Hitmaker

by Tommy Mottola

  “I just heard it last night,” I’d say.

  When I think back on the wedding to Mariah, all that’s left in my mind is a stop-action still frame—the kind of publicity shot that might be in the newspaper the next day or that I see still floating around the Internet.

  My mind just doesn’t remember the wedding like it was a flowing movie. In fact, I can’t remember anyone dancing. I know that I did my best to create a fairy tale. But for all the meticulous planning, I can’t even remember the name of the band or any—and I mean any—of the songs that were played at the reception. So in reality it was just a fairy tale.

  I can tell you that it was at Saint Thomas Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue. I remember there were a lot of flower girls, and Mariah had my friend Vera Wang design her wedding gown. It seemed like the entire music industry turned out. The reception following the ceremony took place at the Metropolitan Club overlooking Central Park—sort of cold, stiff, and proper. But when I press myself to think back on it, the images that come to mind now are what I didn’t see at the time, but that came out later. One of those images was of my daughter Sarah crying during the ceremony and my son Michael hugging her and trying to comfort her. Sarah was twelve. Michael was thirteen. They felt terribly out of place and uncomfortable, and they knew in their bones what I simply couldn’t feel.

  So many people understood beforehand that it just wasn’t right and tried to tell me time after time as best as they could. I remember talking with Mickey Schulhof in his office just a week before the wedding and him saying to me, “Let me just shoot straight with you. She’s an artist on the label and you’re twenty years older than her. If it lasts five years, nobody’s gonna criticize you. But if it ends within twelve months…”

  It’s true, I wanted to get married, but it certainly wasn’t like I was forcing this on anyone. There was nothing in Mariah’s past that leaned toward marriage at all whatsoever. In fact, the idea of marriage was the furthest thing away from her universe, and to her marriage was probably one of the most frightening words in existence. Any inference to it in conversation early on really didn’t go anywhere. So I just sat back, left it alone, and stayed away from the topic. I can only now wonder if marriage was a way for her to close some of the cracks she noticed coming between us, because I was completely taken by surprise when she sprang the idea on me. At about midnight while we were renting a house in Florida, she just turned to me with a smile and said: “Hey, why don’t we get married?”

  Me being me, I would’ve gotten an engagement ring to pop the question. But it didn’t happen that way. I was both empty-handed and stunned.

  Even though marriage meant only anxiety and anguish for her in her upbringing, I think when she thought this through she figured it would make me happy. The two of us had an intimate and genuine care for each other. And it could’ve been her way of giving back after I had given so much to get her to where she was.

  There was no reason to be concerned with pushback from inside the company. Sales were going through the roof, and Mariah was not only on top of the world but she was one of the biggest-selling artists in Japan. The idea of getting married soon morphed into creating a fairy tale. There was detail after detail after detail being handled by a small army.

  The stitching of a special compartment in one of Mariah’s shoes to fit a sixpence for good luck came from that old British custom: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a sixpence in her shoe.” So much for that good luck!

  The fifty flower girls were all Mariah’s fans. Mariah took part in designing the wedding cake.

  All I can tell you about these forgotten details that I’m trying to dredge up and pull to the surface is that I was just trying my best to make Mariah happy. And when the wedding ended, it felt like we were both happy. The only thing left to complete the fairy tale was to build her a castle.

  So that’s what I tried to do next—completely blind to the fact that fairy tales don’t come true.

  My honeymoon had barely ended when two very unpleasant situations arose. The first came when charges that Michael Jackson had molested a thirteen-year-old boy filled the airwaves. A few months later I had to go to England to testify in a trial against an artist whose music I loved dearly—George Michael.

  There are few charges more serious than molestation, and in the case of Michael Jackson there was little we at Sony could do but step back and wonder how it would play out. It was our job to handle the public relations as it pertained to his music and recording career, but we couldn’t do anything in these legal matters other than support him in any way he asked. Looking back now, it’s obvious that Michael’s career had already peaked by this time, though he refused to acknowledge it. Living in a delusional bubble permitted him to think these allegations and the press reports were not going to affect the way people thought about him. The reality is his career was certainly never the same from the moment that charge hit the airwaves.

  Earlier in 1993, we had tried to reignite passion for his Dangerous album with a halftime performance at the Super Bowl. He appeared to pop out the top of the scoreboard seconds before being shot up through a stage at midfield amid fireworks. A couple of weeks later he sat down for an interview with Oprah Winfrey that was seen by 90 million people. But the topics everyone was talking about the next day had little to do with music, but as his celebrity would have it, about the Elephant Man’s bones and all of the physical abuse Michael endured as a young boy from his dad. Dangerous did get a boost from these appearances and the surrounding publicity, but certainly not the kind of sales we saw when our new management team had taken over in 1988 and had given his previous album, Bad, a second wind.

  We didn’t know the exact impact the charges would have on his career and would only get a reading of the scope when his next album came out. While we knew that his loyal fans would stand by him, there was no doubt all the publicity surrounding the facts, rumors, and innuendo behind the cash settlement between Michael’s insurance carrier and the boy’s family was going to turn a lot of people away.

