And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records

by Harris, Larry

  Cher’s manager, Sandy Gallen, was a pretty well-connected person in the Hollywood film, television, and music arenas, which was another advantage of signing Cher. Sandy put Bill Sammeth in charge of Cher. We knew Bill from his work with David Joseph and the Hudson Brothers, and we liked him a lot. Cher was good to work with, too. She was an artist who knew what she wanted, and she made sure that she got it.

  She played a big role in pushing “Take Me Home” into the Top 10. It debuted fairly well, but then it stalled at around No. 30. We sent Don Wasley out on the road with her to do a promo tour—it was just the two of them. They went from market to market working whatever they could, wherever they were. When they landed in Atlanta, Wasley called WQXI and told them he was coming in with Cher and wanted to see what he could do to get the record added. Much to the surprise of both Cher and Don, the station was hosting a parade. In short order, Cher was tooling down the street on a float shaped like a giant shoe (which, I was told, looked like something right out of Mother Goose). I’m sure she was thinking “What the hell have I gotten myself into?” As the tour progressed up the East Coast, they stopped in Washington DC, where a local station invited Cher to a roller-skating party. At the rink, it turned out that the regular patrons were more gang members than disco fans, which created an interesting dichotomy: Cher skated along surrounded by thug-like rockers. She did everything we asked, never complaining, and the record did make it into the Top 10.

  Neil became so smitten with Cher that he had the company buy her a Jeep for Christmas in 1978. But his grand gestures always seemed to have fallout: when Donna Summer heard about it, the shit began to fly, so Neil had to get Donna an even fancier Jeep. Donna deserved it, as she was selling tons of records, but why he would spend that kind of money on a present for Cher was beyond me. It got worse. He presented Cher with a Gold LP on The Tonight Show. That was the type of publicity we’d always done: celebrate your successes in public, as loudly as possible. But the thing was, the album wasn’t Gold, so we went into a mad scramble to ship extra copies of the LP out to keep Neil from looking like a fool, or a liar. The PolyGram distribution guys were none too pleased to be pushing out albums when the demand wasn’t there.

  Neil’s excitement was growing beyond my ability to manage its effects. He began to chase all sorts of grand ideas. I didn’t like the role I was playing—I was constantly having to temper his increasingly erratic behavior. Had it always been this way? Had I just failed to notice it in my state of starstruck naivete? We were working on a line of live concert releases for home video; VHS was not yet a household standard, and the retail market for music video product was nonexistent. A demonstration by Philips (PolyGram’s parent) and a subsequent keynote convention speech from Warner exec Stan Cornyn on an emerging technology called the compact disc had us all excited about its enormous possibilities (and left Bruce looking for new speakers when the Philips sample disc blew out the cones in his enormous Altec Lansing cabinets). Neil was also working on a deal with ABC Television to produce five specials—a variety show, two documentaries, and two movies of the week—all with heavy music spinoffs. An opportunity to dispense cassette tapes from vending machines was being investigated. Neil wanted to develop new divisions for classical music and country and western. Mounting Broadway shows in Las Vegas and New York was on the agenda, as was a plan to open offices in London, France, and Holland. Our New York office, still headed by Irv Biegel, was now located in a posh townhouse at 137 West Fifty-fifth Street, and Neil was committed to spending a good third of the year in Manhattan. All of this was in addition to the January opening of our BookWorks division, which had already acquired its initial offering: a hardcover novel by Jackson Rice, called Flash Point, about a fire that sweeps through Los Angeles. It was an absolutely dizzying display of ambition. Neil was starting to seem totally manic rather than just enthusiastic.

