RED PARROT
Jerry started bringing in other people to the office to share in the booking activities. Maybe he sensed I was feeling itchy—that I had a hunger for something else. So, while I continued working there, I started booking bands every Wednesday night at the Red Parrot nightclub.
Yet, in early 1983, I finally left The Ritz. Between speaking to Mitchell about his father’s plans for restarting Elektra and my desire to do more in the music business, it felt right to move on. Bill Brusca, the day manager at The Ritz, happened to be leaving the club at the same time and, luckily, he got me that weekly booking gig at the Red Parrot, which meant I could stay employed while I waited hopefully for an interview with Mitchell’s father, Bob Krasnow.
The Red Parrot opened in 1982 and was located on 57th Street and 11th Avenue near the West Side Highway. One of the more striking things about the place was that, once you entered, there were a dozen huge climate-controlled cylinders housing large, beautiful red parrots.
I ended up bringing in a lot of exceptional acts to the club, including Madonna, Ronnie Spector, David Johansen, Bow Wow Wow, Divine, James Brown, and George Clinton. I also arranged for silk-screened posters to be designed by the performance artist, John Sex.1 Every week he screened a hundred posters for each show and we pasted them up all over the city.
One night, when I showed up at the club for work, Wayland Flowers and Madame were in the dressing room as they were appearing that evening. Wayland was a comedian and puppeteer who had risen to fame in the seventies largely due to his buddy—an off-color, wooden puppet named Madame. Wayland described Madame as “my mama, my grandmother, my aunt and a lot of people I had watched in the movies. She’s Mammy Yokum to Marlene Dietrich to Marjorie Main.”2
I went backstage to make sure Wayland had everything he needed and when I opened the door, I found him so high on cocaine, I was afraid he wouldn’t be able to perform. I looked at him and he shot back a nasty stare then threw Madame on the floor. I was mortified. That was his ticket, that craggy old puppet is what shot him to fame on The Andy Williams Show and Hollywood Squares, and he had just thrown her on the ground. I feared he might step all over her, so I picked her up and put her gently down on a chair. Eventually, we had to wait until he came down from all the coke in his system, because he could barely speak and we couldn’t cancel, as the event was sold out.
The Red Parrot was a blast to work at and, for one weekend, I was able to get Jerry Lee Lewis booked. He demanded that a 50 percent deposit of his fee be sent to his home in Georgia, which I did. Then the day before he was set to arrive, he canceled. It turned out he had surgery on his butt and couldn’t make it. Meanwhile, the weekend was sold out. I thought I might lose it, and I said to his agent in a frantic phone call: “I will provide a perfect pillow for him to stick under his ass. Just get him up here!”
“Mr. Lewis is not coming,” he insisted.
“Ok, fine!” I said. “Just send back the 50 percent deposit.” His agent said he would—except he never did. The club owner, Jimmy Murray, wanted Bill Brusca to repay the deposit, which Lewis never returned. Bill freaked out so he got hold of a gorgeous escort for Jimmy, and Jimmy let him off the hook. “A hot trick cures everything,” Bill said.
Chuck Berry and James Brown also insisted on a 50 percent deposit up front or they would be no-shows.
James Brown played the club in March 1983 and the thing I remember most about that evening was when some I.R.S. agents showed up to get the money we were paying Brown, because he owed back taxes to the government. Except we had paid him in advance.
All the old-school black entertainers wanted 50 percent sent to them upfront and the remainder in cash prior to the gig. They had been screwed out of money too many times. The bias and prejudice against blacks in the fifties and sixties was as prominent in music as it was in the rest of the country, and they never forgot it.
Often catapulted to success from a neighborhood street corner or, like Little Richard, from a bus terminal kitchen where he was washing dishes, black musicians seldom had access to good advice about record contracts, royalty payments, marketing, promotion, or career development. As a result, they were routinely swindled out of their publishing rights and underpaid for record sales.3
When the show was over, Brown and his band rushed up to the roof and down the fire escape to dodge the I.R.S. agents.
Chuck Berry performed a few months earlier and he required a “pickup” band to back him up. In those cases, I usually hired Arno Hecht and the Uptown Horns. Chuck always wanted to pay the band the least amount of money as possible, and when he arrived in his dressing room, I had to have the last 50 percent of his fee in cash, with a bottle of Grand Marnier. Every time I booked him, there were different women with him and they were always white. Before he went onstage, all three of us—Chuck, his lady friend of the moment, and me—stood there counting the remaining 50 percent of his fee. When it was definite that it was all there, the young lady put it in her purse and Chuck went onstage.
Aside from all that, Chuck was really nice and sat at the bar with me having drinks before his gig. My dad was a big Chuck Berry fan and he came to both the early and late shows. He never came to any of the concerts I promoted. But he was such a huge Chuck Berry fan, that when he showed up for those shows, I got a chance to introduce him to Chuck and I was delighted. I think Dad specifically came to these shows because I was never around the family anymore, and this was a chance for us to get together and bond.
During those spectacular Wednesday night concert series, I also booked Madonna, whose self-titled debut album was just being released. She was still doing track dates, so I had her perform her singles “Everybody” and “Burning Up.” I had spoken with her agent, Rob Light at ICM, and argued about whether I was going to pay her $2,000 or $2,500 for the gig. I ended up paying her the $2,500. The New York City night life came out in droves to hear her. That evening, we had a number of special guests in the house, including Afrika Bambaataa, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Bernard Summer, the lead singer from New Order, who I was so in love with that after I gave him a hit of ecstasy, I proposed marriage—another amazing Wednesday night.