Mike Edison, I HAVE FUN EVERYWHERE I GO author and former High Times editor: Mr. Media Audio Interview

In his new book, I Have Fun Everywhere I Go, Mike Edison does for sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll what Hulk Hogan did for wrestling!

No, scratch that. Edison hates Hogan. Saying that will just piss him off.

How about:

Mike Edison does for sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll what Lennon & McCartney did for elevator music!

Damn, that won’t work either. Edison hates the Beatles, too.

Here’s a thought:

Let me just read the subtitle of Edison’s book. It’s so long, people will think it’s an introduction and not notice that I left out all the stuff about him being a former editor of High Times, Cheri, and Main Event, a contributor to Screw and Hustler magazines, and drummer in bands such as Raunch Hands, Pleasure F*ckers, and Rocket Train Delta Science Arkestra.

Please welcome my guest today, Mike Edison, author of I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World.

You can LISTEN to this interview by clicking the BlogTalkRadio.com audio player below!

Open in your default player
Detach into a separate window

© 2008 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Joe Sinnott, "Spider-Man" "Fantastic Four" comic book artist: Mr. Media Interview, Pt. 1

Joltin’ Joe Sinnott.

You have to be pretty damn good at what you do for someone to name you Joltin’. The name stuck to Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, of course, and is also part of the eternal legend of Joltin’ Joe Sinnott.

Unless you’re a comic book fan, you may not know Sinnott. But if you recognize the names of Stan “The Man” Lee and Jack “King” Kirby, Joltin’ Joe will be forever connected to their accomplishments. Lee wrote the stories, Kirby drew them, and Sinnott inked them, starting with the fifth issue of the Fantastic Four in 1961 on through the first appearance of the Silver Surfer and beyond. He’s also contributed his talents to Thor, The Hulk, and Captain America, to name just a few.

You can see Sinnott's work on three new Marvel Super Hero postage stamps - two Silver Surfers and a Thing -- that were released in late July by the United State Post Office.


Sinnott is the subject of a new oral history called Brush Strokes With Greatness, compiled and written by Tim Lasiuta. It’s packed with illustrations from his fifty- plus year career, starting with a Timely Comics story called “The Man Who Wouldn’t Die” on through the development of the legendary Marvel universe.

BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: Let’s start with a general point of information. What on earth does a comic book inker actually do, and how do you explain your career to the layman?

JOE SINNOTT: Well, actually, it’s all I ever did. I drew from the time I was three years old, I can remember, and it’s the only thing I knew. All my brothers could build houses, they could do all that. I couldn’t drive a nail, but I could draw, and I drew all the time. I drew on paper bags, whatever I had. Things were tough growing up in the thirties, but we made the best of it, and it paid off in the long run, I guess.

ANDELMAN: What is the difference, for someone who doesn’t know, between someone who does pencils and someone who does inking?

SINNOTT: Well, there’s all types of penciling, Bob. Years ago, most of the artists used to pencil thoroughly and complete pencils, put the blacks in and everything, and it progressed down to the point where a lot of the artists would pencil very loosely like a thumbnail sketch, and the inker, if he was capable, was required to finish the art. So he really was a finisher. Not all artists can do this, but some can, and fortunately, I was able to. Of course, the first 12, 13 years I was with Marvel, I did my own pencils and inks, and that’s the way I used to like it. But that was a different world back then.







ANDELMAN: When did it change for you? When did you stop focusing on penciling?

SINNOTT: Well, I started at Marvel in 1950 with Stan Lee. It was Timely Comics back in those days. And around 1961, Jack Kirby didn’t do his own inking, and he asked me if I could fill in and do a Jack Kirby. He couldn’t find anyone to ink it, and so I inked it, and Stan liked it quite a bit. He liked the combination. So it progressed from there, and Stan just kept sending me more Jack Kirby stuff, and I felt I could make as much inking as I could penciling, so I proceeded to ink primarily for Stan. Of course, I had other accounts, Treasure Chest and Dell and whatever, and there I did my own pencils and inks.

ANDELMAN: I wondered if you could actually make as much inking as penciling. I would have guessed not, but from what you say, I guess you could.

SINNOTT: It seemed like I could, maybe because I was a faster inker than I was a penciler. A lot of times with penciling you had to research and do things like that that used up a little of your time, but it never seemed to be a problem with me. The inking came very easily.

ANDELMAN: How different is one man’s inks from another's? Again, if we’re describing this for people who really aren’t that familiar with it, some people would just think oh, inking, you’re just taking an ink pen and going over someone’s pencils, but it’s more than that, right?

SINNOTT: Don’t I wish! No, I felt down through the years I’ve added a lot to whoever I was working on, and I’m sure a lot of my friends would tell you the same thing. Some inkers, I must say, do, so to speak, ink over the lines that the penciler has put down, and other inkers have to do a lot of what we call finished art. We have to finish the art. Some pencilers don’t put any blacks in whatsoever or details, and the inker has to do that. He’s primarily, like I said, finishing the art. He’s completing it. He’s adding to it. He’s an embellisher.

ANDELMAN: What do you think is the difference between the art you were inking in the early '60s, the start of the real Marvel Age, and today? Has it changed?

SINNOTT: Oh, a great deal. Of course, being off in the old school, I prefer the old method. I feel things are too technical today and too slick, and they don’t look like a comic book should look. That’s my feeling. Of course, in the old days, everyone did this same type of art. Reproductions were basically the same, but it looked like a comic book. It had the classic look. I prefer the Kirby, the Buscemas, the Colan, the Romitas. It was just great. It was stylized, but it was realistic art, whereas today, it’s hard to say what the new method would be called. We’re influenced a lot by the Japanese today, as you know. Not my preference.

ANDELMAN: Have the changes had anything to do with improvements in printing technology? You get a finer printing today than obviously you did 40 years ago.

