The Taste Of Champions
"You've still got speed/To feed from speed/Doing it... all...the time..."- Graham Lewis
Cows, Shtick, Mudmen and Thyme Pt. 3
(to be read following the previous 2 Signals, Pt. 1 and Pt. 2)
There are two ways to have longevity as an A&R person at a major label: don’t sign anything, or sign a band that bears a hit. During my A&R tenure in the ‘90s, I knew a lot of folks who opted for the former, hiding out at a label for a good amount of years, grooving on the lifestyle of seeing bands, taking meetings, eating well, buying records.
Not signing a band was safe…but it was in no way fun. At Warner Bros. Records, I was taught by Roberta Petersen, Michael Ostin and Lenny Waronker to sign artists that I believed in. True art would rise. While the rising was not always with the first record, the heads of Warner Bros. believed in staying with the artist, working with the artist from record to record to help the artist realize their vision artistically while pushing the market towards their music. Keep them on the road with tour support. Get them the best producers and mixers. Find the music writers who will help tell their story. Once signed, my gig was to be their champion.
At twenty-four my WB roster included The Flaming Lips, Mudhoney, The Muffs (who I signed with Rob Cavallo), The Boredoms and I was about to sign Shane MacGowan to the states. The Flaming Lips had released their second Warner Bros. record Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, and after a year of cutting and scraping through Lollapalooza & other support tours, press junkets and radio campaigns, the breakthrough came via Chicago—big ups to WB’s then-local promo guy Tom Biery and stations WXRT and Q101—and suddenly, She Don’t Use Jelly was the #1 alternative music song in the nation and all over the then-music video station MTV. It was a glorious moment, a long time coming…so sweet.
The Flaming Lips explosion happened right as Warner Bros. was about to change forever, with CEO Mo Ostin being pushed out, President Lenny Waronker leaving and A&R head Michael Ostin following closely behind. Having a hit band meant that my expectations had become great, with most major labels hunting me down for a meeting, for a lunch, sniffing around the latest person with (at least temporarily) golden taste. The only call that really excited me was from Lenny Waronker, who wanted to meet and discuss the potential of my coming to Dreamworks Records, the new label that he started with Mo and Michael.
I was totally conflicted about which label to work with. Warner Bros. Records was the home to my bands…bands I loved before I had ever dreamed I would actually sign them…bands I had promised to act as champion with the label, with the business side of the music business. Dreamworks was new, it was exciting and I would be a central part of the team—a team that at the moment was just three of the greats from the field—building a roster, a label. Lenny would take me on long drives, pitching me (like he really needed to) about how Dreamworks would be a different kind of record label, playing me the latest demo Van Dyke Parks had given him of Loudon Wainwright’s son Rufus. Rufus Wainwright looked to be his first signing to the label, a baroque sound framing a crystal-shimmering voice—even as demos, just gorgeous arrangements of songs like Foolish Love and In My Arms that would make it to the artists’ debut record. Dreamworks was starting where the Mo Warner Bros. years had ended: as an artist-driven label, something that was becoming rarer and rarer in the post-Steve Ross version, multi-national company nature of the new record business.
Yet, even with Mo Ostin taking me out to lunch to try and convince me to join his team (a highlight of my life), and the fact that I had worked in the A&R department with Michael for my entire career…there was something about leaving my bands that did not feel right.
That all seemed to change when Danny Goldberg brought me into his office to give me a piece of his mind about the Mudhoney record. It was the first time an artistic statement was questioned: not the music, not the marketability…but the words, the vision. I felt I had no real option except to leave the label: how could I stay if my bands…if I…was going to be treated with such disregard. And it crushed me. When I got the message that following morning saying that Danny wanted to have lunch with me on the Warner’s lot, I assumed that would be my final moment at the label I had invested all of my adult life working with.
I walked down the allies of the old film noir sets on the Warner lot, on the way to the commissary, feeling like I was in some Billy Wilder film…a 1940s down-and-outer, fedora atop my head, hands in my trench coat, heading towards a fate that I did not deserve. I had been wrongly accused and beaten down, and now it was time for the final showdown, the Shakespearean tragedy played out on the streets.
But when I arrived at the restaurant, led to the table where Danny was waiting, he stood up to greet me and immediately threw a grin the size of Texas. He reached his right hand out to meet mine, patting me on the back with the other, thanking me for making it on such short notice.
I had barely sat down when he apologized for our last conversation. I had been right he said. He had spent the night listening to the Mudhoney record and it was great. He was fully behind the record and the band, and he was fully behind me. In fact, he wanted to make me a Vice-President of A&R. I was stunned, but not stunned enough to respond with: Thank you Danny, thank you so much, I love that idea. And one other thing, I have this small label I have been growing, Birdman Records. I need funding to help grow it. “Of course you do,” he said. And I will be so busy with my growing job, too busy making records with my bands…I will need to pay someone to run it. “Of course you will need someone to run it,” he said. With a hand shake, and raised glasses, we began our lunch and our talks about the future, and I left making my decision to stay. He made many promises to me that day, promises he upheld…until he left his post 6ish months later.
