Welcome to my official website. I have spent more than half a century in the music and entertainment business: managing artists, founding labels, financing tours, making records, producing films, publishing songs, creating partnerships that looked improbable until they worked, and surviving a few ideas that were considerably more impressive on paper than they were in the bank account.

I managed The Police and Sting, founded I.R.S. Records, and worked with artists and projects that helped push punk, new wave, alternative music, and Arab and world music into places the established business did not expect them to go. The interesting part is not a trophy case. It is how things actually happened: the deal behind the deal, the mistake behind the lesson, the personality behind the press release, and the moment when accepted wisdom became an obstacle.

This is where I speak for myself—about music, entertainment, business, politics, the Middle East, intelligence, power, and the strange ways all of them overlap. Some readers will agree with me. Others will arrive determined not to. Both groups are useful.