RAINMAKERS: MYSTERY GUEST, PLEASE SIGN IN

Can you guess which entry from our forthcoming Rainmakers special issue yielded the following story? Look for the answer to this question—and the full issue, studded with sensational, classic photos—in the coming weeks.

His first job was with Walter Hofer, the New York attorney most famous for representing The Beatles and Brian Epstein. “I didn’t know what to say, so I tried to get him to like me,” he recalled years later. “I said, ‘I really want to work for you, but I don’t come from a very wealthy family, so I can't afford to pay you very much to hire me.’”

He was obliged to step into the old-school way of doing business—visiting people like Morris Levy to get a bill paid and walking out with a five-figure settlement… in green, inside a brown paper bag.

We were first introduced to him in the late ‘70s by Bang Records head Eileen Burns; we needed help collecting money from Don Arden, who had hired us to market and promote ELO’s releases on his CBS Records-distributed Jet label. We flew to New York and he walked us into the office of Walter Yetnikoff. The CBS Records chief said he would pay us on the condition that if he ever needed help with an artist, he could call us and ask for a favor. We were OK with that-despite the fact that the line sounded chillingly like it came straight out of Godfather II.