Melissa Etheridge is open, honest and forthcoming, nothing is off limits. We discuss her music, her relationships, her upbringing, her sexuality, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, the Oscars… It’s like talking with a friend!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/melissa-etheridge/id1316200737?i=1000574984329

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/b2391d50-7211-4bb4-ab3e-ed4ca08ae617/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-melissa-etheridge

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/melissa-etheridge-205503143

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3PZXBTF

YouTube: https://bit.ly/3SonL4g

1

But I’m listening on Qobuz.

That’s what I’ve been doing since Monday, all day, just listening, scouring the virtual stacks to see what is in Hi-Res. There’s no rhyme or reason what oldies are in Hi-Res or not. Some catalogues have been completely upgraded, others have not. And in truth, the regular CD quality stuff sounds pretty good, but the Hi-Res stuff…there’s not an adjective in the dictionary!

You see this is what we used to do. Sit in front of the stereo and do nothing else but listen. That was more than enough. We parted the scrim of the speakers and got inside the music where we could not be reached. And if it was too loud for others, we put on the headphones. You see if you paid attention, there were certain things in the record that you could not catch on a casual listen, but if you knew the cut and had a good enough stereo, there would be so much to be found. Like “I’m very cold” at the end of “Strawberry Fields Forever” on “Magical Mystery Tour.” It wasn’t until nearly two years later that it was claimed that Paul McCartney was dead and this buried snippet confirmed it, saying “I buried Paul.”

Not that we told everybody about these discoveries. They were private, just for us, not casual fans. We were the ones who blew up the concert industry, because we had to see these acts. It was the next step, it was a communal experience. There were seats, the music was respected, if you stood at all it was only for the encores. And it wasn’t about who you went with, but just you and the act and the music, a transcendent connection. The record was preparation for the ultimate live experience. All this comes back as I listen to Hi-Res on Qobuz.

The first James Taylor album was gifted to me by my sister for my 17th birthday, she said it was big at B.U. That same week I bought “Sweet Baby James,” which had only come out in February, but I always preferred the Apple debut, whose production hasn’t aged well, but was magic back then.

It all started with “Carolina in My Mind.” At least on the second side. The original version is different from the now famous slowed-down take which has replaced it in the public consciousness, the one that’s included in the first “Greatest Hits” album. It’s sunny and upbeat. Like James is remembering a sunny day and good times. Whereas the slowed-down version is reflective. Like he’s looking back, over years and distance, it’s a memory, but the original is palpably now.

“Carolina In My Mind” was my favorite at first, I played it every day when I woke up, that’s what I used to do in high school, it was a ritual, it demonstrated that there was a world for me, even if the one I was actually living in didn’t understand me.

My second favorite was the original “Something in the Way She Moves,” which is also much faster, as if he’s in the throes of the feelings as opposed to thinking back. From when James was a nobody as opposed to an international star when he recut it.

My third favorite was the traditional “Circle Round the Sun,” I’m a fool for the slow majesty of cuts like this, I’m conducting a virtual orchestra in my brain, totally in the moment, believing there’s a world, girls, who understand me, can see inside to who I really am.

“Sweet Baby James” has a completely different feel.

2

There was a time when almost nobody knew of James Taylor. When he was in the marketplace but only the cognoscenti were aware of him. Ubiquity came in the fall of 1970, when “Fire and Rain” dominated the airwaves. Whereas before this the song stuck out for me because of the mention of “Jesus,” when this was very rare.

The first song on “Sweet Baby James” that I loved so much was on the first side, “Country Road.”

Funny how I live in the city today, actually a giant suburb, that’s what L.A. is, but my heart is still in the country. Then again, the country is no longer so removed, what with Amazon and the internet. You used to be off the grid. Where people went in the seventies, licking their wounds from the sixties.

There’s a rhythm in “Country Road,” an emphasis, and then it amps up. It’s got more edge than “Fire and Rain.” James is exhorting, he’s not restrained whatsoever, he can feel it on a country road. Which he keeps traveling down…”walk on down, walk on down, walk on down, walk on down, walk on down a country road.” I learned to play this on the guitar, back when that was something we all did, before everybody used online tools to make beats. And we’d get together and trade songs and sing, it was part of experience, like singing around the piano before the age of recorded music, back in 1970 music was not portable.

