Appetite For Self-Destruction Part 1

Appet.i.te for self-destruction.

The spectacular crash of the record industry in the digital age.

by Steve Knopper.

Prologue.

19791982.

Disco Crashes the Record Business, Michael Jackson Saves the Day, and MTV Really Really Saves the Day Saves the Day ONE MAN almost destroyed the music industry in the late '70s. almost destroyed the music industry in the late '70s.

His name was Steve Dahl, and he was a roundish Chicago rock disc jockey with huge gla.s.ses and a s.h.a.ggy bowl cut. In a maniacally nasal voice, he pioneered shock radio with his outrageous stunts. Once, during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, he made random on-air calls to Iran and savagely mocked the first person with a foreign accent to answer. But the WLUP-FM DJ didn't find widespread recognition until he started smashing Donna Summer records in the studio, calling to arms a crazed group of followers he dubbed the Insane Coho Lips.*

Dahl's hatred for disco ran deep and personal. He had taken a long road to his first Chicago job, dropping out of high school at age sixteen to work at an underground station near his home in La Canada, California. He scored a few DJ gigs and married a young woman who'd called one night to request Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne." Naturally, they divorced. But when he was nineteen, less than a year after they'd split up, Dahl sat in his Subaru in front of her house, waiting all night for her to come out. This was the 1970s, so rather than having him arrested for stalking, she used personal connections to land him a morning-show job at a struggling station as far away as possible, in Detroit.

Almost overnight, Dahl turned his new station's ratings around. Big-time Chicago rock stations came calling, and Dahl accepted a job at WDAI, where he worked until it abruptly switched formats in 1978, dropping Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones and transforming into "Disco 'DAI." Pictures of the Village People started appearing in its promo ads. Dahl, a rock guy, had no choice but to quit. He accepted a morning-show job at another Chicago rock station, WLUP.

"I was just mad at my previous employer," the now-white-haired, still-Hawaiian-shirt-wearing Dahl says. "And Midwesterners didn't want that intimidating [disco] lifestyle shoved down their throats." The antidisco campaign became the centerpiece of Dahl's morning show with cohost Garry Meier. They invited listeners to call in with their most hated disco songs; after airing a snippet, Dahl and Meier would drag the needle across the record and queue the sound of an explosion. The show was wildly popular. When the duo offered membership cards to a kill-disco organization, ten thousand listeners called the station within a week to sign up. Dahl took the show on the road, packing a suburban Chicago nightclub with a "death to disco" rally. But what was so intimidating about people dancing in nightclubs? Why did rock fans in Chicago hate disco so much?

Because it sucked. sucked. That's why. That's why.

The songs, the dancing, the roller-skating, the dis...o...b..a.l.l.s, the heavy makeup-it was all so ma.s.sive, so goofy, and over the top. Andy Warhol, Studio 54, Skatetown, USA, Skatetown, USA, "Disco Duck"-people were getting sick of this stuff. Besides, in order to make it with a lady, during the disco craze, a guy had to "Disco Duck"-people were getting sick of this stuff. Besides, in order to make it with a lady, during the disco craze, a guy had to learn how to dance. learn how to dance. And wear a fancy suit! It was an outrage. (It's also possible these rock fans hated dis...o...b..cause black and gay people liked it, although n.o.body talked about that in public.) Whatever the reason, the backlash was inevitable. Disco needed to be destroyed, and Dahl appointed himself the pied piper for this enraged crowd. He found a compatriot in twenty-eight-year-old Mike Veeck, a failed rock guitarist. "I loathed disco," Veeck said later. And wear a fancy suit! It was an outrage. (It's also possible these rock fans hated dis...o...b..cause black and gay people liked it, although n.o.body talked about that in public.) Whatever the reason, the backlash was inevitable. Disco needed to be destroyed, and Dahl appointed himself the pied piper for this enraged crowd. He found a compatriot in twenty-eight-year-old Mike Veeck, a failed rock guitarist. "I loathed disco," Veeck said later.

Veeck happened to have an excellent forum for what would become the decisive event in Dahl's campaign: Comiskey Park, home of the Chicago White Sox. He was the son of thenSox owner Bill Veeck, a seventy-five-year-old baseball legend. (When he owned the Cleveland Indians, the elder Veeck made Larry Doby the first black player in the American League.) With his father's permission, Mike Veeck and Dahl hatched a plan. On July 12, 1979, the White Sox were to play a night doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers at Comiskey. In the days leading up to the game, Dahl announced on the air that White Sox fans could enter the park for just 98 cents if they brought a disco record. Sister Sledge, Bee Gees, "I Will Survive"-it didn't matter. Everything would be obliterated.

The Sox averaged sixteen thousand fans at their home games that year, and they expected a few thousand people more than usual because of Dahl's stunt. They were completely unprepared for the army of fifty-nine thousand fans who showed up at the first game, carrying stacks of Bee Gees alb.u.ms in their arms. Another fifteen thousand spilled along the surrounding South Side streets. They wore Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath T-shirts, smashed bottles on the ground, smoked G.o.d-knows-what and chanted their almighty rallying cry: "Disco sucks!" In the stands, sharp-edged records flew like Frisbees. The players were clearly unsettled. The Tigers' Ron LeFlore wore his batting helmet in center field during the first game.

Dahl was surprised. And nervous. He had prepared for a monumental failure, not thousands of minions waiting for him to lead. Wearing a green army helmet the size of a fishbowl and a matching jacket with wide lapels, looking like a hippie Colonel Klink, Dahl arrived in center field in a military Jeep between the two games.

