Peter Paterno

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bomb Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is Attorney Extraordinary Peter Paterno. Hi. So,
Peter the Doctor's gonna win the World Series? I hope. So.
I don't know. It's very dicey with some good teams
in the So what are the weaknesses? It seems like,
you know, the relief pictures, they keep blowing it. They've

(00:30):
gotten better. I mean, if the pitching is gonna be
the key I think to the World Series. I mean,
the Astros are very, very good and the Yankees are
good too, so it's just gonna be an issue to
see who who makes it. In Well, what we learned
from last year were learned from last year. Don't pull
your picture when he's pitching a one hitter in the
seventh inning. I know the guys too into the statistics.
So in any event, in addition to being a music lawyer,

(00:53):
you're a huge music fan. How did you get into
music like when you were a kid? I mean, I
think I got into music the way that a lot
of us gotten the music, the Beatles. I mean, you know,
I blame my career on John Lennon. Okay, so I
believe that the path, the path for better or for
worse that I've taken is basically due to those those guys. Okay,
so were you a fan? Were you listening to the

(01:15):
Top forty or anything before the Beatles run ed? Sullivan,
I was a kid. I listened to music. I didn't
think any of it was, Honestly, it's kind of weird.
I remember the year before the Beatles broke, sitting there
as a kid thinking music isn't very good, is it?
I really, you know, it was, you know, all these
like girl groups and whatever else was happening then, and
it just wasn't good. I mean, I think the week
before the Beatles broke, I think number one was Dumb

(01:37):
and eque by the Singing Nuns. So it was close
yeah around there. Yeah so, and that was one of
the better songs on the Top forty. She never did
have a follow up though, No, they apparently she had to.
She haded tragic circumstances that pursued her, but I don't
remember what they were. Actually, I don't remember that. Okay,
But did you have a transistor radio as a kid?

(01:58):
Of course? Okay, but for you listened to the baseball games,
I assume I listened to the baseball games when I
was a kid, and the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn and
New York to Los Angeles, and I was living in
New York at the time, and I put my transistor
radio on and the game started then at eight They
started now at seven or earlier in the game started eight,
which is eleven o'clock New York time, and I put

(02:18):
the transistor under my pillow. I listened to the ball
games because the broadcast the Giant Dodger games back to
New York. I listened to Vince Gully on the radio
and fall asleep with a radio under my pillow. And
I remember you. They used to have the nine vote
batteries and I would test them by putting them on
my tongue to see if they still had any zip
to them. Yeah, I don't think I had nine vote

(02:38):
battery transistor radio. I think mine was regular whatever the
double as or whatever they are. Okay, So what age
did you move from New York to Los Angeles. I
was twelve, with twelve is kind old enough to know
what was going on. So when you move, where did
you live in New York? Again? I lived on Long
Island Okay, what town, Baldwin? Okay, alright, by my backyard

(02:59):
was in the center, but main house was involved within. Okay,
And before you moved to the West coast, did you
go to any concerts because he had the Nasau Coliseum? Okay,
maybe the Nashville Coliseum wasn't even built by that point.
I think it was because it's ended. It was like
a dump thing. The team's moved out of there, but
now they have a new arena. In any event, you
moved to l A, where do you move to in

(03:21):
Los Angeles? I actually moved to Orange County. I grew
up in Orange County and Tustin. Tustin is like landlocked.
It's not like by the beach, and it's pretty flat. Yeah.
At the time, though, it was kind of the end
of the world. I mean all the freeways ended there.
It was still very heavily populated by orange groves instead
of people. Yeah, I mean the house next to me
had horses. And you know, we lived in Tustin proper.

(03:44):
It wasn't like we lived in like some weird place.
It was just it was a small community. And and
we used to go to the beach pretty regularly because
Newport Beach. You just got on the freeway and drove
down down the fifty five to its coast of Masa
and then you went to Newport Beach. So, yeah, we
spent our summers at the beach. How far was that
from tust him, you know, I think it's seven miles
actually something like that. I didn't realize it was that close. Yeah,

(04:07):
And what did your father or mother do for a
living when you lived in Tustin. My mother was a teacher.
She taught um for a while, biology, then she taught
languages at the local high school where I went to
high school. And my dad was a contracts administrator for
various facets of the defense industry. So he'd get laid
off every two or three years when the budget name

(04:27):
would go down and go up, and go down and
go up. So his training was in finance or engineering.
I think he got I know when I was a kid.
He went to n y U and got an NBA
at night at night in night school, so he you know,
he had he had. My parents both went to Brooklyn College,
but my dad left early to go to the world.
We're talking about the Brookley in Brooklyn, California. Brooklyn College.

(04:52):
They went to Brooklyn College. They my parents grew up
in Brooklyn, which is why I'm a huge Dodger fan.
And my dad left early. They allowed the people that
you know, the guy shipping out, They let him graduate early.
So he went out to the war and then came back.
And you know, I don't know what he did, but
when I was a little kid, he went to get
his graduate degree at n y U and business and
ended up doing whatever he did, okay, did he used

(05:15):
to tell stories about the war. Not much. It's actually
it was fairly traumatic for him. And I think he
had a little bit of a you know, uh p
ptsd P. Yeah, I mean, I guess what I heard.
I mean again, I was I wasn't born yet, but
I heard that he had he had some issues following
the war. And do you know what he did during
the war. He was he was in the South Pacific

(05:37):
and he um, I think he was a communications officer.
He you know, did walkie talkies and stuff like that.
And I think I don't know that much about it, okay,
But for those of us living on the East Coast,
to grow up in California in the sixties was a dream. Yes,
So what was it, like, I so didn't want to go,
I mean because I had all my friends in Baldwin
and I you know, I was getting ready to I

(05:59):
just graduate, and uh, you could graduated great school. So
I guess I was going into junior high and I
didn't want to go, and I was really upset. And
uh then we moved out here and it was great.
I mean it was just really great. I mean, you know,
um we lived in Orange County, were close to Disneyland,
which was exciting for me as a kid, and then
I could go to Dodger games and and there was

(06:21):
the beach and it was it was real. It was great.
How often would you go to Disneyland A lot? Really? Yeah?
I did? I went a lot. Okay. And were you
a popular kid in school? I don't know if I
was necessarily popular. I was the first couple of years
I had a New York accent and that wasn't cool
in California. But I kind of get along with everybody.

(06:43):
I was, you know, in high school. I think I
was voted most comical or something like that. Really, so
you were a good student. I was a very good student. Yeah,
and you did because parental pressure. You were just good,
or you were grind or all of those things. Wasn't
a grind? I just I was good at school, okay?

(07:04):
And you're you have the one sister, correct, two sisters,
two sisters, okay, and their daughters are super successful. Right,
but it's starting at this level. You're in the middle,
or where are you? I'm the oldest, you're the oldest. Now.
The next one is Vicky, who's an m d. Yeah,
she's a doctor. And the one after that Susan, she's
a journalism professor. She's um currently on sabbatical because she

(07:27):
was in the middle of writing a book about college admissions.
So she became the poster child for all the New
York Times and l A Times. They all interviewed her
because she was writing about this, and she's now taking
sabbatical to finish her book that she was in the
middle of when the scandal hit. Well, in terms, you
were talking about the generation after being super successful by
baby boomer standards, everybody in the family really rang the bell.

(07:49):
What was the drive was that, you know, the parental ethos?
Why do you think everybody was so successful? I don't know.
I think basically, I think my mother was probably pretty
much uh, a driver. My dad wasn't so much, but
he expected us to get good grades. And I remember,
I remember when one semester I came in with my grades.

(08:13):
I had all a's and I had four unsatisfactories and
conducts six. I used to just tell jokes in class
and and so my dad just started yelling at me, going,
anybody can get as it's the conduct that matters, and
you're failing. And so anyway, that was did you, uh
those conduct grades go back up? Yeah? I mean again,
I wasn't particular. I was sort of more of a

(08:36):
comedic foil than I was a troublemaker, you know. And
so you went to the same high school your mother
taught at I did. Yeah, what was that like? It
was a little weird. I had her for about three
weeks when I first started as a freshman, I was
in her class. And then then they started these um
I was I don't want to sound equal to etotistical,

(08:56):
but I was. I was doing super well. I wasn't
very engaged. So they put me in all these advanced
placement classes and so I had to transferred over class
and do the other classes. Okay and okay, so the
Beatles hit. Were you a record buyer or just a
radio listener? Um? When at that age, you know, I
you know, basically buying records was kind of an event. Um.

(09:20):
I remember I in my sixth grade class, I won
some award and the teacher gave us some forty five um,
And so I just went home and listened to him
incessantly because they were all that I had, you know,
and for what those records were, I will follow him
by Little Peggy Mark. I think that was one of them.
I can't remember the rest of them. I just heard
that the way. That's a great song. Yeah. I mean

(09:42):
I never would have listened to it if they hadn't
given it to me, But yeah, that's what I had
to listen to. Okay. So the Beatles break, you're first
aware of the Beatles by seeing them on Ed Sullivan.
Yeah okay. And then how does that change your life? Well,
I you know, it doesn't change my life. I was
in seventh or eighth grade, so it was like, you know,
I mean I just became a big fan, and I

(10:02):
by the you know, the little trucks would come by
with the ice cream and they'd have tops baseball cards,
except they were Beatles and I bought them, and you know,
I just it's a fan. I'm not like an intense
super fan. I'm just a you know, I just really
think that, you know, I'm really into the music, but
I'm not crazy. I have other things that I do.
You know, you're about music in general or the beat

(10:24):
music in general. Okay, I'm a really pretty big Beatles fan,
but I'm not I'm not going to get confused with
one of these people that just basically knows everything in
the world about them. Okay, But in terms of music,
you're saying that you have other musical actury and or
other interests other than law, baseball and music. Yeah, I mean,
you know, I do you know, I fall sports. You know,
I'm yeah, I mean, I have other interests, but I'm

(10:47):
you know, I like music a lot. So when did
you start going to concerts? I remember the first sort
of unofficial concert I went to because I didn't it
wouldn't have been anything I would have chosen to go to.
Was I worked at a flower shop in Orange County
and the guy, the owner's son in law, was about
seven years older than I was, and he got tickets
to Melody Land, which was this theater in the Round

(11:10):
in Anaheim, right right next to Disneyland. It was hell
about three thousand people. It was a you know, it's
theater in the round that used to have The King
and I, which I saw there with my mom. And
they had a concert that day with Little Richard, four
Tops and Bo Diddley. So again, not wouldn't have been
my choice of of things that I would go to,

(11:33):
but it was great, and I went to that, and
then I didn't really go to anything on my own
until until I was like a junior in high school
and I um and the Doors played the Hollywood Bowl
and we went and it was funny. We went and
bought tickets at whatever the equivalent of ticket Master was then,
which was just this weird box office where you'd buy
tickets and there you had a choice, and I, you know,

