Lunch With Joe Smith

He was interested in ME!

Not a day goes by where I don't get e-mail imploring me to waste my time listening to someone I usually don't know try and sell me something I don't need. That's what they want, some of my time, so they can convince me to help them get ahead.

Huh?

I've about given up going to lunch. I don't even respond to most e-mail. It's not so much that these people are takers, but that I'm nowhere in the equation. You meet them and they don't even pay lip service to the fact I'm a human being, they're just narcissistically on their own trip.

Maybe you're too young to know who Joe Smith is.

He started out as a deejay (after graduating from Yale), and then went on to star in the Mo and Joe show, running Warner/Reprise Records.

Oh, he told me some great stories.

My favorite was about the Eagles, when Joe'd moved on to run Elektra/Asylum. He'd convinced them to do a live album. It would be good for the label and the band. But days before, Irving called and said there was a problem... He put Glenn Frey on the phone. Glenn went on about how it really didn't feel right, how they didn't want to play the Santa Monica Civic, how they could make so much more somewhere else and...the band would only do it if Joe could name the four starting pitchers of the Baltimore Orioles who each won twenty games in 1971. Joe had a history with Glenn, discussing baseball trivia, but this was too much, this was manipulative, this was unfair. But like the father who lifts the automobile crushing his son via pure adrenaline, Joe answered Glenn, he got it right, and they went on to record the double album!

That's exactly how Joe told it.

Not that he was into polishing his image, it's just that I got uptight with the focus all upon me and shifted it back to him.

So I asked Joe about the Grateful Dead. What did he say to them when they put out one stiff album after another?

First, Joe said they burnished the roster, the Dead helped the label sign other bands. Then he told me of a conversation with Mike Maitland, his then boss. Joe told him he could sign every San Francisco act for the same 50k he gave the Dead...Joplin, Country Joe and the Fish... But Mike said to wait and see how it turned out with the Dead.

But by then it was too late.

But the Dead ultimately turned it around, with "Workingman's Dead."

How did Joe get them to record it?

By saying MAKE ONE FOR ME!

After letting them do three studio albums their way, and one overpriced live album, Joe felt the label deserved something it could work with.

And what did Joe say when he heard the result?

He was thrilled!

But he had absolutely no input into the record whatsoever, that's not the way he did business.

Joe signed Bonnie Raitt by having her meet with him and Randy Newman and Ry Cooder, her idols. She was gonna sign with Capitol, which paid to fly her to the west coast, but now she switched allegiance. And for her first record she wanted to record in Minnesota with a friend.

Joe was against this. But he let her. Because artists have to find their own way. Bonnie learned what she didn't know making that first record and adjusted for the second.

There was one story after another of how Joe was hands-off. So different from today.

But then I asked Joe about Ry Cooder, who never broke through commercially, what could I take from that?

Well, Ry was an artist.

But Joe threw it back to me...how was I gonna make some MONEY!

I told him about personal appearances, about my gig with "Variety," but Joe wanted to know about the plan, the strategy.

I wish I had more answers.

But I did tell him I wanted to make seven figures a year.

I shoot high.

Which is what Joe believes in. He felt I had to meet with more people who could push my career. Not the HR person, but the ones who ran companies.

I told Joe I wanted to be on the Amazon homepage. Or iTunes'. Or maybe even an interview podcast for AEG or Live Nation, someone who'd put it on the homepage and promote it, I'm not gonna start at zero, I'm too old, and Joe agreed.

But Joe told me first and foremost I had to know what I wanted. And then I had to get along. In other words, people had to be glad to see me, when I walked into their office they had to be thrilled.

And I've worked on that. I've learned how to be warm and nice. But the nature of my act is I'm going to inherently piss people off in my writing, otherwise it wouldn't be honest.

Joe told me not to change the act. Not to take any ads, not to play the game, not to change the essence of who I am.

But to strategize, to reach out, to not be afraid to fail, he said I was too old to be afraid.

And he's right.

P.S. We went to Bouchon Bistro. Mmm...was the food good. You could go just for the bread, but I ordered the steak and frites. Got to say, it was the most tender steak I'd eaten in years, and I even had the Japanese wagyu at CUT last week! I had to look down with my weak eyesight and investigate, was this hamburger? My knife cut through so easily!

P.P.S. Steve Ross was the big boss. And Steve never interfered, whenever Joe asked him what to do, Steve said it was Joe's money, the same thing Joe told the acts. If you give people responsibility, they step up and deliver, or at least try.

P.P.P.S. Joe referenced having breakfast with Dick Wolf, to trade basketball tickets. Joe's got the Lakers, Dick's got the Clippers. His point was everything's social, and you've got to play with the right people, those you can call up who deliver. The same way Irving did when Joe was writing his book, furnishing addresses and phone numbers. That's the nature of the game, he who does favors wins. And the big boys don't ask for payback, because if you give enough, you always get.

P.P.P.P.S. Joe tracked me down. I felt he had an agenda. The fact he wanted to focus on me was quite the surprise. Then again, if you walk out the front door you never know what will happen.


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