INTERMISSION:
I just saw Ford v Ferrari. Great movie. It reminded me of the meetings I had with Carole Shelby and John Hughes about a script we were developing for Columbia Pictures called “ Muscle Cars”. John and I went to Detroit several times to meet with Shelby. The movie was correct. He was larger than life.
A&M Records was in the historic Charlie Chaplin studio at the corner of Sunset and La Brea Avenue in Hollywood Blvd. It was a series of bungalows with an open courtyard in the middle. The studio also had a large sound stage where he shot a lot of scenes for his films. It also was the home of many historic events. Michael Jackson’s “We Are the World” was shot there. I was there for that amazing event. I think it is still the largest selling single ever.
My bungalow with me and my assistant was in a suite next to the sound stage. George Harrison and his Dark Horse Records and Lou Adler and his Ode record label were above me on the second floor. There was only one bungalow level above me so we all got to know each other very well. Artists like Carole King and Cheech and Chong would visit Lou and countless stars and celebs would stop by and visit George.
The legendary A&M recording studio was across from me about 30 feet away. There were always acts like Joe Cocker, Humble Pie, Supertramp, the Police and many more going to record there day and night.
My job as the Director of College promotion was to promote our acts in college radio stations and get them to play our records. I had one rep in every state. My Wisconsin rep became quite famous. Peter Greenburg is now a renowned travel writer and NBC personality. But he got his start promoting A&M bands! Peter actually called me up while a band was performing in Madison, Wisconsin and asked me how he can expense the cocaine he had just bought for the band! Another college rep for A&M was Henry Mcgee who ended being president of HBO
I spent the first year at A&M flying around the country going to college radio stations with a box of albums and giving them to the radio station. I would literally pick a college I wanted to visit and hang out at the college radio station. A great gig for a single guy right out of college!
I would also tour with some of the bands on the road. Some of the bands just played colleges. I had a tour with Cheech and Chong. They were cool and I was more like a groupie than a record company promoter.
Besides having an assistant and college reps in every state, there were other perks. When I arrived at A&M I was given a black American Express card which had no limit. I was never asked to do an expense report and was encouraged to take radio station DJ’s to really nice places. I remember that one fellow A&M exec was reprimanded because he wasn’t spending enough!
Here’s how green I was. I was also given a $400 a month car allowance. I walked in the Peugeot dealership and told the salesman “ I have a $400 a month car allowance. What can I get for $400 a month.” And he said, “boy, do we have a car for you!”
I also participated in a lot of company meetings. There were weekly Singles meetings, not about dating although that might have been fun, but to pick the “A” side and “B” side of the 45 vinyl record. There were always a lot of arguments about what songs should be on the 45 and which would be the “A” side and which would be the “B” side. Jerry Moss always made the final decision and he was a master at picking hits. I remember when Sting and the Police came to Jerry with their new song “Roxanne.” Jerry brought it to the singles meeting and I can tell you NO ONE thought it would be a hit single. Jerry insisted that it be released as the next Police single and it became one of their biggest hits ever.
The A&M executives always wanted me in the Singles meetings. The execs thought I had the worst sense of what would be hit of anyone in the company. So, they would play the choices for the “A” side song and the “B” side song and ask me what I thought. Whichever one I said should be a “B” side single they made it the “A” side. Worked every time!
There were some interesting characters on the Lot during this time. There was an A&R director named Alan Mason who was a music fanatic. The odd thing about him was he would go on the road looking for new artists and leave carrying only like a kid’s backpack. We never knew where he got his clothes! The great director Barry Levinson (Diner, Rain Man) told me that Alan was who he based the Daniel Stern character on in Diner.
There was a manager of a comedian we had signed named Wally Amos. Wally would go from office to office bringing homemade chocolate chip cookies made from, he said, his grandmother's family recipe. They were fantastic. About a year later he opened the FAMOUS AMOS cookie company which was a huge success. I think some of the A&M execs invested in it. I should have!
After a year of buying expensive food and drinks for college DJ’s and giving them free albums, A&M asked me to take over their Publicity department. I must have spent enough money on my expense account!
This is when things became pretty wild and became the basis for the Vinyl Showtime pilot screenplay.
My job was to promote A&M and its artists in the U.S. and around the world. The year was 1972 and A&M Records was moving quickly towards becoming a 100 million dollar company. It had an impressive roster for an independent label with artists ranging from Herb Alpert to Cat Stevens, the Police, Supertramp, Joan Baez, etc. The list goes on and on.
And I had to get great press for all of them! I had a terrific team helping me which was good because this is another job I totally unqualified for(a few months ago at my 70th birthday party I told a small group of family and friends that every job I ever had I started with no training or experience-college promotion, PR, producing, running companies and teaching)
It was a crazy, exciting time but also one of the most stressful times in my life. The day started at 5 a.m. when the entertainment trades were delivered to my door. This was just as the internet was revving up. The powerful influencers at that time Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. I was one of the few people who got their trades hand-delivered because I had the PR job.
People say there is no bad press. Don’t tell that to the artist or even worse, their manager. As soon as I read the trades my job was to call whoever had gotten a bad review or embarrassing news and WARN THEM. The next thing I had to do was listen to them yell at me for 45 minutes. They would always say something like “fix it! Just fix it dammit!, like I should drive all over L.A. and pull the trades from trade dispensers by the side of the road. Or maybe I could go to every office that has a subscription and snatch them away too. No problem, I will have all that done by 8 a.m. just in time for me to get to work and have people yell at me in person (can you tell I’m not liking’ this job).
I hated doing Publicity so much that after a year I announced to Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss (A&M) that I was going to take a one year sabbatical and travel around the world.
btw: There are no sabbaticals in business, that is an academic concept. But I used it anyway…
One reason I was doing this is because I had always told myself that I didn’t want to see the world when I was old and in a wheel chair on a Senior’s Cruise at 65 ( I’m 74 now), I wanted to see it when I was young, in my twenties.
Herb and Jerry loved the idea and they were so happy for me, they gave an around the world tickets to 6 continents which I could use to go anywhere for one year. The price of that ticket in 1976 was $2,500 DOLLARS!
After traveling around the world for a year ( for another chapter story) I got a telegram (remember that?) from Jerry Moss saying “ You’ve had enough fun. Come back. I need you.”
I returned to Los Angeles to work next door to Jerry Moss, and work with him on a wide variety of projects.
I did not arrive to just go back to work.
I arrived with a new idea: A&M FILMS.
For the next story…