From:   "Dik de Heer"  
Date:  Thu Apr 24, 2003  1:19 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Freddy Bienstock
 
FREDDY BIENSTOCK (By Shaun Mather)

Born 24 April 1928, Vienna, Austria

Freddy Bienstock will be famous to most Shakers as the music publisher 
and plugger for Elvis Presley. I remember reading Peter Guralnick's epic
book Careless Love (highly recommended, as is the first volume, Last Train
To Memphis) and came away with the feeling that Bienstock was guilty of
giving Elvis so many turkeys to record all because the Presley Corporation
of America held the publishing. Luckily, things like Guitar Man slipped
through, and then only thanks to a struggle from Jerry Reed. Below are two
articles which delve deeper than I'm likely to. The first is from ASCAP and
the second is an interview with Elvis World. His success is undeniable, but
how did he get Petunia The Gardener's Daughter through to the man who a
decade earlier had shook the world?

Freddy Bienstock was born in Austria and emigrated to the United States 
just before the onset of World War II. Freddy Bienstock began his career in
the music business in the stock room of Chappell & Company, then and
now a major music publisher. Within a few years, after having risen to the
post of song plugger for Chappell, whose job it was to generate recording 
activity of the company's songs, Bienstock joined Hill and Range Songs, 
a publishing firm established by his two cousins, Julian and Jean Aberbach,
which eventually published a number of songs recorded by Elvis Presley, 
among others.

In 1966, he acquired Belinda Music, the English affiliate of Hill and Range
and renamed it Carlin Music Corporation. In 1969, Bienstock left Hill and 
Range and formed a United States joint venture with songwriters Jerry 
Leiber and Mike Stoller called The Hudson Bay Music Company. Hudson
Bay's first acquisition also occurred in 1969: the purchase of the music
publishing division of Commonwealth United (which included Bobby Darin's
TM Music and Koppelman and Rubin Music). In 1971, the joint venture bought
Lin Broadcasting's publishing and record division. This acquisition included
Starday Records, an extremely successful Nashville-based company; King
Records, which was a legendary blues entity established by the late Syd
Nathan in Cincinnatti; and a number of publishing companies that published,
among other songs, the bulk of the songs released by the Starday and King
record companies.

At this same time, Bienstock was expanding Carlin Music's business in
England, making deals to acquire the publishing of such important artists
as Cliff Richard and the Shadows, the Kinks and the Animals. In addition,
in this period, Carlin was the UK subpublisher of the Jobete Music catalog,
which contained all the classic Motown hits.

Bienstock's US acquisitions continued with the 1977 purchase by the
joint venture of the music publishing wing of The New York Times. These
companies, Herald Square Music and Times Square Music, published a 
number of important Broadway shows, including Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, 
Company, Follies and Godspell, as well as important works by such songwriters
as Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager.

In 1980, Bienstock's joint venture with Leiber and Stoller terminated. In 1981, 
in association with the estate of Oscar Hammerstein II, he took over another
fabled company: E.B. Marks Music, publisher of a number of important songs,
including "God Bless the Child," "Malagueña," and many of the works of Jim
Steinman. Several years later, in 1984, Bienstock became the single largest
stockholder and CEO of Chappell & Company, the publisher in whose stock 
room his career had begun many years before.

When Chappell was eventually acquired by Warner Communications,
Bienstock departed but continued as chairman of his own firms that had 
never become a part of the Chappell arrangement. Bienstock later entered
the background music library business in the UK with the formation of the
Carlin Recorded Music Library, whose business is currently the second
largest in its field in that nation. In 1995, all of Freddy Bienstock's US 
companies relocated to beautiful new offices in their own building on East
38th Street in Manhattan and were reorganized under the umbrella name 
Carlin America, Inc.

From ASCAP website:

Freddy Bienstock is not a household name. Even to Elvis fans, he is
something of a mystery figure. We know about James Burton, Scotty 
Moore, Red West and Colonel Parker, but who can tell you much about
Freddy Bienstock?

And yet look in the index of any Elvis Presley biography and you will find
references to him. He runs through Peter Guralnick's definitive biographies,
'Last Train To Memphis' and 'Careless Love', and, quite clearly, he is an
essential component in the Elvis story. Just how important becomes clear
when he told me, quite matter of factly, "For the first 12 years of Elvis'
career with RCA, he wouldn't look at a song unless I had seen it first".
Read that again - it's a remarkable thing to say. 

