Many of the song titles have an instantly recognizable dramatic feel, conjuring recollections of intense Marlon Brando or James Dean movies. Some titles are the same as classic films: “The Wild One,” “In the Heat of the Night,” “For a Few Dollars More,” “Wild Wild Angels.” Much of the imagery is complementary: nights perforated by howling winds and tormenting rains with strangers lurking in the shadows; midnight rendezvous, the man with eyes as red as the sun; and mysterious settings like Devil Gate Drive. In 1987 Dolly Parton recorded Mike’s “Red Hot Screaming Love.”
It’s important to note that many recordings in the early days of rock ’n’ roll embraced a considerable amount of fun. The personalities of many of the original rock ’n’ rollers made them seem more like cartoon characters than professional musicians. Think of the outrageousness of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, or the duck walk of Chuck Berry. Mike Chapman, through his records with Sweet, Mud, and Suzi Quatro, championed this fun spirit. It largely dissipated from Mike’s stateside productions as he focused on competing with serious records in the soft rock and disco genres.
As Richard Foos and I were partners in our new Rhino Records label, I was curious how other partners worked together. Mike was the real creative talent, but he couldn’t do it on his own. He needed a collaborator. Nicky’s role was a lesser, but still necessary one. Mike called him “the carpenter” because he helped shape the songs. Nicky came up with ideas and suggestions, but mostly he was a sounding board for Mike. As Mike could often be opinionated and tactless, the arrangement worked best with him sequestered in the studio. Nicky interacted with the record companies, negotiated the deals and made sure the records were promoted. He acquired an interest in business from discussions around the family dinner table.
Mike’s first two years in the US had been a tough slog. His English hits had afforded him the luxury of living in Beverly Hills, in a Paul Williams-designed estate on 1.3 acres. But he still felt “like a nobody.” Mike thought the key to making it in America was to amp up his workload. In the first six months of 1978, he had finished albums with Rick Derringer, Smokie, Suzi Quatro, Exile, and Blondie, and produced three songs for Nick Gilder. He was in town only two weeks. I felt sorry for his wife, who surely was neglected. In social settings at their house, she was always nice to me. There was an additional connection: her parents had rented the space next to the Rhino store in Claremont to sell antiques.
In July Mike called and invited me to the studio. He had just returned from New York, where he was producing Blondie’s third LP. Toby Mamis was Blondie’s publicist, and he brought Mike to see them perform at the Whisky in February 1977. He loved them, and wrote on the club’s napkin “I must produce this band.” Chrysalis Records’ cofounder Terry Ellis, with whom Mike had a good relationship, bought the group out of their contract with Private Stock Records for $500,000. It was a hefty sum considering neither of their first two albums sold as many as fifty thousand copies.
In Whitney’s mastering studio, Mike played me an acetate (test record) of “Heart of Glass.” He enthused that it sounded like a number one hit. I could tell it was Deborah Harry singing, but it didn’t sound like Blondie to me. It was disco. I had him play it for me a second time. It was a new style for Blondie, one I wasn’t expecting. The group’s original sound was fun, energetic, rough. This was polished and sonically superior.
I heard more songs as they were mixed, and thought Mike had done a wonderful job on the whole album. The group retained its frantic energy, but Chapman improved their sound. The band’s playing was tight and Deborah sang well. Chapman’s help with the arrangements, the placement of the instruments, and the overall dynamic sound was superb. It was quite an achievement, and began a fruitful relationship for both Mike and the band, but it almost didn’t happen. During his initial meeting with Deborah and Chris Stein, the band’s guitarist and her songwriting collaborator, Mike was unnerved by Deborah’s intimidating stare. “She didn’t say a word,” he said. “She was the most frightening person I’d ever met.”
“Once I Had a Love” was a song Stein and Harry wrote that Mike thought had promise, but he didn’t like the title or the reggae arrangement. He asked Deborah what artists she liked, and when she responded with Donna Summer, Mike cast the song, retitled “Heart of Glass,” in a disco arrangement. He felt secure in this new direction for the band knowing The Rolling Stones had scored a number one with their disco arrangement of “Miss You.”
