Plunged Into ‘A Circus
Mixed With An Orgy’
In an exclusive excerpt from her memoir Anything for a Hit: An A&R Woman’s
Story of Surviving the Music Industry, the author recalls her harrowing
experience working for Atlantic Records in a pre-#MeToo record industry
BY DOROTHY CARVELLO PHOTOGRAPHED BY MACKENZIE STROHErtegun is lionized in
the music business.
Do you expect any
blowback from
this book?
I’ve already had a bit
of backlash — how
could I do this — but
I really don’t care.
Ahmet knew I was
writing the book,
and everything in
the book is true.
If people want to
believe he was a
warm, fuzzy guy
that didn’t step over
people to make his
vast wealth, that’s
their fantasy. It’snot mine. I spent
12 hours a day with
him. Those upset by
the book shouldn’t
buy it. I hope it
helps other women
facing abuse.You insisted that
this interview be
conducted by a
man. Why?
Men control the
music business, and
now that women are
starting to speak
up about the abuse
they’ve endured,
we need men to
stand for us andWhile working at Atlantic Records from
1987-1990, when, she says, she was fired
for complaining about the misogynistic
treatment she suffered at the hands of the
virtually all-male executive staff, Dorothy
Carvello realized that the diaries she had
been keeping could make a good book. Her
subsequent experiences at RCA, Columbia,
Epic and other labels only confirmed that
notion, and 18 years after leaving that world,
the Brooklyn native is set to publish her frank
and funny memoir, Anything for a Hit: An A&R
Woman’s Story of Surviving the Music Industry,
on Sept. 4. Carvello, 56, who still works in the
industry as an indie publicist, spoke about
her unvarnished depiction of her former boss,
Atlantic founder Ahmet Ertegun (who died in
2006) and the industry’s treatment of women.Carvello On What
The Music Industry
Must Do Now
him down at the Atlantic recording studio
on Sixtieth Street and Broadway. He was
producing an album for a commercial
jingle singer turned Atlantic recording
artist named Rachele Cappelli, who
wasn’t in the studio that night. When
I arrived, I found Ahmet in the control
room, pants and underwear down to the
loor, getting a blow job.
He saw the papers in my hand and gave
me a look I would come to know well. It
said, “Are you in?” I held his gaze, feeling
the pressure. How badly do I want to roll
with Ahmet? What would I do to enter his
world? I knew if I went along with this,
there was no turning back. I walked to
him calmly and handed him the papers.
He signed them, mid–blow job, without
a word.
The battle for my soul had begun.
There was no honeymoon. I was plunged
headirst into what I can only describe as
a circus mixed with an orgy. If personnel
had actually enforced the rules, everyone
in the building would have been ired
by lunch.
Everything was about sex at Atlantic.
Discussing sex and having sex took up a
large part of the day, and there was always
time for pleasure on Ahmet’s watch. There
was a term for sex that we all used—
“slapping it,” or “slappage” for short.
These words were hilarious coming from
Ahmet’s Turkish mouth. Few people saw
this side of him.
I learned to be careful entering any
oice, because some executives watched
pornography behind closed doors. They
also walked around with pornographic
magazines hidden in manila envelopes,
and they’d read them during meetings.
Is it any wonder these guys were sexual
animals in the workplace? Watching porn
all day got them hyped up and ready to go.
This behavior created a culture of toxic
masculinity.
The promotion department was theI
STARTED WORK ON MONDAY,
April 6, 1987, nine days before
my twenty-ifth birthday. I got an
oice in the executive wing, near
Atlantic president Doug Morris,
vice chairman and CFO Sheldon
Vogel, and of course, Atlantic
founder/chairman Ahmet Ertegun. My
oicial title was secretary to the chairman,
or as Ahmet said it in his frog-croak voice,
“sec-a-tary.”
My oice was in the middle of the
hallway leading to the executive wing,
making me an easy target. One executive
walked past my oice every day and said,
“Blow me.” I hadn’t even met him. I was
also across the hall from the head of A&R,
Tunc Erim, the most vulgar, disgusting
man of the bunch. He called everyone a
cocksucker or a cunt, and he grabbed my
ass constantly. I hated it.
These men were sending me a message:
Don’t get comfortable here; you aren’t
important. I got that message every day
from nearly every man who worked at
Atlantic. In large and small ways, they
tried to chip away at my conidence and
strip away my power.
Most of the men were too stupid to
deliver that message with anything
approaching inesse. Their attempts to
degrade me were cartoonish—pinching
my ass, bragging about their dicks, telling
me to blow them.
Still, I loved the job. My sense of
morality had been shaped by the nuns
who had taught me at school. I knew the
nuns wouldn’t have approved of anything
that went on at Atlantic, and yet, I didn’t
care. Nothing about life up to that point
had been fun. The nuns weren’t fun.
Catholic guilt wasn’t fun.
Atlantic was fun.
That week, I got my irst big task: ind
Ahmet and get his signature on some
inancial papers. It was after hours, and
he had already left the oice, but I tracked
44 BILLBOARD AUGUST 4, 2018