Could you tell me what the industry was like at the time?

Well, um, I started in the legal department at Capitol in 1970. Uh, it was at the time of affirmative action and people were trying to get more minorities into non-traditional roles. But it was very, very difficult. I think at the time there were only about five black entertainment lawyers in the whole country, you know. We all knew each other and we all were experiencing the same problems, primarily trying to get hired. But fortunately I was able to hire _____, and I was a lawyer there for about four or five years before the chairman asked me to, uh, investigate Capitol's failure to be successful in the black music area. By this time, uh, Motown had started to sell albums. Up until that time most of the major companies weren't really that concerned with R and B music. They were considered more of a 45, single type of music, and there was not a lot of profit potential in it. But then Motown started to sell albums, and started to sell albums in a great way. And Capitol had made few overtures into the business but had been unsuccessful. and so he sent me out on a fact finding mission to find out why they had failed. And there were a lot of problems. There was a lot of racial problems between the, uh, the record companies and the radio stations, uh, between the black retailers, mom and pop -- we just had to revamp our whole way of dealing with the retailers, which is very, very mom and pop retailers, which are very, very instrumental in starting black music, you know, because that's where it starts. And Capitol at that time wasn't set up to handle orders of five records, ten records, things like that. So without having some way of making that available to them, making our product available to them, they weren't giving them credit like they were the other white stores. And so we, we embarked on a whole total program. And I came up with the concept of a soul music division within Capitol, somewhat akin to the country music division, which I presented to the chairman and he liked my report and asked me if I'd be interested in heading it up, so I did. So it was an all encompassing division and like most any other companies, I had the power to sign acts, I had the power of marketing, promotion, everything but sales. And it worked very well. And it enabled us to focus all of our attention on one unit, on the black artists and to give them the type of attention that heretofore had been denied them.

Who did you sign at that time? First of all, just for informational purposes, what period of time are we talking.

We're talking 1973, '74, when I first started. Uh, I signed such acts as Tavares, Natalie Cole, Peabo Bryson, Maze, the Sylvers, a Taste of Honey, all from '74 to '78. We had a lot of success. We started at a deficit of a quarter of a million dollars, and by the time I left we were 20 million dollars in profit.

Was your success, was it R and B, was it pop, was it both?

Well, it was primarily R and B. I mean we had a problem in crossing over records, you know. We also had a problem of latent racism somewhere in the company and on the part of the sales people. And also some fear. I mean there was fear for them to go into the black neighborhoods to sell the records to the mom and pop, because of fears of being attacked. There was also a feeling that there was a lack of sophistication on a lot of the black retailers, because they wouldn't pay their bills for whatever reason. They had a lot of credit holds. So there were a lot of problems that we had to correct organizationally. And we also encountered a great deal of resistance initially from our pop promotion staff, from crossing over some of our records to black radio. But in some instances, they tried, but even white radio was resistant. At the time, the music industry is not separate and distinct from the things that are going on in our community. I mean there was forced busing, there was affirmative action, all these things were making some resistance to black music and black people in general, unlike the '60s, when there was a time of peace and love, there was a time where white people felt that they were being forced to accept black people in executive positions, forced to accept jobs, uh, forced to send their kids to black schools and everything. So the one thing a lot of these people could control was that they wouldn't be forced to play their records, and so they didn't. But we finally overcame that with the signing of Natalie Cole. She was the daughter of Nat King Cole which basically was the founder of Capitol in the sense that his music helped put that company on its sure footing, and was instrumental in its survival. So the chairman and the president made all possible efforts to make certain that she crossed over. And that was the big success, the first success that we had. And then disco came along and I used that wagon to help cross over the rest of the acts.

How was disco able to cross over?

Well, Neil Bogart with Casablanca basically used the I guess it's Italian or French I don't know which one it is, the word disco to camouflage that basically he was selling black music. I mean Gloria Gaynor was a black artist, it was black music. But by using the word disco it wasn't R and B and so therefore we had, radio was more receptive to it in that sense. So what I did is I tried to take what we normally had as black music, and in some instances, I would speed up the record so that it would fit in with the disco vibe, and that's how we had "Boogie" with Taste of Honey, we had "Disco Nights" with GQ, and we were able to use the term disco to sort of sneak black music on the white radio. But that came to an end because there was a resistance to that. So towards the end of the '70s there was this sort of rebellion on the part of the white male against black people, against women in general. You know, I know, if you remember the big disco burning that they had in Chicago where they burned all these disco records in Wrigley Field which was sort of a way of stopping this thing, no more. We're not going to, we're getting inundated with this black disco music which is really black, black records, and women saying I will survive and all these kinds of things. So that rebellion came to an end, they stopped it for a long time. In the late '70s, early '80s, it was basically impossible to get any black records crossed over.

