The Bobby Bones Show - Music History-The evolution of music and activism: A conversation with legendary music executive Danny Goldberg

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Danny Goldberg is the President of Gold Village Entertainment and has worked in the music business as a personal manager, record company president, public relations man, and journalist since the late 1960s.He has written multiple books and he began his career as a journalist having written for Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, and Billboard Magazine among others.From 1983 to 1992 he was the founder and president of Gold Mountain Entertainment, an artist management firm whose clients included: Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Bonnie Raitt, The Allman Brothers, and Rickie Lee Jones to name a few.Earlier in his career, he formed and co-owned Modern Records, which released Stevie Nicks's solo albums, including her number-one album “Bella Donna. Prior to that he was Vice President of Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song Records and worked with the band from 1973-1975. *****Thank you so much for listening to the TAKIN’ A WALK PODCAST SHOW hosted by Buzz Knight!  Listen to more honest conversations with a compelling mix of guests ranging from musicians, authors, and insiders with their own stories. Get inspired, get motivated, and gain insights from honest conversations every week that can help you with your own journey. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and be part of this blessed family.Website: https://takinawalk.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebuzzknightLinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/buzzknightLinkfire: https://lnk.to/takinawalk Please consider subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with your friends and family!Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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this conversation is for you to hear more. Listen to Money and Wealth with John Hope Bryant from the Black Effect Network on the I'd Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The Taking a Walk Podcasts, Array. Music History on foot. You can find the podcast on Apple, Spotify, the podcast playground, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode, with your host Buzz Knight, has a guest who's been in the middle of music history his entire career.

Danny Goldberg is the president of Gold Village Entertainment. His career accomplishments include personal manager, label president, author, and public relations man. Danny Goldberg is Buzz Knight's guest on Taking a Walk next. Well, Danny, thank you so much for being on the Taking a Walk podcast. We are at your palatial home office here in Midtown Manhattan. I was the idiot that said to Danny, hey, Danny, maybe we could take a walk on a side street. And Danny goes, yeah, but I'm right around the corner from Penn Station. There's no quiet side street.

That is true. This is a noisy neighborhood, but this has been a good office for me these last few years. It's near all the trains. Perfect. So when did you realize you were first hooked in your life on music? Do you remember that moment? I think it was in high school. I was walking down the corridor.

And in those days, it was just the beginning of portable record players. and a kid who I didn't know that well, who was a year older than me, he says, you've got to listen to this. And it was a ballad of a thin man by Dylan on the album Highway 61 that just had come out with the famous tagline, something is happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones? And that was quite a moment that a record could have so much emotional and intellectual depth. It wasn't just something to sing along to or party to.

So that was certainly a key moment, you know, in terms of my love affair with rock and roll. I mean, I also, the summer before I had heard Phil Oaks' song, Love Me, Love Me, I'm a Liberal, and that was also quite an eye-opener for me. So those were probably the two important moments. And then a third moment was the first time I ever smoked pot. And I remember to this day, which is all 1965, fall of 65, basically. The records that were played at the party, it was the love and spoonful daydream, it was out of our heads by the Rolling Stones, rubber-souled by the Beatles.

So that group of moments is clustered together in my teenage memories. But one or more of those were the one I fell in love with the culture. I didn't know at that time I was going to be able to make a living. through that passion, but I knew I had the passion. And it is quite a coincidence that on this day that we're recording this podcast, it happens to be Bob Dylan's birthday. 82nd birthday. God bless him. Right.

