Artist and Repertoire A&R Masterclass With Pete Ganbarg Atlantic Records

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
So before we start today's show, we we wanna to talk about
what's been going on here in Southern California with the tragedy with the
Southern California wildfires. You know, we've been gone, Rich, for the last couple
of weeks. We haven't aired a show. We've gone black because this has affected
everybody down the line, even with us to a to
an extent, that we had a couple of scares. Absolutely. And

(00:22):
we wanted to share some resources with everybody, but just wanted to talk
about why we hadn't been on. We did this partially because it had affected us
to a certain degree. We had a couple of really big scares. Sure. And we
had to tear down all of our equipment in the studio here. And so
it's just been a very trying time. I think we're entering, like, the third week
now of, you know, these these fires that have been just popping up

(00:43):
everywhere. Yeah. We have. And, you know, in the last couple days, there's been a
new fire that emerged out of, you know, the Lake Hughes area
up north Correct. Where the winds are, you know, whipping up again.
Exactly. But yeah. I mean, it's affected everybody. I I feel,
and I know a lot of, us do feel a a tremendous sense of
gratitude, you know, that that we didn't lose our home.

(01:05):
Like, so many of us extended, you know, MUBUTV family. We know
people. Right. You know, I know you know people Yes. Who who you've worked
with. Yeah. They've lost everything. Everything. They they have nothing but the clothes on their
back. Right. And they've lost their homes, and, you know, we're gonna
be feeling the effects of that, of the of this fire
for a very, very long time. Yeah. So that was kind of partial

(01:27):
for the reason why we went black for a couple of weeks because, you know,
we had to set up all the gear again and everything and, you know, just
out of respect for everybody, but we did wanna come back to talk to
everybody, especially again, this is more geared towards the musicians that
were affected here in Southern California and Los Angeles, Greater Los
Angeles area. So we wanted to share some of these links which we will put

(01:48):
all the links. We're not gonna go through the actual URLs on here, but we're
gonna talk about the different ones that we have. And then we're gonna post an
article up, and it'll also be in the show notes for this particular episode.
So the first one is a MusiCares, which is obviously the Recording
Academy's philanthropic arm, is offering
financial assistance. MusiCares is a resource to music professionals

(02:10):
impacted by the fires in the Los Angeles area, and
MusiCares provides short term disaster relief including
$1,500 in financial assistance and a $500 grocery
card to the music professionals impacted. MusiCares disaster
relief is intended to cover short term costs. Should you incur costs
from evacuating for hotel food supplies, MusiCares is also

(02:31):
able to provide additional support for individuals and considerable
impact, including damage to their homes, medical issues,
damaged musical equipment, or longer term relocation needs.
Music care support is available to the music professionals in any capacity
with five years of employment or credit on 6 commercially
released recordings. And if you would like to request support from MusiCares, please

(02:54):
reach out to music cares relief at
musiccares.org. And again, we're gonna provide that link as well.
MusiCares is obviously an extension of those. Yeah. Right. And then there's also, you
know, ASCAP has an emergency relief fund, which people have been donating
to. You know, they they have a $1,000,000 fund, which is designed
to assist ASCAP composers and songwriters and its members in the Los

(03:16):
Angeles area who, you know, as Eric mentioned, have have suffered loss
to, you know, 1 time stipends in the amount of
$1,500, for ASCAP writer members and so
forth. So you can apply for that on the link. Just click the
link and it will take you right to the application. Right. And these are
for ASCAP rider members that are in good standing as of Jan.

(03:38):
21, Jan. 1, 2025 who does not have a reg
a resignation notice pending. The stipends will be awarded on a first come first
serve basis while funds are available, and we'll provide that link. Another
organization, the Sona Foundation Songwriter Fund, which is the
songwriters of North America Foundation, relaunched its songwriters fund
to provide emergency relief for songwriters and composers that have been

(04:00):
impacted by the wildfires. In order to qualify for this 1 for the
$500 emergency grants, songwriters can visit the organization's
website and provide examples that demonstrate professional level
work as a musician, prove that they were and based around in the area of
the fires, and then provide 3 recent songwriter and or composer
credits. And the qualifying writers and composers will then receive payment via

(04:22):
direct deposit, check, or digital wallet, and we'll provide that
link as well too. In addition, there's also, you know, we are moving
the needle, which is micro grants for the wildfire relief
fund. This was just launched last week, and it's designed
to support, you know, early and mid career producers, engineers, and
creators who who have lost studio space or gear in the

(04:44):
wildfires. And those looking to apply, there is a link that they can
go directly to. So that's that's another very, very specific
1. Yeah. And for people that are listening that that weren't in the, Los Angeles
area, if you guys wanna donate to any of these funds too, I'm sure they're
accepting. I know the Red Cross is doing a big 1. So, you know, if
you guys are not sure about what to donate to, definitely

(05:06):
go to the Red Cross website because they do have a a link which we
will provide as well too. Another resource that we have here is the
Entertainment Community Fund, and this 1 is emergency financial assistance
from the Entertainment Community Fund is open to eligible performing
arts and entertainment professionals who are in times of,
unexpected critical need, and it can also help with basic living

(05:28):
expenses including health care and housing. On its website, the fund
notes that the applicants impacted by the LA wildfires will be asked
to upload a list of documents. If you do not have access to these
documents, upload a blank file. Once we receive the application,
we will work with you to complete the application. And, again, we'll provide that
link in the show notes. Another 1 is Backline, which is, you

(05:50):
know, the mental health nonprofit. They're sharing resources for musicians in
Los Angeles via social media and offering its own
services. You know? Know that Backline is here for you and that you're
not alone. So, you know, we we have a, a link that
you can go to. There's an 800 number,
809855990, that you can call for that

(06:11):
as well. Yeah. It's a just a disaster distress hotline for free
247 by calling that number. Another organization which we
we've known for for a long time, the Sweet, Relief Musicians Fund. They are a
nonprofit helping musicians and, music industry workers in
need, and they've launched a natural disaster relief fund for
those in the Los Angeles County and the surrounding areas.

(06:33):
Applications are also open for those seeking relief with funds raised
going towards loss of music related equipment, medical bills
related to the fires, and other vital living expenses. So,
again, we'll have the link to provide that to, donate or to fill
out an application. Guitar Center Music Foundation is
another 1 that is offering they've announced on their website that they are

(06:55):
offering support to the LA area musicians and music
programs affected by the devastating fires. Eligible
individuals can apply, for a 1 time grant to
help. Again, the link is on there, on the will
be on the site there as well. Yeah. And that's to help replace instruments
or lost or damaged that that were in the fire. NAMM, which is obviously everybody

(07:17):
knows, actually, it's hap actually happening this weekend as we speak, as we talk
about this. NAMM is going on. The NAMM Foundation has pledged
$50,000 and is welcoming further donations via its
website. The fund aims to provide needs based assistance to
NAMMM members, employees of NAMMM member companies, music
education programs, and music professionals that have been impacted by the fires.

(07:39):
The foundation said it is currently assessing the needs of the affected community
and will announce details about the distribution process and application
guidelines in the near future. So, yeah, so you can check that out. And actually,
like what we said, NAMM is going on currently right now. So, you know, we'll
we'll we'll provide that on the link as well too. In addition, Fender, the
guitar maker, is also providing,

(08:03):
a a fund. They have invited musicians who have lost instruments or gear
in the wildfires to submit details about the losses, and there's a
link that you can go to, on on the site as well
to to apply for relief. Yeah. And Fender, put here that
they promise to respond and replenish requests to the best of their abilities. So there's
submission details there that we'll provide. Another organization, Crew

(08:25):
Nation, the Crew Nation Global Relief Fund is committing
$1,000,000 to assist performing musicians, live music
crew, and live musician industry workers that have been affected by the
recent wildfires in LA. Crew Nation has opened up applications for
grants for up to $5,000 for individuals that are currently
employed within the industry facing displacement, expenses

(08:47):
due to mandatory evacuation orders, damages, or loss.
Those seeking support can apply for the CREW Nation Fund, and the and we'll provide
that link as well. And then there's also the National Independent Venue
Foundation. They're a nonprofit arm of the National Independent
Venues Association. They're stepping up to provide critical
disaster relief to help venues and businesses rebuild

(09:08):
and reopen their doors. So any venues or businesses that have
been directly impacted, you can also apply there too, and there's a
link. Music Rising, which is a charitable organization
founded in 02/5 by U2's The Edge, producer Bob
Esran, and other music industry partners will support school
music programs that have been affected by the wildfires with its National

(09:31):
Music Education Disaster Relief Coalition,
which they aim to rebuild music programs providing instruments and
essential resources in the wake of natural disasters. The
school music programs impacted by the fires can
emailmusicrising@mhopus.org.
That's
musicrising@mhopus.org,

(09:56):
or call (818)
762-4328. That's 4 (818)
762-4328 for assistance.
And, also, we're gonna provide that link for everybody. And I'm sure there's a ton
of other ones, but those are the ones that we could share, and we hope
that everybody can go out and donate and support this
really much needed cause. And with that, on with the

(10:18):
episode. On today's podcast, we sit down with legendary
A&R executive, Pete Ganbarg. Pete has been the force behind career
defining projects such as Santana's Supernatural and hit Broadway
cast albums such as Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen. We
discussed the impact of fear and work ethic and personal growth, the
importance of music history in the industry, and his experience in identifying

(10:40):
and nurturing talent. Plus, Pete shares insightful anecdotes from his
career, including the stunning success of Smooth, his new venture with Pure
Tone Records, and his innovative rock and roll high school podcast.
You can't afford to miss it. Insiders, are you ready?
Welcome to MUBUTV's Music Business Insider Podcast, where
our mission is to educate, empower, and engage artists and

(11:04):
music business professionals who are dedicated to having a successful career
in the new music industry. Here are your hosts, Ritch Esra
and Eric Knight. Welcome back, Insiders, to another episode
of the Music Business Insider Podcast, where our mission is to
educate, empower, and engage your music career. On today's
episode, we're thrilled to welcome back a legend in the music

(11:26):
industry, Pete Ganbarg. We dive deep into Pete's fascinating
journey from spotting the next big thing in A&R to creating the
iconic rock and roll high school podcast and even
revealing the inside story of Carlos Santana's comeback
hit Smooth from his album Supernatural. Pete shares
his invaluable insights on the importance of work ethic, forming

(11:48):
connections, and the role fear plays in personal growth. We'll also
get into his tips on discovering talent and why understanding music
history can shape the future of A&R. Whether you're an
aspiring music professional or just a fan of the business, you
won't wanna miss this episode. But first, a word from our
sponsor. Hey, Insiders. Are you an aspiring musician,

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career. That's
book.mubutv.com.
Welcome back, Insiders. Today's featured guest is none other than the
legendary A&R executive, Pete Ganbarg, who
we welcome back for the second time. Pete was on our
series a long time ago on the video series. Yeah. And

(14:02):
if you have not had a chance to check that out, definitely, you know, take
a look. It's, it's on our YouTube page. Episode, and it's 1 of the greatest
conversations on the subject of A&R I've ever seen. Oh, well, thank
you. I I it was I remember the conversation very, very well. This was a
conversation that I'm so glad that we had because we got to really go
into a whole deep dive, not only on the subjects of A&R, but

(14:24):
on the subject of Pete's career, which expands beyond just
rock and pop and artists, but also went to Broadway Right. And
and iconic cultural shifting shows like Hamilton and Right.
Dear Evan Hansen. I mean, these were some of the most successful
Broadway soundtracks in decades. Yep. You know, it's really,
really interesting. Some of the things that I thought that that,

(14:47):
really struck me on an emotional level was how he talked about, you know,
work ethic and consistency. You know, he underscores that
that critical role of not only hard work and consistency and showing up, but
he also stressed that, you know, missing certain opportunities can lead to lost
career defining moments. He spoke about how, yeah, I
guess, for whatever reason, was doing certain things, and he didn't

(15:09):
end up following Clive when Clive formed Jay. Jay. Yeah. But, you
know, there's also the other philosophy that says, you know, there are no mistakes in
the world, and maybe he was meant you know, he wouldn't have had the career
at Atlantic had he had he not done that. Right. And he's had
an iconic career at Atlantic Records, you know, as Absolutely. As
the, as the episode, you know, clearly, will indicate.

(15:31):
Yeah. I also thought, you know, his career advice, from Pete, you know,
that it's all about hard work and consistency. Sometimes missing
an opportunity can mean losing a career defining a moment.
And I think, we talked about that Jimmy Iovine exemplifies this
perfectly, and you can maybe talk about that. Yeah. Definitely. I mean,
Jimmy Iovine, the the the moment was it was Easter Sunday.

