Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bob Left Sets podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest this week is Danny Goldberg, who's had a career
Speaker 1: as a record executive, as a manager, as a writer,
Speaker 1: as a producer. Good to have you here, Danny, So
Speaker 1: nice to be here, Bob. Okay, you were the billboard
Speaker 1: correspondent for Woodstock. How did that come together? I got
Speaker 1: my first job after dropping out of college. Uh, with
Speaker 1: Billboard because okay, well let's go that that triggers. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you grow up where? Grew up in Hastings on Hudson,
Speaker 1: which is Westchester County, right, and I went to a
Speaker 1: high school called Fieldston, which is actually in the Riverdale
Speaker 1: section of the Bronx Private School. Yeah, and your father
Speaker 1: is doing what for a living? Here? Was a textile
Speaker 1: executive and my mother was a housewife. She didn't make money,
Speaker 1: but she was a brilliant you know, she's a poet.
Speaker 1: She published a book of poetry and we always looked
Speaker 1: her is the smartest one. But but my dad was
Speaker 1: took the train to the city every day and came
Speaker 1: back and as did you. If you're going to Fieldston,
Speaker 1: well to Fieldston from Hastings there was a math teacher,
Speaker 1: Mr Jason, who would drive me there and then it
Speaker 1: was a bus back. There was there was not really
Speaker 1: a train. How long was the bus ride that? Forty minutes? Right?
Speaker 1: Relatively long for school? Yeah? And you have any siblings.
Speaker 1: I have a younger brother and a younger sister. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're the oldest. All the hopes and dreams are
Speaker 1: in you, correct. And so what are your brother and
Speaker 1: sister up to today? My brother works for a company
Speaker 1: that sells computer systems to companies. I don't know exactly
Speaker 1: what he does, but it's in that ballpark. And he's
Speaker 1: got a son named Ben and and two grand daughters. Uh.
Speaker 1: And my sister is an academic. She is a professor
Speaker 1: at the Paul University in Indiana of conflict resolution. And
Speaker 1: she's a PhD. So we do have a doctor in
Speaker 1: the family. Okay. And are your parents political, because I
Speaker 1: know you're very political. My parents were political. I got
Speaker 1: my politics from my parents. They were there. They they're
Speaker 1: in heaven now, but they're not, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: get to talk to them in the flesh anymore. But
Speaker 1: there they were, you know, for the civil rights movement.
Speaker 1: They had worked together before I was born. On the
Speaker 1: thing was before they were married, but when they were
Speaker 1: gonna get married. On the Henry Wallace campaign in so
Speaker 1: so he was he for those who don't know he was,
Speaker 1: he had been Roosevelt's Vice president and Secretary of Agriculture,
Speaker 1: and he was kind of against the Cold War and
Speaker 1: was to the left of Harry Truman and and ultimately
Speaker 1: ran on an extremely unsuccessful third party ticket in forty
Speaker 1: eight because he felt Truman had kind of sold out
Speaker 1: some of the New deals. So that's what I grew
Speaker 1: up with was they weren't communists, but they they they
Speaker 1: were They hated John McCarthy, and they were they were lefties, liberals, liberals.
Speaker 1: Let's jump all the way to the future as we
Speaker 1: sit here right now with what happened in the Bronx
Speaker 1: with Crowley being uh beaten in the primary by a
Speaker 1: twenty eight year old woman. Do you believe the Democrats
Speaker 1: should run to the center, run to the left. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that the short answer, the one word answer,
Speaker 1: would be to the left. But I do think these
Speaker 1: words left and center are kind of um used differently
Speaker 1: by different people. But to me, the key to the
Speaker 1: Democrats is to turn out the vote and to get
Speaker 1: everybody who voted for the third party candidates uh to
Speaker 1: vote for Democrats this time. To get the people who
Speaker 1: didn't vote to vote for Democrats this time, I think
Speaker 1: that's the low hanging fruit. I think changing the mind
Speaker 1: of a Trump voter is really really hard. And I
Speaker 1: think getting somebody who voted for the Libertarian or Jill
Speaker 1: Steiner who didn't think there was any difference, or those
Speaker 1: ridiculous arguments, I think getting those people to show up
Speaker 1: and vote for the Democrats is is an easier lift
Speaker 1: of the two. Well, that's what Frank Rich says. Frank
Speaker 1: Rich said, you know, although it's interesting to study why
Speaker 1: these people voted for Trump, that you're not going to
Speaker 1: convince him. It's about getting out the vote. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's true. I think historically, when there's a high turnout,
Speaker 1: Democrats win, and when there's a low turnout, they lose.
Speaker 1: And I think clearly we know the math. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's not a majority support for Trump, but but if
Speaker 1: if a majority the people who show up to vote
Speaker 1: support him, then he controls everything. Do you have any
Speaker 1: fear that we could have candidates that are too far
Speaker 1: to the left and we lose the so called center.
Speaker 1: I'm much more scared of people who demoralize women, young
Speaker 1: people in racial minorities, because that's what happened last time,
Speaker 1: and that's what's happened frequently with the Democrats. I haven't
Speaker 1: I guess, if you wanted to say McGovern was too
Speaker 1: far to the left, that was so long ago, and
Speaker 1: it was such a unique set of circumstances, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know, almost forty more than forty more than
Speaker 1: forty years ago. But certainly in terms of in the
Speaker 1: last several decades, there's no examples of Democrats who are
Speaker 1: too far to the left. There's a lot of examples
Speaker 1: of Democrats who didn't get the turnout, who didn't motivate
Speaker 1: young people. These kids who showed up on the Gun March,
Speaker 1: the women who showed up on the William Million Women March,
Speaker 1: the the African Americans who showed up for Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: the Latinos who need to know that there's a compelling
Speaker 1: difference between Democrats and Republicans. Getting them to show up
Speaker 1: is to me the big task. I haven't seen examples
Speaker 1: of Democrats who lost because they were too far to
Speaker 1: the left. We have a lot of examples of Democrats
Speaker 1: who couldn't get turned out. Well, it's interesting in the
Speaker 1: last few days, uh, people are accusing of The New
Speaker 1: York Times of trying to bring people to the center,
Speaker 1: and then there are people to the left like Matt
Speaker 1: Taiebi say no, we really have to run on the issues.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of them publicized by Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 1: having to do with school debt and healthcare and other opportunities.
Speaker 1: And as I say, this is how we lost, if
Speaker 1: I want to say I am a Democrat, that is
Speaker 1: how we lost the last time around. Um, I guess
Speaker 1: when Hillary Clinton said her favorite book was the Bible,
Speaker 1: I said, it just blew all credibility. Well, I think
Speaker 1: when she said I'm going to ask Henry Kissingerer for advice,
Speaker 1: and when she said no, I won't tell you what
Speaker 1: I said to Goldman Sachs that it was it was
Speaker 1: not exciting. You know, Look, I voted for Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 1: I contributed money to Hillary Clinton, and I think she
Speaker 1: would have been a terrific president. I was for burning
Speaker 1: in the primaries because I agreed with him on the issues.
Speaker 1: But I think the reality is that there's been too
Speaker 1: many Democratic leaders that haven't delivered for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and and some of those people, uh didn't vote last time,
Speaker 1: and some of them voted for third parties. I think
Speaker 1: five percent of the vote went to the libertarian or
Speaker 1: to Jill Stein. I think all those people, I don't
Speaker 1: think any of those people would have voted for Trump.
Speaker 1: Some of them would have voted for for Hillary. Maybe
Speaker 1: some of them you just could never get. There's a
Speaker 1: certain core of nihilist lefties that will never vote for
Speaker 1: a Democrat. But it's not five percent, that's for sure,
Speaker 1: And uh, you know that was you know, and then
Speaker 1: you look at the young people. The percentage of progressive
Speaker 1: views of people under thirty or fifteen twenty points higher
Speaker 1: than the rest of theation. And uh, every every election
Speaker 1: is more of those people. And you've got to motivate
Speaker 1: them and show them there's a real difference and that
Speaker 1: it's worth it and taking it for granted because you
Speaker 1: just kind of quote something that you know lb J
Speaker 1: did fifty years ago is not going to do it.
Speaker 1: You've got to. So I on that particular argument, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm more on the mat Ti e. B side, not
Speaker 1: only because I happen to believe in those issues, because
Speaker 1: I don't believe the other thing works. That what the
Speaker 1: what you're describing the not let's not go too far
Speaker 1: to the left platform is what lost for the Democrats,
Speaker 1: not only Hillary Clinton, but but successive mid terms and governorships.
Speaker 1: And you know, the Democratic Party is the weakest in
Speaker 1: terms of elective office that it's been in my lifetime
Speaker 1: because they keep taking the advice of these so called
Speaker 1: experts who claim to know what the center thinks, except
Speaker 1: they keep losing. If they would win, I would salute,
Speaker 1: you know, but they lost, so obviously their expertise is
Speaker 1: not what they claim it was. Okay, you're speaking my
Speaker 1: language before we go back to the beginning here, is
Speaker 1: there a place for music in this political sphere? And
Speaker 1: can music move the needle um? You know, it's so
Speaker 1: hard to know how music affects people relative to to politics.
Speaker 1: The historical role of music has mostly been as a
Speaker 1: source of encouragement for people. When when you know, John
Speaker 1: by Ezra Pete Seeger would go and sing for the
Speaker 1: civil rights workers, or phil Oaks would sing at peace rallies,
Speaker 1: or Jackson Brown and Bonnie Rate would would sing, you know,
Speaker 1: for anti nuclear rallies and things like that. It's not
Speaker 1: been to convert people. It's mostly been to kind of
Speaker 1: inspire and motivate the troops and to raise money. Um,
Speaker 1: you never know what art can do. You know, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't look at music as a separate category. I would
Speaker 1: just think creativity in general. I mean, certainly, Uncle Tom's
Speaker 1: Cabin is believed to have been a big catalyst in
Speaker 1: getting white people who had political power to finally be
Speaker 1: against slavery. So that's the famous example of a work
Speaker 1: of art actually moving the needle. But I think in
Speaker 1: terms of the general atmosphere of the culture, to the
Speaker 1: extent that art is makes certain things cool. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know it helps. I don't think it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: that big deal. I think the underlying issues matter more
Speaker 1: and and the Again, the main role of artist is
Speaker 1: to support politicians. As much as I love Harry Bellafante,
Speaker 1: he supported Martin Luther King, he wasn't Martin Luther King,
Speaker 1: and he would be the first to say that. Okay,
Speaker 1: So going back to Fieldstom, you were in high school
Speaker 1: in a very tumultuous era. Were you involved in politics them?
Speaker 1: I was, to the extent I could be. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: bunch of us in in um in seventh grade. One
Speaker 1: of my my best friend in high school was somebody
Speaker 1: named Joel Goodman, who was still a friend of mine.
Speaker 1: He lives in Santa Monica, not far from where we
Speaker 1: were doing this podcast, and he um. His uncle was
Speaker 1: Paul Goodman, who's a famous radical writer of the fifties,
Speaker 1: great hero of both the gay rights movement and a
Speaker 1: lot of left wing movements. So he was way more
Speaker 1: tuned in to sort of left the ideas than I was.
Speaker 1: But my parents, like I was telling you earlier, supported
Speaker 1: these things. And he had the idea that we should
Speaker 1: protest air A drills because they represented preparation for war
Speaker 1: and kind of enabling a war psychology. And so in
Speaker 1: seventh grade, six of us held signs up mindset, don't
Speaker 1: prepare for war prevented and refused to participate in an
Speaker 1: air A drill and we got suspended for a day.
Speaker 1: But then the next year they stopped having air A drills.
Speaker 1: So now this was a private school, but it gave
Speaker 1: me an unrealistic sense of what protests could do, which
Speaker 1: I've never completely lost. Okay, so you get kicked out
Speaker 1: of school for a day for yours. Oh, they were
Speaker 1: all for it now my parents supported that. My parents
Speaker 1: didn't like it when I started smoking dope and taking
Speaker 1: acid that and and dropped out of college. That freaked
Speaker 1: them out. But the political activity they were completely supportive of.
Speaker 1: And a bunch of us got a bus in sixty
Speaker 1: five to go to a march on Washington against the
Speaker 1: war fields and bus and uh. And one of my
Speaker 1: classmates in in in Um the last three years of
Speaker 1: high school was gil Scott heron Um. You know, he
Speaker 1: he got a scholarship there. He had his family had
Speaker 1: moved up from somewhere in the South. I think it's Virginia,
Speaker 1: but it might be Tennessee. I it's But he was
Speaker 1: immediately the most popular kid in school because he was
Speaker 1: that cool. He was the lone African American. There were
Speaker 1: a few other African Americans, not a lot, but I
Speaker 1: think we had out of a class of a hundred,
Speaker 1: I think there were seven or eight. But he was
Speaker 1: just so charismatic. He was the center of the basketball team.
Speaker 1: He was the biggest, he was the main he was
Speaker 1: the wide end on the football team. He was the
Speaker 1: most talented musically. He had the best sense of humor,
Speaker 1: and he was an incredible writer. The first day in
Speaker 1: English class, we've been given this assignment about what did
Speaker 1: you do over the summer? And mine was the I
Speaker 1: went to the beach. I rode my bike and brought
Speaker 1: a copy of Mad magazine, and I had a ice
Speaker 1: cream Sunday and I rode back. And we're all having
Speaker 1: these like a sort of four line see Dick run
Speaker 1: type descriptions, and the okay, Gil yours and he starts
Speaker 1: reading the wind Blew through marriage Hair. She hadn't slept
Speaker 1: all night, but she'd had enough coffee that she was,
Speaker 1: you know, it was literature. And we all looked around, like,
Speaker 1: who is this guy? You know? And um, so he
Speaker 1: was you know, he wasn't um. He didn't come with
Speaker 1: us to the to the march. His mother was pretty
Speaker 1: strict and but but but he he was. He was
Speaker 1: a lefty. He was he was a deaf and it lefty.
Speaker 1: How was he your friend in school? He was my friend.
Speaker 1: He mostly hung out with the jocks, but he liked me.
Speaker 1: It's it's counterintuitor, isn't it. But but these were fields
Speaker 1: in shocks. This is a mostly Jewish private school. This
Speaker 1: this was not providing players for the NFL or NBA.
Speaker 1: You know, Um, but he uh, he was. He was
Speaker 1: a good guy, and he was he was. Everybody loved Gil.
Speaker 1: He got along with kind of all the different cliques
Speaker 1: and and and I considered him a friend and he
Speaker 1: and I saw him in subsequent years at different times
Speaker 1: in both of our lives. You know, now, any of
Speaker 1: your contemporaries from Fieldston become notable on the scene. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I would say he was by far
Speaker 1: the most spectacular public figure from our particular class. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you graduate from Fieldston and you go to college
Speaker 1: where I got into the University of California at Berkeley
Speaker 1: because I was an underachiever, as they used to call us,
Speaker 1: a d D people in those days, do you consider
Speaker 1: yourself to have a d D? In retrospect? I know
Speaker 1: what it was about the story. That's the story I
Speaker 1: tell myself now for being such a mediocre student. Who knows,
Speaker 1: but I um, but but but I was a good
Speaker 1: test taker. And Berkeley was one of the schools that
Speaker 1: only looked at the S A T. S. So the
Speaker 1: guidance people said, don't even those are the only colleges
Speaker 1: you should apply to, because if they look at your grades,
Speaker 1: they're not gonna want you, you know. And I spent
Speaker 1: an entire week going to classes and that was it.
Speaker 1: I just was only into drugs at that time, and
Speaker 1: so I dropped out literally after one week. This is
Speaker 1: the fall of no. No, this is this is the
Speaker 1: fall of sixties seven. I graduated from high school in
Speaker 1: June sixty seven and go I wind up in Berkeley,
Speaker 1: and okay, sixty seven, Okay, so that is literally just
Speaker 1: at the end of the summer of law. Just missed
Speaker 1: the summer of love. Yeah, so by the time I
Speaker 1: visited Hay to Ashbury, it was it was already kind
Speaker 1: of ruined by the inflo of junkies and predators. And
Speaker 1: I mostly stayed in Berkeley, but I did. But I
Speaker 1: saw it right after the Summer of love. The real
Speaker 1: summer of love, I think, having just written a book
Speaker 1: about this, was really sixty six. That was the real
Speaker 1: idealistic period. Sixty seven was the media summer of love.
Speaker 1: Although many people think sixty eight was the summer of love.
Speaker 1: Who weren't around that today was the summer of assassination.
Speaker 1: Sixty eight was certainly that was when the mains just
Speaker 1: started to get clued in. But you're in Berkeley, which
Speaker 1: is a hot bit of radicalization, and could you still
Speaker 1: feel that even though Mario Savio was before that, etcetera. Well,
Speaker 1: there was a schism. It wasn't an official schism, but
Speaker 1: there was the fact of schism among people that were
Speaker 1: kind of long haired, people that were generally rebellious baby
Speaker 1: boomer anti war types, between people that were sort of
Speaker 1: into the seeing political radicalism in the anti war movement
Speaker 1: as their number one priority, and people who saw getting
Speaker 1: high as their number one priority. And I was in
Speaker 1: the latter group. I was in said head who was
Speaker 1: against the war and proudly against it. I had no
Speaker 1: ambiguity about it. But I didn't want to sit in meetings.
Speaker 1: I was never part of STS. I was really mainly
Speaker 1: into getting high. Okay, So were you into getting high
Speaker 1: in high school? I was, okay? So why do you
Speaker 1: you just doubled down when you get to Berkeley? Correct?
Speaker 1: Because I didn't have parents to come home to anymore. Okay?
Speaker 1: So you literally stopped going to classes after one week? Correct?
