Can I recommend half a book?

What made "Hit Men" so great wasn’t the narrative so much as the insider information revealed.  We know the story, we want to know the backstory.  Steve Knopper has written the new "Hit Men".  The sequel to Fredric Dannen’s book.  But it only goes up to the twenty first century.  After that it’s essentially a recitation of headlines, which we all know too well.

But how did Gil Friesen get his job?  Do you know the story of how Steve Jobs closed Roger Ames and Roger became the point man for the iTunes Music Store?

I didn’t know the former, but I do know the latter.  Roger IM’ed me that he was going to meet with Jobs, he was thrilled the way you and me are when we meet a rock star.  But Roger had met many a rock star.  This was something different.  This was a genius.  This was a twenty first century rock star.

And I mention this story because Steve Knopper gets it right.  But there are a bunch of other details that he gets only half right. Or wrong.  And this is interesting because no one who was actually there will ever write the story and "Appetite For Self-Destruction" will become factual history.

We all know the Napster story, it played out in every publication known to man.  But did you know some guy in the Pacific Northwest invented the CD back in the sixties?  Long before Sony and Philips masterminded their own?  And that the successor in interest of those patents made a killing decades later?

These are the kinds of facts exposed in "Appetite For Self-Destruction".  You learn the story behind the story.

I kept saying I was going to put the book down.  But then I couldn’t put it down.  Which is the mark of a great read.  Until I got to the points about Jobs and KaZaA and…  Anybody could have written those chapters, at least most of them.  Furthermore, I was depressed.  Because I realized all of the excitement was at the turn of the decade, the few years thereafter, when innovation was rampant and the major labels were clueless.

The majors squandered their power.  But what is more interesting is that they stifled innovation.  That’s why I write about the major labels so much.  Because the power they retain is a drag against progress.  As for the music they release…  If music were that exciting, kids wouldn’t be busy updating their Facebook profiles and playing Grand Theft Auto.

Something’s been lost.  And it’s not clear exactly what it is.  We don’t want the return of Tommy Mottola.  But we do want the return of Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss.  But they failed with Almo just like Mo and Lenny failed with DreamWorks.  Because they didn’t start at the absolute bottom, they knew too much, it wasn’t fresh.  Great music is not made in a factory, but in basements and bars, and if you’re lucky producers little better than amateurs can capture its rawness, keep the lightning in the bottle for all to see.

Although the emphasis of "Appetite For Self-Destruction" is the self-immolation of the major labels, the subtext is money.  How the compact disc blew up record company profits.  Enhanced even further by the reduction in the percentage paid to acts.  The executives wanted to retain these exorbitant profits and their corporate overseers pushed them to do so.  But now that money is gone.

It doesn’t matter who Guy Hands puts in at EMI, he paid too much for a company that can no longer deliver a string of million sellers.

AC/DC may be burning up the chart, but the band has no presence in the culture.  That’s what Wal-Mart does to you, it speaks to your fans and truly casual buyers and that’s it.  Metallica’s sales are slower, but the band means more.

But Metallica doesn’t mean that much.  No one means that much.  And those entrenched in the industry just can’t get over this. They want someone to blame.  Shawn Fanning, Nikki Hemming, Steve Jobs, the customer.  Someone must have conspired to steal their business.

But their bottom line was impacted less by the mistakes they made fighting digital music than the change in our culture.  True, P2P software allowed many to own much for essentially zero, but the fact that there was such a cornucopia of options, so many entertainment choices, made it hard to build a star.  Especially the kind Tommy Mottola and his Sony Music liked to construct. People like J. Lo.  Low on talent, but shoved down people’s throats.

You can’t shove anything down people’s throats anymore.  They don’t have to pay attention.  They love train-wrecks, but they’ll only invest long term in something they discover and believe in.  Which is too difficult a challenge and too expensive for too little reward for the baby boomers and their older brethren still running the record companies.  What if a record had to be good to sell?  What if going gold truly meant something again?  That won’t pay for gas for your private jet.  Certainly not in the short run.

According to Amazon, this book isn’t being released until January 6th.  But I’m writing about it now because the publisher sent it to me weeks ago.  I wasn’t going to write about it, because they kept e-mailing me about it, but a few pages got me hooked.

We’re all looking to get hooked.

