then of it. And then I
Speaker 5: got in trouble for that too, because they hail was
Speaker 5: this elderly black woman it was. She was the head
Speaker 5: of manufacturing and she called me in tour office and
Speaker 5: got pissed off that one I went to a low
Speaker 5: person in her to get information and I didn't clear
Speaker 5: it with her. So there was all these kind of
Speaker 5: departmental things that I just you know, know, there wasn't
Speaker 5: a guidebook. They don't give you like a you can't
Speaker 5: talk to this person, get this through that. You guys
Speaker 5: have to find your way, you know.
Speaker 3: Politics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I want to move on past Motown, but
Speaker 2: since you're already there, I gotta know this. Why did
Speaker 2: Motown never use a consistent manufacturer? Like one of the
Speaker 2: weirdest things about Motown to me was, you know, like,
Speaker 2: okay for with Steve with his ninety Bay City rollers
Speaker 2: back there.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm here.
Speaker 2: I you know, I have a large record collection myself
Speaker 2: in which I've purchased maybe you know, maybe I have
Speaker 2: ten copies of songs in the Key of Life. But
Speaker 2: my question is that I know that obviously Motown had
Speaker 2: to use various pressing plants, independent pressing plants across the
Speaker 2: United States in the world, because the ink, like the
Speaker 2: fonts of the ink for you know, if you brought
Speaker 2: the album down South and Georgia somewhere is different than
Speaker 2: if you brought it in New York, and different than
Speaker 2: if you brought in LA And I just never understood
Speaker 2: why a label of Motown's magnitude never just had one
Speaker 2: consistent pressing plant, Like was Motown basically still an independent
Speaker 2: label even though they were the biggest black label.
Speaker 5: Yeah? That was you know Barry thought. I think he
Speaker 5: believed that he had more power, more influence as an
Speaker 5: independent label than he would if he cut a distribution deal.
Speaker 5: He would make more money. He was willing to take
Speaker 5: those risks that you're talking about of working with all
Speaker 5: the independent once stops and manufacturing centers around. But and
Speaker 5: he couldn't compete, you know. I think it was an
Speaker 5: issue of these bigger companies, you know, taking a big
Speaker 5: piece of independent companies and being able to offer record
Speaker 5: stores and stuff a bigger piece at a pie. It
Speaker 5: was very difficult for him and to stay independent. He
Speaker 5: wasn't the only one that was trying to do it,
Speaker 5: but it was very, very difficult. But I think that
Speaker 5: was a it was a numbers games to him, you
Speaker 5: know at the time that he felt, you know, that
Speaker 5: he was going to win bigger by staying independent than
Speaker 5: doing a distribution to with someone.
Speaker 2: And what was the logic and the reason for why
Speaker 2: Motowl never registered with the r I A A. Like
Speaker 2: every television appearance I would hear like and the Jackson
Speaker 2: sold you know, seven million units, I'll be there, like
Speaker 2: it would just be like these really crazy numbers.
Speaker 1: So what was like the logic of not.
Speaker 2: Joining the Recording Industry Associations of America And.
Speaker 1: How did that affect I think.
Speaker 5: It's because he didn't want to be He didn't want
Speaker 5: to have to be certified. He wanted to be able
Speaker 5: to use his own publicity and say whatever he wanted
Speaker 5: without being questioned. I mean, you know, that's the only
Speaker 5: thing that I could think of at the time, was
Speaker 5: he didn't want to have buy on you know, he
Speaker 5: could always exaggerate, you know, and all the companies were exaggerating.
Speaker 5: I mean used to you know, the big thing in
Speaker 5: those days was to say that a record ship platinum.
Speaker 5: And you know, it's not how many records you ship,
Speaker 5: that's how many you sell. But you know, life they realized,
Speaker 5: you know, they'd run these stories, Oh it's and sort
Speaker 5: of ship platinum, but every turn gold. You know, so
Speaker 5: you know, did you.
Speaker 2: Guys, did you guys numbers?
Speaker 5: It was a big part of the record business thing.
Speaker 5: So I think that he was part of, you know,
Speaker 5: wanting to be able to control the narrative of what
Speaker 5: his company really represented in the marketplace.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, now with streaming, especially in
Speaker 2: the movie business, like, the one thing I'll never know
Speaker 2: is how much money my film actually made exactly, Like
Speaker 2: that's the one thing they won't allow me to do.
Speaker 2: I can't look at the numbers at all to see
Speaker 2: if we did nine hundred million or just one million.
Speaker 5: So right, Yeah, it's it's red tape. It's the red
Speaker 5: tape of being involved. And you know that's the same
Speaker 5: thing that you've been dealing with with your film. That's
Speaker 5: been going on for years in the film business too,
Speaker 5: where they tell you, oh, well, we didn't recoup you know,
Speaker 5: the whole idea is, you know, if you don't have
Speaker 5: to tell your artist, you don't have to quantify how
Speaker 5: many records and you could you can you can also
Speaker 5: tell them that you owe us more money than you
Speaker 5: owe us, right. But I think that a lot of
Speaker 5: why he had so much frustration with a lot of
Speaker 5: the artists because the numbers didn't match what they felt
Speaker 5: they should should be getting, you know, and he got
Speaker 5: a bad rep for you know, supposedly shortcoming you know,
Speaker 5: uh short short sty selling everybody and not paying them
Speaker 5: what they were entitled to.
Speaker 2: So what was your next step after Motown? Like, what
Speaker 2: was your last period at Motown? And what was the
Speaker 2: next step afterwards?
Speaker 5: Then that was I got laid off because they were
Speaker 5: having a really tough winter and they were old a
Speaker 5: lot of money, you know, in terms of you know,
Speaker 5: a lot of what people don't realize is there's a
Speaker 5: when you're an independent company, you can't afford to not
Speaker 5: get paid for like ninety days. So they were getting old.
Speaker 5: They were being old a lot of money because a
Speaker 5: lot of companies just weren't paying them and so they
Speaker 5: had to lay off a bunch of people. And I
Speaker 5: was one of the people that was laid off, and
Speaker 5: Bob Jones was kind enough to one He let me
Speaker 5: write for some other magazines like Black Star. I don't
Speaker 5: remember if you remember Black Stars, Black Star, You remember
Speaker 5: Black Stars.
Speaker 1: Black Stars and the CPA, Yes, I remember them.
Speaker 5: So I wrote for that under a pseudonym. Ray Trish
Speaker 5: was my name, and he told me I could you know,
Speaker 5: he helped to introduce me to He said, look, I
Speaker 5: know we not I can't get you any more money,
Speaker 5: but you know you could write for some magazines. I'll
Speaker 5: refer you. So I wrote for a lot of other
Speaker 5: magazines at the time as a freelancer, but I couldn't
Speaker 5: use my own name. And he told me that this
Speaker 5: company named Rogers and Cowan, which is actually a very
Speaker 5: famous PR company. They were actually the first independent public
Speaker 5: relations company in Hollywood when the studios originally started. You know,
Speaker 5: they controlled everything. You know, they basically employed the all
Speaker 5: the actors and there were no managers and no agents
Speaker 5: and no publicists. And they were the first company to
Speaker 5: be an independent publicist where big stars like Nally Wood
Speaker 5: and Robert Wagner and people of Paul Newman could actually
Speaker 5: go and have their own publicity and at this time
Speaker 5: there was an emergence of agents like the William Morrises
Speaker 5: and all those you know agents started around the same time.
Speaker 5: So he told me that Paul Block, this guy Paul Block,
Speaker 5: who was the head of music over there, was hiring
Speaker 5: freelance writers, right, and he said, you know, we're probably
Speaker 5: going to hire you back, but this will maybe hold
Speaker 5: you over. And so that's when I went to meet
Speaker 5: with Paul Block to see if he would hire me
Speaker 5: to do some freelance work. And was after work, was
Speaker 5: at seven o'clock. I had a GELOPI of a car.
Speaker 5: I had a Dodge Dart and I didn't have enough
Speaker 5: money to had no reverse. What I had no reverse,
Speaker 5: I didn't have enough money to fix it. So I
Speaker 5: used to drive around to find the right parking space.
Speaker 5: I couldn't do any valet parking or whatever. And I
Speaker 5: was drive around the finest spot where I can go.
Speaker 1: Up into a spot.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but you couldn't even go in head first. You
Speaker 6: could go head first anywhere because you have to back out.
Speaker 5: Exactly all right. So you know, I was waiting to
Speaker 5: get enough money to fix my reverse, and so I
Speaker 5: went to Beverly Hills their offices were on Bedford and Wiltshire,
Speaker 5: and I went in to meet with Paul, and here's
Speaker 5: a nice guy. Didn't really give me any guarantee that
Speaker 5: I would get hired or not. And then I went
Speaker 5: back to my car kind of a little bit deflating
Speaker 5: and disappointed and realized that I'd screwed up and I
Speaker 5: had I couldn't pull my you know, somebody had parked
Speaker 5: in front of me, so I had to back the
Speaker 5: car up, and this guy saw me trying to you know,
Speaker 5: I was leaning and trying to you know, those cars
Speaker 5: were kind of heavy. So this guy comes up and says, hey, man,
Speaker 5: you comes with your car And I said, yeah, it's
Speaker 5: just I guess my it seems like my reverse is
Speaker 5: not working. I'm not really sure. I mean I lied,
Speaker 5: pretend like I didn't really know what was wrong with
Speaker 5: my car, and he helped me and I finally got
Speaker 5: out of there. And then about two weeks later, I
Speaker 5: got a call from Paul and he says, hey, do
Speaker 5: you want to come in and work on I have
Speaker 5: a project that I think I could use you for.
