It was a rainy Wednesday morning back in May 1985 when I met Larry Rosen - co-founder and co-president of GRP Records - at his hotel near Zürich, Switzerland where he was staying during the launch of the European branch of GRP Records. While having his breakfast I enjoyed the company of a relaxed and talkative Mr. Rosen willing to tell me all about the Grusin/Rosen story I wanted to know. Read on...

Interview with Larry Rosen, Co-President of GRP

Peter Böhi: Larry, first of all, what should we know about your person?

Larry Rosen: Oh boy!

P.B.: We know you only as the man behind the mixing console. But I think you've got also a career as a musician, haven't you?

L.R.: Well, I guess my career started as a musician when I was thirteen years old. I grew up in New York City and my mother wanted me to play a musical instrument. She wanted me to play the accordion and I said: "No, no - I don't want to play any instrument! I want to play the drums!" So I started playing the drums, I started taking lessons. I must have had a natural attitude for it because it came very easy to me to play the drums.

I started playing in bands right away after I was playing one year. Many friends of mine played instruments as well.

I moved to New Jersey when I was about fifteen years old. I was able to read music very easily, so I started playing in big bands and a lot of stage bands right away. I had a lot of friends in New York City, we had a little Jazz group, we used to rehearse in New York City. Just about this time, I was about seventeen years old, Marshall Brown and George Wein put together a band through the entire New York area called The Newport Youth Band. You had to be from fourteen to eighteen years old. And the idea was to put together a band of the best young players in the greater New York City area - that's New York, New Jersey and Connecticut - and come up with this big band that could serve as a training ground for the next generation of musicians because big bands were starting to disappear at that point. And where will young musicians gonna get their kind of training?

So there were about six hundred young musicians in New York City that were editioned for this band, and I was picked as the drummer in the band. The bass player in the band was Eddie Gomez, the piano player in the band was Mike Abene, saxophone players were Andy Marsala and Eddie Daniels and Ronnie Cuber, Jimmy Owens and Alan Rubin played trumpet in the band. It was just an excellent band, so many good players came out of that band. Although we were all very young, and it was a training ground, we learned how to play, how to really play on a professional level. Marshall Brown and George Wein used to bring down special people to train the band. We used to rehearse every weekend, Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon. And then we played at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1959 and then we played at the Newport Jazz Festival again in 1960 and we made three albums. They're on Coral Records, that were part of Decca Records at that time. We did special concerts with guest artists like Cannonball Adderley and all different great players.

So at a very young age I was playing on a very professional level and got the chance to be in the recording studio. It was very interesting to me, not only from the playing point of view but also from the technology, about the recording that was going on. I didn't know what was going on behind that glass. People were in there, doing things and then play it back and it sounded good. At that time I was only concerned of being a player and about the musician side of it.

I was in the band for almost three years and then I attended college and went to Manhattan School Of Music. And while I was in Manhattan School Of Music, because I was in that Newport Band, got a lot of offers for a lot of bands. I was called by Maynard Ferguson to go to play with his band and many other players like Al Cohn and Zoot Sims to play with their band, but my parents didn't want me to leave college because they felt it was important that I had an education and get a degree. Their expression was: "You need a degree because you need something to fall back on" because they realized that the music business was such a difficult business. They couldn't imagine how I was going to spend the rest of my life playing the drums. So at least if I got a degree I could always teach in High School. And I would tell my parents:"I don't want to teach in High School, I don't want to be a teacher, I want to be a player, I want to be a musician".

So I stayed in school for about two and a half years and then I got an offer from Andy Williams who is a very famous singer. He came in to New York City and was looking for a drummer to take out on the road with him to travel all across the United States. And the piano player was Dave Grusin. So Dave Grusin played piano for Andy Williams. He wasn't even arranging at that time, he just played piano and was the conductor. We traveled with Andy wherever he went and now they wanted to carry a drummer also. I met Dave and told him about what I was doing, some people recommended me to him. I went out on the road with Andy Williams and left school. That grew into a relationship that lasted for six years.

And at the same time, Henri Mancini was travelling with Andy Williams as a show, it was the Henri Mancini and Andy Williams Show. So I played for both Henri Mancini and Andy Williams. Wherever we went we picked up the rest of the orchestra, so we would have maybe a 40-piece orchestra wherever we went, and we travelled all over. They made records with Andy Williams and did a lot of concerts, television shows and radio shows. I did that until I was about 25 years old.

Then I met a lady and got married and I decided I wasn't going to travel anymore. I wanted to stay in New York City and be involved as a studio musician, be involved in either playing jazz in clubs or playing on other people's records or playing for commercials or shows or whatever, but as a studio musician in NYC. I started to get involved in that and that takes time because you have to be known in that area. It's like a small group of musicians that do all that work. And while I was doing that I bought a house in New Jersey.

I was always interested in recording so I built a recording studio in my house. I started out to be a very very small studio, we just had a two-track machine , a little mixer and microphones. I had friends come over who would play and I'd wear headphones and play the drums and at the same time try to mix and record. And of course that became real difficult so I would bring in other friends of mine who play the drums so I could record. And then I realized with the headphones I couldn't hear if I was hearing in the room or was I really hearing what was on the tape so I built a control room in my house. And then I wanted to start overdubbing so I had to buy another tape machine so then I had two two-track machines and then I had a mixing console with ten inputs and then I bought a four-track machine and then I bought an eight-track machine. Recording is just like - you need more and more.

