Siren Song_My Life in Music

by Gareth Murphy

  “Well, Seymour has always done right by the Ramones,” replied Danny.

  After months of chasing, that one little endorsement from Danny must have clinched it. Talking Heads knew Sire was nothing special, but by then, they knew they were too special for any major. What they needed was a hip indie who understood what they were about; the rest was down to themselves.

  “Okay, we’re ready to record something,” Chris Frantz told me on behalf of his bandmates. This fabulous news deserved a celebration, so I took them to Patrissy’s in Little Italy. Over the best pasta in New York, I finally got a laugh out of David Byrne when I sang some of his songs in what he’d describe as my “drunken sort of way.” He’d always looked at me suspiciously, like I was a shark from the sewers of Crooklyn, but he’d probably never heard anyone sing his songs before.

  We agreed to start with a single, and I thought “Love Goes to Building on Fire” had the best chance of airplay. I was wrong. It didn’t chart and didn’t get much action beyond college radio, but never mind—it was a happy anthem that launched the adventure on the right note. Above all, it got both the band and Sire staff hungry for a full album. To expand their sound, they recruited a second guitarist, Jerry Harrison, a former member of the Modern Lovers who had already jammed with Talking Heads on a few occasions.

  My other mistake was to have suggested Tony Bongiovi as producer without giving enough thought to the delicate team chemistry. It was the last time I’d ever get involved in a producer casting for Talking Heads. They got the work done; however, Tony didn’t know how to handle David Byrne, who insisted on doing simple things funny ways, like evacuating the control room when he sang his vocals. David was so shy, he didn’t want anyone gawping at him through a window.

  Midway through the album in April 1977, all four Talking Heads flew off with Danny, Linda, and the Ramones to Europe to play six weeks of one-nighters, including some prestigious venues like the Bataclan in Paris and the Rock Garden in London. At the London show, Brian Eno appeared backstage with John Cale and introduced himself to David Byrne. Linda saw the twinkling eyes and organized a brunch for Eno and the Heads the following day in a pub called the Spotted Pig. That’s when they first discussed working together in the future. As Linda told me over the phone, Brian Eno and David Byrne spoke the same conceptual language. Eno was the man for their next album.

  I would have loved to have been there, but Sire was at a critical juncture. The lucky combination of the Climax Blues Band scoring a mainstream hit while punk began making headlines in England got Sire bleeping on major corporation radars. I urgently needed a better distributor than the mess ABC was becoming. I loved working with Charlie Minor, but the company was going through a senseless shake-up. The owners kicked out Jay Lasker because he dressed badly or some such ridiculous reason. In his place, they put in a guy with the unlikely name of I. Martin Pompadur, a total stranger to music, to run ABC’s parent company, and Jerry Rubinstein who was a relative, but slick, novice. Neither of them knew much about music and they began steering ABC straight into a ditch. Our distribution deal was set to expire in August 1977, and I had four high-risk albums in the pipeline: Talking Heads: 77, Rocket to Russia by the Ramones, Young Loud and Snotty by the Dead Boys, and Blank Generation by Richard Hell & the Voidoids—all exciting CBGB art rock that could either take off if given a real push or stiff in total embarrassment if mishandled.

  I sent out signals, and hey, presto, I got offers from the two biggest companies in the business, Warner and CBS, both of which I knew were interested mostly in the Climax Blues Band. I talked with a friend at CBS, Ron Alexenburg, about what their third-party distribution wing could do for us. My natural instincts, however, leaned toward Warner, who owned most of my favorite imprints: Atlantic, Elektra, Asylum, Reprise, and the flagship label, Warner Bros. Records. CBS and the Warner group were about as huge as each other, but Warner was the younger, fresher, more audacious group that had a reputation in the business as the friendly superpower.

  Getting into bed with Warner meant sitting at the same breakfast table as the Atlantic brothers, Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun, two old-schoolers I really looked up to. There was also Joe “Surfing in Kansas” Smith, who’d just taken over the Elektra-Asylum wing from the recently departed David Geffen. But it was Mo Ostin, the mogul behind the biggest label in the group, Warner Bros. Records, that I’d be dealing with directly. Warner Bros. Records—or WBR, as the trade called it—was based in Burbank, California, right next the Warner Bros. movie studios. All these labels operated and promoted separately but funneled their records into WEA, their collective distribution network. WEA was a global monster, carrying the likes of Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Aretha Franklin, Tom Waits, AC/DC, Chic, and hundreds of fabulous acts, both new and old.

