Q&A With Maroon 5 Manager Jordan Feldstein

Having majored in business at Syracuse University, Feldstein knew he wanted a career in the music industry, but had no idea as to where his passion would take him.  A longtime friendship with Maroon 5’s Adam Levine eventually led him to managing the band.

Now, as the founder/CEO of Live Nation subsidiary Career Artist Management, Feldstein is deeply involved with all aspects of his artists’ careers, from recording to touring to TV, film, publishing and merchandise.

While chatting with Pollstar Feldstein described the journey that led him to managing Maroon 5.  But the conversation was more than just a biographical tale.  Feldstein also talked about today’s recording industry, the differences between how pop and rock bands make records and why managers should never say no to their clients.

What led you to become an artist’s manager?

I was working at ICM in New York [in 2000].  I knew Adam (Levine) from when I was growing up in Los Angeles.  He invited me to come here … said he was working on a [recording].  I went into the studio, heard it and I instinctually knew that it was something I wanted to be a part of [and] I quit my job and started management.

Do all agents harbor a secret desire to become artist managers?

(laughs) I think I knew being an agent wasn’t for me.  It’s a pretty one-dimensional job.  Honestly, I didn’t even know what I was doing.  I just knew I needed to be a part of this.

At the beginning of your relationship with Maroon 5, was it more like a handshake deal or did you sign papers?

We had a contract.  I was just starting out.  They were on a second run.  They were signed to Reprise under a different name, before.  But there wasn’t much to go on.  They were all pretty much starting from scratch.

Was there a singular moment or event that convinced you or re-affirmed your decision to be in artist management?

No.  I knew I wanted to be in the music business.  I had interned at a couple of places [while] in college, and I worked at ICM.  So I knew music was where I wanted to go.  What was in music? I had no idea.  The band just kind of naturally led me to that role.

As a manager, how involved are you with your artists’ creative decisions?

I think the relationship with Maroon 5 has changed over time. When they first made Songs About Jane, I was definitely involved in the creative concepts they were developing, but back then they made records more the way a rock band would make a record.  Over time they [started making] records more like the way a pop act would make a record.  I’m much more involved in the pop-act process than I was in the rock-band process.

What are some of the differences between the way a pop act makes records versus a rock band?

When they made Songs About Jane, their first album, they were coming from where a band wrote all their own material, tracked it in a very traditional way – laid down all the drums, then the bass, then you do the guitar overdubs and the vocals.  The way we make records now, a lot of times either whole tracks will be submitted or partial songwriting ideas will be submitted.  And I help filter through those songs and help decide which ones to pursue and how to pursue them, in conjunction with the band and Max Martin who executively produced the last two records.

And where do these submissions originate?

They are songwriting demos.  Max Martin will say, “Hey, my writer wrote this song.  What do you think of it?” And me and Adam will listen to it and kind of make a decision whether to pursue it or not from there.  Sometimes I get songs from publishers or other writers … and play it for Adam and see how he feels about it.

Do you receive a lot of song pitches, either for Maroon 5 or your other artists?

Absolutely.  I don’t have any artists that make records the way we used to make those kind of rock records.  Between Maroon 5 and Robin Thicke and Big Boi from Outkast, this is kind of the new age of making records.  Unless you’re like a [traditional] rock band.  Even a lot of those, these days, are heavy into electronics, doing more co-writes.  The whole way of making records has changed, in the 15 years I’ve been in the business.

Does that surprise you?

In 2000 would I ever have thought that guitar-driven rock bands would almost cease to exist?  Yes, that would have surprised me.  But as time went on it … with the growth of hip hop, R&B, EDM, it seems to have made a natural progression toward this way of record making.  But, yeah, I think the 21-year-old me would be shocked.

What types of music did you like when you were 21?

I always loved R&B and hip hop music but I had a great respect for rock.  For me, that was the way I learned to make records, on those first couple of Maroon 5 records.  And we made those records in a much more traditional way bands made records.

During the first couple of years managing Maroon 5, were there ever moments where you wished you had remained an agent?

Oh, no.  I loved the process of making that record.  We put it out in 2002 and by 2004 they won “Best New Artist” at the Grammys. 

With them you could see the progression. We would get a tour or we would come back and headline a market and the audience would double.  You always saw progress.  It was rough going, financially, in the beginning but you always kind of felt there was something special here.

You just mentioned something that fans might not often recognize.  Is there a certain number of years you expect to be in the red before an act shows some serious profit?

I don’t think you can expect anything.  If you look at Maroon as an example, I didn’t manage them when they were signed to Reprise.  Before they were able to actually start to make real money, they had been a band for eight years. Granted, part of that time was in high school [and] making money wasn’t as much of a necessity.  It took us two full years of working Maroon 5 before we really started to see some money on that first album.

When I managed Sara Bareilles in the beginning, I think we developed her for a full year, then we signed her and made a record for a full year, then we worked her for a year and a half.  It was like three and a half, four years of me managing her before she really started to make some money.

How important is it for a manager to challenge an artist to do better on the next project?