So your leadership skills throughout your career have been quite impressive. Who shaped your leadership skills? Well, I had a couple of, a few different bosses that were role models in different ways. days. The first that comes to mind would have been Lee Salters, who was a PR guy extraordinaire of the previous generation. And when I was 22, I got a job being kind of a long-haired rock publicist in a company where they had Barbara Streisand and Frank Sinatra and Broadway shows. And, you know, his heyday was really the 40s and the 50s. But he was really understood the mindset of the news media and the idea that to get anyone's attention in a press release,

he always said that no one's going to read the second paragraph if they're not interested in the first paragraph, and within the first paragraph, no one's going to read the second sentence if they're not interested in the first sentence. He had a lot of other concepts like that about just PR 101 that I've certainly carried with me. So I wouldn't carry it. So I wouldn't carry characterize that exactly as leadership, but it was thought leadership in a way of just understanding how to communicate to the media and the discipline of what it was to really make an impact beyond just asking people for favors, but to come up with a good story. Then in terms of the line of work that I'm in now and for the last 15 years, which is personal management,

I certainly always look at Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin's manager, as a boss that I had that really left some lessons behind. He was a complicated guy, tough guy. Good to me, though, I have to say, and good for Led Zeppelin in terms of his belief in them. And his mantra was, can I curse on this podcast? Of course. You know, his mantra was, it doesn't matter what the fuck anyone else cares about. It doesn't matter what the record company says. It doesn't matter what the promoter says. It doesn't matter what the media says. matters is what the band says. And if the band is Led Zeppelin, I think that's, that was the, that was not just the spiritual or artistic reality. That was the business reality.

You know, so understanding the centrality of the artist in the context of the music business and to ally yourself with that, that was certainly something that has stuck with me. And then in terms of the idea of how to be a boss, which is, I think, really a lot of the question, certainly working for Doug Morris. You know, he was, he hired me at Atlantic, then promoted me to run Warner Bros., you know, made me president of Atlantic and chairman of Warner Brothers Records, the two jobs that changed my life in terms of my status in the business. And, you know, he was someone who would walk around the offices of Atlantic asking everyone. everyone had their weekend was. He liked, he would fight to pay his people more. He engendered tremendous loyalty. And then the trade-off was he expected loyalty in return and, you know, had a very relentless kind of a work ethic. But just kind of watching him operate was another,

was another important role model. And then finally, the fourth boss that I would say I learned from was Alon Levy, who was the CEO of Polygram Worldwide, who hired me to run Mercury Records. And he just had a tremendous grasp of detail of every aspect of the business. And, you know, again, just through osmosis, I hopefully picked up some of his skills in that area. But those are the bosses I had that left me better than when I joined them. So I don't know if that's exactly the answer to the question, but that's the only one I can think of. So I was thinking about your varied roles and your interaction with your artists. Have you ever gotten good at having a premonition when the phone rings knowing it might not be something good on the other end from the call from an artist at that time?

I don't know. I'm not quite sure how to answer that. I mean, I think as a manager is the role where I think you have the closest relationship with the artist because you're really working for them in all aspects of their life, and that's been what I've done the last dozen years or so, and I did it earlier in my career too

for a period of time. And, you know, I think if you're close, you can develop a sense of how they're feeling and what might be a problem. But I wouldn't say I've had a premonition. But and the one or two examples I can think of, I really wouldn't particularly want to talk about because they involve, you know, sad things. But I do think that when you're working with an artist, the way many managers do and the way I do, you really are tuned into their feelings in a way that you kind of get a sense of when they might be worried about something or upset or something like that.

So there is a little bit of ESP involved, but I don't know that it rises to the level of a premonition. So when you think of the qualities of artists that you've been around, over your career. What are some of the qualities that you feel make them successful, if you could boil a few of them down? Well, obviously the first one is talent. You can't create that with willpower. So somebody like Kurt Cobain or Steve Earle or, you know, Bonnie Raid or some of the people I've worked with, I mean, they just, they had tremendous natural gifts. Not everyone who's

talent that is successful, but it's hard to be successful without having talent, then certainly a desire to be successful. I've never seen anyone become successful by accident. Some people that came easier to and some harder to, but there are so many obstacles in the entertainment business, whether it's getting exposure, whether it's getting paid for what you do, whether it's trying to convince people to support what you do, not to mention the physical, rigors of things like touring, the people that are successful all have a work ethic, even if they may be undisciplined in some aspects of their personal life. They show up for shows, and they generally, the people I've worked with have been pretty disciplined about dealing with

making, motivating the people around them to support them, whether there's people in the media or people at a record company or crew or other musicians and stuff like that. And then finally, perseverance because with very few exceptions, there's a lot of setbacks and you've got to be willing to get off the proverbial canvas and go out at time and time again in order to make it, you know. So I think talent is the first threshold, but strong worth ethic discipline and a sort of a drive to be successful, you know, is needed also. Ruth Gordon, the late former movie story and screenwriter of the 30s and 40s, I saw around a talk show once, and she said, to making a show business is not enough to have talent. You also have to have a talent for having talent.

