Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, brocome back to the Bob Left Sets Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is truly legendary artist manager Ken Craigan.
Speaker 1: We have the Smothers Brothers, Lionel Richie the First Edition,
Speaker 1: Travis Tritt, Tricia Yearwood, the comedian Gallagher. Is there anybody
Speaker 1: who haven't represented Ken? It's amazing. It's sort of that
Speaker 1: six degrees of separation. I'm connected to everybody one way
Speaker 1: or another. So why did you decide to become an
Speaker 1: artist manager? You know, it's funny. I didn't exactly decide that.
Speaker 1: I went to Harvard Business School. Let's go back, where'd
Speaker 1: you go to undergraduate? I went to undergraduated Berkeley. Okay.
Speaker 1: My dad was vice chancer and teaching in the law school,
Speaker 1: and uh, and we were living in Berkeley, and I
Speaker 1: ended up going there thinking I was gonna be a microbiologist.
Speaker 1: Why a microbiologist? I have no idea. Well, six for
Speaker 1: we have to be started here. How many kids in
Speaker 1: your family? Uh? Just myself and my sister and your
Speaker 1: sister older or younger. She's younger by six years and
Speaker 1: she's still with us. Oh, what's she up to? She's
Speaker 1: got four kids and thirteen grandchildren's boyfriend. Her husband passed
Speaker 1: away a few years ago, and you got a wonderful
Speaker 1: boyfriend that's and which I love at her age and
Speaker 1: they travel all over the world together. It's fabulous. Okay.
Speaker 1: So you're growing up in Berkeley. This is the fifties
Speaker 1: and fifth well we went. He was he was ahead
Speaker 1: of Loeban Lobe here in l A. And that's a
Speaker 1: legendary also entertainment. Yeah, he represented eleven studios. He was
Speaker 1: a chief lobbyist and Sacramento for them. And he had
Speaker 1: the funny thing is this is a good story. He
Speaker 1: he had clients. His clients were Deborah Carr, William Holden,
Speaker 1: Alan lad Mickey Rooney. And they used to come over
Speaker 1: the house and I was like six years old or something,
Speaker 1: and I would sit at their feet in the on
Speaker 1: the rug in the living room and here the taught
Speaker 1: my dad and them tell stories about all these entertainment stories, right,
Speaker 1: And I remember, I do remember this perfectly that I
Speaker 1: thought to myself, I'll never have any stories like that. Now,
Speaker 1: you bring up any subject, I can tell you a story.
Speaker 1: Something in my fifty or sixty years in this business. Okay.
Speaker 1: So you're living where in l A. At that time,
Speaker 1: we were living over near Fairfax in Beverly, where I
Speaker 1: ended up much later, basically having an office at CBS. Okay,
Speaker 1: you never left, but uh, in terms of were you
Speaker 1: aware that your father was that successful? We we Uh,
Speaker 1: we moved when my dad was really at Loeban Loeban
Speaker 1: doing Grady ended up being the managing partner. Uh. We
Speaker 1: lived on Irving in Los Angeles, right off of right
Speaker 1: off of third Street. Uh, in that kind of area
Speaker 1: where they shot movies a lot, and there were all
Speaker 1: these big homes at the time. And I would go
Speaker 1: down on the weekend and get to help run the
Speaker 1: switchboard at Loeban Lobe. Yeah, that was like a little kid.
Speaker 1: Where was their office that their office was Grant Union
Speaker 1: and Grant Okick or something like that or Grand I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: grand And and Union, I think. Okay, so you met
Speaker 1: a lot of powerful, famous people when you were growing up.
Speaker 1: Did that have an impact upon you? You know, I
Speaker 1: don't think so. But what changed my life in a
Speaker 1: funny way was uh that I we moved when I
Speaker 1: was fifteen to Berkeley. And when we moved when my
Speaker 1: dad took what happened, and it's a big lesson. My
Speaker 1: dad was making I don't know, over a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: a year, because that was a lot of money back then, ton,
Speaker 1: I mean the fifties, fifty two. This was you See,
Speaker 1: Berkeley comes to him and they offer him twelve five
Speaker 1: to come pel five a year to come teach us
Speaker 1: like ten percent of his salary right to come teach
Speaker 1: at Berkeley in the law school. And he takes it,
Speaker 1: and we leave Los Angeles and we moved to Berkeley.
Speaker 1: I've used it in my classes at U c l
Speaker 1: A when I've teaching there. I used it as a
Speaker 1: great example of do what you love, what you really believe.
Speaker 1: He stayed there forty two years. He taught till he
Speaker 1: was eighty seven. He chaired committees till he was ninety five.
Speaker 1: He died in his sleep at night. I mean he did.
Speaker 1: He lived it so he never had any regrets none,
Speaker 1: And somehow or other he ended up living, leaving my
Speaker 1: kids and and uh and my sister's bunch of kids.
Speaker 1: Uh A lot of money. I who knows it from where?
Speaker 1: You know? So you moved You were born in l A.
Speaker 1: You moved to fifteen What about your mother? My mother
Speaker 1: was basically a housekeeper and homekeeper. But she had been
Speaker 1: a violinists with the Oakland Symphony. And but after she
Speaker 1: met my dad, slowly she wound that. Now she still
Speaker 1: played even when we moved down here in groups there.
Speaker 1: So music was in our life, but I was a
Speaker 1: terrible musician. I played a lousy trombone. Okay, So your
Speaker 1: parents born in the US and their parents born in
Speaker 1: the Old Country as her family, this is kind of neat.
Speaker 1: Our family came, at least one side of it, came
Speaker 1: to San Francisco for the gold Rush. The great great
Speaker 1: grandfather came across the Isthmus of Panama on a donkey
Speaker 1: because there was no canal. Then he rode across. He
Speaker 1: got on a steamer. He came up to San Francisco.
Speaker 1: But he got there in eighteen fifty two and the
Speaker 1: gold Rush was essentially over. And he then formed or
Speaker 1: opened the first furniture store on Market Street in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: And he had come from where he had come. Well,
Speaker 1: we always thought it was Austria, but I think what
Speaker 1: we're finding out is it may be part of Austria now,
Speaker 1: but it was hungry, I think in that. And what
Speaker 1: about Poland, and what about the other side of your family,
Speaker 1: the other side of the family also from that kind
Speaker 1: of area. My mom trade. This is kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: My mom trace back to the fact that in the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds a Jewish, a regular general in the German army,
Speaker 1: married a Jewish woman and was kicked out of the
Speaker 1: army in the seventeen hundreds. Right. I don't know how
Speaker 1: she found that out, but she did, and so they
Speaker 1: moved away from Germany. And so I think both sides
Speaker 1: of the family came from that, you know, that Hungary, Austria,
Speaker 1: Poland kind of one came in eighteen fifty. When did
Speaker 1: the other one come? You know, the other one came
Speaker 1: when there was a railroad that I don't know the
Speaker 1: year now, I probably should, but the wild part of
Speaker 1: it was, and this is the first She was with
Speaker 1: the firstborn child, who was like four or five, and
Speaker 1: the new and a new baby in her arms, and
Speaker 1: she came across on a train and they changed trains
Speaker 1: in Chicago, and the four or five year old ran
Speaker 1: under a train and was killed. And she had to
Speaker 1: arrive in San Francisco with the firstborn boy in the
Speaker 1: family in a coffin wild you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: My mother was phenomenal at tracing all that stuff back. Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's be like you were born in l Aye
Speaker 1: and he didn't move to Berkeley. I was born in Berkeley, Okay,
Speaker 1: and moved to l A. I remember. I think I
Speaker 1: started Third Street School in Los Angeles and probably the
Speaker 1: third grade. So you were here for like six or
Speaker 1: eight years before you went back to Berkeley a little more,
Speaker 1: and you were in Berkeley you went to regular public school. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I went to Berkeley High. I'm an alumnus of Berkeley High.
Speaker 1: So what was that experience? Like? Very interesting? Uh? You know?
Speaker 1: For the interesting most interesting thing is Berkeley High had
Speaker 1: a theater attached to it, a regular community theater, and
Speaker 1: the first show I ever produced was for a group
Speaker 1: of the Kingston Trio or no, it was sort of
Speaker 1: the lot. It was for the Gateway Singers. I think
Speaker 1: I don't even know they well, they predated they were
Speaker 1: sort of the West Coast weavers, you know, in that
Speaker 1: old folk era, you know, I know it was one
Speaker 1: of those, and it probably was the king Centrio and
Speaker 1: it was in the Berkeley Community Theater. And the reason
Speaker 1: I remember it so well is the group made three
Speaker 1: sixty dollars, which was more money than they had ever made.
Speaker 1: That that night, I made eighty two dollars until my dad,
Speaker 1: who was a tax expert, explained to me that there
Speaker 1: were admission taxes and they were eighty dollars. So so
Speaker 1: my first show in the Berkeley Community Theater, right where
Speaker 1: I went to high school, I ain't two dollars. And
Speaker 1: so you're in high school, You're a popular kid. Were
Speaker 1: you a nerd? What kind of kid were you know?
Speaker 1: I joined a club there, club called the Annoias and
Speaker 1: we called what they were called the Unoias EU. And
Speaker 1: I have no clue. I don't know. But what I
Speaker 1: know is because this was the seeds of my career
Speaker 1: is in l A. We had always had these big
Speaker 1: dances with Nay. We had Frank Sinatra come and sing
Speaker 1: it at a high school dance, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was unbelievable. Got to Berkeley and I felt like
Speaker 1: they were ten years behind the time. So I started
Speaker 1: through my dad, I made some connections and I started
Speaker 1: bringing acts from l A to come up to perform
Speaker 1: at dances or not concerts. At that point, we're talking
Speaker 1: the fifties, uh and and I'll never forget because I
Speaker 1: bought this. I bought the stand Kenton band. Except you
Speaker 1: didn't get the band. You got a group that he
Speaker 1: formed of musicians in San Francisco, and they sent the
Speaker 1: drums that said Stan Kenton on it, right, you know,
Speaker 1: but at least Stan Kenton was there, right. No, No,
Speaker 1: Stan wasn't there either. Stan couldn't be there, and I
Speaker 1: had booked his I think his wife was Julie Christie maybe,
Speaker 1: and I booked her and she couldn't come either, So
Speaker 1: they sent a lady named Terry Southern. These are all
Speaker 1: acts no one would know now, you know, but the bad.
Speaker 1: But we made money, you know. My mother sent me
Speaker 1: a picture one time of me giving six four dollars
Speaker 1: to the Red Cross from one of these shows that
Speaker 1: I did, you know. Okay, so you're in high school,
Speaker 1: are you you know, certainly looking at your career? Are
Speaker 1: you that entrepreneurial? From day one? You have a paper
Speaker 1: route that kind of I sold Time Life Sports illustrated subscriptions,
Speaker 1: and I would go up to the Berkeley campus and
Speaker 1: I would hand out discount cards in what was then
Speaker 1: the Red Line. Now you wouldn't have stand in line
Speaker 1: to register then you had to stand in a long,
Speaker 1: long line for hours to go and actually register, and
Speaker 1: I would have to. So I would go down the
Speaker 1: line and hand everybody a students a student discount card
Speaker 1: for Time Life for Sports Illustrated. But it had my address,
Speaker 1: my home address on it. I would get. I remember
Speaker 1: I made eighteen hundred dollars one week in commissions in
Speaker 1: high school. It's like today doing My mother looked at
Speaker 1: me like I was. She thought, oh, no thing is
Speaker 1: going to come from this. So I did that. I
Speaker 1: got over the years. Even after I got into college.
Speaker 1: I had I called at the cal Subscription Service, but
Speaker 1: because my first initials ken K in my last k,
Speaker 1: it was called k L Subscription Service. I ended up
Speaker 1: with fifty sales people around California on campuses. I so
Speaker 1: I was totally entrepreneurial from the early stages there. Okay,
Speaker 1: and how did you get you know, was it a
Speaker 1: super discount price? Why did everybody say that it was
Speaker 1: like half the normal price? And how did you get
Speaker 1: hooked up? Well, somehow or other, I agreed to do it,
Speaker 1: and they gave us. I would get like six they wanted.
Speaker 1: They wanted the subscription, so that would give me like
Speaker 1: sixty or seventy of the cause of the subscription. So
Speaker 1: even though the subscription was less than five dollars for
Speaker 1: for the year, I would get, you know, three sixty
Speaker 1: five or something from every subscription. You know that our
Speaker 1: mailbox would be stuffed with these cards and fifty salesman.
Speaker 1: How much did you take from them? You know? I
Speaker 1: don't remember that. I don't remember, but I might have
Speaker 1: split with them or maybe I don't know. I gave
Speaker 1: them enough as incentive, and even I let when I
Speaker 1: went to Berkeley. I was in Berkeley four years and
Speaker 1: then the King cent Trio I was doing their shows
Speaker 1: and they wanted me to become their concert promoter on
Speaker 1: the road. And the meantime, I got accepted to Harvard
Speaker 1: Business School, and my father, I think that's the only
Speaker 1: time in my whole life, he said, you've got to
Speaker 1: do something. He said, if you don't go to Harvard
Speaker 1: Business School now, you will never go Okay, let's go back.
Speaker 1: You're in Berkeley studying, what I'm saying. From getting out
Speaker 1: of high school, I thought I'd be a microbiologist. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then I ended up in engineering and I did terrible
Speaker 1: there because I was awful at math. I used to
Speaker 1: skip math in high school for basketball practice and and
Speaker 1: so I dropped out of that for after a year.
Speaker 1: And they had a special deal for basketball players at Berkeley,
Speaker 1: although I wasn't a big time player there, and it
Speaker 1: was where you could make up. Of course, the schools
Speaker 1: all have it now. This they created for the athletes,
Speaker 1: and you could take subjects from You had to have
Speaker 1: a total of twelve units and you could go up
Speaker 1: to three different areas. So I picked anthropology, sociology, and journalism.
