Paul Rappaport on Rock’s Golden Age: Inside Gliders Over Hollywood
Few people have had a backstage pass to rock history quite like Paul Rappaport. As a longtime Columbia Records executive, he worked closely with legendary artists like Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Alice In Chains, shaping the way their music reached the world. Now, in his new book, Gliders Over Hollywood, Rappaport takes readers behind the curtain, sharing incredible, untold stories from the golden era of rock.
From flying the iconic Pink Floyd airship to witnessing Bruce Springsteen’s relentless work ethic and even talking Bob Dylan through a creative crisis, his memoir is packed with insider moments that capture the magic (and madness) of the music industry. In this interview, Rappaport reflects on the most unforgettable stories from his career, the changing landscape of the music business, and what it was like to stand on stage with Pink Floyd.
Mark Dean of Antihero Magazine sat down with Rappaport to dig into the stories behind the book—and the legends who shaped rock and roll.
There were two. The first was Chapter 13 – Your Purse Is On Fire. It chronicles my experiences on the road with Ronnie Wood’s The New Barbarians band. I wanted to explain in a fun way how crazy it was being in that gang for a week. Of course, it will come as no surprise that in 1979 it was a pretty drug-crazed tour. Because I was invited to be a part of it and I had a nice relationship with Woody and Keith, the challenge was how much should I tell, and what not to tell, because there is a code of honor when you are allowed inside—some of what you experience on the road stays on the road. But I also needed to be honest about what was really going on. I walked right up to the line on this one, but didn’t cross it. Ron Wood and Keith Richards deserve respect, and I value my relationship with both of them.
The second was my chapter on Bob Dylan, Chapter 19 – Beasts In The Bible. This guy has meant so much to me and the world. He helped shape a culture and his songs certainly helped shape me. I wanted the reader to see some other sides of Bob they wouldn’t know. But there is part at the end where Bob is really down, suffering from writer’s block and he calls to tell me he’s thinking about quitting. It was quite a personal moment, and I found myself talking him off the ledge for an hour. I struggled with whether to include it, it being so personal and all. In the end I felt folks should know that even if you’re Bob Dylan you can have a real down time in both your life and your artistry.
It would be Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Because of the work ethic. I’ve never seen anything that comes close to the work Bruce and that band put into their performances. I watched sound checks that were also rehearsals, lasting two to three hours. For arena size shows, Bruce had a 100-foot chord on his Fender Esquire that went from his amp all the way down the center aisle to the soundboard where he rehearsed the band, played his parts, and also twisted the knobs on the mixing console to get the overall desired sound for the band that he wanted. Then they’d take a break and come back and do a four-hour show. After a long towel down Bruce would come out and meet folks backstage. These were not rushed encounters, Bruce had meaningful conversations with everyone he met. He’d return to the hotel at around 1am, and then get up the next day and do it all over again—city, by city, by city. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are the hardest working team in show biz by far.
When I come up with an idea for a promotion or marketing event, I always try and take a page from the artist. I want the event to feel like it’s an extension of their music or stage show, so that it has an authenticity about it.
By the time The Division Bell was released, Pink Floyd certainly had a huge fanbase. But I wanted to expand that fanbase even further, turning a younger audience on to the band. I also wanted to create Beatle-esque excitement in every city the band visited on tour. When the Beatles came to America even your grandmother knew who they were. I wanted to create something so big, something that nobody could miss, that would bring a similar excitement and anticipation.
I was looking out my 14th floor office window in New York when I saw the huge Budweiser Blimp in its red and white logo flying about 1,000 feet over the Hudson River. It looked grand, majestic. Pink Floyd is famous for grand, majestic production in their concerts and also famous for using inflatables during their shows—most renowned the giant pig. I thought ‘Wow, this is just what we need. It’s the biggest billboard in the world, and it floats from city to city!’
When blimps become huge, they are referred to as airships. I asked my assistant to find the biggest airship in America. I won’t go into the whole story, which you can read in the book, but it took a couple weeks to talk the president of Columbia Records into it because it cost so much money to create. I thought the band would want the airship to be a huge flying pig, but they thought that passe, and wanted something new. Enter Storm Thorgerson, the band’s longtime graphic designer who, amongst many other things, designed all those famous album covers. There are lots of fun Storm stories in the book—he was a wild creative genius, who was also hysterically funny. Storm took on the challenge and created graphics that made the airship look like a giant creature from another world. Everywhere it went it caused massive excitement. We gave rides in it to fans who entered to win one at their favourite record stores. Just to make sure everyone in a city looked up to see it, I had local rock stations’ morning shows broadcast live the from beautiful pink gondola. “Hi, this is Lin Brehmer from WXRT in Chicago broadcasting live from the Pink Floyd airship. We’ll be flying by the Sears Tower today at noon, so please wave to us was we fly by!”
