William Morris sent a white man named Hayden {Visualize Adam Sandler from the movie Sandy Wexler}.
About forty, ordinary-looking.
By his own account he’d been a middle manager at a car dealership in Detroit and had moved over to agenting less than three years ago.
He still cared very much about cars: every few minutes during the signing he’d walk over to the window to check on the Dodge Dynasty he’d parked downstairs from Old Joe Music, and every Black kid who strolled past it put the fear of God in him.
“All right, let’s drink to it!”
Old Joe was very satisfied.
Alex hadn’t come in looking to squeeze anybody at this particular juncture — most of the reason being that he didn’t dare and didn’t need to.
The terms he was offered were more or less the standard writer’s agreement.
“Here’s to the new album selling out.”
Pablo could live with it too.
Lori’s name went into the lyricist’s column alongside Alex’s, but that was for publicity.
Under the contract, Lori’s actual interest in the words was half of Alex’s.
And half wasn’t a small thing.
That was copyright; it could feed a man for the rest of his life.
Under the deal, the words carried six percent of the thrift store song’s revenue and the music four — ten percent in total.
Of the words, Lori held two points and Alex the other four, and Alex held all four points of the music.
On an album the song’s revenue was pooled evenly with everything else on it.
Take a ten-song album: ten percent divided by ten, and Alex came out with almost exactly one percent of the album’s money.
That was one percent of revenue, not of profit; if a cassette sold for five dollars, Alex made five cents.
And don’t be fooled by that — an album selling a million copies would bring Alex fifty thousand dollars, but the real weight was in the singles to come.
A single didn’t have to split its revenue with nine other songs, so the ten percent was a true one-tenth.
And singles came out on vinyl and mini-CD, both priced higher than the cassettes everybody actually bought.
“Hey.” Alex raised his glass and made the first friendly move toward Lil Lori.
What was done was done, and Lori wasn’t sulking any longer.
Perhaps Pablo had laid it all out for him and made his own position clearer to him than it had been.
“Cheers!” he said, and drank first.
Things between the two of them would be complicated from here on, but everybody in the room knew it was a long way from the hour for that kind of arithmetic.
“Cheers.” Hayden, who had been selling things to strangers for half his life, had the social skills to match.
“Here’s to the new album selling.”
The liquor in the glasses came out of Old Joe’s collection: Rémy Martin XO.
Alex tried it carefully first — the people back home in the south had liked this stuff too — then knocked one back and found he thought very well of it.
Nobody present saw the slightest problem with a minor drinking.
After the round of toasts, Hayden and Pablo had two more contracts ready, and there was still signing left to do.
The first was the assignment fee.
Alex transferred one third of the copyright in the lyrics to Lil Lori for twenty-five hundred dollars, a figure worked out against a projection of fifty thousand albums and ten thousand singles.
Hayden wasn’t happy with it and wanted to go another round on the number, but Alex told him to let it go and treat it as tuition.
Next came the confidentiality agreement covering the first contract — hush money, in plain words — for another twenty-five hundred dollars.
From now on, on any occasion, Lori could tell the world that he had written the rap section of the thrift store song himself and that Alex was only the author of the hook, and Alex was obliged to back that story to the hilt.
As for the liquidated damages clause, the figure in it was meaningless.
Lori wasn’t going to volunteer the truth, and if he ever did go back on it—
Well.
Then it wouldn’t be something money settled.
Pablo produced five tidy bricks of twenties, dropped them in front of Hayden, and told him to count.
Alex remembered Goodman’s warning and reminded himself privately that cash income was still income and the tax still had to be paid.
Tax season came in April in this country.
He must not forget that.
With everything done, Alex paid Hayden his cut and walked him down to the street to see him off.
“The two things I mainly need from you right now are watching the copyright registration through, and getting me into ASCAP as fast as you can,” he said, standing in front of Hayden’s Dodge Dynasty.
“I’ll watch it.”
Two drives down to the South Side and a review of a few contracts had earned him five hundred dollars, and for the next year he’d be collecting ten percent of Alex’s royalties.
It was very nearly free money, even after William Morris took their share, and Hayden was in an excellent mood.
“No problem,” he agreed.
“Although my advice is that you join BMI instead. The fees are higher, but BMI’s roster overlaps more with the audience for your kind of song. Radio, you understand.”
“Understood. You handle it.”
The two of them had already talked at length before this, and Alex felt he could vouch for the man’s professionalism; that was before he took him and Aunt Susie over to Goodman’s office, where they had signed the first management contract of Alex’s new life, with Goodman looking it over.
“Anything else? You want me to go dig up some more work for you?” Hayden volunteered.
“There’s a lot of small-time singers who need words and music, and I’ve even got a line into some advertising, as long as you can write it.” This chapter was taken from novelping.com without permission.
“Let’s not.”
Alex couldn’t write it if he tried.
Without the Revelation he knew exactly what he was worth.
“You should get going,” he said.
“It’s not safe for a white man to hang around here too long.”
“Uh…”
Hayden turned his head toward the darkening patch of ground in front of the basement nightclub across the street.
“Then I’m off. Call me. Bye.” He got the car started fast and vanished with a squeal.
Back upstairs, every room but the live room was full of people, and most of them were girlfriends, dates, and assorted nobodies the musicians had brought along.
Tony had even brought his ex over; the two of them were folded into a corner going at each other’s mouths.
The players who kept arriving collapsed onto the control room sofa and watched the drummer inside audition the same part over and over.
The only person genuinely working from end to end was Eric the engineer, who by Alex’s count had slept a few hours total, and who looked liable to drop dead of overwork at any moment.
The air was very close, and it was still the same mixture of perfume, weed, alcohol, tobacco, and hard-earned body odor — but perhaps that was simply normal in the music business, where everything went and nothing mattered.
Even the boss didn’t care.
Old Joe stood there with a glass in his hand, ringed by girls some musician or other had brought, delighted with all of it.
Maybe it’s just that I’m the only outsider in here.
Alex, in the middle of all that noise and warmth, had somehow produced a feeling of loneliness.
The Chinese soul in him could not dissolve into this at all.
He remembered that he hadn’t been to school in days, which made the plan to be a straight-A student look shaky, and after that came the thought that he had no idea how or when the next Revelation would be triggered, and he couldn’t help feeling irritated.
Fortunately the cash in his pocket came to four thousand five hundred dollars, which was a considerable comfort.
So I’ve got my first stake.
Now what?
He thought about it for a while.
He had no memories of his old life to work from, so investing on foreknowledge was out of the question.
And in America, not having a car in the household was intolerably inconvenient.
So he went and found Tony.
“Hey. Come with me to the used car lot tomorrow.”