CHAPTER 3

The Albert Einstein of the Record Business

My Partner Richard Foos

It wasn’t that early, around ten o’clock, when I visited Richard at home for the first time. It was September 21, 1973, and I was flying to London in a few hours. I wanted Richard to have the pristine stack of promotional albums I had been saving for him so he would have a small but potent supply to bolster the stock of the record store he was to open in a few weeks. One of his roommates answered the door at his suburban house in West Los Angeles. Richard was still asleep. When he trudged into the living room minutes later, his gut was busting out of a t-shirt two sizes too small, and he was scratching his right buttock inside of the only other article of clothing he was wearing, his Fruit of the Loom underwear.

Eighteen months before, I was leafing through the bootleg albums that were on sale at Lewin’s Record Paradise on Hollywood Boulevard. In the 1960s the store was important because it was the only one in the area that stocked English imports. The original Beatles and Rolling Stones albums released in England were coveted because they had additional songs and different covers than their American counterparts. Only later were the imports also valued for their superior sound. By the early 1970s, with the Beatles having broken up, and with the same albums now being issued on both sides of the Atlantic, the store was a shadow of itself, reduced to selling bootlegs. When I commented on the high prices to a fellow shopper, he alerted me to a guy who had a record concession in Santa Monica who not only had lower prices but also took records in trade.

Apollo Electronics stood at 315 Broadway across from a vacant parking lot. Richard was friendly with the son of the owner and made an arrangement to rent space in the store to sell mostly used albums. Whenever I came to shop or sell my promotional albums—Richard paid better than Aron’s Records in Hollywood—there were usually no other customers.

I instantly liked him. He was low-key, but friendly. At times he seemed clueless, and I felt I had to help him where I could. After he opened the Rhino Records store, I encouraged my fellow rock writers to make the trek from Hollywood to Westwood to trade in their records with him.

Had Albert Einstein grown up in an affluent suburb of Pittsburgh and been attracted to absurdist humor and rock ’n’ roll instead of math and physics, he might have been similar to Richard Foos. Like the disheveled, absent-minded professor—always thinking, with his head in the clouds—Richard could be forgetful and neglectful. A creative thinker who made up his own games—and changed the rules of existing ones—he was like a missing character from the Seinfeld TV show.

Richard came over to my apartment with one of his roommates, Pete Parks. Pete had returned from a camping trip during which his girlfriend had drowned. Richard brought Pete over so he could make a recording of the tribute song he had written to present to her parents. Given the solemnity, and that I didn’t know Pete, I felt very uncomfortable. My feeling only increased as I endured take after take of Pete coarsely bellowing “Jodie!” I was relieved when they left. Pete had eaten half of an orange, but left the remains and juice splattered on my kitchen counter. I couldn’t imagine the song giving her parents any comfort.

What also struck me that day was that Pete kept calling Richard “Mack.” Usually someone referred to with that sobriquet has a surname prefixed with “Mac” or “Mc” and is of Irish or Scottish extraction. Richard looked neither. When I asked him, he told me it referred to Mack Trucks because he came from Truckee, a small town in Northern California near the Nevada border. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that Richard wasn’t from Truckee at all.

Richard Foos was born in New York City in 1949. His family soon moved to Pittsburgh where, as a preteen, he acquired a taste for early 1960s rock ’n’ roll. The first record he bought was Joe Jones’ “You Talk Too Much,” and the first record he “went crazy over” was local group the Marcels’ “Blue Moon.” The first album he bought was the Four Seasons’ Sherry. Every Friday night he listened to the new Top 40 countdown on radio station KQV, rooting for his favorite records to make it to number one. Richard was a big fan of Lou Christie, who had four top twenty hits, including the astonishing “Lightnin’ Strikes.” “He grew up in my neighborhood,” recalled Richard. “I was a friend of a girl who had once been to his house. Until I got into the record business, that’s the closest I’d ever come to meeting a rock star.” (Richard and I had lunch with Lou when he sang on one of our albums. Meeting him was a highlight for both of us.)

