Life on Planet Rock

by Lonn Friend

  In early November, I received a tape by messenger from a man named Carter with songs by an artist called E, who called his band Eels. The first song hit me the way “Raga” had— between the eyes, ears, and right down to the solar plexus. The track was called “Novocaine for the Soul.” In both vocal tone and lyrical pathos, it evoked Peter Gabriel. I brought A&R reps Michelle Ozbourn and Jason Markey into my office and cranked it up.

  “This is amazing!” exclaimed Jason and Michelle, almost in unison. I felt the same way. Then I played the other two demos on the tape and was further blown away. The second song was called “Susan’s House,” a bizarre, melancholy ballad laced with spoken-word samples and homegrown sound effects. The chorus was hypnotizing: “Going over to Susan’s house, she’s gonna make it right.”

  The third song on the tape was a passionate rocker called “Rags to Rags.” We were speechless. I asked Michelle to get Carter on the phone immediately. “Okay, this Eels tape, uh, I’m in. What do I have to do?”

  It was still early in the shopping season. Only one label had heard and passed on the band. “Move fast, get Clive into it, and you’ve got a great shot,” said Carter, E’s manager.

  I started doing my homework. Mark Oliver Everett was a singer-songwriter who had grown up in Virginia and moved to L.A. in his midtwenties. He cited Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush and the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds as the two records that inspired him to become a musician. He’d been around the industry block once before and was signed to Polydor Records, where he released 1992’s A Man Called E and 1993’s Broken Toy Shop. Both albums were commercial disappointments and he was dropped.

  In 1995, E saw his musical persona transmuting from a lone balladeer to something more group-oriented, so he dropped the solo-letter moniker and formed Eels. He widened his instrumental repertoire to include a Wurlitzer electric piano played through a guitar amp and secured a rhythm section with Butch Norton on drums and Tommy Walters on bass.

  The first time I saw Eels perform live was in the basement of the tiny Luna Park club in West Hollywood. They were mesmerizing. I went up to E after the show and introduced myself. It was the night ABC was premiering a big documentary on the Beatles. “I’d like to hang out more and talk, but I have to get home and watch the Beatles.”

  He stared me straight down and said, “That’s tonight? I have to run too. I’ll see you again, Lonn.”

  Connection made, I called Carter the next day and arranged for me to take E to dinner. “He liked you,” said Carter.

  I listened to the demo nonstop, at home, in my car. Megan, only five years old, had memorized the chorus to “Susan’s House.” After a Mexican dinner somewhere, I invited E to come back to my house so we could hang out and talk some more. When he saw my dad’s one-hundred-year-old grand piano in the living room, he sat down and started twinkling the keys. Megan came downstairs and E did an impromptu performance of “Susan’s House” for her as a bedtime lullaby.

  Out back in the guesthouse—the private museum of my career where I listened to records, entertained visitors, and escaped when I needed to be alone—E and I got to know each other. “I come from a pretty dysfunctional family,” he confessed. “My sister’s a drug addict and my mom’s a whore.” I was surprised by his honesty. “I used to sit in front of the house where [failed filmmaker] Ed Wood committed suicide and write songs. I go into dark places but try to find sweet melodies.” He reminded me artistically of Morrissey, a master of marrying the darkest lyrics with the most uplifting refrains.

  We listened to Pet Sounds twice. I didn’t hesitate to sing along with Brian when the urge called. “I guess I just wasn’t made for these times.” I asked E if he ever felt that way, because I certainly did, especially since leaving the media and taking a record-company job.

  On December 7, the band performed again at the Alligator Lounge on Pico Boulevard, about fifteen minutes west of Cheviot Hills. There were A&R reps from other labels in the room. I was pressing Clive and Roy to spend time with the demos. The interest was rising on the band. I sent a memo to Clive and Roy on December 11, 1995, urging them to pay attention and show me some support. Clive wrote back that the songs were quirky and clever but they were hard to break. He was skeptical, but was bolstered by my enthusiasm and agreed to see them when he was next in L.A.

