Her name is on the building.

That’s the power of songs. It buys you six floors on Cahuenga, you’ve got a permanent piece of the rock, it illustrates…

You made it.

Do you know how hard it is to make it?

Music ain’t like Wall Street, where your relatives give you a leg up, ensure your career. Sure, your name might get you a gig on the business side, but on the creative side? It’s every person for themselves.

And all that education you’ve got, that fancy degree, it don’t mean nothin’ in Hollywood, where it’s only about hits, can you write one?

This is a completely different business from performing. Where you can go on the road and earn bucks in this crazy era. No, either what you write goes up the chart and coin rains down…

Or it doesn’t.

Diane comes from Van Nuys. There are some upscale communities in the San Fernando Valley, but that’s not one of them. Her father sold insurance. Her two siblings were much older.

But she was born to write songs.

Now when you hang with the business people you get loudmouthed glad-handers. If you ain’t got the gift of gab, you ain’t gonna make it on that side of the aisle. It’s all about relationships, and if you’ve got smarts, you can make it to the top, otherwise there’s no room for you. The people my age are either running the enterprise or they’re out. Because people are lining up to work for free, and no one wants to hear about your family commitments on your fat salary, they’ll just hire someone younger and hungrier who will give them their all.

And Diane Warren is hungry. She shows up at nine every morning and writes till…whenever. She’s got friends, she goes out to dinner now and again, but her work is her life. She doesn’t feel like she’s sacrificing, but to an outsider..? No kids? Almost no vacations? No weekends? But that’s what it takes to make it. And you only work this hard if you’re driven.

Diane is driven.

So she e-mailed me.

Normally we see each other at restaurants. We’re strangely simpatico. Diane has no airs, maybe a bit of self-discomfort, but she’s open, she’ll talk and reveal, and we connect. So when we spoke on the phone and she asked me to come to her studio to hear the song she’s most proud of…

I said I would.

But I didn’t expect her to own the building.

It’s where Mike Caren and Atlantic Records used to be set up, next to the Hotel Cafe. You can drive by and see her name, even if you can’t get in, security is just that tight, there are weirdos everywhere these days. But when you’re a wannabe, and we all were at one time, these establishments are iconic. Not only the Capitol Tower, I remember coming to L.A. in the sixties and noticing Liberty Records was across the street from our hotel. I had no idea who Simon Waronker was (although I was a huge fan of the Chipmunks!), never mind his son Lenny, but I got up my gumption and crossed the street and a receptionist who couldn’t have cared less answered my question, gave me a list of titles for the new Jan & Dean album, they were my favorites.

All over L.A., there are edifices wherein…

The magic is made, in the room where it happens.

So the last time I was in this studio, Flo Rida was cutting a hit.

But Diane told me it was owned by SOLAR, but then Dick Griffey lost it in a divorce, and then Death Row moved in (there are still bullet holes in the ceiling), and then Atlantic and I probably missed one or two residents, but Diane’s there now. She’s moved from her abode around the corner, her office of 32 years, with her studio that’s never ever been cleaned.

She doesn’t want anybody touching her stuff. Not because they’re gonna compromise a new tune, move a lyric sheet, but because it’s HER STUFF! And she needs to feel comfortable there.

Me too. My place is a dump. No one can come in. Same with her old studio. Some stuff may have not been touched in years, but we know exactly where it is.

So the story is the song was written for a movie, about Thurgood Marshall, coming out in October.

You see Diane had the couplet in her head for a while now:

It all means nothing
If you don’t stand up for something

But when she found out about the movie and the producer said he was open to a song, she went to work.

She sits at a keyboard and…

She says she can’t describe her process, but if you’re a creator you understand it. She puts her fingers to the keys and…

Something comes out.

The chorus in twenty minutes. The second verse took longer thereafter.

And then…

Days to do the first verse.

Every word counts. Hell, there was that recent song a star wanted to cover, but this person rewrote the lyrics to the point it was lousy. Diane said no, she will bend, but she will not break.

