Part Three: Pushing the Envelope, 1977-1978

It all changed in 1977. Casablanca Record and Filmworks, as it was now called, expanded into film while KISS, Parliament, and Donna Summer, the label’s headline acts, had amassed enough gold singles and albums to paper four walls. Casablanca also sealed a lucrative partnership with PolyGram, a German conglomerate whose portfolio comprised a number of U.S.-based labels, including Mercury, MGM, Verve, and RSO, in addition to its own label, Polydor. With a 50% interest in Casablanca, PolyGram streamlined Casablanca’s distribution system. It also made Casablanca flush with cash, affording the label the means to build its roster to major label heights.

The sleeve inside many of Casablanca’s album jackets also listed the labels Casablanca distributed through its own brand. The Douglas imprint carried jazz titles by the Charlie Rouse Band, The Last Poets, and a five-volume series entitled The New York Loft Jazz Sessions (1977). Russ Regan, who was known by many at Casablanca from his established reputation in the business, helmed Parachute Records, which concentrated more on pop/rock and R&B. It debuted in 1977 with albums by Lalomie Washburn (who wrote Rufus & Chaka Khan’s “At Midnight”) and singer-songwriter David Castle.

“Parachute Records was supposed to be a launching pad for all kinds of different artists”, Castle explains, “not only mainstream pop but pop-rock and R&B. Russ is truly one of the nicest people in the industry. He’s just a real, real nice guy and took a great interest in my career, very selflessly and with great consciousness promoted my career”. While Parachute never spawned a smash hit on par with its parent company, it contributed a number of artists that were truly great musicians, writers, and performers to Casablanca’s rich musical legacy. In addition to Castle and Washburn, Parachute also signed acts that, to this day, have yet to receive their full due: 7th Wonder and Randy Brown. When Parachute folded in 1979, both acts, who were R&B-based, migrated over to Chocolate City.

Neil Bogart also negotiated a distribution deal with Jimmy Ienner’s New York-based Millennium label. The company was home to a motley crew of artists including pop-soul east coast export Brooklyn Dreams, Lori Lieberman (who wrote “Killing Me Softly”), soul chanteuse Ruby Winters, Bruce Foster, and a hard rock band, Godz. Most crucially, though, Casablanca also landed its first number one single through Millennium: a disco rendition of John Williams’ Star Wars score performed by Meco (“Star Wars/Cantina Band”). In 1977, every style of music was fair game at the Casbah.

Six Archetypes Walk Into a Record Label…

One of the most crucial signings of 1977, indeed in Casablanca’s entire history, came courtesy of a French producer, Jacques Morali. With his partner Henri Belolo, Morali was a tenacious presence along the eastern corridor of the dance music community. Through the help of Philadelphia-based Sigma Sound arranger Richie Rome, Morali had created and produced the Ritchie Family, who charted in 1975 with “Brazil” on 20th Century Records. With no defined image at first, the group became a trio and released a series of thematic albums, including Arabian Nights (1976) and African Queens (1977). (Morali brought the Ritchie Family to Casablanca in 1979. He also produced Josephine Superstar for the label, an album recorded by Phylicia Allen — a.k.a. Phylicia Rashad — that told the story of Josephine Baker using a male chorus and a disco beat.) However, Morali’s greatest creation, and one of Casablanca’s most commercially successful acts, came from an unlikely source… insofar as platinum-selling groups are concerned.

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Tom Moulton: Jacques wanted to create a group for gay people. He had put an ad in The Village Voice about finding these singers to be in this group. When somebody showed me the ad in the paper I said, “You got to be kidding. What the hell is he doing?” He had this sort of kooky idea, the caricatures of people that are in (NYC’s Greenwich) Village: the motorcycle guy, the cowboy, the drag of the Village with the construction shoes and the helmet. Jacques wanted to be loved by the gay community. That’s exactly what he wanted.

David Hodo (Village People “Construction Worker”): I became a member of the Village People by answering an ad in the showbusiness trade papers. I had to get one week’s employment to file for an unemployment claim and sit back on it through the Christmas season. I really didn’t intend to keep the job for longer than a week, but we were having so much fun creating the group that I sort of took it a week at a time. (I’m still taking it a week at a time!) When I auditioned for Jacques, he cast me as the Construction Worker. The look of the group came out of the gay clubs, where “role playing” seemed to be part of the club experience. You could go home, take off your suit, put your jeans on with a t-shirt and construction boots with a hard hat and you could be something completely different from what you had to be all day. I never understood the costume part of going out but plenty of people did.

Alex Briley (Village People “GI”): My costume came about at the suggestion of the Construction Worker. Our wardrobe person at the time visited the army/navy outlets and Brooklyn Navy Yard and created the armed forces attire.