You won’t love "Appetite For Self-Destruction", but if you work in this business you won’t be able to stop reading its first half, when all the people you know testify.

As for the public at large?

Why are there major publishers paying authors a bunch of money to write tomes that the mainstream is not into?  I admire Mr. Knopper’s research, but who is going to buy this book?  It needed to be a Website, not something bound between two covers.  It needed to unfold online.

But the book business is not prepared for this sea change.  Where people pull the information they desire when they desire online.  Where heat is more important than your book tour.

The times have certainly changed.  It’s got me scratching my head.  Big records and movies are so bland as to appeal to everybody, around the world.  TV’s a bit better, but it’s helped by a limited channel universe, even if this universe is five hundred outlets strong.  Still, most of those channels get every little traffic.  But they survive because advertisers want to reach this narrow sliver of audience.  Your band’s audience is narrow too.  Don’t try to convert outsiders, maximize the revenue from those who’ve become addicted.  Outsiders don’t care about you, they care about someone else.  Accept it.

Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age

Jimmy Shoes.  That’s what they called Jimmy Iovine in the studio.

They laughed at him behind his back.  Without a college degree, driving a Mercedes-Benz coupe, needing to work his way up the ladder.

Yes, Jimmy needed it.  We can analyze why, but that’s not important.  Iovine’s drive brought him to the top.  From Shelly Yakus’ assistant to employing Shelly on his production projects to working with Stevie Nicks, then U2 and eventually helming Interscope.  The business was built upon the backs of men like Jimmy Iovine.

But somewhere along the line, the culture changed.  Ahmet and his brother did not arise from the bottom financially, but they needed to follow their passion for music.  This is what drove them.  Mo Ostin fell into running a record label.  A financial wizard, Frank Sinatra put him in control and Mo learned on the gig, eventually blossoming and constructing the best record company that ever existed.

All the old titans didn’t come from within.  They were scrappers.

But then came all the money.

Ahmet sold Atlantic to Warner for a pittance.  Less than Tommy Mottola made at Sony in a year.  You see in the nineties, all the label executives made so much money that they suddenly saw themselves as members of a different class.  No longer street urchins, but refined hitmakers, who lived a lifestyle befitting kings.  They’d left their histories behind.  They got together at City of Hope dinners and made like they were friends.  And when Napster arrived they were caught completely flat-footed.

Funny, because the impresarios of yore capitalized on trends.  Whether it be folk music, British Invasion, the San Francisco sound or disco.  They chased a buck.  Utilizing the same logic, shouldn’t they have chased the Internet?

But they felt superior to the Internet.  Especially to boy wonder Shawn Fanning and his band of renegade backers. Hummer Winblad was a venture capital company.  Fanning’s uncle was only in it for the money.  These people didn’t know anything about music.  These interlopers had to be taught a lesson.

But it was these outsiders who imparted a lesson to the music business.  That the fat cats still haven’t recovered from.

Despite the press releases, suing customers does not decrease P2P trading.  But rather than admit this truth publicly, the barons of yore are fighting the public will.  The public is now the enemy.  As if eons of commerce rules can suddenly be erased.

I was on a conference call with the President of a major label.  He was trying to convince me that it was a mistake to sell at iTunes.  Longwinded, he went on for ten minutes without me interrupting.  And then I told him he was wrong.  So, this gentleman launched into another ten minute spiel, essentially the same, yet delivered more vociferously.  I repeated my mantra and this gentleman became exasperated.  So, very slowly, he started in one more time.  And after telling him I understood his logic but the marketplace dictated otherwise, he told me we had to meet in person, so he could show me.

I wondered what it was like to work for this person.

I don’t know if you read that article in the "New York Times" about the shrinks to the ultra-rich.  They charge $750 an hour. When one doctor asked a recalcitrant Congressman if anybody ever disagreed with him, this lawmaker said it had happened once.  And he’d fired the underling.  No wonder the Congressman wasn’t heeding the shrink’s advice!

That’s what those running the old wave music business are like.  Forces of nature.  Believing they can dictate reality by sheer will.

They told their employees to scrub P2P software from their computers when logic would tell you they should be stealing like crazy, to find out how the public, the supposed enemy, is functioning.  But if you stood up to your boss you were considered a troublemaker, you were fired.

