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Interviewed by Michael Laskow
Where did you grow up?

In London, England.

Were you always interested in music?

I started playing in semi-professional bands as a guitar player right
about 13 or 14 years old. When I was about 16, I left school and went
with professional bands from London on tour around Europe. I finally hooked
up with a band in the '60s called Unit 4+2 and we had a hit with a song
called "Concrete and Clay." I was 18 or 19 at the time, and I traveled
around the world doing that for awhile. Then I hooked up again as a guitar
player with a band called Christie. These were basically one-hit-wonder
pop bands out of England in the '60s.

How did you end up in the U.S.?

I was in a number of bands in the '70s, and then pretty much quit the
business as far as performing right about 1974 when the oil crisis hit
Europe. It hit America, but it hit Europe really hard. Gigs closed down
because all those places were oil heated. We had PA systems, and a friend
of mine who I was in a band with at the time and I decided that we would
rent this stuff out. All of a sudden I became a production engineer on
the road. I did road work for a long period of time. Even when the economy
bounced back, I never went back to playing full time. In the end, I ended
up just by default becoming a sound engineer, and then ended up being
a tour manager/sound engineer.
 In the late '70s,
I worked with bands that ended up on Stiff Records and started bringing
those over from England to America. Later, I decided that I had had enough
of England. The music business was getting really stale over there, and
America was just like this wealth of possibilities. It's a huge country,
and a band can tour for the rest of their lives. In England, you do two
weeks of shows and you cover the whole country. Coming over with those
previous bands in the '60s, I always loved America. So I decided to move
over here permanently.
 I set up in New
York in the early '80s when I was 36 or 37. I teamed up with a guy named
Andy Cavaleri, who has since passed away. He was a road manager and had
worked with Grand Funk Railroad. He was then doing work with Stevie Winwood
and decided to reform Grand Funk Railroad. So we went around the world
on the Grand Funk Railroad, part two. Then I did a lot of production work
with a guy named Harry Sandler and Bruce Springsteen's people. I worked
with Clarence Clemons and the offshoot bands of Springsteen, doing road
managing and production. That's how I ended up meeting Jimmy Iovine. Jimmy
was Bruce's guy at that time.

How did that association with Jimmy Iovine eventually lead to your
very successful pairing at Interscope Records?

I was in New York, and I got a call from a woman who was managing a then
fledgling band called Lone Justice. I went out on the road and spent pretty
much the next two or three years just working with Lone Justice. We ended
up managing themmyself and Jimmy Iovine. Jimmy had moved from New York
to L.A., and he called me up one day when the Lone Justice stuff was petering
out and not happening anymore. He said, "There's a plane ticket for you
to come out to L.A. if you want to come out." I said, "What for?" and
he said, "I don't know. Just come out. We're having a great time. L.A.
is great."
 Jimmy had been
hired as a consultant to refurbish A&M Studios in order make it a world-class
studio again. About the winter of 1985, I actually flew out there and
hung out with Jimmy and met all of these people out here. I noticed that
a lot of the creative talent that was in New York in the late '70s and
in the early '80s had migrated west. The business and money people still
remained in New York, but all of the creative elements were moving west.
There was this whole migration going on, so it seemed like the right thing
to do. I never went back. I stayed out here, and I moved my family out.
 Then Jimmy got
a boutique label deal at A&M which did nothing for us. Jimmy was getting
tired of the late nights of studio work and wanted to get out of the producer
game. He always knew that the power of the music industry was basically
at the labels. He wanted to form a label for the longest time. Eventually
he met up with Ted Field. Jimmy said, "I'm forming this label with Ted.
Do you want to come along?" I said, "Sure. What am I going to do?" It
was that loose. Everything was that loose. When I look back on it, fate
played an amazing role. I just fell into things. I'm making it sound a
little easier than what it was, but it was literally like that. Jimmy
said, "Well, what you want to do?" I said, "I don't know. A&R sounds fine."
And that's what I ended up doing.

This story is going to make thousands of people sick with envy. What
happened next?

The label got successful fairly quick. The first year was exciting. We
spent the first two months trying to think up the name of the label and
finding out where to plug the phones in. Meanwhile, all these bands were
passing through our hands because of all of Jimmy's connections. Everyone
was excited about Jimmy heading up a new label with Ted Field. Ted's holding
company was called Interscope, but nobody wanted to call the label Interscope.
Everybody thought it sounded like an aerospace company. But we never thought
of another name, so it stuck.