At that point I started realizing that I was very interested in the recording part of music and I was becoming more interested by the challenge and the new area of recording than I was with the playing part. I was still playing the drums of course but I wanted to find out more and more about recording and I wanted to go in a natural extension of that which was production. So I didn't know which way to go as far as what was I gonna produce, I had no idea so I just record jazz, I'd record singers, anything I could record, anything, I'd write music and record the loam moor outside, the cut of grass, I'd record the water flowing, anything, I'd do all kinds of experiments with recording.

I got involved in the next place where I started to actually do a production,was in the area of doing commercials. For some reason rather I heard a commercial on the radio for a store in NYC and I didn't like the commercial. I said:"My god, here's a radio station that plays music all day long and they had a commercial for a clothing store. It was called OR&G Clothing. It was a commercial that didn't fit the radio program station at all. So I called up the person who owned the store and I said:"I just heard your commercial on the radio and I can make a better commercial than the commercial you have on your radio." He said:"Ok, go and make the commercial and bring it to me on Saturday and let me hear what it's like." So I drove out to his store and looked what clothing he had there, what his slogans were, what the idea, the concept of the store was. I got a friend of mine who is an arranger, to write an arrangement, I recorded it in my studio, I brought a friend of mine who is a singer, whose name is Jon Lucien, who's just a wonderful, wonderful singer!

P.B.: That's the one that sang on Tania Maria's album "Love Explosion" and on the new Grover Washington, Jr. as well, isn't he?

L.R.: That's right, yes. Jon was a friend of mine 'cause he played bass also and we played in a lot of bands together. So I called Jon, he came and he sang the music and Saturday I went out to this person's store with this tape of this commercial and I played it for him and he loved it. He said:"That's great, that's great!" We worked out the thing and he paid me for the commercial and I gave him the tape. And it was on the radio every hour, every day in NYC, it became a very popular commercial. Because I got the chance to do that commercial people sought and called me to do more commercials so I started to do have a production company to do commercials.

And that was how I got involved in production. And by doing commercials I started learning about what you have to do for recording, what you have to do to make things sound good on the radio, how you have to mix, how much does it cost to produce, all the aspects of the music and the business of being a producer. I started to learn what this was all about. So it gave me a chance to use the music that I've learned and the recording techniques and the production techniques all together.

From that point I opened up an office in NYC. It was a company called Duo-Creatics with a friend of mine named Shep Meyers. And we did a lot of commercials for all kinds of different products, for clothing products, for bus companies, greyhound busses, for airlines, for television, radio. I did that for about three years. With our company we won three Clio awards. That's equal to the Grammy award or the Oscar, that's given out in the United States for commercials. We started to do very very good music for commercials and very creative music for commercials. And I was still using sometimes the studio in my house, but I would just do the demos in my house. Usually the final version we'd do with an orchestra in one of the major studios in NYC. When I would go into the studio in NYC, the engineer who is working there would be the engineer, and I would be the producer.

After a while I started to get bored with the whole idea of a commercial because the music was only 30 seconds long or 1 minute long, somebody would be talking over the music saying: "Go out and buy" you know, whatever it was. It wasn't rewarding for me because my background is still a musician, my love was jazz and this was a real good training but it wasn't really what I wanted to do.

P.B.: And what did Dave Grusin during this time?

L.R.: After the Andy Williams situation ended, I stayed and settled in NYC and Dave Grusin moved to California. While Dave Grusin was in California he started to write for television and for films as a composer.

So I get back to the situation with Jon Lucien being a wonderful singer and a wonderful composer and we were very good friends. When he was over in my house working on this very first commercial he played his songs for me and he said:"Larry, you know, I want you to hear my songs." He took out his guitar and started playing all these songs and I just fell in love with the music and in love with the songs and I've record him all the time. For about two years he's been coming to my house and we'd record his songs. Just him playing guitar and singing and we'd overdub another part and another part and another part. Sometimes I would play drum parts and overdub on top of what he did and we'd work together and make a lot of demo tapes. Well we took these demo tapes to RCA and we worked out a record deal for Jon and we made an album called Rashida on RCA which was all Jon' s original tunes. We recorded most of the basic vocals and the tracks in the studio in my house. We took it to RCA and transferred it to sixteen-track at that time and I sent the tapes out to Dave Grusin because I wanted to have strings recorded for this and overdub instruments.

And Dave liked it and I said:"Dave, I'd love to have you do this." And we always talk on the telephone 'cause we became real good friends through the six years that we worked together with Andy Williams. Then he flew in to New York and wrote all the arrangements and we recorded the arrangements. And that's the first production we really did together. He was the arranger and I was actually the producer in that particular case.

Well, the record came out and was nominated for a Grammy award - the very first record we ever did. And it was a very very good record. It didn't sell a lot of records, but in NYC and in the United States it became almost a classic type album. So from there on it took a period of time where I did another record with Jon for RCA a year later, it was called Mind's Eye. The same thing, Dave came in and he wrote the arrangements and we did that album together. And then Jon and I left RCA and went to CBS in 1975. The first record was 1972, then the next one was 1973 or 74 and then 1975 we went to RCA when Bruce Lundvall became president. Bruce heard from Herbie Hancock about Jon Lucien who liked the records we made so much on RCA that he told Bruce Lundvall about it.