I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s November 10th "New Yorker" story entitled "The Uses Of Adversity".  It focuses on Sidney Weinberg, who rose from the streets to run Goldman Sachs.  His success was based on being an outsider.  He could speak the truth that those in the club could not.

The music industry has become a club.  It doesn’t want to hear any contrary opinions.  It believes it’s entitled to rule forever.  And it’s precisely this insider quality that’s devastating it.

Jimmy Iovine’s a bit smarter than most.  He still knows it’s about the artists.  He no longer demonizes Net startups in print, but sidles up to some.  But his sheer power has created a blind spot.  He’s no longer of the street.  He’s about image.  The number one hitmaker, the Oz of the chart.  And this is hurting him and Universal Music.

Has Doug Morris been hampered by graduating from Columbia?  Can he not sympathize with the college dropouts that are creating the applications that are ruining his business?

Edgar Bronfman, Jr. never had to steal.  Maybe he doesn’t understand the mentality.  Lyor Cohen is not going to cross him because he’s being paid too much.  As for the money men…  The holier than thou private equity companies want nothing to do with the street.  They want to fly private and stay at exclusive resorts.  They’re out of touch, and they believe money triumphs in the end.  But no amount of money has been able to stifle file-trading.

As for Clive Davis, he has just denied the future.  As if Whitney Houston can be rehabilitated and can sell ten million CDs.  As for telling Mr. Davis that he’s wrong, that hasn’t happened in memory.  He takes pleasure from always being right, from wining and dining media heavyweights to promote his vapid projects.

But the masses aren’t watching TV and listening to radio.  Not those stations, not in quantity.  And niche product made for almost nothing on computers is revered by many.  But since this is so scary, the concept of relinquishing control, of possibly being wrong, of needing to learn something, the old heavyweights would rather jeopardize their businesses than risk losing face.

You can’t change the truth.  But you can listen to it.

The Uses of Adversity

From: Andrew Loog Oldham
Subject: Re: Mitch Mitchell

bob;
the cruel master indeed.
no one up above warned the invincibles of the road they’d have to hoe.
guess mitch was not up to signing on for the next episode.
as i’m sure you know the hendrix experience, with mike jeffries , was really brutal. quite a suppressor and difficult to emerge from with the glass half full…. but he tried.
and thanks for the memory of wonderful sally and klein’s of westport.
best from buenos aires where pete best appears next week.
ALO

From: Luke Lewis
Subject: Re: The CMA Awards

George Strait DOES ride the range.  Think Frank Sinatra with twang.

From: Jon Landau
Subject: Re: The CMA Awards

Bob:  I had the pleasure of managing  Shania during the Come on Over years and your description of her creative abilities is inaccurate.  She and Mutt co wrote almost everything and you can feel and hear the difference between their collaborations and Mutt’s work with others in the cleverness, warmth and emotional range of so many of the songs.  No question that, great producer that he is, he dominated the record making, but not the song writing, in my opinion.  Also, Mutt did not imbue her with a superstar quality.  From my observation

I once stood in line with him for the bathroom.

It was at Ken Scott’s house.  Remember Ken Scott?  Worked with everybody from Bowie to Supertramp?

Anyway, at the time Ken and his wife lived over the hill, just off of Laurel Canyon.  They had one of those pools with the natural rocks jutting up from the concrete.  I don’t know if they have those on the east coast now, but they were new to me in California. Everything was just a bit ethereal in California.  Like we were all in a Jack Nicholson movie, kind of "The Trip" crossed with "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice".

Actually, sometime I’ll tell you my Jack Nicholson story.  You see I was working in Star Sporting Goods on Highland…

Well, I guess I’m telling you now.  You see Jack used to come into the shop, but I was never there.  His driver would show up from time to time, needing supplies for his client, always being boorish and unfriendly, but I never caught a glimpse of Jack until…  One day in the fall of ’74, when I was in the back shop, word filtered through that Jack was in the store.

Now live in L.A. long enough and you give celebrities room, you respect their privacy.  But the only star I’d seen up close and personal to that point was Bette Davis, signing a memoir at Klein’s, on Main Street in Westport, so I couldn’t give up the chance, I bolted to the front of the store, adopted my coolest personality and started riffing with Jack.

Who was cooler than I’ll ever hope to be.

And so friendly!