"I didn't think that anyone would even show up," Dahl says today. The Sox fireworks crew had rigged crates of records to explode with dynamite. He managed a few incomprehensible screams and his best anti-disco catchphrase from the radio (borrowed from a popular Second City Second City TV sketch of the time): "That blowed up TV sketch of the time): "That blowed up real real good!" It worked. Unwittingly, he rallied ten thousand fans to storm the field, climbing down the foul poles and turning the record explosion in center field into a raging bonfire. Sox officials hesitated to call in the cops for fear of stirring things up even further. They allowed fans to linger, shredding the dirt and turf beyond recognition. The senior Veeck and legendary baseball announcer Harry Caray impotently attempted to exhort people back to their seats over the loudspeaker. For thirty-seven minutes, Sox fans, disco haters, and all-purpose rabble-rousers united in a ma.s.sive jamboree of public destruction. good!" It worked. Unwittingly, he rallied ten thousand fans to storm the field, climbing down the foul poles and turning the record explosion in center field into a raging bonfire. Sox officials hesitated to call in the cops for fear of stirring things up even further. They allowed fans to linger, shredding the dirt and turf beyond recognition. The senior Veeck and legendary baseball announcer Harry Caray impotently attempted to exhort people back to their seats over the loudspeaker. For thirty-seven minutes, Sox fans, disco haters, and all-purpose rabble-rousers united in a ma.s.sive jamboree of public destruction.

One such Sox fan was a twenty-one-year-old South Sider who'd been sitting in the upper deck with six or seven of his friends from the neighborhood. One by one, they jumped over the barrier, then climbed fifteen feet down to the field. They were delighted to discover they could slide unmolested into third base and casually pick up bats and other paraphernalia their favorite players had left behind. The man was Michael Clarke Duncan, a stockroom employee at the Carson Pirie Scott department store downtown. You may recognize the name: He later broke into Hollywood and earned an Oscar nomination for his work as the hulking, doomed prisoner in The Green Mile The Green Mile, costarring Tom Hanks. None of the many TV newsclips of the scene captures Duncan, which is surprising, given that he stood 6'5", wore a huge Afro, and was one of the few black people on the field.

Duncan was also perhaps the only disco fan on the Comiskey field that night. "I loved disco music back then!" recalls Duncan, now fifty-one, a veteran of more than seventy movies, including The Island The Island and and Sin City Sin City. "I had the four-inch-wide shoes, the belt buckle, the tight pants with no pockets." He'd been to tons of all-night-dancing clubs, and his sister often let him borrow her stacks of Donna Summer records.

"After Steve Dahl did that, n.o.body wanted to wear the platform shoes in the following weeks. n.o.body wanted to wear the bell-bottoms," Duncan says. "People were like, 'Ah, that's getting kind of old now, things are kind of changing.'"

Dahl, who went to work the next morning expecting to be fired, wound up a bigger celebrity than ever. The week of the demolition, July 8 to 14, Chic's "Good Times" hit the Top 10-one of six disco songs to do so. On August 18, three disco singles were in the Top 10. By September 22, the number dropped to zero. "It seemed pretty immediate. Bars that had gone disco immediately seemed to turn back into rock 'n' roll clubs. Live music began to thrive again," Dahl says. "All I know is that the Bee Gees and KC, of KC and the Sunshine Band, are still mad at me."

Disco sucks! Disco sucks!

It was the new mantra of white America. As a thirteen-year-old suburban Who fan, I myself carried a gold D.R.E.A.D. card, which stood for Detroit Rock-and-rollers Engaged in the Abolition of Disco. The local rock station, WRIF-FM, gave them out at concerts. My older brother, a station intern, brought them home by the boxload. Back then, they were hard-to-find totems of coolness. I must have owned three hundred of the d.a.m.n things, not counting the fifty or so I gave out to kids on the block who suddenly wanted to be my best friends.

Almost thirty years later, the idea of furiously hating disco seems ridiculous. I dumped my D.R.E.A.D. cards in the trash during college, and I now hear Donna Summer and Chic as links in the musical chain between early-'70s funk and soul and the beginnings of rap music. Vicki Sue Robinson's "Turn the Beat Around"? Hot Chocolate's "You s.e.xy Thing"? It's incredible to me that rock fans would actually riot riot for the right to hear REO Speedwagon and Foreigner on their local airwaves instead. Anyway, disco's grooves never really died, they just went underground, in the form of house music and other big-city warehouse happenings of the early '80s. (That's not to mention every wedding in the universe, including my own, where the Village People's "Y.M.C.A." has been a dance-floor prerequisite.) Steve "Silk" Hurley, who as a high school DJ was souping up Chicago dances at the time of Dahl's demolition, remembers wanting to track down the records that hadn't blown up real good. "Most DJs never stopped," says Hurley, a Grammy-winning remixer and veteran DJ. "It didn't affect me at all. I thought it was a joke." for the right to hear REO Speedwagon and Foreigner on their local airwaves instead. Anyway, disco's grooves never really died, they just went underground, in the form of house music and other big-city warehouse happenings of the early '80s. (That's not to mention every wedding in the universe, including my own, where the Village People's "Y.M.C.A." has been a dance-floor prerequisite.) Steve "Silk" Hurley, who as a high school DJ was souping up Chicago dances at the time of Dahl's demolition, remembers wanting to track down the records that hadn't blown up real good. "Most DJs never stopped," says Hurley, a Grammy-winning remixer and veteran DJ. "It didn't affect me at all. I thought it was a joke."

But in 1979, disco had rammed headlong into the wall of the brick house. "People were trying to murder it," says Gloria Gaynor, who had the misfortune of peaking, with "I Will Survive," in the year of the backlash. "Someone was saying, 'I'm bringing in rock acts and every time I try to promote my record they're putting Gloria Gaynor or Donna Summer in my slot. And this sucks. Disco Disco sucks.' I began to think it was an economic decision." sucks.' I began to think it was an economic decision."

