There aren't many individuals who can namedrop John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, Joe Cocker, Neil Young, Richie Havens and any number of others and reference them as personal friends. However, for Artie Kornfeld, it's hardly a stretch to namedrop given the fact that as one of the architects of Woodstock, he and his then-partner Michael Lang managed to gather some of the biggest names in rock to a field in Bethel, New York, for three days in August of 1969 and created an event that mark one of the most significant and spectacular milestones in the history of modern rock.
While Woodstock alone would be able to secure his name in the annals of rock and roll, Kornfeld needn't rest solely on its legacy. As he nears his 82nd birthday, he can look back on a career that was already well entrenched and accomplished by the time he was in his mid-twenties. A winner of four BMI Million Performance Awards and eight BMI Awards as a writer and publisher, he composed hits for Cher, The Cowsills, Dusty Springfield, Jan & Dean, Connie Francis, Wayne Newton, Tony Orlando, Jay Black & The Americans, Al Hirt, The Bangles, Minnie Riperton and literally dozens of others. They include such standards as "The Rain, The Park & Other Things," "Dead Man's Curve" (co-written with Brian Wilson), "The Pied Piper" and any number of other songs that climbed to the upper reaches of the charts . . . some 75 in all.
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GM: It seemed you were responsible for jumpstarting a lot of careers. Did you ever pass on anyone in particular?
AK: I turned down The Monkees and I turned down The Osmonds and I stuck with that. Everybody was teasing me. "What are you dealing with these kids for?" I said, "America was founded on coffee and milk and donuts on Sunday morning. And if I write the song, they're going to go to No. 1. I cowrote "The Rain, The Park & Other Things" for The Cowsills and proved the point.
GM: So you had a lot to do with The Cowsills' career then?
AK: I was at Mercury Records and I was with Chuck Berry on the road, and when I came back and they had released The Cowsills. I had gotten to work with them for a year, and I just knew that they could happen. I just felt it. So I financed them. When "The Rain, The Park & Other Things" hit, I was minus a couple of $100,000 that I had put into them, because it's hard to keep a band with 10 kids in the family. It's hard to keep alive. It was my idea to call it "The Rain, The Park & Other Things." The original title was "I Love the Flower Girl," but two days before it came out, the president of MGM called me and said, "Artie, you've got to change the title." I said, "Why?" He said, "Because the Scott McKenzie record about the flowers in their hair had taken off and you're going to get lost." He said, "Give me a title now." I said, "The Rain, the Park and Other Things."
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