[Paterno: Shopping Bands]

In terms of shopping, it's something you do a lot more when you're younger and trying to establish a clientele. It was a lot different also back when I started out. Our people had the ability to sign artists, which they don’t much have anymore. There were many more signings going on and there was much more of an active NR community.

The NR function, I've noticed as I've observed it, is more directed - realistically at white rock bands. These critics all sit around and talk about them. The NR function - the NR people are not so much in Hip Hop or R&B. Those tend to come in from other places, not from lawyer’s shopping them. So as Hip Hop becomes more prevalent the shopping becomes less. As Rock becomes less prevalent the shopping becomes less. If people get signed less, the shopping becomes less. As you get older, like me, you just can't put up with it anymore. You can't put up without - with sending out ten CDs and nobody responding. The artist calling you up and saying, “What's going on?” And the guy hasn’t listened to it. It's a very frustrating process and ultimately not all that fruitful.

In fact when I used to do a lot of shopping, which was - I sort of had two careers. I was a lawyer from 1980 to 1990. Then I went to run a record company and then in the mid 90’s I came back and became a lawyer again.

In my first career I did a lot of shopping. Again, it was more productive then, but even then it wasn’t so much more productive. You learned as time went on that bands didn’t or artists didn’t get signed based on some lawyer sitting around or some manager sitting around. It really was pretty much other things. It just, you know, the lawyer could fan the flames once they started. But it was really the artist doing the bulk of the work to get noticed and write great songs, and get a presence out there and have people notice who they are.

So I decided it was such an inefficient process and not all that much - not really very rewarding. I stopped doing it. On the other hand, I have the luxury of representing a lot of major artists. If don’t shop the latest new band it's not going to make a lot of difference in my life. Not to say we don’t take on new artist, because we do.

If I had my preference it would be when they got their first offer. Which, by the way is mostly how bands do get signed. Again, when I say bands it's referring to white rock bands. That would be my preference, they probably would like to be earlier so they have somebody they can call up and bother and talk about the industry. Again, if bands got an offer I'm a lot more interested. If they’ve got really good management I'm a lot more interested.

Management is also very helpful in that shopping process. I guess, when you say shopping, if you include that broadly to me - like going out and playing, cutting demos, putting out your own independent records. If that’s all part of the shopping process then I guess it's more productive then just the idea of me getting a lawyer demo and calling up an A&R guy and sending it to them.

So again, I have the luxury at this point in my career of not having to listen to 300 demos and decide which ones are good. Which lawyers are notoriously bad at anyway. I think, part of my early success was based on the fact that I was good at it. It's ultimately a pretty inefficient process. When it comes right down to it I decided now at this stage of my life I’d rather listen to music that I know I'm going to like, then stuff that’s unsigned. Stuff that’s more likely than not to be crap. There's not a lot of great bands out there and the chances of one of them randomly landing on my desk is minimal.

Well, I mean, if you're a young lawyer, what you should do is get to know the NR people. That’s the key. Do what you have to do to get to know the NR people, because they're going to be the people you're going to shop to. Also the NR people are a good source of artists, because that’s their job to know about most artists. So they can tip you off to stuff they're interested in. Maybe not be able to sign or maybe they do want to sign them.

I can tell you my story about Guns N’ Roses, which really wasn’t an A&R guy that told me about it, but it kind of was. I was very friendly with most of the NR people and there was a really good A&R guy named Tom Zootock back in the day. There was a woman who was managing Guns N’ Roses and her name was Vickie Hamilton. She would always invite me to go see her bands and I’d never make it. The reason I’d never make, because when I say I'm going to go I actually feel like I should show up. I’d actually blown off one of them and I felt really guilty about it. So, she said she had this band Guns N’ Roses that was playing the Trubadur that Friday night and I said, “Great.” Then I had lunch with Tom Zootock on Thursday and he said he was going to go see them. I said, “Well, if Tom’s going to go see them, they must be pretty good.”

I showed up at the gig and there were 12 A&R people there. It's incredible. Back in those days they didn’t have the massive A&R swarms that you have today. Not so much today, it was like about seven or eight years ago that you had the swarms.

But there were 12 people and when I got there at ten, which was when Guns N’ Roses were suppose to go on there was still the band before the band before Guns N’ Roses. So I'm going, "You know what?" I'm going home to go to sleep.” Then I see 12 A&R people and I go, “Maybe I should stay.” So I stayed and they finally went on at one and they were amazing. That's how I ended up working with them.

Again, it's partly staying in touch with the A&R people. They are - they will probably know as much or more about most artists that people are thinking about then anybody else. It's sort of a shortcut, a research shortcut.

The job is much harder today, because the business is in such bad shape. With all the piracy and everything else whatever has effected the music isn't all that good. The business is not that good. The record companies, which is the primary place where as a music lawyer you do business, they're all afraid for their jobs. They're laying people off. They're squeezing every nickel like they need the imprint on their thumb. It's not as fun as it use to be. Mostly having to do with the fact that the business is not in very good shape.

Interviewer:
Do you see an out?

Peter Paterno:
I have to say up until recently I was pretty much thinking it was hopeless. I'm not saying
that - I have an idea of what might happen. I'm not going to share it, but I have an idea of
how things might actually turn out to be okay at some point, which is not to say that I
don’t thinks things were ever going to turn out okay. My premise has always been
people want to listen to music and musicians won't work for free.

So somewhere in that equation you're going to get some solution, but I for the life of me couldn’t figure it out. You sit there and read a billboard recently or the L.A. Times in the last five years. The record industry is not joining the modern age. They're holding back these new technologies that consumers want.

I sit there go that’s a bunch of crap. First of all these aren’t consumers they're thieves. They don’t want to pay. Everybody’s saying, “Well, you should monetize these new sources of technology. I'm a lot smarter than people - I can't figure out a way to monetize it and if somebody could it would be happening. It's not easy or maybe even doable, but it's certainly not easy. All these people that say, “Well, consumers want this and consumers want that.” Consumers want free, okay, and free is pretty hard to compete with. It's a very difficult problem, but ultimately look, the consumers are getting what they want. The more free they get, the less musicians get paid, the less good the music is.

Then there's the other argument; musicians will do it because they love the music and it will all be great, because they’ll do it because they love it. Well, even if you love it if you can do it 16 hours a day it's a lot better than if you have a 12 hours shift at McDonalds. You’ll write a lot more music if you’re not flipping burgers. So even if you love the music, the chances of making more and better music is higher if you're actually getting paid for it.