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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Websites podcast. My

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Speaker 1: guest today is the King of Memorabilia, Jeff Gold. Jeff,

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Speaker 1: good to have you on the podcast. Good to be here, Bob. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So there's all this scuttle but about Elvis that the

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Speaker 1: value of his memorability is going down because his audience

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Speaker 1: is dying off. Is that true? To some extent yes,

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Speaker 1: and to some extent no. The A level stuff is

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Speaker 1: going for more than it's ever gone before. The mid

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Speaker 1: range stuff is kind of deteriorating. The low end of

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Speaker 1: the market is really deteriorating. So people want the best

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Speaker 1: stuff and they're willing to pay crazy prices for it.

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Speaker 1: So it's just like concert tickets, it's the cheaper ones

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Speaker 1: that are harder to sell. So you have a website,

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Speaker 1: record Mecca, tell us how you develop the website? Well, Uh,

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Speaker 1: as a teenager, I started buying uh rare Jimi Hendrix

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Speaker 1: records or Jimmy Hendrick records, and I started trying to

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Speaker 1: collect as many as I could find, and that entailed

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Speaker 1: going to swap meats and going to flea markets and

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Speaker 1: UH talking to anybody who might have anything, and along

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Speaker 1: my travels I started finding things that I recognized were

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Speaker 1: rare and buying them to sell them to pay for

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Speaker 1: my rare Jimi Hendricks Records. And uh. This turned into

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Speaker 1: a business for me as a kid. And so I

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Speaker 1: would go to England once a year, twice a year,

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Speaker 1: bring a suitcase full of rare American stuff, sell it

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Speaker 1: and trade it for rare English stuff, bring it back

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Speaker 1: and sell that in the Hollywood Swap Meet, which was

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Speaker 1: in the shadow of the Capitol Records Tower. And I

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Speaker 1: was making a lot of cash for a young person.

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Speaker 1: And I went to work for Rhino Records. That was

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Speaker 1: the first employee where I met you, and UH just

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Speaker 1: became an entrepreneurial guy. I uh and was doing this.

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Speaker 1: It was getting bigger and bigger. I opened up an office.

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Speaker 1: I started doing mail order. But when I graduated from college,

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Speaker 1: I thought, I really don't want to be going to

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Speaker 1: the Salvation Army in Oxnarden buying who forty five is

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Speaker 1: a fifty year old? So I got a business degree

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Speaker 1: from USC UH leveraged that into a job A and

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Speaker 1: M Records, but was continuing to collect things the whole time.

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Speaker 1: And when I left the record business after eighteen or

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Speaker 1: nineteen years at A and M and then Warner Brothers.

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Speaker 1: I was still collecting records. I had gotten very heavily

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Speaker 1: into the pre internet online world and then the Internet

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Speaker 1: online world, which sidebar. We started the first participation in

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Speaker 1: that at Warner Brothers, myself, at a few other people,

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Speaker 1: and so I just got a whole hog back into it.

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Speaker 1: And it was the early days of eBay and the

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Speaker 1: early days of web browsers, and uh, I never stopped. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So this point in time, let's go back to the beginning.

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Speaker 1: So you're from l A. How old were you when

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Speaker 1: you started to trade records sell records? Maybe fifteen? And

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Speaker 1: how old were you when you made your first trip

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Speaker 1: to the UK? Uh? Nineteen? Okay? So what was it

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Speaker 1: like growing up in the classic rock era in southern

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Speaker 1: California where a lot of this scene was happening. It

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Speaker 1: was fantastic. Um people sold bootlegs at swat meets. The

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Speaker 1: the record sat Meat that I talked about before, initially

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Speaker 1: started on Sunday mornings, and everybody was getting more and

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Speaker 1: more competitive and would get there at you know, I'll

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Speaker 1: get there at seven, I'll get there at six, I'll

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Speaker 1: get there at five, And eventually people including myself, started

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Speaker 1: getting there at ten o'clock at Saturday night and spending

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Speaker 1: the night in your car hanging out with your friends

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Speaker 1: so you could get the best position be there. When

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Speaker 1: people opened up at the earliest, stuff started selling earliest earlier.

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Speaker 1: I remember Al Wilson from Canned Heat, Uh would set

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Speaker 1: up there and had had a beat up old van

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Speaker 1: and would sell posters. It was a wild West and

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Speaker 1: it was fantastic. They were used record stores everywhere, which

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Speaker 1: I know you experienced and uh, uh you know, I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna write a blog post on what record collecting was

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Speaker 1: like in the pre internet days for those younger people. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know. I collected Hendricks Records, that was my first priority,

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Speaker 1: and then David Bowie Records. There were no discographies. You

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Speaker 1: had to find somebody who knew somebody who had something

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Speaker 1: or had heard of a rare record, and tracked them

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Speaker 1: down and call him on the phone enough till they

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Speaker 1: find something they wanted so you could trade it from

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Speaker 1: them or prior out of their prior, out of their hands.

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Speaker 1: But it was very, very exciting. Okay. I read a

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Speaker 1: whole book written by some college professor about Al Wilson

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Speaker 1: supposedly he was even though Bob High, the big, large

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Speaker 1: guy who was lead singer of Cantet, and although al

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Speaker 1: Wilson sang the hits that Al Wilson was like a

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Speaker 1: real blues purist who knew everything about it was, you know,

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Speaker 1: driving force in that world. Is that something you're aware of?

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Speaker 1: You know? I know those guys were very serious record

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Speaker 1: collectors and music obsessives. And I actually bought a poster

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Speaker 1: collection of Larry Taylor, who was the bass player and

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Speaker 1: can't eat, and he had just incredible stuff that he

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Speaker 1: would pick up. You know, he was one of those guys.

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Speaker 1: I also bought a lot of stuff from the widow

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Speaker 1: of Sterling Morrison from the Velvet Underground, and occasionally you'd

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Speaker 1: find people like that who just wanted everything having to

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Speaker 1: do with their band and would uh as Sterling's wife

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Speaker 1: told me, you know, if they didn't have a poster

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Speaker 1: for him to take home, he'd rip it down off

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Speaker 1: the wall. And you know, most artists, as you know,

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Speaker 1: don't care about this stuff. I did some consulting for

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Speaker 1: Bill Wyman of the Stones, who's one of the probably

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Speaker 1: the pre eminent guy who saved absolutely everything, and uh,

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Speaker 1: I love talking to those guys, let's stay with Wyman

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Speaker 1: for a second. Because he he had everything, They did

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Speaker 1: a movie about him, and then all of a sudden

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Speaker 1: he decided to sell stuff. What was going on there?

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Speaker 1: You know? I have an NDA with Bill Winman, if

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Speaker 1: you can believe that, but not disclosure agreement, but suffice

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Speaker 1: to say, he had just an enormous amount of stuff,

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Speaker 1: has an enormous amount of stuff and sold some but

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Speaker 1: certainly far from all. And that movie, the Quiet One,

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Speaker 1: really shows the depths of his collecting. It's it's really

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Speaker 1: amazing if people haven't seen it well to the degree

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Speaker 1: you can talk about it. What kind of relationship did

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Speaker 1: you have with Bill Wyman relative to his collection? I

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Speaker 1: was consulting with him, and I spent a week at

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Speaker 1: his side going through stuff, which was probably the greatest

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Speaker 1: thrill in my fanboy record collector, music business life. He

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Speaker 1: remembers everything, he's kept a diary since he was ten. Uh,

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Speaker 1: just unbelievable. And what did he want from you? What

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Speaker 1: was he hiring you to do? You know, I really

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Speaker 1: can't talk about that, unfortunately. I just have to be

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Speaker 1: respectful to him. Okay, okay, so let's go back, Let's

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Speaker 1: leave memorabilia aside. So you grew up in l A.

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Speaker 1: How did you actually get into music. My parents had

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Speaker 1: a suitcase stereo and they bought herbal Bert and the

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Speaker 1: Tijuana Brass records, and I remember hearing the Lonely Bowl,

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Speaker 1: which was on his Lonely Bowl album and his first hit,

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Speaker 1: and just going nuts over. I just became obsessed with

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Speaker 1: that song to play it over and over and over

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Speaker 1: again as a six or seven year old, and uh,

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Speaker 1: it was amazing. Later going to work for her and

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Speaker 1: meeting salt Lake, the guy who had been in the

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Speaker 1: bar Mitzvah band with Urban written that song, and just

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Speaker 1: fawning over him, which I imagined didn't happen that often

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Speaker 1: for this guy who was probably eighty at the time. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then my parents went to Palm Springs and they

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Speaker 1: brought me back as a gift the Beatles I want

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Speaker 1: to hold your hands single Creed Sullivan because they've read

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Speaker 1: about it in Time magazine and that was my first

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Speaker 1: record that I owned myself, and I went nuts and

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Speaker 1: just played that over and over and over. And when

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Speaker 1: they were on Ed Sullivan, I saw that and it

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Speaker 1: blew my mind. And I remember my some friend of

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Speaker 1: My parents had given me a Mr. Ed the Talking

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Speaker 1: Horse record and a couple of kiddie records, and I

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Speaker 1: made my mother take me to the record store they'd

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Speaker 1: come from in Beverly Hills so I could trade them

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Speaker 1: for rock records, and I got Beach Boys Party and

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Speaker 1: maybe the first Beatles album and uh, I just never

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Speaker 1: stopped the idea that I could own these things and

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Speaker 1: play them over and over and over again. That obsessed

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Speaker 1: me was fantastic. Okay, so you wrote a book about

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Speaker 1: Iggy and the Stooges, but you also said that you

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Speaker 1: went to the Whiskey to see the Raw Power were

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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three. So when did you start going

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Speaker 1: to concerts and what did you see? My father took

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Speaker 1: me to concerts by artists he like. There was a

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Speaker 1: Spanish group called Murray and Miranda who had uh Songs

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Speaker 1: of the African Velt was what it was called. And

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Speaker 1: I love that record, and we went and saw them.

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Speaker 1: I first started going to records to two shows on

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Speaker 1: my own, probably at fifteen, when I could hitchhike to

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Speaker 1: the Santa Monica Civic and I remember seeing Mountain and Zephyr,

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Speaker 1: and a little later when I was in high school

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Speaker 1: going to see Pink Floyd there who were traveling. We're

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Speaker 1: touring on Adam Hart mother and I saw free and

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Speaker 1: traffic reconstituted traffic. As soon as I got a car,

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Speaker 1: which maybe came when I was seventeen, I was unstoppable,

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Speaker 1: you know. I was at the Whiskey constantly where every

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Speaker 1: British prog band known to man played, and uh I

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Speaker 1: started working at Rhino I was probably seventeen, and people

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Speaker 1: would give us concert tickets, drop off concert tickets, So

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Speaker 1: I was I was a wild man. What's that story

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Speaker 1: of how did you get that? You know? At this

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Speaker 1: point in time, which is kind of funny for those

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Speaker 1: of us grew up in l A or at least

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Speaker 1: from age early twenties, you know, Rhino on Westwood Boulevard.

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Speaker 1: Ultimately there was a label. Harold Bronson, you know, got

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Speaker 1: started to come to Rhino Records while man Fisher. But

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Speaker 1: people don't understand what a big deal the record store was.

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Speaker 1: So Richard Fuss, who started it, started a department in

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Speaker 1: another store and then ultimately went to Westwood Boulevard. What

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Speaker 1: was Rhino Records like and how did you get the job? Okay?

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Speaker 1: So Richard who's still one of my best friends, had

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Speaker 1: a friend whose father had an army circle US electronics

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Speaker 1: store called Apollo Electronics on Broadway and Third in Santa Monica,

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Speaker 1: and that was the that was when the mall was

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Speaker 1: dead with J Jerry, And it wasn't even on the mall,

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Speaker 1: it was around the corner from them all. But and

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Speaker 1: so Richard convinced his friend's father to give him an

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Speaker 1: area that I'm gonna guess was like ten by fifteen

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Speaker 1: feet to sell US records. And a friend of mine

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Speaker 1: went in there and he was selling bootlegs. And this

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Speaker 1: was a big deal because I had to go to

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Speaker 1: the Rose bull Swat Meat to buy bootlegs. So someplace

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Speaker 1: that I could ride my bike too incredible. So I

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Speaker 1: started going in there and befriended Richard and he would

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Speaker 1: buy cutouts and used records and bootlegs, and we became friendly,

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Speaker 1: very friendly. And uh, sometime in probably late seventy two

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Speaker 1: or very early seventy three, said Hey, I'm gonna open

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Speaker 1: a record store. And I said something like and you're

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Speaker 1: gonna give me a job and he said, okay, and

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Speaker 1: there you got. So he uh, he had rented the

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Speaker 1: there was a guy on Westwood Boulevard who had a

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Speaker 1: Zenith appliance repair store. So if you had a Zenith

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Speaker 1: uh integrated stereo and it broke, you would go to

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Speaker 1: this guy. His name was Dave nine, and he had

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Speaker 1: very little business. And somehow Richard convinced him to lease

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Speaker 1: him the front half of the store and he would

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Speaker 1: keep the back half of the store to do his

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Speaker 1: electronics repair. And uh so I went down and with

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Speaker 1: a friend of mine, and we were helping Richard pound

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Speaker 1: together wooden bins for the records. And he had gone

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Speaker 1: to Aaron's Records and roseml swap in all these places

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Speaker 1: for about a year, saving up inventory to start this store.

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Speaker 1: And myself, his roommate, and a friend of his who

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Speaker 1: was a basus were the first three part time workers.

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Speaker 1: And they lasted maybe a month or two. And I

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Speaker 1: was not going to give this up. I was in

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Speaker 1: high school, I had a job a record store. I

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Speaker 1: had first pick of the records that got traded in. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It was as as you were alluding to the social

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Speaker 1: scene on the West Side for record collectors. There were

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Speaker 1: people who came four or five times a week waiting

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Speaker 1: to see what came out, what used records were new

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Speaker 1: in the bins what we had missed priced or missed,

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Speaker 1: and Richard very smartly salted the bins so he he

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Speaker 1: had a bunch of things like live Yardbirds album with

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Speaker 1: the John's Children album that back then we're records that

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Speaker 1: maybe now our hundred hundred to records, and he would

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Speaker 1: put him out for two fifty just so people would

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Speaker 1: start to talk about the great stuff in the bins.

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Speaker 1: And I made a lot of my friends at that

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Speaker 1: store were still my friends almost fifty years later. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Artists would come and visit us. Uh. You know, if

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Speaker 1: if Atlantic had the pretty Things on tour, there weren't

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Speaker 1: many record stores that cared about the pretty things. But

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Speaker 1: we would go nexts to meet the pretty things are

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Speaker 1: the trogs. Uh. You know, we do an in store.

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Speaker 1: We'd get a lot of people. We would have live

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Speaker 1: shows with our friends, the Angry Smoans or it was

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Speaker 1: just crazy all things to all people. Uh. Fun thing

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Speaker 1: and truly the most fun job I've ever had in

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Speaker 1: my life by life. Actually, what at what point did

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Speaker 1: you start to stock new records in addition to use

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Speaker 1: records pretty early on because people came in and wanted

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Speaker 1: new records, and then there were things like Saturday Night Fever,

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Speaker 1: which became these phenomenons that you couldn't not carry And

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Speaker 1: I remember, uh, that record was so big. You remember

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Speaker 1: a specific instance where you were this woman who was

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Speaker 1: probably in her thirties came in with a tennis racket

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Speaker 1: and a tennis skirt and a tennis shirt, fresh off

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Speaker 1: the courts, and she walked in the store, looked at

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Speaker 1: me and I said, Saturday and Night feverites right over there.

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Speaker 1: She said, how did you know? And it was so

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Speaker 1: evident this person was so outside the demographic of anybody

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Speaker 1: would come into our record store. Or you'd remember another

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Speaker 1: instance where it's a Sunday morning, somebody comes in and says,

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Speaker 1: Teff this album by the Roaches, Yeah, it's over there,

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Speaker 1: And about fifteen minutes later, somebody comes in and goes,

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Speaker 1: do you have this album on the Roaches? And you go,

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Speaker 1: they were on Saturday Night Live, right. How did you know?

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Speaker 1: You could really kind of gauge what was coming on,

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Speaker 1: what was going on in the world from that little

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Speaker 1: perch behind the counter. I've been to a lot of

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Speaker 1: record stores and they made movies now, high fidelity whatever,

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Speaker 1: but really that's not the way it was at most

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Speaker 1: record stores. Maybe there was a person behind the counter

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Speaker 1: or whatever, but you literally had to be anxious going

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Speaker 1: into Rhino Records because the staff would insult you on

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Speaker 1: what you bought, if you was as guilty if that

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Speaker 1: as anybody. Unfortunately, that's what I remember. So it was

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Speaker 1: less of all of what was anybody, uh policing that.

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Speaker 1: It was everyone's side. This was kind of the charm

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Speaker 1: of the store or what nobody was policing that because

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Speaker 1: what Richard did was higher experts in each category. You know,

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Speaker 1: Lee Kaplan ran the jazz and later Neil's Fine who

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Speaker 1: is famous as the guitar still Wilco and I was

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Speaker 1: doing the rock and the imports, and uh, it was

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Speaker 1: a store that had personality. You've got to admit that. Um,

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Speaker 1: that was just part of the stick. And I think,

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Speaker 1: you know, high fidelity was very much what Rhino was like, right.

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Speaker 1: The other thing, I remember we did great. I remember

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Speaker 1: Van Halen playing opening for Nils Loft in the Santa

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Speaker 1: Monica Civic and I was kind of laughing, like this

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Speaker 1: was black O gar Kansaw. And then I went into

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Speaker 1: Rhino and the guys by the kind of were reaving

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Speaker 1: how great guitarist Eddie Van Halen was, and I said, well,

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Speaker 1: maybe I have this row. Okay, So how did you

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Speaker 1: get your job at A and M. So I went

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Speaker 1: to USC and I got a business was a business major,

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Speaker 1: and my plan was to get a job in the

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Speaker 1: record business. And one of our customers, a guy named

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Speaker 1: Lou Beach, came in and said, I know this guy

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Speaker 1: at A and M, Jeff Areroff. You should call him.

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Speaker 1: And I said, okay, okay, And I was interviewed for

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Speaker 1: two or three jobs that I hadn't gotten and didn't

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Speaker 1: really want, but was looking for any entry point, and uh,

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Speaker 1: this guy kept bugging me to call his friend, Jeff Farroff,

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Speaker 1: and finally I did, and Jeff Farroff, who's now probably

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Speaker 1: my best friend, UM said okay, come on and you know,

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Speaker 1: talk to me. And he was the vice president of

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Speaker 1: creative Services at that point, so he wasn't responsible for

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Speaker 1: all the album covers, videos, marketing, advertising, and we hit

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Speaker 1: it off instantly, and he said, look, I'd like to

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Speaker 1: hire you. I just fired a bunch of people. That

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Speaker 1: was nineteen seventy nine and the record business had just

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Speaker 1: expanded hugely on the back of Fleetwood, Mac Rumors and

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Speaker 1: some of those records, and then contracted very dramatically. So

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Speaker 1: Jeff said, I'd love to hire you. I can't hire you.

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Speaker 1: I just fired a bunch of people. How would you

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Speaker 1: like to work for me as a freelancer? And I

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Speaker 1: said great. So he would give me projects to think

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Speaker 1: about and I would come in once every couple of

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Speaker 1: weeks and meet with him, and then every once in

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Speaker 1: a while he'd say, send me an invoice for five dollars.

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Speaker 1: And this was great. I was sort of what would

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Speaker 1: the projects be. So Squeeze were signed to A and M,

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Speaker 1: and he was trying to figure out something clever to

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Speaker 1: do with Squeeze, and I go, why don't you make

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Speaker 1: a five inch Squeeze record like Squeezed? And uh, I

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Speaker 1: had this little six inch Jimmy Hendricks record from France

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Speaker 1: and I brought it and showed it to me. Loved

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Speaker 1: that idea. So they made a five inch Squeeze record

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Speaker 1: for cool for Cats or one of those songs that

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Speaker 1: kind of thing. Um, Tim Curry's recording a new album,

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Speaker 1: bring me some songs that might be interesting for him

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Speaker 1: to cover, which was fantastic. I mean, I was getting

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Speaker 1: paid what I thought was a fortune for this, and

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Speaker 1: after about nine months he said, you know, I should

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Speaker 1: get Guilfries and the president of him to hire you.

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Speaker 1: That was the job I had. Jeff had and so

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Speaker 1: he had Guilt take me out to lunch and uh

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Speaker 1: this turned into probably six different meals with Gilt every

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Speaker 1: three weeks or so. And one day he says to me,

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Speaker 1: maybe we'll get you a desk in sales and I said, WHOA,

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Speaker 1: does that mean you're hiring me? And he goes, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I was always gonna hire you. So I got hired

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Speaker 1: as his assistant, which was the greatest job in the world. UM.

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Speaker 1: Jeff had had it. A guy named Michael Leon who

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Speaker 1: ran in him on the East Coast had it, and

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Speaker 1: uh I had it. And then the gig was, after

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Speaker 1: you had this job, you had to find your replacement.

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Speaker 1: And I went and got Tom Corson who worked at

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Speaker 1: I R. S and helped him get that job. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and uh I the job was basically doing everything he

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Speaker 1: didn't have time for. So you'd read his mail, respond

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Speaker 1: to the low hanging fruit stuff, bring things to his

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Speaker 1: attention in the company that you thought he needed to

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Speaker 1: know about. UM Travel with him. You know, he had

351
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Speaker 1: a secretary, but you were the person sitting at his

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Speaker 1: side helping him navigate his day to day responsibility to

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Speaker 1: the workload was so great, and that too, was an

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Speaker 1: incredible job. And he was probably the most important man

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Speaker 1: in my life in terms of teaching me things and

356
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Speaker 1: being able to emulate him and empowering me. You know,

357
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Speaker 1: I did things like the Funny Enough, the the Maybe

358
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Speaker 1: six months into the job, I got the tape of

359
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Speaker 1: and Adams album You Want It You got advanced cassette

360
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Speaker 1: I've never heard of. I listened to it and I

361
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Speaker 1: went to Gil. I said another thing about this guy.

362
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Speaker 1: He's signed by the Canadian Company, but this has one

363
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Speaker 1: a O R classic after another as far as I'm concerned.

364
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Speaker 1: Gil said, all right, fly him and his manager Dan,

365
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Speaker 1: that's your project. So I flew Brian and Bruce Allen

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Speaker 1: as manager down and they became my project. And so

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Speaker 1: I could say to Gil they're trying to get the

368
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Speaker 1: Kinks tour, and he'd get on the phone with whoever

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Speaker 1: the agent was and try to make that happen. And

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Speaker 1: I talked about him in the marketing meetings, and he

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Speaker 1: was a nonentity there at one point, Charlie Miner, the

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Speaker 1: late grade head of promotion, came down to my office,

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Speaker 1: grabbed me by my shirt and lifted me up against

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Speaker 1: the door and said, if you ever mentioned that guy's

375
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Speaker 1: name again, I'm gonna kill you. And three years later

376
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Speaker 1: and sold fifteen million albums something like. So Gil was

377
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Speaker 1: very empowering and letting you decide what you wanted to do,

378
00:22:03,080 --> 00:22:15,479
Speaker 1: and uh, supportive of going after So ultimately, air off

379
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Speaker 1: leaves and you get that job. What's that like? So

380
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Speaker 1: I worked for Gill as assistant. Then Adam started a

381
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Speaker 1: film company which was very successful. It had Bertie, which

382
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Speaker 1: won the Poem to Or at the can Film Festival,

383
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Speaker 1: and we made the Breakfast Club. And at some point

384
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Speaker 1: Guil came to me and said, do you want to

385
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Speaker 1: work half time for the film company as the music guy?

386
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Speaker 1: And I said sure, not because I had any interest

387
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Speaker 1: in the movie business, but because everybody I knew had

388
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Speaker 1: interested in the movie business. And what I hadn't figured

389
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Speaker 1: on was this. Then I had to read a script

390
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Speaker 1: every day, so I had to wake up at six

391
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Speaker 1: rate a script till seven thirty, then go to work.

392
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Speaker 1: And uh. I remember one series of meetings where somebody

393
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Speaker 1: was coming in and saying, some the extend up, We're

394
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Speaker 1: gonna do a remake of Alice in Wonderland. We've got

395
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Speaker 1: Madonna attached, and I'm going on, that sounds stupid. And

396
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Speaker 1: then to two meetings after that, somebody comes in and says,

397
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Speaker 1: we're making a remake of something else. We've got Madonna attached,

398
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Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, Wow, we're in the music business.

399
00:23:14,840 --> 00:23:18,600
Speaker 1: We just exaggerate these guys lie um. And after about

400
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Speaker 1: six months I went to Gil and said, I'm not

401
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Speaker 1: into this. I want to work in the record business

402
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Speaker 1: full time, no problem, And so Jeff Areff left and

403
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Speaker 1: I was nominated and Gil came to me to run

404
00:23:32,520 --> 00:23:36,000
Speaker 1: first the alternative marketing. We started an alternative marketing department.

405
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Speaker 1: Actually I started it, and it was the first one

406
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Speaker 1: in the music business to work on bands that weren't

407
00:23:41,600 --> 00:23:45,400
Speaker 1: getting the full attention of Charlie and the higher ups

408
00:23:45,400 --> 00:23:47,719
Speaker 1: in the company. So we worked on simple Minds at

409
00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:50,520
Speaker 1: Suzanne Vega and O. M. D. And acts like that

410
00:23:51,119 --> 00:23:53,760
Speaker 1: and had success, and then the idea was we'd get

411
00:23:53,840 --> 00:23:56,960
Speaker 1: something going and then hand him off to the company

412
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Speaker 1: at large. At some point, Bob Right, who's the head

413
00:24:01,520 --> 00:24:04,880
Speaker 1: of marketing leaves and Gil comes to me and says,

414
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Speaker 1: I want you to be the head of marketing too great,

415
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Speaker 1: so I leave. UH. I leave his assistant job, and

416
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Speaker 1: I become the head of marketing, which is where you

417
00:24:14,600 --> 00:24:19,280
Speaker 1: and I really started to work together. And uh. At

418
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Speaker 1: some point jeff Eroff leaves and I get nominated to

419
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Speaker 1: be the head of creative services too. And neither of

420
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Speaker 1: these jobs did I have any experience that they just

421
00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:32,080
Speaker 1: threw you in and supported you, and uh, I did that.

422
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Speaker 1: So I was in charge of advertising marketing all the

423
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Speaker 1: merch stuff, album covers and videos, which was a big

424
00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:47,920
Speaker 1: portfolio stuff and kind of very heavy stuff to learn

425
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Speaker 1: while doing. But I had Gil was a very creative guy,

426
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Speaker 1: and I could call on jeff Eroff and H somehow

427
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Speaker 1: I figured it out. Okay, how do you. Ultimately we

428
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Speaker 1: decide to DeCamp to Warner Brothers. I thought A M

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Speaker 1: was going to be my entirety of my career. I

430
00:25:08,800 --> 00:25:11,400
Speaker 1: was so close to guilt personally as well as professionally.

