And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records

by Harris, Larry

  Although the indies were not as crucial in the 1970s, even then there were people who had the ability and contacts to control what music was played on key radio stations in major cities. Paying these promotion people with cash, drugs, or records was not uncommon, and it could mean the failure or success of a record.

  Ron Weisner, vice president of artist relations, was a great teacher and mentor. He was of average height and build; he had a head of thick hair, a big mustache, and a weird and distinctive gait. Ron had the push—the ability to get our artists on local and national TV shows. That’s what he spent most of his time doing, when he wasn’t busy acting as in-house psychiatrist for many of the artists and a few of the employees. He also helped book tours and gigs for the artists.

  Ron had major clout with WWRL-AM, the leading R&B station in New York, due to his close relationship with Norma Penella, the station’s music director. It always seemed a little ironic to me that Norma, a middle-aged Italian woman, chose the music for the station that so heavily influenced the city’s black population, but in this she was hardly unique. A big—and here I’m being kind—Italian gentleman named Joe “Butterball” Tamburro was the music and program director for Philadelphia’s WDAS-FM, the leading R&B station in the market. But most stations were owned by white folks in those days, and I suppose they felt more secure having white executives in charge.

  While Ron was a gregarious and gentle soul, Buck Reingold was a totally different story. This former short-order cook was a very forceful guy. Buck was built short, square, and hard with red hair and a lot of freckles. He had very little understanding of music, which didn’t bother him in the least. When Buck (or Bucky, as some called him) needed a record played, it would get played, and if something or someone got broken in the process, oh well. He was hired after he married Neil’s sister-in-law, Nancy—who was the twin of Neil’s wife, Beth—and he therefore became yet another beneficiary of Neil’s steadfast nepotism. He did his job well, and if getting those records played meant parading down Broadway naked with a record hanging from each ear, then he would do it.

  Buck had a set of brass balls. Rick Sklar, the program director of WABC-AM (the most powerful station on the East Coast) was arguably the most influential person in the world of music radio. Not surprisingly, it was very difficult to get a meeting with Rick, and if you were lucky enough to see him, you would have very little time to play your music; more often, you’d just drop it off and he would listen to it when he was ready. Just after I joined the company, our Kama Sutra label released “Put Your Hand in the Hand,” by Ocean. It was receiving substantial airplay around the country, and Neil, who was not one to let go of a record that was beginning to show promise, was walking around the office repeating to anyone who would listen, “Keep pushing it, guys. Keep pushing it. We’re this close to breaking this thing big. I can feel it.” Buck decided that he was going to impress Neil by getting Rick Sklar to play the record before it had risen high enough on the charts to be automatically added to WABC’s playlist. Buck went to WABC’s offices and camped out for hours in a men’s room stall, knowing that eventually Rick would have to use the facilities. Rick finally came in, and as soon as he was comfortable in his stall, Buck began to play the record at full volume on a portable record player. Rick was so taken by this (and the fact that it was a great song) that he started to play it on air immediately.

  Buck once followed a program director to a baseball game, sat behind him, and played him a song while he watched the action; another time, he paid someone to let him hang a banner hyping one of our artists out of a twentieth-story window directly across from a radio station’s offices. As obnoxious as he was, he fit right into the promotion-man mold Neil loved.

  But Buck’s aggressive, abrupt style didn’t always work. While he had close relationships with a number of Top 40 programmers, when it came time to deal with many of the more laid-back artists and the rock radio people, Neil tended to steer Buck out of the office. Buck was a loaded weapon, and Neil had an innate sense of when to deploy him.

  Buck was also Neil’s gofer. If Neil was having a party at his home in New Jersey, Buck would be there to carry in the tables and chairs, and he would also take care of much of the food prep. Although he could probably rip Neil in two without much effort, he would dutifully take Neil’s public berating when he screwed up. This was a bit out of character for Neil, whose typical reaction to a mistake was to shoot you a look, his expression grim and eyes bulging more than usual, or to have a terse but civil discussion with you in private. Not so with Buck. Neil would fly off the handle and scream in front of everyone. This seemed to happen very frequently. Buck never said a word in response; he knew Neil was his meal ticket.

