Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob Leftet's podcast. My guest
Speaker 1: today is Cruly, a legend in the pian era. Mr
Speaker 1: Electra Records, Pano Vision, and so much more. Jack Holsman, Jack,
Speaker 1: it's a pleasure to be here. Okay, first question, why
Speaker 1: is there no kay On Jack? Because the name was
Speaker 1: originally Jacob and my dad, I'm a junior, Jack Holsman.
Speaker 1: It's Jacob Holsman, and my dad said that when he
Speaker 1: was going to school up in Portland, Jacob was a
Speaker 1: Jewish name, so he decided to get rid of that
Speaker 1: in terms of talking to other students that he named
Speaker 1: himself Jack and I inherited on my birth certificate is
Speaker 1: Jacob Easton Holsman the second But you are Jewish and
Speaker 1: were raised Jewish? Correct? Yeah? I was Okay, So he
Speaker 1: was doing it, Uh, just so he wouldn't experience anti
Speaker 1: semitism in Portland. What was he doing in Portland? Well,
Speaker 1: the whole family had come across the United States, had
Speaker 1: settled in Denver, and at one point I thought that
Speaker 1: Portland was new, fresh open territory, and uh, they opened
Speaker 1: up second hand stores there. Okay, we'll get back to that.
Speaker 1: But h in our conversations previous to this, you said, well,
Speaker 1: you didn't know whether you could schedule because you were
Speaker 1: doing work for Warner Music. What exactly, how exactly and
Speaker 1: what are you doing involved with Warner today? Well, what
Speaker 1: happened was that I was with the company for twenty
Speaker 1: three years, and I knew I couldn't leave the company
Speaker 1: until we had a solid distribution system. And I had
Speaker 1: made a promise to myself to quit my at midlife.
Speaker 1: I saw a movie once, uh, and it was a
Speaker 1: story of about a guy who decide that he wants
Speaker 1: to stop at midlife and figure out what he's doing
Speaker 1: and then pick up and go from that. And I
Speaker 1: thought that was in uh, incredibly smart, And so I
Speaker 1: knew that I wanted to stop in my forties and
Speaker 1: take how many years to do whatever I wanted. There
Speaker 1: were things I longed to do. I was a pilot.
Speaker 1: I loved airplanes. I like to fly airplanes. I love
Speaker 1: to scuba dive, I wanted to travel. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to have time off and see what comes into my
Speaker 1: perspective and figure out what I'm going to do later.
Speaker 1: I did that for seven years, uh, and then in
Speaker 1: the end of that seventh year, I UH called the
Speaker 1: chairman of the company and I said to him, I'm
Speaker 1: ready to come back. And he said, what do you
Speaker 1: want to do? And I said, I want to come back,
Speaker 1: not in the music group, but as as a technologist,
Speaker 1: your chief technology. As he said, You're hired. And then
Speaker 1: we got into cable and a whole bunch of interesting
Speaker 1: things and I was there as part of that group,
Speaker 1: and when we had problems, I knew how to solve them. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're rehired at Warner is the chief technologist? What
Speaker 1: does that ultimately leave you? That ultimately led me into
Speaker 1: cable TV. I had a friend who had done a
Speaker 1: video which I thought was quite amazing, and Uh, I said,
Speaker 1: I think there's something here. One of the things that
Speaker 1: happened that was material was that somebody gave me a
Speaker 1: film of his performing a song and I thought it
Speaker 1: was wonderful, and I got it up on one of
Speaker 1: the UH Warner cable channels and there was excitement about that,
Speaker 1: and then that turned itself into MTV over time, and
Speaker 1: that was just wonderful because suddenly the record companies had
Speaker 1: an outlet for making people aware of their records and
Speaker 1: promoting their records without having to go through radio stations
Speaker 1: and all the nonsense that went on with getting your
Speaker 1: thing on the air, and it was a more complete
Speaker 1: emotional picture or emotional experience of what the song was.
Speaker 1: So MTV was was was the happy outcome of what
Speaker 1: I had started. I got it to the right people
Speaker 1: at the right time, and it just happened. So from
Speaker 1: there you go to Piano Vision. You go through many iterations,
Speaker 1: but before we go literally you're still working for the
Speaker 1: company today. Yes, that's a longer story, but what happened
Speaker 1: was that after we got the MTV up, Warner Communications
Speaker 1: became Warner Communications. They immediately acquired a company called Pani
Speaker 1: Vision at the recommendation the man who was running the
Speaker 1: uh the studios. And the thing about Panavision was that
Speaker 1: it made cameras. It was very profitable at least cameras
Speaker 1: and lenses to all of the picture companies. The picture
Speaker 1: companies had sent their equipment back. And what happened at
Speaker 1: Panavision is that it was upgraded. There were new lenses,
Speaker 1: everything was guaranteed. They rented it, you had somebody standing
Speaker 1: by to fix it if it needed fixing. That was
Speaker 1: all wonderful then suddenly they were spending a lot of
Speaker 1: money and nobody could find out what the money was
Speaker 1: being what the money was being spent on. And since
Speaker 1: I knew something about cinematography, Steve Ross, who was the
Speaker 1: chairman of the company, asked me to go out and
Speaker 1: find out what the hell was going on. So I
Speaker 1: went to Panavision and I sat with the man who
Speaker 1: was in charge of the company, Bob got Schalk. He
Speaker 1: was very tightly woven. I couldn't get any answers. And
Speaker 1: then he took me into room where all of the
Speaker 1: pan division equipment was showing, and I looked around and
Speaker 1: I saw a camera that had a red light flashing,
Speaker 1: and it had it had film in it, but I
Speaker 1: didn't hear anything. So I said, is that a silent camera?
Speaker 1: He said yes. I said, in effect, what you did
Speaker 1: was didn't try to muffle the noise. You tried to
Speaker 1: eliminate it before it happened. He said, exactly right, And
Speaker 1: that was the Panaflex. So suddenly movie making change. Everybody
Speaker 1: wanted a Panaflex because it was a smallish camera, it
Speaker 1: could be moved around and you didn't hear it. It's
Speaker 1: it saved all kinds of time and money. Gotchawk was
Speaker 1: running it. He was running it moderately well, but then
Speaker 1: he was killed by a living male lover. And I
Speaker 1: got a call from Steve Ross saying, we've heard that
Speaker 1: Gotcha talk was was killed. Can you find out what's
Speaker 1: going on and try to come up with something that
Speaker 1: you think we should do. So I was up at Atari,
Speaker 1: where I was in a where I was a director
Speaker 1: because I had been involved in the evaluation, the technical
Speaker 1: evaluation of that company. And I called into the got
Speaker 1: Shocks UH secretary and I said, Michael, and he said
Speaker 1: it's true. And I said, what's happening? He said, everybody's
Speaker 1: going around crazy with rumors. I said, I'd like you
Speaker 1: to stay off the phone for five minutes. I need
Speaker 1: to think, and he said I'll do that. And I
Speaker 1: as he stayed off the phone for five minutes, I
Speaker 1: asked myself, do I really want to take over this company?
Speaker 1: Do I think I can do that job? Well? I
Speaker 1: have some fun, it's so totally different from anything I've
Speaker 1: ever done, and yet it's in the business that I
Speaker 1: admire so much. And I called him back and I said, well,
Speaker 1: tell everybody I'm taking over the company. And I'll be
Speaker 1: there at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. And you picked the
Speaker 1: executives you think I need to meet with first before
Speaker 1: we meet with everybody. He said fine. And then I
Speaker 1: called Steve Ross and I said it's true. And he said,
Speaker 1: you have any ideas? I said, I've taken over the company,
Speaker 1: and he said, what can I do for you? I said,
Speaker 1: don't call me cash my checks and he said, agreed,
Speaker 1: will do that. I said, I need I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you when I think I've got my arms wrapped around it.
Speaker 1: But these are people I don't know, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to earn my way into their confidence, and
Speaker 1: that's going to take time. And that's what we did,
Speaker 1: and I took over the company. We brought in all
Speaker 1: of the people from around the world who were releasing
Speaker 1: agents for us, and uh. They all were helpful. And
Speaker 1: when I was in the company two or three months,
Speaker 1: I could see the defects and what we needed to
Speaker 1: do and where we needed to go. And we had
Speaker 1: optics that were too old and some optics that weren't honest.
Speaker 1: So we got it all fixed. And three years later
Speaker 1: Ross decided he didn't want the company anymore, and he
Speaker 1: was going to sell it. I had money and was
Speaker 1: willing to buy it with a people, with people I
Speaker 1: could raise money from. But he never sold any company
Speaker 1: to any person who would run it on the grounds
Speaker 1: that you knew stuff that he didn't know, and so
Speaker 1: you had an advantage. So he turned me down and
Speaker 1: that was it. And Uh. Eventually I left Warner Communications
Speaker 1: and stayed out while I took a vacation that I
Speaker 1: had promised myself. I had seen a movie called Holiday
Speaker 1: with Carrie Grant. That was a wonderful movie about a
Speaker 1: guy who was from the wrong side of the tracks
Speaker 1: when he was on the rights I had of the
Speaker 1: tracks and beginning to make some money if he made enough,
Speaker 1: he wanted to take a break for a period of time,
Speaker 1: figure out where he was going and what his life
Speaker 1: was all about. And at nineteen years old, I saw
Speaker 1: sat in the back of the theater and I said, God,
Speaker 1: that makes so much sense. I don't want to forget that,
Speaker 1: and I didn't so that. When my contract was up,
Speaker 1: UH and I was asked to renew, I said, look,
Speaker 1: you can put a lecture with Asylum. You've got Geffen,
Speaker 1: You've got all of these good people. You don't need
Speaker 1: me anymore. I need time for myself. And I had
Speaker 1: discovered Hawaii and a holiday trip, and I knew that's
Speaker 1: where I wanted to be. And I moved to Hawaii
Speaker 1: and I lived there for seven plus years and did
Speaker 1: everything I wanted to do, so all the people I
Speaker 1: wanted to see and meet and have all of the adventures,
Speaker 1: and I I loved my life. But I knew it
Speaker 1: was time for me to go back to work and
Speaker 1: called Steve Ross and that's when we got into the
Speaker 1: stage of being the chief technologist. But let's go back
Speaker 1: to the beginning. So your parents were they born in
Speaker 1: the US? Were they born in the so called Old Country? No,
Speaker 1: they were born in the United States. My mother was
Speaker 1: born in Cincinnata. My father was born in Portland. Where else? Okay,
Speaker 1: So they met in Portland, Um, actually they did. My
Speaker 1: mother came there with her mother, a stell Sternberger, who
Speaker 1: was a real personality. She had a program, a weekly
Speaker 1: political analysis program on CBS network which was broadcast on
Speaker 1: Saturday mornings. And that was a big piece of my
Speaker 1: actually going into music because when I asked to sit
Speaker 1: in the studio with her, they said, oh no, you
Speaker 1: can't do that. But you can sit in the control
Speaker 1: room and in the control room where all the lads
Speaker 1: and earned tables and uh everything. It was used in broadcasting,
Speaker 1: and I was intensely curious about it, and I'd ask
Speaker 1: a lot of questions and they'd explained it to me.
Speaker 1: So that when I was reading Life magazine and saw
Speaker 1: an article uh that showed the inventor or the creator
Speaker 1: for CBS Labs of the LP record, I knew that
Speaker 1: it was going to be a winner, and that small
Speaker 1: independent labels could start because we would do stuff that
Speaker 1: was not related to the major labels at all. I
Speaker 1: thought I would do folk music in baroque music. Baroque
Speaker 1: music was too expensive for me. I only had six
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, and so I tried folk music. Glenn Yarborough,
Speaker 1: who turned out to be a star later and a
Speaker 1: member of the Limelighters, was one of my first early artists.
