|
|
Paul Rappaport Takes Us Behind the Curtain in Music |
|
For thirty-three years Paul Rappaport worked promoted music icons and in
the process he became an icon on the business side of music. He started
working for Columbia Records when he was in university and worked his
way up through the ranks to eventually become Senior Vice-President of
Rock Promotion. In April he will release his autobiography, Gliders
Over Hollywood Airships, Airplay and the Art of Rock Promotion. For
the purposes of this article, we will refer to the title as Gliders
Over Hollywood. Paul Rapport left Columbia Records in the early
2000s, but what is astounding about that is not how much time has passed
in between then and his April release of the book (pre-order links at
the bottom of this interview), but the clarity of his memory in terms of
his personal memories and the events, circumstances and relationships
that he experienced in the music business. The chapters of this book are
not merely vague and scattered memories but rather play out like a
streaming or television series where we are introduced to the colorful,
creative and interesting artists and colleagues of Paul Rappaport.
Nick Mason from Pink Floyd gave me a very nice quote (about that). He
and David Gilmour are really great people. You don’t expect that kind of
thing, but I reached out and he wrote something very nice. The small
version is on the back of the book and when you open it there is this
full quote,” he says (we are going to dispense here with proper
journalism and refer to Paul Rappaport, simply as Paul, because he is so
personable, we want you to get to know him as we did).
Paul, a few things jumped out at us right away in reading your fabulous
book, one of them being that as you peel back the layers about your life
and your career, is the great respect you have for the women in your
life, your mother Vera, your sister Ruth, your wife Sharon and women who
have been your colleagues. In particular there is a photo in your book
of you with The Bangles and you say this in the caption, “Others though
of them as a great girl band, but I always thought of them as a great
band that happened to be women (page 169).
He explains, “I think it comes from my parents and growing up in a
wonderful household with parents who had really good values. Some of
that might have come from early dealings in the music business, when I
was in my very young twenties, and I did see things as far as how some
women were treated that really threw me in a bad way. I was kind of
shocked. I was at a business meeting at Columbia, and I saw the way one
woman was treated in a meeting, gross and rude. It really put me off.
There was another time when I was in a meeting and the General Manager
of the station was saying derogatory things to her. I was embarrassed.
He was commenting on how beautiful her boobs looked today and all this
kind of crazy stuff. When we walked out of the meeting, I said I am
sorry and she said to me, Paul, you should see what he says to me when
you are not in the room or somebody else isn’t in the room. It was just
shocking.
When I saw those things, it made me run the other way, just to make I
would have proper respect for women. I always did and when I saw these
bad characters with bad actions, it made me more aware of how one should
be. It was always in there, but in those early days I saw that, and I
was whoa.
The thing about The Bangles is whenever people say they were a great
girl band it made them less than. It (sounded like) they are only so
good, because they are a girl band. I was no, they happen to be girls,
and they are really good. Susanna (Hoffs) was a great vocalist. They
were tremendous, they had a great producer in David Kahne. They were
terrific and very hard-working. They were very young. Most bands sleep
in the same room, because you don’t have money for separate rooms. They
all slept in the same room, and they looked like the seven dwarfs (he
laughs). Everybody was like a family in those days. They were all
getting ready for bed and in their flannel pajamas, with their hair in
curlers. For their bedtime stories we would read them the charts, the
Billboard charts and the Air Play charts. We would say your record only
went up one point today, but don’t worry there are some other records
coming down and your record will jump ten points. This is what your
single is doing and that was their bedtime story. Goodnight kids, see
you tomorrow.”
The other thing that comes through loud and clear in Gliders Over
Hollywood is Paul Rapport’s willingness to be vulnerable and talk about
any insecurities he may have had, while in the midst of forging a
formidable career in music.
“I am pretty much an open book. When I thought of writing these stories
over the years, there were a lot of years when I didn’t write them
because I didn’t know what I could or couldn’t share. There are things
that aren’t in the book when you go right up against a line and there
were things I saw that I would never put in the book.