Speaker 5: You come in, I'll tell you what it's for. And
Speaker 5: he says, well, he said, I one of my clients
Speaker 5: is Paul McCartney. I said, wow, Paul McCartney from the Beatles,
Speaker 5: Paul McCartney. He goes, yeah, that Paul McCartney, and I said, wow, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: I would love to work on the Beatles, I mean,
Speaker 5: you know. So what I found out was that Paul
Speaker 5: had bought the publishing to the Buddy Holly catalog, so
Speaker 5: he had owned it, and he was doing a week
Speaker 5: of you know, in a special Buddy Holly week in
Speaker 5: the you K and he wanted a press kit put together,
Speaker 5: and so I was my task was to write all
Speaker 5: the materials that would go in the press kit for
Speaker 5: them to use for him to use to launch that week.
Speaker 5: And so that was my first project at Rogers and Cowan.
Speaker 5: And I didn't talk to Paul, but he approved all
Speaker 5: everything that I did, and and they ended up hiring
Speaker 5: me as a as a publicist based on my work.
Speaker 1: I'm Paul McCarthy.
Speaker 5: And then I ended up being like a gay guy
Speaker 5: on on Paul's account in LA and then he had
Speaker 5: another guy working in New York, but Paul was really
Speaker 5: the head guy. Okay, I you know, I I Linda
Speaker 5: McCartney and Lee Eastman, his father in law, and it
Speaker 5: was a couple of meetings and on phone call and stuff.
Speaker 5: I didn't really get to know him very well, but
Speaker 5: I got a chance to work on his an account
Speaker 5: and I learned so much. I mean, he had one
Speaker 5: of the biggest publishing MPL communications. He owned so much publishing,
Speaker 5: it's just amazing. It was like books of it. And
Speaker 5: I got to see all he owned, like over one
Speaker 5: hundred fight songs from all the major colleges across the
Speaker 5: US really usually won schools. I mean, it just was unbelievable,
Speaker 5: just so many songs.
Speaker 2: Well, it said that he's the one that taught Michael
Speaker 2: Jackson about like the power of owning publishing.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Well apparently what ended up happening was that he
Speaker 5: told him that Capital had offered, you know, to buy
Speaker 5: for giving them an opportunity to buy their catalog back right. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And he was telling Michael, you know, I just couldn't
Speaker 5: pull my I couldn't convince myself to pay that much
Speaker 5: money for songs that we wrote, you know, And so
Speaker 5: he turned it down. But then Michael went back and
Speaker 5: told Mike Stewart at Mike Stewart was ahead of publishing
Speaker 5: at Sony at the time, and Mike Stewart helped him
Speaker 5: purchase the music.
Speaker 2: It's Paul's fault, man, he should have Always claim your legacy,
Speaker 2: Always claim your legacy.
Speaker 6: Well, what's your take on people these days selling their
Speaker 6: catalogs and that being a thing that people do these days?
Speaker 6: Do you you see it as fortuitous or not?
Speaker 5: You know, I think it's I think it's a great.
Speaker 5: It's great for these a lot of artists that are
Speaker 5: not really relevant, you know, on streaming services and stuff.
Speaker 5: They're not making a lot of money. But these are
Speaker 5: companies that their job is to, you know, try to
Speaker 5: make money after publishing off placement and sinking and all
Speaker 5: that stuff. So I think it's I think it's great.
Speaker 5: I've seen it. It's amazing that they you know, I
Speaker 5: kind of it's a it's a further development from when
Speaker 5: I guess maybe ten years ago, when Live Nation and
Speaker 5: AEG started paying huge amount of money for artists rights,
Speaker 5: you know, to circumvent agents and you know where they
Speaker 5: would you know, end labels. You know, they wanted to
Speaker 5: really monopolize and control, and this is just another form
Speaker 5: of that where you know, publishing has always been an
Speaker 5: annuity for artists if they understood it that it's something
Speaker 5: that lasts in perpetuity, and so I would always say,
Speaker 5: hang on to it. But if someone's going to give
Speaker 5: you three hundred million dollars and you're still going to
Speaker 5: you know, make money, you know, that's a lot of
Speaker 5: money to turn.
Speaker 1: Down spending it now. Yeah, I you know I did that, right, Bill?
Speaker 1: What you do sold my publishing? Did you sell a posting?
Speaker 6: I sold it so you could pay for the new house.
Speaker 3: Exactly all of it, all of it.
Speaker 1: Because it's like the logic was, they did the math
Speaker 1: for me, and basically.
Speaker 2: The way I was going now, I would have gotten
Speaker 2: the full value of my lifetime work. But maybe when
Speaker 2: I was seventy seven years old, so I could either
Speaker 2: they did the math, like we can either give this
Speaker 2: all to you right now, like what you would make
Speaker 2: up into seventy seven years old, or we could just
Speaker 2: pay you off a.
Speaker 1: Little bit at a time, a little bit at a time.
Speaker 2: And you know, the Roots are just one of those
Speaker 2: prestige artists that like selling records.
Speaker 1: Was never our thing. And I mean for the most part, licensing,
Speaker 1: you know, like.
Speaker 3: You still have to get permission for licensing, correct, Like
Speaker 3: it's not full out you sold it, and they can
Speaker 3: just do whatever they want to with it.
Speaker 2: I mean, we have a very specific arrangement, so you know,
Speaker 2: I don't want my shit being used for like mega
Speaker 2: parades or anything.
Speaker 3: Right, That's what I'm asking. But if I didn't ask,
Speaker 3: you want to disclose that information, I'm like, you'll want
Speaker 3: people out here thinking the music could.
Speaker 5: Just be anywhere.
Speaker 2: No, there's there's always sort of stipulations, like depending on
Speaker 2: what it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, for the most part, Yeah, I decided to It's.
Speaker 2: Not as big as a Bob Dylan deal or you
Speaker 2: know McCartney deal.
Speaker 5: But but you started in nineteen eighty seven, right with
Speaker 5: the roots.
Speaker 2: Well I'm a technically eighty seven, but we got ninety three. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's thirty years for us, and so.
Speaker 5: You earned the right to do that. That's why I'm
Speaker 5: saying that people you know who've been in the industry
Speaker 5: a long time. You know, you guys have been you know, performing.
Speaker 5: I've seen you guys perform several times. In fact, we met.
Speaker 5: I don't even know if you remember, but we met
Speaker 5: when d Jane yeah with feet are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally remember that. Maybe you well you.
Speaker 5: Try to like you, No, I just didn't know the radar. No, no,
Speaker 5: I just didn't know if you remember how how we met.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that was absolutely Yeah, you're the first time
Speaker 2: when I did a speeches a solo solo situation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you start your your book at a very curious place.
Speaker 2: You start with the Richard Prior story, and that particular
Speaker 2: chapter in chapter one, to me, I was very curious
Speaker 2: about that, only because kind of one of the prevalent
Speaker 2: themes on the show that we often talk about that
Speaker 2: I'm often curious about is when a creative or an
Speaker 2: artist sort of subconsciously lets you know that they don't
Speaker 2: want to do this anymore. And oftentimes it'll happen. They'll
Speaker 2: react in ways that will let me know that. And
Speaker 2: oftentimes artists will self sabotage, you know, a good thing,
Speaker 2: and there's ways to do it. There's you know, I
Speaker 2: mean lightweight stuff like gambling, and you know, for you,
Speaker 2: especially as a manager, I know that time management is
Speaker 2: also a way that an artist will express their unhappiness
Speaker 2: with the situation. I'm certain you've dealt with artists that
Speaker 2: last minute, we'll cancel something.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I used to always joke that I always felt the
Speaker 2: Jackson's made up. I only knew the Jackson's got exhaustion.
Speaker 1: That's why, like, right.
Speaker 2: Right, I've never seen the word exhausting you so much.
Speaker 2: Whenever it's like I canceled, Mike origanet like exhaustion, okay, whatever.
Speaker 1: But for you, though, just.
Speaker 2: The amount of fires that you've had to put out
Speaker 2: with every client that you've had, like it's like you're
Speaker 2: being sent out into the front lines and you go
Speaker 2: off on Yes, while he is holding.
Speaker 3: Up I'm holding up the chapter where he says a
Speaker 3: path of self destruction can sabotage fame?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so well, one, I wanted to know why you
Speaker 2: felt this is a very unique interpretation of your life,
Speaker 2: that is, that isn't a biography or memoir. And as
Speaker 2: I said at the top of it, I feel like
Speaker 2: this book is important for the future managers or really,
Speaker 2: like to me, I think it's important for interns because
Speaker 2: I know every intern I ever met in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: three is now CEO that I work with, and it
Speaker 2: always starts with Hey, you don't remember it, but you
Speaker 2: came to my college back to then and back when
Speaker 2: I was an intern.