  In the midst of Neil’s constant epiphanies, other things would pop up. We received a call out of the blue from Bob Dylan. He wanted a meeting, and Neil, of course, accepted. A day or two later, Dylan and his manager met with Neil and me at our offices on Sunset. Dylan wanted to arrange a production deal. He was signed to Columbia, but he was interested in producing other bands on the side. The discussions were going along well—they liked us and we liked them—until I decided to open my mouth. The moment stands as a shining example of what bad judgment and an inflated sense of self-importance can lead to; it’s also a good demonstration of why you should never hold a business meeting when you’re stoned (I had a pretty good buzz going). I asked Dylan, “Bob, do you produce your own albums?” “No, I don’t.” “Then why the hell do you think we’d pay you to produce ours?!” End of meeting.

  A couple of days after the Ford party, I flew to New York to attend the Billboard Disco Forum V at the Hilton. These three- or four-day conventions were Bill Wardlow’s personal parties. There were daytime meetings and panel sessions, followed at night by a live performance and party at a nearby venue, usually the Roseland Ballroom. On the final evening of the forum, there would be an awards ceremony. To lend the event an aura of importance, Bill would arrange to have famous artists in attendance, and no one had more famous disco artists than we did. Bill also needed the record companies to pay for the awards dinner and presentation ceremonies, and we were more than happy to help bankroll the event. The night prior to the forum, Casablanca threw a huge party in Brooklyn at a skating rink called the Empire Rollerdome. Cher hosted the event, but even if she hadn’t, the see-through top she wore would still have made her the center of attention. Wardlow would usually corral me into moderating a forum panel discussion, and this year he’d asked me to moderate one with the wordy title “Disco TV Shows and Their Importance to the Future Growth of Disco.” Most years, we’d turn the awards banquet into our own personal press conference. This year, we did it big-time: Casablanca was named the best disco label for the third time; Donna Summer won six awards; and thirteen awards in all went to the company or our artists.

  At some point during those thirteen trips to the podium, a problem arose. Jacques Morali was in attendance to supervise his band, the Village People. Prior to the awards ceremony, Jacques, Bill Wardlow, and I had agreed that the group would win three awards. In return, Morali had arranged for the Village People to do a forty-five-minute performance after the awards presentation. Everything was going smoothly, the Village People had snared two awards, then Wardlow goofed: he gave the third award to the Bee Gees. Morali went nuts, pulled me off of the dais, and began screaming at me that the Village People would not be performing. He ranted and raved for a good ten minutes. I eventually calmed him down and explained that the award was not the important thing in the long run—selling product was. If he backed out of performing, Wardlow would be embarrassed and take it out on the group by lowering their chart position, thereby hurting their sales. I actually think Morali believed that if he seemed out of control then he would win his point, but I was not going to fall for that. I berated Bill in front of Morali to make Morali think I really cared, but I was beyond giving a shit about him or his act. I was concerned with protecting Casablanca’s interests, not the Village People’s. If the Village People had backed out of performing, then all of our products and chart positions could have been compromised. Then I remembered that Wardlow had a close relationship with Al Coury, who ran RSO, the Bee Gees’s label. It’s likely we weren’t the only ones playing backroom dealer—we were just better at it than most.

  Three weeks later, we were back at the NARM convention in Miami. Again, the Village People were slated to perform. Their single “YMCA” had sold over three million copies, and it was not only the best-selling single in Casablanca history but also in PolyGram history. On the heels of the single’s huge success, we’d released another, “In the Navy,” which was selling almost as quickly. It had been licensed to the US Navy to use in their recruiting program. The Village People had been permitted on board the navy frigate USS Reasoner to shoot a video for th
e song, and the navy had made them honorable mates for the day. (The “don‘t’ ask, don’t tell” irony here is far too amusing to ignore.) Then, in response to some grumbling about tax dollars being used to promote a band, especially one comprised mainly of gay men singing about gay issues, the navy washed their hands of the whole thing. By that point, however, so much attention had been drawn to the group and the song that we didn’t care.

