WEBVTT - Jeff Gold 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:12.920 Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Websites podcast. My 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:17.480 guest today is the King of Memorabilia, Jeff Gold. Jeff, 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:21.759 good to have you on the podcast. Good to be here, Bob. Okay, 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:25.840 So there's all this scuttle but about Elvis that the 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:29.880 value of his memorability is going down because his audience 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:33.480 is dying off. Is that true? To some extent yes, 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:37.000 and to some extent no. The A level stuff is 0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:40.200 going for more than it's ever gone before. The mid 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:42.720 range stuff is kind of deteriorating. The low end of 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:47.120 the market is really deteriorating. So people want the best 0:00:47.159 --> 0:00:49.440 stuff and they're willing to pay crazy prices for it. 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:52.880 So it's just like concert tickets, it's the cheaper ones 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:57.000 that are harder to sell. So you have a website, 0:00:57.120 --> 0:01:02.320 record Mecca, tell us how you develop the website? Well, Uh, 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:06.080 as a teenager, I started buying uh rare Jimi Hendrix 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:08.560 records or Jimmy Hendrick records, and I started trying to 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:11.240 collect as many as I could find, and that entailed 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:15.480 going to swap meats and going to flea markets and 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:19.560 UH talking to anybody who might have anything, and along 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:23.040 my travels I started finding things that I recognized were 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:25.800 rare and buying them to sell them to pay for 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:29.920 my rare Jimi Hendricks Records. And uh. This turned into 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:32.600 a business for me as a kid. And so I 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:35.920 would go to England once a year, twice a year, 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:39.440 bring a suitcase full of rare American stuff, sell it 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:42.039 and trade it for rare English stuff, bring it back 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:45.840 and sell that in the Hollywood Swap Meet, which was 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:48.960 in the shadow of the Capitol Records Tower. And I 0:01:49.040 --> 0:01:51.200 was making a lot of cash for a young person. 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:53.320 And I went to work for Rhino Records. That was 0:01:53.320 --> 0:01:57.760 the first employee where I met you, and UH just 0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:01.600 became an entrepreneurial guy. I uh and was doing this. 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:03.800 It was getting bigger and bigger. I opened up an office. 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:08.200 I started doing mail order. But when I graduated from college, 0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:10.400 I thought, I really don't want to be going to 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:13.880 the Salvation Army in Oxnarden buying who forty five is 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:17.440 a fifty year old? So I got a business degree 0:02:17.480 --> 0:02:21.320 from USC UH leveraged that into a job A and 0:02:21.440 --> 0:02:25.000 M Records, but was continuing to collect things the whole time. 0:02:25.600 --> 0:02:29.239 And when I left the record business after eighteen or 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:31.960 nineteen years at A and M and then Warner Brothers. 0:02:32.919 --> 0:02:35.760 I was still collecting records. I had gotten very heavily 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:39.160 into the pre internet online world and then the Internet 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:44.280 online world, which sidebar. We started the first participation in 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:47.280 that at Warner Brothers, myself, at a few other people, 0:02:47.840 --> 0:02:49.920 and so I just got a whole hog back into it. 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:53.400 And it was the early days of eBay and the 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:58.720 early days of web browsers, and uh, I never stopped. Okay, 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:03.400 So this point in time, let's go back to the beginning. 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:06.440 So you're from l A. How old were you when 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:13.079 you started to trade records sell records? Maybe fifteen? And 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:14.840 how old were you when you made your first trip 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:20.760 to the UK? Uh? Nineteen? Okay? So what was it 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:24.440 like growing up in the classic rock era in southern 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:28.480 California where a lot of this scene was happening. It 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:35.600 was fantastic. Um people sold bootlegs at swat meets. The 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:39.800 the record sat Meat that I talked about before, initially 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:42.480 started on Sunday mornings, and everybody was getting more and 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:45.040 more competitive and would get there at you know, I'll 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:46.480 get there at seven, I'll get there at six, I'll 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:50.120 get there at five, And eventually people including myself, started 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:53.800 getting there at ten o'clock at Saturday night and spending 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:56.880 the night in your car hanging out with your friends 0:03:56.920 --> 0:03:59.000 so you could get the best position be there. When 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:03.080 people opened up at the earliest, stuff started selling earliest earlier. 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:08.720 I remember Al Wilson from Canned Heat, Uh would set 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:10.960 up there and had had a beat up old van 0:04:11.160 --> 0:04:14.760 and would sell posters. It was a wild West and 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:17.840 it was fantastic. They were used record stores everywhere, which 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:23.240 I know you experienced and uh, uh you know, I'm 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:25.640 gonna write a blog post on what record collecting was 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:29.400 like in the pre internet days for those younger people. Uh, 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:32.600 you know. I collected Hendricks Records, that was my first priority, 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:35.279 and then David Bowie Records. There were no discographies. You 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:39.160 had to find somebody who knew somebody who had something 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:41.800 or had heard of a rare record, and tracked them 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:45.160 down and call him on the phone enough till they 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:48.040 find something they wanted so you could trade it from 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:51.320 them or prior out of their prior, out of their hands. 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:54.039 But it was very, very exciting. Okay. I read a 0:04:54.040 --> 0:04:57.040 whole book written by some college professor about Al Wilson 0:04:57.160 --> 0:05:00.960 supposedly he was even though Bob High, the big, large 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:03.360 guy who was lead singer of Cantet, and although al 0:05:03.400 --> 0:05:06.680 Wilson sang the hits that Al Wilson was like a 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:09.720 real blues purist who knew everything about it was, you know, 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:13.240 driving force in that world. Is that something you're aware of? 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:17.520 You know? I know those guys were very serious record 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:22.640 collectors and music obsessives. And I actually bought a poster 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:25.600 collection of Larry Taylor, who was the bass player and 0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:28.120 can't eat, and he had just incredible stuff that he 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:30.560 would pick up. You know, he was one of those guys. 0:05:30.800 --> 0:05:33.000 I also bought a lot of stuff from the widow 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:36.560 of Sterling Morrison from the Velvet Underground, and occasionally you'd 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:40.279 find people like that who just wanted everything having to 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:44.320 do with their band and would uh as Sterling's wife 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:46.240 told me, you know, if they didn't have a poster 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:48.080 for him to take home, he'd rip it down off 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:51.080 the wall. And you know, most artists, as you know, 0:05:51.560 --> 0:05:53.839 don't care about this stuff. I did some consulting for 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:56.200 Bill Wyman of the Stones, who's one of the probably 0:05:56.200 --> 0:06:01.720 the pre eminent guy who saved absolutely everything, and uh, 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:03.919 I love talking to those guys, let's stay with Wyman 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:07.760 for a second. Because he he had everything, They did 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:09.960 a movie about him, and then all of a sudden 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:12.240 he decided to sell stuff. What was going on there? 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:15.360 You know? I have an NDA with Bill Winman, if 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:19.840 you can believe that, but not disclosure agreement, but suffice 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:23.440 to say, he had just an enormous amount of stuff, 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.440 has an enormous amount of stuff and sold some but 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:30.640 certainly far from all. And that movie, the Quiet One, 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:34.880 really shows the depths of his collecting. It's it's really 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:37.919 amazing if people haven't seen it well to the degree 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:40.560 you can talk about it. What kind of relationship did 0:06:40.560 --> 0:06:44.960 you have with Bill Wyman relative to his collection? I 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:48.040 was consulting with him, and I spent a week at 0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:52.919 his side going through stuff, which was probably the greatest 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:59.200 thrill in my fanboy record collector, music business life. He 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:04.440 remembers everything, he's kept a diary since he was ten. Uh, 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:09.840 just unbelievable. And what did he want from you? What 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:12.360 was he hiring you to do? You know, I really 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:14.680 can't talk about that, unfortunately. I just have to be 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:17.760 respectful to him. Okay, okay, so let's go back, Let's 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:21.280 leave memorabilia aside. So you grew up in l A. 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:25.760 How did you actually get into music. My parents had 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:30.000 a suitcase stereo and they bought herbal Bert and the 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:34.480 Tijuana Brass records, and I remember hearing the Lonely Bowl, 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:37.200 which was on his Lonely Bowl album and his first hit, 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:39.920 and just going nuts over. I just became obsessed with 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:42.720 that song to play it over and over and over 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:46.640 again as a six or seven year old, and uh, 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:49.920 it was amazing. Later going to work for her and 0:07:49.960 --> 0:07:52.520 meeting salt Lake, the guy who had been in the 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:55.320 bar Mitzvah band with Urban written that song, and just 0:07:55.440 --> 0:07:58.600 fawning over him, which I imagined didn't happen that often 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:02.400 for this guy who was probably eighty at the time. Uh. 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:05.040 And then my parents went to Palm Springs and they 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:07.880 brought me back as a gift the Beatles I want 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:10.640 to hold your hands single Creed Sullivan because they've read 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:14.120 about it in Time magazine and that was my first 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:16.880 record that I owned myself, and I went nuts and 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:20.120 just played that over and over and over. And when 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:22.280 they were on Ed Sullivan, I saw that and it 0:08:22.320 --> 0:08:26.560 blew my mind. And I remember my some friend of 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:29.600 My parents had given me a Mr. Ed the Talking 0:08:29.640 --> 0:08:32.440 Horse record and a couple of kiddie records, and I 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:35.200 made my mother take me to the record store they'd 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:37.920 come from in Beverly Hills so I could trade them 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:41.480 for rock records, and I got Beach Boys Party and 0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:44.880 maybe the first Beatles album and uh, I just never 0:08:44.880 --> 0:08:47.760 stopped the idea that I could own these things and 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:51.200 play them over and over and over again. That obsessed 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.080 me was fantastic. Okay, so you wrote a book about 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:57.240 Iggy and the Stooges, but you also said that you 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:00.280 went to the Whiskey to see the Raw Power were 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:03.960 in nineteen seventy three. So when did you start going 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:08.600 to concerts and what did you see? My father took 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:13.040 me to concerts by artists he like. There was a 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:18.360 Spanish group called Murray and Miranda who had uh Songs 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:20.840 of the African Velt was what it was called. And 0:09:20.880 --> 0:09:22.800 I love that record, and we went and saw them. 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:26.520 I first started going to records to two shows on 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:30.080 my own, probably at fifteen, when I could hitchhike to 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:33.960 the Santa Monica Civic and I remember seeing Mountain and Zephyr, 0:09:34.760 --> 0:09:41.120 and a little later when I was in high school 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:44.480 going to see Pink Floyd there who were traveling. We're 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:48.400 touring on Adam Hart mother and I saw free and 0:09:49.200 --> 0:09:53.120 traffic reconstituted traffic. As soon as I got a car, 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:58.280 which maybe came when I was seventeen, I was unstoppable, 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:02.640 you know. I was at the Whiskey constantly where every 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:07.560 British prog band known to man played, and uh I 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:12.679 started working at Rhino I was probably seventeen, and people 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:15.559 would give us concert tickets, drop off concert tickets, So 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:17.880 I was I was a wild man. What's that story 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:19.720 of how did you get that? You know? At this 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:21.360 point in time, which is kind of funny for those 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:24.079 of us grew up in l A or at least 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:28.959 from age early twenties, you know, Rhino on Westwood Boulevard. 0:10:29.080 --> 0:10:32.319 Ultimately there was a label. Harold Bronson, you know, got 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:35.520 started to come to Rhino Records while man Fisher. But 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:39.080 people don't understand what a big deal the record store was. 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:43.880 So Richard Fuss, who started it, started a department in 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:47.440 another store and then ultimately went to Westwood Boulevard. What 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:52.720 was Rhino Records like and how did you get the job? Okay? 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:56.200 So Richard who's still one of my best friends, had 0:10:56.320 --> 0:11:00.959 a friend whose father had an army circle US electronics 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:06.480 store called Apollo Electronics on Broadway and Third in Santa Monica, 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:09.679 and that was the that was when the mall was 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:13.960 dead with J Jerry, And it wasn't even on the mall, 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:17.120 it was around the corner from them all. But and 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:20.079 so Richard convinced his friend's father to give him an 0:11:20.120 --> 0:11:23.559 area that I'm gonna guess was like ten by fifteen 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:27.079 feet to sell US records. And a friend of mine 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:30.040 went in there and he was selling bootlegs. And this 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:31.640 was a big deal because I had to go to 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:36.920 the Rose bull Swat Meat to buy bootlegs. So someplace 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:39.560 that I could ride my bike too incredible. So I 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:43.080 started going in there and befriended Richard and he would 0:11:43.080 --> 0:11:48.000 buy cutouts and used records and bootlegs, and we became friendly, 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:52.880 very friendly. And uh, sometime in probably late seventy two 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:55.280 or very early seventy three, said Hey, I'm gonna open 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:57.240 a record store. And I said something like and you're 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:00.040 gonna give me a job and he said, okay, and 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:05.120 there you got. So he uh, he had rented the 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:08.960 there was a guy on Westwood Boulevard who had a 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:13.280 Zenith appliance repair store. So if you had a Zenith 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:17.200 uh integrated stereo and it broke, you would go to 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:20.679 this guy. His name was Dave nine, and he had 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:23.600 very little business. And somehow Richard convinced him to lease 0:12:23.679 --> 0:12:25.880 him the front half of the store and he would 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:27.400 keep the back half of the store to do his 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:32.400 electronics repair. And uh so I went down and with 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:34.520 a friend of mine, and we were helping Richard pound 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:38.800 together wooden bins for the records. And he had gone 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:41.920 to Aaron's Records and roseml swap in all these places 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:45.320 for about a year, saving up inventory to start this store. 