(15:53):
He gets a call from the studio from Royce, Roy Sekala
saying we need you to come in. Jimmy says, okay. Tells his mother I'm coming,
and they're like, no. You can't go, and you've got the family coming. It's Easter
Sunday. Blah blah blah blah. He says, ma, I'm going. And Jimmy goes.
He gets to the studio, and who's sitting there? John
Lennon. And it was like, woah. You know? Yeah. And this was like

(16:16):
you know, because growing up Right. The Beatles were everything Yeah.
To to, Jimmy Iovine. And he he
tells the story Jimmy Iovine tells the story where he says, you know, Roy basically
said, you know, I wanted just to see how committed you were. I wanted to
see It was a test. It was a test. Exactly. It was a test.
And, you know, he, he got to work with, with John Lennon,

(16:38):
with 1 of his heroes. And the rest is history of his career. Yes.
Also, I thought 1 of the other areas of his mentoring talent and being actively
involved in mentoring talent, like introducing Jeff Levin to, Lynn and the
roots highlights his commitment to nurturing the next generation.
And I thought this is a very interesting thing that you guys are gonna listen
to because it's all about passing that torch, and that's 1 of the things that

(17:00):
some of the guests that you and I are trying to interview. You know, we've
got these 3 different sets of people, people that have already been through the
mountain top, and they're at the twilight of their careers. People that are in that
mid journey of their career and then people that are just coming in. And so,
it's very interesting, and I love the fact that, that Pete is
trying to pass that torch and that knowledge on to the next generation of

(17:21):
aspiring A&R people. It's so interesting you bring that up because it's, you
know, the longer I'm in this business, the more I hear from
people around that very subject of, you know, that that
people aren't mentoring the next generation enough, and
that's why hearing that, you know, Pete made that such an important
factor. And it's illustrated by his own executives at Atlantic

(17:44):
Right. Who, you know, started out as, like, literally kids,
15 year old kids in high school. Which you guys are gonna talk about in
the in the interview. Exactly. Which was, you know, really interesting. The other thing
that that, really captured me in this conversation was how
Pete talked about learning from his failures. You know, he compares working to
A&R to to baseball, where not all projects

(18:05):
succeed, but learning from each experience is key to
eventual success. And, you know, he he spoke of, you know,
certain projects that were not successful. Right. You know, not
only the the the Santanas, which were enormously successful in Grammy
winners. But the ones that he thought that were gonna be hit the winners out
of the park, and they just ended up not working because, you know, he says

(18:26):
at the end of the day, it's all about the audience that makes that decision.
Exactly. And that's something that, you know, I remember when I worked I too
worked for Clive, like Pete did at at Arista.
Clive used to talk about that as well. And, you know, although Clive
couched it in a different term, he used to say nobody remembers
your failures. Right. You know, which is true. Yeah. They remember your your

(18:48):
successes, your Whitney Houston's and your, you know, your, Annie
Lennox's. Of course. They don't remember the acts that you truly believed
in, but that didn't but it's it's a thing of taking that experience
and moving on, not getting so crushed or, you know, behind it.
But I thought that the idea that he talked about, you you know, learning from
your failures, and I I, you know, I remember there there have been

(19:09):
many executives who have spoken about the the aspect of
that, which I think is a very important 1, which is that often your failures
can teach you a lot more than your successes.
And with that, insiders, sit back, relax, and enjoy our featured
conversation with Pete Ganbarg. Pete, welcome.
It's great to have you back. Thanks, guys. Good to be back. Good to talk

(19:32):
to you. Listen, I wanna start this conversation. You know, given your extensive
experience in A&R across various industry transformations,
how do you view the current evolution of the A&R role, particularly
regarding the influence of social media platforms, you know,
and discovery and things like that with regards to your job in
A&R? You know, I find that there's a lot less

(19:55):
of traditional A&R from when I was coming up
where the A&R person would
legitimately be in the trenches figuring out
the best material for the artist, how to find it, how
to improve it, you know, kick at it, make a c, a b, make
a b, an a, make an a and a plus, and

(20:18):
really utilizing the resources that we
all were trained on back then, which is, you know,
the lyric sheets and the arrangements and the productions and
really deep diving into making these records great. I
don't I I think it's still done to a degree, but it's definitely
not done as much as it used to be.

(20:40):
And, you know, social media has definitely given
the new crop of A&R as a shortcut where, you know, something goes
viral on some platform. You pick it up, you put it out, and you hope
for the best. That's kinda that's not really how we used to do it. We
used to sweat a lot more. Yeah. And and it's also a thing of I
think you're speaking about something deeper too, which is the values,

(21:02):
you you know, the values around A&R, which is something that I
think technology and, you know, social media and so forth
have changed. Become more data driven. Yeah. They've
changed. Yeah. It's true. It's it's definitely true. I you know,
I'm going further even now, I'm going further the other way
where I'm studying a lot about A&R

(21:24):
history going back to the early twentieth century. And it's fascinating
because when you think about A&R, you know, there was a
point in time where it didn't exist. You know? First, you
have the history of recorded music where recorded
sound was invented. Right? And
then it is it evolves to a point

(21:46):
where there is music being recorded
and released commercially so that people can listen to
it. Then it's it's kind of a free for all. How are we gonna figure
out which artist to record? How are we gonna figure out what
material that these artists can record? So the earliest A&R
people had to invent their job on the fly, and it's

(22:08):
fascinating reading about these people. And then, you know, it's only
around a hundred years ago that this was happening. And in a hundred years, we've
gone from that creating something from absolutely
nothing to, oh, yeah. This is viral on TikTok. Let's write
a big check, and and hopefully it works. Yeah. Precisely. And and and I
think, you know, I mean, you you know a lot of the the history of

(22:30):
this and that, you know, originally, A&R people were people
who would find the song, but they were also people traditionally from the
who also made the records, which is interesting too.
And we also lived in a time where with very, very rare
exception, the Duke Ellingtons or, you know,
those kinds of artists were were the only ones who were self

(22:53):
contained. Every other artist in that era, you know, needed the
songs to record. So that was a very big
factor of the A&R process, and that all shifted in the
Yeah. The the the definition of a record producer
as we know it now didn't really come into play
until the You're absolutely right. Before that, it was the A&R

(23:17):
person's responsibility. This was back in the
day where the engineers wore white lab coats, and it
was very scientific. You know? It wasn't
until the where, you know, record
an outside independent record producer would be hired by a record
label to go and make a record. That's a fairly new

(23:40):
construct that's, you know, that's maybe 60 years old at this
point. Yeah. It's interesting. You know, throughout several of the documentaries I've
seen in my life, George Martin used to talk about that process,
and and I've heard some of the, you know, various other artists. Bob Dylan also
talked about it when he would go into CBS in the to make
records. He he he actually said exactly what you said. He said, you know, these

(24:02):
people were in, like, lab coats, and you couldn't touch, you know, certain
pieces of equipment and and all of that. And that is the way that it
was made back then, you know, and it it it's it's it's it's an
interesting process. Yeah. And, you know, it's
it's obviously changed a lot since then.
But with people like Bob Dylan who you mentioned, Bob Dylan didn't

(24:24):
produce his own records. He had record producers, but they weren't wearing the white
lab coats. I think that things definitely took off in the
and, you know, you had the independent record producers, you know, starting
in the through the through the Now, you know, it's
it's basically, it's a whole new ballgame where you have record producers, but
you also have self contained artists who are not only making the music

(24:47):
themselves at home without the need of a recording studio,
but they're able, for the first time in our lifetime,
to, you know, be in charge of their own distribution as well by
uploading a song that they could create same day. And, you
know, back when we were growing up, you had to jump a lot of hurdles
to get your music to a place where people could buy it. It had to

(25:09):
be physical, and it had to be, you know, at some sort
of retail establishment, usually a record store. Now, you know,
it's basically all you need is is a a phone and an upload
button. And, you know, I can record something
now, and ten minutes from now, the entire world has the option you
know, the opportunity to hear it. Much different much different ballgame. Not

(25:31):
necessarily better, by the way. No. No. I I I totally agree. You
know, last year, we we had a conversation with Ron
Fair, and he talked about this very concept that you
were just speaking about. And he said, you know, 1 of the main differences between
A&R of the past and A&R today, and this is kind
of like on a meta level, is that you were picked.

(25:53):
You know, you got a record deal as an artist because someone deemed
that you were worthy of that deal. Someone made that
decision and made a record, you know, with a Barry Gordy
or Clive Davis or Yamater, you know, whoever. Somebody made the decision.
And, you know, and he pointed out that, you know, a lot of times those
decisions didn't pan out, but when they did, you know, that was the

(26:15):
basis of support for the whole industry. And he said, now, like,
exactly what you were saying is that now the public makes that
decision. You know? Yeah. The public makes that decision. So it's it's it's
Yeah. I mean, the the public the the public always made the
decision in terms of deciding what a hit was. Right. Right. You know,
the the Clive Davises and the Ahmed Ertegens couldn't, you know,

(26:38):
tell the world this is a hit. Right. Right. They could throw a lot of
money into something, but, ultimately, it's always been the audience. But
now the audience can bypass the record label
if they gravitate towards something on a platform like TikTok that
hasn't even been vetted by a record company yet. Right. Exactly.
Pete, it's it's Eric, and so excited to have you back on the show again.

(27:00):
I I did wanna say to all of our listeners out there that are listening,
Pete happens to have the distinction of being our number 1 most watched
video on MUBUTV's history. And if anybody hasn't seen that interview
between Rich and Pete, you should go watch that on YouTube. It's a great conversation.
So thank you again for having us on the for being on the show. Yeah.
Thanks thanks for having me back. That was that was a long time ago. Yeah.

(27:22):
It was. It was great, great conversations. 1 of the best,
A&R interviews. Really, really great conversation. But I wanted to ask
you, you know, your work in A&R has been incredibly diverse
stylistically. Was your belief in musical confidence something you always had, or
did it evolve as you gain more experience in the business? Not
really. I mean, I I guess it's a blessing and a curse that my

(27:44):
taste has always been of a teenage pop music
fan, and I got ridiculed for it when I was
in college. You know? Like, who listens to pop music? But I listen to
everything. And, ultimately, I learned a long time ago that my
opinion as an A&R person doesn't matter. The only opinion
that matters, as we mentioned earlier, is the audience's opinion. So my

(28:06):
job is to figure out what the audience may wanna
hear before they even know what they wanna hear. And
so, you know, I've always considered myself
genre agnostic. Music is music. And any project
that I'm working on is usually some sort of
puzzle that we have to as A&R people, we have

(28:28):
to figure out how to solve the puzzle. And once we solve the
puzzle, then hopefully, it is what the audience is
going to gravitate towards. Like Rich said earlier,
I have been involved with some real stinkers. You know? Like, I
artists that I've signed or records that I've made that I thought the
audience was gonna like. Ultimately, their vote means more

(28:51):
than than my opinion. And if they vote they don't like it,
then I just gotta go back to the drawing board and try to learn the
lesson of why they didn't like it and what can I do better this
time to make sure they like it? And what people don't
realize is I always use the analogy of baseball where if you're
a baseball hitter and you're you know, every 10

(29:12):
times that you're up at bat, if you make a base
hit 3 or 4 times out of those 10 at
bats, you're batting 300 or 400. If you bat
400, you're the greatest hitter of all time, and you're in the hall of
fame. That still means that 6 out of 10 times,
you miss. You know? So as an A&R person, if I'm batting

(29:34):
300, if I'm batting 400, that means that
6 out of 10 or 7 out of 10, you know, projects that I'm
putting out to the marketplace are failing. And I'm still, you know,
eligible for the hall of fame with a 300 or 400 batting average. It's it's
fascinating. But the audience is gonna tell you what they like, and they're gonna tell
you what they don't like. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, it's funny as you were

(29:55):
speaking about that, I was thinking, like, you know, the the the I think the
all time record for number ones is, Max Martin. He's got
25. But out out of how many thousands of songs and
that's not to take away from the point you're making, but it's like, you know
and he's considered, you know, among, like, How and Does Your like, the number
1 of all time with pop hits. And yet Right. Your point

(30:15):
is so so, you know, valid and and and and correct.
It's it's kind of like I I guess you could you could analogize it
with anybody who makes a vast amount of things, the choices
you you know, of successes that you have versus, you
know, how Clive used to say a very interesting thing when this
conversation would come up about what we're talking about. He he used to say, and

(30:36):
I think he actually even put it in his book, nobody remembers your
failures. Right. Yeah. Ex
except yourself. Well, exactly. You know? Exactly.
Exactly. I was I was recently cleaning out, like,
some old boxes of of the last, you know, sixteen years Uh-huh.
That I I've spent at at Atlantic as as head of A&R for sixteen years,

(30:59):
and and I was cleaning out a bunch of boxes. And I had completely
forgotten about some of these artists that I had signed that just went nowhere. Wow.
And I'm like, man. You know? It's like and and these were some
good good records that probably are
never going to, you know, hit the the mass
audience the way that we imagined that they would when,

(31:21):
you know, the band started making music and I decided to sign them. But it
just goes to show you that the audience, you know, votes with
their, you know, they vote with their ears. They they decide what what it is
they're gonna wanna hear over and over. Absolutely. You
know, on that note, Pete, I I I wanna get into the
actual A&R process. And 1 of your biggest,

(31:43):
most successful A&R stories is the story of
Carlos Santana's comeback album Supernatural and the
worldwide smash Smooth. It's the stuff of A&R
legend. And for a couple reasons, number 1, it was also your
idea to make the album a concept of artists collaborating with
Carlos. So my question is a couple things.