SINNOTT: I’m sure there has been a great change in printing obviously. Of course, we have better paper, but then again, here we go, the old comics had that old comic book feel to it. A lot of people that I know, especially people my age, certainly prefer the old classic comic style and reproduction.

ANDELMAN: I guess one of the things that I think of when I think of your work in the sixties is, particularly working with Kirby, was that it was a heavier line, it seemed like a thicker, heavier line in those books than maybe we would see today or maybe even in some other books. Is that a mistake?

SINNOTT: I think you’re correct in that regard. I know, looking back, when I worked on Kirby in particular, I used an awful lot of brush, and certainly with a brush, you’re going to get a heavier line. But Jack’s work, it almost demanded a brush because he had big, bold pencil strokes, and usually four, five at the most panels on a page. And you could really do big drawings, and you could get in there with a brush and let yourself go. It’s not like today when I’m inking the Sunday "Spider-Man" page for Stan and the King Features. I use an awful lot of pen. The drawings are so small, and they’re reproduced so small that you have to use a lot of pen because brush is just too big, and the lines would be too heavy.

ANDELMAN: You had worked in comics for ten or eleven years by the time that first issue of Fantastic Four came your way. You had seen the superheroes go away, Westerns come on, things like that. When the Fantastic Four came to you, what did you think? Did you think it was another monster comic? Was it a big deal at the time, or was it just another assignment?

SINNOTT: It was no big deal at all. When the Fantastic Four came to me at number five, I had never heard of the book. But as soon as I saw the characters, I said, gee, what great characters. Of course, in those days as you know, through the fifties and sixties, we were always looking for a new trend. We had the Korean War, then we had the horror comics, we had romance, we had science fiction, and then we had the monster books in the late fifties and early sixties. And then when Stan came out with a few superheroes, we didn’t think anything more of it. We thought, even Spider-Man, we just thought that was another character, that it would soon fade, and we’d be doing something else. Certainly, as you know, it caught on and took off.

ANDELMAN: I think I need to correct myself on something from something you just said. You actually came on Fantastic Four with the fifth issue not the first issue.

SINNOTT: That’s right. The introduction of Doctor Doom.

ANDELMAN: How did the whole perception of the industry you were working on start to change in the early '60s as these comics took on a life of their own that they had not had?

SINNOTT: It was pretty obvious. Most of the comic houses -- we were dropping houses at that time -- really concentrated on the superheroes. DC, of course, with their Justice League and Batman and Superman and whatever. They brought them all back. The same with Marvel, only Marvel created more characters. Of course, we did have Captain America and a few like that, but basically, we had all new superheroes. I think Stan was surprised that they were so popular.







ANDELMAN: And Stan created kind of a culture personality around everyone who worked on those books, didn’t he?

SINNOTT: Yeah, he certainly did.

ANDELMAN: How was that different than the way the industry had operated a decade earlier?

SINNOTT: Well, that’s pretty hard to ascertain, Bob. I really wouldn’t know how to put a finger on it, to tell the truth.

ANDELMAN: Stan nicknamed you "Joltin’" Joe Sinnott, but there was a nickname before that, right?

SINNOTT: Yeah. He had called me "Jovial" Joe.

ANDELMAN: Were you surprised the first time that popped up?

SINNOTT: No, not really. I don’t know where he got it from, but Joltin’ Joe, I could understand that because I’m sure he was influenced by Joe DiMaggio. And I used to talk a lot about baseball with a friend of mine that worked in the office down there, Jack Abel, a very talented individual.

ANDELMAN: In the late '60s and early '70s, comics developed a cult of personality. It was a changing time. People actually knew your name, they knew what you did, they knew other people. It wasn’t just a matter of buying their favorite comic, they were looking for people’s names, and they were recognizing people, right?

SINNOTT: Oh, I think so. I often hear from people that said, "I rooted for you," so to speak, and "I looked for your work way back in the beginning of the superhero age, back in the early '60s, '61, '62. I remember many years ago the first fan mail I ever got was back in 1953, I think it was, and this kid from Connecticut wrote me and said how much he loved my character, Arrowhead. He was an Indian renegade. The law was always after him, but he was always helping out those who were in trouble. The book ran for quite a few issues, and I really enjoyed it. This kid wrote to me and said how much he loved Arrowhead. They finally made a movie, and Charlton Heston played a character called Arrowhead, and here again, he was an Indian. It was a fairly successful book for the '50s, and I kept his letter all these years.

The last letter I heard from him, he said he was going off to Korea. This was during the Korean War. Well, I never heard from him again. It was interesting because I thought maybe something happened to him during the war, and I had lost his address. But anyway, about two years ago, I got a letter from this woman from Connecticut, and she said she was this person’s wife that I had known when he was a kid and that he was very sick. He wasn’t expected to live any more. His illness was terminal so I got together some of the old Arrowhead drawings I had done many years ago, and I sent them off to Roland. Of course, he couldn’t respond to me. He was aware that he got them and everything, and he passed away about a week later. I’m sure I made his last couple days fairly happy because he loved that character.

ANDELMAN: What a wonderful story. What a great story. Now, I wanted to ask you, you’ve had a business relationship with Stan for 57 years. How different was Stan in 1950 from the man who, this year, is hosting a weekly TV show?

SINNOTT: I can’t see one bit of difference.

ANDELMAN: Is that right?

SINNOTT: Oh yeah. Stan was always the life of the party, so to speak. If Stan was in a room with a thousand people, he would stand out. Great sense of humor. His memory is a little bit off now, but even back in those days, he wasn’t known for him memory. Tremendous sense of humor. I wish I could tell you some of the stories because whenever I vouch for my work, Stan sends me a little note back. I’ve kept them all. I have hundreds and hundreds of Stan’s notes and letters. Someday, they’ll make a good book, I think. Really, you can’t believe the sense of humor he had. Always with a smile. If you ever see a picture of Stan, it’s with a great big smile.

