QLS Classic: Shep Gordon

Of Course Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora. Yo Yo, what up.

This is Fante back again with another QLs classic.

This one we take this from back to October.

Sixteenth, twenty sixteen. This was episode six of our show where we sat down with one of the most iconic managers in all of music. Shep Gordon came in to Quest Love Supreme and he talked about his time of Luther Vandroz, Tip Pendergrass and Alice Cooper and countless others. This is a really fun episode. Shep was a lot of fun. Y'all enjoy this CURELS classic. It's Fontaino yeh.

Supremo So so up, Suprema roll call Supriva Suck Suck Supremo, roll Call Supreme, Suprema.

Supreme a roll. My name is quest Love. Yeah, I have a fence. Yeah, don't get mad Steve. Yeah, I didn't rhyme the words you think.

Suprema Son Supreme, A role called Suprema son Son Suprema, role called.

Yeah I am a Trooper. Yeah. My favorite single Yeah it was Jimmy.

Apreca Son Supreme. A role called Suprema, So Supreme, A role called.

My name is Sugar. Yeah, you know my stanch. Yeah, it's nice to meet you. Yeah, Superman Show.

Supreme Son Son Supreme, roll call Supreme So.

Supreme, A role call Lost Bill is here. Yeah, Quest Love Supreme. Yeah, thank you for listening. Yeah, this Pandora stream Bro Suprema.

Son Son Suprema roll call Suprema Son Son Suprema roll call my name.

Yeah, I love the brothers.

Yeah.

But Chef, Yeah about.

The Suprema roll call Suprema Son Suprema roll.

Call my neighbor, Chef.

Yeah, I come from MAUI. Yeah, I'm looking for a joint. Yeah, and I have no idea how to Ryan.

Roll call Suprema some some Supremo roll call Suprema some something Supremo roll call.

That was perfect.

What's up, ladies and gentlemen. This is Quest Love. How you doing. We are alive at Electric Lady Studio. I'm sitting here with Team Supreme. How you doing, guys? Yeah right, all right, Oh man, I'm really I'm really excited today because the the Guru of all gurus, one of the best, most powerful managers, most effective managers, and music uh is with us today. Shep Gordon, He I mean some of the greatest name of the Luther Vanros, Alice Cooper, Blondie Blondie,

Ye Kenny Loggins, right, Keay Loggins was black for a couple of the great voices thank him justin.

Yeah, you're right, you're right. So we're gonna pick his brain a little bit. But you know how, I want to know how you guys are doing. What's up? Man, I'm in the middle of trying to move from my goddamn house. It is tiring. It is tired. Man. You're doing it on your own. Hell no, I'm hiring movers. What part is tiring.

It's just like because you don't realize how much ship you have until you start taking away ship that you sit your ship on.

So you know, you have a little TV on the big TV. I'm not that good. I'm you know, I'm past the did you once have a small TV on it?

We had we had the floor model that didn't work, and then we had the TV on top of it.

Yet that you know that did that had? You know it had the big back a little bit?

So nah man, But nah, I'm in the process of moving, you know what I'm saying, and packing up all my music and that's like been the biggest thing, like clearing my media rat with all my like CDs and vinyl and CDs.

And still keep your CDs in your cassettes, not my Cossetts. I don't, but my CDs I do. My whole thing is like, aw, you're gonna have to downsize that. You're like, I did I have? I have downside? I cold her.

I think I got like maybe like two hundred copies of the two hundred CDs away.

So I got two hundred out and it was just stuff that threw them away. No, no, no, not throw away. I just throw away. I donated them. I donated them like a good will or whatever. Not seeing them again, you would have hated me in two thousand and nine. Well you gave stuff away. I threw stuff away? Oh wow, what did you throw away? This a whole like. This was right at the end of my record label days.

So I had a ton of just shitty promos and stuff that couldn't sell them for anything, so I just put them on the corner.

I used to sell them on Amazon.

I like, there's like too much work. Do I really need three copies of White Tea by the franchise Boy?

Yeah?

I mean that's exactly kind of stuff I was throwing out.

You know, all those crappy Universal Records promos in the blue sleeves that nobody WoT I won't lie. Like we realized that if we went up to uh Geffing Records and jack a couple of boxes, we could sell them and make cash. So there was a period where we were like stealing our own promos.

Big red boot.

Yeah.

But after a while they're like, I don't need no more distortion and stack. You know, got like two hundred copies. Wow.

But yeah, that's been me man, just like pecking up and like getting rid of ship and uh handling life stuff. It's been interesting being absolved into the quest Love universe because you are in your own.

Time and uh it is. It is a lot, you know what I'm saying. But we do it because we love you, our great lead. Better be honestly stop it, all of you, stop it, I said, please, No, we do it. Look, we do it in service of he. I'm honored and to be in your presence. I work for this really great guy. All right, I'm skipping all of you. Actually have we have someone new and our miss Actually Scott is like our boss, your boss Losses. He's the pretty much. Yeah. When at first I didn't

We have?

Yes? What is what is the what is the need for us to always check that if we're gonna have employment? I think that's a black ship.

Like we we're always like okay uh with like I think every every black person that has had some success, like we're always secretly like waiting because like that white man to come and just take everything away, because you know, seriously, I was I was literally just thinking going through my work history and like pretty much anytime I got an email from any any my supervisors whatever, it's like, oh that's it.

Anytime. Yeah, let's let's open in the future that I still have my eighteen jobs. That's that's all I'm saying. So, Steve, how how you doing? I'm great? Is it good to be back at Electricity Studios? Oh yeah, this is amazing. I love being here. Vibe great, staff is great, all the memories.

And you started from the bottom here right, look at me, down here, look at me.

He turned into Phil Collins, started from the bottle and take him field of goal. Now I feel good. I missed. Bill Sherman is not here, so I'm going to be doing this. Where is Bill?

Bill?

And Big Bill is in l A. He is working on a TV show that he and I both will be nice Floyd on.

Okay, I'm saying, so, see, you're getting your jobs on I'm getting my job, yo.

I told you Quest Love is I want to be like Quest Loving. Get your job, bro, I'm getting them getting my jobs up. Man, that's perfect, that's awesome. I'm not complaining. So, of course, our special guests today on Quest Love Supreme, What can I say? I mean? At the very beginning of the tonight show, we had a guest Mike Myers on promoting a movie, a documentary called

Thank you, Hello, thank you, thank you. Thanks for the Netflix plug.

Oh yeah yeah. We watched it.

For the first time a couple of nights ago, and I remember one of the there's things I can remember, you know, when you know we can get into the business. My friend of mine told me, he was like, your manager has got to be whoever you choose your manager, that has got to be the guy that knows where all your bodies are buried. Like that's got to be

You know, you're saying that if you were to pass away, have somebody run in the house and clean up a little bit. Yeah, everyone, brother, everyone needs a mister wolf everyone.

And watching the Superman documentary, I was just like, yo, Shep Gordon is the ultimate mister Wolf. Like, he's the ultimate like manager that anyone could ever wish for.

Now we're broadcasting here at our at our home and electrically. And you know, of course, of your connection with Jimmy Hendricks. You said you were here when he.

Yeah, I lived on Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, and I had a good friend of mine, Alan Douglas, who had a daughter who was the same age as a child I was raising, and he was here at the time doing some over. Jimmy had passed away, and this was the first album coming out after he passed away. They brought in John McLachlan and a bunch of people to play on it. They said that they had found

While they were working here at the Electric Leaveinglan.

Wow.

Yeah, because it was all part of you know, it was such a different business then.

You know, it was a family. We all knew each other, wasn't It wasn't like random people were coming in to use the studio. There was no studio business. It was basically acts that was signed by a record company and everybody sort of new.

So it was very family.

See that's when when I did my residency here back in I started in ninety seven.

Was Eddi Kramer here?

Then you know the first year they that's when they first started to re release a lot of hidden not

Was the way it was then. That was sort of the way it was. You know, you came in, you'd spend sixty days, forty five days. You sort of live here, you do your record. It was a different The recording process was a very I think I never recorded, so I don't know, but I think a very different process. It was a it was much more a creative collaboration. And if someone was in studio B you'd bring them in and the same thing. Yeah, they'd work on the

The same thing here, Like we would there'd be clients in the sea room upstairs, and we'd be in the a room downstairs, and then we sneak over and pee.

I need a background vocal anybody, Uh yeah, poach.

