I don’t really care. I’m burned out on these gigantic catalog sales. But maybe this is important, maybe this isn’t just a banking deal, maybe Sony has insight that is not being acknowledged.

Bear with me here.

The bottom line is we are not minting new superstars. So the value of old superstars goes up! If everybody knows your name, in an era where that’s nearly impossible to accomplish, think of the value!

At Canadian Music Week Don Passman said he advises his clients not to sell. Most people regret it. But if it’s for estate planning…

But the dirty little secret is although Bryan May is 76, Roger Taylor is 74 and John Deacon is only 72! They could live for another three decades.

Or die tomorrow, but…

When it comes to money, the financiers are always smarter than you are, ALWAYS! This is their business. Running the numbers, making bets. Your business is making music. How many times have you gotten screwed in your career? If you haven’t been screwed, you’re not successful.

As for getting the money now… You’ve got a steady stream of income, what are you going to do with the cash? Put it in the bank and you’re LOSING money! Everything else is inherently risky, much more risky than the royalties of a superstar act.

And we’ve seen this movie over and over again. Michael Jackson beat Paul McCartney in a bidding war for Beatles copyrights and they ended up being worth more than ten times the purchase price. How about Colonel Parker selling Elvis’s catalog?

As for your advisors… It’s very hard to turn down a payday, it’s human nature. It takes a special kind of person to give up their commission on a big sale. So beware of people pushing you into selling.

But assuming you’re out, where does that leave the purchaser?

Let’s be clear, this Queen deal is not only the songs, like with Hipgnosis and the rest of the new publishing giants. Sony is buying EVERYTHING! And with total control of all the assets comes power. You can maximize the value.

Irving Azoff’s company buys the Beach Boys. Let me ask you, is the Beach Boys’ music ever going to evaporate? Not only is it steady, we’re just one revival away from a burst of notice and revenue. Could be a TikTok, a film usage, there’s a giant catalog of instantly catchy hits, the band is the sound of the summer, and nobody has ever come close. Song of the summer today? God, even Spotify now has a playlist, but odds are you haven’t heard most of the songs and don’t care, it seems the only people who truly do care are the press and the acts and their handlers who are on said list. The rest of us ignore it, if we’re even aware it exists.

But Bob Dylan? Just like we never got a new Beatles, we never got a new Bob Dylan. So buying the songs was a good idea. However Universal does not own the recordings.

Bruce Springsteen sold absolutely everything to Sony. I’ll posit that the Boss is less universal than Queen. He doesn’t even go clean everywhere. But “Born to Run” is an anthem. And when Bruce dies, he’ll become an even bigger icon, because we’ve never gotten a new Bruce and what Bruce represents is impossible to find in today’s marketplace. Honest musician, who can sing, write and play, who’s never sold out to the man who is singing from his heart about life in these United States. He’s one of a kind, like with Queen, he’s just one placement from ubiquity.

That’s what happened with Queen. “Wayne’s World.” Period.

Just like Journey and “The Sopranos.” Journey headlines stadiums without even the real singer of their hits! The hits have eclipsed the band! Think of the value there. And there wasn’t only one hit, but many.

But Queen is unique. From an era when that mattered, when me-too was anathema (in sound, not behavior). The band melded prog rock with straight rock without synthesizers and had hits as varied as not only
“Bohemian Rhapsody,” but “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “We Are the Champions” and “We Will Rock You.” The breadth alone gives the band gravitas.

In other words, Queen is selling too low. Sure, the band is getting the money now, but in a world of niches, everybody knows Queen. And as stated above, Queen has a unique identity.

Not everybody is forever, but there are many more that still own their rights. I mean if Queen is worth a billion, then the Eagles are worth at least two. Then again, over Henley’s dead body. By not maximizing the value of the catalogue, Henley and the Eagles have increased it! Proving once again, if you’re willing to leave money on the table, there are bigger paydays down the road.

Now supposedly Sony is going to maximize the asset, the virtual ABBA show has been bandied about as an example. That was an incredibly heavy investment. But if Queen is selling all those tickets with a fake lead singer and sans Deacon’s bass playing… Think of the demand!