Michele Hart-Winer (Director of Special Projects): We were so happy to get the Village People. The first album, Village People (1977), was one that was played everywhere. It was a perfect album. I loved the album but then they moved into the pop world after that.

Ruben Rodriguez (National Promotion and Marketing Director): Village People were a big challenge because they were so different. There was a TV station that was based out of New York called Soul Alive and my good friend Gerry Bledsoe was the MC. They had great ratings in New York. I’ll never forget trying to get the producer to agree to have Village People perform on TV. That was actually their first TV gig. I said to him, “Man give it a shot. You’re going to be really surprised how well this audience is going to receive them”. That became their highest rated show. That TV show, during that time, had been on for a couple of years in New York City. That was the very first TV show Village People did in the States.

Moulton: When it took off, I think Jacques and Henri Belolo were shocked. They never dreamed in a million years that everybody would go for it.

Rodriguez: I’ll never forget going to Cherry Hill, New Jersey. There was a club called Valentino’s, or something like that. It was pouring rain and there were lines and lines of kids dressed up with their umbrellas trying to get in to see Village People. You’ve got to give credit to the club scene. From a radio standpoint, one guy I’m going to give credit to, who actually broke Village People on the radio, was Hal Jackson of WBLS in New York.

Bobbi Cowan (Director of Publicity): The guys from Village People were in our office whenever they were in town and we loved them. They were so sweet. They were great. We knew they were going to be a very big act. Their records were fabulous and they could actually perform.

Arnie Smith (National Director of Disco Promotion): They were so easygoing. They would do whatever they had to do, wherever you needed them to be, there were no prima donnas, nothing. They were so excited and happy about what they were doing.

Rob Gold (Director of Marketing): The Village People were really a phenomenon. THAT was a fun bunch of guys. They certainly were more humble in the earlier part of their career and there was some infighting and drama. They were wonderfully warm individuals. It’s always a pleasure when you’re working for somebody who appreciates the hard work that you do and they loved seeing their images all over the place.

Moulton: Years ago, I did an interview on Biography on Village People. This is long after Jacques had died. I was so offended when Biography asked me questions like, “Well Jacques was gay…” and I go, “What does that have to do with the price of bananas? Nothing”. They said, “Well they were a gay act” and I said, “No they were a pop phenomenon”. You have to call it what it is. They had that virile look. You could see all the young girls. They thought, “Oh wow! Would I like to be trapped with them for a week!”

Smith: If I had to analyze the group’s success, I would say that there were several elements. One was, it was the music of the time, which had to be the most powerful force in the whole equation. Two, the uniqueness of who they were in the costumes. It was like a party. Halloween everyday! Third, it was just the talent and the ability to put on a great show. Isn’t that what everybody wants at the end? They did it brilliantly.

Dennis Wheeler (Promotions Manager, Special Projects): Village People were a creation of the time. They were trendsetters in that field. I would want to say “novelty” but at the same time, they truly have classics that define that era.

Hart-Winer: I think of Jacques sometimes. If he could see the bar mitzvah crowd, would he die? (laughs) Could you imagine? It’s absolutely hysterical.

Hodo: We were something that no one had ever seen before, along with the kitschy, danceable music and the unusual look – what’s not to love?

Village People – “Y.M.C.A.” (1978)

Signing Spree

Signing Spree

With disco moving well beyond its underground roots and beginning to saturate radio, television, advertising, and film, Casablanca directed much of its focus towards signing producers and developing artists who could satiate the public’s appetite for the 4/4 beat. The company’s stable of disco auteurs churned out a cavalcade of projects under their own names, through studio aliases, soundtrack scores and, of course, with the label’s key artists.

Tom Moulton, who mixed and produced a number of the era’s most timeless tracks (“Disco Inferno” by the Trammps, “More, More, More” by Andrea True Connection, and most of the Salsoul label’s output, to name a very few), remembers the stipulations of his contract. “I had to put an album out with my name on it. I couldn’t really work for anybody else. The Trammps and Grace Jones were the only two outside acts I could keep. I signed exclusively because Neil Bogart didn’t want me working for anybody else. I regretted it after I did it because I could only do three albums a year and by April, I had all the albums done”. He teamed up with People’s Choice (he mixed their “Do It Anyway You Wanna” in 1975 for PIR) for their self-titled release in 1980 while releasing a pair of heralded LPs in 1979 for the group Loose Change and his own TJM album (featuring Ron Tyson of the Salsoul act, Love Committee).

