| You can't get to him easily though "normal"
channels because his office is in the "Office of the President" suite on an
upper floor of the Hollywood building. If you want to be sure and talk to him,
you need to have the number of his private line. His official title is
"Assistant to the President" - his duties include all of the duties of the
A& R Director of an independent national record label plus other duties assigned
to him by the president of the company. |
| He assumed his present duties a little less than 2 years
ago, making the trek from the Detroit area to sunny California. The record company
he works for, Holland Group, was formed by Edward Holland of the famous
songwriting/production team of Holland-Dozier-Holland. Leveraging songwriting
royalties, Mr. Holland planned releases on as many as nine acts to launch his label.
Quickly running into lack of production co-ordination, Mr. Holland called upon A&R
expert "Ron" to help get the productions done in a timely manner with the
quality his production team was accustomed to. The company pared down its plans and
got releases out on four artists, three of which charted on national charts in
1999. |
| Ron started his music industry career well before I met
him in 1968. He had previously worked in production for a major label and was
working with the Holland-Dozier-Holland team at Motown when they exited that company to
launch their Invictus and Hot Wax record labels. A gaggle of creative and technical
people exited with this team, including Ron and yours truly. |
| At the new HDH labels, Ron assumed the duties of A&R
director as well as a contributing writer on several of HDH's dozen gold records put out
between 1969 and 1972. With the collapse of the HDH labels, Ron turned to
independent production projects until he joined George Clinton's Uncle Jam Records in
1978, again as A&R director. Ron adroitly coordinated the 150 hours of
production done each week by George & gang for the two years that George's label
operated. It was independent productions again for more than a decade while he also
helped his wife establish a very successful marketing business.
|
| As I walked into his office, I noticed the familiar 4
gold/platinum awards for national hits on the west wall. On the South wall his
Grammy was displayed and the rest of the walls were lined with BMI awards for hit songs
that he has written. It's an impressive array but only a tenth of the size of
display that could be in his Boss's office, the office of Edward J. Holland, Jr. |
| We greeted with a hug rather than a handshake and we sat
down, with recorder running, so Ron could answer my questions about how the record
industry works today. We discussed today's industry compared to how it was one, two and
three decades ago. As he talked, I was impressed not only by his past achievements
but by current knowledge of the music business scene. |
| Ron is not a person to rest on his laurels. One
night a week (on the average) he's in a UCLA classroom learning about record production,
tune publishing and marketing as it is practiced in this Millennium. He said
some very valuable stuff that the wannabes of today could use to get successful music
releases out to market today. |
| We talked into the recorder for about an hour.
Unfortunately, we did not quite complete the interview in that one sitting. Ron has
graciously agreed to pick it up by phone when I get back to the office in a couple of
weeks. Look for this eye-opening interview in the October 15th issue of REQ. |