Speaker 1: And but you're living in the dorm. No, at Berkeley,
Speaker 1: you did not have to live in the dorm. So
Speaker 1: Joel Goodman, the Fellow I mentioned you before, also went
Speaker 1: to Berkeley and we shared an apartment. It was actually
Speaker 1: in a town called Albany, California, that's just past the
Speaker 1: border of just slightly north of of Berkeley. So we
Speaker 1: we had an apartment and we're not in a dorm. Well,
Speaker 1: so what? And he continue to go to school. He
Speaker 1: stayed in Berkeley for about another year, and then he
Speaker 1: later became a film editor. You'll see his name on
Speaker 1: the credits of many TV series and the movies and
Speaker 1: so on. He's okay, so you're there. You you stopped
Speaker 1: going to class for uh after week. You know, you
Speaker 1: know something is coming the bell that's gonna be wrong.
Speaker 1: Your parents are gonna freak out. So what's going through
Speaker 1: your head? You know? I this was not the time. Welcome, Welcome,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bob Left Sets podcast. My guest this
Speaker 1: week is Danny Goldberg, who's had a career as a
Speaker 1: record executive, as a manager, as a writer, as a producer.
Speaker 1: Good to have you here, Danny, So nice to be here, Bob. Okay,
Speaker 1: you were the billboard correspondent for Woodstock. How did that
Speaker 1: come together? I got my first job after dropping out
Speaker 1: of college, uh with Billboard because okay, well let's go
Speaker 1: that that triggers. Okay, So you grow up where? Grew
Speaker 1: up in Hastings on Hudson, which is Westchester County, right,
Speaker 1: And I went to a high school called Fieldston, which
Speaker 1: is actually in the Riverdale section of the Bronx Private School. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and your father is doing what for a living? Here
Speaker 1: was a textile executive and my mother as a housewife.
Speaker 1: She didn't make money, but she was a brilliant you know,
Speaker 1: she's a poet. She published a book of poetry and
Speaker 1: we always looked at her as the smartest one. Uh
Speaker 1: but but my dad was took the train to the
Speaker 1: city every day and came back, and as did you.
Speaker 1: If you're going to Fieldston, Well, to Fieldston from Hastings
Speaker 1: there was a math teacher, Mr Jason, who would drive
Speaker 1: me there and then it was a bus back there
Speaker 1: was there was not really a train. How long was
Speaker 1: the bus ride that? Forty minutes? Right, relatively long for school. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you have any siblings. I have a younger brother
Speaker 1: and a younger sister. Yeah. So you're the oldest. All
Speaker 1: the hopes and dreams are in you, correct, And so
Speaker 1: what are your brother and sister up to today. My
Speaker 1: brother works for a company that sells computer systems to companies.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what he does, but it's in
Speaker 1: that ballpark. And he's got a son named Ben and
Speaker 1: and two grand daughters. Uh. And my sister is an academic.
Speaker 1: She is a professor at De Paul University in Indiana
Speaker 1: of conflict resolution and she's a PhD. So we do
Speaker 1: have a doctor in the family. Okay. And are your
Speaker 1: parents political, because I know you're very political. My parents
Speaker 1: were political. I got my politics from my parents. They
Speaker 1: were there. They they're in heaven now, but they're not
Speaker 1: you know, I don't get to talk to them in
Speaker 1: the flesh anymore. But there they were, you know, for
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement. They had worked together before I
Speaker 1: was born on the thing was before they were married,
Speaker 1: but when they were gonna get married. On the Henry
Speaker 1: Wallace campaign in so so he was he for those
Speaker 1: who don't know he was. He had been Roosevelt's vice
Speaker 1: president and Secretary of Agriculture, and he was kind of
Speaker 1: against the Cold War and was to the left of
Speaker 1: Harry Truman and and ultimately ran on an extremely unsuccessful
Speaker 1: third party ticket in forty eight because he felt Truman
Speaker 1: had kind of sold out some of the new deals.
Speaker 1: So that's what I grew up with was they weren't communists,
Speaker 1: but they they they were They hated John McCarthy, and
Speaker 1: they were they were lefties, liberals, liberals. Let's jump all
Speaker 1: the way to the future as we sit here right
Speaker 1: now with what happened in the Bronx with Crowley being
Speaker 1: UH beaten in the primary by a twenty eight year
Speaker 1: old woman, do you believe the Democrats should run to
Speaker 1: the center, run to the left. Well, I think that
Speaker 1: the short answer, the one word answer, would be to
Speaker 1: the left. But I do think these words left and
Speaker 1: center are kind of um used differently by different people.
Speaker 1: But to me, the key to the Democrats is to
Speaker 1: turn out the vote and to get everybody who voted
Speaker 1: for the third party candidates UH to vote for Democrats
Speaker 1: this time. To get the people who didn't vote to
Speaker 1: vote for Democrats this time. I think that's the low
Speaker 1: hanging fruit. I think changing the mind of a Trump
Speaker 1: voter is really really hard, and I think getting somebody
Speaker 1: who voted for the libertarian or Jill Steiner who didn't
Speaker 1: think there was any difference, or those ridiculous arguments. I
Speaker 1: think getting those people to show up and vote for
Speaker 1: the Democrats is is an easier lift of the two. Well,
Speaker 1: that's what Frank Rich says. Frank Rich said, you know,
Speaker 1: although it's interesting to study why these people voted for Trump,
Speaker 1: that you're not going to convince him it's about getting
Speaker 1: out the vote. Yeah, I think that's true. I think historically,
Speaker 1: when there's a high turnout, Democrats win, and when there's
Speaker 1: a low turnout, they lose. And I think clearly we
Speaker 1: know the math. I mean, there's not a majority support
Speaker 1: for Trump, but but if if a majority the people
Speaker 1: who show up to vote support him, then he controls everything.
Speaker 1: Do you have any fear that we could have candidates
Speaker 1: that are too far to the left and we lose
Speaker 1: the so called center. I'm much more scared of people
Speaker 1: who demoralize women, young people in racial minorities, because that's
Speaker 1: what happened last time, and that's what's happened frequently with
Speaker 1: the Democrats. I haven't I guess if you wanted to
Speaker 1: say McGovern was too far to the left, that was
Speaker 1: so long ago, and it was such a unique set
Speaker 1: of circumstances, you know, and uh, you know, almost forty
Speaker 1: more than forty more than forty years ago. But certainly
Speaker 1: in terms of in the last several decades, there's no
Speaker 1: examples of Democrats who were too far to the left.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of examples of Democrats who didn't get
Speaker 1: the turnout, who didn't motivate young people. These kids who
Speaker 1: showed up on the Gun March, the women who showed
Speaker 1: up on the William Million Women March, the the African
Speaker 1: Americans who showed up for Barack Obama, the Latinos who
Speaker 1: need to know that there's a compelling difference between Democrats
Speaker 1: and Republicans. Getting them to show up is to me
Speaker 1: the big task. I haven't seen examples of Democrats who
Speaker 1: lost because they were too far to the left. We
Speaker 1: have a lot of examples of Democrats who couldn't get
Speaker 1: turned out. Well. It's interesting in the last few days,
Speaker 1: UH people are accusing of the New York Times of
Speaker 1: trying to bring people to the center, and then there
Speaker 1: are people to the left like Matt Taiebi say no,
Speaker 1: we really have to run on the issues. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of them publicized by Bernie Sanders, having to
Speaker 1: do with school debt and healthcare and other opportunity. And
Speaker 1: as I say, this is how we lost. If I
Speaker 1: want to say I am a Democrat, that is how
Speaker 1: we lost the last time around. I guess when Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton said her favorite book was the Bible, I said,
Speaker 1: it just blew all credibility. Well, I think when she
Speaker 1: said I'm going to ask Henry Kissinger for advice, and
Speaker 1: when she said no, I won't tell you what I
Speaker 1: said to Goldman Sachs that it was it was not exciting.
Speaker 1: You know, look, I voted for Hillary Clinton. I contributed
Speaker 1: money to Hillary Clinton, and I think she would have
Speaker 1: been a terrific president. I was for Burning in the
Speaker 1: primaries because I agreed with him on the issues. But
Speaker 1: I think the reality is that there's been too many
Speaker 1: Democratic leaders that haven't delivered for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And and some of those people, UH didn't vote last time,
Speaker 1: and some of them voted for third parties. I think
Speaker 1: five percent of the vote went to the libertarian or
Speaker 1: to Jill Stein. I think all those people, I don't
Speaker 1: think any of those people would have voted for Trump.
Speaker 1: Some of them would have voted for for Hillary. Maybe
Speaker 1: some of them you just could never get. There's a
Speaker 1: certain core of nihilist lefties that will never vote for
Speaker 1: a Democrat. But it's not five percent, and uh, you
Speaker 1: know that was you know, and then you look at
Speaker 1: the young people. The percentage of progressive views of people
Speaker 1: under thirty or fifteen twenty points higher than the rest
Speaker 1: of the polation, And uh, every every election is more
Speaker 1: of those people. And you've got to motivate them and
Speaker 1: show them there's a real difference and that it's worth
Speaker 1: it and taking it for granted because you just kind
Speaker 1: of quote something that you know lb J did fifty
Speaker 1: years ago is not going to do it. You've got
Speaker 1: to So I on that particular argument, I'm I'm more
Speaker 1: on the mat Ti e B side, not only because
Speaker 1: I happen to believe in those issues, because I don't
Speaker 1: believe the other thing works that what the what you're
Speaker 1: describing the not let's not go too far to the
Speaker 1: left platform is what lost for the Democrats, not only
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton, but but successive midterms and governorships. And you know,
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party is the weakest in terms of a
Speaker 1: of office that it's been in my lifetime because they
Speaker 1: keep taking the advice of these so called experts who
Speaker 1: claim to know what the center thinks, except they keep losing.
Speaker 1: If they would win, I would salute, you know, but
Speaker 1: they lost, so obviously their expertise is not what they
Speaker 1: claim it was. Okay, you're speaking my language before we
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning here. Is there a place
Speaker 1: for music in this political sphere? And can music move
Speaker 1: the needle? Um? You know, it's so hard to know
Speaker 1: how music affects people relative to to politics. The historical
Speaker 1: role of music has mostly been as a source of
Speaker 1: encouragement for people. When when you know, John by Ezra
Speaker 1: Pete Seeger would go and sing for the civil rights workers,
Speaker 1: or phil Oaks would sing at peace rallies, or Jackson
Speaker 1: Brown and Bonnie Rate would would sing, you know, for
Speaker 1: anti nuclear rallies and things like that. It's not been
Speaker 1: to convert people. It's mostly been to kind of inspire
Speaker 1: and motivate the troops and to raise money. Um, you
Speaker 1: never know what art can do. You know, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: look at music as a separate category. I would just
Speaker 1: think creativity in general. I mean, certainly, Uncle Tom's cabin
Speaker 1: is believed to have been a big catalyst in getting
Speaker 1: white people who had political power to finally be against slavery.
Speaker 1: So that's the famous example of a work of art
Speaker 1: actually moving the needle. But I think in terms of
Speaker 1: the general atmosphere of the culture, to the extent that
Speaker 1: art is makes certain things cool. Uh, you know it helps.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's it's it's it's that big deal.
Speaker 1: I think the underlying issues matter more. And and there again,
Speaker 1: the main role of artist is to support politicians. As
Speaker 1: much as I love Harry Bellafante, he supported Martin Luther King,
Speaker 1: he wasn't Martin Luther King, and he would be the
Speaker 1: first to say that. Okay, So going back to Field Stem,
Speaker 1: you were in high school in a very tumultual was era.
Speaker 1: Were you involved in politics them? I was to the
Speaker 1: extent I could be. Um. You know, a bunch of
Speaker 1: us in in um in seventh grade. One of my
Speaker 1: my best friend in high school was somebody named Joel Goodman,
Speaker 1: who was still a friend of mine. He lives in
Speaker 1: Santa Monica, not far from where we're doing this podcast,
Speaker 1: and he um His uncle was Paul Goodman, who's a
Speaker 1: famous radical writer of the fifties, great hero of both
Speaker 1: the gay rights movement and a lot of left wing movements.
Speaker 1: So he was way more tuned in to sort of
Speaker 1: left the ideas than I was. But my parents, like
Speaker 1: I was telling you earlier, supported these things. And he
Speaker 1: had the idea that we should protest air A drills
Speaker 1: because they represented preparation for war and kind of enabling
Speaker 1: a war psychology. And so in seventh grade, six of
Speaker 1: us held signs up mindset, don't prepare for war, prevented
Speaker 1: and refused to participate in an air A drill, and
Speaker 1: we got suspended for a day. But then the next
Speaker 1: year they stopped having air aid drill. So now this
Speaker 1: was a private school, but it gave me an unrealistic
Speaker 1: sense of what protests could do, which I've never completely lost. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you get kicked out of school for a day
Speaker 1: for your say, Oh, they were all for it. Now,
Speaker 1: my parents supported that. My parents didn't like it when
Speaker 1: I started smoking dope and taking acid that and and
Speaker 1: dropped out of college. That freaked them out. But the
Speaker 1: political activity they were completely supportive of. And a bunch
Speaker 1: of us got a bus in sixty five to go
Speaker 1: to a march on Washington against the war fields and
Speaker 1: bus and uh and one of my classmates in in
Speaker 1: in Um. The last three years of High school was
Speaker 1: Gil Scott heron Um. You know, he he got a
Speaker 1: scholarship there. He had his family had moved up from
Speaker 1: somewhere in the South. I think it's Virginia, but it
Speaker 1: might be Tennessee. I it's but he was immediately the
Speaker 1: most popular kid in school because he was that cool.
Speaker 1: He was the lone African American. There were a few
Speaker 1: other African Americans, not a lot, but I think we
Speaker 1: had of a class of a hundred, I think there
Speaker 1: were seven or eight. But he was just so charismatic.
Speaker 1: He was the center of the basketball team. He was
Speaker 1: the biggest, he was the main he was the wide
Speaker 1: end on the football team. He was the most talented musically.
Speaker 1: He had the best sense of humor, and he was
Speaker 1: an incredible writer. The first day in English class, we've
Speaker 1: been given this assignment about what did you do over
Speaker 1: the summer? And mine was the I went to the beach.
Speaker 1: I rode my bike and brought a copy of Mad magazine,
Speaker 1: and I had a ice cream Sunday and I rode
Speaker 1: back and we're all having these like a sort of
Speaker 1: four line see Dick run type descriptions, and the okay,
Speaker 1: Gil yours and he starts reading the wind blew through
Speaker 1: Merrit's hair. She hadn't slept all night, but she'd had
Speaker 1: enough coffee that she was you know, it was literature.
Speaker 1: And we all looked around, like, who is this guy?
Speaker 1: You know? And um, so he was, you know, he wasn't. Um,
Speaker 1: he didn't come with us to the to the march.
Speaker 1: His mother was pretty strict and but but he was.
Speaker 1: He was a lefty, he was. He was a definite lefty.
Speaker 1: Now was he your friend in school? He was my friend.
Speaker 1: He mostly hung out with the jocks, but he liked me.
Speaker 1: So it's it's counterintuitor, isn't it. But but these were
Speaker 1: fields in Shocks. This is a mostly Jewish private school.
Speaker 1: This this was not providing players for the NFL or NBA.
Speaker 1: You know. Um, but he uh, he was. He was
Speaker 1: a good guy and he was he was. Everybody loved Gil.
Speaker 1: He got along with kind of all the different cliques
Speaker 1: and and and I considered him a friend and he
Speaker 1: and I saw him in subsequent years at different times
Speaker 1: in both of our lives. You know, Now, any of
Speaker 1: your contemporaries from Fieldston become notable on the scene, Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I would say he was by far
Speaker 1: the most spectacular public figure from our particular class. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you graduate from Fieldson and you go to college
Speaker 1: where I got it into the University of California at
Speaker 1: Berkeley because I was an underachiever, as they used to
Speaker 1: call us, a d D people in those days, do
Speaker 1: you consider yourself to have a d D? In retrospect?
Speaker 1: I know what it was? That the story, that's the
Speaker 1: story I tell myself now for being such a mediocre student.
Speaker 1: Who knows but I um, but but but I was
Speaker 1: a good test taker. And Berkeley was one of the
Speaker 1: schools that only looked at the S A T. S.
Speaker 1: So the guidance people said, don't even those are the
Speaker 1: only colleges you should apply to, because if they look
Speaker 1: at your grades, they're not gonna want you, you know.
Speaker 1: And I spent an entire week going to classes and
Speaker 1: that was it. I just was only into drugs at
Speaker 1: that time, and so I dropped out literally after one week.
Speaker 1: This is the fall of sixty No, no, this is
Speaker 1: this is the fall of sixties seven. I graduated from
Speaker 1: high school in June sixty seven and go I wind
Speaker 1: up in Berkeley, and okay, sixty seven. Okay, so that
Speaker 1: is literally just at the end of the summer of law.
Speaker 1: Just missed the summer of law. Yeah, so by the
Speaker 1: time I visited Hay to Ashbury, it was it was
Speaker 1: already kind of ruined by the influx of junkies and predators.
Speaker 1: And I mostly stayed in Berkeley, but I did. But
Speaker 1: I saw it right after the Summer of Love. The
Speaker 1: real summer of love, I think, having just written a
Speaker 1: book about this, was really sixty six. That was the
Speaker 1: real idealistic period. Sixty seven was the media summer of love.
Speaker 1: Although many people think sixty eight was the summer of love.
