There’s a universal adage that says, “There’s no ‘I’ in team.” That’s only one of the things that Steven Machat discusses in this episode. Steve is one of the world’s most successful entertainment moguls. He has been involved with producing and marketing music and artists all over the world and is legally trained as an attorney. He is also the author of Sacred Knowledge: A Rock And Roller’s Guide To Higher Consciousness. On today’s show, he joins Michael Silvers to share his insights on how music moves souls and talk about teamwork and why it’s necessary to play as a team.
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Playing As A Team With Steven Machat
We are on Vertical Live and we’re excited. It’s something for them to learn, know and have fun. We all make a difference in everything that we do every day. We also come from varied backgrounds. When you build a business, build a business together. When I built the business many years ago, I built it with my wife. We worked it together and we still work it together. We’re a team and being a team is everything that’s important to do. Don’t do this alone. Knowing that and working as a team, what’s critically important is to have other people who will play as a team. Playing as a team is critically important. This next gentleman that I’m going to introduce has been all about the team. Everything he’s done has been about the team in his life. It’s been about helping and supporting others and achieving their dreams.
This is a fun show. We’ll talk a little history and we won’t date ourselves too much because then we start to show how old we are. We’ll talk about some new things. Steve’s also going to be in the next episode and we’ll dive a little bit deeper. We’ll take a deeper Q&A. We’ll talk a little bit about his book. I promise you that we don’t sell anything. It’s not about selling. It’s giving you information and then you make a decision.
Do not believe what you have now is all you'll ever have. The trick in life is to understand forever but the game is to understand evermore. Click To TweetWe have the great and amazing Steven with us. He’s one of the world’s most successful entertainment moguls. He has been involved with producing and marketing music and artists all over the world and is legally trained as an attorney. One of the artists he’s worked with is Electric Light Orchestra and this is one of my favorite groups of all time. I’m amazed when people say they don’t know who they were but once to play the music, you do know. Genesis’ Peter Gabriel, which is also one of my favorites of all time, Leonard Cohen, Phil Spector, Snoop Dogg, Bobby Brown, Manu Dibango, Angélique Kidjo from Africa, and Rita Lee and Gilberto Gil from Brazil. I listened to a Leonard Cohen song one time and my wife says that it’s one of those beautiful songs she’s ever heard.
You also credit with movies that include Anaconda, Street Fighter, and Judge Dredd. He’s also known in social circles too. His social circles include people around him that are thought leaders, people who think forward like Stan Lee, the Dalai Lama and Prince Andrew. He’s taught and lectured in universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, music festivals and book fairs in over 100 countries. He saw an election for the US Senate and the US House of Representatives. He doesn’t rule anything out. Steve makes it happen. He’s quickly becoming one of my close friends. We went to a baseball game together even though he’s a Yankees fan and I’m a Mariners. Life is good. I wanted to welcome everybody. Steve, welcome.
My last name is Machat. People are asking if it’s a French word, but it’s not. It’s a Samaritan word. If you look at the map, it separates Iran from Iraq, Eastern world from the Western world. The name means a thread, the person that unites both. I dedicated my life to understanding the Eastern philosophy of spirit and the Western world of physical life and physical reality. Each and every one of us who’s reading and anyone you’ll ever meet is a metaphysical being. You exist inside of a physical body. We call that body human. Hu stands for humus, which means Earth. There are two types of us. There’s a man and then there’s a man with a womb. The asset of mankind is the man with the womb. No womb, no cry. That’s what we need to understand. We are here and we live in physical form. We need to build a world that surfaces around art. The secrets are in our words. Earth, get rid of Ea, what are you left with? You’re left with art. What about your heart? Get rid of your ego. Get rid of He and you’re left with art. I’ve spent my whole life dedicated to art. I’m honored to be sharing with all of you.
Tell us one thing when we first met. The music industry is big.
Do you remember where we met?
I remember, at a game.
We went to see Seattle play the Yankees.
You’re not going to bring that up again, are you? You’ve got to remember, Steve, the Mariners have one thing that nobody else has. The Mariners have never won the World Series, so we have a title to hold on to.
There’s one other team.
Tampa, so there are two of us. That’s great. We’re in a party of two.
There’s a third, San Diego Padres.
They’ve never won?
No, they played in ‘84. I’ll give our readers the story.
