WEBVTT - Dan Beck 0:00:02.400 --> 0:00:06.479 Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Set podcast. 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:11.040 My guest today is Dan Beck, who's got a new book. 0:00:11.360 --> 0:00:15.240 You've got Michael, Dan, explain the title please. 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:19.680 It came from my days at Epic Records. I was 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:25.520 a senior product manager there and one day Dave Glue, 0:00:25.600 --> 0:00:29.360 who was chairman of Epic, walked in my doorway and 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:32.480 I was on the phone. I put the phone down 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:38.040 and Dave said, You've got Michael and walked away. And 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:43.080 that meant I was now Michael's product manager. And it 0:00:43.120 --> 0:00:46.040 was about eight weeks in front of the Dangerous album 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:51.000 and I had nothing. I had no files, no background, 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:53.640 and it was a time to scramble. 0:00:55.360 --> 0:00:57.639 Okay, who had Michael Jackson before you? 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:02.960 Larry Stecil had been Mike product manager from the days 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:07.039 of Off the Wall, and he had moved to International 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:11.360 and then subsequently got an offer from another company and 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:12.360 left after that. 0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:18.080 O case, from a distance, it would seem that being 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:21.319 the product manager from Michael Jackson would be an honor, 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:25.040 but it doesn't quite come across that way in the book. 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:26.360 So give us an explanation. 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:29.520 Well, it was a double edged sword from the beginning. 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:33.600 Number one, when had happened. My first thought was, well, 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:36.240 I've earned this. You know, I had been a product 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:41.040 manager at that point for about twelve years. It had 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:45.480 handled a lot of hit acts, so this was the ultimate. 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:48.280 So what was the first thing you had to do? 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:53.000 Number One, just immediately did the check around. You know, 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:56.960 it's a checked with each department what was going on, 0:01:57.120 --> 0:02:00.720 where they were with the campaign. And also to reach 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:06.080 out to Michael's management, which was Sandy Gallon and Jim 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:10.760 Morey and so which concerned me a little bit because 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:15.519 I didn't have a relationship with either Jim or Sandy, 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:19.639 and you know, I knew Sandy had a very high 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:24.799 profile and my initial thought was, does he want to 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:27.880 speak to a product manager? You know, he wants to 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:31.440 deal with Walter Yetnikov and Dave Blue, you know. And 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:35.560 so I was concerned because a lot of times, and 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:39.519 particularly in those days, you know, getting things done took 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:44.280 extra time. You know, it's the manufacturing process, you know, 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:47.800 everything took time. And one of the first things I 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:52.079 discovered speaking to Nancy Donald who Nancy had done all 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:56.720 of Michael's design work for her for his packaging. And 0:02:56.760 --> 0:02:59.920 when I spoke to Nancy, she said, I really don't 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:03.919 have any photos. And I have to say that probably 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:08.000 was kind of visionary on Michael's part, kind of leading 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:10.760 up to that time. You know, an artist would come 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:13.799 in and we'd take them to the art department, to 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:18.920 the album design department, and they would say, Okay, we're 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:21.480 going to line up a photographer, blah blah blah. They 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:24.600 just kind of took over. But in Michael's case, he 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:31.920 really started acquiring photos, and he had photographers on staff 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:36.880 at times or on retainer, and so he had all 0:03:36.880 --> 0:03:41.680 the photos. And so my concern was am I going 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:44.600 to be able to get photos for the second single? 0:03:44.840 --> 0:03:48.160 You know? Because what would happen is you go into 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:53.440 the label meeting on Wednesday, and you know, Tuesday night 0:03:53.680 --> 0:04:01.280 was the promotion departments. You know the weekly report card. Yeah, 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:04.560 the report card happened every Tuesday night, So if things 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:06.960 were going south, all of a sudden, there was a 0:04:07.000 --> 0:04:10.480 scramble let's get the next single, you know, and that 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:14.000 meant you better have the photos, you better, you know. 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:17.320 And in Michael's case also there was a lot of 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:23.479 promise to tip sheets and magazines to get covers, you know, 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:28.880 and magazine covers and tip sheet covers and the tip 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:32.160 sheets and magazines were all, yeah, yeah, we'll give Michael 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:37.560 the cover until you didn't have an exclusive shot for them. So, 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:40.280 you know, we were kind of in this catch twenty two. 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:48.000 So fortunately Sandy turned me over to Evvy, who was 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:55.360 Michael's assistant, and I explained by circumstance to Evvy and 0:04:55.839 --> 0:04:59.760 why the reasons why, you know, and she totally got it, 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:04.440 and you know, I knew I had somebody in house 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:07.280 who could could explain it to Michael, you know, and 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:11.560 then we started on a role. You know, it's every 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:16.200 other artist I'd worked with, there were either photos available 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:21.600 in the Sony archives or an art director would put 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:25.120 together a shoot, you know. But putting together shoots was 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:28.560 a challenge with all the superstars because you were You're 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:33.240 trying to get high end photographers involved, and they had 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:36.240 a schedule as demanding as the artists. 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:40.960 Okay, you're a product manager in this particular case. Larry 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:45.560 Stecil was the product manager before. Just in general, do 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:49.560 you ever take over an act and the management team 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:52.440 whoever you're dealing with, says, either that's not the way 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:55.400 we've done it, or this is new, or is it? 0:05:55.440 --> 0:05:57.560 Pretty much everybody does it the same way. 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:01.360 Now, you know, I think there's a lot of feelings 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:06.400 that way, Bob. In this case, Michael's management had changed also, 0:06:06.760 --> 0:06:09.880 and Frank de Leo had been the manager up till 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:15.279 this point. So Sandy and Jim were new to Michael 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:20.680 and I was new. So you know, I'm trying to understand. 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:23.640 You know, I knew Frank very very well. We had 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:27.919 been friends. We were both from the Pittsburgh area. You know, 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:31.080 we both said Crick and Creek instead of Creek, and 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:34.920 we both had worked in Nashville at the same time. 0:06:35.279 --> 0:06:38.640 He was at Monument and I was at Columbia Epic, 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:41.359 and we were friends down there. I'd go over to 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:46.400 his apartment and so. And Frank, of course had delivered 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:49.760 all the singles on Thriller, and that's why Michael had 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:52.960 chosen him as the wanted him to be his manager. 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:57.760 And you know, for Larry, Larry had a very close 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:02.280 relationship with Frank, and you know, all of us at 0:07:02.279 --> 0:07:05.960 the label felt like, wow, we're in great hands. We're 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:09.800 one voice away from Michael and we're with Took. He 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:14.560 could you know, Frank was called Tookie it and Took. 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:19.720 He knew our situation. So he he understood our challenges, 0:07:20.000 --> 0:07:22.880 so we knew we had somebody who can help us 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:27.360 get through that. I didn't know that with Sandy, you know, 0:07:27.680 --> 0:07:31.560 and so it was all kind of new and tried 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:33.360 to figure it out from the get go. 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:40.440 Okay, you lawed Frank in the book. You know, Michael 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:45.520 predicted one hundred million sales on Dangerous. Do you think 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:49.520 if Frank had still been the manager, A there would 0:07:49.560 --> 0:07:53.560 have been more sales? Or B was his relationship with 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:55.960 Michael such that he might have managed him to a 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:57.239 better result? 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:01.000 How would have affected sales? You know, I'm not sure 0:08:01.040 --> 0:08:04.120 I have that crystal ball, but I do believe that 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:09.880 there were probably some early decisions made that I think 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:14.400 Frank could have started the conversation sooner with Michael. Sandy 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:18.679 was more hands off, let Michael do what Michael wants 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:22.800 to do. Frank was a big brother, you know, Frank. Frank, 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:26.040 Frank would tell my Michael, I don't like that idea, 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:30.680 you know, And Michael liked that. I mean, you know, 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:35.120 he really he really responded to that. And you know, 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:39.319 he liked that street sense that Frank brought to the table, 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:42.720 you know. And uh, and of course Frank, you know 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:47.160 had dealt with all the indies and had that relationship, 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:51.960 but I think there might have been some maybe not 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:55.839 so much on Dangerous, but later on with history, I 0:08:55.880 --> 0:08:59.360 think Frank might have been able to hold off some 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:04.880 of Michael's impulses that I felt were where Michael maybe 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:09.000 didn't understand how the marketplace was going to react, how 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:11.000 the media was going to react. 0:09:11.400 --> 0:09:15.320 Okay, you've worked with many acts in your career. The 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:19.280 bigger you are, the more you're in the bubble. Having 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:22.480 said that, there's some acts that are students of the game. 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:28.320 Ultimately you create or he starts a personal relationship with you, 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:34.120 he's calling you at home, etc. To what degree was Michael, 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:37.480 let's not talk about his personal life, we're talking about business. 0:09:38.080 --> 0:09:41.960 To what degree was he isolated from the game being 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:45.120 so successful, or to what degree did he have his 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:47.520 finger on the pulse? And to what degree could he 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:48.960 be swayed if he was wrong. 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:53.520 That's a great question at a great area here, Bob, 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:58.040 that I've thought about so often over the time. One 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:00.280 of the things that I found with Michael is that, 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:04.640 you know, number one, he was competitive, He's enthusiastic, he 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:08.719 was you know, he wanted to jump in with big ideas, 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:13.000 and sometimes he didn't understand the nuances, you know, and 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:16.520 you know, because he was a big thinker, and so 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:19.760 he if he got an idea, you know, if he 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:23.200 had to be at his bonnet. It was very hard 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:27.120 to convince him, you know, because he was so excited 0:10:27.160 --> 0:10:31.120 about the idea. And if you could get to him 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:35.920 in front and discuss an idea as it came up, 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:38.920 you could sway him, you know, you could. He would 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:42.840 understand your logic, you know, and but you know, he 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:46.520 would get excited about something and then really, you know, 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:48.160 get stubborn about it. You know. 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:53.480 Okay, but you come on late with Dangerous. The book 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:58.840 focuses to a great degree on history. Let's start with Dangerous. 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:02.400 So were you always playing catch up ball? But did 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:05.240 you think that you ultimately got a handle on it? 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:06.160 There was enough time. 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:10.200 H Yeah, you know we did get a handle on it, 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:15.920 at least, you know, in my look at it. You know, 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:21.440 the first video was Larry had already set that up 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:25.760 and I was it Singleton shot the really up and 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:31.160 coming black director and you know they had Magic Johnson 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:34.040 did it and I'm on and it was you know, 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:39.520 it was just the star studded and which I was 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:43.320 so thankful that it was locked in, and you know, 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:48.400 from there, obviously the single really happened, and that was 0:11:48.480 --> 0:11:51.920 Remember the Time, and of course Black or White was 0:11:52.000 --> 0:11:56.000 actually before that. They were it was bang bang with those. 0:11:56.480 --> 0:12:00.960 So we had these two tremendous videos out there. I 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:05.240 got involved with Remember the Time, just really basically buttoning 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:08.720 it up, you know, making sure the payments were made. 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:11.760 We had the master blah blah blah. And there was 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:15.400 a question at the end about there was a kiss 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:19.320 at the end with them on and so I brought 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:22.440 the video into the company and you know, we get 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:25.840 the promotion department in, and my joke with the promotion 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:28.680 department is is, you know, did you bring your wig 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:32.320 and black rogues because they came in, you know, and 0:12:32.640 --> 0:12:37.240 we're judging everything, and it's basically their own protection. You know. 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:39.960 It's like, hey, if we don't have a great video, 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:43.439 we're going to have trouble with radio. You know. So anyway, 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:48.520 everybody started nitpicking this kiss at the end. So I 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:51.120 went back to the production company and I said, you know, 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:56.240 I just don't feel like it, you know, connects solidly. 0:12:57.640 --> 0:13:00.640 So they played around with it state back and then 0:13:00.679 --> 0:13:04.000 I played it again for you know that half dozen 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:08.360 people in the company, you know that, and you know, 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:12.800 mostly promotion people, and everybody's still kind of whining about it. 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:16.920 So then I took it. I knew the production company 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:19.160 was like over it. It's like, you know, they're to 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:23.079 say to me, what are you crazy, It's like, And 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:27.120 so I took it into an edit bay and I 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:30.760 was like shaving, you know, one thirtieth of a second 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:34.080 off to try to make it, give it more energy 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:38.080 or whatever. And you know, finally the promotion department just 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:41.200 I guess we wore them out and the clock was ticking. 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:43.640 We needed to get this out there. And of course 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:46.120 it was never an issue. You know, but what do 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:49.360 we do at record companies. We overthink these things, you. 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:52.439 Know, well, needless to say, it's hard to get any 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:57.160 attention today, never mind these micro decisions. You look back 0:13:57.200 --> 0:14:00.080 at this era in the nineties, do you say that 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:03.920 that's what it took or we took ourselves way too seriously? 