 |
VP of A&R at Lava/Atlantic, CA. Interviewed by Jean-Francois Mean,
courtsey www.hitquarters.com
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"People
usually think: How can I get a record deal? The proper question is:
How can I make a career for myself as a musician?"
Andy
Karp is Vice President of A&R at Lava/Atlantic in New York. Among the
acts he is A&R for are Kid Rock (10 million copies sold in the US of
his first Lava release "Devil Without A Cause" in 1998, and Uncle Kracker
(US Double Platinum Debut in 2001).
The most important thing was probably that I’m very fortunate to have a good memory. Combine that with being an unabashed and obsessive music freak… I usually remember what the B-side was in Japan, who produced the record, who the engineer was, and so on. I always had that somewhat odd ability long before it was relevant to my career. That quality came in very handy in impressing Jason Flom, who is our president here. His logic has always been that if somebody seems to be in touch with what’s going on, is in the clubs all the time or has a wealth of knowledge that most people don’t have, then it probably increases his/her chances of recognizing something that’s great if they hear it somewhere.
Which qualities, in your opinion, are needed to be a successful A&R?
There are several. Obviously being able to spot hit records in many cases before they are produced like hit records is critical. Beyond that you have to be very patient and remember that you’re dealing with artists who can be very temperamental, understandably so. I’ve often found myself being sort of a dime store psychiatrist which is a very handy skill, you have to be able to listen well if you want to relate to your artist. It also helps in my case to be a musician. I don’t think it’s a necessary skill to be a good A&R, but it’s important for me. If you are able to display that you know what you’re talking about and that you understand the creative process, it helps you build credibility with your artists. I can empathize with most of the artist’s feelings and I think they’re more inclined to pay attention when I have something to say.
How were you approached by the acts you’re working with?
I got to know Uncle Kracker through Kid Rock since he’s Kid Rock’s DJ. He just struck me as being a very talented person. He did a lot of writing on Kid Rock’s "Devil Without A Cause" record, which is something that not a lot of people know.
David Garza I first heard of through his current manager who at the time was his lawyer, Christopher Sabec. I had just developed a relationship with Christopher and I took Jason down to see him and he was fantastic. He’s just an amazingly talented writer, multi-instrumentalist and producer. He’s actually the first artist I ever signed.
As for some of the other artists…Simple Plan that’s interesting, because the drummer actually called me up about three years ago pretending to be his manager. He sent me some demos and we started to talk and developed a little bit of a relationship. The songs were good, although not what they are now. Over the span of time they eventually hooked up with friends of mine who are managers and producers in Canada, Arnold & Rob Lanni and Eric Lawrence. I went out to go see them and the whole thing just kind of went from there.
Hot Action Cop came to me through their lawyer, David Chidekel. He called me up and said the manager was coming to town with this project and that I would like it. They played it and I thought it was great. We brought the artist, Rob Werthner, up and found out that he had this catalog of amazing songs.
Outspoken was the same thing. We met through a friend of mine who was shopping them.
As for Bif Naked, Jason first heard her at a live show and because she’s an amazing live performer he was blown away. I had the record here, he came back raving about it and we met her. She’s got this electricity about her. She’s got this wonderful, exciting and vibrant personality and is an incredibly interesting and incredibly decent person. As soon as we had lunch with her, we knew we wanted to work with her.
How did you come in contact with Kid Rock?
Kid Rock wasn’t a secret. He had put out three records. His first came out in 1990 when he was 18, on Jive and it sold about 100,000 copies. His second came out on a label called Continuum in ‘93, which then went bankrupt. He put out his third himself and his manager at the time was a fellow named Steve Hutton. Steve and I had developed a friendship when we first met at a Nashville extravaganza showcase in ‘95 or ‘96. We were both young guys who hadn’t really established ourselves yet. I think I may have been, at the time, one of the only people who took his calls. He was a manager in Chicago, who was just starting to build a roster. He kept telling me how great the live show was. So I went out to see a Kid Rock show in Cleveland, and….he was fantastic! You could tell right then and there, he was playing in front of sixty people, that he had the charisma to play arenas. The funny thing was that people knew about him. He was selling a lot of tickets and a lot of merchandise in Detroit (where he’s from). A&Rs were aware of who he was, but they just thought he was a joke. I took Jason to see Kid Rock play in front of about 1200 people in Detroit. Kid Rock invited people from most of the major labels, but nobody came except for Jason and myself!