Mudhoney’s My Brother The Cow came out on March 18th, 1995 to rave reviews. The band toured the world behind it, on fire, every show. And while the record did not do the business the company had hoped it might…a victim of a grunge hang over…they did back the record, making multiple videos and pushing it to radio. There was even a moment when Into Your Shtik was the proposed single.
As for Ash, they ended up signing to Warner Bros. Records under the guidance of Tim Carr. The UK rag Melody Maker covered their trip to the majors, ending the article by saying that the band had a hard decision between Interscope and Warners, but at a show at the Palace in Los Angeles, a Warner Bros. Records A&R Rep got thrown out, beaten up, and yet made it back into the venue to buy them a round of drinks. That was the moment they knew that Warners was the label for them.
I hired Larry Hardy to run Birdman Records, and over years we released records by John Frusciante (the infamous did-it-for-the-drugs record), Tom Recchion, The Warlocks, The Howlin’ Rain, The Gris Gris, Paula Frazer as well as the Skip Spence More Oar compilation with Bill Bentley. Birdman is still around today, getting ready to release the debut record by Battle Elf, and Invisible Men, a reissue by 80’s abstract/electronic pioneers F/i.
My tenure at Warner Bros. would last another six years, unfortunately getting worse as the time went on. But I never regretted my decision to stay, and loved the records I got to be a part of during my second chapter at the label.
The Renaissance of the music industry is over, finished around the time this story took place, but the lessons taught by those who ruled it remain. Working with artists demands a respect, a reverence and a great bushel of loyalty. They need champions, especially in the beginning days of a career. True artistry will find its audience; true artistry will change the world for the better.
This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Tim Carr…a passionate, beautiful, loyal weirdo who believed in his bands more than he believed in himself.
HAPPY 225th BIRTHDAY Library of Congress: With chaos everywhere and anyplace in Washington DC, at least we get to celebrate the best (and one of the oldest) government institutions: The Library of Congress. Today, 225 years ago, President John Adams pushed through the house an act that granted $5000 to start a library, a library to contain the history, the art, the culture, the storied ephemera of America and beyond. Just a few weeks ago they inducted songs of Amy Winehouse and songs from Hamilton into their registry (the announcement is here). Download their latest magazine that salutes their 225 years (the magazine is also consistently top of class from a public institution). One of the greatest days I have had was being in the library with Ellen Harold, Alan Lomax’s niece, and custodian Todd Harvey, researching the trip the Alan took to Haiti in the mid-30s, rifling through letters and old maps, while listening to music of Haitian troubadours. The library’s holdings is one of the wonders of the world, and it is wonderfully preserved and curated. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!
Jeff Maser’s catalogs are always great to look through, incredible first editions, fanzines…strange books that I never knew existed. This catalog is a great representation of what he digs up.
Scientists trace a butterfly migration route that is millions of years old
This fascinating story links human migration with butterfly migration. Dig in to the work of the Worldwide Painted Lady Migration Project…
Mystical Irish Folk Horror Fréwaka Weaves an Unnerving Spell
Oh yeah….
New Compilation of Live Recordings by The Fall to be Released
I guess this makes three live recording comps put together by ex-Fall members, the first two being around the Grotesque (seen in the picture) era and Slates era. All supposedly amazing. VERY VERY PSYCHED (always) for new….nee new/old…releases from the Fall. WE NEED A DRAGNET ERA LIVE RELEASE!!!!!
A deep deep conversation about the search for extraterrestrial life in the Universe..in our solar system…in our back yard…and the chaos factor of why we cannot admit to the possibility of aliens existing around us. Ravi Kopparapu and Jacob Haqq Misra do an excellent job presenting the history, the facts and the further questions here, where science fiction can make facts. “A close encounter with alien technology could spark geopolitical instability. Unlike some abstract suggestion of a distant exoplanet signal, a discovery near Earth would carry the weight of perceived threat. World governments might scramble to respond, not out of curiosity, but fear. To consider such a possibility would demand new strategies, new science and a level of intellectual risk we’ve so far resisted. And if the discovery does ever come, it could provoke fear, confusion or overreaction.”
San Francisco Night Windows
By: Robert Penn Warren
So hangs the hour like fruit fullblown and sweet,
Our strict and desperate avatar,
Despite that antique westward gulls lament
Over enormous waters which retreat
Weary unto the white and sensual star.
Accept these images for what they are--
Out of the past a fragile element
Of substance into accident.
I would speak honestly and of a full heart;
I would speak surely for the tale is short,
And the soul's remorseless catalogue
Assumes its quick and piteous sum.
Think you, hungry is the city in the fog
Where now the darkened piles resume
Their framed and frozen prayer
Articulate and shafted in the stone
Against the void and absolute air.
If so the frantic breath could be forgiven,
And the deep blood subdued before it is gone
In a savage paternoster to the stone,
Then might we all be shriven.
HAPPY 125th Birthday Henry Barraud (listen to this incredible piece of music)