(32:05):
What was your inspiration for that concept? And number
2, can you also talk to us about the finding and and
developing, yes, I said developing, of the smash hit
song Smooth because there is a great A&R story behind
the development of that song. So on both of those Yeah. I mean
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And this speaks towards what we

(32:28):
were talking about at the beginning of this conversation, which is kind of
the long lost art of A&R. A&R stands
for 2 things, artists and repertoire.
And the repertoire is as important as the artist.
Without 1, you don't have the other. You know, when you're able to
pair the brilliant song with the pureless

(32:50):
voice, you have Whitney Houston, I will always love you. You have
Aretha Franklin, respect. You have Frank Sinatra, strangers in the night. You
know? That is kismet. That doesn't happen. That's like
lightning, you know, striking. Right? So for me,
when I got to Arista in 1997, I was around 30
years old. Clive hired me, but I don't think he, you

(33:12):
know, was expecting anything. I think that he, you know,
his gut told him to give me a shot, but it's not
like I had signed, you know, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and and Nirvana,
you know, before that. I, you know, I had a couple of hits, but I
think he was taking a chance on me. And I came
in, like, day 1 to arrest the records in

(33:33):
1997 really without a manual of how to do A&R
for Clive Davis. Rich, you know. You did it. You know? It's like, you
know, a lot of really, really great A&R people have worked for
Clive Davis and not succeeded at his company just
because he's very, very specific and very
particular about how A&R is done. Right. And

(33:55):
there's no manual saying this is how you do it here. You know, you get
thrown in the in the deep end of the pool, and you either swim or
you drown. And so I was there around six weeks trying to figure out
my way in because I didn't have anything I wanted to sign.
And Clive's not the A&R person or he wasn't back then the label
head, who was going to assign you a project. It's things are done

(34:18):
collectively there. And he had just signed Santana. He
signed Santana before I got there in the
And, of course, he had signed Santana for a second time having
signed him in 1969 to Columbia. And Clive's
vision is always like, what if, you know, what
if I could bring Rod Stewart back or Aretha Franklin

(34:41):
back or Santana back. And I think
that that was more the headline in his
imagination than it was, hey. This is how we're
going to do it. So when I came in, I had
plenty of time because I didn't have any projects there. And I had been
there for around a month, a month and a half. And like I said

(35:03):
earlier, I was a student of pop music from a very,
very early age, and so I was always paying attention to
what the audience was reacting to and the audience
was responding to. And there was a record, an album that was
selling back in that era in
1997, selling better than it should have. And it was a

(35:24):
duets album by BB King, And it was called Deuces Wild.
And I remember seeing it on the charts and saying, oh, BB King doesn't
usually chart, you know, record albums now, you know, in the
Why are people buying this record? So I listened to the record, and it was
a duets record. It was BB King with Tracy Chapman, BB
King with Bonnie Raitt, BB King with D'Angelo. And I'm like,

(35:46):
really interesting concept. And then I listened to the record, and I'm like, there's a
ceiling here. You know, any ANR person would be able to listen to it
and say, yeah. This isn't going to get on pop radio
because and if it did back then, if it didn't get on pop radio, you
had a ceiling. You weren't gonna sell millions and millions of records.
And the reason that it wasn't gonna get on pop radio is because the

(36:09):
songs weren't pop hits. There were covers of BB King songs, and there were other
songs that were just not going to go all the
way as as pop hits. And, also, as a
duet album, you had BB King singing,
and his voice was an older voice at that point. Older
voices don't make it on contemporary radio. So

(36:32):
my idea was to completely steal the
concept for BB King but tweak it so that
what I would do is I would go to the library because this was
before the Internet. And I would go and I would study
every single contemporary hit artist
who had given an interview and mentioned

(36:54):
Carlos Santana as a reason, an
influence that they got into music in the first place.
And if I'm able to find that person, then I'm
able to make that phone call and say to them, hey. How would you like
to collaborate with Carlos Santana? And then before
I agree to it, I would say, you know, get them all excited

(37:16):
about collaborating with their hero and then
say not so fast. Price of admission, 1 hit song. What
I knew is that Carlos doesn't sing, or he
doesn't sing like BB King sang. You know? His voice is the guitar.
So the guitar voice, unlike the human voice, doesn't
age. And so if we can get the contemporary

(37:38):
pop stars of the day to write a hit
song for Carlos Santana who can then do it with
them on his guitar, I've got a shot to
maybe get a great song on the radio. So I
really like this idea that I had even though it was stolen from somebody
else and then tweak as all great ideas usually are. But I

(38:01):
still had to run the idea by Clive. And back then,
Clive didn't do email. I I still don't think he does email. But the
email that I wrote, I printed out. I put it on his assistant's desk, and
I basically spelled out the blueprint of how I would
envision this album. And I waited for him to get back to me, and he
never got back to me. He never told me it was a great idea. He

(38:21):
never told me it was a lousy idea. He just didn't respond. And so I
was the new guy. I I was flustered. I didn't know what to do because
I couldn't say why didn't you respond to my email. But I believed in the
idea. So, you know, having some, I picked up the telephone.
I called Carlos Santana's then manager. I introduced
myself. He didn't know who I was. And I said, I have an idea

(38:43):
for Carlos. He's like, great. We haven't heard from anyone at the
label with any creative ideas since we signed. What's your
idea? And I ran it by him, and he's like, great. When can we
start? So I said, you know what? I haven't gotten Clive's
blessing, but I'm gonna start anyway. And if Clive wants me to
start, he is the head of the label. He's my boss. If he if he

(39:05):
wants me to stop rather, he'll tell me to stop. So I started.
He never told me to stop, and we ended up selling 30000000
records. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So now
the the other part to that is, you know, 1 of those songs
was the lead off single With Rob Thomas. Which has, yeah, with
Rob Thomas, which has its own story and it has its own

(39:27):
development, which is unusual for for a hit song. And I was
wondering if you could tell that because I think that that's a very, very informative
I mean, you wanna get to the heart of what A&R actually does.
That's a great story, and I was wondering if you could share it with us.
Yeah. Of course. I mean, it's interesting that we talk about something like
this because I've got friends who are great

(39:50):
A&R people and great creative publishing A&R's
as well. And some of them, if they hear a song
and the song doesn't sound like a hit to them, they throw it in the
garbage and move on to the next song. I've never been like that. I've always
been like, if there is a piece
of something in this song that could

(40:12):
be turned into a hit, it's incumbent on me as the A&R
person to try to see that through. And that's exactly what happened with
Smooth, where I was finishing this album that I had been working
on for a year and a half. We'd spent a lot of money because at
that point, we had a lot of pretty big guest stars on the
album who all cost a lot of money. And remember, Santana hadn't had a

(40:34):
gold record in close to twenty years at that point. And so
people started, you know, coming to me and said, what are you doing? You're, like,
spending all this money on an artist who is
arguably past his prime. You're gonna lose a lot of money for the record label.
Even Clive said to me at 1, he's like, Nick, money grows on trees around
here. But I figured, you know, I I figured

(40:56):
that if we're going for it, we're gonna go for it. We're gonna go all
in, and we're gonna go big or we're gonna go home. You know? And there
are certain projects that you do that with, and this was 1 of
them. And we could have easily, you know, lost everything, but
sometimes when you go all in, the the risk is worth it. And so
I had to finish the record. Somebody stopped by my office, 1 of

(41:17):
the guys in charge, and said, hey. We have to get this record out before
the end of the fiscal year. This was in Jan. 0. The fiscal year ended
in June 0 at the June,. And so we have to get this album out
before the June, because we think we'll be able to ship a hundred thousand
units, and we need those numbers for our year end budget. And I said
to him, I'm not finished yet. He's like, Pete, you're finished.

(41:39):
Finish up. You're done. We gotta get this record out. And I have this
nagging doubt even though we had some really good songs that we were missing the
first single. So as luck would have it, and I'm kind of getting
nervous that I'm gonna miss the deadline here because now I'm
up against it. I get a call from an A&R friend of mine. His name
is Jerry Griffith. Great, great A&R guy. Oh, yeah. I worked with

(42:01):
Jerry at Arista. Yeah. He he was the 1 who turned Clive on to
Whitney. He he was. And Jerry and I became
friendly. And when I got to Arista, I would call him anytime
that I was unsure of how to navigate
these Clive Waters because he had done it so well
for a long time. And so we became friends. And

(42:24):
1 day, as I'm trying to figure out how I'm gonna finish this record, Jerry
calls me. And I hadn't spoken to him for a while, and he says, hey.
Are you still working on Santana? I said, yeah. It's good timing because I gotta
finish. I need 1 more song. He's like, oh, I met this guy. I
may start managing him. He's a songwriter. He lives in New York. His name
is Ital Shire. He had a hit, you know, within the last few years by

(42:46):
Maxwell called Ascension. He's a real museo. He is
I told him about Santana. He said he's got a ton of ideas. Can he
come up and see you? And at that point, I was I was open to
anything because I didn't know if we were gonna find this song,
and if we were gonna find it, who was gonna come through the door with
it. And I learned a long time ago, you can never say no. You gotta
listen to everything. So Ital comes in, and he plays me a song

(43:09):
that he had written for Santana called room 17. And I
listened to the song, and Ital and I had never met before.
And the song ends, and I say to him, look. You
want the good news or the bad news? I said, the good news is that
this track is really good. The track is like classic
Santana, but modernized. The lyric is

(43:31):
ridiculous. I mean, he's never gonna sing this song. Room 17 is the
hotel room where, you know, the guy and the girl are are gonna meet and
get it on. Right? Like, that's the opposite of, you know, mister peace
and love, Carlos Santana. It's just not gonna happen. And he starts saying
to me, I think you're wrong. This is a hit song. I'm like, I think
you're wrong. I think it's half a hit song. Give me the track. You know,

(43:53):
throw away your lyric. Throw away your melody. I don't think either of
them is viable. And we start arguing with each other. This is the first time
we're meeting. Finally, I wrestle the track out of him, and
this is before m p threes. This is before you know, you could
easily kinda press a button and just, you know, send a track
via email to somebody. So he goes back to his studio.

(44:15):
He removes the lyric after, you know, he and I go at
it a little bit. And he removes the lyric and the melody. He just gives
me the track. And like I said, unlike now, you can't email this
around because the technology didn't exist back then. So I'm listening
to this track, and the more I listen to it, the more excited I get.
But now we've gotta get somebody to write to it. So I call up a

(44:36):
buddy of mine who's a music publisher at the time at EMI
Music Publishing, and that was Evan Lambert who now is at Universal
Music Publishing and is still a dear dear friend of mine to this day. I
called him up, and I said, Evan, I have this track that I need
somebody to write to. And I literally held up the receiver
of the phone to play him the track. And I said, do you have any

(44:57):
ideas for this? And I play him the track. He's like, that's
really good. Who is that for? Santana? I'm like, yeah. I think it's could be.
If I get the lyric right, this could be the final final song for the
album. It could also potentially be the first single.
He's like, Pete, I know who should write it. I said, who? He said, Rob
Thomas. And I'm like, who? Rob Thomas from

(45:18):
from Matchbox twenty? Remember, this is
1999. Wasn't Rob Thomas back then.
Matchbox twenty was a pretty good band, but they were face you know, they they
were in a part of groups like Collective Soul and and bands like that
that nobody knew who the lead singer was. You know, they knew the
songs on the radio. Right? So he said to me, he's like, Pete,

(45:39):
do you trust me? I said, Evan, you know, your ears are as good as
anybody I know. Of course, I trust you. He's like, Pete, don't tell this to
any other songwriter that I work with, but Rob Thomas is the best songwriter I've
ever signed. And I'm like, you're kidding. He's like, trust me. He's like, can I
send the track to Rob? Like, absolutely. So he sends the track to
Rob. And sometimes, you know, when the stars align,

(46:00):
you have no idea, you know, what's going on kind
of in the ether, in the universe. Turns out that Rob had just come
off the road touring with Matchbox twenty for a
long time, and he was finally off the road with his
fiancee living in the West Village in New York. His
fiancee, as Kismet would have it, was Spanish.