I remember telling people that I’d signed this artist named Kid Rock and they would say: "Oh my god! Isn’t he old?" I’d say "No, he’s not, he’s 25" "Oh well good luck!" they replied in a very disparaging tone of voice. I think it’s one of those great music business stories that will and should be an inspiration to a lot of bands out there. Since the vast majority of records released don’t sell, most artists eventually get dropped., Here’s a guy who actually got dropped, not once but twice… and came back to be one of the biggest artists in the world. It’s a great story. Every artist that has gone on to have commercial success has stories like this to tell, it just tells people out there that no matter how many people tell you that you’re not good enough, it’s just an opinion and they might be wrong. It illustrates what is interesting about the A&R process which is: that it is SO subjective. It’s really just a guessing game, you’re just using your taste and your knowledge of how to make records properly and try to put something together that’s great. There are other A&Rs out there that have made great records with bands that I didn’t think had it in them. They surprised me, just like I’m sure Kid Rock surprised them.
How much input do you usually have on the productions?
It depends on the circumstances and on how clear the artist’s vision is. Some artists need more direction than others. Sometimes the best job an A&R can do is get out of the way and not screw it up. Other times it really needs hands on direction, production, editing and arrangement ideas. But in order to be able to do that you have to build some credibility with your artist. Most artists feel they have some sort of clear vision and very often the A&R’s job is just to help them figure out what that is. Each experience is different. You have to approach it with an open mind.
What proportion of your time is spent looking for new acts to sign, in comparison with the time spent dealing with already established acts in your rooster?
I do a lot of both. The funny thing is as you start to have records that do well, those projects become more important and less manageable in some ways. More people become involved, the artist has far less time on his hands and in some ways they become much more high maintenance. Those things require more of your time, but at the same time the music industry has always been fueled by new artists. So there’s always a focus on finding new things, that’s just the nature of our business. The one thing that’s hard is that there really is not enough time to listen to music as one would think. I find myself being on the phone all the time. I do a lot of listening to demos at home, on the weekend or when I’m driving.
How do you find new talent?
The first thing I like to keep in mind is that you’re never going to know where you’re going to find something great. One thing I have learned is that you have to be open to meeting new people, to take meetings with and phone calls from people you don’t know. I always try to return everybody’s calls regardless of whether I know them or not.
Research is something all the major labels do now. Sometimes you find things by just being in touch with regional music scenes. You try to build a network of contacts you trust; lawyers, managers, agents… You can’t hear everything. You’re not always going to know what’s going on in Lawrence, Kansas, but I know people who are going to know and if there’s something that I should be aware of, I know they’re going to make me aware of it. That’s a big part of it; building a network of people.
What do you look for in an artist or an act?
Great songs are always the key. You can sell a great song if the artist doesn’t play that well or if he/she isn’t that great looking. The song is what everybody responds to, you can’t see what a band looks like through the radio. Beyond that, if an artist has star quality, that’s a very big plus. That’s one of the things that helped us tremendously with Kid Rock. If a band is great live then that really helps but it’s not necessarily critical. I know a lot of A&Rs who wouldn’t sign a band if they weren’t good live, but I’m not one of those people. I think that if the songs are good enough, I would do it. I have done it.
Do you find it important that the act be creatively involved in the selection of the songs?
Absolutely! No question! At the end of the day it is their record. The artist has to go out and promote the record and autograph copies of it for the next year, so they have to believe in it. People can sense phoniness, especially the younger people. Teenagers have incredible bullshit detectors, it has to be real.
There have been instances where I have had disagreements with artists over songs, but I’ve never thrown down the gauntlet to an artist and said: "It has to be this way!" My approach has been much more along the lines of trying to advocate my position and convince him of what I think is the right way to go. Like I said, at the end of the day they have one career. I’ll make lots of other records in mine but in most cases this is their one shot. So, I will usually let them make the final call.
Do you pay attention to things like who the manager is, who the attorney is, who the team is, when considering signing a new act?
