Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bomb Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Attorney Extraordinary Peter Paterno. Hi. So,
Speaker 1: Peter the Doctor's gonna win the World Series? I hope. So.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's very dicey with some good teams
Speaker 1: in the So what are the weaknesses? It seems like,
Speaker 1: you know, the relief pictures, they keep blowing it. They've
Speaker 1: gotten better. I mean, if the pitching is gonna be
Speaker 1: the key I think to the World Series. I mean,
Speaker 1: the Astros are very, very good and the Yankees are
Speaker 1: good too, so it's just gonna be an issue to
Speaker 1: see who who makes it. In Well, what we learned
Speaker 1: from last year were learned from last year. Don't pull
Speaker 1: your picture when he's pitching a one hitter in the
Speaker 1: seventh inning. I know the guys too into the statistics.
Speaker 1: So in any event, in addition to being a music lawyer,
Speaker 1: you're a huge music fan. How did you get into
Speaker 1: music like when you were a kid? I mean, I
Speaker 1: think I got into music the way that a lot
Speaker 1: of us gotten the music, the Beatles. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I blame my career on John Lennon. Okay, so I
Speaker 1: believe that the path, the path for better or for
Speaker 1: worse that I've taken is basically due to those those guys. Okay,
Speaker 1: so were you a fan? Were you listening to the
Speaker 1: Top forty or anything before the Beatles run ed? Sullivan,
Speaker 1: I was a kid. I listened to music. I didn't
Speaker 1: think any of it was, Honestly, it's kind of weird.
Speaker 1: I remember the year before the Beatles broke, sitting there
Speaker 1: as a kid thinking music isn't very good, is it?
Speaker 1: I really, you know, it was, you know, all these
Speaker 1: like girl groups and whatever else was happening then, and
Speaker 1: it just wasn't good. I mean, I think the week
Speaker 1: before the Beatles broke, I think number one was Dumb
Speaker 1: and eque by the Singing Nuns. So it was close
Speaker 1: yeah around there. Yeah so, and that was one of
Speaker 1: the better songs on the Top forty. She never did
Speaker 1: have a follow up though, No, they apparently she had to.
Speaker 1: She haded tragic circumstances that pursued her, but I don't
Speaker 1: remember what they were. Actually, I don't remember that. Okay,
Speaker 1: But did you have a transistor radio as a kid?
Speaker 1: Of course? Okay, but for you listened to the baseball games,
Speaker 1: I assume I listened to the baseball games when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, and the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn and
Speaker 1: New York to Los Angeles, and I was living in
Speaker 1: New York at the time, and I put my transistor
Speaker 1: radio on and the game started then at eight They
Speaker 1: started now at seven or earlier in the game started eight,
Speaker 1: which is eleven o'clock New York time, and I put
Speaker 1: the transistor under my pillow. I listened to the ball
Speaker 1: games because the broadcast the Giant Dodger games back to
Speaker 1: New York. I listened to Vince Gully on the radio
Speaker 1: and fall asleep with a radio under my pillow. And
Speaker 1: I remember you. They used to have the nine vote
Speaker 1: batteries and I would test them by putting them on
Speaker 1: my tongue to see if they still had any zip
Speaker 1: to them. Yeah, I don't think I had nine vote
Speaker 1: battery transistor radio. I think mine was regular whatever the
Speaker 1: double as or whatever they are. Okay, So what age
Speaker 1: did you move from New York to Los Angeles. I
Speaker 1: was twelve, with twelve is kind old enough to know
Speaker 1: what was going on. So when you move, where did
Speaker 1: you live in New York? Again? I lived on Long
Speaker 1: Island Okay, what town, Baldwin? Okay, alright, by my backyard
Speaker 1: was in the center, but main house was involved within. Okay,
Speaker 1: And before you moved to the West coast, did you
Speaker 1: go to any concerts because he had the Nasau Coliseum? Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe the Nashville Coliseum wasn't even built by that point.
Speaker 1: I think it was because it's ended. It was like
Speaker 1: a dump thing. The team's moved out of there, but
Speaker 1: now they have a new arena. In any event, you
Speaker 1: moved to l A, where do you move to in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles? I actually moved to Orange County. I grew
Speaker 1: up in Orange County and Tustin. Tustin is like landlocked.
Speaker 1: It's not like by the beach, and it's pretty flat. Yeah.
Speaker 1: At the time, though, it was kind of the end
Speaker 1: of the world. I mean all the freeways ended there.
Speaker 1: It was still very heavily populated by orange groves instead
Speaker 1: of people. Yeah, I mean the house next to me
Speaker 1: had horses. And you know, we lived in Tustin proper.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like we lived in like some weird place.
Speaker 1: It was just it was a small community. And and
Speaker 1: we used to go to the beach pretty regularly because
Speaker 1: Newport Beach. You just got on the freeway and drove
Speaker 1: down down the fifty five to its coast of Masa
Speaker 1: and then you went to Newport Beach. So, yeah, we
Speaker 1: spent our summers at the beach. How far was that
Speaker 1: from tust him, you know, I think it's seven miles
Speaker 1: actually something like that. I didn't realize it was that close. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And what did your father or mother do for a
Speaker 1: living when you lived in Tustin. My mother was a teacher.
Speaker 1: She taught um for a while, biology, then she taught
Speaker 1: languages at the local high school where I went to
Speaker 1: high school. And my dad was a contracts administrator for
Speaker 1: various facets of the defense industry. So he'd get laid
Speaker 1: off every two or three years when the budget name
Speaker 1: would go down and go up, and go down and
Speaker 1: go up. So his training was in finance or engineering.
Speaker 1: I think he got I know when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: He went to n y U and got an NBA
Speaker 1: at night at night in night school, so he you know,
Speaker 1: he had he had. My parents both went to Brooklyn College,
Speaker 1: but my dad left early to go to the world.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the Brookley in Brooklyn, California. Brooklyn College.
Speaker 1: They went to Brooklyn College. They my parents grew up
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, which is why I'm a huge Dodger fan.
Speaker 1: And my dad left early. They allowed the people that
Speaker 1: you know, the guy shipping out, They let him graduate early.
Speaker 1: So he went out to the war and then came back.
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't know what he did, but
Speaker 1: when I was a little kid, he went to get
Speaker 1: his graduate degree at n y U and business and
Speaker 1: ended up doing whatever he did, okay, did he used
Speaker 1: to tell stories about the war. Not much. It's actually
Speaker 1: it was fairly traumatic for him. And I think he
Speaker 1: had a little bit of a you know, uh p
Speaker 1: ptsd P. Yeah, I mean, I guess what I heard.
Speaker 1: I mean again, I was I wasn't born yet, but
Speaker 1: I heard that he had he had some issues following
Speaker 1: the war. And do you know what he did during
Speaker 1: the war. He was he was in the South Pacific
Speaker 1: and he um, I think he was a communications officer.
Speaker 1: He you know, did walkie talkies and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And I think I don't know that much about it, okay,
Speaker 1: But for those of us living on the East Coast,
Speaker 1: to grow up in California in the sixties was a dream. Yes,
Speaker 1: So what was it, like, I so didn't want to go,
Speaker 1: I mean because I had all my friends in Baldwin
Speaker 1: and I you know, I was getting ready to I
Speaker 1: just graduate, and uh, you could graduated great school. So
Speaker 1: I guess I was going into junior high and I
Speaker 1: didn't want to go, and I was really upset. And
Speaker 1: uh then we moved out here and it was great.
Speaker 1: I mean it was just really great. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: um we lived in Orange County, were close to Disneyland,
Speaker 1: which was exciting for me as a kid, and then
Speaker 1: I could go to Dodger games and and there was
Speaker 1: the beach and it was it was real. It was great.
Speaker 1: How often would you go to Disneyland A lot? Really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I did? I went a lot. Okay. And were you
Speaker 1: a popular kid in school? I don't know if I
Speaker 1: was necessarily popular. I was the first couple of years
Speaker 1: I had a New York accent and that wasn't cool
Speaker 1: in California. But I kind of get along with everybody.
Speaker 1: I was, you know, in high school. I think I
Speaker 1: was voted most comical or something like that. Really, so
Speaker 1: you were a good student. I was a very good student. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you did because parental pressure. You were just good,
Speaker 1: or you were grind or all of those things. Wasn't
Speaker 1: a grind? I just I was good at school, okay?
Speaker 1: And you're you have the one sister, correct, two sisters,
Speaker 1: two sisters, okay, and their daughters are super successful. Right,
Speaker 1: but it's starting at this level. You're in the middle,
Speaker 1: or where are you? I'm the oldest, you're the oldest. Now.
Speaker 1: The next one is Vicky, who's an m d. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's a doctor. And the one after that Susan, she's
Speaker 1: a journalism professor. She's um currently on sabbatical because she
Speaker 1: was in the middle of writing a book about college admissions.
Speaker 1: So she became the poster child for all the New
Speaker 1: York Times and l A Times. They all interviewed her
Speaker 1: because she was writing about this, and she's now taking
Speaker 1: sabbatical to finish her book that she was in the
Speaker 1: middle of when the scandal hit. Well, in terms, you
Speaker 1: were talking about the generation after being super successful by
Speaker 1: baby boomer standards, everybody in the family really rang the bell.
Speaker 1: What was the drive was that, you know, the parental ethos?
Speaker 1: Why do you think everybody was so successful? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think basically, I think my mother was probably pretty
Speaker 1: much uh, a driver. My dad wasn't so much, but
Speaker 1: he expected us to get good grades. And I remember,
Speaker 1: I remember when one semester I came in with my grades.
Speaker 1: I had all a's and I had four unsatisfactories and
Speaker 1: conducts six. I used to just tell jokes in class
Speaker 1: and and so my dad just started yelling at me, going,
Speaker 1: anybody can get as it's the conduct that matters, and
Speaker 1: you're failing. And so anyway, that was did you, uh
Speaker 1: those conduct grades go back up? Yeah? I mean again,
Speaker 1: I wasn't particular. I was sort of more of a
Speaker 1: comedic foil than I was a troublemaker, you know. And
Speaker 1: so you went to the same high school your mother
Speaker 1: taught at I did. Yeah, what was that like? It
Speaker 1: was a little weird. I had her for about three
Speaker 1: weeks when I first started as a freshman, I was
Speaker 1: in her class. And then then they started these um
Speaker 1: I was I don't want to sound equal to etotistical,
Speaker 1: but I was. I was doing super well. I wasn't
Speaker 1: very engaged. So they put me in all these advanced
Speaker 1: placement classes and so I had to transferred over class
Speaker 1: and do the other classes. Okay and okay, so the
Speaker 1: Beatles hit. Were you a record buyer or just a
Speaker 1: radio listener? Um? When at that age, you know, I
Speaker 1: you know, basically buying records was kind of an event. Um.
Speaker 1: I remember I in my sixth grade class, I won
Speaker 1: some award and the teacher gave us some forty five um,
Speaker 1: And so I just went home and listened to him
Speaker 1: incessantly because they were all that I had, you know,
Speaker 1: and for what those records were, I will follow him
Speaker 1: by Little Peggy Mark. I think that was one of them.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the rest of them. I just heard
Speaker 1: that the way. That's a great song. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: I never would have listened to it if they hadn't
Speaker 1: given it to me, But yeah, that's what I had
Speaker 1: to listen to. Okay. So the Beatles break, you're first
Speaker 1: aware of the Beatles by seeing them on Ed Sullivan.
Speaker 1: Yeah okay. And then how does that change your life? Well,
Speaker 1: I you know, it doesn't change my life. I was
Speaker 1: in seventh or eighth grade, so it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean I just became a big fan, and I
Speaker 1: by the you know, the little trucks would come by
Speaker 1: with the ice cream and they'd have tops baseball cards,
Speaker 1: except they were Beatles and I bought them, and you know,
Speaker 1: I just it's a fan. I'm not like an intense
Speaker 1: super fan. I'm just a you know, I just really
Speaker 1: think that, you know, I'm really into the music, but
Speaker 1: I'm not crazy. I have other things that I do.
Speaker 1: You know, you're about music in general or the beat
Speaker 1: music in general. Okay, I'm a really pretty big Beatles fan,
Speaker 1: but I'm not I'm not going to get confused with
Speaker 1: one of these people that just basically knows everything in
Speaker 1: the world about them. Okay, But in terms of music,
Speaker 1: you're saying that you have other musical actury and or
Speaker 1: other interests other than law, baseball and music. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I do you know, I fall sports. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm yeah, I mean, I have other interests, but I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I like music a lot. So when did
Speaker 1: you start going to concerts? I remember the first sort
Speaker 1: of unofficial concert I went to because I didn't it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been anything I would have chosen to go to.
Speaker 1: Was I worked at a flower shop in Orange County
Speaker 1: and the guy, the owner's son in law, was about
Speaker 1: seven years older than I was, and he got tickets
Speaker 1: to Melody Land, which was this theater in the Round
Speaker 1: in Anaheim, right right next to Disneyland. It was hell
Speaker 1: about three thousand people. It was a you know, it's
Speaker 1: theater in the round that used to have The King
Speaker 1: and I, which I saw there with my mom. And
Speaker 1: they had a concert that day with Little Richard, four
Speaker 1: Tops and Bo Diddley. So again, not wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: my choice of of things that I would go to,
Speaker 1: but it was great, and I went to that, and
Speaker 1: then I didn't really go to anything on my own
Speaker 1: until until I was like a junior in high school
Speaker 1: and I um and the Doors played the Hollywood Bowl
Speaker 1: and we went and it was funny. We went and
Speaker 1: bought tickets at whatever the equivalent of ticket Master was then,
Speaker 1: which was just this weird box office where you'd buy
Speaker 1: tickets and there you had a choice, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: I've never been to the Hollywood Bowl and and I
Speaker 1: have a funny story about that, but I've never been
Speaker 1: to the Hollywood bowls. So they had tickets available for
Speaker 1: five dollars in the first row behind the Garden Terrorist
Speaker 1: or whatever it's called. There were five bucks and the
Speaker 1: ones in front we're six dollars. So we made a
Speaker 1: conscious decision. We got the five dollar tickets because they
Speaker 1: just one roll back and and uh we went and
Speaker 1: saw the Doors, Um Stepping Wolf and the Chambers Brothers.
