Speaker 1: Of Course Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This
Speaker 1: classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora. Yo Yo,
Speaker 1: what up.
Speaker 2: This is Fante back again with another QLs classic.
Speaker 1: This one we take this from back to October.
Speaker 2: Sixteenth, twenty sixteen. This was episode six of our show
Speaker 2: where we sat down with one of the most iconic
Speaker 2: managers in all of music. Shep Gordon came in to
Speaker 2: Quest Love Supreme and he talked about his time of
Speaker 2: Luther Vandroz, Tip Pendergrass and Alice Cooper and countless others.
Speaker 2: This is a really fun episode. Shep was a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. Y'all enjoy this CURELS classic. It's Fontaino yeh.
Speaker 3: Supremo So so up, Suprema roll call Supriva Suck Suck Supremo,
Speaker 3: roll Call Supreme, Suprema.
Speaker 1: Supreme a roll. My name is quest Love. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have a fence. Yeah, don't get mad Steve. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't rhyme the words you think.
Speaker 4: Suprema Son Supreme, A role called Suprema son Son Suprema,
Speaker 4: role called.
Speaker 1: Yeah I am a Trooper. Yeah. My favorite single Yeah
Speaker 1: it was Jimmy.
Speaker 4: Apreca Son Supreme. A role called Suprema, So Supreme, A
Speaker 4: role called.
Speaker 1: My name is Sugar. Yeah, you know my stanch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's nice to meet you. Yeah, Superman Show.
Speaker 4: Supreme Son Son Supreme, roll call Supreme So.
Speaker 2: Supreme, A role call Lost Bill is here. Yeah, Quest
Speaker 2: Love Supreme. Yeah, thank you for listening. Yeah, this Pandora
Speaker 2: stream Bro Suprema.
Speaker 4: Son Son Suprema roll call Suprema Son Son Suprema roll
Speaker 4: call my name.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I love the brothers.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But Chef, Yeah about.
Speaker 4: The Suprema roll call Suprema Son Suprema roll.
Speaker 1: Call my neighbor, Chef.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I come from MAUI. Yeah, I'm looking for a joint. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and I have no idea how to Ryan.
Speaker 4: Roll call Suprema some some Supremo roll call Suprema some
Speaker 4: something Supremo roll call.
Speaker 6: That was perfect.
Speaker 1: What's up, ladies and gentlemen. This is Quest Love. How
Speaker 1: you doing. We are alive at Electric Lady Studio. I'm
Speaker 1: sitting here with Team Supreme. How you doing, guys? Yeah right,
Speaker 1: all right, Oh man, I'm really I'm really excited today
Speaker 1: because the the Guru of all gurus, one of the best,
Speaker 1: most powerful managers, most effective managers, and music uh is
Speaker 1: with us today. Shep Gordon, He I mean some of
Speaker 1: the greatest name of the Luther Vanros, Alice Cooper, Blondie Blondie,
Speaker 1: Teddy Wait food. He does food too. That's amazing. Yes,
Speaker 1: of course he invented the food. So we're just going
Speaker 1: to try and I actually want to pick his brain.
Speaker 1: Just not many people know that have seen the Superman
Speaker 1: documentary that Mike Myers did For those that don't know,
Speaker 1: when they were shooting Wayne's World and requested Alice Cooper
Speaker 1: to come on the movie to do a cameo We're
Speaker 1: not worthy, We're not worthy. That's how Mike Myers got
Speaker 1: to know SHEF Gordon, And when he heard his life story,
Speaker 1: he was like, one day, I'm gonna make a story
Speaker 1: of your life. So, I mean some nineteen twenty years
Speaker 1: later he made that documentary. But because Shep's clientele is
Speaker 1: so expansive and lodge, not many people know that he
Speaker 1: has managed some of the greatest, most powerful names in
Speaker 1: black music. I mean they cover Teddy Pendergrass, but I mean,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned, like mid nice stars in the point.
Speaker 2: Ye Kenny Loggins, right, Keay Loggins was black for a
Speaker 2: couple of the great voices thank him justin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, you're right. So we're gonna pick his
Speaker 1: brain a little bit. But you know how, I want
Speaker 1: to know how you guys are doing. What's up? Man,
Speaker 1: I'm in the middle of trying to move from my
Speaker 1: goddamn house. It is tiring. It is tired. Man. You're
Speaker 1: doing it on your own. Hell no, I'm hiring movers.
Speaker 1: What part is tiring.
Speaker 2: It's just like because you don't realize how much ship
Speaker 2: you have until you start taking away ship that you
Speaker 2: sit your ship on.
Speaker 1: So you know, you have a little TV on the
Speaker 1: big TV. I'm not that good. I'm you know, I'm
Speaker 1: past the did you once have a small TV on it?
Speaker 2: We had we had the floor model that didn't work,
Speaker 2: and then we had the TV on top of it.
Speaker 1: Yet that you know that did that had? You know
Speaker 1: it had the big back a little bit?
Speaker 2: So nah man, But nah, I'm in the process of moving,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying, and packing up all my
Speaker 2: music and that's like been the biggest thing, like clearing
Speaker 2: my media rat with all my like CDs and vinyl
Speaker 2: and CDs.
Speaker 1: And still keep your CDs in your cassettes, not my Cossetts.
Speaker 1: I don't, but my CDs I do. My whole thing
Speaker 1: is like, aw, you're gonna have to downsize that. You're like,
Speaker 1: I did I have? I have downside? I cold her.
Speaker 2: I think I got like maybe like two hundred copies
Speaker 2: of the two hundred CDs away.
Speaker 1: So I got two hundred out and it was just
Speaker 1: stuff that threw them away. No, no, no, not throw away.
Speaker 1: I just throw away. I donated them. I donated them
Speaker 1: like a good will or whatever. Not seeing them again,
Speaker 1: you would have hated me in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: Well you gave stuff away. I threw stuff away? Oh wow,
Speaker 1: what did you throw away? This a whole like. This
Speaker 1: was right at the end of my record label days.
Speaker 2: So I had a ton of just shitty promos and
Speaker 2: stuff that couldn't sell them for anything, so I just
Speaker 2: put them on the corner.
Speaker 5: I used to sell them on Amazon.
Speaker 1: I like, there's like too much work. Do I really
Speaker 1: need three copies of White Tea by the franchise Boy?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean that's exactly kind of stuff I was throwing out.
Speaker 2: You know, all those crappy Universal Records promos in the
Speaker 2: blue sleeves that nobody WoT I won't lie. Like we
Speaker 2: realized that if we went up to uh Geffing Records
Speaker 2: and jack a couple of boxes, we could sell them
Speaker 2: and make cash. So there was a period where we
Speaker 2: were like stealing our own promos.
Speaker 1: Big red boot.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But after a while they're like, I don't need no
Speaker 1: more distortion and stack. You know, got like two hundred copies. Wow.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's been me man, just like pecking up
Speaker 2: and like getting rid of ship and uh handling life stuff.
Speaker 2: It's been interesting being absolved into the quest Love universe
Speaker 2: because you are in your own.
Speaker 1: Time and uh it is. It is a lot, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. But we do it because we
Speaker 1: love you, our great lead. Better be honestly stop it,
Speaker 1: all of you, stop it, I said, please, No, we
Speaker 1: do it. Look, we do it in service of he.
Speaker 1: I'm honored and to be in your presence. I work
Speaker 1: for this really great guy. All right, I'm skipping all
Speaker 1: of you. Actually have we have someone new and our
Speaker 1: miss Actually Scott is like our boss, your boss Losses.
Speaker 1: He's the pretty much. Yeah. When at first I didn't
Speaker 1: like you around because I just felt this pressure. Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's clear. Used to stand behind me like the
Speaker 1: like the like the Angel of Death. Yes, well I
Speaker 1: got seated there. I didn't actually choose that place, but
Speaker 1: I did. I felt bad about being he did. He did.
Speaker 1: He actually hit me up the next day and he
Speaker 1: was like, oh man, I hope. I mean you know,
Speaker 1: like the Family Guy episode where like the Angel Death
Speaker 1: is just chill and talking to Peter like any second
Speaker 1: he could die. Like any email I've ever got from Scott,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, ship, I just lost the show. I
Speaker 1: lost the show. The shows on. How are we doing, Scott? Great?
Speaker 1: It's amazing. No, No, I mean literally, how are we question?
Speaker 4: We have?
Speaker 1: Yes? What is what is the what is the need
Speaker 1: for us to always check that if we're gonna have employment?
Speaker 1: I think that's a black ship.
Speaker 2: Like we we're always like okay uh with like I
Speaker 2: think every every black person that has had some success,
Speaker 2: like we're always secretly like waiting because like that white
Speaker 2: man to come and just take everything away, because you know, seriously,
Speaker 2: I was I was literally just thinking going through my
Speaker 2: work history and like pretty much anytime I got an
Speaker 2: email from any any my supervisors whatever, it's like, oh
Speaker 2: that's it.
Speaker 1: Anytime. Yeah, let's let's open in the future that I
Speaker 1: still have my eighteen jobs. That's that's all I'm saying. So, Steve,
Speaker 1: how how you doing? I'm great? Is it good to
Speaker 1: be back at Electricity Studios? Oh yeah, this is amazing.
Speaker 1: I love being here. Vibe great, staff is great, all
Speaker 1: the memories.
Speaker 5: And you started from the bottom here right, look at me,
Speaker 5: down here, look at me.
Speaker 1: He turned into Phil Collins, started from the bottle and
Speaker 1: take him field of goal. Now I feel good. I missed.
Speaker 1: Bill Sherman is not here, so I'm going to be
Speaker 1: doing this. Where is Bill?
Speaker 4: Bill?
Speaker 1: And Big Bill is in l A. He is working
Speaker 1: on a TV show that he and I both will
Speaker 1: be nice Floyd on.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm saying, so, see, you're getting your jobs on
Speaker 2: I'm getting my job, yo.
Speaker 1: I told you Quest Love is I want to be
Speaker 1: like Quest Loving. Get your job, bro, I'm getting them
Speaker 1: getting my jobs up. Man, that's perfect, that's awesome. I'm
Speaker 1: not complaining. So, of course, our special guests today on
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme, What can I say? I mean? At
Speaker 1: the very beginning of the tonight show, we had a
Speaker 1: guest Mike Myers on promoting a movie, a documentary called
Speaker 1: Super Mitch and on Netflix right now. Yes, it's on
Speaker 1: Netflix right now, and it instantly caught my attention because
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I thought I was going to
Speaker 1: see a music documentary and instead I got a life lesson.
Speaker 1: It was like the greatest ted talk ever, but like
Speaker 1: not way cooler, the more the most creative tech of
Speaker 1: all time, more emotional. So you know about our next guest,
Speaker 1: Shep Gordon is I mean, he's a guru. He's a
Speaker 1: manager and organizer, a conceptualizer. Uh and most importantly he's
Speaker 1: a friend to everyone. Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to of
Speaker 1: course Love Supreme. Shep Gordon.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Hello, thank you, thank you. Thanks for the
Speaker 6: Netflix plug.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah. We watched it.
Speaker 2: For the first time a couple of nights ago, and
Speaker 2: I remember one of the there's things I can remember,
Speaker 2: you know, when you know we can get into the business.
Speaker 2: My friend of mine told me, he was like, your
Speaker 2: manager has got to be whoever you choose your manager,
Speaker 2: that has got to be the guy that knows where
Speaker 2: all your bodies are buried. Like that's got to be
Speaker 2: no secret, none, it's got to know everything. Whatever whatever
Speaker 2: drug you on, whoever girl you're sleeping with, whatever, all
Speaker 2: the dirt, Like your manager has to be the guy
Speaker 2: to know it, because he's the guy that has to
Speaker 2: protect you from it.
Speaker 1: You know, you're saying that if you were to pass away,
Speaker 1: have somebody run in the house and clean up a
Speaker 1: little bit. Yeah, everyone, brother, everyone needs a mister wolf everyone.
Speaker 2: And watching the Superman documentary, I was just like, yo,
Speaker 2: Shep Gordon is the ultimate mister Wolf. Like, he's the
Speaker 2: ultimate like manager that anyone could ever wish for.
Speaker 1: Now we're broadcasting here at our at our home and electrically.
Speaker 1: And you know, of course, of your connection with Jimmy Hendricks.
Speaker 1: You said you were here when he.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I lived on Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, and
Speaker 7: I had a good friend of mine, Alan Douglas, who
Speaker 7: had a daughter who was the same age as a
Speaker 7: child I was raising, and he was here at the
Speaker 7: time doing some over. Jimmy had passed away, and this
Speaker 7: was the first album coming out after he passed away.
Speaker 7: They brought in John McLachlan and a bunch of people
Speaker 7: to play on it. They said that they had found
Speaker 7: the guitar part only and rebuilt the record. And I
Speaker 7: used to drop the girl I was not my daughter,
Speaker 7: but the girl I was raising here and they babysit for.
Speaker 6: While they were working here at the Electric Leaveinglan.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 6: Yeah, because it was all part of you know, it
Speaker 6: was such a different business then.
Speaker 7: You know, it was a family. We all knew each other,
Speaker 7: wasn't It wasn't like random people were coming in to
Speaker 7: use the studio. There was no studio business. It was
Speaker 7: basically acts that was signed by a record company and
Speaker 7: everybody sort of new.
Speaker 6: So it was very family.
Speaker 1: See that's when when I did my residency here back
Speaker 1: in I started in ninety seven.
Speaker 6: Was Eddi Kramer here?
Speaker 1: Then you know the first year they that's when they
Speaker 1: first started to re release a lot of hidden not
Speaker 1: the hidden, the unreleased under Hendrick stuff. So Janey Hendricks
Speaker 1: and Eddie had crazy stories for us, like they played
Speaker 1: us all these tapes and everything, and you know, like
Speaker 1: it's funny, like this was like a I consider this
Speaker 1: my my home because I did like a majority of
Speaker 1: my work at the studio from like ninety seven to
Speaker 1: like two thousand and four, and I think like between
Speaker 1: ninety eight and two thousand and two, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: there'd be times where I just like slept here in
Speaker 1: the studio, like but that that.
Speaker 7: Was the way it was then. That was sort of
Speaker 7: the way it was. You know, you came in, you'd
Speaker 7: spend sixty days, forty five days. You sort of live here,
Speaker 7: you do your record. It was a different The recording
Speaker 7: process was a very I think I never recorded, so
Speaker 7: I don't know, but I think a very different process.
Speaker 7: It was a it was much more a creative collaboration.
