Music Exec Reflects on His Glory Days in the Rock Business

Published Nov 22, 2023, 1:08 PM

Tom Werman, Music Industry Executive and Producer, discusses his book Turn It Up! My Time Making Hit Records in the Glory Days of Rock Music.
Hosts: Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec. Producer: Paul Brennan.

This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.

Gotta Love It Everybody, Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick, Molly Hatchett, Poise, and just a sampling of some of the music our next guest has had a hand in bringing into this world to all of us.

He spent four decades in the recording industry, working with some of the biggest rock bands in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. Working in an R which stands for Artists and Repertoire, he discovered sign and produced Ario Speedwagon, Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick, and Molly Hatchett Carol. He later produced albums for Blue Oyster, Colt Crew, Twisted Sister, and Poison.

Yeah, an iconic music label, many others as well. He produced twenty three gold or platinum selling albums that cumulatively sold more than fifty two million copies. He's got a new book out. It's called Turn It Up, My Time Making Hit Records in the Glory Days of Rock Music. Tom Worman is the former music industry executive and producer who wrote the book. He join us on Zoom from Lenox, Massachusetts. Hey tom So looking forward to talking to you. How are you.

I'm great, I'm great. How are you.

We're doing okay, trying to keep up with what we thought would be a quiet news week, but it's not even close. I want to talk about your four decades iconic rock and hard rock bands. We just listed some of them. Take us to the beginning. Because New England Prep School, Ivy League Education, you got an MBA advertising, could have had a job at P ANDNG. Take us to the beginning and how it all started.

Well, I wasn't very happy. I didn't know what I was doing, choosing the advertising agency over CBS Records. It was they paid a little better, so I was very unhappy. I was assigned to the Proper and Gamble account group and I was in charge of writing marketing plans for game Detergent and then Jeff peanut Butter you know yeah, And at the end of the year, I was really not happy. And I had seen some you know, some very you know landmark concerts, and I was a musician and I had had a great band, and I was thinking about getting into the music business. I just could not really envision spending my life without rock music. When I you know, I mean, since I heard Elvis in nineteen fifty four, that was really it for me. So I wrote a letter to Clive Davis, which was a cheeky thing to do, I think, and I told him, I told him in the letter that I would call his office to arrange an appointment. You don't do that to Clyde. You let him arrange the appointment. Anyway, I started interviewing at CBS Records, which was the home of Columbia Label and Epic Label, and I finally got to see Clive and he hired me on the spot and I went from hell to heaven overnight.

Wait, so do the letter work, Like, did that initial letter get you? That initial it did? Love it?

Yeah, the letters reprinted in the books as it was written to the actual letter, And yeah. You know, one fortunate thing is that it was a time when they could hardly make records fast enough to satisfy the demands. So they were hiring.

Certainly a different era. I mean, instead of discovering folks on YouTube or TikTok, and we're going to get to that a little bit later. You know, you were having to actually do the shoe leather work and going and finding these artists. So you're in your twenties, you show up at the label. How do you make your how do you get your first big break?

Well, two months in after I started working, I heard the assetate that this independent engineer brought me. He had recorded a Reo Speedwagon at his house in Connecticut and there were two songs on there that I thought were outstanding, and I flew out to Champagne, Illinois to see the band because it's you know, you say that there was shoe leather involved and that it was work, but really it was a lot of fun. You know, flying was really enjoyable back then. And uh, you know, they gave me a credit card and said go find hits. So it was pretty pile flying around the country and seeing bands when when you thought that there might be you know, some potential there.

It's a little different than marketing peanut butter.

Yeah, he asked marketing peanut butter. And it's also quite different from discovering bands by using algorithms and looking on social media. You know, we heard it, if we liked it, we went to see it, and you know they were they were a wonderful band, and I signed them. So after that I tried to sign Kiss, Leonard skinnerd and Rush, and I was turned down on all of them. Eventually, you know, the people at the label said, I think maybe Werman knows something that we don't and and and then they let me sign Ted Nugent.

What was interesting though, even after your first big discovery of R E Sped Waggon, like, you still had to prove yourself. And you make note of that, right that you talked about Kiss, Rush and Leonard Skinnyard, and yet they were all rejected by your boss, right right.

He was a smart guy, a great guy. I loved working for him, but he was wrong, right Well, he didn't have a rock and roll ahead, you know, he liked a lot of other kinds of music. And I was really the rock and roll guy. Was trying to introduce epic records to hard rock or power pop, you know, whatever you want to call it. And you know, they after I signed Ted, and I went into the studio and and kind of horned in on the creative process and they gave me co producer credit and then I was a producer ABCAB.

What did you explain what a producer did then? And what a producer does?

Now, oh, I don't know what they do. You know now they make beats and they use samples and they use keyboards and computers. Way back when, in nineteen you know, in the nineteen seventies, a producer did literally everything from the beginning of the album to the delivery of the album. So you would work with the band, pick the material, rehearse, rearrange stuff, hire the hire the studio, hire the engineer, set everybody up, use, choose the mics, choose the position, maybe change the snare drum head, do every single thing. Wherever there was a decision to be made, you were part of that. Now the band hired you. So you know, people think that the producer was a dictator. He's not. He's he's a collaborator ideally, and the producer is is hired to help the band realize its musical vision. You know, you choose the performances, you make edits, you combine things, you you tell people when when the performance was the best, and edit you mix the record, which is tough, and then you master it and then you deliver it and then you go on to the next project.