Speaker 1: And at the end of that third year, St. John's
Speaker 1: College was an am using school. It it's had a
Speaker 1: curriculum that did not use textbooks. It used the original books.
Speaker 1: If you were studying geometry, you went all the way back. Well,
Speaker 1: let's just let's go back. We'll get back to St. John's.
Speaker 1: So you grew up in Portland. No, I didn't grow up.
Speaker 1: I grew up in New York. My father came to
Speaker 1: New York UH after his after his supremat he came
Speaker 1: to medical school at Harvard. And after medical school at Harvard, UH,
Speaker 1: he was taken in by Mound Sinai and was at
Speaker 1: Mount Sinai for a number of years, and then he
Speaker 1: went into private practice. And he called up my mother
Speaker 1: our writer or a letter or whatever did and then
Speaker 1: they started dating, and eventually I emerged. And how many
Speaker 1: kids in the family? True? My brother and I my
Speaker 1: brother Keith, who's the oldest. I'm the oldest. I'm And
Speaker 1: to what degree be the oldest child? Were you in
Speaker 1: the embodiment of their hopes and dreams? My father didn't
Speaker 1: think I was very smart, and he said that, look,
Speaker 1: I know you're gonna have a trouble finding a way
Speaker 1: to make a living. So I'll buy a drug store
Speaker 1: for you in this building. We'll put it up and
Speaker 1: then you run the drug store, and we split the
Speaker 1: profits at the end of the year. And I said,
Speaker 1: that's not what I have in mind. He said, what
Speaker 1: did you have in mind? I said, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to think on it. And Uh, I
Speaker 1: started a little record shop for folk music and as
Speaker 1: the office for a record company I named Electra because
Speaker 1: I loved the name. Electra was one of the one
Speaker 1: of the outer muses in the Solar system. And but
Speaker 1: I wanted Electra with a C. Was. I wanted a heart,
Speaker 1: more dramatic K. And so the lecture came with a K.
Speaker 1: And I found my first folk singer, Geane Ritchie, and
Speaker 1: she we made a wonderful album together. You could record
Speaker 1: the artist in their own home. I had my own
Speaker 1: tape recorder by that time, six hundred dollar Magna order
Speaker 1: and a microphone. And so what we do was we
Speaker 1: would set up the rooms, hang hang things on the
Speaker 1: walls to keep the echoic nature of a room from
Speaker 1: happening into the microphone. And I did that with a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of artists, Oscar Brand, Frank Warner, uh And
Speaker 1: slowly these were tenanth LPs. They kind of grew and
Speaker 1: grew and grew. I still wasn't making money. I was
Speaker 1: making debt. In nineteen fifty five, I was sitting in
Speaker 1: a at a home with some friends and they were
Speaker 1: having everybody brought their guitar and they're singing songs. And
Speaker 1: they gave this guitar to this guy who was an actor,
Speaker 1: and he just blew me away. It was Theodore Bickel. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was doing Yiddish songs, he was doing Israeli songs,
Speaker 1: he was doing Russian folk songs. And I knew those
Speaker 1: genres had big audiences in the major cities. So I
Speaker 1: sat theo down and we talked, and we made a
Speaker 1: record deal together, and uh, we started making these albums.
Speaker 1: And in the nifty six when twelve inch records happened,
Speaker 1: we added more music to the album as they came
Speaker 1: out as twelve inch LPs, and suddenly we were selling records. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back. Uh, you're growing up. What kind of
Speaker 1: kid are you? You have a lot of friends. Are
Speaker 1: more of an introvert? I was a loner. I had
Speaker 1: one friend named Adam Pinsker. Adam was smart and kept
Speaker 1: me kind of straightened out. I was kind of loose
Speaker 1: and banging at all kinds of edges. But when I
Speaker 1: had something I love to do, I did it very well.
Speaker 1: And when I went to St. John's College, which was
Speaker 1: this great book school which Ahmed Errigan had gone to
Speaker 1: eight years earlier than me. When we found out that
Speaker 1: we had both gone to this very obscure school where
Speaker 1: there are only one hundred students in it for all
Speaker 1: all grades, big hugs and kisses because we had that
Speaker 1: extremely important education and opportunity in hand. Why did you
Speaker 1: go to St John's Because I had my only other
Speaker 1: choice with another college. I had a promising date for
Speaker 1: that weekend, so I they insisted upon an interview that weekend.
Speaker 1: I said, the hell with it. I'll go to St.
Speaker 1: John's whatever that is. I had no idea what I
Speaker 1: was getting into what it turned out to be a
Speaker 1: turning point in my life. And as I was there
Speaker 1: and picking up some packages that I had sent to myself,
Speaker 1: I noticed one to Adam Pinsker. He had also ended
Speaker 1: up in this school. The child wildhood friend whom I
Speaker 1: hadn't seen in years was in this school, and he
Speaker 1: was enormous help to me. And so at what point
Speaker 1: do you decide to start electra? Are you still at
Speaker 1: St John's and don't you have a partner. I'm still
Speaker 1: at St. John's. I had somebody who had come out
Speaker 1: of the Navy who put up three hundred dollars and
Speaker 1: they we were partners. Uh. He later didn't want to
Speaker 1: be involved with this, and so I think I gave
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars. I don't know where the hell I
Speaker 1: got the thousand dollars, but I gave a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and he went his way, and I owned a hundred
Speaker 1: percent of the company, but we were in about ninety
Speaker 1: thousand dollars worth of fifty five debt before Theodore Bikail
Speaker 1: the Theater or Pikail records between them sold about a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand, but they were very profitable despite the fact
Speaker 1: that they were very elaborately produced. Did you had a
Speaker 1: Russian album? We had a book of liner notes. It
Speaker 1: wasn't liner notes on the back so much as it
Speaker 1: was liner notes. Inside the album. We would have the
Speaker 1: songs in Russian in a transliteration, which is what if
Speaker 1: you want to sing along with us and can read English,
Speaker 1: you might be able to sing with with theo uh
Speaker 1: and then the English translation. And because they were so
Speaker 1: complete and the covers were so good, we did well.
Speaker 1: And I had very good suppliers. They were really generous
Speaker 1: with me. I owed him ninety thousand dollars, but my
Speaker 1: strategy with them was not to put off paying them.
Speaker 1: It was the opposite, to pay a small amount every
Speaker 1: two weeks. So they saw a check coming every two weeks,
Speaker 1: and the checks got bigger and bigger and bigger, and
Speaker 1: then one day I wrote checks for ninety thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: paid them off and kept them. Okay. Now, I certainly
Speaker 1: remember growing up with Theodore Maquel records, and he was
Speaker 1: very definitely a star. The reason I bring this up
Speaker 1: is when you meet him in this party. Had he
Speaker 1: been contacted by anybody else to make records? No, he wasn't.
Speaker 1: He was an actor. He was on Broadway. I thought
Speaker 1: he could be in a record artist. And I said, Jim,
Speaker 1: come on over to the house and we'll record some stuff.
Speaker 1: We'll see how it goes. And then I played it
Speaker 1: back for myself a lot, and I said, this isn't
Speaker 1: this is an artist. I think that will help get
Speaker 1: me there. And about five years after he had helped
Speaker 1: get me there, I said THEO we're doing well. Now
Speaker 1: you deserve a reward as an appreciation, and he said
Speaker 1: what I said, Well, I'll sell you five percent of
Speaker 1: the company for the low price of twenty dollars and
Speaker 1: he bought it, and when the company was sold, he
Speaker 1: walked out with five hundred thousand dollars. But that's what
Speaker 1: I felt. I owed him. He was there at that time.
Speaker 1: You have a record deal. Today, record deals are very complicated,
Speaker 1: never mind the streaming era. What kind of deal did
Speaker 1: you cut the O back in the fifties. Well, I
Speaker 1: cut the deal of no money down and a royalty
Speaker 1: of seven on the price on which all records were sold,
Speaker 1: because there was a ten percent federal tax at that time,
Speaker 1: instituted during the war. So that was it. The contracts
Speaker 1: were very simple. We had very successful series. We had
Speaker 1: a series we did. Another artist, Oscar Brand, who had
Speaker 1: a New York radio show every Sunday, came to me
Speaker 1: one day and said, you know, I've been getting lyrics
Speaker 1: and stuff with melodies from Air Force people. He said,
Speaker 1: you know, we could make an Air Force album. I
Speaker 1: said that kind of crazy, but let me listen to
Speaker 1: the material. And the material was there, and so I said, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll call at the y old Blue Johnder. We made
Speaker 1: a record, we put it out, It did well, and
Speaker 1: we sent a copy with a note to the unit
Speaker 1: that bought all of the stuff for the stores that
Speaker 1: they ran in each of the various locations the world,
Speaker 1: and uh so we sent it and we didn't hear
Speaker 1: from them, and then about three weeks later we got
Speaker 1: a letter with an order for ten thousand copies. I
Speaker 1: called him and said, do you guys make a mistake
Speaker 1: with a zero? And they said, no, no, we think
Speaker 1: we can sell ten thousand, and so that worked, and
Speaker 1: then we did it for the Marines, we did it
Speaker 1: for the Navy. We were doing well. No, nothing explosive,
Speaker 1: but I was having fun and we were doing things
Speaker 1: that other people didn't do. There was a moment when
Speaker 1: I had there was nothing to record. I could not
Speaker 1: find an artist I wanted just before Josh White, so
Speaker 1: I said, what else can I record? I'm a Ham
Speaker 1: radio operator and I have trouble with Morse code. So
Speaker 1: I came up with a Morse code record that you
Speaker 1: could play at thirty three, forty five, and seventy eight,
Speaker 1: depending upon your how good you were in reading Morse code.
Speaker 1: And we didn't sell it through record stores. We sold
Speaker 1: it through stores that had big mail order departments. Uh
Speaker 1: and they were located throughout the country of Concord was
Speaker 1: one of them. There were about eight, and he sold
Speaker 1: about five a month, So I was selling three thousand
Speaker 1: a month of what I couldn't give away in fol
Speaker 1: in folk music, and I never forgot that it's not
Speaker 1: always about recording music, which came later on and proved
Speaker 1: to be the most dynamic restart in a record company
Speaker 1: that I know of. Okay, now, one thing we know
Speaker 1: in the era of independent distribution as opposed to branch distribution,
Speaker 1: that it wasn't always so easy to get paid even
Speaker 1: if the records sold. What was that experience like for you?
Speaker 1: I didn't have that experience very badly. I picked good
Speaker 1: people who actually paid me, but took their time about it,
Speaker 1: which was one of the reasons why I didn't have
Speaker 1: enough money to pay off the manufacturers and people who
Speaker 1: made the records assemble the albums. But I knew that
Speaker 1: had to end, and that was one of the sparking
Speaker 1: points with which I always lived. I've got to find
Speaker 1: an opportunity for independent labels to be able to supervise
Speaker 1: and handle the last thing between the record and the
Speaker 1: person who buys it, so you ultimately form wea But
Speaker 1: staying with the Electra story tell us the story of
Speaker 1: Josh White Josh White. I got a phone call one day.
Speaker 1: A man said to me, I represent Josh White, and
Speaker 1: Josh White can't get a record contract because he's been blacklisted.
Speaker 1: Why was he blacklisted? He performed at a Russian a
Speaker 1: concert to raise money for Russia and special arms for
Speaker 1: Russia during the Second World War, so he was blacklisted.
