The next record was "All Alone" on Current Records. The company was run and partially owned by one Mike Goldberg. After Penthouse I went outside of Randy Wood's reach and signed a 1 record deal with Current. I was given label credit for arranging, as well as writer and artist and it was a good record. I cut that record in a couple of hours one afternoon and never knew the names of those who played on it. I am sorry for that, because they did a hell of a good job. J. Fisher is listed as producer and I have vague memories of who that is. It may be that J. Fisher is also playing guitar, I don't know. After the record was cut nothing was done with it. There it was and that was it. I went in to Goldberg's office and asked him why nothing was being done with the record?
He told me all the reactions by LA radio were negative and there wasn't much he could do about it. I had signed a contract that was going to tie me up for a minimum of 1 year and there was nothing he could do about it. I told him that was no good for me and asked him to release me from the contract which he said he could not do. I recall getting mad at him almost immediately, because this was just one more bullshit hangup in a long list of hangups, where my well being was involved. He finally said he'd let me out of the contract if I paid him for the cost of the session. Great! I was broke, as usual, and this guy wanted me to pay for my own session to let me out of a contract that he's using to hang me up. He won't work the record so it's dead and I gotta pay him to get out, man!
I was so pissed off I couldn't see straight. This guy had sweet talked me into signing the goddamn thing in the first place now he wanted money to let me out, cause he isn't doing his job and promoting the record. It wasn't that it was a whole lot of money, $500 or $600, but for me that was a lot. I had met a women named Carol Paulus who I still know to this day and she gave me the money to get out of that contract. The record says lightswitch Music is the publisher, but I will challenge that on similar grounds to those involving Penthouse and other claims by various publishers.
Record labels and publishers are bound, at least minimally, to do something more than record a song and publish it and then sit on it. A contract is between various parties and each party has some sort of obligation to perform some duty to make the contract binding. I challenge Current Records and Lightswitch Music on that basis. I would also like to see the contract again, because my belief is that it would be found to be insufficient as a legal document. Therefore I will again claim all rights to my songs, "All Alone" and "Your Sweet Lovin".
That's 4 singles in a row that I wrote and recorded for 3 different companies in a matter of months. In each case I was promised something which I never received. Mostly that those who were signing me were promising to do the best job possible with each record. This by no means was ever the case. In each of these circumstances the records were recorded by me using my songs. The records were basically shelved by those labels while their publishing arm claimed in each case the rights to my songs. It is because of this practice that I feel each of these agreements must be challenged at this time.
Back at Mira Records, Phill Turetsky was watching this absurdity unfold for months. He finally got me away from everyone and told me that he wanted to try and get me something more legitimate than what had gone on previously. I was surprised by this and welcomed Phil's involvement in my life knowing that Phil was Johnny Rivers business manager. The first thing he did was tell me about a new TV show that was being planned called "The Monkees" which he believed I had a real shot at. I was pretty much overwhelmed by this news and told him I was very interested. He told me that Burt Schneider and Bob Raphelson, at Columbia had based their idea for "The Monkees" on "The Beatles" movie "A Hard Days Night" so you know how excited I must have been about doing it.
A meeting was set up and I was scheduled to meet with the producers at Columbia. It seems to me that Phil Turetsky had intervened for whatever purpose in the black comedy he'd been viewing concerning the career of Bobby Jameson. I guess he thought that he could do a better job than what he'd watched others do without success.
I arrived at Columbia Studios down on Gower St. in Hollywood I think and was ushered right in without any trouble, that in itself was different from what I'd been getting used to. I met Raphelson and Schneider right off and then David Jones who had already been chosen as the first "Monkee". They were all extremely nice and very excited about meeting me it was a very positive experience. I asked if the show was really going to be as hip as "A Hard Days Night" and they assured me it would be that hip, but from the very beginning I kind of got the feeling that it was going to be exactly the way it turned out to be, kind of lame.
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