E Street Shuffle: The Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band by Clinton Heylin Page A

“I asked [Appel] what kind of agreement he had [with Springsteen], and he said, ‘Oh, don’t worry. I’ve got him signed.’…I said, ‘Mike, would you do me a favor? There’s a lawyer I’d like you to talk to. He’s a lawyer I trust and…I’d like him to see the contract.’ Mike replied, ‘Well, if you say so.’ Reluctantly, he went to see this lawyer and the lawyer said, ‘Mike, this is a slave contract.If you’re smart, you won’t go through with it, because your artist—if he makes it—is going to hate you.’”
    The lawyer Hammond had referred Appel to was William Krasilovsky, someone familiar with the music business and copyright law but not affiliated with Columbia. Nevertheless, it was a highly dangerous thing to do. Appel would have been well within his rights to refer the matter to Davis. Krasilovsky would later claim, three decades on and with hindsight to spare, that “he knew right away…Springsteen would one day be sorry he had agreed to Appel’s terms.”
    In fact, Appel had done Springsteen a huge favor, one that would reap Springsteen (as opposed to Appel) millions in the fullness of time. He had signed Springsteen to a production deal which meant that CBS would have to
license
the recordings from Laurel Canyon, rather than signing Springsteen directly to the label. He thus retained control of all unreleased masters. The standard “slave-contract” that CBS required of its new artists still talked in terms of “delivered masters,” as if this were the days of the 78 rpm record; and in many ways it still was.
    Even the contract Appel and Springsteen signed in early June required two albums a year, a patently absurd demand that was still there because it could then be invoked when artists (inevitably) fell behind on their delivery dates to either a) drop them from the label or b) extend the term of the contract, depending on how they were doing commercially. Hammond, of course, had no problem with this contract. It was pretty much the same one he had cajoled Dylan into signing without independent counsel when he was still a legal minor, a ruse which nearly backfired disastrously when six months later Dylan got himself a manager in a mold Mike Appel could only aspire to: Al Grossman, to whom Hammond also took an immediate dislike. Hammond also seemed to think that Springsteen might be better off on the altogether less prestigious Epic subsidiary. Appel, again, interceded:
    Mike Appel: [Hammond] decided that Bruce should be with those younger people up at Epic and not with the stodgier, older people at Columbia—and he got this in his head. I always felt that Columbia was the classiest label on the planet. I just always saw [Bruce’s] record going round on that red label, just like Dylan’s did, and I couldn’t get that out of my head. I had it out with Hammond…Hammond was astubborn, arrogant, enthusiastic guy. But he was like everybody that was great at what they do—he thought he was right on everything.
    Appel and Hammond did not, however, disagree always. On one issue, they were as one. That was their belief that Bruce Springsteen should be marketed as a solo artist, and that the first album should be as close to the demo tape Hammond had made back in May as possible. Springsteen was left in no doubt that this was their preference. But he was less convinced, and once he realized Clive Davis and Jim Cretecos had their doubts too, he quickly aligned himself with their camp:
    Mike Appel: Hammond and I were on the same side [of the acoustic argument]. And Clive Davis and Jim Cretecos were not. And Bruce was the arbiter in the middle. I said, “Your songs are so great. You don’t need a band.” Hammond was like, “Mike, did he buy it?” “No, he did not buy it.” [The album] was a hodgepodge. There was no order in advance. It wasn’t like all
these
songs are going to be acoustic, and all
these
are going to be electric. In the end, what he decided is what we did. Davis is