In 1963 one of his best friends became immersed in listening to black music. Initially Richard found the style too foreign, but after a while he acquired a taste for it, furthered by the soul records he heard on Porky Chedwick’s show on WAMO. He became so passionate about this once alien music that he began to scrounge around junk stores to find rare Rhythm & Blues (R&B) records. As few whites were fans of non-mainstream black music, it became a way for him to express his individuality and nonconformity. At the same time, he became aware of the plight of black Americans and empathized with their cause.

Interestingly enough, Richard didn’t go back to check out the rock ’n’ roll greats of the previous decade until he had been exposed to the material via cover versions released during the mid-sixties British Invasion. Richard preferred harder sounding groups like the Rolling Stones and Animals, and mentions the Yardbirds as his favorite rock band of the period. As he matured, his understanding of black social issues increased and he became more radical in his political views.

One of Richard’s best friends was a Beach Boys fanatic, and together they listened to the hit singles and album cuts. The Southern California that the Beach Boys conveyed to Richard was of a dreamland where everyone had blond hair, was beautiful, and hung out all day at the beach living a very liberating life. This fantasy contrasted sharply with Pittsburgh’s drabness and a routine of hanging out at the local pool hall. When his father was offered a job as vice president of the Los Angeles May Company department stores, necessitating a move to Southern California, Richard anticipated paradise.

When he showed up for his first day as a senior at Beverly Hills High, he was shocked. He’d carefully dressed up Brooks Brothers for style, as he’d heard that Californians were sartorial trendsetters. What he faced was a student body of unattractive teenagers (the beautiful celebrity kids were probably sequestered in private schools), sporting torn Cords, blue deck tennis shoes, and pocket t-shirts. Even more disappointing, the kids weren’t as hip as those in Pittsburgh; they lacked the street orientation. Still, the weather was pleasant, there were more radio stations that played rock, and more local music TV shows like Boss City and The Lloyd Thaxton Show. The DJs were more charismatic and the programming often more adventurous (e.g., Stones’ Weekends).

Richard’s interest in music and black social issues increased. Once he and his friends went to a black music lineup at the Shrine Auditorium. One of Richard’s missions was to turn his peers onto the hip R&B music he experienced in Pittsburgh. They were the only white people that they could see. The show was sold out and they couldn’t get in, but Richard encountered an advocate of the Black Power political movement who talked to him for three hours outside the auditorium.

The next step in being a music fan was to pick up an instrument and learn how to play. Richard was able to fake competence on the bass guitar and joined Larry Parker (later proprietor of a well-known Beverly Hills diner) in a series of bands. Sometimes they practiced after hours in a USC sociology department conference room. In addition to the usual wedding and Bar Mitzvah gigs, their most adventurous musical endeavor placed the duo as the only white musicians in an otherwise all-black blues band. Their strong desire to taste some blues roots led them to an all-black after-hours club in South Central LA, playing for a small audience that appeared to include hookers and pimps. Afraid for their safety, Larry’s grandmother sent along a bodyguard—a cook at his Uncle’s deli—to watch over the band. On a good night, Richard recalled, he made five dollars.

Much of what shaped his sense of humor was the absurdity of growing up in a highly structured environment. His wit was sharpened by the peculiarly East Coast ritual of cutting contests. These exchanges were best documented by comedian Gabriel Kaplan in his “Up Your Hole With a Mellow Roll” routine, in which he described the fierce one-upmanship in trying to creatively put the other down: “I’ve heard your father is a skin diver for Roto Rooter.” He was also inspired by Alan Abel’s book Confessions of a Hoaxer. It was while in college—he attended Whittier, USC, and San Fernando Valley State—that Richard acquired the nickname “Gimmick,” later shortened to “Mack,” because he was always coming up with something. He was thought of as the type of person who would do anything for a practical joke.