  The other promotion man I worked with at Buddah was Cecil Holmes. Cecil was a tall, good-looking, well-dressed black man with a large Afro. He was very well respected in the industry, and of all the people I ever worked with, Cecil is the only one who never cursed or had anything bad to say about anyone. He also never did drugs—ever. Cecil was a gentleman, and he knew how to take care of business.

  One evening, Cecil and I went to the Apollo Theater in Harlem to see a show by Honey Cone, an all-girl vocal trio coming off a string of hits for Hot Wax Records, which we distributed through Buddah. Cecil drove us there in his big Cadillac through Central Park. Just when we were about to leave the park, he locked all the doors. I was taken aback, and I immediately thought, “These are his people. Why is he locking the doors?” When I mentioned this, he replied, “These definitely are not my people!” In 1971, Harlem was not the safest place to be; even the cops walked three or four abreast for protection. But Cecil’s action surprised me, as I frequently went to Harlem to visit record shops and WLIB-AM radio. I had never felt threatened, and I couldn’t possibly have been more Jewish or more white.

  My sense of security vanished that evening. In the Apollo, we both had a growing sense that we were being sized up. For what reason, we didn’t know, but we were both New York kids, and that sixth sense comes with the territory. We left the show fearing a confrontation outside the backstage entrance, which is where Cecil had parked. By a stroke of luck, the boyfriend of one of the Honey Cone girls was at the theater that night, and he came outside with us. His name was Thad Spencer, and he was a professional boxer who had come very close to fighting Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight title in late 1967, before the government stripped Ali of his mantle for dodging the draft for the Vietnam War. The unsavory types who had seemed intent on confronting us behind the theater clearly recognized Thad, and they parted like the Red Sea. No one came close to touching us.

  Around this time, we had another close call. One day, two big black guys with equally huge Afros walked into our offices. They waltzed by Neil’s secretary, Barbara, went into Neil’s office, and shut the door. Taking out their guns, they laid them on the desk in front of them and told Neil he was on trial. They claimed we had purchased a certain record and the deal included distribution rights; they were concerned that the original distributor, who happened to be a popular gospel disc jockey named Joe Bostwick whose contract we were not aware of, was being pushed out into the streets by “the Man.” In this era, there was a movement in the black community against “the Man” who was making money on the backs of black performers.

  Barbara called Cecil Holmes, maybe figuring that because he was black, he could help calm the situation. Cecil walked into Neil’s office and addressed the two thugs as “brothers,” but he was quickly told to sit down and shut up. He had no stroke with these guys. They told Neil that he had twenty-four hours to get the situation taken care of and that they would return the following day—if Neil didn’t make it right, there would be trouble. In the meantime, Barbara, cool as she was, sat at her desk trying to scheme a way out of this mess. She called a guy named Nate, who was our “cleaner,” so to speak, and who was likely involved with the Mob in ways I never knew. The next day, when the thugs returned, they found Nate standing in Neil’s
office. They turned on their heels and walked quietly out of the building. In an attempt to reach a middle ground, we gave Bostwick mail-order rights to the record.

  Of course, this event shook Neil, but the fact that he had the protection of some major crime figures probably made him a little more comfortable about the situation. Mafia protection was a dual-edged sword, however, and he always told me that he had never wanted to ask a favor of “those people,” as he would be paying it back for the rest of his life. The Mafia would have connections in the music industry for many years to come.

  One day, Neil received a call from a disc jockey friend of his in San Francisco, who told him about a record that was burning up the local airwaves. The song, called “Oh Happy Day,” had been recorded by a religious group, The Edwin Hawkins Singers. Neil had the DJ play the song over the phone and then decided that he wanted to put it out on Buddah immediately. Neil called Edwin Hawkins right away, but he could not close the deal over the phone—he would have to go to San Francisco and work the deal in person.

