Nobody could see what was waiting behind the door that the CD had opened. How could we? Billy Joel’s CD came out in 1982. The Internet was created around 1983, and the first Apple Macintosh was sold in 1984. Nobody could fast-forward to glimpse just how powerful the information superhighway would become. Or envision how entire libraries of songs could one day be digitally shared around the globe in a matter of seconds. And not only that: Nobody I knew could imagine that the people receiving those songs over the Internet would come to believe that music didn’t have a price tag and, what’s more, feel entitled to get it for free as if they were listening to it on the radio. The way we all saw it back then, it was fun to go to the record store, talk to the people behind the counter, and sample the music, especially if it was an incredible place like Tower Records. That whole experience was part of enjoying the musical journey. And when you walked out the door, the music you wanted was yours. It was cool to own your own music.
There’s always a question of ownership when it comes to a product. I’m going to dwell on this point in the case of the CD because it’s going to bring clarity to the obstacles that surfaced when searching for solutions to the downloading that rocked the music industry at the end of the nineties. I’m convinced that one of the reasons Apple was able to ultimately get a grip on the music industry was that very issue of proprietary ownership on the part of Sony.
There’s something essential to understand here. Sony did not create those CDs by itself in 1982, just as it did not put out compact cassette tape technology on its own before that. Both the cassette and the CD were based on a partnership between Sony and a Dutch company called Philips that owned PolyGram Records. It was a perfect marriage. Philips was a leader in optical video disc technology, while Sony was at the cutting edge of digital-processing technology.
Norio Ohga was influential in putting together a joint development deal between the two companies on the CD. It’s very important to remember this about two hundred pages down the road. He had the foresight to cement this partnership. But Ohga was not in charge when the downloading of songs became serious, and the new leadership did not view partnerships the same way.
Nobody I knew even considered the downloading of music when we set our CDs into a Sony Discman during the early eighties. We all knew about piracy. The sale of blank cassettes led to primitive cases of music theft—which some of us didn’t even regard as theft at the time. The blank cassettes gave people the ability to record off the radio and rerecord cassettes. You know how we saw that at the time? We didn’t care. At worst, it was insignificant. And at best, it was great marketing.
We were happy when somebody taped “She’s Gone” off the radio and passed the cassette on to a friend. We thought it was wonderful because whoever heard it might go straight to the record store and buy Abandoned Luncheonette. And we knew that if the person liked “She’s Gone,” he or she might buy tickets to Daryl and John’s concerts and become a committed fan. We also knew that a committed fan was not going to settle for a bootleg, that he was going to go out and buy the quality recording.
There was very little time for a guy like me to sit around and wonder about the possibility of CD piracy in the early eighties. In fact, there was no time at all. I was in the middle of a revolution.
The revolution was every bit as influential as Elvis or the Beatles—but much trickier to identify because it wasn’t attached to a singular musical act. It was a series of technological breakthroughs accompanied by the emergence of new platforms to showcase music: The Walkman in 1979. CNN in 1980. MTV in 1981. The CD in 1982.
When the Walkman arrived, cable TV was in its infancy. Only six years later, the release of “We Are the World” was beamed around the world by CNN’s satellites twenty-four hours a day, and Live Aid concerts across the globe could be seen for sixteen straight hours on MTV.
What happened was so big that a guy like me could work ninety-six hours a week—or even try to squeeze in 120.
Just like when I was a kid running home from school to watch Dick Clark and American Bandstand, everyone ran home in 1981 to watch MTV. Only not for thirty minutes—but for seven hours straight. Or more. MTV became like wallpaper.
It was the first total music television channel, and the first time I saw its three-minute music videos was like another Elvis moment. You knew we were experiencing something that would create a powerful change. It was immediately clear that a music video in heavy rotation hitting millions of people with pictures and sounds combined with the same song’s heavy rotation on radio would strike every part of the consumer’s senses and have an explosive effect. You knew that it had the possibility to create monster smash hits unlike ever before, and certainly it did, ultimately leading to millions of additional sales that were just not there until that time.
Hall & Oates were in just the right place at the right time to take advantage of the new network. They were on fire again after remaking “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” originally a hit for the Righteous Brothers, for their Voices album, and they became one of MTV’s most important early acts. So it was my job to get very friendly with the guys running the network: Bob Pittman, John Sykes, Les Garland, and John Lack. I brought Allen Grubman into MTV to discuss a deal for Hall & Oates. And, of course, Allen walked out representing MTV.
We were all finding our way with this new medium, especially Hall & Oates. To this day, when I happen to come across some of their early videos I find my hands covering my eyes. “Private Eyes,” was basically two guys lip-synching in trench coats. These were low-budget productions, and Daryl and John were not particularly suited to the new medium. Now, you needed to not only be able to write the music, play it, and perform it onstage. You had to act it out for the camera—and not every musician is a great actor. A group from New Zealand that I managed at the time called Split Enz was much better at it. And as I began to manage John Mellencamp and Carly Simon, I observed that they had an affinity for it, too. Bands like Duran Duran seemed to be created just for the new network. It broke the lock of radio as a way of breaking an artist. Sometimes MTV took the lead over radio, and sometimes it could be groundbreaking even without Top 40 radio.
