NO MORE MR. RECORD EXECUTIVE
During 1999, I met a number of times with Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records, who was starting a new company called Palm Pictures. I met with him about possibly joining their A&R department. As the deal was being considered, my friend Mina Caputo asked me if I wanted to be involved with her first solo project.
For the life of me, I don’t really know when I met Mina, but I believe it was around 1993. All I know is that the moment we met, we both knew that it was a friendship that would last for the rest of our lives. Mina was still Keith at that point. She did not start transitioning until a few years later and through it all, she continues to be that charming, creative, talented human being.
Mina has been the front person and lyricist for Life of Agony since that band’s inception. Her live performances are electric, and she has that wildly charismatic, Jim Morrison quality on stage.
Around 1997, while Mina was still Keith, he took a break from the band and, in 1998, decided he wanted to make a solo album. Given my experience as an A&R executive—not to mention being his friend—he wanted my involvement, so I took on the job of executive producer. After a few conversations, we decided we wanted the album to come from a traditional, storytelling perspective, with a lot of mood and dark atmosphere.
We started researching producers and we looked on the Billboard charts and the name Jared Kotler jumped out at us. He had a number-one hit single with “Sex and Candy” by the band Marcy Playground. We called him at his recording studio, The Orchard House, in Kings Point, New York, located on the grounds of a horse ranch estate. The production of his current record interested us, and we set up a meeting with him to discuss Keith’s album. In conversation, Jared came across as smart and unconventional, which made us feel he just might be the right person to make this record for us.
We were excited about the recording. Keith had a ton of songs which we narrowed down to twelve that we knew were going to tell an inspiring story. From the get-go, I thought we had this mini-masterpiece on our hands. But I didn’t want to get too excited too quickly. Yet, as an A&R executive, I know when something is going to be magical. That album had the makings of magic.
Before long, we were in Jared’s Long Island studio, laying down some basic tracks. There were vintage Persian rugs on the floor, which kept the sound in the room warm and ambient. It was the beginning of a phenomenal experience.
The songs were amazing and Jared brought in brilliant musicians such as Craig Ross, guitarist and longtime associate of Lenny Kravitz; Gerry Leonard, who played guitar with David Bowie—and was personally chosen by Bowie to play on his last tour; the great drummer, Steven Wolf; and the fabulous Jack Daley on bass; as well as many other highly respected session players.
We planned to hire Mike Shipley to mix the album after we finished laying down all the tracks with Jared. Mike was a superstar engineer,1 having worked with the Sex Pistols and Queen early in his career, and later, with various artists, most notably Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Def Leppard. I didn’t even know if we could afford him, because his fee was way up in the stratosphere. But what I do remember is that any time I needed money, I went to the Business Affairs department at Roadrunner Records, the label releasing the album. I would ask for another $10,000—another $20,000—another $30,000—and believe it or not, we got all the money. We ended up spending nearly $250,000 on this record that no one at Roadrunner understood or even cared about.
Roadrunner is a hard rock, heavy metal label and had released three Life of Agony albums: River Runs Red, Ugly, and Soul Searching Sun. But Keith’s solo record was very different. It had a John Lennon quality, something Roadrunner was not at all known for. We were very proud of the album and yet I wound up having many arguments with Business Affairs and the A&R department about the final results.
We went out to Los Angeles to have the record mixed by Shipley. I always preferred to go to the studio where the mixing engineer worked, because they were familiar with the room and knew how to get the biggest and best sounds of what was just laid down on tape. Mike was a sweetheart, despite the fact that he never wanted us in the studio looking over his shoulder while he was mixing. We were somewhat amused but never fought him on this, because we knew we were going to get back a world-class, brilliantly mixed album.
When we arrived at the studio, the first person we ran into was Eminem, which stopped us dead in our tracks. Keith extended his hand and said hello. I just stood there, frozen. We knew that Dr. Dre was producing his album, although we never got a chance to meet him. We heard Marilyn Manson was in the next studio doing mixing work as well. There was a strong, creative energy throughout each of the studios, coming out of the work Mike and all those major artists were doing. In that moment, we knew we were in the right place.
The first day we arrived in L.A., we stayed at the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn in Burbank. The hotel was named after the actress from My Three Sons—such a hoot! Very camp! However, we ended up moving the following day to West Hollywood to be closer to the studio and all the action. We wanted to stay at The Standard on Sunset Boulevard because we knew the rooms were furnished with silver leather bean bag chairs, and the curtains were covered with the famous Andy Warhol flower prints. The room we were in was modern, but definitely a throwback to the sixties.
We also brought a book on the teachings of the Sufi, Islamic scholar and theologian, Rumi. His words guided us throughout our entire journey. The book we carried with us was The Essential Rumi and we held it close throughout the entire trip because we felt it gave us the spiritual guidance we were looking for. Every day, we opened it to a new page and read a few words of wisdom for the day, such as “Shine like the universe is yours.”