Comparatively little is known about Freddy Bienstock. 'Elvis - His Life From
A - Z' is a treasured reference book, but the biographical detail about him
only runs to three sentences, and I have never read an interview with him or
heard him speak in the media. Freddy is a business partner in Muze Inc.,
which produces the remarkable 'Encyclopaedia Of Popular Music', and I 
used my friendship with its owner, editor and chief writer, Cohn Larkin, to
arrange an interview for me. I was told that Freddy would see me three days
hence at his headquarters in the Chalk Farm area of London. 

Freddy owns Carlin Music and the downstairs rooms are full of activity -
someone, I thought, is bound to be negotiating terms for an Elvis song in 
a commercial. I climbed the spiral staircase to his large office, which is
tastefully decorated with expensive furniture. There are signed Picasso
lithographs on the wall and awards relating to U2 and The Kinks. I didn't
need Loyd Grossman to tell me that this is the office of someone who was,
and still is, very successful. 

A friendly, courteous man, Freddy Bienstock looks well-fed and prosperous -
he is in his early 70s but would pass for ten years younger. He welcomed 
me into his office and by way of introduction, I gave him a copy of 'Now Dig
This'. He flipped through the pages, caught Jack Good's picture and
immediately reminisced about the TV producer. "Jack doesn't drive so why 
did he live in Beverly Hills where everybody drives? There are no sidewalks
there." He described a meal with Jack which turned into a one-man
performance of 'Macbeth' and he envied his ability to insult anyone in
Shakespearean terms. 

I had been allocated an hour before a luncheon engagement, but telephone
calls inevitably cut into my time. Freddy is an entrepreneur and one call
related to his latest venture. He has been investing in West End shows and
has had success by backing the producer. Laurence Myers, who two Jewish
comedies. 'Laughter On The 23rd Floor' with Gene Wilder and currently
'Jesus, My Boy' with Tom Conti. His friend, Laurence. has a grandson called
Oscar and apparently. "he has always wanted an Oscar". 

Passing thought: as Freddy owns the score and with this fad for staging
well-known films, wouldn't a production of 'Jailhouse Rock' be an automatic
hit? 

It struck me that Freddy Bienstock has done as well out of the Presley
phenomenon as anyone. Elvis himself was dealt a stacked deck by Colonel
Parker, and Parker lost much of his money through his addiction to gambling.
Freddy's empire, on the other hand, has grown and grown. To quote Albert
Goldman writing in his insulting, supposedly amusing way, Swiss Freddy has
made money from his musical chocolate bars. 

COPYRIGHTS 
Freddy's main concern is still music publishing and he has acquired - and
sold - many copyrights over the years. When I asked him how many he
owned, he said it was in excess of 100,000, but "not all of them are hit songs.
Some of them I can't even remember." Without a separate interview, I found
it hard to grasp just what Freddy now owned and what he had sold but
certainly numerous standards, the Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals, Burt
Bacharach's compositions and the Motown catalogue are either in his hands
or been sold at considerable profit. 

Freddy Bienstock speaks carefully and deliberately, but with much humour 
and I was reminded of the Danish comedian, Victor Borge. He was born in
Switzerland but his parents moved to Vienna when he was three He recalls,
"I left Vienna at the beginning of 1939 to visit an uncle in the United States.
Due to Hitler's entry into Vienna, my parents went back to Switzerland and I
was meant to stay in America until they got settled, but then war broke out
and my brother and were stuck in the States. My parents eventually came to
America in 1941." 

Freddy spoke some English and he was soon able to fend for himself. "Our
uncle didn't want the responsibility of caring for us for a long period of time,
so we moved out and took a little room in New Jersey - I was 13 at the time 
and my brother was 14, and nobody cared. It was marvellous as long as the 
money lasted, but then it became rather dodgy. There was a point when we
didn't have enough money to eat and I would go to the delicatessen - Johnny
was scared, he would wait around the corner - and I would tell the store to
make up ham and Swiss cheese sandwiches with mustard, and when they 
were all smeared up, I would say that I couldn't pay and the owner was faced
with the choice of eating it himself or throwing it away, and in most cases
they were very nice, and said, 'Go ahead and take it and have a cupcake too'. After
a while. I ran out of stories 'cause I could only do that once. The one
positive thing from this time was that you could see a triple feature for 11
cents and I would go to a triple feature in the morning and one in the
afternoon. By the time I came home at night, my head was spinning." 

