After PolyGram signed my publishing company, I made one of the worst business decisions of my career.
I rented office space that had once belonged to Owen Husney, Prince’s first manager. At the time, it felt like success. The address had history. The walls had stories. I convinced myself that if I worked where important people had worked, perhaps some of that importance would rub off on me. A glass desk in a fashionable office seemed like the Los Angeles thing to do.
It wasn’t.
The office didn’t make me a better publisher.
It didn’t help me discover better songs.
It didn’t close a single deal.
If anything, it had the opposite effect. Some artists walked through the door expecting to meet Owen’s ghost. Others assumed I had money I didn’t have.
What I really rented was overhead I couldn’t afford.
One afternoon I accidentally received a check from Paisley Park for nearly twenty thousand dollars. It was Jesse Johnson’s royalty payment from Purple Rain. For a few surreal moments I held a check that wasn’t mine but represented the kind of business I hoped to build.
It was a reminder that real publishing wasn’t about impressive offices.
It was about songs that found their audience.
I wasn’t investing in my business.
I was investing in validation.
There’s a difference.
At the time I couldn’t see it.
Today it’s painfully obvious.
Getting a publishing deal is the first mountain most people never climb.
Keeping it is another mountain entirely.
Looking successful doesn’t put points on the scoreboard.
Only results do.
That lesson cost me far more than the monthly rent.
During those years I learned that the music business rewarded possibility more often than certainty.
Every songwriter signed to a publishing agreement represented hope.
Every demo hinted at the next hit.
Every meeting carried the promise that this one might change everything.
I signed six songwriters.
They were talented.
But talent alone doesn’t keep people together.
Writers chased better deals.
Opportunities shifted.
Even my own business partner eventually looked beyond the company we had built.
I didn’t realize it then, but the ground beneath me had already begun to move.
Around the same time, I helped Twin Tone Records secure a new national distribution agreement through Restless Records.
For a while it looked as though the label had been given another chance.
The Jayhawks.
The Replacements.
Soul Asylum.
The Suburbs.
Ween.
Minnesota’s remarkable independent music community fought hard to keep its place in an industry that was changing faster than any of us understood.
We celebrated victories because that’s what musicians do.
We don’t celebrate guarantees…
because there aren’t any.
Success in music has always been temporary.
Every record begins at zero.
Every artist starts over with the next song.
Eventually I came to understand that careers aren’t built by appearances.
They’re built by surviving disappointment long enough to recognize the next opportunity when it arrives.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
For years I had been chasing the image of success.
What I should have been chasing was the work itself.
Years later, people occasionally ask me what it was like during the Minneapolis music boom.
I usually smile.
Most people imagine it as one long party.
It wasn’t.
It was a room full of talented people trying to outrun time.
Some made it.
Most didn’t.
The truth is, the music business doesn’t hand out lifetime memberships.
Every hit song starts the clock all over again.
Every contract eventually reaches its last page.
Every artist wonders what comes next.
Looking back, I don’t regret renting that office.
I regret believing it meant I had arrived.
Success isn’t where you work.
It isn’t the address on your business card.
It isn’t whose office you inherited.
Success is waking up the next morning…
and still having a reason to create.
That lesson followed me long after the office was gone.
Long after PolyGram.
Long after the music stopped.
It would become one of the most important lessons of my life.
