Feature Articles

LOU LEVY PUBLISHERS ROUND TABLE 1998

Participants
Big John Platt, Vice President Creative, EMI Music;
Jem Aswad, ASCAP Online Editor;
Barbara Vander Linde, General Manager Creative, Rondor;
Antony Bland, International A&R Manager, Chrysalis Music;
Benjamin Groff, Creative Manager, BMG Music;
Leeds Levy, President, Chrysalis Music

Round 1: 1998
Part 1: The Cut-In

Barbara Vander Linde: My biggest concern right now is artists who want a piece of publishing who weren't even in the room when the song was written! Huge artists, and even not-so-huge artists, want a piece of the songs that we place.

Leeds Levy: What do you do when a major artist who sells millions of records insists on cutting themselves in? Just say no?

BV: I evaluate on a case-by-case basis. Who is the artist, what is the sales history, is the writer someone I'm trying to break?

LL: So in the last year you've seen this increase one hundred percent?

BV: Absolutely. And I think the reason is: everyone now understands the value of publishing, so even an artist who is not really a songwriter is going to try to write half of their album so they can make the publishing money. So the window for getting an outside [-written] song has gotten so small that you have to come to the table with something that everyone agrees is a smash, and nine times out of ten, it's an up-tempo.

Jem Aswad: The market for good ballads is that small?

BV: The easiest song to write -- for someone who can't write -- is a ballad. It's not easy to write a great ballad, but it's harder to write a great up-tempo. Co-writing is the best way to go, but when you're talking about an artist who's not really bringing anything to the table, you've got to balance out the odds. So unless you've got a writer who can do everything, you're going to have to put somebody else in the room, and then you've got three writers -- and the pie gets that much smaller.

LL: In the old-time music business, that was called the "cut-in." Very famous artists said, "Great -- I love that song. The only thing that's missing is my name in the writing credits."

Big John Platt: I haven't seen it as much, but I do know it happens. You just know that with a huge-name artist, you may have to give them a piece. If you wrote 100% of the song, you have to be somebody with an incredible amount of clout not to.

LL: I could almost understand the artist wanting a piece of the publishing, but this is a share of the writer credit -- the official records in the Library of Congress will say that it was a collaboration. The "cut-in" on the economic side has been with us forever -- record companies, by the way, are the biggest co-publishers of all -- but artists actually wanting a co-writing credit...

BJP: I think if it's a huge-name artist that's going to sell tons of millions of records with or without your song, you say, "Okay, I'll give you a piece of this use. Not of the next or the next or the next."

LL: Yeah, business is business. Ben, have you come across much of this?

Benjamin Groff: Not really, not that blatantly. I have had the occasion where someone co-writes with an artist and the artist demands more of the share than he is properly entitled to.

Antony Bland: I see it a lot more when writers get together with maybe a lyricist, and suddenly the lyricist is taking 60-70% when it should be equal thirds. But a lot of it may have to do with the "cred" factor -- more people are looking to see who wrote the songs, so a lot of artists don't want to be accused of not writing their own songs, and they want to establish credibility.

LL: We had one situation where an artist didn't want the royalty but wanted the credit.

BJP: I think a lot of bigger-name writers and producers do to the newer writers what was done to them. It's an ever-evolving cycle. For instance, there was one record produced by a big-name guy -- two other guys wrote it, 100%. The version that came out was exactly like the demo, but this producer said, "Just give me 10% of the song." Which is fine -- you may think 10% is nothing. But -- the perception is, when you see this producer's name, you think he wrote most of the song, because he had all these other hits. So this producer gets more and more work because of this #1 record that he didn't write.

JA: This is not a new thing -- why is it so much worse now?

AB: People are wiser about the amount of money in publishing.

BJP: Publishing isn't really something that you can touch, so a lot of new writers don't really know what it is until they see their friend get a big publishing deal or big royalties off of a song they co-wrote -- "Wait a minute! I didn't get that!" "Well, remember that piece of paper you signed a year or two ago? You signed those royalties away!"

LL: Did you ever see Ma Rainey's Black Bottom? It's a show about the Chicago blues scene in the '20s, when the writers would sell all of the rights to a song for $50. But I think now, people are more educated, deals have skyrocketed, and although the general health of the business seems flat at the moment, it's still a huge industry, and it's a great way to continue to receive income.

I remember when I was at MCA, a very big producer -- who did not need the money or the prestige -- working on a very big project, called and said he wanted a piece of the publishing. And I said no. I could do that because it didn't matter as much to MCA -- someone might get mad at me, but the company would still go on. But if you're a smaller publisher, you have to think twice. You can't be so bold as to tell them to get lost.