In contrast to Moulton’s orientation towards R&B-based dance music, Bob Esty scored a number of the label’s more pop-based disco productions. He was introduced to Casablanca through his friend Paul Jabara. Esty helped orchestrate and conduct Jabara’s irreverent version of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and co-wrote much of Jabara’s Casablanca debut, Shut Out (1977). In the summer of 1977, Esty collaborated with Jabara on arranging and writing (though he is not credited) “Last Dance” for Donna Summer, a year before the song appeared in the movie Thank God It’s Friday (1978), where two more of Esty’s collaborations with Jabara were featured (“Trapped in a Stairway” and “Disco Queen”). Giorgio Moroder then enlisted Esty to arrange three-fourths of Summer’s Once Upon a Time (1977) album before granting him co-production on Roberta Kelly’s “gospel-disco” album, Gettin’ the Spirit (1978). Later that year, Neil Bogart teamed Esty with D.C. LaRue, Brooklyn Dreams, and Cher in the studio.

Meanwhile, the European side of the Casablanca roster multiplied when producer Alec R. Costandinos brought his orchestral-disco projects to the label. Prior to Casablanca, Costandinos wrote “Love in C Minor” by Cerrone, foreshadowing his repertoire of side-long epics. He billed his first project for Casablanca as Love & Kisses (1977), with the infamous cover photo of a woman’s shirt being ripped to shreds. The album’s pair of mini-masterpieces, “Accidental Lover” and “I Found Love (Now That I Found You)”, introduced his signature sound: staccato strings, marathon explorations of love, a choir of female songbirds intoning the rather uncomplicated lyrics, and a male voice (sometimes Costandinos himself) taking the lead. His output for Casablanca included more than a dozen releases, among the most notable Romeo & Juliet (1978), a trio of Love & Kisses albums (including the theme to Thank God It’s Friday), and Sphinx (1977), which recounted the crucifixion of Christ.

Between Costandinos and Giorgio Moroder, who continued working with Munich Machine and Donna Summer after releasing his groundbreaking From Here to Eternity (1977) album within months of Love & Kisses, Casablanca cornered the market on Eurodisco.

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Moulton: Alec’s claim to fame was producing all the Demis Roussos records. I was with Billboard too so I met him when I’d go to MIDEM. He was just getting involved with Love & Kisses. He did it at Trident Studio. I went over to Paris a couple of times to visit him. It was wonderful. He’s such an incredibly nice man, very talented. That’s where I met a fellow named Raymond Donnez. He’s a Frenchman who did a lot of arrangements for Alec. When he came out with his album, he switched his name around and called himself “Don Ray”.

Leroy Gomez (Santa Esmeralda): Alec goes back to the disco days in Paris. Alec Costandinos, Don Ray, it was a community in the studio. We were all in and out of the studio together. I’d worked on another project with Alec before the disco heyday. We’ve been friends ever since.

Smith: Alec R. Costandinos was just this handsome man and his wife was wonderful. When you meet gentle souls, they stay in your heart and your mind forever. He was one of them. He was just most beautiful human being you’d want to meet and I’m a bitch, so for me to say those kinds of things about people, you got to believe it’s true.

Gomez: He’s an all-around talent. He doesn’t only write, he can produce, he plays the piano. He’s more of a producer-artist than a performing artist: writing words and melodies, going into the studio to find the right people to get the sound in those days. He was very good at doing that.

Smith: His music was journey music. Dramatic journey music: “I’m going to take you some place and I’m going to give you a beginning, middle and an end and you are never going to forget this”.

Wheeler: He was the king of journeys. You could go on a journey with an album. He’s one of my favorite producers of that time. I actually got to work with him on a couple of records. He was just a genuine man, a lovely person. There’s a little special place in my heart for Latin music and it probably came out of that. He pulled in all these amazing Latin sounds to dance music and created some of, in my opinion, the most wonderful songs. He could really take you somewhere, from one song to the other. Giorgio Moroder was very much the same in that respect, just the continuous flow.

Behind the Munich Machine

Behind the Munich Machine

Chris Bennett (Munich Machine): Giorgio might not like me saying it, but he was a brilliant producer. He really had his pulse on what the public liked. He really did revolutionize recording and film music. Pete Bellotte was brilliant. He always stayed under the radar but he was very much a partner to Giorgio in those days.

Gomez: I went to the Greek Theater to see Donna Summer play one night and this was when I was in the process of seeing who I was going to take for arrangers and all of that. I bumped into Giorgio Moroder. He goes, “Leroy, here’s my card. Call me in the beginning of the week. I’d really like to talk to you”. I take the card and give it to my management and they go, “No you don’t want to go with Giorgio. We’re going to do it this way”. Now talk about stumbling.

Bennett: Giorgio was notorious for calling you at 9:30 p.m., when your bed was starting to look good, and say, “Now I need you to come in! We’re going to do like a whole album tonight”. I was young and frisky and it was the best experience you could have.

Frank DiMino (Angel): Giorgio’s willing to take chances. He makes it comfortable enough where you don’t feel pressure.

