Complete Interview with Tom Silverman of Tommy Boy Records

[Prhime]

Tom Silverman: I went to graduate school at Western Michigan in Environmental Geology after Colby College. My roommate from Colby College was the station manager at Western’s radio station and I was the music director. He got a job in L.A. for Cashbox, which was like Billboard at the time. Disco started to break out and I was playing that music before and he said “why don’t we go to NY and start a newsletter for DJs.”

I left graduate school before I could finish my master thesis and setup shop in Manhattan. He quit his job and moved from LA and we started this newsletter for DJs called “Disco News” in 1978. Disco first started about a year after Saturday Night Fever but it was a year before Disco died. By 1979 - 80 they declared Disco dead. The press hated disco and we changed the name to “Dance Music Report” at that point and in 1980 we also started an independent distributor for music all different genres but it was mostly Indie Rock and a few other kinds of music.

It was doing really well and turning over a lot of cash. Then my roommate came to me and said “OK, I’m getting married to this girl and I don’t really want to do ‘Dance Music Report’ anymore, so why don’t you keep it and I’ll keep the profitable record distribution.” I said “why don’t you pay off at least half of the debt of “Dance Music Report,” and I’ll let you go. I’ll keep the apartment and you can go get another one (he wanted to take the apt also).”

It took me about a year to pay off all the debt and I kept building it at the same time. People were bringing in music and I was reviewing records that weren’t out yet or were on little independent labels that were releasing a record for the first time.

I was watching what was happening with “Rappers Delight” and would go to the stores and see the stuff blowing up and said why not start a record company. So I setup Tommy Boy around 1980 as a label in case someone bought music in. In 1980 I released a record called “Let’s Vote” by Eric Nuri which was a Black Voters registration theme song. It wasn’t on my label, it was on a label called Trial and Park records but I funded and put it out just so I could learn how to do it before I started doing it myself.

Then I started Tommy Boy after I met Afrika Bambaataa. He turned me on to this record by a group called Cotton Candy [named] “Having Fun” that he was playing and that became our first release. The second release was an Afrika Bambaataa record called “Jazzy Sensation.”

There was a big record the summer before, Gwen McCrae’s “Funky Sensation” and this was a rap off of it that we sampled-actually it wasn’t sampled we just played it. I didn’t know about the publishing laws and we got busted and had to pay people. We just paid it and we made a lot of money. It got a couple of spins by Mr. Magic on the radio HBI and we got orders for 5,000 the next week.

The record exploded and we sold 35,000.

I paid my parents back the $5,000 loan they gave me to start the label and that was the beginning.

[Prhime]

Intro: Bambaataa and Planet Rock

I was writing about Bambaataa for an article I was doing in “Dance Music Report.” There was a store called Downstairs Records on 6th and 42nd (where the subway station and HBO are located) that had a room called Break Beats or Break Room.

I went down to the [store] and saw this room with a table with all kinds of 45s and old albums like The Eagles, Long Run and Bob James. There were 15 and 16 year old kids that would come by, pool their money and buy doubles of records. I asked Roy, the guy who ran that room at Downstairs, how did these kids find out about these records. He said through a guy in the Bronx called Afrika Bambaataa and he has this thing called the Zulu Nation.

I went to visit him at a teach-in where he was actually DJing once a week on White Plains Road at a place on the 2nd floor. Bambaataa, Red Alert and Jazzy Jay were setup up there and they would take turns spinning. Bam would spin the most and when he wasn’t spinning he would select the records for them to lay. They were much better that him technically like taking the small beat and expanding them but Bambaataa would choose the record and find the groove. Jazzy Jay and Kool DJ Red Alert were sort of the protégés. There would be a guy up there called Record Lenny who would come with a boombox, record everything and then bootleg it.

I heard Bam playing records like Kraftwerk, James Brown, Sly Stone and contempary WBLS records then he’d play The Monkeys or Billy Squier. ‘How could you mix all these records?’ but kids were getting off on it. Someone would hook a mic up on stage and freestyle but the most you would normally get was “throw your hands in the air” which was basically to keep the party going - it was all about the party.

That was the early beginnings of Hip Hop. Bambaataa came out of the Black Spades where everyone was getting killed. He saw a lot of his friends get killed. He went on his own and built the Zulu Nation a positive replacement for what the gang was kicking and he gave people something to belong to that wasn’t the Boys and Girls Club, because nobody wanted to get that wack.

