The City of Hope has its mojo working
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The stock market was down 733 points, the Dodgers were on the brink of being booted out of the playoffs and ‘Obama vs. McCain III’ was on the tube, but instead of staying home, I went out to a party. And what a party! The music business may be in a death spiral, but they still know how to have a good time. Next to the Grammys, there’s no bigger night in the music biz than the City of Hope Spirit of Life award dinner, which unfolded last night under a giant, Cirque du Soleil-style tent on the beach in Santa Monica. The dinner raised a record $10 million, with Universal Music Chairman Doug Morris as its drawing card. Since Universal owns Motown Records, the legendary Berry Gordy made a rare public appearance to pay tribute to Morris and introduce the Doug Morris Motown Revue, a killer band of session players who backed a series of Universal label stars doing Motown oldies.
Everyone took a turn in the spotlight. Stevie Nicks, dressed all in black, did the Supremes’ ‘Love Is Like an Itching in My Heart.’ Erykah Badu funked out to Rick James’ ‘Mary Jane.’ Mariah Carey crooned the Jackson 5’s ‘I’ll Be There.’ Lionel Richie showed he hadn’t lost a step, handling his own ‘I’m Easy.’ Duffy, the new Lulu-style neo-soul starlet, sounded totally at home with Smokey Robinson’s ‘I Second That Emotion.’ Rihanna channeled Diana Ross, doing ‘Baby Love.’ If I had to pick favorites, I’d say the Stevie Wonder numbers brought out the best in everyone, with Robin Thicke (who looks like a young Pierce Brosnan) doing ‘Ribbon in the Sky,’ Maroon 5 performing ‘My Cherie Amour’ and Michael McDonald belting out a white-haired soul version of ‘Living for the City.’
Before the music began, Nicks gave an emotional speech about her connection to the City of Hope. When Morris got up to speak, he made a special point of thanking Zach Horowitz, the Universal COO who is the driving force behind the dinner, his father having been the City of Hope’s chief fundraiser for years. Morris sounded an optimistic note about the future, saying that if new technology had put the industry into its current funk, it could well be new technology that gave it a new lease on life, saying he’d never been more hopeful about the industry’s future.
As good as the speeches and performances were, the real fun was getting to circulate, seeing all the big players from both music and film renewing old friendships or smoothing over old rivalries. The dinner’s whopping $10-million take is a tribute to the respect the industry has for Morris, who is the last of the old-style record moguls still in power, reigning over Universal, far and away the industry’s biggest company. With Morris in the spotlight, I saw people who rarely show up at these kind of dinners. Top music lawyer Allen Grubman had David Geffen at his table, who sat with producer Irwin Winkler. They seemed an odd couple, until Geffen reminded me that they’d become friends after they both worked in the William Morris mailroom 40-plus years ago.
Between dinner courses, conversation was the sport. I found film director Brett Ratner schmoozing with Warner Records chief Edgar Bronfman. Eagles manager Irving Azoff was huddled with Interscope chief Jimmy Iovine. Music attorney (and sometime novelist) Don Passman gave me a great recommendation for my book club. Revolution Films founder Joe Roth stopped to chat before going over to see his pal Steve Jobs. Talk about smoothing over rivalries. Jobs, who looks even more skeletal in person than he does at Apple presentations, has been locked in a bitter struggle with Universal for years over iTunes music pricing and other issues, but there he was, having shown up to celebrate Morris’ big night.
My favorite moment of the evening came when I was talking to filmmaker Taylor Hackford, an ardent music lover who directed ‘Ray’ and the Chuck Berry tribute film ‘Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll.’ Just as we were getting ready to go our separate ways, along came Lionel Richie, who did a song for the filmmaker’s ‘White Nights.’ Richie jabbed an elbow in Hackford’s direction. ‘This is the guy who came to me and said, ‘You have to write a song called ‘White Nights,’ ‘ Richie said with a mischievous grin. ‘I told him, ‘There’s never gonna be a hit song called anything like ‘White Nights,’ especially not sung by a black man!’ ‘
Hackford cracked up. He said, ‘What I remember most is that Lionel used to write songs, put ‘em on a cassette and throw it into the glove compartment of his car. And when we’d be driving around, he’d take a cassette out and play it in the car.’ Richie chimed in: ‘That’s how you know if a song works, if it sounds good in the car on the freeway, with the top down.’ Hackford said, ‘If Lionel thought the song didn’t work, he’d just toss the cassette out the window.’ Richie laughed. ‘You never know,’ he said merrily. ‘I bet I threw a lot of hits out of that window too.’
That was the mood in the music business last night. Times are hard, but everyone always hopes there’s another big hit just around the corner.