And in truth I love “Sweet Baby James” because of this verse:

“Now the first of December was covered with snow

So was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston

Though the Berkshires seemed dreamlike on account of that frostin’

With ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go”

I know all of it. The first of December, when winter really starts to begin. And the Mass Pike, which had a unique toll system, you got a card when you got on and paid at a man in a booth when you got off, whereas on the Connecticut Turnpike they had toll booths along the way. And if you had exact change, you threw it in the bucket.

As for the Berkshires… They’re hills, except for Mt. Greylock, but they’re higher than those in northwest Connecticut. The Berkshires are far from New York City, you can’t commute from there, it’s its own state of mind, even though cultured New Yorkers park there in the summer.

As for the slog of the highway, it’s a metaphor for life. Then sometimes you reach the distant destination and are flummoxed as to where to go next.

Beyond these three tracks I’ve got to single out “Anywhere Like Heaven” in the middle of the second side.

And I went to see James Taylor twice in a matter of weeks, just days after my birthday in Boston and then in Port Chester. But one song James never played was “Suite for 20 G.” What was that about?

3

It was actually two songs. A suite. But why these two? And why was it 20 G?

I didn’t learn the story until I became friends with Peter Asher, who produced the album. Truth is they wanted to finish the album to get the twenty grand due on delivery, but they were a song short, so they combined these two and thus, “Suite for 20 G.”

Not that anybody talks about it.

The track starts to gain power after the initial “chorus” about “Mary Jane.”

“I’ve been trying hard to find a way to let you know

That we can make it shine most all the time

This time ’round I’m searching down to where I used to go

And it’s been on my mind to make it shine”

This is just a bit more intimate, to the heart. The lyrics are relatively unencumbered by the instrumentation. In the lingo of the era, this is when the song starts to get “heavy.” And I’m listening to the cut on Qobuz today and suddenly I hear Carole King. Subtly, but clearly!

I mean I’ve always heard the female backup vocal. And if you’d asked me who I thought it was, I’d have said Carole, but in Hi-Res her vocal sound, the timbre, stands out. And she’s not belting, she’s just dipping her toe in the background, it’s so magical.

But the standout part of the track, which features Carole too, is the link, the segue between the two songs.

“You can say I wanna be free

I can say some day I will be”

And then there’s an instrumental interlude employing the melody of what came before and then…

There’s a repeat.

“You can say I wanna be free

I can say some day I will be”

And then the track changes completely, it’s a different song with horns, and it’s good, but not as good as that segue, that’s the key to the track. It resonates with sweetness in a way nobody does today.

There is meaning. That’s what we wanted to be, free. Back before the right co-opted that word. But we were talking about a different kind of free, we mostly wanted to be free in the mind. To explore, to be our best selves. We were reaching for something, we weren’t quite sure what it was, but that didn’t mean we stopped our yearning, our journey.

But wait, there’s more!

4

Now actually I heard this first on Amazon Music Ultra HD.

I didn’t realize James was doubling his vocal. But it’s clear as day when you do critical listening in Hi-Res. You can’t miss it, there’s a James in each channel. On the car speaker, on a mediocre music reproduction system, it sounds like just one James. But with critical listening in Hi-Res, which I can do with Qobuz, my DragonFly Cobalt and Genelec speakers, not only can I hear it, I gain insight into the recording process, I can see the studio. That’s what we wanted to know, how the acts recorded this music, the thought process, the tricks.

The truth is tracks are built in the studio. It sounds like one big amalgamated unit on the radio, but you start from scratch, with the songs, production ideas. You experiment, you risk, you keep some things and lose others. Sometimes a detour will deliver a full blown change.

And in truth there are tricks. And people are constantly coming up with new ones. Doubling is new, then it’s de rigueur. The envelope was constantly being pushed back in this era, tape machines had more tracks, there was outboard gear, you got new sounds, and they enhanced the records.

I’ve been trying to find a way to let you know that we can make it shine most all the time. That the magic is still there. Listening to these cuts this way makes me realize many more of them will survive than I thought. It’s because of not only the talent, but the effort. Nobody was just going through the motions, everybody was on their own hejira, searching for excellence. The acts didn’t sound the same, and that’s one of the things we liked about the scene.

