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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob Leftet's podcast. My guest

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Speaker 1: today is Cruly, a legend in the pian era. Mr

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Speaker 1: Electra Records, Pano Vision, and so much more. Jack Holsman, Jack,

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Speaker 1: it's a pleasure to be here. Okay, first question, why

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Speaker 1: is there no kay On Jack? Because the name was

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Speaker 1: originally Jacob and my dad, I'm a junior, Jack Holsman.

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Speaker 1: It's Jacob Holsman, and my dad said that when he

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Speaker 1: was going to school up in Portland, Jacob was a

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Speaker 1: Jewish name, so he decided to get rid of that

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Speaker 1: in terms of talking to other students that he named

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Speaker 1: himself Jack and I inherited on my birth certificate is

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Speaker 1: Jacob Easton Holsman the second But you are Jewish and

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Speaker 1: were raised Jewish? Correct? Yeah? I was Okay, So he

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Speaker 1: was doing it, Uh, just so he wouldn't experience anti

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Speaker 1: semitism in Portland. What was he doing in Portland? Well,

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Speaker 1: the whole family had come across the United States, had

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Speaker 1: settled in Denver, and at one point I thought that

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Speaker 1: Portland was new, fresh open territory, and uh, they opened

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Speaker 1: up second hand stores there. Okay, we'll get back to that.

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Speaker 1: But h in our conversations previous to this, you said, well,

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Speaker 1: you didn't know whether you could schedule because you were

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Speaker 1: doing work for Warner Music. What exactly, how exactly and

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Speaker 1: what are you doing involved with Warner today? Well, what

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Speaker 1: happened was that I was with the company for twenty

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Speaker 1: three years, and I knew I couldn't leave the company

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Speaker 1: until we had a solid distribution system. And I had

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Speaker 1: made a promise to myself to quit my at midlife.

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Speaker 1: I saw a movie once, uh, and it was a

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Speaker 1: story of about a guy who decide that he wants

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Speaker 1: to stop at midlife and figure out what he's doing

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Speaker 1: and then pick up and go from that. And I

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Speaker 1: thought that was in uh, incredibly smart, And so I

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Speaker 1: knew that I wanted to stop in my forties and

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Speaker 1: take how many years to do whatever I wanted. There

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Speaker 1: were things I longed to do. I was a pilot.

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Speaker 1: I loved airplanes. I like to fly airplanes. I love

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Speaker 1: to scuba dive, I wanted to travel. I just wanted

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Speaker 1: to have time off and see what comes into my

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Speaker 1: perspective and figure out what I'm going to do later.

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Speaker 1: I did that for seven years, uh, and then in

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Speaker 1: the end of that seventh year, I UH called the

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Speaker 1: chairman of the company and I said to him, I'm

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Speaker 1: ready to come back. And he said, what do you

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Speaker 1: want to do? And I said, I want to come back,

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Speaker 1: not in the music group, but as as a technologist,

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Speaker 1: your chief technology. As he said, You're hired. And then

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Speaker 1: we got into cable and a whole bunch of interesting

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Speaker 1: things and I was there as part of that group,

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Speaker 1: and when we had problems, I knew how to solve them. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so you're rehired at Warner is the chief technologist? What

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Speaker 1: does that ultimately leave you? That ultimately led me into

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Speaker 1: cable TV. I had a friend who had done a

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Speaker 1: video which I thought was quite amazing, and Uh, I said,

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Speaker 1: I think there's something here. One of the things that

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Speaker 1: happened that was material was that somebody gave me a

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Speaker 1: film of his performing a song and I thought it

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Speaker 1: was wonderful, and I got it up on one of

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Speaker 1: the UH Warner cable channels and there was excitement about that,

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Speaker 1: and then that turned itself into MTV over time, and

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Speaker 1: that was just wonderful because suddenly the record companies had

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Speaker 1: an outlet for making people aware of their records and

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Speaker 1: promoting their records without having to go through radio stations

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Speaker 1: and all the nonsense that went on with getting your

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Speaker 1: thing on the air, and it was a more complete

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Speaker 1: emotional picture or emotional experience of what the song was.

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Speaker 1: So MTV was was was the happy outcome of what

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Speaker 1: I had started. I got it to the right people

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Speaker 1: at the right time, and it just happened. So from

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Speaker 1: there you go to Piano Vision. You go through many iterations,

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Speaker 1: but before we go literally you're still working for the

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Speaker 1: company today. Yes, that's a longer story, but what happened

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Speaker 1: was that after we got the MTV up, Warner Communications

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Speaker 1: became Warner Communications. They immediately acquired a company called Pani

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Speaker 1: Vision at the recommendation the man who was running the

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Speaker 1: uh the studios. And the thing about Panavision was that

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Speaker 1: it made cameras. It was very profitable at least cameras

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Speaker 1: and lenses to all of the picture companies. The picture

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Speaker 1: companies had sent their equipment back. And what happened at

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Speaker 1: Panavision is that it was upgraded. There were new lenses,

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Speaker 1: everything was guaranteed. They rented it, you had somebody standing

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Speaker 1: by to fix it if it needed fixing. That was

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Speaker 1: all wonderful then suddenly they were spending a lot of

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Speaker 1: money and nobody could find out what the money was

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Speaker 1: being what the money was being spent on. And since

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Speaker 1: I knew something about cinematography, Steve Ross, who was the

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Speaker 1: chairman of the company, asked me to go out and

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Speaker 1: find out what the hell was going on. So I

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Speaker 1: went to Panavision and I sat with the man who

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Speaker 1: was in charge of the company, Bob got Schalk. He

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Speaker 1: was very tightly woven. I couldn't get any answers. And

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Speaker 1: then he took me into room where all of the

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Speaker 1: pan division equipment was showing, and I looked around and

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Speaker 1: I saw a camera that had a red light flashing,

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Speaker 1: and it had it had film in it, but I

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Speaker 1: didn't hear anything. So I said, is that a silent camera?

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Speaker 1: He said yes. I said, in effect, what you did

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Speaker 1: was didn't try to muffle the noise. You tried to

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Speaker 1: eliminate it before it happened. He said, exactly right, And

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Speaker 1: that was the Panaflex. So suddenly movie making change. Everybody

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Speaker 1: wanted a Panaflex because it was a smallish camera, it

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Speaker 1: could be moved around and you didn't hear it. It's

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Speaker 1: it saved all kinds of time and money. Gotchawk was

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Speaker 1: running it. He was running it moderately well, but then

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Speaker 1: he was killed by a living male lover. And I

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Speaker 1: got a call from Steve Ross saying, we've heard that

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Speaker 1: Gotcha talk was was killed. Can you find out what's

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Speaker 1: going on and try to come up with something that

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Speaker 1: you think we should do. So I was up at Atari,

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Speaker 1: where I was in a where I was a director

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Speaker 1: because I had been involved in the evaluation, the technical

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Speaker 1: evaluation of that company. And I called into the got

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Speaker 1: Shocks UH secretary and I said, Michael, and he said

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Speaker 1: it's true. And I said, what's happening? He said, everybody's

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Speaker 1: going around crazy with rumors. I said, I'd like you

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Speaker 1: to stay off the phone for five minutes. I need

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Speaker 1: to think, and he said I'll do that. And I

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Speaker 1: as he stayed off the phone for five minutes, I

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Speaker 1: asked myself, do I really want to take over this company?

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Speaker 1: Do I think I can do that job? Well? I

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Speaker 1: have some fun, it's so totally different from anything I've

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Speaker 1: ever done, and yet it's in the business that I

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Speaker 1: admire so much. And I called him back and I said, well,

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Speaker 1: tell everybody I'm taking over the company. And I'll be

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Speaker 1: there at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. And you picked the

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Speaker 1: executives you think I need to meet with first before

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Speaker 1: we meet with everybody. He said fine. And then I

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Speaker 1: called Steve Ross and I said it's true. And he said,

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Speaker 1: you have any ideas? I said, I've taken over the company,

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Speaker 1: and he said, what can I do for you? I said,

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Speaker 1: don't call me cash my checks and he said, agreed,

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Speaker 1: will do that. I said, I need I'll talk to

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Speaker 1: you when I think I've got my arms wrapped around it.

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Speaker 1: But these are people I don't know, and I'm going

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Speaker 1: to have to earn my way into their confidence, and

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Speaker 1: that's going to take time. And that's what we did,

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Speaker 1: and I took over the company. We brought in all

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Speaker 1: of the people from around the world who were releasing

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Speaker 1: agents for us, and uh. They all were helpful. And

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Speaker 1: when I was in the company two or three months,

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Speaker 1: I could see the defects and what we needed to

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Speaker 1: do and where we needed to go. And we had

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Speaker 1: optics that were too old and some optics that weren't honest.

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Speaker 1: So we got it all fixed. And three years later

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Speaker 1: Ross decided he didn't want the company anymore, and he

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Speaker 1: was going to sell it. I had money and was

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Speaker 1: willing to buy it with a people, with people I

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Speaker 1: could raise money from. But he never sold any company

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Speaker 1: to any person who would run it on the grounds

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Speaker 1: that you knew stuff that he didn't know, and so

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Speaker 1: you had an advantage. So he turned me down and

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Speaker 1: that was it. And Uh. Eventually I left Warner Communications

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Speaker 1: and stayed out while I took a vacation that I

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Speaker 1: had promised myself. I had seen a movie called Holiday

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Speaker 1: with Carrie Grant. That was a wonderful movie about a

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Speaker 1: guy who was from the wrong side of the tracks

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Speaker 1: when he was on the rights I had of the

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Speaker 1: tracks and beginning to make some money if he made enough,

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Speaker 1: he wanted to take a break for a period of time,

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Speaker 1: figure out where he was going and what his life

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Speaker 1: was all about. And at nineteen years old, I saw

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Speaker 1: sat in the back of the theater and I said, God,

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Speaker 1: that makes so much sense. I don't want to forget that,

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Speaker 1: and I didn't so that. When my contract was up,

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Speaker 1: UH and I was asked to renew, I said, look,

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Speaker 1: you can put a lecture with Asylum. You've got Geffen,

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Speaker 1: You've got all of these good people. You don't need

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Speaker 1: me anymore. I need time for myself. And I had

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Speaker 1: discovered Hawaii and a holiday trip, and I knew that's

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Speaker 1: where I wanted to be. And I moved to Hawaii

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Speaker 1: and I lived there for seven plus years and did

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Speaker 1: everything I wanted to do, so all the people I

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Speaker 1: wanted to see and meet and have all of the adventures,

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Speaker 1: and I I loved my life. But I knew it

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Speaker 1: was time for me to go back to work and

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Speaker 1: called Steve Ross and that's when we got into the

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Speaker 1: stage of being the chief technologist. But let's go back

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Speaker 1: to the beginning. So your parents were they born in

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Speaker 1: the US? Were they born in the so called Old Country? No,

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Speaker 1: they were born in the United States. My mother was

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Speaker 1: born in Cincinnata. My father was born in Portland. Where else? Okay,

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Speaker 1: So they met in Portland, Um, actually they did. My

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Speaker 1: mother came there with her mother, a stell Sternberger, who

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Speaker 1: was a real personality. She had a program, a weekly

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Speaker 1: political analysis program on CBS network which was broadcast on

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Speaker 1: Saturday mornings. And that was a big piece of my

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Speaker 1: actually going into music because when I asked to sit

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Speaker 1: in the studio with her, they said, oh no, you

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Speaker 1: can't do that. But you can sit in the control

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Speaker 1: room and in the control room where all the lads

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Speaker 1: and earned tables and uh everything. It was used in broadcasting,

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Speaker 1: and I was intensely curious about it, and I'd ask

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Speaker 1: a lot of questions and they'd explained it to me.

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Speaker 1: So that when I was reading Life magazine and saw

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Speaker 1: an article uh that showed the inventor or the creator

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Speaker 1: for CBS Labs of the LP record, I knew that

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Speaker 1: it was going to be a winner, and that small

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Speaker 1: independent labels could start because we would do stuff that

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Speaker 1: was not related to the major labels at all. I

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Speaker 1: thought I would do folk music in baroque music. Baroque

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Speaker 1: music was too expensive for me. I only had six

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Speaker 1: hundred dollars, and so I tried folk music. Glenn Yarborough,

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Speaker 1: who turned out to be a star later and a

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Speaker 1: member of the Limelighters, was one of my first early artists.

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Speaker 1: And at the end of that third year, St. John's

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Speaker 1: College was an am using school. It it's had a

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Speaker 1: curriculum that did not use textbooks. It used the original books.

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Speaker 1: If you were studying geometry, you went all the way back. Well,

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Speaker 1: let's just let's go back. We'll get back to St. John's.

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Speaker 1: So you grew up in Portland. No, I didn't grow up.

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Speaker 1: I grew up in New York. My father came to

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Speaker 1: New York UH after his after his supremat he came

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Speaker 1: to medical school at Harvard. And after medical school at Harvard, UH,

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Speaker 1: he was taken in by Mound Sinai and was at

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Speaker 1: Mount Sinai for a number of years, and then he

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Speaker 1: went into private practice. And he called up my mother

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Speaker 1: our writer or a letter or whatever did and then

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Speaker 1: they started dating, and eventually I emerged. And how many

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Speaker 1: kids in the family? True? My brother and I my

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Speaker 1: brother Keith, who's the oldest. I'm the oldest. I'm And

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Speaker 1: to what degree be the oldest child? Were you in

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Speaker 1: the embodiment of their hopes and dreams? My father didn't

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Speaker 1: think I was very smart, and he said that, look,

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Speaker 1: I know you're gonna have a trouble finding a way

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Speaker 1: to make a living. So I'll buy a drug store

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Speaker 1: for you in this building. We'll put it up and

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Speaker 1: then you run the drug store, and we split the

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Speaker 1: profits at the end of the year. And I said,

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Speaker 1: that's not what I have in mind. He said, what

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Speaker 1: did you have in mind? I said, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: but I'm going to think on it. And Uh, I

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Speaker 1: started a little record shop for folk music and as

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Speaker 1: the office for a record company I named Electra because

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Speaker 1: I loved the name. Electra was one of the one

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Speaker 1: of the outer muses in the Solar system. And but

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Speaker 1: I wanted Electra with a C. Was. I wanted a heart,

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Speaker 1: more dramatic K. And so the lecture came with a K.

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Speaker 1: And I found my first folk singer, Geane Ritchie, and

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Speaker 1: she we made a wonderful album together. You could record

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Speaker 1: the artist in their own home. I had my own

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Speaker 1: tape recorder by that time, six hundred dollar Magna order

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Speaker 1: and a microphone. And so what we do was we

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Speaker 1: would set up the rooms, hang hang things on the

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Speaker 1: walls to keep the echoic nature of a room from

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Speaker 1: happening into the microphone. And I did that with a

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Speaker 1: whole bunch of artists, Oscar Brand, Frank Warner, uh And

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Speaker 1: slowly these were tenanth LPs. They kind of grew and

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Speaker 1: grew and grew. I still wasn't making money. I was

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Speaker 1: making debt. In nineteen fifty five, I was sitting in

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Speaker 1: a at a home with some friends and they were

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Speaker 1: having everybody brought their guitar and they're singing songs. And

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Speaker 1: they gave this guitar to this guy who was an actor,

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Speaker 1: and he just blew me away. It was Theodore Bickel. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He was doing Yiddish songs, he was doing Israeli songs,

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Speaker 1: he was doing Russian folk songs. And I knew those

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Speaker 1: genres had big audiences in the major cities. So I

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Speaker 1: sat theo down and we talked, and we made a

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Speaker 1: record deal together, and uh, we started making these albums.

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Speaker 1: And in the nifty six when twelve inch records happened,

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Speaker 1: we added more music to the album as they came

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Speaker 1: out as twelve inch LPs, and suddenly we were selling records. Okay,

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Speaker 1: let's go back. Uh, you're growing up. What kind of

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Speaker 1: kid are you? You have a lot of friends. Are

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Speaker 1: more of an introvert? I was a loner. I had

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Speaker 1: one friend named Adam Pinsker. Adam was smart and kept

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Speaker 1: me kind of straightened out. I was kind of loose

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Speaker 1: and banging at all kinds of edges. But when I

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Speaker 1: had something I love to do, I did it very well.

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Speaker 1: And when I went to St. John's College, which was

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Speaker 1: this great book school which Ahmed Errigan had gone to

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Speaker 1: eight years earlier than me. When we found out that

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Speaker 1: we had both gone to this very obscure school where

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Speaker 1: there are only one hundred students in it for all

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Speaker 1: all grades, big hugs and kisses because we had that

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Speaker 1: extremely important education and opportunity in hand. Why did you

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Speaker 1: go to St John's Because I had my only other

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Speaker 1: choice with another college. I had a promising date for

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Speaker 1: that weekend, so I they insisted upon an interview that weekend.

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Speaker 1: I said, the hell with it. I'll go to St.

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Speaker 1: John's whatever that is. I had no idea what I

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Speaker 1: was getting into what it turned out to be a

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Speaker 1: turning point in my life. And as I was there

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Speaker 1: and picking up some packages that I had sent to myself,

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Speaker 1: I noticed one to Adam Pinsker. He had also ended

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Speaker 1: up in this school. The child wildhood friend whom I

285
00:18:01,000 --> 00:18:04,479
Speaker 1: hadn't seen in years was in this school, and he

286
00:18:04,520 --> 00:18:07,840
Speaker 1: was enormous help to me. And so at what point

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Speaker 1: do you decide to start electra? Are you still at

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Speaker 1: St John's and don't you have a partner. I'm still

289
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Speaker 1: at St. John's. I had somebody who had come out

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Speaker 1: of the Navy who put up three hundred dollars and

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Speaker 1: they we were partners. Uh. He later didn't want to

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Speaker 1: be involved with this, and so I think I gave

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Speaker 1: a thousand dollars. I don't know where the hell I

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Speaker 1: got the thousand dollars, but I gave a thousand dollars

295
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Speaker 1: and he went his way, and I owned a hundred

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Speaker 1: percent of the company, but we were in about ninety

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars worth of fifty five debt before Theodore Bikail

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Speaker 1: the Theater or Pikail records between them sold about a

299
00:18:52,520 --> 00:18:56,399
Speaker 1: hundred thousand, but they were very profitable despite the fact

300
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Speaker 1: that they were very elaborately produced. Did you had a

301
00:18:59,040 --> 00:19:03,399
Speaker 1: Russian album? We had a book of liner notes. It

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00:19:03,520 --> 00:19:06,119
Speaker 1: wasn't liner notes on the back so much as it

303
00:19:06,200 --> 00:19:08,600
Speaker 1: was liner notes. Inside the album. We would have the

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Speaker 1: songs in Russian in a transliteration, which is what if

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Speaker 1: you want to sing along with us and can read English,

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Speaker 1: you might be able to sing with with theo uh

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Speaker 1: and then the English translation. And because they were so

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Speaker 1: complete and the covers were so good, we did well.

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Speaker 1: And I had very good suppliers. They were really generous

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Speaker 1: with me. I owed him ninety thousand dollars, but my

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00:19:36,160 --> 00:19:39,399
Speaker 1: strategy with them was not to put off paying them.

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Speaker 1: It was the opposite, to pay a small amount every

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Speaker 1: two weeks. So they saw a check coming every two weeks,

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Speaker 1: and the checks got bigger and bigger and bigger, and

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Speaker 1: then one day I wrote checks for ninety thousand dollars,

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00:19:51,920 --> 00:19:56,400
Speaker 1: paid them off and kept them. Okay. Now, I certainly

317
00:19:56,440 --> 00:19:59,480
Speaker 1: remember growing up with Theodore Maquel records, and he was

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Speaker 1: very definitely a star. The reason I bring this up

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00:20:02,840 --> 00:20:05,760
Speaker 1: is when you meet him in this party. Had he

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Speaker 1: been contacted by anybody else to make records? No, he wasn't.

