The Key to Success Lies in the Mix

Stepping into the office of most high-powered managers in pop music is frequently like walking onto a concert stage. From Elvis’ Col. Tom Parker and the Beatles’ Brian Epstein on, the most celebrated managers have been artists themselves--masters of image, marketing and the deal.

Jerry Weintraub, who helped make John Denver one of the biggest stars in pop in the ‘70s, once boasted that he worked the phones the way Jimmy Page worked the guitar--and he was serious.

The walls of most managers’ offices are shrines to what they’ve accomplished or whom they know: rows of platinum albums, celebrity photos, magazine cover blowups and, increasingly, pieces of fine art.

Step into Andy Slater’s fifth-floor office in West Hollywood, however, and you’d never know he was one of music’s fastest-rising managers.

Slater certainly has notable clients: the Wallflowers, Fiona Apple and Macy Gray, three of the hottest and most acclaimed pop arrivals in years.

And he has plenty of platinum albums and MTV Music Video statuettes to demonstrate his success with these artists and his earlier associations with Don Henley, the Beastie Boys and Lenny Kravitz.

But these trophies are either stacked randomly in a corner or relegated to a table outside. His office walls are bare, and the only desk decoration is a modest flowerpot that looks more appropriate for a budget motel room.

“I’ve only been in here a couple of months,” Slater, 42, says offhandedly when asked about the unceremonious surroundings.

But that doesn’t explain it, because his old digs, just down the hall, were similarly bare.

Some friends and colleagues wonder if the lack of pretense isn’t a reminder to Slater of the pitfalls of getting caught up in the glamour of the pop world. His fast-lane indulgence got so bad a decade ago that it cost him most of his clients (including Henley and Kravitz) and caused him to check into a rehab center.

Others suggest the reason for the bare walls may be that Slater’s real shrine is the recording studio. He’s one of the few managers ever to also master one of the other pop music arts: record production.

Col. Parker may have been a marketing genius, but Elvis Presley needed record producer Sam Phillips to help shape his rock ‘n’ roll sound. Epstein may have been indispensable to the launching of the Beatles, but the Fab Four was fortunate to have George Martin in the studio.

A few managers have handled both responsibilities, including Peter Asher (Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor) and Jon Landau (Bruce Springsteen). There is also some overlap in the hip-hop world. But the list is remarkably short.

That’s why Slater has caught the pop industry’s attention in a big way over the last three years. He’s a sign that someone with taste and drive can still score big in a record industry where corporate consolidation and bottom-line pressures have made it increasingly difficult to focus on the kind of quality acts that Slater has helped guide to the top of the charts.

In a music era dominated by limp teen pop, novelty rock and recycled rap, Slater manages three artists who would have been applauded in even the most creative of pop decades. He personally produced albums that won best new artist Grammy nominations for Apple and Gray, and he’s now co-producing the Wallflowers’ follow-up to the band’s 1996 blockbuster, “Bringing Down the Horse.”

“What’s important is that he hasn’t just made big hits, but important ones,” says one industry power who doesn’t work with Slater. “He’s not the guy who does the Backstreet Boys. What Andy does is make important records with important artists.”

One reason so few managers have even attempted to handle both roles is that it’s a potentially combustible mixture.

“I’m a huge fan of Andy’s,” says Asher, who is now senior vice president of Sony Music Entertainment. “But there are dangers in combining the two roles, because if the production side goes sour it may also affect the management side.”

It’s a challenge Slater understands. A former musician himself, he admits he’s a demanding producer, a perfectionist who can try an artist’s patience by endlessly going over details that he feels add character and depth to the music. Sometimes he may push the artist too hard.

Take the case of Gray.

Slater was so impressed when he heard a Gray demo tape in 1998 that he agreed to produce her album even though he didn’t manage her. But Gray got so frustrated during the seven months in the studio that she went to her record company and tried to get Slater fired.

“I was nuts,” she says now. “We used to argue over some of the arrangements and which musicians would play what. During the mastering of the record, we were ready to kill each other.”

They eventually resolved their differences, and Gray was so pleased with the record, “On How Life Is,” that she ended up hiring Slater as her manager.

But Apple elected not to have Slater return as producer of her second album, which came out last year--a decision that has led some to wonder whether his management relationship with the volatile young singer-songwriter is on shaky ground.