(11:54):
I've never been to the Hollywood Bowl and and I
have a funny story about that, but I've never been
to the Hollywood bowls. So they had tickets available for
five dollars in the first row behind the Garden Terrorist
or whatever it's called. There were five bucks and the
ones in front we're six dollars. So we made a
conscious decision. We got the five dollar tickets because they
just one roll back and and uh we went and

(12:16):
saw the Doors, Um Stepping Wolf and the Chambers Brothers.
That was one bill. That was one bill. It's the
famous show what they have on the movie about the doors.
And and again I think that my theory is, you
know when people hold up lighters for encores, I think
it was invented at this show because the show was

(12:37):
on I believe the fifth of July, and everybody had
sparkers left over for from fourth of July, and so
after the show the set ended, they put up the
sparklers for light my fire. And I think that was
probably if you go before that, I probably don't think
you're gonna find anybody putting up lighters. And everybody was
holding them up for light my fire. Now, I never
I've seen the Chambers brothers. I got squeezed on Boss

(13:00):
and Garden. That's why never there's a crowd. I'm weary now.
But how were the Doors? I never saw him? They were, Well,
it's funny. I later got to be pretty friendly with
Robbie Krieger and uh, and it was really weird. I mean,
you know, the show was I mean for me, you know,
I was a kid that was great, but there was
generally some kind of issue. And Jim walked off stage

(13:20):
and disappeared for a while, and they brought him back
out and he was rambling and stuff. But again, you know,
that's what they do. I mean, you know, Lee, listen
to some of those uh songs, like the end and
stuff like that, there's a lot of rambling. And Robbie said, yeah,
Jim dropped acid right before the show, and by the
end of the show he was just tripping beyond belief.
You know, I'm sitting in the audience. And the funny thing, too,

(13:41):
is in the in the movie version of it. In
the Doors movie, they have all these women, you know,
these naked women dancing on the side. I believe I
was fifteen years old. If there had been naked women there,
I would exactly not that way. So how did you
get from Orange County to the Hollywood? Well, my friend, Uh,
I had a friend who had a microbust and right,

(14:01):
and uh it relates to Anto the other story I
was referring to. So we wanted as microbus to the
Hollywood ball. Then that summer we went to we decided
to drive up and see if we could find the Beatles.
We went up to Capitol Records and as microbus right,
and we show up at the Capitol Tower and we
don't know anything or kids, right, so we start wanting

(14:24):
around the tower looking for the Beatles, who weren't there obviously,
and then we thought maybe the doors with the studio
and Studio A at Capitol It's like it's on the
same floor as you enter, and so we sort of
wandered there in the guard said, well, you can't go here,
and we're looking for the doors, you know they're not here.
So then we got in the elevator and we went
up to the it's still the thirteen floor, but they
don't call it that um and we started wandering around

(14:46):
all the executive office, like me and two of my friends,
and my one friend kept going, you know how many
groups are on a record, There's just one long group
and it's harassing all these executives. And nobody threw us out,
nobody did anything, and we then we left and never
found the Beatles. Well that's something that could not happen
in today's security world. I couldn't even get into this building.
We can't get anywhere. We have silly security everywhere. So

(15:09):
you saw the door. Any other memorable concerts in your
high school era, Well that was about it for my
high school era. I was, you know, I went in
Orange County. I was pretty sheltered. I wasn't like l
A kids, you know, so I didn't really start going
to shows until I went to college. Okay, so you
went to college. You went to Harvey Mud, Right, how
long had Harvey Mud been in existence when you went

(15:31):
started in fifty seven? I started there in sixty eight.
I guess, well that must have been I mean, granted
you're living in the area, but in the East Coast
where the school has been open for hundreds of years,
it seems Why did you end up going to Harvey Mud? Um,
no clear plan. I actually went and visited some schools.
We went up to Mount Baldi to you know, slide

(15:54):
in the snow and sledge on the way back. My
mom said, why don't we visit these colleges? And it
was kind of pretty. And then the other one I
went to was Occidental, And you know, I applied to
all the u c s and so I decided I
was either you go to Occidental and Major and political
science to go to Harvey Mudd and major and maths.
So you can tell how focused I was on my
career and at the end I ended up going to

(16:15):
Harvey Mudd. My sister went to Occidental with Barack Obama,
but really she knew him, Yeah, she knew. What did
she say about him? She said, I didn't know him well,
and people go, how do you know you know him?
She goes, there are eight black people in Occidental. You
know Harry Mudd? There were there was one, so you
know at the time, okay he was bury Obama. I think,
yeah he was, but he was very Obama. Okay, so
there were there five Clearmont colleges. How many people went

(16:37):
to Harvey Mud the time I went there four And
that's men and women are just men. It was men,
and I don't want to say anything in correct politically incorrect,
but yes, there was men and women. There were There
were only about i'd say eight women at Harvey Mud.
It's gotten almost fifty fifty now, but at the time,
you know, it's a science and engineering school, and girls
from the fifties didn't really do science and engineering. That's changed,

(17:01):
but at the time there just weren't very many women there,
but you know, again, there were women at Scripts across
the street, and there were women at Pitzer across the
other street. And there was you know, co ed down
to Pomona, and there was a men's college at Claremont.
So that was fine. It was It was an incredibly
great atmosphere. Just Claremont McKenna was men only. Then it
was called Claremont Men's College. Really yeah, they they changed

(17:21):
the name to Claremont McKenna when they started admitting women. God,
because I always wondered, what was Claremont McKenna. Okay, so
what is your experience going to college? They wanted to
keep the M so it was still CMC and McKenna
was a big donator, A donor a donator. Excuse me,
So what was your college experience like? Were you basically
studying where you're partying? What were you doing? You don't

(17:43):
you don't party at Harvy Mode if you want to
stay there. You know, incredibly smart people there, and it's
like ridiculous, Um, you know, I mean basically, you know,
I mean again it's college, you don't study all the time.
But if you know, it was I remember my saw
my junior year. I'll tell you what my classes where
if I can remember right, had topology, which is not
what you think of topology. It's like this advanced math.

(18:04):
I was doing quantum physics French lit uh um partial
differential equations, and then some physics class and quantum mechanics
are quantum something. So those are my five classes. It
was pretty intense. And how if there were four people

(18:26):
there was one hundred unior class. There were seventy five
in my classic class. Where were you in that class?
Not that it really matters, well, they were like I
was a math major, so there were like fifteen math
majors and I was kind of in the middle. Um.
But this is what convinced me that I was never
going to be a mathematician. Is that the year that
my senior year UM, which was what year seventy two,

(18:48):
I was a year ahead. I was skipped a grades.
So I kindergarten. I just went right. I went right
in the first grade when I was five or some so. UM.
So in my senior year they take you take the
NSF I mean, uh whatever you call them, the the

(19:08):
g r E s and there's a testing end too.
They then they evaluate the g r S and some
other factors. I don't know what they do, but they
hand out, um, they hand out thirty NSF fellowships for
grad school and six National Science Science Foundation and sixty
At the time, there was sixty or so runners up.

(19:28):
So this was in the math and the math part.
So out of the thirty people got the Math NSF fellowships,
two of them were in my class. And out of
the sixty runners up, four of them in my class.
So the six of the fifteen math majors were like,
they were ridiculous. So I said, you know, I don't know.

(19:50):
You know, again, I was fine, I was I wasn't great.
I was fine. But math people, when they there's just
guys that are just some different level, they just you know,
and uh, we had a couple of those, I mean
they when I went on to prove a very important
theory and he didn't prove it. He did the set
up to the guy that proved it was the I
think it was four days last theory. I'm the four
color theory. One one of those one of those sort

(20:12):
of stating I won't borrow anybody with this, but it
was a four hundred year old problem. That he actually
helps solve. So anyway, I was out of my league
there and uh so, anyway, but you went to graduate school.
There's a reason for that. So I go to Harvey
Mud and I'm gonna graduating class of seventy people or

(20:32):
seventy seven or whatever it was. And um, I decided,
I'm I'm you know, these guys are too smart for me.
So I'm gonna go to law school. So I go
down to Pomona to take the L s a T.
I show up at Pomona. I have not read the materials.
I haven't done anything. And I show up and they go,
where's your idea? And I go, it's back at the

(20:54):
dorm and they go, well, you need your idea? I go,
why you know people cheat on this test? I go,
what nobody's taking this asked in my class except for me?
And they go, no, you can need your I d so,
but we'll wait for you. So I'd go bicycle back
up to my dorm room, come back and they're about
three quarters of the way through the instructions, which I
have never read. And you know, people are taking L
s a T prep courses and they're all getting ready

(21:14):
for you know, the day and I basically opened the
thing and see it for the first time as I'm
sitting there. So I took the test. I didn't actually okay,
not great, but okay, six forty or something okay, And
so I got into some schools, but not really anything
that I wanted to do. And so I all my friends,

(21:34):
meanwhile are getting these massive for the time fellowships to
do grad school because they're geniuses. So I go, well, okay,
everybody's getting all this money to go to grad school,
maybe I'll do that. So, like here we are, basically
the spring of seventy two, after everybody's done all their applications,
I applied to a bunch of grad schools um and
my only criteria for the grad schools is that there's

(21:56):
no application fee. So I just applied to the which
they had at the time. So I paid no application fee,
and I applied to seven grad schools and got into
a bunch of them, and they gave me. The biggest
fellowship I got was Hawaii. I just basically I basically
based my city. I based my decision on who they
paid me the most. So I went to Hawaii. HA
never been to Hawaii, and so I did that and

(22:19):
then yeah, so that's what I did. So okay, and
so you did that was one year? Well, I was
supposed to be two years. But remember I went to
a college full of geniuses. I tested out. I had
nine graduate units. I tested out of everything. I mean,
the people in Hawaii, God loved them. They have every
The professors were really smart because a lot of old,
really smart mathematicians retired there essentially. Um. But so I

(22:41):
tested out of everything. I got my masters in a year. Um,
and I took the l s C T again and
I did really well and got into pretty much everywhere
I wanted to go. So so you so you had
never had an intention when you're going to White to
actually practice in the math area. They were too smart.
So you just said, I'll do this and I'll apply

(23:02):
to law school. I got paid money. It was great.
I got to earn some money, and I got to
spend a year in Hawaii. It was kind of good. Okay,
So you take the L s A T again and
you ultimately decided to go to U C. L A.
Y Um. Well, I wanted to go to Berkeley because
my friend was in My best friend was in the
physics department there. Uh, he was a year behind me.
He had gotten while I was going to grad school.