And the music was enough, the penumbra was just that. There weren’t even t-shirts for a long time. The acts were artists. They didn’t want to do anything to compromise their artistry, their vision. They hewed to their own tuning fork. They were unconstrained. And to be a fan and to be able to go on the ride…it was better than anything at Disneyland, or social media. Because these tracks contained the essence of humanity, and truth and direction, if you paid attention there was so much there!

But the business stopped respecting the music. And then the audience did the same. Music is the accompaniment, not the essence. Musicians became brands. And I’m not saying that you can’t do it just as well employing the new tools, but the players don’t. Money comes first, everybody complains, when in truth only a select few ever made big bucks in the music business, and most people couldn’t record at all.

And there have been all these shows documenting the process. But they never illustrate it accurately. It starts with a beginning off the radar, years of woodshedding, working with different players, honing your material. And then if you’re lucky you gain notice. The industry is just the patina, laid atop what the artist comes into the studio with.

But you need engineers and producers to put it all together and levitate it. But old school producers are rare, those who didn’t work the board, but produced with their minds, on what they heard. Because the artists fear being told what to do, and an engineer can do both for less money.

But something is lost in the process.

Listen to all the James Taylor records, different producers created different records. Just when it looked like JT was lost, Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman resuscitated him, to the point where he was as big as ever, if not bigger.

But this is all to say when I hear Carole King singing in “Suite for 20 G” I not only feel connected to what once was, I connect to myself.

And when “Suite for 20 G” is opened up I can join in, mentally, I may not be able to impact the process, but I’m definitely a fly on the wall, exposed to the inner workings. I’m free! WHAT MORE COULD YOU ASK FOR?

I didn’t know Mo well, but I was intimately involved with his work.

That was the difference between Mo and his competitors, he was not self-aggrandizing. He was a family man, akin to your father, but he ran the best label operation on the planet, FOR DECADES!

You’ve got to understand, it all began with the Beatles. In 1964. They were on Capitol, as were the Beach Boys. And we noted that the soundtrack to “A Hard Day’s Night” came out on United Artists. Yes, we were intimately involved with label monikers, the days of the indie manufacturer of 45s was history, it was now all about albums on majors.

Especially after 1967’s “Sgt. Pepper.” That’s when the rest of the world caught the shift. That not only did rock and roll rule, it was more than music, it was a statement, it was not only an exponent of the youth movement, it was its spiritual guide, its leader!

And starting in ’68, underground FM started to permeate the country. And some of its biggest hits crossed over to AM, like “Sunshine of Your Love,” but not “Purple Haze,” some tracks were just too dangerous for the mainstream population, you had to seek them out, but when you found them you were a member of the tribe, hipper than the rest of the land.

And most of those records were on Warner/Reprise.

I first noticed the Reprise label on Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant.” Sure, other acts featured it, like the Kinks, but “Alice’s Restaurant” was a breakthrough. A guy who didn’t look like a rock star cutting a song unsuitable for AM radio in both content and length who broke through anyway. This was a revolution. It was believed that radio was king, the only way to truly break a record, but this was now history. As for the label, did you pronounce “Reprise” like in “Leeds” or “Pie”? Who knows!

But as left field as “Alice’s Restaurant” was, Peter, Paul & Mary with their late sixties youth group staple that ultimately crossed over to radio, “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” were on the label too. And the Association as well. But by the end of the sixties the transition was complete. It was all rock, except for Frank Sinatra, who we ultimately learned started Reprise, with Mo Ostin as its head.

Just like we ultimately learned that John Denver wrote “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” There was a dearth of information in the sixties, and we hoovered up every scrap. We memorized the album covers without realizing it, we just looked at them so many times. We needed to get closer to the music. It was unlike today. Television was moribund, the boob tube. Movies were expensive and always a bit behind the times. But music? Music was up to date, and Warner/Reprise was the operation pushing the envelope. The Mo and Joe show.

Yes Joe Smith was different from Mo Ostin. A Jewish Yalie with a background in radio Joe was the toastmaster at the conventions that no longer exist in the internet era, he signed the Grateful Dead, and he wanted you to know it. Joe had a personality larger than life, he was glad-handing and insulting you simultaneously, but it was all in good fun. But as the years wore on Joe was upset that all the credit went to Mo, and he’d tell you so.

But in reality it was a team effort. A family. It was a vortex. You moved your way up the label food chain, back when execs used to switch labels faster than today’s sports stars, and if you were good and lucky you ended up at Warner Brothers, and never left.

