For those unfamiliar with Harold Bronson, he’s a dedicated American music lover who caught the bug as a teenager in the 1960s and was never cured, not that he ever wanted to be. Every penny he earned doing chores at the family home was spent at the local record store and when he left college he immersed himself in what he loved, playing in a band, writing record reviews for magazines and, eventually, working at a store called Rhino Records, the name he chose for the much-respected reissue label that he and his partner Richard Foos launched in 1978. By the mid-1980s it was the leading repackaging label in the US, noted not only for its good taste but the care and precision its owners devoted to each and every release. Rhino was eventually bought out by Warner Bros who, it’s safe to say, weren’t quite as conscientious as those from whom they bought it.
This is Harold’s third book, following on from his Rhino Records Story (2013) and My British Invasion (2017), whose subtitle might well have been Confessions Of An Anglophile. It differs from those in that its format is a series of diary entries, utterly candid and without pretension or hindsight. What we read in this laconic, day-to-day style is precisely what happened and when, recollected in a very matter of fact fashion, complete with forthright impressions of those he met and casual observations on personal traits. As such, it’s very enlightening, a snapshot of how operators like Harold do their business, the characters they meet, among them several noted rock and pop stars, and what’s said at the meetings. It’s also very moreish in that once you start reading you want to keep reading, not that the structure of the book makes it a page-turner, more that items of interest keep jumping off the page, some amusing, some edifying, and, of course, once you’ve got the hang of the way Harold lays it all down, you can jump in anywhere, pick and choose a few pages without concern for losing a thread, simply because there isn’t one, apart from the sense of being a fly-on-the-wall eavesdropper to an interesting life in music.
Let’s take a few examples. Among the many acts with whom Harold became close was the Monkees, several of whose LPs were reissued by Rhino. Harold met Michael Nesmith for the first time on Monday, June 1, 1970, at the offices of his music publisher, Screen Gems, on Sunset Boulevard, interviewing him for an unnamed magazine. “Mike was smart, thoughtful and surprisingly candid, especially when I asked him why he hadn’t formed a band with Peter Tork after they left the Monkees,” writes Harold. “Mike and Peter were considered the serious musicians of the four Monkees. His response was unsettling: ‘I don’t like Peter Tork, never have liked him. I have to qualify that, because me not liking somebody doesn’t mean that they’re particularly bad people. He could do a lot of wonderful things for me. The first visceral gut reaction to Peter was one of dislike. I never have liked him. I don’t want to play in a band with Peter. I didn’t want to play in a band with Peter. And I didn’t like playing in a band with Peter.’ To provide perspective, he also said, ‘I don’t like my mother. She happens to be an awfully nice lady and has never done anything to me to make me not like her’.”
Six year later Harold met Davy Jones: “Davy was serious throughout the interview, focused on financial matters even though I didn’t ask about that…. He said he was fine with the money [the group] made from royalties on the records but believed Screen Gems had cheated the group on the merchandising. ‘Our contract said we were supposed to split five percent. All we got were checks for $3,000 apiece. We sued them for $20 million, but eventually settled for $50,000.’ It left a bad taste in Davy’s mouth: ‘I will never sue anybody as long as I live. It’s heartache, it’s boring and it’s unfriendly. If anybody crosses me up now, I’ll cut their balls off and stick them in their mouth. Nobody will ever fuck me again, that’s for sure.’ Afterward, Davy and I walked to our cars parked on a side street. I was disconcerted to discover that, even though he had made over a million dollars as a Monkee, five years after the group dissolved he was driving a battered yellow Volkswagen Bug.”
Here’s an entry for Tuesday, June 12, 1990: “Earlier this year, I wrote to Apple Records head Neil Aspinall, offering an advance (against royalties) of $500,000 to license the U.S. rights to Apple’s non-Beatles masters. Despite the hefty amount, I received no reply. As it’s likely Apple will someday issue a Best of Badfinger, I wanted to compile their post-Apple masters. The Best of Badfinger Volume II, released today, took over two years from when I initiated the project. Even before the group’s fourth and final album for Apple was released in November 1973, the label was falling apart, and interest in Badfinger had diminished. They had made money for Apple and were still capable of making good records. Bill Collins, their aged and overwhelmed dance band manager, had brought in a sharpie to handle their affairs. Stan Polley, their new co-manager, made a good deal with Warner Bros. Records. He negotiated an advance of $225,000 per album, which meant there was much more for him when he absconded with the funds.”
