Once A King, Now A Prince:

When A Music Industry Executive Learns Too Late One of the things that occurred to me after writing “Once A King, And Now A Prince,” along with all of the additional posts and supportive writing for my memoir that I have done, is that the thought that consistently pops into my head is, “what could I have done then, that would not only be different, but could change things for the better?” As a music industry executive, I had wins, losses, mistakes, lessons, and a front-row seat to untold rock history. Looking back now, this is also the story of my life, not just the story of my career. Big Not-So-Bad John On a personal level, as a kid, there was a person who was always kind to me, whose name was John. John owned the small grocery and sundries shop next to my father’s candy store, and from his…

My Healing From A Dysfunctional Family: Curbing The Fear Over the years, I have noticed that I have a particular persona that is, most of the time, hypervigilant. Whether I was walking down a street or driving my car, I would imagine what I called the “what ifs.” I would see some guy and imagine what I would do if I were attacked by him. I would be reviewing my moves from martial arts or boxing and planning my counter. While driving, this would happen if someone was tailgating me, cutting me off, or alongside me. What was worse was my imagining an attack for no reason at all. I now understand that this hypervigilance is part of the damage from a dysfunctional family. For most of my life, I never connected the man looking for danger with the child who had lived with it. Healing From A Dysfunctional Family…

Frustration at So-Called Online Rock and Roll History About Rush I was searching Google for information for a post I was writing, and while I was there, I decided to look into how Rush had been established in America, who the actual management was at the time, and how the record deal came about. What I found was what I had seen for years: misinformation, bad information, people taking credit for things they had little to do with, and the same drivel repeated over and over. Google was no different. When I challenged the information Google’s AI served up, I understood that it could only work with what it found across the Internet. The trouble is that when inaccurate versions are repeated often enough, they begin to look like accepted rock and roll history. I decided to set the record straight with a music industry true story from the man…

WHEN A ROCK N ROLL MEMOIR STOPS BEING ABOUT THE APPLAUSE There was a time when going on the road with a rock band seemed like the greatest life imaginable. I was young, ambitious, making money, flying back and forth to England, discovering bands, negotiating deals, and watching artists I believed in walk onto stages in front of thousands of people. Every city brought another hotel, another promoter, another concert, and another problem to solve before the lights went down. We were helping create the modern touring business without really thinking of it that way. We were simply living it. For a long time, it was exhilarating. Then, somewhere along the way, the road stopped being quite so much fun. That change is at the heart of this rock n roll memoir. I cannot point to one particular day when that happened. It happened gradually, as the stories accumulated and…

THE REAL EDUCATION BEHIND MY MUSIC INDUSTRY STORY Every music industry story has famous names, big stages, contracts, victories, and betrayals. What is often overlooked are the men behind the music who made those careers possible. Some taught me directly. Others taught me by what they did wrong. A few taught me something valuable only after the damage had been done. My music industry story came from Associated Booking, American Talent International, promoters, managers, agents, and record executives. Their lessons became the foundation of the music industry stories I tell today. LARRY MAGID TAUGHT ME THE VALUE OF THE RIGHT INTRODUCTION Before Associated Booking, I was buying and reselling recording acts for clubs. Nearing graduation from Hofstra, I met Larry Magid at Capitol Booking. Larry knew I was active in live music and that Sol Saffian needed help. He suggested that I go see Sol. That introduction changed my life….

The Glory Was Real. So Were The Scars. Behind the music business there is not just glory. There is pain, anxiety, backstabbing, betrayal, pressure, jealousy and the occasional moment when you wonder why the hell you got into it in the first place. Of course, there was plenty of fun behind the music too. I represented artists I believed in, watched careers explode, sat in rooms where important decisions were made and lived through a period of rock and roll that could never be duplicated. But the applause belonged to the people onstage. Behind the music, those of us building careers were often dealing with an entirely different show. The Pressure Behind The Music When you are the agent or manager, the audience sees a sold-out arena. You see the contracts, routing, promoters, record companies, egos, personalities and the hundred things that can go wrong before the first note is…