At the time, the older Zulu were really interested in back to Africa and learning about African tradition much more than kids today.

There were gangs on one side and the “who are we / black exploration” on the other side and Bam was caught in the middle. Bambaataa was against the violence - he was like the Ghandi of Hip Hop. When he would play a Zulu Nation party and a fight would break out he’d stop the music. Scratch a few beats and then stop the music and say “you like that” then he’d play a few more times and say “stop fighting”.

The guy is just like one of the high priests of Hip Hop because he is so straight and he is totally committed to the future of Hip Hop. He is the one who put culture in Hip Hop and created the concept of the 4 pillars of Hip Hop that KRS-One, Chuck D and everyone are always talking about.

Hip-Hop is about music, DJ’ing, graffiti and break-dancing and his 5th pillar is knowledge because that is very important part of Hip Hop.

His first record was with Paul Winley called “Zulu Nation Throwdown.”
“What’s the name of this nation” / “Zulu, Zulu” / “Who’s going to get down”

I asked him can we make a record that sounds like the stuff you are playing and he said sure – we made “Planet Rock.” We sold about 600,000 of “Planet Rock” in 1982 with about 2 employees and didn’t know what we were doing. We made it up as we went along and got ripped off by promoters but it didn’t matter because we were doing great; we had no over head and it got us in the game. Bambaataa did the A&R and found Johnson Crew, this group from Boston that had some electric (he loved electric and Kraftwerk); Archie Baker produced Jazzy Sensation and found this group in Boston called Planet Patrol. We used most of same tracks from “Planet Rock,” using the same 2-inch tape and replaced a few tracks and changed the vocals. That was very productive 2-inch tape and we sold almost a million 12-inches of that. In the “Planet Rock” session we used a Fairlight, which was the first digital synthesizer, and an 808, which was the first time a Roland drum machine was used on a record. We just messed around with all this stuff because it was in the studio.

The business plan for the label was to make 12-inches. My contract didn’t allow me to make an album so I had to go back and renegotiate with Bambaataa. They had a tough lawyer and asked for stuff I couldn’t give and we kept negotiating. We got an album out two years after “Planet Rock” was released and it was too late. In those days 12-inches only sold in NY and NJ so for me to sell 600,000 12-inches - if I had an album I could have sold 2 or 3 million albums but I guess I wasn’t supposed to get that hot that quickly, it would have made me stupid - I was supposed to stay hungry.

[Prhime]

The Warner Brothers Days....

I was able to grow the company and then we had a cold period. In 1985 I had to sell half the company to Warner Bros to bring money in and get access to pop radio and in 1988 they bought the rest. We kept our own distribution and international. The only thing we ended up using them for was manufacturing. It really didn’t work out so well for us because they (WB) had all the bureaucracy and politicking etc.

F.O.K.U.S: From your site: “The suits upstairs, did their job well: keeping shareholders happy with rising stock prices, but ultimately there were conflicting visions of the “bottom line” vs. art. Tommy Boy chose art.”

TS: 1999 was the peak of the music business. and by 2002 the entire music industry was off 15%; now its down around 40% from peak.

Our business was changing and our ability to compete in Hip Hop was being undermined by Viacom and Def Jam spending 3x what we could and they didn’t really care because they had a lot of money. I couldn’t really be competitive so I wasn’t able to sign and break the biggest Hip Hop acts after Coolio and Everlast. Those were the two biggest records we ever had and those were in the early 90s.

We built that company up until we had to sell millions of records just to cover our overhead. When you get to this place where you have to make and put records out to feed your machine and pay for your overhead, then you start doing things for money as opposed to art.

I wanted to sign crazy music and do fun things, but instead of becoming fun we felt the pressure of generating income. The reason I got into the business was not just to generate income but to generate culture and ideas. When it turned to just generating income we became machines and we weren’t that fit. That was never my specialty but I got sucked into it. I never wanted the company to be that big but I never stopped it so it’s my fault for letting it get that big.

[Prhime]

Hip Hop Essentials

F.O.K.U.S.: What is your goal for “Hip Hop Essentials?”

TS: I have a few different goals. My main goal is for it to be perceived as the most important Hip Hop compilation of all time and becomes the de facto standard that defines the history of Hip Hop musically. I’m concerned, Bam is concerned and Kool Herc is concerned that Viacom and Def Jam are trying to rewrite Hip Hop History.

