ROCK AND ROLL INSIDER STORY
WITH VIDEOS, PODCASTS,
& AUTHOR READINGS

My rock and roll insider story comes from decades spent inside the music business, not from research, rumor, or somebody else’s memories. I owned American Talent International, signed and represented major artists, managed talent, made deals, traveled with bands, and experienced firsthand the personalities and events that helped shape an extraordinary period in rock and roll history.

The videos, podcasts, book trailers, and author readings collected here bring another dimension to Once A King, Now A Prince. Some deal directly with the music business. Others go back to the dysfunctional family and childhood I survived before rock and roll became my escape, my profession, and eventually a major part of my life.

Taken together, they tell a rock and roll insider story about Rod Stewart and Faces, The Eagles, ZZ Top, Deep Purple, Rush, and many others, while also revealing what happened away from the stages, headlines, and public mythology. This is the untold rock history that often disappears when the people who were actually there stop telling the stories.

The book trailers below offer different windows into Once A King, Now A Prince. Some introduce the journey from childhood abuse to success in the music industry. Others focus on the artists, deals, relationships, excess, betrayals, and unexpected turns that became part of my career.

They also show why my story cannot be separated neatly into “family” and “music.” What happened before the music helped shape the man who eventually found himself inside the music business, making decisions and building relationships with artists whose music would become part of rock history.

These trailers are short introductions to much larger rock and roll insider story—stories about success, survival, ambition, loyalty, money, ego, talent, and the strange things that can happen when all of them collide.

Podcasts give me room to go deeper. In these interviews, I discuss my years as a music agent, manager, agency owner, author, and participant in the business during an era when many of the rules were still being written.

The conversations cover artists I signed and represented, how the agency business actually worked, what happened on the road and behind the scenes, and the difference between the public image of the music business and the reality experienced by the people operating inside it.

These are music industry true stories, told from memory by someone who participated in them. They are also part of the broader story of how rock and roll became an enormous business while still retaining much of the unpredictability, personality, and chaos that made it exciting in the first place.

For anyone interested in rock and roll history, these interviews provide something different from the familiar retelling of famous careers. They provide the perspective of someone who was often sitting on the other side of the desk, negotiating the deal, booking the tour, signing the artist, solving the problem, or occasionally discovering that there was no solution at all.

The author readings bring the written stories into my own voice. Some come directly from Once A King, Now A Prince. Others are readings of essays and stories I have written about family, betrayal, survival, New York, songwriting, touring, the music business, and the people whose paths crossed mine.

They include music business stories, but the music is only part of the journey. The readings also return to the childhood experiences and family relationships that shaped everything that followed.

That is one reason I consider these recordings an important part of the page. Rock and roll insider stories are more meaningful when you understand the person who lived them. The career did not begin with a backstage pass or a record contract. It began years earlier, with a child trying to survive circumstances he did not choose.

My years as a music agent placed me close to artists, managers, promoters, record companies, tours, negotiations, successes, failures, and plenty of situations nobody could have planned. Those experiences became part of my music agent memoir, but many of the individual stories continue beyond the pages of the book.

Some are funny. Some are painful. Some reveal how the business actually worked. Others simply capture moments that would otherwise disappear with the people who were there.

That is what I mean by untold rock history. History is not only the records that sold millions of copies or the concerts everyone remembers. It is also the conversations, decisions, arguments, accidents, friendships, betrayals, and unlikely circumstances that happened before anyone knew which moments would eventually matter.

The videos and recordings on this page represent only part of what I have written and spoken about. Throughout this site in addition to my rock and roll insider story, there are music business stories, and firsthand recollections from a career that stretched across some of the most important decades in modern music.

There are stories about the artists, but there are also stories about the machinery surrounding them: agents, managers, promoters, record companies, lawyers, songwriters, road crews, and all the other people whose work rarely received the same attention.

Together, the videos, podcasts, readings, and written stories provide my view of inside the music business and the rock and roll history I was fortunate—and sometimes unfortunate—enough to witness firsthand.

Once A King, Now A Prince is available on Amazon and through fine booksellers.