(23:23):
He when he got in the physics department at Berkeley.
But I got wait listed, and so I actually had
a I had a bunch of fun correspondence with the
Berkeley admissions office. They waitlisted me, and I wrote them
back and said, thank you very much for wait listening. Uh,
could you let me know what's going on? And they didn't,
and so then they finally rejected me, and I wrote

(23:44):
back and said, well, I reject your rejection, and could
you give me information on the dorms. I'll be showing
up on such and such a day. And they wrote
back and said, we can't give your innovation on the doors.
You're not accepted dorms. And I go and then I
write back something like I need a place to live
while I'm going to school there, and they right back,
You're not going to school here. And the funny thing
was is a dean of admissions at Bolt Berkeley Law

(24:04):
School was named Sarah Tomato. So so in my final letter,
I took a Heinz catchup bottle, cut the little tomato
out and said dear ms, and put the Tomato in
there and wrote a one final letter. And you know,
obviously I didn't go there, but I did get into
U c l A and a bunch of other people places.
So I went to u c l A. And that

(24:25):
good experience. Going to law school bad experience. It's law school.
You went to law school. Yeah, I mean, I had
a similar experience at law school that, uh my college
was so rigorous that law school. The other thing is,
you know two things Richard Nixon said nothing. I want
to quote Richard Nixon. The only thing you need to
get through law school is a lead butt. And I'm convinced,

(24:46):
if you're a smart person, you apply yourself, you could
take the bar review course and never go to law
school and pass the bar. Yeah. I don't know. I mean,
I think the experiences probably helps, because I I didn't.
I walked into law school in the first day, I
looked around and saw the Polly sign majors from cal State.
I went, finally, I'm smarter than somebody was in college.
I wasn't, and I didn't really. The other thing that

(25:09):
I did in law school was I hadn't I hadn't
taken really a test in two or three years because
in math, what they do is they just give you
a theorem and they said, go home and prove this.
You know, I didn't sit there and study for a final.
Either were able to do the you able to apply
what you learned to uh proving the theorem, or you weren't.
So I hadn't taken a test in at least two

(25:30):
years and probably more like three years, and I just
went finals. This was it was painful. So like my
first year of law school, I didn't really I did
okay and do great, and then about the first quarter
my second year, I figured it out. I figured law
school out, and then I just cruised the rest of
the time. We got all a's from then on out. Okay,
So you graduate from law school and your intention is
to do what well again, uh, keeping it with my personality,

(25:54):
my intention was not to work for the man. I
mean not not No, that's not right, that's incorrect. I
didn't to work for a big corp. I didn't want
to work for a big corporate law firm. I had
most people interned or summer clerk at you know, the
big firms. My first year I clerk at the Department
of Housing and Urban Development. My second year, UM, I
did the State Energy Commission, which is where I started

(26:16):
realizing how sort of bad the government is. I mean
just bureaucratic, and it was regulatory stuff. I started getting
my economic views from working at the State Energy Department. UM.
So my third year I didn't really know what I
wanted to do. I because everybody was interviewing with firms
for jobs. I I decided I do some interviews. And

(26:40):
I interviewed with a big firm. It might have been
Greenberg Gluscre, which is four flow floors below was it
might not have been, And so I did my one interview.
I did a few, but I did this one and
the guy says to me, Um, you know, he's going, well,
what have you done that you know that extra curlercular
activities that would help qualify you for career as a lawyer?
And I go, well, I ran the speakers program at

(27:02):
U c l A. I was on the pub board
at the Daily Brune. I was the president of the
Student Bar Association. I did you know, I did the
fair amount of stuff and I was on the communications
bought board, And they go, yeah, but more sort of
intellectual scholarly stuff. Well, I did you know, I don't remember.
I was telling him some more stuff. I knew exactly

(27:23):
what was getting at, and he says, why aren't thinking
more of something like law review? And I go, Honestly,
those guys were the biggest dicks in the school and
and I had really no interest in doing that. He guess, well,
I was the editor of the U c l A
nine six. I got, well, that's your problem then, isn't it.
And then I you know, they didn't have email, but
I they messengered the rejection to my house. So so

(27:44):
I my career trying to be a big firm lawyer
was not met with an initial round of success. So
I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't
really have a great idea. So I took the bar
and sat around, and I said, no, there was a
book that out set us how to start your own
law firm. So I read the book, and I'll start
my own law firm. So me and a classmate from

(28:07):
u c l A started a little law firm and
we started doing whatever walked in the door. I had
p I did personal injury, I did h wills and trust,
I did everything I did litigation, I did whatever came
in and um, I did that, and I started realizing
all the things that I didn't want to do, which
is pretty much everything I was doing. And this is

(28:28):
gonna sound really yeah, I don't care. I'm I'm old
now anyway, But poor people tend to have not very
interesting problems. I mean, you know, you know, it's like
a dog bite case or you know something, and so
the case, you know, I was taking whatever walked in
the door, and it was somewhat not that interesting, you know. Um,

(28:53):
but I am. I did a good job for everybody,
so that wasn't that. I mean, I was a young lawyer,
so I was learning stuff, but I didn't really love it.
And then, uh, Howard King, my partner, um had gone
to law school with me, that he was a year
behind me, and he calls up one day and says,
if you know somebody who wants a job being a
music lawyer is going to be an opening on Friday.

(29:13):
I hate this bitch that I'm working for. The bitch
actually happened to be a friend of mine. She's I
had gone to law school with her also, so I go, well, yeah,
music law, that sounds a lot more fun than what
I'm doing so I applied. It was at Manatt Phelps.
He was at Manatt Phelps. I was on my own
and I applied to Manatt Phelps and uh, you know,
after a couple of months, they interviewed me and they

(29:36):
may be an offer to go work in the music department.
So that's how I ended up doing that. Okay, what
was your experiencing that? It was good? I enjoyed it.
I was there for about ten years, and uh, you know,
I started out working for Lee Phillips and servicing a

(29:57):
lot of his clients, and he had great clients. It
was all the people I wanted to work with. I mean,
it was really exciting to me that I was going
to go to a firm that represented Linda Ronstad and
Neil Young and you know, and um Jackson Brown and
the Eagles were not really so much the Eagles, but
the label that they represented electro Psylum Records, so they
had you know, the interface with you know what. Actually

(30:18):
that wasn't the label that you know, I paid attention
to labels. I loved a lot of their artists, and
it was a super political firm to which I thought
I was interested in a certain soon disabused of that notion,
but because at the time was Manatt felt Rothenberg and
Tuney and John Tunney had been his dad had been
a big boxer and he had been a senator from
the state of California. So it was very and Chuck
man At had been the head of the Democratic Party

(30:40):
that a few years before I got there, so it
seemed very exciting to me, and it wasn't. It was great.
I mean I had a good time. You know, they
didn't pay me, but it was fun. So the next
step was Hollywood Records. Yeah, well before you get there, though,
you were you're like an incredible rainmaker. Okay, you have
a relationship with all the clients. Did you learn that

(31:00):
at Manatt Phelps? Well, no, I probably, I don't know
if I learned it. Ever. I think it's just sort
of an eight. But I mean I got clients and
my little stupid law firm when I was just me
and a friend. You know, it just they just were
not you know they used to at Manat used ago
this goofy guy. Why should we pay him? I mean,
he's the only reason he gets clients because in the
music business. And I want to know, if I were

(31:21):
a corporate lawyer, I'd have clients because that's what I do.
I mean, I figure out how to solve problems and
succeed at what I do. But so I don't know,
you know, you just I'm gonna service business. I can
service people. I mean, okay, when you opened up your
you know, hung out your shingle, as they say, how
did you get clients? Then you know, I just you know, invite.
We had a party. You invited a bunch of people,

(31:42):
and I let it know, you knowing that we were open,
and you know, people would start referring their brothers and
their fathers and stuff, and you know, I do whatever
came in the door, and I was willing to learn
whatever it was. It was actually fairly good training for
being a music lawyer, because music musicians have all these
problems and they think of you as their lawyer. So
if they have a family law problem, they want, you know,

(32:05):
they call you. They don't call a family they don't
know anybody. Or they have a tax problem, they call you.
And so it was very useful to me to have
done all these different disciplines because I actually can sort
of fake my way through pretty much anything. Right now,
at least long enough to get up to somebody who
really knows what they're talking about. Okay, So, now, in
your ten years at Manette, where do you feel you
are in the hierarchy of music lawyers. Well, it was

(32:28):
really really kind of funny. Actually, um I remember was
it then? And I think it was sort of the
end of my tenure at Manette. Remember this big article
on all the new hot young lawyers that they've done
in one of the periodicals, And I'm looking at, you know,
the new hot young lawyers. I'm going And the reason
I wasn't in that because I wasn't a new hot
young lawyer. I was an established lawyer. By that, they're

(32:50):
all older than I am. They're all older and I
won't mention any names, but going, well, she's older than
I am, and he's older than I am. Why am
I not hot? In New York? You're not a hot
new lawyer because you're an established lawyer. So okay, And
at the time, you were basically doing contracts. What kind
of work were you doing about I mean basically yeah,
I mean, you know what you do as a music lawyer.

(33:10):
Back in the day, the practice was I mean largely
not entirely, but doing record contracts, doing publishing contracts. You know,
I actually, um, one of my heroes was David Geffen,
and he was a client of the firm, and so
when I'd been there maybe a year and a half,
he started Geffen Records, and I went to Lee Phillips

(33:31):
and said, I'd like to work on this. You know,
I was second year lawyer, and I go, I want
to work on this. And so one of the things
I did from my first two or three years was
just the paperwork for Gethin Records. I the agreement that
formed record Gethin Records was written by me ages entirely
by me. Um. You know, by the end of it,
nobody was reading it. You know, I was more scrivener

(33:54):
than a dealmaker. But they'd make the deal and I'd
sort of translated and tell them, well, wait, you can't
do this. You can't do this. He can do this,
and so you know, so you know, it was that
I did the you know, and and uh and then
just a lot of record contracts, you know, touring contracts,
whatever you do when you represent talent. Okay, and who
were the main competitive lawyers or law firms at that

(34:16):
time at the time. Well, it was always John Branca,
Don Passman, Krugman Um. You know, I missed out on
Bruce Springsteen as a client because he lived in the
East Coast. I did the first management agreement for John Landau.
Well at least that's what John told me. Maybe he's
been we have management agree with him in Springsteen. Yeah,
I wrote the management agreement and John tells me that

(34:37):
to this day it's it's a one page agreement or
two page agreement. And I think to this day Bruce
signs it every three years. Well, how did you know,
how did that come together? How do you know John
who lived on the East Coast. I think remember the
bitch that I told you about, Debbie Reinberg, who was
not She's really a nice person. She was number one
in my class. She knew John for some reason because
I think she was a big Bruce Springsteen fan and

(34:59):
she you know, we we did the work for Electra
Sylum Records, and we did the work for RSL Records,
so we we represented a bunch of record executives, so
there was some I don't remember how she knew John,
but she ended up I ended up meeting John. I
think through her Okay, she had gone in house at
a lecture by then. I think, so was she today.

(35:19):
I think she might be retired. I haven't talked to
her in a while, but I think she might be retiring.
So um, in any event, tell the story of how
you end up getting the job at Hollywood Records. Okay,
so um, somebody else show may name less and I
will may name us because we're not friendly. Um, i'll

(35:42):
tell you off the record. Um. But anyway, they were
looking for somebody to start their record company and this
guy was working in house there and he told Michael
Eisner about me. So, um, this is the person you
don't have a positive opinion of. Yeah, I mean you know,
there were other people that told him to I think
you'd heard. I think it was him and other people.

