Students of the game know that Jeffrey interviewed Irving at the “Billboard” touring conference. I was in Iceland, but I just watched the tape, and a number of things stood out.

1. Don’t take it personally.

Jeffrey said Irving always told him this.

Now I’ve got a hard problem with this, especially in deals. You agree on one thing, and then the attorney comes back with another. It messes with my notions of fairness and trust. But really, it’s just a game. With an underside of duplicity. The attorney wants to claw back some of the money, lock you up even more and it all comes down to how much leverage you’ve got, whether or not you can say no. If you can’t say no, you’re never gonna get a good deal. Stand up to them and they hem and haw, but if you’re willing to forgo the entire deal, you can usually get most of what you want. But are you willing to pass? It’s scary being talent, you may not get another chance. But if you’re a true artist, you must go with your gut. If they won’t give you what you want (or need!) now, good luck getting it in the future, the same way they send a limo while they’re wooing you, but you Uber on your own dime after the deal is done.

2. Time passes.

One of Irving’s main skills is transitioning to the future. He embraced the internet earlier than anybody of his age and power. Jeffrey said how Irving now even texted with acts, even though he didn’t always know the lingo of the medium. He got STFU, but missed LOL. Does anybody still remember texts were SMS, i.e. “short message service”? And texts go via the cellular network and iMessages go via the internet but the point is the landscape changes and if you don’t adjust to it you’re left behind.

3. Time passes 2.

Jeffrey asked Irving what the best label was.

Irving answered “Giant”!

And there were crickets.

It was a good joke, but Giant, which started in 1990, was sold to Warner in 2001, almost twenty years ago. Meaning, a student of the game would have to be fortysomething to get the reference.

It was scary.

But the truth is the business is comprised of wholly different people with wholly different perspectives these days. If you’re thirtysomething… Chances are you were in high school during Napster. If you’re twentysomething, you might have never owned a CD. Meanwhile, oldsters look through their own lens and miss the market.

4. Artists first.

We’re all beholden to the artist. Irving has always been on the side of the artist. That’s his bitch with “Billboard,” for the industry “Bible,” it’s not always artist-friendly. Without acts, you’re nothing. You could be the best manager in the world, but with nothing great to manage… Artists need representatives, people on their side. Since the advent of the Mottola era, the business people have been in cahoots with the artists left outside the circle. You see the business remains, the acts come and go. That is changing with the younger generation, if for no other reason than the label is not the big daddy it once was, advances are lower and attorneys and managers have to make their bank in other places. But this business runs on artists. We admire artists. We need more people on their side, defending them, giving them good advice.

5. Songs.

That’s why the Eagles survived, Henley says it every night on stage. Great songs can live forever. If you write them… And Irving’s philosophy is to always write the song you’re gonna close your set with. A manager’s job is to inspire the artist, to push them just a little bit, like a coach, but without all the b.s. testosterone.

6. Nepotism.

That was one of the questions from the audience. Which was reluctant and unimpressive. One manager asked if the Azoffs would come see his K-Pop band. As my friend Jake Gold says, if you’re the manager, if the act’s already got a manager, WHY SHOULD I COME? It’s business, it’s money, time is valuable. The Azoffs said they’d be on the road on that date, but it made me laugh how the asker was a wanker. As was the person asking about her career. You always get this question at presentations, what advice do you have for ME? How can you help ME? Those on stage roll their eyes and try to escape. Meanwhile, re nepotism, Jeffrey said he was at his first settlement at 11, that when he went to work for Jordan Feldstein at 21, he knew things others his age did not. And Irving said that Shelli told him that Jeffrey was a drug dealer, why else did he have all that cash on his bed during high school. Turns out Jeffrey was doing after-prom parties. Irving winced and said WITHOUT INSURANCE! Jeffrey said he had insurance, who knows what the truth is.

Watching this interview, before the audience questions, was the college education I never got. Sure, I went to a liberal arts institution, where business wasn’t even taught, but the truth is I wasn’t interested in a single subject. And they always wanted to study classical theory whereas I was interested in my own theories! Those who work for themselves, like managers, get to act on their own feelings and insights. Some people just cannot be held back. Irving was making more money than his parents in high school, he paid for his tenure at college himself.

You see some things interest me, and some things don’t. And when I care, I cannot get enough. And to sit at the feet of giants and experience their lessons is…PRICELESS!

P.S. If you weren’t there, the interview will be broadcast on SiriusXM Volume 106 on Tuesday December 11th at 8 PM east and 5 PM west.