  When an unsigned band has a hit on its hands, the competition among the labels to sign the act develops at a lightning pace, and Neil was fearful that while he was in transit from New York to San Francisco someone else would call Hawkins and close the deal on the phone. Hawkins had implied to Neil during their conversation that he was fielding offers from other labels and was waiting to hear back from them.

  Reasoning that Hawkins wouldn’t be able to field other calls if he were on the phone (luckily, call waiting had yet to be invented), Neil had Artie Ripp call Hawkins and keep him talking. While Neil traveled half a day to get to San Francisco to lock up the record, Artie kept Hawkins on the phone, determined to prevent someone else from beating us to the punch. When Hawkins was done talking and hung up, Artie would immediately call back with something else to discuss. This lasted for hours, until Neil finally arrived. Buddah got the record, and it was a monster hit.

  One of the more colorful characters I met during this time was Paul Colby. Paul was a strange little man, and he owned The Bitter End in Greenwich Village. He had a reputation for being difficult, but due to the amount of money we spent at his club, we got along wonderfully with him. I would go to the club at least once a week to see various artists (Bette Midler with Barry Manilow on piano stands out), and I was always given a great reception and the best seat in the house, no matter how packed it was. Although the cramped venue was maybe seventy-five seats jammed together to the point where you couldn’t even walk around, it was famous. It was our first choice when we wanted to impress out-of-towners. My first meeting with Brewer and Shipley, for instance, was at The Bitter End. It was also my first meeting with cocaine. The duo may have been famous for songs about weed (“One Toke over the Line” and “Tarkio Road”), but they seemed equally at home with blow. The backstage area at The Bitter End was nothing more than two rooms containing a beat-up old couch, a table, and a few chairs. Between shows that night, we were smoking some weed when Brewer and Shipley began to do some lines of coke, scooping up the dust with long pinkie fingernails that they kept manicured in a spoon shape for just that purpose. Initially, it did nothing for me, but after a few minutes the coke overrode the pot and I began to feel a different kind of buzz. It wasn’t a big revelatory experience, but I didn’t hate it, and I continued to do the stuff for years.

  The early days at Buddah were filled with that anything-can-happen sense you have when you’re young and your life is spread out before you. Each day was a learning experience. After the work day was over, between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m., a few of us would gather in Neil’s office to smoke pot and drink Blue Nun. These hangout sessions were not structured meetings; but, looking back, I’m sure Neil knew that sometimes things would happen during them. The West Coast was still open for business, so a call or two might come in during the sessions. No one wanted to rush home, especially if they did not live in the city, and many of us had regular dining engagements with industry people, so we used the time to cool our heels (and avoid the traffic) while we waited for the dinner hour to roll around. We would sit and bullshit or listen to some product by bands on the label or new artists Neil was considering signing. I began to see a little more of Neil’s identity during these times. He was maybe a little less insistently enthusiastic, more reflective about what he doubted or didn’t like. We’d discuss other labels, or artists and their managers, occasionally drifting into the realm of politics. (Neil was a fan of Richard Nixon; he believed that Nixon’s economic policies helped put money in his pocket.)

  The gatherings would go on for an hour or more and were often attended by people from various departments, including Nancy Lewis (who avoided the drugs but usually supplied the Blue Nun) and Sherrie Levy from publicity, Jerry Sharell from promotions, Joe Fields from sales, Jude Lyons from creative services, as well as me, Neil, Cecil, and, on occasion, Buck. No business environment I’ve been in before or since has created a more intimate bond among coworkers than those hangout sessions in Neil’s office did. It was us against the world. It was family, and that’s exactly the way Neil wanted it.