People and do that. So for those that haven't seen the film, I guess what the beginning of your your management career was Alex Cooper nine, And I mean at the time, I mean for me, like a manager, there's

You know, I never really thought about it. I did it as a mine was a cover.

I got into being a manager, so if someone asked me how did I make a living, I could say I was I was a manager. Jimmy Hendrix said to me when I was, I was a dealer and on a very low level. And he said, what are you gonna do if the police ask you where you make your money? You know, and where I grew up. You need to you wear a new watch. You've been to be able to tell the cop where you got to watch? And I said, you know, I'm a middle class you they Long Island, they don't police, don't company.

Yeah. I was about to say, like opportunity.

Exactly, but that's crazy because then watching the documentary, I said, there and I wondered. I was like, at the point where you and Alice Cooper said okay, we're going to do this, you had to have more expertise than just a.

Dealer, like.

And you know what alse Alice says, his words are Scheppinheim met All a lie I told him I was a singer. He told me he was a manager.

Wow.

But what what happened was.

People started getting busted around me, and I didn't want to deal anymore. So I sat down with Alice and I said, I have no idea what I'm doing. And he said I have no idea what I'm doing. And I said, well, let's figure it out and get rich, and let's agree to stay together till we didn't.

So we we.

I had never thought of myself as a manager. It was trying to earn lunch. I didn't even know what a manager was. There was no rules for a manager. I had never met a manager. But I had this idea that if we could piss off parents, kids would come to us, and then we could hire people to make music. And that's where we focused, and that's where all of our stunts came from. Our focus at band meetings was how do we piss off parents? And that's

Now, okay, from our from our side of the fence, especially because we're not the target rock audience. Like I'm certain that you know both you fante and I'm talking to Fante right now, like we were brought up at least in this Baptist or Christian background where it didn't

And by the way, Alice's father was a minister. His grandfather was the head of the Church of Jesus Christ. He married the daughter of a minister. He reads the Bible every morning at five o'clock.

Since I know him.

He goes to church on Sundays. And I had to hide all that because I said, yeah, people are gonna like you.

We can't like you.

They hate you.

So that that was really our biggest challenge was was not giving up who he was.

But that's amazing though, man, I mean because that's like a clear like showing just the difference between your persona versus your identity, you know.

What I mean, And the fact that he could hold on to who he was and not get lost.

But he did.

He did.

Oh yeah, yeah, he got consumed. He went to rehabby at the bottom. But I think most people who hit that level of fame, especially if they've done it as entertainers, have to deal with that moment where they're not being fulfilled. That there's very few of the number one ers that I've come across who don't need an adjustment somewhere along the way, who don't fall to something.

You know, I've had so many.

You know, Teddy's not around, Luther's not around, all the people I grew up with, Jimmy Hendrix knighted at twenty seven Mars and at twenty seven. There always was a link between fame and using crutches that really hurt you.

What do you think that link is? Like, why do you think you know?

I think I don't know in the general world, but I think in the entertainment, in the world that I lived in, which was live entertainers, the rejection is so gigantic to get to a place of success. It's so overwhelming that if it's us, if your goal is to just make a living or to have a career, you

Small fall and you come back.

Well, let me ask I, okay, the way that my manager taught us to cope with it. And this is really weird because everyone around me was like, he's so negative, why do you embrace like all that negativity? And my mom, you know, she had problems with him and everything. But what I realized he was doing by the first year was he was just preparing us to not have any expectations, like he told he told me Richard Nicholson. Yeah, So like Richard was basically like, you know, he's like, I'm

Don't feel the good So when you say that, you mean like you don't feel the good stuff either.

Well I don't, Yeah, I don't feel anything, gotcha, And it's like it's to the point where it's just like, I'm mere. Stevie wonders on the show. Oh my god, Yeah that's cool, Oh my god, I mere?

Like what what?

What ten years ago you would have been like? And that's the thing, like, I had to numb myself so much to protect to keep myself from forming a drug cabin or suicide or whatever the vices that artists get into. That Now as a forty plus year old man like it. Now, I'm trying to get emotions back and it's.

Yeah, no, it's funny you should say that, because I from it completely the other side. I've come to the same place.

I have.

People ask me, is there anything you regret? It was one of the questions that's been asked, and I say, you know, one of the most satisfying nights of my life was Alice getting in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It was forty years of hard work and really amazing and I went home and looked in the mirror and said it worked. I got into bed and watched CNN fifteen minutes after the thing. I didn't go to the party. I wish I could have shared in the love. And I said to Alis, the next thing, you know.

It's weird. I've always been like this. I don't know why. And they said, well, I was in bed fifteen minutes after watching a movie.

So we come up from the other side. Because I manage them exactly the opposite way. I used to sit them in a room and I would. I would always tell clients, if I do my job perfectly, it's very possible I'll kill you because I'll make you so famous that you're going to kill yourself or hurt yourself. But I would tell them that and say, that's what I do for a living. It's the only thing I know how to do. Other guys will make you more money, other guys will do a lot of stuff better than me.

And so is it almost is it almost better to go for second place?

I don't know better. I don't, you know, hard for me to judge, but I think you do what you know how to do.

I think it's.

I think better, like if I have someone I love. I'm going through it now with my assistant's daughter who I love, who's very talented, very beautiful, a lot of record companies are trying to sign her and take her, and I hug her, and I say, why don't.

You become a school teacher and have three kids, because.

You're really happy now and you're going to work for thirty years the goal to be happy, and you're gonna have to unwind a lot of stuff if you're successful, because that's really the goal I think for most people is get happy, be able to buy dinner. Yeah, And I think most artists work at it so hard and they get to the end of the row where they can be happy, and they forgot how to be happy.

Yeah.

It's like it's the dog. It's literally the dog chasing it's hotail. But I will say that there is also an insatiable thing going on because you know, like my goal for always, you know, there's always a deeper kind of end game every three or four years, you know, back and it's like, man, just okay, just get one grammy, I'll be happy by my Mond ware house and I'll be happy. And then I mean for now, I don't know, like, okay, what were your person on my personal like my life goals.

So look all right, My happiness for me is again, well, my sad, sat satisfy, satisfied, my satisfied. My satisfaction would be when I have enough money in the bank to where I can sit still for three years, at least three years and like not do ship Like if I don't, I don't got to go to a show.

I ain't got a fucking write, not a song, I ain't got a sing one goddamn note. I'm good for like what about ten years? Ten?

No?

No, no, But I'm like, all right, it's three more realistic to you or ten because I.

Had the three year plan, but then you got and then it was like if I get a bigger house and you addicted.

I think that's human nature, not question love nature.

No, no, no, I think it is human nature. I think for me, this is like my whole thing, and it's kind of you know what shep was saying, you know. My thing was, I remember when I first got in, when I first when I first first started, before like we had signed anything, I was working at a call center making ten dollars an hour.

You know what I'm saying. And you know I'm in college. I mean, I'm working at the call center.

It was I mean, it was a shitty job, but I was like, look, it's ten dollars hour. I remember saying to myself specifically, if I could just get to a point in my career where I'm making ten dollars an hour rhyming, doing what I love to.

Do, I'm good.

If I can do If I can make ten dollars an hour and not be in this fucking call center and gotta be nice to these people, I'm good.

And so I got to that point. And so for me, my kind of moment realization was I got to that point where I made way more than that.

I mean, you know, crazy times more, but you still find yourself asking for more. And so it's like I had to check myself. It's like, man, that was a time in my place. So it got to go when I made twenty dollars out and it's like, man, I remember that was a point in my life, I never thought, let's get the job.

Even now I am financially I heard that. I was like, wait, let me So for me, I just keep that and I keep that in mind for me.

It's like there were times where whenever I get like depressed or overwhelmed, it just whatever the case, I remember that there was a day I was praying for the things that I have now absolutely and that's just keeps me kind of grounded, you know what I mean.

I say, I wake up and physically say thank you every day for all the gifts I have. It's amazing and just for all I mean, all of us were sitting here.

I've been to your house in Hawaii, so I do the same thing. So I got to ask you because you established that you knew the quote unquote twenty seventh club, which consisted of Hendrickson and Choplin and ours Jim Morrison. So I mean, was this on a daily or a weekly basis that you would see these people.

And I'd see them, I'd see Janice. Janis lived at the motel. It was a Hollywood Landmark motel.

Is that where the height it is? Right now?

No, right next to the Magic Castle on Franklin between Highland and Librere.

It's still there, you know what.

