And Party Every Day: The Inside Story Of Casablanca Records
Language: English
Pages: 310
ISBN: 0879309822
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Now it can be told! The true, behind-the-scenes story of Casablanca Records, from an eyewitness to the excess and insanity. Casablanca was not a product of the 1970s, it was the 1970s. From 1974 to 1980, the landscape of American culture was a banquet of hedonism and self-indulgence, and no person or company in that era was more emblematic of the times than Casablanca Records and its magnetic founder, Neil Bogart. From his daring first signing of KISS, through the discovery and superstardom of Donna Summer, the Village People, and funk master George Clinton and his circus of freaks, Parliament Funkadelic, to the descent into the manic world of disco, this book charts Bogart's meteoric success and eventual collapse under the weight of uncontrolled ego and hype. It is a compelling tale of ambition, greed, excess, and some of the era's biggest music acts.
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millions on TV. But, regardless of his stage fright, he knew that Merv’s show, which drew solid ratings, was an important means to expose our artists and projects. So Neil and Merv became friends, to a degree (with Merv, it was always to a degree). Although Merv appeared warm and caring on television, in person I didn’t find him quite so friendly. He had a tough-guy shark for a business manager and would always blame him for any difficulty that arose in negotiations—as if Merv himself wasn’t the
a big kick out of our shenanigans. PolyGram had created a forty-minute Casablanca multimedia production for NARM, narrated by Orson Welles and titled “Sounds of Success,” which heavily promoted a forthcoming disco-tinged KISS album called Dynasty. Even our lone real rock act was turning disco, and this shows the genre’s growing influence and commercial potency. Though they’d been influenced heavily by the likes of The Beatles, the Stones, The Who, and Led Zeppelin, KISS’s artistic sensibilities
heavyweights. Mo Ostin and Joe Smith were among the Warner representatives; Art Kass, Jerry Sharell, Arnold Feldman, and Ron Weisner from Buddah were there, as was Morris Levy from Roulette. Executives from almost every record company in southern California were in attendance. So was nearly everyone who had ever worked at or with Casablanca: including me and Candy, Christy Hill, Cecil Holmes, Bruce Bird and his entire family, Peter and Lynda Guber, as well as Jeff Franklin and others from ATI.
snug, so they definitely looked best on women. Even though I was fairly trim at the time, I could never wear one. When we told the Warner people that we would need more shirts, they explained that they cost almost $20 apiece to manufacture (a fortune in those days); all the rhinestones had to be hand applied, and there was no way they were going to spend more money on them. With the excitement surrounding KISS and all the publicity, airplay, and concerts, we thought the album would sell like
heavily into the band’s finances and advertising that Casablanca became almost superfluous to the operation, simply handling sales and a minor bit of promotion. We were used to being involved in planning tours and controlling the press. Now we would step back and let the new KISS organization do the work, unless they interfered with our plans, and then a fight would develop. We were on the brink of getting a KISS single on few major stations when things suddenly fell apart because the KISS