Yes. The attorney is less of a concern because attorneys don’t get involved with the day to day handling of the artist’s career. There are situations where I haven’t pursued a band because I had trouble dealing with the manager. I like to think that I can get along with pretty much everybody and that I’m a pretty laid back guy. So if I have a very negative reaction to a manager, I’ll trust my instinct on that one.
How sure about the available market-space for an act do you need to be before signing and releasing them?
It depends very much on the type of music, and the degree of clutter out there. In some cases, I’m sort of harping on Kid Rock, but when we put that record out, we had no idea if we could sell it. We just thought the record was great, but the radio wasn’t playing that kind of music in 1998. So, certainly there was an opening in the marketplace, but a void in the marketplace doesn’t mean that you are just going to be able to fill it. The time has to be right.
If you take the flip side of that, just because an artist or rather a style or genre of music is packed with artists, it doesn’t mean that you can’t sell it. What it all comes down to is the strength of your songs and the believability of your act. If you’re looking at the pop artists right now, you’ve got: N’Sync, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. In the rap/metal thing you’ve got: Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, Korn and until recently, Rage Against the Machine. Three or four break through and the other ones are sort of perceived as being the "imitators" of those four. Not necessarily less valid, but it seems like the second wave of acts don’t have songs that are as good as the first ones. If you come with equally strong songs, you could absolutely have another pop act that does very well. There’s always going to be young kids who want their own music.
From which people and departments at Lava/Atlantic do you need support before signing an act?
At Lava we sign it because we like it. I don’t care too much what people think, that’s one thing that Jason Flom definitely instilled in me early on in my A&R career. He’s made it very clear to me that most of the successful acts that he signed over the years, were acts that nobody else wanted. I learned something from that and can say that my experience with Kid Rock was exactly that. So the only thing I can trust is my own gut. I’m a firm believer in the concept that nobody in A&R really knows anything, It’s all just our opinions. If you accept the truthful premise that everybody in A&R is wrong more than they are right, then there’s no reason to let people, who are probably wrong anyway, convince you not to sign somebody you believe in. The greatest A&R people in history, Ahmet Ertegun, John Hammond, Clive Davis… have all signed many more stiffs than hits. I’m concerned with what Jason has to think, and what our primary core of people here at Lava think. And even if those people really didn’t like something, if I believed in it, I’d want to sign it anyway. I’ll make a record that’s good enough so that everybody else gets it.
What advice would you give unsigned acts on how to approach the music biz?
I would say that the best thing any unsigned act can do, is to prepare for the likelihood that they will be dropped. I don’t mean to sound cynical, but in a more practical sense the logic is that so much of this business is based on luck and timing. I’ve always found that the smarter you are and the harder you work, the better your luck is. So, control the things that you’re able to control: your song writing, your performance, the way in which you do your business. Do those things intelligently and with as much passion as you possibly can.
Secondly, building a following before you get your record deal will put you in a stronger position when you’re negotiating your deal and you’ll be much better off should you actually get into a situation where you’re dropped. I think that people often don’t ask themselves the right questions. People usually think: "How can I get a record deal?". The proper question is: "How can I make a career for myself as a musician?". Record deals come and go. There are plenty of artists out there who can make a decent living on the road but haven’t been with a major label in ten years. The only way you can do that is by being real with your audience, work hard and build a following. That’s how you get real fans. You don’t get them through MTV or radio play, you get them by much more grassroots means.
Would you work with acts from outside the US?
Sure! We’ve done that before. I’m signing something right now that’s from outside the U.S. I signed an act from Norway a few years ago called Midnight Sons and Lava also has the Corrs, who are massive in Europe. There are certain practical limitations that one has when dealing with bands that are not stateside, but ultimately you go where the music is!
What are some of the differences in how a record would be made and marketed for a rap/rock act, like Kid Rock, in comparison to a pop act like Backstreet Boys?
Most rock records are generally done by a single producer and the band usually writes their own songs. Sometimes you’ll have a radio mix which is not as aggressive as the album mix, but for pop records you often have to do a club mix, a dance mix and a mix that’s more appropriate for crossover stations. Most pop acts these days tend to not write their own songs, so you have to find producers who usually bring the songs with them. It’s often quite expensive, A-level pop producers can make over a hundred thousand dollars a track. Many pop records will cost three-to-four times what the average rock record will cost to make. Pop is also much more expensive to break as far as independent promotion is concerned and also marketing expenditures, including videos. In general pop tends to be a much more expensive proposition, but in many cases with a bigger upside if you can actually break the acts.
