2015.07.22 - Who Knew - Tom Zutaut Talk

Transcript:

Tom Zutaut: I'm not that used to being up on a stage.

28 years ago, yesterday, Appetite for Destruction was released. I found Guns N' Roses 30 years ago. It took two years to develop that band and make that record. It takes an incredible amount of patience. Everybody wants to make a record right away and they just want to jump out there and do it and if you want to make music history you have to get it right. You know, making a great record and putting on a great show, it's like being an Olympic athlete in training. And I think it's interesting that, you know, 28 years ago that record came out most of you, that were buying music back then, probably didn't hear about the band until 27 years ago because nobody really heard about that band until about a year after the record came out. In fact, if any of you have seen Uproxx I recently did a six-minute clip for them about what was nearly the end of Guns N' Roses where the company wanted to walk away from the band. And basically, you know, I went and told the president of the company that I thought he was wrong and that the record hadn't even really started yet. And I went up to the owner of the company's office, back when, like, real people owned the record companies and decided to spend money on developing talent, and I said, "You know the record hasn't even started yet," and he said to me, "Well, what's the one thing that I could do," sort of like ten minutes of talk here, "What's the one thing I could do that would make a difference?" and I said, "Well, we have the most visual band in rock music but MTV won't play their videos." So he made a phone call and they agreed to play it one time at 4:00 in the morning, you know, wasn't looking too good really.

So the band decided to throw a party, we had a big swan song party and we watched it play at 1:00 a.m. in LA because there weren't East and West Coast feats for MTV yet. And we stayed up to about 7 or 8 a.m. and we thought it was all over. And little did I know when my office managed to wake me up at about 5:00 p.m. that the switchboard at MTV had literally caught on fire from so many phone calls, back before there was digital exchanges, it was long wires and stuff and electrical impulses. And so they added the video. The record sold a million in a month.

So, you know, it was a dream, you know. I saw Axl Rose actually play for another band. He guested for a song because he traded slots, he was supposed to headline with Guns N' Roses and he gave his opening band a headlining slot so I missed it. The way I found it, you know, there are these moments in life where you just get an impulse or an instinct and you have to follow it through. I was driving on Sunset and I found a poster, [it] was up on a telephone pole and it was that logo of the guns and roses, you know, and I saw that, it caught my attention. I parked my Jeep, I ripped it down, probably helped them sell a few less tickets and I just said, "I have to go see this band."

As far as I'll tell you, another thing, you know, and David from 30 Tigers brought this up and, you know, there's always this battle between art and commerce and music and I think right now one of the reasons that music is getting boring is because all the big companies are focused on commerce rather than art and I think it's great that a guy like David is focused on art. The greatest music is like the perfect intersection of art and commerce and it might even lean more towards art and it brings commerce its way. And, you know, when you sit with like a real artist and, you know, Axl Rose has become, you know, a debilitated person who doesn't really get out much and do what he used to do, for whatever the reasons are, but when I first met the band and they came to my house and we just listened to records and talked and, you know, CNN had just, like, gone on the air and, you know, this is where a guy like Axl, a real artist and he's smart and, you know, he said, you know, "I read this book by Marshall McLuhan, 'The Global Village'," and he said, you know, "CNN is gonna ruin the world," and I said, "Well, what do you mean?" and he said, "You know, I could show it to you in art and that art is behind me," he said, "You know, the robot is CNN, the girl is the people getting raped by the cameras and the robot, and the monster is the train wreck that's looming after CNN puts cameras in everybody's face." I didn't necessarily know what he was talking about but I went out and got the book and tried to read it and it actually makes a lot of sense to me because that's what's happening every day with the media in our lives. So I think, you know, artists, you know, what they contribute to our culture, you know, it makes us think. And here's something that happened, you know, 29 years ago because he found that piece of art a year before we put the record out. Amazingly it got banned so they're really rare. If you see one, buy it immediately.

But these are the great people that come along and show us through great music and, you know, it's no surprise to me that that record shows up in the top 100 of all the lists that come out. So I thought I'd start with some Guns N' Roses.

Transcribed.