The reason disco died was was economic, but it wasn't really a decision. As always, record labels went where the sales were, and for much of the late 1970s, that was disco. Soon, the boom made executives complacent when they should have been scouting for new talent. "The labels should have lost economic, but it wasn't really a decision. As always, record labels went where the sales were, and for much of the late 1970s, that was disco. Soon, the boom made executives complacent when they should have been scouting for new talent. "The labels should have lost more more money. They should have f.u.c.king money. They should have f.u.c.king closed closed for what they did," says Nicky Siano, who used to DJ in drag as two thousand dancers writhed all night at his influential The Gallery club in New York City. "Between 1974 and 1977, any record that had the word for what they did," says Nicky Siano, who used to DJ in drag as two thousand dancers writhed all night at his influential The Gallery club in New York City. "Between 1974 and 1977, any record that had the word disco disco on it would just on it would just sell. sell. People didn't have to hear it. They just took it and bought it. When the record companies saw that happening, they put any old piece of garbage in that wrapper. People started getting burnt, and they got really p.i.s.sed off. And they stopped buying." People didn't have to hear it. They just took it and bought it. When the record companies saw that happening, they put any old piece of garbage in that wrapper. People started getting burnt, and they got really p.i.s.sed off. And they stopped buying."

When disco fans stopped buying, record stores around the United States suddenly found themselves inundated with millions of unwanted LPs. The stores had to return them to the labels. It was a recipe for music-business disaster, and in 1979, labels started to crash. Sales plummeted that year by almost 11 percent after more than a decade of growth. The first to go down, in spectacular fashion, was over-the-top Casablanca Records.

Casablanca had been founded six years earlier by Neil Bogart, who had an ear for fads and a gift for burning through a lot of money. Born Neil Bogatz, he was a postal worker's son who learned show business by singing and dancing in the Catskills. His first industry job was ad salesman for the trade journal Cash Box Cash Box, and by the end of the '60s, he'd worked his way up to president of a new label, Buddah Records. In its first year, Buddah made $5.6 million, thanks to bubblegum hits like the Ohio Express's "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy" and the 1910 Fruit Gum Company's "Indian Giver."

Bogart's specialty was elaborate, shameless promotions-some worked and some imploded. While at Buddah, he tailed a prominent radio program director through the streets of New York City in a rented limousine, using a loudspeaker on top of the car to blast the names of his acts. He also signed one of the most unique recording acts of 1969, the New York Mets, and dragged the entire team, many of them drunk, into the studio for an all-night session after they won the World Series. Buddah managed to release this alb.u.m the day of the city's ticker-tape parade for the Miracle Mets, and an alb.u.m of gimmick songs like a version of the d.a.m.n Yankees d.a.m.n Yankees show tune "You Gotta Have Heart" sold nearly 1.3 million copies. Bogart also botched a new act, Elephant's Memory, a rock band that would later back John Lennon during his politically active phase in the early 1970s. Bogart surrounded the band at one showcase with inflatable elephants and various barnyard animals, and was surprised when they drew derision from the crowd. show tune "You Gotta Have Heart" sold nearly 1.3 million copies. Bogart also botched a new act, Elephant's Memory, a rock band that would later back John Lennon during his politically active phase in the early 1970s. Bogart surrounded the band at one showcase with inflatable elephants and various barnyard animals, and was surprised when they drew derision from the crowd.

Bogart flirted with bankruptcy until the mid-1970s, when he met Italian producer Giorgio Moroder, who introduced him to a gospel-turned-disco singer named Donna Summer. With singles like Summer's "Love to Love You Baby," Casablanca rode the dis...o...b..om hard, going platinum on just about every record it threw into the marketplace. But more than songs or sales, Casablanca was legendary for its excesses. Quaalude dealing was rampant, as were elaborate food fights at the fancy restaurant across the street. Bogart equipped all fourteen of its executives with brand-new Mercedeses. He presented Donna Summer, when she flew from Germany to New York to promote her Love to Love You Baby Love to Love You Baby alb.u.m, with a life-size cake that looked exactly like her. It was even the same alb.u.m, with a life-size cake that looked exactly like her. It was even the same size. size. The cake, according to Fredric Dannen's book The cake, according to Fredric Dannen's book Hit Men Hit Men, took two seats in a cross-country airplane and a freezer ambulance to get to Summer's performance at the Penta discotheque in New York. The company's executives were out of their minds. Promo man Danny Davis, who didn't do drugs of any kind, famously recalled talking to a radio programmer on the phone while a colleague trashed the stuff on his desk with a golf club, then lit the desk on fire.

"Almost anything could have happened at Casablanca," says Bill Aucoin, who managed Casablanca's most famous rock act, KISS, in those early days. "The first offices were a converted home with a pool house. If you went to the pool house at any time, day or night, as a record promoter or a DJ, you probably could get laid at any moment."

"[The office] was being used for nonsocial purposes," is David Braun's euphemism of choice. He would know. A veteran music business attorney who represented Bob Dylan and Michael Jackson, Braun moved from Los Angeles to New York to become president of PolyGram Records in 1981. PolyGram had purchased half of Casablanca for $10 million in 1977, thinking the disco hits would continue. Unfortunately for the label, Summer broke her contract and fled to industry mogul David Geffen's new record company. KISS's. .h.i.ts dried up-for a while. New acts like over-the-top rock band Angel, whose members would emerge from pods on stage, possibly inspiring a key scene in This Is Spinal Tap This Is Spinal Tap, never caught on. Then there was the tricky little matter of Casablanca executives shipping hundreds of thousands of records at a time, with little regard for public demand, and being unprepared when stores returned them. (This problem was common in the industry.) And as Steve Dahl's demolition suggested, the public suddenly wasn't quite as enamored of disco as it used to be. Braun had to clean up Bogart's $30 million mess. These missteps almost killed PolyGram Records, whose market share had jumped from 5 percent to 20 percent in the disco era. For a few years, it had been the world's largest record label.

Casablanca imploded, and so did the industry. (And so did Bogart, who died in 1982 at age 38 of cancer.) Although record companies' sales had climbed from just under $1 billion a year in 1959 to a Sat.u.r.day Night Fever Sat.u.r.day Night Feverfueled record of $4.1 billion in 1978, the antidis...o...b..cklash lingered from 1979 to 1982. CBS Records laid off two thousand employees and drastically cut its artist roster and budgets. Susan Blond, a publicity executive at CBS-owned Epic Records, says the company lost three hundred employees on her first day. Her staff eventually disappeared entirely. Blond's boss, CBS' flamboyant attack-dog chairman, Walter Yetnikoff, declared the industry "in the intensive care ward."

