LEVEL 2 = Christ Killer
1984:
Shaolin Music
First Vinyl Record Release
In 1983, Richard O'Connor lived out of his van for the entire year, saving enough money to release his first 12" Vinyl Album, "Temptation," in 1984.
I had attended Music Publishing classes at UCLA. Any book on the subject was on my shelf.
Realizing my library of songs was a gold mine, I desired to have my songs covered by other artists but couldn't find the time to perform this job with my many other jobs already needing more time.
A girlfriend of mine, Michelle, was an avid fan of my songwriting. She would sneak through my cassette collections where no other human hands had ever been and dug out many songs from my fifteen years of songwriting demos.
She really really really enjoyed my music and pursued my songs like no one else. Finally, I found someone to run my music publishing company.
I had no interest in getting married or having babies with anyone. But when Michelle got pregnant accidentally, I wasn't bothered as I had been in previous relationships where I always desired termination to parenting.
Realizing that there may be a good wife in Michelle, a super fan of my music, a booking agent, and editor...it finally made sense to have a family without sacrificing any of my career goals.
Michelle was young, just turned 21. She had no professional aspirations, no job experience except food sales and was willing to train under my supervision to take over my Music Publishing company. From this we would both reap the benefits as we were both family...
So we made a marriage pact with the following terms:
- we would be monogamous
- Michelle would run my Shaolin Music publishing company
- Richard would run the Shaolin Records record company
- Richard would cook and clean the house as a Mr. Mom
- Michelle would work any day jobs required to make ends meet until my companies could support us
I have replied our agreements a hundred times and still think I was resourceful, wise and prudent...
But it didn't work.
Michelle convinced me that she had music industry contacts in Salt Lake that could benefit my career much more than the record company execs, A&R people, and newspaper contacts I had developed as a Recording Studio Designer and photojournalist of Newspaper Guild #69.
How I could have believed her still baffles me.
Well, not really. I loved Michelle. I trusted Michelle. I dedicated my life to being partners with Michelle. Of course I should believe her and trust her.
She lied.
Within days of moving to Utah, I began to realize that Michelle had zero contacts in the music or movie industry. Why she lied?
Next, I discovered that all those clubs she said she would book me into were for heavy metal bands and Top-40 covers. She had zero industry connections. She got me zero bookings. She made me zero dollars.
So, I had been deceived and manipulated into moving back to Michelle's hometown with absolutely no benefit to my career or survival. Far from my business contacts, jobs, connections, and friends, I was stranded in Utah with a girl who had lied to me and led me astray.
Once it became evident that Michelle was not planning to "make me sucessful" as she promised, she delivered the final bomb to my soul, "I am not going to take orders from you or ever work for you again."
There wasn't even the slightest incident to set off any ill-will between us, except for the fact that she had obviously never planned on fulfilling any of her promises or supporting my careers in any manner.
This was such a harsh and unrealistic turn in my life, that it took me three more years before I realized that Michelle was serious. She would never follow my instructions again. She never worked for any of my companies again. And Michelle never treated me like a husband again.
All my decade in California, building my career, working bands, studios, record companies... was gone and now of no use to me at all. My family wouldn't help me with any money whatsover to come back to California and without any of my contacts or even carpentry job connections...I couldn't even work to save my life.
Thus, Shaolin Music saw a bright future, had a new employee, and new vision, a new business plan and was destroyed the following year with Michelle's abandoning it.
It's 2007 now. I'm just getting my record company back to where it was when I met Michelle. I'm still looking for some bright face to take over the Shaolin Music publishing company, and hopefully I won't get married again.
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