GOLDMINE
April 30, 1993
 
by Jack Ortman
The name Matthew Katz "(pronounced cates) may not be well known to the general rock audience, or even those who have a special fondness for the San Francisco rock of the late '60s. Yet Katz was very much a pivotal figure in that scene. As one-time manager of three of its great bands-Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape and It's A Beautiful Day- Katz handled their business affairs and helped get those groups' careers off the ground.
None of those bands will deny any of the above, but that's about where any agreement ends. Several former members of those bands ,in fact,have gone on record numerous times during the past couple of decades to attempt to discredit Katz and call him all sort of unflattering names. Without going into great detail it could be said that the basic reasons for the musicians' disappointment in their former management boils down to legal and financial matters.
Katz, for example, was the legal owner of the names Moby Grape and It's A Beautiful Day. Without his permission, ex-members of those bands have been unable to use those names, giving rise to dozens of similar- sounding appellations (such as Legendary Grape) whenever full or partial reunions have taken place. In addition, several protracted court battles have ensued over the years involving monies that the bands have claimed they were entitled to during their Katz-managed years but did not receive.
Katz not only was the registered owner of the names Moby Grape  and It's A Beautiful Day, he was the owner of some of their most important recorded music catalogs. The only legally released CDs of early Moby Grape and It.s A Beautiful Day (until now, as Sony Legacy prepares anthologies on each) in the U.S. have been issued on Katz's own San Francisco Sound label ( often at higher-than. market-standard prices which have alienated some fans).
Much has been said about Matthew Katz in the press, but until now little has been heard from Matthew Katz. In conjunction with Goldmine's Grape and Beautiful Day stories, both of which contain their share of references to Katz, the controversial Katz was contacted and asked to respond to some of the allegations made over the years by his one-time colleagues.

Goldmine: Where did the names Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape and It's A Beautiful Day come from?

Matthew Katz: Each one is a story in itself. I can only say this: I've spoken to a lot of people who do what you do over the years. The ones that have gotten statements from me have offended me because they put me in context with something that I don't relate with. They've made me out to be a different person than I've been. I am not as the media has made me look. They have the strength and power of having their peer group believe them over me because I was over 30. I don't know how they came up with that number, but they did and so they're victims of big business and I'm not going to go into dtail about that. They are victims of that and I am a victim of their naivete.

Goldmine: Can you tell us your current situation with It's A Beautiful Day?

Matthew Katz: No one, as was ruled by the courts, is allowed to use that name without my sanction. In fact, I did make attempts to bring back some of the original people and wasn't really able to do that. I was able to work with David LaFlamme in the '805. The original band that was recorded was the seventh of It's A Beautiful Day.
Goldmine: Can you give us your version of what happened in the '60s?
Matthew Katz: San Francisco rock was the best thing that happeped to rock 'n' roll in the '60s. I say that with great affection. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to be the catalyst in that time and the older I get the more I realize it wasn't an accident. None of us were an accident. We were meant to meet each other, we were meant to do something together. I would only hope that future people, especially musicians and artistic people, will benefit from the bad experience that we had, that they will make a better relationship of their trusts and will be more committed to their trust and they know who they are dealing with when they make agreements. It's a very difficult thing. I can't blame them.
Goldmine: What happened in the '60s that left you owning the groups' names and mate rial?

Matthew Katz: In any business, one protects their inventory. You can't walk into a person's store and kick them out from behind the counter and say "This is my store now!" That's just a very simple analogy of business. You can't walk into my place and take away my inventory. People don't like to be referred to as inventory, but they are the product I deal in. While I speak here, my house is full of people that are musicians that I'm working with. I have to do business as well as make music with them. I don't have to apologize for that.

Goldmine: Why do these ['60s] bands [that you managed] feel the way that they do?
Matthew Katz: I can't answer that. You can ask them until doomsday why they feel the way they do. There are several things: there's lack of knowledge of the business world, there's a sudden awareness of money, that otherwise didn't exist. Perhaps there's a mistrust there. I never had an opportunity to handle a~y money from any band that I ever originated. It never got to my hands. I was never there when payday came around. I can honestly say under my guidance it all would have had a much stronger substantial finan- cial state. When it got in the hands of other people, I lost all control.
I never had the benefit of any of that, never been the recipient of any royalties from any of those bands other than meager little checks for $20.22 kinds of stuff. I have never received any great payment for any music that I ever had anything to do with. I can't tell you that it has been a wonderful financial business. It's never been a financial success, but I wasn't doing it with finances as the ultimate purpose.
The ultimate purpose was to put it out in the street, to get the attention of the young people, and get them into a passive direction rather than a violent one. I didn't know what else to do so I tried entertaining them until someone else wiser could figure out what to do about the dilemma. They were all about ready to do what would have made the punkers look like neophytes. I firmly feel that if the violence that was being expressed at the time had been given attention, it would have flourished.
Of course, the passive people would have gone into total hiding and the ugly, aggressive, violent types would have been what the media put their attention to. As it was, it was very difficult to get the media interested in what we were doing. What's interesting about a bunch of passive people? Nothing! So we didn't have the media, the media is not what made us happen, the media is what destroyed us! Big business and the media is what destroyed the Love Generation, not me!
Goldmine: Sony is putting out anthologies of both Moby Grape and It's A Beautiful Day. Did you work out some kind of deal with them so that the albums could be released?
Matthew Katz: Nobody had talked to me about it and I don't know anything about it. It's news to me.
Goldmine: Are there any photos of you with any of these bands?