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:50.920 And myself, his roommate, and a friend of his who 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:54.120 was a basus were the first three part time workers. 0:12:54.520 --> 0:12:57.680 And they lasted maybe a month or two. And I 0:12:57.800 --> 0:12:59.000 was not going to give this up. I was in 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:01.120 high school, I had a job a record store. I 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:04.480 had first pick of the records that got traded in. Uh. 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:08.320 It was as as you were alluding to the social 0:13:08.559 --> 0:13:12.160 scene on the West Side for record collectors. There were 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:16.559 people who came four or five times a week waiting 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:19.200 to see what came out, what used records were new 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:22.520 in the bins what we had missed priced or missed, 0:13:22.800 --> 0:13:26.600 and Richard very smartly salted the bins so he he 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:29.319 had a bunch of things like live Yardbirds album with 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:33.680 the John's Children album that back then we're records that 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:37.800 maybe now our hundred hundred to records, and he would 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:41.079 put him out for two fifty just so people would 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:43.240 start to talk about the great stuff in the bins. 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:45.760 And I made a lot of my friends at that 0:13:45.840 --> 0:13:50.560 store were still my friends almost fifty years later. Uh. 0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:53.760 Artists would come and visit us. Uh. You know, if 0:13:53.800 --> 0:13:56.800 if Atlantic had the pretty Things on tour, there weren't 0:13:56.800 --> 0:14:00.120 many record stores that cared about the pretty things. But 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:01.920 we would go nexts to meet the pretty things are 0:14:01.960 --> 0:14:05.160 the trogs. Uh. You know, we do an in store. 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:08.079 We'd get a lot of people. We would have live 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:12.160 shows with our friends, the Angry Smoans or it was 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:19.080 just crazy all things to all people. Uh. Fun thing 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:21.600 and truly the most fun job I've ever had in 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:25.280 my life by life. Actually, what at what point did 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:28.520 you start to stock new records in addition to use 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:33.840 records pretty early on because people came in and wanted 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:37.440 new records, and then there were things like Saturday Night Fever, 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:42.440 which became these phenomenons that you couldn't not carry And 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:47.640 I remember, uh, that record was so big. You remember 0:14:47.640 --> 0:14:51.280 a specific instance where you were this woman who was 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:54.040 probably in her thirties came in with a tennis racket 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:57.920 and a tennis skirt and a tennis shirt, fresh off 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:00.720 the courts, and she walked in the store, looked at 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:03.280 me and I said, Saturday and Night feverites right over there. 0:15:03.840 --> 0:15:06.240 She said, how did you know? And it was so 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:09.480 evident this person was so outside the demographic of anybody 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:12.760 would come into our record store. Or you'd remember another 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:15.720 instance where it's a Sunday morning, somebody comes in and says, 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:18.320 Teff this album by the Roaches, Yeah, it's over there, 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:21.160 And about fifteen minutes later, somebody comes in and goes, 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:23.120 do you have this album on the Roaches? And you go, 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:26.320 they were on Saturday Night Live, right. How did you know? 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:30.760 You could really kind of gauge what was coming on, 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:33.880 what was going on in the world from that little 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:36.320 perch behind the counter. I've been to a lot of 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:40.160 record stores and they made movies now, high fidelity whatever, 0:15:40.280 --> 0:15:42.600 but really that's not the way it was at most 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:45.120 record stores. Maybe there was a person behind the counter 0:15:45.240 --> 0:15:48.880 or whatever, but you literally had to be anxious going 0:15:48.920 --> 0:15:52.600 into Rhino Records because the staff would insult you on 0:15:52.680 --> 0:15:55.440 what you bought, if you was as guilty if that 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:59.480 as anybody. Unfortunately, that's what I remember. So it was 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:03.440 less of all of what was anybody, uh policing that. 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:05.880 It was everyone's side. This was kind of the charm 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:10.360 of the store or what nobody was policing that because 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:13.760 what Richard did was higher experts in each category. You know, 0:16:13.840 --> 0:16:17.200 Lee Kaplan ran the jazz and later Neil's Fine who 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:19.600 is famous as the guitar still Wilco and I was 0:16:19.600 --> 0:16:23.480 doing the rock and the imports, and uh, it was 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:26.920 a store that had personality. You've got to admit that. Um, 0:16:26.920 --> 0:16:28.560 that was just part of the stick. And I think, 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:33.720 you know, high fidelity was very much what Rhino was like, right. 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:37.160 The other thing, I remember we did great. I remember 0:16:37.240 --> 0:16:40.360 Van Halen playing opening for Nils Loft in the Santa 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:44.280 Monica Civic and I was kind of laughing, like this 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:47.320 was black O gar Kansaw. And then I went into 0:16:47.400 --> 0:16:49.520 Rhino and the guys by the kind of were reaving 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:53.320 how great guitarist Eddie Van Halen was, and I said, well, 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:59.640 maybe I have this row. Okay, So how did you 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:04.440 get your job at A and M. So I went 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:07.440 to USC and I got a business was a business major, 0:17:07.480 --> 0:17:09.280 and my plan was to get a job in the 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:13.600 record business. And one of our customers, a guy named 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:16.320 Lou Beach, came in and said, I know this guy 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:19.240 at A and M, Jeff Areroff. You should call him. 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:21.960 And I said, okay, okay, And I was interviewed for 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:24.520 two or three jobs that I hadn't gotten and didn't 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:28.919 really want, but was looking for any entry point, and uh, 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:32.560 this guy kept bugging me to call his friend, Jeff Farroff, 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:36.360 and finally I did, and Jeff Farroff, who's now probably 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:40.359 my best friend, UM said okay, come on and you know, 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:44.439 talk to me. And he was the vice president of 0:17:44.480 --> 0:17:47.320 creative Services at that point, so he wasn't responsible for 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:52.639 all the album covers, videos, marketing, advertising, and we hit 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:54.840 it off instantly, and he said, look, I'd like to 0:17:54.920 --> 0:17:57.440 hire you. I just fired a bunch of people. That 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:02.560 was nineteen seventy nine and the record business had just 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:08.840 expanded hugely on the back of Fleetwood, Mac Rumors and 0:18:08.880 --> 0:18:14.040 some of those records, and then contracted very dramatically. So 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:16.000 Jeff said, I'd love to hire you. I can't hire you. 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:18.000 I just fired a bunch of people. How would you 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:19.520 like to work for me as a freelancer? And I 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:22.440 said great. So he would give me projects to think 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.399 about and I would come in once every couple of 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:28.119 weeks and meet with him, and then every once in 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:30.640 a while he'd say, send me an invoice for five dollars. 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:35.040 And this was great. I was sort of what would 0:18:35.080 --> 0:18:40.800 the projects be. So Squeeze were signed to A and M, 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:42.600 and he was trying to figure out something clever to 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:44.240 do with Squeeze, and I go, why don't you make 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:48.560 a five inch Squeeze record like Squeezed? And uh, I 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:51.600 had this little six inch Jimmy Hendricks record from France 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:53.280 and I brought it and showed it to me. Loved 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:56.119 that idea. So they made a five inch Squeeze record 0:18:56.160 --> 0:18:58.879 for cool for Cats or one of those songs that 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:02.719 kind of thing. Um, Tim Curry's recording a new album, 0:19:02.960 --> 0:19:05.080 bring me some songs that might be interesting for him 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:09.399 to cover, which was fantastic. I mean, I was getting 0:19:09.400 --> 0:19:11.520 paid what I thought was a fortune for this, and 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:14.639 after about nine months he said, you know, I should 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:17.040 get Guilfries and the president of him to hire you. 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:20.840 That was the job I had. Jeff had and so 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:25.080 he had Guilt take me out to lunch and uh 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:30.639 this turned into probably six different meals with Gilt every 0:19:30.680 --> 0:19:33.880 three weeks or so. And one day he says to me, 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:37.320 maybe we'll get you a desk in sales and I said, WHOA, 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:39.080 does that mean you're hiring me? And he goes, oh, yeah, 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:42.640 I was always gonna hire you. So I got hired 0:19:42.680 --> 0:19:47.880 as his assistant, which was the greatest job in the world. UM. 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:49.920 Jeff had had it. A guy named Michael Leon who 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:52.840 ran in him on the East Coast had it, and 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:57.280 uh I had it. And then the gig was, after 0:19:57.320 --> 0:19:59.200 you had this job, you had to find your replacement. 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:01.600 And I went and got Tom Corson who worked at 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:06.800 I R. S and helped him get that job. Yeah, 0:20:07.680 --> 0:20:11.840 and uh I the job was basically doing everything he 0:20:11.880 --> 0:20:14.840 didn't have time for. So you'd read his mail, respond 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:19.199 to the low hanging fruit stuff, bring things to his 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:23.239 attention in the company that you thought he needed to 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:27.680 know about. UM Travel with him. You know, he had 0:20:27.800 --> 0:20:30.879 a secretary, but you were the person sitting at his 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:36.400 side helping him navigate his day to day responsibility to 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:40.560 the workload was so great, and that too, was an 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:44.640 incredible job. And he was probably the most important man 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:48.080 in my life in terms of teaching me things and 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:51.520 being able to emulate him and empowering me. You know, 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:55.640 I did things like the Funny Enough, the the Maybe 0:20:56.359 --> 0:20:59.439 six months into the job, I got the tape of 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:04.080 and Adams album You Want It You got advanced cassette 0:21:04.240 --> 0:21:05.919 I've never heard of. I listened to it and I 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:08.400 went to Gil. I said another thing about this guy. 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:12.000 He's signed by the Canadian Company, but this has one 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:15.800 a O R classic after another as far as I'm concerned. 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:18.240 Gil said, all right, fly him and his manager Dan, 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:21.480 that's your project. So I flew Brian and Bruce Allen 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:25.359 as manager down and they became my project. And so 0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:27.399 I could say to Gil they're trying to get the 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:29.479 Kinks tour, and he'd get on the phone with whoever 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:33.560 the agent was and try to make that happen. And 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:36.320 I talked about him in the marketing meetings, and he 0:21:36.400 --> 0:21:40.000 was a nonentity there at one point, Charlie Miner, the 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:42.960 late grade head of promotion, came down to my office, 0:21:43.280 --> 0:21:47.240 grabbed me by my shirt and lifted me up against 0:21:47.280 --> 0:21:48.960 the door and said, if you ever mentioned that guy's 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:52.800 name again, I'm gonna kill you. And three years later 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:58.080 and sold fifteen million albums something like. So Gil was 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:02.920 very empowering and letting you decide what you wanted to do, 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:15.479 and uh, supportive of going after So ultimately, air off 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:20.280 leaves and you get that job. What's that like? So 0:22:20.480 --> 0:22:23.960 I worked for Gill as assistant. Then Adam started a 0:22:24.000 --> 0:22:28.359 film company which was very successful. It had Bertie, which 0:22:28.359 --> 0:22:30.520 won the Poem to Or at the can Film Festival, 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:33.280 and we made the Breakfast Club. And at some point 0:22:33.320 --> 0:22:35.000 Guil came to me and said, do you want to 0:22:35.040 --> 0:22:37.280 work half time for the film company as the music guy? 0:22:37.320 --> 0:22:40.520 And I said sure, not because I had any interest 0:22:40.600 --> 0:22:43.879 in the movie business, but because everybody I knew had 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:47.000 interested in the movie business. And what I hadn't figured 0:22:47.040 --> 0:22:48.600 on was this. Then I had to read a script 0:22:48.640 --> 0:22:50.720 every day, so I had to wake up at six 0:22:51.200 --> 0:22:53.640 rate a script till seven thirty, then go to work. 0:22:54.280 --> 0:22:58.359 And uh. I remember one series of meetings where somebody 0:22:58.400 --> 0:23:00.760 was coming in and saying, some the extend up, We're 0:23:00.760 --> 0:23:02.760 gonna do a remake of Alice in Wonderland. We've got 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:06.560 Madonna attached, and I'm going on, that sounds stupid. And 0:23:06.600 --> 0:23:09.560 then to two meetings after that, somebody comes in and says, 0:23:09.600 --> 0:23:12.160 we're making a remake of something else. We've got Madonna attached, 0:23:12.760 --> 0:23:14.760 and I remember thinking, Wow, we're in the music business. 0:23:14.840 --> 0:23:18.600 We just exaggerate these guys lie um. And after about 0:23:18.600 --> 0:23:20.280 six months I went to Gil and said, I'm not 0:23:20.359 --> 0:23:21.960 into this. I want to work in the record business 0:23:22.040 --> 0:23:27.560 full time, no problem, And so Jeff Areff left and 0:23:27.720 --> 0:23:31.399 I was nominated and Gil came to me to run 0:23:32.520 --> 0:23:36.000 first the alternative marketing. We started an alternative marketing department. 0:23:36.119 --> 0:23:38.399 Actually I started it, and it was the first one 0:23:38.440 --> 0:23:41.600 in the music business to work on bands that weren't 0:23:41.600 --> 0:23:45.400 getting the full attention of Charlie and the higher ups 0:23:45.400 --> 0:23:47.719 in the company. So we worked on simple Minds at 0:23:47.760 --> 0:23:50.520 Suzanne Vega and O. M. D. And acts like that 0:23:51.119 --> 0:23:53.760 and had success, and then the idea was we'd get 0:23:53.840 --> 0:23:56.960 something going and then hand him off to the company 0:23:57.359 --> 0:24:01.479 at large. At some point, Bob Right, who's the head 0:24:01.520 --> 0:24:04.880 of marketing leaves and Gil comes to me and says, 0:24:05.119 --> 0:24:08.280 I want you to be the head of marketing too great, 0:24:08.720 --> 0:24:12.520 so I leave. UH. I leave his assistant job, and 0:24:12.560 --> 0:24:14.560 I become the head of marketing, which is where you 0:24:14.600 --> 0:24:19.280 and I really started to work together. And uh. At 0:24:19.320 --> 0:24:24.679 some point jeff Eroff leaves and I get nominated to 0:24:24.720 --> 0:24:26.639 be the head of creative services too. And neither of 0:24:26.720 --> 0:24:28.840 these jobs did I have any experience that they just 0:24:28.880 --> 0:24:32.080 threw you in and supported you, and uh, I did that. 0:24:32.200 --> 0:24:38.520 So I was in charge of advertising marketing all the 0:24:38.600 --> 0:24:43.040 merch stuff, album covers and videos, which was a big 0:24:43.080 --> 0:24:47.920 portfolio stuff and kind of very heavy stuff to learn 0:24:48.040 --> 0:24:51.200 while doing. But I had Gil was a very creative guy, 0:24:51.240 --> 0:24:55.199 and I could call on jeff Eroff and H somehow 0:24:55.200 --> 0:25:00.119 I figured it out. Okay, how do you. Ultimately we 0:25:00.240 --> 0:25:05.760 decide to DeCamp to Warner Brothers. I thought A M 0:25:05.800 --> 0:25:08.720 was going to be my entirety of my career. I 0:25:08.800 --> 0:25:11.400 was so close to guilt personally as well as professionally. 