Flip Side to Pop Music’s Drug War

There’s a joke about the entertainment industry that’s a favorite of Michael Greene, the outspoken president of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences.

“It seems that whenever we get into a dispute over something,” he says, sitting in his plush-casual office at the academy’s Santa Monica headquarters, “someone calls for a firing squad and everybody forms a circle, shooting each other down.”

Lately, Greene feels like he’s in the middle of that circle. Ever since last winter when he launched an aggressive campaign to develop strategies for stemming the rising rate of substance abuse among music professionals, Greene has been attacked from virtually all quarters.

Greene has garnered some support: Closed-door meetings in December and June drew about 400 people each--from big stars to studio assistants--and resulting committee sessions are expected to attract similar numbers next month. Greene also expects to announce plans this week for a series of benefit concerts to fund the various anti-drug programs.

But the absence of most high-level record executives from any direct involvement in the effort has not only been conspicuous, but accompanied by charges that Greene is, at best, naive and, at worst, grandstanding.

In the past, record companies have dealt with drug rehabilitation problems internally. They did, however, support NARAS’ MusiCares program, which provides financial assistance and guidance for musicians in need, including those with substance addictions.

But then came a spate of drug-related incidents, including the May 1995 arrest of Stone Temple Pilots’ singer Scott Weiland and the death of Blind Melon’s Shannon Hoon last October. Initially, the industry tried to ignore Greene, but his anti-drug rhetoric escalated. With the arrest this year of Depeche Mode’s David Gahan and the deaths of Sublime lead singer Bradley Nowell and, most recently, Smashing Pumpkins sideman Jonathan Melvoin, executives grew concerned that their silence might be perceived as indifference. That point was not lost on Greene either, who charged that executives hesitating to jump on the NARAS bandwagon were in denial.

“I think Mike Greene is well-intentioned, but he has a tendency to become a victim of his own press releases,” said Hilary Rosen, the president of the Recording Industry Assn. of America, which represents the six major conglomerates that release 90% of the music sold in the United States. “I believe that Mike comes to this issue from a pure place, but his rhetoric has offended many people who have been on the front lines in this battle for a long time. It’s not just offensive. It’s insulting.”

There is even grumbling among executives who initially saw merit in Greene’s crusade.

“I wasn’t apprised of the scope of what Mike Greene was up to when I signed on,” said Capitol Records Chairman Gary Gersh, one of the first executives to join the effort along with Virgin Records President Phil Quartararo, Revolution Records Chairman Irving Azoff and MCA Records President Jay Boberg.

“I was stunned when I learned he was chastising other executives and claiming that they were in denial,” Gersh said. “That is totally untrue. The record industry has been supporting rehabilitation and education behind the scenes for many years--long before Mike Greene came to the table.”

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Greene is used to this kind of talk, though. From the time he took the reins of the academy, first as chairman of the board of trustees in 1985 and then as president three years later, he’s frequently been under attack.

Many of his own academy members rebelled when he restructured the organization, consolidating power in his national office. And the Grammy Awards, the academy’s most visible and lucrative activity, has been constantly chided for a long-standing lack of relevancy.

One label executive, speaking anonymously, remarked, “Why doesn’t Greene stop butting in on record company business where he doesn’t belong and go back to things he knows, like giving out Grammys?”

Greene has an answer: As the head of an association of more than 11,000 music professionals--more than triple the membership of when he became president--it is his business. It’s precisely what he’s paid more than $500,000 a year to do. And with a background that includes 15 years as a touring and recording musician, as well as experience as a producer and studio owner, he says he knows what his constituents’ needs are. And often that creates friction.

“The agenda of a recording artist or producer or engineer many times is different than the agenda of a record company executive,” Greene says. “And we work for [NARAS members]. We do not work for the record companies.”

Yet, he’s trying to lead them in the anti-drug campaign--and therein lies a key to the current tension. The strongest resistance comes from those who question his motives.

Ask many in the record business what Michael Greene’s agenda is and you’ll get a simple answer: Michael Greene.

