Porn Agent Managed Young BN
 

[He will write whole chapter just on Stevie]

Fugues.com Par : Richard Burnett [19-03-2013]

http://www.fugues.com/main.cfm?l=fr&...rubrique_ID=90

“I just love it that Stevie is a star!” says David Forest, the Hollywood porn super agent who began his storied showbiz career managing gay and rock icon Stevie Nicks back in 1966. Back then both Nicks was a student at San Jose University and Forest attended Stanford University.


“I was a freshman and social chairman of my dorm,” Forest recalls. “Seeing a chance to make money by getting other dorms and fraternities and high schools to book the top local bands that I was hiring at my dorm, I created the David Forest Booking Agency. Most of the little groups were happy if they made $125 for four 45-minute sets. I’d make a $25 fee on top of that. But not Stevie’s band, The Fritz Rabyne Memorial Band [later shortened to Fritz]. They’d only do three sets and wanted $150 net. I had to get my $25 fee ‘on top’ and they refused to do the 'must-do' frat-gig songs, Louie/Louie, Gloria and – most importantly – Satisfaction.”

David Forest went on to work for legendary rock promoter Bill Graham (who owned the Fillmore) before David Geffen asked Forest to head up the contemporary music division at CMA in 1970. There they moulded the careers of Leon Russell, James Taylor, Carole King, Van Morrison and The Carpenters, who, Forest says, he took “from a little boy-and-sister act to international headliners.”

While Forest flaunted his gayness, Geffen was closeted. “But we were open to each other,” Forest says.

In those heady years Forest also personally managed, among others, Stevie Nicks, Mickey Thomas of Jefferson Starship, Elvin Bishop, Shaun Cassidy, Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe and Quiet Riot (whose singer Kevin DuBrow died of a cocaine overdose in 2007 and whose onetime guitarist Randy Rhoads died in a 1982 plane crash after joining Ozzy Osbourne’s band).

But Forest – then one of the top concert producers in the western USA – lost his shirt in 1978 financing a TV special with Alice Cooper, The Kinks and Nazareth. So he turned to the gay-porn biz, literally turning Ryan Idol and Ken Ryker into superstars. Along the way he also became the world’s most famous “male madam,” arrested twice for pandering.

In other words, Forest went from rock to cock.

Now he’s writing all about it – warts and all – in his upcoming memoirs.

“I’m talking about everything – the arrests, prison, my famous clients. And there’ll be a whole chapter just on Stevie.”

Nicks appears to be the one client Forest was most fond of. “Fritz weren’t as popular as Santana or Big Brother & the Holding Company, and [when] the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service got recording contracts, Fritz was still playing high schools. But I knew Stevie would be a star the night Fritz opened for Janis Joplin and Big Brother at the Fillmore. After her band members left I told Stevie, ‘Stay and meet Janis.’ Stevie looked at Janis and she saw herself in her.”

Eventually the egos of the male band members killed Fritz.

“The boys didn’t want to have a ‘lead’ singer, let alone a female lead singer,” Forest explains. “They resented Stevie being the centre of attention. I did everything possible to convince them they were missing the boat. In the end Lindsay [Buckingham] and Stevie [quit] and Fritz didn’t survive their departure.”

Forest put together a showcase of the newly named Buckingham-Nicks duo at the penthouse of the Hyatt on Sunset but, Forest says, “It didn’t produce any [record company] bidders.”

So Buckingham-Nicks split with Forest, scored a Polydor record deal and came back to Forest (temporarily) in 1974 when Fleetwood Mac came calling. “I got the call from Stevie that Mick Fleetwood wanted them to join [his band]. It wasn’t a very good deal – no part of the publishing. They were just paid sidemen, really. But that changed real quickly.”

The problems that broke up Fritz began to plague Fleetwood Mac as Nicks again became the band’s undisputed star. But nearly 40 years after joining the band, Stevie is still with Fleetwood Mac, who are currently headlining their first tour in three years and will play at Montreal’s Bell Centre on June 18.