(46:23):
He hears this track, and he
decides to write a love letter to his fiancee,
Marisol. And Evan calls me a week later and says, Rob
wrote to that track. He's gonna come up to my office. If you wanna
meet us, he'll play it for us. So I go up to Evan's office at
EMI Music Publishing. Rob comes. First time I'm meeting Rob. And they

(46:45):
play the track, the same track that I had sent to
Evan for Rob to write to. And Rob starts singing to
it, reading lyrics off a lined
yellow legal path, and he starts singing this
song. And the song ends, and he looks at Evan,
his publisher, and Evan looks at Rob and says, Rob, that's amazing.

(47:07):
You nailed it. That's a smash. And Rob says, thanks, Evan. And they both look
at me, and I'm shaking my head. And Evan's, like, flashing me daggers. Like,
why are you shaking your head? This guy just sold millions of matchbox 20
records. You know? You're you're making me look bad here. You know? You're embarrassing.
And I said, Rob, I don't think that you're all
the way there yet. And to Rob's credit, he's like, why not? What do you

(47:29):
hear? And I said, go to your chorus. And so he goes to
the chorus, which at the time was the part of the song that
said, and if you say, you this life is good and and
I'm like, I don't think that's a chorus. I think that's a pre chorus. I
think you can beat that melodically and lyrically. And
he said, okay. Let me try it. So he goes back

(47:51):
a week later. We do it again. He's like, what do you think of
this? And he sings a
a new melody to a new part that he's written.
The part of and if you say this life is good
enough, that becomes the then he sings a new melody
that ultimately became the chorus of smooth. But in the

(48:14):
category of nothing is ever easy, the original lyric
is give me something hot to make
me move. Get my motor running so I can
get to you. You've got the kind of loving that can
be so smooth. Give me your heart. Make it real or forget
about it. And I say to Rob, I'm like, oh my god. You're on to

(48:37):
something. But the first two lines of this song, get my
motor running, what is this? Born to be walking on. You know? So it's like
Exactly. And Evan turns to me. He's like, Pete, I
know Rob's writing really well. I don't think he wrote that line.
And I say to Rob, I'm like, Rob, did you write that line?
He's like, no. I felt bad for Ital. He wrote the line because

(48:59):
it was his idea. I'm like, how about we not feel bad for Ital?
Do you have a line there in your mind
that you would have done if Ital wasn't given those 2
lines to write? He's like, yeah. I said, what are they, Rob? He's
like, well, my lines are just like the ocean
under the moon. That's the same as the emotion that I get

(49:22):
from him. I said, Rob, do you wanna call me, tell him, tell him, or
should I? Wow. Yeah. So that's
how we got the song. But, again, nothing is ever
easy. At this point, Clive Davis has no idea
that this is going on. You know, I have these guys. We demoed the
song 6 times, 7 times, 8 times until my

(49:43):
ears tell me that now is the time that it's right, and this
demo can be played for Clive. So I go into Clive's
office. It was an A&R meeting at the time, and there are, like, 5 or
6 other people in the room, and I play them the song. And
I'm, like, literally holding my breath because I've spent nothing
but, you know, time on this song, kind of Frankenstein

(50:07):
monster, this idea that once was Room 17 and then was
born to be wild, but now it's smooth. And if Clive doesn't like it,
it's going to die right here, right now. Right?
And so I hold my breath for what seems like three and a half minutes.
The song ends. Clive looks at me. He's like, I love it.
I'm like, really? It's that easy? He's like, I love it. That sounds like a

(50:29):
smash. And that's not something you hear all the time from Clive. It's Right.
Yeah. Never from Clive. Never. Exactly. Finally, I exhale. He's
like, what does Carlos think of it? I'm like, Clive, I haven't played it for
Carlos yet. Because, you know, if you didn't like it, what was I gonna do?
Have him fall in love with it? He's like, oh, I love it. Send it
to send it to Carlos. So I exhale. I'm really

(50:50):
excited because now it's the easy part. Send it to Carlos. But, of course,
nothing is ever easy. I send it to Carlos. His manager calls me
the next day and says Carlos hates the song you sent him. He will never
ever record this song. Wow. Oh god. So, you
know, it's like a fucking marathon of just 1
idea to finish this album. You know? And luckily,

(51:13):
you know, I finally, after a week of pleading with Carlos
Santana, got the manager to say to me,
Pete, he's not gonna record the song. He hates it. But with all
due respect, he's known you now for two years. He's
known Clive Davis for thirty years. If Clive
Davis tells him himself that the song is a

(51:35):
hit, he'll try it. So I have to go to Clive's office again
and say, Clive, Carlos heard the song. He doesn't he's
not convinced that it's right for him or a hit song. He needs
to hear it from you. And so Clive, as Clive will do, says to
me, Pete, sit down, take out a notebook,
and I'm gonna dictate a fax, and you're gonna type it up and send it

(51:58):
to Carlos. And it basically said, Carlos, I
understand that you're having questions about this song, but trust me
on this. We're gonna get the right producer. We're going to,
you know, get the right band. This song has the potential to be a
big, big hit for you. And Carlos gets the facts, calls me back, and says,
thank you for doing what I asked you. I will agree to record the song.

(52:20):
And then once he recorded the song, he started to like it. Then it became
our first single, and the rest is history. Wow. So so
did you did you follow the song as he was doing it, or did he
just send you a finished mix or in the in the
recording process? I I wasn't in the studio with them.
Matt Sierletic, who had produced all the Matchbox twenty records at that

(52:41):
point, went out with Rob Thomas and Carlos' band,
and they recorded it. Okay. And, you know, so that
was that was his job. And there's 1 more funny story,
which is when Matt sent me his recording
remember, I'm, like, all in on this. I'm Robert De Niro on this. I've
spent nothing but, you know, smooth, smooth,

(53:04):
smooth $24.07 for the last month. So, of course, I
have the worst case of demo it is that you've ever gotten in your
lifetime. So when I heard Matt's recording of the song,
I was convinced that he had ruined the song because he put on
on this telephone effect on Rob's vocal on the verse. And when I heard it,
I was like, what is he doing? In hindsight, that that effect

(53:27):
on the final version of of the song works because it makes
the verse feel smaller. It makes the chorus feel bigger when he takes the
effect off. I didn't see that at the time. But
this is the genius of Clive Davis. I run into Clive's office, and I'm
like, Clive, I've got smooth back from Matt Soreletic. He ruined the song.
Listen to it. And I play it for him. And the genius of Clive is

(53:49):
he looked at me, and he knows demoitis when he sees it. He's
like, Pete, you did your job finding the song. Now let Matt
Sirlitic do his. Get out of my office.
And and he and he was absolutely right, and Matt was absolutely right.
And all of us, you know, to this day, like, guys who are in a
foxhole in Vietnam, we still joke about that. You know? Whenever I see Matt

(54:12):
Sorelitic, he's like, Pete, how's that telephone effect doing? You know? I'm like,
so You know, it's it's so funny because
Clive does have a history with that. You you know the story of, I Will
Always Love You. Of course. Yeah. That's the famous I mean, him and David
Foster almost came to blows over Yeah. 1 because
Clive it was the same principle. He had recorded a

(54:34):
guide vocal with Whitney, and Clive it was the opposite.
Clive absolutely loved it and said, no. This is the
with this with the silent intro Right. Where it was just her voice. Right. And
David was just about you know, he hit the ceiling, and David tells
the the same story. And, you know, and
Clive eventually, I think, just he ended up putting it out that way

(54:56):
Right. Against not only David didn't like that,
but David didn't even know that was happening. So and and
you're right. I mean, Clive's instinct on that was absolutely correct.
And and it it not only became a hit record, but it became a standard.
It became a classic. Yeah. A %. As did Smooth. As
did Smooth. Pete, staying with that thread with Clive, you know, you

(55:18):
once mentioned that your biggest career regret was not joining Clive
Davis when he formed Jay Records. What led you to feel that way at that
time? I was very immature at
that point as an executive because I had
just been part of this album that
was 1 of the best selling albums of all time. And right

(55:41):
as we're celebrating the 9 Grammys and the
fact that this album had sold over 30000000 copies worldwide, Clive
gets fired. And BMG, which was, you know,
owning Aristot at the time, they fired him. They
put LA Reid in to replace him. And LA Reed
started talking to me about, man, I give my A&R

(56:03):
people credit for the records they do, you know, knowing that
Clyde's reputation is as a credit hog and things like that. So
I also had for the first time in my career, I had advisers.
You know? What the hell does an A&R guy need advisers for? But I had
a, you know, I had a lawyer, and I had a manager, and I had
these people helping me as an A&R person. But what I didn't realize at the

(56:24):
time is they were only looking out for
the dollar sign because they figured the more money they can
get for me if they're on commission, the more money they're gonna get for
themselves. And so I mistakenly, you know, followed
their lead to go for the check rather than
realizing sometimes you go for less money in

(56:47):
the short term for more long term success. And the
minute I started working with LA Reed when he came and took over Arista, I
knew that there's a big difference between how LA Reed runs a record
company and how Clive Davis runs a record company. And my taste is the
Clive Davis taste is is is, you know, that way of running a record
company. But since I stayed with LA, I couldn't

(57:09):
go back to Clive until many years later. You know, once my
the bridge that I burned had you know, there was enough time to rebuild it
and repair the relationship. And I started working for Clive again
in 02/3 after I had left or
02/4 after I had left the first time in in
June 2000. And, you know, subsequent to that, after

(57:32):
that, you had, you know, other A&R jobs. You you worked with Epic. You worked
with several other companies. And then I believe in
02/8, at Atlantic asked you to A&R
Hailstorm's debut album. And after that, I
believe he asked you to run the Atlantic's A&R department. And my
question is what appealed to you about Craig's

(57:54):
particular offer after you had worked at a few other
big labels and your experience was not so pleasant
in the previous, like, four or five years? The five years that
I spent between EPIC and Atlantic, I started my
own company called Pure Tone Music. Right. And I thought that the
company was going to be a production company and a

(58:16):
publishing company. It turned out, thanks to Clive, that it
became a an A&R consulting company, which didn't
really exist at the time. But Clive called me up and said, hey. How'd
you like to come back and A&R some records for me? He never offered me
a full time job, and I never asked for 1. I just started A&R ing
records for him. And the the A&R community

(58:38):
is very small. So once I started doing that for Clive,
all my old buddies were calling and saying, hey. If you did that if you're
doing it for Clive, why don't you do it for us? So most of the
label groups became my clients. And before I knew it, I was A&R
ing more records as an independent A&R consultant
than I was as a full time employee at any of the record labels that

(58:59):
I worked for. So I did that for
02/78 until
Clive got fired again. And when Clive got fired again,
when, I guess, RCA I I don't even
remember. It's like, you know, soap operas from fifteen, twenty years
ago now. But he got bumped upstairs, and I'm like,

(59:19):
you know what? This was a great five year run independently if the phone
rings and someone has an offer for me
where it's, you know, compelling and I can, you
know, kind of further, you know, the
further the ANR career that I've had in some sort of
new capacity, you know, maybe it's it's the right time. And and

(59:42):
Craig at Atlantic, who I worked with on this hailstorm
record, and he liked what I did. I liked working with him. He
calls me in the February, and says, I think I'm gonna
shake stuff up. How'd you like to come in and be my new head of
A&R? And that was in '19 that was in 02/8. And I said,
Craig, I think your timing, you know, is right now. It wasn't right before,

(01:00:03):
but I think it's right now. And 1 thing that I sent to him, I
said, if I'm coming in, I wanna do this my way. I
wanna build my own staff. I wanna train future
A&R people. I wanna find kids. I wanna teach them how to
properly A&R records so that 1 day when I'm not doing this job,
you're gonna be in good hands because the future will have been trained

(01:00:24):
properly. And where we're talking right now, you know, 2
ago, a 70 people get laid off from Atlantic. It's gonna be a
completely new record label, and your new heads of A&R are the 2
kids that I hired when they were 16 and 18 who I trained
for ten years. So, you know, I'm excited to see what they do, and I
think that, hopefully, A&R wise, the label's in good hands. Hey,

(01:00:47):
Insiders. We hope that you've been enjoying our featured interview. Stay tuned
because we've got so much more value coming your way. But before we dive back
in, a word from our sponsor. Hey, Eric. As an artist, what do you find
are the most challenging aspects to a music career
especially when you're starting out? Well, I think 1 of the first things is just
trying to get the direction of who you are as an artist, where you wanna

(01:01:08):
go, where you wanna be. And you know, we've talked about it on the show
a lot. Who is your target audience? Who you are? Who what do you
stand for? What do you believe in? What do you think would resonate with an
audience. And so those are some of the things that I would feel being a
new artist. I obviously, what I know now is different because I know these things,
but for people that are out there like our audience that don't necessarily any

(01:01:28):
direction to go would be the first things that I would start off with. With.
And having the songs that incorporate those elements
that you're speaking of into it. That's so important today. Yeah. And I
think that's 1 of the reasons why we started MUBUTV and why we started this
new consulting service that we're offering to all of our insiders out there because
that is another 1 of the big things. I mean, that is the big thing

(01:01:48):
is like having the great songs. That's what it really starts off. Our friend,
Don Grierson always said, it always starts with a great song. So that's
probably besides putting together what your audience and what your target
audience is is the single most important thing. Where are your songs at
currently today? Are you collaborating with people? Are you trying to go
out to networking events where you can connect with other songwriters and stuff like that?

