Word: rso
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They are the only ones. This year, RSO will sell more than $300 million worth of records. Al Coury spearheaded the runaway success of the Grease and Saturday Night Fever sound tracks, making them two of the alltime Top Ten albums. He insists that the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band sound track package will sell 4.6 million units. For 42 weeks of 1978, RSO albums occupied the top slot on the charts. During one of those weeks, the RSO logo?a benign, bright red castrated bull?graced the labels on three of the top five albums. During...
...talks as tough ("Don't call me back. Just do it") and speaks as straight ("If someone brought me Kiss today on a silver platter, I still wouldn't sign them") as he did 21 years ago, when he started hustling records around New England for Capitol. At RSO, Coury is given his head ("Robert's always on a boat somewhere. He says the L.A. smog affects his breathing"). Coury plunges into all areas of the biz. He engineers marketing strategy, designs ad campaigns, even pitches in on planning those mammoth Sunset Strip billboards, which are for the music indus...
This communal commercial approach yields a uniform sound to RSO's product: smooth, sweet and very airy, like a sauna filled with Cool Whip. Coury boasts that he has sold Eric Clapton better than anyone, but Clapton's RSO albums (like the recent Backless) are bleached-out blues for easy listening. Coury's golden ears have helped create a theme song from the new RSO movie Moment by Moment that seems just right for slow dancing in elevators. Consequently, Coury is often on the aesthetic defensive, making heated claims for such slick popsicles as the Bee Gees by stating, "They...
Promo men work record stores too, but it is radio that gets their best shot. Meanwhile, back in the three-story Sunset Strip offices of RSO, Coury is on the phone, eagerly reading the new charts ?delivered to his office before they go to press?and placing calls to the various trades about the new positions of RSO products. If, as RSO National Sales Manager Mitch Huffman says, "the charts are Coury's bible," then the boss is certainly not averse to applying for a revised standard version. He'll bluster, cajole, even strongarm an editor for a more...
Coury, playing guarded, projects RSO business for next year at 75% of 1978, but admits: "That's a lot." The Bee Gees are dishing up a new album in February that Coury predicts will be "a gorilla." There will be new albums from the small roster of 13 RSO acts, and a record package of Evita, a pop-top opera about Eva Peron that is S.R.O. in London. Al Coury has to love it all. "I don't love vacuum cleaners and underwear. But I love music, and I can sell it." And it will be sold. What comes...