Bruce Lundvall called me up and he said:"I'd like to sign Jon and I'd like you to do a record here at CBS." And we went and we did a record at CBS and it was called Song For My Lady with Jon. Herbie Hancock played on it and Dave Grusin wrote the arrangements and a lot of good players... Harvey Mason played on it. I started the record in the studio in my house which was eight-track, went to A&R-Studios in New York and bounced it to sixteen-track and we worked on the record in New York, took the tapes out to Los Angeles, went to twentyfour-track and Dave Grusin wrote the arrangements so we completed the album out on the westcoast which came out on Columbia Records 1975. That did very very well that record.

After that, in the next year in 1976, Dave got called by the school he went to which was the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado where he grew up as a child. They asked him to write a symphonic piece for orchestra, chorus and a jazz group. So he composed a quite extensive piece of music for the school to perform and he called me and he said:"Maybe you can come out here and help me and we could record this piece, I'd really like to have a recording up." I said:"Sure, absolutely." So we went to Denver, Colorado bringing a remote recording truck and put together this whole production. We had such a good time working on it together, Dave said to me:"I'm getting a little bit tired of working on so many movies and television." He felt that unrewarding as well. He felt one movie they wanted him to write in a certain style, another movie another style and he was like an arranger for hire, a composer for hire. He would like to be more involved in records. He suggested:"Why don't we form a production company together and we'll see what we can do as far as producing records?" And I felt certainly the same way 'cause that was the direction that I wanted to go in.

So we decided to form Grusin/Rosen Productions which of course turned into GRP Records. We didn't have any idea of GRP Records at that time, we're just to do a production together and with our new company. Well, he went back to California right after everything in Colorado and I went back to NYC.

Dave got called from George Butler who was at Blue Note Records at that time. George said he heard a demo tape of a new guitar player named Earl Klugh. And he said: "Why don't you people listen to this?" He said to Dave: "I would like you to listen to it and to do maybe an arrangement for this record." So Dave said:"I just formed a production company together with Larry Rosen." and George Butler was familiar with me from the Jon Lucien albums, he liked those albums very much. So Dave said:"We'd like to be able to maybe produce this record." George Butler said:"Sure, fine, why not. I think you guys are great, let's try it. See what you want to do with Earl Klugh."

So he sent us this tape and we listened to it, Dave and I. Some of the songs Earl was playing electric guitar and some songs he was playing acoustic guitar. Nobody knew which way to go with Earl. Should he play electric guitar because he played just for a short period of time before that with Return to Forever with Chick Corea before Al Di Meola and anyone played electric guitar. He played on a couple of things with George Benson. George Benson played the electric guitar and he played acoustic guitar and nobody knew which way should he try to go, which guitar. Everybody thought the acoustic guitar could only be used for bossa nova type music. That's the only time you heard it was with Charlie Byrd or very light kind of music. Not with anything that was heavy, not with anything that was funky 'cause it's a very hard instrument to project. So Dave and I and Earl we sat and we tried different ideas and different concepts and we went into the studio with a rhythm section in California and we started working on this record. Louis Johnson was playing bass and Harvey Mason played drums and Dave Grusin played keyboards and we had electric guitar, and the electric guitar became a background instrument and we tried Earl playing electric. Then we felt there wasn't anything real special about it, but when he played acoustic guitar we really felt there was something real special. So we said lets go in a direction of making it all acoustic guitar jazz record but with a funky rhythm section and electric guitar in the background and acoustic guitar out in the front. And it was kind of a different approach in that time to try that. It was the first record we made together Dave and I and it was a regular production for Blue Note Records. Well, I don't have to tell you what happened with Earl Klugh from that point on. That record is still being sold and it's a classic type album, it's Earl's first record. It was a certain interesting way to use his guitar and I think it was the beginning of a sound that we started creating. It's known as the Grusin/Rosen or the GRP type sound. Well after we did that one album for Earl, we did a second album for Earl and we felt we wanted to start bringing more artists.

And there is an artist that I knew of in NYC from when I was working with Jon Lucien who was only sixteen years old at that time and that was Noel Pointer. Now he is somebody that plays the acoustic violin and electric violin. We said:"Wow, that would really be neat with a rhythm section also with a kind of funky style. Let's try a violin that way." Here we did it with acoustic guitar with Earl, let's try that with a violin. And then we did Noel's record. Noel's first record did very very well it was really a very interesting sound, the combination of instruments. That's been when I first met Steve Gadd, he played on that record and it was just the whole beginning of a whole development of seeing a production working together with Dave and I, we both felt very comfortable working together and we also felt we could create a whole style here.

And then we did two records with Noel and three records with Earl Klugh and then we met Dave Valentin. Dave Valentin went to High School together with Noel Pointer, called Music and Art High School and a lot of good young musicians in NYC went to this High School. It was a special art type school, a musicians school. So, at that point we got called from other record companies because a lot of people started to hear these records that we were making and Polydor Records at that time in New York called us and said:"We'd like to work out a deal with you where you would make three albums for us, three different artists, a production deal." We said:"Sure, good, fine." That's been what we wanted to do. And the first artist we'd have there would be Dave Grusin making his own record. And that was the One Of A Kind album that we made there.

P.B.: That's the very first album Dave Grusin recorded under his own name?

