And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records (4 page)

One evening, a few months after I had joined the company, Neil walked into my office and informed me that I wasn’t doing my job well. He wasn’t screaming, and he didn’t appear to be mad; his voice completely matter-of-fact, he told me I wasn’t living up to his expectations. I’d been blindsided. I turned green as my stomach rolled over. How could he say this? Here I was, putting in fifteen-hour days (and loving it), visiting record stores and radio stations that had never seen a representative of the company before. I was establishing myself and Buddah at all three of the area’s major rock stations. WLIR in Long Island had been particularly easy for me, as I was good friends with both the program director, Mike Harrison, who coined the term AOR (album-oriented radio) and his eventual replacement, Ken Kohl, with whom I’d gone to college.

I couldn’t believe that Neil was disappointed with my work. When I asked him what he meant, he pointed to my expense account. I cringed. And then I began to get mad, because I knew that I was always very frugal with my expenditures. How could he possibly think I was being wasteful? Then Neil said, “You’re not spending enough.” I blinked. Huh? “Larry, you can’t do your job well unless you’re spending money, and you’re not spending enough of it.” I thought that by being money conscious I was helping the company. But, what the hell, if he wanted me to spend money, I would accommodate him.

I began to spend more freely. I found that it was pretty easy to have breakfast with a DJ, lunch with a music director, dinner with a program director and drinks with a writer, all on Buddah’s dime. Sending chocolates to the secretaries, buying gifts for the elevator operators—it all became second nature to me. I would visit WPLJ or WNEW in the small hours of the morning and bring the on-air DJ food and drinks, and often marijuana or blow. The drugs were never a gift, but rather something we did together to build the bond of friendship. Mike Klenfner of WNEW and I would go out for some massive, expensive dinners. We were both well over six feet tall, and although I was thin at that point, Michael was a big guy and could eat the kitchens bare.

My favorite Mike Klenfner story involves a folk artist named Steve Goodman, who had been brought to us by Paul Anka. Goodman recorded a self-titled album for us that featured a song called “The City of New Orleans,” and I got him a considerable amount of airplay throughout the country. However, I could not get as much play as I wanted on WNEW. One day, when we were in the elevator, Steve told me he had leukemia and did not know how long he was going to live, but he wanted to leave his wife and baby daughter something when he passed. I just about broke down in tears, and the next day I went to see Mike at WNEW. I told him that he had to play the album more frequently because the guy was going to die. Klenfner was convinced I was bullshitting him, and for years (fortunately, Steve lived until 1984) he kept asking me when the guy was going to die. He really thought I made the whole thing up just to get airplay. I did resort to some ridiculous maneuvers to get a record played, but even I would not stoop that low.

The list of contacts I had made was impressive. Or at least I thought it was. John Zacherle at WPLJ was a particular favorite item on my expense reports. I would visit him at 2:00 a.m. and give him a ride home when he went off the air. I loved Zach—still do. As host of a very popular local TV show,
Chiller Theater,
he was an influence on me when I was growing up, and he is one of the kindest people you will ever meet. Alex Bennett was the overnight man at WPLJ from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m., and I was the only promotion man—or one of very few—to bring artists to visit him when his interview/music show was running. I brought Charlie Daniels when “Uneasy Rider” came out, and comedian Robert Klein joined us numerous times. Dick Neer, the overnight person at WNEW, and I were never very close, but Mike Klenfner often filled in for him.

Alison “the Night Bird” Steele was on from 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. Alison was great; she played all our artists, and we didn’t even have to ask her to do it. She and her boyfriend, who was an assistant district attorney of New York, spent enough time with Neil and Buck on a regular basis that I never really needed to drop in and see her on my promotion rounds. When Alison was on the air, I spent time with John Zacherle, as his show was on at the same time as hers and he had no relationship with either Neil or Buck. I also devoted a great deal of time to all the WNEW talent during their Summer in the Park events—a series of live performances at area parks. It seemed like we had an artist doing an event almost every week—everyone from Jim Dawson and Buzzy Linhart to Sha Na Na. Buddah probably supplied more artists for Summer in the Park than any other label.

When my overnight visits were done, I went home, slept for a few hours, woke up, showered, and headed to WNEW to be with Pete Fornatale and later, in the day, Mike Harrison or Dave Herman.

Middays I spent with Scott Muni (even in the early 1970s, he was a living legend in the radio and music industries), and I would watch him drink his lunch. I also became friends with Dennis Elsas, who succeeded Klenfner as music director when he left to become the first album promotion person at Columbia Records, which at that time was the largest label in the world.

I was able to get almost anything played on WNEW, WLIR, and WPLJ (though I could never corner the impenetrable Jonathan Schwartz, who would run and hide when he saw a promo person). I was, at least by my own reckoning, off to a very good start.

A year or so after I joined the company, we moved to 810 7th Avenue. Brand new offices in a classy building. This was nice. I still had to share an office—this time with the new head of album promotion, Jay Schick—but I didn’t mind in the least. Jay came from Florida, where he had been a court reporter. After a few too many “trips,” he decided to venture into the music business. I watched Jay closely to see how he worked; I saw that although he worked hard, he had trouble concentrating. He introduced me to what would become not only my new favorite drug but also the preferred drug of the early-to-mid 1970s: Quaaludes. We were at a concert together, and he casually offered me a couple of pills. I shrugged and thought, “What the hell?” I swallowed two of them. It was a very nice kind of high. It made my fingertips tingle and slurred my speech a bit, but rather than feeling mellowed out, I felt like getting up and doing something, anything—sex, cleaning, cooking. It just felt good to be active. The drug would prove to be Jay’s undoing, as it would cause him to pass out at very inopportune times, like when we were all in a meeting. He left the company shortly thereafter to return to Miami and his more lucrative court reporting gig. But he taught me one important lesson: never take ’ludes before dusk.

