The Ballad of Dennis and Lenny

Lenny Beer: The first time I met Dennis, we ran into each other by happenstance in the bathroom of Dan Tana’s. The first thing he ever said to me was, “You want a bump?”

Lavinthal: My dad was Lou Lavinthal. When he and his high-school friend got out of World War II, they bought a little record distribution company in Seattle. At that time, the records were shellac, not vinyl. And it was all 78s.

When the music business grew in the ’50s, his business grew. He ended up having a couple hundred people working for him. He became a rack jobber, a one-stop. All the big independent labels went through him. His business was eventually called ABC Record and Tape. And he opened a retail store, The Warehouse of Music.

When I was 15, I started working in my dad’s warehouse. I’d hear records being played around the office and tell my dad’s co-workers which ones I liked. They finally said to me, “Why don’t you go to the radio station and tell those guys why you like them?” That’s how I started doing radio promotion.

I went to work full time for my dad in the mid-’60s. But I started to feel the resentment from the older guys. I was Lou’s kid. I decided I needed to strike out on my own. I started going to L.A. a lot. I try to get a job at A&M, Warner Bros., Elektra. Nobody was hiring me.

In 1968, I’m at the NARM Convention at the Century Plaza Hotel, pitching Howard Stark, who’s running ABC Records, for a job. I’m that desperate. They have one record on the chart that year, The O’Kaysions’ “Girl Watcher.” There’s a guy in the room with Howard who I don’t know. His name is Jay Lasker, he runs Dunhill Records. Their big act was The Mamas & the Papas. Jay said, “Come to work for me. I’ll teach you the business.”

Beer: After I got an MBA from NYU, the only job offer I had was from Clairol, the hair coloring company. They were collecting MBAs. They put me in a room and made me wear a three-piece suit. It was the early ’70s. I had long hair and was a total stoner. After work, I would go over to Record World magazine where my high-school friend Mike Sigman was working.

At Record World, these guys were sitting around smoking dope, they had stacks of records on their desks and they were all happy. I would show up in a three-piece suit after another workday of doing nothing.

Record World was in a softball league in Central Park with all the record companies and the publishers. And I had a particular skill. I could pitch underhand really fast. They wanted to get me on their team as a ringer, so they started giving me assignments: “Go see Bill Withers at the Bottom Line and write a story about it. Then you can pitch for us.”

I saw everybody. David Bowie at Radio City doing Ziggy Stardust. Bruce Springsteen at The Bottom Line. Billy Joel upstairs at Max’s Kansas City. Dylan, James Taylor, Richie Havens...

Soon, a job opened up to be the chart editor at Record World. I was making $20,000 at Clairol. Record World offered me $7,500. I took it. I had to get away from Clairol.

Lavinthal: I told Jay Lasker, “I’ll do anything but radio promotion.” I’d been doing it since I was 15. I didn’t like radio people; they were narcissists. So he trained me in how to press records and order jackets and monitor inventories and international publishing, all these other things. Six weeks after I started there—this is Feb. 11, 1969, the day before my birthday—I walked in the office and Jay threw a box of 45s at me. He said, “Go get this record played or go back to work for your father.” It was a folk-rock song called “November Snow” by a band called Rejoice! that Jay had signed. I drove home and told my wife, “I don’t think I’m going to be home tomorrow for my birthday. I’ve got to figure this out.”

So I called Bill Gavin of The Gavin Report, who I had known growing up. He said, “Here’s what I want you to do. Go to Oklahoma City, see this guy, go to Dallas, see this guy, go to Houston and see this guy.” So I go to Oklahoma City, go to lunch at the radio station and get the record played. I go to Dallas, go out for dinner with the radio guy, get the record played. I go to Houston. The radio guy ends up making me wait a day, said he was out duck hunting. He didn’t add it. I was pissed at that guy for years. But Bill Gavin made “November Snow” the Record to Watch. And we were off to the races.

Beer: The guy who did the charts before me at Record World explained how to do the job. He said, “Okay, we take Billboard, and we take Cash Box. And if a record is #55 here and #54 there, we want to be #49, so everybody will like us.” That was literally how they did it. They didn’t call any radio stations. They didn’t call any stores. And then every Tuesday afternoon, there would be a gigantic line of promo people out the door, and they’d talk to the chart department with facts and figures about how their records were doing, which were all lies.

