Elliot Roberts

Speaker OK, let’s start off start at the beginning. How did you meet David? What was your first impression of him?

Speaker First, let me start by saying I’m really grateful for the opportunity to talk about my relationship with David because there was no one more pivotal or more important in my life than David at the time. He came into my life and I was living in the Bronx at home with my parents. I was a page at NBC. And two friends of mine, Jeff Walt, who is my next door neighbor across the street in the Bronx, and a guy named Hal Ray, who was an agent at William Morris at the time. Help me get a job at William Morris in the mailroom. From NBC, I went to the William Morris mail room, and when I got there, David had already been a legendary figure. He had been in the mailroom three months previously to my arriving at the mailroom. And he was already I think he was second head of television programming.

Speaker And and everybody was talking about David. And we were four days apart. David and I are the exact same age. So at that time there was probably 22. And Hal and Jeff were his real only friends at William Morris at that time because everyone else was afraid of David.

Speaker They were all in their 30s and 40s and David was 22 and he became, in a sense, a mentor to me and that we became very, very good friends. I remember the very first time I went to David’s house. We were in the courtyard outside of his house and he said, Elliot, I want you to hear this is Buffy Sainte-Marie record and there’s a song you have to hear.

Speaker And we went up to David’s apartment, Jeff Hall and I, and he played us. Now that the Buffalo’s Gone, which is this song of Buffy Sainte-Marie. And at the end of the song, you see, he was crying literally, and he was so moved by that song and so passionate about his music. And and that was really an incident that defined our relationship from really from then on. And that music was that important to me as well. And I think he and I oddly enough, though, he was always in a mentor position to me at that time because I was always seeking his advice because he had been through what we were both going through and I had not been through it. And so I I really valued the relationship that we built up from the early days. Then I started working with Johnny and this was much later when we became friends. And during this period, neither of us were in the music business. I was still at William Morris and he was in television packaging. And then gradually over that year, I started working with Joni Mitchell. He started working with Laura Nyro. And again, we all started doing things together and following each other and learning from each other. There were no rules then we had a problem. I had a problem getting a record deal. She had been turned down by all the New York companies. And a guy named Andy Wickham in Los Angeles wanted to hear her demos. And David said, oh, you do what you can get, get out there.

Speaker And I did OK. Yeah, we just need to block you. OK? Yeah. Show a little film or something.

Speaker You know, I don’t have one problem. Oh, really?

Speaker It was great, you know, but he didn’t remember a lot of things. So I would love you to set the stage for when you last. Why was he already a legend? What was he doing? How did he get the job?

Speaker Because, well, you know, some of the stories are well known. The UCLA story, I’m sure he’s told you that.

Speaker I mean, have you heard that?

Speaker He didn’t really tell us that story. Someone did. Anyway, let’s get not.

Speaker Well, I think I’m going to leave that to David, to be honest. I think that’s something that he should tell. I can tell you that we used to go in early in the morning and steam open memos. See that again when he said, let’s meet there. We would meet early in the morning.

Speaker And David on his original application said that he was a UCLA graduate and he found out later on that they actually checked. And once he found out that they checked, we started going in early in the morning to intercept the letter from UCLA. But while we were doing that, we were able to read a lot of interoffice memos and learn exactly what went on in the agency business and how it all worked. You only really when you were an intern there or when you were in the mailroom or an assistant, you had some understanding and there was a specific training role of who was in the business. And you learned who the players were and how to how to deal with them. But the one thing they didn’t tell you is the interoffice politics, which normally you needed years to learn. But David had an accelerated way of learning it, which is to read everyone’s memos and see what everyone was doing. And everyone thought that that was his motivation, but his actual motivation was to find this UCLA letter.

Speaker Were you ever. But I would go with him some mornings and we would meet. And I was just always such an adventure.

Speaker It was always such drama that we were able to build into just doing what we were doing, and when I went to California at first, forgive me for leaving William Morris, but when I went to California with Joanie, we still were in touch all the time. David was still in New York at the agency. And then I would meet Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. And that that all started forming. And all that time I’m talking to David every day and on what’s going on out in California and what I’m doing and and getting his counsel and his advice and telling him what he better get out here.

