The Fast Track to Platinum

By John E. Gallagher

Heard that bouncy Wilson Phillips sound on the radio? Remember the way cool sound track from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? How about the fresh funk of Technotronic, the band that opened for Madonna on her recent concert tour? As it happens, all this music is on the SBK label. How's that? SBK?

In an industry dominated by the familiar spinning logos belonging to Columbia, MCA and Atlantic, SBK Records is the new platter on the stack. Since its first release last summer, SBK has seen 12 singles reach the pop charts. With only 14 albums so far, the company has already grossed $56 million worldwide. The platinum debut album by Wilson Phillips, a group formed by two daughters of Beach Boy Brian Wilson and one daughter of Mamas and the Papas singers John and Michelle Phillips, has zoomed to No. 2 on this week's Billboard chart. Another platinum seller is Technotronic's Pump Up the Jam. The label's fast dance to the top is especially impressive for a company that has started from scratch by nurturing new artists.

SBK is an energetic partnership that was formed in 1986 by Stephen Swid, Martin Bandier and Charles Koppelman to produce records for other companies. The firm scored a major coup that year when it paid $125 million to buy CBS's music-publishing division, which held the rights to more than 200,000 songs ranging from Over the Rainbow to the score from Hair. Less than three years later, SBK turned around and sold the catalog to Thorn EMI, the British entertainment giant, for $295 million. As part of that deal, EMI gave $30 million to Koppelman and Bandier (Swid had left to start his own firm) to start a record division. The joint venture allows SBK to keep its discoveries on its own label, which is distributed by EMI.

% Bandier, 49, a former real estate lawyer, concentrates on business, while Koppelman, 50, minds the music. He has spent 30 years in the industry, including a stint as a member of the Ivy Three, a pop group that recorded a 1960 hit, Yogi, about the cartoon bear. As a music executive in the 1970s, Koppelman produced such hits as Dolly Parton's Here You Come Again and the Barbra Streisand-Neil Diamond duet You Don't Bring Me Flowers.

Koppelman says his taste is mainstream, which he defines as "when more people will like it than not." Still, he is often willing to gamble on something different. He eagerly signed a politically conscious black singer- songwriter who was a classmate of his son's at Tufts. The result was an SBK success story: Tracy Chapman, whose hits the firm produced for the Elektra label.

Koppelman predicts that by the end of the decade SBK will rank with such now established upstart labels as A&M and Geffen. With their sizzling track record, the two partners expect the company to grow rapidly, even in the face of a sluggish economy. "When people feel good they buy records," says Bandier. "When they are sad they do the same thing."