0:25:12.440 --> 0:25:17.400 And UH, I had had, through my friend Gary Boorman, 0:25:17.800 --> 0:25:20.679 had been approached by Warner Brothers, and I'd gone and 0:25:20.720 --> 0:25:23.000 had a meeting. But I decided, you know, I just 0:25:23.000 --> 0:25:26.600 don't want to leave Gil and this company where I 0:25:26.640 --> 0:25:30.640 know everybody, all my friends are And at some point UH, 0:25:30.920 --> 0:25:34.560 and periodically UH people from the press would call and 0:25:34.560 --> 0:25:36.399 say there are rumors and M is gonna get sold, 0:25:36.400 --> 0:25:38.760 and Guild would always say not gonna happen, and I'd 0:25:38.760 --> 0:25:41.320 go back and say, not gonna happen. And one day 0:25:41.359 --> 0:25:45.119 those rumors turned out to be true and Annam was 0:25:45.160 --> 0:25:48.879 sold by Herban Jerry to PolyGram. And it was clear 0:25:49.080 --> 0:25:53.400 that even though everybody was saying everything's gonna stay the same, 0:25:53.520 --> 0:25:57.359 no problem. I remember meeting with Alan Levy, who was 0:25:57.400 --> 0:26:02.919 the y hey of PolyGram in Europe, and he was 0:26:03.119 --> 0:26:07.280 really a dismissive, rude guy, and he was interrogating you. 0:26:07.400 --> 0:26:11.239 Was almost like the Gestapo. He'd say, tell me about this, 0:26:11.600 --> 0:26:14.960 and you start talking and he'd say, enough, tell me 0:26:15.000 --> 0:26:17.639 about this. And I just thought, this is not a 0:26:17.640 --> 0:26:19.600 good vibe. This guy is going to be the boss 0:26:19.640 --> 0:26:24.200 of our bosses. And at some point it becomes clear 0:26:24.760 --> 0:26:27.760 that the A M of Old is not going to 0:26:27.840 --> 0:26:30.639 be the A and M of new. And I start 0:26:30.680 --> 0:26:33.520 talking to Mouston and Lenny Warniker and Michael Lost and 0:26:33.520 --> 0:26:37.240 Warner brothers, and they're willing to make me a senior 0:26:37.320 --> 0:26:42.359 vice president and double my salary. And Warner Brothers and 0:26:42.400 --> 0:26:44.480 A and M are the two companies I ever wanted 0:26:44.560 --> 0:26:48.040 to work for, and MO was somebody I was always 0:26:48.040 --> 0:26:52.240 fascinated by, having signed hendricks On down. And so I 0:26:52.280 --> 0:26:54.640 made the tough decision that I was gonna leave my 0:26:54.680 --> 0:26:58.119 mentor and go to work for Warner Brothers. And the 0:26:58.240 --> 0:27:00.399 day I was going into quit, I had onto my 0:27:00.480 --> 0:27:04.399 shrink to prepare for this very difficult conversation, and we 0:27:04.480 --> 0:27:06.760 had an off the lot meeting and Tom Corson called 0:27:06.800 --> 0:27:11.480 me and said, Jerry just fired Gil. What I was 0:27:11.520 --> 0:27:14.600 gonna go quick today? Jerry just fired and called Gil. 0:27:14.880 --> 0:27:16.680 And I called Gil and I said, you're not gonna 0:27:16.680 --> 0:27:18.840 believe this, and Gil said, oh fantastic. You can walk 0:27:18.880 --> 0:27:21.960 into Jerry's office and it'll be I fired Gil. Now 0:27:22.000 --> 0:27:24.520 his number one, one of his number one guys is leaving. 0:27:26.040 --> 0:27:29.120 And I went in and quit to Jerry, who I had, 0:27:29.200 --> 0:27:32.200 you know, not a close relationship with. It was closer 0:27:32.240 --> 0:27:36.240 to her and Gil, and uh so the timing worked 0:27:36.280 --> 0:27:43.960 out beautifully. Okay, sidebar, you drove that Alfa Romeo Alphatta. 0:27:46.359 --> 0:27:50.080 I had a g TV six and I had a spider, 0:27:50.119 --> 0:27:52.879 but not an alphatta. I thought you had an al 0:27:52.920 --> 0:27:54.840 fet It must have been somebody else on the lot. Okay, 0:27:54.840 --> 0:27:57.840 you go to work, but I had to, So you're right. 0:27:58.600 --> 0:28:03.679 And how bad were they? Uh? The spider was really good. 0:28:04.760 --> 0:28:08.280 The GTV six required a bunch of work, but I 0:28:08.400 --> 0:28:12.800 enjoyed it. I like them. Okay, So was it culture 0:28:12.840 --> 0:28:15.119 shock going to Warner Brothers or do you fit right in? 0:28:15.720 --> 0:28:18.360 It was total culture shock, but not for the reason 0:28:18.440 --> 0:28:21.480 you might expect that A and M. Gil had his 0:28:21.560 --> 0:28:26.880 hands in absolutely everything, so I might hear from him 0:28:26.920 --> 0:28:30.360 five times a day. Uh, this is when I'm doing 0:28:30.359 --> 0:28:34.000 marketing and creative services. And then at the end of 0:28:34.040 --> 0:28:36.239 the day, all the senior vice presidents would go to 0:28:36.280 --> 0:28:38.960 his office and do a kind of a debrief for 0:28:39.000 --> 0:28:44.040 about an hour. When I went to work for MO, 0:28:45.280 --> 0:28:48.840 he was very decentralized. He hired people he thought I 0:28:48.920 --> 0:28:50.880 knew what they were doing and just let them know 0:28:50.920 --> 0:28:55.600 what let him go. And so I was so used 0:28:55.640 --> 0:28:57.920 to Hey, Gil, I'm gonna do this. How about that? 0:28:58.720 --> 0:29:00.920 I think we should do this. What are you doing 0:29:00.960 --> 0:29:05.080 about this? Jeff More didn't one enough. He just felt like, 0:29:05.160 --> 0:29:07.440 you know, there was a once a week meeting of 0:29:07.520 --> 0:29:10.480 vice presidents and senior vice presidents, and everybody would go 0:29:10.520 --> 0:29:13.440 around the table talking about what they were doing. And 0:29:13.480 --> 0:29:17.440 then there was a Thursday Senior Vice president's meeting that 0:29:17.520 --> 0:29:21.760 was called Korea because everybody said it just goes on forever, 0:29:21.920 --> 0:29:25.200 like the Korean War. And that was about four hours. 0:29:25.920 --> 0:29:27.920 And those are the opportunities where if you had a 0:29:28.000 --> 0:29:30.600 question for Mo, or Lenny or the head of Business 0:29:30.600 --> 0:29:33.240 Furs David Altchole, or wanted to let everybody know what 0:29:33.280 --> 0:29:35.719 you were doing, you did him in that for him, 0:29:36.000 --> 0:29:39.560 and otherwise you just did what you did and they 0:29:39.600 --> 0:29:44.680 didn't want to know about the everyday quotidian decisions that guilded. 0:29:44.880 --> 0:29:46.880 So it was culture shock in that way, but I 0:29:46.920 --> 0:29:51.920 adapted to it. And Mo was a genius, smartest guy 0:29:51.920 --> 0:29:54.760 ever met in the music business, and I knew exactly 0:29:54.760 --> 0:29:57.160 what he was doing. How did Mo evidence his genius? 0:29:59.280 --> 0:30:02.680 This is a real story. We're sitting in that Monday 0:30:02.760 --> 0:30:11.640 Vice President's meeting and Tom Raffino, the late head of International, says, oh, 0:30:11.800 --> 0:30:15.680 Rod Stewart's touring Germany. Uh, and it's gonna be a 0:30:15.720 --> 0:30:19.240 huge tour. They're gonna do a huge TV advertising campaign, 0:30:19.920 --> 0:30:23.760 and they're going to release the Greatest Hits in Germany only, 0:30:24.520 --> 0:30:27.320 and Mo turns to David Altchill Business appears and says, 0:30:27.920 --> 0:30:31.520 it seems to me, when we renegotiated Rod's contract about 0:30:31.520 --> 0:30:33.760 seven years ago, there was a provision for the Greatest 0:30:33.800 --> 0:30:35.240 Hits and I just want to make sure that this 0:30:35.360 --> 0:30:39.480 German Greatest Hits doesn't kill our ability to put out 0:30:39.520 --> 0:30:43.040 a worldwide Greatest Hits later. And you're thinking, how does 0:30:43.080 --> 0:30:48.320 this guy keep all this stuff in his mind? Just exceptional? 0:30:49.040 --> 0:30:51.840 And uh, you know, he's trying to sign the Red 0:30:51.840 --> 0:30:54.160 Hot Chili Peppers that he's taking him to Laker games 0:30:54.160 --> 0:30:58.720 and they're sitting on the court, and uh, he's pursuing 0:30:58.760 --> 0:31:00.800 them heavily, and they decide to go with the money 0:31:00.800 --> 0:31:05.000 and signed with CBS Colombia. And instead of being pissed, 0:31:05.080 --> 0:31:09.239 Moe calls each of them individually and congratulates them and 0:31:09.280 --> 0:31:11.080 tells them he's sorry we couldn't make a deal, but 0:31:11.120 --> 0:31:13.120 he wishes them all the best and was wonderful to 0:31:13.120 --> 0:31:15.120 get to know them, and he hopes he sees them 0:31:15.120 --> 0:31:20.640 in the future. And so as CBS starts negotiating the 0:31:20.720 --> 0:31:25.440 contract the way I heard it, they start backing out 0:31:25.480 --> 0:31:27.680 of some of the commitments they made, and well, yeah, 0:31:27.760 --> 0:31:29.840 we said that, but really it's got to be you know, 0:31:29.960 --> 0:31:34.280 four fourth album kind of thing, and the Chili Peppers 0:31:34.320 --> 0:31:37.680 start to say, you know, these guys promised us to 0:31:37.680 --> 0:31:40.040 the world and now they're starting to go back on it. 0:31:40.680 --> 0:31:44.080 Moe was the greatest guy in the world. Even losing us. 0:31:44.120 --> 0:31:46.440 He called each of us individually, fuck that. We'll go 0:31:46.480 --> 0:31:50.560 to Word Brothers. Who is that. I don't think he 0:31:50.640 --> 0:31:54.040 was being strategic either. I think that's who he was is. 0:31:54.640 --> 0:31:58.840 But um, it ends up with the Chili Peppers coming 0:31:58.840 --> 0:32:03.000 to Warner Brothers and enormous success because Mo was a 0:32:03.000 --> 0:32:07.240 class act who could see the future and a very 0:32:07.240 --> 0:32:13.440 strategic guy. Okay, Lenny was originally a producer he and 0:32:13.520 --> 0:32:15.400 our Guy maybe a little bit before that, but made 0:32:15.400 --> 0:32:18.800 his bones. Was a song plugger before that, right, but 0:32:18.880 --> 0:32:21.680 he was working with Russ Russ, titleman, whatever, and then 0:32:21.720 --> 0:32:25.480 they promote him to president. Does that happen during your 0:32:25.520 --> 0:32:31.480 tenure or before before? Okay? So what was Lenny's everyday role? 0:32:32.560 --> 0:32:35.200 Lenny was the music guy. MO was the business guy. 0:32:35.320 --> 0:32:38.719 Lenny was the music guy. So artists would come in 0:32:38.760 --> 0:32:42.480 and talk to Lenny about their records he ran. He 0:32:42.600 --> 0:32:48.600 was the head of the A and R department. Um, 0:32:48.720 --> 0:32:53.560 he was a vibe is a vibe guy and also 0:32:53.920 --> 0:32:58.800 just unbelievably impressive at talking to artists, being able to 0:32:58.840 --> 0:33:01.400 say to an artist the album is great, but you 0:33:01.480 --> 0:33:04.000 need two more tracks and here's what they need to 0:33:04.040 --> 0:33:10.960 accomplish without pissing an artist off, which is a unique talent. Um. 0:33:11.040 --> 0:33:14.200 He would really get in the weeds with people making records. 0:33:15.200 --> 0:33:19.080 He's brilliant at that. Okay, So Deedles just say as 0:33:19.120 --> 0:33:21.440 we say in the business. There's a lot more product 0:33:21.520 --> 0:33:23.880 at Warner Brothers. So how did you manage dealing with 0:33:24.040 --> 0:33:29.600 such workload? I had a lot more people, and I 0:33:29.640 --> 0:33:33.520 worked really long hours. It was incredible workload at Warner Brothers. 0:33:33.560 --> 0:33:37.040 We released a ton of records. Um, a lot of 0:33:37.080 --> 0:33:41.520 people worked very long hours making sure that that happened. 0:33:42.160 --> 0:33:48.720 And you prioritize like anywhere else. So where long this 0:33:49.320 --> 0:33:51.920 timeline do you meet your wife and how do you 0:33:51.960 --> 0:33:57.040 meet her? I meet her at A and M Records. 0:33:57.640 --> 0:33:59.960 So I'm working for A and M. I've got at 0:34:00.160 --> 0:34:03.640 Boston and then New York. Uh, I have to go 0:34:03.680 --> 0:34:05.120 buy a suitcase. A call a friend of mine to 0:34:05.120 --> 0:34:07.400 see if he wants to go have lunch, and by 0:34:07.400 --> 0:34:11.319 a suitcase. We do. He mentions that his girlfriend, who 0:34:11.360 --> 0:34:14.479 I'm close friends with, as a friend, visiting from New York. 0:34:15.840 --> 0:34:18.120 We go over to their house. I meet Jody there 0:34:18.600 --> 0:34:20.880 and she has caught the bouquet at a wedding the 0:34:21.000 --> 0:34:24.400 night before. She'd come at her wedding and I really 0:34:24.440 --> 0:34:26.360 liked her, and she was in New York. So I 0:34:26.400 --> 0:34:28.000 flew to Boston that day, and for a couple of 0:34:28.080 --> 0:34:30.520 days I was kind of ruminating, Wow, I really liked her, 0:34:30.560 --> 0:34:33.560 Maybe she liked me. I'll call Steve. And I called 0:34:33.560 --> 0:34:36.120 Steve and he said, she really liked you. You You should 0:34:36.120 --> 0:34:38.359 call her. You're going to New York. So I call 0:34:38.400 --> 0:34:41.400 her to ask her out. Um left a message on 0:34:41.440 --> 0:34:45.560 her phone machine, never heard back. Get to New York. 0:34:45.640 --> 0:34:48.759 Called her. She says, yeah, she'll go out with me. 0:34:48.840 --> 0:34:51.719 We have dinner, hit it off, and that starts at all. 0:34:51.800 --> 0:34:55.360 And after the fact I find out that she had 0:34:55.400 --> 0:34:57.759 actually called me at the hotel in Boston, left a 0:34:57.760 --> 0:35:00.480 message she couldn't go out. She couldn't go out with me, 0:35:00.880 --> 0:35:03.720 but felt since I was being so persistent, she would, 0:35:04.280 --> 0:35:06.280 when in fact, I had never got the message. Somebody 0:35:06.320 --> 0:35:09.759 forgot to slide the slip under the door, as I 0:35:09.880 --> 0:35:11.879 used to do back then, and I would have never 0:35:12.520 --> 0:35:16.440 pursued her had she said no. So this whole family 0:35:16.480 --> 0:35:19.120 of mine and these two grown kids exists because some 0:35:19.239 --> 0:35:23.120 bellman at the Copley Plaza didn't slide a little note 0:35:23.160 --> 0:35:25.759 under my door. Do you know why she said no? 0:35:25.920 --> 0:35:29.360 The first time? She was breaking up with her boyfriend 0:35:29.640 --> 0:35:33.879 and felt weird about it now. But she comes from 0:35:33.880 --> 0:35:36.480 a lot of history in the music business. What was 0:35:36.520 --> 0:35:39.640 she doing then? And your father in law did he 0:35:39.680 --> 0:35:44.480 impact you at all? Yes? So Jody's father was Larry Utall, 0:35:44.600 --> 0:35:49.359 who owned Amy Mala and Bell Records, which were the precursors, 0:35:49.400 --> 0:35:53.759 as she pointed out of Ariston and Uh. I had 0:35:53.800 --> 0:35:56.000 never heard of him when I met her, but we 0:35:56.160 --> 0:35:59.359 soon got into conversation about that. She had worked for 0:35:59.400 --> 0:36:03.879 her father next label, Private Stock, and in her one 0:36:04.040 --> 0:36:07.560 in and R the thing that she ever did, found 0:36:07.640 --> 0:36:09.880 Blondie and brought it to her father and said we 0:36:09.880 --> 0:36:14.800 should sign these guys, which he did, and so uh, 0:36:15.120 --> 0:36:17.480 pretty soon in this conversation we realized I told her 0:36:17.520 --> 0:36:18.560 I was going to New York and one of the 0:36:18.600 --> 0:36:23.440 reasons was to meet How Wilder, a late grade record producer, 0:36:23.920 --> 0:36:25.879 and she said, I know how And so our first 0:36:25.880 --> 0:36:29.600 conversation was about this guy we knew mutually, and she 0:36:29.680 --> 0:36:31.839 had grown up in the music business and so could 0:36:31.840 --> 0:36:36.960 relate to that. And ironically, Um, my youngest daughter is 0:36:37.000 --> 0:36:41.319 engaged to a music business manager, which means that my 0:36:41.400 --> 0:36:44.600 daughter will have married somebody in the music business. My 0:36:45.280 --> 0:36:48.560 her mother, Jodie married me, a guy in the music business, 0:36:48.600 --> 0:36:52.799 and her grandmother married her father, Jody's father, a guy 0:36:52.800 --> 0:36:55.800 in the music business. And Jody's grandmother was a singer 0:36:55.800 --> 0:36:57.799 in the Zigfield Follies. So we're going to have four 0:36:57.840 --> 0:37:03.640 generations now, Okay, so Warner Brothers, you know, is going along. 0:37:03.800 --> 0:37:08.280 Let's just stop for one thing. I know most take 0:37:08.400 --> 0:37:11.480 on Prince. What was the take on Prince with him 0:37:11.520 --> 0:37:14.920 wanting to put out more product, the label saying no, 0:37:15.440 --> 0:37:18.200 him say painting slave on his face? What was it 0:37:18.280 --> 0:37:22.120 like inside the building? Well, I was in the middle 0:37:22.160 --> 0:37:27.640 of all that. Prince was the only genius, true genius 0:37:27.640 --> 0:37:31.880 I ever worked. Um and I had a have a 0:37:31.920 --> 0:37:34.239 funny story about our first meeting, but it's like five 0:37:34.239 --> 0:37:40.120 minutes long. Well that's that good telling. Okay. So, uh, 0:37:40.440 --> 0:37:43.239 Prince has had a couple of stiff records, and Moe 0:37:43.400 --> 0:37:45.239 and Lenny and Michael Auston, who's the head of A 0:37:45.320 --> 0:37:48.239 and R, meet with him and say, look, you've got 0:37:48.239 --> 0:37:51.759 to have some in our input. Your next record is 0:37:52.360 --> 0:37:55.200 not life or death, but very very important, and that 0:37:55.280 --> 0:37:59.440 becomes Diamonds and Pearls. And they're working very closely with him, 0:37:59.560 --> 0:38:02.520 and Mo and Lenny and Michael are keeping us up 0:38:02.520 --> 0:38:06.760 to data on all this, and uh, they're very convinced 0:38:06.760 --> 0:38:09.880 that they've got a Prince record with multiple hits. And 0:38:09.920 --> 0:38:14.200 I'm at the label maybe six months and they would 0:38:14.239 --> 0:38:18.240 circulate the artwork that somebody had submitted if we weren't 0:38:18.239 --> 0:38:21.320 doing it in the house for the album cover. And imagine, 0:38:21.320 --> 0:38:25.000 if you will. I opened this envelope and I've got 0:38:25.000 --> 0:38:27.200 the new Prince out and cover, and it's a type 0:38:27.200 --> 0:38:30.719 photo of his face from kind of his forehead down 0:38:30.760 --> 0:38:34.240 to his chin, and he's making kind of the peace 0:38:34.280 --> 0:38:37.000 sign with his fingers reversed, with his tongue sticking out 0:38:37.000 --> 0:38:42.000 of the middle. It's just a ridiculous photo. And so 0:38:42.040 --> 0:38:44.879 I go to Lenny's office and I said, I think 0:38:44.920 --> 0:38:46.799 this is you know, you guys have spent so much 0:38:46.800 --> 0:38:49.920 time on this record. This photograph that he wants on 0:38:49.960 --> 0:38:52.680 the album cover is laughable, It's ridiculous. And he said, 0:38:52.719 --> 0:38:57.240 go have a meeting with Prince. Okay. So Benny Medina 0:38:57.440 --> 0:39:00.080 is the head of black An R and the in 0:39:00.200 --> 0:39:02.759 his contact. So Benny sets up a meeting a couple 0:39:02.760 --> 0:39:08.400 of days later and Prince I come in and Benny 0:39:08.480 --> 0:39:11.160 has an office that looks like a cave with no windows, 0:39:11.800 --> 0:39:14.479 and the setup is he Benny sitting at his desk, 0:39:14.520 --> 0:39:17.719 and across from his desk perpendicular to it are two 0:39:17.719 --> 0:39:22.200 couches apart from each other, and Princes sitting on one 0:39:22.360 --> 0:39:24.720 and I'm sitting on the other one. And Prince looks 0:39:24.760 --> 0:39:27.120 as if he has come off stage or is about 0:39:27.120 --> 0:39:30.799 to bound on stage. He's wearing full hair, makeup, full 0:39:30.840 --> 0:39:33.839 stage clothes, which he always did I later found out. 0:39:34.800 --> 0:39:39.200 And Benny starts saying, um, well, Jeff's our new head 0:39:39.239 --> 0:39:43.040 of creative services, and he thinks your album cover maybe 0:39:43.080 --> 0:39:45.640 could be better, and then there's bam, bam bam on 0:39:45.680 --> 0:39:50.200 the door, and into the door walks Benny's lawyer, who's 0:39:50.280 --> 0:39:54.160 renegotiating Benny's contract at Warner brothers and says, I need 0:39:54.160 --> 0:39:56.160 to talk to you right away, and Benny proceeds to 0:39:56.239 --> 0:39:59.240 leave for the entirety of the meeting. So I'm sitting 0:39:59.480 --> 0:40:03.319 across from Prince Uh, who's a guy I have great 0:40:03.360 --> 0:40:06.680 admiration for, but by all accounts a difficult guy to 0:40:06.719 --> 0:40:11.160 deal with. And Uh, Benny has just told him I 0:40:11.160 --> 0:40:14.640 don't like his album cover, and he's this is a 0:40:14.640 --> 0:40:18.720 guy who knows how to use silence and intimidate people, 0:40:19.040 --> 0:40:21.799 and he's developed this to a fine art. So he 0:40:21.840 --> 0:40:24.160 looks at me and says, so, what do you think 0:40:24.160 --> 0:40:26.120 I should do? Do you think I should wear overalls 0:40:26.160 --> 0:40:28.520 like R E. M Or a band of the label 0:40:28.520 --> 0:40:32.560 who clearly did not wear overalls. But well, no, I 0:40:32.600 --> 0:40:37.040 was thinking, and you know it's just devolving, is do 0:40:37.080 --> 0:40:39.279 you think you wear good clothes? Maybe I should get 0:40:39.280 --> 0:40:42.000 you clothes like your send me your sizes. And he's 0:40:42.000 --> 0:40:47.560 wearing uh, fucia they look like ski pants, their skin 0:40:47.640 --> 0:40:50.480 tight pants with a loop around the bottom under his 0:40:50.520 --> 0:40:57.160 boots and a see through chartruss pinstriped shirt and uh, 0:40:58.480 --> 0:41:01.520 it's just kind of baiting me. And at some point 0:41:01.560 --> 0:41:05.759 he says, show me something you've done. I go okay. 0:41:06.080 --> 0:41:07.799 So I go up to my office and I pulled 0:41:07.800 --> 0:41:12.040 together all these CDs that I had art directed, and 0:41:12.080 --> 0:41:13.879 they were mostly from A and M because I hadn't 0:41:13.880 --> 0:41:17.080 been a worried Brothers that long. And he's bringing down 0:41:17.160 --> 0:41:20.560 maybe a foot high stack, and he's looking at them 0:41:20.600 --> 0:41:24.280 making dismissive comments. This is you know, I'm not saying 0:41:24.280 --> 0:41:26.680 this is ship, but that's essentially what he's saying. Why 0:41:26.680 --> 0:41:29.080 would I want to do this? Who would think this 0:41:29.160 --> 0:41:31.600 is a good idea? And he gets near to the 0:41:31.640 --> 0:41:35.799 bottom and he finds this holographic album of CD cover 0:41:35.880 --> 0:41:39.080 that I've done for Suzanne Vega for Days of Open Hand, 0:41:39.160 --> 0:41:42.520 that I actually she and I and Thomas and Len 0:41:42.520 --> 0:41:44.960 Pelt worked on it one great a Grammy for art direction. 0:41:45.719 --> 0:41:48.560 And after dismissing the first fifteen of these, he looks 0:41:48.600 --> 0:41:51.359 at this hologram and just kind of mesmerized and says, 0:41:52.600 --> 0:41:56.399 this is good. Why can't I get a hologram by 0:41:56.480 --> 0:41:59.640 some miracle I had met maybe a month before with 0:41:59.680 --> 0:42:02.960 a I working for a company. You you'd have these 0:42:02.960 --> 0:42:05.880 meetings who had a new technology to make holograms cheaply, 0:42:06.760 --> 0:42:08.920 And I said, well, maybe you can get a hologran 0:42:09.040 --> 0:42:10.839 what do you mean? And I explained to him and 0:42:10.840 --> 0:42:13.920 he said, all right, give me a hologram. And so 0:42:14.000 --> 0:42:18.480 that this hour and a half torture session ended up 0:42:18.520 --> 0:42:23.399 on a slightly positive note. So I called this guy 0:42:24.080 --> 0:42:26.640 from the hologram company and said, how would your company 0:42:26.800 --> 0:42:29.640 like to launch their new technology on the new album 0:42:29.680 --> 0:42:33.560 from Prince? What? And I explained to him and said, 0:42:33.560 --> 0:42:36.160 but you're gonna have to really make this economically viable 0:42:36.200 --> 0:42:40.520 for us. They did, and we ended up putting out 0:42:40.520 --> 0:42:44.080 diamonds and pearls with this holographic cover. And Prince actually 0:42:44.120 --> 0:42:46.960 sent me a thank you note, which is something that 0:42:47.040 --> 0:42:52.360 his assistant said she had never seen him do. That says, 0:42:53.239 --> 0:42:57.200 the more I look with an eye eyeball, the more 0:42:57.560 --> 0:43:02.080 I like with another eyeball, thank you for the cool cover, Prince. 