But rest on your laurels in this business for a minute and you’re toast. Yes, that fast. We knew that in order to continue as the greatest music company in the world, we needed to compete in places where we hadn’t been before. So we were constantly evolving with new ideas, coming up with amazing box sets and digging deep into the history of our company to showcase legends like Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, and Johnny Cash while feverishly developing new artists. There was always the constant pressure of being able to deliver volume while looking for that big new breakthrough artist whom we could establish on the world stage.
Reinventing our catalog was simply just great business, since we already owned all the masters. There was virtually no expense to produce it other than repackaging the content and marketing costs. But more than that, it continued to give tremendous credibility and integrity to our history-rich company. Going back to those great legacies was almost as critical as taking leaps and bounds to push it forward. The artists who were signed to Sony, and the artists outside of Sony, all took notice and, as musicians first, truly appreciated what we were doing—not to mention consumers who simply loved music that should live forever.
Tony Bennett’s MTV Unplugged concert was so successful that it still resounds to this day, nearly twenty years later. Just recently Tony did a duet album with younger artists, like Lady Gaga, that entered Billboard’s chart at Number One. And he’s currently doing another duet album with all of the top Latino artists singing in English and Spanish—including Thalia. Eighty-seven years old, and still crossing over…
So the fairy tale continued. Mariah and I built a castle in Bedford, New York. It contained just about everything that a person could possibly wish for. Together, we studied Georgian manor houses and the homes in Newport and then built it with my best friend, Ronny Parlato. There was a salon for Mariah to get her hair done, a world-class state-of-the-art recording studio with every new piece of equipment in the universe for her to sing in, and an indoor swimming pool covered by a cloud-painted ceiling for her to swim in. All my best intentions were working against me. Sadly, I just couldn’t see it.
In fact, one night she even said to me, “In a few years, let’s just run away and escape to an island and buy a little night-club. I’ll be the singer in that club and the rest of the time we can hang out on the island and chill.” I was so smitten that I actually believed it for a second. Not only did I drink the Kool-Aid, I guzzled the whole fucking bucket. After all the hard work we’d put in, what a finish to the fairy tale. Funny, the paths that life will lead us down, even when you think you know it all.
Strangely, the very thing that had brought us together—music—now was starting to cause huge disagreements between us. A little while after the success of Music Box, I said to Mariah, “Wouldn’t it be a great idea for you to do a Christmas album?”
After all, every great artist, and I mean every great artist, who came along when I was growing up put out a Christmas album. It was simply part of their repertoire. Phil Spector made one of the greatest Christmas albums of all time—it still plays in my house year after year. Even Bruce Springsteen did one of the best renditions ever of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” Christmas was one of the best times of my childhood, and one of the happiest times of the year for Mariah, so it was only natural to me that she’d jump at the idea. Everybody at Sony was onboard and gung-ho. There was only one person who resisted it: Mariah.
She resisted it, probably thinking that a Christmas album would be very, very uncool to her hip-hop fans. We went back and forth. Finally, she began to open up to the idea, and once she started, she dove into it with Walter A., writing some new songs and also covering the classics. This album ended up, in my opinion, as the single greatest modern Christmas album. And when she finished we even created a homegrown video with images of a sleigh, live reindeer, and the best decorations of Christmas lights ever from the Bronx. And guess who dressed up as Santa? The album cover photo was to be a sleigh and live reindeer with Mariah in a very sexy Santa suit. That was her idea—and very cool. And the entire Sony team was overwhelmed with enthusiasm when the album cover photo came in. But when Mariah looked at the same photo she turned to me and said, “What are you trying to do, turn me into Connie Francis?”
Rather than fight about it, I just walked away, although I had to hold back my laughter as soon as I got into the next room and thought: How the hell does she even know who Connie Francis is?
Her rendition of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has now become a modern-day classic, played as much these days as any song you know, probably even more than “White Christmas.” All the TV news broadcasts use it as their intro and outro. It was also covered recently on albums by Michael Bublé and Justin Bieber. Mariah’s gospel rendition of “Joy to the World,” which was in a Christmas television special filmed at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, still stands out to me as one of the greatest live vocal performances of all time. The initial release of Merry Christmas sold almost 15 million copies, and today that number is in excess of 20 million. It sold almost three million in Japan alone—and Japan is a Buddhist country. Helloooo!
Other than the success of the album, the only good part of this story for me is a magazine article not long ago in which Mariah told a writer how she thought I was crazy for asking her to do the album and how she initially resisted, but that in retrospect it’s become one of her favorites and that she was really happy I made it happen. That same year there was a television special in which she sang Christmas songs with her mother, and it made me feel good to know that she’ll be able to treasure all those Christmas songs and sing them with her children for the rest of her life.
If I’m rambling on about this, it’s only because of the unavoidable conflicts that were occurring between us, which musically brought out fear, not only in me but in everyone at Sony who cared about her career, because her heart more and more wanted to go in a different direction. Going down the path she wanted to go could only result in a narrower audience and less airplay formats, and it could possibly alienate the broad spectrum of consumers who loved and bought her music.