The rich get richer and the poor struggle for recognition, never mind remuneration.

And maybe you’re not rich enough to maximize the value yourself. Which might argue for having a partner. But if you sell out completely and there’s a huge jump in revenue…your image, your legacy is burnished.

Some of these acts already have enough money. They’re very interested in lasting.

And think of the acts further down the totem pole. Get the right team involved and they can be much bigger than they are today. Because no one is minting new superstars! So the old stars become even BIGGER!

It goes really deep. Kids are turned on to the classics by their parents. By Disney. The rights holder doesn’t even have to do any marketing, it can just lay back and collect the cash. But work it just a bit… Hell, what was the value of Kate Bush before and after the use in “Stranger Things”?

The paradigm has shifted. Yes, it used to be that most acts’ value, their revenue, decreased over time. But today, in many cases it goes up! Because there’s no one else in their league.

Sure, advertisers have paid handsomely for catalog in the past, but now movies and streaming shows… They want to use tracks everybody knows, how many of those are there?

Sony could be sitting on a gold mine. That they bought cheaply.

Music is not tech. It doesn’t lose its value with new innovation, rather when done right it is unique, stands alone, and if not fresh, is emblematic of the times.

Furthermore, it all comes down to the song, it always comes down to the song. You can’t sing most of the Spotify Top 50, which means the odds of those songs lasting are low. It’s only when the public can sing along, with or without the record, when the melody and the chorus and the riff stick in their head, that the endless pot of gold is developed.

And they said Napster ruined the recorded music industry, that no one would pay for music again. EVERYONE is paying. Sure, you might get it for free on YouTube, but the rights holder is being paid. And you might listen for free but go to the show and buy merch and…

The future’s so bright I gotta wear shades!

Tune in Saturday June 22nd to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz

You could say it’s the end of an era, but in truth that era died on January 12, 1969, when the New York Jets beat the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. Joe Namath predicted it, and when it came true not only was he a hero in New York, but throughout the country. 

We didn’t pay attention to the rest of the globe. And people were just starting to play soccer in the U.S. We were so self-focused that the baseball championship was called the World Series, even though nobody else in the world competed.

But it was more than the Jets’ victory. It was Namath himself. The sixties had finally caught up with sports. Namath had facial hair, and a nightclub, he had trouble with authority, he resonated with both youngsters and oldsters, whereas baseball players…

But those on the diamond had their heyday. Kind of like rock and roll. It may be in bad shape now, but for decades it was EVERYTHING!

This is hard for those not alive in the fifties and sixties to understand. As for those conscious before that, not many of them are even left.

There are statistics, records, and we knew them, from the back of baseball cards if nothing else, but they could not convey the essence, the power of the game. You got that from watching, whether in the stadium or at home, in black and white.

It started with spring training and didn’t finish until the first week of October, with the end of the World Series. Baseball was a summer sport, but in the name of cash, no sport observes its natural limits anymore. Football is played in February, hockey and basketball in June, and the World Series is oftentimes played in November and it all runs together, but it didn’t used to be this way.

There were eight teams in each league, and then it spread to ten. This was a big deal, a very big deal. And the Yankees won almost every year. Which disappointed others, but their sheer dominance, their sheer talent, was akin to what Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods embodied in their heyday. But the Yankees and baseball had even further reach. You may not be able to name a song from the latest Taylor Swift album, but everybody knew that Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were battling to beat Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1961.

And the uniforms! They were not double-knits, they were flannel, and heavy, and warm. And the stockings came up almost to the knee. There was tradition, the game was the same as it ever was. But then came the designated hitter and…

George Carlin’s breakthrough routine was about the difference between baseball and football. You can probably recite it in your head right now. Remember, football is played on a gridiron, baseball in a field…we don’t know when a game will end, it could go on FOREVER!

And ultimately that’s what happened. And it contributed to the demise of the sport’s popularity.

Along with night games. Baseball was a daylight game, played at night irregularly. You were glued to your transistor at work, the scores were passed by fans in school hallways. If you were lucky, your teacher would allow you to listen to the World Series on the public address system. And you rode your bike home fast to try and catch the last couple of innings.