431
00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:17,400
Speaker 1: And UH, I had had, through my friend Gary Boorman,

432
00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:20,679
Speaker 1: had been approached by Warner Brothers, and I'd gone and

433
00:25:20,720 --> 00:25:23,000
Speaker 1: had a meeting. But I decided, you know, I just

434
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:26,600
Speaker 1: don't want to leave Gil and this company where I

435
00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:30,640
Speaker 1: know everybody, all my friends are And at some point UH,

436
00:25:30,920 --> 00:25:34,560
Speaker 1: and periodically UH people from the press would call and

437
00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:36,399
Speaker 1: say there are rumors and M is gonna get sold,

438
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:38,760
Speaker 1: and Guild would always say not gonna happen, and I'd

439
00:25:38,760 --> 00:25:41,320
Speaker 1: go back and say, not gonna happen. And one day

440
00:25:41,359 --> 00:25:45,119
Speaker 1: those rumors turned out to be true and Annam was

441
00:25:45,160 --> 00:25:48,879
Speaker 1: sold by Herban Jerry to PolyGram. And it was clear

442
00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:53,400
Speaker 1: that even though everybody was saying everything's gonna stay the same,

443
00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:57,359
Speaker 1: no problem. I remember meeting with Alan Levy, who was

444
00:25:57,400 --> 00:26:02,919
Speaker 1: the y hey of PolyGram in Europe, and he was

445
00:26:03,119 --> 00:26:07,280
Speaker 1: really a dismissive, rude guy, and he was interrogating you.

446
00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:11,239
Speaker 1: Was almost like the Gestapo. He'd say, tell me about this,

447
00:26:11,600 --> 00:26:14,960
Speaker 1: and you start talking and he'd say, enough, tell me

448
00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:17,639
Speaker 1: about this. And I just thought, this is not a

449
00:26:17,640 --> 00:26:19,600
Speaker 1: good vibe. This guy is going to be the boss

450
00:26:19,640 --> 00:26:24,200
Speaker 1: of our bosses. And at some point it becomes clear

451
00:26:24,760 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 1: that the A M of Old is not going to

452
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:30,639
Speaker 1: be the A and M of new. And I start

453
00:26:30,680 --> 00:26:33,520
Speaker 1: talking to Mouston and Lenny Warniker and Michael Lost and

454
00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:37,240
Speaker 1: Warner brothers, and they're willing to make me a senior

455
00:26:37,320 --> 00:26:42,359
Speaker 1: vice president and double my salary. And Warner Brothers and

456
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:44,480
Speaker 1: A and M are the two companies I ever wanted

457
00:26:44,560 --> 00:26:48,040
Speaker 1: to work for, and MO was somebody I was always

458
00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:52,240
Speaker 1: fascinated by, having signed hendricks On down. And so I

459
00:26:52,280 --> 00:26:54,640
Speaker 1: made the tough decision that I was gonna leave my

460
00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:58,119
Speaker 1: mentor and go to work for Warner Brothers. And the

461
00:26:58,240 --> 00:27:00,399
Speaker 1: day I was going into quit, I had onto my

462
00:27:00,480 --> 00:27:04,399
Speaker 1: shrink to prepare for this very difficult conversation, and we

463
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:06,760
Speaker 1: had an off the lot meeting and Tom Corson called

464
00:27:06,800 --> 00:27:11,480
Speaker 1: me and said, Jerry just fired Gil. What I was

465
00:27:11,520 --> 00:27:14,600
Speaker 1: gonna go quick today? Jerry just fired and called Gil.

466
00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:16,680
Speaker 1: And I called Gil and I said, you're not gonna

467
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:18,840
Speaker 1: believe this, and Gil said, oh fantastic. You can walk

468
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:21,960
Speaker 1: into Jerry's office and it'll be I fired Gil. Now

469
00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:24,520
Speaker 1: his number one, one of his number one guys is leaving.

470
00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:29,120
Speaker 1: And I went in and quit to Jerry, who I had,

471
00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:32,200
Speaker 1: you know, not a close relationship with. It was closer

472
00:27:32,240 --> 00:27:36,240
Speaker 1: to her and Gil, and uh so the timing worked

473
00:27:36,280 --> 00:27:43,960
Speaker 1: out beautifully. Okay, sidebar, you drove that Alfa Romeo Alphatta.

474
00:27:46,359 --> 00:27:50,080
Speaker 1: I had a g TV six and I had a spider,

475
00:27:50,119 --> 00:27:52,879
Speaker 1: but not an alphatta. I thought you had an al

476
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:54,840
Speaker 1: fet It must have been somebody else on the lot. Okay,

477
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:57,840
Speaker 1: you go to work, but I had to, So you're right.

478
00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:03,679
Speaker 1: And how bad were they? Uh? The spider was really good.

479
00:28:04,760 --> 00:28:08,280
Speaker 1: The GTV six required a bunch of work, but I

480
00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:12,800
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. I like them. Okay, So was it culture

481
00:28:12,840 --> 00:28:15,119
Speaker 1: shock going to Warner Brothers or do you fit right in?

482
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:18,360
Speaker 1: It was total culture shock, but not for the reason

483
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:21,480
Speaker 1: you might expect that A and M. Gil had his

484
00:28:21,560 --> 00:28:26,880
Speaker 1: hands in absolutely everything, so I might hear from him

485
00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:30,360
Speaker 1: five times a day. Uh, this is when I'm doing

486
00:28:30,359 --> 00:28:34,000
Speaker 1: marketing and creative services. And then at the end of

487
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:36,239
Speaker 1: the day, all the senior vice presidents would go to

488
00:28:36,280 --> 00:28:38,960
Speaker 1: his office and do a kind of a debrief for

489
00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 1: about an hour. When I went to work for MO,

490
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:48,840
Speaker 1: he was very decentralized. He hired people he thought I

491
00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:50,880
Speaker 1: knew what they were doing and just let them know

492
00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:55,600
Speaker 1: what let him go. And so I was so used

493
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:57,920
Speaker 1: to Hey, Gil, I'm gonna do this. How about that?

494
00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 1: I think we should do this. What are you doing

495
00:29:00,960 --> 00:29:05,080
Speaker 1: about this? Jeff More didn't one enough. He just felt like,

496
00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:07,440
Speaker 1: you know, there was a once a week meeting of

497
00:29:07,520 --> 00:29:10,480
Speaker 1: vice presidents and senior vice presidents, and everybody would go

498
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:13,440
Speaker 1: around the table talking about what they were doing. And

499
00:29:13,480 --> 00:29:17,440
Speaker 1: then there was a Thursday Senior Vice president's meeting that

500
00:29:17,520 --> 00:29:21,760
Speaker 1: was called Korea because everybody said it just goes on forever,

501
00:29:21,920 --> 00:29:25,200
Speaker 1: like the Korean War. And that was about four hours.

502
00:29:25,920 --> 00:29:27,920
Speaker 1: And those are the opportunities where if you had a

503
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:30,600
Speaker 1: question for Mo, or Lenny or the head of Business

504
00:29:30,600 --> 00:29:33,240
Speaker 1: Furs David Altchole, or wanted to let everybody know what

505
00:29:33,280 --> 00:29:35,719
Speaker 1: you were doing, you did him in that for him,

506
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:39,560
Speaker 1: and otherwise you just did what you did and they

507
00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:44,680
Speaker 1: didn't want to know about the everyday quotidian decisions that guilded.

508
00:29:44,880 --> 00:29:46,880
Speaker 1: So it was culture shock in that way, but I

509
00:29:46,920 --> 00:29:51,920
Speaker 1: adapted to it. And Mo was a genius, smartest guy

510
00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:54,760
Speaker 1: ever met in the music business, and I knew exactly

511
00:29:54,760 --> 00:29:57,160
Speaker 1: what he was doing. How did Mo evidence his genius?

512
00:29:59,280 --> 00:30:02,680
Speaker 1: This is a real story. We're sitting in that Monday

513
00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:11,640
Speaker 1: Vice President's meeting and Tom Raffino, the late head of International, says, oh,

514
00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:15,680
Speaker 1: Rod Stewart's touring Germany. Uh, and it's gonna be a

515
00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:19,240
Speaker 1: huge tour. They're gonna do a huge TV advertising campaign,

516
00:30:19,920 --> 00:30:23,760
Speaker 1: and they're going to release the Greatest Hits in Germany only,

517
00:30:24,520 --> 00:30:27,320
Speaker 1: and Mo turns to David Altchill Business appears and says,

518
00:30:27,920 --> 00:30:31,520
Speaker 1: it seems to me, when we renegotiated Rod's contract about

519
00:30:31,520 --> 00:30:33,760
Speaker 1: seven years ago, there was a provision for the Greatest

520
00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:35,240
Speaker 1: Hits and I just want to make sure that this

521
00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:39,480
Speaker 1: German Greatest Hits doesn't kill our ability to put out

522
00:30:39,520 --> 00:30:43,040
Speaker 1: a worldwide Greatest Hits later. And you're thinking, how does

523
00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:48,320
Speaker 1: this guy keep all this stuff in his mind? Just exceptional?

524
00:30:49,040 --> 00:30:51,840
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, he's trying to sign the Red

525
00:30:51,840 --> 00:30:54,160
Speaker 1: Hot Chili Peppers that he's taking him to Laker games

526
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:58,720
Speaker 1: and they're sitting on the court, and uh, he's pursuing

527
00:30:58,760 --> 00:31:00,800
Speaker 1: them heavily, and they decide to go with the money

528
00:31:00,800 --> 00:31:05,000
Speaker 1: and signed with CBS Colombia. And instead of being pissed,

529
00:31:05,080 --> 00:31:09,239
Speaker 1: Moe calls each of them individually and congratulates them and

530
00:31:09,280 --> 00:31:11,080
Speaker 1: tells them he's sorry we couldn't make a deal, but

531
00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:13,120
Speaker 1: he wishes them all the best and was wonderful to

532
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:15,120
Speaker 1: get to know them, and he hopes he sees them

533
00:31:15,120 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 1: in the future. And so as CBS starts negotiating the

534
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:25,440
Speaker 1: contract the way I heard it, they start backing out

535
00:31:25,480 --> 00:31:27,680
Speaker 1: of some of the commitments they made, and well, yeah,

536
00:31:27,760 --> 00:31:29,840
Speaker 1: we said that, but really it's got to be you know,

537
00:31:29,960 --> 00:31:34,280
Speaker 1: four fourth album kind of thing, and the Chili Peppers

538
00:31:34,320 --> 00:31:37,680
Speaker 1: start to say, you know, these guys promised us to

539
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:40,040
Speaker 1: the world and now they're starting to go back on it.

540
00:31:40,680 --> 00:31:44,080
Speaker 1: Moe was the greatest guy in the world. Even losing us.

541
00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:46,440
Speaker 1: He called each of us individually, fuck that. We'll go

542
00:31:46,480 --> 00:31:50,560
Speaker 1: to Word Brothers. Who is that. I don't think he

543
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:54,040
Speaker 1: was being strategic either. I think that's who he was is.

544
00:31:54,640 --> 00:31:58,840
Speaker 1: But um, it ends up with the Chili Peppers coming

545
00:31:58,840 --> 00:32:03,000
Speaker 1: to Warner Brothers and enormous success because Mo was a

546
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:07,240
Speaker 1: class act who could see the future and a very

547
00:32:07,240 --> 00:32:13,440
Speaker 1: strategic guy. Okay, Lenny was originally a producer he and

548
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:15,400
Speaker 1: our Guy maybe a little bit before that, but made

549
00:32:15,400 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 1: his bones. Was a song plugger before that, right, but

550
00:32:18,880 --> 00:32:21,680
Speaker 1: he was working with Russ Russ, titleman, whatever, and then

551
00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:25,480
Speaker 1: they promote him to president. Does that happen during your

552
00:32:25,520 --> 00:32:31,480
Speaker 1: tenure or before before? Okay? So what was Lenny's everyday role?

553
00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:35,200
Speaker 1: Lenny was the music guy. MO was the business guy.

554
00:32:35,320 --> 00:32:38,719
Speaker 1: Lenny was the music guy. So artists would come in

555
00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:42,480
Speaker 1: and talk to Lenny about their records he ran. He

556
00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:48,600
Speaker 1: was the head of the A and R department. Um,

557
00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:53,560
Speaker 1: he was a vibe is a vibe guy and also

558
00:32:53,920 --> 00:32:58,800
Speaker 1: just unbelievably impressive at talking to artists, being able to

559
00:32:58,840 --> 00:33:01,400
Speaker 1: say to an artist the album is great, but you

560
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:04,000
Speaker 1: need two more tracks and here's what they need to

561
00:33:04,040 --> 00:33:10,960
Speaker 1: accomplish without pissing an artist off, which is a unique talent. Um.

562
00:33:11,040 --> 00:33:14,200
Speaker 1: He would really get in the weeds with people making records.

563
00:33:15,200 --> 00:33:19,080
Speaker 1: He's brilliant at that. Okay, So Deedles just say as

564
00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:21,440
Speaker 1: we say in the business. There's a lot more product

565
00:33:21,520 --> 00:33:23,880
Speaker 1: at Warner Brothers. So how did you manage dealing with

566
00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:29,600
Speaker 1: such workload? I had a lot more people, and I

567
00:33:29,640 --> 00:33:33,520
Speaker 1: worked really long hours. It was incredible workload at Warner Brothers.

568
00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:37,040
Speaker 1: We released a ton of records. Um, a lot of

569
00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:41,520
Speaker 1: people worked very long hours making sure that that happened.

570
00:33:42,160 --> 00:33:48,720
Speaker 1: And you prioritize like anywhere else. So where long this

571
00:33:49,320 --> 00:33:51,920
Speaker 1: timeline do you meet your wife and how do you

572
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:57,040
Speaker 1: meet her? I meet her at A and M Records.

573
00:33:57,640 --> 00:33:59,960
Speaker 1: So I'm working for A and M. I've got at

574
00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:03,640
Speaker 1: Boston and then New York. Uh, I have to go

575
00:34:03,680 --> 00:34:05,120
Speaker 1: buy a suitcase. A call a friend of mine to

576
00:34:05,120 --> 00:34:07,400
Speaker 1: see if he wants to go have lunch, and by

577
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:11,319
Speaker 1: a suitcase. We do. He mentions that his girlfriend, who

578
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:14,479
Speaker 1: I'm close friends with, as a friend, visiting from New York.

579
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:18,120
Speaker 1: We go over to their house. I meet Jody there

580
00:34:18,600 --> 00:34:20,880
Speaker 1: and she has caught the bouquet at a wedding the

581
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:24,400
Speaker 1: night before. She'd come at her wedding and I really

582
00:34:24,440 --> 00:34:26,360
Speaker 1: liked her, and she was in New York. So I

583
00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:28,000
Speaker 1: flew to Boston that day, and for a couple of

584
00:34:28,080 --> 00:34:30,520
Speaker 1: days I was kind of ruminating, Wow, I really liked her,

585
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:33,560
Speaker 1: Maybe she liked me. I'll call Steve. And I called

586
00:34:33,560 --> 00:34:36,120
Speaker 1: Steve and he said, she really liked you. You You should

587
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:38,359
Speaker 1: call her. You're going to New York. So I call

588
00:34:38,400 --> 00:34:41,400
Speaker 1: her to ask her out. Um left a message on

589
00:34:41,440 --> 00:34:45,560
Speaker 1: her phone machine, never heard back. Get to New York.

590
00:34:45,640 --> 00:34:48,759
Speaker 1: Called her. She says, yeah, she'll go out with me.

591
00:34:48,840 --> 00:34:51,719
Speaker 1: We have dinner, hit it off, and that starts at all.

592
00:34:51,800 --> 00:34:55,360
Speaker 1: And after the fact I find out that she had

593
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:57,759
Speaker 1: actually called me at the hotel in Boston, left a

594
00:34:57,760 --> 00:35:00,480
Speaker 1: message she couldn't go out. She couldn't go out with me,

595
00:35:00,880 --> 00:35:03,720
Speaker 1: but felt since I was being so persistent, she would,

596
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:06,280
Speaker 1: when in fact, I had never got the message. Somebody

597
00:35:06,320 --> 00:35:09,759
Speaker 1: forgot to slide the slip under the door, as I

598
00:35:09,880 --> 00:35:11,879
Speaker 1: used to do back then, and I would have never

599
00:35:12,520 --> 00:35:16,440
Speaker 1: pursued her had she said no. So this whole family

600
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:19,120
Speaker 1: of mine and these two grown kids exists because some

601
00:35:19,239 --> 00:35:23,120
Speaker 1: bellman at the Copley Plaza didn't slide a little note

602
00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:25,759
Speaker 1: under my door. Do you know why she said no?

603
00:35:25,920 --> 00:35:29,360
Speaker 1: The first time? She was breaking up with her boyfriend

604
00:35:29,640 --> 00:35:33,879
Speaker 1: and felt weird about it now. But she comes from

605
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:36,480
Speaker 1: a lot of history in the music business. What was

606
00:35:36,520 --> 00:35:39,640
Speaker 1: she doing then? And your father in law did he

607
00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:44,480
Speaker 1: impact you at all? Yes? So Jody's father was Larry Utall,

608
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:49,359
Speaker 1: who owned Amy Mala and Bell Records, which were the precursors,

609
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:53,759
Speaker 1: as she pointed out of Ariston and Uh. I had

610
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:56,000
Speaker 1: never heard of him when I met her, but we

611
00:35:56,160 --> 00:35:59,359
Speaker 1: soon got into conversation about that. She had worked for

612
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:03,879
Speaker 1: her father next label, Private Stock, and in her one

613
00:36:04,040 --> 00:36:07,560
Speaker 1: in and R the thing that she ever did, found

614
00:36:07,640 --> 00:36:09,880
Speaker 1: Blondie and brought it to her father and said we

615
00:36:09,880 --> 00:36:14,800
Speaker 1: should sign these guys, which he did, and so uh,

616
00:36:15,120 --> 00:36:17,480
Speaker 1: pretty soon in this conversation we realized I told her

617
00:36:17,520 --> 00:36:18,560
Speaker 1: I was going to New York and one of the

618
00:36:18,600 --> 00:36:23,440
Speaker 1: reasons was to meet How Wilder, a late grade record producer,

619
00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:25,879
Speaker 1: and she said, I know how And so our first

620
00:36:25,880 --> 00:36:29,600
Speaker 1: conversation was about this guy we knew mutually, and she

621
00:36:29,680 --> 00:36:31,839
Speaker 1: had grown up in the music business and so could

622
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:36,960
Speaker 1: relate to that. And ironically, Um, my youngest daughter is

623
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:41,319
Speaker 1: engaged to a music business manager, which means that my

624
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:44,600
Speaker 1: daughter will have married somebody in the music business. My

625
00:36:45,280 --> 00:36:48,560
Speaker 1: her mother, Jodie married me, a guy in the music business,

626
00:36:48,600 --> 00:36:52,799
Speaker 1: and her grandmother married her father, Jody's father, a guy

627
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:55,800
Speaker 1: in the music business. And Jody's grandmother was a singer

628
00:36:55,800 --> 00:36:57,799
Speaker 1: in the Zigfield Follies. So we're going to have four

629
00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:03,640
Speaker 1: generations now, Okay, so Warner Brothers, you know, is going along.

630
00:37:03,800 --> 00:37:08,280
Speaker 1: Let's just stop for one thing. I know most take

631
00:37:08,400 --> 00:37:11,480
Speaker 1: on Prince. What was the take on Prince with him

632
00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:14,920
Speaker 1: wanting to put out more product, the label saying no,

633
00:37:15,440 --> 00:37:18,200
Speaker 1: him say painting slave on his face? What was it

634
00:37:18,280 --> 00:37:22,120
Speaker 1: like inside the building? Well, I was in the middle

635
00:37:22,160 --> 00:37:27,640
Speaker 1: of all that. Prince was the only genius, true genius

636
00:37:27,640 --> 00:37:31,880
Speaker 1: I ever worked. Um and I had a have a

637
00:37:31,920 --> 00:37:34,239
Speaker 1: funny story about our first meeting, but it's like five

638
00:37:34,239 --> 00:37:40,120
Speaker 1: minutes long. Well that's that good telling. Okay. So, uh,

639
00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:43,239
Speaker 1: Prince has had a couple of stiff records, and Moe

640
00:37:43,400 --> 00:37:45,239
Speaker 1: and Lenny and Michael Auston, who's the head of A

641
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:48,239
Speaker 1: and R, meet with him and say, look, you've got

642
00:37:48,239 --> 00:37:51,759
Speaker 1: to have some in our input. Your next record is

643
00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:55,200
Speaker 1: not life or death, but very very important, and that

644
00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:59,440
Speaker 1: becomes Diamonds and Pearls. And they're working very closely with him,

645
00:37:59,560 --> 00:38:02,520
Speaker 1: and Mo and Lenny and Michael are keeping us up

646
00:38:02,520 --> 00:38:06,760
Speaker 1: to data on all this, and uh, they're very convinced

647
00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:09,880
Speaker 1: that they've got a Prince record with multiple hits. And

648
00:38:09,920 --> 00:38:14,200
Speaker 1: I'm at the label maybe six months and they would

649
00:38:14,239 --> 00:38:18,240
Speaker 1: circulate the artwork that somebody had submitted if we weren't

650
00:38:18,239 --> 00:38:21,320
Speaker 1: doing it in the house for the album cover. And imagine,

651
00:38:21,320 --> 00:38:25,000
Speaker 1: if you will. I opened this envelope and I've got

652
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:27,200
Speaker 1: the new Prince out and cover, and it's a type

653
00:38:27,200 --> 00:38:30,719
Speaker 1: photo of his face from kind of his forehead down

654
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:34,240
Speaker 1: to his chin, and he's making kind of the peace

655
00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:37,000
Speaker 1: sign with his fingers reversed, with his tongue sticking out

656
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:42,000
Speaker 1: of the middle. It's just a ridiculous photo. And so

657
00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:44,879
Speaker 1: I go to Lenny's office and I said, I think

658
00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:46,799
Speaker 1: this is you know, you guys have spent so much

659
00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:49,920
Speaker 1: time on this record. This photograph that he wants on

660
00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:52,680
Speaker 1: the album cover is laughable, It's ridiculous. And he said,

661
00:38:52,719 --> 00:38:57,240
Speaker 1: go have a meeting with Prince. Okay. So Benny Medina

662
00:38:57,440 --> 00:39:00,080
Speaker 1: is the head of black An R and the in

663
00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:02,759
Speaker 1: his contact. So Benny sets up a meeting a couple

664
00:39:02,760 --> 00:39:08,400
Speaker 1: of days later and Prince I come in and Benny

665
00:39:08,480 --> 00:39:11,160
Speaker 1: has an office that looks like a cave with no windows,

666
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:14,479
Speaker 1: and the setup is he Benny sitting at his desk,

667
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:17,719
Speaker 1: and across from his desk perpendicular to it are two

668
00:39:17,719 --> 00:39:22,200
Speaker 1: couches apart from each other, and Princes sitting on one

669
00:39:22,360 --> 00:39:24,720
Speaker 1: and I'm sitting on the other one. And Prince looks

670
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:27,120
Speaker 1: as if he has come off stage or is about

671
00:39:27,120 --> 00:39:30,799
Speaker 1: to bound on stage. He's wearing full hair, makeup, full

672
00:39:30,840 --> 00:39:33,839
Speaker 1: stage clothes, which he always did I later found out.

673
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:39,200
Speaker 1: And Benny starts saying, um, well, Jeff's our new head

674
00:39:39,239 --> 00:39:43,040
Speaker 1: of creative services, and he thinks your album cover maybe

675
00:39:43,080 --> 00:39:45,640
Speaker 1: could be better, and then there's bam, bam bam on

676
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:50,200
Speaker 1: the door, and into the door walks Benny's lawyer, who's

677
00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:54,160
Speaker 1: renegotiating Benny's contract at Warner brothers and says, I need

678
00:39:54,160 --> 00:39:56,160
Speaker 1: to talk to you right away, and Benny proceeds to

679
00:39:56,239 --> 00:39:59,240
Speaker 1: leave for the entirety of the meeting. So I'm sitting

680
00:39:59,480 --> 00:40:03,319
Speaker 1: across from Prince Uh, who's a guy I have great

681
00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:06,680
Speaker 1: admiration for, but by all accounts a difficult guy to

682
00:40:06,719 --> 00:40:11,160
Speaker 1: deal with. And Uh, Benny has just told him I

683
00:40:11,160 --> 00:40:14,640
Speaker 1: don't like his album cover, and he's this is a

684
00:40:14,640 --> 00:40:18,720
Speaker 1: guy who knows how to use silence and intimidate people,

685
00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:21,799
Speaker 1: and he's developed this to a fine art. So he

686
00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:24,160
Speaker 1: looks at me and says, so, what do you think

687
00:40:24,160 --> 00:40:26,120
Speaker 1: I should do? Do you think I should wear overalls

688
00:40:26,160 --> 00:40:28,520
Speaker 1: like R E. M Or a band of the label

689
00:40:28,520 --> 00:40:32,560
Speaker 1: who clearly did not wear overalls. But well, no, I

690
00:40:32,600 --> 00:40:37,040
Speaker 1: was thinking, and you know it's just devolving, is do

691
00:40:37,080 --> 00:40:39,279
Speaker 1: you think you wear good clothes? Maybe I should get

692
00:40:39,280 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 1: you clothes like your send me your sizes. And he's

693
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:47,560
Speaker 1: wearing uh, fucia they look like ski pants, their skin

694
00:40:47,640 --> 00:40:50,480
Speaker 1: tight pants with a loop around the bottom under his

695
00:40:50,520 --> 00:40:57,160
Speaker 1: boots and a see through chartruss pinstriped shirt and uh,

696
00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:01,520
Speaker 1: it's just kind of baiting me. And at some point

697
00:41:01,560 --> 00:41:05,759
Speaker 1: he says, show me something you've done. I go okay.

698
00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:07,799
Speaker 1: So I go up to my office and I pulled

699
00:41:07,800 --> 00:41:12,040
Speaker 1: together all these CDs that I had art directed, and

700
00:41:12,080 --> 00:41:13,879
Speaker 1: they were mostly from A and M because I hadn't

701
00:41:13,880 --> 00:41:17,080
Speaker 1: been a worried Brothers that long. And he's bringing down

702
00:41:17,160 --> 00:41:20,560
Speaker 1: maybe a foot high stack, and he's looking at them

703
00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:24,280
Speaker 1: making dismissive comments. This is you know, I'm not saying

704
00:41:24,280 --> 00:41:26,680
Speaker 1: this is ship, but that's essentially what he's saying. Why

705
00:41:26,680 --> 00:41:29,080
Speaker 1: would I want to do this? Who would think this

706
00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:31,600
Speaker 1: is a good idea? And he gets near to the

707
00:41:31,640 --> 00:41:35,799
Speaker 1: bottom and he finds this holographic album of CD cover

708
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:39,080
Speaker 1: that I've done for Suzanne Vega for Days of Open Hand,

709
00:41:39,160 --> 00:41:42,520
Speaker 1: that I actually she and I and Thomas and Len

710
00:41:42,520 --> 00:41:44,960
Speaker 1: Pelt worked on it one great a Grammy for art direction.

