Whitney, Me and Clive

Quick: name another National gathering, besides Thanksgiving, where the main course features both the bird and the breast. Answer: half time on Super Bowl Sunday.

But long before the intermission between the 2nd and 3rd quarters became a Burlesque show, long before the game itself stopped being enough, and long before lesser-lights like MIA flipped everyone off and Janet Jackson's titillated the nation with her faux wardrobe malfunction, super star Whitney Houston did the nearly unthinkable: gracing the event with class and dignity. People still talk about her absolutely stirring version of "The Star Spangled Banner", a 1991 pre-game rendering so rousing it was quickly put out as a radio single, actually cracking the Billboard Top 20.

Before all that though, the first time I ever heard Whitney Houston sing was in the summer of 1984. I'd just started working at KNCO in Grass Valley and on the playlist that first week was a Teddy Pendergrass single called "Hold Me", a 4 minute duet with somebody named Whitney Houston. Though credited on the label, her name was only an afterthought, listed underneath Teddy's, and in parentheses. But the first time I played it I remember thinking, Man, bag Teddy Pendergrass; give me more of that Whitney chick. What a voice. And what a sad waste of talent.

That's what I thought when the news broke of Whitney Houston’s death. However, considering her life had been spinning out of control for the last 15 years, it wasn't really much of shock at all. It’s amazing it hadn’t happened sooner. But what I also remembered about Whitney Houston was how she got me in trouble with Arista Records President Clive Davis. Well, Whitney herself didn't get me in trouble. Actually the fault was completely mine. But the ability to add future her music to KNCO's playlist in a timely manner- or lack of that ability thanks to the deaf ears living at her label- was the source of my woes. Let me explain.

After the duet with Teddy Pendergrass, Houston became a rising solo act and Arista Records released several more wildly popular singles, beginning with "Saving All My Love for You". During the next six months, "How Will I Know" and "The Greatest Love of All", quickly zoomed to the top of the charts as well, and not long after, yours truly was promoted to KNCO Music Director, a position I both enjoyed and took seriously.

 

Unfortunately, KNCO was a small station and sometimes on the short end as far as getting good record label service. Oh, we had adequate in-roads with Warner Brothers, Columbia, RCA, Atlantic and Universal.  But because we didn’t ‘report” to Billboard and Radio & Records (or, R&R)- the two behemoth industry publications that record companies and radio stations used for news and airplay information- Arista ignored us. Though we received both magazines and used them to make playlist decisions, KNCO was considered too small to be one of their reporting stations. What's a reporting station, you ask?  Nothing really except stations would do back flips to be one, especially one for R&R. R&R was the pop-chart Bible.

Here’s how it worked: the reporting station designated an in-house contact person- usually the Music Director- to call or fax once a week and "report" current songs they were playing that week. The higher the rotation and bigger the station, the more weight went into the algorithms used to tabulate a record’s chart action. And if you were one of lucky stations R&R deemed important enough to collect this data from, you were golden. Not only did a Music Director gain instant credibility and radio insider status, but it guaranteed his or her station gold standard record service from all the major labels. Forever.

So we all wanted to report to R&R.  But alas, if the radio world was the ocean then KNCO was a guppy trying to swim with the whales. And not get eaten. And even if we managed to briefly catch Billboard and R&R's attention, they'd just throw us back. Too small. However, we weren't completely overlooked; KNCO was a reporting station for The Gavin Report. Though not as significant as either of the Big Two, being a Gavin reporter got us pretty decent service from most of the other major record labels. Except Arista Records. They kept pretending we didn't exist, even though they'd received many letters of inquiry and had taken at least two of my phone calls.

The best they ever could seem to do was send a 'care package', a box of recently released singles. And that was fine; it was good for starters. But we needed on-going weekly current product to keep up with competing signals coming in from Sacramento. So the lack of consistent service was problematic because KNCO’s music heavy on adult contemporary and Arista was the label of record for much of the Adult Contemporary format. Air Supply. Carly Simon. Barry Manilow.  Kenny G. Dionne Warwick. The Eurythmics. Hall and Oates. Alan Parsons. All and were signed to Arista. Nobody listens to that stuff now but back then, those were the core artists making up more than half the weekly AC chart-lists. And at the center of that core was Whitney Houston, an act so hot she could burp and debut Top 10 with a bullet. Good for her; not so good for KNCO. 

If KNCO was going to play it- or anything else on the Arista label- I'd have to drive down to Sacramento and buy the 45 at Tower Records. Which was super annoying. Not only was it a waste of time and gas, it meant we were always lagging a week or two, or sometimes three, behind everybody else. It was a lame arrangement and I needed a better solution and one day I thought I found it.

While speaking with my contact at RCA Records, I mentioned my Arista frustration. He suggested I write Clive Davis personally and let him know about it. I had no idea who Clive Davis was, not then anyway. Of course now everybody knows him. President of the label; industry heavyweight; power broker. A record mogul. If anyone could free up the service bottleneck for me at Arista, my RCA friend said it'd be Mr. Clive Davis. So I sat down and wrote him a nice long two page letter, telling him exactly what the problem was and what I hoped he and his company could do to rectify the situation. Then I handed it off to Carolyn, our sweet and efficient front office secretary, who typed it on company letterhead and sent out over my signature.

