Siren Song_My Life in Music

by Gareth Murphy

  Tom Noonan secured us $50,000 from Columbia as operating capital, a serious investment considering we were so young. The plan was to provide Columbia with some real-deal soul, a genre they were trying to break into. We needed an office, and luckily, Syd Nathan offered to rent us King’s old New York brownstone office at 146 West Fifty-Fourth Street on the parlor floor. For the bargain of $235 a month, it was in an old brownstone with four spacious rooms, each with a fireplace. Richard turned one of the back rooms into a studio, and for $150 a month, we sublet the biggest room to two brothers, Roy and Julie Rifkind. Roy Rifkind ran a talent agency, and his brother Julie had previously been Vice President at Bang Records and had just started his own label, Boom. So, from its very birth, Sire stepped straight into one of King’s old shoes on a street between Seventh and Sixth Avenue, around the corner from the Brill Building. Opposite us was Al & Dick’s, a popular steak house among showbiz wheelers and dealers, and a bit further down the street was La Scala, probably the most popular Italian restaurant in the music business at the time.

  Our first record as Sire Productions was a cover version of the soul thumper “That’s How Strong My Love Is” by Mattie Moultrie, which Richard produced beautifully. I still think it’s a great recording, but to our disappointment, it got lost in Columbia’s dense release schedule. We kept batting away with other acts, such as a young group called Chain Reaction introduced to us by my old friend Pete Bennett. “I’ve got this great band for you,” he said. “They’re from Yonkers, and the singer, Steven Tallarico, is actually my best friend’s son.”

  We said, “Yeah, sure, bring ’em down.” So, these kids filed in and performed a song they’d written called “The Sun,” which Richard also produced.

  We couldn’t get anyone in Columbia’s New York or London offices interested; the only takers were CBS in Italy, probably on account of Steven Tallarico’s name. When the band realized their debut single was only being given a push in Italy, the singer’s father stormed in demanding that we rip up the contract. “What, are you kidding me?” I protested. Then he pulled out a gun. Richard had experienced situations like this at Bang Records and calmly fished out the contract. “Life’s too short.” He sighed, handing the agreement to me. I wasn’t happy about ripping up a deal at gunpoint, but we got a laugh out of it years later when Steven Tallarico became Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.

  These and other false starts lost us our Columbia deal within a year. The whole experience, however, taught us a vital lesson. Just delivering masters to a major company as big as Columbia was like throwing darts at a board from fifty feet away. We knew we’d get far better results by promoting our records ourselves, which meant running a proper independent label. So, in 1967, we changed our name from Sire Productions to Sire Records, and with the help of my old friend from Massachusetts, Danny Gittleman, we got a distribution deal with Pickwick, a budget label owned by his friend Cy Leslie. It was the wrong fit, so very quickly Danny helped us secure a more lucrative distribution deal with London Records, which was British Decca’s operation in New York.

  There was just one snag. Danny Gittleman’s wife was convinced a thirty-four-year-old Broadway actress and singer named Phyllis Newman had the makings of a pop star. For all of Danny’s invaluable help, she and Danny guilt-tripped us into making an album with Phyllis, the idea being to give her a younger, radio-friendly sound. Phyllis was married to the lyricist and playwright Adolph Green, and together they introduced us to classical music giants like Leonard Bernstein, Isaac Stern, and others. Phyllis was a lovely woman, but the musical and generational chasm was pretty ludicrous considering that Richard and I were twentysomething rock and rollers. Richard accepted the uphill challenge even though we both knew the casting was all wrong.

  To find talent we could sell, we were going to have to look a lot harder than just around the Brill Building, so while Richard was working on Phyllis Newman’s album, I ventured off in search of bands, foreign licenses, loose connections, anything that could broaden our horizons. Thanks to our low rent and all the savings I’d stashed away while working for George Goldner, I was able to attend the Sanremo Music Festival in Italy as well as the second Midem trade fair on the French Riviera. It was expensive traveling around, even staying in cheap hotels, but I was showing up in different places, collecting contacts, records, and news as I went.