Suggestions about what music to record were a very natural discussion between the artist and the business side, and disagreements were common. The artist is the artist. But the business side has many creative people with their own ideas. That’s why when you added it up it was called the music business. I’d watched these conflicts unfold from as far back as when I was managing Hall & Oates, and initially Celine Dion did not want to sing “My Heart Will Go On.” That song only generated a billion dollars in business. So it was nothing new that these disagreements came up with Mariah. In fact, there’s another story that comes to mind on this topic that bears telling, and it has to do with Luther Vandross.
Luther was one of the greatest R & B singers of all time. His voice was like a powerful instrument that played velvet. From a pure singing point of view—just his pipes—you’d have to consider him to be at the top of the list.
He always had success, but he was headstrong and he always wanted to do the material that either he had written or that he had personally selected. He was usually never open to much suggestion. And we were perfectly fine with that if he was perfectly fine with that. But, of course, he wasn’t completely okay with it, because he wanted to be selling much more than he was.
We, too, as a company always thought that Luther had the ability to sell not just a million with every release. But we knew he was capable of selling at least five million. We told him the only way he could do that was to cross his R & B success over into Top 40 radio. But in order to achieve that, he would have to be open to working with new producers and songwriters, experiment, and try some new things. We never, ever could, or would, force it on him. But we always urged him to try. “If you don’t like it,” I assured him, “we won’t put it out. We’ll respect your decision.”
Luther finally agreed to try around 1994. And one day after he had agreed, while
Mariah and I were driving in my car, I mentioned that Luther was doing an album called Songs that paid tribute to some of the classic hits that had inspired him over the years. I asked her for suggestions and she quickly blurted: “Why don’t we do ‘Endless Love’ together? He is one of my favorite singers ever, and I would do it with him if you could get him to do it.”
I absolutely loved the idea. “Endless Love” was a classic originally sung by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie. There were only two risks involved—starting with Luther. I would have to tiptoe through the tulips and walk on glass to ask him if he would do the duet—all of which I did do. The second risk was that Sony would be putting its biggest-selling recording artist on the line to front this experiment.
Luther went for it hook, line, and sinker—he absolutely loved and respected Mariah as a singer and was completely surprised that I would suggest it. The team at the company also jumped on board, making it a collaborative effort between two separate labels. Mariah was on Columbia, and Luther was on Epic. So we put out the album and the single. The single climbed the Top 40 radio charts straight to Number Two, lit up the phones, and ended up selling millions. Luther was a very, very, very happy camper. But the rest of the songs on the album—most of which were Luther’s choices—just didn’t have the same success. So, of course, no good deed goes unpunished. Luther thought we took the single “Endless Love” that high only because Mariah was singing on it with him.
Mariah was having success after success after success, and each album was becoming sort of a landmark. She threw herself head over heels into her next project, Daydream, and the company went out of its way to bring together the elements, producers, songs, and musicians that leaned in the direction that she wanted to go and would make her happy.
We brought in Dave Hall, who was working with Mary J. Blige. I was able to commandeer the hottest group at the time, Boyz II Men, to come in and complement her on “One Sweet Day.” And Jermaine Dupri, the youngest and coolest producer out there at that time, came in to work on “Always Be My Baby.” The album was so well rounded that it gave her fans everything they wanted while forging ahead.
I will admit that I was not nuts about the idea of inserting Ol’ Dirty Bastard as a featured rapper on a remix version of “Fantasy” that Sean Combs (aka Puff Daddy, aka Diddy) ended up producing. This guy, ODB, may his soul rest in peace, had tremendous issues with drugs and alcohol and was certainly a contrast to Mariah’s girl-next-door image, and I just didn’t see him jumping on a record with the Pop Princess. But in the end you couldn’t deny his street poetry. It was a bold and dangerous move. And Mariah’s judgment was completely right—it worked.
The video of “Fantasy” was the first one that Mariah ever directed on her own. So we surrounded her with all the best technical and lighting people so there would be absolutely no potholes to stop her from creating her vision. The song sounded like airy summer breezes, the boardwalk, a Ferris wheel, and all of that. So I suggested shooting it at Rye Playland—my old childhood stomping grounds. You could smell the summer salt air as Mariah Roller-bladed on the boardwalk while singing, then mimed the lyrics on a roller-coaster ride, then stood and danced on a Hummer in the parking lot with the lights of the amusement park behind her. It turned out Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s appearance was the perfect complement.
As soon as I heard it and saw the video I knew she was 100 percent spot-on. And, of course, the record just blew up. “Fantasy” went straight to Number One. I always applaud things that work, and this didn’t just work… it was huge. My feeling about it was simple: Great! Now we’ve totally captured the hip-hop audience, too.
Mariah looked at it in a very different way. She felt like it had broken the dam for her. She thought: This is what I’ve wanted to do for a long time. See what happens when I do this? This is the only direction I should be going.