  Neil hadn’t always been so expansive or casual. When he started at Buddah, he had been far more conservative, insisting, for instance, that all the women—with no exceptions—wear skirts. He was so militant about it that during one of his trips to the West Coast, all the women in the office wore pants as a form of rebellion, but his secretary ratted them out—she called Neil and told him about the fashion coup. Drugs and that whole scene were completely verboten as well. Anyone caught doing drugs in the office was fired. In those early days, despite the fact that he was married to Beth (his first wife), Neil had lots of girlfriends on the side, one of whom, Mitzi, worked for Buddah. Neil was more serious about Mitzi than the others, and they would often stay late at the office and have sex on his desk. At some point in 1970, Mitzi convinced Neil to start smoking pot. Not long after that, Buddah released a debut LP by a singer/songwriter named Biff Rose. A press party was held in a small recording studio, and it was the first time Neil endorsed open drug use at a company function. He wanted tons of joints to be on hand, and Soozin Kazick, Buddah’s publicist, had to roll them all herself at home during the evenings leading up to the party.

  One evening, a few months after I had joined the company, Neil walked into my office and informed me that I wasn’t doing my job well. He wasn’t screaming, and he didn’t appear to be mad; his voice completely matter-of-fact, he told me I wasn’t living up to his expectations. I’d been blindsided. I turned green as my stomach rolled over. How could he say this? Here I was, putting in fifteen-hour days (and loving it), visiting record stores and radio stations that had never seen a representative of the company before. I was establishing myself and Buddah at all three of the area’s major rock stations. WLIR in Long Island had been particularly easy for me, as I was good friends with both the program director, Mike Harrison, who coined the term AOR (album-oriented radio) and his eventual replacement, Ken Kohl, with whom I’d gone to college.

  I couldn’t believe that Neil was disappointed with my work. When I asked him what he meant, he pointed to my expense account. I cringed. And then I began to get mad, because I knew that I was always very frugal with my expenditures. How could he possibly think I was being wasteful? Then Neil said, “You’re not spending enough.” I blinked. Huh? “Larry, you can’t do your job well unless you’re spending money, and you’re not spending enough of it.” I thought that by being money conscious I was helping the company. But, what the hell, if he wanted me to spend money, I would accommodate him.

  I began to spend more freely. I found that it was pretty easy to have breakfast with a DJ, lunch with a music director, dinner with a program director and drinks with a writer, all on Buddah’s dime. Sending chocolates to the secretaries, buying gifts for the elevator operators—it all became second nature to me. I would visit WPLJ or WNEW in the small hours of the morning and bring the on-air DJ food and drinks, and often marijuana or b
low. The drugs were never a gift, but rather something we did together to build the bond of friendship. Mike Klenfner of WNEW and I would go out for some massive, expensive dinners. We were both well over six feet tall, and although I was thin at that point, Michael was a big guy and could eat the kitchens bare.

  My favorite Mike Klenfner story involves a folk artist named Steve Goodman, who had been brought to us by Paul Anka. Goodman recorded a self-titled album for us that featured a song called “The City of New Orleans,” and I got him a considerable amount of airplay throughout the country. However, I could not get as much play as I wanted on WNEW. One day, when we were in the elevator, Steve told me he had leukemia and did not know how long he was going to live, but he wanted to leave his wife and baby daughter something when he passed. I just about broke down in tears, and the next day I went to see Mike at WNEW. I told him that he had to play the album more frequently because the guy was going to die. Klenfner was convinced I was bullshitting him, and for years (fortunately, Steve lived until 1984) he kept asking me when the guy was going to die. He really thought I made the whole thing up just to get airplay. I did resort to some ridiculous maneuvers to get a record played, but even I would not stoop that low.

  The list of contacts I had made was impressive. Or at least I thought it was. John Zacherle at WPLJ was a particular favorite item on my expense reports. I would visit him at 2:00 a.m. and give him a ride home when he went off the air. I loved Zach—still do. As host of a very popular local TV show, Chiller Theater, he was an influence on me when I was growing up, and he is one of the kindest people you will ever meet. Alex Bennett was the overnight man at WPLJ from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m., and I was the only promotion man—or one of very few—to bring artists to visit him when his interview/music show was running. I brought Charlie Daniels when “Uneasy Rider” came out, and comedian Robert Klein joined us numerous times. Dick Neer, the overnight person at WNEW, and I were never very close, but Mike Klenfner often filled in for him.