L.R.: No, no! At the same time we were working with Andy Williams the same producer who's producing Andy Williams really liked the way Dave played and asked Dave to make a piano record as a solo artist with a rhythm section. And Dave made an album called something like Moonlight Sunbeams - I forgot the name a bit. It was bass, piano and drums and some strings. And that was Dave's first record, it was on Epic Records. Then he made a second record, just a trio record, piano, bass, drums. Then he made a third record, it was a about 1965 and that was more of a jazz oriented record and it was called Kaleidoscope on CBS. Dave played piano, I played drums, Bobby Cranshaw played bass, Frank Foster and Thad Jones. That was a real jazz record, a straight ahead be bop record. We played some Monk tunes and some original tunes by Dave. Dave didn't make a record now all the way until the One Of A Kind record which was a whole new style of course of music and that was not until about 1977. So there's a long period of time in there for Dave as an artist. All that time he really spent more time as a composer and arranger.

In 1977 we made One Of A Kind and of course it was with Steve Gadd and Anthony Jackson and Grover Washington - just so many wonderful players. Ralph MacDonald and Dave Valentin played on that record as well. We released that record on Polydor but we were very very disappointed with the marketing and the sales approach that Polydor was taking.

Just at this time I happened to meet on a plane coming back from California one day Clive Davis, who is the president of Arista Records and we sat next to each other on the aeroplane. I certainly knew who he was and I started talking to him and he knew who I was by the productions that we've made between the Earl Klugh records and the Noel Pointer records. We also made a record during that time for CTI for Patti Austin called Havana Candy. He said:"You know, I really like to talk to you about producing records or bringing artists to Arista Records. Maybe we could work out some kind of a situation." So I told him we would be doing something already with Polydor. He said:"Well, lets talk about it." We set up a meeting. He said:"I'd like to hear all the records." and I sent all the records that we made up to that point to his office and he called me back about two days later and he said:"I really like those records very much and I'd like to work out some kind of a production deal with you.

So Dave and' I sat down and we said:"What do we wanna do?" We said we wanna have a label, we want to have our own label. We didn't know what name it was going to be at that point and we sat down the next day with Clive Davis and the people at Arista Reciords and he said:"I'd like your records and we'd like you to produce records for Arista Records." We said:"Well, what we would like to do is have our own label." So that was the point of view that we came from and after a long period of negotiations and discussions he agreed to it. It was called Arista/GRP Records.

So we went back to Polydor and we said that we were very disappointed with the sales there and we'd like to buy back this record and be released from the contract. And since they changed so many presidents nobody really cared anyway so we paid for the record and got back the master of One Of A Kind and we laughed and went to Arista Records. And we thought we'd release One Of A Kind right away but we didn't because when Dave came up to make another record we made Mountain Dance at that point. So we just held One Of A Kind we knew eventually we release it but we didn't know excactly when.

But in the meanwhile we went out and started to look for other artists for our own Arista/GRP Records now. And that's when we already had signed Dave Valentin with the idea we would gonna take him to the Polydor situation so he became the first artist for the Arista/GRP label. And then he told us about a singer named Angela Bofill who we listened to and liked very much and we signed Angela Bofill. And then Earl Klugh one day was telling me about a trumpet player named Tom Browne. So I went to listen to Tom Browne and I liked him very much so I signed Tom Browne. And Tom Browne told me about a piano player named Bernard Wright. So he played on Tom's first record and I met him and I liked him very much so I signed... And also amongst Tom's friends who all lived in one area of Queens called Jamaica. That's how we came up with "Funkin' For Jamaica" there was a guitar player named Bobby Broom and I liked him very much so we signed Bobby Broom.

And this is how the label just kept on growing and expanding. We met so many new young artists that were just coming out to the scene. For young artists there wasn't a lot of places to go and a lot of labels weren't looking for these people. We felt they were very very talented and together with the production style and the production between Dave's writing and his musical direction and the engineering that I'm doing and the kind of sound that we were developping and our choice of material - Dave and I would sit and listen to our songs together and figure which is the best way to go with the artist - and our concepts as far as marketing and selling and what the cover should look like and where in the marketplace does this artist fit, we started becoming a more total operation. We started thinking about the artists and the music industry in much broader terms. When we were thinking about an artist we weren't just thinking about his music but we were thinking about his image, and thinking about his style and what would be the production of this record and how does it fit into the marketplace and how do we bring this to the most people. And needless to say Arista/GRP just grew into a much bigger situation than we ever expected. When we first started with the first Earl Klugh record we never anticipated to having our own record label but this is the direction it was taking.

Well the Arista situation lasted for about five years, for about the length of the contract and then ended about 1982. Once that ended we decided which way we wanted to go. Are we going to do another label with another company like GRP with CBS or GRP with Warner Brothers or RCA. We didn't know excactly what was the best way to go. Should we get involved in more commercial type music because Funkin' For Jamaica was a funk type record and it sold a million records all over the world. It generates a lot of money, you see how you can make a lot of money from that and it's a tendency to go in that trend.

This funky kind of music is happening, so maybe we should be making funky records and it's very easy to lose track at that point of maybe what you really love in music which was certainly jazz and that was where it all came from originally. The records we made originally were never made for any purpose of making money. That was never the concern. And it was never concerned how many records can we sell. We'd liked this music and because we'd like the music and we'd like the production and that's the way we felt it should go. That was the kind of records we made. As long there was enough money to make the record that was the only concern. How many records it sold and how much money you generated we didn't even care about. But when you just start developping into a situation where you have your own label you start realizing that the money that is generated by your artists becomes very important to the continuing of a label.