How did Interscope become involved with some of the premiere and most
successful artists in rap?

Jimmy always had this affiliation with black music philosophically because,
in his opinion, white musicparticularly white pop musicalways has
its roots in black music. Whether it was the bluesbluegrass is a form
of that, country music is a form of thatthey are all integrated. It's
all a complicated web. Black music is where the rhythm and the sexiness
of rock and pop music come from. So Jimmy saw a great opening for rap.
 At that time,
rap was not selling huge amounts of records. It would sell a few thousand.
Run-DMC was probably the biggest selling act at the time. Jimmy thought
if he could find a great rap act, it could be like Guns N' Roses. You
could sell like 10 million, because white kids and black kids want to
buy this stuff. It could be packaged, and marketed and done right like
it was done in the '60s with Leiber and Stoller, Motown, Phil Spector
and all these people. They marketed black music. Historically in the music
business, there has always been that involvement of white people with
black music. Jimmy had this vision of doing black rap and making it accessible.
And he did.

By affiliating with Death Row Records?

He did a very bold thing by teaming up with them. He got Dr. Dre who then
introduced Snoop Dogg to him. All of a sudden we were known as this heavy
rock and rap label. We were getting this bad boy reputation in the business
as this independent label that was rising very fastin some opinions,
too fast. Dolores Tucker with the Coalition of Black Women in Washington,
D.C. decided to target us because of the controversial black lyrics and
the way these rappers are influencing Black America in a very derogatory
waybeing derogatory to women, society, street gangs and violencealmost
glamorizing the bad things. But Jimmy and Ted stuck by their guns and
said, "We're not going out there and signing every rap act under the sun.
We decided what we think are the most credible vocal representatives of
the society of where rap has come fromthe ghettoswith Dre, Snoop Dogg,
and Tupac Shakur. We're going to stick by our artists."
 But Warner Brothers
soon felt the heat from Washington and wanted to basically either terminate
their agreement as distributors for Interscope, or else Interscope had
to terminate its agreements with these artists. Jimmy sided with the artists.
Besides being a smart business move, in Jimmy's eyes, what are we in business
for if we can't stick by our artists? He essentially said, "My credibility
is as a producer and artist, and I've always wanted to make Interscope
an artist-oriented, artist-friendly label. To go against that would be
hypocritical." So they decided to stick by the artists, and it has worked
out well for us.

What happened then to turn the "heavy rock and rap label" into the
fully diversified label that Interscope has become?

We started to get more involved with pop stuff through our amalgamation
with Trauma Records, and Rob Kahane and Paul Palmer especially. We got
their band out of Hollywood Records called Bush, and that became a big
seller. All of a sudden we were in the pop game as well, which broadened
Interscope into a full-service company. It was no longer this little independent
upstart that was being controversialwe now had this broad spectrum.
That was a very pivotal move which happened around the end of 1995 and
early 1996.
 In the meantime,
I signed this young little Orange County band back in 1991 called No Doubt.

Nice going!

At the time, Pearl Jam and Nirvana were breaking, and nobody wanted to
hear an 8-piece horn section with a blond girl from Orange County doing
ska-retro-disco-metal-funk. But the kids did. I would go to the shows
in Orange County and up here, and they were selling out. The Whisky, The
Troubadourthey were selling places out. Kids were stage diving to this
with Pearl Jam and Pantera t-shirts on. I grew up with skabeing with
Stiff Records who had a big friendliness with Two Tone Records and had
Madness on the labelso I loved ska. But I was in the wrong place with
the right band. All of the bands that I saw around the country that were
coming up and doing skalike the Bosstones, Let's Go Bowling, and all
those bands back thenhad one thing in common, and that was zero songs
at that time. All of them were about the beat and the fun. They were like
frat party bands. They could pack a club out on a Saturday night, and
you'd have one hell of a time dancing your ass off, but I could never
see radio catching on.
 Of course, when
we made the first No Doubt record back in 1991 and 1992, the band wanted
us to go to radio. We tried it, and radio just went, "Are you crazy? Who
is going to buy this?" But we sold over 25,000 units in California. We
kept the band on the road touring all the time. We didn't spend a lot
of money on the band, but we kept their touring base. They are the smartest
people I know. They took care of themselves. They put their own merchandising
together. They got their website together. They got their fanbase together.
I mean they were very, very motivated in keeping the fanbase together.
It was growing all the time.

So it was really the band doing it even more than their management?