0:43:02.520 --> 0:43:04.080 And it's on this little piece of station and it 0:43:04.120 --> 0:43:09.759 says from the desk of Prince. So after that, I 0:43:09.920 --> 0:43:11.759 was one of the few people at Warner Brothers that 0:43:11.840 --> 0:43:16.360 Prince talked to. And uh Mo and Lenny leave eventually, 0:43:17.960 --> 0:43:22.279 and so and Benny leaves and Michael Austen leaves, and 0:43:22.360 --> 0:43:24.920 so maybe it's me and one or two other people 0:43:24.960 --> 0:43:28.959 that Prince talks to and uh, well, actually I'm getting 0:43:28.960 --> 0:43:33.360 ahead of myself. So um, one day, Moe walks in 0:43:34.360 --> 0:43:37.319 and says, I had a meeting with Prince. He wants 0:43:37.320 --> 0:43:40.319 to be a vice president of this company. So I said, sure, 0:43:40.400 --> 0:43:45.440 you're a vice president. So Prince becomes a vice president 0:43:45.480 --> 0:43:49.000 of Warner Brothers and shows up to a couple of 0:43:49.000 --> 0:43:51.640 the career meetings, and one of them I remember because 0:43:51.640 --> 0:43:53.880 it was the day Magic Johnson announced he had it 0:43:54.239 --> 0:43:58.840 aids it was HIV positive, and uh, we had this 0:43:58.920 --> 0:44:02.359 giant projection TV and all of us were mesmerized. Those 0:44:02.360 --> 0:44:05.600 guys were big basketball fans and we're watching the live 0:44:05.680 --> 0:44:09.000 coverage of this with Prince, who for a very short 0:44:09.040 --> 0:44:12.839 period of time pretended to be an a our guy. 0:44:12.880 --> 0:44:15.560 But he was giving us so much product, and we 0:44:15.640 --> 0:44:21.919 had his label, Paisley Park. Why not? And uh then 0:44:21.960 --> 0:44:26.759 at another point Prince decides, you know, I want to 0:44:26.760 --> 0:44:30.000 get my master's back and goes to MO and they say, no, 0:44:30.160 --> 0:44:32.840 you can't get your master's back. We pay you millions 0:44:32.840 --> 0:44:35.879 of dollars every time you give us a record. If 0:44:35.920 --> 0:44:39.479 you were when you were negotiating nine months ago, maybe 0:44:39.480 --> 0:44:42.840 we could have discussed that, but no, so Prince decides 0:44:42.920 --> 0:44:46.319 he's going to change his name and then claim that 0:44:46.360 --> 0:44:51.200 Warner Brothers has signed Prince, but the symbol is a 0:44:51.239 --> 0:44:54.640 different artist who consigned to a different record label. And 0:44:54.680 --> 0:44:58.600 we're having fun with this because the name Prince has gone, 0:44:58.600 --> 0:45:00.960 so we do. He's a little come puter floppy disks 0:45:01.040 --> 0:45:03.319 with the symbol and send it out to the press 0:45:03.400 --> 0:45:06.200 so they can uh write articles about him and not 0:45:06.320 --> 0:45:11.359 use prints. And when when I needed to call him, 0:45:11.400 --> 0:45:13.799 I'd call his office and say, Hi, it's Jeff Gold 0:45:13.800 --> 0:45:17.480 from Warner Brothers. His Prince there, knowing that his uh 0:45:18.080 --> 0:45:20.560 people were from couldn't use the name. Or somebody would 0:45:20.600 --> 0:45:22.960 call from Paisley Park and say, Hi, my boss is 0:45:23.000 --> 0:45:25.440 on the phone. It's who who is that? You know? 0:45:25.520 --> 0:45:32.520 My boss? So obviously that doesn't fly. But eventually Moe 0:45:32.600 --> 0:45:35.040 and Lenny leave, and Michael leaves and Benny leaves, and 0:45:35.080 --> 0:45:38.239 I'm one of the few guys he talks to, and Uh, 0:45:39.200 --> 0:45:43.680 I remember having a conversation with him where he's complaining. 0:45:43.719 --> 0:45:45.680 It was just the two of us and he was 0:45:45.719 --> 0:45:49.160 complaining and I'm gonna paraphrase this, but it was, you know, 0:45:49.239 --> 0:45:54.360 everybody looks at these albums I put out as uh, 0:45:54.440 --> 0:45:56.799 you know, kind of being delivered from the mountain, these 0:45:56.840 --> 0:45:59.319 great statements. But I'm just recording all the time. And 0:45:59.320 --> 0:46:03.040 when I get enough songs that I think make an album, 0:46:03.480 --> 0:46:06.239 I put out an album. And I don't understand why 0:46:06.280 --> 0:46:09.880 I can't just do that whenever I want. And I said, well, 0:46:11.000 --> 0:46:15.520 when you renegotiated, you're getting to three million dollars whatever 0:46:15.560 --> 0:46:18.200 it is per album, and we've got to be able 0:46:18.200 --> 0:46:20.719 to recoup that money. And if you're giving us three 0:46:20.719 --> 0:46:23.920 albums a year and we're giving you nine million dollars, 0:46:23.960 --> 0:46:26.960 we can't possibly release the number of singles and market 0:46:27.000 --> 0:46:29.879 these things the way that we need to market them, 0:46:30.200 --> 0:46:34.560 uh to make our money back and be profitable. And 0:46:35.560 --> 0:46:37.319 he knew what I was saying. He was a very 0:46:37.440 --> 0:46:39.560 very smart guy, and I knew what he was saying. 0:46:39.880 --> 0:46:41.760 But it was kind of one of the few moments 0:46:41.760 --> 0:46:45.319 where he let down. His guarden was vulnerable. And I 0:46:45.360 --> 0:46:49.680 remember when he did the Gold Experience album. I think 0:46:50.120 --> 0:46:51.719 either that or the Come album. Maybe it was a 0:46:51.800 --> 0:46:56.080 Come album. We had a marketing meeting with Prince to 0:46:56.120 --> 0:46:59.360 discuss he was touring in the marketing of that album, 0:46:59.440 --> 0:47:00.960 and he sat to me because I was the only 0:47:01.000 --> 0:47:03.920 person in the meeting who had a relationship with and 0:47:04.000 --> 0:47:06.560 at some point, and this was the only time you 0:47:06.680 --> 0:47:11.319 really broke character. He whispered in my ear, make this big, 0:47:11.360 --> 0:47:16.560 I need the money. And you really never saw Prince 0:47:16.640 --> 0:47:20.239 break character. You know, he was literally every time I 0:47:20.320 --> 0:47:22.840 ever saw him, he could have gotten on stage and 0:47:22.880 --> 0:47:25.880 started performing. He was fully made up to the nines 0:47:26.680 --> 0:47:39.040 and uh dressed as exactly as if he was on stage. Well, 0:47:39.080 --> 0:47:41.239 in any event, you referenced, all of a sudden, there's 0:47:41.280 --> 0:47:44.080 all this turmoil in the music business. You know, Doug 0:47:44.120 --> 0:47:49.360 Morris gets power, he's kicked out. Bob Morgado's manipulating everything. 0:47:49.840 --> 0:47:53.480 What was it like inside the building, and what was 0:47:53.520 --> 0:47:58.080 it like when Mo and Lenny decided to go. It 0:47:58.200 --> 0:48:02.640 was terrible. So Steve Ross, who ran Warners and then 0:48:02.640 --> 0:48:07.719 time Warner had gotten ill and died. And uh the 0:48:08.040 --> 0:48:11.360 head of the Warner Music Group was this guy, Bob Morgado, 0:48:11.960 --> 0:48:14.400 who MO did not get along with. So MO had 0:48:14.440 --> 0:48:18.480 a special side deal that while the heads of Electra 0:48:18.600 --> 0:48:21.399 and Atlantic had to report to Bob Morgado, MO did 0:48:21.400 --> 0:48:27.320 not have to. So Steve Ross dies and morgatoh cease 0:48:27.400 --> 0:48:31.760 his opportunity and convinces Jerry Levin, who takes over Time Warner, 0:48:32.320 --> 0:48:35.040 that he really needs Mo Austen to report to him 0:48:35.080 --> 0:48:38.040 and the Bob Morgado knew nothing about the music business 0:48:38.360 --> 0:48:41.720 and would give interviews after after the Grammy's when Madonna 0:48:41.760 --> 0:48:44.520 wins a bunch of Grammys, saying, well, I authorized her signing, 0:48:45.280 --> 0:48:51.000 you know, I authorized her resigning. So uh, when Morgato 0:48:52.080 --> 0:48:57.400 uh convinces Jerry Levin that it's in his best interest 0:48:57.440 --> 0:48:59.799 to have more report to him, most has forget it. 0:48:59.840 --> 0:49:03.239 I'm not resigning, I'm dune, and nobody can believe this, 0:49:03.400 --> 0:49:06.920 But Jerry Levin backs up Morgado and Mo leaves and 0:49:07.000 --> 0:49:09.560 for a while, uh, Lenny is going to take over, 0:49:09.640 --> 0:49:11.520 and we think, well, this is a tragedy, but at 0:49:11.600 --> 0:49:16.880 least Lenny is going to take over. Lenny eventually decides, 0:49:16.960 --> 0:49:19.200 now I'm gonna leave and start a record label with 0:49:19.320 --> 0:49:26.080 Mo DreamWorks. So then uh, Danny Goldberg comes in, who 0:49:26.160 --> 0:49:29.400 I knew from me and m And Danny actually promotes 0:49:29.480 --> 0:49:33.560 me and Howie Klein and Stephen Baker and Rich Fitzgerald 0:49:33.880 --> 0:49:36.000 in an effort to keep us and gives us big 0:49:36.120 --> 0:49:40.239 raises so he can project stability. But he's commuting from 0:49:40.280 --> 0:49:43.560 New York where he lives every week at to l 0:49:43.600 --> 0:49:49.600 A and Doug Morris Uh in a power play destabilizes 0:49:49.960 --> 0:49:53.160 UH Morgado and Morgado gets fired and Dug takes over 0:49:53.960 --> 0:49:58.239 and and this continues. So the music group has been 0:49:58.360 --> 0:50:00.520 run by Morgado for a longer of time, but MO 0:50:00.640 --> 0:50:04.400 has been independent. And then you've got Morgado seizing power, 0:50:04.800 --> 0:50:07.520 and then Doug seizing power from Regato, and then Michael 0:50:07.560 --> 0:50:13.840 Fuchs seizing power from UH Doug, and then UH Bob 0:50:14.400 --> 0:50:17.680 Daily and Terry Simmel from the picture company. This is 0:50:17.719 --> 0:50:20.480 in about two years. There are four different people running 0:50:20.520 --> 0:50:25.160 the music and the record company goes from Mo to 0:50:25.360 --> 0:50:28.560 Lenny to Danny to rust Thy Red, who then has 0:50:28.640 --> 0:50:31.719 heart failures so Phil Corduro was brought in. So you've 0:50:31.760 --> 0:50:34.359 got these companies at Moran this for twenty five years, 0:50:34.760 --> 0:50:37.520 and you've got five different people in the next two 0:50:37.600 --> 0:50:40.640 years running it. So it was very, very unstable. There 0:50:40.719 --> 0:50:42.879 was lots of speculation about what was going to happen, 0:50:42.960 --> 0:50:46.040 who was going to take over, what kind of changes 0:50:46.080 --> 0:50:49.480 there were, and they were very distracting from what we 0:50:49.560 --> 0:50:51.720 were trying to do, which is break acts and sell records. 0:50:52.719 --> 0:50:55.080 So how did you how did it ultimately end with 0:50:55.280 --> 0:50:58.640 you and Warner Brothers. Everybody's dream come true at this 0:50:58.760 --> 0:51:01.040 time was to get fired with time on your contract. 0:51:01.400 --> 0:51:03.359 This had happened to two of my closest friends, Hale 0:51:03.400 --> 0:51:07.239 Millgroom and Jeff Arrell, who got essentially paid to go 0:51:07.400 --> 0:51:13.040 home and do nothing. And the job was getting more 0:51:13.080 --> 0:51:15.920 and more stressful as I was getting I got eventually 0:51:16.040 --> 0:51:19.560 made the executive vice president and general manager of Warner 0:51:19.800 --> 0:51:21.800 so I was the number two guys. Steve Baker was 0:51:21.880 --> 0:51:27.279 the president. That happened with Danny and so my time 0:51:27.360 --> 0:51:35.200 went from being administrative creative reversed. So I was doing 0:51:35.280 --> 0:51:40.160 things like signing independent promotion bills and arguing with the 0:51:40.280 --> 0:51:45.120 CFO about why a secretary couldn't get a raise. And 0:51:45.200 --> 0:51:48.359 it was really not fun, but I was being paid well. 0:51:49.400 --> 0:51:53.799 So when the fifth person from the person who hired 0:51:53.880 --> 0:51:59.479 me took over, uh I UH was confronted by Phil 0:51:59.520 --> 0:52:02.959 Cornerrea who said, look, Russ, and I feel like maybe 0:52:03.000 --> 0:52:04.920 you'd be better in another job. What would you like 0:52:05.000 --> 0:52:07.200 to do instead? And this was you know, I had 0:52:07.239 --> 0:52:09.320 a contract that said I was the executive as president 0:52:09.400 --> 0:52:12.400 general manager or they were in breach and had to 0:52:12.440 --> 0:52:14.560 fire me. I had two years left on my deal, 0:52:14.600 --> 0:52:17.399 and so I said, fire me. I don't want another job, 0:52:17.600 --> 0:52:19.879 and that's what happened. I had become a Buddhist about 0:52:19.880 --> 0:52:23.160 three years before that. I realized every year I was 0:52:23.239 --> 0:52:26.800 working was probably two years off of my lifespan. But 0:52:27.040 --> 0:52:29.000 the money was good and I had a young family. 0:52:29.160 --> 0:52:36.600 And my contract auspiciously expired December thirty one. I thought, 0:52:36.920 --> 0:52:39.000 when that is over, I'm out of here and I'm 0:52:39.000 --> 0:52:40.879 gonna find something less stressful to do and mean while 0:52:40.880 --> 0:52:43.760 I'm gonna bank every penny I can. So what happened 0:52:43.760 --> 0:52:46.160 two years before me? I had these role models in 0:52:46.280 --> 0:52:50.120 Hale and Jeff, and I couldn't have been happier. Okay, 0:52:50.160 --> 0:52:54.719 So how did this ultimately segue into the memorabilia business? So, 0:52:55.800 --> 0:52:59.799 as I described, I started off collecting rare records and memorabilia, 0:53:00.560 --> 0:53:04.800 and I continued to do that during the record business years. 0:53:05.440 --> 0:53:07.279 And it was great because I could fly all over. 0:53:07.560 --> 0:53:11.279 Everything I bought was tax deductible. I was deep into 0:53:11.320 --> 0:53:13.600 the Internet, and so my deal with Warner Brothers said, 0:53:13.680 --> 0:53:15.920 as long as I didn't have another job, they had 0:53:16.000 --> 0:53:21.279 to pay me. Uh what my contract specified. So I thought, Okay, 0:53:21.280 --> 0:53:22.839 I'm not going to get another job, but I can 0:53:22.880 --> 0:53:26.920 be Entrepreneurroll what am I into? Rare records and memorabilia, 0:53:27.400 --> 0:53:33.319 the Internet, stereo equipment, and computers. All four things very 0:53:33.440 --> 0:53:39.399 simple too. Uh, cluster those together and start right back 0:53:39.440 --> 0:53:41.440 up where I had left when I was in the 0:53:42.680 --> 0:53:44.520 when I went to A and M and starting selling 0:53:44.640 --> 0:53:47.560 rare records and memorabilia, but at a much higher level 0:53:47.600 --> 0:53:51.080 because I was much better capitalized. And uh so I 0:53:51.120 --> 0:53:55.840 started a website. I started selling an eBay very early on, 0:53:56.880 --> 0:54:01.400 and uh, this is gonna be my retirement job. And 0:54:01.520 --> 0:54:05.880 it's become my kind of out of control retirement job 0:54:05.920 --> 0:54:08.480 that I'm constantly trying to not work more than I 0:54:08.560 --> 0:54:12.040 want to work, but I love. Okay. One has to 0:54:12.120 --> 0:54:18.680 ask how lucrative is this relative to working for the labels. Well, 0:54:18.719 --> 0:54:20.440 I don't make as much money as I did working 0:54:20.440 --> 0:54:24.360 with the record companies, but it's very lucrative. Okay. So 0:54:25.480 --> 0:54:29.080 when you first go online et cetera with eBay, what 0:54:29.200 --> 0:54:35.319 kind of stuff are you're selling? Rare records? Um, there's 0:54:35.360 --> 0:54:39.680 a big market for first pressing rare records, and the 0:54:39.760 --> 0:54:45.960 best analogy is um rare books. So you know somebody 0:54:46.040 --> 0:54:49.279 might pay an extreme amount of money for well, I'll 0:54:49.280 --> 0:54:54.880 give you an example. Um, The Beatles first album anywhere 0:54:54.880 --> 0:54:57.759 in the world is Please Please Me. In England for 0:54:57.920 --> 0:55:00.600 reasons that had nothing to do with the Beatles. It 0:55:00.760 --> 0:55:04.759 came out on Parlophone in a on a label that 0:55:04.960 --> 0:55:09.239 was black background with gold printing, and Parlophone decided to 0:55:09.440 --> 0:55:15.360 change their label design about two months in. They also, 0:55:15.520 --> 0:55:22.000 the first pressing of Please Please Me had erroneous copyright 0:55:23.719 --> 0:55:27.759 credits for a few songs crediting them to Dick James 0:55:27.960 --> 0:55:31.280 Music when they were actually Northern songs of the Beatles Company. 0:55:32.320 --> 0:55:36.879 So somebody will pay a huge premium for a gold 0:55:37.000 --> 0:55:41.160 Parlophone copy of Please Please Me that came out two 0:55:41.239 --> 0:55:44.480 months before a black and yellow copy, and they'll pay 0:55:44.560 --> 0:55:48.920 them even bigger premium if it has the first mistaken credits, 0:55:50.040 --> 0:55:53.080 And then they'll pay an exponential premium if it's a 0:55:53.120 --> 0:55:59.839 stereo copy, because nobody was buying stereo records and can 0:56:00.000 --> 0:56:04.400 addition is so important that let's say I had an 0:56:04.680 --> 0:56:10.160 absolutely perfect, brand new stereo copy of that record, I 0:56:10.239 --> 0:56:15.720 could probably get for it if I had a copy 0:56:15.800 --> 0:56:19.640 that was in very good condition that somebody had taken 0:56:19.680 --> 0:56:22.239 care of but had some scuffs and marks still played. Well, 0:56:22.320 --> 0:56:29.000 that might be ad. So I started selling really rare 0:56:29.200 --> 0:56:34.239 records in the best condition possible. That's what I started with. 0:56:34.800 --> 0:56:41.160 And then memorabilia as well, so concert posters, documents, signed things. 0:56:41.480 --> 0:56:45.400 I remember in the seventies passing up a version of 0:56:45.520 --> 0:56:49.359 Lumpy Gravy and then spending two years trying to find 0:56:49.440 --> 0:56:52.000 it again and having to buy an import because it 0:56:52.120 --> 0:56:57.000 was cut out from MGM whatever. Um uh So in 0:56:57.120 --> 0:57:00.800 any event, everyone knows in the memory of Bealia world 0:57:00.880 --> 0:57:04.160 in general that it used to be about like rock 0:57:04.320 --> 0:57:07.279 Guitaristromingham would go from pawn shop to pawn shop. This 0:57:07.520 --> 0:57:13.200 all went to the Internet, so everything became available. It 0:57:13.400 --> 0:57:16.160 was not so much about the hunt but about buying. 0:57:16.360 --> 0:57:19.080 Tell us the evolution once we're on the Internet of 0:57:19.600 --> 0:57:23.400 what is available and how you find it, etcetera. So 0:57:24.240 --> 0:57:29.160 I'll give you an example. M there's a when the 0:57:29.240 --> 0:57:32.480 Freewheel and Bob Dylan album, his second album, is released, 0:57:32.560 --> 0:57:37.920 in a story breaks that a few copies have been 0:57:37.960 --> 0:57:41.800 discovered that have four different songs. They aren't listed on 0:57:41.840 --> 0:57:47.040 the album cover. But uh, what had happened? Was he 0:57:47.200 --> 0:57:50.320 recorded the album the beginning with John Hammond and then 0:57:50.360 --> 0:57:55.120 with Tom Wilson, and then he written four more songs, 0:57:55.160 --> 0:57:57.640 including Blowing in the Wind, and they had the record 0:57:57.680 --> 0:58:01.160 all master designed, ready to go. But Tom Wilson thought 0:58:01.200 --> 0:58:04.120 these songs were so strong that he went in gutman. 0:58:04.120 --> 0:58:06.560 The studio recorded these four songs and they swapped them 0:58:06.560 --> 0:58:11.520 out at one pressing plan in California. Somebody didn't get 0:58:11.560 --> 0:58:15.120 the message and a few copies got pressed with the 0:58:15.160 --> 0:58:21.480 old stampers which had the four original songs. But I 0:58:21.520 --> 0:58:23.200 won't go to in the weeds with this, but the 0:58:23.320 --> 0:58:30.040 mono copies became instantly very very very very collectible, and 0:58:30.240 --> 0:58:33.280 the stereo copies nobody knew they existed to have surfaced 0:58:33.520 --> 0:58:40.480 since nineteen so um pre eBay, that was the kind 0:58:40.520 --> 0:58:43.360 of thing you heard about, but never ever saw a 0:58:43.480 --> 0:58:46.400 freewheel and Bob dealing with those four tracks. And I 0:58:46.440 --> 0:58:49.640 remember somebody knowing somebody in Santa Monica who had one, 0:58:50.440 --> 0:58:53.760 and I inveigled myself to go over to this guy's 0:58:53.800 --> 0:58:56.040 house and actually see it. And the only way you 0:58:56.080 --> 0:58:57.800 can tell is either playing it or looking at the 0:58:57.840 --> 0:59:02.560 stamper noters. That record was just impossibly rare, and I 0:59:02.640 --> 0:59:04.959 was looking for it for maybe seven or eight years, 0:59:05.240 --> 0:59:08.439 and I had a mail order catalog that I would 0:59:08.440 --> 0:59:12.320 send out to four collectors three or four times a year, 0:59:13.000 --> 0:59:15.520 and everybody would circulate there one list of times. I 0:59:15.600 --> 0:59:17.400 will pay a lot of money for this record if 0:59:17.400 --> 0:59:21.120 anybody has with And eventually, after I don't know, seven 0:59:21.200 --> 0:59:24.320 or eight years, somebody contacted me and I traded him 0:59:25.320 --> 0:59:29.000 maybe a thousand dollars worth of stuff for it. Just 0:59:29.160 --> 0:59:32.640 an impossible to find record. Now if you're looking at eBay, 0:59:32.800 --> 0:59:37.360 one a year will show up, so it's not it's 0:59:37.400 --> 0:59:41.800 still very rare, but it's not impossible. So records that 0:59:42.920 --> 0:59:48.439 were previously virtually unfindable find their way, as you said 0:59:48.480 --> 0:59:52.600 with the guitars, to eBay or to auction, and if 0:59:52.680 --> 0:59:54.520 you're willing to spend the money, you can find them. 0:59:55.120 --> 1:00:00.320 Records that were sort of rare are now generally pretty 1:00:00.360 --> 1:00:06.440 common because of Emay and discous people have a easily 1:00:06.920 --> 1:00:09.640 it's easy to find out what something's worth, to research it, 1:00:10.320 --> 1:00:13.160 and to put it up for sale on a forum 1:00:13.200 --> 1:00:17.160 where people are looking for Okay, you talk about free wheeling. 