Documentary Profiles Jewish impresario Behind Rock Legends

NEW YORK - JULY 20: Andy Warhol and Lou Reed with Danny Fields at a David Johansen show at the Bottom Line on July 20th 1978 in New York City. (Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns)

If you’re a rock fan, you’ve probably heard of bands like The Doors, The Ramones and The Stooges. But chances are you haven’t heard of Danny Fields.

Fields, a Jewish guy from Queens, N.Y., deftly made the punk scene happen. He helped sign now-iconic groups to record labels, get them on magazine covers and ultimately etch them into the rock ‘n’ roll lexicon.

Now, this unsung hero is having his own moment in the spotlight. “Danny Says,” a recently released documentary named for a song about him written by The Ramones, may be short on personal details but is full of the sex, drugs and music that Fields navigated during rock’s golden age.

“Danny is like the Zelig of punk — he’s everywhere and he’s so important with so many things,” said Steven Lee Beeber, author of “The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s: A Secret History of Jewish Punk,” referring to the chameleonic Woody Allen character. “We kind of live in Danny’s world today. … [No one else had] his sensibility or the pulse of what was really coming.”

Born Daniel Henry Feinberg, Fields was never a top music executive. But with his myriad roles in the business — publicist, artist liaison and manager among them — Fields pressed all the right buttons.

Fields graduated from high school at 15 and earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He enrolled in Harvard Law School but left after a year, embedding himself in New York City’s hip Greenwich Village scene in the early 1960s.

Over the course of that decade and the next, he befriended Andy Warhol and Lou Reed, publicized bands like The Doors and Cream, introduced Jim Morrison to the singer/model Nico, discovered MC5 as well as Iggy Pop and The Stooges, and managed The Ramones.

The film details all of this and even offers a glimpse into how Fields’ Jewish identity shaped his view of the world and its music scene.

Fields grew up in a somewhat observant Jewish household and has a witty sense of humor about it. Among the Jewish moments in the film, footage shows Fields watching a video from his bar mitzvah party and remarking, “Isn’t this mortifying?” An image of his Harvard yearbook shows that he drew blue Stars of David next to photos of his Jewish classmates.

Fields worked with The Stooges until the group’s first breakup in the early ‘70s. A few years later, he discovered The Ramones, a black-clad group of scruffy, fellow Queens natives.

“They were like the MC5 and The Stooges, except that they were funny and ironic,” Fields says of The Ramones. “And, like Jews, they were steeped in the showbiz tradition.”

Singer Joey Ramone (who was born Jeffry Hyman) and drummer Tommy Ramone (born Thomas Erdelyi to Hungarian Holocaust survivors) were both Jewish.

“Danny Says” follows Fields’ exploits, from doing drugs with Jim Morrison to nearly getting punched in the face by a co-worker at Elektra Records. Legends like Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper and Patti Smith’s Jewish guitarist Lenny Kaye offer amusing personal anecdotes.

However, the film omits Fields’ post-Ramones life. He eventually fell from the industry’s inner circle and returned to journalism. Now 77 and still living in New York, Fields earlier this year released a book of Ramones photographs. He had vowed never to watch the final cut of the film about him, but wound up viewing a DVD that director Brendan Toller left him.

Though his peak years in the industry have passed, Fields still receives a great deal of praise. One could “make a convincing case that without Danny Fields, punk rock would not have happened,” The New York Times wrote in 2014. The dedication of rock journalist Legs McNeil’s 1996 book “Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk” reads, “This book is dedicated to Danny Fields, forever the coolest guy in the room.”

Or as Beeber puts it, Fields remains “forever at heart a nice Jewish boy who embodied punk’s simultaneous reaction against yet embrace of New York Jewishness.”

Not a bad reputation to have.

Gabe Friedman writes for the JTA international news agency and wire service.

 Caption: In 1978, Danny Fields (far right) hangs with punk icon Lou Reed (center) and artist Andy Warhol, mentor for Reed and his former band, the Velvet Underground.

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