Time Has Come Today: Rock and Roll Diaries 1967 - 2007 - Softcover

Bronson, Harold

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798987989142

Publisher: Trouser Press, LLC, 2024

Synopsis

Before he co-founded Rhino Records and put decades of rock and roll history back into musical circulation, Harold Bronson was a devoted fan with boundless enthusiasm, a discerning ear and a near-photographic memory. He channeled his passion into writing for the UCLA Daily Bruin and then Rolling Stone and other magazines before launching the Rhino label from the back room of the Los Angeles record store he managed.

Completing a trilogy that began with The Rhino Records Story (2013) and continued with My British Invasion (2017), this 40-year diary documents Bronson’s progress from student musician and journalist to label executive, where his fandom, wit and wildly creative imagination augmented and altered the course of many brilliant careers. Time Has Come Today contains accounts of significant events and meetings with noted hitmakers and reveals fascinating details that have never before been made public.

Featuring close encounters with:

• The Monkees
• Peter Noone
• The Turtles
• AC/DC
• Arthur Lee and Love
• Gene Simmons
• Maurice Gibb
• Ozzy Osbourne
• John Sebastian
• George Carlin
• George Clinton
• Andrew Loog Oldham
• Henny Youngman
• Electric Light Orchestra
• Neil Innes
• Mark Lindsay
• Paul Anka
• Peter Asher
• Mickie Most
• Badfinger
• Spirit
• Rod Argent
• Stephen Bishop
• Wally Amos
• ...and many more

About this title

About the Author

Before he co-founded Rhino Records – America’s leading reissue label -- and put decades of rock and roll history back into musical circulation, Bronson was just another devoted fan growing up in Southern California in the 1960s. But with boundless enthusiasm, a discerning ear and a near-photographic memory, he channeled his passion into writing for the UCLA Daily Bruin and then Rolling Stone and other magazines. After meeting and interviewing many of the era’s greats, he launched the Rhino label from the back room of the Los Angeles record store he managed. This is his third book.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, June 24, 1986

Gene Simmons had read in Newsweek about our interest in making feature films. He came to Rhino in his Rolls-Royce, dressed like a New Yorker: sport coat, jean shirt, black slacks. He wore ankle boots. (So does Peter Noone.) He explained that KISS is on hiatus and he wants to establish himself in the film business. He has a role in Never Too Young, a low-budget chase movie currently in theaters. He feels that, with the success of KISS and his celebrity, he can set up meetings and get movies produced. I told him about a movie we want to make with the band Big Daddy that has been optioned by New World Pictures. He was about to give up, saying, “Then you don’t need me.” I told him to let me think about it, maybe there’s something else we can work on together. I said I’d be in touch.

Tuesday, January 8, 1991

Richard and I met with two ex-Goldman Sachs investment bankers, Steve Bannon and John Talbott, and their client Elliot J. Horowitz. Elliot was a high-ranking executive at the L.A. Gear athletic shoe company who is looking for another company in which to invest his millions. Neither Elliot, who said little, nor Bannon and Talbott knew much about the music business, so we spent most of the meeting giving them an overview of the industry and our company.

Thursday, February 7, 1991

We had a second meeting with Bannon, Talbott and Horowitz at Elliot’s impressive house on Palisades Beach Road in Santa Monica. I got the impression that it is a new house for him and his much younger, beautiful wife. As Elliot showed us around, his feet flopping in leather sandals, he seemed more like a capitalist hippie than a high-powered executive. Unusual for a beach house, it was designed in the streamlined modern style: curvy, chrome railings; beveled, marble countertops; glass-block walls; atrium. The only oddity is that the his-and-hers closets are at opposite ends of the house.

Over lunch in the ocean-view dining room, we explained that we would use an investment to acquire catalogs. We discussed the Roulette deal, that we didn’t have the money to purchase the whole catalog and so partnered with Capitol Records, retaining North American rights while they held the rest of the world. I didn’t get any sense that Elliot was interested in our business, nor did I feel any chemistry between us.

Edition details

• Publisher: Trouser Press, LLC
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798987989142
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 435