1:00:17.640 --> 1:00:20.480 Bob Dylan's girlfriend at the time, Susie Rutolo is on 1:00:20.560 --> 1:00:23.600 the cover of that. And if I got this straight, 1:00:24.080 --> 1:00:28.840 they ultimately sold her record collection and people bought the 1:00:28.920 --> 1:00:32.360 record she owned, and you know we're looking at one 1:00:32.400 --> 1:00:34.360 of them, right, So what is what is what is 1:00:34.440 --> 1:00:39.440 that worth? So Susie rode Along, who was his girlfriend 1:00:39.520 --> 1:00:43.240 in the early sixties, saved a lot of stuff and 1:00:43.600 --> 1:00:51.040 in probably the early two thousand's, decided she was going 1:00:51.120 --> 1:00:56.000 to sell some stuff and being a big consumer of 1:00:56.080 --> 1:00:59.920 Dylan stuff, and uh, I've worked for I appraised as 1:01:00.080 --> 1:01:02.479 archive with a colleague, I'm very much in the middle 1:01:02.520 --> 1:01:05.120 of that. So I got contacted and the two things 1:01:05.200 --> 1:01:11.040 I really wanted were two blues albums from sixty one 1:01:12.040 --> 1:01:14.880 that he had bought in London. There were English copies 1:01:15.760 --> 1:01:18.360 and on the back he had written above the liner 1:01:18.480 --> 1:01:23.160 notes things like written for and about Bob Dylan and 1:01:24.280 --> 1:01:28.120 read and absorbed by Bob Dylan. And I thought, I've 1:01:28.240 --> 1:01:30.920 got to have these, and I won them. I think 1:01:30.920 --> 1:01:33.040 I paid five or six thousand dollars apiece for them, 1:01:33.080 --> 1:01:36.800 which I've considered a huge bargain. And they're really interesting 1:01:36.880 --> 1:01:43.800 because this is Bob Dylan absorbing his influences, acknowledging that 1:01:44.720 --> 1:01:47.560 writing on the back of the album covers, and at 1:01:47.600 --> 1:01:50.200 the point where he's bought these records, He's been Bob 1:01:50.280 --> 1:01:52.439 Dylan for maybe a year a year and a half, 1:01:52.920 --> 1:01:55.320 so it's almost like he's trying on his new name. 1:01:56.040 --> 1:01:59.560 I've actually written an essay about this for a forthcoming book. Um, 1:02:02.400 --> 1:02:05.600 So I'm really One of my sub collections personal ones, 1:02:05.800 --> 1:02:10.720 is collecting records owned by artists who I who inspired me. 1:02:11.120 --> 1:02:13.680 So I've got about twenty five of Jimmie Hendricks's records, 1:02:13.720 --> 1:02:17.080 including his Dylan's greatest hits with some psychedelic doodling on 1:02:17.160 --> 1:02:19.560 the back. I've got some of Bill Wyman's records. I've 1:02:19.600 --> 1:02:23.080 got John Lennon's copy of A Hard Day's Night. I've 1:02:23.160 --> 1:02:28.440 got some Sterling Morrison's all that underground records. Um. You 1:02:28.480 --> 1:02:31.320 know it's pretty nerdy, but I love it. Okay, So 1:02:31.840 --> 1:02:35.680 Susie's album, let's assume she had an album from two 1:02:36.320 --> 1:02:39.040 with no doodle on it. It's just the same as 1:02:39.080 --> 1:02:44.360 if you boughted a retail store. Is that worth anything? Absolutely? Um, 1:02:44.800 --> 1:02:49.000 especially if it's a Dylan album. Um. And I was 1:02:49.080 --> 1:02:52.800 able to through the auction house contact her and say, 1:02:52.880 --> 1:02:54.480 you know, why was he writing on these records, and 1:02:54.560 --> 1:02:56.680 she said something to the extent of it would be 1:02:56.720 --> 1:02:58.800 as if someone was doodling on the side of a 1:02:58.840 --> 1:03:03.400 paperback book writing little notes to themselves. But yeah, people, 1:03:03.640 --> 1:03:06.840 there are people like me who are interested in records 1:03:06.920 --> 1:03:12.360 owned by musicians they like. Now, she's one generation away 1:03:12.440 --> 1:03:14.600 from that. But if it was something she had at 1:03:14.600 --> 1:03:17.600 the time and that Bob Dylan I would have listened 1:03:17.640 --> 1:03:22.240 to her played, that makes it intriguing. Okay, so at 1:03:22.320 --> 1:03:25.400 least to me. Yeah, right, so we know any of 1:03:25.560 --> 1:03:28.640 us who have sold or been to record stores that 1:03:28.800 --> 1:03:33.560 albums that everybody has Fleetwood, Mac, Rumors, Saturday Night Fever 1:03:33.760 --> 1:03:39.240 essentially worthless. Okay, what do people own that is actually 1:03:39.320 --> 1:03:45.280 worth something? That's not strictly true. The vinyl revival has 1:03:45.360 --> 1:03:50.840 gotten so out of control that people will pay premium 1:03:50.880 --> 1:03:55.400 prices for records that sold millions of copies. So if 1:03:55.440 --> 1:03:58.320 you had a sealed copy of Rumors that was the 1:03:58.360 --> 1:04:01.800 first pressing, probably go for three or four dred dollars. 1:04:02.800 --> 1:04:05.440 If you had a stone Mint first pressing, it's probably 1:04:05.440 --> 1:04:08.560 a hundred dollar record, which is inconceivable to be because 1:04:08.640 --> 1:04:11.520 it's one of the best selling records of all time. Um, 1:04:12.240 --> 1:04:17.960 I'll tell you the most recent story. Imaginal Nirvana's never 1:04:18.120 --> 1:04:21.400 Mind came out at a time where very few people 1:04:21.480 --> 1:04:27.200 were buying final records, so i've every day I wake 1:04:27.280 --> 1:04:28.480 up in one of the first things I do is 1:04:28.520 --> 1:04:32.160 look at the top forties selling records that's sold on 1:04:32.280 --> 1:04:36.800 eBay the day before. Just for those unsophisticated, that's an 1:04:36.840 --> 1:04:40.840 easy chart to find. Where's that chart grip swet dot com, 1:04:41.040 --> 1:04:43.600 g R I P s W E A T dot com. 1:04:44.080 --> 1:04:45.920 So you can see what's sold the day before on 1:04:46.040 --> 1:04:52.200 eBay in descending order of price. And never Mind has 1:04:52.280 --> 1:04:55.320 just been going up and up and up the last 1:04:56.320 --> 1:04:59.840 two or three years. And one sold for two thou 1:05:00.080 --> 1:05:01.960 dollars a couple of years ago, or a couple of 1:05:02.000 --> 1:05:04.360 months ago, a vinyl copy sold for two thousand dollars. 1:05:05.280 --> 1:05:10.440 Yesterday a copy sold for thirty perfect condition. And you know, 1:05:10.560 --> 1:05:14.000 nobody's records are in perfect condition, and if if they're not, 1:05:14.080 --> 1:05:16.320 the suffer a lot less. So I wrote to a 1:05:16.400 --> 1:05:19.040 friend of mine, going, God, I just can't believe they're 1:05:19.080 --> 1:05:21.160 selling for this much. It's nuts, and he said, yeah, 1:05:21.240 --> 1:05:24.000 that record just keeps going up. So in the middle 1:05:24.040 --> 1:05:25.920 of the night last night, I woke up and went, 1:05:27.120 --> 1:05:30.160 you know, I might have a copy of that, And 1:05:30.200 --> 1:05:31.840 I wrote a note to myself, and I got up 1:05:31.920 --> 1:05:34.360 this morning and I went to my record collection, and 1:05:34.640 --> 1:05:38.760 sure enough, I have an absolutely perfect promo copy of 1:05:38.880 --> 1:05:42.800 never Mind. And that's not something I would keep for 1:05:43.960 --> 1:05:45.480 I'm happy to have a reissue of that. It's not 1:05:45.600 --> 1:05:49.960 a record that's, you know, generationally deep to me. So 1:05:50.320 --> 1:05:52.360 that's a perfect example of the kind of thing that 1:05:53.800 --> 1:05:56.000 a non record collector might have that's worth a lot 1:05:56.080 --> 1:06:09.280 of money. Okay, So you know you occasionally go to people. 1:06:09.520 --> 1:06:12.080 Let's talk Ken Barnes. Ken Barnes, very well known rock 1:06:12.200 --> 1:06:15.840 writer from the classic rock era. He's got a huge collection. 1:06:17.080 --> 1:06:21.280 A few questions here, Hey he decides to sell. Are 1:06:21.440 --> 1:06:25.000 most of these people selling because they need the money? 1:06:25.800 --> 1:06:28.640 And be how do you find out about it? And 1:06:28.840 --> 1:06:33.200 sees to what degree is this the source of your inventor. 1:06:33.920 --> 1:06:37.439 I'd rather not talk about Ken, um, let's talk about 1:06:37.440 --> 1:06:39.680 it in a theoretical way. But that's why I bought 1:06:39.760 --> 1:06:42.920 his collection. I bought much of his collection. So there 1:06:43.000 --> 1:06:46.600 aren't that many people who will come over to your 1:06:46.640 --> 1:06:50.360 house and pay you tens of thousands of dollars or something, 1:06:52.200 --> 1:06:54.480 or a collection. A lot of the people who do 1:06:54.600 --> 1:06:57.240 what I do have stores, and their business model is 1:06:57.280 --> 1:06:59.840 by it as cheap as I can and then flip 1:06:59.880 --> 1:07:01.960 it as fast as I can because they've got overhead. 1:07:03.040 --> 1:07:06.320 My business models different. I want to buy the best 1:07:06.440 --> 1:07:08.880 things and only the best things, and I'll pay more 1:07:08.960 --> 1:07:12.000 than anybody to get them, and I'll put them on 1:07:12.120 --> 1:07:14.840 my website. And I don't care if something takes two 1:07:14.920 --> 1:07:18.120 or three years to sell if it's something really good. 1:07:18.880 --> 1:07:20.920 So I'll work with a couple of friends of mine 1:07:20.960 --> 1:07:23.240 in Los Angeles if somebody's got a huge collection and 1:07:23.480 --> 1:07:25.680 there are things that interest me, and I'll buy what 1:07:25.800 --> 1:07:27.960 I want and then they'll come in and buy what 1:07:28.120 --> 1:07:33.320 they want, and I get, you know, once a couple 1:07:33.320 --> 1:07:35.320 of times a week. I get those kind of calls. 1:07:35.440 --> 1:07:41.920 But generally people have used record store stock collections that 1:07:41.960 --> 1:07:46.160 aren't that interesting. But if it's an industry collection or 1:07:46.480 --> 1:07:49.600 somebody who worked in the media, oftentimes they do have 1:07:49.720 --> 1:07:52.880 interesting stuff. And I also very involved with the Rock 1:07:52.920 --> 1:07:54.880 and Roll Hall of Fame, and I will buy things 1:07:55.640 --> 1:08:00.400 that don't have financial value but have historical value, donate 1:08:00.480 --> 1:08:05.720 them things that I think need preserving. Okay, so the 1:08:05.800 --> 1:08:09.000 people who are selling these records? What is their main motivation? 1:08:09.240 --> 1:08:12.920 Money room, or they just don't want them anymore, all 1:08:12.960 --> 1:08:15.960 of the above. A lot of times somebody dies, somebody 1:08:16.040 --> 1:08:19.280 wants to raise money for a kid who's lost a job. Recently, 1:08:20.000 --> 1:08:24.080 I've paid for plastic surgery, I've bought new cars, I've 1:08:24.120 --> 1:08:29.880 paid for cancer medication. UM, you name it, Okay, so 1:08:30.080 --> 1:08:33.040 you come in. Let's assume to make the numbers around, 1:08:33.439 --> 1:08:37.799 somebody has a thousand records. Generally speaking, can you cherry 1:08:37.880 --> 1:08:39.600 pick or does someone want you to buy all a 1:08:39.680 --> 1:08:44.839 thousand for price and you deal with it? Uh? Generally, 1:08:45.000 --> 1:08:47.840 the way I explain it is, if you want me 1:08:47.920 --> 1:08:50.479 to buy everything, I'll buy it, but you'll make less 1:08:51.000 --> 1:08:53.479 than if I cherry pick it. And then I introduce 1:08:53.520 --> 1:08:57.200 you to somebody who will come over and and buy 1:08:57.240 --> 1:09:00.760 the rest from you. Because you're paying me, essentially to 1:09:00.880 --> 1:09:03.840 do the work that I don't need to do. It's 1:09:03.880 --> 1:09:07.120 a hassle for me to buy a thousand records keep 1:09:07.120 --> 1:09:10.360 a hundred of them at wholesale out nine hundred, So 1:09:10.520 --> 1:09:13.000 I'm gonna want something for my time. You're gonna get 1:09:13.080 --> 1:09:15.840 more money if I come over, pay you top dollar 1:09:15.920 --> 1:09:18.320 for that hundred and then introduce you to somebody who'll 1:09:18.320 --> 1:09:22.400 pay you top dollar for the other nine. Okay, let's 1:09:22.439 --> 1:09:27.200 talk about the ultimate a shrink wrapped record. How often 1:09:27.280 --> 1:09:29.840 do you find a shrink wrapped record? And how does 1:09:29.880 --> 1:09:34.040 that affect the price all the time. And here's here's 1:09:34.080 --> 1:09:39.320 my standard example. Yesterday and today in the Beetle by 1:09:39.320 --> 1:09:41.640 the Beatles was going to come out originally with a 1:09:41.760 --> 1:09:45.080 cover showing them with decapitated baby dolls covered in blood, 1:09:46.520 --> 1:09:52.000 capital printed them up, got very negative feedback from the media, 1:09:52.720 --> 1:09:56.960 and record store owners recalled or actually hadn't sent out 1:09:57.000 --> 1:10:01.200 the album in most cases, and pay did the trunk cover, 1:10:01.360 --> 1:10:05.360 an innocuous cover showing them standing around, uh, a trunk 1:10:06.360 --> 1:10:11.840 over the offending ones. So there, and they had sent 1:10:11.920 --> 1:10:16.120 out some of the original ones to reviewers, and they 1:10:16.200 --> 1:10:19.040 sent out a letter to them say, uh, mistake, sent 1:10:19.120 --> 1:10:21.240 it back to us, will send your replacement copy, which 1:10:21.280 --> 1:10:25.280 most of them didn't do. So you can find or 1:10:25.680 --> 1:10:28.800 what exists in the world are original copies that weren't 1:10:28.800 --> 1:10:32.080 pasted over, Copies that were pasted over that are called 1:10:32.160 --> 1:10:36.400 second state, and copies that are called third state. Where 1:10:36.520 --> 1:10:42.400 somebody industrious kid steamed off the old covered the new 1:10:42.439 --> 1:10:45.800 cover to reveal the old cutter cover. And these are 1:10:46.000 --> 1:10:51.280 worth a variety of prices depending on what the condition is. 1:10:51.840 --> 1:10:57.599 The most desirable one is a stereo, a sealed stereo, 1:10:58.439 --> 1:11:02.519 not pasted over copy. Uh. The guy who was the 1:11:02.680 --> 1:11:05.760 president of Capital at the time, Allen Livingston, kept a 1:11:05.840 --> 1:11:09.400 number of these, and those are the ultimate ones because 1:11:09.400 --> 1:11:11.400 I've got a letter from him saying I'm the president 1:11:11.439 --> 1:11:15.000 of Capital. I kept these from the top. So let's 1:11:15.000 --> 1:11:20.040 say one of those might be worth a hundred thousand dollars. Uh. 1:11:20.400 --> 1:11:24.760 If I took my fingernail and opened the shrink rap 1:11:24.840 --> 1:11:29.320 at the mouth, didn't pull the record out, that's gonna 1:11:29.360 --> 1:11:34.200 mean it's worth six. For the privilege of or the 1:11:34.320 --> 1:11:37.200 difference of sealed and unsealed, even though nothing else has changed, 1:11:37.880 --> 1:11:41.920 might reduce the price by if you took the record 1:11:41.960 --> 1:11:44.040 out and played it, the corners were bent up a 1:11:44.120 --> 1:11:50.599 little bit just through normal handling, that might be worth Uh. 1:11:51.200 --> 1:11:54.240 If the seams started to split, that might be worth fifteen. 1:11:54.720 --> 1:11:57.320 Now that's the extreme example, but that shows you how 1:11:57.360 --> 1:12:02.280 obsessed people are by condition and what an extreme premium 1:12:02.360 --> 1:12:08.639 people pay for rare records they're sealed. Let's uh, stay 1:12:08.680 --> 1:12:12.280 with the butcher cover. For a minute, Let's assume someone 1:12:12.479 --> 1:12:15.760 steamed off the cover and the album is not in 1:12:15.840 --> 1:12:19.320 good condition. What is that worth If they did a 1:12:19.840 --> 1:12:23.280 so so job, as most kids did, a couple hundred bucks, 1:12:24.200 --> 1:12:26.920 if they did a fantastic job where it was done 1:12:27.000 --> 1:12:30.400 professionally and there are people literally who do this professionally 1:12:32.880 --> 1:12:37.040 undred Okay, those of us who were record store savvy. 1:12:37.160 --> 1:12:39.560 You went into the Tower Sunset, you went in the 1:12:39.640 --> 1:12:42.920 back room. They had a shrink wrap machine. They sure 1:12:43.040 --> 1:12:47.040 did so. And Charlie Shaw, the manager of Tower at 1:12:47.080 --> 1:12:49.880 that time, had a motto, there's no such thing as 1:12:50.240 --> 1:12:54.160 as a defective record. So they were just reshrink everything. 1:12:55.520 --> 1:12:59.040 So the question becomes fraud. To what degree is being 1:12:59.080 --> 1:13:01.720 sold as shrink opped is really not shrink wrapped? And 1:13:01.760 --> 1:13:05.519 how can you tell? That? Is an extremely savvy question, Bob. 1:13:06.000 --> 1:13:09.439 There are a huge percentage of what's sold as sealed 1:13:09.680 --> 1:13:14.799 isn't is reshrink reshrunk. There's a huge amount on eBay 1:13:15.640 --> 1:13:19.640 of people selling NonStop sixties records that are supposed to 1:13:19.680 --> 1:13:24.280 be factory sealed, which aren't. I kind of find the 1:13:24.320 --> 1:13:27.760 whole phenomenon of sealed records ridiculous because, as you and 1:13:27.840 --> 1:13:30.240 I know there are defective records, and if I'm going 1:13:30.280 --> 1:13:31.800 to pay a thousand knowledge for record, I want to 1:13:31.800 --> 1:13:35.680 see what the record looks like. Um, there's a lot 1:13:35.760 --> 1:13:39.200 of fraud. And the way you tell the difference is 1:13:39.960 --> 1:13:44.240 somebody like me stares at it for a very long time. Well, 1:13:44.320 --> 1:13:46.920 I know, somebody's what a ship ton of records? You 1:13:47.000 --> 1:13:49.719 could tell back then? What was reshrunk? You know? I haven't. 1:13:49.960 --> 1:13:54.120 You can't tell you right? And but have you very 1:13:54.200 --> 1:13:58.880 sophisticated though? That's my I figured? So have you been beaten? Yeah, 1:13:58.920 --> 1:14:02.360 I've been beating a couple of times, um, but not many. 1:14:03.479 --> 1:14:07.519 And another quirk about my business model is, and I 1:14:07.560 --> 1:14:10.439 don't know anybody else who does this, I guarantee everything 1:14:10.479 --> 1:14:14.160 I sell to be authentic forever, in writing, if people 1:14:14.200 --> 1:14:17.760 ask and for hiring things in writing anyway, And this 1:14:17.920 --> 1:14:21.599 has two purposes. One it ensures the buyers they're getting 1:14:21.680 --> 1:14:25.720 something that is authentic. And to it prevents me from 1:14:26.680 --> 1:14:30.000 buying and reselling anything that I'm not absolutely positive about. 1:14:30.640 --> 1:14:33.240 If I see something and I'm nine percent sure it's good, 1:14:33.360 --> 1:14:35.800 I'm passing because I don't want that coming back to 1:14:35.840 --> 1:14:40.320 haunt me. Okay, So have you ever sold something that 1:14:40.400 --> 1:14:44.839 turned out not to be authentic. It's happened a few times. 1:14:46.040 --> 1:14:49.479 I almost did. Actually this week i'll show it to 1:14:49.520 --> 1:15:01.360 you this This is audio only, so described for the 1:15:01.400 --> 1:15:06.679 audience side it okay, this is a nine concert program 1:15:06.840 --> 1:15:11.920 for Felonious Monks first Australian tour and as you Bob 1:15:12.000 --> 1:15:14.360 can see, it's signed at the top by the Felonious Monk. 1:15:15.320 --> 1:15:18.639 So I bought this from a guy in Australia who 1:15:18.720 --> 1:15:22.200 told me that his friend now deceased, had gotten it signed. 1:15:23.160 --> 1:15:25.479 And I looked at the signal I bought it got 1:15:25.560 --> 1:15:30.000 it looked absolutely genuine, signed in fountain pen and uh. 1:15:30.640 --> 1:15:34.200 I sold it to a good customer. Mind I hadn't 1:15:34.200 --> 1:15:37.600 sent it out, and the next day somebody sent me 1:15:37.720 --> 1:15:40.960 an email saying, hey, that Felonious Monks signed thing you signed? 1:15:41.479 --> 1:15:43.640 Do you have that because somebody's got one listed on 1:15:43.760 --> 1:15:46.240 eBay And he sent me a link and I looked 1:15:46.280 --> 1:15:49.320 at it. It looked almost exactly the same, but there 1:15:49.320 --> 1:15:51.800 were a few creases in different places. So I wrote 1:15:51.840 --> 1:15:54.439 to the seller and said, do you actually have that? 1:15:54.760 --> 1:15:56.400 It was a guy in Australia. Is it possible that 1:15:56.479 --> 1:15:59.360 I bought that copy and you just didn't take it down. No, 1:15:59.520 --> 1:16:03.400 I've got the right in front of me, and I said, 1:16:03.520 --> 1:16:05.720 got the autograph has to be printed. And I looked 1:16:05.760 --> 1:16:08.680 at it through a very high power loop and it 1:16:08.960 --> 1:16:13.640 still looks like an original autograph. Um. And I did 1:16:13.680 --> 1:16:15.439 a lot of research and I couldn't find any other 1:16:15.520 --> 1:16:17.519 copies of it online. This guy sent me some high 1:16:17.520 --> 1:16:22.479 resolution pictures of the one he had, and even though 1:16:24.160 --> 1:16:27.240 I was almost certain it wasn't printed, it clearly has 1:16:27.280 --> 1:16:30.439 to be printed because there's another one that's identical in 1:16:30.560 --> 1:16:34.960 every way. So I contacted my customer and said, bad news. 1:16:35.320 --> 1:16:37.519 I'm refunding your money. I didn't send it out yet. 1:16:38.320 --> 1:16:41.240 It's fake. I can't think of the last time that happened. 1:16:43.560 --> 1:16:47.080 If ever. Um, yeah, just happened a couple of weeks ago. 1:16:47.439 --> 1:16:49.800 So I do, I do, But you know, the good 1:16:49.840 --> 1:16:53.760 news is I guarantee everything. So okay. So how much 1:16:53.880 --> 1:16:58.640 inventory do you have and where do you keep it? Uh? 1:16:59.280 --> 1:17:02.280 I have a fair amount of inventory, but a lot 1:17:02.360 --> 1:17:06.160 of it is very valuable pieces of paper and records 1:17:06.200 --> 1:17:10.200 which don't take up a lot of space, and unframed posters. 1:17:10.560 --> 1:17:12.840 So I have some flat files and I have a 1:17:12.880 --> 1:17:15.360 big safe and I have a safe deposit box, and 1:17:17.200 --> 1:17:23.639 I'm forever trying to sell fewer more expensive things, um 1:17:24.840 --> 1:17:28.000 and happily that what I deal in generally doesn't take 1:17:28.040 --> 1:17:32.080 up very much space. Okay, So how many vinyl records 1:17:32.160 --> 1:17:37.160 do you own today in my personal collection? You're looking 1:17:37.240 --> 1:17:40.439 at it a two thousand? Okay, how many of those 1:17:40.560 --> 1:17:47.160 records you're never gonna sell? Well, I'm gonna die someday, shockingly, 1:17:47.840 --> 1:17:50.400 and so you know my fantasy is to sell it 1:17:50.479 --> 1:17:52.720 all right before that happens. I don't know if that 1:17:52.760 --> 1:17:55.360 will happen. But those two thousand records are my collection, 1:17:55.960 --> 1:17:59.360 So I'm I'm very disinclined to part with any of them. 1:17:59.640 --> 1:18:02.320 There are hard earned, a lot of them might spend 1:18:02.320 --> 1:18:04.559 a lot of time looking for a lot of them 1:18:04.640 --> 1:18:08.320 have stories behind them, are souvenirs from travel or owned 1:18:08.400 --> 1:18:10.560 by friends of mine who are no longer here, or 1:18:11.640 --> 1:18:15.120 owned by artists I admire. So that's my record collection. 1:18:15.360 --> 1:18:19.240 And if one was knowledgeable like yourself, how many of 1:18:19.320 --> 1:18:22.320 those are rare and how many just have sentimental value? 1:18:24.200 --> 1:18:32.880 M m it's probably m hmm. There are records in 1:18:32.920 --> 1:18:36.439 there I would be extremely hard pressed to ever replace. 1:18:37.240 --> 1:18:40.080 There are records in there that are irreplaceable or the 1:18:40.200 --> 1:18:43.680 only known copy. There are records in there that are 1:18:43.720 --> 1:18:50.440 really common. Having found that Nirvana record today, I'm motivated 1:18:50.479 --> 1:18:52.880 to go look through and I wonder if there's anything 1:18:52.920 --> 1:18:56.800 else that doesn't mean that much, to mean it's worth 1:18:56.840 --> 1:19:00.200 a lot of money. But but generally those are things 1:19:00.240 --> 1:19:02.360 that I have a deep connection to and I listened to, 1:19:02.960 --> 1:19:06.639 you know, probably five or six albums a day. Okay, 1:19:06.840 --> 1:19:09.120 So how good a system do you have? What do 1:19:09.160 --> 1:19:13.920 you have I have? I lived in a house with 1:19:14.000 --> 1:19:18.640 just my wife. She never turns on the stereo, and 1:19:18.760 --> 1:19:22.000 I have four stereos with turntables, and I have a 1:19:22.080 --> 1:19:27.160 three floor house. Uh. My best stereo is I was 1:19:27.200 --> 1:19:29.719 born in nineteen fifty six and I thought it would 1:19:29.720 --> 1:19:31.760 be fun to put together he stayed of the art 1:19:31.880 --> 1:19:35.920 nineteen fifty six system, and for that I have some 1:19:36.280 --> 1:19:40.120 nineteen circa nineteen fifty six JB L speakers that have 1:19:40.200 --> 1:19:43.519 been rebuilt that are about three ft tall. I have 1:19:43.800 --> 1:19:53.280 a Macto, Macintosh Mono to bamps, Macintosh uh Tuner pre amp, 1:19:54.200 --> 1:20:01.400 and a um Thorn's turntables. So that's all circa nine 1:20:02.280 --> 1:20:06.960 and that's my best stereo. I think, uh, I have 1:20:07.120 --> 1:20:13.320 some other McIntosh integrated amps. I have Linn Access turntable. 