"An Offer I Should Have Refused..."

One day in 1978, when we were really rolling, Neil Bogart called, and offered to buy me out, to become V.P. of publicity at Casablanca Records. His PR chief, Susan Munao, was moving over to management with her first client, Donna Summer. It was a momentary lapse of judgement on my part, but the High Profile position,leased Mercedes, grand salary and other perks were irresistable. Also irresistable was the opportunity to work with Bogart, whom I considered the most creative and dynamic person in the music business. What I didn't know was that Neil was moving further and further away from the day to day operation of the label and into the film business. And I had to work with his brother-in-law, Larry Harris, which was not so thrilling. So there I was, at the height of Disco-mania, and rode the wave with the Village People, Donna Summer, and Casablanca's movie "Thank God It's Friday." The excesses which drove the world of Disco were pretty bizarre to a late-bloomer like myself; also, the music gave me a headache. My second attempt at clawing my way up a corporate ladder ended up in disaster less than a year later.

I picked up where I had left off, with a couple of boxes of my Dean Torrance designed letterhead, a new Beverly Hills address, and in 1980, had a new partner in Kip Morrison, a most ambitious and creative publicist with a corporate background. She went after her wine and beauty products accounts, I represented rock bands, and we handled the restaurant Fellini's together. My old friends, The Turtles, metamorphized into Flo & Eddie, and went out on tour together, and once again, I had the fun of working with these very talented veteran performers.

"No One Here Gets Out Alive..."

Back in the Gibson & Stromberg Good Old days, lots of new young people hung out at our office, as we were the center of activity for rock'n' roll information in L.A. Sixteen-year old Cameron Crowe from San Diego was one of these kids, and as long as he did stories on our clients, we encouraged him, introduced him to the editors at the L.A. Times, Rolling Stone and Playboy Magazine. His writing career later merged into a spectacular film career and he won an Oscar for "Almost Famous" a film about those glory days in Rock n' Roll. Another of these kids was Danny Sugerman, a Beverly Hills High dropout who had managed to get a job as gopher for our clients The Doors. Danny's whole life became The Doors, and he had written an unpublishable manuscript about the band. Somehow, in the late 1970's he connected with Jerry Hopkins, who had written what at that time had been the definitive biography of Elvis, and was living on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. The two collaborated on what became "No One Here Gets Out Alive," which Warner Books published in 1980. We threw a publication party at the Whisky, where the Doors had started out in the '60's as House Band. We assembled all of the folks who had been involved with them, managers, groupies, musicians and their producer Paul Rothschild, who had kept a very low profile for years. Elektra founder Jac Holzman was there, and the remaining Doors played, with vocals by LA club stalwarts Top Jimmy (and the Rhythm Pigs.) They successfully recreated the entire atmosphere of the Doors' beginning in that club, and some people swore that Jim's spirit had materialized in the room! In the middle of the evening, Ray Manzarek read to the assembled crowd a telegram from Warner Books, announcing that the book was #1 on the New York Times best-seller list. This was the first rock book ever to reach that pinnacle. The book went on to sell in the gazillions, and eventually spawned the controversial Oliver Stone movie, "The Doors."

Then, the delightful Steve Goodman, he of the classic song "City of New Orleans," became a client. Stevie had created a wonderful song about his beloved Chicago Cubs, and as it turned out, just as the song, "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request" was hitting the airwaves, the Cubs were winning the Pennant. Tragically, Stevie was, in fact, dying of leukemia, and left us a few months later. His manager, Al Bunetta, also had us working on his other artist, the acclaimed singer- songwriter John Prine. Prine was, and is today, the critics' favorite, and, everything he releases on his OBoy Records goes gold.

"Minimum Wage Rock'N'Roll..."

The BusBoys were a most unusual occurance in the music business in the early days of 1980. They were a working class black band who played what they called "minimum wage rock'n' roll." They wrote songs like "There Goes the Neighborhood," and the L.A. reviewers went crazy. They played in clubs all over town, the buzz became deafening, and I persuaded Arista Records' A&R whiz Bud Scoppa, a man of uncompromisingly good taste, to come down to see them. After much wrangling about what to do with this hybrid, Arista signed them. By that time, stories on them had broken in Time, The Wall Street Journal, L.A. Times Calendar and many other national publications. They went into the studio, and their first album, "Minimum Wage Rock & Roll" was released, only to be rejected by FM radio for being too black, and R&B Radio for being too rock'n roll. MTV, which had just gone on the air in late 1980, had the good sense to air the BusBoys' video, but not in heavy rotation. Meanwhile, the heat we had generated resulted in Eddie Murphy, who had just signed to do his first feature film "48 Hrs." coming after The BusBoys for his movie. Who would have thought the thing would take off into the stratosphere! The movie was a monster, the BusBoys appeared on "Saturday Night Live," and opened a tour with Linda Ronstadt. Their performance of the "The Boys Are Back" made them known throughout the world. The song, which was never released as a single, eventually became the theme for the Dallas Cowboys, later for Fox Sports network and the BusBoys, despite the fact that they never had a hit record, has had a run of about 20 years.

Also during that time, I became aligned with top New York publicist Howard Bloom, who needed a West Coast office to represent his many clients. Together, we signed the group Earth, Wind & Fire, who were preparing to record a new album for CBS. Their management company also represented a very short, but talented young man who called himself Prince. Prince, with his "Dirty Mind" album and his androgynous attitude, quickly became the darling of the rock press, and we had another success on our hands.