So you start to look at things in a lot of different ways and in 1982/1983 we decided that we wanted to have our own label GRP to be a totally independent label and to be able to independently make our own decisions. Of course this takes a tremendous investment of Dollars and tremendous investment of energy and time, but we felt very confident and that was the way that we should go. That was the beginning of GRP Records as a totally independent label. It meant that a lot of the albums that we made before - the albums that we made for Blue Note or for CBS or for RCA or for whatever label it was on - those records weren't our records. We didn't own those masters, we could not take those records and put them out on GRP Records. We had to start all over from the beginning. We had to start from record number 1001!

And that was a tour that we went to Japan where we took Steve Gadd and Lee Ritenour and Eric Gale and all these great players with Dave Grusin. That was called The NY/LAL Dream Band So that became record number 1001. That was the very first record that was going to be on the new GRP label. And Dave Valentin at that point left the Arista/GRP situation and came just to GRP. As part of the contract Arista had the right to keep artists like Angela Bofill, Tom Browne, Bernard Wright and Bobby Broom. Even though those artists were signed to GRP under our contract Arista had the right to keep those artists. But when Arista doesn't want those artists any more those artists revert back to GRP. This is all still developping right now, it's very recent all these effects.

Under the new GRP label we had to start finding new product and create a label all over again. So of course the first record was this GRP record of the NY/LA Dream Band. The next thing that we saw was the coming of compact discs. I and Dave feel that compact discs are the whole future of the entire music industry. It's digital technology which is the storage medium of the future. We were involved with digital recording all the way from Dave's record Mountain Dance which was the first digital recording we did all the way back in 1979. When we heard the first digital playback we were so excited with that. I mean the first thing I heard was Marcus Miller's bass and I couldn't tell if it was really happening in the studio, wether he was playing the bass or it was really on the tape. I mean I never heard anything like that and Dave and I looked at each other and we said: "That's it, digital technology, there is no doubt that this is the future."

We decided we were going in this digital direction although even those compact discs weren't available yet. We were reading about the advent of compact disc between Philips and Sony and this new concept of laser disc. There was no doubt that that was going to be the future as far as we were concerned and a lot of people in the record industry certainly didn't take that as being a reality. They weren't concerned about that at all but it fit the musical style that we were doing, the high quality type production and we knew what digital recording and digital storage meant already. So we went out and we said:"What kind of record could we make that would be really be good for a compact disc." At the beginning of compact disc. Music that would be known all over the world and would be dynamically strong for compact disc. And that's when we decided on doing this Glenn Miller big band music which was certainly different than anything we ever did before. Everything we did before was in a jazz style with original music and new or established jazz artists and going to Glenn Miller - somebody who's been dead for 40 years - was so completely different than what we ever did before. But we figured this would be a good way for us to get involved into compact disc because that type of a product could be a perfect demonstration for compact discs because everybody in the world knew the music of Glenn Miller. It was the most popular band music in the world and a big band would be the perfect example.

So we worked out some kind of a deal with the Glenn Miller estate in the United States to get the original arrangements and we put together a studio band in New York and recorded it on a 32-track digital 3-M System. We released that on analog record and it sounded real good, everybody knew the record, but we were really looking for the CD release. Well, I took us a while to release the first CD and the first CD on GRP Records was released at the end of May just about this time in 1984. Last year was the first CD we released and that right now was one of the top selling CDs in the world. The biggest selling CD in the United States right now is Michael Jackson, the second one is Prince and the third one is the Glenn Miller record on CD. It did excactly what we wanted it to do. But of course that had nothing to do with GRP and building GRP type of music that we wanted to do. We weren't gonna go out and making big band records on CD, that wasn't really the point of music that we wanted to get involved in.

So we started looking for new artists again and looking for established artists and we wanted to widen the spectrum of GRP Records. We didn't want it to be a so called jazz-fusion label, only in that area. We wanted to do more classic artists. And that's when we started to get involved with Gerry Mulligan and started to talk to Dizzy Gillespie. We wanted to get artists that are really classic artists and done more in a be bop style of playing. We wanted to do high quality recordings from of a contemporary viewpoint to those artists as well as of course the type of records that we made before with new artists with Dave playing keyboards and Dave and I doing the production work and I would be doing the engineering - like the records we made all the way back from Jon Lucien and Earl Klugh but we also wanted to have musicians have the opportunity to produce their own records. Well, we would become more the executive producers. We felt we needed a much much wider span on our own label than we did if we were with an Arista/GRP label where we only did a few albums a year. Now on our own label we needed more of a product flow. And it also gives us a way to introduce more artists and a wider spectrum of music.

Well, that's when we first heard of a group called Special EFX and Kevin Eubanks, guitar player. Both of them who are on a record originally made by Chris Hinze from Holland. He recorded them in NYC and I heard both of those records and they were looking for distribution in the United States. We had our GRP Records and we needed more product and I thought these were very very talented new young artists doing their own thing their own way and so I released both of those records in the United States. We mixed those records to the style that we wanted to and we mixed them to a digital format and kind of changed around, edited and re-edited the music where we felt could be tightened up and work better. These artists startet to get a reputation in the United States. Then we signed Kevin Eubanks to a new contract for the whole world and signed Special EFX also to a contract for the whole world and their new records have just been released now as well.

