There were some electrifying performances that day. Beck, who had ditched his neo-folkie thing from his club days and left his leaf blower at home, presented himself as a born-again soulster who, despite looking like the whitest white boy in the whole white-boy world, managed to kick out some downright funky sounds with his band. Morrissey showed that he had some real connections to Southern California’s Hispanic community when hundreds of young Latino kids—most of them boys—crowded the stage for his set. Dressed in the typical Morrissey drag of stiff and cuffed Levi’s and white T-shirts, the kids also sported Morrissey’s short-back-and-sides pompadour haircut and mimicked their hero’s odd, arm-swinging dance moves. Perry Farrell led some kind of crazy conga line. Tool, of course, was heavy, and Rage Against the Machine pummeled the audience with its style of firebrand political rock. Josh and I turned in a good set, although Josh’s shoe-gazing stage presence still struck me as goofy. “Dude, you need to connect with the audience,” I’d tell him.
“But this is how I play,” he’d say.
I never even knew how tall the kid was because he’d curl into himself, head down and permanently hunched over his guitar.
“They have these stools for us to sit on,” I’d say at a gig.
“That’s cool, man. I’ll just sit on the stage floor,” he’d say with a shrug.
It was maddening to me. In a festival setting like Coachella, you need to command an audience’s attention. And you’re not going to do that if you refuse to even look at the crowd. The stage is not the same as your bedroom.
Coachella was a huge undertaking. It had very little of the military precision that the festival features now. There were some problems with money. A lot of the bands agreed to be owed their performance fees. We were all friends, so it seemed uncool to blow that over money. But not everyone on the ticket took that attitude. Rage Against the Machine, which had fostered its image as a group of radical, fight-the-power communists, was adamant that they be paid. The money troubles led to the dissolution of the Goldenvoice label.
I was a free agent once again. The record had done well, though. It had gotten a lot of critical praise and sold steadily, but I needed distribution. Danny Goldberg of Artemis Records, a man who had managed Kurt Cobain, had listened to the record and he loved what he heard. I was at home when the call came. I let the answering machine take it. “Bob? This is Irene from Danny Goldberg’s office. Could you please get back to us?”
I listened to the message. The whole idea of the music business still seemed distasteful to me. The guys at Goldenvoice were friends, so it was low-key and I trusted them. Goldberg was a different sort of creature. He continued to call. Eventually, my resistance weakened and we finally talked. I was curious.
“Bob, you’ve been hard to reach.”
“I’m scared,” I told him truthfully.
“Look,” he said, “why don’t we sit down and talk? I really think we can do something with your record. I listened to it and I loved it.”
He “loved” it? Well, if there’s one way to get through to me, it’s via praise and flattery. I’m no different in that regard than most people. I thought to myself, Well, what can it hurt to just meet with the guy to see what he has to say?
“Okay,” I said. “I can manage that.”
“Good, good,” he crooned through the phone. “Why don’t we meet at the Four Seasons hotel over on Doheny?”
“Sounds great.”
“Tuesday at eight o’clock?” he asked.
“I’ll see you then,” I said, and put down the phone.
I got ahold of Josh. “Look, man, we have a meeting with Danny Goldberg. All I’m asking is two things. Let me do the talking and please at least make eye contact with the guy and shake his hand. You know, be polite.”
“God, Bob, I know how to behave with people.”
The Four Seasons is the typical entertainment-biz place to eat and meet. Lots of greenery around that sets up a vibe that says although you’re smack in the middle of one of the busiest corridors of the city, you’re miles away from it all. The ground-floor lounge is casual in that kind of way that people with money have: elegant but low-key. Danny was already seated when Josh and I arrived. I introduced them and Josh shook his hand, made eye contact, and then folded into himself like always and stared at his menu while Danny and I talked.
“Bob, the record’s great, and I know we can package it and sell it.” He listed all the advantages Artemis could bring to the party and I sat and listened. It sounded good. I was polite and Danny didn’t have a trace of the hostility or distrust toward me that I had expected. In fact, he was very charming. We ate and talked and by the end of the meal, we had come to a deal. I felt good about it.
On the way home in the car, Josh was quiet. I could sense that something was up with him. “What?” I asked after the third mile had passed without his saying a word.
“You trust that guy?” he asked me.
“Yeah. This is a good deal. Why?”
“I don’t like him,” he said. “He seems slippery.”
“Well, you don’t know much about it, do you? That’s how all these guys are.”
“I still don’t trust him at all, man,” he said, and then went back to silence.
Well, he was a kid. What did I expect? He’d get over it, I thought. Besides, it was my band. But the seed of suspicion had been sown, or maybe it was just Josh growing up and coming
