casablanca records warner records party every day

#Casablanca records warner records party every day license
#Casablanca records warner records party every day series

It s all in here, from the drug-fueled meetings to flying a birthday cake first class to Donna Summer, though there s the inescapable sense that it was always going to end in tears. As cofounder and Bogart s cousin Harris had a front-seat view of the madness.

#Casablanca records warner records party every day license

The home of Donna Summer and The Village People during their 70s heyday, flamboyant mogul Neil Bogart s Casablanca Records had a license to print money which they promptly blew on drugs, bribes, and outrageous promotional stunts. The rise and fall of the world s most debauched label. Those dreams, those experiences, those trips and those days, may well be gone forever.but thanks to Larry Harris we've been blessed with an unabashed look back into our most fantastic and frivolous past. And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records is not just an insider account of a major portion of American rock n' roll history-it's a work of cultural anthropology. He relates each story with a refreshing humility, often sharing the recall of his own overwhelmed surprise. Larry Harris was front and center-from Woodstock and the discovery of KISS, to the founding of Casablanca, Studio 54 and the origin of Disco. LA WeeklyĪ delightful new memoir pulls back the veil on an almost-forgotten era. This fell mostly under Harris purview, and he offers fascinating insight on what these legendary promo men did back in the day.

The book contains detailed evidence of the chaotic manipulation of the music charts in the wild days before computer scanning. of the Eagles, CSNY and the long-haired ladies of the canyons. The book conveys this sense of excitement, as this ambitious, wild bunch from lands in the supposedly chill, post-hippie L.A. Harris says, We came out with a New York attitude, trying to change things and made a little noise in the process. Larry Harris has emerged from his music-industry semiretirement to pen And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records.

#Casablanca records warner records party every day series

'We never thought the roller coaster would stop,' Harris says.Neil Bogart died in 1982 and, though there has been talk of a biopic for years (it was rumored in 2001 that Gene Simmons wanted to produce it as a Mike Myers vehicle), the actual story of the Los Angeles label he masterminded remained just a series of tall tales and exaggerated drug gossip until now. He changed from somebody who didn't care about that stuff to somebody who cared a lot.'īogart's drifting focus, coupled with a number of high-profile flops (particularly the much-derided decision to release four Kiss solo albums on the same day in September 1978) and a decline in disco sales, combined to ensure Casablanca's fall would be nearly as meteoric as its rise. 'At one point we had maybe half the PR department working on Neil's publicity. As the label shifted to a more disco-heavy output at the expense of its once-vaunted diversity (in one telling vignette, Harris writes of Bogart denying him the $100,000 needed to sign Dire Straits because Casablanca 'could do five disco records for that (money)'), Bogart became driven by his desire to remain in the spotlight. Unlike Clinton, however, whom Harris describes as an artist's artist - totally unfazed by any media attention - Bogart embraced fame and all of its trappings. 'It never helped that every time we met with George there was a line of coke out, which made it tough to comprehend anything anyway.'įormer Parliament-Funkadelic keyboardist and arranger Bernie Worrell, who plans to release his latest album under the name SociaLybrium early in 2010, believes that Clinton and Bogart were kindred spirits, saying, 'I think George and Neil were on the same page. and then someone would have to (translate) it for us,' he says. 'George would be talking about Funkadelic and this ethereal experience with the mothership up in the heavens. Harris laughs recounting his dealings with Clinton. Then again, there aren't many people who can regale listeners with stories about doing lines of cocaine with George Clinton, who swore that anyone who joined in would end up speaking Spanish because the stuff they were snorting 'hadn't cleared customs yet.' Then there are the tales from the catacombs deep inside New York City's Studio 54 (Bogart and club founder Steve Rubell were close friends), a celeb-infested honeycomb that Harris describes as 'dusted' with cocaine. Harris confirms numerous debauched tales, though he maintains that the drug use at Casablanca didn't exceed what was going on at every other label at the time. And this is when people were open about smoking weed and doing coke.' Says Aucoin, 'It was like they were the new stars of Hollywood. Three decades removed from its heyday, the label is still nearly as renowned for its excesses as the music it released.