There aren’t many jobs where water gun fights are part of normal business. How about bowling in the office hallway? Or fencing with Iron Maiden’s frontman over the boss’s desk? But this was the wacky reality of the music industry in the 70s and 80s according to veteran rock promoter Paul Rappaport.
“It was a business where fun was part of your job description,” he tells me on a call from his home in New York. “Everybody was a character.”
Rappaport spent over 30 years as a rock promoter at Columbia Records, and too preserve the memory of those crazy times, he has put it all down in a new autobiography, Gliders Over Hollywood. “I want people to understand how nuts it was,” he says of his motive for writing the book. “The business back then was so wild and so wonderful. I didn’t want people to forget it.”
Talking to Rappaport, one is quickly drawn in by his endless anecdotes attesting to the zaniness of the era – like the time some promoters brought a lion into a radio station, only for it to escape onto the streets and wreck a car. But readers will be most interested by his tales of working with rock royalty, from Paul McCartney and The Rolling Stones to Elvis Costello and Billy Joel. With his inside access, Rappaport pulls back the curtain on key moments in their careers – like Bruce Springsteen’s famous 1978 show at LA’s Roxy Theatre. “That’s a story no one knows,” Rappaport laughs. “Bruce doesn’t even know.”
In Rappaport’s telling, the behind-the-scenes logistics of this legendary concert were pure chaos. Staged with just a few days’ notice, the gig was broadcast live on radio and demand for tickets was so high that it caused a riot. To pull it off, Rappaport endured “three days and nights of no sleep”. Favours, physical fights, and fistfuls of cocaine all played their part in bringing the show together. But the audience saw none of that. All they experienced was Springsteen onstage in his element. Such is the art of promotion.
For Rappaport, that art is similar to the illusionist’s craft. “I was lucky enough to study with one of the greatest magicians in the world,” he explains, referring to sleight-of-hand artist Tony Slydini. For two-and-a-half years, Rappaport studied close-up magic with him in his spare time, learning several principles that he would later apply to his day job in rock promotion. “One of the things he taught me was that the audience will believe what you believe.”
It was this mindset that enabled Rappaport to pull off some of the greatest magic tricks in rock promotion history. He is especially proud of his work on Dylan and the Dead – a critically reviled live album that he somehow spun into a gold record.
“I don’t know how an album between Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead could be so bad,” Rappaport recalls. “But it was.” Tasked with turning this dud into a hit, Rappaport flouted the conventions of rock promotion. “Usually, we bring music to radio stations early,” he explains. “But I told my guys not to take that record in until the day of release.”
In the meantime, Rappaport fuelled the excitement for an album only he knew was a clunker. “I was taking out giant ads in the trade magazines,” he recalls. “I was hyping the hell out of it. And when the record came out, the magic trick took place – every station put it straight into heavy rotation.” By the time the programmers caught on, the album had already sold half a million copies. “It was a gold record and then it just disappeared,” Rappaport says proudly. Just like magic.
Some of his illusions hewed closer to the spectacle of stage magicians. There was the time he fired an “Argon laser cannon” over the LA skyline to synchronise with a Blue Öyster Cult radio release. “It was so powerful that it shot for over 30 miles,” Rappaport recalls. “It was positively unreal, and so scary that our first inclination was to immediately shut it off.” There was also the time he painted an entire building pink, floated an inflatable pig over the top, and held a radio interview with Pink Floyd on the roof. “It stopped traffic,” he chuckles.
In pulling off these attention-grabbing antics, Rappaport earned the friendship of his artists. In fact, Pink Floyd were so pleased that they invited him to play guitar with them onstage. “I was in Pink Floyd for seven minutes,” Rappaport remembers. “That was probably the most beautiful gift I ever got in the industry.”
To promote the band’s next tour, in 1994 Rappaport planned the greatest stunt of his career. He leased “the biggest airship in the world”, emblazoned it with psychedelic colours and sent it flying across America. When it landed, mute pilots descended to hand out mysterious cards: “The Pink Floyd airship is headed towards a destination where all will be explained.”
Such extravagant displays were possible in those days. The industry was awash with cash and open to taking chances, according to Rappaport. In his book, he speaks of unlimited expense accounts and endless supplies of Dom Pérignon. And in our conversation, he compares the revelry and camaraderie to the mythical court of Camelot.
It’s easy to get caught up in Rappaport’s unbridled positivity for that era. But, then again, he is a professional promoter. So, I ask if there was a dark side to the industry, noting how the book details his introduction to cocaine on his first day at Columbia – while still a student.
“When I tried cocaine, I loved it,” he admits. “My diet for three months was cocaine and Cap’n Crunch [breakfast cereal]. At the end, I looked in my bathroom mirror and I was very white and pasty. I decided I was going to have to give up one of them – either the cocaine or the Cap’n Crunch. It took me a week to decide which.”
Not everyone got off the drugs so easily though. “A lot of people did way too much cocaine. Some people died from it,” Rappaport acknowledges. “I don’t want to name names. But I can think of two really big stars that just didn’t quite become what they could have because of cocaine abuse.”
When I ask if there were any stories he couldn’t include, he alludes to some seedier moments. “This is not a kiss-and-tell book,” he clarifies. “There were things I saw on tour that I would just never write about. It’s nobody’s business. It’s like dirty laundry to me. I’m not about that.”
Despite my prodding, Rappaport remains adamant. “There were way more good times than dark times,” he insists. “The record business was a big family.” And they all looked out for each other too, he emphasises. “When Columbia Records made money, a lot of that money filtered down – all the way to the secretaries. Everyone felt it.”
If Rappaport is cynical about anything, it’s the way the industry is run today and how those values of fellowship have been lost. “Look at these big corporations,” he says. “These people are billionaires. But are they filtering down their money? Nope. That’s sad to me because your people should be treated like assets.”
He feels the industry has shaped the music too – for the worse. By the end of his career, Rappaport noticed how the “music business was becoming the money business”. In his memoir, he writes, “I have a special dream that perhaps one day we might get back to making art the priority in our music business.”
Such wistful nostalgia makes Rappaport’s Camelot analogy particularly apt. For him, it seems, that heyday of rock represents a kind of mythological golden age. Looking at the roster of artists he worked with – Springsteen, Dylan, Pink Floyd – it’s hard to disagree.
But as that era recedes into the past, becoming fable and legend, we must ask if it was truly the Arcadian age we remember. Or, like all great acts of rock promotion, was it just an illusion.
‘Gliders Over Hollywood: Airships, Airplay, And The Art Of Rock Promotion’ by Paul Rappaport (Jawbone Press, £16.95) is out on 28 March