But then came the savior.

THE FORMER M MOTOWN child superstar arrived in a black leather jacket spilling over with belt buckles. He danced like a backwards angel, screeched and squealed, and-inexplicably-wore one white glove. In late 1982, Michael Jackson almost magically restored the music industry's superstar clout by releasing one record. child superstar arrived in a black leather jacket spilling over with belt buckles. He danced like a backwards angel, screeched and squealed, and-inexplicably-wore one white glove. In late 1982, Michael Jackson almost magically restored the music industry's superstar clout by releasing one record.

Jackson didn't do it on his own. The most important music business guy behind the success of Thriller Thriller was Yetnikoff, a c.o.ke-addicted, fast-living, bomb-throwing, disrespectful, disloyal provocateur. He grew up in Brooklyn, the son of a painter with a hot temper and a sympathetic mother who cleaned his wounds whenever his father knocked him around. His grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Austria or Poland-they were never quite clear which-and they spoke Polish and Yiddish around the house. They called Walter "Velvel," his Yiddish name. With his mother's encouragement, Yetnikoff picked up garbage and made city deliveries on nights and weekends to put himself through Columbia Law School. His first job out of college was at a New York law firm, Rosenman & Colin, where he met a young lawyer named Clive Davis. Harvard-educated and imaginative, Davis had tired of the legal business and taken a job as counsel for CBS Records down the street. Davis called Yetnikoff in early 1961 to offer him a job. was Yetnikoff, a c.o.ke-addicted, fast-living, bomb-throwing, disrespectful, disloyal provocateur. He grew up in Brooklyn, the son of a painter with a hot temper and a sympathetic mother who cleaned his wounds whenever his father knocked him around. His grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Austria or Poland-they were never quite clear which-and they spoke Polish and Yiddish around the house. They called Walter "Velvel," his Yiddish name. With his mother's encouragement, Yetnikoff picked up garbage and made city deliveries on nights and weekends to put himself through Columbia Law School. His first job out of college was at a New York law firm, Rosenman & Colin, where he met a young lawyer named Clive Davis. Harvard-educated and imaginative, Davis had tired of the legal business and taken a job as counsel for CBS Records down the street. Davis called Yetnikoff in early 1961 to offer him a job.

The head of CBS was G.o.ddard Lieberson, an Eastman School of Musictrained man in impeccable tweed suits. He and Yetnikoff couldn't have been more different, but the crude Yetnikoff befriended the erudite Lieberson. Though Yetnikoff called Lieberson "Potted Lieberfarb" behind his back, the relationship stuck, and Velvel climbed through the CBS ranks around the same time the Beatles turned rock 'n' roll into a gigantic worldwide commodity. Through the 1970s, following Davis's lead, Yetnikoff grew rich off Miles Davis, Bruce Springsteen, Earth, Wind, and Fire, and Barbra Streisand. By the 1980s, in his own words, he'd grown into a "wild man," the bearded, squinty-eyed tough talker whose autobiography, Howling at the Moon Howling at the Moon, begins with this (fictional) sentence: "After her third o.r.g.a.s.m, Jackie O looked at me with a mixture of grat.i.tude and awe."

Yetnikoff was smart. To win the respect of Mick Jagger at a Paris wine bar, he calculated the value-added tax in France on a c.o.c.ktail napkin. Jagger, a London School of Economics dropout, subsequently signed the Rolling Stones to a CBS record deal. Yetnikoff was also known for throwing outrageous tantrums. One of his legendary office exchanges with Larry Tisch, head of CBS Records's parent company, television monolith CBS Inc., ended with Yetnikoff threatening bodily harm and pounding his fist on the table. During a 1975 contract renegotiation with Paul Simon and his attorney, the mogul and the singer-songwriter's aggressive bargaining escalated into a full-blown argument, and Yetnikoff banned Simon from CBS Records's building for life. "Walter Yetnikoff was crazy and wild and weird like a fox," says George Vradenburg, former general counsel for CBS Inc. "He could yell and scream and throw things, and at the same time wink at me."

And Yetnikoff was fiercely loyal to his artists. He helped a post-Thriller Jackson weasel out of a promised duet with his brother Jermaine. Yetnikoff once referred to Bruce Springsteen's very serious 1982 masterpiece Jackson weasel out of a promised duet with his brother Jermaine. Yetnikoff once referred to Bruce Springsteen's very serious 1982 masterpiece Nebraska Nebraska as as Omaha Omaha-in front of him, no less-but agreed to release it, even if it didn't sell, to make Springsteen happy. Which he did. (And it didn't sell.) He cheated on his wife with his secretary. He cheated on his wife with a fellow music-business type he called Boom Boom. He snorted copious amounts of c.o.ke. He openly rebelled against his superiors at CBS. He tried to get Mike Wallace of CBS's 60 Minutes 60 Minutes fired for investigating the music business. He engineered coups. "If anything," he said after an NBC payola expose, which pegged him as a c.o.kehead, "I became more defiant, more arrogant, more contemptuous of my adversaries." fired for investigating the music business. He engineered coups. "If anything," he said after an NBC payola expose, which pegged him as a c.o.kehead, "I became more defiant, more arrogant, more contemptuous of my adversaries."

But as the fast-living Yetnikoff suffered through the record industry's postdisco crash, he was growing antsy. Jackson's last alb.u.m, Off the Wall Off the Wall, which had sold 8 million copies in 1979, was one of the few bright lights in a terrible year. Soon that minor gold rush had faded. By the end of 1981, CBS Records took in a little more than $1 billion, its worst yearly earnings since 1971. So Yetnikoff pressured his biggest star. With just months left in 1982, he gave Jackson and producer Quincy Jones a deadline: Finish a new alb.u.m, and make it a blockbuster, by Christmas. They weren't happy about having to rush, but they obeyed and finished the final Thriller Thriller mixes in a month. They turned them in to Epic Records, for release just before Thanksgiving. mixes in a month. They turned them in to Epic Records, for release just before Thanksgiving.

