Simple Twist of Fate
This article originally appeared in The New York Times on December 12th, 2004
ONE of my big influences was Lee Solters. He was a Broadway P.R. guy with clients that included Barbra Streisand and Ringling Brothers. I was this long-haired rock guy. That's why he hired me in the first place. It was 1973; his agency was one of the powerhouses, but it was mainstream with little in the way of rock 'n' roll. I'd been around, writing for Rolling Stone and other magazines, and I had a reputation as someone who knew rock writers.
Lee was obsessed with getting things accomplished. He didn't yell, but he was forceful and blunt. It was a transition for me from post-hippie fuzziness to the business world.
I had Stan Getz as a client. I couldn't think of ways to get him publicity because he didn't have a new album out. I called the music writers I knew to find out if they wanted to write about Getz, and that's when Lee explained to me that I was to think about how to make news and be proactive. We ended up staging a birthday party for him and invited other jazz musicians. We got coverage on three TV networks.
When Led Zeppelin became a client, Lee immediately assigned the band to me. I was the only person there who had listened to Led Zeppelin. It was very exciting because at that moment it was breaking attendance records set by the Beatles. That gave me the persona in the rock business I have today, and that wouldn't have happened without Lee.
The second key for me was in the early 1990's; after years of running my own business I went to work for Atlantic Records, reporting to Doug Morris. Morris explained something to me about how to be a good boss that I vividly remember: "You've been used to showing people how smart you are; now your job is to show how smart they are." I'm still trying to learn to apply it.
When it comes to picking what song should be a single from an album, it's usually better to listen to what the marketplace wants. We had an idea on what the single would be from Bad Religion's new album at Atlantic, and KROQ, a Los Angeles station, had another in mind; it kept playing "Infected." I said: "We're not going to pick what one station likes. We pick what we like." In retrospect, I wish I had done what KROQ suggested.
But when Steve Greenberg from S-Curve Records came to me with Baha Men's "Who Let the Dogs Out," after Warner Brothers told him they didn't want to put the song out because they thought it was too stupid, I said yes. I had a feeling it was going to be a hit. In the five years of Artemis Records, it's been the best seller.
It was a fluke that I got into the music business. I had dropped out of the University of California, Berkeley, after a few weeks. I came back to New York. I went through the classifieds and got offered two jobs, one as a keypunch operator at Sears, Roebuck and the other in the chart department at Billboard magazine. I took the job at Billboard. It was late 1968; I was making $90 a week. I had always loved music but I didn't know there was a business around it.
I remember that at Christmas that year, a promotion guy from Capitol Records gave everyone in the department a free Beatles "White Album." This was like landing in Santa Claus's castle. Clearly this was a world I stumbled into by accident but clung onto with intensity.
I never thought my father influenced me. He worked as a salesman in the textile industry and then went on to become president of Collins & Aikman. He'd go to work every day with a suit on. I had long hair, was into music. I thought what he was doing was boring. But the more time passes, the more I seem to be influenced by my dad. I ended up a businessman like him.
