The biggest moment in my career was not a song. It was not an album. It was not a concert. It was a handshake. John Lennon put his hand out in Washington Square Park in 1971 and I shook it and that was the contract. No paper. No lawyer. No manager calling another manager. A Beatle and a street musician shaking hands next to the fountain while a dog barked and a cop watched from across the street.

That handshake was worth more than every contract in the history of the music business. You know why. Because a handshake means I trust you. A contract means I do not trust you but I will do business with you anyway. Lennon did not need a contract. Lennon needed a handshake. He put his hand out and I put mine out and that was the record deal. Apple Records. The Beatles' label. Signed with a handshake next to a fountain in Greenwich Village.

Every musician wants the phone call. The phone call from the label. The phone call that says we want to sign you. I never got the phone call. I got the handshake. And the handshake was better because the handshake happened in person. The phone call is a voice in a wire. The handshake is a hand in your hand. You can feel the other person's grip. You can feel whether they mean it. Lennon meant it. I could feel it in his hand. The man had shaken a million hands and this one he meant.

The music business runs on contracts. Thousands of pages of contracts. Publishing deals and distribution deals and licensing deals and merchandising deals and every single one of them is a document that says we do not trust each other enough to shake hands. The contract is the replacement for the handshake. The contract is what happens when trust leaves the room and lawyers walk in.

I have signed contracts. I signed one with Elektra Records. I signed one with Orange Records. Every contract I signed cost me something. The handshake with Lennon cost me nothing and gave me everything. The Pope Smokes Dope. An album produced by a Beatle. Recorded at the Record Plant. Released on Apple. All of it started with a handshake next to a fountain.

The last handshake I remember was with a kid in Washington Square Park about ten years before I died. He had a guitar and a hat and he was playing for change and I walked up to him and I shook his hand and I said keep playing. That is all I said. Keep playing. I do not know if he kept playing. I do not know if the handshake meant anything to him. But it meant something to me because it was the same handshake Lennon gave me. A person with more experience putting their hand out to a person with less experience and saying I see you. Keep going. The handshake is the oldest contract in the world and it is still the only one that means anything.

See also: Lennon Meets Peel — the day it happened. The Apple — the label that honored the handshake. The Pope Smokes Dope — the album that came from it. The Rejection Letter — what happens when nobody shakes your hand. Washington Square — the park where both handshakes happened. The Record — the groove that came after the handshake.

David Peel Rant #94

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