Ken Kragen

I went to Harvard Business School. Let's go back, where'd you go to undergraduate? I went to undergraduated Berkeley. Okay. My dad was vice chancer and teaching in the law school, and uh, and we were living in Berkeley, and I ended up going there thinking I was gonna be a microbiologist. Why a microbiologist? I have no idea. Well, six for we have to be started here. How many kids in your family? Uh? Just myself and my sister and your sister older or younger. She's younger by six years and

she's still with us. Oh, what's she up to? She's got four kids and thirteen grandchildren's boyfriend. Her husband passed away a few years ago, and you got a wonderful boyfriend that's and which I love at her age and they travel all over the world together. It's fabulous. Okay. So you're growing up in Berkeley. This is the fifties and fifth well we went. He was he was ahead of Loeban Lobe here in l A. And that's a legendary also entertainment. Yeah, he represented eleven studios. He was

a chief lobbyist and Sacramento for them. And he had the funny thing is this is a good story. He he had clients. His clients were Deborah Carr, William Holden, Alan lad Mickey Rooney. And they used to come over the house and I was like six years old or something, and I would sit at their feet in the on the rug in the living room and here the taught my dad and them tell stories about all these entertainment stories, right, And I remember, I do remember this perfectly that I

thought to myself, I'll never have any stories like that. Now, you bring up any subject, I can tell you a story. Something in my fifty or sixty years in this business. Okay. So you're living where in l A. At that time, we were living over near Fairfax in Beverly, where I ended up much later, basically having an office at CBS. Okay, you never left, but uh, in terms of were you aware that your father was that successful? We we Uh, we moved when my dad was really at Loeban Loeban

doing Grady ended up being the managing partner. Uh. We lived on Irving in Los Angeles, right off of right off of third Street. Uh, in that kind of area where they shot movies a lot, and there were all these big homes at the time. And I would go down on the weekend and get to help run the switchboard at Loeban Lobe. Yeah, that was like a little kid. Where was their office that their office was Grant Union and Grant Okick or something like that or Grand I'm sorry,

grand And and Union, I think. Okay, so you met a lot of powerful, famous people when you were growing up. Did that have an impact upon you? You know, I don't think so. But what changed my life in a funny way was uh that I we moved when I was fifteen to Berkeley. And when we moved when my dad took what happened, and it's a big lesson. My dad was making I don't know, over a hundred thousand a year, because that was a lot of money back then, ton,

I mean the fifties, fifty two. This was you See, Berkeley comes to him and they offer him twelve five to come pel five a year to come teach us like ten percent of his salary right to come teach at Berkeley in the law school. And he takes it, and we leave Los Angeles and we moved to Berkeley. I've used it in my classes at U c l A when I've teaching there. I used it as a great example of do what you love, what you really believe. He stayed there forty two years. He taught till he

was eighty seven. He chaired committees till he was ninety five. He died in his sleep at night. I mean he did. He lived it so he never had any regrets none, And somehow or other he ended up living, leaving my kids and and uh and my sister's bunch of kids. Uh A lot of money. I who knows it from where? You know? So you moved You were born in l A. You moved to fifteen What about your mother? My mother was basically a housekeeper and homekeeper. But she had been

a violinists with the Oakland Symphony. And but after she met my dad, slowly she wound that. Now she still played even when we moved down here in groups there. So music was in our life, but I was a terrible musician. I played a lousy trombone. Okay, So your parents born in the US and their parents born in the Old Country as her family, this is kind of neat. Our family came, at least one side of it, came

to San Francisco for the gold Rush. The great great grandfather came across the Isthmus of Panama on a donkey because there was no canal. Then he rode across. He got on a steamer. He came up to San Francisco. But he got there in eighteen fifty two and the gold Rush was essentially over. And he then formed or opened the first furniture store on Market Street in San Francisco.

And he had come from where he had come. Well, we always thought it was Austria, but I think what we're finding out is it may be part of Austria now, but it was hungry, I think in that. And what about Poland, and what about the other side of your family, the other side of the family also from that kind

of area. My mom trade. This is kind of interesting, My mom trace back to the fact that in the seventeen hundreds a Jewish, a regular general in the German army, married a Jewish woman and was kicked out of the army in the seventeen hundreds. Right. I don't know how she found that out, but she did, and so they moved away from Germany. And so I think both sides of the family came from that, you know, that Hungary, Austria, Poland kind of one came in eighteen fifty. When did

the other one come? You know, the other one came when there was a railroad that I don't know the year now, I probably should, but the wild part of it was, and this is the first She was with the firstborn child, who was like four or five, and the new and a new baby in her arms, and she came across on a train and they changed trains in Chicago, and the four or five year old ran

under a train and was killed. And she had to arrive in San Francisco with the firstborn boy in the family in a coffin wild you know, I don't know. My mother was phenomenal at tracing all that stuff back. Okay, So let's be like you were born in l Aye and he didn't move to Berkeley. I was born in Berkeley, Okay, and moved to l A. I remember. I think I started Third Street School in Los Angeles and probably the

third grade. So you were here for like six or eight years before you went back to Berkeley a little more, and you were in Berkeley you went to regular public school. Yeah, yeah, I went to Berkeley High. I'm an alumnus of Berkeley High. So what was that experience? Like? Very interesting? Uh? You know?

For the interesting most interesting thing is Berkeley High had a theater attached to it, a regular community theater, and the first show I ever produced was for a group of the Kingston Trio or no, it was sort of the lot. It was for the Gateway Singers. I think I don't even know they well, they predated they were sort of the West Coast weavers, you know, in that old folk era, you know, I know it was one of those, and it probably was the king Centrio and

it was in the Berkeley Community Theater. And the reason I remember it so well is the group made three sixty dollars, which was more money than they had ever made. That that night, I made eighty two dollars until my dad, who was a tax expert, explained to me that there were admission taxes and they were eighty dollars. So so my first show in the Berkeley Community Theater, right where I went to high school, I ain't two dollars. And so you're in high school, You're a popular kid. Were

you a nerd? What kind of kid were you know? I joined a club there, club called the Annoias and we called what they were called the Unoias EU. And I have no clue. I don't know. But what I know is because this was the seeds of my career is in l A. We had always had these big dances with Nay. We had Frank Sinatra come and sing it at a high school dance, you know, I mean, it was unbelievable. Got to Berkeley and I felt like

they were ten years behind the time. So I started through my dad, I made some connections and I started bringing acts from l A to come up to perform at dances or not concerts. At that point, we're talking the fifties, uh and and I'll never forget because I bought this. I bought the stand Kenton band. Except you didn't get the band. You got a group that he formed of musicians in San Francisco, and they sent the drums that said Stan Kenton on it, right, you know,

but at least Stan Kenton was there, right. No, No, Stan wasn't there either. Stan couldn't be there, and I had booked his I think his wife was Julie Christie maybe, and I booked her and she couldn't come either, So they sent a lady named Terry Southern. These are all acts no one would know now, you know, but the bad. But we made money, you know. My mother sent me a picture one time of me giving six four dollars to the Red Cross from one of these shows that

I did, you know. Okay, so you're in high school, are you you know, certainly looking at your career? Are you that entrepreneurial? From day one? You have a paper route that kind of I sold Time Life Sports illustrated subscriptions, and I would go up to the Berkeley campus and I would hand out discount cards in what was then the Red Line. Now you wouldn't have stand in line to register then you had to stand in a long, long line for hours to go and actually register, and

I would have to. So I would go down the line and hand everybody a students a student discount card for Time Life for Sports Illustrated. But it had my address, my home address on it. I would get. I remember I made eighteen hundred dollars one week in commissions in high school. It's like today doing My mother looked at me like I was. She thought, oh, no thing is going to come from this. So I did that. I got over the years. Even after I got into college.

I had I called at the cal Subscription Service, but because my first initials ken K in my last k, it was called k L Subscription Service. I ended up with fifty sales people around California on campuses. I so I was totally entrepreneurial from the early stages there. Okay, and how did you get you know, was it a super discount price? Why did everybody say that it was like half the normal price? And how did you get hooked up? Well, somehow or other, I agreed to do it,

and they gave us. I would get like six they wanted. They wanted the subscription, so that would give me like sixty or seventy of the cause of the subscription. So even though the subscription was less than five dollars for for the year, I would get, you know, three sixty five or something from every subscription. You know that our mailbox would be stuffed with these cards and fifty salesman. How much did you take from them? You know? I don't remember that. I don't remember, but I might have

split with them or maybe I don't know. I gave them enough as incentive, and even I let when I went to Berkeley. I was in Berkeley four years and then the King cent Trio I was doing their shows and they wanted me to become their concert promoter on the road. And the meantime, I got accepted to Harvard Business School, and my father, I think that's the only time in my whole life, he said, you've got to

do something. He said, if you don't go to Harvard Business School now, you will never go Okay, let's go back. You're in Berkeley studying, what I'm saying. From getting out of high school, I thought I'd be a microbiologist. Uh. Then I ended up in engineering and I did terrible there because I was awful at math. I used to skip math in high school for basketball practice and and so I dropped out of that for after a year.

