And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records (22 page)

With the pop promotions department growing, the R&B side of the company was clamoring for attention. Spurred on by Renny Roker, Cecil insisted that his department needed to be expanded. This made sense, since Parliament, Donna Summer, and others were being played heavily on R&B radio. Cecil hired Jheryl Busby to be vice president of R&B promotion, Eddie Pugh and Ernie Singleton to handle national promotions, and Ruben Rodriquez to be promotions VP for the East Coast. Once again, we had a team of men so talented and experienced that each could have handled national promotions at the company of his choosing.

Busby was everyone’s favorite. He handled himself well with radio people and artists, and he would later become the head of Motown Records, which he brought to a greater level of success than it had previously enjoyed. Jheryl became a major player in the biz. He would frequently credit Neil with mentoring him and claim that Neil had made him a better record executive.

Ruben, too, was a consummate promotion person. He had a simple MO: when it came to working records, there would be no drugs, no payola, and no women. Instead, he would be the Flower Man. He would send flowers to anyone—flowers to all the girls in the office, flowers to the girls he met on the road, flowers to the receptionists at radio stations. And it worked, big time. Ultimately, he did it to get airplay by scoring face time with the bosses: “Oh, you should take a meeting with that Ruben from Casablanca. He’s so nice.” Ruben had his own perception-is-reality gimmick, which involved establishing what a nice guy he was. The flower bills that he sent in could have floated the debt of a Third World country, and I would lightheartedly protest them, but what he was doing worked, so he was allowed to keep doing it. You couldn’t argue with the results.

Eddie Pugh, who had brought the kissing contest promotion to my attention in 1974, stayed with the company for only a short time. He did not get along very well with Bruce, and the jockeying for power among Jheryl, Ernie, Ruben, and Eddie came to a head. But he did leave on a good note and went on to run the R&B department at CBS.

Then it was sales’ turn to ask for more people. We needed someone who had the contacts among the major one stops and rack jobbers to get more attention for our product. The person we chose was a well-liked and savvy salesman named Pete Jones. Pete brought us a respect that we were lacking. Not that department head Dick Sherman was held in low regard, but he was not comfortable applying the pressure when we needed it. Dick played the joker/nice-guy role much more naturally. Pete could put the screws to people in such a way that they never felt he was being pushy. He also had a good grasp on how to do major promotional tie-ins with retailers and often came up with fresh ideas to market bands at the retail level. I remember a photo of Pete and his family standing in the snow on the East Coast and holding a banner that said, “Thank you Neil and Joyce, Larry and Candy, and Bruce and Nancy”—we had just put a down payment on a house for them in LA.

Without question, all of these hirings helped Casablanca, but there was little doubt in my mind that Bruce was the major reason we began to grow so rapidly. Bruce understood how the game was played on Top 40 radio, and Neil and I gave him carte blanche to go out and do whatever was necessary (we didn’t ask for any details, because we didn’t want to have to swear to anything on the stand). Casablanca now appeared—especially to people in the industry—to have all the trappings of success, and there is nothing like success to breed success.

Along with Bruce’s obvious talent came a temper to match. On a few occasions, he came close to engaging in physical combat with Renny Roker or Eddie Pugh, and I had to rein him in. Bruce had grown up in an atmosphere that was less than conducive to getting along with minorities, and he had mentioned to me several times that in Cleveland, black people and white people kept to their own areas. Much of this anger would disappear when Bruce was not doing drugs, but when he mixed certain substances, he would become extremely belligerent and refuse to back down from a fight (the man could certainly handle himself in a brawl).

In January, right on the heels of Bruce’s hiring, we released the debut album of a band called Stallion. I had signed them to the label late in 1976, convinced that they sounded exactly like the Eagles. Another factor in their favor was that my friend Ken Kohl had a piece of their management. Ken was in need of a gig and some money, so it was no big deal to sign them. To this day, Ken and I get kidded about this band, because their finished album sounded nothing like their demo tape. I did not do my homework thoroughly enough and neglected to check out the band up close. I figured the problem was their producer and guru, Dick Darnell. My first clue should have been that when I asked him to make the band sound more like the Eagles, he looked nonplussed and asked who the Eagles were. But by the time this happened, it was too late. The band was already in the studio in Colorado, and I could not pull the plug on the band of one of my best friends.

