So, in the midst of this excitement and RTB getting ready to sign us to a deal, two significant things happen: I hire the Anti Christ lawyer, who turns into manager, lawyer, publisher, agent, gate keeper to Hell and everything else you can think of, and then our beloved demo producer commits suicide.

Anyone who has lived through someone close to them committing suicide will tell you the millions of emotions and thoughts you go through. In hindsight, we all see the signs and symptoms, but while they are happening, we don’t. It’s not fair to explain the details of this and not my desire to do so, but needless to say, it was crushing to us. It was depressing, and it hurt, but it also gave us some odd, naïve purpose to win one for him, and that was the focus. He was a very important cog in the wheel, and it took us a long time to move forward. Just a wonderful man, and he is still missed by everyone.

So, the big shot lawyer comes in and dazzles us with both his resume of success and his Hollywood good looks and charisma. We bit the bait and bit it hard. His first job was the publishing issue with the Bon Jovi lawyer, which he said he cleared up only to find out years later that it was Jon who allowed me to keep my publishing. So I thought he was Superman, and he was just a hustling lawyer. He was smart and continued to win me over by giving me clothes for my daughter, as he had a baby near her age. At this point, I worshipped him. He and his partners were riding high on success after success, including number one records, and when he said, “I can get you a record deal easily,” we not only believed him but cheered him.

So what did I do? You bet, I signed my life away. They became the epitome of conflict of interest. They were the managers, lawyers, publishers, record company and whatever else you can name; we signed everything, that’s right, danced with the devil in exchange for my weekly check of one-hundred and fifty dollars a week, which felt like a million to my family and me. Lesson one: hunger breeds stupidity.

So we began this record contract with Elektra and oddly enough without RTB in the picture. I didn’t question; I just rolled with the punches. I clearly remember my mom crying with happiness when we signed that deal, and I could afford to get us a small rental house that had a bath tub and three bedrooms. She told me when we were leaving the tenement, “I thought I was going to die here.” Well, you didn’t mom, but my innocence died there, and you died years later in a hospital due to scum bag doctors errors, but you got to live like a queen for decades, my love.

So here we are with the super managers feeding us dreams and us eating it up. Around this time, they had morphed into a massive company with acts like New Edition, John Waite, Ready for the World, and many more. This was the big time. They asked us to meet a producer, and that should have been clue number one as to their lack of intelligence. The producer in question was a nice enough guy, somewhat goofy, and then when we asked him his favorite rock band of all time, he answered The Beach Boys. Oh shit, we were in trouble.

This producer was about as “rock and roll” as Marie Osmond, about as edgy as Ed McMahon, but we didn’t want to rock the boat, so we hired him.

Next lesson: hunger breeds stupidity.

We started looking for engineers, and the one we wanted was vetoed, and I believe the reason was the producer was intimidated by him (he became my engineer years later when I began producing). Then we hunted studios and found one near us on the shore with a massive recording room, the right price and owned by a father and son team who were priceless in so many ways, including the father being the radar operator at Pearl Harbor during the attack and no one believing him that planes were coming. I loved the guy, but if you met him and saw how droll he was, you wouldn’t believe him about the planes coming in either.

He was really cool in a comatose sort of way, and even wore a “regulation” rock and roll leather vest when he came to visit the studio, but he got really pissed when we opened up a fire extinguisher all over his piano during a band play time out of control. I guess he wasn’t really rock and roll.

The recording was going along great, even though Mr. Beach Boys Fan Producer would sporadically stop the session to make us look at his dog when she held items, as he called them, in her mouth. Look, I love dogs more than you can imagine, but to stop me in the middle of a blazing guitar solo to say, “Look, Kippy has three items in her mouth!” is pure idiot.

This guy was nice enough but added nothing; in fact, he hindered us. I then decided to record our own version of the song that appeared on Jon’s record, and Jon came in to sing background vocals on it, much to the dismay of my singer who was fighting his own issues of insecurity over this. Jon and I were rooting for each other, and that was obvious to all. It was then I deeply regretted not having Jon in this band instead of a singer I just hated, but it was too late. It was like a good marriage, an old shoe, and here I was trying on shoes that just didn’t fit.

Midway through recording, our demon manager informed us we were no longer recording for Elektra but now for EMI America. We figured that was just because he had the number one artist in America with the number one single, and that suited us just fine. Years later I realized it was because he could use his then considerable status to pull a stunt like that and pocket even more cash.

We never got one dime of advance money from either Elektra or EMI. Nice, I never asked, but I knew, deep in my heart I knew, but I needed the weekly paycheck, and I needed that Holy Grail record deal.

So we conclude recording and sign with EMI, complete with a photo in Cashbox with us, manager from Hell, president of EMI America and the VP (the wonderful Neil Portnow, who is now Mr. Grammy, and a great guy). Now I had written more songs, and management suggested we record them with, now check this out, one of their producers, the very guy who produced the big number one they were riding. Lesson number three, nice guys can also be talentless.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 3:15 am and is filed under Label Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.