Some of Richard’s behavior fell into the category of sub-petty theft. His guide was Abbie Hoffman’s best seller from 1971, Steal This Book, which advocated rebelling against the establishment. He and his friends avoided buying tickets to see movies by walking backwards into theaters from the exits. Sometimes they departed restaurants without paying for their meals.

Richard coached the Little League baseball team on which his younger brother, Garson, played. He attempted to motivate the lethargic players by festooning the dugout with Playboy magazine centerfolds. Major League pitcher Jim Bouton had published Ball Four, a candid look at baseball behind the scenes. Inspired, Richard wrote fictionalized, outrageous exploits of his team, and had Circles sell Who Do They Ball For? to the parents in the stands for ten cents. Once he even placed Fark in the outfield. Even though he wore a uniform, Fark was in his early twenties and sported a beard and long hair. He lasted half an inning before the umpire noticed him and had him ejected.

Richard’s first attempt at record retail was Mojo Records, a proposed door-to-door record delivery service he formed with Circles who had acquired fifty promotional albums from a friend of his father’s. Rather than make them part of his collection, he and Richard decided to use their booty to trade for records they could sell for full value. They advertised their service in an ad in the L.A. Free Press, but nobody responded. Next they randomly called people listed in the phone directory to tell them about their company. Finally a customer called back. But the effort it took Richard and Circles to track down the obscure classical recording, traipsing around to six stores and then trading records for it, all for five dollars, diminished their enthusiasm.

After graduating from San Fernando Valley State College with a sociology degree, Richard opted for community work in South Central Los Angeles. For a time he ran the Free Store, where anyone who had an unemployment card could take home an item that had been donated.

Being a hard-core record fan, Richard continued to seek bargains and obscurities at swap meets. At La Mirada, a reappropriated drive-in theater, he saw a dealer selling hundreds of albums, more records than he had ever seen outside of a store. When he asked, the dealer candidly admitted that he got the whole stack from Aron’s for a mere three dollars. Richard thought he could do the same.

Needing a way to supplement his meager community work income, he moved into the space at Apollo. In addition to records from his own collection, Richard creamed Aron’s (and other stores) bargain bins when they opened, knowing he could resell these used records for a profit. Richard’s out-of-the-way concession became a stop for collectors: delighting them with grossly under-valued collector’s items, but frustrating them because he wrote the price with a Marks-A-Lot right on the LP covers. I remember purchasing Little Eva’s Locomotion album for thirty-five cents (then worth thirty dollars), and Jeff Gold recalls a Beatles MGM album priced at fifty cents (worth fifty dollars). When Jeff noticed a few copies of David Bowie’s American debut album (on Deram), he asked Richard if there were any in back stock he could purchase. Richard sold him what he wanted at a nice four dollar mark-up. Gold says they were worth about $100 each.

Around this time Richard had a “record review” column in the small, local newspaper The Venice Beachhead. Instead of record reviews, “Politidiscs” acted as a showcase for Richard’s Mad magazine-like writing. In a typical column he commented that Bob Dylan’s new Dylan album was too commercial and so over-produced that it would have been rejected as programming by the Muzak company. He then devoted the bulk of his column to provide the “rumored” lyrics and spoken dialogue of Dylan’s commercial for Coke, rewritten (by Richard) from his song “Just Like a Woman.”

Although Richard’s father’s background was in retail—on a higher, chain level—Richard didn’t have the driving acumen in this area. Establishing a record store was merely an outgrowth of the Free Store and Apollo experiences. When he opened the Rhino store a mile south of UCLA, he assumed, incorrectly as it turned out, that the students would be clamoring for a cheap record store.

