Hitmaker

by Tommy Mottola

  “Look,” Daryl said, “we can always do commercial songs. But this will give us credibility and integrity. Rock credibility. We need that.”

  Abandoned Luncheonette had given them all the credibility and integrity they’d ever need. We ended up mired in the classic debate between commerce and art for the sake of art. Whenever I tried to take it back to the strength of the R & B sound, Daryl might hit me with an argument from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Yes, listening to those arguments was part of my job, too, as the manager, and at 2:30 a.m., no less, as the grappa went down.

  At the end of the day, I had to go along with him. I had tremendous respect for both Daryl and John. It was their lives and their career, and it was my job to facilitate their music and get the most out of it.

  “We don’t want Arif Mardin working on our next album,” Daryl said. “I want to hire Todd Rundgren to produce it.”

  I fought it for as long as I could, but after a lot of back and forth, we got together with Mark Meyerson and agreed to make an album with Todd Rundgren producing. Rundgren was well known for his hits “Hello It’s Me” and “I Saw the Light.” I tried to see this collaboration in the best possible light. Todd was from Philadelphia, so there was a commonality, a Philly brotherhood. The problem was there were two Todd Rundgrens. The “Hello It’s Me” side that made a ton of money. And an acid-guitar-experimental-rock side with a band called Utopia that didn’t. Utopia won out.

  The album was called War Babies. The cover art appropriately reflected the title. I remember delivering it to the executives at Atlantic. As they were listening, they would pick their heads up for a moment, look at me, and then drop their eyes down. Ahmet Ertegun was in the room when I played it. When it was finished, there was complete silence. Nobody said, This sucks. Nobody said, This album is not going to make it. The only comment Ahmet made was, “I think the drums need to be louder.” Whatever the hell that meant.

  Everybody seemed to respond the same way—that is, by not responding at all. It was a completely different body of music on an album that everybody was hoping would be the next big success in the music industry. But people were not as judgmental in those days, nor quick to kill. There was a respect for the artist that translated into: Let’s see what happens…

  Sadly, nothing did happen. The album wasn’t the right format for the FM rock stations that represented integrity to Daryl. And there certainly weren’t any programmable singles for Top 40 AM radio. I don’t know how many fans War Babies made or turned away, but it definitely confused a lot of people. One DJ at WMMR in Philadelphia played the record one night and commented on the air that it sounded like elephants fornicating!

  War Babies put all of us in a difficult spot from a business perspective. First of all, Atlantic wasn’t going to throw money and all of its promotional muscle behind this strange left turn. The album made every exec there nervous. Second, Hall & Oates’ contract with the label was up, and that album couldn’t have put me in a worse negotiating position. All of a sudden the execs were wondering just where the hell Hall & Oates were headed.

  A newcomer just couldn’t afford to take that kind of a left turn at a company that was rolling out Aretha one month and the Rolling Stones the next. It just didn’t make sense for Atlantic to put any energy into left turns when it could spend its time creating blockbusters. Putting out War Babies was like losing our number at the deli. We had to take a new ticket and get to the back of the line.

  Atlantic had to decide whether or not to extend the contract by putting up an additional $30,000. I had a feeling that Jerry Greenberg, Atlantic’s young new president, was going to waffle. Even if Jerry did want to go forward, he’d definitely want to protect his downside by putting up as little money as possible on any contract going forward. The cards in his hand were strong. We’d put out three straight albums that didn’t make money.

  I needed a backup plan. While I was a song plugger, I’d become very good friends with a man named Mike Berniker, who in his late twenties had produced Barbra Streisand’s first three albums for Columbia and was now an exec at RCA. Mike was looking for talent. He had to be, because the company that he worked for was jokingly known in the business as the Recording Cemetery of America. I met with Mike and figured out a way to turn the perfect storm that War Babies had created into my best-case scenario. Mike was in love with Hall & Oates and desperately wanted to sign them. There weren’t many talented artists waiting in line to go to RCA. He could see the potential in Hall & Oates, and he was willing to pay attention and a huge advance right away.