BV: No, every situation is different. Once I had a writer -- I hadn't even signed him -- and we sort of accidentally got a huge rock cut, and the artist wanted to come in as a writer, but he genuinely contributed to the song: even though the song already existed, there were lyric and melodic changes that made it more specific for them.

LL: Then again, I've seen people like [songwriter/producer] David Foster bring a song to life through an arrangement, maybe even change some of the melody a little bit, and not take anything for it -- "that was my job as the producer and arranger." You might say that he can afford to be that way, but he's always been like that -- when he was coming up, he probably produced a lot of records that he didn't get credit for, and refused to turn around and do that to other people.

JA: Does it happen to the biggest writers?

BV: Yeah. I don't think anyone is bulletproof against it. They'll ask major, legendary songwriters for a piece -- my response is, "Are you kidding?" A major recording artist asked one of my major writers for a piece of one of his songs that she recorded -- I said "Here's his number: you call and ask him! I dare you!" And she chickened out. But it's fascinating when they approach you.

BJP: The approach is funny: it's different each time, and each time you're like, "Here it comes," and it takes them about 20 minutes to finally get to it. But we have to stand up for our writers: I had a situation a while ago where one of my writers did a song with another writer, and there was a sample in the song that took 50%. So his publisher called me and said "Your guy doesn't get anything" -- "What are you talking about?" They said, "He wrote the music but there's a sample" -- "No -- these guys were together from day one, so any sample comes off the top and they split it." "Well, the record's coming out next month" -- "No it's not, because I'm about to put a stop on all this!" They said, "But you're gonna hold up the project" -- "Well you're saying my writer isn't getting paid anyway!" So they called back the next day and basically said what I said in a different way. But many people in that situation would have just crumbled -- either said "Oh, okay," or they'll be mad but not say what's on their mind.

BV: And maybe one writer won't do it out of principle, but there are ten others behind them who will.

LL: I'll give you a reverse of that story, something that I heard happened in Nashville. A song on the current album by a big country artist was originally cut by a new artist. And the record company kept pushing back the new artist's release date, pushing it back, pushing it back. Two independent publishers copublished the song, and they finally said, "Enough already! No one's paying my bills -- I know I can get this song cut." And now the new artist's record company is trying to sue them, saying that they'd damaged their artist and all that -- but only after the song exploded for the big country artist!

Another rumor I heard says that if that same country artist puts a song on hold, she will pay the publisher $30,000 -- assuming you control 100% of the song -- as a deposit. If she cuts the song, great, it comes out of the mechanical royalties you're owed. If she doesn't cut it -- the money's yours. Because she wants to put the best songs on hold, she wants to lock them up, she wants to make sure that you bring them to her.

BJP: That's a businessperson enticing you, saying "If I love a song, we can do business today." She means business -- you're on my "AA" list, you get everything first, and I also know you're only going to pick what you love.

BV: She's showing you how committed she is -- that's a lofty amount! Most people would probably give you five!

LL: I also heard the reverse of that, from a company not represented at this table, where, let's say you signed a self-contained country act, thinking you're going to get at least half the album, with maybe a couple of outside songs. The act gets signed to a record deal, they assign a producer, and the producer is an exclusive writer who has a co-publishing deal with another publishing company -- and suddenly you find out you have one song on the album. All of the other songs are published by the company that the producer writes for -- even though he may not have written the songs -- and he's getting paid $5000 a track to cut his company's songs, whether they come out or not.

Part 2: The Sky's The Limit/The Death of Artist Development

LL: Let's talk about how crazy deals are right now.

AB: We do deals with songwriters that have cuts out, and they're fairly decent-sized deals, but not stupid. But if we sign a rock act or a rock writer, they'll want $250-300,000 when they don't even have a record out.

BJP: I sit in our acquisition meetings and my mouth drops when I see what these rock bands are getting, and a lot of them aren't even signed yet. They will get signed, but you're paying $400-500,000 for a band that doesn't even have a record out. I've got R&B writers that might have five cuts on platinum records, and their deals are like night and day compared to rock bands.

I just try to make fair deals, where a writer gets what they should and we get what we should. I explain to them what it is from the get-go: if you want a million dollars, you have to make a million dollar commitment, because I don't like my writers stressed! They can't really create when they're stressed, whereas if we lower this or that commitment, they can create freely. I just think it's out of control with these rock bands -- an R&B writer doesn't get two million dollars unless he's had three or four #1 records.

LL: So how does a big company rationalize that that's a valid deal to make?

BJP: Because it could be "The One That Got Away." You could give somebody a million dollars today and it could seem like a lot, but a year from now, after they sell ten million records, it was a good deal. No one wants to miss that next Nirvana or Green Day or Alanis. The managers and attorneys are the ones who are really doing it, because that's what they get paid to do.

