COLUMBIA RECORDS WAS ENORMOUS. THE headquarters took up three floors (twenty-four, twenty-five, and twenty-six) of the Sony building at 550 Madison Avenue, and the label was home to nearly three hundred artists. I came in as an A&R consultant. My job was to find new music and bring it to the attention of John Ingrassia, Don DeVito, and Will Botwin. Columbia had a huge A&R staff, but I felt they would be more competition than help, so I kept mostly to myself. I didn’t ask Donnie for a permanent place in A&R either. I knew how easily I could be fired again. I was afraid to push my luck.
I spent most days hanging out on twenty-six near the Press Department, or on twenty-five near the offices of the senior VP of promotion, Jerry Blair, and his number two man, VP of promotion Charlie Walk. I knew Charlie Walk from Kiss 108, the radio station where he used to work. He was small in stature but had the biggest personality in any room. I knew Jerry Blair too. Charlie Minor once invited me, Jerry, and about twenty other people out to dinner, and when Charlie left the table toward the end of the meal, Jerry yelled for everyone to run out of the restaurant, leaving Charlie with the massive check.
In some ways, Jerry and Charlie were stereotypical promotion men. They lived a wild lifestyle and could always be counted on for a touch of insanity. One day I got off the elevator on twenty-five to find a herd of lambs bleating and baaing all over the place. Mariah Carey was coming up to do some radio calls, and since she called her fans “lambs,” the two of them put on this display for her. At the same time, Jerry and Charlie didn’t do the shit that gave promotion men a bad reputation (for instance, one man masturbated on his secretary’s desk in front of her). Quite the contrary, Charlie supported me from the start and sometimes let me do my work in his office. Sadly, other women apparently weren’t so lucky. Charlie eventually became president of Republic Records, and as of this writing he and Republic have agreed to part ways after several women accused him of sexual misconduct.
As for Jerry, he hired many female executives, including Cynthia Johnson, Columbia’s first female African American senior vice president; Elaine Locatelli, another senior VP; and Lisa Ellis, who became the president of R&B music. He was truly devoted to his female employees. When one of them wanted to start a family, Jerry allowed her to work from home on Fridays so she could spend time with her children. Several male department heads complained, but Jerry stood his ground and placated them by extending work-from-home Fridays to male executives as well.
Both men worked hard. We had a weekly scheduling meeting to set the priorities for radio promotion, and Jerry, who had over a hundred people reporting to him from all over the nation, likened it to being an air traffic controller. Each week he had records landing in different cities—Miami, L.A., Phoenix, New York—and he had to figure out how to route them so they didn’t crash into other records we were trying to get off the ground.
The Promotion Department did its radio pitches on Mondays and Tuesdays. Wednesdays, all the official ads were made. Thursdays and Fridays, the trade magazines listed all the hit records from the week. Outlets such as R&R, Radio and Records, and Billboard let us know how we were doing.
Donnie kept a close eye on his promotion team. He came from a promotion background, running that department for Clive Davis at Arista Records. These guys couldn’t bullshit him. Even I was afraid of him. Donnie didn’t give you the chance to kiss his ass. You had to move at his pace. He worked like lightning—he’d return the calls, attend the meetings, and leave every night at seven with his day done. That’s the mark of a great executive.
Politically correct he was not. He called male executives pussies. He made grown men making millions of dollars a year cower like babies. Donnie never turned his temper on me. I loved watching him in action. From where I stood, he represented long-overdue justice. For years I’d had to put up with the male-culture bullshit. Watching Donnie ream these guys out almost made up for all the other men at all the other labels that had fucked with me. It also gave me a measure of safety: Donnie hired me and approved of me, so that meant anyone I needed at the company had to work with me, no questions asked. If they had complaints about me, they could feel free to tell Donnie. Good luck with that!