One of the reasons I spent time with Mike in the studio was to pick up ideas I might use when I produced. During the mix for “Living in the Real World” for Blondie’s 1979 album Eat to the Beat, Mike dropped a reverb (echo) unit at 1:47 into the song to create a small explosion that propelled the arrangement. I would have liked to have attended a Blondie session, but those first two albums with Mike were recorded in New York and my budget didn’t permit an excursion.
Mike finally exploded in the US with a remarkable twelve-month run, starting with Exile’s “Kiss You All Over,” written by Mike and Nicky, which topped the charts at the end of September for a four-week run. During this period, he also produced number ones with Nick Gilder’s “Hot Child In the City,” Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” and The Knack’s “My Sharona.” He even managed to get a US hit for Suzi Quatro, whose popularity was bolstered by her recurring role as Leather Tuscadero on Happy Days. He had Suzi duet with Smokie’s Chris Norman on “Stumblin’ In,” a song he had written with Nicky, resulting in a number four hit. (Smokie became so successful in Europe, they outsold ABBA in their native Scandinavia.) He also scored two number one albums, with Blondie and The Knack. A few months later, Pat Benatar’s debut album climbed to twelve.
Lou Naktin and I met the stunning Benatar during the recording at Whitney. Terry Ellis had signed her to Chrysalis Records. The band was working on a John Cougar Mellencamp song, “I Need a Lover.” Mike and rhythm guitarist Scott St. Clair Sheets were in a heated exchange because Sheets wanted to leave in a guitar phrase at the beginning of the song that Mike thought was extraneous. Mike’s authoritarian tone came out: “I didn’t sell tens of millions of records by arguing with a guitar player!”
Sitting in Studio A’s control room, our senses were assaulted. The air conditioning was cranked up high, and the playback speakers were set to ear-splitting levels. We were like the guy in the Maxell tape ad whose hair was blown back by the volume. Mike had a reputation for blowing out speakers. His ace engineer, Peter Coleman—who produced most of Benatar’s In the Heat of the Night album—wore a pair of unplugged headphones to protect his ears.
Mike preferred that I visit him when he was working on a potential single or prominent track, usually when background vocals were recorded or during the mixdown, so I could hear a close-to-complete version of the song. Hearing these wonderful songs many times made it easy for me to like them. These Chapman productions may not have hit the Top 10, but they’re on my playlist: Exile’s “Try It On,” Smokie’s “Wild Wild Angels” and “I’ll Meet You at Midnight,” Suzi Quatro’s “She’s In Love With You” and “Lipstick” (in which Mike had Suzi sing a vocal phrase I suggested), Thieves’ “400 Dragons,” and Bow Wow Wow’s “Aphrodisiac.”
With Mike’s success as a producer, and Mike and Nicky as songwriters, Al Coury, the head of RSO Records, gave them their own label deal. RSO—the initials stood for the Robert Stigwood Organization—was the most successful record company in the world. In 1977 and 1978, with the soundtracks for Saturday Night Fever and Grease, and The Bee Gees’ Spirits Having Flown, RSO had sold tens of millions of albums and was overflowing with cash. It made sense for Coury to invest in the industry’s top creative team.
Well into 1979, I was not sure that our fledging Rhino label would be able to survive. I asked Mike and Nicky, separately, for a job as their A&R person. It wasn’t as if Mike didn’t take note of my recommendations. He first heard about The Knack from me, but didn’t approach them about p
roducing until they were signed to Capitol Records months later. I also recommended that he sign The Heaters and The Rubinoos. He didn’t sign either, but with Suzi he recorded The Heaters’ “Never Been In Love,” as well as Stevie Wright’s “Evie.” I made these suggestions out of friendship, not because I expected to get anything out of it.
I got $500 from United Artists Records to record demos of two songs, which turned out really well, but not to the extent that UA offered me a contract. Mike liked one of the songs Mark Leviton and I had written, “1977 Sunset Strip,” and played it for amused visitors to the studio. I was pleased that he liked the song, but noted that he wasn’t more encouraging. In response to my query, Mike and Nicky told me that they would be jointly handling the A&R function at their new Dreamland Records label.