I thought if I write this now, what would Steve Perry from Journey think
about this or what would Keith Richars think or what would any of these
people think.
I am seventy-six years old now and I started writing this six years ago.
I think it is time now, because I don’t know how much time any of these
people have left or me. I don’t plan on leaving the planet anytime soon,
but …
You get to the place when I write a lot about Bob Dylan who was a big
part of my life, and he meant a lot to me. There is a part in the book
when he actually called me, and he said he was going to quit. He
literally said I don’t think anybody wants to hear my shit anymore. I
think I am going to quit. In the book, I talk him off of that ledge for
about an hour. I said look you are just going through writer’s block and
if anybody’s mind needs a rest, my god it would be yours with all of the
songs that you have written.
I wasn’t going to put that in the book, because that is personal, and I
don’t want Bob to call me up. We had a nice relationship I thought, you
know I am going to put it in the book, because people should know, even
Bob Dylan can have a hard time. Even someone who is a genius can go
through a (difficult) time, and I wrote it in a way that hopefully
doesn’t make him look bad. He was just going through a tough time. If I
had written this book twenty years ago, I don’t think I would have put
it in. I think I would have been too skittish and worried what is this
one going to think and what is that one going to think? There are some
drug scenes in there and I talk about some of that. There is nothing
there that you wouldn’t know already or haven’t already read.
There is a line. I saw other things that I wouldn’t (include). I wrote
what I wrote. As time passes there were things and come on guys this is
what happened, and this is what I am going to write about,” he says.
Paul in a reflective mood says, “I have grandchildren now, which is a
crackup and one of the older grandchildren is a girl. I take her to get
her nails done, so when we go there, I have taken her to get her
manicures for years. (He gets his done there as well) I do closeup magic
and people are always looking at your hands. When people are always
looking at your hands, the first thing they teach you is to go and get a
manicure. When I get my nails done, I always get my thumbs done, the
color of her nails. She is a teenager, so she is getting kids’ stuff,
like pineapple nails, bright yellow and bright green, so I get my thumbs
done. We are kind of palling around. I don’t care; I am having fun. If
(someone) thinks it is weird, I really don’t care.
I think it is age. You just have a different perspective than when you
are younger. When you are younger you always want people to like you and
you care about those things more, so you are careful.”
There is a guy in town who is an A list ghostwriter. This guy writes for
presidents of the United States. He writes for actors and actresses.
When I first started thinking about the book, I took him out to lunch
and I wanted to get some pointers. I said I don’t know if I can write
this book, because I don’t know if I can write these stories. I don’t
know if they are for me to write, because I spent time with these people
and these were personal times I was with them. I don’t know if I have
the right to put that in a book. He encouraged me to write it because he
said they are your stories too. They happen to be in your story. As long
as you don’t cross a line and embarrass anybody, I don’t see why you
wouldn’t want to share these stories. This is your experience and what
an amazing experience it was.
I thought about it and about how many stories there are that are fun and
that are not off color or that I wouldn’t tell somebody. I began to tell
those stories. (He chuckles) this book is 320 pages of those stories,
and they aren’t all in there, because you can’t shoehorn in 33 years of
being in the record business into one little book. I had to pick the
best stories, that I thought people would at least appreciate. This is
the record business, so there has to be some sex, drugs and Rock n Roll
or nobody is going to believe it,” he says.
Although Paul Rappaport could have been my older brother, because there
is only a few years difference in our age, we shared much of the changes
that took place in music over the decades and one of those was when FM
Radio, really began to take hold in North America in the early 1970s
(for clarity it had existed decades earlier, but was not a popular
format before the seventies).
He recalls, “These stations were just coming onboard and some of them
had better signals than others. I grew up in Southern California and I
was listening to a station called KAPPC (check this name). I had a
little transistor radio and depending on what room I was in or how I
turned on the radio (I could listen). If I turned the antennae to pick
up the signal it was like a window into a new world. We grew up in the
heyday of LA top forty radio. When The Beatles and the Stones started,
they were Pop stars. They were not album Rock stars yet. There were no
Rock stars yet. There was only Pop music, and it could be Neil Diamond
or a Rolling Stone song. It is going to be “Get Off of My Cloud,” or
“Ruby Tuesday,” and The Beatles songs are going to be “She Loves You,”
and that kind of thing.