LL: It's the blockbuster mentality. One record -- Fastball or Smash Mouth or Blink 182 -- will take off, and it's almost like that's the only record the label can promote. It's much more efficient and profitable for a record label to press ten million copies of one record than a million copies of ten records, so they'll put all of their resources into that one act -- and if they're lucky enough to have that one hit, they make 32 to 1 rather than even money. It's almost like the pricing of publishing has followed that, so you have this blockbuster that will sell four or five million records, where before there would be four or five acts selling a million, or ten or eleven acts selling half that. There's no artist development anymore.

BJP: You almost have to earn the right to develop your artist or your songwriter these days. It's like you've got to make some money first, and then they'll say, "Okay, now you can go off in the corner and play with your new little writer who you think is gonna be the next #1." Everybody's looking for the quick turnaround. If you sign some name artists or name acts, then the company trusts you, so when I sign a Warryn Campbell or a Tamara Savage, they say "Go do your thing." Then they see those writers getting cuts and making money, and that leads into the next writers I want to develop. But at some companies, it wouldn't be that way if I didn't have Jay Z or Usher -- people who are generating some dollars. It's different at EMI -- a lot of my newer writers went to other companies and their first question was, "What do you have coming out?" "Nothing." "Okay, keep in touch!" Whereas if I love the music, we can do the deal.

LL: What's your window?

BJP: A year. If I can't get anything going in a year, knowing how I work, then it's just not happening.

JA: You don't start sweating at the ten-month mark?

BJP: Nah. It takes about a month for us to get our bond together, usually six months to get them a cut, and then it's getting them really out there. Two contract periods, sure -- I don't sweat after ten months because I'm going to pick up the option anyway.

BV: I like to give myself at least 18 months. You can certainly have activity in the first six to 12 months, but you have no control over when their record's going to come out.

BG: I think two years is a good period of time to see if we're going to move forward. Unless it's a writer who I think is a headache or just not the right person.

LL: Yeah, what are the telltale signs of "Oops! This was a mistake!"?

BG: Bad songs. Maybe the deal got done because of one good song and the rest just aren't happening. Or there may be ego issues or management issues that make it less attractive. I haven't really had a situation like that.

say, "Okay, I believe in this" -- I'm speaking about bands more than individual writers. But if you've signed a new developing band that no one knows about, after a year you want good quality demos and live performance, hopefully get a deal six months after that, and hopefully have a record out six to ten months after that. It can take a couple of years or more. It's about belief.

But sometimes the problems can rest with yourself: if you sign something and see it going downhill, you shouldn't be afraid to step in and say, "Look -- these songs are okay, what if you change this chord? Or what if you used this melody here?" That can be crossing the fine line between being a publisher and being a writer, and you can't ask for a writing credit unless you actually have earned it. But if the writer is not open to any suggestions and just says, "This is my song -- it's personal," then you can't work with them. "Fine, go be successful with someone else rather than fail with us!"

Part 3: Tending the Stable

JA: How many different writers do you have at a time?

AB: Full-time, totally hands-on, maybe 12. Beyond that, there's the other couple hundred writers on Chrysalis worldwide -- like, I don't need to do much for Portishead, but I work much more closely with unsigned bands such as this Swedish drum-and-bass band called Baxter (now signed to Maverick). So there's about a dozen taking up the 40-50% of my time that I allot just to my writers.

BG: Five or six full-time, and maybe 12 peripherally -- that every two weeks or so I'll speak with on the phone and discuss things or have activity with.

LL: Are you as responsible for the peripherals?

BG: I'm in kind of a unique situation in that I haven't signed anyone yet. I've been focusing on working on our overall roster, and whoever writes the best songs is who I give my attention to, internationally as well.

LL: And the results are what you are judged on?

BG: Yes.

BJP: I deal with about 15 writers on a hands-on, every day basis. Then there's another five to ten who were already there that I handle as well, but 15 day-to-day, hearing songs, going to the studio, traveling.

LL: Do you see that number growing?

BJP: If I love the songs, we're on! But I don't like to stockpile. You could bring me some songs and they'd be cool, but I've already got songs like that. When I bring something in, it's got to be something I don't really have, or something to enhance what I have.

LL: When I was at MCA, we would start with five and get up to ten, but a number of the writers or writer/artists or writer/producers would get on automatic pilot -- they're launched, they've left the nest, see you at the ASCAP awards! And that's cool -- they've kind of graduated.

BJP: Yeah, Warryn Campbell is getting a lot of work now, and I said, "Okay, I need a new baby to groom!" And that's when Tamara came along: perfect timing, only she took off quicker than I thought!

BV: My number slides between 12 and 20. But I agree with you, when they're out of the nest it becomes more maintenance, and not the bust-ass-every-day to get them in the door. I've got one guy who's on auto-pilot right now who's got so much lined up that he's not available to me.

