Interview with Daniel Glass
Daniel Glass is the founder and CEO of Glassnote Records.
"I Love To Take A Photograph”
Contents
Daniel Glass: I did a lot of homework and there are some common themes in your interviews. It is interesting how belief in God comes up — it gets interesting when you ask some of the most learned and educated people on earth about belief or non-belief in God.
Max Raskin: You can't say that without that being the first question I ask you! Do you believe in God?
DG: Yes. Yes.
MR: Do you believe in an afterlife?
DG: Yes. I believe a lot in karma. I think you are preparing for coming generations.
MR: But do you feel like you will have a personal consciousness after you die?
DG: I don't think about that or know about that or dwell on it. Unfortunately, I lost both my parents in the last five years. My mother passed away in June and my father passed away almost five years ago. And I speak to them as much as ever. I feel them. I want my mother's approval as every Jewish boy does.
When we won the Grammy for Silvana Estrada, all I thought about was my mother that night.
MR: So this big wall of you with famous people in your office — is this the Jewish boy wanting to make his mother proud?
DG: It's magical moments. I'm very big into cameras. If you worked for me or with me for the last 40 years, you had to do two things. You had to own a camera and you had to read the Sunday New York Times cover-to-cover.
It’s interesting when you ask someone to take a picture, or they ask you to take a picture, how they smile. And one thing you'll see on my wall is the amount of joy.
The only person that doesn't smile is Al Pacino because he was ordered under the doctors not to speak after his performance. It was a Bertolt Brecht play, and he couldn't speak out of doctor's orders. But everybody else is smiling, I think.
MR: Do you take pictures with your cell phone?
DG: Now, I do, yeah.
MR: Do you share them?
DG: I share it with the people I think it would mean something to. I really believe that. And I think I prefer a candid picture to preserve a moment, and then I send them to people and they're so happy.
And I always tell people, "I know I'm annoying you, but you're going to thank me one day." And I've never ever been yelled at because of that. And I've had people secretly saying, "I really appreciate you doing that."
I learned the lesson. At my wedding, we voted for no film. We're married now 41 years, and my uncle Joe, may he rest in peace, he had his old Super 8 camera, and he shot about seven minutes of film. We've watched it thousands of times. I'm so happy he captured it in his own awkward, crude way what was going on there.
But I think gratuitous selfies and lack of focus is not good.
MR: Is there anyone who you've taken a picture with who didn't want to take a picture with you?
DG: Yeah, Steve Martin wasn't happy. We were in Philadelphia. He wasn't happy. And he said, "But I'll do it."
With Silvana Estrada
I think you’d be surprised by how many people really want to take a picture when you think they're unapproachable. I always think it's like the prettiest girl in school and you ask her to the prom and she says, "I'll go with you." And you say, "Really?” Because no one else asks.
I find that the top of the corporate media ladder, the person on top rarely gets asked to listen to a record or look at a movie because they're so high up that they've delegated it out and they're out of touch.
MR: That’s true! If you just email people at the top, you’d be surprised who responds immediately.
DG: Well, that's it. I remember I've had moments in my career when I would call Mo Ostin and he'd respond within minutes. David Geffen, Allen Grubman, Berry Gordy, Irving Azoff — the most responsive people in our business to this day.
And I asked a couple of them, "Why do you respond so quickly?"
I got this from the former head of ICM, Jeff Berg, who said to me, "I want to meet with you, but it will only be for 20 minutes.” Adam Grant from UPenn said something like, “Make yourself accessible, but not for that much and not for that long, but take that meeting. You'll never know who it is. You might have an idiot or a jerk once in a while but you'll be turned onto something. You'll pay it back in the karma bank. It'll be good for your soul. Good for the future, but just keep it in small segments."
“This Is The End”
MR: What's the last song you listened to fully?
DG: We were leaving Florida the other day and I wanted to hear the whole side of Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert. We played the entire side on vinyl, and it was a beautiful way to leave before we got on the plane. I listened to the whole side and I waited for the applause.