Speaker 1: That was one bill. That was one bill. It's the
Speaker 1: famous show what they have on the movie about the doors.
Speaker 1: And and again I think that my theory is, you
Speaker 1: know when people hold up lighters for encores, I think
Speaker 1: it was invented at this show because the show was
Speaker 1: on I believe the fifth of July, and everybody had
Speaker 1: sparkers left over for from fourth of July, and so
Speaker 1: after the show the set ended, they put up the
Speaker 1: sparklers for light my fire. And I think that was
Speaker 1: probably if you go before that, I probably don't think
Speaker 1: you're gonna find anybody putting up lighters. And everybody was
Speaker 1: holding them up for light my fire. Now, I never
Speaker 1: I've seen the Chambers brothers. I got squeezed on Boss
Speaker 1: and Garden. That's why never there's a crowd. I'm weary now.
Speaker 1: But how were the Doors? I never saw him? They were, Well,
Speaker 1: it's funny. I later got to be pretty friendly with
Speaker 1: Robbie Krieger and uh, and it was really weird. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the show was I mean for me, you know,
Speaker 1: I was a kid that was great, but there was
Speaker 1: generally some kind of issue. And Jim walked off stage
Speaker 1: and disappeared for a while, and they brought him back
Speaker 1: out and he was rambling and stuff. But again, you know,
Speaker 1: that's what they do. I mean, you know, Lee, listen
Speaker 1: to some of those uh songs, like the end and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, there's a lot of rambling. And Robbie said, yeah,
Speaker 1: Jim dropped acid right before the show, and by the
Speaker 1: end of the show he was just tripping beyond belief.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm sitting in the audience. And the funny thing, too,
Speaker 1: is in the in the movie version of it. In
Speaker 1: the Doors movie, they have all these women, you know,
Speaker 1: these naked women dancing on the side. I believe I
Speaker 1: was fifteen years old. If there had been naked women there,
Speaker 1: I would exactly not that way. So how did you
Speaker 1: get from Orange County to the Hollywood? Well, my friend, Uh,
Speaker 1: I had a friend who had a microbust and right,
Speaker 1: and uh it relates to Anto the other story I
Speaker 1: was referring to. So we wanted as microbus to the
Speaker 1: Hollywood ball. Then that summer we went to we decided
Speaker 1: to drive up and see if we could find the Beatles.
Speaker 1: We went up to Capitol Records and as microbus right,
Speaker 1: and we show up at the Capitol Tower and we
Speaker 1: don't know anything or kids, right, so we start wanting
Speaker 1: around the tower looking for the Beatles, who weren't there obviously,
Speaker 1: and then we thought maybe the doors with the studio
Speaker 1: and Studio A at Capitol It's like it's on the
Speaker 1: same floor as you enter, and so we sort of
Speaker 1: wandered there in the guard said, well, you can't go here,
Speaker 1: and we're looking for the doors, you know they're not here.
Speaker 1: So then we got in the elevator and we went
Speaker 1: up to the it's still the thirteen floor, but they
Speaker 1: don't call it that um and we started wandering around
Speaker 1: all the executive office, like me and two of my friends,
Speaker 1: and my one friend kept going, you know how many
Speaker 1: groups are on a record, There's just one long group
Speaker 1: and it's harassing all these executives. And nobody threw us out,
Speaker 1: nobody did anything, and we then we left and never
Speaker 1: found the Beatles. Well that's something that could not happen
Speaker 1: in today's security world. I couldn't even get into this building.
Speaker 1: We can't get anywhere. We have silly security everywhere. So
Speaker 1: you saw the door. Any other memorable concerts in your
Speaker 1: high school era, Well that was about it for my
Speaker 1: high school era. I was, you know, I went in
Speaker 1: Orange County. I was pretty sheltered. I wasn't like l
Speaker 1: A kids, you know, so I didn't really start going
Speaker 1: to shows until I went to college. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: went to college. You went to Harvey Mud, Right, how
Speaker 1: long had Harvey Mud been in existence when you went
Speaker 1: started in fifty seven? I started there in sixty eight.
Speaker 1: I guess, well that must have been I mean, granted
Speaker 1: you're living in the area, but in the East Coast
Speaker 1: where the school has been open for hundreds of years,
Speaker 1: it seems Why did you end up going to Harvey Mud? Um,
Speaker 1: no clear plan. I actually went and visited some schools.
Speaker 1: We went up to Mount Baldi to you know, slide
Speaker 1: in the snow and sledge on the way back. My
Speaker 1: mom said, why don't we visit these colleges? And it
Speaker 1: was kind of pretty. And then the other one I
Speaker 1: went to was Occidental, And you know, I applied to
Speaker 1: all the u c s and so I decided I
Speaker 1: was either you go to Occidental and Major and political
Speaker 1: science to go to Harvey Mudd and major and maths.
Speaker 1: So you can tell how focused I was on my
Speaker 1: career and at the end I ended up going to
Speaker 1: Harvey Mudd. My sister went to Occidental with Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: but really she knew him, Yeah, she knew. What did
Speaker 1: she say about him? She said, I didn't know him well,
Speaker 1: and people go, how do you know you know him?
Speaker 1: She goes, there are eight black people in Occidental. You
Speaker 1: know Harry Mudd? There were there was one, so you
Speaker 1: know at the time, okay he was bury Obama. I think,
Speaker 1: yeah he was, but he was very Obama. Okay, so
Speaker 1: there were there five Clearmont colleges. How many people went
Speaker 1: to Harvey Mud the time I went there four And
Speaker 1: that's men and women are just men. It was men,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to say anything in correct politically incorrect,
Speaker 1: but yes, there was men and women. There were There
Speaker 1: were only about i'd say eight women at Harvey Mud.
Speaker 1: It's gotten almost fifty fifty now, but at the time,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a science and engineering school, and girls
Speaker 1: from the fifties didn't really do science and engineering. That's changed,
Speaker 1: but at the time there just weren't very many women there,
Speaker 1: but you know, again, there were women at Scripts across
Speaker 1: the street, and there were women at Pitzer across the
Speaker 1: other street. And there was you know, co ed down
Speaker 1: to Pomona, and there was a men's college at Claremont.
Speaker 1: So that was fine. It was It was an incredibly
Speaker 1: great atmosphere. Just Claremont McKenna was men only. Then it
Speaker 1: was called Claremont Men's College. Really yeah, they they changed
Speaker 1: the name to Claremont McKenna when they started admitting women. God,
Speaker 1: because I always wondered, what was Claremont McKenna. Okay, so
Speaker 1: what is your experience going to college? They wanted to
Speaker 1: keep the M so it was still CMC and McKenna
Speaker 1: was a big donator, A donor a donator. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: So what was your college experience like? Were you basically
Speaker 1: studying where you're partying? What were you doing? You don't
Speaker 1: you don't party at Harvy Mode if you want to
Speaker 1: stay there. You know, incredibly smart people there, and it's
Speaker 1: like ridiculous, Um, you know, I mean basically, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean again it's college, you don't study all the time.
Speaker 1: But if you know, it was I remember my saw
Speaker 1: my junior year. I'll tell you what my classes where
Speaker 1: if I can remember right, had topology, which is not
Speaker 1: what you think of topology. It's like this advanced math.
Speaker 1: I was doing quantum physics French lit uh um partial
Speaker 1: differential equations, and then some physics class and quantum mechanics
Speaker 1: are quantum something. So those are my five classes. It
Speaker 1: was pretty intense. And how if there were four people
Speaker 1: there was one hundred unior class. There were seventy five
Speaker 1: in my classic class. Where were you in that class?
Speaker 1: Not that it really matters, well, they were like I
Speaker 1: was a math major, so there were like fifteen math
Speaker 1: majors and I was kind of in the middle. Um.
Speaker 1: But this is what convinced me that I was never
Speaker 1: going to be a mathematician. Is that the year that
Speaker 1: my senior year UM, which was what year seventy two,
Speaker 1: I was a year ahead. I was skipped a grades.
Speaker 1: So I kindergarten. I just went right. I went right
Speaker 1: in the first grade when I was five or some so. UM.
Speaker 1: So in my senior year they take you take the
Speaker 1: NSF I mean, uh whatever you call them, the the
Speaker 1: g r E s and there's a testing end too.
Speaker 1: They then they evaluate the g r S and some
Speaker 1: other factors. I don't know what they do, but they
Speaker 1: hand out, um, they hand out thirty NSF fellowships for
Speaker 1: grad school and six National Science Science Foundation and sixty
Speaker 1: At the time, there was sixty or so runners up.
Speaker 1: So this was in the math and the math part.
Speaker 1: So out of the thirty people got the Math NSF fellowships,
Speaker 1: two of them were in my class. And out of
Speaker 1: the sixty runners up, four of them in my class.
Speaker 1: So the six of the fifteen math majors were like,
Speaker 1: they were ridiculous. So I said, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, again, I was fine, I was I wasn't great.
Speaker 1: I was fine. But math people, when they there's just
Speaker 1: guys that are just some different level, they just you know,
Speaker 1: and uh, we had a couple of those, I mean
Speaker 1: they when I went on to prove a very important
Speaker 1: theory and he didn't prove it. He did the set
Speaker 1: up to the guy that proved it was the I
Speaker 1: think it was four days last theory. I'm the four
Speaker 1: color theory. One one of those one of those sort
Speaker 1: of stating I won't borrow anybody with this, but it
Speaker 1: was a four hundred year old problem. That he actually
Speaker 1: helps solve. So anyway, I was out of my league
Speaker 1: there and uh so, anyway, but you went to graduate school.
Speaker 1: There's a reason for that. So I go to Harvey
Speaker 1: Mud and I'm gonna graduating class of seventy people or
Speaker 1: seventy seven or whatever it was. And um, I decided,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm you know, these guys are too smart for me.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna go to law school. So I go
Speaker 1: down to Pomona to take the L s a T.
Speaker 1: I show up at Pomona. I have not read the materials.
Speaker 1: I haven't done anything. And I show up and they go,
Speaker 1: where's your idea? And I go, it's back at the
Speaker 1: dorm and they go, well, you need your idea? I go,
Speaker 1: why you know people cheat on this test? I go,
Speaker 1: what nobody's taking this asked in my class except for me?
Speaker 1: And they go, no, you can need your I d so,
Speaker 1: but we'll wait for you. So I'd go bicycle back
Speaker 1: up to my dorm room, come back and they're about
Speaker 1: three quarters of the way through the instructions, which I
Speaker 1: have never read. And you know, people are taking L
Speaker 1: s a T prep courses and they're all getting ready
Speaker 1: for you know, the day and I basically opened the
Speaker 1: thing and see it for the first time as I'm
Speaker 1: sitting there. So I took the test. I didn't actually okay,
Speaker 1: not great, but okay, six forty or something okay, And
Speaker 1: so I got into some schools, but not really anything
Speaker 1: that I wanted to do. And so I all my friends,
Speaker 1: meanwhile are getting these massive for the time fellowships to
Speaker 1: do grad school because they're geniuses. So I go, well, okay,
Speaker 1: everybody's getting all this money to go to grad school,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll do that. So, like here we are, basically
Speaker 1: the spring of seventy two, after everybody's done all their applications,
Speaker 1: I applied to a bunch of grad schools um and
Speaker 1: my only criteria for the grad schools is that there's
Speaker 1: no application fee. So I just applied to the which
Speaker 1: they had at the time. So I paid no application fee,
Speaker 1: and I applied to seven grad schools and got into
Speaker 1: a bunch of them, and they gave me. The biggest
Speaker 1: fellowship I got was Hawaii. I just basically I basically
Speaker 1: based my city. I based my decision on who they
Speaker 1: paid me the most. So I went to Hawaii. HA
Speaker 1: never been to Hawaii, and so I did that and
Speaker 1: then yeah, so that's what I did. So okay, and
Speaker 1: so you did that was one year? Well, I was
Speaker 1: supposed to be two years. But remember I went to
Speaker 1: a college full of geniuses. I tested out. I had
Speaker 1: nine graduate units. I tested out of everything. I mean,
Speaker 1: the people in Hawaii, God loved them. They have every
Speaker 1: The professors were really smart because a lot of old,
Speaker 1: really smart mathematicians retired there essentially. Um. But so I
Speaker 1: tested out of everything. I got my masters in a year. Um,
Speaker 1: and I took the l s C T again and
Speaker 1: I did really well and got into pretty much everywhere
Speaker 1: I wanted to go. So so you so you had
Speaker 1: never had an intention when you're going to White to
Speaker 1: actually practice in the math area. They were too smart.
Speaker 1: So you just said, I'll do this and I'll apply
Speaker 1: to law school. I got paid money. It was great.
Speaker 1: I got to earn some money, and I got to
Speaker 1: spend a year in Hawaii. It was kind of good. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you take the L s A T again and
Speaker 1: you ultimately decided to go to U C. L A.
Speaker 1: Y Um. Well, I wanted to go to Berkeley because
Speaker 1: my friend was in My best friend was in the
Speaker 1: physics department there. Uh, he was a year behind me.
Speaker 1: He had gotten while I was going to grad school.
Speaker 1: He when he got in the physics department at Berkeley.
Speaker 1: But I got wait listed, and so I actually had
Speaker 1: a I had a bunch of fun correspondence with the
Speaker 1: Berkeley admissions office. They waitlisted me, and I wrote them
Speaker 1: back and said, thank you very much for wait listening. Uh,
Speaker 1: could you let me know what's going on? And they didn't,
Speaker 1: and so then they finally rejected me, and I wrote
Speaker 1: back and said, well, I reject your rejection, and could
Speaker 1: you give me information on the dorms. I'll be showing
Speaker 1: up on such and such a day. And they wrote
Speaker 1: back and said, we can't give your innovation on the doors.
