David Foster chuckles at the irony of it all — how, despite his fear of elevators, he’s still riding high 42 years after his band Skylark’s Top 10 hit Wildflower launched his career.
The 16-time Grammy Award-winning musician’s old friend Paul Anka once joked that the real reason his claustrophobic, Victoria-born pal won’t ride elevators is because he doesn’t want to hear his own music.
The quip still makes Foster laugh — all the way to the bank.
The mention of David Foster’s name conjures up images of the accomplishments that have built his reputation as the multimillionaire music man with the Midas touch. During four decades as a musician, songwriter, composer, arranger, producer and recording artist, he has earned 49 Grammy nominations, an Emmy, a Golden Globe and three Oscar nominations.
The long list of musical titans for whom he has created hit songs or albums includes Michael Jackson, Madonna, Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, Michael Buble, Whitney Houston, Alice Cooper, Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban and Chicago.
The artist has an under-appreciated flipside, however — his business acumen, the reason he’s being honoured as the University of Victoria’s Distinguished Entrepreneur of the Year.
“I don’t think anybody could argue with the fact I’ve maximized what you can do as a piano player,” Foster said by phone from Singapore, where he was a celebrity judge for Asia’s Got Talent.
“I always thought if I wasn’t a musician, that if I was a shoe salesman, I’d have been the best shoe salesman in the store.”
While Foster, 65, and his fourth wife, Yolanda Hadid Foster, 51, the Dutch interior designer and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star, have homes in Malibu and Beverly Hills, his virtual address has always been at the intersection of art and commerce.
In the 1960s, the skinny teenage keyboardist gigged back-to-back at the bygone Century Inn and Strathcona Hotel’s Old Forge. After he moved to Los Angeles in 1971, he went on to create soundtracks for films including St. Elmo’s Fire and The Bodyguard, which famously spawned Whitney Houston’s power ballad I Will Always Love You. Other notable highlights include producing Natalie Cole’s comeback album Unforgettable and launching Céline Dion’s English-language career.
Yet he has also achieved success as an entrepreneur, real-estate investor and music-industry executive.
Indeed, it was prophetic that by 1973, the budding entrepreneur was already making “north of $100,000” as a studio musician, performing with superstars including John Lennon, Diana Ross and Rod Stewart.
It was a sign of things to come that he took a big gamble, walking away from the fat paycheques to start spreading his wings creatively and business-wise, laying the foundation for his career as a music mogul.
Twenty years later, Foster’s entrepreneurial spirit caught the attention of Atlantic Records brass, who recruited him as vice-president. He later established his boutique label 143 Records.
In 1997, he was promoted to senior vice-president of Warner Music Group and chairman of 143 Records, by then a joint venture with WMG.
Three years ago, Foster kept going up on that imaginary elevator, becoming chairman of Universal’s Verve Music Group, the fabled jazz label.
“I was always good with finance from an early age, I guess,” recalls the former Mount Douglas Secondary student. He credits his late mother, Eleanor, a homemaker, and late father, Maurice, a musician and Saanich maintenance-yard superintendent, with providing a happy “non-affluent” upbringing — and piano lessons that began at age four — to inspire the only boy in a family with six sisters.
“I was always the guy that if I earned a dollar, I saved 50 cents,” Foster said. “Ah, the gift of poverty. But we didn’t feel poor. We just didn’t have any money.”
Chris Earthy, his best friend and saxophone player in his 1960s bands Starbright Combo and Teen Beats, recalls Foster as a hard-working saver who booked their gigs and handled finances.
“When David was 17 or 18, he bought a 1968 Dodge Super Bee, brand-new,” recalled Earthy. “Most of us would have been lucky enough to buy a Volkswagen.”
Earthy, 67, also has fond memories of a New Year’s Eve gig where guests passed a hat to give $20 extra to the musicians, who earned $50 apiece.
“My dad picked us up and we went to David’s place, and he showed his dad how much money we made,” Earthy recalled. “They said: ‘That’s more than both of us make in a month!’ ”
One of the biggest mistakes artists make, Foster said he has since learned, is “they make a dollar and they think they’ve earned a dollar, and that really is a trap.
“The second mistake creative people make is that they trust other people with their money, and hope they do the right thing.”
He recalls another valuable lesson learned from Geoff Vantreight, his mother's cousin, when Foster, then 21, gleefully announced he had sold for $7,000 a Gabriola Island property he bought for $5,000 two months earlier.
“He said: ‘You know what? You’re an idiot,’ ” said Foster, recalling the daffodil king’s reaction. “He was very brusque and to the point. He said: ‘Don’t sell anything until you’re 60.’ ”
The musician said he also still follows some “great advice” billionaire Jim Pattison once gave him.
