‘We Funkified It, If You Know What I Mean’

● Jerry Greenberg, music executive: I joined Atlantic Records as Jerry Wexler’s assistant, but he saw that I had a good ear for signing acts. The first artist, I went to Jerry and I said, “I just heard a record from a group in Texas. I really like it.” He goes, “Make the deal, I don’t even have to hear it. I trust you.” It turns out to be Archie Bell & the Drells, “Tighten Up,” which was a top-ten record. I signed Foreigner, Chic, Genesis, the Blues Brothers, the Muppets. Eventually, at 32, I became president of the company.

Having our own studio was great because I could walk in and watch Aretha record; I watched Cream record. If you walked down the halls, you heard music coming out of all the offices. Unfortunately, these days, I’ve been to some record companies and it’s almost like walking into an insurance company. You don’t hear the music; you don’t feel the excitement. When we would get a record on a big radio station, everybody’d be running down the halls screaming and yelling. We’d have once-a-week marketing meetings, and there’d be 30 people in there listening to new records, listening to singles. Everybody at Atlantic Records was a part of music. And artists knew they could come up there and hang out.

Our office was at 1841 Broadway, but then we were bought in ’67 by Warner Communications. We were all told we were moving over to their big corporate building, which didn’t have a studio in it. But we funkified it, if you know what I mean. We made it funky. The posters were up on the walls, speakers all over the place, music blasting. So even though we had to walk into a building on Rockefeller Plaza now, we loved it. Nobody wanted to go home. It was not a nine-to-five job. It was a seven-day, morning-noon-and-night situation. Jerry Wexler once called me at two in the morning to ask me if I would listen to an Otis Redding track. He didn’t care what time it was; he was working seven days a week.