Richard Gottehrer co-founded The Orchard with then-partner Scott Cohen in 1997 — or five years before iTunes opened its first digital storefront. It was a time when physical music was the dominant format, and the only conversations happening around digital were theoretical arguments over what form the economic model would take.

While still in its infancy, the company was lucky — but also shrewd enough to be named as the sole distributor of DIY indie artists and their labels for Valley Media, which led to them supplying music to early purveyors like CDNow and Music Boulevard, online stores at the dawn of the digital age. And they had the foresight to include digital distribution rights in all contracts with artists and labels, even when the main form of distribution The Orchard trafficked in at the time was in CDs.

So began the evolution of The Orchard, which today is the largest distributor of independent music in the world. While the Sony Music Group-owned company doesn’t reveal such figures, Billboard estimates the company is closing in on $2 billion in annual revenue, with a current U.S. market share that has hovered around 10.75% for the year so far through early May, according to Luminate data.

Gottehrer, 86, says that of all of his music industry accomplishments — many of which he discussed at length here — he is most proud of co-founding The Orchard. (You can read all about his involvement with The Orchard in part one of this interview.) But as it turns out, Gottehrer had a few other accomplishments before the founding of The Orchard — including being part of the songwriting/production trio FGG (for Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Gottehrer); performing as a member of the British invasion band The Strangeloves; co-founding Sire Records; and producing albums for the likes of Blondie, Climax Blues Band and Richard Hell, among many, many other accomplishments.

Here, he spoke to Billboard about those musical feats in this second part of his career-spanning conversation. “Music styles all change,” he says. “But when it comes to earnings in our business, the song is the thing that has the most value.”

You had a little bit of history in the music business prior to co-founding The Orchard, where you might have written a hit song or two, and then you helped launch Sire Records with Seymour Stein. Let’s go backwards in your history. How did you become involved in Sire?

We were doing great, but within FGG, Jerry wanted to move to Los Angeles, and Bob was doing different things. So while we stayed partners in publishing — Grand Canyon Music — we separated at that time. 

But when we were still together, we had produced a record for The McCoys called “Hang On Sloopy,” which became a hit record. On its way to No. 1, it needed extra promotion and they hired a promotion guy, a young man named Seymour Stein, who got his music industry training in two places — as an assistant to Tommy Noonan, who oversaw the Billboard charts, and from Sid Nathan, who owned King Records. So we became friends and decided we would form a production company together, which became Sire Productions, and we got a production deal from Tommy Noonan, who by then was running Date Records. I produced a number of R&B records for them, but nothing really broke.

How did Sire Productions turn into a record label?

Seymour told me he had a guy who was the head of a one-stop who had relationships with all the record companies, and one of them was London Records, which would go on to distribute Sire, so that’s how we got there. The first record we did was an artist you would see frequently on the television talk shows, Phyllis Newman. Nothing much came of that record, but we continued.

Back then, there was a change from AM to FM [radio]. At that time, nobody released albums unless you had a huge hit, and if you did, the rest of the album was cover songs of other hits. But FM radio was becoming significant, and they needed albums. At that time, we were traveling to the U.K. and found that the big labels there couldn’t get their U.S. labels to release their music. So we began licensing those records for the U.S. 

Wasn’t one of them the Climax Blues Band, which you also produced?

Yes, and another was Renaissance, and there were a lot of others. One day, we were in the Netherlands and arranged a deal for Focus. Their second album came out through Tony Martel and Paramount, produced by Mike Vernon of Blue Horizon; and it had “Hocus Pocus” on it, which became a hit all around the world.

Was that Sire’s first hit record? 

That was the first huge record. There was another one, a single from Australia called the “Pushbike Song” by The Mixtures. But also, we bought a 50% interest in Blue Horizon from Michael and his brother Richard Vernon; they really supported and were instrumental in the British blues explosion, with the original Fleetwood Mac and the original Chicken Shack, with Christine Perfect and her recording of “I’d Rather Go Blind.” So Seymour and I had great things that we were developing.

Eventually, you left Sire and did some artist management, but that didn’t seem to last too long.

The main one I managed was Robert Gordon, and I thought Robert was going to be huge. He had that great voice — a great rockabilly voice, and we had several regional adds but could never fully break him in the U.S., although he was pretty well-known in Europe. Also, I paired him with Link Wray, who was one of the most influential musicians of all of rock’n’roll, and a great guitar player.

Around the same time, you also produced Blondie.

Both he and Blondie were on Private Stock. On Blondie’s second album, which was on Chrysalis after that label bought out the Blondie contract, the band had their first hit, but not in the U.S. — it was in the rest of the world.

And that was “Denis,” but in my opinion, Blondie’s finest moment, including all the subsequent hits, was the song “In The Sun.” For me, that’s their masterpiece.

I always wondered why some suntan lotion brand didn’t use that song in a commercial. [Sings the lyrics: “In the sun, it’s for everyone / In the sun, we’re gonna have some fun.”]