So I kind of know what she means, and you kind of sense that. There are some people that are talented, that you just could see, they're self-sabotages, and other people that have a gleam in their eye, and you just know nothing's going to stop them. What's the current state of the music industry, and where do you think the future of the music industry? Well, first of all, music industry is really not the right way I would describe, but I think it's industries plural, because there's certainly there's the recording business, which is usually what people mean when they say the music business. But there's this other giant business, the live entertainment business concerts that, for a lot of artists, they make most of the

money. I mean, someone like Bruce Springsteen makes a lot more money touring right now than he does from records. Rolling Stone, the same thing. The biggest. touring acts in the world. So I think the live business is not that different from what it's been over the last 50 years, except there is this audience of people over 40 who will pay more money for tickets than ever was the case with previous generations, because the love affair of sort of people over 40 and the artists, people who came of age in the rock era. have an emotional connection to more artists than people did of the previous generation. Previous generation, you had a couple of people, Tony Bennett and Franks Nodger, come to mind

that were able to keep careers going because people just wanted to see them. But there's like 50 rock artists like that where people will pay hundreds of dollars to see them. So that's a change. But the basic business model is the same. How much of the ticket prices? How many seats are there? How much did you sell of that? What goes to rent?

What goes to marketing? goes to the person who took the financial risk, the promoter, and what goes to the artist. And for quite some time, certainly, and Led Zeppelin's manager, Peter Grant, was the one who changed the paradigm. For quite a long time, you know, artists have gotten in the ballpark of 90% of the profits from concerts. There's other fees on top. They claw back some money in ticket fees or servicing fees or what they make for merch. But that business model is pretty much the same. Obviously, COVID had a traumatic effect on that business, and there's still some after effects from it in terms of, I think there's certain people that aren't going to go to concerts again that went before. But it's pretty much the same.

It's probably more international than it's ever been. I mean, I don't think there's going to be too many shows in Moscow in the next few years, and that was actually a place you could go and do gigs for years. And I don't know what China is going to be like for concerts, but generally speaking, you know Latin America, some parts of Africa, Europe in particular Australia, Canada, the United States. These are, it's a global

business. The record business, the recording business, and it includes the way people make money from songwriting, so-called music publishing, has changed completely with the advent of streaming and no one like I'm not the person who can

predict what's going to happen next. I'm not a technically sophisticated. I just try to understand on behalf of the people I represent what the playing field is, you know, today. And today, streaming is the main way people are absorbing music. You know, it's biased in favor of people with the, the way the money is divided up is biased in favor of people with younger audiences. Because a 12-year-old might want to listen to the same song 30 times a day, and people my age once a day is probably enough. But we're still paying our tend to a month or whatever it is.

So, you know, the algorithm has some built-in biases that we just have to live with. It's a good playing field if you have a catalog, because the multiples, as they say, what people will pay to buy catalogs of songs or recordings is at a high point. But if you're just on your way up, you know, or in the middle, it's not as good as it was 20 years ago. but business keeps changing, technology keeps changing. One thing I think is not changed is the emotional connection between fans and the music and the musical arts that they like, how that's monetized changes, the business model changes,

how to market it changes, but the essential relationship between a fan and music, I think, is exactly the same. And the job of those of us in the business is to figure out how to get paid for that and how to get artists paid for that. But the soul of the business is the same, but the mechanics of the recording part of it is just completely different than it was in a million different ways. Do you have a position on what AI is going to do to the business? No. I think I don't know what AI is going to do. It's obviously the big subject of conversation in the last few months since ChatGBT BT debuted,

and there's all sorts of anxiety about, will it marginalize certain people and eliminate jobs? And I would imagine it's, you know, there's certain kinds of music that I think probably a computer could create in a competitive way. And then there's a certain kind that I think it couldn't, you know. And I think, again, the live business is going to be less affected by it because people are paying for that experience,

whether it's Taylor Swift or Bruce Springsteen or Beyonce, it's about being in the room with that particular human being and with their fans, and that is not affected by it in terms of what people are going to dance to or sing along to. You know, I would imagine that it'll, you know, I might create some catchy hooks, you know, It's another tool for artists also, the same way synthesizer became a tool for artist,

pro tools became a tool for artists. So I think there'll be artists that use it as a tool, the way the great artists throughout history have done. There'll be certain people that maybe have been doing a certain kind of work that they won't be able to do anymore, like what happens with technology. But, you know, the kind of artists I work with, which are very personal art. who are kind of taking their self-expression, people like Steve Earle or Mike Scott of the Waterboys, or, you know, I think of other artists that I don't work with,

but who I admire, you know, in that category. You know, I think it's just another tool for them to use, but the relationship between them and their fans is not going to be adversely affected by it. But it's going to change things in ways that smarter people than me will have to articulate. You know, I'm an old fart. But I'm not.

scared of it. I'm curious about it. There's also, by the way, not just artificial intelligence, there's also artificial stupidity. These algorithms are still only as good as the human beings that create them, and they make mistakes. I mean, I went on chat GBT and just asked for them to describe my own career, just curious what it would say, and it made a significant mistake. Now, I'm sure they'll get the bugs out of it, but, you know, look, it's a new tool, just like computers were and smartphones were, and it's going to make some people feel very old, and other people are going to use it as a tool

and do things they couldn't do before. Same thing with the world of virtual reality. You know, that's going to be a tool for some artists. You know, it's not going to replace the desire to go see sports or a concert live, but, you know, it took stereo quite a while before people like the Beatles knew how to use it an artistic tool but usually as these new tools emerged creative jameson's figure out how to make art out of it and I'm sure that'll be this case with some of

the various tributary AI is kind of a catch-all for a lot of different computer-generated things so you mentioned the live performance aspect of things you've been to so many live performances in your life are there any in particular that really stick out to you that are just embedded so deeply in your brain that you'll never forget it? Well, when you're in the business, you have two categories. There's people I've worked with, and it's just shows I've seen. So, you know, I'm very enamored to the people I work with.

So let's just take them off of that category because it's kind of distorted by my own relationship with them and my self-interest. Certainly, I mean, Springsteen, I've never seen him do a bad show. He's certainly one of the greatest, if not the greatest, rock performer. When I first saw Ben Midler, I thought it was one of the most amazing performers I'd ever seen. That still stands out of my mind. When I go back earlier in my life, when I was just starting as a so-called rock critic, I mean, the first time I saw Loudounselaerite, the third, it just blew my mind that really I didn't know that somebody, it was so many years after Dylan had created a scene in the village and then left it, that somebody could still do that. Same, but the first time I saw Christopherson or John Prine, those are just people I was lucky enough to see in my early 20s when they were still playing clubs.

So, you know, if you'd ask me tomorrow, I'd probably come up with a different list. But that first time I saw B.B. King, I was just the kid. I was able to get a ticket. He saw him at the Village Gate. It was just that I could be in the room with BB King while he was playing the guitar. But I don't know that that was, it was not just about him, although he was very consistently great. It was about who I was at that moment, and it was so new to me to be able to see live music, you know. But on any given night, I thought Nirvana was very consistent as a live band. Steve Rale is extraordinarily consistent.

The Water Boys are extraordinarily. Martha Wainwright, who I've worked with for years, amazing live performer. am biased. But of the people I haven't worked with, it's the people I mentioned, I guess, it was stuck in my head when you asked me the question. So you mentioned Phil Oaks earlier, and I think of activism, obviously. And I think of today's times with artists and activism. Are you disappointed? There's not enough activism today with musicians? No, no. I feel the opposite. I mean, I actually wrote a book about the 2020 election called Bloody Crossroads 2020.

art entertainment and resistance to Trump, where I really spent a lot of time. A lot of it was written during lockdown during the COVID period where it was just documenting all the different artists that were commenting on politics at that time. And it was much more than any other time

in my observation. I mean, to have Taylor Swift and Cardi B, the biggest pop acts in the world in America, anyway, weighing in so clearly and explicitly about an election, I never saw Mariah Carey or Madonna doing that. I never saw the Rolling Stones doing that. I never saw the Beatles doing it.

