Attorney-to-the-stars Don Passman represents some of the biggest names in the recording industry, and has negotiated two of the biggest paydays in history
Hollywood lawyers tend to be a flamboyant bunch, but not Don Passman.
It’s not that he doesn’t have plenty to crow about. His clients include some of the biggest names in the music industry: Randy Newman, Mariah Carey, Quincy Jones, Jennifer Lopez, Lauryn Hill, Tom Waits and Tina Turner, among others.
As a dealmaker, Passman holds the record for having negotiated two of the biggest record deals in history. In 1996, he negotiated an $80 million deal for Janet Jackson and then the band R.E.M. for the same amount.
But unlike many dealmakers, Passman’s strength is working behind the scenes, away from the media limelight.
Passman started out representing record companies (Warner Records, RCA and others) but switched to performers because of his predisposition toward the artistic side of the business. He himself plays the guitar and has been doing so since his high school and college days in Texas.
Married with four children, he prefers balancing his career with his family life. He has written, “All You Need to Know About the Music Business,” which is considered a guidebook on the recording industry, has published three novels and is already at work on his fourth.
Question: The University of Texas and Harvard Law aren’t the traditional pedigree for the music industry. What attracted you to this business?
Answer: I was always around it. I played in bands in law school and college. My stepfather was a disk jockey, but I knew I wasn’t going to be a musician. So I wanted a way to eat regularly and be in the business.
Q: So how did you evolve into becoming the mega-dealmaker?
A: When I started out doing this, the firm was doing the record company side of the business. We were the outside counsel for Warner Records and RCA and companies that no longer exist, like United Artists Records. I made a conscious decision that I wanted to build an artists’ practice. I like creative people. So I intuitively moved to that side of it. I began with small artists and whomever I could work with. Then I got Tina Turner as a client that moved me up to the big leagues.
Q: What types of things do you negotiate?
A: Mostly I negotiate deals and the contracts from the artists’ point of view that’s record deals, endorsements, touring, song writing, publishing whatever comes up in their lives. Also, part of the firm does the routine stuff, like buying houses, making out wills, if they get into a fight with the neighbors and things like that. We are a full-service firm.
Q: Is part of your job also to ferret out potential deals for your clients, in addition to merely negotiating the terms of deals?
A: Yes. Mostly what I do is to keep informed about what (possible) deals are out there, and knowing how to maximize them. And I have a good sense of it. Lawyers in the music business know more about deals than almost anyone else because we do more of them. The managers know about deals, but they are limited because of what they do for a relatively small number of clients. The agents are involved mostly in the personal-appearance field and don’t understand the record and publishing side of it.
Q: In the early days of the recording business, a lot of performers were their own dealmakers. Is that feasible anymore?
A: No. The world has gotten too complicated. When I started doing this, record deals were 15 to 20 pages long. Now, they are 110 pages when they start out and by the time they finish they can be much more than that. You need someone knowledgeable to guide you through the maze.
Q: What advice would you give a new performer to protect himself?
A: The biggest mistake that new performers make is to sign themselves up to long-term deals that don’t guarantee any kind of success. They may sign with a manager for five or seven years, and the manager may be a dud and do nothing with their career. But if you build in a fairly simple provision that, if you haven’t gotten a record deal within a certain amount of time, or if you haven’t sold a certain number of records in a specific amount of time or earned a specific amount of money, then you can get out of the management deal.
Q: Why is music such a treacherous business?
A: From the outside, it may look that way. You’ve got a business that has been started by entrepreneurs who had no barrier of entry. You still have the ability for people with little or no training to become very successful very quickly. When you do that, you attract people who are very street smart and very good at making things happen. In every business, if you look at the people on the top, you will find a number of treacherous people. Our society rewards treachery by calling it something else.
Q: Your low-key style is quite a contrast to that of other Hollywood lawyers. What about that?
A: I am not a big hanger-outer who has to be seen at every event. I am not a screamer. If a client wants a pal to hang out with and someone who is visible and high-flying, they will not be happy with me. Everyone has a different style. Some work with a foil and some work with a saber.
Q: So what’s the fun?
A: Being at the intersection of art and commerce. There has always been this tension, going back to the days when people started drawing art. The artists want to do what’s best for them creatively and companies want to do what’s best for them. I love being at the focal point of that.
Q: How do you deal with flamboyant colleagues who yell and scream over a deal?
A: I always believe that speaking quietly is a better way to deal with screamers than yelling back. If they scream, they usually run out of steam and settle down. But sometimes they can get out of hand. I was once in a meeting and one of the opposing lawyers tried to take a swing at my partner, who was 60 years old.
Q: Obviously, the Internet is revolutionizing the music business. How much of a risk is that to your clients and to record companies?
A: Enormous. Any time you have the ability to take a CD and take it from its tangible form and, with the push of a button, send it to 50 friends, you have enormous potential for piracy. It’s not the big-league pirates who you can stop, but the friend who says, “Don’t bother to buy the album; I’ll get it to you.” It’s college students who think they are doing a service to the world, those who believe that what they are doing is all about freedom and no boundaries and no rules and “We can do whatever we feel like.”
There also are a lot of people who genuinely believe that there are no intellectual property rights because of the First Amendment, and that people should be able to copy anything and there should be no such thing as copyright. If we don’t protect music in some way, there is no business.
Q: How do you combat this?
A: None of the companies want to break apart their albums. They don’t want anybody to buy one or two cuts. They are wedded to a profit structure. All this reminds me of the music business in the 1950s, when you could for very little money and no barrier of entry sit down and make a record and ship it out to the marketplace and make profits. It was wide-open spaces for entrepreneurs, which is what the Internet has become. It is very exciting, but it also is very scary.
Q: Who are the performers who have had the most profound impact on music?
A: The Beatles, not even a close call on that one. They were so brilliantly innovative. They caused such a revolution in music, far ahead of anything that had come before.
Q: How did you make the record deals for Janet Jackson and R.E.M.?
A: It’s supply and demand and knowing what to ask for. We weren’t holding an auction, but it was more like (the record companies) were bidding. It wasn’t just the money (that made the deals); it was where they felt their careers would be best handled.
Q: How tough was it to make these deals?
A: It was tough. You are dealing with very sophisticated people at that level. Corporations have to make a profit and there is only so far you can push. You have to know there is limit and you have to know when to settle.
