It’s a pre-game faceoff between Stan Smyl and Mario Lemieux, with Michael Jackson (yes, here we go again) doing the honours.  Jory asserts that there is actually a confluence:

• The Canucks hosted the Pittsburgh Penguins at the Pacific Coliseum on November 16, 1984 and beat them 7-6.
• Michael Jackson’s Victory Tour stopped in Vancouver to play three shows on November 16, 17 & 18 at BC Place.

It’s possible this is the correct date.  1984 was Lemieux’s first season in the NHL, and (there is no C on his sweater) was not yet captain of the Penguins.

On the contradicting side, Jory also points out that there’s “no red carpet” as there is in this photo.  However, if you look behind Michael Jackson, you’ll notice the penalty box.  The red carpet typically extends from the players’ benches for these sorts of things, since the penalty boxes and scorekeeper’s bench do not have exits, and those benches are clearly behind the photographer.  Furthermore, the photog is clearly standing on the ice, and for safety reasons would only be standing on carpet himself… so just because you don’t see the carpet doesn’t mean it’s not there.

I did some digging and here’s a photo of Michael from 1984, wearing what seems to be the same outfit.

I’ve got to say he really foretold the whole bedazzled revolution, didn’t he, Wal-Mart shoppers?  Must’ve liked that jacket, because here it is again (also in 1984) with the sleeves rolled up.

So there you go, sports fans.  I have resolved this issue of critical importance to the hockey nation.  Michael Jackson did in fact drop the puck at Mario Lemieux’s debut game in Vancouver in November, 1984.  Please now relax, drop an ambien, and head to bed happy.  The speckled one loves hockey.  Though perhaps not as much as Gary Coleman:

Who dares wins

The ‘comedy terrorist’ who gatecrashed Prince William’s 21st birthday party may have zero talent for jokes or impersonation. But there’s one quality Aaron Barschak possesses in spades – chutzpah. And that, writes Simon Hattenstone, can get you a very long way

Simon Hattenstone and Isabelle Chevallot Wednesday June 25, 2003 The Guardian

He may be a rank failure on the comedy circuit, he may be a loser in life and love, he may belong to the great unwashed, he may even have hooked up with a former stripper, but Aaron Barschak possesses something most of us haven’t got. Not only did he climb three walls and two gates to gatecrash Prince William’s 21st birthday party, he did so dressed as Osama bin Laden (though he actually looked more like Michael Jackson), performed a comedy routine, kissed William on both cheeks, left to wild applause and headed off for the champagne bar. That’s when he got arrested.

Barschak doesn’t care. The Crown is unlikely to press charges against him, he has become a national treasure and front-page news. Despite his transparent lack of talent, he has achieved his ambition to become famous. Undeterred by decades of failure (he wanted to be an actor, but ended up as a removal man and waiter), he has carried on in the face of his own lack of ability, finally winning our admiration by doing something most of us would never have dared do. In short, Barschak has proved his chutzpah.

What is chutzpah? And how do you pronounce it? Well, last things first. It is pronounced Khoots-pah: imagine you are clearing your throat, preparing yourself for a really good spit (think Paul Mariner on Match of the Day, if you’re old enough). That’s the “ch”, and the rest spells itself. It is a Yiddish word, with no English equivalent, and there is no better way to express audacity, daring and presumption.

Perhaps the best way of understanding it is to examine the people who have it in spades: Eddie the Eagle (a hopelessly talentless skier, but that didn’t deter him); Bill Clinton (his redefining of “sexual relations” was truly audacious); Karl Power (prankster extraordinaire, who managed to get himself into the Manchester United team picture, played on centre court at Wimbledon and went out to bat for England); Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf (Iraq’s minister of information, who insisted on television “There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!” when we could see them in the backdrop); the whole of Britart (“Believe me, my unmade bed really is as good as any Vermeer”); Ruby Wax (rifling her way through Imelda Marcos’s shoe closet), and Christine Hamilton (simply for being Christine Hamilton).

Michael Winner, who knows more about chutzpah than most, is keen to help us out. “Chutzpah is two things. It can be cheek and insolence. But it can also be used to describe a derisory act, for example, someone who is selling something could say: ‘What Chaime offered me was a chutzpah!'”

Hats off to Barschak, says Winner. “It had all the elements of chutzpah: the impertinence of intruding on a class way above your own; the expertise of finding the way of doing it; and it also had the ludicrousness of pitting the east- european immigrant, albeit one generation removed, against the royal family. I think he should be thoroughly applauded.”

Why do we associate Winner with chutzpah? “Ah, I excel in it. I’m always doing impertinent things. For example, when I was 14 I befriended the publisher Paul Hamlyn, who was an old boy at my school who had gone on to publish film books. So I phoned all the film studios and said ‘I’m writing a book called Film-Making From the Children’s Angle’, and all the studios welcomed me and I met the stars and that’s how I got to see how films were made. I went back time and again and always ate for free. Eventually, Paul phoned me and said ‘I hear you’re going round saying you’re writing a book for me. Give it a rest, would you?’ We remained friends till he died.”

The author Leo Rosten defines chutzpah as follows: a man kills both his parents and then throws himself at the court’s mercy on the grounds that he is an orphan. There is also an old Jewish joke that illustrates chutzpah. A Jewish grandmother is sitting on the beach with her beloved grandson when a freak wave sweeps him out to sea, where he is instantly devoured by the ocean. The distraught woman sinks to her knees, wailing, pleading with God to spare the child’s life. Suddenly, there is a celestial thunderclap and her prayers are answered. Another wave gathers the boy up from the depths and plonks him safely, miraculously, beside the old lady, at which she turns her eyes heavenwards, and says: “His cap’s missing.”