I just read in MusicAlly that Fortnite has 200 million registered users.

It almost made me want to play. Because I want to check out every phenomenon, and I want to belong. Never underestimate the power of membership. We are social animals, and we feel best when interacting, when in the flow of life, not sure what is going to happen next.

But Fortnite is truly a phenomenon. Kinda like “Game of Thrones” or “Black Panther.” Where is our phenomenon in the music business?

The last one we had was in 2002, when Kelly Clarkson won “American Idol.” Insiders, aficionados, excoriated the show, but the public tuned in in droves, and anointed Kelly and Simon Cowell stars.

Simon was different from network TV, he had an edge and he was honest. And he didn’t seem to be bothered by disdain. He was an exotic animal, and he’s worked this personality for over fifteen years, in a world of too much me-too, especially in music.

As for Kelly Clarkson… She could SING!

Sure, oldsters pooh-poohed this, they wanted someone who could write, but it turned out she could do this too. And when she hooked up with Max Martin and Dr. Luke she produced a track so powerful that it became iconic, ruling the world at the end of 2004 into 2005. That’s the power of a hit single, that’s the power of “Since U Been Gone.”

Since then?

We used to have phenomena in the music business on a regular basis. Genres changed every three years. But no more. We’ve got new acts, but to a great degree they’re doing the same old thing. It’s not exciting.

And the public is not involved.

I know, I know, the concert business is booming. But so much of that has to do with the social media era. Going is an event unto itself. Hanging with your friends, demonstrating you were there. Which is why festivals have burgeoned.

But as for the talent on stage…

We always had a medium to push the message further. FM paved the way for album rock. MTV paved the way for English new wave. And the internet paved the way for hip-hop.

But that was eighteen years ago.

What now?

This business is driven by talent. Outsiders who do it a little bit differently. Who plot their own course. Isn’t it funny in 2018 we’re still talking about “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Is it because we haven’t come up with a replacement?

It’s kind of like the Dark Ages, we’ve lost the plot.

I know everybody’s bitching about recording revenues, but if you’re a hit artist you’re making more money in adjusted dollars than ever.

Is the bar to entry too low? Is there too much product? Is the creative community demoralized?

Music was always the most immediate medium.

I think it’s about the song. We’re too far from the garden. We need more melody, more you can sing along with. There’s your participation right there. Way back when we got together and strummed guitars as we sang the hits of the day. Nobody does that anymore. Is it that they can’t play guitar or the songs just aren’t worth singing?

Country’s been sanitized.

Hip-hop is only about the bleeding edge. If you don’t have face tattoos and get arrested you can’t gain any attention. What’s next, dismemberment?

For every adolescent who thinks facial mutilation is cool, many more people think these “performers” are freaks who have lost the plot. You want to bring everybody along.

This is the opportunity.

Song camps should be doing just that, writing songs.

The breakthrough is gonna come from outside the major label system. Because the major labels are moribund, running on fumes, they’re GM in a world of Tesla, they don’t believe in risk.

We’re talking about art, we’re talking about conception. Devo couldn’t play that well, but they came up with a hit concept. Frank Zappa could play very well, but couldn’t resist commenting on society and its foibles.

And then there were the Doors and Queen and Led Zeppelin, who didn’t sound quite like anybody else, who the establishment pooh-poohed upon release, before these acts became icons.

Maybe Simon Cowell had it right. Maybe it’s not about a competition show, which both Apple and Spotify have tried and failed with, but edge, tension, music.

Music should be the great unifier, music should be pushing the envelope. This is our game, we invented it!

But somehow we’ve lost the formula.

They’re preparing for the future.

Unlike the record companies. The labels and the artists berated not only the techies, but their own customers, demanding that everybody jet back to the past. When people drove cars and the rest of the world was not going electric.

Clayton Christensen wrote the blueprint in “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” You disrupt yourself, before somebody disrupts you.

And I could criticize our President for being ignorant and not getting it, but this is not a political issue, this is pure business, and GM wants to survive.

The labels survived, but only because of their catalogs. They wielded them to extract power in the future, then again, the center of power has shifted to the live side. Think about it, which came first, performance or recording? You’re better off being a great performer than a great recording artist. In this mechanized society we’re looking for something honest, with edges, that breathes, that we can get hooked by, not something seamless and shiny without mistakes.

But automobiles are completely different. We want them to just WORK!

Which to a great degree they now do. They’re too sophisticated to work on at home. And with a little maintenance, you can get ten years and one hundred thousand plus miles out of them. Which was unheard of when the baby boomers were growing up. Before the days of minivans, before the days of four wheel drive, back when the only people who owned a truck were manual laborers.