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:09.719 Yeah, I think And again moving forward, because dangerous, we 0:14:09.800 --> 0:14:13.200 had lots of radio success, we had lots of video success, 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:18.480 and you know, as you mentioned before, you know, did 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:21.040 we get a handle on it, and I think we did, 0:14:21.160 --> 0:14:24.920 you know, it was we did in the Closet, which 0:14:25.040 --> 0:14:29.920 that video was just awesome. Michael looked so virile, you know, 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:33.160 it was just a great, great video. And then we 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:37.000 did Jam with Michael Jordan, and you know, some of 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:39.840 the people of the company actually came to me. It 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:44.600 was my idea to try to get Michael Jordan. And 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:48.040 you know, it didn't take a genius to think of 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:51.520 that idea. The song was called Jam and Michael Jordan's 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:55.080 the biggest star on the planet at the time, and 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:59.360 so but some of the people were concerned to say, oh, 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:03.800 you know, Mychael Jackson could never stand up to Michael 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:06.680 Jordan and a video. And you know, my thought was, 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:11.280 you know, Michael Jackson's he's an athlete too, it's just 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:16.800 his sport is dance and choreography. And I thought, by 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:19.480 the nature of the two of them having fun with 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:25.200 each other about teaching each other there there's super talent, 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:28.640 that it would be fun. And as it turned out, 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:34.680 it was so you know, we were coming into a 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:39.600 year on in that marketing campaign and then we hit 0:15:39.920 --> 0:15:45.040 the super Bowl, and we hit Oprah, and we hit 0:15:45.320 --> 0:15:49.480 the Grammys, and the American Music Awards and that nineteen 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:54.640 ninety three, in that January February, we were just rocking, 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:59.520 you know. And to me, the great thing was one 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:02.120 of the first things that I really started to connect 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:07.720 with Michael was to say, you know, focus on the music. 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:10.280 Don't pay any attention to the rest of this stuff, 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:15.160 you know, because he was beginning to respond to the 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:19.359 you know, the skin color issues and the plastic surgery 0:16:19.600 --> 0:16:22.680 and the elephant man and all the you know, all 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:25.560 the circus stuff, and I said, you know, we got 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:28.280 to get back to the music. And and you know, 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:33.600 I think essentially everybody felt that way. We'd also remixed 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:39.480 everything to bring it into like the dance world. We 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:43.960 went back to the previous albums and we did all 0:16:44.000 --> 0:16:47.880 these remixes on everything basically for the dance floor, and 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:52.680 it re established Michael and the clubs, and so we 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:56.200 were we were flying at you know, after the super 0:16:56.200 --> 0:17:00.120 Bowl and after the award shows and after Oprah, and 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:03.000 you know, I thought, wow, you know, we've come a 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:06.439 long way. And it got harder with history. 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:11.040 Okay, let's back up. How did you become a product manager? 0:17:11.760 --> 0:17:14.959 Well, kind of a long story, like so many people 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:18.960 of that time, I played in local bands and I 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:24.600 really got really leaning toward songwriting. And this is in 0:17:24.680 --> 0:17:28.760 the late sixties and nineteen seventy seventy one, and I 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:31.760 came to New York a couple of times pitching songs, 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:34.720 you know, re building and sixteen fifteen. 0:17:34.400 --> 0:17:38.119 Whoh whoa, wha, wha, whoah, You're you're in Pittsburgh in 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:40.600 nineteen seventy seventy one where you living? 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:45.800 And nineteen well. I graduated from college in seventy two 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:50.239 at Pittsburgh Robert Morris College, and I had been to 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:55.720 Nashville this summer before Chris Christopher said I'd started suddenly 0:17:56.440 --> 0:18:00.399 having this success, and I thought, wow, I can't stain 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:03.320 myself going to New York. I could last about two 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:07.600 days on my budget. And I went down to Nashville 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:10.720 for the summer between my junior and senior year, and 0:18:10.760 --> 0:18:13.240 I've met a bunch of people that had kind of 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:16.280 the same idea as me, and I went back after 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:21.200 I graduated in seventy two, and then ended up at 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:26.080 Record World Magazine writing a country special puff pieces you 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:32.480 know for the annual you know advertorial, and the editor 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:36.639 left the regional editor, Southeastern editor and I got the job. 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:41.920 And then a year later, Columbia Epic decided to start 0:18:41.960 --> 0:18:46.520 a publicity department in Nashville and they hired me and 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:47.439 we did that. 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:50.880 Wait wait, wait, I want to go back. Okay, you're 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:55.280 playing in bands? Was the inspiration seeing the Beatles on? 0:18:55.440 --> 0:18:56.000 Ed Sullivan? 0:18:56.240 --> 0:19:00.440 Oh? Absolutely, just like so many other people, you know, 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:07.359 the Bob Really interesting thing here. My brother was seven 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:09.320 and a half years older than me, and he was 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:14.359 kind of, you know, a western Pennsylvania fonds and he 0:19:14.480 --> 0:19:18.240 was an Elvis guy and people called him Elvis, and 0:19:18.480 --> 0:19:20.640 you know, it's your big brother. You look up to him, 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:23.800 and you know, he had all the moves. He was 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:26.920 into James Dean and Dion and all, you know, all 0:19:26.960 --> 0:19:30.760 the street guys. You know. So I grew up from 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:34.160 probably the age of six. I knew all the Elvis 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:38.879 lyrics and all that stuff. And when the Beatles came on, 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:43.600 Ed Sullivan, it was like, there's my Elvis. You know, 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:46.679 I had my own, you know, and uh, you know, 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:49.919 my brother was bigger than life in our town, and 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:54.640 you know, it was like, well what do I have? 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:58.320 You know, well, I got the Beatles like everybody else, 0:19:58.440 --> 0:19:58.639 you know. 0:20:09.000 --> 0:20:12.600 Okay, when the Beatles hit, were you already taking music 0:20:12.720 --> 0:20:14.360 lessons or do they start with the Beatles. 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:18.920 I had taken piano lessons a couple of years earlier, 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:24.760 you know, more straight standard piano lessons, and after the 0:20:24.800 --> 0:20:27.359 Beatles when I was in tenth grade, of us have 0:20:27.440 --> 0:20:30.840 been fourteen, so it's probably sixty four, you know. And 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:34.920 there was a band that called me up and said, hey, 0:20:34.920 --> 0:20:37.320 we hear you played the piano. You know, want to 0:20:37.320 --> 0:20:40.560 be in our band? And I was really excited. I 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:43.480 went to my parents and you know, I bought this 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:47.320 little keyboard. I begged my parents to buy it and 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:51.600 went to practice and you know, a few practices, and 0:20:51.640 --> 0:20:53.879 then I went to a skating rink with them to 0:20:54.000 --> 0:21:05.200 play a gig and they stopped calling me. And believe me, Bob, 0:21:05.400 --> 0:21:08.320 I thought my life was over. You know. It's the 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:11.359 number one I was doing. I wasn't doing well in 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:16.280 ninth grade with academics. And I went to the guidance 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:21.840 counselor and called me in and said, Dan, you're coasting 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:27.840 and the only way to coast is downhill. And I thought, 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:32.240 I'm not. I didn't answer them, I'm just stunned, and 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:35.360 I walked out of there thinking I'm not coasting, I'm floundering. 0:21:35.880 --> 0:21:37.800 You know, I don't know where I'm at, you know. 0:21:38.680 --> 0:21:43.080 So that summer I just started playing pool all the time, 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:48.120 and up with this dirty old pool haul upstairs over 0:21:48.800 --> 0:21:53.399 a restaurant in my hometown, and there was another band 0:21:53.880 --> 0:21:57.040 had started and I saw a picture of the paper 0:21:57.080 --> 0:22:02.000 of that They're called the Invaders, and it just brought 0:22:02.000 --> 0:22:06.000 the knife back to my chest. You know, Oh my god, 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:08.480 I wish this would have worked out. So I'm up 0:22:08.520 --> 0:22:12.600 there playing pool one Saturday afternoon. I'm just shooting around 0:22:12.600 --> 0:22:16.000 by myself, and two of the guys whom the band 0:22:16.040 --> 0:22:19.439 walked in and they just stood around and watched me 0:22:19.560 --> 0:22:24.640 play for like fifteen minutes, didn't say anything, and finally 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:28.280 they said, hey, you know, would you like to be 0:22:28.320 --> 0:22:32.480 in a band again? And I gave him a long 0:22:32.640 --> 0:22:38.040 silence and I said I'm not very good and they 0:22:38.119 --> 0:22:45.359 laughed and they said, yeah, we know that. But the 0:22:45.800 --> 0:22:48.359 leader of the group, who was in his twenties and 0:22:48.520 --> 0:22:52.200 married his wife, played the piano and they said, hey, 0:22:52.880 --> 0:22:57.600 burnus can help you. So anyway, we practiced all week 0:22:58.160 --> 0:22:58.920 and then we went to. 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:03.520 Wait, what was the name you can use Burnus Burness, Yes, yes, 0:23:03.560 --> 0:23:04.879 oh Burnus being the wife. 0:23:05.359 --> 0:23:09.320 Yes, that's the waste stage. Yeah. So we practiced that week, 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:12.159 you know, every night, and I played with them that 0:23:12.320 --> 0:23:16.600 Friday night in at the tin nest of Volunteer Fire 0:23:16.680 --> 0:23:21.880 Department and we just it just worked and we ended 0:23:21.960 --> 0:23:24.840 up playing together for three years. We just had a 0:23:24.840 --> 0:23:27.800 ball jack who was the leader of the group, who 0:23:27.920 --> 0:23:30.879 was older. You know, we wanted to play high school, 0:23:31.480 --> 0:23:34.240 you know, after the football game, he had his booked 0:23:34.280 --> 0:23:38.720 at bars and we were all like fifteen, sixteen years 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:43.080 old and we're playing at all these bars, but we 0:23:43.080 --> 0:23:47.040 were making money. And then at that time, Bob, the 0:23:48.240 --> 0:23:52.040 drinking age at Pennsylvania was twenty one, but it was 0:23:52.160 --> 0:23:56.680 eighteen in New York State, and we lived about forty 0:23:56.720 --> 0:24:00.280 miles from the New York border. So we started playing 0:24:00.440 --> 0:24:05.080 this club called Melody in in Bustin, New York, just 0:24:05.400 --> 0:24:11.760 near Jamestown. And it was like, you know, thirty feet 0:24:11.800 --> 0:24:14.600 across the New York state line in the middle of nowhere, 0:24:15.040 --> 0:24:19.320 and the Pennsylvania crowds would come up there. And we 0:24:19.400 --> 0:24:22.960 started playing on Sunday nights. Then we added Tuesday nights, 0:24:23.280 --> 0:24:26.160 and then we were playing Thursday nights and then it 0:24:26.240 --> 0:24:29.280 was so we just played all these bars for like 0:24:29.359 --> 0:24:32.960 three years. And then us three young guys, none of 0:24:33.040 --> 0:24:36.240 us actually drank at that time or anything, but we 0:24:36.280 --> 0:24:38.560 had a ball playing and you know, we had a 0:24:38.680 --> 0:24:42.760 great crowds and you know, we were playing vfw's and 0:24:43.480 --> 0:24:47.880 you know, Legion halls and things like that, and it 0:24:47.920 --> 0:24:51.760 was great. And then when I went to college, Bill Thomas, 0:24:51.800 --> 0:24:54.600 who was the drummer who had become a dear friend, 0:24:55.160 --> 0:24:57.680 he thought it was over, so he joined the army 0:24:58.600 --> 0:25:00.840 and I was like, oh, it's going to come home 0:25:00.880 --> 0:25:07.200 every weekend. And but that ended it. And then Gary Deemer, 0:25:07.240 --> 0:25:09.760 who was the guitar player, and I started writing songs 0:25:09.760 --> 0:25:14.880 together and then we put together various formats of bands 0:25:14.920 --> 0:25:18.840 for a couple of years. And when I went to Nashville, 0:25:19.480 --> 0:25:22.840 I wanted the last band to come with me, and 0:25:23.760 --> 0:25:28.280 but you know, they all had other commitments college. Gary 0:25:28.400 --> 0:25:30.840 worked in the steel mills, and you know, it was 0:25:30.920 --> 0:25:32.760 like he had a great job. He had a brand 0:25:32.800 --> 0:25:37.000 new car, and leaving that, you know, his dad had 0:25:37.000 --> 0:25:40.439 worked in the steel mills for forty years or thirty years, 0:25:40.960 --> 0:25:44.080 and it was a tough thing to leave. But you know, 0:25:44.480 --> 0:25:46.840 of course, my hair brained idea of getting in the 0:25:46.920 --> 0:25:48.960 music business didn't sound too good. 0:25:49.920 --> 0:25:54.960 Okay, you go to Nashville and the goal is to 0:25:55.080 --> 0:25:56.160 sell your songs. 0:25:58.000 --> 0:26:04.600 Actually, and initially the number one I had a business 0:26:04.800 --> 0:26:10.399 background in college and business management. So I thought, you know, 0:26:11.680 --> 0:26:15.160 I thought I didn't have a lot of confidence in 0:26:15.200 --> 0:26:19.040 my musical ability. I had a lot of confidence in 0:26:19.080 --> 0:26:23.000 my lyric writing. And that's what I really wanted to do, 0:26:23.200 --> 0:26:26.639 was to co write. And so but I thought, the 0:26:26.680 --> 0:26:29.879 only way I'm going to be become a writer is 0:26:30.080 --> 0:26:33.160 if I use my business background. I get in the business, 0:26:33.480 --> 0:26:38.080 you know, and can establish myself and then find some partners, 0:26:38.200 --> 0:26:41.800 you know. And so that's what I went down to do. 0:26:42.119 --> 0:26:44.800 And that first summer I met a couple of guys 0:26:45.040 --> 0:26:50.240 that had this similar ideas as me, and then they 0:26:50.440 --> 0:26:52.560 were calling me my senior year, say you got to 0:26:52.600 --> 0:26:54.040 go back here when you graduate. 0:26:54.760 --> 0:26:58.480 So I went back the way before you go back, ye, 0:26:58.720 --> 0:27:01.920 go to Nashville. Do you have any money in your pocket? 0:27:01.960 --> 0:27:04.840 Do you know anybody? I mean, what do you do? 0:27:04.880 --> 0:27:05.479 You show up? 0:27:05.520 --> 0:27:09.920 And what I did not know one soul I bought 0:27:09.920 --> 0:27:14.280 a one way ticket on Eastern Airline and it was 0:27:14.560 --> 0:27:17.639 thirty four dollars. I had one hundred dollars. I sold 0:27:17.640 --> 0:27:22.000 my keyboard and I had one hundred dollars and I 0:27:22.040 --> 0:27:24.280 sold one of my keyboards. I had two at the time, 0:27:25.040 --> 0:27:28.800 and so I had sixty six dollars when I got there, 0:27:29.359 --> 0:27:32.440 and I was going to take the bus into Nashville, 0:27:32.480 --> 0:27:35.160 but I was so excited I jumped in a cab. 0:27:35.840 --> 0:27:38.440 I spent like ten bucks that I shouldn't have spent 0:27:38.560 --> 0:27:42.160 to get in the city, and then I just walked 0:27:42.200 --> 0:27:46.280 around and I went up by Vanderbilt University and there 0:27:46.280 --> 0:27:49.040 were a lot of kids packing up. They just finished 0:27:49.080 --> 0:27:52.439 the semester, and I said, you know, where did like 0:27:52.560 --> 0:27:55.840 college people and music people hang out? You know. They 0:27:55.880 --> 0:27:58.359 were all kind of looking at me like, I don't think. 0:27:58.880 --> 0:28:02.600 I don't think those two meet anywhere, you know. But actually, 0:28:02.800 --> 0:28:07.679 right between Vanderbilt and Music Row was this kind of 0:28:07.720 --> 0:28:13.119 west end area that actually was kind of a young 0:28:13.280 --> 0:28:19.280 songwriter hippie place, you know. So one kid's told me 0:28:19.359 --> 0:28:24.280 about this bar, which I forget the name of right now. 0:28:24.359 --> 0:28:29.280 But I went over there and it was like an 0:28:29.320 --> 0:28:34.680 old house or something that there were like little shops, headshops, 0:28:35.040 --> 0:28:36.760 and then you got to the back and there were 0:28:36.760 --> 0:28:38.480 pictic tables at a dirt. 0:28:38.200 --> 0:28:43.600 Floor and David allen Coe was playing, and so I 0:28:43.680 --> 0:28:49.360 sat down across from this Asian guy and it was 0:28:49.480 --> 0:28:53.320 very loud in there, and I got the idea that 0:28:53.360 --> 0:28:56.160 he was a songwriter, and he got the idea I was. 0:28:56.480 --> 0:28:58.720 So we said, hey, let's go across the street and 0:28:58.760 --> 0:29:01.920 get a cup of coffee. We went over and met 0:29:01.960 --> 0:29:05.280 and he, you know, and I he said, hey, you know, 0:29:05.600 --> 0:29:09.760 you want to hear some of my songs. And so 0:29:09.760 --> 0:29:11.880 so I went back to his place. In the meantime, 0:29:11.880 --> 0:29:15.080 I'm thinking, am I going to get staffed right right? 0:29:15.120 --> 0:29:19.600 You know? And as it turned out, this guy, Willie 0:29:19.640 --> 0:29:25.280 Fong Young was just an amazing songwriter. I was just 0:29:25.440 --> 0:29:32.440 blown away listening to his stuff. And so after after listening, 0:29:33.400 --> 0:29:35.920 he said, hey, you know, I know you're new in town. 0:29:36.120 --> 0:29:40.840 He had a writer's draw deal with Shelby Singleton, which 0:29:41.640 --> 0:29:45.720 Shelby owned Sun Records at that time and had genc 0:29:46.000 --> 0:29:52.240 Riley Harper Velipta and so anyway, so you know, Willy said, hey, 0:29:52.240 --> 0:29:55.800 look I just got this apartment. You've got the couch 0:29:55.920 --> 0:30:00.760 for fifty bucks a month, and so and we agreed 0:30:00.960 --> 0:30:06.800 we were not gonna bother each other about our own 0:30:06.960 --> 0:30:12.320 passion pursuits as songwriters, you know. And but within a 0:30:12.360 --> 0:30:16.120 couple of weeks, Wait, we're best buddies. We just had 0:30:16.120 --> 0:30:18.440 a great todd together. We met a couple of other 0:30:18.520 --> 0:30:22.440 guys and you know, floated around that West End area 0:30:22.760 --> 0:30:26.520 and we had a great time. And so I came. 0:30:26.400 --> 0:30:28.440 Back that wait, wait, what were you doing for money? 0:30:29.200 --> 0:30:32.120 Well? I got a job at a place called the House, 0:30:32.920 --> 0:30:39.960 which was like this old I would say, uh, aaliana building, 0:30:40.200 --> 0:30:43.680 like brick building. It was like an old you know, 0:30:43.760 --> 0:30:46.600 probably kind of a well to do house at one time. 0:30:47.360 --> 0:30:51.920 And they they had high end Hamburgers, you know. And 0:30:52.680 --> 0:30:57.640 I got a job washing dishes there and then uh 0:30:57.840 --> 0:31:00.960 then they they ended up liking man. They sent me 0:31:01.040 --> 0:31:03.680 down to be the bus boy in the basement where 0:31:03.720 --> 0:31:06.680 there was a piano bar, and people like Bobby had 0:31:07.000 --> 0:31:10.440 with you know, Sonny would come in, and Sid and 0:31:10.560 --> 0:31:13.440 he was from Nashville and the Ragent Cage and what 0:31:13.640 --> 0:31:18.719 was his name? He would come in, all these characters. 0:31:18.240 --> 0:31:18.479 You know. 0:31:18.760 --> 0:31:24.240 And so anyway, Willie and I had a great summer 0:31:24.320 --> 0:31:25.080 hanging out together. 