Speaker 1: But for you.
Speaker 2: To be at the Helm especially like the way you
Speaker 2: started that Richard Pryor chapter in your book, Why would
Speaker 2: you want to subject yourself to that level of torture
Speaker 2: and not saying it's all bad, but you know, like
Speaker 2: surely you're you have to be living every day like
Speaker 2: any moment, I'm going to get a call at three
Speaker 2: a m. And I got to get I got to
Speaker 2: put a fire out.
Speaker 5: It did come to that, but I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 5: think that going in, Like I had bright lights and
Speaker 5: I thought, Wow, I'm getting a chance to represent Richard Pryor,
Speaker 5: someone who I really respected, who I knew about, who
Speaker 5: I was a fan with. You know, he was given
Speaker 5: a black kid, you know, young still, you know, by
Speaker 5: that time, I was pretty experienced. But his manager, David Franklin,
Speaker 5: he made sure that when he that he wanted He said,
Speaker 5: Richard really wants you to do this, and we want
Speaker 5: to make sure that you're going to be the one
Speaker 5: to do it. We want you to be responsible. So
Speaker 5: I thought, wow, this is great, you know, to have
Speaker 5: a you know, at that point, Richard was really you know,
Speaker 5: he was one of the top paid black actors in
Speaker 5: the business. He had been successful as a writer, he
Speaker 5: had had a lot of success, you know, and so
Speaker 5: it was like a real feather in my cap to
Speaker 5: get him as a client, you know. And I was thinking, Wow,
Speaker 5: I can do you know, There's no limits to what
Speaker 5: I can do with this guy from a pr standpoint.
Speaker 5: So that was where my thinking was, like, this is
Speaker 5: gonna be a great opportunity. I'm going to make him
Speaker 5: even a bigger star than he already is.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 5: And then when I got into trenches, it wasn't quite
Speaker 5: the opportunities that I thought were there. Weren't one hundred
Speaker 5: percent there because he was, you know, he was very unpredictable,
Speaker 5: and he was going through a lot of personal issues
Speaker 5: with his drugs and alcohol and stuff like that. And
Speaker 5: you mentioned at three o'clock, you know what. The first
Speaker 5: time that that happened, he was supposed to do a
Speaker 5: he had agreed the headline for the Brotherhood Black Crusade,
Speaker 5: which is a very well known organization, fundraising organization, community
Speaker 5: organization in Los Angeles and a guy named Danny Bakewell
Speaker 5: was the founder of it and still has kept the
Speaker 5: organization going. But Richard called, and at that time it
Speaker 5: was his wife, Jennifer. They called me at three o'clock
Speaker 5: in the morning and they're kind of giggling. I can
Speaker 5: kind of tell their hw and stuff, and they tell
Speaker 5: me that Richard wants to Richard wants to cancel his performance.
Speaker 5: It was like early Saturday morning and the show wasn't
Speaker 5: until he wasn't gonna go on until like nine to
Speaker 5: twenty the next night, right, So he says, well, you know,
Speaker 5: we went to the doctors and he has gastro internitis.
Speaker 5: I didn't even know what gastro in tonitis was, so
Speaker 5: I had to look it up and I we had
Speaker 5: the stomach ache, you know, basically that's a fancy word
Speaker 5: for stomach ach medical terms. I said, well, you know,
Speaker 5: why don't you guys go to sleep and let's just
Speaker 5: re you know, reconnect in the morning, Uh, you know,
Speaker 5: get a good night's sleep. I can call you around
Speaker 5: eleven and then we'll decide what we should. I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, you don't have to go on until nine o'clock.
Speaker 5: Maybe your stomach will be feel better by then. And
Speaker 5: I said, also, I really don't want to. You know,
Speaker 5: he wanted me to make an announcement, and I said
Speaker 5: that there's no place I can go. You know, at
Speaker 5: that point, there was no social media or whatever like that.
Speaker 5: And the only way I could break a story like
Speaker 5: that was I could go to AP Associated Press, and
Speaker 5: I said, I don't want to do that, and I
Speaker 5: wanted to wait and talk to Danny Bakewell to see
Speaker 5: what he thought what would work best for him. I
Speaker 5: did end up talking to Danny in the morning, and
Speaker 5: I convinced Richard that I would create a statement to
Speaker 5: be read and that we wouldn't announce it nationally as
Speaker 5: a national thing. We just announced it at the venue
Speaker 5: because a lot of people, do you know, it's just
Speaker 5: a charity event, and not everybody needed to know that
Speaker 5: he was canceling it, right except for the people that
Speaker 5: were in there. And he also agreed to donate ten
Speaker 5: thousand dollars to the Brotherhood Crusade. I said, So Danny
Speaker 5: was fine with that. So I went there that night,
Speaker 5: you know, and I had prepared the statement with the
Speaker 5: idea that Danny Bakewell would read the statement to the
Speaker 5: audience and also tell them. So when I got there,
Speaker 5: I hadn't met Danny. I'd only talked to him on
Speaker 5: the phone. So I said, well, Danny, here's the statement
Speaker 5: that Richard wants you to read. He goes, I'm not
Speaker 5: reading that. He said, you're here, you're his guy. So
Speaker 5: you go up there and read it. And it was
Speaker 5: at the shrine. I said, oh, man, you're kidding me, like,
Speaker 5: you know, really, So I had to go up on
Speaker 5: stage and tell five thousand black people who were expecting
Speaker 5: Richard Prior to perform. And that was really the beginning.
Speaker 5: It set a pattern of just having to do that
Speaker 5: all the time.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: Richard was just one of those guys. He was unpredictable
Speaker 5: and I'd come to the office some days and I
Speaker 5: just never knew what he was going to so you
Speaker 5: just kind of hope that, you know. And then there
Speaker 5: was other things that he did do. For example, the
Speaker 5: Richard Prior Life and Concert film was my you know,
Speaker 5: was an idea I brought to him. That wasn't It
Speaker 5: wasn't my idea to do the contract. But somebody came
Speaker 5: to me, a guy by the name of Bill sargent
Speaker 5: Well I mentioned in the book. He's the guy that
Speaker 5: offered fifty million dollars for the Beatles to your Reunion tour.
Speaker 5: And he said, Hey, I want to do a live concert.
Speaker 5: And I said, well, I think that's a really great idea.
Speaker 5: I don't know if I can sell it, but and
Speaker 5: you know, David and Richard gave me their blessings and
Speaker 5: I helped to put that whole thing together. So you
Speaker 5: get those kinds of moments and you think, well, you know,
Speaker 5: if I can do more of that, that offsets those
Speaker 5: other times when I'm canceling signatory whatever.
Speaker 1: But you gave.
Speaker 3: I just wanted to give you your props and at
Speaker 3: least at the least in the richer prior chapter, because
Speaker 3: not only do you account for all these events, but
Speaker 3: you also give perspective and where Richard came from and
Speaker 3: kind of telling his story to give you know, this
Speaker 3: kind of twenty twenty two. I always say lens of
Speaker 3: cause and effect basically, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, different, you know, like you know, Richard did a
Speaker 5: lot of things he never got canceled, like what happened
Speaker 5: with Dave Chappelle. And you know, Richard, people just loved
Speaker 5: him because he was so vulnerable and he shared, He
Speaker 5: turned his cont his his misfortune into comedy in a
Speaker 5: way that it was resonated with people, and they forgave him.
Speaker 5: They always forgave him of everything, and he he you know,
Speaker 5: as I think you noticed in the book he created
Speaker 5: a pattern that was very successful for him in terms
Speaker 5: of marketing. The way he marketed his fame and his persona.
Speaker 5: You know, his comedy, live concert film. You know, there's
Speaker 5: very rare, you know, as a strategic uh, you know,
Speaker 5: crisis manager, whatever, the first thing you say is let's
Speaker 5: do something and let's move away from Let's figure out
Speaker 5: a way to put that in the past. And he
Speaker 5: found a way to actually allowed that the fuels a
Speaker 5: lot of his comedy.
Speaker 1: All right, So I.
Speaker 2: Forgot where I read it, But there was a show
Speaker 2: that he did at the Hollywood Bowl. I'll remember there's
Speaker 2: a famous photo where he says, I want you all
Speaker 2: to kiss my happy black ass. He's a little I
Speaker 2: think it was like he was doing a benefit. It
Speaker 2: was like an l g b t Q.
Speaker 5: I was representing bet Midler then, yes, so that was
Speaker 5: a star spangled night for rights. Bet Midler's manager, Aaron Russo,
Speaker 5: came up with the idea and we and I was
Speaker 5: I really had a big role in that because we
Speaker 5: met with all these gay you know, l g b
Speaker 5: Q organizations from San Francisco. Because we donate the money
Speaker 5: from the concert and Richard agreed to do it, but
Speaker 5: I didn't. I didn't represent Richard then, okay, But I
Speaker 5: literally was on the stage and I was six feet
Speaker 5: away from him before he went on, and I stayed
Speaker 5: on the stage because I was such a big fan
Speaker 5: I wanted to see him close up. So I was
Speaker 5: on the wing of the stage watching that all happen,
Speaker 5: and he walked right by me. After he did that,
Speaker 5: he walked off the stage and went straight to his
Speaker 5: limbo and left.
