#65 Shep Gordon: Trust, Compassion, and Shooting Friends from Cannons

Legendary show-business manager, agent, and producer Shep Gordon talks sex, drugs, and rock and roll. He also shares the formula for manufacturing fame, and his unique philosophy on success, love and happiness. Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Physically, I don't think I ever felt scared, but scared every day that I'm not going to pull it off. That's a lot of weight to have people's lives on your shoulders. I still get scared when I'm doing something. But I think that fear is good. It drives it and makes sure it's better.

• 0:25Shane Parrish?

  Hello and welcome. I'm Shane Parrish and this is The Knowledge Project, a podcast exploring the ideas, methods, and mental models that help you learn from the best of what other people have already figured out. You can learn more about the podcast and stay up to date at fs.blog/podcast. We also have a newsletter that comes out every Sunday. It's called Brain Food. It's free, packed with all the best content we've come across all week that's worth reading and thinking about. It contains quotes, book recommendations, articles, and so much more. You can learn more at fs.blog/newsletter. Today, I'm talking with Shep Gordon, the Rolling Stones named Shep one of the most hundred influential people in the world. And while Shep prefers to remain behind the scenes, you've likely heard of some of the people he's worked with or helped create.

• 1:10Shane Parrish?

  Alice Cooper, Mike Myers, Jimi Hendrix, Sylvester Stallone, Michael Douglas, Emerald, Wolfgang Puck, Roger Verge, and so many others. I would go on, but it would just sound like I'm name dropping for the next hour. At first, the audio is a bit windy because we're sitting outside on his lawn in Hawaii. Eventually, we move inside, so it gets a little better. Shep is one of the most interesting people I've ever met, and it's very difficult to summarize this conversation. We're going to talk drugs, how fame doesn't equal happiness, how to manufacture popularity, and explore life. It's time to listen and learn.

• 1:48Shane Parrish?

  You grew up with a brother who was the favorite child. What was that like?

• 1:53Speaker 00

  You know, as I think probably every child, it's all you know. So that was life. Probably after a lot of my foundation was formed, that I realized not everybody's brother treated him like that. And that those were choices you made, not life choices made for you. That you could choose how you dealt with people.

• 2:19Shane Parrish?

  Were you as competitive at all?

• 2:21Speaker 00

  Not at all. We didn't, we don't. I love him as my brother, but we don't know each other. I probably know you now as well as I know him.

• 2:30Shane Parrish?

  What was the biggest lesson you learned from your mom as a child?

• 2:34Speaker 00

  Listen and be compassionate to people.

• 2:38Shane Parrish?

  What does that mean to you, the compassionate part?

• 2:41Speaker 00

  Be sensitive to people, show them love, listen to them, don't be cruel to them. Don't take out your whatever went wrong with you that day on someone else. And try and make every interaction sort of like a Johnny apple seed. You know, make someone's day a little bit better by interacting with you. You can't do it all the time, it's not possible, but I think that thought makes for a better world. We're just one species on this very complicated web.

• 3:15Shane Parrish?

  Totally. Is that what made you, you became a parole officer, I think for a day or two?

• 3:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was just to buy lunch. And a little bit of altruism. You know, I don't know if it was watching the western movies. I don't know if it was the Jewish culture of understanding that I was from a group of humans who had been persecuted for whatever the reasons were. I was very quiet, I sort of stayed in my room most of my, till I got to college. But I always had this vision of really, you know, silly vision of myself on a white horse. Like charging in and saving the day. When I saw the job for the parole officer, it was really one of the first times I manifested that.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  I was at the New School for Social Research in New York. I was a psychedelic head. It was during the Reagan era.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  There was a big song called "I Wanna Wear a Flower in My Hair and Go to San Francisco." I loved that song. At the New School, they came in recruiting for parole officers for California. Because we were all sociology majors. There were, the only two jobs you could get was parole officer, social worker. That's all sociology in those days led towards. And I didn't graduate, but I said, gee, what an opportunity. And the guy said, you don't have to, you can still apply. And I said, what a great opportunity to save these kids from Ronald Reagan. And, you know, my image was... Kids up against the wall at the whiskey and long hairs up against the wall and Latinos up against the wall and I could be that Jew on the white horse. I was a little high on

• 5:01Speaker 00

  acid.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  And so that's what brought me to California. I stopped in San Francisco, lived in a commune for about a week, got the song out of my system.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  And I never had hair to put the flower in, but I got the song and then I went down to LA and got the job and came in with that attitude. Okay, kids, everything's great now. I'm here. Very naive.

• 5:30Shane Parrish?

  I'll save you.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'll save the day. Here he comes to save the day like Mighty Mouse.

• 5:37Speaker 00

  And the officer showed me very fast who was in charge and that they didn't want me. They sent me out. They said, the kids are going to have a softball game. We need you to just watch and make sure they don't hit each other. And slowly the kids got around me and I saw there were no other guards. They were pretty cool. I think they could have really hurt me. I realized after I left there that day that they really didn't and they probably could have, but they made it appear as if they were. And finally, it seemed like five minutes. It probably was 30 seconds. The guards came out, took me in the office and had a very frank conversation with me. I had long hair down on my shoulders and California penal system. So I quit that night. That was my first time on a white horse charging

• 6:22Speaker 00

  into a room.

• 6:23Shane Parrish?

  Not the last time?

• 6:25Speaker 00

  Not the last time, though. But it's sort of become my life.

• 6:29Speaker 00

  I still get that image. I laugh at it now. I'll be in the middle of a project and, oh, shit, here you go again, goddamn horse.

• 6:43Shane Parrish?

  And then you ended up at a hotel. And you heard a scream, I think it was Janis Joplin.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  That was the second time on my horse, that was that night.

• 6:53Shane Parrish?

  So this is the white horse again?

• 6:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, it hit twice in a 24 hour period.