Bennett: We did Munich Machine and we did his only duet album. Love’s In You, Love’s in Me (1978). It’s got a couple of cool tracks on it. We had some fun doing it and the photo session was with Harry Langdon. Some of the stuff I have a little trouble listening to because I sound like I’m about 12. Giorgio had his formula and it worked and he had his muse in Donna. She was just such a huge talent. It was her time. I was young and I don’t think really ready for what was put in my lap. It was wonderful. Now, I’ve pretty much found my niche as a jazz singer but I look back at that as such an incredible experience.

Donna Summer: Giorgio’s strength was his music. That was his absolute strength and his vision. We had great regard for each other’s talent. Something that people don’t know about Giorgio is that he has an incredible arsenal of songs that no one has probably ever heard that are brilliant. He has chosen to use what he considers the most commercial of the commercial stuff. Giorgio is and remains a very brilliant composer and he doesn’t take himself too seriously although he’s qualified to do anything. He’s Italian and he has joie de vivre – to use a French expression – he knows how to live. More than even his music, his art of living is wonderful. He’s an artist at living.

Bennett: He’s from that little part of the world where they speak German, Italian, and Swiss. He’s a really good observer of people. He’s almost a voyeur and I mean that in the kindest way. That’s what made him a great producer because he really could see what was happening and what people wanted to hear. I’d see him very intensely just go into the studio — synthesizers were new then — and he had that four on the floor thing going. Nobody had done that before.

Giorgio Moroder – In the Studio/Interview (1979)

Casablanca continued its signing spree with two American acts that gave a face to disco in contrast to studio outfits whose members shifted with each project. D.C. LaRue and Pattie Brooks were already established in the industry by the time they got to Casablanca. LaRue had released two albums on Pyramid Records that were conceptual masterworks about the social mores of clubland, Cathedrals (1976) and The Tea Dance (1977) while Brooks was an in-demand session vocalist who’d worked with Diana Ross, Donna Summer, and Ann-Margaret.

D.C. LaRue: Morris Levy owned my record company, Pyramid. He called me up to his office and said, “I’m not going to head a record company anymore. It’s going to be a production company”. He said, “Where do you want to go?” I was friendly with Ray Caviano at T.K. and I was friendly with Marc Simon who worked at Casablanca. They loved my music after two albums. I said, “I’ll be with Casablanca”. It went exactly like this: Morris picked up the phone and called Neil Bogart that minute. He said, “Neil I’m sitting here with D.C. LaRue. We’re turning Pyramid Records into a production company. He just told me he’d love to be on Casablanca”. Neil Bogart said, “Send him out. We’ll put him on the soundtrack to Thank God It’s Friday“. That was on a Tuesday and that Thursday I was on an airplane to work with Bob Esty to put two songs in Thank God It’s Friday.

Hart-Winer: Neil wanted a male artist really bad. He had the female and he had the band but he needed a white male artist. He wanted like a Leo Sayer and he thought D.C. was it but it just didn’t click. At that time, Bob was kind of a golden haired boy at Casablanca so Neil trusted him.

Bob Esty: They teamed me up with D.C. LaRue right after I came back from Germany and I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know his songs because I didn’t hang out in discos really. I heard Cathedrals and I thought it was interesting. I loved his being a conceptualist. The oddness of his albums is very interesting to me. They’re not straight ahead commercial. I don’t know how ultimately successful we were together but I was kind of inspired – not by his singing – but by his concept of what the song was about. We looked pretty much alike at the time. We could have been brothers but we had such a different energy.

LaRue: I had a New York City mystique that nobody could figure out. Nobody told me what to do or how to do it except Esty. He was very difficult but the label never A&R’d me or told me how much money to spend. It was just an ideal situation. I went into record Forces of the Night (1979) and I didn’t have a budget. It was like spend whatever you want to spend. I’d never heard of that.

Pattie Brooks: I didn’t know anything about disco. That was completely foreign to me because in L.A., I was doing Top Ten R&B, pop and jazz. A disco record? I said, “Well what’s that?” All the guys that danced with Ann-Margaret knew about the discos. I was still trying to grapple with that whole thing of what it was. I got signed, they put “After Dark” out and it began to go crazy up the dance charts. I went to my first disco club and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. They had me up on a catwalk and the guy said, “Just lip-synch to the song. When we point to you, the spotlight will hit you”. There were tons of guys there, just all over the place. They were just in heaven and so I went, “So this is disco” (laughs). It was so much fun.

Rodriguez: Pattie Brooks was a dear friend. I love Pattie. Everybody in the company loved her. They loved to see her win. They’d go out of their way for Pattie.

Hart-Winer: Marc Simon took on Pattie Brooks as a project with our department. He almost took a managerial interest in her. He had Paul Jabara put together this show for her at The Backlot. Simon Soussan and Marc did the music. Paul Jabara wrote a special song for her for that. They got costumers in. It was an amazing night.