Oh, absolutely. We just supported them. They would come in here with boxes
of flyers to mail out for their shows. The mailroom guys would cringe
because it would take them all day to mail them out. There were literally
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these mail-outs, and their fanbase
was getting bigger. From about late 1992 to 1995, we made the second record,
Tragic Kingdom. Matthew Wilder, God bless his heart, chewed off more than
he could take because that was a hard record to make. We had tried various
producers that didn't work. We had to beg, borrow and steal studio time.
We didn't really have enough in the budget to keep going in. We would
have gone broke. The studios were very good to us giving us their downtime.
Matthew Wilder would drive down to Orange County every day on the 405
Freeway and work with these kids. They rose to the occasion as well. For
someone to come in and start messing around with the arrangements of the
songsa lot of artists have a problem with that. No Doubt did have a
problem with it, but they got into the spirit of it as well. Finally,
we finished the record, and I delivered it to Interscope. Again, ska was
not happening yet. Sublime was coming up, and 311 were just starting to
percolate. There was a percolation going on out of Orange County. Trauma
Records had just broken Bush, and I played the stuff for them just to
get their opinion. As luck would have it, somebody at KROQ was present
when I played it. They knew the band from old because KROQ had done a
"Loveline" show with them. Being from Orange County, they had supported
the band in the past, but didn't have a reason really to actually put
them on the playlist. The track that we played was "Just A Girl," and
they though it was great. Then I took it to Interscope and they said,
"Well let's reciprocate. We're doing a deal with Bush which came through
Trauma. Let's do a deal where No Doubt comes from Interscope, and Trauma
will help us develop the act." And it went great. It just fucking took
off. We were in the right place at the right time. That's not to downplay
everybody's involvement, because the band put a lot of work into this,
as did Matthew Wilder. A lot of people worked their asses off on that
record big time. But still, there was a shitload of luck. It was just
at the right place at the right time.

How many records have they sold thus far?

We're up to almost 15 million worldwide now.

Did Jimmy and Ted support your efforts with the band?

Yeah, Jimmy and Ted gave me money. There were always questions about what
we were going to do with this band, because rock was still in this alternative
grunge thing. Here we had this ska-influenced, pop-ish hook-driven band
with a blond girl singer. You've got Alanis Morissette, who is the epitome
of the angry woman, and here we had Gwen Stefani, who is a little bit
more of the antithesis of that and is just enjoying herself. But music
is the same merry-go-round. Trends go round and round and round, but every
time they come back aroundwhether it's metal, or rock, or pop, or disco,
or dance music or whateverthere is always a new twist. There are always
the new influences. There is always an amalgamation of influences that
have come before. That's why everyone is kind of at the moment waiting
for trend number whatever to come up.

I think it has had a very good effect on the industry, though, in that
it has opened the industry up to almost anything that is just plain good
right now.

I think it's great. In the late '80s when you had those "hair" bands,
there were very few to no women. So when the boys pretty much became a
parody of themselves because the talent pool was drained completely dry,
they went the way of the dinosaur. They just went downhill. After the
Winger/Warrant episodes, there was nowhere else to go. That's why when
Nirvana and Pearl Jam came up with this much more direct, real, organic,
in-your-face kind of street, dirty sound, it was a breath of fresh air.
These other bands had just parodied themselves to death. The difference
now with grunge and alternative is that it is still infiltrating all of
the other areas, and that's especially interesting because women are involved.
I think these last few years when the boys dried up, and the Pearl Jam
wannabes were in danger of again becoming a parody of themselves, all
these women bands came up with a new fresh approach lyrically on what
to say from the woman's perspective. Alanis Morissette, Tracy Bonham,
Jewel and the whole list of themthey picked up the ball and ran with
it. It kept the whole alternative scene going a lot longer than what it
would normally have done if women weren't in there.

The girls were all over the map stylistically, too. Even Donna Lewis,
who had a big pop hit last summer, was certainly a harbinger that pop
was back and that it is okay to be pop now.

Pop now is okay because there have been five or six years of immense influences,
and we're now two generations removed from the mid-'80s. They are bringing
those more recent styles inloops, grunge guitars, samples, more direct
and real lyricsas opposed to the "moon in June" and "met him in a bar"-type
ideas. It's become much more interesting. So pop is not a dirty word anymore.
Pop music actually is somewhat educational now. Just look at the Top-200
songs. There are all kinds. It's wacky. There is such a wild diversity.