Well, he could be tough too, though. He knew what he wanted, and he expected it. He certainly helped me in many, many ways. Right from the start, I remember when I was just a kid out of school, he said, "Joe, whatever you do, exaggerate everything." He said, "I want everything exaggerated." That’s what we lived by.

ANDELMAN: What about Kirby? Obviously, you got pages from him. And I know that while Stan developed this idea of the Marvel bullpen, there were some guys working on staff, but mostly guys worked from home so you didn’t see each other that often.







SINNOTT: No. Most of the guys who did the books worked at home. The staff, of course, involved so many people. Proofreaders, people who did corrections, things like that. Well, Romita, of course, worked there at the office, and there were a few others. Kirby, I worked with Jack, oh gee, must be 18 years, something like that, and I had never met him. Never talked to him on the phone, would you believe that? And so Marvel had a convention in ’72, and I went down and I was introduced to Jack Kirby by Marie Severn. And I didn’t see him again, I didn’t talk to him again until 1975. They had another convention, and I went down and we got together. We had a great three days together. After that, I never spoke to him again, would you believe that?

Of course, Jack moved to California, and he dropped me a note once in a while if he wanted something. For example, if he wanted his characters inked, and he’d ask me that way if I could help him out, and of course, I always did. We never talked about the Fantastic Four. He never told me he liked the way I did this or didn’t like the way I was doing that. We just never talked about what we were working on, which is amazing, I think.

CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING!

©2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Joe Sinnott, "Spider-Man" "Fantastic Four" comic book artist: Mr. Media Interview, Pt. 2

(RETURN TO PART 1)

ANDELMAN: Well, to use the Marvel term, it’s astonishing, really. You guys only met twice in all those years, and yet, your work is so closely tied from that era.

SINNOTT: Never discussed the work. Never.

ANDELMAN: I’m baffled. Really.

SINNOTT: Of course, Jack and Stan used to write notes on the pages for each other. If Stan wanted something changed, or Jack didn’t like a certain way a story was being told or whatever, but when Jack sent the work to me, there was never, ever a note on the border saying Joe, would you do it this way or would you do it that way. And, of course, my son knows all the pages we did together. It astonishes me, Bob, sometimes also.







ANDELMAN: Do you have any guys that you were particularly close to from that era, from Marvel?

SINNOTT: No, no. Actually, it was pretty much the same as Kirby. They sent me the work, and they knew I was gonna do a complete, acceptable job when I returned it.

ANDELMAN: And where were you living at the time?

SINNOTT: I’ve lived in Saugerties all my life.

ANDELMAN: Really?

SINNOTT: Yeah. I was born here in 1926, and I went to the Cartoonists and Illustrators School in New York City for about three years, I guess it was. So I lived down on 74th Street and Broadway. Then I moved back up to Saugerties here when I got a firm account with Stan.

ANDELMAN: And that school you went to later became the School of Visual Arts.

SINNOTT: That’s right. Burne Hogarth was one of the directors there.

ANDELMAN: I think I saw that Silas Rhodes just passed away.

SINNOTT: Oh yeah. Well, I’d say it’s been about two or three years ago now.

ANDELMAN: Really?

SINNOTT: Oh, wait a minute. I thought you meant Burne Hogarth.

ANDELMAN: No, no, no. Silas. I think I just saw…

SINNOTT: I didn’t know that he passed away.

ANDELMAN: I think he was like 92 or something.

SINNOTT: He was. What a dynamic…They both were. Unbelievable. Both characters were dynamic personalities. Of course, Silas had been in the Marine Corps during World War II, and I would hate to have been under him, I’m telling ya. He was a, what do they call, not slave driver, but there’s another word.

ANDELMAN: Do you have a good story about him?

SINNOTT: Well, we used to call him "Rocky" when we were in school. He’d come around everyday, certainly. I’m telling ya, he was a dynamo. He was a strong person, and you could just see him in the Marine Corps. A lot of stories, little stories that he would tell. I remember one time he told me, he said, "Joe, you’re putting on weight. It’s not good. It’s very unhealthy." I’m sure he was a health nut because he looked like he could take on a weightlifter. And like you just said, he lived to be 93, right?

ANDELMAN: Yeah. Yeah.

SINNOTT: It’s funny to think that as many times as I talked to him, that’s the one thing, of course two things, that’s the one thing I remember him saying to me, "Joe, you’re putting on a little weight." I wasn’t aware that I was, but obviously, he could see it.

Another time when I was down at the school to apply for entrance, I had my little pencil and ink scratchings. I was very apprehensive about it cause I thought they weren’t good enough to get into school. So I went to see Silas Rhodes. He called me in, and he looked at my work, and he said, "Joe, this is really good stuff for a beginner. I gotta show these to Burne Hogarth." And I was saying to myself he’s just saying that because they’re having trouble getting people into the school, and they want to make sure I come to the school. So he went in and showed the samples to Burne, and of course, Burne came out and told me, "Joe, these are pretty good for a guy at your stage." I wanted to be an illustrator so I wanted to take the illustrating course. And Burne says, "No, Joe, you’re a natural-born cartoonist. I’ll tell ya, it’s not easy, it’s very hard, very hard work. But your work will lend itself perfectly to a comic strip or comic book cartoonist." So that was the first day I was down at the school. Certainly, both of them impressed me so much at the time.







ANDELMAN: For people who don’t know Burne Hogarth, do you want to explain?

SINNOTT: Yeah. He was the illustrator for the newspaper strip "Tarzan." It appeared in the New York Mirror back in those days. Of course, he was a great draftsman, and we used to love to have him come in and draw on the easel for us. He could draw anything you wanted. A sabertooth tiger or whatever. He was just a dynamic person and a great artist. He really was.