711
00:41:45,719 --> 00:41:48,560
Speaker 1: And after dismissing the first fifteen of these, he looks

712
00:41:48,600 --> 00:41:51,359
Speaker 1: at this hologram and just kind of mesmerized and says,

713
00:41:52,600 --> 00:41:56,399
Speaker 1: this is good. Why can't I get a hologram by

714
00:41:56,480 --> 00:41:59,640
Speaker 1: some miracle I had met maybe a month before with

715
00:41:59,680 --> 00:42:02,960
Speaker 1: a I working for a company. You you'd have these

716
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:05,880
Speaker 1: meetings who had a new technology to make holograms cheaply,

717
00:42:06,760 --> 00:42:08,920
Speaker 1: And I said, well, maybe you can get a hologran

718
00:42:09,040 --> 00:42:10,839
Speaker 1: what do you mean? And I explained to him and

719
00:42:10,840 --> 00:42:13,920
Speaker 1: he said, all right, give me a hologram. And so

720
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:18,480
Speaker 1: that this hour and a half torture session ended up

721
00:42:18,520 --> 00:42:23,399
Speaker 1: on a slightly positive note. So I called this guy

722
00:42:24,080 --> 00:42:26,640
Speaker 1: from the hologram company and said, how would your company

723
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:29,640
Speaker 1: like to launch their new technology on the new album

724
00:42:29,680 --> 00:42:33,560
Speaker 1: from Prince? What? And I explained to him and said,

725
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:36,160
Speaker 1: but you're gonna have to really make this economically viable

726
00:42:36,200 --> 00:42:40,520
Speaker 1: for us. They did, and we ended up putting out

727
00:42:40,520 --> 00:42:44,080
Speaker 1: diamonds and pearls with this holographic cover. And Prince actually

728
00:42:44,120 --> 00:42:46,960
Speaker 1: sent me a thank you note, which is something that

729
00:42:47,040 --> 00:42:52,360
Speaker 1: his assistant said she had never seen him do. That says,

730
00:42:53,239 --> 00:42:57,200
Speaker 1: the more I look with an eye eyeball, the more

731
00:42:57,560 --> 00:43:02,080
Speaker 1: I like with another eyeball, thank you for the cool cover, Prince.

732
00:43:02,520 --> 00:43:04,080
Speaker 1: And it's on this little piece of station and it

733
00:43:04,120 --> 00:43:09,759
Speaker 1: says from the desk of Prince. So after that, I

734
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:11,759
Speaker 1: was one of the few people at Warner Brothers that

735
00:43:11,840 --> 00:43:16,360
Speaker 1: Prince talked to. And uh Mo and Lenny leave eventually,

736
00:43:17,960 --> 00:43:22,279
Speaker 1: and so and Benny leaves and Michael Austen leaves, and

737
00:43:22,360 --> 00:43:24,920
Speaker 1: so maybe it's me and one or two other people

738
00:43:24,960 --> 00:43:28,959
Speaker 1: that Prince talks to and uh, well, actually I'm getting

739
00:43:28,960 --> 00:43:33,360
Speaker 1: ahead of myself. So um, one day, Moe walks in

740
00:43:34,360 --> 00:43:37,319
Speaker 1: and says, I had a meeting with Prince. He wants

741
00:43:37,320 --> 00:43:40,319
Speaker 1: to be a vice president of this company. So I said, sure,

742
00:43:40,400 --> 00:43:45,440
Speaker 1: you're a vice president. So Prince becomes a vice president

743
00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:49,000
Speaker 1: of Warner Brothers and shows up to a couple of

744
00:43:49,000 --> 00:43:51,640
Speaker 1: the career meetings, and one of them I remember because

745
00:43:51,640 --> 00:43:53,880
Speaker 1: it was the day Magic Johnson announced he had it

746
00:43:54,239 --> 00:43:58,840
Speaker 1: aids it was HIV positive, and uh, we had this

747
00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:02,359
Speaker 1: giant projection TV and all of us were mesmerized. Those

748
00:44:02,360 --> 00:44:05,600
Speaker 1: guys were big basketball fans and we're watching the live

749
00:44:05,680 --> 00:44:09,000
Speaker 1: coverage of this with Prince, who for a very short

750
00:44:09,040 --> 00:44:12,839
Speaker 1: period of time pretended to be an a our guy.

751
00:44:12,880 --> 00:44:15,560
Speaker 1: But he was giving us so much product, and we

752
00:44:15,640 --> 00:44:21,919
Speaker 1: had his label, Paisley Park. Why not? And uh then

753
00:44:21,960 --> 00:44:26,759
Speaker 1: at another point Prince decides, you know, I want to

754
00:44:26,760 --> 00:44:30,000
Speaker 1: get my master's back and goes to MO and they say, no,

755
00:44:30,160 --> 00:44:32,840
Speaker 1: you can't get your master's back. We pay you millions

756
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:35,879
Speaker 1: of dollars every time you give us a record. If

757
00:44:35,920 --> 00:44:39,479
Speaker 1: you were when you were negotiating nine months ago, maybe

758
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:42,840
Speaker 1: we could have discussed that, but no, so Prince decides

759
00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:46,319
Speaker 1: he's going to change his name and then claim that

760
00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:51,200
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers has signed Prince, but the symbol is a

761
00:44:51,239 --> 00:44:54,640
Speaker 1: different artist who consigned to a different record label. And

762
00:44:54,680 --> 00:44:58,600
Speaker 1: we're having fun with this because the name Prince has gone,

763
00:44:58,600 --> 00:45:00,960
Speaker 1: so we do. He's a little come puter floppy disks

764
00:45:01,040 --> 00:45:03,319
Speaker 1: with the symbol and send it out to the press

765
00:45:03,400 --> 00:45:06,200
Speaker 1: so they can uh write articles about him and not

766
00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:11,359
Speaker 1: use prints. And when when I needed to call him,

767
00:45:11,400 --> 00:45:13,799
Speaker 1: I'd call his office and say, Hi, it's Jeff Gold

768
00:45:13,800 --> 00:45:17,480
Speaker 1: from Warner Brothers. His Prince there, knowing that his uh

769
00:45:18,080 --> 00:45:20,560
Speaker 1: people were from couldn't use the name. Or somebody would

770
00:45:20,600 --> 00:45:22,960
Speaker 1: call from Paisley Park and say, Hi, my boss is

771
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:25,440
Speaker 1: on the phone. It's who who is that? You know?

772
00:45:25,520 --> 00:45:32,520
Speaker 1: My boss? So obviously that doesn't fly. But eventually Moe

773
00:45:32,600 --> 00:45:35,040
Speaker 1: and Lenny leave, and Michael leaves and Benny leaves, and

774
00:45:35,080 --> 00:45:38,239
Speaker 1: I'm one of the few guys he talks to, and Uh,

775
00:45:39,200 --> 00:45:43,680
Speaker 1: I remember having a conversation with him where he's complaining.

776
00:45:43,719 --> 00:45:45,680
Speaker 1: It was just the two of us and he was

777
00:45:45,719 --> 00:45:49,160
Speaker 1: complaining and I'm gonna paraphrase this, but it was, you know,

778
00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:54,360
Speaker 1: everybody looks at these albums I put out as uh,

779
00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:56,799
Speaker 1: you know, kind of being delivered from the mountain, these

780
00:45:56,840 --> 00:45:59,319
Speaker 1: great statements. But I'm just recording all the time. And

781
00:45:59,320 --> 00:46:03,040
Speaker 1: when I get enough songs that I think make an album,

782
00:46:03,480 --> 00:46:06,239
Speaker 1: I put out an album. And I don't understand why

783
00:46:06,280 --> 00:46:09,880
Speaker 1: I can't just do that whenever I want. And I said, well,

784
00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:15,520
Speaker 1: when you renegotiated, you're getting to three million dollars whatever

785
00:46:15,560 --> 00:46:18,200
Speaker 1: it is per album, and we've got to be able

786
00:46:18,200 --> 00:46:20,719
Speaker 1: to recoup that money. And if you're giving us three

787
00:46:20,719 --> 00:46:23,920
Speaker 1: albums a year and we're giving you nine million dollars,

788
00:46:23,960 --> 00:46:26,960
Speaker 1: we can't possibly release the number of singles and market

789
00:46:27,000 --> 00:46:29,879
Speaker 1: these things the way that we need to market them,

790
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:34,560
Speaker 1: uh to make our money back and be profitable. And

791
00:46:35,560 --> 00:46:37,319
Speaker 1: he knew what I was saying. He was a very

792
00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:39,560
Speaker 1: very smart guy, and I knew what he was saying.

793
00:46:39,880 --> 00:46:41,760
Speaker 1: But it was kind of one of the few moments

794
00:46:41,760 --> 00:46:45,319
Speaker 1: where he let down. His guarden was vulnerable. And I

795
00:46:45,360 --> 00:46:49,680
Speaker 1: remember when he did the Gold Experience album. I think

796
00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:51,719
Speaker 1: either that or the Come album. Maybe it was a

797
00:46:51,800 --> 00:46:56,080
Speaker 1: Come album. We had a marketing meeting with Prince to

798
00:46:56,120 --> 00:46:59,360
Speaker 1: discuss he was touring in the marketing of that album,

799
00:46:59,440 --> 00:47:00,960
Speaker 1: and he sat to me because I was the only

800
00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:03,920
Speaker 1: person in the meeting who had a relationship with and

801
00:47:04,000 --> 00:47:06,560
Speaker 1: at some point, and this was the only time you

802
00:47:06,680 --> 00:47:11,319
Speaker 1: really broke character. He whispered in my ear, make this big,

803
00:47:11,360 --> 00:47:16,560
Speaker 1: I need the money. And you really never saw Prince

804
00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:20,239
Speaker 1: break character. You know, he was literally every time I

805
00:47:20,320 --> 00:47:22,840
Speaker 1: ever saw him, he could have gotten on stage and

806
00:47:22,880 --> 00:47:25,880
Speaker 1: started performing. He was fully made up to the nines

807
00:47:26,680 --> 00:47:39,040
Speaker 1: and uh dressed as exactly as if he was on stage. Well,

808
00:47:39,080 --> 00:47:41,239
Speaker 1: in any event, you referenced, all of a sudden, there's

809
00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:44,080
Speaker 1: all this turmoil in the music business. You know, Doug

810
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:49,360
Speaker 1: Morris gets power, he's kicked out. Bob Morgado's manipulating everything.

811
00:47:49,840 --> 00:47:53,480
Speaker 1: What was it like inside the building, and what was

812
00:47:53,520 --> 00:47:58,080
Speaker 1: it like when Mo and Lenny decided to go. It

813
00:47:58,200 --> 00:48:02,640
Speaker 1: was terrible. So Steve Ross, who ran Warners and then

814
00:48:02,640 --> 00:48:07,719
Speaker 1: time Warner had gotten ill and died. And uh the

815
00:48:08,040 --> 00:48:11,360
Speaker 1: head of the Warner Music Group was this guy, Bob Morgado,

816
00:48:11,960 --> 00:48:14,400
Speaker 1: who MO did not get along with. So MO had

817
00:48:14,440 --> 00:48:18,480
Speaker 1: a special side deal that while the heads of Electra

818
00:48:18,600 --> 00:48:21,399
Speaker 1: and Atlantic had to report to Bob Morgado, MO did

819
00:48:21,400 --> 00:48:27,320
Speaker 1: not have to. So Steve Ross dies and morgatoh cease

820
00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:31,760
Speaker 1: his opportunity and convinces Jerry Levin, who takes over Time Warner,

821
00:48:32,320 --> 00:48:35,040
Speaker 1: that he really needs Mo Austen to report to him

822
00:48:35,080 --> 00:48:38,040
Speaker 1: and the Bob Morgado knew nothing about the music business

823
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:41,720
Speaker 1: and would give interviews after after the Grammy's when Madonna

824
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:44,520
Speaker 1: wins a bunch of Grammys, saying, well, I authorized her signing,

825
00:48:45,280 --> 00:48:51,000
Speaker 1: you know, I authorized her resigning. So uh, when Morgato

826
00:48:52,080 --> 00:48:57,400
Speaker 1: uh convinces Jerry Levin that it's in his best interest

827
00:48:57,440 --> 00:48:59,799
Speaker 1: to have more report to him, most has forget it.

828
00:48:59,840 --> 00:49:03,239
Speaker 1: I'm not resigning, I'm dune, and nobody can believe this,

829
00:49:03,400 --> 00:49:06,920
Speaker 1: But Jerry Levin backs up Morgado and Mo leaves and

830
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:09,560
Speaker 1: for a while, uh, Lenny is going to take over,

831
00:49:09,640 --> 00:49:11,520
Speaker 1: and we think, well, this is a tragedy, but at

832
00:49:11,600 --> 00:49:16,880
Speaker 1: least Lenny is going to take over. Lenny eventually decides,

833
00:49:16,960 --> 00:49:19,200
Speaker 1: now I'm gonna leave and start a record label with

834
00:49:19,320 --> 00:49:26,080
Speaker 1: Mo DreamWorks. So then uh, Danny Goldberg comes in, who

835
00:49:26,160 --> 00:49:29,400
Speaker 1: I knew from me and m And Danny actually promotes

836
00:49:29,480 --> 00:49:33,560
Speaker 1: me and Howie Klein and Stephen Baker and Rich Fitzgerald

837
00:49:33,880 --> 00:49:36,000
Speaker 1: in an effort to keep us and gives us big

838
00:49:36,120 --> 00:49:40,239
Speaker 1: raises so he can project stability. But he's commuting from

839
00:49:40,280 --> 00:49:43,560
Speaker 1: New York where he lives every week at to l

840
00:49:43,600 --> 00:49:49,600
Speaker 1: A and Doug Morris Uh in a power play destabilizes

841
00:49:49,960 --> 00:49:53,160
Speaker 1: UH Morgado and Morgado gets fired and Dug takes over

842
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:58,239
Speaker 1: and and this continues. So the music group has been

843
00:49:58,360 --> 00:50:00,520
Speaker 1: run by Morgado for a longer of time, but MO

844
00:50:00,640 --> 00:50:04,400
Speaker 1: has been independent. And then you've got Morgado seizing power,

845
00:50:04,800 --> 00:50:07,520
Speaker 1: and then Doug seizing power from Regato, and then Michael

846
00:50:07,560 --> 00:50:13,840
Speaker 1: Fuchs seizing power from UH Doug, and then UH Bob

847
00:50:14,400 --> 00:50:17,680
Speaker 1: Daily and Terry Simmel from the picture company. This is

848
00:50:17,719 --> 00:50:20,480
Speaker 1: in about two years. There are four different people running

849
00:50:20,520 --> 00:50:25,160
Speaker 1: the music and the record company goes from Mo to

850
00:50:25,360 --> 00:50:28,560
Speaker 1: Lenny to Danny to rust Thy Red, who then has

851
00:50:28,640 --> 00:50:31,719
Speaker 1: heart failures so Phil Corduro was brought in. So you've

852
00:50:31,760 --> 00:50:34,359
Speaker 1: got these companies at Moran this for twenty five years,

853
00:50:34,760 --> 00:50:37,520
Speaker 1: and you've got five different people in the next two

854
00:50:37,600 --> 00:50:40,640
Speaker 1: years running it. So it was very, very unstable. There

855
00:50:40,719 --> 00:50:42,879
Speaker 1: was lots of speculation about what was going to happen,

856
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:46,040
Speaker 1: who was going to take over, what kind of changes

857
00:50:46,080 --> 00:50:49,480
Speaker 1: there were, and they were very distracting from what we

858
00:50:49,560 --> 00:50:51,720
Speaker 1: were trying to do, which is break acts and sell records.

859
00:50:52,719 --> 00:50:55,080
Speaker 1: So how did you how did it ultimately end with

860
00:50:55,280 --> 00:50:58,640
Speaker 1: you and Warner Brothers. Everybody's dream come true at this

861
00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:01,040
Speaker 1: time was to get fired with time on your contract.

862
00:51:01,400 --> 00:51:03,359
Speaker 1: This had happened to two of my closest friends, Hale

863
00:51:03,400 --> 00:51:07,239
Speaker 1: Millgroom and Jeff Arrell, who got essentially paid to go

864
00:51:07,400 --> 00:51:13,040
Speaker 1: home and do nothing. And the job was getting more

865
00:51:13,080 --> 00:51:15,920
Speaker 1: and more stressful as I was getting I got eventually

866
00:51:16,040 --> 00:51:19,560
Speaker 1: made the executive vice president and general manager of Warner

867
00:51:19,800 --> 00:51:21,800
Speaker 1: so I was the number two guys. Steve Baker was

868
00:51:21,880 --> 00:51:27,279
Speaker 1: the president. That happened with Danny and so my time

869
00:51:27,360 --> 00:51:35,200
Speaker 1: went from being administrative creative reversed. So I was doing

870
00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:40,160
Speaker 1: things like signing independent promotion bills and arguing with the

871
00:51:40,280 --> 00:51:45,120
Speaker 1: CFO about why a secretary couldn't get a raise. And

872
00:51:45,200 --> 00:51:48,359
Speaker 1: it was really not fun, but I was being paid well.

873
00:51:49,400 --> 00:51:53,799
Speaker 1: So when the fifth person from the person who hired

874
00:51:53,880 --> 00:51:59,479
Speaker 1: me took over, uh I UH was confronted by Phil

875
00:51:59,520 --> 00:52:02,959
Speaker 1: Cornerrea who said, look, Russ, and I feel like maybe

876
00:52:03,000 --> 00:52:04,920
Speaker 1: you'd be better in another job. What would you like

877
00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:07,200
Speaker 1: to do instead? And this was you know, I had

878
00:52:07,239 --> 00:52:09,320
Speaker 1: a contract that said I was the executive as president

879
00:52:09,400 --> 00:52:12,400
Speaker 1: general manager or they were in breach and had to

880
00:52:12,440 --> 00:52:14,560
Speaker 1: fire me. I had two years left on my deal,

881
00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:17,399
Speaker 1: and so I said, fire me. I don't want another job,

882
00:52:17,600 --> 00:52:19,879
Speaker 1: and that's what happened. I had become a Buddhist about

883
00:52:19,880 --> 00:52:23,160
Speaker 1: three years before that. I realized every year I was

884
00:52:23,239 --> 00:52:26,800
Speaker 1: working was probably two years off of my lifespan. But

885
00:52:27,040 --> 00:52:29,000
Speaker 1: the money was good and I had a young family.

886
00:52:29,160 --> 00:52:36,600
Speaker 1: And my contract auspiciously expired December thirty one. I thought,

887
00:52:36,920 --> 00:52:39,000
Speaker 1: when that is over, I'm out of here and I'm

888
00:52:39,000 --> 00:52:40,879
Speaker 1: gonna find something less stressful to do and mean while

889
00:52:40,880 --> 00:52:43,760
Speaker 1: I'm gonna bank every penny I can. So what happened

890
00:52:43,760 --> 00:52:46,160
Speaker 1: two years before me? I had these role models in

891
00:52:46,280 --> 00:52:50,120
Speaker 1: Hale and Jeff, and I couldn't have been happier. Okay,

892
00:52:50,160 --> 00:52:54,719
Speaker 1: So how did this ultimately segue into the memorabilia business? So,

893
00:52:55,800 --> 00:52:59,799
Speaker 1: as I described, I started off collecting rare records and memorabilia,

894
00:53:00,560 --> 00:53:04,800
Speaker 1: and I continued to do that during the record business years.

895
00:53:05,440 --> 00:53:07,279
Speaker 1: And it was great because I could fly all over.

896
00:53:07,560 --> 00:53:11,279
Speaker 1: Everything I bought was tax deductible. I was deep into

897
00:53:11,320 --> 00:53:13,600
Speaker 1: the Internet, and so my deal with Warner Brothers said,

898
00:53:13,680 --> 00:53:15,920
Speaker 1: as long as I didn't have another job, they had

899
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:21,279
Speaker 1: to pay me. Uh what my contract specified. So I thought, Okay,

900
00:53:21,280 --> 00:53:22,839
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get another job, but I can

901
00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:26,920
Speaker 1: be Entrepreneurroll what am I into? Rare records and memorabilia,

902
00:53:27,400 --> 00:53:33,319
Speaker 1: the Internet, stereo equipment, and computers. All four things very

903
00:53:33,440 --> 00:53:39,399
Speaker 1: simple too. Uh, cluster those together and start right back

904
00:53:39,440 --> 00:53:41,440
Speaker 1: up where I had left when I was in the

905
00:53:42,680 --> 00:53:44,520
Speaker 1: when I went to A and M and starting selling

906
00:53:44,640 --> 00:53:47,560
Speaker 1: rare records and memorabilia, but at a much higher level

907
00:53:47,600 --> 00:53:51,080
Speaker 1: because I was much better capitalized. And uh so I

908
00:53:51,120 --> 00:53:55,840
Speaker 1: started a website. I started selling an eBay very early on,

909
00:53:56,880 --> 00:54:01,400
Speaker 1: and uh, this is gonna be my retirement job. And

910
00:54:01,520 --> 00:54:05,880
Speaker 1: it's become my kind of out of control retirement job

911
00:54:05,920 --> 00:54:08,480
Speaker 1: that I'm constantly trying to not work more than I

912
00:54:08,560 --> 00:54:12,040
Speaker 1: want to work, but I love. Okay. One has to

913
00:54:12,120 --> 00:54:18,680
Speaker 1: ask how lucrative is this relative to working for the labels. Well,

914
00:54:18,719 --> 00:54:20,440
Speaker 1: I don't make as much money as I did working

915
00:54:20,440 --> 00:54:24,360
Speaker 1: with the record companies, but it's very lucrative. Okay. So

916
00:54:25,480 --> 00:54:29,080
Speaker 1: when you first go online et cetera with eBay, what

917
00:54:29,200 --> 00:54:35,319
Speaker 1: kind of stuff are you're selling? Rare records? Um, there's

918
00:54:35,360 --> 00:54:39,680
Speaker 1: a big market for first pressing rare records, and the

919
00:54:39,760 --> 00:54:45,960
Speaker 1: best analogy is um rare books. So you know somebody

920
00:54:46,040 --> 00:54:49,279
Speaker 1: might pay an extreme amount of money for well, I'll

921
00:54:49,280 --> 00:54:54,880
Speaker 1: give you an example. Um, The Beatles first album anywhere

922
00:54:54,880 --> 00:54:57,759
Speaker 1: in the world is Please Please Me. In England for

923
00:54:57,920 --> 00:55:00,600
Speaker 1: reasons that had nothing to do with the Beatles. It

924
00:55:00,760 --> 00:55:04,759
Speaker 1: came out on Parlophone in a on a label that

925
00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:09,239
Speaker 1: was black background with gold printing, and Parlophone decided to

926
00:55:09,440 --> 00:55:15,360
Speaker 1: change their label design about two months in. They also,

927
00:55:15,520 --> 00:55:22,000
Speaker 1: the first pressing of Please Please Me had erroneous copyright

928
00:55:23,719 --> 00:55:27,759
Speaker 1: credits for a few songs crediting them to Dick James

929
00:55:27,960 --> 00:55:31,280
Speaker 1: Music when they were actually Northern songs of the Beatles Company.

930
00:55:32,320 --> 00:55:36,879
Speaker 1: So somebody will pay a huge premium for a gold

931
00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:41,160
Speaker 1: Parlophone copy of Please Please Me that came out two

932
00:55:41,239 --> 00:55:44,480
Speaker 1: months before a black and yellow copy, and they'll pay

933
00:55:44,560 --> 00:55:48,920
Speaker 1: them even bigger premium if it has the first mistaken credits,

934
00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:53,080
Speaker 1: And then they'll pay an exponential premium if it's a

935
00:55:53,120 --> 00:55:59,839
Speaker 1: stereo copy, because nobody was buying stereo records and can

936
00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:04,400
Speaker 1: addition is so important that let's say I had an

937
00:56:04,680 --> 00:56:10,160
Speaker 1: absolutely perfect, brand new stereo copy of that record, I

938
00:56:10,239 --> 00:56:15,720
Speaker 1: could probably get for it if I had a copy

939
00:56:15,800 --> 00:56:19,640
Speaker 1: that was in very good condition that somebody had taken

940
00:56:19,680 --> 00:56:22,239
Speaker 1: care of but had some scuffs and marks still played. Well,

941
00:56:22,320 --> 00:56:29,000
Speaker 1: that might be ad. So I started selling really rare

942
00:56:29,200 --> 00:56:34,239
Speaker 1: records in the best condition possible. That's what I started with.

943
00:56:34,800 --> 00:56:41,160
Speaker 1: And then memorabilia as well, so concert posters, documents, signed things.

944
00:56:41,480 --> 00:56:45,400
Speaker 1: I remember in the seventies passing up a version of

945
00:56:45,520 --> 00:56:49,359
Speaker 1: Lumpy Gravy and then spending two years trying to find

946
00:56:49,440 --> 00:56:52,000
Speaker 1: it again and having to buy an import because it

947
00:56:52,120 --> 00:56:57,000
Speaker 1: was cut out from MGM whatever. Um uh So in

948
00:56:57,120 --> 00:57:00,800
Speaker 1: any event, everyone knows in the memory of Bealia world

949
00:57:00,880 --> 00:57:04,160
Speaker 1: in general that it used to be about like rock

950
00:57:04,320 --> 00:57:07,279
Speaker 1: Guitaristromingham would go from pawn shop to pawn shop. This

951
00:57:07,520 --> 00:57:13,200
Speaker 1: all went to the Internet, so everything became available. It

952
00:57:13,400 --> 00:57:16,160
Speaker 1: was not so much about the hunt but about buying.

953
00:57:16,360 --> 00:57:19,080
Speaker 1: Tell us the evolution once we're on the Internet of

954
00:57:19,600 --> 00:57:23,400
Speaker 1: what is available and how you find it, etcetera. So

955
00:57:24,240 --> 00:57:29,160
Speaker 1: I'll give you an example. M there's a when the

956
00:57:29,240 --> 00:57:32,480
Speaker 1: Freewheel and Bob Dylan album, his second album, is released,

957
00:57:32,560 --> 00:57:37,920
Speaker 1: in a story breaks that a few copies have been

958
00:57:37,960 --> 00:57:41,800
Speaker 1: discovered that have four different songs. They aren't listed on

959
00:57:41,840 --> 00:57:47,040
Speaker 1: the album cover. But uh, what had happened? Was he

960
00:57:47,200 --> 00:57:50,320
Speaker 1: recorded the album the beginning with John Hammond and then

961
00:57:50,360 --> 00:57:55,120
Speaker 1: with Tom Wilson, and then he written four more songs,

962
00:57:55,160 --> 00:57:57,640
Speaker 1: including Blowing in the Wind, and they had the record

963
00:57:57,680 --> 00:58:01,160
Speaker 1: all master designed, ready to go. But Tom Wilson thought

964
00:58:01,200 --> 00:58:04,120
Speaker 1: these songs were so strong that he went in gutman.

