So one morning, I was sitting in my office on Wilshire Boulevard -I had a huge office, with a million-dollar view of the hills-when John came storming in, unannounced and unplanned, a freight train with a head of steam.
"We have to talk, Jerry."
"Hey, John," I said, "great to see you. How're you doing?"
"Fine, fine," he said. "I've got something to tell you."
"Okay, good, tell me."
"I'm firing you."
I sat back and looked at him. I was infuriated, enraged. Look at this guy. Look where he was and look where he is. And now he comes here like this, not even sitting, not even talking and explaining, to tell me it's over and we are done. At such moments, I don't know why, my gut instinct is, Hey, fuck you!
"What did you say?" I asked.
"I'm firing you."
"Can you repeat that?"
"I'm firing you, Jerry."
I came out from behind the desk, came at him like you would come at someone on a basketball court. I was really hot. "Say it again," I told him. "I want to hear you say it again."
"I'm firing you."
"I don't ever want to see your face again," I told him. "Get out of my office. Who the fuck do you think you are?"
"Don't you want to know why I'm firing you?" he asked.
"I don't care why, what, where, or how," I said. "Don't ever say my name again in your lifetime; get out of here."
I threw him out. I went over to the window and stared at the hills without seeing, the blood pulsing in my face.
Later that afternoon, John's business manager called to tell me that all the things I owned with John-we were partners on every show and record-no longer belonged to me, as I had been booking his shows while also working as a producer, which was not permitted, or some such mumbo jumbo. I could hardly follow him, and I did not care. I was angry, heartbroken as well. "What's the point of this conversation?" I asked. "Just tell me what you're trying to tell me."
He said, "You don't own anything with John anymore."
I said, "I don't want to own anything with John. You can keep it all." And I hung the phone up.
I was depressed for weeks. Not about losing a client but about losing a friend, somebody to whom I had given so much of myself.
Things did not go well for John after that. RCA dropped him, his talent agency dropped him, most of the other people he worked with dropped him. I knew all of them and they understood how the operation functioned. What we created with John, the persona, the mood, simply was not real; we invented it. We were so interwoven, there was simply no way you could have Denver without Weintraub-not as John Denver had been in the seventies. It was his talent, but it was also my maneuvering. I was really his partner in everything. I did all the marketing and press. I packaged and sold him and turned him into a star. I put in a lot of my own money and all of my effort and ingenuity, because he was so talented and because I loved him. I still do. I miss him even now. When John died-in 1997, he crashed an experimental aircraft off the California coast-there was still so much left to do, to forgive and to be forgiven for, but who knows. As the poets say, death is not a period, it's an ellipsis.
John and I did not talk for years. He was just another star dimming in the glassy firmament, another face on TV. I wanted to forget him. Because he had been such a good friend, because the end had been so traumatic, because he had hurt me. I buried it and moved on. I did not see him again until 1984, in a restaurant at the Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. We exchanged polite hellos. Cordial, but cold.
"Hey, Jerry," he asked, "now do you want to hear why I fired you?"
"No, John," I told him, "I honestly don't give a fuck."
Then, finally, about ten years after that, we ran into each other again and this time, probably because so many years had gone by, we could finally talk calmly.
"Now do you want to hear why I fired you?" he asked.
"No, not really," I said, "because I don't think there can be a good reason, but if you have something you need to say, then just say it."
"Then I will tell you why I fired you," he said. "Because finally, after the death of my father and the end of my marriage, I wanted to take charge of my own life. I knew I could never do that while you were running my affairs. More than a manager and a friend, you were a father. And I had to see if I could live a life without fathers. I mean, Jerry, you ran my whole life!"
I clapped him on the shoulder and I said, "Yeah, but did I really do such a bad job of it? Was it really so terrible?"
Knowing Which Calls to Return
One morning, at the end of the 1970s, I got into the office early. I like being up when New York is just waking, the old metabolism still governing in the Pacific Time Zone. I like knowing I have done an entire day of work before the clock strikes nine. When my secretary came in, she handed me the call list.
Now, let me explain my call list of those years: Simply put, it was the names and numbers of all the people who had called and whom I was obligated to call back, three or four pages typed up and handed to me each morning. These names, taken together, told the story of my day: managers looking to cut deals, studio executives looking to pitch scenarios, actors looking for representation, arena owners wanting to renegotiate a split, politicians looking for a handout, rock stars angered by a missing amenity or anemic sound system, local promoters apoplectic over a perceived infringement, reporters looking for a quotation, bankers looking to sell bonds, realtors looking to sell or buy land, clients panicked between projects, friends looking for tickets or a room in a sold-out hotel in Vegas-hotels are never really sold out.
So my secretary gave me the list-all these calls were in regard to Concerts West, my music business-and, as I was paging through the names, I suddenly realized that I did not want to call back any of these people. I sat there for a moment, thinking about what this meant, what my gut was telling me. It was not making the calls that bothered me. It was having to make the calls. In a flash I thought, I will quit this business instead of making these calls. I don't feel that way about my call list now-being successful means filling your life with calls you want to return. But in that moment, I knew that period of my life had ended. I was done with being a manager, because when you are a manager, you're not working for yourself. You're working for the people on the list. I'm not knocking it. But I just didn't want to work for anyone else. I called my clients over the next few days. I told them, one by one, "I love ya, find someone else, I'm done."
All these years later, people still ask me how I was able to walk away from the concert business.
"Don't you regret it? There was so much money to be made."
"Not for a minute," I tell them. "Not for a second."
You have to be willing to walk away from the most comfortable perch, precisely because it is the most comfortable.
The next morning was the greatest morning of my life. I went to the office at the usual hour, had my coffee, read my paper, and did my work as usual, only this time, when my secretary came in with the call list, I crossed out the names of all the people I did not want to call back. I was free! There was nobody I had to talk to. It was so liberating. I had become my own person.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
Irving Azoff is one of the most successful men I know. He is a dear friend. He is as big and rich and brilliant as they come. But Irving Azoff has clients. One of his clients calls, he has to call back. Me? I call back who I want, when I want. That's freedom.