  It was the best time to make the move. There was no doubt that we could get a much better contract from RCA than from disillusioned Atlantic. I just needed to play my cards right. Jerry could extend the contract simply by writing a $30,000 check. That was not what I wanted him to do when I stepped into his office. If he wrote one, fine, a deal is a deal. But I wasn’t going to let him start waffling…

  Jerry was an aggressive, cocky guy, and he had to be thinking he had the better hand when we began to talk. He was running a powerhouse, and he couldn’t conceive of Daryl and John going anywhere else. Who else would sign them after that failure? Jerry started hemming and hawing about how Atlantic might do another album with Hall & Oates, but he didn’t want to write the check. He kept on hedging. Maybe we can do this. Maybe we can do that…

  I just looked straight into his eyes and said: “Either give us the $30,000, or let us off the label.”

  “Look, dammit, I’m not sure,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t care if you don’t know. I’m not walking out this door without an answer!”

  The discussion got heated, really heated. I was even prepared to burn the bridge because I knew I had a backup plan. He kept hedging and I stepped toward him, looking ominously at the window behind him, getting right in his face as our voices got even louder. I certainly knew that I wasn’t going to be the one going out that window. But maybe the Bronx coming out in me made him feel like he was.

  It was nothing personal. I really liked Jerry. We were friends. But it was business. I felt like the future was at stake. It’s hard to explain the dichotomy. But maybe this will help.

  Under pressure, Jerry released Hall & Oates from Atlantic Records.

  Fourteen years later, when I began to run Sony Music, one of the first things I did was give Jerry Greenberg his own label.

  The view outside Jerry’s window opened up a whole new world for me. The release from Atlantic had a huge and unexpected impact on my career because it led to a phone call that I hadn’t planned on making.

  The release needed to be legally expedited. The new contract with RCA had to go through the legal formalities as well. I was working with a prominent lawyer at the time, Bob Casper, who represented the Beatles’ music publishing catalog and Elton John. The new deal with RCA was bringing in close to a million dollars, and Casper estimated his fee would be around $80,000. I thought that was absurd. Then I remembered that songwriter walking the corridor of MRC. “Grub-man. Grub-man. Grub-man. I gotta go see Grub-man.”

  I’d spoken with Allen Grubman a few times, but I’d never done business with him. The irony of Grubman was that he didn’t care about music at all. He used to make a point of telling the artists that came through his office: “I don’t listen to your music.” That was his line. It worked because he was a haimishe guy who had a way of making people feel comfortable around him, and also because, as someone in the industry once observed, “With Grubman, it’s not about the money, it’s only about the money.” Grubman protected the people who came through his door and took care of them legally and financially. He said he’d charge twenty grand to do the deals. Soon he was not only representing Hall & Oates, he was also representing me.

  Grubman started out with the Village People, and his list of clients would eventually include Madonna, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Mariah Carey, Bono, Lady Gaga, and on and on. Not only did he develop a skill and style to attract
the artists, but he also developed relationships with the record company execs and producers, and he began to represent them as well. So he was connected to all the components. He was representing so many people in the industry that he could ask for favors and, just as important, he knew everything that was going on. Grubman made deals work on everybody’s behalf.

  Each artist and executive that Allen added to his list of clients meant more leverage. Anyone who dealt with Grubman knew: If I screw Allen on this deal, I’m going to get screwed down the road. And believe me, Allen was not hesitant to remind people of this. As charming as he could be, he was also aggressive in a very direct way. “You think you’re not gonna give me a big advance for Billy Joel, you’re out of your fucking mind! Period!” He’d say stuff like that to Walter Yetnikoff, the mad genius running CBS Music.

  Allen’s firm seemed to represent everybody in the music industry, but it never represented two parties in the same transaction. It might represent the artist against the record company, and it might represent the record company in a different transaction. So there never really ever was a conflict of interest—though Allen liked to joke about it. “If there is no conflict,” he’d say, “there is no interest.” Bottom line is, everybody in the industry went to his firm because they knew they would be protected and they knew they’d get the best possible deal.