Speaker 1: I said, that's no reason to be blacklisted. They well,
Speaker 1: they calling him a communist. I said, well, I call
Speaker 1: him Josh White, and I would love to have him.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm not going to send him over if
Speaker 1: you're going to disappoint him. I said, if he can
Speaker 1: sing the way I remember he could sing, then you
Speaker 1: have no problem. And he came over and we sat
Speaker 1: down and we got along very well. And then he
Speaker 1: began to sing, and I realized that all of the
Speaker 1: recordings that had been done mono records were done very cheaply,
Speaker 1: and he didn't sound like Josh White. I thought I
Speaker 1: could make him sound like Josh White. And we talked
Speaker 1: about this, and then we did the We did an
Speaker 1: album called John Henry, which was two LPs. One was
Speaker 1: just the story of John Henry and the other was
Speaker 1: other songs from that same period and then we did
Speaker 1: Josh at Midnight, which was the winner. We did it
Speaker 1: late in the evening, a young lady would drop by.
Speaker 1: We had to do it all with one microphone, so
Speaker 1: I had I put the people where I thought they
Speaker 1: belonged in front of the microphone and you know, take
Speaker 1: something to the floor so that they wouldn't know we're
Speaker 1: a step. We recorded, and that's when we made the
Speaker 1: Josh White recording and it just took off. By take off,
Speaker 1: I mean it was selling thirty thirty five thousand, which
Speaker 1: for me was wonderful, and he got paid, so Josh
Speaker 1: was easy to work with me. We made about seven
Speaker 1: albums and all overtime. So this begs a question. Since
Speaker 1: you were recording in Mono and you had the magnetone
Speaker 1: tape recorder, were you also serving as the engineer and
Speaker 1: do you have skills in that area. I did everything myself. Yes,
Speaker 1: I was the engineer. I had the tape recorder, we
Speaker 1: had the one microphone. They were placed strategically where they
Speaker 1: should be in terms of distance. Uh. They were wonderfully cooperative.
Speaker 1: But I recorded every album with my tape recorders. I
Speaker 1: would go places by strapping my tape recorder onto the
Speaker 1: spare seat behind me on my motor scooter. I didn't
Speaker 1: have a car, but I motor scooted everywhere. I love
Speaker 1: that motor scooter. Okay, So for those of us who
Speaker 1: are a little bit younger, we remember Elektra being one
Speaker 1: of the two kings of folk music, the other being Vanguard.
Speaker 1: So as we start to hit the sixties and the
Speaker 1: folk music eras begins with even Hood Nanny on DV,
Speaker 1: you start putting out these folk records that start getting traction. Okay.
Speaker 1: What happened was by nineteen sixty, I thought folk music,
Speaker 1: the five to eight hundred songs that were folk songs
Speaker 1: had all been recorded. They had been played to death
Speaker 1: on radio and people would sit there clapping their hands,
Speaker 1: which had nothing to do with folk music. And I said,
Speaker 1: it's a different direction. If I find a folk artist
Speaker 1: that I are, an artist like a Judy Collins, who
Speaker 1: I think has has talent, I'll do that. But I
Speaker 1: don't know what the hell to record, and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to record crap. So I went back to my
Speaker 1: time every of recording the Morse Code, and I said,
Speaker 1: I said, what's not out there that needs to be done?
Speaker 1: Because I'm not going to make any piece of ship.
Speaker 1: I thought, and I thought, and I came home one
Speaker 1: day and I was closing the door. I heard a
Speaker 1: car crash which was on my wife's TV. And I said,
Speaker 1: sound effects. There are no sound effects albums that I
Speaker 1: know of that are available to the public. So I
Speaker 1: did a lot of research, and I started started by
Speaker 1: sitting down watching television and writing down every sound effect
Speaker 1: I heard, and every sound effect I could think of.
Speaker 1: When I had six hundred of them, I put together
Speaker 1: a team of people who had for whom I could least,
Speaker 1: the recorders and microphones and stereo, and we started recalling
Speaker 1: recording all of these and it took about eight months.
Speaker 1: And when I got them all together, I program them
Speaker 1: into ten albums and you could buy them as a unit,
Speaker 1: or you could buy them individually, but you could. You
Speaker 1: ended up with forty some odd sound effects at a
Speaker 1: course of about fourteen cents each, and it blew wide open.
Speaker 1: I could not believe the numbers of sound effects I
Speaker 1: was selling, and they were. They were obviously in record stores.
Speaker 1: We made them available through mail order. We produced a
Speaker 1: very good record, and we thought about everything to locate
Speaker 1: a sound effect when you had twenty of them. On
Speaker 1: one side. We had a little ruler which had a
Speaker 1: little hole where which you put over the center hole
Speaker 1: and then you wrote down which track that arrow was
Speaker 1: entered into. So you had twenty arrows and you could
Speaker 1: find the sound effect immediately. So you think about all
Speaker 1: of that stuff beforehand, and then you do it. And
Speaker 1: when you do it with love and intention and you
Speaker 1: don't spare the money, you do well. We made a
Speaker 1: million and a half dollars that year on sound effects.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of money. Uh, sixty years ago, back
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one, boy, that was a lot of money. Okay.
Speaker 1: We also asks the question you're having these huge successes
Speaker 1: are other people than imitating you? There's no point in
Speaker 1: imitating a set that's got everything. You force them out
Speaker 1: of doing it by making it so good and so
Speaker 1: complete and so full that nobody wants to buy anything
Speaker 1: but yours, because you have those little grace notes like
Speaker 1: the thing that slips over the spindle on your turntable,
Speaker 1: those kinds of thinking and talking about how we did them,
Speaker 1: and then we would sell them in a special package.
Speaker 1: You could get the package for fifty dollars and uh,
Speaker 1: we would send it off to you. You got the
Speaker 1: whole thing. We didn't collect for licensing. If somebody wanted
Speaker 1: to use the sound effect, go ahead and use it.
Speaker 1: We don't care. We made it for you to use,
Speaker 1: and we're very satisfied with the profit we're making per album.
Speaker 1: So with all of these benefits, who's going to come
Speaker 1: out and try to compete with us, especially when we
Speaker 1: did such a good job making them. You have this
Speaker 1: big victory. What's your next step? My next step is Okay, folks,
Speaker 1: music is going where do we go? And I'm beginning
Speaker 1: to hear I heard about the Paul Butterfield blues band,
Speaker 1: uh and that sounded really good and my uh but
Speaker 1: but before we got to Paul Butterfield, you you recorded
Speaker 1: Tom Rush. There are a lot of other people that
Speaker 1: you recorded phil Oaks that were folk yaks before you
Speaker 1: got into rock. You're you're absolutely right, So let me
Speaker 1: start again. Knowing that there were no more folk songs anymore,
Speaker 1: there was beginning to come forth. The generation of people
Speaker 1: who inspired by Dylan were writing their own songs, and
Speaker 1: they they were phil Oaks and Tom Rush, who was
Speaker 1: also an interpreter, and any number of people who wrote
Speaker 1: distinctively different songs, phil Oaks especially, and we recorded all
Speaker 1: of those people. And then as we saw different things happening,
Speaker 1: and and Dylan went electric at Newport and I was
Speaker 1: standing right below him, and parts of the Butterfield Blues
Speaker 1: Band were accompanying him, and I just shivered because I
Speaker 1: knew exactly where I was going. I was going to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, and I was out the next day and
Speaker 1: we started looking for things in the first group I
Speaker 1: found was Love, and then Love turned me onto a
Speaker 1: group that they thought was pretty good. That was the
Speaker 1: second on their bill, which was The Doors. Now I
Speaker 1: went to see The Doors four times before I got them.
Speaker 1: If I got the means before, I understood because Jim
Speaker 1: loved to sing the blues, and he'd sing the blues
Speaker 1: for a whole set. And I don't need Jim to
Speaker 1: sing the blues, but I need those musicians. They are
Speaker 1: superb guitar, keyboards, drums, each superlative. I can get the
Speaker 1: right material to them. And then one day they play
Speaker 1: a song that it was so totally off the wall.
Speaker 1: Show me the Way to the next whiskey bar. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the song. They just sort of slipped into the
Speaker 1: Whiskey Bar song. And when I heard what they could
Speaker 1: do with that, and I heard how Jim and everybody
Speaker 1: was so locked in with each other, I said, I
Speaker 1: have to have that group. And I went back and
Speaker 1: introduced myself. They knew we were coming, and we talked
Speaker 1: and we talked and we talked, and I made them
Speaker 1: an offer, and we went back and forth. They were
Speaker 1: taking their time. They had a contract with Columbia, but
Speaker 1: Columbia dropped them. Uh. Columbia said, well, we'll keep you
Speaker 1: if you'll record a single force and if we like
Speaker 1: the single, and they said, the hell with this, we
Speaker 1: don't want this. We got an offer from Electra, so
Speaker 1: they started nosing around and talking to other artists about Electra,
Speaker 1: and we had no problems there and we signed The Doors. Now,
Speaker 1: the very first album was both a huge success and legendary.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about the experience of making that. Well,
Speaker 1: my problems were that I wasn't the producer. I needed
Speaker 1: somebody who was right and who keep them in line
Speaker 1: and who was at least as smart as they were,
Speaker 1: and I could manage the group. So we decided to
Speaker 1: do two weeks of rehearsal and I asked Paul Rothschild
Speaker 1: to do it. He said, well, look, I'll go out
Speaker 1: there and I'll check it out. But they liked each
Speaker 1: other a lot, and so there was a natural coming
Speaker 1: together and he helped polish the songs a lot. He
Speaker 1: would make suggestions about how to make changes and they
Speaker 1: would do it, and the album was recorded in about
Speaker 1: a week. Bruce Botnick, who had done the Love Album
Speaker 1: with me and I was the producer of that, was terrific.
Speaker 1: And so the combination of Rothschild and Bruce Botnick was
Speaker 1: just magic and the band and we did it. It
Speaker 1: was wonderful in many respects. I knew that Jim was
Speaker 1: in love with the U forty seven microphone because he
Speaker 1: was a big Frank Sinatra follower, and Frank Sinatra always
Speaker 1: sang in front of this microphone. So when he came
Speaker 1: into the studio and I said for the vocals, you'll
Speaker 1: be in the booth or outside depending and this is
Speaker 1: your microphone, he had tears in his eyes. He said,
Speaker 1: you gave me Thank Sinatra's microphone. I said, we think
Speaker 1: that's best for you. And uh, it went well. I mean,
Speaker 1: there were all kinds of wild things that happened during it.
Speaker 1: That Jim got mad and threw UH through some stuff
Speaker 1: against the glass in the control room. I had to
Speaker 1: take care of all of that and keep it quiet
Speaker 1: without calling the police. I knew he was going to
Speaker 1: be Uh needing constant watch. But we were finished the
Speaker 1: album and it was scheduled to come out in November
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty six, and I said to myself, wrong month.
Speaker 1: So I got the band together and I said, guys,
Speaker 1: I might a mistake of promising you November. It's the
Speaker 1: wrong month. They said, why Christmas is coming, people can
Speaker 1: give it a Christmas present. I said, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: You're not going to get the airplane that you need.
Speaker 1: And I said to them, if you let me come
Speaker 1: out in January January four, I promise you you will
Speaker 1: be the only album we released that month. Now, you
Speaker 1: could do that when you're only issuing eighteen albums a year,
Speaker 1: but nobody out offers anything that crazy and on and
Speaker 1: I had everything probe. We knew what we were going
Speaker 1: to do. I had the idea I see these billboards
Speaker 1: on Sunset Strip, but nothing had to do with music.
