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You once said that everywhere you went in 1970 you found somebody talented—Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Tom Waits, Steve Martin. It’s a long list. Is it really true nobody wanted to sign them?

I could’ve signed twice as many people if I really had an idea of what I was doing. They’d all been around. Linda Ronstadt was on Capitol—she’d had a hit with the Stone Poneys and her career went nowhere. Jackson Browne had already been signed and dropped by Elektra without ever making a record! Don Henley and Glenn Frey had been signed by a company called Amos Records. I bought their recording contract and their music publishing rights, which were owned by Amos, for $5,000. And gave them back half their publishing. People just didn’t recognize these people’s talents.

What was different about the music business then? Was it more about music than about business?

I don’t think so. But in those days there were lots of young entrepreneurs—Chris Blackwell had Island Records; Jerry Moss and Herb Alpert had A&M Records; Herb Cohen had Bizarre Records. Today, except for Ahmet, all the entrepreneurs are gone. All the small record companies are gone. The costs are incredible today. What it costs to make one record today by an unknown artist—$300,000—would equal the entire recording budget for Asylum Records in 1972. In those days, people were, for the most part, self-contained. Joni Mitchell performed with a guitar, Laura Nyro with a piano. Today everyone has a big band, and it’s very expensive to keep that kind of organization going.

You and Joni Mitchell lived together for three years—as roommates, not as lovers. You said you two were like the Odd Couple. What did you mean?

I was doing business. Joni was painting and creating. She would try out new songs all the time. She wrote a song about me—“Free Man in Paris.” I was embarrassed when she first wrote it. I felt it was an exposure of some kind. It was like “Oh, my God . . .” It seemed so personal. I knew exactly what she meant: “He said you just can’t win. Everybody’s in it for their own game.” It was very deep and very right. That’s why she’s such a great songwriter. Her stuff is extraordinarily revealing, both about herself and about others. Of course, today I’m extraordinarily proud of it.

You don’t have anyone quite like Joni Mitchell or Bob Dylan on your label today, but you do have Guns n’ Roses. How did you first meet them?

Tom Zutaut had signed the band, and they were camped out in the reception room of our record company, looking like they were sleeping in the street. And I remember going upstairs and saying, “Who is that in the reception area?” And they said, “It’s Guns n’ Roses.” And I said, “My God, these guys look like they haven’t got a nickel.” And Tom Zutaut said, “They don’t.”

So looking back, which artists’ careers do you think you really had an impact on, in the sense that you helped them reach certain artistic achievements?

I felt I had a big impact on Jackson Browne’s career, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell. But if I didn’t exist, they still would have been successful. The only thing I’m sure of is that Joni Mitchell wouldn’t have written “Free Man in Paris.”

KURT COBAIN

by David Fricke

January 27, 1994

Along with everything else that went wrong onstage tonight [at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom], you left without playing “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Why?

That would have been the icing on the cake [smiles grimly]. That would have made everything twice as worse.

I don’t even remember the guitar solo on “Teen Spirit.” It would take me five minutes to sit in the catering room and learn the solo. But I’m not interested in that kind of stuff. I don’t know if that’s so lazy that I don’t care anymore or what. I still like playing “Teen Spirit,” but it’s almost an embarrassment to play it.

In what way? Does the enormity of its success still bug you?

Yeah. Everyone has focused on that