When I went to London in the fall of 1979, Mike offered the use of a spare office at Chinnichap. I took lunch breaks at the Hard Rock Café, a third-of-a-mile away. I called Terry Uttley, the bass player in Smokie, with the intention of visiting him. I didn’t know that Bradford, Yorkshire, was 175 miles to the north, but he was busy anyway. One afternoon I went to RAK and visited with David Most, Mickie Most’s ace promotion man brother. Suzi Quatro was there and I chatted with her. David gave me a RAK single from the previous year, “While I’m Still Young” by Autographs. It didn’t make the charts, but I loved the record. Later that day, flipping through the used record bins at a record store, I bought the Tangerine Peel album for four pounds. It wasn’t good. When I next saw Mike, as a joke, I had him autograph it. He wrote, “Don’t ever play this record for anybody!!! Please, Harold!!!”
By 1980, Mike had run out of gas. When he arrived in LA, he was anti-drug. Bernie Taupin, Elton John’s long-time lyricist, introduced him to cocaine and Mike acquired a drug habit and a bloated ego, evidenced by his photo on the cover of BAM magazine outfitted like General George Patton, referring to himself as Commander Chapman. His momentum carried him through 1980 with a number one album and single with Blondie and a number fifteen LP with The Knack, and in 1981 with a number one album with Blondie. But by then his life had cratered. Dreamland, hitless in a little more than a year of releases, had failed. His obsessive workload resulted in his wife divorcing him for neglect. And his partnership with Nicky Chinn was over.
His last number one was a fluke, a 1970s castoff he wrote with Nicky that languished until Mickie Most recorded it for an album he produced with English band Racey. Choreographer Toni Basil changed the title from “Kitty” to “Mickey,” added a football cheer to the intro, and produced a video that was a mainstay of MTV in its early years. “Heart and Soul,” an unsuccessful Chinn-Chapman song when first recorded by Exile, became a Top 10 hit for Huey Lewis and the News in 1983.
Mike still produced good records, but none were a hit in America. He forged a successful songwriting collaboration with Holly Knight, the keyboardist from Dreamland signing Spider, which resulted in three Top 10 hits in the eighties: Tina Turner’s “Better Be Good to Me,” Pat Benatar’s “Love Is a Battlefield,” and Rod Stewart’s “Love Touch.” Nicky fared less well. Kim Wilde’s “Dancing in the Dark,” written with Paul Gurvitz (of Baker Gurvitz Army) became a modest European hit in 1983.
Mike’s goal was to make hits. It didn’t seem to occur to him that a record could be of value decades later. The albums Mike produced weren’t well reviewed, and only Blondie’s Parallel Lines made it into Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” But I loved his records. On my playlist I have over fifty songs that he wrote or produced. There are no songs by Tangerine Peel.
Rotten
Rhino Films was in post-production on our first three features when I got a call from Eric Gardner, an artist’s manager who represented Todd Rundgren. I had made a deal for Rhino to license the Bearsville Records masters, which included Rundgren’s catalogue, and I had developed a good relationship with Eric the past ten years.
Now he was representing John Lydon, better known as Johnny Rotten, the lead singer of the 1970s band the Sex Pistols. He’d called to inquire if Rhino Films would be interested in making a movie from Lydon’s 1994 autobiography Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs. I was surprised when he told me that no one had previously optioned the property.
“Punk rock” was coined in the early 1970s to refer to American rock bands of the 1960s that sounded like they got started practicing in their garages. More specifically, it meant edgy bands with attitude that derived their sound from The Rolling Stones, bands like The Standells, The Seeds, The Shadows of Knight, and ? and the Mysterians. In 1976 the Sex Pistols emerged, spearheading a movement in Britain composed of angry, ragged musicians and singers who railed against the class system, the bleak economy, and the unresponsive government. The press called the music “punk rock.” The better known performers included The Clash, The Jam, The Damned, and Siouxsie and the Banshees.
I loved the Sex Pistols’ debut single “Anarchy in the UK” as soon as I heard it. I was curious to know more about the group, and Robert Hilburn, the pop music editor of the Los Angeles Times, assigned me to interview their manager, Malcolm McLaren, by phone. This may have been the first interview article to be published in the US, and ran many months prior to Rolling Stone covering the group. At this point it might be apt for an overview of the band, and my March 1977 Los Angeles Times piece is a good place to start.