  On January 11, 1996, I composed a fifteen-hundred-word memo titled “The Story of E,” detailing the history of the artist, why Arista should sign Eels, and how we would break them. My stock had fallen with Clive due to the failed Bogmen campaign, and it was obvious that for me to shepherd another band into the building, I’d have to buckle down, talk the talk, and become one of them. Under the heading “How Do We Break It?” I wrote the following:

  There is a growing movement of quirky, ambient/pop artists happening at AA, Alternative, and Modern Rock radio. I’ve attached current soundscan figures on three acts from the genre, which I believe Eels fall into: Morphine (Rykodisc), Portishead (London), and the very hot Folk Implosion (London). I also submit to this category the new Eric Matthews release, It’s Heavy in Here (Sub Pop), which is garnering raves from the industry and consumer critics alike. Radio and MTV are the key to breaking the Eels. The images in E’s songs lend themselves to cutting-edge filmmaking that goes straight to Alternative Nation and beyond. I believe, however, that the Eels have great crossover potential, à la Crash Test Dummies, and that tracks like “Rags to Rags,” “Your Lucky Day in Hell,” and “Beautiful Freak” could very well, like “Novocaine,” find comfort atop the Modern Rock charts. E is an artist who possesses a quiet, subtle star quality that will be conveyed in press, video, and live performance.

  I was dancing around like a court jester begging for attention. I used to write about rock ‘n’ roll for fans and musicians. I reported what I saw and felt. Now I was spending hours on memoranda begging aliens to take a look at life on Planet Rock through my eyes. I’d been reduced to a lobbyist, standing atop a soapbox, flailing my arms like a lunatic, shouting, “Please, please, O great and powerful Oz, look at me! Look at me! Listen to me! Trust me! And more than that, trust them. The artists. The ones who built your entire fucking gold-plated empire!”

  Clive Davis’s private Eels showcase was set for January 28, 1996, 6 P.M., at the Cox rehearsal studio in Hollywood. That afternoon I’d made a trip up to the bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where the boss was staying while in L.A. We’d moved to a new building a year before, but with the exception of one token appearance, the West Coast employees never saw Clive unless they were summoned up to the bungalow. He wasn’t much for walking the halls, pressing the flesh with the rank and file, and rallying the troops. Beverly Hills was a vanity play, a satellite office, an afterthought.

  “Michael Barackman doesn’t share your enthusiasm for Eels.” Clive’s comment almost made me throw up. His journeyman tape-listener who had never signed an act since coming to Arista was passing judgment on my artist from the other side of the country, having never seen the act live. I didn’t dignify Clive’s comment with a reaction but rather shifted my energy to prepare for the evening’s showcase. “I know I’m right about them,” I said. “They’re going to blow you away tonight.”

  Arista’s head of business affairs was a skinny six-foot blonde with a no-bullshit personality named Carol Fenelon. And she was crazy about Eels. “I’ll be at the showcase, Lonn. We’re going to get this one, I can feel it.” Carol wielded considerable influence with Roy, who would also be there. The ducks were lining up. The band was setting up when we arrived.

  The six-song set was perfect. E was engaging, Butch slammed the kit, Tommy throttled the bass. Carol and I looked at each other when the music had stopped and smiled a giddy grin. I gave a muted thumbs-up to the band, Carter, and their attorney, Jonathan Haft. I’d assembled all the principals. If Clive’s thumb went up too, I’d have closed my second deal.

  We met in the hallway adjacent to the parking lot. I could barely contain myself. The boss didn’t wait for
me to speak first. “The songs are interesting but he’s not a star. I can see ‘Novocaine’ getting modern-rock airplay and possibly ‘Rags to Rags,’ but the front man is not compelling. Arista signs stars, Lonn. I don’t see it. I’m sorry; you’ll have to pass. I have to get to a dinner.”

  I stopped him. “Wait one minute, please.”

  Carol spoke up. She believed Arista desperately needed to develop some hip baby bands to give the roster balance. I took her lead and pleaded the credibility case—we needed cool bands to seduce other bands to build a rock roster. The argument was flawed. Credibility to Clive was measured by the success quotient, how many platinum acts were delivered with the smallest number of overall releases. Cred comes when an influential program director like Oedipus or KROQ’s Kevin Weatherly gives you a shot and adds your record to the playlist.