  On the way home from Cannes in early February 1967, I stopped off in Paris, where I stayed the night with an old friend from New York, Barbara Baker. She was living there with her husband, Mickey “Guitar” Baker, cowriter of “Love Is Strange.” He was black, she was Italian, and together they believed their mulatto kid would have an easier childhood in Paris, which was more racially integrated than New York. Barbara had found a job with a hot Parisian record company, Disc’Az, and Mickey was getting session work all over Europe. When I arrived, Mickey was packing a bag for London, where he had a recording date with a producer he rated highly. That’s how I first heard about Mike Vernon, the producer and owner of Britain’s purist blues label, Blue Horizon.

  It all smelled too intriguing to not investigate, so I changed my flights and tagged along to London with Mickey. When we walked into the session in Decca’s studios, there was a situation brewing. The singer Champion Jack Dupree wasn’t going to sing a note unless Mike Vernon paid him up front. Because Mike Vernon didn’t have enough money on him, I reached into my pocket and offered to buy the publishing rights of whatever was about to be recorded. Dupree accepted my £50, and the session continued.

  After the session, Mike Vernon introduced me to his kid brother, Richard, who was his partner in Blue Horizon. Mike was a lovely guy with an impressive knowledge of American blues and spoke openly about how tough it was to keep his label running. To fund the label, both Vernon brothers were doing freelance producing. For Decca and its Deram imprint, Mike in particular was making his money by producing the debut albums of David Bowie, Ten Years After, Savoy Brown, John Mayall, and Eric Clapton.

  I hung around London and called up a contact my ex-girlfriend Roberta Goldstein told me I absolutely had to meet. Her name was Linda Keith, something of a London starlet, who at the time was dating Keith Richards. Linda took me to a club called Middle Earth, where an American friend of hers named Jimi Hendrix was playing. After about an hour of earsplitting blues, the fucker started smashing his guitar up. Unfortunately, I was standing beside Linda, who practically went through the roof herself. Turns out it was one of Keith Richards’s guitars that she’d loaned to Hendrix for the evening. I have to say that under the circumstances, it was hard for me to appreciate the theatrical value. I later learned that Linda had broken Hendrix’s heart, but even still, a Fender Stratocaster in those days cost about $200, more than Hendrix was probably getting paid to perform. Apparently, that guitar marked the end of her romance with Keith Richards.

  London’s electric blues scene was scorching hot but so small. The audiences of one hundred or so people were mostly comprised of other musicians and their girlfriends. There were already a few managers lurking in the shadows, but nobody had a clue how big the whole thing was about to blow up. I mean, who’d o’ thunk; a bunch of white English guys selling the blues back to America? Still, I must have smelled something cooking because when I got back to New York, Richard Gottehrer and I put on the Blue Horizon records I’d taken home and marveled at the smoky atmospheres.

  Very quickly, London’s blues scene began to bubble over, and in the space of just weeks, familiar names started showing up around America. In May 1967, Cream recorded their second album Disraeli Gears in Atlantic Studios in New York, which marked their turning point into big business rock. In June, Jimi Hendrix took the Monterey Pop Festival by storm, even though there wouldn’t be an American release of Hendrix’s debut album Are You Experienced? until August, and the now-legendary Monterey film wouldn’t come out until a year later. In New York, Jimi Hendrix was still just a fast-spreading English rumor who packed out Café au Go Go on Bleecker Street th
at July, and in fact, Eric Clapton joined him onstage for a number. By late summer, however, the race was on. American majors were all over the West Coast hippies like a rash, while the more clued-in American labels began sniffing around this new electric blues scene in London.

