Siren Song_My Life in Music

by Gareth Murphy

  Jerry Harrison and guest artists like Bernie Worrell could play different instruments and add whatever extra sound or sparkle each song needed, but there was a family spirit behind Talking Heads that, I think, David thrived on rebelling against. It was intense emotional pressure for David to feel so outnumbered by this indivisible family unit, but like a teenager, he could lock himself inside his room, work his songs in front of a mirror, and then storm out for showtime and take his place at the top of the table. Everything would be ready and waiting. The mood would be festive even when he might not be that sociable.

  That sweet-and-sour sauce gave Talking Heads such a unique flavor. David’s songs were loaded with nervous tension, the verses would build up like tropical thunderstorms and explode into these majestic choruses where peace would rain down over the stage. It was absolutely enthralling to witness, and I’m sure they all fell in cosmic love in those magical moments. I don’t know if David Byrne ever consciously realized all this. I don’t even know if Chris and Tina did either. Chris and Tina weren’t trying to be nice, no more than David was trying to be eccentric. As a band, they weren’t trying to be any kind of combustible substance—that’s just how the whole thing naturally came together.

  The human chemistry behind music is a strange science. Danny Fields always said something similar about the Ramones. For Danny, and I think just about everyone who saw the Ramones up close, the original lineup was always the most explosive. Once Tommy Ramone quit in 1978, the Ramones were never as exciting, even though Marky Ramone was a better individual drummer. Whatever special ingredient Tommy brought, the overall electricity was more heavily charged with his unorthodox whacking. I’m no musician, so I never understood or even trusted technical virtuosity. What do I know as a simple fanatic is that it’s boring to watch a band in total control. It’s even duller watching a great singer backed up by gun-for-hire session musicians. Pop music is not just notes and beats; the really big vibration that rattles the city walls comes from a real-deal gang walking a tightrope together. Danger is the essence of rock and roll, which is maybe why so many great bands struggled to pull it all off onstage and secretly hated each other offstage.

  If you look closely, the history of rock is full of dysfunctional gangs who spent years at each other’s throats. Mike Vernon, who’d already seen plenty of fighting between John Mayall and his musicians, witnessed sparks constantly flying during the recording of Focus’s breakthrough album. The band’s two creative forces, Jan Akkerman and Thijs van Leer, had an extraordinarily tense relationship due to their very different backgrounds and mutual incomprehensibility. Jan was a working-class boy who taught himself the guitar and couldn’t read music, whereas Thijs was an upper-class Jew who’d studied classical theory. They both looked at each other’s methods with a mix of admiration and disgust and constantly fought about how things should be done. There are so many other examples: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Lou Reed and John Cale, Stephen Stills and Neil Young. Cream was a three-man brawl. I guess tension makes it ring.

  Anyway, between Talking Heads, the Pretenders, Madonna, and a whole roster of other stuff that I haven’t even got around to mentioning yet, it was an extremely intense period for Sire. Without realizing it until years later, I was probably the king of the castle—in A&R terms, at least. Alongside Talking Heads, Madonna took less than a year to ignite, amazingly fast and roughly the distance between Speaking in Tongues and Stop Making Sense. Her first record came out in the summer of 1983 and of course didn’t jump off the shelves. We had to keep pumping out singles to get Top 40 radio hooked. “Holiday” got inside the top twenty in January 1984 and was technically the first hit. The big bang, however, turned out to “Borderline,” the fifth single, later that spring. There really was no stopping Madonna from that point onward.

  Considering the club route she’d first taken, “Borderline” was a musical departure that pointed the way into her giant future. Its writer and producer, Reggie Lucas, gave it a modern pop sound, but listen carefully—it’s an old-school R&B number that could easily have been done à la Motown with a brass section. Once it started getting heavy airplay in the summer of 1984, all age groups turned their heads and started singing along. “Borderline, feels like I’m going to lose my mind!” You live for these moments when a star is born.