Speaker 1: So I decided I'm gonna buy a year on that
Speaker 1: billboard and we went up and when the record was
Speaker 1: out there was this billboard on Sunset strip which was
Speaker 1: you couldn't miss. And then we we did our job
Speaker 1: and took it across very slowly, and the band was
Speaker 1: an enormous success, and the doors were history and joy
Speaker 1: and in history and not so much joy sometimes, but
Speaker 1: the artist always comes first, and you take care of
Speaker 1: the artists and the other The other three lads were
Speaker 1: just beautiful to work with, and the ones who were
Speaker 1: still alive are still very close friends. So do you
Speaker 1: know that Late My Fire is going to be a smash?
Speaker 1: And how do you make it a smash? Back in
Speaker 1: the days of indie labels competing with majors. I knew
Speaker 1: that was the song, but it was very long. That
Speaker 1: was the problem. So I sat down with Rathchild and
Speaker 1: everybody and said, let's try some edits down and I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what I'll do. I'll do two forms of
Speaker 1: the song. I'll do a single which you can buy
Speaker 1: that has the complete song, the short song on one
Speaker 1: side and the complete song on the other side, and
Speaker 1: or I will come out with one that has the
Speaker 1: short version and then another song from the album on
Speaker 1: the other side. Both of these will be out, the
Speaker 1: public will buy what it wants, but I need to
Speaker 1: get it heard. And what was happening in starting in
Speaker 1: San Francisco, Uh there was FM radio for the kinds
Speaker 1: of music we were recording. And uh so I knew
Speaker 1: that if I could get the FM stations to begin
Speaker 1: to back it, their A M counterparts would be forced
Speaker 1: to putting it on the air sooner or later. And
Speaker 1: that's what happened. Uh. It went on the air in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles the same time were they were having the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven rock festival Monterey Pop Monterey Pop, and
Speaker 1: they were all over the radio. They had not been invited,
Speaker 1: Blood had been invited, but it turned it down. But
Speaker 1: whenever you turned on the radio and everybody with nuts,
Speaker 1: why aren't the doors here? They've got the hottest song
Speaker 1: in California. And it moved slowly across the country. It
Speaker 1: by the time it was not playing in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: it was number one in New York. And in June
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty seven, one of my people came and
Speaker 1: said to me, your number one next week would light
Speaker 1: my fire nationwide. I cried, was that your first number one?
Speaker 1: That was my first really charted. I never had a
Speaker 1: chart single before. It was my watch stopped. My watch stops.
Speaker 1: So I later put the watch aside and bought an
Speaker 1: expensive watch the next day, and that that that we
Speaker 1: had had a number one. Considering what we had started from,
Speaker 1: which was the smallest inkling of an idea, and how
Speaker 1: it had grown mostly because we were We were straight
Speaker 1: with everybody. We had a good reputation. The DJs would
Speaker 1: come to the office in Los Angeles, what would they
Speaker 1: pick up? They weren't picking up the rock records. They
Speaker 1: were picking up the none such records. They had amazing
Speaker 1: taste and we were very close to them, and we
Speaker 1: didn't ask for favors. If it wasn't right for them,
Speaker 1: it wasn't right for them, and they shouldn't play it.
Speaker 1: But we started with the doors and then we grew
Speaker 1: from that. Okay, Uh, did you get a piece of
Speaker 1: the publishing on these acts? Yes, I had of the
Speaker 1: publishing they had. When the contract was over and I
Speaker 1: wanted to make one more album, the album that was
Speaker 1: to become l a Woman. I had a hunch Jim
Speaker 1: was going to go off to France. I didn't think
Speaker 1: the group was going to stay together after that I
Speaker 1: didn't know that he was going to die, but I said,
Speaker 1: there is one more album to be had. And one
Speaker 1: of the negotiating points from the lawyer, who said he's
Speaker 1: not going to give this up, was that I give
Speaker 1: up my of the publishing, which I said, we're not publishers.
Speaker 1: They can have it, no problem. That's the all the deal.
Speaker 1: And we had the opportunity to do the sixth studio album,
Speaker 1: which I think is right up there with their first
Speaker 1: is the best. But starting with that sixth album, uh,
Speaker 1: they'd done Morrison Hotel but for which in retrospect is
Speaker 1: legendary with Rhodehouse Blues and so many other songs Piece Frog,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't quite as successful financially as what came before.
Speaker 1: So they make a record l a Woman, and they
Speaker 1: fired Paul Rothchild and they make it themselves. Aren't you afraid? No,
Speaker 1: that he was on that record. He was not fired,
Speaker 1: he quit, which is a very interesting story. We knew
Speaker 1: we were going to make a sixth album, so we're
Speaker 1: talking about what to do. The Doors start writing some
Speaker 1: material and Rothchild goes, here's here's it and says, I
Speaker 1: think it's awful. I don't want any part of it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to produce this. I had somebody in
Speaker 1: back in my mind to produce it, so I said, okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: thank you for everything you've done. Will remain friends, and
Speaker 1: we did very close friends. We worked together on projects
Speaker 1: later on when he couldn't get work and I had
Speaker 1: owned yet another label. But anyway, I didn't hear the
Speaker 1: material for l a woman. I said to Bruce Botaniic,
Speaker 1: you can produce this, who is traditionally an engineer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's basically an engineer, but he had produced a great
Speaker 1: deal of what became one of the great albums of
Speaker 1: all time, the Love Forever Changes Album, which is just
Speaker 1: so special. I knew he could do it, and he
Speaker 1: did it very, very cleverly, and he got them back
Speaker 1: in and I said, I think we need we need
Speaker 1: some richer instrumentation. This is not a rock record anymore.
Speaker 1: This is a record from a point in time. So
Speaker 1: let's do what we think we should do. And there
Speaker 1: was a song that I thought could be orchestrated, and
Speaker 1: that's what we did. And it opens up the record. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you have this grand, welcoming song that just overwhelms you.
Speaker 1: And then the rest of the record is what we
Speaker 1: intended it to be. We understood what was happening. It
Speaker 1: became the record which every time I I cried because
Speaker 1: I loved it so much. Uh, getting a record that
Speaker 1: you hear sometimes for the first time, and I was
Speaker 1: not allowed to hear this record until it was done.
Speaker 1: We're talking forever changes, right, yeah, And but when I
Speaker 1: heard it, I knew it was there. I knew the
Speaker 1: sequencing was wrong. I reserved the sequencing for myself and
Speaker 1: I would listen to any good argument, and sometimes I
Speaker 1: would make changes if they were minor. But I knew
Speaker 1: how to I knew how to sequence albums. I knew
Speaker 1: about the keys. I knew about the mood structure, what
Speaker 1: you want to do at the end of the first
Speaker 1: side to get him to turn to the to the
Speaker 1: second side. All of that stuff was inherent in me,
Speaker 1: and so I took a crack at it, and they
Speaker 1: would say we like it or we don't like it,
Speaker 1: and maybe make a change or two. But that worked.
Speaker 1: I was the final word. But I was not arrogant.
Speaker 1: I was this is what I really believe in. Give
Speaker 1: it free, give it careful, listen, and I could pick
Speaker 1: out the songs that we're going to happen with the Doors.
Speaker 1: L A woman was with a song that was going
Speaker 1: to happen. It was destined, and I knew it was
Speaker 1: worth giving up the publishing so I could get this album,
Speaker 1: which was a statement, now we're not going to be
Speaker 1: any more Doors albums. We did do a gym, a
Speaker 1: gym album, his poetry album, and that's another story. So
Speaker 1: that happened, and all of the songs hold up. The
Speaker 1: sound effects that are used on the opening and closed
Speaker 1: are found the sound effects library. So they got on
Speaker 1: that record the Thunderstorm, it's all very much in the
Speaker 1: distance and very polite, and then it's writers on the Storm.
Speaker 1: What a wonderful song that Hey, every day it rains
Speaker 1: in l A, they play it. Let's just let's go
Speaker 1: back to the Butterfield Blues Band. Why did not not
Speaker 1: break bigger than it did? Very influential, but not a
Speaker 1: huge sales success. They didn't have any singles hits without
Speaker 1: a single. It's very very tough. I mean it's possible,
Speaker 1: look at but Dylan had singles. They had a strong
Speaker 1: loyal group and their records did very well. And the
Speaker 1: double records that that came out of the of the
Speaker 1: folk festival. Was was just incredibly successful. This is after
Speaker 1: the festival and things start falling apart. They had played
Speaker 1: with with Dylan on stage. A couple of them had
Speaker 1: played with Dylan on stage, but they were What happened
Speaker 1: with them is that other artists would say, well, you
Speaker 1: really worked and stayed with Butterfield even though they don't
Speaker 1: have any hits. We're willing to take a chance with you.
Speaker 1: And what about Mike Bloomfield, what can you tell us
Speaker 1: about him? Who's in the Butterfield Blues. He he wasn't
Speaker 1: the drugs so valuely he didn't know whether it was
Speaker 1: going to show up or not. The story the album.
Speaker 1: Rothschild made the album and after we had ten thousand
Speaker 1: of them ready to go, they were in their sleeves.
Speaker 1: He said, I didn't get it. I said, what do
Speaker 1: you mean you didn't get it? We were flying up
Speaker 1: to see Tom Rush and we're in my airplane and
Speaker 1: I just gently lowered the nose of the airplane and
Speaker 1: picked up speed, and he saw we were heading for
Speaker 1: the ground. I said, what do you mean? He said,
Speaker 1: I just didn't get it, And I said, convinced me.
Speaker 1: And he talked for a few minutes with such passion.
Speaker 1: I straightened the airplane back up and I kept some
Speaker 1: of the records and I trashed the rest, kept the covers,
Speaker 1: and then we went out and we did it three
Speaker 1: times more and he got what he thought was the
Speaker 1: record and it it was excellent. What it lacked with
Speaker 1: some of the passion that was in the first album.
Speaker 1: Years later, I got the first album re released on Rhino.
Speaker 1: When when I heard it that this is I got
Speaker 1: flu mixed. I shouldn't have done it, but it all
Speaker 1: worked out and I got the first record out and
Speaker 1: it was wonderful, and even Rothschild said, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: I overdid it. And that was that. Okay. What about
Speaker 1: Tim Buckley? Tim Buckley is comes in the mail. His
Speaker 1: manager sends me an ascertate of He said, this is
Speaker 1: someone who sings, and I think you should listen to it,
Speaker 1: and it's I take him in the order in which
Speaker 1: they come in and it flows to the surface. Three
Speaker 1: days later and I hear Tim Buckley and I am
Speaker 1: absolutely knocked out. He's doing the wrong material, But the
Speaker 1: voice is there, and what can be done with that
Speaker 1: voice if we figure out what's going to fit that voice?
Speaker 1: And so I signed him, put together proper team. We
Speaker 1: did the first album. I didn't think we hit it
Speaker 1: with a first album. Then we did the second album,
Speaker 1: and that's when we got it. The album was perfect,
Speaker 1: happy sad with Buzzing Fly and all those other tracks. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was what I was looking for. And suddenly he
Speaker 1: broke wide open and it was wonderful to see happen.
Speaker 1: But there was a point when I knew he was
Speaker 1: going to go downhill. He felt that his audiences owned him,
Speaker 1: and that put him in a very depressive state, and
Speaker 1: so he became more cautious and more cautious, and then
Speaker 1: he stopped playing all together, which was a shame because
Speaker 1: I don't think his audiences were trying to do that.
