THIS BUSINESS CALLED MUSIC

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench,

a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free,

and good men die like dogs.

—Creatively adapted from a quote by Hunter S. Thompson

In 1990 my first son was born. Parents often listen to nursery rhymes from people like Raffi and watch big purple dinosaurs on TV with their kids. My wife and I thought about how soothing and contemporary a Reggae for Kids album would be. Songs with positive messages for children that both they and their parents could enjoy listening to with that nice relaxing reggae beat. I moved forward with this concept and decided to add a number of baby boomer songs from my childhood like “Puff the Magic Dragon” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” We were not seeing dollar signs and thinking about how much money this would generate, yet it became the biggest and most profitable release in RAS Records history. It originated from a place of love. Love for our newborn baby and the blessings that come with children.

I picked out the songs and then thought about which artists could perform them, and helped write some lyrics to impart the positive messages. It was a joy creating this album, and I learned that when you do something from pure love, you may be blessed with the greatest amount of money you could ever imagine. I have always believed that when you do good that good will come back to you—and this has been an important aspect of how I live my life.

RAS earned profits of over a million dollars from this release. It was licensed all around the world with the jackets printed in many different languages. I got letters from teachers of autistic children who told me that this was the only thing that could calm down their class and bring them serenity. It became so popular in Jamaica that a radio show called Reggae for Kids came on each morning at six thirty a.m. on Irie FM when everyone was getting ready for school and work, and its theme song was taken from our album. And twenty years later the show is still on every morning and people all over the island start their day with a positive message and some irie vibes. You see how Jah works? My goal of spreading the positive vibes and sounds of reggae internationally was becoming a reality. Once again, we had incredible packaging, which had become our forte, courtesy of another warm, spiritual, and positive cover from Mitch “Ites” Goldberg.

I followed this up with More Reggae for Kids, and then my European distributor suggested that I do a Reggae for Kids with all Disney songs. The first two Reggae for Kids releases had both been huge successes, and I figured that since everyone knew and loved the songs from Disney, this should be even bigger and could cross over into more homes outside of the reggae market. Of course, the release had to be relevant to Jamaican culture, and I still had to live up to the Real Authentic Sound I had promised. In my head I heard Bunny Wailer doing “Hakuna Matata” from The Lion King. Tony Rebel doing “Bare Necessities” from The Jungle Book. Even Gregory Isaacs doing “When I See an Elephant Fly” from Dumbo.

The recordings were amazing. People were blown away by reggae renditions of these Disney classics. My friend John Simson sent out the master to people he knew at Disney to see if they would be interested in licensing the CD for the Disney label, and they loved it. They offered me a $75,000 advance and said that they would feature it on the Disney TV channel, and do a special promotion for it at Disney World featuring artists from Jamaica. That they would create animated videos for the project and that the CD cover art would be complete with all the Disney characters. The project would reek of Disney. In addition, they would hire me to be the executive producer of a whole series of Disney collections such as Disney Blues, Disney Jazz, Disney Goes Latin, and so on. I could see myself entering a whole new echelon of the music business. Hanging out with Disney executives and flying out to LA and having astronomical production budgets—visions of grandeur.

But people close to me talked me out of it. My US distributor projected that I would get at least $500,000 in profits from them based on the sales of the previous two Reggae for Kids albums, which made the Disney advance look small. My overseas partners were also pushing for me not to give it to Disney, as it would then fall out of their distribution. And then a good friend from LA who worked in the film industry told me that Disney was a big corporate motherfucker, and that all the people he knew who had worked on the Cool Runnings film, a Disney production, felt that they had gotten ripped off. I had heard similar things about Disney and knew there were books written about what a big evil empire they had become.

So the independent rebel in me turned them down and I decided to put it out on my own in 2001. Disney warned me not to use any of their characters in the artwork and that I could not use the Disney name in the title. And although the CD turned out to do very well, it was not the success I had hoped it would be. By this time the music industry had started to collapse with the advent of Napster and other free downloading sites. And my US distributor that had promised me big bucks actually ended up filing for bankruptcy and burned me for over $300,000. Other than the “Bad Boys” publishing oversight, this was the biggest mistake of my career in the music business. Who knows what Jah would have had in store for me if I had gone along with the Mouse down that yellow brick road?