Speaker 1: Who weren't around that today was the summer of assassination
Speaker 1: was certainly that was when the mains just started to
Speaker 1: get included in. But you're in Berkeley, which is a
Speaker 1: hot bit of radicalization, and could you still feel that
Speaker 1: even though Mario Savio was before that, etcetera. Well, there
Speaker 1: was a schism. It wasn't an official schism, but there
Speaker 1: was the fact of schism among people that were kind
Speaker 1: of long haired, people that were generally rebellious baby boomer
Speaker 1: anti war types, between people that were sort of into
Speaker 1: the seeing political radicalism in the anti war move as
Speaker 1: their number one priority, and people who saw getting high
Speaker 1: as their number one priority. And I was in the
Speaker 1: latter group. I was an asset head who was against
Speaker 1: the war and proudly against it. I had no ambiguity
Speaker 1: about it. But I didn't want to sit in meetings.
Speaker 1: I was never part of STS. I was really mainly
Speaker 1: into getting high. Okay, So were you into getting high
Speaker 1: in high school? I was okay? So why do you
Speaker 1: You just doubled down when you get to Berkeley? Correct?
Speaker 1: Because I didn't have parents to come home to anymore. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you literally stopped going to classes after one week? Correct?
Speaker 1: And but you're living in the dorm. No, at Berkeley,
Speaker 1: you did not have to live in the dorm. So
Speaker 1: Joel Goodman, the fellow I mentioned you before, also went
Speaker 1: to Berkeley and we shared an apartment. It was actually
Speaker 1: in a town called Albany, California, that's just passed the
Speaker 1: border of just slightly north of of Berkeley. So we
Speaker 1: we had an apartment and we're not in a dorm. Well,
Speaker 1: so what? And he continue to go to school. He
Speaker 1: stayed in Berkeley for about another year, and then he
Speaker 1: later became a film editor. You'll see his name on
Speaker 1: the credits of many TV series and the movies and
Speaker 1: so on. He Okay, so you're there. You you stopped
Speaker 1: going to class for uh after week. You know you
Speaker 1: know something is coming. There's a bell that's gonna be wrong.
Speaker 1: Your parents are gonna freak out. So what's going through
Speaker 1: your head? You know? I this was not the time
Speaker 1: in my life when I was the most clear thinking.
Speaker 1: Um what was I was really thinking everything in terms
Speaker 1: of sort of the next twenty four hours, and I
Speaker 1: really became a druggie. I'm not particularly proud of it.
Speaker 1: I think that the psychedelics played a positive role for
Speaker 1: me at one moment in my life, but thereafter I
Speaker 1: was just into taking all kinds of drugs, including you know,
Speaker 1: meth and heroin and everything. And I got arrested in
Speaker 1: May of sixty eight wandering around asking a cop for
Speaker 1: directions when I was very, very stoned, and it was
Speaker 1: obviously subconsciously something I wanted to do. It's scared, you know,
Speaker 1: I was scared straight, as the expression goes. I spent
Speaker 1: six days and Alameda County Juvenile All my parents found
Speaker 1: some laurying got me out. It was before my eighteenth birthday,
Speaker 1: and the lawyers were not as strict then, and and
Speaker 1: I I didn't. I don't think I took any drugs
Speaker 1: or had a glass of wine for a ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen years after that. Really, you were literally scared. I
Speaker 1: was like I, I don't understand a lot of things
Speaker 1: about life, but I never want to put myself in
Speaker 1: that position again. You know, that was very clear. I
Speaker 1: got lucky nobody raped me or beat me up. I was,
Speaker 1: but I never wanted to be in that situation again.
Speaker 1: How about today? I still don't want to be in jail.
Speaker 1: But would you imbibe any uh? I don't have a
Speaker 1: social glass of wine or smoke a joint. You know
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not a twelve step person that many
Speaker 1: of the people closest to me are. But but in
Speaker 1: the in the extreme moderation, we'll take a quick break
Speaker 1: and come back with more of my conversation with Danny Goldberg,
Speaker 1: recording it at the Tune in studios in Venice, California.
Speaker 1: I love sitting down with music industry veterans like Danny
Speaker 1: and traveling back in time and getting their history. I
Speaker 1: love getting to the heart of a person's story, whether
Speaker 1: they're perform warmer, a manager, a record label executive, or
Speaker 1: just someone on the street. Everyone's got a story and
Speaker 1: I want to hear it. This week, Danny Goldberg tells
Speaker 1: us all about his roles in the music business. Previously,
Speaker 1: we talked with artists like Cascade, Moby and Shirley Manson
Speaker 1: of Garbage. Whether you come from the music conversation or
Speaker 1: learn more about the business, be the first to hear
Speaker 1: next week's episode by subscribing to the podcast on tune in,
Speaker 1: Apple or your podcast host of choice. If you like
Speaker 1: what you hear, please rate, review, and of course tell
Speaker 1: your friends they'll dig it to. Okay, let's get back
Speaker 1: to my conversation with Danny Goldberg. Okay, so when do
Speaker 1: your parents wake up to the fact you ain't going
Speaker 1: to school. I think when they got the call from
Speaker 1: the jail was when they woke up to it. And
Speaker 1: so how pissed were they? They were devastated. My poor parents.
Speaker 1: They were such lovely people, and I got very close
Speaker 1: to them by the time I hit my thirties, but
Speaker 1: you know, at that time in my life, I just
Speaker 1: didn't want them in my head. They they were I
Speaker 1: if I get to be born again and live on
Speaker 1: a planet like this, and I can pick my parents.
Speaker 1: I'm fine to have the same parents. They were really interesting,
Speaker 1: loving people, and I became particularly close to my dad,
Speaker 1: who outlived my mom and and who was the not
Speaker 1: the disciplinarian of the two of them, and was the
Speaker 1: unconditional love guy. But they were just freaked out. I mean,
Speaker 1: they didn't understand it. They were worried that I'd ruined
Speaker 1: my life. But you know, within you know, I got
Speaker 1: a job. I got the job working for Billboard. Remember
Speaker 1: of that year. Okay, you're in Berkeley, you get out
Speaker 1: of juvenile hall, you go back to your parents. I
Speaker 1: have to go back. The condition of my release was
Speaker 1: that I would not be in California for a year,
Speaker 1: that i'd get therapy, and and so I'm living in
Speaker 1: their apartment going to some kind of group therapy that
Speaker 1: was for people with drug problems. Was that beneficial at all?
Speaker 1: It was? First of all, I was so surprising to
Speaker 1: me that other people had problems. I thought I was
Speaker 1: the only one I had problems. So just that sheer
Speaker 1: fact of sitting in a group. And what was really
Speaker 1: amazing to me was that older people had problems, because
Speaker 1: I thought only people my age had problems. So just
Speaker 1: in terms of that superficial getting out of my own
Speaker 1: self centered nous, it was hugely helpful. And there was
Speaker 1: one therapist there named Ralph Ricky. I think he's passed away,
Speaker 1: that I still remember that that that that he just
Speaker 1: helped me feel a little bit better about myself. I
Speaker 1: only went for Bad five or six months, and then
Speaker 1: I by the fall, this was June, and by September
Speaker 1: I got the job at Billboard. How did you get
Speaker 1: the job at Billboard? And The New York Times really
Speaker 1: says magazine clerk wanted for magazine. I had no idea
Speaker 1: what Billboard was. I didn't know there was a music business.
Speaker 1: I just loved rock and roll as a fan. I
Speaker 1: didn't know there was a whole business and that it
Speaker 1: would be a trade magazine about it, or three trade
Speaker 1: magazines about it. But you know, I figured magazine. I'd
Speaker 1: written for the high school newspaper. I figured the other
Speaker 1: job that I could get was key punch operator for
Speaker 1: Sears Roebuck and writer. You know, magazine just sounded better
Speaker 1: to me than Sears Roll. Did it say Billboard? Uh?
Speaker 1: I don't remember, But I didn't know what Billboard was.
Speaker 1: I didn't really unders thinking of other competition. Other people
Speaker 1: might want that gig. Well, I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: nobody knew what the music business was then later on
Speaker 1: USA today, the New York Times would print charts and
Speaker 1: they'd beat you. Developed subsequent generations understood there were things
Speaker 1: called record companies and managers and agents, and it became
Speaker 1: part of popular conversation. At that time. Nobody knew anything
Speaker 1: about this except people that were in the business. So
Speaker 1: I certainly didn't know what billboard was, and I really
Speaker 1: didn't understand what it was when I started the first
Speaker 1: day and I was leafing through it, and they had
Speaker 1: pictures of like Janis Joplin and people that I liked,
Speaker 1: in addition to kind of country artists and R and
Speaker 1: B artists. And the job was in the chart department,
Speaker 1: where there was no bar codes then. So the way
Speaker 1: they compiled the charts what they had seven or eight
Speaker 1: of us called stores three or four three three days
Speaker 1: a week. We would call the stores and read a
Speaker 1: checklist of all the singles that were on the list
Speaker 1: and ask to people who answered the phone or is
Speaker 1: it selling heavy, medium, light or not at all? And
Speaker 1: then what's your top ten selling albums, and then I
Speaker 1: had and then some of us had specialties. Mind was
Speaker 1: classical music, so I would also have a list of
Speaker 1: classical stories to call to compile the classical chart. And
Speaker 1: then we and then then one day we'd spent compiling
Speaker 1: the now would be called data. And then then then
Speaker 1: the fifth day we'd answer the phone when people called
Speaker 1: all day asking where their record was on the charts.
Speaker 1: So if there are five other people doing this and
Speaker 1: you're basically a data technician, you're not on the fast
Speaker 1: road anywhere. Well what happened is they were. I discovered
Speaker 1: that there was this thing called the music business, and
Speaker 1: there were people. I discovered two things pretty quickly. Number one,
Speaker 1: there were people and another side of the office that
Speaker 1: got to go to concerts for free and got free records,
Speaker 1: and all they had to do was write their opinions
Speaker 1: about them. And I had pretty low self esteem, but
Speaker 1: I knew I could do that. You have plenty of yeah,
Speaker 1: especially about music, you know, especially about the kind of
Speaker 1: music that I that I like. So I was immediately,
Speaker 1: how do I get that job? How do I get
Speaker 1: that job? But no, no, no, no, there's that you
Speaker 1: have to be credentialed. And but what what happened is
Speaker 1: that by nagging enough. It was a small enough office,
Speaker 1: there were there were certain assignments that none of the
Speaker 1: staff writers could cover, and so within a few months
Speaker 1: they would let me as a freelancer do pieces that
Speaker 1: nobody else none of the states remember. The first one
Speaker 1: ever was a banned on Atlantic called Mr Flood's Party.
Speaker 1: I don't even remember that. No, they were a flop.
Speaker 1: They played at the Steve Poles the Scene and um,
Speaker 1: I wrote one that I do remember, um about the Rascals.
Speaker 1: The Rascals played at an outdoor venue in Queens. I
Speaker 1: think it was called the Pavilion. It was on the
Speaker 1: side of what had previously been the World's Fair. And um,
Speaker 1: and I wrote, um, and I love the Rascals. But
Speaker 1: I knew I'm supposed to be a critic, so I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to say something critical or I'm not really a critic.
Speaker 1: So I said, well, feelis cavalerian Eddie Brigotti sound amazing
Speaker 1: vocalist and the songs are great, And I said and
Speaker 1: and and Gene Cornish twanged his guitar. Because this was
Speaker 1: the era of guitar heroes. You have Jimmy Hendrix and
Speaker 1: Eric Clapton and you know Jeff Beck and you know
Speaker 1: these amazing guitar players. And he was like, you know
Speaker 1: the rascals guitar. So on Monday, which was in the magazine,
Speaker 1: is published The Phone Rings and it's Gene Cornish and
Speaker 1: he says, um, what do you mean I twanged my guitary?
Speaker 1: Do you know how long I practiced to learn other players?
Speaker 1: I have a lot of I said, I didn't mean
Speaker 1: it as a criticism. I I just, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I was so I felt so terrible. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that these people in bands were human beings that would
Speaker 1: read or care about anything like this. I was just
Speaker 1: trying to look like I was a critic, and after
Speaker 1: that it was very hard for me to criticize musicians,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's why I ended up being a
Speaker 1: much better publicist than I was a critic. Okay, So
Speaker 1: if you're starting to fall of sixty eight, let's go
Speaker 1: back to the additional question. You end up being the
Speaker 1: writer for Woodstock, So then then I'm still at Billboard
Speaker 1: by by August of sixty nine, when when Woodstock happens
Speaker 1: and none of the writers wanted to cover it because
Speaker 1: a good assignment for a Billboard writer. These were old
Speaker 1: guys like thirty five, you know, totally different generation than
Speaker 1: a nineteen year old, and they they wanted to go
Speaker 1: to clubs like the Copacabana where you got a free
Speaker 1: drinks and free dinner. Those were the assignments that were
Speaker 1: coveted by the staff writers. Nobody wanted to slep up
Speaker 1: to the country. They didn't care about these artists. They
Speaker 1: were ten fifteen years older, and so nobody wanted to go.
Speaker 1: So they somebody said, do you want to go? I
Speaker 1: said yes, So I went there in a limo with
Speaker 1: the public The publicist for Woodstock was a woman named
Speaker 1: Jane Friedman, who is still alive. I think she runs
Speaker 1: an art gallery in Soho. Now and uh, stop for
Speaker 1: one second. Are you making enough money at Billboard to
Speaker 1: live in your own place? You're living with your parents?
Speaker 1: Oh no, No. The minute I got the job, I
Speaker 1: got my own apartment. I was sharing it. Initially, I
Speaker 1: had apartment in Brooklyn. Initially I was sharing with Peter Connoy,
Speaker 1: who was a fieldstin friend of mine. He was a
Speaker 1: year older, first guy who's the first guy ever smoked
Speaker 1: pot with and his father was a great civil liberties
Speaker 1: and civil rights lawer. He had represented Dr King and
Speaker 1: Adam Clayton Powell and other other people. But Peter like
Speaker 1: getting high, you know, and uh and and then after
Speaker 1: I saved up about a thousand dollars, which was like
Speaker 1: this huge milestone when of my savings account was four figures,
Speaker 1: I got an apartment on St. Mark's Place by myself.
Speaker 1: So I don't remember when Woodstock happened, if I was
Speaker 1: still in Brooklyn, or if I had moved to sing.
Speaker 1: So you're going in the limo with Jane Friedman. It
Speaker 1: was me, Jane Friedman, and there was a writer named Vincelletti.
Speaker 1: Roll wrote at that time for a magazine called Rat.
Speaker 1: He later became kind of a village voice writer and
Speaker 1: particular expertise on R and B and disco. And I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think if anyone else was in the car.
Speaker 1: I know it was me, Vinceletti and Jane Free. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you're going to go in the car to Woodstock,
Speaker 1: and you're going to stay where in a hotel? They
Speaker 1: were the publicists for Woodstock. They had a group of
Speaker 1: rooms for the writers. And so I may get money,
Speaker 1: did you make it to the hotel, Yeah, definitely. Okay,
Speaker 1: So do you hit any trap if they if the
Speaker 1: first day of shows was Friday? Did you go on Friday?
Speaker 1: Did you go on Thursday? You know? All I remember
Speaker 1: is that when I finally got to the site of
Speaker 1: the festival, the band that was playing was Santana. So
Speaker 1: in my mind it was the first day. But it's
Speaker 1: a long time ago, and a lot of my memories
Speaker 1: of Woodstock are commingled with the memories of watching the
Speaker 1: Woodstock movie. I'm not sure which are my memories in
Speaker 1: which I'm just remembering seeing in the movie, but I
Speaker 1: do remember it was Santana and I've never heard of Santana,
Speaker 1: and I walked up and I asked, these people aren't like,
Speaker 1: who's that, you know? And it was the town and
Speaker 1: they're amazing, and it was so that's like one of
Speaker 1: my They were definitely on because they were so good
Speaker 1: and they were brand new to me at that time,
Speaker 1: and so I happen to remember that now. Certainly it's
Speaker 1: iconic at this point, But in terms of the experience,
Speaker 1: what did you think, Well, what I felt was, even
Speaker 1: though I hadn't been taking drugs for more than a
Speaker 1: year and was really committed to the idea that I'm
Speaker 1: not that guy anymore. Who's who's going to screw up
Speaker 1: my life by taking drugs. I still completely identified with
Speaker 1: the romance of hippie culture. And I was so moved
Speaker 1: by the audience and the crowd and the and the
Speaker 1: camaraderie and sweetness of everybody there that that's my main
Speaker 1: memory more than the music. It was, it was, it was,
Speaker 1: it was you know, it turned out to be the
Speaker 1: end of something, not the beginning of something, but it
Speaker 1: was something in that moment that I was very moved by. So, okay,
Speaker 1: you pored on that for Billboard and they put on
Speaker 1: the front page. The only time I ever had a
Speaker 1: front page story in Billboard. They let me write. Usually
Speaker 1: I'd have to write like three words. This I think
Speaker 1: they let me write a couple of thousand words because
Speaker 1: it was a big turned out to be a big story,
Speaker 1: and I was the only Billboard guy that was there.
Speaker 1: And how much long do you stay at Billboard before
Speaker 1: you become a publicist. Well, I went through a series
Speaker 1: there was a gap in between Billboard. I went through
Speaker 1: a series of of of of short term jobs. First
Speaker 1: of all, I went from Billboard to Record World, which
Speaker 1: was one of the three because Record World was a
Speaker 1: competitive Billboard, but a Record World, I didn't have to
Speaker 1: be in the chart department anymore. I was just hired
Speaker 1: as a writer. So that was a huge step forward
Speaker 1: because I was only writing periodically as a freelancer while
Speaker 1: still having to be in the chart department. A Record World,
Speaker 1: I had a weekly column called Getting It Together, and
Speaker 1: and I reviewed shows, and I interviewed people and I
Speaker 1: wrote story. So that was a full time writing job.