(01:02:10):
So Yeah. And what are your strengths? Exactly. You know, are are you a
strong lyric writer? Are you a strong melody writer? Are you a
strong musician, a player? Right. You know, and it's really important to
get really strong clarity on those issues before
proceeding. I totally agree, Rich. And, you know, with our consulting
services, we offer a myriad of different packages that we've made it

(01:02:32):
super affordable for everybody. So, you know, if you guys are interested out there
in connecting with us on a coaching call, you can visit
book.MUBUTV.com and start off with a free a
fifteen minute discovery call. Well, yeah. Absolutely. Then we start with
an initial fifteen minute call where we can get a sense of who you are,
what are the issues that you specifically have and want to work

(01:02:53):
on. Exactly. And we can go from there. Absolutely. Yeah. And we
tailor everything to your needs. It's not like a cookie cutter thing. We kind of
really wanna get to know who you are as an artist, where you at today,
what's the snapshot of you as an artist today and then start
trying to craft something that's tailor made for you. So again, if you're
interested, visit us at book.MUBUTV.com for your

(01:03:14):
fifteen minute discovery call. And this is a perfect segue, Pete. I mean,
you couldn't have written this better. You you know, you've not only discovered
incredible artists such as twenty one pilots and and Christina Perry,
Rival Sons, among many others, but a lesser known
aspect of your career, which is what you're just touching on, is your commitment to
discovering and developing A&R executives with Jeff Levin and Brandon

(01:03:35):
Davis, both Atlantic A&R executives being standout examples.
Could you share your philosophy on nurturing executive talent,
particularly your journey with Jeff, whom you've known since he was 16 and you kinda
just alluded to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's really important
because you have to pay it forward because, you know,
no A&R person is going to be able to do A&R

(01:03:58):
forever. You know? And so I met Jeff when he was
in high school. He was a junior in high school. And the first day that
I met him, we lived in adjoining towns in New Jersey.
And this is when I had my own business prior to coming to Atlantic.
And the guy who came over to help me with my IT
stuff and fix my computers, his son went to high school with

(01:04:20):
Jeff. So I met Jeff through the guy
who was my IT guy. And the minute that I met Jeff, I'm like, oh,
you're an A&R guy. And he said, What's that? He was 16.
I said, tomorrow after school, you're gonna come over here, and I'm
gonna start teaching you everything I know about A&R and how to make records. He's
like, okay. So he came over the next day, and whenever I

(01:04:42):
was on the phone with Clive or a client or, you know, whoever, I would
put it on speaker. Jeff would listen. And by the time that I
got the offer to go in and head up A&R at Atlantic, I said
to Craig, I'm coming, but I've been a kid with me. And he's like, who's
the kid? I said, his name is Jeff. And, you know, I'm training him. I
think 1 day, you know, he'll be part of the future of this company. And

(01:05:04):
Craig met him and liked him. And so Jeff came came on.
Originally, he was in college. So he would come up on the weekends, and he
would, you know, work on the weekends. And when he graduated, we hired him full
time. And that was you know, how long is he out of college
now? I think he's, like, thirty five, thirty six, so probably fifteen years
ago. Yeah. Very, very much so. And and I think that that's such a great

(01:05:26):
thing because we don't often hear about that. Often, you hear, you know
and I hear this from executives all the time that there isn't a mentoring
system. Right. And it's just so refreshing and and inspiring to hear
you speak about the importance of that particular aspect
of A&R because it is important and we are in a different
era. Pete, I wanna shift the conversation to another

(01:05:49):
area of your career, A&R wise, but which doesn't really get talked
about a lot. But I think it's unique to you among the A&R
aspect of your career and has been very very
successful, which is your incredible success with
Broadway cast show albums. And, you know, for our audience,
these include Hamilton, Mean Girls,

(01:06:10):
Dear Evan Hansen, which you won the Grammy for.
Now my understanding is that you first saw Hamilton at an
advanced reading at the Public Theater
before it opened off Broadway and wanted it for
Atlantic, but you couldn't close the deal. It's a great story.
Can you tell us that story, number 1, and why you felt

(01:06:33):
that that show was worth pursuing? Oh, a %.
I when I was a kid, Broadway music was
pop music. I remember being out on family drives in the
old Cadillac in the and listening to 8 tracks of a chorus line
and singing every song like it was a pop hit. So Broadway's
pop music was never far from my mind

(01:06:55):
because even if there's not a Broadway cast
album that is a cultural success, it just
means it's dormant. It doesn't mean it's gone away. It'll come back with the right,
you know, with the right collection of music. So when I was
starting at Atlantic or a couple months before I started at
Atlantic, my daughter, who is now a theatrical talent agent, but back

(01:07:17):
then was just a very eager preteen who
loved theater, would want me to bring her
to all these Broadway musicals. And I
didn't really have much interest at the time, but she would say, you know,
we gotta go. We gotta go. We gotta go. And 1 day, she drags me
to see the show called In the Heights. And this was 02/8, and I'm watching

(01:07:38):
this show, and I'm reading the playbill. And In the Heights was the
first show written for Broadway by Lin Manuel
Miranda, and I didn't know who that was at the time back in
02/8. But in reading the playbill, I found out that
Lin Manuel Miranda and I have something in common. We went to the same
college. And the college that we went to, Wesleyan University in

(01:07:58):
Connecticut, is a small college, small liberal arts college,
where, you know, we all kinda look at each other as, like,
outsiders, and we're all kind of rooting for each other's success whether we
know each other or not. But we we're always bonded by the fact that
we share this college as, you know, the place we went to school and
got our education. So after seeing in the heights and

(01:08:21):
falling in love with it and falling in love with Lynn, I called up Wesleyan,
and I said, can you connect me with this guy? He's a genius. And they're
like, sure. Here's his number. So I call him, and I'm like, you know, you
don't know me, but we went to the same school. I'm, you know, a little
older than you are, but we went to the we both went to Westland. I
just saw it in the heights. I think it's a genius show.

(01:08:42):
And whatever project you're doing next,
I'd like to do at Atlantic. I'm about to join Atlantic as the as head
of A&R. It's like, great. Let's stay in touch. So fast forward a
few years later, and Lynn, as a writer,
was signed and is still signed to Warner Chapel, the
publishing division of Warner Music Group. And the publisher

(01:09:05):
who was overseeing Lynn's work at the time is a guy named Sean Flavin,
who's now at Concord Theatricals. But at the time, he was in charge
of the theatrical writers at Warner Chapel, and he knew my in the
hype story. So he comes to me 1 day. He's like, hey, Pete.
Remember your conversation with Lynn. His new show is
ready to be seen. It's not for public performance yet, but if you

(01:09:27):
wanna come to a reading, there's gonna be a reading of the show
downtown opposite the Public Theater in a little workshop room.
Some other theatrical people are gonna be there giving him notes if you
wanna sit in, and, you know, you and I can go down and see it.
And that was Hamilton. And I remember as clear as day sitting next to
Steven Schwartz, who wrote, you know, Wicked and Godspell and Pippen

(01:09:49):
and watching him write notes for Lynn, you know,
on this early iteration of Hamilton and being really, really
fascinated by what I had seen because it was completely
different from anything I had ever seen staged before. So I went
back to my bosses at Atlantic, and Atlantic had not
done a cast album in probably a decade at that

(01:10:11):
point. And I said, I I wanna do this cast album,
and they crunched the numbers. And they said, this doesn't make sense
financially because no cast album has sold over
50000 units or a hundred thousand units in the last five years or
whatever it was. And I said, yeah. But it doesn't matter. This, you know, this
is 1 like Santana Supernatural. I'm saying to myself, you gotta go all night.

(01:10:32):
And it's either gonna work or it's not, but you gotta give it a shot.
And so Craig, you know, who is the the
creative's creative, Craig Hellman, like, you know, the best boss you
can have as an A&R person because he's a music fan. The joke
is, you know, you cut Craig open, he bleeds vinyl. Right?
So, you know, that's the guy. He's, you know, got over 2000000 pieces

(01:10:54):
of vinyl in his own personal personal collection. That's the type of guy as
an A&R person you wanna work with. Right? So I pitch Craig on this,
and Craig's all in. He's like, I love this idea. Let's take a meeting with
with Lynn. So we take the meeting with Lynn, and we
realize that even though we're the first record label to reach out and
we're the first record label to have the meeting with Lynn, you know,

(01:11:16):
at some point, the word starts to get out that this show,
you know, could be something. So other labels start circling.
It always makes a big deal with any project or any
artist when you are first because what it means when you're
first is that, you know, it's not like you heard it from another
A&R person or there is hype or there's research. It's just you're

(01:11:38):
believing before anybody else. So that always counts for something, but that
doesn't necessarily mean that you're gonna get the project. So
what I start hearing is that Lynn is taking other
meetings, and he's taking meetings with Sony, with a guy
named Salam Remy, who is a legendary hip hop
producer. He's taking meetings with Warner Brothers

(01:12:00):
Records, our sister label at Warner Music Group, you know, Atlantic sister
label. He's taking meetings with Mike Elizondo, who's doing A&R
at Warner Brothers at the time, but is also a legendary hip hop producer.
And Craig and I are big music fans, but we're not legendary hip hop producers.
And what Lynn keeps saying to us is, I want
this to be as credible a show with hip hop heads

(01:12:23):
as I want it to be with theater people. And the fact
that these 2 other labels came in after the fact
with A&R people on their staffs who were also record
producers who also had hip hop credentials, like,
legitimate hip hop credentials. I was like I said to Craig one day. I said,
Craig, we're fucked. We're not getting this. You know? Unless

(01:12:44):
we can figure out our move on the chessboard for, like
you know, to to, like, checkmate this, I I don't see
how we do it. And he said, well, we can't lose this. Figure it
out. You know? So then I realized, oh, shit. The answer is sitting right in
front of me. There's an A&R guy at Atlantic named Riggs Morales,
and Riggs has a lot even though they don't know each other

(01:13:07):
yet, Riggs and Lynn have a lot in common. They have a very similar
background. They're both hip hop heads. They're both intellectuals.
Riggs came up as a journalist. He wrote the unsigned height
column in the source that, you know, 1 day, he goes through a
box of cassettes, listens to something. And like John Landau did
with I have seen the future of rock and roll and its name is Bruce

(01:13:29):
Springsteen, Riggs does the hip hop equivalent. I have heard the future of hip hop
and his name is Eminem. Right? So he writes that comp
in unsigned hype for the source, and it ends up getting
him an A&R job at Shady Records where he signs
50¢ and, you know, Willie becomes this, you
know, hip hop bonafide in that world. And Atlantic

(01:13:51):
hires Riggs, and he's still pretty new on the job. So he's not doing
a ton at the time. He's still new. I'm like, okay. This is my
Hail Mary. I call Riggs, and I'm like, hey. I need your help. He's
like, yeah. Yeah. What you got? What you got? And I'm like, this is gonna
sound weird. There is this guy. His name is Lin Manuel
Miranda. He's written a hip hop musical

(01:14:12):
about the founding fathers. It's called Hamilton. And
right now, he's meeting with with Salam. He's meeting with
Elizondo. Craig and I are taking good meetings with him, but we need
a hip hop cosign. What do you think? What what can he's like,
oh, it sounds great. He's like, have you called the roots? And I'm like, oh
my god. That's a great idea, Riggs. I said, no. I haven't called the

(01:14:34):
Roots. But if you call the Roots and you can get the
Roots to see, you know, a preview of this show
and sign on its executive producers of this album, checkmate.
We got it. And Riggs is like, I got you. Give me a minute. And
he calls me back, like, maybe a couple days later. He's like, yeah. They're
in. So we introduced Riggs to Lynn. We

(01:14:55):
introduced the roots to Lynn, and we got the deal. And the
good news about that is that to this day,
Riggs and Lynn are like brothers. They talk to each other multiple times a
day. You know, Riggs is as much a part
of Lynn's life now as anybody. And so for
for me as a head of A&R, I'm like, that's part of my job too.

(01:15:18):
That part of the job is knowing when you're not going to be
able to close yourself. You know, how do you
close? What, you know, what tools do you have in your
toolbox that maybe you're not using? And, you know, without
rigs, we don't get the roots, and without the roots, we don't get them. Unbelievable.
You know, so much of what you're saying, you know, is about dreaming and believing.