Barschak’s brand of chutzpah is more than an attitude, it has an element of performance art to it. Indeed, this will almost certainly turn out to be his greatest performance. (At 36, he is not thought to have a promising future as a stand-up – indeed, a close observer of the comedy circuit told me: “As a stand-up comic, never in his wildest dreams could Barschak aspire to mediocrity.”) As with most chutzperians, Barschak’s act was not an end in itself – his performance at Prince William’s party ended with him advertising his live gigs at the Edinburgh festival later this year.

The political activist Peter Tatchell also employs chutzpah as a means to an end. For example, earlier this year he stopped Tony Blair’s motorcade by running out, suffragette-style, in front of his limousine, ending up under the wheels. It was a way of drawing attention to his protest against the invasion of Iraq. Last year, he twice attempted a citizen’s arrest on Robert Mugabe, and got himself beaten up into the bargain.

I ring him to tell him he’s been voted a top chutzperian in the Guardian’s (admittedly unofficial) survey. For once, he’s speechless. But I think he’s pleased. Why does he think that we think he’s got chutzpah? “Well, I guess I’m rather reluctant to show deference where many people think it is due, especially if there’s an issue of injustice involved.”

Does he have any chutzpah role models? “Oh yes. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Sylvia Pankhurst. They didn’t play politics by orthodox rules. They were fearless in confronting the forces of oppression. I’ve tried to adapt their methods of non-violent direct action to the contemporary campaign for human rights.”

George Galloway also features prominently in our list of great chutzperians. He is delighted when I pass on the good news. “I strongly approve of chutzpah,” says the controversial politician, currently suspended from the Labour party after making anti-war comments on television. What does chutzpah mean to him? “It means audacity. I’ve always followed the motto of the French revolutionary Danton – l’audace, encore l’audace, toujours l’audace . And in my line of work, elan can make the difference. I do venture into the lion’s den. Sometimes I’m bitten, but so far so good – I keep getting up again.”

I tell him what I think makes him a great chutzperian – how he can smoke the fattest Cuban cigars and wear the most expensive designer suits, proclaim his socialism and not appear to be a hypocrite. “Others do things behind closed doors,” he replies. “I prefer to openly acknowledge my belief that the devil should not possess all the best suits, and that if one has honestly earned the wherewithal to buy tobacco one should buy the best Havanas.”

With magnificent chutzpah, Christine Hamilton has made a living from milking her infamy. I’m in the fortunate position of being able to tell her that she is one of the Guardian’s top chutzperians. She squeals with delight. “Oh yes, everything I do displays chutzpah,” she says. “It means you’ve got balls and joie de vivre and a bit of cheek. Oh, yes – I’ve been the narrator in the Rocky Horror Show, bossy battleaxe in Jack and the Beanstalk, I’ve even had a bath in strawberry jam for the British Heart Foundation. The rumours that I drink to excess, by the way, are ridiculous. I do everything to excess. I drink with chutzpah. I do everything with chutzpah.”

One of the great things about people with chutzpah is that they like to talk about it. Of course they do. They love talking about themselves, their nerve, their excesses, their presumption, their amazing ability to achieve a great deal (often with very little obvious talent).

With one obvious exception. Reading about Barschak reminds me of a group of people with unequalled chutzpah – each year they take £35m off us without a word of thanks, they have filched some of the world’s greatest paintings for their own private collections, are a law unto themselves and they act as if they own the bloody country.

But the Royal Family were, as ever, unavailable for comment.

-Ian.

—– http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id 9693

Magna Cum Loud The art of DJing has come a long way. How far? A new school is drawing students from Wall Street and beyond FORTUNE Monday, October 14, 2002 By Daniel Roth

Singer Angie Stone has a nice hit in “Wish I Didn’t Miss You.” The song is danceable, features appropriately vacuous lyrics, and has an infectious groove. But, for Eric Schimmel, “Wish” has a major flaw: Its tempo doesn’t match King of House’s “Billie Jean Club Remix.”

It’s a DJ’s worst nightmare. And Schimmel, 31, is determined to be a DJ. By day, Schimmel’s a vice president in emerging markets for Credit Lyonnais, but at night he’s been spinning at a restaurant in Manhattan. Now’s he’s preparing for the big leagues: a chance to DJ at a club in Ibiza, Spain. He knows these two records played back to back will be a hit with the dancers, but he has to get it right. So on a humid Friday night in August, Schimmel–suit jacket off and tie loosened–stands behind two turntables with his tutor, a 34-year-old giant by the name of DJ Kwest.

As Stone’s song plays, Schimmel puts one finger in the air, flicking it up at each of the snares and down at the bass drum. Finding the beat, he reaches for the mixing board that rests between the spinning records and slowly inches over a lever that should seamlessly stitch the songs. The result is a mess of drums and Michael Jackson lyrics. Kwest, whose real name is Derek Scantlebury, shakes his head and shuts off both turntables. “Listen first,” he says, moving into Schimmel’s spot. “Adjust it to make it match up. Drop it on the high hat.” Kwest restarts the records, spins “Billie Jean” back a few revolutions, scratches the bass beat, and lets go. Stone morphs into King of House. “This is how fluid it could be.”

Over the past few months, Schimmel and a couple hundred like him have walked up the six flights of stairs to the Scratch DJ Academy in Manhattan for such wisdom. The students come from the tech world, retailing, school, or Wall Street to learn from teachers by the names of Mista Sinista, Evil Dee, and Brooklyn Miph. Each student is trying to figure out the same thing: how to turn a party loose.