And then there were the cards, and the annuals. Screw the gum, you needed the cards. Which you flipped and traded and they were seen as a momentary diversion until the boomers came of age and in a fit of nostalgia decided the cards were valuable, and oftentimes scarce, because like the rest of our childhood toys, they’d been thrown away.

But going to the game. The field was so green! It was the biggest public edifice you’d ever been in. It was special. And that feeling remains. But the tickets are no longer cheap. Anybody could afford to go to a baseball game, and many did.

Until they were all on TV. Then people stopped going. Baseball can be easier to comprehend on TV, especially football. But the NFL said the games couldn’t be televised locally unless they sold out. The NFL was based on scarcity, there were only a limited number of games, whereas baseball was played every day, like a job, it was immediate, it was part of your life, and you liked that.

By time the seventies rolled around hockey surged, with the success of the Bruins and the Islanders, who had rabid fans. And the NBA got a boost from Willis Reed and the rest of the Knicks, and there was an endless conveyor belt of phenoms. From Dr. J to Pistol Pete to… Baseball players started to fade into the background. They were two dimensional. Hard to relate to. They hadn’t been to college. They were oftentimes seen as hayseeds as opposed to denizens of the city.

Of course the seventies yielded Reggie Jackson. Namath with a bat. But his constant battles with Steinbrenner oftentimes undercut the show.

And Steinbrenner may have won, but he dissed Yogi Berra. And there were the shenanigans with Billy Martin.

And eventually there was the home run race of 1998, between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, but it was ultimately tainted by steroids. Cocaine was one thing, illegal, but it didn’t enhance your ability. But if you’re cheating…

Mickey Mantle was no saint.

Then again, Willie Mays was.

Those were the two dominant players of their era. Of course there were supporting players, but we had Mickey in the American League and Willie in the National, they stood head and shoulders above the rest. They were the icons, and you never exactly knew when they’d deliver. Mickey would strike out, and then he come to bat in a clutch situation and wallop one over the wall.

Willie was more homespun. Willie didn’t need the spotlight, the spotlight found him, he was just that good.

But then Willie was exiled to San Francisco, and played in a park with such bad weather that it impacted his stats and he played three hours later than the teams on the east coast. But in 1962 he was in New York battling the Yankees in the World Series and it looked like the Giants might win, and then Bobby Richardson jumped to catch a blazing line drive and…

Then there was the famous catch. Backwards. Of Vic Wertz’s deep ball. And the throw thereafter. This was legendary, as well known as Woodstock years later. It was basic lore, it was in our DNA, it’s one thing to run and snare the ball, but BACKWARDS? In the deep center field of the Polo Grounds?

The parks were still old. And in some ways decrepit. There were no luxury boxes. We were all in it together.

But that was the fifties and sixties. Sure, there were flaws, engendering protests, rebellion, but seemingly everybody was middle class, there were no billionaires, and we saw it as our duty to raise the level of life for those in poverty.

I have these memories. They’re emblazoned in my brain.

Like the time I bought a biography of Willie on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. I think it was fifteen cents, maybe a quarter, back when paperbacks were cheap. I needed more. We all needed more.

And now there’s too much.

But the heroes of the past. Today’s generations have no idea how big they were.

And Willie Mays was one of the titans. We admired baseball players, we imitated them, we wanted to be them. Work at a bank? No, you’d rather play ball.

And then came rock and roll.

I was having dinner with John Brodey at Ago and he told me his Australian film director buddy Fred Schepisi might be stopping by.

It used to be Bono’s. Sonny’s place. Before that I can’t remember. But it was always Italian. And right there at the intersection of Melrose and La Cienega. The last time I was there Jack Douglas invited me for dinner with Richard Lewis, Steven Bauer, Geoff Emerick and a few other buddies. Before we sat down Richard and I made up, after our encounter at McCabe’s, when we wall went to see Terry Reid. Knowing the booker, I got in early and saved the seats. But while I was waving to our group, showing them where I was, Richard slipped behind me and sat down in my seat, on the end of the row, on the aisle. I was not happy, but ultimately I moved deeper into the row, but Richard knew what he’d done, so he yelled over, “My back, I’ve got a bad back, I’ve got to sit on the end!” That was Richard Lewis. He was the same neurotic guy he was on stage and in “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” And funny, his wife was as down to earth as he was crazy. I always quote Richard… He said before he met Joyce he dated slaves. Women who would do whatever he wanted. Joyce stood up to him.