  That fall, the original Fleetwood Mac—fronted by Peter Green and formed from John Mayall’s old group—recorded their self-titled debut album on Blue Horizon. Produced by Mike Vernon, it was mix of blues covers and original material that shot to number four on the British charts. Hugely impressed he’d scored a major hit on his own little label, I sent Mike a congratulations telegram. Just three months later, he scored another; Forty Blue Fingers, Freshly Packed and Ready to Serve, by Chicken Shack, featuring a then unmarried Christine McVie of future Fleetwood Mac fame. So, I duly telegrammed a second congratulations note. It was then that Record World published a spotlight on Blue Horizon in which Mike Vernon mentioned both Sire and me in praiseworthy terms. I was so astounded, I had to phone up and personally thank him. During that call, he told me that aside from all the chart success, he was having difficulty running the label and was fighting with his brother. He wondered if we wanted to buy half the company. I told him we would love nothing more, but given his rising stature, there was no way we could afford it. “I really want you involved,” Mike said, “and I’ll make it easy for you. Our father lent us £15,000 to start the company. If you would just return that money to him, Sire could become half owners of Blue Horizon.” In what turned out to be our first serious business discussion, I sat down with Richard Gottehrer and laid out a case. “We can’t license any of Mike Vernon’s records, because Blue Horizon already has a worldwide deal with Columbia. But what if we buy into Blue Horizon, the label? Mike urgently needs money to keep going and we need inside connections.” Although we’d have to gamble a huge chunk of cash that we couldn’t really afford, Richard liked the idea. We got the money together and became full partners in the company.

  Richard Gottehrer and I still needed to find our own artists for Sire and knew that London remained our best bet. For the price of a plane ticket, nobodies like us could pick up the American rights for wacky English albums that our big-money competitors hadn’t noticed. You just had to get there, dig, and move fast. That’s how we found what I consider as Sire’s first proper album, Ptooff! by the Deviants, one of London’s cult psychedelic albums of 1968. It wasn’t even in English record stores; only a few thousand copies were available by mail order through London’s underground press. We found the two producers, Peter Shertser and Ian Sippen, who were happy to grant the American rights to anyone. Richard and I knew Ptooff! wouldn’t sell many copies in the States, but we loved its attitude.

  In that first year of scouting, Richard and I were really only fumbling through the dark. Richard’s reference at the time was Elektra, probably the bohemian label moving into all kinds of psychedelic areas with acts like Love, the Doors, and Tim Buckley. Because I hadn’t indulged in much drugging, I wasn’t all that blown away by psychedelia. My model still remained R&B and country. Don’t forget, I was arriving into work every morning through the very doorway where Syd Nathan had told my father that only the music business could save me from a life as a newspaper boy. Can you imagine the effect that must have had on me psychologically?

  The irony wasn’t lost on me either that the birth of Sire coincided with Syd’s slow death. I was still in regular touch to pay our rent and chat about business, and we’d meet up whenever we could, but it was getting harder. Syd was sixty-three but looked about ninety. Pumping out of time between his wheezing lungs was a diseased heart that was about to blow out at any second. He was getting the best possible treatment in Miami Beach, where his brother, David, was a respected cardiac specialist in the Mount Sinai Heart Institute. My parents often took vacations in Florida, and sometimes I’d join them. Whenever we could, we’d meet up with Syd for a drink or a meal. Considering how they first met, I was pleasantly surprised to see that my father and Syd actually got quite close in the end.

  Poor Syd, who’d always been a big eater, had been forced onto a strict health diet. Dreaming of greasy cheeseburgers and other forbidden indulgences, he was always trying to drag me off around the causeway near the Harbor Island Spa. It wasn’t easy denying this dying man some last moments of happiness, but I, like everyone else who visited him, talked Syd out of temptation. We all knew Syd was on his last legs, as did Syd himself. By then, King had been downsized, trust funds had been set up for his family, and various new companies swarmed around James Brown, who had become Syd’s main concern.

  When he finally died in March 1968, it was Paul Ackerman who telephoned me with the news. I immediately called up Syd’s lawyer, Jack Pearl, to get details about the funeral and asked him straight out, “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I’m only just getting around to you; I’m working through Syd’s address book alphabetically. Paul Ackerman’s an A, so he was among the very first.” I don’t doubt that Jack Pearl had hundreds of people to call; Syd had been a boss, friend, and godfather to so many. “I’ll pay for your ticket to come to the funeral,” offered Jack. “I’m sure Syd would have wanted that. But you have to escort my wife, Fanny, because I’ve got to rush off to Cincinnati to clear up some matters before the funeral.” I can only guess what those matters were. If there was any skullduggery going on around King, Jack Pearl and James Brown’s manager, Ben Bart, would have been the chief suspects. They were brothers-in-law; Ben Bart’s sister was Fanny Pearl.