  Before signing up with Warner’s, we all still had to wait a few weeks for our existing deal with ABC to expire, but while the sun was shining, it was time to make hay. In midsummer of 1977, before Talking Heads: 77 even came out, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth decided to get married in Chris’s hometown. Linda and I flew to Cincinnati, rented a car, and spent a day visiting, accompanied by Sire’s new label manager, Ken Kushnick. I paid a long-overdue visit to Syd’s grave, then wandered around all the old places where King used to reign supreme. The next morning, we drove down along the Ohio River to a little white church in Mount Washington, Kentucky. Throughout the whole trip, I couldn’t stop thinking about Syd, who’d been dead nine years.

  That Kentucky wedding seemed very midwestern for a trio of Noo Yawk Jews like us. Not only was everyone Christian, the bride’s and groom’s fathers were both military figures. Tina’s father, Ralph, was a retired U.S. Navy admiral, while Chris’s father, Robert, was a West Point and Harvard Law graduate who had served in the army as a general and at one point worked for the Pentagon. I’m sure Linda, Ken, and I stood out like three sore thumbs. No other music people from New York had come down. It was all family, except us and David Byrne, looking dapper in his seersucker suit. I have to say, however, that Kentucky church scene has stayed with me ever since. The drummer kissed the bass player, and although nobody could have known that day, Chris and Tina would become the most enduring and loving husband-and-wife rhythm section in rock and roll.

  Both Linda and I had high hopes for the guy we’d taken down, Ken Kushnick. I’d just brought him in from the live and management side of the business to provide operational assistance to all the punk bands I was signing. Talking Heads were our big new hope, but they still didn’t have a manager—and to me, a good manager was an absolute necessity. Artists need to focus on their music, and all the touring and administration of a hardworking band needs to be handled by a pro. Both jobs, if they’re being done right, are full-time. Managers would always haggle with the label for more money and from time to time be pains in the ass, but if you chose them yourself, they tended to be cooperative. I wanted Ken Kushnick to manage Talking Heads and offered to lend him $20,000 to go out on his own. He toyed with the idea while acting as their temporary confidant. In the end, he decided not to go backward from where he’d just moved. I think he was relieved to have found a good post at Sire.

  He introduced Talking Heads to Gary Kurfirst, who, as a young man in the sixties, had started out running gigs in the Village Theater on Second Avenue for the likes of the Who, Hendrix, Cream, Janis Joplin, and others. Unfortunately for Gary, San Francisco promoter Bill Graham bought the lease from out under him and created the Fillmore East. So, Gary turned his hand to management with hard-rock group Mountain and later, their post-split offshoot, West, Bruce & Laing. He branched into reggae, managing Peter Tosh, Toots and the Maytals, and the Mighty Diamonds. By 1977, however, he’d been out of action for a few months with thyroid problems and was in need of something new. Ken Kushnick had no better candidates around, so lucky Gary Kurfirst was handed the Heads on a silver platter.

  I was disappointed in Ken Kushnick’s decision t
o not manage them himself. The upside, however, was that Gary Kurfirst knew all the promoters. Meanwhile, Ken remained personally attached to Talking Heads, which definitely helped their cause in other ways. It was Ken who went out to Burbank to present Sire’s upcoming releases to all the Warner marketing and radio pluggers. With all his impassioned, youthful zeal, he explained punk to a roomful of Warner staffers who sat back and listened politely. They were probably hoping for a hit album from the Climax Blues Band and asked him to choose one band out of the Ramones, Talking Heads, Richard Hell, and the Dead Boys. Ken of course hadn’t expected such a blunt question and blanked.

  “Listen, we’re only making 18 percent on the distribution,” they explained, “so we can’t push all four of them. Choose the best one, and we’ll give that band a push.”

  “B-but they’re all important,” stuttered Ken. “This is an entire scene.”

  “Well, then,” they explained flatly, “maybe we should be talking about a joint venture rather than a distribution deal?”