ANDELMAN: For a lot of cartoonists, especially in the action genre/adventure, he’s the gold standard, isn’t he?

SINNOTT: Exactly. Certainly one of them.

ANDELMAN: So when you come in there out of the blue, and Burne Hogarth tells you you’ve got what it takes, that must have been a pretty exciting day.

SINNOTT: Yes it was. Of course, I had come out of the Navy, and I didn’t go to school right away. When I came out, I was playing ball and having a good time, whatever. So then it came time, and I said, "I gotta go to art school." And so when I went down there, we were doing some drawings in ink, and I was using a pen, and he came by me, and he knocked the pen out of my hand. He said, "Joe, in this school, we use a brush." He was a great brush man. Here I was, about 21 years old. I wasn’t even aware that cartoonists used brushes. That’s how naïve I was. In those days, there were no conventions. You had no chance of ever meeting, especially up here in the mountains of the Catskills, I never met a cartoonist and never had the thought that I ever would whereas today, the kids, they see cartoonists all the time at these conventions. They know everything about the field even before they try to break into it. They know what supplies to use and what brushes and what pens and whatever. All I used was a post office pen that they used in the post office. The ones you dip in the inkwell.

ANDELMAN: Right. I did this biography of Will Eisner, and I remember he told me about taking his portfolio up to see Ham Fisher. He did Joe Palooka. And James Montgomery Flagg was there who did the famous Uncle Sam posters. And the big deal for him was he was just so overwhelmed, he didn’t know what to say to the man so he says, "What kind of pen do you use?" And Flagg said, "I use a 290 Gillette." And so Eisner went out and bought nothing but 290 Gillette pens and used them for the rest of his life.

SINNOTT: Isn’t that amazing? Of course, the school used to get a lot of calls from people in the business or whatever. And they got a call from either NBC or ABC, one of the TV stations. There were only three at the time. And they wanted someone to come over on, I forget whose program, but Ham Fisher was the guest over there. And they wanted an art student to come over and talk with Ham Fisher about comic strips. So they used to send me on a lot of these errands, and so they called me up from the class, and they said, "Joe, Ham Fisher wants you to come over and ask you a few questions about school, things like that." And I said, "Oh, I’m afraid not." I thought I was too shy to go on TV. So I passed it up. They chose another friend of mine from the school, and he went over, and he came back, and he said, "You know what? Ham Fisher was showing the people on the easel how to draw Joe Palooka, and it was already drawn. It was in blue pencil, and you couldn’t see it, but he was tracing it." Hey, those guys weren’t taking any chances, either. Another time, Ted Mack, I don’t know whether you remember Ted Mack.

ANDELMAN: "The Original Amateur Hour."







SINNOTT: Yeah. He’s before your time. But anyway, they called me over. Well, the Amateur Hour used to be "Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour." They could have still called it that. But, in any case, I was sent over there. So I did go over there and was up in the booth with him, and we were watching, I can still remember the Old Gold, the mother and the daughter. They were inside a cigarette pack, and they were both dancing on the stage. Do you remember that commercial?

ANDELMAN: I remember dancing cigarette packs.

SINNOTT: Well, that was Old Gold. So anyway, we watched that, and Ted’s agent was there, and he wanted me to do a caricature of Ted for Variety magazine. And I’ll tell ya, boy, I was nervous. And he said, "Make Ted look like a nice guy cause he’s really nice." And actually, he was a really nice guy, but he looked like somebody from Guys and Dolls. How do you do a caricature of someone who looks like a gangster? I’ll tell ya, I was scared to death, and I kept drawing away. And Ted Mack said to me, "Joe, don’t be nervous. I’d like you to come with me over to one of the big nightclubs." I just couldn’t do it. I said, "Ted, I really can’t." I made up some excuse. I was just too scared. I really was scared. I was just a kid then. It would’ve been interesting. Looking back, I should’ve gone to see whom he would’ve met over there and whatever.

ANDELMAN: Well, to borrow the title of your biography, you had another brush with greatness, although I don’t know if you actually had contact with them. I suspect you didn’t. You did a comic based on The Beatles back in ’64, right?

SINNOTT: Yeah. 1964. They were on their way over to be on Ed Sullivan’s show, and Dell called me. They knew I did good likenesses, and they wanted someone who could do likenesses. So they asked me to do The Beatles book, which was 64 pages long. And I had a month to do it in. That was a lot of work in a short period of time. It came out really good, all things considered. They were very happy with it. Of course, I never did get to meet The Beatles. But the book is fairly unique, and it’s fairly rare, I guess.

ANDELMAN: And that was a project that you did the drawing for. You drew The Beatles for that. That wasn’t an inking job like you were known for much later. You drew The Beatles pages.

SINNOTT: Oh sure. Oh yeah, yeah. The book. A good friend of mine, Dick Giordano, he helped me out on a few pages toward the end. I was running out of time. Of course, Dick and I used to work many years ago together. I would pencil books for General Electric or Radio Shack, and he would ink them. Of course, that was an interesting period.

ANDELMAN: Now, I want to ask you about one more thing cause we’re running out of time. This is the summer, of course, that the Silver Surfer actually comes to life. I wondered if you have seen either of the Fantastic Four movies, and if you have, what you thought.

SINNOTT: Don’t embarrass me. No, I haven’t seen them.

ANDELMAN: Really?

SINNOTT: My family, my son, he’s a big comic fan, and he knows all about the comics. He took his two children to see it. Of course, they wanted me to go with them, but it was the first night, and I really didn’t want to go the first night because they get a lot of young people the first night. They pack the theaters, no question. I did see Spiderman 3 the first night, and it was hectic. The kids, they were quiet and everything, but there were just so many of them. I had to wait in line and all that. So anyway, I didn’t see it, but my son Mark, he’s quite a critic. He loved it. There were a few little things, naturally, he disagreed with, but he thought the Surfer was tremendous.