Speaker 1: I heard it was.
Speaker 2: It was described someone say it was the cabaret version
Speaker 2: of Altamont.
Speaker 5: If you know what happened, it was he freaked out everybody.
Speaker 5: I mean, he just went and you could watch him
Speaker 5: turn as it was, you know, he started off and
Speaker 5: people were laughing and whatever, and then he just dark
Speaker 5: and he just I don't know if he realized there
Speaker 5: or if he was misled, but he just really turned
Speaker 5: on the audience.
Speaker 1: Can you give me an example, because oftentimes I say,
Speaker 1: I see that you you are thrown in the front
Speaker 1: line to strategize something or think of a spin or
Speaker 1: fix this real quick. Can you just in your whole career, like, what.
Speaker 2: Was the one time where you felt like whatever spin
Speaker 2: you had to put on something that you know, maybe
Speaker 2: this might engulf you or kind of you know, you
Speaker 2: might get drawn into the tornado yourself, like this is
Speaker 2: something that you can't handle.
Speaker 5: I don't know. I've never thought there's something I couldn't handle.
Speaker 2: So you're not handling this with with fear because even
Speaker 2: then you have to like meet with people. You got
Speaker 2: to be the bearer of bad news. I'm sorry, my client,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah blah. It's not going to make it.
Speaker 5: You know, well, you you learn, you know, you build
Speaker 5: up a resiliency, like Richard Richard prior telling me how
Speaker 5: to be resilient because he was constantly forced me to
Speaker 5: be chimes too.
Speaker 1: Rick James was another.
Speaker 5: Guy that tested me my you know, my resolve and
Speaker 5: my ability to just you know, because I really I
Speaker 5: really admired Rick and thought he had a lot of talent.
Speaker 5: You know, he was a really skilled musician, and but
Speaker 5: he was just his own worst enemy. But I always
Speaker 5: wanted him to win, and I was trying to come
Speaker 5: up for ways to help him win because I thought, like,
Speaker 5: you know, I did feel like he had a potential
Speaker 5: to be bigger than what he was, and it becomes.
Speaker 5: But but I never gave up on that belief and
Speaker 5: so that's what fueled my You know.
Speaker 2: But isn't it exhausting? But is it not exhausting to
Speaker 2: Is it not exhausting for you sometimes to have to
Speaker 2: Jedi mind trick your artists, you know, like I know
Speaker 2: it is it is.
Speaker 5: There's times when I don't. I haven't enjoyed being a MOP.
Speaker 5: I'll be honest. I mean, it's not something that I
Speaker 5: wake up going like what problem can I fucking fix today?
Speaker 5: You know, that's not like I don't wake up with
Speaker 5: that attitude. But I just feel I just always felt
Speaker 5: comfortable with the pressure that I felt I would be
Speaker 5: able to if they trusted me that I could help them,
Speaker 5: we could achieve. Our collaboration to me, as you know,
Speaker 5: artists and managers is really it's just a synergy and
Speaker 5: it's a shared vision. And you know, it's not like
Speaker 5: one or the other. It's if we can share a
Speaker 5: vision of what we hope to accomplish on, that's what
Speaker 5: you really hope for. But it's not always possible for you.
Speaker 1: In getting to know.
Speaker 2: Some of your clients, do you often get to the
Speaker 2: heart of the matter, like are they talking at all
Speaker 2: about like, hey, maybe I should see Like, I don't
Speaker 2: know how prevalent seeing a therapist was to suggest in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty two or nineteen you know, now, of course,
Speaker 2: you know we throw everyone like therapy in the face,
Speaker 2: and yes, mental health is everything in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: but back in nineteen eighty three, nineteen eighty four, if
Speaker 2: you since that an artist is sort of stuck in
Speaker 2: that place, like what what solutions are there that aren't
Speaker 2: you know what's perceived as embarrassing as oh, maybe I'd
Speaker 2: need to see somebody, you know, therapy wise.
Speaker 5: No, I think there was there was up There were
Speaker 5: times when I asked people, you know, have you given
Speaker 5: any thought to getting some help, you know, seeing a therapist,
Speaker 5: or you know, to really do you even think you
Speaker 5: have a problem? I means it seems like you do
Speaker 5: have a problem, you know. You know, even with Don Cornelius,
Speaker 5: you know, he had a brain surgery and it made
Speaker 5: him unstable.
Speaker 1: So you were there in eighty three when he had
Speaker 1: his aneurysm.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I wasn't close to him then, but by then,
Speaker 5: let me think, I'm trying to think when was the
Speaker 5: first soul train music Awards eighty seven. Yeah, so he had. Yeah.
Speaker 5: So it was after the you know, it was shortly
Speaker 5: after that that I became more I started doing pr
Speaker 5: for him. After the brain animism, he told me about it.
Speaker 5: But then when we were doing the Soul Train Awards,
Speaker 5: and I've worked on that show for at least five
Speaker 5: years or so, I remember him telling me that it
Speaker 5: made him moody, and sometimes he wasn't. He didn't know
Speaker 5: how he was going to react to certain things, and
Speaker 5: you know, you could see it, you know, actually happen
Speaker 5: in real time a couple of times. The different things
Speaker 5: that he did that I think, you know, contribute were
Speaker 5: influenced by that. And I remember asking him once, have
Speaker 5: you thought about going back and getting another surgery done?
Speaker 5: And he said, I have thought about it and talk to
Speaker 5: the doctors, but the reality is they couldn't guarantee him
Speaker 5: that he would get better, and it also might even
Speaker 5: be worse. So, you know, these are things that people,
Speaker 5: you know, I don't think he told everybody that, but
Speaker 5: that's something I can say he shared with me, I mean,
Speaker 5: and just for him, you know, because he wanted me
Speaker 5: to understand and I was trying to understand him and
Speaker 5: we had that kind of friendship. I mean, he wasn't
Speaker 5: like a total open book with me, but there were
Speaker 5: times when we would sit down and talk for a
Speaker 5: couple of hours and he would tell me, you know,
Speaker 5: the different things, this frustration with just black people and
Speaker 5: black artists that wouldn't support him, and you know, and
Speaker 5: I always tried to help with any artist that I
Speaker 5: was managing or whatever. Like, you know, we got to
Speaker 5: do the Soul Training Music Awards, you know, because I
Speaker 5: knew how hard it was, you know, when artists crossed
Speaker 5: over a lot of them forgot that, you know, someone
Speaker 5: was the one who put him in a position to
Speaker 5: be on national television.
Speaker 2: How long did you work with this whole train awards,
Speaker 2: the music awards.
Speaker 5: Up until probably the first five years, I think, or
Speaker 5: six or seven years something like that.
Speaker 2: So you're leased there for ninety one ninety two. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna debunk a major theory. I have a major
Speaker 2: theory that I'm afraid to ask you this question because
Speaker 2: I think I know the answer. But I'm gonna ask
Speaker 2: this question anyway. So let's let's go February of nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two. This is the infamous Michael Jackson crutches period
Speaker 2: where if you remember he did remember the time sitting down,
Speaker 2: This is what I think happened, and all you have
Speaker 2: to do is verify if it's true or not. All right,
Speaker 2: So based on our EMC search story, you remember the
Speaker 2: MC search story where hammer took it right, took a
Speaker 2: hit out right story right, and then it wound up
Speaker 2: in Bob Jones's hands where he had to they had
Speaker 2: to manufacture and Artists of the Decade award for Michael
Speaker 2: to win, so that Michael concepcion. Okay, So that was
Speaker 2: the American Music Awards, which of course is a Dick
Speaker 2: Clark platform.
Speaker 1: That was also eighty nine.
Speaker 2: So in February of ninety two, Dangerous is out and
Speaker 2: Michael is being given a Lifetime Achievement Award or whatever,
Speaker 2: like a made up award in Eddie Murphy and Elizabeth
Speaker 2: Taylor are presenting it to him, and Michael has crutches on,
Speaker 2: and you know, sympathy. This is like right after the
Speaker 2: Oprah interview and everything. So this is like a brief
Speaker 2: period where like empathy is really on Michael Jackson's side
Speaker 2: and he performs he was supposed to perform.
Speaker 1: Remember, the time.
Speaker 2: But you know, he has to sit in a wheelchair
Speaker 2: perform and he can't move whatever, so he's just basically
Speaker 2: performing from the top of you know, he's just used
Speaker 2: his souldiers in his neck and whatever. I don't buy
Speaker 2: that one bit. I believe that that was all. I
Speaker 2: don't believe that Michael Jackson injured his foot and rehearsals.
Speaker 1: But I smell.