The Pink Floyd Airship became the biggest promotional event in rock history. It got incredible coverage on radio, in newspapers, and especially on television where the news traffic helicopters would fly right alongside of it. The band loved it even beyond the excitement it created for them. They had become pilots and wanted to log time flying the airship!
When I got to New York, to run Columbia’s rock department at its headquarters, the pressure to succeed was much greater. I was now in charge of our artist’s careers in the rock world—obtaining meaningful rock radio airplay across the country, creating exciting promotions, and making sure each album had enough momentum to continually move up the charts. Getting an album to #1 on the rock charts was always the goal. At Columbia, we did not settle for #2. I became excellent at all that, and being a bit of a rebel thought I was hot sh*t. But I had little experience in dealing with major league, heavy-duty record executives, like heads of marketing or the label President himself. Even though I’m a people person I had to learn how to “manage upwards.” If things were becoming a challenge, how to explain it to the higher-ups in ways they could understand, yet still feel confident in my abilities. I learned there were two truths, the real truth, and the truth the President wanted to hear. Haha. In short, a way to tell a truth in a creative way so as to not launch the President into the stratosphere, totally freaking the f*ck out. There are ways to couch what you say, to present options, to make the person know you are doing everything you can and still believe in you, even if the news is not good.
Sad to say, worse, MUCH WORSE. The biggest difference is, back in the day, the accent was on art—create the best music you can, use the best recording facilities to obtain the finest fidelity, and the record company spend lots of money to promote you in the most creative of ways. The money came as a result of selling great art. Somewhere along the line (starts to really change in the early 90’s) the record business became the “money” business. The accent was on the money and art came second.
Back then bands recorded playing all together in a studio. There is a wonderful synergy that takes place between musicians when they play together. That magic was captured on tape. And most importantly in analogue, where you can hear wonderful overtones. When listening back, you feel like you are in the band. With a great producer the soul of an artist or band enters your soul and an incredible bond is made. Lots of today’s pop records are made by committee—could be three producers, more than one songwriter, a specialist called in to create a beat, another to add something else. With so many people layering different effects at different times, how can there be any soul? Not to mention lots of today’s pop singers can’t sing, so they are Auto-tuned in the studio to correct pitch. How much soul or real human communication are you gonna feel from a digital machine?
My granddaughter wanted to turn me on to a superstar woman artist. She sent me a “special song.” The song was great, but some idiot put a drum loop throughout the whole piece that was like Chinese water torture. I know what happened. Someone said, “Oh let’s get the best beat person in here because now drum loops are the ‘current cool thing.’” Completely killed the whole song as that beat distracted from the lyrics, and never changed to accentuate a deep or powerful word or phrase here and there. They’d lost the plot of how to truly communicate a song. Great drummers like Ringo Starr, Nick Mason, and Liberty DeVitto, just to mention a few, know how to elevate lyrics and sections of songs to make them really come alive for their bands, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Billy Joel.
In the business I loved, if you were an artist or band that made a difference but just weren’t super commercial to the masses, like let’s say, The Velvet Underground, you could still make a nice living even if you sold less than a gold record (500,000 albums), your royalties were paid from your record sales, from your fans. So, if you sold 250,000 albums with a royalty rate of $3.00 an album that’s $750,000. Add 9 cents apiece for every song on the album and that adds up to an extra dollar. Now you’re at a million bucks. With the advent of the streaming services, all the money generated goes to whoever has the most streams on a descending scale (not divided into your personal fan base). With so many pop acts fighting for those top streams, God help you if you are aspiring singer-songwriter, because even if you have a decent following there isn’t enough money left over for you at a mid-level or below.
Fun used to be part of our job description. Reading the book, I am confident you’ll get a big smile on your face and in some places howl with laughter. In today’s world the big phrase is, “Don’t leave any money on the table.” When the famous promoter Bill Graham had artists play for him, he built elaborate backstage sets as a thank you. When Pink Floyd came to San Francisco, if you were backstage, you could walk into a recreated English pub, sit down, have a beer and a Steak and Kidney Pie! How much do you think that cost?!! But it was FUN. Fun, people! We used to have water gun fights and bowling in the hallways, a glass of wine was not unusual during a sales meeting. It was a social business. The radio programmers, disc jockeys, press folks, and record company people were all like a big family. When we wanted to introduce the Alice In Chains band to the radio community we took everyone Go Cart racing. We spent a day playing paint ball with Eddie Money and local radio, press, and retail folks as a lead up to his forthcoming album. I once rented the Stark Trek Adventure at Universal Studios for an entire day during a high-profile rock radio consultant’s convention. It took place on a TV soundstage. At least 30 well known music and program directors were dressed in real Star Trek costumes (Klingons and all) and read from hilarious scripts as they were filmed flying their respective starships and battling alien creatures. That footage was interspersed with real show footage, and at the end we were all handed a VHS tape with us in a real Star Trek TV show! Fun, fun, fun! The next week every single radio programmer volunteered to play any new Columbia artist or band I asked them to because they had become heroes to their kids, extended family, and friends appearing in a Star Trek episode right beside the show’s famous actors.