Speaker 1: You're not accepted dorms. And I go and then I
Speaker 1: write back something like I need a place to live
Speaker 1: while I'm going to school there, and they right back,
Speaker 1: You're not going to school here. And the funny thing
Speaker 1: was is a dean of admissions at Bolt Berkeley Law
Speaker 1: School was named Sarah Tomato. So so in my final letter,
Speaker 1: I took a Heinz catchup bottle, cut the little tomato
Speaker 1: out and said dear ms, and put the Tomato in
Speaker 1: there and wrote a one final letter. And you know,
Speaker 1: obviously I didn't go there, but I did get into
Speaker 1: U c l A and a bunch of other people places.
Speaker 1: So I went to u c l A. And that
Speaker 1: good experience. Going to law school bad experience. It's law school.
Speaker 1: You went to law school. Yeah, I mean, I had
Speaker 1: a similar experience at law school that, uh my college
Speaker 1: was so rigorous that law school. The other thing is,
Speaker 1: you know two things Richard Nixon said nothing. I want
Speaker 1: to quote Richard Nixon. The only thing you need to
Speaker 1: get through law school is a lead butt. And I'm convinced,
Speaker 1: if you're a smart person, you apply yourself, you could
Speaker 1: take the bar review course and never go to law
Speaker 1: school and pass the bar. Yeah. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the experiences probably helps, because I I didn't.
Speaker 1: I walked into law school in the first day, I
Speaker 1: looked around and saw the Polly sign majors from cal State.
Speaker 1: I went, finally, I'm smarter than somebody was in college.
Speaker 1: I wasn't, and I didn't really. The other thing that
Speaker 1: I did in law school was I hadn't I hadn't
Speaker 1: taken really a test in two or three years because
Speaker 1: in math, what they do is they just give you
Speaker 1: a theorem and they said, go home and prove this.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't sit there and study for a final.
Speaker 1: Either were able to do the you able to apply
Speaker 1: what you learned to uh proving the theorem, or you weren't.
Speaker 1: So I hadn't taken a test in at least two
Speaker 1: years and probably more like three years, and I just
Speaker 1: went finals. This was it was painful. So like my
Speaker 1: first year of law school, I didn't really I did
Speaker 1: okay and do great, and then about the first quarter
Speaker 1: my second year, I figured it out. I figured law
Speaker 1: school out, and then I just cruised the rest of
Speaker 1: the time. We got all a's from then on out. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you graduate from law school and your intention is
Speaker 1: to do what well again, uh, keeping it with my personality,
Speaker 1: my intention was not to work for the man. I
Speaker 1: mean not not No, that's not right, that's incorrect. I
Speaker 1: didn't to work for a big corp. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to work for a big corporate law firm. I had
Speaker 1: most people interned or summer clerk at you know, the
Speaker 1: big firms. My first year I clerk at the Department
Speaker 1: of Housing and Urban Development. My second year, UM, I
Speaker 1: did the State Energy Commission, which is where I started
Speaker 1: realizing how sort of bad the government is. I mean
Speaker 1: just bureaucratic, and it was regulatory stuff. I started getting
Speaker 1: my economic views from working at the State Energy Department. UM.
Speaker 1: So my third year I didn't really know what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do. I because everybody was interviewing with firms
Speaker 1: for jobs. I I decided I do some interviews. And
Speaker 1: I interviewed with a big firm. It might have been
Speaker 1: Greenberg Gluscre, which is four flow floors below was it
Speaker 1: might not have been, And so I did my one interview.
Speaker 1: I did a few, but I did this one and
Speaker 1: the guy says to me, Um, you know, he's going, well,
Speaker 1: what have you done that you know that extra curlercular
Speaker 1: activities that would help qualify you for career as a lawyer?
Speaker 1: And I go, well, I ran the speakers program at
Speaker 1: U c l A. I was on the pub board
Speaker 1: at the Daily Brune. I was the president of the
Speaker 1: Student Bar Association. I did you know, I did the
Speaker 1: fair amount of stuff and I was on the communications
Speaker 1: bought board, And they go, yeah, but more sort of
Speaker 1: intellectual scholarly stuff. Well, I did you know, I don't remember.
Speaker 1: I was telling him some more stuff. I knew exactly
Speaker 1: what was getting at, and he says, why aren't thinking
Speaker 1: more of something like law review? And I go, Honestly,
Speaker 1: those guys were the biggest dicks in the school and
Speaker 1: and I had really no interest in doing that. He guess, well,
Speaker 1: I was the editor of the U c l A
Speaker 1: nine six. I got, well, that's your problem then, isn't it.
Speaker 1: And then I you know, they didn't have email, but
Speaker 1: I they messengered the rejection to my house. So so
Speaker 1: I my career trying to be a big firm lawyer
Speaker 1: was not met with an initial round of success. So
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't
Speaker 1: really have a great idea. So I took the bar
Speaker 1: and sat around, and I said, no, there was a
Speaker 1: book that out set us how to start your own
Speaker 1: law firm. So I read the book, and I'll start
Speaker 1: my own law firm. So me and a classmate from
Speaker 1: u c l A started a little law firm and
Speaker 1: we started doing whatever walked in the door. I had
Speaker 1: p I did personal injury, I did h wills and trust,
Speaker 1: I did everything I did litigation, I did whatever came
Speaker 1: in and um, I did that, and I started realizing
Speaker 1: all the things that I didn't want to do, which
Speaker 1: is pretty much everything I was doing. And this is
Speaker 1: gonna sound really yeah, I don't care. I'm I'm old
Speaker 1: now anyway, But poor people tend to have not very
Speaker 1: interesting problems. I mean, you know, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: a dog bite case or you know something, and so
Speaker 1: the case, you know, I was taking whatever walked in
Speaker 1: the door, and it was somewhat not that interesting, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: but I am. I did a good job for everybody,
Speaker 1: so that wasn't that. I mean, I was a young lawyer,
Speaker 1: so I was learning stuff, but I didn't really love it.
Speaker 1: And then, uh, Howard King, my partner, um had gone
Speaker 1: to law school with me, that he was a year
Speaker 1: behind me, and he calls up one day and says,
Speaker 1: if you know somebody who wants a job being a
Speaker 1: music lawyer is going to be an opening on Friday.
Speaker 1: I hate this bitch that I'm working for. The bitch
Speaker 1: actually happened to be a friend of mine. She's I
Speaker 1: had gone to law school with her also, so I go, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: music law, that sounds a lot more fun than what
Speaker 1: I'm doing so I applied. It was at Manatt Phelps.
Speaker 1: He was at Manatt Phelps. I was on my own
Speaker 1: and I applied to Manatt Phelps and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: after a couple of months, they interviewed me and they
Speaker 1: may be an offer to go work in the music department.
Speaker 1: So that's how I ended up doing that. Okay, what
Speaker 1: was your experiencing that? It was good? I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: I was there for about ten years, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I started out working for Lee Phillips and servicing a
Speaker 1: lot of his clients, and he had great clients. It
Speaker 1: was all the people I wanted to work with. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was really exciting to me that I was going
Speaker 1: to go to a firm that represented Linda Ronstad and
Speaker 1: Neil Young and you know, and um Jackson Brown and
Speaker 1: the Eagles were not really so much the Eagles, but
Speaker 1: the label that they represented electro Psylum Records, so they
Speaker 1: had you know, the interface with you know what. Actually
Speaker 1: that wasn't the label that you know, I paid attention
Speaker 1: to labels. I loved a lot of their artists, and
Speaker 1: it was a super political firm to which I thought
Speaker 1: I was interested in a certain soon disabused of that notion,
Speaker 1: but because at the time was Manatt felt Rothenberg and
Speaker 1: Tuney and John Tunney had been his dad had been
Speaker 1: a big boxer and he had been a senator from
Speaker 1: the state of California. So it was very and Chuck
Speaker 1: man At had been the head of the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: that a few years before I got there, so it
Speaker 1: seemed very exciting to me, and it wasn't. It was great.
Speaker 1: I mean I had a good time. You know, they
Speaker 1: didn't pay me, but it was fun. So the next
Speaker 1: step was Hollywood Records. Yeah, well before you get there, though,
Speaker 1: you were you're like an incredible rainmaker. Okay, you have
Speaker 1: a relationship with all the clients. Did you learn that
Speaker 1: at Manatt Phelps? Well, no, I probably, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I learned it. Ever. I think it's just sort
Speaker 1: of an eight. But I mean I got clients and
Speaker 1: my little stupid law firm when I was just me
Speaker 1: and a friend. You know, it just they just were
Speaker 1: not you know they used to at Manat used ago
Speaker 1: this goofy guy. Why should we pay him? I mean,
Speaker 1: he's the only reason he gets clients because in the
Speaker 1: music business. And I want to know, if I were
Speaker 1: a corporate lawyer, I'd have clients because that's what I do.
Speaker 1: I mean, I figure out how to solve problems and
Speaker 1: succeed at what I do. But so I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, you just I'm gonna service business. I can
Speaker 1: service people. I mean, okay, when you opened up your
Speaker 1: you know, hung out your shingle, as they say, how
Speaker 1: did you get clients? Then you know, I just you know, invite.
Speaker 1: We had a party. You invited a bunch of people,
Speaker 1: and I let it know, you knowing that we were open,
Speaker 1: and you know, people would start referring their brothers and
Speaker 1: their fathers and stuff, and you know, I do whatever
Speaker 1: came in the door, and I was willing to learn
Speaker 1: whatever it was. It was actually fairly good training for
Speaker 1: being a music lawyer, because music musicians have all these
Speaker 1: problems and they think of you as their lawyer. So
Speaker 1: if they have a family law problem, they want, you know,
Speaker 1: they call you. They don't call a family they don't
Speaker 1: know anybody. Or they have a tax problem, they call you.
Speaker 1: And so it was very useful to me to have
Speaker 1: done all these different disciplines because I actually can sort
Speaker 1: of fake my way through pretty much anything. Right now,
Speaker 1: at least long enough to get up to somebody who
Speaker 1: really knows what they're talking about. Okay, So, now, in
Speaker 1: your ten years at Manette, where do you feel you
Speaker 1: are in the hierarchy of music lawyers. Well, it was
Speaker 1: really really kind of funny. Actually, um I remember was
Speaker 1: it then? And I think it was sort of the
Speaker 1: end of my tenure at Manette. Remember this big article
Speaker 1: on all the new hot young lawyers that they've done
Speaker 1: in one of the periodicals, And I'm looking at, you know,
Speaker 1: the new hot young lawyers. I'm going And the reason
Speaker 1: I wasn't in that because I wasn't a new hot
Speaker 1: young lawyer. I was an established lawyer. By that, they're
Speaker 1: all older than I am. They're all older and I
Speaker 1: won't mention any names, but going, well, she's older than
Speaker 1: I am, and he's older than I am. Why am
Speaker 1: I not hot? In New York? You're not a hot
Speaker 1: new lawyer because you're an established lawyer. So okay, And
Speaker 1: at the time, you were basically doing contracts. What kind
Speaker 1: of work were you doing about I mean basically yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what you do as a music lawyer.
Speaker 1: Back in the day, the practice was I mean largely
Speaker 1: not entirely, but doing record contracts, doing publishing contracts. You know,
Speaker 1: I actually, um, one of my heroes was David Geffen,
Speaker 1: and he was a client of the firm, and so
Speaker 1: when I'd been there maybe a year and a half,
Speaker 1: he started Geffen Records, and I went to Lee Phillips
Speaker 1: and said, I'd like to work on this. You know,
Speaker 1: I was second year lawyer, and I go, I want
Speaker 1: to work on this. And so one of the things
Speaker 1: I did from my first two or three years was
Speaker 1: just the paperwork for Gethin Records. I the agreement that
Speaker 1: formed record Gethin Records was written by me ages entirely
Speaker 1: by me. Um. You know, by the end of it,
Speaker 1: nobody was reading it. You know, I was more scrivener
Speaker 1: than a dealmaker. But they'd make the deal and I'd
Speaker 1: sort of translated and tell them, well, wait, you can't
Speaker 1: do this. You can't do this. He can do this,
Speaker 1: and so you know, so you know, it was that
Speaker 1: I did the you know, and and uh and then
Speaker 1: just a lot of record contracts, you know, touring contracts,
Speaker 1: whatever you do when you represent talent. Okay, and who
Speaker 1: were the main competitive lawyers or law firms at that
Speaker 1: time at the time. Well, it was always John Branca,
Speaker 1: Don Passman, Krugman Um. You know, I missed out on
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen as a client because he lived in the
Speaker 1: East Coast. I did the first management agreement for John Landau.
Speaker 1: Well at least that's what John told me. Maybe he's
Speaker 1: been we have management agree with him in Springsteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wrote the management agreement and John tells me that
Speaker 1: to this day it's it's a one page agreement or
Speaker 1: two page agreement. And I think to this day Bruce
Speaker 1: signs it every three years. Well, how did you know,
Speaker 1: how did that come together? How do you know John
Speaker 1: who lived on the East Coast. I think remember the
Speaker 1: bitch that I told you about, Debbie Reinberg, who was
Speaker 1: not She's really a nice person. She was number one
Speaker 1: in my class. She knew John for some reason because
Speaker 1: I think she was a big Bruce Springsteen fan and
Speaker 1: she you know, we we did the work for Electra
Speaker 1: Sylum Records, and we did the work for RSL Records,
Speaker 1: so we we represented a bunch of record executives, so
Speaker 1: there was some I don't remember how she knew John,
Speaker 1: but she ended up I ended up meeting John. I
Speaker 1: think through her Okay, she had gone in house at
Speaker 1: a lecture by then. I think, so was she today.
Speaker 1: I think she might be retired. I haven't talked to
Speaker 1: her in a while, but I think she might be retiring.
Speaker 1: So um, in any event, tell the story of how
Speaker 1: you end up getting the job at Hollywood Records. Okay,
Speaker 1: so um, somebody else show may name less and I
Speaker 1: will may name us because we're not friendly. Um, i'll
Speaker 1: tell you off the record. Um. But anyway, they were
Speaker 1: looking for somebody to start their record company and this
Speaker 1: guy was working in house there and he told Michael
Speaker 1: Eisner about me. So, um, this is the person you
Speaker 1: don't have a positive opinion of. Yeah, I mean you know,
Speaker 1: there were other people that told him to I think
Speaker 1: you'd heard. I think it was him and other people.