Do you think that diversity is maybe telling us that it's going to
stay diverse for awhile, and maybe we won't see a "Next Big Thing?" Maybe
people have become so fragmented, through so many labels and the Internet,
that it has fragmented the marketplace.

I think you're right, because of that communication and technology. I
think it would be a little harder for a new dominating, overwhelming wave
or trend to come up. But who knows? Who knows what genius is? You go with
your best instincts, and you hope you're right. Some people seem to always
be on the money, like Clive Davis and people like that. Their whole focus
with the artists is about the songs. Always go for the songs and work
backwards from there. Develop the artist, develop an image, blah, blah,
blah, but always go for the songs. Rightly or wrongly, people think another
rock band of some form is going to come up nextwhether it's a mixture
of, I don't know, Guns N' Roses meets AC/DC meets the Doobie Brothers
with a new twist. In going to some of the clubs around the country, particularly
in the Midwest up through Chicago and down through Texas, there are some
young bandsteenagers and early 20's, that have these influences. You'll
get a singer who is like Ozzy Osbourne twenty years ago, with a guitar
player like Jimmy Page, with a drummer like out of Pearl Jam and ska-influenced
bass player. You just get this whacked-out amalgamation. They come together
and make this music, but they are bringing all of their little individual
influences. I think something like that could happen. There are quite
a few people out there that are waiting for a rock band to start a new
trend. There aren't that many rock acts.

Talk to me about artist development.

It's always hard as a band to get going with something that is a little
out of sync with what is currently happening. It's hard for a label
as well to find where the audience is that would recognize it and gravitate
towards it. In this age of technology and instant communication, we
want instant gratification. Attention spans are very short these days.
Get the hit now. If the first release isn't a hit, it's over. That's
the thinking a lot now. What happened to artist development? We've had
three major instances here at the label of artist development. One was
No Doubt. The first one was a band called the Toadies, whose record
was out 18 months before we got a Florida station banging it. They were
touring bars, criss-crossing the country, playing in front of three
people and their dog. That was the audience. And then suddenly it broke,
18 months later. We've got another band out on the road that we're working
now. Again, they are musically out of step with what is going on right
now. We're doing the same thing with them. The record has been out a
year, and it's just starting to get some percolation.

What
makes it start?

People championing the cause. Some people within the industry, but not
label-connected, hear the record and start a buzz through word-of-mouth.
Word-of-mouth, regardless of the technology and all the charts and all
the magazines and stuff, is still one of the best, most credible and
long-lasting supports for a new act. It's not video. Touring is still
the base, though. Touring and word-of-mouth mean much more than some
whacked-out video, or somebody who writes a little paragraph here and
there. That comes later. The initial word of mouth and the touring base
is what gets a band noticed and gets them off the ground. That's the
first push.

It's been said that the problem with the industry today is that too
much is being signed and released.

I'll agree with that. I think some of these acts are signed, and not
everything can be a priority at a label. Acts should realize that when
they are being courted by a major label, that they are always made to
feel that they are going to be the priority. But a major label, upon
taking delivery of the record that the act has made, may elect not to
make it a priority at that time. That's hard for a band to deal with.
I think labels try to push too much product at too high a level and
flood the market. I agree. I think too many acts are being signed for
some of the wrong reasons. With the success of independent labels over
the last 10 or 15 years, the majors suddenly think, well what are they
doing that we're not doing? Just imagine if we as a major label did
it, we'd even be more successful. So there's a big pressure for A&R
people to go out there and sign, sign, sign and sign. It's kind of like
that movie Glengary Glenross: Sell those cars! Come on let's go! Make
your quota! Sometimes A&R feels like that. Like: Man, I haven't signed
anything in eight months. I'd better go and sign something. So the first
thing you get remotely excited about, you want to sign, instead of being
calm, and selective and figuring out if this band is worth it. Are you
signing drug addicts? Are you signing a nightmare? Is it just one hit
that they've got, or even a hit at all? What is the potential? But sometimes
as an A&R person you don't get the luxury of allowing yourself that
time, because suddenly there are five other guys lining up around you
with their checkbooks open. Sometimes you have to make a snap decision
real fast. I know A&R people, though, who have signed acts that they
had never even seen perform and have never met. Or they've phoned the
attorney because they have a relationship and offer a blank check. Your
odds, at that point, are really against you to break an act. Like I
said before, a lot of what we do in this business is luck, but the odds
are against you in that case.

