And then this happened: Paramount Television vice president Frank Kelly called me in for a meeting in March 1995. In my haste and eagerness to announce my first major concert tour, I thought it appropriate to place a full-page advertisement in the industry paper Daily Variety, thanking PBS and listing all of the concert tour dates. This proved to be a move that harkened back to the impetuous, drop-add forgery fiasco that, twenty-two years earlier, landed me in a pup tent under an overpass. Except the stakes were higher this time around.
With my close friend and attorney Chuck Kenworthy by my side, Paramount TV president Kerry McCluggage and Frank Kelly outlined their position. I had nearly a year left on my contract to co-host Entertainment Tonight. It was Paramount’s position that it was not possible for me to fulfill that obligation with a four-month nationwide concert tour beginning in June. Kelly went on to say that if I didn’t cancel the tour, or at least, somehow, cut it into pieces, Paramount would be forced to not only sue me personally but they would get injunctions against all of the concert venues, legally preventing them from presenting my concert.
Chuck and I refused to cancel the shows, but instead suggested that I leave ET and sign a noncompete, agreeing that I would not appear on a rival show for the next five years. A red-faced Frank Kelly then informed me that if I didn’t cancel the tour they would be forced to hire a trial attorney and take this before a judge. Within twenty-four hours, Paramount had hired independent trial attorney Patty Glaser.
Two days after that, it was Paramount, Glaser, and three of her associates standing in a courtroom opposite me and Chuck. When I’d asked Chuck the night before if he knew anything about Patty, he said, “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
“No. You have to tell me.”
“Well,” Chuck said, “a colleague of mine looked concerned when I mentioned that Patty was representing Paramount.”
“What did he say?”
“He said she is known for ripping opponents’ jugulars out of their neck and then leaving them to bleed on the ground.”
My mouth dropped to the floor. “Seriously?”
“That’s what he said. He said that—”
I put up my hand. “That’s enough. Thanks.”
Have you ever been pulled over by a police officer or been called on to give your book report in front of the class? Then you know the feeling produced by the body’s fight-or-flight hormones. The sudden flood of epinephrine, norepinephrine, and dozens of other hormones cause a chain reaction in our body. Heart rate and blood pressure increase. Pupils dilate to take in as much light as possible. Veins in skin constrict to send more blood to major muscle groups. Your muscles tense up, energized by adrenaline and glucose. All of these physical responses are intended to help us survive a dangerous situation by preparing us to either run or fight for our lives.
Not all that long before the hearing, I had been floating through a colossal measure of success that I had worked to manifest my entire life. It had taken hard work, risk, and focus, of course, but there are plenty of artists who do the same and still come up short. The success of the show was a lightning strike. And now I could only watch the horrifying picture in front of me: Chuck and Patty arguing my fate before Judge Diane Wayne in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Patty sought to legally block the fifty-six performing arts venues from presenting my concert. As she put it to Chuck by phone earlier in the week, “We will send a letter to each venue, threatening a lawsuit if John Tesh appears on their stage.” If she won that argument, if Judge Wayne granted the injunctions she requested, it would trigger a chain reaction that would demolish my music career. Not only would the tour be over, but I would likely be sued by each venue for the damages they incurred by having to refund all of the ticket money to fans (tickets had been on sale for eight weeks).
Without a tour and tickets to generate pledge dollars, PBS stations would likely remove my program from their schedules and replace it with another show. Record stores, encouraged by the promise of hundreds of airings of the concert special, had placed orders for more than fifty thousand CDs and videos. If there was no sales demand, the stores would return the product to us for a refund. Moreover, it seemed likely to me that if Paramount was victorious, there was no way they would renew my contract that was up for renegotiation in six months.
Lest I mistakenly present Paramount Television as the Galactic Empire’s Death Star, I would like to pause a moment for an admission of grandiosity. Having the luxury to reflect here, I now have a wholly different perspective on how I dealt with my situation. When the Red Rocks special blew up on PBS; when record stores responded by placing huge orders for CDs; when the concert tickets approached sell-out, I did not handle my rising tide of fortune with any measure of grace and maturity.