There was no internet then and I am trying to figure out how I would
have known. Somebody must have got me tuned in to this new radio
station. First of all, it was on a transistor radio. I didn’t realize
until later in life that FM radio was in stereo. It wasn’t mono anymore.
If you had a good pair of speakers, you were hearing the records like
they were meant to be heard in stereo. In the beginning it was just what
is this new music? I like this new music. The music was speaking to us.
It was speaking to you and speaking to me. It shows you the power of
music. What were we listening to? The music that we couldn’t get. I was
listening to Jimi Hendrix, this band called Pink Floyd, and I was
listening to this different type of music that you weren’t going to find
on top forty, but it was so powerful you were going. I need to know more
about this.
I was glued to this FM signal, so as that radio became popular and the
reason it became popular is there is so much music being made and the
record companies are discovering this new Rock music it demands a format
of its own. A lot of people don’t realize a lot of these artists started
on FM radio.
Even someone like Billy Joel, he didn’t break until his fourth album and
Bruce Springsteen didn’t have a hit single until four or five albums and
Loggins and Messina. All of these bands started on FM radio. Then the
idea was to cross them over. Journey was a progressive Rock band before
Steve Perry (joined) them. I promoted three Journey records, before
Steve Perry showed up and there was Santana. All of this stuff was
happening in this format.
As the music was being sold in stores, enter the FM format. Fast forward
a bunch of years later when the Seattle sound comes with Alice In
Chains, Nirvana and Ambrosia. All of that music explodes, and there is
so much music it demands its own format. Alternative Rock music was
born, and it needed its own radio format. We didn’t have computers and
internet then, so this is how you got your music.”
During Paul Rappaport’s career, music emerged in several different
media, he started of course with records, then came eight track players
in cars, and cassettes and CDs (now of course we have streaming and are
back to vinyl). We wondered how the industry adapted to promoting music
or if any adaptation was necessary at all.
“It was pretty seamless. The biggest change was the CDs. When you had
different media, it didn’t matter, because you were promoting music.
You were telling the world about this new music. That is what
promotion is. You are making sure people are writing about it, that it
is getting radio airplay, and I was in charge of big promotions. It was
hey look here, you want to know about this. You are promoting the music.
How I got it to the consumer didn’t matter. Someone had a great CD
player; someone has a record player great. It is the music that you are
selling, not the configuration it was in.
I remember walking into the office of the president of Columbia at the
time. He took a little CD of Santana, put it into a player and as it was
playing, he turned the player upside down and around. I thought oh my
god, I have just seen the future. They had experimented with different
things before, eight tracks, quadraphonic sound, but it didn’t really
take off, but the CDs were a game changer at the time.
I thought it was the future until I started getting into the fidelity of
it and then I thought (he starts to laugh) this is terrible, this is a
mistake.
What people don’t realize, but people our age realize, is if you listen
to an album on a good sound system the way your ear hears the
soundwaves, you get overtones and undertones. Even if you turn up a Rock
record, like Deep Purple, it doesn’t matter, and you will feel like you
are in the band and you want to dance around. If you put an acoustic
guitar album on you can almost smell the wood.
We used to call it black magic, but that is what vinyl does. You can
play the same record on a CD and crank it up and all you will get is a
headache, because it is a brick of sound. It doesn’t enter your ear the
same way. It doesn’t enter your heart the same way. It doesn’t do for
you what fidelity does from an album. Everything is digital now and most
of the music I listen to is streaming.
We used to buy imports from England, because they were pressed
differently, and the vinyl was of better quality.
When I was in college my album collection wasn’t that big, because it
was three or four dollars for an album and back then you could eat for
twenty bucks for a week, so albums were a luxury. One of the things we
used to do was go up to the dorms where a guy would play record albums
on a nice system. He had headphones for everybody. You got to listen to
an album with headphones. So, you could listen to Jimi Hendrix’s “Are
You Experienced,” on a good sound system. If you listen to those first
three Hendrix albums on headphones you can really hear what he was
trying to accomplish. Those records even today would blow anybody’s
mind, just because of the intricacies and the sounds and all of the
things he wanted to achieve,” he says.
