Mark and his team had arrived a week in advance of the show, and now they had to fly back to New York, fill up suitcases with hundreds of thousands of dollars, and return to Moscow to ‘take care of’ those in charge. While Mark was out of the country handling financial arrangements, I met with the head of the army.
‘You know,’ he began. ‘We expect there to be more than a million people coming. And, let’s just say, we can’t guarantee their safety. We’ll need more soldiers to make sure everyone is as safe as possible. And we need to, well, take care of them.’
‘What’s that mean, exactly?’ I asked.
‘Well, you know what that means,’ he said, then gave me a dollar figure.
With just over twenty-four hours to go until show time, I flew back home, filled another suitcase with $250,000, and brought it back to Moscow, where I was picked up and shuttled directly to the head of the army, who gladly took the suitcase from me.
On the day of the concert, I walked around the grounds to try to calm my nerves and shake my jetlag. The bands were all there, having arrived two days early, so Sharon and I took a stroll. There was nothing around the airfield, just empty space, and there were more than 1.6 million people arriving at the grounds. There were no stores, no merch counters. When a man wheeled out his ice cream cart a quarter mile from the venue, there were lines three blocks long. That paled in comparison to the bread lines, which looked to be two hundred yards long. But bread was free. Ice cream was not. And neither was McDonald’s.
There was one single McDonald’s in Moscow, and it was the only fast-food outlet in town. The venue didn’t have any sort of catering for artists, so Mark and his team headed out to order five hundred Big Macs to feed the bands and crews.
Even with all the bribes we had to pay, the volatile environment, the lack of food, and the less-than-leisurely accommodations, the event was spectacular. The fans were rabid, rushing the stage until they couldn’t squeeze any further up.
A Russian band I had never heard of opened the show. Then the Black Crowes went on. They were treated well by the crowd, who were starved for any kind of rock entertainment. When Pantera went on, the place went mad. These kids loved metal, craved catharsis, and needed to lose their shit to loud, wild bands. There was a gigantic screen in the middle of the airfield, which was the only way most of the crowd could even see the show. You’d never have known it. Fans a hundred yards from the screen and five hundred yards from the stage were in ecstasy, screaming along to songs they’d probably only heard on fiftieth-generation cassette burns. The sound was bombastic, and the bands were beyond pumped.
Metallica were incredible, as we predicted, and they later called Monsters Of Rock: Moscow one of the greatest shows they ever played. AC/DC ended the show with ‘For Those About To Rock (We Salute You),’ and to see 1.6 million people screaming at the top of their lungs, with cannons blasting to the music and fireworks exploding overhead, was beyond euphoric. It was completely, ridiculously amazing.
The only thing I regret about Monsters Of Rock: Moscow is that there wasn’t better crowd control. There were up to a hundred thousand army soldiers there, and a lot of them were worse than the Hell’s Angels at Altamont. As kids rushed forward, a wave of soldiers with batons and riffles was there to stop them. They had been ordered to keep the fans away from the front, and in their minds that meant they had free rein to beat the shit out of them. During Pantera’s set, Phil threatened to stop the show if the soldiers kept beating the fans. Knowing the entire crowd would riot and tear the soldiers apart if the music stopped, the bullies backed off. But they were just as violent during Metallica and AC/DC. I knew kids were hurt at the show, but the Russian government kept such tight reigns over the media that I didn’t find out that some of them were actually killed until a decade or more after the show. When I first heard that, I felt like I was going to throw up.
I felt similarly ill after I got back from Russia, but not from a rocky flight or jetlag. I had just pulled off the impossible, staging one of the biggest hard-rock concerts ever. And my team and I did it in a place where no one thought it could be done, and in a region that needed ear-blasting escapism more than anywhere else. In a month, we had surmounted countless obstacles and put The Black Crowes, Pantera, Metallica, and AC/DC in the minds and hearts of the Russian people. In other words, I was on top of the world. So, I think anyone can understand how upset I was to find out that while I was out of the country, working hard to change the global landscape for rock, Doug Morris was doing everything in his power to change the structure of Warner Music—to humiliate me and solidify his place in the hierarchy of the corporation. He was already the co-chairman and co-CEO of Atlantic, and now he wanted to stage a coup to dissolve ATCO.
Steve Ross had become critically ill with prostate cancer. Bob Morgado, who had been chief of staff for New York governor Hugh L. Carey and wasn’t a music guy at all, became chairman of the Warner Music Group and started to flex his muscles. He had already put the thumbscrews on Warner execs Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker, and now Doug wanted to exploit the shakeup to move up in Warner Music Group. He wanted me out of the way, so he scheduled a meeting with the ailing Ross (who died in December 1992) and convinced him to shutter ATCO and promote his assistant, Sylvia Rhone, to run Elektra Records.
Not long after I returned to the States, Harry Palmer dropped by my office.
‘Hey man, are you sitting down?’
‘No, I’m doing a handstand on my desk,’ I quipped. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m not sure, but it might be bad news,’ he said, knowing full well that he was being euphemistic. ‘Doug has told a couple of the staff members in radio promotion that they no longer work for ATCO. They’re working for Elektra. And he told other people at ATCO they no longer have jobs.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘This all happened while you were gone,’ he said.
I went to see Bob Morgado to find out what was going on. Bob was strictly a numbers guy. He didn’t care about musicians, art, or loyalty to staffers.
‘Bob, what’s happening? You’re closing ATCO?’ I said, barely able to control my anger.
‘Doug said it was a good idea, and it makes sense to me,’ he said. ‘He said you and Sylvia could be co-chairpersons of Elektra. You can work together.’
This was completely out of the realms of anything I could have predicted, and it was the last thing I wanted—to work with Doug’s inexperienced assistant, Sylvia, and teach her how to run a record label while we shared the credit for my work. I should have taken a deep breath and told Bob I would think about it, but I was being diplomatic.
‘No fucking way!’ I shouted. ‘After I went to Russia to put on this huge show, to be stabbed in the back while I’m gone is bullshit! Go fuck yourself! I’m done!’
Bob could have shown me the door, but he recognized my value to the company, and he knew Sylvia was green and needed help with Elektra.
‘Derek,’ he said, ‘just pick a record company to run, and you can work alongside Sylvia.’
That might have worked out if Doug hadn’t gone already around me while I was gone. As it was, the axe was already buried in my back. The bridge was burned.
‘No chance in hell,’ I said between gritted teeth. ‘I’m out. I’m done.’
Was it the right thing to do? Damn right, it was. Was it a smart thing to do financially? No, but I didn’t care. I had revived ATCO and turned it into a profitable, artistic label. They had taken my baby and drowned it.