Pete Ganbarg. Photo Courtesy of Pete Ganbarg.
Pete Ganbarg, the President of Pure Tone Music, chatted about his latest “Rock & Roll High School” podcast with Tony Orlando, which premiered today.
Season 4 has already featured interviews with legends like Chaka Khan, Billy Gibbons (ZZ TOP), and Chris Difford (Squeeze).
What would you like to tell readers about this season of the Rock & Roll High School podcast?
It’s been a great honor to be able to have such great candid conversations with the legendary artists, songwriters and producers who have been joining us for our podcast.
The vision behind the show has always been to tell the story of the history of contemporary music in the words of the people who helped create it. We’re about to post our 50th interview and I’m very proud of our new season.
The guests are terrific – including some that I’ve signed and worked with before, which makes it even more personal.
The newest episode (out today) features Tony Orlando who has had an incredible career spanning decades.
What was the most surprising or memorable story he shared during your conversation? Did he reveal anything that even longtime fans might not know?
As a kid growing up in suburban New York City in the 1970’s and 1980’s, Tony Orlando was everywhere. His songs were on the radio, his variety show was on TV and every Labor Day, he would co-host Jerry Lewis’ Labor Day Telethon which we all watched every year.
So, it felt like he was always in the background of my life while I was growing up. It wasn’t until I got older until I realized that we actually both did the same job – in between having hits as a performer, Tony was a music publisher and he worked closely with several of my former bosses so it was fun to talk about that and have that moment come full circle.
There’s also a great moment in the episode where we play a long lost clip from the first year of Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 about the hit “Candida” which Tony had never heard before. Those moments are a lot of fun.
Who is at the top of your list of dream guests that you haven’t interviewed yet?
When you’re trying to tell the story of the history of an art form that is infinite, there are so many stories yet to be told.
I like that we’re genre-blind which just gives us more opportunities to speak to a wide array of amazing artists who all have such unique stories to tell.
As a two-time Grammy Award-winning record producer and a longtime A&R executive, what’s the most important piece of advice you would give aspiring artists or A&R professionals?
It’s an extremely competitive business which is always changing and always evolving.
I think that by being counterintuitive and studying everything that’s come before and understanding why certain songs and artists have succeeded, while others have not, it helps A&R’s understand where the business is going because history tends to always repeat.
You need to work hard and network hard. If you’re not, someone else will and those opportunities will always go to the hardest worker.
With the rise of AI-generated music, how do you see the role of A&R evolving in the next decade?
AI will help but it won’t replace the art and science of core A&R which has always been to figure out what the audience will want to hear before they even know themselves.
No machine can predict the vagaries of human nature and opinion.
What’s the biggest challenge in discovering and developing artists today compared to when you first started in the industry?
There’s no barrier to entry anymore in terms of getting your music heard. Which means, that with over 100K+ new songs being uploaded to digital service providers daily, there’s more noise and traffic out there.
It’s much harder to get and hold the public’s attention.
You’ve worked with so many legendary artists—has there ever been a “pinch-me” moment in your career?
When our Santana album “Supernatural” won 9 Grammy’s on the same night, that was an out of body experience for sure.
Just this week, that album was inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame in its first year of eligibility. It just shows that an idea that feels like a long-shot may actually end up making history.