Rock On

by Dan Kennedy

  The meeting settles and he introduces himself. He has an accent. Of course. Jesus, what else, an assistant named Ursula and an Austin Healy with a telephone in the glove box? We get it; you’re a winner.

  After introducing himself with an effortless charm and getting a few eager laughs, he leans back in his chair, casually crosses one leg over the other, and says, “I have a question for everybody here. Is this band, the Darkness, a novelty band? Or, let me put it this way: Are they in danger of being perceived as a novelty band?”

  What I wish I would’ve said:

  “Well, sir, the lead singer alternates his wardrobe between bright pink leather pants and a spandex unitard. I’ve got a snapshot of him riding through a crowd on a roadie’s shoulders, shirtless and sticking out his tongue like a cross between Nigel Tuffnel from Spinal Tap and an oversexed Benny Hill sketch. And the video we watched in this room not so long ago is all about his trying to escape a big octopus in outer space as a female Satan tempts him into a fiery ring, and the bassist walks around like a robot with a penchant for ninja headbands. If that answers your question.”

  That would’ve been a sweet moment. But I’m afraid it went down a little more like this:

  He asks his question, “I have a question for everybody here. Is this band, the Darkness, a novelty band? Or, let me put it this way: Are they in danger of being perceived as a novelty band?”

  I look sort of toward him. I continue looking in his general direction with a polite smile and a “Hmmm, good question” look on my face, not saying anything, but kind of looking up at the ceiling like I’m really pondering it. Like a very smart employee would. The kind of employee who should never be laid off. While I do this, other people answer.

  “Well, actually, that’s what some of us here thought at first, but they’re really into what they do, and we’re really excited to be working on this record,” says a woman in the middle ground of the radio or video promotions department.

  A guy from the sales department, I think: “I can certainly see what you’re saying. It’s a good question. I think ultimately, people are reacting to the music well in research, and we’re definitely seeing good numbers so far. It is a good question, though. At the end of the day, we’re working this record well, and we’re seeing it start to happen, but it is a good question.”

  Try to speak. Stop looking at the ceiling and tell him he’s asked a good question! He’s the new chairman!

  From a person in the publicity department: “I think there’s an education process with this band.”

  I continue tilting my head, looking upward in different directions to hopefully look like I’m thinking about the question.

  President Harding speaks up again.

  “Okay. I just wanted to hear your opinions. I’m just kind of getting my feet on the ground . . . getting a read on things.”

  I finally speak up.

  “Ah, okay,” I mouth silently.

  My mouth then returns to being closed into a mild and polite smile. I sit there hoping to God this whole thing was some kind of secret litmus test that I passed. I try to tell myself that it was a trick question, and the trick is that, in fact, there was no right answer . . . and that only smart, valuable employees would know that, and that’s why the new chairman asked it. I try to act like the trick question was actually devised to see who would be dumb enough to try to answer it, and that’s who he and the new billionaire owner will fire, because what they’re really looking for are quiet, thoughtful people who stare at the ceiling thinking about things. I try to tell myself a lot of things these days that I’m not buying.

  He goes on to tell us a bunch of stuff about how record companies are no longer in the music business, but the lifestyle business.

  He says something like, “I don’t tell people I’m in the record business. I tell people I’m in the business of delivering a lifestyle; hooded sweatshirts and other merchandise — merch that features various band logos; licensing; soft drinks; everything. There is no limit to how this business will change and become a business of selling a way of living, more than simply selling music.”

  Filing out of the conference room once again, I think I’ll do something else instead of going back to my office and reading news stories about our now certain mass layoffs. I head down to the lobby to go outside and take a walk around the block to clear my head. To clear my way of living . . . my lifestyle.