Because they were my signing, I put a lot of pressure on our AOR guy, Dick Williams, to get airplay for Stallion. I probably shouldn’t have given him so much grief, as I doubt I could have gotten much airplay for these guys either. I even went so far as to make some phone calls to help promote the band myself, something I hadn’t done in a while. By pressuring some of my old radio friends, I got some airplay, but it was not enough to make a difference.

My other pet project, Angel, was doing somewhat better. Angel’s first two albums had done OK for us, but Neil and I always felt that they could do more; we fully believed they would become the next KISS, and we spread that perception in the rock press. Neil and I had met with the band’s manager, David Joseph, as early as September 1976 to plan Angel’s third LP,
On Earth as It Is in Heaven,
and we collectively agreed to pull out all of the stops. It was time to make Angel the next supergroup. After all, we’d done it with KISS, so doing it again would be easy, right?

Neil agreed to hire Eddie Kramer (the man whose touch with
Alive!
had broken KISS) to produce the album. We also planned a heavy point-of-purchase and print-marketing campaign and paid for thousands of elaborate press kits and mobiles. As we did our annual filling in of
Circus
readers’ poll cards for KISS, we also voted for Angel in the category of best new group or artist. To everyone’s surprise—except ours, of course—they won, receiving over forty thousand votes and beating out Boston and Heart in the process. To capitalize on the momentum, we built the marketing campaign for
On Earth as It Is in Heaven
around the poll result.

Another major addition to our Angel project was their famous visual palindrome logo. As the story goes, a seventeen-year-old fan named Bob Petrick showed up backstage before one of the band’s East Coast shows. His persistence finally won him an audience with Angel’s tour manager, Bill Schereck. Bill (whom Wally Meyrowitz and I had made an honorary Jew and nicknamed Bill Schereckwitz) listened politely as Bob explained that Angel needed a logo, so he had designed one. He showed the drawing to Bill, who told him that he couldn’t promise anything but he’d see what he could do. Going into a dressing room, Bill put the drawing down on a table and accidentally glanced at its reflection in a mirror. He noticed something very interesting that Bob had neglected to mention. When it was turned upside down, the logo was still right side up. Bill was blown away and ran off to find Bob, panicked that he might have lost him. He finally found him, and he bought the logo from him that night for five hundred dollars and an album credit.

The band members, David Joseph, and everyone at Casablanca loved the logo, too, and when Neil and I were stoned, we’d sometimes amuse ourselves by flipping it back and forth, over and over. We figured if it worked on us, the kids would really think it was magic.

Speaking of magic, David Joseph wanted Neil to fork over an obscene amount of money for Angel’s tour support. I sat there in disbelief as he laid out his reasoning. He wanted to integrate “high-art illusions” into the band’s live show. As he ran down his idiotic list of magic tricks for the band, I felt embarrassed for him; David was actually pitching this to Neil, and he was 100 percent serious and sober. I waited for him to finish this absurd sales job, knowing Neil was doing his best to suppress howls of laughter.

And then Neil agreed to every item on the list.

This was my band, I had signed them to Casablanca, nobody wanted them to succeed more than I did, and even I wasn’t buying this. I decided to keep my opinions to myself, as you never wanted to be negative with Neil, especially in front of a client. After David left, Neil, sensing my hesitation, explained that both Parliament and KISS had huge productions and were beginning to reap the rewards. So why shouldn’t Angel?