The Rolling Stones might make billions by milking baby-boomer nostalgia, but for Gen Xers on down, today’s real music idols are DJs. Stars like Paul Oakenfold and the Chemical Brothers spin to arenas of screaming fans. In mid-September, Intel kicked off a multimillion-dollar ad campaign featuring music from Moby and Basement Jaxx. At music giant Sam Ash, DJ equipment sales–now a $500 million business for U.S. retailers–are up 4% from last year while electric guitar sales are flat.

So it’s no surprise that entrepreneurs have figured out there’s money to be made in teaching how to use the equipment. Which is where Scratch comes in. The school is the brainchild of Rob Principe, a 29-year-old former dot-commer who sports a goatee and greets people with a clasp that’s half soul shake, half hug. In 1999, Principe, a jazz lover, went to a party at a club in New York and watched the DJ spin song after song until the entire club seemed to be dancing. Principe was in awe.

“He flipped 1,500 people,” he says. “He turned them upside down. I walked out and said, ‘That moved me. Just like a book or a good movie or a piece of art.’ It was like, Now what?”

The answer came in 2000 when Principe lost his job as the head of sales for an Israeli software company. Using connections from local venture capitalists, he got in touch with Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell, the DJ behind seminal rap group Run-DMC, and Reg E. Gaines, author of Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk, to discuss the idea of a school for DJs. The three tossed around plans, and in February 2002, Scratch opened its doors in a space that houses Pseudo.com. When Principe advertised a free first semester on his website, 1,200 people signed up.

In the offices, covered in dark paint and graffiti, students are run through a six-week, $270 course on the entire process of DJing. The beginner level, or DJ101, comprises everything from how a turntable works to how to market yourself. DJ202 features more complex classes, such as Advanced Beatmaking and Battle DJ: Routines and Analysis.

But at its base, being a DJ comes down to one thing: “You’re responsible for everybody’s good time,” says Jahi Lake. A tall, dreadlocked teacher who DJs as the Sundance Kid, Lake is running Jared Cantor through the basic lesson. A 29-year-old sales executive for search-engine Looksmart, Cantor heard DJs in clubs and watched as his friends installed turntables and mixing boards in their living rooms. He wanted to give it a try.

Lake takes him through step by step: Before putting on a record, a DJ has to know how many beats per minute (BPM) the two songs contain. The closer the songs’ BPM, the easier to mix. And the higher the BPM, the more people dance. Most DJs start slow, then boost the BPM as the night goes on. Lake explained how to plug a turntable into a mixer, how to control a record’s pitch, and how to mark a record for phrases and beats worth scratching. Lake demonstrates, singling out a lyric in rapper Ludacris’s “Area Codes” and scratching it, creating a new bass line. Cantor tries the same, creating a sound similar to a car driving with a flat tire. “See, he makes it look easy, man,” says Cantor.

Class continues another 15 minutes, and by the end, Cantor’s still having trouble scratching. But he is able to blend one record into the next. That might not sound like much, but in a time when turntables have become the new electric guitar, it’s a start.

Scratch DJ Academy 212-625-3881,

———–

Inside the Rolling Stones Inc. The Rolling Stones are an astounding moneymaking machine. Here’s how Mick Jagger & Co. have perfected the business model behind the most successful act in rock & roll today. FORTUNE Monday, September 30, 2002 By Andy Serwer

Mick Jagger is wearing a cool pink shirt, slim black trousers, and bright red socks. His hair is–well, there’s a lot of it. But don’t let the look fool you. Mick is all business. That’s business with a capital “B,” as in the stuff we write about all the time in the pages of FORTUNE.

I’m up in Jagger’s suite in Boston’s Four Seasons hotel just before the Stones kick off their worldwide Licks tour. Mick turns down the volume on a boom box, packs off two of his young kids with their nannies, and then holds forth on product pricing, economics, and business models. Jagger is eloquent and informed, but he has a disclaimer: “I don’t really count myself as a very sophisticated businessperson,” he says as he leans back on the couch. “I’m a creative artist. All I know from business I’ve picked up along the way. I never really studied business in school. I kind of wish I had, kind of, but how boring is that?” he says with a grin.

Like the protagonist in one of his most devilish songs, Mick has been around for many a long year. He had plenty of smarts to begin with, and now he has 40 years of music industry experience under his belt. Jagger may be getting a trifle old to rock & roll–he’ll turn 60 next July–but from a business perspective he’s at the top of his game. Which makes sense in a way. After all, that’s a typical age for a CEO of a large, multinational organization. (Okay, so most of the CEOs we follow don’t have to swivel-hip their way through “Midnight Rambler,” but you get the point.)

There are, of course, plenty of detractors who say the Rolling Stones should pack in their guitars and drumsticks. “Way old,” they sniff, “and way irrelevant.” I have two responses, one subjective and one objective. Subjectively, the Rolling Stones sound pretty damn good, even after all these years. And objectively, if they’re such has-beens, then how do you explain the band’s phenomenal commercial success over the past decade? No, they aren’t writing groundbreaking songs anymore–in fact they haven’t really recorded any new material of note in 20 years–but we sure are listening to their old stuff. A lot. And buying concert tickets. Millions and millions of them. And that’s the wrinkle here. Even though the Stones have been in what you might call a creatively fallow period, we want to hear them more than ever. Couple that with the fact that they have perfected their business model, and it’s easy to understand why they are such an astounding moneymaking machine.

