The star is dead but got an agent: from Janis Joplin to the Ramones

By editorial board on July 14, 2019

From Morrison to the Ramones, the man that fills the dead Jeff Jampol began almost by chance to take care of the Doors. And he got specialized. "We take care of our customers as if they were alive." And the turnover makes him right

There will always be an eleven-year-old boy that Light My Fire will sound like new. This is my target audience. A Night With Janis Joplin, a cross between a musical and a concert, it was presented in Broadway theaters in 2013 and is still touring.

jeff jampol

The main clients of his agency are Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur, Janis Joplin, Michael Jackson, Jefferson Airplane, and The Ramones. Yes, you read it right: the customers are all dead and Jeff Jampol makes deals with them. Now, that sounds just as bad, rather that this gentleman is not only beautiful, it is also useful. He’s activity works on an idea, now confirmed overtime, You recon a great artist once is gone in the grave (the Ramones' debut album  went gold only in 2014, 38 years after it was published, and when the original band, Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy had not been alive anymore). Not to mention the fact that, in many cases, when an artist leaves us, remains to manage a legacy that not only consists of millions dollars, but also a lot of new material that would be a shame if it remained closed in the safes of some villa or recording studio.

So, what to do if there is to be published the eighth posthumous album of Tupac Shakur? If Courtney Love and former Nirvana still fight for the artistic heritage ? If the United States want to put the face of Janis Joplin on a stamp? Simple, you call the Yampol Artist Managment: "what we do is manage the legacies of our outstanding customers" can be read on the company's website. "We want to help the icons of music to complete their transition into the digital age".

First and foremost, do no harm. Too often, the stewards of great legacy artists, in music and other artistic media, chase perceived opportunities without considering their impact upon the legacy they’re supposed to be looking after. Great performers’ works and images are priceless in the eyes of their fans, and every care must be taken to keep that connection intact.

At the same time, the work of such artists is too important to be kept under lock and key. It must be presented to new, young audiences, in the forms and venues those audiences use. Perhaps most importantly, pop culture tends to compress time: art and artists are being supplanted, replaced and driven into obscurity hour-by-hour, and it’s critical to maintain currency and relevance in a constantly evolving cultural zeitgeist. One must fully understand the artist’s role in society and history, as well as a scholarly approach to their art and all of its facets; but one can never just stand still and do nothing. We refer to the dynamic as “walking up a down escalator.” If you’re not constantly climbing, then you’re not merely standing still, you’re actually moving backward.

Jampol Artist Management, Inc. is dedicated to the re-introduction of timeless art through modern means. We cultivate the recordings, images, writings and other creations of our legacy clients in order to keep them circulating in the cultural bloodstream, and we’re not afraid to employ brand-new methods to do it. But we know that every decision puts a priceless legacy on the table. We help iconic artist legacies make the transition to the digital age with integrity.

We’ve brought the work of our clients into hit TV shows and films that reach younger viewers; developed painstaking, comprehensive reissues of their works; overseen the creation of high-quality apparel and merchandise that respects the aura and depth of their creativity; produced revelatory documentary films that shine fresh light on their cultural impact and relevance; assembled and supervised comprehensive digital strategies employing multimedia messaging and marketing, social media platforms, fan forums, blogs, games, SEO, SEM and various interactive media across multiple platforms; carefully selected brilliant young creators to invent new graphics, remixes, mash-ups and other artifacts that extend the reach of our clients to new audiences; constructed visually arresting, content-rich online destinations that “super-serve” longtime fans and newcomers alike; and much more. Of course, we’ve zealously protected those clients’ copyrights in the process as well.

But we have engaged in these ventures and strategies to expand artists’ legacies and brands without diluting them. Because it’s what we do: Unlike a record company, we don’t place physical or digital sales above all other considerations. Unlike a merchandising company, we don’t live or die by quarterly T-shirt numbers. Unlike a music publishing company, we don’t grade our success merely by the number of commercial placements we achieve without regard to their effect upon other facets of the artist and their identity.

We’re a management company, and our job is managing our extraordinary clients’ legacies.

But it's not just to make a greatest hits or cure the reissue of the album: "seek to fans of the first hour would be simple - Yampol explained in an interview with New York Times - what interests me is to introduce these artists to today's adolescents. There will always be an eleven-year-old boy that Light My Fire will sound like new. This is my target audience ". This is not to report certain songs at the top of the charts, the magic is to revive the essence of these musicians. Punk has just celebrated its forty years, but "to question authority, to feel an outcast, ignore the social order are feelings that are not at all deadConcretely what the Jam ago - after contacting those who have the legal rights of inheritance of the musicians - creating merchandising, producing plays, documentaries, exhibitions and cure, of course, also publish records. Jeff Jampol takes care of its customers, almost all stars of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, "as if they were still alive. The only thing that we do, in fact, is to organize tours and writing new music." And his approach to business seems to have been the right one: his office in West Hollywood, California (which collects relics and memorabilia as the guitars of Rick James or the Doors' plaque on the Walk of Fame), it has six full-time employees and Yampol, with a note of pride, says he has never needed to chase a customer. But that his is the right method that is confirmed by the numbers: the show A Night With Janis Joplin, a cross between a musical and a concert, it was presented in Broadway theaters in 2013 and is still touring. The legacy of Michael Jackson (yes, he is also a customer of Jampol Artist Managment) is estimated to have grown by a billion dollars since the artist died in 2009. The Doors continue to grind albums sold, t-shirt, calendars, posters and "their Facebook page counts 80 thousand new like a week."

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