It is, right right next to the driveway for the Magic Castle. And Janie lived there, so when she wasn't on the road, she was there every day and with her Southern comfort bottle and usually a guy in tow and a revolving door. Guy Jim would come by once in a while. Wasn't there all the time. The Chambers brothers lived there, so they were there all the time.

But it was Why was that particular spot the Hollywood mythical?

I think because it was cheap.

First of all, it was cheaper than having your own property or oh.

Yeah, this was thirty four dollars a night for the room. Oh wow, you know this was not a fancy This was a very bare roots hotel knowsdays. Thirty four dollars was still something, but it was very cheap. It was a hotel California, swimming pool two stories around it, and for some reason, you know, it was just music friendly. You'd go to the pool on a typical afternoon would be Arthur Lee. Wow, who was really interesting because he

See you describing this utopian atmosphere where author Lee in Love and the Jannis Chaplin would just sing likes the guitars.

Usually it was Bobby Newarth would start if Bobby Newarth was Bob Dylan's road manager and also became a folk singer later on in his life. He was usually the instigator. Paul Roth's child lived there, who was the producer of a lot of the Doors records, great producer, So they were usually the instigators, and they would bring out Bobby would bring out his guitar and they just start and Janis would jump in and sing and one of the chambers of others would get on like a you know,

Was the general public aware of this? I mean the way that was celebrity hunting.

Now, yeah, it was funny, you know it was pre age.

Yea yeah, and there was a great there was a great rhythm, like sit at the pool and you'd see like this really pretty girl come in and she'd be with like Pink Floyd in this room, and then you get to the pool the next morning she'd come out of the Chambers room, and then you come down the next morning and come out of the you know, someone else's room. They'd sort of work, yeah, exactly, they sort of worked. They were arount of the place, and the GTOs lived there. I don't know if you've ever heard

The ice Capades had checked in.

Oh my god, I'm sorry.

That was the high point of life at the Hollywood Landmark. The ice Capades were here. It was like, oh my god.

I mean, by that point, could you imagine and during mainstream society or was this just like oh, I'm fine.

Just yeah, no, you know, I I had no consciousness of what it was. And they weren't really mound rushmore people at the time I was. I had just come out of college. I remember, I wasn't I had very few female relationships. I was very I was close to a version at this point.

In my life.

Yeah, of the late bloomer and this beautiful blonde was at the pool when she came and she stayed with me at night and we made love and I'm thinking I'm in love and they go downstairs the next daye she said, Leicester Jabers room.

So you know, one of the things I questioned now, the way that you were describing managing Anne Mary, because I was, you know, five or six years old at the time. You know, I mean, they weren't calling it yacht rock back then or a soft pop or whatever. Like it was just always on radio. Yeah, like I mean you needed Me was like played like forty two billion times a day, like your Lord. However, are you saying at one point she was a hard.

Sell, because oh she was a very tough sell.

Yeah, so that was you that got her on them up at Chill with Alice and Midnight Special and all that stuff.

Yeah, she was a very she was a very tough sell. But she was amazingly talented in her in her I don't know, I mean, I don't mean this in a negative way, her narrow highway. She had one of the greatest purest voices you ever heard. Yeah, and she had very little recognition of what that meant or the part that wasn't just the voice you had to be an entertainer. So she was as pure vessel, completely as far away from Alice as you could possibly get in terms of her attraction and her drawer And.

How did she come to your attention?

I was up in Canada doing a pop fit a show with John Lennon the first time in Classic Chicken Show, Yeah, the Chicken Show, and she i turned on the TV. There was a guy named Brian to Hearn who was a producer, and he said, you gotta watch this TV show I had. I had this girl who teaches Jim in Canada who's singing this song Snowbird, and she's fantastic.

You may want to work with her.

And it was a summer show and she had been she was a gym teacher who got a job in the summer on this four week show and she sang Snowbird and I heard the song whoa and then just started to get some traction on radio and it got to number one. And when it got to number one, I knew the people the Capitol Records, and they and her called me and I said, oh, I know all about you.

I was up in Canada. It was great.

And so was this truly a time period in which I mean, I definitely know the seventies before MTV came to play in I mean, now you know image overtakes talent like talent doesn't even count anymore, borderline.

In every field.

But I mean, are you saying that at one point, at least for a good twenty year period, talent could account for something in which, well, I wouldn't go that far.

But here was the difference between then and now, I think is it Radio was open to playing things. Radio ruled the world. Hit records ruled everything entertainment. It was a very different world that It wasn't like a concert world where you had to be a great performer and if you could get the record company to spend the money, you could have hit records. And that was my goal

In the world. And I got so.

It was a heart sale, a very heart cell heart sale to her and a heart sale to the record company. But once I got the picture with I orchestrated an event where John Lennon, Mickey Dolan's, who was gigantic the monkeys.

He's the biggest thing in the world.

Then Harry Nielsen, who was unbelievably respected by the industry, and Alice took a picture with her. And that picture enabled me to sell just about anybody.

The White Soulfers that photo killed, We see what you did. No, I'm only playing.

And I got her on hosting Midnight Special because if John Lennon liked her, she had to be great. It just thought it a circle of stuff. Then, you know, in those days it was much simpler. It was very different. There was nobody really knew who she was till she was famous. There was no Internet. You couldn't see how bland she was. None of that stuff got revealed. It was really about getting somebody to pay enough money to get her records on radio.

But I mean, by that point a singer like Helen Ready had sort of prominent, so you know she there was a lane at least.

For oh, definitely a lane. I've been a lane from all the way back.

The concept of of wholesomeness and not movement and non entertainer, you know, non entertainment singers.

What were her live concerts like I mean say.

I mean for me, they were boring because they weren't entertaining. But for her audience she had this beautiful voice. You know, there was people would hold hands and wear suits and ties.

And.

By the times you had like five or six hits under her belt. Then it was like she established it.

But and she turned out to be a very good performer. I mean she played to her audience. She really developed, and she got a style and a comfort level with the stage and with an audience. And I went to see her a few years after I stopped managing her, and it was really entertaining. I started Revere, she got a little production.

In Okay, so the one thing well plus and also talking your head off a few times I've met you. I've come to discover now, of course super minch does touch on your your history, Teddy Pendograss. But then later I found out that you damn near managed everyone important in black music, which I mean Superman's kind of treated like a small foot road like. Oh and by the way, Rick James, no that.

That listed the and the Superman. Just I copied that list and wrote it all down of everybody, and it was like whoa Rick James and Stephanie Mills and Lisa Fisher, which I'm sure was not happy about.

He was very he was she was the background singer.

So okay, So the thing I didn't know that was before before Okay, So Teddy went sold one seventy five, seventy six. You're saying that most black shows that occurred were strictly for radio stations and DJs and not for pay.

And I mean audience is paid. Artists didn't get paid. There was an organization called the Black Promoters Association. I don't know if they still exist or not, but they were sort of the enforcers. And they had a collection of promoters who worked with the radio stations and the record companies, and they kept everybody in line. And it was a it was a you know, it was a street business. It was Teddy's last manager before me had

To give it up.

And that didn't scare you at all.

You know, I never it's funny or did they send you?

They sent you in the line of fire. And then was like, oh, by the way, uh my last manager go so we'll get him, step Hey, you go get him. So you're saying like a cat, like, uh, let me pick a random seventies like mac davis. Mac Davis could go out and do whatever he wanted to do make some money. But Teddy went out strictly to ensure that his record played on the radio. He was.

He was convinced by by the record company who profited greatly by the record sales and made nothing on the road, that the only way he was going to keep getting hit records and keep getting basically the rented car that they give him.

Yeah, how how would he make money? Because Gamble, Gamble and Huff are writing the songs.

He lived a very simple life.

He wasn't.

There was no mansions in any of those guys' lives. There were you know, you talked to the OJ's, you talked to all these guys.

In the beginning, they were just working musicians.

They were working.

Musicians until when like when do you think for me?

With Teddy it was.

It was the second solo album. That's about when we started. That's when we we we Our history was that we I I understood, but once I understood the chilling check that we can't do this. So I booked them in Radio City Musical and we got picketed and nobody wanted across the picket line. The Black Promoters Association picketed us.

So it was like al Haman and those guys are part of it. Or was al Haman more like the eighties and.

He was go to part of it, but he was much more nutrient. He was the second wave, he was the the first wave was and good guys. I actually got friendly with most of the guys with Jesse Boseman's who I love, great guy. I mean, it's still a lot of respect from But that was their business and they were able to get away with it, and that's what they did. And so I said, I'm you know, I'm gonna have no We're not doing this. And I booked Teddy into a radio City and nobody wanted to

It was what it was deep.