• 6:58Shane Parrish?

  But this time it would be more, I mean, it would be more benefit, it would lead, it led to...

• 7:03Speaker 00

  It led to something, no, no.

• 7:04Shane Parrish?

  So what happened?

• 7:06Speaker 00

  So I was feeling very dejected, the white horse had been slaughtered. And I drove, and I dragged myself off the battlefield. And driving in LA, and I was sort of daydreaming about how fucked my life was, and I had no money. All I had was some acid with me. And for my old days of a pharmaceutical dealer, that's what Anthony Wardane put it. If anyone knows LA, that there's, when you come off the freeway, I think it's Highland or La Brea, if you're in the right lane, you have to make a right. And I was daydreaming, I was headed towards Sunset Boulevard, where I heard there were cheap motels, one of the other probation guys had told me.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  And I had to get in the right lane, and it took me onto this place. And there was a motel sign vacancy, so I went in. I got a room, I think it was $59, and I had like enough money for 20 days or something. And I went out on the balcony, I took some acid. And I'm just thinking about how fucked my life is. One day at work, I got no job, I have no money, I have no family out here, I have nothing. And I heard a girl screaming, and I had just come from jail. So my thought was something ugly, which is where I'd just come from. And I saw these two sort of bodies wrestling, and I, for some reason, my mind went to rape.

• 8:34Speaker 00

  And for the second time, I'm gonna be the guy on the white horse, I'm gonna go save her. So I went down and I threw this guy off her. And she punched me in the jaw, they were making love. And I licked my lip a little bit, and I went down to the pool in the morning, and the girl was laughing and pulled me over, and she was Janis Joplin. I don't know who she was making love to that night, but at the pool, she was sitting next to Jimi Hendrix, who was not the guy that night, a lot of people have interpreted this as those two, but that's not true. He became a good customer of my pharmaceutical business.

• 9:10Speaker 00

  And luckily for me, at one point, gave me a street education, which I never had. I was in the suburbs. And I went and bought a car, because I was doing fairly well. And he said, what are you gonna tell the police if they ask you where you got the money for the car?

• 9:28Speaker 00

  And I said, you know, I come from Long Island, nobody asks you where you got the money to buy a car? And he said, well, here in LA, they do. He said, you better have an answer. And, because I had long hair, I was a hippie.

• 9:39Shane Parrish?

  Right, so you're targeted.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I said, I don't know. He said, are you Jewish? And I said, yeah. He said, you should be a manager.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  And the Chambers brothers were sitting there, and he turned to Lester and said, that band from Phoenix still in your basement? And he said, yeah. You should tell them you found a Jewish guy to manage him and let Shep manage him. And that's how I started with Alice Cooper fifty years ago.

• 10:03Shane Parrish?

  That's a crazy story.

• 10:05Speaker 00

  Most of my life has been that. I was talking to a new friend a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about that subject, because he's very calculated. I never wanted to be a manager. I never wanted to make movies. I never, I didn't know, care about chefs. There's nothing that I ended up making my living at, that I ever woke up and said, yeah, I gotta make a movie. Or I gotta be in the music business. I didn't have a stereo there for twenty-five years. Music doesn't really interest me. I rarely watch a movie. I haven't seen most of my own.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  It never was about that for me. It was, I realized through Alice and a few other people, I actually was good at helping people get what they wanted. If what they wanted was fame. I wasn't the best at getting them wealthy, but I was really good at getting them fame.

• 10:56Shane Parrish?

  Like, at the time, Alice wasn't famous at all. Nobody had heard of him. And you were not, you had no idea what you were doing as a band manager.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  Luckily, I had no idea what I was doing.

• 11:07Shane Parrish?

  So walk me through a little bit about how this.

• 11:09Speaker 00

  I mean, Alice was complicated. They started as a track team, put on Beatles wigs, the girls screamed. They decided to be a band. Not really musicians, not really, you know, sort of like me. Couple of them were art students. Alice was, holds the Arizona State Record for twenty-six mile run. They were athletes. Dennis was an art student, and Alice and Dennis were art students. And their idol was Dolly.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  And not being musicians, their shows started to take on some Dali-esque things, but very disjointed and very abstract, nothing that anybody in the audience could understand. Lester took me to see him, and they were opening for the Doors at a place called The Cheetah, and they basically emptied the room. It was terrible. Terrible. Well, I mean terrible is a strange word. That's judgment. Okay. It was very strong. It got, you know, fifteen hundred people to get up and leave. That's, that's power, especially when the doors are up next. And they were doing these really weird things, like one song was a picture frame,

• 12:23Speaker 00

  Alice's head out the window, and the whole song was, "Nobody likes me, nobody likes me. Why don't you like me? You all hate me. Nobody likes me." Okay, we don't like you, we leave. So it was, it was an interesting art statement. Right. It certainly had power, but it wasn't what you do if you want to become famous. Right. But isn't art supposed to be polarizing? Yes. Oh, no, it is. No doubt about it. So that's what I saw when I went to see you. There were two hands to this. I was doing very well in my pharmaceutical business. Yeah. I didn't know anything about management. I didn't really want to manage. That was just your cover story? Yeah. So the last thing I wanted was somebody successful.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  And here was a group that emptied the room. This is the perfect act for me. Yeah. Then people all around me started getting into trouble, and I didn't want to get into trouble. The only thing I had in my life was Alice. And I wanted, I didn't want to starve to death. So we had a very frank conversation, all of us, you know. We weren't maybe the best at what we all did, but what I remember the line I told him, I said, "It only took like twelve people to start Christianity because they believed they had less to sell than we did." We got seven people.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  We could do pretty good. And then we started to develop a story we could get people to believe in. In the new school, there was a professor who gave a lecture about the effect of Elvis Presley not being able to show his hips on TV, the effect of the Beatles having long hair, that how it motivated the kids was hatred of parents and that art was a very abstract form. But there were cultural revolutions, like every kid rebels against its parents. So if you can be that definition of rebellion, you can be the thing that the parents hate that they can say they love. That's how you get to be Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Sinatra.