How important is an A&R person's relationship with the radio promotion
people at the label? Can the record still succeed if the A&R person's
heart is into the artist, but the promotion person's is not?

A record can succeed and survive despite that. The radio people tend to
respond to their outside relationships. I've seen situations where the
A&R person gives it to the radio promotion department, and the radio promotion
department is ambivalent at best. But then they've played it for all of
the programmers at the stations who get really excited about it. That,
then feeds back into the company. All of a sudden, so-and-so at WHFS is
nuts about this record. That gets everybody excited again. To be honest,
still to this day, even with all of the other technology, you still need
radio in order to break a band. Radio is still the most powerful conduit
for selling records. The encouraging thing is that some of these big market
stations are now going out on a limb with certain records.

What is your take on the Internet? Do you think it's really going to
change the industry?

I guess the most controversial potential is the ability to digitally download
music. I think it's already changed it, in as much that bands have websites
now and you can browse around. The whole fan club thing has disappeared,
and it's more like the website fan club. People can just go online and
meet the band, or bands can leave messages for their fans and video of
gigs. We had one band that was sending back videotape of gigs, where people
could download it and see the gig from the night before. The band talked
about how they broke down on the road, and this is the club, and here
we are at soundcheck. So I think, yes, it is going to change, but I guess
the most controversial thing is what happens when the ability to download
pristine quality music becomes possible? Where does retail fit in thatwhen
you can actually just plunk down a credit card and download the whole
record, and you've got it? If you want to print out the artwork, it will
be available, and you'll have your own file of bands.

Why are some record companies falling all over themselves trying to
be the actual retailers of their own product? Why not have it more decentralized?
You could be a label with only one website selling your product to the
public, or you could have 10,000 independent retailers on the Internet
all selling your product. That makes more sense to me.

Yeah, except the retailers are all set up with their stores, and staff
and everything else. Business can't change overnight, but the industry,
technology-wise, has gotten so sophisticated, that it will have the ability
to change overnight. That could be dangerous.

Couldn't the existing retailers adapt to the technology and have a
ramp-up time to adjust?

They're going to have to, because that day is coming. I think the retailers
have got to cozy up with the labels, because that is a reality. If they
don't catch on to the technology and figure out a way of utilizing it
for their own good as salesmen, they are going to be out of business.
Then all you'll have left is Blockbuster with video rentals. CDs are going
to be a thing of the past if they're not careful. They've got to figure
out a way to adapt in the not too distant future to the ability to download
music. I don't know, though. How many people worldwide have got computers
and will have the ability to do this? I think the technology is almost
there, but the actual hardware and software in every home for people to
do that is not going to be universally utilized. Not everybody has got
all of the knowledge, let alone the technology. It's going to be like
it was when CDs first came out and stores split their sales up between
vinyl, cassettes and CDs. Eventually CDs took over. You're right, it's
going to be a rampsome kind of crossover time period. The technology
is practically there. We're getting to the stage now where we don't want
to use FedEx or messenger services to listen to mixes. I could be here
in my office, and I could have a record being made in Australia downloaded
over the phone lines into my computer, and I could hear the finished master.
It's going to be a brave new world, that's for sure.

What advice would you give to a young person who aspires to be an A&R
"weasel?"

The only real way of getting into the A&R game is to associate yourself
with an artist that all of a sudden gains notoriety, and you come in on
the coattails of that artist. Or you're in a business that is affiliated
directly with a record label, and people trust your taste, and your ears
and your ability to fish out young talent.

Any sage advice for disenfranchised young bands or artists all over
America who would love to get their tape heard by somebody in the music
business?

Again, the technology is there. They can make a tape and get it to the
right person. Bands are getting remarkably sophisticated in their presentation
these days. I don't necessarily think bands have to send in a large binder
or folder of all the press they've gotten in their local town. It's just
a tape of three or four songsthat's all that's really necessaryand
a return phone number and a contact name. If the music is there, then
we'll want to see all of the other stuff. We've done many seminars at
all of these conferences, and it still remains the same: for bands and
performersas opposed to a non-performing songwriter or an R&B artistthe
best thing they can do is be in their town and develop their own story,
because we hear about it. They don't have to make this big exodus to Los
Angeles or New York to be heard. If they are making enough noise in their
own town, we hear about it. There are clubs, and bars, and universities,
and colleges and coffee houses all across the country. They can still
develop their talent there. Ron Sexsmith was a singer in a suburb of Toronto
that we heard of. He didn't have to travel to Los Angeles and start going
around the companies and delivering his tape. We found him in Toronto.