* * *

With the exception of very early agreements with Freddie McGregor and Black Uhuru, RAS always did one-album deals with artists. I did not want to sign the artists for long-term deals, as their ancestors had already borne the brunt of slavery, and I always felt the music industry created long-term contracts in a contemporary effort to own slaves. The labels would claim to be protecting their investments but it was more about denying the artists the freedom they deserved. I told the artists that we could do an album together, and if we were both satisfied with the experience they could come back and do another one. That way they were free to go elsewhere if they were not pleased with how RAS had treated them. And at the same time I wanted to educate the artists about what is a very complicated business. To empower them with knowledge so they could navigate through the treacherous minefields where record labels, music publishers, booking agents, and managers were all looking to get a piece of what they had created. I always took the time to try to fully explain, to the best of my ability, all of the nuances that could have an effect on their careers.

Sometimes I would lose artists this way, as they would get higher offers from larger labels, but for the most part our return rate was excellent. And I liked that the artists knew they were free, and that this might inspire them to produce their best possible music for me. If an artist was miserable with his label, what would stop him from going to the studio and wasting a bunch of money to turn out some worthless crap just to show his discontent? (This is why I often suggest that everyone in the industry should read the manifesto The Business of Music.) I always felt really good about sending artists checks and paying them their royalties. I knew life was not easy for most of them, and I was glad to get them some money, especially after seeing how other labels (especially the majors) dealt with them. If RAS made a video or some cool item to help promote their albums we never charged them back for this. Even if we gave artists tour support (and we often did), this was never recouped from their royalties.

That word “recoup” has some very interesting implications in the major leagues, as I would later learn in my dealings with Sanctuary Records. Everything got recouped. It was in the contract. It was the norm for major labels to squeeze out as much as they could for themselves, which is why there is often such an adversarial relationship between artists, managers, lawyers, and the labels. Almost an us-against-them mentality. Chaka Demus & Pliers once told me that after having three songs hit the Top Ten of the British pop charts, Island Records sent a royalty statement showing they still had an “unrecouped” royalty balance of close to 100,000 pounds. Sure, they had made expensive music videos and went to England to perform on Top of the Pops, but they had no clue that all these expenses were coming out of their own pockets. Why should the label care if the video director showed up in a limo? Or if the catering on the set was first class? The artist was paying for it anyway.

RAS did not operate that way. Usually it was my station wagon that went to the airport to pick up the artists, and my home became known as Hotel Himelfarb to the musicians staying there so we could save on expenses in order to put out the best music possible. Spending money in the studio was my highest budgetary priority.

My good friend Marc Appelbaum, who owned the thirty-five-store chain Kemp Mill Records in Washington, DC, told me he never understood the excesses of the music industry. He explained how Sony would spend $30,000 on a luncheon in New York with fancy food at some expensive restaurant and bring in artists like Celine Dion to impress all the big record store owners, and the label would pay for all the retailers’ hotels and travel. Wine and dine them to the max. I was once at a Christmas party held at the Kemp Mill warehouse and I noticed a few skids of Prince CDs stacked way up in the air. I asked someone what they were doing up there and they told me that the label had asked them to make a “political buy” to make it look like the Prince release was number one on the Billboard charts. They would be able to return these for full credit in two months, before payment was due on them. All smoke and mirrors. No wonder Prince stuck his middle finger in the air and waved it at the big corporate labels.

I still say it was the major record companies that killed the music business and not illegal downloading. If a CD could retail for ten dollars, you would have a consumer who would support the music business and the artists instead of opting out to download music for free. What was the purpose for selling a Britney Spears CD for $18.99 when it only cost the label seventy-five cents to manufacture it? Again, the answer is simple: greed. The major labels could not control their greed. Greed in keeping as much money from the artists as possible, and greed in soaking the consumer for way more than they were prepared to spend. And this doesn’t even scratch the surface of the horror stories of other backdoor deals and how “payola” dictated what was played on the radio.