Bambaataa coined the term lyingeers instead of pioneers because they are lying. We are really thinking about the Russell Simmons who are saying Hip Hop started when he started and LL cool J was the first Hip Hop artist. If you look at the VH1 Hip Hop Honors program, they leave out everything important before Def Jam like nothing happened until somebody put on a Kangol hat or Russell walks in with Run DMC. VH1 probably asked Russell to do it and they just followed whatever he said but what about Holly Robinson, Jerry Robinson and Stevie Robinson from Sugar Hill Records, people who really started it?

Where is Sleeping Bag, Select, Profile, Tommy Boy and Priority and so many important independent labels that created an incredible cornucopia of important music and it is all on Hip Hop Essentials.

So that is what I hope is going to happen, that this becomes the sound bar none of Hip Hop compilations. What I should try to do is get this in libraries and once the full 12 volumes are out it becomes an academic set.

I remember when I was going to school at Colby there was a jazz horn player, Marion Brown, who came to teach as a visiting professor. Its been 25 years now, when are they going to do that with Hip Hop?

I can’t even get Grandmaster Flash into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and I’m on the board. I put him up every year and he gets the most votes in the room and when it goes to the 600 he gets the least amount. Two years now and no Hip Hop artist in the Rock and Roll hall of Fame. See this is what we are up against - the lyingeers on one side and the people who don’t consider Hip Hop Rock and Roll. Hip Hop is more Rock and Roll than fucking Billy Joel or Elton John. At least it stands for something and defines a generation like Chuck Berry and Little Richie did and they know it. All these guys (writers, mangers etc) know it and can’t deny it but when it goes to the heads of the label who vote, they all vote for their own.

F.O.K.U.S.: Do you think an answer is starting a Hip Hop Hall of Fame and pushing it?

TS: That is like creating a separate bus for Rosa Parks. You gotta say fuck it, I’m sitting in the front of the bus and that’s what I’m going to do. If the southerners were smart then they would have created a whole separate bus line just as good as the ones for Whites for Rosa Parks. It may have allowed racism to continue down there to today but they were stupid and she was smart and brave.

We put out a record with her where she is doing the poetry of rumi. We did it with Deepak Chapra. She was reading the poetry of a 13th century poet and was the only one who changed the words. She did it her way and it came out better.

Rosa

[Prhime]

F.O.K.U.S.: Do you feel music or art in general is being heavily commoditized in a factory type setting where they want one-hit wonders using what has worked before?

TS: They don’t want one hit wonders because they can’t make enough money on a one hit wonder. The majors are still looking for an artist that can have multiple hits but as soon as they think it might not be, they bail on it. They [major labels] can’t afford to take any risks. If you had a record that sold 1 million records last time but they don’t think you can sell 500,000 this time they might drop you because it could be costly for them to bring it out. They look at their numbers and they are very bottom line oriented and very risk averse. They spend so much money because they built this whole cost structure that they are aligning right now with higher expenses so they have to be careful of what they get behind.

That is why they only want to get behind artists that have already blown up on some scene, are already selling records and have a base so all the label has to do get is their name. They don’t have to do the hard work of developing an artist.

How many major labels have signed a new artist from scratch, one who hasn’t had a record out that people are checking for. What if the A&R guy says ‘I just love this. Let me get behind it, spend two years building it and turning it into something great.’ That is not what major labels are doing. The indies are doing it, where they can, and those artists just have to be patient and poor for as long as it takes for it to happen.

It works better in the South because they can do a lot of shows and make money. Also there are a lot of Black radio stations that will support local stuff - that’s how we broke Gucci Mane and Big Kap. [Down there] you can get 2,000 spins a week just off of Black radio and a few crossover stations and that is enough to set exposure for the rest of the country.

F: Describe the people who wrote linings and provided photos for Hip Hop Essentials.

TS: Originally artists wanted to do original photography of kids wearing gazelle glasses or name belts but we thought it wasn’t going to look real - that would have been the way majors might have done it.

I said the best thing would be to find classic things from that period of time, like fat laces and adidas shell toes and shoot that. But Stu didn’t like that idea and said lets find someone who chronicled the original stuff. We called Bill Adler who was the head of PR for Def Jam through the golden ages.

I mentioned a few people including Martha Cooper. Martha was one of the people who we could get all the images from. She was happy to do it and do it within our budget which was really tiny due to our sales
expectations for Hip Hop Essentials.

