Tom King's new life of the Hollywood mogul David Geffen is creating quite a stink. David Geffen: A Biography of New Hollywood (Hutchinson, £18.99 in UK) apparently paints a picture of a man who has let nothing stand in the way of ascent to the pinnacle of the entertainment industry - neither friendship nor loyalty nor anything else. Manipulation, according to the book, is his middle name (and his mother is known, according to one of Geffen's acquaintances, as "The Explanation").
It is reassuring that in these days when even the showbusiness world is dominated by wimps, Hollywood is still capable of producing a genuine monster in the form of David Geffen. However, those who read the recent biography extract in the Guardian will wonder how Geffen ever succeeded in signing up John Lennon and Yoko Ono for their Double Fantasy album. The conversation in New York's famous Dakota apartment building between Yoko Ono (the decision-maker, it seems) and David Geffen apparently went as follows:
"What do you know about us?" asked Ono. Geffen said he knew only a few of Lennon's records.
"What about my music?"
"Well, I've never heard of any of your records."
" That doesn't sound like a very good reason for me to make a deal with you."
"...we're a good record company."
"You haven't put out a record yet!"
"Well, we're gonna be great."
"Gonna be, gonna be, who knows about gonna be?"
The clincher came when Geffen declined to hear any of the proposed album songs. He got the lucrative contract. Yoko Ono then told Geffen that if he had asked to hear the music first, he wouldn't have got the deal. Many people who know my background as supremo of the legendary Seventies record company Vinyl Solution have asked me if this is really a credible scenario. Well, it is. I too once found myself in the same situation, trying to get a new record label off the ground from scratch. I was in New York at the time, when I heard that the hot new British band Noise Annoys, having split from their record company, were staying in the Dakota building. I got on my bike. Literally. And headed uptown to the Dakota. But the boys weren't there. It turned out they were actually in the state of Dakota (South).
This was the kind of misinformation I took in my stride in the rumour-bedevilled record business, though it was quite a stride from uptown Manhattan to Dakota.
Anyway, I headed down south through those black hills, and pretty soon found the boys holed up in a small hotel on the Cheyenne River at Cherry Creek, near Lake Oahe. If this wasn't the middle of nowhere it was pretty damn close. The only thing I knew about Noise Annoys was that they were big, and I was going to make them bigger. And this was exactly what I told their lead singer, Kami Kadzee, that fateful night in the hotel bar.
"What about our music?" asked Kami.
"I've never heard any of it."
"You know what heavy metal is?"
"Nope, can't say as I do."
Before I could stop him, Kami and the rest of Noise Annoys launched into their latest single, Killer Be Killed. The din was frightful. The lyrics, delivered in a sort of banshee screech, were indecipherable, which may have been just as well. In a spirited accompaniment, three of the band members began thrashing the hotel lobby, and as a climax, Kami grabbed the inoffensive hotel pet, a gaily-coloured macaw known as Elvis, from his perch on the bar and bit off its head.
"Tell me," said Kami as he resumed his seat, "you haven't actually put out a record yet, is that right?'
All I could hear was the faintest hum. After the Noise Annoys performance, I was now completely and permanently deaf. Fortunately, I was a skilled lipreader.
"That's right, Kami."
`Well, don't worry. You're gonna be great."
"Gonna be, gonna be" I joked, "who knows about gonna be?"
But I did and I was. Vinyl Solution took off from there. That's the entertainment business for you. Manipulation is its middle name.