0:31:25.120 --> 0:31:28.240 Okay, okay, what did your parents say about all this? 0:31:29.160 --> 0:31:33.040 My father didn't say anything. My father was like, you know, 0:31:33.520 --> 0:31:35.080 got to do what you got to do. You know, 0:31:35.360 --> 0:31:40.280 it's a he did probably didn't think much of the 0:31:40.320 --> 0:31:44.240 idea of the music business being the right way to go. 0:31:44.720 --> 0:31:49.440 I know, my mother was worried about me. Basically, she said, oh, 0:31:49.680 --> 0:31:52.000 you know, you're going to get taken advantage of. You know, 0:31:52.160 --> 0:31:56.520 it's you know, that's a you know, scary business. And 0:31:56.520 --> 0:31:59.760 and but it's interesting because my mother, when I was 0:31:59.800 --> 0:32:05.640 young younger, would always say, you know, she was talking 0:32:05.680 --> 0:32:09.160 to me or friends of hers or an aunt or whatever, 0:32:09.240 --> 0:32:11.320 and she said and she turned to me and say, well, 0:32:11.320 --> 0:32:15.640 when you leave. And I was like, why am I leaving? 0:32:17.480 --> 0:32:21.440 But I think my mother knew that I was destined 0:32:21.560 --> 0:32:25.840 to go someplace. You know that our small town, you know, 0:32:26.120 --> 0:32:29.400 seventy five percent of the people there worked in the 0:32:29.400 --> 0:32:33.240 steel mills, and you know, and so you know, if 0:32:33.280 --> 0:32:37.240 you weren't a steel worker, which they made great money, 0:32:37.560 --> 0:32:40.880 and you know, everybody had two cars and you know, 0:32:41.560 --> 0:32:44.880 only one person worked and the quality of life in 0:32:44.920 --> 0:32:48.960 our town was fantastic. But you know, there really kind 0:32:48.960 --> 0:32:52.440 of wasn't anything there for me, you know, And ultimately 0:32:52.560 --> 0:32:54.360 that's I went to Nashville, you know. 0:32:54.920 --> 0:32:57.080 Okay, a couple questions. What did your father do for 0:32:57.120 --> 0:32:57.480 a living? 0:32:58.320 --> 0:33:02.040 My father ran a mail order house and Bob they 0:33:02.040 --> 0:33:07.080 sold wallpaper and they had it's called Robinson's wall covering. 0:33:07.240 --> 0:33:12.720 Actually their catalogs are collector's items down. But my father 0:33:13.000 --> 0:33:15.560 started working there when he was like twenty years old, 0:33:16.760 --> 0:33:20.920 before World War Two, and he ended up to be 0:33:21.600 --> 0:33:25.440 the foreman of the warehouse, you know, where all the 0:33:25.480 --> 0:33:29.960 stock was stored, where they actually put the orders out, 0:33:30.160 --> 0:33:35.280 you know. And so he did that and then he 0:33:35.360 --> 0:33:38.960 did roofing on the side. He takes some of his 0:33:39.080 --> 0:33:41.400 guys and say, hey, I got a job for us 0:33:41.800 --> 0:33:44.680 this weekend, you know, And that was where he made 0:33:45.080 --> 0:33:47.560 some extra money, you know, for the family. 0:33:48.600 --> 0:33:52.440 Okay, we're in this period around nineteen seventy. Although Dylan 0:33:53.080 --> 0:33:57.080 people can't see my ear quotes Win Country in nineteen 0:33:57.200 --> 0:34:01.160 sixty nine with Nashville Skyline. There was a pretty big 0:34:01.280 --> 0:34:06.320 division between rock and country at that point. Absolutely, And 0:34:06.360 --> 0:34:10.920 were you a country fan? Could you understand that? 0:34:11.800 --> 0:34:18.640 Well? You know, actually no, you know, I mean I 0:34:19.120 --> 0:34:23.120 listened to you know, and I know some of some 0:34:23.200 --> 0:34:27.600 of the people you've spoken to had this similar experience. 0:34:27.680 --> 0:34:31.320 You know, at night, I had transistor radio on and 0:34:31.640 --> 0:34:35.759 in western Pennsylvania, and I could hear, you know, I 0:34:35.760 --> 0:34:40.200 could hear WBC in Boston, and I could hear c 0:34:40.400 --> 0:34:48.120 KLW in Chicago and Detroit and all these great DJs 0:34:48.880 --> 0:34:53.120 and you know who told stories that's made songs just 0:34:53.320 --> 0:34:57.239 sound like so romantic. And but you know what was 0:34:57.320 --> 0:35:00.239 going on then at radio, at Top forty radio, you know, 0:35:00.400 --> 0:35:05.480 was you know, you would hear Johnny Cash boy named 0:35:05.560 --> 0:35:11.480 Sue played next to cream and then there'd be a 0:35:11.520 --> 0:35:14.440 motown song, you know, And so so I had to 0:35:14.600 --> 0:35:18.880 kind of an eclectic understanding. When I went to college 0:35:19.120 --> 0:35:24.040 at Pittsburgh, Whammo was Big Porky Chadwick, the Daddyo on 0:35:24.080 --> 0:35:27.840 the radio who was a white guy who played black music. 0:35:28.000 --> 0:35:31.279 And so I kind of got a, you know, a 0:35:31.400 --> 0:35:34.200 vibe for that. But I really wasn't in the country 0:35:35.000 --> 0:35:40.919 until the summer of seventy two when I went back 0:35:40.920 --> 0:35:43.120 to Nashville. I went back there and I got a 0:35:43.200 --> 0:35:45.320 job at opry Land parking cars. 0:35:45.680 --> 0:35:48.200 After wait, just so I understand we're in this story 0:35:48.360 --> 0:35:50.800 to go to New York to try to sell your songs. 0:35:50.680 --> 0:35:54.840 That I was like nineteen nineteen twenty. I was probably 0:35:54.840 --> 0:35:58.640 in my freshman sophomore year of college. 0:35:59.239 --> 0:36:01.480 Okay, so how'd you get to New York? 0:36:03.120 --> 0:36:07.920 We drove Gary, my writing partner, bandmate, He and I 0:36:07.960 --> 0:36:13.360 would drive up there. And it was my first second 0:36:13.400 --> 0:36:16.239 year of college, and I was in a fraternity and 0:36:17.200 --> 0:36:20.760 two of the guys were from Ridgewood, New Jersey, and 0:36:20.960 --> 0:36:25.160 so we stayed in their parents' basement when we've been out. 0:36:25.520 --> 0:36:27.040 And but we you. 0:36:26.960 --> 0:36:29.480 Know, you went up once for more than once. 0:36:29.600 --> 0:36:31.440 We went up twice. 0:36:31.760 --> 0:36:35.319 And okay, so you go there, you don't know anybody, right, 0:36:35.480 --> 0:36:38.080 So you say you went to the real building and 0:36:38.160 --> 0:36:39.920 knocked on doors. 0:36:39.960 --> 0:36:43.879 Well, essentially we did, but I wrote letters. I wrote 0:36:43.960 --> 0:36:48.920 letters in front to Kamasutra and you know all these 0:36:49.360 --> 0:36:52.319 little labels of their publishing companies, you know. And so 0:36:52.400 --> 0:36:54.680 we had some meetings set up and then once we 0:36:54.680 --> 0:36:57.719 were in the building, we'd see another publishing company. We 0:36:57.840 --> 0:37:01.360 knock on the door, and usually it was pretty casual. 0:37:01.560 --> 0:37:05.200 Is generally a couple of songwriters said there, who were 0:37:06.200 --> 0:37:09.279 you know manning the office too, and so the yeah, 0:37:09.400 --> 0:37:15.279 come on in, you know, And basically what we got was, ah, hey, 0:37:15.560 --> 0:37:17.960 these songs are pretty good. You know why don't you 0:37:18.000 --> 0:37:21.200 come back when you have some more? And when we 0:37:21.239 --> 0:37:23.560 went back the next time, we heard the same thing, 0:37:23.600 --> 0:37:26.480 and it was like, you know, we're dead in the 0:37:26.520 --> 0:37:30.720 water here, you know. So so that's when Nashville struck 0:37:30.800 --> 0:37:34.920 me because of Christofferson, and I thought, wait a minute. 0:37:35.560 --> 0:37:39.000 Number one. He was such a poet, and you know, 0:37:39.080 --> 0:37:42.840 this guy was flying helicopters for the military and he 0:37:42.960 --> 0:37:45.480 was a Rhodes scholar, and I thought, God, there must 0:37:45.480 --> 0:37:48.520 be something different going on down to Nashville. We could 0:37:48.560 --> 0:37:51.920 be different going down there. So that was my whole fantasy. 0:37:52.040 --> 0:37:54.600 We you know, take the rock band down there, and 0:37:54.719 --> 0:37:57.360 you know, and I went by myself. 0:37:58.400 --> 0:38:02.120 Okay, so you graduate now of parking cars at over Land. 0:38:03.120 --> 0:38:08.600 Yes, So you know, music Row was pretty small at 0:38:08.640 --> 0:38:12.760 the time. You know. I met a bunch of children 0:38:13.040 --> 0:38:18.560 of country stars, Charlie Walker's two daughters and Webb Pearce's 0:38:18.640 --> 0:38:23.319 daughter Debbie, and Felice and Boodlo' Bryant who wrote all 0:38:23.360 --> 0:38:28.680 the Everly Brothers' hits, their two sons, Del and Dane Bryant, 0:38:29.239 --> 0:38:33.120 and you know, they're just hanging out and very friendly 0:38:33.280 --> 0:38:36.239 and so got to know some people that way, you know. 0:38:36.680 --> 0:38:40.799 But when I went back. Willie had another roommate, so 0:38:41.440 --> 0:38:44.040 I moved in and the three of us were splitting. 0:38:44.640 --> 0:38:48.560 It was a one bedroom with a fold out couch 0:38:48.640 --> 0:38:51.880 in the living room and another just regular couch, and 0:38:51.920 --> 0:38:57.120 we rotated. You've got the bedroom every three weeks. And anyway, 0:38:57.719 --> 0:38:59.760 our other roommate was Kinky Friedman. 0:39:00.320 --> 0:39:03.279 You're a kidding wow. 0:39:03.800 --> 0:39:06.760 And Kinky had just come back from the Peace Corps. 0:39:06.800 --> 0:39:10.440 He was at Borneo in the Peace Corps and just 0:39:10.520 --> 0:39:15.359 had come back. And you know, his his parents ran 0:39:16.360 --> 0:39:21.239 a Jewish kids camp in Kerrville, Texas. And Kinky the 0:39:21.280 --> 0:39:24.120 way he started writing songs was for the kids. He 0:39:24.320 --> 0:39:27.880 was a counselor, so he started writing silly songs for 0:39:27.960 --> 0:39:34.280 the kids, and then he got more devious and started 0:39:34.280 --> 0:39:38.880 to write you know. Basically, Kinky's thing was he was 0:39:39.160 --> 0:39:48.680 an equal up employer of ways to insult you. And 0:39:49.280 --> 0:39:54.440 so we had a absolute ball three of us, and 0:39:55.719 --> 0:39:59.480 Kinky got signed. At that time, David Wilkes was at 0:39:59.600 --> 0:40:03.839 vander Our Records signed him to the Solomon Brothers who 0:40:03.840 --> 0:40:09.080 owned Vanguard, and Jim Glazer at the Glazier Brothers Studios 0:40:09.800 --> 0:40:15.560 was producing. So we were hanging out at Glazier brothers, 0:40:15.600 --> 0:40:18.279 you know, for the next couple of years. So we 0:40:18.280 --> 0:40:21.800 were all all of a sudden we were the cool 0:40:21.840 --> 0:40:28.359 street people, mostly thanks to Kinky, you know, but they 0:40:28.400 --> 0:40:30.560 were all these characters down there. It was a guy 0:40:30.640 --> 0:40:35.399 jumping Jack Michaels, who was like did Shakespearean readings of 0:40:36.360 --> 0:40:39.640 Jerry Lee Lewis songs. You know, It's like he douced 0:40:39.920 --> 0:40:45.919 soliloquies of the lyrics, and a lot of a lot 0:40:45.960 --> 0:40:49.800 of crazy street people, some of them who were actually 0:40:50.440 --> 0:40:53.640 they called themselves songwriters, but they were basically were homeless. 0:40:53.719 --> 0:40:56.640 And you know, everybody in nash was it was like 0:40:56.880 --> 0:41:00.759 La with actors. You know, everybody in La was supposedly 0:41:00.800 --> 0:41:03.360 an actor. Well, in Nashville, everybody was a songwriter. 0:41:13.239 --> 0:41:15.640 So whatever happened to the third roommate. 0:41:15.760 --> 0:41:22.000 To Willie, Willie had this writing deal and then he 0:41:21.719 --> 0:41:24.800 had he had a mentor who brought him up. Willie 0:41:24.840 --> 0:41:27.120 was from Arkansas and he was playing in a soul 0:41:27.200 --> 0:41:30.279 band in Memphis. He's playing horn in a soul band, 0:41:30.719 --> 0:41:33.640 and this guy, Fred Birch, brought him up to Nashville. 0:41:33.719 --> 0:41:39.600 Fred wrote, he made a was it he made a 0:41:39.640 --> 0:41:42.440 woman out of me? Which was a Bobby Jetry hit. 0:41:43.480 --> 0:41:48.320 He wrote Tragedy for Thomas Wayne, which is like a 0:41:48.400 --> 0:41:54.239 nineteen fifty nine like you know, death pop song. You know, 0:41:54.320 --> 0:41:56.600 there was an arrow where there were a whole bunch 0:41:56.640 --> 0:42:01.120 of those songs where people were dieded carbrecks and things. 0:42:01.160 --> 0:42:06.560 And then he wrote the John Kennedy It was kind 0:42:06.560 --> 0:42:11.040 of an informal campaign song that I think it was 0:42:11.120 --> 0:42:13.880 called the Ballad of the of p T one O nine. 0:42:13.920 --> 0:42:15.960 But let's get back to Willie. What happened to Willie? 0:42:16.040 --> 0:42:20.160 Yeah, so Willy ended up he had he and Fred 0:42:20.239 --> 0:42:25.400 started writing a musical and they ended up doing the 0:42:25.480 --> 0:42:30.640 show at Lemma and Experimental Theater in New York, and 0:42:30.680 --> 0:42:34.400 then that show got picked up and they did it 0:42:34.440 --> 0:42:38.080 at the Kennedy Center, and Willie was on his way. 0:42:38.080 --> 0:42:42.920 I mean, he's just a great, great writer. And Willie 0:42:43.040 --> 0:42:47.200 never pitched his songs. I it used to kill me 0:42:47.360 --> 0:42:50.799 that he'd have these these great pop songs you know 0:42:50.960 --> 0:42:54.680 that that I thought, oh my god, will you gotta 0:42:54.920 --> 0:42:57.960 you gotta pitch that, and he just couldn't do it. 0:42:58.200 --> 0:43:01.359 You know, they were his chill. He just he just 0:43:01.719 --> 0:43:04.360 didn't want to hear him criticized. I guess, you know, 0:43:05.040 --> 0:43:11.640 then he and Fred wrote another show that ended up 0:43:13.000 --> 0:43:20.200 at Radcliffe in Workshop, and Norman Lear backed that show 0:43:20.320 --> 0:43:22.680 and they opened it off Broadway in New York and 0:43:22.760 --> 0:43:28.880 it closed opening night, and it just Fred and Willie 0:43:28.960 --> 0:43:34.800 were just so negatively floored by that. It took Willie 0:43:35.000 --> 0:43:37.759 at least a year to get over that. You know. 0:43:38.239 --> 0:43:39.840 Okay, So let's get back to you. How do you 0:43:39.880 --> 0:43:41.720 get from Oprily into Record World? 0:43:42.760 --> 0:43:45.799 So this woman at ASCAP. I was getting my male 0:43:45.880 --> 0:43:50.760 at ASCAP because I was I was an associate member. 0:43:51.200 --> 0:43:54.040 I never had a song out, but they were. You know. Again, 0:43:54.080 --> 0:43:57.399 it was such a small town then, and I would 0:43:57.440 --> 0:44:01.120 get my mail at ASCAP and there's this Weben I 0:44:01.160 --> 0:44:06.439 forget her maiden name, Karen Conrad. Her husband actually ended 0:44:06.520 --> 0:44:09.920 up to be a very very big publisher in Nashville. 0:44:11.320 --> 0:44:15.239 And Karen I would stop in and you know, and 0:44:15.440 --> 0:44:18.240 I'd asked her if she'd heard of anything, any jobs 0:44:18.360 --> 0:44:21.680 or whatever, and she said, Hey, I think Record World 0:44:21.760 --> 0:44:27.000 is looking for somebody to write the Country advertorial that 0:44:27.080 --> 0:44:30.920 will come out in October. This is like July. And 0:44:31.320 --> 0:44:35.120 she said, I don't think they're paying anything. Well, I 0:44:35.200 --> 0:44:38.080 went down. I met Chuck Nice, who was the Southeastern 0:44:38.200 --> 0:44:42.560 editor he said, I could buy you cigarettes and hamburgers, 0:44:43.440 --> 0:44:46.480 but I can't pay you. And he said, what, I 0:44:46.520 --> 0:44:50.759 need somebody to help me write puff pieces on all 0:44:50.840 --> 0:44:54.720 the companies in Nashville and then we do this big advertorial. 0:44:55.160 --> 0:44:57.480 Then they would sell them ads. You know. Oh, we 0:44:57.560 --> 0:45:00.239 got a nice story about you buy an ad, you know, 0:45:00.840 --> 0:45:04.880 and that was to come out Country Music Week CMA 0:45:05.000 --> 0:45:10.560 Week in October. So I quit my job and took 0:45:10.600 --> 0:45:15.040 the free job and started writing. And over the course 0:45:15.080 --> 0:45:19.160 of the next three months, I met every office general 0:45:19.200 --> 0:45:23.719 manager in Nashville, record labels, publishers, everybody, and I was 0:45:23.760 --> 0:45:27.120 writing positive pieces about them, you know. And that's how 0:45:27.280 --> 0:45:31.760 I really started learning about country music and then listening 0:45:31.800 --> 0:45:36.680 to it. And Chuck Nice, who was the Southeastern editor, 0:45:36.800 --> 0:45:40.680 he reviewed all the country records every week, so I 0:45:40.719 --> 0:45:44.960 would sit in and listen while he reviewed all the records. 0:45:45.719 --> 0:45:52.520 So one little side story, as about two weeks before 0:45:53.480 --> 0:45:56.799 I went to Record World, I got an interview with 0:45:57.440 --> 0:46:02.319 the general manager of RCA. He was he was chet 0:46:02.360 --> 0:46:07.640 Atkins business guy ran the office. So I got a 0:46:07.760 --> 0:46:11.759 meeting with him and I went in to meet him 0:46:11.840 --> 0:46:16.239 and got in his office. At his office was like 0:46:17.520 --> 0:46:20.640 sixty foot long. You know, he had a putting green 0:46:21.920 --> 0:46:24.239 and he was you know, he was decked out in 0:46:24.360 --> 0:46:29.319 the white shoes and you know, three different types of plaid, 0:46:29.520 --> 0:46:32.520 you know, his shirt and his jacket, his pants and 0:46:32.600 --> 0:46:37.840 the whole thing. And so I gave him my elevator pitch. 0:46:37.719 --> 0:46:42.239 And he listened and he sat there and he said, well, 0:46:42.280 --> 0:46:44.640 the best advice I could give you is you should 0:46:44.719 --> 0:46:47.839 go back to Pennsylvania. 0:46:48.920 --> 0:46:50.200 That's fantastic. 0:46:50.719 --> 0:46:54.359 Oh I love it, So Bob, listen to this. So 0:46:54.440 --> 0:46:58.400 what happened was, now I'm at Record World writing these stories, 0:46:58.480 --> 0:47:00.759 you know, and I've been doing it for you know, 0:47:01.280 --> 0:47:04.239 six weeks or eight weeks or whatever, and check us now, 0:47:04.640 --> 0:47:09.239 trusting me with bigger and bigger stories. You know, it's like, oh, okay, hey, 0:47:09.280 --> 0:47:12.120 you're doing good. So I walk in one day and 0:47:12.120 --> 0:47:14.680 he said, hey, I have an appointment for you at 0:47:14.760 --> 0:47:21.479 eleven o'clock with this guy at RCA. And that's the guy. 0:47:23.400 --> 0:47:27.040 So I go over. When I walked in his office, 0:47:27.480 --> 0:47:31.960 he almost died. It's like he knew he and told 0:47:32.000 --> 0:47:34.440 me to go back to Pennsylvania and here I am 0:47:34.600 --> 0:47:39.160 to write the Record World story about their year. So 0:47:39.800 --> 0:47:43.160 I never said a word. He never mentioned it. It was, 0:47:43.360 --> 0:47:46.399 you know that the air was thick, and I took 0:47:46.480 --> 0:47:50.960 down all the information and wrote a nice story. But 0:47:51.120 --> 0:47:55.800 it was like, yes, I'm in I'm in this business. 0:47:55.880 --> 0:48:00.880 You know. It's except when the addition came out that 0:48:00.880 --> 0:48:04.239 that week in October, that was it for me. There 0:48:04.280 --> 0:48:06.560 was nothing for me to do a record world after that. 0:48:07.719 --> 0:48:13.239 So that Monday, I went over to Monday morning, I 0:48:13.280 --> 0:48:16.160 went over to the office. They had given me tickets, 0:48:16.480 --> 0:48:19.120 they gave me. They got me a tuxedo to go 0:48:19.239 --> 0:48:21.920 to some of the shows, you know, they rented it 0:48:22.000 --> 0:48:26.799 for me. And so that Monday morning I went over 0:48:26.840 --> 0:48:29.759 to the office and I'm just going to pick up 0:48:29.800 --> 0:48:32.040 my stuff, and I wanted to say thank you to 0:48:32.600 --> 0:48:36.240 There were two women in the office. One was handled 0:48:36.239 --> 0:48:38.680 the art for the ads and the other one ran 0:48:38.719 --> 0:48:43.760 the country charts and Chuck. But Chuck was gone. Chuck 0:48:44.200 --> 0:48:48.520 had taken a job with Jack Clement and to run 0:48:48.560 --> 0:48:52.560 his publishing company. So anyway, I went. John started it 0:48:52.640 --> 0:48:54.759 was the vice president of charge of the office. He 0:48:54.880 --> 0:48:58.120 sold the ads in the whole thing. So I waited 0:48:58.160 --> 0:49:00.800 around for John to committee didn't commit toil like noon 0:49:00.920 --> 0:49:06.040 that day and I went in and said, you know, John, 0:49:06.120 --> 0:49:08.960 I just want to thank you for the opportunity. And 0:49:09.560 --> 0:49:11.279 you know, I said, I just came in to get 0:49:11.280 --> 0:49:13.319 my stuff and the whole thing, and he said, what 0:49:13.360 --> 0:49:15.640 are you talking about? And I said, what do you mean? 0:49:16.600 --> 0:49:21.640 He said, you're the Southeastern editor. And that's how I 0:49:21.680 --> 0:49:24.400 found out I had a job, you know. So I 0:49:24.440 --> 0:49:28.120 went back. I called Chuck and I said, Chuck you know, 0:49:28.680 --> 0:49:32.160 and Chuck told me, he said, ask him for one 0:49:32.239 --> 0:49:34.959 hundred and fifteen dollars a week. He said, that way, 0:49:35.200 --> 0:49:40.480 you'll walk away after taxes with a hundred and I 0:49:41.320 --> 0:49:44.520 the next week, I'm doing the country record review, said 0:49:44.520 --> 0:49:46.880 all the promotion guys, So the labels are coming in 0:49:46.920 --> 0:49:47.360 to see me. 0:49:48.840 --> 0:49:50.600 So how long do you do that before you get 0:49:50.640 --> 0:49:51.360 a label? Gig? 0:49:52.080 --> 0:49:56.400 I was there like fourteen months. I went down to 0:49:56.480 --> 0:50:00.400 the Grand Old Operay down to the Rhymen every Saturday 0:50:00.520 --> 0:50:04.719 night and just I had backstage pass. I just went 0:50:04.760 --> 0:50:07.719 back there and hung out and just took it all in. 0:50:08.280 --> 0:50:12.640 Never talk to anybody, just took it all in for 0:50:13.080 --> 0:50:17.000 every week, and you know, and of course over the 0:50:17.040 --> 0:50:19.640 course of that year, I met all the promotion people. 0:50:19.920 --> 0:50:22.800 They were all, you know, trying to get me drunk 0:50:22.920 --> 0:50:26.520 or do whatever there. You know, the promotion people back then, 0:50:26.920 --> 0:50:29.839 no one had a fact. No one could tell you 0:50:30.360 --> 0:50:33.920 a sales figure that they didn't make up. You know, 0:50:34.080 --> 0:50:37.760 they they tell you, oh, it's playing on five hundred 0:50:37.840 --> 0:50:40.719 radio stations. There was no facts, and I thought, I 0:50:40.760 --> 0:50:43.040 at the time, I thought, oh my god, I wish 0:50:43.040 --> 0:50:46.399 there was one fact in this business. You know. Now 0:50:46.920 --> 0:50:50.799 go forward to Sound Scared and BDS and all that, 0:50:51.080 --> 0:50:54.959 you know, in nineteen ninety five, and it's like there's 0:50:55.000 --> 0:50:58.439 no theater anymore. Now, it's all fact. You know. Those 0:50:58.440 --> 0:51:01.480 guys were as entertaining as the artists, you know, they 0:51:01.920 --> 0:51:05.640 they were characters, and uh you know that's how they 0:51:06.160 --> 0:51:09.080 got the records played along with you know, maybe a 0:51:09.120 --> 0:51:14.440 bag full of money. I don't know, but uh so 0:51:14.520 --> 0:51:17.640 I had that job and then people were coming in, 0:51:17.840 --> 0:51:20.239 you know. Burt Reynolds would come in because he was 0:51:20.280 --> 0:51:24.839 doing those those country movies, and Olivia Newton John would 0:51:24.880 --> 0:51:29.000 stop by. And the dear friend I made was Shel Silverstein. 