Tom Werman’s Memoir Chronicles ’80s Excess and Awesomeness
Book Review: Turn It Up!: My Time Making Hit Records in the Glory Days of Rock Music
In the 1970s and 80s, Tom Werman had the best life in America.
As an A&R guy at Epic Records, he signed REO Speedwagon, Boston, and Ted Nugent. When Werman evolved from discovering acts to producing them, he made classic albums for Mötley Crüe, Poison, Cheap Trick and tons more. In nearly every case, the biggest-selling album by every band Werman worked with was one he produced.
And then, after 23 gold or platinum albums sold more than 52 million copies, the era of pop metal simply ends, disappearing as quickly as an ounce of coke at the Record Plant. Grunge arrives. It celebrates precisely the imperfections that Werman had spent 20 years ironing out of the polished albums that major label budgets had funded.
Press play to hear a narrated version of this story, presented by AudioHopper.
His career as a producer basically over, Werman might have quietly slinked off to his second act as a New England innkeeper. But he just couldn’t keep quiet when online loudmouths criticized the production of Crüe’s Girls, Girls, Girls. He started writing columns about the salad days of rock. And fans should be grateful to those Crue partisans because the stories in Turn It Up! soar like the chorus to “Surrender.”
For rock fans, one of the most revealing elements of Werman’s memoir is how it details the role of A&R guy in the cash-drenched pre-streaming golden age of America rock. One imagines someone with exquisite taste given carte blanche to sign whoever he deemed both creative and commercial. Werman reveals that getting buy-in from the other execs at his label was almost as difficult as uncovering that great unknown band.
After cajoling his way into a gig at Epic, Werman’s first signing was REO Speedwagon. They went on to sell 40 million records for Epic, but Werman remained in the position of begging the bosses to consider the acts that excited him. After REO, Werman’s boss at Epic, Don Ellis, turns down the next three bands Werman tries to sign. The first was Rush. Prog rock from Canada? Nope.
Werman is so excited about a band he saw in a small club in Macon, Georgia, that he cajoles Ellis to join him for a second trip South. They fly to Nashville to see Lynyrd Skynyrd at the Exit In.
“Once again, the band tore it up, and the audience went wild. As we walked through the parking lot after the show, Don turned to me and said, ‘Good band—no songs.’ Despite the fact that ‘Free Bird’ had been in the set.”
And then there was Wicked Lester, headed by two Jewish boys from Queens. Anyone reading this far into the review knows that they became KISS.
Those three acts ultimately sold over 150 million records. But not for Epic.
Werman eventually accumulates enough juice to land some acts. After REO, his next three signings are Ted Nugent, Molly Hatchet and Cheap Trick.
Werman writes that there are two mistakes an A&R man can make: signing acts that fail and failing to sign acts that become huge. But this guy is four for four on his first signings and still struggles to get a yes from Epic bosses.
Discovering exactly how A&R works was a painful section of the memoir for me personally. At 57, with my rock “career” 35 years in the rearview mirror, I didn’t fully understand until reading this book just how conformist and anti-creative the A&R process really is.
Werman describes how A&R people are like lemmings and when there’s intense interest, you gotta get signed right then and there. If for some reason even a couple weeks go by and a hot band is not signed, interest magically evaporates. Each A&R guy figures the others passed and he doesn’t want to sign an act his rival passed on.
Thinking back to my time in Green and even The Lilacs, when we’d have occasional interest we’d set up a showcase in New York or Chicago or LA. A bunch of labels would show up, and no one would sign us. It could’ve been because we sucked, and I accept that possibility, despite glowing reviews (especially Green) and lots of buzz. But as Werman details, it also could’ve been Record Company B didn’t sign us simply because Record Company A hadn’t.
Werman also dashes the hopes of anyone who thinks their demo will somehow get a fair shake.
Even as he makes a sincere effort to provide meaningful feedback to unknown artists, Werman confirms the worst fears of aspiring artists. “I was a soft touch when it came to accepting demos — I felt it was rude not to do so. But not one unsolicited tape I was ever handed outside of the office turned out to be worth even a second listen.”
As Werman evolves from discovering acts to producing them, he remains fiercely loyal to his conviction that the song is the thing. Although he’s associated almost exclusively with hard rock acts, his fondness for everything from pop (Manhattan Transfer) to classical (Grieg) to punk (New York Dolls, who he saw at Mercer Arts Center, with both Clive Davis and Atlantic Records president Ahmet Ertegun in attendance), shows that he understands that the only thing that matters is the hook and the look. Many of Werman’s acts had great lead guitarists or other noteworthy elements. But it’s “Cat Scratch Fever” or “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” that people remember.
