The following interview with David Diamond, former Berlin member, was conducted as a class assignment for a music industry class. The objective was to interview someone with experience in the industry and to compare their experiences with the information that we received in class. David was a member of Berlin during their first two albums for which he played guitar and keyboard, as well as occassional background vocals. He also wrote for the group including the music to the song Sex.
Michael Rush
4/15/94
Michael: How did you first become involved in the performance industry? Was Berlin your first group ?
David Diamond: I got into music when I was in fifth grade, when I started taking viola lessons. I then taught myself to play guitar and keyboards. I was in a lot of local bands. The first time I played live I guess I was about fourteen or fifteen.
MR: And at that time, did you play guitar or keyboard?
DD: I played guitar and was the lead singer for an absolutely dreadful band in seventh grade.
MR: But you were cool, right?
DD: (laughing) I didn't even think we were cool. I don't think we even had any delusions of being cool and, as I look back in retrospect, I realize that we were not cool.
I just got into it from there. As I said, I was playing guitar, and I wanted to get into a better band. And, of course, on the local band circuit, if you're not a great guitar player and you want to get into a better band, you play bass- because for some reason, people think the bass is easier to play than the guitar. So I played the bass, and was able to get into a better band.
MR: When you started with Berlin, was that the beginning of the group?
DD: Oh, no. Berlin came along when I was about seventeen. Somewhere between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. Of course at that time it seemed like a lifetime.
MR: Had they recorded previously, before you joined them?
DD: Only a few local projects.
MR: How did you get involved with Berlin? Were they friends of yours?
DD: No. I was playing in a local band that actually went on later to get a deal with Elektra called Zot. We went one night to a place in West Hollywood called Flippers, which is no longer there. It was one of those roller-disco's (laughs). Anyway, there was this band playing there called Null & Void, and they were really noisy and very experimental, while Zot was a very commercial pop band like Styx, SuperTramp, and those other tired bands that seemed to appeal to so many blonde beach types. I made some comment about how innovative Null & Void was. So, the singer for Zot, whom I never got along with anyway said "Why don't you join them?" Well just as he said that, I realized that I knew someone on Null & Void's crew and so I went over to say "hi" to him. He made some comment about the fact that they were about to fire their bass player. I said "Well, you know what, I'd like to audition." So, the very next week, I got a call from them and went to audition.
I'll never forget it. I was going down on Thursday night, and then that Saturday we had a show at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. I had to learn the stuff real quick. The thing that broke my heart was that I had seventeenth row, center tickets to see Gary Numan perform on the night of the show. I was torn between "Do I want to go see Gary Numan, or play with this band?"- and I gave up my tickets to see Gary Numan.
David Diamond
Anyway, to get to the point that you asked about, Null & Void's producer, Dan VanPatten was Berlin's Drummer. Berlin was a local band at that time. So I met the people in Berlin through that. After Null & Void and Berlin had broken up, I remembered that there was a song that Berlin did called Looking Glass Man that had a guitar riff that I thought was pretty nice. Through some wheeling and dealing I'd gotten myself a Prophet 5 and 4-track recorder, and I did a rendition of the song just to play around with the new equipment. I played it for Dan who suggested I send it off to John Crawford who was the bass player for Berlin- I did and he liked it. I was working for a record store called Licorice Pizza, and one night while I was at work, I got a call from John Crawford, Berlin's bassist. He told me he wanted to record some new songs he'd written and asked if I would be interested in playing synth on them.
He brought these little demo tapes with these songs on them. One was called Metro, one was called Tell Me Why. I went into the studio the following week to record the tracks with John and their old singer, a girl named Terri Nunn.
Not knowing what sort of sound they were looking for, I came up with two different versions of each song. One version was sort of Nick Gilder-ish while the other was straight Gary Numan. Nick Gilder had a very poppy kind of j-j-j-j kind of thing going, while Gary Numan had this kind of ominous, string soaked, everything's-kind-of-holding-whole-notes kind of thing.
When I set up my Prophet at the studio I explained to them that I had these two different versions and asked which they'd prefer. They all kind of looked at each other with blank looks on their faces and said "I don't know" and "I don't care". Finally John said, "Well, just try the Numan thing." So I put my Numan thing on top of his Ultravox thing and that was it, the Berlin sound.
MR: So then, you were with Berlin for their first record deal?
DD: The first "real" record deal. The local-band version of Berlin did get a deal with a fly-by-night company in Germany, but nothing other than a bad record came from that. Our first album, Pleasure Victim was the demo tape we'd recorded in those first few sessions. We were on no budget. The whole Pleasure Victim album, including the artwork cost just under $3000. That's including all of the recording costs, mixing, mastering, & artwork. So we were really, uh, economical (laughs). It was quite a return on our original $3000 investment. Pleasure Victim is still the largest selling debut EP in the world. It's at just under 900,000 units in the U.S. currently.
MR: Who did you sign with after that?
DD: Well, what we did was, we took the demo tape, or our manager Perry, took the demo tape around, and none of the LA labels liked it. They said, "It sounds European and that's not happening in America. Go over to Europe and try to get a deal." So Perry took it over to England, and they said "We already have too many bands that sound like this, and you're American and no one in Europe's going to listen to an American band unless they sound like Springsteen, or Billy Joel." So, discouraged, Perry came back to Los Angeles, and we kind of set our sights lower and thought, "Well maybe we ought to try to go for an independent deal. So we signed with an label here in LA called Enigma records. Enigma was kind of happening little label because they had signed Motley Crüe when nobody else would sign them, they had signed Ratt when nobody else would sign Ratt, and then they had Berlin. They went on to do good things. Anyway, within three months, they had sold 30,000 copies primarily in L.A. alone of
