Neil Cooper (ROIR)
Encyclopedia
Neil Cooper was the founder and head of independent US cassette and record label ROIR
.
and graduated from Columbia Business School
in 1954. Working as a booking agent for MCA Inc. and Famous Artists in the 1950s, “he wheeled and dealed for everyone from Guy Lombardo
to Tito Puente
.” Artists represented by Cooper included Shirley Bassey
and Charles Mingus
. While managing the bassist-composer, Neil Cooper got Mingus a job writing a score for a surreal short film about a motorboat. Cooper’s career includes a stint at the Royal Mint of the United Kingdom, where he had business meetings with Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia
. This association would serve Cooper well in 1982, when he got Rastafarian hardcore punk
band Bad Brains
to sign a contract with him by giving them medallions minted for Emperor Selassie.
In the mid-1970s, Cooper invested in a restaurant in Hollywood Beach, Florida. It was unsuccessful until it was turned into a rock club called Tight Squeeze. Subsequently, he took over The ’80s, a live venue on Manhattan
’s Upper East Side
. It was during this time that Cooper decided to become a record mogul: “These guys who ran small record labels would come to The ’80s with beautiful women on their arms and order champagne, and I’d be running around trying to fix an overflowing toilet.”
Cooper approached acts playing The ’80s about signing recording contracts with him, but found most of them looking for deals beyond his means. “I wanted to put out [vinyl] LPs, but nobody wanted to make a record with me because I had no history in the [record] business. All these bands I was booking – James Chance, Lydia Lunch, Johnny Thunders, Suicide, Bush Tetras, Fleshtones, Dictators, Bad Brains – were getting popular because of the New York scene, and all wanted to sign with major record companies and get advances and tour support. But English artists like David Bowie and Bow Wow Wow and Elvis Costello were coming out with cassettes – and getting big play in [British music paper] NME. So I was able to get works in progress, or stuff that they didn’t think was good enough for an LP and a major label commitment. I gave them advances, and they gave me the rights to put out music on cassettes.” Live recordings became another specialty. Neil Cooper, microphone in hand, mobile tape recorder at the ready, “the oldest hipster on the scene at nearly 50” became a familiar and much beloved sight at the concerts of New York’s finest underground bands.
Cooper founded Reachout International Records (ROIR
) in 1979 as a cassette-only label. After his first releases – James Chance & The Contortions’ “Live In New York”, 8-Eyed Spy
’s “Live With Lydia Lunch
”, The Dictators
’ “Fuck ‘Em If They Can’t Take A Joke”, and Suicide
’s “Half Alive” – Sony
launched the Walkman
, an innovation which made the cassette the most popular musical medium of the 1980s. “Sony saved me,” Cooper told journalist John Milward of The Philadelphia Inquirer
in 1990. “Had the Walkman not happened, we would have probably never turned a profit.” Cooper set up ROIR with an initial investment of about $60,000, which he retrieved within about six years. Cooper’s most successful signing was the hardcore punk band Bad Brains. Their self-titled 1982 debut sold 150,000 copies in 10 years, 60,000 of which on cassette. Neil Cooper released a total of 106 cassette titles that document his wide-ranging taste in music. Artists published by Cooper include the New York Dolls
, Lee "Scratch" Perry, the Durutti Column, Glenn Branca
, Beastie Boys
, and Oku Onuora
. Cooper started transferring ROIR’s cassette releases to CD in 1995, but to this day, ROIR are offering one-off cassettes.
Cooper took great pride in ROIR’s status as an independent label. Having his records distributed to retailers by around 25 small suppliers instead of dealing with one large distributor was part of this, as he told Billboard Magazine’s Jim Bessman in 1999: “We’re one of the few remaining totally indie labels in the U.S. Not that that’s a tremendous advantage, but I go to distributors you don’t know exist: young guys in their 20s, lean and mean, like Revolver, Get Hip and Surefire, and the regulars like Select-O-Hits, Dutch East India, and Action. So we’re totally independent – which is almost impossible. We have no outside income other than what we beg, borrow or steal.”