Brooks: Marc Simon really took me under his wing because they kind of gave him carte blanche with the disco scene. He began to create the act and we went to New York. My sets were flown there and I did a show at Flamingos. I was taken into Studio 54. I didn’t know I was going to be apart of history.

Hart-Winer: When the soundtrack for Thank God It’s Friday first came out, the one that was moving up the disco charts was Pattie’s song. That was just not greeted warmly by the powers that be. Donna was the star. I think that they could have broken Pattie but not on the same package as Donna. If she’d had another vehicle at a different time, I don’t think it would have been an issue but it was the same vehicle and we just couldn’t do that.

Brooks: They had Bunny Sigler produce Party Girl (1979). They were trying to funk it up a little. They were trying to take me in a different direction and they didn’t know really what they were doing. They weren’t letting me have a free hand in choosing the right producers and the writers for me. That’s what made it hard for my career — not having any control. They didn’t get to know the artist to see all they could do. I also had written some songs and one was recorded on one of my albums, “Come Fly With Me Let’s Do It Again”.

Wheeler: Pattie Brooks — what a talented, talented woman and a lovely person. She had a huge record and then from there, where did it go? In hindsight, they weren’t working her. We tried. We worked hard on it. I don’t know what it was. The music business is funny, some people make it and some people don’t. There’s no reason why.

The Gribbitt Touch

The Gribbitt Touch

Irrespective of any one act’s ultimate record sales, Casablanca always committed to giving its artists the best in album cover design and the presentation of the music. Renowned fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo created iconic images of Donna Summer while Shusei Nagaoka, known for his stunning paintings of science-fiction landscapes, turned albums by Space and Munich Machine into futuristic extensions of the music. Neil Bogart hired Chris Whorf and his design studio, Gribbiit, to handle art direction and design for all Casablanca artists (except KISS), creating a brand of consistent excellence in album covers. Daring, provocative, glamorous – Casablanca fed imaginations.

Hart-Winer: Neil believed in the visual art. That’s why that department got a lot of attention. He did not mind spending money at all. He just didn’t know how to think small, which was marvelous. He had the inability to do that and that really helped all of us think a little larger.

Phyllis Chotin (Vice President, Creative Services): Little by little, I just wanted to start designing because it would end up going through me and my office, as head of Creative Services anyway. I would art direct and I would work with the artists. I didn’t do all of them but a lot I did and would just deliver the photos to Gribbitt to do.

Tom Nikosey (Designer): Gribbitt was a design studio that had art directors designing album covers, mostly, and they needed specialists to do certain things. They would hire out photographers, hire out lettering and logo artists, and hire out illustrators because they really didn’t work in-house. It was too much of a burden on them to hire people who did that for a living so they hired us out on a free-lance basis.

Robert Rodriguez (Illustrator: Gribbitt was great to work for and I think I only worked for maybe three different art directors there. They were so exciting. They did such cool stuff. Everyone was doing good stuff in those days.

Stephen Lumel (Designer): The procedure was sometimes you would handle the whole project, sometimes they’d give you photos and say make an album out of it. Sometimes you’d get a photo and you’d have to get retouching done and clean things up. For Donna Summer, all of her photos were made into 20×24 dye-transfer prints, which was real high-end in those days. They would make five or six prints of different photos and then decide which one they wanted to use. Chris Whorf probably art directed it because she had some famous photographers working with her. She had wonderful pictures but depending on how it was laid out, you had to retouch the pictures accordingly.

Henry Vizcarra (Art Director): Most of the time, all we had was the artist’s name and the title. Sometimes the label would bring in a really expensive photographer and we’d get a glamour shot of the artist. Sometimes they’d hire an illustrator. We’d choose the best image and design the lettering. I had a great time designing the logos for each act.

Nikosey: Henry was great. He was one of my favorite art directors during that time. He’s a very sensitive art director and he gave you a lot of freedom. He gave you good direction but he was just a terrific art director. He’s still in the business, still very highly respected. He has his own company.

Vizcarra: For Village People, we were sent two black and white photos: “This is a group. They’re called the Village People. Design the album cover”.

Lumel: In Donna Summer’s case, I think you had to respect the photography and the feel for who the person was. If it was based strictly on the photographic images that we were using (e.g. Bad Girls), you tried to tie it all together so it all worked together. You can’t add that lettering on the front with the theme and the title being foreign to everything else. We’d do the sketch and then we’d send it to that person to do the final inking and clean it all up but a lot of times I did the lettering by myself because I just liked doing it.

Nikosey: I would always insist on listening to a tape or something while I was working to kind of get the energy of the music and that would influence the style of the design that I’d be doing. I was always trying to create an image with the name or the lettering that would stand on its own, that would have its own sort of brand – nobody said the word “branding” in those days, but that’s basically what it was. I wanted the design, when it was by itself, to stand for whatever it’s representing, so people would remember it and want to wear it on a T-shirt. I was trying to create an image that was sort of a signature piece for the artist or band.