LL: I've heard that Rondor works in a unique way: that there's a pool of writers and you're encouraged to work with all of them, as opposed to being assigned these five or 15 writers, and that's your roster.

BV: We have "writer assignments" so that a writer has a particular person to go to with a problem -- if it's not set up like that, writers can get five people in your company doing the same thing. But yes, everyone can work with everyone; it's not that protective, guarded thing. If I sign a writer, I don't want to be the only one working on him, I want the film people working with him and everyone else. I don't need them going through me, they can call him themselves, and at weekly meetings everyone knows where everyone is. And Rondor doesn't have the turnaround that larger companies have, so it's really more of a... not to be corny, but a family feeling there. [Owners] Herb [Alpert] and Jerry [Moss] are in the building every day, around and available, and they have a way of extracting incredible loyalty from their employees.

LL: John, how is it different working in R&B?

BJP: Right now R&B is a producer-driven market, and the producers are writing the songs, so they don't have to go to anyone else. If they need a big hit they'll go to Diane Warren or someone like that, and do the rest themselves. Jermaine Dupri, Dallas Austin, Puff Daddy, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Organized Noize, R. Kelly -- all writer/producers. As for collaborations, they only happen if a both writers want it to happen -- the big writer might say, you either want my song or you don't, because if you won't use it, someone else will. On the other hand, no up-and-coming young kid wants to be told what to do.

LL: I saw this happen with David Foster, he'd co-write with someone, Lionel Richie or Madonna, and say "Check out this chord progression, I've studied your music, this is an area you haven't visited, let me expand your vocabulary and together we'll take your music to a new place."

BJP: I like my writers to work with a full spectrum of writers, not just urban. You need to show them that there's a whole world out there. They just want to go platinum here; sometimes they don't even know that your record can sell overseas, that you can have the same song that's a hit here working with somebody else in France that's not going to affect the version here -- it's free money! Same thing with getting songs in movies. Executives have to have broadviews; you've got to use all of the company's resources, and pass a tape on to someone else if it's not your field.

AB: I can't really speak from the writers' side, but we've tried to hook up groups, like once we tried to hook up Outkast and Leftfield -- a great hip hop group with a techno-based outfit. That didn't work, but things like that can open up a different audience. And it's not calculated for sales or spreading popularity, I think they just like the music.

LL: Yeah, you have to put the artists together in a social situation and hope there's a chemistry -- throw a rock writer with a country writer or whatever and just see what happens.

BJP: EMI does a thing every year where they send these writers from each genre off to some castle in France.

LL: Actually, that was [Sting's longtime manager] Miles Copeland's brainchild. It took a non-publisher to come up with that idea, which I think is a very clever way of creating something out of virtually nothing.

BV: It was a brilliant idea. Miles' true goal is to justify keeping that castle (laughter), and it's also something he does to get great collaborations for his writers. It's 24 writers for eight days, with two days off. They write and record a song a day in groups of three, we rotate them every day so theoretically they work with everyone who's there, but that doesn't usually happen. Originally, there were six writers from Bugle, six from Rondor, and then we hand-picked 12 others. I would try to have eight artists who were going to record in the not too distant future so there would be some kind of natural outlet for the songs they wrote. And the other four slots would be writers like Carole King, or a big Nashville writer, or interesting international artists. Some great relationships came out of it, and it's wonderful to actually see the songs evolve and come to life.

JA: Did any hits come out of it?

BV: Absolutely -- a song I placed on Celine Dion's album was written there. And a #1 country record with Aaron Tippin, Tal Bachman came, Swirl. It can get spread too thin -- like Swirl wrote six songs but only recorded one -- but you get some really interesting combinations, and the ones you think will never work are the ones that do.

Part 4: Where To Be Found

JA: Where do you find or look for writers?

BV: Through writers that I have signed or I know. I have never found anything through the mail, although I know people who have.

BJP: I've found a couple of interesting things in the mail -- although 98% of what I get isn't quite there yet.

JA: How much of your unsolicited material do you listen to?

BJP: All of it -- you just never know. My assistant and I have a system -- they all get logged with a phone number, the date it came in, a space for my comments, all that.

AB: The first band I ever signed I got in the mail, actually. They're still with us -- a band called The Picture House who does well in Europe and may be on the verge of getting a deal here. Something else came in through a consultant, another through hearing a song on a compilation -- "He's a co-writer, I like this" -- then Scout, a band from from New York, came through both an Arista A&R guy and a scout of ours in New York. I listen to everything that comes in. Most of it isn't what I'm looking for, and not because it's not good -- I hear so many good female singer/songwriters, but I've got like ten that I'm trying to find deals for.

BJP: I always have a fear of not listening to a tape, and three years later the writer's a huge success.