Speaker 2: I smell only because Michael also had to do Dick
Speaker 2: Clark's American Music Awards for the same thing. And I
Speaker 2: know that there's a rivalry between Don and Dick.
Speaker 3: So well, what are you proposing there?
Speaker 1: Come on, I I I'm calling foul.
Speaker 2: I believe that there was a situation between Don and
Speaker 2: Dick Clark American Music Awards and SoulTrain Awards, which this
Speaker 2: is Hatfield McCoy territory, and I think the compromise was
Speaker 2: made that. Okay, I wanted Tom I saw, but I'll
Speaker 2: sit in a wheelchair and perform it.
Speaker 3: It was a throne, by the way, It wasn't a throne,
Speaker 3: but he was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but all right, can you my closest.
Speaker 5: I don't I remember the video because it was like
Speaker 5: twelve minutes long, right, I don't. I don't. The performance
Speaker 5: doesn't stand out to me, but I just remember that
Speaker 5: there was a lot of work that went in to
Speaker 5: get Michael to do the show, and that at that time,
Speaker 5: you know, Michael had so much clout that he demanded
Speaker 5: he put together a video that was twelve minutes long
Speaker 5: about himself. He submitted it to If you look back,
Speaker 5: it was perfectly the Grammys, American Music Awards and his
Speaker 5: and the Soul Train Awards had to use that to
Speaker 5: introduce him. Then that's when after the video plays, then
Speaker 5: Eddie Murphy comes out. He made that a mandatory thing
Speaker 5: that all those major awards shows had to do that
Speaker 5: in order to get him on. And there was always
Speaker 5: a lot of there was back and forth. If certain
Speaker 5: black acts did American Bandstand, don didn't want him on
Speaker 5: the show, and then the other way around, a big
Speaker 5: act did soul Train first, then did Clark wouldn't want
Speaker 5: him on the show. And this went on the whole
Speaker 5: time that ours working. Really Yep, it wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 5: just Michael. It was a lot of how the time.
Speaker 2: I became aware of you, of course during the situation
Speaker 2: with your ex wife having been around at the time
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty three eighty four, you were brought aboard,
Speaker 2: I guess to sort of handle her press and whatnot.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about the situation of how you were
Speaker 2: brought into handle obviously for those that don't know, you know,
Speaker 2: it's amazing to me how you ushered as her manager,
Speaker 2: like what would have been a tarnished career, Like you
Speaker 2: managed to turn Vanessa Williams's entire trajectory around and made
Speaker 2: her way bigger than whatever being a Miss America could
Speaker 2: have promised her. But how did you get brought into
Speaker 2: the organization to fix it?
Speaker 5: There are two really huge misnomers about that whole situation,
Speaker 5: which I'm going to clarify for you.
Speaker 1: Yes, that have been part of history.
Speaker 5: And wrongly reported as they're just not authentic. One was
Speaker 5: that Vanessa had a career. When I met her, she
Speaker 5: didn't have a career. She was a beauty pageant winner.
Speaker 5: She won a Miss America pageant, and what made it
Speaker 5: more significant for her than other pageant winners prior to
Speaker 5: her was the fact that she was black. So she
Speaker 5: was the first black Miss America in the sixteen three
Speaker 5: year history of the pageant. Right, she was a sophomore
Speaker 5: in college, and some woman from the New York State
Speaker 5: pageant saw her performing a play and said, wow, you
Speaker 5: know you would be great. Have you ever thought of
Speaker 5: being in a pageant? Her parents were school teachers, she
Speaker 5: had never been. It wasn't a career to being pageants, right,
Speaker 5: And when they told her that if you win Miss America,
Speaker 5: you get twenty five thousand dollars in scholarship money, she said, yeah, sure,
Speaker 5: I'll give it a try. So she ended up winning
Speaker 5: Miss New York. And then when you win, you automatically
Speaker 5: get a bid to compete in the Miss America pageant,
Speaker 5: And so that all happened in six months. And once
Speaker 5: she won, I was representing an artist, a painter named
Speaker 5: Phoebe Beasley who's pretty well known, and she does, you know,
Speaker 5: amazing collages and stuff. And she knew a guy named
Speaker 5: Dennis Doudell who was a handler for the NASA. He
Speaker 5: was really just a neighbor. Because her parents were school teachers,
Speaker 5: and because she was the only black Miss America, they
Speaker 5: were being besieged by requests from black organizations to have
Speaker 5: Vanessa come and you know, make appearances, public appearances and such.
Speaker 5: So they asked for some help. And Dennis was a
Speaker 5: corporate lawyer for American can and he said, sure, I'll
Speaker 5: try to help out. And so he was really and
Speaker 5: Vanessa did want to have a career in the entertainment
Speaker 5: business once she finished her reign as Miss America. And
Speaker 5: so I, uh, my friend Phoebe, who was a client
Speaker 5: at the time, said hey, I reco wanted to know
Speaker 5: if I could recommend you to this guy. Do you
Speaker 5: know who Miss it who Vanessa Williams is And I said, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: the black girl that won Miss America. I know she is.
Speaker 5: And he said, well, she wants to go into the
Speaker 5: entertainment business. And I said, you should talk to Ramon.
Speaker 5: He'd be great to add to your team. And so
Speaker 5: I met with Dennis one time and he liked me,
Speaker 5: and I would like to introduce you to Vanessa. She's
Speaker 5: on the road every day right now. And I said, yeah, sure.
Speaker 5: You know, in fact I was. I was living in
Speaker 5: La then I flew to New York. I had launched
Speaker 5: with him in New York, and I said, yeah, I'd
Speaker 5: be happy to meet with her. And you know, because
Speaker 5: for me just being a beauty pageant when even though
Speaker 5: it was Miss America, I didn't think that was an
Speaker 5: automatic ticket to being successful in entertainment business. So but
Speaker 5: I said, you know, yeah, if you guys are putting
Speaker 5: together a team, you know, I'd be interested to see
Speaker 5: what can happen. And then I didn't hear from him
Speaker 5: for quite a while, and then this was in July,
Speaker 5: probably mid July. I heard from him and he told
Speaker 5: me that he needed my advice on something, and so
Speaker 5: I said, yeah, sure, what do you need And he said, well,
Speaker 5: I heard there's some rumors of some pictures of Vanessa
Speaker 5: and I don't know if there if it's legit or not.
Speaker 5: And I said, well, if you don't know if they're legit,
Speaker 5: then don't say anything, don't do anything. You know, I'll
Speaker 5: see if I can nose around and find out anything.
Speaker 5: And then a couple of weeks past I told him
Speaker 5: I hadn't found out. I couldn't. I didn't hear any
Speaker 5: wind of it. And then he said, well, the pictures exist.
Speaker 5: What should I do? And I said, well, have have
Speaker 5: you seen the pictures as the pageant seen the pictures?
Speaker 5: He said no, I don't know if they have or not.
Speaker 5: And I again told him, you know, don't say anything
Speaker 5: if you don't really know what you're up against, then
Speaker 5: there's no way curve what the collateral gamage will be
Speaker 5: if you go out too soon in any kind of crisis,
Speaker 5: you need to know what you're up against. And so
Speaker 5: ultimately the pageant did see the pictures and this guy,
Speaker 5: Albert Marx, who was the CEO of the pageant and
Speaker 5: had been for I don't know fifty years or whatever,
Speaker 5: he requested that the NASSA design. Didn't demand it, he
Speaker 5: requested it. And that's another thing that a lot of
Speaker 5: people whenever it's been reported that she was forced to resign,
Speaker 5: she wasn't forced to resign. She was requested. The reason
Speaker 5: they requested it because he didn't know legally whether they
Speaker 5: could actually fire her, and he didn't want to go
Speaker 5: into litigation about it. That's why he never said it.
Speaker 5: So he gave her seventy two hours to respond. And
Speaker 5: that's when Dennis called me and said, what should I
Speaker 5: I said, well, now we can do something. Now we
Speaker 5: have Do you want me to control this and tell
Speaker 5: you guys what to do, or or do you want
Speaker 5: me just to tell you whatever whatever you want me
Speaker 5: to do, I'll try to help out. He goes no, no,
Speaker 5: I want you to manage it, take care of it. Whatever.
Speaker 5: So on Friday afternoon in La, I was, I was.
Speaker 5: I had seventy two hours basically from the time that
Speaker 5: he had not announced it, which was around eleven o'clock
Speaker 5: on Friday morning New York Times. By time I found
Speaker 5: out about it, it was a little later. And so
Speaker 5: I said, here's what I think we should do. We
Speaker 5: should have a press conference in New York. I'll put
Speaker 5: it together. I don't care what you know. If she's
Speaker 5: going to resign, she doesn't really, then I need to
Speaker 5: know that right now. But I need to put together
Speaker 5: a photo news alert and get you know, get a
Speaker 5: commitment and see if we have enough press people that
Speaker 5: will come out to the press conference. And then what
Speaker 5: we'll do is we'll have one statement and that's what
Speaker 5: we'll do.
Speaker 2: Can I ask, was there not a person like the
Speaker 2: sisty person that's trying to like blackmail, like I have
Speaker 2: these photos and I want, you know, one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars or nothing like?