You can tell Steve and I have hung out. We’re both from New York. The Mariners have never even been to the World Series. Does that put us then in our own club?
You’re in your own club because Tampa was there in ‘08 and San Diego was there ‘98 and ‘84. In ‘84, I had an artist called John Waite who’s in a band called The Babys. I did everything I could to make his record missing number one. I had a friend of my father’s who’s a producer named Shel Talmy. He discovered and produced the Kinks and the Who and the guy had what’s called tunnel vision where his eyes went to a tunnel X-ray and he was losing his sight and became angry. He had an ear like no one else because we have five senses. Let’s say all five senses have an average of 70%. If you lose one, you’re still going to end up at 70%. If you lose your sight, your hearing will go to 90% and your sight goes down to 50%. They don’t teach you this because no one wants to deal with metaphysical realities.
In 1984, they wanted John Waite on this TV show called Paper Dolls and I’m like, “We’re not doing that.” Years earlier, I had a movie called Xanadu, which I did everything I could to stop ELO from being part of. I wanted ELO to have nothing to do with it. I tried to get them to do a movie called Midnight Express, which is one of the greatest movies you could watch. They wouldn’t do the soundtrack. I ended up introducing the producer and director to Giorgio Moroder. I got nothing out of it financially, except that they got big thank you and everyone that heard that music became better. Jeff Lynne and ELO became Xanadu, sold twelve million records and destroyed their artistic career. This woman was friends with my dad for years.
My dad was one of the first music lawyers because I won’t shut up. I don’t know if I’m capable of shutting up. When my time on Earth is over, I’ll still be talking to you somewhere. What happened was he would put me out on the road and I talked to anyone that I met and everyone. Dad managed people like Linda Cohen and he managed a boxing name, Sugar Ray Robinson. Sugar Ray Robinson brought in the Urban acts that then called Black acts. Those Black acts were Sam Cooke, James Brown and The Platters. That’s how my dad got into the music business. Dad ended up going to England as opposed to LA. He ended up with Kingston, who Donovan’s band called The Dave Clark Five, which was bigger than the band, Rolling Stones and the Beatles.
I grew up with all these people and when I was twelve years old, dad got mad at me because I was looking at baseball cards. He taught me how to read a contract. Grandfather Charlie was a bookie. Charlie told me how to figure out where the money was. I’ve lived in this world where I’m like, “I’ll go play your games. Life is a game.” The most important thing I’m going to tell you is there’s nothing wrong with beating the crap out of somebody, but you need them to be able to compete with you next time. We live in a society that’s fixed. It’s fixed by the bankers who take money out, but that’s me being political. I’m here to mentor you. What I want to do is if I can teach you to compete but never make it so no one can compete with you. Only by competing do we become better. Only by understanding that everyone is special, unique and extraordinary. We’re all given values that the Creator of all has given us and you need to live in a society where they encourage you to become more than you were.
Each and every one of us and anyone you'll ever meet is a metaphysical being. Click To TweetIf you have a dream, you need to put together a team. I’s don’t win. We all love creative sports and creative sports are teams, be it basketball, football, soccer or baseball. Teams win. In a boxing match, look at what happens to them when they get their brains beat out. By the way, I like boxing but sitting there and they’re abusing themselves in front of you to do what? To go back to 1984, they asked me to put John Waite in this Paper Dolls. I told him, “There’s no way. You’re not going to destroy this.” We had the number one song of the ‘80s called Missing You. My dad’s friend said, “Marty, he can’t do this to us.” Dad gets me to call and she goes, “What would make it easier for you?” I may make you all laugh. I said, “I’m not doing it.” She goes, “Steven, you could do anything you want. All I wanted was for John Waite’s song to be number one.” “I didn’t care,” so she said, “Really?”
ABC that year had the World Series and ABC also had the show, Paper Dolls. I said, “I’ll make you a deal. Here’s what I want. I want you to film John Waite singing I Ain’t Missing You At All at Universal. I want the cameras backstage. I want the girls to meet John Waite backstage. I want you to show that to him, singing I Ain’t Missing You every time you advertise the World Series. For the next week, they had to put my commercial there, Ain’t Missing You At All. They called back and they said, “We’ll do everything you want, except we have one thing.” I go, “What?” They said, “If you want it to be authenticated, you need to be on the TV show.” I said, “I’m not going on the TV show.” They said, “No, you need to go on the show. You need to ask your artists.” I’m looking like, “I’m not doing this.” He said, “You need to do this, Steve, and we’re giving you everything you want. We’re going to write you in the show as the manager.”