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Speaker 1: He was an actor. He was on Broadway. I thought

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00:20:12,680 --> 00:20:16,960
Speaker 1: he could be in a record artist. And I said, Jim,

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Speaker 1: come on over to the house and we'll record some stuff.

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Speaker 1: We'll see how it goes. And then I played it

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Speaker 1: back for myself a lot, and I said, this isn't

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Speaker 1: this is an artist. I think that will help get

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Speaker 1: me there. And about five years after he had helped

328
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Speaker 1: get me there, I said THEO we're doing well. Now

329
00:20:38,240 --> 00:20:43,320
Speaker 1: you deserve a reward as an appreciation, and he said

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Speaker 1: what I said, Well, I'll sell you five percent of

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Speaker 1: the company for the low price of twenty dollars and

332
00:20:51,119 --> 00:20:53,679
Speaker 1: he bought it, and when the company was sold, he

333
00:20:53,760 --> 00:20:56,879
Speaker 1: walked out with five hundred thousand dollars. But that's what

334
00:20:57,000 --> 00:21:01,160
Speaker 1: I felt. I owed him. He was there at that time.

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00:21:01,240 --> 00:21:05,120
Speaker 1: You have a record deal. Today, record deals are very complicated,

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00:21:05,160 --> 00:21:08,000
Speaker 1: never mind the streaming era. What kind of deal did

337
00:21:08,000 --> 00:21:10,479
Speaker 1: you cut the O back in the fifties. Well, I

338
00:21:10,520 --> 00:21:15,040
Speaker 1: cut the deal of no money down and a royalty

339
00:21:15,200 --> 00:21:21,000
Speaker 1: of seven on the price on which all records were sold,

340
00:21:21,040 --> 00:21:23,800
Speaker 1: because there was a ten percent federal tax at that time,

341
00:21:24,440 --> 00:21:29,399
Speaker 1: instituted during the war. So that was it. The contracts

342
00:21:29,400 --> 00:21:33,080
Speaker 1: were very simple. We had very successful series. We had

343
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Speaker 1: a series we did. Another artist, Oscar Brand, who had

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00:21:37,640 --> 00:21:42,239
Speaker 1: a New York radio show every Sunday, came to me

345
00:21:42,320 --> 00:21:45,280
Speaker 1: one day and said, you know, I've been getting lyrics

346
00:21:45,280 --> 00:21:50,000
Speaker 1: and stuff with melodies from Air Force people. He said,

347
00:21:50,040 --> 00:21:52,040
Speaker 1: you know, we could make an Air Force album. I

348
00:21:52,040 --> 00:21:54,040
Speaker 1: said that kind of crazy, but let me listen to

349
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Speaker 1: the material. And the material was there, and so I said, okay,

350
00:21:59,119 --> 00:22:01,359
Speaker 1: we'll call at the y old Blue Johnder. We made

351
00:22:01,359 --> 00:22:04,600
Speaker 1: a record, we put it out, It did well, and

352
00:22:04,640 --> 00:22:07,840
Speaker 1: we sent a copy with a note to the unit

353
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Speaker 1: that bought all of the stuff for the stores that

354
00:22:11,160 --> 00:22:15,520
Speaker 1: they ran in each of the various locations the world,

355
00:22:16,200 --> 00:22:19,280
Speaker 1: and uh so we sent it and we didn't hear

356
00:22:19,320 --> 00:22:22,000
Speaker 1: from them, and then about three weeks later we got

357
00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:25,919
Speaker 1: a letter with an order for ten thousand copies. I

358
00:22:25,960 --> 00:22:27,719
Speaker 1: called him and said, do you guys make a mistake

359
00:22:27,760 --> 00:22:29,560
Speaker 1: with a zero? And they said, no, no, we think

360
00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:32,800
Speaker 1: we can sell ten thousand, and so that worked, and

361
00:22:32,800 --> 00:22:34,800
Speaker 1: then we did it for the Marines, we did it

362
00:22:35,080 --> 00:22:39,760
Speaker 1: for the Navy. We were doing well. No, nothing explosive,

363
00:22:39,840 --> 00:22:43,399
Speaker 1: but I was having fun and we were doing things

364
00:22:43,440 --> 00:22:47,080
Speaker 1: that other people didn't do. There was a moment when

365
00:22:47,680 --> 00:22:50,600
Speaker 1: I had there was nothing to record. I could not

366
00:22:50,680 --> 00:22:54,000
Speaker 1: find an artist I wanted just before Josh White, so

367
00:22:54,040 --> 00:22:56,960
Speaker 1: I said, what else can I record? I'm a Ham

368
00:22:57,080 --> 00:23:00,119
Speaker 1: radio operator and I have trouble with Morse code. So

369
00:23:00,200 --> 00:23:02,919
Speaker 1: I came up with a Morse code record that you

370
00:23:02,920 --> 00:23:05,840
Speaker 1: could play at thirty three, forty five, and seventy eight,

371
00:23:06,480 --> 00:23:10,520
Speaker 1: depending upon your how good you were in reading Morse code.

372
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Speaker 1: And we didn't sell it through record stores. We sold

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00:23:13,760 --> 00:23:18,320
Speaker 1: it through stores that had big mail order departments. Uh

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Speaker 1: and they were located throughout the country of Concord was

375
00:23:22,359 --> 00:23:25,080
Speaker 1: one of them. There were about eight, and he sold

376
00:23:25,119 --> 00:23:28,760
Speaker 1: about five a month, So I was selling three thousand

377
00:23:28,760 --> 00:23:31,400
Speaker 1: a month of what I couldn't give away in fol

378
00:23:31,520 --> 00:23:34,639
Speaker 1: in folk music, and I never forgot that it's not

379
00:23:34,680 --> 00:23:39,640
Speaker 1: always about recording music, which came later on and proved

380
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Speaker 1: to be the most dynamic restart in a record company

381
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Speaker 1: that I know of. Okay, now, one thing we know

382
00:23:47,800 --> 00:23:51,600
Speaker 1: in the era of independent distribution as opposed to branch distribution,

383
00:23:52,080 --> 00:23:55,440
Speaker 1: that it wasn't always so easy to get paid even

384
00:23:55,520 --> 00:23:58,439
Speaker 1: if the records sold. What was that experience like for you?

385
00:23:58,920 --> 00:24:03,359
Speaker 1: I didn't have that experience very badly. I picked good

386
00:24:03,400 --> 00:24:08,960
Speaker 1: people who actually paid me, but took their time about it,

387
00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:10,879
Speaker 1: which was one of the reasons why I didn't have

388
00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:15,120
Speaker 1: enough money to pay off the manufacturers and people who

389
00:24:15,119 --> 00:24:18,280
Speaker 1: made the records assemble the albums. But I knew that

390
00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:21,280
Speaker 1: had to end, and that was one of the sparking

391
00:24:21,400 --> 00:24:24,639
Speaker 1: points with which I always lived. I've got to find

392
00:24:24,680 --> 00:24:29,480
Speaker 1: an opportunity for independent labels to be able to supervise

393
00:24:29,560 --> 00:24:34,080
Speaker 1: and handle the last thing between the record and the

394
00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:38,879
Speaker 1: person who buys it, so you ultimately form wea But

395
00:24:38,960 --> 00:24:41,600
Speaker 1: staying with the Electra story tell us the story of

396
00:24:41,680 --> 00:24:47,120
Speaker 1: Josh White Josh White. I got a phone call one day.

397
00:24:47,480 --> 00:24:50,359
Speaker 1: A man said to me, I represent Josh White, and

398
00:24:50,480 --> 00:24:54,879
Speaker 1: Josh White can't get a record contract because he's been blacklisted.

399
00:24:55,600 --> 00:25:00,600
Speaker 1: Why was he blacklisted? He performed at a Russian a

400
00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:04,240
Speaker 1: concert to raise money for Russia and special arms for

401
00:25:04,320 --> 00:25:08,280
Speaker 1: Russia during the Second World War, so he was blacklisted.

402
00:25:08,560 --> 00:25:10,920
Speaker 1: I said, that's no reason to be blacklisted. They well,

403
00:25:10,960 --> 00:25:13,840
Speaker 1: they calling him a communist. I said, well, I call

404
00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:16,960
Speaker 1: him Josh White, and I would love to have him.

405
00:25:17,040 --> 00:25:18,760
Speaker 1: He said, I'm not going to send him over if

406
00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:21,000
Speaker 1: you're going to disappoint him. I said, if he can

407
00:25:21,040 --> 00:25:24,520
Speaker 1: sing the way I remember he could sing, then you

408
00:25:24,600 --> 00:25:27,359
Speaker 1: have no problem. And he came over and we sat

409
00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:29,560
Speaker 1: down and we got along very well. And then he

410
00:25:29,600 --> 00:25:32,679
Speaker 1: began to sing, and I realized that all of the

411
00:25:32,760 --> 00:25:36,440
Speaker 1: recordings that had been done mono records were done very cheaply,

412
00:25:37,080 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 1: and he didn't sound like Josh White. I thought I

413
00:25:39,359 --> 00:25:42,719
Speaker 1: could make him sound like Josh White. And we talked

414
00:25:42,720 --> 00:25:46,600
Speaker 1: about this, and then we did the We did an

415
00:25:46,600 --> 00:25:51,639
Speaker 1: album called John Henry, which was two LPs. One was

416
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:53,720
Speaker 1: just the story of John Henry and the other was

417
00:25:53,800 --> 00:25:57,120
Speaker 1: other songs from that same period and then we did

418
00:25:57,280 --> 00:26:00,720
Speaker 1: Josh at Midnight, which was the winner. We did it

419
00:26:00,840 --> 00:26:04,399
Speaker 1: late in the evening, a young lady would drop by.

420
00:26:04,920 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 1: We had to do it all with one microphone, so

421
00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:11,159
Speaker 1: I had I put the people where I thought they

422
00:26:11,240 --> 00:26:14,400
Speaker 1: belonged in front of the microphone and you know, take

423
00:26:14,560 --> 00:26:16,840
Speaker 1: something to the floor so that they wouldn't know we're

424
00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:19,760
Speaker 1: a step. We recorded, and that's when we made the

425
00:26:19,840 --> 00:26:24,080
Speaker 1: Josh White recording and it just took off. By take off,

426
00:26:24,119 --> 00:26:28,280
Speaker 1: I mean it was selling thirty thirty five thousand, which

427
00:26:28,600 --> 00:26:33,320
Speaker 1: for me was wonderful, and he got paid, so Josh

428
00:26:33,400 --> 00:26:36,480
Speaker 1: was easy to work with me. We made about seven

429
00:26:36,520 --> 00:26:39,680
Speaker 1: albums and all overtime. So this begs a question. Since

430
00:26:39,720 --> 00:26:42,200
Speaker 1: you were recording in Mono and you had the magnetone

431
00:26:42,760 --> 00:26:46,000
Speaker 1: tape recorder, were you also serving as the engineer and

432
00:26:46,040 --> 00:26:49,520
Speaker 1: do you have skills in that area. I did everything myself. Yes,

433
00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:53,600
Speaker 1: I was the engineer. I had the tape recorder, we

434
00:26:53,680 --> 00:26:58,000
Speaker 1: had the one microphone. They were placed strategically where they

435
00:26:58,040 --> 00:27:02,560
Speaker 1: should be in terms of distance. Uh. They were wonderfully cooperative.

436
00:27:02,640 --> 00:27:06,639
Speaker 1: But I recorded every album with my tape recorders. I

437
00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:10,439
Speaker 1: would go places by strapping my tape recorder onto the

438
00:27:10,600 --> 00:27:13,280
Speaker 1: spare seat behind me on my motor scooter. I didn't

439
00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:16,200
Speaker 1: have a car, but I motor scooted everywhere. I love

440
00:27:16,320 --> 00:27:20,000
Speaker 1: that motor scooter. Okay, So for those of us who

441
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:23,880
Speaker 1: are a little bit younger, we remember Elektra being one

442
00:27:23,920 --> 00:27:27,040
Speaker 1: of the two kings of folk music, the other being Vanguard.

443
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:29,879
Speaker 1: So as we start to hit the sixties and the

444
00:27:29,920 --> 00:27:33,560
Speaker 1: folk music eras begins with even Hood Nanny on DV,

445
00:27:34,160 --> 00:27:38,520
Speaker 1: you start putting out these folk records that start getting traction. Okay.

446
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:43,159
Speaker 1: What happened was by nineteen sixty, I thought folk music,

447
00:27:43,800 --> 00:27:46,399
Speaker 1: the five to eight hundred songs that were folk songs

448
00:27:46,400 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 1: had all been recorded. They had been played to death

449
00:27:49,320 --> 00:27:51,960
Speaker 1: on radio and people would sit there clapping their hands,

450
00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:54,960
Speaker 1: which had nothing to do with folk music. And I said,

451
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:58,320
Speaker 1: it's a different direction. If I find a folk artist

452
00:27:58,359 --> 00:28:01,600
Speaker 1: that I are, an artist like a Judy Collins, who

453
00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:05,719
Speaker 1: I think has has talent, I'll do that. But I

454
00:28:05,800 --> 00:28:08,720
Speaker 1: don't know what the hell to record, and I'm not

455
00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:12,840
Speaker 1: going to record crap. So I went back to my

456
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:16,840
Speaker 1: time every of recording the Morse Code, and I said,

457
00:28:17,720 --> 00:28:20,240
Speaker 1: I said, what's not out there that needs to be done?

458
00:28:21,080 --> 00:28:23,440
Speaker 1: Because I'm not going to make any piece of ship.

459
00:28:24,080 --> 00:28:26,400
Speaker 1: I thought, and I thought, and I came home one

460
00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:28,720
Speaker 1: day and I was closing the door. I heard a

461
00:28:28,760 --> 00:28:34,200
Speaker 1: car crash which was on my wife's TV. And I said,

462
00:28:34,240 --> 00:28:39,239
Speaker 1: sound effects. There are no sound effects albums that I

463
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:42,640
Speaker 1: know of that are available to the public. So I

464
00:28:42,680 --> 00:28:45,640
Speaker 1: did a lot of research, and I started started by

465
00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:50,040
Speaker 1: sitting down watching television and writing down every sound effect

466
00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:52,200
Speaker 1: I heard, and every sound effect I could think of.

467
00:28:52,960 --> 00:28:56,640
Speaker 1: When I had six hundred of them, I put together

468
00:28:56,720 --> 00:28:59,760
Speaker 1: a team of people who had for whom I could least,

469
00:28:59,760 --> 00:29:04,560
Speaker 1: the recorders and microphones and stereo, and we started recalling

470
00:29:04,760 --> 00:29:07,800
Speaker 1: recording all of these and it took about eight months.

471
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:12,800
Speaker 1: And when I got them all together, I program them

472
00:29:12,920 --> 00:29:17,680
Speaker 1: into ten albums and you could buy them as a unit,

473
00:29:17,760 --> 00:29:20,560
Speaker 1: or you could buy them individually, but you could. You

474
00:29:20,680 --> 00:29:23,440
Speaker 1: ended up with forty some odd sound effects at a

475
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:28,680
Speaker 1: course of about fourteen cents each, and it blew wide open.

476
00:29:29,240 --> 00:29:31,960
Speaker 1: I could not believe the numbers of sound effects I

477
00:29:32,080 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 1: was selling, and they were. They were obviously in record stores.

478
00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:39,880
Speaker 1: We made them available through mail order. We produced a

479
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:44,320
Speaker 1: very good record, and we thought about everything to locate

480
00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: a sound effect when you had twenty of them. On

481
00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:50,200
Speaker 1: one side. We had a little ruler which had a

482
00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:52,800
Speaker 1: little hole where which you put over the center hole

483
00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:58,200
Speaker 1: and then you wrote down which track that arrow was

484
00:29:58,320 --> 00:30:01,080
Speaker 1: entered into. So you had twenty arrows and you could

485
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:04,560
Speaker 1: find the sound effect immediately. So you think about all

486
00:30:04,560 --> 00:30:07,800
Speaker 1: of that stuff beforehand, and then you do it. And

487
00:30:07,840 --> 00:30:11,880
Speaker 1: when you do it with love and intention and you

488
00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:15,160
Speaker 1: don't spare the money, you do well. We made a

489
00:30:15,200 --> 00:30:18,719
Speaker 1: million and a half dollars that year on sound effects.

490
00:30:18,800 --> 00:30:21,960
Speaker 1: That's a lot of money. Uh, sixty years ago, back

491
00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one, boy, that was a lot of money. Okay.

492
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:34,480
Speaker 1: We also asks the question you're having these huge successes

493
00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 1: are other people than imitating you? There's no point in

494
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:41,320
Speaker 1: imitating a set that's got everything. You force them out

495
00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:44,200
Speaker 1: of doing it by making it so good and so

496
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:48,040
Speaker 1: complete and so full that nobody wants to buy anything

497
00:30:48,080 --> 00:30:51,560
Speaker 1: but yours, because you have those little grace notes like

498
00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:55,400
Speaker 1: the thing that slips over the spindle on your turntable,

499
00:30:55,960 --> 00:31:00,240
Speaker 1: those kinds of thinking and talking about how we did them,

500
00:31:00,280 --> 00:31:02,400
Speaker 1: and then we would sell them in a special package.

501
00:31:02,840 --> 00:31:08,440
Speaker 1: You could get the package for fifty dollars and uh,

502
00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:10,840
Speaker 1: we would send it off to you. You got the

503
00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:15,560
Speaker 1: whole thing. We didn't collect for licensing. If somebody wanted

504
00:31:15,600 --> 00:31:17,680
Speaker 1: to use the sound effect, go ahead and use it.

505
00:31:18,240 --> 00:31:21,120
Speaker 1: We don't care. We made it for you to use,

506
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:26,720
Speaker 1: and we're very satisfied with the profit we're making per album.

507
00:31:26,800 --> 00:31:30,479
Speaker 1: So with all of these benefits, who's going to come

508
00:31:30,520 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: out and try to compete with us, especially when we

509
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:35,440
Speaker 1: did such a good job making them. You have this

510
00:31:35,560 --> 00:31:40,960
Speaker 1: big victory. What's your next step? My next step is Okay, folks,

511
00:31:41,120 --> 00:31:45,520
Speaker 1: music is going where do we go? And I'm beginning

512
00:31:45,560 --> 00:31:48,600
Speaker 1: to hear I heard about the Paul Butterfield blues band,

513
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:54,240
Speaker 1: uh and that sounded really good and my uh but

514
00:31:54,240 --> 00:31:58,120
Speaker 1: but before we got to Paul Butterfield, you you recorded

515
00:31:58,160 --> 00:32:00,760
Speaker 1: Tom Rush. There are a lot of other people that

516
00:32:00,840 --> 00:32:04,600
Speaker 1: you recorded phil Oaks that were folk yaks before you

517
00:32:04,720 --> 00:32:07,720
Speaker 1: got into rock. You're you're absolutely right, So let me

518
00:32:07,800 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 1: start again. Knowing that there were no more folk songs anymore,

519
00:32:12,880 --> 00:32:16,280
Speaker 1: there was beginning to come forth. The generation of people

520
00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:21,080
Speaker 1: who inspired by Dylan were writing their own songs, and

521
00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:24,560
Speaker 1: they they were phil Oaks and Tom Rush, who was

522
00:32:24,640 --> 00:32:27,800
Speaker 1: also an interpreter, and any number of people who wrote

523
00:32:27,840 --> 00:32:33,400
Speaker 1: distinctively different songs, phil Oaks especially, and we recorded all

524
00:32:33,440 --> 00:32:38,680
Speaker 1: of those people. And then as we saw different things happening,

525
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:42,080
Speaker 1: and and Dylan went electric at Newport and I was

526
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:47,080
Speaker 1: standing right below him, and parts of the Butterfield Blues

527
00:32:47,200 --> 00:32:51,560
Speaker 1: Band were accompanying him, and I just shivered because I

528
00:32:51,600 --> 00:32:55,480
Speaker 1: knew exactly where I was going. I was going to

529
00:32:55,560 --> 00:32:58,120
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, and I was out the next day and

530
00:32:58,200 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 1: we started looking for things in the first group I

531
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 1: found was Love, and then Love turned me onto a

532
00:33:04,120 --> 00:33:07,600
Speaker 1: group that they thought was pretty good. That was the

533
00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:10,120
Speaker 1: second on their bill, which was The Doors. Now I

534
00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:13,080
Speaker 1: went to see The Doors four times before I got them.

