A new documentary about the manager that threw a live chicken onstage to be ripped apart by Alice Cooper
Have you ever wondered what a music manager actually does for their 20 per cent? Well, Shep Gordon sold marijuana to Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, threw a live chicken onstage to be ripped apart by Alice Cooper and stayed up for three days with Teddy Pendergrass consuming a suitcase full of pharmaceuticals to prove his assertion that he could outdrink, outsmoke and outdrug any artist and still function well enough at the end to collect the takings. Of “the three most important things a manager does,” according to Gordon, “one is get the money; two is always remember to get the money; and three is never forget to always remember to get the money.”
Some managers have achieved a degree of fame, or at least notoriety, to match their acts. Every rock fan knows of the symbiotic connection between Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley; Brian Epstein and the Beatles; Andrew Loog Oldham and the Rolling Stones; Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols… the inspirational background figures whose outlandish schemes proved integral to the creation of musical legends. But could such larger-than-life figures still thrive in the music business today? “I thought it helped if the manager was as crazy as the band,” says Gordon. “In most cases, they were crazier.”
If there is a stereotype of a maverick Svengali from a glorious faded era of hype and debauchery, Gordon fits the bill: the man who drummed up ticket sales for Alice Cooper at Wembley Arena in 1972 by staging the breakdown of a truck in Piccadilly Circus hauling a billboard of his naked client with a python wrapped around his genitals. “I thought, ‘What’s going to get a kid sitting at home to buy a ticket? Parents telling them you can’t go!’ Well, naked guy named Alice brings London to a halt on BBC evening news, that’s gonna get attention at the dinner table. I was always trying to create history rather than waiting for it to happen.”
Supermensch, a cheery new documentary by Mike Myers (Austin Powers), traces Gordon’s career from college-educated sociologist to rock-star drug dealer to manager of Alice Cooper, Blondie, Teddy Pendergrass and Luther Vandross. Now semi-retired in Hawaii, Gordon is a genial, astute and evidently much-loved figure, yet his early career was apparently conducted in a stupefying haze of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. I wonder how this was even possible?
“As an artist, your job at that time in rock ’n’ roll was to get as f—ed up as you could be,” says Gordon. “If you were normal, nobody wanted to go see you. So they were acting out, but for a manager to be in the middle of that, someone with business skills who could be doing other things and making proper money, they really had to be insanely motivated. To stay in a game that was 24/7 with no certainty of a big payback, it was like climbing Mount Everest every day. There were no rules for any of us. The business was making itself up as it went along.”
“I don’t know whether it washes anymore to have that image as a manager,” says Ignition Management boss Marcus Russell, the man behind Oasis. “If you were transported from the Sixties or Seventies to today, you wouldn’t recognise the business, primarily because of the impact of digitalisation. The monetisation of music is becoming more complicated and time-consuming.”
“Managers have become a lot more businesslike because music simply doesn’t generate enough revenue on its own for anyone to be that crazy,” says Dave Wibberley, who lectures on music industry management at the University of East London. “Simon Fuller is the great model of the contemporary music industry,” he says of the head of XIX Entertainment, who managed the Spice Girls and started the reality TV show musical model with Pop Idol. “You have to position the artist, brand the artist, keep the artist visible, do sponsorship deals, establish partnerships and look for opportunities for diversification to maximise earnings, because it is not going to come from a multimillion-selling album.”
“It’s a very sophisticated business now with very high stakes, for sure. You are not dealing with individuals, you are dealing with corporations,” says Gordon. None the less, he sees signs that mavericks can still thrive behind the scenes. “Just look at Lady Gaga wearing the meat coat, Miley Cyrus riding a giant hot dog on American TV. That takes a lunatic artist and manager. I don’t think the Barnum & Bailey warped side of management ever changes.”
Sources:
http://www.nachtkabarett.com
The Telegraph