1:20:14.120 --> 1:20:17.320 I have a real good turntable. Yeah, lesser stuff, but 1:20:18.439 --> 1:20:21.160 it's great to have stereos all over the house. What 1:20:21.320 --> 1:20:25.960 do you think of the vinyl revival. It's mystifying to me. 1:20:26.280 --> 1:20:29.320 It's fantastic. I think it's fantastic. My first book was 1:20:29.439 --> 1:20:35.000 on classic vinyl records. Um, it's great to see kids 1:20:35.680 --> 1:20:39.320 excited about vinyl records. It's great to see all these records, 1:20:39.360 --> 1:20:42.160 store day releases coming out, lots of things you thought 1:20:42.240 --> 1:20:44.439 you'd never hear or never be able to get on vinyl. 1:20:45.439 --> 1:20:48.280 It's shocking to me when I look at the forty 1:20:48.320 --> 1:20:52.880 biggest selling records from the day before on eBay and 1:20:53.040 --> 1:20:57.439 seeing over and over and over Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift 1:20:57.479 --> 1:21:04.000 record store day records or reissues of not that uncommon 1:21:04.080 --> 1:21:08.360 records selling for five six hundred dollars. H People doing 1:21:09.120 --> 1:21:12.240 bespoke jazz reissues itself for five d to a thousand 1:21:12.320 --> 1:21:16.479 dollars when you could buy for that kind of money 1:21:16.640 --> 1:21:19.840 a truly rare record. But generally, I think it's very 1:21:19.880 --> 1:21:23.240 exciting that kids are getting turned onto music and and 1:21:23.360 --> 1:21:26.680 not just kids and records. We grew up in an 1:21:26.760 --> 1:21:30.160 era where the records were cut analog on tape, ultimately 1:21:30.200 --> 1:21:33.519 analog format, and you wanted to get the best ster 1:21:33.800 --> 1:21:37.120 you can afford. Whereas kids frequently have a very poor 1:21:37.320 --> 1:21:41.639 stereo and they're buying something that was cut digitally that's 1:21:41.720 --> 1:21:45.040 ultimately pressed on vinyl. What do you think about all that? 1:21:46.320 --> 1:21:49.080 I think the whole thing is weird. When the Beatles did. 1:21:50.040 --> 1:21:54.840 When the first Beatles vinyl remasters came at five or 1:21:55.160 --> 1:21:59.000 seven years ago, I bought some of them, and they 1:21:59.080 --> 1:22:01.479 were doing all this us about how George Martin's son 1:22:01.640 --> 1:22:06.880 and state of the art UH remastering and allowed them 1:22:06.960 --> 1:22:09.760 to tease new information on the tapes, and you could 1:22:09.800 --> 1:22:14.519 hear the Beatles fingers on the strings, the string noise 1:22:14.600 --> 1:22:17.479 and stuff, and they've been remixed from the original masters. 1:22:17.840 --> 1:22:20.719 And I listened to them and I hated them because 1:22:20.760 --> 1:22:24.120 they didn't sound like the records that are imprinted in 1:22:24.200 --> 1:22:27.360 my mind that I love. And I have a friend 1:22:27.400 --> 1:22:29.400 who has a very high end audio store at the 1:22:29.439 --> 1:22:32.320 time had a hundred thousand dollar turntable and I went 1:22:32.600 --> 1:22:36.280 a bead some of my English first pressing Beatle records 1:22:36.640 --> 1:22:40.160 against those, and I just thought the new ones sounded terrible. 1:22:40.200 --> 1:22:44.760 They were like science projects. Yeah, there's more information, but 1:22:44.920 --> 1:22:48.360 it's not what the Beatles signed off on in when 1:22:48.400 --> 1:22:52.600 they were sitting in the room with George Martin. So 1:22:53.040 --> 1:22:56.200 generally that stuff doesn't interest me. M I buy lots 1:22:56.240 --> 1:23:00.599 of reissues and I like find hearing new music artists 1:23:00.680 --> 1:23:04.640 I like. But the remastering, you know, I mean, the 1:23:04.760 --> 1:23:07.720 remastering never stops. As you know, you know, there are 1:23:07.800 --> 1:23:11.000 records have been remastered, you know, pet sounds four or five, 1:23:11.160 --> 1:23:15.400 six times, and uh, it just feels very science project. 1:23:15.760 --> 1:23:18.120 We'll certainly remix. You know. I've been on record and 1:23:19.200 --> 1:23:22.719 certainly been involved with people on this is just crazy. Okay. 1:23:23.120 --> 1:23:28.680 You've been heavily involved with Dylan's music, both in the 1:23:29.160 --> 1:23:32.920 museum that opened in Oklahoma and finding unreleased stuff. Tell 1:23:33.000 --> 1:23:38.160 us about that. He was one of my favorite artists 1:23:38.200 --> 1:23:40.960 as a kid. It still is. I heard a show 1:23:42.120 --> 1:23:48.240 on YouTube from five days ago in Seattle where he 1:23:48.400 --> 1:23:52.240 was just sounding unbelievably good. It's just remarkable. This guy 1:23:52.280 --> 1:23:55.439 at eighty one years old is making great music and 1:23:55.600 --> 1:23:59.760 is still great, still on the road and sounding fantastic. Uh, 1:24:00.000 --> 1:24:01.880 he's not sounding like he did in Night sixty four. 1:24:02.040 --> 1:24:07.200 But sav Um, I loved Dylan records. I bought all 1:24:07.240 --> 1:24:09.400 the Dylan bootlegs I could find. As a kid, I 1:24:09.520 --> 1:24:13.320 collected rare Dylan records. I wanted that freewheel and so bad. 1:24:13.400 --> 1:24:16.599 I was willing to pay crazy money for it. Um 1:24:18.240 --> 1:24:21.400 I became friendly with a guy named Jason Emmons who 1:24:21.760 --> 1:24:25.599 was the curatorial director at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. 1:24:26.439 --> 1:24:30.719 He put together a museum show called Bob Dylan's American 1:24:30.800 --> 1:24:36.479 Journey that traveled around the United States. That was the 1:24:36.600 --> 1:24:39.519 only authorized ever Dylan exhibit. It was at the Scutball 1:24:39.560 --> 1:24:42.680 here in Los Angeles. It was incredible. I was consultant 1:24:42.760 --> 1:24:44.760 to it, and I was probably the major, one of 1:24:44.800 --> 1:24:47.599 the major lenders to it. And through that I met 1:24:47.680 --> 1:24:55.280 Jeff Rosen, who manages Bob and at some point many 1:24:55.400 --> 1:24:59.120 years later, he called me up and asked me if 1:24:59.200 --> 1:25:05.280 I would uh uh. He had a project he was 1:25:05.400 --> 1:25:07.400 interested in talking to me about, but I had to 1:25:07.439 --> 1:25:14.040 sign a nondisclosure agreement first. Sure I did. He told 1:25:14.080 --> 1:25:18.200 me about Bob Dylan's archive and that it was being 1:25:18.680 --> 1:25:22.479 had been sold to the George Kaiser family. Foundation in 1:25:22.560 --> 1:25:26.120 Tulsa and they were going to open a museum and 1:25:26.360 --> 1:25:28.720 he needed somebody to appraise it. And he felt like 1:25:28.840 --> 1:25:32.120 I probably knew as much about that as anybody and 1:25:32.160 --> 1:25:36.080 could I do? And this threw me for a total loop. 1:25:37.160 --> 1:25:39.920 But it was a dream come true project and I 1:25:40.000 --> 1:25:44.559 told him I could certainly value this stuff, but when 1:25:44.640 --> 1:25:48.160 I saw what it constituted, I said, you know, I'm 1:25:48.200 --> 1:25:50.960 not somebody who can write you hundreds of page long 1:25:51.000 --> 1:25:54.280 appraisal and then defended to the I R s if 1:25:54.520 --> 1:25:58.360 if that happens, But I know somebody who can. Laura Woolli, 1:25:58.479 --> 1:26:01.080 who's the top entertainment praiser in the world, isn't a 1:26:01.160 --> 1:26:04.960 good friend of mine. So I brought her on board 1:26:05.720 --> 1:26:10.519 and for about six months we appraised this massive archive. 1:26:11.040 --> 1:26:16.000 There were six thousand handwritten things, ranging from a note 1:26:16.040 --> 1:26:19.880 on the back of a business card to the notebooks 1:26:19.920 --> 1:26:22.240 that he wrote blood on the Tracks in, or the 1:26:22.520 --> 1:26:25.840 original manuscript to Subterranean Homesick Blues. And we were holding 1:26:25.920 --> 1:26:30.120 these things in our hands, and you know, it was 1:26:30.240 --> 1:26:34.880 just breath digging, literally breath digging for me. And uh 1:26:35.080 --> 1:26:40.240 I have done helped them with other projects. I bought 1:26:40.320 --> 1:26:44.000 the collection of Ralph J. Gleeson, who was the first 1:26:44.320 --> 1:26:49.360 rock printic in America and in he had died, but 1:26:49.439 --> 1:26:51.639 he was one of those guys to say literally everything. 1:26:52.240 --> 1:26:55.720 And in his archives in his basement, I found a 1:26:55.800 --> 1:26:58.960 bunch of Bob Dylan tapes that had come from Dylan 1:26:58.960 --> 1:27:02.280 who he was friendly with him other people, and um, 1:27:02.960 --> 1:27:04.960 I had a lot of them were poorly labeled. So 1:27:05.040 --> 1:27:07.759 I rented a recording studio and went and listened to stuff. 1:27:08.479 --> 1:27:14.000 And there was one that just said Dylan Brandeis on 1:27:14.120 --> 1:27:20.000 the side in pencil, and I googled and I couldn't 1:27:20.000 --> 1:27:23.000 find anything about that. He played Brandeis University, but that 1:27:23.160 --> 1:27:25.360 was it. And it turned out to be a professionally 1:27:25.400 --> 1:27:29.920 recorded stereo recording of Bob Dylan at Brandeis University about 1:27:29.920 --> 1:27:34.439 a month before Freewheeland came out, perfect quality. And my 1:27:34.640 --> 1:27:36.679 jaw dropped when I was listening to this in the studio, 1:27:37.840 --> 1:27:39.519 And you know, my find tapes like this, and I 1:27:39.600 --> 1:27:41.679 always my first stop is always to go to the artist. 1:27:41.840 --> 1:27:43.519 And so I called Jeff rosen up and I told 1:27:43.600 --> 1:27:47.960 him and h I made a deal with him and 1:27:48.160 --> 1:27:51.760 myself in the Gleason family for them to buy that 1:27:51.960 --> 1:27:54.240 tape and it got released as Bob Dylan at Brandeis 1:27:54.320 --> 1:27:57.880 University in nine and it was just shocking to me 1:27:58.000 --> 1:28:03.519 that I could be the fanboy Jeff Uh buying these 1:28:03.560 --> 1:28:07.439 bootlegs all of a sudden is responsible for Bob Dylan 1:28:07.439 --> 1:28:09.840 album being released. And I found other tapes that have 1:28:09.920 --> 1:28:12.880 been released and that I've sold the artists. But that 1:28:13.080 --> 1:28:23.040 was the peak for me. Okay. You also, you know 1:28:23.160 --> 1:28:26.200 Rhino Records label and Rhino have been sold years past. 1:28:26.720 --> 1:28:29.439 You also implore them to release some of the stuff 1:28:29.479 --> 1:28:35.760 you find. What's that experience been like? Mixed? Um, the 1:28:35.880 --> 1:28:39.200 late great Gary Stewart who worked to Rhino with me, 1:28:39.479 --> 1:28:42.560 was a wonderful guy. Um was the head of A 1:28:42.600 --> 1:28:46.680 and RT Rhino and when he was it was easy. Uh. 1:28:46.960 --> 1:28:50.360 When he left, I remember, for instance, I had bought 1:28:50.400 --> 1:28:53.960 a bunch of stuff from Danny Fields and in these 1:28:54.120 --> 1:28:56.559 again I had to read a studio to find out 1:28:57.080 --> 1:29:00.840 what was on these boxes and things. I found the 1:29:02.360 --> 1:29:07.479 a copymaster tape of the first Stooges album with John 1:29:07.560 --> 1:29:11.000 Kale's mixes that had never been released. They've been remixed 1:29:11.920 --> 1:29:16.599 um by Jack Holsman and Idie And so I went 1:29:16.680 --> 1:29:19.880 to Rhino and had a meeting saying, look, this is incredible. 1:29:19.920 --> 1:29:22.280 You can release this as a double album with the 1:29:22.920 --> 1:29:26.280 mixes everybody knows and these John Kale mixes which are 1:29:26.400 --> 1:29:29.679 legendary but nobody's ever heard. And one of the guys 1:29:29.800 --> 1:29:33.040 at Rhino, who I had known for a very long time, said, well, 1:29:33.080 --> 1:29:34.840 why should we buy those from you? We can go 1:29:35.000 --> 1:29:38.200 remix these ourselves, and I was like, you don't get it. 1:29:38.320 --> 1:29:42.640 This is American history at a high level. Uh, you 1:29:42.800 --> 1:29:45.240 gotta put this out, And they bought the tape from me, 1:29:45.479 --> 1:29:48.680 and sparingly would put out a couple of tracks at 1:29:48.680 --> 1:29:52.240 a time and eventually released the whole thing. So sometimes 1:29:52.320 --> 1:29:55.040 it's really I mean, I had Charlie Parker out takes 1:29:55.600 --> 1:29:58.960 and I called Verve and said, you know, I've got 1:29:59.040 --> 1:30:01.960 these false starts and Charlie Parker with strings out takes, Well, 1:30:02.040 --> 1:30:05.200 jazz doesn't sell, and it's like, look, I'm not talking 1:30:05.280 --> 1:30:09.559 about Johnny Hodge's outtakes. It's Charlie Parker. And eventually they 1:30:09.600 --> 1:30:12.160 bought them. But sometimes it's the myth of sism. This 1:30:12.240 --> 1:30:14.960 you're rolling a boulder up a hill, and sometimes people 1:30:15.040 --> 1:30:17.160 like Jeff Frozen get it instantly. It's like, yes, we've 1:30:17.200 --> 1:30:19.280 got to buy it from you know, you talk about 1:30:19.320 --> 1:30:21.920 Gary Stewart, anybody who was at his house, it was 1:30:22.160 --> 1:30:25.919 you know, it was an unending stream of vinyl records. 1:30:26.520 --> 1:30:29.439 I think about my records and I say I'll buy 1:30:30.320 --> 1:30:33.200 and my girlfriend or my sister just throw it out. 1:30:34.320 --> 1:30:37.280 So my dness, oh, believe me it is. I say, 1:30:37.280 --> 1:30:41.000 you have no idea how valuable these he put it. Okay, 1:30:41.560 --> 1:30:47.519 So what happened to Gary Stewart's records, Well, what happened 1:30:47.520 --> 1:30:53.160 to Gary Stewart's records is Gary Stewart, who was ultimately 1:30:53.320 --> 1:30:56.160 the head of an art Rhino and then the uh 1:30:57.040 --> 1:31:00.920 ran iTunes at the beginning for Apple, was a frequent 1:31:01.000 --> 1:31:04.720 customer of Rhino Records who I befriended, and he I 1:31:04.840 --> 1:31:07.040 kept trying to hire him to come to work to 1:31:07.120 --> 1:31:09.320 the store because he spent so much time there. He 1:31:09.520 --> 1:31:13.640 was working at McDonald's. It was a management trainee, and 1:31:14.080 --> 1:31:16.120 I felt like that was a greater career path than 1:31:16.200 --> 1:31:19.400 working in record store. And though he would till the 1:31:19.520 --> 1:31:23.000 end of his life deny that that these two things 1:31:23.040 --> 1:31:26.680 were connected. The McDonald's got held up twice, and the 1:31:26.760 --> 1:31:28.840 second time he was locked in a meat locker with 1:31:28.960 --> 1:31:32.720 a bunch of employees and eventually decided, Okay, I'll come 1:31:32.760 --> 1:31:37.960 to work for Rhino and excelled and became at Richard 1:31:38.000 --> 1:31:41.200 and Harold's feet, the guy who put together all those 1:31:41.320 --> 1:31:46.479 incredible reissues that Rhino became famous for. And we remained 1:31:46.600 --> 1:31:48.439 close friends till the end of his life, which was 1:31:48.479 --> 1:31:53.040 about three years ago. So when Gary died, I had 1:31:53.080 --> 1:31:55.439 been in close contact with him, and I had been 1:31:55.479 --> 1:32:00.479 in close contact with his UH cousin, who inherited his estate, 1:32:02.120 --> 1:32:04.280 and I said, look, if you need any help figuring 1:32:04.320 --> 1:32:06.479 out what to do with any of his possessions, I'll 1:32:06.479 --> 1:32:09.519 be happy to help. Yes, I do. She lives in Chicago, 1:32:10.320 --> 1:32:13.200 So I went over there and UH went through his 1:32:13.320 --> 1:32:18.120 collection and I my idea was we should take all 1:32:18.200 --> 1:32:22.040 of the Rhino reissues, which they were colossal number hundreds 1:32:22.080 --> 1:32:24.680 and hundreds and hundreds, and donate them to the Rock 1:32:24.720 --> 1:32:27.600 and Roll Hall of Fame because they really document the 1:32:27.680 --> 1:32:31.679 birth of the reissued culture in America, in the world, really, 1:32:32.240 --> 1:32:35.640 and they were very excited about that. His cousin approved, 1:32:36.240 --> 1:32:39.599 so all of his a copy of everything he ever did, 1:32:40.120 --> 1:32:42.800 is at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Then 1:32:43.240 --> 1:32:47.320 I had an idea that we should save some of 1:32:47.400 --> 1:32:50.000 the records that he was obsessed with and give them 1:32:50.080 --> 1:32:54.839 to his friends, so artists like Elvas Costello, for instance, 1:32:55.000 --> 1:32:59.160 or Sparks. I bought those records from the estate and 1:32:59.200 --> 1:33:01.640 made up a little car arts saying this record was 1:33:01.680 --> 1:33:05.160 owned by Gary Stewart, and I distributed them to about 1:33:06.040 --> 1:33:08.280 seventy five of his friends so people could just have 1:33:08.360 --> 1:33:12.280 a reminder of Gary. And then the rest were sold 1:33:12.360 --> 1:33:14.640 to a friend of Gary's. In mind, Bob say, who 1:33:14.680 --> 1:33:19.880 has a record store. Now, it's a very tragic story, 1:33:20.400 --> 1:33:23.360 and you seem to have been closest to Gary at 1:33:23.400 --> 1:33:26.760 the end. Was this anomalous his death or is this 1:33:27.160 --> 1:33:30.360 evidence of our era? Because I certainly know a lot 1:33:30.439 --> 1:33:34.080 of people who had very big jobs in the music business, 1:33:34.240 --> 1:33:37.800 but when the time came with a the game of 1:33:37.880 --> 1:33:40.680 musical chairs, there was no longer receipt for them have 1:33:41.040 --> 1:33:44.840 hit very hard times. So is he evidence of that really? 1:33:45.280 --> 1:33:47.439 Or you know, he was a unique guy and none 1:33:47.479 --> 1:33:52.320 of those laws apply. You know, Gary took his own life. 1:33:53.400 --> 1:33:59.360 He had been suffering from mental illness. He would depression. 1:34:00.360 --> 1:34:04.960 He was working on it head on, working with therapists. 1:34:05.720 --> 1:34:07.479 He didn't tell a lot of people about it, but 1:34:07.520 --> 1:34:12.240 I knew about it, um, and I think ultimately he 1:34:12.400 --> 1:34:15.760 just couldn't um see the forest for the treaty. It's 1:34:15.880 --> 1:34:20.040 one of the great tragedies of my lifetime. UM. I 1:34:21.680 --> 1:34:30.960 think Gary had very strong feelings about what he wanted 1:34:31.000 --> 1:34:34.000 to do and what he didn't want to do, and 1:34:34.200 --> 1:34:38.240 he was the antithesis. I mean, I was someone who 1:34:38.360 --> 1:34:41.719 was happy to work for a record company and market 1:34:41.840 --> 1:34:46.960 and package things, even though a lot of them weren't 1:34:47.400 --> 1:34:51.160 to my personal taste. I could find, you know, I 1:34:51.200 --> 1:34:53.080 didn't go home and listen to Van Halen Records, but 1:34:53.200 --> 1:34:57.639 I could appreciate what van Halen worked. Um. Gary didn't 1:34:57.680 --> 1:35:00.240 want to work on things that he wasn't personally too. 1:35:01.200 --> 1:35:06.280 And I think that that is not the trajectory that 1:35:07.800 --> 1:35:11.240 people are looking for. We're running record companies, you know, 1:35:11.320 --> 1:35:16.760 it's become much and much more of a being counting mentality. 1:35:16.960 --> 1:35:22.280 Forgive the expression and uh, you know, the Netflix culture 1:35:22.400 --> 1:35:26.439 is the most extreme example of it. And I don't 1:35:26.479 --> 1:35:29.120 think Gary had a place in that world. And I 1:35:29.280 --> 1:35:31.680 think that world repulsed Gary. You didn't want to have 1:35:31.760 --> 1:35:36.599 a place in the world. Just going back over your 1:35:36.680 --> 1:35:40.639 decades in the business, what can you tell us about 1:35:40.720 --> 1:35:44.479 the people who ultimately got squeezed out? How they I mean, 1:35:44.600 --> 1:35:46.639 first they all went to work in the video business. 1:35:46.760 --> 1:35:49.560 Then they all went to work in real estate, and 1:35:49.840 --> 1:35:53.000 video business tied. Real estate is really competitive. I certainly 1:35:53.080 --> 1:35:56.280 know a lot of people who have hard been on 1:35:56.400 --> 1:36:01.519 hard times. What your experience been with people? It's the same, um, 1:36:05.200 --> 1:36:07.920 it's you know, we lived this charmed life where we 1:36:08.000 --> 1:36:11.160 had expense accounts and traveled all around the world and 1:36:11.240 --> 1:36:14.800 hung out with bands, and you know, my experience was 1:36:17.120 --> 1:36:19.560 what I figured everybody in the music business had to 1:36:19.640 --> 1:36:23.519 be just as crazy about music as I was, And 1:36:23.640 --> 1:36:24.960 when I got to in m I found out that 1:36:25.040 --> 1:36:26.880 was absolutely not the case. There were a lot of 1:36:26.920 --> 1:36:30.040 people like Jeff Arroff and Steve Baker were obsessed with music, 1:36:30.520 --> 1:36:32.160 But there are a lot of people who just ended 1:36:32.240 --> 1:36:34.600 up in the music business because they were good salespeople 1:36:34.720 --> 1:36:38.400 or marketing people or advertising people who didn't live and 1:36:38.479 --> 1:36:41.400 breathe this stuff the way you and I do. UM. 1:36:43.439 --> 1:36:47.280 So I feel lucky that I could transition straight in. 1:36:47.400 --> 1:36:51.519 You know, I'm still entirely consumed by music all day long, 1:36:52.320 --> 1:36:56.960 doing you know, writing books about music and consulting for artists, selling, 1:36:57.200 --> 1:37:01.400 buying and selling this stuff, researching this stuff. Um, some 1:37:01.479 --> 1:37:05.000 of the people who weren't as obsessed with it as 1:37:05.040 --> 1:37:07.040 you say, found other careers. Some of them have been 1:37:07.160 --> 1:37:12.320 very successful. Some of them are working very hard h 1:37:12.560 --> 1:37:17.080 to reinvent themselves. And you know, I think this golden 1:37:17.160 --> 1:37:20.479 age that we lived through, we were very fortunate to 1:37:20.520 --> 1:37:24.599 live through. But the business, as you know better than anybody, 1:37:25.240 --> 1:37:29.680 has changed dramatically. Okay, speaking of which, you wrote a 1:37:29.720 --> 1:37:32.479 book about the jazz clubs of the forties and fifties, 1:37:33.479 --> 1:37:35.960 and of the books you've written, that is the most 1:37:36.160 --> 1:37:40.120 riveting because it is a window into a world that 1:37:40.200 --> 1:37:42.840 I don't only happened before I was born, that I 1:37:43.000 --> 1:37:46.120 really wasn't aware of, and I certainly know Q and 1:37:46.160 --> 1:37:49.720 a lot of big jazz ers, etcetera. My question, I 1:37:49.760 --> 1:37:53.760 always viewed the rock era as the Renaissance. Okay, there 1:37:53.840 --> 1:37:57.479 was only one Renaissance. They painted and sculpted after that, 1:37:57.880 --> 1:38:00.160 but there was one Renaissance. And then I'm reading your 1:38:00.200 --> 1:38:03.439 book and I'm saying, well, maybe you know sounds change. 