And this is different from the collaboration city that dominates the music business today. Sometimes Diane co-writes, but most of the time…

It’s just her and the keyboard.

So she played me the tune from her phone.

I chuckled. I came all this way and I’m not listening to the full spectrum master? I mean we were behind the console, with the keyboard customized for Pro Tools, and the zillion faders, with the Yamahas and the Genelecs and the no-name speakers in the wall, and the music was playing through there…

And I immediately got it.

“Stand Up For Something” was gonna get nominated for an Oscar. There was no doubt in my mind. It was gonna play great in the film, have gravitas.

But I wasn’t as sure it was gonna be a pop hit. Because today pop is all hip-hop and…

But “Stand Up For Something” is performed by Andra Day, with a rap by Common, and the rap isn’t overdone and it was not calculated, Common ran into Diane and when she told him what she was working on he asked…

And the whole number is shy of four minutes and…

The chorus is anthemic.

It all means nothing
If you don’t stand up for something
You can’t just talk the talk
You got to walk that walk, yes you do

Finally someone singing it straight. A counterweight to a society where money is everything and if you ain’t got it, you don’t count. Kinda like that inane Louise Linton, wife of Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, who thinks since she walks in designer clothing she has the answers.

She does not.

You can have all the money in your hands
All the possessions anyone can ever have
But it’s all worthless treasure
True worth is only measured not by what you got
But what you got in your heart
You can have, you can have everything
But what does it, what does it mean

Criticize Warren if you want, but she made it and you didn’t. That’s America for you, full of sour grapes. Someone else has your job, you coulda made it if only…

If only what? If you put your nose to the grindstone? If you didn’t do so much dope? If you put yourself in uncomfortable positions? If you moved to Hollywood and got kicked around before you broke through?

Now you can write songs about love all day long. And love makes the world go ’round, it truly does. But now, thinking people are starting to wonder… How long is that world gonna last? Are we gonna get cooked by heat or blown up in war and we haven’t seen this level of tumult since the sixties.

And in the sixties, we had anthems that engendered belief and pushed us forward.

Diane Warren is doing her part.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

“McConnell, in Private, Doubts if Trump Can Save Presidency”

This is the end
My only friend
The end

Only amateurs believe the paper prints the news.

Professionals MAKE the news. They control the narrative. They provide access, tidbits, the papers just do their dirty work.

And it is the papers, because the video outlets have no reporters. Oh, if there’s a war or a tornado or a murder they’ll send a well-coiffed person with a camera to make pictures. But the less glamorous stuff? Fuggedaboutit on cable, and network can be dismissed when it comes to news. The newspapers set the agenda, and there are only three, “The New York Times,” “The Washington Post” and “The Wall Street Journal.”

And “The Wall Street Journal” ain’t breaking much news, they’re stretched too thin. Trying to be everything to everybody they’re failing. But “The Washington Post” got an infusion from Bezos and they’re competing with the “Times” on breaking stories.

And together they’re controlling the national dialogue.

How do I know this?

Talk radio takes cues from the “Times” and flipping amongst the three major cable news outlets today who was deepest into the McConnell story? Fox. That’s right, Murdoch’s empire is reacting to the “Times.”

Anyway, we’re in uncharted territory.

Or are we not?

Credit Frank Rich with pointing out it was a matter of time. That Nixon was impeached long after the break-in.

“Just Wait, Watergate didn’t become Watergate overnight, either.”

But then there was that opinion piece in the “Times,” postulating that Trump would not go until Fox News turned against him.

“Want to Get Rid of Trump? Only Fox News Can Do It”

We’re getting to that point.

If you believe the “Times” reporters dug and came up with this story, you’re wrong. They were TOLD! By people who wanted to get back at Trump, people who worked for McConnell. Deny, deny, deny, have no quotes, but put the land mines out there.

This is how war is fought today, certainly in D.C., in the media.

You use the media to your advantage.