(36:06):
So what happened was I was in New York, um
with Chris black Blow because I represent a Delicious Vinyl
and we were doing a deal with Island Records with
Chris Blackwell, and I get a call from my you know,
I called into my office. See anybody call in and
she goes. Assistant goes, um, yeah, you got a call
from Michael Eisener. I go, yeah, sure, I go, yeah, right,

(36:28):
Michael eis was calling me. She goes, no, really, I
go really because I didn't know Michael Eisener. So I
called Michael Eiser back and he goes, uh, I've been
hearing things about you. We're starting a record label. We'd
like to talk to you about it. And I go, oh,
to be the lawyer. He goes, yeah, or maybe to
you know, run it. He said. So he said you
want to meet and I go yeah, sure, and I
go he goes, how about tomorrow. I go, I'm in

(36:50):
New York. And when you're back tomorrow, it says how
about the next day? And I go okay, fine, And
so I met with him and UM, now you earlier
say you're not good with the man, So how did
that meeting go? Well, I told you I corrected that.
It wasn't that I wasn't good with the man. I'm
I'm bad with authority. And the meeting went fine. I mean,
michaeliss is a great guy. I mean he's very personable,

(37:11):
he's super smart. Um, so the meeting went fine. And
the really funny thing was we were walking out and
I said, it was nice to meet you. As you know,
you're obviously a legend and it was great meeting. I'm
parked on the street. I don't like Valet, and he goes,
neither do I. I'm parked on the street too. That's
hysterical because I've had my car. You know, I had
an accident in Valet parking. I do my best thought

(37:33):
because you can't collect. I mean I did collect it.
I was tenacious, but it's almost impossible. I just I'd
rather not have to wait for my car. It's really
as simple as that. So anyway, I met with him.
Then he liked me, I guess. And he brought me
in to meet Frank Wells, who was the president of
the Disney Corporation, and uh, I guess Frank liked me.
So they aren't being to meet Jeffrey and Jeffrey Jeffrey

(37:55):
Katzenberg and um. Again, this is from my perspective. I
don't know jeff him. I have a different perspective. But
in between one of those meetings, I had a call
from David Geffen. You know, I've been doing his legal work.
He said, come over here. I know what's going on.
You come over here right now. He wanted me to
come meet with him. So I go to that point
his office on Sunset Boulevard in the building. Yes, yes, yes,

(38:16):
So I drive over and we meet for two hours,
and he tries to convince me. I had asked him
about six months earlier, because he had been there have
been talking of him reviving asylum records, and I had
asked him if it would be, you know, if he'd
considered me to run, And you go, no, you need
to get some experience like business affairs, like I don't.
I don't want to do that. So he calls me
over and spends two hours trying to convince me not

(38:36):
to take this job. And he basically says, you know
why you shouldn't take this job. And you know why
I'm successful because I do things where my chances with
success are high and my chances of failure are low.
Your chances are failure are high, and you shouldn't do this.
So he tried to convince me to do it, and
I didn't listen to him. It turns out he was right.
Um so anyway, so then I met with Katzenberg, and

(38:57):
but also you know, he just focusing. He did say,
because tell you telling me the story before that you
needed more seasoning in addition to the odds. Yeah, that's
what he did. Okay, so he So do you think
at this point you did need more seasoning or you
just were in a bad situation. No, I don't think.
I mean, look, as it turns out, I needed more seasoning,

(39:18):
but I don't think running business affairs at a record
label was the season and I need it, you know.
And and Eisener later told me again it's all you know,
he considered the source. But he said the reason Geffen
was so uh so intent and not discouraginging. He didn't
want you to leave as his lawyer, which I don't
know how much. I believe he had grew him and
he had other people, so um so. Anyway, so I

(39:41):
disobeyed him. And uh again, some of this comes from Eisener,
some of it comes from what I could see. But
between him and Jeffrey, they spent four years trying to
get me fired. Um No, I don't know. It's unfair.
I didn't they uh As Eiser once said that bas
I fired myself. I don't agree with him, but um

(40:04):
you know, there's corporate politics at Disney, and and I
didn't play that well with the strategic planning people and
the finance people, and they didn't much like me because
first time sort of anti authoritarian and I'm sort of
not sober serious about this stuff. And and the thing
that really really hated as I understand math, So you know,

(40:25):
they would have most of the creative execs didn't understand
what they did well. I understood really well. I'm good
at math, so I would get in discussions with them
and they wouldn't like how they went so and I
was was it was an experience. Okay. So from the
first meeting with Eisner, you talked about taking the top job. Yeah,
and again nothing happened, and then he called me about
a month or two later and said, look, we're still considering,

(40:47):
you know, like, oh, that's fine. I got a day job.
I know, I mean, you know, because I was conflicted
about doing it, and especially given I didn't want to
have geff and mad. I mean, Geffin had been a
good friend for a year, so I didn't want him
mad at me. So it was easier if nothing happened. Okay,
So then how did you Ultimately, ultimately they decided they
were going to move forward, and they asked me if
I wanted to take the job, and then I said, yeah, okay,

(41:09):
what did Minatte say about your leaving? I mean, you know, man,
that it was great. I left left behind my client base,
which they took over, and I became a client of
the firm. I used them for my internal legal work,
so you know it was great for them. Okay. So
the first thing you do when you open it was
it already decided was going to be called Hollywood Records. No.
I think they decided they had Hollywood films at the time,

(41:32):
and they decided I don't remember. I think Michael or
Frank or somebody picked the name. They thought it would
be good to affiliate it with the film company, the
studio they had. Um then we, of course there was
already a Hollywood Records that have been in the fifties.
We got in a big fight, paid the guy off.
It was anyway, I didn't pay him much, but whatever
it was. It's a guy named mole Lettle who was

(41:55):
It turns out if you go look through your case books,
he's a fair lititious guy. He would he you know,
he bought up all those old fifties labels and would
sue people. You know, it would that, you know, like
a patentrol today yeah, or or like, um, I'm not
gonna say, like all the copyright infringement lawyers that bring
these stupid suits that they shouldn't win and they get

(42:16):
lucky and win sometimes. Okay, so you got Hollywood's the
first thing you did at Hollywood record This was funny.
I remember walking in and I had I was in.
There was nobody there. I just wanted I walked in
and go. I guess I had to start a record company.
I mean really, like I walked in. I was the
only employee. So I was money and issue do they have?

(42:37):
Budget was large? Money wasn't an issue, um you know,
I mean whatever we lost was a pimple in the
Disney You got enough money to hire or in Yeah, oh,
no question about it. So, um, I realized, probably the
first thing I have to do is have to find
somebody to run the radio department, since back in the
day the world really dependent on radio. Unless you know,

(43:00):
well that's funny unless you signed sort of street hip hop,
which I wanted to sign and did sign actually, which
did not go over well with Disney people. When I
got hired. They I did an interview where I said
I wanted this higher signed hip hop and hard rock
and so like. Somebuddy organized the campaign to basically send

(43:21):
letters to Disney saying you've made a horrible mistake. He's
going to ruin the company. And and I think they
got three or five thousand letters and they were all
the same. And you know, so who'd you hire? I
hired Brendan Romano, Okay, who's still working today at Intersco
at Interscope. She's great. And what had she done before that?
She was at PolyGram? I think, I try to hire

(43:43):
I try to hire Polly Anthony and I couldn't convince
her to come, but she recommended Brenda Tomin to me.
She was a number two person and wherever she was PolyGram,
I think, And she's, you know, unbelievable, she's fabulous, she's okay.
Who else did you? Oh? I mean that was my
good hire. I hired a guy named Unfair Transition. I

(44:03):
was thinking of my marketing guy that I hired that
it was a mistake. I hired west Hine would run
Enigma Records, so he'd actually run a label. It was
an independent label. I hired him to sort of be
my number two guy, and then hired and our people
that probably could have done a better job at since
basically they didn't sign anything that was any good. But yeah, okay,
the marketing person I'm familiar with what was without mentioning

(44:25):
his name, what was the problem there? Uh well, I
mean it's the guy that we hired to replace him.
When we hired somebody to replace him. He wasn't particularly creative,
but the trains ran on time, so it was actually
better having him than the creative guy that I hired
first that basically just randomly spend money on, you know,
crazy marketing ideas that we're very creative but not particularly

(44:48):
economical or successful. Speaking of success, so the two things
you're noted for in Hollywood Records. You made a deal
for the Queen catalog and you signed you distributed Dave
Clark five album which had been off the market. Let's
start with the Queen albums. Actually it's kind of reverse.
I didn't sign the Queen count What happened was I

(45:10):
was that I was a lawyer I told you for
the outside lawyer for Electure Records, and they were signed
to Electra Records, and um they were I don't want
to say dead dead would be an upgrade from where
they were in America. They were in a really, really
bad place in America. They were beyond washed up. And um,

(45:31):
I was Bob Krass Now I ran an Electoral Records
and said I got a thing. He had two albums
left it that he was committed to do it a
million dollars an album because I can't put these records out,
I'll lose my ass. Get get rid of them. So
basically I was My job as a lawyer was to
negotiate with Jim Beach a release of Queen, And essentially
he was Jim Beach. Jim Beach is the manager of Queen.