• 14:31Speaker 00

  You can't get that big by people just liking your art. So, you know, he said, hey, fuck it. Everybody ran out of the room. That's, uh, if we can get parents to say they ran out seeing you, their kids will flock to see you. And that's where we went to. And it worked. And during the course of it, they figured out how to transform their artistic endeavors onto the stage. So they became better players. Alice became a great songwriter, in my opinion. I think in the last 20 years or so, he's become a great vocalist. They really developed their stuff, but that was the opening volley.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  So then for me, I didn't know if I got really lucky or if this theory really worked. Not necessarily that one theory, but the way that you look at the world of creating history rather than waiting for it to happen, because that's what we did with Alice. We just created what we thought we wanted to have happen. We wanted pickets every night. How do you get pickets?

• 15:38Speaker 00

  Harm an animal, ASPCA will show up every single night.

• 15:41Shane Parrish?

  That says chicken?

• 15:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:45Speaker 00

  So.

• 15:46Shane Parrish?

  So the story, just so everybody listening understands is, I think it was Toronto, wasn't it?

• 15:51Speaker 00

  It was, opening for John Lennon.

• 15:53Shane Parrish?

  Right, so there's a Canadian connection here, which is also, you got him played on the Canadian station.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  That's how we got their play.

• 15:59Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, and then you threw a chicken on the stage and he threw-

• 16:02Speaker 00

  Canada was very important to our career.

• 16:04Shane Parrish?

  He threw it into the audience and it came back fairly dismembered.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Fairly dismembered, wasn't a pretty sight.

• 16:10Shane Parrish?

  But it made for great.

• 16:11Speaker 00

  Great press. So they actually, the press was at Alice, ripped its head off and drank the blood. And we never claimed that it wasn't true. It wasn't true. We never claimed it wasn't true. And that's what catapulted him. And then that led to the first record, Canada passed the Canadian content law. The two thirds of the records played on Canadian radio had to be two out of three, Canadian recorded, Canadian produced, Canadian musicians, Canadian written. Either it was two out of the four, three out of the four. And the number one, what was called breakout station in those days was CKLW out of Windsor, Ontario. It was very early in the game and I said, that's how we're getting on the air. And we went up to Toronto and found the guys who did the Guess Who?

• 16:55Speaker 00

  Who had a studio in Toronto and gave a guy, found a co-writer, Canadian, and brought the record in as a Canadian content. Which I don't think an American band had ever done before.

• 17:07Shane Parrish?

  One of the ways that you've helped people become famous, you're not a one trick pony by any stretch of the imagination. Cause one of your other early clients was Anne Murray, a Canadian folk singer. Who didn't, you know, throw chickens into the audience.

• 17:24Speaker 00

  You know, Ed was the other side of the coin. Ed was a great artist. Who had no credibility with the audience. She had no image. She had no credibility. She was an unknown until you told them "Snowbird" and "Oh, what a great song." So my challenge with her, with how do you get her to be the sweetheart of Rolling Stone when they won't even, you know, put an interview in for three sentences? And I knew her talent at that point, as opposed to Alice, who was developing his talent. Her talent was her vocal cords. She'd just sit on a stool. Right. But she had the purest voice, the most amount of octave. She's gotta be who she is.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  How do you do that? So I always used to laugh at a thing I called guilt by association. You put someone famous next to someone who's not famous, all of a sudden they become famous. Kim Kardashian is maybe our prime example today of that. Yeah. That was what I thought I needed to do for Annie. And I knew if I got the right group of people to take a photo with her, I could then talk my way on to like the midnight specials, the Rolling Stones. But I, and I got really lucky. John Lennon happened to be in L.A. It was this dark period. He was never in L.A. And Harry Nielsen was in town, and Alice, and I think Mickey Dolenz was in the picture. And they all went to a place called The Rainbow to Drink, and I used to be the designated driver home.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  It was Thanksgiving Day, or the day before Thanksgiving. Annie was playing the troubadour. I begged and got them all to come over for like three minutes and take a photo. And that photo changed her life. How does the pharmacist become the designated driver? Yeah. I was always, I was always the driver, even on Control was always good for me. Yeah. Always stayed in control. So yeah, that broke her. She then hosted the midnight special. And got big space in Rolling Stone and she was off and running because once you looked inside, she was so powerful, you want, you know, my job was to get people to look inside. How did you feel at this point?

• 19:35Speaker 00

  I was on a roll. I was a Hollywood kind of, you know, more coke, more cars, more girls, more fame, more all that shit. What's life on the road like? Life on the road for me was making sure there was a Bloody Mary next to my bed when I woke up in the morning. That was the most important thing of life on the road. Life on the road for me was different. I never really, after Alice, I never really had, I always had some, a tour manager, someone who took care of him. So my life was much more back at the office.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Trying to find quiet time to figure out. I always felt my job for an artist, whether they were a chef or a filmmaker or a musical artist, was to get ahead of them a year.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  And build a highway for them and try and make sure they avoided the potholes. Come back every once in a while and check. But that was sort of, you know, because I had a lot of artists and a lot of things going. I couldn't really give personal service there. Artists I managed that I met once in my life, twice in my life, who I managed for years. My job was to get them down to one name, at least I felt my job. Was to get them, you know, no one asked Luther who or Raquel who or Groucho who or Alice who or that, it was that. And it was to give them a roadmap for the year.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  Other than that, pick berries, you know, take the phone calls and pick the right ones that couldn't, so much of it is not planned, but it's knowing what to say yes and no to for your artist. Because they come at you, you know? You can't sell a car commercial or a Disney voice. Very hard. You have to be consistent with this image that you're Yeah, and you have to understand what's coming in that's real and not real because once they get to a certain point of fame. The filtering system is really important. So my job was, wasn't to be with the artist, not to get to know them, not that, my job was to get them famous and then filter. So I would do the filtering for all the acts and then I'd give it to some guy.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  I'd give it to him and say, pass on this immediately or investigate this, let me know what's happening or we want this, get it immediately, just to keep that highway on path.