I saw John Lennon as an individual was politically outspoken in his day. And I think the range of people who weighed in during that period from Lucinda Williams, Rosanne Cash, I mean, it's an incredibly long list. So I think that the younger generation of artists, that people had kind of had a deal with the Trump era in particular, are more politically engaged than the people were in the 60s. My generation likes to romanticize political activism of the 60s and lumping in with rock and roll in Woodstock Festival.

It's at love and peace, peace, peace, peace. And there was a Vietnam War going on. But there was only a handful of artists that were really explicitly engaged in the anti-war protests. The Jefferson Airplane were the Croisbury Still and Ash did, Ohio, obviously. Country Joe and the Fish. Dylan, the early part of Dylan's career was political, and then he stopped writing that many political songs. He'd occasionally return to the subject. I loved Philoics.

It was my first favorite artist. He wasn't a mass appeal artist, but he was a remarkable. You know, but I don't, you know, the Jimmy Hendricks never did a political song. Janice Joplin never did a political song. The Grateful Dead, you know, pretty apolitical. later they'd show up for an environmental event or something. You know, a lot of the big artists of the 60s were not particularly political.

Oh, I just have to flash back, though, when I'm talking about great shows that I've ever seen, Leonard Cohen, during the last decade of his life, every time I saw him, it was like going to church. I mean, those live shows during that period of his life to me were definitely at the top of the list of shows for me personally that really moved me deeply. Do you have some favorite venues that you've seen shows or had artists at or is it too big of a list?

Well, I mean, I'm a great fan of the City Winery. I think what Michael Dorf has done is incredible. He's created a space for the audience with a sound and the way things are presented there. It's to me way better as an experience as a fan than the previous generations of clubs ever had. I mean, I was, you know, to me, clubs are, most of the legendary clubs are legendary, not because of the real estate or the physical space or the way that people were, but because of who played there. Like CBGB's very famous because the Ramones and Patty Smith and television,

talking heads and blondely all played there at a moment when they didn't have other places to play. And Hilly Crystal certainly had an incredibly good taste to give those. artists a platform, but it was not a pleasant place physically to be. Bottom line, legendary shows there. I loved going to the bottom line. I was always treated incredibly well there by Alan Pepper, who ran it. I like the food at the City Winery a lot better. I mean, Philmore East was a big deal to me in my beginning of my career. It was incredible privilege to be able to go there to get tickets there. I thought that had a special quality to it,

but that, again, had a lot to do with the cults, the musical culture of the times. But Bill Graham had a vision about what a rock show should be that was distinctive from other promoters, and you could feel it at the Fillmore East and at the Fillmore West. I just lived in New York. But, you know, I think the artists are a lot more important than where they play.

Right. I love the city wineries, especially. how it's in all the market. Oh, it's in so many cities. I haven't been to all of them, but I've been to one in Chicago and Nashville, both fantastic rooms, and I hear nothing but good things. I haven't been to all of them yet, but I think that's really created a new category for artists and audiences that I'm very much appreciate right now.

So when you think of all your roles through your career, it's varied in terms of of what you've done. Yeah, yeah. Has each one of those roles continue to serve you today in terms of how you lead and work and manage? I think, you know, the fact that I worked at and ran record companies for six years helps me understand what people at record companies

are going through at any given moment in time. I think that's a bit of a help. I think the fact that I was a publicist certainly allows me to communicate, I think, on a pretty high level with publicists and to help strategize in that area. So, you know, I think that everybody who's a manager did something else first, and they all bring whatever they did to the job. So those are my backgrounds. I think they help inform what I do now, yeah.