And they had a special deal for basketball players at Berkeley, although I wasn't a big time player there, and it was where you could make up. Of course, the schools all have it now. This they created for the athletes, and you could take subjects from You had to have a total of twelve units and you could go up to three different areas. So I picked anthropology, sociology, and journalism. Don't ask me, I don't know why, but there were

all things I was interested in. So I did very well because I now was taking things that were fascinating to me and interesting to me. And I got all ready to graduate from Berkeley, and I turned out I was three units short. So my journalism for me who was my sort of my mentor too, she gave me, uh, she let me work on a study with her, and she gave me three credits so I could graduate. Okay, did you promote shows in college? Yes, we're at the

college or the idea. The first show I ever did at the college was the group the Limelighters, and it was in a sevenfty hall seed Hall. I've got the poster on my wall at home. I know. The tickets were seventy cents, okay, and I and it was first come, first served, no pre sale. And I remember sitting in the office of the editor of the of the school paper, the Daily Cow, and saying to him, Oh, God, is

anybody going to show up? And we walked out of his office, which was right across from the hall, and there was a line around the building. We sold out. It was my my first show on the Berkeley campus. And and by the way, it led to my managing that group after I got out of Harvard Business School, because they thought of me as some kind of genius. They had never done that, They've never made that much money. They were appearing at the Hungry Eye, a little club

over in the Bay Area, and uh. And I was like a hero as a kid, you know, from doing it. And I actually ended up by the way U after once I got professional, after Harvard, I wrote a book on promoting college concerts. Okay, so the line lighters hadn't broken yet if they're playing at the Hungry No, they hadn't broken back. Okay. Now today it's a track people become part of the concert committee, etcetera. Were you operating totally independently or were you part of a club? No,

I was. I was operating pretty much independently, but I was doing everything. In fact, once I took on the management of that group after after the business school, I would do everything from sending the laundry out to booking the airfares to uh, you know, I'd be a shill at the concert and have to throw out a line that got a very funny reaction from the their response to it, and stuff like that. I mean I was

a run spotlights. I sold souvenir programs, whatever was necessary at that moment in time that had to be done that would help the group I did. It was a great education. They were older and me. They knew what they were doing. I learned management. Okay, so you're still in Berkeley. When you book a bandon Berkeley, you know, today there's a huge guarantee and the promoter can lose money. What was the deal back then? Well, I just you

reminded me of one grace whore. I booked Ray Charles, and it's Saturday night in Berkeley and they get there for rehearsal at four in the afternoon and Joe Adams, his manager, says to me, you owe him ten thousand dollars, which is what I had to pay for him then. And he says, and we want it in cash. Where do you get Where does a college kid get ten thousand dollars? And I have no idea where I got it.

I did, and I watched them count every dollar. Okay, you graduate from college, you go to Harvard Business School the following fall. Do you take time off? Yeah, here's the crazy thing. The king Centrio asked me to be there answer promoter. My dad had ah. I think I had grant some kind of a grant to go to Europe and do some lectures there. So we went to Europe for the summer, and I flew directly from Copenhagen

back to Boston to start Harvard Business School. And I walked into my dorm room and a guy said to me, my god, have you heard this song by the Kingston Trio Hanging out your Head Tom Dooley. It's the number one song in the country. I was sure, absolutely certain, I had blown it, and my career was in the in the entertainment business. I had lost, I had lost any opportunity there. I was sure of it. I thought,

you know, you should have taken that job. Look at their the number one and I had predicted a year before when I first heard him. I walked up to him after the show at a little club called the U. The UH was the Blue Onion or something in San Francisco, and I I said to them, you know, a year from now, you're going to be the hottest thing in the US. And almost a year to the day they had the number one record. Okay, so at that time you ended up managing the Kingston Trio. No never, No, okay.

So you go to Harvard Business School. When you were in college, did you live at home or on campus? And lived at home? Okay, so this is the first time you're living alone. Yeah, and your Harvard Business School dorm. Any idea what you're trying to achieve by going survive? I flew home the first year until my parents. I had flunked out. I was sure of it, and I ended up twenty seven in the class, and I I was absolutely certain I had to fake some of the exams, you know, I mean it was it was so hard,

it was unbelievable. And they told us that the dean. I think the reason I got into Harvard School is the dean of of the school had been the dean of men at Berkeley when my dad was vice Chances that they were all friends. Somehow I got in, you know, those that wouldn't happen nowadays. But and and uh, and I was sure that I had was flunked out, and I just couldn't believe it. But the second year was a little easier than the first, but never it was easy.

And and I, by the way, I started a subscription service. I called it New England Subscription or something like that in England. You know I had but I you know, I got an offer from this group, from the Lime Letders. They I was home at Christmas between I still had four or five months ago, and they called me just as I'm getting ready to leave to go back, and they said, we need an executive secretary. Would you be

our executive secretary? And I think this is probably the single guttiest thing I've ever done in my life, because I said to them, look, I didn't go to Harvard Business School to be an executive secretary. If you need a manager, you know, call me. And when I got back to school. The leader of the Lime Letters was a very funny guy named Leuke Got Ladies. Rik was funny, and there was this wonderful letter that I can't find anywhere. And he said, we want you to be our manager.

So now I accept the management and he want and they want me to come out of school. And I said no, no no, no, no, no. Four months from now, I'm you know, in May or whatever it is, I'm graduating. Uh, you have to wait. But I started working for them right away, and I took their album and I walked into the biggest station in Boston at the time, w b Z, and who was the program director but Joe Smith not He was the librarian. Joe Smith for those of no, Joe Smith had a legendary career in the

record business, working at Warner Brothers Records running Electra. Yeah, he was co president of Warners with Mo Austin. You know, the gold Dust Twins, that's what they were called. So he he was the first guy. He sat me down and gave me clues to the business. And I took that record all over Boston and promoted it and everything. Had some unbelievable experiences. You know, this was the days of Paola and other stuff like that, and there were

some amazing things happening in those days. I don't know if we have time for it, but I okay, if there's Paola, you're a graduate student. How did you get the money to pay them? I didn't. I didn't pay anybody. But it led, it led, and I wish I could remember the guy's name. He was like the hottest DJ in the country at the time. What if he played

your record, you were made right? And he was at a competing station, not busy, and I made an appointment to take one of the members of the group kind of a hot blooded he's still around and still I think, occasionally performs with the group as he's constituted. A guy named Alex Hasslev and he was from a Russian background, and UM and I took him with me to meet this DJ with our record, with our single, whatever it was, and we and UM he kept us waiting over an hour,

which was getting Alex kind of upset anyway. Then he walked into the studio, walked right by us, went to his office and we were sat there for another half hour or more. Finally we go into his office and he is he's got a stack of In those days, they were those little forty five with a big hole, right, and he's taking them and he's throwing them one after the other into the waste basket. Uh. And every every so often he puts one down on the desk, but

the rest just get tossed. And we're standing there in front of me. Doesn't offer any place to sit, and he doesn't look up, and he says, come back when you get a hit. That's it, Alex. I have to restrain Alex from jumping over the desk and strangling him from the dead. This is my first month in the job, right, and the bigger thing than happened. I go to Chicago. The group is in Chicago that went at the Easter break.

So I go to Chicago. They're peering at a at a club in Chicago, and I go to their hotel room. And as I walk in their hotel room, and I've turned down bb D, N O, Procter and Gamble Time magazine, all these people that are hiring the Harvard grats, the Harvard Business School grads and and uh. As I walk in the room, Alan, I hear Alex say, Okay, that's it. We're breaking up. And what I didn't know was they

break up every day from there on concerant. You know, okay, God, just finishing Harvard Business School before you got that call slash letter from the Lime Lighters. Would you have gone into music management or would you have gone to work for Procter and Gamble or one of those? I think I might have gone to work for Time magazine because of all my history with Time, and the department that wanted me a time was called New Developments or innovation,

or nowadays it'll be called innovation. When there was a recession a year later, I guarantee you it was the first department to go. So I made one good decision. And what are your parents say about you going to Harvard Business School? Now you're a manager? You know? The great thing about my parents is whatever I was doing they were thrilled with. They were here. So many stories now of kids whose parents, you know, fight what they want to do. You read books about it all the

time here, and the kids do it anyway. But you know, we all want to make our parents proud. I think even even abusive parents, people still want to They're they're driven to make them proud and um and in my case, I felt the same way. But they never pushed me one way or another, and they were just proud of everything I did. And I and I got lucky. Listen, I took this group on. We were I moved him from Electra Records. I moved with Jack Holtsman, dear Jack Holdsman,

of course the recent scene. I moved him from there to our c A for a much bigger deal. At the time, Elector was an independent. Yeah, it was a smaller independent. They didn't have the money to promote them. I made a rather revolutionary d at the time. I made a deal which gave us a fifty thousand dollar promotion fund would be five thousand maybe now or more. A fifty thousand dollar promotion fund that that we controlled. They had to if they objected anything that had to

be coordinated with them, but we could control it. And um and so I had that fund to work with to promote the group, and we became the number two selling artist at our c A. But you know, it was just kind of amazing. I mean, I learned by making mistakes through that whole period. But these guys, they

couldn't agree on anything together. So what they would do is each one would take me aside and try to get me to agree with their point of view about which booking agency we should go with, whether she we should take this tour or not, and so on, you know, and um, and then what would happen is we'd get together they each want to do at a different time, in different place. Then we all get together to meet and make a decision booking agencies. One I particularly remember

they each wanted a different agency. They finally throw up their hands and say, well, let's let Ken decide. Like what, Ken, what do you think? Now? I've heard all the arguments, ad infinitum. I mean, I've heard them over and over and over, and I make a decision, you know, and

hopefully I make the right decision. In fact, one of the wrong decisions I made that was perfectly right for them, as I pulled them off some booking to put them on the mort Salt tour all over the country, thirty four cities and thirty five year we have like sixty two, sixty probably sixty and sixty one. Yeah, in six you go to negotiate a record deal. Everything is very sophisticated, these tapes. Did you have a lawyer. Do you do it yourself? How did it work? We had lawyers usually

I don't remember who was there. Oh, they did have a lawyer that I wasn't too crazy about, but they But the record deals, I still got very much involved. I didn't know better, you know, I mean and and and it wasn't anything like it is today. Really talking to So you're dealing with the record company, then to what degree are you telling the record company what to do? I can't. It's not my style. So what is your?