Trump thought he was winning, with his direct access to the public via Twitter. But reporting on those musings was like reciting the baseball scores. Interesting to a few, but not many. The problem is there’s little amplification. Anybody online knows that news comes and goes, and unless it’s everywhere, it’s nowhere. So Trump keeps tweeting to a smaller and smaller audience. We’ve seen the train wreck, we no longer care. And today Trump got schooled by the old school.

That’s what I hate about the prognosticators, they miss the memo, always get it wrong. Traditional media is challenged FINANCIALLY, but not in IMPACT! The more news outlets there are, the more we gravitate to a few.

Trump got ahead of himself. He thought the revolution was complete, but it’s still being televised, it’s still being printed, turns out the old media companies are still the most powerful.

Come on, how many of the online news outlets have reporters. They have meme-thinker-uppers and typists, but no one out there digging, no one who knows how the game is played. They think it’s about clicks and ads and maybe that leads to money, but ad rates are going through the floor and just like you’re paying for music, soon you’ll be paying for news. Yup, that’s the story of the imminent future, the old wave companies are getting the new ones to capitulate. Both Facebook and Google are talking about being gatekeepers who pay fealty to news outlets.

So, just when we thought Trump was forever, at least four years, the dam broke. And how do you lose a Presidency? Just like you lose a fortune, very slowly and then all at once.

Could be Charlottesville was the breaking point. All the built-up frustration came home to roost. The Republicans in Congress are afraid to stand up in public, but put the shiv in you off camera? They’re all for that, watch a season of “House of Cards,” especially the first, you’ll understand.

If Trump goes, it’ll be because the Republicans say so.

And now they’re starting to.

When the music’s over, TURN OUT THE LIGHTS!

When did this become a thing?

Like the lead in “Atypical,” my goal in life was just to SEE boobies, never mind all the time, everywhere.

It’s a funny culture we live in now, one wherein the famous are merging with the hoi polloi. Did you see Ryan Adams’s twitter rant about Father John Misty?

“Ryan Adams Calls Father John Misty the ‘Most Self-Important Asshole on Earth”

Used to be we’d read about this in the gossip pages at best.

Now we see it up front and center. With the perpetrators seemingly unaware of the consequences, until they wake up and take their words down. Or, like Steve Mnuchin’s wife Louise Linton, are unable to:

“Steve Mnuchin’s Wife Has A ‘Let Them Eat Cake Moment On Instagram”

So Tiger and Lindsey are stunned, positively stunned, that their selfies are in the wild.

What possessed them to shoot and send them to begin with? Just because they could?

It appears no one has any self-restraint. Kinda like birth control in the heat of the moment. We seem unable to eradicate unwanted pregnancies and we seem to be unable to keep our selfies to ourselves. Call me a prude, but anything I don’t want to be common knowledge I don’t put in an e-mail, even to a friend. You’d be amazed how this stuff finds its way out. You type it and it lasts forever. Never put anything illegal or damaging or critical in an e-mail unless you want everybody in the world to know it, period.

As for Tiger and Linds, the truth is they were stupid. Their passwords just weren’t strong enough. Assuming they were on iPhones, this has been proven again and again, there is no server compromise. What happens is bad actors guess their passwords. Which are oftentimes linked to their personal life, the street where they grew up on, their favorite items, it’s not about length so much as GUESSABILITY!

But they’ll find the perpetrator, there are just too many digital crumbs, you can never get away with it, certainly not if you live in America, maybe if you live in Russia or a third world nation. The only people committing crimes and getting away with it these days are white collar people, who can afford attorneys to make it all go away. Other than that, there are cameras everywhere and digital bread crumbs and crime is on the way out.

So I looked. Not something I haven’t seen a million times online, only in this case Tiger and Lindsey are famous. So, they’ve coughed up a bit of privacy. That’s the price of fame. Don’t want to sacrifice, don’t be famous. But if you are famous, you’ve got to be smart.

So the truth is the internet is doing for America what hundreds of years have not. Which is to decriminalize the human body, make our country less puritanical about sex. You can see nude bodies and sex acts all over the web, all you have to do is Google (be sure to take off Safe Search, but only an oldster would be unaware of this.)