Speaker 1: He was into drugs a lot. We made a fourth album.
Speaker 1: I didn't think it was very good, but I released
Speaker 1: it because I thought it was the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: As time went over, I realized it was a much
Speaker 1: better album that I thought it was, and I, uh so,
Speaker 1: I was happy I did that. I'm always trying to
Speaker 1: stay in congruence with the artist, to feel what they feel,
Speaker 1: and if we have a problem, we just figure it out,
Speaker 1: sit it out, talk it out or bargain it out.
Speaker 1: I mean I've I've had some strange things happen with
Speaker 1: artists and groups like what well, Arthur Lee in Love.
Speaker 1: I had a problem on the second album. He said,
Speaker 1: I don't have to record for you under my contract.
Speaker 1: I was a minor when I signed the contract that
Speaker 1: you would not believe. This guy was under eighteen years old.
Speaker 1: And he said, I'm just gonna go find a better deal.
Speaker 1: And his lawyer was a very good guy, and he
Speaker 1: said I didn't know anything about this, and I said, look,
Speaker 1: I absolutely trust you. I need only one thing from you.
Speaker 1: I need you to get me in the room with
Speaker 1: him when he's in a calm state. So uh, that happened.
Speaker 1: And he said, well, I think AUTO have ten percent
Speaker 1: for everybody that's in the band, and he said it's
Speaker 1: going to be nine people. So I want we sit
Speaker 1: down and we talk and he realizes that he's over
Speaker 1: he's over pushing it, and so I increased the advances
Speaker 1: and I increased the royalties and then Paul Rothschild does
Speaker 1: the second album, which is not a good album. It
Speaker 1: was experimental, but it wasn't the album I expected. And
Speaker 1: then we started working toward a third album. I took
Speaker 1: Rothchild off it and said to Botanick, you get along
Speaker 1: with him, Why don't you guys try to put the
Speaker 1: album together? And they did. Bruce brought in a lot
Speaker 1: of other musicians. We brought in an arranger for the
Speaker 1: opening song. That album was done, and then I worked
Speaker 1: through it with him and we made some changes and
Speaker 1: I got the sequencing right, and then we came out
Speaker 1: with the album and that became a hit as an album,
Speaker 1: but not with any singles. Would you ever tell any
Speaker 1: of your acts once the record was delivered that you
Speaker 1: were not going to put it out as is, or
Speaker 1: that they needed to record a single. Uh No. I
Speaker 1: wanted to get the singles from the album in some
Speaker 1: form that it would promote the album, because that's where
Speaker 1: their income wasn't It was true of me as well.
Speaker 1: The singles were the calling cards for the albums. The
Speaker 1: singles on Light My Fire did remarkably well for the album.
Speaker 1: Suddenly the album was selling over a million and a
Speaker 1: half records. But did you ever say the album isn't done,
Speaker 1: you need one more song? Oh yeah? And what would
Speaker 1: the ox say the well? Judy Collins as an example,
Speaker 1: I let Judy and her producer, who was a staff member,
Speaker 1: do the do the fifth album on her own. And
Speaker 1: then they played the album for me and it was good,
Speaker 1: but it didn't stand out. It was lacking a certain feeling.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel she was as passionately in the materials
Speaker 1: as I could wish her. But I had to show
Speaker 1: that passion someplace on the album. So I said, uh,
Speaker 1: we can't release what we have. We need to go
Speaker 1: out and look for more. And she said, you know
Speaker 1: how much trouble I've had. And I said, Judy, I know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm seeming like I don't care about the album,
Speaker 1: but I really do. It just don't think it's finished yet,
Speaker 1: So see if you can find some more songs. And uh.
Speaker 1: Then I didn't hear from her. I figured, well, I'm
Speaker 1: on the don't call thing. And then three weeks later
Speaker 1: I got a call and she said, you won't believe it.
Speaker 1: I met this wonderful poet who speaks French from Canada
Speaker 1: and he writes these glorious songs and I have got
Speaker 1: such and such and such and such, and she things
Speaker 1: them over the phone for me, and you know who
Speaker 1: that was. Of course, let her call it dude, what's
Speaker 1: the story of both sides? Now that we that we
Speaker 1: put it out because we thought it was a single,
Speaker 1: there's no story behind it. How did you actually find
Speaker 1: and signed Judy Collins? Uh? I found Judy Collins singing
Speaker 1: in a club downtown and Columbia was looking at them
Speaker 1: as well. I saw enough material that I knew we
Speaker 1: had a starter album. I never thought that an artist
Speaker 1: has to hit with The first album will build up,
Speaker 1: we'll learn, we'll do better, and maybe around the third
Speaker 1: album we'll hit it. But we'll do these things right
Speaker 1: and with honor. And we all listened to each other,
Speaker 1: and that's what happened. That's how we would do these things.
Speaker 1: And then somebody, somebody would come up with an idea,
Speaker 1: and Leonard Cone was an amazing choice. You put his
Speaker 1: two songs in the album, and suddenly the glue flowed
Speaker 1: throughout the record. You had him exactly precisely placed as
Speaker 1: to where you wanted them to be. When you heard
Speaker 1: it that way, then you knew you had an album.
Speaker 1: I was loath to release anything that I didn't believe
Speaker 1: was going to be good for the artists. If it
Speaker 1: was not going to be good for the artist, that
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be good for me. And the artists
Speaker 1: were really very good in trusting me about this. If
Speaker 1: I said no, they'd grumble a lot, but it always
Speaker 1: worked out, and then they would always remember that and
Speaker 1: they would tell that story to other artists. Though the
Speaker 1: artist at a lecture were very were very chummy. Okay,
Speaker 1: how do you end up with Bread, which is seemingly
Speaker 1: a different kind of music than the rest of electra? Yeah?
Speaker 1: How did I? How did I get Bread? That? You're
Speaker 1: very astute, because that was everybody said, that was so
Speaker 1: different from what you were doing When I had Trouble
Speaker 1: with Love on the second album. Their lawyers said to me,
Speaker 1: you handled it very well. If anything crosses my desk
Speaker 1: that I think might be good for you, I'll give
Speaker 1: you the first shot. And I got a call saying
Speaker 1: he had this group called Bread, and so and so
Speaker 1: and so and so was in it. And I knew
Speaker 1: some of the names, David Gates, I knew from his
Speaker 1: other recordings, and I said, I'd love to hear something.
Speaker 1: Are they available to go to our studio? We by
Speaker 1: that time, I had built a studio in California in
Speaker 1: the studio was available, and they went over that day
Speaker 1: and they recorded four or five songs and the song
Speaker 1: was in the album or not the album, but the
Speaker 1: disc was delivered to me the next day and I
Speaker 1: listened to the songs, and yes they were popular, they
Speaker 1: were not what intellectual, but they were beautiful. And how
Speaker 1: hard is it to write a simple song? You write
Speaker 1: a song like if? When I heard that, I cried.
Speaker 1: I cried a lot and when I'm listening to music,
Speaker 1: because it just gets inside me so quickly. And I said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to make an offer. And I made an
Speaker 1: offer and he called me back and he said the
Speaker 1: boys accepted it. I said, we're in business. Let's get
Speaker 1: started working on an album. And they made the first
Speaker 1: album out at our studios and the album was quite wonderful,
Speaker 1: but it got put out the at the wrong time.
Speaker 1: Crosby Stilton Nash came out and that totally wiped any
Speaker 1: attention anybody was going to pay to them. It was
Speaker 1: bread just was gone. So I said, we lost the
Speaker 1: first album. We're never going to get it back. But
Speaker 1: Crosby Till the Nash aren't gonna last forever start writing.
Speaker 1: And they started writing and they were in the studio
Speaker 1: and I went into the studios and I would listen,
Speaker 1: and one day I said to uh them, what's that
Speaker 1: fourth track and they said it's Oh, it's called if
Speaker 1: and it's I said, let me hear it, because I
Speaker 1: think that that's got hit single capability. Now I never
Speaker 1: pick hit singles in my life. If they happened, they
Speaker 1: happened because they were part of something else. But I
Speaker 1: listened to it again and I said, that's the single,
Speaker 1: and we came out with it, and that was the single.
Speaker 1: And suddenly all those bread records and everyone that came
Speaker 1: after went platinum very quickly because they wrote they wrote
Speaker 1: simple songs. These were guys who came in with their
Speaker 1: briefcases in the morning record from nine to twelve, had lunch,
Speaker 1: finished at five, picked up the briefcases and went home.
Speaker 1: Now nobody was using the studio between nine and six.
Speaker 1: They were all coming in at eight o'clock at night
Speaker 1: to use it all night. So these guys were perfect
Speaker 1: and we got along very well with him. Except there
Speaker 1: was a part of their contract I didn't know about.
Speaker 1: Their contracts said that if any band, any member of
Speaker 1: the band left the band, the band was dissolved and
Speaker 1: the drummer left the band, and I got a call
Speaker 1: in from the lawyer about this and I said to him,
Speaker 1: give me his phone number. I said, I have an
Speaker 1: idea and let me go try it out. So I
Speaker 1: went up to see him and he gave me all
Speaker 1: the reasons and not giving him enough of the money,
Speaker 1: and so and so and so and so, and I said, look,
Speaker 1: you can wreck the group or you can make some
Speaker 1: real money. He said, how I said, I will pay
Speaker 1: you your royalty, whether you're on the album or not,
Speaker 1: so you will collect on every album they sell, even
Speaker 1: if you're not on it. Now, that was about one
Speaker 1: and three quarter percent, which which I could easily afford.
Speaker 1: It was going to be about seven cents an album,
Speaker 1: but it was really big money down the line. So
Speaker 1: by doing that I got him to sign off on
Speaker 1: it and we kept the band alive. And did he
Speaker 1: play on the record. Nope. I didn't want to see him.
Speaker 1: But he got paid anyway. And was that the was
Speaker 1: that the last Bred record? No, no, no, that was
Speaker 1: the second Bread record, which was the hit. They did
Speaker 1: about five or six of them. Okay, So he did
Speaker 1: he get paid on every record thereafter? He got paid
Speaker 1: on every record thereafter. So why do these bands after
Speaker 1: they have success, why did they break up? Internal stuff?
Speaker 1: Usually they don't think they want half of their songs
Speaker 1: on the album because the writers were really the guitarist
Speaker 1: and David. Sooner or later, it's just going to get
Speaker 1: to the point where nobody's gonna want to play with
Speaker 1: anybody anymore. We had five, I think albums with them. Uh.
Speaker 1: I thought that if it's going to break up, it's
Speaker 1: going to break up. We've got the best of what
Speaker 1: they have, and so we'll just move on. But trying
Speaker 1: to save trying to save a contract. Uh, it was
Speaker 1: something that I was very conscious of. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to see bands split up, and I was willing to
Speaker 1: pay extra to keep the bands together. Do you remember
Speaker 1: any other stories but like that. Nope. But there are
Speaker 1: always stories of me going and quieting people down and
Speaker 1: getting them back on track and getting them to talk
Speaker 1: to talk together again. Uh. I mean the artists that
Speaker 1: I worked with, we're wonderful. Harry Chapman was terrific. When
Speaker 1: you go through the list of artists we had. While
Speaker 1: we had Bread, we had the Stooges just developing. We
Speaker 1: had Carly signed Man who was breaking out. We were
Speaker 1: yet to get Queen. We had the Doors who were
Speaker 1: continuing to make records. We had Tim Buckley, and we
Speaker 1: had enough going two to do well. As we were
Speaker 1: looking for new artists. New artists would come up just
Speaker 1: when we needed them. Harry Chapin would come up a
Speaker 1: year and a half after Carly Simon. That was a
Speaker 1: hard That was a hard contract to get, a really
Speaker 1: hard contract again, But the Carly Simon contract, Oh, Carly
Speaker 1: Simon was easy. She always wanted to be on an
Speaker 1: electric She thought of a lecture in book terms, because
Speaker 1: she was the daughter of the of the partner who
Speaker 1: ran Simon and Sister publishing. So she said, well, Electra
Speaker 1: reminds me of a good publishing company that watches its roster. Uh.