535
00:33:13,240 --> 00:33:16,480
Speaker 1: If I got the means before, I understood because Jim

536
00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:18,760
Speaker 1: loved to sing the blues, and he'd sing the blues

537
00:33:18,800 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 1: for a whole set. And I don't need Jim to

538
00:33:21,160 --> 00:33:24,680
Speaker 1: sing the blues, but I need those musicians. They are

539
00:33:24,800 --> 00:33:32,400
Speaker 1: superb guitar, keyboards, drums, each superlative. I can get the

540
00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:37,240
Speaker 1: right material to them. And then one day they play

541
00:33:37,320 --> 00:33:39,840
Speaker 1: a song that it was so totally off the wall.

542
00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:43,320
Speaker 1: Show me the Way to the next whiskey bar. Yes,

543
00:33:43,920 --> 00:33:46,640
Speaker 1: that's the song. They just sort of slipped into the

544
00:33:46,640 --> 00:33:49,640
Speaker 1: Whiskey Bar song. And when I heard what they could

545
00:33:49,680 --> 00:33:54,280
Speaker 1: do with that, and I heard how Jim and everybody

546
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:56,320
Speaker 1: was so locked in with each other, I said, I

547
00:33:56,360 --> 00:33:59,480
Speaker 1: have to have that group. And I went back and

548
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:03,160
Speaker 1: introduced myself. They knew we were coming, and we talked

549
00:34:03,200 --> 00:34:07,280
Speaker 1: and we talked and we talked, and I made them

550
00:34:07,320 --> 00:34:09,719
Speaker 1: an offer, and we went back and forth. They were

551
00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:13,400
Speaker 1: taking their time. They had a contract with Columbia, but

552
00:34:13,520 --> 00:34:18,640
Speaker 1: Columbia dropped them. Uh. Columbia said, well, we'll keep you

553
00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:22,719
Speaker 1: if you'll record a single force and if we like

554
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 1: the single, and they said, the hell with this, we

555
00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:28,160
Speaker 1: don't want this. We got an offer from Electra, so

556
00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:31,480
Speaker 1: they started nosing around and talking to other artists about Electra,

557
00:34:32,000 --> 00:34:35,880
Speaker 1: and we had no problems there and we signed The Doors. Now,

558
00:34:36,360 --> 00:34:40,680
Speaker 1: the very first album was both a huge success and legendary.

559
00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:43,560
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about the experience of making that. Well,

560
00:34:43,880 --> 00:34:47,720
Speaker 1: my problems were that I wasn't the producer. I needed

561
00:34:47,760 --> 00:34:51,240
Speaker 1: somebody who was right and who keep them in line

562
00:34:51,920 --> 00:34:54,000
Speaker 1: and who was at least as smart as they were,

563
00:34:54,680 --> 00:34:59,120
Speaker 1: and I could manage the group. So we decided to

564
00:34:59,239 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 1: do two weeks of rehearsal and I asked Paul Rothschild

565
00:35:02,120 --> 00:35:03,600
Speaker 1: to do it. He said, well, look, I'll go out

566
00:35:03,600 --> 00:35:06,239
Speaker 1: there and I'll check it out. But they liked each

567
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:09,280
Speaker 1: other a lot, and so there was a natural coming

568
00:35:09,280 --> 00:35:13,880
Speaker 1: together and he helped polish the songs a lot. He

569
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 1: would make suggestions about how to make changes and they

570
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:19,600
Speaker 1: would do it, and the album was recorded in about

571
00:35:19,600 --> 00:35:22,400
Speaker 1: a week. Bruce Botnick, who had done the Love Album

572
00:35:22,680 --> 00:35:26,440
Speaker 1: with me and I was the producer of that, was terrific.

573
00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:30,719
Speaker 1: And so the combination of Rothschild and Bruce Botnick was

574
00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:34,319
Speaker 1: just magic and the band and we did it. It

575
00:35:34,400 --> 00:35:38,160
Speaker 1: was wonderful in many respects. I knew that Jim was

576
00:35:38,200 --> 00:35:41,520
Speaker 1: in love with the U forty seven microphone because he

577
00:35:41,560 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 1: was a big Frank Sinatra follower, and Frank Sinatra always

578
00:35:46,520 --> 00:35:48,879
Speaker 1: sang in front of this microphone. So when he came

579
00:35:48,920 --> 00:35:51,680
Speaker 1: into the studio and I said for the vocals, you'll

580
00:35:51,719 --> 00:35:54,520
Speaker 1: be in the booth or outside depending and this is

581
00:35:54,560 --> 00:35:57,279
Speaker 1: your microphone, he had tears in his eyes. He said,

582
00:35:57,400 --> 00:36:01,680
Speaker 1: you gave me Thank Sinatra's microphone. I said, we think

583
00:36:01,719 --> 00:36:07,239
Speaker 1: that's best for you. And uh, it went well. I mean,

584
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:10,120
Speaker 1: there were all kinds of wild things that happened during it.

585
00:36:10,200 --> 00:36:13,360
Speaker 1: That Jim got mad and threw UH through some stuff

586
00:36:13,400 --> 00:36:16,759
Speaker 1: against the glass in the control room. I had to

587
00:36:16,800 --> 00:36:19,120
Speaker 1: take care of all of that and keep it quiet

588
00:36:19,560 --> 00:36:22,480
Speaker 1: without calling the police. I knew he was going to

589
00:36:22,560 --> 00:36:27,040
Speaker 1: be Uh needing constant watch. But we were finished the

590
00:36:27,080 --> 00:36:29,719
Speaker 1: album and it was scheduled to come out in November

591
00:36:30,520 --> 00:36:35,360
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty six, and I said to myself, wrong month.

592
00:36:36,480 --> 00:36:39,480
Speaker 1: So I got the band together and I said, guys,

593
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:43,520
Speaker 1: I might a mistake of promising you November. It's the

594
00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:46,719
Speaker 1: wrong month. They said, why Christmas is coming, people can

595
00:36:46,719 --> 00:36:49,120
Speaker 1: give it a Christmas present. I said, you're not gonna

596
00:36:49,200 --> 00:36:51,160
Speaker 1: You're not going to get the airplane that you need.

597
00:36:51,800 --> 00:36:54,560
Speaker 1: And I said to them, if you let me come

598
00:36:54,600 --> 00:36:59,520
Speaker 1: out in January January four, I promise you you will

599
00:36:59,560 --> 00:37:03,360
Speaker 1: be the only album we released that month. Now, you

600
00:37:03,360 --> 00:37:06,239
Speaker 1: could do that when you're only issuing eighteen albums a year,

601
00:37:06,600 --> 00:37:11,160
Speaker 1: but nobody out offers anything that crazy and on and

602
00:37:11,320 --> 00:37:14,160
Speaker 1: I had everything probe. We knew what we were going

603
00:37:14,200 --> 00:37:17,880
Speaker 1: to do. I had the idea I see these billboards

604
00:37:17,880 --> 00:37:20,400
Speaker 1: on Sunset Strip, but nothing had to do with music.

605
00:37:20,960 --> 00:37:23,520
Speaker 1: So I decided I'm gonna buy a year on that

606
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:28,239
Speaker 1: billboard and we went up and when the record was

607
00:37:28,239 --> 00:37:31,000
Speaker 1: out there was this billboard on Sunset strip which was

608
00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:34,840
Speaker 1: you couldn't miss. And then we we did our job

609
00:37:34,960 --> 00:37:38,319
Speaker 1: and took it across very slowly, and the band was

610
00:37:38,360 --> 00:37:43,200
Speaker 1: an enormous success, and the doors were history and joy

611
00:37:43,280 --> 00:37:46,040
Speaker 1: and in history and not so much joy sometimes, but

612
00:37:46,960 --> 00:37:49,279
Speaker 1: the artist always comes first, and you take care of

613
00:37:49,320 --> 00:37:52,960
Speaker 1: the artists and the other The other three lads were

614
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:56,239
Speaker 1: just beautiful to work with, and the ones who were

615
00:37:56,239 --> 00:38:00,040
Speaker 1: still alive are still very close friends. So do you

616
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:02,640
Speaker 1: know that Late My Fire is going to be a smash?

617
00:38:02,640 --> 00:38:04,840
Speaker 1: And how do you make it a smash? Back in

618
00:38:04,880 --> 00:38:07,719
Speaker 1: the days of indie labels competing with majors. I knew

619
00:38:07,760 --> 00:38:11,000
Speaker 1: that was the song, but it was very long. That

620
00:38:11,120 --> 00:38:13,960
Speaker 1: was the problem. So I sat down with Rathchild and

621
00:38:14,040 --> 00:38:18,919
Speaker 1: everybody and said, let's try some edits down and I'll

622
00:38:18,920 --> 00:38:21,160
Speaker 1: tell you what I'll do. I'll do two forms of

623
00:38:21,200 --> 00:38:25,160
Speaker 1: the song. I'll do a single which you can buy

624
00:38:25,200 --> 00:38:28,479
Speaker 1: that has the complete song, the short song on one

625
00:38:28,520 --> 00:38:32,840
Speaker 1: side and the complete song on the other side, and

626
00:38:33,160 --> 00:38:35,840
Speaker 1: or I will come out with one that has the

627
00:38:35,880 --> 00:38:38,880
Speaker 1: short version and then another song from the album on

628
00:38:38,920 --> 00:38:41,200
Speaker 1: the other side. Both of these will be out, the

629
00:38:41,239 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 1: public will buy what it wants, but I need to

630
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:48,560
Speaker 1: get it heard. And what was happening in starting in

631
00:38:48,640 --> 00:38:54,200
Speaker 1: San Francisco, Uh there was FM radio for the kinds

632
00:38:54,200 --> 00:38:59,760
Speaker 1: of music we were recording. And uh so I knew

633
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:05,280
Speaker 1: that if I could get the FM stations to begin

634
00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:09,320
Speaker 1: to back it, their A M counterparts would be forced

635
00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:12,360
Speaker 1: to putting it on the air sooner or later. And

636
00:39:12,400 --> 00:39:15,759
Speaker 1: that's what happened. Uh. It went on the air in

637
00:39:15,880 --> 00:39:19,960
Speaker 1: Los Angeles the same time were they were having the

638
00:39:20,360 --> 00:39:27,720
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven rock festival Monterey Pop Monterey Pop, and

639
00:39:28,120 --> 00:39:31,760
Speaker 1: they were all over the radio. They had not been invited,

640
00:39:31,800 --> 00:39:34,640
Speaker 1: Blood had been invited, but it turned it down. But

641
00:39:34,760 --> 00:39:37,800
Speaker 1: whenever you turned on the radio and everybody with nuts,

642
00:39:38,520 --> 00:39:41,319
Speaker 1: why aren't the doors here? They've got the hottest song

643
00:39:41,440 --> 00:39:45,880
Speaker 1: in California. And it moved slowly across the country. It

644
00:39:46,320 --> 00:39:49,160
Speaker 1: by the time it was not playing in Los Angeles,

645
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:52,560
Speaker 1: it was number one in New York. And in June

646
00:39:52,840 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty seven, one of my people came and

647
00:39:57,680 --> 00:40:01,960
Speaker 1: said to me, your number one next week would light

648
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:05,719
Speaker 1: my fire nationwide. I cried, was that your first number one?

649
00:40:05,920 --> 00:40:08,680
Speaker 1: That was my first really charted. I never had a

650
00:40:08,760 --> 00:40:15,040
Speaker 1: chart single before. It was my watch stopped. My watch stops.

651
00:40:15,080 --> 00:40:17,680
Speaker 1: So I later put the watch aside and bought an

652
00:40:17,680 --> 00:40:21,600
Speaker 1: expensive watch the next day, and that that that we

653
00:40:21,640 --> 00:40:24,520
Speaker 1: had had a number one. Considering what we had started from,

654
00:40:24,560 --> 00:40:28,880
Speaker 1: which was the smallest inkling of an idea, and how

655
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:33,880
Speaker 1: it had grown mostly because we were We were straight

656
00:40:33,920 --> 00:40:38,160
Speaker 1: with everybody. We had a good reputation. The DJs would

657
00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:41,000
Speaker 1: come to the office in Los Angeles, what would they

658
00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:43,600
Speaker 1: pick up? They weren't picking up the rock records. They

659
00:40:43,600 --> 00:40:46,960
Speaker 1: were picking up the none such records. They had amazing

660
00:40:47,080 --> 00:40:49,600
Speaker 1: taste and we were very close to them, and we

661
00:40:49,640 --> 00:40:51,960
Speaker 1: didn't ask for favors. If it wasn't right for them,

662
00:40:52,000 --> 00:40:54,040
Speaker 1: it wasn't right for them, and they shouldn't play it.

663
00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:57,439
Speaker 1: But we started with the doors and then we grew

664
00:40:57,480 --> 00:41:00,719
Speaker 1: from that. Okay, Uh, did you get a piece of

665
00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:06,319
Speaker 1: the publishing on these acts? Yes, I had of the

666
00:41:06,360 --> 00:41:12,799
Speaker 1: publishing they had. When the contract was over and I

667
00:41:12,880 --> 00:41:16,239
Speaker 1: wanted to make one more album, the album that was

668
00:41:16,280 --> 00:41:19,000
Speaker 1: to become l a Woman. I had a hunch Jim

669
00:41:19,080 --> 00:41:21,080
Speaker 1: was going to go off to France. I didn't think

670
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:23,600
Speaker 1: the group was going to stay together after that I

671
00:41:23,640 --> 00:41:26,880
Speaker 1: didn't know that he was going to die, but I said,

672
00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:30,040
Speaker 1: there is one more album to be had. And one

673
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:34,000
Speaker 1: of the negotiating points from the lawyer, who said he's

674
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:36,319
Speaker 1: not going to give this up, was that I give

675
00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:41,560
Speaker 1: up my of the publishing, which I said, we're not publishers.

676
00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:44,960
Speaker 1: They can have it, no problem. That's the all the deal.

677
00:41:45,040 --> 00:41:50,440
Speaker 1: And we had the opportunity to do the sixth studio album,

678
00:41:50,760 --> 00:41:53,560
Speaker 1: which I think is right up there with their first

679
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:57,799
Speaker 1: is the best. But starting with that sixth album, uh,

680
00:41:57,960 --> 00:42:02,520
Speaker 1: they'd done Morrison Hotel but for which in retrospect is

681
00:42:02,640 --> 00:42:06,040
Speaker 1: legendary with Rhodehouse Blues and so many other songs Piece Frog,

682
00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:09,800
Speaker 1: but it wasn't quite as successful financially as what came before.

683
00:42:10,080 --> 00:42:12,799
Speaker 1: So they make a record l a Woman, and they

684
00:42:12,960 --> 00:42:17,840
Speaker 1: fired Paul Rothchild and they make it themselves. Aren't you afraid? No,

685
00:42:18,040 --> 00:42:21,000
Speaker 1: that he was on that record. He was not fired,

686
00:42:21,120 --> 00:42:24,480
Speaker 1: he quit, which is a very interesting story. We knew

687
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:26,879
Speaker 1: we were going to make a sixth album, so we're

688
00:42:26,880 --> 00:42:30,319
Speaker 1: talking about what to do. The Doors start writing some

689
00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:33,880
Speaker 1: material and Rothchild goes, here's here's it and says, I

690
00:42:33,880 --> 00:42:35,839
Speaker 1: think it's awful. I don't want any part of it.

691
00:42:36,160 --> 00:42:39,040
Speaker 1: I don't want to produce this. I had somebody in

692
00:42:39,080 --> 00:42:44,360
Speaker 1: back in my mind to produce it, so I said, okay, sorry,

693
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:47,920
Speaker 1: thank you for everything you've done. Will remain friends, and

694
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:51,000
Speaker 1: we did very close friends. We worked together on projects

695
00:42:51,040 --> 00:42:53,560
Speaker 1: later on when he couldn't get work and I had

696
00:42:53,560 --> 00:42:57,080
Speaker 1: owned yet another label. But anyway, I didn't hear the

697
00:42:57,120 --> 00:43:00,440
Speaker 1: material for l a woman. I said to Bruce Botaniic,

698
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:04,560
Speaker 1: you can produce this, who is traditionally an engineer. Yeah,

699
00:43:04,640 --> 00:43:07,600
Speaker 1: he's basically an engineer, but he had produced a great

700
00:43:07,640 --> 00:43:11,319
Speaker 1: deal of what became one of the great albums of

701
00:43:11,360 --> 00:43:15,120
Speaker 1: all time, the Love Forever Changes Album, which is just

702
00:43:15,239 --> 00:43:18,040
Speaker 1: so special. I knew he could do it, and he

703
00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:21,400
Speaker 1: did it very, very cleverly, and he got them back

704
00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:24,520
Speaker 1: in and I said, I think we need we need

705
00:43:24,600 --> 00:43:29,760
Speaker 1: some richer instrumentation. This is not a rock record anymore.

706
00:43:30,239 --> 00:43:33,200
Speaker 1: This is a record from a point in time. So

707
00:43:33,320 --> 00:43:37,359
Speaker 1: let's do what we think we should do. And there

708
00:43:37,440 --> 00:43:40,239
Speaker 1: was a song that I thought could be orchestrated, and

709
00:43:40,360 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 1: that's what we did. And it opens up the record. Uh,

710
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:47,799
Speaker 1: and you have this grand, welcoming song that just overwhelms you.

711
00:43:48,880 --> 00:43:51,560
Speaker 1: And then the rest of the record is what we

712
00:43:51,640 --> 00:43:55,879
Speaker 1: intended it to be. We understood what was happening. It

713
00:43:56,200 --> 00:44:01,160
Speaker 1: became the record which every time I I cried because

714
00:44:01,200 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 1: I loved it so much. Uh, getting a record that

715
00:44:05,719 --> 00:44:07,960
Speaker 1: you hear sometimes for the first time, and I was

716
00:44:08,000 --> 00:44:10,239
Speaker 1: not allowed to hear this record until it was done.

717
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:16,080
Speaker 1: We're talking forever changes, right, yeah, And but when I

718
00:44:16,120 --> 00:44:18,400
Speaker 1: heard it, I knew it was there. I knew the

719
00:44:18,440 --> 00:44:22,480
Speaker 1: sequencing was wrong. I reserved the sequencing for myself and

720
00:44:22,520 --> 00:44:25,640
Speaker 1: I would listen to any good argument, and sometimes I

721
00:44:25,680 --> 00:44:28,439
Speaker 1: would make changes if they were minor. But I knew

722
00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:31,480
Speaker 1: how to I knew how to sequence albums. I knew

723
00:44:31,520 --> 00:44:35,239
Speaker 1: about the keys. I knew about the mood structure, what

724
00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:37,040
Speaker 1: you want to do at the end of the first

725
00:44:37,040 --> 00:44:39,160
Speaker 1: side to get him to turn to the to the

726
00:44:39,200 --> 00:44:42,520
Speaker 1: second side. All of that stuff was inherent in me,

727
00:44:42,600 --> 00:44:44,600
Speaker 1: and so I took a crack at it, and they

728
00:44:44,600 --> 00:44:46,920
Speaker 1: would say we like it or we don't like it,

729
00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:50,600
Speaker 1: and maybe make a change or two. But that worked.