  I don’t think any artist can be ready for superstardom, but Madonna took it in her stride like she’d been built for nothing else. In fact, she never really changed; it was everyone else who started looking at her differently, me included. She was still living in a small apartment, waiting for her royalties to kick in, a strange situation most rising stars have to live with for a while. When she first met the directors of Desperately Seeking Susan, the movie she starred in just as things were taking off, she jumped out of the cab and begged them for the fare, because she didn’t have a cent. That’s pretty much how she secured the part; she really was the character in the script. Some found her a little pushy, but most people loved how she radiated this enormous, youthful lust for life.

  It was Madonna who asked Warner if Nile Rodgers could produce the follow-up record, and a very smart choice that was.

  By 1983, he’d already seen so much blockbuster success with Chic, Sister Sledge, Diana Ross, David Bowie, Duran Duran, and others, he didn’t even need a manager. He just strolled into every situation with a big smile on his face and handled deals personally. When it came to haggling the finer details, Nile took his accountant along, which of course makes perfect sense. If you understand how deals work, all you need is your number cruncher looking over your shoulder to nitpick the small print and ensure everything clicks nicely into your tax affairs. I have immense respect for Nile Rodgers and not just for his hit-making genius; he conducted his business with the same simplicity and success.

  Representing WBR was David Berman, Mo’s main in-house lawyer, or what we call “business affairs” in the trade. I didn’t mind David Berman, but I know Rod Stewart’s manager, Billy Gaff, nicknamed him David Vermin. This was a bit extreme in my opinion, but hey, I never got on David’s wrong side. Anyway, the contracts man unfairly nicknamed David Vermin offered Nile Rodgers a standard 3 percent royalty as producer, but Nile turned around, smooth as silk, and suggested something more exciting. “Tell you what: I’ll take a 2 percent royalty up to two million copies, but after that, I want 6 percent, retroactive.”

  “What?” said Berman, stunned by the producer’s overconfidence. “But Madonna’s first record has sold three hundred thousand so far. There’s no way it’ll sell another 1.7 million.”

  “Well, I’ll take that shot on the next record.” Nile smiled.

  “Okay,” said Berman, thinking he’d just made Warner a one-point savings. In the weeks that followed, there was the mightiest shit storm over that deal. As Madonna’s first album started to gain traction, I was sucked into this crisis situation that had moved to the desk of Mo’s number-one protégé, Lenny Waronker. I’d always liked, respected, and trusted Lenny Waronker, because he had excellent ears and came from indie royalty. Lenny’s father, Si Waronker, was one of the West Coast’s greatest-ever music men—the founder of Liberty Records, which launched the careers of Eddie Cochran, Julie London, Henry Mancini, Willie Nelson, Johnny Burnette, David Seville and the Chipmunks, Gene McDaniels, Bobby Vee, Timi Yuro, Gary Lewis & the Playboys, Martin Denny, and Jackie DeShannon, to name a few. Working for the family business in the sixties, young Lenny had also studied under an A&R man and producer named Snuff Garrett, a legend in his own right, and also promotion man turned producer extraordinaire, Tommy LiPuma. Lenny’s uncles, Herb Newman and Lou Bedell, had their own indie labels as well. Uncle Herb wrote some fine songs of his own like “The Wayward Wind,” recorded by Gogi Grant, and “The Birds and the Bees” by Jewel Akens, both on his own Era label. Lou Bedell had Doré Records, which helped jump-start the career of Phil Spector with the release of his first production, “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” as well as some of Jan & Dean’s best hits
, including “Baby Talk,” which, by the way, was produced by two later legends—Herb Alpert and Lou Adler.

  Lenny Waronker had received the finest possible music business education from his father, but somehow, he’d gravitated into the orbit of Mo Ostin, who became his career equivalent of a stepfather. I never had the guts to ask Lenny why he never took over Liberty; maybe there was too much tension between him and his father. Mo always claimed that Si was too tough on Lenny, but I believe tough is what any record boss father should be. No son and heir will learn how to survive in such a competitive game by being treated differently from everyone else, which was always the problem with Mo’s favorite son, Michael. I’d always just assumed that Mo expected Lenny to mentor the Ostin boys, which is why Lenny was promoted into executive roles that didn’t suit his A&R talents or temperament—situations exactly like this Nile Rodgers business.