Speaker 1: And she was very easy to work with, ah, and
Speaker 1: she would listen to two ideas that I had. At
Speaker 1: first I wasn't sure she was a writer, but then
Speaker 1: but then she became a writer. And when I told
Speaker 1: her we needed a single from the first album to
Speaker 1: move that forward, and I always thought, I always heard
Speaker 1: that's the way it should be. Was the single. It's
Speaker 1: a tongue twister of a title for a DJ, but
Speaker 1: it opens light. No other single view have heard simple
Speaker 1: piano notes and then it goes into this song which
Speaker 1: women will understand. Men won't get it, but I knew
Speaker 1: the women would understand. And my wife, my former wife,
Speaker 1: told me that she heard this on the radio and
Speaker 1: she saw cars pulling over to the side of the road.
Speaker 1: There were other ladies wanting to hear that song, and
Speaker 1: it broke her out big. Because we're willing to be daring,
Speaker 1: and because I was dead sure that was the song. Okay,
Speaker 1: So why was it so hard to get Harry Chapin?
Speaker 1: Because I was running into Columbia again. Columbia would go
Speaker 1: against me on an act sometime, I think simply because
Speaker 1: Clive liked to be in uh jousting with me. We
Speaker 1: were we were friendly, We were definitely friendly. I had
Speaker 1: been recommended to seek uh Harry Chapin. I went down
Speaker 1: to see him playing at the village gate. I thought
Speaker 1: there was a band there that his inclusion of a
Speaker 1: cello player I thought was brilliant because that permitted us
Speaker 1: to get a different kind of song into his repertoire. Um.
Speaker 1: So I made an offer. And then when Clive heard
Speaker 1: that I made an offer, he made an offer that
Speaker 1: was much bigger than ours, and sat down and showed
Speaker 1: them what their sales would be. His sales would be
Speaker 1: someplace less than deal bit more than so and so uh,
Speaker 1: And he decided to sign with A Clive and I
Speaker 1: had to go to California, and he said. He came
Speaker 1: out to see me at the airport. He said, I
Speaker 1: have to tell you this. I'm gonna go with with Columbia.
Speaker 1: And I said, Clive is good, We're better, but I
Speaker 1: wish you well. And it ate away at me the
Speaker 1: entire flight out to California, and it ate away at
Speaker 1: me all week. And then I found out that the
Speaker 1: numbers Clive had showed were numbers that they showed artists
Speaker 1: on an inflated basis, or at least that's what I
Speaker 1: was told. So I was revitalized. I never said it.
Speaker 1: I never told him that part of the story, but
Speaker 1: I gave him a ring and said, I'm coming in
Speaker 1: on Sunday and I'll be at your door at six
Speaker 1: seven in the morning, and I'm not going away until
Speaker 1: you and I have a deal. You belong with Electra.
Speaker 1: I understand what you're doing. I love the way you've
Speaker 1: arranged the material. I love how you can write a
Speaker 1: song quickly. I like the way the band unites in
Speaker 1: their instrumentation. So I'll be there and I'm going to
Speaker 1: bang on the door. And I was there, and I
Speaker 1: banged on the door, and we made a tough deal,
Speaker 1: made a deal and money far more than I expected
Speaker 1: of that. I think a dollar advance. Um. But uh.
Speaker 1: I then said, you know, I haven't produced a record
Speaker 1: in a long time. I'd love to produce this record.
Speaker 1: So I'll produce the record with you, will work it out,
Speaker 1: we'll finish the record. I'll do my sequencing for which
Speaker 1: I am famed for, and then we'll talk about and
Speaker 1: if we don't have something right, we're gonna go fix it.
Speaker 1: That record is not going out with me as producer
Speaker 1: unless I know it is perfect. So he said, I
Speaker 1: can't beat your offer, but we've got to take our
Speaker 1: family with us. I said, I'll get a company yet,
Speaker 1: because we were part of of of what was then
Speaker 1: UH Warner Warner Communications, and so I got them to
Speaker 1: give me the plane and the dogs and everybody got
Speaker 1: on and everything happened, and we were in the studio
Speaker 1: for three weeks and we did the album, and then
Speaker 1: we did the mix, and then I lived with it,
Speaker 1: and then when I thought we had it, Harry agreed
Speaker 1: to everything that I had done, and we came out
Speaker 1: with it, and I made him the same promise, I
Speaker 1: won't issue any album the same month yours comes out,
Speaker 1: because Clive can't do that. He's got fifty records. He's
Speaker 1: got to get out that month. And I'm taking advantage
Speaker 1: of what he can do, which I do on purpose,
Speaker 1: but I wear them down and Harry, he sort of
Speaker 1: pulls himself together and Uh, calls Clive and says, I've
Speaker 1: got to go with the lecture. And he went with
Speaker 1: the lecture, and Clive said, Jack will do right by you.
Speaker 1: So all was peaced. We fought it out and the
Speaker 1: rest worked exactly as we thought it was going to work.
Speaker 1: But going back to that first album, the track, of
Speaker 1: course is Taxi, but it's the better part of seven
Speaker 1: minutes long. Yeah. Uh, we didn't care. We didn't. I
Speaker 1: don't recall that we made a version of that, but
Speaker 1: FM radio would play that like crazy, and AM would
Speaker 1: pick it up. It happened, and the album happened because
Speaker 1: we were within them eight weeks, we were a quarter
Speaker 1: of a million albums sold. Yeah, and then I would
Speaker 1: work with them on. What I like to do was
Speaker 1: had people come over to a house I had in
Speaker 1: the country, just from the weekends, and we would record everything,
Speaker 1: very simple, and I would just sit and listen to
Speaker 1: the songs and study of the songs and get myself
Speaker 1: into the songs. And if I thought we had it,
Speaker 1: we'd go into the studio. If I thought we didn't
Speaker 1: have it, we might go into the studio anyway, because
Speaker 1: when everybody was eating lunch, Harry was sitting in the
Speaker 1: corner writing more songs. He was wonderful to work with.
Speaker 1: How how does Richard Perry end up getting hooked up
Speaker 1: with Carly Simon? Because that was my idea. After we
Speaker 1: had a very good selling record from Carly, we needed
Speaker 1: a hit single and I heard one, and I knew
Speaker 1: it needed an experienced producer. So I called his lawyer,
Speaker 1: who didn't particularly like me. He had been the doors
Speaker 1: lawyer who said to the doors, Jack will never do this.
Speaker 1: And then Jack did it, and he was embarrassed by it,
Speaker 1: but he said, that's a good that's a good choice.
Speaker 1: She's right for this, and so that that happened. It
Speaker 1: was very easy. It was an off the wall choice.
Speaker 1: From but I thought about it very carefully. I would
Speaker 1: go through whatever publication I could go through. If a
Speaker 1: producer was listed, I wanted to know who that was,
Speaker 1: and I had a list of them together with knowing
Speaker 1: the songs that they had recorded, like go check on,
Speaker 1: and I had those records on file. So I just
Speaker 1: thought he was right. She needed somebody tough and authoritative
Speaker 1: because she didn't like making decisions much herself. But she
Speaker 1: was very very good to work with, and they both
Speaker 1: were good to work where there were some there were
Speaker 1: some fights and stuff going on, but it all got settled. Now,
Speaker 1: she famously has stage fright and doesn't go on the road.
Speaker 1: To what degree did that affect you in terms of
Speaker 1: thinking of signing her and how to break records? Well,
Speaker 1: we didn't know that that was part of her her
Speaker 1: disease that she did that she couldn't perform, and I
Speaker 1: found out after the contract was signed. So I said,
Speaker 1: we're just going to have to get her perform to perform,
Speaker 1: because I need to see what the problem is. We
Speaker 1: arranged to have her perform in West Hollywood at a
Speaker 1: club everybody went to and told her she had to
Speaker 1: do it. Well, she said, I'll only do it if
Speaker 1: I can get ahold of these these band leaders whom
Speaker 1: she knew were committed to be playing with somebody else.
Speaker 1: It turns out that somebody else was not, uh, was
Speaker 1: not going to do the recording at that time. So
Speaker 1: we said they're all available. She said, then I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to do it. We had someone who just
Speaker 1: actually was with her all of the time, and when
Speaker 1: she came in she was nervous on the stage, but
Speaker 1: after thirty seconds she was in command of the room,
Speaker 1: and you saw the nervousness, but she saw the love
Speaker 1: of it, the appreciation she got. She could suck it
Speaker 1: out of those people there and was a triumph. But
Speaker 1: then she proceeded not to go on the road. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: she wouldn't. She did not go on the road very much.
Speaker 1: But she did go on the road for big festivals,
Speaker 1: but did not go on the road playing clubs. It's
Speaker 1: a big difference because they have a big festival. You're
Speaker 1: in command of that festival a lot of people. And
Speaker 1: she learned that she would get over whatever negative feelings
Speaker 1: she had in the first thirty seconds of performance. And
Speaker 1: she was always a pleasure to work with. She never
Speaker 1: argued with me about anything, and she had very good management.
Speaker 1: It was a non sexual love affair. It was we
Speaker 1: really cared deeply for each other, and I watched out
Speaker 1: for her and she watched out for me. It was
Speaker 1: an excellent relationship. So tell us the story of signing
Speaker 1: Queen Ah. It's an interesting story. I had a call
Speaker 1: from Trident Studios saying that they had been recording a
Speaker 1: lot of artists and they thought they wanted their own
Speaker 1: record label. Uh. And they were sending some tapes of
Speaker 1: these artists. They were ten and all over with a
Speaker 1: with the person who was going to be the manager
Speaker 1: of this enterprise. The representative tried and came and he
Speaker 1: put ten albums on my desk. By albums, I mean
Speaker 1: ten tape boxes of ten different groups. And he said,
Speaker 1: this is how we want to start. We want you
Speaker 1: to do for us what you did for a lecture,
Speaker 1: to go from nothing and take us someplace and we
Speaker 1: have all this wonderful music. Uh. Now I knew I
Speaker 1: wasn't going to do that. And I knew it because
Speaker 1: I knew how those deals work. You put up all
Speaker 1: the money, meaning elector puts up all the money. You
Speaker 1: take your time away from your artists because your people
Speaker 1: are doing stuff on this new label and you put
Speaker 1: up all the money and you get half the profits.
Speaker 1: Now that's dumb to begin with, but I figured I'll
Speaker 1: listen to some of the stuff. So I listened to
Speaker 1: a couple of tracks of about three or four different albums,
Speaker 1: and then I see this thing with Queen, and I
Speaker 1: listened to a whole side and there was something there.
Speaker 1: I heard one or two singles. I don't remember what
Speaker 1: they were. Keep Yourself Alive. Yeah, well that's for sure.
Speaker 1: I just had a feeling that there was more to
Speaker 1: this band. So when he came back the next day,
Speaker 1: I said, look, I can't do that. I can't do
Speaker 1: for my artists what I want to do for my
Speaker 1: artists if I'm handling a label for somebody else. He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can understand. I thought you'd come up with that.