Speaker 7: And if someone was in studio B you'd bring them
Speaker 7: in and the same thing. Yeah, they'd work on the
Speaker 7: record with you. It wasn't this territorial yeah, weird thing.
Speaker 1: The same thing here, Like we would there'd be clients
Speaker 1: in the sea room upstairs, and we'd be in the
Speaker 1: a room downstairs, and then we sneak over and pee.
Speaker 6: I need a background vocal anybody, Uh yeah, poach.
Speaker 1: People and do that. So for those that haven't seen
Speaker 1: the film, I guess what the beginning of your your
Speaker 1: management career was Alex Cooper nine, And I mean at
Speaker 1: the time, I mean for me, like a manager, there's
Speaker 1: two types of manager. One is like super established, like
Speaker 1: if you go to like a company and someone that's
Speaker 1: like alter established, and then someone that's just your road
Speaker 1: buddy that's organized, and I mean, you haven't haven't had
Speaker 1: any experience in the music business, like where you kind
Speaker 1: of worried about how to navigate.
Speaker 6: You know, I never really thought about it. I did
Speaker 6: it as a mine was a cover.
Speaker 7: I got into being a manager, so if someone asked
Speaker 7: me how did I make a living, I could say
Speaker 7: I was I was a manager. Jimmy Hendrix said to
Speaker 7: me when I was, I was a dealer and on
Speaker 7: a very low level. And he said, what are you
Speaker 7: gonna do if the police ask you where you make
Speaker 7: your money? You know, and where I grew up. You
Speaker 7: need to you wear a new watch. You've been to
Speaker 7: be able to tell the cop where you got to watch?
Speaker 7: And I said, you know, I'm a middle class you
Speaker 7: they Long Island, they don't police, don't company.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was about to say, like opportunity.
Speaker 5: Exactly, but that's crazy because then watching the documentary, I said,
Speaker 5: there and I wondered. I was like, at the point
Speaker 5: where you and Alice Cooper said okay, we're going to
Speaker 5: do this, you had to have more expertise than just a.
Speaker 1: Dealer, like.
Speaker 6: And you know what alse Alice says, his words are
Speaker 6: Scheppinheim met All a lie I told him I was
Speaker 6: a singer. He told me he was a manager.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 6: But what what happened was.
Speaker 7: People started getting busted around me, and I didn't want
Speaker 7: to deal anymore. So I sat down with Alice and
Speaker 7: I said, I have no idea what I'm doing. And
Speaker 7: he said I have no idea what I'm doing. And
Speaker 7: I said, well, let's figure it out and get rich,
Speaker 7: and let's agree to stay together till we didn't.
Speaker 1: So we we.
Speaker 7: I had never thought of myself as a manager. It
Speaker 7: was trying to earn lunch. I didn't even know what
Speaker 7: a manager was. There was no rules for a manager.
Speaker 7: I had never met a manager. But I had this
Speaker 7: idea that if we could piss off parents, kids would
Speaker 7: come to us, and then we could hire people to
Speaker 7: make music. And that's where we focused, and that's where
Speaker 7: all of our stunts came from. Our focus at band
Speaker 7: meetings was how do we piss off parents? And that's
Speaker 7: where the chicken came from. And that's where the name
Speaker 7: came from.
Speaker 1: Now, okay, from our from our side of the fence,
Speaker 1: especially because we're not the target rock audience. Like I'm
Speaker 1: certain that you know both you fante and I'm talking
Speaker 1: to Fante right now, like we were brought up at
Speaker 1: least in this Baptist or Christian background where it didn't
Speaker 1: not the Jewish world. It's just like from our point
Speaker 1: of view, it's always like I was taught, especially the
Speaker 1: church I went to, like this Pentecostal church, Oh God,
Speaker 1: which everything was of the devil, and say, you know,
Speaker 1: like you would look at these you know, you can
Speaker 1: look at Ozzy Osmorene covers or Blue Oyster Calton like
Speaker 1: all these things, and you're thinking, like a man, there's
Speaker 1: a temple of devil worship and basically it's just like
Speaker 1: a marketing seem like, how can we you were doing exactly.
Speaker 7: And by the way, Alice's father was a minister. His
Speaker 7: grandfather was the head of the Church of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 7: He married the daughter of a minister. He reads the
Speaker 7: Bible every morning at five o'clock.
Speaker 6: Since I know him.
Speaker 7: He goes to church on Sundays. And I had to
Speaker 7: hide all that because I said, yeah, people are gonna
Speaker 7: like you.
Speaker 6: We can't like you.
Speaker 4: They hate you.
Speaker 6: So that that was really our biggest challenge was was
Speaker 6: not giving up who he was.
Speaker 2: But that's amazing though, man, I mean because that's like
Speaker 2: a clear like showing just the difference between your persona
Speaker 2: versus your identity, you know.
Speaker 1: What I mean, And the fact that he could hold
Speaker 1: on to who he was and not get lost.
Speaker 6: But he did.
Speaker 1: He did.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, yeah, he got consumed. He went to rehabby
Speaker 7: at the bottom. But I think most people who hit
Speaker 7: that level of fame, especially if they've done it as entertainers,
Speaker 7: have to deal with that moment where they're not being fulfilled.
Speaker 7: That there's very few of the number one ers that
Speaker 7: I've come across who don't need an adjustment somewhere along
Speaker 7: the way, who don't fall to something.
Speaker 6: You know, I've had so many.
Speaker 7: You know, Teddy's not around, Luther's not around, all the
Speaker 7: people I grew up with, Jimmy Hendrix knighted at twenty
Speaker 7: seven Mars and at twenty seven. There always was a
Speaker 7: link between fame and using crutches that really hurt you.
Speaker 1: What do you think that link is? Like, why do
Speaker 1: you think you know?
Speaker 7: I think I don't know in the general world, but
Speaker 7: I think in the entertainment, in the world that I
Speaker 7: lived in, which was live entertainers, the rejection is so
Speaker 7: gigantic to get to a place of success. It's so
Speaker 7: overwhelming that if it's us, if your goal is to
Speaker 7: just make a living or to have a career, you
Speaker 7: can't take all that rejection. So normally it's to fill
Speaker 7: some hole in you that you think that applause is
Speaker 7: going to fill some hole for you, and it doesn't,
Speaker 7: and then you just get angrier and you use more crutches,
Speaker 7: and you know, hopefully you take a.
Speaker 6: Small fall and you come back.
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask I, okay, the way that my
Speaker 1: manager taught us to cope with it. And this is
Speaker 1: really weird because everyone around me was like, he's so negative,
Speaker 1: why do you embrace like all that negativity? And my mom,
Speaker 1: you know, she had problems with him and everything. But
Speaker 1: what I realized he was doing by the first year
Speaker 1: was he was just preparing us to not have any expectations,
Speaker 1: like he told he told me Richard Nicholson. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: like Richard was basically like, you know, he's like, I'm
Speaker 1: not preparing you guys for start him. I want you
Speaker 1: to have a long term career. So I'd rather you guys,
Speaker 1: you know, live better than the average jazz musician. You know, now,
Speaker 1: because we're in hip hop you're instantly thinking of this
Speaker 1: ticker tape parade or what Rich called the Bentley moment,
Speaker 1: like think of, think of like think of like your
Speaker 1: most salacious hype Williams video and yeah, poorn Champagne all
Speaker 1: over women like that that, you know, and he just
Speaker 1: wanted for us to sort of just get rid of
Speaker 1: that expectation, like he would always say, just lower your expectations.
Speaker 1: And maybe the first year we started taking a personal
Speaker 1: and then pointing fingers at each other, it's your fault,
Speaker 1: and well you drump to a drum click, but DJs
Speaker 1: will play like all this thing, you know, And then
Speaker 1: I will say that I will say that protecting ourselves
Speaker 1: helped us, helped me and Tarika the long run, I mean,
Speaker 1: some of us sort of fell by the waysides and
Speaker 1: kind of succumb to different vices and whatnot. But at
Speaker 1: least for Tarika and I, it kind of helped us.
Speaker 1: But then again, like twenty years later into it, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's made us immune to emotional feelings
Speaker 1: like I've so you.
Speaker 2: Don't feel the good So when you say that, you
Speaker 2: mean like you don't feel the good stuff either.
Speaker 1: Well I don't, Yeah, I don't feel anything, gotcha, And
Speaker 1: it's like it's to the point where it's just like,
Speaker 1: I'm mere. Stevie wonders on the show. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: Yeah that's cool, Oh my god, I mere?
Speaker 4: Like what what?
Speaker 1: What ten years ago you would have been like? And
Speaker 1: that's the thing, like, I had to numb myself so
Speaker 1: much to protect to keep myself from forming a drug
Speaker 1: cabin or suicide or whatever the vices that artists get into.
Speaker 1: That Now as a forty plus year old man like it. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get emotions back and it's.
Speaker 7: Yeah, no, it's funny you should say that, because I
Speaker 7: from it completely the other side. I've come to the
Speaker 7: same place.
Speaker 6: I have.
Speaker 7: People ask me, is there anything you regret? It was
Speaker 7: one of the questions that's been asked, and I say,
Speaker 7: you know, one of the most satisfying nights of my
Speaker 7: life was Alice getting in the Rock and Roll Hall
Speaker 7: of Fame. It was forty years of hard work and
Speaker 7: really amazing and I went home and looked in the
Speaker 7: mirror and said it worked. I got into bed and
Speaker 7: watched CNN fifteen minutes after the thing. I didn't go
Speaker 7: to the party. I wish I could have shared in
Speaker 7: the love. And I said to Alis, the next thing,
Speaker 7: you know.
Speaker 6: It's weird. I've always been like this. I don't know why.
Speaker 6: And they said, well, I was in bed fifteen minutes
Speaker 6: after watching a movie.
Speaker 7: So we come up from the other side. Because I
Speaker 7: manage them exactly the opposite way. I used to sit
Speaker 7: them in a room and I would. I would always
Speaker 7: tell clients, if I do my job perfectly, it's very
Speaker 7: possible I'll kill you because I'll make you so famous
Speaker 7: that you're going to kill yourself or hurt yourself. But
Speaker 7: I would tell them that and say, that's what I
Speaker 7: do for a living. It's the only thing I know
Speaker 7: how to do. Other guys will make you more money,
Speaker 7: other guys will do a lot of stuff better than me.
Speaker 7: I know how to make you really famous.
Speaker 1: And so is it almost is it almost better to
Speaker 1: go for second place?
Speaker 7: I don't know better. I don't, you know, hard for
Speaker 7: me to judge, but I think you do what you
Speaker 7: know how to do.
Speaker 6: I think it's.
Speaker 7: I think better, like if I have someone I love.
Speaker 7: I'm going through it now with my assistant's daughter who
Speaker 7: I love, who's very talented, very beautiful, a lot of
Speaker 7: record companies are trying to sign her and take her,
Speaker 7: and I hug her, and I say, why don't.
Speaker 6: You become a school teacher and have three kids, because.
Speaker 7: You're really happy now and you're going to work for
Speaker 7: thirty years the goal to be happy, and you're gonna
Speaker 7: have to unwind a lot of stuff if you're successful,
Speaker 7: because that's really the goal I think for most people
Speaker 7: is get happy, be able to buy dinner. Yeah, And
Speaker 7: I think most artists work at it so hard and
Speaker 7: they get to the end of the row where they
Speaker 7: can be happy, and they forgot how to be happy.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like it's the dog. It's literally the dog chasing
Speaker 1: it's hotail. But I will say that there is also
Speaker 1: an insatiable thing going on because you know, like my
Speaker 1: goal for always, you know, there's always a deeper kind
Speaker 1: of end game every three or four years, you know,
Speaker 1: back and it's like, man, just okay, just get one grammy,
Speaker 1: I'll be happy by my Mond ware house and I'll
Speaker 1: be happy. And then I mean for now, I don't know, like, okay,
Speaker 1: what were your person on my personal like my life goals.
Speaker 1: I don't believe in happy, I believe in satisfied. So Okay,
Speaker 1: what would where will you really truly be satisfied? But
Speaker 1: be artists are never No, I'm gonna keep always. I
Speaker 1: know a lot of you, brother, for real, Look we
Speaker 1: keep a hunded this quest loves of plean God, damn's
Speaker 1: what we do, all right?
Speaker 2: So look all right, My happiness for me is again, well,
Speaker 2: my sad, sat satisfy, satisfied, my satisfied. My satisfaction would
Speaker 2: be when I have enough money in the bank to
Speaker 2: where I can sit still for three years, at least
Speaker 2: three years and like not do ship Like if I don't,
Speaker 2: I don't got to go to a show.
Speaker 1: I ain't got a fucking write, not a song, I
Speaker 1: ain't got a sing one goddamn note. I'm good for
Speaker 1: like what about ten years? Ten?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: No, no, But I'm like, all right, it's three more
Speaker 1: realistic to you or ten because I.
Speaker 2: Had the three year plan, but then you got and
Speaker 2: then it was like if I get a bigger house
Speaker 2: and you addicted.
Speaker 1: I think that's human nature, not question love nature.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I think it is human nature. I
Speaker 2: think for me, this is like my whole thing, and
Speaker 2: it's kind of you know what shep was saying, you know.
Speaker 2: My thing was, I remember when I first got in,
Speaker 2: when I first when I first first started, before like
Speaker 2: we had signed anything, I was working at a call
Speaker 2: center making ten dollars an hour.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. And you know I'm in college.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm working at the call center.
Speaker 2: It was I mean, it was a shitty job, but
Speaker 2: I was like, look, it's ten dollars hour. I remember
Speaker 2: saying to myself specifically, if I could just get to
Speaker 2: a point in my career where I'm making ten dollars
Speaker 2: an hour rhyming, doing what I love to.
Speaker 1: Do, I'm good.
Speaker 2: If I can do If I can make ten dollars
Speaker 2: an hour and not be in this fucking call center
Speaker 2: and gotta be nice to these people, I'm good.
Speaker 1: And so I got to that point. And so for me,
Speaker 1: my kind of moment realization was I got to that
Speaker 1: point where I made way more than that.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, crazy times more, but you still
Speaker 2: find yourself asking for more. And so it's like I
Speaker 2: had to check myself. It's like, man, that was a
Speaker 2: time in my place. So it got to go when
Speaker 2: I made twenty dollars out and it's like, man, I
Speaker 2: remember that was a point in my life, I never thought,
Speaker 2: let's get the job.
Speaker 1: Even now I am financially I heard that. I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: let me So for me, I just keep that and
Speaker 1: I keep that in mind for me.