Of course we wanted to go on further with other artists and Lee Ritenour who we've been working with for years and years on so many things moved more in his career to a pop direction and realized that he really is a guitar player. We had many discussions about this, and he decided he wanted to go in a more playing direction, so the natural place for him to come to was GRP. So Lee Ritenour came to GRP and of course the first album that he's done is the new Harlequin album with Dave and Lee together which is such an exciting concept of Dave and Lee always working together but never actually making a record like this as called headliners. Really where they worked totally together on the whole album this way and both of them just felt that Ivan Lyns is such a powerful songwriter and such an emerging artist on the scene and the world is becoming a smaller and smaller place. We realized on our own label that we have to think of the world as being our market not the US as the only place that were going to sell our records or

Japan where we were very well established. But we felt we've never gotten a chance in Europe because of the whole situation with Arista/GRP. A lot of our records were never released in Europe, they were only been imported and very few people knew about it. And now we said with our own label we have the ability now and we have under our own control to make our own distribution around the world. But we needed more product flow so we created more product because two years ago we started with 1001 and now were up to about number 20: 1020, and the CDs, for every record that we make we make a compact disc as well because we realized how important that is and everything is mixed with digital format - if it's not recorded totally digitally, right from the very beginning - so it was just natural now to come to Europe to look for people that we could work together with on the continent and through the UK and expand GRP across the world. That kind brings us pretty close to where we are now.

As far as more artists are concerned - one artist that I always respected, we've been friends for a long long time and he seemed to drop out for a little while out of the music scene is Billy Cobham. And I know that he's been living in Switzerland and I spoke to Billy on the phone a number of times and I said:"I'd really love to make a record with you." and he said:"I'd love to do that with you too" and we signed Billy Cobham as an exclusive deal and we just made his first record on GRP. And Billy Cobham's first album on GRP is gonna be shipped at the end of June and it's called Warning - because this is the most powerful record I've ever heard in my life. We recorded this record on the Sony 24-track digital format and mixed it to the JVC digital format and it's just a pure digital recording of Billy Cobham - so powerful I've never heard anything like this. I can't think of anything better than either a symphony orchestra or Billy Cobham to be on a digital recording on a compact disc. So Billy came to the United States and we sat down and we worked out all the music which he composed for the album and the style and I went into the studio with Billy and we worked very very closely together on the record. I'm very very excited about it. I can't wait until it comes out, I can't wait to see the reaction to it because I think it's so strong. We used a lot of synthesizers on it and we used a lot of drum experiments and we spent a lot of time when we mixed it in our studio in New York and it's just such a strong record I can't wait 'til you hear it.

So this is the growth of GRP Records and we're just at the beginning again. I mean we were at the beginning with Earl Klugh, we were at the beginning with Arista/GRP and now we we're at the beginning with GRP.

Now with Dave and Lee coming to Montreux and artists starting to tour around the world. We're going on a major tour across the United States with Lee Ritenour and Dave Grusin and Dave Valentin and Diane Schuur who is such a wonderful wonderful vocalist. I mean we are so excited about her. She was introduced by Stan Getz to us and Stan played on her first record and now we're just starting on June the 17th, we start working on her second album and we have so much wonderful material and wonderful surprises for that album which will be released in September and Lee Ritenour will be starting now on his own new solo record and that will be available in September and Dave Grusin's working on some new wonderful experiments and we're dealing with signing some young wonderful artists who you'll be hearing from. And that is where we are going with GRP - You have the whole history!

P.B.: Can you say that it's a purpose of GRP to find new artists and produce them. For instance Jay Hoggard was such an experiment - but I heard his album wasn't very successful.

L.R.: Its succes has to do with sales, not with music. Dave and I both enjoyed working with Jay Hoggard. I think he's a wonderfully talented musician but those were some of the pressures that we had at Arista Records. If records didn't reach a certain kind of sales level we were under pressure from the company itself to either change musical styles or drop the artist. Sometimes it doesn't give the artist enough chance to develop and get involved in the market strong enough. Maybe if Jay Hoggard was just on GRP Records at this point things would be different because he's a wonderful musician, there's no doubt.

P.B.: How much has the artist to say during the production of an album? Is it up to you to say how it has to be played or mixed or how the sound has to be?

L.R.: I'd happen saying. A record to work the right way has to be a total understanding between the artist and the producer. It can't be that the artist wants to do it one way and the producer hates it. Or the producer wants to do it one way and the artist hates it. There is no way it's gonna be successful. It has to be that both people want to do the same thing and then the idea is that you could bounce off of each other.

Each person could make a suggestion and you have to feel that there's total respect and total working relationship and everybody is going for the same goal at the same time. That's the way it works. When you get involved in a situation where you're going in two different directions you're probably better off not making the record. So it's not a question of telling anybody who's right and who has more power than the other person because once it comes down to that even that way of thinking it's no good anymore.

P.B.: But all GRP albums have got a very distinctive GRP sound to it. Does it depend on the mixing or how Dave Grusin arranges?

L.R.: Both, absolutly it takes both. What we would try to do - especially with a new artist - is try to find, like in a case of an Earl Klugh or any of these artists, the major strenght of this artist. Because if you listen to the musicality of any musician - especially a new artist where the total style has not emerged yet - you see the style usually looking back on it. When you first listen to that person play a lot of times, the total style has not been developed yet. What a producer has to do is look at that and say: "What is the best that this artist does and how can I complement it in a way to bring out the best?" That's the job of a producer, to help the artist bring out the actual best part of what they do. Sometimes two people may not look at it the same way. It's like a matter of taste, it's a matter of point of view. I think you would hear by a GRP type sound that there's a certain similarity maybe in the arrangements, if Dave's writing the arrangements, because that's his style and it'll be a certain sameness to the recorded sound or the mixing sound or the type of echo or the type of stereo spread or whatever because that's the way I hear it. But what the artist plays is very individual as far as musicianship is concerned. To me they're not the same at all. There are certain elements that may be the same as far as the clarity of sound and the depth of sound it's not all distorted - you know what I mean? But the artistic individual style of the artist is very different. And to me they're somewhat alike but they're not exactly alike. It's not like you could take out Dave Valentin out of his record and put instead Tom Browne on those same tracks - they wouldn't work, totally different kind of music. They are very individual in their own way.