The first thing I did was put a map on the wall and said, “We need to start calling radio and retailers, get real information and make a chart.” Over time, people started to respect our charts, and they became important. The record companies went crazy, though, because they couldn’t control what they used to be able to control. People were going, “Fuck your MBA! Who the fuck are you?” Jerry Greenberg wanted to get me fired. Neil Bogart wanted to kill me. He had put out a Johnny Carson comedy album. In those days, when you shipped a million copies of a record, the other trades would make it seem like you’d sold a million copies. I talked to the stores, and the Carson album didn’t sell at all. We brought the album onto our chart at, like, #190. And Billboard brought the album in at #10. Bogart saw me at a retail convention. He was jumping up and down, going, “You motherfucker. You motherfucker. I’m going to kill you.” Two weeks later, all the retailers returned the record.

Irving Azoff: Leonard was the first guy who wouldn’t take money to keep my bullet. And I’ve hated him ever since.

Lavinthal: I was VP of marketing and promotion at ABC/Dunhill. Thirty years old and full of blow. I used to buy a quarter-ounce every Monday. Check into the Beverly Hills Hotel on Monday and Tuesday nights and party like crazy while working the Troubadour, the Roxy, the Whisky, Dan Tana’s, Ma Maison… Then stay home on Thursday, recover, and go back to the office on Friday.

Lenny was doing the charts at Record World. He was the nerd. We would have occasion to talk once in a while about one of my records.

Azoff: I met Dennis when he was at ABC and I was managing Joe Walsh. I remember, it was Dennis, Charlie Minor, Corb Donahue and Jay Lasker. Dennis was the most honest person in the building, which was a miracle.

Beer: Eventually, Record World became more and more important. And started making a lot of money. They bumped my pay up to $20,000 after five years. I got them to move me to L.A. And then in ’77 I got a job offer from 20th Century-Fox during the Star Wars, Barry White era. Head of promotion. $65,000. So, I went to work at 20th Century- Fox. The first record they gave me was Dan Hill’s “Sometimes When We Touch.” Which I took to #2. People still make fun of me for it.

Lavinthal: I got fired from ABC/Dunhill in 1976 and I go to work for David Krebs and Steve Leber. They managed Aerosmith and Ted Nugent. I was running their promotion and marketing. They had a label called Silver Cloud, with Rex Smith and Artful Dodger, and Beatlemania, which was their production, opened on Broadway. But their big thing was Aerosmith and Nugent. I was on the tour with them. We were in St. Louis and one of the road managers said, “They’re not going on unless they get some heroin.” And I said, “I’m going home. I don’t want to do this.”

Beer: I was in New York for some meetings, and I flew back with Alan Livingston. He ran 20th Century-Fox Entertainment. He had been the president of Capitol when The Beatles walked down the staircase at LaGuardia Airport. He’s the one that shook their hands. People thought he brought The Beatles to America and he became famous. Fucking idiot. Anyway, I said to him, “I hear Harvey Cooper’s getting fired.” Harvey was the one that brought me in. I said to Alan, “Look, if you’re firing Harvey, you’re probably going to fire me too. So why don’t we just make a deal and I’ll leave quietly.” And he says, “No, Lenny. We know you’re doing a good job. You’re our guy. Don’t worry about it.” The next day, he fires Harvey and then he fires me. I freaked out. I was sitting in the corner of my room with a blanket over me for two days. People knew me from Record World, so I had lots of offers, but I didn’t want to work for a record company. I said, “Nobody’s going to do that to me again.”

One of the calls I got was from Russ Thyret. He offered me the head of promotion for Warner Bros. But I was spooked, I didn’t want to get fired again, so I passed. And then I got a call from Dennis. He said, “I’m out, and you’re out. Why don’t we do something together?” We didn’t know what, but we decided to go in business together.

Lavinthal: By 1978, we’re both out of work. We have lunch at Art’s Deli. We’re talking about going into business together. I’m not sure why, because it’s not like we were close friends. But he said to me, “I’ve got an idea for radio promotion.” And we started MusicVision. My shrink came up with the name.

Beer: I get another call from Russ. Dennis and I go over to talk to him. He says, “Look, I can’t find a head of promotion. Why don’t you guys just do my records? You’ll tell me which ones you can get and just do it.” And we walked into the hottest hot streak in the history of the business.