JA: What are some ways a writer can get onto your radar?

BJP: For me it's relationships: attorneys, managers, the writers I have now. They see what you're doing for the writers they brought you before, and they start shooting people your way. Now, most of them just come my way, or I'll be listening to an album and a song by a new writer stands out.

LL: I once saw David Sanborn opening for someone, and his bass player was unbelievable. I just had a feeling that he wrote songs, and it turned out to be [jazz/urban great] Marcus Miller. That's something that my father told me a long time ago: to keep an eye out for band members, particularly keyboard players. Usually they write arrangements or are the musical director and have a good melodic sense and probably write songs: like Barry Manilow was Bette Midler's musical director.

JA: Ben, do you get a lot of tips from other BMG companies? Arista, RCA?

BG: Yes, I really do. One thing that connects it is, we're all on the same e-mail system, so that makes it really easy -- type in a few letters and the person's name pops right up.

JA: It's amazing how something that simple can make all the difference.

BG: It really does. There's a very strong synergy between the companies.

LL: There's a guy at one of the big film studios who never returns phone calls but responds to e-mail.

AB: If someone at RCA signs a band, do they automatically bring it to BMG Publishing?

BG: Oh yeah, they're right downstairs. We talk all the time.

LL (to BJP): Do Capitol and Virgin do that for you?

BJP: We know pretty much what they're doing, they stay in contact with us and [EMI CEO] Marty [Bandier] tells us things all the time. We don't get internal memos or anything, but I'll get a note or find out from someone in the company.

AB: I hear A&R people say all the time that they find bands on the net. Do any of you? I just wonder if they're making it up, because I never have time to plow through every band on IUMA or whatever.

ALL: No.

JA: It's all very much in its infancy. Web sound is terrible for most people, and there's usually only a 30-second clip -- I think that has prevented it from being utilized as much as it will be very soon.

LL: There are a lot of less traditional methods you can use to promote your writers. We made a co-publishing deal with an independent film company where we would be involved not only in selecting songs for the film, but also have some of our writers work with the guy writing the score, which can really open up the portfolio of our writer: now he has credentials in other genres. We did that a lot when I was at MCA because obviously it's tied to Universal Pictures and Universal Television. We would also do loan-out agreements to broaden a writer's accomplishments -- loan the writer out to another studio to write the music for a series. Even though you don't own the publishing, you still participate in the royalties, and you're furthering that writer's career.

We have another writer who tours with a lot of artists as a musician: he may end up writing with those artists or he may not, but that's another way of promoting a writer who is also an amazing guitar player.

We also do samplers. Recently we did a CD-Rom of Paul Anka's catalog geared for film&TV and commercial production companies, because that's a way to get them all of the songs in a way that makes them easy to find. It's very user-friendly and also ties into our web site. EMI also has a new system, and BMG has a very sophisticated search engine for their catalog as well.

JA: Warner/Chappell's web site has something like 40,000 sound clips.

Part 5: The Rap Sheets

JA: Can we go around the room and have each of you tell a little bit about yourselves and who your writers are?

BJP: I'm from Colorado, I was a club DJ in Denver. I started reading books on the industry -- Hit Men, All You Need To Know About The Music Business, The Death Of Rhythm & Blues. What would The Death Of Rhythm & Blues tell me about music publishing? I just feel you've gotta know where music came from to know where it's going. Then I came out here and started managing producers, both of whom had publishing deals with EMI: one of which I secured -- Madukey Productions -- and the other, Kiyamma McGriffin, was already signed to EMI. When the guy who signed him left EMI for Warner Bros. in '95, he helped me get the job.

My main writers are Tamara Savage, Warryn Campbell, Mike Mosely -- who's got an artist on Epic now. TQ -- he worked on 2Pac and E40 -- and I also handle Jay Z and Usher. I handle Jermaine Dupri with [EMI exec] Jody [Gerson], 2Pac, Lost Boyz, Mo Thugs, Krazie Bone from Bone Thugs N' Harmony, this guy named Mix-O who did the KP&Envy record "Swing My Way." And others! Some of the songs I had a part in acquiring were "Waterfalls" for TLC, Monica's "Don't Take It Personally," and I've got a song on each of their new albums.

BV: I had a friend who was working at A&M Records and I started temping there. I temped for three weeks and was offered three jobs: publicity, sales & marketing, and publishing, and I chose publishing. Tom Vickers hired me, that's when Rondor was still Almo/Irving and still with A&M, and I worked for him for about ten days before he left to go to Capitol -- damn! I chose the wrong job! But they kept me, and I stayed for two years and worked in business affairs, and then film & television. Then I met Linda Blum and Marla McNally who were starting a new company called Emerald Forest, and they hired me to plug songs -- I'd never plugged songs before -- and I worked there for two years. It was hard to be song plugger a in a small company with no catalog, but it was an excellent, excellent education. Then I met Ronnie Vance and he hired me at Geffen Music, and I loved that -- we had more catalog, more writers, and I worked with him for six months. When I went to Geffen they had already been sold to MCA, and after six months they started to eliminate the overlapping departments, so we were all very unceremoniously fired.