965
00:58:04,120 --> 00:58:06,560
Speaker 1: The studio recorded these four songs and they swapped them

966
00:58:06,560 --> 00:58:11,520
Speaker 1: out at one pressing plan in California. Somebody didn't get

967
00:58:11,560 --> 00:58:15,120
Speaker 1: the message and a few copies got pressed with the

968
00:58:15,160 --> 00:58:21,480
Speaker 1: old stampers which had the four original songs. But I

969
00:58:21,520 --> 00:58:23,200
Speaker 1: won't go to in the weeds with this, but the

970
00:58:23,320 --> 00:58:30,040
Speaker 1: mono copies became instantly very very very very collectible, and

971
00:58:30,240 --> 00:58:33,280
Speaker 1: the stereo copies nobody knew they existed to have surfaced

972
00:58:33,520 --> 00:58:40,480
Speaker 1: since nineteen so um pre eBay, that was the kind

973
00:58:40,520 --> 00:58:43,360
Speaker 1: of thing you heard about, but never ever saw a

974
00:58:43,480 --> 00:58:46,400
Speaker 1: freewheel and Bob dealing with those four tracks. And I

975
00:58:46,440 --> 00:58:49,640
Speaker 1: remember somebody knowing somebody in Santa Monica who had one,

976
00:58:50,440 --> 00:58:53,760
Speaker 1: and I inveigled myself to go over to this guy's

977
00:58:53,800 --> 00:58:56,040
Speaker 1: house and actually see it. And the only way you

978
00:58:56,080 --> 00:58:57,800
Speaker 1: can tell is either playing it or looking at the

979
00:58:57,840 --> 00:59:02,560
Speaker 1: stamper noters. That record was just impossibly rare, and I

980
00:59:02,640 --> 00:59:04,959
Speaker 1: was looking for it for maybe seven or eight years,

981
00:59:05,240 --> 00:59:08,439
Speaker 1: and I had a mail order catalog that I would

982
00:59:08,440 --> 00:59:12,320
Speaker 1: send out to four collectors three or four times a year,

983
00:59:13,000 --> 00:59:15,520
Speaker 1: and everybody would circulate there one list of times. I

984
00:59:15,600 --> 00:59:17,400
Speaker 1: will pay a lot of money for this record if

985
00:59:17,400 --> 00:59:21,120
Speaker 1: anybody has with And eventually, after I don't know, seven

986
00:59:21,200 --> 00:59:24,320
Speaker 1: or eight years, somebody contacted me and I traded him

987
00:59:25,320 --> 00:59:29,000
Speaker 1: maybe a thousand dollars worth of stuff for it. Just

988
00:59:29,160 --> 00:59:32,640
Speaker 1: an impossible to find record. Now if you're looking at eBay,

989
00:59:32,800 --> 00:59:37,360
Speaker 1: one a year will show up, so it's not it's

990
00:59:37,400 --> 00:59:41,800
Speaker 1: still very rare, but it's not impossible. So records that

991
00:59:42,920 --> 00:59:48,439
Speaker 1: were previously virtually unfindable find their way, as you said

992
00:59:48,480 --> 00:59:52,600
Speaker 1: with the guitars, to eBay or to auction, and if

993
00:59:52,680 --> 00:59:54,520
Speaker 1: you're willing to spend the money, you can find them.

994
00:59:55,120 --> 01:00:00,320
Speaker 1: Records that were sort of rare are now generally pretty

995
01:00:00,360 --> 01:00:06,440
Speaker 1: common because of Emay and discous people have a easily

996
01:00:06,920 --> 01:00:09,640
Speaker 1: it's easy to find out what something's worth, to research it,

997
01:00:10,320 --> 01:00:13,160
Speaker 1: and to put it up for sale on a forum

998
01:00:13,200 --> 01:00:17,160
Speaker 1: where people are looking for Okay, you talk about free wheeling.

999
01:00:17,640 --> 01:00:20,480
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan's girlfriend at the time, Susie Rutolo is on

1000
01:00:20,560 --> 01:00:23,600
Speaker 1: the cover of that. And if I got this straight,

1001
01:00:24,080 --> 01:00:28,840
Speaker 1: they ultimately sold her record collection and people bought the

1002
01:00:28,920 --> 01:00:32,360
Speaker 1: record she owned, and you know we're looking at one

1003
01:00:32,400 --> 01:00:34,360
Speaker 1: of them, right, So what is what is what is

1004
01:00:34,440 --> 01:00:39,440
Speaker 1: that worth? So Susie rode Along, who was his girlfriend

1005
01:00:39,520 --> 01:00:43,240
Speaker 1: in the early sixties, saved a lot of stuff and

1006
01:00:43,600 --> 01:00:51,040
Speaker 1: in probably the early two thousand's, decided she was going

1007
01:00:51,120 --> 01:00:56,000
Speaker 1: to sell some stuff and being a big consumer of

1008
01:00:56,080 --> 01:00:59,920
Speaker 1: Dylan stuff, and uh, I've worked for I appraised as

1009
01:01:00,080 --> 01:01:02,479
Speaker 1: archive with a colleague, I'm very much in the middle

1010
01:01:02,520 --> 01:01:05,120
Speaker 1: of that. So I got contacted and the two things

1011
01:01:05,200 --> 01:01:11,040
Speaker 1: I really wanted were two blues albums from sixty one

1012
01:01:12,040 --> 01:01:14,880
Speaker 1: that he had bought in London. There were English copies

1013
01:01:15,760 --> 01:01:18,360
Speaker 1: and on the back he had written above the liner

1014
01:01:18,480 --> 01:01:23,160
Speaker 1: notes things like written for and about Bob Dylan and

1015
01:01:24,280 --> 01:01:28,120
Speaker 1: read and absorbed by Bob Dylan. And I thought, I've

1016
01:01:28,240 --> 01:01:30,920
Speaker 1: got to have these, and I won them. I think

1017
01:01:30,920 --> 01:01:33,040
Speaker 1: I paid five or six thousand dollars apiece for them,

1018
01:01:33,080 --> 01:01:36,800
Speaker 1: which I've considered a huge bargain. And they're really interesting

1019
01:01:36,880 --> 01:01:43,800
Speaker 1: because this is Bob Dylan absorbing his influences, acknowledging that

1020
01:01:44,720 --> 01:01:47,560
Speaker 1: writing on the back of the album covers, and at

1021
01:01:47,600 --> 01:01:50,200
Speaker 1: the point where he's bought these records, He's been Bob

1022
01:01:50,280 --> 01:01:52,439
Speaker 1: Dylan for maybe a year a year and a half,

1023
01:01:52,920 --> 01:01:55,320
Speaker 1: so it's almost like he's trying on his new name.

1024
01:01:56,040 --> 01:01:59,560
Speaker 1: I've actually written an essay about this for a forthcoming book. Um,

1025
01:02:02,400 --> 01:02:05,600
Speaker 1: So I'm really One of my sub collections personal ones,

1026
01:02:05,800 --> 01:02:10,720
Speaker 1: is collecting records owned by artists who I who inspired me.

1027
01:02:11,120 --> 01:02:13,680
Speaker 1: So I've got about twenty five of Jimmie Hendricks's records,

1028
01:02:13,720 --> 01:02:17,080
Speaker 1: including his Dylan's greatest hits with some psychedelic doodling on

1029
01:02:17,160 --> 01:02:19,560
Speaker 1: the back. I've got some of Bill Wyman's records. I've

1030
01:02:19,600 --> 01:02:23,080
Speaker 1: got John Lennon's copy of A Hard Day's Night. I've

1031
01:02:23,160 --> 01:02:28,440
Speaker 1: got some Sterling Morrison's all that underground records. Um. You

1032
01:02:28,480 --> 01:02:31,320
Speaker 1: know it's pretty nerdy, but I love it. Okay, So

1033
01:02:31,840 --> 01:02:35,680
Speaker 1: Susie's album, let's assume she had an album from two

1034
01:02:36,320 --> 01:02:39,040
Speaker 1: with no doodle on it. It's just the same as

1035
01:02:39,080 --> 01:02:44,360
Speaker 1: if you boughted a retail store. Is that worth anything? Absolutely? Um,

1036
01:02:44,800 --> 01:02:49,000
Speaker 1: especially if it's a Dylan album. Um. And I was

1037
01:02:49,080 --> 01:02:52,800
Speaker 1: able to through the auction house contact her and say,

1038
01:02:52,880 --> 01:02:54,480
Speaker 1: you know, why was he writing on these records, and

1039
01:02:54,560 --> 01:02:56,680
Speaker 1: she said something to the extent of it would be

1040
01:02:56,720 --> 01:02:58,800
Speaker 1: as if someone was doodling on the side of a

1041
01:02:58,840 --> 01:03:03,400
Speaker 1: paperback book writing little notes to themselves. But yeah, people,

1042
01:03:03,640 --> 01:03:06,840
Speaker 1: there are people like me who are interested in records

1043
01:03:06,920 --> 01:03:12,360
Speaker 1: owned by musicians they like. Now, she's one generation away

1044
01:03:12,440 --> 01:03:14,600
Speaker 1: from that. But if it was something she had at

1045
01:03:14,600 --> 01:03:17,600
Speaker 1: the time and that Bob Dylan I would have listened

1046
01:03:17,640 --> 01:03:22,240
Speaker 1: to her played, that makes it intriguing. Okay, so at

1047
01:03:22,320 --> 01:03:25,400
Speaker 1: least to me. Yeah, right, so we know any of

1048
01:03:25,560 --> 01:03:28,640
Speaker 1: us who have sold or been to record stores that

1049
01:03:28,800 --> 01:03:33,560
Speaker 1: albums that everybody has Fleetwood, Mac, Rumors, Saturday Night Fever

1050
01:03:33,760 --> 01:03:39,240
Speaker 1: essentially worthless. Okay, what do people own that is actually

1051
01:03:39,320 --> 01:03:45,280
Speaker 1: worth something? That's not strictly true. The vinyl revival has

1052
01:03:45,360 --> 01:03:50,840
Speaker 1: gotten so out of control that people will pay premium

1053
01:03:50,880 --> 01:03:55,400
Speaker 1: prices for records that sold millions of copies. So if

1054
01:03:55,440 --> 01:03:58,320
Speaker 1: you had a sealed copy of Rumors that was the

1055
01:03:58,360 --> 01:04:01,800
Speaker 1: first pressing, probably go for three or four dred dollars.

1056
01:04:02,800 --> 01:04:05,440
Speaker 1: If you had a stone Mint first pressing, it's probably

1057
01:04:05,440 --> 01:04:08,560
Speaker 1: a hundred dollar record, which is inconceivable to be because

1058
01:04:08,640 --> 01:04:11,520
Speaker 1: it's one of the best selling records of all time. Um,

1059
01:04:12,240 --> 01:04:17,960
Speaker 1: I'll tell you the most recent story. Imaginal Nirvana's never

1060
01:04:18,120 --> 01:04:21,400
Speaker 1: Mind came out at a time where very few people

1061
01:04:21,480 --> 01:04:27,200
Speaker 1: were buying final records, so i've every day I wake

1062
01:04:27,280 --> 01:04:28,480
Speaker 1: up in one of the first things I do is

1063
01:04:28,520 --> 01:04:32,160
Speaker 1: look at the top forties selling records that's sold on

1064
01:04:32,280 --> 01:04:36,800
Speaker 1: eBay the day before. Just for those unsophisticated, that's an

1065
01:04:36,840 --> 01:04:40,840
Speaker 1: easy chart to find. Where's that chart grip swet dot com,

1066
01:04:41,040 --> 01:04:43,600
Speaker 1: g R I P s W E A T dot com.

1067
01:04:44,080 --> 01:04:45,920
Speaker 1: So you can see what's sold the day before on

1068
01:04:46,040 --> 01:04:52,200
Speaker 1: eBay in descending order of price. And never Mind has

1069
01:04:52,280 --> 01:04:55,320
Speaker 1: just been going up and up and up the last

1070
01:04:56,320 --> 01:04:59,840
Speaker 1: two or three years. And one sold for two thou

1071
01:05:00,080 --> 01:05:01,960
Speaker 1: dollars a couple of years ago, or a couple of

1072
01:05:02,000 --> 01:05:04,360
Speaker 1: months ago, a vinyl copy sold for two thousand dollars.

1073
01:05:05,280 --> 01:05:10,440
Speaker 1: Yesterday a copy sold for thirty perfect condition. And you know,

1074
01:05:10,560 --> 01:05:14,000
Speaker 1: nobody's records are in perfect condition, and if if they're not,

1075
01:05:14,080 --> 01:05:16,320
Speaker 1: the suffer a lot less. So I wrote to a

1076
01:05:16,400 --> 01:05:19,040
Speaker 1: friend of mine, going, God, I just can't believe they're

1077
01:05:19,080 --> 01:05:21,160
Speaker 1: selling for this much. It's nuts, and he said, yeah,

1078
01:05:21,240 --> 01:05:24,000
Speaker 1: that record just keeps going up. So in the middle

1079
01:05:24,040 --> 01:05:25,920
Speaker 1: of the night last night, I woke up and went,

1080
01:05:27,120 --> 01:05:30,160
Speaker 1: you know, I might have a copy of that, And

1081
01:05:30,200 --> 01:05:31,840
Speaker 1: I wrote a note to myself, and I got up

1082
01:05:31,920 --> 01:05:34,360
Speaker 1: this morning and I went to my record collection, and

1083
01:05:34,640 --> 01:05:38,760
Speaker 1: sure enough, I have an absolutely perfect promo copy of

1084
01:05:38,880 --> 01:05:42,800
Speaker 1: never Mind. And that's not something I would keep for

1085
01:05:43,960 --> 01:05:45,480
Speaker 1: I'm happy to have a reissue of that. It's not

1086
01:05:45,600 --> 01:05:49,960
Speaker 1: a record that's, you know, generationally deep to me. So

1087
01:05:50,320 --> 01:05:52,360
Speaker 1: that's a perfect example of the kind of thing that

1088
01:05:53,800 --> 01:05:56,000
Speaker 1: a non record collector might have that's worth a lot

1089
01:05:56,080 --> 01:06:09,280
Speaker 1: of money. Okay, So you know you occasionally go to people.

1090
01:06:09,520 --> 01:06:12,080
Speaker 1: Let's talk Ken Barnes. Ken Barnes, very well known rock

1091
01:06:12,200 --> 01:06:15,840
Speaker 1: writer from the classic rock era. He's got a huge collection.

1092
01:06:17,080 --> 01:06:21,280
Speaker 1: A few questions here, Hey he decides to sell. Are

1093
01:06:21,440 --> 01:06:25,000
Speaker 1: most of these people selling because they need the money?

1094
01:06:25,800 --> 01:06:28,640
Speaker 1: And be how do you find out about it? And

1095
01:06:28,840 --> 01:06:33,200
Speaker 1: sees to what degree is this the source of your inventor.

1096
01:06:33,920 --> 01:06:37,439
Speaker 1: I'd rather not talk about Ken, um, let's talk about

1097
01:06:37,440 --> 01:06:39,680
Speaker 1: it in a theoretical way. But that's why I bought

1098
01:06:39,760 --> 01:06:42,920
Speaker 1: his collection. I bought much of his collection. So there

1099
01:06:43,000 --> 01:06:46,600
Speaker 1: aren't that many people who will come over to your

1100
01:06:46,640 --> 01:06:50,360
Speaker 1: house and pay you tens of thousands of dollars or something,

1101
01:06:52,200 --> 01:06:54,480
Speaker 1: or a collection. A lot of the people who do

1102
01:06:54,600 --> 01:06:57,240
Speaker 1: what I do have stores, and their business model is

1103
01:06:57,280 --> 01:06:59,840
Speaker 1: by it as cheap as I can and then flip

1104
01:06:59,880 --> 01:07:01,960
Speaker 1: it as fast as I can because they've got overhead.

1105
01:07:03,040 --> 01:07:06,320
Speaker 1: My business models different. I want to buy the best

1106
01:07:06,440 --> 01:07:08,880
Speaker 1: things and only the best things, and I'll pay more

1107
01:07:08,960 --> 01:07:12,000
Speaker 1: than anybody to get them, and I'll put them on

1108
01:07:12,120 --> 01:07:14,840
Speaker 1: my website. And I don't care if something takes two

1109
01:07:14,920 --> 01:07:18,120
Speaker 1: or three years to sell if it's something really good.

1110
01:07:18,880 --> 01:07:20,920
Speaker 1: So I'll work with a couple of friends of mine

1111
01:07:20,960 --> 01:07:23,240
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles if somebody's got a huge collection and

1112
01:07:23,480 --> 01:07:25,680
Speaker 1: there are things that interest me, and I'll buy what

1113
01:07:25,800 --> 01:07:27,960
Speaker 1: I want and then they'll come in and buy what

1114
01:07:28,120 --> 01:07:33,320
Speaker 1: they want, and I get, you know, once a couple

1115
01:07:33,320 --> 01:07:35,320
Speaker 1: of times a week. I get those kind of calls.

1116
01:07:35,440 --> 01:07:41,920
Speaker 1: But generally people have used record store stock collections that

1117
01:07:41,960 --> 01:07:46,160
Speaker 1: aren't that interesting. But if it's an industry collection or

1118
01:07:46,480 --> 01:07:49,600
Speaker 1: somebody who worked in the media, oftentimes they do have

1119
01:07:49,720 --> 01:07:52,880
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. And I also very involved with the Rock

1120
01:07:52,920 --> 01:07:54,880
Speaker 1: and Roll Hall of Fame, and I will buy things

1121
01:07:55,640 --> 01:08:00,400
Speaker 1: that don't have financial value but have historical value, donate

1122
01:08:00,480 --> 01:08:05,720
Speaker 1: them things that I think need preserving. Okay, so the

1123
01:08:05,800 --> 01:08:09,000
Speaker 1: people who are selling these records? What is their main motivation?

1124
01:08:09,240 --> 01:08:12,920
Speaker 1: Money room, or they just don't want them anymore, all

1125
01:08:12,960 --> 01:08:15,960
Speaker 1: of the above. A lot of times somebody dies, somebody

1126
01:08:16,040 --> 01:08:19,280
Speaker 1: wants to raise money for a kid who's lost a job. Recently,

1127
01:08:20,000 --> 01:08:24,080
Speaker 1: I've paid for plastic surgery, I've bought new cars, I've

1128
01:08:24,120 --> 01:08:29,880
Speaker 1: paid for cancer medication. UM, you name it, Okay, so

1129
01:08:30,080 --> 01:08:33,040
Speaker 1: you come in. Let's assume to make the numbers around,

1130
01:08:33,439 --> 01:08:37,799
Speaker 1: somebody has a thousand records. Generally speaking, can you cherry

1131
01:08:37,880 --> 01:08:39,600
Speaker 1: pick or does someone want you to buy all a

1132
01:08:39,680 --> 01:08:44,839
Speaker 1: thousand for price and you deal with it? Uh? Generally,

1133
01:08:45,000 --> 01:08:47,840
Speaker 1: the way I explain it is, if you want me

1134
01:08:47,920 --> 01:08:50,479
Speaker 1: to buy everything, I'll buy it, but you'll make less

1135
01:08:51,000 --> 01:08:53,479
Speaker 1: than if I cherry pick it. And then I introduce

1136
01:08:53,520 --> 01:08:57,200
Speaker 1: you to somebody who will come over and and buy

1137
01:08:57,240 --> 01:09:00,760
Speaker 1: the rest from you. Because you're paying me, essentially to

1138
01:09:00,880 --> 01:09:03,840
Speaker 1: do the work that I don't need to do. It's

1139
01:09:03,880 --> 01:09:07,120
Speaker 1: a hassle for me to buy a thousand records keep

1140
01:09:07,120 --> 01:09:10,360
Speaker 1: a hundred of them at wholesale out nine hundred, So

1141
01:09:10,520 --> 01:09:13,000
Speaker 1: I'm gonna want something for my time. You're gonna get

1142
01:09:13,080 --> 01:09:15,840
Speaker 1: more money if I come over, pay you top dollar

1143
01:09:15,920 --> 01:09:18,320
Speaker 1: for that hundred and then introduce you to somebody who'll

1144
01:09:18,320 --> 01:09:22,400
Speaker 1: pay you top dollar for the other nine. Okay, let's

1145
01:09:22,439 --> 01:09:27,200
Speaker 1: talk about the ultimate a shrink wrapped record. How often

1146
01:09:27,280 --> 01:09:29,840
Speaker 1: do you find a shrink wrapped record? And how does

1147
01:09:29,880 --> 01:09:34,040
Speaker 1: that affect the price all the time. And here's here's

1148
01:09:34,080 --> 01:09:39,320
Speaker 1: my standard example. Yesterday and today in the Beetle by

1149
01:09:39,320 --> 01:09:41,640
Speaker 1: the Beatles was going to come out originally with a

1150
01:09:41,760 --> 01:09:45,080
Speaker 1: cover showing them with decapitated baby dolls covered in blood,

1151
01:09:46,520 --> 01:09:52,000
Speaker 1: capital printed them up, got very negative feedback from the media,

1152
01:09:52,720 --> 01:09:56,960
Speaker 1: and record store owners recalled or actually hadn't sent out

1153
01:09:57,000 --> 01:10:01,200
Speaker 1: the album in most cases, and pay did the trunk cover,

1154
01:10:01,360 --> 01:10:05,360
Speaker 1: an innocuous cover showing them standing around, uh, a trunk

1155
01:10:06,360 --> 01:10:11,840
Speaker 1: over the offending ones. So there, and they had sent

1156
01:10:11,920 --> 01:10:16,120
Speaker 1: out some of the original ones to reviewers, and they

1157
01:10:16,200 --> 01:10:19,040
Speaker 1: sent out a letter to them say, uh, mistake, sent

1158
01:10:19,120 --> 01:10:21,240
Speaker 1: it back to us, will send your replacement copy, which

1159
01:10:21,280 --> 01:10:25,280
Speaker 1: most of them didn't do. So you can find or

1160
01:10:25,680 --> 01:10:28,800
Speaker 1: what exists in the world are original copies that weren't

1161
01:10:28,800 --> 01:10:32,080
Speaker 1: pasted over, Copies that were pasted over that are called

1162
01:10:32,160 --> 01:10:36,400
Speaker 1: second state, and copies that are called third state. Where

1163
01:10:36,520 --> 01:10:42,400
Speaker 1: somebody industrious kid steamed off the old covered the new

1164
01:10:42,439 --> 01:10:45,800
Speaker 1: cover to reveal the old cutter cover. And these are

1165
01:10:46,000 --> 01:10:51,280
Speaker 1: worth a variety of prices depending on what the condition is.

1166
01:10:51,840 --> 01:10:57,599
Speaker 1: The most desirable one is a stereo, a sealed stereo,

1167
01:10:58,439 --> 01:11:02,519
Speaker 1: not pasted over copy. Uh. The guy who was the

1168
01:11:02,680 --> 01:11:05,760
Speaker 1: president of Capital at the time, Allen Livingston, kept a

1169
01:11:05,840 --> 01:11:09,400
Speaker 1: number of these, and those are the ultimate ones because

1170
01:11:09,400 --> 01:11:11,400
Speaker 1: I've got a letter from him saying I'm the president

1171
01:11:11,439 --> 01:11:15,000
Speaker 1: of Capital. I kept these from the top. So let's

1172
01:11:15,000 --> 01:11:20,040
Speaker 1: say one of those might be worth a hundred thousand dollars. Uh.

1173
01:11:20,400 --> 01:11:24,760
Speaker 1: If I took my fingernail and opened the shrink rap

1174
01:11:24,840 --> 01:11:29,320
Speaker 1: at the mouth, didn't pull the record out, that's gonna

1175
01:11:29,360 --> 01:11:34,200
Speaker 1: mean it's worth six. For the privilege of or the

1176
01:11:34,320 --> 01:11:37,200
Speaker 1: difference of sealed and unsealed, even though nothing else has changed,

1177
01:11:37,880 --> 01:11:41,920
Speaker 1: might reduce the price by if you took the record

1178
01:11:41,960 --> 01:11:44,040
Speaker 1: out and played it, the corners were bent up a

1179
01:11:44,120 --> 01:11:50,599
Speaker 1: little bit just through normal handling, that might be worth Uh.

1180
01:11:51,200 --> 01:11:54,240
Speaker 1: If the seams started to split, that might be worth fifteen.

1181
01:11:54,720 --> 01:11:57,320
Speaker 1: Now that's the extreme example, but that shows you how

1182
01:11:57,360 --> 01:12:02,280
Speaker 1: obsessed people are by condition and what an extreme premium

1183
01:12:02,360 --> 01:12:08,639
Speaker 1: people pay for rare records they're sealed. Let's uh, stay

1184
01:12:08,680 --> 01:12:12,280
Speaker 1: with the butcher cover. For a minute, Let's assume someone

1185
01:12:12,479 --> 01:12:15,760
Speaker 1: steamed off the cover and the album is not in

1186
01:12:15,840 --> 01:12:19,320
Speaker 1: good condition. What is that worth If they did a

1187
01:12:19,840 --> 01:12:23,280
Speaker 1: so so job, as most kids did, a couple hundred bucks,

1188
01:12:24,200 --> 01:12:26,920
Speaker 1: if they did a fantastic job where it was done

1189
01:12:27,000 --> 01:12:30,400
Speaker 1: professionally and there are people literally who do this professionally

1190
01:12:32,880 --> 01:12:37,040
Speaker 1: undred Okay, those of us who were record store savvy.

1191
01:12:37,160 --> 01:12:39,560
Speaker 1: You went into the Tower Sunset, you went in the

1192
01:12:39,640 --> 01:12:42,920
Speaker 1: back room. They had a shrink wrap machine. They sure

1193
01:12:43,040 --> 01:12:47,040
Speaker 1: did so. And Charlie Shaw, the manager of Tower at

1194
01:12:47,080 --> 01:12:49,880
Speaker 1: that time, had a motto, there's no such thing as

1195
01:12:50,240 --> 01:12:54,160
Speaker 1: as a defective record. So they were just reshrink everything.

1196
01:12:55,520 --> 01:12:59,040
Speaker 1: So the question becomes fraud. To what degree is being

1197
01:12:59,080 --> 01:13:01,720
Speaker 1: sold as shrink opped is really not shrink wrapped? And

1198
01:13:01,760 --> 01:13:05,519
Speaker 1: how can you tell? That? Is an extremely savvy question, Bob.

1199
01:13:06,000 --> 01:13:09,439
Speaker 1: There are a huge percentage of what's sold as sealed

1200
01:13:09,680 --> 01:13:14,799
Speaker 1: isn't is reshrink reshrunk. There's a huge amount on eBay

1201
01:13:15,640 --> 01:13:19,640
Speaker 1: of people selling NonStop sixties records that are supposed to

1202
01:13:19,680 --> 01:13:24,280
Speaker 1: be factory sealed, which aren't. I kind of find the

1203
01:13:24,320 --> 01:13:27,760
Speaker 1: whole phenomenon of sealed records ridiculous because, as you and

1204
01:13:27,840 --> 01:13:30,240
Speaker 1: I know there are defective records, and if I'm going

1205
01:13:30,280 --> 01:13:31,800
Speaker 1: to pay a thousand knowledge for record, I want to

1206
01:13:31,800 --> 01:13:35,680
Speaker 1: see what the record looks like. Um, there's a lot

1207
01:13:35,760 --> 01:13:39,200
Speaker 1: of fraud. And the way you tell the difference is

1208
01:13:39,960 --> 01:13:44,240
Speaker 1: somebody like me stares at it for a very long time. Well,

1209
01:13:44,320 --> 01:13:46,920
Speaker 1: I know, somebody's what a ship ton of records? You

1210
01:13:47,000 --> 01:13:49,719
Speaker 1: could tell back then? What was reshrunk? You know? I haven't.