  RIP running a feature gave a band cred. Lonn Friend pleading his case on a Hollywood sidewalk to the most stubborn icon the music industry’s ever known didn’t.

  Clive zoomed away in his hired town car as I walked back into the studio and broke the news to the band. “You did your best, Lonn,” said Carter.

  “Yeah, man, don’t stress it,” added E. “You’re a good guy. Some things aren’t meant to be.”

  Yeah, like me in the record business, I lamented to myself.

  The following week, I was playing golf with Interscope Records president Tom Whalley at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades. Walking up the ninth fairway, I asked him if he’d heard of Eels. “No,” he said. “Who are they?” I told one of the most successful A&R men in the business my frustrating tale, pulled a copy of their demo out of my pocket, and handed it to him. “Here, bud. Enjoy.”

  Tom took the tape back to the office and played it for label founder Ted Field and CEO Jimmy Iovine, who both flipped out, called Carter, and began their quest for the man called E. In the interim, Mike Simpson—one half of the production team known as the Dust Brothers—had just landed an A&R gig at the brand-new record arm of DreamWorks, the entertainment conglomerate founded by Steven Spielberg, former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, and record mogul David Geffen. Simpson knew E from the Silver Lake/Echo Park artist community that included (what did Clive call him?) “novelty” artist Beck. DreamWorks Records, like Interscope, came to win, hiring a team of moguls to run the company that included former Warner Bros. titans Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker as well as my old pal Michael Goldstone.

  Over the next two weeks a bidding war ensued. David Geffen and Jimmy Iovine were courting the artist that I had to pass on. At the last Eels industry showcase, there were ten companies in the room salivating over E and his sad, whimsical, beautiful songs. I went down because I loved seeing the band perform, but the gesture was more masochistic than anything else.

  Out of respect for my passionate pursuit of Eels, Clive wrote me a memo further explaining his decision to pass on the act. In the memo, dated February 6, 1996, he said he was concerned about E. Clive felt that he lacked staying power, and that he was not a tortured soul. He made a reference to E’s quirkiness and said that he didn’t feel it was star caliber. All of this sounded so judgmental to me, it discounted any validity the legendary music man had in my eyes with regard to evaluating the talent or integrity of the artist.

  This was Clive Davis and his ilk—puppeteers of privilege who, because of their success and Donald Trump-sized boardrooms, had deluded themselves into believing that they could not only see inside the soul of another but calculate just how tortured that soul was. Clive’s inflated sense of entitlement was representative of everything I’d come to despise about the record business. Ego, power, greed—Babylon’s holy trinity. Thanks, but no thanks.

  In the end, Eels became the first act to sign to the new DreamWorks Records. On February 16, 1996, I sent the following fax to Mo Ostin’s and Lenny Waronker’s office:

  Dear Gentlemen:

  I just wanted to drop a quick note congratulating you on signing Eels. The gentle, gifted man called E and his music have been a very special part of my life for the past four months. It was the most pleasant obsession of my career. E, Tommy, and Butch have found the perfect home for their remarkable songs. My envy is only superseded by my confidence in their future success and the delight you and great people at DreamWorks are going to have making and breaking their records.

  After I lost Eels, my desire for the job dissipated, though I and my staff kept up the search for new rock talent. Jason Markey brought in a hilarious, Santa Barbara-based three-piece called Nerf Herder, who had recorded a demo called “Van Halen” that sounded so instantly radio reactive, you needed lead gloves to hold on to it. I helped Jason ink the act, but Arista failed to get “Van Halen” or its brilliant novelty follow-up “Sorry” on the radio. For the latter track, I solicited the help of a golfing buddy, actor Miguel Ferrer, and his childhood pal Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill to do cameos for the video clip. The name Nerf Herder comes from a line uttered by Han Solo (my friend Ben’s dad) in the original Star Wars. Miguel loved Nerf Herder. He thought lead singer Parry Gripp was a satirical genius.

  The video for “Sorry” was awesome, but once again the label failed to get airplay, and Nerf Herder died an unceremonious death at Arista. Every time I hear that comical band Bowling for Soul, I think of Nerf Herder and what may have been. Then again, we’re talking about the music business, an industry with a 90 percent failure rate. Sometimes just getting the shot is a miracle. Success, well, that’s downright biblical.

