Lindsey Blair Hallman

As you look back on your career—mentally flipping through a rolodex of accomplishments—you hope to come across that one moment that made it all worth it—that one instance where you felt like you could finally say, “I’ve arrived.”

For Eliot Tiegel, it was getting a handwritten letter of thanks from arguably one of the most powerful entertainers in history—Frank Sinatra. Eliot covered one of Sinatra’s late­ night recording sessions on the evening of March 8, 1975, but he remembers it like it was yesterday. “I accompanied him alone to his car around 12:30 a.m. expecting to see a chauffeur driven limo; instead he got into a small two­seater sports car and drove away alone into the dark night to his Beverly Hills home.”

This professional triumph, however, didn’t come without some good old­fashioned hard work. Life was a juggling act for Eliot—a full­time journalism student and beat reporter for the Seawanhaka at LIU Brooklyn, and a copyboy/editorial assistant for the Herald Tribune where he covered high school and college sports, including LIU baseball. “I had to work the 5 p.m.­1 a.m. and the 8:30 p.m. to 3 a.m. shifts, which meant I was always tired.”

After graduation, Eliot spent two years in the army, editing a weekly army newspaper in Ft. Stewart, Georgia. When he got out, he worked for a small magazine in New York called Music Vendor. Eliot’s appetite for writing about the music industry only grew stronger, and his experience landed him a job with Columbia Records’ public relations department in Los Angeles. “I had always enjoyed listening to music, so it was a natural for me to write about it for music magazines,” he explains.

One could say that Eliot was certainly in the right place at the right time—Columbia Records’ offices were just around the corner from the offices of Billboard magazine, putting him in contact with some of the most influential people in music journalism. When major editorial changes occurred at the New York headquarters of Billboard, they turned to Eliot to be the L.A. bureau chief. He gladly accepted.

Eliot continued full speed ahead, interviewing the “who’s who” of the music industry, from Barbra Streisand to Dave Brubeck to Benny Goodman to Steven Stills to Graham Nash and Neil Young. “Working at Billboard was an exciting experience,” he says. “I broke a lot of exclusives.”

One of those exclusives included a major payola scandal, which according to Eliot made him the most hated writer in Hollywood. “I had to deal with death threats, causing me to report them to the police,” he explains. “My payola stories were picked up by several L.A. papers, which kept my name in the spotlight for an uncomfortable period of time.”

Eliot’s career at Billboard flourished, allowing him to be in the frontline of the ever­ changing music industry. From swing to modern jazz to rap, Eliot reported on each genre with fervor. “Each style has catered to new legions of fans,” he says. “Music styles fractionalize their audiences, so you generally don’t find people enjoying all styles of music based on their age and ethnic background.”

In addition to writing for magazines, Eliot also was commissioned to write two books for Phoenix Books of Los Angeles, including “Overexposed: The Price of Fame” and “Latinization of America.” And he has just finished his latest book entitled “Multi­media Meltdown,” exploring how the growth of the Internet changes our lives.

Eliot’s love affair with the entertainment industry continues to grow and evolve. “The industry is constantly changing,” he says, “and that opens new areas for journalistic exploration and learning.”

Written by Lindsey Blair for Long Island University