My style is finding a way that together we make decisions and that that I but I'm willing to go with them the extra mile to support everything. To that I'm not. I'm not saying to them, you go promote this, you go. I mean, even we're talking, if you if you skip ahead thirty years on, Kenny Rodgers or Tricia Earwood or I would make four hundred radio calls to promote a record. Now the record company's still doing the

same thing. But my calls. They don't get calls from managers on you know, the program directors Like I became close friends with program directors all over the country, and I would call, call and call to get my records on the end. What if you felt the record wasn't an a level record, would you still call That's an interesting question. I you know, hopefully most times, you know. I'm trying to remember one of those incidents. I'm pretty sure that I was involved enough that whatever came out

with something. Now, when Kenny Rogers first recorded Lucile, he's into seventeen songs. I thought it was hysterically funny. It was going to be either a big flop or a big or a big success. And I tried to get the record and you put it out, and they wouldn't. They put out one or two records before it. But boy, when we got to it, I worked that record like crazy because I believed in it. I don't know what I did with the previous two. I probably didn't work

anywheres as hard. Okay, so you're managing the law lights. Their career gets better when you're the manager, much better, and you're making any money A lot a lot of my when when I graduated from Harvard Business School, and anybody who knows what they get nowadays from that school when you're grad will just be before it the the top price that the guys coming out of Harvard Business School got on the average a lot of them got it was twelve five a year. Okay, that was considered

a lot of money for them. H I earned by my second year, I earned thirty five. And at this point, how many people do you have working for you? If any maybe no, I probably nobody. Probably, So the Limelighters are big, big and successful. What's the next step? The next step is the Limelighters finally reach a point where

they decided to break up. And by that time, by the way, by that time, for the last year, they have replaced me with a woman they met in New York who because they've decided they can save the timber cent, they're paying me, right, and you charge ten? Then ten was all? Then yeah, it went up to five. I never charged more than fifteen. The managers get hey, Colonel Tom Parker got you know that story, it's the great story,

some news guy says to him. So I understand that you know that you take you take half of Pressley's earnings. He said, no, no, no, no, Elvis Presley takes half of months, right, you know, but anyway, uh, in those days, I'm trying to think now, I got a little off trail. Okay, So the point is they were the limelighters, replace you to save money. Where does that leave They replace me with a woman. They send her out to give her

two weeks to learn everything I'm doing. She calls him up in the second week and says, this is crazy. It's gonna take me a year out here. She stays like four or five months. She finally goes back. She's mannaging him for six months, and now she asked them for tier and he saved anything. In the meantime, they make me the concert promoter. I'm making two or three times what I made as their manage. At that time,

there wasn't percentage, right, you paid a flat fee. Uh you may for for the if you're a promoter to the act, to the act, you paid them, Yeah, some kind of percentage usually though even then, Yeah, a lot of times was flat feet. And earnings in those days, my god, I mean we were getting ten thousand a night.

Streisan came along and charged twenty five thousand, and we all talked about how uh you know that she was going to ruin the business at Okay, so you know you're being the promoter, but the band breaks up, what do you do next day. Here's the crazy part of it. The band breaks up. Well, I'm holding a ten thousand dollar commercial for Chrysler Cars in my hand that for them,

and they can't do it because they've broken up. And I approached the Smothers brothers and say I'd like to manage I knew them, I knew them from San Francisco. We were friendly and said I wanted to manage him. And here's a ten thousand dollar deal. I've convinced the buyer that they that the Smothers are the right group.

At that point, they're on a lot of of the late night shows jacqu Parr and shows like that, and I say, I say, I'm gonna always make more money than I cost you for you and they signed with me. So the day the Lime Letters break up, I signed the Smothers brothers and that within a month, they appear on three major network shows in the same week. That never happened then, but they prefer a prayer performing on

three shows. Uh, Judy Garland, I can't remember the shows, but the Sullivan Show was one I can't I don't remember what the third one was anyway, that never happened because they all had exclusivity causes clauses. But the smothers weren't big enough than anybody cared because Striison was on one of the shows, and so you know the show. The shows each wanted to put whoever they had on that week, and the smothers were secondary, but they got

all the and the commercial breaks. So the Christi commercials are playing on the on the Today Show, and the Tonight Show, the the they're on a bunch of shows one week, we get so much exposure. The next forty nine shows selled out. Okay, just to be clear, was it your plan to get them on all those shows in a week or was that I think it was. I think it sort of happened. I mean, I don't think I had any idea. I looked back at it.

I teach now something called the magic of threes. How it takes three impressions in a concentrated period of time for anybody to take any real action. That if you just have one, so you try and combine, you try and bring things together. So they all happened in a very tight period that I learned that it now shown as a real law, I mean, a real scientific principle.

But in those I learned it when I started teaching at u c l A. By looking back and specifically that week taught me that everybody got excited when they saw the Smothers in those multiple appearances all happening in one week. It was all in one week. So anyway, uh, the Smothers very quickly are red hot and a blast vocal. Who's running. William Morris at that time talks to CBS and says, all of your stars on the network are aging. You've got Ed Sullivan and you've got all these old

you know, all these other stars that are older. Red Skelton had a show. They're they're all older stars. You need some youth, and he convinces them to put the Smothers on the air. So it's just sixty six. That was about that. What we've started out with was was a show in which Tommy played in Angel. Oh yes, yes, that exactly just to be there before we get to

my brother the Angel. Had you kept regular contact up with theos because I was living in the Bay Area right right a block two blocks from the Hungry Eye, and it was the Purple Onion. I said, it was the blue it's the Purple Onion. And they were appearing, and then they do a live album from the Purple Onion. I think they did absolutely one of the first step maybe the first album. Okay, And didn't they have a manager? No, they didn't at that point. I don't know if they

had had it or not prior I can't remember. Okay, So they do that show, I remember, and what network does it? The first show the My Brother the Angel was on. I think it was a sho That's what I was going to say. Okay, so I know it was. It was a company called screen gim So it was now I remember because I had a friend who had the record, and so therefore I tuned in. But from the perspective of viewer, the show wasn't really successful. But

in those days they bought twenty six shows. Nowadays you get six maybe, And in those days they bought you for a season, and they lived with you for a season. There were only three networks, and and if you got on the air, you still got a year's worth of exposure. You know, they didn't they didn't take you off mid year.

They didn't have any other shows to put on. Uh. So we did get through a year and then we kind of things were it still gave them weekly exposure, which was good, so fed the concert business and everything, and they were touring a lot. And then we then, of course in six okay, let's go back. Did they like each other or not? If they were threatened from the outside, they would respond as brothers, as a pair. Uh. If they were just arguing among themselves, uh, they would

really argue. And the funny part of it was one night they had a they had a concert in Aspen, or or very close to Aspen somewhere. They're in a club and it was snow on the ground everywhere, and everybody was lined outside the club waiting to get in. And Tom and Dick come along and they're arguing and they start throwing punches and they now are wrestling in the snow in front of the crowd that's going into

Tommy says, best show we ever did. People believed everything. Okay, so they see you can drive off the concert business. The show ends, and then what, uh the I don't quite understand the SMS Brothers. They do their network show runs a season half a year, twenty six episodes, and then they just continue touring and stuff like and doing

some records and stuff. We were on Mercury Record and then um and then this is when last Vogo convinces the network that they should put the Smothers brothers on and they and they put them on nine in a slot which see me, us has failed over and over and over there in fact, for eight years, nobody can knock bananas out and number one. But Sunday nights at eight o'clock and it's Bonanza and it's America's show, right, nobody's gonna do anything, and we knock them out of

number one. All Smothers goes on in sixty seven becomes an instant hit. Not instant, but within a week or a few weeks. We were not a lot of the show. A lot of the show was kind of traditional old, you know, variety show. But certain number five ten minutes of the show was outrageous and and we had young riders. We were protesting the Vietnam War, we were protesting racism. We were but in a satirical way, in a in

a you know, really really funny way. There's a great there's a great documentary on it called Smothers Smothered, and it has the highlights of all the show and what happened because after two and a half three years, the CBS threw them off the air. UH new president Bob Wood who came in and Tommy went head to head. Tommy got rid of after about in nineteen sixty nine, he got rid of me, and he got rid of UH my partner at the time, and he had nobody beat no buffer, and he went one on one of

the network president. Next thing you know, they were off the air. He you know, he's looked back on that and said it was the wrong thing to do. Okay, But just in that era, you're the manager you have, you know that they're testing the limits on a regular basis, and how did you manage that with the uh that work before they had a change. I always loved to

tell this. We would be in the dressing room. There was a wonderful man from the CBS network who was sort of the guy that dealt with us day in and day out, and and we'd be in the dressing room and Tom and Dick would be swearing, you know, like like say, I mean sailors um about, you know, tell CBS to take this show and shove it, you know, and all that stuff, and swearing left and right, and then kN Frets, my partner at the time, and I would walk out of there and we'd go up to

the CBS guy and we say, you know, we have a small problem here. You know, we would have we would bring it all down and we would talk with them and so on and everything. And we were a hit, which helps. I mean, we're the number one show on television for a while, and you know, they put up with a lot when you are By the time the Smothers got thrown off, a lot of things that happened,

and they were maybe seventeen. Today, they wouldn't consider throwing the seventeen show up, but in those days that was considered. You know, we had been number one, We'd set a pretty high gund bar um. So we would always kind of modify it and keep it down. And there was a William Morris agent named Stamp came in and he kept everything. We all kind of controlled the volatility. And the other thing about the Smothers is Dick was super conservative.