I felt a quarter million people should have this kind of knowledge but people don’t want to take a spoonful of medicine. All I know is when I played a one for Queen Latifah, she flipped out and almost went into a trance.

If you were around during that period it is fabulous and nostalgic but the young kids that are into Hip Hop today aren’t necessarily the core demographic that we expect to buy it because we understand ignorance and how hard it is to break through it. But people who have a nostalgic attachment to this period- when they hear this they are going to go ‘oh my god, I have to have this. I’ll buy them all and relive that period that was so amazing.’ You talk to people who were into Hip Hop in the golden days and play any of these records for them and it’s like they have a heart attack.

Martha was the first photographer that shot Hip Hop. She’s been around since the beginning documenting the pillars. It was the same thing for the writers. We wanted people who have been writing about it for a long time or wrote about it during that period and were champions of it when there weren’t many champions of it. You look for the early pioneers not the lyingeers. You want the ones who really put there ass on the line trying to push music that really was offensive to a lot of people and a threat.

F: What’s the plan after the set is complete.

TS: Export it and get it into other territories because it is important to get it to the rest of the world to know that Hip Hop grows here and this is where it came from. I hope that people don’t just burn them and give them to their friends. That is another reason we did the liner notes and the art because it makes it something people want to own.

We picked the big hits and the crossovers that still get play now and then we picked ones that were really important in the period but never crossed. Those that were only big in a scene; like if you were in NY but never heard “Egypt Egypt,” which was a gigantic record on the West Coast. So we tried to make sure we covered ones like that and Luke Skywalker.

We show Hip Hop for the cultural and amazing event that it was and is today. It is now a lifestyle and a whole business but in those days it was really an amazing group of events that all happened at the same time and the same place. What were the odds that graffiti writers, breakdancers, mcs and turntablists would be in the same location in the Bronx. Then a small infection would take off from there and spread to the whole world. It never has happened before- jazz and maybe the blues were close - but this is bigger than anything else.

Rock and Roll is not an ethnic thing anymore. It once was but now has been white-washed and doesn't feel like how Hip Hop still does.

[Prhime]

Why won’t the more articulate of these guys get honorary degrees, like Chuck D or KRS-One? Why aren’t they speaking at institutions like University of Michigan? Why aren’t they getting honorary degrees like Bill Cosby or jazz players? How are they different? How old do you want them to get? Who deserves it more than an mc or a writer. You guys are in a place to do it and once you do it everyone will follow. Pretty soon all of these guys will start doing it and this changes the perception that [Hip Hop] is an art form. We are not just talking about 50 Cent and Eminem. We are talking about people like Grandmaster Flash, Queen Latifah and Will Smith.

Spread the word about “Hip Hop Essentials.”

Radio isn’t going to play it and its not going to be on TV. The only way to know about it is to tell people. Each on teach one. This is our history. You think about Black History month and you can go back to Harriet Tubman but we have Black history within last 25 years that we wrote and is still resonating with current generation. So where did it come from and how can we use it as a teaching mechanism. Once you go back to that, you can go back to funk and jazz and it gets kids into it. I can see academic institutions really embracing it. This could be the beginning of something very exciting. The most important new cultural statement that has been made in probably a century is Hip Hop and you have these people who are still alive.

Hip Hop can do a lot more than it is currently doing. It has become very complacent. The people who are running Hip Hop and are at the top of the game are thinking how they can get paid more as if they don’t have enough now.

They are asking what’s in it for me rather than asking how can I share or serve. Until that dialogue changes we still will have a very big problem in the Hip Hop community.

When Hip Hop started it was only ‘how can I serve’ that was asked. That was the spirit that created Hip Hop and all of the arts surrounding it. Nobody was making money doing it back then so what other question could you ask. If they were saying ‘what’s in it for me,’ then they would have gotten a job doing something else. [Instead] they just loved what they were doing and were doing it as a means of self expression which was pure. Then money fucked it up, it always does. I like to believe there is a way to go back underground and blast them with that kind of creativity but there can be alternate segments, different versions and other things that make it work.

With 1 billion people going at it, there has to be one or two people that are into different things and doing something radical. Then you need people to get behind them and all of a sudden there is a following and
hopefully a major doesn’t sign them and put them on the shelf or misunderstand it all.

Hip Hop needs its messiah.

There needs to be someone who comes back and says something but flips it in a way that nobody has ever done before and all of a sudden people will say ‘oh my god, we never thought about this.’

Hip Hop will have a whole new lease on life