Combining management and production is such a difficult balancing act that there is already guessing about when Slater will make what some feel is the inevitable leap and become the head of a record label. It’s a possibility someday, he says, but he’s still intrigued now by his unique place in the pop world.

“I’ve spent my whole life trying to be close to the music,” Slater says, sitting in his office before heading to the studio to work on the almost-completed Wallflowers album.

“I’ve gone from being an usher at concerts to writing about music for the college paper to publicity, and this is as close as I’ve ever come to feeling part of the music. There is no greater joy than hearing a song, going into the studio and seeing the record come to life. Maybe I won’t be lucky enough to continue to have the artists that will allow me to keep doing it, but it’s that partnership that drives me and I don’t want to lose touch with it.”

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The long, narrow hallway leading to Studio B at historic Village Recorders in West Los Angeles is lined with all the gold and platinum albums you normally see in managers’ offices. It’s a virtual Who’s Who of Southern California rock: the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty--and ‘70s arrival Bob Dylan.

That’s an intimidating lineup under any circumstances, but especially if the record you are working on is the long-awaited follow-up to an album that sold more than 4 million copies in the U.S. and netted two Grammys. On top of that, the group is led by Bob Dylan’s son Jakob.

Slater didn’t produce “Bringing Down the Horse” (former Bob Dylan ally T-Bone Burnett did), but Slater the manager guided the Wallflowers’ career superbly, tastefully downplaying the “Son of Bob” connection and placing the band on Interscope Records, the hottest label of the ‘90s.

By the time the Wallflowers were ready to go back into the studio for this album, he seemed to Jakob Dylan and Interscope co-founder Jimmy Iovine to be the natural choice to produce. “He knows when something is wrong in a recording, and that’s the most important thing with any producer,” says Iovine, a former producer whose credits include works with U2, Patti Smith and Stevie Nicks.

But there’s another reason that young Dylan turned to Slater. He trusted him.

“When I made our first record, it was very difficult to find a producer who would work with us,” Dylan says. “We were just starting out and all. But when it came time to make this record, producers didn’t seem that hard to find, if you know what I mean.

“It makes you a little suspicious about who wants to really make a good record and who is trying to fill up their yearbook [with credits]. I wanted to work with someone I thought genuinely cared about what was happening with me in this record.”

Along with co-producer Michael Penn, Slater has been working on the Wallflowers album for nine months. For most of that time, he’s been concerned with aesthetics. But now it’s time for him to shift to the management role and select the single. It’s a crucial decision, especially in a time when so many bands are having difficulty following up on an initial success.

Slater has just returned from Miami, where he spent four days going over final remixing of the album--the crucial but tedious job of attaining the right balance of the voices and the various instruments.

It was lengthy mixing sessions, apparently, that finally caused Gray to lose patience last year. But Dylan didn’t have any trouble with the sometimes grueling process.

“I’ve never had a good time making a record and I didn’t expect to this time,” Dylan says. “I expect it to be a lot of work and a lot of confrontation on all ends, and it was certainly that. But I had no problem separating [Slater’s two roles]. . . . When it comes to something creative, everyone always has their own input, but when it comes to management, it’s definitely more his end than mine.”

Then again, Slater and Dylan had a special bond that surely helped them keep perspective during the long months in the studio. When Slater spent a month in rehab in 1991, the only client who visited him was Jakob Dylan.

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If Slater’s history sounds a lot like your standard rock ‘n’ roll artist’s bio, it’s only natural. He wanted to be a rock star.

He grew up in Forest Hills, N.Y., where he could see Shea Stadium from his family’s high-rise apartment. He still smiles when recalling the excitement of his baby-sitters when the Beatles played the stadium in 1965.

Slater’s father owned a lamp store and his mother was a housewife, and they both wanted their oldest son to be a professional. They didn’t like his infatuation with rock ‘n’ roll and they vetoed his plans of going to UC Berkeley. They regarded the university and the Bay Area as a hotbed of drugs and rock rebellion.

The compromise was Emory University in Atlanta, where Slater studied political science and spent most of his free time playing guitar in the dorm and at parties. He became close friends with Peter Buck, a dorm mate who later started R.E.M. with Michael Stipe and some other University of Georgia students.