The new relationship between images and music created a whole new cultural experience that reverberated throughout the world. The fresh styles seen on MTV were embraced by the fashion industry. Marketers and every advertising agency on Madison Avenue followed these trends, which became a major influencer of consumer behavior and even flipped Hollywood upside down.
For the first time, corporate America really gravitated toward the music industry. I remember hearing a story about how Elvis Presley’s manager, Colonel Parker, once offered to have Elvis advertise for free for a year for RCA. Of course, the record company, owned by GE, turned the offer down because execs were scared of a backlash from people who didn’t like Elvis, some saying he was making “race” records. During the tumultuous sixties, the so-called “Generation Gap” pretty much ensured that there would be little synergy between corporate executives in suits and long-haired music stars in bell-bottoms. The magnetic attraction between corporation and artist really started in the seventies and exploded after MTV appeared. I was eager to forge these new alliances, and I actively pursued them for my artists, knowing full well what the benefits could be.
But at the time it wasn’t always easy. When I’d brought a Beech-Nut Chewing Gum sponsorship to Hall & Oates, it should come as no surprise that the artist in Daryl saw this as a sellout. A lot of artists felt the same way at the time. It wasn’t like it is now, when even Bono puts on sunglasses and is photographed in an open field with a Louis Vuitton bag. Back then, it wasn’t cool for an artist to take money to associate with a product.
“This gum is in every candy store in America,” I’d say. “Think of all the additional advertising and marketing you’ll receive in stores and with consumers who’ve never even heard of you before. Plus, the company is dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into your lap.�
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The sponsor provided not only financial gain, but tens of thousands for tour support and additional funds that were coupled with the sales plans that the record company had drawn up. It also tied our products into our sponsor’s distribution points, further providing a network of promotion for our music.
I do remember Daryl’s and John’s eyes lighting up when the next sponsor came to the table: Pontiac. Especially when I told them that in addition to the hundreds of thousands of dollars they would each receive, they’d get a brand-new car and so would each of their parents and other members of their families. It was like hitting the lottery. Pretty funny: We were all driving around in Pontiacs for three years. And GM and Pontiac got what they wanted. They were rubbing against the success of Daryl Hall and John Oates—the hottest-selling duo in the world at that time.
These new marketing advantages tremendously helped their Voices and Private Eyes albums go platinum, and then their H2O and Big Bam Boom albums go double platinum.
Following those massive successes, Hall & Oates were invited to sing on “We Are the World” along with Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen, Diana Ross, Ray Charles, Lionel Richie, and a choir of superstars that was the greatest assemblage of musical talent to ever stand in one room. I was one of the privileged few to be in the control room to watch it all, completely aware that I was witnessing the biggest musical event of all time. Eight thousand radio stations around the world played the single simultaneously, with proceeds going to help provide famine relief in Africa. Talk about new platforms. Music and philanthropy were now married, and technology was the pastor.
A few months after “We Are the World” was released, Hall & Oates played at an all-day concert called Live Aid. The idea, generated by Bob Geldof, raised money to fight famine in Ethiopia by linking performances by some of the world’s most popular artists at two venues—Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. I met Geldof in the UK and we became good friends. The guys in my office were big fans of his band, the Irish phenomenon Boomtown Rats, so we offered to help in any way that we could. Bob did most of the booking and planning of the first Live Aid event out of Champion’s Fifty-Seventh Street offices in New York.
Those who were watching that day walked away with many memories. Madonna, who would appear nude in Playboy the next month, came onstage in Philadelphia and joked that she wasn’t “taking shit off” that day. Phil Collins performed at both venues, flying across the Atlantic in just under three and a half hours on the Concorde to make both shows. During a version of “It’s Only Rock ’n Roll,” Mick Jagger ripped off part of Tina Turner’s dress, and she finished in leotards. The microphone was errantly turned off for the first two minutes of Paul McCartney’s piano rendition of “Let It Be,” and he later joked that he thought of changing the lyrics to “There will be some feedback, let it be…” It was Daryl and John who opened the prime-time portion of the show, televised by ABC before more than 100,000 people live in Philly, their hometown.
There was so much inside maneuvering to get Hall & Oates the prime position on ABC’s portion of the show. Mountains had to be moved, as well, to position them on the cover of People magazine alongside Bob Dylan, Madonna, and Mick Jagger. The issue came out shortly after the concert and gave them tremendous prestige.
The opportunities coming from all these new platforms—MTV, corporate sponsorships, philanthropy, new media—exponentially magnified the workload. If the phone rang twenty times a day in the seventies, it was ringing a hundred times a day in the early eighties. There were so many more possibilities to look into and follow up on. This period was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and we took full advantage of every minute of it. It totally covered every inch of my day.
During this period in the early eighties, my son Michael and daughter Sarah were born. Being caught up in the musical vortex of the hurricane, working, working, working, it was impossible for me to notice how all-consuming it was. Only now do I fully realize—and fully regret—that the necessary time was not spent with my two oldest children at that point.