Speaker 1: And then I got fired from that because I kept
Speaker 1: coming in eight You know, I hadn't completely mastered this
Speaker 1: adult thing yet. Uh. It's so funny because now the
Speaker 1: last thirty or forty years, when I have people who
Speaker 1: work from you coming late, I really don't like it. Well,
Speaker 1: what's your definition of late? Uh? You know, if it's
Speaker 1: more than it depends on the Like our office now,
Speaker 1: in my little company, we look at ten o'clock as
Speaker 1: a time. Other companies I had at nine o'clock. But
Speaker 1: to me, if it's more than twenty minutes, it's late, right,
Speaker 1: I just meant the time that you would have to
Speaker 1: arrive so you get can from Record World. So I
Speaker 1: got caned from Billboard. Then I got Can from Record World.
Speaker 1: No no, you didn't tell me you got Key No no, no, no, right, right,
Speaker 1: I went from Billboard to Record right then. Um, there
Speaker 1: was about a year where I worked for Circus Magazine.
Speaker 1: I think I had the title of managing editor of that,
Speaker 1: and that was so sort of a cross between sixteen
Speaker 1: Magazine and Rolling Stone, right, it was. It was going,
Speaker 1: That's a good description of it. It was certainly for
Speaker 1: more for males and girls. You know, it was a
Speaker 1: little bit older audience than sixteen. And it was a
Speaker 1: rock magazine. There were no pop, no Bobby Sherman, no
Speaker 1: David Cassidy. It was it was rock. But the thing
Speaker 1: that roll that Circus had that Rolling Stone even didn't
Speaker 1: have at that time was color pictures. Rolling Stone later
Speaker 1: got colored, but for this brief period, so Circus had
Speaker 1: shorter articles, but we had some of the Rolling Stone
Speaker 1: typewriters like Paul Nelson wrote also for Circus, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the people who wrote for Rolling Stone would
Speaker 1: also write pieces for Circus. To pick up an extra
Speaker 1: fifty hundred bucks, you have another outlet or or whatever.
Speaker 1: And so I did that for about a year and
Speaker 1: then I got a job working for Albert Grossman's publishing
Speaker 1: company that I wasn't any good at. But I got
Speaker 1: to meet Albert Grossman, who was my great hero of mine,
Speaker 1: who's Bob Dylan's manager, and I've seen him in that
Speaker 1: movie Don't Look Back. And at least I got to
Speaker 1: meet him, you know, at that time. And and then
Speaker 1: finally I was kind of desperate. I wasn't getting writing
Speaker 1: work anymore because I wasn't really that good a writer.
Speaker 1: I was just mostly into trying to meet girls and
Speaker 1: having friends and I wasn't serious about you know, there's
Speaker 1: this um website called my back Pages, uh that's out
Speaker 1: of England that compiles rock journalism. So they found a
Speaker 1: lot of my old articles, including especially the Circus articles,
Speaker 1: and it's I don't think I ever wrote a second
Speaker 1: draft of anything. It was all this. So I walked
Speaker 1: into the room and you know, Alvin Lee was just
Speaker 1: eating breakfast, and you know, I thought that's what journalism was. UM.
Speaker 1: So I couldn't I couldn't make it as a writer.
Speaker 1: And I got a job working for Lee S. Walters,
Speaker 1: who was the real rand old great show business uh,
Speaker 1: you know publicist he um one of One of the
Speaker 1: things that happened that was a big life changing experience
Speaker 1: for me when I was at Record World was I
Speaker 1: met a guy named Danny Fields. And Danny Fields I
Speaker 1: had read about because there had been an article about him.
Speaker 1: He had worked in Electra in in the in the
Speaker 1: eight period, where his actual title was company freak, and
Speaker 1: he then signed the m C five and the Stooges
Speaker 1: to Electorate. He later was one of the managers of
Speaker 1: the Ramons. He also, I believe, introduced the Louie to
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol. I mean, he's a great historical figureing. There's
Speaker 1: a documentary about him called Danny Says. It came out
Speaker 1: a few years ago, and he read a piece. The
Speaker 1: woman named Gloria Stavers, who was the editor of sixteen magazine,
Speaker 1: UM read everything and took notes, and she read a
Speaker 1: column that I wrote about the m C five for
Speaker 1: Record World and sent it to Danny. And Danny called
Speaker 1: me and said, uh, we should have lunch, you know, great,
Speaker 1: you know and and and then he took me the
Speaker 1: next night to Maxis, Kansas City, where I met Gloria.
Speaker 1: Woman named Lillian Rockson who was the Australian correspondent for
Speaker 1: the Sydney Morning Herald, who at the Encyclopedia of the
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia of Rock, and Steve Paul, who was Johnny Winter's
Speaker 1: manager and runs De Poils, and I met all of
Speaker 1: them the same night and they became the most important
Speaker 1: people in my life. For the next several years, I
Speaker 1: just would go to Max's every night, and it was
Speaker 1: my social life, was my professional life, and it was
Speaker 1: my identity and I it just conferred. Being Danny's friend
Speaker 1: was this instantly legitimacy in a culture that was a
Speaker 1: million times cooler than anything I'd ever encountered, And overnight
Speaker 1: I had an identity that I really owe him forever for.
Speaker 1: But I did find my own way. I mean, after
Speaker 1: the first night I could go myself. Mickey Ruskin, the
Speaker 1: guy who ran it, was just kind of if he
Speaker 1: you know, the big thing with Mickey Ruskin famously is
Speaker 1: if you came in a limo, he wouldn't let you in.
Speaker 1: You know, that wasn't what you know, he had like
Speaker 1: this inverse snobbery. So um so. Gloria became a good
Speaker 1: friend of mine and she was a mentor. She was
Speaker 1: such a glamorous person. She passed away. Uh, in her
Speaker 1: fifties from lung cancer. But she had an extraordinary life.
Speaker 1: First of all, she she invented a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: before Rolling Stone sixteen magazine was all there was. And
Speaker 1: she did some of the earliest interviews with Dylan and
Speaker 1: the Beatles and Elvis. And she did a thing about
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone when it first was published that Yan always
Speaker 1: said helped get them thousands of subscriptions. And and she
Speaker 1: had been Lenny Bruce's lover for the last several years
Speaker 1: of his life, which there was just no more awesome
Speaker 1: credential for me than someone who had known Lenny Bruce
Speaker 1: not to mention, and slept with him. So I just
Speaker 1: idolized her and did and and and she and she
Speaker 1: liked me, you know, so she she she um. When
Speaker 1: I was desperate for a job, she called Lee Alters
Speaker 1: and look, you know, if you want somebody to do
Speaker 1: rock and roll, this would this would this is this
Speaker 1: is who I would suggest. So Lee interviewed me, because
Speaker 1: of Glory's recommendation, hired me. And you know, within a
Speaker 1: few months he asked me if I thought it was
Speaker 1: a good idea for Salters and Roskin to do pr
Speaker 1: for led Zeppelin and I said yes, and he said, well,
Speaker 1: you'll have to deal with them because I'm the guy
Speaker 1: Lombardo generation. I said, you got it. So then I
Speaker 1: was Led Zeppelin's publicistem that's which kind of branded me
Speaker 1: for the rest of my career. Okay, so you were
Speaker 1: Led Zeppelin's publicist at what point in their seventy three
Speaker 1: The album was Houses of the Holy and they that
Speaker 1: album came out, and then they did an American tour
Speaker 1: and it was the tour where they sold out stadiums.
Speaker 1: One of them was Tampa, which was fifty hundred people,
Speaker 1: which was more people than so the Beatles and Jay Stadium.
Speaker 1: And I got a wire service story about it, and
Speaker 1: you know, I got Zeppelin really the first good press
Speaker 1: they'd ever had. People. They're so legendary and such an
Speaker 1: influence on the musical culture that it's hard for people
Speaker 1: who weren't around to realize they never got good reviews.
Speaker 1: The rock press hated Zeppelin in those years because they
Speaker 1: you know, they were they were Their audience was younger.
Speaker 1: The Rolling Stone writers were into The Stones, Dylan Cream
Speaker 1: and then Zeppelin comes along, and Zeppelin was made famous
Speaker 1: by radio, not by the press, and so they always
Speaker 1: got bad reviews. So by House of the Holy was
Speaker 1: their fifth album, and it was the first time they
Speaker 1: got good press. And it was just the planets lined up.
Speaker 1: I was in the right place of the right time,
Speaker 1: and I could help them do that, and they liked
Speaker 1: me enough to then hire me before they hired So,
Speaker 1: you know, Peter Grant is a legendary guy. The BM
Speaker 1: members are known as being off putting too. How do
Speaker 1: you ingretiate yourself with that? Well, you know, I was
Speaker 1: so nervous, Lee and I Lee came to the first meeting.
Speaker 1: He said, I'll come to the first meeting and after
Speaker 1: that I'm never going to see them again or meet
Speaker 1: them again. But I'll go to the first meeting because
Speaker 1: they were hiring lease authors. And we flew to Paris.
Speaker 1: They were playing at the Palais to Sports in Paris,
Speaker 1: and we stayed at some fancy George sand hotel which
Speaker 1: is where the Zeppelin was saying, I've never been to
Speaker 1: Europe before, you know, not to mention to Paris, and
Speaker 1: he says, so tell me about these guys. I said, Look,
Speaker 1: they got a really bad reputation with writers. I mean
Speaker 1: there was some writer named Ellen Sander who they supposedly
Speaker 1: threw things at and you know, they had, like what
Speaker 1: you're saying, a reputation of not being pleasant to strangers
Speaker 1: or people that weren't in their inn out, including and
Speaker 1: a particularly journalists because they viewed journalists as adversaries. I
Speaker 1: said there, like considered to be like barbarians. So we
Speaker 1: get to the meeting with Peter Grant. First we meet
Speaker 1: with Peter Grant, and then after that we meet with you.
Speaker 1: Who have it? Are you pitching? I don't really know,
Speaker 1: I mean Lee, they we flew over there. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know how they came to him exactly. He was
Speaker 1: just to go to famous PR guy and they decided
Speaker 1: to go to him. I don't know really. Uh. In
Speaker 1: my understanding of it was that we had them, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure if they hadn't liked the meeting, they would
Speaker 1: have changed their mind. And um, so we're sitting there
Speaker 1: with Peter Grant, who is this three hundred plus pound
Speaker 1: former professional wrestler, wrestler, cockney accent, very intimidating, tough guy.
Speaker 1: And uh, I'd heard about Peter Grant, you know, and
Speaker 1: there was vague sense that he maybe new gangsters or
Speaker 1: could have been a thug or you know, it was
Speaker 1: a scary guy physically. And lisays, tell tell Peter, you
Speaker 1: tell me, tell tell him, tell tell him. You told me,
Speaker 1: tell about the Barbarians thing. So I said to Peter, look,
Speaker 1: you know, um, like I talked to some of the
Speaker 1: writers and you know, there's like this feeling like that
Speaker 1: the that the band is almost like barbarians. And he
Speaker 1: looked at me with this big smile. You know, Peter
Speaker 1: was brilliant. He wasn't only tough, he was the smartest
Speaker 1: manager of his generation and knew how to be charming.
Speaker 1: He looked at his big smile and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: but we're just mild barbarians. So then we met with
Speaker 1: the band and uh, you know, uh it was fine.
Speaker 1: You know, they they they you know, they they wanted
Speaker 1: good press. Robert Plant in particular was sick of He
Speaker 1: wanted his parents and the people who grew up with
Speaker 1: to read about him. Also, they already were the biggest
Speaker 1: band commercially, and he he did most of the interviews.
Speaker 1: Jimmy Jimmy controlled things, but he was in the big schmoozer.
Speaker 1: Robert was the big mooser. Okay, so you're moving from
Speaker 1: writing publicity with essentially no training or track record. How
Speaker 1: do you pick it up? Well? Two things. One is
Speaker 1: I had friends who were writers. All my friends wrote
Speaker 1: about rock and roll. I had spent three or four
Speaker 1: years in this clique of people that revolved around Max's
Speaker 1: Kansas City writers and who were on the press list.
Speaker 1: There was like a party every night. I mean it
Speaker 1: was the boom period in the music business. You never
Speaker 1: had to pay for a meal or pay for a ticket.
Speaker 1: So I knew the New York writers and it was
Speaker 1: all about favors and hey, it's can you do this
Speaker 1: for me? So like Lilian Rockson did the first piece
Speaker 1: for the New York Daily News. By this time, in
Speaker 1: addition to the Australian paper, she was the rock writer
Speaker 1: for the New York Daily News, which at that time
Speaker 1: I had the biggest circulation of any American newspaper. She
Speaker 1: did a big full page in the Sunday and so
Speaker 1: she came to the airport and did a piece on them.
Speaker 1: And so I was into asking my friends for favors.
Speaker 1: And then Lee explained to me, Les Alters taught me publicity.
Speaker 1: He is different generation. He didn't care anything about rock
Speaker 1: and roll. He were suit every day. He was a
Speaker 1: guy that you know, knew, Walter Winchell. He was like
Speaker 1: from out of a forties movie. But um, he understood
Speaker 1: the rock and roll was this new thing that they
Speaker 1: wanted to have their piece of that pie, and that
Speaker 1: I was his guy with the long hair to do that.
Speaker 1: And he explained to me that if you had a
Speaker 1: good story, you didn't need to ask for a favor.
Speaker 1: That the idea was to create good stories and that
Speaker 1: was this huge paradigm shiffers. So he and the other publicists,
Speaker 1: it's olders. They were all older than me, and and
Speaker 1: and uh and hard bitten, but they they they took
Speaker 1: me under their wing and they showed me. They explained
Speaker 1: to me how to write a press release and you know,
Speaker 1: how to how to do it, you know, and it
Speaker 1: was like it was like going to Harvard for publicity.
Speaker 1: Did you like it? You know? I liked that I
Speaker 1: had a job. I had had spent three after you know,
Speaker 1: I had a few months where I didn't have a job.
Speaker 1: So I was like, I I liked that I had
Speaker 1: a job. And it occurred to me after are a
Speaker 1: couple of months that I was good at it. And
Speaker 1: it was the first time I'd ever felt I was
Speaker 1: any good at anything. I always felt like a complete
Speaker 1: fraud as a As a journalist, I knew I wasn't
Speaker 1: really as good as the really good writers. They were
Speaker 1: great writers. John Lynde was writing about rock and roll,
Speaker 1: then Paul Nelson. These were great writers. I knew I
Speaker 1: couldn't write as well as them. But I was really
Speaker 1: good at publicity because I was a fan and because um,
Speaker 1: you know, that fit my temperament better, like I said,
Speaker 1: being a fan instead of a critic. So within a
Speaker 1: pretty short amount of time I started to get, for
Speaker 1: the first time in my life, feeling I was good
Speaker 1: at something, and so I like that. So how did
Speaker 1: you end up working? Well? I did publicity for the
Speaker 1: for the seventy three tour, and then when they started Swansong,
Speaker 1: they offered me the job to be what Peter called
Speaker 1: his ambassador and in America, and I said, uh, well,
Speaker 1: could I have a title? He said, well, what title
Speaker 1: do you want? I said, I've had vice president of Swansong.
Speaker 1: He said fine, because there was no staff. Was he
Speaker 1: was president vice press or something about vice president of
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin's label. But yeah, they they had a good
Speaker 1: they liked me, you know, and and and and they
Speaker 1: needed somebody like in my category for for the new label.
Speaker 1: So they for me, were you making the money that
Speaker 1: would be aligned in one's brain with that title in
Speaker 1: that position, Well, I was making more money than I
Speaker 1: was making. Its salters, I think it's salters. I was
Speaker 1: making three hundred dollars a week. Um, this is seventy
Speaker 1: three so whatever inflation would be, you know, that's fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand a year. That's probably like making seventy five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand now, uh. And then and then I got a
Speaker 1: percentage of business I brought in. And the only business
Speaker 1: I ever brought in was Edgar and Johnny Winter, which
Speaker 1: was Steve Paul's clients. So maybe I was making three
Speaker 1: fifty a week. So then I started a Swan song
Speaker 1: at five hundred a week, so that was like a
Speaker 1: fift increase dollars a year. And I also um had
Speaker 1: an expand accounts, so I could take people to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the fancy Italian restaurant around the corner, and
Speaker 1: and and they would pay for it. So that was
Speaker 1: a step up. And then after the first year they
Speaker 1: raised me to forty thousand dollars a year because we
Speaker 1: had a great first year. Bad Company record came out.
Speaker 1: Of course, it was the first release of Lanson was
Speaker 1: Bad Co number one album, number one single. So so
Speaker 1: you know, I was then twenty four. I was that
Speaker 1: was fine, you know. I was ambitious to kind of
Speaker 1: just be more in the business. But it was certainly
Speaker 1: for a guy who never had any college education. I
Speaker 1: suddenly was rebranded from being this failure to being this
Speaker 1: success in terms of just the way. Like my parents
Speaker 1: realized at a certain point when I was working for
Speaker 1: Zeppelin and my mother said, Danny, you ever think about
Speaker 1: maybe going back to college? And I said, month, did
Speaker 1: you know who Lie Zeppelin is? Okay, So were you
Speaker 1: working with the band during the famous era at the Cote, Yes,
Speaker 1: I was. That's why that's really where I bonded with
Speaker 1: I think that's why Peter Grant hired me is because
Speaker 1: that was in ninety three, and the story is that
Speaker 1: they had cash. It was the end of a tour
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of cash. Peter liked cash
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, and there was I think two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in a safety deposit box of the Drake Hotel
Speaker 1: that disappeared, and it was front page of the newspapers,
Speaker 1: and I and and Peter is like, they're all freaked out.