I'm a big finisher. I finish books. I read the back cover, the side cover. I finish every movie. I watch the credits. I finish every marathon.
One of the worst questions I’ve ever been asked is, "How many marathons did you finish?" Of course, I finished them all!
And I think it's a metaphor of what's wrong with the world. People do not finish. They don't see it through. The commitment is not there.
MR: Sometimes, I will want to just finish something up and check it off my list rather than wait. This can be a problem when I don’t let things ripen.
DG: I share that with you. And it's a compulsion I have. I can't call it an addiction, but I was a big magazine reader. When more magazines were in print, I had to read every one of them. If it was about gardening, I'd read it. Fashion, I'd read it.
With Marcus Mumford at the NYC Marathon
I will read a book even if by the middle it’s mediocre. I'll finish it. And I think that's a mistake, but I have to do it. It's important.
DG: I did A&R [artists and repertoire] last night. I listened to one song about 15 times. We are doing a French-English collaboration with our new artist, Patrick Martin, and a very popular singer in France called Adé and I think I listened to the new mix somewhere between 12 and 15 times.
MR: How do you listen to music? Are you an audiophile?
DG: Well, I try and listen as the regular person does when it is for work. So even though I've got a pair of amazing speakers from Poland which my friend Troy Germano designed in my house I save those for pleasure. Listening for work is also for pleasure but I need to listen as fans and consumers do. It is important to listen to it on a laptop. I also have a brand of headphones I love from B&W which our team gave me for my birthday. We have a Como Audio single music system which is excellent too.
But number one way to listen is in the car. Number one is the car by far.
MR: Do you listen to talk radio at all?
DG: No. If there's a very important sports program, I'll put it on. But I do homework. I still have the people that work with us here make me up CDs and I play them randomly to listen to music. I don't want to know who the lawyer is, who the manager is. I want to hear the music. That's my homework. And I love long drives because I can listen to music over and over and over again.
MR: You don't put on the radio?
DG: I do, I do. We just drove to Connecticut and back and I played Alt Nation from SiriusXM, Sirius XMU, the Pulse and then I put WFUV on for a little bit. Then once in a while when I want guilty pleasures, I put on Sirius Hits 1.
“There Used To Be A Ballpark”
MR: Do you get really deep into bands the way people are with the Grateful Dead, for instance?
DG: Growing up, it was The Who. I had to have everything…because it was competitive when I grew up.
It was also baseball cards and Challenge the Yankees and Strat-O-Matic; I was a baseball freak and a fan.
MR: Are you still a Yankee fan?
DG: Big Yankee fan still.
I played Challenge the Yankees which was a board game. And you had to really memorize the cards and yes, I traded Topps trading cards. But then I got into music and collecting every song on the WMCA 57 (570 AM) — I collected every single for years. I had every single of the top 57. Every single.
I discovered dance, R&B, soul music at a young age. And I have an older sister who was much more into hippie rock — she turned me onto Joni [Mitchell]. Laura Nyro was the first singer she actually turned me onto. She was into Jackson Browne. She was into CSNY, the Laurel Canyon sound, Buffalo Springfield. I still think country rock might be my favorite. On a desert island — if I bring in Simon & Garfunkel, I'd be happy.
But I felt I differentiated myself by learning about soul music and learning about another culture that I didn't have access to.
“Keep Me In Your Heart For A While”
MR: The name of your record label, Glassnote — is that a joke on glasnost?
DG: Yes. You're one of the few people who would know that.
When I came up with the word, it wasn't a takeoff of Blue Note. It was that Gorbachev was in power and my friend Drew made me Post-it notepads that said, “Glasnotes." Because Gorbachev used two words, glasnost and perestroika. It was so much about inclusion and openness.
MR: I knew we need to talk about things other than music, but I see a gold record plaque of Warren Zevon behind you, and I love Warren Zevon.
