Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S3E04 - Marketing Rock and Roll, Part One

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

In part one of a two-part series, we’ll trace the marketing of rock all the way back to its origins with Elvis Presley and his wily manager Colonel Tom Parker. We’ll tell the story of how the Beatles lost millions by not following Elvis’s blueprint, and how the Rolling Stones borrowed a page right out of the books of Madison Avenue to compete against the Fab Four.Plus, what show on marketing rock and roll would be complete without mentioning the biggest marketing machine in the history of rock and roll – KISS.Part Two will begin with the emergence of MTV.It's a fascinating and interesting journey. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling. Subscribe now and don't miss a single beat. This is an Apostrophe podcast production. You're soaking in it.

Scores of it in an instant. Your teeth look whiter than no, no, no You're not you when you're hungry You're in good hands with us You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. Now tonight, you're going to twice be entertained by them. Right now and again on the second half of our show. Ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles! A lot of things changed that night on February 9th, 1964.

Not only did a new ban from Liverpool cause every teenage girl from coast to coast to have seizures, it also inspired an entire generation of bands. One of those groups was called the Bo Brummels. Started in San Francisco in 1964, shortly after the Beatles invaded North America, the band was made up of five musicians. They were discovered by a pair of local disc jockeys who had started a new record label.

They brought The Bo Brummels into a recording studio and paired them up with a 21-year-old producer by the name of Sylvester Stewart. You may know him as Sly Stone, soon to be of Sly and the Family Stone. The Bo Brummels had written a good song, and Sly Stone helped them record it. It hit the charts in January of 1965 and was called Laugh Laugh. Many thought the band was English, as Bo Brummell sounded vaguely British,

and the group dressed in Beatlesque suits with Beatlesque hairstyles. Their debut album, titled Introducing the Bo Brummells, was released in April of 65, and yielded a second single that reached the top ten called Just a Little. As with all bands in the early 60s,

the music was the all-important driver, but so was marketing and a dash of luck. The Bo Brummels had not only crafted their songs and their look, they had also crafted

their name. Bo Brummel was a term for an excessively dressed person, and the band liked the Britishness it implied. But it also had one other thing going for it. It put them right next to the Beatles in the record bins. B-E-A-T-L-E-S, right next to B-E-A-U, Brummels. So when thousands of young girls rushed to get the latest Beatles record,

and usually found it sold out, the next thing their fingers touched were the Bo Brummel's. They looked like the Beatles, they sounded like the Beatles, they had hit records, and they were conveniently parked right next to the empty Beatles bin. It was perfect positioning. The marketing of rock and roll has a fascinating history. It's littered with groundbreaking artists, opportunistic managers, trailblazing merchandising, and flat-out luck.

It's a story that spans six decades and crosses genres, eras, changing musical tastes, and ever-evolving technology. And it all begins with a truck driver. You're under the influence. To understand the marketing of rock and roll, you must begin with the origin of the species. You have to dial the time machine

back to 1954, to a recording studio at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, to a truck driver with ambition, and a cigar-smoking manager with carnival experience. When Elvis Presley hit the airwaves in 1954, rock and roll as we know it discovered its first bookend. His original five singles on the Sun label were regional hits in the southern U.S., but his impact was beginning to send tremors throughout the music industry. In November of 1955, Sun Records founder Sam Phillips

ran into financial difficulties and sold Elvis' contract to RCA Records for $35,000, which was the largest sum paid for a singer up until that time. In March of the following year, a cigar-chomping ex-Carnival promoter named Colonel Tom Parker signed Presley to a management contract. It would be a partnership

that would last until Presley's death 21 years later. While Colonel Parker instantly understood his young singer was becoming the hottest act around, he also figured his popularity might last two years at most. So, Parker was determined

to ride that short wave for all it was worth by marketing Presley in ways no other manager had ever dreamed of. With his new RCA contract, Elvis insisted on recording a song inspired by the suicide of a lonely man who jumps from a hotel window. It was called Heartbreak Hotel. The record company was completely against it,

saying nobody would be interested in a song that morbid. Elvis was unfazed and recorded it anyway. The song topped Billboard's charts for seven weeks, going to number one on the country and western and R&B charts and became Elvis' first million-selling record. Seeing that national success, Colonel Tom Parker started to plan an extensive marketing campaign to make his boy the number one attraction in North America.

