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5 years ago I changed my life. After 50 or so mostly European record releases, I left a long, safe, and eventually boring career as a writer / producer in Germany and moved to New York City. My European publishers said I wouldn't last more than 12 months in America and most German writers who tried the jump across the big pond, drowned, returning after their savings were gone.
I arrived in NYC 2001 with funds for 2-3 years rent. I imagined renting a big loft space on Brooklyn and after only 2 weeks search I already signed a lease for an incredibly beautiful space in Brooklyn BedSty. That evening I couldn't sleep, questioning myself if I could really live in that area. Eventually I decided to get up and go there after midnight to find out if I would feel safe. That night I witnessed a robbery, a fight with knives and I met a stabbing victim who just returned from the hospital... needless to say next morning I begged the landlord to void the lease. Soon after I found a little shared studio space in Midtown Manhattan, which turned out to be key for getting collaborators to come over. No one can come up with excuses that it is out of their way and every major record label is in walking distance.
I had travelled to the USA many times before and even recorded records in LA and NYC for Germany, but I didn't really have any solid contacts in NYC to begin with and so I actually really totally started over, from scratch. I went to talent shows, open mike events, high school competitions and I even put up flyers on traffic signs around schools scouting for a singer to work with.
Eventually I found my first artist: A 17 year old caribbean brooklyn girl that had the looks, a soulful voice and a few songs of her own. I made an improvised one page agreement with her mum that I was going to be her producer in case I landed a record deal and we began writing. We wrote 2 songs a week and after 3 months we had a nice demo tape with 6 songs we really liked. I asked my oblivious European publishers for one last favor: To recommend me an entertainment lawyer.
I got a list with 8 names and I met with each of them, hoping that they were interested in shopping a record deal for my artist. One attorney eventually seemed enthusiastic enough to get started. We wrote a few more songs and he spread the word. Soon he opened doors to almost every major record label. We had a dozen label appointments with more or less important A&R's ( artist and repertoire guys ). I began to feel like a winner, as every meeting was full of excitement and seemed to go really well. 2 weeks later we began to wonder what step 2 would be but despite the warm reception we never heard back from a single A&R. Eventually even my attorney wouldn't return my phone calls anymore and I was back at square one...almost.
On several of those appointments I overheard A&R's asking if we would give our best songs away to some of their artists. That sounds like a slap in the face when you try to sell your own artist. But now, since we didn't land a deal, I began calling those A&R's again, pretending I had the right song for their artist. I got several second meetings and each A&R almost liked what I played. Asking what I could do better the response was to collaborate with some of their favorite song writers, hoping that this chemistry would maybe lead to a hit song.
I had nothing to loose so I accepted each and every co-write I could get hold of. The next 2 years I wrote over 250 songs with more than 100 writers. Some of them were artists the label was considering to sign and some of them were artists that had just lost their deals. Some of them had Grammy nominations and some of them just got recommended because that A&R was hoping to get laid.
Whenever I finished ten new songs I would visit the A&R's again and get their feedback on the new songs. I took the criticism very serious and tried to come back with 10 even better songs the next time. Some A&R's wouldn't give me a third meeting but a handful actually did and I began to develop something like a relationship. The A&R's felt honored to see how I gave my everything hoping to come up with that one song that would actually get a hold and I was happy that I had an open door and a real chance to get on a US major record.
I was coming close to the end of my savings and it felt like the fate of my big dream depended on the record labels judgment of my song writing. Never before did I take an A&R's opinion so to heart. I re-wrote songs when they just liked the verse. I put different vocalists on the song to match the target artists voice. I changed keys, tempos, made unplugged versions, changed intros and did just about anything imaginable I might have scoffed at years before in Germany in order to please the record companies.
Eventually I got my first "hold" on one song I submitted for one of their artists. I was thrilled and that excitement made me write better songs which lead to more "holds" and eventually to my first US"cut"( a cut is a songs that actually gets recorded by the artist ). Soon I had created a little buzz amongst the A&R community ( yes, the record label world is really small and word spreads almost instantaneously ) and more and more A&R's would put my songs on hold. I got meetings with more important A&R's and after those meetings went well, the big guys wanted to get to know me. I got invited to meetings with Clive Davis, Tommy Mottola, Dough Morris and again I was sure that this was finally the big break in my career.