Do you accept unsolicited material?
No. There are legal reasons why the business affairs department tells us not to do that. Nobody wants to take the chance that somebody sues us if they believe an artist has a song that sounds similar to theirs. We limit that possibility by simply not accepting material like that.
Has the amount of time given by labels to new acts before they break?
There’s far less artist development than there used to be at major labels. The unfortunate thing is that marketing costs have sky rocketed since the video age entered, live revenues gone down, ticket prices increased and record-making have become more expensive. You have fewer outlets due to the consolidation of radio, which is still a primary way of exposing your records, and people are less inclined to stick with acts through multiple records. Part of it is that there’s a perception that music is more disposable now than it was twenty years ago. There’s a lot of blame to go around on that one. A lot of it is MTV’s fault, some of it is certainly the major labels’ and radio’s fault and some of it I think, is simply a cultural shift. There are many more things competing for consumer’s dollars, there’s a new blockbuster movie opening every weekend, the Internet, video games, everybody has a hundred channels on their televisions. All these things combine to make music less important to people these days, although hit records now sell more than they used to and have a longer life span. The unfortunate downside is that there are a lot of great classic bands that would have trouble getting a record deal now. Like the Doors or others who didn’t have their first hit record until their second or third album.
If you could dramatically change some aspect of the music industry, what would you do?
I would really like it if MTV played more videos and if radio play lists weren’t as tight as they are now. As far as the practicality of breaking some of our artists, that would help a lot. It’s been a frustrating thing in the last couple of years because MTV is such a cultural force. They used to program like a radio station and now they program like a televison network.
What has been the greatest moment of your music career?
Probably watching Kid Rock perform at the MTV awards two years ago and then the first time he headlined a show at a hockey arena. The MTV awards was the sign that we were really going to penetrate the American consciousness. That very first Arena show was the result… it was a very satisfying feeling to hear 18,000 people sing along to the songs that I used to listen to in my office .
What do you see yourself doing in 5-10 years?
I know that I very much enjoy making records, writing music and playing music, and I hope I can continue to do that. I don’t know what my business situation will be like in a couple of years. I’m enjoying what I’m doing now, have been really fortunate to have done well with it and I just want to keep on doing it, live a good life and do the right thing.
The most important thing was probably that I’m very fortunate to have a good memory. Combine that with being an unabashed and obsessive music freak… I usually remember what the B-side was in Japan, who produced the record, who the engineer was, and so on. I always had that somewhat odd ability long before it was relevant to my career. That quality came in very handy in impressing Jason Flom, who is our president here. His logic has always been that if somebody seems to be in touch with what’s going on, is in the clubs all the time or has a wealth of knowledge that most people don’t have, then it probably increases his/her chances of recognizing something that’s great if they hear it somewhere.
Which qualities, in your opinion, are needed to be a successful A&R?
There are several. Obviously being able to spot hit records in many cases before they are produced like hit records is critical. Beyond that you have to be very patient and remember that you’re dealing with artists who can be very temperamental, understandably so. I’ve often found myself being sort of a dime store psychiatrist which is a very handy skill, you have to be able to listen well if you want to relate to your artist. It also helps in my case to be a musician. I don’t think it’s a necessary skill to be a good A&R, but it’s important for me. If you are able to display that you know what you’re talking about and that you understand the creative process, it helps you build credibility with your artists. I can empathize with most of the artist’s feelings and I think they’re more inclined to pay attention when I have something to say.
How were you approached by the acts you’re working with?
I got to know Uncle Kracker through Kid Rock since he’s Kid Rock’s DJ. He just struck me as being a very talented person. He did a lot of writing on Kid Rock’s "Devil Without A Cause" record, which is something that not a lot of people know.
David Garza I first heard of through his current manager who at the time was his lawyer, Christopher Sabec. I had just developed a relationship with Christopher and I took Jason down to see him and he was fantastic. He’s just an amazingly talented writer, multi-instrumentalist and producer. He’s actually the first artist I ever signed.