ANDELMAN: Yeah. It was great. I thought they did a great job with the Surfer. My daughter, who’s the upcoming comic fan in our house, she loved it. She just absolutely loved it.

SINNOTT: John Buscema and I did the first three Surfers. Of course, he continued with his brother for a while. I think they did maybe 17, 18 issues altogether. But I thought what a great character the Surfer was. Of course, John did a beautiful Surfer.

ANDELMAN: I think you have to go see the movie, not just to see what they did with the Silver Surfer, but I think you’ll get a kick out of Stan’s cameo in this particular movie.

SINNOTT: That’s what Mark said. The first couple that he was in, you could barely see him. Don’t blink, otherwise you’ll miss him. But I understand he had a little more…

ANDELMAN: Yeah, you can’t miss him in this one. It’s a very funny moment, especially for someone who’s known him as long as you have.

SINNOTT: He’s something, I’ll tell ya. He just called me about two days ago. And I was away from the "Spider-Man" Sunday comic strip for a while because my wife had passed away, and I was quite sick for a while. I was in the hospital three times.

ANDELMAN: I’m sorry.

SINNOTT: Yeah, over the last five months, so I had to hand over the "Spider-Man" to him, a friend of mine. And he very graciously took care of it while I was laid up. So I went back about, oh maybe a month ago, so Stan had to call me and tell me how great it was to be back working with me.

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Tamara Conniff, "Billboard" editor: Mr. Media Interview, Pt. 2

CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO PART 1!

ANDELMAN: Let’s come back to the music industry. Among the major labels, and even what few independents there are, whose star is rising these days and whose is falling?

CONNIFF: On the label side?

ANDELMAN: Yeah.

CONNIFF: You know what? The indies are definitely on the rise. You look at a number of indie labels and indie distributors and so many indie releases that have come out. Koch is definitely hot right now. Victory Records always has some great hardcore rock fans. Even Sub Pop is sort of having a new revolution since the grunge era in signing artists. I think a lot of artists are opting to go in indies because the deal terms are better. The advance money isn’t as big, but the deals are better, and the rights are better. The other thing about the indie labels is that they are much more nimble and able to adapt to changing technology much faster than the big conglomerates who aren’t. So if I were an artist today, I would definitely look to go with an indie.

ANDELMAN: It seems like there has always been an opportunity in music for independents to rise up. I just read a book, I think it’s called Machers and Rockers, about Chess Records. That was a great example of it. You know, who’s this guy Chess? Where he’d come from?

CONNIFF: Right.







ANDELMAN: Sub Pop Records, of course, with the whole Seattle, as you mentioned, the grunge, and there has always been that opportunity. So where does this leave the major labels today? They’re merging, and they’re eating each other alive. Are any of them doing it right?

CONNIFF: Very interesting question. I would say that probably the people who are furthest along the right path is Warner Music Group, mainly because they’ve been forward-thinking about technology. And while they’ve had a lot of layoffs, they really trimmed fat and focused on smaller rosters that they can work better as opposed to over-signing. So I think that Warner is probably, in terms of technology, Warner is a forerunner.

Universal Music Group is, of course, the largest, and each label within the Universal Music Group system is very different, and certainly all of the Universal labels have probably among the best leadership in the business. We’ve got Jimmy Iovine at Interscope. A&M/Geffen is brand-oriented and big picture. L. A. Reid, who’s a music guy through and through who’s taking care of Island/Def Jam. So you’ve got good people in place, it’s just the economics are difficult. Here’s the best way I can explain it. Ten years ago, the number one album in the country sold, I don’t know, like 2.5 million albums the first week. In January 2007, the number one album sold 70,000.

ANDELMAN: I wanted to ask you about that. It is astonishing the change in what’s considered a big hit album right now compared to a few years ago.

CONNIFF: Oh, absolutely.

ANDELMAN: The buying public’s tastes have become that diffuse, I guess, because they have so many options.

CONNIFF: No, I don’t even think it’s that. There is a whole generation of consumers out there that have never, ever, ever bought a CD. It’s like completely foreign to them. “A CD? Why would I buy a CD? I’m going to get that off iTunes, or I’m going to get it from a peer-to-peer service.” They just have no concept of buying a physical product, so they’re buying the music, they’re buying the ring tones, they’re buying the songs, they’re just not buying it on a physical disc.

ANDELMAN: I don’t imagine my daughter, who’s 10, ever buying a CD or whatever follows it, whereas, we’re still buying the occasional DVD, and of course, there used to be VHS tapes for her. She’s been able to download music for the last two years. Why would she want to do anything different?

CONNIFF: Yeah. It’s a waste of space.






ANDELMAN: Speaking of downloading music, still, what’s holding up at this point The Beatles and EMI from getting their music into the digital era?

CONNIFF: Rates. It’s cost. It’s rates.

ANDELMAN: They want more money for it.

CONNIFF: Yeah.

ANDELMAN: That’s all it is?

CONNIFF: Yeah.

ANDELMAN: So at $1.29, the deal that EMI struck, do you think it will happen?

CONNIFF: I think it will. I think the Beatles are very perceptive over their music and are not going to give it away cheap. It is the most popular music in the world, and there is no reason for them to give it away cheap.

ANDELMAN: Is there like a bell-shaped curve on this, though, at some point, if they wait too much longer, do they become irrelevant?

CONNIFF: No.

ANDELMAN: Really?

CONNIFF: I don’t think so.

ANDELMAN: Be interesting to see.

CONNIFF: I mean, I honestly don’t think so.

ANDELMAN: Okay. There are kids my daughter’s age who, the name “The Beatles” means absolutely nothing to them.

