Brill Building
The Brill Building is an office building on Broadway in 1619 in New York City - west of Times Square - where a total of 165 publishers were united under one roof in 1962 and so the inaccurate terms " Brill Building Pop " or " Brill Building Sound" coined.
History
Built in 1931 and 11 floors comprehensive office building was the brothers Brill named after its owners, who operated on the ground floor there is a gentlemen's outfitters shop.
For the high concentration of composers, producers and music publishers in the Brill Building Don Kirshner was mainly responsible. He began as a manager of Connie Francis. In 1958 he opened the music publisher, Aldon Music, named after the owners Al Nevins and Don Kirshner. Here Kirshner busy little later talented songwriters like Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Neil Sedaka, Howard Greenfield, Cynthia Weil, Barry Mann, Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, Neil Diamond and Tommy Boyce. Strictly speaking, Aldon Music, however, was not in the Brill Building, but one block further over in 1650 Broadway.
Initially attracted 1932 three publishers here, namely Southern Music, Mills Music and Famous Music. The peculiarity of this building made the claustrophobic by the large number of small offices. A musician could record a demo recording in the studio in the Brill Building, a publisher, a producer and then choose a radio promoter in the same building. This concentration on the one hand synergies yielded about by the exchange of ideas among the composers, on the other hand, the musical-technical requirements could be completed ( the composers were looking for a music publisher from the building, which in turn selected the performers ). The song writers worked here most of her compositions from the score. This meant after the rock'n'roll, the emphasis of the song with orchestral songs that others have written. The heterogeneous compositions and vocal and production styles can, however, recognize no musical commonality, so that the designation " Brill Building Sound" only describes the single origin of these songs.
The Brill Building Empire produced 1958-1966 over two hundred pop songs that reached the U.S. top ten. Many of these were to million -sellers as the basis of cover versions. The Acts include the Ronettes, the Drifters, the Shangri -Las, the Crystals and many more. As by author music by the Beatles, the Beach Boys and Bob Dylan (not forgetting the bands of the British Invasion ) this kind of music credibility and authenticity ( hence representation power at the plate buyers ) lost composed their music itself, be had to the Brill Building composers towards solo performer shift ( for example, this is Neil Diamond succeeded ), the publisher (s) found themselves a new audience: the teens and preteens. At that time, had already bought Columbia ( CBS) Aldon Music. And so the media mogul Don Kirshner worked with the Monkees and Archies for TV stations such as NBC and CBS. Later in the 1970s he was manager of the rock group Kansas and retired circa 1975 from the business back.
Even today, some of the music and movie industries affiliated companies located here, such as Sound One ( a post -production company), Colony Records, and the video company Broadway Video.
Definition of the Brill Building Pop
The booklet to the sampler "The Brill Building Sound" by Greg Shaw and Dawn Eden identifies five historical conditions that made up Brill Building Pop:
CD
- Up on the Roof - Songs of the Brill Building, Columbia 474 356 2