Once A King, Now A Prince:

A music agent memoir is not written from the spotlight. It is written from the phone, the routing sheet, the hotel bill, the half-empty weekday that had to be turned into a profitable night, and the instinct that told me a smaller room could sometimes do more for a band than a bigger hall. I was not standing at the microphone. I was trying to make sure the artist looked like he belonged there before the public fully understood what was happening. That is why this rock and roll story is different from most celebrity autobiographies. The artist can tell you what it felt like to hear the crowd roar. I can tell you what had to be done before there was a crowd big enough to roar. In my world, a career was not built only by talent. It was built by judgment, timing, routing, pressure, nerve, and sometimes…

If A Tree Falls In A Forest: A Rock And Roll Book Extra When telling my stories that are part of the untold side of rock history, I hope you will be informed and entertained as you read things you were unaware of as a fan, and would not have been able to read elsewhere. Here are some new, but old, tidbits for you, and some of the untold rock history that came from living on the business side of the music. Untold Rock History From The Other Side Of The Desk One industry true story that belongs to untold rock history, and that you rarely see in the rock and roll stories or memoirs of others, comes from the other side of the desk. Most rock memoirs are written by musicians. The agent’s side is rarely seen, which is why this kind of untold rock history matters. One story…

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…