0:51:29.239 --> 0:51:29.479 Wow. 0:51:29.560 --> 0:51:33.080 And Shell would come down from New York like every 0:51:33.120 --> 0:51:37.360 three months and he would stop by the office and 0:51:37.520 --> 0:51:40.240 just hang out. We'd hang out for three four hours, 0:51:40.320 --> 0:51:43.920 you know, and uh, he'd tell me stories about pitching 0:51:44.000 --> 0:51:47.799 songs and you know, and uh he he telled me 0:51:47.840 --> 0:51:50.640 every he said, every time I go to these see 0:51:50.719 --> 0:51:53.960 these producers, the first thing they say is you got 0:51:53.960 --> 0:51:58.319 another boy named Sue and and he said, yeah, I 0:51:58.360 --> 0:52:01.440 got you know, you know, he I got this song 0:52:01.840 --> 0:52:03.960 you know, on the cover of Rolling Stone or whatever, 0:52:04.040 --> 0:52:06.959 you know, all the other hits that and he said. 0:52:07.000 --> 0:52:09.640 They said, no, no, I'm lucky for something like boy 0:52:09.719 --> 0:52:14.520 named Sue and Shelle. Tony said no, what they wanted 0:52:14.880 --> 0:52:19.040 was the success of boy name Sue. They didn't know 0:52:19.080 --> 0:52:21.520 whether they he said, they probably couldn't hear it if 0:52:21.520 --> 0:52:27.560 it hit him. But I love Shelle. He was such 0:52:27.600 --> 0:52:32.600 a warm, wonderful guy at such a brilliant, brilliant talent 0:52:32.719 --> 0:52:33.800 on so many levels. 0:52:35.120 --> 0:52:36.600 So how'd you get your label gig? 0:52:37.440 --> 0:52:41.839 At that time? So this was end of seventy two, 0:52:42.160 --> 0:52:47.000 all of seventy three. Something was happening in the South. 0:52:47.120 --> 0:52:51.840 That one, Southern rock was evolving out of Georgia and 0:52:51.840 --> 0:52:56.840 the Carolinas and Charlie Daniels and Nashville, and the outlaw 0:52:56.880 --> 0:53:01.160 movement was happening in Texas. So I was covering those things. 0:53:01.200 --> 0:53:03.160 I was down in Macon all the time, and down 0:53:03.200 --> 0:53:08.120 in Atlanta and Muscle Shoals, Memphis, you know, Austin writing 0:53:08.160 --> 0:53:12.480 for the magazine. So I got to know a bunch 0:53:12.560 --> 0:53:19.240 of the publicists from LA and New York, and Charlie 0:53:19.320 --> 0:53:22.600 Rich had exploded in Nashville and Tammy Whinett and George 0:53:22.600 --> 0:53:25.440 Stones were doing great, and of course Johnny Cash was 0:53:25.480 --> 0:53:30.839 there at Columbia and CBS Records decided to start a 0:53:30.880 --> 0:53:36.480 publicity department in Nashville, and really there weren't very many people, 0:53:38.800 --> 0:53:43.560 you know, to interview, really, and so I got the job. Actually, 0:53:43.719 --> 0:53:47.360 they wanted me to start the beginning of would have 0:53:47.400 --> 0:53:54.000 been seventy four, and the Clive thing happened and they 0:53:54.000 --> 0:53:56.960 put everything on hold, and then they came back to 0:53:57.000 --> 0:54:01.400 me like in May, and I guess the dust settled 0:54:01.400 --> 0:54:05.960 and they hired me. They were starting to expand again 0:54:06.080 --> 0:54:09.719 and they hired me to start the publicity department. And 0:54:10.040 --> 0:54:12.560 one of the guys that was a real supporter, somebody 0:54:12.560 --> 0:54:16.640 who would stop by the Record World office was Steve Popovich. 0:54:17.440 --> 0:54:21.200 And Steve was, you know, a Pittsburgh, Cleveland guy. So 0:54:21.760 --> 0:54:24.480 he and Frank and I were kind of, you know, 0:54:25.560 --> 0:54:28.839 we all kind of had that same Pittsburgh ease thing, 0:54:29.000 --> 0:54:31.480 you know. And so Steve and I kind of hit 0:54:31.560 --> 0:54:35.720 it off. And I set Steve some some a couple 0:54:35.719 --> 0:54:38.400 of my songs and told him it was somebody I 0:54:38.440 --> 0:54:42.680 had heard. I didn't say it was me. And he 0:54:42.760 --> 0:54:46.439 figured it out and he he liked it. He thought 0:54:46.440 --> 0:54:51.160 it was funny, and so so he was maybe calling 0:54:51.200 --> 0:54:54.120 me all the time, and he was a big supporter 0:54:54.760 --> 0:54:59.680 of me getting that gig. And I had done a 0:54:59.760 --> 0:55:03.600 recor rolled at the time, like once a month, would 0:55:03.680 --> 0:55:06.799 do these what was called dialogues, and it was a 0:55:06.840 --> 0:55:10.239 big interview in the middle of the magazine with a 0:55:10.320 --> 0:55:13.200 major figure, you know, it might be Clive Davis or 0:55:13.360 --> 0:55:16.400 you know Mo Austin or you know, big people in 0:55:16.440 --> 0:55:20.080 the industry. And I did. I did a dialogue with 0:55:20.160 --> 0:55:23.799 Billy Ryl who was producing Charlie Rich and Tammy and 0:55:23.880 --> 0:55:27.840 George and Billy and I hit it off, you know, 0:55:28.080 --> 0:55:32.080 And so when the job came up, I got the job. 0:55:32.320 --> 0:55:38.040 And so there was no other publicist in Nashville at 0:55:38.040 --> 0:55:40.040 a label. There were a couple of Indian. 0:55:39.920 --> 0:55:41.600 No label had a publicist. 0:55:42.239 --> 0:55:47.560 No label had a publicist. Every label had an A 0:55:47.680 --> 0:55:52.479 and R guy or two in house producer whatever, and 0:55:52.640 --> 0:55:57.680 they would have a promotion person with a secretary and 0:55:57.680 --> 0:55:59.279 that was it. I was just put it on the 0:55:59.360 --> 0:56:02.600 radio that it. So when I got over there, I mean, 0:56:03.080 --> 0:56:06.120 there were no bios there or no pictures. The pictures 0:56:06.160 --> 0:56:10.160 were just awful, and I probably spent the first three 0:56:10.239 --> 0:56:14.720 four months just either hiring somebody to write a bio 0:56:14.920 --> 0:56:18.840 or writing it myself and then having pictures taken or 0:56:18.880 --> 0:56:23.279 finding better pictures. So all the artists, I mean, you 0:56:23.320 --> 0:56:26.600 know these are like Barbara Fairchild, Joe Stapley, and you know, 0:56:26.680 --> 0:56:30.400 Bob Luman, and they were like, wow, I got a 0:56:30.440 --> 0:56:33.879 guy he's writing eyes and then you know, they thought 0:56:33.880 --> 0:56:39.640 it was great. Tammy absolutely. I think this came from 0:56:39.680 --> 0:56:44.759 her being what she called the beauty operator, you know 0:56:44.880 --> 0:56:49.239 she was she had worked in the beauty salon in Alabama, 0:56:50.480 --> 0:56:53.680 and she read all those romance magazines you know that 0:56:53.719 --> 0:56:57.279 they have in the beauty shops, you know, and so 0:56:59.080 --> 0:57:04.040 to have assist was like to her, it was like 0:57:05.120 --> 0:57:07.480 the greatest thing. You know, here I am. I'm a 0:57:07.520 --> 0:57:10.680 twenty four year old kid, you know, I've never gotten 0:57:10.719 --> 0:57:14.960 anybody in the newspaper ever, and she just took to 0:57:15.000 --> 0:57:19.960 me and then she was always plotting and planning, how 0:57:19.960 --> 0:57:23.440 can we get George involved in some press, you know. 0:57:23.640 --> 0:57:26.560 So she and Billy and I would plot and plan 0:57:26.680 --> 0:57:31.080 how to get George to do an interview or do 0:57:31.160 --> 0:57:35.320 a photo shoot, you know. And so I had this 0:57:35.400 --> 0:57:41.040 great roster, you know, I had Tammy, George, Johnny Cash, 0:57:41.120 --> 0:57:44.640 you know, we just and we had some pop stuff 0:57:44.680 --> 0:57:48.160 starting to happen. Dave Loggins please come to Boston, and 0:57:49.160 --> 0:57:53.240 Dan Fogelberg, and so there were other things starting to 0:57:53.280 --> 0:57:57.080 go on. And when the acts would come through from 0:57:57.120 --> 0:58:00.000 New York, you know, there was a great club circle 0:58:00.080 --> 0:58:02.240 it back then, you know, the you know, the bottom 0:58:02.320 --> 0:58:05.520 lines of the world. But at Great Southeast and nash 0:58:05.960 --> 0:58:11.760 in Atlanta, they exited in Nashville, Lafayette's in Memphis, and 0:58:11.880 --> 0:58:15.000 I would do I was writing reviews from those clubs 0:58:15.600 --> 0:58:18.880 at Record World, and then when I started to become 0:58:19.320 --> 0:58:22.160 when I became the publicist, when the rock acts would 0:58:22.160 --> 0:58:26.400 come through, I'd try to get them suppressed. So New 0:58:26.480 --> 0:58:30.400 York really, you know, really liked what I was doing, 0:58:30.800 --> 0:58:34.360 and we had no competition, you know. So so this 0:58:34.480 --> 0:58:38.920 guy came down. His name was Patrick Anderson, and he 0:58:38.960 --> 0:58:42.760 had been a speech writer for John Kennedy, and he 0:58:42.840 --> 0:58:47.800 knew Fred Birch, who was Willie's mentor, right and Fred 0:58:47.840 --> 0:58:51.000 called me up and said, Hey, my friend Patrick is 0:58:51.040 --> 0:58:55.400 coming down here. He works for the for the Washington Post, 0:58:55.720 --> 0:58:59.040 but he's doing an article for the New York Times 0:58:59.040 --> 0:59:03.760 Sunday magazine on Nashville country music. Could you help him out? 0:59:04.720 --> 0:59:08.320 So when Patrick came down, he didn't have anybody else 0:59:08.360 --> 0:59:11.600 to talk to, so we got him to every one 0:59:11.640 --> 0:59:15.640 of our acts. He ended up asking me, can you 0:59:15.760 --> 0:59:18.880 do something to help me get to Loretta Lynn on MCA, 0:59:19.240 --> 0:59:22.400 And literally I was putting together interviews for him with 0:59:22.720 --> 0:59:26.800 people from other labels. I wanted him to be happy. So, 0:59:26.960 --> 0:59:30.720 as it turned out, this story came out in the 0:59:30.840 --> 0:59:36.480 New York Times Sunday magazine and David allan Coe, who 0:59:36.480 --> 0:59:39.440 had recently been signed but didn't He might have had 0:59:39.480 --> 0:59:42.840 a single out, but he hadn't finished his album. He 0:59:42.920 --> 0:59:44.840 used to sit in my office all day long and 0:59:44.880 --> 0:59:50.120 watch me make calls for other ears, And so they 0:59:50.200 --> 0:59:53.040 ended up putting David on the cover of the New 0:59:53.120 --> 0:59:56.680 York Times Sunday magazine. You know, it was the tats 0:59:56.880 --> 1:00:00.720 because at that time there weren't people like all Tatted 1:00:00.800 --> 1:00:04.320 up like that. So thew York Times thought, hey, that's 1:00:04.360 --> 1:00:08.440 a visual, you know, and so I didn't. You know, 1:00:08.800 --> 1:00:11.440 I'm not thinking of it. I'm twenty four years old. 1:00:11.520 --> 1:00:13.920 I'm a kid. I'm just learning how to be a publicist. 1:00:14.240 --> 1:00:17.760 I'm making friends at all the newspapers across the country 1:00:17.800 --> 1:00:22.200 because they were interested in country artists, you know. And 1:00:22.480 --> 1:00:27.160 so this New York Times Sunday magazine comes out and 1:00:27.280 --> 1:00:30.440 all of CBS in New York is going nuts. It's like, 1:00:30.880 --> 1:00:34.320 how did that happen? This huge story, it's all epic 1:00:34.400 --> 1:00:38.840 and Colombia. Well, before long, I was in New York 1:00:38.920 --> 1:00:43.200 head Ofgethic Publicity, you know, and which is you know, 1:00:43.520 --> 1:00:46.720 kind of where I peeked out because I had Susan 1:00:46.800 --> 1:00:52.560 Blonde as the New York publicist. You know, she knew everybody. 1:00:52.600 --> 1:00:55.880 She she was New York, you know. So I ended 1:00:56.000 --> 1:00:59.880 up being really more of a manager of the department 1:01:00.120 --> 1:01:05.760 and working internally to get the field staff at CBS 1:01:06.360 --> 1:01:10.200 to respect the publicity department because the field staff said 1:01:10.480 --> 1:01:13.680 they just do stories about the dictators or you know, 1:01:14.280 --> 1:01:17.000 you know, all these New York acts. They never sell 1:01:17.040 --> 1:01:19.440 any records, you know, why don't they get a story 1:01:19.520 --> 1:01:23.200 on Kansas, you know, or Reo Speedwagon. Well I knew 1:01:23.200 --> 1:01:27.320 those daily newspapers. So we ended up hiring the first 1:01:28.400 --> 1:01:32.080 tour publicist to go out with bands and really work 1:01:32.160 --> 1:01:35.439 the heartland, you know. And that was the only thing 1:01:35.480 --> 1:01:38.800 I could bring to the table. You know, Susan owned 1:01:39.120 --> 1:01:42.040 you know, Rolling Stone and you know the all the 1:01:42.120 --> 1:01:45.320 rock press, you know. But Kinky helped me, you know, 1:01:45.520 --> 1:01:49.080 just meet a lot of people, Lester Bangs. I was 1:01:49.120 --> 1:01:52.640 staying in the Warwick Hotel and Kinky bring Lester over 1:01:53.440 --> 1:01:56.760 hang out in my suite. Well I was, you know, 1:01:56.880 --> 1:02:00.600 while I was trying to find an apartment and Nick 1:02:00.720 --> 1:02:04.600 tashis who you know. Nick and I became dear friends. 1:02:06.000 --> 1:02:10.600 But most of the major media, I was milk toast 1:02:10.680 --> 1:02:13.760 America to them. You know. I didn't live up to 1:02:14.400 --> 1:02:18.960 the standard of the rock elite, you know, But anyway, 1:02:19.000 --> 1:02:21.560 I did that for a little over a year, and 1:02:21.600 --> 1:02:25.400 then I went to liber Krebs Management Company with Aerosmith 1:02:25.480 --> 1:02:29.280 and Ted Nugent, and I had kind of spearheaded, you know, 1:02:29.360 --> 1:02:34.160 forgive me that Ted Nugent the press campaign that really 1:02:34.200 --> 1:02:40.040 broke him, and you know that's back when Ted actually 1:02:40.040 --> 1:02:42.200 thought it was funny what he was saying. He didn't. 1:02:42.600 --> 1:02:46.920 He wasn't, but he wasn't believing himself then. So liber 1:02:46.960 --> 1:02:50.360 Krebs said, Hey, we need somebody to run our music 1:02:50.400 --> 1:02:56.440 publishing and troubleshoot pr things with Aerosmith. Aerosmith at that 1:02:56.640 --> 1:03:01.080 time was a lot of drug problems, and they'd end 1:03:01.160 --> 1:03:04.080 up setting me out on the road with a briefcase 1:03:04.680 --> 1:03:08.160 to bring the merch cash back so that it didn't 1:03:08.200 --> 1:03:13.480 get spent on the road. I'd walk out of Boston 1:03:13.520 --> 1:03:17.200 Garden with one hundred thousand dollars in my bag, you know, 1:03:18.760 --> 1:03:21.880 and did that for a year, And then I went 1:03:21.920 --> 1:03:24.680 back to Nashville. I had friends back there say, oh, man, 1:03:24.720 --> 1:03:28.360 you're a manager, now come back here. Well, none of 1:03:28.360 --> 1:03:31.400 the accident Nashville needed a manager. They'd go out and 1:03:31.480 --> 1:03:35.680 play the Johnny mac Brown High School for three thousand 1:03:35.760 --> 1:03:40.480 dollars on Friday night. You don't need a manager for that. Yeah, 1:03:39.960 --> 1:03:44.040 So we went back. We started a band called Riders 1:03:44.040 --> 1:03:47.400 of the Sky, cowboy band that's still playing today and 1:03:47.960 --> 1:03:54.880 playing old Western themes. And I went broke and I 1:03:54.920 --> 1:03:58.520 came back to New York and at the time I 1:03:58.560 --> 1:04:01.440 had kind of an on off relationship with Gail Sparrow, 1:04:01.600 --> 1:04:04.680 who had worked at Columbia on to the West Coast 1:04:04.680 --> 1:04:09.640 and then ultimately went to MTV when they started, and 1:04:10.080 --> 1:04:13.240 I was up at Christmas time, this would have been 1:04:13.920 --> 1:04:18.600 end of seventy eight, and I ran into Don Dempsey, 1:04:18.640 --> 1:04:22.600 who had become the new head of EPIC and previously 1:04:22.640 --> 1:04:25.920 I had worked for Ronald Lexeburg was head of EPIC. 1:04:26.520 --> 1:04:29.080 Said Don said, hey, why don't you come back in 1:04:29.200 --> 1:04:33.320 marketing as a product manager? And I was broke, so 1:04:33.840 --> 1:04:37.240 I said, yeah, what do you want me? How about Monday? 1:04:38.760 --> 1:04:43.880 So I came back and moved back to New York 1:04:44.000 --> 1:04:48.320 and became a product manager. And the first thing that 1:04:48.440 --> 1:04:52.120 happened was Charlie Daniels was handled out of New York 1:04:52.200 --> 1:04:55.840 because at that time Charlie was not considered country. He 1:04:55.960 --> 1:05:00.840 was considered a rock band and a boogie ban, you know, Southern. 1:05:00.920 --> 1:05:04.840 Ron and I knew Charlie from writing an article about 1:05:04.920 --> 1:05:09.160 him at Record World, and then when I was I 1:05:09.240 --> 1:05:12.440 knew Joe Sullivan, who was his manager, and Charlie and 1:05:12.480 --> 1:05:15.320 I kind of continued on a relationship when I when 1:05:15.360 --> 1:05:18.920 I headed publicity and he was signed. He was so 1:05:19.080 --> 1:05:23.479 happy that he had a natural guy in New York, 1:05:23.600 --> 1:05:27.120 you know. So and then when I came back, he 1:05:27.200 --> 1:05:29.480 called Don Dempsey and said, I got to have Dan 1:05:29.560 --> 1:05:34.400 as my product manager. So I got Charlie and within 1:05:35.800 --> 1:05:40.120 six months we had Devil went down to Georgia and exploded, 1:05:40.480 --> 1:05:44.800 and we just had a ball marketing that because Charlie 1:05:44.920 --> 1:05:48.800 was owed favors by everybody. He had always done everything 1:05:48.920 --> 1:05:54.320 for everybody, and literally when he when that record started 1:05:54.360 --> 1:05:58.680 to break, my phone exploded with people saying I owe him? 1:05:58.760 --> 1:06:01.320 What can I do to help? And you know, it 1:06:01.440 --> 1:06:05.880 just shows you what hard working artists you know that 1:06:06.000 --> 1:06:08.280 it can't come back to you, you know. 1:06:18.280 --> 1:06:20.320 Okay, when did you give up the dream to be 1:06:20.360 --> 1:06:21.040 a songwriter? 1:06:21.480 --> 1:06:25.120 I didn't and I didn't have the courage. You know, 1:06:25.520 --> 1:06:30.280 I was writing. Actually I signed with April Blackwood when 1:06:30.320 --> 1:06:34.440 I was in the publicity department seventy six, and they 1:06:34.480 --> 1:06:39.240 started putting me with people. I had met Zachlickman and 1:06:39.280 --> 1:06:42.840 we had become really good friends. He managed d On 1:06:42.960 --> 1:06:47.160 Democci and I showed him a lyric and he said, oh, 1:06:47.240 --> 1:06:50.680 Dion has to see this, you know, And so he 1:06:50.720 --> 1:06:52.760 took it to d On and he said, Dion loved 1:06:52.800 --> 1:06:54.680 it and wants to meet you. Blah blah blah. It 1:06:54.720 --> 1:06:58.520 took a year, and about a year later I got 1:06:58.520 --> 1:07:02.280 a call. I was at liber Kreb and I went 1:07:02.280 --> 1:07:05.040 out to lunch. I came back and the receptionist said, 1:07:05.520 --> 1:07:08.520 some guy named Dion called you like fifteen times at 1:07:08.520 --> 1:07:13.240 the last hour and bingo. So I called him back 1:07:13.280 --> 1:07:17.160 and he said, man, I'm so into this lyric. Send 1:07:17.160 --> 1:07:19.320 me everything you've got. And I said, well, I'm not 1:07:19.360 --> 1:07:21.560 going to do that that I have a title. I'm 1:07:21.560 --> 1:07:24.280 going to see if I could finish it tonight, at 1:07:24.280 --> 1:07:25.920 which I did, and I sent it to him the 1:07:25.960 --> 1:07:28.800 next day, and those two songs ended up on his 1:07:29.960 --> 1:07:34.480 Return of the Wanderer album, which unfortunately didn't happen. We 1:07:34.560 --> 1:07:39.440 got some great reviews, and then later Epic A and 1:07:39.560 --> 1:07:43.280 R connected me with Felix Cavalieri and we wrote a 1:07:43.280 --> 1:07:47.000 couple of songs together. And Popovich put me with the 1:07:47.040 --> 1:07:50.040 Iron City House Rockers and we wrote a couple of songs. 1:07:50.760 --> 1:07:53.840 And Popovich and Lenny Pizzi put me with this group 1:07:53.920 --> 1:07:59.720 called Gasoline from Denmark, and I had to rewrite the 1:07:59.720 --> 1:08:03.400 album in a week. What happened was they were decided 1:08:03.400 --> 1:08:08.280 to put the put the album out and the band 1:08:08.520 --> 1:08:15.040 got an English writer in Europe to rewrite the lyrics, 1:08:15.280 --> 1:08:18.639 is their English wasn't so good. So when the band 1:08:18.720 --> 1:08:23.040 showed up in New York with the new lyrics, Lenny 1:08:23.200 --> 1:08:26.960 and Steve went, oh my god, this doesn't work. And 1:08:27.080 --> 1:08:31.120 Popovich called me up and said, Dan, I needed to 1:08:31.120 --> 1:08:36.559 rewrite this album by next Thursday. And I said, I 1:08:36.600 --> 1:08:40.360 said why next Thursday? And he said, Roy Thomas Baker 1:08:40.439 --> 1:08:45.800 is exploding because of Bohemian Rhapsody, and he's their producer 1:08:46.200 --> 1:08:49.519 and he only has one day open on his schedule. 1:08:49.560 --> 1:08:54.320 It's next Thursday, and to redo all the vocals. So 1:08:54.360 --> 1:08:57.599 in the meantime, the band was in town. I hadn't 1:08:57.640 --> 1:09:01.879 met them. Popovich said, I'll have them in your office 1:09:01.880 --> 1:09:05.599 tomorrow morning. So they come over and he's told them, 1:09:05.600 --> 1:09:08.439 by this time, this guy's going to rewrite your lyrics. 1:09:08.640 --> 1:09:11.800 So they're meeting the head of publicity and the guy 1:09:11.840 --> 1:09:14.840 who's going to rewrite their album. It's like, I thought, 1:09:14.880 --> 1:09:17.880 oh my god, these guys probably are what what the 1:09:17.960 --> 1:09:21.519 hell is going on? But we did it, and we 1:09:21.600 --> 1:09:24.880 got some good reviews, and the band went out on 1:09:25.000 --> 1:09:33.120 tour with Jack Cassidy in Taorma and the audience hated them. 1:09:33.680 --> 1:09:36.760 I mean they were throwing fruits and vegetables at this 1:09:36.880 --> 1:09:41.120 band within half a song. And the band was so 1:09:41.280 --> 1:09:44.479 disillusioned they went back to Denmark and said we will 1:09:44.520 --> 1:09:48.960 never record in English again, and we're never coming back 1:09:49.040 --> 1:09:52.080 to America. And they were huge over there that, you know. 1:09:52.160 --> 1:09:55.959 They they were selling a couple hundred thousand of Denmark, 1:09:56.000 --> 1:10:01.680 which was like twenty million here. And so anyway, the 1:10:01.760 --> 1:10:05.920 next album came up, and Roy Baker called me up 1:10:05.960 --> 1:10:09.280 and said, hey, why don't you come to Denmark. He said, 1:10:09.320 --> 1:10:12.000 I want to convince the guys to put a bonus 1:10:12.080 --> 1:10:15.680 track on this, the Danish album, you know. So I 1:10:15.720 --> 1:10:19.920 went to Steven Lenny and that they very graciously said, look, 1:10:19.920 --> 1:10:22.200 we'll pay for you to go over there. We're not 1:10:22.240 --> 1:10:24.280 going to put the record out, you know, we'll send 1:10:24.320 --> 1:10:27.640 you over there. So I went over there and for 1:10:27.680 --> 1:10:31.519 about three weeks we were on a mushroom farm and Odense. 1:10:31.840 --> 1:10:35.599 It was not a it was a commercial mushroom farmer. 1:10:35.920 --> 1:10:39.439 And I wrote a couple of songs to be bonus tracks, 1:10:39.520 --> 1:10:43.040 you know. I wrote the lyrics and we finished the 1:10:43.120 --> 1:10:48.280 songs and I came home. I never heard anything again. 