Tommy was the liberal one. Tommy was hanging out with Timothy Leary and doing LSD and and hanging out with there was I can't remember his first his first name now, but there was a h Federal Communications remember who was a rebel and Tommy would hang out with him, and he would urge Tommy to you know, to be as controversial as possible. And Tommy would think, wow, this is the FCC, so telling me this, you know, but but it was it was pretty crazy and okay, a couple

of things. How did you end up getting the partner? Ken Fritz hired him as a road manager for the Smothers. And then, uh, uh, Tommy, you know when when I found this a lot when an act is on the road with a guy who's there every night. I mean the early days, it was me, you know, always with the act. But once I got more successful, I was not going as much because I had too many other responsibilities and also felt staying in l A I could do a better job for my group. I go out

on all the big things. But if ken Fritz was traveling as a road manager for a couple of years, and uh, finally Tommy said, you gotta make him a partner, and I already had a partner at that a guy out of Boston. So for a short while we were three ways was the guy out of Boston? Oh God, I'm tom Oh well, what was how did he get involved? I can't remember how he got involved, but I know I originally he may have been I may have been

involved with him when I was doing concerts or something. Yeah, but by the way, he did a very key thing when I moved. I was I first started out working out of San Francisco. When I decided to move to Los Angeles, or we decided to put our offices in l A, Tom Carroll said to me, we're going to go to l A. We're gonna have We're gonna be the most honest guys with the best reputation and business is going to be the path to our door. That I mean Tom Carol unfortunately died early young, but Tom

I felt he was so right. That's what I did, And literally I never had to run after an act. I think in all the years, the only act other than maybe the Smothers, which really wasn't running after him. But but other than that, um, you know, Bill Medley and Righteous Brothers were the one act I ever heard ran after and we didn't get him. I got I got Medley years later as a solo artist, but I

never managed him. Okay, So during this period you also have first edition, the Kenny Riding the first station comes along. After the Smothers are on the air for a year and and very hot, and a lawyer keeps calling me and bugging me to go see this group at a little club called Leadbetters. Leadbetters was owned by the leader of the New Christie Mistrels. The group him out of

the New CHRISTI instruls. Kenny Rogers was a member of the group, and I went down finally and saw them after six weeks of this lawyer in l A. It's in l A on Westwood Boulevard, or it was no longer there, And I went down there and flipped and I brought Mason Williams and Tommy Smothers the next night or the next week or whenever, and they flipped for him, and we put him on the show and started managing right away. And Kenny Rodgers was part of the group,

but he wasn't. He was singing lead on some of the songs, but he wasn't the key member in it. He didn't didn't become Kenny Rogers in the first edition until a couple of years or a year at least a year later. So how does just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in. That was the initial big hit. How did that come together? You know, I don't remember how the song got in there. I do know that was a song that kind of changed

things for us. That and Ruby Don't Take Your Love to Town and Lucy Well Lucy a for Kenny as a solors um. But but the thing was that Kenny became the lead voice on a lot of those and we had a hit going up the charts. And I remember meeting with Mo Austin and Joe Smith at Warners and them saying, we've got to do something because this record is starting to get play and we've got another record that's way up the charts. What do we do?

And we sat there and somehow in the group we made a decision that since Kenny was the lead on I think it was Ruby Um, that it would be Kenny Rogers and the first edition for one of them, in the first edition for the other. It was a group happy with this. No, okay, during this area, you're managing the Smothers, you manage the first edition managing anybody else. Yeah, I had three or four let's see, from the Smothers

Brothers show. I had a fabulous, probably the best banjo player in America, John Hartford, uh uh, who became kind of a sidekick on the on the Glenn Campbell Show. By the way, I I literally found Glenn Campbell for that show to be the summer replacement for the Smothers when I was tasked with that job by watching. In those days, the tapes that you viewed were these heavy, huge, heavy video tapes. There were two inches wide. They I don't know how much they weighed, but I could barely

carry one. And I had to watch fifty of those. I had a hundred hundred acts to watch, hundred artists to see who would host the show. And when it got to number fifty, actually number fifty, exactly halfway through, Glenn Campbell was there. Uh, And I ran upstairs, got Tommy Smithers, brought him down to the screening room, said here's our guy. And we never looked at the other fifty. Okay, so uh, Now it ends with the Smothers brothers. What's

keeping the door open? That the first edition and they're they're hot in the US, and then we also as they start to cool here, we get an offer to tour in New Zealand and believe it or not, We go to New Zealand were treated like the Beatles. It's unreal how hot we get in New Zealand. We make three tours there and I literally spent probably six months of my life in New Zealand, which is an incredible country visually, and everything else conservative is all get out.

I mean everything Saturday afternoon until Monday morning, everything closed closed. In those days. It was, you know, quite a different experience, but it was the most fabulous country visually. Uh you know. So anyway, so first edition is driving, But I have other clients during that period of time. I've been handling Mason Williams out of the I had Bob Einstein, who went on ended up being Super Day Super Dave. Yeah.

By the way, I just recently went to the memorial service for Bob Einstein and he had to his two brothers, one of whom his head of a big advertising agency, Cliff, and the other one is Albert Brooks, the comedian. So Cliffs gets up to and and does a whole thing on Bob from beginning to end. It's like thirty minutes. Everybody else is talking five just Seinfeld was there, All kinds of people Tommy smothers were there. They all talked five or ten minutes. Cliff does this whole big long thing,

and he's followed by Albert Brooks. If anybody knows wonderful comedian movie maker move, you know. Albert Brooks gets up there. He has this sheaf of papers in his hand and he throws him up in the air and he says, well, the heck with that. They told me Cliff had died. That's good, great, And then he says, but now I hear Cliff speak. Jeez, I went out to move my car twice while Cliff speak. He brought the house that. It was the best two lines of the night. It

was hysterical. I just that. I mean, that family was so funny, and their father was a guy name of all things, whoever remembers this father was a comedian named Parker Carcass. That was his name, I mean his stage name, you know. Anyway, But I had Einstein, I had Mason Williams, I had John Hartford. Oh, I had Jennifer Warren, uh you know. And and somewhere in that period of time, I think maybe it was a little later, Jennifer and Bill Medley did fabulous songs for the movie. Uh. So

I had a lot going on during that period. Uh. But then I went to work for Jerry Wander. How did that come about? I used to collect old cars, antique cars, and Kenny gave me an old nineteen uh Ford with a little Ford coupe with a with a rumble seat, and I had a park somewhere I was. I drove it around town and a note came on my window and said, we're doing this thing in Vegas, the show in Vegas, and we're using antique cars and stuff. Could we use your car? Actually, first around l A,

it was a group called the Do Dog Gang. I don't know if you remember it. You're talking about the people did the parade and they did all kinds of things that they that they they were They played as if they were nine. So there was Big Jim and he was a gangster, and they were all hoodlums and there were a rival gang and they'd have shootouts in l A. In fact, he gets married to this lady that's supposed to be she's a dancer from a chorus

line in Chicago, because he's from Chicago. And they get married at the Beverly Hills hotel and as they're walking out of the hotel, the rival gang kidnaps. Her name was I can't remember what her name was, but Bob Boop see something or something like that, you know, and then they go in to shootout around town. So we opened in Vegas. They talked me into coming up and helping produce a show in Vegas at the at the

Flamingo and it failed, and um but it failed. The week that Time magazine did a fabulous review of it. We just couldn't We couldn't get a second show going. We were in a side room. Didn't work anyway. I limped back to l A. And I had loaned the show what amounted to my life savings to pay the very last week's salary, thinking we were getting money. But we didn't. So I lost my money. So I'm now broke. I've got my house in my car and an antique

piano from the show and that's it. And and somehow or other, I found Jerry Weintrop and he hired me. Hired me for nothing. I mean, it wasn't much, but it was enough to keep me alive at the at that point in time. And I worked for him for two years. And I learned an enormous I learned an enormous amount from it. Uh good and bad. I have to be a couple of things. What was good what was bad. The good things were things like you play uh l A and New York for the career, and

you play the rest of the country for the money. Okay, I mean for him by the way I handled the carpenters. I worked with John uh John Davidson, I worked with with John Denver. We had all we had all the d's. We had Davis and Denver was unbelievable. We even had Dylan for a while. I remember walking down the hall and Bob Dylan's walking towards me. The Colonel used to come and hang out in my office. Colonel Tom Parker

would hang out in my office anyway. In that, you know, That's what I learned that what I the problem was Jerry was driven by power and money. You know, I'm very driven by those things, and that's just not my style. It's not what I you know. So those were like the Kings, and and so I learned things not to do. But I really learned a lot from him. On a positive side, he was incredibly sick Cessil and he had a thing called Concerts West, which is still around now.

Uh that was part of the company and they produced everybody, and they did all the Sinatra tours. I got to work with Sinatra and stuff. It was pretty fun. I mean, now, at the time, you're still managing Kenny Rogers. No, Kenny had left, the group had broken up. That was the other thing that had happened before. Right around that time, the first edition broke up. But I wasn't making much from them anyway. They were in the very, very downside

of their career. Uh So I at that point in time, I went, you know, I'm going to work for Jerry. Was kind of salvation for me at that moment in time, and um, I kind of lost my trend. Thought, I'm sorry, no, okay, So how do you decide to leave Jerry? Oh yeah, that's exactly. Let me right back into the Kenny Rogers thing. So Kenny goes to Nashville, meets up with Larry Butler, starts to record song since a seventeen song. I sit

in Jerry had his own promotion department. The three guys from the promotion department and I sit in the little room we had with the great speakers and stuff, and we listened to these seventeen songs and we hear Lucy Elle and a couple of other songs that became big hits, and we're pretty mesrized with it. And so I want to and I want to sign Kenny, and Jerry says, oh, he's washed up and so over. It's not going to happen. Don't do that now, you know that'd be straight and so.

