Dorothy Carvello |
Dorothy Carvello — who started as a secretary to Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun and became the first female A&R exec at the label in 1985 — has penned “Anything for a Hit,” dishing on the excesses of the industry at its peak.
“At the time, there was so much money involved,” explains Carvello, who also worked for RCA and Columbia, among other imprints. Some “high-level executives had multiple mistresses who got anything from record deals to apartments. I had to buy one a refrigerator.”
The book proposal catalogues bad behavior, including an exec who was so depressed on vacation with his family that his wife sent for not one, but two, of his girlfriends to join them.
Money was no object. As Ertegun’s assistant, the author says she was asked to book a company jet to fly her boss a case of Clamato to Turkey because it wasn’t sold there. Some execs pirated their own labels’ CDs by selling thousands of “cleans,” copies of hit records, with no bar codes, to stores for a 50 percent cut. The dough paid for “second homes and lavish lifestyles.”
The book promises to “name names”.
In 2008, Carvello left Columbia to become a p.r. pro and crisis manager.
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