After that experience, I didn't ever want to lose my job because of a merger or a buyout or anything. I wanted to go back to Rondor because I knew and loved the catalog already: we've got the East Memphis catalog -- Al Green and Otis Redding and the Staple Singers -- as well as the Beach Boys and the Carpenters. I've been there now for six years, and was promoted to general manager a year ago January, and it's my home.

My main writers are Will Jennings, a young writer/producer who's starting to blow up named Greg Wells -- he had an Aerosmith record, he co-wrote my Celine Dion song "The Reason," he's co-written and producing the new Crash Test Dummies record. I have Mark Mueller, who wrote "That's What Love Is For" for Amy Grant, and Jennifer Paige's "Crush." We also publish Blues Traveler, Melissa Etheridge, and Garbage.

BG: I went to Berklee School of Music in Boston, majoring in performance and songwriting -- studying, writing and playing as much music as possible. When I graduated, I moved to New York and figured I'd work in a publishing company during the day and be a musician at night. I was hired by a wonderful woman named Molly Kaye at Almo/Irving, doing tape copying there, just getting my taste for publishing. From there I worked at PolyGram Music for Holly Greene, doing a little song-plugging. Meanwhile, Molly Kaye, who had moved to BMG in LA, offered me a job as a song plugger. So I moved out here blindly, and I've been at BMG for two years and a few months. I really into this because of my love of songs, and the more time I spend in publishing, the more I realize I'll be doing this for the rest of my life. My main writers are these great songcrafters from Vancouver named Sean Hosein and Dane Deviller, they had their first hit last year with "Invisible Man" by 98 Degrees and other cuts on Amy Grant, All-4-One, etc. I also work with Dave Stewart, formerly of Eurythmics, Ashley Ingram (co-wrote "You Gotta Be" for Des'ree), Manuel Seal who co-wrote the last three Usher hits, Phil Thornalley, Jim Brickman, Stephen Bishop, Charlotte Caffey (formerly of the Go-Gos), Teron Beal, Jeff Pescetto, Rashad Coes and even some great current writers that have tremendous catalogs, like the Gibb Brothers [aka the Bee Gees], John Hiatt, Tommy Sims, etc.

LL: What about Natalie Imbruglia?

JA: "Torn" was actually written by Phil Thornalley --

BV: With Ann Previn and Scott Cutler. And that song is seven years old, which just goes to show that a good song is a good song and it will eventually find its way. Ann's original demo was pretty much like Natalie's version.

AB: I worked in a chicken factory! Then I interned for Chrysalis in London in '91, then interned for them over here, tape room, mail room, reception, then finally started doing song-plugging, and I was probably the worst song-plugger in history: I got like four songs covered in a year-and-a-half, a couple of really dodgy ones, too! I signed one writer in that time who we actually picked up an award for the other night, Stacy Piersa, who did well toward the end of her time at Chrysalis. Then I moved into International, because there was always a problem between us and the English office, and that's basically it. My main writers over here are a guy named Craig Kafton -- it was a team effort, he's been developing this artist named Reiss who put out a single on Mercury --

BV: [starts singing song]

AB: Well! That's good to hear! John Lowery, who's now with Marilyn Manson and also recently wrote LPs with Two (on Nothing Records) and David Lee Roth. Scout, from New York, who are my most precious developing band. And the UK and international writers I get involved with depending on how much help they need -- like I'm helping Baxter to find distribution for their independent label that they have on the side. I love working with international and developing acts.

LL: I've got a question for you guys, because my experience in the business is slightly different in that I grew up in it -- I was named after a music publishing company! My father [Leeds Music founder Lou Levy, after whom this Round Table is named] started with a couple of guys named Sammy Cohn -- who changed his name to Sammy Cahn -- and Saul Kaplan -- changed his name to Saul Chaplin -- and during the Great Depression, they were all poor kids from the Lower East Side. His idea was to innovate and sell and market songs, and I am very fortunate to have been subconsciously or subliminally being taught a lot about the business.

I started working for ASCAP in the mid-'70s, collecting license fees in Brooklyn and Staten Island -- talk about street-level, trying to collect money from a bar-owner at 4AM in Brooklyn! Then I joined the membership department, then a guy who had worked for my father introduced me to the Elton John gang. I established their American music publishing operations -- and boy, it's a lot easier to get your phone calls returned when you say you're from the Elton John organization! Then I worked at MCA, then eventually had my own firm, and I've been with Chrysalis for two years.