But over his objection, I signed Kenny, which, by the way, ultimately made Jerry several millions, and after I had left him, by the way, um so, anyway, Kenny knows that Jerry didn't want him as a client. I don't remember. I doubt if I said that directly, but he knew. Uh. As Kenny starts to become successful, he says to me, I'm leaving. You can either go with me or not, but it's up to you. Well, you know, now Kenny's

my hot client. I've got others. I've got Dottie West the singer, and I've got I'm working with Harry Chapin and and who Jerry had signed, and a few others. So I decided to leave Jerry very contentious decision. It wasn't pleasant. But so what did Jerry? Sorry, yeah, give me a few million dollars and you can go. And he was paying me next to nothing. Um No, but he did keep a piece of Kenny for a couple of years, which turned out to be a couple of big years. Um So in any event, um, and he

became very fair. Used to come over and visit me at my other once. I became very successful with the new new acts. I mean, I've been there before during the mother's days being real hot, but I got very hot in the eighties, as you know. And uh, and Jerry would just drop by and his in his sweat clothes, come over and sit in my office. You know. It's funny. Uh, sort of like Colonel Tom Parker did. It was interesting.

But but when I left Kenny, I bought a little house on Shaborne Drive here in Los Angeles that would have been Casablanca Records and Neil Bogart's place, and but it was the record company. Uh, and you know, set up an office there and started managing acts and had almost huge success from the very beginning because Kenny was read hot and he was getting out of all the time and I was really able then I was able to probably use whatever skills I had as a manager

really came into play in that period. Who's the next big act? Dr? Kenny? Uh, Lionel Ritchie and how did you get Lionel Richie been with the Commodores? How did he come to you? He came to me because Kenny had been very hot on the country charts and was now doing extremely well popped. People don't kind of realize, but the first act to really cross from country to pop and keep his foot in both was Kenny Rogers, and he decided there was one other chart at the time.

He decided he wanted to be number one on the R and B charts, so he Uh. He went to Jim as It, who was running the record company, and said, I want to have an R and B head And Jim said, well, there's only one guy around to write it for you. It's Lionel Richie. And I think Lionel was in Vegas. Al the Linel remembers is the opposite. He remembers that he went to Vegas to visit Kenny.

But the story I've always known was Kenny went to Vegas to visit Lionel and Lionel played him what he had of this song and then wrote it for Kenny, which was Lady, which became one of Kenny's very biggest hits, and produced it for him and everything. So it was quite something and and he Uh So, all of a sudden, I had two huge acts. One of the things I'm

extremely proud of his one through into two. For eighteen months, I had forty eight percent of the top ten records in America were my clients over an eighteen minute period month period for eighteen months. Okay, so who was it? It was Kenny, it was Lionel, it was Kim Carnes with Betty Davis eyes and a lot don't fall in Love with a Dreamer, which she did with Kenny. Uh.

You know, she had a whole series of hits. Uh had we had the Jay Giles band at that time with freeze Frame and you know a lot of the other songs. Um, I hadn't taken on Olivia yet, and I didn't have big hits with Olivia. Later on. I had Olivia, John and the Bigs for short periods of time, and Burt Reynolds for a very short less than a year. Uh. But I'm trying to think who all the others were right in that period. But you know, Lionel and Kenny would have more than one hit in the top ten

at times. Okay, So lionle to manager and he just called you up and said, I want to go with you. No, we were doing after we did, lady. We flew down to Tuskegee for a TV special and for and had the Commodores as a guest. I have a great picture with all of them. And they were managed by Benny Ashburne. I think, boy picking names out of my head that I don't know how I'm doing it. Uh, And and they were, and he was he had really done a

lot for the group. But Lionel came to me and said he and his wife at the time, Brenda, and said, you know, we want to we want Lina wants to go solo and he wants to do this. And I said, look, I'm not gonna. I've never stolen an act from another manager, you know, so you gotta if you leave Benny, come to me when you're free, which he did very quickly, and he always felt very bad about it because Benny probably in another year or maybe less, Benny died yeah. So,

and Lionel took that hard of it. I mean, you think these were the tracks were really hot because he had all night long. Yeah, yeah, he had. He had so many hits in in a period of time. But remember Kenny was having hits then two Kenny's got like fifty number one records. Lionel was having one hit after another. Lena was taking more time. Kenny would get a record. Kenny could record a record in Nashville, and he could do it in three days, okay, three days, you know.

Lino would take a year and a half, you know, and the record company would be calling for the last six months, calling me every day, is it ready yet? Is it ready yet? They were trying to schedule it as it ready in line, it will be going I need one more song, I need one I've got to tweak this or whatever. So that the style was so different, you know. Okay. The question, of course is would they have been as successful if they had not been with you. Well,

that's a trick question. I'll tell you why, because if I didn't believe that was true, wouldn't be any good at what I do or what I did. I don't do that much anymore now, but I believed that was the best manager in the business, not the only good one and not but I and not doing it the same way others did you know if he went to Peter Asher who ended up managing Linda Runstad and James

Taylor and others. You know, he was a record producer, He's been an act He've been part of Peter and Gordon, isn't yeah, um, you know, but he was a wonderful record producer and would produce incredible music with him. What he did in the rest of the areas, I'm not sure because I never followed that part of it, but he had great success with his act. Um. You know, Sandy Gallen and and Jim Morey and some of the other managers in the business that were successful worked different ways.

They were they were tougher, They were probably better negotiators than me. I always felt my strength was twofold one picking the right artist, some gut feel for who has talent? Where is that X factor? Where what's totally different about this person in some way? It doesn't have to be everything. In fact, a lot of things may not. It may not be good to be different in every way, but what's unusual what's special, what's the wow factor, what's why? Why?

You know? Where's the I could feel the charisma of certain artists when they walk in the room. They didn't have to do anything. Give me a couple of examples. Um, that's interesting, that's a good, good question. I'd have to think about it for a minute. Um, you know, I mean, certainly Lionel had it and Kenny had it. Um, great, great, Kenny illustration Slightly different than that answer. I felt what Kenny Rogers could do was like what Michael Jordan did

on the basketball court. If the chips were down, if if he had to hit the shot to win the game, he would take his game up and hit the shot. I found Kenny every time there was a challenge there, he dialed it up. Yeah. I know, this is like sports starters. You can hang with him every day and he could be better than them. But when competition comes there just there's one thing, you know, they just and a part of it is they don't want to fail.

Part of it is they're absolutely determined not to be embarrassed, not to fail. I listened. I gave a fiftieth birthday party for Kenny Rogers at the Mountain Gate, which the golf course here in l a And and I live across the street from it. But I gave a party there as a surprise for Kenny. And he was out on the golf of course, playing in a foursome that day. He didn't know there was any party coming. And flew Dolly Parton in flew his original jazz group, the Bobby

Doyle Tree in trio in. We had all things scheduled, and Kenny's playing the course and I got the fifty people are so attending to hide behind trees and rocks around the ninth hole. And what I had told him was when he find when he hits the final punt, you jump out, yell surprise, happy birthday or whatever. Well he's off the green, and somehow or other, the minute they see him, they all jump out from behind the rocks, and you know, and they and they yell surprise, and

he's he's, you know, twenty ft off the green. He chips to nine feet and he sinks the putt. I went to I said, all you need is a little pressure. All you need, I said, you could go on the pro tour. You know, I mean, he he was He was a good golfer, but he wasn't that level or you're gonna do that with a hundred and fifty people standing around at yelling surprise. But but that was typical of me, of that Michael Jordan's quality that you see,

or the Kobe Bryant quality, that competitiveness. Uh uh So. Anyway, what I started to say is I have some kind of a gut feel for who has that extra dimension and it's got to excite me. It's got to be something that I feel like, oh boy, there really is something cool happening here, even if it isn't my genre music I would listen to normally, If it's quality, if it's different, if it's unique, then that's that's the biggest

that's the number one. Number two. I think I take everything I'm working on and try and take it up to another level, almost like what I'm talking about with the artist. I always try to find the piece of it, what how can we make this something bigger than it might otherwise be? So and I feel extremely creative. I think my strengths are creative vision of stuff. How do you how do you take stuff? Whatever I'm working on, I mean, whether it was you know, the great charity

projects have done that are very historical. It's always finding that way to have a wow factor, to have something that takes it to another level. And those are those are my areas of strength. I'm not the strongest negotiator in the world. I negotiate differently than some of the tougher guys I know in the business. I still get it good stuff, but I start with acts that can

demand that that that are going to get that anyway. Okay, but didn't you you develop some of these acts like Travis Tritt and Trishanyrwood from the beginning the same way, same way, figure out, you know, bottom line, figure out what's needed at that moment in time for that day, even what what's the most important thing you can accomplish today and go after that and make it happen, and um so on each of those acts. I mean Travis Tritt, when I first saw him, it was because of Warner

Brothers promotion. Guy called me and said, you've got to come to Atlanta and see this act. And he just and and I trust did him enough that I really had to go do it. And he blew my mind in his live performance. And Jim Ed Norman, who was running the Warner Brothers in Nashville, was there, and he Travis had a singles deal, and uh. And I turned to Jim in and I said, Jim had um, he's not going to record anymore for you unless he has an album deal. You've got to agree to put make

turn this into an album deal, which he did. But I looked at Travis Tritt and I went, this is a great live performer, this guy. This is a guy who's sensational on stage. So the first thing I went did is I went out and bought an old I think it was Randy Travis or somebody's tour concession bus, so he had a bus so he could tour. Because we couldn't afford to fly him from day to day.

