About Pacific Paradise Records

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Mike Glick (Michael Glick) grew up around the Los Angeles music business long before he ever thought of making it a career. Living around the corner from the Troubadour as a kid, he would sometimes sit outside the legendary West Hollywood club just to listen to the music coming from inside. Music was also part of the world around him growing up, through neighbors, friends and families connected to the entertainment business, giving him an early look inside recording studios and the workings of the industry.

While attending college, Glick worked at Studio Instrument Rentals (SIR), setting up instruments and equipment for recording sessions, rehearsals and live performances. That experience eventually led to an opportunity that would change the direction of his life: he was hired by legendary Troubadour founder Doug Weston. In 1981, Glick became the club’s talent buyer and manager, putting him in the unusual position of deciding which young artists and bands would get an opportunity to play one of the most important stages in Los Angeles.

At the time, the Hollywood hard-rock and heavy-metal movement was still developing. Glick began moving the Troubadour more aggressively toward the emerging scene, spending countless hours listening to demo tapes and booking bands that he believed deserved to be heard. Some could already fill the room; others could barely draw an audience and were relegated to late-night slots. What mattered was whether there was something in the music and performance worth developing.

Between 1981 and June 1985, Glick booked a remarkable cross-section of artists who would become part of the history of Los Angeles rock, including Metallica, Slayer, Ratt, W.A.S.P., Poison, Social Distortion, Dokken, Great White, Quiet Riot/DuBrow, Warrant, Armored Saint, Stryper, Y&T, White Sister, Rough Cutt, Steeler, Keel, Lizzy Borden, Black ’N Blue, Malice, London, Hollywood Rose and L.A. Guns, The Bang / The Bangles among many others.

Several of those bookings are particularly revealing in retrospect. Metallica and Social Distortion, for example, were still capable of struggling to draw audiences and sometimes played late slots long before either became internationally recognized. Glick booked W.A.S.P. after hearing the band’s demo; Blackie Lawless would later publicly remember Glick’s role in giving the band its early Troubadour opportunities. Glick also booked Steeler during the brief period when its guitarist was a virtually unknown young Swedish musician named Yngwie Malmsteen, who had only recently arrived in the United States.

Another young guitarist moving through the scene was Jake E. Lee, who played with Ratt and Rough Cutt before being chosen to play guitar with Ozzy Osbourne. Rough Cutt would become particularly significant to Glick’s next venture: its early lineup also included vocalist Paul Shortino, who later went on to front Quiet Riot.

The Troubadour became one of the important gathering places for the developing Los Angeles hard-rock and metal movement. Glick’s booking philosophy was relatively simple: a band’s current draw did not necessarily determine its potential. He was willing to put an act onstage, watch what happened and bring it back when he believed there was something there. Some of those bands went from playing for small club audiences to signing major recording contracts within a remarkably short period of time.

His involvement occasionally extended beyond simply putting a band’s name on the marquee. With Poison, for example, Glick helped arrange financial support through the Troubadour while the band was still developing, with an understanding that the money would be repaid through future performances after the band secured a recording deal.

The evolution of Ratt was another example of the changing Hollywood scene. Before Glick took over the booking operation, the band had at one point been required by the club to perform under the temporary name The Gladiators. Once Glick was handling the bookings, he allowed Ratt to perform under its own name and continued booking the band as its following grew.

His Troubadour years ultimately ended with an extraordinary historical coincidence. Glick’s final booking in June 1985 was the Troubadour performance featuring Axl Rose, Slash, Izzy Stradlin, Duff McKagan and Steven Adler—the lineup that would become known worldwide as the classic Guns N’ Roses.

Seeing so many unsigned and developing artists move on to recording contracts also convinced Glick that there were other ways to expose new talent. He founded Pacific Paradise Records and created LA’s Hottest Unsigned Rock Bands, a compilation designed to put promising Los Angeles bands onto a record that could be heard by both the public and the music industry. Among the artists featured was Rough Cutt, including recordings associated with guitarist Jake E. Lee, before his career with Ozzy Osbourne, and vocalist Paul Shortino, before he later joined Quiet Riot.

Eventually, Glick stepped away from the music business and pursued other interests for many years. More than four decades after his original Troubadour period, he returned to music and to Pacific Paradise Records. Today his work includes developing artists, revisiting previously unreleased recordings and exploring how contemporary recording and production technology can be applied to music created decades earlier.

The technology has changed dramatically since the days when bands handed him cassette demos at the Troubadour. The basic part of the job that interests Glick, however, has remained much the same: listening to music, deciding whether there is something worth pursuing, and then determining what can be done with it.