All the while, Elvis harbored a secret desire to be a movie star. And in all the reading I've ever done about Elvis, I've long believed that this was Elvis' real goal in life. So, in 1956, Presley made his first movie titled Love Me Tender. The film was a huge hit, and there were one million advanced sales for the title song, a first for a single in music history. Sensing a marketing opportunity that no music manager had ever considered before, Colonel Parker signed a deal with a Beverly Hills movie merchandiser for $40,000.

The goal was to turn Elvis into a brand. It was a revolutionary strategy, as it was the first all-out merchandising campaign ever aimed at the teen market. In just a few months, over 50 different Elvis-themed products were produced, from charm bracelets and necklaces to scarves, teddy bear perfume,

Topps bubblegum cards and sneakers to record players' hats and lipsticks in Heartbreak Pink and Hound Dog Orange, sold with the slogan Keep Me Always On Your Lips. in Heartbreak Pink and Hound Dog Orange, sold with the slogan, Keep Me Always On Your Lips. The Wall Street Journal reported that by the end of 1957, Elvis merchandise had grossed over $22 million.

By 1962, Colonel Parker's share of that booty would become an eye-popping 50%. His most ingenious product, though, was I hate Elvis buttons. The Colonel even made money from people who despised his hip-swiveling star. When Elvis went into the Army for a two-year posting in 1958, this sustained merchandise marketing helped keep his image alive. When he returned in 1960, it was as if Elvis hadn't skipped a beat. The nearly 50-year-old Colonel Tom Parker had not only promoted the first major rock and roll star in history, he had designed the first ever blueprint for marketing rock

and roll that included not just the music, but movies, TV shows, concerts, and hundreds of products. It was a ripple that did not make it all the way across the ocean. Brian Epstein was the manager of a family-owned business called North End Music Stores in Liverpool, England. He began hearing a lot about a new group called The Beatles who were playing at the Cavern Club. So he went to hear them and one day proposed a management contract.

The four lads, which included drummer Pete Best at the time, eventually agreed, and a five-year deal was signed in 1962. With that, Epstein created a company called NEMS to manage the Beatles. As the band became popular in England, NEMS began to be overwhelmed with product licensing offers. But once the band hit America, NEMS became besieged with merchandising requests. So Epstein reluctantly set up

a subsidiary called CellTab to deal with the offers. CellTab was Beatles spelled backwards. As Epstein saw it, the merchandising was just a PR abstraction at best. So he asked a friend

to take the management of CellTap off his hands. That friend, Nicky Byrne, suggested a 90-10 split, which, by the way, was 90% for Byrne, 10% for the Beatles. Epstein agreed immediately, thinking that 10% of incidental merchandising was better than nothing, and in the stroke of a pen, lost untold millions for the Beatles. And, as some believe, that decision would be a factor in Epstein's suicide five years later.

When the Beatles hit North America, the demand for Beatle merchandise was, in a word, unprecedented. The Reliant Shirt Corporation sold a million Beatle t-shirts in a three-day period. Remco, one of the largest toy manufacturers in America, made 100,000 Beatle dolls and had orders for half a million more. Beatle wigs were being manufactured at a rate of 35,000 per day, and those were only three of the 150 Beatle products that had been licensed. The Wall Street Journal estimated that more than $50 million worth of Beatles merchandise would be sold by the end of 1964. That news made Brian Epstein visibly ill.