But they’re not really trucks anymore. They’re really cars with truck-like bodies. Yes, yes, some rich geezers are buying glammed-up pickup trucks, but the real money is in what’s called an SUV, a sport utility vehicle, and there’s a dose of fashion involved, but really it’s about that utility, you can squeeze a lot more inside than you can with a car, and you sit up high.

As for that higher center of gravity…

In many cars electronics make it so it’s less of a safety issue.

As for gas mileage…the so-called SUVs get about as much as cars.

So this ship has sailed. The public has spoken. They want SUVs.

Just like they no longer wanted CDs.

You want to live in bizarro world, read the SoundScan Top Ten, where albums are boosted by ticket inclusion and the sale of physical product and downloads when the truth is anybody who’s a fan has given up on those formats. It’s all about streaming baby, and if you believe otherwise, you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution.

That’s right, some have to be dragged into the present. Others decide to sit the future out and be left forever behind. Ironically, those are the ones who scream loudest and should be ignored.

GM can see the looming crisis coming.

Not only does nobody want to buy a car, soon many won’t buy an automobile at all! You won’t need to own one. Never mind Uber, self-driving automobiles will show up when you need them. Insurance will be built-in, as will be fuel. And we’ll need a whole hell of a lot less of them.

Kinda like the Apple stock drop.

Huh?

People don’t need a new iPhone. If you read the papers, you’re always a few years behind. It’s all about stock going up and up. But to tell you the truth, my iPhone Xs Max is unnecessary. Its camera is a bit better, otherwise it’s a needless upgrade for most. So they don’t. Phones are now mature, like computers. But that did not stop the press from trumpeting Apple’s trillion dollar value. Apple’s got a product problem. Sure they can make some dough with services, but the company’s a one-trick pony, whereas Microsoft not only has software, but the cloud.

You’ve got to diversify, you’ve got to sleep with one eye open, you’ve got to contemplate the future.

It’s not like car companies can’t crash. Just look at 2008!

Meanwhile, plug-in hybrids are a concept that has passed, so Chevrolet is axing the Volt. The music business refuses to get alta kachers to stream, even though streaming saved their ass. Get those oldsters to subscribe to Spotify, or Apple or Amazon, it benefits the entire music business. But the labels don’t want to kill their cash cow. But Adobe went from boxes to subscriptions and their business went through the roof. The transition is always painful, but if you play it right, at the end you reap rewards.

Yes, people are gonna lose their jobs. But if the corporation dies, EVERYBODY loses their job.

And our myopic populace doesn’t realize that China and Europe have already gone green. The WSJ bitches about Tesla and electric car subsidies, meanwhile those selling gasoline automobiles will go bankrupt in the future, there will be no demand. Electrics have more torque and accelerate more quickly and are more efficient and pollute less. And yes, electricity has to be created to power them, but LESS! But you don’t want to deal in science, but emotion. Emotion is good for art, but not business. Like they say, WHAT’S THE BOTTOM LINE?

The bottom line is Mary Barra is preparing for not only Tesla, but BMW and Mercedes and Uber and… She’s doubling-down on electrics and driverless to win in the future, to EXIST in the future. As if Warner Brothers hadn’t refused to license Spotify in America for two years, allowing YouTube to become a streaming music powerhouse. You beat the alternatives to market, you don’t deny them or try to shut them down. Especially when the public wants them.

Those who prepare for the on demand, driverless future will win in the end.

Government is always hampered and gets it wrong. Because government doesn’t understand. The representatives know all about running for office, they know little about industry. They hold hearings to no effect. I’m not saying government is irrelevant and powerless, I’m just saying it categorically cannot see the future. Like the effects of Article 13 on the Internet.

Lyor is hated, but Article 13 is gonna hamper the net. Just listen to Seth Godin’s podcast below.

But Google is big and artists are warm and fuzzy and the past must be protected, even though it doesn’t square with the future.

How do you lose your business?

Very slowly, and then all at once.

That’s what happens in tech. That’s what could happen to Apple.

It certainly could happen to GM.

But GM is preparing, trying to turn the battleship.

Meanwhile, the President and the emotionalists are mad.

God, if these people are mad at you you must be doing something right!

Imagine a world with no Spotify, where you still had to pay up to twenty bucks to hear one good track on a CD so artists could get rich from recordings. We saw how that worked out, they called it Napster. And right now automobile giants are fighting over the future, but you don’t know this unless you’re paying attention. But ain’t that America, where the uninformed babble ignorantly about that which is beyond their pay grade. Where expertise is excoriated. Where being smart and experienced holds no value. Where a woman trying to save an industrial power is crapped upon for threatening the old boys’ world.