So I knew I had to do business with him. Somehow, some way, we had to do business, and we ended up making an arrangement with him. Then if Teddy played a institutional building like Radio City that was where the promoter owned the building, they would allow us to do it as long as we paid.

Him a fee.

So it's like the mafia.

Yeah, but every business, I mean, you know, try and buy laundry in New York and then you're restaurant and you know, it's still the same life works the same way.

It just the way contribute to somebody.

Yeah, yeah, it always works that way. So that was the way we sort of got out.

And then what we did was we just played those kind of places and finally they came back to us and said, okay, we'll let you. My beef was money, but it was also promotion. They didn't do anything, and I wanted the shows promoted. So we finally made arrangement that date we could take a white promoter who has been in the business, pair them with someone from the Black Promoters Association, give them their fifty percent.

Of the date, but don't come, don't do anything.

Right right, just leave us alone. So all those shows that are you saying that that was the modus operandi for the average black show.

And then well what happened is then other people's earth winded fire came on that highway. A lot of acts started to follow that highway and everything started to So did this at the grade a little bit, and it opened up. By the time I got to Rick James, I didn't have to deal with it at all.

So with the exception of like James Brown, you're seeing, everyone had to go through that funnel system.

I'm sure James Brown probably went through.

Well.

I know that he was kind of handling his own business or whatnot. But that's it was great. That's what it was.

It was a childing circuit. It's just the way it was.

Wow. I went I went to elementary school on in Philadelphia at thirteen three thirteen Broad Street, which is right next door at the Philly International.

So at that great bar across the street.

The name of that bar, I forget.

There was a great bar in the corner and everybody hung at it, the.

Former Philadelphia International.

Yeah, now it's a SLS hotel. Oh is that what it is?

Though?

Yeah, they're about to build an SLS. But I could time it perfectly, like and I could tell that he might have been on CP time every time because I could always I knew when teddypin the grass was outside mm hmm. It was always like twelve twenty two, like during lunch break, so between like third and sixth grade, like like clockwork, I could catch teddypin the grass right outside, right outside of affiliateder like I've never seen a kind

The white girls yeah with a license played Teddy rented right that I think they.

Yeah, And I just like that made an impression on me, not like man one day, I want you want to be a pill people. So I mean, but what I know you can't get super personal of it. But I mean the the heating stick idea of what a rock star was, I know that was that for Teddy Pa, which I mean, how not bad did it get? How did it how extreme?

Because now, but it's all a matter of levels. And Teddy was probably making more money than he ever thought he'd ever make in his whole life, just by the drippings from the side, you know he was. He's selling millions of records. That's a lot of money. So if a couple one hundred thousand maybe went off to him, where another a white artist may have gotten a million. If he's getting a couple of hundred thousand, that's big money. Because all you know is what you know, and you know.

So how are you able to orchestrate the women only concerts?

Like?

Were their guards there to stop?

No?

No.

I I realized when I thought of it that I could get sued if I didn't let guys in. And every you know, everybody told me I couldn't do it because and I just said, if they want to buy a ticket, I don't care if they buy a ticket and come in. I just want the twenty five million people who aren't attending the concert to see for women only.

I couldn't care if there's a guy in the place.

No, even though I think, but they made HBO and it was like I think it was only cuts of women, so I only thought.

That's all they were.

It did make it. Yeah, No men came.

No men came at all.

I mean they could have, but they were outside. We had a lot of pimps outside waiting for their ladies to.

The letout.

I have reason to believe that Teddy rocked a few marriages in my family's, but my extended family.

The best part of those shows is we gave out everybody chocolate Teddy Bear lollipops, so he go had to like close.

The door and you're seeing them out in the audio to grow up, clicking the lollipop and biting its head off. Teddy. Yeah, patties a lot of patties on stage.

Did it ever bother him in the least? Or was he just enjoying it?

He enjoyed it, Teddy was.

I had such a great time working with Teddy was one of my you know, Alice for me is like an armor after Alice.

Teddy Teddy was, I was. He's my favorite music. That's what I listened to at home.

It's the only thing I play in my house for the last fifteen years is Teddy. And he just loved being that character.

I loved it was.

I used to have these great conversations with him. I would show up and he say, oh shit, this is the time, and I say, yeah, we called it that don't be a schmuck conversations and.

I sort of shut the door and I go, man, you're being a schmuck. Have I a schmuck again? And I get it off my chest and we deal with it. He was great.

You could you could talk, you know, with some artists, you have to tiptoe around the issue. You have to figure out a way to get to where you want to go with him. You didn't have to tiptoe. I could just tell him, you know, as as h fancy as I could what I felt.

So what would be what would be an issue? Then?

Well, actually for women only came out of it. That's how the concert happened. He played, I got really pissed when I went and did the first Chiplin circuit show with him. Really pissed me off, like, you can't let this happen. That's when he told me his manager got killed. And I said, you know, I don't give a shit. I don't have kids, I don't care let him kill me, but I'm not going to be part of this thing.

And he said, what do we do?

I said, I'm going to book you in the whitest place I can find and fuck him excuse me, and we're going. Uh So I booked him in the Roxy in l a, which very white bread, small club. I don't think a black artist that ever played it. At that point, we got a lot of death threats we got we ended up getting FBI security there.

They for what the black Promoters Association.

Oh okay, I thought, so, you know, so, I'm like risking my life to do this rock the Roxy. You're not going to make any money in the Roxy. It's two hundred seats. And I had only done one show with him, right, And we get to the Roxy and he does the whole show sitting on a stool. All the women wanted to do was like grab him and fucking brains. And he's sitting on a stool being this really cool, really cool guy, like you know, and I was getting furious, like furious, like I can't believe you're

And you're just you're not reacting, you're not engaging, You're not engaging it.

You're not giving it back to him, You're not doing So I go upstairs and this is only my second show with him, and he's got these two security guys, one real big, one real small, and they really don't know me, and they tell me I got to wait. Teddy's getting, you know, changing, which really pisses me off to begin with because I'm used to immediate access.

And then this PARADEI of women starts coming in and you know, a woman comes in and.

I'm out there. It's fifteen minutes later. The next one comes in. Now it's two o'clock in the morning. I've risked my life. I hate the show and I'm sitting here at two.

O'clock in the morning and I get in you mother the fucker, Who the fuck do you think you are? You know, I've risked my life for you to sit on a fucking stool and and like be cool, and then you make me wait till two o'clock in the morning, Go fuck yourself. And he said, hey, man, what do you expect from me? I'll tell you what to expect me. To get those women crazy, and let me be the only guy in the room when you're doing it. I will have the greatest time ever. And then I said,

Let's go do it.

Well.

I think before this point there used to always be two sets of shows, because even Sam Cook had the show that he did at the Kopa, the Dinner Shownight Midnight, do the you know, rebel Rousing Show, and James Brown Motown.

No.

They were doing like magic Tricks and wow. I was like, really, I never knew how Blue Notes seeing the way we were seeing the sho now getting ready for the Josh. Yeah. But I mean just pretty much even James Brown, like star Time was like the hits, but then he do some Sinatra stuff he do that's life and you know, like the I can be serious and play the copa. So maybe that was the mentality.

I think he was just trying to be cool.

So where the audience or the the demographics different as well, Like did he ever, Yeah, it was it was he started at the end to get some white audience.

Once he got once.

They the press finally started calling him the black Elvis, and that sort of attracted a lot of white women once they said black Elvis, but up till but never really was gigantic, But it was. It was every woman in town.

I mean it was.

It was fantastic and they had the greatest time. I mean it really it paid off. He was an entertainer who paid off. They went home exhausted.

Let me ask you a personal question, because in the documentary some of your friends admit that you.

Love the ladies.

Do so how does the police police himself? Because if you were, you know, with these guys like Teddy and Alls and where women were everywhere, was there a moment when you had to go or maybe just three to night or just two?

No, okay, I was just I was.

I've always I've always been very direct. I try to always be honest. And in those days, I was overworking, you know, I was. That was all I had was my work. That's all I cared about.

So there wasn't really time for relationships. So but I loved women and I love sex.

Did you have any did you have some game?

Well?

So what not great game? Not great game, but great access Because I had I was in the midst of all the stars. Always, I was standing next to the people they wanted to be next to.

Everybody wanted to be with the lead singer of a band. And so I said to myself, how can I I don't have the time to romance someone. You know, it's like it's eleven thirty, I got to get up at six.