(01:15:40):
And and, you know, Pete, you once said, you know, part of being an A&R
person is being a dreamer, and you have to be able to shut your eyes
and imagine the act that is showcasing for you in front
of, you know, like playing at Madison Square Garden. And and the only people
that are dreamers are the A&R people. Do you feel that we still
have that quality in A&R today? Not as much as we should

(01:16:03):
because there's, you know, there's whole there's a whole world now
of A&R done by A&R research people and analytics
and coders and computer programmers and, you know, it's
yeah. Sure. You wanna know what the audience is gravitating towards,
but no algorithm was going to identify
and rewrite smooth. No algorithm was going

(01:16:26):
to introduce the roots to Lin Manuel Miranda. You know? There's
still gotta be a human element to it. Figure out,
okay. If we do this and this and this,
if we change this lyric and we make this chorus a
prechorus, you know, things like that, there gotta be dreamers. Right. You
know? That that's why I love, you know,

(01:16:48):
the the A&R guys of the past, you know, who had
this vision. You know, Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records
who signs Aretha Franklin after she had failed as an
artist at Columbia Records. He's like, she's an amazing artist, but
they're not making the right records on her. Yeah. They got the a right, but
they got the r wrong. So you know what we're gonna do? Jerry Wexler

(01:17:11):
says when we get Aretha Franklin to Atlantic Records, we're gonna put her
in church, and that's exactly what he did. You know? And so
it's basically these gospel sessions with pop lyrics,
and that's where Aretha Franklin shone. You know? That's where she was
able to shine, and that's what makes Jerry Wexler one of the greatest
people of all time. So I'm always looking around to

(01:17:34):
see who's it gonna be. You know? Who's gonna have that
vision to be able to connect dots that don't exist
right now to be able to create something
that the audience is not going to realize
that they've always wanted. And that's, you know, that's the genius and the magic of
the hang on. Yeah. It it it definitely is and and you know you

(01:17:57):
you sometimes see that at at at labels on a
different level and and you and and maybe I'm wrong on this, but
you know when when you had your role as president of A&R at Atlantic,
there was a time when you also took on the task of relaunching the
iconic ATCO label. And I'm I'm just curious, what
was the motivation behind resurrecting this storied

(01:18:19):
label at that particular time? Was it a belief that artists had been
left behind, or was it that more talent needed to come
into the Atlantic fold? What what was that at the time?
I I think it was the opportunity for
my bosses, Craig and Julie Greenwald, to give me the opportunity

(01:18:39):
to be the president of a label inside of Atlantic because
in the twenty year run that Julie and Craig had as a co chairman, they
never had president of the label. So this was the opportunity for them to
say, hey. We see you. We see the job you're doing. Why
don't we kind of dust off this imprint and give you the opportunity
to to work, you know, with new artists on Adco. Okay. Totally makes

(01:19:02):
sense. You know, Pete, your your vast knowledge of music history
must inevitably impact your ANR choices. And I'm curious, how
does this perspective influence the way that you evaluate emerging
artists today? I think it's always the more I can study the past
and the more I could learn about the history of recorded music,
it's almost like you have a file cabinet in

(01:19:24):
your brain where anything you're listening
to, you can cross reference
against any song that's come before, any artist
that's come before. You know, not necessarily, oh, this uses the
same chords or this lyric is similar to that song, but it's more
like, oh, this artist is doing something in a way

(01:19:46):
that hasn't been done since x.
And when x did it, you know, like the BB King analogy. Right? It's like
you're always looking to see, okay. This artist came up with the
idea and did it, but they were only able to get to the 50 yard
line. You know? What if I take the idea and just make it better? You
know? What if there's a guitar player that you hear tomorrow that,

(01:20:08):
you know, plays licks like Prince or like Jimi Hendrix
but is missing something? What is the added
special sauce that we could suggest that they add to
help their audience grow? You know, it's always like that. And
the more that I can study the past music is infinite,
so there are always gonna be things to learn. And, you know,

(01:20:30):
the history of contemporary music is fascinating.
You know? And you can just go down these rabbit holes and learn and
learn. You know? I'm actually teaching a class at the Berkeley College of
Music this semester on the history of A&R, And we're
studying people that I didn't even know a ton about. You
know? Like, last week, we were studying this woman named Lillian McMurray who

(01:20:53):
had a label in the called Trumpet Records in
Mississippi, and it was a white woman during segregation. She
signed Sonny Boy Williamson and Elmore James and, you know, and she this
was this white woman in the middle of a segregated community
in Jackson, Mississippi without any music experience or
any business experience, and she just loved the music. And,

(01:21:15):
you know, it's fascinating because people like her, people like
Helen Oakley Dance or Miriam Abramson or any of these women
from a generation or 2 ago, you know, their stories are
being lost. Nobody is talking about
the pioneering work that they did. So, you know, like
I said, it just goes in the file cabinet. And maybe, you know, when

(01:21:38):
I'm teaching 1 of these classes, there's a young woman who's studying
music business in the class who raises her hand, who has the potential
to be the next Lillian McMurray or the next telephony dancer. Yeah. And and
and well, I'm trying to remember her last name. Florence
Greenberg. Yeah. Of course. Greenberg. Yeah. The famous Yeah. Who had,
Dionne Warwick and several others in in her label. I think it was in the

(01:22:01):
or Yeah. It was called Scepter Records. Scepter. That's
it. I yeah. And the the fascinating thing about Florence
Greenberg is do you know how old she was when she
decided that she was going to try to work
in music? No. She was 43 years old.
Wow. I did not know that. She was a she was a suburban

(01:22:23):
housewife in New Jersey. Her daughters came home from school 1
day and said, mom, the girls who did the talent show and won, they're
amazing. She's like, bring them over the house. The girls come over the house. She's
like, you guys are amazing. I'm gonna record you, and that was The Shirelles.
You know, you can't make this up. Right? The the history is so
fascinating that as an A&R person,

(01:22:46):
you wanna recreate that history. You wanna, you know, put your
part and your imprint on the music
of tomorrow the way that these pioneers did it before. And the more
that we can learn from their stories, you know, the more that we're
armed with how they did it so that, hopefully, we can do it, you know,
for a new generation. Absolutely. You know, as you were speaking,

(01:23:09):
Pete, you know, you've you you your history
with Atlantic, I mean, anybody who knows anything about the music
business knows that is truly 1 of the most
storied and historic labels. I mean, you mentioned, you know, Aretha Franklin,
who Atlantic broke, and and I'm sure you've seen, you know, the house that Amit
built, you know, the great and and if anybody who has not seen that documentary,

(01:23:31):
that's a must. Must. Yeah. That's an absolute must see. You know, just a
short deviation on that story, Pete. I remember having a conversation
be about two years before he died with Seymour Stein. He was out here at
Muse Expo, and we were talking over lunch. He had
not seen it. He had not seen the documentary, and and I went
out that night and bought the DVD and

(01:23:54):
mailed it to his house just so he would see it. Oh, yeah. Because he
he literally hadn't seen it, and he knew Ahmed very, very, very well
for many years and and didn't see it. And and he that's a man who,
I mean, you probably had many conversations with him, really knew music
history. And so for him I mean, the fascinating thing
about Seymour, and I got to know Seymour really well when we worked

(01:24:16):
together when I was at Atlantic, and he was still inside the Warner Music
Group building. Right. You know, even though he's well known, like, at
Sire, you know, for artists like the
Ramones and the Talking Heads and, you know, being the
American label for the Smiths and Depeche Mode, the you know, and,
obviously, Madonna. The thing about Seymour is do you know what his

(01:24:39):
favorite song was of all time? I think it was yes. I
I've heard him mention it before. It was some song from, like, what, the or
Well, it's the French national anthem in French. Oh,
okay. He he go he goes so much
deeper. Yeah. And then, you know, I I used this this
phrase earlier about Craig Calvin when I said you cut him open and he

(01:25:01):
bleeds vinyl. Right. That's a that's a quote that I
stole from a story about Seymour Stein. Because Seymour
Stein, when he was a kid, he worked in the chart department
at Billboard magazine. And he was able, as a
teenager, to sit in the record review meetings at
Billboard. And in the record review meetings, this was an era where a

(01:25:23):
record review, a single review in Billboard magazine could break a song. And
because everybody read it, and that's what the DJs would play, and that's what the
record stores would buy if the billboard picked it. So the record
labels used to show up at these meetings to
pitch their new singles to the singles meeting at Billboard.
And 1 day, a man named Sid Nathan Yes. Comes into the

(01:25:45):
singles meet at Billboard magazine, and
Sid is in from Cincinnati. He has a label called King Records, most
notably for signing and breaking James Brown. But
Sid is right out of central casting. Short, fat, cigar,
obnoxious, you know Right. With a gravelly voice. And he meets
Seymour. And he says to Seymour, you've gotta come and spend

(01:26:07):
your summers in Cincinnati learning the business. And Seymour
says, I'm 16 years old. You're gonna have to convince my parents.
So he comes over to I I think either
the parents went to meet Sid, I think. I don't think they went to,
Seymour's apartment. But the the parents went to meet Sid,
and Sid says to the parents, he has to

(01:26:29):
go to Cincinnati next summer. And the
parents are like, why? You don't understand. Your kid has shellac
in his veins.
Exactly. Sid saw it. He saw it in Seymour. Absolutely.
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It's the same thing that I that same thing that I saw

(01:26:49):
in Jeff Levin and, you know, hopefully, that Charles Koppelman and Clive
Davis on me. You know? It's like we have to, you know, pay it forward,
and we have to find the next, you know, we have to find the
next Sid Nathans who can find the next Seymour Stein to keep this moving, you
know, keep it keep it going. Absolutely. I wanna talk to
you about another aspect of the A&R process that often doesn't

(01:27:11):
get talked about, and that is, you know, you have worked in your career with
thousands of artists and bands. And
having worked with so many of them in so many aspects of this
industry in in in your own career, Can you talk about
what you have observed? And you don't have to name names, but just what specific
factors do you feel holds artists back

(01:27:32):
from achieving success in their careers? I think a lot of artists are
scared. I think that the reason that
Carlos Santana hated Smooth so much is
because I think, viscerally, he knew that if he
recorded this song and released the song, it would change his life. And did he
want to be in the spotlight again? Did he want to be that

(01:27:54):
famous again? You know, it's scary because an a
successful artist's life is not a normal life.
And so a lot of times, you know, the artists are you know, they're excited
to be signed. They're excited to be making a career making music, but they're
scared. And, you know, you look at the roster on on
Atlantic. One of the hardest working artists on the Atlantic

(01:28:16):
roster is Ed Sheeran. He doesn't need to work hard, yet
he works harder than most every new artist there because
he doesn't know when this ride is gonna stop. And so if
he sees his schedule and there's, like, an
hour hole in it, You know, why is this empty? Oh, we we wanted
to give you a lunch break. No. Fill it. You know? Because he wants to

(01:28:38):
work as hard as he can to make sure that he's
not leaving anything on the table. And I think that a lot of
times, the artist just don't either don't want it hard
enough or don't wanna work hard enough. I've had artists who have
booked national tours who call me and say I need to cancel my tour.
I'm like, why do you need to cancel your tour? I have a sore throat.