For fun, Slater wrote rock reviews for the school paper and later got published in the Atlanta Journal. Though he never felt confident as a writer, Slater’s enthusiasm and passion impressed Larry Solters, who handled publicity for Irving Azoff’s Front Line Management, home of the Eagles and Jimmy Buffett.

When Azoff left Front Line to run MCA Records in 1983, Solters went with him and recommended Slater as his replacement at Front Line.

One of his first assignments for the company, which is now known as HK Management, was coordinating videos and serving as liaison with Henley. Slater spent months in the studio in 1983 and 1984 watching Henley record “Building the Perfect Beast.”

“I went into the studio every night and I was fascinated by everything,” he recalls. “I would ask so many questions that they would chase me into another room. But it was amazing. I saw how Don worked, what he did with the drums and the overdubs. He was the consummate record maker.”

With that lesson in production, he jumped at the chance to produce an album for Warren Zevon, who was his first “official” client at the company. Though Zevon was never a big seller, he was greatly respected by other musicians for his solidly crafted songs.

Neil Young and Bob Dylan were among the artists who stopped by the sessions to guest with Zevon on his album, 1987’s “Sentimental Hygiene,” and it was a heady experience for young Slater to be around them. His confidence soared and he was soon signing acts to the firm, including the Beastie Boys and Kravitz.

But he didn’t handle success well. Whether it was the pressures or the seductiveness of the fast lane in Southern California, things began falling apart.

“Despite the success, it was a terrible time,” he recalls. “How can you feel good about yourself when you don’t take care of things? I couldn’t find the right combination of things, chemicals and alcohol, to make me feel comfortable with myself.

“I started missing occasional meetings because I’d wake up late or have a hangover. When I felt bad, I wanted to feel good. When I felt good, I wanted to feel better. It just kind of took me out of reality.”

He hit bottom on June 17, 1991, when he got a letter from Henley saying he was fired. Within weeks, most of his other clients had also dismissed him. Slater remembers the day because it was his 34th birthday.

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Jakob Dylan was confused during Slater’s rehab days, especially when people in the industry urged him to find another manager--someone he could depend on. For advice, Dylan went to see Jeff Ayeroff, the co-head of Virgin Records, which was in the process of signing the Wallflowers.

“I think I was 20 or 21 and I had no idea of what to do,” Dylan says. “Jeff told me, and I quote, ‘The most powerful thing you can do is give someone a chance to redeem himself’--and that made perfect sense. Besides, who was I? I didn’t have any standing in the music business. Who was I to fire someone? I saw Andy more as a friend who was in trouble.”

Slater repaid the gesture by devoting himself almost exclusively to the Wallflowers when he got out of rehab--to the point of volunteering to drive the van for the group on a brief California tour in 1991.

The Wallflowers’ 1992 debut album, “The Wallflowers,” only sold about 40,000 copies, and Slater worried that the group would get lost in the shuffle after Ayeroff left Virgin in 1993. He got the company to release the group and eventually hooked up with Interscope, which actively backed “Bringing Down the Horse.”

The success of the album reestablished Slater as a player in the pop world--and he would make the most of the second chance.

Asher says the first rule of being a great producer is having a great artist, and Slater found two great ones in Apple and Gray.

In her 1996 debut album, “Tidal,” Apple, just 19 at the time, served up sexually charged, torch-like rock songs with an intensity that was unsettling and unforgettable.

“When we went to make the first record, I had gone through a phase of listening to a lot of Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald, and I saw her as that kind of great jazz singer,” Slater says. “But I think she was able to put a modern context to that phrasing. As a writer, she had a very interesting and original point of view on relationships.”

Gray is also a provocative and penetrating writer, whose songs examine the often troubled undercurrents of relationships with a sometimes startling aggressiveness. Where Apple’s music incorporates elements of jazz and sophisticated pop, Gray’s combines classic soul and contemporary hip-hop.

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The invitation to produce Gray came from Polly Anthony, president of Sony’s Epic Records Group. “I felt Andy would be perfect for Macy because he is good at stepping outside of himself and looking at the music objectively” she says. “I also knew he’s an artist and she’s an artist, and that can lead to conflicts, but it can ignite a creative fire in the studio, which is what happened in this case.”

