So by now you’ve all heard me wax poetic about the roller coaster ride that is a major record label. It’s pretty much hell atop a ritz cracker. Trust me. There are some cool things that come from it too. You ride in limos for about 6 weeks. People tell you how great you are for about 6 weeks, etc. In my experiences with Atlantic Records there is one memory that still truly stands out for me. I’m sure over the next few days you’ll hear all sorts of really famous and successful folks going on and on about this, but here’s a view from the ‘working class.’
When we decided to sign to Atlantic it had EVERYTHING to do with wanting to be a part of a lineage. The Coasters, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Booker T. and the MG’s, Mr. Otis Redding, The Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin, Will Hoge. Anyhow, we HOPED in the years gone by that might be the case. I sure liked seeing MY name in line with those folks. That is what the dream is built on. Unfortunately very early in my time at Atlantic I realized that it was just that, a dream. Very little if ANYTHING that had brought THOSE artists to the label, or that the label had used to break those artists was even close to being in play anymore. Bummer. But one day while sitting in Nick, my A&R man’s office we get a call. “Mr. Ertegun would like to meet the band.” Now mind you all those folks listed above, Mr. Ertegun is responsible for. He’s the ONLY link between greatness and Atlantic Records at this point. Nick gets really excited, even sort of nervous. Heather our product manager is even more that way than Nick. She’s been with the company for 3 years and never even met him. Nick has only chatted with him a time or two. Here we are hicks from Nashville going into a meeting with as close to a real life musical god as we may ever know.
The next hour of my life is as memorable a moment as I think I could ever have. We go to the office which is this HUGE deep dark wood suite. Covered with AMAZING rock and roll photos. Jim Marshall, Annie Liebowitz, the real shit. Photos I’ve never even seen before and trust me I’ve spent MANY MANY and hour gawking over some rock and roll photos. Then, there’s Mr. Ertegun. He says hello. We start talking. He says, “I really like your record.” I wish I had a recording of THAT! Then he starts into shit like, “…you know on the second track the way your vocals come in and are right up front. It reminds me of how we made records back in the ’60’s.” Then he talks about the “….tight groove in Ms. Williams.” On and on. “…I really like the way it closes with the ballad. It feels like a whole experience….” I’m floored. This guy has actually listened to this album. Hell he’s even thinking it’s somewhat good. Now he moves on to telling us about how we need to break this album and me as an artist. “This isn’t about radio. It’s about building something on the road. I remember I had an artist named Eric Clapton. He’d done a few bands but had decided to do sort of a jazz/rock/trio kind of thing in the late ’60s called the Cream.(now mind you he’s saying all this like we’ve NEVER EVER heard of any of these guys! and he’s NOT name dropping, he’s just telling stories about his friends. The same way I would talk about Dean or Erson, etc.) Noone at radio would touch this so we just kept them on the road, touring and playing and eventually a little at a time radio started to embrace them…….”
Next we talked about touring and doing opening shows. He said, “….don’t be alarmed if you’re the opener and people aren’t into you so much. My friend Mick Jagger once wanted a new artist to come and open for his band the Rolling Stones. Some R&B guy that nobody had heard of. He got a luke warm reception at best every night but kept on and kept on. A year or so later everyone new this guy named Prince…..”
He then talked about sales numbers and said, “….. first we’ve got to sell 15-20,000. Then you goto 50,000. From there it builds quickly to a few hundred thousand, the 500,000 then a million. We can do this. Everyone just has to stick by it and work really hard.”
During these conversations he would take the really, really, REALLY long pauses. Mid sentence would just stop for seriously like 10-15 seconds. Now Mr. Ertegun was already pushing 80 at this point and I was terrified that he was DYING. As much as I wanted to be linked to that Atlantic legacy I sure as shit didn’t want it to be as the artist who was in the office when Ahmet Ertegun passed away. No thanks. Luckily that wasn’t the case. Conversations wrapped up, we posed for a photo, shook hands and I asked him to,”… tell me ONE Otis Redding story. He’s my favorite singer of all time.” He smiled, shook my hand and whispered in my ear. FIVE WORDS. I’ll never forget them and won’t share them. But I will say thank you. Thank you Mr. Ertegun for truly setting the standard that should be followed by record labels still today. Thank you for signing the soundtrack of my life. Thanks for cultivating the TRUE artistry that still makes me want to get up every single day and get on this bus and go play music for folks, be it 50 or 5,000. Thank you for letting artists be themselves and try to say what is in the deepest parts of their souls. You are one of a kind and will truly be missed. I wish we could’ve worked together longer. I wish someone other than you, the old lion, at Atlantic Records had the guts or strength to stick to one of the points you made above. It’s a shame what they’ve done to your label, to your dream, to your legacy. But know that no matter how many times they homogenize it, beat it, suck the soul out of it, try and kill it that because of the work you did there will ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS be a band out here doing it the RIGHT way for ALL THE RIGHT REASONS! My eternal thanks sir. Farewell.

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