No Way to Say Goodbye - Anna McPartlin [61]
Within weeks he’d picked himself up and made a decision. He was never going to be the next Santana but, sure as shit, he was going to be the next Clive Davis, the next great music executive in America. He’d never again be expendable. He’d be the best in his chosen profession – and if being the best meant being a complete fucking asshole like that guy Eastler, then so be it.
Fate must have taken him in hand because a week later he bumped into a blue-eyed blonde called Frankie. Mesmerized by her unaffected beauty, he offered to replace the coffee she’d just spilled over him. Half an hour later she had made the decision to dump her boyfriend of three months. On their second official date Frankie mentioned she was the daughter of Joe Merrigan, head of New Moon Records. Sam couldn’t believe his luck. Six weeks passed before he met Joe for dinner in his mansion. Joe conducted the meal as if it was an interview and Sam, ever prepared, came through with flying colours. Afterwards, when Frankie and her mother were making drinks, Joe told Sam dirty jokes, which he described as his weakness and not tolerated by his wife and their squeaky-clean daughter. Sam indulged the old man by responding appropriately and telling a few of his own. Joe smacked him on the back, laughing hard, and Sam knew he wouldn’t have to wait long.
When he wasn’t brown-nosing Joe or having polite sex with the man’s sensitive daughter, he was trawling clubs looking for that next big act. Early on he narrowed it down to six bands, following them night after night and gig after gig, then narrowing them down again until, four months into his relationship with Frankie, he’d found the Dead-beats, his first great act.
He’d phoned her dad in his office at around noon. He told him he’d discovered a great band and respectfully asked if he would attend their gig later that night. Joe had laughed, saying he had young guys who did that, but Sam was insistent. Joe broke, and met Sam after eight in a small club in Hoboken. The band played and Joe’s initial bemusement turned slowly to interest. After their fourth song he was hooked. Over the months Sam had cultivated a relationship with the band and introduced Joe to them. As instructed they sucked ass. Joe was really impressed with their knowledge of his medium-sized company and of its many quality acts. He was especially impressed with their lack of ego and commitment to the process of making music – in which Sam had spent most of the day indoctrinating them.
Later at an all-night diner and over pancakes, Joe offered Sam his first job in A&R. He started the next day and at first he worked under a gay guy called George Le Forge, a coiffeur turned A&R in the late sixties after a chance encounter with Misty Day, a buxom blues singer he had introduced to Arista Records. She went on to sell eight million copies before she died of a coke overdose in the early eighties. Then he’d found a metal outfit who were doing nicely for Blue Moon. Sam guessed that George had been lucky – he’d only discovered two acts in ten years while he himself was planning on discovering one a year. Within six months Sam controlled the Deadbeats and George was back doing hair.
After he had successfully signed another two million-dollar acts, he migrated to RCA America, leaving Frankie and Joe devastated. Frankie had lost the man she thought would marry her and Joe a natural son-in-law and heir. Sam felt a clean break was best. As much as he liked Frankie, she was a little too fragile for his taste and, besides, he had enough of his own shit to deal with. He didn’t love her so he reasoned that he was doing the right thing. He didn’t look back, not even when Frankie ended up in hospital having starved herself for six