Well, you know, so everything was going well for a while, and then, um, the rebellion came. The white male disk jockeys more or less had a rebellion against disco. They figured that, the guys with disco, they were being forced to play more black music than they wanted. They were being forced to play a lot of women's liberation music, Gloria Gaynor "I Will Survive" and everything like that. There was a big anti-disco campaign that was sweeping over the country that was sort of culminated in a bonfire of burning records in Wrigley's Field in Chicago. They piled all these records in the middle of the field, and lit the fire, and the people were, basically it was a male audience, in the stands, down with disco, down with disco. But basically they were also saying down with black people, down with strong women, and so they rebelled. It was all a reflection of what was going on at the time, the affirmative action, the busing and all that whole stuff. So that put an end. So that ended, toward the end of the '70s and the first part of the '80s it was virtually impossible to cross over any black music on radio. I think Gloria Gaynor had difficulty. And I think Quincy Jones produced her last album during that period, thinking that his name and her music would make the combination but that stopped. And so we had to devise other ways, other ways of trying to get our music on to pop radio.

Now, when you got to CBS Records, another album that was difficult Quincy Jones to cross over was “Off The Wall”. Could you tell me what Michael, when he got to CBS Records, what Michael Jackson was concerned about?

Yeah, well, when I was hired, uh, at CBS as a senior vice president to run both their black music division for Columbia and Epic, I met with Michael. We had lunch with he and Catherine and Joe. And he was telling me about some of the problems that he had had with "Off The Wall", which was released before I got there. The album sold about 5 million units. I personally thought that the album was just as good if not better than "Saturday Night Live", which sold 25 million units, and if you listen to the music, it was quite comparable.

Well, when I arrived at CBS Records, Michael Jackson was very concerned with what had happened with his album "Off the Wall", which was released before I arrived there. The album had sold only 5 million units. I thought…

Well, when I arrived at CBS Records, I met with most of our artists at that time. I met with Michael Jackson and we were talking about the problems he had had with crossing over with his record "Off The Wall", which I thought was a quality record, and should have sold at least what "Saturday Night Fever" did, which was 25 million units. So we sat and we talked, and uh, I was surprised to find that Michael was classified at that time as a black artist. So he fell under my jurisdiction. And I thought that he had the potential to sell those numbers. The fact is that in my contract I negotiated that anything that he sold over 5 million units I would be paid for, because I knew that he had the potential to make those sales. And I thought it was just racism on the part of the company and a part of the radio, on the part of the press even that was holding him back. He told me that he was having difficulty, that he didn't get on the cover of Rolling Stone, and he didn't get any writeups in Newsweek Magazine, that he was stopped in his attempt to make a video along the caliber that he wanted to, and the quality and the money. All these things I thought were just happening to him because he was black at that time, and if given the right promotional and marketing support from the company, that we could do the numbers that "Saturday Night Fever" did. I had no idea honestly that we would do over 40 million. But I was quite happy.

So we, uh, I set about, uh, working within the company, which was given a lot of opposition. They were saying that if you put a black on the cover of a magazine, you won't have the same number of newsstand sales and it cuts circulation, all these different types of excuses that were there for not giving him the type of press coverage that he was entitled. But being as how the senior vice-president I put a few jobs on the line and with "Thriller" we were able to get the press and the publicity. I approved the marketing money for his video, which broke him, because at that time, a video of 170,000 dollars was quite a lot for any artist, let alone a black artist. But I put myself on the line and said, this is what we have to do, and the rest is history.

[Inaudible.] Especially "Off the Wall" and then with "Thriller" have really put a lot of elements together to try to get that great pop sound, not just the R and B but a pop sound. Was Quincy able to cross over?

Well, uh, Quincy did a very unique and very smart thing. If people remember, he pro-, he paired Michael with um, Paul McCartney, and uh, the combination of Paul McCartney, you know one of the hallowed artists of white America, wouldn't make it much more difficult not to play the record, and that's why we went with that record as the first single, and that's what crossed it over and that's what opened up the door, along with the video, because Michael was such a unique talent that he was the first one to successfully combine video and music in the form and fashion that hadn't been done up until that time. Basically, videos before were almost performance videos, but he came up with the concept video. So that combination along with the tremendous selection of material, and the production that Quincy did just resulted in historic sales, which I don't know if they'll ever be equaled.