Part 6: Don't They Teach This In School?

LL: But my question is, where are they training the executives for tomorrow? If our industry ends up being run by -- I mean, I've got nothing against MBAs or accountants as long as they're music publishers first, but if you've got someone coming directly from Diet Coke to EMI Music, I think that's going to be a problem for our industry. Where is the mentoring going to come from?

BV: There's not much of a training ground.

BJP: I would probably agree, but I'd also say that a lot of kids coming in now think they're at level ten already. It's like you're a basketball coach with players who are so talented, but they're just uncoachable -- you understand what I'm saying? You have to show yourself worthy of being trained, or usually they'll sort of let you just be there -- "Oh, he's okay, he's finding some cool stuff."

LL: He's a great player but he'll never be a great coach.

BV: It's interesting -- especially at record companies, youth is being hired over experience. If you don't have the experience to guide the youth, you have nothing.

LL: But experienced executives don't guide the youth, they don't want to guide the youth. They're protecting their gigs, keeping everything close to the vest.

BJP: No one wants to reach out and say, "This is how you should do this." They'll just watch you fall rather than try to catch you. If that's going to change, I think it has to start with every individual looking in the mirror and saying, "I'm not going to be that way." Most people don't learn from the mistakes of others -- although successful people do. My writers and I will be in my office till all hours of the night just talking, because I want them to understand what this business is really about. You've gotta be able to talk their language, because sometimes if you tell someone to do something, they're not gonna do it. You've got to tell them in their way, and creatively push them. But there is definitely a gap between the older executives and the up-and-coming ones.

LL: They do have mentoring in Nashville, and from my experience, Nashville's community of executives is the best-trained, across the board. They have a thing called Leadership Music Nashville where they give you one-on-one contact with more experienced executives: imagine sitting with Clive Davis all day talking about different situations -- it's almost like the Castle sessions, except with executives. Nashville has always tried to reinvest in their executive talent as well as their musical talent.

Part 7: The Ever-Changing Biz/Pay For Play

JA: How do you think the business will be affected by the Universal/Polygram merger [which will consolidate MCA and Polygram Publishing]?

BV: I think that kind of situation makes things better for smaller companies, because a lot of writers won't want to be folded into a huge roster. When you're number 70 on a writer list of 150, how much attention will you get? I think that's why so many writers don't want a co-pub deal, because they feel like they're doing it all themselves.

AB: John, how does it work at EMI? You must have a ton of writers, does EMI really sign the amount of acts that we perceive they do?

BJP: It seems that regardless of what we have, everyone seems to get taken care of. It never seems like too much. Some people have five writers, I have 15 or 20, but it doesn't seem like a lot. It's probably a little different for the alternative bands, because you're talking about bands where you might not have to deal with them day-to-day.

LL: I'm more concerned about pay-for-play at radio, quite frankly. It's starting now in country, but it's going to happen in pop and R&B. It's already expensive to promote in radio anyway, and I've got to assume that record companies are going to come to publishers and say, "If your song is played on the radio, you earn money, so we think you should contribute to this promotional campaign." You guys are worried about songwriters cutting in -- I'm worried about record companies!

BG: Hasn't that happened already?

LL: Yes, for independent promotion money, and in the scheme of things, that was a relatively manageable amount of money. But one radio network is talking about a campaign for $20,000 or $40,000 for just their network of country stations -- and from there you go to how long they'll play it, and how many spins you're guaranteed. Then you get other radio station chains saying they'll cross it over to pop radio, guaranteeing you this much play, and at the end of the day you're talking about something like $150,000 that you didn't have to spend before. Maybe it will make the record companies shift their priorities and figure that, since they can't get anything played on MTV anyway, they might as well spend $150,000 on pay-for-play instead of a video.

What really concerns me is the long-term effect distorts the marketplace -- what you hear on the radio is not what people want to hear, and they won't even get to hear what they might want to hear. They're being fed songs because a broadcaster made a deal with the record company that paid the most. It's just a matter of time until the record companies, particularly the indies, come to us with their hands out.

Anyway, I hope that the internet will open up a new channel that will not be as constrained as either MTV or radio as we know it. The internet doesn't care how old you are, what color you are, what car you drive, where you live or anything -- and if people can be reached with some entertainment that they like, they may click and buy.

I hope it will make for a much broader consumer base for music. Record companies have narrowcast their research down to who the consumers of certain records are going to be -- and yet they still get blindsided by several records a year where they have no clue who buys them. The best example of that is Titanic: Sony couldn't give that record away internally -- every label turned it down, and finally Sony Classical said, "Okay, we'll pay the $700,000 -- and maybe we'll sell 300,000 copies." [The album has sold over 10 million units in the US alone.] I think there is a lack of understanding of who buys records, who potentially can buy records, and how to reach the people who may want to buy a record.