CONNIFF: Yeah, but they also are discovering you can still stream Beatles music, so I’ve actually found that more kids are actually discovering The Kinks and The Monkees. How would you even know them, and they find them online.

ANDELMAN: Right. But every day, every year, there is so much more music out there to discover. When I was her age, it was the music from the ’50s and ’60s. Now, it’s the same type of music, it’s the ’50s, the ’60s, the ’70s, the ’80s, the ’90s, and the ’00s, so I wonder if they will discover it the same way they might have a few years ago.

CONNIFF: I think so.






ANDELMAN: Let’s turn to your own publication. How has Billboard changed in the last couple years, and how will it be different, let’s say, four or five years from now?

CONNIFF: Billboard has changed dramatically over the past three years. For many years, Billboard is 113 years old, and for many years, it was, let’s say in the past 15 years, it was a very true reflection of the recorded music industry, where it had its head in sand about technology. It wasn’t evolving where things were evolving in much the same way the record labels were not. And as a result, we went through kind of rough patch, because no one was really reading it. It wasn’t that interesting to read, which had to do with a lot of different things. You take a trade publication, you take a particular style of reporting, you take an industry that’s downsizing in panic, it was sort of like a tipping point, I think. Or a sea change or a perfect storm, one of those buzz words, and so I came on with Billboard three years ago at a point where it either needed to change drastically or it was going to continue to go down, and we redesigned it 100% where it actually, even though it is still a business publication, it looks like a consumer publication. My theory on that was, this isn’t your daddy’s trade pub, so it doesn’t have to look like it. It can still have the information in it, but we’re in the music industry. This isn’t Progressive Grocer.

ANDELMAN: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

CONNIFF: No, and Progressive Grocer is a sister publication; I say that with a lot of love. And we also adapted our coverage dramatically in that we started covering the real music business, which includes advertising agencies, all technology companies, branded entertainment, everything that you can possibly imagine where music is, television, film. My theory, my mission, I guess, was I wanted Billboard to be a place where all these different energies could meet and understand each other better.

I think one of the biggest hurdles of technology and music is that they are very different breeds of people, and they don’t always speak the same language. I kind of use Billboard as a translator tool. This big technology has come out, here’s what it means to the music business. The music business can go, “Oh, okay, this is what the technology means.” Or, I can explain how contracts work or how deals are struck, or the interest of the record label is that if they’re going to give a single, it has to be part of their overall strategy for an album. They can’t just like give it to you, which a lot of technology companies thought they could do.

We are ahead of the curve instead of on top of it, which is key. Our readership has gone up substantially. At a time when print is considered a beast, our print is stronger than ever. and we also developed, we have a half dozen products, such as a mobile application where you can get Billboard information on any device you want.






ANDELMAN: Any trade publications that you kind of look to at this point, three years on, and want to emulate further or that you admire?

CONNIFF: I think when I was looking at the redesign for Billboard, one of the magazines I looked at was BusinessWeek, how they organized information, the issues they addressed, the signs, the ease of use, the covers. I mean, Billboard hasn’t had covers since 1930, and we now have covers again. It’s very difficult to have a trade publication have a cover. Trades are generally newsprint on the front cover, so I really did look at BusinessWeek as sort of a model.

ANDELMAN: It’s a good model. They’ve won a few awards. I know you guys won an award recently.

CONNIFF: I know. It was so exciting. We actually won an Eddy. We’re a 100-plus years old, and we’ve never won an Eddy, so I’m very excited.

ANDELMAN: That’s very good. Now, before we wind up, I have to ask you, I told a story about growing up in my unspectacular house. I have to tell you that I am very curious to know what it was like to grow up in the Conniff family. Was there a lot of music?

CONNIFF: I consider myself one of the most blessed humans on the planet. Whenever anyone asks me, “Is Ray Conniff your father?” and they say that they’re a fan, I always say, “Yes, and I’m proud, and his music is fantastic, but the most important thing about his life is that he was a great father and a great husband.” He was truly a family man.

It was always exciting, I guess. Growing up, obviously, music was always in our household. My father was recording up to two albums a year for a long period of time. Later, he went on to doing just one album a year. He toured once a year, and he would take the family with him, so we’d go touring in South America and be treated like rock stars. And then we’d come back to the United States, and our family vacations were taking my mom, my dad, our animals, and me and packing us into a motor home and driving across the country. That was our family vacation. My dad was happiest when he was wearing jeans and climbing underneath the motor home. I had a great upbringing, and I was lucky that my dad taught me a lot about business, taught me everything I know about the music business.

ANDELMAN: Really? Okay. See, I wondered about that. Obviously, you’re covering music as opposed to making music, which some people might have thought would be a natural progression. Can you play any instruments? Are you musical at all?

CONNIFF: I started playing piano when I was four. I actually played with my father on tour, and I played on albums with him. I never wanted to be, I mean, I am a musician, because I’ve played or studied, but I never wanted to be a performer. I always wanted to be a writer. I think everyone has their calling, and writing was my calling. It’s ironic -- I actually had no intention of being a music writer, I wanted to be a political writer. Bizarre. I guess it’s the same thing, sort of. You’re attracted to what you know, and I guess these opportunities just kept coming up for me, and it’s what I know. If there is anything I know on the planet, it’s the music business. You end up writing what you know, and it sort of happened that way, and I couldn’t be happier.

ANDELMAN: We’re coming up on I guess what will be the fifth anniversary of your dad’s passing. I assume that the Conniff family has a personal interest in music rights and royalties, that kind of thing. What do you think will be the music that your dad will be most remembered for and that will be the most enduring?