One night, Keith and I rented a vintage Cadillac convertible to celebrate. We bought a couple bottles of champagne and we both dropped a hit of ecstasy. Even before we left the hotel, we were laughing and screaming while Keith painted his toenails. We knew we wanted to go for a late-night drive, so we took the car and drove up to the Hollywood sign on Mount Lee in the Hollywood Hills. On the way there, we went up Mulholland Drive to the area where the very rich live. We were feeling very “David Lynch.” We laughed and sang as the ecstasy kicked in. I soon noticed a security guard a few feet up the hill, so I told Keith to put out his joint and hide the champagne bottles under the seat. Of course, when security stopped us, we apologized, said we took a wrong turn, that we were from New York and didn’t know where we were going. The guard very sternly let us know we had to exit the area immediately.
A few days later, when we were heading back to New York City, I reached out to the photographer Edward Mapplethorpe, to shoot the front cover of the album. Edward did a session with Keith at the beach. It was the dead of winter. All Keith had on was white gauze and it was twenty degrees out. I also reached out to Carol Friedman, who shot exquisite studios photographs of Keith.
Eventually, Roadrunner let us know they weren’t releasing the album in the United States. We were completely thrown! The album was a work of art, although certainly not the type of recording that Roadrunner had in its catalogue. It was released in Germany and Japan, the Netherlands, and the UK, but we were very disappointed by the label’s overall lack of support.
A number of years later, Keith transitioned to Mina. It has been so inspirational to see my dear friend blossom and truly become her authentic self. In many of our conversations about her transitioning, we were concerned about the possible negative effect on her career and on Life of Agony. However, what happened was the exact opposite—she was accepted with love and acclaim by all her fans. We’ve had many intimate conversations during this self-liberating process, and I have found my dear friend to be very brave and courageous. Mina has always been a person about truth and honesty and, as a result, people respond to her with nothing but love.
Thankfully, the job at Palm Pictures came through and I started there in 2000. Palm Pictures is an entertainment company that acquires and distributes both film and music.
While I was there, the first band I signed was Speedealer. They were from Dallas, Texas, and were a noisy bunch—they made a mighty racket—and I adored every waking moment of them. I contacted Jason Newsted from Metallica to produce their album and I loved how he unified their sound yet allowed them to still steam roll through all of the songs with a kick-ass intensity. It was called Second Sight, and was just fantastic.
After I brought in Speedealer, Palm’s business affairs office began assigning bands to me they had already brought onto the label. One of those bands was Fozzy, headed by the famed wrestler Chris Jericho and included his infamous sidekick, Rich Ward, of Stuck Mojo—pioneers of rap-metal. At some point they wanted to name the band “Fozzy Osbourne,” but Sharon Osbourne nixed that immediately.
Because Chris was a highly successful wrestler at the time, there was a real buzz about their self-titled debut album, which came out in 2000 on the Palm and Megaforce labels. Unfortunately, it failed to make the Billboard charts. Since that debut, the band has released seven albums and continue to tour worldwide, killin’ it wherever they go.
Another one of the bands assigned to me was Local H. Local H was formed by guitarist and vocalist, Scott Lucas, and drummer, Joe Daniels, both from Zion, Illinois. Though Scott has remained the central figure in the duo, there has been an ever-changing cast of drummers—except for Brian St. Clair, who played in Local H the longest, from 1999–2013.
The duo that turned “keep it copacetic” into a primal anthem revive Nirvana’s brand of anarchic rock, replete with sly slacker lyrics, screeching slogans (“Hands on the Bible!”), and feedback-drenched hidden tracks. Brian St. Clair can’t provide the bottom-heavy kick of old drummer Joe Daniels, but guests like Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme and the Misfits’ Jerry Only complete Scott Lucas’ (guitar, bass, vocals) noisy symphony.2
We grabbed Jack Douglas3 to produce, because we loved his work with John Lennon and Aerosmith. The album, titled Here Comes The Zoo, did pretty well, making it to number thirteen on Billboard’s Top Independent Album chart.
A couple months after working on the recording of Here Comes the Zoo, I was at home making some tea. While I waited for the water to boil, I went out onto my terrace to enjoy what looked like a glorious morning. I live on 17th Street in Chelsea and my balcony faces south. I have a clear shot view of downtown New York City and the World Trade Center.
As I was out there, I suddenly heard my neighbor, Cathy, scream. I share the terrace with her, so I leaned over the partition to look into her apartment.
“Cathy! “Is everything okay?”
She ran out.
“Michael! Look!”
I turned around. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
“Wait a minute,” I gasped. “Are the Twin Towers . . . on fire?” My eyes stopped cold, in shock.
Seventeenth street had been my home for the last six years, and the constant view from my terrace was of the magnificent city skyline.
“I think an airplane crashed into the World Trade Center!” Cathy said.
I saw huge clouds of smoke billowing up from the force of whatever was happening, whatever was hitting the World Trade Center. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I ran back inside to turn on CNN, and Cathy came racing over. She left my front door open and my neighbors on the entire 15th floor started streaming into the apartment. We congregated on my terrace and in front of the television. We all watched in horror. CNN finally said that New York City was under attack. We didn’t know what to think—or do.
