ENTERTAINMENT MONTHLY MAGAZINE (1984)

Pasha: People Power
By Richard K. West & William Widmaier

At the unfashionable end of Melrose Avenue looms the huge Paramount headquarters, a symbol of corporate power. In its shadow stands an unprepossessing one-story building with a sign on the front door which sends visitors round the back. This is the headquarters of Pasha Records, home of heavy metal music, a rock and roll David to Paramount's Goliath.

Once inside the electronically-operated back door, an air of orderly disorder prevails. Drums sound in the background, a guitar screeches, telephones ring. The walls are covered with posters and photos, desks are piled with papers. It's obviously the kind of place where creativity is ranked higher than corporate image, where excitement is vocalized and 'pashion' reigns supreme. Lyn Corey-Benson, a vivacious brunette, presides over this volatile area. She handles the company's national promotion, using contacts and techniques she developed in radio. Born in Pennsylvania, Lyn began her career as a radio DJ in upstate New York.

"I wanted to be a recording engineer," she recalled, "but at that time it was tough for a woman to get that kind of job. So I did Top 40, ran a lot of Yankee baseball games, and eventually got into programming for WZZL in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Then I got married, and we moved to L.A. I suffered from culture shock at first, and it was very hard for me to get work. Carol was only one among many who said 'Listen, babe, I'd love to hire you' but she really meant it. She's probably the most sincere person I've met in a very long time. Come and meet her." And without more ado, Lyn lead the way into the inner sanctum of her chief, Carol Peters, General Manager of Pasha Records.

Carol's office is more like a drawing room, with its fitted carpet, its restful sofa and deep easy chairs, a haven of tranquillity-apart from a certain heavy metal leakage from next door. Carol herself is an attractive woman with curly pre-Raphaelite hair and a confident, easy manner. She began by explaining the company.

"The Pasha Music organization is a production facility that offers production services to various different record companies in the following way: if somebody comes to us and says 'will you produce Band X?' then we act as a production facility, and the record comes out on their label as a Pasha production."

"On the other hand," said Lyn, "if the record comes out on our label, the Pasha label, then it's distributed through CBS - it's Pasha/CBS. And CBS has the right of first refusal on anything Spencer discovers."

35-year-old Spencer Proffer is the owner of the company. He started it five years ago on a shoestring and put everything he owned into it. He recorded all the songs, writing and arranging many of them himself, and worked until all hours. By the time he acquired the label deal with CBS he was in need of someone who could handle the street profile of the company, in terms of promotion, marketing, merchandising and publicity -a jack-of-all-trades in the music industry. Carol's predecessor, Ray Anderson, took the job.

"He's an old friend of Spencer's," she said, "from when they were both working at United Artists, from before then. Anyway, when Ray was stolen away by Columbia -he's now their National Director of Promotion. Spencer was back to square one. He had records to promote. He still needed someone to deal with the record companies on a day-to-day basis, so he went after the guy I was working for at Warner Brothers. Now, I've been in the record business for twenty years, and each place Spencer checked David's references he found out more about me than he did about him!" She smiled winningly. "I guess I've always assumed a high profile."

Soon after she got the job she went looking for an assistant, a highly-motivated self-starter who was hungry and whose career aspirations would not outdistance the job too quickly. She preferred a woman because 'the biggest career aspiration of a man would be my job!'

"I still want your job," protested Lyn. "But seriously, just as Carol takes the burden of contracts and finance off Spencer's shoulders, so I take the promotion angle off of Carol's. We complement each other."

All told, eleven people are in permanent employment at Pasha, often doing the same amount of work that requires 35 people or more at one of the bigger companies. This signifies longer working hours for the eleven, and a high degree of motivation would seem necessary. The fact that most employees are women is incidental, assures Carol.

"Pasha is a company where women can broaden out to their fullest potential," she said, "but this doesn't mean we're against men. Our art director, Jay Vigon, is a man, and he's done all our covers -apart from the "Kick Axe" cover. That one was painted by a brilliant artiste, Dario Campanile, a former student of Salvador Dali."