  For me, connecting with Grubman was like a right hand suddenly finding its left. He used to say that he worked so hard because he didn’t want to go back to sleeping on a couch in Brooklyn. And I used to say I worked so hard to make sure that I didn’t have to go back to the Bronx. I soon had a partner without a partnership. Good cop. Bad cop. Bad cop. Good cop. Our two arms could play it any which way.

  Grubman soon got along famously with Mike Berniker at RCA, and the new deal with Hall & Oates was quickly concluded. It was time to rock and roll.

  Daryl was able to laugh when he heard that the DJ in Philadelphia had compared the music on War Babies to elephants fornicating. But he got the message. It was time to return to his R & B roots.

  I’m sure both Daryl and John appreciated me even more for the big RCA contract. That was evident in a song Daryl had written about me for their next album called “Gino (The Manager).” There was a joking reference to my Gucci-Pucci pointed shoes, but the core of what I was doing for them came through the chorus:

  Remember hard work means something

  Live fast, die laughing

  No hurt in asking

  Nothing for nothing

  Another song planned for the next album was called “Grounds for Separation.” Sylvester Stallone told me it became an inspiration when he was putting together the movie Rocky. He even used it for temp music. The chorus on “Grounds for Separation” went:

  Gonna grow a new set of wings

  And fly away

  Anybody who’s ever watched Rocky run up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum to the music of “Gonna Fly Now” will get the connection. A ballad called “Sara Smile” would become the B-side to the first single. The music was shaping up to become the classic Hall & Oates album that everybody in the world was hoping for after Abandoned Luncheonette. The songwriting, the vocals, and the musicianship were just brilliant.

  Arif Mardin didn’t produce it, because his contract was exclusive to Atlantic, and Daryl and John wanted to spread their wings anyway. So we brought in some major Los Angeles session players like Ed Greene on drums, who worked on Steely Dan’s Aja, and Leland Sklar, the world-renowned bass player. Christopher Bond helped Daryl and John produce the record, and they hit it out of the park.

  But there couldn’t be a Hall & Oates album without another twist. There needed to be an air of eccentricity to make Daryl happy. John and Daryl had never put their faces on a cover up to that point, and they felt that if they were going to do so, they should do it in a very different way. Daryl and John approached Pierre LaRoche, an art director whose work they loved. LaRoche was Mick Jagger’s makeup artist, and he’d also designed some David Bowie covers. LaRoche told Daryl and John that he’d make them immortal. Okay, I thought, hopefully he’ll come up with a great vision. I didn’t know that his vision would be to turn Daryl and John into two embalmed transsexuals.

  When the cover came in, everyone said: “Whoa!” Even Daryl, when he got over his shock, joked that he looked like the woman that he’d always wanted to go out with. John just looked like a guy with a mustache and a blotch of rouge on his cheek.

  LaRoche didn’t stop there. Back in the day, there were inserts inside the album. On the insert was a photo of Daryl and John inside a tunnel toned with magenta neon fluorescent light. John was naked. If the message somehow didn’t come across on the cover, this certainly took it to the next level.

  Everybody was freaked out about it. RCA had spent a fortune because of the unusual technique involved in creating the cover. Albums generally use four colors. This album came to be known as the Silver Album because there was a fifth color. The fifth color, silver, was almost like real silver, and very expensive in the first printings.

  In the end, John and Daryl decided to run with it and I supported them. Nobody could argue that it wasn’t a great piece of art. I just wondered if the music would be pushed to the side by the question that everyone was sure to ask: are Hall & Oates gay?