I mean, when you do feedback or when you say maybe you want to do this. I mean, is it always easy or is it sometimes difficult?

Well, you suggest things nicely and you try them, the band will will will try them and if they're reasonable, and usually they work and we we will you know, adapt and will make a little change or an improvement. Sometimes it doesn't work and you don't and then you simply don't do it, but you don't tell the band what they're going to do.

Let's get back to Tom Mormon, as we said, spent four decades in the recording industry, worked with some of the biggest rock bands of the seventies, eighties, and nineties. He's got a new book that reveals it all. Turn it up, my time making hit records in the glory days of rock music. And he's still with a sun Zoom from Lenox, Massachusetts. So, Tom, is it like sex, drugs and rock and roll?

What was it like?

Take us back to the seventies or the eighties. What was it like out there in la and being in this industry, in this business.

Well, it was life in the fast lane. Generally, we'll say. The book does deal with rock and roll and some drugs. No sex in the book.

It's a family book.

I'm Sorry, that probably puts a damper on sales. But no, you know, LA was the place to make records. It was sunshine and beautiful people and a lot of ease. You could get anything you wanted right away if you needed it in the studio, from equipment to musicians. It was the best. And there were probably thirty recording studios out there to choose from. And I went out there with cheap trick to make in color and I said, Wow, I could live here. And I went back to New York and I told Epic that I said I'd be much happier making records in Los Angeles, and they said, we'll move you. So they moved us. They were great, and god, it was wonderful. I never experienced any traffic because I went to work at noon and came back at midnight.

That's pretty amazing living in LA and not experiencing traffic. That's a unique experience. Hey, Tom, why did you leave LA just out of curiosity? I know at the end of your recording career you decided to open a bed and breakfast in Massachusetts. But so many people who went out to who went out West in the seventies and eighties ended up you know, planting down new roots there and staying well.

We did raise a family there. I was there for twenty three years, and you know, I think that if you don't need to be in LA, you probably shouldn't at this point. Back then, I just needed to reinvent myself because the music had changed. I was fifty five years old, and you know, I didn't think I should be making records for teenagers at that point, and I was. I was very heavily associated with hair bands and hard rock, and you know, Seattle. I don't think any Seattle bands were that anxious to work with you know, a producer who had worked with Twisted Sister and Motley Cruze because you know, I think it would They thought that it would have damaged their street credibility. So I decided to to get up and go instead of stay there and wallow in my frustration and unemployment. And I closed it out. You know, fifty two records. Wow, it was a lot.

I was.

Burnt. I was pretty burnt at that point. So we came here, and you know, this is heaven on earth right here. It's beautiful country. We opened up a luxury bed and breakfast, which was a kind of a new concept, and we had a ball and we won awards and my wife and I and then we sold it three years ago and moved up the street and I am blissfully retired.

Now.

You just they're doing annoying interviews with people like us, which we certainly appreciate. Hey, I'm not annoying. I'm really interested in what you think about music today. You were talking just now about a transition in your career when you were fifty five, sort of the move from rock and roll and hair bands to grunge, the Seattle movement in the nineties, Nirvana and bands like that. What's happening right now from I guess we could call you like an outsider's insider. What's your perspective right now?

Well, I know, very honestly, I know very little about what's going on today. My son works in A and R at Warner Records in LA and we talk. I try to find out how they do their job. It's quite different, and so is the recording industry. Everything is. If you can play keyboards and run a computer, you can make records in your bedroom and music in your bedroom, and you know it's all perfect. It's all digital. I don't think you'll ever hear another flatter, sharp note from a vocalist. You won't hear any mistakes. And I prefer, you know, human beings playing real music, warts and all. I just find that I can hear. I can listen to music that's forty years old and it still inspires me. I have a four hour playlist of music from the sixties, seventies and eighties, the classic rock era, and I take it to the gym on my phone and it works every time.

Do you listen to anything from today?

No, I really don't unless I have to, which means I go into a you know, a drug store or a supermarket and sometimes there's a classic rock playlist, which is fine. Other times there is music that I find unrecognizable. I actually it's rhythmic entertainment. I hate to do this, but I channeled my parents and and and I want to say, you call that music?

So did you say music?

I just want to check it.

Did you say that?

I have? We We listened to the music. They look at it a lot now because it's on you know, it's on a screen and they can take sections of it and move it. It's it just doesn't do it for me. And also I think age has something to do with it.

No, that's fair. Listen, this was really fun, and I hope we can talk again in the future because it is interesting to hear the history, and you know, you had a front seat at so many iconic rock bands that are still being played. So it's it's pretty cool stuff. Tom Mormon, thank you so much. Have a good holiday. His new book out, Turn It Up. My time making hit records in the glory days of rock music, and he did it in the set V Indies, eighties, and nineties, so he's seen quite a lot.

Pretty cool stuff.

Yeah, ped Nuga, Cheap Trick, Reo, Speedwagon, everything pretty cool, pretty wild stuff, all right, everybody, you're listening and watching Bloomberg BusinessWeek

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