1:10:48.360 --> 1:10:52.479 And the band broke up like a year later, and 1:10:52.600 --> 1:10:55.799 Kim Larson, who was the leader of the band, became 1:10:56.120 --> 1:10:59.960 this like Bob Dylan of Denmark. He had like fifty 1:11:00.000 --> 1:11:05.360 the albums after that, all in Danish. So he died 1:11:06.360 --> 1:11:10.040 back in I think twenty eighteen, and a week after 1:11:10.080 --> 1:11:14.000 he died, U two played Copenhaggen. They had two nights 1:11:14.000 --> 1:11:18.400 there and after the first night, Bono was talking to 1:11:18.520 --> 1:11:23.759 the local crew backstage and they were telling him about 1:11:23.880 --> 1:11:26.760 Kim and how you know this guy was a hero 1:11:26.960 --> 1:11:29.400 to them and the whole thing. So the next night, 1:11:30.240 --> 1:11:33.080 Bono put a picture of Kim up on the screen 1:11:33.160 --> 1:11:37.360 in the in the arena they were playing, and then 1:11:37.479 --> 1:11:39.280 he recited a. 1:11:39.280 --> 1:11:42.639 Lyric come full Circle. 1:11:43.240 --> 1:11:47.160 This is a song. This is like forty years later, 1:11:47.840 --> 1:11:53.080 and I mean, for like, I never even knew the 1:11:53.120 --> 1:11:59.200 track had been actually on the Danish album. Yeah, so anyway, 1:11:59.320 --> 1:12:02.880 so I didn't know about it. Then about a month later, 1:12:03.439 --> 1:12:08.160 there's this one fan who had always reached out to me, Hey, 1:12:08.240 --> 1:12:10.519 you got any pictures some gasoline when they were in 1:12:10.560 --> 1:12:13.640 New York and all this, and so we stayed in 1:12:13.720 --> 1:12:16.680 touch over the years. He sent me a note with 1:12:16.760 --> 1:12:20.360 a link, a YouTube link, and he said Dan, I 1:12:20.400 --> 1:12:23.559 think you should watch this, and I went on and 1:12:23.600 --> 1:12:29.040 it was like bon overciting my lyrics. Well, it blew 1:12:29.160 --> 1:12:34.280 up on the streaming service. It's we had like eighteen 1:12:34.680 --> 1:12:40.800 million plays and it was all in Denmark and it's now, 1:12:41.560 --> 1:12:43.880 you know, which isn't a lot in the big scheme 1:12:43.880 --> 1:12:48.720 of things, but it's like fifty million now. And the 1:12:48.840 --> 1:12:53.720 YouTube stuff was like a similar number, you know. But 1:12:54.040 --> 1:12:57.639 what a strange tale for a song. You know, it's 1:12:57.680 --> 1:13:01.400 just such a weird thing. You know. I love crazy 1:13:01.960 --> 1:13:05.920 stories about songs, you know, I think it's great. So anyway, 1:13:07.360 --> 1:13:12.240 reeling back, I was product managing Mighty Clouds of Joy 1:13:12.600 --> 1:13:17.320 for zachlickman manage them and we won the Grammy for 1:13:17.439 --> 1:13:22.880 Best Gospel Record, and I was product managing the Clash, 1:13:23.200 --> 1:13:26.120 and of course we broke the Clash, and you know, 1:13:26.200 --> 1:13:29.040 everybody said, there's no way you could break them in 1:13:29.800 --> 1:13:33.960 the US, you know, and we just kept pounding away. 1:13:34.080 --> 1:13:39.519 We found those people within the CBS distribution, you know, 1:13:39.720 --> 1:13:42.360 we had hundreds of people out there, and you know, 1:13:42.760 --> 1:13:46.080 you get with the college reps and the account service 1:13:46.080 --> 1:13:49.000 wrecks who were in doing inventory and record stores and 1:13:49.120 --> 1:13:52.560 the assistants and the branches, they were twenty one branches 1:13:52.640 --> 1:13:57.040 back then, and you'd find the people who who favored 1:13:57.040 --> 1:13:59.960 that music, who were out there talking to store clerk, 1:14:00.439 --> 1:14:04.519 and you know, that's how we would build, you know, 1:14:04.680 --> 1:14:07.640 a little base. And then you know, when you have 1:14:07.800 --> 1:14:12.000 a band toured those clubs, you know, you could count 1:14:12.080 --> 1:14:15.960 on the Atlanta branch. We'd have twenty twenty five people there, 1:14:16.120 --> 1:14:19.120 you know, and that's how we would get things started 1:14:19.720 --> 1:14:23.599 on a band, particularly a band, you know, in those days. 1:14:24.400 --> 1:14:26.800 For most of those days, you know, we'd have a 1:14:26.840 --> 1:14:30.160 marketing meeting and somebody said, what's the marketing plan, and 1:14:30.240 --> 1:14:34.879 everybody's head would swivel to the head of promotion, radio promotion. 1:14:35.040 --> 1:14:37.320 It was like, yeah, put it on the radio. We 1:14:37.320 --> 1:14:42.320 don't need any marketing here, you know. So I think 1:14:42.320 --> 1:14:45.280 for a product manager, it was trying to find those 1:14:45.560 --> 1:14:49.960 those other ways of finding some buds, finding some little 1:14:49.960 --> 1:14:52.680 ways of getting a hook into something, you know. 1:14:53.439 --> 1:14:56.240 Okay, so how long were you were product manager before 1:14:56.280 --> 1:14:58.000 you started to work with Michael Jackson. 1:15:00.120 --> 1:15:04.800 I started product managing in January of seventy nine, and 1:15:05.080 --> 1:15:11.920 I started with Michael in let's see about September of 1:15:13.640 --> 1:15:14.599 nineteen ninety one. 1:15:15.360 --> 1:15:18.360 Now, you also say, in this process, you wake up 1:15:18.400 --> 1:15:20.920 one day and you realize you're never going to be 1:15:21.680 --> 1:15:25.960 promoted into the top job. What was that like? 1:15:28.439 --> 1:15:31.880 You know, you're kind of taught that that's what you're 1:15:31.880 --> 1:15:36.559 supposed to do. But you know, Bob, what I hated was. 1:15:36.600 --> 1:15:39.720 You know, there were different times where I was a 1:15:39.840 --> 1:15:44.000 department head or East Coast department head or whatever, you know, 1:15:44.080 --> 1:15:45.920 and they come to you and say, okay, you have 1:15:45.920 --> 1:15:50.000 a four percent pool, split it up between your people. 1:15:50.800 --> 1:15:52.960 So okay, so I'm going to give this one three 1:15:53.000 --> 1:15:56.240 point seventy five and piss them off. And then I'm 1:15:56.240 --> 1:15:58.920 going to give four point twenty five to this one 1:15:58.960 --> 1:16:01.000 and they're going to say it's not enough for what 1:16:01.120 --> 1:16:04.280 I did. I just hated all that. You know, I 1:16:04.320 --> 1:16:09.040 hated it, and I wasn't very good at it. You know. 1:16:09.360 --> 1:16:15.560 It's I was good at getting people excited and interested 1:16:15.760 --> 1:16:19.559 and you know, going out and explaining why we should 1:16:19.640 --> 1:16:23.040 break this act, you know, and getting people in the 1:16:23.120 --> 1:16:26.160 company into it. You know, so much of it was 1:16:26.720 --> 1:16:30.479 working the assistance. The secretaries knew more was going on 1:16:30.560 --> 1:16:33.280 than anybody, and they were the ones who could spread 1:16:33.320 --> 1:16:36.599 the word. You know, this secretary of the Dallas branch 1:16:36.720 --> 1:16:39.880 was talking to this secretary and promotion and they were 1:16:39.880 --> 1:16:41.479 both excited about a band. 1:16:41.960 --> 1:16:42.160 You know. 1:16:42.439 --> 1:16:46.360 That's that's how things would get started, you know. So 1:16:47.479 --> 1:16:50.320 that's what I loved. I you know, I didn't like 1:16:50.920 --> 1:16:54.320 the management stuff. I was better at it later in life, 1:16:54.880 --> 1:16:58.320 but in that time and finally, what I I just 1:16:58.479 --> 1:17:02.920 came to the conclusion, screw it. You know, I'm just 1:17:02.960 --> 1:17:06.599 going to work these acts. That's what I like to do. 1:17:06.720 --> 1:17:10.559 That's what I know what to do. It's the small 1:17:10.640 --> 1:17:15.599 problem solving. You know. A product manager didn't ever take 1:17:15.640 --> 1:17:18.680 a record order, didn't ever get a record plate on 1:17:18.720 --> 1:17:21.720 the radio. But we were in charge of all the 1:17:21.960 --> 1:17:25.840 screw ups, you know, and you know something was going wrong, 1:17:25.920 --> 1:17:28.880 it's like, go fix that, you know. And I liked 1:17:28.960 --> 1:17:33.000 that and looking for ways of turning on the field 1:17:33.040 --> 1:17:36.960 staff because we couldn't get to the consumer. You know, 1:17:37.000 --> 1:17:39.320 the only way to the consumer was through the record 1:17:39.400 --> 1:17:42.960 stores or through radio. You know, we didn't have enough 1:17:43.000 --> 1:17:45.760 money to market you know. I mean we could take 1:17:46.400 --> 1:17:51.240 three hundred sized ads and college papers for the Indigo girls. 1:17:51.320 --> 1:17:55.360 You know, we just didn't have the money for it. 1:17:55.439 --> 1:18:00.280 You know. I actually a number of years ago through 1:18:00.320 --> 1:18:02.559 some of my old notes, I wrote down what we 1:18:02.600 --> 1:18:06.000 did in nineteen ninety five, as far as how many 1:18:06.040 --> 1:18:11.600 posters we did, how many snipes we did on construction 1:18:11.760 --> 1:18:16.000 sites to announce shows, and how many TV spots, how 1:18:16.000 --> 1:18:19.000 many music videos you know. And by the way, that 1:18:19.120 --> 1:18:21.840 was one of the things that the product managers we 1:18:21.920 --> 1:18:27.840 started doing back around nineteen eighty and that was it 1:18:28.000 --> 1:18:33.320 fell to us to contract the video producers and directors. 1:18:34.000 --> 1:18:39.000 Okay, you worked with a lot of acts. Leave Michael 1:18:39.080 --> 1:18:41.760 Jackson aside, he's in his own world. What did you 1:18:41.880 --> 1:18:45.600 learn about musicians. 1:18:46.200 --> 1:18:51.839 That? I think the ones that sustain fundamentally keep it simple. 1:18:52.400 --> 1:18:56.479 I found the biggest acts that I worked with were 1:18:56.520 --> 1:19:01.720 the ones who were most grateful, were the easiest to 1:19:01.760 --> 1:19:07.280 talk to. They were also people that you could have 1:19:07.320 --> 1:19:11.600 a conversation about weaknesses, you know, strengths and weaknesses of 1:19:11.680 --> 1:19:15.760 their their career. You know that that if they were 1:19:15.800 --> 1:19:20.479 strong enough to be successful, they were strong enough to 1:19:20.680 --> 1:19:26.479 be objective about circumstances in their career, you know, and 1:19:26.760 --> 1:19:28.600 and hey, how do we overcome that? 1:19:28.960 --> 1:19:29.160 You know? 1:19:29.439 --> 1:19:34.360 And obviously the bigger part of that was leading on strengths, 1:19:34.680 --> 1:19:40.040 you know. The so I found the access sustain number one. 1:19:40.479 --> 1:19:44.640 They're hard working. You know, they work. If you have 1:19:45.040 --> 1:19:49.280 if you have a longer career, you've worked a long time. 1:19:49.560 --> 1:19:55.160 You know. It's Charlie Daniels on the nineteen was it 1:19:55.400 --> 1:20:01.519 seventy nine million mile Reflection album. The tie was based 1:20:01.600 --> 1:20:07.880 on his buses had traveled to me by nineteen seventy nine, 1:20:08.360 --> 1:20:12.519 So when you consider the man passed here just a 1:20:12.560 --> 1:20:15.720 few years ago, you know, the buses had a lot 1:20:15.800 --> 1:20:18.840 more miles on him. And you know, I saw that 1:20:18.880 --> 1:20:24.200 with Gloria Estefan. You know, Cyndi lauper Shade in her 1:20:24.280 --> 1:20:28.679 own way. She she didn't like all the promotion stuff, 1:20:28.720 --> 1:20:31.679 you know, and all that, but she had a sense 1:20:31.720 --> 1:20:35.160 of humor about it, and as cool and collective as 1:20:35.160 --> 1:20:38.439 she is, she's very nervous, very you know, It's like 1:20:39.040 --> 1:20:41.599 she didn't know what to say to salespeople or things 1:20:41.680 --> 1:20:45.719 like that, you know, and so she and I kind 1:20:45.720 --> 1:20:48.479 of made a deal on how we were going to 1:20:48.560 --> 1:20:51.519 do things. And you know, one of the things is 1:20:51.520 --> 1:20:54.000 is she said, you know, over the course of an album, 1:20:54.320 --> 1:20:57.880 she said, it just never ends. Somebody pops up backstage 1:20:57.960 --> 1:20:59.920 and you know, all of a sudden, I'm supposed to 1:20:59.960 --> 1:21:04.519 do something. And I went back to all the people 1:21:04.840 --> 1:21:10.599 from publicity, sales, promotion, and I said, look, I think 1:21:10.640 --> 1:21:17.080 it's essential that we try to put everything in a 1:21:17.160 --> 1:21:21.920 time period that and I told her this, I said, 1:21:21.960 --> 1:21:24.120 I'm going to go back to the label. She told me, 1:21:24.280 --> 1:21:27.920 she said, it just totally freaks me out. And I said, 1:21:28.720 --> 1:21:31.799 I said, how about if you give us a month 1:21:32.600 --> 1:21:36.280 just before the release. And of course now we'd had 1:21:36.640 --> 1:21:40.439 a huge hit, a four million seller, so we had 1:21:40.479 --> 1:21:44.000 a little more control of the marketplace. But I said, 1:21:45.320 --> 1:21:47.720 give us a month. I said, you're gonna hate it. 1:21:48.000 --> 1:21:51.000 You're going to hate every second of it. But we're 1:21:51.040 --> 1:21:54.400 going to put everything in that month, and when that 1:21:54.520 --> 1:21:57.679 month ends, no one is going to bother you. I said, 1:21:57.960 --> 1:21:59.519 I'm going to go back and try to sell that 1:22:00.240 --> 1:22:03.360 to the people at the label. I went back, and 1:22:04.560 --> 1:22:10.400 you know, for all the you know dysfunctioned sometimes of 1:22:10.479 --> 1:22:13.920 record labels and things like that, everybody came to the 1:22:13.960 --> 1:22:18.560 party and agreed. And we did that on every subsequent 1:22:18.600 --> 1:22:21.240 album that I worked on with her. And I would 1:22:21.280 --> 1:22:24.040 tease her in front, so a month is coming up 1:22:24.080 --> 1:22:28.360 that you hate, you know, and she'd laugh and said, yes, 1:22:28.479 --> 1:22:32.799 I could. I hate it. But we crammed everything into 1:22:32.880 --> 1:22:36.200 that month. You know, we tried to you know, have 1:22:36.280 --> 1:22:41.880 a vision for what was needed for every single, and 1:22:41.960 --> 1:22:45.439 you know, and it was easier with her to kind 1:22:45.439 --> 1:22:49.440 of understand how the flow should happen on single releases. 1:22:49.880 --> 1:22:54.479 You know, I think other artists it wasn't so kind 1:22:54.520 --> 1:22:58.280 of uniform, you know, maybe Luther Vandros. You know, it's 1:22:58.320 --> 1:23:03.519 a Luther was great working with Luther. Luther. Luther would 1:23:03.800 --> 1:23:06.960 say to me, you know, because I'd give him the 1:23:06.960 --> 1:23:11.960 bad news too, that he would say things like, Dan, 1:23:12.880 --> 1:23:18.479 don't make me eat donuts, which meant which meant if 1:23:19.520 --> 1:23:22.439 if I gave him bad news, he was going to 1:23:22.520 --> 1:23:27.439 go on a bingch. We just had so much fun. 1:23:27.720 --> 1:23:31.400 We were at one video shoot. 1:23:30.600 --> 1:23:33.400 And he had his little posse there and it was 1:23:33.439 --> 1:23:36.719 before everybody's just having coffee or wait for the crew 1:23:36.800 --> 1:23:40.720 to set up, and Luther, I'm over on the other 1:23:40.800 --> 1:23:42.759 side of this warehouse where we're shooting. 1:23:43.240 --> 1:23:45.920 I'm gonna a cup of coffee. And Luther said, Hey, Dan, 1:23:46.160 --> 1:23:49.000 come over here when you get your coffee. So I 1:23:49.080 --> 1:23:52.559 go over and and he's got his buddy sitting around 1:23:52.560 --> 1:23:59.320 and he said, uh, Dan, you know this album and 1:23:59.439 --> 1:24:05.000 tour is going to become be the Picasso. And I said, wow, Luther, 1:24:05.080 --> 1:24:07.880 it's going to be that great and he said, no, Dan, 1:24:08.400 --> 1:24:10.920 he said, I'm going to take all the money from 1:24:10.960 --> 1:24:12.880 the tour and the album. I'm not going to buy it. 1:24:16.400 --> 1:24:19.679 And you know, Luther had an album every year because 1:24:20.200 --> 1:24:25.559 because he was a big shopper. But I loved working 1:24:25.600 --> 1:24:28.680 with it. He was he could be a pill, he was. 1:24:29.040 --> 1:24:31.800 He was tough on himself. After he was so tough 1:24:31.840 --> 1:24:34.800 on himself, he had to share it with you. 1:24:35.880 --> 1:24:39.800 So to what degree were these stars accessible or were 1:24:39.840 --> 1:24:43.080 there handlers managers in between and kept them from you. 1:24:44.120 --> 1:24:47.200 For the most part, with the managers and artists that 1:24:47.240 --> 1:24:51.679 I worked with them very sharing. I think partly because 1:24:52.200 --> 1:24:57.080 the managers who managed those acts on that level had 1:24:57.120 --> 1:24:59.920 a lot more confidence than themselves. You know, if you 1:25:00.000 --> 1:25:03.840 we had a young manager, you know sometimes they you know, 1:25:03.920 --> 1:25:07.960 they would get protective, but they're really protecting their own 1:25:08.360 --> 1:25:11.360 their own situation. You know. I would see a lot 1:25:11.360 --> 1:25:16.120 of like young English managers come over and basically they 1:25:16.120 --> 1:25:19.519 were intimidated by the United States. You know, it's too big, 1:25:19.640 --> 1:25:24.320 you know, it's a mess, merchants, you know, world, it's 1:25:24.439 --> 1:25:28.240 you know, you go on a chain of radio stations, 1:25:28.240 --> 1:25:31.200 you go in a chain of record stores, you know, 1:25:31.439 --> 1:25:35.040 and it was scary to some of those those managers, 1:25:35.240 --> 1:25:38.400 and so they, you know, sometimes they would really kind 1:25:38.439 --> 1:25:42.479 of put a defense up, you know. But part of 1:25:42.520 --> 1:25:47.160 our philosophy was to try to get a young manager 1:25:47.760 --> 1:25:51.240 and educate them and train them about how the company worked, 1:25:51.680 --> 1:25:56.000 because if they could push our buttons properly, it was 1:25:56.040 --> 1:25:58.439 going to help us, you know. So if we could 1:25:58.439 --> 1:26:01.400 get a young manager to know how to work, you know, 1:26:01.439 --> 1:26:05.000 we tell him, hey, here's Jack Chase is the branch 1:26:05.080 --> 1:26:08.200 manager in Dallas, and here's the music he likes, you know, 1:26:08.280 --> 1:26:11.040 and this is the bourbon he likes it, you know. 1:26:11.240 --> 1:26:14.120 And he's a guy who will step out on a 1:26:14.200 --> 1:26:16.960 record and I think he's going to like yours, you know, 1:26:17.200 --> 1:26:20.360 and so we you know, you try to do that 1:26:20.520 --> 1:26:25.080 to kind of get these people, you know, as a 1:26:25.120 --> 1:26:28.320 manager and an artist, they've got a booking agent, maybe 1:26:28.360 --> 1:26:32.840 an outside publicist, the road manager. That's their world, you know, 1:26:32.960 --> 1:26:36.360 and they're coming into a big corporation. So it was 1:26:36.439 --> 1:26:40.920 like trying to demystify the corporation and get people to 1:26:41.000 --> 1:26:43.720 realize it's just a bunch of people. If we can 1:26:43.800 --> 1:26:46.960 work the people, you know, we can maybe get someplace. 1:26:57.800 --> 1:27:04.160 Okay, here's the manager basically a traffic cop and just 1:27:04.200 --> 1:27:08.200 putting the pieces together for other people or what kind 1:27:08.200 --> 1:27:10.560 of decisions does a product manager. 1:27:10.200 --> 1:27:14.439 Make that that's that's a lot of it, Bob. You know, 1:27:15.240 --> 1:27:21.400 essentially you're a coordinator. You're dealing with every department. As 1:27:21.439 --> 1:27:25.040 we got into it, we had a one sheet that 1:27:25.280 --> 1:27:31.880 was a budget sheet for every aspect. You know, how 1:27:31.960 --> 1:27:35.479 much of the DJ's going to cost? You know, you know, 1:27:35.560 --> 1:27:39.200 what's that inner sleeve cost? What? You know? But the 1:27:39.240 --> 1:27:41.800 product manager would go to the head of promotion, and 1:27:41.840 --> 1:27:44.360 the head of promotion would say what that number is 1:27:44.680 --> 1:27:47.519 for their promotion budget. Hey, this is what I'm going 1:27:47.560 --> 1:27:50.519 to spend on tip sheets. You know, we're going to 1:27:50.600 --> 1:27:54.800 work with an indie budget of X. Put that in there, 1:27:55.120 --> 1:27:59.439 you know. And then I was essentially ahead of East 1:27:59.439 --> 1:28:02.800 Coast product management for almost all that time that I 1:28:02.840 --> 1:28:06.400 was a product manager, So that would come back to me, 1:28:06.720 --> 1:28:10.360 and then I would have discussions with the president or 1:28:10.439 --> 1:28:15.760 vice president you know, of marketing basically talking about, hey, 1:28:15.800 --> 1:28:19.400 we got this number, you might want to question it, 1:28:19.560 --> 1:28:23.800 you know. And but a lot of product managers would 1:28:24.400 --> 1:28:28.320 initially feel kind of helpless. You know. Number one, they 1:28:28.400 --> 1:28:33.200 usually got artists who were down the priority list, and 1:28:33.479 --> 1:28:36.320 you know, so they get anxious and want to spend 1:28:36.360 --> 1:28:39.639 some money, and it's like, this is a business where 1:28:40.400 --> 1:28:43.360 you hold your cards. You hold your cards until something 1:28:43.439 --> 1:28:47.280 tells you something that you can leverage with a little 1:28:47.320 --> 1:28:50.680 bit of money, you know, and otherwise it's not going 1:28:50.760 --> 1:28:54.559 to not going to help. As a senior product manager 1:28:54.680 --> 1:28:58.800 and as the East Coast had and later when I 1:28:58.880 --> 1:29:01.640 was senior VP of mar Marketing and Sales, you know, 1:29:01.720 --> 1:29:06.960 I was designating what our price and positioning budget would 1:29:07.000 --> 1:29:11.880 be with the accounts, what the what kind of video 1:29:11.920 --> 1:29:15.640 budget we needed. If we were tour supporting, you know, 1:29:16.200 --> 1:29:20.080 I would be negotiating with a manager about how much 1:29:20.200 --> 1:29:24.479 money to get, how many dates involved. You know, it's 1:29:24.840 --> 1:29:29.040 you know, I'd sit down with a manager who come 1:29:29.080 --> 1:29:31.040 in with, you know, well we're going to stay at 1:29:31.040 --> 1:29:34.519 the Hilton and blah blah blah, and I'd say, well, look, 1:29:34.960 --> 1:29:38.080 you know you could probably weasel about thirty thousand dollars 1:29:38.120 --> 1:29:40.400 out of us if you want that the last two 1:29:40.439 --> 1:29:46.400 weeks or three months. You know, I think you'd make 1:29:46.439 --> 1:29:49.799 a better decision if you went with the three months, 1:29:49.880 --> 1:29:53.479 you know. And so once again it was educating people 1:29:53.600 --> 1:29:56.320 to say, you know, we got to hang in there 1:29:56.320 --> 1:30:00.479 for the long run. Our spending is better down the road. 1:30:00.800 --> 1:30:03.719 We need to get something going without the spend to start. 1:30:04.640 --> 1:30:10.400 Did you ever negotiate with the artist teams over who 1:30:10.479 --> 1:30:13.800 was going to pay or basically you argue who of 1:30:13.840 --> 1:30:16.240 a number and it's always charged to the artist's account. 1:30:17.520 --> 1:30:23.160 Yeah, there were. Basically we kind of established some levels. 