Then, just like that, when it seemed no more than a moment had passed, the kid walked the aisle in the red coat and Frank launched into "My Way." The ignition was turned in the limo, the pizzas were pulled from the ovens, the plane raced down the runway, and we were laughing and eating pepperoni as the jet climbed into the stratosphere.

Around this time, in 1978, Jane and I purchased land in Malibu and built the house where she still spends much of the year. I describe it as a beach shack, but it really is one of the great California houses, a compound more than a house, with stables and guest quarters and trails that run across six acres on the Pacific coast, where the land juts out and Catalina Island rises into view. If you leave Beverly Hills at 2:00 P.M., heading north on the Pacific Coast Highway, with the sea on your left and the hills rising steeply on your right, you will arrive before three, finally passing through a gate marked "Blue Heaven."

In the midseventies, Jane and I threw a lot of parties. She calls it the era of "extreme entertaining." We had people over most nights, the rooms filled with music and movie types, the windows glittering, laughter spilling onto the beach, where I stand with a bottle of wine knee deep in the surf. In the garage in Malibu, we have posterboard-size pictures taken in those bygone days. Jane with Walter Winchell. Jane with Darryl Zanuck and John Wayne. Jane, at a dinner party, with three different kinds of crystal in front of her, seated between Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant.

By then, my touring company, Concerts West, was booming. But no matter how well I was doing, I was always on the lookout for the new artist, the next big thing. When I think back on those years, it's me going from club to club, sitting at cocktail tables, meeting artists in cramped dressing rooms, pitching, cajoling, selling. (Breaking a new act is a special high; some agents spend their careers chasing it.) My most noteworthy find of those years was John Denver, who, as far as I am concerned, I cooked from scratch. By examining how I dealt with John Denver you can get a pretty good sense of the task and challenge of the manager, how he finds and builds an act, and how that act will eventually break his heart.

John was a military brat. His childhood was spent moving base to base, New Mexico, Arizona, Alabama, Texas. His real name was John Deutschendorf Jr. His father was an amazing guy, a test pilot and flight instructor who often seemed confused by his kid. The love of music and songwriting, the long hair and pursuit of beauty-where did they come from? John left home as soon as he was of age. He traveled the country with a guitar and a notebook of songs. He was going to write about everything, all of it, the mountains and plains, the continental divide, set it to music. He made a few solo records, which went nowhere, then scored one big success, "Leaving on a Jet Plane," which went top ten when recorded by Peter, Paul, and Mary, who, by the way, I managed. But his first real break came in the midsixties, when, answering an open audition, he won a spot in the Chad Mitchell Trio, a hot New York folk act.

I first heard about John when he left the Trio and was looking to make it on his own. He had been represented by Irwin Winkler, who was going into the movie business, and needed representation. A friend tipped me: "Jerry, check out this kid. He's playing a dive in Greenwich Village." So I went over. No one there. The joint was empty. Just this earnest kid with a pageboy haircut, singing and playing guitar on stage. I sat and listened. He made a connection immediately. That's how it was with him-his talent. With each song, you felt he had opened his chest and was showing you his beating heart.

Okay, you might think, Jerry Weintraub and John Denver, something does not compute, something is not right. How does a folk singer from New Mexico end up in league with a street kid from the Bronx? But the fact is, we were a lot alike, me and John, had a lot in common, which is why our friendship was so immediate and deep. He, too, had run away from home when he was a kid-he left in his father's car and turned up weeks later at a cousin's house in Los Angeles. He, too, wanted to get out into the world, see and experience everything, find his way. I saw all of this that first night in New York. I saw the talent, too. It was one of those rare moments you dream of as a manager-spotting the kid who will become a star, who is a star already, even if the world does not yet know it.

From that moment, I was determined to break John Denver. He would be a test case for all my theories on selling and packaging, for everything I had learned since I left home and before, on the streets in the Bronx and from my father. John Denver would be my Star of Ardaban.

I wanted to start by getting some noise going. Here was this gem, John Denver, playing five nights a week in Greenwich Village, virtually for free-he was making seventy dollars a show when I met him-and no one even knew it. I went all around New York and LA, talking my head off to all the big operators. John Denver. Have you seen this kid? John Denver. He's amazing. John Denver. I went on like this until my friends said, "All right. We get it! John Denver. Shut up."

"Shut up about who?"

"John Denver."

"Yeah, isn't he great?"

Then I started to embroider, embellish. I would say, "Wow, John Denver, this client of mine, he's so great, so on fire, that Bob Dylan has been hanging out in this club every night, watching him play."

Just get them there, that's what I believed. Just get them there, let them see this kid, they will love him.

Did it work?

Of course it did.

Within a few weeks, the place in the Village was packed, every seat filled, and the patrons three deep at the bar.

"Okay," I said, "now let us see what we can do about this seventy dollars a night nonsense."

John had cut a record for RCA. This was part of his long-term contract. He had already made Rhymes and Reasons and Take Me to Tomorrow. This was all before I got there-pre-Jerry. The new record was called Poems, Prayers and Promises. It had one obvious hit: "Take Me Home, Country Roads." But the challenge was the same as always: get people to hear it, to recognize it as a hit. This mirrors the greater challenge of the talent manager. I did not invent John Denver. I did not write his hits, or create anything that was not there before I arrived. No manager does that. As I tell aspiring agents and managers, remember where the engine lies: with the artist. If the artist makes nothing, I have nothing to sell. It's as simple as that.

It's best, when selling something new, to envision the goal-let the entire world hear John Denver-then work your way back. How do we get there? Now and then, it happens by itself. This is a matter of luck, zeitgeist. More often, you have to be creative, crabwalk your way. Once the new record was released, I sent John on a tour of the biggest radio stations in the country. He would turn up by himself, with his song and his guitar, as if he just stumbled out of the mountains.

You have to remember what John looked like back then. He was simple and blond with the bangs and the glasses. This was the early seventies, when everyone was looking for his own Jimmy Carter, a man he could trust. John, with his apple-pie face, was perfectly cast. He came to hate this, but he was lucky. He had just what the market was demanding. It was his trademark, as the blue suede shoes and pompadour trademarked Elvis. It was his thing. You can evolve and grow but you should never resent your thing. If you look at how few artists actually make it, you will recognize that those trademarks, though in some ways limiting, are a gift of providence. John would show up with his pageboy and all-American smile and say, "Hi, I'm John Denver. I would like to play a song for you." And bang, he was on the air.