* * *

In the 1980s and ’90s, there had been a great proliferation of big-box record stores like Virgin, HMV, and Tower. Both Best Buy and Circuit City also expanded their CD selections, so there was a much larger distribution pipeline to fill. The problem was that in the music business you sell the product to a distributor, who in turn resells it to the music stores, and it is all 100 percent returnable. Anything that doesn’t sell comes back to the label, and this larger pipeline meant larger returns. Instead of getting monthly checks from our distributors, so much product would be returned that we got “upside down” with them and they were instead asking us for big checks to balance out the accounts. This meant that we had thousands of CDs in our warehouse with no one to sell them to, and the money we thought we had in the bank had to be repaid to our distributors. This effectively led to a situation where the labels financed the entire record industry, since we paid for everything from the manufacturing to artist royalties to returns.

We were not alone. All the other labels were feeling the same pinch and Rounder, our owner at that stage, did not blame RAS for this unfortunate financial circumstance. But they did start to tighten the screws. If I wanted to spend even five hundred dollars, they required an explanation of what I was spending it on and whether it was really necessary. Cost-cutting was the order of the day, and the freedom I had felt in running RAS had been taken away from me by CFOs in Boston who were watching every dime. It wasn’t the kind of situation I was comfortable with and I soon told the Rounders I was coming to Boston to discuss our future relationship.

I have been told that while many people see the world in numbers, I see it in colors. Some might say I take an unorthodox approach to life and money, but that is just me. I told the Rounders that day that I was leaving the company and they could sort out my 20 percent ownership sometime down the road. I was moving on. They tried to discourage me and said we could work everything out, and that a RAS without Doctor Dread at the helm was like a ship lost at sea, but I stood firm.

Later that evening Bill Nowlin suggested that instead of leaving I could just buy out their 80 percent stake. I had never thought of that but it sounded like a pretty interesting idea. And thanks to my lawyer Rich Bar and his insistence that I set a goal and then together we figure out how to get to the finish line, I ultimately found a way to buy back their 80 percent stake in RAS, and in 1997 I was once again the soul owner of the company.

* * *

RAS occupied a small suite of offices on the second floor of a building in Silver Spring, Maryland. Tafari Music also had its offices there, and it was nice to have RAS and Tafari reunited. We were trodding along again and continued to release a steady stream of music. Our relationships with our overseas distributors were still intact and we were able to survive. But in 2001 a confluence of events put the company in a precarious position. Our distributor, Valley Music, one of the largest record distributors in the world, filed for bankruptcy. The owner Barney Cohen, who had become a friend along the way, took his company public and raised loads of money (I even got in on the IPO before realizing that the whole system felt dirty, so I got out)—and then, boom, it all fell apart. Valley Music went bankrupt and shares in the company became worthless. Because US bankruptcy laws protect the rich and fuck the less fortunate, I ended up having to buy back the inventory that I owned, and this whole affair set me back $300,000. It was a lot to swallow.

This was around the same time that Napster set up shop on the Internet and people now had the ability to download music for free, which signaled the beginning of the end for the music industry as we knew it. Throughout history, from Edison cylinders to 78s and LPs, from eight-track tapes and cassettes to eventually CDs, it was the record companies who told you how you were going to buy your music. But the paradigm had shifted. The consumer was now telling the record labels how they wanted to get their music. Yet the labels did not want to abdicate this power to the consumer. They wanted the control. The writing was on the wall but the record companies refused to see it. Instead of trying to make a deal with companies like Napster, the greedy motherfuckers decided to sue college kids and their moms instead. If the majors could have seen the forest through the trees and offered the two college kids who started Napster something like $500 million to become partners and figure out a way to monetize the new file-sharing phenomena, then maybe the music industry would not have collapsed. The consumer was rebelling.

Record labels were now thought of as big evil corporate rip-offs, and the consumer had no remorse in stealing music from the web. Even some recording artists started bypassing labels and using the Internet to connect directly with their audience. Many other free download sites popped up, and piracy became rampant. Out of control. It brought the music industry to its knees. I knew it was just a matter of time before all of this would implode and the music industry would be a shambles.