“Jimmy said: ‘Keep some money aside from everybody else who’s in your life, and keep track of it yourself.’ ”
Foster’s other favourite influential friends include Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Craig McCaw, Dennis Washington and his Beverly Hills neighbour Haim Saban, the media mogul and billionaire philanthropist who launched the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers franchise in the U.S., started Fox Family Channel with Rupert Murdoch and acquired Univision, the largest Spanish-language media company in the U.S.
“David’s got incredible instincts. He sees things that others would miss,” said Saban, adding it’s a trait he witnessed while helping Foster negotiate a Universal contract.
“You can’t learn this. David was born with that,” Saban, 70, said. “I think of him as a really good chess player, as somebody who sees not just the step he or the opponent is making. He’s always one step ahead.”
Howard Grossman, Foster’s business manager for the past 20 years, said one thing he has recognized representing artists for over 25 years is that most earn money based on their artistic talents rather than business acumen.
“David, on the other hand, has been not only blessed with one of the most supple creative minds of our time, but he also possesses a keen interest and a skillset in connecting dots on the business side of things,” said Grossman, who is involved in all negotiations relating to Foster’s “producer’s deals and the exploitation of his publishing.”
Describing his client as “marvellous to work with,” he said one of their most significant collaborations was on the sale of Foster’s publishing catalogues to Peer Music.
“David also has an unquenchable desire to ask questions and listen to people who are leaders of industry, whether it be financial, technology or otherwise. David is a great listener and an incredible student of life.”
When Foster lists his proudest achievements, they invariably include the David Foster Foundation, the national charitable organization he founded here in 1985 that has since provided financial support to nearly 1,000 Canadian families with children who need organ transplants.
It reflects his enduring passion for his hometown that he’s also as pumped about David Foster Way, the Victoria harbourfront walkway named in his honour, as about his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
As for his personal business success, Foster attributes it to “being smart in the stock market,” real-estate investments and other deals.
Transactions have included the purchase of waterfront property on the Saanich Peninsula; the sale of his former Malibu property, including his 22-acre compound (“my Bodyguard house”), with 14,000 square feet of living space and 19 bathrooms, that he bought in the early 1990s; and, more recently, sales of his penthouse in Victoria’s Shoal Point and another home in Vancouver’s Fairmont Pacific Rim.
Other successful ventures include the Starbucks compilation of Foster’s seasonal hits and his Emmy Award-winning Hit Man PBS specials.
Mostly because of how it has spawned his wife’s businesses, including Hopelessly Romantic which inspires couples to “get wise, keep your romance alive” he also mentions Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, the reality series he occasionally appears in as “Yolanda’s husband” in their Malibu home, and even The Princes of Malibu.
Although it cast Foster in an unflattering light, he said the 2005 Fox reality series that chronicled the chaotic home life of his blended family with his ex-wife Linda Thompson and Brody and Brandon Jenner, his two then-spoiled stepsons, he said it fulfilled his motivation to do the show in the first place — to create opportunities for them.
“The TV exposure in these shows leads to other things, and it sort of opened the door for the Kardashians,” he said. “We were doing this early on and Brody went on to The Hills and [Keeping Up With] the Kardashians after that.”
While Foster still flies in private jets, he said he and Yolanda are in “downsizing mode” and “my toys have become less important.”
Foster has two other ex-wives — B.J. Cook, the Victoria-based singer and songwriter, and former model Rebecca Dyer — and five biological children: Amy, Erin, Allison, Jordan and Sara. Foster and Yolanda share their home with Bella, Anwar and Gigi Hadid from her first marriage.
One thing he hasn’t downsized is his work ethic, with Asia’s Got Talent, Wallflower, Diana Krall’s new album he produced, and a venture with Disney and Universal Music keeping him busy.
It’s typical of the hitmaker’s risk-taking nature that at the age of 65, he’s taking another creative gamble — writing 25 songs for a Broadway musical inspired by Betty Boop.
“I don’t write Top 40 hits anymore and in the ever-changing landscape of the music business, particularly the record business, that has morphed into something else,” Foster said.
“The music biz is a moving target, and I’m in that mindspace again where I can write freely,” said Foster, whose past experiences with musical theatre include producing the cast album for the Tony Award-winning musical Dreamgirls, and developing Primal Scream: The Musical with his friend, psychotherapist Dr. Arthur Janov (The Primal Scream).
“You have to try different things, and luckily I’ve found some that worked for me, so Broadway’s a logical place for me to go.”