BJP: I don't know what you guys think about this, but I think there might be a scam being run with the record and publishing companies with a major Los Angeles radio station. All you've got to do is get a song played on that station, and you can get a record deal, a publishing deal -- and six weeks later the station may drop the record, but you've cashed in, and everyone's gotten their kickbacks. I know it's happening. I hear this station mentioned so much: someone says, "I hear this station' s [playing] it" and all the sudden everybody goes crazy. I think there's a big scam going on, and it won't come out until there's another Hit Men or something. Hell, I was a DJ, I know that if you play something enough times you'll get requests for it.

It seems so easy -- let's talk hypothetically: I'm a manager, I go to the radio station, "I've got this band" -- who's a decent enough band -- "play this record for six weeks and I'll give you $100,000." I can get the $500,000 publishing deal, the $350-400,000 record deal, and after that, $100,000 is nothing!

LL: That's nothing compared to Europe. I remember, if you had a summer record that you wanted to get played in the South of France, you made a deal with a radio station and gave them half the publishing. So we did that and we thought it would be a big hit, but we wound up getting no airplay because the publishers of the B-side gave them 100% of the publishing and received all of the radio play!

Part 8: The Other

JA: What is the biggest misperception that writers have about music publishers, and vice-versa.

AB: The first one's easy -- the bank one.

LL: That we're banks, parasites, insurance agents...

BV: That we don't do anything.

AB: They're also wise to the fact that a lot of publishers and label people tend to be reasonably young kids that kinda look like them and act like them and have the same musical opinions as them -- and they're deliberately planted there to win these bands over. I think the bands are getting smart to that and they don't trust anyone anymore. But then again, can we trust them or their managers?

JA: Do you ever feel like a plant?

AB: No, and I think I'm maybe too honest with the artists when I say, "This is what I am, this is what Chrysalis is, this is what we're prepared to do for you." I try not to slag off other companies --

LL: He leaves that to me! (laughter)

AB: Because you can't say that EMI and Warner/Chappell and Rondor and Windswept and Peer and whoever else don't do anything for their writers, because obviously they do.

LL: I also appreciate it from the writer's perspective: It's essentially a private business, they struggle, there's overwhelming frustration -- I don't think I could do it, quite honestly. Even if you're an A&R person who doesn't have the authority to green-light a project -- at least he's got a paycheck for the moment, the writer's completely out of a job.

BV: That's like when songs get put on hold. This is this writer's livelihood: a major label CEO will hold a song for a year or two years, sometimes, and even then there's still no guarantee that it's ever going to come out. And maybe the contemporary feel of that song has expired -- you have to invest more money to demo it again, maybe the trend has changed --

BJP: If someone holds a song too long, nobody'll want it. I went through that recently, where two people wanted a song, one wanted to keep it on hold, the other wanted to cut it right away -- and I went with the cut. You know how people act when they want something -- they'll reach out. Puffy will call up and say "Yo, this is my song, isn't it?" I know he's interested -- and I want my songs placed on projects where the passion is. "Come on! Let's do this!" That's passion.

Part 9: The Numbers

BJP: But I think some of the misperception is just lack of education. And not knowing what the numbers are. A lot of writers think if they sell 500,000 records they should get $2 million -- they don't know that they only generated $350,000. It's a penny business -- and those pennies do add up to dollars, but you've gotta know what the pennies are.

That's what I like about publishing: if you're smart, you know the numbers -- hell, you'd better know the numbers! -- and to me, it's a safer bet working with songwriters and publishing than records. Because a songwriter could have a song on, say, the next Celine Dion album, but if that album catches a brick, that's okay, because they have songs on nine other projects. There are more chances with a songwriter than with an artist -- at a major label, if you put the record out and it only sells 50,000 copies, the band gets dropped and you're fired! With publishing, well, that project didn't do that well, but we've got this song placed on this movie and we've got this cut in French -- there are so many opportunities to generate money if you take advantage.

BV: I think it's the more creative job.

LL: Unfortunately, I think writers have heard more negative stories about publishers than positive ones, so there's probably some validity for a writer to have misconceptions about what a publisher can or can't do. I'm a businessperson: sometimes I'm an investment banker, sometimes an A&R person, an agent, a psychiatrist, it all depends. Not all experiences are the same, and there's no one more anonymous than a music publisher. We are at the very low-profile end of a very high-profile business, and what you hear are the horror stories.

AB: I think one thing that is always discounted is the actual amount of time we put in -- it's always about how much money and did you get this or do this, the actual time you're taking away from other writers or artists that you're developing, especially new artists.

BV: I could have become a psychiatrist and made a hell of a lot more money. It's all the same skills!

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