Speaker And if this is what is happening, if I can just take it off the hook, just leave it busy work. Stop. Just keep plodding.

Speaker Yeah.

Speaker Just leave it off the hook. Where were we still? Yeah.

Speaker Oh, yes, yes, yes, and I think I did a fabulous lot, frankly, so I didn’t do a very good thing.

Speaker Now, there were a group of you that you all kind of hung out together.

Speaker There were. There was Scott.

Speaker Yeah, Jeff and Larry Kurzon, Hal Ray and Jerry Brant. And these were all the what we thought of them as the young lions of the agency. It was really turning them around.

Speaker And I’m just wondering, does this is one thing? Yeah.

Speaker Or maybe it’s in their little water, it could be the washer dryer, rather, or the washing machine second element.

Speaker I think that this house pretty well. Yeah, there’s a lot of noise in it, particularly people move around. So I think everybody should not move around. OK.

Speaker OK, I’m sorry about that.

Speaker Where were we? Look, I’m telling you, oh, there was a little clique of the young guys, again, that the William Morris agency was in a big transition that, you know, rock and roll and rock and roll music and the rock and roll business were just forming.

Speaker And so they had a very low place on the totem pole at William Morris. And most of the music agents were isolated and treated with some disdain that were the young rebels.

Speaker They had longer hair and there was some speculation that some of them were smoking marijuana and they were rebel. They were young rebels within an agency format. And so they really were set apart.

Speaker And that small group that we were in, we were all music agents, except for David, who was in the TV agency, but he was our age and he just fit in with all of us better. And again, he was sort of a mentor, mentor to the whole group. How was he a mentor? Well, both in action. He was very, very out of the box for the most part. When we started, I was from the Bronx. We were all pretty passive. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. And that was sort of our attitude. And it was not David’s attitude. David’s attitude was, let’s try to do something different. Let’s do something no one’s ever thought of. What would that be?

Speaker And then we’d come up with it and execute it. And that was always his form. That was always it was not a matter of passive aggressive. It was a matter of let’s come up with things that haven’t been done before while we have the opportunity. And at that point there was the opportunity because the business was just for me. And so there were no rules at that point that we were actually setting all the rules for both. There was no performing. There was not a set up yet. There were no promoters in all the cities. So you were dealing with club owners for the most part or were gangsters? There was the record companies were very stable and rock and roll was a business that was manipulated. And where all the contracts were very against an artist, they were all very punitive for the most part and paid very, very small rates.

Speaker Took your masters, took your publishing and. We thought this is an opportunity to represent people.

Speaker And do it a totally different way. Totally unique way and and we did and we did that when we weren’t even together yet. That was David’s input into both the group and into me as we went on the journey, which really didn’t culminate for another two years in California. But but we still had set the standards of what we wanted to do and what we were as people then. And we had a continuity to it. David and I, even though we were on opposite ends of the coast, spoke daily and we still had a plan and we’re still executing the plan even though we were on different coasts.

Speaker So when David finally came to California and finally we finally cornered me and said, let’s merge, I’m going to become your partner, which is really what happened. It was a joy for me. I mean, it was.

Speaker I can’t tell you that, OK, because this is a really interesting, interesting period before we go forward. I want to talk a little bit about.

Speaker I’m so glad you told me your story. Thank you.

Speaker It happened again with Jackson.

Speaker I’ll tell you that story in a bit just in terms of the chronology here. I’m not want to be a slave to chronologies, no, no, no, no, my memory’s as vague as one could be with you.

Speaker You actually left William Morris and went to Chartoff Lincoln before you went out to California, right? I didn’t get that important. But you were in New York when you met when you went to your job and that changed your life?

