OutFront
Field of Dreams
Dorothy Pomerantz,
Forbes Magazine,
01.21.02
Ted Field hit it big with Interscope Records. Can lightning strike twice?
When he arrived in Hollywood in the early 1980s, Marshall Field's department store heir Frederick (Ted) Field, now 49, learned a valuable lesson from the natives: Use other peoples' money. He took the advice to heart. Despite the fact that he showed up with part of a $200 million inheritance, Field still made sure to leverage cash from the big studios and record labels for his various projects.
Among them: Interscope Records, the hugely successful home to such controversial acts as Snoop Doggy Dogg, Marilyn Manson, Eminem and the late Tupac Shakur. After financing many of the company's projects with Time Warner's money and getting the big media outfit in hot water with Congress, Field sold Interscope to Universal for $330 million.
"Ted's really talented--and lucky," says James (Jimmy) Iovine, Field's former partner at Interscope and now chairman of the Interscope Geffen A&M division at Vivendi's Universal Music Group.
True to form, Field is still using other peoples' money. Two months after resigning last February as cochairman (with Iovine) of the Universal unit, he popped up as chief executive of ArtistDirect. Founded by two booking agents in 1996 as a way to flog concert merchandise online, the little $22 million (revenues) company has bled $171 million since its founding and seen its stock collapse to a recent $10 from a high of $94.
But while the shareholders are underwater, Field has taken care of himself. The company has agreed to spend as much as $50 million over the next five years on a new record label for Field, even though he didn't have a single band signed at the time of the deal. Such is Field's reputation that the generous bankroll, and the agreement by the company to swallow 100% of the losses in Field's label, were met with nary a peep of protest.
"We believe the value we're creating in the label will far exceed our cash," says Field, his mangled left hand swathed in a trademark Ace bandage, the result of a car racing accident in 1975. (He relaxes these days with games of Internet speed chess.) "I'm really driven. The good thing is I don't have a wife anymore to tell me to take a vacation."
Field also has something to prove. Unlike other heirs to great fortunes, Field carries a chip on his shoulder about his inheritance and was pleased to see the word removed from his Forbes 400 listing, which pegged his net worth at $1.2 billion last year. "I've worked very hard to get away from the impression that I'm a dilettante."
But even after the success of Interscope, Field still had a reputation that he was just the money man while Iovine was the musical genius. At least according to Iovine, Field had plenty to do with the music at Interscope, regularly hitting the club scene to scout new talent. "One night Ted called my house from New York. It must have been 3 in the morning there,"Iovine says. "He woke my wife and said, ‘Just remember one word--Helmet.'"
Field's first big roll of the dice for shareholders is on Custom, the nom de plume of Duane Levold, a 6-foot-8 Canadian who was the subject of a noisy bidding war last summer between Field and DreamWorks. Field sealed the deal at the hip Park nightclub in NewYork last August at 2:30 a.m. At the time Field had no label employees and no distribution deal, and Custom demanded that he be on the radio in September. The deal cost Field at least $1 million.
Custom is no less controversial than Field's earlier acts. Custom's latest hit song is an obnoxious ditty about a punk surfer kid sassing the dad of the girl he's dating. The song was so provocative that Field decided not to promote it right after Sept. 11.
ArtistDirect's shareholders don't seem to mind the trash-talking as long as Field restores their investment. "I'm impressed with the bands they've found,"says Clint Coghill of hedge fund Coghill Capital Management, which owns 180,000 shares of ArtistDirect. But Field is prouder of a call from half-brother Marshall Field V, with whom he's had an occasionally frosty relationship. He wanted to buy some stock. "That probably meant more to me than any compliment I've gotten."