It was then that he realized the colossal mistake he had made in agreeing to a 90-10 split. To put it in proper context, that lost merchandising revenue easily dwarfed what the band was making on live performances and record sales combined. It is believed that Epstein lived in dread of having to face the Beatles on the issue, as Epstein's contract with the band was coming up for renewal in 1967. That enormous revenue loss, paired with the fact the Beatles had decided to stop touring, which was Epstein's main purpose as a manager, helped, along with some personal issues, to make him utterly despondent.

On August 27th of 1967, 32-year-old Brian Epstein was found dead in his apartment, the result of an overdose of sleeping pills. But say what you will about Epstein's lack of merchandising foresight, the Beatles were a powerful foursome, and he knew how to present them well. As Keith Richards once said to Lennon, the Stones had only one frontman, but the Beatles had four. The Rolling Stones were marketed in a very different way. Their manager, Andrew Lug Oldham, who had done PR work for the Beatles, was very shrewd in his thinking. He instinctively knew that the only way to make a dent in the tsunami that was the Beatles

was to position them as the anti-Beatles. So instead of having the Stones dress up in matching suits, as almost every other Beatles-influenced band did, he had them dress down. As he once said, the Beatles looked like they were in show business, but it was important for the Stones to look like they weren't. The Stones were a blank canvas for Oldham, so he told them they were bad boys,

and they became it. When a British journalist asked in a story, Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone? Oldham took the line and branded the group with it. It perfectly underpinned the marketing that set the Rolling Stones apart. Here's Mick Jagger keeping the branding going at the band's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. You know, it's slightly ironic that tonight we're all

on it. You see us on our best behavior, but we're being rewarded for 25 years of bad behavior. But the happy-go-lucky Beatles still outsold the bad boy Stones by a wide margin. And that didn't go unnoticed by two producers looking to create a new television series. Inspired by A Hard Day's Night, producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider decided to create a TV show about a Beatle-esque band called The Monkees. So in 1966, they held auditions and out of 437 hopefuls,

chose Davy Jones, Peter Tork, Mike Nesmith, and Mickey Dolenz. While the Monkees were a pure Hollywood creation, the Prefab Four enjoyed enormous success. They had four number one albums in a single year, had seven albums on the Billboard 200 charts at the same time, and have sold over 65 million records. A huge part of that success was due to marketing. Like the Beatles, they were happy-go-lucky, funny, and each of the four had a unique personality.

Leveraging that image, there were Monkees comics, hats, jewelry, buttons, lunchboxes, Corgi monkey mobiles, trading cards, belts, binders, wallets, and more. Like the Fab Four, it was a marketing bonanza. And it didn't miss the eye of a young, aspiring musician named Chaim Witz. In 1972, Chaim Witz and his friend Stanley Eisen were in a group called Wicked Lester. The band wasn't getting any traction, so they decided to change direction.

They added a new drummer, who had been in a band called Lips, which inspired Stanley to suggest the name Kiss. That's when Chaim Witz became Gene Simmons, Stanley Eisen became Paul Stanley, Peter Criss was that new drummer, and guitarist Ace Fraley joined the band not long after. The newly formed Kiss signed to Casablanca Records,

but their first two albums failed to sell. But the band was explosive on stage, with full face makeup, wild costumes, 8-inch platform heels, fireworks, and fake blood spewing everywhere. They sold lots of concert tickets, but no records. So they decided to release a live album to try and capture the excitement of their performances.

It was a risky strategy, as very few bands had broken through with concert albums. But the record was released, it was titled Alive! and it spawned their first top 40 hit titled Rock and Roll All Night. It was the breakthrough KISS had hoped for, and the LP went top 10. Over the next four decades, the band would go on to sell over 100 million albums worldwide. More than a rock band, KISS is a rock brand. It's safe to say they have generated more revenue from marketing than any other band in history.

Today, the KISS empire boasts over 3,000 product categories. Over 10 million KISS t-shirts have been sold. There are KISS action figures, pinball machines, lighters, makeup, trading cards, footballs, barbecue sauces, cookies, apparel, Merry Kissmas throw blankets, nutcrackers, phone cases, a KISS Arena football team, and even KISS condoms, KISS caskets, and KISS cremation urns. For people and pets.