1:30:23.479 --> 1:30:28.720 Initially it was on music videos. It was if it 1:30:28.760 --> 1:30:32.840 was a superstar artist, it was like, hey, one hundred 1:30:32.920 --> 1:30:38.679 thousand dollars and it's it's fifty to fifty and over 1:30:38.720 --> 1:30:43.520 one hundred thousand indulgence, so that's yours. You know, we'll 1:30:43.600 --> 1:30:46.200 pay it, but it's going to be charged back, you know. 1:30:46.640 --> 1:30:48.960 And then you know, sometimes I'd be on the phone 1:30:49.000 --> 1:30:54.280 with an Emilio Estefon or you know, and say, hey, 1:30:54.520 --> 1:30:57.200 you need to call you need to call Dave, you 1:30:57.280 --> 1:30:59.680 need to you know, if I thought there was some 1:31:00.200 --> 1:31:03.400 wrangling that a manager could do, I'd tried to let 1:31:03.479 --> 1:31:07.519 them know. There was one time when an artist came 1:31:07.520 --> 1:31:12.880 in renegotiating their deal after the first huge album, and 1:31:14.200 --> 1:31:18.400 I got a deal sheet back that said that the 1:31:18.520 --> 1:31:26.000 music budget would be completely a marketing cost. And I 1:31:26.080 --> 1:31:29.360 went back to business affairs and said, this is an 1:31:29.400 --> 1:31:34.960 absolute disaster. You have to have the artist having some 1:31:35.120 --> 1:31:37.439 skin in the game. Otherwise they're just going to they 1:31:37.479 --> 1:31:40.320 don't care, They're just going to you know, So we'll 1:31:40.479 --> 1:31:43.880 have a seventy five thousand dollars video budget that's going 1:31:43.960 --> 1:31:46.600 to go to four hundred thousand. You know, we have 1:31:46.760 --> 1:31:50.200 to cap it somewhere, you know. And at times, once again, 1:31:50.280 --> 1:31:53.800 there would be negotiations on it. You know, it might 1:31:53.880 --> 1:31:58.479 be you know, Dave Glue might say, hey, look, if 1:31:58.520 --> 1:32:03.559 we hit this level, I'll make it one hundred percent marketing, 1:32:03.760 --> 1:32:05.600 you know, that kind of thing. So there was a 1:32:05.600 --> 1:32:07.840 lot of give and take on those things. You know, 1:32:08.080 --> 1:32:12.760 as you know, Bob that the labels always had the 1:32:12.880 --> 1:32:17.280 leverage in those situations. You know, we were essentially given 1:32:17.560 --> 1:32:21.559 guidelines you have to come into this, you know, and 1:32:21.640 --> 1:32:24.759 if again, if there was a problem with an artist 1:32:24.840 --> 1:32:29.080 or manager, it was just hey, here's here's how you 1:32:29.200 --> 1:32:32.160 might be able to deal with it, you know. And 1:32:32.920 --> 1:32:37.040 you know, different managers might have a different relationship with 1:32:37.160 --> 1:32:40.439 different people, you know, it's like, oh, hey, talk to 1:32:40.520 --> 1:32:43.519 Richard Griffiths. You know, he's going to get you. Talk 1:32:43.560 --> 1:32:45.679 to Dave, he's going to get you. You know, talk 1:32:45.720 --> 1:32:48.360 to Waldert you know. I mean, you know some of 1:32:48.400 --> 1:32:53.080 the artists you know, had great relationships with Yetnikov. You know, 1:32:53.280 --> 1:32:54.439 it's in his day. 1:32:55.320 --> 1:32:58.360 So okay, you make a point in the book that 1:32:58.640 --> 1:33:02.640 Dave Glue hipped the company to the economics and the 1:33:02.680 --> 1:33:07.200 business more than previous major domos. Can tell me about that. 1:33:08.640 --> 1:33:13.639 Yeah, Dave really instituted this one sheet with the costs 1:33:13.680 --> 1:33:18.120 on it, and you know, we would have a one 1:33:18.240 --> 1:33:22.760 seat every six months, a sit down and Dave would 1:33:22.840 --> 1:33:31.559 bring in those worksheets with the actuals beside them and said, well, hey, 1:33:31.600 --> 1:33:36.599 you guys, you know, promotion, product management, you guys were 1:33:36.920 --> 1:33:39.920 talking you needed X amount of DJs and that sort 1:33:39.960 --> 1:33:45.599 of thing. Why is it four times? You know, and 1:33:46.560 --> 1:33:49.920 you know some of the just natural aspects of that 1:33:50.080 --> 1:33:54.120 were the simple things. So just realizing, hey, if it's 1:33:54.120 --> 1:33:57.559 a pop record, you're going to use more DJs than 1:33:57.640 --> 1:34:00.200 you are on a rock dricord, you know, and it's 1:34:00.240 --> 1:34:04.240 just but people saying oh yeah, let's just uh, let's 1:34:04.560 --> 1:34:09.240 let's order the DJs nobody was looking at those at 1:34:09.280 --> 1:34:14.479 those fundamental costs. So a lot of it was learning, hey, 1:34:14.760 --> 1:34:20.679 we if we're more efficient, we'll have more money later 1:34:20.760 --> 1:34:24.120 in the game to invest in it in trying to 1:34:24.160 --> 1:34:27.080 break a band if we don't waste it, you know, 1:34:27.280 --> 1:34:31.760 and other things like I know on my list from 1:34:31.880 --> 1:34:36.840 nineteen ninety five, we did sixty three videos that year, 1:34:37.760 --> 1:34:41.800 and I think, what was it how many we had. 1:34:42.479 --> 1:34:44.599 I think we had five that went to number one, 1:34:45.360 --> 1:34:49.720 and we had nine that were top ten, and we 1:34:49.960 --> 1:34:54.840 charted something like half of them, you know. But what 1:34:54.880 --> 1:34:59.680 was really interesting was is that and this is one 1:34:59.680 --> 1:35:04.080 of the areas where it was, well, we couldn't get 1:35:04.120 --> 1:35:07.519 that first video on the air, why did we do 1:35:07.640 --> 1:35:08.360 the second one? 1:35:09.040 --> 1:35:09.240 You know? 1:35:09.880 --> 1:35:13.760 Yeah, or the third one? You know, And it was 1:35:13.840 --> 1:35:17.800 just hope on hope, you know, and and you know, 1:35:17.920 --> 1:35:21.759 there were times we needed to make those risks. Living Color, 1:35:22.200 --> 1:35:26.559 the first video we did the company's hair was on 1:35:26.600 --> 1:35:29.040 fire about living color. This is going to be the 1:35:29.080 --> 1:35:31.840 greatest thing on earth, you know, Mick Jagger's behind it, 1:35:31.880 --> 1:35:36.560 blah blah blah. And they're so cool. There's such great players, 1:35:36.680 --> 1:35:41.280 and there's and they were so colorful and great live 1:35:41.439 --> 1:35:47.560 on stage and we made a video on Middleman and 1:35:47.760 --> 1:35:52.040 they brought it, you know, a couple of people. I 1:35:52.080 --> 1:35:55.160 don't know what there was who was involved in it, 1:35:55.240 --> 1:35:57.120 but some of the people who got involved and they 1:35:57.720 --> 1:36:01.040 got like some really arty person to come in to 1:36:01.080 --> 1:36:04.880 do the video and everybody thought that was cool. Well 1:36:05.040 --> 1:36:09.479 the video we took it to MTV and they said, yeah, 1:36:09.640 --> 1:36:15.080 you know, and so what happened was you know, and 1:36:15.080 --> 1:36:18.760 then Jim Grant and Roger Kramer were the managers who 1:36:18.760 --> 1:36:21.559 were on the phone to me about nineteen times a day. 1:36:21.880 --> 1:36:27.639 It's Jim still apologizing for that, and I love them 1:36:27.640 --> 1:36:31.280 for it. It's uh the But anyway, Jim was calling 1:36:31.320 --> 1:36:33.439 me up and said, damn, we got to do another video. 1:36:33.479 --> 1:36:38.040 And I said, you know, Jim, there's no way I'm 1:36:38.040 --> 1:36:40.160 going to get disapproved. I mean, you know, we just 1:36:40.240 --> 1:36:43.840 don't have anything, you know, and I said we They 1:36:43.840 --> 1:36:46.800 were out doing some dates, you know, Toads and New 1:36:46.840 --> 1:36:49.639 Haven and you know, playing the clubs in New York 1:36:49.720 --> 1:36:54.640 and going down to Philadelphia and says that we just 1:36:54.640 --> 1:36:57.840 need to expand that in the Northeast. You know, let's 1:36:57.880 --> 1:37:00.719 see if we could sell some records and then I'll 1:37:00.760 --> 1:37:03.840 go back in and see if we can get some money. Well, 1:37:04.479 --> 1:37:08.800 that's what happened that band. The reason the Cult of 1:37:08.840 --> 1:37:13.519 Personality video blew up that band was because the band 1:37:13.560 --> 1:37:17.080 went out and work their butts off in clubs and 1:37:17.160 --> 1:37:21.880 started selling records. That gave us the ability to convince 1:37:23.680 --> 1:37:28.720 the bosses to let us shoot another video. And you know, 1:37:28.760 --> 1:37:33.080 we had something going, and then we shot Cult and 1:37:33.760 --> 1:37:38.120 Cult didn't go on MTV, but it went on a 1:37:38.280 --> 1:37:43.600 video local video program in Denver, and I think it 1:37:43.680 --> 1:37:47.200 was called the Colorado Music Channel or something, but it was, 1:37:47.280 --> 1:37:52.720 you know, just an independent music video channel. And the 1:37:52.760 --> 1:37:57.960 branch manager for that area called me up and said, hey, 1:37:58.040 --> 1:38:01.800 we're seeing some sales here, you know, and there's nothing. 1:38:01.840 --> 1:38:04.320 There's no radio, are player or anything. It's got to come. 1:38:04.760 --> 1:38:06.840 The band hasn't been through here. It's got to be 1:38:06.880 --> 1:38:09.960 coming from that video. So we watched it a couple 1:38:09.920 --> 1:38:13.519 of weeks and then I think Harvey leads I took 1:38:14.280 --> 1:38:18.639 the information to Harvey. Harvey went over to MTV and 1:38:18.920 --> 1:38:21.719 they didn't believe him at first, and he came back 1:38:21.960 --> 1:38:25.720 the next week with more information and then they put 1:38:25.760 --> 1:38:29.559 it into head Banger's Ball and boom. We immediately saw 1:38:30.000 --> 1:38:33.200 you know, ones and twos and threes and fives around 1:38:33.200 --> 1:38:36.880 the country, and we brought that back to MTV and 1:38:36.920 --> 1:38:39.639 then they played it some more. You know. We got 1:38:39.720 --> 1:38:44.120 kind of into weekly rotation at head Banger's Ball, and 1:38:44.160 --> 1:38:48.400 then it went into regular rotation and boom the record blow, 1:38:48.720 --> 1:38:51.080 you know, and of course the band was out there touring, 1:38:51.160 --> 1:38:54.200 you know, doing the clubs, you know, so they could 1:38:54.200 --> 1:38:54.800 back it up. 1:38:55.960 --> 1:39:01.120 Okay, so Dangerous is put to bed. When's the first 1:39:01.120 --> 1:39:02.800 time you get in inkling there's going to be a 1:39:02.840 --> 1:39:03.439 new album. 1:39:05.720 --> 1:39:13.840 Well, so we finished that campaign basically in March of 1:39:13.960 --> 1:39:17.360 nineteen ninety three. That's when we had finished Oprah in 1:39:17.400 --> 1:39:20.679 the Super Bowl, and then Michael was off on tour, 1:39:20.920 --> 1:39:25.920 the Dangerous Tour internationally that summer, so we didn't see him, 1:39:26.280 --> 1:39:29.240 you know, he was in the hands of the International company, 1:39:29.479 --> 1:39:34.080 you know, and other territories, and we were fundamentally wrapped 1:39:34.160 --> 1:39:38.600 up with our campaign. We were probably sixteen months seventeen 1:39:38.640 --> 1:39:42.320 months into it, and so we were kind of quiet. 1:39:42.360 --> 1:39:44.439 The only thing I was trying to do was finish 1:39:44.960 --> 1:39:48.559 the Dangerous home video, which I thought I was going 1:39:48.640 --> 1:39:51.800 to finish in three weeks, and it was fourteen months later. 1:39:52.640 --> 1:39:58.559 Michael was still making changes, and so that summer, you know, 1:39:58.640 --> 1:40:01.200 I didn't see him or hear from him or anything. 1:40:01.960 --> 1:40:06.760 And then that August is when the initial charges came out. 1:40:07.600 --> 1:40:11.519 And that went on until the end of January of 1:40:11.640 --> 1:40:16.800 ninety four, and at that point we heard on the 1:40:16.840 --> 1:40:24.559 news Michael had settled. And as I've heard later, you know, 1:40:24.880 --> 1:40:27.920 as I heard shortly after that, it was that his 1:40:28.040 --> 1:40:31.120 attorneys told him, settle, get it over with, get it, 1:40:31.439 --> 1:40:33.800 get it out of the way. It's if you could 1:40:33.920 --> 1:40:40.400 try to beat this, but you're just going to linger it. 1:40:40.400 --> 1:40:44.080 It's just going to get muddier and mundier. Just settle. 1:40:44.479 --> 1:40:47.680 So that was kind of the word. And later it 1:40:47.760 --> 1:40:51.320 was actually years later that I had heard that it 1:40:51.400 --> 1:40:54.599 wasn't the attorneys, it was the insurance company. And the 1:40:54.600 --> 1:41:00.439 insurance company didn't even consult the attorneys or Michael. They 1:41:00.439 --> 1:41:04.600 said we're settling, and so Michael really didn't have a 1:41:04.720 --> 1:41:08.320 chance to do that. But anyway, so in January, so 1:41:08.880 --> 1:41:12.760 now it's on the news, Michael settled, you know, And 1:41:13.680 --> 1:41:17.960 through that those dark months before that, I thought I'm 1:41:18.000 --> 1:41:20.720 never going to see him again. It's ober, you know, 1:41:20.840 --> 1:41:23.479 it's just I mean, who could come back from something 1:41:23.600 --> 1:41:27.160 like that. I just didn't seem possible to me. So 1:41:27.840 --> 1:41:32.160 I go into a marketing meeting end of January nineteen 1:41:32.200 --> 1:41:36.559 ninety four. Dave turned to me and said, crank it 1:41:36.640 --> 1:41:40.320 up there, We're going to do the greatest hits. And 1:41:40.320 --> 1:41:46.920 Michael had actually been in recording stuff previously, probably for 1:41:47.000 --> 1:41:51.640 the the last year whenever he was, you know, on 1:41:51.680 --> 1:41:55.880 the West coast, and you know, the formula back then 1:41:56.280 --> 1:42:00.639 was record two new songs, we'll put them on the radio, 1:42:00.760 --> 1:42:04.080 and we'll put ten hits on there. And we've got 1:42:04.120 --> 1:42:07.280 the formula for the greatest hits, you know. So anyway, 1:42:07.800 --> 1:42:12.400 then Dave and I went out to LA and went 1:42:12.439 --> 1:42:16.439 to the studio and Michael played us some tracks, no 1:42:16.600 --> 1:42:20.840 vocals on or anything. Played this a few tracks. He 1:42:20.960 --> 1:42:27.040 was very upbeat and turned to Dave and said, Dave, 1:42:27.120 --> 1:42:32.120 I've got five new songs and number one. I'm thinking, 1:42:32.320 --> 1:42:34.719 how do we get his greatest hits on a single 1:42:34.800 --> 1:42:37.280 album to begin with? You know, I mean, you know 1:42:37.840 --> 1:42:40.519 Thriller was the greatest hits out, you know, and you 1:42:40.520 --> 1:42:43.479 know there are five hit singles off of Off the 1:42:43.520 --> 1:42:49.240 Wall or whatever. And so then Dave and I are like, okay, 1:42:49.360 --> 1:42:52.040 if we get into a double album. What you know, 1:42:53.200 --> 1:42:56.040 you know, and I think you know, for Dave, there's 1:42:56.080 --> 1:43:03.800 a lot of pressure from Matola and uh, you know, 1:43:04.360 --> 1:43:08.280 the the leadership camp that wait a minute, how much 1:43:08.360 --> 1:43:11.480 is this going to cost? And we just had a 1:43:11.520 --> 1:43:15.400 scandal and you know, wait a minute, you know, what 1:43:15.400 --> 1:43:18.400 are we what are we doing here? But but Dave 1:43:19.040 --> 1:43:25.400 sold Michael's idea of the double album to Tommy and 1:43:25.479 --> 1:43:30.439 mel Oberman and and off we went. So that end 1:43:30.479 --> 1:43:36.240 of that January, then we started scrambling to put it together. 1:43:36.560 --> 1:43:39.840 And then it was like trying to get Michael to 1:43:40.000 --> 1:43:43.679 visualize the album out because he was in the studio 1:43:44.640 --> 1:43:48.959 where he has lots lots of fun, there's no judgment. 1:43:49.640 --> 1:43:54.160 He's with people he loves, he's doing stuff he loves 1:43:54.200 --> 1:43:59.200 the most. It's such a protected environment. We had to 1:43:59.240 --> 1:44:04.320 convince him it was just as nice going up the charts, 1:44:04.720 --> 1:44:09.080 you know, so and of course, you know, you had 1:44:09.080 --> 1:44:11.880 to know that in the back of Michael's mind is 1:44:12.120 --> 1:44:17.120 you know, as optimistic of a person as he was. 1:44:17.240 --> 1:44:20.160 He had to have a sense of am I still 1:44:20.479 --> 1:44:23.679 valid out there? So trying to convince him and then 1:44:24.400 --> 1:44:28.679 that's where we came up with a title to work with, 1:44:28.880 --> 1:44:33.200 and then visual ideas to get him to start living 1:44:33.240 --> 1:44:35.480 with the idea of it released. 1:44:35.880 --> 1:44:38.120 You know, Okay, you came up with the name of 1:44:38.160 --> 1:44:39.559 the album. Tell us about that. 1:44:40.840 --> 1:44:44.800 Dave and Polly Anthony and I would meet often in 1:44:44.880 --> 1:44:47.040 Dave's office kind at the end of the day, you know, 1:44:47.120 --> 1:44:51.280 six forty five, seven o'clock, and I'd come up with 1:44:51.560 --> 1:44:54.240 kind of the issues of the day, you know, oh, 1:44:54.320 --> 1:44:57.720 we're having trouble finishing this video or you know what 1:44:57.880 --> 1:45:01.679 this is going on with It was always a Michael 1:45:02.120 --> 1:45:04.800 tale to it, you know. And we were up there 1:45:05.400 --> 1:45:09.320 basically talking about, you know, getting Michael to visualize the 1:45:09.400 --> 1:45:15.599 album out, and uh, you know, I said, we don't 1:45:15.600 --> 1:45:18.000 have a title. We don't have any visuals or anything, 1:45:18.080 --> 1:45:21.080 you know, And you know, Dave said, you know, call 1:45:21.240 --> 1:45:23.360 Sandy and see if we can get a title out 1:45:23.400 --> 1:45:28.559 of Michael. You know. So I called. I called Sandy 1:45:28.640 --> 1:45:32.120 and I said, you know, does Michael have any ideas 1:45:32.560 --> 1:45:37.240 for the title for the album? And Sandy said, well, no, 1:45:37.280 --> 1:45:39.439 why don't you come up with Why don't you guys 1:45:39.640 --> 1:45:43.800 come up with something? And I said, geez, Sady, it's 1:45:43.840 --> 1:45:46.880 a little personal. You know, this is his greatest hits. 1:45:47.120 --> 1:45:51.000 You know, I think maybe we should ask him. So 1:45:51.479 --> 1:45:54.040 Sandy said, okay, I'll ask it. So anyway, I took 1:45:54.080 --> 1:45:57.160 that story back to Dave and Polly. We all laughed 1:45:57.160 --> 1:46:02.120 to check her head. And so the next Sandy called 1:46:02.160 --> 1:46:05.720 me and said, well, I spoke to Michael and he 1:46:05.760 --> 1:46:09.240 doesn't have any ideas and he wants you guys to 1:46:09.240 --> 1:46:13.200 think about it. So okay, all right. So I go 1:46:13.320 --> 1:46:21.320 back that night to Polly and Dave, and Polly said 1:46:21.400 --> 1:46:27.679 the perfect thing. She said, just kind of wistfully, said, 1:46:28.120 --> 1:46:30.200 you know, I just wish Michael could come up with 1:46:30.240 --> 1:46:35.000 an idea like the Immaculate Collection by Madonna. It was 1:46:35.040 --> 1:46:39.840 such a cool title for a greatst dance and you know, 1:46:40.120 --> 1:46:44.040 and I walked away from that meeting and I thought, wow, 1:46:44.240 --> 1:46:48.040 she's right, you know, that's what we need. So on 1:46:48.080 --> 1:46:52.640 the train going home to Long Island that night, I 1:46:52.680 --> 1:46:57.040 got to thinking about what Michael had said in the studio, 1:46:57.280 --> 1:46:59.800 and that was and what was being talked about is 1:46:59.840 --> 1:47:03.040 that there'd be one album that was the greatest hits 1:47:03.240 --> 1:47:05.920 and the other album that would be the new songs. 1:47:06.600 --> 1:47:10.080 And by that time we kind of knew that Michael 1:47:10.280 --> 1:47:15.160 was writing some songs about what was happening to him. 1:47:15.560 --> 1:47:19.680 The new songs were going to be edgy. So I 1:47:19.760 --> 1:47:23.160 got to thinking, well, the old songs are his history, 1:47:23.760 --> 1:47:27.640 and these new songs are his story. And so that 1:47:27.800 --> 1:47:30.400 I wrote it down on a piece of paper capital 1:47:30.600 --> 1:47:36.120 H capital I capital S small t r Y, and 1:47:38.600 --> 1:47:43.680 the next day I sent it to Sandy and Just 1:47:44.479 --> 1:47:47.120 I faxed it to them. You know, we were dealing 1:47:47.160 --> 1:47:50.679 with factses and the trap like that. We didn't really 1:47:50.720 --> 1:47:57.080 Email wasn't even functional at the time anyway, so then 1:47:57.439 --> 1:48:01.040 we don't hear anything, and I ran the the idea 1:48:01.120 --> 1:48:04.760 by Polly and Dave and everybody kind of said, man, 1:48:05.160 --> 1:48:09.400 you know. And so about two weeks later, Dave is 1:48:09.439 --> 1:48:12.439 getting antsy and he said, we got to come up 1:48:12.479 --> 1:48:17.280 with some packaging, you know. He said, go out, go 1:48:17.320 --> 1:48:22.599 to Arnold Levine, who runs creative services for Sony, and 1:48:22.640 --> 1:48:26.679 he said, let's offer bounties fifteen hundred dollars twenty five 1:48:26.760 --> 1:48:33.240 hundred dollars for concepts for the album, and that Nancy 1:48:33.320 --> 1:48:37.000 Donald and Arnold would go out to ad agencies. They 1:48:37.840 --> 1:48:44.200 talked to their own creative services staff, designers, photographers to 1:48:45.120 --> 1:48:50.479 offer concepts for the album. So we ended up and 1:48:50.560 --> 1:48:54.360 they were all sent to Nancy Donald's office in LA 1:48:55.200 --> 1:48:58.559 and then Dave and Polly and I flew out and 1:48:58.640 --> 1:49:03.559 we went went to Sandy's office. I went with Arnold 1:49:03.640 --> 1:49:07.120 and Nancy and we rented a van and hauled all 1:49:07.240 --> 1:49:10.720 this stuff over to Sandy's office. There were concepts that 1:49:10.760 --> 1:49:16.400 were like books and big frame pictures and this all 1:49:16.439 --> 1:49:20.760 this concept stuff, and we're holing it up from the 1:49:20.800 --> 1:49:24.439 basement garage up to Sandy's office and into the his 1:49:24.600 --> 1:49:29.120 conference room. And as we're coming in with the first load, 1:49:30.120 --> 1:49:33.800 Sandy's assistant leaned around the corner and said, Hey, Dan, 1:49:33.960 --> 1:49:36.879 isn't it great. Michael's going to use your history concept. 1:49:38.800 --> 1:49:42.479 We're sitting there with about one hundred thousand dollars worth 1:49:42.520 --> 1:49:47.760 of concepts, and I thought Nancy and Arnold were going 1:49:47.840 --> 1:49:51.320 to kill me. It's like, oh my god, I felt 1:49:51.320 --> 1:49:55.559 about this big and I had no idea. So anyway, 1:49:55.560 --> 1:50:00.000 we haul all this stuff in and we win the conference. 