ELEKTRA RECORDS
In February of 1983, I found myself sitting in Bob Krasnow’s office at Elektra Records in the Rolex building at 665 Fifth Avenue. I was there to interview for an A&R job, which was a bit bizarre to me, because I wasn’t sure what an A&R person did. I sat on a rather plush sofa near the receptionist’s desk. As I waited, my nerves started to get the best of me.
Bob Krasnow was the new chairman of Elektra. He had recently taken over the company that year and was starting with an empty slate, building a staff from scratch and, to my surprise and shock, I was one of the first people he was interviewing for his A&R department.
Mitchell—whom I had been dating for a few months by that point—had referred me to his dad. In fact, when I talked about my increasing desire to move forward in my career, Mitchell suggested I meet with him. I had been booking bands for three years and I was anxious for something else—but I had no idea what that was—where was I going?
From a young, excitable fan, Jerry Brandt created a professional out of me. I absorbed every single bit of information from Jerry that I could and I became the best assistant ever. But as I began booking more and more national acts, I knew there had to be more to the business. I just didn’t know what that “more” was.
The Elektra reception room felt a bit cold. I started to think I couldn’t get through this interview. Suddenly, I noticed there was a lot of contemporary art on the walls. Mitchell had told me his father was a big art collector and, when I looked around, I saw a life-sized masked sculpture made of refuse by David Finn; a glass, framed, original yellow suit from the band, Devo; a Joni Mitchell woven tapestry; and, a very cartoon-like Leslie Lew painting of children playing 45 rpm records.
I was getting excited. I loved art and I knew a lot about it, especially the current stars exhibiting downtown at that time. I decided I would talk to Krasnow about Haring, Schnabel, and Basquiat—they were the New York fixtures I was most familiar with. In fact, a few months previously, I had danced under the Basquiat mural in the Mike Todd room at the Palladium.
After a few minutes, Krasnow appeared. He wasn’t as tall as I thought he would be, but he was impeccably dressed in a gorgeous dark Italian suit with a black, silk tie and a white shirt radiating deep power. He was partially bald with perfectly angled grey hair and an unlit cigar balanced between his fingers. My initial thought upon seeing him was he had a very strong, stern face that could easily shout out a harsh command at any moment, for any reason.
He reached out his hand to me and as he did, the cufflinks on his wrist fell into a haze of diamonds and gold.
I immediately stood up, shook his hand and returned an uneasy smile. I felt a bit awkward in my black jeans and T-shirt (although I wore a pair of dress shoes, not my sneakers) but I was there, and I was going to get through this—somehow.
He showed me into his office which was larger than my entire one-room apartment and had a wall of windows overlooking Fifth Avenue. I sat down and immediately noticed he had a Terry Winters and a Robert Longo on his walls.
“By the way, have you gone to the Haring exhibit at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he replied. “I like him very much.” He lit his cigar and smiled at me.
Within minutes, we were ripping through the current art world with excitement. When we paused a little while later, we dove head-on into everything music.
Bob was a maverick in the music world since the early sixties when he did promotion work for James Brown. In 1968, he started Blue Thumb Records with Tommy Lipuma and Don Graham, bringing in The Pointer Sisters, Dave Mason, and Captain Beefheart while helping launch many other acts, including Ike & Tina Turner. I told him about my music obsession which started when I went to my first concert in 1973 to see Alice Cooper, and we began discussing the history of music from The Great American Song Book to Captain Beefheart, David Bowie and Marvin Gaye—we ran the spectrum of the hottest artists at that moment. If there was one thing I absolutely couldn’t hide, it was my lust for music. All music.
After about an hour, Bob stood up, shook my hand, said he really enjoyed our conversation and that he would be in touch. I turned and smiled to his executive assistant, Ruth, as I walked out the door. When I reached the elevator, I wiped my eyebrows and prayed—I really wanted that job.
A few weeks later, while I was working on my Wednesday and Thursday night schedules at the Red Parrot, I got a call from Krasnow.
“I’m going to hire you,” he announced.
I was stunned, and thanked him as professionally as I could. When we hung up, tears started forming in my eyes. I couldn’t believe this turn in my life, and the problem was, I had no idea what an A&R executive did.
Those first six months were a huge learning curve. Bob pulled me into his office to sit in on phone calls with agents, managers, and lawyers.
There I was, a twenty-three-year-old nightclub assistant director and suddenly I was thrust into a corporate environment. Bob was aware that a major bottom line needed to be satisfied for our parent company, Time Warner. However, the brilliance of Krasnow was that he knew how to merge art and commerce successfully. What Bob was doing was grooming me in how to approach record deals with the same finesse that he did so beautifully.
The primary job of the A&R department makes up the backbone of every record company label. The role of the A&R executive is to find and acquire new talent because without extraordinary and potentially bankable artists there is no label. Then the A&R executive nurtures and develops the new talent to the point when it’s time to go into the recording studio. They oversee the recording process by finding a producer, developing a budget, and making sure all of the songs are top-notch. I was just praying I could do any of this.
When I was given my own office, I was beside myself with excitement. I was anxious to set it up perfectly. I hung some of my black-and-white photography collection on the walls—a Mapplethorpe, an Albert Sanchez of Dolph Lundgren in the swimming pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel painted by David Hockney. and a Peter Beard of Truman Capote visiting Bobby Beausoleil in San Quentin prison. I also put up a very colorful Ted Rosenthal poster of an Italian exhibition of his sculptures. Art was a world Bob and I shared with great passion. If you had the opportunity to visit his home, you were greeted at the front door by a silver life-sized double-image Elvis Presley by Warhol. I believe it was the only double that existed. Bob exposed me to more intellectually stimulating and refined works than I could ever have imagined.
Often, when Bob knocked on your office door you would be presented with completely unexpected surprises. Once, he tapped on mine and opened it and Andy Warhol was standing right next to him. Warhol introduced himself and gave me the latest copy of Interview magazine, which he signed. I thanked him, trying not to faint from the shock. Bob did that with everyone in the office.
As I became more involved in my job, I listened to thousands of demo tapes investigating potential bands to sign. I traveled constantly to wherever there was an artist whose sound sparked my interest—Austin, Dallas, Memphis, Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and every so often I would head north to my one of my other favorite cities, Toronto. All those places were thriving with up-and-coming, unsigned bands from every genre.
That was the job: searching, speculating, judging—hoping I would find the next big thing.