So back to the studio we go, but this time back to House of Music, the home of those Southside/Gary Tallent demo sessions.

The House of Music was an amazing studio, tucked away in the mountains in West Orange, NJ. It was the studio in which a lot of the Bat out of Hell record that sent Meatloaf into the stratosphere was recorded in and many, many others. It even had a swimming pool, which to a guy who never had a bath tub, was a pretty big deal. It was owned and run by a lovely husband and wife team who were kind and generous, in fact too kind and generous, and gave away far too much free time and “spec” (meaning if you get a record deal you pay us or record your album here), so much free time that it helped drive the place to bankruptcy.

I met another squirrel of a manager there that pops up later, but never managed me, thank God. Another charming dirtbag in a long line of charming dirtbags who slither along the fabric of this business and suck the life out of anything in their path. This guy had almost as much charm as my dirtbag lawyer/manager yet to this day continues to find himself with hit act after hit act. Absurd as it seems, hunger breeds stupidity.

Now at the House of Music, I had the displeasure of seeing Art Garfunkle function up close. This was not the nicest guy in the universe (IMO). I think he hated me, because in the lounge one day, he had all his session players gathered round watching a video of Art’s vacation. They were all oooing and aaaahing (I guess you have to do that while on salary). Me, being me, shut off the video and said, “This is really nice and everything, but I’d rather be getting laid.” Art didn’t like me much after that, and I got yelled at by the studio owner. My dad always said, “You meet the same people coming up the ladder as you do going down.” Some people never learn that lesson. Being nice is easy.

We also got into trouble for leaving a mannequin hanging from a noose around its neck in the control room, only to be found, in a screaming frenzy, by the poor cleaning lady. Ok, we also got into trouble for a little romance ’round the swimming pool late at night, when screams of passion (disgust?) woke the owners, whose bedroom window was directly underneath. I’m downplaying some things. Needless to say, we always got in trouble.

So here we are recording a few more songs for our record, with the producer handpicked by management, who I’m not sure was really a producer. He was real nice guy, but not really a producer at all. It was during these sessions I learned things like invoices could be written for anything, including “recreational vitamins” for the engineer (please read between those lines). Yup, and all of that billed to us and 100% recoupable. Recoupable is a magic word which translates to: nothing is free, ever.

So the producer explained to me that the engineer needed these supplements to stay awake to mix the record. Ok! I was in go with the flow mode. I just wanted to have a record out. Whatever man, I don’t care, I just want to be a rock star.

We get done, go through all the typical things like a photo shoot and get a road manager assigned to us. Why, I don’t know, as the only road we saw was from NJ to NY. Anyway, it felt cool, and we felt like we were for real. We even got to go see New Edition and stand on stage behind their back line for the show! That was shocking to us, and even more shocking to New Edition to see a bunch of rockers on their stage. That could have lead to Bobby Brown’s spiral for all I know. Though I will say, at that time, New Edition were just a bunch of nice, clean living kids.

In retrospect, we did no interviews, no publicity, and no nothing. Welcome to the tried and true tradition of “throw it against the wall and see if it sticks.” Well, needless to say, it didn’t stick. It merely got stuck.
I also learned labels never want to hear from the artist, so my mighty phone magic couldn’t turn a page let alone fix anything. The only take away was getting free records at the label. Yay! Except I wasn’t into anything on the roster, and this was way before E Bay, where they were sure to have been sold.

My savior/manager took to the habit of now calling me late at night to ask me what the buzz on the street was about him and were people impressed with his growing stature. Paranoia and delusion are pretty funny combined in dead of night. How about we talk about MY career? Nope, just his ramblings on himself. I thought I was the one, as the artist, that was supposed to be fucked up and asking for reassurance.

This guy was completely lost. His then manager partner still works in the business today and swears to me he had no part in the fucking and swears he himself was victim as well. Not sure if I buy that. The main offender reached out to me recently in some new fog of Zen forgiveness and retribution. I have to say, I actually liked him better when he was a delusional snake crawling along the slime of deceit. Much more entertainment than the broken down coward he is now.

The only bright spot during this time was one Johnny Bronco. Man, I loved him. Our keyboard player, who couldn’t really play, but had heart, loyalty, and just kept you in stitches daily. After he executed a U-turn in the Lincoln Tunnel, we could have literally been in stitches. What a character. Johnny Bronco was all sinew and muscle in a small frame. Having lost most of his hair, he got a wig way before the 80’s hair band tradition of donning one. Every day he dressed the same: ballet tights, cowboy boots with spurs, no shirt, a dinner jacket, and the photo of “Lil Debbie” from the snack cakes box, which he had laminated and wore around his neck.

He had a theme song he would sing upon entering any room and sang to everyone, including a frightened New Edition and John Waite.
A few Bronco highlights: at a trendy Indian eatery in NY (Nirvana), Bronco tried to get the waiters to sing along, after Bon Jovi became huge, Bronco would come with me to shows and scream over and over again, “Johnny Bon Jovi,” for hours backstage, one night he tried to tackle Joe Elliot from Def Leppard backstage at a show, and my favorite moment, my good friend Adam Curry let Bronco host the MTV countdown, which almost got Adam fired. Good times!

However, the only bright spot during the sacred days of my first record deal. So, the record comes out, and guess what? It stiffed. Completely nothing. Charted at 300 with an anchor and went cardboard. The dream is over. What does my wonderful manager do? Well, the jerk off calls me into his office and tells me my pathetic little paycheck is now no more. What do I do? Cry.

Cry and beg him that I need the money to feed my daughter. Fuckface tells me to stop crying. I tell him I am going to sue him; he laughs and says, “You have no money to sue me.” I run out and run home scared out of my mind, crying and throwing up. New lesson: instead of crying I should have punched his fucking lights out.

You know, no one has the right to be a dream killer. No one has the right to use anyone and discard them like trash. This business, for the most part, doesn’t care about the human carnage, the tears and broken dreams, they only care about themselves and that is wrong on every level. If you’re an earner, you get love, if not, drop dead, you and your fucking dreams.

Enter the dark period where everyone left because we were dropped. All of our new friends, hook ups, women, everything. Gone.

I will say one thing, this experience molded me as the manager I became decades later, and I swore to myself I would never do to anyone what was done to me. I had to be the antithesis of the animal who pissed on me.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 3:50 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.