• 21:54Shane Parrish?

  What's it like dealing with all of these egos, I would imagine, as people became more famous? Do you think that revealed who they are or do you think it changed who they are?

• 22:05Speaker 00

  Once I did Alice and Anne Murray, what I realized fairly early was the toughest thing was dealing with the fame. That was really the hardest thing for, and it was the thing that was completely out of my control. Just out of my control. I couldn't feel it, you know, psychologically. So what I did is I set up a rule in my office that we didn't take acts until after they had already had a number one act, record. And they were meaningful on the road. I think we set our barrier at 3,500 people or something. So that they had already been tested.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  If they were going to drop out from fame, they had their shit together. We may take it to a new level, but at least Alice was the only act I ever created. Anne Murray even had a number one record when I took her, but it was Snowbird. So that was my filter system, so I didn't waste my time.

• 23:05Shane Parrish?

  Is that where a lot of people sort of like run into problems, that 3,500 sort of audience size?

• 23:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you don't see it as the public.

• 23:14Shane Parrish?

  What are the problems?

• 23:16Speaker 00

  Everyone's different. And when I say problems, I'm not speaking as much problems for them or problems for the audience, problems for a manager.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  They're not smart enough to understand that it's a team. So many of them still think it's just them. So you come up with this brilliant idea and they shoot you down. And I don't, you know, I'm not, I don't do this to buy lunch.

• 23:47Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  I'm really proud of what I do. Mine, I feel like I'm performing art. And I want to deal with people who really appreciate what I do. Really understand that I'm gonna fuck up at times because I go way out, but then I'm gonna protect them. And I don't want to deal with those conversations of, that I see every other manager go through. We have to, you know, convince them that you're on their side. My thing is sitting in a jacuzzi, having a joint, getting really excited and getting to the phone and saying, "I got it." And then going to mirror myself for like a year later and going high five and going, "Motherfucker, you pulled that off." That's my joy.

• 24:28Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 24:29Speaker 00

  You know, that's, that's, maybe that's my white horse still. I've come to realize what my joy is. I've come to realize I'm never gonna be the guy that, the name's gonna be on an office building. You know, that's, I'm not an accumulator. Sammy Hagar in his book, I think, tells it the best. When he joined Van Halen, he wanted them to, for me to manage him. And they came over to the office and the first thing I said to them, "Listen, if money is your goal, I'm the wrong guy." And he said, "That took care of that meeting."

• 25:03Shane Parrish?

  What's the difference? I mean, I would imagine a lot of people are sort of in this for money versus sort of like in it to serve.

• 25:11Speaker 00

  Oh, I'm in it for money. There's no question I'm in it for money. But that's one of many things. I don't want to overstate it. Everybody's in it for money. All the artists are in it for money. I'm in it for money. It's those choices that you make. For example, the way I met Sammy. Alice was headlining in Orlando, Florida, an outdoor show. We were getting thirty-five hundred dollars maybe, twenty-five hundred dollars as a headliner. The opening act was Montrose. They were getting a hundred and fifty dollars. They had five guys in the van. A hurricane came and blew the stage. The promoter didn't pay anyone. I knew that these guys at a hundred and fifty bucks, that's a fucking killer. That means you're not in a motel, you're all in one room. That night, you're not in the one room.

• 25:56Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  That means they're missing a meal.

• 25:58Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  So I went into Alice and I said, hey, here's what happened. I think we should give them a hundred and fifty, man. And he said, absolutely, whatever you think. As you get bigger, those choices you make every day, why do you pay the lighting guy? Uh, his wife's pregnancy isn't good and he doesn't have insurance. There's choices like that every day that if you're there for the money, the answer's always gonna be no. Everybody has a right to their choices. I don't wanna be a part of the, those no's. I wanna be a part of something where I can be a human being, do my job, win, and have everybody else win.

• 26:39Shane Parrish?

  Why is that important to you?

• 26:40Speaker 00

  It's just, maybe it's my white horse, I have no idea. Maybe it's my father, who always felt that way. You know, I, there was a large time in my life when I used to question it and now I just don't question it anymore. I know it makes me feel good. I, I feel better about myself. Soon after Alice, I became at a point in my life where I didn't have to do other stuff. Which is not to say I don't work hard, I mean, take the weight of a person's life on your shoulders. That's tough shit. Cause they only have one life. You as their manager can destroy that life.

• 27:14Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  Or make it. I got thirty-five lives, I move on. I move right to the next one.

• 27:19Shane Parrish?

  Have you maintained integrity in an industry that seems, at least from the outside, notorious for a lack of integrity, a lack of relationships? You've never had a contract with Alice?

• 27:29Speaker 00

  Never had a contract with any of my artists. The only artist I ever had a contract with was Dan Murray, whose lawyer made me sign a contract. That's the only one I've ever had a contract with. It doesn't mean anything. It's meaningless. They wanna leave, goodbye, no problem. The way I do my business, it's all based on trust. They have to trust me. And I have to trust them. And if we don't have that trust, for me, it doesn't work cause of what I'm looking to get out of it selfishly for me. Which is to be able to win and win in a way that everybody else wins. Win-win. So if they don't trust me and I don't trust them and they don't, why are we doing this for? Yeah. You know? If you need a contract to enforce trust. Yeah, yeah, then you're-

• 28:14Speaker 00

  You have a problem. And it's not only a problem, that creates the problem. Mm-hmm. You've now created the problem. Because now you're getting into technicalities and- And now you're into a place where, fuck, I had it signed to trust, it's a whole, now it's lawyers now. It's a whole different game. And it goes both ways, you know? When you fuck up, if you have a contract, they beat the shit out of you. When it's trust, the guy can say to you, "I know you did the best you tried. I appreciate you trying." That's what I would always say to my artists or they say to me, "I've never had an artist when I failed, backtrack on me." Ever, I don't think. Because we cover it. We cover the failure. What happens when people become famous?

