Quote Of The Day

"When a page turns, it turns fast."

Jerry Weintraub on Paul Anka in the May issue of "Vanity Fair."

I love Jerry. Because he's entertaining and loyal.

Having said that, I wouldn't want to be on his bad side.

That's what they don't tell you about the titans, how engaging they are! Some might say cunning, but one thing Jerry has is a heart. If you need something, call Jerry. He's a fixer. All the great ones are.

Jerry's writing about his friend Paul Anka. Let me give you the complete paragraph for context:

"For Paul, the biggest test, the thing that could have killed his career before it really got started, came in the early 60s, when the Beatles made their first tour of the United States. My God, nothing was the same after that. It was as if the old cavalcade of stars was folded up and shoved in the back of a closet. The biggest stars of the 50s, the heartthrobs, they couldn't get on the radio or sell 10 tickets to a show. WHEN A PAGE TURNS, IT TURNS FAST. You might run across some old rock idol and suddenly he is not 19, he's 27 and pushing a broom around Grand Central, or working as an agent."

That's what bugs me about my people, the baby boomers. They think they own the world, that they're gonna rule until they die. Since they rebelled against their conservative parents, that they're hip forever more.

But they're not.

They just can't understand this computer revolution. They tried to deny it. Some still do. They still employ BlackBerries instead of iPhones and Androids. Who needs an app, I need pressable keys to type! But if you ain't got apps, you're clueless.

I always wondered what it was like for my mom, the switch from radio to television, what did that feel like? (I didn't wonder about this with my dad, he NEVER watched TV.) Now I know, I experienced the Internet revolution. Which hit the mainstream back in '95, when everybody who pooh-poohed computers suddenly got one in order to play on AOL. It happened almost overnight. If you're too young to have experienced it, you have no idea what it was like. Even faster than the acceptance of cell phones, suddenly EVERYONE was online.

And then there was the universality of information and products, low prices for everybody in America, not only those in metropolitan areas.

And then there came Napster. Label heads and acts are still lamenting its arrival. Ask these same blokes if they'd turn down chemotherapy and other medical miracles to treat their cancer and they'd say OF COURSE NOT! Used to be the Big C was a death sentence, now when you hear someone has cancer you ask them about their treatment, you expect them to survive, even though not all do.

Sometimes a tsunami comes along and wipes out everything that came before.

We saw this in music. Rap killed Geffen Records. It was supposed to be a passing phase, something for the inner city kids. Who knew it was going to be propped up by middle class white suburbanites.

And now we've got this EDM thing. Which clearly is unlike anything that came before. Where are the melodies? Where are the lyrics? Don't they vary the beat?

But suddenly EDM is what all the kids want.

Kind of like video. We had passe idiots, even youngsters like Justin Timberlake, lamenting the fact that MTV no longer played music videos. Little did they know that progress, the Internet, broadband and YouTube, would blow up music video to a point it never reached before. Now, you can make a ton of money with your video, it's not only a marketing exercise. Furthermore, the opportunity is available to everyone!

And Jerry goes on:

"When a door closes, don't stand there like a dummy - find another door!"

This is what Steve Jobs specialized in, finding another door. It's what Steve Ballmer is bad at, it's what almost everybody who's not an entrepreneur spending his own money is bad at. If you've survived by your wits, if you've built your edifice, you know it could disappear overnight, you sleep with one eye open. At least the best ones do.

And Jerry's one of the best.

Because he knows it's all about insight. The great ones see things the average person does not.

And he knows it's about loyalty.

The world is a people business. If you're bad with human beings, you're gonna have a very rough ride.


--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1

If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25

To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25




--
Powered by PHPlist, www.phplist.com --