Speaker 1: Don't ask me, I don't know why, but there were
Speaker 1: all things I was interested in. So I did very
Speaker 1: well because I now was taking things that were fascinating
Speaker 1: to me and interesting to me. And I got all
Speaker 1: ready to graduate from Berkeley, and I turned out I
Speaker 1: was three units short. So my journalism for me who
Speaker 1: was my sort of my mentor too, she gave me, uh,
Speaker 1: she let me work on a study with her, and
Speaker 1: she gave me three credits so I could graduate. Okay,
Speaker 1: did you promote shows in college? Yes, we're at the
Speaker 1: college or the idea. The first show I ever did
Speaker 1: at the college was the group the Limelighters, and it
Speaker 1: was in a sevenfty hall seed Hall. I've got the
Speaker 1: poster on my wall at home. I know. The tickets
Speaker 1: were seventy cents, okay, and I and it was first come,
Speaker 1: first served, no pre sale. And I remember sitting in
Speaker 1: the office of the editor of the of the school paper,
Speaker 1: the Daily Cow, and saying to him, Oh, God, is
Speaker 1: anybody going to show up? And we walked out of
Speaker 1: his office, which was right across from the hall, and
Speaker 1: there was a line around the building. We sold out.
Speaker 1: It was my my first show on the Berkeley campus.
Speaker 1: And and by the way, it led to my managing
Speaker 1: that group after I got out of Harvard Business School,
Speaker 1: because they thought of me as some kind of genius.
Speaker 1: They had never done that, They've never made that much money.
Speaker 1: They were appearing at the Hungry Eye, a little club
Speaker 1: over in the Bay Area, and uh. And I was
Speaker 1: like a hero as a kid, you know, from doing it.
Speaker 1: And I actually ended up by the way U after
Speaker 1: once I got professional, after Harvard, I wrote a book
Speaker 1: on promoting college concerts. Okay, so the line lighters hadn't
Speaker 1: broken yet if they're playing at the Hungry No, they
Speaker 1: hadn't broken back. Okay. Now today it's a track people
Speaker 1: become part of the concert committee, etcetera. Were you operating
Speaker 1: totally independently or were you part of a club? No,
Speaker 1: I was. I was operating pretty much independently, but I
Speaker 1: was doing everything. In fact, once I took on the
Speaker 1: management of that group after after the business school, I
Speaker 1: would do everything from sending the laundry out to booking
Speaker 1: the airfares to uh, you know, I'd be a shill
Speaker 1: at the concert and have to throw out a line
Speaker 1: that got a very funny reaction from the their response
Speaker 1: to it, and stuff like that. I mean I was
Speaker 1: a run spotlights. I sold souvenir programs, whatever was necessary
Speaker 1: at that moment in time that had to be done
Speaker 1: that would help the group I did. It was a
Speaker 1: great education. They were older and me. They knew what
Speaker 1: they were doing. I learned management. Okay, so you're still
Speaker 1: in Berkeley. When you book a bandon Berkeley, you know,
Speaker 1: today there's a huge guarantee and the promoter can lose money.
Speaker 1: What was the deal back then? Well, I just you
Speaker 1: reminded me of one grace whore. I booked Ray Charles,
Speaker 1: and it's Saturday night in Berkeley and they get there
Speaker 1: for rehearsal at four in the afternoon and Joe Adams,
Speaker 1: his manager, says to me, you owe him ten thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: which is what I had to pay for him then.
Speaker 1: And he says, and we want it in cash. Where
Speaker 1: do you get Where does a college kid get ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars? And I have no idea where I got it.
Speaker 1: I did, and I watched them count every dollar. Okay,
Speaker 1: you graduate from college, you go to Harvard Business School
Speaker 1: the following fall. Do you take time off? Yeah, here's
Speaker 1: the crazy thing. The king Centrio asked me to be
Speaker 1: there answer promoter. My dad had ah. I think I
Speaker 1: had grant some kind of a grant to go to
Speaker 1: Europe and do some lectures there. So we went to
Speaker 1: Europe for the summer, and I flew directly from Copenhagen
Speaker 1: back to Boston to start Harvard Business School. And I
Speaker 1: walked into my dorm room and a guy said to me,
Speaker 1: my god, have you heard this song by the Kingston
Speaker 1: Trio Hanging out your Head Tom Dooley. It's the number
Speaker 1: one song in the country. I was sure, absolutely certain,
Speaker 1: I had blown it, and my career was in the
Speaker 1: in the entertainment business. I had lost, I had lost
Speaker 1: any opportunity there. I was sure of it. I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, you should have taken that job. Look at
Speaker 1: their the number one and I had predicted a year
Speaker 1: before when I first heard him. I walked up to
Speaker 1: him after the show at a little club called the U.
Speaker 1: The UH was the Blue Onion or something in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: and I I said to them, you know, a year
Speaker 1: from now, you're going to be the hottest thing in
Speaker 1: the US. And almost a year to the day they
Speaker 1: had the number one record. Okay, so at that time
Speaker 1: you ended up managing the Kingston Trio. No never, No, okay.
Speaker 1: So you go to Harvard Business School. When you were
Speaker 1: in college, did you live at home or on campus?
Speaker 1: And lived at home? Okay, so this is the first
Speaker 1: time you're living alone. Yeah, and your Harvard Business School dorm.
Speaker 1: Any idea what you're trying to achieve by going survive?
Speaker 1: I flew home the first year until my parents. I
Speaker 1: had flunked out. I was sure of it, and I
Speaker 1: ended up twenty seven in the class, and I I
Speaker 1: was absolutely certain I had to fake some of the exams,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean it was it was so hard,
Speaker 1: it was unbelievable. And they told us that the dean.
Speaker 1: I think the reason I got into Harvard School is
Speaker 1: the dean of of the school had been the dean
Speaker 1: of men at Berkeley when my dad was vice Chances
Speaker 1: that they were all friends. Somehow I got in, you know,
Speaker 1: those that wouldn't happen nowadays. But and and uh, and
Speaker 1: I was sure that I had was flunked out, and
Speaker 1: I just couldn't believe it. But the second year was
Speaker 1: a little easier than the first, but never it was easy.
Speaker 1: And and I, by the way, I started a subscription service.
Speaker 1: I called it New England Subscription or something like that
Speaker 1: in England. You know I had but I you know,
Speaker 1: I got an offer from this group, from the Lime Letders.
Speaker 1: They I was home at Christmas between I still had
Speaker 1: four or five months ago, and they called me just
Speaker 1: as I'm getting ready to leave to go back, and
Speaker 1: they said, we need an executive secretary. Would you be
Speaker 1: our executive secretary? And I think this is probably the
Speaker 1: single guttiest thing I've ever done in my life, because
Speaker 1: I said to them, look, I didn't go to Harvard
Speaker 1: Business School to be an executive secretary. If you need
Speaker 1: a manager, you know, call me. And when I got
Speaker 1: back to school. The leader of the Lime Letters was
Speaker 1: a very funny guy named Leuke Got Ladies. Rik was funny,
Speaker 1: and there was this wonderful letter that I can't find anywhere.
Speaker 1: And he said, we want you to be our manager.
Speaker 1: So now I accept the management and he want and
Speaker 1: they want me to come out of school. And I
Speaker 1: said no, no no, no, no, no. Four months from now,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, in May or whatever it is, I'm graduating. Uh,
Speaker 1: you have to wait. But I started working for them
Speaker 1: right away, and I took their album and I walked
Speaker 1: into the biggest station in Boston at the time, w
Speaker 1: b Z, and who was the program director but Joe
Speaker 1: Smith not He was the librarian. Joe Smith for those
Speaker 1: of no, Joe Smith had a legendary career in the
Speaker 1: record business, working at Warner Brothers Records running Electra. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was co president of Warners with Mo Austin. You know,
Speaker 1: the gold Dust Twins, that's what they were called. So
Speaker 1: he he was the first guy. He sat me down
Speaker 1: and gave me clues to the business. And I took
Speaker 1: that record all over Boston and promoted it and everything.
Speaker 1: Had some unbelievable experiences. You know, this was the days
Speaker 1: of Paola and other stuff like that, and there were
Speaker 1: some amazing things happening in those days. I don't know
Speaker 1: if we have time for it, but I okay, if
Speaker 1: there's Paola, you're a graduate student. How did you get
Speaker 1: the money to pay them? I didn't. I didn't pay anybody.
Speaker 1: But it led, it led, and I wish I could
Speaker 1: remember the guy's name. He was like the hottest DJ
Speaker 1: in the country at the time. What if he played
Speaker 1: your record, you were made right? And he was at
Speaker 1: a competing station, not busy, and I made an appointment
Speaker 1: to take one of the members of the group kind
Speaker 1: of a hot blooded he's still around and still I think,
Speaker 1: occasionally performs with the group as he's constituted. A guy
Speaker 1: named Alex Hasslev and he was from a Russian background,
Speaker 1: and UM and I took him with me to meet
Speaker 1: this DJ with our record, with our single, whatever it was,
Speaker 1: and we and UM he kept us waiting over an hour,
Speaker 1: which was getting Alex kind of upset anyway. Then he
Speaker 1: walked into the studio, walked right by us, went to
Speaker 1: his office and we were sat there for another half
Speaker 1: hour or more. Finally we go into his office and
Speaker 1: he is he's got a stack of In those days,
Speaker 1: they were those little forty five with a big hole, right,
Speaker 1: and he's taking them and he's throwing them one after
Speaker 1: the other into the waste basket. Uh. And every every
Speaker 1: so often he puts one down on the desk, but
Speaker 1: the rest just get tossed. And we're standing there in
Speaker 1: front of me. Doesn't offer any place to sit, and
Speaker 1: he doesn't look up, and he says, come back when
Speaker 1: you get a hit. That's it, Alex. I have to
Speaker 1: restrain Alex from jumping over the desk and strangling him
Speaker 1: from the dead. This is my first month in the job, right,
Speaker 1: and the bigger thing than happened. I go to Chicago.
Speaker 1: The group is in Chicago that went at the Easter break.
Speaker 1: So I go to Chicago. They're peering at a at
Speaker 1: a club in Chicago, and I go to their hotel room.
Speaker 1: And as I walk in their hotel room, and I've
Speaker 1: turned down bb D, N O, Procter and Gamble Time magazine,
Speaker 1: all these people that are hiring the Harvard grats, the
Speaker 1: Harvard Business School grads and and uh. As I walk
Speaker 1: in the room, Alan, I hear Alex say, Okay, that's it.
Speaker 1: We're breaking up. And what I didn't know was they
Speaker 1: break up every day from there on concerant. You know, okay, God,
Speaker 1: just finishing Harvard Business School before you got that call
Speaker 1: slash letter from the Lime Lighters. Would you have gone
Speaker 1: into music management or would you have gone to work
Speaker 1: for Procter and Gamble or one of those? I think
Speaker 1: I might have gone to work for Time magazine because
Speaker 1: of all my history with Time, and the department that
Speaker 1: wanted me a time was called New Developments or innovation,
Speaker 1: or nowadays it'll be called innovation. When there was a
Speaker 1: recession a year later, I guarantee you it was the
Speaker 1: first department to go. So I made one good decision.
Speaker 1: And what are your parents say about you going to
Speaker 1: Harvard Business School? Now you're a manager? You know? The
Speaker 1: great thing about my parents is whatever I was doing
Speaker 1: they were thrilled with. They were here. So many stories
Speaker 1: now of kids whose parents, you know, fight what they
Speaker 1: want to do. You read books about it all the
Speaker 1: time here, and the kids do it anyway. But you know,
Speaker 1: we all want to make our parents proud. I think
Speaker 1: even even abusive parents, people still want to They're they're
Speaker 1: driven to make them proud and um and in my case,
Speaker 1: I felt the same way. But they never pushed me
Speaker 1: one way or another, and they were just proud of
Speaker 1: everything I did. And I and I got lucky. Listen,
Speaker 1: I took this group on. We were I moved him
Speaker 1: from Electra Records. I moved with Jack Holtsman, dear Jack Holdsman,
Speaker 1: of course the recent scene. I moved him from there
Speaker 1: to our c A for a much bigger deal. At
Speaker 1: the time, Elector was an independent. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: smaller independent. They didn't have the money to promote them.
Speaker 1: I made a rather revolutionary d at the time. I
Speaker 1: made a deal which gave us a fifty thousand dollar
Speaker 1: promotion fund would be five thousand maybe now or more.
Speaker 1: A fifty thousand dollar promotion fund that that we controlled.
Speaker 1: They had to if they objected anything that had to
Speaker 1: be coordinated with them, but we could control it. And
Speaker 1: um and so I had that fund to work with
Speaker 1: to promote the group, and we became the number two
Speaker 1: selling artist at our c A. But you know, it
Speaker 1: was just kind of amazing. I mean, I learned by
Speaker 1: making mistakes through that whole period. But these guys, they
Speaker 1: couldn't agree on anything together. So what they would do
Speaker 1: is each one would take me aside and try to
Speaker 1: get me to agree with their point of view about
Speaker 1: which booking agency we should go with, whether she we
Speaker 1: should take this tour or not, and so on, you know,
Speaker 1: and um, and then what would happen is we'd get
Speaker 1: together they each want to do at a different time,
Speaker 1: in different place. Then we all get together to meet
Speaker 1: and make a decision booking agencies. One I particularly remember
Speaker 1: they each wanted a different agency. They finally throw up
Speaker 1: their hands and say, well, let's let Ken decide. Like what, Ken,
Speaker 1: what do you think? Now? I've heard all the arguments,
Speaker 1: ad infinitum. I mean, I've heard them over and over
Speaker 1: and over, and I make a decision, you know, and
Speaker 1: hopefully I make the right decision. In fact, one of
Speaker 1: the wrong decisions I made that was perfectly right for them,
Speaker 1: as I pulled them off some booking to put them
Speaker 1: on the mort Salt tour all over the country, thirty
Speaker 1: four cities and thirty five year we have like sixty two,
Speaker 1: sixty probably sixty and sixty one. Yeah, in six you
Speaker 1: go to negotiate a record deal. Everything is very sophisticated,
Speaker 1: these tapes. Did you have a lawyer. Do you do
Speaker 1: it yourself? How did it work? We had lawyers usually
Speaker 1: I don't remember who was there. Oh, they did have
Speaker 1: a lawyer that I wasn't too crazy about, but they
Speaker 1: But the record deals, I still got very much involved.