Speaker Well, yeah, I had just been hired from one of the great advantages of being a William Morris is that everyone else in the entertainment business at that point in time would be looking for William Morris employees as people who really understood and knew what was going on. That was a great training ground and it really was. And they would post and the William Morris locker room in our intern locker room post jobs. And one day there was a post from Bob Chouteau, from Irwin Winkler, who had a company called Chartoff Winckler, and they were looking for managers. And I answered I went up there and interviewed for the job and I got the job and I thought I was a manager. And what I didn’t know at that particular time was that Bob and Irwin, Chartoff Winkler had just made a deal with MGM and were producing the Elvis Presley Goes to Hawaii movie. And we’re moving out of management and we’re moving into MGM studios and we’re negotiating a long term production deal at MGM. And they were looking to break up their company, which I didn’t know that I was hired because I think they hired the most unqualified, inexperienced person they could find. And they had six or seven comedians. And Buffy and I had always been a huge fan of Buffy’s, actually. David had turned me on to Buffy. But from that point on, we were real big fans. And Chartoff Winckler managed Buffy. So they had a bunch of comedians got Hendron, Arlit and.

Speaker I’m still around Marre Cherian and.

Speaker Um.

Speaker It was a great experience, but I I remember a hundred dollars used to call me, call me in and we’d have these meetings and one day Jerry Stiller and Anne Marie came in and they went, oh, Elliot, Elliot, tell us what to do with our careers. And that was, in a sense, a sense of humor. I had no idea what to do with the careers.

Speaker I’d never worked with a comedian before and I had no idea. But they had Buffi. And so I gravitated to Buffy. And Buffy said to me one day, Joni Mitchell is playing at the Cafe Agogo. And I knew that Buffy had just recorded a song of Joni called Song to a Seagull, which was this great song. And I said, Oh, great, I’ll go down there. And I went down that night with her last night. Joni’s last night and. I can’t describe what the experience was like hearing her set, but I went up after after it and I said I’ll I’ll do anything I can to work with you. I’ll do anything. I’m a manager and I work with Buffy. And Buffy told me to come down here and and Joan was leaving the next day to Detroit, Michigan, on a tour. She had booked a four week tour, and she did it all herself. She booked it herself with club owners. She traveled with herself. There was no one else whether she just had a guitar and went. And I said, let me go with you. And we met at the airport the next morning in Detroit. And I did a month tour with her. And at the end of the tour, she asked me to manager. And I went up to explain to Bob and Irwin that I wanted to quit and then I was going to go to California with Joan and they were amazing about it. They said, we get it. We’re going to be out there. You can use our offices, we’ll help you. And they were really most gracious. And to this day, Bob and Irwin have remained really good friends.

Speaker So it was such a second that I was saying to a single.

Speaker Yeah, that Buffy had recorded it, thought it was several, you know, a circle game was Tom Rush.

Speaker I have gotten that story. He said he that simple thing. And he called Buffy and said, God, I love love my favorite song, I suppose.

Speaker Yeah, I did. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker She recorded as well the the the one that most people I knew at that point was. Yeah. And Tom Rush to circle the to was the big radio recording of Circle.

Speaker Yeah. I know. You just don’t want to forget this one because we want, believe William Morris all together. But can you just tell us a couple of really wonderful anecdotes about what happened between Morris when you guys were there? We need to set the stage a little bit about how David got his beginnings.

Speaker Well, you know, by the time to be honest, by the time I was in the mail room and by the time I left the mail room, I think David was head of TV packaging by that time and had made the Thomas deal with Danny Thomas production company. And that was huge. Then television in those days had only a few networks and Danny Thomas had a bunch of primetime shows and it was a huge coup for David. And and again, it was something that was totally out of his element that all that took creativity to get to put together, to sign, to sign the Thomas spelling and.

Speaker So his cachet within our group with it was very high. We all knew that David had a style and panache, that creativity that we didn’t we were building to, that we realized you can be creative in this. It is a creative industry and the smartest and the brightest are going to be the most successful. And it wasn’t the most political or, you know, it just change the rules for all of us by watching his progression is really what it was. It was just he wasn’t political. He didn’t have friends higher up, everyone higher up as afraid of him. But he did it because he was more creative. He was a little smarter and not smarter. These weren’t smart men. He was just willing to lose. He was willing to take a chance. And he did fail occasionally. But again, the incremental failures matched against the large successes are just so minimal that you don’t think of them on any level. But so we all gained from that. We all saw there was a different path. We could take the different path and be equally successful.