Richard needed to express himself humorously outside of Rhino. He wrote fake issues of the UCLA Daily Bruin that were distributed on campus on a day when the real paper wasn’t published. The issue was complete with major stories, such as “UCLA Students To Be Bussed.” An advertisement for the “Charles C. Koalsin [sic] Cheat Method—Successfully Used at West Point and the Air Force Academy” promised to raise grade point averages by one whole point. The Crime and Punishment section reported the following: the arrest of Armand Biceps, star of the UCLA weight lifting team for shoplifting—actually lifting a shop and moving it to a new location; the discovery of the body of Nicholas Simpson, who had been missing for three years and consequently racked up an F average because he had failed to file a withdrawal notice; and the detailed report of the mysterious theft of an economy sized bar of Ivory soap from the men’s shower. Listings for UCLA’s Experimental College included classes on Famous Chinese Launderers, Proper Kidnapping Etiquette, and How to Avoid Giving to Charities Without Guilt.

Richard teamed with Joe Morris, Robbie Robinson, and (briefly) Robin Cleary in The Snickers Comedy Hour, a Sunday night show that aired in the mid-seventies on the then weak-signaled KCRW, a national public broadcasting station based in Santa Monica. It was conceived to feature an hour’s worth of newly written and recorded comedy. With a few songs slated for the first show, Richard asked me to supply the vocals. I impersonated Bob Dylan on “Stuck Inside of L.A. in a Place Called Malibu” (with new lyrics about him living in the beach town) and Dracula on Beach Boys parody “Give Your Death to the World.” I became a member of the group. The show was like an American version of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Snickers proved to be a valuable training ground for our later exploits into writing and recording novelty records for Rhino. One better-realized skit was “The Ed Sullivan Invasion Caper,” during which a town is taken over by numerous (TV host) Ed Sullivans in a similar manner to Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Ultimately, writing and producing an hour’s worth of comedy (later a half hour) every week—part time—became too taxing and the show ended. Some original Snickers bits were incorporated into early Rhino albums. Richard and Joe then teamed up for Sneakin’ Back, a show that interspersed oldies with new comedy and satire. During a tribute to the “late” early-sixties teen idol Dion, an impersonator phoned in as his mother, crying that her son wasn’t dead.

To the embarrassment of his neighbors (if not his parents) on Maple Drive in affluent Beverly Hills, Richard always seemed to be driving a dirty vehicle with a bashed-in passenger door. Initially it was a red Dodge Dart. Not long after he opened the store he bought a yellow Ford van that soon gathered a layer of dust and a bashed-in passenger door. It could have been the subject of a horror movie like Christine, the 1958 Plymouth Fury from Stephen King’s novel. The interior of the van was like the Bermuda Triangle—objects kept disappearing into it. It was almost an unspoken consequence that a certain number of objects were to be sacrificed to the van in exchange for having gotten a deal on the purchase price. One night, for a joke, Richard and a few of his friends dressed in suits and went to Lawry’s Prime Rib, a gourmet restaurant on La Cienega’s Restaurant Row in Beverly Hills. They emerged from the battered, yellow wreck, much to the surprise of the valet parkers.

Like his van, Richard always seemed to need a hosing down. From zipping around town hustling for deals to pricing records in the dangerously cramped, non-air-conditioned back room of the store, the swirl of dirt and dust slowly orbiting his frame recalled the “Pig Pen” character from Peanuts.

As creative as Richard was, and as much as his mind was working, he could be neglectful when it came to practical matters. Was it forgetfulness or laziness that transformed his pool into a swamp, or the rotting food in his small refrigerator into a science project? It was probably more forgetfulness when Richard failed to inform me when he changed the alarm code at the Rhino store. I usually opened, and I had to endure the alarm ringing until I could contact him for the revised code. The scenario repeated a couple of years later at our first label office.

Richard carried a fat wallet. It wasn’t so much that it was stuffed with currency, it was a matter that more odd papers and cards went in than came out. It was referred to as the “exploding wallet,” because often when Richard opened it, objects flew out. Richard was forced to reform when his chiropractor informed him that the pain he was experiencing was because his back was out of alignment from sitting on the thick wallet in his right back pocket. It’s almost as if the producers of Seinfeld got wind of Richard’s indisposition and, many years later, turned it into a George Costanza side plot on 1998’s “The Reverse Peephole” episode.