Speaker 1: So what happened was I was in New York, um
Speaker 1: with Chris black Blow because I represent a Delicious Vinyl
Speaker 1: and we were doing a deal with Island Records with
Speaker 1: Chris Blackwell, and I get a call from my you know,
Speaker 1: I called into my office. See anybody call in and
Speaker 1: she goes. Assistant goes, um, yeah, you got a call
Speaker 1: from Michael Eisener. I go, yeah, sure, I go, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: Michael eis was calling me. She goes, no, really, I
Speaker 1: go really because I didn't know Michael Eisener. So I
Speaker 1: called Michael Eiser back and he goes, uh, I've been
Speaker 1: hearing things about you. We're starting a record label. We'd
Speaker 1: like to talk to you about it. And I go, oh,
Speaker 1: to be the lawyer. He goes, yeah, or maybe to
Speaker 1: you know, run it. He said. So he said you
Speaker 1: want to meet and I go yeah, sure, and I
Speaker 1: go he goes, how about tomorrow. I go, I'm in
Speaker 1: New York. And when you're back tomorrow, it says how
Speaker 1: about the next day? And I go okay, fine, And
Speaker 1: so I met with him and UM, now you earlier
Speaker 1: say you're not good with the man, So how did
Speaker 1: that meeting go? Well, I told you I corrected that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that I wasn't good with the man. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm bad with authority. And the meeting went fine. I mean,
Speaker 1: michaeliss is a great guy. I mean he's very personable,
Speaker 1: he's super smart. Um, so the meeting went fine. And
Speaker 1: the really funny thing was we were walking out and
Speaker 1: I said, it was nice to meet you. As you know,
Speaker 1: you're obviously a legend and it was great meeting. I'm
Speaker 1: parked on the street. I don't like Valet, and he goes,
Speaker 1: neither do I. I'm parked on the street too. That's
Speaker 1: hysterical because I've had my car. You know, I had
Speaker 1: an accident in Valet parking. I do my best thought
Speaker 1: because you can't collect. I mean I did collect it.
Speaker 1: I was tenacious, but it's almost impossible. I just I'd
Speaker 1: rather not have to wait for my car. It's really
Speaker 1: as simple as that. So anyway, I met with him.
Speaker 1: Then he liked me, I guess. And he brought me
Speaker 1: in to meet Frank Wells, who was the president of
Speaker 1: the Disney Corporation, and uh, I guess Frank liked me.
Speaker 1: So they aren't being to meet Jeffrey and Jeffrey Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Katzenberg and um. Again, this is from my perspective. I
Speaker 1: don't know jeff him. I have a different perspective. But
Speaker 1: in between one of those meetings, I had a call
Speaker 1: from David Geffen. You know, I've been doing his legal work.
Speaker 1: He said, come over here. I know what's going on.
Speaker 1: You come over here right now. He wanted me to
Speaker 1: come meet with him. So I go to that point
Speaker 1: his office on Sunset Boulevard in the building. Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: So I drive over and we meet for two hours,
Speaker 1: and he tries to convince me. I had asked him
Speaker 1: about six months earlier, because he had been there have
Speaker 1: been talking of him reviving asylum records, and I had
Speaker 1: asked him if it would be, you know, if he'd
Speaker 1: considered me to run, And you go, no, you need
Speaker 1: to get some experience like business affairs, like I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that. So he calls me
Speaker 1: over and spends two hours trying to convince me not
Speaker 1: to take this job. And he basically says, you know
Speaker 1: why you shouldn't take this job. And you know why
Speaker 1: I'm successful because I do things where my chances with
Speaker 1: success are high and my chances of failure are low.
Speaker 1: Your chances are failure are high, and you shouldn't do this.
Speaker 1: So he tried to convince me to do it, and
Speaker 1: I didn't listen to him. It turns out he was right.
Speaker 1: Um so anyway, so then I met with Katzenberg, and
Speaker 1: but also you know, he just focusing. He did say,
Speaker 1: because tell you telling me the story before that you
Speaker 1: needed more seasoning in addition to the odds. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what he did. Okay, so he So do you think
Speaker 1: at this point you did need more seasoning or you
Speaker 1: just were in a bad situation. No, I don't think.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, as it turns out, I needed more seasoning,
Speaker 1: but I don't think running business affairs at a record
Speaker 1: label was the season and I need it, you know.
Speaker 1: And and Eisener later told me again it's all you know,
Speaker 1: he considered the source. But he said the reason Geffen
Speaker 1: was so uh so intent and not discouraginging. He didn't
Speaker 1: want you to leave as his lawyer, which I don't
Speaker 1: know how much. I believe he had grew him and
Speaker 1: he had other people, so um so. Anyway, so I
Speaker 1: disobeyed him. And uh again, some of this comes from Eisener,
Speaker 1: some of it comes from what I could see. But
Speaker 1: between him and Jeffrey, they spent four years trying to
Speaker 1: get me fired. Um No, I don't know. It's unfair.
Speaker 1: I didn't they uh As Eiser once said that bas
Speaker 1: I fired myself. I don't agree with him, but um
Speaker 1: you know, there's corporate politics at Disney, and and I
Speaker 1: didn't play that well with the strategic planning people and
Speaker 1: the finance people, and they didn't much like me because
Speaker 1: first time sort of anti authoritarian and I'm sort of
Speaker 1: not sober serious about this stuff. And and the thing
Speaker 1: that really really hated as I understand math, So you know,
Speaker 1: they would have most of the creative execs didn't understand
Speaker 1: what they did well. I understood really well. I'm good
Speaker 1: at math, so I would get in discussions with them
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't like how they went so and I
Speaker 1: was was it was an experience. Okay. So from the
Speaker 1: first meeting with Eisner, you talked about taking the top job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again nothing happened, and then he called me about
Speaker 1: a month or two later and said, look, we're still considering,
Speaker 1: you know, like, oh, that's fine. I got a day job.
Speaker 1: I know, I mean, you know, because I was conflicted
Speaker 1: about doing it, and especially given I didn't want to
Speaker 1: have geff and mad. I mean, Geffin had been a
Speaker 1: good friend for a year, so I didn't want him
Speaker 1: mad at me. So it was easier if nothing happened. Okay,
Speaker 1: So then how did you Ultimately, ultimately they decided they
Speaker 1: were going to move forward, and they asked me if
Speaker 1: I wanted to take the job, and then I said, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: what did Minatte say about your leaving? I mean, you know, man,
Speaker 1: that it was great. I left left behind my client base,
Speaker 1: which they took over, and I became a client of
Speaker 1: the firm. I used them for my internal legal work,
Speaker 1: so you know it was great for them. Okay. So
Speaker 1: the first thing you do when you open it was
Speaker 1: it already decided was going to be called Hollywood Records. No.
Speaker 1: I think they decided they had Hollywood films at the time,
Speaker 1: and they decided I don't remember. I think Michael or
Speaker 1: Frank or somebody picked the name. They thought it would
Speaker 1: be good to affiliate it with the film company, the
Speaker 1: studio they had. Um then we, of course there was
Speaker 1: already a Hollywood Records that have been in the fifties.
Speaker 1: We got in a big fight, paid the guy off.
Speaker 1: It was anyway, I didn't pay him much, but whatever
Speaker 1: it was. It's a guy named mole Lettle who was
Speaker 1: It turns out if you go look through your case books,
Speaker 1: he's a fair lititious guy. He would he you know,
Speaker 1: he bought up all those old fifties labels and would
Speaker 1: sue people. You know, it would that, you know, like
Speaker 1: a patentrol today yeah, or or like, um, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say, like all the copyright infringement lawyers that bring
Speaker 1: these stupid suits that they shouldn't win and they get
Speaker 1: lucky and win sometimes. Okay, so you got Hollywood's the
Speaker 1: first thing you did at Hollywood record This was funny.
Speaker 1: I remember walking in and I had I was in.
Speaker 1: There was nobody there. I just wanted I walked in
Speaker 1: and go. I guess I had to start a record company.
Speaker 1: I mean really, like I walked in. I was the
Speaker 1: only employee. So I was money and issue do they have?
Speaker 1: Budget was large? Money wasn't an issue, um you know,
Speaker 1: I mean whatever we lost was a pimple in the
Speaker 1: Disney You got enough money to hire or in Yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: no question about it. So, um, I realized, probably the
Speaker 1: first thing I have to do is have to find
Speaker 1: somebody to run the radio department, since back in the
Speaker 1: day the world really dependent on radio. Unless you know,
Speaker 1: well that's funny unless you signed sort of street hip hop,
Speaker 1: which I wanted to sign and did sign actually, which
Speaker 1: did not go over well with Disney people. When I
Speaker 1: got hired. They I did an interview where I said
Speaker 1: I wanted this higher signed hip hop and hard rock
Speaker 1: and so like. Somebuddy organized the campaign to basically send
Speaker 1: letters to Disney saying you've made a horrible mistake. He's
Speaker 1: going to ruin the company. And and I think they
Speaker 1: got three or five thousand letters and they were all
Speaker 1: the same. And you know, so who'd you hire? I
Speaker 1: hired Brendan Romano, Okay, who's still working today at Intersco
Speaker 1: at Interscope. She's great. And what had she done before that?
Speaker 1: She was at PolyGram? I think, I try to hire
Speaker 1: I try to hire Polly Anthony and I couldn't convince
Speaker 1: her to come, but she recommended Brenda Tomin to me.
Speaker 1: She was a number two person and wherever she was PolyGram,
Speaker 1: I think, And she's, you know, unbelievable, she's fabulous, she's okay.
Speaker 1: Who else did you? Oh? I mean that was my
Speaker 1: good hire. I hired a guy named Unfair Transition. I
Speaker 1: was thinking of my marketing guy that I hired that
Speaker 1: it was a mistake. I hired west Hine would run
Speaker 1: Enigma Records, so he'd actually run a label. It was
Speaker 1: an independent label. I hired him to sort of be
Speaker 1: my number two guy, and then hired and our people
Speaker 1: that probably could have done a better job at since
Speaker 1: basically they didn't sign anything that was any good. But yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: the marketing person I'm familiar with what was without mentioning
Speaker 1: his name, what was the problem there? Uh well, I
Speaker 1: mean it's the guy that we hired to replace him.
Speaker 1: When we hired somebody to replace him. He wasn't particularly creative,
Speaker 1: but the trains ran on time, so it was actually
Speaker 1: better having him than the creative guy that I hired
Speaker 1: first that basically just randomly spend money on, you know,
Speaker 1: crazy marketing ideas that we're very creative but not particularly
Speaker 1: economical or successful. Speaking of success, so the two things
Speaker 1: you're noted for in Hollywood Records. You made a deal
Speaker 1: for the Queen catalog and you signed you distributed Dave
Speaker 1: Clark five album which had been off the market. Let's
Speaker 1: start with the Queen albums. Actually it's kind of reverse.
Speaker 1: I didn't sign the Queen count What happened was I
Speaker 1: was that I was a lawyer I told you for
Speaker 1: the outside lawyer for Electure Records, and they were signed
Speaker 1: to Electra Records, and um they were I don't want
Speaker 1: to say dead dead would be an upgrade from where
Speaker 1: they were in America. They were in a really, really
Speaker 1: bad place in America. They were beyond washed up. And um,
Speaker 1: I was Bob Krass Now I ran an Electoral Records
Speaker 1: and said I got a thing. He had two albums
Speaker 1: left it that he was committed to do it a
Speaker 1: million dollars an album because I can't put these records out,
Speaker 1: I'll lose my ass. Get get rid of them. So
Speaker 1: basically I was My job as a lawyer was to
Speaker 1: negotiate with Jim Beach a release of Queen, And essentially
Speaker 1: he was Jim Beach. Jim Beach is the manager of Queen.
Speaker 1: She He was a lawyer at the time he became
Speaker 1: the manager. If he watched the movie, they referred him
Speaker 1: as Miami Miami Beach. So I, um, and I you know,
Speaker 1: I'd done all the Queen negotiations in the past, So
Speaker 1: I negotiated with him to basically give them. It was
Speaker 1: a licensed deal. They they were signed at E M
Speaker 1: I and the rest of the world, and they were
Speaker 1: licensed to North America to Electra Records. I think Geffin
Speaker 1: had tried to sign him. I don't know the history,
Speaker 1: but I think he had tried to sign them, and
Speaker 1: somehow they ended up on a Electura. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: when he was running a Sylum, I don't remember. Um,
Speaker 1: so I negotiated an exit with him where basically we
Speaker 1: got out of paying the money and he got his
Speaker 1: catalog back. So then a few years a little bit
Speaker 1: slower you talking about they Okay, they had a million
Speaker 1: dollar deal with Electra and then what was the next
Speaker 1: step in terms of them getting their catalog back. Well,
Speaker 1: it was a license, so I don't remember how much
Speaker 1: they had left on the catalog anyway, on the licensed deal,
Speaker 1: I just you know, it was thirty years ago. I
Speaker 1: don't remember, but there was something basically the idea was, here,
Speaker 1: we don't have to pay you two million dollars to
Speaker 1: give us too stiff records, and you can have back
Speaker 1: whatever we have of yours. So I got it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so um that happened. And then um, fast forward a
Speaker 1: few years and I'm running Hollywood Records and I show
Speaker 1: up in the door and look around. There's nobody around,
Speaker 1: and I send an email that Jim no one of
Speaker 1: my email facts to Jim Beach, and I said the
Speaker 1: beach um is Queen's still free for North America. And
Speaker 1: he writes back, yes, and I go, I'd like to
Speaker 1: sign him because I'm listening to the Queen records. They're
Speaker 1: making it the time when they're dead in America. They're great.