P.B.: I've noticed that always the first album of an artist has the strongest Dave Grusin stamp on it. With every album the artist grows more personal, he develops his own style. If you look at Dave Valentin and compare his first album with his last one - which is straight latin jazz - you can see that. And what time was there in between when Dave Valentin released his "Fruit Juice"album? This was quite disco to my ears. Did you try to increase the number of sales? Did it work and why did he come back to his roots again?

L.R.: Because at the beginning of GRP as an individual label the sales of records to generate Dollars to keep a label going psychologically becomes a very important thing. As I said before, it's hard not to look at the market and say this is what's selling so this is what I am gonna do with this style with this artist. It's very difficult not to do that, it's very difficult to say:"I'm just gonna do what I feel is what's right an forget about what the whole market feels about. Even though that was the first part that created our success. Well we certainly tried that with Dave Valentin's first record on GRP as a label to go into more of a disco kind of thing. It sold, it sold records maybe it sold a little bit more but it didn't sell a lot more. And from the musical standpoint it was very disappointing to us. After that record we made a decision, Dave and I, that we are gonna go in a direction of music and that's gonna be the common denominater and not necessarily what the market happens to be, what's popular at the moment, we're gonna do that with our artists. We decided that this wasn't the approach. The approach is the strength of that artist and that's the way we're gonna go with it. If that means that the artist is gonna sell 10000 records or if the artist is gonna sell 1 million records in that style, that's the way we're gonna go with it. Because that's the healthiest approach to what we're doing and I think that has the most integrity to it and in the long run that's what I think is gonna win out. And that's why you see Dave Valentin's Kalahari record or the brand new record Jungle Garden is strictly in a musical direction that he feels the strongest in.

P.B.: What does Lee Ritenour at the moment? Does he have any studio dates at the moment ?

L.R.: No, Lee Ritenour is going in a direction of being a total artist on his own and he's not taking studio dates or very very few studio dates. Cause at one time, Lee was probably the busiest guitar player in California. He decided now that he just want to pursue his career as a musician as a player - as an artist. He is spending his time right now recording his new album.

(Pause)

It's interesting what you said about our artists when the original records that they made for GRP you feel more of a stamp of Dave Grusin's arrangement and that type of control. That's because a lot of them have never been in the studio before, have no concept of making a record. That's when they need the most control, they need the most help. After they start gaining experience doing this by themselves we want to be able to provide the type of label where they can grow into their own. I think that's what gonna make GRP Records great. GRP Records is not gonna be great of Dave Grusin and I sittin' and make every record on every artist. It's gonna limit the growth of the artist for the company. A new artist needs help at the beginning and after that point they start growing on their own und just keep expanding and expanding. Now we're dealing with new artists where we're more involved as executive producers at the beginning. We'll sit and talk about who's playing on the record and what the material is gonna be and review the material. But they go into the studio with a different producer to produce it if they are not the producer that we work with, they work with a different engineer. I won't even go into the studio and neither will Dave. They'll sit and come back to our studio after two or three days in the studio or after one day and say:"Hey, listen and tell me what you think of this. Do you think I'm going in the right direction?" We have that kind of discussions with an artist. It's not that we're sitting there with them anymore. Because there would be no way we could ever make this amount of records we want to have to really have a label if we had to make every single record with them. We couldn't make more than three or four records a year, or five records a year. That would be the most we can have. And a label has then more depth to it and dimension to it than that. With the new Kevin Eubanks record, Wynton Marsalis was in the studio with Kevin through the most of the recording and acted as the producer on the record with Branford Marsalis and Kenny Kirkland playing on the record and Kent Jordan playing on the record and Smitty Smith and a whole new group of players. So Kent played some great solos and is a featured player on that record. So that was completely made that way.

Special EFX's new album that's just been released, Modern Manners has McCoy Tyner playing on the record. McCoy is a special guest and they went into the studio and worked on that record and kept bringin' it back and we mixed parts of it in our studio, you know, because they mixed it outside and we felt certain parts of it could be a little bit different and we discussed and they said:"Yeah" so we worked it on that part together with them.

With the Kevin Eubanks record we mixed it all in our studio. But he went out and recorded it with Wynton Marsalis producing it. So each record is starting to take on a different shape. With Dizzy Gillespie we were in the studio working with Dizzy but in that situation Dizzy took care of the arrangements, there was no Dave Grusin stamp on that. I mean there was a rhythm section with Kenny Kirkland and Branford Marsalis and Lonnie Plaxico and Dave Valentin's drummer, Robert Ameen, he's such a wonderful new young drummer. Dizzy, the man who invented be bop along with Charlie Parker with all these new young players. It's a very exciting type record to me and it's getting tremendous reception in the United States. It's probably gonna be one of Dizzy's best records, best selling record, that's for sure.

