Which might make you wonder, why didn’t Tisch and Paley just give him the ax? Walter may have been the King to the thousands of people who worked at CBS Records Group and to everyone else in the music industry, but he was only a vice president at CBS, Inc. The bottom line was that Tisch and Paley were his bosses.
Walter just didn’t give a shit. That was not only his personality. A lot of people in the music business at that time had that attitude. Music has always spoken to power. Music was the power. Walter wasn’t a musician; he was an executive who worked in the Fifty-Second Street skyscraper that was famously known as Black Rock with all the other suits. But he felt attached to the artists. At the time, he was seen in the media walking side by side with the stars. This gave him enormous power, the power of association. If Tisch and Paley got rid of Walter, who knew what impact that might have had on the artists? Maybe the artists would want to leave, too. Music was a business that Tisch and Paley really didn’t understand—and truthfully, they feared sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. They had an FCC license to worry about. On top of that, it didn’t make sense for Tisch or Paley to upset the applecart, because Walter was selling a lot of apples. So instead of seeing Walter as the chairman of their record group, or as a vice president in their overall company, they, too, saw him as the King.
A lot of kings would have figured out a way to compromise and make nice with their bosses. Others might’ve said the hell with this, left, and looked for a new kingdom. Walter’s mind didn’t work like that. Walter began to wonder: How can I take this kingdom away from Tisch and Paley and keep it for myself?
Walter noticed Tisch selling off pieces of CBS, Inc., that he didn’t find a good fit for the company or that he could make a nice profit on. In the beginning of 1987 Walter began to formulate a plan. I felt like I was on the inside because he let me in on it as our late afternoons together extended into the evenings. Walter would look for a buyer for CBS Records Group and swing a deal. That way, he could have someone else pay to take Tisch and Paley off his back, and at the same time keep himself in charge. If you’re wondering where somebody gets the chutzpah to do something like this, then you’re just beginning to understand Walter. He knew that if he could put out the right hook and convince someone he trusted to put the right amount of money on it, then Tisch would bite.
Why? There were plenty of reasons. Tisch and Paley would be thrilled with the idea of getting a lot of cash for the company. They’d no longer have to have the good name of CBS smeared by any of the musicians on their roster who popped up in the news because of a drug bust or a rape charge. And there was the unspoken benefit: if Tisch took the deal, he could get rid of this huge pain in the ass called Walter Yetnikoff.
As Walter let me in on his plan, he began asking a lot of questions. What do you think about this artist? How would you market this act? If you were in charge, how would you build a promotion department? Walter didn’t say anything directly, but I got the feeling that if he could pull off the deal, in some way he was going to bring me in to work with him. Maybe even install me just underneath him and let me run the company.
Walter’s craziness was an advantage in situations like these. He was also at his best when he had a singular objective that occupied all his time and thoughts. He went to Tisch with his idea, and Tisch gave him a number. If he was going to part with CBS Records Group, he was looking for $2 billion—an unheard-of figure at that time. Walter knew that if he got close, he could move Tisch toward the deal.
Disney passed. An attempt to bring in Mike Milken and the prepared-food magnate Nelson Peltz also failed. A couple of other suitors also couldn’t reach the number. A lot of those people probably kicked themselves later on. They could’ve bought the company for $1.5 billion. Who knew that ten years later, we’d be able to drive the company to a valuation of $14 billion?
Walter kept at it. Eventually, he went to his old friend in Japan, Norio Ohga at Sony. Walter had a relationship with Ohga that dated back two decades because Sony was the licensee for CBS Records Group in Japan. Back in the day, it was easier to make a licensing deal in a foreign country than to create your own company with an expensive infrastructure.
Ohga, the baritone opera singer who was married to the famous concert pianist, and one of the driving forces behind the Walkman and the compact disc, was naturally intrigued by the deal. And he was in the perfect position to help pull it off. His ear for music had helped him rapidly ascend to the presidency of the Sony Corporation under founder Akio Morita. Walter could not have found a better partner.