I went to my artist because I didn’t need him to think that I manipulated this so I could be on a TV show. He said, “No. If I’m going to do it, you’re there. I’m not doing this alone.” He had never been on TV like acting. I agreed to do it. For six weeks in America, they advertised the Paper Dolls shows with John Waite and they said to everyone that was watching this, “Will Nicollette Sheridan find real love with John Waite, or will that horrible rock and roll manager and horrible person that only wants money, Steven Machat, sit there and ruin love from happening?” I saw that for about 35 days on primetime TV.
You don’t always know how things are going to work out.
The show’s always top ten before we go on it. It was on the top 50 and off the air when we got done with it when John Waite had the number one song.
Part of what you’re saying is that you saw a vision here. First of all, you saw how advertising could work. You saw one of the biggest shows, which is the World Series, can advertise. What in your background allowed you to do that? There were mentors in your background that helped you make that decision. Who were those people in your life?
My father, first off and God. I’ve learned one truth and I tried to teach it to everybody. Don’t lie because if you lie, you create two alternatives. It’s easier to live in truth. If you believe you could lie and no one sees what you’re doing, know that God did not make us to be Pinocchio. We were all made to be God’s children and they don’t teach you that. I’m not telling you to pray, beg down and ask for forgiveness. Understand that you’re God’s child and when you walk around, you represent your maker. You need to do things right. You need to help each other, support each other and make things happen. You need to learn that it’s okay to win and you need to learn that if you win, make it so other people can win. You don’t need to be the only winner for the rest of your life.
Without being political, that’s my problem with America. We live in a system of me. I’m a little bit older than you, Michael. My generation was we. When we lost the Vietnam War because we were fighting a third world nation in 1975. I’ll never forget this. I was in law school and I watched the last American be transported off. America lost its values. We became me, not we. We became a drug-addicted society on pills, “Make me bigger and better,” not, “We’re going to do this together.” The best drug you’ll ever have is breathing me out. You live in an oxygen tank. Your body was made so you could live here on Earth, have consciousness and enjoy the physical existence of being able to touch, hear, see, feel and taste each other.
You were here to find love, discover love and understand the boundaries of love. Love is not telling people they can’t get healthcare. Love is not telling people you can’t be educated. Love is not telling people to get a job and sell McDonald’s, which isn’t even food. Love is not serving people GMOs, which are modified foods. Love is love. Love is helping develop each other and there’s nothing wrong with having a dream and put together a team in all businesses. Live at your dream and do not actively make your dream someone else’s nightmare. Do not actively live in a world where you kill other people because they’re in your way. If you believe you’re as good as you believe you are, then go prove it. Let everyone win.
We talked about looking at life’s abundance, it’s got to be a win-win, and we’re all human beings doing the best in this world we can. What you said is great because that’s what we always talk about. It doesn’t mean that you can’t succeed. What have you done around you? What have you created? Have you created it towards or away from? Do you always take a look at how that shows up? You’ve done films, movies, and TVs, and you’ve worked with a tremendous amount of musical talent. One thing about the musical talent that is phenomenal, and you’ve got great stories, is that music moves souls. It’s a vibration. You’ve got some great stories. You happen to work with one of the musicians, Peter Gabriel, who moves souls. Can you talk a little bit about working with him? You talked about one of the songs. How is a song created? I know sometimes they say, “I was just strumming my guitar.” From your perspective, what music has truly moved souls on the planet that you’ve been involved with? How did that come about?
It’s in my book called Sacred Knowledge: A Rock And Roller’s Guide To Higher Consciousness. I’ve dealt with more creative people than anyone else you’ll ever meet. I consider that an honor that I was blessed to be able to be in this situation where I find creative people and they find me. This is a communication that goes on. You see each other and you see beyond. They understand how to go beyond and they will meditate. The difference between a prayer is where you ask God for something. The difference when you learn to meditate is you listen to the higher knowledge and you listen to the powers. Most, if not all, of the people I work with at some stage, be it just heartfelt inducement or drugs, whatever got them to relax and listen to the messages, that’s how they were created. There was a guy named P. F. Sloan.