So each record we see taking on a whole new light. Lee Ritenour is gonna be working on his record and Dave or I are not gonna be involved in the actual production of that record whatsoever. He's working on it now although we're involved as far as the material again, you know, the basic approach that we'd be taking. We discussed where we feel stronger, that he shouldn't be having lot of songs on it and singers like he did on Banded together and his last Elektra records. We felt that takes away from Lee's style as a player. It was his approach to be more commercial. That's one of the most difficult things for an artist to deal with - what should he really do and where does it fit. Because there's a lot of pressures from the record company itself. Pushing an artist in a certain direction, to be commercial to sell more records. And that's what I think is gonna be the success of GRP, even though we want to sell records it's not pushing an artist into some direction. It's trying to deal with what is the musicality of the artist and that's what should be done on the record. And the sales will seek its own level and that's the way you have to approach it because that's the way we're gonna build this label to be the integrity and the strength and be different than other types of labels. It's gonna be a musicians label. There aren't too many labels that are owned by musicians that become successful. I feel that we have the capacity and capability and the experience to be able to do that and that's very very rare. I mean, that doesn't happen very often. Musicians aren't necessarily the best business men. And certainly we know that the best business men are not the best musicians. That's for sure. And if we could possibly make that balance together with the artist that we chose, take care of the business and also have the creative music behind it, I think that's the success of which GRP Records will be and I can see it already taking shape.

P.B.: We introduced you yesterday to the music of Ricardo Silveira, the Brazilian guitar player. Do you think he could also be a man for GRP in the near future?

L.R.: This was my first introduction to him, just a wonderful player. There's no doubt about Brazilian musicians and Brazilian music what an influence on the entire world that type of music has. That's why we've had Ivan Lyns appear as a guest artist on Dave Grusin/Lee Ritenour's Harlequin album, I think that's such a strong statement. Ivan Lyns's written so many wonderful songs and is such a strong artist. That's why we're planning to sign Ivan Lyns now and bring him to the United States to not only to do this tour, the JVC Jazz Festival across the United States to appear with us, which will be recorded live also and that'll be an album. But also for Ivan Lyns to do his own record and we're just involved in doing that and as far as any other artist from Brazil, we're certainly opened to those musicians.

P.B.: Are you going to record the Montreux concert of Dave Grusin too this summer?

L.R.: No, we're not planning on doing that because we're gonna do the live concerts in the United States - and one is enough. Because what happens is when you go into a live concert the audience wants to hear the music that's already recorded. So you can't record that and release it all over again. You know I mean you keep recording the same songs over and over. That has to be very carefully thought out. Since this special event in the United States which is called the JYC Jazz Festival with GRP artists and this major tour we felt that was important to record because we're also doing a video of that concert. That's the one that we'll do for this year as far as a live recording.

P.B.: Are you also expanding into the video market? There's a video available of the NY/LA Dream Band and some more GRP videos from another company.

L.R.: That video was made in Japan of course at that tour and GRP owns the right to that video for the whole world exept for Japan where JVC has the right to it and where it was released. There is not really a sizeable market for videos in the area of jazz, at least not in the United States. I really don't know if it's a worthwhile situation to actually manufacture the videos and release them. They utilize more in the United States for promotional purposes than they are for something that's for sale. We will be making certain videos more of live concerts than videos you would make in pop music. We'll see where that goes. There's no doubt that the audio-visual concept is certainly something of the future. There is no doubt that that's gonna go in that direction. But whether right at this point that we would be spending lots of Dollars in the area of video - probably not at this point of GRP Records. We wanna make more records and invest the Dollas in the music, in the records, in the artists as opposed to making a video because the costs of one video we can make two albums. Maybe I rather have two new artists making two new albums than making a video.

P.B.: I think it's only interesting to produce videos in order to sell hit singles but not albums. But the NY/LA Dream Band video is a video for the music lover to enjoy at home in its full length of 80 minutes. That's where I first saw Michael Franks joining the band and now I'm eagerly awaiting the release of the second part of the concert as an album.

L.R.: We've been thinking about it. You could imagine with the tremendous growth of GRP that it's a lot of times hard to go back to things. That is why it took One Of A Kind from 1977 to 1985 to be released because there's always something new happening. It's hard to go back. We haven't had a chance to ever go back and sit with those tapes again and listen to them and think about mixing them for a new album even though maybe part two of the concert would be a very worthwhile thing and maybe we will get to it eventually and hopefully it's not gonna take another seven years to get to it. But right today we haven't got the chance to go back.

P.B. criticizes the new Michael Franks album.

L.R.: Maybe you get a chance to produce Michael Franks sometime and then you could do it the way you think it should be (laughs). You see, as an artist, the first few records go in a certain style and if they become popular and they become accepted that's what the general public likes about that artist. But you can't keep making the same record over and over and over and over again so you have to stretch out and experiment and go in different directions and then you get the general public as well as critics saying:"Oh, why did that person do that? I don't like that, I like his first records better, I like it this way." But the person can't make the same record all over again and when you do that same critic and that same public say:"Oh, he keeps doing the same thing over and over and over again." So you get caught in a very difficult trap. It's a very difficult thing for an artist and a producer. You know if you can make one or two records and then retire I guess you're ok because that's what everybody remembers and it's successful. I mean if Michael Jackson right at this point retired everybody would know him for what he did.

P.B. says that he's a fan of GRP and Dave Grusin.

L.R.: The music that flows out of Dave Grusin is just something.. a beauty. I mean as you could see by this whole discussion that I know Dave from when I was about eighteen or nineteen years old all the way up to today. It's like twenty years or some twentyfive years or whatever it is a lot of years. I never get bored with this man's talent, it's just phenomenal talent and it's just total musicality and total beauty and everything he plays and everything he writes... very special, very special

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Created: 12/30/99