For one, it would be easier for Walter to swing the sale to Sony because it was a huge company with a sterling name. He wouldn’t be trying to sell it off to some corporate raider in a move that would attract bad press for Tisch and Paley. Walter knew he was working with the board at Black Rock. This had to be respectable. And two, Walter’s bond with Ohga would only strengthen his position of power after the deal was done.
When Walter told me, “I think I got a buyer. I think it’s gonna be Sony,” our talks went from being nebulous to being very clear. And I mean very clear. Once Walter had Sony in a position to do the deal, but before it was actually signed, he said: “I’d like you to come in and work with me.”
I was excited, but some part of me must’ve conveyed hesitance about where I would fit in among the suits. I didn’t wear suits after I left Chappell and became a manager. I wore jeans, like the musicians.
“Look, Tommy,” he said, “I’m prepared to make you president of CBS Records.”
For about half of my life it had been my dream to hear those words. But when I heard them, I was stunned. I was, and am, a realist. Bringing me in to run this monolith had to make anybody who didn’t know me think Walter was completely off his rocker. Yes, I was seen as the manager behind the success of Hall & Oates and John Mellencamp. But I had no college degree, and absolutely no experience running a large multinational record company. How the hell was Walter going to sell me to Ohga as the new guy he wanted in charge? Oh, and one other thing: I’d also be the youngest president in the company’s history.
Ohga didn’t have any idea who I was. There had to be a big chance that he wasn’t going to go for this.
Walter went to Japan to finalize the details of the deal in early ’88. I was at home in Greenwich the moment the call came in. Walter had Ohga’s complete trust. When Walter said that Ohga had agreed to let me run the company, I didn’t know if I should jump up and down or start crying.
The deal made the front page of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. I left Champion Entertainment and basically handed it to the guys who were in it with me.
A limo driver pulled up to my home to take me to Black Rock for my first day of work. I was dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase.
Walter had given me the shot of a lifetime. He saw the potential inside me more than anybody else ever did. He believed in me, and he put me in the position to show what I could do to the entire world.
God bless Walter Yetnikoff.
It turned out that the house I’d driven by so many times when I was a teen and dreamed of owning one day, the one on the Westchester Country Club grounds in Rye, New York, had come up for sale at exactly the same time. So I put in a bid to buy it—and I got it.
Now, I had the job and the home that I’d always wanted to show Sam Clark. But there was no delight in seeing his reaction to my success. Sadly, Sam had passed away shortly before.
He’d been right about one thing. My relationship with his daughter was wrong. But at this point, there seemed to be nothing I could do about it. I had two beautiful kids whom I loved and couldn’t even think of leaving, even though I was always working and saw them only on weekends. It was a terrible conflict. I wanted to be the father that my father was to me. But I just couldn’t be. I was unhappy in my relationship with their mother, and I knew my kids could sense it.
Our marriage reached a point where one of our disagreements was so bad that I almos
t didn’t show up at a surprise fortieth birthday party that Lisa had planned for me. It was on a yacht. I can’t even remember how I was tricked into getting there.
I couldn’t orchestrate leaving my marriage the way Walter engineered his deal to break away from Tisch and Paley. My neighborhood and family had wired me to be married for seventy years, like my parents.
So I fixated on the new job. This huge career change would send my personal life spinning in a direction I could never have imagined.
There were people who thought Walter’s antics and decisions had gone too far when he appointed me as head of CBS Records. “Clive Davis used to have that job. And Walter brings in a manager?”
But as I drove to Black Rock for my first day of work, I knew exactly what I was going to do. The company had become stagnant as far as breaking new artists, and had been surpassed by WEA—which was short for Warner, Elektra, and Atlantic music companies. All anyone had to do to understand the seriousness of the situation was pick up a copy of Billboard. The charts were a shocking report card for CBS. Many of the big names at CBS were sprinkled around the charts. But there were many more hits coming from Warner, and not only that, but a lot of the Warner albums were from new artists who’d never been heard from before.
Our chief competitor had a great overall strategy. It was clear to me that there was only one way to beat Warner Bros.: attack it at its own game. We needed to operate the way Steve Ross and his army did—only better.