1:50:00.080 --> 1:50:04.000 So Sandy comes in and Michael comes bouncing in and 1:50:04.920 --> 1:50:07.920 he loved the presentation, and he kind of giggled through 1:50:07.920 --> 1:50:11.360 the whole thing, and I guess he was thinking, yeah, 1:50:11.479 --> 1:50:15.360 I've already got this, but he wasn't telling. And we 1:50:15.439 --> 1:50:18.920 finished all the presentation and he and Sandy said, oh, 1:50:18.960 --> 1:50:22.840 thank you guys, this is great, wonderful. Thanks, no conclusion 1:50:23.320 --> 1:50:27.559 and we left. So we fly back to New York 1:50:27.720 --> 1:50:31.519 and we had something going on. I couldn't go right 1:50:31.560 --> 1:50:34.000 back out. I said, hey, Dave, I can go out. 1:50:34.080 --> 1:50:36.639 Week after next. I'll go back out and see if 1:50:36.680 --> 1:50:40.800 I can get this thing moving, you know, and you know, 1:50:40.920 --> 1:50:43.800 Nancy's got all those ideas there, and we'll see what 1:50:43.840 --> 1:50:47.599 we can do, and I'll find out what he's thinking 1:50:47.640 --> 1:50:51.080 on this history thing. So I fly out a week 1:50:51.080 --> 1:50:53.160 and a half later. Now we've been trying to get 1:50:53.200 --> 1:50:58.400 something going from months on this. Now it's like ten 1:50:58.479 --> 1:51:02.080 days from us hearing that he likes this history idea. 1:51:02.880 --> 1:51:05.559 We get out there, Nan I go to Nancy's office 1:51:05.560 --> 1:51:11.800 and she said, Michael's already got a vendor. Who are 1:51:11.880 --> 1:51:18.120 sculptors and computer animation people working on an idea and 1:51:18.160 --> 1:51:23.760 it's a statue. And it was like, uh oh, I 1:51:23.880 --> 1:51:26.800 knew there was no stopping him, you know, it was 1:51:27.400 --> 1:51:32.280 and we felt that, you know, Michael, I think really 1:51:32.479 --> 1:51:38.479 just took it as kind of sixth graders idea of history. Well, 1:51:38.479 --> 1:51:42.120 it's statues and it's you know, it's it's everything he 1:51:43.400 --> 1:51:45.880 you know, he learned in social studies class, you know. 1:51:46.400 --> 1:51:49.719 And in the meantime, we're going, oh my god, people 1:51:49.760 --> 1:51:53.280 are going to think he's a meglomaniac, you know, and 1:51:53.280 --> 1:51:56.360 and of course we faced that later, you know, but 1:51:56.880 --> 1:52:00.320 we couldn't we couldn't get him off the idea. 1:52:00.560 --> 1:52:03.639 Well, tell us about making the promotional teaser video. 1:52:06.160 --> 1:52:12.120 So Michael had ideas that he shared a little bit 1:52:12.160 --> 1:52:17.680 of it, but he wanted to get a director involved. 1:52:18.400 --> 1:52:24.040 And Scott Spanchik, who worked for me, who we brought 1:52:24.080 --> 1:52:29.120 in to kind of elevate our production abilities, and Scott 1:52:29.200 --> 1:52:35.160 was just amazing, and so Scott sent reels out to 1:52:35.280 --> 1:52:41.400 Sandy's office for Michael, and Michael honed in on, gosh, 1:52:41.479 --> 1:52:45.760 I'm forgetting his name now the director anyway, So we 1:52:45.760 --> 1:52:49.439 were just happy that there was something happening there. The 1:52:49.840 --> 1:52:54.920 kind of internal feeling was is that unless we go 1:52:55.040 --> 1:52:58.720 along with Michael's plan for the statue being in this 1:52:58.840 --> 1:53:03.120 teaser spot, he's not going to deliver the record. And 1:53:03.520 --> 1:53:08.519 so it just seemed like the statue video now, Michael said, oh, 1:53:08.600 --> 1:53:12.560 I want to do this as a teaser and I 1:53:12.960 --> 1:53:14.800 said to Michael at the time, I said, you know, 1:53:15.160 --> 1:53:18.760 but Michael's you have classical music on this, you know, 1:53:18.880 --> 1:53:23.240 in the plan, and I said, that's really not teasing 1:53:23.280 --> 1:53:27.960 the music for the album, and it just, you know, 1:53:28.080 --> 1:53:31.400 it didn't connect. He was so excited about his idea 1:53:31.560 --> 1:53:34.320 once again, once he got a B in his bonnet, 1:53:34.680 --> 1:53:37.960 you weren't going to change it, you know, And so 1:53:38.600 --> 1:53:41.840 we braced ourselves and we thought, you know, we'll just 1:53:42.720 --> 1:53:45.479 try to limit the use of this thing boom. We'll 1:53:45.479 --> 1:53:48.760 put it up there, well one weekend on MTV, and 1:53:48.920 --> 1:53:52.960 we'll shelve this thing, you know, and so that it, 1:53:53.560 --> 1:53:59.599 you know, doesn't create huge negatives. And so then they 1:53:59.680 --> 1:54:03.799 product company they came back to us and said, Michael 1:54:03.840 --> 1:54:11.479 wants to shoot in Hungary. And so anyway, we got 1:54:11.479 --> 1:54:15.920 the storyboards. We knew what was coming. You know, we 1:54:15.960 --> 1:54:18.880 didn't like it, but we knew what was coming. And 1:54:19.840 --> 1:54:21.840 all I was trying to do at that point was 1:54:21.920 --> 1:54:25.160 damage control things like you know, they had all these 1:54:25.200 --> 1:54:28.880 flags in it with symbols on them, and I said, 1:54:28.920 --> 1:54:31.640 you know, to the production company, I said, you have 1:54:31.760 --> 1:54:35.160 to understand, this is a global artist. You know, if 1:54:35.200 --> 1:54:38.880 one of those symbols means something in a country that 1:54:38.960 --> 1:54:42.160 we don't know what that means. We could have a 1:54:42.360 --> 1:54:44.840 terrible situation on our hands, you know. So there were 1:54:45.160 --> 1:54:48.560 things like that that we were trying to limit the 1:54:48.640 --> 1:54:52.080 possibilities of problems, you know. I mean, here we were, 1:54:52.480 --> 1:54:57.840 we're working on this, and this is after the scandal situation, 1:54:58.080 --> 1:55:02.240 so you know. And and in nineteen ninety four, and 1:55:02.760 --> 1:55:05.960 we brought Sandy and Michael in for this big marketing meeting. 1:55:06.680 --> 1:55:08.600 They're trying to get him out of the studio, and 1:55:08.640 --> 1:55:13.000 we brought everybody in from all different departments to talk 1:55:13.040 --> 1:55:15.600 about what they would do if he would deliver the 1:55:15.640 --> 1:55:22.320 greatest hits for the nineteen ninety four Christmas season. And 1:55:22.360 --> 1:55:24.560 at the end of that, I mean, we just threw 1:55:24.840 --> 1:55:28.680 every pots and pans, everything in the kitchen sink at it. 1:55:29.360 --> 1:55:33.240 And at the end of the meeting Sandy said, you know, 1:55:33.520 --> 1:55:37.560 Michael and I would like to sell one hundred million albums. 1:55:37.560 --> 1:55:39.680 That it just sucked the air out of the room. 1:55:40.160 --> 1:55:45.760 It's like our salespeople were like, we were just stunned. 1:55:46.120 --> 1:55:51.680 And so here we were facing this kind of unrealistic 1:55:52.360 --> 1:55:57.320 optimism versus the real roll up the sleeve issues that 1:55:57.360 --> 1:56:00.240 we had that we were trying to minimize how he 1:56:00.360 --> 1:56:04.600 might be portrayed by the media, and you know, we 1:56:04.600 --> 1:56:08.600 may have overreacted to that, but you know, Polly was 1:56:08.760 --> 1:56:13.760 definitely afraid of At one point, Sandy said, we want 1:56:13.880 --> 1:56:18.200 to have every radio station call Michael King of Pop 1:56:18.760 --> 1:56:22.080 and Polly said, you know, we got more of a 1:56:22.120 --> 1:56:26.480 fight at radio than you think, and if we do that, 1:56:27.040 --> 1:56:30.840 we're going to turn off some program directors. And so 1:56:30.920 --> 1:56:33.880 we fought that one off. But a lot of what 1:56:33.920 --> 1:56:36.640 we were trying to do at the time was just 1:56:36.880 --> 1:56:41.600 limit the damage. And you know, I think some of 1:56:41.640 --> 1:56:46.280 it we might have overreacted or we were trying to, 1:56:46.880 --> 1:56:52.800 you know, save two pebbles of sand on a big beach, 1:56:53.200 --> 1:56:55.120 But that's kind of what we were dealing with. 1:57:05.720 --> 1:57:09.280 So tell us about when he delivers the video and 1:57:09.320 --> 1:57:12.680 the promise made by the company relative to movie theaters. 1:57:13.760 --> 1:57:18.400 Yeah, it's We had this big marketing meeting on the 1:57:18.440 --> 1:57:24.120 West Coast and all the marketing had from around the world, 1:57:24.360 --> 1:57:31.920 New Zealand, Australia, Japan, you know, Israel, Germany, France, everybody, 1:57:32.000 --> 1:57:35.520 South America there all came. We were at the Peninsula 1:57:35.560 --> 1:57:38.120 Hotel and the I guess it's kind of a small 1:57:38.160 --> 1:57:42.160 ballroom there for a dinner. And that day there had 1:57:42.200 --> 1:57:47.040 been an international marketing meeting, and you know, and basically 1:57:47.760 --> 1:57:52.600 I had fed into Lisa Kramer, who was my counterpart internationally, 1:57:53.400 --> 1:57:57.280 and she made a presentation of all the tools we 1:57:57.280 --> 1:58:02.520 were making available, timetable, et cetera. And they had a 1:58:02.600 --> 1:58:07.600 very very successful meeting. Wasn't there, but they everybody came 1:58:07.640 --> 1:58:11.040 out of there just very very pumped. And you know, 1:58:11.120 --> 1:58:18.440 Michael's marketplace internationally was I kind of gauged it at 1:58:19.320 --> 1:58:21.800 we were thirty percent of the market in the US 1:58:22.120 --> 1:58:26.680 and North America and seventy percent was outside the US. 1:58:26.800 --> 1:58:30.400 I mean, he was much bigger internationally than he was 1:58:30.440 --> 1:58:34.680 in the States. And so anyway, they came out of 1:58:34.720 --> 1:58:39.040 the meeting, everybody's blowing. We have a big dinner. There's 1:58:39.640 --> 1:58:45.400 champagne flowing. Michael's there, and Mickey Schulhoff, who's chairman of 1:58:46.440 --> 1:58:55.440 Sony Entertainment, gets up and Michael had told him all 1:58:55.480 --> 1:58:59.920 about the teaser, and Mickey didn't have any other guy. 1:59:00.840 --> 1:59:04.160 You know, We're thinking, how we're gonna kind of keep 1:59:04.200 --> 1:59:07.520 this thing on the down low as much as we could, 1:59:08.560 --> 1:59:12.800 And so Mickey gets up at dinner and said, you know, Michael, 1:59:12.840 --> 1:59:16.320 I'm really excited about this teaser. I know you're excited 1:59:16.360 --> 1:59:18.600 about it. I'm going to make sure it goes in 1:59:18.720 --> 1:59:24.360 every Low's theater that Sony elms and Michael is just 1:59:26.600 --> 1:59:31.280 so excited and happy, and we're sitting there going, oh 1:59:31.320 --> 1:59:35.560 my god, no, now this thing's going to be everywhere. 1:59:36.160 --> 1:59:39.800 So anyway, so I go back to New York and 1:59:41.200 --> 1:59:45.000 about a week later, Michael calls and said, have you 1:59:45.080 --> 1:59:49.400 spoken to Mickey about the Low's theaters? And I said no, 1:59:49.600 --> 1:59:52.360 you know, I said, we're still waiting to get the 1:59:52.440 --> 1:59:55.640 video in, and you know we got you know, you know, 1:59:55.800 --> 1:59:59.080 wasn't quite ready to be walking over the Low's to 1:59:59.120 --> 2:00:02.920 make the pitch. So anyway, as it turned out, Michael 2:00:03.000 --> 2:00:05.440 kept calling me about it. That was like the one 2:00:05.560 --> 2:00:10.000 thing on his mind. And I kept holding him off 2:00:10.200 --> 2:00:16.440 for probably a month of easily a dozen calls, you know, 2:00:16.960 --> 2:00:21.880 specifically about where's Mickey on this? You know? So I 2:00:21.920 --> 2:00:25.360 called Mickey's office and a couple of times that I 2:00:25.400 --> 2:00:28.880 didn't get any response. So I went to Dave and 2:00:28.920 --> 2:00:30.720 I said, Dave, you've got to help me. I can't 2:00:30.760 --> 2:00:34.520 get an answer out of Nicky's office. So Dave got 2:00:34.520 --> 2:00:37.040 a meeting and we went up like the next day 2:00:37.800 --> 2:00:42.600 and sat down and we explained to Mickey the situation 2:00:43.520 --> 2:00:48.080 about the promise he made to Michael, and we felt 2:00:48.160 --> 2:00:52.200 that the delivery of the album might be influenced by 2:00:53.040 --> 2:00:58.120 that promise. So anyway, Micky picks up the phone and 2:00:58.160 --> 2:01:02.720 he calls Mickey stein Burg, who was head of Lows Theaters, 2:01:03.320 --> 2:01:09.520 and said explained the situation to him, and Steinberg said, 2:01:09.520 --> 2:01:12.160 can I see it? And we had a rough and 2:01:12.760 --> 2:01:17.240 so anyway, Mickey Schuloff said, well, Michael's product manager, Dan Beck, 2:01:17.280 --> 2:01:19.120 will bring it over to your office in the morning. 2:01:19.160 --> 2:01:23.040 How's that great great eleven o'clock ran over boot? So 2:01:23.360 --> 2:01:25.800 he's in Trump Tower and we're at five point fifty 2:01:26.720 --> 2:01:30.040 Madison right around the block, you know. So the next 2:01:30.160 --> 2:01:34.560 day I go over, go up the Trump Tower and 2:01:35.800 --> 2:01:40.200 I go in. I meet Mickey Steinberg and he puts 2:01:40.240 --> 2:01:45.520 the three quarter deck in his in his player, and 2:01:45.560 --> 2:01:48.960 it was like about an eight minute piece, and he 2:01:49.000 --> 2:01:51.760 watches the thing where just he and I were in 2:01:51.800 --> 2:01:56.880 total silence. He finishes it, he ejected it, handed it 2:01:56.920 --> 2:01:59.960 to me and said that'll never play in a low stare. 2:02:03.800 --> 2:02:05.840 What are we going to do now. So I'm raced 2:02:05.880 --> 2:02:10.360 back to the office. I tell Dave. So we're sitting there, 2:02:10.520 --> 2:02:14.640 just cutted numb, and I said, you know, I said, 2:02:14.680 --> 2:02:17.560 I got it off the wall idea. I said, I 2:02:17.600 --> 2:02:22.680 have a friend to help put some music videos in 2:02:22.720 --> 2:02:27.080 front of movies, in front of the previews, you know. 2:02:27.320 --> 2:02:30.280 And I said, you know, so we pay to do 2:02:30.320 --> 2:02:34.560 that and just market by market, you know. And I said, 2:02:34.600 --> 2:02:36.760 he may be able to help us, you know. So 2:02:37.120 --> 2:02:40.840 Dave said, do whatever, you know, see what you can do. 2:02:41.160 --> 2:02:44.280 I didn't tell him who it was, so anyway, so 2:02:44.520 --> 2:02:50.840 I call my friend, who was Bob Kardashian. And this 2:02:50.920 --> 2:02:53.960 is in the middle of the OJ trial and Bob 2:02:54.080 --> 2:03:00.400 is one of the attorneys on the defense on OJ's fence. 2:03:01.280 --> 2:03:03.640 So I called it uber. I don't even know they 2:03:03.800 --> 2:03:07.960 still had the business since the OJ thing and happened. 2:03:08.440 --> 2:03:10.840 So I get a call back. I leave word on 2:03:10.880 --> 2:03:13.960 the voicemail and it's the company, you know, so it 2:03:14.280 --> 2:03:18.080 sounds like they're still operating. So next night I get 2:03:18.120 --> 2:03:21.080 a call from Bob and he said, you know, hey, 2:03:21.080 --> 2:03:23.120 what's up. You know, I said, hey, what's up with 2:03:23.200 --> 2:03:25.720 you? You know, how are you hanging in there? With this 2:03:26.360 --> 2:03:28.880 this OJ trial, and so we talked about that for 2:03:28.920 --> 2:03:30.640 a minute and he said, tell me what you got. 2:03:31.240 --> 2:03:34.440 So I explained the situation. We had this video, there 2:03:34.520 --> 2:03:38.080 was a promise made to get it in the Loew's theaters, 2:03:38.120 --> 2:03:41.080 and we need to find a solution. And I said, 2:03:41.120 --> 2:03:44.440 I thought of you, and he said, he said, well 2:03:44.920 --> 2:03:48.080 number one, he said, I don't go to the top 2:03:48.160 --> 2:03:50.920 people at low So I go to the individual's theater 2:03:51.040 --> 2:03:56.160 managers and as long as there's no sexual you know, 2:03:56.320 --> 2:03:59.600 content violence kind of thing, you know, over the top. 2:04:00.440 --> 2:04:04.760 He said. You know, if the managers feel good about it, 2:04:05.240 --> 2:04:07.360 you know, they make some extra money from this, and 2:04:07.400 --> 2:04:10.480 I make some money too, you know. So I said, well, 2:04:12.400 --> 2:04:15.240 how do we proceed and he said, well, I need 2:04:15.280 --> 2:04:17.720 to look at it, and he said, can you send it? 2:04:17.880 --> 2:04:20.360 I said, I can't let this out of my hands. 2:04:20.800 --> 2:04:23.160 I said, but I'll fly out to LA with it. 2:04:23.480 --> 2:04:27.280 And I said are you available? You know, and I 2:04:27.320 --> 2:04:29.600 think this was a Thursday or something, and I said, look, 2:04:29.600 --> 2:04:33.640 i'll fly out on Monday and he said great. He said, 2:04:33.680 --> 2:04:36.160 I'll be in court all day. He said, just leave 2:04:36.240 --> 2:04:40.400 a message on my voicemail on Monday night. I'll call 2:04:40.440 --> 2:04:45.080 you back at which he did, and so he said 2:04:45.080 --> 2:04:47.800 where are you staying and I said, I'm at Shutters 2:04:48.440 --> 2:04:51.080 and he said, oh, that's really close to the courthouse. 2:04:51.680 --> 2:04:55.040 And he said, how about I come over on my 2:04:55.160 --> 2:04:58.400 lunch break from the trial and if you can get 2:04:58.440 --> 2:05:01.160 a three quarter deck set up and room and we'll 2:05:01.200 --> 2:05:03.600 look at the video and we'll see if we can 2:05:03.680 --> 2:05:08.520 do anything. So the next morning I have an engineer 2:05:09.000 --> 2:05:12.400 putting a three quarter deck in my room and we're 2:05:12.800 --> 2:05:15.480 the engineer and I are watching the trial that you know, 2:05:15.520 --> 2:05:19.320 it's Bob was right there on the screen. So engineer 2:05:19.360 --> 2:05:22.720 gets it set. Ten minutes after twelve, knock at the door. 2:05:22.840 --> 2:05:27.360 It's Bob. He comes in, looks at the video. He 2:05:27.400 --> 2:05:30.880 said I could put that in theaters. And so we 2:05:30.920 --> 2:05:34.080 started talking money, and of course to do it nationally 2:05:34.280 --> 2:05:37.000 was just out of the question. And I said, look, 2:05:37.440 --> 2:05:39.680 how about I send you a list, And I just 2:05:39.800 --> 2:05:44.200 ran off some markets that, you know, basically where Jimmy 2:05:44.240 --> 2:05:49.120 and Terry were the producers in Minneapolis, you know, southern 2:05:49.160 --> 2:05:52.800 California and New York and you know, any place where 2:05:53.320 --> 2:05:57.520 we felt Michael would get the feedback that wow, I 2:05:57.560 --> 2:06:01.920 saw your video, you know. Anyway, I think it cost 2:06:02.080 --> 2:06:07.080 us one hundred and forty thousand dollars and Bob did it, 2:06:07.400 --> 2:06:10.680 and I was able to call Michael and say, we're 2:06:10.680 --> 2:06:15.360 in the Loews theaters. And I always hoped that I 2:06:15.360 --> 2:06:20.960 would run into Mickey Steinberg in an elevator sometimes and 2:06:21.960 --> 2:06:27.040 have him say, oh, hey, you're that kid from Epic Records. Right, 2:06:27.200 --> 2:06:31.800 it's that piece of shit video. What did you ever 2:06:31.880 --> 2:06:36.120 do with that? I put it in your theaters? 2:06:36.680 --> 2:06:39.240 So just for my audience, what was wrong with the video? 2:06:41.160 --> 2:06:44.960 Well, it had all these marching troops that it really 2:06:45.000 --> 2:06:49.680 had a kind of propaganda's feel. At the time, everybody 2:06:49.800 --> 2:06:55.000 kind of took it as a fascist video. Also had 2:06:55.320 --> 2:07:00.520 a statue was probably you know, you know, it was 2:07:00.560 --> 2:07:05.320 all computer generated, but probably had the look of being 2:07:06.320 --> 2:07:09.480 a couple of hundred feet high, you know, and there 2:07:09.480 --> 2:07:14.200 were helicopters flying between his legs and little kids yelling Michael, 2:07:14.280 --> 2:07:17.280 I love you, and everybody that we showed it to 2:07:17.880 --> 2:07:21.920 at the label was just had their heads on the 2:07:22.000 --> 2:07:26.960 table groaning. You know. It was just everybody felt, you know, 2:07:27.040 --> 2:07:30.080 he's going to be accused of being a megalomaniac. He's 2:07:30.120 --> 2:07:33.360 going to be you know that these kids, little kids. 2:07:33.400 --> 2:07:37.480 It just brings back all the negatives. And so there 2:07:37.560 --> 2:07:42.120 was all of that and here we were doing literally 2:07:42.160 --> 2:07:45.280 the exchange for the for the master, you know. 2:07:46.000 --> 2:07:49.000 So ultimately there was a problem with the lyric. 2:07:50.640 --> 2:07:57.560 Yes on, they don't care about us, And Michael had 2:07:57.600 --> 2:08:03.840 some very kind of shocking references to Jewish people in 2:08:04.800 --> 2:08:10.280 the song. I kind of you know, knowing Michael, it's 2:08:10.400 --> 2:08:14.800 like he put himself in the victim's position, you know, 2:08:15.040 --> 2:08:19.480 and and he was saying those words like they were 2:08:19.520 --> 2:08:22.680 being said to him. But the fact is is that 2:08:24.600 --> 2:08:30.920 not everybody was going to accept that, you know. And 2:08:31.000 --> 2:08:37.440 what happened was the Sunday or was it the Thursday before? 2:08:37.720 --> 2:08:40.160 Maybe it was the Thursday before. The in store date 2:08:40.240 --> 2:08:44.440 was June twentieth, so it was either the Thursday. I 2:08:44.480 --> 2:08:48.560 think we got a heads up copy of the Sunday 2:08:49.040 --> 2:08:54.640 New York Times story that was going to explode this 2:08:54.960 --> 2:09:03.800 story about the antisemitic lyrics, and so we were scrambling, again, 2:09:03.960 --> 2:09:05.480 what the hell are we going to do about this? 2:09:05.640 --> 2:09:10.120 You know, So I mean literally, Sandy, you know, it 2:09:10.200 --> 2:09:13.200 was one of the best efforts I saw from Sandy, 2:09:13.240 --> 2:09:16.520 because Sandy went out and really got some of the 2:09:17.520 --> 2:09:22.880 scholars and leaders, the theologians from the temples to really 2:09:22.920 --> 2:09:27.120 address it and support Michael Inniz. But the fact was 2:09:27.560 --> 2:09:32.000 it was it was just another inflaming issue, and it 2:09:32.080 --> 2:09:36.720 was happening right on the release. It's just, you know, 2:09:37.720 --> 2:09:42.000 I had raised the issue, you know, when we really 2:09:42.120 --> 2:09:47.440 heard the final version, which is probably five or six 2:09:47.520 --> 2:09:54.000 weeks before the album was hitting, and we played this. 2:09:55.160 --> 2:09:58.080 We played the record for a lot of people at 2:09:58.160 --> 2:10:02.160 Sony Studios. We brought in Diane Sawyer, we brought in 2:10:02.240 --> 2:10:08.400 all kinds of press people, accounts people, and I had 2:10:08.840 --> 2:10:11.440 it was kind of there that it kind of hit me, hey, 2:10:11.440 --> 2:10:15.040 wait a minute, are we listening to this lyric here? 2:10:15.400 --> 2:10:18.880 And I brought it to Dave's attention, and Dave said, 2:10:19.480 --> 2:10:21.640 I need to talk to Tommy about this, you know. 2:10:21.760 --> 2:10:25.720 So he spoke to Tommy. I'd spoken to him in 2:10:25.760 --> 2:10:31.440 the morning, and that evening Dave called me back in 2:10:31.520 --> 2:10:36.400 the office and you know, I said, this is going 2:10:36.480 --> 2:10:40.440 to be a problem. And so Dave said, well, I 2:10:40.480 --> 2:10:43.240 spoke to Tommy about it, and he said, you know, 2:10:43.600 --> 2:10:46.840 you can't dictate what an artist says on the record. 2:10:47.680 --> 2:10:52.400 I said, I'm not dictating what's going on the record. 