Speaker 1: I said, however, there is one group there, Queen, that
Speaker 1: I think is very promising. I heard two songs that
Speaker 1: I was happy with, and I said, it only takes
Speaker 1: one or two songs to get a start in America.
Speaker 1: I said, the album is not what i'd like it
Speaker 1: to be for a first album, but I know it's
Speaker 1: coming out in England, and there's nothing I can do
Speaker 1: about that. But I would like to distribute and handle
Speaker 1: Queen in America, but handled them as a label. We
Speaker 1: we would be their label, not Trident, and we would
Speaker 1: work together and you would be the manager. He said, well,
Speaker 1: you know the Columbia is interested, And I said, I
Speaker 1: know that Columbia is interested. And I'll tell you what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do. I'm going to come on over and
Speaker 1: see the band and talk to them for a while.
Speaker 1: When I saw them perform on stage, just as sort
Speaker 1: of an audition stage, they didn't move, talk about dance.
Speaker 1: They were frozen, stiff, and I remember writing a three
Speaker 1: page letter to them, which I wish I still had,
Speaker 1: about things that I thought they could do to improve
Speaker 1: their performance. Little that I know that we were going
Speaker 1: to have this explosion of Freddie Mercury. Uh. But then
Speaker 1: I decided to make you comfortable. I'm going to send
Speaker 1: over every week one of our other key people, so uh,
Speaker 1: person who who did radio, who did normal publicity, anybody
Speaker 1: that was material and they're moving forward. Went over and
Speaker 1: spent three or four days with them, and I had
Speaker 1: him pretty electra oriented, and I I said to the manager. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm willing to make an offer. He said, well, we
Speaker 1: haven't heard from Clive Davis yet. I said, how long
Speaker 1: does it take for Clive Davis to make an offer?
Speaker 1: He said, we don't know what's happening. And I sat
Speaker 1: in with a meeting with them and somebody said something stupid.
Speaker 1: So I have a little bit more orientation towards you now.
Speaker 1: So I said, you have you seen the contract from
Speaker 1: Columbia And he said no. I said, you better get
Speaker 1: out to magnifying glass because it's going to be thirty
Speaker 1: pages and someplace on page seventeen, it's going to tell
Speaker 1: you what you get. I said, our contracts are different.
Speaker 1: They're much simpler. And our contracts indeed were Our contract
Speaker 1: was a letter. It started as a letter. It said
Speaker 1: how much we wanted them on the label, why we
Speaker 1: wanted them, the advances they would get, the royalty, they
Speaker 1: would get, the territories we had. At the beginning, it
Speaker 1: was just North America. It ended up that we had
Speaker 1: the rest of the world outside of Europe. But then
Speaker 1: it was accompanied by something called the small print, and
Speaker 1: it had all of the things that the big companies
Speaker 1: have in their contracts, and not all but many of them,
Speaker 1: except they were written so simply and with with humor
Speaker 1: that people liked reading them. And I never had any
Speaker 1: lawyer called me and asked for any change from that
Speaker 1: contract except the modification of one clause. The clause was
Speaker 1: record company agrees to treat artists with love and affection
Speaker 1: artists in terms agreed to treat record label people with
Speaker 1: a modicum of respect. And that was it. But I
Speaker 1: didn't send the contract off yet. I said, I want
Speaker 1: to put myself in their shoes. What is Columbia not
Speaker 1: going to do that I can do. And since the
Speaker 1: contract was only a page and a half letter which
Speaker 1: had all the money stuff in it, and four pages
Speaker 1: folding of of small print, and we called it the
Speaker 1: small print, I said, I'm going to write a check
Speaker 1: for twenty dollars and sign it. Anybody's going to tell
Speaker 1: me not to do this, but I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: So I didn't tell anybody, and I sent it and
Speaker 1: they haven't heard from Clive, and here's twenty five dollars
Speaker 1: sitting in front of them. When they're desperate, they deposit
Speaker 1: the check. We have the artist. And then the first album,
Speaker 1: Very Good. I bought it when it came out, but
Speaker 1: you don't really have any success till the second album,
Speaker 1: and then the third album goes wild. The third album
Speaker 1: goes wild. But I believed in them now. I left
Speaker 1: after the second album. But and there were some clean
Speaker 1: complaints from David Geffen about the group, And I said,
Speaker 1: have you ever had any experience where the first album
Speaker 1: is promising, the second doesn't make it because they're not
Speaker 1: sure of where they are. But by the third album
Speaker 1: they maybe wait for the third album and uh, the
Speaker 1: third album, was it? Okay? Just going to one more act?
Speaker 1: Tell us the story of the Stooges. The Stooges. Ah, yes,
Speaker 1: the Stooges. Now you've picked all the right groups in this.
Speaker 1: I commend you on getting everything that I prepared for.
Speaker 1: I had somebody working for me called Danny Fields. Danny's
Speaker 1: job was to go to the clubs at night, sit around,
Speaker 1: take the temperature of what was happening, all that stuff
Speaker 1: that was essential, and come back to me with the
Speaker 1: information because I was going to get my good night's sleep.
Speaker 1: But if he wanted to start his day at eleven
Speaker 1: o'clock at night, it was okay with me. He could
Speaker 1: come in late in the afternoon, which is exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: And he tells me about this group he had seen
Speaker 1: because I had let him go to Detroit to check
Speaker 1: out the m C five, and he said there was
Speaker 1: this other band performing with them, and the m C
Speaker 1: five say that if we're going to sign them, we
Speaker 1: got to sign these guys. I said, well, get a
Speaker 1: can set, get something on what they do and who
Speaker 1: they are. And I heard nothing. I mean, it just
Speaker 1: was a disaster. But I said, I trust you. If
Speaker 1: you think they're that going to be that good, then
Speaker 1: let's take a chance. I'll sign the contract, which called
Speaker 1: for like fifteen thousand. Now it was much much less
Speaker 1: than that. It was five thousand dollar advance. And you know,
Speaker 1: the worst that can happen is they get the five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and I walk away. But they came into
Speaker 1: New York and they came and loaded, and they had nothing.
Speaker 1: I couldn't hear a thing, and so I said, to them,
Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned, you're still elector artist. Go
Speaker 1: get clean and come back. And they came back a
Speaker 1: month later and they had nothing to play for me.
Speaker 1: I said, where are you going to get the material?
Speaker 1: I said, oh, we're going to write it tonight. So
Speaker 1: I said okay, and they did. So I had a
Speaker 1: produced album and when they played it back for me,
Speaker 1: the this, this, the tension and the strength weren't quite there.
Speaker 1: It was on the corner of it, but not not inside.
Speaker 1: So I said, give me the master tapes and the
Speaker 1: master mixes, and they were eight track, and so I went.
Speaker 1: And this is in New York, where we didn't have
Speaker 1: a studio, but we had very good listen rooms. I
Speaker 1: went into the main listening room eight track, turn them
Speaker 1: all up as loud as I could go. I pinned
Speaker 1: every every microphone, and my god, there it was. So
Speaker 1: we came out with the album not knowing what to expect.
Speaker 1: I was told that if I released this album, I
Speaker 1: was ruining my record company. I said, I don't think so,
Speaker 1: but you never know how these things are gonna work out.
Speaker 1: And you know that Danny has going to knock himself
Speaker 1: out trying to promote them, and so yeah, let's go
Speaker 1: for it. And we did, and it started and it
Speaker 1: got picked up lightly, but it was on the second
Speaker 1: album where it really took hold. And after that I
Speaker 1: was no longer at the company, and so they didn't
Speaker 1: have me there, and they went and signed elsewhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they went with raw power with Columbia. Tell us the
Speaker 1: story of none such St. John's College. Again. I know
Speaker 1: you've asked every question that I hoped you'd ask. The
Speaker 1: stuff that was important to me, Not the stuff that's
Speaker 1: gonna look glorious to anybody else, but the stuff I
Speaker 1: lived through. My friend Adam Pinsker and I used to
Speaker 1: buy records together. Twelve inh LPs were five dollars and uh,
Speaker 1: in order to buy two, we each had to buy
Speaker 1: a half. And you know, why do they have to
Speaker 1: be this expensive? I love baroque music? Why can't I
Speaker 1: get it to anyway? I forget, totally forget about it. Meanwhile. St.
Speaker 1: John's College is giving me an education in baroque and
Speaker 1: folk music, and I'm sitting in a delicate testin before
Speaker 1: we had our own distribution, waiting for my New York distributor,
Speaker 1: and noticed that there's a baroque concert happening in the
Speaker 1: small theater next to Carnegie Hall. So I say to myself,
Speaker 1: I get there's no tablecloth, it's just Butcher's paper. So
Speaker 1: I start figuring out can I have a record? It
Speaker 1: sells for the same price as the quality paperback that
Speaker 1: is profitable. And do I know whether I have the material?
Speaker 1: I knew I had the material, and by that I
Speaker 1: meant I had been been collecting magazines over the years
Speaker 1: UH from English, French and German German publishers, which would
Speaker 1: list all of their serious music, and this music that
Speaker 1: I love so much. If they had four stars, I
Speaker 1: would make a circle. And I had a whole stack
Speaker 1: of this information. So I knew these companies were in
Speaker 1: the Europe but not able to get released in the
Speaker 1: United States. And what if I make a release engine
Speaker 1: for this? What am I going to call it? I had?
Speaker 1: I thought of publishing company that went out of business
Speaker 1: decades ago in England called none Such and said, there's
Speaker 1: no possibility that this is gonna work, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to give it a shot. We're gonna call it None Such.
Speaker 1: And so I figure out that you can actually make
Speaker 1: a record, and if you sold it, you would sell
Speaker 1: it UH at about the two dollar and fifty cent
Speaker 1: record would go out of US at about a dollar
Speaker 1: fifty and the rest was the distributor which wasn't US UH,
Speaker 1: and the dealer, so it would cost US ninety and
Speaker 1: we could make sixty cents an album, and but I
Speaker 1: knew we had to come out ten at a time.
Speaker 1: So I had the first ten albums ready ready to go,
Speaker 1: including a two two records set. UH. That was critical,
Speaker 1: and my sales manager went to the key stores in
Speaker 1: major markets and talked to them and said, we want
Speaker 1: to do this. We want to sell it at to fifty.
Speaker 1: They say it's a bastard price. It's got to be
Speaker 1: to and I said, to strikes, it hits at the
Speaker 1: quality of this, it's just another multiple. No, we're going
Speaker 1: to do it at the price of a quality paperback
Speaker 1: and that's how we're going to advertise it, which is
Speaker 1: what we did. And we had ten records ready to go,
Speaker 1: which I had gotten for many people overseas. We started
Speaker 1: the project in November, and on February the following year,
Speaker 1: nine sixty four, we released the first ten LPs. Now
Speaker 1: I had ten LPs and ten LPs and ten LPs
Speaker 1: already picked out and in the works going beyond that.
Speaker 1: I committed about sixty to seventy thousand dollars of company
Speaker 1: money to test this project out. UH. Fortunately I had
Speaker 1: a young man from the Even Dozen jug band who
Speaker 1: played kazoo, who knew this music cold, and was very
Speaker 1: helpful in writing and writing record notes. And we came
Speaker 1: out with the first ten records, and three weeks later
Speaker 1: we hadn't sold any and little nervousness begins to set in,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly they're disappearing. They're all selling off the shelves.