Along the way, Werman just crushes with anecdote after juicy anecdote. There’s a great story about standing up to Molly Hatchet’s third best guitarist and his antisemitic slurs. Another fascinating story shows engineer Jeff Workman treacherously doctoring a secretly recorded conversation to make it seem to the already feuding guys in Dokken that Werman was shit-talking them behind their backs.
There’s a satisfying amount of score settling, too, including a particularly hilarious defenestration of Twisted Sister. Singer Dee Snyder spent the 20 years after Stay Hungry whining about Werman and making up stories. I speak for every failed musician in saying I wish someone would “destroy my career” like Werman did with “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”
Werman narrates the book himself, and as is almost always the case with a first-person memoir, it’s better for him doing so. It’s notable how much Werman sounds like Casey Kasem, which adds a note of rock ‘n’ roll authenticity. After he mentions Poco, Werman smacks his lips and it’s so endearing to hear these little nuances of a nonprofessional narrator telling his own story.
The book would have benefited from a more careful edit. When Werman first joins Epic, he lists all the great artists associated with parent company CBS like Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel, but a similar list had appeared just a few pages earlier.
More jarringly, the book fails to account for major milestones in Werman’s life. I applaud the decision not to belabor his childhood in Massachusetts. Too much pop psychology can ruin these books, which are best enjoyed for their rock and roll debauchery. But Werman just sort of suddenly mentions that he had a wife (Suki), and then later a kid. There’s almost nothing about his parents. It’s difficult to understand the author’s creative process when there’s so little context.
A surprisingly touching part of the book comes at the end, which is usually the saddest part of most rock memoirs. Normally, that’s where the artist tries to persuade the reader that he’s just as excited about spending time with his family as he used to be about getting high with Aerosmith. Werman doesn’t play that game. He describes the pain of irrelevancy brought on by the sudden dawn of Nirvana and other artists who valued raw sloppy energy and wouldn’t be caught dead in hairspray. It’s to the book’s credit that he doesn’t pretend like Sammy Hagar to be having more fun in his dotage than in his prime.
It’s clear that what’s really fun for Werman is just being honest about what that era of rock was like.
“Night-time recording sessions were fueled by a combination of cheap white wine (Bolla Soave at about three dollars a bottle) and cocaine. It was a potent combination, generating the kind of energy that could in turn generate some good musical creativity. I’d seen other producers use coke at work. One producer whose work I admired very much would put a little saucer of blow on the console, dip the lit end of a cigarette into the powder, and smoke as he normally would. He must have functioned effectively this way since his records were well-produced and very successful. When our sessions ended, usually around midnight, few of the people who worked at the studio—clients or staff—would say goodnight and immediately depart for home. Most nights, they’d hang out for a while, and ‘a while’ could sometimes extend to sunrise. People from the record label might drop in, and after a brief hello and a quick playback of what we were working on, they’d repair to the recreational areas of the studio. There was a jacuzzi room at the Record Plant that could be reserved by clients on an hourly basis. It had a big redwood tub that was sunk into the floor, a sofa, a coffee table with a glass top that was perfect for chopping out lines of coke, a bed, a couch, and a stack of towels.”
These walks down memory lane are so satisfying for those who venerate this era. And it’s most satisfying when it names names, as with the Dee Snyder fight. Other times, Werman resorts to pseudonyms, as when he could not get calls back from an executive at Sony and longtime friends at Warner Brothers during his reinvention as an executive producer.
Another time, someone he calls “Dave” at Atlantic Records blows him off and instead sends Werman out to lunch at the Peninsula with up-and-coming whiz kid Jason Flom.
Interestingly, Flom is really Werman 2.0. Also a nice Jewish kid obsessed with music, he helped nurture Lorde, Kid Rock, Katy Perry, Matchbox 20, Jewel, Hootie & the Blowfish, Collective Soul, Vanessa Williams and Sugar Ray on his way to becoming Chairman and CEO of Atlantic.
(My favorite Flom discovery story was the metal band Zebra whose tape young assistant Flom pressed into the hands of Atlantic president Doug Morris. Morris listened to it on the drive home to Long Island, resulting in a classic first album, less successful follow-up and disastrous third, the exact same pattern Werman describes in this book.)
At this point of his career, having produced and signed bands that sold tens of millions, not to mention being a successful innkeeper well off the grid, why not mention these people by name? You almost wonder if he’s sitting there in Nantucket and doesn’t want to risk not getting a call from “Dave” asking him to produce the new Def Leppard reunion album.
It’s sad and it’s sweet. Just like this whole book.
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