  When Lenny Waronker and David Berman showed me the details of the Nile Rodgers deal, I couldn’t believe they’d let this happen. “Are you guys crazy?” I gasped.

  “But the first album isn’t going to make two million,” argued Berman.

  “Forget her first album. Mark Kamins and Jellybean Benitez are deejays. There was only one real producer on that record, Reggie Lucas, the guy who wrote ‘Borderline,’ but apart from him, everyone was a learner. With a producer like Nile Rodgers, Madonna is definitely going to sell two million.”

  “Well, then, Madonna will have to pay it,” they said bluntly. This meant shortchanging Madonna so that Nile’s cut would be sliced out of hers.

  “You fuckers!” I exploded. This I knew would start World War III. “Do you know who Madonna’s lawyer now is?”

  “No, who?”

  “Allen Grubman!”

  The name sent a shock wave through the room. Allen Grubman was the toughest show business lawyer in New York, who’d beaten the shit out of several major companies in various contentious cases. Mo’s boys hadn’t yet seen “the Grubman” in Burbank, but they’d heard the stories and knew what to expect. Foolishly, they thought they could handle it.

  “You must be responsible for that!” they yelled at me.

  “No, I have nothing to do with it. Madonna’s dating Jellybean now, and Allen Grubman represents Jellybean. That’s how that happened.”

  With a telephone call, a good restaurant, and lots of bended knee, the whole simmering mess could have been settled diplomatically. It wasn’t my place to do it for them, but I thought Nile would have accepted a compromise of 4 percent, which still would have been a great deal for him. Nobody, however, had the stomach to call him back and renegotiate. They all ignored it, hoping the whole headache would just go away, which of course it didn’t.

  When Like a Virgin came out in November 1984, it sold six million copies almost immediately. Mo, who hadn’t been interested until then, read the numbers and hit the roof. “Nobody is going to take advantage of me!” Oh, boy, did it hurt. Because I’d signed Madonna and was technically her label boss, I had to host another pointless meeting, but with Allen Grubman limbering up in the background, I knew how much shit was going to fly.

  Thankfully, I just had to shut up and watch. When Allen Grubman entered the room, it was like a wrestler stepping into the ring. Syd Nathan would have loved him. He was a heavyweight Brooklyn Jew who delivered every legal slam in filthy language and personal insults. At that stage, he wasn’t quite the superlawyer he’d later become, representing not only Madonna but Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, U2, Sting, Lionel Richie, and many other superstars. He was still quite young and a bit rough around the edges.

  After about thirty minutes, Grubman’s machinations got so foul, so devious, so humiliating, Lenny Waronker burst out of the room, physically sick, never to return. Mo was left on his own with David Berman, but the Grubman just kept bouncing them into the ropes, knocking them off each other, which was easy because they hadn’t a leg to stand on, legally, morally, or strategically.

  Against such straight-talking brute force, Mo’s nice-guy tactics were useless. “Allen, we’re hoping to build a working relationship.”

  “Bullshit!” Grubman just kept bulldozing every lame deflection straight back to their weakness. “You thought you’d fuck Nile Rodgers! Had the record sold under two million and he came back whining like you are now, you’d be telling him to go fuck his mother! The artists did their jobs. You fucked up. So now you wanna fuck Madonna. You didn’t fuck him, you fucked yourselves, and now you wanna fuck Madonna.”

  Grubman was an astute lawyer who could do all kinds of legalistic pirouettes if circumstances required, but this wasn’t legal—this was animal. I’m sure he’d been warned about Mo’s techniques by Walter Yetnikoff (chairman of CBS Records) and duly greeted every phony olive branch with a blast of his napalm flamethrower. The more fucks he could squeeze into every sentence, the better. He’d come to gross them out, to repel them into submission. He’d brought his proverbial sledgehammer to teach these tennis-playing Californians the art of disgusting table manners. Any time Mo opened his mouth, it was bam! The Grubman kept knocking giant holes into a linguistic sewage pipe and letting raw shit fly all over the boardroom.