Neil Cooper died at his home in Manhattan on August 13, 2001. He is survived by his wife, art gallery owner Paula Cooper and his sons Lucas and Nick who are currently managing ROIR.
ROIR
ROIR , or Reach Out International Records, is a New York City-based record label founded in 1979 by Neil Cooper.ROIR was founded the same year that the Sony Walkman launched, and initially, the label exclusively distributed its releases in cassette format...
.
Life and work
Born in Philadelphia, Cooper attended Amherst CollegeAmherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
and graduated from Columbia Business School
Columbia Business School
Columbia Business School is the business school of Columbia University in Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1916 to provide business training and professional preparation for undergraduate and graduate Columbia University students...
in 1954. Working as a booking agent for MCA Inc. and Famous Artists in the 1950s, “he wheeled and dealed for everyone from Guy Lombardo
Guy Lombardo
Gaetano Alberto "Guy" Lombardo was a Canadian-American bandleader and violinist.Forming "The Royal Canadians" in 1924 with his brothers Carmen, Lebert, and Victor and other musicians from his hometown, Lombardo led the group to international success, billing themselves as creating "The Sweetest...
to Tito Puente
Tito Puente
Tito Puente, , born Ernesto Antonio Puente, was a Latin jazz and Salsa musician. The son of native Puerto Ricans Ernest and Ercilia Puente, of Spanish Harlem in New York City, Puente is often credited as "El Rey de los Timbales" and "The King of Latin Music"...
.” Artists represented by Cooper included Shirley Bassey
Shirley Bassey
Dame Shirley Bassey, DBE , is a Welsh singer. She found fame in the late 1950s and was "one of the most popular female vocalists in Britain during the last half of the 20th century"...
and Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
. While managing the bassist-composer, Neil Cooper got Mingus a job writing a score for a surreal short film about a motorboat. Cooper’s career includes a stint at the Royal Mint of the United Kingdom, where he had business meetings with Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia
Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia
Haile Selassie I , born Tafari Makonnen, was Ethiopia's regent from 1916 to 1930 and Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974...
. This association would serve Cooper well in 1982, when he got Rastafarian hardcore punk
Hardcore punk
Hardcore punk is an underground music genre that originated in the late 1970s, following the mainstream success of punk rock. Hardcore is generally faster, thicker, and heavier than earlier punk rock. The origin of the term "hardcore punk" is uncertain. The Vancouver-based band D.O.A...
band Bad Brains
Bad Brains
Bad Brains is an American hardcore punk band formed in Washington, D.C., in 1977. They are widely regarded as among the pioneers of hardcore punk, though the band's members objected to this term to describe their music. They are also an adept reggae band, while later recordings featured elements of...
to sign a contract with him by giving them medallions minted for Emperor Selassie.
In the mid-1970s, Cooper invested in a restaurant in Hollywood Beach, Florida. It was unsuccessful until it was turned into a rock club called Tight Squeeze. Subsequently, he took over The ’80s, a live venue on Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
’s Upper East Side
Upper East Side
The Upper East Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, between Central Park and the East River. The Upper East Side lies within an area bounded by 59th Street to 96th Street, and the East River to Fifth Avenue-Central Park...
. It was during this time that Cooper decided to become a record mogul: “These guys who ran small record labels would come to The ’80s with beautiful women on their arms and order champagne, and I’d be running around trying to fix an overflowing toilet.”
Cooper approached acts playing The ’80s about signing recording contracts with him, but found most of them looking for deals beyond his means. “I wanted to put out [vinyl] LPs, but nobody wanted to make a record with me because I had no history in the [record] business. All these bands I was booking – James Chance, Lydia Lunch, Johnny Thunders, Suicide, Bush Tetras, Fleshtones, Dictators, Bad Brains – were getting popular because of the New York scene, and all wanted to sign with major record companies and get advances and tour support. But English artists like David Bowie and Bow Wow Wow and Elvis Costello were coming out with cassettes – and getting big play in [British music paper] NME. So I was able to get works in progress, or stuff that they didn’t think was good enough for an LP and a major label commitment. I gave them advances, and they gave me the rights to put out music on cassettes.” Live recordings became another specialty. Neil Cooper, microphone in hand, mobile tape recorder at the ready, “the oldest hipster on the scene at nearly 50” became a familiar and much beloved sight at the concerts of New York’s finest underground bands.
