Chapter 47 - JET

JOEY AND JEFF Hamilton had met Dave Arden at the Rainbow and started talking about Silverspoon. They had played him the tapes and he was interested in presenting the band to his father, Don Arden, who owned a new record label called Jet Records— their only signed band at the time was ELO. I was still living with Robin Stewart on Detroit St. and really didn't get involved with any Spoon activities anymore. I had had enough, or so I thought. I heard from Stephen and Joey about pending contract negotiations with Don Arden and Jet Records, but I told them: “I don't want to hear any bullshit. When you have a contract for me to sign in black and white, I will look it over but until then keep me out of it.” I had heard too many promises and seen too much to get my hopes up only to be let down and every time it was getting harder and harder to deal with, besides, I had resigned myself to the fact I was now a solo artist, and I was relishing the idea. Life without Silverspoon was feeling mighty good to me although I knew the door was not completely closed if something substantial came along.

Joey, Jeff, Stephen and Blair were dealing with the negotiations and had even retained the services of a lawyer, Barry K. Rotgutt. I heard through the grapevine that there were meetings happening on a regular basis, maybe once a week and an actual contract was prepared with a clause that stated Barry K. Rotgutt was representing Silverspoon and Jet Records, which is highly unethical if not illegal. He waved the pen under the collective noses of the Spoon sans me. When Joey saw this clause he was livid and stormed out of the office. There was another contract, one with Jet Records, but it wouldn't be considered unless the contract was signed with Rotgutt first. Joey was appeased and calmed down. They called and told me of the situation that they had two contracts to sign— real typewritten pages that I could look over. I was slightly impressed. It was the first time I had seen Joey take the reins, really try to do anything but score drugs. Maybe he was changing, growing up? 

What about the unscrupulous Don Arden? The following is an abridged version of Don Arden’s obituary: “He was the most notorious of all British pop-rock music managers had a career that spanned 60 years. He promoted and managed some of the biggest names in pop music. His ruthless business dealings and willingness to intimidate both his charges and his competitors earned him the nickname the Al Capone of pop. Arden was born Harry Levy in Cheetham Hill, Manchester. He would describe the neighborhood as a Jewish ghetto. He left school aged 13 and adopted the name Don Arden to avoid encountering anti-Semitism from bookers. During the WWII, the teenage Arden found work as a stand-up comic and singer on the vaudeville circuit, entertaining the troops before he was drafted. In 1959, Arden promoted the first UK tour of American rockabilly singer Gene Vincent, who was so impressed by his British following that he shifted to the UK, employing Arden as his manager. Arden kept Vincent busy touring Western Europe, but the two men parted in 1965 amid much bitterness, so setting a pattern for Arden's working relationships. By then he had begun to earn substantial sums by promoting package tours of American 1950’s rock'n'roll artists, yet he lost a ton of money from the onset of Beatlemania and British teenagers declared US artists passé.”

Arden set off in search of young British talent and met the Newcastle-based band the Animals, whose manager, Mike Jeffrey, was looking for an agent—one who had a lot of influence in the industry. Arden brought the band to London and helped secure them a recording deal. Their huge immediate success benefited Arden - now their worldwide agent - but he soon fell on bad terms with Jeffrey, so sold his rights to book the band and began managing the Nashville Teens. Arden offered little artistic direction to the Teens, instead keeping them on a grueling tour schedule.

In 1965 he signed the Small Faces and guaranteed their debut single would be a hit by laying out several hundred pounds to chart fixers. Arden kept the successful band on a £20-a-week salary. When the band demanded to see their royalty statements in 1966, he countered by informing their parents that the band were drug addicts. Hearing that Australian entrepreneur Robert Stigwood was interested in the band, he dangled Stigwood off his fourth-floor balcony as a warning. The Small Faces eventually won their freedom, but all attempts at retrieving royalties due from Arden found them locked in court battles, finally receiving payment in 1977.

Arden then took over managing the Move, and out of this band came the Electric Light Orchestra, which went on to sell millions of albums internationally, generating huge wealth for Arden. He settled in Los Angeles, purchasing Howard Hughes' mansion in 1972. Again, the relationship ended bitterly. By 1980 Arden was managing Ozzy Osbourne after the singer's split from Black Sabbath. Osbourne left his wife to marry Arden's daughter Sharon - she, having worked for Don since her teens, had inherited his tough management skills - and when the couple left Arden to go it alone in 1982, Don ensured that much litigation would follow.

In 1986 Arden and son David were charged (as Harry and David Levy) with blackmailing and imprisoning an accountant with whom they had fallen out. The sensational court case found a jury declaring David guilty, while Don was acquitted. Osbourne had told her children that their grandfather was dead, and they first saw him when she began screaming abuse at the elderly Arden upon encountering him on a Los Angeles street. In 2004 Arden published his autobiography, Mr. Big: Ozzy, Sharon and My Life as the Godfather of Rock, to modest interest. Sharon Osbourne's 2005 autobiography Extreme sold two million copies. They eventually reconciled but he was portrayed as a villainous, if occasionally generous, man. His wife Hope predeceased him. He died July 21, 2007, and is survived by Sharon and David.

There was a social gathering in one of the massive bungalows at the Beverly Hills Hotel hosted by Don Arden. His son Dave was present, but Sharon wasn’t—I had heard that they hated each other. I went there with Blair and Joey and couldn't believe the spread of food, wine, booze and a small amount of drugs, anything and everything you could want. I only wanted a record deal, but Blair convinced me to be patient and play this little Hollywood game a little longer. It seemed this time things were on the level and a deal would be forthcoming. But as usual negotiations came down to the eleventh hour and Jet Records had passed on the deal.  Stephen believes the reason why is another one of his conspiracy theories. He thinks that Don Arden wanted to get his unknown band, ELO, on the Carol Burnett (Joey's stepmother) Show, but when ELO started to gain a little notoriety he didn't need Carol Burnett anymore and subsequently didn't need Silverspoon. I don't go along with this theory because it is filled with too many holes; it sounds like we are the victims of some elaborate scheme. What it came down to, I believe, is that it was just another deal that went sour. Was it our immaturity or our reputation that preceded us, or the fact that Jet Records had a band now that needed their full attention? I think it was the latter. If they really wanted to sign Silverspoon, an appearance on the Carol Burnett show wasn't going to be a make it or break it thing. Joey was devastated having spent so much time and energy on the deal and now it had all blown up in his face. He retreated into his comfort zone with hard drugs and alcohol. For me, it was another carrot that was being dangled in front of my nose but this time I wasn't as invested in the race as I was before, so I took it all with a grain of salt. I had my solo career to look forward to, but it wasn't over for Silverspoon, not in the mind of Stephen Adamick-Gries anyway; he was hatching another plan with The William Morris Agency that I mentioned in Chapter 46. We shall see, said the blind man, we shall see.

In his book, Gods, Gangsters and Honour, Stephen Machat has a chapter called, Who’s Afraid of Don Arden, where he talks about how he and his father had taken over the legal proceedings for Jet/CBS Records. As he writes in the book: “CBS would offer the management a second deal: a co-production deal for other artists. Let’s say those other bands flop and flop some more. They almost always do. Well, all the losses incurred by those “loser bands” will be set against your one hit band (ELO). Pretty soon, you could even find yourself owing money to the label and unable to pay your one successful band. CBS had to approve all subsequent contracts with artists if they were to be released on Jet/CBS in the United States—but not if they were released in the UK. So, in the future all I did was write contracts that CBS could not approve.” A light in my head illuminated. Could Silverspoon have been one of those so-called “loser bands”?

When I called Stephen Machat the other day, he told me that the first thing Don Arden did when they hired Machat and Machat was to fire Barry K. Rotgutt. (Rotgutt is if you haven’t figured out is an alias. If I mentioned his real name he would sue the ever-loving crap out of me). He said that their law firm didn’t get involved until after Silverspoon had come and gone in the lives of the notorious Arden clan. It was all Rotgutt. He screwed thing up so badly in the contract negotiations that CBS had no choice other than to drop us. It would have been a legal nightmare for them. It was unsalvageable.

In Machat’s book he describes how Jeff Lynne was terrified of Don. In contract negotiations with ELO, CBS required what is called an inducement letter—which confirms that the individual will look only to the production company for the money and not CBS. Everyone was terrified that the deal was going to go south. The problem was the insurance clause that stated that in the event of Lynne dying, Don would get the insurance pay-off. Jeff was convinced this would encourage Don to kill him off. Only when the clause was altered, so that CBS became the beneficiaries, would Lynne finally sign on the dotted line.”

Knowing now what I didn’t know then, I could see that not signing with Don Arden and Jet Records a real lifesaver—a blessing in disguise. We would have been either killed or had our legs, arms or fingers broken and Joey, with the way he was acting at the time would have had his vocal cords slashed. Sour Grapes? Maybe—maybe not; I guess we’ll never know.