Speaker 1: We have to make more. Nobody are advertisements didn't take
Speaker 1: a page. They took a page and a third and
Speaker 1: it said what we were doing. We were very good,
Speaker 1: very competently made records at the price as an equivalent paperback,
Speaker 1: and then we could come out with material. We came
Speaker 1: out with ten records a month. We had nine records
Speaker 1: out there doing phenomenally well before anybody else who had
Speaker 1: all of the classical catalogs, like like Vanguard. Uh. They
Speaker 1: they thought I was going to fall flat on my face.
Speaker 1: They knew about it beforehand because I told them about it,
Speaker 1: figuring that they might support it and come out with
Speaker 1: their own stuff. So we were because I wanted to
Speaker 1: create this price level, but they weren't for it. They said,
Speaker 1: now we got to get five. I said, you have to,
Speaker 1: but I don't have to because the music has already recorded,
Speaker 1: it's paid for. I just have to pay these guys
Speaker 1: at ten percent royalty, and that's going to be a
Speaker 1: lot more money. And they got nice advances and the
Speaker 1: result was exactly what I hoped it would be. And
Speaker 1: then I started playing with the idea, what else can
Speaker 1: we do with none such it just can't be baroque music?
Speaker 1: What else am I interested in? I was interested in
Speaker 1: the very nascent beginnings of electronic music, and I ran
Speaker 1: into some gentlemen who did a basically an instruction manual
Speaker 1: with information is how you can do this yourself. So
Speaker 1: I had electronic music. But then I wondered, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a there's got to be somebody out there recording
Speaker 1: world music that we don't know about. And he walked
Speaker 1: in the door about a month later. He had gone
Speaker 1: to Sam Goodies and the interesting records to him were
Speaker 1: our folk music record which were wide ranging. Uh, And
Speaker 1: so he came in to see us and he had
Speaker 1: all of this material, like music from the Morning of
Speaker 1: the World, which was Gamalan music. And we signed him
Speaker 1: up to do nothing but go out and record this
Speaker 1: kind of music. We paid him to go out and record.
Speaker 1: We improved his equipment and he went out and for
Speaker 1: the next eight years recorded music all over the world.
Speaker 1: This was what we would call world music. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: so it music from all kinds of odd places where
Speaker 1: you never thought you'd heard anything from. And then you
Speaker 1: would meet people later in life and who said your
Speaker 1: music change in my life. I was listening to music
Speaker 1: morning of the world. I just fell into it, realized
Speaker 1: I wasn't happy here and went to live in Europe
Speaker 1: or I went to live in Asia. The music affected
Speaker 1: people's lives and ways I never expect and the covers
Speaker 1: were superb because graphics were big on my list, and
Speaker 1: I had the best art director extant and we were
Speaker 1: off and none such today is still alive and doing
Speaker 1: business and has this great history. I released only in
Speaker 1: the music I life, and I know I was arrogant
Speaker 1: in that, but I did release the Stooges. But I
Speaker 1: had to love it, or had to see a reason
Speaker 1: in it. And I was very, very lucky in the
Speaker 1: opportunities that came to me, and in the opportunities I
Speaker 1: see by either creating them or getting somebody to go
Speaker 1: with me who was already out there and needed help.
Speaker 1: So how did you decide to sell the Warner Communications.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting story. This distribution was always a problem.
Speaker 1: You had every label going through independent distributors unless they
Speaker 1: were Columbia Decca or r c A who had their
Speaker 1: own controlled distribution. And you saw how much better that
Speaker 1: was because they spoke with your voice. So I started
Speaker 1: at about nineteen sixty six, I started bugging Ahmed, and
Speaker 1: I started bugging Mo Washton, with whom I was very friendly,
Speaker 1: and Ahmed and I had gone to both the St. John's,
Speaker 1: so at least he would sit into what he thought
Speaker 1: would be an intelligent idea, is that we have to
Speaker 1: start our own distribution system. You have no idea how
Speaker 1: much money is out there, and we do not have
Speaker 1: control over the miss message in the product. I thought,
Speaker 1: I don't know when to use the word product, but
Speaker 1: there's a there's a message we need to get out,
Speaker 1: and you only are going to get a message coherent
Speaker 1: with what you want if their distribution is yours. You're
Speaker 1: the ones who write the paychecks. And everybody said it
Speaker 1: was a good idea, but they didn't have enough critical mass.
Speaker 1: I said, you guys have got eight of it, and
Speaker 1: my company is fifteen of it. My output doesn't it
Speaker 1: doesn't compete with your your output. My output is my interest.
Speaker 1: So it broadens the sense of what this new distribution
Speaker 1: can offer. And we finally decided to do it, and
Speaker 1: within about four months it was done, and it was
Speaker 1: a miracle. Suddenly we were the number one sellers. The
Speaker 1: Warner Music Group was just doing phenomenally well. We topped
Speaker 1: the hundred million dollars our first year, which is what
Speaker 1: I thought was the number we wanted to reach, and
Speaker 1: then it went to a hundred and fifty or two.
Speaker 1: We were and our money was critical to the parent company,
Speaker 1: so they loved the idea. Steve Ross could look at
Speaker 1: a wall of numbers and pick out the wrong one.
Speaker 1: I've seen him do it, but he recognized something that
Speaker 1: compared to the film company was so important to him.
Speaker 1: His films required a lot of cash upfront. Our records didn't,
Speaker 1: but our payroll, which was our own distribution generating all
Speaker 1: that cash which we weren't taking back, he took and
Speaker 1: used it to finance pictures. So he had an automatic
Speaker 1: functioning we get it here, we place it there, we
Speaker 1: grow and it was a brilliant Uh. I didn't know
Speaker 1: he felt this way until it happened but I thought
Speaker 1: it was extremely smart of him and it was great
Speaker 1: for us. And once I had that done, I knew
Speaker 1: my key to freedom was eventual because I could once
Speaker 1: it was up and running, Geffen merged his label with Electra.
Speaker 1: Great artists came with him. Everything was working, and that
Speaker 1: happened in nine seventy, which was the thirtieth anniversary of Electra,
Speaker 1: and I served my my three years there. I ran
Speaker 1: the company's got to new the other guys. We got
Speaker 1: to new each other. And when I had an option
Speaker 1: that needed to be picked up and it wasn't, someone
Speaker 1: forgot about it or it got lost in the shuffle,
Speaker 1: and I waited politely, and then I sent him a
Speaker 1: note since Steve rossa notes saying my option has not
Speaker 1: been picked up, for which I am most grateful. You've
Speaker 1: been wonderful. But I think it's time that I go
Speaker 1: out on my own and do something that I dreamed
Speaker 1: about for years. This movie, The Holiday with Carrie Grant
Speaker 1: was just a fabulous movie, and it had left something
Speaker 1: that I had promised I would do deep inside myself.
Speaker 1: And I got to do it. And when was done,
Speaker 1: and I had done all the explanation, I went back
Speaker 1: to the people who had been good to me and
Speaker 1: said I can do this job for you, and now
Speaker 1: let me do it. Okay, come, okay, just to cover
Speaker 1: though ultimately Warner Steve Ross bought all those three labels
Speaker 1: though you know the Warner Music, the Atlanta Electra, so
Speaker 1: that you actually sold Electra prior to the formation of
Speaker 1: Warner of WIA the distribution company. How did you decide
Speaker 1: to sell to Steve Ross? How did I decide to
Speaker 1: sell it? It was an opportunity for me to get
Speaker 1: out and to have and to have distribution we owned.
Speaker 1: They both were equal uh of equal importance to me.
Speaker 1: Knowing that I would have control and have an instrument
Speaker 1: to work with, and that our records would be handled
Speaker 1: the way we needed them to be handled was powerful
Speaker 1: and the and the potential exit. I expected them to
Speaker 1: pick up my contract and I've been five years instead
Speaker 1: of three. But I was willing to do that. And
Speaker 1: we made a tremendous amount of money on the way.
Speaker 1: So all I was doing was making my company more
Speaker 1: productive better we could we could. We had an argument
Speaker 1: that we could give distribution that was equal to or
Speaker 1: better than Columbius. Did you in retrospect do you feel
Speaker 1: the number, Steve Paige, you was fair. I mean the
Speaker 1: ten million dollars that they gave me the sale of
Speaker 1: the company. I had to work them up to get
Speaker 1: him there. But it gave me freedom because the money
Speaker 1: of that money was taxable, and capital gains tax were
Speaker 1: between twenty five and thirty at that time. Uh and
Speaker 1: I had shareholders. Thearadore Bickel had five percent, which was
Speaker 1: now worth a half a million dollars, and my mother
Speaker 1: had five percent. There goes a million, and there was
Speaker 1: about a million dollars I was giving to the staff.
Speaker 1: I walked out with about four and a half million,
Speaker 1: which was not a lot, but it was a lot
Speaker 1: back then. But I was free. I was able to
Speaker 1: build a life for myself, and I had no idea
Speaker 1: about how I was going to do it, but I
Speaker 1: knew the company was in good hands and that the
Speaker 1: artists were in good hands. Okay, I know you're a
Speaker 1: student of the game. So what do you think of
Speaker 1: the business and music today? Well, it's totally different, and
Speaker 1: today it's different from six months ago. The music has
Speaker 1: always been broadened by the technology. CDs were imperative to
Speaker 1: our growth and sales, and in the year two thousand,
Speaker 1: our sales as record companies combined was about twenty four billion.
Speaker 1: Today it's about twenty and it may be less because
Speaker 1: we're not all back on our home basis. Record making
Speaker 1: has changed, Contracts have changed, the opportunities for people to
Speaker 1: bypass record companies have changed. They can go up online themselves.
Speaker 1: They can hire people who were specialists in doing that,
Speaker 1: who can sell eight of a download that record company
Speaker 1: labels don't have. I think the artists have far more control.
Speaker 1: I think that's okay because I think the artists who
Speaker 1: are very concerned about the money, are very concerned that
Speaker 1: we pay them fairly. We paid them exactly what they're
Speaker 1: entitled to, and we have extraordinarily deep royalty statements which
Speaker 1: they can go online and visualize. So I think there
Speaker 1: are so many different ways that music gets across, and
Speaker 1: I think all of these different ways are essential to mute,
Speaker 1: for music to grow. Actually, when you think about uh, Spotify,
Speaker 1: I remember conversation those of us who ran record companies
Speaker 1: would have in the sixties, and the conversation went, boy,
Speaker 1: what we really need is a jukebox in the sky.
Speaker 1: But the problem was we had this great idea, but
Speaker 1: We didn't know how to get it down to the people.
Speaker 1: The technology wasn't there yet, digital technology where punch cards
Speaker 1: you stuck them in a machine. But we had the
Speaker 1: idea that you had to get directly to the customer
Speaker 1: and we would talk about a lot, but nothing could
Speaker 1: happen because the technology simply wasn't in place. But it
Speaker 1: is in place now. I think having a many different
Speaker 1: opportunities for artists to do it themselves, to make it up,
Speaker 1: to create distribution of their own, to be their own commander.
Speaker 1: I think that's there and I think that's good. Okay,
Speaker 1: this has been wonderful, Jack, Thanks so much for taking
Speaker 1: time out of your day to talk to me. It's
Speaker 1: a story I wanted to tell, but it's the story
Speaker 1: I wanted to have stimulated by good questions. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you so much. We got most of the story, Like
Speaker 1: I could still dig deeper. We didn't cover rhinoceros and Aprica, Brandy.
Speaker 1: We didn't cover the original version of m C five
Speaker 1: with that had to be edited after but we'll save
Speaker 1: that for another time until next time. This is Bob
Speaker 1: left Sets. Thank you, Jack. B