Of course, I wrote the letter after a frustrating day that included an air shift, a couple hours of production and another trip to Tower Records and back. So the letter might have sounded slightly less than friendly and business-like. Okay, to be perfectly honest, though I didn't use one word of profanity the tone of the letter hemorrhaged attitude like a severed artery bleeds. As I wrote, the mocking cynic in me sort of leached to the surface and, I suppose, kind of went off on the guy. But it sure felt good. And later that week, I got a call from somebody in Arista's LA office. I don't remember the man's name, either, but it was clear he wasn’t very happy with me. Or else he was just a prick.

He started this way: “Is this the asshole music director for K-N-fucking C-O?” After his opening salvo, he called me some more names before demanding to know where I ever got the balls, as the Podunk music director at a Podunk radio station in a Podunk part of California, to think I could get away with sending such a nasty letter to a company president?! But before I could respond he wanted to offer some helpful, if not profanity-laced advice, should I ever decide to pull out my pen and write another letter to Clive Davis, or anyone else at Arista Records: 

"I'll make sure you fucking never work anywhere else in the fucking business, because I know a lot of fucking people and if your fucking name ever shows up someplace over the title, Music Director at any other radio station anywhere in this country, I'll make fucking sure the people in charge of that fucking radio station know all about you and what you said to Mr. Davis and anything else I can think of, even if I have to fucking make stuff up. Do you fucking understand?!"

Though impressed by the number of f-bombs the dude could squeeze into one sentence, I did understand. I also knew he was full of crap. First, my career wasn't important enough for him or anyone else to be keeping tabs on. And second there were those minor little inconveniences known as labor laws which protect people like me from even an implied restraint of employment, from people like him. And who was he anyway, besides a grade A horses’ ass? 

Heck, if Clive Davis himself wanted to call up and bark at me, that I'd take seriously. But being bawled out by a foul tempered Assistant to the Assistant West Coast Division Junior Vice President (or whatever his title was) was laughable. However, if ruining my afternoon and making me feel stupid was the main purpose of his call, then he'd succeeded. But coming from as big a company as Arista Records, I thought the intimidation tactics and threats seemed unbecoming and beneath them.  If not bad p.r.

They needed radio as much as, or more, than radio needed them. Back then radio was where you heard a song you liked for the first time. And radio was the only outlet that guaranteed so much free mass exposure for the record label's product. I told him so, too- once allowed to speak- and told him to back off. Which he finally did. He was even half way civil as we wrapped things up. But before disconnecting, the guy reiterated that Arista Records did not fucking want to hear from me again. Count on it, a-hole.

 

Of course, I knew there were better ways to get make a point or get things done. I knew my cranky letter was a boneheaded move, done in the heat of aggravation which not only hadn’t endeared me to the intended recipient, it stirred up some bad feelings. And I got busted for it. However after I told her what happened, Carolyn, who before KNCO had been secretary to one of the head honchos at Stanford University, offered some wise council. These were words to the wise which, to my Mother's dismay, would not make an enlightened and reasoned gentleman. However, they would prevent me from becoming a serial dimwit. At least, it'd make me think first before running off at the pen.

”You know, my boss at Stanford used to come across people and issues that irritated him too. So he'd go into his office and write out a not so cordial letter- worse than the one you wrote- and then tear it up. Once the venom was out, he'd then write something more measured and professional, and that was draft he turned in for me to type. So, if I could make a suggestion, the next time you want to unload on somebody, give me your second draft, first, okay?” Sheepishly, I had to agree. Carolyn's idea was spot-on and I've always been grateful to her for caring enough to speak up. And since then, when writing anyway, I've always tried to be guided by those principals, although I doubt Clive Davis actually ever saw my letter. But some overworked mid-level underling at the head office in New York probably did.

 

Added to a growing pile of other unimportant issues the label higher up’s didn't want to deal with, the New York guy likely forwarded/delegated/dumped my letter onto the poor shmuck in LA--Here, take care of this guy- who then promptly took it out on me.  And the rest is history. Except, less than a week later a two-box care package arrived at the station, addressed to me. Both were crammed full of Arista's latest releases- including Whitney Houston's-and stuff planned for release over the next several months. I was set-up for quite awhile. And after that, KNCO never lacked for product from Arista Records again. Go figure.

That was early in 1987.  It's now early in 2012, Clive Davis is still the President of Arista and still a big deal.  Hall and Oates, Manilow, Carly Simon and all the other AC greats of that time, while still heard, are now only heard on oldies stations. If I was still a Music Director, all I’d have to do to add new record is have a company I-tunes account. I could download it and have the song on the air in five minutes. And Whitney Houston is now dead; drowned in her own bathtub with a pharmacy in her system.

But, from my perspective, two constants remain: you live and learn, and sometimes the squeaky wheel really DOES get the oil.