  I began to fall off Clive’s radar like a UFO. With fifteen months left on my contract, I was content going through the motions, occasionally pitching acts that I knew would be rejected. Reality was that Clive gave all his A&R people the power to sign one act on their own. They called it a “put.” You got one put, and if it hit, you were off to the races, had the man’s respect, and the rope would loosen up a bit. If it didn’t, you’d never get another act past Clive again unless they knocked his argyle socks off. I never saw the big man’s bare feet again.

  I saved whatever influence I had left at the roundtable for the Bogmen and their sophomore LP, Closed Captioned Radio. With far less money but equal passion, the band delivered a magnificent sophomore effort under the studio aegis of renowned producer Bill Laswell and SoHo studio character Godfrey Diamond, the man behind the dials for Lou Reed’s ephemeral Coney Island Baby.

  Radio hit the streets February 10, 1998, and was pronounced dead on arrival. It moved a paltry ten thousand units before the band was unceremoniously dropped from the still-lackluster Arista rock roster. As for their A&R guy, he’d turned in his last receipt for a plane ticket or restaurant on January 1, 1998. The new head of marketing, Jay Krugman—with whom I had history from his days at Columbia when RIP was heaping ink on acts like Dangerous Toys, Corrosion of Conformity and Alice in Chains— had stepped up and kept the Friend family mortgage covered by securing me a six-month consulting extension (at a considerable drop in pay) on my original contract, which expired on July 1, 1997.

  My three and a half years at the University of Clive taught me many things. There is no science to A&R. You do what your instincts tell you. Ultimately, I was not a record-company creature. I was a journalist, a music fan, who paid little mind to the industry’s protocol or politics. I understood artists from an authentic place. I knew how to talk to them, on their level, without the invisible wall defined by the institution and suit. Hell, I didn’t even own a suit.

  Clive was a genius at hit making, but he no longer loved music. Based on my inside adventure, I could see that nothing mattered to him but the legacy of platinum success. “Novocaine” went to number one at modern rock, but Clive was unimpressed. Why? Beautiful Freak never sold a million copies, nor have any of the subsequent Eels releases, though the band developed a formidable following around the globe. They have a rock ‘n’ roll career—fans who love their music and come back again and again to see them perform.

  In my opinion, E is a modern-day Brian
Wilson, a gentle balladeer of exacting truth and melody. His musical legacy defines artistic credibility Listen to Eels’ 2005 somber masterpiece Blinking Lights and Other Revelations, the band’s Vagrant Records debut and a Pet Sounds progeny if ever there was one. DreamWorks gave the group a solid decade of support, but they went through a consolidation in 2003, and I guess the bottom line is the bottom line.

  In the weeks preceding my exit, I tasked Eric Greenspan to toss out some job feelers for me, but there was little interest in the former media player turned label failure. “Lonn, I think you better start thinking about a career change. The record business is about fitting round pegs in round holes. You’re a square peg.”

  Really? I thought I was a chameleon.

  11

  Easy Riders on the Storm

  IF MY SPIRIT WERE ALWAYS WIDE AWAKE FROM THIS MOMENT ON, WE WOULD SOON ARRIVE AT THE TRUTH, WHICH PERHAPS EVEN NOW SURROUNDS US WITH HER ANGELS WEEPING.

  —Arthur Rimbaud

  Well, I woke up this morning, and I got myself a beer!

  A howl descends on the lobes of several thousand bikers. The man with the microphone summons their participation and repeats the verse, his volume upped in measure to the enthusiasm. “Well, I woke up this morning …” Vocal stops. Music stops. The verse soars to conclusion on the fuel-injected pipes of a crowd now fully, passionately engaged. “And I got myself a beer!” The collective croon can be heard a light-year away.

  Harry and Beverly are clutching each other so close the emblems on their leather vests—tiny, intricate, shimmering mini-plaques denoting the fifty states and million miles they’ve trekked together since tying the knot thirty-three years ago— touch, click, and almost spark. They are gray from stem to stern, and their taut, round bellies bounce in approval as the legendary strains suck them into a place where past has French-kissed present.