"I told you I'd do it," Jackson told Yetnikoff. "I told you I'd outdo Off the Wall Off the Wall."

Yetnikoff responded: "You delivered. You delivered like a motherf.u.c.ker."

Jackson: "Please don't use that word, Walter."

Yetnikoff: "You delivered like an angel. Archangel Michael."

Jackson: "That's better. Now will you promote it?"

Yetnikoff: "Like a motherf.u.c.ker."

Thriller, like Off the Wall Off the Wall before it, wasn't just brilliant music-it was brilliant business. Michael Jackson had effectively replaced dis...o...b.. absorbing the dying genre into his own brand of dance music. Steve Dahl's Chicago demolition-turned-riot may have killed disco commercially, but the fans were still alive-and Jackson was a master of providing the slinky rhythms to warm their hearts. The melodies catch in your head in the perfect way. The ba.s.s lines sound like poisonous snakes. The rebellious anger in "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" is palpable but never over the top. before it, wasn't just brilliant music-it was brilliant business. Michael Jackson had effectively replaced dis...o...b.. absorbing the dying genre into his own brand of dance music. Steve Dahl's Chicago demolition-turned-riot may have killed disco commercially, but the fans were still alive-and Jackson was a master of providing the slinky rhythms to warm their hearts. The melodies catch in your head in the perfect way. The ba.s.s lines sound like poisonous snakes. The rebellious anger in "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" is palpable but never over the top.

It was the right alb.u.m at the right time: All seven of its singles landed in the Top 10, the alb.u.m lasted a ridiculous thirty-seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Billboard charts, and it went on to sell more than 51 million copies-the best-selling alb.u.m in the world until the Eagles' charts, and it went on to sell more than 51 million copies-the best-selling alb.u.m in the world until the Eagles' Their Greatest Hits Their Greatest Hits surpa.s.sed it (in the United States, anyway) in 2000. surpa.s.sed it (in the United States, anyway) in 2000. Thriller Thriller singlehandedly rescued CBS from its late '70s doldrums-the company's net income jumped 26 percent in 1983, to $187 million-pushing fans back into record stores and propping up the industry. singlehandedly rescued CBS from its late '70s doldrums-the company's net income jumped 26 percent in 1983, to $187 million-pushing fans back into record stores and propping up the industry.

"Thriller was like Moses carrying all the Jews across the Red Sea," was like Moses carrying all the Jews across the Red Sea,"* says Lee Solters, a veteran Los Angeles music publicist who worked on the alb.u.m's campaign. "He rescued the music industry. The music industry suddenly became alive again." And as says Lee Solters, a veteran Los Angeles music publicist who worked on the alb.u.m's campaign. "He rescued the music industry. The music industry suddenly became alive again." And as Thriller Thriller climbed the charts, it awarded even more power to Yetnikoff, the star maker with a direct pipeline into the reclusive Jackson's mysterious personal life. climbed the charts, it awarded even more power to Yetnikoff, the star maker with a direct pipeline into the reclusive Jackson's mysterious personal life.

Thriller's singles took off on the radio, beginning with Top 40 stations and crossing over to rock thanks to Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo on "Beat It." Then Jackson's people produced a video for "Billie Jean." It was sharp and clean, with Jackson in a pink shirt and red bow tie dancing all over the mean streets, and seemed perfect for a new music cable channel that had made instant stars out of n.o.bodies like the Stray Cats and Billy Idol.

But there was a problem: MTV didn't play videos by black artists.

MILES D DAVIS COMPLAINED about the lack of black stars on the video channel, formed in 1981, which was rapidly growing its influence and power within the record industry. So did Stevie Wonder. Rick James, who had a smash radio hit with "Super Freak," publicly railed that MTV was "taking black people back four hundred years." n.o.body at MTV adequately explained this unspoken policy in public. The closest thing to a defense came from the channel's only black VJ, J. J. Jackson, who told Davis at a party that the channel's format was rock 'n' roll, and most rock stations didn't play black artists, either, other than the late Jimi Hendrix. about the lack of black stars on the video channel, formed in 1981, which was rapidly growing its influence and power within the record industry. So did Stevie Wonder. Rick James, who had a smash radio hit with "Super Freak," publicly railed that MTV was "taking black people back four hundred years." n.o.body at MTV adequately explained this unspoken policy in public. The closest thing to a defense came from the channel's only black VJ, J. J. Jackson, who told Davis at a party that the channel's format was rock 'n' roll, and most rock stations didn't play black artists, either, other than the late Jimi Hendrix.

Michael Jackson smashed through MTV's color line, but it was Yetnikoff who solved the problem behind the scenes. "I was the instigator, I guess," recalls Ron Weisner, Jackson's early comanager. "I took the finished 'Billie Jean' to MTV and they refused to air it. So I went to Columbia Records. Walter Yetnikoff and I went to [powerful CBS Inc. chief] Bill Paley. He called MTV and said, 'This video is on the air by end of business today or else Columbia Records is no longer in business with you.' One day changed the whole thing."

MTV cofounder Bob Pittman remembers the history a little differently. Then again, that story has been told and retold so many times, by so many people with conflicting interests and clashing egos, that it's impossible to nail down the facts. "I'll give you my story, which I hope is the true story, but G.o.d only knows," says Pittman, who would later be a top executive for AOL Time Warner and today runs a New York City media-investment firm called the Pilot Group. He'd heard about Rick James's complaints, but the "Super Freak" video, with its very kinky girls in Lycra and lace, didn't meet MTV's pre-Madonna standards. "It seems ridiculous today," Pittman admits. In fact, he says, the channel couldn't wait to play the Thriller Thriller videos. videos.

