What Difference a Year Makes for Roger Clinton : Entertainment: Last year, doors flew open for President Clinton’s half-brother, only to close again. Now the musician-author and talk-show host is ready for his next big break.

Roger Clinton couldn’t have been happier a year ago: He had just signed a recording contract with Atlantic Records and was looking forward to performing a song on MTV the night of his half-brother’s inauguration as President of the United States.

He was soon to be bragging in interviews of securing a book deal, film roles and extensive concert and lecture bookings.

So a year later, what happened to all that promise?

Here’s a clue: Clinton is now hoping his big break will be an infomercial.

If everything goes as planned, he’ll be joining the ranks of Cher and Dionne Warwick: The 37-year-old Arkansas native will be hawking collectibles signed by historical figures ranging from George Washington to John F. Kennedy.

“It’s been very much a learning year,” Clinton said, sitting on his living room sofa in his Redondo Beach apartment before heading to Washington with his fiancee, Molly Martin, for Christmas in the White House.

Things have been unraveling for Roger Clinton all year in a series of mostly unpublicized incidents:

The frustrations began shortly after the inauguration, when Atlantic Records decided Clinton wasn’t a major-label artist and shuffled his contract to a minor label. He has yet to release an album, although the pop-rock collection is promised in April.

The setbacks continued with his purported book deal when Clinton parted ways with his first writing partner, radio deejay and author Jim Ladd. Clinton is still seeking a publisher with his new writing partner, Jim Moore, whose credits include an unauthorized biography of President Clinton.

On the movie front, he’s only had bit parts in three minor films, including “National Lampoon’s ‘Last Resort,’ ” which went straight to video. “Pumpkinhead II” and the recently wrapped “Till the End of the Night” are due out early next year.

Also, Clinton has ended up speaking at less than a quarter of the 40 dates on the U.S. lecture tour originally touted by the New York agency that represents him. And he recently parted ways with his Hollywood concert agent after obtaining only a handful of paid music engagements this year.

“(The career) started going stale,” Clinton said. “I felt that what was once working was not working anymore and then all of a sudden things just started falling apart. I started feeling like I was going back down the ladder.”

Clinton, 37, blames the decline on “misguided” strategies employed by his former manager, Butch Stone, who split with Clinton in October and has since accused him of breach of contract. No lawsuit has been filed but the dispute will be decided by an arbitration panel in March in Atlanta, where the two-year contract was signed in January.

“I feel like things weren’t done in my best interest in a lot of significant areas,” Clinton said. “We conflicted over the direction that we thought my career should go.”

Stone disputed the charge.

The onetime manager of rock group Black Oak Arkansas said there was enough interest initially for Clinton to earn more than $65,000 in fees to appear on two TV talk shows in Spain and Argentina last spring.

But the opportunities dried up following negative press reports about what Stone called Clinton’s “erratic behavior,” including a fight with a spectator at a New York Knicks basketball game in May.

“Roger has systematically destroyed nearly every relationship we established for him in the entertainment industry,” said Stone. “He had the world handed to him on a silver platter and he blew it.”

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Nothing symbolizes Clinton’s hopes and disappointments more than his relationship with Atlantic Records, the giant Time Warner company.

Despite wooing Clinton with limos and flowers in November of 1992, the company began distancing itself from the singer soon after his MTV inauguration ball performance with En Vogue, the R&B; vocal group.

Atlantic officials declined to comment, but sources within the company said several of the firm’s executives were embarrassed about getting caught up in the novelty appeal of the project and never considered Clinton to be what they termed “major label caliber material.”

Although Atlantic advanced Clinton an estimated $150,000 in personal living expenses and video-recording costs (to be repaid with the planned album’s profits), the firm quietly exercised a contract option in February to cut the singer loose, allowing him to shop around for a new deal.

The Times has also learned that Clinton auditioned for other record labels, but there was no interest. He then returned weeks later to Atlantic, where executives offered to underwrite an estimated $50,000 for an album to be released on Pyramid Records, a small Time Warner-distributed label.

The album, “Nothing Good Comes Easy,” was recorded last month at Pyramid’s studio near Chattanooga, Tenn. Clinton still owes Atlantic the original advance plus the additional $50,000, but industry observers question whether the album will sell enough to earn him that amount.

“When the honeymoon (with Atlantic) ended, it hurt my feelings a little bit,” Clinton said. “The limo, the flowers, the baskets of fruit, the wooing period was real nice. It was tough for me to deal with, just being cut off. I’ve never been exposed to anything of the magnitude of this business though, where every (decision) revolves around money, not music.

“But all in all, Atlantic Records has been very good to me. The communication has stopped, but the deal goes forward. I can’t wait for the album to come out. I’ll be glad to get out of this musical limbo.”

Through it all, Clinton has kept his day job warming up audiences on the sets of TV shows produced by his brother and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s close friends, Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth Thomason. Since 1990, he has been production assistant for such shows as “Designing Women,” “Evening Shade” and “Hearts Afire,” and he and his band, Politics, often warm up the audiences.

“Any time Harry and Linda want me in any capacity I’m there for them--because they’ve always been there for me,” Clinton said. “Linda says I’m on perpetual employment with them and will always be.”

While Clinton is counting on the March release of his album to stimulate interest in his music on the concert circuit, he is also pursuing other avenues to heighten his profile in the public arena.

His new manager, Ray Manzella, who currently works for Clinton without a written contract, is hoping to land his client a job as a late-night talk-show host.

Manzella appears especially excited by what he feels are Clinton’s excellent prospects as a TV celebrity spokesman.

“Roger Clinton would be the perfect host for an infomercial focusing in on politics and history,” said Manzella, whose company has produced lucrative infomercials for fitness video star Tony Little and TV hostess Vanna White. “You put Roger in a suit and with his brother in the White House, how can you lose? He’ll blow everybody away.”

Clinton continues pursuing a book deal and hopes to expand his presence on the lecture circuit, where his talks focus on his family’s history as well as his own “dysfunctional” upbringing and bout with drug addiction.

“I am a very vulnerable guy and I have a very addictive personality,” said Clinton, who spent 18 months in jail during the mid-’80s on charges stemming from his former 7-gram-a-day cocaine habit, but now says he’s drug-free.

“Over the past couple years, I slipped up a couple times and I admit this in all my speeches. But right now I’m just as much addicted to being straight as I ever was addicted to cocaine. I’m not going out and being sick and going to prison again.”

The entertainer remains optimistic about the future, understanding that most people say he would have no career in show business if not for his half-brother.

“It’s always felt real good being Bill Clinton’s brother,” he said. “I’ve always been proud of that. And now, being the brother of the most powerful man in the world, I mean, that’s pretty awesome.

“The bottom line is that if (companies) think they can make money off me, it doesn’t matter to me why they think they can make it. All I see it as is an opportunity. What gets me in the door doesn’t concern me. That’s not what I’ve been working for all my life. I’m looking to succeed. Once that door is open, it’s up to me then.”