Ken Ehrlich On The Making Of A ‘Grammy Moment’

Kevin Mazur/WireImage – POSITIVE VIBRATION:
Sting, Ziggy Marley, Bruno Mars, Rihanna and Damian Marley creating a “Grammy Moment” at the 2013 awards show.

Since 1980, when Grammys executive producer Ken Ehrlich began overseeing “music’s biggest night,” two words have become synonymous with the award show’s most breath-taking performances: Grammy moments.

From Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond’s poignant “You Don’t Bring me Flowers” in 1980 and Whitney Houston’s 1994 power vocal on “I Will Always Love You” to Pink’s daredevil acrobatics of “Glitter in the Air” in 2010 and Bruno Mars, Sting, Rihanna, Ziggy and Damian Marley’s rousing tribute to Bob Marley in 2013, these transcendent performances, as Ehrlich explains, are not “a science by any means” or something he “necessarily anticipates.”

That said, Ehrlich, 74, usually has an inkling as to what might rise to the top. Will Kendrick Lamar, U2, Lady Gaga, P!nk, Kesha or Childish Gambino have a break-out performance?

Or is it Little Big Town, Patti LuPone, Ben Platt or Sam Smith?

Or maybe it’s collabs between Bruno Mars and Cardi B; Elton John and Miley Cyrus; Emmylou Harris and Chris Stapleton; Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee; Maren Morris with Eric Church and Brothers Osbourne; DJ Khaled, Rihanna and Bryson Tiller; Alessia Cara, Logic, and Khalid – it’s anyone’s guess as to which performances will transcend the telecast. Here, the veteran producer breaks down exactly what it takes to have a Grammy moment.

Pollstar: We’re just days away from the 60th Annual Grammys show and …
KEN EHRLICH: Jesus Christ. You know, you must be right. Hey, I better get off the phone and get to work …

So what are you doing right now?
We’re finalizing bookings, which by now would be 100 percent done but because the show is two weeks earlier I’m a little farther behind. It’s because the nominations always come out before Christmas break and they moved the show up because of the Winter Olympics, which start in February so the Super Bowl moved up and then we moved up.

Are you frenetically contacting agents and trying to book artists?
No, pretty much all the offers are out. At this point we’re working on the final strokes of the production elements.

How is it being back at Madison Square Garden?
First of all, let me say the people there have been terrific. They’ve been very helpful. They’ve tried to do everything they can to make this a good experience, and I would say the same thing on our side. The building has more challenges built in for a multi-act show like ours. For instance, the Staples Center has more areas for us to work with and access is easier. On the other hand, there is a tradition and a sense of being in a place that has such a history that really brought us here to the Garden.

How do you decide which artists you’re going to book?
There are two things to be considered: one is artists who are nominated, and then there are a number of things we do on the show with artists who are not nominated.

Then how do you go about booking those artists?
We have long and deep associations with managers, publicists, record labels and artists. I can’t generalize an answer for you because on the one hand, when it comes down to an artist like Bruno [Mars] I’ll email him or talk to him about an idea I have. If it’s an artist like Kendrick Lamar I’ll go through Dave Free, who is his manager and creative guy. When it’s an artist like Sting, I’ll call a manager and say, “I’d like to talk to Sting,” and they’ll put me on the phone.

Who on your team supports you?
Well, Chantel [Saucedo] is our talent producer. She doesn’t get involved in the primary booking that often, but she has responsibility for presenters, of which there are at least 17 or 18. She also works out rehearsal schedules and logistics along with Ron Basile, who is my production supervisor who’s been with me for 30 years and knows every production manager. Our supervising producer is a guy named Eric Cook, he oversees the finances of the whole thing. When we do these numbers, we’re responsible for a certain amount of the production and we ask for the act that we’re working with to be responsible for a certain amount, so it’s a combination of us working together that more or less gets worked out by him.

And who do you mostly work with?
I don’t work in a vacuum in terms of booking and creating the show. I’m very responsive both to Neil Portnow [president] at the Recording Academy, who obviously we do the show with; and we also do the show for CBS and Jack Sussman [executive vice president, specials, music and live events] at the network is very actively involved. Occasionally we’ll have some disagreements and one of us will win out and it’s not always a consensus, but overall we have mutual respect for each other and all listen to each other.

After you’ve nailed down production and curation, how do you turn that into a “Grammy moment?” Do you get a feeling in your gut about which one it will be or could it be any one of them? 

– MUSIC’S GREATEST NIGHT MAKER:
Ken Ehrlich and Bruno Mars at The 58th Grammy Awards at Staples Center on Feb, 15, 2016, in Los Angeles.

It is not a science by any means. And it is not something that I necessarily anticipate.There are artists with some identifiable factors: one of which is our history with an artist, and knowing their openness to doing something that’s not necessarily in their comfort zone. That has the possibility of becoming something special knowing that there’s certain artists who come to this show understanding we are open to those kinds of ideas from them and that they’re open to those kinds of ideas from us.

Where do the concepts come from?
Occasionally they’ll come to us with a great idea, but quite often they don’t know the make-up of the show so those ideas will come from me. Again, there’s no pride of authorship here, they can come from any number of places, but a lot of it really does have to do with knowing the zeitgeist of an artist and knowing – having worked with them before – how far I can go in terms of suggesting things.

Can you give an example of how a specific Grammy moment came together?+
Five years ago Bruno [Mars] wasn’t going to do the show. I was with him and asked what his favorite song on the new album was because it wasn’t eligible [yet for a Grammy] and he said “Locked Out of Heaven.” I knew the song and liked it too but he said, “I’m not doing it.”

By the time I left him and got back to my office across the 101, I’d called [Roc Nation’s] Jay Brown. Obviously, the song has a heavy reggae influence, so basically within 24 hours I had Sting, Rihanna and a couple of Marleys on and turned it into a Bob Marley medley. Did that exist 24 hours before? No. Was that something that I could have thought about weeks in advance? No. I really didn’t hear the album until a couple of days before, but the ideas just come from different places.

So what’s at the core of a Grammy moment?
If there’s one continuum, they’re all music related, they’re all based on listening. They start for me with the first time I get the nominations. That first weekend I’ll sit in my home office for however many hours it takes and listen to music – most of which I’ve heard before. And I listen to it in a whole different way knowing that it’s quite possible we’re going to want to do something with them on the show.

Who do you think might break out this year?
Here’s something we did in the last 24 hours: We’ve been looking for a key to doing something and we already have really strong country performances on the show and we like to have at least two, sometimes more. I’ve been playing around with an idea but I really didn’t think I had it right – although there were probably three or four on my tablet that I was playing with. Then, all of a sudden yesterday, it became clear to me that we really should be doing something that’s dedicated to Las Vegas and not just Las Vegas but Manchester as well. 

Then, of course, the logical thing was to do it with artists who had been [at the Route 91 Harvest Festival]. So obviously Jason Aldean was there; Maren Morris was not there that night but she played the festival; the Brothers Osborne played the festival; Eric Church was there.

And again, this is the kind of thing the Grammys do. I don’t want to go into details right now because it’s almost done, but it’s not 100 percent done and I don’t know about Jason but those other artist are going to come to the Grammys and do a song that’s going to be dedicated not just to Las Vegas and the people who died there or the people who died in Manchester but the fact that music has always meant to be an experience that we share for joy.

That already sounds like a moment.
We take our role very seriously as the voice of the music industry so it’s incumbent upon us to responsibly address these kinds of things.