Speaker 1: And Peter's freaked out, and and I said, you want
Speaker 1: me to call um? It was a guy named John Gibson,
Speaker 1: I think was the publicity guy at Atlantic. I said,
Speaker 1: you want me to call Bob Gibson. He says, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want anybody from Atlantic here. I want you
Speaker 1: to handle this. So and I had no idea that
Speaker 1: he would prefer me to somebody at the label, but
Speaker 1: to him, the label was them. And I worked for him,
Speaker 1: and and and and and that was the first time
Speaker 1: I even knew he liked me. I mean, he never
Speaker 1: gave me a compliment. You know, there were some and
Speaker 1: so we had to have a press conference and that
Speaker 1: that's really I felt that that that he kind of
Speaker 1: felt I handled that well enough. Yeah, some people believe
Speaker 1: that they stole the money themselves. Well, nobody knows. Let's
Speaker 1: put it this way, no one's ever was arrested for
Speaker 1: this crime. And uh, it's a little fishy. And then
Speaker 1: the question is who would they be. Would they be
Speaker 1: the entire band, would it just be Peter, would it
Speaker 1: be Peter and someone else? No one knows. What we
Speaker 1: know is no one was ever arrested for it. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess my father woke me up. Was during the summer.
Speaker 1: He couldn't believe the sum he read it in the papers,
Speaker 1: you know, this being led Zeppelin. They're staying at the
Speaker 1: Drake Hotel. And the famous thing was the band flew
Speaker 1: home almost immediately, as opposed to staying around and trying
Speaker 1: to help with the finding of this money. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: how would a band there but I was to get
Speaker 1: on stage a masson Square Garden. You know they saw
Speaker 1: that three shows at the garden and to play a
Speaker 1: great concert. They are not detectives or you know, so
Speaker 1: of course the band flew home. Um there there Peter
Speaker 1: and the two. A manager of led Zeppe was named
Speaker 1: Richard Cole, who's to this day a pretty good friend
Speaker 1: of mine. The beautiful guy he was, he's he's a
Speaker 1: twelve step guy. He's a guy in those he's out
Speaker 1: of control. I remember when he used to be at
Speaker 1: the Rainbow every night. He was out of control, a pirate,
Speaker 1: scary guy. Peter's right hand guy, kind of the enforce
Speaker 1: your guy. And uh and the last thirty years he's like, uh,
Speaker 1: he got sober again. I'm not you know, this is
Speaker 1: he he would be the first to say this, and
Speaker 1: and he's what a beautiful guy. He lives, he's retired,
Speaker 1: he lives in in in England, I think London. I
Speaker 1: just mostly see we mostly communicate through Facebook. But you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think Richard knows and if anybody that IM
Speaker 1: and Peter's dead and um, I don't know, but it's
Speaker 1: something a little a little um. The weird thing is
Speaker 1: that the one was ever arrested for it, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh, and that only a couple of people had
Speaker 1: access to the to the safety deposit box, one of
Speaker 1: whom definitely was Peter. We're listening to my conversation with
Speaker 1: Danny Goldberg, recorded live at the tune In Studios in Venice, California.
Speaker 1: I hope you're enjoying this episode of the Bob Left
Speaker 1: Sets podcast. If you want to see videos, photos, and
Speaker 1: soundbites from Danny and our other guests as they joined
Speaker 1: me in the studio, visit at tune In on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Instagram. Now more of my conversation with Danny Goldberg
Speaker 1: on the Bob Left Sets Podcast. Okay, so you end
Speaker 1: up working with Led zeppelind until the band ends, right, No, No,
Speaker 1: I did not I work with them. Um. I started
Speaker 1: at Swansong in January of seventy four and I left
Speaker 1: in May of seventies six, and the band didn't end
Speaker 1: until seventy seven. Okay, so you left in seventy six
Speaker 1: to do what I started my own PR firm. You know,
Speaker 1: I had a falling out with Peter. We later made up.
Speaker 1: It's it's not that interesting a story. And but I
Speaker 1: by this time I had a reputation of I'd been
Speaker 1: Zeppelin's publicistem bad company, and I've been quoted in articles.
Speaker 1: So I started a PR company with the imaginative name
Speaker 1: of Danny Goldberg, Inc. And And the first client I
Speaker 1: got was Kiss, you know, who idolized Zeppelin and billow
Speaker 1: Cooin had been at somebody i'd met earlier. And I
Speaker 1: also very quickly got E l O, which Don Arden
Speaker 1: managed to Don Arden had been Peter Grant's former bloss
Speaker 1: and was also a legendary tough English guy. His daughter
Speaker 1: married Ozzy Osborne. We know here Sharon Osborne, and those
Speaker 1: days she was Sharon Arden, and very very good to me,
Speaker 1: you know, always made sure I get paid on time. Really,
Speaker 1: so you were at the advent of the success of
Speaker 1: those Well, Yolo had already had a hit seventy four
Speaker 1: in America. Elo, it had hits. They they had. I
Speaker 1: mean I think, um, they already had can't get out
Speaker 1: of my head. Um. The big record we had was
Speaker 1: I think it was called uh, God had living thing
Speaker 1: on it. I think it was called out of the Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that was the big yellow record that I
Speaker 1: that I was Danny Goldberg in just you or did
Speaker 1: you have people working? Oh? No, I had people working
Speaker 1: for me. Um. I started. I started out of my apartment.
Speaker 1: By this time, I'd moved to West seven ninth three
Speaker 1: and I had a one bedroom and sort of for
Speaker 1: the first six months, the living room was our office,
Speaker 1: and actually Howard Bloom shared the office with me, and
Speaker 1: then he later off did his own PR firm. But
Speaker 1: originally we were thinking of doing it together. But but
Speaker 1: we're still friends. Howard and I just did a book
Speaker 1: event together like last year. But um we we um.
Speaker 1: So I had fives, I had, I had some people
Speaker 1: and then and then I made enough money that I
Speaker 1: could afford to rent offices somewhere in midtown. Uh and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, publicity is work intensive. It's it's a you
Speaker 1: need you need bodies making the phone calls to UH
Speaker 1: service the clients. Do you're making any money? I mean
Speaker 1: it was cash flow positive, you know. Um for most
Speaker 1: of it. Um, it was a struggle, but I got
Speaker 1: enough money where I ended up having also an l
Speaker 1: A office. I had an office in Century City, right
Speaker 1: down the hall from where E. L Os Jet Records was,
Speaker 1: And then I had an office in New York, but
Speaker 1: with two or three people in each in each office.
Speaker 1: And it was a cash business. I wasn't owning anything,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't building up any great savings, but I
Speaker 1: was making enough to pay for these rents and to
Speaker 1: pay salaries to these people. So then the next step
Speaker 1: is twentieth century Fox. No, you're so kind to have
Speaker 1: researched to all this, and and obviously you know, being
Speaker 1: around for so many years I have in the middle
Speaker 1: of I'm trying to remember when I did Fox. I um, Fox,
Speaker 1: I think was two. Yeah, that's later the big breakthrough
Speaker 1: coming out of So I have this PR company and
Speaker 1: within a year one of the most the important clients
Speaker 1: to me becomes Bearsville Records. And this is the second time,
Speaker 1: I encounter Albert gross soon, and this time I'm actually
Speaker 1: communicating with him on a regular basis because the guy
Speaker 1: that was president of his label was Paul Fishkin, and
Speaker 1: Paul and I just were best friends, you know, and
Speaker 1: Paul the minute I was doing this, looked for a
Speaker 1: way to get me the business and they had some
Speaker 1: budget for PR so I did Bears well. They had
Speaker 1: Todd run Gren. Their big act in those days was
Speaker 1: fog Hat That was their Planum act and they Jesse
Speaker 1: Winchester made a record while I was there, and Um
Speaker 1: and Paul Um at some point in seventy eight, I
Speaker 1: think it was seventy eight, maybe the beginning of seventy nine.
Speaker 1: Has a romance with Stevie Nicks, and this is at
Speaker 1: the peak of Rumors. They're the biggest group in the
Speaker 1: world and she's the lead singer and songwriter of their
Speaker 1: biggest hits, Rhiannon on the previous record and Dreams on
Speaker 1: Rumors and he introduced me to her, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: would be quickly became clear to me that she was
Speaker 1: frustrated in terms of some of the business dynamics of
Speaker 1: Fleetwood Mac because she and Lindsey Buckingham had joined the
Speaker 1: group that had already been in existence for eight or
Speaker 1: nine years or least. So Fleetwood and Mac made all
Speaker 1: the decisions, including which songs went on the record. And
Speaker 1: she had written this song called Silver Springs that she
Speaker 1: loved that they didn't include on Rumors, and she had
Speaker 1: all these other songs, and I was extremely happy that
Speaker 1: she was so unhappy, because now I could be somebody
Speaker 1: who could maybe help, you know, And and Paul was
Speaker 1: promoting this, and so we got to know each other
Speaker 1: and had this idea for a Rhiannon movie. We made
Speaker 1: a development deal with the United Artists. Nothing ever came
Speaker 1: of it. But I got to be friends with Stevie
Speaker 1: and she's just another person who just believed in me
Speaker 1: when there was no particular reason for her to do so,
Speaker 1: based on my background. And and uh, somewhere along the line,
Speaker 1: Paul and I had this idea that we should start
Speaker 1: a label with Stevie for her solo work, because Warner
Speaker 1: Brothers had not signed her as an individual when she
Speaker 1: joined Fleetwood Mac. Fleetwood Mac had made album after album
Speaker 1: after album. They just seemed to change guitar players on
Speaker 1: every album, and they weren't that important an act to
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers for the first seven or eight albums, so
Speaker 1: there was no big push in business affairs to sign
Speaker 1: the new members of Fleetwood Mac. How hum, and then
Speaker 1: almost immediately they went from selling a hundred fifty albums
Speaker 1: to four million albums with this with the record called
Speaker 1: Fleetwood Mac that had Rhiannon on it, and they never
Speaker 1: signed Stevie, so she was available as a solo artist.
Speaker 1: So we created this label called Modern Records together Paul
Speaker 1: and I. Stevie had a piece of it, and and
Speaker 1: that the first record was Bella Donna, which Jimmy Ivan
Speaker 1: produced and which was number one. I think it's sold
Speaker 1: ten million by an now or something. So that was
Speaker 1: that was a big thing. And then after a few
Speaker 1: years I thow there were there any other records on
Speaker 1: Modern Records. Nothing successful. We put out a couple of
Speaker 1: other records. It was a friend of Paul's named Joey
Speaker 1: Wilson from Philly that we put out that flopped. And
Speaker 1: there was a reggae act called Jamala that I was
Speaker 1: enthusiastic about that also flopped. Those with the other artists
Speaker 1: on Modern Um it went through Atlantic. We made our
Speaker 1: deal with Doug Morris who was just started running at Go,
Speaker 1: which was a division of Atlantic, and it was a
Speaker 1: big deal for him and big deal for us. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there's a photo I have somewhere of me, Doug Stevie,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Ivan and Paul right after Belladonna became number one,
Speaker 1: and it was a moment for all of us, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: So then later on, after I sold my half of that,
Speaker 1: I started some other label UH with A and M
Speaker 1: that that was not particularly successful, called Gold Mountain, which
Speaker 1: I then later used as the name of management company.
Speaker 1: And during that period of A and M, I got
Speaker 1: this offer to be a soundtrack slim for twenty century Fox.
Speaker 1: So I spent the year it was right after Flash
Speaker 1: Dance and all the movie studios to oh, we need
Speaker 1: somebody who understands MTV and stuff to do soundtracks, you know,
Speaker 1: because that's a part of marketing films. So I had
Speaker 1: that sort of as a part time thing. I had
Speaker 1: an office at Fox and an office UH at A
Speaker 1: and M for um Gold Mountain, just just for a year.
Speaker 1: But my name is on some you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: some movies my name is on. And then for about
Speaker 1: a year after that, I did a few other movies.
Speaker 1: The most famous credit I have as music supervisor of
Speaker 1: Dirty Dancing. But you know it was, well, you know
Speaker 1: Jimmy Ivan takes Jimmy Iron or takes all the credit
Speaker 1: on that. Does he deserve it? He definitely deserves some
Speaker 1: of the credit. Um and and he and I have
Speaker 1: not don't have a different narrative about this. We've you know,
Speaker 1: this is come up? I was, can is this? Can
Speaker 1: one use four her words on this course? So the
Speaker 1: director of Dirty Dancing was named Emil Ordealino. He's passed
Speaker 1: away one of the loveliest people I've ever met and
Speaker 1: and couldn't have been easier to work with, and had
Speaker 1: almost no interest in the music. So in terms of
Speaker 1: picking all the oldies that are in the movie and
Speaker 1: Be My Baby and whatever is I I did that
Speaker 1: and it was the easiest thing in the world to do.
Speaker 1: You just pick all your favorite old songs that there
Speaker 1: hadn't been a zillion of these other movies. It was
Speaker 1: like low hanging fruit and it was not hard to
Speaker 1: license them. And then I and then they needed some
Speaker 1: original material, and I suggested and I brought in Michael Lloyd,
Speaker 1: who was a friend of mine. I don't know how
Speaker 1: we got to know each other. It's from a different
Speaker 1: kind of music. He produced like Debbie Boone, You Like
Speaker 1: My Life a pop guy, but I just liked them
Speaker 1: and I knew that needed a pop guy. But there
Speaker 1: was one of the producers of the film, and she
Speaker 1: may still be alive. I don't want to embarrass anybody,
Speaker 1: but she very um. They was so frustrated that we
Speaker 1: didn't have a record deal yet, because you have to remember,
Speaker 1: nobody knew Dirty Dance Thing was going to be a hit.
Speaker 1: It was an unknown director with an unknown cast, with
Speaker 1: a tiny little studio called Vesturan that was known as
Speaker 1: a home video company that had made some money selling
Speaker 1: Jane Fonda videos. So they decided to make a movie.
Speaker 1: It was the least likely film based on the people
Speaker 1: involved in UM, I forget who was The guy who
Speaker 1: brought me on was named Steve Ruther. I don't know
Speaker 1: what became of him. So one of the producers was
Speaker 1: very combative and pushy, and she called my assistant at
Speaker 1: the time, Lorie Levy, a count and uh so I
Speaker 1: just uh said, I can't deal with this. I had
Speaker 1: already gotten so I made a deal. It was the
Speaker 1: worst business decision in my life. I had gotten fifty fee,
Speaker 1: which was a lot of money to be a music supervisor,
Speaker 1: and I had a couple of points on a record,
Speaker 1: but there was no record deal. So I just made
Speaker 1: a deal with Steve Ruther. I said, look, I want
Speaker 1: to keep the credit. I think there was an extra
Speaker 1: ten or fifteen thousand. You know, the fee was paid
Speaker 1: in installments, compaying me the rest of my fee. I
Speaker 1: don't need a royalty. I just need never to talk
Speaker 1: to this woman again, who who? Because you know, insulted
Speaker 1: my assistant. And and then they brought in Jimmy Einer,
Speaker 1: who did oversee the recording of the Hits. There's no
Speaker 1: question about it. Michael Lloyd produced the Hits. I was
Speaker 1: so the producer I've writ but Jimmy Einer in terms
Speaker 1: of the songwriting and A and R in it, He
Speaker 1: and R had they hit singles that made that that
Speaker 1: record what it was as a phenomenon. So he but
Speaker 1: but in terms of the music that you hear when
Speaker 1: you're watching the movie, that's why they kept my credit
Speaker 1: because so so we played different roles in it, and
Speaker 1: he made a lot more money from it than I didn't.
Speaker 1: He deserve to because he he oversaw the production of
Speaker 1: the hit center of the hit songs, and then you
Speaker 1: decided to become a manager. I always wanted to be
Speaker 1: a manager from the time I worked for Peter Grant.
Speaker 1: I just thought that was the job for me. It
Speaker 1: was he was so powerful the record company did what
Speaker 1: he said. He was the close this person to the band.
Speaker 1: He made a percentage, so he was making what seemed
Speaker 1: to me like so much more money than than than
Speaker 1: anything that was accessible to me. So I had wanted
Speaker 1: to be a manager ever since leaving Zeppelin, but it
Speaker 1: was hard for me to convince people to let me
Speaker 1: be a manager. I had this one band called the
Speaker 1: Mink Deville that I was very proud to work with,
Speaker 1: a great band, but Willie became a junkie. You were
Speaker 1: the manager for their first record, first two records, which
Speaker 1: were the best record, Yeah, which is the first two records.
Speaker 1: H Van Edmonds was a former rock writer who's a
Speaker 1: and R guide Capital would signed them and he suggested
Speaker 1: I do it, and and it was it was an
Speaker 1: interesting you know, they were great, I mean they were
Speaker 1: incredible live act. Willie Deville is one of the most
Speaker 1: compelling live performers but you know, a little self destructive,
Speaker 1: so we couldn't really break them, even though again those
Speaker 1: records hold up. And there's a song on the first
Speaker 1: Mink Deville record called Mixed Up Shook Up Girl that
Speaker 1: someday someone's gonna have a hit with. It's such a
Speaker 1: great song. And uh, Willie wrote that song. He didn't
Speaker 1: write Cadillac Walk. Moon Martin wrote Cadillac Walk, which was
Speaker 1: the A O. R track, but Willie wrote Mixed Up
Speaker 1: Shook Up Girl. But you know, that flopped, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't get anyone to the WOMY as a manager, so
Speaker 1: I started, you know, I tried different things, and then
Speaker 1: finally after the Stevie Nicks success in the association with that,
Speaker 1: I somehow had enough whatever it is, to convince people
Speaker 1: to let me be a manager. And the first client
Speaker 1: I had after Gold Mountain Label didn't work, I turned
Speaker 1: it into Gold Mountain Management. And the first client of
Speaker 1: Gold Mountain Management was Belinda Carlisle, right after she left
Speaker 1: the Go Goes. I think her lawyer suggested it might
Speaker 1: have been Michael Lloyd um or maybe that's how I
Speaker 1: met Michael Lloyd. Yeah, because that was before I don't
Speaker 1: know John Mason was her lawyer. Um, she wasn't you know.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like a huge competition at that time to
Speaker 1: get Bull into Carlisle. But I was excited to get
Speaker 1: Bull into Carlisle. And because you know I I was
Speaker 1: a Go Goes fan and she was the singer and
Speaker 1: and uh, and I heard this song Man about You,
Speaker 1: which just I wasn't sure it was a hit. I'm
Speaker 1: not one of those guys that can always predict to him.