Either way, the combination of MTV and Michael Jackson was a one-two commercial punch that began the resuscitation of the record industry. When MTV first went on the air on August 1, 1981, with the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star," it was the product of a unique brain trust of frustrated and slumming music-business types waiting for something big and interesting to come along. John Lack, a thirty-three-year-old rock fan and former CBS news radio executive, first came up with the idea. Marketing whiz Tom Freston was an advertising executive who'd worked on the G.I. Joe account before fleeing the toy business to hike through the Sahara with a girlfriend, then landed in Asia to run a fabric-export company. And John Sykes, who had been working at Epic Records, was responsible for the wildly effective promotional ideas. During MTV's early days, he offered a teen Van Halen fan forty-eight hours of "pure decadence" (i.e., Jack Daniel's and groupies) with the band. The slickest of the group, by far, was Pittman, son of a Mississippi Methodist minister. He'd begun his career as a fifteen-year-old DJ and worked up to program director for a planned cable-TV experiment called the Movie Channel.

Lack received a visit one day from Elektra Records founder and Warner Music executive Jac Holzman, who showed up in his office with a stack of videotapes. Some were of Holzman's old discovery, the Doors, who'd recorded an amateurish $1,000 film for "Break On Through" and aired it on afternoon TV dance shows. Others were surprisingly innovative clips, like "Rio," a psychedelic collection of rainbow-colored effects set to music by Michael Nesmith, formerly of the Monkees.

The clips gave Lack an idea. The The idea. Music on television had been around for years in the form of weekly shows, from idea. Music on television had been around for years in the form of weekly shows, from American Bandstand American Bandstand to to Alb.u.m Tracks Alb.u.m Tracks. But n.o.body had ever attempted a twenty-four-hour music-video channel. Everything happened quickly after that. Lack, Sykes, Pittman, and Freston put on suits and ties, fired up Olivia Newton-John videos for middle-of-the-road executives at parent companies Warner and American Express and came out of the meetings with $25 million in financial backing. They scooped up as many old videos as they could find, and tried to coax all the major record label executives to send them new ones-for free. That part of the plan was not popular.

"John Sykes and I would go out to the record companies, and we would take a whole presentation: 'Look, the record companies are in the doldrums. The pitch is, you're losing money for the first time in decades, radio stations have very tight playlists, and when they do play your new stuff they don't identify what it is,'" Pittman recalls. "We said, 'We're going to play more music than they are, and when we play it we're going to put on the name of the artist, the alb.u.m name, the song name, and the label. And it'll cost you nothing to give them to us. If this happens to work, we will change the record industry.'"

A few label chiefs were actually enthusiastic. Doug Morris, head of Atlantic Records at the time, signed on right away. Warner Bros. Records's Mo Ostin and Elektra Records's Joe Smith soon followed his lead. So did Gil Friesen, then president of the influential independent label A&M. But Sid Sheinberg, president of MCA-Universal, declared at an industry convention: "This guy Lack is out of his f.u.c.king mind." CBS's Yetnikoff shared Sheinberg's view-he still rued the day record labels had started giving radio their music for free some fifty years earlier. But eventually Yetnikoff's underlings and CBS's biggest-name artists started pressuring Yetnikoff. He had no choice but to sign on.

"I was a skeptic," says Joe Smith, now in his late seventies, retired and living in Beverly Hills. "I said, 'Now, why would anybody want to buy their record off of a video?' You're never that eager to give away your product to anybody." But labels agreed to part with a few small videos, and when an unknown band, Duran Duran, became a superstar purely through MTV airplay, Smith was convinced. "We said, 'Whoa! There's something happening here.' They convinced me. [Veteran songwriter] Van d.y.k.e Parks, the head of [Warner's] video department-he was a lunatic, stoned twenty-six hours a day, he was making videos with Randy Newman and some of our other artists. We were investing money like crazy." Before long, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, and Pete Townshend were lining up to shout "I want my MTV!" on the air. Soon, other artists were jumping on board, too, like Tom Petty, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, and, most dramatically, a young Bay City, Michigan, singer and dancer named Madonna Louise Ciccone.

MUSIC STARS WERE huge again. They were huge again. They were on TV on TV! The money from record sales, which had dropped precipitously in 1979 and wobbled up and down through the early 1980s, jumped 4.7 percent in 1983. Out of disco's ashes had risen a new sales monster, Thriller, Thriller, which established the video-driven blueprint for fellow superstars Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, and Prince. "Like everything else, when the tide comes in, all the ships go up," says d.i.c.k Asher, who at the time was a top CBS Records executive and long-suffering Walter Yetnikoff underling. "It was not only good for CBS but good for the whole industry." which established the video-driven blueprint for fellow superstars Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, and Prince. "Like everything else, when the tide comes in, all the ships go up," says d.i.c.k Asher, who at the time was a top CBS Records executive and long-suffering Walter Yetnikoff underling. "It was not only good for CBS but good for the whole industry."

Asher didn't know it yet, but while the record industry had built gold-standard software (the music) and a revolutionary new international marketing tool (MTV), it still needed new hardware. And that was coming.

Veteran artist attorney David Braun began the 1980s by negotiating, on behalf of Michael Jackson, an unprecedented 42 percent of the wholesale price on each US alb.u.m sold. The deal with CBS Records was extraordinary, given most superstars received 10 percent to 20 percent at the time. In 1981, Braun quit his law firm to become president of PolyGram Records. He lasted less than a year. He had spent so much of his career trying to secure the biggest possible advances for his artists, and hadn't seriously considered the constraints record labels were under when they'd tried to tamp down his numbers. As head of a major label, he was suddenly learning those constraints firsthand-and he didn't like them. But one day, during his short time at PolyGram, he showed up twenty minutes late to a historic meeting. Back then the label was owned by Philips and Siemens, two European companies that specialized in home electronics. An emissary from Siemens showed up at precisely 9:00 one morning to meet with the PolyGram staff about a small, round, shiny, silver object that stored data digitally. Nothing special, right? Braun had been on the phone with some artist managers, and by the time he straggled into the meeting, the Siemens guy was just about finished. "Unlike the Americans, when the Germans say 9:00, they mean mean 9:00," Braun says. 9:00," Braun says.