I do it, probably, to my own detriment, sometimes.  For me, particularly for Maroon 5, I’ve known Adam my whole life so it’s a different kind of relationship.  For Sara Bareilles, who I no longer manage, I was with her from the beginning.  And Robin Thicke … those three will probably be my biggest success stories as a manager. 

When I signed Robin, his career wasn’t in a good way.  After he started listening to me, his career took a different turn.  I can only manage one way and that way is to push people to do their best.  Their best may mean different things to different people.  To me, it always meant having hits.  I’ve always pushed people to have hit records.  I still believe a hit records open the door for every other avenue of creativity you want to explore, whether it be doing a musical, touring a certain way, a variety of ways.

Such as being a coach on “The Voice?”

Yes, to pursue other avenues to expose your music.  If you look at Sara Bareilles, she came off of a Rhapsody commercial.  “The Voice” reinvented Maroon 5.  For Robin Thicke it was a music video.  It always starts with the album but you have to be creative outside the album and push the envelope in that regard as well.

How do you say no to an artist when he or she wants to pursue something you don’t think will work?

I don’t think you say no because ultimately you work for the act and you’re there to fulfill their dreams.  I’ll strongly suggest not to do something and I might do that more aggressively than others, but I’ll never say no.

If one day Adam said he wanted to be a porn star …

I think we would have a long conversation.

What do you think is one of the biggest factors of managing an artist that your clients may not be aware of?

I don’t know if artists fully appreciate how often we have to struggle and fight for them.  They know it conceptually, but they never sat in a room and watched us battle for them on a daily basis.

You launched 222 Records and 222 Productions with Adam and you have several projects in the works.  How do you stay on top of it all?

For 222 Productions we have a guy who runs it who;s amazing, named Josh Gummersall, who really deals with the day-to-day in that entity.

We only have two things signed to the label.  One is the soundtrack for the movie Adam is in, “Begin Again.”… And then [there is] our first act that we’re putting out next year, Rozzi Crane, who I also happen to manage.  So it’s not as hard to keep track of that, it’s not like we have a roster of 10 artists. We’re going to put out our second record on the label next year. 

Maroon 5 has a huge tour coming up in 2015.  Once the tour begins, will you be on the road with the band every day?

I usually go for the beginning – the production days and the first couple of days of the tour.  I’ll pop in for the major [markets], like New York, maybe Chicago and I’ll be there in Los Angeles.

No late night phone calls when something goes wrong?

It happens.  We’ve been doing this together, the band, and we’ve had the majority of the same crew for a long time.  You get to a point where it kind of runs pretty damn smoothly.  It happens every once in a while, but if you’re getting late-night phone calls you’ve got an issue that’s bigger than [what] can be solved sitting on the road.

Do you ever find yourself playing armchair manager when you see other artists ending up in unflattering situations and think about what you would do if you were their manager?

No.  Never in that regards. I’ve had clients go through those same situations.  I don’t know if a manager can always control the circumstances of what’s going on.  I’m too focused on my own acts.

Is there a downside of being an artist manager?

To me it’s like being the coach of a basketball or football team.  You get none of the praise and all of the [criticism]. Like with professional coaches, we also get compensated well, so it’s hard to complain.

Can a person be a successful manager if he or she personally does not actually get or appreciate the artist’s music?

I think you have to have some level of appreciation.  You don’t have to necessarily love the music but you have to have an understanding of the fanbase. … For me, I love my artists’ music so I can’t really relate to that question.  I’ve never been in a situation where I manage someone and I’m like, “I don’t get this.  I don’t like this.”  I know there are people who probably do it and do it well.  For me, that doesn’t work.  I gotta love the music.

As the music industry changed and labels lost some of their power, how did you and Maroon 5 manage to stay on top?

When we started in the business, [record labels had] way more power across the board in every category.  Since that has diminished, I’d say the biggest changes [is] I’ve had to hire more staff to compensate for record labels.  I used to sit in a room with one guy.  Not it takes like four people, touring, media … you know what I’m saying?  We need to offer more services than we used to.

[The labels] used to do a lot.  They would do a lot of tour marketing. … A lot of it comes down to us taking control of certain things if they are to do be done right.

Are there managers who excel at the big picture but aren’t that good at handling the day-to-day business?

I don’t look too much at what other people are doing. For our company, we’re always looking 18 months, two years ahead. We have Maroon 5 2016 planned. That, for me, is the only way I know how to do it.  We’re always looking big picture and we’re always trying to figure out what we can do to catapult the band – not just now but in the future and how we can sustain longevity with artists.

Along with changes in the industry, you’re probably seeing changes in the fanbase as new fans come in and long-time fans grow older.  From a management point of view, how do you see fans, today?

I think particularly with a band like Maroon 5, a lot of the newer fanbase is buying singles as opposed to albums.  They’re buying all their music digitally as opposed to maybe a portion of the music or none of the music, digitally.  It’s all digital for the younger portion of our fanbase. 

To me, I think the biggest difference is, you have to hit a wider demographic to achieve the same level of success that you could 15 years ago.  15 years ago maybe you hit one radio format, maybe you hit two radio formats and you’re able to hit critical mass.  Now I have to hit five radio formats to even get near the numbers we were getting back then.  That’s the biggest difference for me.  The amount of impressions that you need to get someone to make a choice in entertainment has grown exponentially.

