YouSaid · the spoken record

L.A. Reid

lines on the record: 45
first: 2016-11-07
most recent: 2016-11-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“They say it's better to be lucky than to be talented. You know? I would have to say that there were times that I was really lucky and there were times that I had to be talented, right? So I'm going to say 50-50.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love it all. I love the theater of action. I love a thousand moving parts and keeping all the balls in the air. That's what I love. I mean, I love music first, of course, but I think I get great satisfaction from juggling, like many, many things and making sure that they all land properly. That's what I like doing. Air traffic control. Yeah.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, I think so Yeah, because I still do music publishing as an entrepreneur, for example. But I'm also an entrepreneur for the major corporation. So, you know, the truth is maybe it was a little bit of my calling to be a little bit of both. Because, you know, I jumped at the opportunity right or wrong, you know, or whether I handled it well or not, or whether it was difficult or not, I jumped at the opportunity to come to work at Arista Records. So I think there was something I liked about the major corporation. There's something that they like about me being an entrepreneur.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the answer is usually no, you can't. You need to do it right now because the minute you walk out my door and other record executives know that you're talking to me and I'm going to sign you will have 10 offers at your door the next day. So I can't risk that.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I don't let people leave. If I think you're going to be a big star, I don't let you leave. Sometimes people insist, hey, can I think about this?”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, Rihanna came to my attention through her now manager, J. Brown, who was an AR guy at the label. He brought her demo to my office one night. I usually work really late at night, and he played me the demo. And I said, that sounds really good. Get her here. He brought her to New York. She auditioned for me and for Jay-Z. A Jay-Z I'd hired as the president of Def J We signed her”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And 40 minutes later, I was shaking hands with Doug Morris, and I become the vice chairman of the Universal Music Group within minutes. Doug says, You know, I'm the luckiest guy in the world. They just let go of a great talent, and I'm so happy to have you. And Doug and I are still together to this day.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't get a chance to get upset. It was the weirdest thing. I think in that moment that I got fired. I felt like someone had punched me in the ear. I saw stars for a second. And as I'm writing down the elevator, you know, from this skyscraper in New York City and thinking about what just took place, I get in my car, I call my lawyer. And I said, you know, I just got let go. He says, yeah, I know You're right back right He literally calls me right back within like a minute or two. He says, Okay, Doug Morris wants to see you. He's the head of Universal Music. He wants you to come to his office right now. So I drove directly to Doug's office and”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everybody's white except me, you know. So I definitely stand out in that respect. And that could be good and bad. That's the reality of the world, you know. I am not playing any kind of a race card or complaining at all because I have a wonderful career and I've been supported both by executives and by the talent. So I don't say that as an excuse for getting fired. Maybe I just pissed somebody off. And the takeaway was not sold my company, then I wouldn't have gotten fired three years later because I was the owner.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know that I'm particularly difficult to work with. I do believe that I'm very different than other people who have my job, a job similar to mine. Look, if I'm in the room with the other record executives, it's pretty difficult to notice me. You know, for 20 years I've been the only black guy. Everybody's white. They're all white.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's just one of those things, you know, if I get if I have a gift, that is my gift. I love talent. By the way, I'm not any different than the public. The public knows also, man, a great artist comes on television or on the radio. The public always knows, like, wow, look at that. That's Lady Gaga. That's great, right? So I think of myself as a super consumer. I don't think of myself as a professional. I think of myself as a fan. And anyway, so Pink became a big success. We had Usher, who had a big success and Outcast had the monumental success. They won album of the year. They sold over 12 million copies of their album. But at the height of it all, I got fired.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, Pink was a great one. Sharon Daley was an assistant at our office. I walked past her office. She was listening to a demo. I said, hey, what's that you're playing? She said, oh, it's these girls from Philadelphia. I said, turn it up. It sounds kind of good. Turn it up. She turned it up. What do it look like? She pulled out a picture, and these three white girls, and I thought they were black. I was like, oh my God, this is really magic. One of them, Alicia Moore, was the outspoken lead singer, who is about sixteen or maybe seventeen years old, and we signed the group based on hearing that demo walking down the hall. And then once we signed them, I encouraged her to leave the group and become a solo performer. And she left the group and she changed her name to Pink and she became a world-class star.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bitterswe Was bittersweet because leaving Atlanta, moving to the big city, people in Atlanta kind of thought I turned my back on them. So that wasn't beautiful either. I love the idea of taking over this major label and being all of a sudden being in charge of Carlos Santana and Whitney Houston's career along with all of my LaFace artists. So it was bittersweet because three years after I took over Aristotle Records, we were wildly successful, more so than we were at Lafayette.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People at Arista who were Clive loyalist, didn't react favorably. Neither did any of the other record executives at the other labels or the media or the artist community no one acted favorably and so I was immediately attacked by the media and the industry and I felt the cold shoulders from everyone. And I said, Oh my God, I've made a massive mistake here.