When asked what it is about Stevie (whose most recent solo album was the Dave Stewart-produced In Your Dreams in 2011) that has made her a gay icon (there is even the famous all-star drag-queen tribute in NYC each spring called Night of a Thousand Stevies which Nicks says she will one day attend in disguise), Forest replies without missing a beat: “Gay men have always loved their dance divas, but Stevie has always appealed to the gay guy rockers. It’s the outfits, the twirling, the persona. The gay guys just really dig her.”

As for Forest – after seeing both the music and porn businesses decimated by the digital revolution – he keeps plugging away, writing his memoirs and looking for his next big star. Says the man I call The Starmaker, “I’ll probably die at my desk.”

Find it interesting that Fritz refused to do the cover songs that people wanted to hear at their parties. They were part of a group with standards, even then.

Michele

I'd be interested to know more about this. I had read before that Lindsey and Stevie were not hired as full partners in the band. But I thought both of them had their own publishing. She had Welsh Witch, he had New Sounds Music. Christine had Fleetwood Mac publishing on the White album, if I recall. Did they not receive publishing royalties for their own music? If anyone could clarify, please help.

I believe Stevie and Lindsey set up their publishing when they joined FM or shortly thereafter. Sounds like Mick had wanted them to just get paid a salary and that was pretty much it (which, btw, is what Jon BonJovi does to all his band members).

Well we know Mick/the band started paying them right away. Stevie has mentioned how it was nice to get what was, to them, a lot of money on a regular basis after they had been struggling. But the publishing would have had to come quickly. Mick couldn't have thought Lindsey and Stevie were going to write songs for the band and not collect royalties.

Very interesting, although I disagree that Stevie's superstar status was an issue for Fleetwood Mac. Mick was all too happy to have another superstar (the first being Peter Green), Christine was all too happy to not be the focal point, and John was happy to be playing.

The only person it may have been an issue for was Lindsey, and he was the only one who had been in Fritz with Stevie and was the one who insisted that he wouldn't join without Stevie. His resentment over Stevie's status was old baggage that he should have gotten over by that point.

I don't think that it bothered him until they broke up..... :cool:

Gay and rock Icon? Umm. Stevie is not Cher. Sure, gay people like her, but I hardly think she is a GAY ICON. Sure, she has a gay following. But hey... Star Trek has gay fans, and I hardly think Star Trek is a GAY TV SHOW. Gay icons typically are the ones that mostly survive off the gays. Like Cher, Britney, Kylie, Bette etc. Take away the gays and those stars will starve!

Stevie has plenty of non-gay fans. Back in the 70s 80's and starting again in 97 and till now she has been just a ROCK icon. Hell, most the only people I know that like her were straight women. I hardly know any gay men that like her. Most are so focused on reality tv and whatever ho-bag skank ala-Britney/Christina that they don't know good music and lyrics.

OH, And all the concerts of hers I have been to mostly were attended by middle aged Trailer Park Cat Women and husband/wives that must have loved Fleetwood Mac back when they were in college. When I see Fleetwood Mac concerts its a mix of middle aged Baby Boomers and some sprinklings of pretty much everything else. Stop trying to make Stevie Nicks a gay icon. She belongs to everyone!

One can be a gay icon and still belong to everyone. Believe me, Stevie IS a gay icon. She is HUGE in the gay community. But she is more than that, too.

For what it's worth, I am gay and don't give a hoot about Cher. And I don't watch reality tv. I read books.

But they were already broken up by the time it happened.

Item: Night of a Thousand Stevies. Case closed.

Their B&N album cover would sell alot of Playboy mags that year if it was printed on the cover of Playboy Penthouse,Hustler and those other skin mags.

I wonder if Stevie has ever met Ryan Idol or Ken Ryker...? :cool:

Preach it brother!!!!:nod:......I can give a rats a** about Cher, Barbra or Liza.

I believe Lindsey's publishing company is Now Sounds Music, which he still uses to this day.