DG: I had the fortune to work with Warren at Artemis Records through my dear friend Danny Goldberg and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life, but it did not start off well. He's a curmudgeon, he's a difficult man.
My quick story of Warren is how we became close. Danny said, "I'm signing Warren because Jackson [Browne] asked us to sign Warren.”
If you know anything about Warren, he had a crazy rider requiring diet Mountain Dew and a certain weird deli sandwich in the morning. It's a meat sandwich, I forget it now, white bread with salami. It's a very crazy thing he had.
I didn't get it right, but I don't work for this guy. So we had a little argument and I was like, "I'm not doing this. This is so stupid.” And I'm dealing with him and Rickie Lee Jones, all these very difficult geniuses. But I didn't sign up for this.
So I get to the airport, I get on a quick plane from San Francisco to L.A., and the weather is delayed. I get bumped up to first class which was a big deal. Who am I sitting next to? Warren Zevon.
So I realize we're going to be delayed for hours and I say to him, "Why do you have to be such a jerk?" And he says to me, "I don't know. That's not really who I am." And we start talking about life. And I fell in love with him on that plane ride. And he has his girlfriend, this beautiful woman, meet us at the airport, give me a lift to my hotel and it began a whole new thing, those four hours.
And he really went into a lot of stuff about his life. And then of course he got sick, and I was there for the David Letterman show.
MR: I watched it — it was wrenching.
DG: One of the most emotional days of my life.
There's the euphoric moments of watching Phoenix and Daft Punk in Madison Square Garden. But there's also being at Saturday Night Live with Sinéad O'Connor ripping up the picture of the Pope. But the most gut wrenching, heart wrenching was Warren on Letterman. Had to be for me.
MR: I always misremember that he sung “Keep Me in Your Heart for a While”; it’s a Mandela effect thing.
DG: I just said that lyric at my friend's funeral. That was impossible for me to get through.
“Long Distance Runner, What You Standin’ There For?”
MR: So you run marathons?
DG: Yes.
MR: How many have you completed?
DG: 33.
MR: Do you listen to music when you run?
DG: Never. I listen to the music of the streets, and I smell the flavors of the streets in the neighborhoods. But I would never put headphones on for many reasons. Also, I'm afraid that I'm going to get hit.
MR: Do you get overstimulated when you're hearing too much music?
DG: No. It's because it’s what I do for a living and I need to know. But I love passive music though whether it's an airport lounge or going to Bloomingdale's…I will always listen.
We have a band called Flight Facilities from Australia. I hear their song “Crave you” everywhere. It's crazy. It happens almost every week. And I love the life of a song out of the radio station, out of the Spotify playlist, or out of SiriusXM. I love context and then hearing it on a TV show or somewhere.
MR: I still ended up asking you about music! I'm sure you have views about politics and about religion, but at least for me, everything is in music; music subsumes everything.
DG: You don't find yourself watching that movie two years later or 15 times in a row.
“שִׁירוּ לַהַ’ שִׁיר חָדָש”
MR: What does your Jewish practice look like?
DG: So it's changed a little bit in the pandemic and very personal to me is that we're active members of our synagogue in New York. It's pretty orthodox — Orach Chaim.
The rabbi, Rabbi Ben Skydell, is young and he loves hip hop. He's a Kendrick Lamar guy. And the senior rabbi who retired is Rabbi Michael Shmidman, who you'd love because he taught at Yeshiva University, City College and Brooklyn College. He was a major professor. Students would call him Mickey Michael Shmidman.
But it is the most welcoming, inclusive place. I've taken so many non-Jews and my artists there.
MR: Did you always go to an orthodox shul?
DG: Yes. We grew up orthodox in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn but we're not an ultra-orthodox family. We're a kosher home. But I find that I gravitate towards the formal strictness. And I love Chabad. Love.
When I'm in Princeton with Liam, I like to visit the Chabad Rabbi there. We were in Aspen over Christmas and Hanukkah, I davened with Rabbi Mintz. They're the most unbelievable people on the planet though, to be in Chabad.
MR: Do you sing when you're at shul?
DG: I love to sing. My voice is not that good. I'm off tune, but you give me a good Ki Mitzion or your good Hadesh Yameinu, things like that when it comes together, it's great.
MR: Have you been to The Carlebach Shul on the Upper West Side?
DG: No, I don't know that.
MR: The cantor there, Rabbi Yehuda Green, is great.
DG: I try to dive in. I'm self-conscious about it. I'm not that great.
MR: You're self-conscious about your singing?
DG: Yeah.
MR: Do you play an instrument?
DG: No. I tried the drums, I wasn't good. I tried guitar, I wasn't good.
“I Read The News Today — Oh, Boy”
MR: Do you floss?
DG: I floss, yeah, at least once a day. Yeah, I do.
MR: How do you read?
DG: I need an intervention. I really need an intervention.
The first thing I read in the morning is Monex which just gives me how the dollar is doing.
MR: Wait, Monex like the money website?
DG: The exchange of euros versus dollars.
MR: That's the first thing you look at in the morning?
DG: Well, it comes in at 4:00 in the morning.
MR: Why do you look at that?
DG: I have a lot of money tied up in Europe and I like the politics behind the exchange. I don't know why. I am fascinated by it.
MR: You like reading forex news first thing in the morning?
DG: Yeah.
MR: When do you wake up in the morning?
DG: Usually around 7:00, 7:30.
MR: When you open your eyes, what’s the first thing you do?
DG: I daven. I pray for my mother. I say modeh ani lefanecha — I love that line. I didn’t know what that line meant when I grew up in Hebrew school but what a great first line. How grateful you are. I don’t care what your religion is that’s a great prayer to say first thing.
MR: Do you look at your phone before you pray?
DG: No, no. In the year of my mother's mourning, definitely not. I think that's very disrespectful to my mother.
MR: So what do you read next?
DG: Punchbowl News is number two — I skim it though because you can't go into Steny Hoyer and every day with Matt Gaetz…you could really become disturbed from that stuff.
The next thing that pops up is usually All Access which is a music industry thing. Then Music Week will have some headlines from the U.K. I consider myself an Anglophile. So I'll have at least one blast from Music Week of the charts and this morning, it was vinyl outselling CDs for the first time ever. I thought that was a good headline.
Then REDEF comes in from Jason Hirschhorn who's an old buddy. And I think he does a really nice job of aggregating articles that I care about.
Andrew Ross Sorkin’s DealBook is next. Very well done. And I think he had the coup of 2022. He had the Sam Bankman-Fried interview.
And then I will quickly check The New York Post. Then it’s Surface because it's the visual arts and design.
Then my very favorite things of the week are Financial Times weekend. Nothing better. Love, love, love. Tyler Brûlé was the first column I read regularly. He's no longer there. I just got hooked and I cannot live without reading that.
DG: I love reading Bob Lefsetz. I think he's amazing.
I like MBW as a trade. And I think the top music writer of our generation is Jem Aswad of Variety. I think he's the tops right now.
“Even Educated Fleas Do It”
MR: Are your kids religious?
DG: No.
MR: Are any of them?
DG: No.
MR: Do you wish they were more religious?
DG: They're going to find themselves. You find yourself in life. And I'm not going to force it. They know they're Jewish.
MR: I just got married and wonder if you have any advice for marriage?
DG: Oh, beautiful. Well, I'm 41 years in and it's better than ever. You really have to live a new life together that has nothing to do with her side or your side or extensions of your friendships, your family, your brothers, your sisters because that messes everything up. You got to have your own thing.
MR: Any specific rituals or tips?
DG: It's compromise. I don't think I want to watch half these shows that we watch, but you do it, and you do it with a smile, not begrudgingly. Never ever go to sleep angry.
I think about running 33 marathons — probably 30 of them my wife has been in the cold or the rain waiting for me — that's really selfish of me. And what does she get out of that? She sees me twice in three or four hours.