Speaker 1: The records are great, and those were hits in the
Speaker 1: rest of them were huge in the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: and they should have been. They were great. So so
Speaker 1: I go, there's something wrong here and this band is
Speaker 1: great and you know so I He says, yeah, they're available,
Speaker 1: and I go, great, I'd love to sign him. He goes,
Speaker 1: would you be interested in the catalog? I go yes.
Speaker 1: So basically I made a deal for It's really funny too.
Speaker 1: I made a deal for the Catalog and Queen and
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk about this. This is could
Speaker 1: put me in a bad light. But in any event,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of impediments like basically, uh, um,
Speaker 1: the night before, the night before I was going to
Speaker 1: sign them, Michael iSER called and said, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to tell this story. Um. In any event, we were
Speaker 1: so there was a spanner in the works just before
Speaker 1: you're going to sign Yes, But I convinced Michael first.
Speaker 1: The first thing was the catalog was it's not a
Speaker 1: secret now it was a ten million dollar purchase, which
Speaker 1: for then was a lot of money, and it was
Speaker 1: an outright purchase. No, it was a license. But I
Speaker 1: had an I built in. I was a good lawyer.
Speaker 1: I built in an option to buy it. Okay, exercise that. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I was gone by the time this
Speaker 1: came up. And I think there was renegotiations along the way,
Speaker 1: but the ultimate result is that Hollywood ended up with
Speaker 1: Catalog and certainly it was there for my lifetime. So
Speaker 1: um so yeah, So Frank said, we can't pay that
Speaker 1: kind of money for this thing. He said, I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you can't do it, but you're free to
Speaker 1: go talk to Michael about it. And I went to
Speaker 1: talk to Michael, and Michael just basic said all right,
Speaker 1: if something really want, it's on you, you gotta go
Speaker 1: sign it. Then the day before there was, as you said,
Speaker 1: a spanner in the works. Then he finally let me
Speaker 1: go ahead and do the deal. And uh, I remember
Speaker 1: we were going to the we A convention that that week,
Speaker 1: and you know you present at the convention because present distributor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we present. Uh it's funny Steve Burman, you know Steve Burman.
Speaker 1: Steve Burman was my weird Repp. He was twenty years old.
Speaker 1: So I've known Steve forever. Um, So you know, I'm
Speaker 1: still not sure whether they're gonna sign. Queen's gonna sign
Speaker 1: or not. There's been so many bumps in the road.
Speaker 1: And we have two presentations that we have presentation with
Speaker 1: Queen and presentation without. We have two separate presentations. Ten
Speaker 1: minutes before we're supposed to go on, I get a
Speaker 1: fact from Beats with the signatures of Queen on the deal,
Speaker 1: and then we went out and we started and started
Speaker 1: out with one vision or something like that, and I
Speaker 1: just played almost was gonna cry and mean, it was
Speaker 1: so happy. I was so because I love Queen and
Speaker 1: I just you know. So that's how we ended up
Speaker 1: with Queen in during your tenure was Wayne's World. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that the story about that, which there has been told
Speaker 1: a number of times completely wrong, and I think in
Speaker 1: the movie is pretty much wrong too. But what happened was, Um,
Speaker 1: remember I told you I wanted to sign hip hop bands, right,
Speaker 1: So I signed this kid named high Sea, And the
Speaker 1: day before the record was going to come out, somebody
Speaker 1: was playing in one of the office is one of
Speaker 1: the Disney Whites came by and heard you know, the
Speaker 1: lyrics were lyrics, I still remember. Uh. So anyway, so
Speaker 1: they went to iSER and they said, we can't put
Speaker 1: this out. So I made a deal with Mo Auston
Speaker 1: where he it went on on his label as a
Speaker 1: distribution deal, and he helped He helped me out. He
Speaker 1: was Moawson is one of the greats. And uh I
Speaker 1: remember sitting there with high c at one point talking
Speaker 1: to him and he had the lyrics, one of his
Speaker 1: lyrics like I like to fourteen year old girls and okay,
Speaker 1: and you told him what I said, Hey, Crawford, look
Speaker 1: here's in the line that uh here's the line. Look
Speaker 1: at this line. I know you say your own you're
Speaker 1: only thirteen years old, Honey, I don't need no idea
Speaker 1: from a Rolling Stone song straycout blues. That's a really
Speaker 1: clever way to say exactly what you just said. He goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it ain't street. I like to say, I fun
Speaker 1: thirteen year old girls. So so that one went over well, So, um,
Speaker 1: what happened was that on The Wayne's World? But wait, wait,
Speaker 1: so Mode put out the record? Did he put off
Speaker 1: the record of that lyric? Yeah? Mo didn't care Mo
Speaker 1: was about creative. He respected the creativity of his artist.
Speaker 1: He didn't censor anybody. Um, so Wayne's world. Um, so
Speaker 1: they send me the script, right, and I read the
Speaker 1: script and it's honestly terrible. And and I go to, uh,
Speaker 1: it was in the script. That scene was in the script,
Speaker 1: but it was script sucked. And so they and the
Speaker 1: same people were attached to it. Yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was all the same. This is not This was just
Speaker 1: months before it came out. And so they they said, um,
Speaker 1: we'd like to, um, you know, we'd like to put
Speaker 1: in the movie. I go, I'm fine, and let me
Speaker 1: talk to Beach. I don't you know. I told Beach sucks.
Speaker 1: But it's a movie. And you know, they'll give us
Speaker 1: a thing fee. And he goes, okay, fine, our master fee.
Speaker 1: And and so I said, okay, fine, they guy and
Speaker 1: we want to put it on the soundtrack album. I go,
Speaker 1: there's no way. I just I just paid ten million
Speaker 1: dollars two months ago for this thing. I'm not putting
Speaker 1: on your soundtrack album. That's not gonna happen. And they go, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take it out of the movie. Then I go, okay,
Speaker 1: you know what do you mean okay, okay, and my
Speaker 1: company's going this is a good marketing opportunity to go A.
Speaker 1: The movie sucks. B. I've worked in a studio long
Speaker 1: enough to know that it's in the script. It's not
Speaker 1: coming out. It's the thing people don't get is when
Speaker 1: you have leverage. I knew it wasn't coming out. So
Speaker 1: they just kept badgering me and kept threatening and taking
Speaker 1: and I just kept going, take it out. I don't care,
Speaker 1: and movies terrible and you know, and uh, you're not
Speaker 1: taking it out anyway. So what happened was more called
Speaker 1: up and most said, you know, really it would be
Speaker 1: really important. It's a favor to me if you would
Speaker 1: let me put this on my soundtrack album. And I went, welm,
Speaker 1: it's you and you're a great man, and sure you
Speaker 1: can do it, but you can't come out. Before you know,
Speaker 1: I'm doing a rerelease, a reissue of Classic Queen Too.
Speaker 1: No we didn't. We did Classic Queen two, and they
Speaker 1: should have been on Classic Queen Run Bohemian Rhapsody, but
Speaker 1: since we knew it was coming, I stripped it on
Speaker 1: the Classic Queen Too. And um, anyway, So so about
Speaker 1: three weeks before the movie opens. I go to see
Speaker 1: a screening of it, and I come back and I
Speaker 1: get on the phone and me like, I called my
Speaker 1: video guy and go, Stu, we gotta did a video
Speaker 1: done immediately this thing. He goes, what do you mean?
Speaker 1: It goes Swain's world. Un blately, he said, I thought
Speaker 1: you said it sucked. I went, the script suck. The
Speaker 1: movie is amazing. I go, I've learned something comedy is
Speaker 1: not in the script necessarily. So we did the We
Speaker 1: did the video. We got Penelfes fear Us, who directed
Speaker 1: the movie, to do the video. Obviously it did. It
Speaker 1: did fabulous. And Freddie had died not tour much earlier.
Speaker 1: He died the fall before the movie came out, and
Speaker 1: I think it was in February of that ninety and
Speaker 1: you knew he was going to die. I did not know.
Speaker 1: That was the story about Michael Eisner. I mean, I
Speaker 1: won't say who, but Michael Eiser had had a little
Speaker 1: bird telling him Freddie was going to die. He had
Speaker 1: aids and he was going to die, and that's why
Speaker 1: he didn't want me to sign him. And I said, well, Michael,
Speaker 1: there's two possibilities. I know he's ill. I mean, Freddie
Speaker 1: didn't hide that he was ill. I said, but I
Speaker 1: don't know why. You know what I said. So either
Speaker 1: he'll get better, in which case is the greatest front
Speaker 1: man that ever lived, then we'll go put him on
Speaker 1: tour it'll be great, or I'll die. And honestly, death
Speaker 1: sells records. So anyway, so we didn't know. And then
Speaker 1: they announced it like two days before they announced that
Speaker 1: he had AIDS and then he died two days later.
Speaker 1: And what I did is, I said, I'm gonna put um.
Speaker 1: We put out a single, these are the days of
Speaker 1: my lives, These days that there are our lives, which
Speaker 1: was on the record that I saw find them for
Speaker 1: It was it's a great record, and we did a
Speaker 1: really nice video. They did a video, and then Disney
Speaker 1: Animation did a video and we're gonna donate all the
Speaker 1: money from the single to the Magic Johnson Eates Foundation.
Speaker 1: So what happens was we see that we're in Waynes
Speaker 1: World thing and I said, well, we've got this record coming,
Speaker 1: Let's put Bohemian Rapsody on the B side. Wayne's World
Speaker 1: blows up. In five seconds, Bohemian rapidly flip flip the
Speaker 1: record over my single gets lost in the mix. We're
Speaker 1: selling just tons of bohemian rapsody singles, and I'm going
Speaker 1: eating all the money to charity while I'm losing my
Speaker 1: ass and the record business. So we at some point
Speaker 1: cut off the single and just put it on the
Speaker 1: album and put it all out. But we we raised
Speaker 1: about four hundred thousand dollars for the Magic Jobs and
Speaker 1: Aids Foundation, because a lot of times they say it's
Speaker 1: charity and there ends up being no money to give you.
Speaker 1: It was like three nine dollars or something like that. Okay,
Speaker 1: so while you were there, did the Queen deal pianout,
Speaker 1: pencil out as they would say? Yeah, I mean when
Speaker 1: I signed them, I mean, you know, we've done some
Speaker 1: projections and you know, look, let's be real. If there's
Speaker 1: been other labels willing to pend ten million dollars, I
Speaker 1: suspect they would have signed somewhere else. But as far
Speaker 1: as I could tell, when we first started putting it out,
Speaker 1: it looked like in about seven years we'd get our
Speaker 1: money back. Then Freddie died, which sells records, so it
Speaker 1: looked like in three years we get our money back.
Speaker 1: Then Wayne's World came out and we got our money
Speaker 1: back that week. Well what about okay, since we'll put
Speaker 1: it in the song on a soundtrack album? Did they
Speaker 1: buy the original? They buy booth? About both? I think
Speaker 1: his records sold two million copies, of Mind sold four
Speaker 1: million copies. Wow. What about Dave Clark. Dave was a
Speaker 1: friend of Freddie's and so that's how he got to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a friend of Freddie's and um he had
Speaker 1: done that play on in UM the West End with
Speaker 1: um famous English actor and Freddie had written some music
Speaker 1: for it. Whatever. He was friendly with with Freddie and
Speaker 1: so that's how I met him. And you know, he
Speaker 1: was incredibly precious about his out a lot. He probably
Speaker 1: waited way too long to let it come out. It
Speaker 1: took took two years to convince him to to um
Speaker 1: make a deal. And you know, there's there's a demographic
Speaker 1: sweet spot for that, and he might he might have
Speaker 1: missed it. Um. And by the time we made the deal,
Speaker 1: by the time it came out, I was gone and
Speaker 1: I was as big champion, you know. So he always
Speaker 1: told me that it was you know that it was
Speaker 1: basically basically if I had been there, it would have
Speaker 1: felt a lot better about how things but at this
Speaker 1: point the records are commercially unavailable. I don't know, yeah
Speaker 1: they are, and at this point Disney still loans Queen
Speaker 1: Galog definitely on the Queen coun okay. And during that interim,
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, there were really no successes. Um, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, high Sea sold you know, I
Speaker 1: mean we had moderate successes, Like high Sea sold three
Speaker 1: or four hundred thousand copies. The Party sold probably eight
Speaker 1: hundred thousand records total, so it was it wasn't completely barren.
Speaker 1: And then we had a huge hit with Sister Act
Speaker 1: soundtrack out, Yeah, you know, and there was Remember I
Speaker 1: made an allusion to the fact that I maybe didn't
Speaker 1: hire the best day in our people. Well, I didn't
Speaker 1: hire the best day in our people. The only stuff
Speaker 1: that sold on that label with stuff that I signed,
Speaker 1: which is scary when you're forty years old and you're
Speaker 1: running the n R Department, which I wasn't running. I
Speaker 1: just you know, I mean, the stuff that ultimately worked
Speaker 1: was this stuff, you know, the Queen stuff, which was
Speaker 1: me we signed, Um, we signed the Briant Such Orchestra,
Speaker 1: which didn't work at Disney, but blew up big time
Speaker 1: on because I was gone when they started putting it out.
Speaker 1: We signed Bush. You know, that didn't work until I
Speaker 1: was gone. Um, you know, so there was stuff there.
Speaker 1: It's just you know, Okay, at what point after you
Speaker 1: walk into the building do you realize this isn't gonna
Speaker 1: work out? Oh? I never thought it wasn't gonna work out.
Speaker 1: I thought no. I mean I actually I kind of
Speaker 1: sucked the first two years because I didn't really know
Speaker 1: what I was doing. But I learned a lot, and
Speaker 1: by the last couple of years, I think I was
Speaker 1: actually pretty good at the job. But I wasn't really
Speaker 1: particularly good at the Disney politics. I could have been.
Speaker 1: You know, It's not like I'm stupid, and you know,
Speaker 1: but I thought because Michael liked me and Frank like me,
Speaker 1: I didn't think I had a play ball with Larry
Speaker 1: Murphy or whoever. The head of Stress died shortly thereafter that.