The bottom line is this: “The only rock & roll band that matters,” or “the greatest rock & roll band in the world,” or whatever you want to call Mick, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood, they are far and away the most successful act in rock today. Since 1989 alone–the beginning of the modern age of the Rolling Stones (more on that later)–the band has generated more than $1.5 billion in gross revenues. That total includes sales of records, song rights, merchandising, sponsorship money, and touring (see charts: Hot Licks and Packing Them In). The Stones have made more money than U2, or Springsteen, or Michael Jackson, or Britney Spears, or the Who–or whoever.

Next: The Rolling Stones Inc. runs on a combustible mix of talent and labor…

Unlike some other groups, the Stones carry no Woodstock-esque, antibusiness baggage. The group has tendrils deep in American business, cutting sponsorship and rights deals with stalwarts like Anheuser-Busch, Microsoft, and Sprint. Remember the old Boston Consulting Group matrix of the four types of businesses? Well, if the Stones were a traditional company, they would be the cash cow.

As with most thriving enterprises, the Rolling Stones Inc. runs on a combustible mix of talent and intense labor–the product of four decades of trial and error. The band downplays the effectiveness of the organization: “I’m sure that if you looked at it and analyzed it, you could say, ‘Well, that’s fucked up,'” says Jagger. “That shouldn’t be like that. No, of course it isn’t run well. No show business organization is run well. There’s always too much money paid out.” Keith, for his part, just shakes his head: “It’s a mom-and-pop operation,” he laughs. “Mick is the mom, and I’m the pop, and then we have these offspring that need feeding.” Well, kind of.

The Stones, or at least some members of the band, can still come across as wiggy rock stars. (“You’re talking to the business right now,” Richards tells me, holding up his two hands ceremoniously. “These are the business.”) But in many respects the Rolling Stones are like any other large business. They are global, they pay taxes (grudgingly), and they litigate. The band has a P&L and budgets, and accountants, and lawyers, and bankers, and investments, and software, and hardware. “They know what they’re doing,” says Barry Diller, a Jagger confidant. “That’s what separates them from any other band.”

Spend time with their senior entourage and you quickly realize how the Stones got so market-wise. Sure, Mick attended the London School of Economics (“I mostly studied economic history”), but his greatest talent, besides strutting and singing, is his ability to surround himself and the rest of the band with a group of very able (they probably hate to be called this) executives.

The Rolling Stones are a private and secretive organization. Most of the team, like Joe Rascoff, the band’s business manager, and tour director Michael Cohl, stay out of the public eye. So, too, does Prince Rupert Zu Loewenstein, a London-based banker who carries an old Bavarian title and who’s been the band’s chief business advisor for some 30 years–“and I hope for another 30 too,” he says. (Keith calls Loewenstein “the mastermind of our setup.”) But just because the Stones’ financials aren’t public doesn’t mean there isn’t rigorous benchmarking. “Mick likes to run a pretty tight ship,” Keith says to me with a twinkle in his eye.

The business side of the Stones has several facets. As for any executive running a conglomerate, understanding and managing these diverse businesses are the key, says Jagger. “They all have income streams like any other company,” he says. “They have different business models; they have different delegated people that look after them. And they have to interlock. That’s my biggest problem.” And as we will see, his biggest opportunity.

The touring side of the business produces a torrent of revenue when the band is on the road, and then of course absolutely zilch when the tour is done. The record business also blows hot and cold–depending on if a new album is released or if old ones are promoted–though it’s not as erratic as touring. Music rights, on the other hand–money paid to a band when its songs are played on, say, the radio–are predictable enough that some artists (most famously David Bowie) have been able to securitize these rights and sell bonds backed by their revenue streams.

To harness these businesses, to make them “interlock,” the Stones and Prince Rupert have set up a unique business structure, which looks roughly like this: At the top, not unlike at a blue-chip law firm, is a partnership consisting of the four core members of the group: Jagger, Richards, Watts, and Wood. Do all four get equal shares of touring and new-record sales? No one in the Stones party will touch that one. “In the old days they all got equal splits,” says the Stones’ former manager, Allen Klein, “but I doubt it now.”

Connected to the Stones partnership and Prince Rupert is a group of companies that include Promotour, Promopub, Promotone, and Musidor, each dedicated to a particular aspect of the business. This family of companies is based in the Netherlands, which has tax advantages for foreign bands. When the group isn’t touring, these companies employ only a few dozen employees. At the high-water mark of a tour, on the night the band is playing, say, Giants Stadium, the Stones may employ more than 350. Backstage the enterprise resembles a flourishing startup, with dozens of fast-moving junior employees in black T-shirts running around to make sure the IPO, er, the show, gets off without a hitch. It looks crazy, but it works. Perhaps Keith sums it up best: “With our business, who really knows what’s what. You go and look at Lake Superior, and you say, ‘Look at all that water, and that’s just the top!’ ”

Next: Touring is the biggest moneymaking part of the Stones’ operation….

Today touring is professionalized, complete with immigration lawyers, traveling accountants, and real-time budgets. It is also the biggest moneymaking part of the Stones’ operation. Since the 1989 Steel Wheels tour, the Stones have grossed over $1 billion on the road. Though exact profit margins are hard to come by, it’s safe to say that tens of millions of that total flowed to each of the band members. It wasn’t always this way. “When we first started out, there wasn’t really any money in rock & roll,” says Jagger. “There wasn’t a touring industry; it didn’t even exist. Obviously there was somebody maybe who made money, but it certainly wasn’t the act. Basically, even if you were very successful, you got paid nothing.”