Chotin: The album cover has to reflect what’s inside, as well as the personality of the artist. You got to try and make it mesh. Usually, I’d get tracks and then I’d listen. I’d start feeling ideas. I’d find out what the single was or what the artist had in mind for the album title and then we’d meet and go over ideas, what their ideas were and what mine were.

LaRue: When I would have my meeting for my album covers, it would be with Phyllis and Chris. In my humble opinion, because I’m a graphic designer, art director and photographer as well, Casablanca put out the best looking recordings in the country for five or six years, on every level. — on the rock level, on the R&B level, on the disco level. Chris Whorf and that art department at Gribbitt, and Phyllis Chotin, they were brilliant. They just excelled. Even the bomb albums, when they were starting to put out four or five or six albums a week, and those disposable disco albums by the studio aggregations that nobody ever heard of, look at those album covers!

Chotin: It’s so much easier today than back in those days when you had to do mechanicals and dye transfers. If there was a typo and you had to cut into a word…it was really difficult. There was a lot of work that went into it back then. I traveled with Robin Williams from San Francisco to New York to shoot his album cover!

Lumel: I was with Phyllis. I was asked to go as the art director for Gribbitt representing Casablanca because I had worked on a lot of Casablanca stuff and they wanted somebody to go and they asked me if I wanted to go. It was a fun thing to do because the Lincoln Town Car picked you up at your house to take you to the airport, The plane is all arranged for you. You land in New York. You don’t know where the hell you are and there’s a guy standing there with a sign with your name on it. He puts you in the Lincoln Town Car and takes you into the city. I stayed at the Park Lane Hotel. We had a big limo each day to go to the shoots. I had no idea what was going to transpire as far as concept. In the case of Robin Williams, because he was so unusual and different — he wasn’t a rock and roller — he put on his costumes for about eight or ten different characters and we shot each character.

Briley: Shooting one of the album covers (Cruisin’, 1978) took us to the Mojave Desert. What a day!

Hodo: At the time we shot the album cover it was supposed to be the most expensive cover ever photographed, which was part of the Barnum-esque approach that Neil added to everything. I won’t get into it but if you look at the cover, consider how much it took to get all of that set up to the Mojave Desert, plus the helicopter filming the whole thing from over head. My clearest memory of that shoot is that it was in July and I was sick to death with the flu. Anytime I am handed that album to sign, all I can think of is how sick I was in the desert sun on top of a bulldozer, trying to look like I was having a good time. Neil had it all filmed in order to make a short for TV on the shooting of the album. He didn’t miss a trick.

Gomez: One thing Casablanca didn’t like was the European cover of Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood (1977). That was the last shot we took on the shoot that we did for the European cover. The sun was going down. They didn’t have the lighting correct. It was really dark. Neil, being a perfectionist, said, “You guys have to go in and shoot another cover for the States”. Neil, with his art department, came up with what I thought was a good idea having just Santa Esmeralda with a rose because “Leroy Gomez” was basically out of the picture at that point! By that time Neil was in full swing with me, he didn’t even know that the producer was trying to cut me out of being the lead vocalist in the group.

Nikosey: As far as risqué covers, there were a number of them. Now, it’s sort of no big deal but a lot of people were pushing the envelope. Disco was very sex-driven, obviously.

Chotin: I did an interview and I got berated (for Love & Kisses). It was one of those TV magazine shows. I think my answer was something like it’s not violence against women, it’s more about keeping your thumb on the pulse of America and this is kind of what America was allowing and going for at the time. It didn’t have, to me, much to do with violence against women. The times were different then. Now, I would be offended but then it was like, “Let’s sell some records! Let’s grab some attention!”, because that was the purpose of album graphics then.

Lumel: There may be some things in general that, because of the strength of women’s rights and violence against women and just domestic violence in general, would be inappropriate so you probably wouldn’t do it today. There are some people who don’t care and they just try to get away with whatever they can. When we had photo sessions and you were just a shooting a model to use on the cover, you couldn’t have that nipple showing. You had to conceal it. There was some of that censorship being practiced. I didn’t want any backlash for anything that we photographed. If you do it tastefully, it’s good but it’s those that don’t think about that when they do it that creates problems for everyone else. The morals of this country compared to the rest of the world are a little different. There are things that are totally acceptable in Europe that aren’t acceptable here in public media.

