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After the mini-concert at Toni Wine’s birthday party, I was standing near the bar when an older gentleman approached me.

“Hello, Paul,” he said, gripping my hand in a firm shake. “I’m Al Cooley.”

My brain started flipping through my internal filing cabinet, let’s see… Capra, Carlson, Celine, Cool and the Gang… no wait, that’s with a ‘K’ I think… Coolidge, back up… oh, here it is, Cooley, Al - A&R rep for Atlantic Records, works under Rick Blackburn. Oh shit.*

“It’s great to finally meet you, Mr. Cooley.” I managed to stammer.

“Oh please, call me Al. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

“Absolutely.” We grabbed a seat.

“Look, I probably shouldn’t be talking to you, but I can’t in good conscience leave you in the dark,” he paused. “I need you to promise that you will keep what I say to you between me, you, and the band. I can’t risk Delious or that LA slimeball Jeff hearing about it.”

“No problem, Al. I don’t have any trouble keeping things from them.”

“Good. Here’s the deal, we’ve heard the demo that you guys cut. We love it. It’s going to be huge. But I understand that you guys haven’t yet signed an agreement with Delious?”

I told him that we hadn’t, and gave him a rough outline of the reasons why we were rejecting the contract. I explained that Matt and I were really the only ones that were the holdout, and I apologized to him for causing such a problem.

“Wait a second,” he interrupted, “there’s no reason to apologize to me for this. Rick and I don’t know anything about the contract that he’s trying to get you to sign with him.” He stopped for a minute, and his face grew red. “Delious told us that there was no problem, and he was only taking a small percentage as a manager of the group. We are offering a 15 point deal.”

I told him that Delious hadn’t told us anything about the deal with Atlantic, in fact he had refused to talk about it until we had signed an agreement with him.

“Ok, here’s the deal. I don’t want to do business with this asshole Delious anymore. We are not in the habit of screwing our artists. It’s a bad business practice and doesn’t make us any friends. When we give out a record contract, we want a long term good working relationship with the artist. This is infuriating.”

Al was getting redder by the moment. “What you don’t know is that Delious is on a deadline to deliver you guys to us. As a matter of fact, he has 48 hours left to walk you guys into our office.”

“Al, we haven’t gotten a response from Delious to our changes to the contract. Even if it came in today, there’s no way that Matt and I will have had time to meet with our attorney to agree to the contract even if they conceded our changes.” I was feeling a bit panicked.

“That’s perfect,” he replied. “If Delious isn’t able to deliver you, then you guys become free agents. I can approach you and sign you guys directly to Atlantic. No production deals, no management bullshit, more importantly, no Delious or Jeff. All you have to do is wait 48 hours.”

This was the best news I think I had ever heard. We were going to get our record deal and it was going to be even better than I had imagined. There were going to be no issues with songwriting royalties, no merchandising issues, and we were going to get 3 points each!

Al gave me his cell phone number and his card with his office number on it. I gave him my information and we promised to be in touch over the next couple of days. He told me that I should call the other guys and let them know what was going on, but to make sure no one talked to Delious about it in the meantime.

As he was leaving, he told me, “If all else fails, I’ll sign you and that other guy… what’s his name, Matthew? Yeah… I’ll sign you and Matthew as a duo. You guys are the singers anyway.” He then walked over to Toni and thanked her for the personal invitation to the party. “You were right,” he told her, “it was definitely worth it for me to come and meet Paul.”

Toni had arranged the whole thing.

* Yes, my brain actually works this way. Scary, isn’t it?