I also read in an issue of Billboard around the time you left Sire that you were going to start a company with producer and New York Dolls manager Marty Thau. What was that?

That was the beginning of Instant Records, our production company, to which we signed Blondie. In fact, Marty was the one who told me I had to see what’s going on down at CBGBs. And I saw all these artists and I thought I could produce a track by each one of them and put them on a compilation album and get it placed with a record label. Well, I tried to do that, and a few sounded like they wanted to try it, but it didn’t quite work out. After that, I also produced Richard Hell [& the Void Oids].

Which included “Blank Generation,” another masterpiece.

No doubt. Richard is a great writer, a great poet, and the recording was done twice, once at Electric Lady. But then I said, “No, no, this isn’t right. Let’s do it again, up at Plaza Sound with engineer Rob Freeman.” And that’s the version that became more well-known. 

How did you become a songwriter?

I’m a classically trained piano player who likes swing music and big band stuff. And then along comes [radio DJ] Alan Freed, and I’m 13 years old, hearing him on the radio playing blues and R&B and Elvis, but he’s also playing Jerry Lee Lewis, who is rockabilly as a piano player. So I can play boogie woogie piano, and I get into Jerry Lee. So as a kid in high school, I write a song called “I’m On Fire.”

Is that how you got started in the music business?

Everybody’s trying to get a kid into the mainstream somehow, and somebody brings me in. One time, when I’m waiting for an appointment outside of Nat King Cole’s publishing company and two other guys are sitting there. It’s Bob Feldman and Jerry Goldstein, and we’re all waiting and waiting and waiting, but we’re not getting anywhere. No one’s seeing us. And they’re songwriters, so I said, “I write songs, too.” And they said, “Let’s go somewhere and write a song.” So we went somewhere there was a piano. We write a song, and then we say, “Oh, that’s good. Let’s write some more.” And little by little, we started writing songs together. 

So did you write the melody? Did you write the lyrics? What role were you playing in that partnership? 

We wrote together, but I would say Bob was the main lyric writer. I would sit at the piano; Jerry could also play the piano, and he would sit at the piano. You sit down and you work at it. I would come down with a list of titles and say, “Can I see this title in the top 10 on Billboard?” You try to come up with things. Our first hit, a small hit, was for Beltone Records for Bobby Lewis, who had a huge hit with “Tossin’ & Turnin’.” So we wrote “Tossin’ & Turnin’ Again.” So Beltone says, “Do you have anything for this group, the Jive Five?” — which had a huge hit with the song “My True Story” — so we wrote “What Time Is It?”

So what year was this?

That had to be 1962, before “My Boyfriend’s Back.” So we then get discovered by Wes Farrell, who said, “Come with me to Roosevelt Music,” where he worked. Publishers were still important because, at that time, most artists did not write their own songs. He said, “I could plug you into Freddy Cannon, Dion and Jerry Butler.” So we went there, and they gave us a room with a piano, and Roosevelt Music paid us $50 a week, each. They would own the songs, and we’d be the writers. And he got us the follow-up to “Palisades Park,” both sides: “What’s Going to Happen When Summer is Done” and “Broadway,” which got mid-level on the Billboard charts. For Dion, we did “Swingin’ Street” and “Gonna Make It Alone.” He then introduced us to Jerry Butler, so we wrote “Giving Up On Love.” These songs became hits, but not huge hits.

When did you write “My Boyfriend’s Back?”

There was a man named Tom Catalano who brought us over to the beginnings of April Blackwood Music, which eventually became Sony Music Publishing, and it was there that we wrote “My Boyfriend’s Back,” which became a huge hit. But one more quick story. So they invite us to a convention, which is held outside Chicago, and there is the president of Smash Records, Charlie Fach, who said, “Hey, you guys got anything for Jerry Lee Lewis? He wants to do one more rock song before going country.” Wow. I said, “What about this?” And I play “I’m on Fire” for Jerry Lee Lewis. He records it; it’s a small-level hit in the U.S. but a big hit in England, and it becomes featured in The Great Balls of Fire movie that’s about his life.

So how did the Strangeloves come along? They were on Bang Records. Do you remember any interaction with the label as an artist back then?

I remember all of it. We had met Bert Berns several times. In fact, [Atlantic Records founder] Ahmet Ertegun said to us, “You should sit down with Bert Berns, because we just started a label with him, Bang Records” — B A N G for Bert, Ahmet, Nesuhi [Ertegun], Gerry [Jerry Wexler], that’s what Bang was. And they had a publishing company called WEB IV because there were four of them. So we go and see Burt, and we sit down and play this track. And he says, “Oh yeah, let’s work on something together.” So the four of us sit down, and we write this song, “I Want Candy.” But prior to that, we had done a cover of a song called “Love, Love.” It was a ska version of a Joni James hit. And in the middle of our song, Bob Feldman narrated a fake British accent.

