I was introduced to everyone in the rock department, and I smiled and joked around with them, but I felt like I was being judged as soon as our eyes met. I couldn’t tell if they thought I was an imposter or if I was the one who felt like a fake. By the end of the day, I felt ill. I was way over my head and would rapidly sink as everyone realized I didn’t know how to run a fucking rock radio promotion department.
When I got home after my first day, I called Sharon. ‘I’ve got to get out of this. I need to quit tomorrow. I’m a musician, not a salesman.’
Always the voice of reason and still the rock that keeps me anchored, Sharon talked me down from quitting and reminded me why Jerry had hired me. He didn’t want someone who would go through the motions, he wanted someone with strong instincts who would shake things up and improve the system. She pointed out that I had steered Gentle Giant through rough business waters time and again and insisted that all I needed was a little bit of self-confidence to make PolyGram’s rock radio department shine. ‘They hired you because they want you.’
I went back on the second day and started going over the acts on our roster with the rest of the team. Some of the guys were cool with me from the start, and a couple even knew about Gentle Giant. But the more offices I visited in the sales and marketing departments, the more I realized that the music business wasn’t about music, it was about business. To a lot of these people, the records weren’t works of art, they were product. Seeing how many people came from that school of thought was unnerving.
I got along much better with people who had tried to make it in music. Maybe they had been in bands or worked as stage techs or radio DJs, but for one reason or another, they couldn’t make a living that way. But they still loved music and wanted to stay in that world, so they got jobs at record companies. I came from the other direction, and now I was determined to learn how to navigate the business of music and put as much emphasis on the music and musicians as possible.
That approach has been immensely beneficial to me and the companies I’ve worked for, and it has allowed me to see the business world through a different lens than my contemporaries. It has enabled me to approach my work with a vision that others lacked because they didn’t have my experience outside of the label world, and it made me a hell of an A&R man and record guy.
Far more irksome to me than the people who just saw music in terms of dollars and cents were the ones who weren’t especially passionate about music or business. They just wanted to enjoy the rock’n’roll lifestyle. Working in music was an open invitation for them to hang out with celebrities, indulge in drugs and alcohol, chase women (even if they were married), party all night, and run up the company credit card (sometimes with discreet payments to dealers and escort services). As long as they came to work every day and got the job done—often with the aid of recreational stimulants—conventional wisdom dictated that they could be as irresponsible, immature, and self-destructive as they wanted to be. And a lot of the label guys I met who lived fast did, indeed, die young.
That was a rude awakening to me. In the same way as when Gentle Giant toured with Black Sabbath and others of their ilk, I was a fish out of water compared to the coke-sniffing industry execs and their extra-curricular pursuits. Or, at least, I was swimming in a different pond. Soon, I would understand that all the hedonism and indulgence was analogous to power. It seemed like the president of each department at the label sat behind a big desk and reveled in the importance of the title on their door. I wanted to learn what to do and what not to do, and I quickly figured out that the best thing to do when you don’t know anything is to shut the hell up and listen.
One of my first realizations was that if these were the kinds of people promoting albums on big labels, no wonder Gentle Giant never reached the mainstream. No matter how many times we were told we were a label priority, we weren’t an easy band to promote, and these kinds of people wanted easy projects that reflected well on their balance sheets. For us to be a major priority at places like this would have required employees who were disciplined, persistent, and dedicated. They would have had to forge and foster strong relationships with people and pull favors to get them to play our challenging music. When I realized that, I made a mental note that when I reached a position where I was calling the shots, I would make sure I worked with people who shared my goals and vision and weren’t just working for a paycheck.
I had to learn the ins and outs of the promotion game and how to make it work without selling my soul or becoming a drug addict. I was determined to use my skills as an artist and businessman to turn PolyGram into one of the top rock labels. To that end, I watched everything that went on around me, assessed the information I was privy to, applied whatever knowledge would benefit me, and discarded or avoided anything that might be harmful or problematic. I was a fast learner, so I knew it would just be a matter of time before I could start making some big decisions and turning things around. But first, I had to follow orders.
Since I was English, I was immediately assigned to promote bands from the UK. Jerry Jaffe figured my accent might encourage radio stations to give The Jam some love. I wasn’t particularly a fan, but I feigned enthusiasm and pushed their 1982 album The Gift to music programmers across the country. When the band came to New York, I had to babysit them and take them to radio station interviews, which was unpleasant, since Paul Weller was difficult, to say the least, and his father/manager was even worse. I don’t know if he knew I came from the same side of the industry as he did, or if he knew Gentle Giant. If he did, he certainly didn’t mention it, and he never talked about anything but himself. I doubt he even acknowledged my English accent. He was more obsessed with complaining about why his latest single wasn’t #1 and why we weren’t spit-polishing his shit to make it shine like a diamond.
The higher-ups put plenty of resources into breaking The Jam in America since the record was their most melodic and had topped the charts in the UK. They could have stapled $100 bills to every album sleeve that went to a record station, and it wouldn’t have made a difference. First of all, The Jam didn’t like America, and, more significantly, they didn’t like Americans. Their music was incredibly English, and their lyrics were directed at working-class British kids who worked in shops or factories and probably wouldn’t ever leave their hometown. American kids couldn’t relate to that. Like too many UK bands, The Jam thought people would love them for being snotty and snarky, and they answered interview questions with a sarcasm and cynicism that didn’t endear them to radio.
Aside from the band being unpleasant as people, The Jam’s music didn’t fit the demands of the American market. It wasn’t Joe Jackson. It wasn’t Elvis Costello. It wasn’t even The Clash, who had a playful side, and whose approach to punk rock was more accessible. And they thought they could book eight shows in major US cities and call it a full tour. They didn’t realize that breaking the States requires an insane amount of touring in all kinds of markets. If their quintessentially British music didn’t ensure their obscurity in the US, their attitude and approach to the industry did.
While I was working The Jam, I learned some important lessons about radio. Music directors know more about bands, scenes, and styles than anyone else at the station—certainly more than their program directors or general managers, who often only care about generating the most listeners so they can sell ads at the highest rates. Yet, the music directors were the ones who chose the songs for a station’s playlist. Since they often loved all kinds of music, many of them were familiar with my past life, and they were the ones who were most likely to take me seriously when I pitched a band. In addition to getting many of them to play The Jam, which was a priority, I got them to listen to acts like Rory Gallagher. Since I was the resident Brit, I worked with Tears For Fears on their first album, The Hurting, and played a part in getting radio stations to spin ‘Mad World’ and ‘Pale Shelter.’