1211
01:13:49,960 --> 01:13:54,120
Speaker 1: You can't tell you right? And but have you very

1212
01:13:54,200 --> 01:13:58,880
Speaker 1: sophisticated though? That's my I figured? So have you been beaten? Yeah,

1213
01:13:58,920 --> 01:14:02,360
Speaker 1: I've been beating a couple of times, um, but not many.

1214
01:14:03,479 --> 01:14:07,519
Speaker 1: And another quirk about my business model is, and I

1215
01:14:07,560 --> 01:14:10,439
Speaker 1: don't know anybody else who does this, I guarantee everything

1216
01:14:10,479 --> 01:14:14,160
Speaker 1: I sell to be authentic forever, in writing, if people

1217
01:14:14,200 --> 01:14:17,760
Speaker 1: ask and for hiring things in writing anyway, And this

1218
01:14:17,920 --> 01:14:21,599
Speaker 1: has two purposes. One it ensures the buyers they're getting

1219
01:14:21,680 --> 01:14:25,720
Speaker 1: something that is authentic. And to it prevents me from

1220
01:14:26,680 --> 01:14:30,000
Speaker 1: buying and reselling anything that I'm not absolutely positive about.

1221
01:14:30,640 --> 01:14:33,240
Speaker 1: If I see something and I'm nine percent sure it's good,

1222
01:14:33,360 --> 01:14:35,800
Speaker 1: I'm passing because I don't want that coming back to

1223
01:14:35,840 --> 01:14:40,320
Speaker 1: haunt me. Okay, So have you ever sold something that

1224
01:14:40,400 --> 01:14:44,839
Speaker 1: turned out not to be authentic. It's happened a few times.

1225
01:14:46,040 --> 01:14:49,479
Speaker 1: I almost did. Actually this week i'll show it to

1226
01:14:49,520 --> 01:15:01,360
Speaker 1: you this This is audio only, so described for the

1227
01:15:01,400 --> 01:15:06,679
Speaker 1: audience side it okay, this is a nine concert program

1228
01:15:06,840 --> 01:15:11,920
Speaker 1: for Felonious Monks first Australian tour and as you Bob

1229
01:15:12,000 --> 01:15:14,360
Speaker 1: can see, it's signed at the top by the Felonious Monk.

1230
01:15:15,320 --> 01:15:18,639
Speaker 1: So I bought this from a guy in Australia who

1231
01:15:18,720 --> 01:15:22,200
Speaker 1: told me that his friend now deceased, had gotten it signed.

1232
01:15:23,160 --> 01:15:25,479
Speaker 1: And I looked at the signal I bought it got

1233
01:15:25,560 --> 01:15:30,000
Speaker 1: it looked absolutely genuine, signed in fountain pen and uh.

1234
01:15:30,640 --> 01:15:34,200
Speaker 1: I sold it to a good customer. Mind I hadn't

1235
01:15:34,200 --> 01:15:37,600
Speaker 1: sent it out, and the next day somebody sent me

1236
01:15:37,720 --> 01:15:40,960
Speaker 1: an email saying, hey, that Felonious Monks signed thing you signed?

1237
01:15:41,479 --> 01:15:43,640
Speaker 1: Do you have that because somebody's got one listed on

1238
01:15:43,760 --> 01:15:46,240
Speaker 1: eBay And he sent me a link and I looked

1239
01:15:46,280 --> 01:15:49,320
Speaker 1: at it. It looked almost exactly the same, but there

1240
01:15:49,320 --> 01:15:51,800
Speaker 1: were a few creases in different places. So I wrote

1241
01:15:51,840 --> 01:15:54,439
Speaker 1: to the seller and said, do you actually have that?

1242
01:15:54,760 --> 01:15:56,400
Speaker 1: It was a guy in Australia. Is it possible that

1243
01:15:56,479 --> 01:15:59,360
Speaker 1: I bought that copy and you just didn't take it down. No,

1244
01:15:59,520 --> 01:16:03,400
Speaker 1: I've got the right in front of me, and I said,

1245
01:16:03,520 --> 01:16:05,720
Speaker 1: got the autograph has to be printed. And I looked

1246
01:16:05,760 --> 01:16:08,680
Speaker 1: at it through a very high power loop and it

1247
01:16:08,960 --> 01:16:13,640
Speaker 1: still looks like an original autograph. Um. And I did

1248
01:16:13,680 --> 01:16:15,439
Speaker 1: a lot of research and I couldn't find any other

1249
01:16:15,520 --> 01:16:17,519
Speaker 1: copies of it online. This guy sent me some high

1250
01:16:17,520 --> 01:16:22,479
Speaker 1: resolution pictures of the one he had, and even though

1251
01:16:24,160 --> 01:16:27,240
Speaker 1: I was almost certain it wasn't printed, it clearly has

1252
01:16:27,280 --> 01:16:30,439
Speaker 1: to be printed because there's another one that's identical in

1253
01:16:30,560 --> 01:16:34,960
Speaker 1: every way. So I contacted my customer and said, bad news.

1254
01:16:35,320 --> 01:16:37,519
Speaker 1: I'm refunding your money. I didn't send it out yet.

1255
01:16:38,320 --> 01:16:41,240
Speaker 1: It's fake. I can't think of the last time that happened.

1256
01:16:43,560 --> 01:16:47,080
Speaker 1: If ever. Um, yeah, just happened a couple of weeks ago.

1257
01:16:47,439 --> 01:16:49,800
Speaker 1: So I do, I do, But you know, the good

1258
01:16:49,840 --> 01:16:53,760
Speaker 1: news is I guarantee everything. So okay. So how much

1259
01:16:53,880 --> 01:16:58,640
Speaker 1: inventory do you have and where do you keep it? Uh?

1260
01:16:59,280 --> 01:17:02,280
Speaker 1: I have a fair amount of inventory, but a lot

1261
01:17:02,360 --> 01:17:06,160
Speaker 1: of it is very valuable pieces of paper and records

1262
01:17:06,200 --> 01:17:10,200
Speaker 1: which don't take up a lot of space, and unframed posters.

1263
01:17:10,560 --> 01:17:12,840
Speaker 1: So I have some flat files and I have a

1264
01:17:12,880 --> 01:17:15,360
Speaker 1: big safe and I have a safe deposit box, and

1265
01:17:17,200 --> 01:17:23,639
Speaker 1: I'm forever trying to sell fewer more expensive things, um

1266
01:17:24,840 --> 01:17:28,000
Speaker 1: and happily that what I deal in generally doesn't take

1267
01:17:28,040 --> 01:17:32,080
Speaker 1: up very much space. Okay, So how many vinyl records

1268
01:17:32,160 --> 01:17:37,160
Speaker 1: do you own today in my personal collection? You're looking

1269
01:17:37,240 --> 01:17:40,439
Speaker 1: at it a two thousand? Okay, how many of those

1270
01:17:40,560 --> 01:17:47,160
Speaker 1: records you're never gonna sell? Well, I'm gonna die someday, shockingly,

1271
01:17:47,840 --> 01:17:50,400
Speaker 1: and so you know my fantasy is to sell it

1272
01:17:50,479 --> 01:17:52,720
Speaker 1: all right before that happens. I don't know if that

1273
01:17:52,760 --> 01:17:55,360
Speaker 1: will happen. But those two thousand records are my collection,

1274
01:17:55,960 --> 01:17:59,360
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm very disinclined to part with any of them.

1275
01:17:59,640 --> 01:18:02,320
Speaker 1: There are hard earned, a lot of them might spend

1276
01:18:02,320 --> 01:18:04,559
Speaker 1: a lot of time looking for a lot of them

1277
01:18:04,640 --> 01:18:08,320
Speaker 1: have stories behind them, are souvenirs from travel or owned

1278
01:18:08,400 --> 01:18:10,560
Speaker 1: by friends of mine who are no longer here, or

1279
01:18:11,640 --> 01:18:15,120
Speaker 1: owned by artists I admire. So that's my record collection.

1280
01:18:15,360 --> 01:18:19,240
Speaker 1: And if one was knowledgeable like yourself, how many of

1281
01:18:19,320 --> 01:18:22,320
Speaker 1: those are rare and how many just have sentimental value?

1282
01:18:24,200 --> 01:18:32,880
Speaker 1: M m it's probably m hmm. There are records in

1283
01:18:32,920 --> 01:18:36,439
Speaker 1: there I would be extremely hard pressed to ever replace.

1284
01:18:37,240 --> 01:18:40,080
Speaker 1: There are records in there that are irreplaceable or the

1285
01:18:40,200 --> 01:18:43,680
Speaker 1: only known copy. There are records in there that are

1286
01:18:43,720 --> 01:18:50,440
Speaker 1: really common. Having found that Nirvana record today, I'm motivated

1287
01:18:50,479 --> 01:18:52,880
Speaker 1: to go look through and I wonder if there's anything

1288
01:18:52,920 --> 01:18:56,800
Speaker 1: else that doesn't mean that much, to mean it's worth

1289
01:18:56,840 --> 01:19:00,200
Speaker 1: a lot of money. But but generally those are things

1290
01:19:00,240 --> 01:19:02,360
Speaker 1: that I have a deep connection to and I listened to,

1291
01:19:02,960 --> 01:19:06,639
Speaker 1: you know, probably five or six albums a day. Okay,

1292
01:19:06,840 --> 01:19:09,120
Speaker 1: So how good a system do you have? What do

1293
01:19:09,160 --> 01:19:13,920
Speaker 1: you have I have? I lived in a house with

1294
01:19:14,000 --> 01:19:18,640
Speaker 1: just my wife. She never turns on the stereo, and

1295
01:19:18,760 --> 01:19:22,000
Speaker 1: I have four stereos with turntables, and I have a

1296
01:19:22,080 --> 01:19:27,160
Speaker 1: three floor house. Uh. My best stereo is I was

1297
01:19:27,200 --> 01:19:29,719
Speaker 1: born in nineteen fifty six and I thought it would

1298
01:19:29,720 --> 01:19:31,760
Speaker 1: be fun to put together he stayed of the art

1299
01:19:31,880 --> 01:19:35,920
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six system, and for that I have some

1300
01:19:36,280 --> 01:19:40,120
Speaker 1: nineteen circa nineteen fifty six JB L speakers that have

1301
01:19:40,200 --> 01:19:43,519
Speaker 1: been rebuilt that are about three ft tall. I have

1302
01:19:43,800 --> 01:19:53,280
Speaker 1: a Macto, Macintosh Mono to bamps, Macintosh uh Tuner pre amp,

1303
01:19:54,200 --> 01:20:01,400
Speaker 1: and a um Thorn's turntables. So that's all circa nine

1304
01:20:02,280 --> 01:20:06,960
Speaker 1: and that's my best stereo. I think, uh, I have

1305
01:20:07,120 --> 01:20:13,320
Speaker 1: some other McIntosh integrated amps. I have Linn Access turntable.

1306
01:20:14,120 --> 01:20:17,320
Speaker 1: I have a real good turntable. Yeah, lesser stuff, but

1307
01:20:18,439 --> 01:20:21,160
Speaker 1: it's great to have stereos all over the house. What

1308
01:20:21,320 --> 01:20:25,960
Speaker 1: do you think of the vinyl revival. It's mystifying to me.

1309
01:20:26,280 --> 01:20:29,320
Speaker 1: It's fantastic. I think it's fantastic. My first book was

1310
01:20:29,439 --> 01:20:35,000
Speaker 1: on classic vinyl records. Um, it's great to see kids

1311
01:20:35,680 --> 01:20:39,320
Speaker 1: excited about vinyl records. It's great to see all these records,

1312
01:20:39,360 --> 01:20:42,160
Speaker 1: store day releases coming out, lots of things you thought

1313
01:20:42,240 --> 01:20:44,439
Speaker 1: you'd never hear or never be able to get on vinyl.

1314
01:20:45,439 --> 01:20:48,280
Speaker 1: It's shocking to me when I look at the forty

1315
01:20:48,320 --> 01:20:52,880
Speaker 1: biggest selling records from the day before on eBay and

1316
01:20:53,040 --> 01:20:57,439
Speaker 1: seeing over and over and over Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift

1317
01:20:57,479 --> 01:21:04,000
Speaker 1: record store day records or reissues of not that uncommon

1318
01:21:04,080 --> 01:21:08,360
Speaker 1: records selling for five six hundred dollars. H People doing

1319
01:21:09,120 --> 01:21:12,240
Speaker 1: bespoke jazz reissues itself for five d to a thousand

1320
01:21:12,320 --> 01:21:16,479
Speaker 1: dollars when you could buy for that kind of money

1321
01:21:16,640 --> 01:21:19,840
Speaker 1: a truly rare record. But generally, I think it's very

1322
01:21:19,880 --> 01:21:23,240
Speaker 1: exciting that kids are getting turned onto music and and

1323
01:21:23,360 --> 01:21:26,680
Speaker 1: not just kids and records. We grew up in an

1324
01:21:26,760 --> 01:21:30,160
Speaker 1: era where the records were cut analog on tape, ultimately

1325
01:21:30,200 --> 01:21:33,519
Speaker 1: analog format, and you wanted to get the best ster

1326
01:21:33,800 --> 01:21:37,120
Speaker 1: you can afford. Whereas kids frequently have a very poor

1327
01:21:37,320 --> 01:21:41,639
Speaker 1: stereo and they're buying something that was cut digitally that's

1328
01:21:41,720 --> 01:21:45,040
Speaker 1: ultimately pressed on vinyl. What do you think about all that?

1329
01:21:46,320 --> 01:21:49,080
Speaker 1: I think the whole thing is weird. When the Beatles did.

1330
01:21:50,040 --> 01:21:54,840
Speaker 1: When the first Beatles vinyl remasters came at five or

1331
01:21:55,160 --> 01:21:59,000
Speaker 1: seven years ago, I bought some of them, and they

1332
01:21:59,080 --> 01:22:01,479
Speaker 1: were doing all this us about how George Martin's son

1333
01:22:01,640 --> 01:22:06,880
Speaker 1: and state of the art UH remastering and allowed them

1334
01:22:06,960 --> 01:22:09,760
Speaker 1: to tease new information on the tapes, and you could

1335
01:22:09,800 --> 01:22:14,519
Speaker 1: hear the Beatles fingers on the strings, the string noise

1336
01:22:14,600 --> 01:22:17,479
Speaker 1: and stuff, and they've been remixed from the original masters.

1337
01:22:17,840 --> 01:22:20,719
Speaker 1: And I listened to them and I hated them because

1338
01:22:20,760 --> 01:22:24,120
Speaker 1: they didn't sound like the records that are imprinted in

1339
01:22:24,200 --> 01:22:27,360
Speaker 1: my mind that I love. And I have a friend

1340
01:22:27,400 --> 01:22:29,400
Speaker 1: who has a very high end audio store at the

1341
01:22:29,439 --> 01:22:32,320
Speaker 1: time had a hundred thousand dollar turntable and I went

1342
01:22:32,600 --> 01:22:36,280
Speaker 1: a bead some of my English first pressing Beatle records

1343
01:22:36,640 --> 01:22:40,160
Speaker 1: against those, and I just thought the new ones sounded terrible.

1344
01:22:40,200 --> 01:22:44,760
Speaker 1: They were like science projects. Yeah, there's more information, but

1345
01:22:44,920 --> 01:22:48,360
Speaker 1: it's not what the Beatles signed off on in when

1346
01:22:48,400 --> 01:22:52,600
Speaker 1: they were sitting in the room with George Martin. So

1347
01:22:53,040 --> 01:22:56,200
Speaker 1: generally that stuff doesn't interest me. M I buy lots

1348
01:22:56,240 --> 01:23:00,599
Speaker 1: of reissues and I like find hearing new music artists

1349
01:23:00,680 --> 01:23:04,640
Speaker 1: I like. But the remastering, you know, I mean, the

1350
01:23:04,760 --> 01:23:07,720
Speaker 1: remastering never stops. As you know, you know, there are

1351
01:23:07,800 --> 01:23:11,000
Speaker 1: records have been remastered, you know, pet sounds four or five,

1352
01:23:11,160 --> 01:23:15,400
Speaker 1: six times, and uh, it just feels very science project.

1353
01:23:15,760 --> 01:23:18,120
Speaker 1: We'll certainly remix. You know. I've been on record and

1354
01:23:19,200 --> 01:23:22,719
Speaker 1: certainly been involved with people on this is just crazy. Okay.

1355
01:23:23,120 --> 01:23:28,680
Speaker 1: You've been heavily involved with Dylan's music, both in the

1356
01:23:29,160 --> 01:23:32,920
Speaker 1: museum that opened in Oklahoma and finding unreleased stuff. Tell

1357
01:23:33,000 --> 01:23:38,160
Speaker 1: us about that. He was one of my favorite artists

1358
01:23:38,200 --> 01:23:40,960
Speaker 1: as a kid. It still is. I heard a show

1359
01:23:42,120 --> 01:23:48,240
Speaker 1: on YouTube from five days ago in Seattle where he

1360
01:23:48,400 --> 01:23:52,240
Speaker 1: was just sounding unbelievably good. It's just remarkable. This guy

1361
01:23:52,280 --> 01:23:55,439
Speaker 1: at eighty one years old is making great music and

1362
01:23:55,600 --> 01:23:59,760
Speaker 1: is still great, still on the road and sounding fantastic. Uh,

1363
01:24:00,000 --> 01:24:01,880
Speaker 1: he's not sounding like he did in Night sixty four.

1364
01:24:02,040 --> 01:24:07,200
Speaker 1: But sav Um, I loved Dylan records. I bought all

1365
01:24:07,240 --> 01:24:09,400
Speaker 1: the Dylan bootlegs I could find. As a kid, I

1366
01:24:09,520 --> 01:24:13,320
Speaker 1: collected rare Dylan records. I wanted that freewheel and so bad.

1367
01:24:13,400 --> 01:24:16,599
Speaker 1: I was willing to pay crazy money for it. Um

1368
01:24:18,240 --> 01:24:21,400
Speaker 1: I became friendly with a guy named Jason Emmons who

1369
01:24:21,760 --> 01:24:25,599
Speaker 1: was the curatorial director at the Experience Music Project in Seattle.

1370
01:24:26,439 --> 01:24:30,719
Speaker 1: He put together a museum show called Bob Dylan's American

1371
01:24:30,800 --> 01:24:36,479
Speaker 1: Journey that traveled around the United States. That was the

1372
01:24:36,600 --> 01:24:39,519
Speaker 1: only authorized ever Dylan exhibit. It was at the Scutball

1373
01:24:39,560 --> 01:24:42,680
Speaker 1: here in Los Angeles. It was incredible. I was consultant

1374
01:24:42,760 --> 01:24:44,760
Speaker 1: to it, and I was probably the major, one of

1375
01:24:44,800 --> 01:24:47,599
Speaker 1: the major lenders to it. And through that I met

1376
01:24:47,680 --> 01:24:55,280
Speaker 1: Jeff Rosen, who manages Bob and at some point many

1377
01:24:55,400 --> 01:24:59,120
Speaker 1: years later, he called me up and asked me if

1378
01:24:59,200 --> 01:25:05,280
Speaker 1: I would uh uh. He had a project he was

1379
01:25:05,400 --> 01:25:07,400
Speaker 1: interested in talking to me about, but I had to

1380
01:25:07,439 --> 01:25:14,040
Speaker 1: sign a nondisclosure agreement first. Sure I did. He told

1381
01:25:14,080 --> 01:25:18,200
Speaker 1: me about Bob Dylan's archive and that it was being

1382
01:25:18,680 --> 01:25:22,479
Speaker 1: had been sold to the George Kaiser family. Foundation in

1383
01:25:22,560 --> 01:25:26,120
Speaker 1: Tulsa and they were going to open a museum and

1384
01:25:26,360 --> 01:25:28,720
Speaker 1: he needed somebody to appraise it. And he felt like

1385
01:25:28,840 --> 01:25:32,120
Speaker 1: I probably knew as much about that as anybody and

1386
01:25:32,160 --> 01:25:36,080
Speaker 1: could I do? And this threw me for a total loop.

1387
01:25:37,160 --> 01:25:39,920
Speaker 1: But it was a dream come true project and I

1388
01:25:40,000 --> 01:25:44,559
Speaker 1: told him I could certainly value this stuff, but when

1389
01:25:44,640 --> 01:25:48,160
Speaker 1: I saw what it constituted, I said, you know, I'm

1390
01:25:48,200 --> 01:25:50,960
Speaker 1: not somebody who can write you hundreds of page long

1391
01:25:51,000 --> 01:25:54,280
Speaker 1: appraisal and then defended to the I R s if

1392
01:25:54,520 --> 01:25:58,360
Speaker 1: if that happens, But I know somebody who can. Laura Woolli,

1393
01:25:58,479 --> 01:26:01,080
Speaker 1: who's the top entertainment praiser in the world, isn't a

1394
01:26:01,160 --> 01:26:04,960
Speaker 1: good friend of mine. So I brought her on board

1395
01:26:05,720 --> 01:26:10,519
Speaker 1: and for about six months we appraised this massive archive.

1396
01:26:11,040 --> 01:26:16,000
Speaker 1: There were six thousand handwritten things, ranging from a note

1397
01:26:16,040 --> 01:26:19,880
Speaker 1: on the back of a business card to the notebooks

1398
01:26:19,920 --> 01:26:22,240
Speaker 1: that he wrote blood on the Tracks in, or the

1399
01:26:22,520 --> 01:26:25,840
Speaker 1: original manuscript to Subterranean Homesick Blues. And we were holding

1400
01:26:25,920 --> 01:26:30,120
Speaker 1: these things in our hands, and you know, it was

1401
01:26:30,240 --> 01:26:34,880
Speaker 1: just breath digging, literally breath digging for me. And uh

1402
01:26:35,080 --> 01:26:40,240
Speaker 1: I have done helped them with other projects. I bought

1403
01:26:40,320 --> 01:26:44,000
Speaker 1: the collection of Ralph J. Gleeson, who was the first

1404
01:26:44,320 --> 01:26:49,360
Speaker 1: rock printic in America and in he had died, but

1405
01:26:49,439 --> 01:26:51,639
Speaker 1: he was one of those guys to say literally everything.

1406
01:26:52,240 --> 01:26:55,720
Speaker 1: And in his archives in his basement, I found a

1407
01:26:55,800 --> 01:26:58,960
Speaker 1: bunch of Bob Dylan tapes that had come from Dylan

1408
01:26:58,960 --> 01:27:02,280
Speaker 1: who he was friendly with him other people, and um,

1409
01:27:02,960 --> 01:27:04,960
Speaker 1: I had a lot of them were poorly labeled. So

1410
01:27:05,040 --> 01:27:07,759
Speaker 1: I rented a recording studio and went and listened to stuff.

1411
01:27:08,479 --> 01:27:14,000
Speaker 1: And there was one that just said Dylan Brandeis on

1412
01:27:14,120 --> 01:27:20,000
Speaker 1: the side in pencil, and I googled and I couldn't

1413
01:27:20,000 --> 01:27:23,000
Speaker 1: find anything about that. He played Brandeis University, but that

1414
01:27:23,160 --> 01:27:25,360
Speaker 1: was it. And it turned out to be a professionally

1415
01:27:25,400 --> 01:27:29,920
Speaker 1: recorded stereo recording of Bob Dylan at Brandeis University about

1416
01:27:29,920 --> 01:27:34,439
Speaker 1: a month before Freewheeland came out, perfect quality. And my

1417
01:27:34,640 --> 01:27:36,679
Speaker 1: jaw dropped when I was listening to this in the studio,

1418
01:27:37,840 --> 01:27:39,519
Speaker 1: And you know, my find tapes like this, and I

1419
01:27:39,600 --> 01:27:41,679
Speaker 1: always my first stop is always to go to the artist.

1420
01:27:41,840 --> 01:27:43,519
Speaker 1: And so I called Jeff rosen up and I told

1421
01:27:43,600 --> 01:27:47,960
Speaker 1: him and h I made a deal with him and

1422
01:27:48,160 --> 01:27:51,760
Speaker 1: myself in the Gleason family for them to buy that

1423
01:27:51,960 --> 01:27:54,240
Speaker 1: tape and it got released as Bob Dylan at Brandeis

1424
01:27:54,320 --> 01:27:57,880
Speaker 1: University in nine and it was just shocking to me

1425
01:27:58,000 --> 01:28:03,519
Speaker 1: that I could be the fanboy Jeff Uh buying these

1426
01:28:03,560 --> 01:28:07,439
Speaker 1: bootlegs all of a sudden is responsible for Bob Dylan

1427
01:28:07,439 --> 01:28:09,840
Speaker 1: album being released. And I found other tapes that have

1428
01:28:09,920 --> 01:28:12,880
Speaker 1: been released and that I've sold the artists. But that

1429
01:28:13,080 --> 01:28:23,040
Speaker 1: was the peak for me. Okay. You also, you know

1430
01:28:23,160 --> 01:28:26,200
Speaker 1: Rhino Records label and Rhino have been sold years past.

1431
01:28:26,720 --> 01:28:29,439
Speaker 1: You also implore them to release some of the stuff

1432
01:28:29,479 --> 01:28:35,760
Speaker 1: you find. What's that experience been like? Mixed? Um, the

1433
01:28:35,880 --> 01:28:39,200
Speaker 1: late great Gary Stewart who worked to Rhino with me,

1434
01:28:39,479 --> 01:28:42,560
Speaker 1: was a wonderful guy. Um was the head of A

1435
01:28:42,600 --> 01:28:46,680
Speaker 1: and RT Rhino and when he was it was easy. Uh.

1436
01:28:46,960 --> 01:28:50,360
Speaker 1: When he left, I remember, for instance, I had bought

1437
01:28:50,400 --> 01:28:53,960
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff from Danny Fields and in these

1438
01:28:54,120 --> 01:28:56,559
Speaker 1: again I had to read a studio to find out

1439
01:28:57,080 --> 01:29:00,840
Speaker 1: what was on these boxes and things. I found the

1440
01:29:02,360 --> 01:29:07,479
Speaker 1: a copymaster tape of the first Stooges album with John

1441
01:29:07,560 --> 01:29:11,000
Speaker 1: Kale's mixes that had never been released. They've been remixed

1442
01:29:11,920 --> 01:29:16,599
Speaker 1: um by Jack Holsman and Idie And so I went

1443
01:29:16,680 --> 01:29:19,880
Speaker 1: to Rhino and had a meeting saying, look, this is incredible.

1444
01:29:19,920 --> 01:29:22,280
Speaker 1: You can release this as a double album with the

1445
01:29:22,920 --> 01:29:26,280
Speaker 1: mixes everybody knows and these John Kale mixes which are

1446
01:29:26,400 --> 01:29:29,679
Speaker 1: legendary but nobody's ever heard. And one of the guys

1447
01:29:29,800 --> 01:29:33,040
Speaker 1: at Rhino, who I had known for a very long time, said, well,

1448
01:29:33,080 --> 01:29:34,840
Speaker 1: why should we buy those from you? We can go

1449
01:29:35,000 --> 01:29:38,200
Speaker 1: remix these ourselves, and I was like, you don't get it.