Why?

Well, the British invasion had started, and artists weren’t coming looking for songs anymore because artists from Britain were now writing their own songs. So we, because of the narration, became a group called the Strangeloves, and we came out on Swan Records with that song called “Love, Love.”

So you became a British Invasion band?

Actually, we got a call from a friend who was a DJ in Virginia Beach. He said, “If you guys come down here, I can make this No. 1.” We said sure. So we go down to Virginia Beach. We go to the radio station, and he says, “Get out of here. You have to go to the airport. There’s people waiting for you.” So we go to the airport, and there is a single-engine plane there — we get on it and coast to the terminal where there are hundreds of kids with signs saying, “Virginia Beach welcomes Australia’s Strangeloves.”

I was wondering how that Australian thing started.

So we do this convention in Virginia Beach, we bang our drums, we sing a couple of songs, and people are screaming. So the Strangeloves are born. So when we write the song with Burt, and we then go in and record “I Want Candy” at Bell Sound Studios, Burt directs the guitar player, who’s named Everett Barksdale, to play something that’s similar to the guitar in “Anna” [an Arthur Alexander song]. And that became a feature of “I Want Candy.” It became a huge hit in Chicago and then spread through the rest of the country.

How old were you at that time? 

About 25, which is the right age for doing that. And it became a hit, so we started working on an album, and one of the songs we did for that album was “Hang On Sloopy.” We went on one of these Dick Clark tours, and there’s all sorts of stories about that, but as we’re coming off the stage in Tulsa, Dave Clark Five was on the tour and they had a tape machine, and they taped us singing “Hang on, Sloopy.” And they said, “That’s great. We’re going to make that our next single when we get back to England.”

So Strangeloves hadn’t recorded the song yet?

We knew we had the track already, so as we continued on the tour, we would use backup bands. And somewhere in Ohio, the backup band was called Rick and the Raiders. And Rick was Rick Zehringer (later changed to Derringer). The audience was screaming, “We want Rick,” and I thought they were talking about me, but they were talking about him. So when we got off stage, we asked, “Hey, you guys want to make a record?” And they said, “First, you’ve got to meet our parents,” which we did while we were there. So they followed us to New York, and they became artists for FGG Productions. We put their voice on our track “Hang On Sloopy,” and Rick played that great guitar solo on it, and that literally became a No. 1 record.

Who’s your publisher now? And did you file for copyright termination?

Well, first of all, Grand Canyon still exists. And yes, we recaptured the copyrights. And then we sold them to Sony during COVID. Sony is a great publisher — I love it as a publishing company, and now The Orchard has a publishing division, too.

I read that back in the 1980s or 1990s, you said weren’t writing any more songs.

I stopped writing songs, but I still play the piano for my own amusement. I still do produce. When I started The Orchard with Scott, that became what I did. The world had changed in such a way that I just stopped. But that was a mistake. I should never have stopped, because in the end, the song is the thing that lasts. Music styles all change, but when it comes to earnings in our business, the song is the thing that has the most value. “I Want Candy” and “My Boyfriend’s Back” is an example.

With private equity in the music business, we see that all the time now.

When you first wrote songs back then, you thought you would get a cover version, maybe someone would use it in some movie or commercial, but you never anticipated that 50 years later it would be your most valuable asset. But it’s not just about the money, although I appreciate the fact that I earned the things that support my lifestyle from this business. When it comes to producing records, and it’s four o’clock in the morning when you hear the playback, and now you finally hear what you had previously heard in your head — the sound of the drums, the feeling of the mix — the feeling you get at that moment… it’s a quality to your life. You take that quality, and you try to bring it to a final conclusion that reveals itself as music that other people would like. When it succeeds, the success is in doing it. When other people buy it, that’s the byproduct that pays you the dividend.

Speaking of songs, I want to mention a few other songs you produced that are favorites of mine — the Fleshtones’ “American Beat,” and the Bongos’ “Number With Wings” and “Tiger Nights.”

“American Beat” — you can still hear it on Little Steven’s Underground Garage. And I thought “Numbers With Wings” would be absolutely huge. I love it. Richard Barone is a very talented guy. “Number With Wings,” that’s one of those songs where they thought I was crazy because I spent hours on it, and I banged the tambourine on it, and I set the return so it goes across the speaker — I obsessed over the speed of how it went across the speaker, and I still remember that.

Now this is my last question to you: It’s about an argument I used to have with Seymour Stein, and he and I came down on different sides. I still think that Max’s Kansas City was just as important to the New York punk scene as CBGBs. What do you think?

It was. The artists who played CBGBs also played Max’s. CBGBs had a great sound system. Max’s you had to go upstairs and it was a different kind of stage, and there was a whole other scene downstairs at Max’s. It was a hangout where poets and people like Andy Warhol hung out. Max’s was also a steak joint. Tommy Dean ran it, and he was a different sort of character than Hilly [Kristal, owner of CBGB].