  While all this was playing out, I had to go to London in the fall of ’93 to testify in a trial against George Michael. We would never go to court against recording artists unless there was absolutely no other alternative, and in this case there was no alternative. We worked for months trying to settle the dispute with George even when we knew we were in the right. But George just took things too far and sued us, and I believe deep down inside it was really bad advice from his manager and his attorneys, who were arrogant and pompous in thinking that they would get a release from us at Sony and attract a huge payday from another record company. I knew that simply was just not going to happen.

  George somehow managed to describe the situation surrounding the marketing of Listen without Prejudice, Vol. 1 as “professional slavery.” His suit claimed that he was a victim under British and European laws of restraint of trade because he had no say in the way Sony had promoted his last album and might promote future albums.

  The way we saw it at Sony was this: George brought us an album that was transitional—take that any way you like—and different from Faith. Which is fine; after all, he’s the artist and it is his music. But if the hits aren’t there, that isn’t our fault. The way we saw it, George was the whole package. That package included the great music on Faith and the incredibly youthful handsome guy in a leather jacket and jeans that put him over the top—just as it had for Elvis back in the day. George simply had an emotional rebellion to his success and he lashed out at anything he had done in the past. It was like watching somebody who subconsciously wanted to hurt himself. After all was said and done, the new album sold only a third as many CDs as Faith did and, of course, the artist is never to blame. In his mind, and in the minds of the inept management surrounding him, only Sony was to blame. Good luck, buddy.

  It was unfortunate because, as I said from the start, George was an artist that I, and everyone else at Sony, had put up
on a pedestal. I loved and respected this guy’s music and was so eager to help him get to new platforms and greater heights.

  But you can’t make the public love a product, and you can’t make the consumer go to the store and buy it. Nobody was better than our team at Sony when it came to marketing and promoting and presenting an artist’s new album. We were world renowned for our great distribution, so this album was everywhere that people could see it. We got it played around the world, positioned perfectly in record stores, featured on television shows, and written about in newspapers. But ultimately, something has to catch the attention of the public to make it compelling so enough people will buy it. You just can’t get around this simple truth: ultimately, the consumer genuinely has to want to buy it.

  Music isn’t like a sweater that you might need on a chilly autumn day. It isn’t something you can pick up, feel, examine, and try on. You can’t cook it like a steak and put it in your mouth. Music is something that’s in the air. It has to appeal to all the senses. We had to have a sense of how this ethereal product would sell, and then we needed to prepare the most meticulous and detailed way to sell it.

  We organized dozens of listening sessions in every corner of the world where up to a hundred people sat in a room to listen to the music that was about to be released. Through all of this we stood by and supported our artists—especially George Michael. Even though so many of our promotional tools had been taken away by George, we didn’t back up for one second. There were millions of dollars on the line, so we motivated and inspired our army of troops to promote George’s new release.

  Even though we were handling the most talented artists in the world—often with kid gloves—and giving them the respect and the time and the support that they were entitled to, at the end of the day we were still a business. A big business. A business with $7 billion in sales every year, and it was my job to not only nurture all those artists but to report to a board of directors. That board cared about one thing: numbers. If my numbers weren’t in line or ahead of projections, then the score on my report card wouldn’t look good. So I was faced with a minute-to-minute, night-and-day juggling act of those two dynamics. On one hand, I was dealing with pressures that said: Make the numbers. On the other I realized that I was selling a product that had somebody’s soul in it.

  At the time, Sony had close to four hundred artists who, by the way, were all in need of its promotional dollars. We were just like any other business. And just like any other business, when we saw that one of our releases or new products wasn’t going anywhere, we would have to make cold, hard decisions about how we would be spending our marketing and promotional budget on other releases that could be surging toward the top. That was how our business worked—and if it didn’t work like that, there would be no business at all.

  Yet when I went over to England for the trial my mind was filled with doubt. Even though the evidence is clear in a lot of murder cases, sometimes the murderer gets off. What was that line? If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit. We also didn’t know how cultural differences could affect the case, because George Michael walked on water in the UK. Or how the evidence would play out in a court system that made me feel like I was watching a movie on HBO about medieval times. How the hell could anyone guess what might happen when you’ve got to look up at a judge with a long white wig on his head and call him “my lord.” Can you imagine a kid from the Bronx in this movie? All I could do was testify, tell the truth, and state our case.

  Months later, I was back in my office in New York, when my assistants were ringing my intercom incessantly and there were loud knocks on my door. It was my general counsel. I was in the middle of an important discussion, but I had an idea what he had come to talk about. The decision from the courts in the UK had come down, and it was overwhelmingly in our favor. The people who’d misguided George had really screwed up badly. Not only had he lost the case, but under the judge’s ruling he was now on the hook for all the court costs, and the charges for our UK lawyers were in excess of $15 million.

