If anyone had checked, they would have found out that kids who take music class do better in math and science.
And somebody should also have explained that testing isn’t learning. But for that to happen, somebody would have had to work for a living and… think. A concept rapidly disappearing in our disintegrating society.
The music teachers of America get to me somehow, probably through a lady named Susan McCue, who was working for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Susan was and is my connection to Washington, DC.
The teachers told me that all the music classes were being cut. Could I go check it out and see if anything could be done about it?
Susan hooked me up with Ted Kennedy and Mitch McConnell. Separately, of course. And as I like to say, tragically, Ted Kennedy is no longer with us, and tragically, Mitch McConnell still is.
But both were very nice that day. I was probably the only meeting they had that wasn’t about asking for money.
Teddy gave me a long rap about how all the way back to the Greeks, the Arts have always been included in education, and Arts classes being cut was an unintended consequence of improved science testing, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it anytime in the near future.
McConnell basically said the same thing, without the Greek rap of course.
I reported the bad news to the teachers. “But listen,” I said. “I’ve got an idea. With our screwed-up priorities, the government is not going to put instruments in kids’ hands for a while. We’ll have to find another way to do that.” We would eventually do that with Little Kids Rock. “How about we do a music history curriculum and sneak it into all the different grade levels? It can be cross-curricular, taught in music class, history class, English class, social studies. The best part is, it will work for all the students, not just musicians, and we can keep the Arts in the DNA of the education system.”
They thought about it for a few days and then endorsed the idea.
My first step toward realizing the curriculum was to create another foundation, Rock and Roll Forever.
My second step was to assemble an impressive advisory board before I moved on to the third step, the extremely unpleasant task of raising money. I went to Bruce and Bono and Marty Scorsese, all of whom agreed to be on the board.
I’ll always be grateful, because their participation meant that step three was less unpleasant than I feared. In fact, it was one of the two greatest meetings I’ve ever had. I met one of the loves of my life, Susie Buffett, who, in thirty minutes, on the strength of my idea (and, I’m sure, impressed by the board), gave me $2 million. And the Rock and Roll Forever foundation, whose main initiative would be the TeachRock.org music history curriculum, was born right there.
I quickly outlined two hundred basic lessons to get us started, hired Warren Zanes away from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as my first director, and started looking for teachers to write lesson plans. It would take ten years and a few directors to get the curriculum on the right track. It had to be bulletproof, since we’d only get one chance. We eventually got there.
Over that span, we kept promoting Rock any way we could. We made history by having an actual Garage Rock Chart in none other than Billboard frickin’ magazine! And I wrote a column every week for eighty-three straight weeks before the editors regained their senses.
We did a very freaky residency at a bar called Hawaiian Tropic Zone in Times Square. It was the perfect setting for us. Fake palm trees, waitresses in grass skirts and bikinis, tropical drinks. Kitsch City! We ran horror films on the walls constantly, sometimes right on the bands while they were playing. It was fabulous.
Wackiest, wildest, campiest gig ever.
Only lasted six weeks; the owner got busted for sexually harassing the waitresses.
Bikinis, Garage Rock, and drinks with umbrellas.
A volatile combination.
June 10, 2007, was a day that shall live in infamy: the final broadcast of The Sopranos. Episode 86.
The cast had been making appearances at casinos, breaking records everywhere. We had become so big with the right kind of crowd, the whales and the wiseguys, that we were doing boxing numbers, Ali numbers, Tyson numbers, Mayweather numbers.
Jimmy Allen decided to throw a party at the Hard Rock in Florida. He invited five thousand of his closest friends and every international whale to watch the final episode with the entire cast.
It was one awesome event.
Jimmy constructed a tent with a giant screen on the property, about a fifteen-minute walk from the hotel. We assembled with security to walk out together. There had to be like five thousand people there, stacked twelve to fifteen deep on both sides, screaming and shouting and applauding the whole way. I leaned over toward Jimmy and Lorraine. “If you ever wondered what it feels like being a Rock star, this is it.”
As I watched, I thought about the coming final scene of the episode, which was also the final scene of the series. Chase hadn’t told the cast exactly how the show would end. The script just said that Tony played a song on the jukebox. We were all seeing it for the first time.
More specifically, I was thinking about the two-week wrestling match I’d had with David over what that last song should be.
I had four songs in mind, and made my best pitch for each.
My first suggestion, Bruce’s “Loose Ends,” might have been a little too on the nose, but it would have been cool. My other three were Procol Harum’s “The Devil Came from Kansas” (coolest song ever), the Left Banke’s “Pretty Ballerina” (would have worked beautifully as juxtaposition), and the Youngbloods’ “Darkness, Darkness,” which would have reinforced the ominous vibe.
After ten years and seven seasons of the most amazing music ever used on a TV show, David wanted to use fucking Journey!
