Harold Bronson has already garnered the lifelong appreciation of two generations for music nerds for—along with partner Richard Foos—co-founding Rhino Records. Then and now the best label for not only reissuing long-lost bands and records from the ‘60s and ‘70s, but mining vaults for unreleased material (though the pair are no longer involved with the label).
But Bronson was also a music journalist, gadfly, and perhaps most importantly, a fan. So, he’s met and been around or involved with a lot of musicians over the course of his life. A lot. He’s put a four decades of those experiences in bite-sized ruminations and reflections in Time Has Come Today: Rock and Roll Diaries 1967-2007 (433 pp., $22.50, Trouser Press).
And the word “diaries” is true as the vast majority of Bronson’s entries are from his actual diary. They give an immediacy and era-appropriate feel, though he sparely interjects more current reflections.
The musician encounters read like a ‘60s/Classic Rock station playlist as Bronson tells stories of the Monkees, the Turtles, Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits (and these three entities the most), John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful, Badfinger, Arthur Lee of Love, Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders, and Peter Asher of Peter and Gordon (though they are after their respective chart heydays).
AC/DC, Paul Anka, Stephen Bishop, Gene Simmons, Ozzy Osbourne, George Carlin, and even the King of the One Liners, comic Henny Youngman, appear.
Bronson starts out as a collegiate music journalist, writing for UCLA’s The Daily Bruin and then syndicating to larger newspapers and magazines. And he’s got his bullshit detector on early.
When on his very first in-person interview in 1969, Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees tells him he played the guitar lead on “Something” and bass on a couple songs on the then-new Abbey Road album from the Beatles, it doesn’t sound right. Nor his claim that both George Harrison and Eric Clapton would appear on the next Bee Gees record. None of it was true.
When former Animal Eric Burdon come to speak at Bronson’s Aesthetics of Rock class, his diary entry for Tuesday, April 28, 1970, is succinct: “From his incoherent ‘love’ ramblings it appeared he was under the influenced of LSD. He wasted everybody’s time.”
Bronson then does stints as a college record rep and sings in an ad hoc band, while also working in the Rhino brick-and-mortar record store and as a magazine writer.
Continuing to freelance after graduation, the first person in life he’s ever seen with tattoos happens to be Ozzy Osbourne. The then 23-year-old Prince of Darkness was dripping wet in nothing but swimming trunks at a hotel pool before Bronson joined them in the studio while they record Vol. 4.
The stories come at a rat-a-tat pace. He goes to a press party to introduce an English comedy troupe called Monty Python but can’t think of anything to ask (he admire the albums, but the TV show hadn’t appeared in the U.S. yet).
He smokes a joint—possibly laced with angel dust—backstage with the nascent New York Dolls. He’s unimpressed with a new group KISS’s 20-minute set at a lavish Casablanca Records party but loves seeing Tim Curry and Meat Loaf perform live in The Rocky Horror Picture Show musical. He catches a double bill at L.A.’s Whisky a Go-Go featuring two new bands supporting their debut albums: Blondie and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Record nerds will find Bronson’s attempts to license older material for release from curmudgeonly (and sometimes substance-addled) artists, tight-fisted master tape holders, and the disapproving pundits interesting.
But Rhino fans know and appreciate their efforts to expand and promote the catalogs of the Turtles, Love, and the Monkees specifically.
Bronson was even able to reunite the four Monkees by organizing a 1995 ceremony in which each member was given a platinum record for each of their first five albums. His recounting of the limo ride he took with the quartet to the ceremony (and a trio back) will only make fans pine more for the never-realized full reunion tour (Jones was the first to die in 2012).
The diary entries get sparser as the years progress and Rhino is swallowed up by the larger Time Warner Company (with Bronson and Foos being shown the door with little appreciation).
Efforts to launch a film division are met with unfulfilled dreams. Though Bronson’s reflection on his many meetings with Gene Simmons of KISS to launch a collaboration are interesting.
Harold Bronson has seen and done so much over the course of his career in the music biz. And readers of Time Has Come Today will be glad they were a passenger on his magic carpet ride of memories.