Seth Godin “All Rights Reserved” (start at 14:15 to hear about Article 13, or listen to the entire podcast to further understand the issues)

They got it right.

When so many get it so wrong.

Of course I’ve got complaints. First and foremost, those who were left out. Then again, those who pay for the writing of history control it. And the people involved did a mighty fine job. If you were there, you’ll resonate. If you weren’t, maybe now you’ll understand.

Most people believe the business was always here. That it arrived fully formed. As if there was no development. They lived through the tech tsunami… Then again, most people don’t remember when you had to be your own mechanic in order to compute. Now the devices just work. They didn’t. And there was no Genius Bar, you had to be your own genius.

And the people who built the rock and roll business were just that, geniuses.

Never number one in their class. Never the most popular. Always outsiders with a twinkle in their eye. Willing to take a risk, not knowing what was on the other side, but believing in their hearts…the journey was worth it.

It began with the Beatles.

Because before that national tours were not organized, and the caravans that existed were comprised of lineups of acts. The belief was that an hour plus show of one act would bore the attendees. But the attendees ate it up. Because music was everything, it delivered meaning, it was the only thing we had and we were glad.

So what this film does is give Frank Barsalona his due. He opens and closes the film but truly, his story should dominate, he built the touring circuit, he built the bands. The record companies and the radio stations think they did, but the truth is classic rock was built on the road, and you had to start somewhere, usually at the bottom of the bill, and Frank put you there, by trading much bigger horses. If you delivered, word spread, momentum built, you were on your way. The hit record was just the icing on the cake, oftentimes unforeseen, can you say FRAMPTON COMES ALIVE?

And the promoters were all young guys who gave up their path to join the circus. They were not playing it safe, not going into finance, not becoming a doctor or a lawyer as you did for insurance back then, but living on their wits.

And it was so fulfilling.

It’s hard for a young ‘un to understand what once was, even though many of the bands are still plying the boards. But if you watch this documentary, you’ll get it.

But will people see it?

It’s so hard to break a film these days, to break anything, that there’s a long lead-up of marketing to gain accolades and attention to get you to view it. But this is a documentary that should skip theatres and go directly to Netflix. After maybe screenings at legendary rock clubs, the ones that still survive. It needs to hide in plain sight so you discover it, so you watch it.

Sillerman rolled up the promoters more than two decades ago. Just as the internet hit, long before social media. Some in the business have only known Live Nation. And the one thing about Live Nation is they’re not promoters, there are hardly any promoters left. There are people who rent out halls and put tickets on sale, but few who actively work to get butts in the seats. It’s too hard, it’s just too much effort, and the people in charge work for the man and are too far from the epicenter and although they have little upward mobility, their jobs are safe.

Nothing was safe back in the day. Not the bands, the promoters or the labels. You were fighting for it all day long. And all night too. You worked 24/7 and you enjoyed it. Because you serviced the people, you allowed them to have a good time.

And although there are great songs and clips and pics, there are a couple of times when your skin tingles, like Ron Delsener setting up Simon & Garfunkel in Central Park and then hearing the duo sing “America.”

Now nobody drives cross-country. Everybody has the answers, nobody’s looking for anything, just promoting themselves. But way back when that was the ethos of the younger generation. We were searchers.

So I could walk you through from Delsener to Law to Magid to Belkin to Granat to Graham, but either you know the names or you don’t. Either this movie is second nature, or brand new.

But the most fascinating thing is said by Peter Rudge. Who mentions that he’s been through thirty or forty presidents of Columbia Records, but he’s still dealing with the same handful of promoters.

There’s an excitement, a rush when the lights go down.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re sitting in the front row or the upper deck.

You feel the surge of adrenaline. The speakers start to pump and you become euphoric. This is the place, this is where it’s happening, there’s nowhere you’d rather be.

If anything, I wish this film were longer. Maybe a ten part series. Kinda like a Ken Burns production, but not made by him, he sanitizes everything, takes it too seriously. But music always had a streak of irreverence. And this flick is only the tip of the iceberg. These stories need to be told.

And some of them I’ve heard differently, like how Graham lost the Stones.

But that’s rock and roll, it’s an oral tradition, you learn on the job, all the awards and certifications are b.s., there’s no school that can teach you. But if you were there, it was the most important thing to you.

And for many of us…

It still is.