  Ken Kushnick returned to New York convinced that we didn’t have a choice: we had to enter into discussions. The numbers weren’t hard to understand. What hit me, however, was the game-changing madness of it all: Warner Bros. Records, the world’s hottest major, was dropping hints to buy into my little company. I left the door wide open, as the distribution deal began in a spirit of camaraderie and growing curiosity. I think it’s fair to single out the artist development people in Burbank, characters such as Bob Regehr and Carl Scott, who were the very first to sense that Sire was tapping into something big. This boded well for the long term, because they were key string-pullers in the day-to-day machinery who’d send publicists on the road with our acts to handle local press and radio or organize in-store retail visits.

  Knowing that key corporals on the battlefield were sincerely on your side for musical reasons made the new partnership feel like it was meant to happen. Plus, of course, the financial power of the Warner group mattered to me also. I knew they’d pay on time and weren’t going to suddenly go bust. I’d been in the game long enough to know that distribution is about size, financial clout, and the promotional people involved. It’s a nonstop job of telephone calls and relationships. If the guys at HQ sending out the messages to the ground soldiers genuinely valued your records, they’d all go the extra mile to get results.

  In September 1977, Talking Heads: 77 was our very first record to come out through WEA, and boy, we noticed the difference. Fireworks didn’t exactly burst over Manhattan, but Warner had a well-oiled distribution machine with a magical aura that made our records shine. Before Christmas, “Psycho Killer” charted at ninety-something on the Hot 100 and broke into the top twenty in a few countries around Europe, thanks partly to the French lines in the song. Also that fall, we released our two new CBGB acts, the Dead Boys and Richard Hell, which weren’t as easy to sell outside the big cities, but the cool factor was definitely noticed. The Ramones third album, Rocket to Russia, wasn’t a massive hit either, but it made noise and was the biggest seller they’d enjoyed until then. Sire was suddenly so hip, it felt like a Hula-Hoop was swinging around Blue Horizon House.

  And that’s when the WBR boss, Mo Ostin, entered the picture. The fast-evolving case of Sire Records had been moved up to the desk of one of the world’s most powerful record moguls. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t believe my luck, which is the wrong signal to give off if you’re walking into a life-changing negotiation. If ever there was a time when I needed the ghost of Syd Nathan wheezing “load of crap” into my ear, the imminent lunch was it. All Mo Ostin had to do was dangle a million-dollar carrot in my face, and I’d be too busy drooling all over myself to notice the accompanying stick I’d eventually beat myself with for the rest of my life. The truth is, I wasn’t really looking critically under the hood. I didn’t even seek legal advice about the type of deal I should even want. This was the late seventies, Sire was a small independent, and I had no idea what was up ahead.

  At that moment, my blinding obsession was David Byrne, simply because I knew not only were Talking Heads totally unique and incredible but that David Byrne was someone Mo Ostin would want to get to know better. Mo became a sycophant of David’s. Although to me, it was always Talking Heads, and Chris and Tina were every bit as important as David. In fact, it was Chris who was the glue that held the band together. I knew that Warner would greenlight the necessary promotional support to break Talking Heads, and they were possibly the only major daring enough to do so. It was like I didn’t have a choice. A new day was dawning for Sire, and I could feel it coming.

  5. ROCKET TO RUSSIA

  Before sitting down with Mo Ostin, one of the wise old men I called for advice was Jerry Wexler, who’d just quit Atlantic on bad terms. Atlantic was the A in WEA, Warner’s distribution company; I knew I’d get an informed opinion from straight-talking Jerry, who’d helped build the whole consortium.

  I got along with Jerry, who, like me, always leaned more on the side of the music than on the business. He was a Billboard alumni, probably Paul Ackerman’s number-one protégé, so although I was a lot younger, there was a tribal connection. As I expected, Jerry confirmed much of what I already knew: Warner would be great for the types of left-field bands I was signing. However, he warned me about the vicious corporate politics between the various arms of the group, and he slipped in a cryptic comment about Mo Ostin that took years to compute. “Mo likes to create the impression Warner is The Waltons, when it’s really The Brothers Karamazov.”

