Chances are, if you came of age in the 1970s, you helped make Casablanca Records the most successful independent record label of all time. With artists like Donna Summer, Parliament, Gladys Knight, the Isley Brothers, the Village People, Bill Withers and KISS on the roster, founder Neil Bogart sold millions of records and helped define the sound of the 1970s.
“Spinning Gold,” a new biopic now playing in theatres, written, produced and directed by Bogart’s eldest son Tim, is the story of how it happened. Kind of.
“If what you’re after is the truth,” Bogart says, “and not just what happened, but how it happened, then you are just going to have to believe all of it, because every single bit of it is true. Even the parts that weren’t.”
The story of Casablanca Records begins in Los Angeles, 1974. In the late 1960s the former singer and one-hit-wonder Bogart was a successful music executive. His ear for talent accelerated the rise of bubblegum pop, but it was a shock rock band from New York City, with face paint and futuristic stage outfits, that inspired Bogart to start his own label.
Refusing to ever take no for an answer, even after a disastrous label launch featuring KISS, whose pyrotechnics set off the sprinklers, leaving all the music biz big shots in attendance soaked and unimpressed, Bogart took risks no other executive could. Or would.
Flashbacks to his youth detail how the son of a poor Brooklyn postman rose to become a record industry mover-and-shaker. A charming combo of talent and nerve, with a healthy (and occasionally unhealthy) disregard for money, he cut a path through popular culture, following his personal motto: “Why head for the mountaintop when you’re reaching for the sky?”
A kind of “What Makes Sammy Run” set in the music business, “Spinning Gold” is a fast-paced portrait of an old-school show business mogul, a high school drop-out who gambled as big as he dreamed. It is the stuff of dreams and, as such, plays like a kind of fantasy, with Bogart cast as a rock ‘n roll fairy godfather. As played with great energy by Broadway star Jeremy Jordan, he grants people’s wishes and his belief in his own ability to cast a spell over artists and executives alike, is almost supernatural. “We were in the business of making dreams come true,” he says.
It all feels heightened, like a look at the era through a telescope, enlarged to the point where the image is so big it doesn’t feel real anymore. But, unlike other music biopics—think “Bohemian Rhapsody” for instance—“Spinning Gold” has a meta self-awareness, and even breaks the fourth wall to acknowledge, “This never happened!” It’s a fun stylistic choice, but later, the fictional hagiographic elements are tempered by the drugs, money issues and organized crime that enter the story midway through and give the movie a slightly grittier feel.
“Spinning Gold” relies too heavily on voice over—sometimes it feels like there’s more VO than actual dialogue—but, like the man and the music it is based on, the movie is unapologetically large ‘n loud in its need to entertain the audience and it mostly works with an appealing combo of performances and lots of ear-wormy music.
Most of all, as a portrait of a more free-wheeling time—”I’m not saying it wasn’t sex, drugs and rock and roll, because it was, “Bogart says. “But it was sex before it was deadly.”—“Spinning Gold” succeeds not because it gets the details exactly right but because it captures the spirit of a time in the music industry when it was run by dreamers who had passion for the music, not MBA diplomas hanging on the wall.
The mid-seventies were a confusing time to be a music-obsessed kid looking to latch onto pop culture in Nova Scotia.
Old hippies weren’t my people—they were everywhere, sporting peace and love hangovers, tie dyed t-shirts and dazed looks. With them came bad hygiene and battered copies of Aoxomoxoa. The free love stuff sounded pretty good to me, but I never liked Birkenstocks and stoner rock wasn’t my thing, (although Silver Machine by Hawkwind was usually worth a fist pump.)
In syncopated lockstep with the 60s leftovers were the disco Dan’s and Dani’s, polyester-outfitted goodtime seekers looking to boogaloo to the top of Disco Mountain. I did the Bump at school dances, I suppose, and played the hell out of my Jive Talkin’ 45, but I was six three at age twelve so wearing platforms were out of the question. Even if I could have worn them the hedonistic woop-woop of disco felt alien to me, like it was emanating from a different planet where everyone had glittery skin and mirror balls for eyes.