Speaker 1: I didn't know better, you know, I mean and and
Speaker 1: and it wasn't anything like it is today. Really talking
Speaker 1: to So you're dealing with the record company, then to
Speaker 1: what degree are you telling the record company what to do?
Speaker 1: I can't. It's not my style. So what is your?
Speaker 1: My style is finding a way that together we make
Speaker 1: decisions and that that I but I'm willing to go
Speaker 1: with them the extra mile to support everything. To that
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not saying to them, you go promote this,
Speaker 1: you go. I mean, even we're talking, if you if
Speaker 1: you skip ahead thirty years on, Kenny Rodgers or Tricia
Speaker 1: Earwood or I would make four hundred radio calls to
Speaker 1: promote a record. Now the record company's still doing the
Speaker 1: same thing. But my calls. They don't get calls from
Speaker 1: managers on you know, the program directors Like I became
Speaker 1: close friends with program directors all over the country, and
Speaker 1: I would call, call and call to get my records
Speaker 1: on the end. What if you felt the record wasn't
Speaker 1: an a level record, would you still call That's an
Speaker 1: interesting question. I you know, hopefully most times, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember one of those incidents. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure that I was involved enough that whatever came out
Speaker 1: with something. Now, when Kenny Rogers first recorded Lucile, he's
Speaker 1: into seventeen songs. I thought it was hysterically funny. It
Speaker 1: was going to be either a big flop or a
Speaker 1: big or a big success. And I tried to get
Speaker 1: the record and you put it out, and they wouldn't.
Speaker 1: They put out one or two records before it. But boy,
Speaker 1: when we got to it, I worked that record like
Speaker 1: crazy because I believed in it. I don't know what
Speaker 1: I did with the previous two. I probably didn't work
Speaker 1: anywheres as hard. Okay, so you're managing the law lights.
Speaker 1: Their career gets better when you're the manager, much better,
Speaker 1: and you're making any money A lot a lot of
Speaker 1: my when when I graduated from Harvard Business School, and
Speaker 1: anybody who knows what they get nowadays from that school
Speaker 1: when you're grad will just be before it the the
Speaker 1: top price that the guys coming out of Harvard Business
Speaker 1: School got on the average a lot of them got
Speaker 1: it was twelve five a year. Okay, that was considered
Speaker 1: a lot of money for them. H I earned by
Speaker 1: my second year, I earned thirty five. And at this point,
Speaker 1: how many people do you have working for you? If
Speaker 1: any maybe no, I probably nobody. Probably, So the Limelighters
Speaker 1: are big, big and successful. What's the next step? The
Speaker 1: next step is the Limelighters finally reach a point where
Speaker 1: they decided to break up. And by that time, by
Speaker 1: the way, by that time, for the last year, they
Speaker 1: have replaced me with a woman they met in New
Speaker 1: York who because they've decided they can save the timber cent,
Speaker 1: they're paying me, right, and you charge ten? Then ten
Speaker 1: was all? Then yeah, it went up to five. I
Speaker 1: never charged more than fifteen. The managers get hey, Colonel
Speaker 1: Tom Parker got you know that story, it's the great story,
Speaker 1: some news guy says to him. So I understand that
Speaker 1: you know that you take you take half of Pressley's earnings.
Speaker 1: He said, no, no, no, no, Elvis Presley takes half
Speaker 1: of months, right, you know, but anyway, uh, in those days,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think now, I got a little off trail. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the point is they were the limelighters, replace you
Speaker 1: to save money. Where does that leave They replace me
Speaker 1: with a woman. They send her out to give her
Speaker 1: two weeks to learn everything I'm doing. She calls him
Speaker 1: up in the second week and says, this is crazy.
Speaker 1: It's gonna take me a year out here. She stays
Speaker 1: like four or five months. She finally goes back. She's
Speaker 1: mannaging him for six months, and now she asked them
Speaker 1: for tier and he saved anything. In the meantime, they
Speaker 1: make me the concert promoter. I'm making two or three
Speaker 1: times what I made as their manage. At that time,
Speaker 1: there wasn't percentage, right, you paid a flat fee. Uh
Speaker 1: you may for for the if you're a promoter to
Speaker 1: the act, to the act, you paid them, Yeah, some
Speaker 1: kind of percentage usually though even then, Yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of times was flat feet. And earnings in those days,
Speaker 1: my god, I mean we were getting ten thousand a night.
Speaker 1: Streisan came along and charged twenty five thousand, and we
Speaker 1: all talked about how uh you know that she was
Speaker 1: going to ruin the business at Okay, so you know
Speaker 1: you're being the promoter, but the band breaks up, what
Speaker 1: do you do next day. Here's the crazy part of it.
Speaker 1: The band breaks up. Well, I'm holding a ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollar commercial for Chrysler Cars in my hand that for them,
Speaker 1: and they can't do it because they've broken up. And
Speaker 1: I approached the Smothers brothers and say I'd like to
Speaker 1: manage I knew them, I knew them from San Francisco.
Speaker 1: We were friendly and said I wanted to manage him.
Speaker 1: And here's a ten thousand dollar deal. I've convinced the
Speaker 1: buyer that they that the Smothers are the right group.
Speaker 1: At that point, they're on a lot of of the
Speaker 1: late night shows jacqu Parr and shows like that, and
Speaker 1: I say, I say, I'm gonna always make more money
Speaker 1: than I cost you for you and they signed with me.
Speaker 1: So the day the Lime Letters break up, I signed
Speaker 1: the Smothers brothers and that within a month, they appear
Speaker 1: on three major network shows in the same week. That
Speaker 1: never happened then, but they prefer a prayer performing on
Speaker 1: three shows. Uh, Judy Garland, I can't remember the shows,
Speaker 1: but the Sullivan Show was one I can't I don't
Speaker 1: remember what the third one was anyway, that never happened
Speaker 1: because they all had exclusivity causes clauses. But the smothers
Speaker 1: weren't big enough than anybody cared because Striison was on
Speaker 1: one of the shows, and so you know the show.
Speaker 1: The shows each wanted to put whoever they had on
Speaker 1: that week, and the smothers were secondary, but they got
Speaker 1: all the and the commercial breaks. So the Christi commercials
Speaker 1: are playing on the on the Today Show, and the
Speaker 1: Tonight Show, the the they're on a bunch of shows
Speaker 1: one week, we get so much exposure. The next forty
Speaker 1: nine shows selled out. Okay, just to be clear, was
Speaker 1: it your plan to get them on all those shows
Speaker 1: in a week or was that I think it was.
Speaker 1: I think it sort of happened. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: think I had any idea. I looked back at it.
Speaker 1: I teach now something called the magic of threes. How
Speaker 1: it takes three impressions in a concentrated period of time
Speaker 1: for anybody to take any real action. That if you
Speaker 1: just have one, so you try and combine, you try
Speaker 1: and bring things together. So they all happened in a
Speaker 1: very tight period that I learned that it now shown
Speaker 1: as a real law, I mean, a real scientific principle.
Speaker 1: But in those I learned it when I started teaching
Speaker 1: at u c l A. By looking back and specifically
Speaker 1: that week taught me that everybody got excited when they
Speaker 1: saw the Smothers in those multiple appearances all happening in
Speaker 1: one week. It was all in one week. So anyway, uh,
Speaker 1: the Smothers very quickly are red hot and a blast vocal.
Speaker 1: Who's running. William Morris at that time talks to CBS
Speaker 1: and says, all of your stars on the network are aging.
Speaker 1: You've got Ed Sullivan and you've got all these old
Speaker 1: you know, all these other stars that are older. Red
Speaker 1: Skelton had a show. They're they're all older stars. You
Speaker 1: need some youth, and he convinces them to put the
Speaker 1: Smothers on the air. So it's just sixty six. That
Speaker 1: was about that. What we've started out with was was
Speaker 1: a show in which Tommy played in Angel. Oh yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that exactly just to be there before we get to
Speaker 1: my brother the Angel. Had you kept regular contact up
Speaker 1: with theos because I was living in the Bay Area
Speaker 1: right right a block two blocks from the Hungry Eye,
Speaker 1: and it was the Purple Onion. I said, it was
Speaker 1: the blue it's the Purple Onion. And they were appearing,
Speaker 1: and then they do a live album from the Purple Onion.
Speaker 1: I think they did absolutely one of the first step
Speaker 1: maybe the first album. Okay, And didn't they have a manager? No,
Speaker 1: they didn't at that point. I don't know if they
Speaker 1: had had it or not prior I can't remember. Okay,
Speaker 1: So they do that show, I remember, and what network
Speaker 1: does it? The first show the My Brother the Angel
Speaker 1: was on. I think it was a sho That's what
Speaker 1: I was going to say. Okay, so I know it was.
Speaker 1: It was a company called screen gim So it was
Speaker 1: now I remember because I had a friend who had
Speaker 1: the record, and so therefore I tuned in. But from
Speaker 1: the perspective of viewer, the show wasn't really successful. But
Speaker 1: in those days they bought twenty six shows. Nowadays you
Speaker 1: get six maybe, And in those days they bought you
Speaker 1: for a season, and they lived with you for a season.
Speaker 1: There were only three networks, and and if you got
Speaker 1: on the air, you still got a year's worth of exposure.
Speaker 1: You know, they didn't they didn't take you off mid year.
Speaker 1: They didn't have any other shows to put on. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we did get through a year and then we
Speaker 1: kind of things were it still gave them weekly exposure,
Speaker 1: which was good, so fed the concert business and everything,
Speaker 1: and they were touring a lot. And then we then,
Speaker 1: of course in six okay, let's go back. Did they
Speaker 1: like each other or not? If they were threatened from
Speaker 1: the outside, they would respond as brothers, as a pair. Uh.
Speaker 1: If they were just arguing among themselves, uh, they would
Speaker 1: really argue. And the funny part of it was one
Speaker 1: night they had a they had a concert in Aspen,
Speaker 1: or or very close to Aspen somewhere. They're in a
Speaker 1: club and it was snow on the ground everywhere, and
Speaker 1: everybody was lined outside the club waiting to get in.
Speaker 1: And Tom and Dick come along and they're arguing and
Speaker 1: they start throwing punches and they now are wrestling in
Speaker 1: the snow in front of the crowd that's going into
Speaker 1: Tommy says, best show we ever did. People believed everything. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they see you can drive off the concert business.
Speaker 1: The show ends, and then what, uh the I don't
Speaker 1: quite understand the SMS Brothers. They do their network show
Speaker 1: runs a season half a year, twenty six episodes, and
Speaker 1: then they just continue touring and stuff like and doing
Speaker 1: some records and stuff. We were on Mercury Record and
Speaker 1: then um and then this is when last Vogo convinces
Speaker 1: the network that they should put the Smothers brothers on
Speaker 1: and they and they put them on nine in a
Speaker 1: slot which see me, us has failed over and over
Speaker 1: and over there in fact, for eight years, nobody can
Speaker 1: knock bananas out and number one. But Sunday nights at
Speaker 1: eight o'clock and it's Bonanza and it's America's show, right,
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna do anything, and we knock them out of
Speaker 1: number one. All Smothers goes on in sixty seven becomes
Speaker 1: an instant hit. Not instant, but within a week or
Speaker 1: a few weeks. We were not a lot of the show.
Speaker 1: A lot of the show was kind of traditional old,
Speaker 1: you know, variety show. But certain number five ten minutes
Speaker 1: of the show was outrageous and and we had young riders.
Speaker 1: We were protesting the Vietnam War, we were protesting racism.
Speaker 1: We were but in a satirical way, in a in
Speaker 1: a you know, really really funny way. There's a great
Speaker 1: there's a great documentary on it called Smothers Smothered, and
Speaker 1: it has the highlights of all the show and what
Speaker 1: happened because after two and a half three years, the
Speaker 1: CBS threw them off the air. UH new president Bob
Speaker 1: Wood who came in and Tommy went head to head.
Speaker 1: Tommy got rid of after about in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: he got rid of me, and he got rid of
Speaker 1: UH my partner at the time, and he had nobody
Speaker 1: beat no buffer, and he went one on one of
Speaker 1: the network president. Next thing you know, they were off
Speaker 1: the air. He you know, he's looked back on that
Speaker 1: and said it was the wrong thing to do. Okay,
Speaker 1: But just in that era, you're the manager you have,
Speaker 1: you know that they're testing the limits on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: and how did you manage that with the uh that
Speaker 1: work before they had a change. I always loved to
Speaker 1: tell this. We would be in the dressing room. There
Speaker 1: was a wonderful man from the CBS network who was
Speaker 1: sort of the guy that dealt with us day in
Speaker 1: and day out, and and we'd be in the dressing
Speaker 1: room and Tom and Dick would be swearing, you know,
Speaker 1: like like say, I mean sailors um about, you know,
Speaker 1: tell CBS to take this show and shove it, you know,
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, and swearing left and right, and
Speaker 1: then kN Frets, my partner at the time, and I
Speaker 1: would walk out of there and we'd go up to
Speaker 1: the CBS guy and we say, you know, we have
Speaker 1: a small problem here. You know, we would have we
Speaker 1: would bring it all down and we would talk with
Speaker 1: them and so on and everything. And we were a hit,
Speaker 1: which helps. I mean, we're the number one show on
Speaker 1: television for a while, and you know, they put up
Speaker 1: with a lot when you are By the time the
Speaker 1: Smothers got thrown off, a lot of things that happened,
Speaker 1: and they were maybe seventeen. Today, they wouldn't consider throwing
Speaker 1: the seventeen show up, but in those days that was considered.
