Don Kirshner, who has died aged 76, was a rock promoter who earned the sobriquet “the man with the golden ear”, for making stars of singers such as Carole King, Neil Diamond and Neil Sedaka; he was also behind the hits written for the Monkees, the group manufactured for American television as the answer to the Beatles.
Don Kirshner Photo: AP
Kirshner was one of the principal architects of the so-called “Brill Building” genre which dominated the American charts in the period between Elvis Presley being enlisted in the US Army in 1958 and the onset of the British invasion, spearheaded by the Beatles, in 1964.
At that time the American pop music industry was centred around the Brill Building on Broadway. In a nearby office Kirshner’s teams of songwriters worked day and night in a rabbit warren of cubicles, each furnished with a piano and a desk, fashioning hits for the pop market — a process which Kirshner described as “fun servitude”.
He described his writers as “normal Jewish kids”, many of them barely out of their teens, whose songs both shaped and reflected the conservative dreams of most American teenagers, with their time-honoured themes of infatuation and heartbreak, summer romances, first kisses, and living happily ever after.
A brash, opinionated man, Kirshner had no musical training, but enjoyed a reputation for his unerring understanding of popular taste. “That man could sit and listen to somebody play eight bars of a song and tell you whether it was a hit or not, and he was right so often it was frightening,” the producer Stu Phillips recalled. “I don’t have the talent myself,” Kirshner admitted. “But, you know, I’m the man with the golden ear.”
Donald Kirshner was born in the Bronx on April 17 1934, the son of a tailor. After a year at City College, he went to Upsala College, New Jersey, where he read Business Administration and captained the basketball team. After graduating in 1956 he met a young singer named Robert Walden Cassotto at a sweetshop in Washington Heights. They became partners, working on advertising jingles and pop ditties (their first was called Bubblegum Pop). But their collaboration ended after Cassotto — under his new stage name, Bobby Darin — had a hit in 1958 with Splish Splash, which he wrote without Kirshner’s help.
Kirshner then went into music publishing with Al Nevins, who had produced several successful albums for a group called The Three Suns. Fusing their first names, they came up with the company name, Aldon music, and had a first hit with Stupid Cupid, sung by Connie Francis and written by a young Neil Sedaka and his songwriting partner Howard Greenfield. Aldon signed a long-term contract with the songwriting duo and had another hit with The Diary, sung by Sedaka, which charted at No 14 in America in February 1959. When Kirshner pressed Sedaka for a follow-up hit, the result was Oh! Carol.
Sedaka described his song as “an ode to my old high school girlfriend, Carol Klein”. She was starting in the music business as Carole King, and she and her husband, Gerry Goffin, also signed with Aldon. The couple’s song Will You Love Me Tomorrow? went to No 1 for the Shirelles in January 1961. Kirshner and Carole King took a limousine to the chemical plant where Goffin laboured at his day job and told him he would never have to work again.
Two years later, in 1963, Kirshner made his own fortune when Aldon was sold to Columbia-Screen Gems, making him a millionaire at the age of 29. With the coming of the Beatles, and the growing practice of performing artists writing their own material, the demand for “song factories” such as Kirshner’s began to decline. But he found a lucrative new outlet in the Monkees, the group which had been assembled in 1966 by American television executives desperate to cash in on the Beatles phenomenon, and which was widely derided as “the Pre-Fabs”.
Kirshner became musical producer, providing such songs as I’m A Believer, written by Neil Diamond, and Pleasant Valley Sunday, written by Goffin and King, which made the group a huge sensation on both sides of the Atlantic.
When tensions arose within the Monkees, Kirshner moved on to help create the Archies, an animated version of an American cartoon strip. He made no bones about his reasons for doing so, saying: “I want a band that won’t talk back.” The Archies’ music, performed by uncredited studio session musicians, is widely regarded as the quintessence of bubblegum music; their irritatingly catchy Sugar, Sugar became the bestselling song of 1969.
Kirshner was also one of the first music moguls to bring live rock and roll to American television. For 10 years from 1972 he presented Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, which featured musicians such as Billy Joel and the Police.
Kirshner was honoured by the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 2007.
Don Kirshner, who died on January 17, is survived by his wife, Sheila, and by their son and daughter.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/music-obituaries/8459328/Don-Kirshner.html
Sedaka described his song as “an ode to my old high school girlfriend, Carol Klein”. She was starting in the music business as Carole King, and she and her husband, Gerry Goffin, also signed with Aldon. The couple’s song Will You Love Me Tomorrow? went to No 1 for the Shirelles in January 1961. Kirshner and Carole King took a limousine to the chemical plant where Goffin laboured at his day job and told him he would never have to work again.
Two years later, in 1963, Kirshner made his own fortune when Aldon was sold to Columbia-Screen Gems, making him a millionaire at the age of 29. With the coming of the Beatles, and the growing practice of performing artists writing their own material, the demand for “song factories” such as Kirshner’s began to decline. But he found a lucrative new outlet in the Monkees, the group which had been assembled in 1966 by American television executives desperate to cash in on the Beatles phenomenon, and which was widely derided as “the Pre-Fabs”.
Kirshner became musical producer, providing such songs as I’m A Believer, written by Neil Diamond, and Pleasant Valley Sunday, written by Goffin and King, which made the group a huge sensation on both sides of the Atlantic.
When tensions arose within the Monkees, Kirshner moved on to help create the Archies, an animated version of an American cartoon strip. He made no bones about his reasons for doing so, saying: “I want a band that won’t talk back.” The Archies’ music, performed by uncredited studio session musicians, is widely regarded as the quintessence of bubblegum music; their irritatingly catchy Sugar, Sugar became the bestselling song of 1969.
Kirshner was also one of the first music moguls to bring live rock and roll to American television. For 10 years from 1972 he presented Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, which featured musicians such as Billy Joel and the Police.
Kirshner was honoured by the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 2007.
Don Kirshner, who died on January 17, is survived by his wife, Sheila, and by their son and daughter.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/music-obituaries/8459328/Don-Kirshner.html
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