(45:52):
She He was a lawyer at the time he became
the manager. If he watched the movie, they referred him
as Miami Miami Beach. So I, um, and I you know,
I'd done all the Queen negotiations in the past, So
I negotiated with him to basically give them. It was
a licensed deal. They they were signed at E M
I and the rest of the world, and they were
licensed to North America to Electra Records. I think Geffin

(46:14):
had tried to sign him. I don't know the history,
but I think he had tried to sign them, and
somehow they ended up on a Electura. Maybe it was
when he was running a Sylum, I don't remember. Um,
so I negotiated an exit with him where basically we
got out of paying the money and he got his
catalog back. So then a few years a little bit
slower you talking about they Okay, they had a million

(46:34):
dollar deal with Electra and then what was the next
step in terms of them getting their catalog back. Well,
it was a license, so I don't remember how much
they had left on the catalog anyway, on the licensed deal,
I just you know, it was thirty years ago. I
don't remember, but there was something basically the idea was, here,
we don't have to pay you two million dollars to
give us too stiff records, and you can have back

(46:55):
whatever we have of yours. So I got it. Yeah,
so um that happened. And then um, fast forward a
few years and I'm running Hollywood Records and I show
up in the door and look around. There's nobody around,
and I send an email that Jim no one of
my email facts to Jim Beach, and I said the
beach um is Queen's still free for North America. And

(47:18):
he writes back, yes, and I go, I'd like to
sign him because I'm listening to the Queen records. They're
making it the time when they're dead in America. They're great.
The records are great, and those were hits in the
rest of them were huge in the rest of the world,
and they should have been. They were great. So so
I go, there's something wrong here and this band is
great and you know so I He says, yeah, they're available,
and I go, great, I'd love to sign him. He goes,

(47:38):
would you be interested in the catalog? I go yes.
So basically I made a deal for It's really funny too.
I made a deal for the Catalog and Queen and
I don't want to talk about this. This is could
put me in a bad light. But in any event,
there were a lot of impediments like basically, uh, um,

(48:01):
the night before, the night before I was going to
sign them, Michael iSER called and said, I'm not going
to tell this story. Um. In any event, we were
so there was a spanner in the works just before
you're going to sign Yes, But I convinced Michael first.
The first thing was the catalog was it's not a
secret now it was a ten million dollar purchase, which

(48:22):
for then was a lot of money, and it was
an outright purchase. No, it was a license. But I
had an I built in. I was a good lawyer.
I built in an option to buy it. Okay, exercise that. Yeah, No,
I don't know. I was gone by the time this
came up. And I think there was renegotiations along the way,
but the ultimate result is that Hollywood ended up with

(48:43):
Catalog and certainly it was there for my lifetime. So
um so yeah, So Frank said, we can't pay that
kind of money for this thing. He said, I'm going
to tell you can't do it, but you're free to
go talk to Michael about it. And I went to
talk to Michael, and Michael just basic said all right,
if something really want, it's on you, you gotta go
sign it. Then the day before there was, as you said,

(49:03):
a spanner in the works. Then he finally let me
go ahead and do the deal. And uh, I remember
we were going to the we A convention that that week,
and you know you present at the convention because present distributor. Yeah,
we present. Uh it's funny Steve Burman, you know Steve Burman.
Steve Burman was my weird Repp. He was twenty years old.
So I've known Steve forever. Um, So you know, I'm

(49:27):
still not sure whether they're gonna sign. Queen's gonna sign
or not. There's been so many bumps in the road.
And we have two presentations that we have presentation with
Queen and presentation without. We have two separate presentations. Ten
minutes before we're supposed to go on, I get a
fact from Beats with the signatures of Queen on the deal,
and then we went out and we started and started
out with one vision or something like that, and I

(49:51):
just played almost was gonna cry and mean, it was
so happy. I was so because I love Queen and
I just you know. So that's how we ended up
with Queen in during your tenure was Wayne's World. Yeah,
that the story about that, which there has been told
a number of times completely wrong, and I think in
the movie is pretty much wrong too. But what happened was, Um,

(50:13):
remember I told you I wanted to sign hip hop bands, right,
So I signed this kid named high Sea, And the
day before the record was going to come out, somebody
was playing in one of the office is one of
the Disney Whites came by and heard you know, the
lyrics were lyrics, I still remember. Uh. So anyway, so

(50:33):
they went to iSER and they said, we can't put
this out. So I made a deal with Mo Auston
where he it went on on his label as a
distribution deal, and he helped He helped me out. He
was Moawson is one of the greats. And uh I
remember sitting there with high c at one point talking
to him and he had the lyrics, one of his
lyrics like I like to fourteen year old girls and okay,

(50:57):
and you told him what I said, Hey, Crawford, look
here's in the line that uh here's the line. Look
at this line. I know you say your own you're
only thirteen years old, Honey, I don't need no idea
from a Rolling Stone song straycout blues. That's a really
clever way to say exactly what you just said. He goes, yeah,
but it ain't street. I like to say, I fun

(51:18):
thirteen year old girls. So so that one went over well, So, um,
what happened was that on The Wayne's World? But wait, wait,
so Mode put out the record? Did he put off
the record of that lyric? Yeah? Mo didn't care Mo
was about creative. He respected the creativity of his artist.
He didn't censor anybody. Um, so Wayne's world. Um, so

(51:42):
they send me the script, right, and I read the
script and it's honestly terrible. And and I go to, uh,
it was in the script. That scene was in the script,
but it was script sucked. And so they and the
same people were attached to it. Yeah, it was. It
was all the same. This is not This was just

(52:02):
months before it came out. And so they they said, um,
we'd like to, um, you know, we'd like to put
in the movie. I go, I'm fine, and let me
talk to Beach. I don't you know. I told Beach sucks.
But it's a movie. And you know, they'll give us
a thing fee. And he goes, okay, fine, our master fee.
And and so I said, okay, fine, they guy and
we want to put it on the soundtrack album. I go,

(52:22):
there's no way. I just I just paid ten million
dollars two months ago for this thing. I'm not putting
on your soundtrack album. That's not gonna happen. And they go, well,
we're gonna take it out of the movie. Then I go, okay,
you know what do you mean okay, okay, and my
company's going this is a good marketing opportunity to go A.
The movie sucks. B. I've worked in a studio long
enough to know that it's in the script. It's not

(52:43):
coming out. It's the thing people don't get is when
you have leverage. I knew it wasn't coming out. So
they just kept badgering me and kept threatening and taking
and I just kept going, take it out. I don't care,
and movies terrible and you know, and uh, you're not
taking it out anyway. So what happened was more called
up and most said, you know, really it would be

(53:04):
really important. It's a favor to me if you would
let me put this on my soundtrack album. And I went, welm,
it's you and you're a great man, and sure you
can do it, but you can't come out. Before you know,
I'm doing a rerelease, a reissue of Classic Queen Too.
No we didn't. We did Classic Queen two, and they

(53:26):
should have been on Classic Queen Run Bohemian Rhapsody, but
since we knew it was coming, I stripped it on
the Classic Queen Too. And um, anyway, So so about
three weeks before the movie opens. I go to see
a screening of it, and I come back and I
get on the phone and me like, I called my
video guy and go, Stu, we gotta did a video
done immediately this thing. He goes, what do you mean?
It goes Swain's world. Un blately, he said, I thought

(53:47):
you said it sucked. I went, the script suck. The
movie is amazing. I go, I've learned something comedy is
not in the script necessarily. So we did the We
did the video. We got Penelfes fear Us, who directed
the movie, to do the video. Obviously it did. It
did fabulous. And Freddie had died not tour much earlier.
He died the fall before the movie came out, and

(54:09):
I think it was in February of that ninety and
you knew he was going to die. I did not know.
That was the story about Michael Eisner. I mean, I
won't say who, but Michael Eiser had had a little
bird telling him Freddie was going to die. He had
aids and he was going to die, and that's why
he didn't want me to sign him. And I said, well, Michael,
there's two possibilities. I know he's ill. I mean, Freddie
didn't hide that he was ill. I said, but I

(54:30):
don't know why. You know what I said. So either
he'll get better, in which case is the greatest front
man that ever lived, then we'll go put him on
tour it'll be great, or I'll die. And honestly, death
sells records. So anyway, so we didn't know. And then
they announced it like two days before they announced that
he had AIDS and then he died two days later.

(54:51):
And what I did is, I said, I'm gonna put um.
We put out a single, these are the days of
my lives, These days that there are our lives, which
was on the record that I saw find them for
It was it's a great record, and we did a
really nice video. They did a video, and then Disney
Animation did a video and we're gonna donate all the
money from the single to the Magic Johnson Eates Foundation.

(55:13):
So what happens was we see that we're in Waynes
World thing and I said, well, we've got this record coming,
Let's put Bohemian Rapsody on the B side. Wayne's World
blows up. In five seconds, Bohemian rapidly flip flip the
record over my single gets lost in the mix. We're
selling just tons of bohemian rapsody singles, and I'm going
eating all the money to charity while I'm losing my
ass and the record business. So we at some point

(55:35):
cut off the single and just put it on the
album and put it all out. But we we raised
about four hundred thousand dollars for the Magic Jobs and
Aids Foundation, because a lot of times they say it's
charity and there ends up being no money to give you.
It was like three nine dollars or something like that. Okay,
so while you were there, did the Queen deal pianout,
pencil out as they would say? Yeah, I mean when
I signed them, I mean, you know, we've done some

(55:57):
projections and you know, look, let's be real. If there's
been other labels willing to pend ten million dollars, I
suspect they would have signed somewhere else. But as far
as I could tell, when we first started putting it out,
it looked like in about seven years we'd get our
money back. Then Freddie died, which sells records, so it
looked like in three years we get our money back.
Then Wayne's World came out and we got our money
back that week. Well what about okay, since we'll put

(56:21):
it in the song on a soundtrack album? Did they
buy the original? They buy booth? About both? I think
his records sold two million copies, of Mind sold four
million copies. Wow. What about Dave Clark. Dave was a
friend of Freddie's and so that's how he got to me. Yeah,
he was a friend of Freddie's and um he had
done that play on in UM the West End with

(56:46):
um famous English actor and Freddie had written some music
for it. Whatever. He was friendly with with Freddie and
so that's how I met him. And you know, he
was incredibly precious about his out a lot. He probably
waited way too long to let it come out. It
took took two years to convince him to to um

(57:07):
make a deal. And you know, there's there's a demographic
sweet spot for that, and he might he might have
missed it. Um. And by the time we made the deal,
by the time it came out, I was gone and
I was as big champion, you know. So he always
told me that it was you know that it was
basically basically if I had been there, it would have

(57:27):
felt a lot better about how things but at this
point the records are commercially unavailable. I don't know, yeah
they are, and at this point Disney still loans Queen
Galog definitely on the Queen coun okay. And during that interim,
if I remember correctly, there were really no successes. Um, well,
I mean, you know, high Sea sold you know, I
mean we had moderate successes, Like high Sea sold three

(57:50):
or four hundred thousand copies. The Party sold probably eight
hundred thousand records total, so it was it wasn't completely barren.
And then we had a huge hit with Sister Act
soundtrack out, Yeah, you know, and there was Remember I
made an allusion to the fact that I maybe didn't
hire the best day in our people. Well, I didn't

(58:11):
hire the best day in our people. The only stuff
that sold on that label with stuff that I signed,
which is scary when you're forty years old and you're
running the n R Department, which I wasn't running. I
just you know, I mean, the stuff that ultimately worked
was this stuff, you know, the Queen stuff, which was
me we signed, Um, we signed the Briant Such Orchestra,

(58:32):
which didn't work at Disney, but blew up big time
on because I was gone when they started putting it out.
We signed Bush. You know, that didn't work until I
was gone. Um, you know, so there was stuff there.
It's just you know, Okay, at what point after you
walk into the building do you realize this isn't gonna
work out? Oh? I never thought it wasn't gonna work out.

(58:54):
I thought no. I mean I actually I kind of
sucked the first two years because I didn't really know
what I was doing. But I learned a lot, and
by the last couple of years, I think I was
actually pretty good at the job. But I wasn't really
particularly good at the Disney politics. I could have been.
You know, It's not like I'm stupid, and you know,
but I thought because Michael liked me and Frank like me,

(59:15):
I didn't think I had a play ball with Larry
Murphy or whoever. The head of Stress died shortly thereafter that.
He died after I left, right after I left. And then, um,
was there any advantage of being with Disney? What do
you mean? It's a Disney's corporation? Now, you said they
made a couple of videos for you. When you're working
for that, could you leverage anything they had. Yeah, I

(59:35):
could leverage they were so hot at the time. I
could leverage their name, and you know, it was what
I was selling because we didn't have a label that
was doing much of anything. Um, they weren't particularly synergistic.
I mean The Party, which was a band that I
put together out of the Mickey Mouse Club, which actually
had Britney Spears in it for about five seconds, and J. C. Chase,
who ended up in one of those other bands in

(59:57):
Center or something like that. I don't which one. Um,
you know, they didn't really get the fact that I
needed them to drive sales of this, you know band
that was basically manufactured of the Mickey Mouse Club. Um,
it actually did fairly you know, like I said, I

(01:00:17):
did fairly well. But um, they didn't really help a
whole lot. And it wasn't until about five years later
when Clive Caldler used a Disney channel to break in
Sync and Backstreet Boys in a huge way obviously that
the Disney people went, oh, wow, you know, we can
help break these backs because at the time I needed
something like that because radio, I don't know, probably don't
remember radio from their early nineties, but Hit Radio thought

(01:00:39):
their audience was thirty five year old housewives, and so
they there was I remember one time we had the
party on. It was number one phones for three straight
weeks at the station in Hawaii, and they called up
Brenda Romano said, we're dropping this record. Just what do
you mean you're dropping the record? These kids are clogging
up our phone lines. I can't sell enough pimple cream
to make it worth my while, so you know, and
so we needed something like that to drive it, and

(01:01:00):
it really wasn't particularly helpful. And you know, the film
company was not particularly helpful, you know, it was. It's
a big corporation. Every division is Therefore, you know, they
get paid their bonus based on how their division it does.
And if they're out trying to promote my records, they're
not out promoting their TV show or their film. So
you know, I get it. I'm not bitter about it
or anything like that. What about the famous memo. There

(01:01:28):
was a letter that you wrote I've leaved to Michael Eisner,
and within a very short period of time it was
leaked and everybody in the music business credit right. It
was basically a seven page get off my back because
I was tired of the strategic planning people, in the
financial planning people where they come and say, we need
to do a P and L on on this new artist,
like I've done two artists. I don't need to do

(01:01:48):
a piano if you want to know, a P and
L L, because most artists fail. And I said, you know,
so it was sort of that. And and I'm almost
positive I know who leaked the memo because they're all
I might have. Well, there were. I delivered the memo
to Michael Izer, Frank Wells and this third person who
was the CFO and UM, and then I was walking

(01:02:12):
back to my office and I was reading it and
there was a typo in the memo and I went
back and fixed the typo. And the memo they got
leaked had a typo in it, so it had to
be one of those three copies that got leaked. And
Frank had his copy with his notes on it, and
Michael had his copy, So you figure it out. What
was the backlash when it was leaked? UM, as somebody

(01:02:33):
referred to it, it was a seven page suicide note,
and you know, it blew over eventually. I mean, they
were there were you know, look, I never got any
good press while I was there. I mean it just
got you know, I was bringing Satan to Disney, and
you know it was they loved to pick on. I
mean the queen signing go back and look it right,
How stupid that was, and what an idiot he was

(01:02:54):
signing this washed up gay guy, you know. And so
it wasn't like it was funny Christmas. About a couple
of years and there was an article in the New
York Times and basically talking about what a complete disaster
it was and what a complete city. And I was.
My sister calls me up and says, did you read
this New York Times article? And yeah, I read it,
and she goes, it's horrible. I can't believe they're doing
this too. You and I go, really should rate it again.

(01:03:14):
It was like water off a duck's back at that point.
So how did it finally end? Um? It finally ended
that Um, you know, they decided they were going to
go in a different directions, So I mean, literally, okay
to keep going yet Well, he just called me in
his office and you know, basically said we decided we're
gonna make a change. And I go, is there anything
I can do to talk about it? He said, no,
and I went, okay. And at that point, okay, when

(01:03:37):
you walked in the office, do you knew that was
gonna happen? No? And do you have any time left
on your contract? No? So it was literally kind of
like the end of the contractor we were like, you know,
I technically didn't get fired. I technically they just didn't
pick up my option. Okay, so you walk out the door.
You're done that day. Well, I mean, you know, he

(01:03:57):
said I could keep an office there, and he, you know,
he's from the film business, so he said, maybe we
could put up a production company on the lot. I go,
that's not what we do in the music business. And so,
you know, but you know, this is actually a story
that I actually use a lot. So it was on
a Wednesday or Thursday or something like that, and I said,
could we just keep a lid on this thing until
the weekend? And he said, sure, I won't tell anybody,

(01:04:20):
And you know, I said great. And so the next morning,
my general manager is wandering the halls because you'd get
it at six in the morning or seven in the mornings,
like ridiculous Jeffrey Katzenberg hours, and and he runs into
some strap planning kid. You know some kid it was
like in this six years old in the strat Planning division.

(01:04:41):
And he says, you know, patern has been fired. And
and so I get there on Brad says to me,
you know they told me you're fired. To go what's
that about? I go, I don't know it's I go
to see Eisner. I go, I thought we're gonna sort
of give me a couple of days on this thing.
He goes, he said, I had nothing to do with it.
He goes, uh, let me, let me find out what's
kid's name? I got. I don't all. I call Brad.
He goes, you know, so Is Star calls up this

(01:05:03):
kid and he said, so I heard you tell Brad
Hunt that you know that we're firing paternal And he goes, oh,
no, no no, I didn't do that, and he goes, okay.
He calls Brad Hunt and talks to Brad Hunting and
he gets off the phone and he says, to me,
that kids lying. He calls the kid back and said,
you know what, I don't know who you are, what
you do, or what where you come from. But he said,

(01:05:25):
let me tell you something. I don't think it's really
wise to the wide to the CEO of your company,
and he hung up on him. Okay, and you didn't
want people to know for the weekend. Why you wanted
to tell your staff yourself. Yeah, I just wanted to,
you know, keep it under wraps for a while. Okay,
So then your knned After that weekend, You're done. What's

(01:05:45):
your emotional state? Not good? It's not fun getting fired,
iSER said to me. We all get fired at some point.
It's it's a it's a building block towards a successful career.
Because I've been fired, that's great. I don't like it.
So how long to take you to pick your feet
up from pick yourself up? Um? Well, I mean it

(01:06:06):
wasn't immediate. Um I tried to find a job for
a while. You know, I sit there and go, okay,
it's in. It's in the nineties. There's a convergence between film,
TV and music. I've obviously got music nailed film and
I mean film technology and music, and I go, I've
worked at a studio for four years. I kind of
know my way around the studio, which I did learn.

(01:06:27):
And technology well, my background I used to write software,
so I got that down. So I should be very hirable.
So I went to some of the placement firms whatever
they call like corn Furry and stuff like that. These
things you learn when you're unemployed, Like, first of all,
they don't really want to place you. They want to
get paid for finding you. So they were pretty useless
because again, I look like a good candidate, you know,

(01:06:48):
I mean again, it didn't seem to me that it
would be impossible to find a job. The other thing
I learned is there's probably ten people in hand out
the job that I wanted, and if you don't have
a good relationship with not to say you have a
bad relationship, but you know, it's it's somewhat a meritocracy,
but it's not a complete meritocracy. It's a meritocracy based
on relationships. So if you don't have the relationships, you know,

(01:07:11):
it wasn't gonna happen. And the guys that I knew
that handed out these jobs were Geffen who was mad
at me, Eisner who just fired me, and you know
whatever else. So that didn't work. So I kind of
sat around and and try to figure out what I
was gonna do next. And then sot of my old
clients started calling me and saying, could you help out
as a lawyer. The last thing I wanted to do

(01:07:32):
is be a lawyer again, but it was I had
to just kind of crawl back to being a lawyer
because it's really all that I was in demand for.
So how long after you got cam by Eisener were
you really back in the swing of being a lawyer?
Probably about six months in Metallica asked me to help
them get out of there their deal with Electra, so

(01:07:55):
that I started working on that, and then I started
working on some other stuff, and and after about a
year my current partner said, why are you working out
of your house? Why don't you come in here and
we'll give you an office. We don't have to have
any commitments. And so I came in here and got
an office and just started People started calling, Okay, what
was the name of the lawyer who ended up running

(01:08:15):
Polydor Polygraham? David Broun, David Broun. Okay, everybody whoever was
a lawyer who went inside, when they came out and
tried to practice law dead in the water, failed miserably. Hey,
were you aware of that? Be? Why why did you
break that mold? I was very aware of it and
be I mean, I don't know why I broke them all.

(01:08:35):
The reason I went back to the lawyers, I couldn't
get a job, and you know, like I'm not independently wealthy,
so I needed to get a job. And it was
the job that people seem to be willing to hire
me for. And you know, it's funny. I went back
to Minat and said, I remember, I go, maybe I
could come back here and at least you can give
me work, and they go, well, what are you looking for?

(01:08:56):
And I said, well, look all my old clients that
I left behind, I won't you know, I won't make
any claim on any of them, except for Metallica because
I'm already doing work for them. So like, say ten
percent of what Metallica is generating or five percent some
low number. And then I said, like, I'd like a
third of any new business that I bring in, and
you can pay me on my hours. And they go, well,

(01:09:16):
third in new business. If you have two million dollars
of business, we don't have to pay seven under thousand
of dollars. That's not how it works here. And I go,
it's two million dollars of business. You don't have I'm
not asking for the old stuff, and they go, well, um,
that's not what we do here, but we'd like you back,
but we'd like to pay you. Like it was ridiculous,
whatever it was. So I just didn't do that, and
I went like, I talked to some other firms, but again,

(01:09:41):
the law firm business, it's like, we'll pay you for
what you kill. And if I'm gonna get paid for
what I kill, I might as well keep it myself.
So I started I started back here at this with
my friends, and people just started calling. I mean, I
didn't approach anybody really, And the old clients that you
left behind him at what percentage of them aimed to you? Now?
A large percentage, a really large percentage. And why do

(01:10:03):
you think that was? I think they were happy with
the work I've done for them, and you know that,
I don't think they felt like they it's gonna fit
at the time. Okay, So at what point did you
and Howard and Holmes ultimately decide, well, you're gonna throw
in together. Well, I just started generating a lot of
work and so I needed, you know, it seemed like

(01:10:25):
a much better idea to have people that help, you know,
so that's kind of just evolved. I think they wanted
me to do it, and they just were trying to
be nice to me to give me the space to
figure out that I wasn't I wasn't going to get
a job. And once when you were back into it,
did you make peace with being a lawyer as opposed
to a business executive? Yeah? Yeah, I mean, you know,
I'm It's something I'm good at, so I'm gonna as

(01:10:45):
well deal with it. Well, at this late age, you
feel like, you know, any regrets you didn't do something else.
I think we all have regrets, but you know I
did okay, So okay, so now you come back in Okay,
let let's jump forward and then jump back. What is
the difference practicing law now as opposed to before when

(01:11:07):
you were before you went to Hollywood Records? You mean
now or when I just got back in now? Now
it's super different. I mean when I got back into
the nineties, it was pretty similar. I mean the business
is just I mean, look a lot of what I
don't do much in the I don't do a lot
of record deals anymore, which is the basis of the
practice before. The whole marketing aspect of the music. The

(01:11:29):
record business has change, has changed. I mean basically when
I was involved, you know, even when I was at
a record company, they talk about marketing and they talk
about all this bunch crap. I mean, basically, everything you
did was to drive something either to radio or MTV.
And that was what marketing was, is to get MTVS
attention or radio's attention. Um, and so the path was

(01:11:49):
pretty clear. There were a bunch of gatekeepers, and you
wanted to figure out how to get it to the
gatekeepers and get it through the gate Now, I don't
know what the hell you do. Everything breaks that viral
a I don't know the good news. I guess you
can bribe pray lists, except Spotify won't let you bribe them.
And it's it seems a whole lot more difficult to
break an artist now, and it's just or not even

(01:12:11):
so much to break it is to sustain a career. Okay,
but uh so since before now we talked in another
time about what's your viewpoint on the music today? The
music will see in the Spotify Top fifty. The stuff
that labels are signing, I mean labels are signing, what
drives revenue? What drives revenue is the stuff that gets

(01:12:31):
played over and over and over again. And what gets
played over and over again what thirteen and fourteen year
olds like because they'll play something a hundred times a day.
Whereas if you or I buy a record, we might
listen to it, you know, but we have jobs and
we have other things to do. Kids listen to consume music,
so whatever the you know, whatever they and their friends
are consuming is what gets you know, in the way

(01:12:52):
Spotify works is they you get paid based on the
number of places that you get for your particular track
compared to the overall number of plays. So essentially thirteen
or fourteen year olds or fifteen year olds or whatever
it is, are are sort of driving what gets picked
up by major labels because that's what but by the
same token, in terms of the overall music business, the
streams and the labels are a smaller percentage than ever

(01:13:15):
in our history, I'm sorry, as well as a percentage
of the overall revenue is uh streams and major signings.
Like a lot of your acts, you put out the records.
Metallica puts off the records centraally themselves. They own the record,
They find a deal so, but they're generating a shipload
of money there, you know. Yes, Yeah, and a lot

(01:13:36):
of the other clients are like that too, Yeah, No,
a lot of That's a lot of what I do.
I'll do a lot of deals with Live Nation, whereas
I used to do a lot of deals with the
record companies. I do a lot of deals with around
Live Nation, a real lot or a g And are
those deals tend to be overall deals? Yeah, I mean
there's a number. I mean I do a lot of
you know, like Live Nation buys a lot of management companies,

(01:13:58):
so I represent managers that are selling the Live Nation
and you know, there's like a Coachella deal for Dr
Dre for instance, I'll do that deal, or a national
tour deal for one of my clients. We get very
involved in that, whereas that was just the province of
agents before. And how did you get Drey as a client? Um? Uh,
the general manager of Interscope Records, David Cohen Um was

(01:14:23):
dealing with whoever his lawyer was at the time, and uh,
it was being very difficult and they couldn't get anything done.
And and Jimmy obviously has a great relationship with Dr
Dre and Cohen went to Jimmy and said, look, there's
my friend that just started back into practice again. And
m you know, I think he's he's more of a
problem solving a problem creator. Maybe we should see if

(01:14:45):
Drey wants to meet with him. So they set up
a meeting for me with Dre, and I met with
Dre and and he hired me. At the time, I mean,
Drey wasn't Dre. It was it was his Queen period,
it was his fellow period. Um, you know, but I
thought I think I had a I mean I was
always a fan, so that was you know, I just
thought he was enormously, enormously talented and we'd figure something

(01:15:07):
out for three or four years. It was just it
was it was tough. Okay. So in terms of payment
or all your clients on a percentage deal, No, most
of my clients are hourly, and uh, if it is
a percentage deal, was a traditional five lawyer house. Okay,
So what would how do you decide if a client

(01:15:29):
is a percentage deal or an hourly deal. I let
them decide. I don't decide into some book up a
lot of hours then say hey, I'll be in a
percentage We don't like doing that. I mean, that's the
one thing that I'd have a problem with this year,
the percentage or an hourly client. I don't want to
sit there and have you on a percentage where you're
making no money and then when you start making money
you want to go to hourly. That's not right. And

(01:15:50):
so if I'm on a percentage deal, will you take
care of all my legal business or just my my
music business, like wills and trust, you know, and things
like that. We don't do wills here, so we've heard
that out. We do anything that's kind of I mean,
if it's litigation, we charge on top for that, um
because we're one of the few entertainment firms that have litigators.

(01:16:11):
But we'll do any kind of contractual stuff, any kind
of corporate stuff. So if it's a live Nation deal,
we'll do that. It's a publishing deal with that record deal,
will do that. It's a corporate formation or a joint venture,
will do that. And that's all part of the five percent. Okay,
So tell me. Because your firm was involved in the uh,

(01:16:32):
the famous hit case that went through a whole thing,
and now we have the stairway case. Uh the borderlines right,
So what's your viewput on all that? Don't get me started.
The court system is just not set up to understand music.
They suck at it. I I about six months ago
was a reception with Justice Kagan from the Supreme Court,

(01:16:52):
and I said, well, well a little bit. So how
did that come together? Um, I do a lot of
work at u C Law School, and she was there
for a reception and the so they invited me. I
work with Kenny's Different at the Different Center, and us
and me and about ten other people are twelve other people,
and so I just said, could you please leave the
music cases alone? You get you get them wrong every
single time. I mean not every time, but at least

(01:17:14):
half the time. Because the judges can read books, they
get the bookcases right. They get the script cases, all
the script copyright cases, they get those right. They throw
them out because they generally deserve to be thrown out.
They can't read music. They don't understand it. The blurredlines case,
there are no notes the same between that and the
Marvin Gay tune. There are no chords the same, there
are no lyrics the same. There's nothing in the same

(01:17:34):
except they sound the same. And that's not a copyright infringement.
You know, I tell you that the Stairway to Heaven case,
it's probably more has more in common with the Spirit
song then Marvin Gay and Blurred Lines, and I think
that the Stairway to Heaven case, it looks like they're
gonna just you know, get rid of that. So it's
in this Katie Perry case, another disaster. It's like they say, well,

(01:17:58):
there's an eight Austinado that's the same between the two songs.
Once you say it's an ostinato, you're talking about a
common figure in music. You can infringe in ostinato. It's
a repeating a bunch of notes. It's ridiculous. And they
let these go to a jury and they don't stop
them on a summary judgment. It's it's pathetic. Okay, So
what's did at this point in time on the Blurred
Lines case? Did they pay the judgment or is there

(01:18:20):
anything left? It's we're done, we're you know, we we
asked for a non bunkering they granted and they led
Zeppelin case. They didn't grant it to us. We're done,
and the Supreme Court is not going to take the case.
If they'd screw it up anyway. So so they paid
the money or you're negotiating with no, no, we've we
you mean the defendants we paid, Okay, And so what
do you think should be the law in terms of

(01:18:42):
copyright infringement. The law is fine, they just don't know
how to implement it. I mean, the law is fine.
You look at the law, these cases you know they
shouldn't not. There's I don't want to get too deep
into this, but there's something called the extrinsic tests and
the intrinsic tests, and the extrinsic tests where they have
music colleges do gang wars and try to, you know,

(01:19:04):
say whether it's an infringement or not extrinsically. And and
if if they decide that, um, if they decide that
there's a substantial similarity in strinsically, they sent it to
a jury to decide whether intrinsically there's substantial similarity. I'm
just I don't know to tell you other than you
could sit there and look at the music and these
cases should mostly be thrown out. Okay. So your prediction

(01:19:27):
is uh that the spirit estate will not win the
Steerway to Heaven case. But you're I'm not holding you,
but it does look like it, okay. So let me
just say in the in the Blurred Lions case when
it went up on appeal, there was a descent in
the Blurred Lince case that was completely a h percent right.
You want to know if the law should be or

(01:19:47):
the law is? Is what the descent said. How many
judges were in that there's one dissenting to in the majority.
The two in the majority uh upheld the trial court
on procedural grounds that they didn't they didn't opine as
to the merits of the case. She opined. The judge
win applied pine is to the merits of the case
and got it completely right. So if you want to

(01:20:08):
know what that's what the law is. And I think
I think she was the presiding judge in the m
Bank appeal and that led Zeppelin case. So my prediction
is that what she wrote in the Blurred Line case
is going to become law of the circuit, which is
what it should be, okay? And where will that leave
copyright infringement? Because the Blurred Lines made everybody anxious. Do

(01:20:28):
you think this will move it towards more liberalism or
to be a crackdown. What do you think. I think
it's gonna be. People will be free to create and
have to worry about everything they write and generating infringement
suit an infringement suit. I mean, it's just really, I mean,
every time somebody and I represent has a hit, some
idiot sends an email saying, I have a song on

(01:20:50):
the internet. You must have heard because we have people
that saw it on YouTube, and therefore you stole my song.
I mean, you know, it's every single So certainly the
Cathy Perry Katie because you have to prove access. This
guy had some you know, Christians who would have heard it.
While she was Christian at one point, so she might
have heard. I mean, it's just it's just ridiculous. And

(01:21:10):
the jury in the Blurredlines case nobody could read music. None,
not one of the jurors can read music. It's just stupid. Okay,
So if we look forward, what do we see in
the music business, what do you mean in terms of Okay,
let me go with differently you when it comes to
anti trust law. I'll let you answer. Your viewpoint is

(01:21:35):
there is virtually no anti trust anywhere. Okay. The only
anti trust that this is gonna get me a lot
of trouble. But the only anti trust that exists is
when it's government supported and I trust like a T
and T in the past or something like that. So
in terms of company mergers, you're that you're totally cool
with that, completely okay. So to talk about recently T

(01:21:56):
Mobile and and T Mobile Sprint, totally fine. Yeah, okay,
if there were further consolidation three labels to two, would
that be fine? Yeah? Okay, So because you feel eventually
there's a third party that will come. What do you
think about Facebook and Snapchat and all that anybody have
a problem with them? I mean seriously, you know they
recently Snapchat has been logging the ways that face forget

(01:22:18):
the government, Snapchat has been logging the way that Facebook
has been anti competitive in their eyes, allowing may not
allowing them to have any content on Instagram that is
Snapchat oriented, uh, having a special program such that they
could see what was going on in Snapchat. I mean
there's some legal issues there also, you know, as opposed
to just raw anti trust, but some of them in

(01:22:41):
the privacy stuff and that you know, data, you know,
snatching stuff, that's a different story. I mean that's that's
its own it's its own problem, you know. I mean again,
I don't have an opinion about that. Okay, let's go
back to Metallica. Walk us through Metallica Napster. What you
thought and what you think now and whatever. I don't

(01:23:02):
think any differently than I thought then. I thought Napster
was a massive bootlegging uh scheme, and and you know,
everybody goes, well, you should have settled with Napster. Really,
how are we supposed to settle They're charging nothing, They've
got twenty five million followers. In order to get any
decent income, we'd have to charge ten dollars a month,
and we charged ten dollars a month, and you're still

(01:23:23):
half the size of the business you work two years before,
and somebody starts Crapster the next day, and it's another
free service out there, another free file sharing service. So
it was I never had a problem with it. I
only felt bad for Laws and James because they took
so much abuse. But in terms of like, do I
think that that it was wrong to sue Napster? No,

(01:23:43):
I'll never believe that. And everybody who thinks differently just
wasn't there. Well, I certainly believe that Napster was copyright
infringement on a massive scale, and I thought that the
lawsuits and the parties proved that, although I was under
the illusion there would be some kind of step forward,
some kind of licensing deal after that decision was made. Yeah, well,

(01:24:06):
I mean again, I don't know. I don't know how
you make a deal because it's so easy to just
replicate what they're doing someplace else. So until you have
the framework that it's clearly massive coyper and infringement and
it's easy to shut down, there's no incentive to make
a deal. Okay, but there were you know, the revenue
from recorded music was going ultimately went down by a
little bit more than half. What could the record companies?