Speaker Now, you both came, he was from Brooklyn, you were from the Bronx, and neither one of you came from a background that would have naturally led you to entertainment, I would imagine, when you were talking together and you were, you know, going out and talking about your futures and plotting it, let’s do something special. Let’s do something new. Did you talk about your childhood? Did you talk about where you came from?

Speaker No, we never had to. I always knew that David and his mom were close and what his background was and David always knew what mine was. Our parents were both immigrant parents who did not have a clue of what David was doing or what I was doing. Didn’t really understand how successful we were when we were or didn’t know the path. So we had a lot in common from day one. Again, even when David was on TV and I was still in the mailroom.

Speaker David was fast becoming my best friend and we had no idea that we would be in business with each other or that our paths would continue to meld and metion. But that really wasn’t a thought that we just gravitated to each other. As I was just moved out of my house, he had just moved out of his house. I was living in the village. He was living in Lower Manhattan was our first forays out. And we just naturally gravitated to each other, I think we both saw each other’s strengths and weaknesses and there was.

Speaker No paranoia on either one, and that was important in those days because we were making relationships that would last for a very, very long time and we didn’t know why yet.

Speaker And let’s talk about Laura Nyro for a moment, David. I understand the story, he was now an agent and he went out to Los Angeles. I think you were already there. And one of those trips, somebody I can’t remember. I told him, maybe told him the story about Laura Neuros bombing at Mojave and that she was hiding out in New York and he heard her music. And what I’ve heard is he raced back to New York, found her and said, let me be your savior. Do you know the story of how he got to know?

Speaker Yeah, that’s sort of how the story is. And then we used to go to Laura’s house all the time. Tell me the story.

Speaker OK, you know, I think and again, this you should have you should hear this from David. Not for me, but David was in love with Laura, and I think she was in love with David actually at that point. And we used to go to David and I would go to Laura’s house and she would play the piano and we’d, you know, go out and eat or play around or she would torment us and he’ll tell you the story about he and I went to her house. She invites us over to the house. Come on, let’s hang out. We get there and she won’t let us in. And we’re outside of the house, her apartment, begging her to please let us in and stop torturing and tormenting us in a good way.

Speaker It was all in a good way.

Speaker And she was just the most fun and such a great artist. And at the same time, I was working with Joni, he was working with Laura. And there was so many similarities in both personalities and the two of them. Well, you loved that she was wild. And she’s an incredibly sexual and one of the sexiest women I’ve ever met. And she was not an attractive woman, but there was no one sex here. I mean, when she started playing and she would throw her hair back and she just took on this persona that was just so unique and so powerful and so sensual. And she was like that off as well. She was a real girl.

Speaker Laura loved being a woman. And and I think she just really captured David’s heart. He was obsessed by her. He did everything he could for her in every way. He tried to protect her every way he could in his mind for what he can do for her. How did he describe her music to you when you talked about. It was a passion he always used the word passion to describe her music because she was so passionate about it and again, very similar to Joan and that they were both considered themselves artists.

Speaker From the very word go, and so we thought we were very lucky and again, meeting those two girls first as the first two clients we both had that David had and that I had it, when people ask me, even though I’ve been with Neil Young now 41 years, who’s the biggest influence and what’s the biggest influence in your career and how you forged a company and why you fought for artist rights and why you’ve never had contracts with people. And and it was Laura and Joni, and they actually shaped how we thought the business should be run and how we thought artists should be treated.

Speaker You know, when I think about it as just, you know, journalists, historians, documentarian. I’m blown away. I mean, two of the greatest female singer songwriters, the. Our century and you have one.

Speaker And you know the history, you know, the truth is, I think even at that time we sense that we knew we were lucky, we knew we were working with that. Our calling wasn’t to work, to be BS, to be worker bees in a hive, that we had a slightly higher calling. I know this sounds bizarre, but I really think that we both felt that way.

Speaker I don’t know, it’s people like him.

Speaker Everybody, this is heavily a house, and if I can sit here and be not move you off, said, don’t move, don’t move, because I’m hearing every single sound.

Speaker Sorry.

Speaker It’s OK. I just forget where I am. No, know, it’s just I really I this is something I don’t want to do themselves. OK, so come on, where are you going to get a.

Speaker OK, just because you might as well.

Speaker And you know, another thing about this period, you have to remember that I remember now is that we were obsessive, we had no relationships, we had no girlfriends.

Speaker You know, he was in love with Laura, you know, I was committed to Joan, we were both just left our homes in Brooklyn, in the Bronx and were living in Manhattan. We just moved out. What then? We just got to I just got to California. David was still in New York.

Speaker And so we were on this odyssey and we understood it.

Speaker We related to it when it happened. We knew we were lucky. And we followed the muse and tried to have both Jonah and Laura as a muse was.

Speaker I don’t know what the right expression would be other than.

Speaker God sent I think there’s something to that. I mean, you must have and love that you said you’ve sensed it because. No, you couldn’t. I mean, they were they were both such geniuses, and here you were and but. And I would love you to talk about this, despite the fact that we look back and we know it and you knew it, they weren’t easy sells neither one.

Speaker No, it was very hard. Again, it was a strange period of time in music.

Speaker You know, rock and roll was coming in. The folk movement had died. Singer songwriters were not what was happening at any level. At that point. It was pretty well Tin Pan Alley still.

Speaker And it was a hard sell.

Speaker It was hard to get a record deal. David made a record deal for Laura at Columbia, and I had a problem getting a record deal for Joni again. And we were turned down by MGM Universal, all the major companies in California at that in New York. At that time, there was only one company in California, MO had just started Reprise Records with Frank Sinatra, oddly enough, and one of the guys, Andy Wickham, reprise New Joni and knew that all these people were recording her songs.

Speaker And had heard that I had a demo of Chance and invited me to come out and I went out and I played it for Ian Moe and. And then we came back and then we went out there permanently and never came back to New York. Is it true that Laura was gay?

Speaker Not that I ever knew she was one great kisser, but whether she had affairs or not, that was in a book that was maybe in later periods of time. In that period of time, I would have thought that none of us was sexual.

Speaker Sex was always a cool thing, but it was not we were not these 20 year old hyper driven let’s have sex tonight, we were much more obsessed with the opportunity that we were both given. I mean, I know that I sensed that I won’t speak for David, but I can tell by his actions that he more than sense it because I followed his lead, that we were in this unique life situation, that we had a chance to do something that would be literally that would change our lives. So, I mean, I don’t remember even dating then. I’m sure I did. But it was not an obsession on any level. The obsession was working with Joni and getting it to the next level and figuring out how to do that. And again, we made a ton of mistakes. We were learning about what record deals were and what a publishing deal was. And we were in the middle of a huge learning process, negotiating and sitting down, dealing with lawyers and people who have been doing this forever. And again, neither of us had been to college. I mean, I had been at Bradley University and he’d been at UCLA. I was kicked out for leading a civil rights march. He was kicked out. He just left. And so we were on this continual consistent learning curve of learning all of these businesses that we were responsible for doing.

Speaker So it really wasn’t driven by and I think Laura was the same way. I don’t think she had in the period that we were taught that we’re talking about, and I don’t think she had any. Gay experiences, I don’t think David did. I don’t think, you know, I don’t it wasn’t a priority.

Speaker Crosby. David Crosby was quoted.

Speaker They’re saying that, Laura. Was a window into something at that gathering that was not primarily about money. This is a really interesting statement. Well, again, I think he was in love with her, but there’s more to it than. There’s something I’m trying to get you.

Speaker David, I have to say this to David has something of a difficult time of putting himself back in that period and being able to remember the young guy who heard war in Europe first way.

Speaker And something touched him about that music that.