Speaker 1: Was there?
Speaker 5: No? No, GUCCIONI had already uh uh had the magazine
Speaker 5: had her picture on the cover. That's what we saw.
Speaker 5: He was about to par so.
Speaker 1: He just he printed it with it so.
Speaker 5: Sat He claimed that he had a model release. So
Speaker 5: he had been planning this whole thing. He had planned
Speaker 5: it to happen before she ended her rock her reign
Speaker 5: as missing. We wanted it to happen before the next
Speaker 5: Miss America was in, you know, crowned, which was going
Speaker 5: to be a few weeks away. So there wasn't six
Speaker 5: weeks left.
Speaker 2: There wasn't at least a pre phone call, like much
Speaker 2: how much were me in that destroy your life right now?
Speaker 1: And none of that?
Speaker 5: Now he connived and planned the whole thing.
Speaker 3: And how was she this whole time?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: What were her feelings? Was she angry? Was she like, well, I.
Speaker 5: Hadn't met her. I had never even met her. Wow,
Speaker 5: So what happened is she ended up confessing to Dennis
Speaker 5: that she did take the pictures, but she didn't sign
Speaker 5: a model release. And so that part I knew about
Speaker 5: before I came involved, But I literally got involved with
Speaker 5: seventy to two hours. My job was to come to
Speaker 5: a solution on how we're going to deal with this announcement,
Speaker 5: and I suggested the announcement so that she could go
Speaker 5: on with her life one time don't answer any questions
Speaker 5: from the press. You're going to do a statement. I'm
Speaker 5: going to hand the statement out to all the press.
Speaker 5: I hired an affiliate company in New York, a good
Speaker 5: friend of mine to help me set it up, and
Speaker 5: then night I took a red Eye to New York
Speaker 5: and on the way this guy came picked me up
Speaker 5: at the airport at JFK. I drove out to Milwood
Speaker 5: where they live in Westchester County, and I got away there,
Speaker 5: Dinnis told me there was going to be a lawsuit.
Speaker 5: I go, okay, that's a lawsuit, hunht. So we got it.
Speaker 5: So now I'm finding out that I'm gonna have to
Speaker 5: deal with lawyers and they're going to have input on
Speaker 5: what the press statement can be. And when I got
Speaker 5: to Millwood, there was over four hundred and fifty media people,
Speaker 5: like an encampment taking over her neighborhood, across the street
Speaker 5: and everything. And that was the first time and you
Speaker 5: said that, did I have fear? I had fear then,
Speaker 5: because I said, Wow, this is a much bigger thing
Speaker 5: than I realized, because in La you know, it wasn't
Speaker 5: when I was in I just didn't even the fact
Speaker 5: that she won Miss America was not It was like
Speaker 5: one page picture on the front page of the La Times.
Speaker 5: But in New York because she was from New York.
Speaker 5: She was missed New York. It was huge, and so
Speaker 5: all these people were waiting and they didn't even know
Speaker 5: where she was. She was at home, but they were
Speaker 5: just waiting to get a glimpse and everything. And so
Speaker 5: when I went in there, I met the parents and
Speaker 5: I met Vanessa probably at around eight o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 5: and mostly you know, then the lawyers showed up, and
Speaker 5: at that time everybody wanted to uh said that they
Speaker 5: were going to fight and they weren't going to let
Speaker 5: her resign, that they were gonna But my feeling was
Speaker 5: based on the fact that there was only six weeks
Speaker 5: left before the national cast, and I felt in my
Speaker 5: heart that the pageant was not going to support. Yeah,
Speaker 5: they weren't going to let her, you know, be on
Speaker 5: that show for one And I didn't think that there
Speaker 5: could be an injunction. You know, whether they could get
Speaker 5: an injunction or not, they're not going to let her
Speaker 5: perform any of her services that she was supposed to
Speaker 5: deliver as Miss America. So why fight for what are
Speaker 5: you fighting for? You have nothing. The only thing left
Speaker 5: for you to do is to be on that show
Speaker 5: and give the other girl the new crown, you know,
Speaker 5: And is that really worth it? Just go on with
Speaker 5: your life. But I wasn't in charge, you know. I
Speaker 5: mean that they had lawyers, the parents had input. So
Speaker 5: I was I said, Hey, whatever you guys want to do,
Speaker 5: I'm going to frame this statement to represent Vanessa's voice,
Speaker 5: you know. And so I worked with Vnessa over the
Speaker 5: course of that, within that seventy two hours, and we
Speaker 5: bantered about with the lawyers, and at one time they
Speaker 5: were saying, well, she can't say this and she can't
Speaker 5: say that. And say, well, look, guys, if she can't
Speaker 5: say anything, then let's just cancel the press conference. You
Speaker 5: guys can do your lawyer shit and just make a
Speaker 5: lawyer legalese announcement and just it'll make it like a
Speaker 5: law release instead of a press release. And I'll be
Speaker 5: happy to service that for you guys. And then then
Speaker 5: we changed and we were back and forth, and then
Speaker 5: ultimately in the book, I explained what everything need to happen.
Speaker 5: But she did end up. You know, the world knows
Speaker 5: that she did end up resigning, but she had the
Speaker 5: option not to. That's the thing that I think a
Speaker 5: lot of people don't realize. They didn't force her out,
Speaker 5: but she decided to do and I think she did
Speaker 5: the right thing.
Speaker 2: Two questions, two minuted questions. One only because I went
Speaker 2: to school with her. Did she ever have a conversation
Speaker 2: with Susette? So Susette Charles and it was this Jersey
Speaker 2: but she's really Philly And I went to school like
Speaker 2: she was my sister's best friend.
Speaker 1: So we all you really know, Oh, I definitely. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: I was cheering for Suzette the whole time, but you know,
Speaker 2: but that's cool cheering for anybody's.
Speaker 1: African American as well. She's black. She's a black woman
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: So was there Did they ever have a conversation about
Speaker 2: this during this time period or now?
Speaker 1: Both camps were separate.
Speaker 5: They were both separate. And if I would have been
Speaker 5: Suzanne's manager, I would have told her don't accept it.
Speaker 2: I always now hindsight, we would have been more famous,
Speaker 2: she would have been more famous.
Speaker 5: Accepted it because it's like one black woman, like you're
Speaker 5: gonna do this to a black woman? And then I'm
Speaker 5: going to side in there. And she never I mean,
Speaker 5: she was only Missed America for six weeks.
Speaker 1: Six weeks.
Speaker 5: Why would you accept that like peons like pennies? And
Speaker 5: she never got to do after that. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: she's not one of the most you know, I mean
Speaker 5: Miss Americas are not recognized, but Susie Charles is probably
Speaker 5: the one of the least recognized. Because she accepted that.
Speaker 3: Well, everybody ain't have a ramone, so.
Speaker 5: I said, no, don't be more famous. So she would
Speaker 5: have been all over the news. She could have her
Speaker 5: own press conference to say why she didn't accept it?
Speaker 2: What were your feelings when I I guess, I guess
Speaker 2: thirty seven years later, they tried to pull a mea
Speaker 2: kopa and say, Okay, we were wrong and that was
Speaker 2: tone deaf of us, and we want to reinstate you
Speaker 2: back as Miss America. And I assume she declined it.
Speaker 2: But we're even aware that maybe seven eight years ago
Speaker 2: that that organization actually yeah, yeah, I wanted to write
Speaker 2: them wrong about it.
Speaker 5: She called me, she asked me what I thought she.
Speaker 1: Should do, and you told her still no, I.
Speaker 5: Said, no, why would you go back to them? Yeah?
Speaker 5: But you know she she did. I mean I was
Speaker 5: I think that she did it for her parents for
Speaker 5: a mom d doing it. She ended up supporting them.
Speaker 5: She didn't actually do what they wanted, but they did
Speaker 5: reach it. Uh uh. You know she's she's held in
Speaker 5: a different light now than she was. And I'd say,
Speaker 5: it's up to you. I wouldn't do it ifire you,
Speaker 5: but you know, it's your life. And if that's if
Speaker 5: you guys want to if you want to have peace
Speaker 5: and you get some benefit out of it, then do it.
Speaker 3: Miss America of All Times, isn't you mean former Miss
Speaker 3: America of All Time?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Wait, but it took a long time, you know, it
Speaker 5: took a long time for all that stuff to really
Speaker 5: put it behind her. A lot of people say any
Speaker 5: publicity is good publicity, and I don't want from that
Speaker 5: school of thought. It took over a decade before she
Speaker 5: could actually be listed by her name only, meaning for
Speaker 5: ten years, every time she was in the paper, there
Speaker 5: was some reference to farm former New New Pictures missing.
Speaker 5: It was like a tag and it's like, you know,
Speaker 5: having a monkey on your back only was in writing.
Speaker 5: It was like a little literally like a brand tag,
Speaker 5: you know, new Miss America forced to resign because of
Speaker 5: new pictures I'm wordying. It was always every time, you know,
Speaker 5: and I said, if we could, you know, for me,
Speaker 5: my biggest goal was if I could just have one
Speaker 5: person say, just use her name without any reference to
Speaker 5: the past. And it finally happened. A journalist by the
Speaker 5: name of David Rich who's a well known Broadway critic,
Speaker 5: when she was in Kissed as Spider Woman for her review.