And the whole operation was run by this relative cipher, Mo Ostin.

You’d see his picture in the trades, “Billboard” was godhead back then, and there were “Cash Box” and “Record World” too, the business was flourishing to the point where it could support three trades, and you’d see Mo in trade photos sporting his Vandyke beard. Smiling. But to the public he was two dimensional, all you could see was his visage, and the label empire he created.

And once everybody’s initial recording contract ran out, they’d end up on Warner Brothers. They would be presented as superstars even though they had little cultural penetration. Like Van Morrison. Hell, the Shadows of Knight had the hit with “Gloria” in the U.S., Them were barely known. But when Van started releasing records on Warner Brothers…it was presented like the arrival of the second coming.

And by this time there was too much music to all be featured on FM radio. These records were spread by word of mouth, blurbs in the nascent rock press and…

The Warner/Reprise inner sleeves.

The Beatles gained control of the inner sleeve with “Sgt. Pepper.” That was a huge step. Before that the label owned that real estate, it used it to promote the other records on the label. You were truly powerful if you could create the artwork on the inner sleeve, which too often featured tiny photos of albums you weren’t interested in, from the pre-Beatle era, stuff that never hit, but the Warner/Reprise inner sleeve?

It listed all the acts. You compared them, to see which acts had been added, which ones had been dropped.

And then there were the Loss Leaders, two record sampler albums sold mail order for two bucks. And they were always worth it. They contained a few hits, a bunch never to make it, and undiscovered gems that turned you on to the act.

Like Beaver & Krause. An electronic duo whose album I had to buy after hearing a track on a Loss Leader. And Little Feat. And Tower of Power. And…

It was a club. And if you bought the albums, you were a member.

And the team, they became famous too. Stan Cornyn, the head of creative services, a job that didn’t even exist at other labels. There was an irreverence, a feature of the sixties that’s been forgotten, and wasn’t employed by the other label operations. CBS said “The man can’t bust our music.” and we laughed, how could they be this out of touch?

This was when credibility was key. We needed to believe in you.

And we believed in Warner/Reprise.

If it was on Warner/Reprise…

It was worth checking out.

Until the nineties when Mo and Lenny exited the building, the box from Warner Brothers got the most attention. Every album contained inside may not be great, but you knew there was a reason the act was signed and the album was made. Nothing was done on a whim. Nothing was thrown against the wall.

And then Bob Morgado, today completely forgotten, blew a hole in the Warner Music Group after Doug Morris got in his ear and undercut the west coast operation, three hours behind the time.

The dream was to get to Los Angeles. New Yorkers thought they were superior, still do, but it was all happening in laid back L.A., where there were billboards for records on Sunset, numerous local record chains, it was palpable, you could feel it! And the main driver was Warner/Reprise in Burbank.

Now that’s all gone.

After Mo left the building, the company started throwing records against the wall. They’d sign an act, put out one album and then drop them. There was no investment, no commitment.

And the nineties brought hip-hop and indie rock, and the twenty first century brought Napster and the iPod and then Spotify.

And now it’s 2022.

Most youngsters have no idea who Mo Ostin was or what he built, even though the work produced during his tenure still survives. Maybe because he worried about careers more than sales. That was the rap, Warner Brothers would stop selling singles, let your album go fallow, allow you to follow up with a new album, whereas at CBS they wrung every last sale out of your LP, to the point where people were sick and tired of you at the end and you were starting behind the 8-ball on the next album.

Today major labels release fewer albums. Marketing is king. If it won’t sell, they aren’t interested. As for corporate image? There is none.

Universal is a great operation, but Lucian Grainge’s greatest achievement is taking the operation public and making triple digit millions for himself.

Not that Mo didn’t make bank. This was as a result of the hands-off, coddling philosophy of Steve Ross. There were corporate jets, corporate houses in far-off locations like Aspen and Acapulco and Steve didn’t meddle with you and handsomely compensated you, why would you leave?

But the dirty little secret was the record operation was the most profitable. It built the Warner Cable system. One can argue that Mo deserved every penny. And unlike other labels, acts weren’t constantly bitching they were screwed.

And then there was Prince.

Mo and Lenny discussed it with me at lunch at Peppone. It was a business issue. They just couldn’t make any money with an endless stream of albums with huge advances.

In retrospect, Prince was ahead of the game.

Because the old game died.