730
00:44:51,280 --> 00:44:55,200
Speaker 1: I was the final word. But I was not arrogant.

731
00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:58,839
Speaker 1: I was this is what I really believe in. Give

732
00:44:58,880 --> 00:45:02,000
Speaker 1: it free, give it careful, listen, and I could pick

733
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:05,280
Speaker 1: out the songs that we're going to happen with the Doors.

734
00:45:05,960 --> 00:45:08,040
Speaker 1: L A woman was with a song that was going

735
00:45:08,080 --> 00:45:12,360
Speaker 1: to happen. It was destined, and I knew it was

736
00:45:12,440 --> 00:45:16,560
Speaker 1: worth giving up the publishing so I could get this album,

737
00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:20,680
Speaker 1: which was a statement, now we're not going to be

738
00:45:20,719 --> 00:45:23,960
Speaker 1: any more Doors albums. We did do a gym, a

739
00:45:24,040 --> 00:45:28,040
Speaker 1: gym album, his poetry album, and that's another story. So

740
00:45:28,440 --> 00:45:33,560
Speaker 1: that happened, and all of the songs hold up. The

741
00:45:33,920 --> 00:45:38,680
Speaker 1: sound effects that are used on the opening and closed

742
00:45:39,239 --> 00:45:43,759
Speaker 1: are found the sound effects library. So they got on

743
00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:47,520
Speaker 1: that record the Thunderstorm, it's all very much in the

744
00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:52,120
Speaker 1: distance and very polite, and then it's writers on the Storm.

745
00:45:52,160 --> 00:45:55,280
Speaker 1: What a wonderful song that Hey, every day it rains

746
00:45:55,280 --> 00:45:57,880
Speaker 1: in l A, they play it. Let's just let's go

747
00:45:57,920 --> 00:46:01,799
Speaker 1: back to the Butterfield Blues Band. Why did not not

748
00:46:02,000 --> 00:46:05,520
Speaker 1: break bigger than it did? Very influential, but not a

749
00:46:05,640 --> 00:46:11,360
Speaker 1: huge sales success. They didn't have any singles hits without

750
00:46:11,360 --> 00:46:14,080
Speaker 1: a single. It's very very tough. I mean it's possible,

751
00:46:14,080 --> 00:46:19,640
Speaker 1: look at but Dylan had singles. They had a strong

752
00:46:19,880 --> 00:46:24,440
Speaker 1: loyal group and their records did very well. And the

753
00:46:24,520 --> 00:46:28,120
Speaker 1: double records that that came out of the of the

754
00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:34,200
Speaker 1: folk festival. Was was just incredibly successful. This is after

755
00:46:34,239 --> 00:46:39,400
Speaker 1: the festival and things start falling apart. They had played

756
00:46:39,440 --> 00:46:41,680
Speaker 1: with with Dylan on stage. A couple of them had

757
00:46:41,680 --> 00:46:45,440
Speaker 1: played with Dylan on stage, but they were What happened

758
00:46:45,440 --> 00:46:49,960
Speaker 1: with them is that other artists would say, well, you

759
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:53,000
Speaker 1: really worked and stayed with Butterfield even though they don't

760
00:46:53,000 --> 00:46:55,480
Speaker 1: have any hits. We're willing to take a chance with you.

761
00:46:55,600 --> 00:46:57,759
Speaker 1: And what about Mike Bloomfield, what can you tell us

762
00:46:57,760 --> 00:47:00,680
Speaker 1: about him? Who's in the Butterfield Blues. He he wasn't

763
00:47:00,680 --> 00:47:02,680
Speaker 1: the drugs so valuely he didn't know whether it was

764
00:47:02,680 --> 00:47:06,480
Speaker 1: going to show up or not. The story the album.

765
00:47:07,080 --> 00:47:10,360
Speaker 1: Rothschild made the album and after we had ten thousand

766
00:47:10,440 --> 00:47:13,800
Speaker 1: of them ready to go, they were in their sleeves.

767
00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:15,960
Speaker 1: He said, I didn't get it. I said, what do

768
00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:18,359
Speaker 1: you mean you didn't get it? We were flying up

769
00:47:18,360 --> 00:47:21,239
Speaker 1: to see Tom Rush and we're in my airplane and

770
00:47:21,320 --> 00:47:24,400
Speaker 1: I just gently lowered the nose of the airplane and

771
00:47:24,480 --> 00:47:26,480
Speaker 1: picked up speed, and he saw we were heading for

772
00:47:26,560 --> 00:47:28,680
Speaker 1: the ground. I said, what do you mean? He said,

773
00:47:28,719 --> 00:47:31,279
Speaker 1: I just didn't get it, And I said, convinced me.

774
00:47:31,560 --> 00:47:34,520
Speaker 1: And he talked for a few minutes with such passion.

775
00:47:34,640 --> 00:47:40,400
Speaker 1: I straightened the airplane back up and I kept some

776
00:47:40,440 --> 00:47:43,720
Speaker 1: of the records and I trashed the rest, kept the covers,

777
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:46,480
Speaker 1: and then we went out and we did it three

778
00:47:46,480 --> 00:47:50,880
Speaker 1: times more and he got what he thought was the

779
00:47:50,920 --> 00:47:54,480
Speaker 1: record and it it was excellent. What it lacked with

780
00:47:54,600 --> 00:47:56,600
Speaker 1: some of the passion that was in the first album.

781
00:47:56,719 --> 00:47:59,720
Speaker 1: Years later, I got the first album re released on Rhino.

782
00:47:59,760 --> 00:48:02,520
Speaker 1: When when I heard it that this is I got

783
00:48:02,520 --> 00:48:05,719
Speaker 1: flu mixed. I shouldn't have done it, but it all

784
00:48:05,760 --> 00:48:09,359
Speaker 1: worked out and I got the first record out and

785
00:48:09,520 --> 00:48:13,800
Speaker 1: it was wonderful, and even Rothschild said, you know, maybe

786
00:48:13,840 --> 00:48:18,040
Speaker 1: I overdid it. And that was that. Okay. What about

787
00:48:18,040 --> 00:48:22,759
Speaker 1: Tim Buckley? Tim Buckley is comes in the mail. His

788
00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:28,719
Speaker 1: manager sends me an ascertate of He said, this is

789
00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:32,680
Speaker 1: someone who sings, and I think you should listen to it,

790
00:48:33,200 --> 00:48:35,120
Speaker 1: and it's I take him in the order in which

791
00:48:35,160 --> 00:48:38,399
Speaker 1: they come in and it flows to the surface. Three

792
00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:42,399
Speaker 1: days later and I hear Tim Buckley and I am

793
00:48:42,480 --> 00:48:45,840
Speaker 1: absolutely knocked out. He's doing the wrong material, But the

794
00:48:45,960 --> 00:48:49,359
Speaker 1: voice is there, and what can be done with that

795
00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:52,360
Speaker 1: voice if we figure out what's going to fit that voice?

796
00:48:53,080 --> 00:48:57,520
Speaker 1: And so I signed him, put together proper team. We

797
00:48:57,600 --> 00:48:59,719
Speaker 1: did the first album. I didn't think we hit it

798
00:48:59,760 --> 00:49:02,480
Speaker 1: with a first album. Then we did the second album,

799
00:49:02,520 --> 00:49:04,800
Speaker 1: and that's when we got it. The album was perfect,

800
00:49:04,920 --> 00:49:10,320
Speaker 1: happy sad with Buzzing Fly and all those other tracks. Yeah, yeah,

801
00:49:10,400 --> 00:49:16,120
Speaker 1: it was what I was looking for. And suddenly he

802
00:49:16,200 --> 00:49:20,800
Speaker 1: broke wide open and it was wonderful to see happen.

803
00:49:21,680 --> 00:49:23,960
Speaker 1: But there was a point when I knew he was

804
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:30,480
Speaker 1: going to go downhill. He felt that his audiences owned him,

805
00:49:30,560 --> 00:49:34,719
Speaker 1: and that put him in a very depressive state, and

806
00:49:34,760 --> 00:49:37,680
Speaker 1: so he became more cautious and more cautious, and then

807
00:49:37,680 --> 00:49:41,760
Speaker 1: he stopped playing all together, which was a shame because

808
00:49:43,200 --> 00:49:45,440
Speaker 1: I don't think his audiences were trying to do that.

809
00:49:45,520 --> 00:49:50,680
Speaker 1: He was into drugs a lot. We made a fourth album.

810
00:49:50,719 --> 00:49:52,920
Speaker 1: I didn't think it was very good, but I released

811
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:56,759
Speaker 1: it because I thought it was the right thing to do.

812
00:49:57,080 --> 00:49:59,520
Speaker 1: As time went over, I realized it was a much

813
00:49:59,560 --> 00:50:03,440
Speaker 1: better album that I thought it was, and I, uh so,

814
00:50:03,640 --> 00:50:06,600
Speaker 1: I was happy I did that. I'm always trying to

815
00:50:06,680 --> 00:50:10,560
Speaker 1: stay in congruence with the artist, to feel what they feel,

816
00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:14,600
Speaker 1: and if we have a problem, we just figure it out,

817
00:50:14,760 --> 00:50:18,399
Speaker 1: sit it out, talk it out or bargain it out.

818
00:50:19,120 --> 00:50:22,120
Speaker 1: I mean I've I've had some strange things happen with

819
00:50:22,239 --> 00:50:26,239
Speaker 1: artists and groups like what well, Arthur Lee in Love.

820
00:50:26,320 --> 00:50:28,640
Speaker 1: I had a problem on the second album. He said,

821
00:50:28,680 --> 00:50:30,960
Speaker 1: I don't have to record for you under my contract.

822
00:50:31,000 --> 00:50:33,040
Speaker 1: I was a minor when I signed the contract that

823
00:50:33,120 --> 00:50:35,799
Speaker 1: you would not believe. This guy was under eighteen years old.

824
00:50:36,640 --> 00:50:39,399
Speaker 1: And he said, I'm just gonna go find a better deal.

825
00:50:41,360 --> 00:50:44,520
Speaker 1: And his lawyer was a very good guy, and he

826
00:50:44,600 --> 00:50:46,879
Speaker 1: said I didn't know anything about this, and I said, look,

827
00:50:46,880 --> 00:50:49,680
Speaker 1: I absolutely trust you. I need only one thing from you.

828
00:50:50,080 --> 00:50:51,960
Speaker 1: I need you to get me in the room with

829
00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:58,160
Speaker 1: him when he's in a calm state. So uh, that happened.

830
00:50:58,200 --> 00:51:03,840
Speaker 1: And he said, well, I think AUTO have ten percent

831
00:51:04,040 --> 00:51:06,319
Speaker 1: for everybody that's in the band, and he said it's

832
00:51:06,320 --> 00:51:12,040
Speaker 1: going to be nine people. So I want we sit

833
00:51:12,080 --> 00:51:15,400
Speaker 1: down and we talk and he realizes that he's over

834
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:18,440
Speaker 1: he's over pushing it, and so I increased the advances

835
00:51:18,480 --> 00:51:23,279
Speaker 1: and I increased the royalties and then Paul Rothschild does

836
00:51:23,320 --> 00:51:27,120
Speaker 1: the second album, which is not a good album. It

837
00:51:27,160 --> 00:51:31,480
Speaker 1: was experimental, but it wasn't the album I expected. And

838
00:51:31,520 --> 00:51:34,480
Speaker 1: then we started working toward a third album. I took

839
00:51:34,600 --> 00:51:38,040
Speaker 1: Rothchild off it and said to Botanick, you get along

840
00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:41,120
Speaker 1: with him, Why don't you guys try to put the

841
00:51:41,160 --> 00:51:45,239
Speaker 1: album together? And they did. Bruce brought in a lot

842
00:51:45,280 --> 00:51:49,240
Speaker 1: of other musicians. We brought in an arranger for the

843
00:51:49,280 --> 00:51:53,440
Speaker 1: opening song. That album was done, and then I worked

844
00:51:53,440 --> 00:51:55,799
Speaker 1: through it with him and we made some changes and

845
00:51:56,520 --> 00:51:59,279
Speaker 1: I got the sequencing right, and then we came out

846
00:51:59,320 --> 00:52:03,640
Speaker 1: with the album and that became a hit as an album,

847
00:52:03,680 --> 00:52:12,120
Speaker 1: but not with any singles. Would you ever tell any

848
00:52:12,160 --> 00:52:15,040
Speaker 1: of your acts once the record was delivered that you

849
00:52:15,080 --> 00:52:16,920
Speaker 1: were not going to put it out as is, or

850
00:52:17,000 --> 00:52:20,960
Speaker 1: that they needed to record a single. Uh No. I

851
00:52:21,440 --> 00:52:24,080
Speaker 1: wanted to get the singles from the album in some

852
00:52:24,280 --> 00:52:28,799
Speaker 1: form that it would promote the album, because that's where

853
00:52:28,840 --> 00:52:30,960
Speaker 1: their income wasn't It was true of me as well.

854
00:52:31,480 --> 00:52:34,000
Speaker 1: The singles were the calling cards for the albums. The

855
00:52:34,120 --> 00:52:40,320
Speaker 1: singles on Light My Fire did remarkably well for the album.

856
00:52:40,400 --> 00:52:44,000
Speaker 1: Suddenly the album was selling over a million and a

857
00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:49,040
Speaker 1: half records. But did you ever say the album isn't done,

858
00:52:49,080 --> 00:52:52,160
Speaker 1: you need one more song? Oh yeah? And what would

859
00:52:52,160 --> 00:52:55,600
Speaker 1: the ox say the well? Judy Collins as an example,

860
00:52:56,320 --> 00:52:59,320
Speaker 1: I let Judy and her producer, who was a staff member,

861
00:52:59,480 --> 00:53:05,000
Speaker 1: do the do the fifth album on her own. And

862
00:53:05,040 --> 00:53:08,480
Speaker 1: then they played the album for me and it was good,

863
00:53:09,120 --> 00:53:13,800
Speaker 1: but it didn't stand out. It was lacking a certain feeling.

864
00:53:14,480 --> 00:53:18,040
Speaker 1: I didn't feel she was as passionately in the materials

865
00:53:18,120 --> 00:53:20,000
Speaker 1: as I could wish her. But I had to show

866
00:53:20,040 --> 00:53:23,600
Speaker 1: that passion someplace on the album. So I said, uh,

867
00:53:24,120 --> 00:53:26,279
Speaker 1: we can't release what we have. We need to go

868
00:53:26,320 --> 00:53:29,840
Speaker 1: out and look for more. And she said, you know

869
00:53:29,880 --> 00:53:33,759
Speaker 1: how much trouble I've had. And I said, Judy, I know,

870
00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:38,400
Speaker 1: I'm I'm seeming like I don't care about the album,

871
00:53:38,440 --> 00:53:41,480
Speaker 1: but I really do. It just don't think it's finished yet,

872
00:53:41,920 --> 00:53:45,880
Speaker 1: So see if you can find some more songs. And uh.

873
00:53:46,000 --> 00:53:51,160
Speaker 1: Then I didn't hear from her. I figured, well, I'm

874
00:53:51,200 --> 00:53:54,919
Speaker 1: on the don't call thing. And then three weeks later

875
00:53:54,960 --> 00:53:58,360
Speaker 1: I got a call and she said, you won't believe it.

876
00:53:58,640 --> 00:54:04,719
Speaker 1: I met this wonderful poet who speaks French from Canada

877
00:54:04,920 --> 00:54:08,720
Speaker 1: and he writes these glorious songs and I have got

878
00:54:08,920 --> 00:54:11,120
Speaker 1: such and such and such and such, and she things

879
00:54:11,200 --> 00:54:13,399
Speaker 1: them over the phone for me, and you know who

880
00:54:13,480 --> 00:54:17,000
Speaker 1: that was. Of course, let her call it dude, what's

881
00:54:17,040 --> 00:54:19,719
Speaker 1: the story of both sides? Now that we that we

882
00:54:19,760 --> 00:54:21,680
Speaker 1: put it out because we thought it was a single,

883
00:54:21,719 --> 00:54:25,280
Speaker 1: there's no story behind it. How did you actually find

884
00:54:25,600 --> 00:54:32,120
Speaker 1: and signed Judy Collins? Uh? I found Judy Collins singing

885
00:54:32,120 --> 00:54:36,359
Speaker 1: in a club downtown and Columbia was looking at them

886
00:54:36,400 --> 00:54:41,799
Speaker 1: as well. I saw enough material that I knew we

887
00:54:41,880 --> 00:54:45,920
Speaker 1: had a starter album. I never thought that an artist

888
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:49,160
Speaker 1: has to hit with The first album will build up,

889
00:54:49,200 --> 00:54:52,560
Speaker 1: we'll learn, we'll do better, and maybe around the third

890
00:54:52,600 --> 00:54:57,120
Speaker 1: album we'll hit it. But we'll do these things right

891
00:54:57,160 --> 00:55:00,319
Speaker 1: and with honor. And we all listened to each other,

892
00:55:01,520 --> 00:55:04,880
Speaker 1: and that's what happened. That's how we would do these things.

893
00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:07,680
Speaker 1: And then somebody, somebody would come up with an idea,

894
00:55:08,280 --> 00:55:12,680
Speaker 1: and Leonard Cone was an amazing choice. You put his

895
00:55:12,800 --> 00:55:17,800
Speaker 1: two songs in the album, and suddenly the glue flowed

896
00:55:17,960 --> 00:55:22,239
Speaker 1: throughout the record. You had him exactly precisely placed as

897
00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:24,560
Speaker 1: to where you wanted them to be. When you heard

898
00:55:24,600 --> 00:55:27,680
Speaker 1: it that way, then you knew you had an album.

899
00:55:27,680 --> 00:55:31,560
Speaker 1: I was loath to release anything that I didn't believe

900
00:55:31,680 --> 00:55:34,120
Speaker 1: was going to be good for the artists. If it

901
00:55:34,160 --> 00:55:35,719
Speaker 1: was not going to be good for the artist, that

902
00:55:35,800 --> 00:55:38,120
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be good for me. And the artists

903
00:55:38,320 --> 00:55:41,239
Speaker 1: were really very good in trusting me about this. If

904
00:55:41,280 --> 00:55:44,800
Speaker 1: I said no, they'd grumble a lot, but it always

905
00:55:44,840 --> 00:55:47,759
Speaker 1: worked out, and then they would always remember that and

906
00:55:47,760 --> 00:55:50,640
Speaker 1: they would tell that story to other artists. Though the

907
00:55:50,760 --> 00:55:54,120
Speaker 1: artist at a lecture were very were very chummy. Okay,

908
00:55:54,120 --> 00:55:56,360
Speaker 1: how do you end up with Bread, which is seemingly

909
00:55:56,360 --> 00:56:00,000
Speaker 1: a different kind of music than the rest of electra? Yeah?