Steve Ross was the greatest corporate architect of his time. He was neither a music guy nor a movie guy. In fact, he had no background in the entertainment industry at all. But his philosophy created the largest media company in the world then. In order to understand that philosophy, you need to know a little about him.
Steve’s father had lost everything in the Depression, and Steve got his start in his wife’s family’s funeral parlor business, which ultimately merged with the Kinney parking lot company. Steve grew those companies to the point where he could purchase the Warner–Seven Arts film studio, which he did in 1969 for $400 million, and he continued to expand. Two decades later, in 1989, he merged Warner with Time, Inc., to create a company with a valuation of more than $15 billion.
The secret of his success could very well have been developed early on. There is no place on earth where you are going to meet sadder people than in the funeral parlor business. Steve became an expert at making people feel good. By the time he took over the entertainment company, he was highly skilled at making sure all the talent around him was happy. I’m not talking only about the celebrated artists who were signed in all branches of the company. Steve treated his executives like talent, incentivizing and lavishly rewarding them for innovation and success. The executives at Warner flew on the same corporate jets that whisked movie stars and recording artists to the company getaway in Acapulco.
Steve had the best of the industry giants running the different music labels in his company. Mo Ostin was in charge of Warner Bros. Ahmet Ertegun was atop Atlantic. Great music men like Joe Smith and Bob Krasnow were leading Elektra. The head of each label ran his own company, was in charge of all of its services, and was completely responsible for the outcome of all the music that his company produced and sold. Ross’s music executives were not only getting the most out of talent like Led Zeppelin and the Eagles. They were hustling at the cutting edge, and they were driven by one thing: music.
This was a completely different outlook from the monolithic mind-set at CBS—the one that had been set up by William Paley and Goddard Lieberson, and eventually handed down to Walter Yetnikoff. CBS had generally been handpicking its chairmen from the business affairs and legal departments. So, we’re talking apples and oranges from the start.
Underneath that chairman, there was an appointed president who basically ran CBS Records. But there was no Mo Ostin or Ahmet Ertegun in charge of the Columbia and Epic labels. These labels had many shared services and a corporate governance. Though this system spawned very talented executives like Clive Davis, its overall effects made the company stodgy and tired.
Cornerstone artists like Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, and Bob Dylan, and the invention of the CD were really what kept cash registers ringing at CBS through the eighties. There was simply no burning desire in the management ranks to forge ahead. The pages of Billboard didn’t lie. CBS didn’t have a single hit artist in the burgeoning alternative music scene in Seattle as I headed into my first day of work.
The solution to this problem was very simple to me. The company needed to be turned upside down. It needed to be remodeled after Warner. We needed to set up Epic and Columbia as powerful labels and individual entities, bring in big-time execs, and incentivize success. This would be like shock therapy for a stiff and bureaucratic company that was often slowed down by executives concerned with maintaining the power of their fiefdoms.
Walter loved the idea to restructure and gave me the green light. So I pulled up to Black Rock on that first day extremely confident. There were a lot of people in the company who saw me as a manager who was out of his league, and predicted I’d be gone within six months. But the truth was that I’d never felt more secure in my entire life. I had a five-year contract. And it was a great contract, because Grubman helped me negotiate it.
There was no office ready for me on my first day at Black Rock. A crew would be hired to demolish the existing configuration down the hall from Walter’s office—a big, beautiful corner spot—in order to build my new home. This sent a powerful message. I didn’t move into a room that had been vacated by the last person in the job. I was going to tear down the old structure and create an entirely new one.
I brought in a company that the Kennedys might call—the design team of Parish-Hadley—and thought a great deal about every detail. I didn’t want to mimic the office that Sam Clark had once worked in atop the ABC building. But I wanted people to feel the sense of sophistication and elegance that I’d felt when I first stepped into that office.
For years as a manager, I went to work in jeans. Now I was in a suit and tie. There would be no gold records in my new office. Those were outside in my music room, surrounding my piano. The ambience of that office was yet another way for me to shed the old skin and put on the new.