We just started taking him everywhere across the country, playing in clubs and anything else, but creating excitement because in every city he went into, it wasn't so the important thing wasn't so much the audience. We didn't need to get an audience to react, but it was the record people that we brought in, the DJs and the program directors and song in every city so that we created

excitement out there. Because he could do that in person, phenomenal, great songs, terrific songwriter, and he might have hit even if he didn't to her, but touring was his biggest strength. And what about Tricia Herewood. It's interesting Tricia Herewood. Again, by the way, in those days, I rarely, if ever, I ran after an act. I mean I didn't, and I certainly didn't after Tricia. Somebody brought me Tricia, maybe the record company, and it might have been um the

president record company. I think it was an m C A um uh and I but I wasn't sure she was going to take me as a manager. And she flew out here to meet with the people out here, and we were walking up to the off this and I turned to her and I said, am I going in as your friend or your manager? And she said, you're my manager? Right there? It was that was the question,

you know. And and then that's the funny part of this was that night we went to Spago here you know when it was used to be yeah, was my office was the next block. And uh so we we go to Spago and we're sitting there just she and me at a table, and a little lady comes up and with a pad and a pin and a pencil, and Tricia and I were both thinking, she's coming to get Tricia. Tricia had number one record, She's in love with a boy. The lady says Mr Craig, and Mr Craig,

and will you sign one thing? So I'm thinking on my feet fast. And when she leaves, I turned to Creatricia and I said, Tricia, you realize our job now is to see that you're big enough that that never happened, okay. And I just had a leisure with one of my tricks in those days I learned from Jerry wein trump Um. It was a guy named Joe Layton who was the

most brilliant stage or. He'd come from Broadway and won the Tony a few times, and he was staging people like Bet Midler and Share and people like that, and he was brilliant at staging. And I had gotten him to stage line Ritchie and then Kenny and Dolly went they went on to her and others. And he always did amazing things. He did Diana Russ's tours, did everything, and he was incredibly good at surprising the audience. He

would create amazing stuff the way he did it. And and so I brought him in to do Tricia Herwood, and she had been very stiff on stage and hard to move around and everything, and she just blossomed. She had an inner they all did, really but that wasn't her thing. And he gave her confidence on stage and gave her a show that she could do really well and it and it helped to move things along in

a wonderful way. And then you have to know, when I was managing triciaan Travis's is the end of the eighties beginning of the nineties, I was so established, you know. I could pick up I remember Regis and Cathy. They had that Gelman as their producer and they used to refer to them all. I can't remember his first name now, anyway, I could pick up the phone, call him and say I've just signed this act Travis Tritt, and he'd say,

send him back, We'll put him on. Because they knew the quality of the artists I represented, and they wanted they needed me when they wanted Kenny Rodgers or Line or my other superstars. So I had leverage and I had credibility, you know, and those things worked. So how about Gallagher tell me the story of God? You love this so I go to a TV show I don't remember which one, but with Bill Medley. Bill's performing and this comedian is on the show and he blows again.

I'm just seeing star power. There's something so unique, so special. So you know, he's prior to any of these prop comics, and he's got props and he's smashing watermelons and he's doing all kind of crazy though, And so I give him my card. He didn't even want to take my car. Now I don't need a manager, so I start inviting him to things we're doing. Like I would stage a big baseball game, softball game up in Vegas with Kenny Rodgers and doing it playing the local media with a

team he and his band and stuff. And Kenny was a really first class softball pitcher, so he could really pitch underhand, fast and good. And we would do that all the time. So if id gallery to fly up with us and be part of all of a sudden, he's running after me for management and so and I put him on. So I I put him on tour

with Kenny. Actually I think I signed him first. And and I went to a luncheon, my wife and I went and we sat at lunch with Gallagher, and he trashed everything in the business, trashed everybody, He trashed everything. He he was on stage or sitting. This was sitting at lunch prior prior to putting him on tour with

I think too great Gallagher stories. So he's he's sitting there, we're sitting at lunch and he's telling us what's wrong with everything, and we get up and we leave, and my wife on the in the parking lot, I remember distinctly as we're walking out, and says, you're not gonna sign him. I mean, there's no way you're going to sign that guy. I mean, that was so negative. I can't believe it, I said, Cathy, I can't promise you that.

I said, I'm like a moth to the flame. When I see that level of star quality, when I see that level of unique talent, it is just so hard for me to stay away from it, even though I know it's going to be a lot of a a hassle, you know, and it was a lot of work in a hassle. But he was brilliant. But this is the too really funny Gallagher story. One kind of tragic and not exactly but we um I booked him with Kenny Rogers first show. And it's in Aptis, California, little town

up near below Sant Jose and everything. And uh, it's a concert in a concert hall and he's up on stage and he used to break a watermelon and it would splatter out, and there's a guy sitting in the center of the front row in a white soup. Now understand, nobody has seen Later on with Gallagher audiences, people would come with plastic and umbrellas and everything. You try to trick them, but they become prepared to get squirted and

covered with stuff. This guy, nobody's seen him, right, he smashes the watermelon and it goes right onto the guy in the white suit. And I mean, and Kenny's this, it's my act, Kenny headlining, right, I'm We're all panicked. We run out there, we go up to the guy. We're saying, listen, sorry, we'll get it cleaned, or we probably can't clean it, we'll buy you. Ah No, that was the funniest act I ever saw. You don't have to do it. Wow, I couldn't believe it. We didn't

have to do anything. We didn't even take his name. Um, but the other one was kind of crazy. I got. I got a lot of good things for Gallery. I sold a series of specials to Showtime I think it was, and stuff that were great shows that he did. Anyway, I get Gallagher a deal to do it. Well, I want to get Gallagher a TV show, and so I get Bud Grant, who's the president of CBS at the time and the head of one of the studios to fly up to Las Vegas where Caliger's opening for one

of my acts. It may have been apartment, may have been Kenny, but it also may have been Olivia. Any event, I am checking in staying overnight, but the Kenny's playing which we used, is flying them back that night after the show, So it must have been Kenny. Uh, because Olivia didn't go in private jet um and and they go in the bar, and who do they come upon but Gallagher, and he does just what he did to me my wife at that luncheon. He now trashes the

whole industry. And then he leaves and I come back down and the guys are sitting there and they say, we're going back to l A And I said, why is it? We just had this encounter with Gallagher we don't see any point in doing anything here. He hates everything in the business, you know. And and but they didn't leave. I convinced him to stay. They stay, They see the show, they stand up after the show, they give me a thumbs ups, and we make a deal to do a series. And we get a guy named Maddie.

I can't remember his name, but he was National Lampoon right ahead of it. Maddie. It's an s. Maddie Simmons, Mattie Simmons. So Maddie comes up with they come up with this great idea, and it's it's called our Man in the House, and it's it's a little a little county in Idaho. The congressman dies and the governor of the state has to appoint a new congressman. And there are only eight possibilities in this part of the state. Uh, And there are reasons for eliminating seven of the eight.

And the one that's left is Gallagher. And Gallagher used to go around on roller skates all over the place on his stage show and everything. So the idea was you you go to the parking area at the Capitol building and you'd see car after car with license later and then all of a sudden, you have a parking spade and they'll be two roller skates in it. And so Gallagher says, look, I want to go back and

research this. CBS loves the idea. That's great, you know, called our man in the house, and he goes back and I introduced him to friends of mine in Washington. Patrick Lay's a friend of mine. He hangs out in these congressional offices and meantime we set up a meeting out here with the network. When he gets back, he comes right back from there. He comes over to CBS. I'm sitting with the head of the Bud Grant Head and Matty Simmons in the office when Gallagher walks in.

He walks into the office, he says, I just spent two weeks in Washington. I would need two years before I'd be steeped enough and what's going on there to be able to do this show any justice? And he turns around and walks out. It's the end of the series. We had a serious deal. Okay. Now it's something I remember. You would turn on you talk about those cable special It seemed like whenever you went on the dial, Gallagher was on. He was on more than anybody. Oh God,

they were so good. I mean, that's what this guy had and still has. I saw him maybe two years ago now, but he was funny as I'll get my wife and I still quote all kinds of lines from Gallagher. It's just brilliant. Just okay. So why did it end with you and Gallagher? You know, I don't really recall the ending of that usually I can, but it certainly wasn't bitter or anything like that. It wasn't I In most cases I stayed friendly with I mean, I went to with the people, you know, you know part of it.

You asked me, are you you know? Were they successful because of you? My attitude, which served me so well during that period, was they need me more than I need them. If they leave me, I have more free time. I don't have whatever hassles I was having with them. Uh, somebody, something better is going to come along. No matter what it was, even when Lionel Richie I part, I would have so much self confidence and hopefully it wasn't arrogance or or you know or whatever, but so much feeling

that that was that it was a good thing. I think it's part of I have a general philosophy that everything in life happens for a good reason, and that uh, everything that happens, even the negatives, can be turned into very positive, even some of the most serious I look at I teach this sort of I look at mothers against drunk driving. They their kids were killed by drunk drivers, formed an organization save millions of live That's one of the worst things you can possibly happen. Not that it

was there wasn't. There was good in it because they found that they wouldn't let their kids die in vain. You know, I can give you fifteen different examples like that. Um So, I think that when an artist leaves me, I just figure and now I don't have to worry about that. I don't manage anymore. But I always feel like there's a good reason for everything the way it happens, and when you look for that, most of the time

that's what you find. You know, it changes your approach too, not feeling defeated, but feeling like, oh, this is just part of life and something better is coming along. Okay, Just staying in that philosophy, you have a very active entrepreneurial personality. If someone didn't have that, maybe nothing would come along. Well, that's true. I do get out when

I get excited about something, I work on it. Okay, So how did inn You know a number of these artists that work with you, they and something like Gallagher Travis Tritt, subsequent to work with you, their careers are nowhere near and successful. Yeah, that's I was kind of proud of that for a while. I was. I would always say, gee, you know, nobody's ever left me and been hot or after they left me. Now I will say, and I'm friendly with him still. I just saw him recently, Uh,

Lionel Ritchie. It's pretty hot again. He's got a lot going for him. And we've seen him three times in the last couple of years, most recently just a few weeks ago in UH concert in Santa Barbara and I love it because we were the only ones backstage because he was late getting there, which wasn't unusual, and he had to really rush on stage, so they positioned us right where he got out of the elevator and went through the stage store to go on stage. And he

comes on. He hugs my wife, he said, I gotta hug the women. First meets our cousins who were there, and and then he looks at me, and there's a whole group of people around, the musicians and everybody, and he goes, that's the man who made me famous? Is that boy that made me high? Like puffed up? I felt so good, that was so wonderful. But he's a one. He's a charming, wonderful, wonderful. So why maybe he's hotter

now he's got great management. Now he's got a guy named Bruce Escovitz who's just fabulous and Escowitz and uh um okay, But why did he leave? Why did Travis Trent leave? It's always different reasons. There is one underlying reason that quite often happens. I've said, you work your way out out of management job or you know, one of two ways. One you're terrible at what you do, or you you fail somehow and they leave you because you didn't do the job that you hope to do.