Speaker 1: But it sounded to me like a lot like a
Speaker 1: great Go Go song, you know it's like So she
Speaker 1: was the first client in Bonnie Rate was the second client.
Speaker 1: Bonny I had met um some years in the late seventies. Um,
Speaker 1: when I had the PR company, one of my clients
Speaker 1: was a band called Orleans. And then Orleans broke up
Speaker 1: and John Hole, who was the lead guitar player, Um
Speaker 1: it was a social friend of mine and he made
Speaker 1: a solo deal with Electra and so he hired me
Speaker 1: to be the publicist on his solo records. So his
Speaker 1: solo record flopped. But in the middle of this was
Speaker 1: seventy eight. He said, look, I want you to help
Speaker 1: me publicize this other thing I'm doing and he ex
Speaker 1: Ai'm to me why he was against the nuclear power
Speaker 1: plants because of the environmental hazard. The radiation could cause
Speaker 1: cancer and there could be a meltdown. And this was
Speaker 1: the same period of time Karen Silkwood had had the
Speaker 1: subject of a huge Rolling Stone article. She had uncovered
Speaker 1: some problems in the nuclear power plant, and then she
Speaker 1: mysteriously died. And so we did a press conference whereas
Speaker 1: artists United against Nuclear Energy or something, and the press
Speaker 1: conference with James Taylor, Carly Simon, Bonnie Rate and John Hall.
Speaker 1: And then not long thereafter, there was an accident at
Speaker 1: the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and it became front page news. This Jimmy Carter was president.
Speaker 1: This was before the hostages were taken in Iran, which
Speaker 1: wiped everything off the front pages. During this window of time,
Speaker 1: nuclear power was like a big issue. And and so
Speaker 1: John Hall then calls me and he says, look, we're
Speaker 1: gonna now it's this big issue. We're going to these concerts.
Speaker 1: And they did concerts at Madison Square Garden and Jackson
Speaker 1: Brown joined the Fray and this is where I met
Speaker 1: Jackson And then for the last two nights of those
Speaker 1: concerts Springsteen headlines. So there were five nights at the
Speaker 1: Garden and out of it. Uh And I had this
Speaker 1: notion that we should make a movie UH that was
Speaker 1: released by Warner Brothers called No Nukes that I end
Speaker 1: myself and a friend of mine ended up directing and producing. UH.
Speaker 1: So through that experience, I got to know Bonnie and
Speaker 1: I loved Bonnie Rate. And then it occurred, and then
Speaker 1: by this time, I just she was kind of going
Speaker 1: through a down period in her career. Warner Brothers was
Speaker 1: about to drop her, and she had been around, you know,
Speaker 1: she was close to forty, and it was considered somebody
Speaker 1: that just had her shot and didn't make it, whereas
Speaker 1: Linda Ronstad doing some of the same kind of thing,
Speaker 1: had become the big star. And I just couldn't believe
Speaker 1: that Bonnie Rate couldn't do. I didn't know she was
Speaker 1: going to be as successful as she became, but I
Speaker 1: knew she was great, and so UM I I called her,
Speaker 1: and she had had the same manager for her whole career,
Speaker 1: and I felt it was time. She was at a
Speaker 1: was Dick Waterman and and and it was at a
Speaker 1: dead end, and she came with me and I I
Speaker 1: think I called her. I think I said, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I called her and pitched her. You know, but
Speaker 1: we had We've gotten to know each other pretty well
Speaker 1: through the Nonwkes experience, and I and I knew she
Speaker 1: was struggling, you know, and I said, I can help,
Speaker 1: you know, and and and I brought in a guy
Speaker 1: named Ron Stone, who became part of Gold Mountain and
Speaker 1: so appropriately on all of those records, it says management
Speaker 1: Danny Goldberg and Ron Stone, and we um, you know,
Speaker 1: she got sober just at that time, and she wrote
Speaker 1: that song Nick of Time, and I remember the cassette
Speaker 1: of it in my car, the demo of it, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about watching her parents age, and I
Speaker 1: just tear it up, and you know, knew it was
Speaker 1: great again. We got very lucky with the planets lined up.
Speaker 1: V H one was just starting and suddenly there was
Speaker 1: an exposure vehicle for somebody like Bonnie Raid and capital
Speaker 1: was cold, so they paid more attention to her than
Speaker 1: they otherwise would have, and uh, fourteen labels turned her down.
Speaker 1: I went to everybody, Jerry Moss, Doug Morris, all the
Speaker 1: people I knew in the business that she's too old.
Speaker 1: And then Joe Smith, who had a sentimental attachment to
Speaker 1: her from having worked with her Warner brothers and having
Speaker 1: nothing else at Capital, gave us what was a low
Speaker 1: ball deal, but it was fine out of that cam
Speaker 1: nick of time and that one the Grammy, and then
Speaker 1: I was suddenly a successful manager. And then who were
Speaker 1: the acts to follow? Uh? Well, the biggest one was Nirvana? Right?
Speaker 1: But before Nirvana? Who else did we have? Oh? Goodness?
Speaker 1: I mean I I had a gold Mountain, became a
Speaker 1: certainly a bigger company than the one I have now.
Speaker 1: I think we had like thirty five people there. We
Speaker 1: had a number of different artists. We had Bela Fleck,
Speaker 1: we had Sheena Easton, I had I brought in a
Speaker 1: lot of co managers, So I was com aage with
Speaker 1: a lot of different people to create kind of a
Speaker 1: home for for different managers. We had some rock bands
Speaker 1: that didn't make it that they got played on pirate radio,
Speaker 1: you know, a bang tango. And the whole thing was
Speaker 1: if you could get the record deal and a publishing deal,
Speaker 1: you get a commission on the record advance, you get
Speaker 1: a commission on the publishing advance, and then you've made
Speaker 1: your forty or fifty grand as a manager and then
Speaker 1: you hope it's successful. So I had a lot of
Speaker 1: several of those that didn't make it. Had Andy Taylor
Speaker 1: from Duran Duran solo deal, Steve Jones from the Sex
Speaker 1: Pistols solo deal, my old friend Michael Dabar, you know,
Speaker 1: I worked with on various records, still still one of
Speaker 1: my best friends. Um. But in terms of successful artists
Speaker 1: other than Bonnie and Belinda Uh, the Almond brothers were
Speaker 1: client for several years. Then I was able to help
Speaker 1: them get back together again, and that was really one
Speaker 1: of the great things of my career was to be
Speaker 1: able to work with them for a few years. And
Speaker 1: then I had this realization that there was this younger
Speaker 1: thing happening with punk rock, and then I didn't really
Speaker 1: understand it. So I hired m John Silva, who was
Speaker 1: you know, so I don't remember how I met Silva,
Speaker 1: but he Um, I just knew I needed someone in
Speaker 1: that category. And he had a House of Freaks and
Speaker 1: Red Cross and House the Freaks had acoustic acoustic guitars,
Speaker 1: and I always liked folk music and I was so
Speaker 1: not connected to the eighties punk world. But I figure
Speaker 1: I could kind of get what this was, and he
Speaker 1: had this great work ethic and he came, you know,
Speaker 1: and we decided we got to go and try to
Speaker 1: sign some people and the big Within about six months
Speaker 1: we signed Sonic Youth, which was a big deal in
Speaker 1: the punk subculture for good reason. They're great band and
Speaker 1: great tastemakers. And then through Sonic Youth met Nirvana, and
Speaker 1: did you know Tirvana was going to blow up to
Speaker 1: the degree it did? No, No, nobody knew. I knew
Speaker 1: that I trusted Thurston More and Kim Gordon of Sonic
Speaker 1: you that that they were they they they had the
Speaker 1: jeweler's eye for talent and that idiom so many of
Speaker 1: the artists that were developing reputations had started as opening
Speaker 1: access on a Youth based on them just hearing some
Speaker 1: seven inch So I signed them totally based on the
Speaker 1: fact that Sonic Youth like them, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we signed them to Geffen, the imprint of Geffen called
Speaker 1: d g C that had Sonic Youth already. Gary Gersh
Speaker 1: was the and R a guy for both. And then
Speaker 1: I didn't really know until I saw the band live
Speaker 1: that that they were going to be important to me.
Speaker 1: They had already. We've been managing them for months and
Speaker 1: I've never seen them, which was a common thing for
Speaker 1: me in those days. You know, it was a bigger company.
Speaker 1: And I saw them at the palace they opened for
Speaker 1: Dinosaur Jr. And I was blown away. You know, bye
Speaker 1: bye what this before never Mind came out, But they
Speaker 1: already were working on never Mind, and Uh, seeing this
Speaker 1: way he connected with an audience is when I realized,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is like a much bigger deal
Speaker 1: than I thought it was. And I went from being
Speaker 1: kind of a tertiary priority for me within the company
Speaker 1: to like one of the main things I was thinking about.
Speaker 1: You know. So by the time the record came out,
Speaker 1: I was like totally focused on it. But when we
Speaker 1: first signed them, they were just one of a zillion
Speaker 1: things that we were working on. We'll pause here for
Speaker 1: a weeve moment and get right back to my conversation
Speaker 1: with Danny Goldberg. For those not in the know, I'm
Speaker 1: primarily a writer. You can go to left sets dot
Speaker 1: com and sign up for the newsletter or read the
Speaker 1: archive for past history. In addition to following my commentary
Speaker 1: on music business in the world at large, will be
Speaker 1: the first to find out, we published a new episode
Speaker 1: of the podcast. Go to left sets dot com and
Speaker 1: sign up for the newsletter. I know you'll like it. Now,
Speaker 1: let's return to my conversation with Danny Goldberg, recorded at
Speaker 1: the tune In Studios in Venice, California. Looking back at
Speaker 1: this point in time, Kurt Cobain ultimately commits suicide. Is
Speaker 1: there anything that you were the team could have done
Speaker 1: differently that might have prevented that? Well, Um, obviously the
Speaker 1: only honest answer is I don't know. Um. It's I've
Speaker 1: just finishing a book about him that's going to come
Speaker 1: out in the spring, and I've been thinking about this
Speaker 1: a lot, and uh, I just don't know what to
Speaker 1: say about that. I mean, um, we did a couple
Speaker 1: of it. I was part of personally, part of a
Speaker 1: couple of interventions to get him off of heroin. You know,
Speaker 1: I certainly feel, um, it's better for people not to
Speaker 1: be junkies, and that that's a if there's one lesson
Speaker 1: that I already felt it was bad to be a junkie,
Speaker 1: and I still do. Um. I uh, you know, um,
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of people kill themselves every year, and
Speaker 1: as far as I've been able to find out there's
Speaker 1: no therapists or priests or yogis who the philosophers who
Speaker 1: know how to prevent it. Um. You know, you do
Speaker 1: everything you can and pray, and some people just kill themselves.
Speaker 1: You know. It's It's one of the mysteries of of life,
Speaker 1: I think. I mean, it's just I think fifty Americans
Speaker 1: a year killed themselves. So, uh, you don't think that
Speaker 1: maybe he should have been pulled off the road earlier.
Speaker 1: He was not on the road much. Nirvana did very
Speaker 1: little touring, um the last the last year. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: he certainly didn't kill himself on the road. Um. And
Speaker 1: and he had complete control over every decision. I mean
Speaker 1: he you know, he didn't spend a lot of money,
Speaker 1: so Kurt was financially independent right away. Um. And they
Speaker 1: didn't do much touring. They did I think shows, you know,
Speaker 1: the the you know, the last the last year. And
Speaker 1: was Courtney loved an influence in his decision? Do you think?
Speaker 1: You know, Cortney is a friend of mine and someone
Speaker 1: that I also worked with and who I really admire,
Speaker 1: complicated person like anybody else. When you know, again, I
Speaker 1: think some of these hard drugs are just really bad
Speaker 1: for human beings, and they had a bad effect on
Speaker 1: each of them when they did them, and on almost
Speaker 1: most people who do them. But um, you know, I
Speaker 1: think the main thing is, uh, some people are prone
Speaker 1: to depression. Some people can deal with it, some can't.
Speaker 1: Some some people go into twelve step programs and you know,
Speaker 1: have some don't take to it, you know. Uh. John Coltrane,
Speaker 1: I think just stopped doing heroin through willpower, you know,
Speaker 1: and became a I've never quite understood. He was certainly
Speaker 1: into various Eastern religions, you know. Um, But you know,
Speaker 1: I just don't think anybody knows why people kill themselves.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that we know what some of
Speaker 1: the things increased the likelihood. But there were people who
Speaker 1: were junkies don't kill themselves, or people who were depressive,
Speaker 1: they don't kill themselves. There are people who have relatives
Speaker 1: in their family who who committed suicide who don't kill themselves.
Speaker 1: But you know, all those things increased the likelihood of it.
Speaker 1: So how did you find out? Uh? Rosemary Carroll, who
Speaker 1: was my my wife at the time and mother of
Speaker 1: my children, you know, was was also the lawyer for um.
Speaker 1: She's a music business lawyer. And she was the lawyer
Speaker 1: for by that time, both Kurt and Courtney. And she
Speaker 1: called me. I was Atlantic Records by this time. You know,
Speaker 1: I left the management company to go work for Atlantic. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, within a year after never Mind came out.
Speaker 1: You know, I had a sense of foreboding and I
Speaker 1: was I wanted a regular job. I just didn't want it,
Speaker 1: and that once I had kids, I just didn't want
Speaker 1: to run a small business anymore. I like the idea
Speaker 1: of getting a salary. So I was still involved with Nirvana,
Speaker 1: and particularly involved with Kurt as somebody that he liked
Speaker 1: to talk to. But but you know, I had this
Speaker 1: other job, as you know, you know Atlantic, and and
Speaker 1: so I was in New York at that time. You know,
Speaker 1: Atlantic was in New York. We were still living in
Speaker 1: l A. She was he had just given birth to
Speaker 1: our second kid, Max. You know, Max was I think, uh,
Speaker 1: four or five months old when Kurt killed himself. And Um,
Speaker 1: she called me and told me. So she was on
Speaker 1: her way to see Corny to tell Corney. This is
Speaker 1: a bad segue, but we have to move on on
Speaker 1: the less Um. So you take the job in Atlantic,
Speaker 1: and simultaneous or shortly thereafter, there's a huge power struggle
Speaker 1: at Warner Music. And what did that look like from
Speaker 1: the inside, Well, it unfolded over a period of I
Speaker 1: think the total amount of time I was there was
Speaker 1: three years, so it you know, in retrospect, it was
Speaker 1: a short period of time. But in those days, I'm
Speaker 1: just living my life and I had no idea that
Speaker 1: around the corner was going to come this, this power struggle.
Speaker 1: I did feel. Doug Mars hired me originally to be
Speaker 1: kind of the West coast head of A and R
Speaker 1: for Atlantic. I had the Nirvana's manager. That kind of
Speaker 1: music was clearly overnight change. What was commercial rock and roll,
Speaker 1: The so called hair bands were passe A. There was
Speaker 1: a need for someone who could find these new these
Speaker 1: new acts and uh. In that context, I was one
Speaker 1: of the people at Science Stone Temple Pilots, which was
Speaker 1: almost an immediate huge success and and and kind of
Speaker 1: made me a success in Atlantic right away. Uh, and
Speaker 1: that or so Reaginally I was on the West coast,
Speaker 1: but I Doug, I knew, had aspirations to move up
Speaker 1: in the hierarchy, and I thought that if I did
Speaker 1: a good job, I'd had a chance of them becoming
Speaker 1: presid of Atlantic, and that is what happened. He became
Speaker 1: head of Warner Music for America UH and made me
Speaker 1: president of Atlantic UH and then um, by this about
Speaker 1: two years into my Atlantic period, there was this huge
Speaker 1: convulsion there. Um. They were a corporate guy named Bob
Speaker 1: murgato um who oversaw all the music companies, and um,
Speaker 1: the CEO of Time Warner the entire corporation was named
Speaker 1: Steve Ross, legendary brilliant business guy who had assembled this
Speaker 1: jewel of a media company included Warner Brothers, films, Time Magazine,
Speaker 1: with Time Warner Cable. I think they had Nintendo and
Speaker 1: one or books, and you know, it was like one
Speaker 1: of the big big media companies. He was like on
Speaker 1: that list with like the way you would talk today
Speaker 1: about a Ruper Murdoch or one of those guys. And
Speaker 1: he died in his sixties. Like I don't think people
Speaker 1: knew he was going to die. He had cancer and
Speaker 1: he went from being running the company to being dead
Speaker 1: very quickly. And the vacuum created his death changed the
Speaker 1: power dynamic in the music group because Steve Ross, for example,
Speaker 1: had always said that Mouston reported to him directly, not
Speaker 1: to the head of overall Music and the new guy
Speaker 1: who replaced the Ross was Jerry Levin. Didn't want that
Speaker 1: kind of weird structure, so Margato hated my Austin and
Speaker 1: he liked Doug, and Mom ended up getting fired. I
Speaker 1: ended up for eight or nine months becoming chairman of
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers, and then Doug got fired. It was a
Speaker 1: convulsive time. Uh. You know, the Warner Music group, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a weird thing to be part of. It
Speaker 1: was an amazing experience. I'm gratefully I got paid well
Speaker 1: for it, and I learned a lot from it. But
Speaker 1: I was totally ill equipped to deal with it. I
Speaker 1: had moved so quickly in the corporate world. I I
Speaker 1: didn't I wasn't a corporate guy. I had been an
Speaker 1: independent manager publicist guy for twenty some years and I
Speaker 1: was only in the corporate world for like a couple
Speaker 1: of years and something. I have the biggest corporate record
Speaker 1: job at a time when my boss is embattled, and uh,
Speaker 1: I was not equipped to really deal with the pressures
Speaker 1: in a very intelligent way. But I did the best
Speaker 1: I could, and you know, I'm glad I got to
Speaker 1: do it. And so when you let get let go.