Bennett: I’m a farm girl from Illinois and my parents were very conservative. They were Democrats, but still. When Giorgio had the concept for A Whiter Shade of Pale (1978), I went in for a meeting with Neil Bogart. I was so nervous. He said, “Well we’ve got this idea. It’s going to be like machines and you’re going to look like you’re naked but you’re not really going to be because you’re going to be in fog and have goggles”. I said, “Well that sounds cool. I’m up for that”. We get there for the photo shoot and it’s a major photographer. They start plying me with a little wine, a little smoke. Before I know it, I’m dancing topless thinking nobody’s gong to see anything because I’m going to be covered in smoke. A few weeks later — this is the days before digital, remember — there I am stark naked on the front cover and they’ve enhanced my boobs! I looked good but I began to weep, I said, “My father is going to kill me”(laughs). I think Neil felt so bad for me, he ended up putting it on the back cover and me with the goggles on the front cover. Now I’m proud of it but in those days…My parents were so proud that I had done my first album that they’d take it to places for people but they wouldn’t take the cover because this was a little Methodist town. It’s tame, now.

Cultural Relativism

Cultural Relativism

In retrospect, Casablanca’s album covers served as something of a barometer of socio-cultural norms. If the imagery and music conveyed a heightened sexuality, it simply reflected the zeitgeist.

While the 1970s cultivated an environment where sexual expression and exploration was encouraged — a Halston and Gucci-dressed translation of the “free love” ethos born during the late ’60s — it also created a non-judgmental climate of recreational drug use. Brett Hudson explains, “You got to remember the time that was. There were a lot of drugs, a lot of women. It was a different era, completely”. Or, as Arnie Smith says more directly, “They weren’t the days of wine and roses, they were the days of Quaaludes and cocaine”.

It is perhaps challenging for younger generations to truly grasp the innocence of the era, especially since many written accounts documenting the 1970s crassly and mistakenly moralize a unique set of social codes specific to a time and place long passed. Drug use at record labels, or anywhere for that matter, then was certainly not the inflammatory issue it is today. Regrettably, those writing about this era in the music industry often use Casablanca as a lightning rod for all the excesses. “They target Casablanca because of our success”, Cecil Holmes says. The issue about how drugs figured prominently into an environment where business was conducted and music was created must be examined through a lens of cultural relativism. Equally as important to understand is the fact that not everyone partook, even the most successful acts and executives.

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Chotin: I think it was a part of the whole culture and the industry back then, and music and musicians. There was excess but there was also a lot of creativity.

Randee Goldman (Executive Assistant): Throughout whatever perceptions there were of drugs and rock and roll and all of that, it didn’t matter because the job always got done. It wasn’t like drugs stopped anything from happening.

Bob Perry (Independent Promotion, Southeast: Whatever your preferences, — you wanted to drink, you wanted to smoke, you wanted to snort — it was there. You had a job to do. You get the work done and if you wanted to party, you party. It’s one of those unwritten rules.

Cecil Holmes (Partner/Senior Vice President): I never was involved with drugs at all. Never at all. Ask anybody who knows me up there and they’ll say to you that Cecil was never into that. I heard stories and you would see different things going around but I never put myself into a position to be involved.

Bennett: Depending on who the act was, there might be a little pot in the studio, some artists liked their coke. The truth of the matter is, it’s hard work in the studio. I’m not saying I’ve never smoked a joint or done a line before I did a background part a long time ago, but to really do a performance, you can’t do that stuff. If I was doing a show at a club, I’d always know I had to have a gram of coke for the drummer, and then probably one more gram for the rest of the band. You just kind of figured that into the budget. It was just too early in the game to see that people were going really to blow out their nose and get paranoid.

Gold: I’ll tell you how square I was. I went to a Parliament show and I almost felt like I was in a Woody Allen movie because someone from management asked me, “Want coke?”, and I said, “No, thanks” holding up a can of Pepsi. Then I saw what he was talking about laying there in lines on his briefcase. He didn’t know whether I was kidding or not.

Bernie Worrell (Parliament-Funkadelic): We was hittin’ it man, I was hittin’ it. Had the energy…and stuff to help me have the energy. That’s part of it. There’s a lot of it. That’s grinding. We worked. The energy we put out, (sighs), we needed a little help.

Gold: If you have been on the road with performers you could understand how they could easily be susceptible because they sometimes needed a little something to go to sleep. They need “medicine” to wake up. Traveling is not always good for your stomach and there was something for that, too. And it was hard not to want to unwind and celebrate after a successful show. However, when I was on the road with Donna I never saw her or her back-up singers ever use or abuse anything! She wanted to be at her best every night and she was.

Moulton: A lot of these clubs I went to once. The music was so loud and I was not into drugs. I saw all those drugs and I wanted to get out of there. I just didn’t like to blame drugs for what I was doing because drugs had nothing to do with it. I was high on the music. I didn’t need drugs to stimulate it, believe me.

Gomez: I was a homebody! When I was in a club it was because I was doing a promotion. I was a young happily married old man. I wasn’t interested going out there watching everyone bop around. The club thing, I didn’t get caught up in that.