Paul Rappaport’s career occurred for the most part, prior to cell
phones, prior to laptop computers or Apple or Microsoft operating
systems. We wondered if those things had existed during the majority of
his career, and he would have approached promoting music differently.
He says, “There were no cell phones, but there were phones, so communication was still possible, it just took a bit longer. For instance, in the Alice In Chains story in my book, I discover radio station WSHE had dropped the record, not because it's not performing, just making way for another new band. But I couldn’t have a station that powerful go off a record when I'm trying to build more airplay. I have no way of contacting the Program Director because I don't know where he is. So, I call his wife at home, explain the situation, and she finds him and tells him to call me. Relationships were, and are, everything in the record business.
I also once had WNEW in New York playing the new Mick Jagger solo
album, She's The Boss, on a Sunday before it was released. Now
and then, by nefarious means, stations got hold of hot anticipated
releases, play them, and shout "EXCLUSIVE" over their airwaves. Of
course, we had to shut that down or be forced to rush release a record,
which meant our whole marketing plan would be ruined. It was Sunday
morning. Again, I called him at home. His wife picked up still in bed
with her husband the program director. "Hi Lisa, is Charlie there?"
"Yes, of course, he's laying right next to me."
"Could you put him on the phone please?"
We had a lively conversation, ("You call me in my bedroom??!!!") then he
agreed to take the record off the air, but I would have to hear it one
more time before he did.
In the case of the Bruce Springsteen Live At The Roxy story, when
everyone showed up late, the sound truck, the radio station personnel,
etc., there was no instant communication, all I could do was wait,
worry, and smoke a cigarette.
In today's world, I think my approach to promotion would be the same for
the most part. In fact, I know it would, because up until six years ago
when I left my indie promotion job to write the book, I found I still
used my creative ways of thinking and my personal people skills of
communicating to get the job done.
(For instance) there was a program director in Denver who controlled a
giant satellite network of radio stations with tons of listeners all
across the country. I was working a new Eric Clapton record when Eric
was back to form playing a lively shuffle with killer lead solos. It was
a bonafide hit Rock album, but the program director complained about the
sound of Eric's guitar. He said it didn't have the bite as some of his
previous records. I explained that as some artists grow, they experiment
with different sounds, different band members, different approaches to
their music, but that the fierceness of the solos was there. Then I
reminded him that he was listening to the record in his office and when
played on his airwaves that were saturated with heavy compression to get
that "rock radio sound," that Eric's guitar would be shoved to the
forefront and would sound just the way he'd love to hear it. He added
the record.
It would be unfair to ask you Paul who your favorite artists and bands
were that you worked with, because you promoted so many outstanding
people in music, many of them iconic, but were there some that made an
impression upon you personally?
“I would say there are a few of them, Willie Nelson, Paul McCartney,
David Gilmour and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd, Keith Richards from the
Rolling Stones, Tony Bennett who was a big help in pointing me in the
right direction in the music business. All of these people, beyond the
celebrity have the ability to lose the celebrity part of them and they
just become people. They know how to do the right thing. They are kind,
very approachable and they made an impression on me, because they could
separate themselves.
When I met Keith Richards later with the Rolling Stones he apologized
for his behavior and he said to me, don’t I know you from somewhere? I
said yes you met me on the New Barbarians tour. He said oh my god I was
so bad on that tour. He said I offended so many people. Did I do
anything to offend you? I thought this guy is Keith Richards from the
Rolling Stones, he doesn’t have to ask me that. I said yes. He said I am
so sorry. He got up off his chair, gave me a hug and he said I
apologize. That is a real human being. That is not ha, I am Keith
Richards from the Rolling Stones. He is a real person.