Speaker 1: He died after I left, right after I left. And then, um,
Speaker 1: was there any advantage of being with Disney? What do
Speaker 1: you mean? It's a Disney's corporation? Now, you said they
Speaker 1: made a couple of videos for you. When you're working
Speaker 1: for that, could you leverage anything they had. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: could leverage they were so hot at the time. I
Speaker 1: could leverage their name, and you know, it was what
Speaker 1: I was selling because we didn't have a label that
Speaker 1: was doing much of anything. Um, they weren't particularly synergistic.
Speaker 1: I mean The Party, which was a band that I
Speaker 1: put together out of the Mickey Mouse Club, which actually
Speaker 1: had Britney Spears in it for about five seconds, and J. C. Chase,
Speaker 1: who ended up in one of those other bands in
Speaker 1: Center or something like that. I don't which one. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't really get the fact that I
Speaker 1: needed them to drive sales of this, you know band
Speaker 1: that was basically manufactured of the Mickey Mouse Club. Um,
Speaker 1: it actually did fairly you know, like I said, I
Speaker 1: did fairly well. But um, they didn't really help a
Speaker 1: whole lot. And it wasn't until about five years later
Speaker 1: when Clive Caldler used a Disney channel to break in
Speaker 1: Sync and Backstreet Boys in a huge way obviously that
Speaker 1: the Disney people went, oh, wow, you know, we can
Speaker 1: help break these backs because at the time I needed
Speaker 1: something like that because radio, I don't know, probably don't
Speaker 1: remember radio from their early nineties, but Hit Radio thought
Speaker 1: their audience was thirty five year old housewives, and so
Speaker 1: they there was I remember one time we had the
Speaker 1: party on. It was number one phones for three straight
Speaker 1: weeks at the station in Hawaii, and they called up
Speaker 1: Brenda Romano said, we're dropping this record. Just what do
Speaker 1: you mean you're dropping the record? These kids are clogging
Speaker 1: up our phone lines. I can't sell enough pimple cream
Speaker 1: to make it worth my while, so you know, and
Speaker 1: so we needed something like that to drive it, and
Speaker 1: it really wasn't particularly helpful. And you know, the film
Speaker 1: company was not particularly helpful, you know, it was. It's
Speaker 1: a big corporation. Every division is Therefore, you know, they
Speaker 1: get paid their bonus based on how their division it does.
Speaker 1: And if they're out trying to promote my records, they're
Speaker 1: not out promoting their TV show or their film. So
Speaker 1: you know, I get it. I'm not bitter about it
Speaker 1: or anything like that. What about the famous memo. There
Speaker 1: was a letter that you wrote I've leaved to Michael Eisner,
Speaker 1: and within a very short period of time it was
Speaker 1: leaked and everybody in the music business credit right. It
Speaker 1: was basically a seven page get off my back because
Speaker 1: I was tired of the strategic planning people, in the
Speaker 1: financial planning people where they come and say, we need
Speaker 1: to do a P and L on on this new artist,
Speaker 1: like I've done two artists. I don't need to do
Speaker 1: a piano if you want to know, a P and
Speaker 1: L L, because most artists fail. And I said, you know,
Speaker 1: so it was sort of that. And and I'm almost
Speaker 1: positive I know who leaked the memo because they're all
Speaker 1: I might have. Well, there were. I delivered the memo
Speaker 1: to Michael Izer, Frank Wells and this third person who
Speaker 1: was the CFO and UM, and then I was walking
Speaker 1: back to my office and I was reading it and
Speaker 1: there was a typo in the memo and I went
Speaker 1: back and fixed the typo. And the memo they got
Speaker 1: leaked had a typo in it, so it had to
Speaker 1: be one of those three copies that got leaked. And
Speaker 1: Frank had his copy with his notes on it, and
Speaker 1: Michael had his copy, So you figure it out. What
Speaker 1: was the backlash when it was leaked? UM, as somebody
Speaker 1: referred to it, it was a seven page suicide note,
Speaker 1: and you know, it blew over eventually. I mean, they
Speaker 1: were there were you know, look, I never got any
Speaker 1: good press while I was there. I mean it just
Speaker 1: got you know, I was bringing Satan to Disney, and
Speaker 1: you know it was they loved to pick on. I
Speaker 1: mean the queen signing go back and look it right,
Speaker 1: How stupid that was, and what an idiot he was
Speaker 1: signing this washed up gay guy, you know. And so
Speaker 1: it wasn't like it was funny Christmas. About a couple
Speaker 1: of years and there was an article in the New
Speaker 1: York Times and basically talking about what a complete disaster
Speaker 1: it was and what a complete city. And I was.
Speaker 1: My sister calls me up and says, did you read
Speaker 1: this New York Times article? And yeah, I read it,
Speaker 1: and she goes, it's horrible. I can't believe they're doing
Speaker 1: this too. You and I go, really should rate it again.
Speaker 1: It was like water off a duck's back at that point.
Speaker 1: So how did it finally end? Um? It finally ended
Speaker 1: that Um, you know, they decided they were going to
Speaker 1: go in a different directions, So I mean, literally, okay
Speaker 1: to keep going yet Well, he just called me in
Speaker 1: his office and you know, basically said we decided we're
Speaker 1: gonna make a change. And I go, is there anything
Speaker 1: I can do to talk about it? He said, no,
Speaker 1: and I went, okay. And at that point, okay, when
Speaker 1: you walked in the office, do you knew that was
Speaker 1: gonna happen? No? And do you have any time left
Speaker 1: on your contract? No? So it was literally kind of
Speaker 1: like the end of the contractor we were like, you know,
Speaker 1: I technically didn't get fired. I technically they just didn't
Speaker 1: pick up my option. Okay, so you walk out the door.
Speaker 1: You're done that day. Well, I mean, you know, he
Speaker 1: said I could keep an office there, and he, you know,
Speaker 1: he's from the film business, so he said, maybe we
Speaker 1: could put up a production company on the lot. I go,
Speaker 1: that's not what we do in the music business. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, but you know, this is actually a story
Speaker 1: that I actually use a lot. So it was on
Speaker 1: a Wednesday or Thursday or something like that, and I said,
Speaker 1: could we just keep a lid on this thing until
Speaker 1: the weekend? And he said, sure, I won't tell anybody,
Speaker 1: And you know, I said great. And so the next morning,
Speaker 1: my general manager is wandering the halls because you'd get
Speaker 1: it at six in the morning or seven in the mornings,
Speaker 1: like ridiculous Jeffrey Katzenberg hours, and and he runs into
Speaker 1: some strap planning kid. You know some kid it was
Speaker 1: like in this six years old in the strat Planning division.
Speaker 1: And he says, you know, patern has been fired. And
Speaker 1: and so I get there on Brad says to me,
Speaker 1: you know they told me you're fired. To go what's
Speaker 1: that about? I go, I don't know it's I go
Speaker 1: to see Eisner. I go, I thought we're gonna sort
Speaker 1: of give me a couple of days on this thing.
Speaker 1: He goes, he said, I had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1: He goes, uh, let me, let me find out what's
Speaker 1: kid's name? I got. I don't all. I call Brad.
Speaker 1: He goes, you know, so Is Star calls up this
Speaker 1: kid and he said, so I heard you tell Brad
Speaker 1: Hunt that you know that we're firing paternal And he goes, oh,
Speaker 1: no, no no, I didn't do that, and he goes, okay.
Speaker 1: He calls Brad Hunt and talks to Brad Hunting and
Speaker 1: he gets off the phone and he says, to me,
Speaker 1: that kids lying. He calls the kid back and said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I don't know who you are, what
Speaker 1: you do, or what where you come from. But he said,
Speaker 1: let me tell you something. I don't think it's really
Speaker 1: wise to the wide to the CEO of your company,
Speaker 1: and he hung up on him. Okay, and you didn't
Speaker 1: want people to know for the weekend. Why you wanted
Speaker 1: to tell your staff yourself. Yeah, I just wanted to,
Speaker 1: you know, keep it under wraps for a while. Okay,
Speaker 1: So then your knned After that weekend, You're done. What's
Speaker 1: your emotional state? Not good? It's not fun getting fired,
Speaker 1: iSER said to me. We all get fired at some point.
Speaker 1: It's it's a it's a building block towards a successful career.
Speaker 1: Because I've been fired, that's great. I don't like it.
Speaker 1: So how long to take you to pick your feet
Speaker 1: up from pick yourself up? Um? Well, I mean it
Speaker 1: wasn't immediate. Um I tried to find a job for
Speaker 1: a while. You know, I sit there and go, okay,
Speaker 1: it's in. It's in the nineties. There's a convergence between film,
Speaker 1: TV and music. I've obviously got music nailed film and
Speaker 1: I mean film technology and music, and I go, I've
Speaker 1: worked at a studio for four years. I kind of
Speaker 1: know my way around the studio, which I did learn.
Speaker 1: And technology well, my background I used to write software,
Speaker 1: so I got that down. So I should be very hirable.
Speaker 1: So I went to some of the placement firms whatever
Speaker 1: they call like corn Furry and stuff like that. These
Speaker 1: things you learn when you're unemployed, Like, first of all,
Speaker 1: they don't really want to place you. They want to
Speaker 1: get paid for finding you. So they were pretty useless
Speaker 1: because again, I look like a good candidate, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean again, it didn't seem to me that it
Speaker 1: would be impossible to find a job. The other thing
Speaker 1: I learned is there's probably ten people in hand out
Speaker 1: the job that I wanted, and if you don't have
Speaker 1: a good relationship with not to say you have a
Speaker 1: bad relationship, but you know, it's it's somewhat a meritocracy,
Speaker 1: but it's not a complete meritocracy. It's a meritocracy based
Speaker 1: on relationships. So if you don't have the relationships, you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't gonna happen. And the guys that I knew
Speaker 1: that handed out these jobs were Geffen who was mad
Speaker 1: at me, Eisner who just fired me, and you know
Speaker 1: whatever else. So that didn't work. So I kind of
Speaker 1: sat around and and try to figure out what I
Speaker 1: was gonna do next. And then sot of my old
Speaker 1: clients started calling me and saying, could you help out
Speaker 1: as a lawyer. The last thing I wanted to do
Speaker 1: is be a lawyer again, but it was I had
Speaker 1: to just kind of crawl back to being a lawyer
Speaker 1: because it's really all that I was in demand for.
Speaker 1: So how long after you got cam by Eisener were
Speaker 1: you really back in the swing of being a lawyer?
Speaker 1: Probably about six months in Metallica asked me to help
Speaker 1: them get out of there their deal with Electra, so
Speaker 1: that I started working on that, and then I started
Speaker 1: working on some other stuff, and and after about a
Speaker 1: year my current partner said, why are you working out
Speaker 1: of your house? Why don't you come in here and
Speaker 1: we'll give you an office. We don't have to have
Speaker 1: any commitments. And so I came in here and got
Speaker 1: an office and just started People started calling, Okay, what
Speaker 1: was the name of the lawyer who ended up running
Speaker 1: Polydor Polygraham? David Broun, David Broun. Okay, everybody whoever was
Speaker 1: a lawyer who went inside, when they came out and
Speaker 1: tried to practice law dead in the water, failed miserably. Hey,
Speaker 1: were you aware of that? Be? Why why did you
Speaker 1: break that mold? I was very aware of it and
Speaker 1: be I mean, I don't know why I broke them all.
Speaker 1: The reason I went back to the lawyers, I couldn't
Speaker 1: get a job, and you know, like I'm not independently wealthy,
Speaker 1: so I needed to get a job. And it was
Speaker 1: the job that people seem to be willing to hire
Speaker 1: me for. And you know, it's funny. I went back
Speaker 1: to Minat and said, I remember, I go, maybe I
Speaker 1: could come back here and at least you can give
Speaker 1: me work, and they go, well, what are you looking for?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, look all my old clients that
Speaker 1: I left behind, I won't you know, I won't make
Speaker 1: any claim on any of them, except for Metallica because
Speaker 1: I'm already doing work for them. So like, say ten
Speaker 1: percent of what Metallica is generating or five percent some
Speaker 1: low number. And then I said, like, I'd like a
Speaker 1: third of any new business that I bring in, and
Speaker 1: you can pay me on my hours. And they go, well,
Speaker 1: third in new business. If you have two million dollars
Speaker 1: of business, we don't have to pay seven under thousand
Speaker 1: of dollars. That's not how it works here. And I go,
Speaker 1: it's two million dollars of business. You don't have I'm
Speaker 1: not asking for the old stuff, and they go, well, um,
Speaker 1: that's not what we do here, but we'd like you back,
Speaker 1: but we'd like to pay you. Like it was ridiculous,
Speaker 1: whatever it was. So I just didn't do that, and
Speaker 1: I went like, I talked to some other firms, but again,
Speaker 1: the law firm business, it's like, we'll pay you for
Speaker 1: what you kill. And if I'm gonna get paid for
Speaker 1: what I kill, I might as well keep it myself.
Speaker 1: So I started I started back here at this with
Speaker 1: my friends, and people just started calling. I mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't approach anybody really, And the old clients that you
Speaker 1: left behind him at what percentage of them aimed to you? Now?
Speaker 1: A large percentage, a really large percentage. And why do
Speaker 1: you think that was? I think they were happy with
Speaker 1: the work I've done for them, and you know that,
Speaker 1: I don't think they felt like they it's gonna fit
Speaker 1: at the time. Okay, So at what point did you
Speaker 1: and Howard and Holmes ultimately decide, well, you're gonna throw
Speaker 1: in together. Well, I just started generating a lot of
Speaker 1: work and so I needed, you know, it seemed like
Speaker 1: a much better idea to have people that help, you know,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of just evolved. I think they wanted
Speaker 1: me to do it, and they just were trying to
Speaker 1: be nice to me to give me the space to
Speaker 1: figure out that I wasn't I wasn't going to get
Speaker 1: a job. And once when you were back into it,
Speaker 1: did you make peace with being a lawyer as opposed
Speaker 1: to a business executive? Yeah? Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm It's something I'm good at, so I'm gonna as
Speaker 1: well deal with it. Well, at this late age, you
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, any regrets you didn't do something else.