Slater was in the middle of producing the Gray album when he heard from Apple that she wanted Jon Brion to produce her second album. He admits he was disappointed.

“I felt so connected to her music that, sure, there was a sense of loss, not being able to work on the new songs,” he says. “But Jon was a good producer and I knew she would make a great record. She has good instincts and good songs.”

Apple downplays any suggestion she was unhappy with Slater.

“The producer depends a lot to me on the kind of songs you have. I feel my songs have gone in a much different direction on the second album,” she says.

“Just as you need different instruments depending on the song, you need different producers. Andy was right for the first album; Jon was right for the second.”

The recently released album, “When the Pawn . . . ,” got generally stronger reviews than the debut, but sales have not matched “Tidal” because no track on the album has caught the ear of radio programmers the way “Criminal” or “Shadowboxer” did.

Apple says she still feels comfortable with Slater as a manager.

“What makes him great is he will listen to what I say and he’s supportive,” Apple says. “For instance, he understands when I say I need more free time on the road . . . , that I don’t want to do as much press as I did the first time around. It’s made my life a lot easier.”

Slater has already made one step toward shifting his attention to heading a record company. He runs Clean Slate Records, whose tiny roster includes Apple and Gray, and whose name is a wry reference to Slater post-rehab days.

Clean Slate’s other artist is Dave Navarro, the much-admired former Jane’s Addiction guitarist whom Slater persuaded to go into rehab early last year to battle substance abuse problems that had long plagued his enormously promising career. Navarro has since been sober and is expected to have his first album out in the fall.

Michele Anthony, executive vice president of Sony Music Entertainment, says she would like to see Slater eventually expand Clean Slate, a joint venture with Sony.

“One of the reasons we did the Clean Slate deal was to give Andy the opportunity to use all of his talents, to identify compelling artists, sign them, produce and/or manage them,” she says.

Howard Kaufman, his mentor and the guiding force behind HK Management, wonders if Slater would be happy in the corporate world of record companies.

“I don’t see him running a record company full time,” Kaufman says. “It wouldn’t give him the freedom to do the things he does now. I’m not sure he’d be happy. Running a record company is much more business than it is creative. I think he loves what he does. . . . I just wish he could enjoy his success a little more. “

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A few days after the Wallflowers session, Slater is on the phone from New York, where he is still going over the final mixes for the band’s album. He seems surprised when he hears about Kaufman’s remark about enjoying his success more.

He acknowledges he doesn’t have much time for a personal life. He has been in a relationship for the past year, but he spends much of his time in the studio or on the road with his artists.

Slater’s younger brother, Mitch, says both brothers got a strong work ethic from their parents. “That’s one thing we have in common,” says Mitch, executive vice president of SFX Entertainment, the nation’s new concert titan. “My dad has always been an incredibly hard worker. He just had bypass surgery and he’s back working--at 76.”

But he also thinks his brother has learned to enjoy his success. “I look at Andy as having two lives,” he continues. “There was the early success, then the rehab. That was a real cleansing process and I think he appreciates everything that has happened to him.”

Henley, too, speaks of Slater’s progress on both professional and personal levels.

“Andy started as a critic, and I think he felt uncomfortable at first in the management position trying to reconcile the soul of a writer with the management position,” Henley says now. “I think that weighed on him heavily. But I always saw in him a guy who really loved music.

“He and I did a little rock ‘n’ roll living together, and we both came out of the other end of the tunnel relatively unscathed. I’m very proud of . . . how he has transcended his problems and has become an excellent producer and has discovered some great new talent.”

About his outlook these days, Andy Slater says, “I guess I’m just not the kind of person who goes around parading what is on the inside, but I’m extremely proud of what we’ve all been able to accomplish the last few years. It’s been satisfying on many levels.

“I think when you turn 40, a lot of issues come up in your life, things you haven’t really dealt with. For a long time, my parents could never understand what I did. I didn’t wear a suit. I didn’t go to a ‘job.’ They didn’t perceive the music business as being like an attorney or a professional, like they wanted--and that stuck with me. But I feel like I’ve finally got something to show them.”

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Robert Hilburn, The Times’ pop music critic, can be reached by e-mail at robert.hilburn@latimes.com.