  Sure, I was glad we won. But there was nothing in this situation that I was truly happy about. I knew George wasn’t happy, and at the end of the day all I wanted to do was make the best of the situation. There was a silent period for a few months. Then his attorneys approached us and asked if they could buy George out of his recording contract. We felt there had been such a severe schism that it would probably be best for business, and best for George’s career, to do so. I knew that David Geffen desperately wanted to sign him. So in a short period of time we worked out all the deal points and George Michael ended up on Geffen Records. From a pure dollar and business standpoint we came out great. Not only did we win the case and collect our legal fees, but we made tens of millions by selling the contract to Geffen while retaining the rights to all of George’s catalog—including one of the greatest albums of all time, his Faith album. So we had the best of the old George Michael, and the new George Michael got just what he wanted—he was free to live his life and career elsewhere. Personally, though, it was sad to lose a great artist like George.

  Years later, there was a similar situation when Michael Jackson would try to get out of his contract with Sony after his album sales declined dramatically, dropping the blame on us for the way we’d promoted it. He even took it a step further, calling me the devil, and in one public protest he held up a poster that included facial pictures of himself and George Michael with Xs over their mouths as if Sony had tried to silence both of them.

  That’s all total crap. We at Sony were the ones who had to—and did—remain silent in front of the public. Let there be no misunderstanding about that whatsoever. We never did and never would attack an artist in public. Anyone in the music business knows that would be total suicide.

  It was our job to find, develop, nurture, and release to the consumer as much great music as we could, and ultimately to sell it to as many people as possible. When artists are on the decline, it’s just very hard for them to see it that way.

  There was sad irony to me in George Michael’s departure. That’s because we had completely restructured in order to make ourselves the most artist-friendly company in the world.

  Yes, we were a huge corporation that had global manufacturing and distribution. But we were also able to act like a boutique company that catered specifically to each individual need. Gone were the days when the bands of Seattle wouldn’t talk to us. Now we had Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam coming through our doors and even borrowing one of my guitars to do an acoustic show. Bob Dylan was knock, knock, knocking on my office door to say hello. C’mon, Bob Dylan, one of my heroes, are you kidding me? This was a 180-degree turn from the days at the old CBS prior to its transformation to Sony Music Entertainment. We welcomed our artists with open arms and tender loving care, and continually tried to help push them into new frontiers.

  One of the greatest things we were able to pull off, and that I am still so proud of to this day, was to be able to reposition Tony Bennett. Tony’s son and manager, Danny, had come up with a fresh and amazing strategy. Tony was nearing seventy years old in 1994, but his voice was eternally twenty. Danny’s concept was that great songs, great singers, and great records will appeal to any generation and live forever. And in his father’s case, he couldn’t have been more correct.

  So together with Danny, we positioned Tony in an MTV Unplugged concert to introduce him to a younger audience. It was a historic night. Tony was dedicating songs to Duke Ellington and singing duets with k.d. lang and Elvis Costello. It worked on every level because Tony had never played to a specific demographic. He was authentic, and that sincerity translated across generations.

  Tony Bennett and MTV Unplugged! Can you believe it? This concert was accompanied by black-and-white music videos, along with an incredible album. Suddenly, something old became something totally new. Kids were watching the same Tony Bennett whom I listened to with my parents when I was a kid—and loving it. And to think that Michele Anthony, who
had grown up with Tony because her father was his manager, was now my senior executive vice president—and that she was also simultaneously signing the hottest alternative and rock bands in the world. Talk about contrasts. This is exactly the kind of stuff that makes a great music company. The ability to do it all and do it authentically—without smelling like a big corporation.

  We all had to walk a tricky high wire with Pearl Jam. The group did not seek to be famous. Eddie Vedder did not want to be on the cover of Time magazine, and he felt horrified when he saw his picture on that cover after he and Kurt Cobain had promised each other they wouldn’t participate in a grunge story. It was distasteful to Eddie when designers started copying his flannel shirts and his brown corduroy jacket and selling them for $750. It was everything he was against. He did not want to put a wall up in front of his home, but he had to, and it saved his life when some stalker got in a car and tried to crash into his house. All Eddie and Pearl Jam wanted to do was make music and play it for their fans at a reasonable price. That was it. Period. So it was always a balancing act when it came to promoting the band. But it always went smoothly because Kelly Curtis, Pearl Jam’s manager from day one, and any of the band members could go straight to Michele and the A&R specialist Michele brought in, Michael Goldstone, whom they knew and trusted from the very outset.

  Pearl Jam followed Vs. with another megahit called Vitalogy in 1994. People in the industry saw what was going on. Aerosmith, which had started out on our Columbia label back in the early seventies but then departed for Geffen Records in the mideighties, would soon come back and re-sign with us in the nineties. Again thanks to Michele Anthony and the team. Further testament to how important it is to have all the right people working toward and believing in the same goal.

  All of this momentum converged at a very significant time—and, of course, timing is everything. I believe that the passing of Steve Ross in 1992, along with his leadership and style of management, began to weaken the music companies at Warner just as Sony was coming into full bloom. Warner began to get bogged down with people who were brought in for more corporate governance. Suits who knew nothing about the business. We had just climbed over that mountain, and now we were in the lead, and not just in the United States. We began dominating every territory on the globe and we would later hit our ultimate goal: the number one company in profitable worldwide market share—not just sales alone.