Meanwhile, the second airplane hadn’t struck yet, but it did within minutes. Then we started to see people throwing themselves out of the World Trade Center windows. Everyone went completely silent. It was the most horrible thing we ever witnessed in our lives. The next six months I had to keep my windows closed because whenever the smoke blew north, I was hit with “an acrid burning type smell. A mixture of vaporized burnt plastic, electronics, burnt paper, wood, steel and concrete, jet fuel, ozone and a sickly sweet edge and lot of very old re-awakened NYC dust. . . . The intense heat and burning produced by the airplane fuel and the mixture of all those synthetic (and organic) materials, from the tons of electronics produced some noxious toxic gases.”4 Those sickening smells always brought back the terror of that day.
The city took a long time to recover and it still hasn’t in many ways. One of the first realities from the attack that I came across was when I flew to Paris about a month later. I went there to attend an exhibition of my photographs. There were only five or six people on that 747—an airplane that could hold over four hundred passengers—but there were only a handful. It was eerie.
During this time while I was still at Palm, I started drinking and drugging again. It was growing into a huge problem. I was also very interested in signing a charismatic singer-songwriter named Guy Forsyth, but the Palm Pictures staff didn’t agree with me. The writing was on the wall. The executives at the label didn’t give a damn about any of the artists I was looking to sign. However, that wasn’t the primary reason I finally left.
I looked around at the music business, and there seemed to be the beginning of a massive shift. Within the emerging online world of the internet and personal computers in the nineties, music fans and professionals were now illegally file-sharing and downloading music on a huge scale. There was no official monitoring over that process from the technology or music industries. Retail chains, such as Tower Records and Virgin Megastores, started facing bankruptcies and possible closures. Recording artists were facing enormous losses in royalty earnings. The changes facing the music industry were colossal.
I had worked through unprecedented times in the business. But that was all changing. After twenty-four years of loving my job, developing artists, having massive successes and a few failures, I decided this wasn’t the place for me anymore. Between the unforeseen changes in the way music was now being developed and distributed, and the substance abuse overwhelming me, I was beginning to fall apart again.
After I left Palm, I became even more focused on my photography. One of the early portraits I took was of Hilly Kristal, famed owner of CBGB’s. Hilly was basically a surrogate father to all of us teens taking refuge at CBs. It became our home away from home. He welcomed us all—though he often reminded us if he caught us with alcohol in our hands, we would be banned for a few weeks. Hilly was one of the first club owners to promote to the exploding punk rock music scene coming out of both the U.S. and Britain, and through it all, he gave us a sense of family.
When Hilly closed the club in 2006, he opened a place on St. Mark’s called CBGB Shoppe, and it definitely had the atmosphere of a Trash & Vaudeville store. On one side of the shop was a mural-sized photo of the front of CBGB’s, and on the opposite wall was a mural-sized photo of the stage.
Hilly was very ill. He was going through chemotherapy for lung cancer and he seemed pretty delicate and was very thin. When I arrived to take his picture, I asked him if he wanted me to come another day.
“No, let’s do it,” he insisted.
I shot the photograph of him in front of each of the murals. He was very generous with this time, the afternoon went really well, and his photo5 came out beautifully. Unfortunately, he died the following August.6
Those years—the late seventies and early eighties—when Hilly ran CBs, were vibrant and exceptional. There was an unstoppable energy from everyone in the music community. New York will never be the same as so many of those souls are now angels and ghosts.
Not long after I took Hilly’s portrait, I went to New Orleans to see the catastrophic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which hit in 2005. I wanted to make sure my New Orleans friends—among them George Dureau, Sean Yseult and Philip and Kate—were safe.
With my friend J, from White Zombie, we drove to the Lower Ninth Ward to visit the devastation—it was horrifying to see. Home after home, block after block, roofs blown off, houses leveled to the ground, like a massive cement roller just ran over everything and wiped it all out. An estimated “80 percent of New Orleans and large portions of nearby parishes became flooded, and the floodwaters did not recede for weeks.”7
As we wandered the flattened-out streets, we saw codes written by FEMA on the front of many of the houses. The codes were called “Katrina Crosses,” which “summarized the hazards and horrors found within,”8 such as how many people had been found alive or dead.
J and I also came across Fats Domino’s house, which had been a landmark in the Lower Ninth Ward since the sixties.
Many feared that Fats was dead—one fan even spray-painted a message on his home: “RIP Fats. You will be missed.” But later that day, CNN reported that he had been rescued by a coast guard helicopter on 1 September 2005.9
It was both his home and his publishing office and had been flooded, destroyed and abandoned. We entered through an open door on the side. The place had basically been gutted. We stood there for a moment just quietly looking around. We saw some little fleur-de-lis–shaped mirrors by the back bar and, from the devastation, a bunch of them had fallen onto the floor. They were so beautiful, I picked one up and stuck it in my pocket as a memento. We climbed up the stairs to the second floor and came across Fats’ famous Cadillac sofa. It had been wiped out by the hurricane, although part of it was still intact, including the license plates.
When I returned to New York, I couldn’t stop feeling that I had to get hold of my drinking and drugging. The overwhelming amount I was consuming was beginning to destroy me, both physically and mentally. There I was—approaching the age of fifty—facing a life and death struggle, again.