Speaker It’s I I don’t think you can separate the two, the feelings he felt for her as a 22 year old who has not had up until that point, nor had I that many relationships.

Speaker So I don’t think you can discount or. Dismiss the fact that he was in love with her or that.

Speaker He had feelings that were new and were different as I was having it that same period of time, we were in our early 20s, I mean, I think we were both 22 is what we’re talking about right now.

Speaker And there were a lot of feelings, a lot of growing up.

Speaker I’m talking about the music, no doubt.

Speaker Well, again, you can’t separate the music from the soul, the music, her music touched him in a place that he hadn’t been touched before, the same way he had been touched by Buffy, the same way he had been touched later on. And I told you the story that he called me one day he went, oh, God, I’ve got this demo from this kid, Jackson Browne.

Speaker He sent me a demo. Elliott, when you come in tomorrow, I’m going to play this song. Adam was a friend of mine. You’re going to cry. And he was so moved by that. And I walked in in the morning and he he had it in the machine and he was excited to play that as any any deal that we had made. And I had seen that in him and a couple of times. So I don’t think he could separate Laura and her writing and her sexuality and the emotion that she brought out of him and how she counted on him. And she counted on him a great deal in that period. She was, again, slightly damaged from Monterey and wasn’t in demand live and her concerts didn’t do well initially.

Speaker So I do think she brought out feelings and David that he just hadn’t had before. She awakened feelings that he hadn’t had before. And, you know, only David could answer to this. But I think she was his one of his first loves. And it was a combination of her as a woman. She was this very, very beautiful in a different kind of a way. You look at a picture and you might not think she’s very, very beautiful. She wasn’t that tall. She’s sort of short. She’s like five, three. And she was a little heavy and her features were very idyllic.

Speaker And what it you to do for her career?

Speaker Oh, everything. He made her publishing deal and made her independent. Actually, he gave her an independence. And with that independence came another level of creativity of not having to write or write for a mainstream or write for anything. She was able to then just purely write for herself and what she felt. And and that was the gift that David gave her. And I think that was what he was most proud of at that time.

Speaker Were you at the Carnegie Hall? Yes. Can you talk about that was sort of a triumphant return.

Speaker It was. We had done a concert actually a month or two before that. It was the day that Martin Luther King was killed. I don’t know if he tells the story, but Joni and I went with he and Laura. The four of us were in a limo going up to I think it was Pennsylvania. Laura was doing one of her first shows. And David was a nervous wreck because he had never managed I mean, he had made all her deals and had made her own independently, financially independent. But he didn’t know anything about lights and sound and what to do with the gig. And, you know, so he asked us to go and we all went together.

Speaker And it happened that in the middle of the ride, as we were in traffic going through town, I think it was through Philadelphia news spread about Martin Luther King being assassinated. And we went and played that show, it was the first show, but I remember there was a bunch of people around the limousine and people were crying and. Was pretty horrific, and that was actually the first time we all went to see Laura alive with that show and and we did the show and then we all talked about it on the way back and. And it was to then for David to from the very beginning to Carnegie Hall, which was in fact a tremendous triumph, and one of the great shows and the reviews to that show, I remember were just inspiring just to read. Never mind. See the show. It was a great.

Speaker It was a great triumph, is it true that it was David’s idea to shoot her in this very, you know. A lot of black around your spotlight and put a rose on the piano. Yes. Can you tell?

Speaker Well, it’s actually a thought. She always like to wear black. And it was just one of those things that David, in fact, is a picture of David in the pool with a rose in his mouth. And if you know that picture that David was pulling roses out of a lot of places at that time and it was his idea, he said, wow, wouldn’t it be great if you just had the rose in the light? And again, he was a big part of Laura. He was a big part of Laura’s creativity in that she balanced everything off of of David.

Speaker I’m jumping ahead a little bit now to leave the subject of more of it when he started asylum and she did not sign with the label. OK, can you talk about that?

Speaker It was again, David really should speak to this because only he knows it was a dark time for us. It was a very depressing time.

Speaker He was losing the love of his life. It wasn’t just about her coming to asylum and losing her.