As for some of the other artists…Simple Plan that’s interesting, because the drummer actually called me up about three years ago pretending to be his manager. He sent me some demos and we started to talk and developed a little bit of a relationship. The songs were good, although not what they are now. Over the span of time they eventually hooked up with friends of mine who are managers and producers in Canada, Arnold & Rob Lanni and Eric Lawrence. I went out to go see them and the whole thing just kind of went from there.
Hot Action Cop came to me through their lawyer, David Chidekel. He called me up and said the manager was coming to town with this project and that I would like it. They played it and I thought it was great. We brought the artist, Rob Werthner, up and found out that he had this catalog of amazing songs.
Outspoken was the same thing. We met through a friend of mine who was shopping them.
As for Bif Naked, Jason first heard her at a live show and because she’s an amazing live performer he was blown away. I had the record here, he came back raving about it and we met her. She’s got this electricity about her. She’s got this wonderful, exciting and vibrant personality and is an incredibly interesting and incredibly decent person. As soon as we had lunch with her, we knew we wanted to work with her.
How did you come in contact with Kid Rock?
Kid Rock wasn’t a secret. He had put out three records. His first came out in 1990 when he was 18, on Jive and it sold about 100,000 copies. His second came out on a label called Continuum in ‘93, which then went bankrupt. He put out his third himself and his manager at the time was a fellow named Steve Hutton. Steve and I had developed a friendship when we first met at a Nashville extravaganza showcase in ‘95 or ‘96. We were both young guys who hadn’t really established ourselves yet. I think I may have been, at the time, one of the only people who took his calls. He was a manager in Chicago, who was just starting to build a roster. He kept telling me how great the live show was. So I went out to see a Kid Rock show in Cleveland, and….he was fantastic! You could tell right then and there, he was playing in front of sixty people, that he had the charisma to play arenas. The funny thing was that people knew about him. He was selling a lot of tickets and a lot of merchandise in Detroit (where he’s from). A&Rs were aware of who he was, but they just thought he was a joke. I took Jason to see Kid Rock play in front of about 1200 people in Detroit. Kid Rock invited people from most of the major labels, but nobody came except for Jason and myself!
I remember telling people that I’d signed this artist named Kid Rock and they would say: "Oh my god! Isn’t he old?" I’d say "No, he’s not, he’s 25" "Oh well good luck!" they replied in a very disparaging tone of voice. I think it’s one of those great music business stories that will and should be an inspiration to a lot of bands out there. Since the vast majority of records released don’t sell, most artists eventually get dropped., Here’s a guy who actually got dropped, not once but twice… and came back to be one of the biggest artists in the world. It’s a great story. Every artist that has gone on to have commercial success has stories like this to tell, it just tells people out there that no matter how many people tell you that you’re not good enough, it’s just an opinion and they might be wrong. It illustrates what is interesting about the A&R process which is: that it is SO subjective. It’s really just a guessing game, you’re just using your taste and your knowledge of how to make records properly and try to put something together that’s great. There are other A&Rs out there that have made great records with bands that I didn’t think had it in them. They surprised me, just like I’m sure Kid Rock surprised them.
How much input do you usually have on the productions?
It depends on the circumstances and on how clear the artist’s vision is. Some artists need more direction than others. Sometimes the best job an A&R can do is get out of the way and not screw it up. Other times it really needs hands on direction, production, editing and arrangement ideas. But in order to be able to do that you have to build some credibility with your artist. Most artists feel they have some sort of clear vision and very often the A&R’s job is just to help them figure out what that is. Each experience is different. You have to approach it with an open mind.
What proportion of your time is spent looking for new acts to sign, in comparison with the time spent dealing with already established acts in your rooster?
I do a lot of both. The funny thing is as you start to have records that do well, those projects become more important and less manageable in some ways. More people become involved, the artist has far less time on his hands and in some ways they become much more high maintenance. Those things require more of your time, but at the same time the music industry has always been fueled by new artists. So there’s always a focus on finding new things, that’s just the nature of our business. The one thing that’s hard is that there really is not enough time to listen to music as one would think. I find myself being on the phone all the time. I do a lot of listening to demos at home, on the weekend or when I’m driving.
How do you find new talent?
The first thing I like to keep in mind is that you’re never going to know where you’re going to find something great. One thing I have learned is that you have to be open to meeting new people, to take meetings with and phone calls from people you don’t know. I always try to return everybody’s calls regardless of whether I know them or not.