I'm in a hotel room.

I don't have time to like, I love you, I love you, And it's not honest. Actually, everybody else on the road is like telling these girls that they know they're never going to see again how much they love them.

Just to get him into the bed. And that's yeah.

And I said, I can't do that. So I said, what do I do? I said, well, what's my strength. My strength is that I can get these women a backstage pass to meet the lead singer. So I made up a T shirt that said, no head no backstage pass was honest. You wanted great, you don't want it great, no problem at all.

It was head based, which that was what stopped you from having so many thoughts thought babies, Yeah, okay, oh that was very smart.

It eliminated the down side in fulfill the upside. It was sort of honest right to the floor.

So shut I got, I gotta I gotta ask uh, because I remember again as a Philadelphian, I remember it so well. But can you take us through the like I believe, like March of eighty two when you got that phone call, like.

What I got a phone call that Teddy had his accident.

Do you still remember it?

Like, oh, like it was yesterday. I remember.

I don't remember getting to Philly. I remember the elevated the elevated door in the hospital opening, and uh, Sedonia Walker was there who ran Teddy's office, and Karen who was I don't know if she was his wife at that point, she had been a singer in the show. She was there, Teddy's mom, who's still alive and just an amazing wow. I mean like they should build a

And why was that?

I have no idea and everybody like they just wanted you to put it in this instantly bam, and they said no, and we kill all.

Hopes, so you know, so it's reality and you know where you're going to kill the spirit though.

You know he's strapped to a table that they flip every ten minutes. Yeah, I saw that device like that and all he could do is blink. That was the only you know, like, can you can you hear me? Teddy blink once, yes, twice no, and he blink and then they'd flip him every ten minutes, and they said, and everybody felt that you should be part of the team to tell him. And within sixty seconds, I'm in his room telling the guy that he's never going to walk again. It was a guy I love, I mean

So they revealed that in the daily news front page. Yeah, yeah, I remember, I mean I was really young.

The reason why I remember my mother she was I mean, she loved him, and that was one of the first times, like with the celebrity. I remember seeing my mother cry like I remember her when the news broke. I mean I was like three four years old.

It was crying.

His connection to his audience. I've never seen a connection like he had to his audience. To these women, they really felt that well, he was one of the few he was there.

You know, each one.

Felt personally like he was their lover, their son, their husband. It was really remarkable relations.

It was this very I mean he was such a masculine figure. I mean not saying that, you know the answer.

Worst man I ever saw him, My biggest presence I've ever seen. I mean he walked in a room and.

Was like wow, not for nothing.

I remember as his album when I was a little girl, and that was the only album that I knew, and I used to sing and perform it in front of my my family and friend. So you read about that all ages.

So I wake up in that story is in the newspaper.

So as a manager, how what do you do?

Then?

Like?

So what I did then?

And it I called missus pendergrass Ida.

And I said, I think we I think we have a problem. I don't think the beer Company's going to do what I said they were going to do. Can I come out to the house and go through all the tapes and see if I can find maybe there's some songs that Teddy's done that haven't been released, and I can get someone to pay to put him out. I found an album's worth of material and the rest of the story is almost too ugly to tell, but we got him some money. He was recording for a

In two thrones and behind them were all the black militants, all of them. All of them talked about killing people like me.

You didn't have a good cozy relationship.

It wasn't the war it's place to be. And told them what I had done.

They got very mad that I went to CBS behind their back, but they did finally agree that they would get the check and give it to Teddy. And they did get the check and they gave part of it to Teddy, so that saved us for a while, and.

Then I had it. In the contract there was a soundtrack clause that he could do one album not on p I R if it was a soundtrack of a movie Super one. Yeah. So I went to I went to did you work on Super One?

No? I just know that. Yeah, I I've never seen the movie, but I haven't record.

I worked on that. That was a barbon Worth movie.

Anyway, I never know the movie ever came out.

I just yeah, So I made this movie.

I satted a film company, made a movie called Choose Me, and Teddy got the sound got an advanced from a lecture for the soundtrack, and that's to what put him on straightened out, took care of the kids, took care of the mom.

So by the time you guys own electure when he did like the Joy album, that were things like good.

Things yes, because because the Electra stepped up to the line and gave him, uh, there was a fellow named Bob kras Now, and he had just taken over Electra and I had promised Teddy that if he did something legally that I could get him a million dollars. And he did it and the guy renegged on a million dollars at CBS Walter after this, this is the second part of the incident, and I didn't know what to do. You know, Teddy's lying there still. I promised him a

If he dies.

I need to have a tape in my file of him doing something, and I need a script of a movie.

You don't have to make the movie. Doesn't that be him?

But I got to have my ass covered, so I like the life rights. So I went to Luther and I told him and I said, can you make yourself sound like Teddy? And get me a tape? And he wrote, choose Me, Luthor. He wrote the song and he did like twenty generations, removed the noise in the background. But we had a tape up choose Me that's sort of sated like Teddy. And I went to a filmmaker I had worked with, a guy named Alan Rudolph, and I said, would you write a script for me? When never going

Teddy was rocket. And then now when.

Rudolf called me up about a year later, he said, now I need a favor and I said, what's that? And he said, I want to make the movie.

So I would.

I wouldn't sold my soul to Chris Blackwell, who would always who had always wanted to meet a uh start a film company for a partner with me, because I was I had won the con Film Festival. I was doing pretty good, and but I knew that he had a bad reputation as as you know, a lot of people who had been with him had been burned. And but I said, listen, I know you're sort of devilish, but I will sell my soul to you.

I'm always honest against my greater and and he.

Said, I know people talk about it. And I said, but I need a million dollars to make this movie. I know you have a rec good company, but you can't get the soundtrack. But I'll make it up to you somehow, and I'll partner with him, will do great. And I thought that I owned the live films and Choose Me was the first movie Electric got the soundtrack with Teddy.

And wow, here we are, so wow, I'm noticing that, like you're rolling alone in the situation. Yeah, but I know the business was dangerous in the seventies, and I mean the sixties, seventies and eighties because there was mod run. I mean, how did you get out unscathed? I don't know.

If I am ut scathing, what is your most alive? I would say my scariest What was your most Like you're scathing, I would say my scariest moment. And I'll leave the names of the people out. But my only real brush, the Black Promoters Association never really.

Came after me Hardy.

It was never a moment where I I'm not going to live anymore. I had one second of that. One guy put a gun to my head, but I knew he wasn't going to use it. I just knew he was too high profile. He wasn't going to shoot me. So I wasn't even scared.

It was just like quite cool.

Yeah, But then I was. This is years later. I was in my apartment in New York. It was when Teddy had his accident. I moved to New York for two years, and I went down to Philly every week to see him. And I had taken Bob Ethern, who produced Alice's, his apartment in New York. He let me use for two years, and there was a little phone on the side of the bed, a red phone that never rang. I didn't know the number. I have no idea what he used it for, don't want to know.

A how did you know?

I was answering, he knew where my office was, and he had that voice? Was this was serious Italian kind of you know, a soprano's voice.

Right.

And the next day I get a phone call from a guy that I had met a few times who everyone had told me was connected, mafia connected, and he calls me up. I guess I could say his name because I think he's dead. Tommy Fastola, who ended up going to jail for life for beating up a record company guy.

And he says, hey, ship bet you doing great, Tommy. How'd you get my number? He said, oh, we got friends. We got friends. And he called on the same phone.

Right right right, and he says, you know how lucky you are? And I said, what do you mean, Tommy? He says, so, I'm having breakfast this morning with the guys. Now, one of the guys says I got to leave early, and I says to him, boy, do you gotta leave early? I gotta go bump this guy off. Shep gordon up then wow, and he said, you can't bump the guy off.

He's with me.

And I'm like now thinking to myself, which is worse, getting bumped off of.

Being with him.

Yeah, right.

Exactly, he's with me.

You can't do that, And he says, well, the other guy's sad too, So I can tell the story, he said, So you tell you what, kid, meet me at Moish's office. This afternoon at two, Mois was Marris leaving.

Ah.

So I go up to Marris Levy's office, who I'd never met before with Tommy. He tells the story and Morris.

Says, you're a lucky kid to have Tommy on your side. You know that. I said, yeah, I said, but you know you should do something for him. What should I do for him?

He said, you know that new Blondie record that's coming out. I own these stores strawberries, get me fifty thousand clean copies meant that they weren't punched as free goods so they could sell.

Wow.