So on one hand society is expanding, on another it is contracting.

Anything does not go anymore. This is not ten years ago, when piracy was rampant and the perpetrators eluded the law. Anybody bitching about piracy today is ignorant, ignore them. Legal solutions are much easier and cost-effective. And illegal activities are trackable more than ever before.

So Tiger and Lindsey, you’re shocked, positively shocked that your photos leaked.

Well why were you sending them in the first place? Why were they sitting on your phone?

And if your answer is you should have the right to do so, that brings us back to my initial premise, that no one has any self-restraint, including celebrities.

But we’re all accustomed to nudity today. It’s no big deal. Hell, even sex tapes have lost their luster, Kim Kardashian was the last person to build a career upon one and that was YEARS ago.

So we live in a sexualized world, is that such a bad thing?

I’d say not.

P.S. But you’ve got to get the memo. That it’s not smart to flaunt your wealth or express your bile if you’re in the public eye. Funny how the internet reveals who these people truly are, oftentimes to their detriment.

BILLY JOEL WEARS YELLOW STAR OF DAVID ONSTAGE
… Post-Charlottesville

One of the most horrifying things you see in the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam is a roll of Jewish stars, the ones needed to be worn during the occupation. Straight from the factory, before they were cut up into individual stars for Jews to wear.

It illustrates the scale of the operation, the horror of the Nazis.

Billy Joel is beloved by lovers and haters. Like every superstar. When he started, his audience consisted of lefties. But over time some boomers turned rightward and now our country is divided.

And artists are silent.

They may tweet. They may put out execrable songs, like Wilco, but their statements are drowned out.

Then someone says no words and has a greater impact than all of them.

I decry the country acts, Taylor Swift, all those who refuse to take a stand. Hell, Taylor Swift has created an entire career based on pushback on hatred and shaming, but she’s silent on the big issues, when they affect everybody else. And if you don’t think entertainers have power, you know nothing about media. Entertainers are more powerful than any news outlet, when they make a stand and stick to it.

Billy Joel has waffled on religion. Said he even attended church. But when the Nazis come…

He’s gonna have to wear the Jewish star.

All you people who think you’re in the clear, who are Catholic despite having a Jewish parent, you’re gonna go too. Everybody thinks they’re immune, but they’re not.

Now the ethos of the sixties was to stand up and be counted. And I applaud those who showed up in Boston, illustrating the miniscule number of neo-Nazi haters. We need to push back and show them that we are the majority. Or else their message grows.

And I don’t see Trump vacating office anytime soon, but if you don’t think the pushback is getting to him, you’re not a celebrity. Celebrities read their socials. They see the hate. It bugs them. And for those insecure who need love to fill them up the disapproval prevents them from sleeping at night. Believe me, Trump is in a state of discomfort. Although I won’t quite say we’ve got him on the run.

And if you’re a Trump supporter, I don’t want to hear it.

Because the truth is they’re coming for you next.

Used to be protests were built around music. You couldn’t have one without performances. But music was not an element in Charlottesville and Boston, we did not see superstars lining up to make a stand, no, they weren’t even in the wings.

To be Jewish is to have experienced anti-Semitism. It’s not quite like being black, but when you wear the Jewish star it is.

African-Americans gained status and power when they owned their identity, even taking the N-word back. As James Brown sang, “I’m black and I’m proud!” Illustrating the power of music to change minds right there.

And white people liked James Brown the same way country artists rap.

You see we are all in it together, even if you don’t want to admit it.

We all pay taxes. We all drive on the roads. We all partake of services. And the more educated our populace, the better it is for society at large.

And I’m not gonna dive deep, so you can find an opening to defend the President’s execrable statements and beliefs, I’m just gonna point you to Billy Joel’s picture, he’s owning who he is in a world where entertainers are cowering.

Let him be a lesson to you.

P.S. If you haven’t seen it, and you should, watch the documentary on Billy Joel’s family in Germany:

Billy Joel – The Joel Files