Michael Klenfner was the most famous guy in the music business that you’ve never heard of. The former Atlantic Records executive was responsible for breaking such acts as The Blues Brothers, Cher, and The Rolling Stones, just to name a few.
Michael Klenfner was the most famous guy in the music business that you’ve never heard of. The former Atlantic Records executive was responsible for breaking such acts as The Blues Brothers, Cher, and The Rolling Stones, just to name a few. Turning The Blues Brothers Saturday Night Live skit into a full band (eventually appearing in their movie–see above) and helping revive Cher’s career with her hit single “Believe,” he was the man behind the scenes, promoting the some of the most memorable tunes of the era.
His passing in 2009 due to heart failure left his wife with a vast collection of memorabilia from Klenfner’s Atlantic days, and she held an estate sale last week, selling items such as guitars signed by the likes of Keith Richards and Les Paul, promotional limited release records, and multiple tour t-shirts from bands like The Who and Aerosmith. Luckily, our friends at Steady Sounds got a piece of the action, travelling to a New Jersey warehouse to see what they could dig up. “We got vintage t-shirts, we got posters, books, kind of a little bit of everything,” says Drew Snyder, one of the owners of Steady Sounds. “There was a lot of really great stuff that we couldn’t get because we couldn’t afford it.”
Klenfner was well known by almost every big name in the business, and his memorabilia collection represented just that. “He had a Rolling Stones record they only made 200 copies of, a bunch of really rare shirts, which we got some of, tons of Fillmore posters… I mean anything you can think of,” Snyder says of some of the things he saw at the warehouse.
The Atlantic exec’s record collection was one of Steady Sounds’ primary concerns. “His record collection wasn’t really too big, but we just got a couple of boxes of records,” says Snyder. “It wasn’t a lot, it was probably like 300 records, but it was all really good stuff; stuff that he never opened, or just one-off items that you could only get if you were in the business.” They also ended up with a plethora of vintage tour shirts from artists like Dust (which featured Marky Ramone on drums), The Groundhogs, Santana, and Herbie Hancock. They even managed to snag an orignal Public Enemy hat that was used onstage.
Unfortunately, the chances of seeing any of these records, shirts, or hats show up for sale in Steady Sounds’ retail store is slim. Snyder says they plan to sell many of the albums on eBay. “No one’s going to come in here and buy a $2,000 record,” he jokes.
Although Snyder admits they dropped a lot of dough, he says that the trip definitely proved worthwhile. “We spent a lot of money,” he says. “Not as much as we should have because we were bidding on boxes of records – kind of like a grab bag. But it was all worth it to us. It wasn’t a lot, but it was worth it to us.”