Speaker 1: I think we all have regrets, but you know I
Speaker 1: did okay, So okay, so now you come back in Okay,
Speaker 1: let let's jump forward and then jump back. What is
Speaker 1: the difference practicing law now as opposed to before when
Speaker 1: you were before you went to Hollywood Records? You mean
Speaker 1: now or when I just got back in now? Now
Speaker 1: it's super different. I mean when I got back into
Speaker 1: the nineties, it was pretty similar. I mean the business
Speaker 1: is just I mean, look a lot of what I
Speaker 1: don't do much in the I don't do a lot
Speaker 1: of record deals anymore, which is the basis of the
Speaker 1: practice before. The whole marketing aspect of the music. The
Speaker 1: record business has change, has changed. I mean basically when
Speaker 1: I was involved, you know, even when I was at
Speaker 1: a record company, they talk about marketing and they talk
Speaker 1: about all this bunch crap. I mean, basically, everything you
Speaker 1: did was to drive something either to radio or MTV.
Speaker 1: And that was what marketing was, is to get MTVS
Speaker 1: attention or radio's attention. Um, and so the path was
Speaker 1: pretty clear. There were a bunch of gatekeepers, and you
Speaker 1: wanted to figure out how to get it to the
Speaker 1: gatekeepers and get it through the gate Now, I don't
Speaker 1: know what the hell you do. Everything breaks that viral
Speaker 1: a I don't know the good news. I guess you
Speaker 1: can bribe pray lists, except Spotify won't let you bribe them.
Speaker 1: And it's it seems a whole lot more difficult to
Speaker 1: break an artist now, and it's just or not even
Speaker 1: so much to break it is to sustain a career. Okay,
Speaker 1: but uh so since before now we talked in another
Speaker 1: time about what's your viewpoint on the music today? The
Speaker 1: music will see in the Spotify Top fifty. The stuff
Speaker 1: that labels are signing, I mean labels are signing, what
Speaker 1: drives revenue? What drives revenue is the stuff that gets
Speaker 1: played over and over and over again. And what gets
Speaker 1: played over and over again what thirteen and fourteen year
Speaker 1: olds like because they'll play something a hundred times a day.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you or I buy a record, we might
Speaker 1: listen to it, you know, but we have jobs and
Speaker 1: we have other things to do. Kids listen to consume music,
Speaker 1: so whatever the you know, whatever they and their friends
Speaker 1: are consuming is what gets you know, in the way
Speaker 1: Spotify works is they you get paid based on the
Speaker 1: number of places that you get for your particular track
Speaker 1: compared to the overall number of plays. So essentially thirteen
Speaker 1: or fourteen year olds or fifteen year olds or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, are are sort of driving what gets picked
Speaker 1: up by major labels because that's what but by the
Speaker 1: same token, in terms of the overall music business, the
Speaker 1: streams and the labels are a smaller percentage than ever
Speaker 1: in our history, I'm sorry, as well as a percentage
Speaker 1: of the overall revenue is uh streams and major signings.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of your acts, you put out the records.
Speaker 1: Metallica puts off the records centraally themselves. They own the record,
Speaker 1: They find a deal so, but they're generating a shipload
Speaker 1: of money there, you know. Yes, Yeah, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the other clients are like that too, Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: a lot of That's a lot of what I do.
Speaker 1: I'll do a lot of deals with Live Nation, whereas
Speaker 1: I used to do a lot of deals with the
Speaker 1: record companies. I do a lot of deals with around
Speaker 1: Live Nation, a real lot or a g And are
Speaker 1: those deals tend to be overall deals? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there's a number. I mean I do a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, like Live Nation buys a lot of management companies,
Speaker 1: so I represent managers that are selling the Live Nation
Speaker 1: and you know, there's like a Coachella deal for Dr
Speaker 1: Dre for instance, I'll do that deal, or a national
Speaker 1: tour deal for one of my clients. We get very
Speaker 1: involved in that, whereas that was just the province of
Speaker 1: agents before. And how did you get Drey as a client? Um? Uh,
Speaker 1: the general manager of Interscope Records, David Cohen Um was
Speaker 1: dealing with whoever his lawyer was at the time, and uh,
Speaker 1: it was being very difficult and they couldn't get anything done.
Speaker 1: And and Jimmy obviously has a great relationship with Dr
Speaker 1: Dre and Cohen went to Jimmy and said, look, there's
Speaker 1: my friend that just started back into practice again. And
Speaker 1: m you know, I think he's he's more of a
Speaker 1: problem solving a problem creator. Maybe we should see if
Speaker 1: Drey wants to meet with him. So they set up
Speaker 1: a meeting for me with Dre, and I met with
Speaker 1: Dre and and he hired me. At the time, I mean,
Speaker 1: Drey wasn't Dre. It was it was his Queen period,
Speaker 1: it was his fellow period. Um, you know, but I
Speaker 1: thought I think I had a I mean I was
Speaker 1: always a fan, so that was you know, I just
Speaker 1: thought he was enormously, enormously talented and we'd figure something
Speaker 1: out for three or four years. It was just it
Speaker 1: was it was tough. Okay. So in terms of payment
Speaker 1: or all your clients on a percentage deal, No, most
Speaker 1: of my clients are hourly, and uh, if it is
Speaker 1: a percentage deal, was a traditional five lawyer house. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what would how do you decide if a client
Speaker 1: is a percentage deal or an hourly deal. I let
Speaker 1: them decide. I don't decide into some book up a
Speaker 1: lot of hours then say hey, I'll be in a
Speaker 1: percentage We don't like doing that. I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: one thing that I'd have a problem with this year,
Speaker 1: the percentage or an hourly client. I don't want to
Speaker 1: sit there and have you on a percentage where you're
Speaker 1: making no money and then when you start making money
Speaker 1: you want to go to hourly. That's not right. And
Speaker 1: so if I'm on a percentage deal, will you take
Speaker 1: care of all my legal business or just my my
Speaker 1: music business, like wills and trust, you know, and things
Speaker 1: like that. We don't do wills here, so we've heard
Speaker 1: that out. We do anything that's kind of I mean,
Speaker 1: if it's litigation, we charge on top for that, um
Speaker 1: because we're one of the few entertainment firms that have litigators.
Speaker 1: But we'll do any kind of contractual stuff, any kind
Speaker 1: of corporate stuff. So if it's a live Nation deal,
Speaker 1: we'll do that. It's a publishing deal with that record deal,
Speaker 1: will do that. It's a corporate formation or a joint venture,
Speaker 1: will do that. And that's all part of the five percent. Okay,
Speaker 1: So tell me. Because your firm was involved in the uh,
Speaker 1: the famous hit case that went through a whole thing,
Speaker 1: and now we have the stairway case. Uh the borderlines right,
Speaker 1: So what's your viewput on all that? Don't get me started.
Speaker 1: The court system is just not set up to understand music.
Speaker 1: They suck at it. I I about six months ago
Speaker 1: was a reception with Justice Kagan from the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, well a little bit. So how
Speaker 1: did that come together? Um, I do a lot of
Speaker 1: work at u C Law School, and she was there
Speaker 1: for a reception and the so they invited me. I
Speaker 1: work with Kenny's Different at the Different Center, and us
Speaker 1: and me and about ten other people are twelve other people,
Speaker 1: and so I just said, could you please leave the
Speaker 1: music cases alone? You get you get them wrong every
Speaker 1: single time. I mean not every time, but at least
Speaker 1: half the time. Because the judges can read books, they
Speaker 1: get the bookcases right. They get the script cases, all
Speaker 1: the script copyright cases, they get those right. They throw
Speaker 1: them out because they generally deserve to be thrown out.
Speaker 1: They can't read music. They don't understand it. The blurredlines case,
Speaker 1: there are no notes the same between that and the
Speaker 1: Marvin Gay tune. There are no chords the same, there
Speaker 1: are no lyrics the same. There's nothing in the same
Speaker 1: except they sound the same. And that's not a copyright infringement.
Speaker 1: You know, I tell you that the Stairway to Heaven case,
Speaker 1: it's probably more has more in common with the Spirit
Speaker 1: song then Marvin Gay and Blurred Lines, and I think
Speaker 1: that the Stairway to Heaven case, it looks like they're
Speaker 1: gonna just you know, get rid of that. So it's
Speaker 1: in this Katie Perry case, another disaster. It's like they say, well,
Speaker 1: there's an eight Austinado that's the same between the two songs.
Speaker 1: Once you say it's an ostinato, you're talking about a
Speaker 1: common figure in music. You can infringe in ostinato. It's
Speaker 1: a repeating a bunch of notes. It's ridiculous. And they
Speaker 1: let these go to a jury and they don't stop
Speaker 1: them on a summary judgment. It's it's pathetic. Okay, So
Speaker 1: what's did at this point in time on the Blurred
Speaker 1: Lines case? Did they pay the judgment or is there
Speaker 1: anything left? It's we're done, we're you know, we we
Speaker 1: asked for a non bunkering they granted and they led
Speaker 1: Zeppelin case. They didn't grant it to us. We're done,
Speaker 1: and the Supreme Court is not going to take the case.
Speaker 1: If they'd screw it up anyway. So so they paid
Speaker 1: the money or you're negotiating with no, no, we've we
Speaker 1: you mean the defendants we paid, Okay, And so what
Speaker 1: do you think should be the law in terms of
Speaker 1: copyright infringement. The law is fine, they just don't know
Speaker 1: how to implement it. I mean, the law is fine.
Speaker 1: You look at the law, these cases you know they
Speaker 1: shouldn't not. There's I don't want to get too deep
Speaker 1: into this, but there's something called the extrinsic tests and
Speaker 1: the intrinsic tests, and the extrinsic tests where they have
Speaker 1: music colleges do gang wars and try to, you know,
Speaker 1: say whether it's an infringement or not extrinsically. And and
Speaker 1: if if they decide that, um, if they decide that
Speaker 1: there's a substantial similarity in strinsically, they sent it to
Speaker 1: a jury to decide whether intrinsically there's substantial similarity. I'm
Speaker 1: just I don't know to tell you other than you
Speaker 1: could sit there and look at the music and these
Speaker 1: cases should mostly be thrown out. Okay. So your prediction
Speaker 1: is uh that the spirit estate will not win the
Speaker 1: Steerway to Heaven case. But you're I'm not holding you,
Speaker 1: but it does look like it, okay. So let me
Speaker 1: just say in the in the Blurred Lions case when
Speaker 1: it went up on appeal, there was a descent in
Speaker 1: the Blurred Lince case that was completely a h percent right.
Speaker 1: You want to know if the law should be or
Speaker 1: the law is? Is what the descent said. How many
Speaker 1: judges were in that there's one dissenting to in the majority.
Speaker 1: The two in the majority uh upheld the trial court
Speaker 1: on procedural grounds that they didn't they didn't opine as
Speaker 1: to the merits of the case. She opined. The judge
Speaker 1: win applied pine is to the merits of the case
Speaker 1: and got it completely right. So if you want to
Speaker 1: know what that's what the law is. And I think
Speaker 1: I think she was the presiding judge in the m
Speaker 1: Bank appeal and that led Zeppelin case. So my prediction
Speaker 1: is that what she wrote in the Blurred Line case
Speaker 1: is going to become law of the circuit, which is
Speaker 1: what it should be, okay? And where will that leave
Speaker 1: copyright infringement? Because the Blurred Lines made everybody anxious. Do
Speaker 1: you think this will move it towards more liberalism or
Speaker 1: to be a crackdown. What do you think. I think
Speaker 1: it's gonna be. People will be free to create and
Speaker 1: have to worry about everything they write and generating infringement
Speaker 1: suit an infringement suit. I mean, it's just really, I mean,
Speaker 1: every time somebody and I represent has a hit, some
Speaker 1: idiot sends an email saying, I have a song on
Speaker 1: the internet. You must have heard because we have people
Speaker 1: that saw it on YouTube, and therefore you stole my song.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's every single So certainly the
Speaker 1: Cathy Perry Katie because you have to prove access. This
Speaker 1: guy had some you know, Christians who would have heard it.
Speaker 1: While she was Christian at one point, so she might
Speaker 1: have heard. I mean, it's just it's just ridiculous. And
Speaker 1: the jury in the Blurredlines case nobody could read music. None,
Speaker 1: not one of the jurors can read music. It's just stupid. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if we look forward, what do we see in
Speaker 1: the music business, what do you mean in terms of Okay,
Speaker 1: let me go with differently you when it comes to
Speaker 1: anti trust law. I'll let you answer. Your viewpoint is
Speaker 1: there is virtually no anti trust anywhere. Okay. The only
Speaker 1: anti trust that this is gonna get me a lot
Speaker 1: of trouble. But the only anti trust that exists is
Speaker 1: when it's government supported and I trust like a T
Speaker 1: and T in the past or something like that. So
Speaker 1: in terms of company mergers, you're that you're totally cool
Speaker 1: with that, completely okay. So to talk about recently T
Speaker 1: Mobile and and T Mobile Sprint, totally fine. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: if there were further consolidation three labels to two, would
Speaker 1: that be fine? Yeah? Okay, So because you feel eventually
Speaker 1: there's a third party that will come. What do you
Speaker 1: think about Facebook and Snapchat and all that anybody have
Speaker 1: a problem with them? I mean seriously, you know they
Speaker 1: recently Snapchat has been logging the ways that face forget
Speaker 1: the government, Snapchat has been logging the way that Facebook
Speaker 1: has been anti competitive in their eyes, allowing may not
Speaker 1: allowing them to have any content on Instagram that is
Speaker 1: Snapchat oriented, uh, having a special program such that they
Speaker 1: could see what was going on in Snapchat. I mean
Speaker 1: there's some legal issues there also, you know, as opposed
Speaker 1: to just raw anti trust, but some of them in
Speaker 1: the privacy stuff and that you know, data, you know,
Speaker 1: snatching stuff, that's a different story. I mean that's that's
Speaker 1: its own it's its own problem, you know. I mean again,
Speaker 1: I don't have an opinion about that. Okay, let's go
Speaker 1: back to Metallica. Walk us through Metallica Napster. What you
Speaker 1: thought and what you think now and whatever. I don't
Speaker 1: think any differently than I thought then. I thought Napster
Speaker 1: was a massive bootlegging uh scheme, and and you know,
Speaker 1: everybody goes, well, you should have settled with Napster. Really,
Speaker 1: how are we supposed to settle They're charging nothing, They've
Speaker 1: got twenty five million followers. In order to get any
Speaker 1: decent income, we'd have to charge ten dollars a month,
Speaker 1: and we charged ten dollars a month, and you're still
Speaker 1: half the size of the business you work two years before,
Speaker 1: and somebody starts Crapster the next day, and it's another
Speaker 1: free service out there, another free file sharing service. So
Speaker 1: it was I never had a problem with it. I
Speaker 1: only felt bad for Laws and James because they took
Speaker 1: so much abuse. But in terms of like, do I
Speaker 1: think that that it was wrong to sue Napster? No,
Speaker 1: I'll never believe that. And everybody who thinks differently just
Speaker 1: wasn't there. Well, I certainly believe that Napster was copyright
Speaker 1: infringement on a massive scale, and I thought that the
Speaker 1: lawsuits and the parties proved that, although I was under
Speaker 1: the illusion there would be some kind of step forward,
Speaker 1: some kind of licensing deal after that decision was made. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean again, I don't know. I don't know how
Speaker 1: you make a deal because it's so easy to just
Speaker 1: replicate what they're doing someplace else. So until you have
Speaker 1: the framework that it's clearly massive coyper and infringement and
Speaker 1: it's easy to shut down, there's no incentive to make
Speaker 1: a deal. Okay, but there were you know, the revenue
Speaker 1: from recorded music was going ultimately went down by a
Speaker 1: little bit more than half. What could the record companies?