And I said, Mars, I know, I'm not the record company, I really, but we settled at ten thousand copies, which I bought from the record company.

It costs it gave him that it was like.

And luckily a few months later, Tommy Vastolo got caught on camera in Philadelphia beating up a record store guy. Who hadn't paid his bill to boish with a baseball bat and went to jail for the rest of his life.

Still in jail.

I think he died in jail. He may be around if he will probably come after me.

But is that when you became a Buddhist.

Yeah, but that was my only real you know, there's so much talk. You see vinyls, you see all this stuff. It never really was. You know, there were thugs, but it wasn't this organized.

You know.

That was my only brush in forty years of doing it of like real organized crime stuff.

So did you Did you have personal relationships with all of your clients because I mean no, I mean at some point you had like forty at the same time, right, No. I So what about like Rick.

James, Rick James, I had a very personal relationship with I would say, Rick Teddy, Alice Raquel to some extent. Those were really my closest. There was some that I had no and some of the African artists Johnny Clegig King Sonny A. Day was the most elegant human being I've ever been around in my life. Magic Fashik was just a joy. So but there were many I didn't luthor. I did not have a close relationship.

With really at all, but you were with him at all times though I.

Was with him twenty years, so we lived ten blocks from each other. He never was at my house.

Wow, really yeah? I mean, did you have a liaison like.

I had a liaison?

For every act I used to tell acts, I'd say, you know, the biggest waste of my time is talking to you on the phone about you need four Coca colas. You know, then I'm not doing my job. So I charged twenty percent. If you don't need me to be in your face all the time, I will get someone that you can beat up whenever you want to beat them up, and you'll only charge of fifteen percent. And everybody went for fifteen percent.

I never had anybody say no, I want you for twenty but it was true.

My job is getting ahead of the artist but a year or two and telling them where to go. And if I'm spending my time talking about like I didn't have the right light in my dressing room last night. You know, I like pink lights, not they had.

A blue light. Could you believe they had a blue light?

Well? I can imagine that, especially after the massive success of Street Songs, m V dawning of MTV that Rick James really wanted to be ushered into, you know, the eighties, the same way that Michael and Prince got their due. So I mean I had what was that whole scenario, Like, I mean, was there a pressure on you like to get me on MTV?

And I mean enough from Rick. But we were doing so good that I didn't. He didn't need to. We had It was a great career.

Many complained about it a lot, though, you know, on MTV.

Never to me.

I never never really got it from but he may have to the guy who worked for me, he may have, but he made he was We were headlined those Budweiser festivals and it was good times.

Boy.

He was a great guy. I really loved, very smart man.

Yeah, my uh my Rick James story was at the House of Blues, uh Me, Common and Rossario Dawson went to go see Rick and or it was really the Tina Marie Show, but Rick just happened to be there and they got out and fire and desire and everything. It was like nineteen ninety nine. Anyway, So we're up backstage and Rick comes in with Leon Isaac Kennedy.

So the thing is was married for like a beautiful girl.

Have you ever seen that sexty? Well, here we go, this is where I'm leading to. This is what I'm leading to.

Now.

Rick saw me. Rick saw me walking with Rosario.

Right.

But after a while, like me and Tina started talking a lot about like I'm kicking out whatever. So at some point Rick comes up to me and I was like, he gives me this firm handshake, and I was like, yo, man, like I can't even believe you, like know who I am. He's like, of course I know you are. Motherfucker you want to he was the one of the funkiest motherfuckers walking on earth right now. And he said, but I should tell you something now. At this point, he points

Me me.

Nice of music, guys, get back. I bumped into Dave Chappelle, uh recently, and I told we were interviewing you, and you know, I reminded him that you had managed Rick James. And I was there the day that we actually shot Rick's porson of the interview and uh, he was actually I think the first of the second person that we showed the final sketch to, and uh, you know he loved it. He yeah, he loved it. We got no complaints from him.

Rick was the way I the way I started with Rick. I was in my office one day and this my door gets thrown open and just thrown open, like worked his way right through the reception that just came to the thing. He goes, you, motherfucker you shep Gordon, motherfucker. I know more about you than you know about you, really, And I said, what who are you? And he said, motherfucker Rick James, I'm from Buffalo, New York. You went to school in Buffalo, New.

York, you lived on Main Street.

You ate it the you did?

He like had it down I said, what do you do? And he said, He's good, what do I do? I'm the fucking baddest motherfucker you ever came across in your fucking life.

What do you mean? Why do I do? Wow?

And he and he had a hit record ONWN. So you and I had already been out, and yeah, you and I was out.

He had to.

He had just was just about to sign the Mary Jane girls to Barry, and he said, motherfucker, I got these girls that are gonna be even bigger than me, and you're going to do their deal.

I'm throwing you in.

The pit with Berry. And that was my first meeting. I went to the penthouse on sunset and Barry was playing pool and really yeah and and uh, rickad, this is the motherfucker's gonna squeeze you for more money you ever given anybody.

So what was that light with Barry? We were talking.

I never really got to know him. He was very He dismissed me, right, I mean he really dismissed me. I was that.

He is very dismissive.

Yeah, he dismissed me.

To say, but we held out and he came around and we made the deal, and uh, he paid him. He was Barry was my impression, and I didn't know him well, and I can't say this with one hundred percent certainly, but he would fuck you to your faiths, not to your back.

He cut a really hard deal. You got to respect that and you got to respect it. And he delivered the goods. He got you to hit records. He did the stuff he had to do.

But it was all about Barry and he wasn't sharing, and he was vocal about I can deal with anybody if they're honest, they tell you what the game is. You want to get delt in, you know, get you have a choice.

Did he at least respect that Rick Rick's celebrity and his status at the time was going to carry Motown to the eighties?

I don't.

I mean, with the exception of and Stevie. Yeah, that was it.

Yeah, I don't know. I really don't know. I Rick ended up dealing more with him than I did. Really.

Yeah, Rick had a good relationship with him. I was the white kid on the block who was trying to steal from him, and so I let Rick. I would I would wind Rick up and send him in rather than go in myself. I say, you know, here's what we got to get and here's what I need, and the Mary Jane girls had to hit.

The first record was a hit.

So yeah, both those records.

Yeah, so they were real happy with them.

So you orchestrated both those albums.

I wouldn't say I orchestrated.

I made the deal.

I made the deal for him to allow him to hit, but I didn't have any real influence on it.

Rick.

Rick was very much in control of his career. He was very strong, one of the smartest artists I've ever worked with.

So, with the exception of maybe Freddy Demand, if I'm who.

By the way, I think is maybe the best manager of my in my lifetime.

Really. Yeah. Well, with the exception of Freddie Demand, I don't know where I was the Jackson's and.

Then he did Michael's launch, a solo launch Madonna.

Yeah, he had madonna'srom Jump Street right from jumps Street and brought back Line over Richard And he would only.

Do one or two acts at a time, that's all he needed.

But he did.

He did the job. I mean, he really, My respect love for him is unbelievable. I Mean I always when people ask me, I always say Freddy Demand was the guy.

What I was gonna say between Jerry Goldsmith and Freddy Demand, Well, let me, I'm I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I gotta try and stop. Sorry, I'm sorry.

Well no, I mean, okay, So who was Jerry gold He had wore sly uh the animals? Yeah, er, But I'm just saying that a lot of lawsuits a lot.

However, I'm saying that if I am a black act that's looking to crossover, and crossover was definitely on the minds of a lot of black acts in the seventies, how to break out of the Chitlin circuit and really want to generate money for myself. But like staying power, I mean, are you are you the are you the golden child that will Is it either you or Freddie that's the golden child that will take you there? Or yeah?

And I think, you know, in a way of thinking, I think there were a couple of other guys.

Trying to think of the guys that did earth Wind and Fire, they had found the highway to go down to the way they could do stuff like that. There were a few people. But you know, also radio was hungry for it. They were really hungry for it. It wasn't a hardshell.

It was radio hungry for music. Like now, radio is hungry for you to buy the product that they're advertising. So it's not music centric more than it is getting you know, you to hear the commercials and getting kids to hear their parents to hear the commercials to buy the product. Like music is almost an afterthought for radio, which is why we get the same fifteen songs in rotation. But are you saying that there's a point where radio was truly interested.

In I wouldn't say truly interested, because I don't know if they're capable of that. FM was but pop am radio, but they found that those records worked on their stations. Okay, so you you know, the game was always buying your way on. But you couldn't just buy your way on.

You had to see I always thought you could buy your way on.