Jagger recalls that in the beginning, “you’d just jump from gig to gig. There’d be no sound or lights or anything.” Gradually, beginning with the Stones’ 1969 American tour–which ended with the debacle at Altamont–the touring business would become modernized, with traveling lights, sound, and stage. Jagger himself had a major hand in this, sometimes negotiating directly with promoters in various regions and countries. But it wasn’t until the 1989 Steel Wheels tour, when Canadian rock promoter Michael Cohl took over managing the band’s shows, that the Stones would begin to fully exploit the economic potential of this business.

Generally speaking, prior to Steel Wheels, the band would hire a tour director–the late Bill Graham of Fillmore West fame once filled this role–who would call local promoters in each city to set up shows. Individual deals would have to be cut with each promoter, who took, say, 10% to 15% of ticket sales after the cost of the show. The tour director would then have to collect $250,000 here, $400,000 there, from promoters all over.

Cohl, who started out as a self-described “drugged-out, late-teens strip-club owner from Ottawa,” had been one of those local promoters. After a run-in with the volatile Graham in 1988, Cohl came up with an idea that he thought would tantalize the Stones, who at the time weren’t on speaking terms with each other, never mind touring. “I knew the guys from Pink Floyd, who knew Prince Rupert, and I asked them if they would call Rupert for me,” he tells me as the sounds of the Stones rehearsing “Street Fighting Man” echo backstage. “Ten minutes later Rupert was on my phone saying, ‘Excuse me, young man’– he talks in this very nice, formal British accent–‘excuse me, I understand you have something to say to me.’ And I said $40 million for 40 shows. He said, ‘Very interesting.’ ”

The way Cohl’s plan worked is that he would book the entire tour himself, dealing with the venues directly and cutting out the local promoters. He would also produce new streams of revenue by selling skyboxes, bus tours, and TV deals, and by taking merchandising to a new level. He would bring in corporate sponsors like Volkswagen and Tommy Hilfiger. And most important, he would help stitch these operations together, through cross-promotion and the like, to maximize their earning power.

After months of negotiations and a desperate, failed bid by Graham to retain the Stones, the band accepted Cohl’s offer. Cohl even ended up signing on as the band’s tour director. There was one small problem: “I didn’t have $40 million,” recalls Cohl with a grin. “I had sold half of my company to Labatts [the Canadian beer company], and the truth of the matter is when I offered Rupert the $40 million, I didn’t have their permission to offer it either.” Ultimately Cohl was able to come up with the money, and he and the Stones put together the tour. (Another wrinkle: Steel Wheels had to be insured–Lloyd’s covered Stones tours–and before the insurer would issue a policy, the band had to take physicals. Keith passed, legend has it, to his own astonishment.)

“First and foremost, the show itself was the seminal, watershed point,” says Cohl. “When you look at what a stadium show was pre-Steel Wheels, it was a bit of a scrim, and a big, wide, flat piece of lumber, and that was it. The band turned a stadium into a theater. It all started with Mick. He simply said, ‘We have to fill the end space.’ It was complicated to the third power and expensive to the fifth. But it worked.”

It was also incredibly hairy. “I think Michael would admit that it was a huge learning curve for him doing Steel Wheels,” says Jagger. “Michael had never done it before really, so it was a bit of a gamble.” The tour began in August, and by October Cohl looked at the numbers and realized they were losing money. Gobs of it. The band and the organization had to cut costs quickly. “It was a deal where I said they could make a whole lot of money, and I would guarantee it ‘subject to,’ and the ‘subject to’s’ made us partners at the end of the day. So we all had to learn how to do it,” says Cohl. And they did.

Next: Ticket prices have been the subject of much grousing….

In the end, the Steel Wheels tour–tickets, merchandising, sponsorship money from Anheuser-Busch–made over $260 million worldwide, then a record for a rock tour. The venues, Cohl, the band, and Labatts all made out bigtime. Steel Wheels became the template, and Cohl has been doing Stones tours ever since, refining the operation each time around.

On the new, E*Trade-sponsored Licks tour, the band, which includes keyboard whiz Chuck Leavell and bassist Darryl Jones, is playing three types of venues: stadiums, arenas, and small clubs, each with a unique set of songs (the band has rehearsed more than 130 for this tour), staging, and lights. “It is an amazing challenge,” says Patrick Woodroffe, the lighting designer on the tour, who’s jumped in a cab with me after the Boston show, “but it’s great for the audiences and it keeps the band fresh.” The props and set are downplayed a bit. The giant, multimillion-dollar videoscreen, the staging, and the lights that change for every song don’t overwhelm but complement.

Because they are doing smaller venues, the Stones and Cohl know revenue from Licks won’t approach the monster Voodoo Lounge Tour in 1994-95, which brought in close to $370 million worldwide. Nor will it eclipse 1997-99’s Bridges to Babylon/No Security tour, which did over $390 million. But merchandising (Jagger’s and Charlie Watts’s domain) will be more sophisticated than ever. Jagger tells me that there will be some 50 products–such as underwear by Britain’s Agent Provocateur and new, expensive items like shirts, jackets, and, yes, dresses. And it will be “our most efficient tour ever,” promises Rascoff, though he refuses to divulge any of the band’s financials. “Doing fewer stadiums this time cuts costs because in previous tours we had to have three stages and three crews. This tour we have one stadium stage with one crew.” In other words, when sales in your core business aren’t maximized, you look to cut costs and boost tertiary revenues.