And there are more choices for fans.  If an act isn’t working, someone else will easily take their place in the eyes of fans.  You have Adam on “The Voice,” and he was in the second season of “American Horror Story.” So if you’re not keeping Maroon 5 in front of people, you’re keeping Adam in front of people.

We’re lucky in that regard.  Even off-cycle we have a level of visibility that a lot of people don’t get to have.  We’re doing remixes, rhythmic remixes. … We have TV, viral things … We just need to do a lot more to try to sell even close to the same amount of records that we were selling 8 years, 10 years, whatever ago.

Do you ever look at managers of the past, say Brian Epstein with The Beatles, Albert Grossman who managed Bob Dylan, or Col. Parker with Elvis, for tips on how to do your job?

I’ve read a lot about those guys but one of my mentors is Irving Azoff.  I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with him … learning how he handled problems back then and how he handles problems now.  The guy’s a genius –  every kind of tactical move this guy makes. [I’ve been] able to absorb it all and take from it what I want and create some of my own style as well.

Is that something you would look for in a budding artist manager – a business background or a business degree?

Not really. … I love someone who’s college educated but to me there’s just no experience that you can replicate by just being on the job in this business.

What can an 18-year-old college freshman do to prepare for a career as an artist manager?

To me, if you’re going to be in the music business in general, and this is something I did, I interned every summer at a record label or talent agency or management company, whatever I could.  I would read everything I could get my hands on, whether it be Pollstar, Billboard or Hits. I used to study the Pollstar management [directory] just so I knew who managed who.  Now it’s so much easier with all this information online.  The more knowledge, the more you speak the language of the business, the quicker you’re going to move up the ladder.

What have you learned about people during your years as an artist manager?

What I learned from people is that I needed to improve my people skills.  I think having success early didn’t allow me to develop those [skils] than if I had success later in my 20s, early 30s.

One last question – How many Maroon 5 T-shirts do you own?

I own no Maroon 5 T-shirts.  I try to keep my house free of the music business.  I don’t have any plaques in my house, any posters or anything like that.

And your office?

My office is covered with them.  (laughs) You can’t move an inch without seeing a plaque, a poster or some sort of memorabilia.  But in terms of my home, I try to keep it business-free.

Upcoming dates for Maroon 5:

Dec. 12 – New York, N.Y., Madison Square Garden (Z100 Jingle Ball)
Dec. 30 – Las Vegas, Nev., Mandalay Bay Events Center
Dec. 31 – Las Vegas, Nev., Mandalay Bay Events Center
Feb. 16 – Dallas, Texas,  American Airlines Center
Feb. 17 – Houston, Texas, Toyota Center
Feb. 19 – Atlanta, Ga., Philips Arena
Feb. 24 – Sunrise, Fla., BB&T Center
Feb. 25 – Tampa, Fla., Tampa Bay Times Forum
Feb. 27 – Nashville, Tenn., Bridgestone Arena
Feb. 28 – Indianapolis, Ind., Bankers Life Fieldhouse
March 2 – Washington, D.C., Verizon Center
March 3 – Boston, Mass., TD Garden
March 5 – New York, N.Y., Madison Square Garden Arena
March 6 – New York, N.Y., Madison Square Garden Arena
March 8 – East Rutherford, N.J., IZOD Center
March 9 – Philadelphia, Pa., Wells Fargo Center
March 11 – Columbus, Ohio,  Nationwide Arena
March 13 – Pittsburgh, Pa., Consol Energy Center
March 14 – Louisville, Ky., KFC Yum! Center
March 16 – Toronto, Ontario, Air Canada Centre
March 18 – Auburn Hills, Mich., The Palace Of Auburn Hills
March 19 – Chicago, Ill., United Center
March 21 – Kansas City, Mo., Sprint Center
March 23 – Saint Paul, Minn., Xcel Energy Center
March 25 – Saskatoon, Saskatchean, Credit Union Centre
March 26 – Edmonton, Alberta, Rexall Place
March 28 – Tacoma, Wash., Tacoma Dome
March 29 – Vancouver, British Columbia, Rogers Arena
March 31 – San Jose, Calif., SAP Center At San Jose
April 1 – San Diego, Calif., Viejas Arena
April 3 – Inglewood, Calif., Forum
April 4 – Inglewood, Calif., Forum
May 26 – London, England, The SSE Arena, Wembley
May 28 – London, England, The SSE Arena, Wembley
May 31 – Birmingham, England, LG Arena
June 1 – Manchester, England, Phones 4u Arena – Manchester
June 3 – Amsterdam, Netherlands, Ziggo Dome
June 6 – Rabat, Morocco, OLM Souissi (Mawazine Festival)
June 9 – Oberhausen, Germany, Konig – Pilsener Arena
June 10 – Munich, Germany, Olympiahalle
June 12 – Assago, Italy, Mediolanum Forum
June 14 – Barcelona, Spain, Palau Sant Jordi
June 15 – Madrid, Spain, Palacio de Deportes
June 17 – Lisbon, Portugal, Meo Arena