He’s sixteen years old in 1964 and this guy wrote the song, Eve of Destruction. How did he know that? If you listen to those lyrics, they are still applicable now. I asked him how he wrote that and he told me that Landis Roberts who I worked with, wanted him to get back his copyrights, put them in a room in the ‘60s and gave him LSD. They locked him in and they told him, “Don’t come out unless you write a song about war.” I’m not telling anyone to do LSD, but I will tell you that our CIA created LSD. It was a mind-altering drug that got used out of control. You don’t need to do that.
That’s why I wrote this other book. I’ll tell you how to meditate. I’ll tell you what these artists taught me and what I have learned how to get in touch with a higher power. Ask and you shall receive. When you receive it, remember you can’t do it alone. You’re not an island. You need people that help you make it happen. You need people to become a team. Life is a 24-hour clock, the 24th hour is God. If you look at it, you have 23 chromosomes and 24th is God. I’m not religious but I do believe in the Creator. I do believe that we’re all Creator’s children. I do believe that we’re all here to co-create and make the world better for ourselves and for those who come next.
We’re talking a lot about team, which is critical. A coach will help you get to where you need to go and a mentor is where you want to be, and a mentor should be part of your team. You talk a lot about the team. If you were to start again, who were 2, 3 or 4 people that you would pick to be on your team? We’re going to start with your creative background first. First of all, let’s talk about your musical career.
If I would pick on my team, anybody that resonated with me and understood what’s in front of us because society changes. In 1964, when I want to hold your hand and I’m telling you she loves you, it may not work now. It’s a different noise and instrument. All our instruments are married to our technological advancements or backward of what goes on. We listen to the noise. With my son who passed away in a horrible rock and roll accident, I created the number one independent electronic music label. A lot of what I did, I didn’t sit and plan it. It was given to me and I didn’t have a cross home plate. That’s not what I know. I know how to get you to a finish line. I ended up with the first electronic hit ever and it was called Space – Magic Fly. I didn’t know what I had. I knew that it worked and it got people going.
There's nothing wrong with beating the crap out of somebody, but you need them to be able to compete with you next time. Click To TweetWhoever created the languages that they call Latin, and by the way, English is one of those languages. It’s all married to the a, e, i, o, u. You flip those vowels and those vowels are five musical notes that you hear. I can move you with those vowels. I’ll give you all a story. You can say you’re the first to know this. I’m doing a movie. It’s about the Battle of Stalingrad. I’m doing it with the Russian government and I’ll have it out on May 5, 2020. I’ll have the worldwide album movie out on October 18th, 2020. I like that day. Maybe even October 20th. I’ve got those two days, whatever that Friday is around there. The soundtrack i’m having for it, I once used crystal chord bowls. If you hit the bowls, they sing and make a tone. You could hear that tone.
One of the artists I had gets ahold of me and he goes, “Machat, I did it.” I go, “What did you do?” He said to me, “I’ve recorded plants singing.” Most people would go, “This guy is mentally ill.” When he said that to me, I’m like, “I got it. What did you do?” He said, “I mic them.” We hear seven notes, A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, and there are seven things between each note. Those are 49 reasons on a line. Some of them good ones and some of them lie. Below A is how these plants, mosquitoes, and bugs talk to each other. He liked it, had the machine pick it up and put it in notes that you and I could hear. What I’ve done is they were watching the movie and I said, “Score the movie with your plants and record them.” We’re putting an added soundtrack to this movie with the plants responding to 1.6 million people getting killed in the Battle of Stalingrad. I love experimenting. You asked me about Peter Gabriel. We created the Real World and WOMAD together. I started putting out Pakistani music in 1983 and 1984. Mike, they tried to put me away. I’m sitting with hits like Soft Cell. Do you remember Tainted Love by Hayseed Dixie?
Of course, I do.
I had Genesis, Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel, and I’m putting out this Muslim sitting there chanting but it was the drums beat that’s infectious. The rhythm of your heart is the beat. That’s why drums work because they bring you back to your sacred knowledge. Here on Earth, your heart is a rhythm. If you do the rhythm, it works. Let me go back to what you said about pronouncing a name. I had a record that sold many copies, but I couldn’t get it on the radio because it was called AEIOU Sometimes Y. The band called themselves Ebn Ozn. I’m looking like, “You can’t use this name.” They said, “This is who we are.” I said, “No DJ is going to sit there and make himself look silly by not being able to pronounce your name. It’s not going to happen.” That was a big bracket that never got airplay.