As usual, ticket prices ($50 to $350) have been the subject of much grousing in the press. But Jagger is happy to delve into the topic. “This is one element of the business thing that I try to really control as much as I can,” he says. “Pricing a concert ticket is very different from pricing a Lexus or toothpaste. It’s more like a sports event. And you are prepared to pay the market price. So if U2 or Madonna costs $100 (I’m making these up), you don’t want to be charging $200. I try to keep ticket prices within the market price range. It’s America. We’re not living in a socialist society where we’re all paid so low and no one can afford it.”

The ticket-pricing controversy burns Cohl up. Athletes like Derek Jeter and Marshall Faulk are free to make whatever they can, “but people complain that Mick and Keith can’t. I think that is the biggest load of crap. We are only charging $50 a night for club shows, which we lose money on. I read on eBay one of the tickets to Roseland Ballroom [in New York] went for $10,000. That makes us schmucks! When we charge $300 for some seats, somebody’s out there selling them for $500. If we were to charge $500, somebody would sell them for more. Come on, what are they complaining about?” It’s true that ticket prices to Stones shows have outpaced inflation (along with health care and college tuition), but you kind of get the feeling that the same people who are complaining about high ticket prices also rue the fact that Blind Boy Fuller died poor.

The Stones are famously tax-averse. I broach the subject with Keith in Camp X-Ray, as he calls his backstage lair. There is incense in the air and Ronnie Wood drifts in and out–it is, in other words, a perfect venue for such a discussion. “The whole business thing is predicated a lot on the tax laws,” says Keith, Marlboro in one hand, vodka and juice in the other. “It’s why we rehearse in Canada and not in the U.S. A lot of our astute moves have been basically keeping up with tax laws, where to go, where not to put it. Whether to sit on it or not. We left England because we’d be paying 98 cents on the dollar. We left, and they lost out. No taxes at all. I don’t want to screw anybody out of anything, least of all the governments that I work with. We put 30% in holding until we sort it out.” No wonder Keith chooses to live not in London, or even New York City, but in Weston, Conn.

Of course, it wasn’t just the taxman’s pinch that forced the Rolling Stones to focus on the bottom line. They also got screwed by record labels. “In the early days you got paid absolutely nothing,” recalls Jagger. “The only people who earned money were the Beatles because they sold so many records.”

By the mid-’60s the Stones had reportedly sold ten million singles, including “Satisfaction,” and five million albums, but the band was still living hand to mouth. “I’ll never forget the deals I did in the ’60s, which were just terrible,” says Jagger. “You say, ‘Oh, I’m a creative person, I won’t worry about this.’ But that just doesn’t work. Because everyone would just steal every penny you’ve got.”

In 1965 the band began to work with Allen Klein, a New York manager, who would help it negotiate a new contract. Klein, now 70, recalls his big day with the band some 37 years later: “I told the guys, ‘I want you to come down with me to Decca. Wear dark sunglasses and look angry but don’t say anything. Leave the talking to me.'” By intimidating the British record execs, Klein helped land the Stones their first million-dollar payday. Klein (whose company, ABKCO, still owns rights to the Stones’ songs from the earliest days through 1971) and the band would have a falling-out and part ways in the early 1970s. With vintage photographs of the Stones covering his office walls, Klein leafs through the old contracts in his office and shakes his head: “The others didn’t look at them that much, but I remember Mick would read every single page.”

Interestingly, the Stones have never had a blockbuster album, like Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours or Michael Jackson’s Thriller. But what they have done is make 42 albums. And they’ve sold tens of millions of those records and CDs, and singles and EPs too. Since 1989 alone, for instance, the band has sold more than 38 million albums at roughly $12 each, for gross proceeds of over $460 million.

The new Stones albums haven’t been as hot as the oldies, obviously, but the band has high hopes for the Forty Licks album, due out this fall. The album has 36 of the band’s biggest hits, plus four new songs. Also, Allen Klein’s ABKCO has just re-released 22 of the band’s earlier albums on SACD hybrid, a new CD format (compatible with traditional CD players), including all of the band’s great records from the 1960s. In a way, the Stones’ older music is like Coke Classic. The band tries to introduce new varieties, some of which do okay, but it’s the original stuff we still love the best.

Next: So what keeps the Stones going?…

Serwer: Your income must vary all over the place, year by year, because the tours give you this huge bump and then there’s nothing.

Richards: But there’s always an awful lot of PRS coming in.

Serwer: What the hell is that?

Richards: Performing rights. Every time it’s played on the radio. I go to sleep and make money–let’s put it that way.

Now this is the Microsoft part of the Stones’ business empire. Profitable. Steady. And stretching out to the horizon. “Music publishing is more profitable to the artist than recording. It’s just tradition,” says Jagger. “There’s no rhyme or reason. The people who wrote songs were probably better businesspeople than the people who sang them were. You go back to George Gershwin and his contemporaries–they probably negotiated better deals, and they became the norm of the business. So if you wrote a song, you got half of it, and the other half went to your publisher. That’s the model for writing.”

And Jagger/Richards have written more than 200 songs. The pair has had a few monster hits like “Honky Tonk Woman,” but more significantly they have dozens of songs that are played on FM radio, which is still a vibrant category. And it’s not just the radio. Every time “Shattered” or “Jumping Jack Flash” is played anywhere around the globe when commerce is involved–at an ice-skating rink, on a jukebox, or at a club–the Jagger/Richards cash register goes ka-ching.