You might have might have tried hard. I haven't had that happen hardly ever, but it has happened. The other one, which has more often been my case, is they get very successful and they look at what they're paying you. And I mean I had an artist come to me one time it had made five million dollars that year, and she had netted one point five and she paid mecent commission. So I made seven fifty dollars, but that was my gross. Her gross was five million she netted,

or or of what she what she made. I went back when she said, she said to me, you're making more almost as much money as I am. Uh you know, And I said, wait a second. Years is after everything, including taxes, what you needed. Let me tell you what I needed. And I went back and I looked at it, and it was seventy five dollars. Ten percent of what I got didn't fly because she looked at the seven fifty and went, I don't have to. I mean I could save all that, you know, and did for a while.

I think she had other advantages in ways she could get advice. But but I have said that you can, at least in my case, I have more often found myself. I mean I managed this mother's brothers three separate times, three different times, and each time when we got really successful and things were really going good, Tommy fired me. So you know, it's the you kind of you reach

a point that they think you know artists ego. It becomes very hard to think that somebody else is responsible for even part of your success, if not a good part of it. I always felt Kenny Rogers and I were fifty fifty, that he brought the talent, which was half the equation, and I brought the creative and you know, business expertise and career management and career promotion and all that expertise that was the other half of the equation. I didn't get paid, but I always looked at it

as a partnership. We did. We did share a partnership on some of the Gambler movies which I developed for him, UM and some other of his movies of the week. But but I always felt that my my arrangement with an artist was that I was we were partners. We were doing this as partners. Looked at it that way. We didn't get paid that way, but that was more because of the traditions. Kay, did you have written contracts or not? Once? But what about if an act left you?

They left me? They left me. Now, I think there have been times when having a written contract might have been some value, but there are also ways for artists to get out of written contracts. There is, unfortunately, um Ah, there's been a lot of there have been artists who have fought when I'm at because when you're a manager, you almost always have to do something uh to uh to book the artist, which in California gets you in trouble. And you can know the famous Jefferson airplane case whatever,

And it's still going on. There's still the talent agency. Uh. The talent act has been fought a lot by managers, but not successfully. Okay, so but let's just say you had an act who left and they had a very hot record. You know, in a written contract you have sunset classes in this particular case, how much would you you know, try to commission what was coming in the future are supposed to walking away that day. I would

never worry too much. I was never money driven, um you know, I would never not only because I was making good money, but more importantly, it wasn't what motivated me and and so as a result, I didn't care that much. I wanted to get on with my life um and and the things I was doing. I did care about fairness, but the accident in general that I managed uh were such that they lived up to whatever

would be fair in the situation. If we currently had something that was payment, but I didn't get I didn't get long term residuals on stuff that's still selling to this day. You know, I mean I could have easily gone after that, but I never wanted to be about the money and I and uh, you know, I mean, listen, I any Rogers thirty three years without a contract. You know, there's something about a contract that or but not having a contract that says, look, if you go, you go,

it's your problem. Now that thirty three years he had fired you once in the end, No, Lionel did not Kenny, and then Kenny Kenny fired me in the end. That primarily happened because of a three way partnership. We got into a three way deal which never really really happens properly, and and I always felt I was a bit betrayed by the other partner. Okay, So who have you worked

with who has had this charisma? Who didn't hit? I worked with a teen group group called Three of Hearts, who were gorgeous, but they were in the wrong music field. They were they would have been a pop hit, and they had records that should have been released. Bob, and we've begged the record company to do it. Uh but and the other problem was they were seventeen years old.

Listen I went. I went on a bus tour with three seventeen year olds and a and a mom as a chaperone, sleeping in bunks on a bus all summer, introducing them to radio and doing shows all over the country. And they were terrific. They were wonderful singers, they were gorgeous, they were charming, they were totally different each one, and and we everything in that first year that you could make happen happened. Everything imaginable, but we had we were

in the right we weren't in the right genre. And as much as we tried the record company to release some pop, they didn't do it. And the part of the reason was it was our c A and they had a pop similar pop group breaking at the same time, and they didn't want two of them, and we just didn't. And that was the biggest season. But the group broke up after after a whole year of great stuff happening. The group went three separate ways, and none of them, as far as I know, are still in music as

you know, or doing much in it. Okay, how do acts feel when you're this white hot. How do they feel that you're spending time with the other acts? Well, first, I tried to limit my personal clients to three because when you get above three, I found you can't proportion your time properly. Three you can kind of balance. I've had moments when they didn't balance, but generally you can't.

I mean, I once went to Uh, Tricia was going to do a big commercial for Revlon in New York, and I felt I needed to be there when they filmed it. Travis Tritt was doing a video in uh in Georgia. Uh yeah, I think, I think probably near

his home there in Marietta. And it was the same day, and I got on a plane in for New York and landed in New York and got two calls, one from Georgia where Travis had walked off the set because uh, they had um the director had called him in at six thirty in the morning and it was four thirty in the afternoon. They hadn't used him yet, but I hadn't gone there because he'd worked with that director a lot in the past. But he just got fed up

with sitting around the whole day and he left. So they were now calling me panicked, And I get a call from Tricia and I'm on my way to the stage where she was doing stuff, and that he wants her to do something that's real sexy and she doesn't want to do it. As the director, she had big time director that she hadn't worked with before, so I went to that. But I'm I'm like torn. It's one of the few times I can remember where I should have been in one place and it should have been

in the other at the same moment in time. Usually when I kept it to three, I could. I could cover for three. They weren't all getting hot at the same moment or time or whatever. It might compromise three, even three might compromise my personal life some you know, I found conflicts when I couldn't do things because I remember on Valentine's Day when my wife always went to a restaurant that was a terrific restaurant in l A. Chasen's,

if you may. Of course, we used to have a table, permanent table for Valentine had to be in New York because Tricia was appearing in Central Park, you know. But okay, so with the it was called Craigetting Company, at its peak, how many acts? How many people working there at its absolute peak, which was a mistake, by the way, fifty people working twelve acts. Three managers I had, Kenny Lionel and one other whoever it was at that moment. It

changed over time. Um. And it's really interesting because another manager called me when I started to get big, and he said, Ken, I'm gonna give you a piece of advice. You're not going to take it, but you're going to get big and you're gonna regret it. He said, because society kind of makes you want to grow and be bigger and everything. But in our business, smaller is better. And once you add people, it's so hard to get rid of them. Everybody is dependent on an assistant. Everybody's

been And you know, he was so right. And what happened and what drove me finally to cut it down was another manager in my company, Gary Boorman, who went on to be very successful with a lot of big acts. Uh. And another one of my employees decided to leave even though I just spent a year negotiating a phenomenal deal for them. Unbelievable. They could never I was covering the overhead and they were going to get any five percent of what they brought in and U. But they decided

to leave and form any any formed. Ultimately, his own company is very successful these days. Um. But when I added up they took it was five employees. They took three other people with them major employees, so it was five of them. I added up. I was two hundred thousand, and they took five acts. Five employees and five acts I added up. I was two hundred thousand better off after they left than I was before. And I went, wait a second, and I started cutting my company down

like crazy. And I eventually, I mean, nowadays, I don't manage anymore. I do mostly consulting and nonprofit work and all kinds of very big but I get paid for those. But I do that, uh and UM, but I looked at it, and I eventually worked out of my home, okay, with one assistant. Um. Did you learn anything in Harvard Business School that helped you in your career? More in my life, because it gave me interest in anything every area. A couple of things. I mean, I learned something about banking,

at least at the time. It's changed now. But I learned that the time banking was subjective, not totally objective. It's more so now because corporations have gotten on the banks and stuff big ones. But in those early days, in the sixties, seventies, eighties, my relationship direct relationship with a banker. Man, I could pick up the phone and say, listen, I've got this artist. They need fifty dollars to buy

a bus and go on the road. I mean, I did that this exact thing for Travis, and they'd say, all right, here, come in, we'll sign up the papers, you know, and do it. And I made I learned that banking relationships. I don't know how I learned that at Harbor, but I did. Um that banking relationships were there were people that made decisions that affected you and if you could be if you could get the trust and the friendship of those people, it could really be

a value. Much harder to do these days, it's a whole different ballgame. Um. I learned. I learned to be interested in what anything, every business, and the interesting the most valuable thing about that is the more you learn, you find angles that support some other part of what you're doing. You know, um uh, oh, gosh, what's his name? Jacqueline Hyde and Frank Wildhorn. Frank Wildhorn came to teach him my class at u C l A, and the first thing he said to the students was, don't ever

quit learning. Don't ever quit being a student. The most important thing you can do that will support everything you do in life is is learning constantly. And I read everything I can every time. I love anything new that I haven't learned about. Um, you know, I just I'm fascinating. I'd like to live a lot longer than I'm going to live, just because I want to know everything I want to know, and particularly I want to know a lot of stuff about space that hasn't been discovered. I

have quite an interest in astronomy. I built my own observatory, you know. But I'm fascinated by, uh, by learning. Okay, what are you most proud of in your career? In my career, probably the United Nations Peace Medal. Tell us the story of that, well, it's just basically from we Are the World. We haven't talked about we are as I say so, tell the story of we are the World.

