Epic Records was located on the 13th floor of the imposing Eero Saarinen-designed CBS Building, dubbed “Black Rock” due to its black granite exterior. The interior was furnished with fine tables and chairs designed by Mies van der Rohe, and many of those same tables and chairs could be found at the Museum of Modern Art, just down the block on 53rd Street. During that time, one could find himself in the elevator with John Hammond, Goddard Lieberson, Clive Davis, or even William Paley, the president of CBS. I had an office at Epic in New York from 1970 to 1978, when I moved to Los Angeles. During that time, our annual record sales grew from roughly $12 million to $250 million, but strangely, the number of offices never increased — we actually occupied very little space for the powerhouse we had become. The entire national Epic Records staff occupied 15 offices. We had one conference room. Epic shared creative services with the Columbia label, which was located on the 10th and 11th floors, and occupied all of both floors.
The corporation had a decorating code for offices, and supplied its own artwork for employees to display. Independently chosen artwork was frowned upon — except on the creative floors. Things were so relaxed in the ’70s that for a couple of years I had a large framed poster on my office wall which read, in perfect Coca-Cola lettering, “Enjoy Cocaine.” After Clive was dismissed later that decade, I thought it wise to retire that particular piece.
The A&R offices were extremely colorful, and generally reflected the taste and personality of the inhabitant. They were equipped with standard CBS office furniture, but there were two things that distinguished our offices from all others in the building — a powerful stereo system with both reel-to-reel and cassette tape decks, and upright pianos. The pianos were a holdover from the earliest days of A&R, when songwriters used to come in and pitch their tunes to the early A&R men (like Mitch Miller, who had been head of A&R at Columbia Records) by actually sitting down at the piano and performing. Later in the decade, Jim Steinman would play piano while Meatloaf sang and fairly blew down the walls, auditioning live in my office (more about this in the next installment).
When I arrived early on a Monday morning for my first day of work I encountered the future head of A&R, whose name was Don Ellis, occupying the first office by the secretarial bay. He called me in and we had a nice chat. At that time, Don was director of marketing at Epic, but would soon succeed my first boss, Larry Cohn, director of A&R when I started. Larry was a friendly, easy-going blues fanatic who played guitar and wore jeans and cowboy boots to work. He was a prince of a guy. He didn’t, however, care much for the bureaucracy and structure of a large company — even a record company. He and Clive had frequent creative disagreements, and I always felt that Larry really wanted to create a boutique jazz and blues label — not exactly a formula for massive album sales. At that time, he was content to leave the rock and roll to me. When I started at the label in 1970, its biggest acts were Jeff Beck, the Dave Clark Five, Bobby Vinton and Sly & The Family Stone. (more…)
