And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records (7 page)

It sounds completely ridiculous these days, but owning a microwave and a twenty-seven-inch TV made me something of a cutting-edge gadget collector. The microwave and a refrigerator were sent to me by the Zamoski Company in Baltimore in exchange for some albums. The television, which was a very large model in 1974, was Neil’s suggestion. At Zamoski’s, they were so cool that they were open to trading anything from carpeting to electronics for vinyl records: this was barter at its best. We would often order prizes for our contests or gifts for artists and DJs from Zamoski’s.

Soon after I moved in to the house, one of our former Buddah Group artists, comedian Robert Klein, came to stay while he was performing at the Troubadour on Santa Monica Boulevard. I had gotten to know Robert very well back East, and once I’d moved out to LA, he’d frequently stay with me when he was in town doing shows. Because most of us think of comedians as relative no-names doing five nights a week at the local improv, we tend to forget that the top guys and gals in the field are like rock stars. Robert is solidly old-school now, but at the time he was as hot as any comedian on the planet.

During this particular visit, I drove him around the city and showed him LA’s hot night spots—like the Whisky and the Roxy—and listened to him rant about his managers, Buddy Morra and Larry Brezner. Robert, who had done
The Tonight Show
more times than any other comedian, had just signed a lucrative contract with HBO, and his live shows generated good money as well. He felt (justifiably so, according to the half-hour sales pitch I was hearing) that his managers should be treating him as their top guy, but instead they couldn’t stop raving about this new comedian—some guy named Robin Williams.

After that, I attended a gig of Robert’s at the Troubadour; I knew his routine so well that I could have jumped onstage and done it myself. I found it helpful to drop his name when trying to pick up pretty young things at nightclubs, and his name could equally impress the older set. Robert was nice enough to have dinner one evening with me and my parents, spending most of the meal raving about me. This not only made me proud, but it wowed my parents that a guy who’d done Johnny’s show so many times would say such nice things about their son.

 

 

In early 1974, KISS’s debut album was still not quite ready to be released, as we needed time to prepare Warner Brothers for what was about to befall them. Additionally, January was not typically a good month to release albums, especially those of new artists, since so much product had just hit the market for the holiday shopping season. Instead, a record by an artist named Bill Amesbury, who was referred to us by a Canadian producer whom Neil knew, became Casablanca’s first release. Amesbury’s single, “Virginia,” was not a great record, and I had nothing to do with its promotion as it was tailor-made for Top 40. The record allowed Buck the chance to become familiar with some of the Warner people he would be working with, and it also bought us some time to set up the KISS marketing blitz, which would include several different full-page ads in
Billboard, Cashbox,
and
Record World,
as well as a sixty-second radio spot featuring a Humphrey Bogart sound-alike doing
Casablanca-
themed voice-overs.

I spent much of this time getting to know the Warner Brothers staff and trying to understand how their company functioned. Most of the people at Warner were less than thrilled about our label. They were used to labels that had (in their opinion) relevant artists—such as Chrysalis, with Robin Trower and Jethro Tull; or Capricorn, with the Allman Brothers. It was beneath a company with such a classy image to be associated with a group that wore makeup—though they did have Alice Cooper. Somehow, Alice’s makeup was upscale in their eyes.

We weren’t exactly acting like shy, unassuming neophytes. When you have no experience (and we didn’t, compared to Warner), you’re expected to be deferential, to quietly and respectfully pay your dues. We didn’t. We were loudmouthed New York guys who drove nice Mercedeses and drew bigger paychecks than our Warner counterparts. We bragged publicly and loudly in the trades about ourselves—we Casablanca people, not just the company itself or our artists. More often than not, we acted like we were inventing the business, not like the kids who’d just arrived at the party. I can’t imagine that sat well with most of the Warner folks.

This created two huge challenges for us: one was marketing KISS, and the other was getting Warner Brothers to work with us. To anyone with a pair of functioning eyes, KISS was a supernova waiting to explode, but igniting the fuse was proving far more difficult than we expected. KISS was an uphill battle for us as far as Warner Brothers was concerned, and at the crux of that was the black-and-white contrast between the Casablanca and the Warner ways of doing business. We were a small group of kids out on a new adventure, and Casablanca was as shoot-from-the-hip as you could get. From the start, Neil boasted about us to anyone who would listen. He especially played us up in the January 1974 edition of an in-house Warner newsletter called
Circular,
saying that I had walked into Buddah right off the streets and now knew more about the world of FM radio than guys who had been doing promotions for ten or twelve years. A great compliment, but Neil was being an overzealous braggart and had wildly overstated my experience. In the same article, he also explained the infrastructure that made Casablanca not only successful but also unique among record companies: we were a team of promotion men. It was unusual for a record company president to do promotions himself—to call radio stations, to go out on the road and visit them—but Neil did it, and he loved doing it too. Promotion was the name of the game for us, and that’s what we were: a promotion company.

