At the beginning, when you get on the inside of a record company, the first thing you discover is that all the departments hate one another. The second thing is that labels are in a perpetual state of renovation. The A&R man who signed you to a contract will probably be gone by the time your record is released. Here are the major departments and a brief description of their funcitons:

A&R DEPARTMENT          Talent Scout Hucksters
PROMOTION DEPARTMENT    Radio Airplay Hucksters
MARKETING DEPARTMENT    Get Product Into Store Hucksters
ART DEPARTMENT          Packaging Hucksters
MEDIA DEPARTMENT        "Column-Inches, Baby!" Hucksters
VIDEO DEPARTMENT        Useless-Without-One Hucksters


    The Master Navigators know how to make them all work together.For the rest of us, it's like keeping fifteen pie pans spinning on cue sticks. Though the departments hate each other, a successful record can  provide incentive for harmony.
    Two outstanding inside lines:
(1) "It's in the pipeline, baby!" I wasn't certain what the pipeline was, but I knew it had been backing up since the 1970's. What it means is that your record has been shipped to retail outlets
and radio stations. What it really means is that your record will probably never see the light of day. Why? Because it's in the pipe- line, baby!
(2) "You need to become a priority at the label." If you have to ask what this means, you're probably not ready to become one. Asking a record company person how to become a priority often results in what Edmund Wilson called The Stalin Tic, a constant looking back over the shoulder to see if anyone is listening. Record company people are usually pretty circumspect when talking to artists about the business, and if they're not, they won't last long, or they're
too powerful to care. I finally found out what becoming a priority meant, but I can't tell you because it involves a secret handshake.
    People at our record company liked us at first because we made the mistake of being ourselves. Accessibility, however, is ultimately an anathema to the bogus distance of stardom. In the end, record company workers want you to be exaggerated in certain respects-that way you can dominate their unfulfilled star fantasies and they'll feel compelled to work for you even if they rightly denigrate you the second you leave their offices. So do you remain
human, or do you become a beast?
    THE HAMLET VARIANT. The record company, as were were constantly told, is working for you. I always thought that anybody working for you should be treated with at least a minor display of humanity. In show business, however, displays of humanity are a sign of weakness.
Being nice is a liability, and liability not only gets you nowhere, it "hurts you." This is the high dollar quandary of potential stardom: Are you willing to sacrifice a sense of humanity for opportunity? To be or not to be nice, that is the Hamlet Variant.
    After our self-titled album shot out of the pipeline, we received a good bit of critical praise in America and England (though we were predictably savaged in our hometown). Our first single elicited a "positive response from radio," and it became time to "tour in support of the record." Supporting the record means that you drive to and perform in about fifty American cities where, theoretically, the record company has a crack branch-office team making sure the album
is in the stores and forcing the big radio station to play your record. Our manager was able to pull in some mysterious old favor and arrange a support slot on Lou Reed's first national tour in many years.
    Reed is a quiet gentleman, one of the few with a large brain in the business. He treated us very well, which is more than I can say for the kingpins at our record company. Initially they had provided tour support to deger the ridiculous cost of traveling (road crew,
motels, gas, etc.). With tour support you subtract the money you make each week from total operating expenses. The label picks up the difference, "recoupable," as it were, against profits from your future record sales. Halfway through the Lou Reed tour the kingpins pulled the
plug on our support. I encountered The Top Pin during a three-night stand with Reed in Manhattan. Before I could say anything he quickly justified the plug pulling, saying, "I've seen the pattern many times before."
    After extensive travel you begin to comprehend how big America really is in relation to your hip little scene. We came back from the Reed tour a little rubbery-legged, trying to figure out our next move. Our second single was better than our first single because record
companies always choose the wrong first song to send to the radio station. Naturally it received a negative response from radio, and, with no tour responsibilities imminent, our album went back into the box, one made of pine.
    The dashing of our expectations made it difficult for the next few months, but by March 1985 we were back on track and flew to Hollywood to meet with Pat Benatar's husband about producing our next album. The A&R people were saying we needed to make a "competitive
record." But the Hollywood trip didn't work out. Then a British producer flew in for a meeting. He was to be an unusual choice. He was best known for producing some successful "synth-pop" English bands, and we were into small electric guitar symphonies. It seemed to work,
however, and we spent a total of three months making a pretty sophisticated recording. Our band was foolishly perceibed by the record company to be a "garage guitar band." When the head of A&R heard what we were doing, he was flabbergasted. "What?! They're making a forty-
eight track album?!" Unheard of, except for hugely successful bands. I flew to London where ours became the first record ever mastered on the world's first digital mastering console.