Maybe his methods were unorthodox, but Donnie got results. On his watch, Columbia had been the top label six years in a row. He demanded excellence from those who worked for him because he demanded it from himself. He was hardworking and brilliant, with a natural ability to keep the entire business in his head, like Doug. One instance sums it all up: Donnie came in on a Saturday (he’d work weekends if he had to) and saw an employee from the R&B Division there as well. The two men left the office and walked to the garage together, where Donnie noticed that they had the same make and model Mercedes. The following Monday Donnie quietly ordered a review of the R&B Department spending. He knew the executive’s salary and what his car cost, and he knew it didn’t add up. The review found financial irregularities, and Donnie fired the R&B executive.
As intimidating as he could be, Donnie understood how to motivate and get the most out of his staff. This is an innate gift that can’t be taught in business school. He knew that not every horse can be ridden, but every horse has a use. He understood that A&R men were like talent, and sometimes their personality quirks had to be overlooked. For instance, John Kalodner was working for Columbia on the West Coast as senior VP of A&R. He once didn’t come to work for three days and said he was boycotting the office. Donnie called him to ask why, and Kalodner said he wanted the dividers of the men’s room urinals to have more privacy (that’s exactly the sort of thing Kalodner would do). Donnie had the urinals reconstructed to Kalodner’s liking. Of course, this was also an example of how men get special treatment, but Donnie knew Kalodner’s value and knew he had to keep him happy.
His decision-making skills went beyond the music business, too. One of the secretaries at Columbia was dating a promotion executive in the company, and after they split up, he refused to return a rug of hers. She went to see Donnie about it. Donnie said he was happy she broke up with her boyfriend and then called the guy in front of her. “Return her stuff or I’ll fucking fire you, fatso,” Donnie said. You can’t argue with success.
I had only one run-in with Donnie. During my first year at Columbia, I tried to sign the band Creed. They were making some noise locally in Tallahassee, Florida, and my lawyer, Nick Ferrara, brought them to my attention. I knew they would be a hit: the lead singer, Scott Stapp, sounded just like Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. At that time, Pearl Jam was in the middle of a vicious fight with Ticketmaster over concert ticket prices, and the band suffered commercially. This left a huge void in rock radio, and I thought Creed could fill it.
I submitted Creed’s demo to Botwin, DeVito, and Ingrassia, with a note that the deal would only cost us $50,000, which I knew was a steal for a band with so much potential. Botwin passed because he said it sounded like Eddie Vedder. That’s the fucking point, I thought. All I could do was watch as Creed went to another label and released My Own Prison, which went six times platinum on the backs of four number one singles. The band’s next release, 1999’s Human Clay, is one of ninety albums in history to earn a diamond certification (ten million sales). Yet again, my ear was vindicated. Yet again, it didn’t matter.
After Creed became a hit, Jerry Blair came to see me. He’d just been in a meeting with Donnie, Botwin, and DeVito. At the meeting, Donnie was complaining and reaming the promotion guys out for not having more hits. Jerry said, “Why don’t you sign what Dorothy brings in, like Creed?” Donnie never even knew I had submitted Creed. The A&R department didn’t pass along my suggestions to him. When Jerry told me this, I went home angry and faxed Donnie the original memo I had written on the band, as well as Botwin’s pass notes. I never heard back.
The bullshit with Creed made me lose a little more of my confidence. Just like when I was a child, it seemed every time I tried to stick my head up above the pack, someone smacked it down. I had come to Columbia already feeling that I couldn’t trust my ears. Now I felt that even when my ears were right, no one would listen to me anyway. Creed was just the latest in a series of breaks that could have made my career—breaks that I missed not because someone else worked harder or performed better, but because I was ignored.
I decided the best defense was to lie low at Columbia. I didn’t want any more trouble. So what if they passed on my bands? Keep your head down and collect your salary—that was my motto. And yet, I couldn’t help but admit that there was something sick about the business, something that had scarred me, something that, as I would soon find out, could infect even the purest heart.