In sharp contrast, Warner Brothers was a cumbersome bureaucratic maze in which every department clung desperately to its own turf. Buck or Neil or I couldn’t have cared less who got the credit, we just wanted to succeed. Warner’s staff seemed intent on their proprietary success. It was a classic study in contrast: entrepreneurial creativity versus the old-style corporate mentality. Working for Warner was a dream come true for most Warner employees because it made them part of the WEA (Warner Elektra Atlantic) Corporation, and while the prestigious labels Elektra and Atlantic had great acts, the Warner roster was cooler and hipper.

By the middle of January 1974, we were ready to begin work, but then we were sidetracked when Warner invited us to its convention in Acapulco. This was a major event within Warner culture. The company would fly in its entire promotional and sales staff from around the country and present them with all kinds of awards, but the event’s primary function was to bolster morale. Dinners were massive events, and the convention hotel, the Acapulco Princess, was the height of tropical opulence.

The convention was my indoctrination into Warner Brothers, and it was there that I first met many of the staff members who would play a large role in our day-to-day operations. I was particularly impressed with Warner’s cochairman, Joe Smith, a gregarious and likable man who had a remarkable ability to remember the names of everyone he had met in the industry, and even the names of those he hadn’t met. In the conference’s initial reception line, through which everyone was funneled into the room, Joe greeted his guests, and although I was not with Neil or anyone else from Casablanca, he knew my name. Joe was the kind of person who immediately put you at ease, and since he, and not Warner’s president, Mo Ostin, was actually responsible for us being there, I felt a certain warmth toward him.

Three key members of the Warner staff were Ron Saul, the promotions director; Bob Regehr, who ran marketing, publicity, and artist relations; and Eddie Rosenblatt, who was the head of sales. We immediately developed a good rapport with Regehr, but our relations were considerably cooler with Saul and Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt, who later left to become president of Geffen Records, thought that we weren’t good enough for Warner. But Saul was far worse, and he seemed to be doing everything he could to ensure that his promotion staff gave us as little help as possible, a tactic that would later backfire on him. Saul was replaced shortly thereafter by Gary Davis, though our relationship with Davis wasn’t much better.

Fortunately, Bob Regehr and his staff were very nice, and usually helpful. While they didn’t seem to understand why Warner had made this deal with us, they were willing to give us a shot. It was important to have them in our corner, as they had a separate budget that we could tap into and a great deal of clout with concert promoters throughout the country, all of which would prove highly valuable to us when it came to booking KISS. Regehr and his right-hand man, Carl Scott, knew the concert business. Regehr’s department was also responsible for publicity, and we had a nice relationship with them until our need for publicity outpaced their ability or desire to provide it. I always got along well with Carl Scott; he was accessible and fair, and I did believe he was honest with me in terms of what he could and would do. I also had dealings with another member of the artist relations group, a very small and dynamic young lady named Paulette Rapp, who was Regehr’s lieutenant.

The Warner sales department was made up of some fine industry veterans, and we worked well with all of the field people. Our problem, which did not become apparent until months later, was the head of the department, Eddie Rosenblatt. If it were not for the efforts of Russ Thyret, Rosenblatt’s second in command, we would have been at loggerheads immediately. Russ, who would later become company chairman, was in charge of single sales, and he was a particularly skilled politician, always attempting to smooth over disagreements we were having with Eddie, which usually involved how many records to ship and what sales promotions we should use. Russ had our interests in mind, and he was one of the very few inside Warner who recognized that we were not being treated fairly. Then again, given the politicking that goes on in the industry, Eddie and Russ may simply have been running a good cop/bad cop routine.

KISS’s debut album was finally ready. Our labor pains began as we prepared to deliver it. There was no shortage of enthusiasm for the album on the part of Neil and me and the rest of the Casablanca staff. It had all the energy we’d hoped for. It was filled with the songs that would be the cornerstones of the band’s sound and stage show for decades: “Deuce,” “Strutter, ”Cold Gin,” “Firehouse,” all crashing to a thunderous conflagration at the album’s end in “Black Diamond.” The finished product made Neil feel vindicated for stonewalling Warner’s attempts to dilute these garish misfits and make them more palatable. To celebrate the record’s release on February 8, 1974, Warner decided to throw a party welcoming us to the label. This would give us the opportunity to showcase KISS live for the Warner staff, West Coast radio, television, retail clients, and critics. The event grew in size and scope until it became the most expensive music industry party in history to that point. Factoring for inflation, it may still hold that distinction.

The party, held on February 18 in the Los Angeles Room of the Century Plaza Hotel, was simply amazing. The caterers had turned the ballroom into the
Casablanca
set. There were palm trees, camels (both live and stuffed), rattan furniture, and actors dressed in period costume playing the parts of Rick, Ilsa, and other characters. Warner had even gone so far as to dig up original set decorations and props from the movie. In attendance were rock stars like Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop, and famous television personalities, including David Janssen, and Ted Knight from the
Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Casablanca added to the guest list, flying in numerous radio friends and retail contacts from around the country. I particularly remember Mark Parenteau (from WABX in Detroit) at the event—he’d go anywhere for a free party.

At the evening’s midpoint, KISS took the stage. The retail people, who tended to skew older, walked out en masse and congregated in the lobby, taking cover from the painfully loud performance in the ballroom. The younger attendees remained, but the room’s poor acoustics and the band’s sheer volume gave some of the Warner staff more reason not to like KISS or Casablanca, and they weren’t lacking for reasons to begin with. Nonetheless, the extravagantly staged party marked our coming out: Casablanca was open for business.

Neil was an eternal opportunist, and since KISS was already out on the West Coast for the Casablanca launch party, he arranged for them to perform on ABC Television’s
In Concert
three days later. They also did a great deal of publicity with West Coast publications and radio. This initial glut of exposure was crucial in establishing KISS as outrageous. The party was equally crucial in that regard, as the members of its captive audience were the exact movers and shakers we needed to leak word of KISS’s overpowering and explosive flamboyance. The music trade papers and many of the big-city media outlets ran stories about the band, and people called us for weeks after to rave about what a great time they’d had at the event. Many who called were genuinely happy for us, but a number of the West Coast elite clearly wanted to see us fail; we were the brash New Yorkers who had come to show the laid-back West Coast country clubbers how it was done.

To no one’s surprise, our first release, the Bill Amesbury record, went nowhere (it peaked at a mild No. 86 on the
Billboard
Top 100), and this meant that I had to do the KISS album promotion and marketing almost all by myself. The Warner Brothers field staff were no help at all, providing little more than delivery service, except for a select few of their regional guys, like George Gerrity out of Boston. They did not push anyone to play the record, which wasn’t atypical: Warner had a no-pressure reputation to uphold. However, due to the AOR airplay we were beginning to receive, the group was becoming hard to ignore. By early March, we’d made “most added” in
Record World
and had succeeded in getting KISS added at WRKR-FM (Kalamazoo), WMMR-FM (Philly), WPLR-FM (Connecticut), WVVS-FM (Valdosta, Georgia), and KSHE-FM (St. Louis). Others—like KMET (LA), WOUR (Utica, New York), WCMF (Rochester, New York), and WNEW-FM, WPLJ, and WLIR (all in New York City)—quickly followed suit. Buck was working possible singles, but even with all our efforts, Top 40 radio was not yet buying the fact that this was a viable group.

Although I finally convinced KMET to play the KISS album, I still had to figure a way to get KLOS, the big ABC-owned station, to jump on the record. I normally worked with just one progressive station per market, except in New York City. I always believed that if a station worked with me, then I should work with it in an informally exclusive agreement, which meant that I would be working
against
the competing stations in the format. I would often set up promotions that had nothing to do with my product, just to help a station. I’d also help a station out by asking the promoters I knew to work with it before another. This had worked very well for me at Buddah, back in New York. Now that I was with Casablanca and based in LA, I had to get KLOS on board.

I went to visit the station for the first time right after the KISS album came out. I walked into the programming office to see the station’s program director, Tom Yates, but in order to meet with him I first had to go through the attractive young woman who served as music director. As soon as she and I made eye contact, it was all over—we fell passionately for one another. We went out to have a picnic in a park, and then we went back to my house. She stayed for hours. In the coming weeks, she would come over to my house often, and it would just be sex, sex, sex. No drugs, just sex. She was stunning, and I’d fallen so hard for her that I even called my friend Norm Winer, the program director at WBCN-FM in Boston, to tell him I was in love. She was about five foot four and beautiful, with the cutest face, a remarkably hard body, great legs, and a very sexy, husky voice. Problem was that she had a live-in boyfriend, so it didn’t become a long-term relationship. No matter, I got KISS added to KLOS, and I got laid many times in the process. What great leverage. I’m sure Neil was very proud.