• 28:58Speaker 00

  Um, I think everybody's very different. I think you'd certainly have to figure out a way to live your life through it. It's certainly different because you have all the energy coming out. But Alice, it hasn't changed one iota. Michael Douglas is a good friend, hasn't changed one iota. Both of them have gone through valleys. Where it has just beat the shit out of them, but they've come back to be exactly who they were. So I don't know, I'm not famous enough to really completely understand what that total loss of privacy is all about. But I know that the advice that I give to everyone I've worked with and the ones that are able to do it or are able to later on in life do it,

• 29:41Speaker 00

  is to always think about the person that's out there as a character.

• 29:47Speaker 00

  Put it to sleep. Like, when you, when you go out to dinner and you're Michael Douglas, you gotta be Michael Douglas. The second you get back to the house, zip up the costume, put it in a closet, and go be who you are. Just thinking about it in those terms makes it so much easier. Because when that guy gets a bad review, he's in the closet, fuck him. When you get a bad review, you have to take it personally. You can't not take it personally. Alice is completely not affected by anything that anybody ever does or says professionally.

• 30:23Shane Parrish?

  That sounds pretty unique.

• 30:24Speaker 00

  I don't think, I think more and more. I mean, a lot of the chefs I've worked with, I've seen them having trouble and then just changing that little.

• 30:32Shane Parrish?

  Mindset.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  Just that little mindset.

• 30:35Shane Parrish?

  Talk to me about cooking, that's become like a large part of your life.

• 30:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was.

• 30:39Shane Parrish?

  How did you get interested in that?

• 30:40Speaker 00

  Same kind of way, I had a chef who mentored me.

• 30:42Shane Parrish?

  That was Roger?

• 30:43Speaker 00

  Roger Berger. I had an amazing amount of respect for and love for, can't imagine my life without him. And I saw the way that his class of artists was being treated and the lack of monetizing of it, which led to the lack of respect. And here were some of the greatest artists in the world who were doing the most, other than mothering, maybe the most important thing in the world, feeding us. And they're being treated like cooks, like pieces of shit for these great artists. It just really hurt me. So I decided I had the skills that could change that. It was the same thing I was doing for my other artists.

• 31:25Speaker 00

  Much easier because already the wave, the cultural wave was so evident to anybody who looked at it. You couldn't get into Spago, you couldn't get into Charlie Trotta, you couldn't get into La Cerca. I don't care how much money you had, you could be, you know, the Texas billionaire of all time, you could buy front row tickets for the theater 10 minutes before the show starts, you could be on the 50 yard line at the Super Bowl, you could be behind the home plate at the World Series, you couldn't get a table at Spago. I don't give a fuck who you are. And that shows the man. For what I do, demand is everything. That's 100% of my game, is creating demand. So the demand was already there.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  It was how do you explain to the people who can write the checks that the demand is there and to use them? To create demand for their products.

• 32:21Shane Parrish?

  I always think of this in the sense of there's the value you create and the value you capture. And if those things are out of balance, like to one side of it, you you capture more than you create, you'll go bankrupt or out of business. If you don't capture enough, you won't be able to create.

• 32:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, so fine, I mean, you you have to open the curtain to peek in, but when they peek in, you better have something there.

• 32:44Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 32:44Speaker 00

  Or they're gone forever.

• 32:46Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 32:47Speaker 00

  You know, so um for me, the chefs were easy, it was really how did groups of artists get from a place where they made nothing to where they're billionaires? And they all had the same kind of things in common, which was broadcast. So Food Network, you know, some network became my goal. The first thing I said to the guys in the meeting, I signed everybody the same day. So so what happened was so everything for me is an E jerk. So I got I went with Mr. Vergé on a tour. And for the first time, realized he wasn't getting paid. He was paying his own hotel rooms and places where they were throwing million dollar dinners. It reminded me so much of the chitlin circuit for black artists with Teddy.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  It was exactly the same thing. Was here with these, you know, Stoffers opened a resort in Palm Springs. They called it the million dollar opening featuring Roger Vergé and they had a hundred thousand dollars worth of caviar and Cristal champagne. So we went to check in and they gave him the shittiest room in the hotel. They asked for his credit card for extras. I said, how much are you getting paid for this? He said, oh, Shep, I do not get paid. Are you kidding? I would not ask for money. You're not getting paid, it's a million dollar. We're we're trying to leave, I can't find Vergé. He's at the bar, Stoffers came out with a wine. He's at the pool holding the wine. He has his own wine line, Roger Vergé. Shooting for Food and Wine Magazine.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  I said, excuse me, Mr. Vergé, how much are they paying? He said, oh, Shep, they would not pay me for this. And that happened this whole journey and I got so pissed off. I said to him at the end of the trip that I was going back to LA. I had Kenny Loggins at the Ritz on the Big Island for a corporate affair for one of the car companies.