1450
01:29:38,320 --> 01:29:42,640
Speaker 1: This is American history at a high level. Uh, you

1451
01:29:42,800 --> 01:29:45,240
Speaker 1: gotta put this out, And they bought the tape from me,

1452
01:29:45,479 --> 01:29:48,680
Speaker 1: and sparingly would put out a couple of tracks at

1453
01:29:48,680 --> 01:29:52,240
Speaker 1: a time and eventually released the whole thing. So sometimes

1454
01:29:52,320 --> 01:29:55,040
Speaker 1: it's really I mean, I had Charlie Parker out takes

1455
01:29:55,600 --> 01:29:58,960
Speaker 1: and I called Verve and said, you know, I've got

1456
01:29:59,040 --> 01:30:01,960
Speaker 1: these false starts and Charlie Parker with strings out takes, Well,

1457
01:30:02,040 --> 01:30:05,200
Speaker 1: jazz doesn't sell, and it's like, look, I'm not talking

1458
01:30:05,280 --> 01:30:09,559
Speaker 1: about Johnny Hodge's outtakes. It's Charlie Parker. And eventually they

1459
01:30:09,600 --> 01:30:12,160
Speaker 1: bought them. But sometimes it's the myth of sism. This

1460
01:30:12,240 --> 01:30:14,960
Speaker 1: you're rolling a boulder up a hill, and sometimes people

1461
01:30:15,040 --> 01:30:17,160
Speaker 1: like Jeff Frozen get it instantly. It's like, yes, we've

1462
01:30:17,200 --> 01:30:19,280
Speaker 1: got to buy it from you know, you talk about

1463
01:30:19,320 --> 01:30:21,920
Speaker 1: Gary Stewart, anybody who was at his house, it was

1464
01:30:22,160 --> 01:30:25,919
Speaker 1: you know, it was an unending stream of vinyl records.

1465
01:30:26,520 --> 01:30:29,439
Speaker 1: I think about my records and I say I'll buy

1466
01:30:30,320 --> 01:30:33,200
Speaker 1: and my girlfriend or my sister just throw it out.

1467
01:30:34,320 --> 01:30:37,280
Speaker 1: So my dness, oh, believe me it is. I say,

1468
01:30:37,280 --> 01:30:41,000
Speaker 1: you have no idea how valuable these he put it. Okay,

1469
01:30:41,560 --> 01:30:47,519
Speaker 1: So what happened to Gary Stewart's records, Well, what happened

1470
01:30:47,520 --> 01:30:53,160
Speaker 1: to Gary Stewart's records is Gary Stewart, who was ultimately

1471
01:30:53,320 --> 01:30:56,160
Speaker 1: the head of an art Rhino and then the uh

1472
01:30:57,040 --> 01:31:00,920
Speaker 1: ran iTunes at the beginning for Apple, was a frequent

1473
01:31:01,000 --> 01:31:04,720
Speaker 1: customer of Rhino Records who I befriended, and he I

1474
01:31:04,840 --> 01:31:07,040
Speaker 1: kept trying to hire him to come to work to

1475
01:31:07,120 --> 01:31:09,320
Speaker 1: the store because he spent so much time there. He

1476
01:31:09,520 --> 01:31:13,640
Speaker 1: was working at McDonald's. It was a management trainee, and

1477
01:31:14,080 --> 01:31:16,120
Speaker 1: I felt like that was a greater career path than

1478
01:31:16,200 --> 01:31:19,400
Speaker 1: working in record store. And though he would till the

1479
01:31:19,520 --> 01:31:23,000
Speaker 1: end of his life deny that that these two things

1480
01:31:23,040 --> 01:31:26,680
Speaker 1: were connected. The McDonald's got held up twice, and the

1481
01:31:26,760 --> 01:31:28,840
Speaker 1: second time he was locked in a meat locker with

1482
01:31:28,960 --> 01:31:32,720
Speaker 1: a bunch of employees and eventually decided, Okay, I'll come

1483
01:31:32,760 --> 01:31:37,960
Speaker 1: to work for Rhino and excelled and became at Richard

1484
01:31:38,000 --> 01:31:41,200
Speaker 1: and Harold's feet, the guy who put together all those

1485
01:31:41,320 --> 01:31:46,479
Speaker 1: incredible reissues that Rhino became famous for. And we remained

1486
01:31:46,600 --> 01:31:48,439
Speaker 1: close friends till the end of his life, which was

1487
01:31:48,479 --> 01:31:53,040
Speaker 1: about three years ago. So when Gary died, I had

1488
01:31:53,080 --> 01:31:55,439
Speaker 1: been in close contact with him, and I had been

1489
01:31:55,479 --> 01:32:00,479
Speaker 1: in close contact with his UH cousin, who inherited his estate,

1490
01:32:02,120 --> 01:32:04,280
Speaker 1: and I said, look, if you need any help figuring

1491
01:32:04,320 --> 01:32:06,479
Speaker 1: out what to do with any of his possessions, I'll

1492
01:32:06,479 --> 01:32:09,519
Speaker 1: be happy to help. Yes, I do. She lives in Chicago,

1493
01:32:10,320 --> 01:32:13,200
Speaker 1: So I went over there and UH went through his

1494
01:32:13,320 --> 01:32:18,120
Speaker 1: collection and I my idea was we should take all

1495
01:32:18,200 --> 01:32:22,040
Speaker 1: of the Rhino reissues, which they were colossal number hundreds

1496
01:32:22,080 --> 01:32:24,680
Speaker 1: and hundreds and hundreds, and donate them to the Rock

1497
01:32:24,720 --> 01:32:27,600
Speaker 1: and Roll Hall of Fame because they really document the

1498
01:32:27,680 --> 01:32:31,679
Speaker 1: birth of the reissued culture in America, in the world, really,

1499
01:32:32,240 --> 01:32:35,640
Speaker 1: and they were very excited about that. His cousin approved,

1500
01:32:36,240 --> 01:32:39,599
Speaker 1: so all of his a copy of everything he ever did,

1501
01:32:40,120 --> 01:32:42,800
Speaker 1: is at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Then

1502
01:32:43,240 --> 01:32:47,320
Speaker 1: I had an idea that we should save some of

1503
01:32:47,400 --> 01:32:50,000
Speaker 1: the records that he was obsessed with and give them

1504
01:32:50,080 --> 01:32:54,839
Speaker 1: to his friends, so artists like Elvas Costello, for instance,

1505
01:32:55,000 --> 01:32:59,160
Speaker 1: or Sparks. I bought those records from the estate and

1506
01:32:59,200 --> 01:33:01,640
Speaker 1: made up a little car arts saying this record was

1507
01:33:01,680 --> 01:33:05,160
Speaker 1: owned by Gary Stewart, and I distributed them to about

1508
01:33:06,040 --> 01:33:08,280
Speaker 1: seventy five of his friends so people could just have

1509
01:33:08,360 --> 01:33:12,280
Speaker 1: a reminder of Gary. And then the rest were sold

1510
01:33:12,360 --> 01:33:14,640
Speaker 1: to a friend of Gary's. In mind, Bob say, who

1511
01:33:14,680 --> 01:33:19,880
Speaker 1: has a record store. Now, it's a very tragic story,

1512
01:33:20,400 --> 01:33:23,360
Speaker 1: and you seem to have been closest to Gary at

1513
01:33:23,400 --> 01:33:26,760
Speaker 1: the end. Was this anomalous his death or is this

1514
01:33:27,160 --> 01:33:30,360
Speaker 1: evidence of our era? Because I certainly know a lot

1515
01:33:30,439 --> 01:33:34,080
Speaker 1: of people who had very big jobs in the music business,

1516
01:33:34,240 --> 01:33:37,800
Speaker 1: but when the time came with a the game of

1517
01:33:37,880 --> 01:33:40,680
Speaker 1: musical chairs, there was no longer receipt for them have

1518
01:33:41,040 --> 01:33:44,840
Speaker 1: hit very hard times. So is he evidence of that really?

1519
01:33:45,280 --> 01:33:47,439
Speaker 1: Or you know, he was a unique guy and none

1520
01:33:47,479 --> 01:33:52,320
Speaker 1: of those laws apply. You know, Gary took his own life.

1521
01:33:53,400 --> 01:33:59,360
Speaker 1: He had been suffering from mental illness. He would depression.

1522
01:34:00,360 --> 01:34:04,960
Speaker 1: He was working on it head on, working with therapists.

1523
01:34:05,720 --> 01:34:07,479
Speaker 1: He didn't tell a lot of people about it, but

1524
01:34:07,520 --> 01:34:12,240
Speaker 1: I knew about it, um, and I think ultimately he

1525
01:34:12,400 --> 01:34:15,760
Speaker 1: just couldn't um see the forest for the treaty. It's

1526
01:34:15,880 --> 01:34:20,040
Speaker 1: one of the great tragedies of my lifetime. UM. I

1527
01:34:21,680 --> 01:34:30,960
Speaker 1: think Gary had very strong feelings about what he wanted

1528
01:34:31,000 --> 01:34:34,000
Speaker 1: to do and what he didn't want to do, and

1529
01:34:34,200 --> 01:34:38,240
Speaker 1: he was the antithesis. I mean, I was someone who

1530
01:34:38,360 --> 01:34:41,719
Speaker 1: was happy to work for a record company and market

1531
01:34:41,840 --> 01:34:46,960
Speaker 1: and package things, even though a lot of them weren't

1532
01:34:47,400 --> 01:34:51,160
Speaker 1: to my personal taste. I could find, you know, I

1533
01:34:51,200 --> 01:34:53,080
Speaker 1: didn't go home and listen to Van Halen Records, but

1534
01:34:53,200 --> 01:34:57,639
Speaker 1: I could appreciate what van Halen worked. Um. Gary didn't

1535
01:34:57,680 --> 01:35:00,240
Speaker 1: want to work on things that he wasn't personally too.

1536
01:35:01,200 --> 01:35:06,280
Speaker 1: And I think that that is not the trajectory that

1537
01:35:07,800 --> 01:35:11,240
Speaker 1: people are looking for. We're running record companies, you know,

1538
01:35:11,320 --> 01:35:16,760
Speaker 1: it's become much and much more of a being counting mentality.

1539
01:35:16,960 --> 01:35:22,280
Speaker 1: Forgive the expression and uh, you know, the Netflix culture

1540
01:35:22,400 --> 01:35:26,439
Speaker 1: is the most extreme example of it. And I don't

1541
01:35:26,479 --> 01:35:29,120
Speaker 1: think Gary had a place in that world. And I

1542
01:35:29,280 --> 01:35:31,680
Speaker 1: think that world repulsed Gary. You didn't want to have

1543
01:35:31,760 --> 01:35:36,599
Speaker 1: a place in the world. Just going back over your

1544
01:35:36,680 --> 01:35:40,639
Speaker 1: decades in the business, what can you tell us about

1545
01:35:40,720 --> 01:35:44,479
Speaker 1: the people who ultimately got squeezed out? How they I mean,

1546
01:35:44,600 --> 01:35:46,639
Speaker 1: first they all went to work in the video business.

1547
01:35:46,760 --> 01:35:49,560
Speaker 1: Then they all went to work in real estate, and

1548
01:35:49,840 --> 01:35:53,000
Speaker 1: video business tied. Real estate is really competitive. I certainly

1549
01:35:53,080 --> 01:35:56,280
Speaker 1: know a lot of people who have hard been on

1550
01:35:56,400 --> 01:36:01,519
Speaker 1: hard times. What your experience been with people? It's the same, um,

1551
01:36:05,200 --> 01:36:07,920
Speaker 1: it's you know, we lived this charmed life where we

1552
01:36:08,000 --> 01:36:11,160
Speaker 1: had expense accounts and traveled all around the world and

1553
01:36:11,240 --> 01:36:14,800
Speaker 1: hung out with bands, and you know, my experience was

1554
01:36:17,120 --> 01:36:19,560
Speaker 1: what I figured everybody in the music business had to

1555
01:36:19,640 --> 01:36:23,519
Speaker 1: be just as crazy about music as I was, And

1556
01:36:23,640 --> 01:36:24,960
Speaker 1: when I got to in m I found out that

1557
01:36:25,040 --> 01:36:26,880
Speaker 1: was absolutely not the case. There were a lot of

1558
01:36:26,920 --> 01:36:30,040
Speaker 1: people like Jeff Arroff and Steve Baker were obsessed with music,

1559
01:36:30,520 --> 01:36:32,160
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of people who just ended

1560
01:36:32,240 --> 01:36:34,600
Speaker 1: up in the music business because they were good salespeople

1561
01:36:34,720 --> 01:36:38,400
Speaker 1: or marketing people or advertising people who didn't live and

1562
01:36:38,479 --> 01:36:41,400
Speaker 1: breathe this stuff the way you and I do. UM.

1563
01:36:43,439 --> 01:36:47,280
Speaker 1: So I feel lucky that I could transition straight in.

1564
01:36:47,400 --> 01:36:51,519
Speaker 1: You know, I'm still entirely consumed by music all day long,

1565
01:36:52,320 --> 01:36:56,960
Speaker 1: doing you know, writing books about music and consulting for artists, selling,

1566
01:36:57,200 --> 01:37:01,400
Speaker 1: buying and selling this stuff, researching this stuff. Um, some

1567
01:37:01,479 --> 01:37:05,000
Speaker 1: of the people who weren't as obsessed with it as

1568
01:37:05,040 --> 01:37:07,040
Speaker 1: you say, found other careers. Some of them have been

1569
01:37:07,160 --> 01:37:12,320
Speaker 1: very successful. Some of them are working very hard h

1570
01:37:12,560 --> 01:37:17,080
Speaker 1: to reinvent themselves. And you know, I think this golden

1571
01:37:17,160 --> 01:37:20,479
Speaker 1: age that we lived through, we were very fortunate to

1572
01:37:20,520 --> 01:37:24,599
Speaker 1: live through. But the business, as you know better than anybody,

1573
01:37:25,240 --> 01:37:29,680
Speaker 1: has changed dramatically. Okay, speaking of which, you wrote a

1574
01:37:29,720 --> 01:37:32,479
Speaker 1: book about the jazz clubs of the forties and fifties,

1575
01:37:33,479 --> 01:37:35,960
Speaker 1: and of the books you've written, that is the most

1576
01:37:36,160 --> 01:37:40,120
Speaker 1: riveting because it is a window into a world that

1577
01:37:40,200 --> 01:37:42,840
Speaker 1: I don't only happened before I was born, that I

1578
01:37:43,000 --> 01:37:46,120
Speaker 1: really wasn't aware of, and I certainly know Q and

1579
01:37:46,160 --> 01:37:49,720
Speaker 1: a lot of big jazz ers, etcetera. My question, I

1580
01:37:49,760 --> 01:37:53,760
Speaker 1: always viewed the rock era as the Renaissance. Okay, there

1581
01:37:53,840 --> 01:37:57,479
Speaker 1: was only one Renaissance. They painted and sculpted after that,

1582
01:37:57,880 --> 01:38:00,160
Speaker 1: but there was one Renaissance. And then I'm reading your

1583
01:38:00,200 --> 01:38:03,439
Speaker 1: book and I'm saying, well, maybe you know sounds change.

1584
01:38:03,680 --> 01:38:07,240
Speaker 1: What is your perspective of the continuum and where we

1585
01:38:07,320 --> 01:38:18,080
Speaker 1: are today? I don't know, but I subscribe to the mhm.

1586
01:38:23,000 --> 01:38:28,280
Speaker 1: Different kinds of music had different periods of time where

1587
01:38:28,320 --> 01:38:33,720
Speaker 1: there was a renaissance. I find myself fairly uncompelled by

1588
01:38:34,080 --> 01:38:37,160
Speaker 1: most of the music happening today, but I don't dive

1589
01:38:37,280 --> 01:38:42,439
Speaker 1: that deep into it, and I think that's generational. UM.

1590
01:38:43,160 --> 01:38:46,479
Speaker 1: I think the jazz clubs and the jazz are I

1591
01:38:46,520 --> 01:38:49,800
Speaker 1: wrote about was absolutely a cultural renaissance and a societal

1592
01:38:49,920 --> 01:38:54,360
Speaker 1: renaissance at a time where, um, as I discovered talking

1593
01:38:54,400 --> 01:38:58,200
Speaker 1: to Quincy and Sunny Rawlins, racism started the first breakdown

1594
01:38:58,240 --> 01:39:02,519
Speaker 1: in America. I don't know what's coming next. I think

1595
01:39:02,560 --> 01:39:06,479
Speaker 1: it's kind of a fool's game to try and predict this. Um.

1596
01:39:10,120 --> 01:39:12,759
Speaker 1: I would have never thought that at eighty Bob Dylan

1597
01:39:12,800 --> 01:39:16,599
Speaker 1: would make be making great provocative records. I'm really into

1598
01:39:16,640 --> 01:39:20,320
Speaker 1: a British folksinger named Shirley Collins who is also in

1599
01:39:20,400 --> 01:39:22,680
Speaker 1: her early eighties and released an album last year that

1600
01:39:22,840 --> 01:39:25,280
Speaker 1: was probably my favorite record along with the Dylan album

1601
01:39:25,320 --> 01:39:28,160
Speaker 1: of the year to eight year old. I mean, who

1602
01:39:28,200 --> 01:39:33,080
Speaker 1: would have saw that coming? Um? You never know where

1603
01:39:33,160 --> 01:39:37,080
Speaker 1: the next great thing is coming from. I think anybody

1604
01:39:37,120 --> 01:39:39,840
Speaker 1: who thinks they've got this all figured out may for

1605
01:39:40,000 --> 01:39:45,479
Speaker 1: a short period of time, but the next great thing

1606
01:39:45,520 --> 01:39:49,240
Speaker 1: can be around the corner. Swim generally pretty optimistic. Guy

1607
01:39:49,280 --> 01:39:53,080
Speaker 1: about that? Okay, from the internet era, which will say

1608
01:39:53,240 --> 01:39:55,840
Speaker 1: post two thousand, in the hip hop era, which really

1609
01:39:55,880 --> 01:39:59,599
Speaker 1: started in the eighties but gained significant traction in the nineties,

1610
01:40:00,400 --> 01:40:03,320
Speaker 1: is any of that stuff worth something? And are you

1611
01:40:03,479 --> 01:40:09,240
Speaker 1: involved in Internet? I'll answer your second question first. I'm

1612
01:40:09,320 --> 01:40:12,160
Speaker 1: not involved in it. Generally. I find if I stick

1613
01:40:12,240 --> 01:40:14,960
Speaker 1: to my lane, I do really well, and if I

1614
01:40:15,040 --> 01:40:19,680
Speaker 1: start trying to go deep into something I don't have

1615
01:40:19,800 --> 01:40:25,080
Speaker 1: a personal affinity for, like hip hop, it can be

1616
01:40:25,120 --> 01:40:29,320
Speaker 1: a fraud situation. There are lots of hip hop records

1617
01:40:29,360 --> 01:40:33,360
Speaker 1: worth a lot of money. There's a label called Doubt

1618
01:40:33,520 --> 01:40:36,360
Speaker 1: d a u pe in England who releases limited edition

1619
01:40:36,720 --> 01:40:39,720
Speaker 1: hip hop records that almost instantly sell out and go

1620
01:40:39,880 --> 01:40:45,400
Speaker 1: for five thousand dollars um. A lot of early hip

1621
01:40:45,439 --> 01:40:48,080
Speaker 1: hop stuff, a lot of sample stuff, goes for a

1622
01:40:48,240 --> 01:40:51,439
Speaker 1: lot of money. A lot of punk records from the

1623
01:40:51,640 --> 01:40:57,640
Speaker 1: nineties goes go for a lot of money. UM. A

1624
01:40:57,760 --> 01:41:01,519
Speaker 1: lot of these limited edition record store day records or

1625
01:41:02,400 --> 01:41:05,320
Speaker 1: uh you know, an artist like Taylor Swift will put

1626
01:41:05,360 --> 01:41:07,960
Speaker 1: out a record where a certain retailer will get a

1627
01:41:08,040 --> 01:41:10,479
Speaker 1: certain vinyl color and they'll make a thousand of them

1628
01:41:10,560 --> 01:41:12,360
Speaker 1: go for a lot of money. So yeah, there's there's

1629
01:41:12,880 --> 01:41:17,880
Speaker 1: a lot of current and recent records that are very collectable. Okay, Now,

1630
01:41:17,920 --> 01:41:20,320
Speaker 1: I remember in the nineties you bid in an auction

1631
01:41:20,560 --> 01:41:23,680
Speaker 1: you've got a role in the steam room at Seinfeld,

1632
01:41:23,800 --> 01:41:27,200
Speaker 1: and you gave me a script from that episode that

1633
01:41:27,240 --> 01:41:30,000
Speaker 1: you pulled off the table. My, so I know that

1634
01:41:30,120 --> 01:41:34,920
Speaker 1: it always hasn't been records. So how far afield wire

1635
01:41:34,960 --> 01:41:37,920
Speaker 1: you go, and you certainly do posters and other music

1636
01:41:38,000 --> 01:41:42,160
Speaker 1: related stuff, how do you find that stuff? Assess that stuff?

1637
01:41:42,200 --> 01:41:44,439
Speaker 1: I mean a record, there's there's one free wheel and

1638
01:41:44,479 --> 01:41:48,800
Speaker 1: there various iterations, but there's an endless supply of posters

1639
01:41:48,920 --> 01:41:53,200
Speaker 1: and signatures and all kinds of stuff. There's a lot

1640
01:41:53,280 --> 01:41:56,160
Speaker 1: of the signatures are fake, a huge percentage. Like if

1641
01:41:56,200 --> 01:41:59,479
Speaker 1: you go on I think there are something like twelve

1642
01:42:00,040 --> 01:42:05,840
Speaker 1: authentic American Beatles albums that have been signed service twelve,

1643
01:42:06,640 --> 01:42:11,240
Speaker 1: Yet if you go on email you'll find numerous ones. Uh,

1644
01:42:11,400 --> 01:42:15,160
Speaker 1: it's an extremely fraught areas. So what I bring to

1645
01:42:15,280 --> 01:42:20,240
Speaker 1: it is nearly fifty years of actually more than fifty

1646
01:42:20,320 --> 01:42:23,400
Speaker 1: years of looking at this stuff and expertise and the

1647
01:42:23,439 --> 01:42:32,160
Speaker 1: ability to research it um and discern whether something is genuine,

1648
01:42:32,400 --> 01:42:36,280
Speaker 1: and you begin to develop an internal algorithm for Yeah,

1649
01:42:36,439 --> 01:42:40,280
Speaker 1: that's rarer than it looks. I'll buy it and spend

1650
01:42:40,360 --> 01:42:42,880
Speaker 1: some time sitting with it and letting it marinate my

1651
01:42:43,040 --> 01:42:46,080
Speaker 1: mind and researching it and seeing what I can find

1652
01:42:46,160 --> 01:42:48,760
Speaker 1: out and contextualizing it. And that's the thing I enjoy

1653
01:42:48,840 --> 01:42:54,320
Speaker 1: it the most about what I do, um, you know,

1654
01:42:54,600 --> 01:42:59,120
Speaker 1: finding I bought one of John Coltrane's saxophones at an

1655
01:42:59,160 --> 01:43:02,519
Speaker 1: auction sold by his family, and I was able to

1656
01:43:02,600 --> 01:43:07,160
Speaker 1: find records he played it on live records. I was

1657
01:43:07,240 --> 01:43:09,760
Speaker 1: able to find photographs of him using it. I was

1658
01:43:09,800 --> 01:43:12,680
Speaker 1: able to find posters from the Japanese tour where he

1659
01:43:13,240 --> 01:43:18,519
Speaker 1: played it. I bought on eBay a Japanese magazine that

1660
01:43:19,120 --> 01:43:22,640
Speaker 1: the guy who had been the band boy Uh in

1661
01:43:22,760 --> 01:43:25,479
Speaker 1: the seventies discovered pictures he had taken of the tour,

1662
01:43:26,160 --> 01:43:30,040
Speaker 1: and this Japanese magazine had thirty pictures, and I was

1663
01:43:30,120 --> 01:43:34,439
Speaker 1: able to find three or four with the saxophone or

1664
01:43:35,080 --> 01:43:39,800
Speaker 1: the saxophone case on a rack in a train with

1665
01:43:39,920 --> 01:43:42,880
Speaker 1: Coltrane sitting next to it. I love that detective work

1666
01:43:42,960 --> 01:43:45,160
Speaker 1: aspect of it, and I think That's where I can

1667
01:43:45,200 --> 01:43:48,759
Speaker 1: add value to things as well. I love the research.

1668
01:43:48,840 --> 01:43:51,679
Speaker 1: I love figuring out if things are authentic or not authentic.

1669
01:43:51,800 --> 01:43:56,479
Speaker 1: I love figuring out is this pressing actually what somebody

1670
01:43:56,600 --> 01:44:01,040
Speaker 1: selling as it as or have they mischaracterized it? Uh.

1671
01:44:01,600 --> 01:44:04,880
Speaker 1: Once a year I find something on eBay. Now, I

1672
01:44:04,960 --> 01:44:08,720
Speaker 1: may spend two hours a day on email or an

1673
01:44:08,760 --> 01:44:10,639
Speaker 1: hour a day on email. Once a year I'll find

1674
01:44:10,720 --> 01:44:13,840
Speaker 1: something really incredible. But you've got to put in a

1675
01:44:14,080 --> 01:44:16,960
Speaker 1: lot of hours to get that, to get to that point.

1676
01:44:17,600 --> 01:44:21,000
Speaker 1: I bought the guitar that Bob Dylan played at the

1677
01:44:21,160 --> 01:44:27,880
Speaker 1: Clinton inauguration on eBay, which had been offered with a

1678
01:44:29,520 --> 01:44:31,800
Speaker 1: five thousand or six thousand dollars buy it now, and

1679
01:44:31,880 --> 01:44:35,320
Speaker 1: nobody bought it, and uh, I was able to buy it,

1680
01:44:36,000 --> 01:44:39,080
Speaker 1: research it, get letters from Gibson proving it was real,

1681
01:44:39,680 --> 01:44:43,000
Speaker 1: do a match of the tortoiseshell headstock with one of

1682
01:44:43,040 --> 01:44:47,280
Speaker 1: the foremost rare guitar experts in the world. And I

1683
01:44:47,400 --> 01:44:51,519
Speaker 1: just love the treasure hunting aspect of it, the research aspect. Okay,

1684
01:44:51,600 --> 01:44:54,000
Speaker 1: so you you bought the sacophone, you bought the guitar,

1685
01:44:54,120 --> 01:44:56,240
Speaker 1: you went on an adventure which all of us music

1686
01:44:56,360 --> 01:44:59,160
Speaker 1: nerds know is cool. But in the back of your mind,

1687
01:44:59,360 --> 01:45:01,800
Speaker 1: are you wild being an asset to sell an adding

1688
01:45:01,960 --> 01:45:07,000
Speaker 1: value to that asset? Sometimes yes, Sometimes it's something I

1689
01:45:07,080 --> 01:45:10,519
Speaker 1: want for myself. I sold the Coltrane saxophone twice, actually

1690
01:45:10,640 --> 01:45:13,960
Speaker 1: sold it once, bought it back from the guy, kept

1691
01:45:14,000 --> 01:45:17,559
Speaker 1: it about ten years, and just recently sold it again. Um.

