The cousin of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane is the subject of a delicious
lawsuit by The Collective, a talent management group, over the theft of
actor/singer Drake Bell.
Rob was fired from ICM about 20 years ago, charged with theft.
One year after starting his own agency, Doug returned to ICM at Tom
Ross' request, to work on a special project with Mick Fleetwood. But
his departure was less than auspicious, as he explains: "A friend of
mine who was a junior agent at ICM was fired and needed some work. He
had Robert Palmer as a client. I brought him into ITA as a full partner.
At the same time we were representing The Knack. In the middle of the
night my partner and the manager of The Knack conspired against me,
came into the office and took all the furniture and files out. They
then tried to steal Missing Persons and the rest of my clients. It was
right at the point that I went back to ICM. The partner, Rob Kahane,
left me holding the bag on all the bills; he went on to become George
Michael's manager. I never got a dime back from him.
Dorrell's laconic style contrasts sharply with that of Rob Kahane,
who signed Bush and helped break them in America. Kahane is a small,
dapper 40-year-old with a well-trimmed beard and a brisk, deadly serious
manner. He explained Bush's success to "Entertainment Weekly" by offering
his opinion that Rossdale "had a look which was very favorable for marketing
and selling records."
Kahane managed George Michael throughout the singer's British court
battle with Sony but they parted company soon afterward, Kahane's ears
ringing with Justice Jonathan Parker's admonishments that he was a "thoroughly
unreliable and untrustworthy witness...[motivated] to an unacceptable
degree by self-interest" Kahane had his own label and a distribution
deal with Disney's ill-starred Hollywood Records when he met Bush in
1993 and heard what would become Bush's first five singles, including
"Everything Zen." Just as Sixteen Stone was completed in early 1994,
disaster struck: Disney's executive Frank G. Wells, a Kahane supporter,
was killed in a helicopter crash. After his death, other executives
at Hollywood deemed Bush's album unacceptable and pitched the band members
into career limbo, forcing them to work menial jobs to survive. Then,
Interscope Records rescued the album as it had previously done with
Dr. Dre's The Chronic. Shortly before the end of 1994, Kahane sent an
advance copy of the album, sans photo or info, to a friend as L.A's
influential KROQ station, which instantly added "Everything Zen" to
its playlist. Before long it was hello, America--and goodbye to day
jobs and an uncaring British public.
...This unlikely alliance conjures up the piquant scenario of Albini,
who refuses to take royalties for what he regards as a "day laborer's
job," working for Rob Kahane, a man regarded in many quarters as the
epitome of music-business careerism. When apprized of Kahane's alleged
misconduct in the George Michael/Sony case, Albini replies: "I don't
know who you're talking about. But in music business terms, that [sort
of behavior] is called being a good businessman, and it's actively encouraged.
Rossdale puts it more concisely:"[Kahane] knows when to keep the fuck
away."