• 34:36Speaker 00

  And I got so pissed off, I said, "Mr. Vergé, from now on, please have these people call me. This is what I do for a living. I can't, this is after I knew him for ten years. I said, "I can't see you treated like this. I don't care about the money, but I can't see you treated like this. This is just not right." When I got to the Big Island, I ran into Wolfgang Puck. He was doing the dinner for the event that Kenny Loggins was playing at. And I told him the Vergé story, and he said, "Are you kidding, chef? You want to hear my story?" And I said, "Tell me, Wolf," and he said, "No." And I knew Wolf only through Vergé. You know, I knew all the chefs through Vergé. He was doing the same convention we were. We were getting a hundred fifty thousand, plus all expenses, a week at the hotel for the band, everybody.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  He was promised two first-class tickets and a suite. Two days before he left, they called him up and asked him, they couldn't source the food. Could he bring the certain products with him? It came up to a hundred fifty pounds of food. He gets to the airport, it's new coach tickets. He gets to the airport at the Ritz, there's no one to meet him. He calls up the chef, who said, "I'm so sorry, we're very busy, take a cab." Now with a hundred fifty pounds, he's got to take three cabs. He gets to the hotel, there's no one there to pay for the cabs. They don't have room in the refrigerator, so I had to, he said, "They gave me a cart, and I had to walk it a quarter of a mile to the hotel next door." And walk it back this morning. And I said, "How much are you getting paid?" And he said, "Paid. Nothing."

• 36:04Speaker 00

  Ah, now that night, we do the show, and there's a meet and greet for corporates, always. Kenny Loggins had thirty people waiting on the meet and greet. Wolfgang Puck had four hundred women. Kenny's getting a hundred fifty thousand, Wolfgang's getting nothing. So I said to Wolf, I said, "You know, I'm gonna do this thing for Vergé. You guys got to get yourselves organized. This is insane. You can't take this shit." And when I got back to L.A., he called me, asked me to come over to the restaurant. There were, I think, a hundred, or a hundred and ten, or eighty-five of the world's great chefs. Nobu and Thomas Kellers, Paul Pruitt Holmes. And they asked me if I would represent them.

• 36:48Speaker 00

  I told him I would do it pro bono. But they had it, if I could get him a TV network, they had to work for free for a couple of years, two, three. They had to let me go tell somebody I can get all the talent free. But if they get broadcast, they don't need me anymore. And that's what we did. We started an agency called Live Culinary Resources. A person I knew peripherally was, had just left CNN, he started CNN, Reese Schoenfeld. And all the guys worked for free and we got really lucky because what I got them was a 30 second commercial on each of their shows for, to sell a product in lieu of payment. And we developed Emerald Spices for that.

• 37:30Speaker 00

  And that I share. That's the only thing I share in those days. So for me, it was like representing artists. It was, you know, the same basic thing. How do you get above the noise? I think the first gig we did was Dean Fearing for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Dinner when Bruce Springsteen was inducted at the Century Plaza Hotel, which was actually pretty funny. It was the first gig I booked for the chefs. Dean Fearing was the chef at the mansion in Dallas, very, very, very famous, very well respected by all the chefs. And I got him, I think, $50,000, which was the first time any chef Got paid.

• 38:10Speaker 00

  for anything. Money equates to respect. If you work for free for people, you don't get the respect. That's where a manager's job comes in. And to make them do it in a way that they're not going to, where they win also.

• 38:27Shane Parrish?

  What goes into sort of like creating that? I wouldn't call it the celebrity of whatever industry, but sort of like becoming more of a person and a brand than?

• 38:37Speaker 00

  I think everything's different. Killed by association, very important. It's why people pay for these tweets on social media by stars.

• 38:44Shane Parrish?

  Do you think we're going to see more of this in sort of like with the backdrop of counterculture to algorithmic?

• 38:52Speaker 00

  I think it's always the same. I think, you know, there's people who come through in every generation that are artists who see it. You know, you look at Lady Gaga today. She's exactly what Alice was forty years ago. Yeah, I think it's basically the same. Just the economics change, the delivery systems change, but it's the same kind of thing, you know, it's just figuring out how to get attention and then having the real goods behind the curtain. I remember a moment in my life where I would walk past my kid's room. They were playing hip hop music. I opened up the door. I said, would you turn that shit off? And as soon as I said it, I shut the door and said to myself, that's the next big thing. Because that's the way the cycle works. Anything I don't like, they're

• 39:34Speaker 00

  going for it. And so I think now you're seeing guys like Ed Sheeran who are quiet, go out on their own. That's a counterculture to, you know, the Swedish stance mob and because guys like me don't go to the Swedish. But the next generation does. So they have young kids who are seeing their parents.

• 39:52Shane Parrish?

  It's just kind of like cycles.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  It just, yeah.

• 39:55Shane Parrish?

  Over and over.

• 39:55Speaker 00

  I think so. I think much as we think we're in control, the human cycle is still a lot stronger than us.

• 40:02Shane Parrish?

  Was there a moment when you ever felt like a failure or a fraud?

• 40:06Speaker 00

  Every day. Still, I think anyone who doesn't say they look in a mirror and see a schmuck is sort of kidding themselves to me.

• 40:14Shane Parrish?

  How do you get through that? Like, how do you recover?

• 40:16Speaker 00

  I get, I just laugh.

• 40:17Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 00

  Because I know I'm not. I know I've, you know, had a good life and been lucky and do it all. But I still, you know, you're still that, at least I am. And I think most of the people I say it to, or at least the kind of people I'm drawn to are my friends. You know, they just start laughing and say, oh.

• 40:36Shane Parrish?

  If you watch Super Manager, I mean, you seem like you've had, you know, a lot of successes. It doesn't go into a lot of failures. Are there any that stand out to you in terms of particularly?

• 40:47Speaker 00

  I think most of the ones that stand out to me with Alice, because she was the one that I took the most amount of chances with. We've had so many with him. I think in the movie, I tell the cannon story. We got our first stadium date at Thirteenth Stadium in Pittsburgh. I was trying to think of what would Alice Cooper do at a baseball stadium?