910
00:56:00,120 --> 00:56:02,839
Speaker 1: How did I? How did I get Bread? That? You're

911
00:56:03,000 --> 00:56:08,120
Speaker 1: very astute, because that was everybody said, that was so

912
00:56:08,200 --> 00:56:11,520
Speaker 1: different from what you were doing When I had Trouble

913
00:56:12,440 --> 00:56:16,279
Speaker 1: with Love on the second album. Their lawyers said to me,

914
00:56:17,120 --> 00:56:20,280
Speaker 1: you handled it very well. If anything crosses my desk

915
00:56:20,400 --> 00:56:24,040
Speaker 1: that I think might be good for you, I'll give

916
00:56:24,080 --> 00:56:27,520
Speaker 1: you the first shot. And I got a call saying

917
00:56:27,600 --> 00:56:31,160
Speaker 1: he had this group called Bread, and so and so

918
00:56:31,239 --> 00:56:33,960
Speaker 1: and so and so was in it. And I knew

919
00:56:34,000 --> 00:56:37,600
Speaker 1: some of the names, David Gates, I knew from his

920
00:56:37,640 --> 00:56:41,720
Speaker 1: other recordings, and I said, I'd love to hear something.

921
00:56:42,600 --> 00:56:46,000
Speaker 1: Are they available to go to our studio? We by

922
00:56:46,040 --> 00:56:48,480
Speaker 1: that time, I had built a studio in California in

923
00:56:48,480 --> 00:56:50,919
Speaker 1: the studio was available, and they went over that day

924
00:56:50,920 --> 00:56:54,000
Speaker 1: and they recorded four or five songs and the song

925
00:56:54,120 --> 00:56:56,560
Speaker 1: was in the album or not the album, but the

926
00:56:56,600 --> 00:56:59,440
Speaker 1: disc was delivered to me the next day and I

927
00:56:59,480 --> 00:57:04,600
Speaker 1: listened to the songs, and yes they were popular, they

928
00:57:04,640 --> 00:57:10,920
Speaker 1: were not what intellectual, but they were beautiful. And how

929
00:57:10,920 --> 00:57:14,240
Speaker 1: hard is it to write a simple song? You write

930
00:57:14,239 --> 00:57:17,360
Speaker 1: a song like if? When I heard that, I cried.

931
00:57:17,520 --> 00:57:20,000
Speaker 1: I cried a lot and when I'm listening to music,

932
00:57:20,080 --> 00:57:25,680
Speaker 1: because it just gets inside me so quickly. And I said,

933
00:57:25,680 --> 00:57:28,120
Speaker 1: I'm going to make an offer. And I made an

934
00:57:28,120 --> 00:57:30,280
Speaker 1: offer and he called me back and he said the

935
00:57:30,320 --> 00:57:34,320
Speaker 1: boys accepted it. I said, we're in business. Let's get

936
00:57:34,360 --> 00:57:38,320
Speaker 1: started working on an album. And they made the first

937
00:57:38,360 --> 00:57:42,240
Speaker 1: album out at our studios and the album was quite wonderful,

938
00:57:43,320 --> 00:57:47,400
Speaker 1: but it got put out the at the wrong time.

939
00:57:47,640 --> 00:57:52,479
Speaker 1: Crosby Stilton Nash came out and that totally wiped any

940
00:57:52,520 --> 00:57:56,960
Speaker 1: attention anybody was going to pay to them. It was

941
00:57:57,120 --> 00:58:00,800
Speaker 1: bread just was gone. So I said, we lost the

942
00:58:00,840 --> 00:58:03,680
Speaker 1: first album. We're never going to get it back. But

943
00:58:04,280 --> 00:58:08,800
Speaker 1: Crosby Till the Nash aren't gonna last forever start writing.

944
00:58:09,800 --> 00:58:13,120
Speaker 1: And they started writing and they were in the studio

945
00:58:13,160 --> 00:58:15,680
Speaker 1: and I went into the studios and I would listen,

946
00:58:15,920 --> 00:58:19,640
Speaker 1: and one day I said to uh them, what's that

947
00:58:19,800 --> 00:58:23,320
Speaker 1: fourth track and they said it's Oh, it's called if

948
00:58:23,360 --> 00:58:25,440
Speaker 1: and it's I said, let me hear it, because I

949
00:58:25,480 --> 00:58:29,560
Speaker 1: think that that's got hit single capability. Now I never

950
00:58:31,160 --> 00:58:34,480
Speaker 1: pick hit singles in my life. If they happened, they

951
00:58:34,520 --> 00:58:38,000
Speaker 1: happened because they were part of something else. But I

952
00:58:38,040 --> 00:58:40,480
Speaker 1: listened to it again and I said, that's the single,

953
00:58:41,000 --> 00:58:43,440
Speaker 1: and we came out with it, and that was the single.

954
00:58:43,600 --> 00:58:49,200
Speaker 1: And suddenly all those bread records and everyone that came

955
00:58:49,240 --> 00:58:54,200
Speaker 1: after went platinum very quickly because they wrote they wrote

956
00:58:54,240 --> 00:58:57,680
Speaker 1: simple songs. These were guys who came in with their

957
00:58:57,720 --> 00:59:01,840
Speaker 1: briefcases in the morning record from nine to twelve, had lunch,

958
00:59:02,480 --> 00:59:05,400
Speaker 1: finished at five, picked up the briefcases and went home.

959
00:59:06,200 --> 00:59:09,120
Speaker 1: Now nobody was using the studio between nine and six.

960
00:59:09,200 --> 00:59:11,120
Speaker 1: They were all coming in at eight o'clock at night

961
00:59:11,200 --> 00:59:14,680
Speaker 1: to use it all night. So these guys were perfect

962
00:59:15,160 --> 00:59:18,280
Speaker 1: and we got along very well with him. Except there

963
00:59:18,320 --> 00:59:20,800
Speaker 1: was a part of their contract I didn't know about.

964
00:59:22,040 --> 00:59:25,840
Speaker 1: Their contracts said that if any band, any member of

965
00:59:25,840 --> 00:59:31,160
Speaker 1: the band left the band, the band was dissolved and

966
00:59:31,200 --> 00:59:34,640
Speaker 1: the drummer left the band, and I got a call

967
00:59:34,720 --> 00:59:38,480
Speaker 1: in from the lawyer about this and I said to him,

968
00:59:38,840 --> 00:59:41,280
Speaker 1: give me his phone number. I said, I have an

969
00:59:41,320 --> 00:59:44,280
Speaker 1: idea and let me go try it out. So I

970
00:59:44,320 --> 00:59:47,040
Speaker 1: went up to see him and he gave me all

971
00:59:47,080 --> 00:59:49,200
Speaker 1: the reasons and not giving him enough of the money,

972
00:59:49,240 --> 00:59:51,240
Speaker 1: and so and so and so and so, and I said, look,

973
00:59:51,600 --> 00:59:53,920
Speaker 1: you can wreck the group or you can make some

974
00:59:54,000 --> 00:59:58,120
Speaker 1: real money. He said, how I said, I will pay

975
00:59:58,160 --> 01:00:01,960
Speaker 1: you your royalty, whether you're on the album or not,

976
01:00:03,240 --> 01:00:06,720
Speaker 1: so you will collect on every album they sell, even

977
01:00:06,760 --> 01:00:10,360
Speaker 1: if you're not on it. Now, that was about one

978
01:00:10,400 --> 01:00:13,680
Speaker 1: and three quarter percent, which which I could easily afford.

979
01:00:13,720 --> 01:00:15,600
Speaker 1: It was going to be about seven cents an album,

980
01:00:15,840 --> 01:00:18,760
Speaker 1: but it was really big money down the line. So

981
01:00:18,840 --> 01:00:21,640
Speaker 1: by doing that I got him to sign off on

982
01:00:21,720 --> 01:00:24,560
Speaker 1: it and we kept the band alive. And did he

983
01:00:24,600 --> 01:00:28,480
Speaker 1: play on the record. Nope. I didn't want to see him.

984
01:00:28,520 --> 01:00:31,480
Speaker 1: But he got paid anyway. And was that the was

985
01:00:31,560 --> 01:00:35,960
Speaker 1: that the last Bred record? No, no, no, that was

986
01:00:36,000 --> 01:00:38,720
Speaker 1: the second Bread record, which was the hit. They did

987
01:00:38,720 --> 01:00:41,000
Speaker 1: about five or six of them. Okay, So he did

988
01:00:41,000 --> 01:00:44,120
Speaker 1: he get paid on every record thereafter? He got paid

989
01:00:44,200 --> 01:00:48,360
Speaker 1: on every record thereafter. So why do these bands after

990
01:00:48,440 --> 01:00:52,160
Speaker 1: they have success, why did they break up? Internal stuff?

991
01:00:52,240 --> 01:00:55,200
Speaker 1: Usually they don't think they want half of their songs

992
01:00:55,280 --> 01:00:58,800
Speaker 1: on the album because the writers were really the guitarist

993
01:00:58,880 --> 01:01:01,960
Speaker 1: and David. Sooner or later, it's just going to get

994
01:01:01,960 --> 01:01:03,800
Speaker 1: to the point where nobody's gonna want to play with

995
01:01:03,840 --> 01:01:09,040
Speaker 1: anybody anymore. We had five, I think albums with them. Uh.

996
01:01:09,160 --> 01:01:11,080
Speaker 1: I thought that if it's going to break up, it's

997
01:01:11,080 --> 01:01:13,680
Speaker 1: going to break up. We've got the best of what

998
01:01:13,760 --> 01:01:18,320
Speaker 1: they have, and so we'll just move on. But trying

999
01:01:18,320 --> 01:01:22,960
Speaker 1: to save trying to save a contract. Uh, it was

1000
01:01:23,040 --> 01:01:26,400
Speaker 1: something that I was very conscious of. I didn't want

1001
01:01:26,400 --> 01:01:28,400
Speaker 1: to see bands split up, and I was willing to

1002
01:01:28,440 --> 01:01:31,440
Speaker 1: pay extra to keep the bands together. Do you remember

1003
01:01:31,440 --> 01:01:35,720
Speaker 1: any other stories but like that. Nope. But there are

1004
01:01:35,760 --> 01:01:39,320
Speaker 1: always stories of me going and quieting people down and

1005
01:01:39,320 --> 01:01:41,640
Speaker 1: getting them back on track and getting them to talk

1006
01:01:42,000 --> 01:01:46,040
Speaker 1: to talk together again. Uh. I mean the artists that

1007
01:01:46,120 --> 01:01:51,439
Speaker 1: I worked with, we're wonderful. Harry Chapman was terrific. When

1008
01:01:51,480 --> 01:01:55,200
Speaker 1: you go through the list of artists we had. While

1009
01:01:55,240 --> 01:01:59,000
Speaker 1: we had Bread, we had the Stooges just developing. We

1010
01:01:59,080 --> 01:02:02,360
Speaker 1: had Carly signed Man who was breaking out. We were

1011
01:02:02,440 --> 01:02:05,720
Speaker 1: yet to get Queen. We had the Doors who were

1012
01:02:05,720 --> 01:02:11,520
Speaker 1: continuing to make records. We had Tim Buckley, and we

1013
01:02:11,640 --> 01:02:17,360
Speaker 1: had enough going two to do well. As we were

1014
01:02:17,400 --> 01:02:19,680
Speaker 1: looking for new artists. New artists would come up just

1015
01:02:19,800 --> 01:02:23,520
Speaker 1: when we needed them. Harry Chapin would come up a

1016
01:02:23,640 --> 01:02:29,000
Speaker 1: year and a half after Carly Simon. That was a

1017
01:02:29,040 --> 01:02:31,480
Speaker 1: hard That was a hard contract to get, a really

1018
01:02:31,520 --> 01:02:35,080
Speaker 1: hard contract again, But the Carly Simon contract, Oh, Carly

1019
01:02:35,160 --> 01:02:37,360
Speaker 1: Simon was easy. She always wanted to be on an

1020
01:02:37,400 --> 01:02:40,680
Speaker 1: electric She thought of a lecture in book terms, because

1021
01:02:41,320 --> 01:02:44,760
Speaker 1: she was the daughter of the of the partner who

1022
01:02:44,920 --> 01:02:50,440
Speaker 1: ran Simon and Sister publishing. So she said, well, Electra

1023
01:02:50,560 --> 01:02:57,360
Speaker 1: reminds me of a good publishing company that watches its roster. Uh.

1024
01:02:57,440 --> 01:03:02,080
Speaker 1: And she was very easy to work with, ah, and

1025
01:03:02,160 --> 01:03:05,680
Speaker 1: she would listen to two ideas that I had. At

1026
01:03:05,720 --> 01:03:07,960
Speaker 1: first I wasn't sure she was a writer, but then

1027
01:03:08,640 --> 01:03:12,600
Speaker 1: but then she became a writer. And when I told

1028
01:03:12,640 --> 01:03:15,320
Speaker 1: her we needed a single from the first album to

1029
01:03:15,360 --> 01:03:19,240
Speaker 1: move that forward, and I always thought, I always heard

1030
01:03:19,320 --> 01:03:22,040
Speaker 1: that's the way it should be. Was the single. It's

1031
01:03:22,080 --> 01:03:25,080
Speaker 1: a tongue twister of a title for a DJ, but

1032
01:03:25,600 --> 01:03:31,600
Speaker 1: it opens light. No other single view have heard simple

1033
01:03:32,240 --> 01:03:36,320
Speaker 1: piano notes and then it goes into this song which

1034
01:03:36,360 --> 01:03:39,800
Speaker 1: women will understand. Men won't get it, but I knew

1035
01:03:39,840 --> 01:03:42,840
Speaker 1: the women would understand. And my wife, my former wife,

1036
01:03:42,880 --> 01:03:46,000
Speaker 1: told me that she heard this on the radio and

1037
01:03:46,080 --> 01:03:49,200
Speaker 1: she saw cars pulling over to the side of the road.

1038
01:03:49,720 --> 01:03:52,920
Speaker 1: There were other ladies wanting to hear that song, and

1039
01:03:53,040 --> 01:03:56,440
Speaker 1: it broke her out big. Because we're willing to be daring,

1040
01:03:57,520 --> 01:04:00,920
Speaker 1: and because I was dead sure that was the song. Okay,

1041
01:04:00,960 --> 01:04:03,600
Speaker 1: So why was it so hard to get Harry Chapin?

1042
01:04:04,280 --> 01:04:07,280
Speaker 1: Because I was running into Columbia again. Columbia would go

1043
01:04:07,320 --> 01:04:10,600
Speaker 1: against me on an act sometime, I think simply because

1044
01:04:10,600 --> 01:04:15,960
Speaker 1: Clive liked to be in uh jousting with me. We

1045
01:04:15,960 --> 01:04:20,320
Speaker 1: were we were friendly, We were definitely friendly. I had

1046
01:04:21,280 --> 01:04:25,040
Speaker 1: been recommended to seek uh Harry Chapin. I went down

1047
01:04:25,080 --> 01:04:29,080
Speaker 1: to see him playing at the village gate. I thought

1048
01:04:29,080 --> 01:04:32,920
Speaker 1: there was a band there that his inclusion of a

1049
01:04:33,000 --> 01:04:36,680
Speaker 1: cello player I thought was brilliant because that permitted us

1050
01:04:36,680 --> 01:04:42,400
Speaker 1: to get a different kind of song into his repertoire. Um.

1051
01:04:42,440 --> 01:04:47,320
Speaker 1: So I made an offer. And then when Clive heard

1052
01:04:47,360 --> 01:04:49,560
Speaker 1: that I made an offer, he made an offer that

1053
01:04:49,680 --> 01:04:53,160
Speaker 1: was much bigger than ours, and sat down and showed

1054
01:04:53,200 --> 01:04:57,600
Speaker 1: them what their sales would be. His sales would be

1055
01:04:57,680 --> 01:05:03,480
Speaker 1: someplace less than deal bit more than so and so uh,

1056
01:05:03,520 --> 01:05:09,200
Speaker 1: And he decided to sign with A Clive and I

1057
01:05:09,240 --> 01:05:12,680
Speaker 1: had to go to California, and he said. He came

1058
01:05:12,680 --> 01:05:14,520
Speaker 1: out to see me at the airport. He said, I

1059
01:05:14,520 --> 01:05:18,200
Speaker 1: have to tell you this. I'm gonna go with with Columbia.

1060
01:05:18,840 --> 01:05:24,800
Speaker 1: And I said, Clive is good, We're better, but I

1061
01:05:24,840 --> 01:05:27,840
Speaker 1: wish you well. And it ate away at me the

1062
01:05:28,200 --> 01:05:31,560
Speaker 1: entire flight out to California, and it ate away at

1063
01:05:31,640 --> 01:05:34,960
Speaker 1: me all week. And then I found out that the

1064
01:05:35,080 --> 01:05:39,240
Speaker 1: numbers Clive had showed were numbers that they showed artists

1065
01:05:39,840 --> 01:05:42,600
Speaker 1: on an inflated basis, or at least that's what I

1066
01:05:42,640 --> 01:05:47,040
Speaker 1: was told. So I was revitalized. I never said it.

1067
01:05:47,320 --> 01:05:50,600
Speaker 1: I never told him that part of the story, but

1068
01:05:50,680 --> 01:05:52,440
Speaker 1: I gave him a ring and said, I'm coming in

1069
01:05:52,520 --> 01:05:55,400
Speaker 1: on Sunday and I'll be at your door at six

1070
01:05:56,000 --> 01:05:59,320
Speaker 1: seven in the morning, and I'm not going away until

1071
01:05:59,360 --> 01:06:01,960
Speaker 1: you and I have a deal. You belong with Electra.

1072
01:06:02,400 --> 01:06:07,439
Speaker 1: I understand what you're doing. I love the way you've

1073
01:06:07,600 --> 01:06:09,920
Speaker 1: arranged the material. I love how you can write a

1074
01:06:09,960 --> 01:06:14,680
Speaker 1: song quickly. I like the way the band unites in

1075
01:06:14,720 --> 01:06:18,480
Speaker 1: their instrumentation. So I'll be there and I'm going to

1076
01:06:18,560 --> 01:06:20,640
Speaker 1: bang on the door. And I was there, and I

1077
01:06:20,800 --> 01:06:23,720
Speaker 1: banged on the door, and we made a tough deal,

1078
01:06:24,440 --> 01:06:27,200
Speaker 1: made a deal and money far more than I expected

1079
01:06:27,280 --> 01:06:34,600
Speaker 1: of that. I think a dollar advance. Um. But uh.

1080
01:06:34,760 --> 01:06:36,720
Speaker 1: I then said, you know, I haven't produced a record

1081
01:06:36,760 --> 01:06:39,520
Speaker 1: in a long time. I'd love to produce this record.

1082
01:06:40,120 --> 01:06:44,560
Speaker 1: So I'll produce the record with you, will work it out,

1083
01:06:44,640 --> 01:06:48,000
Speaker 1: we'll finish the record. I'll do my sequencing for which

1084
01:06:48,040 --> 01:06:51,440
Speaker 1: I am famed for, and then we'll talk about and

1085
01:06:51,440 --> 01:06:53,840
Speaker 1: if we don't have something right, we're gonna go fix it.