2:10:52.680 --> 2:10:55.960 I'm saying, we need to have a conversation in front 2:10:56.320 --> 2:11:01.360 with Mike and Sandy to talk about the impact. You know, 2:11:01.640 --> 2:11:06.400 we need to be prepared, and nothing ever happened. And 2:11:07.680 --> 2:11:12.280 I get it, because that album was set on a 2:11:12.360 --> 2:11:17.160 release date. If anything was going to change, it was 2:11:17.200 --> 2:11:20.960 going to push that album back to who knows when, 2:11:21.800 --> 2:11:26.360 and the company was going to lose that Billy and 2:11:27.600 --> 2:11:30.760 I don't think the leadership of the company was going 2:11:30.800 --> 2:11:34.680 to ever go for them. So we put it out 2:11:34.760 --> 2:11:38.960 there and bang, there was a problem. And then then 2:11:39.520 --> 2:11:45.320 the conclusion was that Michael needed What was suggested to 2:11:45.400 --> 2:11:49.640 Michael that he should re record those lyrics, and he 2:11:49.760 --> 2:11:52.880 agreed to do that, and then it was I was 2:11:53.000 --> 2:11:59.600 told to go speak on background to the journalists who 2:11:59.640 --> 2:12:03.440 had the biggest problem with it. So I spoke to 2:12:04.040 --> 2:12:09.320 probably six or seven or eight journalists who were upset 2:12:09.440 --> 2:12:15.280 had written about this, and told him that Michael had 2:12:15.320 --> 2:12:19.080 agreed to re record the lyrics. Well, then Michael had 2:12:19.200 --> 2:12:24.320 second thoughts on it, and it became a real issue, 2:12:24.560 --> 2:12:30.200 and we kind of pushed and pulled, and finally, you know, 2:12:30.360 --> 2:12:35.000 Jim Morey was a big part of getting him back 2:12:35.040 --> 2:12:37.560 in the studio, and Jim and I went over to 2:12:37.600 --> 2:12:43.400 the Sony studios with Michael, went in and Michael did 2:12:43.480 --> 2:12:45.440 re record the lyrics. 2:12:47.240 --> 2:12:52.360 Okay, ultimately you get rewarded with getting a job with 2:12:52.760 --> 2:12:56.760 V two Records with Richard Branson? How was the experience 2:12:56.840 --> 2:12:58.760 running that company working with Branson? 2:12:59.800 --> 2:13:02.960 Was working with Richard was fantastic. It was a lot 2:13:03.000 --> 2:13:06.920 of fun. Basically, his directive was, if you need me 2:13:07.000 --> 2:13:10.360 for profile, if you need me for fun, got some 2:13:10.440 --> 2:13:14.640 great events or whatever. If you need money, call me 2:13:15.240 --> 2:13:19.080 and otherwise go do what you're going to do. The 2:13:19.200 --> 2:13:24.160 company had been formed, I think in March of ninety six, 2:13:24.280 --> 2:13:27.800 and I came on board in January of ninety seven, 2:13:28.480 --> 2:13:32.600 and they had already set up offices in several of 2:13:32.640 --> 2:13:37.200 the European countries, and they also had started buying up 2:13:37.480 --> 2:13:44.200 small labels. And all those labels had two, three, four employees. 2:13:44.640 --> 2:13:48.160 So we took all those employees and they all did 2:13:48.240 --> 2:13:51.080 the same thing for a small label. So now now 2:13:51.160 --> 2:13:53.800 we had all these people who did the same thing 2:13:53.840 --> 2:13:56.920 for a small label at a bigger label. And I 2:13:57.000 --> 2:14:01.400 think when we opened the doors, the other was they'd 2:14:01.440 --> 2:14:06.600 gotten really pretty crazy about signing acts. I think when 2:14:06.600 --> 2:14:10.800 we opened the doors, we had sixty four artists on 2:14:10.920 --> 2:14:14.520 the roster, and the principle that have been set up 2:14:14.600 --> 2:14:19.440 in the headquarters office in London was to break artists 2:14:19.480 --> 2:14:22.600 globally at the same time, and that was kind of 2:14:23.240 --> 2:14:25.520 totally against the grain of what I knew. You know, 2:14:25.840 --> 2:14:28.800 it's you know, how did Pearl Jam break They build 2:14:28.840 --> 2:14:32.240 a base in Seattle and the Northwest. You know that, 2:14:32.640 --> 2:14:35.600 you know how to Southern rock start in the south. 2:14:36.040 --> 2:14:38.920 You know that you got to form some bases. You 2:14:38.920 --> 2:14:43.240 can't break things globally unless you have some big pop hit. 2:14:43.840 --> 2:14:48.560 So that was going to be a challenge, particularly with 2:14:48.640 --> 2:14:51.560 that big of a roster. And the idea of V 2:14:51.760 --> 2:14:56.640 two was to be artists, really super friendly to artists, 2:14:57.160 --> 2:15:01.280 so we couldn't sit there and just draw thirty acts, 2:15:01.640 --> 2:15:04.640 you know. So we were really hung up on this 2:15:04.800 --> 2:15:08.800 and Pete Jones, who was I made the distribution deal 2:15:08.840 --> 2:15:15.120 for North America with BMG, which Pete Jones ran their 2:15:15.160 --> 2:15:20.120 distribution company, and I begged Pete to set up an 2:15:20.160 --> 2:15:24.880 indie distribution wing that I could put out a lot 2:15:24.920 --> 2:15:27.280 of these records that I knew were going to sell 2:15:28.040 --> 2:15:33.320 fifteen hundred three thousand copies, to do it independently and 2:15:33.400 --> 2:15:36.120 keep it out of their branch system because I knew 2:15:36.200 --> 2:15:40.600 the branch managers they're sitting there, you know, counting their 2:15:41.080 --> 2:15:46.120 bonus based on you know, big numbers. And I thought, 2:15:46.200 --> 2:15:50.720 if we put ten Niche records out through BMG, this 2:15:50.880 --> 2:15:53.680 branch managers are going to totally turn off to the label. 2:15:54.120 --> 2:15:56.520 And then we'd start to get something going with an 2:15:56.560 --> 2:15:59.360 act and then the international company would say, well, let's 2:15:59.400 --> 2:16:05.480 bring them to Algium or France or Germany. And you know, 2:16:06.240 --> 2:16:09.840 I don't think there was an understanding of how long 2:16:10.000 --> 2:16:12.440 it takes to break and act in the US, and 2:16:13.640 --> 2:16:17.200 so that was that was an issue. And then Kate 2:16:17.280 --> 2:16:25.920 Hymen brought the Mobi record play into me, and number one, 2:16:26.160 --> 2:16:30.080 I knew he had scanned like fifty two thousand on 2:16:30.120 --> 2:16:33.920 the previous album, so I knew we could break even 2:16:34.000 --> 2:16:37.840 on it, you know, but I love the fact that 2:16:37.920 --> 2:16:42.039 the record was had so much air in it in 2:16:42.120 --> 2:16:45.120 terms of I thought it was a great, you know, 2:16:45.280 --> 2:16:50.960 trailer soundtrack commercials type of thing, and we signed Mobi 2:16:51.240 --> 2:16:55.320 on that idea. I sat down with Mobi and I said, look, 2:16:55.640 --> 2:16:59.280 I forget who I think MCA was trying to had 2:16:59.680 --> 2:17:03.160 a little better offer than us on the table, and 2:17:03.240 --> 2:17:08.000 I said, if you have a hit single, sign with MCA. 2:17:09.280 --> 2:17:11.360 I said, but if you want somebody to work your 2:17:11.400 --> 2:17:15.480 record for the next year, signed with Thoughts. And I 2:17:15.520 --> 2:17:19.400 told him, I said, I really believe we had had 2:17:19.480 --> 2:17:23.400 a couple of publishing songs that David Steele, who was 2:17:23.480 --> 2:17:30.600 our publishing licensing person, had had some success with some 2:17:30.720 --> 2:17:35.200 publishing copyrights that we had, and we were getting had 2:17:35.240 --> 2:17:39.359 some nice licenses. And I said, I'm going to have David. 2:17:40.760 --> 2:17:42.760 This is all he's going to do is work your record. 2:17:43.560 --> 2:17:47.039 And I said, I think it's a marketing plan. I 2:17:47.120 --> 2:17:53.120 had a circumstance at Sony with a band called The Insiders. 2:17:53.680 --> 2:17:56.640 They're a bar band, like a great bar band. Just 2:17:57.400 --> 2:18:02.360 love them, and we over at rock radio and everything 2:18:02.360 --> 2:18:05.560 on their first album, and we got ourselves at a 2:18:05.600 --> 2:18:08.920 little bit of trouble with the finance people. When we 2:18:09.600 --> 2:18:15.400 had the second album come, everybody wanted to drop them. 2:18:15.720 --> 2:18:18.600 In the meantime, the manager called me and said, hey, 2:18:19.000 --> 2:18:22.240 we've got an offer for this little indie film. And 2:18:22.280 --> 2:18:24.720 of course this is back in like nineteen eighty eight 2:18:24.840 --> 2:18:29.400 or something ninety and indie films weren't that big of 2:18:29.440 --> 2:18:33.520 a deal then, you know. But he said you know, 2:18:33.520 --> 2:18:36.360 they're offering like three thousand dollars. But I talked to 2:18:36.400 --> 2:18:41.600 the Sony licensing department and they had no sense of marketing. 2:18:41.640 --> 2:18:45.120 They were just a dollars and cents. If the song 2:18:45.320 --> 2:18:49.200 was the opening track of a movie, the price is X. 2:18:49.400 --> 2:18:52.800 It doesn't matter if it's Barbara streisand or it's The Insiders, 2:18:53.879 --> 2:18:56.600 and if it's the end track, this is the price. 2:18:56.959 --> 2:19:01.560 And it was all total formula. So I called the 2:19:01.600 --> 2:19:07.080 licensing department. I said, look, this band is totally unearned. 2:19:07.800 --> 2:19:12.360 Our publishing company has has signed them, the record company 2:19:12.360 --> 2:19:15.160 has signed them. This band is never going to see 2:19:15.200 --> 2:19:19.560 the three thousand dollars, you know, but it'll give us 2:19:19.640 --> 2:19:23.240 something to go to the marketplace with. You know. We 2:19:23.240 --> 2:19:26.200 we can we can talk that up, you know we can. 2:19:26.480 --> 2:19:30.800 We can probably get some airplay based on some enthusiasm 2:19:30.879 --> 2:19:34.760 for the c Indie movie. Sorry, can't do it. They 2:19:34.760 --> 2:19:38.160 don't pay the price. That's it. So I swore to 2:19:38.240 --> 2:19:41.560 God if I was ever in a position again, that 2:19:41.720 --> 2:19:45.400 was never going to happen. So with Moby, it was like, 2:19:45.800 --> 2:19:48.000 we're going to go and we're going to use the 2:19:48.080 --> 2:19:52.800 whole damn album as a marketing tool and that's what 2:19:52.840 --> 2:19:57.480 we did, and David Steele just rocked. I mean, he 2:19:58.120 --> 2:20:01.320 and the publisher, I forget who the publisher was, Tom. 2:20:01.440 --> 2:20:07.600 They rocked and they worked together. And by the time 2:20:07.680 --> 2:20:13.199 we had I think forty thousand scans on the play album, 2:20:14.760 --> 2:20:19.040 we had grossed a million dollars un licensing, and of 2:20:19.080 --> 2:20:24.200 course it ended up every track license and it just 2:20:24.879 --> 2:20:30.800 it was, you know, just an absolute unique situation. Probably 2:20:30.800 --> 2:20:34.000 couldn't have happened on any other record. It just it 2:20:34.240 --> 2:20:37.880 just fit the moment. And of course it changed things 2:20:37.959 --> 2:20:44.520 because then everybody started pursuing licensing in a more strategic 2:20:44.600 --> 2:20:48.320 way after that, you know. So that was a great thing. 2:20:48.560 --> 2:20:52.560 And as it turned out, Bob I had hearing problems 2:20:53.400 --> 2:20:56.680 and I started realizing they were getting worse. What you know, 2:20:56.720 --> 2:21:00.520 I would go over. I was in Europe every couple 2:21:00.520 --> 2:21:04.800 of weeks in other of our regional offices, and of 2:21:04.840 --> 2:21:09.120 course everybody's got an accent, and I didn't realize it 2:21:09.160 --> 2:21:12.360 that I was. I was reading lips and you know, 2:21:12.480 --> 2:21:16.199 and when you're in an environment where people aren't speaking 2:21:16.640 --> 2:21:20.439 the way you know, the way the people you're around 2:21:20.520 --> 2:21:25.840 every day, I started realizing, Hey, I'm kind of losing touch. Here, 2:21:26.040 --> 2:21:29.960 you know, but I thought I had a fatigue syndrome. 2:21:30.560 --> 2:21:33.600 And I told my wife, I said, you know, I said, 2:21:33.600 --> 2:21:37.240 you know, here, I am working for the nicest billionaire 2:21:37.240 --> 2:21:39.680 on earth who's given us all this money, and we 2:21:39.800 --> 2:21:45.600 got this great young team, and I'm feeling miserable. She said, yeah, 2:21:45.640 --> 2:21:50.200 you are. You're miserable right now. She said, you need 2:21:50.240 --> 2:21:52.200 to get to the doctor and see what's going on. 2:21:52.480 --> 2:21:54.039 So I went to the doctor, and I think the 2:21:54.120 --> 2:21:55.959 doctor picked up on it right away. He gave me 2:21:56.000 --> 2:22:01.000 all the tests for everything, but ultimately said, I think 2:22:01.280 --> 2:22:04.160 I'm going to send you into an audiologist. And I said, 2:22:04.280 --> 2:22:06.879 oh yeah, I got a I know, if I'm at 2:22:06.879 --> 2:22:09.960 a concert and somebody speaks to me in my left ear, 2:22:10.000 --> 2:22:12.800 I tell him talk to me in my rightear. And 2:22:12.879 --> 2:22:15.879 because with all the noise, I don't quite hear, so 2:22:15.959 --> 2:22:19.520 I probably have a little issue. He came back, said, 2:22:19.879 --> 2:22:23.240 you've lost sixty five percent of your mid range in 2:22:23.320 --> 2:22:28.840 both ears, which is conversational, you know. And by the way, 2:22:29.320 --> 2:22:31.520 all the people that I worked with over the years, 2:22:31.680 --> 2:22:36.440 the upper level people, many of them all had hearing problems. 2:22:37.200 --> 2:22:41.720 And you know, back in the seventies and eighties and 2:22:41.760 --> 2:22:44.400 we used to laugh at them, and you know, oh 2:22:44.440 --> 2:22:47.080 my god, those guys can't hear anything, you know. I 2:22:47.120 --> 2:22:50.039 know one A and R guy, he had the treble 2:22:50.160 --> 2:22:54.000 cranked up so high on his system. It was like, 2:22:54.360 --> 2:22:58.920 you know, it was like aluminum, you know. And one 2:22:58.959 --> 2:23:01.680 thing that I did that then was I swore to 2:23:01.720 --> 2:23:05.520 God I would not change my dials. I kept them 2:23:05.560 --> 2:23:09.560 completely neutral in terms of bass, you know, top end, 2:23:09.600 --> 2:23:14.039 low end, kept everything right in the middle, so that 2:23:14.200 --> 2:23:17.480 if I ever had a hearing issue, I would notice it. 2:23:18.720 --> 2:23:22.280 And so I didn't notice it, you know, and a 2:23:22.280 --> 2:23:25.680 band would come in, you know, and so I lost 2:23:25.760 --> 2:23:29.720 mid range and that's where people speak, you know. So well, 2:23:29.920 --> 2:23:31.920 what happened is a band would come in and they 2:23:32.520 --> 2:23:35.520 play an album and I would say, oh, you know, 2:23:35.600 --> 2:23:37.680 you got to bump the vocals up a little bit, 2:23:38.360 --> 2:23:41.480 and the lead singer would always say, yeah, yeah, bump 2:23:41.560 --> 2:23:48.960 the vocal up. But it was my hearing problem. And 2:23:50.520 --> 2:23:55.200 so anyway, I after I realized I had to get 2:23:55.200 --> 2:23:57.920 hearing aids, and frankly, I didn't know what hearing aids 2:23:57.920 --> 2:24:01.240 would do for me. And this is nineteen ninety nine, 2:24:01.480 --> 2:24:05.040 you know, it wasn't exactly a cool thing. I got 2:24:05.040 --> 2:24:07.520 to step away. I I you know, I don't. I 2:24:07.560 --> 2:24:10.640 can't embarrass this company, you know, I don't want to 2:24:10.640 --> 2:24:13.080 be a joke out there. You know, people are talking about, 2:24:13.080 --> 2:24:15.640 oh yeah, the label with the guy can't hear, you know. 2:24:16.320 --> 2:24:18.520 So I stepped away, and it kind of lost my 2:24:18.760 --> 2:24:21.840 mo for a couple of years. And but you know, 2:24:21.920 --> 2:24:24.040 you got to plow ahead. You gotta, you know, you 2:24:24.160 --> 2:24:28.320 gotta take those things and just put them on the 2:24:28.400 --> 2:24:31.120 side and do what you can do, you know, and 2:24:31.240 --> 2:24:34.320 see if you can if there's something some other way 2:24:34.360 --> 2:24:38.440 you can approach things, you know. So it's all problem solving, 2:24:38.600 --> 2:24:40.920 you know that. I think that's the product management thing 2:24:41.080 --> 2:24:43.440 is we had a bunch of little problems. You're trying 2:24:43.440 --> 2:24:46.160 to fix all this little stuff so it doesn't get 2:24:46.160 --> 2:24:49.920 in the way of promotion or sales, you know. And 2:24:49.959 --> 2:24:53.600 that's kind of the way I saw it, you know. 2:24:54.280 --> 2:24:59.240 So do you know what caused the hearing loss? Yeah? 2:24:59.440 --> 2:25:04.640 I do, And Bob, you know what it is? Hereditary. 2:25:05.640 --> 2:25:10.280 It's it was not based on all the decibels that 2:25:10.959 --> 2:25:14.000 I listened to from Cheap Trick and Aussy and Boston 2:25:14.200 --> 2:25:18.560 and you know, all those bands. Uh, it was none 2:25:18.600 --> 2:25:22.440 of that. It was it was I had it was 2:25:23.120 --> 2:25:27.760 it was my genes. So you know, it's most people 2:25:27.840 --> 2:25:31.160 lose high end with due to sound or due to age, 2:25:31.560 --> 2:25:35.800 and that's that's the typical issue for most people. 2:25:36.440 --> 2:25:40.879 Okay, So when Michael Jackson dies, are you surprised? 2:25:42.760 --> 2:25:48.360 Uh? Yeah, I think a figure that large that you're 2:25:48.480 --> 2:25:52.840 naturally surprised, you know, based on all that he'd been through, 2:25:53.240 --> 2:25:55.320 you know, Number one, when I was working with them 2:25:55.400 --> 2:26:01.040 in the early nineties after the scandal issue, I couldn't 2:26:01.160 --> 2:26:05.480 imagine how he could get through. It had to be 2:26:05.560 --> 2:26:08.039 so painful, you know. I mean he had me bring 2:26:08.120 --> 2:26:11.400 research to him that was you know, he would read 2:26:11.480 --> 2:26:15.440 these surveys I bring in and be like a New 2:26:15.520 --> 2:26:21.120 York phone book stack of surveys people saying really nasty 2:26:21.200 --> 2:26:24.040 things about him, you know, and he would flip through 2:26:24.040 --> 2:26:25.960 a read him and he wanted me to bring them. 2:26:26.040 --> 2:26:29.679 And I think that was part of why Michael and I. 2:26:29.760 --> 2:26:33.440 He knew I would tell him the truth, you know, 2:26:33.640 --> 2:26:37.080 if I knew it, you know, and I also told him, 2:26:37.240 --> 2:26:40.200 well I didn't know it, you know. I would say 2:26:40.480 --> 2:26:43.680 I would say to Michael, Hey, Michael, I'm just a 2:26:43.720 --> 2:26:46.120 guy from the record company. And the first time I 2:26:46.160 --> 2:26:49.000 said it, he burst out laughing and he said, you're 2:26:49.200 --> 2:26:52.279 just the guy from the record company. And he's laughed 2:26:52.280 --> 2:26:55.760 and laughed and laughed. So after that, he every time 2:26:55.800 --> 2:26:58.240 he'd asked me an opinion, he said, damn, what do 2:26:58.280 --> 2:27:00.160 you think of this? You know? And I said, well, 2:27:00.280 --> 2:27:02.560 you know, I don't know. You could do a b C. 2:27:02.879 --> 2:27:05.920 You know, there's different ways. And he'd said, yeah, but Dan, 2:27:06.000 --> 2:27:09.680 you're just a guy from company. And it was our 2:27:09.720 --> 2:27:14.800 little joke all, you know. But when he died, you know, 2:27:14.840 --> 2:27:21.080 obviously extremely sad. You know, I knew Frank de Leo 2:27:22.000 --> 2:27:23.920 raced over to the hospital. It was one of the 2:27:23.959 --> 2:27:27.360 things I was aware of from watching CNN, you know. 2:27:27.600 --> 2:27:32.600 I had told Dave Glue. We had breakfast after he 2:27:32.720 --> 2:27:37.840 told Tommy I was leaving Epic, and we were just 2:27:38.000 --> 2:27:43.520 kind of this is end of nineteen ninety six and 2:27:43.600 --> 2:27:49.920 we were just kind of reminiscing our experience working with Michael, 2:27:50.120 --> 2:27:54.200 and I said, you know, five years he's going to 2:27:54.280 --> 2:27:57.200 be bankrupt, you know, and you know, I don't just 2:27:57.480 --> 2:28:01.000 don't know, you know, his health. We had been through 2:28:01.040 --> 2:28:05.400 the thing with the which was crushing the HBO concert 2:28:05.480 --> 2:28:09.320 that we were doing live from New York back in November, 2:28:09.400 --> 2:28:14.080 I think November thirtieth of ninety six, and that fell 2:28:14.200 --> 2:28:18.840 through because Michael went to the hospital. And I think 2:28:18.959 --> 2:28:22.120 sometimes the only way Michael could get out of something 2:28:22.280 --> 2:28:25.840 was making himself sick. And I just thought, you know, 2:28:26.560 --> 2:28:30.560 he was probably making himself sick. I thought he owed 2:28:30.600 --> 2:28:37.720 so much money at the end that you know, he 2:28:37.840 --> 2:28:41.280 had to promise those shows. And one thing about Michael 2:28:41.520 --> 2:28:44.880 was he was a good answer to the man, you know, 2:28:45.160 --> 2:28:49.199 and I think that the man was going to steal 2:28:49.440 --> 2:28:52.640 the joy that he had on stage with the audience. 2:28:53.080 --> 2:28:56.040 That was his heart and soul, that was his that's 2:28:56.080 --> 2:29:01.040 where his heart beat, with the audience's live shows, and 2:29:01.760 --> 2:29:07.200 to do them because he owed money. I just you know, 2:29:07.760 --> 2:29:10.440 I told everybody that I ever spoke to at the time, 2:29:10.520 --> 2:29:15.199 they said, this won't last three shows. It just won't. 2:29:15.640 --> 2:29:21.320 I said, one, it's too physically demanding. And number two, 2:29:21.720 --> 2:29:23.920 I said, he's not going to play for the man. 2:29:24.560 --> 2:29:27.240 He's just not going to do it. And you know, 2:29:27.720 --> 2:29:31.080 it's so sad, you know, in the end, I mean, 2:29:31.720 --> 2:29:35.480 the last you know, fifteen years of his life were 2:29:36.200 --> 2:29:38.440 terribly sad, you know. I mean, one of the things 2:29:38.520 --> 2:29:42.039 that I felt in writing the book was that my 2:29:42.280 --> 2:29:46.160 kids only knew a really negative side of Michael. They 2:29:46.160 --> 2:29:50.560 didn't know that eighties thriller all you know, all that 2:29:51.280 --> 2:29:55.440 phenomenal stuff that we saw, the Motown twenty five and 2:29:55.920 --> 2:29:59.600 you know the you know, the Moonwalk and Billy Jean 2:29:59.720 --> 2:30:03.800 and and you know all of the amazing stuff that happened. 2:30:03.840 --> 2:30:06.880 You know, you know, something would come up on TV 2:30:07.160 --> 2:30:10.240 with my kids were ten or twelve years old and 2:30:11.040 --> 2:30:13.080 Michael and it's oh yeah, I used to work with him. 2:30:13.120 --> 2:30:17.959 They'd look at me side eyed, like by dad, yeah 2:30:18.720 --> 2:30:24.080 you're cp you know, and and I would think, God, 2:30:24.160 --> 2:30:27.840 they just don't they just don't know that other side 2:30:27.959 --> 2:30:30.200 that you know, they only see the dark side of 2:30:30.200 --> 2:30:30.520 the room. 2:30:33.000 --> 2:30:36.480 Okay, Dan, this is you know. I love getting your 2:30:36.520 --> 2:30:39.480 history in the early days, especially for people who were 2:30:39.560 --> 2:30:41.760 there and other people wonder how to make it. There's 2:30:41.800 --> 2:30:46.520 a lot more about Michael and the book, and it's 2:30:46.560 --> 2:30:50.760 certainly in depth. He'll give you all the information you want. Dan, 2:30:50.800 --> 2:30:52.680 I want to thank you so much for taking this 2:30:52.800 --> 2:30:54.240 time to speak to my audience. 2:30:55.640 --> 2:30:59.879 Bob, Well, thank you. You know, I I love your 2:31:00.480 --> 2:31:05.360 inquisitive nature and you know your your curiosity and I 2:31:05.440 --> 2:31:08.680 know you love this business, the music and all that 2:31:08.720 --> 2:31:11.800 goes on about it, and that's just your your gift 2:31:11.840 --> 2:31:14.160 to all of us for doing it well. 2:31:14.600 --> 2:31:18.440 Thank you so much, And on that note, till next time, 2:31:18.920 --> 2:31:20.320 it's Bob Left sets