Jeremy Bradley- Can you please recap your long history in the music world and tell us that you really do know what you're talking about.

Zack Werner- Well, you want bio history? Well, let's see. First of all, all things fundamentally start from what kind of background you get at home. My mother was an opera singer and a club singer, a music teacher, and my father was a music aficionado on many different levels. So I grew up with an enormous exposure to a wide variety of music at home. I started taking piano and clarinet when I was very young. I probably started piano at five and I finished Royal Conservatory piano and theory growing up, so I went through all that and did a lot of music orchestra stuff and started playing instruments and being in music theatre. And so I grew up with a very extensive music background to begin with as a musician and as an exposed person. I started playing in bands and coffeehouses in my early teens and continued on through university where I have an honours BA in English and theatre. A good background in criticism from my English degree. I played in punk bands and had a huge exposure to music, especially because it was the time that Prince and a lot of other things were exploding, and a lot of different genres were cross pollinating, particularly in the mid-western United States.

After that I played in bands for another four years. While I was at law school I played in a number of very big cover and party bands that had repertoires of up to 160, 170 songs. I started writing and recording original material out there in my early 20s. Moved to Toronto and worked with a variety of major producers and did a lot of recording there and was signed to a development deal with Capital Records. While I was living in Toronto from there I moved to Los Angeles and was managed by Stiefel Phillips Management who managed Rod Stewart and Simple Minds and a number of other major bands and played and toured all over the United States, including openings for Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, a wide variety of bands.

We were the house band at what is now called the Viper Room in Los Angeles, so we played and toured out of L.A. during the Guns N' Roses sort of era into the grunge universe and lived down there and played and recorded a lot over the course of three or four years. Moved back to Canada, signed with MCA as a solo artist, worked with a number of producers making a record for them, which was a terrible record but certainly got a lot of experience doing that. Also the band I was in in L.A. was signed to a sub-label of BMG, so I went through that. Then went back to practising entertainment law and producing records. Produced a number of metal records, but started my entertainment law practice, and within a few weeks had found The Philosopher Kings, Ron Sexsmith, The Killjoys. Did entertainment work as a lawyer with a firm that we looked after. Big Wreck, The Watchmen, demands were coming from The Tragically Hip, jacksoul. I mean, I could go on and on. I've worked with a thousand different … endless number of bands, some of which I was responsible for discovering, some of which I was working directly with their management, developing the project from the ground level up.

Built a management company that at one time had seven artists signed to major U.S. recording contracts, and currently has a deal with EMI. I've had artists that we've managed nominated for approximately 30 Juno Awards. Various artists that I have worked with in my career or people that have gone on to produce that we've worked with have sold well. I try to add it up, but we're well beyond the seven million record mark of people that have come through my office in one way or another. So I don't know, I seem to know something about it.

JB- So a no name you' re not, I guess, hey?

ZW- Well, you know, the fact is, I don't know how many names behind the scenes that anybody knows. If you know anybody who knew who the f*** Simon Cowell was before he was on an American TV show I'd be shocked. We work behind the scenes, and aside from people who really make a big noise for themselves because of their position, guys like Clive Davis - Clive is singularly one of one in the world; I'm certainly not comparing myself to him - but if you could name me any of the presidents of the Canadian major labels or any of the major managers in Canada, I would be shocked. If you could name two major managers in the world, I'd be shocked.

The fact that I worked on the Black Eyed Peas' second album, the fact that Esthero recorded with Sugar Ray, the fact that we've recorded with André 3000 or TLC - those are things that people know and those are real things. The fact that I can get the president of any major U.S. label on the phone that means somebody gives a s*** about what I have to say.

Those that can do, and those that can't teach, I guess to some extent. I certainly realized from flipping sides and being behind the scenes that there was a level of genius and of rare special talent that these people possess that perhaps my genius and special talent was not in being front and centre, but was in being able to identify and mould and make things happen. I mean, I freely acknowledge that I ain't no Leonard Cohen as a musician or having the rare vocal gifts of the Celines and whatever, and largely that's what this business is based upon. But I do do other things real well and I was able to take my experience at how hard I was willing to work, the kind of focus and attention to detail, the kind of imagination that it took to reinvent the wheel and try to re-craft pop music into something that was going to work on an international basis. All those skills were better served being the muse for other people's creativity who had the genius to do it. Luckily for me I've always had this obvious ego and desperate desire to get back out in front and do something. I would not have been satisfied just playing clubs, because I certainly was qualified to do that on some level of success. But I wanted to win on some big level and so this was the right place for me to be, to try to do it from behind the scenes, and now fortunately enough I get to do it a bit in front by being me on the show, and that's fantastic.

JB- You were saying at five and at even an earlier age you were... music was all around you. So when did you actually feel in your heart that you just had this love for it? Was it because of the inspiration from parents or was it... when did that come?

ZW- I don't necessarily think early on I thought I was going to be a musician per se. While I grew up in a household that you believed that you could accomplish anything you wanted to, that accomplishment, the basis of that was hard, hard, hard work not talent. My father always believed that hard work could beat talent any day of the week. I personally don't believe that, not in the arts and not in some elements of sports. The extreme level talent is really an issue, but I had more faith that I was going to be a Jim Morrison and Elvis and James Dean. I wasn't sure if I was going to do something creative, something that was timeless, something that was international, something that had an artsy, rock star kind of feel to it. But whether it was going to be actually as a rock star or an actor or a writer or a something, I wasn't really sure at the time. As time has progressed and certainly with more Jim Morrison kind of heroes and the Bob Dylan and Neil Young kind of heroes, music seems to have been the place that was most natural for me to fall. But I wanted to be a big star in some manner of fashion and it wasn't necessarily being obsessed with doing it as a musician.

JB- You've also lived in the States, you've done the Los Angeles circuit, so why back to Canada? Why did you end up back here?

ZW- Well, for a variety of reasons. Some of them were just happenstance. I'm married to a girl from Toronto, and that happened while I was in my band. Toronto felt like the natural place to go back to try to get to the next level. There was a wide open door for me there in the recording business, so I was able to come back and immediately sign a deal with MCA, because I had established enough of a respect in the business there to get some shot at it. And I honestly felt like . . . that the big fish in a small pond was a really good way to build a reputation really quickly and then see what happened from there. And I was going to get first shot at Canada whether or not the infrastructure to build . . . make big stars, we certainly have the talent to find big stars and build them for the next marketplace, right?

So it just really felt like a great place to be able to get first shot at a tremendous amount of talent. From my perspective it was the same as moving to Chicago or something and getting the first shot at great talent there. While you're not in the A level of the system, you're certainly at the A level of talent, right? And being in Toronto you're at the A level of Canadian talent, which is something that I certainly wanted to be involved with, and it was a good place to start building from.

I don't know if I ever thought I'd end up staying there [referring to Toronto -- Zack was in Manitoba during the interview]. I think I thought at a certain point that I would build this entertainment law business and then move to working for a major U.S. record company at some point in time. But it just took a different path.