1086
01:06:53,880 --> 01:06:57,880
Speaker 1: That record is not going out with me as producer

1087
01:06:57,960 --> 01:07:03,320
Speaker 1: unless I know it is perfect. So he said, I

1088
01:07:03,400 --> 01:07:06,160
Speaker 1: can't beat your offer, but we've got to take our

1089
01:07:06,240 --> 01:07:09,680
Speaker 1: family with us. I said, I'll get a company yet,

1090
01:07:09,760 --> 01:07:15,160
Speaker 1: because we were part of of of what was then

1091
01:07:15,800 --> 01:07:20,960
Speaker 1: UH Warner Warner Communications, and so I got them to

1092
01:07:20,960 --> 01:07:23,320
Speaker 1: give me the plane and the dogs and everybody got

1093
01:07:23,360 --> 01:07:25,560
Speaker 1: on and everything happened, and we were in the studio

1094
01:07:25,680 --> 01:07:27,640
Speaker 1: for three weeks and we did the album, and then

1095
01:07:27,680 --> 01:07:30,320
Speaker 1: we did the mix, and then I lived with it,

1096
01:07:31,160 --> 01:07:34,120
Speaker 1: and then when I thought we had it, Harry agreed

1097
01:07:34,160 --> 01:07:37,760
Speaker 1: to everything that I had done, and we came out

1098
01:07:37,800 --> 01:07:40,440
Speaker 1: with it, and I made him the same promise, I

1099
01:07:40,480 --> 01:07:43,479
Speaker 1: won't issue any album the same month yours comes out,

1100
01:07:44,000 --> 01:07:47,720
Speaker 1: because Clive can't do that. He's got fifty records. He's

1101
01:07:47,760 --> 01:07:50,160
Speaker 1: got to get out that month. And I'm taking advantage

1102
01:07:50,160 --> 01:07:52,520
Speaker 1: of what he can do, which I do on purpose,

1103
01:07:53,360 --> 01:07:57,920
Speaker 1: but I wear them down and Harry, he sort of

1104
01:07:58,000 --> 01:08:05,040
Speaker 1: pulls himself together and Uh, calls Clive and says, I've

1105
01:08:05,040 --> 01:08:06,800
Speaker 1: got to go with the lecture. And he went with

1106
01:08:06,880 --> 01:08:09,880
Speaker 1: the lecture, and Clive said, Jack will do right by you.

1107
01:08:10,040 --> 01:08:13,600
Speaker 1: So all was peaced. We fought it out and the

1108
01:08:13,680 --> 01:08:16,880
Speaker 1: rest worked exactly as we thought it was going to work.

1109
01:08:16,920 --> 01:08:20,240
Speaker 1: But going back to that first album, the track, of

1110
01:08:20,280 --> 01:08:23,000
Speaker 1: course is Taxi, but it's the better part of seven

1111
01:08:23,040 --> 01:08:28,840
Speaker 1: minutes long. Yeah. Uh, we didn't care. We didn't. I

1112
01:08:28,880 --> 01:08:32,559
Speaker 1: don't recall that we made a version of that, but

1113
01:08:32,800 --> 01:08:36,280
Speaker 1: FM radio would play that like crazy, and AM would

1114
01:08:36,320 --> 01:08:40,559
Speaker 1: pick it up. It happened, and the album happened because

1115
01:08:40,600 --> 01:08:42,960
Speaker 1: we were within them eight weeks, we were a quarter

1116
01:08:43,000 --> 01:08:48,920
Speaker 1: of a million albums sold. Yeah, and then I would

1117
01:08:48,920 --> 01:08:52,000
Speaker 1: work with them on. What I like to do was

1118
01:08:52,040 --> 01:08:53,880
Speaker 1: had people come over to a house I had in

1119
01:08:53,920 --> 01:08:59,360
Speaker 1: the country, just from the weekends, and we would record everything,

1120
01:08:59,439 --> 01:09:01,600
Speaker 1: very simple, and I would just sit and listen to

1121
01:09:01,640 --> 01:09:04,160
Speaker 1: the songs and study of the songs and get myself

1122
01:09:04,200 --> 01:09:07,800
Speaker 1: into the songs. And if I thought we had it,

1123
01:09:07,840 --> 01:09:09,840
Speaker 1: we'd go into the studio. If I thought we didn't

1124
01:09:09,840 --> 01:09:13,160
Speaker 1: have it, we might go into the studio anyway, because

1125
01:09:13,200 --> 01:09:15,680
Speaker 1: when everybody was eating lunch, Harry was sitting in the

1126
01:09:15,720 --> 01:09:19,680
Speaker 1: corner writing more songs. He was wonderful to work with.

1127
01:09:19,880 --> 01:09:23,200
Speaker 1: How how does Richard Perry end up getting hooked up

1128
01:09:23,240 --> 01:09:27,400
Speaker 1: with Carly Simon? Because that was my idea. After we

1129
01:09:27,520 --> 01:09:32,519
Speaker 1: had a very good selling record from Carly, we needed

1130
01:09:32,560 --> 01:09:37,519
Speaker 1: a hit single and I heard one, and I knew

1131
01:09:37,600 --> 01:09:42,040
Speaker 1: it needed an experienced producer. So I called his lawyer,

1132
01:09:42,080 --> 01:09:44,439
Speaker 1: who didn't particularly like me. He had been the doors

1133
01:09:44,560 --> 01:09:49,040
Speaker 1: lawyer who said to the doors, Jack will never do this.

1134
01:09:49,120 --> 01:09:51,680
Speaker 1: And then Jack did it, and he was embarrassed by it,

1135
01:09:52,040 --> 01:09:53,920
Speaker 1: but he said, that's a good that's a good choice.

1136
01:09:54,360 --> 01:09:56,920
Speaker 1: She's right for this, and so that that happened. It

1137
01:09:56,960 --> 01:09:59,719
Speaker 1: was very easy. It was an off the wall choice.

1138
01:09:59,720 --> 01:10:02,679
Speaker 1: From but I thought about it very carefully. I would

1139
01:10:02,680 --> 01:10:06,040
Speaker 1: go through whatever publication I could go through. If a

1140
01:10:06,120 --> 01:10:08,960
Speaker 1: producer was listed, I wanted to know who that was,

1141
01:10:09,000 --> 01:10:12,559
Speaker 1: and I had a list of them together with knowing

1142
01:10:12,600 --> 01:10:15,200
Speaker 1: the songs that they had recorded, like go check on,

1143
01:10:15,280 --> 01:10:18,080
Speaker 1: and I had those records on file. So I just

1144
01:10:18,160 --> 01:10:22,840
Speaker 1: thought he was right. She needed somebody tough and authoritative

1145
01:10:24,400 --> 01:10:28,160
Speaker 1: because she didn't like making decisions much herself. But she

1146
01:10:28,400 --> 01:10:31,599
Speaker 1: was very very good to work with, and they both

1147
01:10:31,600 --> 01:10:33,240
Speaker 1: were good to work where there were some there were

1148
01:10:33,280 --> 01:10:37,639
Speaker 1: some fights and stuff going on, but it all got settled. Now,

1149
01:10:37,720 --> 01:10:40,679
Speaker 1: she famously has stage fright and doesn't go on the road.

1150
01:10:41,200 --> 01:10:43,400
Speaker 1: To what degree did that affect you in terms of

1151
01:10:43,439 --> 01:10:47,439
Speaker 1: thinking of signing her and how to break records? Well,

1152
01:10:48,080 --> 01:10:51,960
Speaker 1: we didn't know that that was part of her her

1153
01:10:52,040 --> 01:10:56,720
Speaker 1: disease that she did that she couldn't perform, and I

1154
01:10:56,840 --> 01:11:01,160
Speaker 1: found out after the contract was signed. So I said,

1155
01:11:01,200 --> 01:11:03,879
Speaker 1: we're just going to have to get her perform to perform,

1156
01:11:04,640 --> 01:11:07,559
Speaker 1: because I need to see what the problem is. We

1157
01:11:07,720 --> 01:11:11,280
Speaker 1: arranged to have her perform in West Hollywood at a

1158
01:11:11,320 --> 01:11:15,040
Speaker 1: club everybody went to and told her she had to

1159
01:11:15,120 --> 01:11:18,840
Speaker 1: do it. Well, she said, I'll only do it if

1160
01:11:18,880 --> 01:11:24,040
Speaker 1: I can get ahold of these these band leaders whom

1161
01:11:24,040 --> 01:11:27,360
Speaker 1: she knew were committed to be playing with somebody else.

1162
01:11:27,600 --> 01:11:31,559
Speaker 1: It turns out that somebody else was not, uh, was

1163
01:11:31,600 --> 01:11:34,599
Speaker 1: not going to do the recording at that time. So

1164
01:11:34,680 --> 01:11:37,479
Speaker 1: we said they're all available. She said, then I'm going

1165
01:11:37,520 --> 01:11:40,160
Speaker 1: to have to do it. We had someone who just

1166
01:11:40,320 --> 01:11:43,639
Speaker 1: actually was with her all of the time, and when

1167
01:11:43,640 --> 01:11:46,960
Speaker 1: she came in she was nervous on the stage, but

1168
01:11:47,200 --> 01:11:50,960
Speaker 1: after thirty seconds she was in command of the room,

1169
01:11:51,560 --> 01:11:54,800
Speaker 1: and you saw the nervousness, but she saw the love

1170
01:11:54,840 --> 01:11:58,000
Speaker 1: of it, the appreciation she got. She could suck it

1171
01:11:58,080 --> 01:12:01,920
Speaker 1: out of those people there and was a triumph. But

1172
01:12:02,080 --> 01:12:06,520
Speaker 1: then she proceeded not to go on the road. Yes, uh,

1173
01:12:06,640 --> 01:12:09,599
Speaker 1: she wouldn't. She did not go on the road very much.

1174
01:12:09,640 --> 01:12:12,600
Speaker 1: But she did go on the road for big festivals,

1175
01:12:13,439 --> 01:12:15,800
Speaker 1: but did not go on the road playing clubs. It's

1176
01:12:15,840 --> 01:12:19,000
Speaker 1: a big difference because they have a big festival. You're

1177
01:12:19,000 --> 01:12:22,280
Speaker 1: in command of that festival a lot of people. And

1178
01:12:22,400 --> 01:12:27,240
Speaker 1: she learned that she would get over whatever negative feelings

1179
01:12:27,240 --> 01:12:30,280
Speaker 1: she had in the first thirty seconds of performance. And

1180
01:12:30,360 --> 01:12:32,800
Speaker 1: she was always a pleasure to work with. She never

1181
01:12:32,880 --> 01:12:36,680
Speaker 1: argued with me about anything, and she had very good management.

1182
01:12:37,240 --> 01:12:42,000
Speaker 1: It was a non sexual love affair. It was we

1183
01:12:42,120 --> 01:12:44,960
Speaker 1: really cared deeply for each other, and I watched out

1184
01:12:44,960 --> 01:12:47,240
Speaker 1: for her and she watched out for me. It was

1185
01:12:47,280 --> 01:12:50,880
Speaker 1: an excellent relationship. So tell us the story of signing

1186
01:12:50,960 --> 01:12:55,200
Speaker 1: Queen Ah. It's an interesting story. I had a call

1187
01:12:55,280 --> 01:13:00,600
Speaker 1: from Trident Studios saying that they had been recording a

1188
01:13:00,600 --> 01:13:03,639
Speaker 1: lot of artists and they thought they wanted their own

1189
01:13:03,680 --> 01:13:09,160
Speaker 1: record label. Uh. And they were sending some tapes of

1190
01:13:09,200 --> 01:13:13,200
Speaker 1: these artists. They were ten and all over with a

1191
01:13:13,960 --> 01:13:16,000
Speaker 1: with the person who was going to be the manager

1192
01:13:16,080 --> 01:13:21,040
Speaker 1: of this enterprise. The representative tried and came and he

1193
01:13:21,280 --> 01:13:24,760
Speaker 1: put ten albums on my desk. By albums, I mean

1194
01:13:24,880 --> 01:13:29,919
Speaker 1: ten tape boxes of ten different groups. And he said,

1195
01:13:29,960 --> 01:13:32,160
Speaker 1: this is how we want to start. We want you

1196
01:13:32,360 --> 01:13:35,519
Speaker 1: to do for us what you did for a lecture,

1197
01:13:35,560 --> 01:13:37,760
Speaker 1: to go from nothing and take us someplace and we

1198
01:13:37,800 --> 01:13:41,720
Speaker 1: have all this wonderful music. Uh. Now I knew I

1199
01:13:41,760 --> 01:13:44,240
Speaker 1: wasn't going to do that. And I knew it because

1200
01:13:44,280 --> 01:13:46,439
Speaker 1: I knew how those deals work. You put up all

1201
01:13:46,479 --> 01:13:49,360
Speaker 1: the money, meaning elector puts up all the money. You

1202
01:13:49,400 --> 01:13:54,679
Speaker 1: take your time away from your artists because your people

1203
01:13:54,720 --> 01:14:00,160
Speaker 1: are doing stuff on this new label and you put

1204
01:14:00,240 --> 01:14:02,799
Speaker 1: up all the money and you get half the profits.

1205
01:14:02,800 --> 01:14:05,679
Speaker 1: Now that's dumb to begin with, but I figured I'll

1206
01:14:05,720 --> 01:14:08,000
Speaker 1: listen to some of the stuff. So I listened to

1207
01:14:08,120 --> 01:14:10,679
Speaker 1: a couple of tracks of about three or four different albums,

1208
01:14:11,120 --> 01:14:15,120
Speaker 1: and then I see this thing with Queen, and I

1209
01:14:15,200 --> 01:14:19,679
Speaker 1: listened to a whole side and there was something there.

1210
01:14:19,760 --> 01:14:22,200
Speaker 1: I heard one or two singles. I don't remember what

1211
01:14:22,320 --> 01:14:25,840
Speaker 1: they were. Keep Yourself Alive. Yeah, well that's for sure.

1212
01:14:26,479 --> 01:14:28,880
Speaker 1: I just had a feeling that there was more to

1213
01:14:28,960 --> 01:14:33,080
Speaker 1: this band. So when he came back the next day,

1214
01:14:33,680 --> 01:14:37,320
Speaker 1: I said, look, I can't do that. I can't do

1215
01:14:37,520 --> 01:14:39,320
Speaker 1: for my artists what I want to do for my

1216
01:14:39,479 --> 01:14:42,559
Speaker 1: artists if I'm handling a label for somebody else. He said, yeah,

1217
01:14:42,680 --> 01:14:45,400
Speaker 1: I can understand. I thought you'd come up with that.

1218
01:14:45,880 --> 01:14:49,519
Speaker 1: I said, however, there is one group there, Queen, that

1219
01:14:49,640 --> 01:14:52,479
Speaker 1: I think is very promising. I heard two songs that

1220
01:14:52,560 --> 01:14:55,719
Speaker 1: I was happy with, and I said, it only takes

1221
01:14:56,000 --> 01:14:58,480
Speaker 1: one or two songs to get a start in America.

1222
01:14:58,960 --> 01:15:02,080
Speaker 1: I said, the album is not what i'd like it

1223
01:15:02,160 --> 01:15:04,599
Speaker 1: to be for a first album, but I know it's

1224
01:15:04,640 --> 01:15:06,920
Speaker 1: coming out in England, and there's nothing I can do

1225
01:15:07,000 --> 01:15:12,080
Speaker 1: about that. But I would like to distribute and handle

1226
01:15:12,200 --> 01:15:16,560
Speaker 1: Queen in America, but handled them as a label. We

1227
01:15:16,560 --> 01:15:20,200
Speaker 1: we would be their label, not Trident, and we would

1228
01:15:20,200 --> 01:15:23,400
Speaker 1: work together and you would be the manager. He said, well,

1229
01:15:24,120 --> 01:15:26,200
Speaker 1: you know the Columbia is interested, And I said, I

1230
01:15:26,240 --> 01:15:28,519
Speaker 1: know that Columbia is interested. And I'll tell you what

1231
01:15:28,520 --> 01:15:31,640
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do. I'm going to come on over and

1232
01:15:31,680 --> 01:15:34,519
Speaker 1: see the band and talk to them for a while.

1233
01:15:34,600 --> 01:15:37,040
Speaker 1: When I saw them perform on stage, just as sort

1234
01:15:37,080 --> 01:15:41,439
Speaker 1: of an audition stage, they didn't move, talk about dance.

1235
01:15:41,640 --> 01:15:46,439
Speaker 1: They were frozen, stiff, and I remember writing a three

1236
01:15:46,479 --> 01:15:48,880
Speaker 1: page letter to them, which I wish I still had,

1237
01:15:49,560 --> 01:15:52,200
Speaker 1: about things that I thought they could do to improve

1238
01:15:52,240 --> 01:15:54,680
Speaker 1: their performance. Little that I know that we were going

1239
01:15:54,760 --> 01:16:00,160
Speaker 1: to have this explosion of Freddie Mercury. Uh. But then

1240
01:16:00,200 --> 01:16:04,599
Speaker 1: I decided to make you comfortable. I'm going to send

1241
01:16:04,680 --> 01:16:08,360
Speaker 1: over every week one of our other key people, so uh,

1242
01:16:08,680 --> 01:16:14,040
Speaker 1: person who who did radio, who did normal publicity, anybody

1243
01:16:14,080 --> 01:16:18,760
Speaker 1: that was material and they're moving forward. Went over and

1244
01:16:18,800 --> 01:16:22,920
Speaker 1: spent three or four days with them, and I had

1245
01:16:23,000 --> 01:16:29,320
Speaker 1: him pretty electra oriented, and I I said to the manager. Well,

1246
01:16:30,479 --> 01:16:33,120
Speaker 1: I'm willing to make an offer. He said, well, we

1247
01:16:33,160 --> 01:16:36,200
Speaker 1: haven't heard from Clive Davis yet. I said, how long

1248
01:16:36,240 --> 01:16:38,400
Speaker 1: does it take for Clive Davis to make an offer?

1249
01:16:39,360 --> 01:16:41,639
Speaker 1: He said, we don't know what's happening. And I sat

1250
01:16:41,680 --> 01:16:45,160
Speaker 1: in with a meeting with them and somebody said something stupid.

1251
01:16:45,240 --> 01:16:48,240
Speaker 1: So I have a little bit more orientation towards you now.

1252
01:16:49,160 --> 01:16:53,559
Speaker 1: So I said, you have you seen the contract from

1253
01:16:53,560 --> 01:16:56,920
Speaker 1: Columbia And he said no. I said, you better get

1254
01:16:56,920 --> 01:16:59,320
Speaker 1: out to magnifying glass because it's going to be thirty

1255
01:16:59,360 --> 01:17:03,320
Speaker 1: pages and someplace on page seventeen, it's going to tell

1256
01:17:03,360 --> 01:17:07,280
Speaker 1: you what you get. I said, our contracts are different.