Speaker 1: You know, we had been number one, We'd set a
Speaker 1: pretty high gund bar um. So we would always kind
Speaker 1: of modify it and keep it down. And there was
Speaker 1: a William Morris agent named Stamp came in and he
Speaker 1: kept everything. We all kind of controlled the volatility. And
Speaker 1: the other thing about the Smothers is Dick was super conservative.
Speaker 1: Tommy was the liberal one. Tommy was hanging out with
Speaker 1: Timothy Leary and doing LSD and and hanging out with
Speaker 1: there was I can't remember his first his first name now,
Speaker 1: but there was a h Federal Communications remember who was
Speaker 1: a rebel and Tommy would hang out with him, and
Speaker 1: he would urge Tommy to you know, to be as
Speaker 1: controversial as possible. And Tommy would think, wow, this is
Speaker 1: the FCC, so telling me this, you know, but but
Speaker 1: it was it was pretty crazy and okay, a couple
Speaker 1: of things. How did you end up getting the partner?
Speaker 1: Ken Fritz hired him as a road manager for the Smothers.
Speaker 1: And then, uh, uh, Tommy, you know when when I
Speaker 1: found this a lot when an act is on the
Speaker 1: road with a guy who's there every night. I mean
Speaker 1: the early days, it was me, you know, always with
Speaker 1: the act. But once I got more successful, I was
Speaker 1: not going as much because I had too many other
Speaker 1: responsibilities and also felt staying in l A I could
Speaker 1: do a better job for my group. I go out
Speaker 1: on all the big things. But if ken Fritz was
Speaker 1: traveling as a road manager for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and uh, finally Tommy said, you gotta make him a partner,
Speaker 1: and I already had a partner at that a guy
Speaker 1: out of Boston. So for a short while we were
Speaker 1: three ways was the guy out of Boston? Oh God,
Speaker 1: I'm tom Oh well, what was how did he get involved?
Speaker 1: I can't remember how he got involved, but I know
Speaker 1: I originally he may have been I may have been
Speaker 1: involved with him when I was doing concerts or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but by the way, he did a very key thing
Speaker 1: when I moved. I was I first started out working
Speaker 1: out of San Francisco. When I decided to move to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, or we decided to put our offices in
Speaker 1: l A, Tom Carroll said to me, we're going to
Speaker 1: go to l A. We're gonna have We're gonna be
Speaker 1: the most honest guys with the best reputation and business
Speaker 1: is going to be the path to our door. That
Speaker 1: I mean Tom Carol unfortunately died early young, but Tom
Speaker 1: I felt he was so right. That's what I did,
Speaker 1: And literally I never had to run after an act.
Speaker 1: I think in all the years, the only act other
Speaker 1: than maybe the Smothers, which really wasn't running after him.
Speaker 1: But but other than that, um, you know, Bill Medley
Speaker 1: and Righteous Brothers were the one act I ever heard
Speaker 1: ran after and we didn't get him. I got I
Speaker 1: got Medley years later as a solo artist, but I
Speaker 1: never managed him. Okay, So during this period you also
Speaker 1: have first edition, the Kenny Riding the first station comes along.
Speaker 1: After the Smothers are on the air for a year
Speaker 1: and and very hot, and a lawyer keeps calling me
Speaker 1: and bugging me to go see this group at a
Speaker 1: little club called Leadbetters. Leadbetters was owned by the leader
Speaker 1: of the New Christie Mistrels. The group him out of
Speaker 1: the New CHRISTI instruls. Kenny Rogers was a member of
Speaker 1: the group, and I went down finally and saw them
Speaker 1: after six weeks of this lawyer in l A. It's
Speaker 1: in l A on Westwood Boulevard, or it was no
Speaker 1: longer there, And I went down there and flipped and
Speaker 1: I brought Mason Williams and Tommy Smothers the next night
Speaker 1: or the next week or whenever, and they flipped for him,
Speaker 1: and we put him on the show and started managing
Speaker 1: right away. And Kenny Rodgers was part of the group,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't. He was singing lead on some of
Speaker 1: the songs, but he wasn't the key member in it.
Speaker 1: He didn't didn't become Kenny Rogers in the first edition
Speaker 1: until a couple of years or a year at least
Speaker 1: a year later. So how does just dropped in to
Speaker 1: see what condition my condition was in. That was the
Speaker 1: initial big hit. How did that come together? You know,
Speaker 1: I don't remember how the song got in there. I
Speaker 1: do know that was a song that kind of changed
Speaker 1: things for us. That and Ruby Don't Take Your Love
Speaker 1: to Town and Lucy Well Lucy a for Kenny as
Speaker 1: a solors um. But but the thing was that Kenny
Speaker 1: became the lead voice on a lot of those and
Speaker 1: we had a hit going up the charts. And I
Speaker 1: remember meeting with Mo Austin and Joe Smith at Warners
Speaker 1: and them saying, we've got to do something because this
Speaker 1: record is starting to get play and we've got another
Speaker 1: record that's way up the charts. What do we do?
Speaker 1: And we sat there and somehow in the group we
Speaker 1: made a decision that since Kenny was the lead on
Speaker 1: I think it was Ruby Um, that it would be
Speaker 1: Kenny Rogers and the first edition for one of them,
Speaker 1: in the first edition for the other. It was a
Speaker 1: group happy with this. No, okay, during this area, you're
Speaker 1: managing the Smothers, you manage the first edition managing anybody else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had three or four let's see, from the Smothers
Speaker 1: Brothers show. I had a fabulous, probably the best banjo
Speaker 1: player in America, John Hartford, uh uh, who became kind
Speaker 1: of a sidekick on the on the Glenn Campbell Show.
Speaker 1: By the way, I I literally found Glenn Campbell for
Speaker 1: that show to be the summer replacement for the Smothers
Speaker 1: when I was tasked with that job by watching. In
Speaker 1: those days, the tapes that you viewed were these heavy, huge,
Speaker 1: heavy video tapes. There were two inches wide. They I
Speaker 1: don't know how much they weighed, but I could barely
Speaker 1: carry one. And I had to watch fifty of those.
Speaker 1: I had a hundred hundred acts to watch, hundred artists
Speaker 1: to see who would host the show. And when it
Speaker 1: got to number fifty, actually number fifty, exactly halfway through,
Speaker 1: Glenn Campbell was there. Uh, And I ran upstairs, got
Speaker 1: Tommy Smithers, brought him down to the screening room, said
Speaker 1: here's our guy. And we never looked at the other fifty. Okay,
Speaker 1: so uh, Now it ends with the Smothers brothers. What's
Speaker 1: keeping the door open? That the first edition and they're
Speaker 1: they're hot in the US, and then we also as
Speaker 1: they start to cool here, we get an offer to
Speaker 1: tour in New Zealand and believe it or not, We
Speaker 1: go to New Zealand were treated like the Beatles. It's
Speaker 1: unreal how hot we get in New Zealand. We make
Speaker 1: three tours there and I literally spent probably six months
Speaker 1: of my life in New Zealand, which is an incredible
Speaker 1: country visually, and everything else conservative is all get out.
Speaker 1: I mean everything Saturday afternoon until Monday morning, everything closed closed.
Speaker 1: In those days. It was, you know, quite a different experience,
Speaker 1: but it was the most fabulous country visually. Uh you know.
Speaker 1: So anyway, so first edition is driving, But I have
Speaker 1: other clients during that period of time. I've been handling
Speaker 1: Mason Williams out of the I had Bob Einstein, who
Speaker 1: went on ended up being Super Day Super Dave. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, I just recently went to the memorial
Speaker 1: service for Bob Einstein and he had to his two brothers,
Speaker 1: one of whom his head of a big advertising agency, Cliff,
Speaker 1: and the other one is Albert Brooks, the comedian. So
Speaker 1: Cliffs gets up to and and does a whole thing
Speaker 1: on Bob from beginning to end. It's like thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: Everybody else is talking five just Seinfeld was there, All
Speaker 1: kinds of people Tommy smothers were there. They all talked
Speaker 1: five or ten minutes. Cliff does this whole big long thing,
Speaker 1: and he's followed by Albert Brooks. If anybody knows wonderful
Speaker 1: comedian movie maker move, you know. Albert Brooks gets up there.
Speaker 1: He has this sheaf of papers in his hand and
Speaker 1: he throws him up in the air and he says, well,
Speaker 1: the heck with that. They told me Cliff had died.
Speaker 1: That's good, great, And then he says, but now I
Speaker 1: hear Cliff speak. Jeez, I went out to move my
Speaker 1: car twice while Cliff speak. He brought the house that.
Speaker 1: It was the best two lines of the night. It
Speaker 1: was hysterical. I just that. I mean, that family was
Speaker 1: so funny, and their father was a guy name of
Speaker 1: all things, whoever remembers this father was a comedian named
Speaker 1: Parker Carcass. That was his name, I mean his stage name,
Speaker 1: you know. Anyway, But I had Einstein, I had Mason Williams,
Speaker 1: I had John Hartford. Oh, I had Jennifer Warren, uh
Speaker 1: you know. And and somewhere in that period of time,
Speaker 1: I think maybe it was a little later, Jennifer and
Speaker 1: Bill Medley did fabulous songs for the movie. Uh. So
Speaker 1: I had a lot going on during that period. Uh.
Speaker 1: But then I went to work for Jerry Wander. How
Speaker 1: did that come about? I used to collect old cars,
Speaker 1: antique cars, and Kenny gave me an old nineteen uh
Speaker 1: Ford with a little Ford coupe with a with a
Speaker 1: rumble seat, and I had a park somewhere I was.
Speaker 1: I drove it around town and a note came on
Speaker 1: my window and said, we're doing this thing in Vegas,
Speaker 1: the show in Vegas, and we're using antique cars and stuff.
Speaker 1: Could we use your car? Actually, first around l A,
Speaker 1: it was a group called the Do Dog Gang. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you remember it. You're talking about the
Speaker 1: people did the parade and they did all kinds of
Speaker 1: things that they that they they were They played as
Speaker 1: if they were nine. So there was Big Jim and
Speaker 1: he was a gangster, and they were all hoodlums and
Speaker 1: there were a rival gang and they'd have shootouts in
Speaker 1: l A. In fact, he gets married to this lady
Speaker 1: that's supposed to be she's a dancer from a chorus
Speaker 1: line in Chicago, because he's from Chicago. And they get
Speaker 1: married at the Beverly Hills hotel and as they're walking
Speaker 1: out of the hotel, the rival gang kidnaps. Her name
Speaker 1: was I can't remember what her name was, but Bob
Speaker 1: Boop see something or something like that, you know, and
Speaker 1: then they go in to shootout around town. So we
Speaker 1: opened in Vegas. They talked me into coming up and
Speaker 1: helping produce a show in Vegas at the at the
Speaker 1: Flamingo and it failed, and um but it failed. The
Speaker 1: week that Time magazine did a fabulous review of it.
Speaker 1: We just couldn't We couldn't get a second show going.
Speaker 1: We were in a side room. Didn't work anyway. I
Speaker 1: limped back to l A. And I had loaned the
Speaker 1: show what amounted to my life savings to pay the
Speaker 1: very last week's salary, thinking we were getting money. But
Speaker 1: we didn't. So I lost my money. So I'm now broke.
Speaker 1: I've got my house in my car and an antique
Speaker 1: piano from the show and that's it. And and somehow
Speaker 1: or other, I found Jerry Weintrop and he hired me.
Speaker 1: Hired me for nothing. I mean, it wasn't much, but
Speaker 1: it was enough to keep me alive at the at
Speaker 1: that point in time. And I worked for him for
Speaker 1: two years. And I learned an enormous I learned an
Speaker 1: enormous amount from it. Uh good and bad. I have
Speaker 1: to be a couple of things. What was good what
Speaker 1: was bad. The good things were things like you play
Speaker 1: uh l A and New York for the career, and
Speaker 1: you play the rest of the country for the money. Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean for him by the way I handled the carpenters.
Speaker 1: I worked with John uh John Davidson, I worked with
Speaker 1: with John Denver. We had all we had all the d's.
Speaker 1: We had Davis and Denver was unbelievable. We even had
Speaker 1: Dylan for a while. I remember walking down the hall
Speaker 1: and Bob Dylan's walking towards me. The Colonel used to
Speaker 1: come and hang out in my office. Colonel Tom Parker
Speaker 1: would hang out in my office anyway. In that, you know,
Speaker 1: That's what I learned that what I the problem was
Speaker 1: Jerry was driven by power and money. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: very driven by those things, and that's just not my style.
Speaker 1: It's not what I you know. So those were like
Speaker 1: the Kings, and and so I learned things not to do.
Speaker 1: But I really learned a lot from him. On a
Speaker 1: positive side, he was incredibly sick Cessil and he had
Speaker 1: a thing called Concerts West, which is still around now.
Speaker 1: Uh that was part of the company and they produced everybody,
Speaker 1: and they did all the Sinatra tours. I got to
Speaker 1: work with Sinatra and stuff. It was pretty fun. I mean, now,
Speaker 1: at the time, you're still managing Kenny Rogers. No, Kenny
Speaker 1: had left, the group had broken up. That was the
Speaker 1: other thing that had happened before. Right around that time,
Speaker 1: the first edition broke up. But I wasn't making much
Speaker 1: from them anyway. They were in the very, very downside
Speaker 1: of their career. Uh So I at that point in time,
Speaker 1: I went, you know, I'm going to work for Jerry.
Speaker 1: Was kind of salvation for me at that moment in time,
Speaker 1: and um, I kind of lost my trend. Thought, I'm sorry, no, okay,
Speaker 1: So how do you decide to leave Jerry? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly. Let me right back into the Kenny Rogers thing.
Speaker 1: So Kenny goes to Nashville, meets up with Larry Butler,
Speaker 1: starts to record song since a seventeen song. I sit
Speaker 1: in Jerry had his own promotion department. The three guys
Speaker 1: from the promotion department and I sit in the little
Speaker 1: room we had with the great speakers and stuff, and
Speaker 1: we listened to these seventeen songs and we hear Lucy
Speaker 1: Elle and a couple of other songs that became big hits,
Speaker 1: and we're pretty mesrized with it. And so I want
Speaker 1: to and I want to sign Kenny, and Jerry says, oh,
Speaker 1: he's washed up and so over. It's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: Don't do that now, you know that'd be straight and so.