  It really didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because people listened to the music before they decided to buy an album. That’s why radio was so important. That album, called Daryl Hall & John Oates, took off as soon as it hit the airwaves. When an R & B station in Cleveland played the B-side “Sara Smile,” the phones lit up like a firestorm. The local promotion man called the national promotion guy at RCA to tell him what had happened. That was when you knew you had a smash. That was when you had to grab the bull by the horns and flip it on its back. I’d watched the same thing happen after the recording of “Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye).” Paul Leka had us create that song as a throwaway B-side. The moment you discover you might have underestimated a song, you have to be able to turn on a dime and put everything you own behind it. We did just that with “Sara Smile,” and it became a runaway hit.

  Of course, the brass at Atlantic saw that. Although Jerry Greenberg got royally chewed out by Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun for giving us that release, he was quick to grasp the moment and rerelease the Abandoned Luncheonette LP. As soon as he did, “She’s Gone” shot up the charts. Now, we had two monster hits back-to-back and the promotional energy of two companies behind us.

  The parties and relentless hard work didn’t stop. It was party on top of party on top of party. More work on top of more work. When you have your first hit record, everything changes. Everybody starts calling you. Promoters. Radio stations. Record stores. And not only that, but everybody takes your call.

  When you’re the manager of a hit act with hit records, you become seen as the guy who can get things done. When you’re the manager of a hit act that’s writing songs about you, other artists start to sing about you, too.

  VOICES

  DARYL HALL

  I wasn’t looking for a father figure. I was looking for a brother figure, somebody who had the thing I lacked, which was an absolute aggression and determination.

  I remember Tommy trying to impress me. He was like, “I can get you in anywhere.” So he took me backstage at the Spectrum Theater in Philly, and I met Rod Stewart. That was when I said, “Tommy, you’re my manager.”

  I’ll always consider those beginning days as one of the most significant times in my life. It was a wild ride. That’s all I can say. It was a wild ride. And I think everybody should have a wild ride at least once.

  Tommy Mottola is relentless—and that is the key to his success and everything he’s done. He doesn’t take no for an answer, and he really cares about what he’s doing. The one thing I never had any doubts about was that he was fighting full force for anything he wanted from us and wanted us to have.

  When it comes down to art versus c
ommerce, Tommy will invariably come out on the side of commerce. I had a million arguments with him, daily arguments, about what I thought we should be doing, and what I felt comfortable doing. I know myself as an artist and I know myself as a person, and I always took the long view. Whereas Tommy took the shorter view. That’s because he had to pay attention to where the money was coming in from.

  DAVE MARSH

  Writer/historian

  The fact is, nobody gets rich without trying. Nobody gets famous without trying. There was never a time when the music wasn’t commercial.

  Dion, of Dion and the Belmonts, once told me: “Hit records are addictive.” It’s true. They are addictive to the audience and to the artist. They make you a lot of money. They make you famous. They get you laid. They get you into places you wouldn’t normally get into. People kiss your ass.

  That has never been different. Things were never pure. The Grateful Dead made a lot of money. Yo-Yo Ma made a lot of money. It’s what you do with your success that counts. You can be a slut for a nickel, you can be a slut for a dime. You are supposed to have your pink Cadillac and your integrity.

  White dance suits, platform shoes, and strobe lights were next. I could feel disco coming the moment a studio owner in West Orange, New Jersey, turned me on to a group called Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.

  It was more than a band, it was a carnival, almost a dozen kids from the streets of the Bronx who’d grown up taking in the sounds of their neighborhoods. They blended Latin, black, and pop into the most unique music and visuals I’d ever come across. The music was only half of it. Watching the Savannah Band was like watching one of those Busby Berkeley movies from the thirties.

  The group’s costumes were not costumes. Their costumes were their street clothes. One of the leads, August Darnell Browder, wore zoot suits every minute of every hour of every day. He probably slept in his zoot suit. Other guys in the band wore baggy pants and old newsboy caps. The lead singer, Cory Daye, wore antique dresses from the forties and fifties. They all took on their own personas and lived them. They were 100 percent the genuine article. If these kids would’ve had their feet on the ground and not gotten drunk on their first sip of success, they could’ve become one of the biggest acts in the world. Not only that, they’d still be here today!