My good friend Don Rose who had founded Rykodisc, at one time the largest independent record label in America, suggested I contact Sanctuary Records about buying RAS. Sanctuary had just bought Trojan Records, which held the most significant catalog of reggae music (outside of Studio One and Island) from the early ’60s through the late ’70s. By adding the RAS repertoire they could arguably own the most important reggae over a span of almost three decades. Sanctuary said they were definitely interested in making the acquisition. At the same time, my friend and lawyer Rich Bar was carving out an employment contract for me that would ensure me a good salary for the next three to four years. During the negotiations, I had to sell our house in Jamaica so we could continue to pay our bills at RAS. The clock was ticking and I could feel the whole music industry contracting as record stores began to close left and right.

RAS had shown losses of over $100,000 and $200,000 for the previous two years and we were struggling to hang on. Some people told me that I was fooling myself and that Sanctuary would never buy a company that was losing money, but I still believed it made sense because of the value of the catalog. Nicole and Liz at RAS were putting together the figures Sanctuary requested for their due diligence. But things were taking way too long. Ultimately, around thirteen months passed before we signed a deal. I had now sold my company twice and was ready to move into a new phase of my music career. Of course, I had to first get artists who had originally made handshake deals with RAS to sign actual contracts, which was a tough job but was made easier by the goodwill we had generated over the years.

I was visiting my mother in Florida the day the wire for a little bit under one million dollars from Sanctuary hit my account. Man, did that feel good. I had lots of bills to pay off with that money, and while there was not much left for me after it was all said and done, I still had a high-paying job in the reggae music business and had managed to hold onto my publishing company. But for that moment I had a million dollars in the bank and as I looked out over the ocean and into the horizon, I again knew it was Jah who was blessing me, and I was so thankful that I do not remember if I laughed or cried. But I do know I gave thanks with all of my spirit.

* * *

Things at Sanctuary were interesting, to say the least. It was the first time I had worked for what was essentially a major label. We were distributed by Warner Bros. and then Sony/BMG, and there was certainly a pervasive corporate attitude within the company. Many years before I had been part of an independent label organization known as NAIRD (National Association of Independent Record Distributors). I made quite a few friends there and learned the ins and outs of the music industry. Collectively the independents had a bigger share than any one of the individual five major labels so we were definitely a force to be reckoned with. I was voted by my peers to serve on the board of directors one year, which was a great honor. To know that my fellow independent label owners respected me enough to have me represent them was a good feeling. But that camaraderie had faded into a distant memory as NAIRD dissolved with much of the rest of the music industry. Now I was with Sanctuary. Budgets. Sales projections. Egos. I had been told by someone working there that it was impossible to get fired and that the company did not know its head from its tail.

Admittedly, I had the opportunity to produce some great records while I was there, including the Bob Dylan reggae tribute CD. We also signed and released CDs by Steel Pulse and Sizzla. And an amazing CD from Nasio called Living in the Positive. Steel Pulse was one of my all-time favorite groups, and this led to me growing close with their lead singer David Hinds, who along with Sly Dunbar and Gregory Isaacs is one of the true geniuses I have met in the reggae business. I could tell from his songwriting, with its melodic and lyrical sophistication, that this was no ordinary person. The album African Holocaust is one of the best CDs we ever released. Every song a stunner.

So in many ways my years at Sanctuary were quite positive. I had an expense budget that covered my travel and entertainment costs. Excess spending was the order of the day, and I was told that if I did not spend this money allocated to me for travel and entertainment each year that I would be in danger of having it reduced. Excellent restaurants, nice hotels, traveling first class. Just turn in the receipts and a check would be mailed to you. Paris is my favorite city in the world and the company sent me there once a year to stimulate my creative energy. I visited our main offices in London once a year too. And the more trips I took to Jamaica, the better.

Life was good. No, life was great. It’s almost embarrassing how much I was getting paid, along with all the additional benefits being heaped on me. But you know what happens to a house of cards: eventually it collapses. And Sanctuary was hemorrhaging money at a time when the music industry continued to shrink. As Tower Records and HMV shuttered their stores, Sanctuary went into panic mode. It seemed like every week in Billboard there were reports of how much money the company was losing, and how the bank was calling in their loans. Before long, we could all see the company was in free fall.