Speaker 1: But over his objection, I signed Kenny, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: ultimately made Jerry several millions, and after I had left him,
Speaker 1: by the way, um so, anyway, Kenny knows that Jerry
Speaker 1: didn't want him as a client. I don't remember. I
Speaker 1: doubt if I said that directly, but he knew. Uh.
Speaker 1: As Kenny starts to become successful, he says to me,
Speaker 1: I'm leaving. You can either go with me or not,
Speaker 1: but it's up to you. Well, you know, now Kenny's
Speaker 1: my hot client. I've got others. I've got Dottie West
Speaker 1: the singer, and I've got I'm working with Harry Chapin
Speaker 1: and and who Jerry had signed, and a few others.
Speaker 1: So I decided to leave Jerry very contentious decision. It
Speaker 1: wasn't pleasant. But so what did Jerry? Sorry, yeah, give
Speaker 1: me a few million dollars and you can go. And
Speaker 1: he was paying me next to nothing. Um No, but
Speaker 1: he did keep a piece of Kenny for a couple
Speaker 1: of years, which turned out to be a couple of
Speaker 1: big years. Um So in any event, um, and he
Speaker 1: became very fair. Used to come over and visit me
Speaker 1: at my other once. I became very successful with the
Speaker 1: new new acts. I mean, I've been there before during
Speaker 1: the mother's days being real hot, but I got very
Speaker 1: hot in the eighties, as you know. And uh, and
Speaker 1: Jerry would just drop by and his in his sweat clothes,
Speaker 1: come over and sit in my office. You know. It's funny. Uh,
Speaker 1: sort of like Colonel Tom Parker did. It was interesting.
Speaker 1: But but when I left Kenny, I bought a little
Speaker 1: house on Shaborne Drive here in Los Angeles that would
Speaker 1: have been Casablanca Records and Neil Bogart's place, and but
Speaker 1: it was the record company. Uh, and you know, set
Speaker 1: up an office there and started managing acts and had
Speaker 1: almost huge success from the very beginning because Kenny was
Speaker 1: read hot and he was getting out of all the
Speaker 1: time and I was really able then I was able
Speaker 1: to probably use whatever skills I had as a manager
Speaker 1: really came into play in that period. Who's the next
Speaker 1: big act? Dr? Kenny? Uh, Lionel Ritchie and how did
Speaker 1: you get Lionel Richie been with the Commodores? How did
Speaker 1: he come to you? He came to me because Kenny
Speaker 1: had been very hot on the country charts and was
Speaker 1: now doing extremely well popped. People don't kind of realize,
Speaker 1: but the first act to really cross from country to
Speaker 1: pop and keep his foot in both was Kenny Rogers,
Speaker 1: and he decided there was one other chart at the time.
Speaker 1: He decided he wanted to be number one on the
Speaker 1: R and B charts, so he Uh. He went to
Speaker 1: Jim as It, who was running the record company, and said,
Speaker 1: I want to have an R and B head And
Speaker 1: Jim said, well, there's only one guy around to write
Speaker 1: it for you. It's Lionel Richie. And I think Lionel
Speaker 1: was in Vegas. Al the Linel remembers is the opposite.
Speaker 1: He remembers that he went to Vegas to visit Kenny.
Speaker 1: But the story I've always known was Kenny went to
Speaker 1: Vegas to visit Lionel and Lionel played him what he
Speaker 1: had of this song and then wrote it for Kenny,
Speaker 1: which was Lady, which became one of Kenny's very biggest hits,
Speaker 1: and produced it for him and everything. So it was
Speaker 1: quite something and and he Uh So, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I had two huge acts. One of the things I'm
Speaker 1: extremely proud of his one through into two. For eighteen months,
Speaker 1: I had forty eight percent of the top ten records
Speaker 1: in America were my clients over an eighteen minute period
Speaker 1: month period for eighteen months. Okay, so who was it?
Speaker 1: It was Kenny, it was Lionel, it was Kim Carnes
Speaker 1: with Betty Davis eyes and a lot don't fall in
Speaker 1: Love with a Dreamer, which she did with Kenny. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, she had a whole series of hits. Uh
Speaker 1: had we had the Jay Giles band at that time
Speaker 1: with freeze Frame and you know a lot of the
Speaker 1: other songs. Um, I hadn't taken on Olivia yet, and
Speaker 1: I didn't have big hits with Olivia. Later on. I
Speaker 1: had Olivia, John and the Bigs for short periods of time,
Speaker 1: and Burt Reynolds for a very short less than a year. Uh.
Speaker 1: But I'm trying to think who all the others were
Speaker 1: right in that period. But you know, Lionel and Kenny
Speaker 1: would have more than one hit in the top ten
Speaker 1: at times. Okay, So lionle to manager and he just
Speaker 1: called you up and said, I want to go with you. No,
Speaker 1: we were doing after we did, lady. We flew down
Speaker 1: to Tuskegee for a TV special and for and had
Speaker 1: the Commodores as a guest. I have a great picture
Speaker 1: with all of them. And they were managed by Benny Ashburne.
Speaker 1: I think, boy picking names out of my head that
Speaker 1: I don't know how I'm doing it. Uh, And and
Speaker 1: they were, and he was he had really done a
Speaker 1: lot for the group. But Lionel came to me and
Speaker 1: said he and his wife at the time, Brenda, and said,
Speaker 1: you know, we want to we want Lina wants to
Speaker 1: go solo and he wants to do this. And I said, look,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna. I've never stolen an act from another manager,
Speaker 1: you know, so you gotta if you leave Benny, come
Speaker 1: to me when you're free, which he did very quickly,
Speaker 1: and he always felt very bad about it because Benny
Speaker 1: probably in another year or maybe less, Benny died yeah. So,
Speaker 1: and Lionel took that hard of it. I mean, you
Speaker 1: think these were the tracks were really hot because he
Speaker 1: had all night long. Yeah, yeah, he had. He had
Speaker 1: so many hits in in a period of time. But
Speaker 1: remember Kenny was having hits then two Kenny's got like
Speaker 1: fifty number one records. Lionel was having one hit after another.
Speaker 1: Lena was taking more time. Kenny would get a record.
Speaker 1: Kenny could record a record in Nashville, and he could
Speaker 1: do it in three days, okay, three days, you know.
Speaker 1: Lino would take a year and a half, you know,
Speaker 1: and the record company would be calling for the last
Speaker 1: six months, calling me every day, is it ready yet?
Speaker 1: Is it ready yet? They were trying to schedule it
Speaker 1: as it ready in line, it will be going I
Speaker 1: need one more song, I need one I've got to
Speaker 1: tweak this or whatever. So that the style was so different,
Speaker 1: you know. Okay. The question, of course is would they
Speaker 1: have been as successful if they had not been with you. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a trick question. I'll tell you why, because if
Speaker 1: I didn't believe that was true, wouldn't be any good
Speaker 1: at what I do or what I did. I don't
Speaker 1: do that much anymore now, but I believed that was
Speaker 1: the best manager in the business, not the only good
Speaker 1: one and not but I and not doing it the
Speaker 1: same way others did you know if he went to
Speaker 1: Peter Asher who ended up managing Linda Runstad and James
Speaker 1: Taylor and others. You know, he was a record producer,
Speaker 1: He's been an act He've been part of Peter and Gordon,
Speaker 1: isn't yeah, um, you know, but he was a wonderful
Speaker 1: record producer and would produce incredible music with him. What
Speaker 1: he did in the rest of the areas, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure because I never followed that part of it, but
Speaker 1: he had great success with his act. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: Sandy Gallen and and Jim Morey and some of the
Speaker 1: other managers in the business that were successful worked different ways.
Speaker 1: They were they were tougher, They were probably better negotiators
Speaker 1: than me. I always felt my strength was twofold one
Speaker 1: picking the right artist, some gut feel for who has talent?
Speaker 1: Where is that X factor? Where what's totally different about
Speaker 1: this person in some way? It doesn't have to be everything.
Speaker 1: In fact, a lot of things may not. It may
Speaker 1: not be good to be different in every way, but
Speaker 1: what's unusual what's special, what's the wow factor, what's why? Why?
Speaker 1: You know? Where's the I could feel the charisma of
Speaker 1: certain artists when they walk in the room. They didn't
Speaker 1: have to do anything. Give me a couple of examples. Um,
Speaker 1: that's interesting, that's a good, good question. I'd have to
Speaker 1: think about it for a minute. Um, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly Lionel had it and Kenny had it. Um, great, great,
Speaker 1: Kenny illustration Slightly different than that answer. I felt what
Speaker 1: Kenny Rogers could do was like what Michael Jordan did
Speaker 1: on the basketball court. If the chips were down, if
Speaker 1: if he had to hit the shot to win the game,
Speaker 1: he would take his game up and hit the shot.
Speaker 1: I found Kenny every time there was a challenge there,
Speaker 1: he dialed it up. Yeah. I know, this is like
Speaker 1: sports starters. You can hang with him every day and
Speaker 1: he could be better than them. But when competition comes
Speaker 1: there just there's one thing, you know, they just and
Speaker 1: a part of it is they don't want to fail.
Speaker 1: Part of it is they're absolutely determined not to be embarrassed,
Speaker 1: not to fail. I listened. I gave a fiftieth birthday
Speaker 1: party for Kenny Rogers at the Mountain Gate, which the
Speaker 1: golf course here in l a And and I live
Speaker 1: across the street from it. But I gave a party
Speaker 1: there as a surprise for Kenny. And he was out
Speaker 1: on the golf of course, playing in a foursome that day.
Speaker 1: He didn't know there was any party coming. And flew
Speaker 1: Dolly Parton in flew his original jazz group, the Bobby
Speaker 1: Doyle Tree in trio in. We had all things scheduled,
Speaker 1: and Kenny's playing the course and I got the fifty
Speaker 1: people are so attending to hide behind trees and rocks
Speaker 1: around the ninth hole. And what I had told him
Speaker 1: was when he find when he hits the final punt,
Speaker 1: you jump out, yell surprise, happy birthday or whatever. Well
Speaker 1: he's off the green, and somehow or other, the minute
Speaker 1: they see him, they all jump out from behind the rocks,
Speaker 1: and you know, and they and they yell surprise, and
Speaker 1: he's he's, you know, twenty ft off the green. He
Speaker 1: chips to nine feet and he sinks the putt. I
Speaker 1: went to I said, all you need is a little pressure.
Speaker 1: All you need, I said, you could go on the
Speaker 1: pro tour. You know, I mean, he he was He
Speaker 1: was a good golfer, but he wasn't that level or
Speaker 1: you're gonna do that with a hundred and fifty people
Speaker 1: standing around at yelling surprise. But but that was typical
Speaker 1: of me, of that Michael Jordan's quality that you see,
Speaker 1: or the Kobe Bryant quality, that competitiveness. Uh uh So. Anyway,
Speaker 1: what I started to say is I have some kind
Speaker 1: of a gut feel for who has that extra dimension
Speaker 1: and it's got to excite me. It's got to be
Speaker 1: something that I feel like, oh boy, there really is
Speaker 1: something cool happening here, even if it isn't my genre
Speaker 1: music I would listen to normally, If it's quality, if
Speaker 1: it's different, if it's unique, then that's that's the biggest
Speaker 1: that's the number one. Number two. I think I take
Speaker 1: everything I'm working on and try and take it up
Speaker 1: to another level, almost like what I'm talking about with
Speaker 1: the artist. I always try to find the piece of it,
Speaker 1: what how can we make this something bigger than it
Speaker 1: might otherwise be? So and I feel extremely creative. I
Speaker 1: think my strengths are creative vision of stuff. How do
Speaker 1: you how do you take stuff? Whatever I'm working on,
Speaker 1: I mean, whether it was you know, the great charity
Speaker 1: projects have done that are very historical. It's always finding
Speaker 1: that way to have a wow factor, to have something
Speaker 1: that takes it to another level. And those are those
Speaker 1: are my areas of strength. I'm not the strongest negotiator
Speaker 1: in the world. I negotiate differently than some of the
Speaker 1: tougher guys I know in the business. I still get
Speaker 1: it good stuff, but I start with acts that can
Speaker 1: demand that that that are going to get that anyway. Okay,
Speaker 1: but didn't you you develop some of these acts like
Speaker 1: Travis Tritt and Trishanyrwood from the beginning the same way,
Speaker 1: same way, figure out, you know, bottom line, figure out
Speaker 1: what's needed at that moment in time for that day,
Speaker 1: even what what's the most important thing you can accomplish
Speaker 1: today and go after that and make it happen, and
Speaker 1: um so on each of those acts. I mean Travis Tritt,
Speaker 1: when I first saw him, it was because of Warner
Speaker 1: Brothers promotion. Guy called me and said, you've got to
Speaker 1: come to Atlanta and see this act. And he just
Speaker 1: and and I trust did him enough that I really
Speaker 1: had to go do it. And he blew my mind
Speaker 1: in his live performance. And Jim Ed Norman, who was
Speaker 1: running the Warner Brothers in Nashville, was there, and he
Speaker 1: Travis had a singles deal, and uh. And I turned
Speaker 1: to Jim in and I said, Jim had um, he's
Speaker 1: not going to record anymore for you unless he has
Speaker 1: an album deal. You've got to agree to put make
Speaker 1: turn this into an album deal, which he did. But
Speaker 1: I looked at Travis Tritt and I went, this is
Speaker 1: a great live performer, this guy. This is a guy
Speaker 1: who's sensational on stage. So the first thing I went
Speaker 1: did is I went out and bought an old I
Speaker 1: think it was Randy Travis or somebody's tour concession bus,
Speaker 1: so he had a bus so he could tour. Because
Speaker 1: we couldn't afford to fly him from day to day.
