Steve's answer from a fan as to what happened to Squint Entertainment, while at Cornerstone Music Festival 2003.
Source: The Phantom Tollbooth
Cornerstone 2003 Press Conference, Bushnell, IL
July 4th, 2003
Audience: What have you been doing since Squint, and when are we going to get the next album?
Taylor: [laughs] Okay. By the way, Dave, I'm really sorry about that interview I missed in 1987. I don't know how that happened; it just fell through the cracks.
Squint dissolved, or at least my involvement dissolved, in September of 2001. It's a long story. I want to keep everybody awake and I haven't actually talked about it before on the record, so I guess this would probably be on the record. So I'll be as gracious as I possibly can.
When I started Squint in 1997, I met with a few different funding sources. You may not be aware, but I'm not actually all that loaded with money. I was going to need funding to get something going, and I talked with people like Charlie Peacock and Toby McKeehan who had started sort of artist-driven labels, and both of the just counseled, just make sure you've got a lot of money. Because particularly with Charlie's situation, he was having success right out of the gate with his first artist that he signed, and was not able to chase that success when he started getting some radio play on Sarah [Masen] and it was a very frustrating experience.
I met with some different funding sources and the one that I clicked with most was a guy named Roland Lundy at Word Records. We sat, and I said, listen: I don't need to own this, I just have to total autonomy and I need a lot of money because we're going to be working with one group in particular and I've great expectations for this group Sixpence [None the Richer]. It's just going to take a lot of money to launch it. They've had bad experiences before with their indie record labels so I don't want to be putting them in the same position. He said, "Good," we shook hands on it, he was a man of his word and he did exactly that through the entire time that I was working with him. He gave us all the money we needed, he gave me complete autonomy to run things, and things went really well.
Then in the fall of 2000, Roland was pushed out of his position at Word. I guess the best way to put this would be in Biblical language: the new pharaoh knew not Steve. [audience laughs] He was a country music guy. I wouldn't say I was acting at all cocky or anything, but it never occurred to me that with the worldwide success we'd had, in many ways sort of unprecedented because it was a complete indie label; we even had an independent distributor in mainstream through ADA. We'd accomplished something that nobody was able to do anymore in having a worldwide hit as a total indie label based out of Nashville with independent distribution.
We had a really good batting average with the other groups that we had put out and this guy, originally, was very complimentary, and said how interested he was to sit down with me and talk with me about the future. So when we had our meeting, he started asking me questions about Squint. The first thing was, "I don't really get this Sixpence thing."
I said, "What is there to not get?"
"I just don't know that that is a group that is going to be around that long, is going to be that relevant." (I can't remember his exact words.)
I said, "Well, with all due respect, I don't see that as really your concern. I think they are going to be fine and they are a great group, they write great songs, and I have great confidence in them."
Then he said, "Well, what about this band Chevelle?"
I said, "Well, we put a lot of money behind them and a lot of promotion and done videos and they are just getting started, but I really feel like that's going to be a great group, it's a great band; three brothers. It's a really unique rock band and I really think that this is going to be a very successful group as well."
And he said, "And this hiphop group you've got, L.A. Symphony."
I said, "We're just getting started with that, but I feel like that's going to be our next big breakthrough. It's one of the best hiphop groups I've ever heard, and I just feel really privileged to even be able to work with them."
He said, "You are in a lot of different genres of music. In country music, we have one genre, country, and we have one set of radio stations, and we all just are aimed at that one group of radio stations."
Of course inside, I'm thinking, "Yeah, that's why country music, like, sucks completely." [audience laughs] I didn't put it in those particular words--I was just thinking that, it was like a thought bubble, and he couldn't see my thought bubbles, I'm sure.
He said, "Well, you've got all these different genres going."
I said, "Well, you know, in popular music, that would actually be considered a positive, that if you look at the labels we compete against, whether it's Electra or Reprise, they've got music in all different genres.
He said, "I'd like to hear this L.A. Symphony--these demos."
Then I got really quiet. I said, "Maybe you are not aware that the deal I have is that I have complete autonomy to run things. If you are a big hiphop fan, and you just would like to listen to L.A. Symphony demos because you want to groove with them in the car, that is fine. But if you want to listen to L.A. Symphony demos so you can give me advice on which songs you like, and which songs you don't like," I said, you know, "I can tell you right now, that's not going to work. I would not be interested in that kind of a situation."