Mo and Lenny started over at DreamWorks, but it could never work, the paradigm had shifted. You couldn’t invest tons of money in relatively niche acts and expect them to sustain and earn back. But even worse, DreamWorks had no catalog, which sustains the major labels to this day.

So it was over. Not only for Mo, but for the entire business.

Twenty years ago, people used to talk about artist development, my inbox is no longer inundated with that term. Today, artist development is considered taking an act from zero to one hundred, from nowhere to arenas, on one album. Whereas you got five LPs to make it on Warner/Reprise, and some still did not connect.

One of my favorite acts ever, Wendy Waldman, did five albums on Reprise.

Bonnie Raitt was ultimately dropped after more than a decade of investment, with little in return. But when Joe Smith moved over to Capitol he struck gold.

As for Ry Cooder and Randy Newman… If they’d been on other labels…they never would have been signed to begin with! Cooder’s “Into the Purple Valley” is one of my favorite albums, who else would allow an act to cut decades-old Dust Bowl songs that sounded nothing like the music of today?

I could go through the catalog, cite chapter and verse, but ultimately, I don’t have to, because all of those acts survive in the public consciousness, that’s how great their work was.

And Mo Ostin’s spearheading, championing of that work, meant everything, without it the landscape would look completely different, a great number of these bedrock acts would be unknown.

But it’s a different business today. No one leaves any money on the table. Selling out is a feature. Credibility is not even considered. The execs are unknown, and nobody other than insiders care who they are, after all what are they doing? Putting out records. Whereas Mo was impacting and changing the culture!

Music was the Silicon Valley of its day.

But unlike Elon Musk, Mo Ostin was not a buffoon.

But you’ve got to be over fifty to even know any of this. Sure, there have been some good albums released in the past three decades, but music no longer attracts the best and the brightest, it no longer has the same cultural impact, it’s no longer as innovative, it’s akin to what it was before the Beatles broke.

That’s right, we’ve come full circle.

If you’re a baby boomer, you lived through the Renaissance. The original one, back in Italy centuries ago…they’ve painted and sculpted since, but visual art doesn’t dominate the way it did back then. Same thing with music. And Mo may not have been Raphael or Michelangelo, but he was Neil Young and the rest of Warner/Reprise’s Medici. He controlled the purse strings. And sure, he wanted to make money, but that was not the sole concern. He wanted to facilitate the artists, he didn’t want to meddle with their work. He wanted to make their lives easier so they could create.

He was not a prince. After all, he was a businessman.

But in a street business, where a college degree arguably was a detriment, Mo was honest and forthright, a mensch, when they were hard to come by. And this amalgam of traits and behaviors, the warmth, the trust, the investment, the family atmosphere, sustained the greatest label operation in the history of recorded music.

And that’s why we’re talking about Mo now.

And he would have liked this.

But even more he liked his recorded legacy, the work of the Warner/Reprise artists.

And hanging with his grandkids. During that break between Warner/Reprise and DreamWorks he got to spend more time with them. He told me how rewarding it was.

But either you already know all of the above or you don’t.

History may forget Mo Ostin, but we never will.

He was our North Star, our guiding light. As long as Mo was in charge things were going to be all right. You could go to sleep knowing things were handled.

Those days are through.

If only we had more Mo Ostins…

Mo Ostin was a giant amongst giants! When I played Tom Petty’s solo album, Full Moon Fever, to upper management at Tom’s then label MCA they, “didn’t hear a single!” Tom and I were devastated. When Tom’s fellow Travelling Wilbury, George Harrison, played it to Mo Ostin he offered to make a deal there and then for Tom for whenever his deal with MCA was up. Tom wanted to do this even though he had two more albums to deliver under his deal with MCA. Mo said, “I will sign Tom for whenever his deal with MCA is up!” We made a deal, and no one knew anything about it as Tom still had a commitment to MCA. Then the Wilburys and Full Moon Fever albums were released, and both were huge! The deal with Warner Brothers didn’t look so great anymore. I went to see Mo and started to explain my conundrum. He stopped me in mid-speech and said, “Tony, just tell me what you want?” I was taken aback but suggested I go check out what he is worth. I went to several other companies and told them Tom was available and taking offers. I got the offers and Mo matched the highest one. Tom was determined to give Mo a great album and that turned out to be Wildflowers! Everybody won! That was Mo!

Tony Dimitriades