  Downstairs, I’m walking through the lobby, heading for the giant revolving doors of this building — that’s when I see a little piece of history that maybe nobody else will ever see: Rush Hair is walking out of the building slowly, a little lost in thought maybe, and . . . wait, this is the walk of a man who is walking out of the building for the very last time, isn’t it? Somehow, there’s no mistaking it. I stop and watch from the front doors as he walks away down a long white corridor and off to some exit that I never use that probably goes to underground executive parking for the big names upstairs. He gets smaller and smaller on the horizon as he walks away with a slow, you-don’t-need-to-call-security gait. The rest of the building’s lobby is buzzing with people doing other things; people that work in other offices, on other floors, in other businesses that are still alive and kicking. It’s a rather random Thursday afternoon, without ceremony or even remarkable weather outside. Basically a completely average and unremarkable looking day — but that’s almost always the kind of day it is in life when an era ends, isn’t it?

  UNCOOL MERCH IDEAS FOR BANDS

  Chef’s classic bib apron with adjustable neckband, band pictured on front.

  Logo sport coat.

  Leather day planner with gold embossed band logo on front.

  Executive weather desk clock with hygrometer, thermometer, and barometer — attractive pewter band logo on cherry wood base.

  Old-fashioned gumball machine with eleven-inch glass top displaying band logo and silhouette of each member.

  Sixteen-ounce spill-proof “commuter”-style aluminum beverage cup. Band logo on lid and tour dates on front and sides.

  Logo bath towel set.

  Wooden backscratcher featuring current album artwork.

  Attractive photo frame desk clock that displays picture of band.

  SMASH HIT

  The phone in my office is ringing. I answer and it’s one of the two assistants who sit outside the remaining label president’s office. Remaining, because there was another one of him only weeks ago. A copresident. But that copresident was fired, cut, canned, and sacked. I have to say, I love all the sort of hard-boiled detective words for “laid off” that we’ve been able to use in these last days in the middle-aged and paunchy belly of this stumbling, disconnected, dying beast. I want to embrace the language even more. I want to break the modern corporate silence and fear in the halls here by talking out of the side of my mouth and wearing a sturdy fedora. I want to walk right up to the slickest, most well-groomed, over-educated, Rolex-wearing, Prada-clad, modern-day record executive in the building and bark a nineteen-forties film noir pulp bravado. “Did you hear about Frank? Canned. Yes sir, canned, caboodled, and strong-armed right out of this high-rise hothouse and straight home to his Sally Jane for repair. Why, he’ll spend a day in the gin mill and be good as new.”

  In these sterile, feeble, insecure, and uncertain corridors I want to remember a time when people were fired and the first thing they thought about was a stiff upper lip and a good poker face for the wife and kids. Jesus, if my dad would’ve ever come home and announced he’d been fired, something tells me that my sister and I would’ve been excited about what the future might hold; about what he might come up with next and how it would be better than the last job he had. He is that kind of man, from that time. But in this so-called rock-and-roll company that I have found myself working in for the last year and a half, all we have managed to muster is to sit in offices awaiting a phone call that we all knew was coming for the last six months based on what we’ve read almost daily in the Wall Street Journ
al and various music trade magazines. We sit, fattened on expense accounts, and try to figure out what our severance packages will add up to be. What our prorated annual bonuses will be. What our “difficult transition” bonuses will be. And no matter how big of a number it all adds up to, it will look thin next to our new boss’s $50 million five-year salary that he recently . . . WHAT! I’ve been feeling guilty for not using both sides of the paper in the printer! We’ve been asked not to expense work meals for the month because there’s no money! Jesus, $50 million sounds like a joke amount. Like you’re complaining about your new boss getting “a gajillion, zillion dollars” or something. Fifty-million-dollar contract for the new boss, Ms. Chocolate Chip wearing sunglasses in the marketing meeting — have the executives become the rock stars? And what am I not understanding in my little Homer Simpson brain about the difficult financial times reportedly plaguing the record business? Maybe my definition of hard times isn’t the same as the record business’s definition of hard times. For me, hard times were punctuated with phrases like “If I return those bottles for the deposit, I can buy some cheese.”

  “He wants to see you in his office,” this from the voice on the other end of the phone.