Speaker 1: What could the industry have done? Because they proved their
Speaker 1: point legally, but substantially substitutively, it was a loss for
Speaker 1: there for at least a decade. Yeah, but what was
Speaker 1: the alternative? I mean, they you know, remember they tried
Speaker 1: to start downloading services fair player, press player or whatever
Speaker 1: they were called press player. I think they're not good
Speaker 1: at that. They needed Apple to come in and solve
Speaker 1: their problems. I mean, they needed somebody to devise a
Speaker 1: system that people could use economically and and easily. And
Speaker 1: there was no deal. I mean may because there was
Speaker 1: no system in place that could could replace what these
Speaker 1: people were doing. But in addition to dragging their feet,
Speaker 1: they were actively whole putting, putting their heels in the
Speaker 1: past and not jumping into the future. That but naps
Speaker 1: there was never the future. I mean whatever I'm talking
Speaker 1: about it forgetting Napster nas Napster's done. And then there
Speaker 1: were other companies as hard to get a license because
Speaker 1: then it became okay, we don't know what your business is.
Speaker 1: And I mean this gets very complicated. I don't want
Speaker 1: to go that far into it. But they were reluctant
Speaker 1: to make deals that might have been beneficial to them,
Speaker 1: or they were reluctant to give away there there assets
Speaker 1: for some startup company that's gonna make a lot of
Speaker 1: money on the back of the music. As I say,
Speaker 1: I think that the truth. I think they I think
Speaker 1: that's true conceptually and the other there. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just like people every you know, certainly once a week
Speaker 1: somebody emails me. At this late date, I have a
Speaker 1: way to save the music business, you know, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't respond anyway. But it's like, even if you
Speaker 1: had this idea that was like eighteen years ago, no
Speaker 1: one even cares now, and we all learned unless you
Speaker 1: weren't connected to talk about, you know, if you unless
Speaker 1: you have relationships, nothing's gonna happen anyway. So uh, let's
Speaker 1: say you no listen. It's worked out at this point.
Speaker 1: But as I say, the business has changed completely. In
Speaker 1: my viewpoint, the major labels, by having such a narrow focus,
Speaker 1: are seating the territory and all this other music, and
Speaker 1: I think to their detriment. I don't disagree with you,
Speaker 1: but we'll see if we're right. I mean, the point
Speaker 1: of it is that that, um, you know, all this
Speaker 1: other music is not broken through on the level, at
Speaker 1: least on a streaming level. That that the stuff that
Speaker 1: the major labels chase does. And so if you're right,
Speaker 1: in two or three years, some random not hip hop,
Speaker 1: Atlanta trap band or artist is going to break through
Speaker 1: like Billie Eilish. Um, you know, um, but I'm not
Speaker 1: disagreeing with you, but it hasn't happened yet except for
Speaker 1: Billie Eilish. Okay, you represent Frank Ocean, right, Yes, well,
Speaker 1: I don't mean are firms afirmed those He famously delivered
Speaker 1: an album on his contract and then put out another
Speaker 1: album independently shortly thereafter. Yes, what was your viewpoint on
Speaker 1: that in terms of what I mean? Well, some people
Speaker 1: say that the label was blindsided, certainly legal under the circumstances.
Speaker 1: Is that your viewpoint? Or is there an obligation to
Speaker 1: the previous contract holder? I don't think there's an obligation
Speaker 1: in the previous contract holder. What record contract is ever
Speaker 1: fair in favor of the artist? The fact that they've
Speaker 1: made a mistake here, it's so rare. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: kind of what I live to take advantage of. And
Speaker 1: again it wasn't my particular case, but but I mean,
Speaker 1: these record contracts are heinous. They're eighty pages along and
Speaker 1: type this the size of a pen prick, and all
Speaker 1: they are is basically ways for that they can grab, right,
Speaker 1: So they label basically owns the artist. They want pieces
Speaker 1: of your tory, and they want to have These label
Speaker 1: waivers are just annoying beyond belief where you have to
Speaker 1: get a label waiver for your the US to do
Speaker 1: anything because they're basically owned by the label. Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is is, you know, the major labels
Speaker 1: steal from the acts. Even if they go into royalties,
Speaker 1: they have a lot of ways they don't pay, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Why do the labels think they can get paid accurately
Speaker 1: on the touring and these other things. Well they if
Speaker 1: they think that, they're kidding themselves. I mean, as always said,
Speaker 1: there's nobody smarter at stealing money than a promoter. And
Speaker 1: they don't know that. And at least we know a
Speaker 1: little bit about what the promoters do. They just they
Speaker 1: started hiring ex promoters and to to to police this thing.
Speaker 1: The labels are not as they're not as what's untransparent. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're they're more transparent than they've been in the past.
Speaker 1: I don't really. I think there's you know, like the
Speaker 1: back of the day where they sell records out of
Speaker 1: the back of a truck and not report them or
Speaker 1: you know, want of Uh well it's thirty years past.
Speaker 1: It's actual limitation. But Electric Records had a CFO who
Speaker 1: had an account in Hawaii called Jackson Hawaiian. They code
Speaker 1: it with the free goods anything that went to Jackson, Hawaii,
Speaker 1: which was their They didn't have a distributor in Hawaii.
Speaker 1: So they sent all these records of Jackson. Why they
Speaker 1: would be coded as free goods and the artists wouldn't
Speaker 1: get paid on any records for like five years sold
Speaker 1: in Hawaii. There's not that anymore. They're owned by major corporations,
Speaker 1: they're public. They don't really steal overtly. They steal with
Speaker 1: the pen, you know. They basically, like I said, eighty
Speaker 1: pages of oppressive contract. They that's where they do it.
Speaker 1: It's not really the old school, you know. Well, what
Speaker 1: I find is, you know, they have these royalty clauses
Speaker 1: and they give them to completely unskilled people to calculate
Speaker 1: the royalty. Is just crazy. Yeah, you know, you get
Speaker 1: screwed that way. So what are the challenges you find
Speaker 1: artists have or clients have in today's business. I think
Speaker 1: I said it before, sustaining a recording career, not sustaining
Speaker 1: hey touring career, because most of the artists can, you know,
Speaker 1: build a touring base and sustain it by going out
Speaker 1: on the road and working. But it's really hard. The
Speaker 1: turnover is kind of incredible. I mean, you know, when
Speaker 1: you take an artists as big and as great as
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift, and you sit there and look, and every
Speaker 1: time she puts out a record, it's like, is anybody
Speaker 1: gonna care? I mean, she's really talented. People should care.
Speaker 1: But it's not like, you know, at least you'd get
Speaker 1: a slightly longer career. Back in the old days, you
Speaker 1: could extend your career. Now it's just really, every every
Speaker 1: record is an adventure. There's no you know, there's no
Speaker 1: guarantee that you're gonna you know, it's just because they've
Speaker 1: had past success, they're gonna future success. Not that there
Speaker 1: ever was, but there's even less than I think than
Speaker 1: there used to be. Right, So, if someone who's anticipating
Speaker 1: a deal with a major label comes to you, will
Speaker 1: you negotiate that? Yeah? Oh yeah, you know. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: there's interesting there's an interesting sub phenomenon with all these
Speaker 1: hip hop acts. Um, the ones that are blowing up virally.
Speaker 1: You know, they get to ten or twenty million streams
Speaker 1: on their own, the labels start bidding like crazy for them,
Speaker 1: so you can actually leverage the bidding war to get
Speaker 1: fair terms. Although most of the hip hop acts just
Speaker 1: care about the money. But I mean, to me, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe that's not wrong. I mean again, if you don't
Speaker 1: think you're gonna have a career, get as much money
Speaker 1: as you can today. If you think hip hop acts
Speaker 1: do or do not care about I care about money.
Speaker 1: So you know you'll get two or three million dollars
Speaker 1: as an advance for a hip hop act. And the
Speaker 1: label's bet is that I can take these twenty million
Speaker 1: streams and tournam into half a billion streams, which case
Speaker 1: I've covered my bat and then everything's gravy after that,
Speaker 1: you know, so it's a little bit risky. And you know, again,
Speaker 1: what I've always done in my career is trying to
Speaker 1: get the artists much of an option as I possibly can.
Speaker 1: So the number of albums they owe the record company,
Speaker 1: or number tracks the old the record company to a minimum,
Speaker 1: I try to give them as much opportunity to get
Speaker 1: free as possible, so that you know, when a new
Speaker 1: trend comes around, they do not beholding to a label.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you don't think your artist is
Speaker 1: gonna have a career and then get as much money
Speaker 1: as you possibly can, how about the opposite. You have
Speaker 1: an artist that's got some live traction, but nothing's going
Speaker 1: on in recordings. You know, I mean, let me give it.
Speaker 1: It's not a great example, but it's a good example.
Speaker 1: Anderson Park guys phenomenally talented. He does great live business.
Speaker 1: He's one track away from from having a massive career.
Speaker 1: So you just keep trying. I mean, you don't. I
Speaker 1: mean that's really kind of what you do. You just
Speaker 1: keep trying and uh and if worst comes to worst,
Speaker 1: hopefully you keep your touring base and heritage. Jack's should
Speaker 1: they even put out new music? What do you say not?
Speaker 1: I think they should. I think you know. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I'm a big Beach Boys fan. Brian Wilson puts out records.
Speaker 1: Everybody talks about how terrible they are. They're not. They're
Speaker 1: not terrible. They're actually pretty good. And Paul McCartney, you'll
Speaker 1: have a couple of good songs on every record I'll have.
Speaker 1: They're not they're not day in life, but they're decent songs.
Speaker 1: And so you know, go do it. I mean, why
Speaker 1: wouldn't you do it? It It gives you know, unless you
Speaker 1: just don't want to. And then if someone listening to
Speaker 1: this who's thinking about a career as a music attorney,
Speaker 1: what would you tell them, Well, it's really interesting. For
Speaker 1: a period of time there was anybody thinking about doing
Speaker 1: a career as a music attorney. The business sucked and
Speaker 1: technology was where the action was. You know, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean again, if it's if you love music and
Speaker 1: you want to do something and hopefully things are looking up,
Speaker 1: you know, why not do it? Things that things do
Speaker 1: look a lot rosier than they did five years ago.
Speaker 1: And what's the easiest or best way for someone who
Speaker 1: does have a legal degree to get into music. It's
Speaker 1: not easy, and you just gotta find somebody like me
Speaker 1: or you know, done passes firm they were willing to
Speaker 1: take a chance on you, or go work at a label.
Speaker 1: If you can get a job at a label, it's
Speaker 1: it's like anything else, you know, you got to figure
Speaker 1: out how to get your way in. And so how
Speaker 1: many attorneys work in the firm now? Um, about about
Speaker 1: half of which are music lawyers and the other half
Speaker 1: are some litigators corporate guys. And how many support staff?
Speaker 1: But we have about ten paralegals and I don't know
Speaker 1: how many assistants are here. And in terms of management
Speaker 1: of the firm, are you involved in that at all?
Speaker 1: I like how to do most of that stuff? I
Speaker 1: worked too much? I really do Okay, So yeah, I
Speaker 1: know you're working around the clock. You get an email
Speaker 1: from you at twelve, When do you not work to
Speaker 1: service business? You're on all the time, and the thought
Speaker 1: of the thought of potentially retiring, Uh not yet. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I was I was witness and an expert witness.
Speaker 1: And Milt Milt Alan was a music lawyer that was
Speaker 1: tragically he was tragically killed by a cop texting on
Speaker 1: Mulholland when he was riding his bike, and it was
Speaker 1: a wrongful death case. And the insurance company was trying
Speaker 1: to show that he was sixty six year ols old
Speaker 1: when he died and he wasn't gonna have much of
Speaker 1: a career, was going to retire soon. So they interviewed
Speaker 1: me and said, well, what do you think I go?
Speaker 1: Like Jake Cooper was still pricingalized Lee Phillips in his eighties, said,
Speaker 1: music lawyers and basically all lawyers get taken out on
Speaker 1: the slab. They didn't retire, they just get taken out
Speaker 1: on the slab. And I we knew, Bill, why didn't
Speaker 1: give it up? No? Exactly, Peter, this has been wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for your wisdom and your stories. Okay,
Speaker 1: thanks Bob,