http://mixonline.com/ar/a.../index.htm


Hi folks,

Here is an informative interview with Frank Zappa's recording engineer Mark Pinske.

It gives some insights how Frank dealt with record labels. There is some audio/recording info for those of you who are making music out there.

Frank, David Bowie, Ani DiFranco and of course Prince, have all had/have very good business instincts. So, hopefully this helps anyone who wants to learn more about the biz.

what about Michael Jackson,Quincy Jones,Paul Mccartney,Mick Jagger,Ray Charles,Curtis Mayfield??? they handled there Business as well quite Savvy I might add.

mistermaxxx said:

Hi Mistermaxxx,


How's it going?

I mentioned Frank Zappa, Ani and Bowie because their names pop up the most when people mention the recent way Prince has been running his career since he left Warners.

The Artists you mentioned above are as sharp as a razor along with Cash Money, Puffy, Master P and well as Sinatra, Berry Gordy, Madonna and many others.
[This message was edited Sat Feb 15 12:13:39 PST 2003 by cranshaw62]

mistermaxxx said:

as far as I know they have never been outside of major labels. thats the difference.

Wolf said:

they had a Say over the Masters,Publishing&Controled there Music.in fact they are more believeable than the others because they showed you can be in the System&still Control yourself.if Your CD's are in Major Stores&you have a Open Catelog than you are Part of the System.the folks mentioned above aren't exactly Selling there stuff of Car Trunks.but aside from the People I mentioned you gotta give it up to the Rappers who are Running there thing&having a Say.CASh Money Records is handling there Business as did Master P.&Others.I'm not Crazy about alot of these Cats but let me break it down:most hardly got Air-Play&Sold quite a bit&Set there Own Agenda at Making it happen.the Business is a Hustle&the Rappers have Flipped the Script at Running there Thing.

that's beside it all really. some people want to go a totally different highway for their own success, and those are the people cranshaw brought up. their reasons for taking a different path are equally as valid if not more. the first post was about how to make it on an independent level since everybody does not want to go the traditional way.
[This message was edited Sat Feb 15 12:20:28 PST 2003 by Wolf]

Wolf said:

Frank Zappa dealt with a Najor Label for most of His Career as did Prince.David Bowie as well.they aren't good example but Ani Defranco is because the vast majority of Her Career is of being Independent.the Rappers are far more Independent than Prince will ever be.He did this like almost 20 years into His career.Cash Money,No-Limit were doing this from day one.unless you go with a Artist who has had there say as a Indie from day One then a Late One doesn't count in this Argument IMHO&Especially if you don't have those Masters&Publishing Rights.

mistermaxxx said:

sorry, but they are, because Zappa struck out on his own. as quiet as it is, Bowie was released from his label and not signed again by them. if you want to talk about all those who are still on major labels make a thread of your own and stop trying to bum rush someone else's constructive one.

Wolf said:

you cant Twist it however you want to but go to any Major Record Store Chain&if your work is there with a Catelog then How Independent are You?Bowie with a Major for the longest time&He was Smart to Partner up with them&use them to His Advantage.it's a Business which some folks seem to forget&you know from the word Jump that you always gonna be 5 Stairs below the Head Man.you came at me on my Post so use your words to Check YourSelf.

man, you're just dumb and you like to argue, that's why you get clowned all the time for your dense takes on alot of things in threads all over the org.

i'm done.

Wolf said:

did I call you a Name?No.did I explain certain things?Yes.I Know alot of Folks Hate Me&Can't stand My Brain but you know what?if I was so Dense then they wouldn't reply now would they?I don't feel anyone can Clown Me&I don't feel that I can either it's just how you see things.

Here are some bits from the article:

Mix: You said he spent 3.5 million on building the studio, which brings up the question, "how did he finance it?" As far as I know, Warners pretty much had him tied up. He must have had some of his royalties tied up.

Pinske: Most of that was all paid for before I got there. As you know, Frank was like a record machine. He put out products, one way or the other, whether it was through the companies. He had two bad experiences that he talked to me about a number of times, and I won't get into a whole lot of detail about them, with Bizarre and DiscReet Records.

By the way, some of that harmonica playing you asked me about last time was actually Captain Beefheart. When I thought about it later, I realized what it was you were talking about. He started those those companies, and did a certain amount of investment in some other artists as well, Captain Beefheart being one of them, and both those companies pretty much went under.

Mix: Or disappeared along with Herb Cohen.

Pinske: Right. So by the time I got there, he had already made up his mind that he was going to do it differently. He was going to pay for his records, but cut deals with record labels to where the record labels would buy the product.