1692
01:45:18,520 --> 01:45:21,720
Speaker 1: The Dylan guitar, I've had for ten years or so.

1693
01:45:22,240 --> 01:45:27,680
Speaker 1: I've loaded it to various museum exhibitions. Uh. At some

1694
01:45:27,800 --> 01:45:31,599
Speaker 1: point I'll sell it um, but I like having it. Uh.

1695
01:45:31,960 --> 01:45:35,520
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm buying something just to sell, like that felonious

1696
01:45:35,560 --> 01:45:39,400
Speaker 1: Monk program or you know, all day I'm buying stuff.

1697
01:45:39,439 --> 01:45:43,320
Speaker 1: We're selling stuff, okay, but things like posters, programs, other

1698
01:45:43,479 --> 01:45:47,360
Speaker 1: merch How do you find that? How invested are you

1699
01:45:47,479 --> 01:45:52,160
Speaker 1: in that? And what's that like relative to vinyl? Some

1700
01:45:52,280 --> 01:45:55,599
Speaker 1: of those things go for crazy money. There's some stuff

1701
01:45:55,640 --> 01:45:59,040
Speaker 1: I collect myself, which you can see on the walls

1702
01:45:59,120 --> 01:46:03,320
Speaker 1: of my UM office here. Some of the stuff I'm

1703
01:46:03,360 --> 01:46:05,960
Speaker 1: buying just to sell. Some of the stuff I'm buying

1704
01:46:06,040 --> 01:46:11,280
Speaker 1: to keep. Some of the stuff I'm buying to think about. Uh.

1705
01:46:13,479 --> 01:46:17,000
Speaker 1: It runs the gamut um. But people are there. There

1706
01:46:17,080 --> 01:46:21,880
Speaker 1: are crazy collectors for posters. There are crazy collectors for autographs.

1707
01:46:22,360 --> 01:46:28,560
Speaker 1: There are crazy collectors for uh handbills. Um. I have

1708
01:46:29,000 --> 01:46:34,000
Speaker 1: a wammy bar that popped off of Jimmy Hendricks's guitar

1709
01:46:34,200 --> 01:46:38,280
Speaker 1: framed on the wall and went straight into the lap

1710
01:46:38,400 --> 01:46:42,520
Speaker 1: of a guy who was sitting in the pit photographing

1711
01:46:42,560 --> 01:46:49,280
Speaker 1: Hendricks for Rolling Stone. Um. It really, it's just all

1712
01:46:49,320 --> 01:46:52,519
Speaker 1: over the place, and sometimes I think I want something,

1713
01:46:52,640 --> 01:46:56,439
Speaker 1: but somebody comes along. I really like placing things in

1714
01:46:56,520 --> 01:47:00,560
Speaker 1: the right collections, and sometimes somebody who's got an incredible

1715
01:47:00,600 --> 01:47:03,680
Speaker 1: collection will just be desperate to buy something for me,

1716
01:47:03,760 --> 01:47:05,320
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, I've got it. I've had

1717
01:47:05,320 --> 01:47:07,479
Speaker 1: it for ten years. I love it, but time to

1718
01:47:07,560 --> 01:47:09,360
Speaker 1: let that move on. I'm very conscious of the fact

1719
01:47:09,439 --> 01:47:12,320
Speaker 1: that I'm not gonna at some point this stuff will

1720
01:47:12,400 --> 01:47:15,599
Speaker 1: leave me either dead or alive. So it's good when

1721
01:47:15,600 --> 01:47:18,439
Speaker 1: you can make somebody happy. So these worlds are always small,

1722
01:47:18,560 --> 01:47:21,720
Speaker 1: like the music business itself. How many of I mean

1723
01:47:21,720 --> 01:47:23,519
Speaker 1: you maybe at the pinnacle, but how many of you

1724
01:47:23,920 --> 01:47:25,760
Speaker 1: are there out there who are making a full time

1725
01:47:25,840 --> 01:47:29,479
Speaker 1: business or spending a lot of time buying and selling

1726
01:47:29,760 --> 01:47:33,840
Speaker 1: music memorabilia. There are a lot of people doing that,

1727
01:47:34,400 --> 01:47:36,599
Speaker 1: but I think there aren't a lot of people doing

1728
01:47:36,640 --> 01:47:41,360
Speaker 1: it at my level. Who can just you know, somebody's

1729
01:47:41,400 --> 01:47:43,920
Speaker 1: got this has happened to me a year ago. Somebody's

1730
01:47:43,920 --> 01:47:47,800
Speaker 1: got a Jim Morrison handwritten manuscript of Strange Days. I'll

1731
01:47:47,840 --> 01:47:50,200
Speaker 1: buy that, and I will pay you a lot of

1732
01:47:50,280 --> 01:47:53,360
Speaker 1: money for that, and I will sit on that and

1733
01:47:54,400 --> 01:47:58,960
Speaker 1: let it marinate and wait till the right person comes along,

1734
01:47:59,160 --> 01:48:02,080
Speaker 1: and not feel expert to flip it. There aren't a

1735
01:48:02,120 --> 01:48:04,479
Speaker 1: lot of people doing it at my level. I don't

1736
01:48:04,479 --> 01:48:06,519
Speaker 1: want to. I didn't mean that. I'm just trying to

1737
01:48:06,520 --> 01:48:10,280
Speaker 1: get a landscape. Are the buyers? Do you ultimately know

1738
01:48:10,400 --> 01:48:12,720
Speaker 1: all the buyers are? Really the buyers are all over

1739
01:48:12,760 --> 01:48:15,280
Speaker 1: the world, their individuals. They might buy once and forget

1740
01:48:16,000 --> 01:48:18,439
Speaker 1: or as I say, you know, well let's stay there.

1741
01:48:18,760 --> 01:48:22,960
Speaker 1: Are they the same hungry people? No, there's there's a

1742
01:48:23,040 --> 01:48:25,680
Speaker 1: lot of people who are repeat customers who I deal with,

1743
01:48:25,960 --> 01:48:28,280
Speaker 1: and who I get something and pick up the phone

1744
01:48:28,400 --> 01:48:30,160
Speaker 1: or send an email saying I just got this. I

1745
01:48:30,200 --> 01:48:32,880
Speaker 1: thought you might be interested. There are a lot of

1746
01:48:32,920 --> 01:48:36,560
Speaker 1: people who might buy two things you hear from me,

1747
01:48:36,760 --> 01:48:40,240
Speaker 1: but I know who they are, and there are fifty

1748
01:48:40,600 --> 01:48:42,840
Speaker 1: of its people I've never dealt with before buying something,

1749
01:48:43,520 --> 01:48:48,960
Speaker 1: and you establish a price, certainly on the stuff. Okay,

1750
01:48:49,400 --> 01:48:51,679
Speaker 1: how much is buy it as it is on eBay?

1751
01:48:51,840 --> 01:48:55,360
Speaker 1: How much is auction and how much when someone's interested

1752
01:48:55,920 --> 01:49:01,479
Speaker 1: is they're haggling. Almost always I set a price for

1753
01:49:01,600 --> 01:49:04,639
Speaker 1: something and just wait for the right person come along.

1754
01:49:05,080 --> 01:49:08,800
Speaker 1: I'm a patient guys. I've said, if somebody wants to

1755
01:49:08,920 --> 01:49:12,320
Speaker 1: make me an offer and makes a compelling case, and

1756
01:49:12,640 --> 01:49:16,120
Speaker 1: it's in the ballpark and I've had the thing for

1757
01:49:16,200 --> 01:49:18,080
Speaker 1: a long time and I'm not attached to it, I'll

1758
01:49:18,120 --> 01:49:23,400
Speaker 1: consider it. But a lot of these things, you know,

1759
01:49:23,439 --> 01:49:25,800
Speaker 1: when you get to the memorabilia, you're never going to

1760
01:49:25,880 --> 01:49:30,040
Speaker 1: see another one. And I like having a website and

1761
01:49:31,120 --> 01:49:36,960
Speaker 1: eBay listings with stuff people can't find everywhere else. So

1762
01:49:37,439 --> 01:49:42,040
Speaker 1: I'm not generally a motivated seller. And you know, typically

1763
01:49:42,120 --> 01:49:45,920
Speaker 1: what happens is you put up something really big and

1764
01:49:47,160 --> 01:49:49,439
Speaker 1: you might get a i'll pay you fifty right now.

1765
01:49:50,880 --> 01:49:52,200
Speaker 1: And as a friend of mine said, that's what the

1766
01:49:52,240 --> 01:49:54,800
Speaker 1: delete button has made for those people don't even get

1767
01:49:54,840 --> 01:50:01,719
Speaker 1: a response. Um uh, if it's god. I'm a huge

1768
01:50:01,760 --> 01:50:04,320
Speaker 1: stores collector and this is the one thing I'm missing

1769
01:50:04,520 --> 01:50:07,360
Speaker 1: and I can't afford it, but I could pay you

1770
01:50:07,479 --> 01:50:10,840
Speaker 1: off over a year. Sure, no problem. You want to

1771
01:50:10,880 --> 01:50:14,920
Speaker 1: help people out and you talk a couple of times

1772
01:50:14,920 --> 01:50:18,360
Speaker 1: about buying stuff back. How often does that happen and

1773
01:50:18,439 --> 01:50:24,000
Speaker 1: what is the person's motivation? Doesn't happen very often. In

1774
01:50:24,080 --> 01:50:27,280
Speaker 1: the case of the Coltrane saxophone, someone was starting a

1775
01:50:27,320 --> 01:50:30,080
Speaker 1: new business and wanted some capital and it was a

1776
01:50:30,080 --> 01:50:33,800
Speaker 1: big number. In a couple of weeks ago, I bought

1777
01:50:34,040 --> 01:50:37,360
Speaker 1: three great things back from a regular customer line who

1778
01:50:37,520 --> 01:50:41,040
Speaker 1: had was actually writing Ruby an email. It was very

1779
01:50:41,080 --> 01:50:44,680
Speaker 1: apologetic that he wanted was inquiring about selling this stuff back,

1780
01:50:44,720 --> 01:50:47,639
Speaker 1: as if I would be somehow offended, and I wasn't

1781
01:50:47,800 --> 01:50:51,160
Speaker 1: in any way. I was excited about buying these three

1782
01:50:51,240 --> 01:50:55,519
Speaker 1: things back. And he wanted to buy UH a very

1783
01:50:55,880 --> 01:51:01,759
Speaker 1: rare photograph UH of baseball players in the Negro leagues.

1784
01:51:02,520 --> 01:51:05,880
Speaker 1: And so you know, people have differing collecting priorities, and

1785
01:51:05,960 --> 01:51:08,679
Speaker 1: he was trying to fund fund the purchase of something

1786
01:51:08,760 --> 01:51:10,639
Speaker 1: else that I was thrilled to get the stuff back.

1787
01:51:10,840 --> 01:51:13,400
Speaker 1: And how do you establish a price for getting it back,

1788
01:51:15,320 --> 01:51:17,599
Speaker 1: just as you would establish a price for buying something.

1789
01:51:18,680 --> 01:51:21,599
Speaker 1: But in this case, because the guy was a good customer, mind,

1790
01:51:22,280 --> 01:51:24,559
Speaker 1: I paid him more than I ordinarily would, but enough

1791
01:51:24,600 --> 01:51:27,320
Speaker 1: that I could make money enough to make it worth

1792
01:51:27,400 --> 01:51:30,840
Speaker 1: my wife, so less than he boughted from you. Yes,

1793
01:51:31,520 --> 01:51:33,960
Speaker 1: you know, you begin to develop an internal algorithm for

1794
01:51:34,080 --> 01:51:37,400
Speaker 1: this pricing. Okay, so tell us about writing books and

1795
01:51:37,680 --> 01:51:41,800
Speaker 1: that part of your business. I've done three hundred and

1796
01:51:41,840 --> 01:51:46,040
Speaker 1: one Essential Rock Records, which is basically classic vinyl porn

1797
01:51:46,880 --> 01:51:51,360
Speaker 1: with I interviewed some recording artists that I admire about

1798
01:51:52,400 --> 01:51:56,000
Speaker 1: records that were life changing to them. The second one

1799
01:51:56,160 --> 01:51:59,400
Speaker 1: was a History of the Stooges that is centered around

1800
01:51:59,640 --> 01:52:02,760
Speaker 1: a my collection of students memorabilia and that of a

1801
01:52:02,840 --> 01:52:07,120
Speaker 1: friend of mine, and uh series of interviews I did

1802
01:52:07,160 --> 01:52:09,960
Speaker 1: with Iggy Pop talking about the Stooges. And the third

1803
01:52:10,040 --> 01:52:12,960
Speaker 1: one was the Jazz Club Book. Each of them have

1804
01:52:13,080 --> 01:52:16,080
Speaker 1: different origin stories. I never had any aspiration to do

1805
01:52:16,760 --> 01:52:20,120
Speaker 1: a book whatsoever. Uh, but I have a friend who

1806
01:52:20,120 --> 01:52:22,679
Speaker 1: hasn't art book story, Lee Kaplan, who worked at Rano

1807
01:52:22,800 --> 01:52:25,360
Speaker 1: with me, and one day he showed me this book

1808
01:52:25,960 --> 01:52:28,240
Speaker 1: of rare photography books called the Book of a hundred

1809
01:52:28,240 --> 01:52:31,320
Speaker 1: and one Books. And this person had assembled these and

1810
01:52:31,400 --> 01:52:36,080
Speaker 1: possibly rare photography books and written an essay about each

1811
01:52:36,120 --> 01:52:40,519
Speaker 1: book and had a photograph of the cover and then

1812
01:52:40,520 --> 01:52:42,479
Speaker 1: a couple of spreads from the book, and I went, Wow,

1813
01:52:42,600 --> 01:52:44,920
Speaker 1: that would be great to do for records. And I

1814
01:52:45,040 --> 01:52:46,560
Speaker 1: kind of thought about it, but I thought, you know,

1815
01:52:46,640 --> 01:52:49,600
Speaker 1: I don't have a burning passion to do this. And

1816
01:52:49,720 --> 01:52:51,760
Speaker 1: a friend of mine, Brian raps Are caught in a

1817
01:52:51,840 --> 01:52:57,479
Speaker 1: customer who had written a punk rock flyer book called

1818
01:52:57,560 --> 01:53:01,080
Speaker 1: Fucked Up and photocopied. It was one of these pet

1819
01:53:01,200 --> 01:53:04,400
Speaker 1: rock sensations. This book just went crazy. It's in something

1820
01:53:04,479 --> 01:53:07,360
Speaker 1: like its twentieth printing and has sold nearly a hundred

1821
01:53:07,400 --> 01:53:11,200
Speaker 1: thousand copies about punk flyers. And he was in my

1822
01:53:11,280 --> 01:53:14,960
Speaker 1: house one day looking through some new flyers and told

1823
01:53:15,000 --> 01:53:16,920
Speaker 1: me that his book had been such a success the

1824
01:53:16,960 --> 01:53:19,720
Speaker 1: publisher had given him an imprint and if I had

1825
01:53:19,720 --> 01:53:23,320
Speaker 1: any book ideas, he wanted to hear them. And I said, well,

1826
01:53:23,360 --> 01:53:25,200
Speaker 1: I've been carrying this one around to do a book

1827
01:53:25,200 --> 01:53:28,760
Speaker 1: of a hundred and one classic vinyl records, a rip

1828
01:53:28,800 --> 01:53:31,240
Speaker 1: off of this book of a hundred one photography books.

1829
01:53:31,760 --> 01:53:34,719
Speaker 1: And told him what it was and what I added

1830
01:53:34,800 --> 01:53:37,360
Speaker 1: to it was the interviews with artists. He goes, I'll

1831
01:53:37,400 --> 01:53:40,960
Speaker 1: get your book deal, and he did, and so we

1832
01:53:41,080 --> 01:53:45,080
Speaker 1: did it together, and uh interviewed Graham Nash, Iggy, and

1833
01:53:45,200 --> 01:53:49,080
Speaker 1: Suzanne Vega, some other artists I had worked with Johnny

1834
01:53:49,160 --> 01:53:52,959
Speaker 1: Maher people. I knew it had these lush photo spreads

1835
01:53:53,520 --> 01:53:56,960
Speaker 1: of the earliest pressing for the artists country of origin,

1836
01:53:57,360 --> 01:54:01,160
Speaker 1: totally nerdy, and some of those are septionally rare records.

1837
01:54:01,640 --> 01:54:03,400
Speaker 1: And then I did a spread on my collection of

1838
01:54:03,479 --> 01:54:06,840
Speaker 1: Jimmie Hendricks's records, a few other things like that band

1839
01:54:06,920 --> 01:54:11,200
Speaker 1: album covers spread. It was very successful. It's in its

1840
01:54:11,439 --> 01:54:15,360
Speaker 1: fourth printing now, and it was a lot of work,

1841
01:54:15,520 --> 01:54:18,560
Speaker 1: but it was fun and people really enjoyed it, and

1842
01:54:18,920 --> 01:54:21,599
Speaker 1: uh so I was happy to do it, and I thought,

1843
01:54:21,760 --> 01:54:24,000
Speaker 1: I'm never doing another book again, and it was too

1844
01:54:24,080 --> 01:54:27,560
Speaker 1: much work. Glad I did it. And I had this

1845
01:54:27,760 --> 01:54:31,120
Speaker 1: collection of stooges memorabiliy, a very large collection, and another

1846
01:54:31,160 --> 01:54:34,360
Speaker 1: friend of mine had an equally large collection of stuff

1847
01:54:34,360 --> 01:54:36,760
Speaker 1: that nobody had ever seen. He kept bugging me to

1848
01:54:36,840 --> 01:54:39,960
Speaker 1: do a book, and I kept saying, no, not interested.

1849
01:54:40,920 --> 01:54:43,960
Speaker 1: And one day I kind of had this idea where

1850
01:54:44,080 --> 01:54:46,920
Speaker 1: I worked with Iggy at A and M and we

1851
01:54:47,040 --> 01:54:49,600
Speaker 1: become very friendly, and I knew he was this great

1852
01:54:49,680 --> 01:54:51,960
Speaker 1: rack on tour and I thought, I know what to do.

1853
01:54:52,360 --> 01:54:56,520
Speaker 1: We'll pick a hundred things from our Stooges memorabilia that

1854
01:54:56,680 --> 01:55:00,400
Speaker 1: nobody's ever seen, and we'll go interview Iggy and just

1855
01:55:00,520 --> 01:55:03,480
Speaker 1: record what he has to say about each thing, and

1856
01:55:03,600 --> 01:55:07,160
Speaker 1: that will be the book. And uh, my friend said great,

1857
01:55:07,960 --> 01:55:11,200
Speaker 1: and uh so I got in contact with Iggy, who

1858
01:55:11,280 --> 01:55:14,440
Speaker 1: had really liked my hunder one Rock Records book and

1859
01:55:14,520 --> 01:55:18,400
Speaker 1: really liked what I said about the Stooges, included two

1860
01:55:18,440 --> 01:55:21,240
Speaker 1: Stooges albums, and we worked out a deal with him

1861
01:55:21,280 --> 01:55:24,200
Speaker 1: to do it. And the idea was we would go

1862
01:55:24,320 --> 01:55:29,440
Speaker 1: to my aunt or Miami and where he lives, and

1863
01:55:30,440 --> 01:55:34,040
Speaker 1: for eight hours show him these pictures and record his recollections.

1864
01:55:35,160 --> 01:55:37,880
Speaker 1: And my I thought, you know, maybe to have five

1865
01:55:38,160 --> 01:55:40,560
Speaker 1: minutes to say about each thing, and then we'd fill

1866
01:55:40,640 --> 01:55:42,960
Speaker 1: in what the things he didn't remember with a little

1867
01:55:42,960 --> 01:55:45,280
Speaker 1: bit of captions, and that would be It would be simple.

1868
01:55:47,160 --> 01:55:54,680
Speaker 1: So I prepared this page document of questions to ask

1869
01:55:54,800 --> 01:55:59,160
Speaker 1: him about based on these images. And the idea was

1870
01:55:59,240 --> 01:56:00,920
Speaker 1: we were going to surprise. I said, you know, he

1871
01:56:01,160 --> 01:56:03,680
Speaker 1: wouldn't see these things before it, and a couple of

1872
01:56:03,760 --> 01:56:05,720
Speaker 1: days before he said, you know, i'd really like to

1873
01:56:05,800 --> 01:56:08,880
Speaker 1: see these things, okay, So I fixed him to him

1874
01:56:09,280 --> 01:56:11,640
Speaker 1: and he sent me an email saying, this is fantastic.

1875
01:56:11,760 --> 01:56:14,720
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about this. I've never seen almost any

1876
01:56:14,800 --> 01:56:18,400
Speaker 1: of these things before. Great. So my friend Johan, who

1877
01:56:18,400 --> 01:56:20,120
Speaker 1: I was doing this with, and I who had the

1878
01:56:20,200 --> 01:56:23,200
Speaker 1: other collection, I went down to Miami and we sat

1879
01:56:23,280 --> 01:56:26,440
Speaker 1: in this little again has two houses. One is his workhouse,

1880
01:56:27,160 --> 01:56:28,920
Speaker 1: and that's where we went. And sat in this little

1881
01:56:29,240 --> 01:56:32,680
Speaker 1: thatched roofed hut by a creek in the backyard of

1882
01:56:32,760 --> 01:56:36,800
Speaker 1: his place, and uh, you know, we got through the

1883
01:56:36,840 --> 01:56:40,560
Speaker 1: pleasant trees and I showed him the first thing, and

1884
01:56:41,120 --> 01:56:43,640
Speaker 1: he just started talking. And I'm looking at my watch

1885
01:56:43,720 --> 01:56:46,080
Speaker 1: and it's fifteen minutes and I've got eight hours to

1886
01:56:46,200 --> 01:56:49,040
Speaker 1: talk to him, and I'm doing the math, going this

1887
01:56:49,160 --> 01:56:52,960
Speaker 1: is never gonna work. So I interrupted him and I said, listen,

1888
01:56:53,640 --> 01:56:56,200
Speaker 1: we gotta keep these answers pretty short or else I'm

1889
01:56:56,240 --> 01:56:58,400
Speaker 1: going to be more than eight hours. Uh no, I

1890
01:56:58,400 --> 01:57:01,200
Speaker 1: don't want that. And he and we're very reflective about

1891
01:57:01,240 --> 01:57:04,520
Speaker 1: the stooges. Ron Ashton, who was the guitar player, had died.

1892
01:57:04,920 --> 01:57:08,120
Speaker 1: Scott Ashton was in poor health, and I think he'd

1893
01:57:08,160 --> 01:57:10,800
Speaker 1: been thinking a lot about them, and I was a

1894
01:57:10,920 --> 01:57:13,360
Speaker 1: comfortable person to talk to because he knew me from

1895
01:57:13,520 --> 01:57:17,080
Speaker 1: the record company experience in my previous book. And I

1896
01:57:17,200 --> 01:57:19,120
Speaker 1: think he figured, you know, if I'm ever going to

1897
01:57:19,240 --> 01:57:22,000
Speaker 1: talk about this period in depth, which he never had,

1898
01:57:22,920 --> 01:57:24,680
Speaker 1: this is the situation where I'm going to do it.

1899
01:57:26,120 --> 01:57:29,280
Speaker 1: But the thing I hadn't planned on was this unbelievable memory.

1900
01:57:30,760 --> 01:57:32,520
Speaker 1: So I'm in the second and third thing and we're

1901
01:57:32,560 --> 01:57:34,880
Speaker 1: at forty five minutes, and I stopped him and I said, listen,

1902
01:57:36,400 --> 01:57:38,440
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna change plans. I think we're gonna

1903
01:57:38,520 --> 01:57:40,600
Speaker 1: just do an oral history of the Stooges and and

1904
01:57:40,760 --> 01:57:43,400
Speaker 1: show you this stuff and and work around that at

1905
01:57:43,480 --> 01:57:46,280
Speaker 1: some point I may may need to do fill in interviews.

1906
01:57:46,320 --> 01:57:47,960
Speaker 1: And he was like fine, I mean, he was having

1907
01:57:48,400 --> 01:57:52,400
Speaker 1: a ball. So we talked for eight or nine hours,

1908
01:57:52,840 --> 01:57:57,000
Speaker 1: and uh, it was I've never I've talked to a

1909
01:57:57,120 --> 01:57:59,600
Speaker 1: lot of artists. I've never met anybody with the recall

1910
01:57:59,720 --> 01:58:02,200
Speaker 1: he which when you factor in the fact that the

1911
01:58:02,240 --> 01:58:07,280
Speaker 1: guy abused himself as much as anybody, is almost unfathomable. Um.

1912
01:58:07,920 --> 01:58:09,720
Speaker 1: So you'd show him something and he'd say, all right,

1913
01:58:09,760 --> 01:58:12,480
Speaker 1: here's what I remember and give you whatever. He'd remember

1914
01:58:13,720 --> 01:58:16,280
Speaker 1: that was maybe fifty or sixty percent at the time,

1915
01:58:16,480 --> 01:58:19,160
Speaker 1: and then another twenty percent at the time. He'd say,

1916
01:58:20,840 --> 01:58:22,840
Speaker 1: you can almost see the gears turning in his head.

1917
01:58:22,880 --> 01:58:25,920
Speaker 1: And he'd say, all right, I don't remember much, but

1918
01:58:26,680 --> 01:58:30,120
Speaker 1: and he'd tell you and then maybe ten or fifteen

1919
01:58:30,160 --> 01:58:32,680
Speaker 1: percent a time he'd got no idea, don't remember anything.

1920
01:58:32,880 --> 01:58:35,080
Speaker 1: So you knew he wasn't bullshitting. You knew he was

1921
01:58:35,120 --> 01:58:39,200
Speaker 1: telling you the truth. And UH, I got home and

1922
01:58:39,280 --> 01:58:41,560
Speaker 1: just but this is unbelievable. And there were a few

1923
01:58:41,640 --> 01:58:44,040
Speaker 1: filling kind of things I did, and we had this

1924
01:58:44,200 --> 01:58:48,480
Speaker 1: abundance of visuals and that became the book. And that's

1925
01:58:48,560 --> 01:58:52,080
Speaker 1: actually uh. That was published by third man Jack White's

1926
01:58:52,120 --> 01:58:55,080
Speaker 1: company and Ben Blackwell, who was one of the guys

1927
01:58:55,080 --> 01:58:57,240
Speaker 1: who runs it as a Stooges fanatic, and so that

1928
01:58:57,360 --> 01:59:00,920
Speaker 1: was great. And in August they will really a paperback

1929
01:59:01,080 --> 01:59:05,120
Speaker 1: version of that with a bunch of additional content. Uh.