It was simply a period where you were either going to catapult into this new world or stay back and become a dinosaur. Everything I learned on the fly during this stage would set off the Latin Explosion more than a decade later. As you’ll come to see, the corporate sponsorships that we lined up with Pepsi-Cola were so helpful at the World Cup in exposing and breaking open the careers of Ricky Martin and Shakira.
That’s all down the road. But it started in the early eighties. By the time this revolution was complete five years later, the record business had become the music industry.
By the mideighties it was crystal clear that I wanted much more out of my life and career than to be just a manager.
In fact, there’s one person I must credit for helping me see my way out of management and eventually up to the top at Sony: John Mellencamp. Excuse me for being sarcastic when I say that. But the truth is the truth. There were many moments of working with John that made me want to run straight for the exit.
John was extremely difficult to get along with. What else can you say about someone whose own nickname for himself was Little Bastard? But maybe the way he treated the people working around him wasn’t all his fault. At least I can see that there were reasons for it.
John came out of Seymour, Indiana. He was all heartland, a guy who grew up around fields, endless highways, telephone poles with long connecting wires, and a soda called Big Red, and he could express that life and all that came with it like no one else in the world. He was a poet and a minstrel of the Midwest. But he somehow got on the wrong track early in his career when he signed on with a British manager named Tony Defries. Defries had developed David Bowie’s career, and he tried to turn Mellencamp into a pop rocker, an American David Bowie, even convincing John to throw away his last name. John’s first album, Chestnut Street Incident, contained a series of musical covers like “Oh, Pretty Woman” and “Jailhouse Rock,” but the album cover made him look like something he wasn’t. It was released under the name Johnny Cougar. I’m not going to say that John was as heavily made up as Boy George in the cover photo, but he certainly didn’t look like he was going out to work in a hay field. The album sold only twelve thousand copies, and for years John’s career came to be a struggle to simply get his name back.
He changed managers, working in England with Billy Gaff, the guy who’d found Rod Stewart, and he’d had some success by the time we met. It was almost like you could see him trying to take back a little of his name one hit at a time. By his third album, he was no longer Johnny Cougar. He’d become John Cougar. In 1982, after a breakthrough album called American Fool that sold five million copies with hit singles like “Hurts So Good” and “Jack & Diane,” he had the leverage to resurrect his last name. He became John Cougar Mellencamp on Uh-Huh, which had a beautiful song that I’d use to define his work: “Pink Houses.”
It was around this time that John was introduced to me through our mutual accountant, Sigmund Balaban. I’m not Freud, but it wasn’t hard to observe at that first meeting that Mellencamp’s past experiences had soured him toward managers. He thought that he didn’t really need one. But Balaban insisted that I could take him to the next level.
“All right, Big Shot Charlie Potatoes,” John said right off the bat. “I hear you’re a tough guy. The guy who can make all this stuff happen. Well, what are you gonna do for me?” He was constantly challenging me. “Let’s get one thing straight: we do it my way.”
I certainly wasn’t going to argue with him about his music. And when you hear a song like “Small Town,” you know it’s a classic that will be around for the ages. Not only does it have great lyrics, but the melody that went along with it is the sort that brings comfort to the masses of people who live that way. John also had the visuals down. He called up Jeb Brien, my right hand at Champion, and told him he’d seen the work of a photographer whom he wanted to shoot the cover photo for his
next album. John was right. A beautiful photo of John leaning on a wood post and wire fence became the cover of Scarecrow. It went five times platinum. The only name across the top of his next album, The Lonesome Jubilee, was Mellencamp.
John had gotten his name back, and I was the guy who helped him do it, but he didn’t quite see it that way. Even though we helped put him on top, the business side of the relationship was a constant battle. He’d say things like, “Why the fuck should I pay you guys? I’ve got a Number One record. My daughter could book this fucking tour.”
One time we got into an argument over an allotment of tour percentages, and he challenged me to an arm-wrestling match to settle it. “Okay,” I said, “let’s do it.” We struggled to a draw and had to split the difference.
The best metaphor I can give you for our relationship was what was supposed to be a flag football game between his guys in Indiana and a bunch of my friends. Mellencamp had a team in what he called the MFL (the Mellencamp Football League), and he was always boasting about it. When I questioned just how good it was, he called me out. “What’s the matter?” he said. “You New York pussies don’t have the balls to come out to Indiana to play a little friendly football?”
So I rounded up the guys from my office, some of whom were jocks and sports fans, and some old high school football stars from New Rochelle, including Stormy (the Animal) Avallone, and flew the entire team out for the game.
After Mellencamp had called us “a bunch of pansy-ass poseurs from New York City,” we’d bet a thousand dollars on the outcome. I quickly found out that he was more than a little concerned. We held a practice session the day before, and, sure enough, we caught Mellencamp on a hill above us spying on our plays with a pair of binoculars.
The game took place in a snowstorm. Mellencamp’s beautiful wife at the time, Vicky, showed up to watch in a white jumpsuit and long white coat. It was supposed to be flag football, but it got physical quick. One of my guys broke a wrist, another came back to the huddle with a bloody nose, and a third with a chipped tooth.
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