Rose

You'd recognize her name, but it is a stage name, nome de plume, pseudonym, she'll always be Rose to me. A week ago I received a postcard from her, signed 'Rose', so I guess she never changed her name legally. I'll have to ask next time I see her.  She got her start at the bar I was running with my partner Jack.  She was waitressing there, and one day asked us if she could bring her guitar in the evening and sing on a small stage where an old beat up piano stood and which was never occupied. After closing the place one night we gave her an audition, and afterwards Jack said to me, "Wow, she's almost as good as Joni Mitchell", to my reply "That old bag?"  "You're too young to appreciate real artists", he scolded me.

Rose brought her guitar and after her shift ended would sing the songs she had written, all of it for tips, which in time have gotten larger, so that she reduced the number of days she worked as a waitress. I called the bar owners I knew in the area and told them about Rose, and she got gigs around town.  "You're my manager now!" she told me.  "I don't know anything about music business", I replied, and kept doing what I had been doing just for the fun of it.   I borrowed a Nagra tape  recorder from our customers who were filmmakers, and we recorded six of Rose's songs in her living room, with me picking the bass strings of another guitar, or attempting to play a mandolin along with her voice and guitar.  I transferred the recording to a cassette tape, made several copies and sent them to artist agents in Nashville.  We got lucky, and two of the songs were recorded on albums by established artists, I had co-writing credits on them, which Rose insisted on including because I helped her polish these songs, and then I mailed the tapes to record companies in New York and Los Angeles.

We received three responses from agents in L.A. asking Rose to travel to L.A. for auditions with them, the agents.  "No way!" I advised her, and she agreed, agents are dime a dozen, and singers are in the thousands on Hollywood Boulevard.  I had business stationary printed with a gold header and the address of the bar, and typed up responses to these three saying that "my client appreciates your interest, but she is currently booked up for the foreseeable future at local and regional venues, and will not be able to travel to Los Angeles.  However, you would be welcome to come see her perform at one of her concerts."  Needless to say, Rose's "concerts" were her gigs for tips at local bars and clubs, but one of the fish bit the bait and came from L.A. to see her.  Before I knew it, and before I met him,  she signed a contract with this slick guy wearing Italian suits and shoes, name dropping, making all kinds of promises.  She told me she had had the contract looked over by a lawyer before signing,  and I responded that she needed to consult  an entertainment lawyer not a neighbor specializing in real estate.

"Tony told me to change my name," she informed me. "Why?" I asked, "Your own name sounds perfectly acceptable on stage. Helen Shapiro, when she was 14 refused to change her Jewish sounding name!"

"If it was up to you, Frances Ethel Gumm would have never changed her name," Rose retorted.

"And her over the top singing would have fit her so much better," I said.  "Tony Curtis will always be Bernie Schwartz to me."

She wouldn't listen and adopted the stage name. Rose traveled to Los Angeles, where her manager, whose name was Tony, put her up in a nice hotel and arranged an audition with a record company,  which she passed, got a recording deal, recorded an album, while Tony assembled a backing band for her and booked her for appearances across the country. The album was met with great reviews by critics, the audiences were a bit slower coming around to it, but the record company kept promoting it, the radio played it and Rose was appearing in major venues and at various rock festivals. Soon she traveled abroad, Europe, Asia, Australia.   Whenever she returned home she would bring small gifts for Jack's and my families.

Meanwhile here, a local developer named Albert Kennedy, yes a Kennedy, though unrelated to the Boston Kennedys, decided to develop the neighbourhood, or really just two city blocks along one street where our bar was located.  He bought some properties, built and rented out stores which filled with expensive boutiques, brand name beauty shops, a jewelry store, a take out deli with prices unseen on this continent, gourmet restaurants.  Jack and I then had an offer (not from Kennedy)  to sell our bar, an offer so high we couldn't believe our eyes, we had to accept it, or else turn our neighbourhood establishment serving locals, students, artists, into a pretentious upscale watering hole, which was an idea that Jack rejected at the outset. And that is exactly what the new owner did.

There was no non-compete clause in our sale contract and we reopened two and a half blocks away, our clientele, which could never afford to patronize  the old new place, followed us, and I decided to  became a silent partner at the bar, concentrating my efforts on stock investments using the proceeds from the sale.

Rose's second album followed, almost as good as the first one, and then something happened.   Tony started booking her in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Reno, upscale red velvet lounges, private parties at millionaires' estates, where the audiences were older, wealthier and drunker. The money was still there for Rose, even if Tony was getting kickbacks on the side, but her old audiences weren't, and Rose was disappearing from sight, with no radio interviews, no TV appearances.  She rebelled, while Tony waived the contract in her face.  She consulted a lawyer, an entertainment lawyer this time, who told her that it would take a large sum of money to get her from under that contract.  She had several years left on it.

She recorded her third and last album to fulfill the record company contract, and it was a sad affair.  Melancholy, depressing songs, tired voice, the critics hated it, the buyers and radio ignored it, three years after her initial success she was a has been.  The only bright spot was that a famous pop singer recorded one of the songs off Rose's third album, made it a giant international hit, and royalties kept flowing in, even as Rose, confessed to me that she hoped not to ever have to meet him to thank him.  She didn't like him, and neither did I.

Then relief came as suddenly as the fall.   Tony had other business ventures, mob connections, and one of those ventures was exporting stolen sports cars, Porsches, Jaguars, BMWs to the Middle East.  The crowd with which he ran was rough, and one night Tony was shot down in his Mercedes on a street in Las Vegas. Rose's contract with him had a non-inheritance clause,  meaning no one could inherit it, she was free at last,  and his former associates didn't even bother contacting her.

She came home and called me with the question first expressed a long time ago by Vladimir Lenin, "What is to be done?"  We huddled down and brainstormed.  "Now you're my manager!", she said.  "I still don't know anything about music business," I answered as before.  I arranged for her to sing for the yuppies at our old bar, and at other places, including our new bar, for tips once again, once more she was starting from the bottom.  She had no recording, no management contracts, no booking agency.  I knew people who owned a local record label called Tuff Records, which put out punk music, and I could have arranged for her to release records through them. But they had no national distribution, no promotion money, only a studio, and no funds to pay studio musicians to accompany her.   I borrowed that Nagra recorder again, we taped eight songs, and again sent cassettes to Nashville.  Three of the songs got recorded on albums, I had co-writing credits on them, that became my entire financial reward (which I never asked for or demanded.)  Using the royalty payments from the huge pop hit of the world famous heartthrob, Rose bought my wife a brand new Honda minivan.

I also  learned that Rose was still popular in Japan and the Far East, and I contacted a booking agency here, Stateside to arrange bookings for her.   She traveled there, stayed for over six months performing in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and North Korea, the only places where her third weakest album sold reasonably  well, she recorded and released a live album from a concert in Japan, which is a collector's item here in the States, though it was picked up by a German company and released in Europe.   Which led to our next step.  Rose spoke fluent French, and she moved to a base in France, from which she traveled to various countries of Europe to perform.   Last week I received a postcard from her stamped in Paris, written in French, where she says she's recording a new album, half in French, half in English.

I'm thinking of returning to running my bar with Jack.  Maybe now that I know something about the music business  we'll discover another international star, you never know.