That meeting was the beginning of the compact disc business, although it wasn't like record companies saw the future and jumped in right away. Several label chiefs, including Walter Yetnikoff and Sid Sheinberg, had their misgivings. But once they did: boom. "I left as the compact disc was coming in," Braun says. "And the CD saved the industry."

Chapter 1.

19831986 Jerry Shulman's Frisbee: How the Compact Disc Rebuilt the Record Business JAMES T. R T. RUSSELL hated the pops and crackles in his Bach, Beethoven, and Bartok records. hated the pops and crackles in his Bach, Beethoven, and Bartok records.

It was the early 1960s. Rock 'n' roll was young. Frank Sinatra was still the King of Pop. Russell clung to the cla.s.sical recordings he'd been buying since high school. Not a single radio station played this type of music in Richland, Washington, where Russell lived. He became obsessed with preserving his LPs so they wouldn't deteriorate into static. Like some audiophiles of the time, he tried using a cactus spine instead of a steel stylus on his record player. That worked OK, but he still heard the infernal snapping and crackling. "I'd been tinkering with how to get better sound out of an LP for fifteen years," he says. "I decided: 'This isn't going to work. We need a better record.'"

Russell was no ordinary audiophile. Born in Bremerton, Washington, he had become fascinated with radios during grade school-building them, listening to them, figuring out how the electricity worked inside. One day his older sister suggested he would enjoy physics in high school. And sure enough: "Pow!" he recalls. "That was the world world. Everything is based on physics. And that was that." At Reed College in Portland, he plunged into anything involving instruments-computers, optics, chemistry-although he got a degree in physics, naturally. His first job out of college was at the Atomic Energy Commission's Hanford Nuclear Plant. Russell's job was basically to help engineers when they ran into technical snags. Soon he started inventing stuff, like computer controls for a test reactor.

In 1965, Battelle Memorial Inst.i.tute took over from General Electric as the manager of Russell's lab. He had hardly been shy over the previous few years, in complaining about the Bach and Beethoven records-or broadcasting his determination to do something about them. Fortunately, his new bosses were slightly more receptive to his crazy ideas, even if they had nothing to do with nuclear physics.

Russell's home hi-fi, like all music systems of the time, was based on a.n.a.log sound-a needle inscribed each curvy sound wave into the grooves of a vinyl record. Taken together, and played on a phonograph with a stylus moving in the groove, these waves added up to music. But the phonograph had no way of keeping out dust and other foreign particles. Which meant static-Russell's nemesis. He juggled the possibilities in his mind. He visualized exactly what he wanted to build. Then he wrote it all down, in an official Battelle lab notebook.

He had one big idea to solve the problem. Optics. Optics. Who needed a needle? Russell would use a beam of light to read his new musical discs. Still, he wasn't the first inventor to run into frustration with this idea. The whole "mechanical-optical structure," as he called it, was too complicated to work in the average living room. And the costs, for hi-fi enthusiasts, could have added up to $15,000 or $20,000. That was far too expensive. Who needed a needle? Russell would use a beam of light to read his new musical discs. Still, he wasn't the first inventor to run into frustration with this idea. The whole "mechanical-optical structure," as he called it, was too complicated to work in the average living room. And the costs, for hi-fi enthusiasts, could have added up to $15,000 or $20,000. That was far too expensive.

What he needed was a cheap way to record music onto a disc the size of a 45 rpm single. He considered several techniques, including one involving frequency modulation, commonly used in FM radio, but they all relied on old-fashioned a.n.a.log technology. The static would still drive him crazy. Then he came across another helpful science: pulse-code modulation, pulse-code modulation, or PCM. An ITT scientist was the first to suggest this idea in 1937, and the legendary Bell Laboratories electrical engineer Claude E. Shannon developed the blueprint for future use in the late 1940s. When Russell started his own experiments, the telephone industry was already tinkering with PCM. The idea was to take an a.n.a.log signal, like something you'd hear on a record player or the radio, and convert it into a series of microscopic blips-ones and zeroes. It turned out to be the key technology for digitizing sound. With digital, a symphony could be recorded not as c.u.mbersome sound waves but as groups of tiny binary dots. or PCM. An ITT scientist was the first to suggest this idea in 1937, and the legendary Bell Laboratories electrical engineer Claude E. Shannon developed the blueprint for future use in the late 1940s. When Russell started his own experiments, the telephone industry was already tinkering with PCM. The idea was to take an a.n.a.log signal, like something you'd hear on a record player or the radio, and convert it into a series of microscopic blips-ones and zeroes. It turned out to be the key technology for digitizing sound. With digital, a symphony could be recorded not as c.u.mbersome sound waves but as groups of tiny binary dots.

This technology eventually became known as "red book," the heart of every compact disc. Play combinations of these tiny ones and zeroes 44,100 times per second and you start to hear music.

Russell knew it would be a long road to build this kind of musical disc. "Just about each time I came up with a solution to the problem at hand," he says, "there were more problems to solve." To turn a symphony score into digital bits, for example, he would need to create hundreds of thousands of these bits. They would never fit on a disc small enough for home hi-fis. So he decided to make the bits incredibly tiny-the size of a micron, or one-millionth of a meter. That would require a microscope. And even if he did manage to come up with such a disc, he'd have to devise an intricate error-correction system so each disc could play all the music flawlessly. But if he did...imagine the possibilities. Records that sounded just as perfect every time you played them. Needles that didn't wear out. Discs that didn't scratch or warp over time.

One Sat.u.r.day when he had the house to himself and he could really focus on his work, everything clicked-optics, pulse-code modulation, digital, a precision-mechanical system, microns, plastic discs. "Well," Russell says, "it seemed pretty straightforward to me at the time."