CONNIFF: It’s very interesting. I’ve been having interesting conversations about my dad’s music. A lot of young kids are discovering it on the Internet and are really into the sort of jazzy, hi-fi kind of stuff. I think what my father will be remembered for is as the brilliant arranger that he was, and he will be remembered for the stuff he did with Artie Shaw. I think above all, he will be remembered for, he created the sound, that he was the first to put voice and instrument together in the way he did. There are many people who followed, but he was the architect. He was also the first person to ever perform in stereo.

ANDELMAN: Oh, really? I didn’t know that.

CONNIFF: Yes. And the first Western artist to go to Russia. And amazingly enough, I think there’s also a big legacy for him in young composers. There’s not a young self-composer I’ve met who’s not been inspired by my father’s arrangements, so I think that it’s a great legacy, and I aspire to take good care of him and keep his music alive.

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Tamara Conniff, "Billboard" editor: Mr. Media Interview, Pt. 1

Do you remember the first music you ever bought?

Whether it was a digital download, a compact disc, cassette, eight track, or a 33-1/3, 45, or even a 78 RPM wax record, I’ll bet you know that first song or album by heart.

Mine was way back in 1967, The Monkees’ Headquarters album. My parents bought it at the neighborhood pharmacy, believe it or not. I played it over and over and over again. I would have kept playing it, but my little brother, Ira, the future disc jockey, took a bite out of it, literally. I still have it though.

No matter what kind of music you like, whether it’s Bruce Springsteen, Lawrence Welk, or Gwen Stefani, we all form attachments to our favorite songs. For example, the first song my wife and I danced to at our wedding was Springsteen’s "I Wanna Marry You,” and it still brings a smile to my face almost 20 years later.

The point of these anecdotal snapshots? Music matters in our lives.

But the music industry itself is undergoing a historic shift away from the sale of physical albums to downloads of music, one 99¢ song at a time.

Where is pop music going? That’s the topic of today’s interview with Tamara Conniff, executive editor and associate publisher of Billboard magazine, where she oversees all aspects of the Billboard brand, from editorial to face-to-face events. She is the youngest person and first woman to hold this post.

Prior to joining Billboard, Conniff served as the music editor for The Hollywood Reporter for five years and was senior editor in charge of music for Amusement Business. Her work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Daily News, the Boston Globe, and the New York Post, among other places.

Born and raised in Hollywood, she is also the daughter of the late American music legend, Ray Conniff.

DOWNLOAD THE MP3;
LISTEN HERE.

ALSO AVAILABLE AS A PODCAST
ON iTUNES.

ANDELMAN: Let me ask you: is “American Idol” the greatest thing to happen to the music industry since Ahmet Ertegün, or is it the worst development since Milli Vanilli?

CONNIFF: Ah, I think it’s a little bit of both, actually. What’s interesting is industry observers during the first season of “American Idol” -- when it first started -- we were convinced that it was going to be dead in the water. And here we are multiple seasons later and millions and millions of albums sold.

I think what “Idol” really does represent is the shift in the music industry, of a texting-oriented generation. “American Idol” really sort of ushered in the whole text voting, which translates to ring tones and purchasing music with your mobile phone. It also really showed the marketing power of television over traditional media, like radio. It showed that shift in music. I would say that out of all the Idols, there are three breakout stars -- Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Hudson, and of course, Kelly Clarkson are actually really fantastic singers. Is it teen sugar-pop at its best or worst? Absolutely. Has it affected the ability for young artists who do not have that kind of exposure to get signed and be promoted? Yes.

ANDELMAN: In a positive or a negative way?

CONNIFF: Negative.

ANDELMAN: Really?

CONNIFF: Oh, yeah.

ANDELMAN: You think it’s closed doors?

CONNIFF: It has absolutely closed doors to a lot of artists in the business. The one question that record label executives ask themselves is, when they sign a young artist, “How do we break them if they don’t have a platform?” “American Idol” is a platform, you know. How they would normally do it would be to promote it radio, do a couple of radio shows, maybe do a mall tour depending on the age, But now, those avenues don’t hold the power, so unless you have television, either “American Idol” or maybe “Grey’s Anatomy” or one of the hit shows really championing your artist, it’s very hard to take an unknown artist and break them.






ANDELMAN: Wow. So would you say as those doors have closed, has the industry also gotten a little lazy?

CONNIFF: I don’t think it’s laziness as much as it is fear. In your introduction, you talked about the first album that you had in 1967. You look back at the ’60s and the ’70s, record companies were independent. A&M was an independent company. They weren’t owned by the conglomerates who are forcing record executives to meet quarterly numbers. The music industry isn’t like making cereal. You never know when you’re going to have a hit or not have a hit. EMI was late releasing the Coldplay album, and their stock plummeted. You know, back in the day, those issues weren’t a concern to music companies. They’d wait for years for the record to come out.

ANDELMAN: Right.

CONNIFF: So it’s not laziness as much as it is fear and trying to find something that’s going to help you meet those numbers.

ANDELMAN: Has the industry also come full circle in the last 40 years? In the ’50s and ’60s, even the ’40s, for that matter, it was really a singles industry. There were albums, but people were buying 45s and single songs, then we went through these years of the rock albums, the whole concept and the album, you’d be buying a whole album. There was album radio, and now we’re really at that point, aren’t we, with the 99¢ downloads, and some new artists aren’t recording a whole album, they record a song, and if they sell enough copies, maybe then they get an album.

CONNIFF: Well, the interesting thing is that it was really the record industry that kind of screwed themselves on this one.

The record companies actually took singles off the market about 15 years ago, and the reason why they did that is because singles were cannibalizing record sales. People weren’t buying the $12 album, they were buying a $2 single, so the record companies thought, “Hmmm, why should we offer singles and they are not buying the album? We’ll force them to buy the whole album for the single.” So they were releasing at that time a lot of albums that were a whole lot of fluff with one strong song, and the consumers had to pay $12 to get that album This was also during a time when soundtracks were very successful, because soundtracks are essentially a collection of singles.