He was in getting some supplies for his trip to Oregon.  I think he needed a ski rack for his Mercedes 600.  You see he was journeying up there to film "One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest".  We talked about car trips, being behind that great big windshield, observing the scenery.  We went on for about ten minutes.  I got the feeling if I ever ran into him in a bar he’d put his arm around me and say hi.

But I never ran into him again.  Although there was a picture of him riding the ski lift in Gstaad with the Kneissl Blue Stars we’d tuned in the shop in "Time" magazine.  I felt the connection then.

And I felt a similar connection with Mitch Mitchell outside Ken Scott’s water closet.  You know how it is at parties.  People snorting coke, girls perfecting their look, it’s not like a concert, you can wait in line for the loo for seemingly an hour.

I don’t remember if he introduced himself or I recognized him.  I’m thinking the latter, but that part’s unclear.  Although the memory feels like yesterday.  He no longer had the ‘fro of the sixties.  But it was the same guy who’d graced the Bushnell stage with Jimi back in ’68.  The night I took my life in my hands.  Well, the night that guy from Westport with the old Cadillac drove us back and forth to Hartford at ninety miles an hour.  Literally.

That’s what youth will do.  Not only do teenagers feel they won’t have an accident, but that they won’t be stopped by the cops either.

And I’m here to tell the story, so I guess this kid who was a year older but seemed about twenty five was right.

Hartford was an hour from where I grew up.  In the wrong direction.  We focused on NYC, only fifty miles away.  But we figured we could get tickets for the Bushnell show, whereas NYC was always dicey.

But we needed a ride.  And Brad knew this guy from Westport.  And I got the tickets.  And "Purple Haze" had been ubiquitous.  I even remember playing it at full blast through my guitar amplifier on the porch, displaying my identity to the minions in the suburbs.

Not that I’d sprung for "Axis: Bold As Love" yet.  Word on the street was it wasn’t as good as the first album (yes, the first U.S. album, we didn’t get "Smash Hits" for a while here.)  I remember him playing "If 6 Was 9", vividly.  If he played "Little Wing" or anything else from that second record I’m unsure.

But Jimi played the classics from the first album.  Even "Third Stone From The Sun".  And of course, "Foxey Lady".  With an "e". Jimi might have made a spelling mistake, but we thought it was on purpose!

"Foxey Lady" had been my favorite for so long.  But at the time, I was hooked on "I Don’t Live Today".  But he didn’t play that.  But it wasn’t only the hits, "Love Or Confusion" came out of the speakers too.

Actually, just before the encore, they changed the speakers.  Brought in some new cabinets, with rips in the fabric.  And they changed guitars also.  Jimi played with his teeth and then jammed the guitar into these newly arrived cabinets.  Which I thought was a little fake.  I mean why do it if you’re not going to employ the good stuff.

And I remember feeling so good I’d seen Hendrix.  But still having the creeping feeling he’d punched the clock.  After all, it was Hartford.

I never saw Jimi again.  I thought his Woodstock performance of "Star Spangled Banner" was overrated, a parlor trick by this time.  And the Fillmore album did include "Them Changes", but that was Buddy Miles’ number.  And we didn’t like Buddy Miles. We thought he was an interloper.  The only drummer for Jimi Hendrix was Mitch Mitchell.

And here I was standing in line for the bathroom with him.

He wasn’t dangerous, as he’d appeared that night at the Bushnell.  Actually, he was like that kid down the street who cracked jokes but wasn’t hip enough to hang out with.

But this was Mitch Mitchell!

You live long enough in Los Angeles and you meet them all.  And what you realize in almost all cases is they’re regular people. Or a little more fucked up than you.  With some social anxiety mixed in with a superiority complex and a dash of acid flashback thrown in for good measure.  It’s disappointing meeting your heroes.

But it wasn’t disappointing meeting Mitch Mitchell.  He’d survived.  I was proud of him for that.  He wasn’t a burn-out.

But that was almost a quarter century ago.

Mitch resorted to trading on his fame.  He wasn’t doing Hendrix stuff when we talked.  But the world is a cruel master.  It requires money.  And the older you get, the more you mine your past.  Until you just can’t handle it anymore.

I don’t know what killed Mitch Mitchell.  When it comes to rock stars, it’s almost always drugs.  But I’m gonna remember that night at Ken Scott’s house.  When I was suddenly an insider and Mitch Mitchell was positively alive.