Speaker 5: He was the first one really that didn't use the reference.
Speaker 5: And fucking aim Man, we finally won. We got your
Speaker 5: name back.
Speaker 2: You know, watching the initial launch of you Know Her
Speaker 2: eighty seven, the Right of the album and the comfort
Speaker 2: Zone album, and how that, how you just really managed
Speaker 2: to do the impossible, which is like anyone associated with
Speaker 2: Miss America, it's almost like that would have been a
Speaker 2: sure shot way to almost like career suicide. But somehow
Speaker 2: you managed to make her into a household word and
Speaker 2: an international star. So could you just describe what the
Speaker 2: well basic strategy.
Speaker 5: I continued to be a publicist for a while.
Speaker 1: And I even just a publicist, never a manager.
Speaker 5: No, no, I was a manager a much longer time than
Speaker 5: I was a publicist. I was a publicist for less
Speaker 5: than six months probably or maybe less than a year,
Speaker 5: but I was a manager for over ten years. But
Speaker 5: what ended up happening was I didn't want to manage
Speaker 5: her because I had worked with so many other people
Speaker 5: who were either their mother or their husband, or different
Speaker 5: people in the business who were managed by their mother
Speaker 5: or their husbands or whatever. And I said, I never
Speaker 5: I don't want to be that. I don't want to
Speaker 5: be an appendage to the NASA as a manager. And
Speaker 5: I told her that, and I said, but I'll find
Speaker 5: you a good manager. I'll help you, you know. And
Speaker 5: I tried to find her a good manager, and everybody said,
Speaker 5: you know, no, And so finally she did have a
Speaker 5: woman by the name of Dolores Robinson, was a pretty
Speaker 5: well respected manager in the business, and they didn't work out.
Speaker 5: And then one day she just said, well, you know,
Speaker 5: why don't you just manage me? I come to you
Speaker 5: for everything anyways, I'm not going to do anything without
Speaker 5: getting you advice, So why don't you just do it?
Speaker 5: And I finally, you know, I mean, you don't want
Speaker 5: to make decisions out of emotional decisions, But I really
Speaker 5: did it out of love for her, because I wanted
Speaker 5: to see her, you know, I wanted her to be happy,
Speaker 5: and so I finally committed to it and I said, look,
Speaker 5: I want to do it, but the vision is I
Speaker 5: don't think I can make you a star in Broadway
Speaker 5: and motion pictures are TV because there's not a lot
Speaker 5: of parts for black for me. And what we have
Speaker 5: to do is come up with an identity that people
Speaker 5: that you can own. And I think the best way
Speaker 5: to do that is in the music industry because we
Speaker 5: can brand you. I can't brand you waiting for the
Speaker 5: right role to come up, you know, and people know
Speaker 5: that you can sing you one. So what we have
Speaker 5: to do is create an identity that is not miss
Speaker 5: America because you're not really You don't really represent miss
Speaker 5: America and you don't really represent the pictures. So they
Speaker 5: were diametrically opposed. So if we can find music and
Speaker 5: you give me an opportunity to do that, then then
Speaker 5: I think we can create. And if we fail, then
Speaker 5: we'll try Plan B. But let's try to go to
Speaker 5: the music route and try to brand you and create
Speaker 5: an identity that you can own, and then we can
Speaker 5: build and then hopefully that'll be a caveat a pathway
Speaker 5: for you to do film, television, Broadway and all the
Speaker 5: other stuff. But then what I really didn't realize was that,
Speaker 5: you know, the stigma of what everything that had happened.
Speaker 5: I mean, everyone turned me down, you know, Bob kraz now,
Speaker 5: Gerald Busby, you know, I got turned down by like
Speaker 5: eight labels. Clive Calder, you know, I remember he told me,
Speaker 5: he said, well, I kind of see Vanessa's you know,
Speaker 5: this is kind of like a page three like in
Speaker 5: the Sun in the UK, Like that's how what people
Speaker 5: kind of think of her might be. Like maybe she
Speaker 5: could be a celebrity, but I don't think anybody will
Speaker 5: ever take her serious as an artist. And he told
Speaker 5: me that, you know, this is in his office, me
Speaker 5: and Vanessa. He said this in front of Vanessa too,
Speaker 5: And you know, so I was getting turned down left
Speaker 5: and right, you know, but Clive was actually he sent
Speaker 5: me a really nice note and he said, everything you
Speaker 5: told me you were going to do in that meeting,
Speaker 5: you did. And I blew it. And I was so
Speaker 5: happy that he owned up to that, you know, because
Speaker 5: I told him I said, no, I don't want a demo, dao,
Speaker 5: I want a real deal. She can will make her
Speaker 5: a legitimate artist. And the guy who really came to
Speaker 5: the table was at X time and Ed was calling
Speaker 5: called me. At that time, he had just gotten a
Speaker 5: deal with Wing Records to be you know, to start
Speaker 5: Wing Records, and he had one group signed at the time,
Speaker 5: Tony Tony Tony, and so he was just telling me
Speaker 5: we were friends, and he said, man, I got this
Speaker 5: new label, so if you got anybody, you know, please
Speaker 5: run and buy me. And he knew that, you know,
Speaker 5: at this point Vanessa and I had a relationship. People
Speaker 5: knew about it and everything, so you know, at the
Speaker 5: end of our conversation, I said, oh, I don't have
Speaker 5: anybody right now. But he said, well, what are you
Speaker 5: doing with Vanessa? And I said, well, I'm trying to
Speaker 5: get a damn record deal, but everyone wants to do
Speaker 5: a demo and I don't want to get you know,
Speaker 5: demo deals are like purgatory. You know, you get a
Speaker 5: demo deal and then all of a sudden they reject you.
Speaker 5: Then nobody wants to touch you. And I said, I
Speaker 5: don't want to go that route. So he just said, well,
Speaker 5: you know, why don't you come here. Let's do it,
Speaker 5: And I said, really, am you serious, And he said, yeah,
Speaker 5: I don't have any money. I don't have any kind
Speaker 5: of real money, but you know, I can give you
Speaker 5: some money. So we barded a little bit. There wasn't
Speaker 5: a lot of room. I negotiate a little bit more,
Speaker 5: and that's where we started. And so it was the
Speaker 5: three of us, and you know, that was the beginning
Speaker 5: of her musical career and then the rest is you know, history.
Speaker 5: And you know, I think I did have a big
Speaker 5: role in that first decade of her career and everything
Speaker 5: that we The one thing I was disappointed about was
Speaker 5: we didn't get a chance to do a major tour,
Speaker 5: and I thought that that was something that I would
Speaker 5: have loved for her to dedicate and stay more entrenchs
Speaker 5: in the music industry, to really launch a major tour
Speaker 5: while I was still at her helm. And then our
Speaker 5: relationship started. You know, by this time, we had three kids,
Speaker 5: and you know, I don't regret any of the time
Speaker 5: that we spent together. We were very successful in our run,
Speaker 5: and she's gone on to do really great things.
Speaker 2: I have to ask, have you guys ever forgiven La
Speaker 2: and Babyface for giving girls away the pebbles instead of Yeah.
Speaker 5: That was a total that was a total money deal.
Speaker 5: Like Ed and Vanessa. Man, they hated them. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: think you read in the book where we ran into
Speaker 5: I ran into La and Babyface the warm Clock. That
Speaker 5: was so fucking funny. Man, I was cracking up. I
Speaker 5: never thought I didn't have the hate for them. I
Speaker 5: just didn't like the the business business ethics that they exercise.
Speaker 5: And all they had to do was call it was
Speaker 5: a money It was a money deal, you know. And
Speaker 5: also we didn't have But what a lot of people
Speaker 5: don't realize is we didn't have a contract with them.
Speaker 5: We were doing a ED one. You know, we were
Speaker 5: doing a spec deal with them because they brought We
Speaker 5: wanted them to write original material and write and produce
Speaker 5: rigial material for Vanessa on her debut album. And they
Speaker 5: came with four songs and we didn't really like most
Speaker 5: of you know, the three of the songs we didn't
Speaker 5: feel right. But girlfriend one that we thought was interesting
Speaker 5: wasn't really the direction we're thinking. But we said, let's
Speaker 5: do this song, you know, switch and let Levan has
Speaker 5: put her lead vocals on it, and we'll do it
Speaker 5: as a spec and if everything goes well, then we'll
Speaker 5: commit three songs for the album.
Speaker 2: So there's a version of Girlfriend with her voice on
Speaker 2: it somewhere in this world.
Speaker 5: That's what Pebbles heard. Pebbles came to the party.
Speaker 3: She does have the stronger voice than the.