Speaker 2: It's like there were times where whenever I get like
Speaker 2: depressed or overwhelmed, it just whatever the case, I remember
Speaker 2: that there was a day I was praying for the
Speaker 2: things that I have now absolutely and that's just keeps
Speaker 2: me kind of grounded, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: I say, I wake up and physically say thank you
Speaker 7: every day for all the gifts I have. It's amazing
Speaker 7: and just for all I mean, all of us were
Speaker 7: sitting here.
Speaker 1: I've been to your house in Hawaii, so I do
Speaker 1: the same thing. So I got to ask you because
Speaker 1: you established that you knew the quote unquote twenty seventh club,
Speaker 1: which consisted of Hendrickson and Choplin and ours Jim Morrison.
Speaker 1: So I mean, was this on a daily or a
Speaker 1: weekly basis that you would see these people.
Speaker 7: And I'd see them, I'd see Janice. Janis lived at
Speaker 7: the motel. It was a Hollywood Landmark motel.
Speaker 1: Is that where the height it is? Right now?
Speaker 7: No, right next to the Magic Castle on Franklin between
Speaker 7: Highland and Librere.
Speaker 6: It's still there, you know what.
Speaker 7: It is, right right next to the driveway for the
Speaker 7: Magic Castle. And Janie lived there, so when she wasn't
Speaker 7: on the road, she was there every day and with
Speaker 7: her Southern comfort bottle and usually a guy in tow
Speaker 7: and a revolving door. Guy Jim would come by once
Speaker 7: in a while. Wasn't there all the time. The Chambers
Speaker 7: brothers lived there, so they were there all the time.
Speaker 1: But it was Why was that particular spot the Hollywood mythical?
Speaker 6: I think because it was cheap.
Speaker 1: First of all, it was cheaper than having your own
Speaker 1: property or oh.
Speaker 7: Yeah, this was thirty four dollars a night for the room.
Speaker 7: Oh wow, you know this was not a fancy This
Speaker 7: was a very bare roots hotel knowsdays. Thirty four dollars
Speaker 7: was still something, but it was very cheap. It was
Speaker 7: a hotel California, swimming pool two stories around it, and
Speaker 7: for some reason, you know, it was just music friendly.
Speaker 7: You'd go to the pool on a typical afternoon would
Speaker 7: be Arthur Lee. Wow, who was really interesting because he
Speaker 7: when he was there, he was the creative leader. When
Speaker 7: they would sit around the pool and really he's the
Speaker 7: one who would say, you take this, take a background vocal,
Speaker 7: do this song, you do this. Everybody would look at him.
Speaker 7: He was the he was like they'd bow to Arthurly.
Speaker 7: He was the he was the real power in the room.
Speaker 1: See you describing this utopian atmosphere where author Lee in
Speaker 1: Love and the Jannis Chaplin would just sing likes the guitars.
Speaker 7: Usually it was Bobby Newarth would start if Bobby Newarth
Speaker 7: was Bob Dylan's road manager and also became a folk
Speaker 7: singer later on in his life. He was usually the instigator.
Speaker 7: Paul Roth's child lived there, who was the producer of
Speaker 7: a lot of the Doors records, great producer, So they
Speaker 7: were usually the instigators, and they would bring out Bobby
Speaker 7: would bring out his guitar and they just start and
Speaker 7: Janis would jump in and sing and one of the
Speaker 7: chambers of others would get on like a you know,
Speaker 7: start beating on a garbage pail or something. And that
Speaker 7: was sort of the rhythm of the place. It wasn't
Speaker 7: every day, never was organized.
Speaker 1: Was the general public aware of this? I mean the
Speaker 1: way that was celebrity hunting.
Speaker 6: Now, yeah, it was funny, you know it was pre age.
Speaker 7: Yea yeah, and there was a great there was a
Speaker 7: great rhythm, like sit at the pool and you'd see
Speaker 7: like this really pretty girl come in and she'd be
Speaker 7: with like Pink Floyd in this room, and then you
Speaker 7: get to the pool the next morning she'd come out
Speaker 7: of the Chambers room, and then you come down the
Speaker 7: next morning and come out of the you know, someone
Speaker 7: else's room. They'd sort of work, yeah, exactly, they sort
Speaker 7: of worked. They were arount of the place, and the
Speaker 7: GTOs lived there. I don't know if you've ever heard
Speaker 7: of them, the girls together outrageously. No, they were a
Speaker 7: bunch of groupies who did a recording, recorded an album
Speaker 7: for Frank Zappa's label, and they were fantastic there. It
Speaker 7: was miss Christie missed this one, missed that one, and
Speaker 7: they sort of took care of all the girls and
Speaker 7: made sure they got fed, you know, and they just
Speaker 7: I remember that one of the great days at the
Speaker 7: pool because it was a different time. It was a
Speaker 7: free love time, you know, it was really different. But
Speaker 7: I remember I was down at the pool with with
Speaker 7: I think Lester Chambers and Bobby Newarth, maybe Roth Toohn.
Speaker 7: We get to the pool and somebody spots up in
Speaker 7: the corner an entire line of ladies lingerie drying out,
Speaker 7: and we're like hound dogs getting so excited.
Speaker 6: The ice Capades had checked in.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: That was the high point of life at the Hollywood Landmark.
Speaker 6: The ice Capades were here. It was like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: I mean, by that point, could you imagine and during
Speaker 1: mainstream society or was this just like oh, I'm fine.
Speaker 7: Just yeah, no, you know, I I had no consciousness
Speaker 7: of what it was. And they weren't really mound rushmore
Speaker 7: people at the time I was. I had just come
Speaker 7: out of college. I remember, I wasn't I had very
Speaker 7: few female relationships. I was very I was close to
Speaker 7: a version at this point.
Speaker 1: In my life.
Speaker 6: Yeah, of the late bloomer and this beautiful blonde was
Speaker 6: at the pool when she came and she stayed with
Speaker 6: me at night and we made love and I'm thinking
Speaker 6: I'm in love and they go downstairs the next daye
Speaker 6: she said, Leicester Jabers room.
Speaker 1: So you know, one of the things I questioned now,
Speaker 1: the way that you were describing managing Anne Mary, because
Speaker 1: I was, you know, five or six years old at
Speaker 1: the time. You know, I mean, they weren't calling it
Speaker 1: yacht rock back then or a soft pop or whatever.
Speaker 1: Like it was just always on radio. Yeah, like I
Speaker 1: mean you needed Me was like played like forty two
Speaker 1: billion times a day, like your Lord. However, are you
Speaker 1: saying at one point she was a hard.
Speaker 6: Sell, because oh she was a very tough sell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was you that got her on them
Speaker 1: up at Chill with Alice and Midnight Special and all
Speaker 1: that stuff.
Speaker 7: Yeah, she was a very she was a very tough sell.
Speaker 7: But she was amazingly talented in her in her I
Speaker 7: don't know, I mean, I don't mean this in a
Speaker 7: negative way, her narrow highway. She had one of the
Speaker 7: greatest purest voices you ever heard. Yeah, and she had
Speaker 7: very little recognition of what that meant or the part
Speaker 7: that wasn't just the voice you had to be an entertainer.
Speaker 7: So she was as pure vessel, completely as far away
Speaker 7: from Alice as you could possibly get in terms of
Speaker 7: her attraction and her drawer And.
Speaker 1: How did she come to your attention?
Speaker 7: I was up in Canada doing a pop fit a
Speaker 7: show with John Lennon the first time in Classic Chicken Show, Yeah,
Speaker 7: the Chicken Show, and she i turned on the TV.
Speaker 7: There was a guy named Brian to Hearn who was
Speaker 7: a producer, and he said, you gotta watch this TV
Speaker 7: show I had. I had this girl who teaches Jim
Speaker 7: in Canada who's singing this song Snowbird, and she's fantastic.
Speaker 6: You may want to work with her.
Speaker 7: And it was a summer show and she had been
Speaker 7: she was a gym teacher who got a job in
Speaker 7: the summer on this four week show and she sang
Speaker 7: Snowbird and I heard the song whoa and then just
Speaker 7: started to get some traction on radio and it got
Speaker 7: to number one. And when it got to number one,
Speaker 7: I knew the people the Capitol Records, and they and
Speaker 7: her called me and I said, oh, I know all
Speaker 7: about you.
Speaker 6: I was up in Canada. It was great.
Speaker 1: And so was this truly a time period in which
Speaker 1: I mean, I definitely know the seventies before MTV came
Speaker 1: to play in I mean, now you know image overtakes
Speaker 1: talent like talent doesn't even count anymore, borderline.
Speaker 6: In every field.
Speaker 1: But I mean, are you saying that at one point,
Speaker 1: at least for a good twenty year period, talent could
Speaker 1: account for something in which, well, I wouldn't go that far.
Speaker 7: But here was the difference between then and now, I
Speaker 7: think is it Radio was open to playing things. Radio
Speaker 7: ruled the world. Hit records ruled everything entertainment. It was
Speaker 7: a very different world that It wasn't like a concert
Speaker 7: world where you had to be a great performer and
Speaker 7: if you could get the record company to spend the money,
Speaker 7: you could have hit records. And that was my goal
Speaker 7: with her, was to get hit records. And I got
Speaker 7: her in this I decided that I would try and
Speaker 7: put her next to the biggest in the world, take
Speaker 7: that back to the record company and see if they
Speaker 7: would treat her like one of the biggest stars.
Speaker 6: In the world. And I got so.
Speaker 7: It was a heart sale, a very heart cell heart
Speaker 7: sale to her and a heart sale to the record company.
Speaker 7: But once I got the picture with I orchestrated an
Speaker 7: event where John Lennon, Mickey Dolan's, who was gigantic the monkeys.
Speaker 6: He's the biggest thing in the world.
Speaker 7: Then Harry Nielsen, who was unbelievably respected by the industry,
Speaker 7: and Alice took a picture with her. And that picture
Speaker 7: enabled me to sell just about anybody.
Speaker 1: The White Soulfers that photo killed, We see what you did. No,
Speaker 1: I'm only playing.
Speaker 7: And I got her on hosting Midnight Special because if
Speaker 7: John Lennon liked her, she had to be great. It
Speaker 7: just thought it a circle of stuff. Then, you know,
Speaker 7: in those days it was much simpler. It was very different.
Speaker 7: There was nobody really knew who she was till she
Speaker 7: was famous. There was no Internet. You couldn't see how
Speaker 7: bland she was. None of that stuff got revealed. It
Speaker 7: was really about getting somebody to pay enough money to
Speaker 7: get her records on radio.
Speaker 1: But I mean, by that point a singer like Helen
Speaker 1: Ready had sort of prominent, so you know she there
Speaker 1: was a lane at least.
Speaker 6: For oh, definitely a lane. I've been a lane from
Speaker 6: all the way back.
Speaker 7: The concept of of wholesomeness and not movement and non entertainer,
Speaker 7: you know, non entertainment singers.
Speaker 1: What were her live concerts like I mean say.
Speaker 7: I mean for me, they were boring because they weren't entertaining.
Speaker 7: But for her audience she had this beautiful voice. You know,
Speaker 7: there was people would hold hands and wear suits and ties.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: By the times you had like five or six hits
Speaker 1: under her belt. Then it was like she established it.
Speaker 7: But and she turned out to be a very good performer.
Speaker 7: I mean she played to her audience. She really developed,
Speaker 7: and she got a style and a comfort level with
Speaker 7: the stage and with an audience. And I went to
Speaker 7: see her a few years after I stopped managing her,
Speaker 7: and it was really entertaining. I started Revere, she got
Speaker 7: a little production.
Speaker 1: In Okay, so the one thing well plus and also
Speaker 1: talking your head off a few times I've met you.
Speaker 1: I've come to discover now, of course super minch does
Speaker 1: touch on your your history, Teddy Pendograss. But then later
Speaker 1: I found out that you damn near managed everyone important
Speaker 1: in black music, which I mean Superman's kind of treated
Speaker 1: like a small foot road like. Oh and by the way,
Speaker 1: Rick James, no that.
Speaker 5: That listed the and the Superman. Just I copied that
Speaker 5: list and wrote it all down of everybody, and it
Speaker 5: was like whoa Rick James and Stephanie Mills and Lisa Fisher,
Speaker 5: which I'm sure was not happy about.
Speaker 6: He was very he was she was the background singer.
Speaker 1: So okay, So the thing I didn't know that was
Speaker 1: before before Okay, So Teddy went sold one seventy five,
Speaker 1: seventy six. You're saying that most black shows that occurred
Speaker 1: were strictly for radio stations and DJs and not for pay.
Speaker 7: And I mean audience is paid. Artists didn't get paid.
Speaker 7: There was an organization called the Black Promoters Association. I
Speaker 7: don't know if they still exist or not, but they
Speaker 7: were sort of the enforcers. And they had a collection
Speaker 7: of promoters who worked with the radio stations and the
Speaker 7: record companies, and they kept everybody in line. And it
Speaker 7: was a it was a you know, it was a
Speaker 7: street business. It was Teddy's last manager before me had
Speaker 7: been shot to death. It was a tough business and
Speaker 7: and they were making a lot of money and they
Speaker 7: didn't want.
Speaker 1: To give it up.
Speaker 5: And that didn't scare you at all.
Speaker 6: You know, I never it's funny or did they send you?
Speaker 1: They sent you in the line of fire. And then
Speaker 1: was like, oh, by the way, uh my last manager
Speaker 1: go so we'll get him, step Hey, you go get him.
Speaker 1: So you're saying like a cat, like, uh, let me
Speaker 1: pick a random seventies like mac davis. Mac Davis could
Speaker 1: go out and do whatever he wanted to do make
Speaker 1: some money. But Teddy went out strictly to ensure that
Speaker 1: his record played on the radio. He was.
Speaker 7: He was convinced by by the record company who profited
Speaker 7: greatly by the record sales and made nothing on the road,
Speaker 7: that the only way he was going to keep getting
Speaker 7: hit records and keep getting basically the rented car that
Speaker 7: they give him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how how would he make money? Because Gamble, Gamble
Speaker 1: and Huff are writing the songs.
Speaker 6: He lived a very simple life.
Speaker 1: He wasn't.
Speaker 7: There was no mansions in any of those guys' lives.
Speaker 7: There were you know, you talked to the OJ's, you
Speaker 7: talked to all these guys.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, they were just working musicians.
Speaker 6: They were working.
Speaker 5: Musicians until when like when do you think for me?
Speaker 6: With Teddy it was.
Speaker 7: It was the second solo album. That's about when we started.