As for Geoff Emerick… The rule of famous people is you don’t talk to them about what they’re famous for. But the remix of “Sgt. Pepper” had just come out and ultimately I brought this up with Geoff and he went from zero to one hundred instantly, he was pissed! The stereo mixes weren’t afterthoughts, they’d put time into them, they were what everybody wanted.

As for Steven Bauer… What a character. He was just off his success in “Ray Donovan,” and he assumed I knew all about it, when in truth I’d never seen the series. But after recounting his success, recalling the high points, he started telling me the story of his family’s exit from Cuba. In detail. And not only was it fascinating, Bauer was treating me like a good friend, he was convivial, intimate, I could see why he was successful. Then again, was he really the guy in “Scarface”?

But that was years later. My dinner with Brodey was at the beginning of the twenty first century, in the main room, as opposed to the private back room I was in with Jack and his friends.

So we’re just about finished and Fred enters the restaurant. With an entourage. A couple of women, another guy, and…

Donald Sutherland.

I mean come on, DONALD SUTHERLAND? Was there ever anybody cooler? Well, there was James Dean… Let’s not argue about it, let’s just say that Donald Sutherland was always cool. He burst on to the scene in “M*A*S*H,” the breakthrough Robert Altman film, which was platformed as opposed to opened wide back in 1970, there was a small ad in the “Times” for weeks before it opened, building buzz about a movie almost no one was aware of.

In the movie Sutherland embodied the sixties, he was IRREVERENT! He didn’t take it too seriously, he could see the humor in the insanity of war. That was what the era was all about, questioning authority.

And then there was “Klute” and even “Day of the Locust.” As well as the cult movie “Don’t Look Now,” back when there used to be cult movies that you had to see at the revival house, that even if they played on television we didn’t see, because we didn’t own TVs, and they were edited anyway.

And “Steelyard Blues.” And “Ordinary People.” Donald Sutherland was part of the firmament, a true Hollywood star, someone who was not always playing himself, someone who emanated his interior thoughts, not only his exterior visage.

So we finished up and went over to Fred’s table. They were in a booth, Brodey and I pulled up chairs on the outside. They’d just come from filming. And Fred was so NICE!

A lot of Hollywood people can be standoffish, especially if they don’t know who you are.

But not Fred. He set the tone for the conversation. It was breezy. So, after the better part of ten minutes, I participated, I joined in.

And Donald Sutherland immediately gave me sh*t. Wow.

And when I spoke again, he criticized my word usage. And went on about it. So I STFU!

What an as*hole. I was not dominating the conversation. We were all having fun. But according to Sutherland, I was not entitled to speak. So I didn’t.

I sat there in silence for nearly half an hour. I know the rules, it’s not about me. But I can’t say I was happy. It wasn’t like they were discussing things I was unfamiliar with, it wasn’t inside baseball.

And then, when I was completely calm, but not quite detached, Sutherland pontificated, about this or that. From his high horse.

And that’s when I saw my opening.

I gave HIM sh*t!

And he was stunned. Speechless. He’d left an opening and I walked right in and slammed him right down. Employing the same holier-than-thou attitude he did.

And then I did it again.

And then Sutherland shut up for a while. Licked his wounds.

But then he said something and included me as part of his team. Like the two of us were speaking to the table at large. And then we started amping it up, playing with the language, making jokes, having a rollicking good time. The center of attention had shifted to us.

And when the evening came to a close, we all got up, for the long goodbye, and Donald embraced me in a bear hug, smiling, talking about the next time we got together.

That never happened, but…

Let that be a lesson to you. People will try to put you down, keep you in your place, and if you can’t speak truth to power, you will be stepped on.

Whereas if you rise up and play their game…