  When Mo could physically take no more, Grubman stood up to exit the battle scene. Everyone knew the score. From here on in, Warner was going to accept pretty much whatever Madonna wanted. She was in charge now. I almost felt sorry for my groaning, gutted colleagues rolling their eyes around in agony, but they’d brought this on themselves. Warner had to pay what it owed all parties, and from here on in, all future Madonna negotiations would be conducted like a special convening of the UN Security Council.

  At the end of the day, Warner got what was coming to it. I’m not saying Nile Rodgers deserved so much money; 6 percent was outrageous for a producer in those days. Nile fucked them royally, but he hadn’t cheated. He’d simply played his cards and won his bet. Never mind, millions of kids were buying both records, Warner was making tens of millions of dollars in profit. What was there to be depressed about? Nobody died. Great as they were, Madonna was an even bigger success than Prince and Fleetwood Mac. Eighteen months previously, Mo didn’t even want me to sign her.

  It’s amazing how fast situations can change. That stone-broke little blonde who’d come bouncing into all our offices a year before now had the world’s biggest record corporation by the walnuts. If any of the Warner staffers wanted to talk to her now, they had to leave a message with either Freddy DeMann or, God help them, the Grubman. At least David Berman and Lenny Waronker had the honesty to admit how they’d screwed up in the first place. “Seymour was the only one who ever believed in Madonna,” they told Mo, which was what shut him up.

  But only for a while. For someone who’d been so dismissive of Madonna until she was generating millions of dollars, Mo began to take issue with the fact I’d signed Madonna’s publishing to my own company, Bleu Disque Music. The irony was, back in 1977, I’d tried to sell 50 percent of each of my publishing companies, Bleu Disque Music and Doraflo, when Mo bought into Sire. He flatly turned me down and over the subsequent years made no effort to hide his disdain for his publishing colleagues in the group. He had so little time for Ed Silvers, the boss of Warner’s publishing arm, that very little publishing business ever got passed down from WBR, which was very unusual for a major group.

  Finally, Mo ordered me point-blank to hand over both of my publishing companies for the token sum of $150,000, an absolute pittance considering what both catalogs included. As well as Madonna’s early compositions, such as “Everybody,” “Lucky Star,” and others, there were songs from the Ramones, Focus, Talking Heads, and various other Sire acts. This was particularly unfair considering that Madonna and Sire in general contributed a large chunk of WBR’s profits that Mo was getting bonuses on. Unfortunately, there was very little I could do. Mo held all the aces, and my greatest fear was that if I played hardball, he’d take it out on my artists. He made a few innuendos about showing me who was boss if I ever stepped too
far above my station.

  Fortunately for Madonna, she outwitted, outgrew, and outshone us all. I still believe to this day that she would have become a star without any of the other people mentioned above, myself included. The simple truth about Madonna was that she was more naturally powerful than any of us. She was one of a kind, and we were all replaceable cogs in the show business machinery. If there was a trail of whimpering, wounded men along her path to the top, it was only because various guys tried to hold on to her, but as they’d all learn, she didn’t need any of them. Because, as well as everything else she possessed, she had the very gift that matters most in pop music; she was a brilliant A&R woman who could pick out a great song and sprinkle it with stardust.

  I don’t care what the begrudgers say, it was her intelligence. Madonna was always the smartest person in the room, even when she wasn’t physically there. Whether it’s Humphrey Bogart or Marilyn Monroe, sex appeal is never about the actual meat; it’s all happening upstairs. When anyone looked at Madonna, they may have seen her curves and pretty face, but what swallowed up the camera was the power in her eyes. That’s where all the killer lines resonated from. “Like a Virgin”? Although she didn’t write that tune, she spotted it in a pile of junk and made it her own. Try singing that song without laughing or being laughed at. Only Madonna can pull it off. Against everyone’s advice, including Nile Rodgers’s, who thought “Material Girl” was the better tune, she made “Like a Virgin” her battering ram—album title, opening track, first single, and video. She knew what it would do, and she made it happen.

  Whether you’re Édith Piaf, Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, or Madonna, it’s always been the same business. Strip off all the packaging, wipe away all the bullshit, and get down on your knees with a magnifying glass. There really are only two basic ingredients: artists and repertoire. Right people, right songs.