Brash, articulate, gregarious and ever-quotable, Greene, 46, has earned a reputation for promoting his own profile as effectively as music business concerns. Greene acknowledges that his involvement has prevented progress on the drug issue, and he initially expressed reluctance to do this interview for that very reason.

Detractors and supporters alike often use the term “politician” to describe him. Greene himself delights in retelling of clashes with House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whom he first irritated in the late ‘60s as a long-haired, anti-Vietnam War student in then-teaching assistant Gingrich’s history class at Western Georgia University.

The oldest of three boys raised by their musician father and painter mother in a rural setting outside of Atlanta, Greene went on to put together an impressive resume. He earned undergraduate degrees in music and business and, later, a master’s in pottery.

Greene was a touring horn and bass player starting in the late ‘60s when he joined the rock/jazz-influenced Hampton Grease Band. He left to front his own Mike Greene Band, which released three albums. (Greene admits to some drug experience, noting that when asked if he would ever be interested in running for political office he routinely answers, “I was a touring musician for 15 years, and I did inhale.”)

Frustrated with record company politics, he quit performing in the late ‘70s to operate recording facilities and launch a pre-MTV video music channel. He also became an active figure in the Atlanta NARAS chapter, becoming its president before setting his sights on bigger goals.

When he was elected national chairman in 1988, Greene wasted little time in making dramatic changes. Operating then out of a small office complex in Burbank, the national organization was barely visible, outside of the Grammy Awards. Local and regional chapters were the organization’s power bases, with the national presidency more or less an honorary role.

“I always believe that [taking the national office] had to feel the same way that it did to Michael Eisner when he walked into Disney,” he says. “Nothing had been done for so long.”

Among Greene’s first moves was hiring former Warner Bros. Records President Joe Smith as the academy’s first full-time president. Smith, though, soon left to accept the chairmanship of EMI Records’ North American operations. Greene then was voted into the job by the trustees.

Recalls Smith, “[Greene] had been moving up, very ambitious, a driving force for change, and he irritated a lot of people at the academy.”

But he also succeeded in making NARAS a national force, parlaying the Grammy telecast into a lucrative global event by expanding its reach from 12 countries to more than 190. (The Grammys are the one source of power that Greene wields over the record companies, since exposure on the telecast always results in increased sales for artists. That explains why many executives would only comment for this story if their names weren’t used.)

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Other key moves included the founding of MusiCares and efforts promoting music education. Funding for all this comes mostly from the Grammy telecast contract and various concerts and dinners, with total annual revenues exceeding $10 million. To Greene, it’s all just a matter of filling a long-standing void.

“Our industry still can’t get to the point that it understands that to really be an industry that people want to work in and grow old in, and really feel that people care, we have to do more of those things,” he says. “The substance issue is similar. We can’t be in denial about our responsibility.”

Although the majority of the record labels have yet to join the NARAS program, the executives who run them have worked for years behind the scenes to help artists and employees with substance abuse problems.

Mercury Records CEO Danny Goldberg believes that privacy is a crucial element in dealing with drug problems. There is a fear that the wider the circle of people involved in an artist’s treatment, the greater the chances that leaks to the press will occur.

“The therapists that I respect the most have stressed that an atmosphere of confidentiality and anonymity dramatically increases the likelihood of getting people to accept help and to help themselves,” said Goldberg.

Other executives share Goldberg’s concern. But Greene protests that they’re overreacting. What he’s trying to establish, he insists, is a way people can initiate the process to get help for someone in need without breaching anyone’s privacy.

“What we want to set up is a system by which anybody could call a number, identify a problem and then, if they want to be part of the intervention they can,” he says. “But if they want to just say, ‘This is an assistant A&R; person at a label, I don’t want to get involved because I could lose my job, but there’s a problem here. Someone needs help. Can you folks get involved?’ And the answer is, ‘Yeah.’ We’ll find a way to make contact with them and through a very confidential system make them aware of what their options are. And we’ll pay for it.”