(01:24:28):
What could the industry have done? Because they proved their
point legally, but substantially substitutively, it was a loss for
there for at least a decade. Yeah, but what was
the alternative? I mean, they you know, remember they tried
to start downloading services fair player, press player or whatever
they were called press player. I think they're not good

(01:24:48):
at that. They needed Apple to come in and solve
their problems. I mean, they needed somebody to devise a
system that people could use economically and and easily. And
there was no deal. I mean may because there was
no system in place that could could replace what these
people were doing. But in addition to dragging their feet,
they were actively whole putting, putting their heels in the

(01:25:10):
past and not jumping into the future. That but naps
there was never the future. I mean whatever I'm talking
about it forgetting Napster nas Napster's done. And then there
were other companies as hard to get a license because
then it became okay, we don't know what your business is.
And I mean this gets very complicated. I don't want
to go that far into it. But they were reluctant
to make deals that might have been beneficial to them,

(01:25:31):
or they were reluctant to give away there there assets
for some startup company that's gonna make a lot of
money on the back of the music. As I say,
I think that the truth. I think they I think
that's true conceptually and the other there. You know, it's
just like people every you know, certainly once a week
somebody emails me. At this late date, I have a
way to save the music business, you know, I don't.

(01:25:52):
I don't respond anyway. But it's like, even if you
had this idea that was like eighteen years ago, no
one even cares now, and we all learned unless you
weren't connected to talk about, you know, if you unless
you have relationships, nothing's gonna happen anyway. So uh, let's
say you no listen. It's worked out at this point.
But as I say, the business has changed completely. In

(01:26:13):
my viewpoint, the major labels, by having such a narrow focus,
are seating the territory and all this other music, and
I think to their detriment. I don't disagree with you,
but we'll see if we're right. I mean, the point
of it is that that, um, you know, all this
other music is not broken through on the level, at
least on a streaming level. That that the stuff that

(01:26:35):
the major labels chase does. And so if you're right,
in two or three years, some random not hip hop,
Atlanta trap band or artist is going to break through
like Billie Eilish. Um, you know, um, but I'm not
disagreeing with you, but it hasn't happened yet except for
Billie Eilish. Okay, you represent Frank Ocean, right, Yes, well,

(01:26:59):
I don't mean are firms afirmed those He famously delivered
an album on his contract and then put out another
album independently shortly thereafter. Yes, what was your viewpoint on
that in terms of what I mean? Well, some people
say that the label was blindsided, certainly legal under the circumstances.

(01:27:19):
Is that your viewpoint? Or is there an obligation to
the previous contract holder? I don't think there's an obligation
in the previous contract holder. What record contract is ever
fair in favor of the artist? The fact that they've
made a mistake here, it's so rare. I mean, that's
kind of what I live to take advantage of. And
again it wasn't my particular case, but but I mean,

(01:27:40):
these record contracts are heinous. They're eighty pages along and
type this the size of a pen prick, and all
they are is basically ways for that they can grab, right,
So they label basically owns the artist. They want pieces
of your tory, and they want to have These label
waivers are just annoying beyond belief where you have to
get a label waiver for your the US to do

(01:28:00):
anything because they're basically owned by the label. Okay, you know,
the interesting thing is is, you know, the major labels
steal from the acts. Even if they go into royalties,
they have a lot of ways they don't pay, etcetera.
Why do the labels think they can get paid accurately
on the touring and these other things. Well they if
they think that, they're kidding themselves. I mean, as always said,

(01:28:24):
there's nobody smarter at stealing money than a promoter. And
they don't know that. And at least we know a
little bit about what the promoters do. They just they
started hiring ex promoters and to to to police this thing.
The labels are not as they're not as what's untransparent. Uh,
they're they're more transparent than they've been in the past.

(01:28:44):
I don't really. I think there's you know, like the
back of the day where they sell records out of
the back of a truck and not report them or
you know, want of Uh well it's thirty years past.
It's actual limitation. But Electric Records had a CFO who
had an account in Hawaii called Jackson Hawaiian. They code
it with the free goods anything that went to Jackson, Hawaii,
which was their They didn't have a distributor in Hawaii.

(01:29:06):
So they sent all these records of Jackson. Why they
would be coded as free goods and the artists wouldn't
get paid on any records for like five years sold
in Hawaii. There's not that anymore. They're owned by major corporations,
they're public. They don't really steal overtly. They steal with
the pen, you know. They basically, like I said, eighty
pages of oppressive contract. They that's where they do it.

(01:29:28):
It's not really the old school, you know. Well, what
I find is, you know, they have these royalty clauses
and they give them to completely unskilled people to calculate
the royalty. Is just crazy. Yeah, you know, you get
screwed that way. So what are the challenges you find
artists have or clients have in today's business. I think
I said it before, sustaining a recording career, not sustaining

(01:29:52):
hey touring career, because most of the artists can, you know,
build a touring base and sustain it by going out
on the road and working. But it's really hard. The
turnover is kind of incredible. I mean, you know, when
you take an artists as big and as great as
Taylor Swift, and you sit there and look, and every
time she puts out a record, it's like, is anybody
gonna care? I mean, she's really talented. People should care.

(01:30:12):
But it's not like, you know, at least you'd get
a slightly longer career. Back in the old days, you
could extend your career. Now it's just really, every every
record is an adventure. There's no you know, there's no
guarantee that you're gonna you know, it's just because they've
had past success, they're gonna future success. Not that there
ever was, but there's even less than I think than
there used to be. Right, So, if someone who's anticipating

(01:30:34):
a deal with a major label comes to you, will
you negotiate that? Yeah? Oh yeah, you know. I mean, look,
there's interesting there's an interesting sub phenomenon with all these
hip hop acts. Um, the ones that are blowing up virally.
You know, they get to ten or twenty million streams
on their own, the labels start bidding like crazy for them,
so you can actually leverage the bidding war to get

(01:30:57):
fair terms. Although most of the hip hop acts just
care about the money. But I mean, to me, you know,
maybe that's not wrong. I mean again, if you don't
think you're gonna have a career, get as much money
as you can today. If you think hip hop acts
do or do not care about I care about money.
So you know you'll get two or three million dollars
as an advance for a hip hop act. And the
label's bet is that I can take these twenty million
streams and tournam into half a billion streams, which case

(01:31:19):
I've covered my bat and then everything's gravy after that,
you know, so it's a little bit risky. And you know, again,
what I've always done in my career is trying to
get the artists much of an option as I possibly can.
So the number of albums they owe the record company,
or number tracks the old the record company to a minimum,
I try to give them as much opportunity to get

(01:31:41):
free as possible, so that you know, when a new
trend comes around, they do not beholding to a label.
But you know, if you don't think your artist is
gonna have a career and then get as much money
as you possibly can, how about the opposite. You have
an artist that's got some live traction, but nothing's going
on in recordings. You know, I mean, let me give it.

(01:32:01):
It's not a great example, but it's a good example.
Anderson Park guys phenomenally talented. He does great live business.
He's one track away from from having a massive career.
So you just keep trying. I mean, you don't. I
mean that's really kind of what you do. You just
keep trying and uh and if worst comes to worst,
hopefully you keep your touring base and heritage. Jack's should

(01:32:23):
they even put out new music? What do you say not?
I think they should. I think you know. I mean, look,
I'm a big Beach Boys fan. Brian Wilson puts out records.
Everybody talks about how terrible they are. They're not. They're
not terrible. They're actually pretty good. And Paul McCartney, you'll
have a couple of good songs on every record I'll have.
They're not they're not day in life, but they're decent songs.

(01:32:44):
And so you know, go do it. I mean, why
wouldn't you do it? It It gives you know, unless you
just don't want to. And then if someone listening to
this who's thinking about a career as a music attorney,
what would you tell them, Well, it's really interesting. For
a period of time there was anybody thinking about doing
a career as a music attorney. The business sucked and
technology was where the action was. You know, um, you know,

(01:33:08):
I mean again, if it's if you love music and
you want to do something and hopefully things are looking up,
you know, why not do it? Things that things do
look a lot rosier than they did five years ago.
And what's the easiest or best way for someone who
does have a legal degree to get into music. It's
not easy, and you just gotta find somebody like me
or you know, done passes firm they were willing to

(01:33:29):
take a chance on you, or go work at a label.
If you can get a job at a label, it's
it's like anything else, you know, you got to figure
out how to get your way in. And so how
many attorneys work in the firm now? Um, about about
half of which are music lawyers and the other half
are some litigators corporate guys. And how many support staff?
But we have about ten paralegals and I don't know

(01:33:52):
how many assistants are here. And in terms of management
of the firm, are you involved in that at all?
I like how to do most of that stuff? I
worked too much? I really do Okay, So yeah, I
know you're working around the clock. You get an email
from you at twelve, When do you not work to
service business? You're on all the time, and the thought

(01:34:14):
of the thought of potentially retiring, Uh not yet. I mean,
you know, I was I was witness and an expert witness.
And Milt Milt Alan was a music lawyer that was
tragically he was tragically killed by a cop texting on
Mulholland when he was riding his bike, and it was
a wrongful death case. And the insurance company was trying

(01:34:36):
to show that he was sixty six year ols old
when he died and he wasn't gonna have much of
a career, was going to retire soon. So they interviewed
me and said, well, what do you think I go?
Like Jake Cooper was still pricingalized Lee Phillips in his eighties, said,
music lawyers and basically all lawyers get taken out on
the slab. They didn't retire, they just get taken out
on the slab. And I we knew, Bill, why didn't

(01:34:57):
give it up? No? Exactly, Peter, this has been wonderful.
Thanks so much for your wisdom and your stories. Okay,
thanks Bob,

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Bob Lefsetz

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