Freddy soon showed his skill as a fledgling entrepreneur. "I had a job in a
wholesale grocery company and when war broke out, they felt that it was
too costly to service all the little stores, to send a salesman and have it
delivered and wait for the money, so I told them that if they gave me the
merchandise at cost or thereabouts, I would service them on my own account,
so they would still keep the business. A friend of mine had a car and we
worked at the wholesale grocery company from eight n the morning 'til three
in the afternoon and then we delivered the groceries, and we did it all day
Saturday and Sunday too. I made a lot of money which I couldn't spend
because I didn't have the time to spend it." 

$16 A WEEK 
This job held little satisfaction and Freddy wanted to be in music publishing.
"I had a cousin in New York who had a job as a songplugger at Chappell
Music and he would visit all these glorious bandleaders like Benny Goodman 
and Tommy Dorsey and persuade them to play Chappell's songs on their
radio broadcasts. This seemed the most heavenly thing one could possibly 
do, but when I asked him about a job, he said that I was too young. I had to
wait until I was 16. In 1943. he told me that he had a job for me at Chappell's,
starting in the stockroom. It was $16 a week and I was making $70 on my 
groceries, but I still came to New York and started to work in their stockroom.
I got great satisfaction in 1984 when I bought Chappell." 

With much laughter, Freddy recalls his first day at Chappell. "This man was
being sacked and he said to the great Max Dreyfus who was sacking him, 'Mr,
Dreyfus, my fate is in your hands'. He said, 'How can you say a thing like
that? Don't you know your fate and my fate are in the hands of God?'
I thought, 'My god, he's firing him and he is passing the buck to God'." 
Fortunately, Max Dreyfus didn't sack Freddy Bienstock. "I was there for ten
years. I had two years in the stockroom and worked my way up to become a
songplugger. My job was to see the various bands who had air-time from the
Waldorf Hotel, the Commodore and the like and ask them to play the songs
that was assigned to promote. Chappell were promoting the songs of Jerome
Kern and Cole Porter so it was a lovely, easy, glamorous existence. I didn't
have to be at the office before 11 o'clock in the morning and I Would visit
radio stations for daytime programming, and at night I would 90 from one
nightclub to another. I would get paid for it and I had an expense account,
so it was marvellous." 

Freddy left Chappell and after a short while working for himself, joined his
cousins, Jean and Julian Aberbach, who were also in music publishing "I went
to work for my cousins at a company called Hill & Range, and they gave me a
rhythm and blues company to run called St. Louis Music Hill & Range - as the
name suggests - were primarily in country music, and through Colonel Parker,
who was the manager of Eddy Arnold and became the manager of Elvis Presley,
we became involved with Elvis." 

And when did Freddy first hear of Elvis? "This was prior to 'Heartbreak
Hotel' and he was not yet well known in New York Colonel Parker was managing
Hank Snow and he hired Elvis as the opening act for the Hank Snow tour
because he had heard about this young man from Memphis, who was recording
for Sam Phillips. Elvis went over so big that after the first week or so,
fans would leave the theatre after he performed to look for him backstage, and
Hank Snow was playing to empty houses. A disc jockey by the name of Bill
Randle had him come to his studio in New York, and Colonel Parker could see
he was going to become a big star. My cousins used to test the popularity of
an artist by publishing a music folio of his pictures and songs, and we
printed an Elvis folio. With the exception of Memphis and Texas, where it
sold very well, we couldn't give them away. Nobody cared about Elvis Presley
in big centres like Cleveland and Chicago." 

"HE HAD SUCH CONTROL OVER HIS AUDIENCES" 
Freddy Brenstock was converted as soon as he saw Elvis perform. "Colonel
Parker introduced me to him and I went to Texas for my first Elvis concert,
which was in a huge football stadium. Elvis drove into that stadium in a
white convertible and the audience Went mad. He had the most unbelievable
charismatic quality on personal appearances: he had such control over his
audiences, and I was always amazed. He could do anything and the audience
would go mad. That even applied at the end when he was unattractive and
overweight". 