  The one thing that always makes me happy about taking the elevator here is that they have these little flat-screen TV things inside and you can watch national weather highlights, read a quote from somebody famous, or get a health and fitness tip. And somehow, over the last year and half, these little flat-screens have put things in perspective on weird days. Like, if you have a meeting that feels like it could be the meeting you are going to get fired in, you can look on this little flat-screen and see that a snowstorm in Denver has killed three people and that eating one piece of fruit a day will reduce your chances of heart disease. And you feel the surge of confidence and gratitude that comes from knowing you’re not dead in a blizzard in Denver and that you have a chance at beating cardiac arrest by hucking a big hard apple at the Grim Reaper and nailing him right on the side of his head.

  So, I’m watching the screen and there is a small delusion of reprieve as I start my descent. The same small voice in my head that told me maybe working for a major record label in New York would be the most exciting rock-and-roll thing I had ever encountered in my life-long love affair with music is trying to convince me this wasn’t my first and last trip to the remaining copresident’s office. It said, “Hey, this could be one of those classic rock-and-roll moments that you’ve been dreaming of since you were nine! This could be the kind of thing where you walk into an office of aged luminaries sipping scotch and inviting you into a conversation about the time Led Zeppelin did something crazy that nobody knows about because it was covered up and hidden from the press at great expense. It could be the type of thing where it takes you a second to realize the guy on the couch in the corner is Mick Jagger or Jimmy Page or, you know . . . at least somebody other than another well-heeled seven-figure-hording heavy hitter.” Me and the tiny voice would even maybe settle for Jewel’s mom/manager or even the drummer from Hootie and the Blowfish at this point. Anybody, if it meant that this ominous meeting could at least be a little bit like the kind of rock-and-roll moment that seems so sadly missing in this newly merged, trimmed, refinanced, restructured, freshly scrubbed, wide-eyed, suited and tied record company.

  I step out of the elevator, and past his floor’s magnetized, frosted-glass double doors with a swipe of my ID card. I walk by the two assistants and into his office. I recall that in a rush of recent developments, this remaining copresident has been renamed new cochairman. Jesus, if the new head of the entire company is getting $50 million, I’ll bet you Co-Whatever-His-Title-Is still nails, at the very minimum, a couple million a year in these tough times. When I enter his office, Co-Man is seated behind his desk in the quiet, high-above-the-streets-now hum of expensive art, recessed lighting, and . . . God, this . . . desk.

  Racing through my head:

  • Jesus, look at it. Stare at it like an eclipse they told you not to look directly at, because this is your only chance.

  • I didn’t know they made desks like this. It’s, like, Huge. And round. Lacquered, shiny wood and metal. Like a cross between a private-jet interior, a Four Seasons presidential suite, a yacht, and a luxury tour bus.

  • Okay, turn away. Stop staring at it.

  • Good God, man, stop it! He can see you staring right at it. He’s sitting on the other side of it. If you looked up right now you’d see him watching you.

  • Just act like you thought there was a crack in it. Act like you’ve seen desks like this all the time.

  • Look at it, though. Seriously. Look at this thing!

  And there’s a woman seated next to him. Think. Who is she, dammit? Do you recognize her? Maybe she’s a singer of some sort. Although she is very sensible in her little pantsuit, lacquered and tamed Aqua Net hairdo, and very sober shoes. Maybe that’s the next big thing, though. Maybe Sensible Divas are it, and the Co-Man knows this and he’s going to be like, “Dan, meet our newest star . . . Carol. One name. Like ‘Jewel’ or ‘Madonna’ but more sensible. And your job, as Director of Creative Development, is to help introduce her to the world. We’ll need Carol ad campaigns. We’ll need a Carol video. What should Carol’s look be? Should she always be in the Carol pantsuit and leather loafers, or does she mix it up with navy pleated skirts and blouses? I don’t know. I’m not the creative guy . . . that’s your job.”

  She looks at me. And I look at the desk some more. I swear to you this desk had to cost north of fifty grand. And another thought crosses my mind in a rushed daydream, in which, with perfect pitch and without a waver in my voice, I say, “We have to sell your desk, sir. We’re firing assistants that make less than we could get for this thing used.” But I snap back to reality when Carol announces my name and title.

