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