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, sort of, but the way it really works is I'm the manager of the talent and what you're buying is really me. You're not just buying those records that have already been massively successful. You're buying what you hope the future will be. So that's kind of how it works.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We went through a very tough period. We went through a very, very tough period. And Clive felt I betrayed him. And I felt he'd ignored me and ignored my opportunity to cash in on the work that we had done. So we both had issues with each other.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd watched Barry Gordy build Motown Records. I'd watch this as a business practice. I watched David Geffen build record companies and sell them. So a part of my goal from the very beginning was to build an asset that we could sell. The idea was that we could make a lot of money by selling this company. So, you know, we got Aristotle 2 greeted by the company from us. And there was one stipulation. This was like the most difficult thing probably in my entire career. Owners of Arista, they said, We'll buy your label, but you'll have to agree to A, move to New York. You'll have to replace Clive Davis and take over Aristotle Records as its president.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, now I'm managing Kenny and I'm managing the artist on the label and the songwriters and the rappers and I'm managing the relationship with Arista. And I'm also putting together a little staff and figuring that out and figuring out how to keep those doors open and keep the bills paid. And I learned.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and we put it all together, it became boomerang. We sold three million copies of the album and we launched Tony Braxton. We launched TLC off that album and we won Grammys with Boyston for End of the Row. So that album was the launch pad for our label La Face Records”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but we had great relationships with talent, and we went to Boys to men, and we asked Boys to men to be involved. And we asked Johnny Gill to be involved. We asked.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My pitch was basically that your movie is a reflection of who we are as music people. We're all cut from the same cloth. We write the songs that your audience wants to hear. I don't remember exactly what I said, but boy, I must have been good that day. Anyway, so they said, okay, great. Now, who's distributing your label? And I said, Clive Davis from Aristotle Records. They said, okay, well, if you can get Clive to come in, we'll do it. So I called Clive and I asked him, would you come to a meeting with the Hutlands? And Clive agreed to do it. He came into a meeting with us. Clive used his magic charm and we had a deal. And that was it.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just called. I found their numbers. I called their office and I said, hi, this is LA from LA and Babyface. And we have a new record label called LaFace Records. And I'm sure you know us. We produced Don't Be Cruel for Bobby Brown and we produced this and that. And they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We can meet. They were particularly excited. And I thought, wow, you should be so happy I'm calling you. That was my, and I also learned that that didn't work.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Living in Atlanta and living in LA working in recording studios, I didn't know a soul. Cassandra called back and she says, Eddie Murphy has a movie called Boomerang that's in production. It's perfect for your label. You should go and meet Eddie and you should meet the producers and the director, Reginald Hutland and Warranton Hutland and convince them. And I said, you know, perfect.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Called a friend of mine. Her name is Cassandra Mills. She had recently had a soundtrack for a movie called New Jack City. I said, Cassandra, how'd you find that movie? How'd you find the soundtrack? Tell me, walk me through it. How does that work? And she told me, she said, okay, you have to go to the movie producers and you have to go to the studios and just see what their slate of releases looks like and try to attach yourself to one. I said, okay, that sounds like a lot of work. And I know no one. So this is not going to go well.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I never had doubts. I never had doubts that it would work, but I did. Have to think about different strategy. So my strategy was. Wait a minute, this isn't working. Let me think. What are we doing wrong? I said, I know what we should do. We should get a soundtrack to a big movie and we should put all of our artists on it and we should put all of the talent that we have relationships with in the industry. We should ask them to be a part of it. And we'll use this as a launching path for our label and our new artists. So I dreamt up this idea. Then I said, now, how do I pull this off?”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, they were very talented people, but they were not. World class superstar level talent. They weren't. Like Whitney Houston. So we learned quite pretty quickly that we needed to sign better talent.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We just thought, you know, we thought Arista Records had failed us because we thought we were perfect. Like, you know, look at all these hits we have. So it can be the music. It must be the production or the promotion, I'm sorry. And Clive Davis said to me, well, maybe it's the talent.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We started the label in 1989 our first signing was a band called Damien Dame and we gave them our best material It didn't work”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They weren't bigger pains in the ass than the kids I went to high school with. I mean, imagine this. I was at a very young age trying to manage people that were drug addicts or people who weren't particularly motivated, but maybe they had great talent or people who were just difficult for the sake of difficult. And I had to manage to get these people out of their houses and onto a stage. So for me, it was always people management. It was never completely company management to me. It was always people management. And I take it one meeting at a time and one person at a time.