Little did I know that eight out of ten records never even get released despite the huge amounts of money the labels spend making a record. Promotion costs for a $500.000.00 album are often $2.000.000.00 and more, so only a few absolutely undeniable records ever see the shelves of a record store. The making of A&R driven records ( records with more than one producer on which the A&R' functions as an executive producer choosing writers, songs, mixing engineers and additional producers ) takes often longer than A&R's manage to keep their job. The new A&R's don't always "feel" the previous signings and just like mating male lions killing the cuffs of the desired female in order to breed their own, new A&R's prefer to drop most unfinished projects in order to sign their own discoveries. This secures their promotion in case of success.
Out of more than 30 US"holds" I had in 2003, 12 songs got cut and 2 songs got released in 2004. One song was 6 months top 20, but only in the Christian Billboard Charts. In the meantime I had several no.1 hits in Europe, but that would not make me go back. New York always kicks but and the city is addictive like a drug. Everybody on Manhattan is there because they want to make it big. I have a very competitive nature and whenever one of my colleagues made it, I said to myself: "I can do this ! I know I can do this !"
Since my career in Germany took off when I was really young, I never worked a job in my whole life and all I knew was how to write, produce and perform songs.
Financially I was at point zero. The European publishing deal had quietly expired.
I just made a little something on my European hits and on the production budget of 2 "cuts" that never got released, but the manhattan rent swallowed everything and I had a several of those instant soup weeks where you literally don't have the pennies for the subway ride.
Then something like a miracle happened. Andy Shane, an A&R on Lava Records, called me asking if I was available to do a writing session "today in 1 hour" with Willa Ford, one of their artists, since another session of hers just got cancelled. My heart dropped and though I had worked on much bigger records before in Germany ( Milli Vanilli, Enrique Iglesias ), this was actually my first co-write with a signed American artist on a US label. I had submitted many songs for her album before and figured that the chance to get a cut on a song I wrote with a writer was much smaller than if I could directly write the song with the artist who was going to perform the song.
We had an intense improvised 3 hours session and I managed to write and record a song with her. I even mixed the song the same evening and the A&R came to my studio to pick up the mix. Somehow I must have left a good impression as I eventually ended up co-writing and producing most songs on her album over the next few months. Her then-manager David Sonenberg liked my work and made sure I got paid for my work on Willa Ford's entire record even though just our single "Fuck the men/Toast to men" got released ( and made it to a top 40 radio song with a placement in Barbershop2 ). I was very happy that David let me produce the songs I co-wrote. Most A&R's I had deaalt with before hired other producers to re-record and re-produce my songs for their records. Often those producers would just take my TV tracks for free, put the vocal on it and call it their production. The A&R would get credited for involving name-producers and I would not see a penny unless the record would actually get released and become successful.
One year later after having had a closer look at my work ethics, David proposed to become my exclusive manager and another 6 months later I signed a contract with him. I was quite disillusioned after 3 years of seeing all those records with my "cuts" getting dropped. I could have had 10 albums with my songs on it in 2004, but one artist after another lost their deal. When Clive Davis took over RCA records, 5 RCA signings on which I had songs, got dropped. It was also an unfortunate time as most labels merged 2003/2004 and hundreds of employees got fired.
I would loose touch with most of the countless writers I collaborated with if the first co-written song didn't get a "hold" and a "cut", but a few artist/writers were really dear to my heart. I believed in their artistry and during those years I wrote with them on a regular basis even though they did not have a record deal. This way, without being aware of it, I had developed several artists "on the low" and by the time David Sonenberg signed a management agreement with me, I had done 20 and more songs on some of those projects. David managed to get my artists record deals. Now I was in a position where I had produced and co-written every song on those records. David convinced me not to pitch my best songs to record labels but to keep them for my own artists and he was right. I began doing my thing, this time officially.
Those sudden record deals lead to huge interest from my old contacts. Although I would have loved to follow Diane Warren's example of keeping my publishing, I decided that selling half of my publishing for a neat advance would enhance exploitation of my unreleased catalog and movie and commercial placements of my released records.
Now it is march 2005. I don't have the Grammy yet, but for the first time in my life I have over 40 songs on various US major record labels sceduled for release and I got paid to produce each of them. These are songs that I am 100% proud of and songs that I wrote and produced exactly the way I wanted, with artists I would bet my house on and without A&R's making me change a thing. Some records already got released. One the "Hitch" soundtrack, the "Fat Albert" soundtrack, the "Fatty Koo" reality TV show on BET and their album on Columbia records...others will follow soon and even though not all of these records might make it, I have definitely reached the biggest milestone in my career so far.
Looking back at this incredible journey, I must say that diligence, faith in your skills and perseverance can work miracles. I perceive Manhattan as the heart of the music world and when I first came there, I had to have all my expectations and dreams shattered. I was put on the test and even though 100 people said it was impossible, I am still here, doing nothing but music, in New York City. |