A lot of the old guard at CBS became shocked and outraged when word spread about the construction of that new office. But Walter got it. He was treating me the same way that Steve Ross had treated Mo, Ahmet, and Joe.
One of the first albums to be delivered to me had been recorded by Gloria Estefan. It was scheduled for release, but I immediately sensed that something was wrong.
It didn’t feel like all the elements had really come together to create the image of a global superstar. As soon as I looked at the album cover, the videos, and the publicity shots, I could see Gloria’s career veering down the wrong track.
The success of this album for the company, for me, and for Gloria was too important to just let it go. So I stopped the release cold. Inside the building it said that business as usual was no longer going to be the usual.
All of Gloria’s previous albums had credited her band, the Miami Sound Machine, on the cover. This would be the first with only Gloria’s name out front. That was why it was so crucial to get it right. The album had to be focused in a way that didn’t compromise who she really was.
The essence of Gloria Estefan, if you asked anybody to define it, would be one single song: “Conga.” It was a distinct blend of Afro-Cuban rhythm with great orchestrations, some pop, and a beat that could pull anyone onto the dance floor anywhere in the world. When you hear it today it’s as current as the day it was recorded, and will be forever and ever. Gloria had it all: The Latin roots. The look. The rhythm of her music. I knew that if she was positioned correctly, she could become the next worldwide superstar.
My time with the Savannah Band, as hard and trying as that was, had given me the experience of working with a multicultural blend of people, Latin, R & B,
pop, their musical rhythms, and their sense of style and imaging. That schooling broadened my knowledge and enabled me to apply some of that vision to Gloria and her Miami Sound Machine, and to take her pop Latin sound and help turn it into world music.
So one of the first things I did was reach out to meet Gloria and her husband and manager, Emilio, and tell them how I thought the album should be refocused. That meeting became my blueprint for what would become the entire Latin Explosion. It would also start a friendship that would change my life.
Gloria and Emilio were very humble. They had both emigrated from Cuba. Emilio almost died at sea when he returned to Cuba in a small boat to try to get his brother. Neither Gloria nor Emilio was upset that the album would have to be postponed and that I had suggested that we scrap all the images and the entire promotional campaign. They seemed overjoyed to have someone embrace who they truly were, who totally got them on every level, and who was willing put a huge amount of time, passion, energy, and money into their work. I was able to speak to them like a musician and see them through the eyes of a manager. Outside my office a sign read: “Thomas D. Mottola, President of CBS/Sony Records.” But to Gloria and Emilio I was just Tommy and still am.
I immediately got on a plane and flew to Miami to immerse myself in Gloria and Emilio’s world. Being in Miami felt as natural as it was on the night I saw Sinatra at the Boom Boom Room in the Fontainebleau as a boy, and the night I watched Wayne Cochran lift the roof beams off the Barn on the 79th Street Causeway. Gloria and Emilio made me feel like I was at home in their home.
I took so many trips to see them over the years that they now sort of blend together in my mind. But when I think back on those times I think of myself entering their kitchen in the morning wearing a pair of flip-flops and shorts, and having a half-dozen of Gloria’s Dalmatians pin me up against the wall. The first time they charged me, the only clue I had that those dogs weren’t going to bite my balls off was Emilio saying in an accent that sounded like Ricky Ricardo, “Gloria loves those dogs… Gloria loves those dogs…” I also made the mistake of drinking the Cuban coffee they served me as if it were in an American cup—only to find out that it was really a version of Red Bull times ten. My heart started pounding so loudly the first time it happened I nearly asked Emilio to rush me to the hospital. But before long, I was sipping and enjoying. I loved the Cuban food. I loved their culture. It felt like the essence of what I grew up with on Arthur Avenue back in the Bronx. I loved seeing Gloria and Emilio as a couple. To be completely honest, I often stopped to observe the chemistry between them. Whatever that was, that was what I wanted in my own life, that was what I wanted in my own marriage. I loved every minute I spent with them.
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