Speaker 5: Oakwood Boy the Oakwood Apartments. It was where La and
Speaker 5: Face came to Andy. They were just trying to you know,
Speaker 5: they had just left the group the deal, and they
Speaker 5: were trying to you know, they had the Whisper song
Speaker 5: that was a big hit, yeah, rock Sydetti, and so
Speaker 5: they were just starting off and they were cametinue to
Speaker 5: La to you know, mind some business and make money,
Speaker 5: you know, try to get some deal with some songwriting
Speaker 5: production deals. And so what happened was they were at
Speaker 5: that place and Pebbles was also starting her first record
Speaker 5: with NCA, and she came in and heard I think
Speaker 5: Vanessa was actually at the place when Pebbles came in
Speaker 5: and she heard her voice a slave of her voice
Speaker 5: on that track on Girlfriend. And then when Vanessa left,
Speaker 5: she said to La, I want that song. And then
Speaker 5: Husby got involved and her husband had money, right, and yeah,
Speaker 5: so they it was a money It was a money
Speaker 5: switch because we didn't have a deal we were in
Speaker 5: spec and so when they got the money, they just
Speaker 5: didn't have the guys to tell us that they were
Speaker 5: going to go. And also, in all fairness to them,
Speaker 5: Vanessa was pregnant. We were going to have to delay
Speaker 5: the record, so they were not going to make the money.
Speaker 5: And Kenny also thought that it was a more of
Speaker 5: an herb been tracked that it wasn't that Devil's had
Speaker 5: a better voice. She had a more urban voice than Vanessa.
Speaker 1: Yeah, baby said that she was girlfriend. Yeah, yeah, girlfriend.
Speaker 3: I could hear a girlfriend. I could hear it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was Kenny. That was Kenny who said he
Speaker 5: said that, but he let La kind of take the
Speaker 5: blame for it. But uh no, you know, so you know,
Speaker 5: I told him when I saw them at the Forum Club. Look,
Speaker 5: I don't hate you guys, but you guys should have
Speaker 5: called man, that's the only thing. Just had a courtesy
Speaker 5: Just call and say hey, you know, I understood that
Speaker 5: you guys did it for money and her point in
Speaker 5: your career, that made sense, you know, but you should
Speaker 5: All you had to do was call us.
Speaker 2: So Okay, I'm I'm gonna close here because I can
Speaker 2: nerd out for twelve hours. I do want to know though,
Speaker 2: at least for when your daughter, and of course your
Speaker 2: daughter's uh, Jillian, she's lying, babe, Well, she's expressing interest
Speaker 2: in getting in the biz and knowing what you know,
Speaker 2: knowing who you dealt with, all these casting characters that
Speaker 2: you meet, and there's a lot of heartbreak here, you know,
Speaker 2: in the clients that you're working with, Like what advice
Speaker 2: are you? Are you being encouraging, like ah, I wish
Speaker 2: you would try something else, or da da da da da,
Speaker 2: or like or were you the encouraging dad? That's like,
Speaker 2: go ahead, follow your dream, this is what you want
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know. I never gave her any discouraging news
Speaker 5: or suggestions about I didn't throw my history on her
Speaker 5: in that respect, Okay, and give her, you know, the
Speaker 5: dark side of our business with the gas. You know,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of darkness in our business. But I
Speaker 5: did try to. She was like hands off. First of all,
Speaker 5: she goes, Dad, it's not ready for your ears yet.
Speaker 5: She was guarded with the Yeah, she was very guard
Speaker 5: And she told me she was working on one song
Speaker 5: and she would play it for me when it was ready.
Speaker 5: And I said, well, you know, you know I listened
Speaker 5: to all kinds of songs. I listened to Medley's you know,
Speaker 5: just piano or guitar, you know, just let me hear it,
Speaker 5: you know, I'd just like to hear what your direction is.
Speaker 5: And she goes, no, Dad, I'm not ready to play
Speaker 5: for you yet. I said, okay. So she did end
Speaker 5: up coming to me with treat me like Fire, And
Speaker 5: finally when there was a rough demo of it that
Speaker 5: she was happy with at least to let me listen to.
Speaker 5: I made some suggestions on it, but she and Lucas
Speaker 5: pretty much formulated all their own image and and everything.
Speaker 5: I didn't have any input or anything. I just kind
Speaker 5: of let them do what they wanted to do. And
Speaker 5: I remember seeing the video when she had all that hair.
Speaker 5: I'd never seen so much hair. She always had wild hair,
Speaker 5: but this was like, you know, this was like hair
Speaker 5: on steroids.
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, that's how first matter. I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: who's this person? She like, okay, how did you get
Speaker 1: all that hair?
Speaker 5: That's so But you know what ended up happening was
Speaker 5: because I was her father, everyone thought I managed her.
Speaker 5: And so when that single, when they put the single
Speaker 5: out on SoundCloud, I mean it was just like an
Speaker 5: immediate response, like a pess or a response, and everybody
Speaker 5: fell in love with the track. And so I was
Speaker 5: getting all these calls from labels and lawyers and managers
Speaker 5: and say, hey, mom, man, are you managing your daughter?
Speaker 5: What's going on? What's going on? You know? I said, no, no,
Speaker 5: I'm not. I'm just your dad. You know I can,
Speaker 5: I can pass on the information to.
Speaker 3: I'm just her dad.
Speaker 5: What ended up happening? I said, I will help you.
Speaker 5: I don't want to manage you, you know, forever, but
Speaker 5: you guys need help and I'd like to offer my
Speaker 5: services to get, you know, set you a sale. Because
Speaker 5: I never wanted to wake up and you know, because
Speaker 5: I had managed their mother, I said this whole idea
Speaker 5: of managing my daughter and waking up one day and saying,
Speaker 5: I love you, but you're fired. I'm not going to
Speaker 5: be around for that. So I just said, I'm going
Speaker 5: to help you, and so I did. I helped them.
Speaker 5: I helped them get a manager. I flew to London
Speaker 5: and they ended up signing to Outsiders, a small label
Speaker 5: that was distributed by Polydor UK and Amanda Ghost. You know,
Speaker 5: did you ever run her? Meet Amanda Ghost.
Speaker 1: I've not met Amanda Ghost now.
Speaker 5: Okay, So she was a successful songwriter. She was on
Speaker 5: she was a president of elect of Epic Records for
Speaker 5: about six.
Speaker 1: Months or so.
Speaker 5: She was on American Idol as a judge for a minute,
Speaker 5: you know. So she added some uh, you know, some
Speaker 5: traction in the music industry, and she fell in love
Speaker 5: with the group. And so I helped the negotiate that deal.
Speaker 5: I set them up with an attorney, and then I
Speaker 5: went over to London to help them since she was
Speaker 5: gonna be signed to they were gonna be signed to
Speaker 5: a London based label. I said, you guys should get
Speaker 5: a London based manager as well, who has you know,
Speaker 5: tentacles in the US market, because you've got to still
Speaker 5: release the record here in the US. And I wanted
Speaker 5: them to know that I was going to be out
Speaker 5: of the picture. I didn't want to manager thinking that
Speaker 5: I was going to be second guessing everything that they did.
Speaker 5: And so I met with everyone and I said, look,
Speaker 5: you know my role once. If they decide to go
Speaker 5: with you, I'm out. I'm just regular dad. You don't
Speaker 5: have to answer to me, you don't have to copy
Speaker 5: in anything. Your relationship will be with Lucas and Jillian,
Speaker 5: not me.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 5: And I just felt that that was my responsibility to
Speaker 5: give them clear sailing, you know, and to let them
Speaker 5: manifest their career however they saw it.
Speaker 1: And so that's parenting.
Speaker 2: That's the role that parenting. I want to thank you
Speaker 2: for doing this for us again.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank Deana too. I want to thank Diana, Thank
Speaker 3: you Deanna, because yes.
Speaker 5: Diana, she's aid, you know, she's sure god mother right, Yes.
Speaker 2: Sir, just to let our views not yes, I feel
Speaker 2: like it's imperative reading the Fame Game and Insider's playbook
Speaker 2: on earning your fifteen minutes. Harper Collins shout out to
Speaker 2: Harper Collins. But yes, I think it's required reading.
Speaker 3: Yes, I have notes. I have written notes inside. That's
Speaker 3: how good it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good journey into and it makes me
Speaker 2: think twice about working with any artist ever again.
Speaker 1: So on behalf of sir Bill. I'm calling you now,
Speaker 1: Sir Bill. I'll take it. Royal Royal Bill.
Speaker 2: And mister Bay City Rollers down there, Sugar Steve Saturday, Hey,
Speaker 2: go man to.
Speaker 1: Pay for that man.
Speaker 5: I didn't even I mean they had I went to
Speaker 5: several of their big concerence back in the day when
Speaker 5: they performed. One was at a racetrack. I mean they
Speaker 5: were getting you know, run over by women were chasing him.
Speaker 5: But I've never seen anything like that. That's really easy, man.
Speaker 1: It's even a lot for me.
Speaker 2: Anyway, when we have a Bill and Steve and font
Speaker 2: Tigelo and light yea, we thank you very much.
Speaker 5: Thank you all, Thank you all. I really had fun.
Speaker 5: This was really great and I really appreciate your support.
Speaker 5: And yeah, thank you so so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much much. Love Supreme is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeart You Radio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.