That moment when I leaned toward Kerry McCluggage in the Paramount TV executive offices, emphatically declaring that I would not cancel my tour, I showed him deep disrespect. I gave Kerry no room to maneuver, no ground on which to walk back his threat. I was fatuous to a fault. Arrogant. Uncompromising. Paramount had invested heavily in me and Mary Hart. Paramount’s local TV stations were counting on them to deliver the syndicated ET show with the hosts they had been promised in their syndication contracts. Additionally, if Paramount just let me walk off the set for three months, what dangerous precedent would that set for their future dealings with other ET employees?
From my seat in the courtroom, I heard Patty Glaser’s voice rising in volume and intensity as she outlined for the judge why “Mr. Tesh is in substantial, material breach of his contract. Mr. Tesh had no right to do this and Your Honor has every legal right to stop the tour and put Mr. Tesh back in the ET chair.”
I remember thinking, This is why Xanax was created.
My heart was beating through my throat.
What happened next was wiped out of my memory by what must have been “Courtroom PTSD,” but the transcript shows that Judge Wayne told both Chuck and Patty that she was not inclined, during this court appearance, to order an injunction “preventing Mr. Tesh from performing his concerts,” and that instead she would set a hearing for two weeks later to hear further arguments, “if the two parties cannot work this out on their own.”
There would be no further arguments.
The next day, in a move that both shocked and thrilled us, Kerry McCluggage and his in-house legal counsel opened negotiations with Chuck to put together a plan for a calm and civil exit from my ET hosting job. Apparently, from a PR perspective, fighting one of their employees who just wanted to play music and help PBS raise money was a lose-lose situation for Paramount. My exit, we decided, would be timed to coincide with the launch of my first-ever concert tour.
I remain grateful to Kerry McCluggage and Paramount for calling off Patty Glaser. I am forever indebted to my pal Chuck Kenworthy* and I am fully repentant regarding my vainglorious behavior during this time. A few days before I departed on my tour, ET threw me a wonderful going-away party. They let me make a heartfelt goodbye speech on the air and then, for the next decade, broadcast reports on my album releases and concert appearances.
Thankfully, there was much to report on. The PBS broadcasts of Red Rocks over the next three years translated into millions of records sold, more than a quarter of a million concert tickets sold each year, a DVD/VHS that reached triple platinum status, and most importantly, millions of dollars in pledge contributions to PBS’s 350 local stations. My band, the orchestra, and I traveled the country for two and a half months on that first tour. We taped my next PBS concert special, Avalon, on Catalina Island in Southern California. It, too, became a gold-certified recording. Next was One World, where the band and I traveled to Italy, Austria, Ireland, and Monument Valley, Utah, to collaborate with local artists. Following each TV taping we supported the PBS specials and recordings with aggressive touring.
Departing Entertainment Tonight and the media world for life as a full-time recording and touring artist was the realization of my lifelong pursuit. But after three tours and spending many months at a time living in a tour bus, I missed my wife and family. I’d left Connie, quite often, home alone to raise Prima, the toddler, and Gib, the teenager. It was a less than equitable relationship for a couple, and the kids were growing up without me. I was in love with performing live music, yet I was desperate to be with my family. I needed to figure out a way to make those two loves—music and family—work together.
The answer came during a chance encounter at a restaurant in New York City’s theater district in 1996. The legendary record producer Quincy Jones was seated at the table nearest to ours. He smiled at me, leaned in, and said, “Hey man, how ya doin’? You’re the hyphenate, right?”
I couldn’t believe Quincy Jones had just spoken to me! “I’m sorry, Mr. Jones, I don’t understand. I’m John Tesh. It’s an honor to meet you.”
“Yeah man, I know who you are. You’re the hyphenate. TV-and-Music, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, John Tesh, it’s great to meet you. Keep it up!”
It didn’t dawn on me at the time, because I was too deep into the touring lifestyle, but the answer was in the hyphen. I didn’t have to be one or the other, even though Paramount had unwittingly put me in that position a few years earlier; I could be both. I could be any combination of things I wanted, God willing, as long as I found balance and created a schedule I had control over.
It was time to try and put the hyphen back into my life. Could there be a way to continue performing in concerts, help support my family, and still be around enough for them to know I was a husband and a father? Getting back into television was not the answer. Hosting a daily TV show would leave no room for live touring. I realized the answer for balance was much further back in my history. It was my old friend . . . radio. What if I could create a radio program that would enable me to broadcast in a studio and then also remotely when I was out on the road? But did the radio industry need another morning show, another “love songs at night”? Probably not.