(01:29:01):
I'm like, you don't think it's gonna you don't think it's gonna get better? You
know? They're just there there's fear that goes with it. And, you know,
fear is what often leads to, you know, abusing
substances and, you know, like, the the dark
roads that we've all seen and and read about with artists who,
you know, go off the deep end. But they just have to have the right

(01:29:22):
head on their shoulders, and they have to have a work ethic that is going
to even once they're successful, to have the work ethic
that's going to make them work harder than everybody else in the room. Yeah.
You know, it it's so interesting because have you seen the
defiant ones, the documentary, the defiant ones? That's when I
would recommend you watch. It's it's it's it's a 4 part documentary,

(01:29:45):
but it's about the life of Jimmy Iovine and doctor Dre and
how those 2 lives intersect. But you learn a lot of you learn a
lot about Jimmy Iovine. And he said, you know, 1 of the things
that I learned about the nature of my character as a
man is that, you know, fear is a very,
very strong, you know, headwind,

(01:30:07):
and it can slow you down. And he said, 1 of the things that
I feel was a major element in
my life of overcoming that was making fear emotionally and
psychologically for me a tailwind. And he said, you know,
that that was so important in terms of his early career because
he always felt he had to work twice as hard as the next guy

(01:30:29):
just to, you know, get by. And Right. He's felt
that way early in his career, you know, and it was kind of like, well,
if John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen think I can do this, well, I guess I
can, but you know that that kind of doubt that you speak about and that
kind of fear, it does hold people back, and I'm so glad you talked about
the work ethic because we talk about that a lot on this show. Everybody I

(01:30:51):
ask is that, especially people who deal with creative talent, I ask A&R people
and managers especially, what are the non creative
qualities that you look for once you're interested in an artist?
And, you know, they all talk about that work ethic, that drive, you know,
Andy Gould famously said, you know, if if
1 of the worst things that can happen is when you believe in an artist

(01:31:13):
and you actually end up even working with them and you realize,
if you're really honest in the darkest moments of the night, that
you want this more than the artist.
He said it's heartbreaking. And he said, and I've been through that a couple
times where I've worked with somebody, yeah, two or three years, and
you realize you want it more than they do. And he said, that's

(01:31:36):
just it's heartbreaking because you know you can't be the artist,
you can't write the songs, you can't perform the shows. It's devastating,
and I don't think a lot of people get that just because we assume because
everybody is, like, incredibly talented. Of course, they're driven and
hard. No. They're not. They're not all Ed Sheerans. Right. Yeah.
Right. And and I would say the same thing to anyone who's listening who

(01:31:58):
wants to have a career in A&R is you've gotta work harder than anyone
else. Because if you're not, someone else is. And you've gotta show
up. Because if you get a call to be somewhere and it's one in
the morning and you're tired, you know, and you decide not to show up,
someone's gonna take that call and they are gonna show up. And maybe that's the
call that Jimmy Iovine got on Christmas Eve to come and get coffee

(01:32:20):
for John Lennon. Yeah. You know? And if he doesn't show up, then somebody else
is getting that gig. And if somebody else is getting that gig, maybe two
years later, Jimmy Iovine is not engineering Bruce Springsteen, and
maybe ten years later, Jimmy Iovine is not producing you too. You
know? You have to show up and you have to work hard because if
you don't, someone is gonna show up and they're gonna work harder. You know, Pete,

(01:32:42):
we touched on this earlier when you were referring to the
analogies of the baseball players and the at bats and all that stuff. And I'm
curious, your career has been marked by great successes, but undoubtedly,
I also imagine there have been missteps along the way. And I'm curious,
what have both your achievements and challenges revealed to
you about yourself? You know, again, I I look at Ted

(01:33:05):
Williams, you know, the greatest baseball hitter of all time. You know, had a
lifetime batting average over 400. That means that Ted Williams
got out, you know, made an app 6 out of 10 times.
So I'm not Ted Williams, but if I can be batting
300, you know, let me be in the conversation for Cooperstown. You
know? And that's what I try to do. It's like you're not gonna get it

(01:33:27):
right all the time because the audience is fickle, And you
don't know, you know, you don't always know what they're gonna like and what they're
not gonna like. So the failures that I've had, I'm like, well, I guess this
is a record that I'm just gonna be listening to myself for fun, you know,
as opposed to walking down the street and, you
know, someone is blasting 1 of the songs that I've been involved

(01:33:48):
with from their car and just having the you know, bopping up and down
with a big smile on their face and having the best time. And I can
pat myself on the back, you know, because without me,
maybe we're not having this moment where this person is
popping in the car. You know? Yeah. It it's it's it's it's interesting,
Pete, because, you know, you you have throughout this conversation, I think

(01:34:10):
it's evident to anyone listening that you have a very,
very strong and profound sense of curiosity
about music, about, you know, history and so forth,
and your belief in the importance of, you know, others
like A&R executives that you work with also being well versed in music
history. It inspired the creation of a project called Rock

(01:34:32):
and Roll High School in 02/14. And
for our audience, what sparked the idea for this project, and what did you
hope to achieve with it? Well, I realized going back to our our young
friend, Jeff Levin, who is the young A&R guy who I met when he was
16. When he started working for me at Atlantic after he graduated from
college, he showed up at work 1 day wearing a T shirt that

(01:34:55):
had the iconic Andy Warhol banana
album cover of the Velvet Underground. Yeah. But he was wearing it,
and I've known him since he's 16 years old. So I
knew the answer I was gonna get when I asked him the question. I'm like,
why are you wearing this T shirt? He's like, what do you mean? It's cool.
I'm like, yeah. But you have no idea who the band is. He's like,

(01:35:17):
yes. I do. I'm like, who's the band? He's
like, I don't know. But who's the lead who's the
lead singer? I don't know. Name 1 song. I don't
know. And after, you know, after,
like, 10 I don't knows, he turns the conversation
around, and he challenges me. He's like, you don't

(01:35:39):
understand. You know? Nobody my age
knows this stuff. And I said, well, you're doing
A&R. You should know. Because if you're signing
a band whose dad brought them up on the Velvet
Underground Right. Or the Stooges or the MC five,
you should know this music. And he's like, nobody my age knows this, and

(01:36:01):
I'm gonna prove it to you. And within five minutes, he's got
10 kids, like, all 25 or younger sitting in
my office. And I start asking them the basics.
Like, who, you know, who were the brothers and the kinks? Nobody
knows. Right. You know, who was the lead singer of blah blah blah? Nobody
knows. Finally, I'm like, who was the original lead singer of

(01:36:23):
Van Halen? Girl raises her hand. I'm like, oh, finally. She's like, Eddie Van
Halen. I'm like, oh my god. That'd be good.
So so I said, okay, Jeff. You're right.
Nobody your age knows anything. You've proven this is really
depressing, but you've proven your point. So
this is what we're gonna do. Starting next week, I'm

(01:36:45):
gonna hold class, and I'm gonna teach all the
young and our people, all the young creatives, anyone who wants to
come about the history of contemporary music. We're gonna start in
1955, dawn of the rock era, and we're gonna go chronologically
to the present day. So I said to the room, I said, it's optional
for all of you, and then I point to Jeff. It's mandatory for you. And

(01:37:07):
so Jeff and 5 other people show up to the first one. We start
talking about, you know, Chuck Berry and Bill Haley and Buddy
Holly and, like, all the little Richard, like, all the great,
you know, early pioneers of rock and roll. And they're getting really
into it because we're showing videos and we're listening to songs, and and
it's exciting. And the next week, you know, we go up a decade.

(01:37:29):
And instead of 6 people there, there are 20 people there. By the time we
finished, there were, like, over a hundred people coming because they wanted to learn about
the history of music. Then when the pandemic happened, I
had start I had started to bring in guests because
I didn't wanna keep repeating, okay. Let's do the
again after we got to present day. So I started bringing in

(01:37:50):
guests, and I would interview them. So I interviewed Clive Davis,
and I interviewed Graham Nash, and I interviewed all these people
who were, you know, either part of my life or part of
Atlantic's life, and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people would show
up to see these interviews. And then when the pandemic happened, I got a
call from the global head of HR at Warner Visa Group who said, you know

(01:38:12):
those interviews you do? Can you do that on
Zoom for the entire Warner Music Group globally while
everyone is working remote? And I said, sure. No problem.
So I started doing these interviews on Zoom,
and I realized if I'm doing them on Zoom, I'll just press record, and I
will repurpose it as a podcast. And we called the podcast rock and roll

(01:38:34):
high school. We've now done three seasons, close to 50 episodes.
And it's fascinating for me to be able to talk to
people like the temptations, like Eddie
Lavert from the OJ's, like Gamble and Huff, Jimmy Webb, Nile
Rogers, you know, the great the great songwriters, Paul Williams,
Jeff Barry, Barry Mann, and then just great, you know, whether they're

(01:38:57):
artists like Peter Frampton or Todd Rundgren or Gloria Gaynor
talking about how she was in a full body brace recording I Will Survive,
where it was kind of like life imitating art. You know? And, like,
these fascinating stories. And so
that, you know, that's available now, three seasons, anywhere you listen
to podcasts called Rock and Roll High School. We're recording season 4 now, and

(01:39:19):
the goal is to educate. You know? So if there's some young kid
out there who's wearing the Velvet Underground shirt
but doesn't know why they're wearing it, well, listen to our podcast, and
then you can learn something. Yeah. It gives them context. Yeah. It's really great. And
we'll definitely share that on the, show notes of the show. I I wanted to
ask you, Pete. You know, you you've just stepped back from your role as president

(01:39:41):
of A&R at Atlantic to launch Pure Tone Records. What inspired you
to take this new direction at this point in your career? I think that
any time that you're running A&R for a major
label, you know, it's not a job for life.
You know? The it's it's basically you're gonna have your run,
and then you're gonna move on. It's it's I think it's best for

(01:40:03):
you, and it's best for the label to get some new,
you know, creative ideas in there. I was there for sixteen years. I gave it
all I got, and now I'm ready to own my own stuff. You know?
Because as as much success as you can have as an A&R
person for a major label, you're you're not
owning the content. You're, you know, you're doing a

(01:40:25):
service. You're working. You're an employee. You might get a royalty here and there, which
is nice. But if you could actually own what you know,
invest your own money and have ownership
with the artist in what they're creating, then that's
definitely the next step for someone who's been doing it for multiple
decades. Because I already do it on the publishing side, and the publishing side is

(01:40:48):
such a brilliant, you know, brilliant career because if
you pick right on the publishing side and you find a writer,
you know, who's just starting out and you invest in that writer when they
need the investment because they they're not making any
money from their songwriting, and you invest in them and
you introduce them to people and you give them critique on

(01:41:10):
their on their songwriting, it's kind of teaching a kid how to ride
a bicycle. In the beginning, you have training wheels. You take the training
wheels off, and then some of these writers have gone on to be, you know,
some of the biggest pop writers of the last decade. And there's ownership there
because you own the copyrights. So if the copyright
becomes I will always love you or 1 of these songs that you referred

(01:41:32):
to, Rich, earlier as a standard, you actually have a so you
actually have stake in it. You have ownership in it. So kind of
where, you know, my next, you know, my next
career path is is heading, and so far so good. That's
good. I I we're so glad to hear it. You know, we we've talked
about this in in regards to you, and you've mentioned several of

(01:41:54):
them. And I would imagine a man like you has several. But throughout
your life, what books or films or documentaries
have been particularly inspiring to you professionally speaking
that you would recommend to our audience that they should be watching? I I took
a book with me on my honeymoon. I've been married close to thirty years. I
took a book with me on my my honeymoon. I don't know why I picked

(01:42:17):
it up, but it was a memoir of a famous record executive
who we've actually mentioned earlier in this conversation. And I had no
connection to him, to the label, to anything at the comics. Picked
up the book, And I read it, and it was so touching
to me. It was a book called the Rhythm and the Blues, and it was
a memoir of Jerry Wexler written with David Rich. And I

(01:42:39):
read it on my honeymoon, and it just stuck with me
that, you know, this was a guy who was so
intelligent and so erudite. If you read memos
that he wrote, you know, as the head of Atlantic with Ahmed, you know, in
the time that they ran the label together, It's like a master class in
grammar and elocution. You know? It's like I would have to go to a dictionary

(01:43:01):
and look up some of these words. It's classic. I would highly,
highly recommend that book because there's a humanity to it
where he gets into the depths of his personal story. And, you know,
it's beautiful. It's it'll have you, you know, crying and just
kind of being fully enmeshed
in the healing power of music. That's 1

(01:43:24):
book. Sticking with the Atlantic, you know, the Atlantic
team from the payday of Atlantic, there is an incredible
documentary film about Tom Dowd. Tom
Dowd, along with Ahmed Erdegan and Jerry
Wexler, was the sonic architect of Atlantic
in its heyday. You know, kind of crafted art of

(01:43:45):
multitrack recording and was a was a scientist by
trade, actually worked on the Manhattan Project, during World War two
and went to college after World War two to study physics. But
since the Manhattan Project was classified, he knew more
about physics than the professor did, and the professor thought he was making everything
up and failed him. So he decided to go into music

(01:44:08):
and started engineering music sessions and
became a legendary engineer at Atlantic, engineered, you know, all
those Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin sessions, and ultimately went on
to be 1 of the most legendary produce record producers of all time.
Produced Leila for Derek and the Domino's, produced all the Eric Clapton
records, produced all the Allman Brothers records, produced all the Rod Stewart

(01:44:30):
records. Genius genius, but, like, the nicest man
you'll ever meet. And he there's a documentary called Tom
Dowd and the Language of Music about his life and career that's
also happening. Great great documentary. That is a great documentary. He also
features in the, Atlantic Records documentary, the house that Ahmed built.
Ahmed built. Yeah. Yeah. He's in that as well. You know, Pete, I wanted to

(01:44:52):
ask you. For those who aspire to build a career in A&R today,
what key advice would you offer to help them navigate the evolving music
industry today? I think it's all about finding
talent for an audience who doesn't know that's what's
missing in their lives. Right? So how do you figure out what an
audience wants to hear before they wanna hear

(01:45:14):
it? And like we said before, you know, the
TikToks of the world, those were all shortcuts. And, you
know, I'm not sure if Bob Dylan or Radiohead, you know,
are gonna come from TikTok, the next ones. You know? So you have to
figure out you find these people. I just reread the biography
of John Hammond and which I I spoke to my class at

(01:45:37):
Berkeley, and that's that's also a great book. It's called The Producer,
Biography of John Hammond by a writer named Dunstan Prowell, really well written
book. And John Hammond, arguably the greatest A&R guy of all time,
you know, discovered Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Betty Goodman,
Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen. I mean, it goes on Aretha Franklin the first time at
Columbia, goes on and on and on. But how

(01:45:59):
did he realize that an artist like Bob
Dylan or an artist like Bruce Springsteen is what the audience
wanted? And I think that he was able to hear something
special before anyone other than the artist themselves
knew that it was special. And how can we, as the next

(01:46:19):
generation of A&R people, train our ears to understand that?
And, you know, there's a kid out there, you know, who's 16 or 17
who's as obsessed with music as I was at that age or it's
Seymour Stein was at that age, and they're just gonna have to figure out how
you do it in 2025. How do you do it in 2026? How do
you use the tools of technology that are at your fingertips

(01:46:41):
now, but that you don't take the cheap way out by seeing, you know,
what everybody is gravitating towards on TikTok. How do you
find the next arena headline or the next stadium headline? Like,
shut your eyes, listen to something, and say, you know what? 1 day in the
not too distant future, I could visualize 20000 people
paying a hard ticket to to see this person has Lyme Madison Square Garden.

