What the hell?
He sat behind the drums, then, in one clean motion, ripped off the sleeves so you could see his arms and shouted, "How do I look, Jerry Weintraub? I've got your new suit." He held up the arms of the suit, then launched into "Black Dog."
It was hysterical.
For years, I handled the Moody Blues, a British group that went through various incarnations before breaking through in 1965 with the song "Go Now." (They are best known for "Nights in White Satin" and "Tuesday Afternoon.") I had a brilliant pitch for these guys: I sold them as everyone's second-favorite band. Are you a Beatles freak? Well, you're going to love the Moodies second. Are the Stones your thing? Great! Then check out the Moodies. You'll like them almost as much. We made a lot of money with that. We were, in essence, harvesting several fields at once, collecting everyone's runoff. Then these guys did a stupid thing. They broke up. It always happens. The more successful a band, the more certain its demise, as each member gets to thinking, "Well, it's because of me, it's my success, and I'm tired of sharing it."
Two of the Moodies, Justin Hayward and John Lodge, calling themselves the Blue Jays, decided to make their own record. I tried to talk sense. "We've spent years positioning the Moody Blues, and, as a result, millions and millions of people consider you their second-favorite band," I explained, "but no one has heard of the Blue Jays. You'll be starting from scratch."
Did they care?
Of course not.
When I could see they had made up their minds, I decided to get on board, pitch in. For me, the challenge was plain: get people to judge these veteran rock stars as if they were new, notice, and take time. Convincing cynical members of the establishment to rethink something they believe they already know is no small thing. You might call it a relaunch, or rebranding, but it really just amounts to a man from the Bronx yelling: Here, here, look over here! Remember this? It's still really good! They worked on their album for a year. When it was finished, I had beautiful invitations printed and carried by courier, with great pomp and circumstance, to journalists and critics all across the country. They read like tickets to an exclusive, impossible-to-get-into, one-time-only show by the geniuses behind your second-favorite band-Justin Hayward and John Lodge, playing at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
Critics and producers and celebrities turned up from all over the world. The show was in the afternoon. They took their seats. You could feel a tremendous buzz as the lights went down. Everyone was excited. But when the curtain came up, instead of rock stars and their band, there was just a huge, fantastic sound system. You could see tremendous speakers, but no band. Then I played the record, from start to finish. All along, people were yelling, "Down in front! I can't see!" But there was nothing to see, just all the hardware. I wanted to play the songs-I wanted these people, these influential people, to sit and listen to them, really listen, as the record unfolded. Yes, I could have had the Blue Jays perform (they would have been great), but the critics knew Hayward and Lodge, or thought they did. They would watch the show, like it or not like it, and move on. But this night, with that record playing on stage, well, they would never forget it. Some would denounce me, sure, but, with each denunciation, they would mention the record and the band.
I held a press conference after the show. The critics filled the room. They were furious. Jann Wenner, the owner and editor of Rolling Stone, and a great guy, was the first to speak. "You, sir, are a charlatan," he said. He was red with anger. "You have tricked these people with a stunt, made them come all this way, and for what? To sit and listen to a record? They could have done that at home and saved the money and time and fuel. You are P. T. Barnum."
"Okay, okay," I said, trying to calm everyone down. "You've had your say. Now let me have mine-after that, call me whatever you want. The fact is," I explained, "we've spent an entire year of our lives working on this record, and we're proud of it, and think it deserves to be heard, really heard. So what are we supposed to do? Send it to your house so you can put it on the record player? Well, maybe your stereo stinks and the sound stinks, and maybe you had a fight with your wife, and maybe your baby puked on you. So it plays, but it does not get heard. Well, now you have heard it. So go home and say whatever you want about me, but remember the effort that went into this record."
Rolling Stone ran an editorial about the show. It filled half a page. I was called many terrible names, but, in the end, they said, well, you know, he kind of has a point.
We were remaking the concert business in those years. Starting with Elvis, we took an industry that had been regional, divided among fiefdoms, with each territory controlled by a single promoter, and made it national. In the process, we cut out the middlemen. It was just me and the artist, working as partners, cutting deals directly with the owners of concert halls. Costs fell, everyone was enriched. As a result, artists sought me out, wanting to cut the same deal. Which increased my power. I was now able to go to the owner of Madison Square Garden and say, for example, "I'm going to give you thirty nights of shows this year-what kind of break can you give me on the hall?" In this way, overhead fell, and, as overhead fell, profits rose, attracting still more artists, which meant still more dates, which meant still better deals, which meant still more profits, and so on.
Remember how I said everyone was enriched by this process? Well, that is not exactly true. The fact is, when my business took off, the men who ran the old system, the promoters and operators, first got squeezed, then went under. In the academy, they call it creative destruction. I had invented a newer, more efficient model, which meant the old model was doomed. On the street, they call it pain.
The old promoters and middlemen grew to resent me. I was their bogeyman, the devil. The table is covered with settings and piled with food, and here comes Weintraub to pull out the cloth. They called a big meeting on Long Island. (I don't remember the exact year.) You want to feel persecuted? Imagine dozens of record men boarding planes all across the country with a single goal in mind: putting you out of business. The meeting was organized by Frank Barcelona, an agent with a personal beef. He represented Zeppelin. When I made the pitch to promote the band, I went around him, directly to their lawyer-Steve Weiss-who cut a side deal with us, which was a tremendous threat to Barcelona. (Zeppelin was real money.)
The charge against me went like this: "Weintraub doesn't build artists. The local managers and promoters build artists, then Weintraub swoops in and takes them away."
Here's how San Francisco 's Bill Graham, the biggest independent promoter in America at the time, explained it to Newsweek: "Jerry Weintraub comes into town like an eagle, scoops up the money, and leaves. He tells his acts, 'For a piece of the action, I can eliminate certain promoters and agents.' He's more a power broker than a producer."
My answer? Well, hell, yes, of course that's what I do. It's called business. Why do you think I'm successful?
(Bill Graham and I were great friends before this, and we remained great friends.)
I don't really know what came out of this meeting other than a bunch of chatter. The fact is, if a bunch of men are discussing you, meeting about you, and scheming to destroy you, it probably means you're doing something right.
In those years, my key relationship was with the owners of the arenas. That's where I cut my deals and made my profit. The owners were a unique breed, almost entirely gone now, wheelers and dealers, big-money boys, political players, sharpies and sharks, the makers and builders of cities. It was not art or ideas that interested these men. It was bricks and mortar, seats, stages, real estate. A few of them became my teachers. Here I am thinking mostly of Arthur Wirtz, who owned the Chicago Stadium and was one of the truly interesting people of his era.