Matthew Katz: There aren't any photos of me because I made it a point to never allow myself to be in the pictures. I did that all the way through the '60s. It wasn't me I was promoting, it was the music. I have mixed feelings about it. There has been so much written through the years, with obvious absence of my name altogether. An example is the new release of the Jefferson Airplane anthology. There is no mention of me whatsoever, it's like I didn't exist. [Editor's Note: Katz is indeed mentioned in the liner notes for that boxed set.] I don't exist in any of the books written about that time. I'm either left out completely or I'm bad rapped.

Goldmine: I'm trying to give everyone the opportunity to give their side of the story.

Matthew Katz: David {LaFlamme ) proceeds to blame me for his failure. I am not responsible for their failures. They've had every opportunity to play as who they are as individuals. Why is it that it doesn't work?

Goldmine: I think it has something to do with you owning the names and they can't use it as long as it's owned by you, as far as I understand it.
Matthew Katz: Forget about the name! That's admitting the fact that the name is what makes it happen. There's never been anyone to tell them they couldn't perform as themselves. They've gone out and tried on
their own, but I'm the one who has been keeping Moby Grape and It's A Beautiful Day alive for all these years. I don't make a lot of money from it. I'm always running out of money to keep doing what I'm doing. I suppose it doesn't matter, I just had a birthday and I'm not getting any younger.

Goldmine: How old are you now?

Matthew Katz: Sixty-three years old. I mean, this is what I do. I suppose I'll be doing this for the rest of my life.
Goldmine: When it comes to promoters in the San Francisco area of the '60s the bignames were Bill Graham, Chet Helms and yourself.

Matthew Katz: I was never one of those guys. I was never a promoter of engagements per se. I never took over a ballroom and did that. The ballrooms which I had, and there were several, I had the Ark in Sausalito, a ballroom in Seattle for years and I had a ballroom out in Staten Island [New York]. Those places weren't places of business, they were places to encourage young people. There was no money collected, it was just a showcase to develop people. r always do that. I'm not a promoter like Graham and Helms.

Goldmine: What are you working on now?

Matthew Katz: I have a release on my Malibu label. I'm working with Tobias, who is doing this rainforest rhapsody in the key of Bali. Some new age stuff, along with the San Francisco Sound label, I'm also doing music up in Seattle, as usual. I've got 'a remote recording studio. I don't have any more legal stuff that I'm dealing with. I have absolutely freed myself out of it.
I think it's important, as long as you've gotten this much out of me, for people to know that there's never been allegations of illegal misconduct on my part, because it didn't exist. The lawyers didn't know what to hang their hat on to bust me because there wasn't anything, I didn't do anything wrong. I was always above board. Everything was in the open. There was never anything done that was of a hidden nature, never has been. The lawyers could only hang their hats on a labor commission code that said you shouldn't get jobs for people. If you do, you're breaking the labor code. It was a stepping stone for the bands to break their agreement with me. They couldn't find anything else.
I was the one who gave them that knowledge when I gave them the booklet from the labor commission that said I can't get you jobs. I can be your manager, but I can't be an agent. I don't get jobs. Someone wants a job and they talk to you, you can tell them that I'll negotiate it with them, but I can't solicit jobs. That's what they broke me on. It started with that and it never stopped.
After Jefferson Airplane, I started another band. I gave it a name (Moby Grape), financed every bit of it. They were successful immediately and when [they went to CBS], they got new managers. While I was still doing this project, I started It's A Beautiful Day and the exact same thing happened. I gave it its musical direction, I sang the first note, I created a direction that I wanted to do and [they went to CBS].
And, along With that comes a lot of bad rap. I was made out to be the bad guy in the play and it suited people to believe it. So, it's kind of amazing, there must be some thing inside we humans that drives us to , on and do something that we do in the presence of all kinds of obstacles and discouraging factors. That's not unique to anyone. We all seem to do that and I seem have done that well, even though I quit for many years. I came back to it, and only peope like you calling me up reminds me of a of the distasteful aspects of it. I don't dwell on that. You don't create anything good coming from a position of negativity.