Which worried all of us at Sony. While she was dead right to add ODB to the remix version of “Fantasy,” it was another thing to think about framing her entire career this way. So once again, we were at a fork in the road. She was adamant about the direction that she wanted to pursue. The advice from everyone at Sony was very different. We continued to say: Yes, do what your heart wants, but at the same time we were stressing to her: You can have it all. All markets. All demographics. You can have it all like no other artist who’s ever come before you.
The ever-widening crack between us got much wider. I was the chairman of Sony Music and she was the biggest-selling artist on the label, and we were married, and there was no escaping the friction because we came home to it every night.
VOICES
GLORIA ESTEFAN
Tommy wanted to protect Mariah, to do what was best for her career. Tommy believed in her so much. She went from a background singer to the biggest star in the world. But you can’t convey experience. She was just too young.
Fame is very treacherous. It is given, and it can just as easily be taken away. A star that’s riding high in a music career is only as good as their biggest hit. The consumer is in control. It’s a tough ride if your feet are not firmly planted.
MICHELE ANTHONY
Music executive
It always struck me as odd that Tommy got painted as the bad guy in that relationship, when all he did was take her from nothing, fall in love, and give her everything he possibly could.
Because here’s the thing about Tommy. It can be annoying, but if you love him you will find it endearing. Tommy is a 100 percent type of person. That can be all-consuming. We’ll be with him for hours and then after one of us leaves he’ll call up twenty minutes later. It’s not that he’s being controlling to me. He’s like, “Did I miss anything? What’s going on?”
It’s enthusiasm. It’s exuberance. He gets obsessed with things. I guess in certain situations that can play out or feel like control. But it’s really passion and obsession.
At roughly the same time, things were rapidly changing across the ocean at Sony Tokyo. Akio Morita, the founder, had had a stroke while playing tennis, and he’d passed on his position of CEO to Norio Ohga. We were constantly dealing directly with Ohga, but sadly he, too, was ill. He’d had multiple heart attacks. Fortunately, they were mild enough for him to survive, but he looked more and more tired every time he would fly to New York, and it was clear to see that he was growing weaker and weaker.
Both Sony’s founder, Morita, and his right hand, Ohga, had created the finest brand of electronics in the world with brilliant thinking that was so far out of the box it extended into other universes. But it was inside the box where their biggest flaw surfaced. They had never groomed and developed one or two executives who could succeed them. There were some good individual managers running individual units like electronics, semiconductors, and PlayStation, as well as the insurance and finance businesses. But when Ohga was handed the reins from Morita, a lot more attention should have been paid to developing someone who had a parallel vision for Sony. Had Ohga done so, Sony would not be where it is now—which is a far cry from the leading brand that it was when it purchased CBS Records back in 1988.
There was shock and surprise when Ohga, as CEO, handpicked Nobuyuki Idei to succeed him as president. Idei had not stood out in any way in Sony Corp., and Ohga had chosen him over fourteen more senior executives. No one knew how things would unfold. Certainly, no one had a clue that a decade later Idei would be appropriately named by Business-Week as one of the worst managers of 2005. The only thing we hoped for at that time was that Idei would take notice of the giant profits that Sony Music was generating and leave us to do what we knew how to do best. But my antennae were raised, and I had a very strange and uneasy feeling in my gut, because I sensed that changes would be coming.
One of Idei’s first targets was Sony Pictures, formerly Columbia Pictures, which had been hemorrhaging money under Peter Guber and Jon Peters. Guber was one of the brightest guys in the movie business, and also one of the greatest talkers and salesmen I’ve ever encountered, but the com
pany fell into a slump, and he was able to get away with these incredible financial losses only by befriending Mickey Schulhof, who had overriding responsibility for the film company. Mickey was blinded by the Hollywood lights, and he simply stood by as movies tanked and losses mounted. He was able to get away with this because of his longtime friendship with Ohga. But there were too many red flags that Mickey should have acted on. When your film company is bleeding billions of dollars and it becomes cheaper to close the company than back up the losses, something drastic is bound to happen even when you are good friends with the CEO. I stayed at a distance from it; there was nothing I could do about it, and it certainly was not my problem. But it was definitely a house on fire.
The company had been forced to write off a nearly four-billion-dollar loss in 1994, and it started to implode the year after. Guber forced Peters to walk the plank, then he jumped ship himself. Somebody had to pay for the mess. Unlike Norio Ohga, Idei had no attachment to Schulhof. In fact, knowing full well of Schulhof’s loyalty and friendship to Ohga, he quickly forced Mickey to resign at the end of 1995, to Ohga’s dismay. Idei knew that Ohga would not go against him, because he was Ohga’s new appointee, and any backlash would send the wrong signal to the company in Tokyo.
I was sad about Mickey’s departure because Mickey had always been so good and generous to me. But the move was completely justified and understandable. It was a sign that Ohga’s power was definitely waning. My eyes, like almost everyone else’s in the company, were now wide open.
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