Speaker As far as the talent we already had, asylum was already a pretty cool. And we already knew the artists we had. We already had the Eagles and Jackson and Tom Waits and we knew we were forming. I mean, we already had a lot of demos, people we wanted to work with. But I think he did get his heart broken at that point when she didn’t come and their relationship suffered, and I think there were a lot of people who were telling her that bad things and giving her bad advice. Because by by that time, it was no longer the four of us, Johnny and I and and David and Laura. By that time we had a lot of people in our lives. We had a large Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and a lot of other people. We had a larger company. And Joan and. And so there wasn’t that time the I think they just grew slightly apart in that.

Speaker We were doing so much more than you just didn’t have that one on one anymore and the relationships, as you know, and all your lives, when you get to your 20s and in your 30s and people have relationships, they change. You have partners. Phone calls are less those 11, 12 and one o’clock, two hour phone calls become, well, I’m now with someone you really shouldn’t call after 10:00. We’re sleeping and life changes. I mean, things change, circumstances change.

Speaker And I think unfortunately and that was a really hurtful time, there were a lot of there was a trust issues. There were a lot of people who were putting David down to Laura. And I think that Laura accepted any of it when David was so and in love with Laura. I mean, there was nothing that he wouldn’t that he wouldn’t do for her or protect her from from David’s point of view, someone else would look at it and perhaps see it differently. But, you know, I personally couldn’t see how you could. But but I think the fact that Laura stopped trusting him 100 percent. Why did you stop?

Speaker Again, I think people around her where, you know, the publishing deal this and your record deal that, and you should have your masters and you should have maybe a higher royalty, or I think that once you aren’t spending that much time in the relationship, these little things creep in. And I think there was just a little bit of distrust that crept in. I really don’t know how else to explain it, to be honest with you, because there was no tangible reason for it. But having had relationships that have ended after 20 years or 10 years, I know how it happens. And it’s always sorrowful, but it does happen.

Speaker So, yeah, I think it was it was, I think the biggest.

Speaker But it broke his heart. Yeah, without question. It was again, I think it was his first great love.

Speaker Oh, um, OK, now.

Speaker Blah, blah, blah, blah, blood on your chin to find.

Speaker OK, now you’re in California, you’re getting this record deal for Joni and you’re talking to David every day. When they call him up and he said, you’ve got to come out here, they’re band starting left and right, right.

Speaker That whole music scene right after I went out with Joan the very first day in the studio, and David Crosby was producing Joan’s first album, the very literally the very first day in the studio. John and I are in the studio and an engineer casually mentioned the Buffalo Springfield are in the room next door. And Joan says, Oh, Eliot, you’ve got to come with me and meet Neil. You’re going to love this guy. She knew him from Toronto and they had been friends from the folk circuit and they’d spent a lot of time together. So we went that after jam session, we went into room B. Knock on the door and the Springfield are in there and Neil’s in there and. We go out to dinner that night and I’m living on the floor at B Mitchell Reid’s house at this time, and Neil had just taken a house with this woman and QIO for rent and he says, hey, you can rent the room at my place if you know you’re sleeping on the floor. Anyway, within like three weeks, I was working with the Springfield and I could tell they were breaking up. And I had already started a. Felt that Neil and I were really in sync on just about everything that we thought and we thought we were starting to have a very, very close relationship. And I’m talking to David all the time and their break, you know, and then Crosby and Stills, Stills and I have a good relationship and they’re starting and then Graham comes into town one day. We all go to the to the whisky and he comes over to Joan’s house. By now, we’re all living in Laurel Canyon. And and I’m telling David, you got to get your ass out here because there’s all these amazing, not good but amazing artists. And I can only do so much. And I need your help. Come on out here. And over a period of time, he did. He came out and over a period of time, weeks and months, it wasn’t very, very long. But by that time, Crosby, Stills and Nash had been formed. I had formed it with David and David had to do all the negotiating for us. And it was a very hard thing to do. And I had called David and I said, listen, I’ve got the Buffalo Springfield on Atlantic. I’ve got Crosby on the birds, I have Graham Nash on a Universal. I’m dealing with the people and I don’t know how to get them off of all these labels. David said, you deal the band, I’ll leave this to me and I’ll come up with something. And he did. He came out, we barnstormed and he came up with all these trades and he negotiated with Ahmed and with Clive. I think it was Walter Yetnikoff. Yeah, I think it was actually Walter and then Clive. Yeah. Because I think Walter was still there when Crosby was a bird, so he needed the birds released. Then Walter left. Clive came in and that’s when Pocho he made the rest of the of this of these deals to actually free these artists. And we got Stephen off, Stephen and Graham and David on Atlantic. We got David offered Neil off Atlantic on to Warner Brothers, where I was able to make a solo deal with Jerry Wexler. Story with Jerry was again was an important to David. He dealt with David much more than I did. Jerry was a friend, but he he did a lot more business with Neil. So I don’t really know the Jerry story.