Speaker 1: Do you see that coming? Well, um, there was a
Speaker 1: series of things that happened that that seemed incredibly important
Speaker 1: to the time. And now all these names are kind
Speaker 1: of not that interesting, but you know, um, first Mouston
Speaker 1: has let first. Bob kraz now has let go. He
Speaker 1: had been running Electric for ten or fifteen years. One
Speaker 1: of the giants of the business didn't get along with
Speaker 1: Bob Mugato. I guess he wasn't. The company was less profitable.
Speaker 1: Doug puts um Sylvia Rohne in his head of Electra.
Speaker 1: Then Lenny Warnicker was supposed to take Then Moe is
Speaker 1: given all right, when his contract is up, he's going
Speaker 1: to be out, which is a gigantic dock to the
Speaker 1: West Coast music community. Was the premier record executive, certainly
Speaker 1: in California, and many people thought in the country and
Speaker 1: beloved by a wide range of people in the entertainment
Speaker 1: business here, and they all sent letters to Jerry Levin,
Speaker 1: you know, all these Quincy Jones, Barbara streisand everybody, and
Speaker 1: Jerry Levin, CEO of Tom Waterer, didn't particularly like being
Speaker 1: pressured that way. That was not an effective tactic. And
Speaker 1: Magato hated Mouston because of some ego thing between the
Speaker 1: two of them that I was not really privy too,
Speaker 1: but was clearly palpable. And um. So then I then
Speaker 1: then uh, Margato gets fired and is replaced by Michael Fuchs,
Speaker 1: who had been running HBO. And then six months later
Speaker 1: and then then Doug gets fired. Then I get fired
Speaker 1: because I was very close to Doug. The people the
Speaker 1: two people closest to Doug corporately were Melo Winter and myself.
Speaker 1: We both got fired immediately right within weeks after Doug
Speaker 1: got fired. Sylvia hung in for a while. Um, they
Speaker 1: got rid of interscope, you know, within a year, UM,
Speaker 1: and Doug by then Universal brings inter scope there and UM.
Speaker 1: And then Michael Fuchs gets fired because he once Jerry
Speaker 1: Levin used him for the purpose of doing all of this,
Speaker 1: he he also turned out and wanted to also get
Speaker 1: rid of Michael Fuchs. So there was an enormous number
Speaker 1: of people fired. So certainly, once Doug got fired, I
Speaker 1: knew my days were numbered. I mean that was I
Speaker 1: was just a matter of how and what day of
Speaker 1: the week it was going to be. I couldn't imagine
Speaker 1: I was so closely identified with him there and and
Speaker 1: you know it was so personal. My whole role and
Speaker 1: there was so based on him, you know. Uh, So
Speaker 1: once he got fired, I figured it was it was
Speaker 1: going to happen. I I stayed for a couple of
Speaker 1: more months and to see if there was any way
Speaker 1: of achieving equilibrium and and to be responsible. I had
Speaker 1: a job until they fired me to do it. But
Speaker 1: my days were clearly numbered then. So once he was fired,
Speaker 1: I was not surprised that I was later fired. And
Speaker 1: you're fired, then you go to Mercury and then not
Speaker 1: long thereafter, Yeah, A Loon Levy hired me to be
Speaker 1: president of Mercury Records. It was a good soft landing
Speaker 1: and what you learned there, well, you know that was
Speaker 1: the That was a job that I had that wasn't
Speaker 1: based on Doug. That was a job I got kind
Speaker 1: of where it was me because Doug was was a mentor.
Speaker 1: He taught me a lot, but he also was always
Speaker 1: the boss, and a Loon Levy was really hands off.
Speaker 1: He was globally. He was running a global company, not
Speaker 1: just the US, and a global company whose main business
Speaker 1: was not in the United States. PolyGram was the biggest
Speaker 1: company everywhere, but the U S and they were a
Speaker 1: major in the US, but they were super major in Europe,
Speaker 1: Latin American Asia. Um So, first of all, it was
Speaker 1: the first time I kind of did it on my own,
Speaker 1: and uh it was that. It was certainly my most
Speaker 1: successful time as an executive. But it was shortened because
Speaker 1: PolyGram ended up being sold to Universal and they eliminated
Speaker 1: the idea of Mercury, you know. But but I had
Speaker 1: three years there. We had the last year I was
Speaker 1: there when Billboard Sounds getting they did their annual who
Speaker 1: which major company had the biggest market share? It was
Speaker 1: the Mercury Group. We beat Columbia, you know, and everybody else. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, I I felt really good about what we accomplished,
Speaker 1: and uh I got to uh, I got to do
Speaker 1: things that were really exciting there, you know. And uh
Speaker 1: what was exciting there? Well, um I I, UM, we
Speaker 1: had some hits. Are always exciting, right, so, you know,
Speaker 1: I Luke Lewis was running Mercury Nashville. He reported to
Speaker 1: me and Chanai Twain's biggest record, which is one of
Speaker 1: the biggest records of all time. It comes out of that.
Speaker 1: We we created what we called the Mercury Group. Where
Speaker 1: we had the pop department also working with the country department.
Speaker 1: It's very hard in those days to to to do
Speaker 1: pop and country at the same time. We pulled it off.
Speaker 1: I had the classical labels for acording to me and
Speaker 1: we we had Andrea Bicelli, you know, who's this unknown
Speaker 1: blind tenor and Pevrotti was in the middle of retiring
Speaker 1: and just kind of room for one of those and
Speaker 1: we were able to throw pbs and other things established
Speaker 1: him and he said twenty year run. Uh. Phil Walden
Speaker 1: had had another iteration of Capricorn that nobody wanted and
Speaker 1: it was one of the first deals I made and
Speaker 1: within a few months we had Platinum Records with three
Speaker 1: eleven and Cake and I got to work with Phil Walden,
Speaker 1: who was you know, had been noticed writings manager in
Speaker 1: the Alman Brothers manager, one of the great again. He
Speaker 1: died young, you know, but in the sixties of cancer,
Speaker 1: but you know, really to me, a giant in his
Speaker 1: own right, you know. You know, Um, we had a
Speaker 1: big We had the first of the boy bands of
Speaker 1: that era was Hansen, you know, before the Backstreet boyson
Speaker 1: in Sync, the first when Total Request Live started on MTV,
Speaker 1: which became kind of the nexus of the boy band era.
Speaker 1: For the first twelve weeks of TRL and Hansen was
Speaker 1: was number one. So that was kind of fun to
Speaker 1: be part of. And the A and our guy that
Speaker 1: I had hired from named Steve Greenberg developed them, still
Speaker 1: a good friend of mine and and and to be
Speaker 1: part of really launching at least one big pop act.
Speaker 1: I mean, Hansen turned out not to want to play
Speaker 1: the game and have future big records, but that first
Speaker 1: record sold ten million records, was number one all over
Speaker 1: the world. And then because we were doing a lot
Speaker 1: of business, I was able to do some of the arts,
Speaker 1: craftsy personal things that I had always dreamed of as
Speaker 1: a record company president. Maybe I could do which so
Speaker 1: we put out I put out Allen Ginsberg's last record,
Speaker 1: to put it to Jim Carroll's last record. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: brought a record, brought in a label called Tri Loca
Speaker 1: that put out the first several Christian Das records. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just things that culturally I was really proud to
Speaker 1: to to to be able to give a place you know,
Speaker 1: in the in the in the in the business. So
Speaker 1: that was really fun. I love that period. But you know,
Speaker 1: corporate events utterly beyond my control. It was some big
Speaker 1: fight in Holland between Phillips and along Levy about you know,
Speaker 1: the film company or something that had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with me. Caused them to sell the company. And once
Speaker 1: it was part of Universal, it was a different vision
Speaker 1: and they created what they called the Island def Jam
Speaker 1: took over most of what Mercury did, and and they
Speaker 1: were probably right. I mean, you know, hip hop was exploding,
Speaker 1: and Lee or was certainly had his handle on it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I got paid very well for that,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, that was the best parachute I got.
Speaker 1: But those three that so Mercury at least I felt
Speaker 1: I kind of had had the e ticket ride and
Speaker 1: and uh. But after two corporate convulsions, I was a
Speaker 1: little um dubious about my ability to function intelligently in
Speaker 1: a corporate area. I didn't respond to the pressure very well.
Speaker 1: I I panicked and had ego issues, and you know,
Speaker 1: I I didn't have the kind of centered discipline that
Speaker 1: the great long term corporate players have. You know, I
Speaker 1: was I was more of a rock and roll guy.
Speaker 1: And the next step is Artemus. So then yeah, I
Speaker 1: had Artemus I found a guy named Michael Chambers approached
Speaker 1: me right away. He had his father's a very successful
Speaker 1: leverage buyout genius and they had and Michael loved Nirvana
Speaker 1: and wanted to start a label and started Artemus, not
Speaker 1: you know, thinking that I could do what like Interscope
Speaker 1: had done. That was my model, but of course it
Speaker 1: was first of all, I'm not Jimmy Ivan. Secondly, it
Speaker 1: was the wrong time to do it. We started Artemus
Speaker 1: just as the record business was spiraling downward financially and
Speaker 1: the you know, the the the MP three, dot Com
Speaker 1: and Napster and you know, the digital world was was
Speaker 1: was eroding the value of masters. So I couldn't fight
Speaker 1: that that wave. I was totally not equipped for it.
Speaker 1: I was fighting the last war. But we had some
Speaker 1: records I'm really proud of it. Made the last three
Speaker 1: Warrant Yvon records, the third of which one in Grahamy's
Speaker 1: and his gold record That's where I met Steve are
Speaker 1: all made for Steve row records. Uh two of them
Speaker 1: at won Grammys. Uh made a Jimmy for One record
Speaker 1: that won a Grammy, made Hubert Someone's last record, did
Speaker 1: a Pretender's record, Um. And we had to let the
Speaker 1: dogs out. So you know, it was it was not nothing,
Speaker 1: but but it was. It was doomed because I just
Speaker 1: didn't I didn't have the clarity. You know, Daniel Glasses,
Speaker 1: I was chairman, he was president. You know, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: proud of what we did at Artemus, but it was
Speaker 1: it was the wrong business model. It was a business
Speaker 1: model that would have been great for ten years earlier,
Speaker 1: and I, you know, I didn't So but you know,
Speaker 1: again there's the records that we put out that I'm
Speaker 1: very proud of. So now you're a manager again. Correct?
Speaker 1: So what you know you could have just said I'm done? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Why why get back in? Um? You know, I I
Speaker 1: like to work. Um, I I feel better about myself
Speaker 1: when I'm working. I don't really, you know, I I
Speaker 1: my self esteem requires the idea of doing something. Uh
Speaker 1: so far, I do meditate and I defined myself when
Speaker 1: I'm in my highest moments as being not just the
Speaker 1: some of my external work and accomplishments, but most of
Speaker 1: the time I'm the same schmuck that wants to be
Speaker 1: somebody and do something. And the only thing I really
Speaker 1: have expertise in is is is whatever corner of the
Speaker 1: music business I have at any given moment in time.
Speaker 1: So I spent a year or leaving I experimented. I'd
Speaker 1: always had this real interest as a political activist. Ever
Speaker 1: since No Nukes, I've been very involved with a lot
Speaker 1: of political things. I've been the chairman of the a
Speaker 1: c o U of Southern California for seven years when
Speaker 1: I lived out here, and uh, you know, wrote a
Speaker 1: book about politics and culture. Uh. And so I did
Speaker 1: take a non music business job, which was the to
Speaker 1: be the chairman of Air America Radio coming out of Artemus,
Speaker 1: which turned out to be doomed. I noticed you had
Speaker 1: Rob Glazers recent podcast guest, and he was he was
Speaker 1: my least favorite boss. Because I don't want to go
Speaker 1: into it. I'm just trying to say I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: make it. Was he hands on? Well, I mean I
Speaker 1: would say this. Um. When I first got the job. Um,
Speaker 1: he was coming out to l A to try to
Speaker 1: raise some money from the Hollywood liberal community, and I said, you,
Speaker 1: I know, I said, I know, I'm not starting for
Speaker 1: a week or two you but do you want me
Speaker 1: to come with you? I know a lot of these people,
Speaker 1: you know, because when I was here, I was really
Speaker 1: part of that community and meant a lot to me
Speaker 1: and I and I had some credibility with a lot
Speaker 1: of normally are and those kind of people. And he
Speaker 1: said no, no no, no, he says, I don't want you
Speaker 1: to worry about money. I want you to run the company.
Speaker 1: I said great. So then three weeks later, I'm now
Speaker 1: running the company. They've announced it, and the in house
Speaker 1: controller they didn't have a normal CFO comes to me
Speaker 1: and says, Um, by the way, we don't have the
Speaker 1: money for the payroll, and and and you know, as
Speaker 1: I called him, and I said, Rob, we don't have
Speaker 1: the money to the payroll. What do I do? He says,
Speaker 1: you're the CEO. You figure it out. So I knew
Speaker 1: I was fun. You know, there was underfunded. He he
Speaker 1: did lose money on it. I mean he put millions
Speaker 1: of dollars into it, but it required much more money
Speaker 1: than that, and there wasn't a plan to raise the
Speaker 1: rest of the money. There was this if you build it,
Speaker 1: they will come notion, which is that's a movie. People
Speaker 1: would say that. I said, no, that's a movie. That's
Speaker 1: not real. That was like, you know, so you know, um,
Speaker 1: when that, uh, when that flopped. Um it went bankrupt
Speaker 1: not long after. I spent about a year there. Again.
Speaker 1: It a very interesting experience, and to be able to
Speaker 1: work with Al Franklin was an incredible honor. I'm a
Speaker 1: great fan of his. I wish he was still in
Speaker 1: the Senate. Rachel Mattow was our you know. I put
Speaker 1: her into Morning Drive and she's had the celestrious career.
Speaker 1: There were a couple of things came out of it
Speaker 1: that are notable, but it was a failed business. And
Speaker 1: Steve Earle had been on Artemus and he called me,
Speaker 1: and I knew he was looking for a new manager
Speaker 1: because he'd had a falling out with the guy who
Speaker 1: had been managing him for years. And he called me,
Speaker 1: says and I said, look, man, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you'd be interested it, but this thing is going under.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about being a manager again. And
Speaker 1: so he called me back an hour later and he says,
Speaker 1: if you're in, I'm in. So I just figured there
Speaker 1: it is, you know, I you know, I had a
Speaker 1: client and uh, I still work with Steve Earl. I mean,
Speaker 1: so it turns out to be the longest relationship I've
Speaker 1: ever had with an artist. It's not seventeen years we've
Speaker 1: we've worked together, and um, I just didn't want to quit.
Speaker 1: I just didn't know what I would do if I quit.
Speaker 1: You know, Now, because I've been writing more regularly, at
Speaker 1: least I have some confidence that there's something else I
Speaker 1: could do. You know, I published that book last year
Speaker 1: about the sixties nine seven. I have this one coming
Speaker 1: about Kurt. I've been writing regularly for the nation. I
Speaker 1: finally kind of have a discipline as a writer that
Speaker 1: I didn't have in my early twenties. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: I I I like, uh, it's the only thing in
Speaker 1: the world where I've had a role is the is
Speaker 1: the rock and roll world. I don't, you know, It's
Speaker 1: not like I could get another job doing anything thing else.
Speaker 1: And I like working, and I like, I don't like
Speaker 1: every minute of it, but you know, I I'm really
Speaker 1: very grateful to have a little piece of it. And
Speaker 1: I've had a very interesting ride at highs and low
Speaker 1: is big and small, but you know, I still think
Speaker 1: it's a honorable profession. And I don't know what else
Speaker 1: to do. Okay, let's just drill down a little bit.
Speaker 1: Steve Earle Steve Earle, you know, comes out in the
Speaker 1: eighties as the new White Hope, makes these incredible records,
Speaker 1: Guitar Town, etcetera. In a different area. If you're Steve
Speaker 1: Earle today and you're approaching sixty, what does the business
Speaker 1: look like for somebody like that? Uh, yeah, he's over sixty.
Speaker 1: He's over sixty. He's five years younger than me. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: the number one characteristic for an artist in a category
Speaker 1: that includes him is that the primary business is is
Speaker 1: selling concert tickets. You know that the records are are
Speaker 1: are your legacy and their marketing tool for your concert business.
Speaker 1: They're not your main source of income. Um The second
Speaker 1: thing about the business is that it's about it's increasingly
Speaker 1: about trying to monetize the super fan. It's not it's
Speaker 1: it's hard to grow new fans. Every once in a while,
Speaker 1: something happened. Somebody has a song in a movie or
Speaker 1: a commercial, or or a magic song of some kind
Speaker 1: that expands their audience when they're older. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: Zevon expands this audience when he was dying, you know.