  The song was selling so well that we decided to get all the Casablanca employees at NARM to perform Village People songs dressed as sailors. We had custom-designed navy whites made for about a dozen of us, including Neil, me, Dick Sherman, Pete Jones, Bruce Bird, Al DiNoble, and Joyce. We walked around NARM wearing them and caused quite a stir in the halls, meeting rooms, and restaurants; everyone got a big kick out of our shenanigans. PolyGram had created a forty-minute Casablanca multimedia production for NARM, narrated by Orson Welles and titled “Sounds of Success,” which heavily promoted a forthcoming disco-tinged KISS album called Dynasty. Even our lone real rock act was turning disco, and this shows the genre’s growing influence and commercial potency. Though they’d been influenced heavily by the likes of The Beatles, the Stones, The Who, and Led Zeppelin, KISS’s artistic sensibilities had been easily overwhelmed by the money-generating power of disco. Paul and Gene had always been clever songwriters and excellent mimics, so it wasn’t difficult for them to crack the formula for a disco song. They wrote an excellent one, “I Was Made for Lovin’ You,” which would become their second biggest single up to that point.

  The NARM convention coincided with a promotion Bruce Bird had arranged with Miami Top 40 station Y100. The Village People were set to perform for the station at a big outdoor event. The promotion was the back end of a quid pro quo arrangement: Y100 had earlier agreed to help us break certain records in the Miami market if we gave them a major headliner for their show. We left the hotel for the Village People/Y100 show in a procession of limos. We hit some traffic and arrived a little late. The group had already begun performing. As we were ushered behind the curtains that served as the band’s backdrop, we passed a reel-to-reel tape recorder set on a chair with a microphone in front of it. It suddenly dawned on us that all of the band members—except Victor Willis, the lead singer—were lip-synching. It was tacky enough to have used studio singers and musicians on the recording, but to perform to a tape in front of a live audience was beyond the pale. Most if not all of us had seen the group perform before, but no one had ever noticed that they were lip-synching. We thought that they were a real band who danced and sang their own stuff. But, ultimately, our embarrassment and our outrage meant zilch. We couldn’t vent at Morali, who would have blown us off—or, worse, lost his cool. Morali was volatile enough without our help. He controlled the Village People from top to bottom; for all intents and purposes, he was the Village People, and we were just a tool to get that product to the marketplace.

  We were distracted from all of this on the evening of April 9, 1979, during the annual Academy Awards ceremony at Hollywood’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It was Johnny Carson’s first time as emcee. Paul Jabara, Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, and Oliver Stone walked off with Oscars for Thank God It’s Friday and Midnight Express. It sounds a bit arrogant, but although we were elated, we weren’t all that surprised. Paul and Donna’s combined efforts on “Last Dance” had already received Grammy and Golden Globe Awards; Giorgio had garnered a Golden Globe, too; and Oliver had won both a Golden Globe and a Writer’s Guild Award. Still, this was a huge coup for the FilmWorks division, and Peter Guber and Neil were ecstatic. Jabara’s win was especially sweet for Neil, as “Last Dance” had beaten out RSO’s “Hopelessly Devoted to You.” In light of all these awards, the summer-blockbuster status of The Deep, the success of Thank God It’s Friday, and the FilmWorks merger, we were feeling pretty triumphant.

  • February 2, 1979: Sid Vicious, bassist for the Sex Pistols, dies of a drug overdose.

  • March 28, 1979: America’s worst commercial nuclear accident occurs inside the Three Mile Island plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania.

  • June 11, 1979: John Wayne succumbs to cancer at age 72.

  Our attention was refocused on the Village People not long after this, when Morali tried to get us to make him a multiyear offer. Neil, who was always afraid of losing a band that would be successful for someone else, was about to do it. I was concerned and very frustrated. I never liked disagreeing with Neil, but he was beginning to make a lot of amateurish mistakes. I’d revered the guy for years for his ability to find hot new artists, an ability that was so keen it practically amounted to clairvoyance. Now I felt like I was holding his hand and walking him through decisions. “Look, Jacques’s pitch isn’t ridiculous. I’ll grant you that. He wants to sweeten his current contract by offering us a longer term for more upfront money. The Village People are arguably the biggest act in all of disco, and they’re doing a million units with every album they release. But their longevity is limited. Face it—they’re little more than a very successful novelty act, and you want to sign a five-year multimillion dollar deal with them?” I finally won the argument, and we did not extend the original contract. We saved millions of dollars by not renegotiating, as each of the group’s subsequent albums sold fewer and fewer units.

