In a new conversation with The French Connection, Kiss manager Doc McGhee talked about managing, music business and others.
He was asked to explain how he’s selecting the artists, he said:
“Artists, the ones I pick anyway, the ones I end up with, are pretty much autistic in a certain sense – not derogatory.
“What autism is, it’s not being able to focus on the center, on what everybody else focuses on. So, Prince is not focused on f*cking what everybody is doing.
“All these people – Motley, Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses, none of them were – because they focused on the right stuff, so it takes somebody that’s maybe autistic, like myself maybe, to kind of go fishing in deep water, and find these f*cking people.”
Asked- Are you ‘autistic’ on the management side?
“I think so – because I believe that nothing good comes from the middle, I think it’s just the middle. People beat you down into the f**king middle, man, that’s what they do.
“I’ll tell you a Skid Row story. Skid Row had ’18 and Life,’ big f**king hit. The record company, everybody else wanted them to go more ’18 and Life’ – ‘Do another ’18 and Life,’ don’t do this.’
“My brother Scott came to me and said, ‘They’re going to do ‘Slave to the Grind.” And they did – because that was them.
“So, they had to go against it and go in the f**king deeper water and not go to the middle because everybody will beat you into the f**king middle, that’s what happens – because ‘you have to have a hit.’
“The reason why you had the hit was A) It was a pretty good song, and what you say, you were sexy, you had good material, and you worked hard.
“There are people like Jon Bon Jovi, who may not be the most talented cat in the world as far as singing and stuff, but nobody could outwork that f**king guy.
“Man, he’s unbelievable, and he honed his craft from day one – and he worked, and he worked. Dierks Bentley is the same way, he works his a** off to be that.
“And managers just, there’s very few of them out there, there’s a handful of f**king good managers. There are some people that get lucky with an artist, ‘Oh, I signed Justin Bieber‘ – bam, now you’re a big manager.
“Tim Collins with Aerosmith, he was the best manager for Aerosmith, he was the glue that kept them together, he was the guy that saved them money, kept them together, all that kind of stuff.
“That was amazing. He couldn’t manage anybody else, but then he didn’t have to, that wasn’t his f**king goal.”