Ohhhh! As we used to say.
Nothing wrong with Journey, of course. They made terrific records, had one of the best singers in Rock, and were huge.
But that was the problem. David had turned a lot of people onto much more obscure music through the eighty-six episodes, and the show had the reputation of having the coolest music on TV.
His final argument?
“Look,” he said. “Tony is a Classic Rock guy. That’s what he would have played.”
End of discussion.
The day after the finale aired, I appeared on my Miami radio affiliate’s big nationally syndicated morning show, where I heard a straight hour of complaints, consternation, and downright insults about the surprise ending.
People wanted to know what had happened, they’d thought their electricity went out, blah, blah, blah…
After an hour, I started fighting back. “OK, smart-asses,” I said. “You don’t like that ending, let’s hear yours!”
Silence.
“Here, let me help you, did you want Tony to die?”
Grumble, grumble, well… no…
“Did you want Carmela to die?”
Uh… no.
“One of the kids maybe?”
No!
So maybe it wasn’t such a bad ending after all?
By the time the radio show ended, the whole country had started to come around. David Chase had dodged the final bullet and regained his genius status.
Years later, Vanity Fair did a retrospective on the show and talked to actors and writers. Inevitably, the reporter got to the big question: “How did it really end? What happened?”
“OK,” I said. “I’ve been asked this a thousand times, and I’m gonna settle it once and for all right now. You are going to get the scoop! This is the last time I will ever answer this, so sharpen your pencil.”
The reporter got visibly excited.
“You wanna know what really happened?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Alright. This is it. Are you ready?”
He was.
“The Director yelled cut and the actors went home.”
Any excuse to go to Cannes, I’m there.
Nice i
s nice. Èze. Monte Carlo. Right into Portofino. Over to Barcelona. The entire Mediterranean coastline is one big groovy paradise, and I don’t know why I don’t live there.
All my life I’ve wanted to live on the beach. Came close in Miami many times. Lauderdale. But the hurricane thing—man, I don’t know.
None of those problems in the Mediterranean.
I just wish I spoke the language. Italian. French. Spanish. Any of them.
I’ve tried. Maureen and I took Italian lessons for a while. The teacher was a crab. Very formal. Italian is all about informal expressions, and she was more by the book. If we’d actually learned what she taught us, the only people in Italy who would have understood us would have been about a dozen college professors in Milan.
I keep those fantasies alive in my mind, though. Living on the beach, and speaking at least one of those languages. I tell myself I’ve got to save something for my old age. So I’m saving that.
And the opera.
And breaking even.
And finding out who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep.
So in 2009, when I was invited to give a keynote address at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity sponsored by the advertising world, I took it.
“The Future of Advertising” was the theme that year. Maybe that’s the theme every year. I don’t know.
A lot of people invite me to do speeches.
Once.
They rarely invite me back because my tendency is to tell them the truth with the hope of planting a seed or two that might result in a positive change.
In this case, this was the seed I planted. “Listen,” I said,
You want to hear about the future of advertising? There is none.
Advertising is nothing but an aggravating pain-in-the-ass interruption that people feel they have to tolerate. The minute they find content without it, they will flock there.
HBO is the business model of the future. That’s where it’s at. The future is subscription. So you guys should focus on product placement and “Presented by”–type things like on Public Broadcasting channels. Limited-interruption-type programming. Other than that? Your future is sitcoms, reality programming, and Fox News.
They probably weren’t thrilled to hear they were passé, but I got a big hand.
Once, like I said.
The E Street Band had been asked to play the Super Bowl for years, but in the old days, the audience was a mile away. Bruce wisely held out until they agreed to allow the audience to be right up against the stage the way we liked it.
That finally happened in Tampa, for Super Bowl XLIII.
I didn’t care about the game. All I wanted to see was how the hell they assembled that stage so fast!
It was wild to witness. Like a hundred ants coming out of every possible gate with a piece of staging and zip, zip, zip, there it was.
The performance was timed like the Normandy Invasion, to the second. Thirteen minutes exactly is my recollection.
I wasn’t at the meeting with the NFL and the production people, so I was a little surprised when Bruce came back with the setlist: “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” “Born to Run,” and “Glory Days.”
“Uh, not for nothing,” I said, “but don’t we have a new album coming out the week of the Super Bowl?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Well, call me crazy, but this Super Bowl thing seems like it could be a promotional opportunity!”
“We’ve got no time. Everybody decided on those three songs.”
I thought about it for a minute.
“How about we leave out the second verse of every song? It’ll buy us a minute or two, and we can throw in a bit of the title track, ‘Working on a Dream.’”
And that’s what we did.
We killed.
Bruce ended with a slide, a tribute to Pete Townshend. And if our cameraman hadn’t caught him, we’d be looking for a new front man.