Speaker 7: That's when we we we Our history was that we
Speaker 7: I I understood, but once I understood the chilling check
Speaker 7: that we can't do this. So I booked them in
Speaker 7: Radio City Musical and we got picketed and nobody wanted
Speaker 7: across the picket line. The Black Promoters Association picketed us.
Speaker 1: So it was like al Haman and those guys are
Speaker 1: part of it. Or was al Haman more like the
Speaker 1: eighties and.
Speaker 7: He was go to part of it, but he was
Speaker 7: much more nutrient. He was the second wave, he was
Speaker 7: the the first wave was and good guys. I actually
Speaker 7: got friendly with most of the guys with Jesse Boseman's
Speaker 7: who I love, great guy. I mean, it's still a
Speaker 7: lot of respect from But that was their business and
Speaker 7: they were able to get away with it, and that's
Speaker 7: what they did. And so I said, I'm you know,
Speaker 7: I'm gonna have no We're not doing this. And I
Speaker 7: booked Teddy into a radio City and nobody wanted to
Speaker 7: cross the picket line. I mean, it got it was
Speaker 7: pretty deep. Jesse Jackson came and picketed.
Speaker 6: It was what it was deep.
Speaker 7: So I knew I had to do business with him. Somehow,
Speaker 7: some way, we had to do business, and we ended
Speaker 7: up making an arrangement with him. Then if Teddy played
Speaker 7: a institutional building like Radio City that was where the
Speaker 7: promoter owned the building, they would allow us to do
Speaker 7: it as long as we paid.
Speaker 6: Him a fee.
Speaker 1: So it's like the mafia.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but every business, I mean, you know, try and
Speaker 7: buy laundry in New York and then you're restaurant and
Speaker 7: you know, it's still the same life works the same way.
Speaker 1: It just the way contribute to somebody.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it always works that way. So that was
Speaker 6: the way we sort of got out.
Speaker 7: And then what we did was we just played those
Speaker 7: kind of places and finally they came back to us
Speaker 7: and said, okay, we'll let you. My beef was money,
Speaker 7: but it was also promotion. They didn't do anything, and
Speaker 7: I wanted the shows promoted. So we finally made arrangement
Speaker 7: that date we could take a white promoter who has
Speaker 7: been in the business, pair them with someone from the
Speaker 7: Black Promoters Association, give them their fifty percent.
Speaker 6: Of the date, but don't come, don't do anything.
Speaker 1: Right right, just leave us alone. So all those shows
Speaker 1: that are you saying that that was the modus operandi
Speaker 1: for the average black show.
Speaker 7: And then well what happened is then other people's earth
Speaker 7: winded fire came on that highway. A lot of acts
Speaker 7: started to follow that highway and everything started to So
Speaker 7: did this at the grade a little bit, and it
Speaker 7: opened up. By the time I got to Rick James,
Speaker 7: I didn't have to deal with it at all.
Speaker 1: So with the exception of like James Brown, you're seeing,
Speaker 1: everyone had to go through that funnel system.
Speaker 6: I'm sure James Brown probably went through.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: I know that he was kind of handling his own
Speaker 1: business or whatnot. But that's it was great. That's what
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 6: It was a childing circuit. It's just the way it was.
Speaker 1: Wow. I went I went to elementary school on in
Speaker 1: Philadelphia at thirteen three thirteen Broad Street, which is right
Speaker 1: next door at the Philly International.
Speaker 6: So at that great bar across the street.
Speaker 1: The name of that bar, I forget.
Speaker 6: There was a great bar in the corner and everybody
Speaker 6: hung at it, the.
Speaker 5: Former Philadelphia International.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now it's a SLS hotel. Oh is that what
Speaker 1: it is?
Speaker 4: Though?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're about to build an SLS. But I could
Speaker 1: time it perfectly, like and I could tell that he
Speaker 1: might have been on CP time every time because I
Speaker 1: could always I knew when teddypin the grass was outside
Speaker 1: mm hmm. It was always like twelve twenty two, like
Speaker 1: during lunch break, so between like third and sixth grade,
Speaker 1: like like clockwork, I could catch teddypin the grass right outside,
Speaker 1: right outside of affiliateder like I've never seen a kind
Speaker 1: of this hard day's night fan mobbing situation. Wow. And
Speaker 1: he had a a well I assume it was a
Speaker 1: rose voice or whatever.
Speaker 7: The white girls yeah with a license played Teddy rented
Speaker 7: right that I think they.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I just like that made an impression on me,
Speaker 1: not like man one day, I want you want to
Speaker 1: be a pill people. So I mean, but what I
Speaker 1: know you can't get super personal of it. But I
Speaker 1: mean the the heating stick idea of what a rock
Speaker 1: star was, I know that was that for Teddy Pa,
Speaker 1: which I mean, how not bad did it get? How
Speaker 1: did it how extreme?
Speaker 7: Because now, but it's all a matter of levels. And
Speaker 7: Teddy was probably making more money than he ever thought
Speaker 7: he'd ever make in his whole life, just by the
Speaker 7: drippings from the side, you know he was. He's selling
Speaker 7: millions of records. That's a lot of money. So if
Speaker 7: a couple one hundred thousand maybe went off to him,
Speaker 7: where another a white artist may have gotten a million.
Speaker 7: If he's getting a couple of hundred thousand, that's big money.
Speaker 7: Because all you know is what you know, and you know.
Speaker 7: So he was when I got involved, he was happy.
Speaker 7: He had no problem with going and doing the dates
Speaker 7: and not getting paid. It was my problem, not his problem.
Speaker 7: He accepted it as that was the way of life,
Speaker 7: and he was getting enough drippings to come in that
Speaker 7: he felt like he was on top of the world.
Speaker 1: So how are you able to orchestrate the women only concerts?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: Were their guards there to stop?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 7: I I realized when I thought of it that I
Speaker 7: could get sued if I didn't let guys in. And
Speaker 7: every you know, everybody told me I couldn't do it
Speaker 7: because and I just said, if they want to buy
Speaker 7: a ticket, I don't care if they buy a ticket
Speaker 7: and come in. I just want the twenty five million
Speaker 7: people who aren't attending the concert to see for women only.
Speaker 6: I couldn't care if there's a guy in the place.
Speaker 1: No, even though I think, but they made HBO and
Speaker 1: it was like I think it was only cuts of women,
Speaker 1: so I only thought.
Speaker 6: That's all they were.
Speaker 1: It did make it. Yeah, No men came.
Speaker 6: No men came at all.
Speaker 7: I mean they could have, but they were outside. We
Speaker 7: had a lot of pimps outside waiting for their ladies to.
Speaker 6: The letout.
Speaker 1: I have reason to believe that Teddy rocked a few
Speaker 1: marriages in my family's, but my extended family.
Speaker 7: The best part of those shows is we gave out
Speaker 7: everybody chocolate Teddy Bear lollipops, so he go had to
Speaker 7: like close.
Speaker 6: The door and you're seeing them out in the audio
Speaker 6: to grow up, clicking the lollipop and biting its head off. Teddy. Yeah,
Speaker 6: patties a lot of patties on stage.
Speaker 1: Did it ever bother him in the least? Or was
Speaker 1: he just enjoying it?
Speaker 6: He enjoyed it, Teddy was.
Speaker 7: I had such a great time working with Teddy was
Speaker 7: one of my you know, Alice for me is like
Speaker 7: an armor after Alice.
Speaker 6: Teddy Teddy was, I was. He's my favorite music. That's
Speaker 6: what I listened to at home.
Speaker 7: It's the only thing I play in my house for
Speaker 7: the last fifteen years is Teddy. And he just loved
Speaker 7: being that character.
Speaker 6: I loved it was.
Speaker 7: I used to have these great conversations with him. I
Speaker 7: would show up and he say, oh shit, this is
Speaker 7: the time, and I say, yeah, we called it that
Speaker 7: don't be a schmuck conversations and.
Speaker 6: I sort of shut the door and I go, man,
Speaker 6: you're being a schmuck. Have I a schmuck again? And
Speaker 6: I get it off my chest and we deal with it.
Speaker 6: He was great.
Speaker 7: You could you could talk, you know, with some artists,
Speaker 7: you have to tiptoe around the issue. You have to
Speaker 7: figure out a way to get to where you want
Speaker 7: to go with him. You didn't have to tiptoe. I
Speaker 7: could just tell him, you know, as as h fancy
Speaker 7: as I could what I felt.
Speaker 1: So what would be what would be an issue? Then?
Speaker 7: Well, actually for women only came out of it. That's
Speaker 7: how the concert happened. He played, I got really pissed
Speaker 7: when I went and did the first Chiplin circuit show
Speaker 7: with him. Really pissed me off, like, you can't let
Speaker 7: this happen. That's when he told me his manager got killed.
Speaker 7: And I said, you know, I don't give a shit.
Speaker 7: I don't have kids, I don't care let him kill me,
Speaker 7: but I'm not going to be part of this thing.
Speaker 6: And he said, what do we do?
Speaker 7: I said, I'm going to book you in the whitest
Speaker 7: place I can find and fuck him excuse me, and
Speaker 7: we're going. Uh So I booked him in the Roxy
Speaker 7: in l a, which very white bread, small club. I
Speaker 7: don't think a black artist that ever played it. At
Speaker 7: that point, we got a lot of death threats we
Speaker 7: got we ended up getting FBI security there.
Speaker 6: They for what the black Promoters Association.
Speaker 7: Oh okay, I thought, so, you know, so, I'm like
Speaker 7: risking my life to do this rock the Roxy. You're
Speaker 7: not going to make any money in the Roxy. It's
Speaker 7: two hundred seats. And I had only done one show
Speaker 7: with him, right, And we get to the Roxy and
Speaker 7: he does the whole show sitting on a stool. All
Speaker 7: the women wanted to do was like grab him and
Speaker 7: fucking brains. And he's sitting on a stool being this
Speaker 7: really cool, really cool guy, like you know, and I
Speaker 7: was getting furious, like furious, like I can't believe you're
Speaker 7: not giving it up. The energy in this room is
Speaker 7: so strong at you.
Speaker 6: And you're just you're not reacting, you're not engaging, You're
Speaker 6: not engaging it.
Speaker 7: You're not giving it back to him, You're not doing
Speaker 7: So I go upstairs and this is only my second
Speaker 7: show with him, and he's got these two security guys,
Speaker 7: one real big, one real small, and they really don't
Speaker 7: know me, and they tell me I got to wait.
Speaker 7: Teddy's getting, you know, changing, which really pisses me off
Speaker 7: to begin with because I'm used to immediate access.
Speaker 6: And then this PARADEI of women starts coming in and
Speaker 6: you know, a woman comes in and.
Speaker 7: I'm out there. It's fifteen minutes later. The next one
Speaker 7: comes in. Now it's two o'clock in the morning. I've
Speaker 7: risked my life. I hate the show and I'm sitting
Speaker 7: here at two.
Speaker 6: O'clock in the morning and I get in you mother
Speaker 6: the fucker, Who the fuck do you think you are?
Speaker 6: You know, I've risked my life for you to sit
Speaker 6: on a fucking stool and and like be cool, and
Speaker 6: then you make me wait till two o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 6: Go fuck yourself. And he said, hey, man, what do
Speaker 6: you expect from me? I'll tell you what to expect me.
Speaker 6: To get those women crazy, and let me be the
Speaker 6: only guy in the room when you're doing it. I
Speaker 6: will have the greatest time ever. And then I said,
Speaker 6: wait a second, let's do shows for women only. Well
Speaker 6: I do know that, And that was it came out
Speaker 6: of that moment. Don't be a conversation. And he said,
Speaker 6: can we do that? And I said, yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 6: we can do anything we want to do.
Speaker 1: Let's go do it.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 1: I think before this point there used to always be
Speaker 1: two sets of shows, because even Sam Cook had the
Speaker 1: show that he did at the Kopa, the Dinner Shownight Midnight,
Speaker 1: do the you know, rebel Rousing Show, and James Brown Motown.
Speaker 1: Like I think maybe because perhaps Mark how Melvin, the
Speaker 1: Blue Notes sort of had to have dual shows as well,
Speaker 1: like you play certain places where it's like suit and time,
Speaker 1: you know, because I saw one of their concert tapes
Speaker 1: where I mean they were doing like Broadway Danny Rose
Speaker 1: and stuff, let us entertain you, like songs from Yeah.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: They were doing like magic Tricks and wow. I was like, really,
Speaker 1: I never knew how Blue Notes seeing the way we
Speaker 1: were seeing the sho now getting ready for the Josh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But I mean just pretty much even James Brown, like
Speaker 1: star Time was like the hits, but then he do
Speaker 1: some Sinatra stuff he do that's life and you know,
Speaker 1: like the I can be serious and play the copa.
Speaker 1: So maybe that was the mentality.
Speaker 6: I think he was just trying to be cool.
Speaker 1: So where the audience or the the demographics different as well,
Speaker 1: Like did he ever, Yeah, it was it was he
Speaker 1: started at the end to get some white audience.
Speaker 6: Once he got once.
Speaker 7: They the press finally started calling him the black Elvis,
Speaker 7: and that sort of attracted a lot of white women
Speaker 7: once they said black Elvis, but up till but never
Speaker 7: really was gigantic, But it was. It was every woman
Speaker 7: in town.
Speaker 6: I mean it was.
Speaker 7: It was fantastic and they had the greatest time. I
Speaker 7: mean it really it paid off. He was an entertainer
Speaker 7: who paid off. They went home exhausted.
Speaker 5: Let me ask you a personal question, because in the
Speaker 5: documentary some of your friends admit that you.
Speaker 6: Love the ladies.
Speaker 5: Do so how does the police police himself? Because if
Speaker 5: you were, you know, with these guys like Teddy and
Speaker 5: Alls and where women were everywhere, was there a moment
Speaker 5: when you had to go or maybe just three to
Speaker 5: night or just two?
Speaker 6: No, okay, I was just I was.
Speaker 7: I've always I've always been very direct. I try to
Speaker 7: always be honest. And in those days, I was overworking,
Speaker 7: you know, I was. That was all I had was
Speaker 7: my work. That's all I cared about.
Speaker 6: So there wasn't really time for relationships. So but I
Speaker 6: loved women and I love sex.
Speaker 5: Did you have any did you have some game?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 6: So what not great game? Not great game, but great
Speaker 6: access Because I had I was in the midst of
Speaker 6: all the stars. Always, I was standing next to the
Speaker 6: people they wanted to be next to.
Speaker 7: Everybody wanted to be with the lead singer of a band.
Speaker 7: And so I said to myself, how can I I
Speaker 7: don't have the time to romance someone. You know, it's
Speaker 7: like it's eleven thirty, I got to get up at six.