To his credit, he didn't call security, but we pretty much left the meeting on those terms and literally the next day, I was told that they were going to sell Squint.
This took me by great surprise. To this day, I don't have any animosity against this gentleman. I think he was just acting out of what he thought was his responsibility and his role. He's a very, very successful country music executive, and I think a genuinely good guy. We just honestly had a difference of opinion. He felt like he had this new job, and he needed to be in charge.
So when I found out they were going to sell, I went through their lawyers at Word and Gaylord at the time and I said I would like the opportunity to buy Squint back--this label that I started. Unfortunately, there was another guy there who was the head of business affairs. He and I had not gotten on for a number of years. Those of you who know me know I'm a very nice guy, and very easy to get along with. This one gentleman in particular, we'd had a really be row a few years back. It was actually about--he had been hired by Word as an outside attorney and was supposedly representing Word and Squint and other acts and so this was the first time I'd worked with him in this situation.
He had done something when we were negotiating Chevelle's contract without telling me that was bad for the band. I was really, really angry about it. I actually got him on the phone, and got Chevelle's lawyer on the phone, and sort of said, "What's going on?"
He said "Well, I did this."
I said, while their [Chevelle's] lawyer was on the phone, "you don't do those things on your own. You work for me."
He said, "Steve, we'll talk about it later."
I said, "No, I want to talk about it now!" (I was really worked up.)
He said, "Steve, we'll talk about it later."
I said, "No, I want to talk about it now. What are you doing, trying to change our contracts around? I make these decisions, you don't make them!"
So we ended up in a very, very tense situation from then on, and it was this guy who was now in charge of selling Squint.
Things were not sort of stacking up in my favor. He refused to even give me an asking price for the label, which now, of course, was worth a lot of money. So I was really put in a tough position. I couldn't go out and raise money because I didn't know what the asking price was. And unfortunately, I haven't spent enough time hanging out with wealthy people, either, so I didn't have a lot of people I could call. Things got kind of right to the end, and I made a call to the people at Big Idea.
I have a lot of friends up there, and Phil Vischer and some different people we met and hung out and really like each other. They very graciously said, Steve, we don't want to see this happen. We believe in what you are doing so we will come up with the money and we'll partner with you to buy Squint back. They were probably the only people I could have gone to because they also had their distribution through Word, if you are following all this, so they had such a huge part of Word's business that this guy in business affairs couldn't afford to blow them off. They had to actually take them [Big Idea] seriously.
So that kept us going for the next nine months. We worked out our deal with Big Idea and we worked out a deal with what was the Gaylord corporation at the time to buy Squint back, and everything was going fine. It took three or four months to get it all worked out and it came right to the signing phase of it, and that signing kept getting postponed. At first, it was looking like Word was dragging their feet, and then, it became more and more apparent that Big Idea was actually in financial difficulty as well. As successful as they've been, and as great a work as they have done, they'd actually gotten to where they were sort of, I guess, over their head financially and hired too many people, and they were just having trouble keeping their cash flow going, or staying liquid, or something like that.
Word said, you've got to sign this, or we're going to sell it to someone else. Big Idea and I came back and said, we'll keep funding it ourselves, and in the meantime, Big Idea was assuring me that they would be able to come up with the money, it was just a matter of a few months. That situation carried on through the first half of 2001. Big Idea, and I have to say, they did this, I think, first of all, out of the goodness and generosity of their heart and they really believed in what Squint was about, and I have nothing but respect for all of them, but they actually were in such a financial hole, they were never able to get out of it. They were never able to come up with the money--the asking price.
So during these six months, I'm paying money out of my rapidly depleting bank account to keep L.A. Symphony on promo tours and take care of other promotional costs with Sixpence, who was actually recording another album. It was getting really hairy and Big Idea was probably matching every dollar I put in 2 to 1, so the more they got in, the more I was sure they would actually close because they wouldn't want to lose all that money. And just like so many other things in the last nine months, I was wrong on that, too, and they had to pull out right at the last minute.
And that, for all intents, closed down Squint as far as a label that I founded. I tried to bargain to at least keep the name, and that was just one other argument that I lost. My first day--it seems maudlin, maybe I shouldn't even mention it--but my first day out of the office was September 11th [2001]. And so at that point, it was sort of like, my little problems are actually quite small compared to something as catastrophic as that. And that was it