• 41:10Speaker 00

  That big gigantic, how do we use that space to do something really unique? And for some reason, getting shot out of a cannon across the stadium sort of hit my head that that would be like an Alice Cooper thing to do. Big, dramatic, I could do by flame light and a big explosion. So I went to Warner Brothers Studios who had built my guillotines and other props for us and there was an old man, they had little half glasses, who did all our stuff and told him this idea and he didn't even look up at me, he said, "What period cannon?" And it was the most confident answer I've ever gotten on a bizarre question. And I told him, we went to a drawer and he pulled out blueprints.

• 41:54Speaker 00

  So I thought I was home, completely confident. "Alice, sweetheart, baby, you're gonna get shot out of a cannon." "Oh, really?" "Cover it, I got it." So he builds this forty foot, three ton or four ton cannon. And the gag was it, the lights go down, the whole band goes to torchlight, except for the drummer who's on a snare. They take Alice in a procession, two guys are holding him, boom, boom, boom, with torchlights. Load him in the cannon. The band goes up steps to where this big fuse is in the cannon. Light the fuse and the tape recorder comes out, really loud fuse sound.

• 42:36Speaker 00

  Alice catapults out, spotlight hits the top of the stadium on the other side and there's Alice. So he goes into a dummy, he's supposed to get in a golf cart to race around and they spend enough time with the shoes to get him around. The problem is the dummy only comes down like two inches and falls on the stage. Alice is in the golf cart, he hasn't quite gotten to the top. When he gets to the top, there's no noise. It's the end of the show. No one's applauding, no one's going crazy, the spotlight hits him, he's right there, it's like completely silent.

• 43:12Speaker 00

  Then he comes backstage and he said, "What happened?" I said, "It was really horrible. This thing came out. We had an explosion the next night. The cannon blew up. Alice was in it. They went to the hospital. But the doctors were going to allow him to do the show from a wheelchair. So we came and we did the stadium show. And people were just like, the newspaper was, "Can't believe he came and played right from the hospital bed. What a great guy this is." So we got through the cannon not working. But with a normal relationship with an artist, that would have, you'd be up all night screaming and yelling, "How could you do this to me? How could you put me out there? I can't believe what you did to me." And I never would have gotten to the next night, or the next night.

• 43:56Speaker 00

  He didn't say one word to me, except, "Is it gonna be okay? I got it covered." He left me alone. And that's where trust, another corner where, you know, especially in failure, if you don't have trust, those are dark moments, when you got a guy slapping your back and laughing and saying, "Okay, well..." That's all you can do is the best you can do. And if you really have done the best you can do.

• 44:20Shane Parrish?

  Were there any moments that you ever felt scared? I mean, in the seventies, wasn't Teddy's former manager before you killed?

• 44:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, scared in different ways. Physically, I don't think I ever felt scared. But scared every day that I'm not gonna pull it off. That's a lot of weight to have people's lives on your shoulders. I still get scared when I'm doing something. But I think that fear is good. It drives you to make sure it's better.

• 44:44Shane Parrish?

  It seems like fear has different effects on different people. Sometimes it's paralyzing and means you won't do anything. And sometimes it's like motivating.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, for me, it's motivating, yeah. Again, it gets back to that, they only have one life each. I make a mistake, I really screw up a life. There's always a scare that, you know, are you doing the right thing? Are you not doing the right thing? Is it gonna work? Especially when you get way out on the edge, is it gonna work is a big question. You're asking a lot of another human to trust you that it's gonna work. For Teddy Pendergrass, for Women Only shows, there wasn't a person in his life who didn't tell him he shouldn't do it. Lawyer told him he'd get sued. Record company told him he'd never sell a record to a mail ever again. There was nobody who wanted him to do it. And he just looked them in the eyes. He said, "This is gonna work." And I said, "This is gonna work, man. This is gonna work. This is what you need. This is the thing that's gonna put you over."

• 45:34Shane Parrish?

  So that was in the seventies when you met Teddy. And at the time, black artists were being suppressed. What was, what was going on for people?

• 45:42Speaker 00

  I don't know if suppressed is the word to use. They hadn't been liberated, I think is a better way maybe to put it. Just like the chefs. A system had developed, probably was greed based, but I'm not gonna be the one to make that judgment. But in the black world, there was a thing called the chitlin circuit. And just like, the reason Wolfgang worked for free at the Big Island. All the chefs were convinced that if they had an expensive restaurant, the only way to keep it full was to go, reach out to Chicago, to Pittsburgh, to Hawaii, to all these places, and promote themselves. And that that was the only way their restaurants back home were gonna survive.

• 46:26Speaker 00

  The chitlin circuit was exactly the same thing. It was record companies, radio stations, and promoters. Teddy would have a single. He wasn't even told. It was just the way it was. If you were a black artist and you had a single, you went to Cleveland, you played a concert for a promoter who was a partner with the radio station. They played your record. That's why you went and did it, not to get paid. You did it because if you didn't go, you wouldn't get your record played. Or that's what the record company would tell you.

• 46:59Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 46:59Speaker 00

  If they didn't have a chitlin circuit, they'd have to pay a fortune to independent promotion men. So what they would do is deliver the artist, free, to the city. They'd get their records played. They sell a ton of records and they wouldn't pay the artist for the record sales anyway. It just wasn't even discussed, it wasn't.

• 47:17Shane Parrish?

  It's just how it was.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  It's how it was. And once we said fuck you, just like the chefs, everyone realized, wait a second. I'm the power. It's not stofers in Palm Springs that they're coming for, they're coming because I'm cooking here. Just like, wait a second, then I come into the club because I'm on Philadelphia Records, they come into the club because they love my music. And a radio station has to play my music because that's what the people want.

• 47:44Shane Parrish?

  And that's changed everything.

• 47:45Speaker 00

  And that just started to change everything.

• 47:46Shane Parrish?

  What have you learned about how to be successful and not hurting other people?