Angel’s stage show was, depending on your perspective, either the greatest or the worst thing you ever saw from a rock band. For those of you who have never attended an Angel concert, here’s how it went down. The house lights would go out, and a lengthy taped introduction based on the end-credits music from
Ben-Hur
would begin to play over the PA. A huge 3-D prop of a hollow-faced Gabriel (the angel from Angel’s debut album cover) would rise into place atop the backline of the stage. Reaching his zenith, Gabriel would seemingly come alive and begin to address the stoned audience in a booming, God-like voice. Everyone thought the angel’s face was a hologram, but it was actually a rear-projection film of the face of Warren Entner, former guitarist for The Grass Roots, in gold makeup. The voice-over was provided by famous voice actor Paul Frees, who would solemnly intone:

While this was going on, roadies above the stage dressed in black jumpsuits were setting up five mirrored Plexiglas cubes downstage. These were maybe two and half feet wide by two and a half feet tall. They would then stack three additional cubes atop the first one, which created futuristic portals that looked like mirrored doorways. As each band member was introduced, smoke from a fog machine would be released, a spotlight would hit the mirrors, chaser lights would begin revolving around the doorway, and each of the five musicians would seem to materialize inside his cubicle.

Angel drummer Barry Brandt would emerge from the lighted doorway, go slap some quick high fives with fans in the first row and then run over to join his drums as similarly imposing scripts were spoken for Gregg, Punky, Mickie, and, finally, lead vocalist Frank DiMino.

“And thus it came to pass that there was music on Earth as it is in Heaven.” As Gabriel finished speaking to the crowd, the band members would take their places and start the show with their signature song, “Tower.” Of course, if you had an amazing entrance, you had to have an even better exit. So a giant Angel LP cover would descend from above the lighting rig to the center rear of the set. The five Angels would walk into it and begin beating on the sides so you could see they were actually inside. Suddenly, the giant LP would begin to rise above the stage, as if it were ascending to Heaven. And then . . . BOOM! It would explode into pieces. All the spotlights would then go black and, with the crowd clamoring for more, the houselights would go up. By then, the band would already be miles away from the venue. Pure showmanship: always leave them wanting more.

When the illusions worked, they were effective, but it seemed more often than not at least one of the Angels would get stuck in his cubicle. If that sounds eerily similar to a scene in
This Is Spinal Tap,
that’s because Angel’s ridiculous cylinders were probably the inspiration for the translucent plastic egg in which Harry Shearer’s character, Derek Smalls, gets trapped. Between KISS and Parliament, I was more than comfortable with over-the-top shows, but I was flat-out embarrassed by Angel’s. In my opinion, the grandiose
Ben-Hur
music paired with the overblown band introduction wasn’t dramatic, it was silly, and it caused me to question my faith in the band’s prospects.

The biggest problem we faced was far more practical: Angel wasn’t a headliner in most markets, so they often had to scrap their costly production because the acts that were headliners wouldn’t allow an opening act full use of the PA or lights, much less approve anything approaching the rest of Angel’s elaborate requirements.

In December 1976, as we were preparing for the release of
On Earth as It Is in Heaven
(January 24, 1977 was the target date), we had the band do their first promotional films, videotaping performances of two tracks from their back catalog (“Tower” and “Feelin’ Right”) and two songs from the new album (“That Magic Touch” and “You’re Not Fooling Me”).
Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert
eventually broadcast “That Magic Touch,” and it would turn out to be (if my memory serves me correctly) the only national airplay any Angel video would ever receive in the US, although the clips did appear to help the band in some foreign territories, especially Japan.

David Joseph continued to work his act both with us and overseas. Going against everyone’s advice (the band wasn’t big enough to justify it), he sent Angel to Japan in early February to officially inaugurate their new stage show. The tour was a disaster. They’d sold out a few of the shows, and the overall turnout was respectable, but the sheer number of problems that arose during the tour was enough to make me wonder if this group wasn’t living under a bad sign. Angel had, quite accidentally, offended the promoter and some members of the public: while visiting several local attractions to do photo shoots, they had climbed upon some hallowed structures. The promoter considered this to be an act of desecration. Another problem arose when the promoter (who allegedly had ties to the criminal underworld) took issue with the way the tour finances were being handled and hijacked Angel’s entire stage production, refusing to give it back. Bill Schereck met with some heavies and arranged for the equipment to be returned. Then Japan Air Lines told him that the check the promoter had given them to cover the round-trip shipping costs had bounced. It was the band’s first and last overseas tour.