It was evident why Elvis wasn't selling in New York "Wherever Elvis was
doing personal appearances, he would immediately have a tremendous following
The folio was selling because the Hank Snow tour went through Texas, and it
is after that tour that Colonel Parker realised that all he had to do was to
expose him nationally. He put him on the Jackie Gleason television show two
Saturdays in a row and that was all Elvis needed. Elvis signed the record
contract with RCA and as soon as 'Heartbreak Hotel' came out, it was a hit."

I wondered if Freddy liked the new rock n roll music himself as he had been
raised on standards and big band music. "That's true. I was not enamoured
with rock n roll at first, but I changed after a while. By listening to the
songs that were submitted to me for Elvis, I soon had a pretty good idea as
to what he wanted. With Colonel Parker's assistance, we organised two
publishing companies. one ASCAP and one BMI. and Elvis had a 50% interest
and the Aberbachs the other 50%. As Elvis was more or less my age. I was the
one who worked with Elvis, and I selected most of the songs for him. I would
take demos to Memphis and have him select the songs he wanted to do at the
recording sessions." 

OTIS BLACKWELL 
I asked about the first success that Freddy had with Elvis. "The first song
was 'Don't Be Cruel', which was on the backside of 'Hound Dog', which was
written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who were good friends of mine.
Otis Blackwell wrote Don't Be Cruel' and he also wrote a few other songs for
Elvis like 'All Shook Up' and 'Paralysed'. Otis was a very Sweet, small,
black fellow." 

At this point, Freddy pointed to a Picasso litho on his wall. "My office was
way down the hall. I came back to my office once and Otis was already
inside. I could hear him saying to his co- writer. 'His kid must have done
this one', and I knew instantly what he was talking about. He said to me.
'Hey, man, who did this. Caroline or Rob- ert?'. I told him it was a Picasso
but I don't think he knew who Picasso was, and he said. 'What does it
mean?'. I said, 'Well, in the catalogue, it was described as a man sitting
and a woman lying down'. He looked at it again and said. 'Beautiful broad'.
I always laugh at the humour of that. Otis was a very sweet man and he was
extremely talented." 

Although Otis Blackwell wrote 'Don't Be Cruel', 'All Shook Up' and
'Paralysed' himself, the label says 'Blackwell - Presley'. Elvis, it
appeared to me. was doing nothing new: Al Jolson used to claim credits on
songs he didn't write. Freddy disagreed "It's not quite the same thing. In
the early days. Elvis would show dissatisfaction with some lines and he
would make alterations, so it wasn't just what is known as a 'cut-in'. His
name did not appear after the first year. but if Elvis liked the song, the
writers would be offered a guaran tee of a million records and they would
surrender a third of their royalties to Elvis." 

That seemed greedy to me - after all, Elvis would sell a million, no matter
what - and I wondered if all the songwriters agreed to this. "Oh, of course.
To have a guaranteed million sales meant an awful lot of money for them." I
was surprised by that answer as I had thought Leiber & Stoller had stopped
writing for Elvis for that very reason. "No. They stopped writing for Elvis
because they wanted to live in New York and they didn't want to come out to
California." 

THE BRILL BUILDING 
Freddy's office was in the Brill Building. "The Brill Building was the home
of all the main music publishers and a songwriter might start on the
penthouse floor where we had our office and if we didn't take his songs, he
would go to the 11th floor and so on until they found a home. There's a
legend around Walter Donaldson who was always betting on racehorses and
always needed money. He would sell a song like 'My Blue Heaven' to three
different publishers and then they would have to sort out their interests." 
Wouldn't he be blacklisted for that? "No, because he was too talented a
writer. Of course the publishers should have been furious with him but they
weren't as they wanted his next songs. He was a great writer." 

Some writers were exclusively assigned to one publisher. "We didn't have to
have too many exclusive writers and we didn't need to as everybody wanted a
record with Elvis. We had Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and Doc Pomus and
Mort Shuman, and we also had writers in California. Pomus and Shuman were
very prolific: we expected them to bring us songs every week and they often
developed a relationship with particular artists. Doc had been a blues
singer who was playing in nightclubs and he met Mort in our office and they
started to collaborate on teenage songs." 