Singer songwriters wrote about things that didn’t touch me. 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover? I didn’t have a lover to leave once, let alone another 49 ways. Also, lover? Who did Paul Simon think I was? Marcello Mastroianni?
Country rock was OK, although at nine plus minutes Freebird overstayed its welcome by about six minutes. Country music was for hillbillies (it wasn’t until much later I discovered the joys of Waylon and Willie and the boys), soft rock was for girls and I’m pretty sure only dogs could fully appreciate Leo Sayers’ high-pitched wailing. I liked KISS although their “rock and roll all night, party everyday” ethos seemed unrealistic, even to a teenager.
My parents listened to the smooth sounds of Frank Sinatra which frequently clashed with the hard rock racket emanating from my brother’s room.
I was left somewhere in the middle.
Of course I had records. A stack of them.
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was usually near the top. It was a touchstone then as it is now because of its exceptional songwriting, cool cover and otherworldly sounds. I also had the obligatory copy of Frampton Comes Alive! but I also had pop records, heavy metal albums and some disco. But I hadn’t yet heard the definitive sound. For my brother it was Jimi Hendrix’s string stretching. For my dad it was Bing Crosby‘s croon.
I was fifteen and hadn’t yet passed that most important—to me anyway—rite of passage: finding the combination of notes and attitude my parents wouldn’t understand.
In those days the top ten charts were really diverse and fans were regularly exposed to a baffling array of music. The Billboard charts hadn’t yet fragmented off into genre specific listings and radio wasn’t yet run by robots with limited imaginations. Playlists were all over the place, and if you weren’t quick on the dial you’d awkwardly segue from the slick jazz of George Benson into You’re the One That I Want’s pop confectionary.
There weren’t many stations were I grew up but there was a smörgåsbord of sounds to be heard, but around the time Barry Gibb became the first songwriter in history to write four consecutive #1 singles on Billboard’s Hot 100 Chart the music on the radio started to have less appeal for me.
On the quest to figure out your identity there are few things more soul destroying for a fifteen-year-old than finding yourself inadvertently humming along to a song on the radio as your dad drives and hums in harmony.
I didn’t want the shared family something-for-everyone experience radio offered. I wanted my own experience so I began to regard the radio I grew up listening to as Musicology 101. With its indiscriminate playlists, it’s ability to embrace all genres I had a solid base to build on, but like many good relationships we outgrew one another.
Songs by Kenny Rogers and the like were everywhere but tunes such as The Gambler sounded hopelessly old fashioned; like a Zane Grey dime store novel put to music. So when the radio, which had been my constant companion, fell away as a source of discovering new music I turned to Hit Parader, Circus, Cream and any other magazine I could to find out what was what.
There I saw pictures of the Comiskey Park Disco Demolition Night that lead to the jettisoning of my Bee Gees singles. I read about Elvis Presley dying on the toilet, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane bursting into flames, killing six while, ironically, promoting the Street Survivors LP.
It felt like the old guard was fading away. Sure Queen (liked them) and Barry Manilow (not so much) and Village People (see Manilow note) were still having hits, and Bruce Springsteen was still being loudly touted as the future of rock and roll (by rock critic turned Bruce’s co-producer Jon Landau who wrote, “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”) but I wasn’t ready “to trade in these wings on some wheels.”
At the same time my one-time hero Alice Cooper got sober and made the worst record of his career to date but that stuff was quickly fading as I began to hear about—but not actually hear—some exciting music from London and New York.
The only thing I knew about New York came from TV and a family from Manhattan who rented a cottage every year at one of the three beaches that framed my hometown. They told me that if you left your bike unchained at the corner of Ninth Street and Second Avenue it would disappear almost immediately, as if by magic.
London I knew only from history books, James Bond and Monty Python.
But in the pages of my mags I learned about a new youth movement, a musical incubator spearheaded by bands like The Ramones, The Clash, Wire and Television.