There's an 18-hole Kiss mini golf course in Las Vegas, complete with a hotter-than-hell wedding chapel if you'd like to tie the knot with a Kiss-costumed minister. The Gene Simmons Family Jewels reality TV show was yet another vehicle to attract a whole new generation to Kiss, and it was the second-highest highest rated series on A&E. Simmons is such a successful marketer that he also has a company called Simmons Abraham Marketing, with a client list that includes the IndyCarRace.

Kiss also markets to toddlers, with Kiss baby bottles and bibs. And at many concerts, they give away free tickets to kids. It's brilliant marketing, always grooming their next generation of fans. The Kiss brand is worth somewhere north of $1 billion today, more than 40 years after the band began. Marketing rock and roll has always been a high-wire act, to match the high-wire acts. For example, in 1977, Kiss partnered with Marvel Comics to create a series of superhero comic books. But to make it a truly memorable marketing stunt,

Kiss had a nurse draw blood from the band members in front of a notary public and mix the blood into the comic book's red ink. That same year, which was the 25th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's ascension to the throne, the Sex Pistols rented a boat and cruised the River Thames outside the British Parliament buildings, playing songs from their latest album at maximum volume. Soon, the police cut the power and boarded the boat, arresting dozens of people. But the Sex Pistols' single, God Save the Queen, still went to number two on the charts.

Todd Rundgren's second album had only sold 15,000 copies, so he decided to advertise his third album with a poster of himself holding dynamite, with the headline, Go Ahead, Ignore Me. It must have worked. It turned out to be one of his most successful albums. On Sig Sig Sputnik's debut album, Flaunt It, the band left long gaps between the tracks

to be sold as advertising space. The 20 30-second slots were sold for between $2,500 and $7,000 and attracted advertisers like L'Oreal. As the third decade of rock gave way to the 1980s, one of the biggest music marketing opportunities was about to change everything. It would be fueled by technology, it would alter the way we consumed music, and as we'll discover next week in Part 2, it was saved from near death by Mick Jagger

and a single dollar bill. And so ends Part 1 of our look at marketing rock and roll. It's been an interesting journey thus far, with so much of rock marketing having been established so early and firmly in the formative years. From the touring, movie, and merchandise trailblazing of Elvis Presley, to the marketing lesson the Beatles learned the hard way, to the emergence of the first bad boys of rock,

the Rolling Stones, who borrowed a chapter from Madison Avenue and positioned themselves against the leading brand to become the anti-Beatles. As the 60s moved into the 70s, bands became more savvy with their marketing. The Monkees proved that a well-crafted image could move millions

of dollars of product. It was a lesson not lost on Kiss, the biggest marketing machine rock has ever seen. While the music was still the reason fans came,

the marketing strategies gave those fans a way to become more emotionally connected to their favorite bands. It gave them a piece of the group they could take home, something they could wear proudly or wave defiantly. Only a few consumer products

have ever transformed their customers into fans. Think Apple, Nike, and Harley-Davidson. It is the great advantage bands have over brands. Part two of our program will focus on the impact of technology on the music business. Because 1981 sees the music industry transform completely with the arrival of something that doesn't even have a name yet. But it will set the stage for an entirely new way to market rock and roll and keep us all under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly.

Hey Terry, it's Ian LaFever calling. Well, I sure learned a few things about marketing music from this episode. Clearly, you've got to be bold and grab opportunities. Oh, by the way, can you change the credits on the show from Theme Music by Ari Posner and Ian LaFever to Theme Music by Ian LaFever and Ari Posner? Thanks! Under the Influence is produced by Debbie O'Reilly.

Sound engineers Keith Ullman and Jeff Devine. Research James Gangle. Theme music by Ian Lefevre and Ari Posner. See you next time.