Bruce Sudano (Brooklyn Dreams): I was somewhat grounded but I think out of any point in my life, that was the most out I was in that period. I started smoking pot when I was a teenager and I kind of came up in that whole late ’60s kind of thing and it culminated into the excesses of the ’70s into the early ’80s when I put the brakes on in terms of that kind of stuff. When I look back now and I look at all the things that I’ve done and lived through, there was so many instances that anything could have gone wrong and anything could have happened. I think essentially there was always a core in myself…I knew right from wrong so I was only going to go so far and when other people were going over the edge, I was like, “No I won’t go there”. There was a governor on my gas peddle, even though I was braking the speed limit.

Joe Klein Remembers…How “Stars Wars/Cantina Band” got to Number One

Joe Klein Remembers…How “Stars Wars/Cantina Band” got to Number One

Joe Klein gave Casablanca its identity on radio. Through his friendship with Casablanca artist and renowned songwriter Artie Wayne, Klein developed a relationship with Scott Shannon, one of Casablanca’s many promotion stars. Shannon tapped Klein for producing a radio spot to promote David Castle’s debut. Neil Bogart liked what he heard and solicited Klein for Meco’s Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk (1977) album. Artie Wayne explains how Klein got the gig, “Joe was an incredible engineer and he loved the movie, so he made a mini movie out of that Star Wars spot. Neil bought $30-$40,000 worth of radio time and had that spot played and it took it to number one. Joe did successful campaigns from thereon”. Klein, who produced countless radio and television commercials for Casablanca, remembers how his radio spot spawned a chart-topping hit:

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Neil Bogart said, “Look, I need you to pull out every trick in the hat. I want you to produce the best commercial for a record album that’s ever been produced”. I said, “Well that should probably be pretty simple, Neil, because nobody’s been really spending much time and effort and money in this area”. He goes, “Well that’s about to end”.

He said, “This is what I want. I want only one song in this commercial. I’m going to buy so much goddamn airtime on this commercial that that’s the way we’re going to get this record played. You’ve only got one minute so you got to cut this thing down and I want you to make me a masterpiece, Joe Klein”. I said, “Well I’ll give it my best shot Mr. Bogart. I think I really could do this for you”.

I got the copy of the master tape and I got the script and I remember the script was very simple. The script said, “There’s a lot of Star Wars albums to choose from but there’s only one that counts”. Then the next line was “Meco: Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk“. Then we played the music and then at the end the announcer just says, “Meco: Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk from Casablanca Record and Filmworks”.

These disco records were all very heavy 4/4 beat productions so it was an editor’s dream come true because it was so easy to cut this stuff down because everything was based on a heavy 4/4 beat. There’d be little breaks. I must say, to this day, it’s probably one of the best editing jobs I’ve ever accomplished.

I bring the spot into Neil’s office. He had a huge sound system in his office. He had a rack full of real high-end audio gear made by a company called SAE, which interestingly enough I used in my own studio. He had these little red LED lights blinking. I bring him the master of the commercial and he’s got a two-track tape machine. He says, “Let me see what you got”. He’s on the phone, he’s walking around. I thread the thing up and I play the spot and I crank it up a little bit. He freezes. He just stops what he’s doing. He was kind of preoccupied. He hears the thing and he just freezes. He had a phone receiver in his hand and he dropped it. He hears the commercial and it stops and he picks the receiver up – I don’t know who he was talking to – and he says, “I got to call you back”.

He says, “Play that motherfucker again…and turn it up louder”. I play it again and he hears the thing and now he gets on his desk and starts dancing. He’s dancing along with it. It comes to end and he jumps off the desk onto the floor and he says, “That’s the best fucking goddman radio commercial I’ve ever heard in my whole fucking life”. He says, “That’s incredible. What’s your name again?” I said to him, “Joe Klein”. He says, “Well Joe Klein, you know something? I hope you don’t have much else going on in your career right now because you got a new career with me. I’m going to have you so busy you’re just not going to believe it. I think you and I have just discovered a new way to start selling records”.

That story has a happy ending because the record rocketed up the charts. That commercial really had a major role in making that record a hit. The music that was on that commercial was so good and so listenable. Ernie Anderson was such a revered announcer that all the DJs and the program directors loved this guy so they paid even more attention. Ernie Anderson had the voice that every DJ wished he had. That started a succession of ads. Over the next year or two, and I didn’t find out until much later, apparently DJs and music directors and program directors and production directors from radio stations all over the county were calling the label on a regular basis saying these ads are just unbelievable, who does your ads? Of course, they didn’t want to lose me. The label presented me with a platinum single, a gold album, and a platinum album for Meco.

The radio spots became a totally integral part of the marketing of their stuff. The combination of Ernie Anderson’s voice and these really driving heavy 4/4 kick drum spots, they didn’t sound like any other commercials ever made. The radio guys absolutely loved them. It started a great run for me.