So grunge, really, you were at the beginning of, the birth of. You couldn't have realized how significant it was at the moment and time you were in, could you? Well, I think you're talking about really nirvana. That's my claim to fame. I've always known that if there's ever an obituary of me, it's likely to say ex-Nirvana manager. and if it says anything about my work because it was such a privilege to work with that band at that time. And, you know, Kurt Cobain was not crazy about the word grunge.

You know, it was kind of a marketing word. It served the purpose of some of the, you know, record companies in Seattle, sub-pop in particular, and the media liked it, and I guess it was supposed to be some hybrid between heavy metal and punk he was not crazy about thinking that people were putting him in a category. He saw himself as an individual artist who drew on a lot of different influences, but invented something of his own, which I think history has proven to be true. But I certainly didn't know Nirvana was going to be as big as they were

when I first met them and decided to manage them. It happened very quickly, though. Also, if I could plug it, I did write a book about working with Kurt, called Serving the Servant and kind of documents that, whole thing from, because I work with them from, you know, when they, before they were, they'd done the one indie record and through, never mind, and, you know, until, until Kurt died. It happened very, very fast because the song smells like Teen Spirit happened very fast. I mean, there's no mystery about what the inflection point was. That song and the video that accompanied it, you know, one, you know,

in August of, in July of 1991, no one, you know, in, you know, in, in August of July of 1991, no one, knew about it except a few of us who work with the band, and by the end of the year it was the number one record, not just in America, but all over the world. And it was not just a hit song, it was a song that was a vehicle for a whole punk subculture that had been a niche audience, and the graphics, language, and attitudes of that then became mainstream. And, you know, right behind it came Pearl Jam and, you know, Sound Garden, you know, never mind, though, was the one that broke the door open and set a climate where,

you know, the year earlier radio, commercial rock radio, was not interested in any, anything with the word punk in it. And a year later, you know, it was at the center of the programming of some of the big stations like K. Rock and others around the country. So that was an inflection point that happened very, very fast. So certainly when I first was working with Nirvana, I had no idea it was going to be a pop global phenomenon. I knew they were great. I knew Kurt's voice and his songwriting sent him apart from the other artists that were

popular in the punk subculture. And I felt it was going to be very successful within that genre, but I didn't know was going to so quickly transcend the genre. I don't think any of us did. But we knew he was something special. All he had to do was see him on stage once, and you knew this was a special person. And he wrote hooks. He wrote songs.

Most punk artists didn't write those kind of songs that had choruses that you could hum along to, but still had that rebelliousness, that energy and that raw emotionalism of punk. He created a, you know, again, he had his influences. He was influenced by the pixies and by a number of other artists, but he took it to a whole other level. So you mentioned the breakout of obviously Nirvana and the radio aspect of that. How do you feel about radio today? Well, it's got a lot of competition it didn't used to have.

You can listen to Apple Music or Spotify in the car. It's built into it. You know, my new plug-in hybrid, Apple is just built into it. it, you know. So it's got the competition of streaming, which I think is a huge problem. If you're trying to get people to listen to music, you know, there's no commercials. Let's start with that. And you can hear whatever you want. It's also, look, I'm not, admit, I hope this doesn't violate the vibe of what you do, but I'm also a fan of what Sirius does. I think they provide programming that's more customized. and what a commercial radio station can do because of the nature of the technology and the nature of the people who subscribe to it. So I think it's incredibly challenging

for commercial radio stations to deal on that. I don't envy the people who have to program and figure out how to get the ratings that they need to get to keep the parent company happy. And it's a very, very challenging thing for music. Obviously, radio still is unique, when it comes to news and sports. And I think talk radio, for people that are in the car,

you know, there's a certain significant portion of commuters, especially older ones who just aesthetically, that's what they want to listen to. But I think for music radio, it's really, really challenging, and it takes people. I'm glad I'm not the one who has to figure out how to make a music radio station work. But, you know, people in America and all around the world