While she's raising three children, I'm on the road and the phone call is never, "I'm having a bad time," or "I'm working hard," it's always, "I'm having a great time. And I just saw this thing, it was religious, it was an epiphany. Oh my God, they were great tonight. They got a standing ovation. They had an encore. Guess who came? Guess who's backstage?" And you know what? She's got the diapers or she's got the kids.
And I realized when Liam went to college all of a sudden we were empty nesters. She wants to go out every night and she wants to go to every festival. We spent almost two years traveling the world, going to everything that she hadn't seen.
I was exhausted. I was completely exhausted after those two years. And I said, "Deborah, we got to calm down. We can't be at every festival and every backstage."
MR: Do you collect anything?
DG: Yes. My wife and I really solidified our relationship in Cannes, France at a Midem conference. Her father was a legendary music entrepreneur and distributor — and as a young man, I worked for him and he brought me to Cannes.
She was at Brandeis. I just graduated very young from Brooklyn College. We used to go on little dates but they weren’t really dates because she was my friend.
One evening, we went to this place called The Blue Bar on the Croisette in Cannes. James Baldwin was sitting there and first of all, I wanted his autograph and she said to me, "You can't do that." I don't want to upset the boss's daughter. I regret I don't have the photo or the autograph, by the way.
An embarrassing thing then happened where I wanted the menu and I was going to take it, but the waiter actually gave it to me. That was the first menu we had which commemorated the date.
And then we started asking chefs for memorable meals — not famous chefs — "Please sign our menu." We have hundreds now on our walls from all over the world and it could be Barney Greengrass or it could be from Chez Panisse from Alice Waters. It could be The French Laundry. You’d be surprised where they're from. Noma. Lutèce. West St Grill. Chez Paulette. Eli Zabar’s on 91st street and our most recent signed menu, Via Carota.
We collect because my mother threw out most of my 45s and my mother threw out most of my baseball cards when I left home which was sad (because she didn’t have a lot of closet storage).
“You Can Tell Right Away At Letter A”
MR: Of all the people I've interviewed, you're just a fire hose of just information and knowledge.
DG: Well, people say, "What do you do?" And I give them a couple of adjectives. I say, "I'm a busboy. If they want pasta, I get them pasta. If they want me to cut it, I'll cut it. If they want me to get them tea…you want honey? You want lemon." That to me is a privilege. I still do it for clients.
And I'm a sociological student all the time soaking up what's going on in the street. I constantly ask people — like you do — “Where'd you buy that? Why'd you wear that.” I do that to learn about what makes people tick, what's going on.
I think having a conversation with you is interesting because you’ve interviewed people like Al Franken and Noam Chomsky. So to me, I need to learn more about those people.
I find that when you are with an artist — most of our industry are monosyllabic, boring, one-dimensional people who can't carry a conversation, who know nothing about foreign film, opera, culture, architecture.
You know what artists are? They're cultured. Some of them are tormented, some of them are gifted, some of them are both. But you have to be able to speak about culture and understand it. They don't want to talk about the charts. They want to hear about those things.
MR: You have so much in your head — how do you distill it out when you need to distill it out?
DG: Two things: Running and swimming.
I run every morning somewhere between two and six miles and it all gets organized in that run.
And swimming. I've gotten a cathartic swimming routine, whether it's the ocean or a pool. The longer it is, the better.
MR: Do you dream at night?
With Grouplove
DG: I dream a lot. Yes, I dream a lot.
MR: Do you write them down? Do you take them seriously?
DG: As soon as I finish getting ready after I'm praying, I do write things down.
But you know what happens? You have all this information and then I realize how meaningless it is because the clichés come up. First of all, there's health. Then it's family. If you're not good at family and health, you failed at everything else.
And then what I do for a living comes down to one thing. We could speak all day about every fancy term and delivery system and Spotify. It's about the song. It's about the song. It's about the song. And that's it. The older you get and the more you speak to the elders and the leaders and the mentors and the trailblazers — it's the song.