Gary James' Interview With "Publicist To The Stars"
Carold Klenfner



For more than twenty-five years, Carol Klenfner has provided publicity assistance to some of the biggest recording acts in the world. We're talking The Rolling Stones, Elton John, The Who, Jethro Tull, Aerosmith, and the list goes on and on. She is literally the "Publicist To The Stars." And she's had her own public relations firm, Carol Klenfner Public Relations. Carol Klenfner spoke with us about her life in public relations.

Q - Carol, that last name of yours seems familiar to me. Did you have a husband or brother who was an entertainment attorney?

A - Husband, Michael. He was not an attorney. He was a consultant.

Q - To CBS?

A - He actually started at The Fillmore East and then he went to WNEW-FM as a music director and on air personality on weekends. Fill-in on weekends. Then he was hired by Clive Davis and went to work for Columbia Records. He was the first hire that Clive made at Arista and then he went to Atlantic. He signed The Blues Brothers.

Q - How did you get your start in the music business? Did you always work in publicity?

A - Yes. I got my start in publicity. I was a publicist, not in entertainment. I saw that in the days when I started out, that in publicity, public relations women were the heads of those departments. This was in the late '60s, early '70s, late '60s really, I thought this is a good direction for me to go in. I could write. I was an English major. My first job was at a non-profit radio station as a receptionist, but there was a producer there who taught me how to write press releases and helped me understand how things worked. With the writing samples I had from there I went to a book publisher. Then I jumped around. I learned as much as I could in different P.R. opportunities. I worked for the William Morris publishing company, writing all their press releases for about six months. Then I realized I was never going to go anywhere there because nobody was leaving. Then I got a temp job working on a state wide labor union election (laughs), doing P.R. and then the American Cancer Society, booking celebrities to speak at their New York metro area chapters and writing releases. It was then that I was talking to P.R. people that handled celebrities. I thought I always loved art. I'd much rather be on this side of it.

Q - Who was your first big client?

A - Oh, God. We just didn't think of it in those terms. When I started working for Gershman, Gibson And Stromberg, which was a Rock 'n' Roll P.R. firm, there were fifty of the biggest Rock bands. One of the earliest I remember was Elton John in the beginning of his career, The Rolling Stones. Actually, before that job, it was 1969, I worked for Dominick Sicilia at an advertising and P.R. agency, just a little boutique thing, but he was so smart. We did publicity for the first Rock 'n' Roll reunion show at Madison Square Garden. I think it was '69. One of the featured acts was Bill Haley And His Comets. I set up interviews for him (Bill Haley) and escorted him around to do them. That was the first star I worked with. I'd known him as a kid, "Rock Around The Clock". So that was an honor. He was a real Southern gentleman. He was terrific. I was young and starry-eyed.

Q - That's one of the qualities you need. If you didn't have that, you wouldn't be as enthusiastic. Right?

A - Right. Also, throughout my life I wasn't looking to make friends in show business.

Q - Did you get to work with all the guys in The Stones when you handled that account?

A - To some extent, yeah. I was working at the New York office of this agency and they were based in L.A. For the '72 tour I got one of the t-shirts. They made like thirty-seven of them. I went on the plane for one hop, I think to Philadelphia. But I wasn't getting close to them. That never was what I was about.

Q - Did you happen to see who called the shots in that group? Was it Mick, Keith, or a combination?

A - Oh, I don't know first hand.

Q - Did they tell the firm what type of publicity they were looking for? In 1972 The Rolling Stones were a well established act.

A - It was supposed to be the biggest thing. They wanted to pull out all the stops.

Q - I recall Mick Jagger being interviewed by Dick Cavett. He was asked if he could see himself doing his act on stage at sixty and he said, "Yes." How the audience laughed.

A - Right. And now look at him.

Q - You worked for The Doors. Was that when Jim Morrison was in the group?

A - Yes. Here's my big story. There was no direct link to jobs in those days. At some point I ended up taking a temp job in a music publishing company. The reason I took the job is because it was on West 57th street, which was the center of the music business, the record business. All the managers were there. The record companies were pretty much there also. I took this temp job just to stay in the neighborhood, figuring I'd bump into people I knew on the street. Sure enough, one day I see someone I had worked with at another P.R. agency. She was with Mike Gershman of this big Rock 'n' Roll P.R. firm. He was looking for an assistant because he had to go down to Florida the following week to be there when Jim Morrison went on trial for dropping his pants on stage. So, I got that job. How cool was that?

Q - Did you meet Jim Morrison?

A - Not at all.

Q - Did you ever get to meet Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix?

A - No, neither. Grace Slick, yes. I worked with The Airplane.

Q - She was a pretty big name in the '60s.

A - Oh, she was huge. An amazing talent. Jefferson Airplane was a radical, San Francisco band. Nobody sounded the way they did. Each one of them was a rugged individual. None of them were easy to deal with. Their road manager wasn't easy to deal with. (laughs) Although their manager, Bill Thompson was a sweetheart.

Q - Did the people you worked for/with understand the importance of the job, publicity you were doing for them?

A - The acts you mean? The talent?

Q - Yes. Did they understand how vital your job was to their career?

A - Yeah, I think they did. You have to remember back in those days people were not as savvy about how to do an interview, how to pose for a picture. A lot of these acts were naive. Ignorant, not stupid about what they should say in an interview, what's important. People today are much more media savvy because everybody's creating their own brand, but back then they weren't. New bands would come in, like Aerosmith or Black Oak Arkansas, and they didn't know what to do. So we helped them with that and we helped them do interviews. We used to set up sort of dry run interviews as a favor with a journalist and give them notes on how to do it better.

Q - With artists having their own websites these days, what does that mean for a job like yours? Is it going to become obsolete?

A - Yeah, I think slowly. It's sort of evolving into marketing, internet marketing. A lot of the press outlets have shrunk or disappeared. It's definitely in flux.

Q - When did you start your P.R. firm?

A - Probably around '74.

Q - You've been around for forty-five years! You've seen a lot of people come and go through those doors of yours.

A - Absolutely. I've worked with some of the greatest bands, Rock bands of all time, The Stones, The Who, The Airplane, Elton John the first time he came to the States. I set up the interviews for him and Bernie in New York and took them around. They were delightful and grateful.

Official Website: www.PitchingStaffPR.com

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