1257
01:17:07,560 --> 01:17:11,680
Speaker 1: They're much simpler. And our contracts indeed were Our contract

1258
01:17:11,720 --> 01:17:15,719
Speaker 1: was a letter. It started as a letter. It said

1259
01:17:15,840 --> 01:17:18,120
Speaker 1: how much we wanted them on the label, why we

1260
01:17:18,160 --> 01:17:21,880
Speaker 1: wanted them, the advances they would get, the royalty, they

1261
01:17:21,920 --> 01:17:25,960
Speaker 1: would get, the territories we had. At the beginning, it

1262
01:17:26,040 --> 01:17:28,960
Speaker 1: was just North America. It ended up that we had

1263
01:17:29,000 --> 01:17:32,080
Speaker 1: the rest of the world outside of Europe. But then

1264
01:17:32,120 --> 01:17:36,360
Speaker 1: it was accompanied by something called the small print, and

1265
01:17:36,520 --> 01:17:41,000
Speaker 1: it had all of the things that the big companies

1266
01:17:41,040 --> 01:17:44,480
Speaker 1: have in their contracts, and not all but many of them,

1267
01:17:44,600 --> 01:17:48,000
Speaker 1: except they were written so simply and with with humor

1268
01:17:48,760 --> 01:17:52,480
Speaker 1: that people liked reading them. And I never had any

1269
01:17:52,640 --> 01:17:55,360
Speaker 1: lawyer called me and asked for any change from that

1270
01:17:55,439 --> 01:17:59,479
Speaker 1: contract except the modification of one clause. The clause was

1271
01:18:00,439 --> 01:18:04,000
Speaker 1: record company agrees to treat artists with love and affection

1272
01:18:04,800 --> 01:18:09,439
Speaker 1: artists in terms agreed to treat record label people with

1273
01:18:09,560 --> 01:18:13,400
Speaker 1: a modicum of respect. And that was it. But I

1274
01:18:13,439 --> 01:18:17,639
Speaker 1: didn't send the contract off yet. I said, I want

1275
01:18:17,640 --> 01:18:21,000
Speaker 1: to put myself in their shoes. What is Columbia not

1276
01:18:21,080 --> 01:18:23,760
Speaker 1: going to do that I can do. And since the

1277
01:18:23,800 --> 01:18:26,840
Speaker 1: contract was only a page and a half letter which

1278
01:18:27,000 --> 01:18:31,320
Speaker 1: had all the money stuff in it, and four pages

1279
01:18:31,360 --> 01:18:36,200
Speaker 1: folding of of small print, and we called it the

1280
01:18:36,280 --> 01:18:39,400
Speaker 1: small print, I said, I'm going to write a check

1281
01:18:39,439 --> 01:18:43,400
Speaker 1: for twenty dollars and sign it. Anybody's going to tell

1282
01:18:43,400 --> 01:18:46,080
Speaker 1: me not to do this, but I'm going to do it.

1283
01:18:47,080 --> 01:18:50,200
Speaker 1: So I didn't tell anybody, and I sent it and

1284
01:18:50,240 --> 01:18:53,639
Speaker 1: they haven't heard from Clive, and here's twenty five dollars

1285
01:18:53,640 --> 01:18:58,400
Speaker 1: sitting in front of them. When they're desperate, they deposit

1286
01:18:58,520 --> 01:19:03,200
Speaker 1: the check. We have the artist. And then the first album,

1287
01:19:03,400 --> 01:19:05,479
Speaker 1: Very Good. I bought it when it came out, but

1288
01:19:05,520 --> 01:19:08,519
Speaker 1: you don't really have any success till the second album,

1289
01:19:08,760 --> 01:19:11,679
Speaker 1: and then the third album goes wild. The third album

1290
01:19:11,720 --> 01:19:15,040
Speaker 1: goes wild. But I believed in them now. I left

1291
01:19:15,080 --> 01:19:18,719
Speaker 1: after the second album. But and there were some clean

1292
01:19:18,920 --> 01:19:21,599
Speaker 1: complaints from David Geffen about the group, And I said,

1293
01:19:23,479 --> 01:19:25,799
Speaker 1: have you ever had any experience where the first album

1294
01:19:25,880 --> 01:19:28,559
Speaker 1: is promising, the second doesn't make it because they're not

1295
01:19:28,640 --> 01:19:31,400
Speaker 1: sure of where they are. But by the third album

1296
01:19:31,439 --> 01:19:35,760
Speaker 1: they maybe wait for the third album and uh, the

1297
01:19:35,840 --> 01:19:39,519
Speaker 1: third album, was it? Okay? Just going to one more act?

1298
01:19:40,000 --> 01:19:43,960
Speaker 1: Tell us the story of the Stooges. The Stooges. Ah, yes,

1299
01:19:44,080 --> 01:19:47,600
Speaker 1: the Stooges. Now you've picked all the right groups in this.

1300
01:19:47,760 --> 01:19:50,360
Speaker 1: I commend you on getting everything that I prepared for.

1301
01:19:51,240 --> 01:19:54,400
Speaker 1: I had somebody working for me called Danny Fields. Danny's

1302
01:19:54,479 --> 01:19:56,880
Speaker 1: job was to go to the clubs at night, sit around,

1303
01:19:57,600 --> 01:20:00,519
Speaker 1: take the temperature of what was happening, all that stuff

1304
01:20:00,560 --> 01:20:03,000
Speaker 1: that was essential, and come back to me with the

1305
01:20:03,040 --> 01:20:05,559
Speaker 1: information because I was going to get my good night's sleep.

1306
01:20:05,960 --> 01:20:07,960
Speaker 1: But if he wanted to start his day at eleven

1307
01:20:07,960 --> 01:20:10,000
Speaker 1: o'clock at night, it was okay with me. He could

1308
01:20:10,040 --> 01:20:12,719
Speaker 1: come in late in the afternoon, which is exactly what happened.

1309
01:20:13,200 --> 01:20:17,320
Speaker 1: And he tells me about this group he had seen

1310
01:20:17,520 --> 01:20:20,080
Speaker 1: because I had let him go to Detroit to check

1311
01:20:20,120 --> 01:20:23,479
Speaker 1: out the m C five, and he said there was

1312
01:20:23,520 --> 01:20:26,200
Speaker 1: this other band performing with them, and the m C

1313
01:20:26,400 --> 01:20:28,240
Speaker 1: five say that if we're going to sign them, we

1314
01:20:28,320 --> 01:20:32,479
Speaker 1: got to sign these guys. I said, well, get a

1315
01:20:32,560 --> 01:20:35,960
Speaker 1: can set, get something on what they do and who

1316
01:20:36,000 --> 01:20:39,040
Speaker 1: they are. And I heard nothing. I mean, it just

1317
01:20:39,240 --> 01:20:45,240
Speaker 1: was a disaster. But I said, I trust you. If

1318
01:20:45,280 --> 01:20:48,760
Speaker 1: you think they're that going to be that good, then

1319
01:20:48,840 --> 01:20:51,679
Speaker 1: let's take a chance. I'll sign the contract, which called

1320
01:20:51,720 --> 01:20:54,080
Speaker 1: for like fifteen thousand. Now it was much much less

1321
01:20:54,080 --> 01:20:57,479
Speaker 1: than that. It was five thousand dollar advance. And you know,

1322
01:20:57,560 --> 01:20:59,479
Speaker 1: the worst that can happen is they get the five

1323
01:20:59,520 --> 01:21:03,759
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and I walk away. But they came into

1324
01:21:03,760 --> 01:21:06,679
Speaker 1: New York and they came and loaded, and they had nothing.

1325
01:21:07,439 --> 01:21:11,360
Speaker 1: I couldn't hear a thing, and so I said, to them,

1326
01:21:11,400 --> 01:21:14,120
Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned, you're still elector artist. Go

1327
01:21:14,200 --> 01:21:17,360
Speaker 1: get clean and come back. And they came back a

1328
01:21:17,400 --> 01:21:19,599
Speaker 1: month later and they had nothing to play for me.

1329
01:21:19,640 --> 01:21:21,360
Speaker 1: I said, where are you going to get the material?

1330
01:21:21,400 --> 01:21:25,680
Speaker 1: I said, oh, we're going to write it tonight. So

1331
01:21:25,760 --> 01:21:33,240
Speaker 1: I said okay, and they did. So I had a

1332
01:21:33,280 --> 01:21:37,320
Speaker 1: produced album and when they played it back for me,

1333
01:21:38,880 --> 01:21:43,040
Speaker 1: the this, this, the tension and the strength weren't quite there.

1334
01:21:43,920 --> 01:21:48,080
Speaker 1: It was on the corner of it, but not not inside.

1335
01:21:48,280 --> 01:21:51,640
Speaker 1: So I said, give me the master tapes and the

1336
01:21:51,720 --> 01:21:56,400
Speaker 1: master mixes, and they were eight track, and so I went.

1337
01:21:56,439 --> 01:21:58,240
Speaker 1: And this is in New York, where we didn't have

1338
01:21:58,280 --> 01:22:00,840
Speaker 1: a studio, but we had very good listen rooms. I

1339
01:22:00,920 --> 01:22:05,599
Speaker 1: went into the main listening room eight track, turn them

1340
01:22:05,600 --> 01:22:08,360
Speaker 1: all up as loud as I could go. I pinned

1341
01:22:08,400 --> 01:22:14,160
Speaker 1: every every microphone, and my god, there it was. So

1342
01:22:14,240 --> 01:22:17,760
Speaker 1: we came out with the album not knowing what to expect.

1343
01:22:18,520 --> 01:22:21,479
Speaker 1: I was told that if I released this album, I

1344
01:22:21,560 --> 01:22:24,360
Speaker 1: was ruining my record company. I said, I don't think so,

1345
01:22:24,479 --> 01:22:26,840
Speaker 1: but you never know how these things are gonna work out.

1346
01:22:27,280 --> 01:22:29,519
Speaker 1: And you know that Danny has going to knock himself

1347
01:22:29,600 --> 01:22:34,280
Speaker 1: out trying to promote them, and so yeah, let's go

1348
01:22:34,400 --> 01:22:38,920
Speaker 1: for it. And we did, and it started and it

1349
01:22:39,040 --> 01:22:42,599
Speaker 1: got picked up lightly, but it was on the second

1350
01:22:42,640 --> 01:22:48,240
Speaker 1: album where it really took hold. And after that I

1351
01:22:48,280 --> 01:22:51,599
Speaker 1: was no longer at the company, and so they didn't

1352
01:22:51,600 --> 01:22:55,360
Speaker 1: have me there, and they went and signed elsewhere. Yeah,

1353
01:22:55,400 --> 01:22:57,760
Speaker 1: they went with raw power with Columbia. Tell us the

1354
01:22:57,800 --> 01:23:01,680
Speaker 1: story of none such St. John's College. Again. I know

1355
01:23:01,840 --> 01:23:06,280
Speaker 1: you've asked every question that I hoped you'd ask. The

1356
01:23:06,360 --> 01:23:09,439
Speaker 1: stuff that was important to me, Not the stuff that's

1357
01:23:09,439 --> 01:23:11,760
Speaker 1: gonna look glorious to anybody else, but the stuff I

1358
01:23:11,840 --> 01:23:14,680
Speaker 1: lived through. My friend Adam Pinsker and I used to

1359
01:23:14,680 --> 01:23:21,000
Speaker 1: buy records together. Twelve inh LPs were five dollars and uh,

1360
01:23:21,040 --> 01:23:23,280
Speaker 1: in order to buy two, we each had to buy

1361
01:23:23,280 --> 01:23:27,840
Speaker 1: a half. And you know, why do they have to

1362
01:23:27,920 --> 01:23:30,479
Speaker 1: be this expensive? I love baroque music? Why can't I

1363
01:23:30,520 --> 01:23:36,479
Speaker 1: get it to anyway? I forget, totally forget about it. Meanwhile. St.

1364
01:23:36,560 --> 01:23:40,600
Speaker 1: John's College is giving me an education in baroque and

1365
01:23:40,600 --> 01:23:46,759
Speaker 1: folk music, and I'm sitting in a delicate testin before

1366
01:23:46,800 --> 01:23:50,120
Speaker 1: we had our own distribution, waiting for my New York distributor,

1367
01:23:50,479 --> 01:23:54,000
Speaker 1: and noticed that there's a baroque concert happening in the

1368
01:23:54,160 --> 01:23:59,160
Speaker 1: small theater next to Carnegie Hall. So I say to myself,

1369
01:23:59,280 --> 01:24:04,200
Speaker 1: I get there's no tablecloth, it's just Butcher's paper. So

1370
01:24:04,320 --> 01:24:08,519
Speaker 1: I start figuring out can I have a record? It

1371
01:24:08,640 --> 01:24:12,880
Speaker 1: sells for the same price as the quality paperback that

1372
01:24:13,080 --> 01:24:16,839
Speaker 1: is profitable. And do I know whether I have the material?

1373
01:24:16,920 --> 01:24:19,439
Speaker 1: I knew I had the material, and by that I

1374
01:24:19,439 --> 01:24:24,080
Speaker 1: meant I had been been collecting magazines over the years

1375
01:24:24,360 --> 01:24:28,880
Speaker 1: UH from English, French and German German publishers, which would

1376
01:24:28,920 --> 01:24:33,960
Speaker 1: list all of their serious music, and this music that

1377
01:24:34,080 --> 01:24:37,360
Speaker 1: I love so much. If they had four stars, I

1378
01:24:37,400 --> 01:24:39,799
Speaker 1: would make a circle. And I had a whole stack

1379
01:24:39,840 --> 01:24:43,200
Speaker 1: of this information. So I knew these companies were in

1380
01:24:43,240 --> 01:24:46,600
Speaker 1: the Europe but not able to get released in the

1381
01:24:46,680 --> 01:24:50,040
Speaker 1: United States. And what if I make a release engine

1382
01:24:50,080 --> 01:24:52,720
Speaker 1: for this? What am I going to call it? I had?

1383
01:24:53,400 --> 01:24:56,240
Speaker 1: I thought of publishing company that went out of business

1384
01:24:56,360 --> 01:25:00,599
Speaker 1: decades ago in England called none Such and said, there's

1385
01:25:00,640 --> 01:25:04,720
Speaker 1: no possibility that this is gonna work, but I'm going

1386
01:25:04,760 --> 01:25:07,320
Speaker 1: to give it a shot. We're gonna call it None Such.

1387
01:25:08,720 --> 01:25:15,000
Speaker 1: And so I figure out that you can actually make

1388
01:25:15,080 --> 01:25:18,160
Speaker 1: a record, and if you sold it, you would sell

1389
01:25:18,240 --> 01:25:24,320
Speaker 1: it UH at about the two dollar and fifty cent

1390
01:25:24,439 --> 01:25:27,519
Speaker 1: record would go out of US at about a dollar

1391
01:25:27,640 --> 01:25:34,679
Speaker 1: fifty and the rest was the distributor which wasn't US UH,

1392
01:25:34,720 --> 01:25:39,519
Speaker 1: and the dealer, so it would cost US ninety and

1393
01:25:39,520 --> 01:25:44,040
Speaker 1: we could make sixty cents an album, and but I

1394
01:25:44,120 --> 01:25:46,160
Speaker 1: knew we had to come out ten at a time.

1395
01:25:47,040 --> 01:25:51,760
Speaker 1: So I had the first ten albums ready ready to go,

1396
01:25:51,920 --> 01:25:57,000
Speaker 1: including a two two records set. UH. That was critical,

1397
01:25:57,800 --> 01:26:03,559
Speaker 1: and my sales manager went to the key stores in

1398
01:26:03,680 --> 01:26:06,920
Speaker 1: major markets and talked to them and said, we want

1399
01:26:06,960 --> 01:26:10,040
Speaker 1: to do this. We want to sell it at to fifty.

1400
01:26:10,200 --> 01:26:12,160
Speaker 1: They say it's a bastard price. It's got to be

1401
01:26:12,200 --> 01:26:16,040
Speaker 1: to and I said, to strikes, it hits at the

1402
01:26:16,160 --> 01:26:22,080
Speaker 1: quality of this, it's just another multiple. No, we're going

1403
01:26:22,120 --> 01:26:25,360
Speaker 1: to do it at the price of a quality paperback

1404
01:26:25,400 --> 01:26:28,479
Speaker 1: and that's how we're going to advertise it, which is

1405
01:26:28,479 --> 01:26:32,160
Speaker 1: what we did. And we had ten records ready to go,

1406
01:26:32,240 --> 01:26:36,240
Speaker 1: which I had gotten for many people overseas. We started

1407
01:26:36,240 --> 01:26:41,639
Speaker 1: the project in November, and on February the following year,

1408
01:26:41,800 --> 01:26:46,880
Speaker 1: nine sixty four, we released the first ten LPs. Now

1409
01:26:46,920 --> 01:26:50,280
Speaker 1: I had ten LPs and ten LPs and ten LPs

1410
01:26:50,360 --> 01:26:53,240
Speaker 1: already picked out and in the works going beyond that.

1411
01:26:53,920 --> 01:26:58,439
Speaker 1: I committed about sixty to seventy thousand dollars of company

1412
01:26:58,479 --> 01:27:03,360
Speaker 1: money to test this project out. UH. Fortunately I had

1413
01:27:03,360 --> 01:27:05,679
Speaker 1: a young man from the Even Dozen jug band who

1414
01:27:05,680 --> 01:27:09,679
Speaker 1: played kazoo, who knew this music cold, and was very

1415
01:27:09,760 --> 01:27:13,519
Speaker 1: helpful in writing and writing record notes. And we came

1416
01:27:13,560 --> 01:27:17,200
Speaker 1: out with the first ten records, and three weeks later

1417
01:27:17,240 --> 01:27:22,479
Speaker 1: we hadn't sold any and little nervousness begins to set in,

1418
01:27:23,000 --> 01:27:27,920
Speaker 1: and then suddenly they're disappearing. They're all selling off the shelves.

1419
01:27:28,000 --> 01:27:32,280
Speaker 1: We have to make more. Nobody are advertisements didn't take

1420
01:27:32,280 --> 01:27:35,320
Speaker 1: a page. They took a page and a third and

1421
01:27:35,360 --> 01:27:39,920
Speaker 1: it said what we were doing. We were very good,

1422
01:27:40,200 --> 01:27:44,880
Speaker 1: very competently made records at the price as an equivalent paperback,

1423
01:27:46,200 --> 01:27:48,840
Speaker 1: and then we could come out with material. We came

1424
01:27:48,840 --> 01:27:52,520
Speaker 1: out with ten records a month. We had nine records

1425
01:27:53,600 --> 01:27:59,479
Speaker 1: out there doing phenomenally well before anybody else who had

1426
01:27:59,520 --> 01:28:06,120
Speaker 1: all of the classical catalogs, like like Vanguard. Uh. They

1427
01:28:06,160 --> 01:28:08,000
Speaker 1: they thought I was going to fall flat on my face.

1428
01:28:08,040 --> 01:28:11,080
Speaker 1: They knew about it beforehand because I told them about it,

1429
01:28:11,600 --> 01:28:13,800
Speaker 1: figuring that they might support it and come out with

1430
01:28:13,840 --> 01:28:16,160
Speaker 1: their own stuff. So we were because I wanted to

1431
01:28:16,200 --> 01:28:18,920
Speaker 1: create this price level, but they weren't for it. They said,

1432
01:28:19,280 --> 01:28:22,479
Speaker 1: now we got to get five. I said, you have to,

1433
01:28:22,640 --> 01:28:26,000
Speaker 1: but I don't have to because the music has already recorded,

1434
01:28:26,000 --> 01:28:28,000
Speaker 1: it's paid for. I just have to pay these guys

1435
01:28:28,000 --> 01:28:30,840
Speaker 1: at ten percent royalty, and that's going to be a

1436
01:28:30,840 --> 01:28:34,400
Speaker 1: lot more money. And they got nice advances and the

1437
01:28:34,479 --> 01:28:38,160
Speaker 1: result was exactly what I hoped it would be. And

1438
01:28:38,240 --> 01:28:41,400
Speaker 1: then I started playing with the idea, what else can

1439
01:28:41,439 --> 01:28:43,920
Speaker 1: we do with none such it just can't be baroque music?