Speaker 1: We just started taking him everywhere across the country, playing
Speaker 1: in clubs and anything else, but creating excitement because in
Speaker 1: every city he went into, it wasn't so the important
Speaker 1: thing wasn't so much the audience. We didn't need to
Speaker 1: get an audience to react, but it was the record
Speaker 1: people that we brought in, the DJs and the program
Speaker 1: directors and song in every city so that we created
Speaker 1: excitement out there. Because he could do that in person, phenomenal,
Speaker 1: great songs, terrific songwriter, and he might have hit even
Speaker 1: if he didn't to her, but touring was his biggest strength.
Speaker 1: And what about Tricia Herewood. It's interesting Tricia Herewood. Again,
Speaker 1: by the way, in those days, I rarely, if ever,
Speaker 1: I ran after an act. I mean I didn't, and
Speaker 1: I certainly didn't after Tricia. Somebody brought me Tricia, maybe
Speaker 1: the record company, and it might have been um the
Speaker 1: president record company. I think it was an m C
Speaker 1: A um uh and I but I wasn't sure she
Speaker 1: was going to take me as a manager. And she
Speaker 1: flew out here to meet with the people out here,
Speaker 1: and we were walking up to the off this and
Speaker 1: I turned to her and I said, am I going
Speaker 1: in as your friend or your manager? And she said,
Speaker 1: you're my manager? Right there? It was that was the question,
Speaker 1: you know. And and then that's the funny part of
Speaker 1: this was that night we went to Spago here you
Speaker 1: know when it was used to be yeah, was my
Speaker 1: office was the next block. And uh so we we
Speaker 1: go to Spago and we're sitting there just she and
Speaker 1: me at a table, and a little lady comes up
Speaker 1: and with a pad and a pin and a pencil,
Speaker 1: and Tricia and I were both thinking, she's coming to
Speaker 1: get Tricia. Tricia had number one record, She's in love
Speaker 1: with a boy. The lady says Mr Craig, and Mr Craig,
Speaker 1: and will you sign one thing? So I'm thinking on
Speaker 1: my feet fast. And when she leaves, I turned to
Speaker 1: Creatricia and I said, Tricia, you realize our job now
Speaker 1: is to see that you're big enough that that never happened, okay.
Speaker 1: And I just had a leisure with one of my
Speaker 1: tricks in those days I learned from Jerry wein trump Um.
Speaker 1: It was a guy named Joe Layton who was the
Speaker 1: most brilliant stage or. He'd come from Broadway and won
Speaker 1: the Tony a few times, and he was staging people
Speaker 1: like Bet Midler and Share and people like that, and
Speaker 1: he was brilliant at staging. And I had gotten him
Speaker 1: to stage line Ritchie and then Kenny and Dolly went
Speaker 1: they went on to her and others. And he always
Speaker 1: did amazing things. He did Diana Russ's tours, did everything,
Speaker 1: and he was incredibly good at surprising the audience. He
Speaker 1: would create amazing stuff the way he did it. And
Speaker 1: and so I brought him in to do Tricia Herwood,
Speaker 1: and she had been very stiff on stage and hard
Speaker 1: to move around and everything, and she just blossomed. She
Speaker 1: had an inner they all did, really but that wasn't
Speaker 1: her thing. And he gave her confidence on stage and
Speaker 1: gave her a show that she could do really well
Speaker 1: and it and it helped to move things along in
Speaker 1: a wonderful way. And then you have to know, when
Speaker 1: I was managing triciaan Travis's is the end of the
Speaker 1: eighties beginning of the nineties, I was so established, you know.
Speaker 1: I could pick up I remember Regis and Cathy. They
Speaker 1: had that Gelman as their producer and they used to
Speaker 1: refer to them all. I can't remember his first name now, anyway,
Speaker 1: I could pick up the phone, call him and say
Speaker 1: I've just signed this act Travis Tritt, and he'd say,
Speaker 1: send him back, We'll put him on. Because they knew
Speaker 1: the quality of the artists I represented, and they wanted
Speaker 1: they needed me when they wanted Kenny Rodgers or Line
Speaker 1: or my other superstars. So I had leverage and I
Speaker 1: had credibility, you know, and those things worked. So how
Speaker 1: about Gallagher tell me the story of God? You love
Speaker 1: this so I go to a TV show I don't
Speaker 1: remember which one, but with Bill Medley. Bill's performing and
Speaker 1: this comedian is on the show and he blows again.
Speaker 1: I'm just seeing star power. There's something so unique, so special.
Speaker 1: So you know, he's prior to any of these prop comics,
Speaker 1: and he's got props and he's smashing watermelons and he's
Speaker 1: doing all kind of crazy though, And so I give
Speaker 1: him my card. He didn't even want to take my car.
Speaker 1: Now I don't need a manager, so I start inviting
Speaker 1: him to things we're doing. Like I would stage a
Speaker 1: big baseball game, softball game up in Vegas with Kenny
Speaker 1: Rodgers and doing it playing the local media with a
Speaker 1: team he and his band and stuff. And Kenny was
Speaker 1: a really first class softball pitcher, so he could really
Speaker 1: pitch underhand, fast and good. And we would do that
Speaker 1: all the time. So if id gallery to fly up
Speaker 1: with us and be part of all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: he's running after me for management and so and I
Speaker 1: put him on. So I I put him on tour
Speaker 1: with Kenny. Actually I think I signed him first. And
Speaker 1: and I went to a luncheon, my wife and I
Speaker 1: went and we sat at lunch with Gallagher, and he
Speaker 1: trashed everything in the business, trashed everybody, He trashed everything.
Speaker 1: He he was on stage or sitting. This was sitting
Speaker 1: at lunch prior prior to putting him on tour with
Speaker 1: I think too great Gallagher stories. So he's he's sitting there,
Speaker 1: we're sitting at lunch and he's telling us what's wrong
Speaker 1: with everything, and we get up and we leave, and
Speaker 1: my wife on the in the parking lot, I remember
Speaker 1: distinctly as we're walking out, and says, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: sign him. I mean, there's no way you're going to
Speaker 1: sign that guy. I mean, that was so negative. I
Speaker 1: can't believe it, I said, Cathy, I can't promise you that.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm like a moth to the flame. When
Speaker 1: I see that level of star quality, when I see
Speaker 1: that level of unique talent, it is just so hard
Speaker 1: for me to stay away from it, even though I
Speaker 1: know it's going to be a lot of a a hassle,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was a lot of work in
Speaker 1: a hassle. But he was brilliant. But this is the
Speaker 1: too really funny Gallagher story. One kind of tragic and
Speaker 1: not exactly but we um I booked him with Kenny
Speaker 1: Rogers first show. And it's in Aptis, California, little town
Speaker 1: up near below Sant Jose and everything. And uh, it's
Speaker 1: a concert in a concert hall and he's up on
Speaker 1: stage and he used to break a watermelon and it
Speaker 1: would splatter out, and there's a guy sitting in the
Speaker 1: center of the front row in a white soup. Now understand,
Speaker 1: nobody has seen Later on with Gallagher audiences, people would
Speaker 1: come with plastic and umbrellas and everything. You try to
Speaker 1: trick them, but they become prepared to get squirted and
Speaker 1: covered with stuff. This guy, nobody's seen him, right, he
Speaker 1: smashes the watermelon and it goes right onto the guy
Speaker 1: in the white suit. And I mean, and Kenny's this,
Speaker 1: it's my act, Kenny headlining, right, I'm We're all panicked.
Speaker 1: We run out there, we go up to the guy.
Speaker 1: We're saying, listen, sorry, we'll get it cleaned, or we
Speaker 1: probably can't clean it, we'll buy you. Ah No, that
Speaker 1: was the funniest act I ever saw. You don't have
Speaker 1: to do it. Wow, I couldn't believe it. We didn't
Speaker 1: have to do anything. We didn't even take his name. Um,
Speaker 1: but the other one was kind of crazy. I got.
Speaker 1: I got a lot of good things for Gallery. I
Speaker 1: sold a series of specials to Showtime I think it was,
Speaker 1: and stuff that were great shows that he did. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I get Gallagher a deal to do it. Well, I
Speaker 1: want to get Gallagher a TV show, and so I
Speaker 1: get Bud Grant, who's the president of CBS at the
Speaker 1: time and the head of one of the studios to
Speaker 1: fly up to Las Vegas where Caliger's opening for one
Speaker 1: of my acts. It may have been apartment, may have
Speaker 1: been Kenny, but it also may have been Olivia. Any event,
Speaker 1: I am checking in staying overnight, but the Kenny's playing
Speaker 1: which we used, is flying them back that night after
Speaker 1: the show, So it must have been Kenny. Uh, because
Speaker 1: Olivia didn't go in private jet um and and they
Speaker 1: go in the bar, and who do they come upon
Speaker 1: but Gallagher, and he does just what he did to
Speaker 1: me my wife at that luncheon. He now trashes the
Speaker 1: whole industry. And then he leaves and I come back
Speaker 1: down and the guys are sitting there and they say,
Speaker 1: we're going back to l A And I said, why
Speaker 1: is it? We just had this encounter with Gallagher we
Speaker 1: don't see any point in doing anything here. He hates
Speaker 1: everything in the business, you know. And and but they
Speaker 1: didn't leave. I convinced him to stay. They stay, They
Speaker 1: see the show, they stand up after the show, they
Speaker 1: give me a thumbs ups, and we make a deal
Speaker 1: to do a series. And we get a guy named Maddie.
Speaker 1: I can't remember his name, but he was National Lampoon
Speaker 1: right ahead of it. Maddie. It's an s. Maddie Simmons,
Speaker 1: Mattie Simmons. So Maddie comes up with they come up
Speaker 1: with this great idea, and it's it's called our Man
Speaker 1: in the House, and it's it's a little a little
Speaker 1: county in Idaho. The congressman dies and the governor of
Speaker 1: the state has to appoint a new congressman. And there
Speaker 1: are only eight possibilities in this part of the state. Uh,
Speaker 1: And there are reasons for eliminating seven of the eight.
Speaker 1: And the one that's left is Gallagher. And Gallagher used
Speaker 1: to go around on roller skates all over the place
Speaker 1: on his stage show and everything. So the idea was
Speaker 1: you you go to the parking area at the Capitol
Speaker 1: building and you'd see car after car with license later
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, you have a parking
Speaker 1: spade and they'll be two roller skates in it. And
Speaker 1: so Gallagher says, look, I want to go back and
Speaker 1: research this. CBS loves the idea. That's great, you know,
Speaker 1: called our man in the house, and he goes back
Speaker 1: and I introduced him to friends of mine in Washington.
Speaker 1: Patrick Lay's a friend of mine. He hangs out in
Speaker 1: these congressional offices and meantime we set up a meeting
Speaker 1: out here with the network. When he gets back, he
Speaker 1: comes right back from there. He comes over to CBS.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting with the head of the Bud Grant Head
Speaker 1: and Matty Simmons in the office when Gallagher walks in.
Speaker 1: He walks into the office, he says, I just spent
Speaker 1: two weeks in Washington. I would need two years before
Speaker 1: I'd be steeped enough and what's going on there to
Speaker 1: be able to do this show any justice? And he
Speaker 1: turns around and walks out. It's the end of the series.
Speaker 1: We had a serious deal. Okay. Now it's something I remember.
Speaker 1: You would turn on you talk about those cable special
Speaker 1: It seemed like whenever you went on the dial, Gallagher
Speaker 1: was on. He was on more than anybody. Oh God,
Speaker 1: they were so good. I mean, that's what this guy
Speaker 1: had and still has. I saw him maybe two years
Speaker 1: ago now, but he was funny as I'll get my
Speaker 1: wife and I still quote all kinds of lines from Gallagher.
Speaker 1: It's just brilliant. Just okay. So why did it end
Speaker 1: with you and Gallagher? You know, I don't really recall
Speaker 1: the ending of that usually I can, but it certainly
Speaker 1: wasn't bitter or anything like that. It wasn't I In
Speaker 1: most cases I stayed friendly with I mean, I went
Speaker 1: to with the people, you know, you know part of it.
Speaker 1: You asked me, are you you know? Were they successful
Speaker 1: because of you? My attitude, which served me so well
Speaker 1: during that period, was they need me more than I
Speaker 1: need them. If they leave me, I have more free time.
Speaker 1: I don't have whatever hassles I was having with them. Uh, somebody,
Speaker 1: something better is going to come along. No matter what
Speaker 1: it was, even when Lionel Richie I part, I would
Speaker 1: have so much self confidence and hopefully it wasn't arrogance
Speaker 1: or or you know or whatever, but so much feeling
Speaker 1: that that was that it was a good thing. I
Speaker 1: think it's part of I have a general philosophy that
Speaker 1: everything in life happens for a good reason, and that uh,
Speaker 1: everything that happens, even the negatives, can be turned into
Speaker 1: very positive, even some of the most serious I look
Speaker 1: at I teach this sort of I look at mothers
Speaker 1: against drunk driving. They their kids were killed by drunk drivers,
Speaker 1: formed an organization save millions of live That's one of
Speaker 1: the worst things you can possibly happen. Not that it
Speaker 1: was there wasn't. There was good in it because they
Speaker 1: found that they wouldn't let their kids die in vain.
Speaker 1: You know, I can give you fifteen different examples like that.