He proposed the big idea to his bosses at Battelle on March 9, 1965, and they told him to go for it. Over the next year and a half, he would build a contraption that worked roughly like the compact disc players that still sit in cars and living rooms around the world. In an early Battelle public-relations photograph of Russell standing next to his machine, both of them look like relics from another era. Russell has dark, slicked-back hair, a widow's peak, gla.s.ses, a dark suit coat, and a thickly knotted tie. The machine next to him is a foot and a half long and a foot tall, made of thick pieces of metal. It could be a CT scan for a small animal-large and boxy on one end, with a cylindrical piece in the middle and various wires and rods extending to a point on the other. The "discs" are clear, rectangular gla.s.s plates the size of paperback novels. "It's all very well that I built a patent, but there's lots of patents out there that are worthless," he says. "The fact that we were able to build a laboratory prototype added enormous credence to the whole idea."

Russell is careful not to refer to himself as the inventor of the compact disc. In fact, the early history is somewhat confusing. Russell acknowledges that two electronics giants, Sony and Philips, came up with their own discs independently, sometime after he invented the technology. But back in September 1966, when Russell filed the sixth patent of his forty-year, fifty-three-patent career, he became the first inventor to create the fundamental technology that would lie at the heart of every compact disc. The US Patent Office gave him the patent in 1970. It is unclear just how closely the Sony and Philips engineers paid attention to Russell's work. In any event, decades later, the owner of his patents would establish that Russell was the first to get this far with CD technology, winning a huge US court ruling in the early 1990s.

But instead of wealth and fame, all James T. Russell received as a reward was a stack of patent papers and, from his employer, a one-foot-tall crystal obelisk recognizing his work in optical-digital recording technology. So why don't all the people who keep hundreds of CDs lovingly alphabetized throughout their homes remember Russell as the Thomas Edison of the digital age? "Long, sad story," says the retired physicist, seventy-five, from the bas.e.m.e.nt lab of his home in Bellevue, Washington.

In the early 1970s, the funding dried up at Battelle. n.o.body had the cash to help an obsessive nuclear physicist invent a better record. "It was very frustrating," Russell recalls. He pitched it to companies, and was told that his invention involved too many different high-tech ideas that couldn't possibly be compatible. Besides, if it was so great, IBM would have already done it.

Russell didn't want to give up on his idea, despite five years of frustration. And although strapped for cash, Battelle didn't want to give up, either. In fall 1971, a New York venture capitalist, Eli Jacobs, responded to a request from the lab and contacted Russell about his invention. The two agreed to sidestep into video, and Russell successfully grafted digital recordings of TV shows onto gla.s.s plates similar to the audio ones he'd come up with several years earlier. (Russell still keeps a stack of these plates in his bas.e.m.e.nt lab.) They sent out 2,500 brochures inviting everybody to Richland-the press and big companies with pockets deep enough to license the technology. More than one hundred people accepted the invitation. In 1974, Philips and Sony sent reps to his lab. The Philips guy told Russell the company wasn't working on optical-digital technology and, in his opinion, never would. A few months later, an Eli Jacobs rep flew to Eindhoven, Holland, to try to sell the invention to Philips, the huge Dutch electronics company that would help bring the compact disc to the worldwide market. What he was describing, the Philips people told him, was great for computers, but it just wouldn't work for entertainment.

What Russell didn't know was that, in 1974, Sony and Philips were in fact working jointly on their own versions of the technology he had already patented. Using lasers developed at MIT and Bell Labs in the 1960s, both companies independently hit upon a way of recording and listening to digital music. Sony had built a refrigerator-sized, several-hundred-pound contraption called the X-12DTC. It was even bigger and clumsier than Russell's awkward-looking device.

"[Russell] was one of the pioneers. He did excellent work essentially all alone," says K. A. "Kees" Schouhamer Immink, a longtime engineer for Philips. "Philips just had bigger pockets. They could invest billions of dollars just to do that."

By the 1980s, Russell's optical-digital technology was completely out of his hands. Battelle had licensed his patents to Eli Jacobs. When Jacobs's Digital Recording ran out of money, the venture capitalist sold all of his company's patents-including Russell's-to a Toronto start-up for $1 million in 1985.

The executives at this company, Optical Recording Corporation, knew what they had. ORC's savvy, opportunistic owner, John Adamson, saw that Russell's patents-now his his patents-could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He brought the patent papers and a couple of attorneys to dozens of meetings with Sony and Philips reps in Tarrytown, New York, Tokyo, Osaka, and elsewhere. Naturally, the lawyers from these gigantic electronics companies argued that their own patents came first. Although Adamson's company was quickly running out of money and close to bankruptcy, his people persevered. In February 1988, well into the CD era, they convinced Sony and Philips to pay him royalties; by the end of that year, ORC was flush with $10 million. patents-could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He brought the patent papers and a couple of attorneys to dozens of meetings with Sony and Philips reps in Tarrytown, New York, Tokyo, Osaka, and elsewhere. Naturally, the lawyers from these gigantic electronics companies argued that their own patents came first. Although Adamson's company was quickly running out of money and close to bankruptcy, his people persevered. In February 1988, well into the CD era, they convinced Sony and Philips to pay him royalties; by the end of that year, ORC was flush with $10 million.

b.u.t.tressed with cash and confidence, Adamson and his lawyers shifted their focus to CD manufacturers-major record labels-beginning with ma.s.sive Time Warner and its subsidiary, Warner Music. ORC sued for patent infringement in 1990. The media conglomerate's lawyers were fierce. "n.o.body's ever recognized [Russell] as being an inventor of the CD," Michael Rackman, a patent attorney who represented Time Warner, says today. "Let's suppose that I invent a new way to communicate, and you invent a tank and you put my communications in the tank. Are you going to say I invented the tank?" But the jury was unconvinced. In 1992, it ruled for the Toronto company and ordered Time Warner to pay $30 million. Other record labels then agreed to pay royalties, for sums Adamson won't disclose. Not a bad return for ORC's original investment in James T. Russell's patents.

Russell, however, received not a cent.

Today, Russell spends his time inventing new devices, consulting for companies, and playing with his seven grandchildren. He dreams about cities with lots stacked upon lots poking more than half a mile into the sky. Why not? Digital was once considered a loopy idea, too.