Again, Jagger is intimately involved in this business. Perhaps the most famous product rollout of all time used a Stones song–Windows 95 and “Start Me Up.” Microsoft reportedly paid $4 million for those rights. (“Yeah, we met Bill Gates,” says Jagger. “And [Paul] Allen is always around.”) Not to be outdone, Apple used “She’s a Rainbow” to launch the colored iMacs. But, says Jagger, “we don’t really do a lot of commercials. I mean, I’m not against them per se, but we don’t do them that much. We do a lot of film licensing. We get lots of requests, and I usually say yes. It’s a great business. You have a sort of price that you like to keep to, unless it’s a low-budget film and it’s a really interesting film–then you can make a deal maybe.” Though the cost of buying rights to use a Stones song in a film varies, on average it runs a filmmaker in the low six figures.

Over the past decade Fortune estimates that the songwriting team of Jagger/Richards has garnered $56 million from songs being played on radio and in public venues, as well as being used in advertising and movies. A significant chunk of change. “The thing that we all had to learn is what to do when the passion starts to generate money,” says Richards. “You don’t start to play your guitar thinking you’re going to be running an organization that will maybe generate millions.”

The tours, the records, the rights: They’ve all made the Stones the wealthiest rock & roll band on the planet. None more so than Jagger and Richards, who unlike the others enjoy the full fruits of all that licensing. Their portfolios are mostly in the hands of the trusty and tight-lipped Prince Rupert. Though Jagger follows the financial news in the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, he isn’t doing much with stocks these days. “I used to play the market, but I’m not that interested at the moment because I don’t think it’s a very interesting time,” he says.

Keith is more philosophical: “I watch the [Dow] go up and down and wonder. It’s like watching the horses really. How much is that an indication of anything? Oh, the Dow’s up…. And you go, okay, who’s running in the 3:30 at Belmont? I have a small portfolio. I find things I love, like houses–bricks and mortar. Nothing wrong with a bit of land. I’ve invested in my friends’ projects. And there’s Rupert. He is a great financial mind for the market. He plays that like I play guitar. He does things like a little oilwell. And currency–you know, Swiss francs in the morning, switch to marks in the afternoon, move to the yen, and by the end of the day, how many dollars? That’s his financial genius, his wisdom. Little pieces of paper. As long as there’s a smile on Rupert’s face, I’m cool.”

So what keeps the Stones going? Money, yes. But the band could make big bucks simply by doing commercials instead of touring. Going on the road is about ego gratification. “This whole thing runs on passion,” says Richards. “Even though we don’t talk about it much ourselves, it’s almost a sort of quest or mission.”

The Stones and their estates will continue licensing songs and selling records for years. But sooner rather than later, the touring will cease. Jagger’s stage antics are remarkable when you consider his age. But how much longer? Charlie Watts, the oldest Stone, is already 61. The band hasn’t said this is the last tour, though it could be–and of course that kind of speculation is great for ticket sales, particularly in second-tier cities, where this really could be the Stones’ last show.

“How long can we go on?” asks Keith. “Forever. We’ll let you know when we keel over.” And when that day comes, it will mean not only the end of the world’s greatest rock band but also a winding-down of one of the most successful enterprises this crazy business has ever known.

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Hit Charade The music industry’s self-inflicted wounds. By Mark Jenkins Posted Tuesday, August 20, 2002, at 8:19 AM PT

2001 may not be the year the music died, but the pop biz did develop a nagging headache, and it’s not going away. The recorded-music industry’s first slump in more than two decades continues this year; the number of discs sold is slipping and so is the appeal of last year’s stars. Britney Spears’ latest album has moved 4 million copies—a big number, but less than half what its predecessor did.

The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the five major labels that dominate CD retailing, would like to blame much of the slide on Internet music-file swapping. Yet there are many other causes, including the fact that the big five are all units of troubled multinationals—AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal, BMG, EMI, and Sony—that are focused on short-term gain and have no particular interest in the music biz. There’s also been a recession, of course, and resistance to CD prices that have grown much faster than the inflation rate. Perhaps the most important factor, however, is the major labels’ very success in dominating the market, which has squelched musical innovation.

In 2001, U.S. CD sales declined 6.4 percent. Sales have continued downward this year, and a Forrester Research study released last week projects a 6 percent decline in 2003 as well. Yet the report disputes the RIAA’s assertion that the now-bankrupt Napster and its successors are responsible for the downturn. More than two-thirds of CDs bought in the United States sell to consumers who rarely or never download music files from the Web, Forrester concludes. Another market research company, Ipsos-Reid, reported in June that 81 percent of music downloaders buy as many or more CDs than they did before they started getting tunes from the Internet.

The RIAA, of course, has studies that say otherwise. But anyone who rewinds to the last major music-biz slump will find some interesting parallels. In 1978, record sales began to fall, and the major labels blamed a larcenous new technology: cassette tapes. The international industry even had an outraged official slogan: “Home taping is killing music.” The idea was that music fans—ingrates that they are—would rather pirate songs than pay for them, and that sharing favorite songs was a crime against hard-working musicians (rather than great word-of-mouth advertising). Cassettes were so anathema to the biz that Sex Pistols Svengali Malcolm McLaren could think of no more provocative way to launch his new band, Bow Wow Wow, than with a ode to home taping, “C30, C60, C90, Go!”

By the time Bow Wow Wow bowed in 1980, however, the crisis was almost over. It turned out that home taping had not killed music. Instead, the central problem was the collapsing popularity of dance-pop—lively, sexy, but personality-free music whose appeal was broad but thin. They called it disco back then, and the name has never recovered from the era’s backlash. Although usually termed teen-pop, the music of ‘N Sync and Britney Spears is not unlike disco: Both are intellectually underachieving, cookie-cutter styles that have made stars of performers not known primarily for their skills as singers, songwriters, or musicians.