Speaker 6: I'm in a hotel room.
Speaker 7: I don't have time to like, I love you, I
Speaker 7: love you, And it's not honest. Actually, everybody else on
Speaker 7: the road is like telling these girls that they know
Speaker 7: they're never going to see again how much they love them.
Speaker 6: Just to get him into the bed. And that's yeah.
Speaker 7: And I said, I can't do that. So I said,
Speaker 7: what do I do? I said, well, what's my strength.
Speaker 7: My strength is that I can get these women a
Speaker 7: backstage pass to meet the lead singer. So I made
Speaker 7: up a T shirt that said, no head no backstage
Speaker 7: pass was honest. You wanted great, you don't want it great,
Speaker 7: no problem at all.
Speaker 5: It was head based, which that was what stopped you
Speaker 5: from having so many thoughts thought babies, Yeah, okay, oh
Speaker 5: that was very smart.
Speaker 6: It eliminated the down side in fulfill the upside. It
Speaker 6: was sort of honest right to the floor.
Speaker 1: So shut I got, I gotta I gotta ask uh,
Speaker 1: because I remember again as a Philadelphian, I remember it
Speaker 1: so well. But can you take us through the like
Speaker 1: I believe, like March of eighty two when you got
Speaker 1: that phone call, like.
Speaker 6: What I got a phone call that Teddy had his accident.
Speaker 1: Do you still remember it?
Speaker 6: Like, oh, like it was yesterday. I remember.
Speaker 7: I don't remember getting to Philly. I remember the elevated
Speaker 7: the elevated door in the hospital opening, and uh, Sedonia
Speaker 7: Walker was there who ran Teddy's office, and Karen who
Speaker 7: was I don't know if she was his wife at
Speaker 7: that point, she had been a singer in the show.
Speaker 7: She was there, Teddy's mom, who's still alive and just
Speaker 7: an amazing wow. I mean like they should build a
Speaker 7: statue to her. She is a remarkable woman. And the
Speaker 7: doctor because they had called him that the doors opening
Speaker 7: and they said, mister the doctor and mister Gordon's lad
Speaker 7: you're here. Teddy is never going to walk again. We're
Speaker 7: not sure if he's going to live again or not,
Speaker 7: but it's really important in his recovery for us to
Speaker 7: tell him rapidly that he's not going to walk again.
Speaker 7: We found that that's really part of the way if
Speaker 7: he's going to come through this thing. He's got to
Speaker 7: know it now.
Speaker 1: And why was that?
Speaker 7: I have no idea and everybody like they just wanted
Speaker 7: you to put it in this instantly bam, and they
Speaker 7: said no, and we kill all.
Speaker 6: Hopes, so you know, so it's reality and you know
Speaker 6: where you're going to kill the spirit though.
Speaker 7: You know he's strapped to a table that they flip
Speaker 7: every ten minutes. Yeah, I saw that device like that
Speaker 7: and all he could do is blink. That was the
Speaker 7: only you know, like, can you can you hear me?
Speaker 7: Teddy blink once, yes, twice no, and he blink and
Speaker 7: then they'd flip him every ten minutes, and they said,
Speaker 7: and everybody felt that you should be part of the
Speaker 7: team to tell him. And within sixty seconds, I'm in
Speaker 7: his room telling the guy that he's never going to
Speaker 7: walk again. It was a guy I love, I mean
Speaker 7: love Teddy. I can't I still love him. Amazing, just
Speaker 7: an amazing you know. He gave me the trust. Not easy,
Speaker 7: really not easy, and so that was a pretty traumatic moment.
Speaker 7: And I went and he had some children. I didn't
Speaker 7: know how many, because Teddy was he didn't wear the
Speaker 7: same T shirt I did. And he spent everything he had,
Speaker 7: no matter what how much he made, he spent it.
Speaker 7: So I knew there was no money to take care
Speaker 7: of everybody. So I decided I had to attach myself
Speaker 7: emotionally from this. The doctors would take care of him,
Speaker 7: I would, I would figure out how to take care
Speaker 7: of his family. So there was a beer company that
Speaker 7: had been sponsoring us, who will go unnamed, and I
Speaker 7: called him up and I explained what happened and told
Speaker 7: him about the kids, and they agreed to put some
Speaker 7: money into a trust fund, sizeable trust fund and get
Speaker 7: the goodwill for the beer company and help Teddy's family
Speaker 7: and wow, And I thought, okay, got it done with,
Speaker 7: Like I think a million dollars or two million dollars.
Speaker 7: Go to sleep, wake up in the morning, get the newspaper.
Speaker 7: The girl in the car with Teddy was a guy
Speaker 7: front page story, so I knew I would never hear
Speaker 7: from the beer company ever again, which I never did.
Speaker 1: So they revealed that in the daily news front page. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember, I mean I was really young.
Speaker 2: The reason why I remember my mother she was I mean,
Speaker 2: she loved him, and that was one of the first times,
Speaker 2: like with the celebrity. I remember seeing my mother cry
Speaker 2: like I remember her when the news broke. I mean
Speaker 2: I was like three four years old.
Speaker 1: It was crying.
Speaker 7: His connection to his audience. I've never seen a connection
Speaker 7: like he had to his audience. To these women, they
Speaker 7: really felt that well, he was one of the few
Speaker 7: he was there.
Speaker 6: You know, each one.
Speaker 7: Felt personally like he was their lover, their son, their husband.
Speaker 7: It was really remarkable relations.
Speaker 1: It was this very I mean he was such a
Speaker 1: masculine figure. I mean not saying that, you know the answer.
Speaker 7: Worst man I ever saw him, My biggest presence I've
Speaker 7: ever seen. I mean he walked in a room and.
Speaker 1: Was like wow, not for nothing.
Speaker 5: I remember as his album when I was a little girl,
Speaker 5: and that was the only album that I knew, and
Speaker 5: I used to sing and perform it in front of
Speaker 5: my my family and friend. So you read about that
Speaker 5: all ages.
Speaker 6: So I wake up in that story is in the newspaper.
Speaker 1: So as a manager, how what do you do?
Speaker 4: Then?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 1: So what I did then?
Speaker 6: And it I called missus pendergrass Ida.
Speaker 7: And I said, I think we I think we have
Speaker 7: a problem. I don't think the beer Company's going to
Speaker 7: do what I said they were going to do. Can
Speaker 7: I come out to the house and go through all
Speaker 7: the tapes and see if I can find maybe there's
Speaker 7: some songs that Teddy's done that haven't been released, and
Speaker 7: I can get someone to pay to put him out.
Speaker 7: I found an album's worth of material and the rest
Speaker 7: of the story is almost too ugly to tell, but
Speaker 7: we got him some money. He was recording for a
Speaker 7: record company. I went to the record company that distributed
Speaker 7: their record company, CBS correct CBS, and they were CBS
Speaker 7: agreed to give me a million dollars for Teddy for
Speaker 7: the tapes. But but they said they couldn't pay it
Speaker 7: to us directly. Teddy was signed to p I R.
Speaker 7: They had to give it the p I R. So
Speaker 7: I took Teddy's mom and the two kids that I
Speaker 7: knew of to gamble on Huff's office. I remember sitting
Speaker 7: in the chair was it was always dramatic to sit
Speaker 7: there because they sat.
Speaker 6: In two thrones and behind them were all the black militants,
Speaker 6: all of them. All of them talked about killing people
Speaker 6: like me.
Speaker 1: You didn't have a good cozy relationship.
Speaker 6: It wasn't the war it's place to be. And told
Speaker 6: them what I had done.
Speaker 7: They got very mad that I went to CBS behind
Speaker 7: their back, but they did finally agree that they would
Speaker 7: get the check and give it to Teddy. And they
Speaker 7: did get the check and they gave part of it
Speaker 7: to Teddy, so that saved us for a while, and.
Speaker 6: Then I had it. In the contract there was a
Speaker 6: soundtrack clause that he could do one album not on
Speaker 6: p I R if it was a soundtrack of a
Speaker 6: movie Super one. Yeah. So I went to I went
Speaker 6: to did you work on Super One?
Speaker 1: No? I just know that. Yeah, I I've never seen
Speaker 1: the movie, but I haven't record.
Speaker 6: I worked on that. That was a barbon Worth movie.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I never know the movie ever came out.
Speaker 6: I just yeah, So I made this movie.
Speaker 7: I satted a film company, made a movie called Choose Me,
Speaker 7: and Teddy got the sound got an advanced from a
Speaker 7: lecture for the soundtrack, and that's to what put him
Speaker 7: on straightened out, took care of the kids, took care
Speaker 7: of the mom.
Speaker 2: So by the time you guys own electure when he
Speaker 2: did like the Joy album, that were things like good.
Speaker 7: Things yes, because because the Electra stepped up to the
Speaker 7: line and gave him, uh, there was a fellow named
Speaker 7: Bob kras Now, and he had just taken over Electra
Speaker 7: and I had promised Teddy that if he did something
Speaker 7: legally that I could get him a million dollars. And
Speaker 7: he did it and the guy renegged on a million
Speaker 7: dollars at CBS Walter after this, this is the second
Speaker 7: part of the incident, and I didn't know what to do.
Speaker 7: You know, Teddy's lying there still. I promised him a
Speaker 7: million dollars. I got him to go against some of
Speaker 7: his what he considered his best friends, and I wasn't
Speaker 7: bringing back the million dollars. And I didn't have a
Speaker 7: million dollars or I would have given it to him.
Speaker 7: And I went to Bob Krasnow's office and I told
Speaker 7: him the story and he said to me, is Teddy
Speaker 7: gonna live? And I said I don't know, and he said, well,
Speaker 7: I can just do me a favor.
Speaker 6: If he dies.
Speaker 7: I need to have a tape in my file of
Speaker 7: him doing something, and I need a script of a movie.
Speaker 6: You don't have to make the movie. Doesn't that be him?
Speaker 7: But I got to have my ass covered, so I
Speaker 7: like the life rights. So I went to Luther and
Speaker 7: I told him and I said, can you make yourself
Speaker 7: sound like Teddy? And get me a tape? And he wrote,
Speaker 7: choose Me, Luthor. He wrote the song and he did
Speaker 7: like twenty generations, removed the noise in the background. But
Speaker 7: we had a tape up choose Me that's sort of
Speaker 7: sated like Teddy. And I went to a filmmaker I
Speaker 7: had worked with, a guy named Alan Rudolph, and I said,
Speaker 7: would you write a script for me? When never going
Speaker 7: to make the movie? But I told him the story
Speaker 7: and he wrote the script. So we got the money
Speaker 7: and I thought everything was pretty good.
Speaker 6: Teddy was rocket. And then now when.
Speaker 7: Rudolf called me up about a year later, he said,
Speaker 7: now I need a favor and I said, what's that?
Speaker 7: And he said, I want to make the movie.
Speaker 6: So I would.
Speaker 7: I wouldn't sold my soul to Chris Blackwell, who would
Speaker 7: always who had always wanted to meet a uh start
Speaker 7: a film company for a partner with me, because I
Speaker 7: was I had won the con Film Festival. I was
Speaker 7: doing pretty good, and but I knew that he had
Speaker 7: a bad reputation as as you know, a lot of
Speaker 7: people who had been with him had been burned. And
Speaker 7: but I said, listen, I know you're sort of devilish,
Speaker 7: but I will sell my soul to you.
Speaker 1: I'm always honest against my greater and and he.
Speaker 7: Said, I know people talk about it. And I said,
Speaker 7: but I need a million dollars to make this movie.
Speaker 7: I know you have a rec good company, but you
Speaker 7: can't get the soundtrack. But I'll make it up to
Speaker 7: you somehow, and I'll partner with him, will do great.
Speaker 7: And I thought that I owned the live films and
Speaker 7: Choose Me was the first movie Electric got the soundtrack
Speaker 7: with Teddy.
Speaker 1: And wow, here we are, so wow, I'm noticing that,
Speaker 1: like you're rolling alone in the situation. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: know the business was dangerous in the seventies, and I
Speaker 1: mean the sixties, seventies and eighties because there was mod run.
Speaker 1: I mean, how did you get out unscathed? I don't know.
Speaker 6: If I am ut scathing, what is your most alive?
Speaker 6: I would say my scariest What was your most Like
Speaker 6: you're scathing, I would say my scariest moment. And I'll
Speaker 6: leave the names of the people out. But my only
Speaker 6: real brush, the Black Promoters Association never really.
Speaker 1: Came after me Hardy.
Speaker 7: It was never a moment where I I'm not going
Speaker 7: to live anymore. I had one second of that. One
Speaker 7: guy put a gun to my head, but I knew
Speaker 7: he wasn't going to use it. I just knew he
Speaker 7: was too high profile. He wasn't going to shoot me.
Speaker 7: So I wasn't even scared.
Speaker 1: It was just like quite cool.
Speaker 7: Yeah, But then I was. This is years later. I
Speaker 7: was in my apartment in New York. It was when
Speaker 7: Teddy had his accident. I moved to New York for
Speaker 7: two years, and I went down to Philly every week
Speaker 7: to see him. And I had taken Bob Ethern, who
Speaker 7: produced Alice's, his apartment in New York. He let me
Speaker 7: use for two years, and there was a little phone
Speaker 7: on the side of the bed, a red phone that
Speaker 7: never rang. I didn't know the number. I have no
Speaker 7: idea what he used it for, don't want to know.
Speaker 7: And one day it rang and Hello, shep Gordon. Yeah,
Speaker 7: meet me at the corner of this really heavy voice.
Speaker 7: You need to meet me at the corner, Okay, hang
Speaker 7: up the phone, I'll go call the next day, really heavy,
Speaker 7: like heavy, and that I hired two x cops to
Speaker 7: be with me twenty four hours a day. You know,
Speaker 7: how did you get this number?
Speaker 6: A how did you know?
Speaker 7: I was answering, he knew where my office was, and
Speaker 7: he had that voice? Was this was serious Italian kind
Speaker 7: of you know, a soprano's voice.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 7: And the next day I get a phone call from
Speaker 7: a guy that I had met a few times who
Speaker 7: everyone had told me was connected, mafia connected, and he
Speaker 7: calls me up. I guess I could say his name
Speaker 7: because I think he's dead. Tommy Fastola, who ended up
Speaker 7: going to jail for life for beating up a record
Speaker 7: company guy.
Speaker 6: And he says, hey, ship bet you doing great, Tommy.
Speaker 6: How'd you get my number? He said, oh, we got friends.
Speaker 6: We got friends. And he called on the same phone.
