Word: payola
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...Beach Boys are tenuous; really only a group of friends who, juiced, are wont to slobber through "ba-ba-ba-ba-barbara ann." I've always felt a little sorry for the Beach Boys, because it is their singular misfortune to represent rock at its nadir, the post-payola early sixties. I've also resented the fact that they managed to ride surf music, that most dubious of forms, to fame and fortune. They don't do that sort of thing any more. Brian. Wilson can't hear well enough to sing, the whole bank struggled with the Maharishi, there...
After weeks of rumor mongering, the $3 billion-a-year record industry last week was spinning toward what could become its biggest crisis since the payola scandals of the late 1950s. Though industry involvement so far has been limited to relatively minor charges against four former employees of CBS'S Columbia Records, the entire record business was rocked with sensational rumors of extortion, drug deals and million-dollar embezzlements (TIME, June 11). "Everybody in the business is shaking," said one rock-'n'-roll publicist. "And let's face it. The record industry is very vulnerable...
Davis, they added, was too intelligent a man to get himself involved in payola of any kind...
Davis has retreated into the silence of his redecorated apartment and has retained a criminal lawyer. There is speculation in the industry that the CBS suit could touch off another version of the 1950s payola scandal if the activities of other freewheeling record executives are investigated. "I think this firing could lead to another Watergate," says Singer Tony Bennett. "There are a lot of crooks in there. This is only the beginning...
PAYDAY chronicles 36 hours in the life of a minor country-and-western singer called Maury Dann, a sort of Orpheus pretending who boozes, wenches pops pills and passes along the old payola. As played and sung by Rip Torn -eyes bulging, teeth bared until they look like a couple of upended harmonicas-he seems less gifted in music than m hog calling. Like A Face in the Crowd, Payday tries hard to be about the spiritual bankruptcy of American life, but Director Daryl Duke emulates only the hysteria, not the theatrical fervor, of the 1957 Kazan film. The wretched...