• 47:52Speaker 00

  Try and make relationships about win-win instead of win-lose. And you may not be able to do that every time, but if that's your focus, is to try and make sure the person that you're dealing with gets something out of their transactional. Whether it's emotional, economic, career-driven, don't just take what's on the table and run for cover.

• 48:13Shane Parrish?

  A lot of people talk about win-win, but few people live it. What do you do when you're on the other side trying to figure out if this person's sincere or?

• 48:20Speaker 00

  It depends, two different areas. One is for my artists and one is for me. For me, I'm pretty successful at doing win-win because I don't have to jump into stuff. For my artists, I'm not as successful because there are a lot of people out there that want losers. And you have to make sure you're not one of them, that your artist doesn't want them.

• 48:41Shane Parrish?

  You're how old now?

• 48:42Speaker 00

  Seventy-three.

• 48:43Shane Parrish?

  Seventy-three, you've lived an amazing life so far.

• 48:46Speaker 00

  Oh my god.

• 48:47Shane Parrish?

  Hopefully lots of years left. I was reading the Rolling Stones article before, that came out right after the book. And in there, you briefly sort of like, you were asking a philosophical question, but you never answered it, which was, what's life all about?

• 49:00Speaker 00

  I don't know if you ever get that answer.

• 49:03Shane Parrish?

  Where are you with this pursuit?

• 49:05Speaker 00

  It's an interesting moment in my life. I have a new lady, which I didn't think would happen again. Very much in love with and a very different relationship than I've had before, so that's opened the gateway to a much calmer, personal journey. So I'm sort of in a questioning period. I don't really know what I would like, not that I am in control of it, but if I have choices, what I want life to be in the next next period that I have. I've been getting very focused on Chinese cooking.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  And have never given up the thought of a child, even though I'm seventy-three.

• 49:47Shane Parrish?

  Still got some years left, man.

• 49:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Not very interested in commerce. I see these opportunities go by my eyes that are really nice and I can see that I'm really drawing back from that world. It's been a nice time. I feel like I've moved into sort of fourth or fifth gear. I think I'm happier with myself.

• 50:07Shane Parrish?

  What does that mean, happier with yourself?

• 50:09Speaker 00

  I don't see the schmuck in me as much. I get happier with who I am. We all see our own faults. So then it's like a normal time of life. You just, you know. I don't think you ever stop. And one thing for sure, you never find out the answer of what's it all about.

• 50:26Shane Parrish?

  What does happiness mean?

• 50:28Speaker 00

  I think happiness is just feeling good about the way you're living your life. I think it depends on the moment and particularly the person. There are some people who anger makes them really happy in some sick way. I don't know where those emotions come in. I think compassion is one I understand.

• 50:45Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 50:45Speaker 00

  Much more than happiness as a way of dealing with life.

• 50:49Shane Parrish?

  You met the Dalai Lama through Sharon Stone when you guys were meeting. How did that change you?

• 50:55Speaker 00

  Just fortified my feelings I had picked up through my association with Mr. Virgè as a way in which you can live your life of service from a position of strength, not weakness. When I met his holiness, they were exactly the same person, compassionate to every living thing. I always thought with the two of them, the thing that always impressed me with both of them, although I never discussed it with either one, is no matter what we were doing, no matter what, didn't matter. They always saw the miracle in something before they saw the something. The holiness, he meets so many people. Every time he met a person, you could see that first

• 51:37Speaker 00

  And Mr. Vergé was the same, whether it was a chicken that came in to be cooked that night, or a customer, or a flower, like that the miracle of that essence of that thing came first, and you can't be anything but compassionate to it. So, you know, they were as compassionate to like a piece of paper as they were to their relative. They see the miracle in everything. So that's the way I sort of, that was my takeaway from both of them, and I try and incorporate that. I have not been able to do that in my political conversations.

• 52:18Shane Parrish?

  Do you think it's like a mental habit that you consciously practice until it becomes...

• 52:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, for me, for me, definitely.

• 52:24Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 52:25Speaker 00

  Especially if I'm in a moment where I'm confused, or not feeling the joy, or complaining about something, the flight's too long, that this is, I just stopped, oh my God, my two thoughts are first world problems. And then, what a miracle.

• 52:46Shane Parrish?

  How do you drill yourself out of that? My first two thoughts are first world problems. Do you put that in perspective in the sense of...

• 52:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I just start laughing.

• 52:54Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 52:55Speaker 00

  I'll say to my girlfriend, I said, boy, the service here is long. And then I do, wow, what a first world problem, look at me.

• 53:01Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  Like...

• 53:03Shane Parrish?

  We all catch ourselves doing that, right?

• 53:07Speaker 00

  But I think it's nice to have some, something that, you know, clicks you out of it, it's a good world.

• 53:13Shane Parrish?

  I'm wondering if you could go back and tell yourself, your younger self, any message that you, you want to pass on, what would it be?

• 53:23Speaker 00

  I don't know if I would change anything.

• 53:25Shane Parrish?

  No regrets?

• 53:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I'm sure plenty of regrets. I would like to have children at a younger age, but it just didn't happen. I wish my dad had lived longer, and I have things that I would have liked. So I could have spent more time when I understood who he was, rather than being the kid. I don't know. I mean, there are moments when I think, why did I do too much drugs? Did I party too much? And then I go back to, whatever you're doing, you're supposed to be doing. And if you do it with compassion, and I've always had that stroke in me, I just never knew what it was, and I used to be ashamed of it, instead of proud of it. Right. Just happy I got here. Whatever got me here.

• 54:14Shane Parrish?

  The Knowledge Project is produced in collaboration with Jason Oberholzer and the team at Charts and Leisure. You can find show notes on this episode, as well as every other episode, at fs.blog/podcast. If you find this episode valuable, share it on social media and leave a review. To support the podcast, go to fs.blog/membership and join our learning community. You'll get hand-edited transcripts of all the podcasts and so much more. Thank you for listening.