In addition to cassettes, late-’70s industry apologists blamed video games for undercutting record sales. There may have been something to that, and the biz faces even more multimedia rivals today: cable TV, the Internet, and DVDs, as well as much more sophisticated video games. Perhaps more important, younger consumers live in a world where popular music is ubiquitous (and therefore less precious) than in the ’60s and ’70s, when rock was rationed, semi-subterranean, and generation-specific. Some older music fans may hate hip-hop, nu-metal, or techno, yet in general rock today defines parents as much as (or more than) their kids.

The major labels have snubbed older music fans in recent years, yet over-40s now constitute 44 percent of the CD market, up from 19.6 percent in 1992, according to the RIAA’s 2001 annual consumer profile. Unfortunately for the majors, the tastes of graying Beatles and Stones fans have fragmented, making them difficult to reach via mass-marketing. These consumers help support the many smaller labels that market alt-rock, world music, new age, reissues, jazz, folk, bluegrass, post-minimalism, and other niche genres.

Meanwhile, younger fans lose interest quickly and often don’t develop strong loyalties. They’re less likely to investigate a breakthrough act’s previous albums or buy its next one. The genres that appeal to under-25 music fans continue to sell, but individual performers fade quickly.

This is a huge problem for the big labels, who still base their marketing on long-term stars who release multimillion-copy blockbusters. One album that sells 10 million copies is more lucrative than 10 that sell 1 million, because once a CD takes off, the only fixed costs are manufacturing and shipping, which are trivial compared to production and marketing. And long-term careers make each album less of a risk, since the most loyal fans will buy everything an artist releases and profits are high on back catalogs that keep selling.

Yet maintaining superstars is hard and getting harder. They require large advances, high royalty rates, and massive production and marketing money. And they keep demanding such things even when their careers tank (notable recent examples: Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey). The risk that a contemporary superstar’s latest album will bomb is high, since attempts to reach the widest possible audience can easily lead to banality and overexposure.

In 1980, when the same sort of listener burnout bedeviled the biz and its superstars, salvation came from an unexpected source: MTV, an upstart cable channel that began broadcasting clips by a new generation of British bands simply because the established U.S. performers weren’t yet making video clips. Groups like Culture Club, Duran Duran, and the Clash—whose label didn’t even release the original version of its first album in the United States till 2000—broke through to a novelty-starved audience. Suddenly, home taping wasn’t an issue anymore.

This is just the sort of shock that the music industry needs—and labors so hard to prevent. Since 1980, the mainstream music industry has only consolidated: Five companies control CD sales, MTV owns a multi-channel music-TV franchise, and a single company, Clear Channel, dominates both the concert business and Top 40 and rock radio. Ironically, if unsurprisingly, the biz has suffered from its near-monopolistic control. Short-sighted labels and tightly programmed radio have bolstered the success of certain styles and performers but prevented anything fresh from breaking through.

In the past, there were many ways to crack the biz: local radio stations, strong indie labels, regional clubs and promoters. Today, there are only a variety of separate-but-unequal circuits (alt-rock being the biggest) whose performers rarely break into the big time. (Of course, many of them don’t want to, and some are major-label refugees with no intention of going back.) In erecting bulwarks around their domains, the major music businesses have left no entrance for the serendipity that kept the pop industry lively (and profitable) for decades. Yet the barbarians at those padlocked gates are the only people who can save the major labels’ dwindling empires.

Mark Jenkins reviews music and film for the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, NPR’s All Things Considered, and others.

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Even today, I still get requests for copies of that tape. All of the cassette versions I have stink as far as quality and I gave up trying to remaster it a few months ago.

So, since I was redoing it anyway, and since I had to compress it from 90 mins. To 74 mins. I changed around some of the tracks, deleting a few and adding a few more. Many of the tracks are now hard-to-find 12″ remixes.

** Like the last one, make sure you set your CD burning software to burn it in “Disc-At-Once” mode with no gaps between tracks. Otherwise it’ll sound strange and you will think I am a talentless boob.

Hope you enjoy it.

You should be able to listen to both last week’s HipHop mix and this week’s 80s mix on alternation rotation at this URL:

http://www.live365.com/cgi-bin/directory.cgi?autostart=heavysmurf

Download the MP3s from:

http://grapeape.chimpz.com/Ian/MP3s

UserID : foib Password: joy

You’ll see the individual tracks (so that they index properly when you burn to CD) as well as a 192K MP3 and a 56K MP3 containing the whole thing. The 56K version obviously sounds like hell.

Total running time is 72:57, and contains 16 tracks.

TRACK LISTING – 80s with DJ Heavy Smurf:

01 Wang Chung – Everybody Have Fun 02 Duran Duran – Rio 03 Devo – Whip It 04 The Vapors – Turning Japanese 05 Tones On Tail – Go 06 General Public – Tenderness 07 Level 42 – Something About You 08 Howard Jones – Things Can Only Get Better 09 Simple Minds – Don’t You (Forget About Me) 10 Pet Shop Boys – Domino Dancing Prelude 11 Pet Shop Boys – Domino Dancing (Remix) 12 Human League – Don’t You Want Me 13 Information Society – I Want To Know 14 Thompson Twins – Doctor Doctor 15 Culture Club – Miss Me Blind 16 Michael Jackson – Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’

Go ahead… Saturate my DSL!

-Ian.

PS — Sorry, this version isn’t loaded with Santa Claus samples like the last one.