Freddy continued, "Everything was done on a much more personal basis at that
time - now it's all about money and guarantees and so forth. I also think
that the quality of the songs was higher. A song was presented to a
publisher and it was discussed and then given to an artist, who had some
input into it, and so by the time Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra or Perry Como
recorded the song, the song had been fashioned into something that was quite
right. The standards fell with the advent of albums as so many more songs
were needed and it was difficult to cherry pick in the same way. Very often
the performer or his advisers thought they could write them themselves. That
is why we have so few new standards nowadays." 

SERVING UNCLE SAM 
In 1958, at the height of his career, Elvis Presley was drafted. He could
have avoided it by doing special concerts for the troops. Did Freddy think
that Colonel Parker had made a crazy move, or not? "No, the Colonel advised
him correctly and anyway, Elvis felt that it was his duty to go into the
Army and his popularity didn't suffer at all. He was in the Army for two
years in Germany, and articles about him appeared all the time. RCA had
enough records in the can for his career to continue, and by the time he
came out his popularity was enormous. 

Did Freddy go and see Elvis in Germany? "Yes, I went to Bad Nauheim where he
was stationed a couple of times and one time, when he had leave for ten
days, I took him and his friends to Paris. He took half the top floor of the
Prince de Galles. His friend, Lamar Fike, was a big fat boy and a natural
fuck-up. He lost his passport on the train and you need your passport to
check into the hotel, and so I had to go back with him to the train and with
a flashlight, we found it which was amazing. On the first night we went to
this night club on the Champs-Elysees, the Lido, and there was a chorus line
of 24 girls, called the Bluebelles, who were all English. Elvis was there
for ten days and he made it with 22 of the 24 girls. It was unbelievable
because as one was coming in the front door, another would be leaving by the
back. Every night he would go to the Lido. After the second or third night I
got bored with it, but Elvis had a marvellous time." 

In-between all this activity, did Elvis find enough time to discuss songs
with Freddy? 'Hardly, he would sleep until midday or one o'clock and then he
would fool around in the afternoon. We didn't go out very much. We only went
sightseeing once. He wanted to see the Eiffel Tower, and he took one look at
it and said, 'Well, that's it, let's move on'. He didn't want to go to the
Louvre, and he had no feeling for museums at all." 

Was that due to a lack of education? "Well, he had only had limited
education, but he had been to high school and he was very street smart. He
was clever in that respect. You couldn't fool him and he had a terrific song
sense. I once played a song for him and after eight bars he took it off and
said, 'That's not for me'. I was sure that it was a good song for him so I
put it aside, and about nine months later, I thought I would re-submit it.
put it on and he listened to the first eight bars and then said, 'I didn't
like it the first time and I don't like it now'. I was stunned that he would
have remembered those eight bars, I was embarrassed about that." 

Freddy remembered an amusing story from Elvis' Army days. When Elvis was in
the Army, Lamar Fike came to London with Mort Shuman and he became like a
valet to him. He went with him to Birmingham I think for a show, and it was
cold and Mort wanted his scarf. There was a big argument and Lamar said,
'Well take the scarf and shove it up your ass, I'm leaving', He didn't mind
doing things for Elvis but he certainly wasn't going to be a valet for Mort
Shuman." 

"I LIKED MORT A LOT" 
Freddy continued, "Mort loved Europe and he went to France and became a big
recording artist and even made some motion pictures in French. I liked Mort
a lot as he was an hilarious character with lots of charisma Some years
later, he came to Nashville for an award for an old song that had had a
revival and we were staying in the same hotel. He wore a big cowboy hat and
the reporters leapt upon him as they assumed he was a big star." 

