It irked Don Kirshner, who has died of heart failure aged 76, that he was never inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. "My body of work is as big as anyone's and nobody knows the half of it," he protested in 2004, at a time when he was planning abelated music-business comeback. ButKirshner's record will ultimately speak for itself. It spanned the heyday of New York's Brill Building (the mecca of pop in the 1950s and 60s), saw him playing pivotal roles in creating such pop sensations as the Monkees and the Archies, and later found him hosting thelong-running live performance TVshow Don Kirshner's Rock Concert.
Kirshner was born in the Bronx, New York, son of Gilbert Kirshner, atailor, and his wife, Belle. He attended Bronx high school of science and Upsala College in East Orange, New Jersey. Heyearned to become a songwriter, and took his first steps towards amusic career when he met a singer called Robert Cassotto, who confidently assured Kirshner he was going to become a star. They began writing songs together, with Kirshner adding lyrics to Cassotto's music, but itbecame clear that it was Cassotto who possessed the musical talent. Cassotto changed his name to Bobby Darin, and when he scored his debut hit with Splish Splash, it was written not with Kirshner, but with the DJ Murray the K.
Kirshner grasped that his forte was finding and exploiting talent. "Maybe it's because I don't read or write music – and I guess I live vicariously through these people, because I don't have the talent myself – but, you know, I'm the man with the golden ear," he observed in 1993, repeating Time magazine's description of him. With the musician Al Nevins, aveteran of the instrumental group the Three Suns, Kirshner founded Aldon Music. Just up the street from the Brill Building at 1650 Broadway, Aldon was at the core of the Brill Building sound.
Aldon was a songwriting factory where teams of writers crammed into small cubicles churned out pop songs which would promptly be recorded asdemos and sold to the singers of the day. Neil Diamond was one of the first songwriters signed up to Aldon, and the company roster soon grew toinclude such peerless names as Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, and Neil Sedaka. The Beatles recorded the Aldon song Chains, written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, ontheir first album, and among other Aldon triumphs were the Shirelles' Will You Love Me Tomorrow (also by Goffin and King) and the Righteous Brothers' You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling (byMann and Weill). According to another Aldon songwriter, Ron Dante: "Donny [Kirshner] was MrMusic in the early 60s, and a very lovely guy, like your favourite uncle."
In 1963 Kirshner and Nevins sold their Aldon songs catalogue to Screen Gems, a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures, for $2m, and Kirshner was also installed as Screen Gems' musical director. The timing was shrewd, since the era ofsongwriters creating tunes for singers was under threat from the arrival ofartists who wrote their own material, notably Bob Dylan and the Beatles.
Yet Kirshner was about to score his biggest commercial triumphs by masterminding prefabricated pop acts singing songs created by backroom professional writers. Kirshner negotiated for himself a third of all musical profits from the Monkees, Columbia's made-for-TV pop group, and commissioned hit songs for them from Diamond (I'm a Believer) and Goffin and King (Pleasant Valley Sunday).
The Monkees scored two chart-topping LPs, but discord set in when band members began to demand creative autonomy. The drummer Micky Dolenz recalled: "I was 20 years old, making money, but Mike Nesmith led this revolt and, out of camaraderie, we all went along." Kirshner's kudos as the Monkees' svengali was irritating both the band and Screen Gems. The upshot was his sacking, though he won a hefty out-of-court settlement for breach ofcontract.
Undeterred, he went on to another synthetic-pop project, the Archies, acartoon group from TV's The Archie Show. "I said 'screw the Monkees, Iwant a band that won't talk back'," Kirshner commented. The Archies' Sugar, Sugar, which the Monkees had refused to record, was performed bysession musicians, and became one of the biggest hits of 1969, selling more than 6m copies. The Archies notched up several more top 40 hits and bestselling albums.
Kirshner's career became increasingly TV-orientated. He acted as music supervisor for the hit series Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, and in 1972 he took up the post of executive producer on ABC's live music show, In Concert.In September the following year he appeared as host of Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, made by his own production company. This made an auspicious debut by featuring the Rolling Stones, performing in London, and in its 180-show run hosted performances by Rush, the Eagles, David Bowie, the Ramones and the Allman Brothers. Yet Kirshner never thrived in front of the camera, andhis flat, monotonous presenting style was frequently parodied by the comic Paul Shaffer on Saturday Night Live.
Don Kirshner's Rock Concert ended in1982, coinciding with the arrival ofMTV, and this marked the effective end of Kirshner's music-business career. He set about building himself a lavish home in New Vernon, New Jersey, with its own theatre, swimming pool and disco, but he and his wife Sheila were never happy there ("it was a folly, and I'm kind of embarrassed about it now," Kirshner said later).
In 2002 the couple moved to Boca Raton in Florida. Kirshner met a local businessman, Greg Paige, who urged him to return to music. The pair set up acompany called Kirshner International and kicked around the idea of an internet entertainment show said to be like "a combination of chat show and American Idol", but little came of it.
Kirshner is survived by Sheila, his son, Ricky, a daughter, Daryn, and five grandchildren.
