Tommy Conwell and Jane’s Addiction: Local Heroes
Monday is usually the worst night of the week for a club, but on this particular Monday, January 26th, 1987, the Roxy, in Los Angeles, is packed. Glam rockers and slam dancers press the stage; toward the back sits a more sedate crowd — 150 representatives of the recording industry, including scouts from Atlantic, Columbia, Geffen, I.R.S., MCA, Slash and Warner Bros.
Onstage, after a few warm-up cartwheels to calm nerves, the local band Jane’s Addiction is delivering a woolly set. Lead singer Perry Farrell — scrawny and dreadlocked, wearing a nose ring and a psychedelic girdle — moves like a witch doctor, letting fly with his electronically processed, howling vocals. Guitarist David Navarro stands zombielike, casually booming out wild riffs from under a floppy hat; mop-top drummer Stephen Perkins smiles while pounding a tribal beat; and Eric Avery wrestles with his bass. Some songs are quietly beautiful, like ”Jane Says” and ”I Would for You.” Others are harsh, nearly spastic, like ”Whores” (about a hooker friend of the band) and ”Pigs in Zen,” during which Farrell sings, ”Pig mounts sow/When he’s wound…. I know about pain and suffering/And being cold/But I just wanna fuck.”
Some songs are not quite there yet, but the group has conjured up a convincing, unique sound; besides, the drummer and guitarist are not yet twenty, and the band has been together less than a year, getting some demos aired on college radio, playing most gigs at wigged-out local underground clubs like Scream and the Pyramid Club.
Tonight the crowd is decidedly different, and Triple X, which manages Jane’s Addiction, has tried to be accommodating by reserving tables. Still, some label reps complain; one says, ”I hope your preference in seating doesn’t reflect on your preference in picking a label.” At one point, Farrell yells out, ”Fuck all you guys, we’re recording our own record!” (It’s no idle threat: the band has a mobile unit out back and will eventually release a record of the concert independently.) Afterward, Triple X’s Charley Brown tries to keep the backstage area off-limits, but one label representative somehow gets through.
”I hated it,” Farrell, 28, says later. ”All of a sudden I’m to be judged by fuckers who don’t understand it to begin with. I felt like a zoo animal.”
***
Exactly one month later, on Thursday, February 26th, the labels cluster again, this time in the 23 East Cabaret, in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, seven miles outside Philadelphia. Onstage, blues-guitar wiz Tommy Conwell is leading the Young Rumblers through a polished set of hard, catchy pop. In the crowd of 450 are not only representatives from nearly every major label in America — including Poly-Gram, Chrysalis and Capitol — but also the heads themselves of Atlantic (Ahmet Ertegun), RCA (Bob Buziak) and Arista (Clive Davis). The various labels acknowledge one another’s presence with outward nods and inward grimaces.
Conwell’s set includes the clever rocker ”I’m Not Your Man,” the radio-friendly ”Love’s on Fire” and other numbers the crowd already knows from the Rumblers’ independent album, Walkin’ on the Water. Recorded for $13,000, released in only the Philadelphia area just after Christmas and aided by heavy airplay from the top local rock station, WMMR, Walkin’ on the Water has sold an impressive 50,000 copies, a fact that helps explain the surprising presence of such heavies as Ertegun and Davis. ”The act was pretested for you,” says Mike Bone, then at Elektra, now at Chrysalis, ”and it worked.”
But the handsome, leather-jacketed Conwell, 24, who has been striving for success for more than three years, takes nothing for granted, working the room like a pro. Backed by the tight combo of Paul Slivka on bass, Jim Hannum on drums, Chris Day on guitar and Rob Miller on keyboards, he dances out across the tabletops, slapping out sweet licks, with sweat dripping off the end of his big, brown Guild guitar. ”I believe in miracles,” he sings in his album’s title song, ”and baby, you believe in me.”
Perhaps put off by the crunch of competition, Clive Davis leaves at intermission; the next day he has Conwell and his manager, Steve Mountain, to breakfast with him at New York’s Four Seasons. It is one of many such overtures Conwell receives; for the next night’s show, Elektra sends a bus containing its entire New York staff out to Ardmore. ”The kid is inevitable,” says Arista’s Mitchell Cohen. ”It’s like when you see a baseball pitcher in the minor leagues and you know he’s got all the moves.”
Backstage afterward, Conwell holds court, calm and courteous, remembering everyone’s name; Mountain makes sure the A&R people talk music, not money.
A&R stands for artists and repertoire. The label workers so named are initially talent scouts, going out on average three nights a week, seeing perhaps one signable band every few months. If a discovery is signed, the A&R person then becomes that act’s liaison to the label, consulting on recording and touring and motivating the label’s promotion and marketing staffs to get out there and sell some product. Most bands have to fight to kick up enough interest for one label to offer a deal, usually an unfavorable one. But a few times a year, a band gets a buzz about it, and the A&R people flock — sometimes out of true interest, often out of fear of missing out. That’s when the ante goes up.
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