  I’d seen the TV show, but I hadn’t read the Russian novel. Unfortunately, the full thrust of Wexler’s warning had to be personally experienced. Mo seemed like a nice guy on the phone.

  I’d first bumped into Mo Ostin at a Focus gig in about 1973. He was backstage talking to the band, which of course gave me heart palpitations. “Mr. Ostin,” I said as politely as possible, “my name is Seymour Stein, and I’m afraid Focus are under contract to my label, Sire Records.”

  “Oh, I know,” he replied, shaking my hand with a big smile. “Pleased to meet you, Seymour. I just loved the show and wanted to tell the guys.” I had no relationship with Mo, but I did telephone him shortly afterward, asking to be distributed. He was very friendly, but he turned me down.

  By the fall of 1977, all that was long-forgotten prehistory. Sire was hot, and Mo was obviously interested. He flew to New York, and we met up in Fine & Shapiro, a lovely kosher deli just two blocks around the corner from Sire. Sitting there in a neatly ironed Hawaiian shirt, he looked more like a tax inspector on vacation than a major company mogul. He must have been no more than five foot five and wore huge glasses. How this unassuming little smiler got to be the one of the most powerful players in the record industry was a mystery to me. You’d have expected the chairman of a giant like Warner Bros. Records to descend into West Seventy-Second Street from a black chopper with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. No, little Mo was just seated in the corner, thumbing through the menu, wondering if he wanted pickles on his pastrami or onion relish.

  The term soft power didn’t exist in the seventies, but it was already evolving inside Californian pioneers like Mo Ostin. He never gave interviews and barely even talked about himself to music business vets. “The artist should be in the foreground,” was how he’d fob off snooping reporters. Artists and their managers loved reading this stuff. Truth was, Mo was secretive by design. In a trade that trudged around balls deep in its own self-aggrandizing bullshit, he understood that beige sweaters and humility were how you ran circles around the competition, which in his case meant everyone.

  You see, unlike most of the moguls in the Warner group, Mo had never been an owner, nor did he have vinyl in his veins—two missing ingredients in this otherwise genius diplomat and strategist. People always thought he was a lawyer or an accountant, which is exactly what he almost became. What he really was, however, was a natural-born politician who I’m sure could have succeeded in any other field. Not many knew the fin
er details of his rise to power, but he eventually told me how he got his lucky breaks. “I owe my career to Ricky Nelson” was his line. This part was partly true. The rest of his story, however, I’d have to piece together from a long trail of abandoned and wounded comrades that he’d left along the highway.

  Mo’s full name was Morris Otrovsky, and he was born in 1927. This made him fifteen years older than I was, basically a generation above. His long and winding ascent to the Warner throne began way back in 1954 while studying law at UCLA. His wife, Evelyn, got pregnant, which threw his academic plans in to crisis. Luckily, one of his friends was the brother of Norman Granz, the man behind the jazz label Verve, so Morris dropped out of college and became Verve’s “controller,” a nuts-and-bolts man handling royalties, contracts, and company management for the likes of Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker. Verve provided the perfect all-round schooling, and it was there that Morris Otrovsky changed his name to the hipper-sounding Mo Ostin.

  Manning the machines down in Verve’s engine room was where Mo’s destiny shifted tracks thanks to a TV show he had nothing to do with. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet was a fifties blockbuster, starring a real-life family: Ozzie Nelson, a big band leader from the thirties, his wife, Harriet, a jazz singer, and their two sons, David and Ricky. One night in 1957, young Ricky Nelson sang a teeny version of Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin’” and became a pop sensation overnight.

  Through Ozzie Nelson’s old jazz connections, Verve was handed the rights to Ricky’s single and sold a million copies. With Ricky Nelson fever spreading, Verve then released the B side, “A Teenager’s Romance,” and bingo, they sold another million copies of the exact same record except flipped with new packaging. It doesn’t often get this wonderful, and of course, Ozzie was very happy with himself. “Look what I did for you!” he kept telling Ricky, who, being a typical teenager, threw it back in his father’s face. “I didn’t wanna be on a jazz label. I wanna be on Imperial, the same label as Fats Domino.” This racket bounced back and forth until the old man cracked. Ozzie knocked on Norman Granz’s door and announced, “Ricky doesn’t want to be on a jazz label!”