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I was a band leader for so many years. And you know, there's not very much difference between being a band leader and being a CEO of a music company because it's managing talent. And I won't say that I mastered it, but I certainly knew something about it when I started the company. And I figured the rest out.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, we had a joint venture. We brought the talent. They brought the money. And we made the creative decisions and we would bring it to them for marketing and promotion.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As a producer, we would work for hire, so we would get paid. And we used that money to build a recording studio in Atlanta. As a record label, we were funded by Arista Records, which was the great Clive Davis.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and you wonder why people think of things like that. I did it and I did it wildly, successfully, and I still don't know why we did it.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We didn't have a reason. We really didn't. We decided Atlanta by looking at a map and saying, how about Atlanta? And we did it. We moved to Atlanta. We put our flag in the ground. We opened up a little office and called it La Face Records. And we held our additions. We were going to radio and say, okay, auditions are being held at the club Roxy or the Atlanta Knights or any of the nightclubs. And we would just hold auditions looking for talent. And before long, the talent just came running because we were the only shop in town.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, why are we allowing our music to be picked over or people to make decisions about which songs will be singles? You know, we actually know we're very close to it. We should do it ourselves. We lived in Los Angeles by then and we loaded up our trucks and we moved to Atlanta, Georgia.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. This song is great, but the bridge not quite sure, or that lyric, I'm not sure if that lyric is it, or it sounds great as a slow song. Let's make it faster and see how it sounds. Or maybe we should take it from that artist and give it to another artist. So that was my thing was just to try to find the absolute perfect pairing for the material.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A, it just takes great talent. And Kenny Edmonds, my partner, is one of the most prolific songwriters ever. But he had this great talent. And I had the greatest job in the world. I would hear the songs first and decide which ones were.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were signed to a label in Los Angeles called Solar Records. And the label was like Junior Motown. The head of the company, Dick Griffey, called after hearing some demos that Kenny and I did and asked us to come out and produce other artists on the label. Before long, we started getting calls from all the record labels in town. And back then, you had to write the song and produce it. So we did it all.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we had some notoriety for sure. Our first record was a song that I co-wrote called Body Talk. And it became a top five song on R&B Radio. That was good enough to get us on tour with the great Luther Vandrels, who allowed us to open for him. Pretty much overnight life changed, and all of a sudden we are on a massive stage in an arena with 15, 20,000 people per night. Most fascinating thing was the talent that was around watching Luther Vandros every night and watching the musicians in the background singers and the entire productions that went into the shows. And I think I became more fascinated by the talent that we were around than I was about actually being a performer on stage. And I think that was probably the beginning of me sort of drifting into a talent finding. More so than a performer”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I instantly befriended him. He did join our band. We started to write songs together and made our demos that eventually got us a recording contract.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One night Kinny came to watch my band play. And about six months later, I got a call from him asking me, could he join my band? Wow. And I said, nah, nah, I don't think you fit. And then I met him a little while later in the studio. And in the session, Kenny Edmonds was writing a song and performing it. And I walked in while he was recording. And when he came out of the booth, I was like, oh my God, that's Kenny Atmos, the guy that called me and said he wanted to join my band. And I said, no, how stupid am I? Because he's pretty incredible”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a really funny story. I played at home by myself forever and never played with the band. And then one day I'm in my basement and I look out the window while I'm in the basement playing by myself and there's a guy staring at me. And it startled me, so I stopped and I went outside and I said hi, and he had friendly eyes, so you know the fear kind of went away. And he said, You play pretty good. There's a band around the corner that needs a drummer. You know, his name was Vince. And Vince took me around the corner to meet a couple of other musicians, a bass player and a guitar player. And, you know, I joined their band. It was really that simple. And one band led to another. And I think things started to get pretty serious by the time I was in high school.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, all the time. Yes. Fake Mike, the broom, you know, the mirrors. We did everything. You know, we had a great time growing up. And music was everywhere.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just hearing music on the radio, buying 45s, buying James Brown's records, old Motown records, or buying old Soul records, and bringing them home and just drumming on the table along with the songs. By the way, I thought I was going to be the next James Brown. Didn't work out. So the truth is that I failed miserably.”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably would have been better if I just kept my own company and not gone to work for anyone because all of a sudden I had a lot of money and not a lot of friends. And I was immediately attacked by the media and the industry and I felt the cold shoulders from everyone. And I said, oh my God, I've made a massive mistake here”
2016-11-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Music Mogul: L.A. Reid · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT