Pilot

**Pilot** is the first episode of *Vinyl*.

## Plot

New York City, 1973. Richie Finestra, president of American Century Records, sits in his car in an alleyway, swigging alcohol. Richie buys a quarter ounce of cocaine from a drug dealer, rips down his rear-view mirror and cuts the powder with a business card from a homicide detective named Eric Voehel. After snorting a line, Richie dials Voehel's number but never gets a word out -- his car is stampeded by a herd of young people rushing into the Mercer Arts Center. Richie hangs up the phone and follows the crowd inside, where he takes in an edgy performance by the New York Dolls.

Five days earlier, Richie sits at the head of a conference table in a meeting with the executives of PolyGram in West Germany. Joining him are Head of Promotions, Zak Yankovich and Head of Sales, Skip Fontaine. The men are working out a deal in which PolyGram buys out American Century. Richie's past drug habits and a run of disastrous albums have sunk the label and the now-sober Richie hopes they can dump the company and split. A PolyGram executive asks about American Century's pending deal with Led Zeppelin, then tells Richie their attorney will review their balance sheets a final time before signing the deal in New York the following week.

In New York, A&R assistant Jamie Vine picks up a backpack of drugs from her supplier before heading to work. On her way into American Century, she overhears a young proto-punk rocker trying to slip his band's tape to Heather, the receptionist. Jamie steps in and explains that she works for A&R head Julian "Julie" Silver and promises to pass the tape along. The young man introduces himself as Kip Stevens and tells Jamie that his band, the Nasty Bits, will be playing a show at The Coventry.

Richie's driver, Leo, picks him up at the airport with news that there's an emergency with Led Zeppelin that Richie needs to attend to. Richie approaches Robert Plant backstage at Madison Square Garden and attempts to smooth things over: The band agreed to a 20 percent royalty rate but discovered the label attempted to it cut in half without their knowledge. Richie promises to make things right, but Plant dismisses him. Back in the car, Richie calls Scott Leavitt, the label's lawyer, and berates him for messing up the deal. He orders Scott to fix the situation with the band's manager, Peter Grant.

Stuck in standstill traffic trying to get home to Connecticut, Richie redirects Leo to his apartment in the Village. They pass through a neighborhood in the South Bronx and Richie tells Leo to pull over when he hears a guy spinning two records for an impromptu dance party outside of an apartment building. His investigation is cut short when a pimp sticks a gun in the window and questions Richie's presence in the neighborhood. Another man recognizes Richie, and while the two don't acknowledge their history, the man gets the pimp to let Richie and Leo go unharmed.

At his apartment, Richie puts on a reel from an old recording session with Lester Grimes. He recalls seeing Lester -- the man who saved him in the Bronx -- perform at a nightclub where he was a bartender back in the early 1960s. He and Richie bonded over music after his set, and Richie became his manager.

The next morning, Richie arrives at his office to find Zak, Scott and Skip already in a meeting with a livid Peter Grant. Grant is outraged that Richie attempted to do business with one of his clients behind his back. Making matters worse, Scott let slip about the PolyGram deal and Grant vows to keep Zeppelin's money away from "those Nazi bastards." After Grant storms out, Julie delivers some more bad news: American Century artist Donny Osmond has offended radio station owner Frank "Buck" Rogers. He's now refusing to play Osmond's new record and is threatening a label-wide boycott. Despite Richie's reluctance, Zak insists they bring in Joe Corso, a well-known, but far from ethical, promotions man to help smooth things over.

Richie heads into an A&R meeting having lunch while listening to Ring, Ring by ABBA. They make fun of the music, but Richie is able to hear the potential of the Swedish pop group, "Three bars, I can tell they'll be filling football stadiums." He then berates the team for their scattered roster and inability to bring in fresh talent; the industry calls them "American Cemetery: Where Artists Go to Die." Jamie, who's just brought in lunch for the group, reveals that she's listened to a promising demo from a band called the Nasty Bits. Richie praises her initiative.

New York City, 1960. Richie, now Lester Grimes' manager, meets with Maury Gold, the head of Rondelay Records. Gold tells Lester that while he likes the blues, the records don't sell. Richie pitches Lester to cut a couple of successful pop records under the name "Little Jimmy Little," so he can start recording the music he really wants to do. When Lester responds uncertainly, Gold pulls Richie aside and demands he get Lester in line. "Musicians ain't your friends," he tells his protégé. "They're products." A short while later, Lester records "The Cha Cha Twist" as "Little Jimmy Little.”

Jamie watches the Nasty Bits perform at the Coventry. The crowd hates the band's raw, unfamiliar sound, and starts chucking beer bottles at the stage. Kip launches himself into the crowd and starts hitting people with his guitar while the rest of the band fights patrons off the stage. Jamie watches the chaos, entranced and excited. Afterward, Jamie and Kip have sex at his apartment. She tells Kip that he and his band need to be a lot better if they want to get signed, though she recognizes the crowd's visceral reaction to the Bits' sound will be a major selling point. As she prepares to leave, she warns Kip, who's tying himself off, to be careful with heroin.

Richie meets with Buck Rogers and Joe Corso at The Oasis, a sex club. Buck, a major blowhard, details his meritless beef with Donny Osmond. Aware a boycott from Buck would spread like cancer, Corso offers Buck some cocaine and asks what he and Richie can do to make things right.

Arriving home, Richie finds his wife Devon on the couch with their sleeping daughter. Richie unloads about his tense day, worrying that PolyGram will scrap his label once they realize it's nothing but an empty shell, rendering the last 20 years of his life meaningless. Devon reminds him that he's built a great life from that work and that he doesn't have to "retire and build model trains" after the sale. Richie doesn't know what to do next, except that he needs a change. Devon agrees she needs one as well.

Following a tense meeting with the Germans in New York, Devon hosts a birthday bash for Richie at their home in Greenwich. An old friend of Devon's, Ingrid, arrives at the party. She tells Devon that she recently saw their mutual friend Andy Warhol and that the artist asked about her. Devon insists she's happy with her sober suburban life, though she sounds uncertain about her claim. The American Century crew presents Richie with his birthday gift: A 1959 Gretsch Twang Machine, owned by Bo Diddley himself. Richie is forced to leave his own party when he gets a call from Joe Corso; the promoter has been stuck partying with Buck Rogers since their meeting at The Oasis two days ago. Rogers wants to see Richie and Corso won't take no for an answer.

Richie arrives at Buck's home on Long Island and finds him coked out of his mind. Richie, seeing no value in discussing anything with the incoherent man, attempts to leave several times. When Buck grabs Richie and kisses him on the mouth, a fight breaks out between the two men, and Corso winds up bludgeoning Buck to death with a crystal vase. Despite Corso delivering the final, fatal blows, he insists that Richie had an equal hand in murdering Buck and stops him from calling the cops. He forces Richie into helping him dump Buck's corpse in Brooklyn -- the cops will think it's a drug deal gone wrong, and he and Richie will never hear about it again.

The next day, Jamie talks with Richie about the Nasty Bits' performance at The Coventry, but he's too distracted from the previous night's events to listen. His secretary, Cece Williams, interrupts to tell Richie that a detective, Eric Voehel, dropped by and left his card, asking Richie to call him. Also, Zak, Skip, and Scott want to meet with Richie. The men feign seriousness before breaking into smiles -- PolyGram agreed to buy them out. The guys pop champagne, but a disconsolate Richie excuses himself from the celebration.

New York City, 1964. Richie, now working for Rondelay Records, meets with Lester Grimes. Lester wants Richie to finally make good on his four-year-old promise of letting him sing the blues. Richie explains that the label is in deep because of his boss's gambling debts; however, he plans to meet with Maury's creditors to work out a deal and promises to take Lester with him when he starts his own label. Unfortunately, the move doesn't go as planned. Gangster Corrado Galasso agrees to buy out Richie at half its valuation but refuses to release Lester from his contract. The following day, Galasso and his goons beat up Lester for refusing to record anything else for Maury, based on his deal with Richie. When Lester attacks Galasso, one of the men pulls him off with a baseball bat to the throat, crushing Lester's windpipe and effectively ending his singing career.

At home, Richie listens to the Nasty Bits demo while watching the news. When he sees that Buck Roger's body has been found, he panics and uncovers a hidden bottle of Scotch, and takes his first drink in years. Devon discovers a drunk Richie a short while later. She's enraged Richie doesn't feel their life together is "enough" and needs to soothe himself with booze. She hands him the bottle and insists he drink more; he does, then offers it to Devon. She takes a mouthful but doesn't swallow -- instead, she spits it in Richie's face before storming out. In a fit of rage, Richie puts his new guitar through their television.

The New York Dolls continue to rock at the Mercer Arts Center while Richie watches in awe. Moments later, he watches a crack ripple through the walls and the venue collapses around him. Richie survives the collapse, and pulls himself -- relatively unscathed-- from the rubble, and walks off into the night.

## Trivia

* The New York Dolls had a residency at the Mercer Arts Center. This was a small trend at the time. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention played every Wednesday afternoon at the Garrick Cinema on Bleecker St. The Fugs played seven nights a week at the Players Theater on MacDougal Street. The Velvet Underground played around the block twice a night, five days a week at Max's Kansas City. The New York Dolls had a regular Tuesday-night gig in the Oscar Wilde Room of the Mercer Arts Center.
* One of the songs being played at the Mercer Arts Center is "Personality Crisis". It is the lead track from the New York Dolls' self-titled debut album. It was written by Dolls lead singer David Johansen and guitarist Johnny Thunders.
* The two sequences where Richie and his team meets with PolyGram’s German execs are a perfect example of Terrence Winter’s skills meshing with Martin Scorsese’s love of improv, as the two groups passive aggressively poke at each other with funny, natural-sounding dialogue. (“No one knows more about hate than you. I mean not you specifically. Not specifically your generation. Thirty years ago. Like your father. But not him specifically.”)
* A short snippet of the song "Rock and Roll" is played after Richie Finestra says, "Better than the *Hindenburg*" which features footage of the *Hindenburg* disaster and a picture of Led Zeppelin's debut album. The song was not featured on that album, and so that the showrunners didn't have to pay for the licensing fee for Zeppelin's work, it was heavily modified so that it wouldn't resemble the actual song.
* Richie pays a visit to Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden. In real-life, Led Zeppelin performed and filmed three sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden in New York in 1973 for the film *The Song Remains the Same*, which was released three years later.
* The scene where Led Zeppelin's manager Peter Grant is arguing backstage at the Madison Square Garden concert actually happened, almost word for word. In *The Song Remains the Same*, the real Peter Grant is shown screaming about vendors selling knock-off Led Zeppelin items without his knowledge or approval.
* The two songs performed by Led Zeppelin are "Somethin' Else" and "You Shook Me", neither of which were written by the actual band; they are cover songs originally performed by Eddie Cochran and Muddy Waters respectively. The songs were also covered by the actors portraying the band. The show most likely did this so that they wouldn't have to pay for the licensing fee for Zeppelin's music catalog.
* While on his way to Greenwich, Richie made an unexpected stop in the South Bronx and found himself immersed in an impromptu dance party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. The party was enlivened by a skilled DJ who ingeniously extended the beat of the music while isolating the percussion "breaks" using a mixer to switch between two records. Little did Richie know that he was witnessing a pivotal moment in music history. In reality, the Bronx hip-hop scene blossomed on August 11, 1973, thanks to the pioneering efforts of DJ Kool Herc and his sister, Cindy Campbell. Together, they hosted the first-ever hip-hop party in the Bronx, igniting the spark that would set the genre on a remarkable rise. DJ Kool Herc, celebrated as one of the founding fathers of hip-hop music, had been throwing block parties in his neighborhood during the early 1970s, spinning funk and soul hits on his turntables. Among those unforgettable parties was a back-to-school event for Cindy, held on August 11, 1973, at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. This historic gathering is widely regarded as the birth of hip-hop culture, where all the essential elements of the movement converged under one roof. This seed of creativity and innovation would eventually flourish into a global force, shaping not only the music but also the surrounding culture. Kool Herc's innovative turntablist technique, known as "breakbeat," became a fundamental element of modern hip hop, influencing countless artists and shaping the course of musical history. From that fateful day in the Bronx, hip hop's journey to worldwide dominance had begun.
* Clark Morelle is sentenced to spend a marathon recording session with England Dan & John Ford Coley. They were a real life soft rock duo composed of Danny Wayland “England Dan” Seals and John Edward “John Ford” Coley.
* When Richie comes into the office at one point, Cece tells him that he’s missed calls from Lester Bangs and David Geffen. The episode doesn’t say whom he phones back first, but as *Vinyl* plays out, that choice will be key to the future of American Century. Who’s more important: a critic advocating for the raw poetry of primitive rock and roll or a music executive stoking the star-maker machinery behind popular songs?
* The Led Zeppelin-poaching storyline piggybacks on a real piece of rock history. When the band’s original Atlantic contract expired in 1973, other labels scrambled to sign them. Ultimately, as noted in the show, Peter Grant used his leverage to get Atlantic to distribute Zeppelin’s own label, Swan Song Records. This was a common story in the early ’70s. Labels would lure artists to new homes, then promise them their own imprints. Similarly, the Rolling Stones’ original Decca deal wrapped up in 1970, at which point they formed Rolling Stones Records, regularly reselling distribution rights and the back catalog to the highest bidder.
* Apparently, Richie has spent years claiming he went to Woodstock, but he spent that weekend in a hotel room with Devon. Martin Scorsese attended Woodstock as an assistant editor on the 1970 documentary *Woodstock*, where he helped tell director Michael Wadleigh’s cameramen what to shoot.
* Buck Rogers' death is a homage to Alfred Hitchcock's *Torn Curtain*, whose famous scene of the killing of Gromek is cited for showing how hard it is for amateurs without weapons to kill a man.
* The scene where Richie and Joe Corso bury Buck Rogers is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Scorsese's classic film, *Goodfellas*.
* After hearing the Nasty Bits' demo tape, Jamie Vine compares them to the Neon Boys, a short-lived proto-punk band whose trio later went on to form the influential punk rock band Television in 1973.
* The episode drops references to Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, partly to remind audiences that the Stooges and the Velvet Underground were very much a part of the musical conversation in the early ’70s, as well as their influence on punk rock.
* In the middle of the New York Dolls concert, the Mercer Arts Center collapses with several people inside including Richie, yet most of them, including him, end up surviving. In real life, the New York Dolls were not performing when the building came down. They were out of town. The collapse happened hours before the theaters were due to be filled. Hotel residents Herbert Whitehead, Kay Parker, and Arthur and Peggy Sherwin were killed in the incident. It prompted Mayor John Lindsay to have the building commission evaluate the safety of all pre-1901-structures in the city.

## Appearances

### Locations

* New York City, New York
	+ Mercer Arts Center
	+ 1520 Sedgwick Avenue
	+ Brill Building
	+ The Coventry
	+ Oasis
	+ Max's Kansas City (mentioned)
	+ Le Jardin (mentioned)
	+ Kingsway Theater (mentioned)
* Hamburg, Germany
* Connecticut
* Okinawa, Japan (mentioned)
* Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (mentioned)
* Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (mentioned)
	+ Bistro Romano (mentioned)
* Poughkeepsie, New York (mentioned)
* Norway (mentioned)
* Sweden (mentioned)
* Los Angeles, California (mentioned)
* Boca Raton, Florida (mentioned)
* Long Island
* Nile (mentioned)

### Organizations

* New York Dolls
* American Century Records
* PolyGram
* Led Zeppelin
* Nasty Bits
* *King Biscuit Flower Hour*
* Ellerbee Broadcasting
* Atlantic Records Group
* Warner Bros. Records Inc.

### Music References Mentioned

* Chubby Checker
* Hyman Weiss
* Edwin Hawkins Singers
* American Century
* Cat Stevens
* Slade
* Suicide
* England Dan & John Ford Coley
* Donny Osmond
* Jethro Tull
* The Edgar Winter Group
* Black Oak Arkansas
* Humble Pie
* Peter Frampton
* Skip James
* Peetie Wheatstraw
* Big Boy Crudup
* Pinetop Perkins
* Kokomo Arnold
* Thomas A. Dorsey
* William Brewster
* Reverend Gary Davis
* Big Joe Turner
* Louis Jordan
* Lester Bangs
* David Geffen
* Jackson Browne
* Captain Beefheart
* Rod Stewart
* Aerosmith
* ABBA
* Alvin and the Chipmunks
* Good Rats
* Grand Funk Railroad
* Savoy Brown
* Robert Goulet
* Ahmet Ertegun
* Professor Longhair
* José Feliciano
* Frankie Lymon
* Hank Ballard
* Jackie Wilson
* Igor Stravinsky
* The Osmonds
* The Stooges
	+ Iggy Pop
	+ Scott Asheton
	+ Ron Asheton
* Leonard Bernstein
* Herbert von Karajan
* Andy Warhol
* Pete Townshend
* Alvin Lee
* Screamin' Jay Hawkins
* Joe Houston
* Jerry Leiber
* Mike Stoller
* Elvis Presley
* Neon Boys
* The Drifters
* The Monotones
* Woodstock

### Misc. Mentioned

* LZ 129 *Hindenburg*
* Anton Chekhov
* *Uncle Vanya*
* *Cherry Orchard*
* *The Seagull*
* Adolf Hitler
* Alexander the Great
* Napoleon Bonaparte
* Julius Caesar
* Michelangelo
* John Bull
* Topo Gigio
* Vietcong
* Uncle Sam
* Flash Gordon
* Pepsi
* John Addison
* Abbie Hoffman
* *Blackboard Jungle*
* Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
* *Frankenstein*

## Music

* *Vinyl: Music from the HBO Original Series - Volume 1*