  Between her sustained success with 1978’s Live and More (singles “MacArthur Park” and “Heaven Knows” had been huge hits for us) and her sweep of the 1979 award circuit, Donna had unquestionably reached superstar status. By April 14, she was on tour again with her backup band, Brooklyn Dreams, who were also signed to Casablanca. One of the band’s founding members, Bruce Sudano, had begun dating the disco diva, and we couldn’t have been happier. Unlike Donna’s previous boyfriend, Peter Mühldorfer, who had given her (and us) so much trouble, Bruce was great for Donna’s head. The two got along wonderfully, and they married in July. We were thrilled for them. The marriage seemed to relax Donna, who was becoming increasingly frustrated with Neil, Joyce, and Casablanca in general, because she found that the touring-recording-promotion schedule that had been set for her was far too demanding. Looking back, I’m sure she was exhausted and needed a vacation. We rush-released “Hot Stuff,” the first single from her 1979 album Bad Girls, in early spring, and it took off, eventually reaching No. 1 on the Billboard chart; it held that spot for three weeks. The follow-up single, “Bad Girls,” also held the No. 1 spot (for five consecutive weeks), and this propelled the album to the top of the charts. Donna became the only artist to twice have a No. 1 single and album at the same time (Live and More and “MacArthur Park” had done it the previous year). Bad Girls became the best-selling LP of her career, moving over three millions units. As an aside, the other “bad girls” on the album cover were comanagers Joyce Bogart and Susan Munao.

  Despite the overall doom and gloom that characterized the industry for most of 1979, we did have some interesting signings. Producer Tom Moulton was one of the biggest names in the disco world. Neil is often credited with inventing the 12-inch, but it was Tom who invented the format; he also helped pioneer the genre with his very influential “Disco Mix” column in Billboard. We signed a deal to distribute his Tom n’ Jerry label through Casablanca, though I don’t recall much coming of it.

  I was responsible for signing a few artists who proved unsuccessful, but the deals were inexpensive, so we didn’t take a bath on any of them. One was an icon of my childhood, Meadowlark Lemon of Harlem Globetrotters fame. Meadowlark, now a singer, was a pleasure to deal with, and signing him put me in contact with his manager, Randy Phillips. This was Randy’s first foray into the music business, and it was a learning experience. (He would go on to help guide the careers of Lionel Richie and Rod Stewart, among others.) Randy drove the promo guys a little crazy, but they put up with him because they really loved Meadowlark and considered him a childhood hero. We made a particularly cheesy video for one of Meadowlark’s songs, “My Kids”; it was shot in a park and featured Meadowlark surrounded by a group
of children.

  Even comedians were a target. Back on September 14, 1978, I had been lounging around at home—we now lived in a gated one-acre estate in Sherman Oaks, and Stan Cornyn of Warner and actor Stacy Keach were among our neighbors. Finishing up a joint, I turned on the TV to watch the pilot episode of a program called Mork & Mindy. I’m sure the pot played a role in my reaction, but I laughed my ass off at the show’s manic lead, a comedian named Robin Williams. As the credits rolled, I saw that some old friends of mine were involved in the production. I immediately called Neil to tell him about it, barely able to contain my enthusiasm. He told me to go sign the guy and said I could go as high as one hundred thousand dollars to make it happen. I then contacted Larry Brezner, who comanaged Robin with Buddy Morra, and I told him we wanted to sign Robin. In a matter of moments it was done. It was another example of just how fast the industry moves: the Mork & Mindy broadcast had scarcely concluded, and we already had a verbal agreement with Robin. I was certainly not the only one to have noticed Williams’s tremendous talent—the next day Larry was inundated with calls from other record companies, many offering considerably more money than we had.