How did you guys first hear about him?

Through publishing, funny enough. Publishers were very into his songwriting.
About two or three publishers were really hot on this guy. The industry
talks. The industry is all about relationships. We all talk to each other.
"What have you been listening to?" Even though we're all in competition
with each other, we all talk about it. Basically, anyone who is in the
business for any length of time is a fan of music. We love to talk about
music.

What is your most embarrassing industry story?

Two immediately come to mind. The first one was passing on Nirvana. That
was an embarrassment. Mind you, I didn't hear "Teen Spirit." I would hope
in my heart of hearts I would have recognized that "Teen Spirit" was a
potential hit record. Another one is that very early on, a band phoned
me up and said, "What did you think of our show last night?" and I said
it was great, even though I didn't show up for the show. They said, "Well
that's funny, because we didn't perform." So I make a point now of always
being honest. Those are the two most embarrassing moments. I learned that
long ago, so I always go to shows. If I can't make the show, I always
tell the band if I can't make it, or else I'll try and swing by and at
least see one or two songs. But the days of bullshitting are over.

If you could start all over, is there anything you would do differently?

Oh my god, I don't know. I've often thought about that. I don't know if
I would do anything different. I'd like to think that I would have been
smarter. If there is anything I'd like to have been more different, it
would have been a change of characterand that's more or less impossible
to do. A few acts that I really, really hungered for and really believed
in, I should have been more intense about. I'm not a very good used car
salesman. I should have been more intense and dogmatic about signing these
acts because my intuition proved to be right. On the other hand, I've
signed acts that have been dogs, so it balances out. No, I don't know
if I would have done anything differently in retrospect. I'm happy to
have hit one out of the park. I would like to hit another one out of the
park. Jimmy Iovine always said, "The first one, you're lucky. The second
one, maybe you're onto something." So I'd like to hit another one out
of the park, like a big one like No Doubt before I roll over and die.

What is your favorite part about what you do for a living?

Making records. I love making records. I love the process, as frustrating
as it can be. I love getting into the philosophy of the dynamics and the
subtleties of making the recordthe arrangement, the music, putting it
all together with the band or the producer and listening to how it sounds.
Just the slightest adjustments on levels of drums, guitar, strings or
whatever can have the most profound effect on how it supports the musical
integrity, and the lyric and how it all feels. I remember when I first
started engineering, I knew what my ears wanted to hear, but my body was
not making it happen. Eventually my ears could recognize what was 2.5k
and what was 3.25k. I would actually test myself with other engineers
and say, "Let's bring up 400 cycles and take back 250," and I would say,
"Oops, you're off by 100 cycles." I love playing around with sound. You
hit that emotional high when you get that mix just rightwhen you know
that it's the best that it can be. I love that process. I've always been
into the sound quality of records. I've always been a pop music guy. I've
always loved pop music all the way through Motown, to the British Invasion
of the '60s, to the grunge stuff. I've always recognized why people are
buying something. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out why people
are buying it. What I like to do is, even with Madonna records and stuff
like that, to think about the way they're madethe dynamic quality, the
reverbs and the echoes that they used. I just love immersing myself in
those kinds of sounds. I like going in there and cranking stuff up.
 Interscope is
a great label to work for, in that Jimmy has always maintained that artist-oriented
friendliness. He always admired of the early Warner Bros., the early Geffen,
the early A&Mthose three labels in particular were very artist-oriented.
It's a shame that in the '80s, some corporations got a little too big
for their own good. Jimmy quite recently was at some Florida meeting with
a bunch of record execs and businessmen where he made a speech, part of
which was about the fact that the industry still is so business-oriented.
There is a need for that, but it's also an emotional business. We're not
selling tires. We're not selling soft drinks. We're selling emotion. The
people in the business that have that creative talent to go out there
and make that emotional piece of product have to be disciplined with the
business, but the business should not overwhelm that ability. I think
that's a very good point. I think some labels are beginning now to realize
the importance of that creativity within the business. It was definitely
in danger at some corporations of being lost, particularly in the mid-
to late '80s. A lot of it is the bottom line. It costs so much to break
a record. Just to walk a record out of the door on a major label deal
is anywhere between $200- and $500,000 dollars. That's a lot of commitment.
That's what I mean when I say it's the closest thing to the stock market
and Las Vegas. It's a gamble.

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