Speaker 7: Right right right, and he says, you know how lucky
Speaker 7: you are? And I said, what do you mean, Tommy?
Speaker 7: He says, so, I'm having breakfast this morning with the guys. Now,
Speaker 7: one of the guys says I got to leave early,
Speaker 7: and I says to him, boy, do you gotta leave early?
Speaker 7: I gotta go bump this guy off. Shep gordon up
Speaker 7: then wow, and he said, you can't bump the guy off.
Speaker 1: He's with me.
Speaker 7: And I'm like now thinking to myself, which is worse,
Speaker 7: getting bumped off of.
Speaker 6: Being with him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right.
Speaker 6: Exactly, he's with me.
Speaker 7: You can't do that, And he says, well, the other
Speaker 7: guy's sad too, So I can tell the story, he said,
Speaker 7: So you tell you what, kid, meet me at Moish's office.
Speaker 7: This afternoon at two, Mois was Marris leaving.
Speaker 5: Ah.
Speaker 7: So I go up to Marris Levy's office, who I'd
Speaker 7: never met before with Tommy. He tells the story and Morris.
Speaker 6: Says, you're a lucky kid to have Tommy on your side.
Speaker 6: You know that. I said, yeah, I said, but you
Speaker 6: know you should do something for him. What should I
Speaker 6: do for him?
Speaker 7: He said, you know that new Blondie record that's coming out.
Speaker 7: I own these stores strawberries, get me fifty thousand clean
Speaker 7: copies meant that they weren't punched as free goods so
Speaker 7: they could sell.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 7: And I said, Mars, I know, I'm not the record company,
Speaker 7: I really, but we settled at ten thousand copies, which
Speaker 7: I bought from the record company.
Speaker 6: It costs it gave him that it was like.
Speaker 7: And luckily a few months later, Tommy Vastolo got caught
Speaker 7: on camera in Philadelphia beating up a record store guy.
Speaker 7: Who hadn't paid his bill to boish with a baseball
Speaker 7: bat and went to jail for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: Still in jail.
Speaker 6: I think he died in jail. He may be around
Speaker 6: if he will probably come after me.
Speaker 5: But is that when you became a Buddhist.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but that was my only real you know, there's
Speaker 7: so much talk. You see vinyls, you see all this stuff.
Speaker 7: It never really was. You know, there were thugs, but
Speaker 7: it wasn't this organized.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: That was my only brush in forty years of doing
Speaker 7: it of like real organized crime stuff.
Speaker 1: So did you Did you have personal relationships with all
Speaker 1: of your clients because I mean no, I mean at
Speaker 1: some point you had like forty at the same time, right, No.
Speaker 1: I So what about like Rick.
Speaker 7: James, Rick James, I had a very personal relationship with
Speaker 7: I would say, Rick Teddy, Alice Raquel to some extent.
Speaker 7: Those were really my closest. There was some that I
Speaker 7: had no and some of the African artists Johnny Clegig
Speaker 7: King Sonny A. Day was the most elegant human being
Speaker 7: I've ever been around in my life. Magic Fashik was
Speaker 7: just a joy. So but there were many I didn't luthor.
Speaker 7: I did not have a close relationship.
Speaker 1: With really at all, but you were with him at
Speaker 1: all times though I.
Speaker 7: Was with him twenty years, so we lived ten blocks
Speaker 7: from each other. He never was at my house.
Speaker 1: Wow, really yeah? I mean, did you have a liaison like.
Speaker 6: I had a liaison?
Speaker 7: For every act I used to tell acts, I'd say,
Speaker 7: you know, the biggest waste of my time is talking
Speaker 7: to you on the phone about you need four Coca colas.
Speaker 7: You know, then I'm not doing my job. So I
Speaker 7: charged twenty percent. If you don't need me to be
Speaker 7: in your face all the time, I will get someone
Speaker 7: that you can beat up whenever you want to beat
Speaker 7: them up, and you'll only charge of fifteen percent. And
Speaker 7: everybody went for fifteen percent.
Speaker 6: I never had anybody say no, I want you for
Speaker 6: twenty but it was true.
Speaker 7: My job is getting ahead of the artist but a
Speaker 7: year or two and telling them where to go. And
Speaker 7: if I'm spending my time talking about like I didn't
Speaker 7: have the right light in my dressing room last night.
Speaker 7: You know, I like pink lights, not they had.
Speaker 6: A blue light. Could you believe they had a blue light?
Speaker 1: Well? I can imagine that, especially after the massive success
Speaker 1: of Street Songs, m V dawning of MTV that Rick
Speaker 1: James really wanted to be ushered into, you know, the eighties,
Speaker 1: the same way that Michael and Prince got their due.
Speaker 1: So I mean I had what was that whole scenario, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, was there a pressure on you like to
Speaker 1: get me on MTV?
Speaker 6: And I mean enough from Rick. But we were doing
Speaker 6: so good that I didn't. He didn't need to. We
Speaker 6: had It was a great career.
Speaker 1: Many complained about it a lot, though, you know, on MTV.
Speaker 6: Never to me.
Speaker 7: I never never really got it from but he may
Speaker 7: have to the guy who worked for me, he may have,
Speaker 7: but he made he was We were headlined those Budweiser
Speaker 7: festivals and it was good times.
Speaker 1: Boy.
Speaker 6: He was a great guy. I really loved, very smart man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my uh my Rick James story was at the
Speaker 1: House of Blues, uh Me, Common and Rossario Dawson went
Speaker 1: to go see Rick and or it was really the
Speaker 1: Tina Marie Show, but Rick just happened to be there
Speaker 1: and they got out and fire and desire and everything.
Speaker 1: It was like nineteen ninety nine. Anyway, So we're up
Speaker 1: backstage and Rick comes in with Leon Isaac Kennedy.
Speaker 6: So the thing is was married for like a beautiful girl.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen that sexty? Well, here we go,
Speaker 1: this is where I'm leading to. This is what I'm
Speaker 1: leading to.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: Rick saw me. Rick saw me walking with Rosario.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: But after a while, like me and Tina started talking
Speaker 1: a lot about like I'm kicking out whatever. So at
Speaker 1: some point Rick comes up to me and I was like,
Speaker 1: he gives me this firm handshake, and I was like, yo, man,
Speaker 1: like I can't even believe you, like know who I am.
Speaker 1: He's like, of course I know you are. Motherfucker you
Speaker 1: want to he was the one of the funkiest motherfuckers
Speaker 1: walking on earth right now. And he said, but I
Speaker 1: should tell you something now. At this point, he points
Speaker 1: out my peripheral and leon is over there wrapping to Rosario. Now,
Speaker 1: I mean we were cool, like she wasn't my dater
Speaker 1: or anything. But Rick don't know that, he says, He
Speaker 1: points Leon. He says, you know that motherfucker over there.
Speaker 1: I said, that's how leon Isa sac Kennedy, right. He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: He's like, is that your lady? And you know I
Speaker 1: was I was, well, you know, we're cool, but you
Speaker 1: know he's if you know what that motherfucker's hands is. Man,
Speaker 1: I go get your lady right now.
Speaker 4: Me me.
Speaker 1: Nice of music, guys, get back. I bumped into Dave Chappelle,
Speaker 1: uh recently, and I told we were interviewing you, and
Speaker 1: you know, I reminded him that you had managed Rick James.
Speaker 1: And I was there the day that we actually shot
Speaker 1: Rick's porson of the interview and uh, he was actually
Speaker 1: I think the first of the second person that we
Speaker 1: showed the final sketch to, and uh, you know he
Speaker 1: loved it. He yeah, he loved it. We got no
Speaker 1: complaints from him.
Speaker 7: Rick was the way I the way I started with Rick.
Speaker 7: I was in my office one day and this my
Speaker 7: door gets thrown open and just thrown open, like worked
Speaker 7: his way right through the reception that just came to
Speaker 7: the thing. He goes, you, motherfucker you shep Gordon, motherfucker.
Speaker 7: I know more about you than you know about you, really,
Speaker 7: And I said, what who are you? And he said,
Speaker 7: motherfucker Rick James, I'm from Buffalo, New York. You went
Speaker 7: to school in Buffalo, New.
Speaker 6: York, you lived on Main Street.
Speaker 1: You ate it the you did?
Speaker 6: He like had it down I said, what do you do?
Speaker 6: And he said, He's good, what do I do? I'm
Speaker 6: the fucking baddest motherfucker you ever came across in your
Speaker 6: fucking life.
Speaker 1: What do you mean? Why do I do? Wow?
Speaker 6: And he and he had a hit record ONWN. So
Speaker 6: you and I had already been out, and yeah, you
Speaker 6: and I was out.
Speaker 1: He had to.
Speaker 7: He had just was just about to sign the Mary
Speaker 7: Jane girls to Barry, and he said, motherfucker, I got
Speaker 7: these girls that are gonna be even bigger than me,
Speaker 7: and you're going to do their deal.
Speaker 6: I'm throwing you in.
Speaker 7: The pit with Berry. And that was my first meeting.
Speaker 7: I went to the penthouse on sunset and Barry was
Speaker 7: playing pool and really yeah and and uh, rickad, this
Speaker 7: is the motherfucker's gonna squeeze you for more money you
Speaker 7: ever given anybody.
Speaker 1: So what was that light with Barry? We were talking.
Speaker 6: I never really got to know him. He was very
Speaker 6: He dismissed me, right, I mean he really dismissed me.
Speaker 6: I was that.
Speaker 1: He is very dismissive.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he dismissed me.
Speaker 7: To say, but we held out and he came around
Speaker 7: and we made the deal, and uh, he paid him.
Speaker 7: He was Barry was my impression, and I didn't know
Speaker 7: him well, and I can't say this with one hundred
Speaker 7: percent certainly, but he would fuck you to your faiths,
Speaker 7: not to your back.
Speaker 6: He cut a really hard deal. You got to respect
Speaker 6: that and you got to respect it. And he delivered
Speaker 6: the goods. He got you to hit records. He did
Speaker 6: the stuff he had to do.
Speaker 7: But it was all about Barry and he wasn't sharing,
Speaker 7: and he was vocal about I can deal with anybody
Speaker 7: if they're honest, they tell you what the game is.
Speaker 7: You want to get delt in, you know, get you
Speaker 7: have a choice.
Speaker 1: Did he at least respect that Rick Rick's celebrity and
Speaker 1: his status at the time was going to carry Motown
Speaker 1: to the eighties?
Speaker 6: I don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, with the exception of and Stevie. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know. I really don't know. I Rick
Speaker 6: ended up dealing more with him than I did. Really.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Rick had a good relationship with him. I was
Speaker 7: the white kid on the block who was trying to
Speaker 7: steal from him, and so I let Rick. I would
Speaker 7: I would wind Rick up and send him in rather
Speaker 7: than go in myself. I say, you know, here's what
Speaker 7: we got to get and here's what I need, and
Speaker 7: the Mary Jane girls had to hit.
Speaker 6: The first record was a hit.
Speaker 1: So yeah, both those records.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so they were real happy with them.
Speaker 1: So you orchestrated both those albums.
Speaker 6: I wouldn't say I orchestrated.
Speaker 1: I made the deal.
Speaker 6: I made the deal for him to allow him to hit,
Speaker 6: but I didn't have any real influence on it.
Speaker 4: Rick.
Speaker 7: Rick was very much in control of his career. He
Speaker 7: was very strong, one of the smartest artists I've ever
Speaker 7: worked with.
Speaker 1: So, with the exception of maybe Freddy Demand, if I'm who.
Speaker 6: By the way, I think is maybe the best manager
Speaker 6: of my in my lifetime.
Speaker 1: Really. Yeah. Well, with the exception of Freddie Demand, I
Speaker 1: don't know where I was the Jackson's and.
Speaker 6: Then he did Michael's launch, a solo launch Madonna.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he had madonna'srom Jump Street right from jumps Street
Speaker 7: and brought back Line over Richard And he would only.
Speaker 6: Do one or two acts at a time, that's all
Speaker 6: he needed.
Speaker 1: But he did.
Speaker 7: He did the job. I mean, he really, My respect
Speaker 7: love for him is unbelievable. I Mean I always when
Speaker 7: people ask me, I always say Freddy Demand was the guy.
Speaker 1: What I was gonna say between Jerry Goldsmith and Freddy Demand, Well,
Speaker 1: let me, I'm I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I gotta try
Speaker 1: and stop. Sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: Well no, I mean, okay, So who was Jerry gold
Speaker 6: He had wore sly uh the animals? Yeah, er, But
Speaker 6: I'm just saying that a lot of lawsuits a lot.
Speaker 1: However, I'm saying that if I am a black act
Speaker 1: that's looking to crossover, and crossover was definitely on the
Speaker 1: minds of a lot of black acts in the seventies,
Speaker 1: how to break out of the Chitlin circuit and really
Speaker 1: want to generate money for myself. But like staying power,
Speaker 1: I mean, are you are you the are you the
Speaker 1: golden child that will Is it either you or Freddie
Speaker 1: that's the golden child that will take you there? Or yeah?
Speaker 1: I think they were And is it based on the
Speaker 1: relationships you have with radio stations?
Speaker 6: And I think, you know, in a way of thinking,
Speaker 6: I think there were a couple of other guys.
Speaker 7: Trying to think of the guys that did earth Wind
Speaker 7: and Fire, they had found the highway to go down
Speaker 7: to the way they could do stuff like that. There
Speaker 7: were a few people. But you know, also radio was
Speaker 7: hungry for it. They were really hungry for it. It
Speaker 7: wasn't a hardshell.
Speaker 1: It was radio hungry for music. Like now, radio is
Speaker 1: hungry for you to buy the product that they're advertising.
Speaker 1: So it's not music centric more than it is getting
Speaker 1: you know, you to hear the commercials and getting kids
Speaker 1: to hear their parents to hear the commercials to buy
Speaker 1: the product. Like music is almost an afterthought for radio,
Speaker 1: which is why we get the same fifteen songs in rotation.
Speaker 1: But are you saying that there's a point where radio
Speaker 1: was truly interested.
Speaker 7: In I wouldn't say truly interested, because I don't know
Speaker 7: if they're capable of that. FM was but pop am radio,
Speaker 7: but they found that those records worked on their stations. Okay,
Speaker 7: so you you know, the game was always buying your
Speaker 7: way on. But you couldn't just buy your way on.
Speaker 1: You had to see I always thought you could buy
Speaker 1: your way on.
Speaker 6: Oh no, I'll tell you a great Philly story, Gray,
Speaker 6: really funny.
Speaker 1: Everything's happening.
