I became a music lawyer very much on purpose. I started out life as tax lawyer thinkign that that would be an interesting sort of fun thing to do with the idea that I could maybe do tax planning for entertainers and move over to or do both at the same time. But I had been around music my whole life. My step-father was a disc jockey, I played music when I was a kid, and I played in bands in college and law school. Loved music, intentionally wanted to be in the business, knew I couldn’t make it as a musician so I decided I would do it as a lawyer. And when I found out there was such a thing as music law it was like putting my two loves together and it was like fun; it wasn’t like working.

So I went to a firm that was doing it. I was fortunate to get a job there and got trained mostly on the record company side. In those days we represented more companies than artists. And then I becuase temperamentally I relate more to artists I decided to build an artists practice and did that on my own
I decided early in my career that I wanted to be in the artist side of the business. I didn’t want to work for a company. That’s two fold. One, I like the independence of having a number of clients and as opposed to if you work at a company you have one. Two, temperamentally I relate better to artists. I have a creative side to myself and I like being around creative people. I particularly enjoy taking concepts of business and explaining them to creative people because those two worlds don’t mix and match too well; they’re always at tension with each other. And I like sort of like being at the point where the two meet and seeing how it works together.
I decided to go to a private firm just because I thought that would be the best place to represent artists. I like the independence; I like the camaraderie of being with other people. I would prefer that to working by myself which I find a little bit lonesome. I like talking things over with other people, bouncing ideas, I always believe that two bright people discussing something will come up something that neither one of them would have had by themselves.
I think the key to having a long successful career starts with loving what you do and wanting to do it and being passionate about it. I don’t think that you can continue for a long period of time and be happy in your life unless you’re feeling in sync with who you are what you’re doing are the same kinds of things. So I think it’s important to be passionate about what you’re doing and to want to pursue it. I also think it’s important to have some variety to what you do. I think doing the same thing over and over again would get dull would be hard to keep doing it. I think that if you do it with integrity and you do it and treat people with respect this is a relatively small business. You don’t want to be in a position of hurting people if you can avoid it. And I think that’s important to having a long term career. I mean the business is based on information, it’s based on relationships, it’s based on being part of a community and I think you have to be a good citizen within the community to have a long career.
I truly love working in the music industry. I love music. I like listening to it. I like playing it. I like being around musicians. I find the whole process exciting and since it’s not something I have the talent to do and make a living as a musician I really get a thrill out of being what I hope to be is considered a key player in musicians’ lives.
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