Then things came to a standstill. No more productions. I was told to just sit tight and wait to see if the company could get itself out of this mess. The trade publications reported the company was over forty million dollars in debt, and that bankruptcy was looming. I continued to get paid and hung in there doing nothing. I felt isolated being in Washington, DC, while everyone else was at our New York and Raleigh offices. This went on for close to one year. And then in 2007, Universal Records swooped in and actually bought the company and all of its debt as well. I tried to buy back the RAS label before the sale went through, but couldn’t afford the $1.2 million asking price.

No breaks for Doctor Dread this time. On one hand I felt bad knowing that RAS and I would not be together. I had raised this baby from birth, and the separation anxiety kicked in pretty hard. But on the other hand I felt good that a company that was seemingly as financially secure as Universal now owned the masters, and that the artists should be able to get their royalty statements and payments. Boy, was I wrong.

For most artists it has been a nightmare, and it seems that there is not much interest on the part of Universal to take care of them. I soon started a small label, Tafari Records, and released a few CDs, but I could still see that the music industry was ending for me.

* * *

Fortunately, before I resolved to completely leave the game I managed to put together a deal to sell the Greensleeves label and publishing division to Steve Weltman. I had met Steve when he managed Nasio, who I had signed to RAS during my tenure with Sanctuary. Steve was a longtime music veteran and had worked with the Beatles and Chrysalis, among others. He had some venture capital people in Switzerland who made loads of money in the hedge-fund game and wanted to finance the purchase of music labels and music publishing companies. Greensleeves was the top reggae label in England—they had an extensive catalog and were at the forefront of the Jamaican dancehall movement. I had worked with Greensleeves for over twenty years, and became good friends with one of the owners, Chris Sedgwick. Their A&R person and co-owner Chris Cracknell was instrumental in identifying and signing new talent.

I always found it interesting that in the twenty-plus years they owned Greensleeves, Chris Sedgwick had never visited Jamaica and Chris Cracknell had only been there once. Cracknell wasn’t really a producer, instead choosing to license music from other producers, and thus rarely worked directly with the actual artists. In this regard RAS and Greensleeves were very different companies—yet we worked together to distribute each other’s records, license product for manufacturing, and we were reciprocal publishers of each other’s catalogs in our respective territories. Tafari Music collected for Greensleeves Publishing in the US, and Greensleeves collected for us in the UK.

We had some fruitful years together and scored a big hit with the Diwali rhythm from Steven “Lenky” Marsden, which was voiced-over by Sean Paul (“Get Busy”), Wayne Wonder (“No Letting Go”), and Lumidee (“Never Leave You”). All three of these songs crossed over to the pop charts and Tafari collected 50 percent of the proceeds. “Get Busy” spent six weeks at number one on the US pop charts—we collected over a million dollars for that song alone. I remember going to the post office one morning and finding the ASCAP check for radio play and other performances waiting there. I said a prayer over the envelope before I opened it, and lo and behold there was a check in there for nearly $225,000! That remains the single biggest check Tafari Music ever saw. Even after paying Greensleeves and Lenky their respective shares, everybody was able to eat well from this money. I remember thanking Sean Paul backstage at a reggae festival in Paris for paying for my son’s college education. He said it was his pleasure and we thumped fists and laughed.

Because of our mutual respect, when Chris told me he was looking to sell the label and publishing company, I was immediately interested in buying it. And although I wasn’t able to come up with the financing myself, I brokered the introduction between Greensleeves and Steve Weltman. As my commission for securing the deal, Greensleeves ended up wiring me a whopping $178,500. Considering I was out of work and dealing with serious health issues at the time, this was a blessing. To this day I have the utmost respect for Chris and what he did; although we have not talked in years I can say he is a man of his word. I unfortunately can’t say the same for Steve Weltman, who reneged on paying his share of my commission. But I know that Jah always provides and to this day I and I continue to run Tafari Music while Weltman and his investment group had to sell off Greensleeves to VP. And I do not “pity the fool.”

* * *

Although the record industry is just a skeleton of its former self, music will always be created and heard, and that connection between the artist and fan will always remain. Thank you, Jah, and thank you to all the good and bad people I met along the way who allowed me to have a life of such great fulfillment. Raspect!