Oh no, I'll tell you a great Philly story, Gray, really funny.

Everything's happening.

So I'm a young punk. Alice has a hit record, comes time for the second record, and the record company is not going to do anything they're just not going to he just told you this. No, but you can tell you know, you know, by the science and not taking any ads out. There's no independence hired for the single. That's just you know, the tailtale signs. So I'm not gonna let them stop me. So I'm just gonna buy my way on. I had some cash on. So the most powerful guy at the time in radio was out

It's like, oh my god, this is the greatest. We're going to you know, we're getting around of the record company. And the second week with twenty five, it's moving up the charts. This is fantastic.

Third week it drops off the chart, twenty five to. In the record business, once you lose your momentum, no other station in the country's going to pick you up if you don't. That's so the record was over. Maybe a year later I found out what the game was. The station only played twenty songs, but he sold thirty slots, so of course there were no sales. The record never got played. So I paid ten thousand to kill the record, just.

To be in the bottom to kill it.

I killed it.

Lesson learned, Yeah, good learn oh man. Lesson learned.

There's always a curtain behind the curtain.

So and then I'm I'm I'm now now I'm putting two two together. The fact that you managed Stephanie Mills explains her presence on the Teddy Records. Uh. You managing the Callaway Brothers and Midnight Star explains their presence on I.

Want to Be Rich And what a great tour. I love that I want to Be Rich?

That was that your concept?

Yeah?

Completely, oh man, I can't. I mean, I completely, but the thought was there, you know, it was like, come on, let's just say it.

Wow, and it happened. I got it. I mean, I have so many my experience with Luther Vandros. I mean, as a person who was immersed in hip hop whatever I mean, Luther Vanres was the definition of smooth R and B kind of answer, like the complete opposite of what hip hop represented. But I mean I still respected it. But Luther's live show was like my mom would physically describe every moment. And this is from Lisa Fisher, all

I mean what I at of love was probably my personal I mean yeah, as yeah, my personal favorite too.

So, but I also know that he was notorious for being very meticulous and like harder than James Brown, like fines and although he was no spot nor wrinkle, where does that come from? Like that level of discipline that I'm neriable.

Yeah, I've never seen anything like it. It was it, you know, my reputation.

Most many of the artists hired me because I wrote and directed the stage.

Shows and that was my joy.

And I was, oh, really yeah so that I didn't know.

I did the Earth Wind and Fire Pyramid show, I did the first Kiss show. I love doing shows and doing productions, and I knew how to gets standing ovations and that was a lot of my value to most of my artists. Luther would would not let me come to see him until he had broken the show in so I would never allowed to come to the first four or five six shows because he wanted to be perfect. I'd say to him, you know, of my job is to help you make it perfect.

And he was.

He was in complete control of every second on that stage, every single light, every wardrobe change, and did it as good as I mean as good as you could possibly do it. Fanatic about it, but and drove a very hardship. You know, if someone was a second late, they were toast. If they were off on a queue somewhere, if a lighting queue went down, that guy was toasted.

That night.

He was just you know, brought into the dressing room and dressed down. He needed everything absolutely perfect, and he was perfect every night, so he could demand that he hit his marks every night. He was everything was You can almost overlay one show to the other with Luthor.

You could with the clock.

Yeah, yeah, wow.

One question I always had in regards to Luther, and you know, it was a lot of talk about yeah you know, uh as a kid of the eighties, you know my mother, I mean that was the soundtrack to.

My childhood, and no one cared. You know what I'm saying.

Nobody cared at all. Yeah, Like, no one cared at all. We just wanted to hear him sing. As a manager, Was that something that presented a challenge for you or was it how did how did you handle?

That?

Didn't present a challenge at all? The only the part of it that presented a challenge to me wasn't professional, was personal. I never felt that he was joyful, and I felt that a lot of that lack of joy was that he didn't have any relationships in his life.

He didn't that I know of. There was no male.

Relationship, there was no female relationship. There were no relationships. And that was for me was the hard part because I wanted to be happy and enjoy success.

Even with you, Like was there a guard between you guys?

Yes, completely, yeah, and strictly business and strictly business. I don't even didn't really know who.

He was, had one can of conversation or never had a real conversation. How did he seek you out to man or how did you end up managing him?

He?

Uh?

The record company called me up, and he called me up.

He uh.

We had a mutual business manager and he loved the work I did, and we took a meeting and he did. We we joined up, and I had a guy in my office that took care of him. And we never we had no real relationship at all. We we actually he's the only artist that I worked with and had no communication with.

It.

A point in time came when he wouldn't talk to me, and it was about the last three years of our relationship that I managed him, and I would send them notes and say, listen, you don't have to stay with me, and he said, no, no, you're the right guy.

I just don't want to talk. You know.

He was a he was a different kind of a guy.

Luther I tended well in light of the unfortunate events that have happened in twenty sixteen, I'm seeing a common denominator with well one particular icon that for this episode remain nameless, who's notoriously very secret, secretive, and very guarded. And I guess in light of his demise, the things that we found out about his life and what caused his exit, you know, that's a secret, that's you know. Now, I get why everything was so secretive, and you know

Of possible But you even with who you're mentioning, I feel like we knew more about his past with Luther. I don't feel like we know a lot about who Luther was.

I think he really knew who he was. Wow, you know, I think he'd lived for his career. He lived for that moment on stage. That's when he that's when he knew what to do. And I think, you know, you can see the issues with the weight going up and down, how it translates, and you know, you just see certain things. But he was a great artist and I'm honored that I worked with him.

There's one thing that a lot of the public doesn't know you're responsible for, or I guess by accident you're responsible for Deborah, Harry and Christine meeting fat by Freddie.

Well, yeah, I was sort of part of the team. I wouldn't say responsible, but.

Part of it.

We were searching for We were searching for a new single. What do we do for a new single? And they were very culturally significant, they were they were a real product of the times. So we were looking for something to hang our hat on that was more significant than just a song. And we had heard about this thing that was going on up in Harlem, cardboard boxes on the floor, beat boxes, guys dancing, and we said, let's go take a look, let's see what this is all about.

So we started to walk over to him to talk to him, and he started to.

Not run, but move away from us really fast, and he got on the next train when it came. So we jumped on the trade and that we're all trapped on the trade and it was Fab five Freddy and he then we you know, we said when I copps, when I busted you, it's all good. And he took us back to see the dancing and then he he was your tour guy. Who was the tour guy and then he sort of you know, if you remember the video, he's in the background the whole pig, you know, Fab five Freddy dude.

Yeah, that's yeah, that's that's amazing. I mean, there was a landmark movement. It was Eric.

Eric thorn Grin was the guy who took us up there. He was the engineer on Grand Master Flash's record, and he was he was the one we went to and then he took us to Harlem.

That's amazing.

So and I think he engineered that record. Maybe he may have. I'm not sure the Chapman produced it, but Eric may have.

Makes sense. And uh, well, later that year, also when Blondie hosted Saturday Night Live, they insisted that the four plus one be the musical guest. Oh really that was a fight?

How so nobody really no one who nobody ever heard?

No but that that to me, that was an amazing moment, Like I remember that doing the first one of of seeing that.

Did you ever think at any point in timeship of managing hip hop artists or was that never wanted.

To never never appealed to me? I didn't.

Like I started to see the thug element come into the music business. The backstage rhythm changed completely, the attitude of the artists, popsy started to happen. Never had to deal with Popsy's before then.

Jesus Christ, Wait you say that I didn't know that. You started Carlos and Charlie's, Like these are the things you learned, Like I'm Cassley mentioned like Carlos and Charlie's was like you go to Hollywood Spot okay, and He's like, oh I co that, And I was like, I only know of it because of Eddie Murphy. Oh my god. Every Eddie Murphy's story ever heard, am Prince story starts with Carlos and Charlie's. Like even even that.

Those Eddie Murphy's story at Carlos and Charlie.

Yeah.

Again it was there were posse's didn't really exist. The first posse that I saw with my eyes was Thomas Hearns came to the club with a posse and you know, I don't think they would call posse, but he had like six guys with them who hanger on. Yeah, and they moved like a wave, you know. So Eddie Murphy had a posse and he comes one night into the clinic.

My guards are around him keeping him away from getting hurt. And it's just really stupid. And I go over to Eddie and I said, I didn't know him well, but I said, listen, man, you won the game. You're rich, like you want it. You don't have to beat the kids. Look at his nose. He's like, you know, weighs one hundred pounds. You really don't have to do this. You want just calm down. And he wouldn't let go.