Lavinthal: Russ hired us, and Warner became our biggest account. They got so hot during that period: The Doobie Brothers, Fleetwood Mac, Talking Heads, Madonna, Prince, on and on. Just ridiculous.

Beer: Dennis was Mr. Outside, and I was Mr. Inside. He was schmoozier. He was getting the records. I had the relationship with the radio stations.

Lavinthal: Lenny talked to the radio stations and the record stores. Talking to the record stores was a big part of our game. What we sold to radio stations was that we knew what the hits were. And we knew what the hit records were because we talked to retail. Lenny was a great promo guy. He knew which songs were hits. A combination of ears and information.

Beer: I knew how to game the system. Radio & Records worked off a system called Breakers. If you got X number of stations to add your record, it would be a Breaker. Once a record was a Breaker, everybody else fell in. When I was at 20th Century-Fox, I had figured out how to get a record to Breaker by going after all the little guys. Nobody had really paid attention to them before. I made friends with all of them and with all of their indies.

Lavinthal: We revolutionized radio promotion by working radio stations in Boise, Bangor and every little bumfuck place, all the P3s, which nobody was doing. And we were hiring other independents to help us work those records, which, again, nobody else was doing. We’re paying other indies, we’re paying guys that work at one-stops, guys that work at record stores. Anybody who could get the song on the P3 station, we would pay. We were quarterbacking records. It was methodical. Lenny would plan it all out: These are the stations we need this week; these are the stations we need next week. We’d drive the record up the back page of R&R high enough that it looked like a hit, and then the big stations would start to play it too.

Freddy DeMann, manager, Madonna and Michael Jackson: Lenny and Dennis were very effective operators. I used them all the time. They were wired into the program directors. I didn’t care how they got it done.

Lavinthal: All of a sudden, we’re making a lot of money. Other label people would call us and go, “I want that too.” They were begging us to work their records.

Beer: Walter Yetnikoff wanted to get his records played. He thought his own promotion guys were idiots. All the label heads did.

Jon Landau, manager, Bruce Springsteen: Walter hired Dennis to run “Hungry Heart.” The sign of ultimate success at Radio & Records was to be a Breaker—getting 50-plus percent or more of all reporting stations in the first week of release. Bruce had never had a hit single. (“Born to Run” became an anthem, but never a radio hit.) But thanks to Dennis and Lenny, “Hungry Heart” became a Breaker. It was not only a hit single but it kicked off Bruce’s string of ’80s singles—”Dancing in the Dark,” “Cover Me,” “I’m on Fire,” “Born in the U.S.A.,” “Glory Days,” “I’m Goin’ Down,” “My Hometown” and “Brilliant Disguise.” Dennis and HITS were there for many of those too.

Lavinthal: Once Walter found out how great we were doing for Warner, he tried to buy us. Walter was interesting and funny and crazy. My first meeting with him, he said, “I’m going to give you a label.” So we started Boulevard Records.

Bill Bennett, promotion executive, Epic Records: Yetnikoff gave all the indies labels. Dennis and Lenny had Boulevard. Fred DiSipio had one with Tommy Mottola called Empire.

Lavinthal: First Walter wanted me to go in the studio and record his shiksa girlfriend, Lynda Emon, to see if she had any game. She did not.

Lavinthal: Boulevard had three acts: Barnes & Barnes, who had a novelty hit called “Fish Heads”; a new wave band from Kansas called The Clocks; and Hughes/Thrall, which was Glen Hughes from Deep Purple and Pat Thrall from the Pat Travers Band. On the heels of Asia, everybody thought they were going to be the next supergroup. They were not.

Lavinthal: By 1985–86, MusicVision had been in business for eight years and we’re doing great. We’re not the biggest independent promoter. DiSipio has more stations than we do. Other guys do too. The guy in Boston, the guys in Chicago… But we’re making a lot of money.

Tommy Mottola: If you wanted a hit, you paid the toll and got Freddy. He was a good guy from my point of view. He always did what he said.

Lavinthal: There are some storm clouds on the horizon, though. Some people at the major labels think they’re overpaying for independent promotions. By now, there are a lot of people doing it. If there’s a radio format, there are independents servicing it.

In January 1986, I’m in New York with Lenny for the first Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony. And DiSipio calls a meeting of the most important independent promotion people, at the Presidential Suite in Helmsley Tower. It’s me, DiSipio, Jerry Brenner from Boston, Jerry Meyers from Buffalo, I don’t remember who else. Fred wants to split up the country into territories, so people wouldn’t argue over who had which radio station. Then somebody said, “And we’re going to raise the prices of what we’re charging.” And I said, “It’s a big mistake. If Mo Ostin finds out that he’s paying us more than he’s paying Fleetwood Mac, he’s going to be pissed.” And they all said, “Oh, fuck him.”

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to us, Brian Ross was stationed in the hotel for NBC News. He was chasing a story about organized crime in the music business.

On Feb. 24, the shit hits the fan. Ross’s report runs on the NBC Nightly News. It’s called “The New Payola,” about a “network” of independent promoters, some of whom had Mafia connections, who took in millions from the labels and did unsavory things to get their records played at radio stations. There’s footage of DiSipio at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame dinner and, Ross alleged, with mobsters at the Helmsley. Freddy had a bodyguard, Big Mike, who looked like a refrigerator. I think he picked Craig Lambert up by his ankles and hung him out a window.

That report was the end of the independent promotion business. We never had anything to do with any mobsters, but that was the end of MusicVision. In a matter of weeks, the labels bailed. They’d all been unhappy about the costs anyway.

DeMann: That was not a happy day for me. I loved all those guys. Scrupulous, unscrupulous, I didn’t care.

Donnie Ienner: I went to Arista in 1983. We always used Dennis and Lenny. I liked them. They weren’t assholes. They never did the shit that other guys did. Neither did Jerry Meyers, neither did Jerry Brenner, neither did Gary Bird. Some of them were rolling with very bad people and some of them let their egos get out of whack. They thought it was never going to end. But the karma train runs 24/7.

Beer: It was heavy. The Feds came after us. They took our books. They were looking for RICO, whether we were owned by the mob. We weren’t. It was just us Jews. They came back and said, “You guys are all toys and games. We don’t really care.” We’d send people television sets at Christmas. No cash, no drugs. They said, “You guys are in the clear.” And we said, “Great, but we have no business now.”

Richard Palmese, promotion executive, Arista/MCA: Everything crumbled. Everybody pulled back from independent promotion. I would not have bet that Dennis and Lenny were going to survive, but they clearly did.

Lavinthal: I didn’t want to work for anybody. I’d worked for people. I didn’t like it. Lenny and I had put out a newsletter called Music Market Update, which was about what was going on at retail. And Lenny had run the charts at Record World. So he said, “Let’s start a magazine.”

Beer: I was going to write it. Dennis said, “What am I going to do?” And I said, “You’re going to be the publisher.” He said, “I don’t know what that means.” I said, “We’ll figure it out.” For many years, he didn’t want to do anything. He would go on vacation for two weeks and then call in and say, “I’m staying for another two weeks,” and he wouldn’t answer his phone. Now he wants to do everything.

Lavinthal: There were plenty of trade magazines and tipsheets—Billboard, Cash Box, Gavin, FMQB—but they didn’t have anybody who understood the record business like I did.

Larry Jenkins, publicist: Billboard were the stuffed white shirts. And Cash Box was hanging onto the fumes of yesteryear.

Lavinthal: From the day we folded MusicVision to the day that the first issue of HITS came out, it was four months. We worked 24/7.

Beer: When we were planning HITS, we took a meeting with Walter. We told him that we’re going to start this magazine and you’re going to pay us through ads, and we’re going to get your records played. Once Walter said yes, we went over to see Dick Asher, who ran PolyGram, and he said, “Well, if Walter’s in, I’m in.” We got everybody, and then Mo was last. Mo didn’t want to. But he finally said, “If everybody else is in, I guess I have to be in.”

Lavinthal: I looked at it as a front so that we could work records and get paid. I went to New York and sold it to the record companies. I told them I was still going to get their records played. I thought the magazine legitimized us. Our pitch was we’re going to inform you and entertain you. We’re going to put your picture in the magazine and make you the stars.

Beer: I think we all got into this business because it’s a little bit more fun than everybody else’s life. I wanted HITS to be fun, and I wanted to have fun, and I wanted to make fun. The whole concept was to make stars of the star-makers by lampooning them.

David Adelson, former HITS editor: I was a 26-year-old managing editor at Cash Box. Dennis and Lenny knew everyone in the music business and one of them was Bob Gibson, a longtime publicist. A gentleman who worked for him, Larry Jenkins, was one of my closest friends. Dennis and Lenny went to Bob and asked for recommendations for who to hire, and he recommended me.

Jenkins: Dennis and Lenny were friends of Bob’s. They needed an editor. I said, “I’ve got the perfect guy for you: Dave Adelson.”

Adelson: I thought I knew something about the music industry after my two years at Cash Box. The minute I got to HITS I realized I didn’t know anything.

Beer: The first person we hired at HITS was Adelson. At the very start, Adelson was so serious. Adelson, who became a total madman, called all the execs Mister. Mr. Davis, Mr. Ostin. One day, he brought me a photo. It was Willie Nelson and Walter Yetnikoff. He said, “I can’t think of a caption.” I said, “Oh, Willie and Wally.” He said, “You can’t call Mr. Yetnikoff Wally!” Adelson ended up being the voice of HITS for years.

Adelson: I remember being so freaked out by Willie and Wally. And Beer’s like, “Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you? Loosen up.” And we certainly loosened up. We loosened up a lot.

Adelson: One of my first days in the office, I remember listening to Dennis yell at a record company executive for not committing to enough subscriptions to the magazine… before it had even launched! I think it was Phil Q. “That’s not enough! You’ve got to double that!” He’s yelling at people I would address as mister and sir.

Lavinthal: We called one executive a schmuck. He went crazy. Crazy. We made fun of Donnie Ienner’s hair and his nose. He was one of our “Beaks of the Week.” HITS caught on because we were talking their language. Alain Levy, Tommy Mottola, they all wanted to be lampooned by us. We were making stars of the star-makers.

Adelson: There was a photo in which Herb Alpert was pictured making a donation to USC. He was standing with a guy from USC and the caption I wrote suggested that the guy was so happy he pissed his pants. Diana Baron, who turned out to be a good friend of mine, called me freaking the fuck out: “What kind of juvenile bullshit is this?”

Beer: There were a lot of people who were skeptical that we could pull it off. David Geffen said HITS is to the record business as surfing is to Kansas. In the L.A. Times, somebody—and I’m pretty sure it was Eddie Rosenblatt—said, “They’re two savvy guys and they might pull it off. But we have to wait and see.”

Lavinthal: We hired Doug Brown as creative director. He came up with the name HITS. Toni Profera was senior editor. We hired a guy named Francis Lambert who created a digital program for desktop publishing. Danny Fields wrote the “Far Truths” column from New York.

Adelson: The first months were… psychotic. The atmosphere was crazy. Everybody was working really hard. We were partying really hard. After a few months, we took two weeks off, and I immediately went home to my place in Venice and got incredibly sick. It was an intense first year. It was an intense second year

Azoff: I gave them money to start HITS. [Editor’s note: Irving is lying.] I’d been involved in that whole payola scam with them, and they extorted me, so I gave them money. [Editor’s note: More lies.] They said it was a loan, but they never paid me back, so consequently I think I still own a chunk of HITS. I haven’t sued them because it’s worthless. [Editor’s note: That last part is true.]

Allan Grubman, attorney: HITS had very important information before anybody else, and they had great gossip. But they always did it in a way that was positive. That’s why they’ve been able to survive all these years. They haven’t made that many enemies.

Adelson: I’m sure there’s a science to the dynamic of Dennis and Lenny, but it was really more of an art form.

Adelson: Lenny is a numbers genius. Dennis, on the other hand, as Bob Gibson told me, could sell ice to the Eskimos. He is the life of the party. He’s a hub. When you put them together, it’s fucking lethal.

Doug Morris, executive, Atlantic Records: Dennis would have made a great record executive. He understands the business, and he understands what motivates people.

Lavinthal: Lenny’s the professor. He became a powerhouse because he could read the market and he knew what the hits were going to be. And he mentored a ton of promotion people. Taught them how to do their jobs.

Beer: Dennis is an all-time Mount Rushmore great. Because of the way he grew up, he has a vision of the industry that’s larger than most people’s. I understand the way records break. Dennis understands the macro of the music business better than anyone who’s ever lived.

Lavinthal: I would do anything for Lenny. Do we socialize together? No. Do we talk every day? Yes. Do we finish each other’s sentences? Yes.

Are we a great team? Yes.