A decade ago, a 19-year-old Californian named Gary Allan went into partnership with a neighbor and launched a construction company.
The new partners approached their first prospective client, convinced him of their competence and persuaded him to write them a check for $24,000–with which they bought a truck, carpentry tools and enough building materials to get started.
“We stuck a sign in the front yard, and it went big from that point on,” Allan remembers. “We made sure we did real good work, and that was all that mattered.”
Now Allan appears to be launching a national country singing career with similar care and success. He has a substantial hit with his first single, “Her Man,” while his first album, “Used Heart For Sale,” is among the field’s top 40.
But he doesn’t behave quite like most other young superstar candidates. Although still in his 20s, the amiably brash West Coaster has called his occupational shots for years and isn’t going to stop now.
“I’ve worked for myself for so long that if there’s going to be any talking on my behalf, I’d almost as soon do it myself,” he explains. “And if there’s gonna be heavy problems, I want to handle them myself.
“It’s real hard for me to put everything in somebody else’s hands. I’m used to making my own shots and creating things and making things happen.”
Having begun fronting his own band at 13, Allan was offered his first major recording contract at 15 and his second at 24, and when Decca executives landed him on his third time around, they had to move fast. Other interested parties were waiting in line.
He recalls that when Decca senior vice president/general manager Shelia Shipley Biddy came out to see his act and make him an offer, he didn’t jump at it before asking questions. In fact, he all but interrogated Shipley, inquiring as to what parts of him and his music she intended to change. When she asked him to clarify his meaning, he did.
“It may sound corny, but music’s probably the coolest thing in my life,” he remembers telling her.
“This is how I keep myself sane. For you guys to change that and turn it into something I don’t like. . . . I’d rather play California clubs for 50 bucks a night than do that. Music’s going to be in my life with or without you.”
He says Biddy understood, which set her and Decca apart from some of his other corporate pursuers.
“My attorney called me in when we were looking at all these different labels and said, `The best advice I can give you is, this can’t be about money.’ He said, `We need to figure out who gets it.’ His theory was, you’re either going to be successful or you aren’t, once they put you out there, so you go with the person you feel best about. And I really clicked with Shelia.”
Shipley and the other Decca executives have let him go his own way, ranging from the California combination of cowboy hat and an untucked shirt to a musical approach that’s bolder than the Nashville mainstream.
For example, “Her Man” was probably the first radio record in country music history to use the expression “s.o.b.” in its lyrics.
“Out on the West Coast, things are a lot edgier,” he says. “Out here (on Music Row in Nashville), to me it’s over-thought. There’s too much thought going into what we think people are going to like. I try not to over-think.”
Asked if his first single’s lyrical employment of “s.o.b” gave him any pause, he says no.
“It was so minor,” he says. “I think there were only two radio stations that brought it up as an issue, and them ain’t bad odds.”
Born Gary Allan Herzberg a half-hour south of Los Angeles, son of a heavy equipment operator from North Dakota, he grew up surfing and playing country bars. He shortened his name, he says, because people couldn’t remember his surname.
The family wasn’t exactly financially blessed in his early years, so in childhood–on a suggestion from his mother–Gary and his siblings persuaded their father to get them musical instruments by giving him a guitar for his birthday; the elder Herzberg, their mother confided, had played one in his younger days.
Gary became good enough at guitar-playing and singing that at 13 he answered a local honkytonk’s ad for a singer. Two years later, through friends of a relative, he came to the attention of first a small independent record company and then major A&M Records.
When the two companies came after Gary and wanted to sign him to a long-term contract, his parents consulted an entertainment attorney, then ignored the financial temptations and advised against it, saying 7 to 10 years was too long a time for a 15-year-old. He acknowledges that it bothered him badly enough at the time that he quit playing clubs for the next five years, but today his album is dedicated to his parents and he says turning down that initial contract was “the best thing I ever did.
“My dad wanted me to get in the bars and find out who I was,” Allan recalls. “He used to tell me, `If you sign now you’re going to become whatever they want you to be.’ He’d say, `You got to play for the people who love you, the people who hate you and the people who (couldn’t) care less. Then you can figure out what you like and start playing for yourself.’
“I don’t think I realized until I was about 23 how important all that was–especially now that I’m watching other acts. You can’t learn what you learn in the clubs without playing the clubs.
Certain aspects of his past make his present seem almost foreordained.
Having sold his half of the construction business to get capital to fund his musical aspirations, he was selling cars when he happened to sell a well-heeled couple a truck. Somebody gave them a tape of some songs he had written and recorded.
The couple asked what he planned to do next, and he told them he was saving money to go to Nashville and record a first-class tape to showcase himself to record companies. How much, the woman asked, did he need? He told her: $12,000.
“I talked to them for about 15 minutes and, out of the blue, her husband says, `Write him a check,’ ” he recalls. “And she whipped out a checkbook and wrote me a check for $12,000.
“I went to Nashville and had a deal within six weeks of when I got the money.”
He has long since paid it back, he says. Although he still lives in Huntington Beach, Calif., he was back in Nashville recently to hire a booking agent and, at the behest of interviewers, to recount the impressive highlights of his still-budding career.
How much time, he is asked, might it have taken him to get to Nashville and record that tape had the couple not contributed the big check? With a laugh, he says he has no idea.
“I’ve never saved $12,000 in my life.”