On the way out, Bruce looked into the camera and said, “I’m going to Disneyland!”
I thought to myself, Maybe they’ll let you in this time.
And you know, to this day, no one has ever come up to me and said anything about those missing verses.
It could make you wonder why we work so hard on those lyrics.
Anyway, not a bad way to end a decade.
The E Street Band was back.
twenty-eight
Lilyhammer
(2010–2013)
Life requires constant vigilance against love of humanity turning into profound frustration, resentment, and disgust. In other words, let’s face it, most people are assholes.
—GAUTAMA BUDDHA, THE FIFTH NOBLE TRUTH
American Idol was the kind of show the Rock world loved to put down at every opportunity.
It was accused of being Phony! Fabricated! Superficial! Instant Stardom! A false picture of the realities of the business.
I only caught an episode or two, but Maureen liked it, and I figured any show that introduced Smokey Robinson to a new generation was OK by me, since at this point in our history, an era that future generations will look back on with pity, most of our world is phony, fabricated, superficial, and full of instant stardom.
Jimmy Iovine was serving as head mentor, and he asked me to come on as an assistant mentor. Not exactly my world, but I figured Maureen would get a kick out of it, and it ended up being fish-out-of-water fun. I enjoyed trying to find the common ground between traditional Rock and the modern Pop world more than I thought I would.
I tried to share my experience as best as I could. Sometimes a brief comment; when appropriate, a lengthier explanation that I thought might prove useful if they ended up with a real career.
Mostly I focused on song choice. How to pick material that reflected their vocal style and sensibility. It wasn’t easy for the singers, because after getting our advice, they had only twenty minutes or so to learn a song they had probably never heard before in their lives.
Can’t remember whether it was me, Nigel Lythgoe, or Maureen who suggested it now, but I remember Joshua Ledet knocking me out with the Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody.”
Maureen got friendly with quite a few of the singers on Idol, and David Cook surprised her with the gift of a puppy. It was a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel like our first dog Jake, this one named Edie.
I was not thrilled with this because half of me went with Jake when he left us, so I assured Cook that when Edie leaves, he would be leaving with her.
“Why didn’t you drop off a couple of kids while you’re at it?” I snarled. The first time he came to the E Street dressing room, I said, “Where’s my gun?” just to scare the shit out of him.
Of course I love her more than life itself (I added Sedgwick to her name), but I’m not the only one who hopes she lives forever.
I also had a good year at the Hall of Fame.
Selection is a Darwinian process. No, that’s not fair to Darwin—it’s more ruthless than that. It’s always a challenge, as each member of the nominating committee suggests two names, and then tries to talk the other twenty-five or so members into voting for our suggestions rather than their own!
Those first fifty names get winnowed down to fifteen or so, and that list goes out to the hundreds of members of the Hall of Fame plus I’m not sure who else, and they vote it down to five.
In 2011, I brought up the Hollies and, miraculously, got them in. I say “miraculously” because it’s hard as hell. And it really pisses me off when honorees don’t show up, because show up or not, I guarantee it will be the first sentence of their epitaph.
At the time, I was making a case for writers, based on the simple truth that our entire industry begins with the song. I had brought it up before and gotten nowhere, but this time I had extra passion in my argument, having recently lost my friend Ellie Greenwich. “Are we going to wait for them all to die?” finally got through.
A few writers were already in—Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Carole King a
nd Gerry Goffin, Willie Dixon, and the amazing Motown team of Holland-Dozier-Holland—but that year we managed to induct Jeff Barry and Ellie, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Mort Shuman (his writing partner Doc Pomus was inexplicably in without him), Jesse Stone, and Otis Blackwell.
The committee tragically and arbitrarily cut off my list, leaving out Jerry Ragovoy, Luther Dixon, Dan Penn, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, and Bert Berns. We would get Bert in a year or two later.
I have a great deal of clarity when it comes to who deserves to be in, because, once again, I am quite sure that a Renaissance took place, and it was finite.
Everything important, essential, and truly original came from the ’50s and ’60s.
That doesn’t mean nothing great came after. Lots did, and it should be recognized. But without the Naissance of the ’50s and the Renaissance of the ’60s, none of the rest would exist.
The further we get from those decades, the harder it is to justify the relevance of the pioneers when programming the Hall’s televised induction ceremony. That is the frustration of trying to institutionalize historical significance, which ostensibly is our job, while simultaneously having to make a TV audience happy.
I once again suggested our meetings be broadcast live so the audience can witness the process and stop questioning the legitimacy of the decision-making.
I spend half my life defending the Hall of Fame and Jann Wenner, who everyone likes to blame for everything when he doesn’t even attend the meetings!
The system is becoming more challenging, but it’s still functioning. When it inevitably breaks down, I hope the executive committee has the wisdom to recognize the dysfunction and replace it with a new system that works as well or better.
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