Playback and Payback series; (part 9) How many A&R guys does it take to screw in a lightbulb

Q: How many A&R guys does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: We can’t screw anymore – they cut off our balls!

Vic Steffens and Mike Caplan sat in Caplan’s office in the Sony Building on Madison Avenue one day in the early part of the 21st century. Caplan, at the time, was a respected A&R guy at Epic Records. His bands got love from the critics, but usually not the number of sales that it took to succeed at the “majors” level. That has never been too unusual – we’ll see that such a small percentage of bands get the level of sales needed to succeed at the “majors” level, it’s a wonder the “majors” level exists at all. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

One of the bands Caplan had signed, Moe, had at first seemed like a natural. They had a huge following nationwide, and were an integral part of what many touted as the “next big thing” in popular music, the jam band movement that had started to well up from what the major-record economy regarded as the underground. Like so many recordings at the major label level, Moe’s potential outstripped the reality of their sales. The label brass found the number of units Moe shifted so disappointing that they dropped the band. However, Caplan’s signing of Moe still inspired Steffens to set up the meeting.

Steffens has a well-earned reputation as a producer and engineer. His credits include recordings by Lita Ford, Blue Sarceno, Matt “Guitar” Murphy, Sly Stone, and dozens of other artists from blues to gospel to jam bands. He also owns his own studio, Horizon Music, and his own record company, Horizon Records, and manages several of the bands on Horizon as well (prototypical, of a possible future of the music biz). One of the bands with Steffen’s company, the Mighty Purple, had similar roots and fans as Moe. Despite Moe’s dismissal from the company roster, Caplan still apparently saw potential for the jam bands, and had some interest in signing the Mighty Purple to Epic.

Polly Anthony, at that time the president of Epic Records, came into Caplan’s office. She said hello to Steffens and chatted for a few minutes. As she left, Anthony called to Caplan over her shoulder, almost as an afterthought, “Just so you’re not signing another one of those jam bands.”

At which point all Caplan could do was smile sheepishly. Even if he wanted to bring in the Mighty Purple, now he couldn’t. He had just been overruled. In A&R, nothing fails like failure, and nothing succeeds like success. When one band in a “movement” or “genre” fails to live up to the title of “next big thing,” that genre and all artists painted with that genre’s brush (or even those that just come in contact with the paint) will likely never get the opportunity to reach a vast audience suddenly. They’ll have to build – or, even worse, rebuild – their audience more organically.

When an artist does catch the public’s fancy, half a dozen nearly identical artists will spring up after. Those artist’s stories are based on how much like the hit artist they are. (This appeals to radio, which has come to thrive on flavour-of-the-month sameness to keep its audience from switching stations.)

This situation is nothing new. From the “sweet bands” of the early 1940s to the “boy bands” of the late 1990s, when someone found a formula that worked, everyone tried to capitalize on it, and when a formula failed they dropped it with equal or greater rapidity. As 1950s record company owner Bob Marcucci recalled of the heady early days of rock and roll, “I just knew the idols were going to come in. Presley was very, very big. He and Ricky Nelson were really two big artists, and I felt that if I could find kids like that and put them on my label, I could have some big stars, too.”

He did, signing Fabian and Frankie Avalon to his label. With the help of American Bandstand, these became two of the most popular performers of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and laid a path for others just like them: Bobby Vee, Sal Mineo, even Bobby Darrin, before he became one of the first adult contemporary swingers for the Baby Boomer era.