1930
01:59:05,480 --> 01:59:08,240
Speaker 1: And and Henry Rawlins and I, who was a Stooges

1931
01:59:08,320 --> 01:59:11,240
Speaker 1: super fan, interview each other about why the Stooges are

1932
01:59:11,320 --> 01:59:16,120
Speaker 1: so important. UM, and then I thought, Okay, I'm really done.

1933
01:59:16,160 --> 01:59:18,160
Speaker 1: I am never doing this again. It is just too

1934
01:59:18,280 --> 01:59:23,040
Speaker 1: much work for me. And then I went. I was

1935
01:59:24,040 --> 01:59:27,080
Speaker 1: introduced to a guy who had a huge collection of

1936
01:59:27,280 --> 01:59:33,080
Speaker 1: jazz memorabilia who was in San Diego, and the memorabilia

1937
01:59:33,200 --> 01:59:38,000
Speaker 1: was in his safe deposit box. So h two or

1938
01:59:38,080 --> 01:59:40,400
Speaker 1: three times I would go down to this guy's house.

1939
01:59:40,640 --> 01:59:44,480
Speaker 1: We would drive to the Bank of America in San Diego.

1940
01:59:45,200 --> 01:59:47,080
Speaker 1: We would go into one of those little rooms that

1941
01:59:47,240 --> 01:59:49,680
Speaker 1: you can go into take your safe deposit box, and

1942
01:59:49,840 --> 01:59:52,920
Speaker 1: he would bring out a cart with this series of

1943
01:59:52,960 --> 01:59:56,040
Speaker 1: safe deposit boxes. And he had just bought stuff for

1944
01:59:56,280 --> 01:59:59,920
Speaker 1: thirty or forty years and dropped him in the boxes

1945
02:00:00,120 --> 02:00:02,400
Speaker 1: as he was buying. So it was in no The

1946
02:00:02,800 --> 02:00:07,600
Speaker 1: organization was as he bought stuff. So I'm going through

1947
02:00:07,680 --> 02:00:10,400
Speaker 1: these boxes, like here's a Charlie Parker autograph, I want that.

1948
02:00:11,360 --> 02:00:13,680
Speaker 1: Here's a couple of Dave Brubek tickets. I don't care

1949
02:00:13,720 --> 02:00:17,120
Speaker 1: about those. Oh look, here's a photo from Birdland with

1950
02:00:17,280 --> 02:00:21,120
Speaker 1: Count Basie and some fans. I want that. And I started.

1951
02:00:21,160 --> 02:00:24,120
Speaker 1: So these jazz clubs in the forties and fifties had

1952
02:00:24,560 --> 02:00:27,040
Speaker 1: in house photographers who would take a picture of you

1953
02:00:28,040 --> 02:00:30,720
Speaker 1: and your girlfriend or your day or your party at

1954
02:00:30,800 --> 02:00:33,200
Speaker 1: your table. They'd go in the back room and develop

1955
02:00:33,280 --> 02:00:35,040
Speaker 1: it and at the end of the evening you could

1956
02:00:35,080 --> 02:00:37,800
Speaker 1: buy it for a buck in a little custom portfolio

1957
02:00:38,440 --> 02:00:42,040
Speaker 1: that had Birdland artwork. And these things were just fantastic.

1958
02:00:42,080 --> 02:00:46,320
Speaker 1: I've never seen one of them before. And uh so,

1959
02:00:47,480 --> 02:00:49,680
Speaker 1: as I'm going through this stuff, I've got twenty thirty,

1960
02:00:49,800 --> 02:00:52,360
Speaker 1: forty fifty of these things, all from different jazz clubs

1961
02:00:52,400 --> 02:00:56,360
Speaker 1: around America, I'm thinking, I'm in his business for forty

1962
02:00:56,440 --> 02:00:58,440
Speaker 1: years at the time. For five years, I've never seen

1963
02:00:58,520 --> 02:01:01,320
Speaker 1: a single one of these. These have to be impossibly rare,

1964
02:01:01,440 --> 02:01:07,960
Speaker 1: and they're really evocative of these clubs. So um, I

1965
02:01:08,080 --> 02:01:10,960
Speaker 1: end up buying nearly two hundred from him, along with

1966
02:01:11,000 --> 02:01:14,040
Speaker 1: a bunch of other stuff. And while I'm going the

1967
02:01:14,120 --> 02:01:17,520
Speaker 1: first day, as I'm looking at these things, going he

1968
02:01:17,600 --> 02:01:20,640
Speaker 1: should be in a book somewhere and they're just too good.

1969
02:01:21,440 --> 02:01:25,040
Speaker 1: So I um piled these things up on a bookcase

1970
02:01:25,160 --> 02:01:27,080
Speaker 1: and just was staring at them, and I engaged in

1971
02:01:27,160 --> 02:01:30,160
Speaker 1: this staring contest with them that we want to be

1972
02:01:30,280 --> 02:01:32,400
Speaker 1: a book. No, I said, I'd never do another book.

1973
02:01:33,200 --> 02:01:36,240
Speaker 1: People need to see these And as I started googling,

1974
02:01:36,280 --> 02:01:38,840
Speaker 1: I realized there are no books of these things, and

1975
02:01:39,080 --> 02:01:42,120
Speaker 1: occasionally online you can find one or two of them,

1976
02:01:42,160 --> 02:01:44,600
Speaker 1: but there are no collections of them. And it's really

1977
02:01:44,720 --> 02:01:48,080
Speaker 1: black history. You see black people white people. It's the

1978
02:01:48,120 --> 02:01:51,360
Speaker 1: birth of selfie culture. You see Louis Armstrong posing with

1979
02:01:51,440 --> 02:01:57,520
Speaker 1: a bunch of white fans or Count Basie Um, and

1980
02:01:57,640 --> 02:02:01,520
Speaker 1: I just eventually they wore me down, and I decided

1981
02:02:01,600 --> 02:02:04,360
Speaker 1: these things needed to be seen. So I thought, Okay,

1982
02:02:04,400 --> 02:02:06,640
Speaker 1: you know, I know a fair amount of my jazz,

1983
02:02:06,680 --> 02:02:09,600
Speaker 1: but I'm certainly no expert on jazz clubs. What do

1984
02:02:09,720 --> 02:02:13,360
Speaker 1: I do? So I read forty books. I interviewed Quincy

1985
02:02:13,480 --> 02:02:15,680
Speaker 1: Jones and Sonny Rawlins about what it was like to

1986
02:02:15,760 --> 02:02:20,360
Speaker 1: play in these clubs at the time. And I kind

1987
02:02:20,400 --> 02:02:23,560
Speaker 1: of casually said to Quincy, what was the racial situation?

1988
02:02:23,720 --> 02:02:27,080
Speaker 1: It was fantastic, everybody got along. This was where black

1989
02:02:27,120 --> 02:02:29,760
Speaker 1: people and white people could hang out together. Was the

1990
02:02:29,840 --> 02:02:34,360
Speaker 1: first place that happened. Uh, that's shocking. I've never read

1991
02:02:34,400 --> 02:02:38,120
Speaker 1: anything about that. Uh. And he said to me, you know,

1992
02:02:38,280 --> 02:02:40,840
Speaker 1: racism would have been over in the fifties if people

1993
02:02:40,880 --> 02:02:44,520
Speaker 1: had paid attention to the jazz guys. So I'm talking

1994
02:02:44,640 --> 02:02:48,640
Speaker 1: to Sonny Rollins. It's just it's unfathomble to me that

1995
02:02:48,760 --> 02:02:51,640
Speaker 1: he could interview these people, you know, I used Quincy.

1996
02:02:52,160 --> 02:02:54,960
Speaker 1: I used my mo leverage to interview Quincy, and then

1997
02:02:55,000 --> 02:02:57,040
Speaker 1: I used the fact that I had interviewed Quincy to

1998
02:02:57,080 --> 02:03:00,320
Speaker 1: get to Sonny Rawlins. It was wonderful, and I said, so,

1999
02:03:00,520 --> 02:03:03,240
Speaker 1: Sonny Quincy told me, you know, thing about the racism,

2000
02:03:03,440 --> 02:03:05,760
Speaker 1: and it was like he'd been waiting for seventy years

2001
02:03:05,800 --> 02:03:08,600
Speaker 1: for somebody to ask him this question. It's absolutely true.

2002
02:03:09,280 --> 02:03:11,680
Speaker 1: You know, nobody paid attention to who you, what color

2003
02:03:11,760 --> 02:03:16,280
Speaker 1: you were, the musicians, the people. Uh. In the audiences,

2004
02:03:16,440 --> 02:03:18,640
Speaker 1: everybody got along. Now you might go outside and it

2005
02:03:18,760 --> 02:03:21,600
Speaker 1: wasn't the same way, but in these clubs, and so

2006
02:03:21,760 --> 02:03:24,200
Speaker 1: that became a kind of through line in this book.

2007
02:03:24,720 --> 02:03:26,600
Speaker 1: And the next interview, I thought, Okay, I want to

2008
02:03:26,640 --> 02:03:29,200
Speaker 1: talk to somebody who was in the audience. And you know,

2009
02:03:29,480 --> 02:03:31,840
Speaker 1: to be at a jazz club at the end of

2010
02:03:31,880 --> 02:03:34,880
Speaker 1: the forties, you're ninety years old, and Sunny Rollins and

2011
02:03:34,920 --> 02:03:38,760
Speaker 1: Quincy were both sneaking in. So I found Dan Morgan Stern,

2012
02:03:38,880 --> 02:03:41,800
Speaker 1: who is the pre eminent jazz historian in the world,

2013
02:03:42,720 --> 02:03:46,400
Speaker 1: who's now about nine two, and he came to America

2014
02:03:46,440 --> 02:03:49,360
Speaker 1: as a refugee from Nazi Germany, was obsessed with jazz,

2015
02:03:50,000 --> 02:03:53,080
Speaker 1: started uh going to these clubs when he was seventeen,

2016
02:03:53,240 --> 02:03:57,160
Speaker 1: sneaking in and because he was European, uh, he was

2017
02:03:57,200 --> 02:03:59,440
Speaker 1: a very close observer to it, and the musicians were

2018
02:03:59,520 --> 02:04:01,560
Speaker 1: very interesting and talking to um as he was interested

2019
02:04:01,600 --> 02:04:03,640
Speaker 1: in talking to musicians, and he ends up being the

2020
02:04:03,800 --> 02:04:07,240
Speaker 1: editor of Downbeat, has written all these many books, and

2021
02:04:07,400 --> 02:04:10,520
Speaker 1: runs the Ructor's Jazz Institute for forty years. So I

2022
02:04:10,600 --> 02:04:12,720
Speaker 1: could talk to Sonny and Quincy about what it was

2023
02:04:12,800 --> 02:04:15,360
Speaker 1: like on stage and Dan what it was like to

2024
02:04:15,440 --> 02:04:18,400
Speaker 1: be in the audience, and it was just amazing. And

2025
02:04:18,480 --> 02:04:23,400
Speaker 1: then I spoke to Jason Moran, who's a younger pianist

2026
02:04:23,440 --> 02:04:26,240
Speaker 1: and composers, the head of the Kennedy Center Jazz program

2027
02:04:26,320 --> 02:04:31,160
Speaker 1: and Arthur Genius Grant winner and is obsessed with jazz

2028
02:04:31,240 --> 02:04:33,880
Speaker 1: history and he had never seen a single one of

2029
02:04:33,920 --> 02:04:37,200
Speaker 1: these and they just blew his mind. So I got

2030
02:04:37,720 --> 02:04:39,480
Speaker 1: his perspective. And then I spoke to a woman named

2031
02:04:39,520 --> 02:04:43,360
Speaker 1: Robin Given was a cultural critic, Pulitzer Prizeman and culture

2032
02:04:43,400 --> 02:04:47,120
Speaker 1: critic for the Washington Post, but has great at deconstructing photographs.

2033
02:04:48,360 --> 02:04:50,560
Speaker 1: So I keep saying to my wife, I am never

2034
02:04:50,720 --> 02:04:54,840
Speaker 1: doing this again. And the asterix is unless I can

2035
02:04:54,880 --> 02:04:59,720
Speaker 1: find somebody to do pass the work a lot of

2036
02:04:59,760 --> 02:05:01,600
Speaker 1: the lifting, because it's just a lot of work. But

2037
02:05:01,840 --> 02:05:04,600
Speaker 1: you know they're all successful, and that's in its second

2038
02:05:04,640 --> 02:05:06,520
Speaker 1: printing as well. And the last thing I'll say is

2039
02:05:06,600 --> 02:05:10,080
Speaker 1: I feel like with the Students Book and the Jazz Book,

2040
02:05:10,440 --> 02:05:14,800
Speaker 1: they're important in the sense that I got Eggy to

2041
02:05:14,880 --> 02:05:17,280
Speaker 1: talk about the history of the band who invented punk

2042
02:05:17,400 --> 02:05:20,520
Speaker 1: rock in more depth than anybody ever has, and I

2043
02:05:20,680 --> 02:05:22,920
Speaker 1: doubt he will ever do it again. So I feel

2044
02:05:22,960 --> 02:05:26,160
Speaker 1: like I documented something that wouldn't have been documented had

2045
02:05:26,200 --> 02:05:30,560
Speaker 1: I not done it. And the same with the Jazz book.

2046
02:05:30,640 --> 02:05:34,680
Speaker 1: I mean to find somebody who was there at the

2047
02:05:34,800 --> 02:05:37,840
Speaker 1: time in ten years is going to be impossible just

2048
02:05:38,000 --> 02:05:42,440
Speaker 1: because of the age demographics of it. So I feel

2049
02:05:42,480 --> 02:05:46,560
Speaker 1: like I got that story down and documented this scene

2050
02:05:46,760 --> 02:05:52,000
Speaker 1: and the racial situation before it became too late. Now

2051
02:05:52,080 --> 02:05:56,200
Speaker 1: these are all very well done, expensive coffee table books.

2052
02:05:56,240 --> 02:05:58,960
Speaker 1: Are these just labors of love or is this a business?

2053
02:06:00,280 --> 02:06:03,640
Speaker 1: It is a total labor of Look when my first

2054
02:06:03,720 --> 02:06:06,200
Speaker 1: book came out hunder One Essential Rock Rats, I said

2055
02:06:06,200 --> 02:06:08,720
Speaker 1: to my wife, I've now mastered making five dollars an Now,

2056
02:06:09,880 --> 02:06:12,360
Speaker 1: because it had four printings, I've revised that I've now

2057
02:06:12,480 --> 02:06:16,840
Speaker 1: mastered making twenty dollars an now, but no, this is

2058
02:06:16,880 --> 02:06:19,160
Speaker 1: a labor of love and getting it down while I

2059
02:06:19,200 --> 02:06:23,839
Speaker 1: can be gotten down. Now, what is it typical day like? Finally,

2060
02:06:24,560 --> 02:06:27,560
Speaker 1: and is it like being in the music business? We're

2061
02:06:27,680 --> 02:06:32,200
Speaker 1: essentially two seven or you set limits on it. So

2062
02:06:32,640 --> 02:06:35,040
Speaker 1: give us what is going on every day in the

2063
02:06:35,120 --> 02:06:38,520
Speaker 1: life of Jeff Gold. I try to set limits. It's

2064
02:06:38,640 --> 02:06:42,200
Speaker 1: nearly impossible. Um. I wake up and come downstairs. I

2065
02:06:42,240 --> 02:06:44,520
Speaker 1: make my wife coffee and I make me tea. I

2066
02:06:44,640 --> 02:06:47,040
Speaker 1: get on my iPad. I look at the top selling

2067
02:06:47,120 --> 02:06:50,440
Speaker 1: records on he made the day before, just as kind

2068
02:06:50,480 --> 02:06:54,280
Speaker 1: of a wake up. I've got three websites with memorabilia

2069
02:06:54,360 --> 02:06:56,960
Speaker 1: that I look at every day, and once every six

2070
02:06:57,040 --> 02:07:01,360
Speaker 1: months i'd buy something for them. I look at Expecting Rain,

2071
02:07:01,480 --> 02:07:06,960
Speaker 1: which is an incredible aggregator of Bob Dylan links from

2072
02:07:07,000 --> 02:07:10,080
Speaker 1: the day before and general music links from the day before.

2073
02:07:11,440 --> 02:07:16,440
Speaker 1: I look at the New York Times, the h l

2074
02:07:16,520 --> 02:07:20,520
Speaker 1: A Times, and uh, maybe a couple of other news sites.

2075
02:07:20,720 --> 02:07:24,240
Speaker 1: I wake up, I have breakfast, I come upstairs. I

2076
02:07:24,320 --> 02:07:27,560
Speaker 1: started answering email. Generally it will be hey, I've got this,

2077
02:07:27,680 --> 02:07:30,760
Speaker 1: I want to sell because people find something they think

2078
02:07:30,840 --> 02:07:32,720
Speaker 1: might be rare, google it, and I show up high

2079
02:07:32,720 --> 02:07:37,000
Speaker 1: in the results. One out of twenty turns out to

2080
02:07:37,080 --> 02:07:40,960
Speaker 1: be interesting, and I end up buying one out of thirty. Maybe. Um,

2081
02:07:41,880 --> 02:07:44,760
Speaker 1: I've sold a couple of things. I emailed a person

2082
02:07:45,640 --> 02:07:49,400
Speaker 1: letting them them know we're shipping once a week these days. Uh,

2083
02:07:49,880 --> 02:07:53,320
Speaker 1: but that I've received payment and it will go out. Um.

2084
02:07:53,920 --> 02:07:56,400
Speaker 1: My assistant comes one day a week. I pulled the

2085
02:07:56,520 --> 02:07:59,400
Speaker 1: orders for her. She boxes and chip stuff. She takes

2086
02:07:59,400 --> 02:08:03,680
Speaker 1: photographs and template stuff on my wid website eBay. I

2087
02:08:04,360 --> 02:08:07,880
Speaker 1: might write those things up, do a lot of deep

2088
02:08:07,960 --> 02:08:10,720
Speaker 1: research into a project or two I have going on.

2089
02:08:11,960 --> 02:08:16,600
Speaker 1: I might get a call about an archive. Uh. Six

2090
02:08:16,760 --> 02:08:19,040
Speaker 1: or seven o'clock, my wife is tearing me away from

2091
02:08:19,080 --> 02:08:21,200
Speaker 1: the computer, going it's time for dinner. It's time for dinner.

2092
02:08:21,280 --> 02:08:24,440
Speaker 1: I meditate a couple of times a day, try to

2093
02:08:24,480 --> 02:08:26,240
Speaker 1: go out to lunch once a day, just to force

2094
02:08:26,320 --> 02:08:29,440
Speaker 1: myself to leave my computer, because left to my own devices,

2095
02:08:29,520 --> 02:08:31,960
Speaker 1: I can spend way too much time on this stuff.

2096
02:08:32,840 --> 02:08:36,000
Speaker 1: And I'll read them a rock book, or watch a

2097
02:08:36,120 --> 02:08:41,720
Speaker 1: music documentary, or read the paper or sometimes occasionally a

2098
02:08:41,800 --> 02:08:46,960
Speaker 1: non rock book, go to bed and what is your

2099
02:08:47,040 --> 02:08:49,240
Speaker 1: holy grail one of the one or two things you're

2100
02:08:49,280 --> 02:08:54,840
Speaker 1: looking to get, whether available, runavailable. Happily. I don't have

2101
02:08:54,920 --> 02:08:56,920
Speaker 1: any holy grails, but I have some holy grails that

2102
02:08:56,960 --> 02:09:01,680
Speaker 1: I own. Okay, what are those? I have one of

2103
02:09:01,760 --> 02:09:05,080
Speaker 1: Dylan's handwritten manuscripts Do I Want You, which is my favorite,

2104
02:09:05,480 --> 02:09:07,320
Speaker 1: one of my favorite Dylan songs that I have one

2105
02:09:07,360 --> 02:09:12,560
Speaker 1: for absolutely Sweet Marie. And I have uh the manuscript

2106
02:09:12,640 --> 02:09:15,720
Speaker 1: for this Wheels on Fire. So those are holy grails

2107
02:09:15,760 --> 02:09:20,040
Speaker 1: for me. I have, as I said, about twenty five

2108
02:09:20,080 --> 02:09:23,880
Speaker 1: of Hendrix's records. Those two Dylan records or holy grails

2109
02:09:23,960 --> 02:09:29,760
Speaker 1: for me? Uh? Got a great Coltrane poster from the

2110
02:09:29,840 --> 02:09:33,080
Speaker 1: sixties on my wall. I've got a signed Beatles program

2111
02:09:34,000 --> 02:09:38,880
Speaker 1: from the first US tour. I've got a times error

2112
02:09:39,000 --> 02:09:43,920
Speaker 1: changing first pressing signed to me. Uh. Do you use

2113
02:09:43,960 --> 02:09:51,040
Speaker 1: stuff that Dylan? Yeah? Do you have a relationship with Dylan? No?

2114
02:09:51,760 --> 02:09:56,120
Speaker 1: I met him one time. Oddly enough. There's a place

2115
02:09:56,160 --> 02:10:01,480
Speaker 1: called the Brentwood Country martin about a mile from my Yeah, ready, chick.

2116
02:10:01,920 --> 02:10:05,520
Speaker 1: I've been going there since I was four, over sixty years.

2117
02:10:06,440 --> 02:10:09,600
Speaker 1: I probably when I was a kid would go there

2118
02:10:09,800 --> 02:10:13,720
Speaker 1: four times a week, and in nine seventy seven. I'm

2119
02:10:13,760 --> 02:10:17,120
Speaker 1: there eating my Ready chick and I glanced up and

2120
02:10:17,200 --> 02:10:21,440
Speaker 1: there's Bob Dylan wearing a Ready leather jacket with stringy

2121
02:10:21,520 --> 02:10:26,000
Speaker 1: hair and three kids and they go into the toy store,

2122
02:10:26,040 --> 02:10:29,680
Speaker 1: which is my childhood toy store, and I am in shock,

2123
02:10:30,720 --> 02:10:32,080
Speaker 1: and so I think, do I have time to go

2124
02:10:32,160 --> 02:10:34,240
Speaker 1: home and get an album? No? So I go to

2125
02:10:34,360 --> 02:10:37,400
Speaker 1: my car and I get a pad of paper and

2126
02:10:37,600 --> 02:10:40,200
Speaker 1: a pen, and I wait about half an hour and

2127
02:10:40,360 --> 02:10:43,000
Speaker 1: Dylan comes out with kids and he's holding a child's

2128
02:10:43,040 --> 02:10:46,200
Speaker 1: twirling baton with a little ribbon around it that he

2129
02:10:46,280 --> 02:10:48,360
Speaker 1: must have bought his a So his kids were going

2130
02:10:48,400 --> 02:10:51,840
Speaker 1: to a birthday party or something. And I summoned up

2131
02:10:51,840 --> 02:10:54,240
Speaker 1: my courage and I said, excuse me, Bob, I hate

2132
02:10:54,280 --> 02:10:57,680
Speaker 1: to bother your autograph. And he looks at me and

2133
02:10:57,800 --> 02:10:59,800
Speaker 1: holds up this baton with his right hand and goes,

2134
02:10:59,880 --> 02:11:04,040
Speaker 1: I can't sign yeah, And I go, well, I'm really

2135
02:11:04,120 --> 02:11:07,320
Speaker 1: sorry to bother you, but your music has meant so

2136
02:11:07,440 --> 02:11:11,440
Speaker 1: much to me through the years. Uh, you know, thanks

2137
02:11:11,520 --> 02:11:15,640
Speaker 1: for everything, you know, and he says, what's your favorite song?

2138
02:11:15,760 --> 02:11:18,160
Speaker 1: And why I go like a rolling stone because it

2139
02:11:18,240 --> 02:11:22,040
Speaker 1: kind of marks the Yeah, the journey from acoustic to

2140
02:11:22,080 --> 02:11:25,520
Speaker 1: electric and Tom Wilson's production. I just acquitted myself very

2141
02:11:25,640 --> 02:11:28,280
Speaker 1: quickly and showed him I do what I was talking about.

2142
02:11:28,800 --> 02:11:30,520
Speaker 1: I said, you're going to Japan, aren't you. For the

2143
02:11:30,560 --> 02:11:32,640
Speaker 1: first time, he goes, how do you know that? Well,

2144
02:11:32,720 --> 02:11:34,680
Speaker 1: I work in a record store and we get Billboard

2145
02:11:34,720 --> 02:11:37,280
Speaker 1: magazine and I saw an article about it. And he

2146
02:11:37,360 --> 02:11:39,360
Speaker 1: sat and chatted with me for about I don't know

2147
02:11:39,480 --> 02:11:43,080
Speaker 1: five minutes, and his kids are running around, and eventually

2148
02:11:43,160 --> 02:11:45,280
Speaker 1: he looks at them and goes, I gotta go, and

2149
02:11:45,400 --> 02:11:48,280
Speaker 1: I hold out this piece of paper in this pen

2150
02:11:48,760 --> 02:11:51,200
Speaker 1: and he lifts up his hand with the baton again

2151
02:11:51,240 --> 02:11:53,880
Speaker 1: as if say, sorry, my my hands are full, and

2152
02:11:53,960 --> 02:11:58,480
Speaker 1: he walks away, which today is such an amazing story

2153
02:11:58,520 --> 02:12:01,080
Speaker 1: because I got my five minutes with Dylan. You wouldn't

2154
02:12:01,080 --> 02:12:02,720
Speaker 1: sign an autograph for me, but I've got, you know,

2155
02:12:02,960 --> 02:12:06,720
Speaker 1: lyric manuscripts and appraised as archives and all this stuff,

2156
02:12:06,760 --> 02:12:09,720
Speaker 1: So an autograph is the least thing I need. So

2157
02:12:10,360 --> 02:12:12,840
Speaker 1: if someone wants to check your stuff out, whether just

2158
02:12:13,000 --> 02:12:15,480
Speaker 1: for their own interest or to buy stuff, how do

2159
02:12:15,600 --> 02:12:20,920
Speaker 1: they find your stuff? On Twitter and Instagram? I am

2160
02:12:21,160 --> 02:12:24,600
Speaker 1: at record Mecca. I don't look at it. My assistant

2161
02:12:24,640 --> 02:12:27,720
Speaker 1: does uh. The way to get through to me is

2162
02:12:27,760 --> 02:12:30,280
Speaker 1: through the website Record Meca r e c O R

2163
02:12:30,360 --> 02:12:33,680
Speaker 1: D M e c c A dot com and I

2164
02:12:33,840 --> 02:12:37,480
Speaker 1: write about issues of interest to collectors, very nerdball stuff

2165
02:12:37,840 --> 02:12:43,800
Speaker 1: at Record Mecca dot com slash blog. Okay, Jeff, good

2166
02:12:43,880 --> 02:12:46,160
Speaker 1: to see you. Thanks so much for taking the time.

2167
02:12:46,840 --> 02:12:49,440
Speaker 1: This is something people are aware of now we've gone

2168
02:12:49,480 --> 02:12:54,280
Speaker 1: to the absolute source. Thanks again for doing this my pleasure, Bob.

2169
02:12:54,600 --> 02:12:57,040
Speaker 1: Until next time, This is Bob left Sex