England’s Sex Pistols are already being called The Rolling Stones of the seventies. But The Stones’ legendary outrageousness pales in comparison to the Pistols’ antics, which have caused them to be banned from English radio and TV. Municipal governments have banded together, forbidding them from performing anywhere in the UK. It seems as if America is the only market open to them. “Right now we’re making arrangements to come to the States,” manager Malcolm McLaren said by phone from London. “But instead of just tour there, we may move there completely.”
McLaren is part-owner/designer of London’s SEX shop (now called Seditionaries), which deals in avant-garde clothes, often with a bondage motif. Johnny Rotten, 21-year-old lead vocalist of the Pistols, used to come into the store and steal items. McLaren decided to get back some of the lost money by managing the band.
The Pistols’ music is loud and aggressive. On stage Rotten flaunts a ripped wardrobe barely held together by safety pins, which also pierce his ear lobes, inspiring a whole new fashion in Britain. With a ghostly pallor, he looks as if he’ll keel over any moment, which contrasts sharply with his shockingly dyed-orange hair. After he’s through smoking cigarettes, he puts them out on his arms. He’s got the marks and a stay in the hospital fighting the incurred infection to show for it. When the Pistols find themselves in an extremely good mood, it’s not uncommon for them to abandon their instruments on stage and join their audience in brawls.
Soon after their first release, “Anarchy in the UK” (on the EMI label), late last year, the Pistols made a much-publicized appearance on a British TV show. The group’s use of obscenities led to headlines in all five national papers, lots of indignant letter writing, and organized protests. One irate viewer kicked in his picture tube.
A week later the band was waiting in a smoky airport departure lounge for a flight to Amsterdam. Guitarist Steve Jones, reportedly nauseated from a night of heavy drinking, threw up, unable to make it to the toilet. Photographers swarmed on the scene, and it was blown out of proportion.
Amid mounting protests, EMI cancelled the band’s contract. Groups of mothers planted themselves outside the home of the general manager of EMI with petitions and banners that read: “Pop Profiteers Stop Ruining Our Kids Ears!” Others as well, including McLaren, were confronted with complaints and hecklers. In England the record went from 46 to 32 on the charts before it was withdrawn.
“The Sex Pistols are totally committed, and honestly don’t care,” said Rory Johnston, their representative in the United States. “They’re real anarchists, they’re not paper-outrageous like
The Damned or the other punk groups around. Now that they’re successful, they’re still out there on the street. Johnny Rotten, for instance, doesn’t ride around in a car now that he’s made money. He still takes the buses and subways. People know who he is and he gets abused. The Sex Pistols are a national institution; they’re the most talked-about group since The Rolling Stones.”
With all of this interest, England A&M’s Derek Green convinced Jerry Moss (the M of A&M) to sign the group. Contracts were inked March 10 outside Buckingham Palace, and a new single, “God Save the Queen,” was announced. The record was never issued and they were off the label in six days. No explanation was given publicly, and local A&M spokespeople were tight-lipped, leaking only a “no comment.”
McLaren is just as puzzled. “A&M is a good company. They wanted us, and looked to us to open up the label to a wider spectrum of music that they were not usually associated with. Immediately there was dissent from other artists on the label. Lots of people at the BBC, as well as people in publishing and promotion at A&M, expressed their negativeness toward A&M signing the Sex Pistols. Initially A&M thought they could handle things but they quite clearly bit off more than they could chew. There’s a whole degree of mystery surrounding their actions; it’s kind of an industrial blacklist. The reason, if you want to call it that, we were given was that the Sex Pistols would tarnish the kind of quality MOR label image A&M has.”
With a studio already booked, the Pistols proceeded to record an album with producer Chris Thomas (whose credits include Procol Harum, Roxy Music and the Climax Blues Band). The titles confirm the whole negative image: “No Feelings,” “No Love,” “There Is No Future,” “Problems,” “Liar,” and “Pretty Vacant.”
Mulling over how to expose his group under the enforced restrictions, a light bulb over Malcolm’s head flashed “a film.” “It will be a way for people to see the group and hear their music, without the theater owners risking an unpredictable live show.” Written by English comedian Peter Cook, in some ways it will be a fantasy/factual melding à la A Hard Day’s Night. Malcolm also feels the film will aid the group in attracting record companies.
My British Invasion Page 27