It’s critical to know the name and how to pronounce the name. At the same time, you said something about being straightforward to who you are. I also rather have somebody say, “I’m not sure how to pronounce it.” The honesty in that says, “That’s somebody I want to work with because it’s not about their ego.”
Ego is where your edge got out.
That’s the thing in a team, group and mentoring. Everybody knows that Vertical Live is not just about business. This is about life and lifestyle. We come to know who we are. There was another thing that happened between Morrissey and The Smiths. Morrissey is huge in the Latin community because his message resonates with how they’re feeling to try to break out of what’s going on and I found that fascinating.
Michael, why do we call Spaniards, Latin?
Tell us.
That’s the answer to the matrix. The Vatican declared all those people their own. They own and control their mind thoughts. They created a matrix where they tell you, “The God of love is now the God of control.” Jesus and Christ are two different energies. They marked off the world and they call them Latin. They’re Spanish speaking people who say a, e, o, u. There’s no i. You and I have an i. French have an i. I could go on and on and I could share with you the manipulation that went on to make you live in a matrix of fear with responding to hate instead of loving, helping and supporting each other. Also, making the world a better place for all because if the world’s a better place for all, it becomes that much better for you.
You told me the story of how your dad got into the music industry and what he provided and how he helped. That’s a great mentoring story. I’d like to save that for next time. Steve, this has been amazing and great. For those of you at The Mentor Studio and Vertical Live, I want to thank you for reading. We’ll have a Q&A We are here to bring you, mentors, around the world for a price. We’re not going to sell it to you. I wanted to thank you all for being on. From myself, my wife, The Mentor Studio, all of you who bring this, and to Steve, you’ve been amazing. We’re going to have Steve in the next episode and he’s going to tell us more and I want to know that story.
If the world's a better place for all, it becomes that much better for you. Click To TweetIf I could help any of you, please let me know. Do not believe what you have now is all you’ll ever have. Do not believe just because you lost one love, you can’t get another. Do not believe that the world ends now. You don’t die. You have experiences and the trick in life is to understand forever but the game is to understand evermore.
Thank you from me, Vertical Live and The Mentor Studio. Read the next episode. We’re doing one show a week and we’re going to be upping to two, eventually. I love to have you part of the community. Thank you all. Talk to you soon.
Important Links
- Steve Machat
- John Waite
- Shel Talmy
- Giorgio Moroder
- Sacred Knowledge: A Rock And Roller’s Guide To Higher Consciousness
- Real World
- WOMAD
About Steven Machat
Steven has worked in the realms of music, movies, politics, and life as an instigator, packager, promoter, producer and protector for over 35 years. He has an insatiable appetite to know why we do what we do.
At 16, Steven’s father, Marty Machat, one of the pioneering entertainment lawyers, introduced him to Frank Sinatra. The uber-cool Sinatra had power, style, money, and chicks! Steven wanted in. Following Sinatra’s advice, Steven went to Miami, and not southern California, to get his accounting degree, and on from there to Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee to attain his law degree. He thought he was ready for the world.
Together Machat and Machat, father and son, set up their entertainment law firm. Their specialty was the deal and the management of the deal. On their roster were Genesis, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, The Blizzard of Oz featuring Ozzy Osbourne, Leonard Cohen, Phil Spector, Gamble-Huff and their Philadelphia International record label, Don Arden and his Jet Records, to name a few. One of Steven’s first deals made was the agreement with CBS Records for ELO. At that time it was the largest record deal ever. Machat and Machat represented both the legal and business affairs of Don Arden’s Jet Records, who had ELO. Shortly after, ELO sold 30 million records of the double-disc Out of the Blue.
These stories and more are part of Steven’s first book: GODS, GANGSTERS, AND HONOR. A rollicking history of the entertainment world and its tempestuous players capture Steven as a man more enthralled by the deal than the money the deal made. It’s a Rock and Roll odyssey of excess, access and learning from painful events. But seeing his own daughter succumb to addiction, he becomes more disenchanted with the “established” ways of viewing life, as he begins to see a larger deception and burial of the collective human spirit.
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