The biggest advantage of my new office was that I was right next to Joe Fields, the head of sales. Joe, who was short in stature, had more energy than any ten people I have ever known. I absorbed a host of great sales skills just listening to Joe on the phone. He was a master, given that much of our product was very difficult to sell, especially in the inflated quantities Neil asked him to move. Joe could also hold his own with any radio person; the format did not matter. I can honestly say that he sold the Brooklyn Bridge to a few people and mean it literally and figuratively (the band The Brooklyn Bridge, that is).

One story illustrates just how crazy Joe was. Joe and Neil went to a convention for Heilicher Brothers, a very influential distributor in the Midwest. To make an impression, they hired an old-fashioned prop plane and dressed as 1920 aviators; then they had the plane buzz the convention hotel a few times and land on the hotel grounds. After that stunt, who do you think was the talk of the convention?

One of our major artists was Curtis Mayfield, who, before going solo, was the lead singer of The Impressions. Curtis, along with his manager and partner, Marv Stuart, had his own label: Curtom Records. Buddah manufactured, sold, and promoted the product, but Curtis had total control over the content. Neil usually wouldn’t hesitate to correct an artist if he thought his or her music needed a little something, but when it came to Curtis Mayfield, he would never assume he knew better. Curtis was a true superstar in those days. His albums always went Gold (half a million units sold), and he became a household name in the summer of 1972, when he created the music for the smash movie
Super Fly,
the soundtrack for which sold over three million units. But, as exciting as his albums were, he was incredibly dull in concert, anchoring himself in front of the microphone and barely twitching a muscle.

In September 1972, I was sent to Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, to act as liaison between Curtis and the ABC people during the taping of the infamous pilot episode of ABC’s
In Concert
TV series. Also on the bill was Alice Cooper, the original shock rocker, whom Curtis was to follow onstage. The taping was a mess. ABC’s people did not have it together, and everything was way off schedule. We had been slated for a 12:00 a.m. start time, and at 2:00 a.m. we were still waiting to go on. To make matters worse, none of the thirty people in Curtis’s entourage had any rolling papers left. There was smoke, plenty of smoke, but nothing to roll joints with, and certainly no pipe—pipes were not part of the hardcore pot repertoire at that point. This was a major catastrophe. It was intolerable to have to while away the time without being stoned. Not to worry. In amazement, I watched as a member of Curtis’s posse ripped open a paper grocery bag, filled it with marijuana and menthol tobacco from numerous Newport cigarettes, rolled it, fitted one end with a rolled-up piece of cardboard (a perfect filter) and—viola! The biggest joint I had ever seen. It was at least three feet long and four to six inches wide. After two passes to each person, it was gone, but it had served its intended purpose. We were now all in a better mood.

Eventually, Curtis went onstage before a less-than-enthusiastic audience. The
In Concert
people had not allowed audience members to go to the bathroom for hours because they were afraid they would leave the hall, and that would make for terrible audience shots. They were also afraid that, once out of their seats, people would not return at all, leaving the production staff to find replacements in the middle of the night. But some audience members decided that they were leaving, and locked doors were not going to stop them. The fact that it was illegal to lock these people into a theater did not seem to bother the show’s producers; they had a show to shoot, and there had to be an audience, no matter what.

In Concert
was, in fact, an excellent opportunity for Curtis, as the target demographic for the show was young white males into rock and roll, and he needed exposure to that audience. I am sure Ron Weisner was responsible for setting it up.

Neil was a visionary, and he was one of the first people (if not the very first) to use a TV spot to promote an album release. In most cases, the thirty- and sixty-second commercials were cut-down versions of promotional films (essentially music videos), which were mainly created if you needed to promote your product in foreign territories, or if you needed a moving image on a local dance show or news broadcast. Some of those spots, including one for Stories’s (“Brother Louie”) 1973 album,
About Us
, are even available on YouTube.

Neil had a wonderful working relationship with two of the principals in the New York production company Direction Plus, which we occasionally hired to produce promo films and TV spots for Buddah. While certainly no one knew it at the time, both of those principals, Bill Aucoin and Joyce Biawitz, would go on to change our lives forever, as we would change theirs.

The Curtis Mayfield three-foot joint scenario may have been an amusing eye-opener for me, but it was nothing compared to some of the situations I found myself in on Curtis’s behalf. He called me at the office one day (I’m sure one of my Buddah colleagues put him up to it, as I can’t imagine he thought I was cool), and he asked me to meet him at his hotel suite. When I arrived, I found him in bed with several women. He called me over, handed me two thousand dollars, and gave me an address where I was to pick up a package for him. I went to this seedy part of town knowing full well that I had two grand on me and that the package was not going to contain a pastrami sandwich. Carrying around so much cocaine made me very paranoid. I returned to Curtis’s suite, but this time I was not invited in. He opened the door a crack, took the blow from me, and slammed the door shut. No thank-you—nothing. Probably shouldn’t have expected a gratuity, either.

That one occasion aside, Curtis was always very nice to me. In fact, I don’t think I ever saw him be anything but congenial to anyone. Yet I was totally struck by the irony. This guy had written the music to
Super Fly
and was hailed by everyone as a genius for delivering the antidrug message through songs like “Freddie’s Dead” and “Super Fly,” and now he was doing an entire ounce of blow.