Comedy
Jonathan Taplin has found a unique and historic niche in the arts, in academia and in the public sphere. As a folk and blues fan in the early ‘60s, he watched performances by singers like Doc Watson, Muddy Waters, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, and Son House.Shortly after graduating from Princeton, Taplin became the road manager for Bob Dylan and the Band, touring the world with a perspective few others have had. Taplin had the rare opportunity to witness Dylan and The Band jam after hours with The Beatles, Neil Young, and many others.He later began his film production career with Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets,” and has since produced such documentaries as Scorsese and The Band’s “The Last Waltz.”Taplin later became a professor at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication, and is the Annenberg Innovation Lab Director Emeritus. He has also been a vice president of media mergers and acquisitions at Merrill Lynch, and founded the pioneering video-on-demand company Intertainer.In this interview, Taplin talks about his friendship with The Band’s Levon Helm as a jumping-off point for discussing the challenges that musicians face in making money in the age of YouTube. He also discusses his recent book “Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy,” in which he argues that mega-companies are crushing the music business and narrowing the number of news sources available to people. He also talks about how average citizens are having more effect on how online corporations self-regulate through demanding advertisement boycotts - the “power of consumer communications”. His memoir, “The Magic Years: Scenes From a Rock-and-Roll Life,” will be released in March of 2021.