Elvis' first post-Army single, 'Stuck On You', was written by J. Leslie
McFarland, who by all accounts was a Grade A nutcase. "Leslie would come up
to the office and say, 'Have you got some time for me?'. He would be looking
for sympathy as he would have his arm in a sling. The following week he
would appear with his other arm in a sling as he had forgotten which arm he
had put in the sling the first time. He was a crazy guy, but he wasn't as
crazy as another songwriter, John 0. Loudermilk in Nashville. He once went
to a motorpark inn and fired a shotgun down the hallway. The police came
running and he said, 'The guy who fired it went that way. I'll show you.'" 
After 'Stuck On You', Elvis turned to more adult material with 'It's Now Or
Never'. "That song was very important in re-establishing his popularity and
it was based on '0 Sole Mio'. Elvis liked '0 Sole Mio' very much. I had
heard him fool around with it on the piano, and so I had some English
adaptations written. I asked three or four different teams of songwriters to
come up with something and he decided to record 'It's Now Or Never' by Aaron
Schroeder and Wally Gold, which was a huge hit. His record sales had been
going down up 'til then." 

THE MOVIES 
So this is how the Brill Building works. You tell a bunch of writers what
you're looking for and it's up to them to deliver. "Right, and a lot of it
comes out of necessity. Elvis had contracts to make three motion pictures a
year, and to be honest, there was never enough time to do them properly. I
was given the script and we always managed to find a title song. The scripts
never indicated where the songs should be, and I had to mark up where songs
were possible. I would then distribute 12 scripts to 12 different teams, and
tell them to work on songs for certain situations. I would get four or five
songs for each situation and I would take them to Elvis who would select the
songs. Both the mass production and the fact of being tied down to titles
like 'Kissin' Cousins', 'Wild In The Country' and 'Harum Scarum' made
everything very difficult. It was difficult to get hit songs, and the
quality of his songs suffered during the period of time when he was only
doing motion pictures. Of course, there are exceptions - 'Return To Sender'
was a marvellous song." 

Freddy has always owned Carlin Music. "When I bought the original Hill &
Range company in England, which was called Belinda, I changed the name as I
wanted to call it 'Caroline' after my daughter. There already was a Caroline
Music so I took a few letters off the name and called it Carlin." 

One of Freddy's first signings was Ray Davies so he struck gold once again.
He says. "I was involved in all Elvis' pictures and I was also involved in
'The Young Ones' and 'Summer Holiday'. I gave Cliff a very good song.
'Travelling Light' by Sid Tepper and Roy Bennett. I'm surprised that he
didn't get established in the States until he did that duet with Olivia
Newton- John many years later. We also gave some songs to The Animals and
Mort and Leslie McFarland wrote a No. I hit for Billy J. Kramer. 'Little
Children'. 

Unfortunately, my time with Freddy Bienstock was drawing to a close as it
was time for his lunch engagement Any interview with him is bound to be
unsatisfactory as there is so much to ask him and he is such a good talker.
Although his time can be spent so productively in looking after his
copyrights, I hope that he will write his autobiography. "A lot of people
have asked me to do that but I haven't really considered it. If I look back,
I know I have had a marvellous life and a very interesting one and I've met
a lot of interesting people, but no book is planned at present." 

New opportunities are always presenting them- selves. "After I acquired
Chappell in 1984, I became aware of U2 and I started to negotiate with their
management. We did this for a year and came to a deal which was a
three-album deal for $5m. I told the board that I had made this deal with U2
and one of the bankers came to me afterwards He thought that I had made the
deal with the U2 pilot who had been shot down over Russia and he wasn't sure
what I was going to do with him. I had to explain that U2 was also the name
of a group. It was a gamble but as we were publishing all the songs, we were
getting 50 cents an album, and within eight months, 'The Joshua Tree' had
sold 14 million albums and we had $7m back on a guaranteed $5m, It happened
to be a very good deal." 

Finally, I asked Freddy it he thought of Elvis everyday. "No, not everyday.
I have very fond memories of him, of course, and I have very fond memories
of Colonel Parker who was a close friend. Even in his later years when he
was retired, if ever I was in California, I would go to Las Vegas for a
couple of days to see him. I was very fond of Colonel Parker. but I accept
that he was a difficult man. Colonel Parker was like Elvis' security blanket
and Elvis knew that he could never have had that amount of success without
Colonel Parker, Perhaps he took too much commission. but he was loyal to
Elvis. When Brian Epstein died, The Beatles came to California to talk to
him. They would have liked him to become their manager, but he turned them
down. He devoted all his time and energy to Elvis." 

From Elvis World Japan.