Speaker The story goes that when he went in to get, uh, I guess it Steve still went into Atlantic to get stills of.

Speaker Yeah.

Speaker He was going to bring the band to play. Because Clive had a couple of the artists you need to get Steven out of Atlantic Coast, Jerry Wexler to get Steven out of the Atlantic, and Jerry Wexler physically picks him up and throws them out of his office the next day. And hearing about this calls David invites him up and says. Very sorry he was treated this way. Can I do for you? And by the time that meeting ended, it got Crosby, Stills and Nash and he had to go back.

Speaker OK, that’s slightly true.

Speaker What it was, what it what actually happened there.

Speaker And that did happen with Jerry. But Ahmed Ahmed wanted Steven and David and Graham and he was willing to trade Neil. He wasn’t in the picture. He. No, but Neil was Neil was under contract to Atlantic and Neil is in the Buffalo Springfield, which was in Atlantic Act. I got Neil off. And the way we got Neil off was through David promising that he could deliver Crosby, Stills and Nash because we were doing this simultaneously. Remember, I’m dealing with Warners and he’s dealing with Lanark.

Speaker And again, we were all doing this with in concert with David at the front, so Ahmed dropped Neal. He didn’t let him go. He dropped him so that I could make the deal. So Neil was let of Atlantic free, we paid nothing and got nothing, they got nothing for it. They actually just let Neil go. And then I was able to make the deal with MO. Which we did at that very, very same time, so you remember Neil’s first album came out the same time as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s first album because they were recorded simultaneously during the day, Neil was doing X and Y, and during the evening he was doing his album. But the first Crosby, Stills and Nash album, which went to Ahmet David totally negotiated and made it happen and it couldn’t have happened.

Speaker I didn’t notice that, Neil, that this is really.

Speaker Yeah. And again, David, I couldn’t I didn’t was not able to figure it out. I mean, I literally called David and I said, how do you get these three different labels? And I’m telling you, it was done in a week.

Speaker Literally, it was done in a week, he figured it out, not just figured it out, did it?

Speaker They had to go back to Clive and say, oh, by the way, you’re not getting anyone, Clive got nothing.

Speaker Well, later on, Clive got Pocho with from Ritchie, who was also on Atlantic, and Ritchie was in the Buffalo Springfield. So it was quite pissed. Yes and no, he was, but, you know, again, Clive is a player and Clive is very young then and was on a you know, Clive was Clive from the word go. You know, if you’re doing an American Masters on David, you obviously must have done one already on Clive or you will.

Speaker But again, he was a very important. Cog in that wheel, but he got nothing from David. What you they remain good friends. Yes, I think so, yeah. We all like Clive, you know, a great deal of respect for people who have to write about stuff.

Speaker So you read about all these feuds in this because people have to have something right there. But the truth is, my sense is everybody was just doing business.

Speaker Yeah. The word feud a little over you get no. And it’s like, well, there’s a feud. No, we took no because you dealt with the same people over and over. It’s a very small businesses, you know, and you got to know from Clive once you’ll get a yes next time, but you’ll be dealing with him again.