Guidance counselors in high school and college rarely get to know a student well enough to make apt suggestions. Had I been Richard’s, with the knowledge of having worked with him for twenty-seven years, I would have felt his aptitude was best suited to be a contributing writer on a comedy TV show. He didn’t have the discipline to write scripts, but could have excelled at coming up with humorous scenarios and comedic lines. Richard had an interest in psychology, and even took two classes from Billy Jack movie director, actor, and writer Tom Laughlin in Jungian psychology. At times when we discussed employees, he had a quick grasp of their psychological makeup. I think he could have been a good psychological therapist or a speechwriter. As the president of the label, a couple of times a year he gave a speech to the company. While he was always uncomfortable and lacked rhythm, his speeches were effective because they were so well composed.

When I approached Richard about making more of a commitment to expanding the label, it wasn’t as if he had any insight that it would be successful or, as competent as I had proven myself in the record store, that he thought I had the knowledge to make it a success. I think it was more that he thought it would be fun, that he wanted to support my desire, and that he was responding to his gambling nature. It was a roll of the dice. Through the years Richard backed friends in numerous other businesses, but none were successful.

In the early 1980s the industry experienced a sales slump. Executives placed the blame on kids who spent their money at video game parlors and on music fans who borrowed albums from friends to make cassette tape copies. Because the industry failed to acknowledge the obvious reason—the decline in the quality of the music—Richard wrote a facetious letter-to-the-editor that was published in Billboard magazine in July 1982. He identified the main culprits as those who shared their records with others, pointing out that listening to music was “a personal experience meant only for the individual purchasing the LP.” He advocated an industry-wide campaign with the slogan “Music is a personal experience, don’t share it.” In subsequent weeks there were a number of replies to the magazine from people who took his letter seriously.

I didn’t have the same proclivity for practical jokes as Richard. Nonetheless I perpetrated one on him. Man on the Flying Trapeze is a movie from 1935 starring W. C. Fields, whose character could find any requested document in his overstuffed and messy rolltop desk. Richard’s desk at Rhino was like that: papers everywhere, boxes on the floor. When Richard went out of town, I organized his desk, neatened up the room, and hung an elaborately framed photo on the wall of his previously messy room. My effort, or the humor of it, failed to generate a smile upon Richard’s return.

Richard was a big fan of professional wrestling, more the ludicrous personas than the skill. He even got his friends to send him videotapes of wrestlers from other parts of the country. He showed me one, which turned out to be among our favorites. El Ejecutivo, from Argentina, walked briskly down the aisle towards the ring wearing a businessman’s suit and hat, carrying a briefcase and umbrella in one hand and smoking a cigar with the other. He gives instructions to his secretary, who’s holding a phone and books. Right up until the match begins against a Genghis Khan replete with costume, he dictates notes to his secretary who has set up a makeshift office on the apron of the ring. During the match he brushes his suit off, looks at his watch as though he has an upcoming appointment, and gives instructions to his secretary who also fields phone calls.

In sports, Richard was like a magician. In tennis, he twisted his body around and sliced a serve that broke four feet away from his opponent. In addition to his spins on the basketball court, his eyes gave no clue to his next move. Soon after the Minneapolis Lakers moved to Los Angeles in 1960, they established a formidable team led by Jerry West and Elgin Baylor, who are both in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Baylor was more influential since many young basketball fans, including me, copied his balletic moves. He was the first player whose style incorporated a number of spin shots and fancy moves, including the hanging jump shot. His body went in one direction as he shot in the opposite. As Pittsburgh didn’t have an NBA team, Richard hadn’t seen Baylor play until he moved to Beverly Hills, after which he also adopted Baylor’s style.

In many ways, 1983’s Big Daddy was an album that best defined a Rhino release: it was fun, spirited, creative rock ’n’ roll, it was roots music, and it was novelty. In truth, the idea of arranging contemporary pop songs in 1950s styles had been done previously. The album that inspired the project was a 1972 release, Take a Sad Song … Godfrey Daniel, the artist, was a pseudonym for producer Andy Solomon, who appropriated W. C. Fields’ minced oath. Although Richard, I, and Big Daddy’s Bob Wayne learned of this record independently of each other, it was Richard’s love of 1950s rock ’n’ roll that produced a new recording that improved on the concept.

