Music World Has Dark Secrets
SERWER: The recording industry pulled out all of the stops this week for the annual Grammy Awards. But behind the fairytale success stories and the platinum albums and platinum hair, the music world had some dark secrets. Our next guest is a music industry consultant and former record producer and author of a new book, "Million Dollar Mistakes." Moses Avalon joins us now. Moses first of all, I have got to ask you. You are wearing a hat and glasses; Moses Avalon is a pseudonym, what's up with the disguise, man?</s>MOSES AVALON, AUTHOR: I'm just hung over from my Grammy party, that's all.</s>SERWER: Come on.</s>AVALON: Plus you got the lights are so bright in here. What's up with that?</s>SERWER: You got to get shades.</s>AVALON: Way too early for the music business.</s>SERWER: Listen to you dude. Now let me ask you, are you hiding from someone?</s>AVALON: No. I wouldn't say that. I'm on television.</s>SERWER: Fair enough. We'll leave it at that. You are somewhat in disguise though. Let me ask you, so how bad is the record industry? It used to be life with everything is it still that way?</s>AVALON: Well there's been a lot of change in the music industry. There's a lot of business structures because of the Internet and because iTunes, because of iPods and all kinds of new media. Record companies are definitely afraid of some of these things and are trying to find ways to fit into it.</s>CAFFERTY: Let's get right to the dirt. I want names, recognizable names and embarrassing information about them. So give.</s>AVALON: Sure. Well, you know, in the book I outline a whole bunch of big ones and ones you never heard of like a guy who sold all of the rights to a hit song called "Girls on Film" by Duran Duran he sold all the rights for about $1,000.</s>CAFFERTY: Was that the industry's fault or is that just an indication that he's a moron?</s>AVALON: It would be great if it were that simple if everyone was dumb and it was black and white but many times people are misled by trusting the wrong person. You know, a big problem in the music industry is that we overpay for talent. In the 80s and 90s, maximizing earnings and stock manipulation was the game and Wall Street played this game by taking the company's best year and going public with it and using the press to manipulate that stock. In the music industry the pop star version of this is to take your best year, hit your record company up for enormous advance and then make yourself so unpopular the record company decides they want to drop you and with someone like Michael Jackson for example it kind of backfired because he still owes so many records close to three quarters of a billion dollars that they have advanced him and his reputation is in the sewer. He may have to give that money back. A million dollar mistake on both sides.</s>SERWER: I know you have a good Billie Joel story. I want to get to that in a minute. But first of all I want to ask you about rock 'n' roll music itself. You suggest that it is a just going to be something like swing music or something like that. I guess maybe the Grammys pointed that out U2 not exactly cutting edge green day, it is a retro group basically. Is rock dead?</s>AVALON: I don't know -- I didn't say rock was dead. Pop music as a format that we understand it, the 3 1/2 minute song, I'm not sure it's dead but it may be moving into the same place as jazz, classical and other things. It may take another 20 or 30 years but I do believe it's going in that direction because of how music is being sold and listened too. In the industry we use the term liquid music or wallpaper, which means that music, will exist everywhere but not be noticed. Kind of like when you shop in the supermarket. The good news is this means we'll sell more music into more venues and making more money. The bad news is it means music becomes insignificant. Buying a new album of your favorite artist was a personal event. You would listen to the record. Turn off the phone. That was it. Now you can come introduced to a new song by a ring tone and it exists in your hard drive. There's no real pride in your hard drive the way there was in your massive record collection 15, 20 years ago.</s>CAFFERTY: I take pride in my hard drive. Besides the trouble he periodically has keeping his car on the road out in the Hamptons, what's the Billie Joel story?</s>AVALON: Billy Joel signed a deal with his manager back in the early 70s and traditionally manager deals run by year. He may be your manager for five years and the contract might read that I make 20 percent of everything you do for five years and then I might make 10 percent after the contract is over for a couple years. In Billy Joel's case the contract was structured based on number of albums and not number of years. And an album can sometimes take two to three years to do. So a ten-album contract can become a 20- year contract. Billy Joel ended up giving up probably close to $15 or $20 million that he didn't have to give up because of that bad deal.</s>WESTHOVEN: All right Moses. Thank you so much. In this week's "Life after Work" segment, staying on track. Harry Eck and Harry Wilgar spent their careers working on Baltimore and Ohio railroad. Now they're retired but their reliving their past by volunteering at the B&O; Railroad Museum in Baltimore.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you have good eyes, I'm in there, 7594 is the last steam locomotive that we built. Brand new one.</s>WESTHOVEN: Harry Eck and Harry Wilgar spent their working lives building and running trains.</s>HARRY WILGAR, RETIRED RAILROAD WORKER: I was in front as a machinist when I came here in 1947. I was an 18-year-old brat that knew it all.</s>WESTHOVEN: Both Harry's still work together but now they're back at the tracks as volunteers at Baltimore B&O; Railroad Museum.</s>HARRY ECK, RETIRED RAILROAD WORKER: Well after I had been retired about five years the management asked me to come down and help prepare a locomotive that was going to be recognized as a national engineer -- civil engineering landmark. I just stayed. They started a program and I joined that and here I am 15 years later.</s>WILGAR: Put your pajamas on because we're going to talk all night long.</s>WESTHOVEN: With more than 80 years of experience, the two Harry's share their stories about life on the railroad with visitors.</s>WILGAR: Well for me I enjoy meeting and talking to people in here and I have knowledge that I can also tell to people that do come in here and we can help them understand what railroading is all about</s>ECK: That's the high point of the week for me.</s>WESTHOVEN: Still to come on IN THE MONEY, get real about real estate. A new Web site puts a price on your humble abode without the help or the cost of a real estate agent. And later a different take on an Oscar hopeful. "Top Gun meets Broke Back Mountains," that s Our "Fun Site of the Week.