1:38:03.680 --> 1:38:07.240 What is your perspective of the continuum and where we 1:38:07.320 --> 1:38:18.080 are today? I don't know, but I subscribe to the mhm. 1:38:23.000 --> 1:38:28.280 Different kinds of music had different periods of time where 1:38:28.320 --> 1:38:33.720 there was a renaissance. I find myself fairly uncompelled by 1:38:34.080 --> 1:38:37.160 most of the music happening today, but I don't dive 1:38:37.280 --> 1:38:42.439 that deep into it, and I think that's generational. UM. 1:38:43.160 --> 1:38:46.479 I think the jazz clubs and the jazz are I 1:38:46.520 --> 1:38:49.800 wrote about was absolutely a cultural renaissance and a societal 1:38:49.920 --> 1:38:54.360 renaissance at a time where, um, as I discovered talking 1:38:54.400 --> 1:38:58.200 to Quincy and Sunny Rawlins, racism started the first breakdown 1:38:58.240 --> 1:39:02.519 in America. I don't know what's coming next. I think 1:39:02.560 --> 1:39:06.479 it's kind of a fool's game to try and predict this. Um. 1:39:10.120 --> 1:39:12.759 I would have never thought that at eighty Bob Dylan 1:39:12.800 --> 1:39:16.599 would make be making great provocative records. I'm really into 1:39:16.640 --> 1:39:20.320 a British folksinger named Shirley Collins who is also in 1:39:20.400 --> 1:39:22.680 her early eighties and released an album last year that 1:39:22.840 --> 1:39:25.280 was probably my favorite record along with the Dylan album 1:39:25.320 --> 1:39:28.160 of the year to eight year old. I mean, who 1:39:28.200 --> 1:39:33.080 would have saw that coming? Um? You never know where 1:39:33.160 --> 1:39:37.080 the next great thing is coming from. I think anybody 1:39:37.120 --> 1:39:39.840 who thinks they've got this all figured out may for 1:39:40.000 --> 1:39:45.479 a short period of time, but the next great thing 1:39:45.520 --> 1:39:49.240 can be around the corner. Swim generally pretty optimistic. Guy 1:39:49.280 --> 1:39:53.080 about that? Okay, from the internet era, which will say 1:39:53.240 --> 1:39:55.840 post two thousand, in the hip hop era, which really 1:39:55.880 --> 1:39:59.599 started in the eighties but gained significant traction in the nineties, 1:40:00.400 --> 1:40:03.320 is any of that stuff worth something? And are you 1:40:03.479 --> 1:40:09.240 involved in Internet? I'll answer your second question first. I'm 1:40:09.320 --> 1:40:12.160 not involved in it. Generally. I find if I stick 1:40:12.240 --> 1:40:14.960 to my lane, I do really well, and if I 1:40:15.040 --> 1:40:19.680 start trying to go deep into something I don't have 1:40:19.800 --> 1:40:25.080 a personal affinity for, like hip hop, it can be 1:40:25.120 --> 1:40:29.320 a fraud situation. There are lots of hip hop records 1:40:29.360 --> 1:40:33.360 worth a lot of money. There's a label called Doubt 1:40:33.520 --> 1:40:36.360 d a u pe in England who releases limited edition 1:40:36.720 --> 1:40:39.720 hip hop records that almost instantly sell out and go 1:40:39.880 --> 1:40:45.400 for five thousand dollars um. A lot of early hip 1:40:45.439 --> 1:40:48.080 hop stuff, a lot of sample stuff, goes for a 1:40:48.240 --> 1:40:51.439 lot of money. A lot of punk records from the 1:40:51.640 --> 1:40:57.640 nineties goes go for a lot of money. UM. A 1:40:57.760 --> 1:41:01.519 lot of these limited edition record store day records or 1:41:02.400 --> 1:41:05.320 uh you know, an artist like Taylor Swift will put 1:41:05.360 --> 1:41:07.960 out a record where a certain retailer will get a 1:41:08.040 --> 1:41:10.479 certain vinyl color and they'll make a thousand of them 1:41:10.560 --> 1:41:12.360 go for a lot of money. So yeah, there's there's 1:41:12.880 --> 1:41:17.880 a lot of current and recent records that are very collectable. Okay, Now, 1:41:17.920 --> 1:41:20.320 I remember in the nineties you bid in an auction 1:41:20.560 --> 1:41:23.680 you've got a role in the steam room at Seinfeld, 1:41:23.800 --> 1:41:27.200 and you gave me a script from that episode that 1:41:27.240 --> 1:41:30.000 you pulled off the table. My, so I know that 1:41:30.120 --> 1:41:34.920 it always hasn't been records. So how far afield wire 1:41:34.960 --> 1:41:37.920 you go, and you certainly do posters and other music 1:41:38.000 --> 1:41:42.160 related stuff, how do you find that stuff? Assess that stuff? 1:41:42.200 --> 1:41:44.439 I mean a record, there's there's one free wheel and 1:41:44.479 --> 1:41:48.800 there various iterations, but there's an endless supply of posters 1:41:48.920 --> 1:41:53.200 and signatures and all kinds of stuff. There's a lot 1:41:53.280 --> 1:41:56.160 of the signatures are fake, a huge percentage. Like if 1:41:56.200 --> 1:41:59.479 you go on I think there are something like twelve 1:42:00.040 --> 1:42:05.840 authentic American Beatles albums that have been signed service twelve, 1:42:06.640 --> 1:42:11.240 Yet if you go on email you'll find numerous ones. Uh, 1:42:11.400 --> 1:42:15.160 it's an extremely fraught areas. So what I bring to 1:42:15.280 --> 1:42:20.240 it is nearly fifty years of actually more than fifty 1:42:20.320 --> 1:42:23.400 years of looking at this stuff and expertise and the 1:42:23.439 --> 1:42:32.160 ability to research it um and discern whether something is genuine, 1:42:32.400 --> 1:42:36.280 and you begin to develop an internal algorithm for Yeah, 1:42:36.439 --> 1:42:40.280 that's rarer than it looks. I'll buy it and spend 1:42:40.360 --> 1:42:42.880 some time sitting with it and letting it marinate my 1:42:43.040 --> 1:42:46.080 mind and researching it and seeing what I can find 1:42:46.160 --> 1:42:48.760 out and contextualizing it. And that's the thing I enjoy 1:42:48.840 --> 1:42:54.320 it the most about what I do, um, you know, 1:42:54.600 --> 1:42:59.120 finding I bought one of John Coltrane's saxophones at an 1:42:59.160 --> 1:43:02.519 auction sold by his family, and I was able to 1:43:02.600 --> 1:43:07.160 find records he played it on live records. I was 1:43:07.240 --> 1:43:09.760 able to find photographs of him using it. I was 1:43:09.800 --> 1:43:12.680 able to find posters from the Japanese tour where he 1:43:13.240 --> 1:43:18.519 played it. I bought on eBay a Japanese magazine that 1:43:19.120 --> 1:43:22.640 the guy who had been the band boy Uh in 1:43:22.760 --> 1:43:25.479 the seventies discovered pictures he had taken of the tour, 1:43:26.160 --> 1:43:30.040 and this Japanese magazine had thirty pictures, and I was 1:43:30.120 --> 1:43:34.439 able to find three or four with the saxophone or 1:43:35.080 --> 1:43:39.800 the saxophone case on a rack in a train with 1:43:39.920 --> 1:43:42.880 Coltrane sitting next to it. I love that detective work 1:43:42.960 --> 1:43:45.160 aspect of it, and I think That's where I can 1:43:45.200 --> 1:43:48.759 add value to things as well. I love the research. 1:43:48.840 --> 1:43:51.679 I love figuring out if things are authentic or not authentic. 1:43:51.800 --> 1:43:56.479 I love figuring out is this pressing actually what somebody 1:43:56.600 --> 1:44:01.040 selling as it as or have they mischaracterized it? Uh. 1:44:01.600 --> 1:44:04.880 Once a year I find something on eBay. Now, I 1:44:04.960 --> 1:44:08.720 may spend two hours a day on email or an 1:44:08.760 --> 1:44:10.639 hour a day on email. Once a year I'll find 1:44:10.720 --> 1:44:13.840 something really incredible. But you've got to put in a 1:44:14.080 --> 1:44:16.960 lot of hours to get that, to get to that point. 1:44:17.600 --> 1:44:21.000 I bought the guitar that Bob Dylan played at the 1:44:21.160 --> 1:44:27.880 Clinton inauguration on eBay, which had been offered with a 1:44:29.520 --> 1:44:31.800 five thousand or six thousand dollars buy it now, and 1:44:31.880 --> 1:44:35.320 nobody bought it, and uh, I was able to buy it, 1:44:36.000 --> 1:44:39.080 research it, get letters from Gibson proving it was real, 1:44:39.680 --> 1:44:43.000 do a match of the tortoiseshell headstock with one of 1:44:43.040 --> 1:44:47.280 the foremost rare guitar experts in the world. And I 1:44:47.400 --> 1:44:51.519 just love the treasure hunting aspect of it, the research aspect. Okay, 1:44:51.600 --> 1:44:54.000 so you you bought the sacophone, you bought the guitar, 1:44:54.120 --> 1:44:56.240 you went on an adventure which all of us music 1:44:56.360 --> 1:44:59.160 nerds know is cool. But in the back of your mind, 1:44:59.360 --> 1:45:01.800 are you wild being an asset to sell an adding 1:45:01.960 --> 1:45:07.000 value to that asset? Sometimes yes, Sometimes it's something I 1:45:07.080 --> 1:45:10.519 want for myself. I sold the Coltrane saxophone twice, actually 1:45:10.640 --> 1:45:13.960 sold it once, bought it back from the guy, kept 1:45:14.000 --> 1:45:17.559 it about ten years, and just recently sold it again. Um. 1:45:18.520 --> 1:45:21.720 The Dylan guitar, I've had for ten years or so. 1:45:22.240 --> 1:45:27.680 I've loaded it to various museum exhibitions. Uh. At some 1:45:27.800 --> 1:45:31.599 point I'll sell it um, but I like having it. Uh. 1:45:31.960 --> 1:45:35.520 Sometimes I'm buying something just to sell, like that felonious 1:45:35.560 --> 1:45:39.400 Monk program or you know, all day I'm buying stuff. 1:45:39.439 --> 1:45:43.320 We're selling stuff, okay, but things like posters, programs, other 1:45:43.479 --> 1:45:47.360 merch How do you find that? How invested are you 1:45:47.479 --> 1:45:52.160 in that? And what's that like relative to vinyl? Some 1:45:52.280 --> 1:45:55.599 of those things go for crazy money. There's some stuff 1:45:55.640 --> 1:45:59.040 I collect myself, which you can see on the walls 1:45:59.120 --> 1:46:03.320 of my UM office here. Some of the stuff I'm 1:46:03.360 --> 1:46:05.960 buying just to sell. Some of the stuff I'm buying 1:46:06.040 --> 1:46:11.280 to keep. Some of the stuff I'm buying to think about. Uh. 1:46:13.479 --> 1:46:17.000 It runs the gamut um. But people are there. There 1:46:17.080 --> 1:46:21.880 are crazy collectors for posters. There are crazy collectors for autographs. 1:46:22.360 --> 1:46:28.560 There are crazy collectors for uh handbills. Um. I have 1:46:29.000 --> 1:46:34.000 a wammy bar that popped off of Jimmy Hendricks's guitar 1:46:34.200 --> 1:46:38.280 framed on the wall and went straight into the lap 1:46:38.400 --> 1:46:42.520 of a guy who was sitting in the pit photographing 1:46:42.560 --> 1:46:49.280 Hendricks for Rolling Stone. Um. It really, it's just all 1:46:49.320 --> 1:46:52.519 over the place, and sometimes I think I want something, 1:46:52.640 --> 1:46:56.439 but somebody comes along. I really like placing things in 1:46:56.520 --> 1:47:00.560 the right collections, and sometimes somebody who's got an incredible 1:47:00.600 --> 1:47:03.680 collection will just be desperate to buy something for me, 1:47:03.760 --> 1:47:05.320 and I think, you know, I've got it. I've had 1:47:05.320 --> 1:47:07.479 it for ten years. I love it, but time to 1:47:07.560 --> 1:47:09.360 let that move on. I'm very conscious of the fact 1:47:09.439 --> 1:47:12.320 that I'm not gonna at some point this stuff will 1:47:12.400 --> 1:47:15.599 leave me either dead or alive. So it's good when 1:47:15.600 --> 1:47:18.439 you can make somebody happy. So these worlds are always small, 1:47:18.560 --> 1:47:21.720 like the music business itself. How many of I mean 1:47:21.720 --> 1:47:23.519 you maybe at the pinnacle, but how many of you 1:47:23.920 --> 1:47:25.760 are there out there who are making a full time 1:47:25.840 --> 1:47:29.479 business or spending a lot of time buying and selling 1:47:29.760 --> 1:47:33.840 music memorabilia. There are a lot of people doing that, 1:47:34.400 --> 1:47:36.599 but I think there aren't a lot of people doing 1:47:36.640 --> 1:47:41.360 it at my level. Who can just you know, somebody's 1:47:41.400 --> 1:47:43.920 got this has happened to me a year ago. Somebody's 1:47:43.920 --> 1:47:47.800 got a Jim Morrison handwritten manuscript of Strange Days. I'll 1:47:47.840 --> 1:47:50.200 buy that, and I will pay you a lot of 1:47:50.280 --> 1:47:53.360 money for that, and I will sit on that and 1:47:54.400 --> 1:47:58.960 let it marinate and wait till the right person comes along, 1:47:59.160 --> 1:48:02.080 and not feel expert to flip it. There aren't a 1:48:02.120 --> 1:48:04.479 lot of people doing it at my level. I don't 1:48:04.479 --> 1:48:06.519 want to. I didn't mean that. I'm just trying to 1:48:06.520 --> 1:48:10.280 get a landscape. Are the buyers? Do you ultimately know 1:48:10.400 --> 1:48:12.720 all the buyers are? Really the buyers are all over 1:48:12.760 --> 1:48:15.280 the world, their individuals. They might buy once and forget 1:48:16.000 --> 1:48:18.439 or as I say, you know, well let's stay there. 1:48:18.760 --> 1:48:22.960 Are they the same hungry people? No, there's there's a 1:48:23.040 --> 1:48:25.680 lot of people who are repeat customers who I deal with, 1:48:25.960 --> 1:48:28.280 and who I get something and pick up the phone 1:48:28.400 --> 1:48:30.160 or send an email saying I just got this. I 1:48:30.200 --> 1:48:32.880 thought you might be interested. There are a lot of 1:48:32.920 --> 1:48:36.560 people who might buy two things you hear from me, 1:48:36.760 --> 1:48:40.240 but I know who they are, and there are fifty 1:48:40.600 --> 1:48:42.840 of its people I've never dealt with before buying something, 1:48:43.520 --> 1:48:48.960 and you establish a price, certainly on the stuff. Okay, 1:48:49.400 --> 1:48:51.679 how much is buy it as it is on eBay? 1:48:51.840 --> 1:48:55.360 How much is auction and how much when someone's interested 1:48:55.920 --> 1:49:01.479 is they're haggling. Almost always I set a price for 1:49:01.600 --> 1:49:04.639 something and just wait for the right person come along. 1:49:05.080 --> 1:49:08.800 I'm a patient guys. I've said, if somebody wants to 1:49:08.920 --> 1:49:12.320 make me an offer and makes a compelling case, and 1:49:12.640 --> 1:49:16.120 it's in the ballpark and I've had the thing for 1:49:16.200 --> 1:49:18.080 a long time and I'm not attached to it, I'll 1:49:18.120 --> 1:49:23.400 consider it. But a lot of these things, you know, 1:49:23.439 --> 1:49:25.800 when you get to the memorabilia, you're never going to 1:49:25.880 --> 1:49:30.040 see another one. And I like having a website and 1:49:31.120 --> 1:49:36.960 eBay listings with stuff people can't find everywhere else. So 1:49:37.439 --> 1:49:42.040 I'm not generally a motivated seller. And you know, typically 1:49:42.120 --> 1:49:45.920 what happens is you put up something really big and 1:49:47.160 --> 1:49:49.439 you might get a i'll pay you fifty right now. 1:49:50.880 --> 1:49:52.200 And as a friend of mine said, that's what the 1:49:52.240 --> 1:49:54.800 delete button has made for those people don't even get 1:49:54.840 --> 1:50:01.719 a response. Um uh, if it's god. I'm a huge 1:50:01.760 --> 1:50:04.320 stores collector and this is the one thing I'm missing 1:50:04.520 --> 1:50:07.360 and I can't afford it, but I could pay you 1:50:07.479 --> 1:50:10.840 off over a year. Sure, no problem. You want to 1:50:10.880 --> 1:50:14.920 help people out and you talk a couple of times 1:50:14.920 --> 1:50:18.360 about buying stuff back. How often does that happen and 1:50:18.439 --> 1:50:24.000 what is the person's motivation? Doesn't happen very often. In 1:50:24.080 --> 1:50:27.280 the case of the Coltrane saxophone, someone was starting a 1:50:27.320 --> 1:50:30.080 new business and wanted some capital and it was a 1:50:30.080 --> 1:50:33.800 big number. In a couple of weeks ago, I bought 1:50:34.040 --> 1:50:37.360 three great things back from a regular customer line who 1:50:37.520 --> 1:50:41.040 had was actually writing Ruby an email. It was very 1:50:41.080 --> 1:50:44.680 apologetic that he wanted was inquiring about selling this stuff back, 1:50:44.720 --> 1:50:47.639 as if I would be somehow offended, and I wasn't 1:50:47.800 --> 1:50:51.160 in any way. I was excited about buying these three 1:50:51.240 --> 1:50:55.519 things back. And he wanted to buy UH a very 1:50:55.880 --> 1:51:01.759 rare photograph UH of baseball players in the Negro leagues. 1:51:02.520 --> 1:51:05.880 And so you know, people have differing collecting priorities, and 1:51:05.960 --> 1:51:08.679 he was trying to fund fund the purchase of something 1:51:08.760 --> 1:51:10.639 else that I was thrilled to get the stuff back. 1:51:10.840 --> 1:51:13.400 And how do you establish a price for getting it back, 1:51:15.320 --> 1:51:17.599 just as you would establish a price for buying something. 1:51:18.680 --> 1:51:21.599 But in this case, because the guy was a good customer, mind, 1:51:22.280 --> 1:51:24.559 I paid him more than I ordinarily would, but enough 1:51:24.600 --> 1:51:27.320 that I could make money enough to make it worth 1:51:27.400 --> 1:51:30.840 my wife, so less than he boughted from you. Yes, 1:51:31.520 --> 1:51:33.960 you know, you begin to develop an internal algorithm for 1:51:34.080 --> 1:51:37.400 this pricing. Okay, so tell us about writing books and 1:51:37.680 --> 1:51:41.800 that part of your business. I've done three hundred and 1:51:41.840 --> 1:51:46.040 one Essential Rock Records, which is basically classic vinyl porn 1:51:46.880 --> 1:51:51.360 with I interviewed some recording artists that I admire about 1:51:52.400 --> 1:51:56.000 records that were life changing to them. The second one 1:51:56.160 --> 1:51:59.400 was a History of the Stooges that is centered around 1:51:59.640 --> 1:52:02.760 a my collection of students memorabilia and that of a 1:52:02.840 --> 1:52:07.120 friend of mine, and uh series of interviews I did 1:52:07.160 --> 1:52:09.960 with Iggy Pop talking about the Stooges. And the third 1:52:10.040 --> 1:52:12.960 one was the Jazz Club Book. Each of them have 1:52:13.080 --> 1:52:16.080 different origin stories. I never had any aspiration to do 1:52:16.760 --> 1:52:20.120 a book whatsoever. Uh, but I have a friend who 1:52:20.120 --> 1:52:22.679 hasn't art book story, Lee Kaplan, who worked at Rano 1:52:22.800 --> 1:52:25.360 with me, and one day he showed me this book 1:52:25.960 --> 1:52:28.240 of rare photography books called the Book of a hundred 1:52:28.240 --> 1:52:31.320 and one Books. And this person had assembled these and 1:52:31.400 --> 1:52:36.080 possibly rare photography books and written an essay about each 1:52:36.120 --> 1:52:40.519 book and had a photograph of the cover and then 1:52:40.520 --> 1:52:42.479 a couple of spreads from the book, and I went, Wow, 1:52:42.600 --> 1:52:44.920 that would be great to do for records. And I 1:52:45.040 --> 1:52:46.560 kind of thought about it, but I thought, you know, 1:52:46.640 --> 1:52:49.600 I don't have a burning passion to do this. And 1:52:49.720 --> 1:52:51.760 a friend of mine, Brian raps Are caught in a 1:52:51.840 --> 1:52:57.479 customer who had written a punk rock flyer book called 1:52:57.560 --> 1:53:01.080 Fucked Up and photocopied. It was one of these pet 1:53:01.200 --> 1:53:04.400 rock sensations. This book just went crazy. It's in something 1:53:04.479 --> 1:53:07.360 like its twentieth printing and has sold nearly a hundred 1:53:07.400 --> 1:53:11.200 thousand copies about punk flyers. And he was in my 1:53:11.280 --> 1:53:14.960 house one day looking through some new flyers and told 1:53:15.000 --> 1:53:16.920 me that his book had been such a success the 1:53:16.960 --> 1:53:19.720 publisher had given him an imprint and if I had 1:53:19.720 --> 1:53:23.320 any book ideas, he wanted to hear them. And I said, well, 1:53:23.360 --> 1:53:25.200 I've been carrying this one around to do a book 1:53:25.200 --> 1:53:28.760 of a hundred and one classic vinyl records, a rip 1:53:28.800 --> 1:53:31.240 off of this book of a hundred one photography books. 1:53:31.760 --> 1:53:34.719 And told him what it was and what I added 1:53:34.800 --> 1:53:37.360 to it was the interviews with artists. He goes, I'll 1:53:37.400 --> 1:53:40.960 get your book deal, and he did, and so we 1:53:41.080 --> 1:53:45.080 did it together, and uh interviewed Graham Nash, Iggy, and 1:53:45.200 --> 1:53:49.080 Suzanne Vega, some other artists I had worked with Johnny 1:53:49.160 --> 1:53:52.959 Maher people. I knew it had these lush photo spreads 1:53:53.520 --> 1:53:56.960 of the earliest pressing for the artists country of origin, 1:53:57.360 --> 1:54:01.160 totally nerdy, and some of those are septionally rare records. 1:54:01.640 --> 1:54:03.400 And then I did a spread on my collection of 1:54:03.479 --> 1:54:06.840 Jimmie Hendricks's records, a few other things like that band 1:54:06.920 --> 1:54:11.200 album covers spread. It was very successful. It's in its 1:54:11.439 --> 1:54:15.360 fourth printing now, and it was a lot of work, 1:54:15.520 --> 1:54:18.560 but it was fun and people really enjoyed it, and 1:54:18.920 --> 1:54:21.599 uh so I was happy to do it, and I thought, 1:54:21.760 --> 1:54:24.000 I'm never doing another book again, and it was too 1:54:24.080 --> 1:54:27.560 much work. Glad I did it. And I had this 1:54:27.760 --> 1:54:31.120 collection of stooges memorabiliy, a very large collection, and another 1:54:31.160 --> 1:54:34.360 friend of mine had an equally large collection of stuff 1:54:34.360 --> 1:54:36.760 that nobody had ever seen. He kept bugging me to 1:54:36.840 --> 1:54:39.960 do a book, and I kept saying, no, not interested. 1:54:40.920 --> 1:54:43.960 And one day I kind of had this idea where 1:54:44.080 --> 1:54:46.920 I worked with Iggy at A and M and we 1:54:47.040 --> 1:54:49.600 become very friendly, and I knew he was this great 1:54:49.680 --> 1:54:51.960 rack on tour and I thought, I know what to do. 1:54:52.360 --> 1:54:56.520 We'll pick a hundred things from our Stooges memorabilia that 1:54:56.680 --> 1:55:00.400 nobody's ever seen, and we'll go interview Iggy and just 1:55:00.520 --> 1:55:03.480 record what he has to say about each thing, and 1:55:03.600 --> 1:55:07.160 that will be the book. And uh, my friend said great, 1:55:07.960 --> 1:55:11.200 and uh so I got in contact with Iggy, who 1:55:11.280 --> 1:55:14.440 had really liked my hunder one Rock Records book and 1:55:14.520 --> 1:55:18.400 really liked what I said about the Stooges, included two 1:55:18.440 --> 1:55:21.240 Stooges albums, and we worked out a deal with him 1:55:21.280 --> 1:55:24.200 to do it. And the idea was we would go 1:55:24.320 --> 1:55:29.440 to my aunt or Miami and where he lives, and 1:55:30.440 --> 1:55:34.040 for eight hours show him these pictures and record his recollections. 1:55:35.160 --> 1:55:37.880 And my I thought, you know, maybe to have five 1:55:38.160 --> 1:55:40.560 minutes to say about each thing, and then we'd fill 1:55:40.640 --> 1:55:42.960 in what the things he didn't remember with a little 1:55:42.960 --> 1:55:45.280 bit of captions, and that would be It would be simple. 1:55:47.160 --> 1:55:54.680 So I prepared this page document of questions to ask 1:55:54.800 --> 1:55:59.160 him about based on these images. And the idea was 1:55:59.240 --> 1:56:00.920 we were going to surprise. I said, you know, he 1:56:01.160 --> 1:56:03.680 wouldn't see these things before it, and a couple of 1:56:03.760 --> 1:56:05.720 days before he said, you know, i'd really like to 1:56:05.800 --> 1:56:08.880 see these things, okay, So I fixed him to him 1:56:09.280 --> 1:56:11.640 and he sent me an email saying, this is fantastic. 