"Kick Axe is the band you can hear now." Lynn indicated the wall between us and the heavy metal. "Actually, they're doing jazz riffs and five-part harmonies, and using classical song structures. Heady metal-that's the perfect name to describe their music."

Quiet Riot is the best-known group to appear on the Pasha label. The single 'Cum On Feel The Noize' has sold over five million units to date, and is taken from their "Metal Health" album. Carol commented on this.

"We released the Quiet Riot record at a time when New Music was so heavily permeating the airwaves that nobody was interested in a brand-new metal band. Lyn and I worked the record together. We spread it from one city to the next, even hired a woman-as a matter of fact-to help us do marketing, to induce the stores to buy the record wherever there was airplay. And when the band went out on tour, Lyn worked extremely hard making every tour city into an event."

"Well, I got involved in the radio end of it," said Lyn, "interviews and airplay and such, but Carol dealt with the retail aspect."

"Don't forget that Spencer mortgaged his house for this record," admonished Carol. "Just to have a producer who cares that much -nobody's doing that for the present generation, there are no more A&Ms, Chrysalises or Island Records being built. Anyway, to get back to Quiet Riot. You know, we had a party when we'd sold 30,000 units . We thought that was great! Now it's over five million-I'd like to take my hat off to the people at Epic, they gave it everything they've got."

Lyn smiles. "I think it's the responsibility of every manager, every artist, every production facility to break the record themselves," she said.

"Yes," agreed Carol, "Once the record has sold, say, 150,000 copies the big companies know exactly what to do. They come in and they close it out, and they close it out the right way. But you can't get those things-the mandatory videos etc-unless you do the legwork yourselves."

Video-wise, 'Cum On Feel The Noize' was tied for No. 1 this year, Metal Health was doing very well, and Pasha has just completed a video featuring Cheap Trick, for a movie. Yes, watch out Paramount, Pasha's moving into motion pictures! The company has recently completed the sound track for 'Up the Creek', an Orion Pictures production described as 'Animal House on a raft'. Groups involved include Cheap Trick, Heart, The Beach Boys, Kick Axe, and Ian Hunter, all recorded at Pasha. Randy Bishop, one of Pasha's songwriters, was also much involved.

"The Cheap Trick video, produced by Pendulum Productions and Pasha, looks like part of the movie," said Carol. "We sent Rick Neilson down the creek...in a bathtub -almost drowned him in the process!"

"Fortunately he has a good sense of humor," observed Lyn.

"They all do," responded her chief. "The video is a tremendous Marx Brothers-type performance by the group, and I'm looking for a gold for it, even a platinum."

Pasha has garnered twenty or so gold and platinum records for production in the last five years, not forgetting Quiet Riot's five million unit smash, which is quite an achievement for a mere handful of employees. 'Dare to be great' reads a notice on Carol's desk, and this attitude seems to be the real motivator.

"It certainly helps," said Lyn, "and it applies to all the new groups out there too. It's crazy, but since Quiet Riot we seem to be on everybody's drop-list for cassettes. Dare to be great alright, but send your demo to the right place. We're a rock and roll company, we don't have the time to promote soul or country. We listen to all the cassettes that come in-in the office, in the car, at home. I get them first, weed out the best and give them to Carol. She goes through them and passes her selection on to Spencer. There's no way that a non-rock and roll sound is going to get that far."

Carol nodded in agreement. "You know what I would recommend for a band just starting out? Get yourselves a great attorney. Second, what I'm looking for is a distinctive lead vocal that pulls away from the pack. Every successful group or artist on the current scene has one-Sting of The Police, Kevin Dubrow of Quiet Riot, John Cougar, Rod Stewart, all distinctive. Then there's the question of song construction. That's very important. Lots of artists lose out when the quality of their songs goes downhill. Our stable of songwriters make sure that doesn't happen to the artists we work with."

"Hey, this is a first-class act," chimed in Lyn. "Quality product, you know?" And that about sums up Pasha Records -a small team of highly-motivated people, devoted to rock and roll, doing what they believe in. More power to them!