Speaker 1: But more common for artists, whether it's Springsteen or Jackson
Speaker 1: Brown or Steve Earl or you know fifty other names
Speaker 1: that we could we could mention it. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: about figuring out to maintain those fans and and some
Speaker 1: of them will pay for uh you know, uh Golden
Speaker 1: Circle tickets or uh a luxe editions signed things, uh
Speaker 1: being able to come to the sound check. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's about it's about servicing your super fans. It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a hybrid between the old music business and
Speaker 1: kind of the business of being like a painter, where
Speaker 1: you've got you know, it's kind of it's it's not
Speaker 1: like someone spending a million dollars for a painting, but
Speaker 1: it's also not like somebody just streaming something hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds or millions of times. You know. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's about it. It's about an intense group of
Speaker 1: super fans, many of whom will pay more money. So
Speaker 1: you've got venues like the City Winery that pay very
Speaker 1: very well because they make so much money on the
Speaker 1: wine and the food. You've got these performing arts centers, uh,
Speaker 1: and then of course for the bigger artists. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got two hundred and fifty dollar tickets that are
Speaker 1: that are that are part of the ecosystem that was
Speaker 1: unheard of. So so that's the world you know, it's
Speaker 1: about it's about finding your fans uh and uh and
Speaker 1: monetizing them um with and and and you you of
Speaker 1: course everybody always wants new fans, but but if you're
Speaker 1: trying to make sure you can pay your bills for
Speaker 1: the year, it's about servicing the fans that you have.
Speaker 1: So if you're someone like Steve Rrol, how many super
Speaker 1: fans would you think he has? Well? Um, I mean
Speaker 1: on Spotify it says eight hundred thousand people a month
Speaker 1: visit his page, so that's a number I like. Um,
Speaker 1: he's got um uh. He's a global artist. You know,
Speaker 1: he tours. He's in Europe right now as we speak.
Speaker 1: You know, he's he's you know, you can sell a
Speaker 1: couple of thousand tickets and uh in London and Dublin
Speaker 1: and Stockholm, Australia. You know, Canada has always been as
Speaker 1: big as a market. So if he's going, he's selling
Speaker 1: couple hundred tickets, couple of thousand, couple of thousand, ye
Speaker 1: no big, Yeah, there's a couple of no no no
Speaker 1: no no no no no, A couple of thousands. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: no so, um, a couple of thousand tickets. Sure, you
Speaker 1: know he's got a band. Um. Sometimes he plays solo.
Speaker 1: Obviously the margin is bigger when he plays solo. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, the key with the audiences is
Speaker 1: to keep doing something different each time. Right now. In
Speaker 1: the last American tour was him, Lucinda Williams, Dwight Yoakum
Speaker 1: and Steve. They called the L S D Tour. Uh
Speaker 1: you know. Uh. Then he did a cycle with him
Speaker 1: and Sewan Colvin. They did a record together and they
Speaker 1: toured together. Um. You know his next record is going
Speaker 1: to be a record of Guy Clark songs. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: one of his mentor is one of the great Americana icons. Um.
Speaker 1: He won a Grammy a few years ago for an
Speaker 1: album he did of towns, fans and songs. You know,
Speaker 1: Steve is very smart about trying to create a narrative
Speaker 1: for each cycle because the main exposure vehicle is is
Speaker 1: the old school media. You know, there's only there's some
Speaker 1: radio stations that will play him. I mean here in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles KCS and always play Steve, and there are
Speaker 1: a w FUV and there's a noncommon you know, he
Speaker 1: has a weekly show on serious radio and things like that.
Speaker 1: But but kind of having the narrative that can cross
Speaker 1: the old and new media is kind of a way
Speaker 1: of letting fans know. So, like this year was thirtieth
Speaker 1: anniversary of Copperhead Roads, so he did a Copperhead Road
Speaker 1: tour and you know, that did about more ticket sales
Speaker 1: than his last tour because he played the whole album.
Speaker 1: It was easy. It was a one liner the elevator
Speaker 1: pitcheets all of Copperhead Road and some and some other songs.
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's the marketing part of it is
Speaker 1: about a narrative. The economics is about what the ticket
Speaker 1: price is, multiplied by how many people will buy the tickets,
Speaker 1: adding to which the amount of merch you sell, and
Speaker 1: making sure that you spend enough less than that between
Speaker 1: the tour bus and the crew and what you pay
Speaker 1: the musicians, so that there's a profit at the end
Speaker 1: of it. You know, And if you can have a
Speaker 1: thousand or two thousand fans and seventy rading markets around
Speaker 1: the world, you can make a good living. You're not
Speaker 1: going to become a billionaire or you know. Lifestyle is
Speaker 1: the rich and familists, but it's it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: definitely a good, good living. So the same would be
Speaker 1: true of Bonnie Ray, Jackson Brown, you know, a whole
Speaker 1: category of artists and and there's an artistry to a too.
Speaker 1: I think as a fan of the last five years
Speaker 1: of Leonard Owen's career, you know, to me or among
Speaker 1: the most inspiring, profound artistic moments as a fan that
Speaker 1: I ever had, those last several albums he made, those
Speaker 1: last few tours he did. So you know, it's not
Speaker 1: only about being as big as Drake. You know, you can't.
Speaker 1: You can't compete with people fifty years younger than you were,
Speaker 1: forty years younger than you. You know, youth has a
Speaker 1: certain thing to it. But the exciting thing to me
Speaker 1: about our generation is that there are is that emerge
Speaker 1: that some of them have found a way to stay
Speaker 1: relevant as artists, and some of them are just doing
Speaker 1: all these shows obviously, but Leonard Cohen, to me, is
Speaker 1: one of the great examples of someone in the latter
Speaker 1: part of their career and not also doing some of
Speaker 1: his best work. And I think Steve is doing great work.
Speaker 1: I think Steve's last few records are are as good
Speaker 1: as anything he ever did. I think Lucid the Williams
Speaker 1: last few records are as good as anything she ever did.
Speaker 1: And then there are other people whose best work is
Speaker 1: twenty years or thirty years ago. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: it's it's like any other kind of creative person, whether
Speaker 1: it's a novelist. Not every novelist can do what Philip
Speaker 1: Roth did, but Philip Browth did it right. And not
Speaker 1: every filmmaker can stay relevant the way Scorsese does, but
Speaker 1: there is a Scorsese. And it's just one of those
Speaker 1: things about about aging. Some artists lose their inspiration as
Speaker 1: they get older, and some keep it. So really, you've
Speaker 1: been there from the beginning because you were awake when
Speaker 1: the Beatles arrived. You're involved starting in six the Woodstock,
Speaker 1: and you here today with all that perspective, What do
Speaker 1: you think of music and the music business today? You know,
Speaker 1: I tend to see things just through my own prism.
Speaker 1: You you would be much better able to have an
Speaker 1: overview than I do. My My professional life revolves around
Speaker 1: a handful of artists who I work with, and then
Speaker 1: if I get a new client, then I see it
Speaker 1: through their prism and and uh, you know, I see
Speaker 1: it through the prism of some of my friends who
Speaker 1: manage other acts or who work with other artists. But
Speaker 1: I'm not at Billboard anymore. I'm not at MTV. I'm
Speaker 1: not you. I don't have to have it. It's not
Speaker 1: my job description to have an overview, you know. Obviously, um,
Speaker 1: streaming is how people are consuming music. I'm no different.
Speaker 1: I I liked it better when we sold these physical
Speaker 1: products because I understood the economics very well, and it
Speaker 1: was it was a system that worked for a lot
Speaker 1: of people. But I listened to of the music I
Speaker 1: listened to on Spotify because it's so convenient, and there's
Speaker 1: a few things they don't have that I have to
Speaker 1: listen to in another way, But anything that's on Spotify,
Speaker 1: that's how I'm going to listen to it. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously there's a subculture of audiophiles who like vinyl. It's
Speaker 1: not that economically important, but those are the people who
Speaker 1: buy the expensive concert tickets also, so those are super fans.
Speaker 1: The concert business is probably as healthy as it's ever
Speaker 1: been in my lifetime. The the the number of festivals
Speaker 1: around the world, the amount of money people will pay
Speaker 1: for tickets to things that they like, the continued role
Speaker 1: that music has for wealthy, older audiences. So the kind
Speaker 1: of the kind of uh, you know, Bruce Springsteen, the
Speaker 1: face price on the best tickets to that show are
Speaker 1: eight hundred and fifty dollars. You know. Um, that's not
Speaker 1: a scalpers price, you know. Yeah, well you know that's
Speaker 1: a good way of doing it. Um. And obviously stub
Speaker 1: hub and other things like that too. But so I
Speaker 1: think the live businesses as a business very vital. I
Speaker 1: think the record business is being reinvented, and there are
Speaker 1: fifty people a lot smarter than me who could talk
Speaker 1: about what it's going to be. But obviously the aggregant
Speaker 1: amount of money that's dreaming is generating is probably a
Speaker 1: few years away from getting up to what it used
Speaker 1: to be with with the physical product, how it's divided. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think that conversation is over. I think it's
Speaker 1: a little weird, you know. Um, I pay my ten
Speaker 1: dollars a month for Spotify, and so it is my
Speaker 1: son and he probably listens to ten times as much
Speaker 1: on Spotify as I do. So I might listen to
Speaker 1: my Bob Dylan, you know, once a week and somebody
Speaker 1: else is listening to Drake you know, a hundred or
Speaker 1: two hundred times a week, but it's the same ten dollars.
Speaker 1: So in that sense, Bob Dylan is kind of getting
Speaker 1: screwed because they're paying based on the quantity of streams,
Speaker 1: not based Well, there was a study once, the studies
Speaker 1: about five years old at this point, where they allocated
Speaker 1: it the way you're talking about it, and actually the
Speaker 1: revenue went down for those martial artists. Now that has
Speaker 1: not been redone since streaming is really gained traction. So
Speaker 1: it's really about the math. Look, it's it's it's there
Speaker 1: has to be a formula. Obviously. It's also a transition
Speaker 1: in terms of the record deals. When see these first
Speaker 1: came out, written into all the contracts was a packaging
Speaker 1: deduction of twenty five or thirty because of the cost
Speaker 1: of manufacturing see these. By the time those contracts were
Speaker 1: over see these went down from costing three dollars and
Speaker 1: fifty cents to manufacture to a quarter. So during these transitions,
Speaker 1: the record companies make make a big margin, and then
Speaker 1: as people renegotiate deals, these percentages you know obviously obviously changed.
Speaker 1: So part of it is that. Part of it is
Speaker 1: that the algorithm I think does favor um people with
Speaker 1: an appeal to younger audiences than people with an appeal
Speaker 1: to older audiences, because younger people are going to listen
Speaker 1: a lot more. But it's still only ten dollars a
Speaker 1: month if you listen to a five thousand streams a
Speaker 1: month or five streams a month. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm not a math genius to know what to do
Speaker 1: about it. But there are people thinking about this, and
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna see some other models in the
Speaker 1: last in the next few years. But obviously it's going
Speaker 1: to become it's it's a big business. It's still gonna
Speaker 1: be a big business. I'm not sure i'll be the
Speaker 1: right person to have a leadership role in it, but
Speaker 1: I still think I can represent artists of the generation
Speaker 1: that I understand, and uh, I see things through the
Speaker 1: prison of my clients, So it depends on on who
Speaker 1: they are. But it certainly didn't die. You know, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of people thought the record business was
Speaker 1: going to die. I didn't. It's definitely bigger than it
Speaker 1: was a couple of years ago because of the growth
Speaker 1: of streaming, and it's there. Streaming is nowhere near mature yet.
Speaker 1: You know, I think this whole idea of free has
Speaker 1: to go by the way side, you know. And this
Speaker 1: is a uh you know, when I got when I
Speaker 1: was in Atlantic, I mentioned earlier Stone Temple Pilots. Was
Speaker 1: this very important signing to me? And so they sold
Speaker 1: I think four million on a record and then there
Speaker 1: was a million four sold through the record clubs and
Speaker 1: the margin on the front line sales was like four
Speaker 1: dollars a unit or something. Once you were over a
Speaker 1: million units is very profitable because your marketing course weren't
Speaker 1: going up anymore. And on the record clubs the profit
Speaker 1: was like fifty cents. And I used to say, why
Speaker 1: are we doing this? Why are we doing this? And
Speaker 1: no one would ever answer the question, and there was
Speaker 1: nothing I could do about it was corporate decision. So
Speaker 1: then I get the PolyGram and now I'm reporting to
Speaker 1: Alan Levy, who's the worldwide head, not just not just
Speaker 1: a regional head. And I asked him the same question.
Speaker 1: I can't do a French accent, but he gave me
Speaker 1: one of these young men, let me explain to you
Speaker 1: how the world works. And you say, look, I get
Speaker 1: fifty million dollar advanced at the beginning of the year
Speaker 1: from the Columbia Records Club. I mean that might not
Speaker 1: be at that exact number, but something like they said,
Speaker 1: so I can plan my whole year. I know that
Speaker 1: for sure we're profitable. And he said, the lower the
Speaker 1: royalty the better because we have to split the royalty
Speaker 1: fifty fifty with the artists. But the unrecouped amount we keep.
Speaker 1: And I got another advance next year. That's how all
Speaker 1: these initial deals were done with Apple and Spotify and everything.
Speaker 1: I I know for sure, and and so that's um.
Speaker 1: That's a short term high for the labels, even though
Speaker 1: it undermines their long term model, because the long term
Speaker 1: model has to be people paying for it free. The
Speaker 1: advertising revenue generated is not remotely comparable to what it
Speaker 1: is to sell products. But if you're getting ten dollars
Speaker 1: a month, it's it's real. You know, you're multiplied by
Speaker 1: a billion people or whatever. Mark Tiger said, you can
Speaker 1: eventually do you know? That's a that's a that's a
Speaker 1: bigger business than the old c D business. So I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna be a big business. I don't know
Speaker 1: what role I'll play in it. But it ain't going away,
Speaker 1: and the live business has never gone away, and it's
Speaker 1: probably healthier than ever. The digital world makes it easier
Speaker 1: to superserve fans of individual artists, to identify them and
Speaker 1: find them cheaper to market to them, and we found
Speaker 1: that older people will pay a lot of money for
Speaker 1: that live experience, even though there's all these things you
Speaker 1: can do in a home theater and the quality gets
Speaker 1: better and better. There's something about being in a room
Speaker 1: full of people in real time, whether it's a sports
Speaker 1: event or a or a musical event, that is different
Speaker 1: from seeing it on a screen, and that has not
Speaker 1: going away. And so, you know, I think it's that
Speaker 1: people ask me, is there a music business young people
Speaker 1: come to you can? So yeah, I don't know. You know,
Speaker 1: you gotta get lucky, you gotta have hits. But it's
Speaker 1: it's not going away, okay, And you personally relevant music
Speaker 1: business maybe contained with the time you have on the planet,
Speaker 1: anything you want to do, any dreams, unfulfilled bucket list
Speaker 1: or certain desires. You know, I'm I'm really a bee
Speaker 1: here now, guy, you know, I mean that's that's my
Speaker 1: hippie roots are growing bigger and bigger as I get older.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not about taking LSD but some of
Speaker 1: the ideas that came with that about really you know,
Speaker 1: one of my heroes and the people you know, wrote
Speaker 1: a dedicated my last book too, is rondas you know,
Speaker 1: Richard Albert, originally the lsd UH spokesperson who then became
Speaker 1: a mystic and a teacher. And you know, to me,
Speaker 1: it's really about just trying to in the moment be
Speaker 1: a good person and do as good as I can
Speaker 1: and appreciate the moment. And uh, I'm really enjoying writing.
Speaker 1: I love working with you know, some of the artists
Speaker 1: I work with, I get paid very well. For some
Speaker 1: of them, I don't get paid anything for But as
Speaker 1: long as as long as I can feel I'm doing
Speaker 1: something useful in the moment, that's that's. That's that's I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think that way more and more and less
Speaker 1: and less about having a bucket list. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: in a non bucket list mode. I'm I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: here now mode. Okay. Any regret that you didn't go
Speaker 1: to college? Oh goodness, yeah, I mean I'm so grateful
Speaker 1: for my life in general, and but boy, not having
Speaker 1: a college education. I mean, I'm pretty well read by
Speaker 1: just being you know, a didact, but not having that
Speaker 1: credential and not you know, foreclosed a lot of things
Speaker 1: that would have been probably interesting to do. But you
Speaker 1: can't do everything in life. And I definitely grateful for
Speaker 1: the life I've had so far, and so far so good.
Speaker 1: So it worked out for me. I'm very glad my
Speaker 1: kids both graduated from college and I told them that,
Speaker 1: I said, don't the path I walked on doesn't exist anymore,
Speaker 1: so I don't even think about that. The kids you
Speaker 1: today are very smart. They know there's the haves and
Speaker 1: the have nots, and they don't want to end up
Speaker 1: one of the half. Yeah, so I um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just I like doing this podcast. I
Speaker 1: I like writing. I like working with Betty Lovette on
Speaker 1: her record of Dylan songs, and with Steve and Ben
Speaker 1: Lee and you know the people I get to work with,
Speaker 1: and I'm just trying to trying to do it one
Speaker 1: day at a time as much as I as much
Speaker 1: as I can. I I'm grateful for the rock and
Speaker 1: roll business though it gave me a place in the world,
Speaker 1: and as long as I can be of use to artists.
Speaker 1: I'm quite happy with that vocation, you know. So we'll we'll,
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens next. Well, we've heard your entire journey. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there's much more depth underneath all these peaks that would
Speaker 1: be interesting, but we only have a limited period of time. Danny,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for coming and being on the podcast.
Speaker 1: So so pleased to do it with you. Until next time,
Speaker 1: it's Bob left Sets here tune in doing the Bob
Speaker 1: Left Sets podcast once again. That was then Goldberg on
Speaker 1: this week's episode of the Bob Left Sets Podcast, recorded
Speaker 1: live at the tune In Studios in Venice, California. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Don't hesitate to email me feedback
Speaker 1: at Bob at left sets dot com. Until next time,
Speaker 1: It's Bob left Sets