Then we started talking about the guitar and if you play guitar, it is
like a brotherhood. It is a special thing. It is like a little club
everybody is in. He taught me open G tuning. You take one string off of
the guitar and you are barring it.
I would go home, and you literally take one string off of the guitar and
so you are only using five strings, and you are barring it. If you put
your fingers down the way he told me, all of a sudden it is (he imitates
the sound). They are all in there, “Brown Sugar,” “Start Me Up,” and
“Can You Hear Me Now.”
He wasn’t teaching me this as a Rock star, but instead guy to guy. He
said you play the guitar, you should know this, because this will be fun
for you. Those kinds of things really matter to me.
The fact that Tony Bennett would sit me down and would take the time to
explain the music business. He said it is not all duplicitous and it is
not all bullshit. You can have fun; you can be you. You don’t have to be
(a certain way) in the music business. You can be who you are and be
successful.
I got invited to play live on stage with Pink Floyd. Who does that?
Thanks for everything. In fact, thanks so much, why don’t you come and
play with us live on stage. I was oh like at a rehearsal. They said, no,
no at a proper gig. They said you can play. You are a player; you come
and play in Pink Floyd for a song. Who does that? That is a big heart, a
really big heart. They said we really appreciate everything you did for
us. Do you want to know
what it is like to play in Pink Floyd for seven minutes? During the song
they were all smiling at me, because they knew it was the thrill of a
lifetime.
I tried to capture that in the book, so (people) would know what it
feels like. Why did I want to write this book? I wanted to share it. I
wanted people to know. This is what it feels like minute by minute to
step on stage with a band like that. I wanted to share that. That stuff
stays with you for a really long time, because it is from one person to
another person.
I remember when we first started with Willie (Nelson). He was doing okay
on RCA and he hit it big on Columbia with the Red Headed Stranger album.
When he was touring Red Headed Stranger, he was still playing in
clubs. He met a guy in the airport who was playing the trumpet and they
hit it off. He said you should come to the club tonight and play with
us. In my mind the trumpet doesn’t fit, but the trumpet guy was so cool
that he knew when to play and when not to play. Willie put him on stage
and just had him as an accent. That is who that family is.
As I have gotten older, I think this whole world is about how we treat
each other. You seem to get on a higher plane when you get two people
who talk to each other and understand each other,” he says.
This writer could spend a lifetime visiting with Paul Rappaport. His
respect for people, his candid, down-to-earth attitude, but never
offensive, and one suspects his storytelling rivals that of the
legendary Davy Crockett.
Gliders Over Hollywood Airships, Airplay and the Art of Rock Promotion
lets the reader take a peek behind the curtain and does so in a manner
that is not sugarcoated, is not full of the writer’s self, but tells it
like it was and although Paul Rappaport’s intent was never to make the
reader be in awe of him or his career, we are, because of that
vulnerability with which he tells his stories and the clarity with which
he remembers them.
You will regret it if you do not take time to pre-order the book at one
of these links
here
or
here
and for those in the U.K.
here . Top
Photo: Paul Rappaport and The Bangles, photo by Lester Cohen, protected
by copyright
Potrait Photo by Mark Seliger, protected by copyright
Photo Three: Paul Rappaport far left playing guitar, plays a song with Pink Floyd Photo Four: Paul Rappaport and Mick Jagger #PaulRappaport #ColumbiaRecords #MusicLegendInterview #RivetingRiffsMagazine #RivetingRiffs #RockMusicPromotion #PaulRappaportInterview #PinkFloyd
|
“That
is what I was trying to do. This was a very magical time, and I wanted
to share these stories and for the readers to have fun, like I had fun.
I wanted them to have the experience that I had. Somehow, I was
(blessed) with a photographic memory, because as you know from reading
this book, I am talking to Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and David Gilmour
and all of these characters. I wanted it to be that and thankfully
because of this memory I can recall conversations. I can envision where
I had the conversations, what the room looked like, and I know what the
backstage looked like. I have this capability. I wrote it that way,
because I wanted people to experience as close to that (as possible) and
I wanted to make it entertaining in that way, so that you would be right
in the conversation with these people. 