So I called the police. I had a sergeant and we got him arrested and he went to jail. And it's about five thirty in the morning. My phone rings at my house and it's the guy named Don Simpson and he says, Chep, you're still on Carlos and Charlie's And I said yeah, I said, you got to help me. I'm starting a movie this morning and my lead actor, Eddie Murphy is in jail.

A guess of the movie was Beverly Hills Cop.

So this is this is the best fallt of the story. So I call up the sergeant and I say, I'm really sorry. We got to get him out of jail. Now you got to get the charges drop. I'm not going to charge it. And you know, no one's gonna I got to kick. So he goes down to the jail and he calls me up. He says, okay, the motherfucker won't leave the cell. We said, you're you're out of here, and he said, if you want me out.

Of here, then I'm staying here.

He just had the last words.

I always wondered, did hip hop come around and bite you a little bit personally? Because we found out in the documentary Superminch that you ended up adopting, uh two of your ex girlfriend's branches, four of your experman's grandbabies, and they're have a certain age being raised in the eighties and nineties and stuff. So I just wonder, as something boy, I.

Can remember, there was a great moment.

It's funny you're bringing that up because it's exactly there was just great moment when you know, I built my life on with Alice by trying to get parents to hate him.

That was my goal.

And now it's ten or fifteen years later, the kids are getting you know, I have these four kids, they're young. They're staying in the bedroom next to me at my house and I come walking by and I hear hip hop for the first time, and I opened the door I go, what is this ship?

You're listening.

And Alice Cooper did yeah, And as I say it, I realized, oh my god, this is exact They're gonna that's that's it.

And what's there?

What's the oldest kid? How old?

Now?

Thirty five at that time?

Was back then?

Yeah? They were fine?

Oh yeah, no, they the dungarees were always you know, the underwear was showing.

It was every single thing. If they were yo, MTV wraps was all they cared about. That was you know, that was their life. But I knew it right then.

As soon as I said that, when those words came out of my mouth, I said, it's me usic business is changing because if I can't stand that, it's going to be the biggest thing and then it works.

Wow.

Yeah.

So probably the biggest lesson that I learned, I mean, the point where I realized like, oh, this is a lesson that I have to learn is the fact that you have to walk away from it and really just let go. Which to think about that right now for me is like that's one of the scariest things because you think like this is all I have, Like this is all you know, I don't have a lineage or that sort of thing, and it's just like, well, I've made a commitment to the music business, so this is

Mine was completely different. I had a I've always done knee jerk reactions. I've never been a planner. I planned for my artists, for my own life. I've always you know, I wake up in the morning, I really act. And I had a premiere at Universal Studios for one of my movies, Big red Carpet premiere, Cleague, Lights of Flying and you know all that stuff. And I was bored to death, like so bored, you know, I just couldn't wait to get out of there, go see CNN do anything.

And the next day I flew to Mallion.

I was alone on my hammock having a drink at sunset, and every molecule in my body was ecstatic, like ecstatic. I can't even describe how happy. And I said to myself, you know, you're miserable there, you're happy here.

What are you doing?

It's pretty simple, like what's life all about. I worked so hard to get happy and I found what makes me happy, and I'm not doing it.

And I went to the office about four days later and resigned from everybody and told them the story.

And I said, you know, you don't have a fear of missing out? We call it. You didn't have a because.

It's to me, it was sort of false gods anyway, you know, it's it's it's like fool's gold. I mean, I've always had that awareness that we're in the entertainment business. It really doesn't matter, and it is sort of fool's gold. And it's fun and it's great and it provides great stuff, but it's not you know, it's not curing cancer. And and for me as a manager, when I also realizes that I had up until that point, I had spent my life living other people's lives and I had no

Now it's just me, so the.

Effort is gigantic, the result is probably less than it might be with the great staff.

And I still do the same stuff.

But you're not retired either.

Technically you're not my manage Alice, But in my brain I thought it was.

With the chefs. I mean, he's taking himself out of that, out of the hustle bustle, Like did you personally have a one on one with all your clientele?

Was it just like I called everybod I did it on the phone. I called them all the only Luther who I hadn't spoken to in a couple of years, was it? The only one that was sort of upset?

All right?

And then when I was so I woke, I got back to La. I called Alice and I said, where are you? He said in LA? I said, will you picked me up today for lunch? Because I want to get really drunk and I don't want to drive. And he said, what's wrong? And I said, nothing wrong, but I'm going to resigne from everybody but not you. But and I really don't. I want to get whacked. And so I called all the clients. Everybody was and I told the truth. You know, I said, I want to

How much grace time do you give them?

Like?

Okay?

So what I said to him was, you know, you can use the office, use my guys if you want. So I was still, yeah, I can find you somebody else if you'd like. I'll give you a list.

I'll go to the interviews with you and really help you get through it.

I just I got to find out who I am. You know, this is for me, not about you. And everybody was happy. Luther wasn't, but he sort of understood. And as I was leaving the office with Alice, the phone rang and my secretary said, you got to take this call. And I said, I'm not taking any more calls. It's over done. I'm going there and said, no, no,

Company will put this stuff out?

And I said, do I think any Beetles? Get out of here?

He turned out to be close to right. It was a fight, a fight, a real tough fight, but for.

You guys to get a new Beatles.

Capital didn't want to resign him. What it was it was, it's a long it's a whole other story and it's a.

Long one, but it was Gary gerse Era Capital.

I hired Garriott Capital when at that during that.

Do you see what I mean?

During that?

Do you know this guy named Gary gerc he.

Was during that period of time, during that period of time. So anyway, I ended up.

Making the deal with Capital, which wasn't easy for him, and doing working on the BBC tapes and the anthology, and Luther freaked out. You told me you were resigning, now you're doing the bet. He found out, I have no idea. He rewrote his biography and took me out of it. I was very heavily in the first printing. The second print.

I didn't, Oh my god, well, I'm more amazed that a new Beatles.

Song well as a There's a long history here. So here's sort of the let me give you the cover of it. Here's the cover. Capital E.

M I an electronics company that happened to be in the music business, but Thorny m I was the core of their business. They made refrigerators, defence stuff. They were basically a science patent owner company. And they hired a guy named They bought a company from a fellow named Colin Southgate and made him chairman of Thorny m I part of the purchase. He gets the job. He's in the job for three weeks. He goes what they call

Get off the label.

This is his first time as head of the company addressing the street. So for him, I never want to see the Beatles when the contract's over, get rid of the Beatles. Don't ever want him near here. Can't stand them, hate them, So now the contract's up. At that point, guys who are running the company were more interested in their bonuses than in you know, they shut the black music department at Capitol Records, like just to get to

And it was wild to them. It's more of a headache.

Yeah, they didn't want to deal with it, just didn't and they didn't care. They wanted their bonus that I could They couldn't care less.

I couldn't imagine none of the Beatles' music being on any other labels other than Capital.

Yeah.

Oh, anyway, it made it work, but wow, it was. It was pretty wild.

Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, I can go on forever and ever, but you know, all good things come to an end.

Yeah, and uh, this was fun, guys.

Yeah, this has like been the greatest.

This is man So one question I did have, So, now, you know, what does managing Alice Cooper look like now like on a day to day basis.

Well, I don't.

It doesn't occupy the whole day, but I still wake up in the morning thinking about how to enhance his career, and I go to sleep at night thinking about how to enhance the career.

Recently, we just.

Put him in a band with Johnny Depp that I created, which was great for his profile.

Great john it was. It was a win win.

Johnny's a musician who always wanted a tour. I'm always looking for a way to make Alice current and give it an extra twist, so that was perfect. Now we're running in for president. We have a great campaign for get Alice elected, and he's on the Wild Party. His platform is gradual marks on a fifty dollars bill. Let me on Mount Rushmore. Wow, one selfie allowed a year prison sentence for anyone talking in a movie theater. Okay, that's just platform.

So it's you know, Alice is everybody in their life should have a relationship like Alice.

It's just we've it's been an amazing forty five years and he gives me the freedom to fail, which gives me the freedom to be creative.

Well, I I have to say, uh, you are probably, I mean, the textbook guru of of of all gurus. I mean, there's there's no person that I've not made watch this documentary over and over again, and and you've been very very generous, uh and and your wisdom and everything. I really would like to thank you Shep Gordon for just being here man, Thank you, thank you, thank you for doing Christ loves to bring you guys.

You're ready really problem.

Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced by the team at Landoran. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.