Research is something all the major labels do now. Sometimes you find things by just being in touch with regional music scenes. You try to build a network of contacts you trust; lawyers, managers, agents… You can’t hear everything. You’re not always going to know what’s going on in Lawrence, Kansas, but I know people who are going to know and if there’s something that I should be aware of, I know they’re going to make me aware of it. That’s a big part of it; building a network of people.
What do you look for in an artist or an act?
Great songs are always the key. You can sell a great song if the artist doesn’t play that well or if he/she isn’t that great looking. The song is what everybody responds to, you can’t see what a band looks like through the radio. Beyond that, if an artist has star quality, that’s a very big plus. That’s one of the things that helped us tremendously with Kid Rock. If a band is great live then that really helps but it’s not necessarily critical. I know a lot of A&Rs who wouldn’t sign a band if they weren’t good live, but I’m not one of those people. I think that if the songs are good enough, I would do it. I have done it.
Do you find it important that the act be creatively involved in the selection of the songs?
Absolutely! No question! At the end of the day it is their record. The artist has to go out and promote the record and autograph copies of it for the next year, so they have to believe in it. People can sense phoniness, especially the younger people. Teenagers have incredible bullshit detectors, it has to be real.
There have been instances where I have had disagreements with artists over songs, but I’ve never thrown down the gauntlet to an artist and said: "It has to be this way!" My approach has been much more along the lines of trying to advocate my position and convince him of what I think is the right way to go. Like I said, at the end of the day they have one career. I’ll make lots of other records in mine but in most cases this is their one shot. So, I will usually let them make the final call.
Do you pay attention to things like who the manager is, who the attorney is, who the team is, when considering signing a new act?
Yes. The attorney is less of a concern because attorneys don’t get involved with the day to day handling of the artist’s career. There are situations where I haven’t pursued a band because I had trouble dealing with the manager. I like to think that I can get along with pretty much everybody and that I’m a pretty laid back guy. So if I have a very negative reaction to a manager, I’ll trust my instinct on that one.
How sure about the available market-space for an act do you need to be before signing and releasing them?
It depends very much on the type of music, and the degree of clutter out there. In some cases, I’m sort of harping on Kid Rock, but when we put that record out, we had no idea if we could sell it. We just thought the record was great, but the radio wasn’t playing that kind of music in 1998. So, certainly there was an opening in the marketplace, but a void in the marketplace doesn’t mean that you are just going to be able to fill it. The time has to be right.
If you take the flip side of that, just because an artist or rather a style or genre of music is packed with artists, it doesn’t mean that you can’t sell it. What it all comes down to is the strength of your songs and the believability of your act. If you’re looking at the pop artists right now, you’ve got: N’Sync, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. In the rap/metal thing you’ve got: Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, Korn and until recently, Rage Against the Machine. Three or four break through and the other ones are sort of perceived as being the "imitators" of those four. Not necessarily less valid, but it seems like the second wave of acts don’t have songs that are as good as the first ones. If you come with equally strong songs, you could absolutely have another pop act that does very well. There’s always going to be young kids who want their own music.
From which people and departments at Lava/Atlantic do you need support before signing an act?
At Lava we sign it because we like it. I don’t care too much what people think, that’s one thing that Jason Flom definitely instilled in me early on in my A&R career. He’s made it very clear to me that most of the successful acts that he signed over the years, were acts that nobody else wanted. I learned something from that and can say that my experience with Kid Rock was exactly that. So the only thing I can trust is my own gut. I’m a firm believer in the concept that nobody in A&R really knows anything, It’s all just our opinions. If you accept the truthful premise that everybody in A&R is wrong more than they are right, then there’s no reason to let people, who are probably wrong anyway, convince you not to sign somebody you believe in. The greatest A&R people in history, Ahmet Ertegun, John Hammond, Clive Davis… have all signed many more stiffs than hits. I’m concerned with what Jason has to think, and what our primary core of people here at Lava think. And even if those people really didn’t like something, if I believed in it, I’d want to sign it anyway. I’ll make a record that’s good enough so that everybody else gets it.
What advice would you give unsigned acts on how to approach the music biz?