Speaker 7: So I'm a young punk. Alice has a hit record,
Speaker 7: comes time for the second record, and the record company
Speaker 7: is not going to do anything they're just not going
Speaker 7: to he just told you this. No, but you can
Speaker 7: tell you know, you know, by the science and not
Speaker 7: taking any ads out. There's no independence hired for the single.
Speaker 7: That's just you know, the tailtale signs. So I'm not
Speaker 7: gonna let them stop me. So I'm just gonna buy
Speaker 7: my way on. I had some cash on. So the
Speaker 7: most powerful guy at the time in radio was out
Speaker 7: of Philadelphia, Freddie Disappeal. He was probably the most effective guy.
Speaker 7: He was you could pay him and you got a
Speaker 7: hit record. So I went to Freddy and he had
Speaker 7: never heard of me. I got introduced, I think by
Speaker 7: maybe Albert Grossman or somebody on a phone call. There
Speaker 7: were no emails or anything like that. And I told
Speaker 7: him the story and it's Alison, how much is it?
Speaker 7: And in those days they used to charge by parallel one,
Speaker 7: Parallel two, parallel three. Parallel one was a big station,
Speaker 7: so maybe that was a ten thousand dollars by. Parallel
Speaker 7: two was a smaller station, maybe a five thousand dollars by.
Speaker 7: So I wanted to parallel one station. I paid him
Speaker 7: ten thousand, and first week we're twenty seven.
Speaker 6: It's like, oh my god, this is the greatest. We're
Speaker 6: going to you know, we're getting around of the record company.
Speaker 6: And the second week with twenty five, it's moving up
Speaker 6: the charts. This is fantastic.
Speaker 7: Third week it drops off the chart, twenty five to.
Speaker 7: In the record business, once you lose your momentum, no
Speaker 7: other station in the country's going to pick you up
Speaker 7: if you don't. That's so the record was over. Maybe
Speaker 7: a year later I found out what the game was.
Speaker 7: The station only played twenty songs, but he sold thirty slots,
Speaker 7: so of course there were no sales. The record never
Speaker 7: got played. So I paid ten thousand to kill the record, just.
Speaker 1: To be in the bottom to kill it.
Speaker 6: I killed it.
Speaker 1: Lesson learned, Yeah, good learn oh man. Lesson learned.
Speaker 6: There's always a curtain behind the curtain.
Speaker 1: So and then I'm I'm I'm now now I'm putting
Speaker 1: two two together. The fact that you managed Stephanie Mills
Speaker 1: explains her presence on the Teddy Records. Uh. You managing
Speaker 1: the Callaway Brothers and Midnight Star explains their presence on I.
Speaker 6: Want to Be Rich And what a great tour. I
Speaker 6: love that I want to Be Rich?
Speaker 1: That was that your concept?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Completely, oh man, I can't. I mean, I completely, but
Speaker 7: the thought was there, you know, it was like, come on,
Speaker 7: let's just say it.
Speaker 1: Wow, and it happened. I got it. I mean, I
Speaker 1: have so many my experience with Luther Vandros. I mean,
Speaker 1: as a person who was immersed in hip hop whatever
Speaker 1: I mean, Luther Vanres was the definition of smooth R
Speaker 1: and B kind of answer, like the complete opposite of
Speaker 1: what hip hop represented. But I mean I still respected it.
Speaker 1: But Luther's live show was like my mom would physically
Speaker 1: describe every moment. And this is from Lisa Fisher, all
Speaker 1: gown of Fontie Thwarton to all these things. So what
Speaker 1: is I mean of Luther at is at his peak,
Speaker 1: at the peak of his powers, which I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess you could say the night is the night NFL lovers,
Speaker 1: it give me the reason? I mean, yeah, the powerful,
Speaker 1: give me the reason. I mean, God, that was so yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean what I at of love was probably my
Speaker 2: personal I mean yeah, as yeah, my personal favorite too.
Speaker 1: So, but I also know that he was notorious for
Speaker 1: being very meticulous and like harder than James Brown, like
Speaker 1: fines and although he was no spot nor wrinkle, where
Speaker 1: does that come from? Like that level of discipline that
Speaker 1: I'm neriable.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I've never seen anything like it. It was it,
Speaker 6: you know, my reputation.
Speaker 7: Most many of the artists hired me because I wrote
Speaker 7: and directed the stage.
Speaker 6: Shows and that was my joy.
Speaker 1: And I was, oh, really yeah so that I didn't know.
Speaker 7: I did the Earth Wind and Fire Pyramid show, I
Speaker 7: did the first Kiss show. I love doing shows and
Speaker 7: doing productions, and I knew how to gets standing ovations
Speaker 7: and that was a lot of my value to most
Speaker 7: of my artists. Luther would would not let me come
Speaker 7: to see him until he had broken the show in
Speaker 7: so I would never allowed to come to the first
Speaker 7: four or five six shows because he wanted to be perfect.
Speaker 7: I'd say to him, you know, of my job is
Speaker 7: to help you make it perfect.
Speaker 1: And he was.
Speaker 7: He was in complete control of every second on that stage,
Speaker 7: every single light, every wardrobe change, and did it as
Speaker 7: good as I mean as good as you could possibly
Speaker 7: do it. Fanatic about it, but and drove a very hardship.
Speaker 7: You know, if someone was a second late, they were toast.
Speaker 7: If they were off on a queue somewhere, if a
Speaker 7: lighting queue went down, that guy was toasted.
Speaker 1: That night.
Speaker 7: He was just you know, brought into the dressing room
Speaker 7: and dressed down. He needed everything absolutely perfect, and he
Speaker 7: was perfect every night, so he could demand that he
Speaker 7: hit his marks every night. He was everything was You
Speaker 7: can almost overlay one show to the other with Luthor.
Speaker 1: You could with the clock.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, wow.
Speaker 2: One question I always had in regards to Luther, and
Speaker 2: you know, it was a lot of talk about yeah
Speaker 2: you know, uh as a kid of the eighties, you
Speaker 2: know my mother, I mean that was the soundtrack to.
Speaker 1: My childhood, and no one cared. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Nobody cared at all. Yeah, Like, no one cared at all.
Speaker 2: We just wanted to hear him sing. As a manager,
Speaker 2: Was that something that presented a challenge for you or
Speaker 2: was it how did how did you handle?
Speaker 5: That?
Speaker 7: Didn't present a challenge at all? The only the part
Speaker 7: of it that presented a challenge to me wasn't professional,
Speaker 7: was personal. I never felt that he was joyful, and
Speaker 7: I felt that a lot of that lack of joy
Speaker 7: was that he didn't have any relationships in his life.
Speaker 6: He didn't that I know of. There was no male.
Speaker 7: Relationship, there was no female relationship. There were no relationships.
Speaker 7: And that was for me was the hard part because
Speaker 7: I wanted to be happy and enjoy success.
Speaker 1: Even with you, Like was there a guard between you guys?
Speaker 6: Yes, completely, yeah, and strictly business and strictly business. I
Speaker 6: don't even didn't really know who.
Speaker 1: He was, had one can of conversation or never had
Speaker 1: a real conversation. How did he seek you out to
Speaker 1: man or how did you end up managing him?
Speaker 2: He?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 6: The record company called me up, and he called me up.
Speaker 1: He uh.
Speaker 7: We had a mutual business manager and he loved the
Speaker 7: work I did, and we took a meeting and he did.
Speaker 7: We we joined up, and I had a guy in
Speaker 7: my office that took care of him. And we never
Speaker 7: we had no real relationship at all. We we actually
Speaker 7: he's the only artist that I worked with and had
Speaker 7: no communication with.
Speaker 6: It.
Speaker 7: A point in time came when he wouldn't talk to me,
Speaker 7: and it was about the last three years of our
Speaker 7: relationship that I managed him, and I would send them
Speaker 7: notes and say, listen, you don't have to stay with me,
Speaker 7: and he said, no, no, you're the right guy.
Speaker 1: I just don't want to talk. You know.
Speaker 6: He was a he was a different kind of a guy.
Speaker 1: Luther I tended well in light of the unfortunate events
Speaker 1: that have happened in twenty sixteen, I'm seeing a common
Speaker 1: denominator with well one particular icon that for this episode
Speaker 1: remain nameless, who's notoriously very secret, secretive, and very guarded.
Speaker 1: And I guess in light of his demise, the things
Speaker 1: that we found out about his life and what caused
Speaker 1: his exit, you know, that's a secret, that's you know. Now,
Speaker 1: I get why everything was so secretive, and you know
Speaker 1: when you're hiding something. So maybe I'm just thinking that
Speaker 1: he wasn't ready to be vulnerable in front.
Speaker 5: Of possible But you even with who you're mentioning, I
Speaker 5: feel like we knew more about his past with Luther.
Speaker 5: I don't feel like we know a lot about who
Speaker 5: Luther was.
Speaker 7: I think he really knew who he was. Wow, you know,
Speaker 7: I think he'd lived for his career. He lived for
Speaker 7: that moment on stage. That's when he that's when he
Speaker 7: knew what to do. And I think, you know, you
Speaker 7: can see the issues with the weight going up and down,
Speaker 7: how it translates, and you know, you just see certain things.
Speaker 7: But he was a great artist and I'm honored that
Speaker 7: I worked with him.
Speaker 1: There's one thing that a lot of the public doesn't
Speaker 1: know you're responsible for, or I guess by accident you're
Speaker 1: responsible for Deborah, Harry and Christine meeting fat by Freddie.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, I was sort of part of the team.
Speaker 6: I wouldn't say responsible, but.
Speaker 1: Part of it.
Speaker 7: We were searching for We were searching for a new single.
Speaker 7: What do we do for a new single? And they
Speaker 7: were very culturally significant, they were they were a real
Speaker 7: product of the times. So we were looking for something
Speaker 7: to hang our hat on that was more significant than
Speaker 7: just a song. And we had heard about this thing
Speaker 7: that was going on up in Harlem, cardboard boxes on
Speaker 7: the floor, beat boxes, guys dancing, and we said, let's
Speaker 7: go take a look, let's see what this is all about.
Speaker 7: We got a guy to take us up and went
Speaker 7: up by train and when we just that it was
Speaker 7: that casual, there's no concern. Was Chris, Debbie, myself on
Speaker 7: the train subway. They liked the subway. They were subway
Speaker 7: kind of people. And we got off the station and
Speaker 7: there was a guy spray painting the wall and it
Speaker 7: was really early in the game and it was really cool,
Speaker 7: and Devid said, wow, is that cool?
Speaker 6: So we started to walk over to him to talk
Speaker 6: to him, and he started to.
Speaker 7: Not run, but move away from us really fast, and
Speaker 7: he got on the next train when it came. So
Speaker 7: we jumped on the trade and that we're all trapped
Speaker 7: on the trade and it was Fab five Freddy and
Speaker 7: he then we you know, we said when I copps,
Speaker 7: when I busted you, it's all good. And he took
Speaker 7: us back to see the dancing and then he he
Speaker 7: was your tour guy. Who was the tour guy and
Speaker 7: then he sort of you know, if you remember the video,
Speaker 7: he's in the background the whole pig, you know, Fab
Speaker 7: five Freddy dude.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's yeah, that's that's amazing. I mean, there was
Speaker 1: a landmark movement. It was Eric.
Speaker 7: Eric thorn Grin was the guy who took us up there.
Speaker 7: He was the engineer on Grand Master Flash's record, and
Speaker 7: he was he was the one we went to and
Speaker 7: then he took us to Harlem.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 6: So and I think he engineered that record. Maybe he
Speaker 6: may have. I'm not sure the Chapman produced it, but
Speaker 6: Eric may have.
Speaker 1: Makes sense. And uh, well, later that year, also when
Speaker 1: Blondie hosted Saturday Night Live, they insisted that the four
Speaker 1: plus one be the musical guest. Oh really that was
Speaker 1: a fight?
Speaker 6: How so nobody really no one who nobody ever heard?
Speaker 1: No but that that to me, that was an amazing moment,
Speaker 1: Like I remember that doing the first one of of
Speaker 1: seeing that.
Speaker 2: Did you ever think at any point in timeship of
Speaker 2: managing hip hop artists or was that never wanted.
Speaker 6: To never never appealed to me? I didn't.
Speaker 7: Like I started to see the thug element come into
Speaker 7: the music business. The backstage rhythm changed completely, the attitude
Speaker 7: of the artists, popsy started to happen. Never had to
Speaker 7: deal with Popsy's before then.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, Wait you say that I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: You started Carlos and Charlie's, Like these are the things
Speaker 1: you learned, Like I'm Cassley mentioned like Carlos and Charlie's
Speaker 1: was like you go to Hollywood Spot okay, and He's like,
Speaker 1: oh I co that, And I was like, I only
Speaker 1: know of it because of Eddie Murphy. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Every Eddie Murphy's story ever heard, am Prince story starts
Speaker 1: with Carlos and Charlie's. Like even even that.
Speaker 6: Those Eddie Murphy's story at Carlos and Charlie.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Again it was there were posse's didn't really exist. The
Speaker 7: first posse that I saw with my eyes was Thomas
Speaker 7: Hearns came to the club with a posse and you know,
Speaker 7: I don't think they would call posse, but he had
Speaker 7: like six guys with them who hanger on. Yeah, and
Speaker 7: they moved like a wave, you know. So Eddie Murphy
Speaker 7: had a posse and he comes one night into the clinic.
Speaker 7: Came out almost every night to the club, but he
Speaker 7: comes in this one night and his club was very empty,
Speaker 7: and there's a little white kid on the dance floor
Speaker 7: with his girl and the posse comes through like this
Speaker 7: and hits the guy and sort of breaks his nose.
Speaker 7: And there's nobody in the club and there's nothing going on,
Speaker 7: and he starts giving them ship with its nose bleeding.
Speaker 7: It's coming down. They call I was down and says
Speaker 7: having dinner. They called me upstairs. And now for the
Speaker 7: next thirty minutes there's this ridiculous escapade of Eddie Murphy
Speaker 7: trying to get to this kid to beat him up
Speaker 7: because he's talking disrespectfully to his people.
Speaker 6: My guards are around him keeping him away from getting hurt.
Speaker 6: And it's just really stupid. And I go over to
Speaker 6: Eddie and I said, I didn't know him well, but
Speaker 6: I said, listen, man, you won the game. You're rich,
Speaker 6: like you want it. You don't have to beat the kids.
Speaker 6: Look at his nose. He's like, you know, weighs one
Speaker 6: hundred pounds. You really don't have to do this. You
Speaker 6: want just calm down. And he wouldn't let go.
