Coconut Teaszer Now Official Stop on Road to Record Deal as Booker Becomes CBS Scout

During his three years as chief booker of The Coconut Teaszer in Hollywood, Len Fagan has been up to his shoulder-length hair in audition tapes.

The pile is about to get deeper: Fagan, 38, has just been hired by CBS Records as an A&R; man, industry lingo for talent scout. What makes Fagan’s situation unique is that he will continue to work at the Teaszer, sending promising new acts CBS’ way. (If the label decides not to sign one of Fagan’s recommended acts, well, there’s nobody keeping other companies’ scouts out of the club.)

Actually, only the salary and title are new for Fagan, who is still paid by the Teaszer; he’s been screening acts unofficially for record labels since February, 1987, when he started hiring bands to play the nightclub.

What seems to make the club especially attractive to record label scouts is Fagan’s musical taste, his enthusiasm--he’s constantly on the phone, promoting selected upcoming acts to whoever will listen--and the special ways he showcases bands that he personally endorses.

One such showcase forum is a “residency,” in which a band will play each week for several weeks in a row. These are special nights featuring what he calls “L.A.’s Best-Kept Secrets.”

The band currently in residence is Children’s Day, whose lead singer, Kirsten Konte, “looks like a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Debbie Harry, with a voice as good and as powerful and as mellifluous as Linda Ronstadt,” Fagan said.

Taking a week off from their residency, Children’s Day will be back at the Teaszer June 18. Performing this week are Male-Order Brides on Tuesday, singer-songwriter Michael Kline on Thursday, and the Techno-Dudes, including former Vanilla Fudge and Jeff Beck bassist Tim Bogert and Doobie Bros. drummer Chet McCracken on Thursday.

Fagan developed the residency idea because, he said: “I wanted to build artists that we believe in, and not strictly on the basis of how many customers they’d draw. Once the industry showed up, the bands would want to play here. And it started to work.”

Only a few more than 250 patrons can be squeezed into the club and outside patio, in what looks like an old house at the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights boulevards. And only 50 or 60 are actually able to see a band perform on a nearly floor-level stage.

“Because of its size, the club couldn’t be a prestige place like the Whisky or the Roxy,” Fagan said. “So I knew that we’d have to get the acts first, before they got a record deal. That way, bands would see us as a happening place.”

A number of bands have used the Teaszer as a launching pad for their recording careers. Fagan recently recalled a few: “Geffen Records has signed the Rock City Angels, the Nymphs and I Love You. Rhino Bucket are now on Warner Bros. Flies on Fire played the Teaszer before signing to ATCO, and Electric Angel played here before joining Atlantic. And Rebel Train will record for Giant Records,” former MCA Records Chairman Irving Azoff’s new label.

Why did the Coconut Teaszer become a hangout for label scouts, and why have acts including Warrant, Guns N’ Roses, the Chambers Brothers, Bo Diddley, the Dickies and Bonnie Bramlett played there, sometimes just as unannounced drop-ins?

The answer at least partly has to do with the fact that Fagan is a musician himself. Also, bands that play the club get paid.

It used to be, Fagan said, “From Pasadena to Orange County, there were a million bars that would hire bands to play several sets a night and give them a couple of hundred dollars to do it. But from 1982 to 1985, the business had degenerated to where you’d only be able to do one set per night, and walk out of the club with $10 to $15.”

The Teaszer doesn’t pay particularly well, but it does pay--generally a percentage of the door each night. Many promoters who rent the Whisky, Roxy and an increasing number of other local rooms require that bands buy tickets to their own shows and resell them--usually, it turns out, to friends and family members, if at all.

Another attraction at the Teaszer, Fagan said, is that the club keeps a set of drums and various instrument amplifiers on hand so that bands playing there won’t have to bring their own bulky equipment unless they prefer to.

The Coconut Teaszer

8117 Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. (213) 654-4773.

Open all week, except Sundays, with shows beginning at about 9 p.m.