It has been a long journey for our next guest, Chef Gordon, journey from Jackson Heights, Queens, New York, to the upper echelon of Hollywood, filmmaking and the food industry. Chef Gordon is a talent manager. He's also the head of his own company called A Live Enterprises, and the author of a new book entitled They Call Me supermanch a backstage Pass to the amazing world of film, food, and rock and roll. It will be released tomorrow. Chef Gordon,
thank you for coming in. Thank you for having me tell people, just at the very beginning, a little bit of your history so that they understand how you ended up pulling into a hotel in Los Angeles that really changed your life. I was I was raised in Long Island, got a Region Scholarship UM, and wanted to get as far away from my family as I possibly could, which was Buffalo, New York, and still use the New York State Scholarship Um and the school ended up being nomadic
Jews from New York. Basically was the first year as an institution. I took sociology. I went to the New School for Social Research. I didn't like it. I was a long hair, um taking part of the part of the fabric of that time, burning rozy buildings, taking psychedelics and um. They came and recruited for probation offices in California when Reagan was a governor, and I said, I'm going to go on my white horse and save kids in California. And I ended up working one day as
a probation officer. UM. I sort of became the baseball in a softball game. I left, checked into a motel late at night, heard um, heard a girl screaming, thought she was maybe getting rape. Heard a guy went down, broke him up. They were making love, and she happened to be Janis Chaplin, which led to them discovering I was Jewish. Jewish guys should be managers. They introduced me to Alice Cooper, and forty five years later, I'm on the same highway. Well, there are a lot of stops
along on on that highway. Tell us what what was it like to to meet people like let's say, Jimi Hendrix or Alice Cooper, because that they didn't know who you were, right, but they you know, it was a different time. First of all, they weren't Mountain Rushmore characters, and it wasn't the celebrity buzz that we have today. They were nice guys trying to make a living. Um. Alice wasn't making a living. Um. And you know, I think your journey through life. You only know your journey. UM.
So that was just what was happening. I never thought of it as anything bigger than life, you know. Um. Now I look back at it and I realized, oh my god, how lucky I was. But that's all I knew. Um. Well, you seem to also know how to put people together with projects. And I'm wanting and what is it that that sort of excites you? What is it that connects you? Maybe give us an example of a project and connecting
the right person. What I love to do is is um the termine, what the brand of an artist essences? What is it about the artist that really attracts his audience and trying to put a picture frame on it that doesn't compromise what they do, but makes it easy for people to look in. So, for example, Teddy Pendergrass a soul singer, A lot of soul singers. Al Green was around in those days, Marvin Gaye was, There's a lot of soul singers. What was Teddy's magic? Teddy's magic
was sexual. He aroused women. It was a remarkable talent besides being a great voice, and he had all the acrements. He looked beautiful. How do I how do I tell that to the public? How do I take his artistry? Put it in a simple picture frame that makes it completely understandable without being arrogant? Um? And what I did was, I said, let's do concerts for women only. Let's do ads, that's say for women only. Let's only let women into the shows. Let's give that chocolate Teddy barrel lollypops so
they can lick it at the shows. And we we defined who he was in what I think was a very effective way. After that, they started calling him the black Elvis. I'm also managed Luther Vandross, another soul singer. How do I separate him from Teddy? Luther was about romance? Teddy was about sex. So with Luther, I did in twenty cities around the country on the top radio stations b LS. Here in New York, um get married by Luther. We ran a contest. You came on the air, live
Luther marriage, you live, defining romance? Um? And that's what I enjoyed doing, you know, with Alice, who was rebellion of kids against their parents. How do we define that, you know, killing chickens, doing disgusting things, doing anything to adhere at tator parents. And that's the part that I enjoy. I love when it works, looking in the mirror, high fiving myself and putting on Bloomberg News. I just I'm
gonna give you unfortunately only about forty seconds here. I just tell us a little about how your your food interests also blossomed. And then one word about the book. Um. In the book, I talked about how my life changed. I was. I was ready to hit a wall. I was too young, too successful, too rich, too many drugs, too many women. And a chef walked into a room and con and I said, this is the man I
want to follow. He looked happy. And that led my journey into managing most of the great chefs of the world, Nobu and Wolfgang and I'm probably costly. And it's all in the book. It is all in the book that that I can published by Anthony Boydane by the way, Yes and Anthony boyde book a friend of yours and also a noted Chef, I want to thank you very much for spending time with us. You'll have to come.
Thank you for having me. Chef Gordon, talent Manager Alive Enterprises, most recently the author of They Call Me Superman Shape, Backstage Path as to the amazing world of film, food, and rock and roll. This is Bloomberg