Another artist that Harold befriended was Peter Noone, aka Herman of Herman’s Hermits. The book recounts many meetings between them including this one on Wednesday, November 30, 2005: “I met Peter Noone for lunch at Trilussa in Beverly Hills. We don’t usually reminisce about the old days when we get together, but today we did. I had read somewhere that he coined the term ‘groupies.’ I was surprised, because he didn’t seem the promiscuous type. He explained he was late to the concept that young women wanted to have sex with him (for whatever reason: status, bragging rights, glamor). Peter: ‘We were Roman Catholic boys, we were moral, we didn’t steal, we were nice guys. Most guys kept score of how many girls they’d had, but I didn’t, because I was looking for Miss Right. I only dated one girl at a time. It wasn’t until I was 20 that I realized they all weren’t in love with me. I phoned a girlfriend in New York, and she had Jimi Hendrix over.”
On Tuesday, October 22, 1996, Harold attended a Who concert at the LA Forum with his friend Martin Lewis: “Martin and I went backstage after the show. Martin and Pete [Townshend] are old friends; I had met Pete only briefly, but we had exchanged letters regarding possible Rhino projects. In his response to one of my lesser ideas, he accused me of attempting to ‘exploit the jackdaw mentality of US record collectors.’ (I had to look up the unfamiliar term: it means ‘hoarder.’) I chatted briefly with Pete but didn’t want to intrude on Martin and Pete’s social time. The Who’s manager, Bill Curbishley, was friendly and introduced me to John Entwistle, reminding him that Rhino had issued a compilation of his solo work. I told him I was a fan, but he didn’t seem interested. As he drifted away, Bill explained that John is hard of hearing and only interested in meeting women.”
Rhino issued the LP recorded by The Rutles, the Beatle-spoof band masterminded as a Monty Python spin-off by Eric Idle and former Bonzo Dog Neil Innes, with whom he breakfasted on Saturday, September 10, 1994, at the Sunset Marquis Hotel where other Pythons were staying during a promotional blitz in LA: “Neil’s been friends with George Harrison since 1967. (George has a cameo in The Rutles.) Because Neil’s wife was George’s landscape and garden designer, he could have become a closer member of George’s inner circle of friends, but Neil respected his wife’s professional relationship and didn’t push it. On one occasion, he and Eric Idle visited George when Ringo was there. George and Ringo spontaneously sang the Rutles’ ‘Ouch!’ Carol Cleveland stopped by our table to say hello; Neil introduced me. She appeared in most Python productions, usually as the blond sexpot. Now, she’s a much more mature 52.”
Finally, how about this one from Friday May 10, 1974: “I was among 250 guests at a launch party for Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song Records at Hotel Bel-Air. Michele Phillips, Bill Wyman, Bryan Ferry, Dr. John, Billy Preston, Lloyd Bridges, Micky Dolenz and members of ELO were among the celebrity guests. I introduced myself to Jimmy Page, who was dressed smartly in a black blazer and shirt, his avalanche of wavy hair recalling Tiny Tim’s… Heidi, my date, had a meltdown. It sometimes happens when she smokes pot; she becomes paranoid. I escorted her to my car and sat with her trying to calm her down. Here I was, at a fancy Led Zeppelin party, and I had to deal with her poor judgment. I dreaded having to leave. After a while, she calmed down and we returned to savor a dinner of Beef Wellington and Lobster Quenelles Americaine. I would have liked to meet Groucho Marx, but I stayed away because I heard he was cranky. The 84-year-old probably didn’t know why he was with such an unfamiliar crowd. Maggie Bell, the first artist signed to Swan Song, introduced herself to Groucho, telling him what an honor it is to meet him. He responded, ‘Fuck that, show us your tits!’”
That’s just a tiny fraction of the contents of Time Has Come Today – titled after a Chambers Brothers’ song by the way – which is published by Trouser Press Books. It costs £20, give or take a pound or two depending on the supplier, has 435 pages, a useful index and is illustrated with judiciously chosen photographs of the author with some of the people he writes about.
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