1440
01:28:43,960 --> 01:28:46,840
Speaker 1: What else am I interested in? I was interested in

1441
01:28:46,880 --> 01:28:51,200
Speaker 1: the very nascent beginnings of electronic music, and I ran

1442
01:28:51,240 --> 01:28:56,360
Speaker 1: into some gentlemen who did a basically an instruction manual

1443
01:28:56,960 --> 01:29:01,120
Speaker 1: with information is how you can do this yourself. So

1444
01:29:01,200 --> 01:29:04,920
Speaker 1: I had electronic music. But then I wondered, you know,

1445
01:29:05,000 --> 01:29:07,640
Speaker 1: there's a there's got to be somebody out there recording

1446
01:29:08,160 --> 01:29:11,479
Speaker 1: world music that we don't know about. And he walked

1447
01:29:11,479 --> 01:29:14,320
Speaker 1: in the door about a month later. He had gone

1448
01:29:14,400 --> 01:29:19,280
Speaker 1: to Sam Goodies and the interesting records to him were

1449
01:29:19,280 --> 01:29:23,280
Speaker 1: our folk music record which were wide ranging. Uh, And

1450
01:29:23,360 --> 01:29:25,400
Speaker 1: so he came in to see us and he had

1451
01:29:25,439 --> 01:29:27,920
Speaker 1: all of this material, like music from the Morning of

1452
01:29:27,960 --> 01:29:33,040
Speaker 1: the World, which was Gamalan music. And we signed him

1453
01:29:33,120 --> 01:29:35,720
Speaker 1: up to do nothing but go out and record this

1454
01:29:35,800 --> 01:29:38,679
Speaker 1: kind of music. We paid him to go out and record.

1455
01:29:38,760 --> 01:29:41,519
Speaker 1: We improved his equipment and he went out and for

1456
01:29:41,560 --> 01:29:44,320
Speaker 1: the next eight years recorded music all over the world.

1457
01:29:44,720 --> 01:29:48,040
Speaker 1: This was what we would call world music. Yes, right,

1458
01:29:48,840 --> 01:29:53,040
Speaker 1: so it music from all kinds of odd places where

1459
01:29:53,040 --> 01:29:55,680
Speaker 1: you never thought you'd heard anything from. And then you

1460
01:29:55,680 --> 01:29:59,320
Speaker 1: would meet people later in life and who said your

1461
01:29:59,400 --> 01:30:01,920
Speaker 1: music change in my life. I was listening to music

1462
01:30:02,040 --> 01:30:05,960
Speaker 1: morning of the world. I just fell into it, realized

1463
01:30:06,000 --> 01:30:09,439
Speaker 1: I wasn't happy here and went to live in Europe

1464
01:30:10,200 --> 01:30:13,000
Speaker 1: or I went to live in Asia. The music affected

1465
01:30:13,040 --> 01:30:16,400
Speaker 1: people's lives and ways I never expect and the covers

1466
01:30:16,439 --> 01:30:20,160
Speaker 1: were superb because graphics were big on my list, and

1467
01:30:20,200 --> 01:30:24,160
Speaker 1: I had the best art director extant and we were

1468
01:30:24,240 --> 01:30:29,120
Speaker 1: off and none such today is still alive and doing

1469
01:30:29,200 --> 01:30:32,560
Speaker 1: business and has this great history. I released only in

1470
01:30:32,560 --> 01:30:35,080
Speaker 1: the music I life, and I know I was arrogant

1471
01:30:35,080 --> 01:30:40,200
Speaker 1: in that, but I did release the Stooges. But I

1472
01:30:40,240 --> 01:30:42,719
Speaker 1: had to love it, or had to see a reason

1473
01:30:42,800 --> 01:30:47,760
Speaker 1: in it. And I was very, very lucky in the

1474
01:30:47,800 --> 01:30:51,280
Speaker 1: opportunities that came to me, and in the opportunities I

1475
01:30:51,360 --> 01:30:56,760
Speaker 1: see by either creating them or getting somebody to go

1476
01:30:56,880 --> 01:30:59,559
Speaker 1: with me who was already out there and needed help.

1477
01:31:00,720 --> 01:31:03,640
Speaker 1: So how did you decide to sell the Warner Communications.

1478
01:31:03,960 --> 01:31:08,640
Speaker 1: That's an interesting story. This distribution was always a problem.

1479
01:31:08,720 --> 01:31:12,599
Speaker 1: You had every label going through independent distributors unless they

1480
01:31:12,600 --> 01:31:16,200
Speaker 1: were Columbia Decca or r c A who had their

1481
01:31:16,200 --> 01:31:19,640
Speaker 1: own controlled distribution. And you saw how much better that

1482
01:31:19,880 --> 01:31:24,200
Speaker 1: was because they spoke with your voice. So I started

1483
01:31:24,400 --> 01:31:30,800
Speaker 1: at about nineteen sixty six, I started bugging Ahmed, and

1484
01:31:30,920 --> 01:31:34,040
Speaker 1: I started bugging Mo Washton, with whom I was very friendly,

1485
01:31:34,680 --> 01:31:37,200
Speaker 1: and Ahmed and I had gone to both the St. John's,

1486
01:31:37,200 --> 01:31:38,960
Speaker 1: so at least he would sit into what he thought

1487
01:31:39,000 --> 01:31:41,520
Speaker 1: would be an intelligent idea, is that we have to

1488
01:31:41,560 --> 01:31:44,200
Speaker 1: start our own distribution system. You have no idea how

1489
01:31:44,280 --> 01:31:47,080
Speaker 1: much money is out there, and we do not have

1490
01:31:47,160 --> 01:31:50,920
Speaker 1: control over the miss message in the product. I thought,

1491
01:31:50,920 --> 01:31:53,120
Speaker 1: I don't know when to use the word product, but

1492
01:31:53,240 --> 01:31:55,839
Speaker 1: there's a there's a message we need to get out,

1493
01:31:56,439 --> 01:31:58,960
Speaker 1: and you only are going to get a message coherent

1494
01:31:59,680 --> 01:32:04,160
Speaker 1: with what you want if their distribution is yours. You're

1495
01:32:04,160 --> 01:32:07,600
Speaker 1: the ones who write the paychecks. And everybody said it

1496
01:32:07,680 --> 01:32:11,160
Speaker 1: was a good idea, but they didn't have enough critical mass.

1497
01:32:12,800 --> 01:32:15,960
Speaker 1: I said, you guys have got eight of it, and

1498
01:32:16,160 --> 01:32:22,080
Speaker 1: my company is fifteen of it. My output doesn't it

1499
01:32:22,120 --> 01:32:26,320
Speaker 1: doesn't compete with your your output. My output is my interest.

1500
01:32:26,800 --> 01:32:30,360
Speaker 1: So it broadens the sense of what this new distribution

1501
01:32:30,439 --> 01:32:34,000
Speaker 1: can offer. And we finally decided to do it, and

1502
01:32:34,080 --> 01:32:38,760
Speaker 1: within about four months it was done, and it was

1503
01:32:38,880 --> 01:32:43,200
Speaker 1: a miracle. Suddenly we were the number one sellers. The

1504
01:32:43,240 --> 01:32:47,960
Speaker 1: Warner Music Group was just doing phenomenally well. We topped

1505
01:32:48,000 --> 01:32:50,400
Speaker 1: the hundred million dollars our first year, which is what

1506
01:32:50,520 --> 01:32:52,840
Speaker 1: I thought was the number we wanted to reach, and

1507
01:32:52,880 --> 01:32:54,679
Speaker 1: then it went to a hundred and fifty or two.

1508
01:32:54,840 --> 01:32:58,120
Speaker 1: We were and our money was critical to the parent company,

1509
01:32:58,200 --> 01:33:02,920
Speaker 1: so they loved the idea. Steve Ross could look at

1510
01:33:02,920 --> 01:33:05,080
Speaker 1: a wall of numbers and pick out the wrong one.

1511
01:33:05,120 --> 01:33:10,479
Speaker 1: I've seen him do it, but he recognized something that

1512
01:33:10,680 --> 01:33:14,360
Speaker 1: compared to the film company was so important to him.

1513
01:33:14,720 --> 01:33:19,000
Speaker 1: His films required a lot of cash upfront. Our records didn't,

1514
01:33:19,560 --> 01:33:25,479
Speaker 1: but our payroll, which was our own distribution generating all

1515
01:33:25,560 --> 01:33:28,760
Speaker 1: that cash which we weren't taking back, he took and

1516
01:33:28,880 --> 01:33:32,360
Speaker 1: used it to finance pictures. So he had an automatic

1517
01:33:32,520 --> 01:33:35,880
Speaker 1: functioning we get it here, we place it there, we

1518
01:33:36,000 --> 01:33:40,160
Speaker 1: grow and it was a brilliant Uh. I didn't know

1519
01:33:40,240 --> 01:33:43,120
Speaker 1: he felt this way until it happened but I thought

1520
01:33:43,200 --> 01:33:46,599
Speaker 1: it was extremely smart of him and it was great

1521
01:33:46,640 --> 01:33:50,439
Speaker 1: for us. And once I had that done, I knew

1522
01:33:50,479 --> 01:33:55,200
Speaker 1: my key to freedom was eventual because I could once

1523
01:33:55,240 --> 01:34:00,519
Speaker 1: it was up and running, Geffen merged his label with Electra.

1524
01:34:00,920 --> 01:34:04,960
Speaker 1: Great artists came with him. Everything was working, and that

1525
01:34:05,080 --> 01:34:12,879
Speaker 1: happened in nine seventy, which was the thirtieth anniversary of Electra,

1526
01:34:13,560 --> 01:34:16,599
Speaker 1: and I served my my three years there. I ran

1527
01:34:16,680 --> 01:34:19,040
Speaker 1: the company's got to new the other guys. We got

1528
01:34:19,040 --> 01:34:22,639
Speaker 1: to new each other. And when I had an option

1529
01:34:22,720 --> 01:34:25,519
Speaker 1: that needed to be picked up and it wasn't, someone

1530
01:34:25,600 --> 01:34:27,839
Speaker 1: forgot about it or it got lost in the shuffle,

1531
01:34:28,520 --> 01:34:31,000
Speaker 1: and I waited politely, and then I sent him a

1532
01:34:31,080 --> 01:34:35,200
Speaker 1: note since Steve rossa notes saying my option has not

1533
01:34:35,360 --> 01:34:38,439
Speaker 1: been picked up, for which I am most grateful. You've

1534
01:34:38,439 --> 01:34:42,040
Speaker 1: been wonderful. But I think it's time that I go

1535
01:34:42,160 --> 01:34:44,400
Speaker 1: out on my own and do something that I dreamed

1536
01:34:44,439 --> 01:34:48,679
Speaker 1: about for years. This movie, The Holiday with Carrie Grant

1537
01:34:49,320 --> 01:34:52,719
Speaker 1: was just a fabulous movie, and it had left something

1538
01:34:52,760 --> 01:34:55,920
Speaker 1: that I had promised I would do deep inside myself.

1539
01:34:56,840 --> 01:35:00,639
Speaker 1: And I got to do it. And when was done,

1540
01:35:01,200 --> 01:35:04,280
Speaker 1: and I had done all the explanation, I went back

1541
01:35:04,320 --> 01:35:06,439
Speaker 1: to the people who had been good to me and

1542
01:35:06,479 --> 01:35:09,720
Speaker 1: said I can do this job for you, and now

1543
01:35:09,800 --> 01:35:12,639
Speaker 1: let me do it. Okay, come, okay, just to cover

1544
01:35:12,720 --> 01:35:16,679
Speaker 1: though ultimately Warner Steve Ross bought all those three labels

1545
01:35:16,720 --> 01:35:19,800
Speaker 1: though you know the Warner Music, the Atlanta Electra, so

1546
01:35:20,439 --> 01:35:24,040
Speaker 1: that you actually sold Electra prior to the formation of

1547
01:35:24,160 --> 01:35:27,960
Speaker 1: Warner of WIA the distribution company. How did you decide

1548
01:35:28,000 --> 01:35:31,479
Speaker 1: to sell to Steve Ross? How did I decide to

1549
01:35:31,520 --> 01:35:33,679
Speaker 1: sell it? It was an opportunity for me to get

1550
01:35:33,680 --> 01:35:37,240
Speaker 1: out and to have and to have distribution we owned.

1551
01:35:37,479 --> 01:35:41,400
Speaker 1: They both were equal uh of equal importance to me.

1552
01:35:42,320 --> 01:35:45,200
Speaker 1: Knowing that I would have control and have an instrument

1553
01:35:45,240 --> 01:35:48,639
Speaker 1: to work with, and that our records would be handled

1554
01:35:48,680 --> 01:35:51,920
Speaker 1: the way we needed them to be handled was powerful

1555
01:35:52,320 --> 01:35:55,240
Speaker 1: and the and the potential exit. I expected them to

1556
01:35:55,240 --> 01:35:58,040
Speaker 1: pick up my contract and I've been five years instead

1557
01:35:58,040 --> 01:36:01,200
Speaker 1: of three. But I was willing to do that. And

1558
01:36:01,240 --> 01:36:04,280
Speaker 1: we made a tremendous amount of money on the way.

1559
01:36:04,400 --> 01:36:06,800
Speaker 1: So all I was doing was making my company more

1560
01:36:06,800 --> 01:36:10,519
Speaker 1: productive better we could we could. We had an argument

1561
01:36:10,560 --> 01:36:13,000
Speaker 1: that we could give distribution that was equal to or

1562
01:36:13,080 --> 01:36:17,200
Speaker 1: better than Columbius. Did you in retrospect do you feel

1563
01:36:17,240 --> 01:36:20,439
Speaker 1: the number, Steve Paige, you was fair. I mean the

1564
01:36:20,760 --> 01:36:23,200
Speaker 1: ten million dollars that they gave me the sale of

1565
01:36:23,240 --> 01:36:25,240
Speaker 1: the company. I had to work them up to get

1566
01:36:25,320 --> 01:36:29,360
Speaker 1: him there. But it gave me freedom because the money

1567
01:36:29,680 --> 01:36:32,200
Speaker 1: of that money was taxable, and capital gains tax were

1568
01:36:32,360 --> 01:36:36,360
Speaker 1: between twenty five and thirty at that time. Uh and

1569
01:36:36,479 --> 01:36:40,680
Speaker 1: I had shareholders. Thearadore Bickel had five percent, which was

1570
01:36:40,720 --> 01:36:42,800
Speaker 1: now worth a half a million dollars, and my mother

1571
01:36:42,880 --> 01:36:45,920
Speaker 1: had five percent. There goes a million, and there was

1572
01:36:45,920 --> 01:36:48,920
Speaker 1: about a million dollars I was giving to the staff.

1573
01:36:48,960 --> 01:36:51,120
Speaker 1: I walked out with about four and a half million,

1574
01:36:51,800 --> 01:36:54,120
Speaker 1: which was not a lot, but it was a lot

1575
01:36:54,200 --> 01:36:57,280
Speaker 1: back then. But I was free. I was able to

1576
01:36:57,320 --> 01:37:00,479
Speaker 1: build a life for myself, and I had no idea

1577
01:37:00,479 --> 01:37:03,360
Speaker 1: about how I was going to do it, but I

1578
01:37:03,479 --> 01:37:06,439
Speaker 1: knew the company was in good hands and that the

1579
01:37:06,560 --> 01:37:08,800
Speaker 1: artists were in good hands. Okay, I know you're a

1580
01:37:08,840 --> 01:37:11,080
Speaker 1: student of the game. So what do you think of

1581
01:37:11,120 --> 01:37:15,439
Speaker 1: the business and music today? Well, it's totally different, and

1582
01:37:15,520 --> 01:37:19,680
Speaker 1: today it's different from six months ago. The music has

1583
01:37:19,720 --> 01:37:24,360
Speaker 1: always been broadened by the technology. CDs were imperative to

1584
01:37:24,439 --> 01:37:28,080
Speaker 1: our growth and sales, and in the year two thousand,

1585
01:37:28,439 --> 01:37:34,759
Speaker 1: our sales as record companies combined was about twenty four billion.

1586
01:37:35,439 --> 01:37:39,799
Speaker 1: Today it's about twenty and it may be less because

1587
01:37:39,880 --> 01:37:43,639
Speaker 1: we're not all back on our home basis. Record making

1588
01:37:43,680 --> 01:37:49,040
Speaker 1: has changed, Contracts have changed, the opportunities for people to

1589
01:37:49,200 --> 01:37:55,599
Speaker 1: bypass record companies have changed. They can go up online themselves.

1590
01:37:55,840 --> 01:37:58,519
Speaker 1: They can hire people who were specialists in doing that,

1591
01:37:58,920 --> 01:38:04,120
Speaker 1: who can sell eight of a download that record company

1592
01:38:04,160 --> 01:38:07,560
Speaker 1: labels don't have. I think the artists have far more control.

1593
01:38:07,880 --> 01:38:11,320
Speaker 1: I think that's okay because I think the artists who

1594
01:38:11,439 --> 01:38:14,439
Speaker 1: are very concerned about the money, are very concerned that

1595
01:38:14,479 --> 01:38:17,559
Speaker 1: we pay them fairly. We paid them exactly what they're

1596
01:38:17,680 --> 01:38:23,160
Speaker 1: entitled to, and we have extraordinarily deep royalty statements which

1597
01:38:23,160 --> 01:38:27,760
Speaker 1: they can go online and visualize. So I think there

1598
01:38:27,760 --> 01:38:30,880
Speaker 1: are so many different ways that music gets across, and

1599
01:38:30,920 --> 01:38:33,639
Speaker 1: I think all of these different ways are essential to mute,

1600
01:38:33,680 --> 01:38:39,120
Speaker 1: for music to grow. Actually, when you think about uh, Spotify,

1601
01:38:39,320 --> 01:38:42,960
Speaker 1: I remember conversation those of us who ran record companies

1602
01:38:43,000 --> 01:38:46,559
Speaker 1: would have in the sixties, and the conversation went, boy,

1603
01:38:46,680 --> 01:38:51,559
Speaker 1: what we really need is a jukebox in the sky.

1604
01:38:51,600 --> 01:38:54,240
Speaker 1: But the problem was we had this great idea, but

1605
01:38:54,280 --> 01:38:55,960
Speaker 1: We didn't know how to get it down to the people.

1606
01:38:56,000 --> 01:39:00,880
Speaker 1: The technology wasn't there yet, digital technology where punch cards

1607
01:39:01,160 --> 01:39:03,840
Speaker 1: you stuck them in a machine. But we had the

1608
01:39:03,920 --> 01:39:07,000
Speaker 1: idea that you had to get directly to the customer

1609
01:39:07,840 --> 01:39:10,439
Speaker 1: and we would talk about a lot, but nothing could

1610
01:39:10,439 --> 01:39:13,479
Speaker 1: happen because the technology simply wasn't in place. But it

1611
01:39:13,600 --> 01:39:17,240
Speaker 1: is in place now. I think having a many different

1612
01:39:18,000 --> 01:39:22,040
Speaker 1: opportunities for artists to do it themselves, to make it up,

1613
01:39:22,080 --> 01:39:26,880
Speaker 1: to create distribution of their own, to be their own commander.

1614
01:39:26,960 --> 01:39:29,519
Speaker 1: I think that's there and I think that's good. Okay,

1615
01:39:29,560 --> 01:39:32,799
Speaker 1: this has been wonderful, Jack, Thanks so much for taking

1616
01:39:32,840 --> 01:39:34,599
Speaker 1: time out of your day to talk to me. It's

1617
01:39:34,600 --> 01:39:36,960
Speaker 1: a story I wanted to tell, but it's the story

1618
01:39:37,000 --> 01:39:41,000
Speaker 1: I wanted to have stimulated by good questions. Well, thank

1619
01:39:41,000 --> 01:39:43,160
Speaker 1: you so much. We got most of the story, Like

1620
01:39:43,200 --> 01:39:47,479
Speaker 1: I could still dig deeper. We didn't cover rhinoceros and Aprica, Brandy.

1621
01:39:47,560 --> 01:39:49,880
Speaker 1: We didn't cover the original version of m C five

1622
01:39:50,360 --> 01:39:53,160
Speaker 1: with that had to be edited after but we'll save

1623
01:39:53,200 --> 01:39:55,840
Speaker 1: that for another time until next time. This is Bob

1624
01:39:55,920 --> 01:40:04,240
Speaker 1: left Sets. Thank you, Jack. B