(01:47:04):
Yeah. It's, that's that is so true. Pete, I I I
wanna turn the question around 1 little aspect,
which is as the industry evolves, what insights would you
offer artists and bands to assist them in
navigating their careers effectively if they're committed to building a career
in music today? I think the most important thing is finding your audience.

(01:47:26):
You know, getting signed to a record label doesn't matter. You know, having
fans in the music business who do A&R doesn't matter. What
only matters is connecting your art
with your audience. And if you can't figure
that out, if you're just making music, but you're not sure how to connect the
dots between the audience who, you know, should be gravitating

(01:47:49):
towards the music, well, maybe then you need an A&R guy to help you or
an A&R gal to help you because we're good at connecting the
dots in a way sometimes the artist can't see or they're just too
kind of in it to see, and they gotta step back to see it.
But the artist should be making music for
their audience, for their fandom. You know, you 1 of the

(01:48:11):
buzzwords of the last couple of years in the music business is, you
know, fan, super fan, fan engagement. You know, the
artist can build their own community fan by
fan by fan. And there are ways that artists now can
communicate directly with the fan that they weren't able to
do a generation ago or 2 generations ago. You know, if I loved an

(01:48:33):
artist when I was growing up as a teenager, you know, what? There's
a PO box written address written on the
back of an album that I could send this self addressed stamped envelope to,
and maybe I'll get a signed photo. You know? Now the artist can call
you. Right. Exactly. Thanks for coming to my show
last night, Pete. Glad you were there.

(01:48:55):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Pete, what's the best way that people can reach
you? They wanna get in touch with you? I'm on social media. I'm on
Instagram. I'm on Facebook. You know, Rock and Roll High School has
a website. You know, if you wanna find me, you can find me. That's it.
Great. And and my I you know, I'm still working at Atlantic even though
I'm not running the A&R department. I'm still A&R ing my projects

(01:49:17):
there, and I still have 2 artists that are assigned to my pure tone
label that run through Atlantic. So you could find me at my Atlantic Records
email as well, which is just pete dot ganp or @AtlanticRecords.com,
and I'm always happy to to chat with people who reach out. Pete,
you know, from from the bottom of of both of our hearts, we
cannot thank you enough, truly It was a great conversation. The time,

(01:49:39):
and this has been an absolutely fascinating
and insightful, and, I believe, very, very important
conversation. So we both wanna thank you immensely for taking the
time to talk with with us. I mean, I knew it was gonna be this,
which is why we did not schedule anything after this
and why we did such an extensive interview with you because I knew that we

(01:50:01):
would get such a great number 1. You were a number you you had another
hit single with us. Right. With with so we're hoping to make this podcast the
number 1 podcast. Absolutely. So we we thank you so
much. Well, it's always a pleasure talking to you guys. Thanks, God. Thank you.
Oh, Eric. Yeah. What a great conversation.
You know, the I love conversations like this. I mean, especially with

(01:50:24):
somebody who is as passionate, as intelligent,
as articulate, and as knowledgeable as Pete Ganberg is. Yeah. It's
it's such a joy to speak with somebody who's had the rich
kind of history and and understanding of music and
what makes, you know, situations and artists work
Yeah. And also his own journey, you know, his own journey and

(01:50:47):
what he contributed to others. You know? And he loved when he spoke
about, you know, the whole thing of developing an ear for talent. This is something
that, you know, from the very beginning of the conversation when he talked about how,
you know, he always had that penchant for records. Always. You
know? Which which I think is is it's it's an entry when everyone comes
into it from a different place. Right. But he always had that that

(01:51:08):
element. The significance of identifying special talent and nurturing
it, you know, particularly for the new generation of A&R professionals. It's
2 different points, but it's an interesting 1. You know, the idea
it's it's 1 of the things I learned about A&R, and I know Pete
knows this from working with Clive that that that I learned,
was a very, very important distinction when it comes to this whole thing of of

(01:51:31):
A&R and talent. There's a distinction between being able to go
into a club and saying, seeing a Metallica or
seeing a Whitney Houston Right. Okay, and saying that's a great
artist. Right. There's an enormous difference between that and then
the next sentence, which is, and I know exactly the kind of record we
need to make. Okay? That's where the disconnect

(01:51:54):
often comes in the A&R. Remember and Pete even said this
in the in the thing. There's 2 aspects. There's artist, and then there's the repertoire.
Okay? Right. Sometimes repertoire has to be put together.
Sometimes it's self contained where an artist writes it, and then your role as
an A&R person becomes editor or, you know,
going through that where it's not like you're trying to find material for them, but

(01:52:16):
selecting the material that will work. And I thought that that was a very
interesting aspect. And he obviously, you know, had a
has a great, great track record in that. Yeah. I also thought
that, you know, missteps and success in A&R, working in A&R is
like baseball, he says, you know, not all projects succeed, but
learning from them and celebrating the occasional successes can lead to significant

(01:52:38):
achievements. You know, he talks about that baseball average. And I think there was somebody
else that we interviewed. I don't know if it was Jodi, Ambrosio or somebody
who made that reference of baseball. And it's just very interesting to see,
you know, how many at bats you have and how many, you know, our successes.
And like you said earlier, you know, people are not remembering by their,
failures, but by their successes. Yes. And so I thought that that was a

(01:53:00):
an interesting, thing. And, you know, and I also think too, you know, 1 thing
that I I wanna personally say is because, you know, I always hear comments on
our YouTube or not here, read them, or just people in general that just
knock A&R people in general, as what they
do, and I submit to you, Pete Gamborg. Yeah. Oh, no. Absolutely.
This is a man who really knows the art Yes.

(01:53:24):
And the craft Right. Of A&R, and I think this conversation
illustrates that. You know, there are it's it's like, you
know, there are A&R is all about getting an artist to to
the maximum of their potential to get that vision out there.
It's it's also to get everybody excited about it Right. And to translate that
vision within the company, You know? And so it's not just

(01:53:46):
about identifying talent, and it's not just about, okay. Here,
here's the record. We're done. Right. It doesn't work like that. Let's get
specific because 1 of the things that he talked about on on the role of
A&R and artists today, which I think our audience really would
wanna know, is the whole thing of building a fan base.
This is not the era where you can just put a record out, hope that

(01:54:08):
it's a massive hit, and sell. Right. There was an era many years ago
where that was the case. It was the copy model where we we sold
things, CD, singles, hits, whatever. Today, it is
about building a fan base. And if you look at any artists that are out
there, that's a very big factor. And what specifically I'm referring
to is the fact that, you know, music is free

(01:54:30):
today. Whether it's you as an up and coming artist or
Beyonce, does not matter. The music is free. So
what is it that's going to make people say, I really need to be a
part of this? And the answer is who you are,
what you're about, where you're coming from, what do you stand
for, what don't you stand for. Those are the things whether

(01:54:52):
they're articulated or not by the audience, and I think oftentimes in this
culture, they're not, but they're very, very present and they're
very, very real. And when Pete spoke about building that fan base,
it's very important. And you and I have spoken about that, Eric, where Yeah. We
get, you know, it's it's important to know who your fan base is. Right.
Number 1. Yeah. Who are we talking about? Who is your audience? Right. That's a

(01:55:14):
question that when, a record company has a marketing meeting about an artist
new or even established, who are we marketing this
music to? It's not just we're throwing it out there hoping somebody
Right. Somewhere picks it up. No. Who is it? Is it men?
Is it women? Are they older? Are they younger? Are they college educated? Right. Are
they single? Are they The avatar. Who is your avatar? Exactly.

(01:55:37):
Are they drinkers? Are they nondrinkers? I mean, you you can
really get granular about this stuff. Psychographics and infographics.
Psychographics and infographics. Great. And we should have a thing on that. Absolutely. We should
be definitely discussing that because all of the the persona of of
who your ideal avatar is. Yes. You know, and it goes even deeper.
What type of music they're consuming? What products do they,

(01:55:58):
consume? What things are they watching? I mean, it's just it goes very deep, and
it's a very interesting thing. 1 of the other things that I thought
getting back to the whole art of A&R and, you know,
like I said before, I submit to you Pete Gambard, which really
is the essence of the, you know, art of A&R is the development
of smooth. And, you know, we we went into a whole thing about that because

(01:56:20):
it was such a fascinating story how that song came to be and
how that kicked off just, you know Oh, yeah. Basically the rebirth of of
Carlos Santana's career. And so, you know, despite
initial skepticism, the development of Smooth became a definitive
process leading to what can now be seen as the key single from
that project. And again, you know, we're talking about a song that came out my

(01:56:42):
god. Yeah. Or whatever.
07/00. 08/00. Yeah. And so, you know, but it but it's
really a a a a really interesting case study
on the art of A&R and how that song came to be and just how
all the different hoops he had to jump through and how everything came
together, but how much he believed that that song was gonna be

(01:57:05):
what it became, you know, and that's a true testament of
A&R. That's what Clive did so well. And I guess, you know, you guys coming
from the school of Clive, you can speak to that better. Yeah. I mean, Pete
really articulated it well. It was, you know, Pete's tenacity,
like you were talking about his actual belief. And 1 of the things that was
so interesting about the point you just brought up is that now we're getting

(01:57:26):
into the the marrow, if you will, of what A&R is
about and how Pete talked about the shaping. And,
you know and And I think even the lyric, he talked about how the lyrics,
how it ended up being that Rob Thomas didn't want to
take away from the and then he said, well, what's the lyric that you have?
And that was the the lyric that just changed everything with the song.

(01:57:48):
Absolutely. Yes. Exactly. And how oftentimes,
you know, and when he initially played it for Carlos, Carlos hated it. Right. You
know, I mean, think about it. You know? These are the stories that you hear,
you know, that that just, you know Exactly. It's it's not just like it all
just came together. And it's about sticking with it and about and
and also the whole thing of, you know, how he never kept Clive in in

(01:58:09):
the in in the loop initially. Right. You know, but but how it it
it eventually all worked out. Right. But you got to see the
individual steps, which is often not spoken about in
A&R. It's just sort of like, well, that was a big success, and it just
all worked out and happened on its own. Here, you got to see how that
big success was created literally Yeah. You know, in terms of the

(01:58:30):
rewrite and the new lyric and getting Rob Thomas involved
and and so on and so forth. This really was an exciting
conversation about, you know, the the art and the craft
and and the soul of A&R by someone who's not
only, you know, been there and done that, but has had an enormous
track record in so many areas, not only with artists and songs,

(01:58:53):
but also with Broadway, you know. And I thought his whole thing with
Hamilton and the stories that he told with that Yeah. Really painted
a fantastic portrait of what the life of an A&R
person actually is. Hey, Insiders. Thanks so much for
tuning into this episode. We really appreciate it. To get show notes,
links, and everything that was mentioned during this interview, head on over to our

(01:59:15):
official website at
mubutv.com/podcast/shownotes.
If you're enjoying the content and what we're doing here on the show, please subscribe
to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever
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(01:59:35):
that our podcast stands out on the top rated and new and noteworthy
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x, all ending with the handle MUBUTV, which is spelled M
U B U T V. Don't forget to catch our flagship show, the
MUBUTV Music Business Insider Video Series airing

(01:59:56):
every week on YouTube at
youtube.com/MUBUTV. This show
was produced and created by Ritch Esra and Eric Knight. Theme music
by Disciples of Babylon, and be sure to tune in next week for another
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