Most of the men inside Dorothy Carvellohis new novel The Cycle is Broken it's horrible: Bucky, a Nashville record executive who screams to a packed restaurant that his wife is the “harlot of Babylon.” The Colonel, who controls his country star client and takes 40% of his royalties, leaving the singer with just 10%. and Michael, the tormented young talent who suffers a traumatic brain injury and scolds and angers his partner.
“All my books that I write – and will write – will always be about the corruption of the music business,” says Carvello, whose previous book was 2018's Anything for a Hit: An A&R Woman's Story of Surviving the Music Industry, which he followed up with a sexual assault lawsuit in December 2022 against two major record labels and three longtime executives. “And there will always be issues of women being the unsung heroes behind men in any part of the music industry.”
Carvello's lawsuit repeated many of the allegations from her first book. He blames the late co-founder of Atlantic Records Ahmet Ertegun and former head of Universal, Sony and Warner Doug Morris of her “horrendous sexual assault” and is suing Atlantic, its parent company Warner Music Group and former Atlantic executive Jason Flom “Knowingly permitted … egregious sexual assault in the workplace.” Among her claims: Female employees were “systematically exposed to Mr. Ertegun's masturbation.” Morris carried a pornographic magazine around the office and placed it on Carvelo's desk when he was Ertegun's secretary. and Ertegun committed “violent and non-consensual assaults” on Carvello at a Skid Row concert and then on a corporate helicopter.
(Flom did not respond to requests for comment. Warner said in a statement that the labels “take allegations of misconduct very seriously. These allegations date back 35 years, before WMG was a stand-alone company. We're talking to people who was there at the time, noting that many key people have died or are in their 80s and 90s, through his lawyer, he said Carvello's claims are “without legal or factual merit.” Rick Werder(a former lawyer for Ertegun's widow, Mika, who filed a motion to dismiss Karvello's lawsuit before her death last December at 97, called Karvello's claims “totally baseless.”)
Oral arguments were scheduled to begin in New York Supreme Court in mid-June, but a judge postponed them until September. “My jury is going to have to have trigger warnings because there's a lot more that wasn't in the book,” Carvello says, during a half-hour discussion about her writing career and the lawsuit.
Here is an excerpt of the conversation.
The only character name that appears in the The Cycle is Broken as Anything for a hit is Joel Katz, the real music lawyer. In the new book, the fictional Katz gives a speech honoring a Nashville record mogul and says he's “proof that if you do good enough in this town, you'll be rewarded in kind. Unless you're Jewish.” How conscious was your decision to put Katz in both books?
It was a conscious decision, because Joel Katz he was the only premiere lawyer involved in so many people's careers, artists and executives, and he practically ran the city of Nashville. Also, I wanted to show that if you're Jewish, Nashville is a tough town. If you're gay, Jewish, if you're not white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, it's a tough town.
Because you raised in general The Cycle is Broken in nashville?
I started going to Nashville in 1988 and my first experience was at Atlantic Records Nashville. They were trying to sign an artist, and I was sitting there, and the person said to the artist, “Jesus wants us to have your release.” I was surprised by this. I've always been fascinated by the religious undertones of Nashville. Even when I came down five years ago, a label head asked me what church I belonged to. I said, “I don't know if you've ever heard of the Catholic Church – we have our own bank and we have our own ambassadors.”
Cee Cee, the singer-turned-manager in the book, is a victim of abuse, and despite making some questionable decisions, she's full of empathy and has a lot of love to give. How personal was writing this character?
I wanted to show all the characters struggling with religious oppression, in a way. I went to a Catholic school, a Catholic college. Religion teaches you to obey. As women, we get it everywhere we turn. And in the field of music there are very few women. We've never had a woman run a major company. We still have three white men running the game. When Warner Music Group just changed CEOs [in September 2022]they had a chance to actually do something and they were still stuck with a white male [Robert Kyncl]. I wanted to show a woman who breaks free and makes a choice to get away from this religious stuff and fall in love and do it.
Why should I write? Anything for a hit first, then file the lawsuit?
The law changed in New York in 2022. [The state passed the Adult Survivors Act in May of that year, eliminating the statute of limitations for sexual-abuse cases for a year — which led to more than 3,000 civil suits through last Thanksgiving, including Carvello’s in December 2022.] I couldn't sue because I was barred. The book was published in 2018 and when I learned that the law had changed, I interviewed lawyers and decided to sue.
After Anything for a hit came out, did you hear back from the people you wrote about?
No. I didn't get a pushback, a letter, a lawsuit, nothing. Deathly silence.
One of the most disturbing details in the Anything for a hit, Amidst many accounts of sexual abuse is your claim that Ertegun broke your arm because he was angry about a skiddy Skid Row concert after you had directed Atlantic to sign the band. How long did it take you to overcome this abuse, if at all?
Well, I haven't gotten over it and probably never will. I know what happened to me. I know what that truth is and I am prepared to convey that truth in a court of law, with a jury of my peers, at 60 Center Street [site of the New York County Courthouse].
After the #MeToo movement led to men in the music industry being publicly accused of sexual assault, has anything changed?
We didn't have #MeToo in the music industry. Where is #MeToo?
Several men have been named in lawsuits and press reports – most recently Diddy, but also Russell Simmons, Los Angeles Reed, Charlie Walk.
No. I don't think anything has changed. Like I said, we have three white men running the business.
How did you manage to make the transition from non-fiction to landing a book deal in the world of fiction?
I had to get a different agent and sell him the idea, and that wasn't easy because the book tells two stories – my critique of the music business as a whole in Nashville and the story of one woman, two women actually, struggling to help this one man. I had to learn how to write fiction. It took three years. The next book is almost finished and that took me less than a year.
What can you say about it?
It is said Brostaris, and will be about a rock star and the six women in his life throughout his career that began in the 70s in the UK
When did you realize you had what the music industry calls “solid golden ears” and the talent to be a record company A&R person?
When we did it in the 80s and 90s, you had radio and you could get a feel for what was going on and go out and see somebody play live and see how people reacted to the songs. I never say I have great ears. I want to clear my name. I want to reclaim my place in history as the first woman at Atlantic Records.
Where are you now;
In New York. Born and raised. You'll never take me to Nashville.
