Berklee today

JUN 2017

Berklee today is the official alumni publication of Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. It is a forum for contemporary music and musicians.

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Summer 2017 15 "Jimmy [Iovine] asked me how I got to where will.i.am wanted me to manage him when every superstar manager in the game would have killed to manage him at that point in time." class," he confesses. "I was making excuses for what I was doing. Tonic Productions had failed and I was wasting my father's hard-earned tuition money. I was caught in a cycle of partying, trying to make records, and being the road manager for Lettuce." Around that time he learned that his friend Jeff Goldman from Long Island had committed suicide. It was like a splash of ice water in the face. "That shook me and was a pivotal moment in my life," he says. "My friend Danny Berzak from home was floundering like I was and we both decided it was time to get our lives to- gether. Things were going the wrong way and we knew that we needed to get jobs. I told my dad that I was going to leave college." In 1999, Frank Jacobson steered Neil toward a job with one of his clients, Stark Carpet. "My dad said that if I worked there I would learn the basics of sales and account management. I had gotten similar advice from a guy I caddied for named Tom Ennis, who was a vice president at Arista Records at the time. Tom told me to just get any job and learn how to work in a company. So I became a carpet salesman in Boston and loved it. I later transferred to their New York office." An interior designer named Kenny Alpert met Jacobson through Stark in New York and lured him to his company. But after about a year, Alpert corroborated Jacobson's inner feeling that he wasn't lit up about the business he was in. "It happened when I took Kenny out to see my friend's band," Jacobson remembers. "He told me that I should be in music because he could see that I had a passion for it. I realized then that I had to get back into the music industry and called Tom Ennis to ask him for a job at Arista. He said no, but arranged an internship for me." At Arista, Jacobson met Nichole Plantin, an assistant to Pharrell Williams and jumped to another internship at Williams's record label, Star Trak Entertainment. A Berklee friend, Mike Meeker '99, alerted Jacobson to an opening for an assistant in Interscope's international department. He interviewed successfully and scored his first official job at a record label in 2003. He packed a couple of duffel bags and his golf clubs and prepared to move to Los Angeles. "I couldn't have been more excited," he says. "The week that I was hired at Interscope, my family learned that my father had multiple myeloma, bone cancer," Jacobson says. "I decided I'd pass on the job and stay in New York. But my father told me to take the job. He said there was nothing that would break his heart more than to know that his cancer caused me not to take my dream job. I knew he was right, and I moved out here." His father fought the cancer for eight years before passing away in 2011. He did, however, live long enough to see his son thrive in his chosen field. Taking Flight Jacobson scaled another rung on the ladder when he was promoted to international publicist from assistant. "It was a tremendous job traveling all over the world looking af- ter the marketing and promotional efforts for the artists," he says. "I was making about $40,000 a year working 20- hour days and couldn't have been more psyched. I worked for Martin Kierzenbaum who was a real disciplinarian, he could be hard, but he did it with love." Jacobson spent the next five years traveling the world with the Black Eyed Peas, Eminem, 50 Cent, Fergie, Robin Thicke, and many others, bringing Interscope's artists to press conferences, radio and TV appearances, and other events. Getting the artists to events was a little like herding cats at times Jacobson recalls. But through those experiences he built solid bonds with his artists. Jacobson had worked closely with will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas as the band became red hot. When will.i.am parted ways with his manager, he asked Jacobson to co-manage him. "I couldn't do that while working at Interscope, so figured I'd leave the label and manage Will," Jacobson says. "But he said he wanted me to stay at Interscope and manage him and that Jimmy Iovine wanted me to do this. I told him that Jimmy didn't even know who I was." That night, to Jacobson's surprise, his phone rang. It was Iovine telling him to come right over to his house. Walking into Iovine's kitchen, Jacobson saw Kierzenbaum who had told Iovine that Jacobson was tight with Will. "That was my break," Jacobson says. "Jimmy asked me how I got to where will.i.am wanted me to manage him when every superstar manager in the game would have killed to manage him at that point in time. Jimmy tried to talk me out of leaving Interscope to go into management. But I told him that I wanted to manage Will. He didn't want me to leave. He said he thought I'd be crazy to leave the company." Iovine offered Jacobson a substantial raise and said he and Interscope's lawyers would work out the conflict of interest issues involved with one person repre- senting both the interests of the label and their artist. Iovine established Interscope Management and made Jacobson its senior vice president for A&R; and manage- ment. It was big break for Jacobson. He applied his energy and passion and got big results. Some other artists he had worked with wanted him to manage them. "When I worked as a publicist, I was with the artists in Japan, Italy, or Russia, always hanging out with them," he says. "They saw that I was a good salesman, energetic, artic- ulate, and that I could talk people into things." Jacobson continued managing Jeff Bhasker—his friend from their Berklee days—as an independent producer, but also took on Interscope artist Robin Thicke. He signed LMFAO to will.i.am's label and began representing more artists and producers. "I co-signed Avicii from Sweden to Troy Carter's label Atom Factory within Interscope, and his ca- reer exploded," Jacobson says. "I took on [producers] Emile Haynie and Martin Terefe and they started catching hits." Overseeing A&R;, Jacobson built a solid reputation as someone with an ear for hits and an eye for spotting talent. He also learned how to push songs he believed in through the UMG organization. "Knowing the infrastructure of UMG, I became an expert in the global exploitation of our records," Jacobson says. "I also understood the flow of a record and the time it takes to disseminate it throughout the world and how to conduct the symphony of an inter- national marketing campaign to make sure that all of our territories know what we are doing at once. There are thou- sands of people around the world to coordinate with. It is a great job for an ADHD crazy person like myself who can handle talking to 32 territories with different needs." Multiplatinum songs on Jacobson's résumé include "Boom Boom Pow" and I Gotta Feeling" (Black Eyed Peas), "Sexy and I Know It" and "Party Rock Anthem" (LMFAO),

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