Speaker 1: Um So, I think that when an artist leaves me,
Speaker 1: I just figure and now I don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about that. I don't manage anymore. But I always feel
Speaker 1: like there's a good reason for everything the way it happens,
Speaker 1: and when you look for that, most of the time
Speaker 1: that's what you find. You know, it changes your approach too,
Speaker 1: not feeling defeated, but feeling like, oh, this is just
Speaker 1: part of life and something better is coming along. Okay,
Speaker 1: Just staying in that philosophy, you have a very active
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial personality. If someone didn't have that, maybe nothing would
Speaker 1: come along. Well, that's true. I do get out when
Speaker 1: I get excited about something, I work on it. Okay,
Speaker 1: So how did inn You know a number of these
Speaker 1: artists that work with you, they and something like Gallagher
Speaker 1: Travis Tritt, subsequent to work with you, their careers are
Speaker 1: nowhere near and successful. Yeah, that's I was kind of
Speaker 1: proud of that for a while. I was. I would
Speaker 1: always say, gee, you know, nobody's ever left me and
Speaker 1: been hot or after they left me. Now I will say,
Speaker 1: and I'm friendly with him still. I just saw him recently, Uh,
Speaker 1: Lionel Ritchie. It's pretty hot again. He's got a lot
Speaker 1: going for him. And we've seen him three times in
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, most recently just a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago in UH concert in Santa Barbara and I
Speaker 1: love it because we were the only ones backstage because
Speaker 1: he was late getting there, which wasn't unusual, and he
Speaker 1: had to really rush on stage, so they positioned us
Speaker 1: right where he got out of the elevator and went
Speaker 1: through the stage store to go on stage. And he
Speaker 1: comes on. He hugs my wife, he said, I gotta
Speaker 1: hug the women. First meets our cousins who were there,
Speaker 1: and and then he looks at me, and there's a
Speaker 1: whole group of people around, the musicians and everybody, and
Speaker 1: he goes, that's the man who made me famous? Is
Speaker 1: that boy that made me high? Like puffed up? I
Speaker 1: felt so good, that was so wonderful. But he's a one.
Speaker 1: He's a charming, wonderful, wonderful. So why maybe he's hotter
Speaker 1: now he's got great management. Now he's got a guy
Speaker 1: named Bruce Escovitz who's just fabulous and Escowitz and uh
Speaker 1: um okay, But why did he leave? Why did Travis
Speaker 1: Trent leave? It's always different reasons. There is one underlying
Speaker 1: reason that quite often happens. I've said, you work your
Speaker 1: way out out of management job or you know, one
Speaker 1: of two ways. One you're terrible at what you do,
Speaker 1: or you you fail somehow and they leave you because
Speaker 1: you didn't do the job that you hope to do.
Speaker 1: You might have might have tried hard. I haven't had
Speaker 1: that happen hardly ever, but it has happened. The other one,
Speaker 1: which has more often been my case, is they get
Speaker 1: very successful and they look at what they're paying you.
Speaker 1: And I mean I had an artist come to me
Speaker 1: one time it had made five million dollars that year,
Speaker 1: and she had netted one point five and she paid
Speaker 1: mecent commission. So I made seven fifty dollars, but that
Speaker 1: was my gross. Her gross was five million she netted,
Speaker 1: or or of what she what she made. I went
Speaker 1: back when she said, she said to me, you're making
Speaker 1: more almost as much money as I am. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: And I said, wait a second. Years is after everything,
Speaker 1: including taxes, what you needed. Let me tell you what
Speaker 1: I needed. And I went back and I looked at it,
Speaker 1: and it was seventy five dollars. Ten percent of what
Speaker 1: I got didn't fly because she looked at the seven
Speaker 1: fifty and went, I don't have to. I mean I
Speaker 1: could save all that, you know, and did for a while.
Speaker 1: I think she had other advantages in ways she could
Speaker 1: get advice. But but I have said that you can,
Speaker 1: at least in my case, I have more often found myself.
Speaker 1: I mean I managed this mother's brothers three separate times,
Speaker 1: three different times, and each time when we got really
Speaker 1: successful and things were really going good, Tommy fired me.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's the you kind of you reach
Speaker 1: a point that they think you know artists ego. It
Speaker 1: becomes very hard to think that somebody else is responsible
Speaker 1: for even part of your success, if not a good
Speaker 1: part of it. I always felt Kenny Rogers and I
Speaker 1: were fifty fifty, that he brought the talent, which was
Speaker 1: half the equation, and I brought the creative and you know,
Speaker 1: business expertise and career management and career promotion and all
Speaker 1: that expertise that was the other half of the equation.
Speaker 1: I didn't get paid, but I always looked at it
Speaker 1: as a partnership. We did. We did share a partnership
Speaker 1: on some of the Gambler movies which I developed for him,
Speaker 1: UM and some other of his movies of the week.
Speaker 1: But but I always felt that my my arrangement with
Speaker 1: an artist was that I was we were partners. We
Speaker 1: were doing this as partners. Looked at it that way.
Speaker 1: We didn't get paid that way, but that was more
Speaker 1: because of the traditions. Kay, did you have written contracts
Speaker 1: or not? Once? But what about if an act left you?
Speaker 1: They left me? They left me. Now, I think there
Speaker 1: have been times when having a written contract might have
Speaker 1: been some value, but there are also ways for artists
Speaker 1: to get out of written contracts. There is, unfortunately, um Ah,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of there have been artists who
Speaker 1: have fought when I'm at because when you're a manager,
Speaker 1: you almost always have to do something uh to uh
Speaker 1: to book the artist, which in California gets you in trouble.
Speaker 1: And you can know the famous Jefferson airplane case whatever,
Speaker 1: And it's still going on. There's still the talent agency. Uh.
Speaker 1: The talent act has been fought a lot by managers,
Speaker 1: but not successfully. Okay, so but let's just say you
Speaker 1: had an act who left and they had a very
Speaker 1: hot record. You know, in a written contract you have
Speaker 1: sunset classes in this particular case, how much would you
Speaker 1: you know, try to commission what was coming in the
Speaker 1: future are supposed to walking away that day. I would
Speaker 1: never worry too much. I was never money driven, um
Speaker 1: you know, I would never not only because I was
Speaker 1: making good money, but more importantly, it wasn't what motivated
Speaker 1: me and and so as a result, I didn't care
Speaker 1: that much. I wanted to get on with my life
Speaker 1: um and and the things I was doing. I did
Speaker 1: care about fairness, but the accident in general that I
Speaker 1: managed uh were such that they lived up to whatever
Speaker 1: would be fair in the situation. If we currently had
Speaker 1: something that was payment, but I didn't get I didn't
Speaker 1: get long term residuals on stuff that's still selling to
Speaker 1: this day. You know, I mean I could have easily
Speaker 1: gone after that, but I never wanted to be about
Speaker 1: the money and I and uh, you know, I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: I any Rogers thirty three years without a contract. You know,
Speaker 1: there's something about a contract that or but not having
Speaker 1: a contract that says, look, if you go, you go,
Speaker 1: it's your problem. Now that thirty three years he had
Speaker 1: fired you once in the end, No, Lionel did not Kenny,
Speaker 1: and then Kenny Kenny fired me in the end. That
Speaker 1: primarily happened because of a three way partnership. We got
Speaker 1: into a three way deal which never really really happens properly,
Speaker 1: and and I always felt I was a bit betrayed
Speaker 1: by the other partner. Okay, So who have you worked
Speaker 1: with who has had this charisma? Who didn't hit? I
Speaker 1: worked with a teen group group called Three of Hearts,
Speaker 1: who were gorgeous, but they were in the wrong music field.
Speaker 1: They were they would have been a pop hit, and
Speaker 1: they had records that should have been released. Bob, and
Speaker 1: we've begged the record company to do it. Uh but
Speaker 1: and the other problem was they were seventeen years old.
Speaker 1: Listen I went. I went on a bus tour with
Speaker 1: three seventeen year olds and a and a mom as
Speaker 1: a chaperone, sleeping in bunks on a bus all summer,
Speaker 1: introducing them to radio and doing shows all over the country.
Speaker 1: And they were terrific. They were wonderful singers, they were gorgeous,
Speaker 1: they were charming, they were totally different each one, and
Speaker 1: and we everything in that first year that you could
Speaker 1: make happen happened. Everything imaginable, but we had we were
Speaker 1: in the right we weren't in the right genre. And
Speaker 1: as much as we tried the record company to release
Speaker 1: some pop, they didn't do it. And the part of
Speaker 1: the reason was it was our c A and they
Speaker 1: had a pop similar pop group breaking at the same time,
Speaker 1: and they didn't want two of them, and we just didn't.
Speaker 1: And that was the biggest season. But the group broke
Speaker 1: up after after a whole year of great stuff happening.
Speaker 1: The group went three separate ways, and none of them,
Speaker 1: as far as I know, are still in music as
Speaker 1: you know, or doing much in it. Okay, how do
Speaker 1: acts feel when you're this white hot. How do they
Speaker 1: feel that you're spending time with the other acts? Well, first,
Speaker 1: I tried to limit my personal clients to three because
Speaker 1: when you get above three, I found you can't proportion
Speaker 1: your time properly. Three you can kind of balance. I've
Speaker 1: had moments when they didn't balance, but generally you can't.
Speaker 1: I mean, I once went to Uh, Tricia was going
Speaker 1: to do a big commercial for Revlon in New York,
Speaker 1: and I felt I needed to be there when they
Speaker 1: filmed it. Travis Tritt was doing a video in uh
Speaker 1: in Georgia. Uh yeah, I think, I think probably near
Speaker 1: his home there in Marietta. And it was the same day,
Speaker 1: and I got on a plane in for New York
Speaker 1: and landed in New York and got two calls, one
Speaker 1: from Georgia where Travis had walked off the set because uh,
Speaker 1: they had um the director had called him in at
Speaker 1: six thirty in the morning and it was four thirty
Speaker 1: in the afternoon. They hadn't used him yet, but I
Speaker 1: hadn't gone there because he'd worked with that director a
Speaker 1: lot in the past. But he just got fed up
Speaker 1: with sitting around the whole day and he left. So
Speaker 1: they were now calling me panicked, And I get a
Speaker 1: call from Tricia and I'm on my way to the
Speaker 1: stage where she was doing stuff, and that he wants
Speaker 1: her to do something that's real sexy and she doesn't
Speaker 1: want to do it. As the director, she had big
Speaker 1: time director that she hadn't worked with before, so I
Speaker 1: went to that. But I'm I'm like torn. It's one
Speaker 1: of the few times I can remember where I should
Speaker 1: have been in one place and it should have been
Speaker 1: in the other at the same moment in time. Usually
Speaker 1: when I kept it to three, I could. I could
Speaker 1: cover for three. They weren't all getting hot at the
Speaker 1: same moment or time or whatever. It might compromise three,
Speaker 1: even three might compromise my personal life some you know,
Speaker 1: I found conflicts when I couldn't do things because I
Speaker 1: remember on Valentine's Day when my wife always went to
Speaker 1: a restaurant that was a terrific restaurant in l A. Chasen's,
Speaker 1: if you may. Of course, we used to have a table,
Speaker 1: permanent table for Valentine had to be in New York
Speaker 1: because Tricia was appearing in Central Park, you know. But okay,
Speaker 1: so with the it was called Craigetting Company, at its peak,
Speaker 1: how many acts? How many people working there at its
Speaker 1: absolute peak, which was a mistake, by the way, fifty
Speaker 1: people working twelve acts. Three managers I had, Kenny Lionel
Speaker 1: and one other whoever it was at that moment. It
Speaker 1: changed over time. Um. And it's really interesting because another
Speaker 1: manager called me when I started to get big, and
Speaker 1: he said, Ken, I'm gonna give you a piece of advice.
Speaker 1: You're not going to take it, but you're going to
Speaker 1: get big and you're gonna regret it. He said, because
Speaker 1: society kind of makes you want to grow and be
Speaker 1: bigger and everything. But in our business, smaller is better.
Speaker 1: And once you add people, it's so hard to get
Speaker 1: rid of them. Everybody is dependent on an assistant. Everybody's
Speaker 1: been And you know, he was so right. And what
Speaker 1: happened and what drove me finally to cut it down
Speaker 1: was another manager in my company, Gary Boorman, who went
Speaker 1: on to be very successful with a lot of big acts. Uh.
Speaker 1: And another one of my employees decided to leave even
Speaker 1: though I just spent a year negotiating a phenomenal deal
Speaker 1: for them. Unbelievable. They could never I was covering the
Speaker 1: overhead and they were going to get any five percent
Speaker 1: of what they brought in and U. But they decided
Speaker 1: to leave and form any any formed. Ultimately, his own
Speaker 1: company is very successful these days. Um. But when I
Speaker 1: added up they took it was five employees. They took
Speaker 1: three other people with them major employees, so it was
Speaker 1: five of them. I added up. I was two hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: and they took five acts. Five employees and five acts
Speaker 1: I added up. I was two hundred thousand better off
Speaker 1: after they left than I was before. And I went,
Speaker 1: wait a second, and I started cutting my company down
Speaker 1: like crazy. And I eventually, I mean, nowadays, I don't
Speaker 1: manage anymore. I do mostly consulting and nonprofit work and
Speaker 1: all kinds of very big but I get paid for those.
Speaker 1: But I do that, uh and UM, but I looked
Speaker 1: at it, and I eventually worked out of my home, okay,
Speaker 1: with one assistant. Um. Did you learn anything in Harvard
Speaker 1: Business School that helped you in your career? More in
Speaker 1: my life, because it gave me interest in anything every area.
Speaker 1: A couple of things. I mean, I learned something about banking,
Speaker 1: at least at the time. It's changed now. But I
Speaker 1: learned that the time banking was subjective, not totally objective.
Speaker 1: It's more so now because corporations have gotten on the
Speaker 1: banks and stuff big ones. But in those early days,
Speaker 1: in the sixties, seventies, eighties, my relationship direct relationship with
Speaker 1: a banker. Man, I could pick up the phone and say, listen,
Speaker 1: I've got this artist. They need fifty dollars to buy
Speaker 1: a bus and go on the road. I mean, I
Speaker 1: did that this exact thing for Travis, and they'd say,
Speaker 1: all right, here, come in, we'll sign up the papers,
Speaker 1: you know, and do it. And I made I learned
Speaker 1: that banking relationships. I don't know how I learned that
Speaker 1: at Harbor, but I did. Um that banking relationships were
Speaker 1: there were people that made decisions that affected you and
Speaker 1: if you could be if you could get the trust
Speaker 1: and the friendship of those people, it could really be
Speaker 1: a value. Much harder to do these days, it's a
Speaker 1: whole different ballgame. Um. I learned. I learned to be
Speaker 1: interested in what anything, every business, and the interesting the
Speaker 1: most valuable thing about that is the more you learn,
Speaker 1: you find angles that support some other part of what
Speaker 1: you're doing. You know, um uh, oh, gosh, what's his name?
Speaker 1: Jacqueline Hyde and Frank Wildhorn. Frank Wildhorn came to teach
Speaker 1: him my class at u C l A, and the
Speaker 1: first thing he said to the students was, don't ever
Speaker 1: quit learning. Don't ever quit being a student. The most
Speaker 1: important thing you can do that will support everything you
Speaker 1: do in life is is learning constantly. And I read
Speaker 1: everything I can every time. I love anything new that
Speaker 1: I haven't learned about. Um, you know, I just I'm fascinating.
Speaker 1: I'd like to live a lot longer than I'm going
Speaker 1: to live, just because I want to know everything I
Speaker 1: want to know, and particularly I want to know a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff about space that hasn't been discovered. I
Speaker 1: have quite an interest in astronomy. I built my own observatory,
Speaker 1: you know. But I'm fascinated by, uh, by learning. Okay,
Speaker 1: what are you most proud of in your career? In
Speaker 1: my career, probably the United Nations Peace Medal. Tell us
Speaker 1: the story of that, well, it's just basically from we
Speaker 1: Are the World. We haven't talked about we are as
Speaker 1: I say so, tell the story of we are the World.
Speaker 1: We are the World started with a well, it started
Speaker 1: with Bob Geldof seeing pictures on the BBC in London,
Speaker 1: of children dying in Africa and deciding you had to
Speaker 1: do something about it, and twisting the arms of all.
Speaker 1: I mean, he wasn't a big deal at the time,
Speaker 1: but he he bugged everybody to the point where they
Speaker 1: all agreed to perform, and he put a record together
Speaker 1: and it ultimately brought in ten million dollars. Led to
Speaker 1: live Aid much later. But while that was going on
Speaker 1: and making the news, Tom brokaw here insisted that those
Speaker 1: same pictures from Africa be shown on NBC here, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, everybody over here was seeing it,
Speaker 1: and Harry Belafoni picked up the phone. Well what Belifani
Speaker 1: did first as he went to he thought they should
Speaker 1: do a concert here. So he went to a concert
Speaker 1: promoter named Ron Delsner in New York, and Ron Delsner
Speaker 1: said to him, look, Ken Craigan manages some of the
Speaker 1: biggest art and Belifani wanted to do it with strictly
Speaker 1: with African American artists who had some ties to Africa,
Speaker 1: which is a good idea, but not not the one
Speaker 1: we ended up with. And I'm glad we didn't just
Speaker 1: do African American art. But anyway, Delzner said, look, Ken
Speaker 1: Craigan's got managing some of the hottest artists in the world. Um,
Speaker 1: and he cares about this because he was Harry Chapin's manager,
Speaker 1: and he said he he Um, these issues, these hunger
Speaker 1: and homeless issues and poverty issues are something that he's
Speaker 1: been working on with for years with Harry and then
Speaker 1: with Kenny Rogers. So I get a call from Belofani
Speaker 1: on two days before Christmas or two days before Christmas.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh, he says, uh, we should do a concert.
Speaker 1: Have you seen these photos? I said, yeah, I've seen
Speaker 1: him on television. And I said, but why do a concert?
Speaker 1: I said, Geldof has just shown us the way. I said,
Speaker 1: We've got bigger artists who sell more records here than
Speaker 1: what he had there. And not that he didn't have
Speaker 1: some very big artists, but we we've got a better
Speaker 1: stable in terms of what we can rape. Um, let
Speaker 1: me see what I can do. So I hung up
Speaker 1: with him. I drove to Lionel's house. I was picking
Speaker 1: him up for he was going to host the American
Speaker 1: Music Awards and I was taking him to a meeting
Speaker 1: with Dick Clark to go over some of the details.
Speaker 1: It wasn't for another month until the twenty eight January.
Speaker 1: On the way on my way to Lionel's house, I
Speaker 1: called Kenny Rodgers and Kim Carnes and they both said,
Speaker 1: you know, they do whatever we wanted. And then I
Speaker 1: got to Lionels and he and his wife Brenda had
Speaker 1: seen there. They wanted to do something bad, and I
Speaker 1: suggested the right with Stevie Wonder, but he couldn't. He
Speaker 1: couldn't reach Stevie tried all night. In the meantime, I
Speaker 1: took Lionel to meet with Dick Clark, and on the
Speaker 1: way over to Dick Clark, I got this idea, why
Speaker 1: don't we do it the night of the American Music
Speaker 1: Awards because the artists would be already be in town.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna have to struggle to get him. Um.
Speaker 1: I told Dick that he loved that because it would
Speaker 1: help him get artists to come to down. So I'm
Speaker 1: I did. Then the next morning, Lionel was still trying
Speaker 1: to reach Stevie and his wife Brenda at the time.
Speaker 1: His wife then then went into a jewelry store to
Speaker 1: buy it was the day before Christmas, to buy last
Speaker 1: second gifts. Who walks in but Stevie wonder. I probably
Speaker 1: had somebody with him who said, that's Brenda Richie, because
Speaker 1: Stevie couldn't go around on his own. But I don't
Speaker 1: know that part of the story. I do know that
Speaker 1: he said, would you help me pick out some jewelry gifts?
Speaker 1: And she said not until you call my husband back.
Speaker 1: And they got Lionel in a dentist chair and Stevie
Speaker 1: agreed to write. In the meantime, I'm on the phone
Speaker 1: with Quincy Jones. He's on a getting He's in the
Speaker 1: airport getting on a Warner Brothers plane to fly to
Speaker 1: a wife for vacation, for Christmas vacation. And I say,
Speaker 1: will you produce this? He says absolutely, And he I said,
Speaker 1: can you get Michael to be one of the singers.
Speaker 1: He calls me back thirty minutes later. He says, Michael
Speaker 1: will do it, but only if he writes a song
Speaker 1: with Lionel and Stevie, which is all good. I mean.
Speaker 1: Bellafoni calls me back after the day after Christmas, says,
Speaker 1: if you thought about this at all, what do you
Speaker 1: think we ought to do? I said, well, I've got
Speaker 1: a song being written by Lama Richie Stevie Wonder, I
Speaker 1: thought and didn't work out that way. And Michael Jackson,
Speaker 1: I've got Quincy Jones producing. I've got Kenny Rogers and
Speaker 1: Kim Karnes and Lindsey Bucking and the rest of my
Speaker 1: clients willing to perform. He says, uh, oh, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm off to Europe. He was going to Europe for
Speaker 1: a month. I'll be back. He got back three days
Speaker 1: before the recording session. Um. Any event, I very little
Speaker 1: could get done from there till New Year till after
Speaker 1: New Year's But I just sat down starting January two,
Speaker 1: every day, get two artists. Go start at the top
Speaker 1: of the billboard charts. Get two artists that are up there.
Speaker 1: I had already number one and number three, which were Lionel,
Speaker 1: and number one was Michael, Number two was Prince, Number
Speaker 1: three was Lionel. But I just worked my way down
Speaker 1: the charts and would get in touch with and call
Speaker 1: an artist every uh at least. And I wouldn't go
Speaker 1: to bed at night until I had two artists. And
Speaker 1: then on the fifteenth of January, UM Bruce Springsteen's manager
Speaker 1: John Landau. I had convinced John that he should ask
Speaker 1: Bruce to come out and do it. He talked Bruce
Speaker 1: into it. It didn't take much from what he said,
Speaker 1: and uh and uh. I from the moment that Bruce said, yes,
Speaker 1: I never made another outgoing call. I just had to
Speaker 1: turn people down or okam, you know I already had
Speaker 1: quite a bit at that point, but Bruce was that
Speaker 1: magnet that brings people you know to it. So okay,
Speaker 1: so now you have how hard was it to absolutely
Speaker 1: actually finalize it, have it done that night at A
Speaker 1: and m etcetera. Well, it almost didn't happen. There's a
Speaker 1: great Thornton Wilder quote, every great thing balances at all
Speaker 1: times on the razor edge of disaster. And I've always
Speaker 1: found the bigger they are, the more often that's going
Speaker 1: to happen. And the night before the actual recording session,
Speaker 1: one of the artists managers who quite involved with the artist,
Speaker 1: came to me and said, the rockers don't like the song.
Speaker 1: They don't want to stand on the stage next to
Speaker 1: the non rockers because they think it will diminish him somehow.
Speaker 1: And so we're leaving. And I said, you know, listen,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna leave, you're gonna leave. I can't do
Speaker 1: anything about that we're recording tomorrow. Well, they went to
Speaker 1: Springsteen and Springsteen said, I came here to feed people
Speaker 1: and save lives. I'm not going anywhere. And they knew
Speaker 1: that if they left and the boss stayed, they're gonna
Speaker 1: look pretty sat nobody left, but you know, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: it was it was difficult in every way, you know,
Speaker 1: to pull it off. But I had a staff of
Speaker 1: fifty in those days. I mean, my my head of
Speaker 1: a of you know, personnel at the company was parking cars.
Speaker 1: My assistant was sitting at the get door with a
Speaker 1: sign saying check your egos at the door, checking people
Speaker 1: in and directing their whoever had come with them to
Speaker 1: the There was a sound stage there where they could
Speaker 1: watch on a big TV screen what was going on
Speaker 1: in the studio. But think we couldn't have all the
Speaker 1: people that were came with, you know, with everybody was
Speaker 1: allowed to bring five people and forty five artists. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got I don't know a hundred some people there
Speaker 1: fifty people. So so um uh, it was quite in.
Speaker 1: Geldof came. We flew Geldof over and he came and
Speaker 1: he uh uh, he almost spoiled the whole thing because
Speaker 1: he he went out, I had put a microphone and
Speaker 1: a little stand up if any of the artists wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to the crowd that was there. And I
Speaker 1: see where you're going, Bob, keeping Bob. So Bob goes
Speaker 1: up there and we have everything's been donated. Every single
Speaker 1: thing for that night has been donated. Couches, pool tables, food, everything.
Speaker 1: He gets up on that podium and he says, listen,
Speaker 1: there are people dying in Africa, and you people are
Speaker 1: sitting here and eating all this food. You should be
Speaker 1: ashamed of yourselves. And he starts lecturing them on everything,
Speaker 1: and I get I'm in the studio and somebody runs
Speaker 1: in and gets me. You've got to get out here
Speaker 1: and get Bob off this stage. Sure enough, about half
Speaker 1: the people left. I mean it was much like you know,
Speaker 1: was two in the morning or something like that. We
Speaker 1: finished at eight am. But when he spoke, had you
Speaker 1: done any recording? We have been recording and people have
Speaker 1: been seeing it. Oh yeah, so the whole project. Did
Speaker 1: it turned out the way you expected? Much bigger, much bigger?
Speaker 1: And he twists and turn serendipity that you didn't anticipate. Well, no,
Speaker 1: but the greatest thing was I was able to convince everybody,
Speaker 1: record distributors, everybody, but we paid. We paid for nothing
Speaker 1: but the vinyl. So when you bought a record, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it was either eight those days for a
Speaker 1: you know, thirty three and album, a big album. When
Speaker 1: you bought that record, we got all but a dollar
Speaker 1: of you know. I talked to There's a big distributor
Speaker 1: called Handelman. I talked to them. They said, we lost
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand dollars distributing that album, but we didn't
Speaker 1: care for a good cause. Um, you know. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there were all kinds. I mean, look, every every we
Speaker 1: had lawyers negotiating deals with record companies so that you know,
Speaker 1: the artists. But the good news was we had the
Speaker 1: biggest artists in the country all agreeing to be part
Speaker 1: of this. So nobody put up. Nobody drove us crazy, really,
Speaker 1: and Josh, from the first day it came out, it
Speaker 1: just went through the roof. I mean, it was just
Speaker 1: one of the you know, I would go to Tower
Speaker 1: Records here on you know, on Sunset, we're near the
Speaker 1: block from my office, and I'd see people walking out
Speaker 1: with ten and fifteen albums under their arm. It was
Speaker 1: one of those things I'm doing in the project and
Speaker 1: big project I'm doing now. You you give people something
Speaker 1: that they want and yet at the same time they're
Speaker 1: doing good so they know that the money they're buying
Speaker 1: this records with is going to a good cause. And
Speaker 1: and but they're getting We put a record album out
Speaker 1: with unreleased tracks, you know, we had we had ten
Speaker 1: or eleven under his release tracks. Um, and and we
Speaker 1: are the world on this album. And so you've got that,
Speaker 1: You've got a double album that it wasn't two records,
Speaker 1: but you got a double album that you could a
Speaker 1: gatefold gatefold. Yeah, that's the right, and uh, with all
Speaker 1: kinds of photos and everything, and and uh, you know
Speaker 1: it was I still have it right behind my desk
Speaker 1: in my office. I love it. And so we found
Speaker 1: ways to really make it exciting for people. I you know,
Speaker 1: it was a pretty heavy time. Things really went amazing
Speaker 1: for and a lot of people jumped him. MTV vh one,
Speaker 1: well yeah, I think h one had started by the yes,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. Yeah, Um, they both jumped on HBO. I
Speaker 1: sold HBO a special on it, which MTV was also
Speaker 1: doing like a three or four days on it. I
Speaker 1: had to then convince a MTV that the HBO special
Speaker 1: would be a promotion for the Michael Michael Fuchs was
Speaker 1: the president of HBO. Uh and he wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: or one way or maybe it was the other way around.
Speaker 1: I think it was Michael Michael had paid two million dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he paid two million dollars for the special and MTV
Speaker 1: had three days of it and he and I said, no,
Speaker 1: it's a build up to your special. Okay, this has
Speaker 1: been wonderful, Ken. We got your biography, We only touched
Speaker 1: on certain parts of your management career. We could go
Speaker 1: on for six or eight hours, but we're gonna end
Speaker 1: it here today. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you, it's been my pleasure. Okay, until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob left Sex