We are the World started with a well, it started with Bob Geldof seeing pictures on the BBC in London, of children dying in Africa and deciding you had to do something about it, and twisting the arms of all. I mean, he wasn't a big deal at the time, but he he bugged everybody to the point where they all agreed to perform, and he put a record together and it ultimately brought in ten million dollars. Led to

live Aid much later. But while that was going on and making the news, Tom brokaw here insisted that those same pictures from Africa be shown on NBC here, and all of a sudden, everybody over here was seeing it, and Harry Belafoni picked up the phone. Well what Belifani did first as he went to he thought they should

do a concert here. So he went to a concert promoter named Ron Delsner in New York, and Ron Delsner said to him, look, Ken Craigan manages some of the biggest art and Belifani wanted to do it with strictly with African American artists who had some ties to Africa, which is a good idea, but not not the one we ended up with. And I'm glad we didn't just do African American art. But anyway, Delzner said, look, Ken

Craigan's got managing some of the hottest artists in the world. Um, and he cares about this because he was Harry Chapin's manager, and he said he he Um, these issues, these hunger and homeless issues and poverty issues are something that he's been working on with for years with Harry and then with Kenny Rogers. So I get a call from Belofani on two days before Christmas or two days before Christmas. Uh and uh, he says, uh, we should do a concert.

Have you seen these photos? I said, yeah, I've seen him on television. And I said, but why do a concert? I said, Geldof has just shown us the way. I said, We've got bigger artists who sell more records here than what he had there. And not that he didn't have some very big artists, but we we've got a better stable in terms of what we can rape. Um, let me see what I can do. So I hung up

with him. I drove to Lionel's house. I was picking him up for he was going to host the American Music Awards and I was taking him to a meeting with Dick Clark to go over some of the details. It wasn't for another month until the twenty eight January. On the way on my way to Lionel's house, I called Kenny Rodgers and Kim Carnes and they both said, you know, they do whatever we wanted. And then I got to Lionels and he and his wife Brenda had seen there. They wanted to do something bad, and I

suggested the right with Stevie Wonder, but he couldn't. He couldn't reach Stevie tried all night. In the meantime, I took Lionel to meet with Dick Clark, and on the way over to Dick Clark, I got this idea, why don't we do it the night of the American Music Awards because the artists would be already be in town. I'm not gonna have to struggle to get him. Um. I told Dick that he loved that because it would help him get artists to come to down. So I'm

I did. Then the next morning, Lionel was still trying to reach Stevie and his wife Brenda at the time. His wife then then went into a jewelry store to buy it was the day before Christmas, to buy last second gifts. Who walks in but Stevie wonder. I probably had somebody with him who said, that's Brenda Richie, because Stevie couldn't go around on his own. But I don't know that part of the story. I do know that he said, would you help me pick out some jewelry gifts?

And she said not until you call my husband back. And they got Lionel in a dentist chair and Stevie agreed to write. In the meantime, I'm on the phone with Quincy Jones. He's on a getting He's in the airport getting on a Warner Brothers plane to fly to a wife for vacation, for Christmas vacation. And I say, will you produce this? He says absolutely, And he I said, can you get Michael to be one of the singers.

He calls me back thirty minutes later. He says, Michael will do it, but only if he writes a song with Lionel and Stevie, which is all good. I mean. Bellafoni calls me back after the day after Christmas, says, if you thought about this at all, what do you think we ought to do? I said, well, I've got a song being written by Lama Richie Stevie Wonder, I thought and didn't work out that way. And Michael Jackson,

I've got Quincy Jones producing. I've got Kenny Rogers and Kim Karnes and Lindsey Bucking and the rest of my clients willing to perform. He says, uh, oh, okay, Well, I'm off to Europe. He was going to Europe for a month. I'll be back. He got back three days before the recording session. Um. Any event, I very little could get done from there till New Year till after New Year's But I just sat down starting January two, every day, get two artists. Go start at the top

of the billboard charts. Get two artists that are up there. I had already number one and number three, which were Lionel, and number one was Michael, Number two was Prince, Number three was Lionel. But I just worked my way down the charts and would get in touch with and call an artist every uh at least. And I wouldn't go to bed at night until I had two artists. And then on the fifteenth of January, UM Bruce Springsteen's manager John Landau. I had convinced John that he should ask

Bruce to come out and do it. He talked Bruce into it. It didn't take much from what he said, and uh and uh. I from the moment that Bruce said, yes, I never made another outgoing call. I just had to turn people down or okam, you know I already had quite a bit at that point, but Bruce was that magnet that brings people you know to it. So okay, so now you have how hard was it to absolutely actually finalize it, have it done that night at A

and m etcetera. Well, it almost didn't happen. There's a great Thornton Wilder quote, every great thing balances at all times on the razor edge of disaster. And I've always found the bigger they are, the more often that's going to happen. And the night before the actual recording session, one of the artists managers who quite involved with the artist, came to me and said, the rockers don't like the song.

They don't want to stand on the stage next to the non rockers because they think it will diminish him somehow. And so we're leaving. And I said, you know, listen, if you're gonna leave, you're gonna leave. I can't do anything about that we're recording tomorrow. Well, they went to Springsteen and Springsteen said, I came here to feed people

and save lives. I'm not going anywhere. And they knew that if they left and the boss stayed, they're gonna look pretty sat nobody left, but you know, hey, listen, it was it was difficult in every way, you know, to pull it off. But I had a staff of fifty in those days. I mean, my my head of a of you know, personnel at the company was parking cars.

My assistant was sitting at the get door with a sign saying check your egos at the door, checking people in and directing their whoever had come with them to the There was a sound stage there where they could watch on a big TV screen what was going on in the studio. But think we couldn't have all the people that were came with, you know, with everybody was allowed to bring five people and forty five artists. You know, you've got I don't know a hundred some people there

fifty people. So so um uh, it was quite in. Geldof came. We flew Geldof over and he came and he uh uh, he almost spoiled the whole thing because he he went out, I had put a microphone and a little stand up if any of the artists wanted to talk to the crowd that was there. And I see where you're going, Bob, keeping Bob. So Bob goes up there and we have everything's been donated. Every single thing for that night has been donated. Couches, pool tables, food, everything.

He gets up on that podium and he says, listen, there are people dying in Africa, and you people are sitting here and eating all this food. You should be ashamed of yourselves. And he starts lecturing them on everything, and I get I'm in the studio and somebody runs in and gets me. You've got to get out here and get Bob off this stage. Sure enough, about half the people left. I mean it was much like you know, was two in the morning or something like that. We

finished at eight am. But when he spoke, had you done any recording? We have been recording and people have been seeing it. Oh yeah, so the whole project. Did it turned out the way you expected? Much bigger, much bigger? And he twists and turn serendipity that you didn't anticipate. Well, no, but the greatest thing was I was able to convince everybody, record distributors, everybody, but we paid. We paid for nothing

but the vinyl. So when you bought a record, I don't know, it was either eight those days for a you know, thirty three and album, a big album. When you bought that record, we got all but a dollar of you know. I talked to There's a big distributor called Handelman. I talked to them. They said, we lost four hundred thousand dollars distributing that album, but we didn't care for a good cause. Um, you know. So yeah,

there were all kinds. I mean, look, every every we had lawyers negotiating deals with record companies so that you know, the artists. But the good news was we had the biggest artists in the country all agreeing to be part of this. So nobody put up. Nobody drove us crazy, really, and Josh, from the first day it came out, it

just went through the roof. I mean, it was just one of the you know, I would go to Tower Records here on you know, on Sunset, we're near the block from my office, and I'd see people walking out with ten and fifteen albums under their arm. It was one of those things I'm doing in the project and big project I'm doing now. You you give people something that they want and yet at the same time they're doing good so they know that the money they're buying

this records with is going to a good cause. And and but they're getting We put a record album out with unreleased tracks, you know, we had we had ten or eleven under his release tracks. Um, and and we are the world on this album. And so you've got that, You've got a double album that it wasn't two records, but you got a double album that you could a

gatefold gatefold. Yeah, that's the right, and uh, with all kinds of photos and everything, and and uh, you know it was I still have it right behind my desk in my office. I love it. And so we found ways to really make it exciting for people. I you know, it was a pretty heavy time. Things really went amazing for and a lot of people jumped him. MTV vh one, well yeah, I think h one had started by the yes, it wasn't. Yeah, Um, they both jumped on HBO. I sold HBO a special on it, which MTV was also

doing like a three or four days on it. I had to then convince a MTV that the HBO special would be a promotion for the Michael Michael Fuchs was the president of HBO. Uh and he wasn't you know, or one way or maybe it was the other way around. I think it was Michael Michael had paid two million dollars. Yeah, he paid two million dollars for the special and MTV had three days of it and he and I said, no, it's a build up to your special. Okay, this has

been wonderful, Ken. We got your biography, We only touched on certain parts of your management career. We could go on for six or eight hours, but we're gonna end it here today. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you, it's been my pleasure. Okay, until next time. This is Bob left Sex