  I think only my parents understood how much Syd’s death affected me. He’d been my guardian angel over the previous decade, and to this day, I still can’t see where my life might have ended up without him. I took the plane to Cincinnati with Fanny Pearl and was proud to be one of the pallbearers, alongside James Brown, Hank Ballard, and Henry Glover, who I think in their own ways all realized that afternoon just how much their lives had been changed by the old man. It was nice to hear Syd’s relatives and friends say how much he was proud of the road I’d taken; some even said I was the son he’d never had. I’d spend the rest of my life learning how this vocation runs on mentors and adopted sons. A dying record man has to leave his assets to his blood family, of course, but it’s usually some outsider apprentice who’ll inherit the trade secrets. Around the grave of every successful record boss, there’ll always be two families looking at each other jealously.

  Syd’s death was my first professional heartbreak, but I had to walk away from that cemetery. So much was happening around Sire; all the seeds we’d planted over the previous year were beginning to sprout. Every few weeks, we kept opening these killer records from Mike Vernon. His first Fleetwood Mac knockout was “Black Magic Woman,” followed by “Need Your Love So Bad,” which happened to be a cover of the Little Willie John classic that first came out on King in 1955. Then came the classic instrumental “Albatross,” which climbed to number one in the UK and went top five in countries all over the continent, a European smash.

  Unfortunately, early Fleetwood Mac was too bluesy for American radio. Although their song “Albatross” managed to get onto Billboard’s “Bubbling Under the Hot 100” Chart for several weeks, it nonetheless failed to make much of a commercial impact. The problem was that Columbia’s HQ in New York didn’t consider Fleetwood Mac as anything special. Fleetwood Mac’s situation in America was much like our own frustrating experience with the same company just two years before. Columbia was North America’s biggest major, releasing so many titles every week, the third-party licenses tended to slip through the cracks. There was also a generational problem. Even in the late sixties, the record business was still very middle aged and old-fashioned, but at least the smaller majors were so hungry, they had to take risks. The problem with Columbia was that they could afford to be lazy. They didn’t get Fleetwood Mac because they didn’t really have to.

  It still feels like a terrible injustice that America seemed to ignore such an important band. To my ears, Peter Green h
ad more soul, magic, and creativity than any of the other English bluesmen he’s compared to. As a business investment, however, at least Richard Gottehrer and I were shareholders in Blue Horizon, the mother company that was enjoying all this European success. There was no doubt about the spin-off image value, too. I made sure that Fleetwood Mac’s winning streak in Europe was reported in Billboard bulletins about Sire, which gave us some extra credibility in American music business circles, even though we had nothing to do with the band. A little bit of bullshit won’t kill anyone—especially if it’s half-true.

  In August 1968, Mike Vernon invited me to the Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival in Richmond, a flowery suburb on the banks of the Thames, just outside London. We were there to check out bands and cheer on Fleetwood Mac, who were topping the bill alongside Cream. Also performing was Blue Horizon’s new group, Chicken Shack, featuring a young Christine Perfect, who later became Christine McVie of latter-day Fleetwood Mac.

  At one point, I was sitting between Mike and his sound engineer, Gus Dudgeon, when this unknown band called Jethro Tull stepped onstage. They were managed by Chris Wright and Terry Ellis, who managed Ten Years After and Savoy Brown, two bands Mike was still producing for Decca. “Hey, this band is great!” I said to Mike after the first few numbers. “We should sign them to Blue Horizon immediately.”

  “Seymour, I don’t want any bands with flautists in them,” replied Mike.

  Flautists? What the fuck were flautists? Maybe it was the contempt in Mike’s voice and the way the guy onstage was standing on one leg like a Shakespearean jester, but I just presumed Mike knew something I didn’t. In Brooklyn, a fella who plays the flute is called a flute player, right? A flautist sounded like some kind of English pervert who liked to get whipped. Instead of looking dumb, I just shut up.