And most of the deals we did, we were with Phonogram/Mercury when I started out with him, and we'd gone through Capitol Records and MCA. We did a big long stint with a number of different labels.

CBS, obviously. CBS was so weird, because we did CBS--it was like two separate companies when you talk about internationally and when you talk about domestically. We weren't treated the same at all.

But he would do a deal to where we would pay for the record, they'd reimburse him for all the recording expenses, but they basically would do distribution, and then he would give the record company 15 percent. So Frank ended up making, in those days, like $2.25 off each record sold. And that's unheard of.

It was unheard of compared to what somebody like Dylan--we talked about him last time--would make 18 cents a copy. And Frank would always say, "You know how many albums you gotta sell to make the same amount of money? I could sell 400,000 albums, and you'd have to sell 3 million to make the same amount of money." That kind of thing.

The logic was that Frank knew business really well. So what I'm saying is, he kind of set a precedent in a way. He kind of started something that almost set an example to original artists all around the world. By having that kind control, he was able to take more money in, and not have to have all Platinum albums.

Because he knew his music was off-the-wall enough, and wouldn't be played on radios and stuff like that, that he couldn't get that kind of volume.

So he set up his business accordingly. He was very clever about it. He also--don't get me wrong--he made a lot of the money from a lot of the first albums, even before the lawsuits ever started. How he collected all his money, and how he saved it all up, and how he finally got enough money together to finance the studio, I don't know all the details of that, but I know is was just about paid for when it was built. And then when we got the settlement, of course, everything was paid for.

Mix: Three-and-a-half million for a studio, you'd have to make 35 albums at $100,000 in cost an album, to amortize that off.

Pinske: Well, the bulk of his money still came from live performances. He got paid well for performing, and also, he sold a heck of a lot of memorabilia. That whole Barfko Swill stuff, and Barking Pumpkin Records. Joe's Garage warehouse out there was just a regular--whatever you could put in the mail. T-shirts, you name it.

Mix: That came a little later, though, didn't it?

Pinske: Well, it came later in a bigger swing, but they were doing it all along in kind of a smaller scale. Most all the stuff was at a smaller scale, and we just got better at it as we went.

Mix: And then you would deliver acetates, or production master tapes to the record company, which would then actually give you--

Pinske: No, no, no. We never gave them the tapes. No. I would go cut, in the case of--depending on what era you're talking about, but I would go cut 27 sets of lacquers, is what we would do. Twenty-six or 27 sets of lacquers, and we would mail them all out to the different pressing plants. Like Belgium, we'd mail them to Belgium. We mailed them to South America. Whichever pressing plants we were doing.

Mix: And part of this is keeping control, and part of this is because you'd do the job better than they would?

Pinske: Well, he would never let anybody have his tapes. As a matter of fact, we would air freight the lacquers because, if the lacquers--you probably know that after 24 hours they start expanding and contracting. So you wanted to get them nickel plated as soon as you possibly could. Which was a problem when you're sending them around the world. And if they took too long getting there, they would expand and contract, and then you would have all this pre-echo, where the song starts before it actually starts. That kind of stuff would all come from the expansion and contraction of the lacquers. Later on, we moved into doing things at Sheffield, because we could just cut the metal masters right there ourselves, and we did all the metal parts ourselves. We'd send out mothers for stampers. And that way we had better control. And I think we--London Symphony was like--the better albums were pretty much like that. "Them Or Us," I think, was one of them. I'm pretty sure "Them Or Us" was somewhere around that time. When we started doing John Matousek. Isn't he the one who mastered that? Anything we did with John Matousek at Hitsville, we would take the masters, and I would go cut the metal parts over at Sheffield. And they would do what's called "groove sculpturing."

When you had dust particles and things like that, that set up on there, they would shave them off, instead of just scrubbing them off with a brush. And you would have a lot less rumble and stuff. We took a lot of care, a lot of tender loving care to how we made the metal parts. And he paid for all that himself.

Mix: That was how he was able to go to the companies and just literally give them a distribution deal. Say, "Look, I've got a complete master, right down to the mothers."

Pinske: Right. And they basically had no expense in it. All they had to do was take 15 percent for distributing it, and they would get their money out of it. Providing it would sell enough. In a way, he kind of invented some of the ways of dealing with some of these companies, as a result of all the business things he had through. He learned a lot.

cranshaw62 said:

I Appreciate you sharing that.that goes to show that you can be on your game well within the System once you know it all works&do your Homework fully.Props to Zappa.