Well, the most surprising of all was, as a thank-you present, being invited as a guest guitarist to play live on stage with Pink Floyd at the London Arena in 1989. It was on the Momentary Lapse of Reason tour. Even got to trade licks with David Gilmour—pretty epic. I describe that experience minute by minute in the book so the reader will feel like they are there, and truly understand what it’s like to play live on stage with Pink Floyd.
Lesser-known anecdotes would include trading card sleights with renowned producer Rick Rubin when we found out we were both heavily into magic. Performing card trick mysteries for Bob Dylan, surfing with Steve Perry from Journey, and giving my red Rickenbacker, that I played in my high school band, to Elvis Costello because he couldn’t find one with original pickups. He used it all over Armed Forces, and every time I hear a song from that album and hear my Rick jangling away, I get a smile on my face and a little choked up.
I didn’t want people to forget these glorious times, and aside from readers getting to know their favourite recording artists in a much more intimate way like I did, I also wanted to introduce them to some of the behind the scenes characters who made it all happen like Pink Floyd’s famed graphic designer Storm Thorgerson, renowned record man Steve Popovich, managers like Sandy Pearlman from Blue Oyster Cult, Steve O’Rourke from Pink Floyd, and Herbie Herbert manager of Journey. These guys were so colourful and outrageous in their own ways, and brought big smiles to the world.
I want readers to have fun like I did by reading this book. I want them to have “you are there” conversations with Bob Dylan, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Billy Joel, and many more to experience those artists’ more intimate sides. I want readers to shake their heads in amazement, asking “did that really happen?”
There were sooooooo many, and they all stood out for so many different reasons. So, it’s hard to pick just one. But a stand out is the manager of Journey, Herbie Herbert. I write a lot of cool stuff about him, but one of his most memorable eccentricities is when he got on a Yiddish kick. He got enamoured with the language working with Journey’s famed road manager Pat “Bubba” Morrow, who used to date Jewish girls when he lived in Yonkers, New York, and became fond of their mannerisms and jargon.
Herbie sent The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Learning Yiddish books to the entire music industry and told us if we wanted to speak to him or Bubba, we’d first have to learn a couple lines of Yiddish. Bear in mind, neither of these guys are Jewish.
Book Excerpt:
One day, Herbie called me to discuss the release of a new Journey single. We were in the middle of a hot Journey release, selling at least fifty thousand albums a week. The timing of a single was crucial to keep momentum going, and we were on a very tight deadline.
‘Vas makhstu,’ he begins (‘how are you?’).
I tell him I got the book, it’s a cute joke, and then I go on to talk about the single. Herbie keeps talking in Yiddish before finally switching to English.
‘Rap, what the fuck? A good Jewish boy like you can’t even learn a couple lines of Yiddish?’
‘Herbie, we’re on a deadline!’
‘I know.’
He tells me he will not discuss the single until I read the book and call him back and speak a few phrases.
How many millions of Journey albums were we looking to sell? How important was this timely conversation? It didn’t matter. Welcome to rock’n’roll business in the 80s.
‘Learn your Yiddish and call me back.’
I did.
Yes. I don’t think Alice In Chains would have broken big on main stream Rock Radio if I was not the guy sitting in that chair at the time. Alice was breaking new ground with a new sound that no one could relate to at first. NO ONE in rock radio wanted to play Alice In Chains. Their first single “Man In The Box” starts with guitar crunch like no other. Radio programmers used to Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac, ZZ Top, and Van Halen, were thrown by the band’s discordant parallel harmonies. I’d seen the band live and knew I was witnessing the next big thing, one of the most creative and powerful bands in the world. I put my reputation on the line for those guys. I called in every favor I had and offered future favors if a radio programmer would just play the song once. That’s all it took. As soon as kids heard “Man In The Box,” the request lines melted down. It took three long months, one station at a time to build and break that record wide open. But when it finally did, that paved the way for Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and the rest of the Seattle Sound to be accepted at Rock Radio.
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Looking back at your career, is there anything you would have done differently, or any opportunities you wish you had taken?
Only one. Go back to question 4. I wish I’d figured out how to talk to the higher-ups with better communication skills more quickly than I did. I had too many painful experiences getting hammered when I could have avoided so much of that if I had just gotten off my rebel high horse a bit sooner.
Many thanks for giving me this opportunity
Interview by Mark Dean, Antihero Magazine.
Source: www.antiheromagazine.com
