![]() We wanted it to be saturated before we went to radio, because we knew radio would be scared of it. It was in the contract that we wouldn’t even go to radio until the band had scanned 75,000 records. it wasn’t about radio, it was about culture. Then when they got their record deal at Columbia with Rick Rubin, Rick really got it. ![]() We had this list of kids across the world, creating organic chatter about this crazy band. I remember going into early internet chatrooms on a little dial-up modem and writing, ‘Has anybody heard of SOAD?’ They were like, ‘No, what’s that?’ ‘Call this number…’ They’d call my number and I’d play the music down the phone, then send them a tape. If I have anything to do with it, we will get back there, that’s for sure…” MANAGING SYSTEM OF A DOWN MUST HAVE BEEN A STEEP LEARNING CURVE… “I’ve never once felt that rock is dead,” he laughs, as he settles down to talk to MBW in Velvet Hammer’s art-strewn LA office, not far from the Strip where, as a teenager, he used to blag into the Whisky a Go Go and the Rainbow Bar & Grill. Such metal machinations would probably not make the same waves these days, but Benveniste insists rock music can still regain its former cultural cachet. “I love a good scrap, so it was fun,” he grins, “But we’re all friends now.” A furious Durst dropped SOAD from the Family Values tour in revenge, but two decades on, Beno can laugh about it. It all kicked off in 1999 when Benveniste signed alt-metallers Taproot to Atlantic from under the nose of the Limp Bizkit frontman, who was also an Interscope exec at the time. Nowadays Beno balances artist management with sidelines as a real estate investor and art collector, but his commitment to rock is every bit as intense as it was in the days when, at the peak of nu metal mania, he very publicly feuded with Fred Durst. He even initially signed the not-very-metal OneRepublic to Velvet Hammer for records, having seen them play Apologize at LA’s Key Club (“I was like, ‘If this isn’t a hit, I don’t know what is!’”), although they only hit paydirt later on Interscope. Along the way, Benveniste also pioneered digital marketing techniques with his StreetWise Concepts & Culture agency and set up publishing and recording interests. The Velvet Hammer stable now reverberates to the sound of multiple bands, each one just as influential. His Dad had his money back just 18 months later and, following the release of their 2001 classic second album, Toxicity, which caused a riot in Los Angeles when 10,000 people turned up to a free album launch gig, System became the hottest band in metal. ![]() That band, of course, was System Of A Down and Benveniste Jr rapidly made good on his promise. The band signed to Madonna’s Maverick Records and while, ultimately, they didn’t make it, a couple of years later his friend in the band tipped Beno off about “these four Armenian guys in North Hollywood playing crazy heavy music with time signatures you’ve never heard before.”Ī couple of meetings later, Benveniste was so convinced of the band’s importance that he persuaded his father that, rather than pay for him to go to law school, he should lend him $15,000 so he could “figure out how to make them the biggest band in the world.” After college, he became friends with a member of pioneering rap-metal act called Proper Grounds. Throw a stick at any moshpit and you’ll almost certainly hit someone wearing one of his band’s T-shirts.īenveniste grew up as one of those rock kids in Beverly Hills, attending the notorious 90210 High School (he quips that the show’s Brandon Walsh character, played by Jason Priestly, was based on him) and becoming a Sunset Strip scenester by the time he was 15.Īs hair metal gave way to grunge, Beno was inspired to join the industry. The roster for his Velvet Hammer Music & Management Group reads like a fantasy Download / Welcome to Rockville line-up as well as SOAD, he also reps Korn, Deftones, Alice In Chains, AFI and has just signed Avenged Sevenfold. Since guiding System Of A Down to global stardom at the turn of the century, he has built one of the heaviest, loudest artist management empires on earth. There are two types of people in this world: those who think rock is dead, and those that have met David Benveniste.īecause the manager – known to everybody in the business as Beno – is such an enthusiastic evangelist for all things rock and metal that spending just a few minutes in his company would be enough to convince even the most cynical, rock-is-all-over naysayer that the genre is not just alive, but kicking hard.Īnd Benveniste himself is living proof of rock’s continued vitality.
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