So, then after the difficulty that Quincy had with Gloria Gaynor, he came up with a very creative idea. I don't know if it was particularly he or Michael, of pairing Michael with Paul McCartney for "The Girl Is Mine," fearing that, or feeling, rather that white radio would not turn down one of the Beatles on such a great song. I thought it was a brilliant move and it worked very, very well. Because we had been through a similar situation, at least I had, with Marvin Gaye's records, you know, just the year before. We had put out "Sexual Healing", which was one of the greatest singles ever made. And it was number one black for like 21 weeks, and we couldn't get it on pop radio. And the fact is I got into some arguments with our pop department on how they were not able to cross over records from such a storied figure and that had such great acceptance. I mean, after all, the record was number one in New Zealand and was number one in Brazil, and we couldn't get it on the pop charts. But that record was so strong that it could not be denied the fact that it forced itself on. But being aware of those possibilities and all those problems that we had, the pairing of Paul McCartney and Michael assured access to pop radio, and from there the rest is history.

What's your definition of funk?

Well, uh, to me, uh, if you look at music, uh, and you look at the sound of music, where some people say that white people are more treble oriented and black people are more bass oriented. In fact, you listen to rock music, it's primarily lead guitar. Funk to me is, is bass guitar driven. You know it's the bottom that goes along with the drums that is the driving force of it. That's the distinguishing thing, a strong, strong, heavy bass line that is pumping the pedal through, through the whole record. That to me is the distinguishing factor. It's interesting. Most uh, white people, when you listen to their music, it's, they would rather turn up the treble, whereas black people turn up the bass. And for wherever reason that's where are and that's where our music is, is rooted, is in the rhythm section. Funk is when that bass line is just pumping in terms of the drums and whatever else you want to put on top of it. But if you've got the heavy bass line and the drum pounding, then you have some funk.

When you are looking at acts trying to, for cross over potential, what is good crossover potential?

Uh, to me, uh, and, and what I always did in picking the records, or picking artists, I thought that anything that, that would appear, would appeal to, um, the vast majority of black people, in other words anything that was capable of getting into the top ten, top five on the black charts, meaning that it had such widespread acceptance among all black people, was, was pop music. Because you know, we have differences, but we're more similar than, than, than alike. And I think if people were exposed to the music, which they have been, they would accept it. And that was the great problem. Getting radio to play it, and getting our promotion staffs to promote it. Once that happened, as is happening now, then you could see that, that they love it. It's that way not only here, in Australia, New Zealand, around the world. I mean I have always felt that if our music was ever given the same promotion, same marketing that any other type of music that it would have a widespread acceptance.

What is your definition of rock 'n' roll?

Well, rock 'n' roll, uh, it's unfortunate that for some reason, rock 'n' roll has sort of left and things have become much more segmented. I remember when I was coming up, uh, I used to like, uh, Bill Haley and "Rock Around The Clock", the Four Seasons, the Magnificent Men out of Michigan. All those things were played on the same radio stations right along with black music. You don't seem to have that anymore. It, it's much more fragmented. You have R and B and you have country, you have pop, you have adult contemporary. It seems that music is all fragmented. People in my generation when we were growing up, we all listened to the same radio stations. Now, that seems to be changing. It seems like the music is becoming even more segregate, segregated on the radio even though it's gotten wider acceptance.

What does the advent of FM have to do with that segmentation?

L Well, I think when, when FM first started, they were looking for a, um, a niche in the marketplace. They started off primarily I think playing album cuts. You know, generally top 40 radio just concentrated on the singles. FM people like Frankie Crocker, Melvin Spann in Washington, DC, Barry Mayo out of Chicago, they started going deeper into the, into the music. They started playing two and three cuts from an album. The same thing started happening on white radio. The songs became longer. You know, it used to be that you couldn't get a record on the radio if it was longer than three minutes and 30 seconds. FM came out, and they were playing cuts, five minutes, six minutes, you know of duration. And that sort of opened up the creative abilities of that artist. Because up until that time they were limited to that time frame. I think it had a great deal to do with popularizing the music. But it also made it more specialized. You know, you got different stations playing just different types of music. And uh, so now people don't listen to the same type of music that they used to, all, if somebody likes easy listening, if someone likes adult contemporary, someone likes oldies, someone likes the sound of the '70s. It's become so specialized and so segments, uh, you have to be very, very careful in releasing a record. You have to know which markets you're going after, and program your marketing and promotion campaign just for those stations.