Cooper founded Reachout International Records (ROIR
ROIR
ROIR , or Reach Out International Records, is a New York City-based record label founded in 1979 by Neil Cooper.ROIR was founded the same year that the Sony Walkman launched, and initially, the label exclusively distributed its releases in cassette format...
) in 1979 as a cassette-only label. After his first releases – James Chance & The Contortions’ “Live In New York”, 8-Eyed Spy
8-Eyed Spy
8-Eyed Spy was a late 1970s No Wave/Post-punk band featuring Lydia Lunch, Jim Sclavunos, Pat Irwin, Michael Paumgardhen and George Scott III. They covered the Swamp rock classic "Run Through the Jungle" by Creedence Clearwater Revival and Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit"...
’s “Live With Lydia Lunch
Lydia Lunch
Lydia Lunch is an American singer, poet, writer, and actress whose career was spawned by the New York No Wave scene...
”, The Dictators
The Dictators
The Dictators are an American punk rock band formed in New York City in 1973. Critic John Dougan said that they were "one of the finest and most influential proto-punk bands to walk the earth." The Dictators are represented in the "Punk Wing" of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in Cleveland, Ohio...
’ “Fuck ‘Em If They Can’t Take A Joke”, and Suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
’s “Half Alive” – Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
launched the Walkman
Walkman
Walkman is a Sony brand tradename originally used for portable audio cassette, and now used to market Sony's portable audio and video players as well as a line of Sony Ericsson mobile phones...
, an innovation which made the cassette the most popular musical medium of the 1980s. “Sony saved me,” Cooper told journalist John Milward of The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer is a morning daily newspaper that serves the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the...
in 1990. “Had the Walkman not happened, we would have probably never turned a profit.” Cooper set up ROIR with an initial investment of about $60,000, which he retrieved within about six years. Cooper’s most successful signing was the hardcore punk band Bad Brains. Their self-titled 1982 debut sold 150,000 copies in 10 years, 60,000 of which on cassette. Neil Cooper released a total of 106 cassette titles that document his wide-ranging taste in music. Artists published by Cooper include the New York Dolls
New York Dolls
The New York Dolls is an American rock band, formed in New York in 1971. The band's protopunk sound prefigured much of what was to come in the punk rock era; their visual style influenced the look of many new wave and 1980s-era glam metal groups, and they began the local New York scene that later...
, Lee "Scratch" Perry, the Durutti Column, Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca is an American avant-garde composer and guitarist known for his use of volume, alternative guitar tunings, repetition, droning, and the harmonic series. In 2008 he was awarded an unrestricted grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.-Beginnings: 1960s and early 1970s:Branca...
, Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys
Beastie Boys are an American hip hop trio from New York City. The group consists of Mike D who plays the drums, MCA who plays the bass, and Ad-Rock who plays the guitar....
, and Oku Onuora
Oku Onuora
Oku Nagba Ozala Onuora , known as the "father of Jamaican dub poetry" is a Jamaican dub poet and performer.-Biography:...
. Cooper started transferring ROIR’s cassette releases to CD in 1995, but to this day, ROIR are offering one-off cassettes.
Cooper took great pride in ROIR’s status as an independent label. Having his records distributed to retailers by around 25 small suppliers instead of dealing with one large distributor was part of this, as he told Billboard Magazine’s Jim Bessman in 1999: “We’re one of the few remaining totally indie labels in the U.S. Not that that’s a tremendous advantage, but I go to distributors you don’t know exist: young guys in their 20s, lean and mean, like Revolver, Get Hip and Surefire, and the regulars like Select-O-Hits, Dutch East India, and Action. So we’re totally independent – which is almost impossible. We have no outside income other than what we beg, borrow or steal.”
Neil Cooper died at his home in Manhattan on August 13, 2001. He is survived by his wife, art gallery owner Paula Cooper and his sons Lucas and Nick who are currently managing ROIR.