Kirjahaku

A go-getting, red-headed college kid eager to break into the music business, Phil Gernhard produced a handful of singles for South Carolina doo-wop group Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs. One of these songs, ""Stay,"" reached number one on the charts in 1960. Gernhard was just 19 years old.Phil Gernhard, Record Man is the story of a self-made music mogul who created nearly fifty years' worth of chart-topping songs. From a tiny office and studio in Florida, he co-wrote the Royal Guardsmen's ""Snoopy vs. the Red Baron,"" America's fastest-selling single of 1966. He revived the career of singer Dion DiMucci with the ballad ""Abraham, Martin and John""-a million seller. He discovered and produced hit records for Lobo, Jim Stafford, and the Bellamy Brothers. Through a long collaboration with music business icon Mike Curb, he launched to fame many others, including country superstars Tim McGraw and Rodney Atkins. In Nashville and Los Angeles, Phil Gernhard was a legend.Yet Gernhard's private life was crumbling. He battled physical and emotional demons that he simply couldn't overcome, struggling with alcoholism, drug addiction, and a bad past with his father. He filed for his fourth divorce just months before taking his own life in 2008.Through interviews with Gernhard's musicians, business partners, family members, and ex-wives, Bill DeYoung offers an intimate portrait of a brilliant yet troubled man who channeled his talent, ego, and ambition into the success of others. A true ""record man,"" Gernhard did it all. He lived to make records into gold, to make unknowns into stars, and above all, to make music.

Published by St. Petersburg Press, I Need to Know includes 23 revealing conversations with seminal music artists including Tom Petty (four lengthy interviews conducted between 1985 and 1993), Beatles producer Sir George Martin, Neil Young, Merle Haggard, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, Bo Diddley, Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson and others.The majority of these in-depth interviews have never been published in their entirety. They were conducted for various newspaper stories - which utilized a few quotes here and there - or for the international music magazine Goldmine in the 1990s and early '00s.

Bill DeYoung "takes a prideful romp through some of the quirkiest carefree and fun-loving experiences of our boomer childhood. He gently reminds us that history has occurred, too, in our lifetime. For those new to our city or interested to learn more, it'll quickly help you discover the tremendous breadth of activities our city had generated to attract people to our peninsula and separate them from their hard-earned vacation pay." From the foreword by Chris Steinocher, CEO of the St. Petersburg, FL Area Chamber of Commerce.

Phil Gernhard was not only the most successful record producer to come out of Florida, he introduced many of the state's homegrown artists to the world stage - including Jim Stafford ("Spiders & Snakes"), Lobo ("Me and You and a Dog Named Boo") the Bellamy Brothers ("Let Your Love Flow") and the Royal Guardsmen ("Snoopy vs. the Red Baron," which he also co-authored). Gernhard started young. He was just 19 when he produced "Stay," a worldwide No. 1 by South Carolina's doo-wop group Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs. After a decade of making hits back in Florida - including Dion's original version of "Abraham, Martin and John," one of the most-recorded songs in history - he worked his magic first in Los Angeles and then in Nashville, where as head of Artists & Repertoire for Curb Records, he engineered the careers of Tim McGraw, Rodney Atkins and others. Yet for all his success, Gernhard was a deeply troubled man whose personal life was ravaged by alcoholism and drug abuse, four failed marriages and a simmering hatred towards his abusive father. Told with comments from his family, friends, business associates and nearly every singer and songwriter he produced, Record Man is the story of a man for whom music was a life raft. Enigma, wunderkind, control freak, visionary, raconteur, artist advocate, shameless hustler and, in the end, kind heart, Gernhard spent four-and-a-half decades chasing recording art and blatant novelty with the same dogged determination. Success and failure being the hallmarks of the go-for-broke A&R man, Gernhard's achievements in the music business rival those of Rick Hall, Mike Curb, Phil Walden and perhaps even Sam Phillips.Rodney Crowell, Singer/songwriter DeYoung hooks Phil Gernhard's genius, discipline and love of music -- right up to the side of his self-indulgent, carny, smarmy business practices. I had no idea what a huge swath of great work he'd cut, starting right in his own back yard. Much like every music executive, just when you start to love Phil, you want to beat him with a rake.Stan Lynch, Founding member of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers