The first time I met with Jerry and Eric was in New York, and with us as we talked was a huge hulk of a man who didn’t say a word. When I asked who he was, I found out his name was Suge Knight and he was the label’s bodyguard. I would never have guessed it at the time, but he already had a rap sheet longer than the label’s catalogue. Soon after that, I went out to LA to meet the rest of the group. Being utterly naïve about gangsta rap, I didn’t believe all the hype about gangs and guns. When Suge was standing guard at our meeting, I figured he was part of some gangster hip-hop shtick and just there to emphasize the toughness these guys wanted to get across in their music. It seemed like part of an image to help make N.W.A seem more dangerous and increase their sales—kind of like Black Sabbath did when they wrote songs about satanism.
When I arrived at LAX, Jerry and Eric picked me up in a black Mercedes. I sat in the front seat next to the driver; Eric and Jerry were in the back. I looked down and noticed a truncheon at my feet. Not wanting to make a big deal over it, I placed my hand on the armrest and saw a handgun in the compartment where other celebrities usually kept CDs, books, and maps. That’s when I knew I was dealing with people who knew how to fire guns and use clubs and might already have done so against other individuals. I had read that Eric started working in music after his cousin was murdered and figured it was part of the mythology. Now, I believed it. Oh, shit! What had I gotten myself into? Even Don Arden and his team of thugs were small potatoes compared to the shoot first don’t bother asking questions later ethos of LA gangs like the Crips and Bloods.
This was not a world I understood. It was a lucrative corner of the music business, for sure. Eazy-E’s Eazy-Duz-It, the label’s first release, was a huge success; N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton hit pay dirt and was a landmark release; and the company was about to release an album by Dre’s girlfriend, Michel’le, that was sure to be successful. But I was acutely aware that being a part of this windfall of cash wasn’t worth the risk of a hailstorm of bullets through the windshield. I had to concentrate to hide my discomfort and act professionally.
We drove through the Compton and Watts areas of LA to Ruthless HQ in a dilapidated and dangerous neighborhood right in the middle of the South Central ghetto. It reeked of desperation and decay, and I started to understand where these rappers were coming from and what their music was about. They were reflecting their world, which was about being downtrodden, being a minority, and having to use whatever assets and experience you had to get your message across. The shit they rapped about—police brutality, racism, guns, drive-bys, drug deals, murder—was all real. The music was part of the message, and the message was about their lifestyle. I realized their songs were art imitating life, and I started to understand why and how hip-hop became incredibly popular. It was authentic, raw, and scary, and it offered a glimpse into a crazy world that listeners could learn about from the safety of their locked suburban homes.
I first met Jerry when I was in Gentle Giant and he was a young Jewish kid just starting out in the music industry, and I was relieved there was someone there who I had something in common with. When we got out of the car, he said, ‘Look, follow my lead. You have to trust me and believe me because I know this world. It’s a world you want to benefit from. The music is massive, and I promise you when they present something to you, you’ll be very happy, and so will they. But this is not a world you want to be part of.’
Fair enough. I didn’t fit in anyway. But I had to do my job and work in this genre of music that was foreign to me, and I did my best. The first project I worked was Michel’le’s album. Jerry played it to me, which wasn’t bad. Her vocals were incredible, but I wasn’t used to the sound of samples in hip-hop, so the beats sounded too electronic to me.
‘Listen to me, this is going to be a winner,’ Heller said.
I knew this was more his domain than mine, but I felt there was room for improvement. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s good,’ I told him. ‘I just feel like it could sound more organic. I’d love to sit down with Dre and listen to the record with him, and I can give him some input. How’s that sound?’
‘You da boss,’ Heller chuckled. Around a week later, Jerry came to my office with Dre and Suge, who stood in the back. Dre played the record. Not realizing Dre was the grand master of hip-hop beats (and the man who would eventually name his headphone company Beats), I suggested he rethink the mix.
‘Could you maybe get the beats to sound a little more lively?’ I asked him. ‘I think they could be placed in a slightly different way sonically, so they’re more present.’
He was very nice and took my unschooled criticism well. I’m sure he saw me as this guy from another world of music who didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about.
‘Uh, yeah. Yeah, man,’ he said. ‘I can do that.’
Dre went back to the studio and came back to present his new mix to us. It sounded the same to me. I’m not sure he even changed anything, but I wasn’t about to say anything. We released the first single, ‘No More Lies,’ and it blew up. It was massive. Five weeks after that came out, Michel’le went gold.
N.W.A and Ruthless were happening in a big way, and it looked like there was plenty of money to be made with the distribution deal. But while Michel’le, N.W.A, and other acts were taking over gangsta rap, I was working on a pile of ATCO projects, and I couldn’t devote the time they needed me to spend with them. I assigned one of my co-workers to oversee Ruthless, and soon after that, both companies decided the relationship wasn’t as ideal as it initially seemed, so they parted ways—which, I must admit, troubled me not in the least. Another label, Priority Records, took over the distribution, and eventually Dr. Dre left Ruthless to start Death Row Records with Suge Knight.
ATCO was an artist’s label, and the focus was primarily on music—or at least that was my goal—but since the label was an Atlantic imprint when I came on board, as opposed to an independent company, there was some carry-over from other parts of the Warner family, which is how we secured some of our acts. There was also a certain amount of bartering we had to do to secure the artists we wanted.
At the time, AC/DC were on Atlantic and were on the verge of being dropped. They were in a downward tumble and hadn’t released a full-length original album since 1985’s Fly On The Wall, which tanked. They could still fill venues on tour, but it looked like their best days were behind them and they would soon become a legacy band playing package tours in summer sheds. That would have been a shame, since they could still put on a great live show and were still talented artists who, I felt, still had plenty to offer. I thought they deserved a chance to redeem themselves, but the company was looking at paying them one million dollars for the next album they delivered.
‘Ah, you can’t drop AC/DC,’ I told Doug Morris, who I tried to be as civil with as possible, even though I knew he had argued against me running ATCO.
‘AC/DC has nothing left,’ he said. ‘And I don’t see it happening in this music climate.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘It’s AC/DC. They’re legends.’
‘Well, if you want to take them over to ATCO and try to get them to do something real, maybe we could trade. If you give me Pete Townshend, I’ll give you AC/DC. Otherwise, I’m gonna drop them.’