I'll spend a lot of their time in cars, and there is a different experience with the radio. There's the opportunity to be surprised by what the next song is going to be. So as much fun as it is to pick your own songs, there's a certain mastery quality to that as opposed to just trusting somebody else to program it and to introduce the songs. And I still like listening to certain stations because I want to hear the curation of somebody. who's listened to a lot more stuff than I have, you know, and I think there are certain geniuses and programming that are able to do that in the way that really gets a big enough audience for them to keep doing it. But it's incredibly challenging compared to the way it was before the digital

age. Would Air America that were still around, you were CEO of it, obviously, would it be successful now, in your opinion? Well, Air America had a lot of problems that I don't want to go into, but it was chronically underfunded from the beginning. But I think if Al Franken, who was the flagship person in Air America, wanted to do a radio show, I think he could have a successful radio show right now. There's no question of my mind. He got good ratings. He wasn't getting as big ratings as Rush Limbaugh did, but he came closer than you would think. He had a real gift for it. if Rachel Maddow, who was on Air America, wanted to do a radio show now, I think she'd find an audience, but she seems to be doing quite well on television. So those are certainly two particular people that I think would do just fine if they wanted to do a radio show now.

There's something, again, called talent that transcends ideology. There are people that are just talented at communicating as broadcasters. and, you know, I think we had a couple of them. We didn't have an infrastructure that had any kind of a business plan that could give it a chance to blossom as a network, but it produced some notable people, the two I mentioned. And, of course, Mark Marin, who I, you know, had to, the unpleasant task of having to cancel his show

because it was losing money, not his fault. It was just the people that were supposed to fund the place, didn't come up with the money, and I don't think he likes me very much as a result of the role I was required to play then. But what a success he's had as a podcaster. I mean, that's one of the most successful podcasts. No disrespect to this podcast, but I would imagine you'd be happy to get his numbers. And, you know, so I think that, you know, we have a mutual friend who you mentioned before we started this, John Sinton, who picked all of those people. And, you know, we have a mutual friend who you mentioned, And, you know, I think he deserves a lot of credit for his judgment as a programmer in giving those people a platform,

none of whom had done radio before, and all of whom are kind of household names today. So that was a failed business for reasons that aren't worth going into in a conversation like this. Happy to have a different conversation about that. But it did unearth some very, very significant talent. So in closing, you've done so much. What's on your roadmap, either for this company or personally that you haven't done? Well, I'm a one day at a time guy, especially as I get older. I'm just trying to do a good job every day.

You know, I really love the people I work with. I've had a parallel career as a writer. I've published five books, and I'm starting to work on another one, but it's too early to talk about it. I just want to do, you know, somebody, Doug Morris, who I mentioned earlier, who has hired me to be President Atlantic and who was probably the preeminent record executive of the last 30 or 40 years. He ran Universal Warner's and Sony. You know, he ran all the majors. No one's ever done that. You know, he's like the GOAT in terms of what he accomplished.

At one point he had said to me, because he was older than me, you know, he said, you know, first part of degree you want to get some. somewhere and the second part you just want to stay there you know and uh i didn't understand what he meant then because i was trying to get somewhere but i sure understand it now i my goal is to just be able to stay involved with artists to be part of this business and uh and each project has its own uh goals attached to it and those become my goals i'm so grateful that you uh took the time to be on the podcast so flattered that you wanted me man thank you Thank you so much. Taking a walk with Buzz Night is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast, Eating While Broke, is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future. This month, hear from top streamer, Zoe Spencer, and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre, as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up. There's an economic component to communities thriving. If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they failed. Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes.

You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Saigon, the story of my family. family and of the country that shaped us. From IHeart Podcasts, Saigon. You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam? One city, a divided country, and the war that tore America apart.

This is for Vietnam. They're pouring patril all over here. Freedom for Vietnam! There's a fire coming to this country, and it's going to burn out everything. Listen to Saigon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On a recent episode of the podcast, Money and Wealth with John Hobriant, I sit down with Tiffany the budgetista Aliche to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money. What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?

We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts. Too many of us were never, ever taught. If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation, is for you to hear more. Listen to Money and Wealth with John Hope Bryant from the Black Effect Network on the I'd Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.