I would say that the best thing any unsigned act can do, is to prepare for the likelihood that they will be dropped. I don’t mean to sound cynical, but in a more practical sense the logic is that so much of this business is based on luck and timing. I’ve always found that the smarter you are and the harder you work, the better your luck is. So, control the things that you’re able to control: your song writing, your performance, the way in which you do your business. Do those things intelligently and with as much passion as you possibly can.
Secondly, building a following before you get your record deal will put you in a stronger position when you’re negotiating your deal and you’ll be much better off should you actually get into a situation where you’re dropped. I think that people often don’t ask themselves the right questions. People usually think: "How can I get a record deal?". The proper question is: "How can I make a career for myself as a musician?". Record deals come and go. There are plenty of artists out there who can make a decent living on the road but haven’t been with a major label in ten years. The only way you can do that is by being real with your audience, work hard and build a following. That’s how you get real fans. You don’t get them through MTV or radio play, you get them by much more grassroots means.
Would you work with acts from outside the US?
Sure! We’ve done that before. I’m signing something right now that’s from outside the U.S. I signed an act from Norway a few years ago called Midnight Sons and Lava also has the Corrs, who are massive in Europe. There are certain practical limitations that one has when dealing with bands that are not stateside, but ultimately you go where the music is!
What are some of the differences in how a record would be made and marketed for a rap/rock act, like Kid Rock, in comparison to a pop act like Backstreet Boys?
Most rock records are generally done by a single producer and the band usually writes their own songs. Sometimes you’ll have a radio mix which is not as aggressive as the album mix, but for pop records you often have to do a club mix, a dance mix and a mix that’s more appropriate for crossover stations. Most pop acts these days tend to not write their own songs, so you have to find producers who usually bring the songs with them. It’s often quite expensive, A-level pop producers can make over a hundred thousand dollars a track. Many pop records will cost three-to-four times what the average rock record will cost to make. Pop is also much more expensive to break as far as independent promotion is concerned and also marketing expenditures, including videos. In general pop tends to be a much more expensive proposition, but in many cases with a bigger upside if you can actually break the acts.
Do you accept unsolicited material?
No. There are legal reasons why the business affairs department tells us not to do that. Nobody wants to take the chance that somebody sues us if they believe an artist has a song that sounds similar to theirs. We limit that possibility by simply not accepting material like that.
Has the amount of time given by labels to new acts before they break?
There’s far less artist development than there used to be at major labels. The unfortunate thing is that marketing costs have sky rocketed since the video age entered, live revenues gone down, ticket prices increased and record-making have become more expensive. You have fewer outlets due to the consolidation of radio, which is still a primary way of exposing your records, and people are less inclined to stick with acts through multiple records. Part of it is that there’s a perception that music is more disposable now than it was twenty years ago. There’s a lot of blame to go around on that one. A lot of it is MTV’s fault, some of it is certainly the major labels’ and radio’s fault and some of it I think, is simply a cultural shift. There are many more things competing for consumer’s dollars, there’s a new blockbuster movie opening every weekend, the Internet, video games, everybody has a hundred channels on their televisions. All these things combine to make music less important to people these days, although hit records now sell more than they used to and have a longer life span. The unfortunate downside is that there are a lot of great classic bands that would have trouble getting a record deal now. Like the Doors or others who didn’t have their first hit record until their second or third album.
If you could dramatically change some aspect of the music industry, what would you do?
I would really like it if MTV played more videos and if radio play lists weren’t as tight as they are now. As far as the practicality of breaking some of our artists, that would help a lot. It’s been a frustrating thing in the last couple of years because MTV is such a cultural force. They used to program like a radio station and now they program like a televison network.
What has been the greatest moment of your music career?
Probably watching Kid Rock perform at the MTV awards two years ago and then the first time he headlined a show at a hockey arena. The MTV awards was the sign that we were really going to penetrate the American consciousness. That very first Arena show was the result… it was a very satisfying feeling to hear 18,000 people sing along to the songs that I used to listen to in my office .
What do you see yourself doing in 5-10 years?
I know that I very much enjoy making records, writing music and playing music, and I hope I can continue to do that. I don’t know what my business situation will be like in a couple of years. I’m enjoying what I’m doing now, have been really fortunate to have done well with it and I just want to keep on doing it, live a good life and do the right thing.
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