So what happened with the advent of that technology and the peer-to-peer sharing technology is the consumer got really smart, and said, “I’m paying $15 for an album that sucks because I like one song. Here’s this new service; I can go get it for free.”






ANDELMAN: Well, I agree with that completely. I know the reason I stopped buying records was I was just sick of having to spend that much money, and really all I wanted was one song.

CONNIFF: Right. So you’re looking at a situation where it is a singles market, again. Absolutely, but that’s because of how record companies have been making albums and also because of technology.

ANDELMAN: How far can the “American Idol” approach go? It’s still drawing like crazy. As we’re talking, they are winding up what I guess is the sixth season, and I read where they’re talking about spinning off a show that is band-oriented, and of course, we have “RockStar,” the Mark Burnett show, and “Dancing with the Stars,” which is just kind of a variation, more focused on dance but heavy music. How far can all this go? Will we have more programs? Will we sell more records this way, or will it have to start to swing back at some point soon?

CONNIFF: At some point, everything swings back. Everything has a life cycle as pop music has a life cycle. I mean, you can go back to the real sugary, doo-wop of the ’50s, which is in no way dissimilar from 'N Sync or the Backstreet Boys. I think that this phase will pass, and then another phase will begin, and then probably another 15, 20 years from now, we’ll go back to pop music, and we’ll have another “American Idol,” which in many ways is sort of like “American Bandstand” except for the voting aspect of it. It’s all cyclical, I think.

ANDELMAN: We’ve talked a little bit about what may be wrong with the industry at the moment. What’s right about the music industry? What can it brag about? What’s it doing right today?

CONNIFF: That’s a very good question.

ANDELMAN: I was afraid from your brief silence that there was no answer.

CONNIFF: I actually have to think about what they’re doing right. They are actively embracing new technologies, finally, even though they’re a little late. Some of the companies, EMI being the forerunner, have said goodbye to DRM.

ANDELMAN: Digital rights management.

CONNIFF: Digital rights management, which is a big plus for consumers.

ANDELMAN: Do you think other labels are going to follow it because it’s the right thing to do or because it’s their opportunity to get an extra 30 cents a song for downloads?

CONNIFF: I think you have to do it. I’m kind of opinionated about this, but DRM is sort of like Reagan’s Star Wars, you know. Like, what are you doing? Essentially, you are punishing consumers who want to buy music by making it impossible for them to use it on the devices they want to use it on, and the people who are going to steal it are going to steal it anyway. So I think that DRM was a huge waste of money, and it’s torture to consumers who seek to buy music legally. I think eventually all the labels are going to have to abandon it.






ANDELMAN: Does the fact that its EMI reached this deal with iTunes… iTunes was already standing high apart from everyone else. Does it now put someone standing on its shoulders making it that much harder that anyone will ever catch up to it?

CONNIFF: I don’t know. The irony about iTunes and their DRM strategy is that they were like the worst culprits of DRM with the rights management drowning iTunes.

Listen, I think that they had to do this in order because other media players were actually starting to chomp at their heels. I don’t know. I think that it’s a cultural phenomenon, Apple and iTunes, is, and at some point, it will swing again, but I don’t see it stopping any time soon.

ANDELMAN: This is a little broad of where we’re going, but has the Zune had any impact in the market at all?

CONNIFF: Zune is a really fantastic product. The only problem with Zune is that not enough people have it for it to work. Zune is a sharing system, and in order to share, you have to have someone who has a Zune, so the problem is that it’s not mass market yet.

ANDELMAN: Do you think it ever will be?

CONNIFF: I think if they stick to it and continue to adapt it and make it smaller and find a right promotion for it, I think that it could be a viable competitor. But it was a very advanced product to come into a market that wasn’t really ready for it.

ANDELMAN: As you were saying that, I was trying to remember the last time I saw an ad either on TV or in print for the Zune, and I honestly can’t remember.

CONNIFF: Yeah. I think that they’re going back to the drawing board a little bit for the next incarnation of it.

ANDELMAN: So we talked about “American Idol”’s impact on the industry. What about iTunes and Apple? Have they played a big role in revolutionizing the music industry?

CONNIFF: Well, yeah, absolutely. Good and bad, I suppose. They have made music portable. They have made downloads legal. They have become a huge marketer of music. They’ve definitely steered people away from peer-to-peer sites where it was free to pay for music. The only problem is that they have also set a price point that is 99¢, and that’s a pretty low price point to start from. It’s hard to lower that. I think it would have been better for the industry to start it a little higher.

ANDELMAN: Of course, there has always been this belief in retail that you want to be under the dollar, whether it’s $9.95 being under $10 or 99¢ being under $1.

CONNIFF: Absolutely. But as you see the value of music going down, the monetary value of music going down, you might have wanted to launch it at $2.99 to have negotiating room, to bring the price down.






ANDELMAN: How much impact has iTunes and iPods and for that matter, Zune and SanDisk, how much impact have they had on radio, because I know that Billboard covers radio, as well.

CONNIFF: Well, radio, it’s not only that so much, I think the Internet has had the biggest impact on radio.

ANDELMAN: How so?

CONNIFF: With web radio, with bloggers being able to do play lists with web casts. On the web is where you find the old-school DJs or what we remember as DJs, where you find a community and someone whose taste that you like, and you go, and you listen to their playlist. That’s what DJs used to do. So I actually think that Internet webcasting and Internet radio have been the biggest Achilles heel of terrestrial.

ANDELMAN: That as opposed to satellite radio.

CONNIFF: Satellite radio is a totally different demographic. Your average kid can’t afford satellite radio, nor do they care or are they going to buy it. Satellite radio is for an older consumer, and it certainly has been positive, but I don’t think it’s really taken that much away from terrestrial.

CLICK HERE TO READ PART 2!!!

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.