A NOTE ABOUT THESE WRITINGS: I did not spell-check or grammar-check these poems when I wrote them, nor have I done so now. They are reproduced here exactly as I wrote them at the time—in their original words, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, format, and layout. Nothing has been cleaned up or rewritten. What you are reading is the nineteen-year-old me as he put these thoughts on paper, with the exception of the final piece, which I wrote in 1976 at the age of thirty-four. The First True Life Stories I Put On Paper Long before I ever thought about writing a memoir, I was writing about my life. At nineteen, I had begun to think about moving on from the dysfunction of my own family and was grasping at the hope that better things might be waiting somewhere ahead. I didn’t know where I was going, and I certainly hadn’t figured…

A Classic Rock Memoir About Ambition, Anger, And The Childhood I Carried With Me When people hear the words classic rock memoir, they usually expect the famous names, backstage stories, big deals, arguments, excess, and the moments that could only have happened during those years. I have plenty of them. I spent decades inside the music business, helped build American Talent International, managed Rush, worked with major artists, and lived through an era that now belongs to rock history. What interests me more today are the decisions I got wrong. Some were enormous, some were reckless, and one involved a waiter, a piece of cheesecake, and Tony Bennett singing at the Waldorf. For years I treated those incidents as colorful stories from a complicated career. Only much later did I begin to see that they might also belong to another story, one that began long before I ever walked into…

POSTSCRIPT: The King Has Died—Long Live the King. Barry Richards passed away. The man is gone, but everything he meant to me—and to the music—remains. This is a postscript to my music autobiography that I never expected, or wanted, to write. For anyone who does not know who he was, he was a giant in the music business. When I met him, he was a DJ in Washington, D.C., and one of the things that I always admired about him was that, of everyone I knew in the music business, BR (Barry Richards, A/K/A The Reazar) had the best “ears” for hearing a hit record. Barry, due to his radio show success, grew into the “top rotation,” so to speak, and became a P.D., a Program Director. He was the man in charge of the playlists. Some radio stations leave that to the Music Director. Barry eventually bought his own…

How does one reconcile with the fact that a sentient being is no longer in the home you shared with him for twenty years? I feel different now that he is gone. The house is empty. I feel a bit empty. He was a loyal pal for sure. His name was Butters. Butters was a well-known cat in that I used him as an icon, in memes and in posts. He was part of my everyday life, both personal and business. Butters succumbed to intestinal cancer, which caused him considerable pain. It had reached a point where it was cruel to keep him alive. He was not eating nearly enough to keep going, and his last blood test confirmed the cancer, as did the doctor’s examination. I spared nothing with respect to expenditures to keep him going. I wished he could last forever, but life is not like that. Losing…

The Music Is Only Half the Job Someone remarked to me recently about how hard it is to succeed in the music business. I had originally answered him online, but the more I thought about my reply, the more I realized I had reduced a lifetime of experience to a few paragraphs. There was a larger music business story sitting underneath it, because when people talk about “the music business,” they sometimes hear only the first word. Music is what brings everyone into the room. Business is what keeps the lights on, gets the record heard, puts the artist on the road, pays the bills, and gives a career a chance to last beyond one lucky break. That does not mean an artist has to become an accountant with a guitar. It does mean that anyone who wants to make a living from music eventually has to understand that he…

When Music Industry True Stories Collide With The Legend I was on one of the top-rated music forums when a post I had started was closed. A member still had a solid and cogent question—one that had not been asked before the thread ended—so he started a second post and presented the question again. His question was simple: “Is this a photo of the industry professionals meeting that Bill Graham discussed in his memoir?” He then posted a lengthy excerpt from Graham’s memoir explaining Bill’s version of what had happened at that meeting. That exchange reminded me why I continue writing music industry true stories. The longer history sits around, the easier it becomes for legend, self-promotion, selective memory, and plain old B. S. to replace what actually happened. Eventually, somebody searches for the story and discovers that people who were really in the room have become footnotes, while others…