Wayne, also a connoisseur of 1950s music, contacted the members of his former oldies band, Big Daddy, to record the album. He and Richard came up with the arrangements. Highlights included an authentic Everly Brothers impersonation of Rick James’ “Superfreak,” and a stunning a cappella rendition of “Eye of the Tiger,” the theme from Rocky. Rather than have the album released in a cheesy, K-Tel-like, 1980s hits done 1950s- style package, I came up with the concept that explained Big Daddy’s style.

Richard wrote an extensive story for the liner notes—a prime example of his creativity and imagination—which we packaged to look like an article from a National Enquirer type tabloid. The story explained that when the members were young teens, they were on a USO tour of Southeast Asia. They were captured by the Pathet Lao and held captive for twenty-four years before they were released. Back home, all their American references were from the 1950s, including their musical ones. During their debriefing, an official felt sorry for them and got them sheet music of contemporary hits so they could learn new songs. They worked up the only arrangements they knew, 1950s rock ’n’ roll, which explained the songs on the record. Richard’s writing was convincing, except when he integrated his jokes, like when he reported that as a rock ’n’ roll band, they “were held in such low regard by the rest of the performers, they had to ride behind the main tour bus in an ox cart.”

A natural for a feature film, Richard and I collaborated on expanding the story, which we optioned to New World Pictures. With New World’s skimpy budget, I had difficulty finding a writer who I thought could turn in a funny script. One exception was Dan Waters, whose screenplay for New World’s upcoming Heathers I thought had the goods. I met with Waters—who later wrote Batman Returns—but he wasn’t interested. I allowed our option to expire rather than waste New World’s money.

In the summer of 1984 Bruce Springsteen had his biggest hit with “Dancing in the Dark” and his biggest-selling album with Born in the U.S.A. Big Daddy fleshed out the melody by arranging the song in the style of Pat Boone. The joke was that an artist of high integrity (Springsteen) was covered by one who was perceived as having low musical integrity (Boone). In the spring of 1985 our record climbed into the top twenty in England, but the label, Making Waves, went out of business and we didn’t get paid.

Richard and I loved Big Daddy, and we funded four albums with them, including a twenty-fifth anniversary tribute to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper. In order to try to get them attention, I came up with the idea of having them act in their story—and perform a set afterwards—in a small theater. We launched Stranded in the Jungle in the spring of 1991 at the Groundlings Theater on Melrose Avenue. The Wednesday performances were well-attended, but the novelty of a rock ’n’ roll band launching a dramatic production to promote their album didn’t get the media response I was hoping for.

Members of Bid Daddy helped out on a number of our projects, including masquerading as the Benzedrine Monks of Santo Domonica. In 1994 Chant, a rerelease of a twenty-year-old album of Gregorian chants by the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos, became a phenomenon, selling three million copies in the United States. Our parody, Chantmania, was an EP of chanted rock songs that included “Losing My Religion” and “(Theme from) The Monkees”—“Hey, hey, we’re the Monks …” It sold 43,000 copies.

One of Richard’s passions was the doo-wop vocal group sound from the fifties and early sixties. He championed a 4-CD box set compiled by Bob Hyde and Walter DeVenne, justifying the expense by keeping the costs down. He didn’t even spring for color photographs to be used in the packaging. He planned to sell it only through mail order because he didn’t think there would be a broader market. Much to everyone’s surprise, owing to a series of televised doo-wop revival shows on PBS, it became a top seller, racking up over 250,000 boxes sold.

Richard is married to Shari Famous, a talented comedian and singer who we had used on a few of our early recordings. Over the last ten years of our Rhino partnership, even though our families didn’t socialize much, I was pleased that our wives liked each other and our daughters enjoyed playing together.