  “Dan Kennedy, Director of Creative Development.” She says it like some Human Resources woman.

  Oh, right. Human. Resources. Uh-oh.

  And then Mr. Co-Hyphen-Question-Mark starts a thing about me. A little ditty that he kind of makes up on the spot like a toastmaster covering for a drunk toastmaster friend who ditched out of his home-meeting speaking obligation at the last minute. “Dan, your work at Atlantic Records has been . . . extraordinary.” (Seriously? I didn’t even think this guy knew I worked here. He always ignored me in the elevator and stuff.) “And you’ve certainly done some incredible” — looks down at list in front of him — “cre . . . ative . . . creative developing . . . development directing . . . anyway, I think you know what I’m trying to say: You’re very talented.”

  And Carol echoes him, seeing his “very talented” and raising him one “extremely talented” as she nods her head and focuses her eyes on middle distance like they do in inspirational scenes in the movies. Co-Man resumes.

  “Your work here has been more than we could’ve hoped for.” (So this is what it must feel like to win an award or something. I swear, at this moment, I think that maybe with all of the restructuring that’s happening, I’m actually getting promoted.) “You’ve brought so much energy to your job here — andto-daywillbeyourlastday — and because you’ve gone really rather above and beyond in your duties here, I would like you to know that I plan on still contracting you on a freelance level more or less, perhaps in the future, if the opportunity should arise, possibly, if it should work out, to some degree.”

  Whoa! Did we all hear that? Did Carol hear it? I heard it. Crammed in there between the flattering stuff and the strange, politically safe, benign, and very vague promise to use me on a future project, he . . . he . . . totally canned me. Carol swings into action fast and deft, like the tranquilizer dart will wear thin soon and she has to work quickly while I still have a pleasant and dazed look. She points to documents bearing my signature and figures and dates. She smiles when she tells me how long I will remain on payroll until my official termination starts and then how long I will be paid in severance and how long my health insura
nce will continue to last. I make some strained joke about wanting to undergo a cosmetic surgery that most doctors are “currently describing as an elective vanity surgery” and they just kind of give me a gentle and supportive look and explain to me that it would most likely be covered. This makes my mind race to try and figure out what about me is so obviously askew that a plastic surgery joke falls flat.

  In the middle of all of this, I feel my stomach fall and my blood go a bit thin, because no matter what anybody says, and no matter how much you expect it, and no matter how you tell yourself you can take it, when you are fired, you feel it. The two words everyone here throws around with no apparent relation to high demand now ricochet around my head and in the hollow feeling in my chest: Smash! Hit! And as he sits behind his desk waiting for Carol to finish her part of the show, Co-Co — if I may start to refer to him on more casual terms — glances down at the sheet in front of him, looks mildly confused, and adds one last and late sentence to his praise of me and my extraordinary talent:

  “And, Dan, um . . . refresh me on what it is you did in your role here.”

  Jesus. What?

  So I tell him that I have a background in New York advertising, and first worked here as a freelancer. I tell him that what I do here is . . . Did. Was. What I did here was write and produce television advertising campaigns for our artists, wrote print advertising and marketing materials, came up with partnership ideas here and there. There was the idea I had for developing artists with an online contract — I remind him that we were on a big video conference call together about that idea, because he said he was really excited about the idea and wanted me to explain it to the people in the L.A. office. I tell him that I had put together some partnership deals, one with JVC in North America that resided in at least the “pretty lucrative” file. Certainly justified my year’s salary, anyway. And I’m telling him all about this stuff and somehow actually, strangely, starting to feel my self-esteem come back up a little, even though I’m canned now. And this is augmented by seeing a look sweep across his face that seems to say, “Ah, right, right. Okay . . .” as if he suddenly remembers. And that maybe I wasn’t supposed to be on the list? Or maybe the look on his face isn’t about me at all and he’s just remembering what he wants to have for lunch, like, “Yes, sushi. Ooooh, and there’s that new Japanese place downstairs that just opened last week.” I look at how many papers the legal department has drawn up and how many places my signature is needed, and then it hits me again, a little aftershock about how final all this is.