Speaker 7: So I called the police. I had a sergeant and
Speaker 7: we got him arrested and he went to jail. And
Speaker 7: it's about five thirty in the morning. My phone rings
Speaker 7: at my house and it's the guy named Don Simpson
Speaker 7: and he says, Chep, you're still on Carlos and Charlie's
Speaker 7: And I said yeah, I said, you got to help me.
Speaker 7: I'm starting a movie this morning and my lead actor,
Speaker 7: Eddie Murphy is in jail.
Speaker 1: A guess of the movie was Beverly Hills Cop.
Speaker 7: So this is this is the best fallt of the story.
Speaker 7: So I call up the sergeant and I say, I'm
Speaker 7: really sorry. We got to get him out of jail.
Speaker 7: Now you got to get the charges drop. I'm not
Speaker 7: going to charge it. And you know, no one's gonna
Speaker 7: I got to kick. So he goes down to the
Speaker 7: jail and he calls me up. He says, okay, the
Speaker 7: motherfucker won't leave the cell. We said, you're you're out
Speaker 7: of here, and he said, if you want me out.
Speaker 6: Of here, then I'm staying here.
Speaker 1: He just had the last words.
Speaker 5: I always wondered, did hip hop come around and bite
Speaker 5: you a little bit personally? Because we found out in
Speaker 5: the documentary Superminch that you ended up adopting, uh two
Speaker 5: of your ex girlfriend's branches, four of your experman's grandbabies,
Speaker 5: and they're have a certain age being raised in the
Speaker 5: eighties and nineties and stuff. So I just wonder, as
Speaker 5: something boy, I.
Speaker 6: Can remember, there was a great moment.
Speaker 7: It's funny you're bringing that up because it's exactly there
Speaker 7: was just great moment when you know, I built my
Speaker 7: life on with Alice by trying to get parents to
Speaker 7: hate him.
Speaker 6: That was my goal.
Speaker 7: And now it's ten or fifteen years later, the kids
Speaker 7: are getting you know, I have these four kids, they're young.
Speaker 7: They're staying in the bedroom next to me at my
Speaker 7: house and I come walking by and I hear hip
Speaker 7: hop for the first time, and I opened the door
Speaker 7: I go, what is this ship?
Speaker 6: You're listening.
Speaker 7: And Alice Cooper did yeah, And as I say it,
Speaker 7: I realized, oh my god, this is exact They're gonna
Speaker 7: that's that's it.
Speaker 1: And what's there?
Speaker 5: What's the oldest kid? How old?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 6: Thirty five at that time?
Speaker 1: Was back then?
Speaker 6: Yeah? They were fine?
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, no, they the dungarees were always you know,
Speaker 7: the underwear was showing.
Speaker 6: It was every single thing. If they were yo, MTV
Speaker 6: wraps was all they cared about. That was you know,
Speaker 6: that was their life. But I knew it right then.
Speaker 7: As soon as I said that, when those words came
Speaker 7: out of my mouth, I said, it's me usic business
Speaker 7: is changing because if I can't stand that, it's going
Speaker 7: to be the biggest thing and then it works.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So probably the biggest lesson that I learned, I mean,
Speaker 1: the point where I realized like, oh, this is a
Speaker 1: lesson that I have to learn is the fact that
Speaker 1: you have to walk away from it and really just
Speaker 1: let go. Which to think about that right now for
Speaker 1: me is like that's one of the scariest things because
Speaker 1: you think like this is all I have, Like this
Speaker 1: is all you know, I don't have a lineage or
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, and it's just like, well, I've
Speaker 1: made a commitment to the music business, so this is
Speaker 1: all I've got. I mean, at what point did you, like,
Speaker 1: did it take having to go to the hospital where
Speaker 1: it's just no, no.
Speaker 7: Mine was completely different. I had a I've always done
Speaker 7: knee jerk reactions. I've never been a planner. I planned
Speaker 7: for my artists, for my own life. I've always you know,
Speaker 7: I wake up in the morning, I really act. And
Speaker 7: I had a premiere at Universal Studios for one of
Speaker 7: my movies, Big red Carpet premiere, Cleague, Lights of Flying
Speaker 7: and you know all that stuff. And I was bored
Speaker 7: to death, like so bored, you know, I just couldn't
Speaker 7: wait to get out of there, go see CNN do anything.
Speaker 7: But it was, you know, the same old, same old,
Speaker 7: same old for me.
Speaker 6: And the next day I flew to Mallion.
Speaker 7: I was alone on my hammock having a drink at sunset,
Speaker 7: and every molecule in my body was ecstatic, like ecstatic.
Speaker 7: I can't even describe how happy. And I said to myself,
Speaker 7: you know, you're miserable there, you're happy here.
Speaker 6: What are you doing?
Speaker 7: It's pretty simple, like what's life all about. I worked
Speaker 7: so hard to get happy and I found what makes
Speaker 7: me happy, and I'm not doing it.
Speaker 6: And I went to the office about four days later
Speaker 6: and resigned from everybody and told them the story.
Speaker 1: And I said, you know, you don't have a fear
Speaker 1: of missing out? We call it. You didn't have a because.
Speaker 7: It's to me, it was sort of false gods anyway,
Speaker 7: you know, it's it's it's like fool's gold. I mean,
Speaker 7: I've always had that awareness that we're in the entertainment business.
Speaker 7: It really doesn't matter, and it is sort of fool's gold.
Speaker 7: And it's fun and it's great and it provides great stuff,
Speaker 7: but it's not you know, it's not curing cancer. And
Speaker 7: and for me as a manager, when I also realizes
Speaker 7: that I had up until that point, I had spent
Speaker 7: my life living other people's lives and I had no
Speaker 7: idea what my life actually was like. If I'm if
Speaker 7: I don't have to go to the office, am I
Speaker 7: going to be bored to death? Am I going to
Speaker 7: like myself? Am I going to hate myself? Maybe I'm
Speaker 7: going to get married like I always wanted to do,
Speaker 7: but I never had never happened let me find out
Speaker 7: what my journey is made. What I found out is
Speaker 7: that there's no difference, Like my life is absolutely not different,
Speaker 7: retiring not retiring. I probably if I got a second
Speaker 7: life and could do it again, I probably wouldn't retire.
Speaker 7: I would find a way to have the two live
Speaker 7: with each other, because there were great advantages for me
Speaker 7: to be in the traffic. I still love to think
Speaker 7: of something and then make it happen, to create something
Speaker 7: out it it doesn't exist. And I did a big
Speaker 7: benefit Monday night for a chef, Roger Verger with about
Speaker 7: twenty chefs. And in the early days I could do
Speaker 7: that with the staff in my office so I could
Speaker 7: think of it.
Speaker 6: Now it's just me, so the.
Speaker 7: Effort is gigantic, the result is probably less than it
Speaker 7: might be with the great staff.
Speaker 6: And I still do the same stuff.
Speaker 5: But you're not retired either.
Speaker 6: Technically you're not my manage Alice, But in my brain
Speaker 6: I thought it was.
Speaker 1: With the chefs. I mean, he's taking himself out of that,
Speaker 1: out of the hustle bustle, Like did you personally have
Speaker 1: a one on one with all your clientele?
Speaker 7: Was it just like I called everybod I did it
Speaker 7: on the phone. I called them all the only Luther
Speaker 7: who I hadn't spoken to in a couple of years,
Speaker 7: was it? The only one that was sort of upset?
Speaker 6: All right?
Speaker 7: And then when I was so I woke, I got
Speaker 7: back to La. I called Alice and I said, where
Speaker 7: are you? He said in LA? I said, will you
Speaker 7: picked me up today for lunch? Because I want to
Speaker 7: get really drunk and I don't want to drive. And
Speaker 7: he said, what's wrong? And I said, nothing wrong, but
Speaker 7: I'm going to resigne from everybody but not you. But
Speaker 7: and I really don't. I want to get whacked. And
Speaker 7: so I called all the clients. Everybody was and I
Speaker 7: told the truth. You know, I said, I want to
Speaker 7: find out who I am. I have no idea what
Speaker 7: my life is now. Oh were you at this point?
Speaker 7: I was fifty seven fifty six, maybe fifty five fifty six.
Speaker 5: How much grace time do you give them?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 7: So what I said to him was, you know, you
Speaker 7: can use the office, use my guys if you want.
Speaker 7: So I was still, yeah, I can find you somebody
Speaker 7: else if you'd like. I'll give you a list.
Speaker 6: I'll go to the interviews with you and really help
Speaker 6: you get through it.
Speaker 7: I just I got to find out who I am.
Speaker 7: You know, this is for me, not about you. And
Speaker 7: everybody was happy. Luther wasn't, but he sort of understood.
Speaker 7: And as I was leaving the office with Alice, the
Speaker 7: phone rang and my secretary said, you got to take
Speaker 7: this call. And I said, I'm not taking any more calls.
Speaker 7: It's over done. I'm going there and said, no, no,
Speaker 7: you really got to take this call. And it was
Speaker 7: George Harrison who had just found the basement tapes that
Speaker 7: John Lennon song for You as a Bird, And he said,
Speaker 7: do you think any record.
Speaker 6: Company will put this stuff out?
Speaker 1: And I said, do I think any Beetles? Get out
Speaker 1: of here?
Speaker 7: He turned out to be close to right. It was
Speaker 7: a fight, a fight, a real tough fight, but for.
Speaker 1: You guys to get a new Beatles.
Speaker 7: Capital didn't want to resign him. What it was it was,
Speaker 7: it's a long it's a whole other story and it's a.
Speaker 1: Long one, but it was Gary gerse Era Capital.
Speaker 6: I hired Garriott Capital when at that during that.
Speaker 1: Do you see what I mean?
Speaker 6: During that?
Speaker 1: Do you know this guy named Gary gerc he.
Speaker 6: Was during that period of time, during that period of time.
Speaker 6: So anyway, I ended up.
Speaker 7: Making the deal with Capital, which wasn't easy for him,
Speaker 7: and doing working on the BBC tapes and the anthology,
Speaker 7: and Luther freaked out. You told me you were resigning,
Speaker 7: now you're doing the bet. He found out, I have
Speaker 7: no idea. He rewrote his biography and took me out
Speaker 7: of it. I was very heavily in the first printing.
Speaker 7: The second print.
Speaker 1: I didn't, Oh my god, well, I'm more amazed that
Speaker 1: a new Beatles.
Speaker 6: Song well as a There's a long history here. So
Speaker 6: here's sort of the let me give you the cover
Speaker 6: of it. Here's the cover. Capital E.
Speaker 7: M I an electronics company that happened to be in
Speaker 7: the music business, but Thorny m I was the core
Speaker 7: of their business. They made refrigerators, defence stuff. They were
Speaker 7: basically a science patent owner company. And they hired a
Speaker 7: guy named They bought a company from a fellow named
Speaker 7: Colin Southgate and made him chairman of Thorny m I
Speaker 7: part of the purchase. He gets the job. He's in
Speaker 7: the job for three weeks. He goes what they call
Speaker 7: Wall Street in England, the Street. So he goes to
Speaker 7: make his first speech to the street and the announcement
Speaker 7: is that they've resigned the Beatles in the press conference.
Speaker 7: During the press conference, as he's saying we resigned the Beatles,
Speaker 7: a warrant server comes up to him and gives them
Speaker 7: a lawsuit for the Beatles to.
Speaker 6: Get off the label.
Speaker 7: This is his first time as head of the company
Speaker 7: addressing the street. So for him, I never want to
Speaker 7: see the Beatles when the contract's over, get rid of
Speaker 7: the Beatles. Don't ever want him near here. Can't stand them,
Speaker 7: hate them, So now the contract's up. At that point,
Speaker 7: guys who are running the company were more interested in
Speaker 7: their bonuses than in you know, they shut the black
Speaker 7: music department at Capitol Records, like just to get to
Speaker 7: their bonuses. If they would be wanted forty two million
Speaker 7: dollars to re sign, which they deserved, if they had
Speaker 7: given him that money, they wouldn't have gotten their bonuses.
Speaker 7: So I had the chairman, the president, and the vice
Speaker 7: predident all against reciting the Beatles.
Speaker 1: And it was wild to them. It's more of a headache.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they didn't want to deal with it, just didn't
Speaker 7: and they didn't care. They wanted their bonus that I
Speaker 7: could They couldn't care less.
Speaker 1: I couldn't imagine none of the Beatles' music being on
Speaker 1: any other labels other than Capital.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Oh, anyway, it made it work, but wow, it was.
Speaker 6: It was pretty wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, I can go on
Speaker 1: forever and ever, but you know, all good things come
Speaker 1: to an end.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and uh, this was fun, guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this has like been the greatest.
Speaker 2: This is man So one question I did have, So, now,
Speaker 2: you know, what does managing Alice Cooper look like now
Speaker 2: like on a day to day basis.
Speaker 6: Well, I don't.
Speaker 7: It doesn't occupy the whole day, but I still wake
Speaker 7: up in the morning thinking about how to enhance his career,
Speaker 7: and I go to sleep at night thinking about how
Speaker 7: to enhance the career.
Speaker 6: Recently, we just.
Speaker 7: Put him in a band with Johnny Depp that I created,
Speaker 7: which was great for his profile.
Speaker 6: Great john it was. It was a win win.
Speaker 7: Johnny's a musician who always wanted a tour. I'm always
Speaker 7: looking for a way to make Alice current and give
Speaker 7: it an extra twist, so that was perfect. Now we're
Speaker 7: running in for president. We have a great campaign for
Speaker 7: get Alice elected, and he's on the Wild Party. His
Speaker 7: platform is gradual marks on a fifty dollars bill. Let
Speaker 7: me on Mount Rushmore. Wow, one selfie allowed a year
Speaker 7: prison sentence for anyone talking in a movie theater. Okay,
Speaker 7: that's just platform.
Speaker 6: So it's you know, Alice is everybody in their life
Speaker 6: should have a relationship like Alice.
Speaker 7: It's just we've it's been an amazing forty five years
Speaker 7: and he gives me the freedom to fail, which gives
Speaker 7: me the freedom to be creative.
Speaker 1: Well, I I have to say, uh, you are probably,
Speaker 1: I mean, the textbook guru of of of all gurus.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's no person that I've not made
Speaker 1: watch this documentary over and over again, and and you've
Speaker 1: been very very generous, uh and and your wisdom and everything.
Speaker 1: I really would like to thank you Shep Gordon for
Speaker 1: just being here man, Thank you, thank you, thank you
Speaker 1: for doing Christ loves to bring you guys.
Speaker 6: You're ready really problem.
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Landoran. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.