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In all the drug debate, the charge that rankles Greene most is the common accusation that he’s a Johnny-come-lately to the issue. It was only after Greene’s own son went through rehab, several record company presidents allege, that he became a crusader. It’s no coincidence, they claim, that Greene’s campaign is tied to interventionist Bob Timmins and the staff of the Exodus recovery facility at Daniel Freeman Hospital in Marina Del Rey.

The campaign, Greene insists, has little to do with his family. Rather, it was inspired by encounters with Shannon Hoon last fall at Exodus. (Greene would neither confirm nor deny if his son had received treatment, but did acknowledge visiting a “family member” at Exodus.) Greene said he would regularly chat with Blind Melon’s lead singer, bringing him small gifts for encouragement.

“All of a sudden he wasn’t there any more, and then a few days later, there he was on the Letterman show and I went, ‘Great! He got through the program.’ But then the next thing I know, he’s in the obits.”

Hoon, while on tour in New Orleans, relapsed and died on the band’s bus of a cocaine overdose on Oct. 21. Greene, saddened and angered, met with his trustees and discussed the need to do something, “even if it was just something to make us feel like we were trying.”

With their approval, he put together a panel including Timmins (the counselor associated with Aerosmith and other rockers recovering from drug addiction), psychotherapist Nancy Sobel, then-Aerosmith manager Tim Collins and drug counselor Dallas Taylor (former drummer for Crosby, Stills & Nash) to organize a meeting of concerned people in the music industry.

The December gathering proved an emotional affair, opening with a video montage of dozens of musicians who had perished due to drug abuse. But the meeting also featured some harsh dialogue about treatment philosophies. Most voluble, it seemed, were people who had themselves been through treatment for addiction.

The meeting also spurred widely spread speculation that Greene and the other organizers would propose mandatory drug testing by record companies and “morals clauses” in contracts that would allow record companies to drop artists who use drugs--reports that continue to surface despite Greene’s insistence that such elements were never considered.

The public nature of the discussion and the prominent role of Timmins and the connection to Exodus also did not sit well with some.

“Mike Greene diagnosed a problem in the industry and then decided who everyone’s therapist should be,” the RIAA’s Rosen says. “But that’s not the way it’s going to work. The record companies are not going to be subject to the Mike Greene test. We are going to be subject to what’s right for the issue and each individual involved.”

Rosen said that the association is developing its own initiative, which is expected to be announced next month. It is likely to include an analysis of the various rehabilitation methods already in practice, as well as some new suggestions on a collective industrywide response to the substance abuse problem.

Because Rosen does not believe it would be productive for the academy and the association to have competing initiatives, her group plans to share its ideas with NARAS next month.

Greene and Rosen have met to discuss the issue, and Greene says that he welcomes the industry input.

“All we’re doing is trying to put people into a situation where there is a support group set up so that people who do the same things and have similar problems can feel comfortable in calling other managers or agents or label people in confidence and talk to them about what they can do,” he says.

As Greene spoke in his office, he faced a wall that is decorated with photos of his musical heroes--mostly jazz greats including Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Billie Holiday. Greene is well aware that they all battled drug addiction. He’s also aware that his efforts deliver a mixed message: An anti-drug campaign is coming from an industry, many of whose heroes were drug users.

And he’s also aware that some of his critics have pointed to the recent death of Jonathan Melvoin--whose father, jazz musician Mike Melvoin, is a close friend of Greene’s and a former NARAS president--as proof of Greene’s naivete. In the initial report of Melvoin’s death, Greene told The Times that, to his knowledge, the keyboardist had not used drugs in the past. However, sources close to the band have confirmed two other overdoses by Melvoin while touring overseas with Smashing Pumpkins. If Greene and the elder Melvoin were unaware of the son’s problem and unable to intervene, how can Greene help others?

“That’s the trouble with this whole thing,” Greene says. “We are only known by our failures. Remember, the goal is education, empowerment and support. That’s all it is.

“Back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, we simply didn’t know as much about drugs. If we failed to help then, it was out of ignorance. Now we know much more. If we fail to try to help, it’s no longer ignorance. It’s stupidity.”

Times staff writer Chuck Phillips contributed to this story.