1:56:11.760 --> 1:56:14.720 I'm really excited about this. I've never seen almost any 1:56:14.800 --> 1:56:18.400 of these things before. Great. So my friend Johan, who 1:56:18.400 --> 1:56:20.120 I was doing this with, and I who had the 1:56:20.200 --> 1:56:23.200 other collection, I went down to Miami and we sat 1:56:23.280 --> 1:56:26.440 in this little again has two houses. One is his workhouse, 1:56:27.160 --> 1:56:28.920 and that's where we went. And sat in this little 1:56:29.240 --> 1:56:32.680 thatched roofed hut by a creek in the backyard of 1:56:32.760 --> 1:56:36.800 his place, and uh, you know, we got through the 1:56:36.840 --> 1:56:40.560 pleasant trees and I showed him the first thing, and 1:56:41.120 --> 1:56:43.640 he just started talking. And I'm looking at my watch 1:56:43.720 --> 1:56:46.080 and it's fifteen minutes and I've got eight hours to 1:56:46.200 --> 1:56:49.040 talk to him, and I'm doing the math, going this 1:56:49.160 --> 1:56:52.960 is never gonna work. So I interrupted him and I said, listen, 1:56:53.640 --> 1:56:56.200 we gotta keep these answers pretty short or else I'm 1:56:56.240 --> 1:56:58.400 going to be more than eight hours. Uh no, I 1:56:58.400 --> 1:57:01.200 don't want that. And he and we're very reflective about 1:57:01.240 --> 1:57:04.520 the stooges. Ron Ashton, who was the guitar player, had died. 1:57:04.920 --> 1:57:08.120 Scott Ashton was in poor health, and I think he'd 1:57:08.160 --> 1:57:10.800 been thinking a lot about them, and I was a 1:57:10.920 --> 1:57:13.360 comfortable person to talk to because he knew me from 1:57:13.520 --> 1:57:17.080 the record company experience in my previous book. And I 1:57:17.200 --> 1:57:19.120 think he figured, you know, if I'm ever going to 1:57:19.240 --> 1:57:22.000 talk about this period in depth, which he never had, 1:57:22.920 --> 1:57:24.680 this is the situation where I'm going to do it. 1:57:26.120 --> 1:57:29.280 But the thing I hadn't planned on was this unbelievable memory. 1:57:30.760 --> 1:57:32.520 So I'm in the second and third thing and we're 1:57:32.560 --> 1:57:34.880 at forty five minutes, and I stopped him and I said, listen, 1:57:36.400 --> 1:57:38.440 I think I'm gonna change plans. I think we're gonna 1:57:38.520 --> 1:57:40.600 just do an oral history of the Stooges and and 1:57:40.760 --> 1:57:43.400 show you this stuff and and work around that at 1:57:43.480 --> 1:57:46.280 some point I may may need to do fill in interviews. 1:57:46.320 --> 1:57:47.960 And he was like fine, I mean, he was having 1:57:48.400 --> 1:57:52.400 a ball. So we talked for eight or nine hours, 1:57:52.840 --> 1:57:57.000 and uh, it was I've never I've talked to a 1:57:57.120 --> 1:57:59.600 lot of artists. I've never met anybody with the recall 1:57:59.720 --> 1:58:02.200 he which when you factor in the fact that the 1:58:02.240 --> 1:58:07.280 guy abused himself as much as anybody, is almost unfathomable. Um. 1:58:07.920 --> 1:58:09.720 So you'd show him something and he'd say, all right, 1:58:09.760 --> 1:58:12.480 here's what I remember and give you whatever. He'd remember 1:58:13.720 --> 1:58:16.280 that was maybe fifty or sixty percent at the time, 1:58:16.480 --> 1:58:19.160 and then another twenty percent at the time. He'd say, 1:58:20.840 --> 1:58:22.840 you can almost see the gears turning in his head. 1:58:22.880 --> 1:58:25.920 And he'd say, all right, I don't remember much, but 1:58:26.680 --> 1:58:30.120 and he'd tell you and then maybe ten or fifteen 1:58:30.160 --> 1:58:32.680 percent a time he'd got no idea, don't remember anything. 1:58:32.880 --> 1:58:35.080 So you knew he wasn't bullshitting. You knew he was 1:58:35.120 --> 1:58:39.200 telling you the truth. And UH, I got home and 1:58:39.280 --> 1:58:41.560 just but this is unbelievable. And there were a few 1:58:41.640 --> 1:58:44.040 filling kind of things I did, and we had this 1:58:44.200 --> 1:58:48.480 abundance of visuals and that became the book. And that's 1:58:48.560 --> 1:58:52.080 actually uh. That was published by third man Jack White's 1:58:52.120 --> 1:58:55.080 company and Ben Blackwell, who was one of the guys 1:58:55.080 --> 1:58:57.240 who runs it as a Stooges fanatic, and so that 1:58:57.360 --> 1:59:00.920 was great. And in August they will really a paperback 1:59:01.080 --> 1:59:05.120 version of that with a bunch of additional content. Uh. 1:59:05.480 --> 1:59:08.240 And and Henry Rawlins and I, who was a Stooges 1:59:08.320 --> 1:59:11.240 super fan, interview each other about why the Stooges are 1:59:11.320 --> 1:59:16.120 so important. UM, and then I thought, Okay, I'm really done. 1:59:16.160 --> 1:59:18.160 I am never doing this again. It is just too 1:59:18.280 --> 1:59:23.040 much work for me. And then I went. I was 1:59:24.040 --> 1:59:27.080 introduced to a guy who had a huge collection of 1:59:27.280 --> 1:59:33.080 jazz memorabilia who was in San Diego, and the memorabilia 1:59:33.200 --> 1:59:38.000 was in his safe deposit box. So h two or 1:59:38.080 --> 1:59:40.400 three times I would go down to this guy's house. 1:59:40.640 --> 1:59:44.480 We would drive to the Bank of America in San Diego. 1:59:45.200 --> 1:59:47.080 We would go into one of those little rooms that 1:59:47.240 --> 1:59:49.680 you can go into take your safe deposit box, and 1:59:49.840 --> 1:59:52.920 he would bring out a cart with this series of 1:59:52.960 --> 1:59:56.040 safe deposit boxes. And he had just bought stuff for 1:59:56.280 --> 1:59:59.920 thirty or forty years and dropped him in the boxes 2:00:00.120 --> 2:00:02.400 as he was buying. So it was in no The 2:00:02.800 --> 2:00:07.600 organization was as he bought stuff. So I'm going through 2:00:07.680 --> 2:00:10.400 these boxes, like here's a Charlie Parker autograph, I want that. 2:00:11.360 --> 2:00:13.680 Here's a couple of Dave Brubek tickets. I don't care 2:00:13.720 --> 2:00:17.120 about those. Oh look, here's a photo from Birdland with 2:00:17.280 --> 2:00:21.120 Count Basie and some fans. I want that. And I started. 2:00:21.160 --> 2:00:24.120 So these jazz clubs in the forties and fifties had 2:00:24.560 --> 2:00:27.040 in house photographers who would take a picture of you 2:00:28.040 --> 2:00:30.720 and your girlfriend or your day or your party at 2:00:30.800 --> 2:00:33.200 your table. They'd go in the back room and develop 2:00:33.280 --> 2:00:35.040 it and at the end of the evening you could 2:00:35.080 --> 2:00:37.800 buy it for a buck in a little custom portfolio 2:00:38.440 --> 2:00:42.040 that had Birdland artwork. And these things were just fantastic. 2:00:42.080 --> 2:00:46.320 I've never seen one of them before. And uh so, 2:00:47.480 --> 2:00:49.680 as I'm going through this stuff, I've got twenty thirty, 2:00:49.800 --> 2:00:52.360 forty fifty of these things, all from different jazz clubs 2:00:52.400 --> 2:00:56.360 around America, I'm thinking, I'm in his business for forty 2:00:56.440 --> 2:00:58.440 years at the time. For five years, I've never seen 2:00:58.520 --> 2:01:01.320 a single one of these. These have to be impossibly rare, 2:01:01.440 --> 2:01:07.960 and they're really evocative of these clubs. So um, I 2:01:08.080 --> 2:01:10.960 end up buying nearly two hundred from him, along with 2:01:11.000 --> 2:01:14.040 a bunch of other stuff. And while I'm going the 2:01:14.120 --> 2:01:17.520 first day, as I'm looking at these things, going he 2:01:17.600 --> 2:01:20.640 should be in a book somewhere and they're just too good. 2:01:21.440 --> 2:01:25.040 So I um piled these things up on a bookcase 2:01:25.160 --> 2:01:27.080 and just was staring at them, and I engaged in 2:01:27.160 --> 2:01:30.160 this staring contest with them that we want to be 2:01:30.280 --> 2:01:32.400 a book. No, I said, I'd never do another book. 2:01:33.200 --> 2:01:36.240 People need to see these And as I started googling, 2:01:36.280 --> 2:01:38.840 I realized there are no books of these things, and 2:01:39.080 --> 2:01:42.120 occasionally online you can find one or two of them, 2:01:42.160 --> 2:01:44.600 but there are no collections of them. And it's really 2:01:44.720 --> 2:01:48.080 black history. You see black people white people. It's the 2:01:48.120 --> 2:01:51.360 birth of selfie culture. You see Louis Armstrong posing with 2:01:51.440 --> 2:01:57.520 a bunch of white fans or Count Basie Um, and 2:01:57.640 --> 2:02:01.520 I just eventually they wore me down, and I decided 2:02:01.600 --> 2:02:04.360 these things needed to be seen. So I thought, Okay, 2:02:04.400 --> 2:02:06.640 you know, I know a fair amount of my jazz, 2:02:06.680 --> 2:02:09.600 but I'm certainly no expert on jazz clubs. What do 2:02:09.720 --> 2:02:13.360 I do? So I read forty books. I interviewed Quincy 2:02:13.480 --> 2:02:15.680 Jones and Sonny Rawlins about what it was like to 2:02:15.760 --> 2:02:20.360 play in these clubs at the time. And I kind 2:02:20.400 --> 2:02:23.560 of casually said to Quincy, what was the racial situation? 2:02:23.720 --> 2:02:27.080 It was fantastic, everybody got along. This was where black 2:02:27.120 --> 2:02:29.760 people and white people could hang out together. Was the 2:02:29.840 --> 2:02:34.360 first place that happened. Uh, that's shocking. I've never read 2:02:34.400 --> 2:02:38.120 anything about that. Uh. And he said to me, you know, 2:02:38.280 --> 2:02:40.840 racism would have been over in the fifties if people 2:02:40.880 --> 2:02:44.520 had paid attention to the jazz guys. So I'm talking 2:02:44.640 --> 2:02:48.640 to Sonny Rollins. It's just it's unfathomble to me that 2:02:48.760 --> 2:02:51.640 he could interview these people, you know, I used Quincy. 2:02:52.160 --> 2:02:54.960 I used my mo leverage to interview Quincy, and then 2:02:55.000 --> 2:02:57.040 I used the fact that I had interviewed Quincy to 2:02:57.080 --> 2:03:00.320 get to Sonny Rawlins. It was wonderful, and I said, so, 2:03:00.520 --> 2:03:03.240 Sonny Quincy told me, you know, thing about the racism, 2:03:03.440 --> 2:03:05.760 and it was like he'd been waiting for seventy years 2:03:05.800 --> 2:03:08.600 for somebody to ask him this question. It's absolutely true. 2:03:09.280 --> 2:03:11.680 You know, nobody paid attention to who you, what color 2:03:11.760 --> 2:03:16.280 you were, the musicians, the people. Uh. In the audiences, 2:03:16.440 --> 2:03:18.640 everybody got along. Now you might go outside and it 2:03:18.760 --> 2:03:21.600 wasn't the same way, but in these clubs, and so 2:03:21.760 --> 2:03:24.200 that became a kind of through line in this book. 2:03:24.720 --> 2:03:26.600 And the next interview, I thought, Okay, I want to 2:03:26.640 --> 2:03:29.200 talk to somebody who was in the audience. And you know, 2:03:29.480 --> 2:03:31.840 to be at a jazz club at the end of 2:03:31.880 --> 2:03:34.880 the forties, you're ninety years old, and Sunny Rollins and 2:03:34.920 --> 2:03:38.760 Quincy were both sneaking in. So I found Dan Morgan Stern, 2:03:38.880 --> 2:03:41.800 who is the pre eminent jazz historian in the world, 2:03:42.720 --> 2:03:46.400 who's now about nine two, and he came to America 2:03:46.440 --> 2:03:49.360 as a refugee from Nazi Germany, was obsessed with jazz, 2:03:50.000 --> 2:03:53.080 started uh going to these clubs when he was seventeen, 2:03:53.240 --> 2:03:57.160 sneaking in and because he was European, uh, he was 2:03:57.200 --> 2:03:59.440 a very close observer to it, and the musicians were 2:03:59.520 --> 2:04:01.560 very interesting and talking to um as he was interested 2:04:01.600 --> 2:04:03.640 in talking to musicians, and he ends up being the 2:04:03.800 --> 2:04:07.240 editor of Downbeat, has written all these many books, and 2:04:07.400 --> 2:04:10.520 runs the Ructor's Jazz Institute for forty years. So I 2:04:10.600 --> 2:04:12.720 could talk to Sonny and Quincy about what it was 2:04:12.800 --> 2:04:15.360 like on stage and Dan what it was like to 2:04:15.440 --> 2:04:18.400 be in the audience, and it was just amazing. And 2:04:18.480 --> 2:04:23.400 then I spoke to Jason Moran, who's a younger pianist 2:04:23.440 --> 2:04:26.240 and composers, the head of the Kennedy Center Jazz program 2:04:26.320 --> 2:04:31.160 and Arthur Genius Grant winner and is obsessed with jazz 2:04:31.240 --> 2:04:33.880 history and he had never seen a single one of 2:04:33.920 --> 2:04:37.200 these and they just blew his mind. So I got 2:04:37.720 --> 2:04:39.480 his perspective. And then I spoke to a woman named 2:04:39.520 --> 2:04:43.360 Robin Given was a cultural critic, Pulitzer Prizeman and culture 2:04:43.400 --> 2:04:47.120 critic for the Washington Post, but has great at deconstructing photographs. 2:04:48.360 --> 2:04:50.560 So I keep saying to my wife, I am never 2:04:50.720 --> 2:04:54.840 doing this again. And the asterix is unless I can 2:04:54.880 --> 2:04:59.720 find somebody to do pass the work a lot of 2:04:59.760 --> 2:05:01.600 the lifting, because it's just a lot of work. But 2:05:01.840 --> 2:05:04.600 you know they're all successful, and that's in its second 2:05:04.640 --> 2:05:06.520 printing as well. And the last thing I'll say is 2:05:06.600 --> 2:05:10.080 I feel like with the Students Book and the Jazz Book, 2:05:10.440 --> 2:05:14.800 they're important in the sense that I got Eggy to 2:05:14.880 --> 2:05:17.280 talk about the history of the band who invented punk 2:05:17.400 --> 2:05:20.520 rock in more depth than anybody ever has, and I 2:05:20.680 --> 2:05:22.920 doubt he will ever do it again. So I feel 2:05:22.960 --> 2:05:26.160 like I documented something that wouldn't have been documented had 2:05:26.200 --> 2:05:30.560 I not done it. And the same with the Jazz book. 2:05:30.640 --> 2:05:34.680 I mean to find somebody who was there at the 2:05:34.800 --> 2:05:37.840 time in ten years is going to be impossible just 2:05:38.000 --> 2:05:42.440 because of the age demographics of it. So I feel 2:05:42.480 --> 2:05:46.560 like I got that story down and documented this scene 2:05:46.760 --> 2:05:52.000 and the racial situation before it became too late. Now 2:05:52.080 --> 2:05:56.200 these are all very well done, expensive coffee table books. 2:05:56.240 --> 2:05:58.960 Are these just labors of love or is this a business? 2:06:00.280 --> 2:06:03.640 It is a total labor of Look when my first 2:06:03.720 --> 2:06:06.200 book came out hunder One Essential Rock Rats, I said 2:06:06.200 --> 2:06:08.720 to my wife, I've now mastered making five dollars an Now, 2:06:09.880 --> 2:06:12.360 because it had four printings, I've revised that I've now 2:06:12.480 --> 2:06:16.840 mastered making twenty dollars an now, but no, this is 2:06:16.880 --> 2:06:19.160 a labor of love and getting it down while I 2:06:19.200 --> 2:06:23.839 can be gotten down. Now, what is it typical day like? Finally, 2:06:24.560 --> 2:06:27.560 and is it like being in the music business? We're 2:06:27.680 --> 2:06:32.200 essentially two seven or you set limits on it. So 2:06:32.640 --> 2:06:35.040 give us what is going on every day in the 2:06:35.120 --> 2:06:38.520 life of Jeff Gold. I try to set limits. It's 2:06:38.640 --> 2:06:42.200 nearly impossible. Um. I wake up and come downstairs. I 2:06:42.240 --> 2:06:44.520 make my wife coffee and I make me tea. I 2:06:44.640 --> 2:06:47.040 get on my iPad. I look at the top selling 2:06:47.120 --> 2:06:50.440 records on he made the day before, just as kind 2:06:50.480 --> 2:06:54.280 of a wake up. I've got three websites with memorabilia 2:06:54.360 --> 2:06:56.960 that I look at every day, and once every six 2:06:57.040 --> 2:07:01.360 months i'd buy something for them. I look at Expecting Rain, 2:07:01.480 --> 2:07:06.960 which is an incredible aggregator of Bob Dylan links from 2:07:07.000 --> 2:07:10.080 the day before and general music links from the day before. 2:07:11.440 --> 2:07:16.440 I look at the New York Times, the h l 2:07:16.520 --> 2:07:20.520 A Times, and uh, maybe a couple of other news sites. 2:07:20.720 --> 2:07:24.240 I wake up, I have breakfast, I come upstairs. I 2:07:24.320 --> 2:07:27.560 started answering email. Generally it will be hey, I've got this, 2:07:27.680 --> 2:07:30.760 I want to sell because people find something they think 2:07:30.840 --> 2:07:32.720 might be rare, google it, and I show up high 2:07:32.720 --> 2:07:37.000 in the results. One out of twenty turns out to 2:07:37.080 --> 2:07:40.960 be interesting, and I end up buying one out of thirty. Maybe. Um, 2:07:41.880 --> 2:07:44.760 I've sold a couple of things. I emailed a person 2:07:45.640 --> 2:07:49.400 letting them them know we're shipping once a week these days. Uh, 2:07:49.880 --> 2:07:53.320 but that I've received payment and it will go out. Um. 2:07:53.920 --> 2:07:56.400 My assistant comes one day a week. I pulled the 2:07:56.520 --> 2:07:59.400 orders for her. She boxes and chip stuff. She takes 2:07:59.400 --> 2:08:03.680 photographs and template stuff on my wid website eBay. I 2:08:04.360 --> 2:08:07.880 might write those things up, do a lot of deep 2:08:07.960 --> 2:08:10.720 research into a project or two I have going on. 2:08:11.960 --> 2:08:16.600 I might get a call about an archive. Uh. Six 2:08:16.760 --> 2:08:19.040 or seven o'clock, my wife is tearing me away from 2:08:19.080 --> 2:08:21.200 the computer, going it's time for dinner. It's time for dinner. 2:08:21.280 --> 2:08:24.440 I meditate a couple of times a day, try to 2:08:24.480 --> 2:08:26.240 go out to lunch once a day, just to force 2:08:26.320 --> 2:08:29.440 myself to leave my computer, because left to my own devices, 2:08:29.520 --> 2:08:31.960 I can spend way too much time on this stuff. 2:08:32.840 --> 2:08:36.000 And I'll read them a rock book, or watch a 2:08:36.120 --> 2:08:41.720 music documentary, or read the paper or sometimes occasionally a 2:08:41.800 --> 2:08:46.960 non rock book, go to bed and what is your 2:08:47.040 --> 2:08:49.240 holy grail one of the one or two things you're 2:08:49.280 --> 2:08:54.840 looking to get, whether available, runavailable. Happily. I don't have 2:08:54.920 --> 2:08:56.920 any holy grails, but I have some holy grails that 2:08:56.960 --> 2:09:01.680 I own. Okay, what are those? I have one of 2:09:01.760 --> 2:09:05.080 Dylan's handwritten manuscripts Do I Want You, which is my favorite, 2:09:05.480 --> 2:09:07.320 one of my favorite Dylan songs that I have one 2:09:07.360 --> 2:09:12.560 for absolutely Sweet Marie. And I have uh the manuscript 2:09:12.640 --> 2:09:15.720 for this Wheels on Fire. So those are holy grails 2:09:15.760 --> 2:09:20.040 for me. I have, as I said, about twenty five 2:09:20.080 --> 2:09:23.880 of Hendrix's records. Those two Dylan records or holy grails 2:09:23.960 --> 2:09:29.760 for me? Uh? Got a great Coltrane poster from the 2:09:29.840 --> 2:09:33.080 sixties on my wall. I've got a signed Beatles program 2:09:34.000 --> 2:09:38.880 from the first US tour. I've got a times error 2:09:39.000 --> 2:09:43.920 changing first pressing signed to me. Uh. Do you use 2:09:43.960 --> 2:09:51.040 stuff that Dylan? Yeah? Do you have a relationship with Dylan? No? 2:09:51.760 --> 2:09:56.120 I met him one time. Oddly enough. There's a place 2:09:56.160 --> 2:10:01.480 called the Brentwood Country martin about a mile from my Yeah, ready, chick. 2:10:01.920 --> 2:10:05.520 I've been going there since I was four, over sixty years. 2:10:06.440 --> 2:10:09.600 I probably when I was a kid would go there 2:10:09.800 --> 2:10:13.720 four times a week, and in nine seventy seven. I'm 2:10:13.760 --> 2:10:17.120 there eating my Ready chick and I glanced up and 2:10:17.200 --> 2:10:21.440 there's Bob Dylan wearing a Ready leather jacket with stringy 2:10:21.520 --> 2:10:26.000 hair and three kids and they go into the toy store, 2:10:26.040 --> 2:10:29.680 which is my childhood toy store, and I am in shock, 2:10:30.720 --> 2:10:32.080 and so I think, do I have time to go 2:10:32.160 --> 2:10:34.240 home and get an album? No? So I go to 2:10:34.360 --> 2:10:37.400 my car and I get a pad of paper and 2:10:37.600 --> 2:10:40.200 a pen, and I wait about half an hour and 2:10:40.360 --> 2:10:43.000 Dylan comes out with kids and he's holding a child's 2:10:43.040 --> 2:10:46.200 twirling baton with a little ribbon around it that he 2:10:46.280 --> 2:10:48.360 must have bought his a So his kids were going 2:10:48.400 --> 2:10:51.840 to a birthday party or something. And I summoned up 2:10:51.840 --> 2:10:54.240 my courage and I said, excuse me, Bob, I hate 2:10:54.280 --> 2:10:57.680 to bother your autograph. And he looks at me and 2:10:57.800 --> 2:10:59.800 holds up this baton with his right hand and goes, 2:10:59.880 --> 2:11:04.040 I can't sign yeah, And I go, well, I'm really 2:11:04.120 --> 2:11:07.320 sorry to bother you, but your music has meant so 2:11:07.440 --> 2:11:11.440 much to me through the years. Uh, you know, thanks 2:11:11.520 --> 2:11:15.640 for everything, you know, and he says, what's your favorite song? 2:11:15.760 --> 2:11:18.160 And why I go like a rolling stone because it 2:11:18.240 --> 2:11:22.040 kind of marks the Yeah, the journey from acoustic to 2:11:22.080 --> 2:11:25.520 electric and Tom Wilson's production. I just acquitted myself very 2:11:25.640 --> 2:11:28.280 quickly and showed him I do what I was talking about. 2:11:28.800 --> 2:11:30.520 I said, you're going to Japan, aren't you. For the 2:11:30.560 --> 2:11:32.640 first time, he goes, how do you know that? Well, 2:11:32.720 --> 2:11:34.680 I work in a record store and we get Billboard 2:11:34.720 --> 2:11:37.280 magazine and I saw an article about it. And he 2:11:37.360 --> 2:11:39.360 sat and chatted with me for about I don't know 2:11:39.480 --> 2:11:43.080 five minutes, and his kids are running around, and eventually 2:11:43.160 --> 2:11:45.280 he looks at them and goes, I gotta go, and 2:11:45.400 --> 2:11:48.280 I hold out this piece of paper in this pen 2:11:48.760 --> 2:11:51.200 and he lifts up his hand with the baton again 2:11:51.240 --> 2:11:53.880 as if say, sorry, my my hands are full, and 2:11:53.960 --> 2:11:58.480 he walks away, which today is such an amazing story 2:11:58.520 --> 2:12:01.080 because I got my five minutes with Dylan. You wouldn't 2:12:01.080 --> 2:12:02.720 sign an autograph for me, but I've got, you know, 2:12:02.960 --> 2:12:06.720 lyric manuscripts and appraised as archives and all this stuff, 2:12:06.760 --> 2:12:09.720 So an autograph is the least thing I need. So 2:12:10.360 --> 2:12:12.840 if someone wants to check your stuff out, whether just 2:12:13.000 --> 2:12:15.480 for their own interest or to buy stuff, how do 2:12:15.600 --> 2:12:20.920 they find your stuff? On Twitter and Instagram? I am 2:12:21.160 --> 2:12:24.600 at record Mecca. I don't look at it. My assistant 2:12:24.640 --> 2:12:27.720 does uh. The way to get through to me is 2:12:27.760 --> 2:12:30.280 through the website Record Meca r e c O R 2:12:30.360 --> 2:12:33.680 D M e c c A dot com and I 2:12:33.840 --> 2:12:37.480 write about issues of interest to collectors, very nerdball stuff 2:12:37.840 --> 2:12:43.800 at Record Mecca dot com slash blog. Okay, Jeff, good 2:12:43.880 --> 2:12:46.160 to see you. Thanks so much for taking the time. 2:12:46.840 --> 2:12:49.440 This is something people are aware of now we've gone 2:12:49.480 --> 2:12:54.280 to the absolute source. Thanks again for doing this my pleasure, Bob. 2:12:54.600 --> 2:12:57.040 Until next time, This is Bob left Sex